Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Quinnipiac poll,
Speaker 1: Paris by five in Pennsylvania, and I'm beginning to suspect
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign is this close to you offering anybody
Speaker 1: in a swing state who votes for him a nude
Speaker 1: photo of Millennia. I mean, that is neither as gratuitous
Speaker 1: nor as crazy as it sounds. I first heard about
Speaker 1: the post on Twitter, and I thought this was going
Speaker 1: to be a Sarah Cooper bitch or the rebirth of
Speaker 1: JibJab and then I clicked on it.
Speaker 2: Why do I stand proudly behind my nute modeling work.
Speaker 2: The more pressing question is why has the media chosen
Speaker 2: to scrutinize my celebration of the Human Forum in a
Speaker 2: fashioned photoshoot?
Speaker 1: Have we known? Michigan Harris by five, Quinnipiac, Wisconsin Harris
Speaker 1: by one, Quinnipiac, Georgia, Trump by just three. That's Donald
Speaker 1: not Milania. Atlanta Journal Constitution poll it had been five,
Speaker 1: and as mentioned, Pennsylvania Harris by five, Quinnipiac, oh. Also
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania throwing Stein and Oliver. It's Harris by six Quinnipiac. Nationally,
Speaker 1: Harris fifty Trump forty eight, and a poll by Fox
Speaker 1: News a month after they had a Trump fifty Harris
Speaker 1: forty nine. How about vote for Trump and order Millenia's
Speaker 1: book and get two free nude photos of her. That's
Speaker 1: where we are, or almost where we are. Ex prosecutor
Speaker 1: vice president swapped in for the retiring president versus insane
Speaker 1: proto Nazi racist would be dictator adjudicated sex offender with
Speaker 1: the nude model first lady and her step sons, who
Speaker 1: are both appearing with it. Oklahoma religious crackpot who has
Speaker 1: called the vice president a quote lying whore and their
Speaker 1: dad's campaign is about the scary illegal black people eating cats,
Speaker 1: but the grotesque, misogynist Russian produced sexual memes are about
Speaker 1: the vice president. As a movie, it would be hilarious
Speaker 1: if the title hadn't been taken. You could call it
Speaker 1: doctor Strangelove.
Speaker 2: Why do I stand proudly behind my nute modeling word?
Speaker 1: As the old joke goes, Hey Donald, got any nude
Speaker 1: pictures of your first lady? Would you like them? Holy crap? Okay,
Speaker 1: back to the numbers. The Pennsylvania and Michigan leeds are
Speaker 1: outside the margin of error, So, to borrow another phrase,
Speaker 1: stop the count more nationally, you go for the economist
Speaker 1: has it Harris by four, Active vote has Harris by six,
Speaker 1: And literally two weeks ago it was Harris by two,
Speaker 1: and the five thirty eight average ticked up to Harris
Speaker 1: by three point three. Okay, okay, My final offer vote
Speaker 1: for Trump in Pennsylvania, and you can take a photo
Speaker 1: with the first lady. And that's as far as I go.
Speaker 1: The Trump people remain utterly mystified by what is happening.
Speaker 1: Like all Republicans ever since Newt Gingrich crawled out of
Speaker 1: the primordial slime. They live by one mantra and one mantra.
Speaker 1: Only if it is evil and it worked, do more
Speaker 1: of it. If it's evil and it didn't work, do
Speaker 1: twice as much of it. They cannot figure this out.
Speaker 1: Crazy won them the White House in twenty sixteen. Crazy
Speaker 1: almost won them a coup in twenty twenty. So why
Speaker 1: is Crazy losing and losing a little bit more every week?
Speaker 1: To her? Naturally, the response is the evil once worked,
Speaker 1: but it hasn't been working, so we won't stop it,
Speaker 1: and we won't double it. We have to do three
Speaker 1: times as much of it as we did previously. I
Speaker 1: mean Axios. Far right reactionary axios headlined all this last night,
Speaker 1: the no shame strategy. The interior headline Vance's zero shame strategy.
Speaker 1: It's also Vance's zero truth strategy. This whole thing, this
Speaker 1: whole thing about the cats and the migrants in Springfield, Ohio,
Speaker 1: the whole Riizon detra of JV. Vance's stochastic terrorist attack
Speaker 1: on the residents of his own state. This has now
Speaker 1: been revealed to originate from two lies. The first lie
Speaker 1: was from the woman who posted to Facebook about somebody's friends, neighbors, aunts, uncles, condoms,
Speaker 1: salesman seeing somebody eat a cat. The woman's name was
Speaker 1: Erica Lee. She has at least expressed remorse. Vance's campaign
Speaker 1: knew this was not true. It had called the Springfield
Speaker 1: City Hall on the ninth of this month and was
Speaker 1: told by people there that it was not true, and
Speaker 1: that did not stop them. It didn't even slow them down.
Speaker 1: The second lie, revealed yesterday, turns out to have been
Speaker 1: by the woman in Springfield who told the police her cat,
Speaker 1: Miss Sassey, had been taken and killed. Maybe that's the
Speaker 1: story Vance keeps using as a fallback. Oh there's a
Speaker 1: police report. My constituents insist there is a missing cat.
Speaker 1: The woman is named Anna Kilgore, and guess what her
Speaker 1: cat is alive? Sweet Sassy Melasses, the cat, Miss Sassey,
Speaker 1: is alive. The Wall Street Journal did something that Trump
Speaker 1: and Vance and their fellow scumbags would never do. They
Speaker 1: fact checked Vance's story and kill Gore's story and Miss
Speaker 1: Sasse's story. I quote. A Vance spokesperson on Tuesday provided
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal with a police report in which
Speaker 1: a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken
Speaker 1: by Haitian neighbors. But when a reporter went to Anna
Speaker 1: Kilgore's house Tuesday evening, she said her cat, Miss Sassey,
Speaker 1: which went missing in late August, had actually returned a
Speaker 1: few days later, found safe in her own basement. Kil Gore,
Speaker 1: wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to
Speaker 1: her in Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter
Speaker 1: and a mobile phone translation app. And again, as stupid
Speaker 1: as all that sounds, at least she did that. At
Speaker 1: least she made some effort to put one pinch of
Speaker 1: the toothpaste back into the tube. Vance Vance got up
Speaker 1: on a stage and insisted not only that he has
Speaker 1: multiple reports from his constituents, but that the legal immigrants,
Speaker 1: virtually everybody Republican or Democrat is generously welcomed into Springfield,
Speaker 1: Ohio acknowledge that they have improved Springfield, Ohio. Vance got
Speaker 1: up there yesterday insisted they are not legally here and
Speaker 1: that it's just a legal trick played by the Vice
Speaker 1: president and he's going to keep calling them illegal. JD.
Speaker 1: Vance is a menace to the peace and safety of
Speaker 1: the citizens of this country. He is a liar. He
Speaker 1: is an amoral son of a bitch. And guess what
Speaker 1: if we start kicking people out of America, if we
Speaker 1: start saying, oh, you think you're here legally, We've decided
Speaker 1: you're not here legally. If we start deporting them, we
Speaker 1: need to make sure Trump is first and JD. Vance
Speaker 1: is second, or maybe it should be the other way round,
Speaker 1: because Trump can't run as fast as Vance can. For
Speaker 1: all the hyperbole here, it is essential to remember at
Speaker 1: all times that Trump is the psychotic in this equation.
Speaker 1: Vance is the one pretending to be psychotic, deliberately, exploitatively, reprehensively.
Speaker 1: CNN reported yesterday that right after the twenty twelve election,
Speaker 1: Vance then still at Yale law wrote a seemingly heartfelt
Speaker 1: rebuke of people like the JD. Vance of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Vance twenty twenty twelve attacked the GOP platform on migrants
Speaker 1: and minorities, calling it quote openly hostile to non whites
Speaker 1: and alienating to blacks, Latinos, the youth. He wrote this
Speaker 1: on a non partisan blog run by one of his
Speaker 1: former teachers, and four years later, as he cynically mapped
Speaker 1: out this path to political horedom we see him living today,
Speaker 1: he decided it needed to be erased. He asked his
Speaker 1: ex professor to delete it. Well, there's deleted, and then
Speaker 1: there's deleted. It is still on the Internet archive. I
Speaker 1: quote JD. Vance twenty twelve. A significant part of Republican
Speaker 1: immigration policy centers on the possibility of deporting twelve million
Speaker 1: people or self deporting them. Think about it. We conservatives
Speaker 1: rightly mistrust the government to efficiently administer business loans and
Speaker 1: regulate our food supply, Yet we allegedly believe that it
Speaker 1: can deport millions of unregistered aliens. The notion fails to
Speaker 1: pass the laugh test. The same can be said for
Speaker 1: too much of the party's platform. That is exactly what
Speaker 1: Vance without a second thought for truth or humanity, or
Speaker 1: how much we laugh at him or who he used
Speaker 1: to be when he was still a human being. That
Speaker 1: is exactly what jd. Vance is pushing on America right now.
Speaker 1: It is even if he and Trump go down in
Speaker 1: record breaking flames, indescribably damaging to this country, he should
Speaker 1: be ashamed of it. Remember the practicalities here too, which
Speaker 1: I've been hammering since twenty sixteen, and I've never asked
Speaker 1: anybody to delete the record of mass deportations require mass
Speaker 1: concentration camps, and mass concentration camps require this nation to
Speaker 1: move just one small step away from ethnic cleansing. The
Speaker 1: Vice President underscored the point yesterday while talking to the
Speaker 1: Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. Quote, massive raids, massive detention camps.
Speaker 1: What are they talking about? She said, as the room
Speaker 1: understandably went silent coverage of her speech. It was married
Speaker 1: to an ipso's poll indicating fifty four percent of the
Speaker 1: country at least somewhat supports apprehending and removing undocumented immigrants.
Speaker 1: How about the net pole asking if America supports death
Speaker 1: camps for them, because that as Kamala Harris rightly implies
Speaker 1: is the inevitable trumpion outcome. And JD. Van's is still
Speaker 1: out there every day selling lying about what he was
Speaker 1: once ashamed of, and he should be ashamed of it still.
Speaker 1: But I assume he asked his old propht to delete
Speaker 1: his conscience for him as well. The overall picture can
Speaker 1: used to verify something I guessed weeks ago. The Trump
Speaker 1: campaign will just get darker and darker, and many of
Speaker 1: its leaders will abandon hope of an electoral victory and
Speaker 1: focus entirely on forcing a contingent election in the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives or another coup attempt. We're both. This is
Speaker 1: a dangerous cult full of stupid, failed people looking for
Speaker 1: somebody else to blame. When they were told yesterday at
Speaker 1: advance event that the FED had cut interest rates, they
Speaker 1: booed because in their echo chamber, any economic improvement now,
Speaker 1: including economic improvement for themselves, is bad news for Trump.
Speaker 1: It is madness. And no. Lemmings do not actually follow
Speaker 1: each other blindly off of cliffs, but metaphorically, Trump thugs
Speaker 1: do follow each other blindly off of cliffs. For my
Speaker 1: next guess, the next flashpoint is going to be a
Speaker 1: really difficult one. Those two charges against the guy at
Speaker 1: the Trump golf club, the weapons possessions violations that may
Speaker 1: be it. The Department of Justice may not have any
Speaker 1: other legal action to take against him, although clearly it
Speaker 1: wants more. It is combing his life to look for
Speaker 1: something else to charge him with, as is the state
Speaker 1: of Florida. But as the Wall Street Journal put it, quote,
Speaker 1: additional charges would present challenges for prosecutors, since law enforcement
Speaker 1: officials have said Routh never fired a shot or had
Speaker 1: Trump in his line of sight before a Secret Service
Speaker 1: agent spotted his rifle poking through the golf course fence
Speaker 1: and open fire, sending him fleeing. If you've noticed, even
Speaker 1: places like the Wall Street Journal and Fox are backing
Speaker 1: away from referring to this event at the golf course
Speaker 1: as a quote assassination attempt unquote, still had that term
Speaker 1: on its front page last night, in mice type at
Speaker 1: the bottom. Given less prominent play than Woje leaving ESPN,
Speaker 1: the journal has adopted quote apparent assassination attempt unquote. What
Speaker 1: happens when the cult figures out that the suspect is
Speaker 1: facing like six years in jail for a crime they
Speaker 1: consider worse than the crucifixion. Well, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: guess that at that point they send out dvance to
Speaker 1: claim that the man is also an undocumented immigrant. Also
Speaker 1: of interest here the response to this from the former
Speaker 1: Trump critic and fired CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. He phoned
Speaker 1: Trump to apologize to him because I don't know, I
Speaker 1: stopped understanding anything he was doing. Five years ago, Chris
Speaker 1: Cuomo used to think the correct journalistic answer to how
Speaker 1: to have CNN cover the implosion of his brother's tenure
Speaker 1: as governor of New York was to just ignore the
Speaker 1: story every night. Now he's apologizing to Trump for I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's next, then, an all new edition of Countdown.
Speaker 3: This is Countdown with Keith Oberman, my crazy friend set
Speaker 3: of us on this all new edition of Countdown. It
Speaker 3: dawned on me the other day that I have been
Speaker 3: living in apartments in New York City for more than
Speaker 3: two thirds of my life now, and that inevitably led
Speaker 3: me to think back to the day and how many
Speaker 3: times has this happened to you? How many times have
Speaker 3: you flashed back to the day when somebody came over
Speaker 3: to the apartment building you were living in and lit
Speaker 3: it on fire, the story of Hey, why is the
Speaker 3: light through yonder window breaking so much brighter than usual?
Speaker 3: Next in Things I Promised not to tell they let
Speaker 3: my building on fire. First, there are still more new
Speaker 3: idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miss Grants,
Speaker 3: morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worst
Speaker 3: persons in the world, or, as the number three here
Speaker 3: would say it, whoo the bronze worse.
Speaker 1: Maria Badauomo. Maria was once a business anchor at CNBC
Speaker 1: and then she was hit by lightning or something that
Speaker 1: was transformed into a Saturday Night Live weekend update character
Speaker 1: who could have been played by the late Gilda Radner
Speaker 1: in her theory as expressed on Fox to Murdoch's Australian failure,
Speaker 1: Miranda Divine of the New York Vanity Press Post, who
Speaker 1: restrained herself throughout this somehow from exploding and saying, boy,
Speaker 1: are you nuts? Maria. It's Maria's theory that the world's
Speaker 1: media is being manipulated by you ready, Alejandro majorcis the
Speaker 1: head of Homeland Security. No, no, seriously, I mean, even
Speaker 1: even as a conspiracy theory, even in the conspiracy theory world. Seriously,
Speaker 1: the one time I would ever say this sentence. You
Speaker 1: sure you don't mean George sorows where Joe Biden or
Speaker 1: at least like Aaron Rodgers or somebody. Bartiromo's theory is
Speaker 1: that the head of Homeland Security is manipulating the country
Speaker 1: to stop talking about the guy who had the gun
Speaker 1: at Trump's golf course. Once again, they take that same
Speaker 1: strategy out, and that is change the conversation. She said,
Speaker 1: the timing of the p Diddy arrest, Please, they must
Speaker 1: have had the p Diddy arrest on the shelf, waiting
Speaker 1: to take it off the shelf for when they needed it.
Speaker 1: And yesterday, boy, oh boy, did they need it. Because
Speaker 1: the questions were spiking everywhere as far as how it
Speaker 1: is possibility that another assassination attempt happened, that another would
Speaker 1: be assassin was within a couple of hundred yards of Trump.
Speaker 1: What questions were spiking? Trump plays golf every day at
Speaker 1: the same three courses. He walks slowly when he walks,
Speaker 1: and he likes having people film him play golf as
Speaker 1: if he were good at it. And his golf course,
Speaker 1: the one in Florida, the main one he uses next
Speaker 1: to Mari a lago. It abuts public streets. He has
Speaker 1: been warned endlessly while in office and out not to
Speaker 1: do this, but he does it anyway. The only questions
Speaker 1: that are spiking here are how is Trump this stupid?
Speaker 1: Not from Awa. As we are all asking these questions, boom,
Speaker 1: they take P Diddy in and now we're all talking
Speaker 1: about that. I saw right through it as soon as
Speaker 1: it happened. Ah okay, I got it now, so uh sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm who's P Diddy? The rapper guy with the sex
Speaker 1: trafficking thing? Who is not R Kelly? I got it right?
Speaker 1: Ah okay? Was that this week? Maria? The only thing
Speaker 1: you saw right through his reality and into your own
Speaker 1: little fantasy, paranoid world. The runner up worser the University
Speaker 1: of South Carolina. I'll just read this intact from the
Speaker 1: South Carolina Daily Gazette, the nonprofit news site in that
Speaker 1: state Columbia. A social media message circulating among the University
Speaker 1: of South Carolina alumni is criticizing the state's largest university
Speaker 1: system for allowing the student event featuring a pair of
Speaker 1: controversial far right political provocateurs, including the founder of the
Speaker 1: Proud Boys. In response, a college spokesman said, allowing the
Speaker 1: event as a matter of free speech. The September event,
Speaker 1: sponsored by the USC chapter of Uncensored America, bills itself
Speaker 1: as a roast of Vice President Harris with roast masters
Speaker 1: Milo Ianapolis and Gavin mckinness. It's Gavin mckinness from the
Speaker 1: Proud Boys. Proud is a brand name. They don't have
Speaker 1: anything to be proud about. The event's title uses a
Speaker 1: crude spelling of the Democratic presidential nominee name, which the
Speaker 1: sc Daily Gazette is intentionally not repeating. Unquote, the newspaper
Speaker 1: The Guardian is quoting a South Carolina student name Nick
Speaker 1: Stewart is saying, as someone who normally has a lot
Speaker 1: of school pride, this ordeal has made me feel ashamed
Speaker 1: of being a student at USC. Well, yeah, look, it's
Speaker 1: South Carolina, so our expectations for you doing the right
Speaker 1: thing were next to nothing. But Jesus suffering f you're
Speaker 1: actually hosting this on campus, an attack on a vice
Speaker 1: president of the United States and making a sexual joke
Speaker 1: about her. In the title of the thing with these
Speaker 1: two idiots, mckinnis but our winner worse than all this
Speaker 1: the worst Chris Cuomo I was explaining this. In fact,
Speaker 1: Chris Cuomo's name came up during it to a media
Speaker 1: reporter the other day. There are those of us who
Speaker 1: suffer from being on TV, radio, podcast disorder. It's a
Speaker 1: minor personality disorder. And if you recognize you have it,
Speaker 1: and that it's not quite one hundred percent healthy, you're
Speaker 1: coping with it. You're not dangerous, You're not harming anybody.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you might humiliate yourself now and again,
Speaker 1: But if you get fired from CNN for not understanding
Speaker 1: that there are rules about journalism and nepotism, and you
Speaker 1: think you were right and so you must remain on TV,
Speaker 1: you have the disease that says you must be on
Speaker 1: TV to such a degree that you're willing to accept
Speaker 1: a job on the nick at night of TV news
Speaker 1: called News Nation. This is no longer a minor disorder,
Speaker 1: it's no longer coping and you should seek help. Then
Speaker 1: if you decide that what happened to Trump on Sunday,
Speaker 1: what didn't happen to Trump on Sunday has never happened
Speaker 1: to any politician before, even though your own father and
Speaker 1: your own brother were governors, and you choose to call
Speaker 1: Trump to apologize for something, and then you go on
Speaker 1: the air and talk about calling Trump for twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid, Chris Cuomo, you are in the tertiary stages
Speaker 1: of this disease.
Speaker 4: I called him today because I am ashamed of how
Speaker 4: we are responding and not responding to the threats on him,
Speaker 4: and I feel for his family. And I know you
Speaker 4: can roll your eyes and say, oh, yeah, he asked, right, listen,
Speaker 4: that's your choice, and I think it's a wrong choice.
Speaker 3: Okay, we got to get out of.
Speaker 4: The judgment business, unless it's judging ourselves. A guide point
Speaker 4: in AK forty seven at him while he's playing golf,
Speaker 4: and we take solace in the fact that the guy
Speaker 4: didn't get any rounds off.
Speaker 1: That does not work for me.
Speaker 4: If I had been through what that guy's been through
Speaker 4: in the last two months, you would not know where
Speaker 4: I am. You would never see me on TV again.
Speaker 1: My god, Chris, get help, Chris. That happened to me.
Speaker 1: You'd never see me on TV again. You're a news nation.
Speaker 1: We never see you on TV now. Today's worst Person
Speaker 1: nor She was the number one story on the Countdown
Speaker 1: and my favorite topic, me and things I promised not
Speaker 1: to tell. I first lived in a New York City
Speaker 1: apartment in nineteen fifty nine. I mean, truth be told
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight. But I was in the womb then,
Speaker 1: so I don't remember much about the apartment Grand Avenue
Speaker 1: in the Bronx off Fordham Road. Full time. We live
Speaker 1: there until October nineteen sixty, then roughly one day a
Speaker 1: week in another apartment, the one my grandparents lived, same
Speaker 1: block until like my folks, my grandparents, it's moved out
Speaker 1: of the Bronx to the suburbs round about when I
Speaker 1: was seven. I did not get my own apartment in
Speaker 1: New York City until nineteen eighty, which seems so long
Speaker 1: ago that if you ask me now, was it still
Speaker 1: called New Amsterdam, then I'd have to stop and think
Speaker 1: about my answer. Anyway, I was there the other day,
Speaker 1: a block away from my apartment. Could look right into
Speaker 1: the window and at just the right angle to see it.
Speaker 1: So I stood and stared and took some pictures with
Speaker 1: my phone, and I shook my head and I went
Speaker 1: into full flashback mode, and I saw the flames and
Speaker 1: the glow and the blackened lobby. Because one night somebody
Speaker 1: threw a Malata fn cocktail into the building in which
Speaker 1: I had my first New York City apartment. The address
Speaker 1: was it is two hundred and forty East fifty fifth Street,
Speaker 1: Apartment ten F. It was two doors west of Second Avenue,
Speaker 1: south side of the street. It was the center apartment
Speaker 1: on the streets side of the building, and I was
Speaker 1: directly above the front entrance and above the only thing
Speaker 1: of note in the whole place, a full fledged, old
Speaker 1: fashioned New York City apartment building canopy. You could get
Speaker 1: out of a cab and a rain storm and under
Speaker 1: that canopy in like a second and a half and
Speaker 1: pretty much not get wet. No doorman, no amenities, rather dubious,
Speaker 1: live in super but it had that canopy. I moved
Speaker 1: in on June seventeenth, nineteen eighty. It was a big
Speaker 1: studio apartment. The view was of a big video warehouse
Speaker 1: across the street, though if you leaned out the westernmost
Speaker 1: window you could see the City Corps Center, which was
Speaker 1: always an impressive sight on a foggy night. The neighborhood
Speaker 1: and the building were safe and quiet, at least they
Speaker 1: thought they were safe. It was a fifteen minute walk
Speaker 1: from my first job and then a twenty five minute
Speaker 1: walk from my second job, and when I first rented there,
Speaker 1: it was are you ready four hundred and eighty three
Speaker 1: dollars a month, which sounds unbelievable except that was about
Speaker 1: a third of my salary. And I think when I
Speaker 1: moved out in nineteen eighty four the rent had gone
Speaker 1: up to five hundred and ten dollars a month, And
Speaker 1: that low price might have had something to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that one night somebody threw them all a
Speaker 1: top cocktail into the building. You know how, once you've
Speaker 1: been in any place for any length of time, you
Speaker 1: get used to the physics of it, the feel of it.
Speaker 1: Not just someplace you live, any place you spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time in an office, a classroom, a theater,
Speaker 1: or an apartment. You know what it sounds like. You
Speaker 1: know what it feels like in the summer, or how
Speaker 1: it feels differently in the winter. You know what it
Speaker 1: looks like, the building, noise, the smells, if it's too hot,
Speaker 1: if it's too cold, and especially, and think about this
Speaker 1: for a second, especially what the light looks like at
Speaker 1: every hour of the day. I don't know if there
Speaker 1: was a day when I could have said this is
Speaker 1: what the light looks like in Apartment ten f two
Speaker 1: forty East fifty fifth Street during a snowstorm, or what
Speaker 1: the light looks like coming in through the shades at
Speaker 1: eight in the morning or eight at night. But it
Speaker 1: probably didn't take long. June nineteen eighty was when I
Speaker 1: moved in. I bet I knew the various lights of
Speaker 1: the place by September, so by New Years of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, I knew it all instinctively, exactly reflexingly, boringly.
Speaker 1: I would go to my bed in the southeast corner
Speaker 1: of my studio apartment. I'd get in sleeping north south,
Speaker 1: but with my head at the south end, and as
Speaker 1: I lay on my back, I could look out the
Speaker 1: windows and see the faint orangey glow from a couple
Speaker 1: of street lights that shone through the four windows that
Speaker 1: opened to on either side of a kind of small
Speaker 1: picture window in the middle. The light would be brightest
Speaker 1: from the window on the farthest right, which was the
Speaker 1: one closest to Second Avenue and the closest to one
Speaker 1: of those street lights. So on Sunday, January ninth, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, as that night turned into Monday, January tenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, I hit the sack around midnight because
Speaker 1: I actually had one of those rare nine to five
Speaker 1: jobs in television as a field reporter for CNN. I
Speaker 1: shut off the light on my nightstand. I laid down
Speaker 1: on my back. I stared out my right hand window,
Speaker 1: and immediately I thought, boy, the light is slightly more
Speaker 1: orange than it should be. What the hell's wrong? I'm
Speaker 1: guessing it was no more than five or ten percent
Speaker 1: different from usual. But as I've gone to such lengths
Speaker 1: to point out, if you see the same light through
Speaker 1: the same window in all conceivable conditions almost every night
Speaker 1: for more than two years, five or ten percent difference
Speaker 1: is a lot, I think. I lay there trying to
Speaker 1: figure it out for a minute or so when I
Speaker 1: realized it was now ten or fifteen percent different. Cleverly,
Speaker 1: I got up and went to the window and rolled
Speaker 1: up the shade and looked down to that canopy ten
Speaker 1: floors below, and I must say, to my credit, I
Speaker 1: quickly discerned that the canopy was on on fire. I
Speaker 1: reacted as almost everybody does, matter of factly, thinking, maybe
Speaker 1: even saying out loud, hey, the canopy is on fire.
Speaker 1: And then registering the fact that the fire had already
Speaker 1: burned through the building end of that canopy, and it
Speaker 1: was moving quickly outwards towards the street, suggesting again, I
Speaker 1: must say, I figured this out for myself, suggesting that
Speaker 1: there was probably a fire in the lobby. I put
Speaker 1: a robe on over my pajamas, I put on some shoes.
Speaker 1: I grabbed my wallet and my keys, and I ventured
Speaker 1: into the hallway. No smell of smoke, which I took
Speaker 1: again intelligently, is a good sign. Two elevators were staring
Speaker 1: me in the face, but I knew better than to
Speaker 1: try them. I was, after all, the grandson of a firefighter.
Speaker 1: So I opened the stairwell and then I smelled the smoke. Faint,
Speaker 1: but it was there. I went down two floors, and
Speaker 1: every step I took the smell got a little stronger.
Speaker 1: I went back up. I went back into my apartment.
Speaker 1: I did not really know what I was going to do.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, ten floors is not jumpable. Also, there
Speaker 1: was no outdoor fire escape like in many of the
Speaker 1: New York City older apartment buildings. And even if I
Speaker 1: went down the elevator or the stairs or the side
Speaker 1: of the damned building. I would wind up right in
Speaker 1: the middle of the fire. For a few seconds, I
Speaker 1: really didn't know what to do next. Me, the grandson
Speaker 1: of the man who was not only a firefighter, but
Speaker 1: who drove the hook and ladder irony also fire. That's
Speaker 1: when the sound of the fire engines broke me out
Speaker 1: of self absorption and cheered me, I must say considerably.
Speaker 1: They parked right near where that convenient canopy used to be,
Speaker 1: but was now pretty much a charred hunk of the
Speaker 1: metal framing in a little burned fabric. I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: seen a fire. Maybe you've seen firefighters arrive at one
Speaker 1: and get going with their amazing speed, But there is
Speaker 1: something different in seeing it from the vantage point of
Speaker 1: being above the fire. First there is an extraordinary amount
Speaker 1: of water, then a lot of smoke, then an almost
Speaker 1: unstoppable instinct to say cool. And then you go and
Speaker 1: check the stairwell again and joyfully inhale the smell of
Speaker 1: stuff that had been on fire but was now no
Speaker 1: longer on fire and just inundated with water. Hallelujah. I
Speaker 1: waited until after they left before I decided to go
Speaker 1: back to my bed. I did not feel the need
Speaker 1: to add to whatever loud chaos was going on in
Speaker 1: the lobby or what have been the lobby, nor to
Speaker 1: get any details about the fire other than the key one,
Speaker 1: which was it's out. But in the morning, since I
Speaker 1: had to go to work anyway, I saw the elevator
Speaker 1: door open onto the little linoleum covered landing in the lobby,
Speaker 1: and saw that everything else but it in the lobby
Speaker 1: was jet black. They were still hosing some of it down.
Speaker 1: They were already pulling up burned carpet, installing new windows
Speaker 1: and doors, and carting away what was left of the canopy.
Speaker 1: And it was evident that as thorough a job as
Speaker 1: had been done there, nothing else in the building had burned. Nothing.
Speaker 1: In the days and weeks to come, the other residents,
Speaker 1: knowing I worked in news, clued me in on the
Speaker 1: rumors and asked me to check them out. There was
Speaker 1: a dispute, somebody said, involving the owner. There was something
Speaker 1: about a woman. No, there was nothing about a woman.
Speaker 1: But all of them, every story, every rumor, included the obvious.
Speaker 1: That was no boating accident. Somebody had thrown a milo
Speaker 1: toof cocktail into or against our front door, and then
Speaker 1: there was the best of the stories, born out or
Speaker 1: at least lent plausibility by the rapidity with which the
Speaker 1: firefighters arrived, which thinking back on it was no more
Speaker 1: than three or four minutes after I first saw the
Speaker 1: extra orange glow. The best rumor was that the fire
Speaker 1: department had been called by somebody before anybody in the
Speaker 1: building had called. The implication was somebody called in a
Speaker 1: fire and then started the fire. For forty years plus
Speaker 1: I have been unable to find the truth. The fire,
Speaker 1: doing superficial but ultimately not serious damage did not make
Speaker 1: the New York newspapers. Hell that year, I took a
Speaker 1: subway to work in the morning and there was a
Speaker 1: guy sprawled over three seats. And when I went home
Speaker 1: that night, I happened to get on the exact same
Speaker 1: train car and there was the exact same guy sprawled
Speaker 1: over the exact same three seats because he was dead.
Speaker 1: And that didn't make the New York newspapers of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three either. We old timey New Yorkers, we lived
Speaker 1: on the edge. Baby. All I know is that within
Speaker 1: weeks a doorman was hired. His name was Jane and
Speaker 1: he had a strong Irish accent. And he was still
Speaker 1: there as of two thousand and two, and then the
Speaker 1: building suddenly went co op. All of us renters were
Speaker 1: suddenly offered the chance to buy our apartments. But I
Speaker 1: didn't want to take out a loan, and I expected
Speaker 1: to be moving to Boston in the near future, and
Speaker 1: I kept thinking about that Molotov cocktail. So I turned
Speaker 1: down that apartment at the price of are you lying
Speaker 1: down thirty six five hundred dollars. Turned it down because, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was the fire and the loan and Boston. But
Speaker 1: ultimately I turned it down, even just to keep as
Speaker 1: a storage unit. I turned that apartment down because when
Speaker 1: it comes to investments, I'm a moron. I've done all
Speaker 1: the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: We're now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly
Speaker 1: just after midnight Eastern. Once again there is a Monday countdown.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking as I read that, if you
Speaker 1: said to me in nineteen eighty, you know you'll still
Speaker 1: be doing this when you're sixty five, only you'll be
Speaker 1: doing a podcast. I wouldn't have had any idea what
Speaker 1: you were talking about. Of churs. I was pretty dim then.
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't have had any idea what you were
Speaker 1: talking about, no matter what you brought up. Brian Ray
Speaker 1: and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled the
Speaker 1: orchestration and the keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
Speaker 1: bass and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers.
Speaker 1: Our satirical and fifthy musical comments are by the best
Speaker 1: baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is
Speaker 1: the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Speaker 1: Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed
Speaker 1: by the group No Horns Allowed and out here today
Speaker 1: is my friend Tony Kornheiser in honor of the retirement
Speaker 1: of WOJ. Good Luck Adrian. Everything else was pretty much
Speaker 1: my fault. That's countdown for this the forty eighth day
Speaker 1: until the twenty twenty fourth presidential election, the one and
Speaker 1: forty sixth day since convicted felon domestic jay terrorists first
Speaker 1: attempted coup against the democratically elected government in the United States.
Speaker 1: Use the election, use the mental health system, use presidential
Speaker 1: immunity if you have to to keep him from doing
Speaker 1: it again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
Speaker 1: is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news requires till the next
Speaker 1: one on Keith Olderman good Morning, good afternoon, good night,
Speaker 1: and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.