Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. People
Speaker 1: like him. The more and more you analyze the impact
Speaker 1: from Tim Walls, the more and more you analyze the
Speaker 1: process of the selection of Tim Walls, the more and
Speaker 1: more you examine the reaction to Tim Walls, the more
Speaker 1: and more clear it becomes it is that simple people
Speaker 1: like him. In a time when fifty percent approval for
Speaker 1: a politician is a landslide of support, when the very few,
Speaker 1: most earnest and most honest politicos are still just tolerated.
Speaker 1: When we have had a decade one of the most
Speaker 1: dislike humans on the planet, hating everything and everybody, the
Speaker 1: idea that the Democrats are running not one but two
Speaker 1: likable candidates is staggeringly important and simple and novel. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you get literally one hundred words into the founding
Speaker 1: document of this nation, the Declaration of Independence, you hit
Speaker 1: the unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Happiness.
Speaker 1: Tim Walls is happy. Tim Walls is happy to be
Speaker 1: living here, happy to be fighting to help other people
Speaker 1: become happy. And now to join Kamala Harris, who is
Speaker 1: also happy and who smiles like a person Trump isn't happy.
Speaker 1: At every moment of what should be rapturous success. Trump
Speaker 1: is degrading somebody else. He's embittered, he's angry, he's the victim,
Speaker 1: he's been shortchanged, he's threatening revenge. And he hasn't even
Speaker 1: digested the newest new Paul. And yes, they continue to
Speaker 1: be all Kamala, and I will review them in depth
Speaker 1: in a moment. But to finish up this point, Trump
Speaker 1: has dug up from the garbage dumps of this nation,
Speaker 1: every slob who wants to force his will on you.
Speaker 1: The latest of them is this robot dvance. Every slob
Speaker 1: who believes that for him to succeed, somebody else must fall,
Speaker 1: preferably one hundred somebody else's must fall. They're evil, they're greedy,
Speaker 1: they're malignant, But at their core they fulfill hl Mankin's
Speaker 1: priceless definition of puritanism, the haunting fear that someone somewhere
Speaker 1: may be happy and it's not a one way street.
Speaker 1: In response to them, we have become angry and self righteous,
Speaker 1: and I put myself at the top of that list.
Speaker 1: And then Vice President Harris steps out of the background,
Speaker 1: smiling and laughing and underscoring a point I made two
Speaker 1: weeks ago. When the hell have you ever seen Trump
Speaker 1: actually laugh? And now here's Tim Walls and he's been
Speaker 1: the vice presidential candidate for eight hours and he's not
Speaker 1: just telling dad jokes. He's telling some dirty dad jokes.
Speaker 2: Make no mistake, violent crime was up under Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: That's not even counting the crimes he committed. JD.
Speaker 2: Vance literally literally wrote the foreword for the Architect of
Speaker 2: the Project twenty twenty five agenda. Like all regular people
Speaker 2: I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale,
Speaker 2: had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then
Speaker 2: wrote a bestseller trashing that community.
Speaker 1: Come on, that's not what Middle America is.
Speaker 2: And I got to tell you, I can't wait to debate.
Speaker 3: The guy, that is, if he's willing to get off
Speaker 3: the couch and show up.
Speaker 1: So I'll see what I did there. Don't underestimate that
Speaker 1: seemingly throwaway line at the end. There see what I
Speaker 1: did there? This is below the belt humor, used as
Speaker 1: a political kill shot, but honed over his decades in classrooms.
Speaker 1: Is that little softening agent that allows him to take
Speaker 1: the meanest joke and reduce its trauma to mitigate. How
Speaker 1: you couch it? See what I did there? By the way,
Speaker 1: the couch thing will never go away? Viral yesterday a
Speaker 1: photo of JD. Vance in a podcast appearance seated either
Speaker 1: on a love seed of some sort of divan maybe,
Speaker 1: legs spread as far apart as they can go, man spreading.
Speaker 1: The pros call it as he sits on a large,
Speaker 1: wide chair or a small narrow couch. The couch is JD.
Speaker 1: Vance's dead bear cub and all credit to the Vice President.
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris barely knew Tim Walls last week, and by
Speaker 1: Monday he had vaulted over her favorites who supposedly carried
Speaker 1: guarantees of guaranteeing states like Pennsylvania or Arizona, and barely
Speaker 1: into day two. Is there any question that as good
Speaker 1: as Senator Kelly and Governor Shapiro might be as leaders
Speaker 1: or pola petiticians, is there a chance they could do
Speaker 1: for this campaign what Tim Walls can do? Do you
Speaker 1: want to hear what Tim Walls says next? Do you
Speaker 1: you know like him? I don't like quoting Politico, but
Speaker 1: they got it exactly right. Kamala Harris loved Tim Wallas's
Speaker 1: governing record in Minnesota, his biography and record of winning
Speaker 1: tough races resonated with her, and most of all, she
Speaker 1: just really liked him. I also don't like videos of
Speaker 1: the phone call. They are universally cringe except this one.
Speaker 1: The words beautiful, enthusiasm, enjoyed, and joy are all used
Speaker 1: in this phone call, and not ironically and not by
Speaker 1: the goddamned candidate about himself. These two people get it.
Speaker 1: America is so worn out by and so done withhappy weirdos.
Speaker 1: Would you be my.
Speaker 3: Running mate and let's get this thing.
Speaker 1: On the road.
Speaker 2: I would be honored, Madame Vice President, the joy that
Speaker 2: you're bringing back to the country, the enthusiasm that's out there.
Speaker 3: It'll be a privilege to take this with you across
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 1: Well, let me say I have just a most respect
Speaker 1: for you. I have really enjoyed our work together. And yes,
Speaker 1: that was her second phone call to him. It turns
Speaker 1: out he did not pick up the first time because
Speaker 1: she didn't have call her id. Frankly, Tim Walls is
Speaker 1: America pointing at Trump and saying, what the heck is
Speaker 1: wrong with this weirdo? Thank goodness, the Trump people took
Speaker 1: this well, it is instructed that the Trump cult, having
Speaker 1: spent literally five years focused on nothing but Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: has three weeks after his departure, still not come up
Speaker 1: with one attack line against Kamala Harris. They were convinced
Speaker 1: she was going to pick Josh Shapiro, so they had
Speaker 1: attacks ready on him, and now they have nothing but
Speaker 1: Nicki Haley accusing the Democrats of anti Semitism because they
Speaker 1: didn't pick him. When Trump admitted to owning a book
Speaker 1: of Hitler's speeches which he kept on a night stand
Speaker 1: in his bedroom, and Trump is openly anti Semitic, and
Speaker 1: she bowed to him after insisting she never would. They
Speaker 1: threw everything at the wall at the tim walls. Am
Speaker 1: I right? I can hear him making that joke. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm learning something. Not only did nothing stick to that
Speaker 1: wall or walls, but there is no evidence that any
Speaker 1: of it even hit the walls. Steven Miller insists going
Speaker 1: to turn the Midwest into Mogadishu, which would be nice
Speaker 1: and racist if any of Trump's supporters knew where the
Speaker 1: hell Mogadishu was, or if they were certain it was
Speaker 1: not some kind of delicious foreign food. Kevin McCarthy says,
Speaker 1: Walls was known as the Bernie Sanders of the House,
Speaker 1: and it was like, wait, is that is that an insult?
Speaker 1: People like Bernie Sanders. People who don't like the policies
Speaker 1: of Bernie Sanders, like Bernie Sanders. They look at him
Speaker 1: and they see Larry David. You want to insult Tim Walls,
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy, You tell them people said Tim Walls was
Speaker 1: known as the Kevin McCarthy of the House. That's an insult.
Speaker 1: They sent JD. Vance to Philadelphia to proactively attack Walls,
Speaker 1: even before Kamala introduces him, and they have Vance stand
Speaker 1: in front of a huge banner reading Kamala Chaos, which
Speaker 1: isn't a bad line C minus maybe, especially not for Republicans,
Speaker 1: especially not for Republicans in disarray. But they can't snap
Speaker 1: out of their one template. So in the little mandatory
Speaker 1: tableau they insist on there have to be people behind Vance.
Speaker 1: It has to look like like there's a crowd of
Speaker 1: people who agree with him, even if you have to
Speaker 1: pay them. And there are no seats, so everybody is
Speaker 1: standing behind Vance. So they're standing behind him, and because
Speaker 1: they're not all three feet tall, you can't see the
Speaker 1: word chaos, So all you get is JD. Vance giving
Speaker 1: an impossibly monotonous speech, another one under a big banner
Speaker 1: that reads Kamala, and you're thinking, man, now, this is
Speaker 1: a surprise endorsement. And of course Vance is only out
Speaker 1: there because Trump is taking the week off. And as
Speaker 1: the Democrats go from political honeymoon number one through the
Speaker 1: Harris Walls political honeymoon number two, on their way to
Speaker 1: political honeymoon number three, the one that is the convention,
Speaker 1: why would the Republican presidential candidate bother to appear in public?
Speaker 1: Let the freak in the eyeliner do it all while
Speaker 1: Trump stays home and tweets. Trump's campaign is suddenly bleeding
Speaker 1: to death, and he's getting laughs scored off him by
Speaker 1: the guy who would have been about the five hundredth
Speaker 1: likeliest vice presidential candidate in the gambling houses two weeks ago. While,
Speaker 1: by the way, all the networks carry his speech live,
Speaker 1: and Carrie Harris's speech live, and Carrie Josh Shapiro's speech live,
Speaker 1: and somebody at CNN who can read the ratings is thinking, say,
Speaker 1: maybe we should show all of their speeches live from
Speaker 1: here on in huh instead of three more hours of
Speaker 1: Van Jones. Maybe Trump in the Bunker is in fact
Speaker 1: the best for the cult, because, on top of everything
Speaker 1: else that has gone wrong for the Republicans, Trump has
Speaker 1: turned into a moron. Yesterday he posted nothing less than
Speaker 1: very bad fan fic wherein Joe Biden storms into the
Speaker 1: Democratic Convention to take back his nomination. And I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there reading it, thinking, could you make the projection about
Speaker 1: what you would do? Trump? Could you make it slightly
Speaker 1: difficult to deduce from what you've written? After apparently deciding
Speaker 1: to power through on what is also hands down the
Speaker 1: worst attempt to tag an opponent with an insulting nickname,
Speaker 1: the Biden fanfic was the highlight of the Trump social
Speaker 1: media day. Face it. The nicknames are perhaps Trump's only
Speaker 1: true political skill other than the fire hose of lies
Speaker 1: that makes checking each lie impossible, and he has decided,
Speaker 1: after years of success at political nicknames, that putting a
Speaker 1: B the letter B in the middle of Kamala Harris's
Speaker 1: name is the greatest idea he's ever had. Kamala with
Speaker 1: a bee e Kama b La. I have spent more
Speaker 1: time than I care to admit over the course of
Speaker 1: two full days now trying to figure out what the
Speaker 1: hell it means, what the hell it's supposed to mean,
Speaker 1: how he is hearing it sound in the big cobweb
Speaker 1: filled attic that is his head. Moble co maele come
Speaker 1: maybe la comabla ca mable. I see the word able
Speaker 1: in there. Donnie, sorry, punt on this one, or let
Speaker 1: JD have a try at giving her a nickname, because
Speaker 1: in the world of American politics twenty twenty four, jokes matter.
Speaker 1: This is your fault and you are winning all this
Speaker 1: time on this topic. But at three o'clock the high
Speaker 1: school got out of class, and now they're out there
Speaker 1: with you, kicking your ass. Sometimes it happens like that
Speaker 1: in life, unbeaten, unchallenged, always at worst competitive, a perennial threat,
Speaker 1: and then one day they go right off the cliff,
Speaker 1: never to be heard from again. One day you are
Speaker 1: the best, the next day it's all gone, the muse
Speaker 1: has packed and moved out to like Australia. Let me
Speaker 1: swing off into a baseball analogy for a moment before
Speaker 1: I run the polls crazy. I know I never do
Speaker 1: a baseball analogy. The nineteen eighty three Philadelphia Phillies had
Speaker 1: four future Hall of Famers in their lineup, plus Pete Rose.
Speaker 1: A sixth player won a Most Valuable Player award. Another
Speaker 1: one won the Cy Young Award for Best pitcher. Four
Speaker 1: other players won Gold Glove awards. Of the remaining fourteen
Speaker 1: guys on their roster, eleven were passed or future All Stars.
Speaker 1: The Phillies won twenty of their last twenty five games
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighty three season, but in the playoffs
Speaker 1: they faced the Dodgers, to whom they had lost eleven
Speaker 1: of twelve games during the season. It didn't matter. They
Speaker 1: beat the Dodgers in four games. They rolled into the
Speaker 1: World Series as an unstoppable juggernaut. They beat Baltimore and
Speaker 1: Young Cal Ripken in Game one at Baltimore, and many
Speaker 1: observers thought the nineteen eighty three Phillies might sweep the
Speaker 1: World Series. And then the sun rose and they awoke
Speaker 1: on the morning of Wednesday, October twelfth, nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: and the Juggernaut overnight had become a bunch of washed
Speaker 1: up old trumps. Phillies led Game two one to nothing
Speaker 1: in the fourth inning. They blew that lead. They only
Speaker 1: scored six more runs in the entire rest of the Series,
Speaker 1: they benched Pete Rose and there was a huge controversy.
Speaker 1: They lost the World Series in five games. They got
Speaker 1: rid of Pete Rose, they got rid of two of
Speaker 1: the Hall of Famers, most of the All Stars. The
Speaker 1: award went. They next won the World Series twenty five
Speaker 1: years later. And a little known baseball fact, it was
Speaker 1: all because they tried calling her Combbla. They didn't. But
Speaker 1: how great would it be if they had Marist polls
Speaker 1: for PBS Harris fifty one, Trump forty eight. Harris by three.
Speaker 1: Previous poll, Trump by one Marist for PBS. Who do
Speaker 1: you trust more on abortion? Harris fifty six to forty one.
Speaker 1: Who do you trust more on preserving democracy? Harris fifty
Speaker 1: three to forty six. Who do you trust more on
Speaker 1: the economy? Trump? But by only three. Who do you
Speaker 1: trust more on immigration? Well? This is the killer right,
Speaker 1: Trump's real chance to survive the Harris tsunami. Yes, the
Speaker 1: pole says they trust Trump more on immigration only by six.
Speaker 1: That is as startling a poll number as I have
Speaker 1: seen in two years. Swing state polls Redfield, Wilton. The
Speaker 1: polling was done Saturday. New Mexico is Harris by seven.
Speaker 1: Minnesota is Harris by five that may rise. Arizona is
Speaker 1: Harris by one. In this poll. It had been Trump
Speaker 1: by three. Pennsylvania is Trump by two. In this pole,
Speaker 1: it had been Trump by four. Michigan is Trump by one.
Speaker 1: In this poll. It had been Trump by three. Georgia
Speaker 1: is Trump by two. In this poll it had been
Speaker 1: Trump by five. Nevada is tied at forty Wisconsin is
Speaker 1: tied at forty three. Same pole. Harris approval up by
Speaker 1: one point in Arizona and Georgia. Up by three points
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, up by five in Wisconsin. All of this,
Speaker 1: all of these numbers before Tim walls happily for Trump,
Speaker 1: he can turn to his in house geniuses like senior
Speaker 1: campaign advisor Chris Losavita and spokesperson Caroline with A k
Speaker 1: Levitt los Avida. July twenty fourth, reliable sources confirm Kamala
Speaker 1: to pick Governor Shapiro from Pennsylvania. Chris Losovita from August fifth,
Speaker 1: five thirty PM breaking news. According to my sources, Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris is not picking Josh Shapiro Pennsylvania. Caroline Levitt Yesterday's
Speaker 1: statement on Kamala's selection of radical leftist Tim Walls doesn't
Speaker 1: mention Joe Manchion supporting Tim Walls for Vice president, from
Speaker 1: proposing his own carbon free agenda to suggesting strict your
Speaker 1: mission standards for gas powered cars and embracing policies to
Speaker 1: allow convicted felons to vote. Wait wait, wait, what was
Speaker 1: the part in the middle there about embracing policies to
Speaker 1: allow convicted felons to vote. Trump is opposed to this.
Speaker 1: Trump is a convicted felon. I think he knows clearly
Speaker 1: his spokesperson does not. Don't worry all as fine as
Speaker 1: Trump Headquarters from now on, We're just gonna mention Caroline
Speaker 1: Lovett's name, but put a B in the middle of it,
Speaker 1: so she's Carol blind lev bit. How could this possibly
Speaker 1: get any better? How could a day have gone better
Speaker 1: for the Democrats than it did yesterday? How well? Monday
Speaker 1: at twelve I'm sorry, I'm laughing in advance Monday at
Speaker 1: twelve thirty four pm Eastern, retweeting the Writer's bulletin that
Speaker 1: Josh Shapiro and Tim Walls were the vice presidential finalists
Speaker 1: for Kamala Harris. One pundit retweeted this, adding, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be Shapiro people signed Chris silzit. Oh, that's it. Trump,
Speaker 1: That's it right there, that's it. I shouldn't say it
Speaker 1: because this is it. This will put you right back
Speaker 1: in the race. Hire Chris Slizza. Have him workshop the
Speaker 1: Kamabla nickname. Maybe Cambabla, cub blah blah blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, something like that. Give Chris a few years,
Speaker 1: he'll come up with it. It's gonna be Shapiro people.
Speaker 1: Chris is the Crystaliza of crystalizzes. Also of interest here,
Speaker 1: somebody touches Congressman Derek van Orden brushes past him in
Speaker 1: a line going into a hotel. He wants them charged
Speaker 1: with assaulting a member of Congress because Derek van Orton
Speaker 1: is nuts. And not only does Axios dot Com fire
Speaker 1: ten percent of its staff, but the boss makes the
Speaker 1: departed read about it in a memo that is written
Speaker 1: in that disgusting, impossible to understand axios ease. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Oberman stell
Speaker 1: ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. I was
Speaker 1: supposed to anchor NBC's cable coverage of the summer Olympics
Speaker 1: in two thousand from Sydney, Australia, but I kind of
Speaker 1: quit the job in nineteen ninety eight, so that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: Then I was supposed to anchor NBC's cable coverage of
Speaker 1: the Summer Olympics in two thousand and four from Athens
Speaker 1: in Greece, but I told them no, no, I'd rather
Speaker 1: stay in New Jersey and try to grow this new
Speaker 1: news show on MSNBC called Countdown. And there are still
Speaker 1: former sports executives at NBC who are now retired who
Speaker 1: continually think I am insane, even though that decision turned
Speaker 1: out the way it did. I was also supposed to
Speaker 1: cover the Summer Olympics in nineteen eighty in Moscow, but
Speaker 1: then the US pulled out of those games in a
Speaker 1: political thing, so that was not my fault. But I
Speaker 1: am proud to tell you that I have not watched
Speaker 1: one minute, not one highlight from the twenty twenty fourth
Speaker 1: Summer Olympics in in France. France. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: tell me Kamala Harris won the Olympic skeet shooting on
Speaker 1: ice gold medal yesterday and I'd say, sure, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: she was great. I was watching. I'm beginning to think
Speaker 1: I may not like the Olympics. If this is true.
Speaker 1: My not liking the Olympics dates back to nineteen eight
Speaker 1: in my experience as part of a two and a
Speaker 1: half man team that covered the entire Winter Olympics at
Speaker 1: Lake Placid, New York. Just the two and a half
Speaker 1: of us. The half a guy was management. He was
Speaker 1: in the office most of the time. It was rewarding,
Speaker 1: it was challenging, it was snowy cold. It was a
Speaker 1: once in a lifetime experience, and I have done everything
Speaker 1: since then to make sure that it was literally just
Speaker 1: once in a lifetime, especially after the other one and
Speaker 1: a half guys, my boss and my boss's boss got
Speaker 1: me drunk one night and then sent me to cover
Speaker 1: the skiing at sunrise and I almost did not survive it.
Speaker 1: Next in things I promised not to tell first, there
Speaker 1: are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily
Speaker 1: roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens
Speaker 1: who constitute two days worst persons in the world from
Speaker 1: the top of a mountain mountain, mountain mountain. The Bronze
Speaker 1: Worse co founder Jim VandeHei of Axios dot com, the
Speaker 1: news organization which fired fifty people yesterday five ozho and
Speaker 1: did it not just by memo, but by Axio style memo.
Speaker 1: Axios pretty much sucks. They overextended, they paid management too much.
Speaker 1: They spent most of their time complimenting themselves. They relied
Speaker 1: on a cut c style they called smart brevity, in
Speaker 1: which they would state the basic facts of a story
Speaker 1: for about a paragraph or so and then begin to
Speaker 1: spin it with a subheadline indented that read why it matters.
Speaker 1: This was part of the memo from Jim Vanda Hi
Speaker 1: difficult changes. We're making some difficult changes to adapt fast
Speaker 1: to a rapidly changing media landscape. Why it matters. We're
Speaker 1: eliminating about fifty positions to get ahead of tectonic shifts.
Speaker 1: And that they used the format of the publication that
Speaker 1: CEOs puts out twice a day, their newsletters, to inform
Speaker 1: the people writing the newsletters and reporting for the newsletters
Speaker 1: that they were being fired from the company. It's like
Speaker 1: I don't know, getting a pink slip inside a custom
Speaker 1: made Ford motor company. I don't know, cover for your
Speaker 1: inside windshield. Unbelievable. Why it matters? Why it matters you
Speaker 1: might be unemployed. And there's an intented paragraph later on
Speaker 1: that reads with a little dot if your job is
Speaker 1: being eliminated, you will receive an accompanying email in the
Speaker 1: next few minutes with information about your severance package and
Speaker 1: a calendar invite for a meeting with a leader from
Speaker 1: your team and a member of the people team. We
Speaker 1: wanted to tell each of you in person first, but
Speaker 1: the mechanics of that proved infeasible. In other words, Jim
Speaker 1: Vandeheid didn't want to go to the office in the morning.
Speaker 1: Why it matters, you may not have a job anymore.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, the runner up worser Bloomberg News. Sure
Speaker 1: it's White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs was Trump's favorite, and
Speaker 1: sure she once tried to make a thing out of
Speaker 1: the Vice president saying the as in the point here,
Speaker 1: And she did a lot of stupid stuff and a
Speaker 1: lot of bad coverage and a lot of absolutely the
Speaker 1: worst elements of Washington inside the Beltway. We just talked
Speaker 1: to each other and have no idea that there are
Speaker 1: human beings affected by this kind of insider access stuff.
Speaker 1: Sure she did that. On the other hand, she was
Speaker 1: apparently reportedly fired because Bloomberg blew the embargo on the
Speaker 1: rescue mission the trade of hostages that got the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich back they reported it too early.
Speaker 1: She was the principal writer on the story, so naturally
Speaker 1: she got fired. As some He wrote, I haven't heard
Speaker 1: the last time that a reporter actually hit send on
Speaker 1: their own story. Unless it's a one person website, even
Speaker 1: at axios, they don't get to say why it matters.
Speaker 1: An editor gets to say that. And so the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: editor in chief, John Micklethwaite, disciplined staffers for jumping the
Speaker 1: gun on the dramatic deal. This according to New York Magazine,
Speaker 1: and he didn't seem to fire any editors, or if
Speaker 1: he did, they were not as prominent in the organization
Speaker 1: as this Jennifer Jacobs, who was fired because the story
Speaker 1: she wrote was put out before the embargo was lifted.
Speaker 1: There may be other details to this. Perhaps she told
Speaker 1: her bosses that the embargo had already expired, or that
Speaker 1: she had authorization from her sources, or that everybody there
Speaker 1: at the White House team for Bloomberg said it was okay.
Speaker 1: But we don't know any of that. Right now, it
Speaker 1: just looks like Bloomberg fired the reporter because the editors
Speaker 1: did something wrong, once again in the story of journalism.
Speaker 1: But our winner, Congressman Derek Van Orden of Wisconsin, we
Speaker 1: have talked about him too many times for me to
Speaker 1: go into a review about him and the fact that
Speaker 1: it looks like he has PTSD and has never done
Speaker 1: anything about it. He was about twenty five years in
Speaker 1: the military and the wear and tear seems to have
Speaker 1: gotten to him. Plus he's a Republican from Wisconsin, so
Speaker 1: he's an asshole. However, Rep. Van Orden was in line
Speaker 1: for the morning event at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee
Speaker 1: and happened to find himself trying to get into the
Speaker 1: Fister Hotel. That's right, They've kept the name Fister for
Speaker 1: a century, the Fister Hotel. I'll meet you at the Fister. Also,
Speaker 1: the Fister is supposedly haunted by people who were really
Speaker 1: bothered by the name Fister. I suspect, were people sentenced
Speaker 1: to eternity in the Fister Hotel? Where were you sentenced? Well?
Speaker 1: I went to hell for a thousand years. Where did you? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's much worse than Hell. I went to the Fister
Speaker 1: Hotel pfi st er Fister. Anyway, I'm getting away from
Speaker 1: the point here. He was in line, Van Orden was,
Speaker 1: and if he's going to purgatory, he's definitely going to
Speaker 1: the Fister. Van Orden was in line along with the
Speaker 1: members of the protest group Code Pink, including one newer Jagama,
Speaker 1: a twenty four year old woman who was in line
Speaker 1: apparently just in front of Van Orden in this security
Speaker 1: line to get in during the Republican National Convention along
Speaker 1: with other members of Code Pink. The congressman seemed to
Speaker 1: touch her gently to get her to move. When the
Speaker 1: line towards the security box began to move, she said
Speaker 1: we're moving, or he said we're moving, and she moved,
Speaker 1: and she grumbled about it, and she said something wise,
Speaker 1: and then she walked back in front of him, which
Speaker 1: is where she had been before the line was moving,
Speaker 1: and he then says, ma'am, you'd better watch it, and
Speaker 1: begins to claim that she has cut in front of him.
Speaker 1: She was already in front of him, and Van Orden
Speaker 1: then accused her of political violence. You just assaulted a
Speaker 1: member of Congress. Van Orden is about a foot taller
Speaker 1: than this woman. He said he'd be filing a police report.
Speaker 1: He told policemen on the scene that he would do that,
Speaker 1: and as usual, the real victim here is always Derek
Speaker 1: Van Orden. A helpful cop then says to another officer,
Speaker 1: she just shoved a senator. There was no shove, and
Speaker 1: Van Orden is not a senator, He's barely a congressman.
Speaker 1: Van Orden is seen saying this blank ain't happening anymore.
Speaker 1: Then the police bodycam video, which reporters were told did
Speaker 1: not exist, suddenly existed again and it was released, and
Speaker 1: on it you see it the way I've just described
Speaker 1: it to you. There's a woman standing in front of
Speaker 1: a congressman. A line starts to move. She doesn't move
Speaker 1: fast enough for him. He tells her to move, She
Speaker 1: moves and mouths off to him. She moves back in
Speaker 1: front of him where she was, and he accuses her
Speaker 1: of well, to use the parlance of the time, an
Speaker 1: attempted assassination. Well almost Then there is a conversation between
Speaker 1: Van Orden and one of the cops. The questions one
Speaker 1: of the cops asks Van Orden, They're gonna ask is
Speaker 1: did you feel pain? Van Orden replies, I have really
Speaker 1: bad hips. Okay, so pain. The officer asks again. Then
Speaker 1: Van Orden pauses and says, yes, my hip, my hip hurts.
Speaker 1: I mean it hurts already. Did she exacerbate it? I
Speaker 1: don't know, but a hip check is a hip check.
Speaker 1: Van Orden was a Navy seal. He was deployed five times,
Speaker 1: but oddly go look up the five deployments online. The
Speaker 1: only one you'll find named that he boasts about is
Speaker 1: going to Bosnia, where I guess he suffered a hangnail.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he received the Congressional Medal of Honor,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure he thinks he did. Congressman Derek Oh oh,
Speaker 1: I have been mortally wounded my hip parts. Oh nos,
Speaker 1: it's an act of political terrorism. This tiny woman, five
Speaker 1: foot nothing just knocked me to the ground. My legs
Speaker 1: have fallen of Oh no, oh, I'm bleeding. I'm dash.
Speaker 1: He actually murdered me. Van Orden two Day's worst person
Speaker 1: in Oh no, the world soft as a great. The
Speaker 1: alarm goes off. It is pitch black in my room
Speaker 1: at the Swiss Acres Motel. It is Valentine's Day and
Speaker 1: I am still drunk. Keith knew he was in trouble,
Speaker 1: but I was also twenty one years old, and in fact,
Speaker 1: my twenty first birthday had only been eighteen days earlier.
Speaker 1: So somehow I survived, showered, dressed, packed, and I mean
Speaker 1: I packed two cassette tape recorders, four sets of batteries,
Speaker 1: an audio processing machine that weighed like fourteen pounds. The
Speaker 1: nine volt batteries it took, I think it was a
Speaker 1: dozen of them, a telephone, a backup telephone, twelve assorted
Speaker 1: patch cords, two loose leaf notebooks, about eight pens, two microphones,
Speaker 1: two extra pair of socks, and I got dressed, two
Speaker 1: full sets of thermal underwear, shirts, sweaters, snow pants, snow
Speaker 1: shoes because it was eleven degrees below zero that morning.
Speaker 1: I got something quick to eat at the commissary, and
Speaker 1: I made it out somehow to the line for the
Speaker 1: bus from the Lake Placid Olympics Center to the Lake
Speaker 1: Placid Transportation Center to Lake Placid's own White Face Mountain,
Speaker 1: then onto the snow track the open penned mountain tractor
Speaker 1: that went up the side of Whiteface Mountain and took
Speaker 1: me to the finish line of the nineteen eighty Olympic
Speaker 1: Men's downhill ski final still drunk. That is how a
Speaker 1: reporter covered the Olympics nearly forty three years ago. You drank,
Speaker 1: you woke up, you went, You stood near the finish line,
Speaker 1: and when the skiers completed their runs, you hiked or
Speaker 1: wobbled over to them and you took out your microphone
Speaker 1: or your pen and you interviewed them, like two minutes
Speaker 1: after they had finished hurtling towards you down the hill.
Speaker 1: You could see almost nothing of the race from there.
Speaker 1: There were no TV monitors. Basically your only clue was
Speaker 1: the sound of the crowd that would give you about
Speaker 1: thirty seconds worth of warning that the skier was coming
Speaker 1: over the near horizon and you should be prepared to
Speaker 1: flee just in case he or she wiped out. Also,
Speaker 1: you were on top of a mountain at the dead
Speaker 1: point of winter, and whereas it might have been a
Speaker 1: balney eleven degrees below zero in the comfort of the
Speaker 1: Swiss Acres motel with the wind chill, at the base
Speaker 1: of the mountain, it was forty eight below zero and
Speaker 1: there had already been four inches of new snow since
Speaker 1: the sun came up, which is where the still drunk
Speaker 1: part came in handy. My boss is at my first job,
Speaker 1: the thousand station radio network called United pres International Audio,
Speaker 1: had decided the night before to teach me how to
Speaker 1: drink while on assignment. My bosses were the bureau manager
Speaker 1: for that part of you PI, the late Stan Sabik,
Speaker 1: who had hired me, and Sam Rosen, the sports director
Speaker 1: of the network, who not only somehow survived being my
Speaker 1: first boss, but today, just forty three years later, is
Speaker 1: still working as the television voice of the New York
Speaker 1: hockey team and is in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: So I guess my reputation is a tough employee is
Speaker 1: wildly overrated, or at least Sam thinks. So Sam and
Speaker 1: Stan kept me drinking at the motel until two am,
Speaker 1: knowing full well that I had to get on the
Speaker 1: six am bus to go cover the men's downhill because
Speaker 1: it was the two of them who had assigned me
Speaker 1: to go cover the men's downhill, And bluntly, I was
Speaker 1: surprisingly pleased with myself that freezing morning because I had
Speaker 1: indeed learned how to drink while on assignment. I had
Speaker 1: somehow found the phone jack for the UPI phone buried
Speaker 1: under all the new snow, which of course was buried
Speaker 1: under all the old snow. Attached the phone to it,
Speaker 1: gotten a dial tone, called the office, checked the alligator
Speaker 1: clips with which I would feed the tape, and all
Speaker 1: was well until I went to put a cassette tape
Speaker 1: into the cassette recorder. I didn't have one fat lot
Speaker 1: of good two cassette tape machines. Gonna do you without
Speaker 1: a cassette to sticking one of them? I looked forlornly
Speaker 1: around the base of Whiteface Mountain, twelve hundred feet above
Speaker 1: sea level. As we were. There was a surprisingly nice
Speaker 1: chalet and a decent restaurant, but there were no radio
Speaker 1: shacks or other electronics stores. There was, however, one other
Speaker 1: radio guy, Jack Briggs, from the Associated Press Radio Network,
Speaker 1: the nominal arch rival to our own UPI Audio. I
Speaker 1: knew Jack a little. He was a nice guy. I
Speaker 1: went and explained my plight, making sure to blame my
Speaker 1: bosses for my predicament. Oh man, he said, his breath
Speaker 1: turning into first steam and then ice cubes. I'm so sorry,
Speaker 1: but I can't give you a cassette. I'm sorry you
Speaker 1: were UPI, and I'm ap oh I laughed. That was
Speaker 1: a great line to say to a rookie reporter still drunk.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the initiation rituals of his own bosses, the
Speaker 1: possessor of one great buzz but zero audio cassettes, Jack
Speaker 1: Briggs could tell I thought he was kidding. That's when
Speaker 1: he said, I'm not kidding. Look, if my boss, Shelby Whitfield,
Speaker 1: ever found out, he'd fire me. I suddenly wasn't drunk anymore,
Speaker 1: not at all. My boss will will fire me. Briggs
Speaker 1: was adamant. I can't run the risk of Shelby finding out.
Speaker 1: I have to confess. I shouted, how the hell is
Speaker 1: he gonna find out? Jack? I think subconsciously I was
Speaker 1: hoping to create an avalanche, which would have been a
Speaker 1: better solution than the one I was faced with. I
Speaker 1: said to him, there's you and there's me, and we're
Speaker 1: on top of a goddamn mountain, and Shelby Whitfield, your
Speaker 1: boss is in Washington, DC, and he's a drunk. He's
Speaker 1: probably more drunk than I am, and he'd probably thank
Speaker 1: you for helping me to drink more. Briggs would not budge.
Speaker 1: I told him I would pay him. I told him
Speaker 1: I would give him the cassette back after I fed
Speaker 1: my boss the interviews over the phone, so there'd be
Speaker 1: no evidence and he wouldn't even have to do any interviews.
Speaker 1: No good, I'm sorry, and I know you're going to
Speaker 1: tell this story about me for a while. As he
Speaker 1: walked away from me, I shouted after him. Forever. Turned
Speaker 1: out there was no radio shack and no camaraderie, but
Speaker 1: there was a West Coast newspaper reporter atop the mountain
Speaker 1: who heard some of this conversation. I guess I yelled
Speaker 1: a little loudly at mister Briggs. Some guy standing next
Speaker 1: to a Saint Bernard told me to quiet down. He
Speaker 1: mentioned something else about the avalanches, or maybe I dreamed
Speaker 1: that part. I don't know. Anyway, the West Coast newspaper
Speaker 1: guy said he had a micro cassette machine and he
Speaker 1: would loan it to me and I could give it
Speaker 1: back to him at the media center that day or
Speaker 1: the next one. But I had to do him because
Speaker 1: there was this really cute reporter in our UPI bureau
Speaker 1: and he really wanted to be introduced to her. And
Speaker 1: I said, I can promise you nothing but a handshake,
Speaker 1: and he understood and That's how I did not get fired.
Speaker 1: But of course a story like this has punchlines, and
Speaker 1: this one has two of them. The first is two
Speaker 1: years and a couple of months later, Shelby Whitfield asked
Speaker 1: me to lunch. He had left the Associated Press to
Speaker 1: run the sports department at the ABC Radio network, back
Speaker 1: when that was not only a thing, but a big thing.
Speaker 1: We went to a terrific New York City Chinese restaurant
Speaker 1: near ABC called shun Lee, and Shelby Whitfield interviewed me
Speaker 1: for a job when that kind of job paid eighty
Speaker 1: thousand a year in my very nice studio apartment and
Speaker 1: a very nice part of town costs less than five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a month later, in an interesting twist, I
Speaker 1: found out that jobs didn't exist. I was mentioning the
Speaker 1: interview in a press box somewhere I think Madison Square Garden,
Speaker 1: and there was another kid reporter named Howie Rose, and
Speaker 1: how he is still working, he does the New York
Speaker 1: Mets games on the radio. And how he said, wait,
Speaker 1: they interviewed me for that job last year. Just an
Speaker 1: excuse for that damn Whitfield to go drink his lunch
Speaker 1: on ABC's tab. Anyway, before we started the interview for
Speaker 1: the job I did not know did not exist at ABC.
Speaker 1: I told Shelby Whitfield the White Face Mountain? Can I
Speaker 1: borrow a cassette Jack Briggs story? And Shelby's exact reply was,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Was I going to find out? There
Speaker 1: was you and there was him, and you were on
Speaker 1: top of a goddamn mountain and I was in Washington.
Speaker 1: Only he didn't say goddamn that Briggs. He added, always
Speaker 1: trying to suck up to me, I got to tell
Speaker 1: you something I actually once promised I wouldn't tell you
Speaker 1: if we ever met. This. When the Olympics were over
Speaker 1: and came back to the office, he told me what happened.
Speaker 1: He expected me to be happy or give him a
Speaker 1: bonus or something, and I called him a little snitch.
Speaker 1: Only Shelby didn't say snitch, just a word that rhymed
Speaker 1: with it. The other punch line is from nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: and remember this happened at the nineteen eighty Olympics. I
Speaker 1: go to work at ESPN and come in a little
Speaker 1: early to launch their radio network, a story I've told
Speaker 1: here before, and there I find a friend of mine
Speaker 1: since my radio days, who I had not seen in
Speaker 1: a year or so, and he says, Hey, last month,
Speaker 1: I was at an NBA game in Washington. I ran
Speaker 1: into Jack Briggs. He heard you were going to ESPN.
Speaker 1: He asked me if you were still telling that story
Speaker 1: about the time you got stuck on Whiteface Mountain without
Speaker 1: a cassette, And he was the only other reporter there,
Speaker 1: and he wouldn't give you a spare And I told
Speaker 1: him you were, and I smiled, and I replied, I
Speaker 1: hope you remembered to use the word forever. I've done
Speaker 1: all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil, the musical directors of
Speaker 1: our little countdown podcast here, have arranged, produced, and performed
Speaker 1: most of the music you've heard throughout. Mister Schaneil on
Speaker 1: orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums,
Speaker 1: and their work was produced by TKO Brothers, which is
Speaker 1: the two of them and me. Our satirical and pithy
Speaker 1: musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Speaker 1: Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer today is my friend John Dean. Everything else
Speaker 1: was pretty much my fault. And yes, part of me
Speaker 1: is still in line somewhere waiting for a van at
Speaker 1: Lake Placid, New York in February nineteen eighty. Let's countdown
Speaker 1: for this the ninety first day until the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four presidential election, and the one thy three hundred and
Speaker 1: eighth day since convicted felon Donald J. Trump's first attempted
Speaker 1: coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Speaker 1: Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use the mental health system.
Speaker 1: You've got it. President Biden used presidential immunity to stop
Speaker 1: Trump from doing it again while we still can. And
Speaker 1: also anti Semitic, anti immigration, lunatic Republicans, please stop shooting
Speaker 1: at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. If you've
Speaker 1: suffered along with me and my voice today, I'll just
Speaker 1: mention here that I'm living in the middle of a
Speaker 1: construction site and there is every impossible debris in the air,
Speaker 1: and that's causing my voice a lot of harm. So
Speaker 1: if there's none tomorrow, blame the construction site. I'll do
Speaker 1: my best bulletins as the news requires until the next one.
Speaker 1: Whenever it is. I'm Keith Olrumman. Good morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.