Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Texas
Speaker 1: is in play Activote polling concluding yesterday Trump fifty three
Speaker 1: point three, Harris forty six point seven, so Trump is
Speaker 1: only had by six and six tenths in Texas and
Speaker 1: the margin of error is five points. Their last poll
Speaker 1: was on July nineteenth. It was Trump by nine points,
Speaker 1: so she cut the lead by nearly one third in
Speaker 1: three weeks. She is ostensibly within the margin of error.
Speaker 1: Texas is in play. Texas, oh And Florida is in
Speaker 1: play even more in play. Polling led by USA Today
Speaker 1: Trump for Harris forty two, so Trump is ahead by
Speaker 1: five in Florida. Margin of error is four and a
Speaker 1: half points, so Kamala Harris is within the margin of
Speaker 1: error in Florida. All previous polls, from one by the
Speaker 1: University of North Florida Research Lab to one by a
Speaker 1: Trump polster McLaughlin, had Trump by eight as recently as
Speaker 1: last Thursday. Quote. I was surprised, unquote, said David Paleo Lojos,
Speaker 1: director of Suffolk University Research, which did the poll the
Speaker 1: five point poll, that Harris is within striking distance, being
Speaker 1: only five points down Florida is in play. Florida, Florida,
Speaker 1: and Texas are in play. I have an urgent request
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump's campaign for president. Please continue to do
Speaker 1: everything exactly the way you are doing it now. Thank you.
Speaker 1: You are Kamala Harris's primary asset. You are her rock. Now.
Speaker 1: Look is she going to win Florida or Texas or both?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in
Speaker 1: Florida by a million. Trump won Texas in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: by nine points, by five and a half in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: But the fact of Kamala Harris before the convention, before
Speaker 1: the campaign has really even begun. The fact that she,
Speaker 1: by just being there has cut Trump's lead by nearly
Speaker 1: a third in Texas and nearly forty percent in Florida,
Speaker 1: tells you just how bad things were there and elsewhere,
Speaker 1: and just how much better things are now and how
Speaker 1: much better they've already gotten in Florida and Texas and
Speaker 1: Michigan and Pennsylvania and America. I have previously discussed and
Speaker 1: expressed my distrust of Poles, my horror at the ease
Speaker 1: of their manipulation of my own experience with people at
Speaker 1: MSNBC asking Frank Lunz for a focus group and for
Speaker 1: the outcome of that focus group about me before they
Speaker 1: did the focus group. I've expressed this occasionally, once or
Speaker 1: twice a week, but poles are compass needles. They don't
Speaker 1: tell you how far you have to go, and they
Speaker 1: don't give you directions on how to get there. But
Speaker 1: generally speaking, they do get the big picture right. They
Speaker 1: do get north versus south correctly, and right now they
Speaker 1: are all saying the same thing. It is Trump who
Speaker 1: is going south. We even have the first polling on
Speaker 1: Tim Walls. Morning Console pulled on him right after she
Speaker 1: chose him August two and three, and again over this
Speaker 1: past weekend. So the original poll showed that fifty seven
Speaker 1: percent of all voters had never heard of him. Never
Speaker 1: heard of him fifty seven percent, It is now fifteen percent.
Speaker 1: That would be a good rollout. Walls had a favorable
Speaker 1: score of eighteen in the first poll, it is now
Speaker 1: thirty eight. His unfavorables went from eleven to thirty three.
Speaker 1: Cutting to the chase. He is above water by five
Speaker 1: points as of Sunday. As Morning Consult notes, the vice
Speaker 1: presidential pick rarely gets any traction is rarely a boon
Speaker 1: or a bust. And this guy is in positive territory,
Speaker 1: and that's after the Republicans began to try to swift
Speaker 1: vote him. They note that Walls is at plus five
Speaker 1: and at the same point in his rollout, Vance was
Speaker 1: at minus one. And I'm going to go way out
Speaker 1: on a limb here and say that JV has not
Speaker 1: exactly rebounded from minus one. A couple of other results
Speaker 1: Big Village pollsters. This is a national poll, Harris by three.
Speaker 1: It's previous poll, Trump by two. Nate Silver's average keeps
Speaker 1: growing a couple of parts of a point each day.
Speaker 1: Now Harris by three and one tenth nationally. Bullfinch asked
Speaker 1: swing state voters which candidate would you feel comfortable babysitting
Speaker 1: your kids? Total shock here on the answer Harris forty
Speaker 1: five percent, Trump twenty percent, and I'm presuming the remaining percent,
Speaker 1: the thirty five percent left over, those are JV Vance's
Speaker 1: childless cat ladies. Right now to the election interference by Politico,
Speaker 1: by the New York Times, by the Washington Post, in
Speaker 1: which we are talked down to by a news organization
Speaker 1: of one hundred and forty seven years experience, which has
Speaker 1: done us the service of explaining why the Washington Post
Speaker 1: cannot publish nor even identify internal documents and computer traffic
Speaker 1: stolen from a presidential campaign. I mean, why the Washington
Speaker 1: Post cannot publish any of that this time, especially a
Speaker 1: lengthy JV vance vetting document prepared by or for the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign. Which news organization has explained this to us
Speaker 1: about the Washington Post. Why it's the Washington Post quote
Speaker 1: this episode probably reflects that news organizations aren't going to
Speaker 1: snap at any hack that comes in and is marked
Speaker 1: as exclusive or inside dope and publish it for the
Speaker 1: sake of publishing, said Matt Murray, Executive editor of the Post. Instead, quote,
Speaker 1: all of the news organizations in this case took a
Speaker 1: deep breath and paused and thought about who was likely
Speaker 1: to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the
Speaker 1: hacker might have been, and whether this was truly newsworthy
Speaker 1: or not. Well, that's the part of the executive editor's
Speaker 1: statement intended for the journalism schools as classes begin anew
Speaker 1: in the coming weeks. Here's the real part of what
Speaker 1: mister Murray had to say. The decision for newsrooms to
Speaker 1: not publish the Dvance Materials, a compilation of publicly available
Speaker 1: records and statements, including Dvance's past criticisms of Trump, appeared
Speaker 1: to be more straightforward because they also didn't reach a
Speaker 1: high level of public interest. Quoting this guy Murray, the
Speaker 1: one who still uses phrases like inside dope, quoting mister Murray.
Speaker 1: In the end, it didn't seem fresh or new enough.
Speaker 1: So if it were new jd Vance stuff, then they'd
Speaker 1: swallow hard and just push those morals and ethics to
Speaker 1: the side a little bit and run it and not
Speaker 1: say all that stuff about taking a deep breath and
Speaker 1: pausing and thinking about who the leaker might be or
Speaker 1: what their motives might be. Gotcha? End number one justifies
Speaker 1: the means, and end number two does not justify the means. Frauds.
Speaker 1: From the same Washington Post piece, quoting Kelly McBride, NPR's
Speaker 1: public editor and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for
Speaker 1: Ethics and Leadership at the Pointer Institute, and before twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: the general thinking was that even with hacked materials quote
Speaker 1: if there's something interesting in there, and of course you're
Speaker 1: going to report it unquote, but with foreign state actors
Speaker 1: increasingly getting involved. It just feels diceier for news organizations
Speaker 1: to make the decision, because you don't want to be
Speaker 1: helping another country undermine our democracy. McBride said. The motivations
Speaker 1: don't have to be pure, but it can't be to
Speaker 1: undermine the stability of the entire country. She added that
Speaker 1: just seems like a bridge too far. Of course, that
Speaker 1: wasn't a bridge too far in twenty sixteen, was it?
Speaker 1: Ms McBride. While there was no initial clear link between
Speaker 1: say Russia and Wiki leaks and Roger Stone and his wig,
Speaker 1: it became apparent pretty damned fast that there was a
Speaker 1: link between at least two of those folks, especially after
Speaker 1: that subtle hint from Trump. Remember when he said, quote, Russia,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the
Speaker 1: thirty thousand emails that are missing. I think you will
Speaker 1: probably be rewarded mightily by our press, which he said, incidentally,
Speaker 1: and answer to a question by Katie Turr god and
Speaker 1: the same day that he said that Russian intelligence began
Speaker 1: to target Hillary Clinton's emails. It's almost as if they
Speaker 1: were listening. The Washington Post, of course, is threading not
Speaker 1: one but two needles. Here, it is insisting it does
Speaker 1: not have to publish the results of the anti Trump hacking,
Speaker 1: while insisting it was justified in publishing the results of
Speaker 1: the pro Trump hacking, while also insisting it's older and
Speaker 1: wiser and more careful now bullshit. Brian Boutler flagged this
Speaker 1: clip from the old Showtime political program The Circus, and
Speaker 1: since Showtime posted the clip on YouTube, I'm sure it
Speaker 1: won't mind the plug. I think the show is an
Speaker 1: on ayme, but so what. It's a plug for Showtime
Speaker 1: now available on your cable package. It's Mark McKinnon talking
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen with Washington Post reporters Roz Helderman and
Speaker 1: Mateia Gold. Matea Gold I dealt with several times when
Speaker 1: she was in LA is now one of the posts
Speaker 1: managing editors, and it's her voice you will hear first
Speaker 1: on this, and you should look for this clip on
Speaker 1: YouTube because you should see Matia Gold's face light up
Speaker 1: when the other reporter, Roz Helderman, the one with the glasses,
Speaker 1: says she's just found something juicy inside the stolen materials
Speaker 1: the Post is going to publish as opposed to these
Speaker 1: stolen materials, which they're not going to publish.
Speaker 2: Obviously, Wikiwiks seems to have some sort of agenda in
Speaker 2: putting this material out. But at the same time, I
Speaker 2: don't think anything that's been released so far has been
Speaker 2: this big October surprise. It's going to change the trajectory
Speaker 2: of the race, Hey, Roz about anything?
Speaker 3: A couple little things. Podesta says that they've taken on
Speaker 3: a lot of water, and he says most of that
Speaker 3: has to do with terrible decisions made pre campaign, but
Speaker 3: a lot has to do with her instincts. Who and
Speaker 3: then neuro writes back, almost no one knows better than
Speaker 3: me that her instincts can be terrible.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Did that create any issues for you guys as reporters
Speaker 2: that it seemed strategically leaked?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think every indication is that both of these hacks
Speaker 3: are stolen material. On the other hand, they're undeniably newsworthy.
Speaker 2: This information is now out there and it's getting consumed
Speaker 2: by the public, So I actually feel like we have
Speaker 2: a responsibility to use it to sort of illuminate the
Speaker 2: stories that we're already been working on and pursuing. I
Speaker 2: think we have to assume that these kind of hacks
Speaker 2: will likely happen again, and that this kind of material.
Speaker 1: Will re allergy culture going forward.
Speaker 2: That's sort of the psychological warfare aspect of the campaign, argues,
Speaker 2: which is true. I mean, if there's no doubt it
Speaker 2: has rattled them, it's everyone going to have to be
Speaker 2: on guard for this kind of hack in the future.
Speaker 1: So they knew in twenty sixteen this would happen again,
Speaker 1: and they knew they were setting the precedent, and they
Speaker 1: knew they wouldn't do better next time. And now they're
Speaker 1: pretending that it hasn't happened again, and they're pretending no
Speaker 1: precedent was set, and they're confirming they aren't doing better
Speaker 1: next time, and they haven't learned a damn thing. The
Speaker 1: Washington Post Executive editor Matt Murray again in an interview
Speaker 1: with his own reporters about why his own newsroom is
Speaker 1: failing all its own ethical obligations to its own nation quote.
Speaker 1: Murray said, the Post has no blanket, no hacked materials policy.
Speaker 1: You have to evaluate the material as it comes in.
Speaker 1: I certainly don't want to encourage hacked material, but it's
Speaker 1: going to happen in this world that we're in. So
Speaker 1: they they've learned something the hell they have. They published
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen because the material was hot. They're not
Speaker 1: publishing in twenty twenty four because the material isn't hot.
Speaker 1: And when the next hot material comes in, they've made
Speaker 1: sure they can all sell out their ethics yet again
Speaker 1: in yet a different direction. One thing you may have
Speaker 1: noticed in none of mister Murray's remarks, nor any of
Speaker 1: the similar ones from similar editors at the Times or
Speaker 1: Politico explaining their cowardice. In none of them do any
Speaker 1: of them take the weaker but still far more commendable
Speaker 1: route of at least admitting they screwed up in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen when they decided to publish. I mean, it would
Speaker 1: be nice to see the word wrong come out of
Speaker 1: somebody's mouth. But in twenty six years in the news
Speaker 1: andical news businesses, I can tell you without fear contradiction,
Speaker 1: that the most wide spread skill in the field is
Speaker 1: the one that allows someone to make up gallant sounding
Speaker 1: rationalizations for doing or not doing anything purely for the
Speaker 1: public interest, never for your own interest, and always accepting
Speaker 1: the responsibility, but never the blame. Because, as the political
Speaker 1: impressionist David Fry once said, those who are to blame
Speaker 1: lose their jobs. Those who are responsible do not. You
Speaker 1: would think there'd be some pain from twisting their spine
Speaker 1: so much so often, but remember this is the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: These guys don't have a spine. A couple of other notes.
Speaker 1: You heard that Selene Dion is suing over Trump using
Speaker 1: her song My Heart Will Go On from Titanic at
Speaker 1: his rallies. I mean, come on, it's perfect, all right.
Speaker 1: I can understand her not wanting to be associated with it,
Speaker 1: but it is the perfect song. Everything but the glob Glob.
Speaker 1: As another option, may I suggest the wreck of the
Speaker 1: Edmund Fitzgerald. This is hilarious. This is from Stephen Chung,
Speaker 1: a Trump spokesman who, to his credit, usually puts his
Speaker 1: name on press statements from the Trump campaign, even though
Speaker 1: Trump has been leaking anonymously on and off the record
Speaker 1: since at least the nineteen eighties. The Harris campaign referred
Speaker 1: to the Trump Musk Twitter whatever that was, and referred
Speaker 1: to Trump's extremism and dangerous Project twenty twenty five agenda,
Speaker 1: and the Harris campaign insulted Musk by saying Trump is
Speaker 1: there in service of people like Keon Musk and himself
Speaker 1: self obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class,
Speaker 1: and who cannot run a live stream in the year
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Stephen Chunk's response, all these statements, yet
Speaker 1: nobody ever puts their name on them. Effing Coward's Steve bigmad.
Speaker 1: Steve's so big mad he didn't notice it. Right under
Speaker 1: that statement it reads Harris Walls in capital letters. That
Speaker 1: would be two somebodies who put both their names on it.
Speaker 1: They were right, of course, though I did think there
Speaker 1: was one undersold gem in that thing that Donnie and
Speaker 1: Elanie did on Twitter.
Speaker 5: The next time. What we'll do is if something happens
Speaker 5: with his election, which would be a horror show, we'll
Speaker 5: meet the next time in Venezuela because it'll be a
Speaker 5: far safer place to meet in our country. Okay, so
Speaker 5: we'll go, You and I will go, and we'll have
Speaker 5: a meeting and dinner in Venezuela because that's what's happening.
Speaker 1: So they're gonna move to Venezuela. Huh. Don't let the
Speaker 1: wall door hit you in the ass on the way out, Donald.
Speaker 1: But finally, maybe the fullest measure of how bad it's
Speaker 1: gone for Trump and how fast it's gone bad is
Speaker 1: criticism from one person, one voter out there, one lone voice.
Speaker 1: Trump is getting hurt, says this one loan critic, because quote,
Speaker 1: it's all about discipline. He's a very emotional guy, and
Speaker 1: if he's having a bad day, that bad day is
Speaker 1: gonna come out during a rally or an interview. But
Speaker 1: he isn't like a guy who is internalizing what he
Speaker 1: should do. He just flies and he doesn't really think
Speaker 1: about the repercussions of what he says, and that's hurting him.
Speaker 1: The speaker Bill O'Reilly, or what's left of him on Newsmax.
Speaker 1: I was shocked. Bill O'Reilly's gaunt now scary looking. Basically,
Speaker 1: he's down to just a skull and an ego. But
Speaker 1: understand what Bill O'Reilly's criticism of Trump means. More than
Speaker 1: a decade ago, when I still paid for front row
Speaker 1: seats at Yankee Stadium, mostly so I could give away
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty tickets a year to make a
Speaker 1: wish and sit there and get in ESPN's camera shot
Speaker 1: when they did the games. Half the games I actually
Speaker 1: went to, there would be Trump seated a row or
Speaker 1: two behind me with a guest neither of them ever
Speaker 1: saying a word. Trump not even talking to this guy
Speaker 1: who appeared to have been his only friend in the world,
Speaker 1: the only person who ever showed up with him to
Speaker 1: these games. You'd see them drinking milkshakes, occasionally chain drinking milkshakes.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they just sat there silently staring at the ball game.
Speaker 1: The other guy with Trump was Bill O'Reilly. If Bill
Speaker 1: O'Reilly is slamming Trump, it's over. Texas is in play,
Speaker 1: Florida is in play. Bill O'Reilly is in play.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: By the way, they're tickets. They're Yankee tickets. They were
Speaker 1: gratis no charge, provided by the Yankees, because Bill O'Reilly
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump were two of the three biggest freeloaders
Speaker 1: I have ever seen at any ballpark anywhere. The third
Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani. Those we're all free tickets. Me I paid.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a tax deduction for the tickets
Speaker 1: I gave away. I'm not going to deny that. But
Speaker 1: I paid because you because you pay for things. Also
Speaker 1: of interest here, speaking of New York sports, my past
Speaker 1: is slipping away. Yesterday it happened again. The day before
Speaker 1: had been New York's top all news radio station, the
Speaker 1: great inspiration of my youth going off the air. And
Speaker 1: yesterday it was my first boss, the first of a
Speaker 1: long suffering parade of my long suffering bosses retiring, retiring
Speaker 1: after about half a century of doing play by play
Speaker 1: of the New York Rangers hockey team. I have known
Speaker 1: my friend Sam Rosen so long that when I first
Speaker 1: met him, I wrote about it in a paper for
Speaker 1: one of my classes in school. Oh sorry, Sam.
Speaker 4: That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman,
Speaker 4: my crazy friend still ahead of us on this edition
Speaker 4: of Countdown. Monday, it was the New York all news
Speaker 4: radio station WCBS going off the air, the station who's
Speaker 4: news director in nineteen seventy nine gave me the self
Speaker 4: confidence to actually pursue this as a life's work. Yesterday
Speaker 4: it was the retirement, effective after the upcoming season of
Speaker 4: Sam Rosen, the Hall of fame play by play man
Speaker 4: of the New York Rangers. Sam was my first boss
Speaker 4: in radio in nineteen seventy nine. In fact, I met
Speaker 4: him sixteen days before I got that letter from the
Speaker 4: news director at WCBS Radio. Sam was both my first
Speaker 4: true job lead and my first boss. And now he's retiring.
Speaker 4: As they say, time is undefeated. But there's more to
Speaker 4: this because after I met him, but before he hired me,
Speaker 4: And think about having a Hall of Fame career as
Speaker 4: a broadcaster after you were responsible for managing this crazy
Speaker 4: twenty and twenty one year old kid version of me.
Speaker 4: After I met him, but before he hired me, I
Speaker 4: had to go back to my senior year at Cornell
Speaker 4: and write a creative writing essay about a memorable person
Speaker 4: I had met under unusual circumstances. So I wrote it
Speaker 4: about Sam Rosen, And of course I still have the
Speaker 4: original copy, which I will read to you next in
Speaker 4: Things I promised not to tell first, there's still more
Speaker 4: new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miscreants,
Speaker 4: morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute two days
Speaker 4: worst persons in the World, Lebron's worse Chris Slizza, two
Speaker 4: z's and an endless amount of ls you remember him
Speaker 4: from such worst person in the world appearances as it's
Speaker 4: Shapiro people, And how dare you claim Trump as dementia?
Speaker 4: You're not doctors? Even though I wrote fifty pieces just
Speaker 4: in twenty fifteen diagnosing Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy and telling
Speaker 4: the former history teacher Jim Clyburn that rule one is,
Speaker 4: don't compare anything to Nazi Germany. Well, Chris, with a
Speaker 4: lot of zas and an endless amount of ls is back.
Speaker 4: It's been twenty three days since Joe Biden ended his candidacy.
Speaker 4: It's been seven days since Kamala Harris was formerly named
Speaker 4: the Democratic presidential nominee. She has yet to sit for
Speaker 4: an interview with any media outlet, and she has answered
Speaker 4: less than five total questions from the press.
Speaker 1: Chris. Those five questions were when she came over to
Speaker 1: the traveling pool and said, okay, what you got and
Speaker 1: they asked her her policies. No, they asked her about
Speaker 1: Trump and what Trump had said, and what did she
Speaker 1: think of Trump? And Trump did this, and Trump did that?
Speaker 1: Who wasted the opportunity with the Vice president of the
Speaker 1: United States to address I don't know the border the
Speaker 1: Middle East? Tim Walls, Whether or not she was black
Speaker 1: or Indian or Blindian or anything like that. No, No,
Speaker 1: they asked her about Trump. Might as well have asked
Speaker 1: her about her football picks for the first weekend of
Speaker 1: the NFL season. So You're blaming her because our American
Speaker 1: news media, particularly the White House and the Vice Presidential
Speaker 1: Press Corps, is largely made up of people who only
Speaker 1: remember the last three hours of their lives. I mean,
Speaker 1: what do you want from her? You want her to
Speaker 1: have a news conference like the one Trump had last week,
Speaker 1: where it turned out his news conference was about him
Speaker 1: pretending to have a news conference instead of just saying,
Speaker 1: I'm going to come here and give a series of
Speaker 1: small speeches that have nothing to do with the questions
Speaker 1: you just asked me. She is, as Solica accurately notes,
Speaker 1: I just said it, Solica and accurate. In the same sentence,
Speaker 1: Solica notes she was on day twenty three of her
Speaker 1: campaign official or unofficial day twenty three of her campaign,
Speaker 1: and he's upset that he has not gotten an exclusive
Speaker 1: with her. You're going to try to push her off
Speaker 1: the ticket too, because she hasn't done enough interviews with
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, CNN and anybody else. That fired you,
Speaker 1: Jesus never stops. Absolutely no self awareness whatsoever. You would
Speaker 1: think getting fired might have been the first clue that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not doing this correctly. I mean, I have
Speaker 1: quit jobs and wondered today, let me quit. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not as good at this as I thought I was.
Speaker 1: Never such a doubt has hit. Chris Silizza has it.
Speaker 1: The runners up worser speaking of not having a doubt.
Speaker 1: The Trump War Room, which is considered an official part
Speaker 1: of the social media campaign of what's his name Psycho Trump.
Speaker 1: They put out a tweet tweet x a muscow or
Speaker 1: whatever you're gonna call them at eleven twenty one am
Speaker 1: Eastern daylight time yesterday. There is a picture on the
Speaker 1: left of some two story homes. I mean, they look okay.
Speaker 1: They have porches that are not sagging, so they don't
Speaker 1: look like the more disreputable parts of upstate New York.
Speaker 1: They don't look like a place that you would live
Speaker 1: your entire life in going where all the people who
Speaker 1: live in the United States actually go on a day
Speaker 1: like this, I haven't seen anybody new since the year
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. They have that, and it's nice
Speaker 1: and clean, and the bushes out front or all right,
Speaker 1: and there don't seem to be any cracks in the
Speaker 1: pavement or in the six steps up to the giant
Speaker 1: American flag that's taller than any of the inbred people
Speaker 1: inside this house that is clearly in a white neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And I might add there are no people shown in
Speaker 1: this photograph, and it says your neighborhood under Trump, and
Speaker 1: there's a picture of houses and a flag and no people.
Speaker 1: Next to it is your neighborhood under Kamala And in
Speaker 1: it is a bunch of folks who appear to be
Speaker 1: rushing for aid after a crisis of some sort, possibly
Speaker 1: a hurricane, in perhaps an inner city setting. Most of them,
Speaker 1: if not all of them, appear to be African American,
Speaker 1: or are perhaps people of color show in some other nation.
Speaker 1: It's hard to tell from the photograph. There's a guy
Speaker 1: in front with a very bad haircut who is drinking
Speaker 1: very very earnestly from a cup of water. This looks
Speaker 1: like a water distribution scene after some sort of crisis,
Speaker 1: and it's packed. Everybody is there and they're all in
Speaker 1: a small space and people are worried. And in the
Speaker 1: back of some guy wearing a mask. It might be
Speaker 1: a crisis in Haiti. It's hard to tell, but the
Speaker 1: text above this from the Trump War Room is import
Speaker 1: the third World, become the third World. Your neighborhood under Trump,
Speaker 1: your neighborhood under Kamala. So if you had any questions
Speaker 1: where the Trump campaign would be going henceforth, the answer
Speaker 1: is it would be going to George Wallace's gravestone to
Speaker 1: get his support for their campaign. Full on racism. Haven't
Speaker 1: we done enough for these people? And other past Republican
Speaker 1: slogans dating to nineteen sixty six and earlier, That is
Speaker 1: where they're going to go down the last eighty plus
Speaker 1: days of this campaign. If you think the stuff about
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris identifying as a being of Indian descent and
Speaker 1: now suddenly becoming black, if you think that's racist, you
Speaker 1: ain't seen nothing yet. But I would remind you that
Speaker 1: in this side by side, these Trump shits don't even
Speaker 1: recognize the fact that they've shown your neighborhood under Trump
Speaker 1: as being completely devoid of people, because of course they
Speaker 1: were some of the one million who died under Trump's
Speaker 1: mismanagement of COVID. That's just my interpretation of what that
Speaker 1: picture means. It's very clean here, like a graveyard. Nice
Speaker 1: flag though, and seems to be at full staff, not
Speaker 1: at half staff or the million people Trump killed. But
Speaker 1: the worst person our winner e lawn Musk. You heard.
Speaker 1: I played a clip of it before that very sibilant
Speaker 1: destruction of two hours of world history between must Psycho Trump,
Speaker 1: the post afterwards from X and its desperate attempt to
Speaker 1: appear relevant in the media space between seven forty seven
Speaker 1: pm forty seven minutes late and ten forty seven pm
Speaker 1: e g. When Trump finally stopped effing talking already President
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's space post, Well, he's not president, he's ex president.
Speaker 1: You can call him ex president, former president. That's fine.
Speaker 1: I would just call him Psycho Trump, but that's just me.
Speaker 1: Trump's space post received seventy three million views. During the
Speaker 1: same period, there were four million posts about Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and President Trump's conversation on X, generating a total of
Speaker 1: nine hundred and ninety eight million views. Somebody else wrote,
Speaker 1: CNN gets fifty million views per month, less than two
Speaker 1: thirds of what this did on Tuesday Night. I noted
Speaker 1: at the time that a Twitter view is a second,
Speaker 1: and if you watch something on Twitter for one second,
Speaker 1: it counts as a view, and thus the total number
Speaker 1: of seconds is the total number of views. It's not
Speaker 1: like TV when you hear that two million people watched
Speaker 1: a show on Fox News. It means that at a
Speaker 1: given moment, two million people were actually watching the show,
Speaker 1: or estimated to be based on the way ratings work
Speaker 1: in television. It's not accumulative. It doesn't mean there were
Speaker 1: two million different people who watched some part of it
Speaker 1: over the course of an hour. It's two million per average.
Speaker 1: We don't know. In fact, there is some demographic information
Speaker 1: about how many different people watch during the course of
Speaker 1: an hour. But the point is two million is okay?
Speaker 1: Freeze time count the number of people watching Sean Hannity
Speaker 1: Rachel Maddow when I did a show me and that
Speaker 1: number is two million. That is totally different from the
Speaker 1: idea of two million Twitter views, which is two million
Speaker 1: people watching for a second each. In other words, if
Speaker 1: in fact seventy three million people viewed the Musk Trump conversation,
Speaker 1: it's like there's a drunk guy here at the bar.
Speaker 1: He won't stop his conversation with me. If seventy three
Speaker 1: million people viewed for one second each, that would mean
Speaker 1: the total audience was actually twenty one thousand people. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think it was that bad, But that's just
Speaker 1: to give you the relative idea between a Twitter view
Speaker 1: and a TV viewer. Now, somebody who knows this far
Speaker 1: better than I do is Michael Mulbihill, the ratings and
Speaker 1: research and analytics dude at Fox Television and Fox Sports.
Speaker 1: And he wrote seventy three million views and a concurrent
Speaker 1: viewership that never got above one and a half million
Speaker 1: implies that the average viewer of this three hour interview
Speaker 1: watched for less than four minutes. We used to do
Speaker 1: pretty well on Countdown. We held people they used to
Speaker 1: watch for about forty five minutes out of the sixty
Speaker 1: minute show. The average length of time watching Musk and
Speaker 1: Trump was just four minutes, meaning at four minutes people went,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm listening to this again. Let's go
Speaker 1: see what's on good old fashioned TV. Or I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'll just count my fingers. That'll be more interesting. Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: still lying, still stoned, Still the cautionary tale about what
Speaker 1: happens if you mainline ozempic and two days worst a
Speaker 1: person in the world. See the number one story on
Speaker 1: the Countdown on my favorite topic, me and Things I
Speaker 1: Promised not to tell. It was James Thurber who once
Speaker 1: pointed out that the secret to great writing was never
Speaker 1: throw away anything you have written. He confessed that I
Speaker 1: believe in nineteen fifty eight that he had managed to
Speaker 1: rework stuff that he had written in nineteen eighteen. Well,
Speaker 1: I can finally top him. I wrote what You're going
Speaker 1: to Hear Next on March twenty seventh, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: It was a creative writing assignment for my last English
Speaker 1: class at Cornell, and it was simple, somebody you have
Speaker 1: met recently who you found interesting or under interesting circumstances.
Speaker 1: Four to five pages, typed double space. I'll spare you
Speaker 1: the suspense. It's about Sam Rosen, as you will hear.
Speaker 1: I had what seemed to be a courtesy interview with
Speaker 1: Sam Rosen in his office at UPI Audio in New
Speaker 1: York on Thursday, March twenty second, nineteen seventy nine. I
Speaker 1: didn't think anything had come of it, but on July third,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, UPI Audio hired me my first job.
Speaker 1: I was replacing their sports director. Thought I named Maury Trumbull,
Speaker 1: who was leaving to go be the sports director of
Speaker 1: NBC Radio. Yes, they used to have such jobs. Morey
Speaker 1: and I overlapped for about ten days, so technically he
Speaker 1: was my first boss. But really, Sam was my first boss,
Speaker 1: and he not only survived it, he's still working. He's
Speaker 1: been the play by play announcer of the New York
Speaker 1: Rangers since nineteen eighty four, and he remains a friend.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm not that tough on my employers after all.
Speaker 1: Just as interesting, though, is a guy you will here
Speaker 1: referred to in passing in the second sentence as an
Speaker 1: ABC Sports executive. I will explain who that was and
Speaker 1: is after I read you the original. From the original copy,
Speaker 1: I might add which I will start doing in one
Speaker 1: second from now. Keith Olberman English, one thirty five point
Speaker 1: one three, March twenty seven, nineteen seventy nine. By the
Speaker 1: time I cornered Sam Rosen in the back room of
Speaker 1: United Press Internationals offices in New York City, March twenty
Speaker 1: second had already qualified as a very bizarre day. In
Speaker 1: the preceding twelve hours, I had dragged myself out of
Speaker 1: bed despite half a night's sleep, conducted a successful job
Speaker 1: interview with an ABC Sports executive who turned out to
Speaker 1: be a former WTKO ITHACA disc jockey, gotten drunk before
Speaker 1: noon at a bar run by an ex Cornell basketball player,
Speaker 1: sobered myself up in the bowels of New York's subway
Speaker 1: system and walked at least three miles on the hard
Speaker 1: city streets. Sam Rosen is a sportscaster for the United
Speaker 1: Press Audio Network, a low grade national organization with which
Speaker 1: I had some contact and some small hope of employment.
Speaker 1: The Rosen, who introduced himself to a burnt out, tired me,
Speaker 1: was a burly, slow moving man, broad in the shoulders,
Speaker 1: straightforward and confident, and the owner of distractingly bushy sideburns.
Speaker 1: He had consented to spend a few minutes with me
Speaker 1: at the request of Roger norm, a UPI newscaster, whom
Speaker 1: I had met through a contact just four days earlier.
Speaker 1: Norham had thought Rosen might be able to help me
Speaker 1: in my efforts to get a job, and at the
Speaker 1: very least critique a tape of one of my broadcasts.
Speaker 1: Page two. Rosen began slowly and deliberately reviewing his rise
Speaker 1: to network radio from humble beginnings as a gopher at
Speaker 1: a New York station. It's a hard business, Keith, he
Speaker 1: pointed out, you have to be prepared to start at
Speaker 1: the bottom, even say as an intern for a radio
Speaker 1: or TV station. I noted, rather meekly, that I spent
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen seventy eight in just such a
Speaker 1: capacity at Channel five in New York. Rosen seemed surprised
Speaker 1: and a little miffed at my sliver of experience, and
Speaker 1: seemed to be growth hoping for something else to suggest, Well,
Speaker 1: it's good to define just where you want your career
Speaker 1: to go and how it will go. Rosen's confidence disappeared
Speaker 1: a second later when I recounted my decision at the
Speaker 1: age of eight to become the country's top sportscaster by
Speaker 1: starting in radio and then moving into television. He looked
Speaker 1: at me with mystification and slowly leaned back in his seat,
Speaker 1: to the accompaniment of a groan from rusty hinges and
Speaker 1: the squeak of the chair's casters against the tile floor.
Speaker 1: Maybe you should try stringing, he offered, and began to
Speaker 1: explain the radio term for providing reports or newsmaker's comments
Speaker 1: to a station or network on a freelance basis. He
Speaker 1: stopped explaining when I noted I had done that for
Speaker 1: three city stations and two networks, including his own. Page
Speaker 1: three Oh. There followed a classic deafening silence. Finally, Rosen
Speaker 1: seized on something he presumed I couldn't possibly have done already,
Speaker 1: Small mark good radio, He blurted, barking the words out
Speaker 1: as if he were desperately answering some oral test question.
Speaker 1: At the last possible second, Sam looked hopefully at me,
Speaker 1: but I disappointed him by reviewing my four years at WVBR,
Speaker 1: the station's ratings and nature, and my thousand or so
Speaker 1: broadcasts on it. He was now getting upset. It was evident,
Speaker 1: and Sam later embarrassedly admitted that he was approaching our
Speaker 1: talk as a major league baseball player might a clinic
Speaker 1: with a dozen little leaguers. Well, you just can't expect
Speaker 1: a job in New York out of college, he was
Speaker 1: nearly pleading, And then, more sternly, you have to be realistic. Well, Sam,
Speaker 1: I had decided to take the offensive at this point
Speaker 1: and was speaking softly and unpresumptuously. Do you think my
Speaker 1: four years in Ithaca will be discounted because I was
Speaker 1: a college student. It's small market radio, and I don't
Speaker 1: think it can get much better in small market radio.
Speaker 1: Can we listen to my tape now? Is that okay?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: Pleasure? Sam appeared relieved, by not having to answer my question,
Speaker 1: and he quickly threaded the brown tape through one of
Speaker 1: the studios many large tape recorders. Page four. He hit
Speaker 1: the on button and sat back. My voice was soon
Speaker 1: reverberating in the small room. At first, Rosen simply gazed
Speaker 1: at the revolving reels and played with his sideburns. At
Speaker 1: the moments passed, however, the motion stopped and he sat
Speaker 1: up in his chair. Finally, with the tape over, he
Speaker 1: moved his lips as if to comment, but couldn't manage
Speaker 1: more than a nervous laugh. Then suddenly his tone changed.
Speaker 1: You know, Keith, this tape. No, maybe I shouldn't point. Well,
Speaker 1: we just hired a guy to do sports starting next month,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have anything to do with the hiring
Speaker 1: or anything. But here Rosen stopped staring past me and
Speaker 1: looked me instead, squarely in the eyes. His tape wasn't
Speaker 1: half as good as yours. I'm very again, a brief
Speaker 1: silence in a staccato delivery. I'm very impressed. It was
Speaker 1: at once one of the most prideful and disheartening moments
Speaker 1: of my life. I couldn't help but smile at the
Speaker 1: thought that perhaps my basic skills were indeed honed enough
Speaker 1: to the point of excellence. But at the same time
Speaker 1: I sensed having been purposely placed in the right place
Speaker 1: at the wrong time. UPI Audio, as Sam later noted,
Speaker 1: hadn't had any changes in sports staff since nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: and here there had been an opening filled just a
Speaker 1: week before, filled by somebody who sounded only half as
Speaker 1: good as me, Page five. The rest of my conversation
Speaker 1: with Sam Rosen was far more enjoyable and relaxed. It
Speaker 1: had been graphically illustrated to me that patronizing condescension could
Speaker 1: be turned into genuine respect by my simply flashing a
Speaker 1: little talent. Sam spent the rest of my time in
Speaker 1: the studios bathing me in compliments, offering me any assistance
Speaker 1: he could, and urging me to make a lot of
Speaker 1: people listen to the tape. Make them listen to it,
Speaker 1: he suggested, drawing on our just concluded experience. Early in
Speaker 1: the conversation, the instructor in this class English what was it?
Speaker 1: One thirty five point one point five one three gave
Speaker 1: me a check mark with a plus on it. Sounds
Speaker 1: like a great experience. I can't believe that you'll have
Speaker 1: any difficulty in finding a suitable job. This is well written,
Speaker 1: it's clear to the point narrative. Some cleverness as usual,
Speaker 1: but cuteness firmly under control. Also, perhaps because written fast,
Speaker 1: none of those awkward spots caused by your fondness for
Speaker 1: being indirect. Some things have not changed at all since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. I wish I could remember the name
Speaker 1: of the teaching assistant who wrote that she was very nice,
Speaker 1: extremely supportive, and obviously claire voyant. Now a little reminder
Speaker 1: that you cannot, always, to paraphrase Shakespeare, look into the
Speaker 1: seeds of time and say which great and will grow
Speaker 1: in which will not. The ABC Sports executive and former
Speaker 1: wtko Ithaca, New York disc jockey I met earlier in
Speaker 1: the day, to whom I gave short shrift to say
Speaker 1: the least in sentenced to a paragraph one, was a
Speaker 1: vice president at a broadcast called Wide World of Sports,
Speaker 1: who gave me a brilliant piece of advice that I
Speaker 1: will save for a later edition of Things I promised
Speaker 1: not to tell. And his name was Robert Bob iger Iger.
Speaker 1: By nineteen eighty nine, Iigre was the head of entertainment
Speaker 1: at the ABC Television Network. In nineteen ninety four, he
Speaker 1: became president of Cap Cities ABC, which owned ESPN, so
Speaker 1: he became my ultimate boss in my third year there.
Speaker 1: The next year, Disney bought ABC, mostly so it could
Speaker 1: get its hands on ESPN. Iiger became president of Disney
Speaker 1: in two thousand, chairman in two thousand and five. He
Speaker 1: retired in twenty twenty one, but he returned to the
Speaker 1: but at Disney last year. And as I have said
Speaker 1: to him every time we have talked since March twenty second,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, when we met and here, I thought
Speaker 1: you were just some middle manager who still wanted to
Speaker 1: be a sportscaster when he grew up. Sammy, I've done
Speaker 1: all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: Please share this podcast with somebody who does not listen.
Speaker 1: We're up to a total audience of over a million
Speaker 1: a week. Let's go. Let's go now. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, musical directors of Countdown, arranged,
Speaker 1: produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle on
Speaker 1: the orchestration and the keyboards. Mister Ray in charge of guitars,
Speaker 1: bass and drums and playing them. It was produced by
Speaker 1: Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by
Speaker 1: the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports
Speaker 1: music is the Lderman theme from ESPN two, written by
Speaker 1: Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged
Speaker 1: and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer
Speaker 1: today was my friend Tony Kornheiser, and everything else was
Speaker 1: pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the
Speaker 1: eighty fourth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election
Speaker 1: Florida and Texas are in play, and the three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteenth day since convicted felon dementia j second place
Speaker 1: Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of
Speaker 1: the United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use
Speaker 1: the mental health system. You've got this. President Biden used
Speaker 1: presidential immunity to stop him from doing it. Gain while
Speaker 1: we still again and anti Semitic, anti immigration, nutjob Republicans,
Speaker 1: please stop shooting at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Bulletin says the News requires till then. I'm Keith Olderman.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
Speaker 1: Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.