Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
Speaker 1: have been thinking this since no later than Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 1: I have been thinking that there will come a point
Speaker 1: this year, this election, maybe this month, where we will
Speaker 1: all be standing here saying, can you believe we came
Speaker 1: this close to not making Vice President Harris the nominee.
Speaker 1: You have heard the poll ipsos for Reuters Harris forty
Speaker 1: two Trump thirty h Kennedy h in the three party race,
Speaker 1: and Harris forty four Trump forty two head to head,
Speaker 1: a four point shift to Kamala Harris in one week.
Speaker 1: But have you heard the other polls Maris for NPR
Speaker 1: and the PBS News Hour Harris forty two, Trump forty two,
Speaker 1: Kennedy seven Trump forty six, Harris forty five. You Gov
Speaker 1: for Yahoo News Harris forty six, Trump forty six. These
Speaker 1: numbers are from at the latest, the first full day
Speaker 1: of the Harris campaign. There are voters who do not
Speaker 1: know she is going to be the Democratic nominee for president.
Speaker 1: Could be a million of them, could be twenty million
Speaker 1: of them. It is hard to say. And she is
Speaker 1: already in a statistical tie. And yet the most jaw
Speaker 1: dropping poll is none of these. It is from a
Speaker 1: state and I had to look up the pollster, whereupon
Speaker 1: my jaw dropped a second time in the same poll
Speaker 1: Georgia conducted Monday, Trump forty eight Harris forty seven by
Speaker 1: Landmark Communications, And who in the hell is Landmark Communications?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's a Republican internal pollster in Georgia.
Speaker 1: From its website. Mark Rowntree is president of Landmark Communications,
Speaker 1: which he founded in nineteen ninety one. He's been professionally
Speaker 1: engaged as run more than two thousand different Georgia elections,
Speaker 1: including statewide, congressional, legislative and local campaigns and elections magazine
Speaker 1: I Let my subscription lapse. Campaign and Elections magazine has
Speaker 1: recognized Mark as one of Georgia's five top influencers, as
Speaker 1: well as quote the go to man for GOP legislative candidates.
Speaker 1: Landmark regularly polls Georgia and is rated in an A
Speaker 1: minus grade by five thirty eight dot com. Sweet Jesus
Speaker 1: on hockey skates, Kamala Harris trails Trump in Georgia by
Speaker 1: one according to the leading Republican pollster. The last Trump
Speaker 1: Biden polled there earlier this month. Trump by five, four
Speaker 1: June Trump by five, January Trump by eight. Also back
Speaker 1: to the National Poll's marist, what is your impression of
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris registered voters Monday? Favorable forty four, unfavorable forty six.
Speaker 1: So she's two points underwater. That sounds meh. Trump is
Speaker 1: nineteen points underwater nineteen. Joe Biden is eighteen points underwater.
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris minus two. We joined the Trump campaign in
Speaker 1: full fledged pole panic, frantically lowering the bar already in progress.
Speaker 1: A memo at midday yesterday from Tony Fabrizio, Trump polster
Speaker 1: who now works at MAGA Inc. Even though Trump tried
Speaker 1: to stiff him for seven hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: it owed him from polling during the twenty sixteen campaign.
Speaker 1: Part of his memo quote, many of you have heard
Speaker 1: me refer to the upcoming Harris honeymoon that I expect
Speaker 1: to see in the public polling over the next couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, he wrote an hour before it began. As
Speaker 1: I've explained, the honeymoon will be a manifestation of the
Speaker 1: wall to wall coverage Harris receives from the MSM. The
Speaker 1: coverage will be largely positive and will certainly energize Democrats
Speaker 1: and some other parts of their coalition, at least in
Speaker 1: the short term. That means we will start to see
Speaker 1: public polling, particularly national public polls, where Harris is gaining
Speaker 1: on or even leading Trump. Obviously, the situation we find
Speaker 1: ourselves in today is totally uncharted territory and has no
Speaker 1: modern historical parallel, but there are some things that haven't
Speaker 1: changed due to the events of the past two weeks,
Speaker 1: including our highly successful convention. Did you see the speech Tony?
Speaker 1: President Trump has seen a bump in his numbers in
Speaker 1: a number of recent public polls, not surprising given that
Speaker 1: most candidates historically receive some type of bump. Given what
Speaker 1: has happened over the past last couple of days and
Speaker 1: her impending VP choice, there is no question that Harris
Speaker 1: will get her bump earlier than the Democrats convention, and
Speaker 1: that bump is likely to start showing itself over the
Speaker 1: next few days. Tick tick ticket forty five minutes later
Speaker 1: and will last a while until the race settles back down.
Speaker 1: The Democrats and the MSM Fabrizio Rights will try and
Speaker 1: tout these polls as proof that the race has changed,
Speaker 1: but the fundamentals of the race stay the same. The
Speaker 1: Democrats deposing one nominee for another does not change voter's
Speaker 1: discontent over the economy, inflation, crime, the open border housing costs,
Speaker 1: not to mention concern over two foreign wars. Before long,
Speaker 1: Harris's honeymoon will end and voters will refocus on her
Speaker 1: role as Biden's partner and co pilot. Copilot is the
Speaker 1: funniest word I've ever heard used as an attempt to
Speaker 1: slur somebody. So Trump's convention bump and the so somebody
Speaker 1: nearly shot him with a paper clip. No, no bullet bump.
Speaker 1: They're already baked in here. But it's Harris who has
Speaker 1: the honeymoon at the moment. Here's the graveyard, and right
Speaker 1: next to it, here's Team Trump whistling past it. Because
Speaker 1: there's one little thing Tony left out of his memo.
Speaker 1: Did you notice one small detail that we can now
Speaker 1: stop wasting so much of our energy, devoting so much
Speaker 1: of this campaign to denying and finessing and finding the
Speaker 1: very real silver linings while trying to deprioritize the equally
Speaker 1: real thunderstorm clouds that contain them. Nowhere in the Trump
Speaker 1: internal polling memo is a reference to that pesky little
Speaker 1: age thing. I wonder did anybody pull the new campaign
Speaker 1: between Trump and Harris on the age thing? Oh oh,
Speaker 1: look here it is. It's Ipsos for routers. Thank you
Speaker 1: God for ipsos for routers Monday and some yesterday. Do
Speaker 1: you agree or disagree? At seventy eight years old, Trump
Speaker 1: is too old to work in government. Agree fifty three percent,
Speaker 1: disagree forty three percent. But wait, there's more? Do you
Speaker 1: agree or disagree? Kamala Harris is mentally sharp and able
Speaker 1: to deal with challenges. Agree fifty six percent, disagree thirty
Speaker 1: seven percent. Check plays now, polls change, and Tony the
Speaker 1: unpaid Trump pollster is right about honeymoons and bumps and fundamentals,
Speaker 1: And though he didn't mention it in the memo, the
Speaker 1: fact that you always should get Trump to pay you
Speaker 1: up front. But the reason I began to say that
Speaker 1: we would soon be saying, can you believe we came
Speaker 1: this close to not making vice president Harris? The nominee
Speaker 1: was not about those which blunt we are unforeseeably great
Speaker 1: bump or no bumps and honeymoons or no honeymoons. Now,
Speaker 1: this is about something else. I actually first felt a
Speaker 1: version of this question before the debate, the same time
Speaker 1: I heard, for the first time, perhaps a year, Vice
Speaker 1: President Harris give a speech. I had stopped listening to
Speaker 1: her speeches, and I'll explain why in a moment. But first,
Speaker 1: this is the candidate yesterday throwing out the opening pitch
Speaker 1: on opening day in Milwaukee.
Speaker 2: I was like the United States senator. I was elected
Speaker 2: attorney General of the state of California, and I was
Speaker 2: a courtroom prosecutor before then. And in those roles, I
Speaker 2: took on perpetrators of all kinds, predators who abused women,
Speaker 2: fraudsters who ripped off, cheaters who broke the rules for
Speaker 2: their own game. So hear me when I say I
Speaker 2: know Donald Trump's tight.
Speaker 1: Not in my lifetime have I heard a public speaker
Speaker 1: improve that much that late, relatively in their career. Where
Speaker 1: she was tentative and even diffident, Kamala Harris is now
Speaker 1: excited to get to the punchline, and now she knows
Speaker 1: how to throw the punch when she gets there. And
Speaker 1: one small but significant technical improvement. She used to click.
Speaker 1: There used to be a little mouth noise clicking sound
Speaker 1: during her pauses as often as every ten seconds or so,
Speaker 1: just enough to drive you crazy within minutes. I heard
Speaker 1: it during the twenty nineteen twenty twenty primary season, and
Speaker 1: I thought she could never get elected. The click, in
Speaker 1: short order becomes all you can hear. The click is gone.
Speaker 1: I don't know what she did. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was conscious. I don't know if they worked on
Speaker 1: it for two years. It's gone. The click is gone,
Speaker 1: and honestly, I think so are Trump's chances. Famous last words,
Speaker 1: I know these poll numbers could be a honeymoon, though,
Speaker 1: tell me when was the last American political honeymoon? Maybe Obama? Maybe,
Speaker 1: I mean in the late primaries. It could be just
Speaker 1: a bump. Or it could be this other thing that
Speaker 1: we tended to discount much of this year. It could
Speaker 1: be the voters who have been screaming at everybody. We
Speaker 1: told you we didn't want either of them. We told
Speaker 1: you we wanted somebody younger, almost anybody younger. Oh thanks,
Speaker 1: there's somebody younger. If that's what this is, this could
Speaker 1: be a democratic landslide. Can you believe we came this
Speaker 1: close to not making Vice President Harris the nominee? By
Speaker 1: the way, A PostScript I think the polls that Nancy
Speaker 1: showed President Biden Nancy Pelosi. That is sure. There were
Speaker 1: the polls about how he was losing all the swing
Speaker 1: states and creating new swing states, and the national polls.
Speaker 1: I think she also showed him ones that we have
Speaker 1: not yet seen that look like those hypotheticals I quoted
Speaker 1: last week in which we go from Biden down five
Speaker 1: in the swing states to somebody else up seven. Only
Speaker 1: it's not some tiononary somebody else in the ones I
Speaker 1: think Pelosi showed Biden. It's Kamala somebody else Harris who's
Speaker 1: up by seven in the Swing states, or can be Ohwen.
Speaker 1: She probably also showed Joe Biden fundraising expectations, and my god,
Speaker 1: it just keeps coming. Plus now there are Harris jokes,
Speaker 1: good Harris jokes about Harris fundraising. I don't see an
Speaker 1: official update as I record this. I expect that the
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty three thousand dollars a minute clip
Speaker 1: will have leveled off somewhat. But we did get this
Speaker 1: in the inbox quote over one hundred million dollars raised
Speaker 1: for Kamala that was sent by JD Vance. Thanks JD
Speaker 1: by the way, that was one hundred million dollars as
Speaker 1: of our thirty six. The fundraising jokes too. I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention from the comedian Paul Rudnick. Kamala raises any
Speaker 1: more money, Millennia marry her good from Heather Thomas. Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris has raised so much money, Clarence Thomas wants to
Speaker 1: vacation with her. We had another example of the media
Speaker 1: being too stupid for words talk about jokes. A debate
Speaker 1: A Harris Trump debate. The headline at the website The Hill,
Speaker 1: Trump commits to debating Harris, would be willing to do
Speaker 1: more than one. In point of fact, as the story reveals,
Speaker 1: Trump was uncommitting from the scheduled debate against Harris on
Speaker 1: ABC in September and committing to other hypothetical ones, but
Speaker 1: only on his terms. In other words, they got the
Speaker 1: story entirely incorrect. Quote I have at least equals say,
Speaker 1: and I don't like the idea of ABC, Trump told
Speaker 1: reporters on a press call, I would be willing to
Speaker 1: do more than one debate, actually, but he added that
Speaker 1: he had not agreed to anything as far as to
Speaker 1: a debate with Harris. I agreed to a debate with
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. Why don't you go do that? Maybe they'll
Speaker 1: put it on radio. I agreed to a debate with
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, but I want to debate her. They have
Speaker 1: the same policies. I think debating is important for a
Speaker 1: presidential race. I'm only seventy eight and a half years old.
Speaker 1: My name is Elmer j FID millionaire. I own a
Speaker 1: mansion in a yacht I was suggested to this crazy
Speaker 1: old man that he take whatever terms he can get
Speaker 1: in a debate, because it may shortly be clear, even
Speaker 1: to him in his adult state of mind, that his
Speaker 1: only chance is if she bothers to debate him. Now
Speaker 1: happily in the background, it's not like the Republican rank
Speaker 1: and file is panicking or anything. From Politico. House Republican
Speaker 1: leaders told law makers to focus on criticizing Harris's record
Speaker 1: without reference to her race and gender, following caustic remarks
Speaker 1: from some Republicans attacking her on the basis of identity.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent is some right. During a closed door
Speaker 1: meeting yesterday, chair of the House GOP campaign arm Richard
Speaker 1: Hudson and others issued the warning after a series of
Speaker 1: comments by their members that focused on Harris's race, as
Speaker 1: well as claims she is a quote DEI pick. According
Speaker 1: to two people in the room, Speaker of the House
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson, who is really dumb. This should not be
Speaker 1: about personalities. It should be about policy. And we have
Speaker 1: a record to compare DEI. You're trying to get them
Speaker 1: to not say DEI. I mean, what is it. It's
Speaker 1: a week since the Trump crony Sebastian Gorka called Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris quote colored unquote, and you're trying to stop them
Speaker 1: from saying DEI. You are telling your collection of white
Speaker 1: supremacist morons not to call her DEI. Well, guess what,
Speaker 1: here's a shock. They're not listening to you, Richard Hudson,
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson. They're listening to Sebastian Gorka. This is Harriet Hageman,
Speaker 1: who primaried and beat Liz Cheney and who is as
Speaker 1: widely noted. Well, maybe also George Santos. When George Santos
Speaker 1: is dressed up as Katara Ravasche dead ringers, they're dead
Speaker 1: ringers for one another. Also, as you listen to Harriet
Speaker 1: George Katara Ravasch Santos Hagman to get the full flavor
Speaker 1: of the thing of what she means. Imagine at the
Speaker 1: end that she does not say DEI, but what she
Speaker 1: and the others really want to say, that she's saying
Speaker 1: the N word.
Speaker 3: Well, I think she's one of the weakest candidates I've
Speaker 3: ever seen in the history of our country. I mean, intellectually,
Speaker 3: just really kind of the bottom of the barrel. I
Speaker 3: think she was a DEI higher and I think that
Speaker 3: that's what we're seeing. And I just don't think that
Speaker 3: they have anybody else. I just think that they're in
Speaker 3: real disarray.
Speaker 1: Whoo, one of them is going to do it. I
Speaker 1: predicted it yesterday, before the end of the month. Somebody's
Speaker 1: going to use an actual racial epithet. They're not going
Speaker 1: to stop at DEI. We can't call her DEI? Oh
Speaker 1: how about this other word here that starts with it? No? No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: How about these initials JD? Can we call her a JD? Oh?
Speaker 1: My goodness, is there JD? Vance Buyer's remorse on the
Speaker 1: Republican side of the ball. I can't tell if he's
Speaker 1: inflated or stuffed or both. He's not making a good impression. Also,
Speaker 1: there's the little matter of CNN breaking the story that
Speaker 1: he repeatedly indicated in twenty sixteen that he believed Donald
Speaker 1: Trump had committed sexual assault. CNN reported that Vance appeared
Speaker 1: on an MSNBC segment in October that year on Trump's
Speaker 1: alleged misconduct sexual misconduct, in which an interview with Jessica Leads,
Speaker 1: who accused Trump of groping and forcibly kissing her during
Speaker 1: a flight in the nineteen seventies. The tape was played,
Speaker 1: Vance said it was hard to believe Trump's denials. Quote
Speaker 1: at a fundamental level, this is sort of a he said,
Speaker 1: She said, right, And at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: Trump's vice presidential nominee JD. Vance said, do you believe
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, who always tells the truth just kidding? Or
Speaker 1: do you believe that woman on the tape? Can they
Speaker 1: have another convention since that last convention went so so
Speaker 1: well for them and picked somebody else? Anybody else? Anybody
Speaker 1: know where Mike Pence is at the moment. Hello, I'm
Speaker 1: Vice President Mike Pence for the Trump Pence twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four campaign. I know, I know you're asking why one
Speaker 1: more item here? Trump and the Magic Bullet this is
Speaker 1: finally sneaking into the mainstream again. A CNN piece not
Speaker 1: on the air on the website, Sanjay Gupta writes, although
Speaker 1: the images we've seen of Trump since his attempted assassination
Speaker 1: have been those of a person who was barely injured
Speaker 1: and is now in high spirits, what we've been told
Speaker 1: by the campaign offers very little insight into the former
Speaker 1: president's condition, what kind of care he received, or how
Speaker 1: his medical team will monitor him in the days and
Speaker 1: weeks ahead. Oh really, I hadn't noticed this. A full
Speaker 1: public assessment of Trump's injuries is necessary for both the
Speaker 1: former president's own health yeah okay, and the clarity it
Speaker 1: can provide for voters about the recovery of the man
Speaker 1: who could become president of the United States once again.
Speaker 1: The concern is that gunshot blasts near the head can
Speaker 1: cause injuries that aren't immediably noticeable, such as bleeding in
Speaker 1: or on the brain, damage to the inner ear, or
Speaker 1: even psychological trauma. His head is not big enough to
Speaker 1: contain any more psychological trauma. This has to be it.
Speaker 1: He is already the craziest man in public discourse in
Speaker 1: the United States, certainly North America, probably the entire hemisphere. Oh,
Speaker 1: he might have a little bit more psychological trauma. Well,
Speaker 1: then he'll be an axe murderer by the end of
Speaker 1: the week. As a trauma neurosurgeon, I have seen how
Speaker 1: a thorough evaluation after any kind of gunshot wound can
Speaker 1: provide a complete picture and lead to a speedier recovery.
Speaker 1: Sonjay's spoiler alert, it wasn't a bullet, bottle cap, piece
Speaker 1: of plastic, possibly a very old hard gum ball. Why
Speaker 1: are they keeping this a secret because they can't face
Speaker 1: the idea one particular aspect apart from the martyrdom, apart
Speaker 1: from the he can stop a bullet with his bare ear,
Speaker 1: apart from the he took a bullet from democracy, all
Speaker 1: of these lines that would instantly vanish if there were
Speaker 1: in fact, open proof that he was hit by some
Speaker 1: sort of debris, even though to you and I they
Speaker 1: tried to kill him and he got hit by something
Speaker 1: and it opened up a wound on his ear, and
Speaker 1: if he just played it straight, we couldn't have said
Speaker 1: anything about it. We couldn't have mocked him for it.
Speaker 1: We couldn't have accused him of exaggerating it. We couldn't
Speaker 1: have used it against him, And here he has created
Speaker 1: this entire situation simply by not telling the truth. If
Speaker 1: people shoot at you and you are running for president
Speaker 1: of the United States, and other people get killed and
Speaker 1: wounded because of those bullets, and you get hit by
Speaker 1: some sort of essentially improvised shrapnel, that counts. That was
Speaker 1: an assassination attempt. That was an assassination attempt by gun.
Speaker 1: That counts. But they can't let it happen that way
Speaker 1: because of one line that would result the idea that
Speaker 1: when Trump dived under that podium, he was diving to
Speaker 1: get out of the way of a bottle cap. They
Speaker 1: cannot face the idea that Trump would have had to
Speaker 1: dive under the podium unless it was a bullet. What
Speaker 1: if it wasn't a lethal threat to him? What if
Speaker 1: it had hit him in the back of the head,
Speaker 1: whatever it was, and it wasn't a bullet. Even if
Speaker 1: the other bullet in that photograph whizzed right past him
Speaker 1: and didn't strike him, and he got hit by some
Speaker 1: sort of debris struck somewhere along the way, buy that
Speaker 1: bullet or some other bullet. We don't see the difference.
Speaker 1: They are living and dying over it. It could become
Speaker 1: something that would do as much damage to the Trump
Speaker 1: campaign as Kamala Harris is doing to the Trump campaign.
Speaker 1: And I'll explain to you again from my personal experience
Speaker 1: where this comes from, in this kind of reptile mind
Speaker 1: that is at the back of every Republican candidate and voter.
Speaker 1: In September of two thousand and six, I received a
Speaker 1: package of fake anthrax in my mail at home. From
Speaker 1: the beginning, it was obvious it was fake anthrax, except
Speaker 1: what if it wasn't. I knew, because I happened to
Speaker 1: be at that moment on antibiotics, that I was not
Speaker 1: going to get anthrax, let alone die from it. But
Speaker 1: the building was full of ninety three year old ladies.
Speaker 1: What if the one in a billion chants were true
Speaker 1: that it was anthrax, and so somehow somebody dealing with
Speaker 1: anthrax who did not kill themselves while dealing with anthrax,
Speaker 1: managed to put anthrax in the mail to me. What
Speaker 1: if that happened and the ninety three year old ladies
Speaker 1: all got it and died, which is exactly the scenario
Speaker 1: that took place in the actual anthrax attacks. After nine
Speaker 1: to eleven in the early winter of two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: including one at the Rupert Murdoch paper the New York Post,
Speaker 1: but because it was not actually anthrax, and when I
Speaker 1: called the Department of Homeland Security, and a wonderful exhibition
Speaker 1: of your tax dollars in action was played out in
Speaker 1: front of me as has Matt suit after has Matt's
Speaker 1: suit marched through my apartment and the departments adjoining, and
Speaker 1: they finally ordered me into the ambulance at threat of arrest,
Speaker 1: to spend the night being checked for anthrax just in case,
Speaker 1: on the same premise that I had called them just
Speaker 1: in case. After that was leaked the New York Post,
Speaker 1: when the FBI asked me not to report it so
Speaker 1: they could get a head start on finding the guy
Speaker 1: who did it, and ultimately they did. As I have
Speaker 1: described here in previous episodes, this fake anthrax attack was
Speaker 1: very much a terrorist act, and the man who did
Speaker 1: it and sent similar packages to others and ultimately sent
Speaker 1: me four different packages of fake anthrax went to prison.
Speaker 1: I believe it was for three years. I think he
Speaker 1: still has a parole officer or at least a probation officer,
Speaker 1: and he literally lived in his mother's basement in southern
Speaker 1: California and thought the two most beautiful women in the
Speaker 1: world were Laura Ingram and culture. But what was the
Speaker 1: reaction to this? This was exactly what The New York Post,
Speaker 1: when it was leaked to them wrote, MSNBC. Oh the
Speaker 1: headline powder puff spooks Keith, not something about how taking
Speaker 1: precaution here MSNBC loudmouth Keith Alderman flipped out when he
Speaker 1: opened his home yesterday. The acerbic cob was terrified when
Speaker 1: he opened a suspicious looking letter with a California postmark
Speaker 1: and a batch of white powder poured out a note inside.
Speaker 1: Warrened Olderman, who's a frequent critic of President Bush's policies,
Speaker 1: that it was payback for some of his on air stick.
Speaker 1: The caustic commentator panicked and frantically called nine to one
Speaker 1: one at about twelve thirty am. Sources told the post's
Speaker 1: Philip Messing himself? Is that Philip Messing? That's Philip Messing himself.
Speaker 1: An NYPD has Matt Unit rushed to Olberman's pad, but
Speaker 1: preliminary tests indicated the substance was harmless soap powder. However,
Speaker 1: that wasn't enough to satisfy Olberman, who insisted on a checkup,
Speaker 1: as I pointed out, no, I said, why do you
Speaker 1: have to Why do I have to go to the
Speaker 1: hospital all night just in case? Okay, what if I don't,
Speaker 1: we'll arrest you under public health charges. He asked to
Speaker 1: be taken to Saint Luke's Hospital, where looked him over
Speaker 1: and sent him home. Whether they gave him a lollipop
Speaker 1: on the way out is it known? Alderman had no comment.
Speaker 1: Imagine the right wing media having to deal with the
Speaker 1: reality that Donald Trump was not hit by a bullet,
Speaker 1: but was hit by I don't know, fake anthrax, harmless
Speaker 1: soap powder, a lollipop, debris from an assassin's bullet is
Speaker 1: not to them the same as an assassin's bullet. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: this christ like act by Trump taking a bullet for
Speaker 1: democracy suddenly that turns into powder puff spooks Trump and
Speaker 1: that's why they are doing this and why Trump continues
Speaker 1: to hide the real story of how his ear got
Speaker 1: nearly fail scratched. Don't you say it wasn't real. Don't
Speaker 1: you say it wasn't a real bullet. He didn't just
Speaker 1: he didn't dive and hide under that lectern because he
Speaker 1: was a bullet he was almost dead. In fact, his
Speaker 1: head came off. I saw him put his head back on.
Speaker 1: He stitched it himself. He's Jesus. But let us not
Speaker 1: get lost in the conservative weeds. Kamala Harris, first full
Speaker 1: day on the camp. For first full day on the campaign,
Speaker 1: thrown in at the last minute. The award winning actor
Speaker 1: can't perform. You have to go on. A star is born,
Speaker 1: starring Kamala Harris, first day out of the box with
Speaker 1: an epic speech, a declaration of war on Trump in
Speaker 1: said speech, millions more in don nations and of course
Speaker 1: ahead in the Reuter's poll, a point back in the
Speaker 1: Georgia poll. Approval poll number is seventeen points better than Trump.
Speaker 1: To start with, polling, polling, polling, polling pole Oh wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: wait wait, oh, Nancy, the same melody, different lyrics, polland
Speaker 1: polland poll in. Keep those numbers rolling, get them margin swollen,
Speaker 1: vice press day three ONSU already kicking drop. He wants
Speaker 1: to see the manager and soon two points the top
Speaker 1: of the match up. Now make sure he don't catch up.
Speaker 1: Remember don vote for the old guy. I can Nancy
Speaker 1: fast theme from ra Hind also of interest here. So
Speaker 1: another Republican elected official has threatened civil war, only this
Speaker 1: one tried to take it back, and he says we
Speaker 1: all need to watch our words. Dude, you said that
Speaker 1: if you didn't get your way and the Republicans did
Speaker 1: not win the election, you would start a civil war
Speaker 1: with your little guns. The government has all the tanks
Speaker 1: and the jets, and the government the governments. The government's
Speaker 1: run by Democrats. We all need to watch our words. Bullshit, dude,
Speaker 1: you need to watch your words. That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 1: This is countdown, with Keith Olberman still ahead of us.
Speaker 1: On this edition of Countdown, I slammed Aaron Sorkin yesterday
Speaker 1: for his classic and perfectly timed New York Times op
Speaker 1: ed Sunday morning that yes, Joe Biden should step aside
Speaker 1: to be replaced by Mitt Romney. I mentioned that Aaron
Speaker 1: Sorkin had, over the years, gone from being a friend
Speaker 1: who I admired and who apparently admired me, to a
Speaker 1: guy who admired me too much and started borrowing stuff
Speaker 1: from me, like my career, all the stories in it
Speaker 1: for free. If you don't know that story, let me
Speaker 1: tell you of the day I heard my own father's
Speaker 1: favorite phrase come out of the mouth of Aaron Sorkin's
Speaker 1: lead character in Things I Promised Not to Tell First.
Speaker 1: There are still more new idiots to talk about. The
Speaker 1: daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger
Speaker 1: effects specimens who constitute today worst persons in the world.
Speaker 1: The Bronze Valentina Gomez, the twenty five year old Colombian
Speaker 1: born anti immigration candidate for Secretary of State in Missouri.
Speaker 1: Anti immigration because of course she is. She's here already.
Speaker 1: Why do we need other immigrants? Valentina does videos, usually
Speaker 1: with weapons, and she's often seen wearing a size seven
Speaker 1: Maga hat, even though her head seems to be about
Speaker 1: a four. Recently, this Gomez attacked Missouri State Senator Barbara Pheiffer,
Speaker 1: who has a trans grandchild. As they reported, the tension
Speaker 1: escalated when Gomez launched a personal attack on Pfeiffer via
Speaker 1: social media. You have a trans grandchild, she wrote, that
Speaker 1: means you raised a r you failed your children, and
Speaker 1: they failed your grandchildren. Also, you're irrelevant and you belong
Speaker 1: in a nursing home. Pfeiffer is and has been for
Speaker 1: forty years, a Methodist minister. Her response it's concerning anytime
Speaker 1: a person attacks a child. Attacks on children have no
Speaker 1: place anywhere on anything. Miss Gomez has not been listening.
Speaker 1: There's another video of her burning LGBTQ themed books with
Speaker 1: a flamethrower. There's another one in which she urged voters
Speaker 1: not to be quote weak and gay. And now she
Speaker 1: has filmed a campaign ad on the balcony of the
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Capitol in Washington,
Speaker 1: where campaign politics is explicitly prohibited by law and by custom.
Speaker 1: In it, she says something. Miss Gomez has a fairly
Speaker 1: standard Colombian sibilant s. So all I ever hear is
Speaker 1: I'm Valentina and I'm seeking the office of Secretary of State.
Speaker 1: She's not likely to be in trouble, even though the
Speaker 1: video boasts about how they don't like her on the
Speaker 1: speaker's balcony and says she's on the speaker's balcony, and
Speaker 1: then she shows a picture of herself with an AR fifteen.
Speaker 1: Of course, but if somebody wants to file an ethics
Speaker 1: complaint about Speaker Mike Johnson for letting his speaker's balcony
Speaker 1: be used illegally, well, you know, try to find him,
Speaker 1: you should first look in a church where he will
Speaker 1: be pretending to pray. Above that new video shot on
Speaker 1: the speaker's balcony, Miss Gomez claims she's quote on fire
Speaker 1: with the truth. Now I'm going to need to see
Speaker 1: that video to confirm that optimistic statement. Run her up.
Speaker 1: And once again, if you think National Republicans are idiots
Speaker 1: and psychotics, you really haven't taken a good look at
Speaker 1: the people they have elected at the state and even
Speaker 1: the city level. The runner up worser George Lang, Ohio
Speaker 1: state Senator, who now says he regrets the divisive remarks
Speaker 1: he made in the excitement of the moment on stage,
Speaker 1: especially in light of the assassination attempt of President Trump
Speaker 1: last week, We should all be mindful of what is
Speaker 1: said at political events. Myself included what did he say?
Speaker 1: I'll play it for you in a moment. First, I'd
Speaker 1: like to point out that he's an Ohio State senator.
Speaker 1: He got the office, he was appointed to it. His
Speaker 1: background he was on the zoning board for Westchester Township
Speaker 1: and he was a trustee there for fourteen years. And
Speaker 1: he used to work at Procter and Gamble. And it
Speaker 1: says quote Lang is a member of the Boy Scouts
Speaker 1: of America. What did he say own nothing at a
Speaker 1: JD Vance rally. He simply threatened civil war if he
Speaker 1: doesn't get what he and the other white folk want.
Speaker 4: Trump and Butler County's JD vans are the last chance
Speaker 4: to save our country politically. I'm afraid if we lose
Speaker 4: this one, it's going to take a civil war to
Speaker 4: save the country.
Speaker 1: And it will be saved.
Speaker 4: It's the greatest experiment in the history of mankind.
Speaker 1: And if we come down.
Speaker 4: To a civil war, I'm glad we got people like
Speaker 4: Schmidy and the Bikers for Trump on our side.
Speaker 1: I regret the divisive remarks I made in it. We
Speaker 1: should all be mindful, dude. You should be mindful of
Speaker 1: the fact that if you try to start a civil war,
Speaker 1: you guys keep forgetting who has all the tanks and bombs.
Speaker 1: I'm a glad an AR fifteen. Anybody see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's over there in that pile of AR fifteen from
Speaker 1: all the guys who were captured. But I but my
Speaker 1: Second Amendment rights you going to jail for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life now. Also, you lost Civil War two.
Speaker 1: It took an hour and a half and it was
Speaker 1: entirely confined to Westchester, Ohio. But our winners the New
Speaker 1: York Post and Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who led
Speaker 1: the charge yesterday, the attempt to kill former President Jimmy
Speaker 1: Carter yesterday. This is a screenshot, apparently of a Google
Speaker 1: search of an article that The New York Post posted
Speaker 1: and then quickly got rid of. And it has the
Speaker 1: Post logo. We believe it's accurate, and it has the
Speaker 1: headline former President Jimmy Carter dead at ninety nine New
Speaker 1: York Post, which isn't true. He's not dead, but the
Speaker 1: synopsis reads today Jimmy Carter, the Georgia peanut farmer who
Speaker 1: became the thirty ninth President of the United States during
Speaker 1: a time of gas shortages, Cold War drama and ellipses.
Speaker 1: That's as much as they could get into the Google search.
Speaker 1: Then they killed it. The New York Posts post it first,
Speaker 1: try to find out if it's real later or not
Speaker 1: at all. New York Post, which, if it were required
Speaker 1: to make a profit rather than simply massage Rupert Murdoch's ego,
Speaker 1: i e. His balls, it would have gone out of
Speaker 1: business in nineteen ninety four. Rupert Murdoch and The New
Speaker 1: York Post. If you ever read something in The New
Speaker 1: York Post it sounds too good to be true, or
Speaker 1: too bad to be true, or simply badly written, you
Speaker 1: know it's not the truth because it's in the New
Speaker 1: York Post. And all the good people who work for
Speaker 1: the New York Posts say, in the sports department, you
Speaker 1: are contributing to Rupert Murdoch's attempt to destroy the United
Speaker 1: States of America. I got into a long argument once
Speaker 1: with a Post sports writer who says, you're harming my business,
Speaker 1: and I said, your business is predicated on putting the
Speaker 1: United States out of business. It's not my department. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if it's not your department. The line for
Speaker 1: you to get into hell with the other Rupert Murdoch
Speaker 1: employees is not going to discriminate between those who worked
Speaker 1: in sports and those who worked in killing Jimmy Carter
Speaker 1: in the paper. And by the way, the Post is
Speaker 1: not the worst. It's only tied for the worst because
Speaker 1: the worst is Mike Lee, possibly the dumbest man ever
Speaker 1: to serve in government, including that Lang guy from Ohio.
Speaker 1: The reason the Post posted what it apparently did, and
Speaker 1: what Mike Lee posted was there was a letter with
Speaker 1: a faked heading on it office of Jimmy Carter, dated
Speaker 1: yesterday's date, and Mike Lee simply copied it, pasted it,
Speaker 1: and posted it on Twitter X. Mike Lee at based
Speaker 1: Mike Lee former President Jimmy Carter has died. Mike Lee said, well,
Speaker 1: if Mike Lee says it, you know it's not true.
Speaker 1: It's not true. My thoughts and prayers are with his family.
Speaker 1: I'll mention this in the Reuter's article about this disaster
Speaker 1: by Mike Lee and The New York Post. In response
Speaker 1: to a request for comment, the owner of the account
Speaker 1: took credit for creating the fake Jimmy Carter letter, telling
Speaker 1: Reuters in a direct message, I created it last that
Speaker 1: would be Monday night. The amount of misinformation which spread
Speaker 1: throughout the weekend surrounding the state of President Biden's health
Speaker 1: was maddening. I wanted to prove that many people on
Speaker 1: X often spread sensationalist news and headlines without fact checking
Speaker 1: or double checking the source content. You think the rest
Speaker 1: of this stuff After the initial former President Jimmy Carter
Speaker 1: James Earl of Carter Junior aka passionate, champion of human rights, democracy,
Speaker 1: World War Two, veteran blah blah blah. With family by
Speaker 1: his side, President Carter did this foreign policy ecomma. That's
Speaker 1: the second paragraph, third of a Domestically President carter achievement
Speaker 1: included installing solar panels on the White House blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah the fourth one. Despite these successes as president,
Speaker 1: now you think you would have read some of this,
Speaker 1: or somebody would have read some of this. No, he's
Speaker 1: Mike Lee. He has the IQ of a fish and
Speaker 1: not a brightfish. Despite these successes as president all his life,
Speaker 1: President Carter considered his marriage to former First Lady Rosalind
Speaker 1: Carter his life's greatest achievement. At her passing last November,
Speaker 1: President Carter said Roseland was a battie. Jill Milania, even
Speaker 1: throat goat Nancy Reagan had nothing on Rosalind. She was
Speaker 1: the original brat. She gave me wise, guidance and encouragement
Speaker 1: when I needed it. As long as Rosalind was in
Speaker 1: the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.
Speaker 1: They were married for seventy seven years. That the question
Speaker 1: of the quote in here about calling her a baddie
Speaker 1: or referring to Nancy Reagan as throat goat. That didn't
Speaker 1: get anybody's attention, That didn't send up a red flag.
Speaker 1: What was trueth in nineteen ninety nine is trueth today?
Speaker 1: No one hath read it the link, No one clickth,
Speaker 1: no one readeth the New York Post. It's Murdoch, of
Speaker 1: course it's wrong, and Mike, but the quoted here from
Speaker 1: Carter's scholar, Oh wah tunas I am. That means it's true,
Speaker 1: right Lee, two days worse persons, Jimmy Carter is not
Speaker 1: dead in the world. Finally our number one story in
Speaker 1: the countdown things I promised not to tell And back
Speaker 1: to my favorite topic me. I heard Jeff Daniels say
Speaker 1: the words, and in the next minute my cell phone rang.
Speaker 1: It was an ex girlfriend. While we were talking, an
Speaker 1: email arrived from another ex girlfriend, and then in came
Speaker 1: a text from the current girlfriend at her folks house,
Speaker 1: and two more emails, and before I was off the
Speaker 1: phone to voicemails, and then regular friends started to contact me.
Speaker 1: This is just over ten years ago now. It was Sunday,
Speaker 1: August fifth, twenty twelve. Jeff Daniels was playing the controversial
Speaker 1: newscaster and commentator on Aaron Sorkin's HBO series Newsroom, which
Speaker 1: was based structurally on Me and Countdown. And I know
Speaker 1: this because Aaron Sorkin told me so before he filmed
Speaker 1: any of it. And I know this because he asked
Speaker 1: me if he could base the pilot episode on what
Speaker 1: happened to me at MSNBC in the spring and summer
Speaker 1: of twenty ten. And I know this because he came
Speaker 1: in and shadowed the staff of Countdown for two days
Speaker 1: to get the feel for the place. And I know
Speaker 1: this because he wound up basing one character, Maggie Jordan,
Speaker 1: on my assistant, Margaret Judson, and then hiring Margaret Judson
Speaker 1: as a consultant, and then hiring her as an actress
Speaker 1: to play a part that wasn't supposed to be her.
Speaker 1: And I know this because he was He's furious when
Speaker 1: I would not fly to Denver. I think it was
Speaker 1: to do a cameo in the pilot. And I know
Speaker 1: this because he said he was hiring me as a consultant.
Speaker 1: And I know this because I never saw a dime
Speaker 1: out of it. This was the second time Aaron Sorkin
Speaker 1: had based one of his TV series on one of
Speaker 1: my TV series. The other was called Sports Night, and
Speaker 1: Esquire magazine once asked me to interview Sorkin about Sports Night,
Speaker 1: and I asked him the real tough question, what was
Speaker 1: the origin of Sports Night? And his answer was, quote,
Speaker 1: you are the origin. So when The New York Times
Speaker 1: had called me about Newsroom, I lightheartedly said it was
Speaker 1: nice to know in advance this time that Aaron Sorkin
Speaker 1: was making a TV series about me. Sorkin did not
Speaker 1: like this at all, and he told all his actors
Speaker 1: to tell all their interviewers that this was not true.
Speaker 1: And I know that because Jeff Daniels told me that
Speaker 1: that was what Sorkin had told him. Sorkin is interesting.
Speaker 1: I had known him him for about ten or twelve
Speaker 1: years when he came in to countdown to see what
Speaker 1: it looked and felt like, and he was twenty minutes late.
Speaker 1: And my assistant Margaret after whom he named Maggie Jordan,
Speaker 1: whom he then hired away from me, and whom he
Speaker 1: finally hired as an actress to play Tess Weston, and
Speaker 1: she was great. By the way. Margaret brings him in
Speaker 1: and he apologizes for being late, and he says, he's
Speaker 1: staying in a hotel two blocks away and he should
Speaker 1: have just walked, but instead he got in a car,
Speaker 1: and the next thing he knew, he was six blocks away,
Speaker 1: caught in traffic caused by the complete shutdown of one
Speaker 1: of the crosstown streets for midday construction. And I laughed,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, like my late father, the architect,
Speaker 1: used to say, New York, it'll be a great town
Speaker 1: whenever they finish it. And he laughed, and I laughed.
Speaker 1: And two years later, in the seventh episode of the
Speaker 1: HBO Newsroom series, first aired on August fifth, twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: and re aired throughout the week, Jeff Daniels as the anchorman,
Speaker 1: Will McAvoy, who wasn't me but actually kind of was me,
Speaker 1: is late to his newsroom because he gets caught in
Speaker 1: Manhattan traffic caused by Sunday night street construction, and he
Speaker 1: says to his exasperated producer, new York, it'll be a
Speaker 1: great town whenever they finish it. That's when my phone
Speaker 1: and email blew up. And the then girlfriend, and like
Speaker 1: forty percent of all of my exes ever, all had
Speaker 1: the same question, New York, It'll be a great town
Speaker 1: whenever they finish it. Isn't that what your dad used
Speaker 1: to say? Even the ones who never met my dad
Speaker 1: knew this because I used to quote him constantly, because
Speaker 1: the real humor in the quote is the fact that
Speaker 1: my dad was an architect and construction was his business.
Speaker 1: New York, It'll be a great town whenever they finish it.
Speaker 1: And then one of the last of the exes reached out.
Speaker 1: She waited until the show was over. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: think any of us is proud of this, but she
Speaker 1: had also dated Sorkin once or twice, and since she
Speaker 1: had written celebrity stories for a New York newspaper, he
Speaker 1: had later asked her by email what the world of
Speaker 1: gossip reporting was like, and she told him by email.
Speaker 1: And what she now told me made Aaron Sorkin's use
Speaker 1: of my dad's quote and other parts of my life
Speaker 1: seem like possible coincidences. She said she was watching the third,
Speaker 1: maybe fourth episode of Newsroom and in walked a new character,
Speaker 1: a gossip columnist, a woman, and the first sentence the
Speaker 1: character said was my friend, and X said word for
Speaker 1: word something she had sent to Sorkin in one of
Speaker 1: the emails about the gossip business. She said when she
Speaker 1: heard it, her face started to get read, and it
Speaker 1: would keep getting reader. The gossip columnist character's second line
Speaker 1: had also been cut and pasted from my ex's email,
Speaker 1: then her long speech, then all of her dialogue. She
Speaker 1: said in her second scene. My ex actually managed to
Speaker 1: record that episode and to find her own email to
Speaker 1: Sorkin and to compare them, and she said, other than
Speaker 1: changing a couple of tenses, he had used her answers verbatim.
Speaker 1: I met the actor Josh Charles during the two thousand
Speaker 1: World Series. I was there anchoring it for Fox Sports.
Speaker 1: Josh was there promoting his new show on Fox. Josh
Speaker 1: had played Dan Rydell on Sorkin's Sports Night series, and
Speaker 1: even Sorkin and I agree, dan Rydell is just me
Speaker 1: with a different haircut. I was walking up Sixth Avenue
Speaker 1: one day in October two thousand and from several blocks away,
Speaker 1: I saw Josh Charles walking towards me, so I had
Speaker 1: several minutes to prepare what I could say to him.
Speaker 1: This was not spontaneous, sadly, but after our eyes met
Speaker 1: and I smiled, and he gave me that, yes, I'm
Speaker 1: on TV, look that I recognize and have myself deployed.
Speaker 1: He switched suddenly to shock and even a little apprehension,
Speaker 1: and I said the line I had been rehearsing in
Speaker 1: my head for several minutes. Excuse me. You don't get
Speaker 1: to say this often in life, But didn't you use
Speaker 1: to play me on TV? Right there on sixth? That
Speaker 1: and you? Josh told me about the ordeal of working
Speaker 1: with and for Aaron Sorkin, and I thought he just
Speaker 1: meant for actors, but I later found out because New York,
Speaker 1: it'll be a great time whenever they finish it. Josh
Speaker 1: and I are still friends. We've gone to ballgames together.
Speaker 1: We were in a fantasy baseball league together. And one
Speaker 1: night on my ESPN two show, we came back from commercial,
Speaker 1: giving the audience no warning or explanation, and we simply
Speaker 1: started co anchoring the show and calling it Sports Night
Speaker 1: and making references to the program and to newsroom. And
Speaker 1: then he said, why did we keep reading this? And
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know. I just assumed Sorkin had
Speaker 1: run out of new ideas. The mutual laughter that followed
Speaker 1: was sincere. There is one more punchline to the newsroom
Speaker 1: Sorkin story because I was like his seventh guest ever.
Speaker 1: When Stephen Colbert wrapped up the Colbert Report on Comedy Central,
Speaker 1: I was invited to be on the final farewell episode,
Speaker 1: me and like ninety nine other people. There were so
Speaker 1: many of us, ranging from Barrymanilow to Brian Cranston to
Speaker 1: Big Bird, that they had like nine green rooms in
Speaker 1: the Comedy Central building. And I get there and they
Speaker 1: send me to the green room I would be sharing
Speaker 1: with several other people, and I'd trudge up a bunch
Speaker 1: of stairs to the top floor and in this big
Speaker 1: room there is only one other performer there yet it's
Speaker 1: Jeff Daniels. Without saying hello, he says, now, wait, let
Speaker 1: me explain. Sorkin told me, and I explained, and then
Speaker 1: he explained, and then I explained some more, and Jeff said,
Speaker 1: oh a lot, and once he said oops, and Sorkin
Speaker 1: didn't tell me that. And after about three minutes he said,
Speaker 1: so I owe you an apology, and I said, no,
Speaker 1: you don't, it's not your fault. And he smiled and
Speaker 1: he said, well great, I'm glad. So can we take
Speaker 1: a picture together that I can put out on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, absolutely, but only if you capture
Speaker 1: it New York. It'll be a great town. Whenever they
Speaker 1: finish it. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. Count On musical directors Brian Ray
Speaker 1: and John Phillip Shanelle arranged, produced, and performed most of
Speaker 1: our music. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums,
Speaker 1: and mister Shanale handled the orchestration and the keyboards, and
Speaker 1: it was produced by Tko Brothers. Another music, including some
Speaker 1: of the Beethoven, arranged and performed by the group No
Speaker 1: Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Alderman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Speaker 1: At this rate, I should just play it for you
Speaker 1: so you remember what it sounds like. Our satirical and
Speaker 1: pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball
Speaker 1: stadium organist ever and now my accompany ist. My announcer
Speaker 1: today was my friend Larry David, who does not accompany
Speaker 1: me anywhere. Everything else was freeing launch my fault. That's
Speaker 1: countdown for this the one hundred and fifth day until
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four presidential election. The two hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety fourth day since convicted fellon Donald J. Trump. I
Speaker 1: want to see the manager's first attempted coup against the
Speaker 1: democratically elected government of the United States. Use the September
Speaker 1: eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use the mental health system. You've got it,
Speaker 1: President Biden. Use presidential immunity to stop him from doing
Speaker 1: it again while we still can. And Republicans please stop
Speaker 1: shooting at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins
Speaker 1: as the news requires. Till then, I'm Keith Oldroman. Good morning,
Speaker 1: good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Poll in Poland, Poland,
Speaker 1: keep those numbers rolling, get them margin swollen, Vice press
Speaker 1: day three on the stuff already kicking jump. He wants
Speaker 1: to see the manager and soon two points atop the matchup.
Speaker 1: Now make sure he don't catch up. Remember, don't vote
Speaker 1: for the old guy. Fink. A Nancy Faust Countdown with
Speaker 1: Keith Oldreman 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.