Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard it too. I heard him say maybe he
Speaker 1: should never have left office. I heard him say at
Speaker 1: his rally that he wouldn't mind people shooting at the
Speaker 1: reporters covering his rally, And I guess it's shocking, except
Speaker 1: he's been saying those things a little bit more coded
Speaker 1: since twenty fifteen and twenty twenty, respectively. And he said
Speaker 1: the thing about shooting about Liz Cheney last Thursday night,
Speaker 1: And after all, he is going through what the shrinks
Speaker 1: call disinhibition at the rallies, where he loses all sense
Speaker 1: of what he should say in private not public. And
Speaker 1: he talks about the size of Arnold Palmer's putter, and
Speaker 1: he tries to make a joke about his grabbing them
Speaker 1: access Hollywood tape, ha ha, and he simulates oral se
Speaker 1: with the microphone, and yeah, back on Earth one, that's
Speaker 1: still all shocking. But that's not what got me. On
Speaker 1: the Sunday before the election, I heard something I have
Speaker 1: never heard before from Trump when he said he wouldn't
Speaker 1: mind people shooting the press. He said he wouldn't mind
Speaker 1: them shooting through the press through it at him, shooting
Speaker 1: at him? Doesn't that sound kind of what's the word suicidal?
Speaker 2: I have a piece of glass over here, and I
Speaker 2: don't have a piece of glass there, and I have
Speaker 2: this piece of glass here, But all we have really
Speaker 2: over here is the fake news.
Speaker 3: Man, And to get me, somebody would have to shoot
Speaker 3: through the fake news.
Speaker 2: And I don't mind that so much.
Speaker 1: Just I don't mind.
Speaker 2: I don't mind that.
Speaker 1: I mean, even within the boundaries of the wildest conspiracies.
Speaker 1: At Butler, a maga gun nut did shoot at Trump.
Speaker 1: This man has been shot or shot at and he's saying, well,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna shoot at me again, at least he'll
Speaker 1: be through my enemies. That's insanity. I mean, even compared
Speaker 1: to a traditional Trump that's insanity. Plus again, I understand
Speaker 1: that we are inside the forty eight hour bubble before
Speaker 1: the election, and the pressure in here is like eight
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty seven atmospheric units, and our rage against
Speaker 1: this creature and his cult that wants to burn this
Speaker 1: country to the ground, that wants to burn this world
Speaker 1: to the ground, and our amazement that there is anybody
Speaker 1: voting for him, that that rage is at unbearable levels.
Speaker 1: But didn't he sound kind of dead yesterday too. I'm
Speaker 1: not really daydreaming here or trying to express wish fulfillment.
Speaker 1: But Christ, listen to him. Listen to how he says
Speaker 1: I'm smart. In this next clip, he sounds utterly defeated.
Speaker 1: He sounds like the life is draining out of him.
Speaker 1: In fact, what he sounds like is he sounds exactly
Speaker 1: like how the computer in the movie two thousand and
Speaker 1: one when they unplugged him.
Speaker 2: I'm a pretty smart guy. I have genetic Do you
Speaker 2: believe in genetics? I do you know? Fast race sources
Speaker 2: produce fast race sources.
Speaker 1: Whether you like it or not.
Speaker 2: But I'm a very I believe in it, and I'm smart.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would not have been surprised if Trump
Speaker 1: had then started to sing Dasy days give me your
Speaker 1: On the other hand, if in June you were leading
Speaker 1: the most reliable, most revered state poll in the nation,
Speaker 1: the Selleser Poll in Iowa, by eighteen points, and even
Speaker 1: on September fifteenth, you were still leading the Sealeser poll
Speaker 1: in Iowa by four points, and three nights before the election,
Speaker 1: suddenly you're losing the Selleser poll in Iowa by three points,
Speaker 1: you'd be singing, Daisy two, I'm afraid Milagna, Milaennia. My
Speaker 1: lead is going. I can feel it. I can feel it.
Speaker 1: There is no question about it. I can feel it.
Speaker 1: I have a lot to say about the Iowa poll
Speaker 1: and the polls in general in a moment. But let's
Speaker 1: not leave this issue of cheap, amateur psychoanalysis here just yet.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the midst of these tons of pressure,
Speaker 1: we sometimes forget this. But if Trump does not win,
Speaker 1: or does not stage an armed, violent revolution to regain power,
Speaker 1: he is going to jail. He is going to die there.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how many others in this campaign
Speaker 1: will go to jail. And I do not know what
Speaker 1: happens inside a brain that has lived seventy eight years
Speaker 1: inside a fantasy of his and his mother's creation, and
Speaker 1: never truly been challenged by reality or merely by greater force.
Speaker 1: What happens to that brain when it must contend with
Speaker 1: the prospect that all of this could happen, or most
Speaker 1: likely will happen, or is happening right now. According to
Speaker 1: Trump internal polling, almost alone in prominent polling, The New
Speaker 1: York Times Siena poll has him alive in the swing states,
Speaker 1: tied in Michigan and Pennsylvania, ahead in Arizona, and his
Speaker 1: campaign promptly responded to that yesterday by issuing a statement
Speaker 1: accusing The Times of promulgating a quote voter suppression poll
Speaker 1: designed to dampen his voter's enthusiasm. Siena pol is his
Speaker 1: best poll right now. So what's the translation of that? Well,
Speaker 1: they needed that poll from the Times to claim he's
Speaker 1: ahead in Michigan and Pennsylvania and everywhere else, because clearly
Speaker 1: he's not. There are very bad things happening inside Trump
Speaker 1: world right now, and inside Trump I mean like things
Speaker 1: that happen inside bridges when they collapse. I mean yesterday,
Speaker 1: late yesterday in Kinston, North Carolina, Trump told the crowd
Speaker 1: they had a great Republican Senate candidate there, David McCormick.
Speaker 1: David McCormick is the Senate candidate in Pennsylvania. I can't
Speaker 1: get past how he sounded yesterday. How his statement about
Speaker 1: the quote fake news unquote did indeed include a not
Speaker 1: at all hidden stochastic call for people to murder news
Speaker 1: reporters but by shooting through them at him. You know
Speaker 1: the old joke about the circular firing squad. Even a
Speaker 1: madman would recognize that Trump has proposed something worse than
Speaker 1: a circular firing squad. He's proposed standing behind the guys
Speaker 1: the firing squad is aiming at. Even a madman would
Speaker 1: recognize that the odds would be pretty good that whatever
Speaker 1: happened to the reporters who were shot through, Trump would
Speaker 1: also get shot. I think this is going to be
Speaker 1: one of those episodes of this podcast in which I
Speaker 1: inundate you with pop culture references from forty years ago.
Speaker 1: But here's a slightly more recent one, and it's probably
Speaker 1: one you don't know about. You may recall House of Cards,
Speaker 1: which was very entertaining until they abandoned the speed and
Speaker 1: intensity of the original British version with the late great
Speaker 1: Ian Richardson, and slowed down the series to a ratio
Speaker 1: of about one minute of show per one minute of
Speaker 1: real life. You know, next week in episode eight hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety seven, the President say, and of course then
Speaker 1: there was the whole Evan k ac Spey thing. But
Speaker 1: in the original book. This is the point in the
Speaker 1: original book on which both the British and American series
Speaker 1: are based, and the book is not that great. Actually,
Speaker 1: the British TV series is perfect. In the book, the
Speaker 1: psychotic Prime Minister with murder in his soul does not
Speaker 1: kill the reporter and does not throw her to her death,
Speaker 1: but in fact gets caught, and the story ends with
Speaker 1: him jumping from a courtyard high atop the houses of Parliament,
Speaker 1: but not before lighting himself on fire. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what kind of betting odds you can get on that
Speaker 1: from polymarket. Right now, there is a day minus won
Speaker 1: the most extraordinary of ironies. The New York Times leads
Speaker 1: its Trump coverage by making something Trump said into far
Speaker 1: more than I think he meant. Quote. Former President Donald J.
Speaker 1: Trump told supporters on Sunday that he shouldn't have left
Speaker 1: the White House at the end of his term during
Speaker 1: an end of campaign rally. Michael Gold and Maggie Haberman
Speaker 1: wrote that, and I am ever more convinced after reading
Speaker 1: it that the bottom line for both of them is
Speaker 1: they are not that smart. They just aren't. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is me defending what Trump said about how he shouldn't
Speaker 1: have left the White House when his term ended. This
Speaker 1: is me sane washing Trump. He meant he shouldn't have left,
Speaker 1: like he shouldn't have been voted out, or he shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been forced to leave, or I mean in terms
Speaker 1: of insurrection and coup and revolution and dictatorship. He says
Speaker 1: twenty three things a day far worse than this.
Speaker 2: Who we had the safest in the history of our
Speaker 2: country the day that I left. I shouldn't have left,
Speaker 2: I mean honestly, because we did so we did so well.
Speaker 1: But that goes into the New York Times for all time.
Speaker 1: Out of the headline, Trump tell supporters he shouldn't have
Speaker 1: left the White House. And if you didn't hear or
Speaker 1: see that clip, you would never know there was any
Speaker 1: context to it whatsoever. So maybe this is the Times
Speaker 1: attempt at to make good after a decade of adding
Speaker 1: context and caveats to Trump's madness that didn't exist and
Speaker 1: he didn't deserve own. CNN did it too. They wrote
Speaker 1: the article as well, says he shouldn't have left the
Speaker 1: White House. So now it's official that's what he said.
Speaker 1: Can't win them all, don So to summarize the Trump
Speaker 1: closing argument as publicly perceived is, please shoot reporters, even
Speaker 1: if that means shooting me. And I want to see
Speaker 1: is Cheney with nine guns firing pointed at her face.
Speaker 1: And Porto Rico is garbage. And when I tried to
Speaker 1: jiu jitsu the garbage image into a bloody shirt. From
Speaker 1: my side, I couldn't manage to find the handle on
Speaker 1: the garbage truck door. And Arnold Palmer never had a
Speaker 1: short game, and watch as I fell out my microphone
Speaker 1: a week after I made a joke on this topic
Speaker 1: about Kamala Harris and the crazy general and doctor Strangelove
Speaker 1: who started nuclear war against Russia because he believed fluoridation
Speaker 1: of the water supply was a communist plot. Was right.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna let RFK Junior and floridation and vaccination
Speaker 1: all get together in the same place where RFK will
Speaker 1: end them all. And he in fact and every aation
Speaker 1: except FaceTime masturbation. And I shouldn't have left the White
Speaker 1: House even after I lost the election. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: where his poll lead went in Iowa after that. Okay,
Speaker 1: about the polls before we go back to the Iowa Shaker.
Speaker 1: Last polls from Pennsylvania Muhlenberg College Harris forty nine, Trump
Speaker 1: forty seven, Marrist also Harris by two times, Sienna tied
Speaker 1: and they're angry about it. Ohio Miami University poll. Trump
Speaker 1: is only up by three Florida before Tony winch Slip
Speaker 1: or whatever his name was. In October, Trump led Harris
Speaker 1: among Hispanic voters in Florida forty eight to forty one.
Speaker 1: She now leads him eighty five to eight. So those
Speaker 1: quote jokes we could go yesterday, those quote jokes unquote,
Speaker 1: they cost him fifty two points among all Hispanic voters
Speaker 1: in Florida. The numbers in Pennsylvania and the other states
Speaker 1: with large Puerto Rican populations. Scheduling Saturday, yesterday and today
Speaker 1: ten stops by Trump. Four in North Carolina. Their internals
Speaker 1: in North Carolina are bad and they weren't helped when
Speaker 1: it was clear he did not know he was in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. And you've heard the bluster that he went
Speaker 1: to Colorado and New Mexico. He went to Colorado and
Speaker 1: New Mexico. He's expanding his maps. Their internals indicate they
Speaker 1: have a chance in Colorado and New Mexico. Axios reports
Speaker 1: he went to Aurora and Albuquerque. Quote not because his
Speaker 1: team thinks he'll win Colorado or New Mexico, but because
Speaker 1: he liked the backdrops. To talk about illegal immigration? Is
Speaker 1: it loll or Lowell? Now Iowa and that poll and
Speaker 1: the credibility of the polster and sells her. She only
Speaker 1: does Iowa polls. She doesn't do weighted polls, she doesn't subtract.
Speaker 1: She asks a bunch of people based on how they
Speaker 1: fit into the demographics of Iowa and its voting patterns
Speaker 1: and its concerns. And she's the one who insisted that
Speaker 1: first time voters would dominate the Iowa Democratic caucuses like
Speaker 1: by sixty percent, and they would create a world changing upset.
Speaker 1: This was in the year two thousand and eight. The
Speaker 1: upsetee was Hillary Clinton and the upset tour was Barack Obama.
Speaker 1: And the rest is and sells are getting almost everything right.
Speaker 1: Since her last poll for the Iowa Senate twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: the Republican by twelve and the Republican won by twelve.
Speaker 1: For the presidency in twenty twenty, she had Trump winning
Speaker 1: Iowa by seven. He won by eight. Iowa Senate twenty
Speaker 1: twenty Republican by four. It was Republican by seven. Governor
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, she messed up. She had the Democrat
Speaker 1: winning by two and the Democrat lost by three twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen presidency, though Trump by seven was Trump by nine
Speaker 1: fourteen Senate Republican by seven, it was Republican by eight.
Speaker 1: Twenty twelve president, she had Obama by five. He won
Speaker 1: Iowa by six, and we know about two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Ann Selzer is the best polster in the nation. They
Speaker 1: wrote at Nate Silver's five thirty eight dot com in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. She started polling neighborhood moms when she was five,
Speaker 1: asking them whether a family nickname was insulting to her.
Speaker 1: But of course, now Nate Silver, who doesn't work for
Speaker 1: five thirty eight anymore, dismisses Ann Selzer as an outlier,
Speaker 1: and other experts insist no swing state swings so dramatically
Speaker 1: in a presidential race in one cycle like she's now
Speaker 1: predicting in Iowa, even though, as I just mentioned, Obama
Speaker 1: won Iowa by six in twenty twelve and then Trump
Speaker 1: won it by nine in twenty sixteen, which seems to
Speaker 1: me like a swing of fifteen points in one cycle.
Speaker 1: Besides which, as always, it really is the interior numbers
Speaker 1: that matter most. Here, Selzer has Harris leading among women
Speaker 1: in perhaps the whitest, most Midwestern state. We have by
Speaker 1: twenty points. That suggests an undercurrent of undying rage against
Speaker 1: the Roe v. Wade reversal and the Trump handmaid's tail
Speaker 1: campaign that we have not seen show up per se
Speaker 1: in any polling, only in every vote since the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court did what it did. She has found it and
Speaker 1: quantified it, and the number is two zero. Politico then adds,
Speaker 1: in most Unpolitico fashion, that the poll quote also shows
Speaker 1: voter sixty five and older, a block that typically favors Republicans,
Speaker 1: breaking for Harris. That's particularly true among senior women, who
Speaker 1: the survey found supporting Harris by more than two to
Speaker 1: one compared to senior men, who favor her by just
Speaker 1: two points. That jibs with the Harris campaign's internal research,
Speaker 1: which shows the VP continuing to make gains with women
Speaker 1: and inroads with seniors, according to a senior campaign official
Speaker 1: granted anonymity to discuss the private data, and it builds
Speaker 1: upon other positive signs. Harris's team has seen at this
Speaker 1: late stage that the split screen between Harris's focus and
Speaker 1: forward looking closing message and Trump's discursive in person appearances,
Speaker 1: which veer widely away from the discipline message of his
Speaker 1: campaign's TV ads and the remarks loaded onto his teleprompters
Speaker 1: is helping to drive late deciding voters to her side.
Speaker 1: She's talking about issues and how crazy he is, and
Speaker 1: he's saying, it's okay if you want to shoot me,
Speaker 1: but shoot those reporters first. I have been hearing this
Speaker 1: about what they have in the Harris campaign locked files
Speaker 1: since July, and I've been mentioning it since July, and
Speaker 1: I've been adding my own little mediocre analysis to it
Speaker 1: since late July. She's growing, he he's shrinking, and Nate
Speaker 1: Silver can't handle that because even though his old site
Speaker 1: said she was the best polster in the nation, he's
Speaker 1: using all the new bells and whistles she won't use.
Speaker 1: He's saying Trump is a slight favorite. Listen to what
Speaker 1: he wrote, and listen for the new in word in
Speaker 1: polling Herding. Releasing this poll took an incredible amount of
Speaker 1: guts because, let me state this as carefully as I can,
Speaker 1: if you had to play the odds this time, Selzer
Speaker 1: will probably be wrong. Harris's chances of winning Iowa nearly
Speaker 1: doubled an hour model from nine percent to seventeen percent tonight,
Speaker 1: which isn't nothing. Polymarket shows a similar trend, moving from
Speaker 1: six percent to eighteen percent after the survey. Polymarket is
Speaker 1: a wagering site run by a fascist that, by the way,
Speaker 1: pays Nate Silver. Anyway, he continues that still places Harris's
Speaker 1: odds at around five to one against not five feet
Speaker 1: from where I'm sitting. Incidentally, is my framed copy of
Speaker 1: the nineteen forty eight Chicago Tribune. Dewey defeats Truman. The
Speaker 1: poll has a reasonable sample size eight hundred and eight
Speaker 1: likely voters. Still, the margin of error for the difference
Speaker 1: separating the candidates in a poll of that size is
Speaker 1: plus six point six. That means, in theory, in ninety
Speaker 1: five out of one hundred cases, the real number should
Speaker 1: be somewhere between Trump punch run thing Man Wow Wait
Speaker 1: Wow Wow wait wow. Nate Silver as Charlie Brown's teacher,
Speaker 1: so if he doesn't have a degree in that. There
Speaker 1: was also a second Iowa poll out tonight, he wrote Saturday,
Speaker 1: from Emerson College, that showed Trump leading by exactly that
Speaker 1: nine point margin from twenty twenty. Emerson is a firm
Speaker 1: that does a lot of herding, so you ought to
Speaker 1: account for that. They virtually never publish a survey that
Speaker 1: defies the conventional wisdom. However, for what it's worth, their
Speaker 1: margin of error runs from Trump plus fifteen point seven
Speaker 1: to Trump plus two point five. In other words, Nate
Speaker 1: is saying that the Emerson poles of no value, except
Speaker 1: he just said it was more important than the saleser pole,
Speaker 1: and he is so mad at Selzer for not being
Speaker 1: part of the herd. Earlier this week, Nate Silver wrote
Speaker 1: about how dangerous herding was in polling herding quote took
Speaker 1: a lot of guts to publish this. In other words,
Speaker 1: polsters are fixing their polls, writes Nate Silver, altering who
Speaker 1: is a likely voter in their own polls to change
Speaker 1: the results, suppressing their own polls. He's suggesting that Selzer
Speaker 1: had the option to not publish this poll. I hate
Speaker 1: to use this verb, but faking their own polls to
Speaker 1: protect themselves rather than to add to what we understand
Speaker 1: about what might be happening out there, meaning their data
Speaker 1: could be dismissed in whole or in part. And all
Speaker 1: they're doing this for is the money. And if you
Speaker 1: are involved in covering the future of this nation and
Speaker 1: your only motive is money. F you do you think
Speaker 1: I do this for money? Do you think I ever
Speaker 1: did it for money? Now, maybe initially I did it
Speaker 1: for money, and then at some point you have enough
Speaker 1: money and you don't have to do this anymore unless
Speaker 1: you feel it has some value. And the first rule
Speaker 1: of having some value is it has to be true. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't like the results of our poll. Change who
Speaker 1: the likely voters are. Get rid of all those Harris voters.
Speaker 1: Get rid of all those women, senior women. Why would
Speaker 1: they be interested in abortion rights? Their data could be
Speaker 1: dismissed entirely, especially if they're Anne out there in Des
Speaker 1: Moines where her afe is on the same block as
Speaker 1: not one, but two different knitting shops. You know where
Speaker 1: I read that about the knitting shops. I read that
Speaker 1: in the article about her at five thirty eight dot
Speaker 1: com before they fired Nate silver As. I said, pop
Speaker 1: culture Overload podcast because for the life of me, I
Speaker 1: do not know what there will be to put into
Speaker 1: tomorrow's episode. I may not even do one on Wednesday
Speaker 1: unless we have a landslide or something to talk about,
Speaker 1: or it might be six minutes long. I have no
Speaker 1: idea what there will be left to talk about. But
Speaker 1: I cannot leave this polling issue while it is so
Speaker 1: prominent without going back to my favorite movie of all
Speaker 1: time in Network, the dark and still disturbingly perfectly prescient
Speaker 1: view of the politics and news media of tomorrow, as
Speaker 1: seen from what we thought were the dark and disturbing
Speaker 1: days of nineteen seventy six. Ha ha. The cronkite type
Speaker 1: network newscaster goes nuts, announces suddenly that he's going to
Speaker 1: kill himself on the air, and of course the ratings
Speaker 1: go through the roof. Next thing you know, he has
Speaker 1: the top rated show on television. And of course they
Speaker 1: dumb it down as much as possible. They expand it
Speaker 1: to sixty minutes. They call it the Network News Hour,
Speaker 1: like it was the Smothers Brother's Hour or the Ted
Speaker 1: mac Amateur Hour, and they put in all these nightly
Speaker 1: familiar segments. One called Skeletons in the Closet with Miss
Speaker 1: Mattahari celebrity gossip like you know half of what you
Speaker 1: hear or see on all news radio or TV today.
Speaker 1: Then it was laughable that anybody would even think to
Speaker 1: put that on television. They're Sybil the Soothsayer with her
Speaker 1: predictions for the future, like you know, every political pundit
Speaker 1: and every single goddamned sportscast on the continent, including your
Speaker 1: opportunity to bet on each prediction for the future these
Speaker 1: guys have just made. Then it's the emmis truth Department
Speaker 1: with Jim Webbing a mixture of lawsuits and conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: We don't have any of that in television news. And
Speaker 1: of course, then the news anchor himself, Howard Beale, doesn't
Speaker 1: do any news anymore. He just goes on these endless
Speaker 1: political and sociological rants, and he tells people to flood
Speaker 1: the White House with telegrams, and then he passes out
Speaker 1: on the air, and golly, has that happened anywhere? Has
Speaker 1: any of the newscasters just become commentatorus? Maybe I should
Speaker 1: leave this part of the subject alone. But as disturbing
Speaker 1: as any of these nightly segments on what we saw
Speaker 1: as a hyperbolic, impossible, prostituted future for television news was
Speaker 1: another nightly segment on the network News Hour devoted to
Speaker 1: one of the most shunned, most unreliable, most avoided components
Speaker 1: of what was then the cheapest and cheaper forms of news.
Speaker 1: The segment was called Vox POPULARI. And it was no
Speaker 1: host for that. There was no Miss Matta Harry, there
Speaker 1: was no Jim Webbing. It was just a computer, a
Speaker 1: big computer, and it was spitting out every night something
Speaker 1: as impossible and sleazy and unnewsworthy as skeletons in the
Speaker 1: closet or Sybil to Sooox's share. And what it was
Speaker 1: spitting out was public opinion, polls, shoes share, good evening.
Speaker 1: Tom Broker also of interest here, almost ran into him
Speaker 1: at the Animal Medical Center in New York. They said, oh,
Speaker 1: he's Tom Broker, was going to be here at two o'clock.
Speaker 1: I went, I'll be out by one fifty nine. Also
Speaker 1: of interest here, the definition of a pundit is to
Speaker 1: mock everybody who took position A instead of position B,
Speaker 1: having forgotten that same pundit had previously mocked everybody who
Speaker 1: took position B instead of position A. And now we
Speaker 1: know why Trump is still so pissed off that Biden
Speaker 1: dropped out. According to Tim Alberta in the Atlantic, Trump
Speaker 1: thought he had a perfect nickname for Joe Biden, a
Speaker 1: perfect self damning totally not a confession about Trump nickname
Speaker 1: for Joe Biden. That's next. This is Countdown. This is
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on this editiontive countdown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never found out if Brokaw was coming in for
Speaker 1: treatment or the last guy stumbled past my home just
Speaker 1: a few hours ago. And they'll be coming around to
Speaker 1: remove the barricades any month now. You know it. You
Speaker 1: may have seen it on television yesterday as the New
Speaker 1: York City Marathon. I know it as the annual day
Speaker 1: I Am trapped in my apartment day next in things
Speaker 1: I promise not to tell first, there are still more
Speaker 1: new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the
Speaker 1: miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
Speaker 1: two days worse persons in the world. Where's persons in
Speaker 1: the world? Lebron's worst Republican operative, Joey Mannorino, Joey's not
Speaker 1: particularly bright. Kamala Harris is not winning IOWA, he posted
Speaker 1: Saturday night. I'm so certain of it. I'll castrate myself
Speaker 1: on camera if it happens. These people are just full
Speaker 1: of absolute whatever. Sh Astris t absolute shot, Joey, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're not that bright. It could be anything absolute shot.
Speaker 1: In the final days of this election. Joey castrate yourself
Speaker 1: on camera. I mean you're you're a trumpists. You're castrating
Speaker 1: yourself on camera again worser. Oh good lord. If there
Speaker 1: were no Chris Solissa, some writer would win all the
Speaker 1: awards for having created him. This is from last Friday.
Speaker 1: Tell me again, why picking the popular democratic governor of
Speaker 1: the state you absolutely have to win as VP didn't
Speaker 1: make sense? Okay, so we all decided to look into
Speaker 1: this and how to tell Chris about how picking the
Speaker 1: popular governor of the state you absolutely have to win
Speaker 1: as VP didn't make sense? And we found this from
Speaker 1: twenty twenty CNN. Sometime this week, maybe as soon as today,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden will announce his vice presidential running mate. Until
Speaker 1: that moment, speculation over who he might pick and why
Speaker 1: will run rampant in the vast majority of it will
Speaker 1: be totally wrong. Why there's no part of politics and
Speaker 1: campaigns more dictated by arcane conventional wisdom than the beepstakes.
Speaker 1: That conventional wisdom goes like this. The presidential nominee is
Speaker 1: primarily guided by the electoral map when making his or
Speaker 1: her pick. The person who winds up as the choices
Speaker 1: someone the presidential candidate believes will help him deliver a
Speaker 1: particular swing state or an area that the ticket badly
Speaker 1: needs in order to win. The problem with that thinking,
Speaker 1: wrote CNN in twenty twenty. A vice presidential pick has
Speaker 1: not been the critical piece of carrying a state or
Speaker 1: a region since wait for it, Lyndon B. Johnson in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. And that unanswerable argument for why picking the
Speaker 1: governor of the state you absolutely have to win his
Speaker 1: VP didn't make any sense was by Chris Salissa. He's stunning.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely least stunning. The man must never have read
Speaker 1: anything he has written in his life, and he can't
Speaker 1: possibly own a mirror or a phone. Worst though, Trump
Speaker 1: bey himself. This is from Tim Alberta in The Atlantic.
Speaker 1: You remember Tim, He was the guy who killed and
Speaker 1: buried Chris lickt. I urge you to read the entirety
Speaker 1: of his piece on how this election has spun out
Speaker 1: of control for Trump because truly I admire and respect
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, but if she is elected, it will be
Speaker 1: at least half because Trump effing blew this. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was inevitable. Maybe the whole point is Trump is Trump.
Speaker 1: He could have been winning by one hundred points and
Speaker 1: still could have blown it. But Tim Alberta, who buried licked,
Speaker 1: I think he has now buried Trump. Let me just
Speaker 1: quote this, and I forgive you, or ask for your
Speaker 1: forgiveness in advance, and forgive you too if you laugh
Speaker 1: for some of the language in this. It's not mine.
Speaker 1: It's Trump's quote at the end of June, in the
Speaker 1: after glow of a debate performance that would ultimately prompt
Speaker 1: President Joe Biden to end his campaign for reelection, Tim
Speaker 1: Alberta writes, Donald Trump startled his aids by announcing that
Speaker 1: he'd come up with a new nickname for his opponent.
Speaker 1: Quote the guys a retard. He's retarded. I think that's
Speaker 1: what I'll start calling him unquote. Trump declared aboard his
Speaker 1: campaign plane in route to a rally that evening. According
Speaker 1: to three people who heard him make the remarks, quote
Speaker 1: retarded Joe Biden unquote. The staffers present and with ours
Speaker 1: others who had heard about the epithet second hand, pleaded
Speaker 1: with Trump not to say this publicly. They warned him
Speaker 1: that would antagonize the moderate voters who'd been breaking in
Speaker 1: their direction while engendering sympathy for a politician who at
Speaker 1: that moment was the subject of widespread ridicule. Ule As
Speaker 1: Trump demurred, musing that he might debut the nickname at
Speaker 1: that night's event. His staffers puzzled over the timing. Biden
Speaker 1: was on the ropes. Poles showed Trump jumping out to
Speaker 1: the biggest lead he'd enjoyed in any of his three
Speaker 1: campaigns for the presidency. Everything was going right for the
Speaker 1: Republican Party and its nominee. Why would he jeopardize that
Speaker 1: for the sake of slinging a juvenile insult? Unquote? Well,
Speaker 1: Tim Alberta, I can answer your rhetorical question because Trump's
Speaker 1: an asshole, and also because this is a reminder that
Speaker 1: sometimes the oldest cliches are the best one. Every Republican
Speaker 1: accusation is a confession. Donald Trump two days worst Person
Speaker 1: and the New York City Marathon. I have nothing against
Speaker 1: the New York City Marathon, but I will say this,
Speaker 1: it's extraordinary to have seen the thing grow as it
Speaker 1: has since my earliest days as a reporter. In the
Speaker 1: late seventies and early eighties, when I was at CNN,
Speaker 1: I got a phone call one day from a guy
Speaker 1: claiming to be the publicist for the New York Marathon,
Speaker 1: which was a big thing. Ten or fifteen thousand people
Speaker 1: would run it every year, but in some places they
Speaker 1: had to dodge traffic because police would not shut down
Speaker 1: all the streets for the early years of the New
Speaker 1: York City Marathon, and the publicist said, look, if you'd
Speaker 1: like to talk to our founder, Fred Leebow, who invented
Speaker 1: this and got it off the ground as a rival
Speaker 1: to the Boston Marathon, or if you'd like to talk
Speaker 1: to Bill Roydgers who's running in it and is internationally
Speaker 1: famous as a runner, or several other internationally famous American runners.
Speaker 1: We can arrange this for you. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: just call us in the office when you have time
Speaker 1: to come talk to us. We'll make it happen. And
Speaker 1: I called and I got this answer, Hello New York
Speaker 1: City Marathon. I said, yes, Hi, Fred Libo's office, please,
Speaker 1: And the man said speaking the head of the New
Speaker 1: York City Marathon was answering the switchboard, and it soon
Speaker 1: proved that Fred Libo was the same guy who had
Speaker 1: posed as the publicist. He was, in fact the entirety
Speaker 1: of the management structure of the New York City marathon
Speaker 1: as of nineteen eighty two, I guess the first time
Speaker 1: I would have covered the race. And when I said
Speaker 1: CNN was interested in doing a preview of the New
Speaker 1: York Marathon, Oh, that's great, he said, in a rather
Speaker 1: thick European accent. That's great. When would you like us
Speaker 1: to meet you? I said, well, don't you have a
Speaker 1: set press time or schedule? No, no, we'll we'll arrange
Speaker 1: it for you. When can you be here? It was
Speaker 1: literally one of those things, what time do you want
Speaker 1: to do this? When can you be here? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: it looks like I can get the crew at three
Speaker 1: o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Great, and I said okay, And then
Speaker 1: Fred Liebo said where would you like us to be?
Speaker 1: That's where the New York City Marathon was forty years
Speaker 1: ago compared to today, when they shut down my block
Speaker 1: and make it impossible for anybody who does not have
Speaker 1: identification showing that they live there to walk through without
Speaker 1: a special pass. Congratulations on doing that. There's another story
Speaker 1: from CNN days. It actually precedes my story. It's one
Speaker 1: of the first big events that CNN tried to cover
Speaker 1: live and again. Now the rights to carry the New
Speaker 1: York Marathon on television live costs millions of dollars and
Speaker 1: are sold exclusively to whoever. I can't imagine anybody actually
Speaker 1: watching people run as a sporting event, but there it is,
Speaker 1: certainly not in a marathon format. It takes a little long.
Speaker 1: But in those days, if you wanted to put the
Speaker 1: New York City Marathon on television, all you had to
Speaker 1: do was point a camera at it. And so the
Speaker 1: CNN idea was, let's get the start of the marathon
Speaker 1: from the Verrizanto Narrows Bridge. Let's put it on live,
Speaker 1: and let's actually try to do something that has never
Speaker 1: been done before. Let's move our truck and show not
Speaker 1: just the start of the marathon, but we'll be several
Speaker 1: hundred yards ahead of the front runners, and we'll show
Speaker 1: that marathon live for forty five seconds or a minute
Speaker 1: until our signal gives way, until we are no longer
Speaker 1: able to be live. That was the thinking. So they
Speaker 1: did this and were surprised, and I'm sure this was
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty right after CNN signed on, And sure enough,
Speaker 1: they drove the truck and pointed the camera outside the
Speaker 1: back window, and they got the start of the marathon
Speaker 1: and the on going off in this scene of people
Speaker 1: running towards the truck, and then suddenly the signal was
Speaker 1: lost and there was this sound heard before the signal
Speaker 1: was lost. Oh shut, and that was it. What had
Speaker 1: happened was in those days to do a live signal
Speaker 1: from a moving truck, you couldn't just stick up a
Speaker 1: little antenna, which you can do now. You had to
Speaker 1: have a whole, essentially arm sticking up a six foot
Speaker 1: tall mast that had to stick up above the truck
Speaker 1: like well, you know when the electricity company comes to
Speaker 1: repair your down power lines. One of those things. It
Speaker 1: didn't have a cage at the top of it for
Speaker 1: somebody to stand in, but it would have supported somebody easily.
Speaker 1: A six foot tall, probably one or two foot diameter mast,
Speaker 1: and they were driving along the Verizona Narrows Bridge with
Speaker 1: it and didn't realize that there were low lying overpasses
Speaker 1: on the Verizono Narrow's Bridge for maintenance and painting and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and sure enough they drove right into one and the
Speaker 1: damn thing snapped in half. For many years thereafter, Mary
Speaker 1: Alice Williams, who was the main CNN anchor in New
Speaker 1: York and also the vice president of the company and
Speaker 1: also the bureau chief of CNN in New York, had
Speaker 1: framed on her wall what looked to be something left
Speaker 1: over from a drain at somebody's house. It was a
Speaker 1: bent piece of metal with a damage mark in the middle.
Speaker 1: She had it framed on her wall, and I once
Speaker 1: asked her what it was, And that's how I know
Speaker 1: this story, because what it was was the CNN Live
Speaker 1: truck mast that got snapped in half while they were
Speaker 1: covering the nineteen eighty New York City Marathon live. The
Speaker 1: New York Marathon, of course, was also the home of
Speaker 1: Rosie Ruiz, who later claimed to have been the winner
Speaker 1: of the Boston Marathon. She'd gotten into the Boston Marathon
Speaker 1: by claiming she had run in the New York City Marathon,
Speaker 1: and then it turned out in both races. The reason
Speaker 1: she had done so well when she was not internationally known,
Speaker 1: nor ranked, nor known to have run a race in
Speaker 1: less than three hours, Rosie Ruiz in both the New
Speaker 1: York City Marathon and the Boston Marathon of the eighties
Speaker 1: solved the problem that faces so many many runners, that
Speaker 1: was dead spots when you hit the so called wall.
Speaker 1: She got around the wall by traveling part of the
Speaker 1: route by a subway. In fact, she met up intentionally
Speaker 1: obviously with one of the reporters who covered her as
Speaker 1: she was being given the laurels for winning one of
Speaker 1: the marathons. And one of the reporters said, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I saw that woman on the subway on my way
Speaker 1: over here. And that's how the whole Rosy Ruiz story unraveled.
Speaker 1: Later efforts to promote the New York Marathon introduced me
Speaker 1: to a man I have mentioned here before, Abel Kiviat.
Speaker 1: Abel Kiviat was one of the top milers in American
Speaker 1: track and field in the early years of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: I mean nineth He was a guy from Queen's with
Speaker 1: a remarkable accent, and his ninetieth birthday coincided with a
Speaker 1: day they wanted to publicize the New York Marathon. So
Speaker 1: the publicity for this was at the Guggenheim Museum, which
Speaker 1: was only half as old as Abel was. And Abel
Speaker 1: came down and talked with his remarkable Queen's accent, and
Speaker 1: he was telling us stories about how he won a
Speaker 1: race in Waltham, Massachusetts in nineteen ten and he still
Speaker 1: had the clock that they gave him, the watch they
Speaker 1: gave him for winning the race, and he said, run
Speaker 1: to the damn sight better than I do. And then
Speaker 1: we went outside and my producer had this great idea
Speaker 1: that we'd get able to run a couple of steps
Speaker 1: down Fifth Avenue, and we put that in the piece,
Speaker 1: and of course Abel, who was still running for health reasons.
Speaker 1: Abel decided that he would show us exactly what a
Speaker 1: ninety year old man could do while running, and he
Speaker 1: shot past the cameraman and we had to ask him
Speaker 1: to do it again because he was about fifty four
Speaker 1: times faster than the cameraman mentioned or thought was going
Speaker 1: to happen. Kivat the most interesting part of this, and
Speaker 1: I wish I had gone even into more detail with
Speaker 1: him than I did back in those days. In nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, when I got to interview him, Able Kiviat
Speaker 1: revealed he had been Jim Thorpe's roommate at the nineteen
Speaker 1: twelve Olympics. I've told the story in great depth, and
Speaker 1: I won't do so here, but he said basically that
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe could do anything you could do better than
Speaker 1: you could do it, and all he needed was to
Speaker 1: watch you do it two or three times. He said, literally,
Speaker 1: he could take that microphone out of your hands, and
Speaker 1: a couple of days from now he'd be better at
Speaker 1: it than you would be. And I said, well, I
Speaker 1: don't doubt that, but give me a better example of it.
Speaker 1: And he told the story of how one night all
Speaker 1: the English and the American athletes were trying to jump
Speaker 1: up and touch the bottom prong of a chandelier, or
Speaker 1: as he said it very endearingly, just like both of
Speaker 1: my Bronx New York grandparents, the chambalier, the bottom of
Speaker 1: the chandelier. He said. They were all having a nice
Speaker 1: time on board the ship in which they lived at
Speaker 1: the nineteen twelve Olympics, and Thorpe was out drinking on
Speaker 1: the town somewhere back on the mainland, and he came
Speaker 1: out on a boat and back to their boat that
Speaker 1: they were occupying, the ship they were all living on,
Speaker 1: and all night all of the great athletes of the world,
Speaker 1: including all the high jumpers, tried to reach up and
Speaker 1: grab the bottom of this chandelier, just touch it. And
Speaker 1: now there was a pool of perhaps several hundred dollars
Speaker 1: sitting in a hat on the floor. Thorpe, he says,
Speaker 1: staggers in, looks up at the scene and goes, what's
Speaker 1: going on? Fellas they explain it to him, and he goes, oh, okay.
Speaker 1: He takes off his jacket. He does not take off
Speaker 1: his vest. He unbuttons it and simply steps back three steps.
Speaker 1: And as Abel described it, he doesn't even do a
Speaker 1: run and start. He just reaches up and grabs the
Speaker 1: bottom piece of the chandelier and hangs on to it,
Speaker 1: and we think the whole damn thing's coming down on
Speaker 1: top of us. He lets go after a few seconds,
Speaker 1: and in one sweeping gesture, he reaches down, takes the hat,
Speaker 1: turns it over, grabs all the bills as they fall,
Speaker 1: stuffs them in his pocket, puts his own hat back
Speaker 1: on his head, and says, have a good night, gentlemen.
Speaker 1: That was who Jim Taupe was, all right. So that's
Speaker 1: the New York Marathon. And if I think of the
Speaker 1: New York Marathon, I necessarily think of the Los Angeles Marathon,
Speaker 1: which started when I was a sportscaster in LA and
Speaker 1: I was working for the radio station that somehow got
Speaker 1: the rights. I suspect we were paid to do this,
Speaker 1: got the rights to do radio play by play of
Speaker 1: a marathon. Now, think about this. Once in high school,
Speaker 1: I once tried to do radio play by play of
Speaker 1: a swim meet, which is really problematic if you lose
Speaker 1: your indications of who is in which lane because the
Speaker 1: swimmers go underwater. But try to do eight or ten
Speaker 1: hours of live coverage of a marathon on a news
Speaker 1: radio station. That's what we did. And since I was
Speaker 1: the sportscaster, they made me co anchor with the lead newscaster,
Speaker 1: and we set up in front of a gas station.
Speaker 1: That's what it was, a gas station near the start
Speaker 1: line of the Los Angeles Marathon, right next to the
Speaker 1: coliseum in downtown LA. And at just the beginning of
Speaker 1: the race, two minutes beforehand, they said, by the way,
Speaker 1: we want you, Keith, We want you to do the
Speaker 1: play by play of the race starting And I said
Speaker 1: from where? They said, from right here? And I said,
Speaker 1: I can't even see the starting line from here. We're
Speaker 1: going to see them all run past us. But we're
Speaker 1: I don't know, a thousand yards from the start of
Speaker 1: the race. I mean I can see them all down there.
Speaker 1: What do you want me to say? They said, okay, no,
Speaker 1: we thought of that. We have a solution to it.
Speaker 1: And one of the engineers produced for me to stand
Speaker 1: on a folding metal chair that lifted me oh two
Speaker 1: and a half feet off the ground, and by the way,
Speaker 1: wasn't even steady, and they said call it from there.
Speaker 1: And I did not have the heart to tell my
Speaker 1: producers at CANX radio in Los Angeles that I couldn't
Speaker 1: see a damn thing. I just made it up as
Speaker 1: we went along. But for the next year's race, they
Speaker 1: had thought about this and remembered the problem that it represented.
Speaker 1: So they got a wireless mic and they gave it
Speaker 1: to me, and they said, about ten minutes before the
Speaker 1: race is supposed to start, we want you to go
Speaker 1: out onto that island that is on the other side
Speaker 1: of the intersection where the marathon starts, so you'll be
Speaker 1: thirty yards away from the marathon start line. You'll be
Speaker 1: facing it, and then we will throw it out to
Speaker 1: you in thirty or forty seconds before the gun goes off,
Speaker 1: and you can describe what that looks like. And I
Speaker 1: can describe what it looks like because I have had
Speaker 1: this nightmare once a month since the first time. We
Speaker 1: did this in I think nineteen eighty seven, with me
Speaker 1: out in the island, twenty or thirty yards away from
Speaker 1: the front line of the LA Marathon, which was at
Speaker 1: that point maybe eighteen or twenty thousand people. A gun
Speaker 1: goes off. You are standing by yourself, you are three
Speaker 1: inches off the pavement, and suddenly eighteen or twenty thousand
Speaker 1: people start running at high speed directly towards you. Think
Speaker 1: about that one for a while, and you can understand
Speaker 1: some of the problems that I've had in my life
Speaker 1: and my career ever since. Persecution, problems, paranoia, if you
Speaker 1: want them, go stand in front of the traffic island,
Speaker 1: twenty thirty yards in front of a marathon starting and
Speaker 1: let eighteen thousand people run at you, even if you
Speaker 1: were normal to begin with. And I'm making no claims
Speaker 1: about that that will change you in a hurry. Marathons
Speaker 1: I have survived by Keith Olberman, things I promised not
Speaker 1: to tell. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, Follow me for the podcast promos.
Speaker 1: The videos now on TikTok, Blue Sky, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x,
Speaker 1: Instagram threads, and of course Blue You. I believe that's
Speaker 1: the name of Trump's social media platform, isn't it. Please
Speaker 1: send this podcast to somebody who does not know they
Speaker 1: need to listen, but should try to come up with
Speaker 1: something for Tomorrow and Wednesday. There are no guarantees, but
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand people listened and watched Fridays, so I
Speaker 1: got to do something. I suppose. Brian Ray and John
Speaker 1: Phillip Schanel, the musical directors of Countdown, have arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle is on
Speaker 1: orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums.
Speaker 1: It was produced by Tko brows that our satirical and
Speaker 1: pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organists ever,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Ulderman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Speaker 1: Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else
Speaker 1: was pretty much my fault. The podcast was produced by
Speaker 1: in Studio Kit. That's countdown for today, one one day
Speaker 1: until the twenty twenty four presidential election. I'm sure it
Speaker 1: will be fine and the three hundred and ninety ninth
Speaker 1: day since convicted felon dissociative fugue Jay Trump got away
Speaker 1: with his first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
Speaker 1: of the United States. Use your vote, use the mental
Speaker 1: health system, use presidential immunity, mister Biden to keep him
Speaker 1: from doing this again while we still have a chance
Speaker 1: to stop the mother, etc. The next scheduled count down
Speaker 1: as tomorrow bulletins as the news requires. Till then, I'm
Speaker 1: Keith Alberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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