Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: is a Countdown special bulletin. I'm Keith Olderman. Inside the
Speaker 1: outline of the Naked Woman was a typewritten note styled
Speaker 1: as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, written
Speaker 1: in the third person. According to the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: bombshell story on Thursday night, quoting again voice over, there
Speaker 1: must be more to life than having everything, the note began, Donald, Yes,
Speaker 1: there is, but I won't tell you what it is, Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: nor will I since I also know what it is. Donald.
Speaker 1: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey, Yes, we do,
Speaker 1: come to think of it, Donald, Enigma's age. Have you
Speaker 1: noticed that, Jeffrey. As a matter of fact, it was
Speaker 1: clear to me the last time I saw you, Trump,
Speaker 1: a pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may
Speaker 1: every day be another wonderful secret. This story is the
Speaker 1: story of the Trump Epstein connection and that phrase wonderful secret?
Speaker 1: What in the hell is Trump talking about? The Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal put this story out at about sunset on
Speaker 1: Thursday night. It was immediately denied in the strangest way
Speaker 1: of all of the denials of all of the Trump stories,
Speaker 1: of all of the Trump sex stories in the last
Speaker 1: decade or more, since long before he became a would
Speaker 1: be dictator. At the risk of reading the entire Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal paywalled story, there are parts that I would
Speaker 1: like to quote for batim. The headline, for instance, Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein's friends sent him body letters for a fiftieth birthday album.
Speaker 1: One was from Donald Trump. The subhead the leatherbound book
Speaker 1: was compiled by Gallaine Maxwell. The president says the letter
Speaker 1: is a fake thing. What may live out of this
Speaker 1: story is not the letter, which is not by any
Speaker 1: means conclusive of about anything at all other than a
Speaker 1: relationship between Epstein and Trump. And we all know about that.
Speaker 1: And Trump's efforts to separate himself from Epstein have been
Speaker 1: pro forma at best and pathetic at worst. What may
Speaker 1: linger are the denials Trump seems to be journalistically doing
Speaker 1: the equivalent of perjury here again and again, needless, stupid,
Speaker 1: easily disproved perjury in a journalistic sense. There is no
Speaker 1: such thing as lying to a newspaper being some kind
Speaker 1: of legal offense. The story begins thusly. It was Epstein's
Speaker 1: fiftieth birthday, and Maxwell was preparing a special gift to
Speaker 1: mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein's family and friends,
Speaker 1: One of them was Trump. Maxwell collected letters from Trump
Speaker 1: and dozens of Epstein's other associates for a two thousand
Speaker 1: and three birthday album. According to documents reviewed by The
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, So put this back in its timing,
Speaker 1: this would have been twelve years before Trump ran for president.
Speaker 1: This is not ancient history. This is not something that
Speaker 1: predates his political aspirations, which we know began certainly no
Speaker 1: later than twenty eleven and had been festering inside that
Speaker 1: semi brain of his since the twentieth century. The letter
Speaker 1: bearing Trump's name, which was reviewed by the journal, is
Speaker 1: body like others in the album. It contains several lines
Speaker 1: of typewritten text, framed by the outline of a naked woman,
Speaker 1: which appears to be hand drawn with a heavy marker.
Speaker 1: A pair of small arcs denotes the women's women's breasts,
Speaker 1: and the future president's signature is a squiggly donald below
Speaker 1: her waist, mimicking pubic hair. One thing above all else
Speaker 1: about the forty fifth and forty seventh president of the
Speaker 1: United States is all class. The denial from Trump is
Speaker 1: the most interesting part of the story. Quote to the journal,
Speaker 1: this is not me. This is a fake thing. It's
Speaker 1: a fake Wall Street Journal story. I never wrote a
Speaker 1: picture in my life. I never wrote a picture in
Speaker 1: my life. I don't draw pictures of women. It's not
Speaker 1: my language, it's not my words. I'm gonna sue the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, just like I sued everyone else. This,
Speaker 1: of course, quoted in the Wall Street Journal. I never
Speaker 1: wrote a picture in my life. Stand by forgive my language,
Speaker 1: writes jd Vance, who is Renfield to the Dracula in
Speaker 1: this equation? But this story is completed, utter bullshit. The
Speaker 1: WSJ should be a shamed for publishing it. Where is
Speaker 1: this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never
Speaker 1: showed it to us before publishing it. Does anybody honestly
Speaker 1: believe this sounds like Donald Trump? Well it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to sound like Donald Trump. Somebody else would have composed
Speaker 1: it for him, and he would have paid them less
Speaker 1: than he promised. To my goodness, he actually could in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three write things that made sense, that
Speaker 1: seemed to be in English, that did not seem to
Speaker 1: be coming from a brain damaged individual. I received a
Speaker 1: letter from him in twenty fourteen that was a suck
Speaker 1: up letter, a fan letter, a disingenuous fan letter, and
Speaker 1: what I'm sure he'd like to destroy. I'll get to
Speaker 1: that in a moment. But this phrase I never wrote
Speaker 1: a picture in my life was disproven within an hour
Speaker 1: of the Wall Street Journal printing the denial. Within an hour,
Speaker 1: no fewer than online copies of at least two dozen
Speaker 1: Donald Trump drawings that had been publicly sold doodles, pictures
Speaker 1: often sold at charity events, almost invariably of skylines, all
Speaker 1: carrying his crazy signature, all resembling his crazy, ironically enough
Speaker 1: heartbeat kind of signature, at least two dozen, one that
Speaker 1: sold for two hundred dollars in Iowa, if I remembering
Speaker 1: it correctly. And then this story about a doodle by
Speaker 1: Donald Trump of the Manhattan Skyline has sold an auction
Speaker 1: for a grand total of twenty nine and eighty four dollars,
Speaker 1: placed on the market early this week by the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles based Nate D. Sanders Auctions. The drawing is typical Trump,
Speaker 1: featuring the Trump Tower right at its center and the
Speaker 1: president's nightmarish signature scrawled below it in gold marker the
Speaker 1: dates to obviously the first term. It's an otherwise nondescript
Speaker 1: and childlike portrayal of New York City with unadorned bill
Speaker 1: bildings lined up in a row like tetris blocks topped
Speaker 1: with triangle roofs. I think they're actually being kind of
Speaker 1: unkind to him. There is a certain well, there's a
Speaker 1: certain charm to this thing. But more importantly, I think
Speaker 1: it's impossible to look at the drawing that Trump did
Speaker 1: and not see what this really is. There are at
Speaker 1: least four buildings that look like erect penises, and all
Speaker 1: the other drawings are the same thing. I don't know
Speaker 1: that anyone has yet produced a Trump took a picture
Speaker 1: of a naked woman with his signature as her hair.
Speaker 1: But we have this denial from Laura Lumer also already disproved.
Speaker 1: I'm calling bullshit on this Trump birthday letter to Epstein.
Speaker 1: It's totally fake. Everyone who actually knows President Trump knows
Speaker 1: he doesn't type letters. He writes notes in big black sharpie.
Speaker 1: Trust me, I would know he doesn't use email and
Speaker 1: he doesn't type write. Lumer, who is a genius prince
Speaker 1: type write as two words. He writes messages in big
Speaker 1: black sharpie. This is not true. I have and I
Speaker 1: have retained it, despite what are clearly subconscious efforts on
Speaker 1: my part to destroy the damn thing by putting it
Speaker 1: in file cabinets full of garbage. I still have from
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen the fan letter he wrote me about my
Speaker 1: ESPN two show, particularly a commentary I did about Ted Turner.
Speaker 1: It is typed. It doesn't have to be typed by him,
Speaker 1: It's typed by somebody else. He, however, dictated it. It
Speaker 1: is his language, and it has a few notations and
Speaker 1: marks on it with a big black sharpie, and of
Speaker 1: course he's crazy ass signature. We've also seen him draw
Speaker 1: on things like, you know, hurricane maps. It is fascinating
Speaker 1: that his typing and his drawing and his writing habits
Speaker 1: are denied here, and not the implications of sexual perversion,
Speaker 1: nor the cover up of the Epstein crimes by Trump,
Speaker 1: nor the connection between Trump and Epstein. That is not
Speaker 1: what his defenders or even what Trump are denying. They
Speaker 1: are denying that he draws pictures, And suddenly two dozen
Speaker 1: pictures appear already online. Jay d Vance says, why haven't
Speaker 1: they shown us the picture? Where is this picture? What
Speaker 1: if the picture now turns up, and of course the
Speaker 1: ridiculous idea that Trump would have to personally type a
Speaker 1: typewritten note himself or it doesn't count somewhere. That's what
Speaker 1: happens when you get a millennial, and not a particularly
Speaker 1: bright one, trying to figure out what a typewritten letter
Speaker 1: is and who has to use the typewriter when they
Speaker 1: type it. Also, the only negative here that I see
Speaker 1: in the short term is it gives those wavering in
Speaker 1: their support of Trump over Epstein, particularly those he called,
Speaker 1: you know, weaklings and idiots and former supporters. It gives
Speaker 1: them something to rally a against and kind of walk
Speaker 1: back towards his side, even if it is the Murdoch
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal against which they are rallying. It may
Speaker 1: work to his advantage in this respect, but in a
Speaker 1: larger sense it underscores this. This story will stay alive
Speaker 1: into a third work week, and very few Trump scandals
Speaker 1: have lasted that long. We will now be in the
Speaker 1: mode in which the remaining news organizations in this country
Speaker 1: begin to look for something else. Also, this story, as
Speaker 1: mild as it is comparatively, drove Trump nuts and raged.
Speaker 1: Trump attempted to kill the story from Status by the
Speaker 1: reporter Oliver Darcy, formerly of CNN. Trump is said to
Speaker 1: have personally called Emma Tucker, the journal's editor in chief,
Speaker 1: to voice his objections. The specifics of the call remain unclear,
Speaker 1: but it's hard to imagine Trump voiced anything but outrage.
Speaker 1: There's a slightly different version of that in Breaker by
Speaker 1: Lachlan Cartwright. There had been it's in recent days from
Speaker 1: the White House to have the story killed, including a
Speaker 1: phone call to Journal editor Emma Tucker from White House
Speaker 1: Press Secretary Caroline Levitt, where Trump was on the line.
Speaker 1: Breaker has learned, Oh no, how could you handle a
Speaker 1: call from Caroline Levitt? The Division three softball center fielder.
Speaker 1: But one thing I can't get past happy birthday? And
Speaker 1: may every day be another wonderful secret? What in God's
Speaker 1: name could that mean? And do any of us want
Speaker 1: to know another wonderful secret? It fits all of the
Speaker 1: cliches and all of the assumptions about Epstein, and particularly
Speaker 1: about whatever Trump's relationship to Epstein really was. That's the
Speaker 1: main thing. It's a vibe, as the kids say, and
Speaker 1: the denials have already been disproved. The lead story on
Speaker 1: the Murdoch owned Fox News Channel shows Tonight, Hunter Biden
Speaker 1: something something Laura Ingram insisting Trump shouldn't fall into the
Speaker 1: special prosecutor trap about Epstein. If it weren't for special
Speaker 1: prosecutors like Ken Starr, Laura would never have a TV career.
Speaker 1: She had followed her mother and she'd be waitressing into
Speaker 1: her seventies. Let me rephrase that that's an honorable career.
Speaker 1: Her mother had not like what Laura is doing now.
Speaker 1: There was, apparently late in Laura Ingram's program, a reference
Speaker 1: to something about the Wall Street Journal story coming up
Speaker 1: after the break, And when the break happened and ended
Speaker 1: and we went back to Laura, she said nothing about it.
Speaker 1: All we saw is that attempt to make her face
Speaker 1: smile after all that work. Also of note as to
Speaker 1: Trump's health cover up, you will have noticed Trump's terrifyingly
Speaker 1: swollen ankles you would go to the hospital, and his
Speaker 1: obvious use of makeup over an area of his hand
Speaker 1: that clearly shows there's been an IV attached there perhaps
Speaker 1: or electrode patches put there, or that his hands have
Speaker 1: had profound bruises in the area, and makeup used to
Speaker 1: cover those bruises. The area seems to be about the
Speaker 1: size of a silver dollar. The White House says he
Speaker 1: has now been tested. There is no deep vein thrombosis,
Speaker 1: no heart problems, but he has had swelling in his legs.
Speaker 1: That's what they checked him out for. And they say
Speaker 1: he has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency or venous insufficiency,
Speaker 1: which occurs when leg veins fail to pump blood to
Speaker 1: the heart, causing the blood to pool in the lower limbs,
Speaker 1: which can then become swollen. They say this is minor,
Speaker 1: and we have long since learned never to trust the
Speaker 1: White House Press Office about anything, but especially his health.
Speaker 1: They are this close to sodom husseining him. They are
Speaker 1: this close to announcing that, like Sodom Hussein used to
Speaker 1: claim to the people of Iraq, he's had a magic
Speaker 1: stone implanted in his chest and is therefore immortal and
Speaker 1: cannot be shot or killed. But this insufficiency in the
Speaker 1: veins may be legit because they have never before cited
Speaker 1: an actual disease Trump has, especially one which may have
Speaker 1: implications for travel, for flying. And the ankles have looked
Speaker 1: like he was wearing winter boots. This is a real
Speaker 1: problem and it may be a real and treatable problem.
Speaker 1: But that leads to the second half of the story,
Speaker 1: which is even on thinner ice than the first half.
Speaker 1: Is it's the stuff about his hands. Those aren't bruises
Speaker 1: or leftovers from patches or ivs or electrodes. Oh no,
Speaker 1: says the White House. They are from shaking too many
Speaker 1: hands while taking aspirin to treat the chronic venous insufficiency,
Speaker 1: which is I believe this is a medical term. Bullshit.
Speaker 1: They are claiming it is not serious, that it's the
Speaker 1: result of the disease, which isn't serious, even though it
Speaker 1: blew up his ankles. And sure, everybody has swelling in
Speaker 1: their legs and they only need aspirin to cure it.
Speaker 1: But if you take the aspirin, the thing causing the
Speaker 1: swelling in your legs will then cause bruising on your hand,
Speaker 1: bad enough to require makeup on your hand. This does
Speaker 1: not add up. Trump, simply put, is in worse physical
Speaker 1: shape now than Joe Biden got within a million miles
Speaker 1: of but he can still instinctively talk fast and loudly.
Speaker 1: So Jake Tapper isn't writing a goddamned book about it.
Speaker 1: His clarity, though, is clearly descending about half a point
Speaker 1: a week. That quote to the Wall Street Journal is
Speaker 1: nonsensical or nearly such. I never wrote a picture in
Speaker 1: my life. Oh good. I never wrote a picture in
Speaker 1: my life either. Holy crap. And it didn't even turn
Speaker 1: out to be true. There's one other note to mention
Speaker 1: in this bulletin. CBS has tonight canceled the Late Show
Speaker 1: with Stephen Colbert. It will linger on in ever less
Speaker 1: supported lame duckness until May of next year, which is
Speaker 1: utterly bizarre. But I have to assume they are refusing
Speaker 1: to just give him any money to go away. Right now.
Speaker 1: They are citing economics CBS is, and I believe that
Speaker 1: there is some legitimacy to that. Nothing in television is paying,
Speaker 1: certainly nothing as expensive as a late night talk show.
Speaker 1: But of course that was also what they cited when
Speaker 1: they denuded the CBS Evening News, and what they presumably
Speaker 1: will cite when they cut the nuts off sixty minutes.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do my reaction to this out of order.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do the unpopular part first. I have
Speaker 1: alluded to this before my experience with Stephen Colbert, which
Speaker 1: dates back I believe to his fourth show on Comedy
Speaker 1: Central in two thousand and seven eight when I did
Speaker 1: a favor to Jonathan Alter, one of our regular guests
Speaker 1: on Countdown, whose wife was the guest booker on a
Speaker 1: show nobody wanted to go on with called the Colbert Rapport.
Speaker 1: My experience with Stephen Colbert over all that time is
Speaker 1: one hundred percent negative. I'm doing him a favor. When
Speaker 1: he goes to CBS once again, missus, Alter asks me
Speaker 1: to come on and be a guest for the demo show,
Speaker 1: like the second time they tried to do a Stephen
Speaker 1: Colbert late night CBS show in front of an audience,
Speaker 1: and I come on and give up my time, which
Speaker 1: isn't that valuable, But I shaved and I come on
Speaker 1: and he asks me what I'm going to do now
Speaker 1: that my ESPN two show has been canceled, and I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know. There are a couple of possibilities, but
Speaker 1: I legitimately don't know. And he responds, tell me, when
Speaker 1: you were on Countdown and somebody gave you a bullshit
Speaker 1: answer like that, what did you do? What I thought
Speaker 1: of doing, since we weren't actually on TV, was getting
Speaker 1: up and spitting in his face and walking off. I
Speaker 1: happened to be telling him the literal truth. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was going to do. There was an
Speaker 1: offer from CNN, there was an offer from MSNBC, there
Speaker 1: were two sports offers. I didn't know what I was
Speaker 1: going to do. Ultimately, I didn't do any of those things.
Speaker 1: I'm doing this guy a favor, and he's saying I'm lying. Later,
Speaker 1: after they got the CBS show on the air, I
Speaker 1: pre recorded for him again, it's just my time. It
Speaker 1: wasn't some sort of I didn't cancel some sort of
Speaker 1: vacation to go do it for him. It was within
Speaker 1: walking distance, but they asked me to come over one
Speaker 1: morning and record a very unfunny bit about Alex Rodriguez
Speaker 1: of the New York Yankees. The intro that Stephen Colbert
Speaker 1: read while I was in the studio standing not twenty
Speaker 1: feet from him, was here's the man who's had more
Speaker 1: jobs than you had hot dinners. Then I go home
Speaker 1: to watch to see if the thing was any funnier
Speaker 1: on TV than it was live, and he has re
Speaker 1: recorded it. It's no longer the man who's had more
Speaker 1: jobs than you've had hot dinners. It's become the man
Speaker 1: who's been fired more times than you've had hot dinners.
Speaker 1: That is as cheesy a thing as I have ever
Speaker 1: heard in the entirety of my fifty years in the
Speaker 1: entertainment and information media business. That's Stephen Colbert. And if
Speaker 1: it wasn't his idea, it was the idea of his
Speaker 1: executive producer at the time, Chris I will later kill
Speaker 1: CNN licked. Stephen Colbert is not an honest broker, He
Speaker 1: is not a sincere guy. He is not worthy of
Speaker 1: your trust. And the more I reflect on it, the
Speaker 1: more I think there was something to the old conservative
Speaker 1: theory about the Comedy Central show, that he was not
Speaker 1: some liberal pretending to be a stupid conservative, a really
Speaker 1: dumb bill O'Reilly who kept stepping on rakes, That he
Speaker 1: was a conservative pretending to be a stupid conservative so
Speaker 1: he could surreptitiously counter liberal narratives in a liberal space
Speaker 1: and counter more importantly things like reality and facts and
Speaker 1: democrats and worst of all, when they can anseled the
Speaker 1: David Letterman Show. When they eased David Letterman out, Colbert
Speaker 1: and the people working for him were brutal to the
Speaker 1: Letterman people, going to the extent of ripping up everything
Speaker 1: in the Ed Sullivan Theater that had any connection to
Speaker 1: David Letterman and throwing it away the morning after the
Speaker 1: last show. No auctions for charity, no farewell items for
Speaker 1: the staffers, nothing, a blood letting to make sure that
Speaker 1: everybody forgot David Letterman and thought only of Stephen Colbert.
Speaker 1: And now Stephen Colbert is finished and everybody thinks remember
Speaker 1: David Letterman. So to hell with him. I hope he
Speaker 1: never works again. The platform, however, will be missed. His
Speaker 1: stuff became reliably anti Trump, meaning anti dictatorship. Occasionally it
Speaker 1: was funny. CBS, of course, jumped the shark with the
Speaker 1: deal that Sherry Redstone's been making with Trump, that bribe
Speaker 1: dressed up as a settlement of the ludicrous lawsuit over
Speaker 1: the editing of the Kamala Harris interview. The question now
Speaker 1: is will these a moral cash whorees who are taking
Speaker 1: over CBS paramount also fire John Stewart, who, after a
Speaker 1: bad both sides this start to his return on Comedy Central,
Speaker 1: has gotten closer to his old form and was about
Speaker 1: one hundred times more valuable in the political space than
Speaker 1: Colbert ever was at his best. In any event, This
Speaker 1: has been a Countdown bulletin podcast. The next regularly scheduled
Speaker 1: full edition is Monday, dropping at midnight Eastern Sunday night.
Speaker 1: Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. I never wrote a picture
Speaker 1: in my life other than these two or three hundred,
Speaker 1: and let me close by just saying, may every day
Speaker 1: be another wonderful secret. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.