Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Now,
Speaker 1: I will tell you the answer to my question. It
Speaker 1: is this, the Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
Speaker 1: We are not interested in the good of others. We
Speaker 1: are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury, or
Speaker 1: long life or happiness. Only power, pure power. What pure
Speaker 1: power means you will understand presently. We are different from
Speaker 1: all the oligarchies of the past in that we know
Speaker 1: what we are doing. All the others, even those who
Speaker 1: resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and
Speaker 1: the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods,
Speaker 1: but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.
Speaker 1: They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized
Speaker 1: power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just
Speaker 1: round the corner of their lay up paradise where human
Speaker 1: beings would be free and equal. We are not like that.
Speaker 1: We know that no one ever sees his power with
Speaker 1: the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means,
Speaker 1: it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship
Speaker 1: in order to safeguard a revolution. One makes the revolution
Speaker 1: in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution
Speaker 1: is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object
Speaker 1: of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty four by George Orwell, the pen name of
Speaker 1: Eric Blair, published on eight June nineteen forty nine. Sometime
Speaker 1: today or this week, Donald Trump will again prove George
Speaker 1: Orwell eric Blair a prophet, or will prove that he
Speaker 1: Trump read nineteen eighty four, but read it as an
Speaker 1: instructional manual, and he will do something his advisors will
Speaker 1: have told him this week not to do, and he
Speaker 1: will do it. Because Trump seeks power entirely for its
Speaker 1: own sake. That he knows no one ever seizes power
Speaker 1: with the intention of relinquishing it at an end. That
Speaker 1: power is not a means to Trump, that the object
Speaker 1: of power is power. Even two fascist imbeciles who surround
Speaker 1: him heg Seth, his secretary of Defense, and Vodka and
Speaker 1: Garden Gnome, the secretary of dress up dolls, they will
Speaker 1: officially tell him not to do this, that it is
Speaker 1: not necessary, that the problem is resolving itself, that he
Speaker 1: can take credit for that, And he will do it anyway,
Speaker 1: because in his reptilian brain, he will think, I am
Speaker 1: not establishing a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution.
Speaker 1: I am making a revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
Speaker 1: And Trump will, despite the advice, invoke the Insurrection Act
Speaker 1: of eighteen oh seven if I'm wrong about this, If
Speaker 1: something else in his reptilian brain tells Trump to defer
Speaker 1: to Gnome, and hegxeth, he will only defer and delay
Speaker 1: now because doing it later will hurt more. He will
Speaker 1: invoke the Insurrection Act of eighteen oh seven, and then
Speaker 1: we will be inside his dictatorship soon or late. And
Speaker 1: that's why the most important person in this country today,
Speaker 1: right now, the person who is most likely to be
Speaker 1: able to save the country or begin to that person
Speaker 1: may be Senator Lisa Murkowski, because, like so many of
Speaker 1: us before her, Lisa Murkowski just realized what George Orwell
Speaker 1: meant when he wrote that in his novel nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: what do.
Speaker 2: You have to say to people who are afraid.
Speaker 3: Or are resent people who are afraid?
Speaker 4: We are all afraid. Okay, that's what I say.
Speaker 2: But we are where we're in it. We're in a
Speaker 2: time at a place.
Speaker 5: Where I don't know.
Speaker 3: I certainly have not.
Speaker 4: I have not been here before, and I'll tell you
Speaker 4: I'm I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about about using my voice.
Speaker 1: Because retaliation is really that which I suspect you have
Speaker 1: heard before. Was at a conference in front of people
Speaker 1: from nonprofit groups at Anchorage, Alaska, and it's a damn Shane.
Speaker 1: The audio is so bad there because it is the
Speaker 1: most important thing yet said by a Republican in any
Speaker 1: office this year, and thus Lisa Murkowski may be the
Speaker 1: most important person in this country right now. She said
Speaker 1: that she is afraid she has reached the exact baseline
Speaker 1: state Trump has sought. It is the exact premise of
Speaker 1: O'Brien's speech in the Torture Chamber to Winston Smith in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, that the objective torture is torture and
Speaker 1: the objective power is power. She is afraid. She is
Speaker 1: afraid of retribution. She is afraid of the mob. She
Speaker 1: is afraid of what is next. She vows to be confrontational,
Speaker 1: to use her voice in public in front of the
Speaker 1: rest of us, and to her, I say, forget the
Speaker 1: rest of us, Senator, use your voice in private, use
Speaker 1: it among your Republican colleagues in the Senate. You and
Speaker 1: thirteen other Republican senators and at most four Republican representatives
Speaker 1: can stop all of this cold You, Senator Murkowski, can
Speaker 1: save the country. You can impeach Trump, or if you
Speaker 1: still can't get over the last hump, if you still
Speaker 1: think that his power is somehow Republican Party power, or
Speaker 1: that his power is somehow Conservative power, or that his
Speaker 1: power is somehow your power, or that his power is
Speaker 1: somehow anything but his power, the eighteen of you can
Speaker 1: use the threat to impeach him, to virtually fetter him,
Speaker 1: to at least control the width and breadth of the
Speaker 1: damage he does, to make him know at all times
Speaker 1: the Senate and if necessary, the House, will vote against him.
Speaker 1: You only need three other Senate Republicans to join you
Speaker 1: just to rein him in thirteen others, and you can
Speaker 1: literally destroy this man. And there is reason to hope
Speaker 1: this might actually happen before the iron curtain of dictatorship descends. Later,
Speaker 1: in her confession of fear at Anchorage, Lisa Murkowski hinted
Speaker 1: at doing exactly what I just suggested.
Speaker 2: You's charm that I am or as a young girl
Speaker 2: and eng.
Speaker 4: And am able to affect.
Speaker 2: Way, and I will figure out how I can do
Speaker 2: my ass to help the many who are so anxious.
Speaker 6: And are so afraid.
Speaker 1: Murkowski was driven in fear to this point, not by
Speaker 1: the pending decision on the Insurrection Act, nor by the
Speaker 1: rendition of an innocent Maryland father without due process, nor
Speaker 1: by the attempted rendition of hundreds of others, nor by
Speaker 1: the tariff disaster, nor by Trump ignoring the courts, but
Speaker 1: by people she knows in the federal government career, people
Speaker 1: summarily fired through the efforts of this stoned fascist foreigner Musk,
Speaker 1: their bodies symbolically piling up in front of her Senate
Speaker 1: office door fire, just so Trump can exercise the power
Speaker 1: that is exercised for its own sake. That's what has
Speaker 1: made this visceral to her. That is her specific creed
Speaker 1: decur that is what she is afraid of. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if she's just afraid of the one thing and
Speaker 1: acting on just the one thing. It is a start,
Speaker 1: and it is a breakthrough, and it is one lit
Speaker 1: match in the darkness that is conservatism and the Republican
Speaker 1: Party in this country right now, because Murkowski will now
Speaker 1: find what all of us have found. Start down this
Speaker 1: path of resistance, and you will discover there are only
Speaker 1: two roots. There is to be presented to you, the
Speaker 1: false promise of compromise and appeasement and partial dissent while
Speaker 1: retaining your power. And that root goes directly over a
Speaker 1: cliff behind the woods. That was the one Gretchen Whitmer
Speaker 1: took the other week. That was the one dozens of
Speaker 1: Republicans have taken. Look down below at the pile at
Speaker 1: the bottom, it's Lindsey Graham. And then there is the
Speaker 1: only other path utter resistance. To stop this. You must
Speaker 1: stop this. As Trump wields power solely. In order to
Speaker 1: wield power forever, you must become such that you resist solely,
Speaker 1: to resist him forever, Senator, Because the voice of the
Speaker 1: scared Senator Lisa Murkowski may be the most important voice
Speaker 1: in the nation right now. She's going to use her charm,
Speaker 1: She's going to have conversations. There are so many conversations
Speaker 1: Senator Murkowski can have that can save the nation. I
Speaker 1: don't dream of her joining the Bernie and AOC tour,
Speaker 1: but god damn, would that be something. But there is
Speaker 1: one advantage to having a Republican feel this way. When
Speaker 1: Republicans don't believe in the rules the rest of us do.
Speaker 1: Republicans have had no squeamishness for decades now about meeting
Speaker 1: the justices of the Supreme Court. Senator, take some of
Speaker 1: your colleagues with you, the ones who are even more
Speaker 1: afraid than you, are too afraid to even admit it
Speaker 1: the way you did, And go and see Amy Coney Barrett.
Speaker 1: I will always be suspicious of Amy Coney Barrett, but
Speaker 1: her voting record shows it is undeniable. There is a
Speaker 1: human being in there. There is somebody who holds at
Speaker 1: least some of the law sacred in there. Go see
Speaker 1: Chief Justice Roberts. I'm not sure what's inside of him,
Speaker 1: but it is clear he lives in abject terror of
Speaker 1: the executive branch subsuming and perverting the judiciary. And it
Speaker 1: looks like it has just dawned on him that Trump
Speaker 1: doesn't just intend to ignore the courts out there somewhere,
Speaker 1: the inferior courts, the district courts, the local courts on
Speaker 1: those minor things, the minor things, the Supreme Court can
Speaker 1: survive and still claim it is in charge. It looks
Speaker 1: like the idea is forming in John Robert's head that
Speaker 1: Trump means to kill him metaphorically, of course, or worse.
Speaker 1: Friday night, in the middle of the night, the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court took its second unmistakable shot across Trump's bow. It
Speaker 1: is one of the other signs hope, besides the fear
Speaker 1: inside Lisa Murkowski. The Court stepped in, not waiting for
Speaker 1: inferior courts to rule, not waiting for one of its
Speaker 1: own justices to rule, just stepping in as the whole
Speaker 1: court and saying, no, you will not kidnap and disappear
Speaker 1: anybody from the soil of the United States of America
Speaker 1: using the Alien Enemies Act, at least until further notice.
Speaker 1: We will get back to you, President Fatso they put
Speaker 1: this out so late, I was already asleep. They put
Speaker 1: this out at one am Eastern daylight time, Friday night,
Speaker 1: Saturday morning. It is a very polite, very legalistic fu
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump, very much of a piece with Senator
Speaker 1: Van Holland spitting the truth yesterday that Trump is already
Speaker 1: ignoring the courts and already ignoring the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 1: thus we are already in a constitutional crisis and guess
Speaker 1: who doesn't like getting ignored or being the victims of
Speaker 1: a constitutional crisis. Well, surveys say seven out of nine
Speaker 1: members of the Supreme Court don't like this quote aarp
Speaker 1: et al v. Trump, President of US et al. There
Speaker 1: is before the Court an application on behalf of a
Speaker 1: putitive class of detainees seeking an injunction against their removal
Speaker 1: under the Alien Enemies Act. The matter is currently pending
Speaker 1: before the Fifth Circuit. Upon action by the Fifth Circuit,
Speaker 1: the Solicitor General is invited to file a response to
Speaker 1: the application before this Court as soon as possible. That's
Speaker 1: shoving the Fifth Circuit Court out of the effing way.
Speaker 1: The government is directed not to remove any member of
Speaker 1: the putative class of detainees from the United States until
Speaker 1: further order of this Court. C. Twenty eight USC. One
Speaker 1: sixty five to one a. Justice Thomas and Justice Alito
Speaker 1: dissent from the Court's order. Statement from Justice Alito to
Speaker 1: follow Now. The Court could undo this today, even though
Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious it was seven to two, with even
Speaker 1: Kavanaugh and Gorsich saying no more renditions, no more, using
Speaker 1: nineteenth century laws designed to protect the nation when it
Speaker 1: is next literally invaded by Britain or France and armies
Speaker 1: with Muskets rendezvousing with their spies who already live here
Speaker 1: and are wearing tricorn hats to try to blend in
Speaker 1: No More Alien Enemies Act, asshole. This is especially pertinent
Speaker 1: because last week refugees from Afghanistan here legally after working
Speaker 1: with US at their own peril against the Taliban there,
Speaker 1: they got emails from the Trump regime telling them they
Speaker 1: had seven days to quote self deport in their case,
Speaker 1: to go back to Afghanistan and get killed. These are
Speaker 1: the same people Trump treated like martyrs when the withdrawal
Speaker 1: he arranged from Afghanistan went predictably tragic. Under Biden, We're
Speaker 1: so sorry for them, Let's send them home to be killed.
Speaker 1: This is also especially pertinent because of Hegseth and Noam
Speaker 1: and the Alien Enemy Act's cousin, the Good Old Insurrection Act.
Speaker 1: At eighteen oh seven, the day Trump returned from Elba
Speaker 1: and seized power again, he directed those two clowns to
Speaker 1: submit a report in ninety days advising him on conditions
Speaker 1: at the southern border and whether or not he should
Speaker 1: invoke the Insurrection Act. And guess what he expected them
Speaker 1: to say yesterday was da Friday. CNN reported the Hegseth
Speaker 1: Gnome report will conclude border crossings are low lower and
Speaker 1: they do not need the additional authority provided by the
Speaker 1: Insurrection Act, you know, authority like suspending much of the
Speaker 1: constitution over a large part of the country, or effort
Speaker 1: over all of the country. I don't doubt the CNN reporting.
Speaker 1: I also don't doubt that if that's what they're going
Speaker 1: to do, it will enrage Trump and he might even
Speaker 1: fire Hegseth and Gnome and invoke the Act anyway, because
Speaker 1: the object of power is power, and Trump cannot process
Speaker 1: why these other carbon based life forms in the room
Speaker 1: with him would delay grabbing more power. As I said,
Speaker 1: he will do it or try it. If it be now,
Speaker 1: tis not to come. If it be not to come,
Speaker 1: it will be now. If it be not now yet,
Speaker 1: it will come. The readiness is all, Senator Murkowski. It
Speaker 1: is also clear I think that those in Trump's inner
Speaker 1: circle have recognized something is wrong with Trump, I mean
Speaker 1: extra wrong with him. You see it now in every
Speaker 1: public statement of fealty and those televised cabinet meetings that
Speaker 1: would make Kim Jong un blush. They are soft soaping
Speaker 1: him whenever possible. They are, so to speak, throwing small
Speaker 1: fish at his mouth to keep him happy and to
Speaker 1: keep him from trying to attack the peaquad. They are
Speaker 1: forcing him, or massaging him into doing a series of climbdowns.
Speaker 1: There's no mistaking it. He has even started some of
Speaker 1: the climbdowns himself. Iran is a climb down. The tariff
Speaker 1: disaster was in mismanagement, lies and changes. Of course, the
Speaker 1: twenty first century equivalent of how the Johnson administration managed
Speaker 1: Vietnam only condensed into like three weeks. They climbed down
Speaker 1: on it. They made money off the climb down, but
Speaker 1: they climbed down off of it. He's climbed down on
Speaker 1: Musk erratically. Sometimes there have been climbs back ups, but
Speaker 1: Musk is on the periphery. Again. There are even the
Speaker 1: vague shadows of a climb down about Ukraine, the attack
Speaker 1: on the universities climb down. Why would you admit the
Speaker 1: threatening letter to Harvard was sent without authorization If you
Speaker 1: didn't realize that Harvard had now decided to retaliate in
Speaker 1: a fight, it will win. This reported recommendation against the
Speaker 1: Insurrection Act, that's a climb down the National Intelligence Council.
Speaker 1: The Reader's Digest version of our eighteen intelligence agencies wrote
Speaker 1: a secret assessment earlier this month that no, sorry, sorry, Trump,
Speaker 1: Venezuela is not directing an invasion of the US and
Speaker 1: using the trend Deragua gang as its mercenaries, so Trump
Speaker 1: can't use that as his excuse to invoke the Alien
Speaker 1: Enemies Act. The whole attempt to stage manage Senator Van
Speaker 1: Holn's visit to see kilbar of Rego Garcia was a
Speaker 1: climb down. First of all, who decided to let Van
Speaker 1: Hollends see him after insisting he could not possibly be seen.
Speaker 1: Two countries were aligned against. Oh yeah, he's over there,
Speaker 1: go see him. Who made that decision? The dictator of
Speaker 1: Al Salvador, who draws his hair on Trump made the decision?
Speaker 1: Who thus confirmed to America that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is
Speaker 1: not dead or mutilated? Trump did that. Who tried to
Speaker 1: make it look like this guy was at a resort,
Speaker 1: passing the time chain, drinking bloody Mary's Trump did. Who
Speaker 1: has panicked over how this has turned out? Trump did?
Speaker 1: This is why Lisa Murkowski might be the most important
Speaker 1: person in this country right now, because Trump's people are
Speaker 1: experts in one thing, only making people afraid, by putting
Speaker 1: up a seemingly impregnable front, by insisting that one day
Speaker 1: rebounds by the stock market in the middle of a crash.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that's the single best day market history. By
Speaker 1: sending out Steven Miller to sound crazier and crazier, and
Speaker 1: for the sweat on his cue ball noggin to shine
Speaker 1: worse and worse under the TV lights. Never let him
Speaker 1: see his sweat, Steve. Oh sorry, I guess I should
Speaker 1: have told you that before. But inside the White House,
Speaker 1: the people who replaced the deep state suddenly have realized
Speaker 1: there's nobody left to do the things that the Trumpets
Speaker 1: are too incompetent to do, and those people have now
Speaker 1: been building a new deep state. But it is hardly
Speaker 1: all positive, because for every Lisa Murkowski over whose head
Speaker 1: not one light bulb went on, but all of the
Speaker 1: light bulbs in Times Square on New Year's Eve all
Speaker 1: went on at the same moment, Lisa's scared. It's hardly
Speaker 1: all positive because for every Lisa Murkowski, this truth is
Speaker 1: still true. Trump is not the only impaired, stupid person
Speaker 1: who has a chief power for its own sake, there
Speaker 1: is still Gavin Newsom. As I have said previously, I
Speaker 1: knew twenty years ago he was as John Madden wants
Speaker 1: dismissed a famous CBS sportscasting colleague of his. Just to
Speaker 1: hear do hell Newsom married Kimberly Gilfoyle, didn't he How
Speaker 1: stupid do you have to be to do that? Trump
Speaker 1: Junior didn't even do that? This disastrous. Gavin Interviews Satan's
Speaker 1: Minions podcast. This seems to have vanished, but not before
Speaker 1: it ended Gavin Newsom's career. I'm going to be president
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty a of my building association. But now
Speaker 1: after this, Gavin Newsom frankly should be recalled. California Democrats
Speaker 1: should start a recall petition and a recall election to
Speaker 1: remove their own Democratic governor because he's not a Democrat.
Speaker 1: He's also not a small D Democrat. He's an idiot.
Speaker 1: He thinks defending the Constitution and the people, including citizens
Speaker 1: of his own state, whom he has sworn an oath
Speaker 1: to protect. He thinks defending people from being disappeared is
Speaker 1: a political distraction, a distraction DuJour. And he said it
Speaker 1: in front of effing cameras.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a you know, this is the distraction of
Speaker 3: the day, the art of distraction. Don't get distracted by distractions,
Speaker 3: we say, and here we sing and zag. This is
Speaker 3: the debate they want. This is their eighty twenty issue,
Speaker 3: as they've described it. You know, those that believe in
Speaker 3: the rule of law defending it. But it's tough case
Speaker 3: because people are really are they defending MSR thirteen? Are
Speaker 3: they defending you know, someone who's out of sight out
Speaker 3: of mine in El Salvador. I mean, we're perfect sheep.
Speaker 3: So I want to answer your question. I don't know
Speaker 3: I add much value answering it. I mean, are you
Speaker 3: kidding me? When a judge adjudicates it's not a question,
Speaker 3: How in the hell are even debating that? It's Orwellian
Speaker 3: that you're debating that. And it's exactly the debate they
Speaker 3: want because they don't want this debate on the tariffs.
Speaker 3: They don't want to be accountable in the markets today.
Speaker 3: They don't want to answer for Nvidia taking a five
Speaker 3: point five billion dollar charge.
Speaker 1: They don't want to have a.
Speaker 3: Real conversation with Christine and what's going on in terms
Speaker 3: of the export uncertainty here in the valley. They want
Speaker 3: to have this conversation. Don't get distracted by distractions. We're
Speaker 3: all perfect sheep. Thank you guys very much.
Speaker 1: Fraud great, flaming, bone headed, power hungry, stupid Gavin fraud Newsom. Resign,
Speaker 1: mister Newsom, save us the trouble. Flee California, go to
Speaker 1: I don't care where you go, but do stop off
Speaker 1: in Michigan and pick up Gretchen Whitmer. Tell her no,
Speaker 1: she was right. If she puts a folder in front
Speaker 1: of her face at the White House and she can't
Speaker 1: see anybody, nobody can see her selling out her state,
Speaker 1: selling out her party, selling out her nation. Why don't
Speaker 1: you both resign and take a vacation, a nice trip,
Speaker 1: some nice warm place like to El Salvador. Maybe go
Speaker 1: have some Bloody Mary's with Bukela. Ask him how he
Speaker 1: draws his hair on. Oh, and before you go, identify
Speaker 1: and out whoever the House Democrat was who provided these
Speaker 1: next quotes to Axios. These House Democrats are specifically identified
Speaker 1: as Congressional Democrats. So the top suspects for this kind
Speaker 1: of quote, which would be Schumer and Fetterman and Newsome,
Speaker 1: they're out. It's none of them. I want to know
Speaker 1: who this is, and I want him or her primaried,
Speaker 1: because we don't put people in public stocks anymore. I
Speaker 1: don't care if this person changes parties and joins the
Speaker 1: Congressional Republican Caucus because he's a Republican anyway. And by
Speaker 1: the way, hell is coming for Republicans as it is.
Speaker 1: Here's the quote from Axios Reality Check. The sentiment within
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party about rallying behind deportees. They're not deportees,
Speaker 1: they're kidnapped victims. It's human trafficking. Deportation is a legal process.
Speaker 1: The sentiment, but then the party about rallying behind victims
Speaker 1: is not universal. The second House Democrat, who spoke anonymously,
Speaker 1: a centrist. Centrist is political ease for asshole. A centrist
Speaker 1: called the deportation issue a soup DuJour. Huh sounds kind
Speaker 1: of like what Gavin Newsom said, arguing Trump is setting
Speaker 1: a trap for the Democrats, and like usual, we're falling
Speaker 1: for it. Rather than talking about the tariff policy and
Speaker 1: the economy, the thing where his numbers are tanking, We're
Speaker 1: going to go take the bait for one hairdresser, they said,
Speaker 1: likely referring to Andre Hernandez Romero. Who could it be.
Speaker 1: Let's start with homophobic democrats in the House, bald homophobic
Speaker 1: democrats in the House. And let's also look for somebody
Speaker 1: who doesn't realize the great truth of America in the
Speaker 1: age of the Internet and in the age of hundreds
Speaker 1: of Democrats who are nationally known one way or the other.
Speaker 1: You want to talk about the tariff policy and the economy,
Speaker 1: and the constitutional rights and the disappearing of people off
Speaker 1: the streets. We can do all of this at the
Speaker 1: same time. You effing moron, launch four podcasts, one on
Speaker 1: each topic. There is, though some hope within the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: There are some Democrats to whom I listen rather than
Speaker 1: try to instruct, because they are smarter than I am
Speaker 1: and they know what they are doing. There is one
Speaker 1: who should be the Democratic leader in the Senate. One
Speaker 1: senator has done something very smart, or is going to
Speaker 1: do it. It's kind of in a twilight zone at
Speaker 1: the moment. He has soft pedaled this, I guess with
Speaker 1: the reason of why try to put this frontend center
Speaker 1: now and all the rest of this stuff about the
Speaker 1: Constitution is cresting right now. But this will be big
Speaker 1: when it hits. I haven't even seen a lot of
Speaker 1: coverage of this. The impeccable Scott MacFarland of CBS put
Speaker 1: it out, I haven't seen a lot of coverage of this.
Speaker 1: Who did this? Who should be the Senate majority or
Speaker 1: Minority leader and Majority leader when the time comes? Ed
Speaker 1: Marquis of Massachusetts. It's a simple sense of the Senate
Speaker 1: Resolution number one five four. All we have is the
Speaker 1: number and the title. But it has already been referred
Speaker 1: to the Committee on the Judiciary. It is, like all
Speaker 1: such resolutions, symbolic, but it proves again that you can
Speaker 1: draw a line in this sand and in the process
Speaker 1: use only thirty six words, one comma and a period.
Speaker 1: Sen Rez one, p. Fifty four from mister MARKI of
Speaker 1: Massachusetts quote a resolution expressing the sense of the Senate
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump is ineligible in any future elections to
Speaker 1: be elected Vice president or president, or to serve as
Speaker 1: president beyond the conclusion of his current term. Ed, You're
Speaker 1: goddamned right. This personal note. So I took last week's
Speaker 1: second episode off to catch up after these intestinal treatments
Speaker 1: that actually has been going really well, and the day
Speaker 1: I took off, I broke my foot, and I was
Speaker 1: in a doctor's office anyway. Well, not all of my foot,
Speaker 1: more like three quarters of an inch of my foot.
Speaker 1: But where's the drama in saying I broke three quarters
Speaker 1: of an inch of my foot. And I might add
Speaker 1: that's a total three quarters of an inch. There are
Speaker 1: two fractures, stress fractures. That's the approximate combined measurement of
Speaker 1: how much. How much is kind kind of broken, but
Speaker 1: it means therapy and office visits and meds and wraps
Speaker 1: and compression. And I've been through this before, my third
Speaker 1: and fourth stress fractures, and they appeared on April fifteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, the previous one, number two in the series,
Speaker 1: April fifteenth, twenty eleven, fourteen years to the day. I
Speaker 1: guess my goddamned warranty on my foot expired. It should
Speaker 1: not affect this podcast unless the little crack, the three
Speaker 1: quarters of an inch in total lengthen just a heads
Speaker 1: up for you or a foots up plus this hurts,
Speaker 1: I want sympathy. Also of interest, here in an all
Speaker 1: new edition, the memo from Hegseth the Gnome telling Trump
Speaker 1: not to invoke the Insurrection Act. This all depends on
Speaker 1: heg Seth still being Secretary of Defense later this week
Speaker 1: if you missed it, The Times reported last night he
Speaker 1: shared the bomber flight schedule times against the Huthis in
Speaker 1: Yemen on a different signal chat. This one included the
Speaker 1: missus Missus secretary of Vodka. Also on the chat his brother,
Speaker 1: who works at the Pentagon. I think maybe in the
Speaker 1: mail room, if they're smart, they'll fire Pete and replace
Speaker 1: him with his brother so they don't have to explain
Speaker 1: the change to Trump and they can still tell him
Speaker 1: it's still Secretary Hegseth, missus brother and lawyer on the chat,
Speaker 1: but surprisingly not Hegseeth's bartender. Also, Trump banning the Associated
Speaker 1: Press from the White House led me into a conversation
Speaker 1: about all the times I've been banned as a reporter,
Speaker 1: and the answer appears to be I've been banned eight times.
Speaker 1: And the Pennsylvania congressman whose heart goes out to Governor
Speaker 1: Shapiro because of that whole, you know, attempt to incinerate
Speaker 1: the governor and his family on passover. But says Congressman
Speaker 1: Dan Muser, he did kind of have it coming. Maybe
Speaker 1: next time he should tone it down and not criticize
Speaker 1: Trump and his policies. And if you think I'm kidding,
Speaker 1: it's on radio and thus it's on tape. And then
Speaker 1: he doubled down on Itchland Bland. That's next. This is Countdown.
Speaker 1: This his Countdown with Keith Olboman still ahead on this
Speaker 1: all new edition of Countdown with Trump moving into round
Speaker 1: two of trying to ban the Associated Press. You've come
Speaker 1: to the expert on this banning reporters? Bullshit? How many
Speaker 1: times have I been banned? You mean this century or
Speaker 1: in the nineteen hundreds? Next in things I've promised not
Speaker 1: to tell, and yet I am not the world record
Speaker 1: holder in getting banned from places first, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: there are still more new idiots to talk about. The
Speaker 1: roundup of the miss Green morons and Dunning Krueger effects
Speaker 1: specimens who constitute the latest other worst persons in the world,
Speaker 1: the brons worse. The guy with the musk cyber truck,
Speaker 1: that thing that, whatever else it does or doesn't do,
Speaker 1: looks broken. The guy who has one of these twenty
Speaker 1: first century forward edsuls without the charm, who parked it
Speaker 1: on seventy sixth Street in Manhattan, just off Second Avenue.
Speaker 1: Look you want to buy one of these, have fun.
Speaker 1: Our complaint isn't with you wasting your money and possibly
Speaker 1: having the thing blow up while you're driving it. It's
Speaker 1: with the psycho who owns the company and is raping
Speaker 1: the country all because he may or may not have
Speaker 1: had botched implant surgery. But you seventy sixth Street, sir,
Speaker 1: you have our condolences, but I must note you're going
Speaker 1: to increase your chances of being mocked if you do
Speaker 1: what you did and park it there and put on
Speaker 1: the back of your musk crapper truck a large decaal
Speaker 1: perhaps two feet wide in decal lengths reading in a
Speaker 1: script like font Girl Dad, Girl dad on the back
Speaker 1: of a muskmobile speaks for itself. Somebody called Child Protective Services.
Speaker 1: Look for the guy driving around with the cyber truck
Speaker 1: with girl dad on the back. He may be looking
Speaker 1: out the back window, or driving it in reverse or
Speaker 1: upside down, or how the hell could you tell? It
Speaker 1: looks broken? The runner up worser speaking of looking broken,
Speaker 1: Congressman Dan Mauser of Pennsylvania, who twisted the old cliche
Speaker 1: after the attack on the official residence of the governor
Speaker 1: of his own state, Dan Mauser, and I'm thinking I'm
Speaker 1: mispronouncing it. Yes, I am, It's it's Muser me e User, Muser.
Speaker 1: To twist the old cliche around, Congressman Muser praised the
Speaker 1: attack with faint condemnation. He's on one of those fascist
Speaker 1: radio shows where they keep playing music in the background
Speaker 1: during the interviews, just to add to the hypnotic. This
Speaker 1: is actually being emanated by the Mullahs in Iran. Quality.
Speaker 1: Here is an elected Pennsylvania congressman soft peddling an assassination
Speaker 1: attempt by fire of the governor of his own state.
Speaker 1: Absolutely awful. It needs to be condemned.
Speaker 5: But you know, it just kills me.
Speaker 1: And I hate to have to go back to this, but.
Speaker 5: There's been so many Testa dealerships, fire bomb there was
Speaker 5: a firebomb GOP headquarters out west and and and then
Speaker 5: and I meanwhile, you got you got those on the left,
Speaker 5: you know, continuing to you know, make a kind of
Speaker 5: you know, violent, type of hostile commentary, and this happens,
Speaker 5: and we all jump right on board, saying this is horrible,
Speaker 5: This needs to be condemned, but by all and you know,
Speaker 5: so the left got to you know, looking look in
Speaker 5: the mirror here too, and our hearts go out to
Speaker 5: the Shapiro family on this, but you know, they got it.
Speaker 5: They got to tone it down too. I mean, every
Speaker 5: action Josh Shapiro has taken so far against the president.
Speaker 1: Has either been a lawsuit or a falsehood.
Speaker 5: And you know that that's not helpful either, not helpful either.
Speaker 1: I had thought at first that mister Muser meant that
Speaker 1: liberals needed to tone it down, which is bullshit, but
Speaker 1: at least it's not psychotic bullshit. No, no, he literally
Speaker 1: meant Governor Shapiro was kind of asking for it, a
Speaker 1: point he made when because his passive aggressive advocacy of
Speaker 1: you know, burning the Jewish governor and his family to
Speaker 1: death on Passover. That's too much even for MAGA. Now,
Speaker 1: when he posted the by now obligatory Republican clarification for
Speaker 1: justifying attempted group murder, he doubled down on this idea
Speaker 1: that it really is Shapiro's fault. He cited the vandalism
Speaker 1: of Tesla's again. He cited the Trump assassination attempts again,
Speaker 1: a reminder, half of which were in fact conducted by
Speaker 1: Trump supporters. He said liberals had called his party fascists
Speaker 1: and Nazis, which I think is perfectly reasonable, since the
Speaker 1: President did keep Hitler's speeches by his bed at night,
Speaker 1: and he is acting as a fascist and Nazi would.
Speaker 1: But he doubled down on Shapiro having asked for it.
Speaker 1: His clean up quote was. What frustrates me is when
Speaker 1: leaders make outrageous false claims, like the governor stating President
Speaker 1: Trump's policies would make Pennsylvanians go hungry. We now know
Speaker 1: his claims were entirely inaccurate. I'm looking at both sides
Speaker 1: of the paper to see if there's more than just that. No,
Speaker 1: those are his rationalizations for this, because those things are
Speaker 1: cause and effect. Criticized Trump's policies about food kitchens, and
Speaker 1: what do you expect will happen? Somebody will try to
Speaker 1: incinerate you, and you blame MAGA for that. Just remember
Speaker 1: to never criticize Trump's policies again. What's the problem? And
Speaker 1: we won't fire bomb the official state residence for its
Speaker 1: governor again with you and your family in it. Probably
Speaker 1: And when I say we, oops, I misspoke, I meant
Speaker 1: they Representative Dan Muser pronounced like Muse, spelled like Mauser,
Speaker 1: like the rifles the Nazis used in World War Two.
Speaker 1: Just to keep it clear, it's Muser, but the winner
Speaker 1: the worst. It's a tie. Riley Gains, the one time
Speaker 1: fifth rate college swimmer who has turned being a sore
Speaker 1: loser into a full time profession. And Pam Bondi, a
Speaker 1: bubblehead who, under the definition of the term by her
Speaker 1: own employers the Trump administration, is herself a dei hire
Speaker 1: as Attorney General. I mentioned this, let me say it again.
Speaker 1: The home of the Governor Pennsylvania, a Jewish man was
Speaker 1: firebombed in the middle of the night on Passover with
Speaker 1: him and his family in it, by a man who
Speaker 1: later told authorities that he went into the house and
Speaker 1: looked for Governor Shapiro in hopes of killing him with
Speaker 1: a hammer because he didn't like Shapiro's politics and his religion.
Speaker 1: Open and shut hate crime, terrorism, perhaps assassination attempt and
Speaker 1: Attorney General Pam Blondie hasn't even devoted a minute to
Speaker 1: it publicly. Nothing might as well have said what the
Speaker 1: anti Semite blamed them, victim Congressman Muser said, But Attorney
Speaker 1: General Blondie and one of her twice a day appearances
Speaker 1: on the Fox News WAFFA through the weight of the
Speaker 1: Justice Department into the Shapiro case, new into any of
Speaker 1: the other crimes going on, into the President repeatedly violating
Speaker 1: the Constitution and the courts through the weight of her
Speaker 1: Justice Department into altering high school and college swimming records
Speaker 1: in Maine because there may have been one or two
Speaker 1: transgendered swimmers in competition there in the last twenty five years,
Speaker 1: might have been. The NCAA estimates there are ten transgendered
Speaker 1: athletes in all of college sports in the whole country. Ten.
Speaker 1: Maybe there is a transgender main swimmer. Maybe there's been
Speaker 1: one in two twenty five years. The odds would say
Speaker 1: it's about one hundred thousand to one against. But Riley Gaines,
Speaker 1: a mediocrity with extra eyelashes, once finished behind one of
Speaker 1: them in a swim meet and has thus turned herself
Speaker 1: into a living, breathing twenty four to seven martyr. And
Speaker 1: once again on Easter weekend, and this idiot Bondie goes
Speaker 1: on Fox and paints Riley Gaines as the Jesus of
Speaker 1: college swimmers. Quote.
Speaker 6: Dalley Gaines started training for swimming when she was four
Speaker 6: years old. She made it to the Olympics. Spoiler alert,
Speaker 6: Riley Gaines did not make it to the Olympics, and
Speaker 6: she had nothing to do with a transgender swimmer in
Speaker 6: her failure. The reason she didn't go.
Speaker 1: To the Olympics is for the fact that Riley gains sucks.
Speaker 1: The swim meet at which all of this began, At
Speaker 1: which all of this thinly veiled attack on transgender people began.
Speaker 1: When this dark undercurrent became overt was in March twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two at the NCAA Freestyle Championships. Leah Thomas of
Speaker 1: a University of Pennsylvania won. Lea Thomas was assigned mail
Speaker 1: at birth. Riley Gaines her life destroyed by Lea Thomas.
Speaker 1: Riley Gaines was in that meet too, and she finished
Speaker 1: fifth in the race that Lea Thomas won. Riley Gaines
Speaker 1: finished tied for fifth. If Lea Thomas had never existed
Speaker 1: or never transitioned, Riley Gaines would have finished fifth or
Speaker 1: maybe tied for fourth. And as to this idiocy by
Speaker 1: Attorney General Bondi, a parrot who happened to be in
Speaker 1: the right place at the time, at the right time
Speaker 1: as Matt Gates flamed out, Riley Gaines didn't go to
Speaker 1: the Olympics. She went to the Olympic Trials. She qualified
Speaker 1: for the twenty sixteen Olympic Trials, and at the twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen Olympic Trials she finished eighty fifth out of one
Speaker 1: hundred eighty fifth. She was invited then to try out
Speaker 1: for the twenty twenty four Olympic Trials and she didn't
Speaker 1: even make it past the qualifier event. Eighty fifth place
Speaker 1: was her Olympic best. Her Olympic record is closer to
Speaker 1: yours and mine than it is to people who have
Speaker 1: gone to the Olympics her career best. Her career best
Speaker 1: was the fifth place tied finish in the race won
Speaker 1: by Leah Thomas, the best she ever did. The day
Speaker 1: Riley Gaines became America's favorite fifth place martyr, the day
Speaker 1: she was denied finishing only one spot off the metal
Speaker 1: stand instead of two. Was the best she ever got
Speaker 1: in big time swimming. And it didn't have a guy
Speaker 1: damned thing to do with Leah Thomas or transgendered people
Speaker 1: or MAGA or Donald Trump or liberals or American culture.
Speaker 1: It had to do with the fact that Riley Gaines
Speaker 1: was a flash in the pan or a splash in
Speaker 1: the pool with at best eighty fifth place talent. The
Speaker 1: Attorney General lying about Riley Gains going to the Olympics
Speaker 1: is probably low on the list of this administration's lies,
Speaker 1: like I don't know number, just to pick a number
Speaker 1: at random. Number maybe eighty fifth this week. But this
Speaker 1: whole fake debate, this whole scapegoating and othering and persecuting
Speaker 1: transgendered people and the debate over their role in sports
Speaker 1: is legitimate. My friend doctor Renee Richards says, so says
Speaker 1: it should be debated. But it's about literally maybe a
Speaker 1: dozen athletes in this country. It's as if we started
Speaker 1: passing laws and threatening people and electing people over whether
Speaker 1: it's illegal, whether it should be a federal crime to
Speaker 1: let a baseball team somewhere use a pitcher who can
Speaker 1: pitch with his left arm and his right arm. It's
Speaker 1: literally that specific and small and stupid and resolvable. This
Speaker 1: whole debate is actually about one failure, Riley effing Gains,
Speaker 1: who's lucky she's always gotten out of the water and
Speaker 1: remembered not to try to live there. Riley Gains is
Speaker 1: being advocated for by another total human failure, Pam Blondie.
Speaker 1: Pam doj Bondie and Riley I was eighty fifth gains
Speaker 1: Today's other worst Worsens.
Speaker 4: In the World.
Speaker 1: Deh And finally, on this all new edition of Countdown,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about and talking with a friend about
Speaker 1: the banning of the Associated Press by the White House
Speaker 1: from the White House coverage, from the White House pool coverage,
Speaker 1: the ignoring of the court orders ordering that the Associated
Speaker 1: Press be permitted back into White House news coverage in
Speaker 1: place of the Daily Nazi or whoever they gave the
Speaker 1: ap space to. And I was thinking about the premise
Speaker 1: that this idiot ex softball player from Saint Anselm's College
Speaker 1: who is now the press folksperson and looks like she
Speaker 1: flunked out of an audition for the price, is right
Speaker 1: as a card girl that she's banned the Associated Press.
Speaker 1: I have, finally, after years of being the UPI guy
Speaker 1: who looked at all Associated Press people as sort of
Speaker 1: the enemy, I've become an Associated Press fan. They don't
Speaker 1: do a great job, but they rarely screw it up.
Speaker 1: That's about the most you could ask from the media
Speaker 1: at the moment. And in any event, I was thinking,
Speaker 1: we're talking about being banned as a reporter and my
Speaker 1: friend asked me, wait, you've been banned, haven't you? And
Speaker 1: I went, oh, my yes, And so to the number
Speaker 1: one story on our countdown, Me and banishment. The number
Speaker 1: of times I have been banned as a member of
Speaker 1: the media, or I guess in other contexts, sometimes by
Speaker 1: the media, sometimes as the media, and they all make
Speaker 1: fairly entertaining stories, but of course you'll be the judge
Speaker 1: of that. I think the first time I was ever banned,
Speaker 1: I was at KTLA in Los Angeles as the sports
Speaker 1: director of the station that carried the games of the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. You have to understand that
Speaker 1: as competitive as the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team has
Speaker 1: been in the last few years and how they have
Speaker 1: expunged their ownership disaster of the racist Donald Sterling, this
Speaker 1: was right after they moved to Los Angeles from San Diego,
Speaker 1: and they were the worst team in professional sports and
Speaker 1: one of the worst teams in professional sports history. I
Speaker 1: have the record in front of me of how they
Speaker 1: performed on the court the first three years that I
Speaker 1: worked at the station that carried their games, and I
Speaker 1: did not feel like I was obligated to make excuses
Speaker 1: for them because the first year, they played eighty two
Speaker 1: games and lost fifty of them and finished in fourth place.
Speaker 1: This would turn out to be not just the high point,
Speaker 1: but the high point by basically double. The next year,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six eighty seven, the Los Angeles Clippers played
Speaker 1: eighty two games and lost seventy of them. They went
Speaker 1: twelve and seventy. That's not very good. You only win
Speaker 1: twelve times in a season that stretches from October into April.
Speaker 1: It was a long winter. And then the last year
Speaker 1: that I worked at their station, more or less eighty
Speaker 1: seven eighty eight, they improved from twelve and seventy to
Speaker 1: seventeen and sixty five. So there was a bad team there,
Speaker 1: and they did stupid, stupid things, and many of them
Speaker 1: were on the court, but it seemed like more of
Speaker 1: them were off the court. And I used to upbraid
Speaker 1: them every night, and I often when they were on
Speaker 1: our air and the Lakers of Los Angeles were playing
Speaker 1: on the same night, I would lead the sportscast with
Speaker 1: the Lakers highlights. Now, if the Clippers won, which, as
Speaker 1: you can tell from those numbers I just gave you,
Speaker 1: was not very often, I would lead with them as
Speaker 1: in my God, the Clippers won. Let's look at these
Speaker 1: highlights before they disappear. Needless to say, at Clipper HQ,
Speaker 1: they were not fond of me. Many attempts were made
Speaker 1: to get me what would be the right word fired.
Speaker 1: But finally, after one incident in I think nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: the then president of the team, his name was Allan
Speaker 1: something I can't remember. He went on to be involved
Speaker 1: in soccer, suspended me, banned me from covering the Clippers.
Speaker 1: And the incident was this, one of the players children
Speaker 1: died in a tragic accident in a swimming pool, and
Speaker 1: the Clippers for weeks had been rumored to be firing
Speaker 1: their head coach, and an announcement was going to be
Speaker 1: made finally about this poor guy who'd been twisting in
Speaker 1: the wind, as the next administration would have called it.
Speaker 1: They were going to announce this on Wednesday, and then
Speaker 1: on Tuesday night there was this tragedy involving or Tuesday
Speaker 1: during the day sometime one of the players children, and
Speaker 1: the Clippers used this as a reason not to hold
Speaker 1: the news conference about the coach. They canceled the news
Speaker 1: conference about the coach, citing humanitarian reasons. And respect for
Speaker 1: the tragedy. And they didn't postpone it. They didn't say
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a moment of silence at it. They
Speaker 1: didn't say, Okay, it's not gonna be Wednesday, will do
Speaker 1: it Thursday. They canceled it. And they never had a
Speaker 1: press conference about this poor coach. They just issued a
Speaker 1: press release saying this guy who they had leaked about
Speaker 1: every day for weeks, that he was terrible and he
Speaker 1: was the problem, and they were going to fire him.
Speaker 1: All these stories coming out. It went on for day
Speaker 1: after day after day and week after week, and this
Speaker 1: poor guy who'd been in the NBA since I don't know,
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, had had to read about himself this
Speaker 1: way every day in the papers and couldn't say anything
Speaker 1: because if he did, they'd fire him for cause and
Speaker 1: not owe him any money. The cause being speaking to
Speaker 1: the media without alle authorization. He had to read that
Speaker 1: he was about to be fired, and here was going
Speaker 1: to be the news conference at least which he'd be
Speaker 1: able to stand up and say something about it, even
Speaker 1: if it was just thanks for the opportunity to restore
Speaker 1: the image of himself as a human being and not
Speaker 1: the cause of this disastrous franchisees disasters. Instead of there
Speaker 1: being a news conference, he had to read finally, he
Speaker 1: had been fired in a one page press release. And
Speaker 1: also no press conference meant the coach not only couldn't
Speaker 1: meet the press and say whatever he wanted to say
Speaker 1: about the Clippers and Clippers management such as it was.
Speaker 1: And I always suspected the Clippers were run by a
Speaker 1: couple of lawn chairs, not guys in lawn chairs, run
Speaker 1: by actual lawn chairs. The Clippers could avoid any questions
Speaker 1: about how they fired this guy, but only after leaking
Speaker 1: for weeks and destroying his reputation. And they could avoid
Speaker 1: any questions about how in a city like Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: with the amount of money this guy Stirling had who
Speaker 1: owned them, they could win only twenty nine games over
Speaker 1: two seasons? How'd you do? Played one hundred and sixty games?
Speaker 1: How'd you do one twenty nine of them? Can't have
Speaker 1: that news conference out of respect? Well, I said, there
Speaker 1: may have been an element of respect to it, but
Speaker 1: that principally the Clippers had exploited the child's death to
Speaker 1: avoid holding a news conference. It was an excuse. They
Speaker 1: didn't plan it. It wasn't their responsibility, but they saw
Speaker 1: the opportunity to not have to face the media or
Speaker 1: let this coach face the media. That it was cheap,
Speaker 1: that it was irresponsible, that it insulted their player at
Speaker 1: a time of tragedy, that insulted his family, insulted his grief,
Speaker 1: insulted the child's passing, and that it was like everything
Speaker 1: else the Clippers had ever done, just another excuse. And
Speaker 1: the Clippers erupted in ray, how dare you invoke this
Speaker 1: poor man's dead child? And I was like, well, no,
Speaker 1: you did that. That's what I was complaining about, and
Speaker 1: they bann. I got a letter saying you are hereby
Speaker 1: banned from all games and practices of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Speaker 1: And in a PostScript from the president of this team
Speaker 1: to the general manager, one of the all time great
Speaker 1: basketball players for the LA Clippers, for the LA Lakers,
Speaker 1: but then general manager of the LA Clippers, Elgin Baylor,
Speaker 1: ps Elgin, make sure he's taken off the mailing list too.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh no, what am I going to do
Speaker 1: without the press releases about the latest promotional night when
Speaker 1: they're giving away socks? Well, of course number one, I
Speaker 1: should point out with glee that what the result of
Speaker 1: that PostScript was was that I started to receive two
Speaker 1: of everything on the mailing list because whoever Elgin Baylor
Speaker 1: told to remove me from the Clipper publicity mailing list
Speaker 1: got it wrong and added my name a second time.
Speaker 1: And as to the suspension and the denial of the
Speaker 1: privilege of attending Clippers practices or games, as I wrote
Speaker 1: back to the president of the team, you have made
Speaker 1: me the envy of every other reporter in town. I
Speaker 1: have been asked by my colleagues how they can be
Speaker 1: suspended from Clipper basketball, hopefully for life. So that was
Speaker 1: my first experience with the attempt to ban me from
Speaker 1: somewhere or from some team or from something. It was
Speaker 1: hilarious and needless to say, I put it on KTLA
Speaker 1: Channel five News at ten, and they liked me even less.
Speaker 1: The next time I think I was banned was after
Speaker 1: I worked for ESPN. The first time. I actually left
Speaker 1: ESPN in nineteen ninety seven under pretty good circumstances, given
Speaker 1: that they had stupidly, as they later admitted, suspended me
Speaker 1: over a joke I made about the city of Bristol,
Speaker 1: Connecticut and what was supposedly an unauthorized appearance on the
Speaker 1: Craig Kilbourne Show to promote a book for which they'd
Speaker 1: given me universal permission to promote the book that Dan
Speaker 1: Patrick and I had written about sports Center that got
Speaker 1: to the New York Times bestseller list and added to
Speaker 1: the patina of ESPN and Sports Center. Even as I
Speaker 1: was leaving it, I left to go somewhere else. We
Speaker 1: agreed on that it was mutual. As I went out
Speaker 1: the door, we reconsidered the possibility of my doing one
Speaker 1: show a week for them as long as they would
Speaker 1: let me work somewhere else full time. They thought about
Speaker 1: it and then decided against it. And when I left
Speaker 1: under those circumstances, the vice president in charge of things there,
Speaker 1: Howard Katz, said, look, we can't make this work. It's
Speaker 1: not going to work. If we let people work on
Speaker 1: other networks, we can't control you. And I said, truer
Speaker 1: words have never been spoken. But he said, if you
Speaker 1: want to come on as a guest on an ESPN
Speaker 1: show or on radio, we'd love to have you. Good
Speaker 1: luck on the new gig at NBC. What happened was
Speaker 1: that blew it up and then turned it into nuclear war.
Speaker 1: Was an ESPN executive decided in the fall of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, after I left to leak the ratings of
Speaker 1: my new MSNBC show, which were then almost non existent
Speaker 1: because it was a terrible show and a new show
Speaker 1: on a new network, to the USA Today sports media writer,
Speaker 1: who of course promptly called me up and told me
Speaker 1: that this executive had done that. This kind of enraged me,
Speaker 1: so I took shot after shot at ESPN, and I
Speaker 1: did it publicly, and this led to them saying he
Speaker 1: didn't just burn the bridges, he napalmed them. And I said, no,
Speaker 1: that's insufficient. I didn't just burn the bridges. I burned
Speaker 1: the river, and on and on it went. Years later,
Speaker 1: perhaps two thousand and five, it was some of those
Speaker 1: same executives called and asked me to help Dan Patrick out.
Speaker 1: His radio show was not doing well. They thought he
Speaker 1: was overworked and needed a spark. They wanted it to
Speaker 1: do better, they knew it could. He just seemed uninspired,
Speaker 1: and they thought if they brought me on for an
Speaker 1: hour a week, and later an hour a day, he
Speaker 1: would perk up. He did, and I think the radio
Speaker 1: show that he took out on his own in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven has largely succeeded because he perked up.
Speaker 1: Things were at a pivotal moment in his career at
Speaker 1: that point. I'm not claiming credit for his show, or
Speaker 1: his work or his success. That's all his. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying that at a critical moment, it was bad enough
Speaker 1: that the ESPN people who were furious at me, and
Speaker 1: it was still nuclear war, and I'd gone to work
Speaker 1: for competition against them that was trying to do a
Speaker 1: Fox version of SportsCenter and constantly made fun of ESPN
Speaker 1: whenever I could, and got Fox's name and Fox Sports
Speaker 1: News into every story about ESPN. I did that job terrifically,
Speaker 1: I might add, although the ratings were terrible. In the
Speaker 1: middle of that, they called and asked me to help out,
Speaker 1: and I said yes. And that was largely the end
Speaker 1: of the active shooting in that war. However, at some
Speaker 1: point I said, maybe, if you want to have real fun,
Speaker 1: why don't I come up there and do a couple
Speaker 1: of shows in person and with him, And the executive
Speaker 1: in charge said, and this is two thousand and six probably,
Speaker 1: he said, well, we can't do that. You've been banned
Speaker 1: from the ESPN campus. And I said, I have, And
Speaker 1: apparently this was well known at ESPN, and I later
Speaker 1: found out by many people in the industry. Folks at
Speaker 1: NBC knew it, and nobody told me because they thought
Speaker 1: my reaction was going to be violent. I went to
Speaker 1: somebody at NBC Sports who knew about this and had
Speaker 1: known about this, and apparently it had been done ten
Speaker 1: years earlier, and nobody told me. And I said, what's
Speaker 1: the point of suspending me or banning me from a place?
Speaker 1: They banned me from campus and told you, but you
Speaker 1: didn't tell me. What's the point of it. It's the
Speaker 1: Doctor Strange love line about the doomsday device. What's the
Speaker 1: point of having an automatic nuclear weapon if you don't
Speaker 1: tell anybody that you have it. What's the point of
Speaker 1: banning a guy from a campus if you don't tell him?
Speaker 1: And they said, well, oh, they didn't want to exacerbate
Speaker 1: the situation further, and blah blah blah, And I said,
Speaker 1: but banning me from a television studio in the middle
Speaker 1: of Bristol, Connecticut, that is itself a ten or twelve
Speaker 1: minute drive from the nearest line highway line that is
Speaker 1: wider than two lanes, what was the chance that I
Speaker 1: was going to go there anyway? Did they think I
Speaker 1: was going to stop by for some nostalgia. The only
Speaker 1: time between nineteen ninety seven when I left ESPN and
Speaker 1: went back to work there in two thousand and eighteen,
Speaker 1: the only time I came within a fifteen minute drive
Speaker 1: of actually getting to the campus from which I had
Speaker 1: been banned. The only time was when I was being
Speaker 1: chauffeured in a limo from Boston to New York for
Speaker 1: Fox for a baseball broadcast in which I would be
Speaker 1: in the dugout for Fox during the World Series. Because
Speaker 1: my banishment from the ESPN campus had caused me such
Speaker 1: professional collapse. Needless to say, my ban from the Bristol
Speaker 1: campus was removed, and all of those problems, the nuclear
Speaker 1: war was not only ended but paved over, and I
Speaker 1: went back to work with The Dan Patrick Show in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, and then I went back to
Speaker 1: work full time in twenty thirteen for ESPN, and it
Speaker 1: turned out that the nuclear war and the forever wars
Speaker 1: between Olderman and Bristol lasted sixteen years. In fact, I
Speaker 1: went back to work for ESPN another time twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and my most recent sports forays for the fan duel
Speaker 1: sports network that's all run by three or four executives
Speaker 1: who rehired me at ESPN twice. So that's how that
Speaker 1: banishment ended. I think I have been banned from the
Speaker 1: press box at Yankee Stadium at least when I'm not
Speaker 1: on assignment from a network, and that's not likely to
Speaker 1: happen again. I went back without incident a couple of times,
Speaker 1: but when I have gone on to the field at
Speaker 1: Yankee Stadium, there's been a guard standing behind home plate
Speaker 1: who was only responsibility for that day was to make
Speaker 1: sure I did not come near the Yankee dugout like
Speaker 1: I was going to firebomb it or something. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that was all about. I do know, and
Speaker 1: I will tell you why they banned me, but I
Speaker 1: do know that it was an incredible surprise to them
Speaker 1: that after they banned me and stopped giving me sort
Speaker 1: of courtesy credentials to the press box to just sit
Speaker 1: there even when I wasn't on assignment for a particular game,
Speaker 1: access to the field, when I wasn't working for ESPN
Speaker 1: or NBC or Fox. That that was that preceded my
Speaker 1: decision to stop buying season tickets at Yankee Stadium after
Speaker 1: forty one years of my father and I buying season
Speaker 1: tickets there, and they were surprised that I stopped spending it.
Speaker 1: And this amount was in the six figures, and they
Speaker 1: were shocked that I stopped buying the tickets. And for
Speaker 1: eight or nine years after this, the Yankee He's kept
Speaker 1: sending me letters and emails and phone calls. Hi, I'm
Speaker 1: the new season ticket director. We know that you miss
Speaker 1: your Yankee tickets. And I went, I'm not going back there.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't go back there if you paid me to
Speaker 1: sit there. And in fact, I have vowed and still
Speaker 1: maintain that I will never walk into Yankee Stadium having
Speaker 1: paid for the privilege of going in there again. You
Speaker 1: pay me to go there, it's a job, I'll go
Speaker 1: and do that. So what precipitated this was and I
Speaker 1: need to set this up by saying I did indeed
Speaker 1: take over the season tickets at Yankee Stadium from my dad,
Speaker 1: mostly for my mom's edification in I think nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: So I paid for the season tickets for thirty seasons
Speaker 1: from when they were seventeen dollars a ticket to when
Speaker 1: they were twenty five hundred dollars a ticket. Most of
Speaker 1: those high end tickets went to the Make a Wish
Speaker 1: Foundation and other charities. But that's the point. And one
Speaker 1: of the things they used to have me do was
Speaker 1: on Old Timer I used to assist the late great
Speaker 1: announcer Bob Wolf, who would sit there during Old Timers
Speaker 1: Day at Yankee Stadium when they bring back the old players,
Speaker 1: and I would help him do the play by play
Speaker 1: of the game. And it was a fun game just
Speaker 1: to see the old timers pitch and swing and try
Speaker 1: to run and hopefully not trip over the bag at
Speaker 1: first base. And I was Bob's friend, and he relied
Speaker 1: on me for things he couldn't see in the corners
Speaker 1: in the outfield. And I did this for ten years
Speaker 1: and it was great fun. Those were my Yankee players
Speaker 1: and the guys I liked the most. And it's there's
Speaker 1: no reason to be fanciful about this or to undersell it.
Speaker 1: It's a hoot to get on the public address system
Speaker 1: at Yankee Stadium and talk to forty or fifty thousand people.
Speaker 1: And one day the Yankees fired me from that job
Speaker 1: by leaking that news to the New York Post. The
Speaker 1: Yankees were mad at me because I had found a
Speaker 1: guy sitting near me in the front row who was
Speaker 1: signaling to Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees what the speed
Speaker 1: and the nature of the preceding pitch had been, because
Speaker 1: where he stood on the other side of me. This
Speaker 1: guy was sitting on one side of me, and Alex
Speaker 1: Rodriguez was standing in the on deck circle on the
Speaker 1: other side of me. Almost a line bisecting this line
Speaker 1: was my seat. He was telling Alex Rodriguez what that
Speaker 1: last pitch was, because Alex Rodriguez, being perhaps the highest
Speaker 1: paid player in baseball at the time, couldn't figure it
Speaker 1: out on the field what that was and how fast
Speaker 1: it was. And I took a picture of this and
Speaker 1: published it, and it became a huge story, and the
Speaker 1: Yankees literally got a handslap, and they assured me there'd
Speaker 1: be no ramifications. And then right before Old Timer's Day
Speaker 1: they dropped me as the Old Timer's Day color announcer
Speaker 1: in the PA system. So, of course, not being one
Speaker 1: who would leave well enough alone under any circumstances, when
Speaker 1: the next Yankee controversy arose, and I still had a
Speaker 1: column that appeared on the MLB website MLB dot com.
Speaker 1: I meant mention that I didn't think Yankee management was
Speaker 1: quite what it used to be. That when it was
Speaker 1: my late friend George Steinbrenner running the place, there were
Speaker 1: lots of things wrong, and I like to point out
Speaker 1: what they were, but efficiency and fairly good management skills,
Speaker 1: and certainly an idea of when to stir the pot
Speaker 1: and when not to stir the pot that was pretty
Speaker 1: well done by George his son Hal. I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: that Hal Steinbrenner, as I said, was well. The phrasing
Speaker 1: was I'm going to need to see a paternity test.
Speaker 1: For some reason. The Yankees responded to this by banning
Speaker 1: me from the press box at Yankee Stadium, So there's
Speaker 1: that one. The Yankees then helped ban me from the
Speaker 1: MLB network when MLB Network offered me a job in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, a story I've told here many times. They
Speaker 1: were going to give me a show, and then the
Speaker 1: Yankees found out about it, and the message, as I
Speaker 1: understood it, was, if you even talked to him further
Speaker 1: about this, we will shut off all the MLB network
Speaker 1: equipment in Yankee Stadium and we will not help fund
Speaker 1: the network any further so that when my agent got
Speaker 1: on the phone with the president of MLB Network, who
Speaker 1: is going to make the offer? When he said and so,
Speaker 1: how about Keith, the guy literally went silent, not I
Speaker 1: can't talk about it, Not we have to withdraw the offer.
Speaker 1: He literally did what the Yankees told him to do,
Speaker 1: to do, do not talk about this again. He took
Speaker 1: it perhaps a little too literally. So I got banned
Speaker 1: from MLB Network, which is kind of unfortunate for one
Speaker 1: reason only, which is that MLB Network is although they
Speaker 1: will be moving apparently, MLB Network is located in what
Speaker 1: was the original MSNBC studio, So going back there was
Speaker 1: always like this time travel thing, because everything was the
Speaker 1: same except the eighty or ninety million dollars they spent
Speaker 1: on improving the studios and the control rooms, all the
Speaker 1: technical guts of the place they spent money on that.
Speaker 1: They literally did not change the signs on the backs
Speaker 1: of the bathroom doors that told you what number to
Speaker 1: call in case the john overflowed. All they did was
Speaker 1: changed the extension, and they did this by taping a
Speaker 1: piece of paper with the new number over the actual plaque.
Speaker 1: They did not spend the three dollars on the plaque.
Speaker 1: I always found this entertaining, and the whole experience was
Speaker 1: like having a dream about your childhood home, and everything
Speaker 1: is exactly the same, down to each creak of each floorboard,
Speaker 1: except for the fact that in the middle of your
Speaker 1: living room there's a nuclear reactor that you never noticed before.
Speaker 1: Now I can't go there anymore because the Yankees banned
Speaker 1: me from MLB network. Similarly, I believe I've been banned
Speaker 1: by MSNBC. If they haven't banned me, they can give
Speaker 1: me a buzz. We could stop by and maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: join forces, which is what I would do if I
Speaker 1: was in the business of being anti Trump and there
Speaker 1: was an anti Trump asset out there who was familiar
Speaker 1: to my audiodians, who was willing to not even address
Speaker 1: the subject of bygones be bygones, but just ignore them
Speaker 1: because we have a bigger mutual enemy. You know, the
Speaker 1: Americans and the Soviet Union were allies during the Second
Speaker 1: World War, and then as soon as that was over,
Speaker 1: they went back to threatening to blow each other and
Speaker 1: the world to bits. I think that could be the
Speaker 1: relationship with MSNBC. But I've been banned by them. I
Speaker 1: may have been banned by CNN. Jeff Zucker insisted I
Speaker 1: was banned as a possible host, but not as a guest.
Speaker 1: But I was in fact booked and then canceled by
Speaker 1: a CNN show several years ago so that I might
Speaker 1: be banned by CNN. I know I've been banned by
Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert because I caught Stephen Colbert, who is a
Speaker 1: reprehensible human being, hiding behind a smile. Stephen Colbert changed,
Speaker 1: or had somebody change or somebody in management changed the
Speaker 1: introduction to a pre taped bit that I did for
Speaker 1: him that wasn't fun. But I came over in the
Speaker 1: morning and did this bit for him, and he changed
Speaker 1: the intro. The intro that I heard as he introduced
Speaker 1: me was, here's the man who's had more jobs than
Speaker 1: you've had hot dinners. Keith Olderman and I played some
Speaker 1: sort of stupid game that they pre taped in the morning.
Speaker 1: When I saw it on the air that night, the
Speaker 1: introduction was, here's a man who's been fired or suspended
Speaker 1: or thrown out of more jobs and you've had hot dinners.
Speaker 1: They changed it, and they changed it after I left
Speaker 1: the building, and I called him a weasel, and I
Speaker 1: called him a weasel in public places, and then that
Speaker 1: was the end of my Stephen Colbert career, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, I wasn't going to go back anyway. I
Speaker 1: assume I have been banned by Madison Square Garden. I
Speaker 1: have hit up the owner of the New York Nixon Rangers,
Speaker 1: the trumpist James Dolan, several times for being generally a
Speaker 1: slob and a guy who delights in humiliating the people
Speaker 1: who pay his team's salaries, the customers. Ironic that because
Speaker 1: it was his brother who with whom I worked at
Speaker 1: CNN for many years, Pat Dolan, who was then in
Speaker 1: charge now of Cable Town or whatever it is that
Speaker 1: they owned and made all their money off of because
Speaker 1: they were in this unprofitable business when it suddenly became
Speaker 1: the only thing in town. Now that's my history, and
Speaker 1: it's obviously twenty five minutes worth of history. I've been
Speaker 1: banned a lot, that's me. But I will say this,
Speaker 1: for all the banning that has happened to me, I
Speaker 1: need you to know this is true. I know a newscaster,
Speaker 1: a late newscaster with whom I worked early in my career,
Speaker 1: who was banned from going into the state of Maryland. Later,
Speaker 1: when I went into television, I discovered a sportscaster who
Speaker 1: was also banned from going into the state of Maryland.
Speaker 1: And the punchline to this is the two men unrelated
Speaker 1: both had the same name. I don't mean they both
Speaker 1: had the same first name. I mean they had the
Speaker 1: same professional name. One was the newscaster or such and such,
Speaker 1: and the other was the sportscaster such and such. So
Speaker 1: I believe the state of Maryland has some sort of
Speaker 1: law making it illegal for people with that name to
Speaker 1: enter the state. Now that's being banned, I've done all
Speaker 1: the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening
Speaker 1: and for not banning me. The Clippers one is still
Speaker 1: the best. Oh No, I can't go to see the
Speaker 1: worst team in professional sports. What will I do? I
Speaker 1: had never gone to any of their games or practices.
Speaker 1: Who would go to see their practice other than to
Speaker 1: try to confirm this team practices practice? We're talking about practice.
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, the musical directors have
Speaker 1: countdown who barely need practice. Arrange produced and performed most
Speaker 1: of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister
Speaker 1: Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. He did
Speaker 1: all his practicing when he was a kid. It was
Speaker 1: produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
Speaker 1: are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
Speaker 1: The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
Speaker 1: written by Mitch Warren Davis and courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Speaker 1: From whose campus I am not banned other music, Well,
Speaker 1: I better check that other music arranged and performed by
Speaker 1: the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my
Speaker 1: friend from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and Airplane
Speaker 1: Jonathan Banks. Everything else was as ever my band self fault.
Speaker 1: That's countdown for today, Just three hundred and seventy one
Speaker 1: days until the scheduled end of his lane duck and
Speaker 1: lame brained term, unless Musk removes him sooner, or the
Speaker 1: actuarial tables do, or Lisa Murkowski does. I'm telling a
Speaker 1: senator the world is in your hands. The next scheduled
Speaker 1: countdown is Thursday. If I don't break anything else or
Speaker 1: get sick again. As always bulletins, as the news warrants,
Speaker 1: remember impeach Trump. It will not work now, it will
Speaker 1: win the Democrats the midterms, and I want polling right
Speaker 1: now on a presidential recall vote, just to see how
Speaker 1: pissed off everybody really is. Until next time, I'm Keith Olrimman.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck Ted. Stevie.
Speaker 1: Do you want to treat? Do you want to treat?
Speaker 1: Tell me? Do you want to treat? Yes or no?
Speaker 1: Do you want to treat? Thank you Rose? Do you
Speaker 1: want to treat.
Speaker 6: Kit? Oh?
Speaker 1: Kitty Kit? Do you want to treat?
Speaker 6: Kit?
Speaker 1: Doesn't know how to bark? Hit for treats, Stevie, Stevie does. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna stop recording now you can stop barking. Countdown
Speaker 1: with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts