Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: is not difficult. Justice Samuel Alito must be off the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court of the United States immediately today. He is
Speaker 1: a man without any morals, ethics, judicial standards, and if
Speaker 1: he is aware of the concept of the appearance of
Speaker 1: the conflict of interest, he no longer gives a damn
Speaker 1: about the appearance of a conflict of interest. He is
Speaker 1: one of the people destroying this nation. He should not
Speaker 1: be allowed to park near the Supreme Court, let alone
Speaker 1: serve on it. ABC News reports, and Alito actually has
Speaker 1: confirmed that on Tuesday he spoke to Trump the day
Speaker 1: before Trump's lawyers filed an emergency request demanding that Alito
Speaker 1: and the other justices block a state judge, New York
Speaker 1: State Judge jan mere Shan from sentencing Trump tomorrow for
Speaker 1: his thirty four convictions in the election interference Stormy Daniel's case. Here,
Speaker 1: even though there is zero percent chance of jail time
Speaker 1: and probably not much more of chances of probation or fine,
Speaker 1: the convicted felon and constitutionally ineligible president elect who is
Speaker 1: running because Alito in the Supreme Court made up a
Speaker 1: new interpretation of an amendment that has never before been made,
Speaker 1: and then made up something called presidential immunity. He still
Speaker 1: has the TikTok case in front of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Now he will probably take the release of either or
Speaker 1: both of the halves of the Jack Smith report on
Speaker 1: Trump espionage the coup attempt to the Supreme Court in
Speaker 1: the next few days to try to keep those reports
Speaker 1: from ever seeing the light of day. And this human
Speaker 1: embodiment of sleas Sam effing Alito talked to him by
Speaker 1: phone less than forty eight hours ago. And what is
Speaker 1: Alito's excuse for this complete breach of judicial etiquette? Alito
Speaker 1: told ABC the conversation was not about that case, was
Speaker 1: not about that case that was not filed till the
Speaker 1: next morning. It was about a job reference. I'll quote
Speaker 1: what he told ABC. Quote William Levi, one of my
Speaker 1: former law clerks, asked me to take a call from
Speaker 1: President elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a
Speaker 1: government position. I agreed to discuss this matter with President
Speaker 1: elect Trump, and he called me yesterday Tuesday afternoon. We
Speaker 1: did not discuss the emergency application filed today Wednesday, And
Speaker 1: indeed I was not even aware at that time of
Speaker 1: our conversation that such an application would be filed as
Speaker 1: an aside. That makes Aledo stupid. On top of everything else,
Speaker 1: we also did not discuss any other matter that is
Speaker 1: pending or might in the future come before the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: or any past Supreme Court decisions involving the President elect.
Speaker 1: Sam Alito to ABC News unquote bullshit. Sam Alito has
Speaker 1: lied in the case of the political flags flown over
Speaker 1: his homes and his conflict with his neighbors. He has
Speaker 1: publicly complained that the American public has had the nerve
Speaker 1: to disagree with him. He has imposed his religious nut
Speaker 1: job cult views on cases before the court. There is
Speaker 1: an argument that he has long since passed the Chief
Speaker 1: Justice at the time of the Court's affirmation of slavery,
Speaker 1: Roger B. Tawney as the worst human ever to sit
Speaker 1: on that court a job reference a job for one
Speaker 1: of his former clerks in Trump's administration, while Trump has
Speaker 1: business before the Court and more to come. Even if
Speaker 1: this far fetched excuse is somehow true, how could you
Speaker 1: talk directly to Trump with cases coming before the court
Speaker 1: centering on Trump to say nothing of cases to come
Speaker 1: in the years ahead, where you have essentially asked Trump
Speaker 1: to hire your former law clerk. It looks like the
Speaker 1: first half of a bribe. If you did it, that's
Speaker 1: what they'd say about you. How could he be so dense,
Speaker 1: so unaware of the hatred he has personally brought down
Speaker 1: upon this once most respected of American governmental institutions. As
Speaker 1: to conduct that call now thirteen days before the inaugural
Speaker 1: I mean, this would be cheap and petty and obvious
Speaker 1: and horrish, and a conflict of interest, or at least,
Speaker 1: at best, the appearance of a conflict of interest, even
Speaker 1: judged against Trump's conduct. That's how bad this is. This
Speaker 1: is not difficult. Recusing is insufficient here he must be
Speaker 1: off the court. In point of fact, Alito should in
Speaker 1: this order recuse, resign, and go to hell. And this
Speaker 1: also is not difficult. Eileen Cannon, Trump's other concier's judge
Speaker 1: ruled the DOJ can't release Smith's report on the espionage
Speaker 1: and Stolen Secret Documents report in the case, which she
Speaker 1: herself threw out corruptly. That report is still nominally vaguely
Speaker 1: in her purview, but probably not. But she also wanted
Speaker 1: and still wants to throw out the Smith investigation report
Speaker 1: of Trump's involvement in the attempted revolution January sixth. The
Speaker 1: solution here is far easier than in the case of
Speaker 1: sam Alito. Oh, He's only talking to him about a job.
Speaker 1: The solution here is far easier. Ignore Eileen Cannon, to
Speaker 1: his very small credit. Merrick Garland is going to release
Speaker 1: the January sixth part of Smith's final report on Trump,
Speaker 1: but withhold the document's part until a final court ruling. Doubtless,
Speaker 1: Trump and his legal whores will go to the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court and try to at least run out the clock
Speaker 1: on the January sixth stuff, just as they have gone
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court to try to run out the
Speaker 1: clock on the sentencing in the Trump election interference Stormy
Speaker 1: Daniels case. Here in New York, an internal Department of
Speaker 1: Justice report has nothing to god damned do with a
Speaker 1: case that no longer exists because the judge threw it
Speaker 1: out corruptly. If her superior judges at the Eleventh Circuit
Speaker 1: Court of Appeals do not immediately overturn her transparent payback
Speaker 1: to the man to whom she owes her job, President
Speaker 1: Biden himself must release all of Smith's report on the
Speaker 1: stolen documents on national security grounds, and if somebody in
Speaker 1: the Trump regime doesn't like it, they can prosecute Biden.
Speaker 1: All right, It's an official presidential act, and thus Biden
Speaker 1: is immune. By the way, Biden, who yesterday said he
Speaker 1: is considering preemptive pardons for people like Liz Cheney and
Speaker 1: Tony Fauci, and I still think there should be a
Speaker 1: million more on the list, should hit Trump with one final, short,
Speaker 1: sharp shock. He should take the whole Smith report on
Speaker 1: the insurrection and the documents and release it a week
Speaker 1: from Sunday, the night before the inauguration, or crack of
Speaker 1: dawn on Inauguration Day itself. The Attorney General, who can
Speaker 1: snatch some small part of his dignity from the jaws
Speaker 1: of humiliation, was not planning to release the two volume
Speaker 1: report before tomorrow morning at the earliest. Hold on to it, Bigfoot.
Speaker 1: It overshadow the inauguration with it every humiliation of Trump
Speaker 1: and these idiots, I mean, besides the humiliations he keeps
Speaker 1: making out of himself every goddamn day. No matter how
Speaker 1: temporary one of these humiliations is, it is a victory. Hell.
Speaker 1: I still think Biden should retire before the twentieth for
Speaker 1: the sole reason of making just for a few hours
Speaker 1: or a few days, Kamala Harris the forty seventh president anyway,
Speaker 1: and to do, if nothing else, screw up Trump's forty
Speaker 1: seven merchandise. Meanwhile, the Eleventh Circuit Court should not only
Speaker 1: reprimand Eileen Cannon, but they should attempt to suspend her, and,
Speaker 1: however fruitless it may ultimately be, they must try to
Speaker 1: remove her from her ill gotten position. She is the
Speaker 1: personification of the Trump Maga Republican Party, prostitution of the bench.
Speaker 1: And to the degree it is still possible, those few
Speaker 1: left in the justice system, all committed to the law
Speaker 1: and the Constitution and the idea of truth, should go
Speaker 1: to the mats to get rid of Eileen Cannon. Ignore
Speaker 1: her ruling, release the damn report, print a million copies
Speaker 1: of it, and drop them from helicopters over every Trump
Speaker 1: property in this country, especially over his home at Muscalago.
Speaker 1: And as to the courts still hearing these cases, this
Speaker 1: is it for your entire profession, kids, for possibly centuries
Speaker 1: to come. It is now or never. Stand up for
Speaker 1: the law and for what you have supposedly don detiquete
Speaker 1: to your lives too, or the entire structure and all
Speaker 1: of you will have to be replaced if this nation
Speaker 1: is ever to again function as what it claims to be,
Speaker 1: a system in which no man, even a fat, stupid,
Speaker 1: crazy one, is above the law. And now to your
Speaker 1: obeying in advanced scorecard. And it is hard to believe
Speaker 1: that we could see somebody hore themselves out. And I
Speaker 1: know I'm pushing my show limit for the word horror,
Speaker 1: but it is amazing to see somebody hore themselves out
Speaker 1: worse than Elon or Jeff Bezos. Mark Zuckerberg in a
Speaker 1: expensive watch and a bad rug on top of his
Speaker 1: head bands, fact checking on Facebook threads whatever else. He
Speaker 1: owns Meta Matza what I don't even know what it's
Speaker 1: called anymore, to enable conservative lying, which is what it's for,
Speaker 1: eliminate fact checks that allows conservatives to lie and to
Speaker 1: groom young people into believing their lies. He puts the
Speaker 1: UFC slimeball Dana White on the board of Mega Maga Zuka.
Speaker 1: He appoints a Trump flunky to a position from which
Speaker 1: he has just fired an actual journalist as a top executive.
Speaker 1: He has the Trump flunky go on Fox News to
Speaker 1: announce this change in the elimination of Facebook, essentially to
Speaker 1: fellate Trump on Fox. Then, just in case you thought
Speaker 1: somebody was freelancing inside Meta Muda mita, Hello Mudda, Hello fada,
Speaker 1: he Zuckerberg puts out a pathetic string of tweets on
Speaker 1: threads or or whatever it's called threats. An A makes
Speaker 1: it sound like he is in a BDSM relationship with Trump,
Speaker 1: and by the way, not in the ass part, and
Speaker 1: b makes elon musk sound subtle. Let me read this
Speaker 1: and translate it, and it's basically already a transcription of
Speaker 1: a video Zuckerberg did in which he's wearing some sort
Speaker 1: of religious pendant or something and a nine hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars watch and a bad rug from zuck It's time
Speaker 1: to get back to our roots around free expression and
Speaker 1: giving people voice on our platforms. Yes, yes, that was
Speaker 1: free expression. That was the thing that got you hauled
Speaker 1: in front of Congress several times because people were printing
Speaker 1: damaging lies and getting away with it. Because the major
Speaker 1: failure in online communication is you let people use anonymity
Speaker 1: to smear other people and to tell lies. Nearly every
Speaker 1: problem on the Internet would disappear tomorrow. If everything written
Speaker 1: on it had to be signed, as we say, had
Speaker 1: to have your name on it. Would this increase some problems? Yes?
Speaker 1: Would it decrease whistleblowing? I guess when was the last
Speaker 1: time a whistleblower went to Facebook or Thrills or whatever
Speaker 1: it's called. When was the last time that happened? Would
Speaker 1: there be some more risk of people trying to jump
Speaker 1: from the Internet world to real life and cause problems
Speaker 1: for people? They're doing that now. People are docksed every hour,
Speaker 1: And basically what Zucker saying is sure, you can dox them,
Speaker 1: you can slander them. We're going back to our roots.
Speaker 1: Here's what we're going to do. One replace fact checkers
Speaker 1: with community notes. Starting in the US. He just fired
Speaker 1: the pros and let the average user of Facebook and
Speaker 1: the other meta products decide what is reality and what
Speaker 1: is not reality. And George Carlin's joke comes back into
Speaker 1: the fore here. Consider the average intelligence of the absolute
Speaker 1: average person in America who has the average intelligence, and
Speaker 1: remember that that means that all nearly fifty percent of
Speaker 1: the public is dumber than that guy. So we're going
Speaker 1: to let those people decide what is real and what
Speaker 1: is a fact and what is not. Two, simplify our
Speaker 1: content policies and remove restrictions on topics like immigration and
Speaker 1: gender that are out of touch with mainstream discourse. So
Speaker 1: get out all of your jokes about transgenders and your
Speaker 1: threats against them, mar Zuckerberg and immigration. You can start
Speaker 1: using terms that were dropped from polite conversation in this
Speaker 1: country in the nineteen seventies about people from Mexico, for instance,
Speaker 1: or Jewish people. If you want, go right ahead, immigration, gender,
Speaker 1: open warfare is now permitted on Facebook, threads, Instagram, instacrap,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Three change how we enforce our policies
Speaker 1: to remove the vast majority of censorship mistakes by focusing
Speaker 1: our filters on tackling illegal and high severity violations and
Speaker 1: requiring higher confidence for our filters to take action. Yes,
Speaker 1: because there were so many censorship mistakes banning Trump from
Speaker 1: the Internet basically from social media actor he tried to
Speaker 1: use social media to cause an armed insurrection in which
Speaker 1: police officers and other law enforcement officers were killed as
Speaker 1: a result of a mob filled with all kinds of
Speaker 1: weapons and militias with organized game plans to potentially hang
Speaker 1: the vice president of the United states. That's right removing
Speaker 1: that policy because that was a censorship mistake. Four, bring
Speaker 1: back civic content. We're getting feedback that people want to
Speaker 1: see this content again, so we'll phase it back into Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive.
Speaker 1: I thought you said you were going to stop fact
Speaker 1: checking the conservatives. How is it ever going to be
Speaker 1: friendly and positive again? I mean I got into an
Speaker 1: argument once on Twitter about the fact that I was
Speaker 1: not a big fan of rap music. I think every
Speaker 1: time other than that that there have been harsh words,
Speaker 1: it's been with a conservative. Five. Move our trust and
Speaker 1: safety and content moderation teams out of California and our
Speaker 1: US content review to Texas. This will help remove the
Speaker 1: concern that bias employees are overly censoring content. People in
Speaker 1: Texas are less biased than people in California. Zuckerberg, you
Speaker 1: know you're talking about Texas. If they find out that
Speaker 1: you think that the people in Texas are more fair
Speaker 1: and honest to immigrants and Hispanics and gay people, they're
Speaker 1: going to run you right out of Texas. That's not
Speaker 1: what they do in Texas. Work with President Trump to okay,
Speaker 1: just give it up. Right here. Just stop pretending in
Speaker 1: your nine hundred thousand dollars watch and your bad rug
Speaker 1: work with President Trump. You do not work with the
Speaker 1: government to do things like this on an ordinary basis
Speaker 1: to push back against foreign governments going after American companies
Speaker 1: to censor more as the strongest constitutional protections for free
Speaker 1: expression in the world, and the best way to defend
Speaker 1: against the trend of government overreach on censorship is with
Speaker 1: the support of the US government. There is nothing at
Speaker 1: all in the Constitution or in any law that says
Speaker 1: that there cannot be consequences for bad free speech. You
Speaker 1: still cannot shout fire in a crowded theater, according to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. And no matter what you say, if
Speaker 1: it's wrong, if it inspires bad conduct, there are results.
Speaker 1: Your company can fire you. But this idea that constitutional
Speaker 1: protections for free expression means everything goes is something that
Speaker 1: someone who is living an abject terror of being blackmailed
Speaker 1: would say. It'll take time to get this all right,
Speaker 1: and these are complex systems, so they'll never be perfect.
Speaker 1: But this is an important step forward, and I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to this next chapter. What is this mark Chapter
Speaker 1: eight hundred. You've been doing this how long thirty years
Speaker 1: and you still aren't even close to fulfilling the responsibilities
Speaker 1: you should have started with Delete your company. Dictatorship requires
Speaker 1: the sublimation and perversion of media. The Nazis cut to
Speaker 1: the chase and simply eliminated private broadcasting in the thirties
Speaker 1: and controlled the newspapers directly. Other authoritarians managed to control
Speaker 1: news and communication forums by intimidation or influence, but bribing
Speaker 1: or rewarding amoral whorees like Zuckerberg and bus Musk with
Speaker 1: billions is just a new streamlining of the Hitler Stalin
Speaker 1: Mao playbook, now the Hitler Stalin Mao Trump playbook. What
Speaker 1: a dispiriting and self destructive, self disemboweling, pathetic excuse for
Speaker 1: a human being. Mark Zuckerberg is not to be outdone
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos, who is also all of those things. Plus
Speaker 1: I tried this not in a social setting, but in
Speaker 1: a work setting. I tried to spend part of every
Speaker 1: day with Laurence Sanchez. I don't know if he had
Speaker 1: told me he was not. I wasn't gonna say it.
Speaker 1: I can't say it. All I know is that it
Speaker 1: would eventually disturb your brain. Jeff Bezos se is signaling
Speaker 1: he will pay to play in this space. Oh no,
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg's gonna turn Facebook and Meta and threads over to
Speaker 1: Trump and eliminate all fact checking. Ah, hold my beer.
Speaker 1: Bezos is signaling he will pay to play to so
Speaker 1: to speak, pay to play with Milania Trump. He didn't
Speaker 1: just buy a documentary about Trump's quote wife unquote for
Speaker 1: forty million dollars, he leased it. He didn't even get
Speaker 1: ownership of it. Fuck's Matthew Boloney scooped. I've also learned
Speaker 1: that Amazon is paying a cool forty million to license
Speaker 1: the film, per three sources familiar with the deal. The
Speaker 1: price includes the Ratner documentary, which will get a small
Speaker 1: theatrical release and then appear on Prime Video, plus a
Speaker 1: previously undisclosed two to three episode follow up docuseries on
Speaker 1: the First Lady. Milania will participate in both projects. As
Speaker 1: an aside, I believe the title of this series will
Speaker 1: be who cares? But seriously, dude, forty million dollars to
Speaker 1: Milania Trump and you don't even own it. Of course,
Speaker 1: come to think of it, that sounds exactly like Trump's
Speaker 1: deal with her. As to Trump himself, if you had
Speaker 1: any doubt it's true that every Republican accusation is a confession.
Speaker 1: Politico reporter Alex Eisenstadt has a new book coming out,
Speaker 1: and in it he says that Trump could not even
Speaker 1: get through a town hall just him, no Common, no Biden,
Speaker 1: no NICKI Haley, just him, just a foxtown hall without
Speaker 1: being given the questions in advance. This Fox hall on
Speaker 1: town hall was a weird A year ago Friday, year
Speaker 1: ago tomorrow. Quoting CNN, Eisenstadt describes a deep relationship between
Speaker 1: Trump and those within Fox News. Eisenstadt reports that in
Speaker 1: January twenty twenty four, then candidate Trump was sent to
Speaker 1: hold a town hall with Iowa voters, moderated by Fox
Speaker 1: News anchors Brett Baher and Martha McCallum. They're not anchors,
Speaker 1: they're opinion people pretending to be anchors. Though not all
Speaker 1: of Trump's advisors wanted him to attend, they quote were
Speaker 1: still peeved at Fox, whose coverage they continued to find antagonistic,
Speaker 1: and did not want the former president to do the
Speaker 1: primetime event. Eisenstadt writes, but Trump had a good relationship
Speaker 1: with Bear. They were golf buddies and wanted to do
Speaker 1: a sit down. About thirty minutes before the town hall
Speaker 1: was due to start, a senior aide started getting text
Speaker 1: messages from a person on the inside at Fox. Holy
Speaker 1: s hyphen t. The team thought they were images of
Speaker 1: all the questions Trump would be asked and the planned
Speaker 1: follow ups, down to the exact wording Jackpot. This was
Speaker 1: like a student getting a peek at the test before
Speaker 1: the exam started, Eisenstadt writes. In other words, Fox was
Speaker 1: giving Trump help to finish first in his class, and
Speaker 1: his class consisted of only one student. Now you know
Speaker 1: how Trump got through Wharton. The amazing part about this
Speaker 1: is that Fox responded by saying it would invest to Gate.
Speaker 1: It didn't like the fact that there were sources, even
Speaker 1: though every minute of Fox is sourced to some anonymous source.
Speaker 1: But the most important part I thought was they complained
Speaker 1: about that description of Brett Behar as a golf buddy
Speaker 1: of Trump's because the implication is that these text messages were,
Speaker 1: or these pictures of the questions were gotten to Trump's
Speaker 1: people by or under the influence of, or at the
Speaker 1: direction of Brett Behar. That's the implication of this. That
Speaker 1: is the way this is phrased from a person on
Speaker 1: the inside at Fox right after the reference to a
Speaker 1: good relationship with Bear, they were golf buddies. Fox has
Speaker 1: denied their golf buddies. Of course, since this happened, whatever
Speaker 1: actually happened, he needed help finishing first in a one
Speaker 1: man race. Of course, since then, a year ago tomorrow,
Speaker 1: Trump has gotten far crazier. And the nice thing about
Speaker 1: being in insane and constitutionally ineligible president is that you
Speaker 1: never have to say you're sorry, or take any more
Speaker 1: crazy pills or anything that might be true. You don't
Speaker 1: have to say that, or you don't have to make
Speaker 1: sense when you talk, or you don't have to say
Speaker 1: something that just holds together as bullshit. I mean, I
Speaker 1: thought he couldn't have sounded nor looked crazier in his
Speaker 1: brain damaged Grant on Tuesday if his eyes had suddenly
Speaker 1: done a Marty Feldman and began pointing in different directions.
Speaker 1: I can't begin to tell you how much was wrong
Speaker 1: with that news conference. We are founding signatories to two
Speaker 1: important treaties, not just to NATO but to the Rio
Speaker 1: Pact which preceded NATO. These both require us, in writing
Speaker 1: to come to the defense if any of our allies
Speaker 1: and co signatories in NATO or in the Rio Pact
Speaker 1: are attacked. We have to defend allies like Canada, Greenland
Speaker 1: and Panama. So after his latest dose of the crazy pills,
Speaker 1: he no longer needs. Trump wants to rename the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico as the Gulf of America as a compromise,
Speaker 1: I recommend the Gulf. Between Trump's insanity and reality. He
Speaker 1: wants to coerce Canada into merging with us. Actually that's cool.
Speaker 1: I like that we get their land, they get to
Speaker 1: run the government. Seems like the optimum outcome for the
Speaker 1: possibility of freedom on the continent. And he wants to
Speaker 1: buy or try out his beloved Hitler style an shlush
Speaker 1: on Greenland at its protector Denmark. And he wants to
Speaker 1: just go seize the Panama Canal and will not rule
Speaker 1: out using troops against countries we are sworn to defend.
Speaker 1: So this could legally put us in this position. And
Speaker 1: I know Trump doesn't believe any rule applies to him,
Speaker 1: and therefore no treaty applies to him, and no reality
Speaker 1: applies to him. And he's not going to die, And
Speaker 1: if he wanted to, he could turn off the gravity.
Speaker 1: He's crazy as f but we could legally be in
Speaker 1: this position internationally. Trump sends troops to Canada, Greenland, and Panama,
Speaker 1: and we also simultaneously send different troops to Canada, Greenland,
Speaker 1: and Panama to help them defend themselves against US. Even
Speaker 1: Trump's media sycophants, We're not ready for all of this?
Speaker 1: How not ready? This is fill in Fox News nitwit.
Speaker 1: Rosanna Scatto on the idea of buying Greenland.
Speaker 2: By the way, this is not the first time that
Speaker 2: America has tried to buy Greenland. Back in eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: Democratic President Harry Truman to bry Greenland for one hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars.
Speaker 1: Cool. Cool, so Harry Truman was president from eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven through nineteen fifty three. By the way, this Rosanna
Speaker 1: Scotto used to co anchor the news here on Channel
Speaker 1: five with Greg Kelly, now of Newsmax. In fact, she
Speaker 1: is still an actual newscaster on the Fox station in
Speaker 1: New York Rosanna Scotto back then, though when she co
Speaker 1: anchored with Greg Kelly, the joke was Greg Kelly was
Speaker 1: on Channel five with her because he could not count
Speaker 1: as high as six. More recently, Greg Kelly told his
Speaker 1: Newsmax idiot viewers that idolizing Taylor Swift was a sin
Speaker 1: and it's in the Bible. And then he went back
Speaker 1: idolizing Trump. And just remember miss Scotto was considered the
Speaker 1: smart one to be fair in the year twenty ten. Scotto,
Speaker 1: who was a member of the family that runs some
Speaker 1: Okay restaurants here, showed off her food sophistication by on
Speaker 1: the air calling soy milk quote cow jism on the
Speaker 1: news on the Morning News at quarter to eight, cow
Speaker 1: good Kennedy. Then there is immigration and the purge of minorities,
Speaker 1: and the growing indications that the guy Trump put in
Speaker 1: charge of all that, Stephen Miller, may not be right
Speaker 1: in the head, and the guy Stephen Miller put in
Speaker 1: charge of pulling it off maybe even less right in
Speaker 1: the head than Stephen Miller. A week after the Vegas
Speaker 1: and Nola attacks, and Tom Homan and boy is that
Speaker 1: a perfect name, home Man still insists immigrants had something
Speaker 1: to do with both of those attacks. Something something borders something, something,
Speaker 1: terrorsts crossing something something. Let their clown voters make up
Speaker 1: their own nonsense connection I Tom Hoeman have run out
Speaker 1: of them. But the madness is not contained to the
Speaker 1: Department of Ethnic Cleansing, Norm Eisen and Thomas Joscelyn in
Speaker 1: the Bulwark quote what was the FBI doing planning January
Speaker 1: sixth for a year? Cash Patel, Trump's dominie to serve
Speaker 1: as FBI director, asked that question during a November twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two episode of Cash's Corner podcast for The
Speaker 1: Epoch Times. It was no slip of the tongue, As
Speaker 1: the title of that episode suggested, what did the FBI
Speaker 1: know before January sixth? Patel spent considerable time trying to
Speaker 1: cast the FBI as a villain responsible for January sixth.
Speaker 1: Patel noted that FBI Director Christopher Ray had quote testified
Speaker 1: that the FBI never instigated or helped the January sixth
Speaker 1: protesters commit crimes, but citing a report that the FBI
Speaker 1: had confidential human sources in the crowd, Pttel asserted, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: that was in planning for at least a year. It's
Speaker 1: the FBI. It's a major political event taking place in
Speaker 1: Washington hours before the certification of the election, which Trump
Speaker 1: has been spending months trying to prevent, and you are
Speaker 1: surprised that the FBI was there. The FBI is supposed
Speaker 1: to be there. Somebody is supposed to be there. Everybody
Speaker 1: else blew it. Every other aspect of that Trump administration
Speaker 1: controlled Justice Department and law enforcement officials, they blew it.
Speaker 1: But the FBI confidential program had a couple of people
Speaker 1: in the crowd good. During the September thirtieth, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two episode of Cash's Corner, by the way, that was
Speaker 1: the best name you could come up for a podcast,
Speaker 1: Cash's Corner, Patel said, the question that has to be
Speaker 1: answered is when did the FBI put those goes in
Speaker 1: and where and did those confidential human sources engage people
Speaker 1: who are not going to conduct criminal activity and convince
Speaker 1: them to do so. Come on, everybody, let's stage a revolution.
Speaker 1: Battel claimed that it is the definition of entrapment, which
Speaker 1: is illegal, and you can't charge someone who's been entrapped,
Speaker 1: and he wondered who was running this confidential human source
Speaker 1: network and reporting it to FBI Director Chris Ray. Petel
Speaker 1: added he would venture a guess that once we see
Speaker 1: the documentation from January sixth, you will see the FBI's
Speaker 1: confidential human source corruption cover up network on blast and
Speaker 1: he accused the FBI of inserting these human sources into
Speaker 1: these matters. Petel asked rhetorically, why why would you say
Speaker 1: January sixth? Because they wanted a political target, a political prosecution,
Speaker 1: not one based on law. In fact, it's an interesting
Speaker 1: article the Bulwark, Thomas Joscelyn and Norm Eisen. The problem,
Speaker 1: of course, is that as a corrupt head of the
Speaker 1: FBI with a screw loose cash, Patel could easily fabricate
Speaker 1: documents or order equally maniacal subordinates to do it for
Speaker 1: him and pass them off as evidence of whatever it
Speaker 1: is he thinks happened here. And then we have jumped
Speaker 1: immediately into the Stalin Purge trials of the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: with fabricated evidence against Chris Ray. No, Biden's got a
Speaker 1: powerdon Chris Ray, who's not that cleaner record. But now
Speaker 1: I's got to everybody else. Is all going to come
Speaker 1: back to. Liz Cheney was in the crowd dressed as
Speaker 1: I don't know, Abraham Lincoln, like in the Manchurian Candidate.
Speaker 1: She was wearing a Lincoln beard and a hat. That
Speaker 1: these people are not very bright is established fact that
Speaker 1: I cite often It does not change the fact though,
Speaker 1: that they can still be very dangerous. But sometimes there
Speaker 1: is comic relief in the stupidity of the Greenland thing.
Speaker 1: The Midas Network quotes Danish media on truth social Trump
Speaker 1: posted a video of a man from Greenland asking him
Speaker 1: to purchase the Danish colony. As it turns out, the man,
Speaker 1: Timmy Zeb tim eh Zeb Zeeb, is a convicted drug dealer,
Speaker 1: according to dr News quote. But Timmy Zeb, who on
Speaker 1: Trump's profile has been made the face of Greenlander's desire
Speaker 1: to become part of the United States, has a long
Speaker 1: list of convictions behind him, most striking as a verdict
Speaker 1: from twenty nineteen, where Timmy Zeb was sentenced to four
Speaker 1: years in prison in one of Greenland's largest cannabis cases.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand and nine, Greenlandic police described how
Speaker 1: Timmy Zeb was known for crimes that were dangerous to people.
Speaker 1: This happened in connection with Timmy Zebe's escape from prison. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, he not only fits right in with Trump,
Speaker 1: he should be in the cabinet or at least ambassador
Speaker 1: to Greenland. Mister Zeb also apparently said Americans were too fat,
Speaker 1: which I guess means that how fat he appears in
Speaker 1: his video, which I would roughly describe as ten pounds
Speaker 1: and a five pound bag would be just fat enough.
Speaker 1: Yet through all this, Trump of course reserved the ultimate
Speaker 1: crazy about January sixth to himself. He has now dropped
Speaker 1: the hint of a new plot line coming up, suggesting
Speaker 1: maybe January sixth was done by I can barely say
Speaker 1: it has Belah, you might as well Trump have said
Speaker 1: January sixth was a conspiracy led by the Visiting Nurse
Speaker 1: Association and the Los Angeles Fires. As a former resident,
Speaker 1: I'm a mess. You may have heard it. I'll go
Speaker 1: into this at length later. The fatal, arrogant, and worse
Speaker 1: mistake of Trump and the cult is that the only
Speaker 1: force on earth that matters is money. When say, Florida
Speaker 1: is rendered unlivable at some point in the next fifty years,
Speaker 1: five years, five months, whatever it is, by winds, by fires,
Speaker 1: by storms, by nature, by God, whatever, all the money
Speaker 1: will mean nothing that moment when you discover that Trump
Speaker 1: is wrong, that money is not the only force in
Speaker 1: the universe that matters, was on public display in the
Speaker 1: last few days at the height of the disaster, as
Speaker 1: others perished and fire after fire broke out a celebrity
Speaker 1: house flipping guy or a real estate jackass or something.
Speaker 1: A week ago was touting the great investments in Pacific Palisades,
Speaker 1: where much of the destruction occurred posts this. His name
Speaker 1: is Keith Watserman and on behalf of all the Keiths
Speaker 1: in the world. I'd like to apologize for this. Does
Speaker 1: anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home
Speaker 1: in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here all neighbors'
Speaker 1: houses burning. Will pay any amount, thank you, Please save
Speaker 1: my luxury home firemen. I can pay more than those
Speaker 1: people who will pay you to save their children. I'm
Speaker 1: even in this America, even in this America that has
Speaker 1: been building since I was a child, in which people
Speaker 1: believe that money can get them anything. And remember there
Speaker 1: is an eternal life cult around the idea that if
Speaker 1: they spend enough money, they can live or be frozen
Speaker 1: and resuscitated in a thousand years. They really believe this.
Speaker 1: They can extend their own life last to one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five years and then get frozen and resuscitated.
Speaker 1: Ted Williams was right seeing the condition his head is in. No,
Speaker 1: I haven't well look around the room later. It's got
Speaker 1: to be here somewhere. Does anyone have access to private
Speaker 1: firefighters to protect our home? And Pacific Palisades need to
Speaker 1: act fast here all neighbors' houses burning will pay any amount,
Speaker 1: thank you. So just picture this. Somebody says yes to
Speaker 1: this and sends private firefighters weaving through everybody being evacuated
Speaker 1: from Pacific Palisades to go in and just save this
Speaker 1: one guy's house, as if that was physically possible. When
Speaker 1: winds of up to one hundred miles an hour, we're
Speaker 1: blowing the fire dozens, perhaps one hundred miles across southern
Speaker 1: California in a forty eight hour period. This idiot believes
Speaker 1: that his home and his home alone can be saved
Speaker 1: by private firefighters because there must be private firefighters. There
Speaker 1: must be for him. He just didn't know about it beforehand,
Speaker 1: or he would have signed a contract and probably left
Speaker 1: a five dollars tip. Wait, it gets worse. This is
Speaker 1: this same guy, Keith Wasserman. Also on ex Twitter in September,
Speaker 1: Trump reposts, your automobile insurance is up seventy three percent.
Speaker 1: Vote for Trump. I'll cut that number in half. He
Speaker 1: retweets this and adds property taxes too. Please, you know
Speaker 1: what property taxes go to. Yeah, trying to stop your
Speaker 1: goddamn house from burning down, and your neighbor's house and
Speaker 1: everybody else's house, because it's cheaper that way and more efficient,
Speaker 1: because you can't just go into a burning neighborhood and
Speaker 1: go thirty two seventy one will save that one. The
Speaker 1: rest of you can go to hell. I never dreamed
Speaker 1: the cut taxes so your house burns down party would
Speaker 1: let my house burn down. Thousands of buildings destroyed by
Speaker 1: the mill of yesterday afternoon, at least seventy thousand evacuated,
Speaker 1: more than one million people without power in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: The total number in Southern California in the Greater Area
Speaker 1: was approaching a million and a half. Wind gusts up
Speaker 1: to one hundred miles an hour to the point where
Speaker 1: they could not fly those planes dropping the water and
Speaker 1: the fire retardant. But only when you discover a piece
Speaker 1: of trivia like the following does it become personal and
Speaker 1: help you clarify your mind about why we continue to
Speaker 1: tempt climatic disaster and the local tragedies that will precede
Speaker 1: it like this in Los Angeles, when we imagine something
Speaker 1: like this every day, every day, a little worse than
Speaker 1: the last one. The denial of disasters from my own
Speaker 1: time living in Santa Monica, where I found out yesterday
Speaker 1: that my old house is literally the last time I
Speaker 1: looked three blocks south of the mandatory evacuation. All right,
Speaker 1: I know I've taken up a lot of your time,
Speaker 1: but there's much more to come. Also of interest here
Speaker 1: in an all new edition, the guy in charge of
Speaker 1: the Washington Post actually is quoted by a staffer who
Speaker 1: resigned as having asked a reporter for the Washington Post quote,
Speaker 1: what can we do to attract Trump supporters? Well, he's
Speaker 1: doing what you could do. Go out of business. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Albumen still
Speaker 1: ahead of us on countdown. To paraphrase the old radio joke,
Speaker 1: No it's not leaving here. Fine, I hope it sounds fine.
Speaker 1: The episode has been a little ragged. I want to
Speaker 1: go into length and distance about why it has been
Speaker 1: so ragged. The short answer to that is two words,
Speaker 1: three words. Really, Southern California fires. I used to live there,
Speaker 1: and I mean there at the intersections. Believe it or not,
Speaker 1: there's still first more new idiots to talk about. The
Speaker 1: daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
Speaker 1: specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world,
Speaker 1: the bronze worse. Jen Saki. Jen Saki is not terrible
Speaker 1: on MSNBC, although if they had wanted to hire somebody
Speaker 1: to do a Rachel Matdow impression, they should have gotten
Speaker 1: somebody to commit to the bit like Abby Elliott used
Speaker 1: to on SNL. She does, however, have that little I'm
Speaker 1: going to explain this to you like you were a
Speaker 1: child tone to her voice. She's gotten that now very nicely.
Speaker 1: But boy, oh boy, oh boys, can she not shake
Speaker 1: the propagandist part. That was not the idea of MSNBC.
Speaker 1: When the Democrats aligned with our positions as we thought
Speaker 1: them out, and our guests believed that was great. When
Speaker 1: they didn't, we slammed Democrats. When we made mistakes, we
Speaker 1: apologized for them, even in past lives, in past careers. Nope,
Speaker 1: Jensaki has now descended into rationalizing fatal mistakes made by
Speaker 1: Jensaki and the presidential administration for which she worked four
Speaker 1: years ago. Talking on MSNBC about Merrick Garland, who right
Speaker 1: now will go down into history as one of the
Speaker 1: great and perhaps final villains of American democracy. This is
Speaker 1: a man, Jensaki said, who has an unassailable resume. I
Speaker 1: believe you have the tense wrong there and views the
Speaker 1: job as it should be viewed through the prism of
Speaker 1: the law and history. No, clearly that's not true. But
Speaker 1: I do wonder if that at that moment in history,
Speaker 1: he was the right choice for the job. She went
Speaker 1: on a long monologue about her internal wonderings. She wondered
Speaker 1: if she should have helped support Garland from the White
Speaker 1: House press podium or gone along with not addressing the
Speaker 1: second Trump impeachment, or much of January sixth from the
Speaker 1: White Ho press podium. A lot of wondering and that
Speaker 1: sort of meanderingly went to her excusing herself for not
Speaker 1: being more aggressive towards Trump. We can't predict the future,
Speaker 1: she said, Funny, Jen, everybody else did, everybody else, pretty
Speaker 1: much in the Democratic Party, everybody else in America told
Speaker 1: you lock him up, send him to ELBA, put him
Speaker 1: and everybody who was involved in this, and put him
Speaker 1: away for good forever, and most importantly, do it before
Speaker 1: he regains strength. You are talking about the Godzilla of politicians. Oh,
Speaker 1: you can't predict the future now. Of course, Jensaki is
Speaker 1: still doing the job she quit in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Stop giving these ponderous, overwrought commentaries that somehow always end
Speaker 1: up with you distancing yourself from the disaster you participated in,
Speaker 1: and then end with you forgive yourself. You failed, you
Speaker 1: all failed. You may have cost America representative government, but no,
Speaker 1: write a long commentary about how you wonder now if
Speaker 1: Merrick Garland at that moment in history was the right
Speaker 1: choice for the job he wasn't, or at any other
Speaker 1: point in history right now, If you want to do
Speaker 1: a commentary about Merrick Garland having vaguely worked for him,
Speaker 1: with him or with the people who chose him, I
Speaker 1: think you should devote it to wondering whether or not
Speaker 1: he's actually a Democrat, a liberal, or a believer in
Speaker 1: representative government. How about that for a commentary. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, your disgrace, your failure, has been rewarded with
Speaker 1: the high paying TV job that you don't do very
Speaker 1: well and you clearly don't understand the purpose of So
Speaker 1: you got that going for you? Runner up worser. We'll
Speaker 1: let Eric Erickson represent all the fascists who now have trumpsomnia.
Speaker 1: But also playing back to what Jensaki said, you can't
Speaker 1: predict the future. Eric Erickson is one of I don't
Speaker 1: know how many ten million Republican commentators, all of whom,
Speaker 1: all of whom have somehow memory hold January sixth and
Speaker 1: changed its meeting, altogether, changed it utterly beyond all recognition,
Speaker 1: as if the Civil War was in fact the war
Speaker 1: of Northern aggression to destroy Confederate property rights, you know,
Speaker 1: the slaves. On January sixth, twenty twenty one, at three
Speaker 1: o'clock in the afternoon Eastern Standard time, Eric Erickson, a
Speaker 1: Conservative who came from such humble beginning beginnings that his
Speaker 1: family could only afford the one name. Eric Erickson tweeted,
Speaker 1: shoot the protesters, wave the rules, impeach, wave the rules, convict,
Speaker 1: waive the rules, deny the ability to run for election again.
Speaker 1: Possibly the only time and certainly the last time. Eric
Speaker 1: Erickson was right, and today he and all the rest
Speaker 1: of them have rationalized putting the man he wanted to impeach,
Speaker 1: convict and deny the ability to run for election again.
Speaker 1: Back in the White House to run the world again
Speaker 1: and rename it the Gulf of America or the gulf
Speaker 1: between Trump's insanity and reality. Eric Erickson representing that group,
Speaker 1: and that group is now pushing, if you have not
Speaker 1: heard this, for an investigation into the death of the
Speaker 1: terrorist Ashley Babbitt, the one he said should have been
Speaker 1: shot along with all the other protesters. I'm not a
Speaker 1: big fan of shooting people. I'm certainly not a big
Speaker 1: fan of shooting people who are expressing political opinions, even
Speaker 1: if they are completely wrong. And they want to shoot me,
Speaker 1: but shoot the protesters. That was a pretty good idea,
Speaker 1: and we didn't do it. Instead we got Merrick Garland
Speaker 1: shoot the protesters. And now they want to investigate the
Speaker 1: death of Ashley Babbitt. And you know already where this ends.
Speaker 1: This ends with indicting people who were involved in protecting
Speaker 1: the capital for the simple reason that not only does
Speaker 1: Trump have to be cleared and made the actual victim
Speaker 1: of all this, but they want to lay the groundwork
Speaker 1: for when they do it again. And they'll do it again,
Speaker 1: I mean, if there's another election. Instead of an investigation
Speaker 1: into the death of Ashley Babbitt, may I suggest this instead,
Speaker 1: which will go over really big, I think in conservative circles.
Speaker 1: How instead about doing this, you fascists, bring Ashley Babbitt
Speaker 1: back to life again. The way you convinced your dim
Speaker 1: bulb occultists that you could bring JFK Junior and JFK
Speaker 1: back to life again, and you can vince them that
Speaker 1: you could bring RFK Junior back to life again. That
Speaker 1: didn't go so well. Hey, Robert, are you over? Oh
Speaker 1: you're on, You're on, You're on FaceTime. Okay, take that
Speaker 1: in the other room, please, AnyWho. I think they should
Speaker 1: bring Ashley Babbitt back to life so she can go
Speaker 1: and do the same insane, stupid, self destructive, anti freedom,
Speaker 1: anti American conspiracy theory crap again and the officers can
Speaker 1: shoot her again now again. I will be happy if
Speaker 1: they bring her back to life and they shoot her
Speaker 1: and they just wound her and she recovers. The point
Speaker 1: will have been made by that. And with all of this,
Speaker 1: this winner is very brief and very much to the point.
Speaker 1: The CEO Will Lewis of The Washington Post also known
Speaker 1: as The Washington Post going out of business sale, the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, what's left of it? The Washington Post no
Speaker 1: longer at this address. The Washington Post now printing three
Speaker 1: times a month. This is from Semaphore News. The Post's
Speaker 1: former deputy Democracy editor, Mary Joe Murphy, quietly quit in
Speaker 1: response to owner Jeff Bezos killing its presidential endorsement. She
Speaker 1: wrote about it on a Facebook page for New York
Speaker 1: Times alumni Quizzlings. She wrote, are inside the house that
Speaker 1: Graham's and Bradley's, Woodwards and Bernstein's built. She recalled here's
Speaker 1: the fun part that CEO will Lewis had asked a
Speaker 1: reporter she managed quote what the Post could do to
Speaker 1: attract Trump supporters parenthesis, I don't know, she wrote, lie
Speaker 1: to them. Will Lewis Jeff Bezos, proprietors of after the
Speaker 1: upcoming doubtless inevitable merger will Lewis, CEO of The Washington Post,
Speaker 1: Penny Saver and Hot Singles News two days Whisson in
Speaker 1: the world. Finally to the number one story on the
Speaker 1: countdown and things I promised not to tell. And if
Speaker 1: this episode has seemed a little ragged, a little more
Speaker 1: ragged than usual, I have an explanation, if not an excuse.
Speaker 1: I spent much of Tuesday night not sleeping, but watching
Speaker 1: and listening to local television and radio coverage of the
Speaker 1: disaster in southern California, specifically in Los Angeles, specifically in
Speaker 1: the area basically north of Santa Monica along the Pacific
Speaker 1: Coast Highway. Other fires, aided by wind gusts approaching one
Speaker 1: hundred miles an hour, afflicted the other parts of the area,
Speaker 1: and it is not fire season. I used to live there,
Speaker 1: and as I said, I was almost an honorary native
Speaker 1: in the news business in Southern California, in TV, particularly
Speaker 1: if you get to seven years on the air there
Speaker 1: in local news, you can be there forever. There were
Speaker 1: people with whom I broke in in Los Angeles television
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five who are still on the air,
Speaker 1: and I'm not being critical of them, nor the fact
Speaker 1: that I got to like six and a half years
Speaker 1: and that was it. So I didn't quite make my
Speaker 1: permanent honorary native status. But I enjoyed my time there.
Speaker 1: It was my second favorite place to live in the
Speaker 1: world and was always an option that I considered moving
Speaker 1: back to as recently as twenty and sixteen. In any event,
Speaker 1: I have affection for la and I have affection particularly
Speaker 1: for that part of LA that was so immediately affected,
Speaker 1: with so many homes lost and so many people evacuated
Speaker 1: overnight Tuesday that I could not stop listening to what was,
Speaker 1: of course a radio station, an all news station that
Speaker 1: I used to work for for the better part of
Speaker 1: my first trip in La KNX. Then they did a
Speaker 1: marvelous job, not surprising. People who are working there are
Speaker 1: people I worked with there. In any event, I went
Speaker 1: back to LA for a second time to work for
Speaker 1: Fox in nineteen ninety nine, two thousand and two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, and I lived in Santa Monica, and in
Speaker 1: fact I lived on Pacific Coast Highway in the area
Speaker 1: in which Santa Monica slowly evolves into Malibu. There were
Speaker 1: a couple of country clubs and tennis establishments just north
Speaker 1: of me. It was a beautiful house. It was a
Speaker 1: house that would I believe was built in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: seven by a Hollywood producer. It was a house there
Speaker 1: that had the inter section of Pacific Coast Highway and
Speaker 1: the California Incline, a key visual from the movie from
Speaker 1: the sixties, It's a Mad, Mad Mad Mad World. The
Speaker 1: California Incline is this hill that goes up from the
Speaker 1: Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Monica proper. And so this house,
Speaker 1: four stories tall, seven bedrooms and priced ridiculously low, had
Speaker 1: at one end past the little spare guesthouse and the pool.
Speaker 1: Beyond that there was a gate, There was the beach,
Speaker 1: there was the ocean, and there was off in the
Speaker 1: distance somewhere Hawaii, which no, you could not see from
Speaker 1: my house. It was great. There was one problem and
Speaker 1: one fear, and it's why I'm bringing all this up now,
Speaker 1: other than simply to say this is part of me
Speaker 1: that was in spirit there as this has unfolded, as
Speaker 1: it is for all calamities in that community. There was
Speaker 1: one problem with the place. When it was built. It
Speaker 1: was on the beach. Santa Monica was not necessarily unpopulated,
Speaker 1: but it was difficult to get to. There wasn't a
Speaker 1: Pacific Coast Highway per se, and in any event, traffic
Speaker 1: was not like it was in nineteen twenty seven. By
Speaker 1: the time I lived there in nineteen ninety nine, there
Speaker 1: was a red light at the California incline that you
Speaker 1: could sort of reach out of my house and touch,
Speaker 1: which meant that at peak driving hours, which are in
Speaker 1: California daylight. The rush hour starts at daylight and ends
Speaker 1: at the sunset, except in winter, when it's about four
Speaker 1: hours longer. At that light, whenever it would turn red
Speaker 1: on Pacific Coast Highway, there would be sixty seventy cars
Speaker 1: idling going in each direction, So a constant rumble was
Speaker 1: in the background there, and when there wasn't a red light,
Speaker 1: you were treated to this sound from Pacific Coast Highway
Speaker 1: echoing through the house, except at night when it was
Speaker 1: motorcycles making that sound. Soon after about the third or
Speaker 1: fourth day that I lived there, I began to find
Speaker 1: myself involuntarily making those sounds myself while I was on
Speaker 1: the phone with people who said are you okay, and
Speaker 1: I would say I'm fine, even when I was seated
Speaker 1: in the back of the backyard visiting with my neighbor
Speaker 1: the beach and the Pacific Ocean. So that was the problem,
Speaker 1: and I didn't stay there that long. But there was
Speaker 1: also something else that worked on my mind then, and
Speaker 1: I didn't really fully understand it and why it was
Speaker 1: such a problem until I watched the fire in Santa
Speaker 1: Monica on the same street on which I lived. Consume
Speaker 1: most of the area and the structures on each floor
Speaker 1: of this magnificent nineteen twenty seven underpriced four story building
Speaker 1: built by the way like a British castle. There weren't
Speaker 1: even cracks in the masonry, and it had been there
Speaker 1: through countless earthquakes. On each floor there was a small door,
Speaker 1: and inside it there was on a wheel on a
Speaker 1: big roof, sometimes rusty and repaired wheel, a fire hose.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I never took one of them out.
Speaker 1: I wasn't there long enough, and I didn't need to.
Speaker 1: I think they might have been fifty feet long. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not good at estimating these things. Let's
Speaker 1: put it this way. These were not seven foot long hoses,
Speaker 1: and these were not garden hoses. These were big, flat,
Speaker 1: leather bound firefighters hoses like I used to see in
Speaker 1: my grandfather, the New York City Fireman's pictures of himself
Speaker 1: driving the hook and ladder in nineteen thirty one, big
Speaker 1: hoses for home use. And obviously I rationalize this by saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, when they built this in nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 1: Santa Monica was not out in the middle of nowhere necessarily,
Speaker 1: But the idea that there would be conceivably a fire
Speaker 1: in the house, and you'd need to deal with it,
Speaker 1: and you should have something like this, And it was
Speaker 1: instead of sprinklers, it instead of rapid response. Now I
Speaker 1: know better. The fear has always been there in southern
Speaker 1: California all and I read this when I lived there
Speaker 1: and was worried about the earthquakes. All of the prophecies
Speaker 1: of the doom of Los Angeles have been about not
Speaker 1: earthquakes but fires. Nathaniel West the day of the Locust,
Speaker 1: los Angeles burns to the ground, painting after painting is
Speaker 1: Los Angeles burning. The real story always from the scientists
Speaker 1: who studied earthquakes was because, of course, an earthquake, no
Speaker 1: matter how damaging it is, is over in a minute,
Speaker 1: or if it's a disastrous, world shaking earthquake, two three minutes.
Speaker 1: A fire, as we see can be two three days.
Speaker 1: And so now they have one hundred mile an hour gusts,
Speaker 1: and I understand why I can still see those little
Speaker 1: doors and the little rusty wheels and the fire hoses.
Speaker 1: I sold the place because somebody else fell in love
Speaker 1: with it, got my money back, and moved out and
Speaker 1: moved back into where I live for most of my
Speaker 1: time in southern California, second time around in a hotel
Speaker 1: or one of two hotels, which, by the way, is
Speaker 1: the reverse of living in a troublesome house or a
Speaker 1: discounted house. It is, as Warren Batty said about moving
Speaker 1: into a hotel, it takes you a long time to
Speaker 1: adjust to living into a hotel room or hotel suite
Speaker 1: several hours. Other than occasional noise from neighbors, there's really
Speaker 1: very little wrong with it, and of course the cost,
Speaker 1: but what the hell, There's something else about the southern
Speaker 1: California aspires that strikes me. And this might be interpreted,
Speaker 1: especially by my friends from that time, with whom I
Speaker 1: am still in touch with many of them, as criticism
Speaker 1: or tisking or you see, you got what you paid for,
Speaker 1: and it's not meant to be that way. But as
Speaker 1: I just expressed, to live in that house in Pacific
Speaker 1: Coast Highway, just north of the California Incline, like the
Speaker 1: westernmost building at home on the continental United States, I
Speaker 1: guess to live in that required a certain amount of denial.
Speaker 1: I didn't recognize that those fire hoses were kept in
Speaker 1: working order because you might need them because something like
Speaker 1: this could happen someday, because fires burning towards the coast
Speaker 1: from the wooded areas, if hit by the winds just right,
Speaker 1: would jump Pacific Coast Highway and burn everything till it
Speaker 1: got to the ocean, as we have seen. But the
Speaker 1: other part of denial and physical calamity in southern California
Speaker 1: has always stayed with me, And it also came back
Speaker 1: to my mind as I heard the announcers on kN
Speaker 1: X again and again try to place the disaster they
Speaker 1: were seeing and the damage they were seeing in historical
Speaker 1: context for native southern California, and they kept referring back
Speaker 1: to nineteen ninety three and the Northridge earthquake and what
Speaker 1: that did to the entirety of the community, and fires
Speaker 1: the same year and what that did to the entire community.
Speaker 1: So thirty two years ago nearly was the first historical comparison,
Speaker 1: and they were all saying, it's dark, we can't really
Speaker 1: see how much damage there's been. It may be nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one on the Malibu fires, but nineteen ninety three
Speaker 1: and Northridge was the first time that I ever heard
Speaker 1: my friends who had been born and raised in southern California,
Speaker 1: and by the time I knew them, when we were
Speaker 1: all in our twenties and thirties, shook off earthquakes and
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, that was a bad one. I
Speaker 1: had forgotten about it in the three hours since it happened.
Speaker 1: But the Northridge one was not that at all. Nobody
Speaker 1: that I talked to who was from southern California when
Speaker 1: I talked to them by phone in my new haunts
Speaker 1: of Bristol, Connecticut in nineteen ninety three, not one of
Speaker 1: them made a joke, not one of them seemed anything
Speaker 1: but still shaken. Days, weeks, months, years later. I had
Speaker 1: friends who lived in the apartment building that pancaked. In fact,
Speaker 1: some of them occupied one of the apartments that was
Speaker 1: totally crushed, and a couple of them, one of them
Speaker 1: in particular, had moved out at my slight help from
Speaker 1: Southern California to ESPN months earlier, and the first thing
Speaker 1: he did was get his roommates jobs at ESPN, and
Speaker 1: they all moved out and the apartment building was empty.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to think about the consequences of your
Speaker 1: job choices and your career pursuits in any event, when
Speaker 1: I got to southern California and experienced my first minor
Speaker 1: earthquake and went, oh, I get it. That thunking sound
Speaker 1: in the chugga chugga chugga for a minute is like
Speaker 1: an old train, a subway train pulling out a Times
Speaker 1: Square station or Grand Central and everything rattling and you
Speaker 1: get all the noises, only it's everything that's shaking, not
Speaker 1: just the train that you're in, but you can pretend
Speaker 1: it's a train. So the first couple of earthquakes in
Speaker 1: the first couple of years, I was okay. And then
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven we had a big one on
Speaker 1: October first, that was I believe five point eight, and
Speaker 1: the pictures on my wall moved, and a star player
Speaker 1: for the Los Angeles Dodgers injured his back and was
Speaker 1: never the same because he tried to catch his big
Speaker 1: screen TV as it fell off the wall. Oops. And
Speaker 1: later on all the crazy earthquakes with people being hit
Speaker 1: by arm wairs in their bedrooms, and of course the
Speaker 1: number one injury requiring hospital at least doctor attention after
Speaker 1: earthquakes of all sizes, it's people stepping on broken glass
Speaker 1: in their home. It was evident to me from the
Speaker 1: day that I moved in. If you want anything in
Speaker 1: your particularly your bedroom, and you're living in southern you
Speaker 1: put up a poster. Put up a cat. The cat
Speaker 1: poster that says, hang in there and use nothing sharper
Speaker 1: or more potentially damaging than thumbtacks. Tape is recommended. The
Speaker 1: other thing was I once saw a special about what
Speaker 1: you needed in an earthquake and how you could fit
Speaker 1: it in a box and store it in your closet.
Speaker 1: You needed a device a wrench that could actually shut
Speaker 1: off the gas meters again fire not earthquakes. You needed
Speaker 1: some form of water supply that could leave you alive
Speaker 1: at the end of a couple of days when they
Speaker 1: could not get to you through the rubble. You needed
Speaker 1: a radio and batteries. You needed a small shovel, You
Speaker 1: needed a medical kit. Just a few things, and they
Speaker 1: sold these things for two hundred dollars. And then there
Speaker 1: were little household things that you could do to make
Speaker 1: things easier to survive an earthquake and not be hit
Speaker 1: in your neck with an armoire as you got out
Speaker 1: of bed and stepped on broken glass. Drill a little
Speaker 1: drill and put in a couple of screws and tie
Speaker 1: things like bookcases to your walls with piano wire, a
Speaker 1: very simple process, so simple that I was able to
Speaker 1: do it with everything in all of my apartments, and
Speaker 1: even I was starting to do it when I moved
Speaker 1: into Pacific Coast Highway, just not screwing them into the wall,
Speaker 1: but just attaching them to the wall, with the premise
Speaker 1: being that if there's a major earthquake enough to knock
Speaker 1: one of them over, it probably will not come over.
Speaker 1: All you'll have to deal with is all of your
Speaker 1: books flying off and hitting you in the head. And
Speaker 1: anybody can say you got a choice of a bookcase
Speaker 1: full of books fawing on you or a bunch of
Speaker 1: books flying off the wall and hitting you in your forehead.
Speaker 1: You'll take the books hitting you in the forehead. But
Speaker 1: at some point, I think around nineteen eighty eight, I
Speaker 1: had an idea, because I wanted to go into some
Speaker 1: sort of advanced prepper stuff about earthquakes. What else could
Speaker 1: you do besides tying your bookcase to the wall. What
Speaker 1: else could you do besides having that one box in
Speaker 1: your closet. And I looked and looked for stores in
Speaker 1: the malls, and there were very healthy malls in those
Speaker 1: days in nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties in southern California,
Speaker 1: healthy malls with stores of all kinds, and never was
Speaker 1: there a earthquake preparedness store. And finally the bright idea
Speaker 1: came to me, I would open an earthquake preparedness store.
Speaker 1: Clearly somebody had missed this entire market. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was already at the stage where whenever I went into
Speaker 1: a building, and since you didn't really have to deal
Speaker 1: with too many high rises, you're talking about the buildings
Speaker 1: of four to twelve stories tall, I guess would be
Speaker 1: probably the main rage in southern California. I would take
Speaker 1: the elevator up and take the stairs down, having thus
Speaker 1: decreased by fifty percent my chances of getting stuck in
Speaker 1: an elevator during an earthquake. A minor thing like that,
Speaker 1: just improve your numbers. You cannot earthquake proof yourself in
Speaker 1: earthquake country. Well what else could you do? What else
Speaker 1: could I be selling people? What else could I? And
Speaker 1: I got this far of seeing the logo for this
Speaker 1: place called be Prepared with me in a boy Scout
Speaker 1: uniform with my fingers up in the boy Scout salute
Speaker 1: or you know, maybe go a little edgy and do
Speaker 1: the other finger salute. And I thought this was the
Speaker 1: greatest idea of all time. And my friends from Southern
Speaker 1: California looked at me not only like I was crazy
Speaker 1: and going to lose every dollar I had, but they
Speaker 1: looked at me as if I were insulting them. This confirmed,
Speaker 1: after years of things that I had noticed vaguely that
Speaker 1: the main defense against earthquakes and other disasters in Southern
Speaker 1: California is denial. And again I'm trying not to be
Speaker 1: critical here because I did it myself. But if you
Speaker 1: go into a building and your first thought is how
Speaker 1: the hell would I get out of here? If this
Speaker 1: hallway is blocked, that can quickly turn into the government
Speaker 1: is causing the earthquakes. It's a straight line from one
Speaker 1: to the other. You have to call it off somewhere
Speaker 1: and have some sort of reasonable idea. Attach your bookshelves
Speaker 1: to your walls with string or with wire or with
Speaker 1: chewing gum. Take the elevator up but not down. Don't
Speaker 1: accept the office at the radio station in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: that's seven doors away from the nearest window. Yeah, at
Speaker 1: that point, like keeping a box full of emergency equipment
Speaker 1: and food stuffs in your closet, and you begin to
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge that you are in denial because you
Speaker 1: are making preparations for a thing that you are convinced
Speaker 1: cannot happen. No matter how many previews you have gotten.
Speaker 1: It was denial, and it was capped by this one winter.
Speaker 1: The company that had sold and they delivered them by ups.
Speaker 1: I think these boxes full of water in some kind
Speaker 1: of plastic pouch, impermeable plastic pouch, water that would last
Speaker 1: you several days, and that God bless America gigantic wrench
Speaker 1: to shut off the gas. Yeah, I want to be
Speaker 1: playing with the gas during an earthquake and aftershocks. What
Speaker 1: do hell do I know about turning off the gas.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about turning off the gas on your stove.
Speaker 1: Worry about it, going in, finding in your building or
Speaker 1: the building which you live, or your home, going in
Speaker 1: finding the main artery to the gas and making sure
Speaker 1: you turned this. And by the way, you and sixteen
Speaker 1: neighbors probably could not turn it if you all turned
Speaker 1: it at the same time. But it had everything else
Speaker 1: that you needed, particularly the medical supplies and the radio
Speaker 1: and the batteries and the little little alerts that told
Speaker 1: you when you needed to throw in more batteries into
Speaker 1: your box in your closet. And for Christmas one year,
Speaker 1: I chose my twenty dearest friends and sent them all
Speaker 1: one of these boxes. Four or five of them not
Speaker 1: born in southern California called me on Christmas to say thanks.
Speaker 1: From four or five, I received no response whatsoever. The
Speaker 1: other ten or twelve either returned the box to me
Speaker 1: or called me up and yelled at me for having
Speaker 1: had the nerve to disturb them with something like this
Speaker 1: on Christmas. I swear denial is a hell of a
Speaker 1: drug in some respects. As I have indicated from my
Speaker 1: own behavior, it is necessary to live in a place
Speaker 1: like southern California, or I imagine in hurricane country, in cyclone country,
Speaker 1: in those areas of the Midwest with twisters. In fact,
Speaker 1: in all of human life, we have to have some
Speaker 1: denial or you will never ever go outside again, and
Speaker 1: while you're inside, you'll be worried about the roof falling in.
Speaker 1: You can't live that way. You do have to proceed,
Speaker 1: But in some areas where it's much more dangerous and
Speaker 1: the dangers are much more lethal. You then resort to
Speaker 1: denying everything and thinking, well, those four giant industrial grade
Speaker 1: fire hoses, they were just here for the problems they
Speaker 1: had in the twenties. It's not like that anymore. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: as the climate continues to deteriorate, and we now know
Speaker 1: that the process by which we make the planet uninhabitable
Speaker 1: has just been advanced by fifty years. Because that's the
Speaker 1: real story of the Trump election. The key decisions that
Speaker 1: will mitigate or worsen the immediate effect of climate change
Speaker 1: and let's call it for what it is, atmospheric disaster,
Speaker 1: those decisions will now be in the hands of a
Speaker 1: madman who doesn't believe in any of it and can't
Speaker 1: make money off of it. As I said earlier, the
Speaker 1: fatal element of the Trump madness is the idea that
Speaker 1: the only force in the world that matters is money.
Speaker 1: Money did nothing other than hasten a vaccine when a
Speaker 1: pandemic hit, and it will do nothing to stop fire
Speaker 1: like we have seen in southern California, and it will
Speaker 1: do nothing for whatever else is next. So when we
Speaker 1: are in denial, and we are now dealing with the
Speaker 1: scenario in which the time off in southern California from wildfires.
Speaker 1: Was the midwinter Rose Bowl Rose Bowl Parade, no fires.
Speaker 1: It's a great time of year, fifty sixty degrees every day,
Speaker 1: sometimes into the eighties. It's great being here. What do
Speaker 1: you mean Santa Monica is on fire? These are the
Speaker 1: changes we will see. It doesn't get warmer, it doesn't
Speaker 1: get colder. It just gets more extreme, more often. And
Speaker 1: now we have a man who thinks somehow that is
Speaker 1: caused by Hezbollah, So we will all have to make
Speaker 1: contain a little denial going forward. I don't know how
Speaker 1: much time the planet has left. The scenes I saw
Speaker 1: from southern California that kept me up all night Tuesday
Speaker 1: night and led this to being a ragged broadcast make
Speaker 1: me thinks, as always that it's sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1: My heart goes out to my former home. I don't
Speaker 1: know what happened to the brick spit house at the
Speaker 1: California Inc Line in pch, but I know I heard
Speaker 1: addresses mentioned Montana Lincoln Boulevard taking people off the freeway
Speaker 1: at Lincoln Boulevard. He used to get my mail on
Speaker 1: Lincoln Boulevard. The distance between Lincoln Boulevard and where I
Speaker 1: lived throughout My last stay in southern California was walking
Speaker 1: distance and that's where I got my mail. And there
Speaker 1: were fires, and there were blockades, and there were refugees.
Speaker 1: So the question that I raised earlier, which is, what
Speaker 1: the hell does all this wasted energy that this country
Speaker 1: is putting into blocking people from coming here who have
Speaker 1: nowhere else to live? What the hell does that mean
Speaker 1: when we are rendering parts of the planet uninhabitable, the
Speaker 1: areas around the equator, that within a few years it
Speaker 1: won't be oh, ten thousand migrants are at the border,
Speaker 1: or there's imaginary caravans on Fox News, there will be
Speaker 1: millions of people trying to get here because guess what,
Speaker 1: They're not going to stay and live in a place
Speaker 1: that's one hundred and fifty degrees. They're going to do
Speaker 1: something else. And the people, the number of people at
Speaker 1: the border may exceed the number of people inside the country.
Speaker 1: So the solution to immigration is not building walls which
Speaker 1: will not hold out a million people a day, which
Speaker 1: would be three hundred and sixty five million people in
Speaker 1: a year, which will be the size of our population. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's not the solution. The solution is to do our
Speaker 1: best to mitigate all of this and to arrange in
Speaker 1: advance areas for which these people can go. And I
Speaker 1: don't care if you have to bend some rules and say, well,
Speaker 1: you refugees from climate crises, you have to live in
Speaker 1: the unpopulated areas, which will be a little bit colder,
Speaker 1: because there are going to be more climate problems here too,
Speaker 1: but not like we're dealing with in the equatorial part
Speaker 1: of the country of the planet. I think there would
Speaker 1: be ways we can handle this, But we live in
Speaker 1: the land of stupid people, led by Trump, who is
Speaker 1: crazier than ever and there's something wrong with his eyes.
Speaker 1: And even if he does succumb to whatever is wrong
Speaker 1: with him, and he looks like he's on the verge,
Speaker 1: but often he's looked like that's imminent, he'll be replaced
Speaker 1: by a bunch of other people who get their news
Speaker 1: from YouTube conspiracy videos, to believe that the only force
Speaker 1: that matters in the world is money, and who do
Speaker 1: not know how to process nor act upon situations in
Speaker 1: which nature, the universe, the climate, the atmosphere, God, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call the forces of reality tell you
Speaker 1: to shove your money up your ass and take what
Speaker 1: you can with you because we're burning down your house
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood. We should have some denial, We should
Speaker 1: try to outlive our lives. But we can't have that
Speaker 1: much denial. And so back to the memo or the
Speaker 1: mantra I was going to use and trying to sell
Speaker 1: my stores that so offended Southern California with earthquake preparedness,
Speaker 1: it is be prepared. I've done all the damage I
Speaker 1: can do here raggedly, but I've been prepared. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration
Speaker 1: and keyboards, Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums,
Speaker 1: and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and
Speaker 1: fifthy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Speaker 1: Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer today was my friend Larry David, who I'm
Speaker 1: sure long ago screwed his cabinets, into his walls. Everything
Speaker 1: else was, as ever, my fault. You can't believe. Even
Speaker 1: thirty five years later, one of my friends from southern
Speaker 1: California brought up that gift of the earthquake preparedness box,
Speaker 1: like I had sent her a box of manure. Now
Speaker 1: I'm going to be thinking about earthquakes for the whole year. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's countdown for today, week and a half until we
Speaker 1: inaugurate a constitutionally ineligible president who does not believe in
Speaker 1: any of this and has no connection to reality anymore
Speaker 1: and thinks that there is money and him and nothing
Speaker 1: else in the world that matters. But it's just four
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy three days until the scheduled end of
Speaker 1: his lame duck term. The next scheduled countdown is Monday.
Speaker 1: I hope to announce a new schedule for this series
Speaker 1: by then. Maybe in the interim has always bulletins as
Speaker 1: the news warrants till the next one. I'm Keith Olderuman.
Speaker 1: Good Morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. 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.