Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio Sunday.
Speaker 1: He got the name of his own doctor wrong. Now
Speaker 1: he has gotten the name of the President of the
Speaker 1: United States wrong. Who in the hell is Joe Bride?
Speaker 1: Joe Bride? This guy is just the worst. Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: forming granting mass thinking to rapid citizenship so they can vote.
Speaker 1: Joe Bride. Trump's brain basically melting in the hot sun
Speaker 1: in Milwaukee. Joe Bride, No, he's fine. Ask doctor Johnson,
Speaker 1: Doctor Jackson, Doctor Johnson, Doctor Jackson, my sister, my daughter,
Speaker 1: Joe Bride, asked Joe Bride. Trump also stepped into it again,
Speaker 1: not in Milwaukee, but about it. His campaign had to
Speaker 1: deny a heavily sourced report from the ABC television station
Speaker 1: in Chicago that during the Republican convention in Milwaukee, the
Speaker 1: place he called horrible last week, he will not even
Speaker 1: stay in a hotel there. He will stay rather in
Speaker 1: his building in Chicago and commute to Milwaukee. Just to
Speaker 1: add a little to the sense of the scenes coming
Speaker 1: apart the Wisconsin congressman who last week insisted Trump never
Speaker 1: said a thing to the Republican House conclave about Milwaukee
Speaker 1: being horrible, then an hour later went on television and
Speaker 1: denied his own denial. Screwed up again in Milwaukee. This
Speaker 1: is Congressman Brian's style. He's supposed to be saying that
Speaker 1: Joe Biden is so old, or at least that Joe
Speaker 1: Bride is so old. Instead he screws up, and he
Speaker 1: makes the age joke about Trump and makes himself look
Speaker 1: like an idiot. It's hard to believe Donald Trump was
Speaker 1: first elected to the United States Senate when I was
Speaker 1: negative eight years old. That's true. President Biden was elected
Speaker 1: when I was negative eight years old. Sure, whatever you say, buddy,
Speaker 1: tell it to Joe Bride. Meanwhile, Susie Wiles and Chris Losavita,
Speaker 1: who are in essence running the Trump campaign, are reportedly
Speaker 1: worried about Trump, specifically about his deteriorating mental condition. Can't
Speaker 1: imagine why Joe Bride, and this is coming from two
Speaker 1: former Republicans still plugged into that side of the ball.
Speaker 1: Wiles and las Avita, per Rick Wilson are going to
Speaker 1: friendly journalists now and quoting Wilson, are starting to whisper
Speaker 1: that no one can control Trump. Former Republican Senate aide
Speaker 1: Tom Nichols meanwhile put his finger to the wind and
Speaker 1: then wrote that the flood of Trump campaign efforts to
Speaker 1: make it look like no one can control President Biden
Speaker 1: are making him suspicious. Nichols now writes, quote, Republicans and
Speaker 1: their media ecosystem seem to be in a panic about
Speaker 1: their candidate. If Trump is doing so well, why is
Speaker 1: his campaign and its support system in right wing media
Speaker 1: resorting to easily disproved lies because their candidate cannot remember
Speaker 1: the name of the man he is running against. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: back at Joe Bride headquarters, I hate background insider how
Speaker 1: it happens stories, but Politico has an unusually useful one.
Speaker 1: Why the Biden campaign finally read the room and called
Speaker 1: Trump a convicted criminal in its new ads going into
Speaker 1: the swing States this month. It's got a Biden polster
Speaker 1: on the record, but anonymous quoting We've seen in polling
Speaker 1: since the conviction that the more the conviction is front
Speaker 1: and center in voters' attention, the worse it is for Trump.
Speaker 1: The pollster said. Their research conclude that Trump's conviction could
Speaker 1: effectively be used in a broader depiction of Trump as
Speaker 1: being self centered and unwilling to take responsibility for his actions,
Speaker 1: quoting him. Trump has dug his own hole deeper on
Speaker 1: the convictions, the poster said, and we're seeing him pay
Speaker 1: the price for that in the polling. Maybe more impressively,
Speaker 1: Politico also had Third Way co founder Matt Bennett underscoring
Speaker 1: the fact that the convictions are really affecting independent voters,
Speaker 1: quoting him. What the polling clearly shows is there is
Speaker 1: a group of voters for whom the convictions matter, and
Speaker 1: it is the voters who are going to decide the election.
Speaker 1: A lot of us were skeptical that it would, but
Speaker 1: I think it's clear that these voters were shaken by
Speaker 1: the idea of a convicted felon becoming president. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty potent argument to make for voters who are on
Speaker 1: the fence unquote. Goddamn right. It is at the other
Speaker 1: end of the journalism scale, though the Biden is going
Speaker 1: to be replaced plot. Maybe he's going to be replaced
Speaker 1: by Joe Bride. The Biden is going to be replaced.
Speaker 1: Plot is ramping up again, and here's a shock. Three
Speaker 1: names still pushing the thing are Mark Penn, Joe Klein,
Speaker 1: and Kathleen Parker. You remember Kathleen Parker. She's the Washington
Speaker 1: Post idiot who eight years ago managed to get not
Speaker 1: just the election wrong, but managed to get it wrong
Speaker 1: in both opposing directions. She wrote, no matter who won,
Speaker 1: we would be fine. There would be no wall, Republicans
Speaker 1: would contain Trump, and Hillary Clinton would be handled by
Speaker 1: her handlers. Inexplicably, Parker is still at the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: and now she is suggesting that Biden has not dropped
Speaker 1: out only because Democrats don't believe Vice President Harris would win.
Speaker 1: So her headline, Democrats are wrestling with an age old problem.
Speaker 1: Maybe Hillary Clinton could come to the rescue. Unquote poker note,
Speaker 1: Secretary Clinton has endorsed a Democratic congressional candidate, and she
Speaker 1: thinks that means well, let me just quote this dribble.
Speaker 1: The question is why, now, Why would she suddenly get
Speaker 1: involved in a congressional race. We are left to speculate
Speaker 1: about motive, but the effect of Clinton inserting herself into
Speaker 1: the news cycle is to remind voters that, but for
Speaker 1: her defeat in twenty sixteen, we wouldn't be stuck in
Speaker 1: this old white man dilemma. No one has mentioned her
Speaker 1: as a possible running mate for Biden far as I know,
Speaker 1: but why not replace Harris with Clinton? At seventy six?
Speaker 1: She might want no part of it, but it's hard
Speaker 1: to retire when you feel your job isn't done. If
Speaker 1: Biden needs to step down, even those who didn't vote
Speaker 1: for Clinton would have confidence in her ability to keep
Speaker 1: the country on track. It's just a thought, But worse
Speaker 1: ideas have met with regrettable success. Unquote. Yeah, CNN once
Speaker 1: thought Kathleen Parker co anchor their eight PM newscast, and
Speaker 1: that had regrettable success. Oh no, it didn't. They fired
Speaker 1: her after a couple of months. As to Mark Penn,
Speaker 1: he is referenced in Britain's Daily Mails article about how
Speaker 1: if the president struggles in the debate, a group of
Speaker 1: Democratic elders will convene and blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: You know the rest. Worse that British tabloid quotes the
Speaker 1: former political columnist Joe Klein with one of the dumbest
Speaker 1: things ever written. Kathleen Parker would not have written this
Speaker 1: quote if Biden were to stand down. Quote a vigorous
Speaker 1: young candidate. Don't ask me who could win over the
Speaker 1: country with a single convention. Speech in August. In Kline scenario,
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party savior would deliver an Obama asque inspirational
Speaker 1: speech akin to Barack's famous two thousand and four Democratic
Speaker 1: Convention address that would quickly bring together disaffected Democrats and
Speaker 1: moderate independence unquote. All you really need to know about
Speaker 1: Joe Klein's incompetence is he and I went to the
Speaker 1: same prep school, not at the same time, but we
Speaker 1: had the same immortal English teacher who reshaped us from
Speaker 1: bad writers into well not so bad writers. The teacher's
Speaker 1: name was Arthur Nathan, and twenty years ago Kleine and
Speaker 1: I co chaired his retirement ceremony, for which a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred students, maybe a quarter of all he ever taught,
Speaker 1: traveled back here to thank him. This is the all
Speaker 1: you really need to know about Klein part. Kleine emphasized
Speaker 1: at that event that mister Nathing had taught him the
Speaker 1: essence of good writing, namely that you must write as
Speaker 1: if your name were in bold print at the end
Speaker 1: of every page, every paragraph, perhaps every sentence. Joe Kline was,
Speaker 1: of course, the man who wrote the novelized version of
Speaker 1: the Bill Clinton campaign primary colors. What you may not
Speaker 1: know about that is that Kleine, molded by Arthur Nathan
Speaker 1: to remember that his words carried his very identity, originally
Speaker 1: published his book Primary Colors anonymously. Meanwhile, almost as big
Speaker 1: as Trump calling Joe Biden Joe Bride Rogers, Stone may
Speaker 1: have conceivably cost Judge Eileen Cannon her job. In the
Speaker 1: latest undercover audio released by my friend, the investigative journalist
Speaker 1: Lauren Windsor and her colleague Ali Somarco, Stone at a
Speaker 1: Catholics for Catholics event at Mary Lago made the mistake
Speaker 1: of hinting that the fix could be in in Trump's
Speaker 1: trial for stealing and keeping classified documents and other Espionage
Speaker 1: Act crimes. That when the Trump appointed Cannon conducts a
Speaker 1: hearing day after tomorrow on the Trump motions to dismiss
Speaker 1: all or most of the charges on the fabricated premise
Speaker 1: that the Special Council was unlawfully appointed, Stone seems, even
Speaker 1: for him, unusually confident that Cannon really will throw the
Speaker 1: case to Trump. I think the judge Stary Lords is
Speaker 1: dismissing that Judges gets what Jack Smith could do about
Speaker 1: that Cannon, whom Trump elevated to the bench after she
Speaker 1: began as literally the flamenco and yoga correspondent of the
Speaker 1: Miami Nuevo Herald newspaper. What Jack Smith could do is unclear.
Speaker 1: There have already been complaints about Judge Cannon's conduct, especially
Speaker 1: her slow walking this case and her overall obvious, painful
Speaker 1: inability to do ordinary judge things like scheduling and ruling
Speaker 1: that has all already made it to the Eleventh Circuit Court.
Speaker 1: What Stone's words might do is even more speculative. As
Speaker 1: close as he has been to Trump, He's not officially
Speaker 1: involved in this case, but as long ago as April,
Speaker 1: Trump's former attorney Ty Cobb said he thought her conduct
Speaker 1: was so unprofessional, leaving aside the potentiality of it also
Speaker 1: being corrupt, that Cobb expected the Eleventh Circuit to remove
Speaker 1: Judge Cannon eventually. Unfortunately, from more of the windsor Somrco
Speaker 1: recordings of Stone at marri Lago last month, if Canon
Speaker 1: is defused and another judge takes over the Trump Document's case,
Speaker 1: Stone ain't worried judges. He's got a million judges and
Speaker 1: he expects to deploy them and lawyers and something closer
Speaker 1: to his Brooks Brothers riot during the judicial selection of
Speaker 1: George W. Bush as president in the early winter of
Speaker 1: two thousand, rather than you know, the real riot at
Speaker 1: the Capitol on January sixth. We're working on it. We're
Speaker 1: working on it.
Speaker 2: Lawyer's judges, technology, n there's some, but there are many
Speaker 2: living guns.
Speaker 1: Money is every level.
Speaker 2: We here, we are doing that the residents trial, George's
Speaker 2: fall in the hall. I think the judges are the
Speaker 2: larger dismissing that judges gets to learn they're delayed in
Speaker 2: New York City and they're now delayed to Washington. Stim
Speaker 2: trials the election, which is the absolute key to be
Speaker 2: able convinced peaker and the reason we lost the special trial.
Speaker 2: Right now, if they steal the peoples of arts impossible,
Speaker 2: SIOF is leading all the poll They walk to try
Speaker 2: and suffer his money, suffered his time, and create the
Speaker 2: reasons why their death is plausible in the.
Speaker 1: Legal As to the more immediate legal issues, Trump's conciers
Speaker 1: Judge Eileen Cannon conduct her hearing Friday. Meanwhile, if you're
Speaker 1: wondering how many End of the World planks they can
Speaker 1: fit into the Republican platform, here's another one. The Heritage
Speaker 1: Foundation the puppeteers behind Project twenty twenty five, and thus
Speaker 1: the puppeteers behind a Trump dictatorship have posted yet another
Speaker 1: you have to keep working until you're dead peace quoting.
Speaker 1: To restore social securities intent, policymakers should gradually increase the
Speaker 1: normal retirement age from sixty seven to sixty nine or seventy,
Speaker 1: moving the age up by one or two months per year,
Speaker 1: and indexit to life expectancy. How do you not make
Speaker 1: that into a Biden ad? I'm Joe Bride, and I
Speaker 1: approve this message because the Republicans want you to work
Speaker 1: till you die. A Steve Bannon update, It is now
Speaker 1: reported that when his four month jail term starts on
Speaker 1: July first, it will not be at some club fed,
Speaker 1: but rather at the Federal Correction facility at Danbury, Connecticut, which,
Speaker 1: among other unpleasant realities, is halfway between New York City
Speaker 1: and ESPN World headquarters. Also, Bannon would be in jail
Speaker 1: while he goes on trial here as part of that
Speaker 1: Build the Wall financial scam that would be in September,
Speaker 1: and if he thinks Danbury is fun, the expectation is
Speaker 1: that when court is not in session in New York
Speaker 1: they would keep him at the Rikers Island jail. I
Speaker 1: mean Rikers Island. This is a jail jail. I have
Speaker 1: been there, not as an inmate, but I have been there.
Speaker 1: They have sent prisoners to Rikers and lost them. I
Speaker 1: don't mean they died, I don't mean they escaped. I
Speaker 1: mean they get sent there, and bureaucratically they get lost,
Speaker 1: and I don't know that they stay and open a shoeshine,
Speaker 1: stand in a cell block or something. Two other notes,
Speaker 1: The Trump family Daily Self Unawareness Award actually does not
Speaker 1: go to elderly offender Trump, even for Joe Bride, but
Speaker 1: to his son, idiot Junior. Donald the second tweeted a
Speaker 1: photo of CNN's anchor Jim Acosta and wrote, Lol, looks
Speaker 1: like CNN fake news loser. Acosta got an embarrassingly bad
Speaker 1: hair dye job, leaving his father's hair diary job out
Speaker 1: of it. Talk about embarrassingly bad hair dye job, Remember that,
Speaker 1: among the other living hells of his life, Don Junior
Speaker 1: is the guy who, on some kind of regular basis,
Speaker 1: mounts that gargoyle Kimberly Gilfoyle, who at age fifty five,
Speaker 1: is trying to look thirty five and who now has
Speaker 1: so much makeup and so much hair dye that she
Speaker 1: looks like Betty Davis in the movie Whatever Happened to
Speaker 1: Baby Jane? And lastly, there has been a Milania Trump
Speaker 1: sighting the log Cabin. Republicans are holding a fundraiser at
Speaker 1: Trump Tower on July eighth. It has been announced, and
Speaker 1: she is going to be the host. And joke all
Speaker 1: you want about a homophobic organization like the Republicans having
Speaker 1: an LGBTQ arm and the most recent missus Trump being
Speaker 1: their host, But the real news here is surprise, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: we were all wrong. Milania Trump has not fled the
Speaker 1: country speaking of unexpected sightings and fleeing. Jeff Bezos has
Speaker 1: actually said something about the fact that the guys he
Speaker 1: hired imploded his Washington Post out first, evacuating the staff
Speaker 1: or the paper's reputation. He sent an email and it
Speaker 1: is so vacuous and so vapid that if you told
Speaker 1: me it was generated by artificial intelligence, I would argue
Speaker 1: your use of the word intelligence, but I would applaud
Speaker 1: your use of the word artificial That's next. This is
Speaker 1: countdown with Joe Bride. Joe Bride, Willie Mays died yesterday.
Speaker 1: Willy Mays was Baseball's greatest living player, the best defensive
Speaker 1: athlete I have ever seen, and the author of the
Speaker 1: most celebrated defensive play in baseball history, maybe in sports history,
Speaker 1: and with timing that defies belief. Willie Mays died at
Speaker 1: the age of ninety three, two days before his San
Speaker 1: Francisco Giants and the Saint Louis Cardinals are to play
Speaker 1: a salute to the Negro Leagues, the leagues in which
Speaker 1: he began his career at the oldest ballpark in America,
Speaker 1: Rickwood Field, where his Birmingham Black Barons played. I saw
Speaker 1: William Mays play several times. I saw him play once
Speaker 1: in Montreal, saw him in New York a lot. Saw
Speaker 1: him in his last two years with the Mets. He
Speaker 1: spoke at my high school right after his retirement, and
Speaker 1: he was simply one of those athletes who seemed to
Speaker 1: be seen and experiencing the world a few seconds before
Speaker 1: the rest of us. The old cliche applied, where the
Speaker 1: ball is going to be, not where it is. That's
Speaker 1: where you will find Willie Mays. And I remember him
Speaker 1: playing one game in his twenty three season National League career,
Speaker 1: a career played entirely in a different world than ours.
Speaker 1: He played it not in his customary center field for
Speaker 1: the San Francisco Giants, but he played it in right
Speaker 1: field because they wanted to give Willy a little bit
Speaker 1: of a break since he was playing with a strained
Speaker 1: groin muscle. And yet, for all his greatness and his longevity,
Speaker 1: my thoughts flashed back, as they inevitably do, to the person.
Speaker 1: He was singular, different, funny, unusual, and even at the
Speaker 1: somber news of his passing, my thoughts flashed back to
Speaker 1: the fact that it was Willie Mays who was on
Speaker 1: the other end of the damnedest interview I ever did.
Speaker 1: This was at my first job for my radio network
Speaker 1: at UPI, when God helped me. Willie Mays was sixteen
Speaker 1: years younger than I am now, and like I wasn't
Speaker 1: scared enough to be on the phone with Willie Mays.
Speaker 1: He started the interview by doing a bit, a bit twitch.
Speaker 1: If I had done that bit, they would have fired me.
Speaker 1: The other thing I think of is an amazing injustice
Speaker 1: that befell Willie Mays, that nobody talks about and nobody
Speaker 1: registers anymore. Okay, the first part. So it's a Saturday afternoon,
Speaker 1: October twenty seventh, nineteen seventy nine, just forty three and
Speaker 1: a half years ago, and Willie Mays has just been
Speaker 1: banned from baseball because word has gotten out that he
Speaker 1: has signed a contract to do promotional events for a
Speaker 1: casino in Atlantic City, and there is a news conference
Speaker 1: coming up in two days on Monday. Now, try explaining
Speaker 1: this whole concept to any current sports fan. Any current
Speaker 1: sports fan now used to seeing retired players on TV
Speaker 1: telling them how to bet and who to bet on,
Speaker 1: or the sportscasters doing the games giving you the latest
Speaker 1: odds and how they have changed since the last period
Speaker 1: or inning started. Plus this was like three months after
Speaker 1: Willy Mays was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame,
Speaker 1: three months after the celebration of this brilliant career, and
Speaker 1: now they've banned him for life for something that today
Speaker 1: the commissioner would have sent him a note of congratulations,
Speaker 1: to say nothing of a large paycheck. And nobody has
Speaker 1: done an interview with Willy Mays yet because he has
Speaker 1: been traveling, and my phone rings in my little cubby
Speaker 1: hole at the United pres International Radio Network that I've
Speaker 1: only been working at since August three months. That's how
Speaker 1: long my full time broadcasting career has been to this point.
Speaker 1: And on the phone is maybe the top baseball reporter
Speaker 1: of the second half of the twentieth century. Keith, it's
Speaker 1: Milt Richmond. This man once reported it in July nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five that if the Milwaukee Braves did not start winning,
Speaker 1: that they would fire their manager. Exactly one year later,
Speaker 1: and they didn't start winning, and exactly one year later
Speaker 1: to the day, they fight their manager. Keith, write this
Speaker 1: phone number down. It's Willie May's. Milt never got excited
Speaker 1: about anything. He talked like this all the time. William
Speaker 1: Mays is expecting your call for an interview about this
Speaker 1: banishment story. And I squeaked yes, sir, And I went
Speaker 1: into one of our recording studios and I dialed Willie
Speaker 1: Mays's phone number. And I will not recreate the voice
Speaker 1: that I heard answer Willie May's phone, because while doing
Speaker 1: this voice was once considered to be a staple of
Speaker 1: American humor, even American humor written or performed by liberals.
Speaker 1: I mean, James Thurber's short stories are full of this voice.
Speaker 1: The voice is wildly racist. It is racist enough that
Speaker 1: if today you heard an African American man do it,
Speaker 1: even Willie Mays, you probably say no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: still still racist. Don't don't, don't do it, Willie. It
Speaker 1: was a voice similar to the actress Hattie McDaniel, who
Speaker 1: won the Academy Award in nineteen thirty nine for Gone
Speaker 1: with the Wind. She was a world class blues singer,
Speaker 1: a top patriotic fundraiser during World War Two, and she
Speaker 1: played maids housekeepers in maybe two hundred films. She also
Speaker 1: played one on a famous radio show, and was paid
Speaker 1: so little that while she was performing her role of
Speaker 1: the pretend maid, she had to keep working as a
Speaker 1: real maid. Okay, so I'm twenty years old and I
Speaker 1: have to interview Willie Mays about him getting banned from baseball,
Speaker 1: which is crazy enough. And I call and the phone
Speaker 1: is answered, and a gravelly but feminine voice that sounded
Speaker 1: exactly like Hattie McDaniel says, hello, mister Mays's residence, and
Speaker 1: I'm a little throne, but I power through it somehow,
Speaker 1: and I explain who I am, and she says ahah,
Speaker 1: And I say where I'm calling from and she says ahah,
Speaker 1: and I say, Milt Richmond said Mays was expecting my call,
Speaker 1: and she interrupts and goes, this is Willie. The Hattie
Speaker 1: McDaniel impersonation was being done by Willie Mays. Now I
Speaker 1: do not have this on tape. Silly me. When my
Speaker 1: bosses said you may not start recording before you get
Speaker 1: express permission from the interviewee to start recording, I believed
Speaker 1: them and I lived by that rule. Anybody else would
Speaker 1: have a tape of this phone being answered and the
Speaker 1: Hattie McDaniel impression done by Willie Mays, because the first
Speaker 1: thing you do is record, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: remember to record, because otherwise you'll forget to record. But
Speaker 1: I'm afraid you are going to have to take my
Speaker 1: word for this, because why would I make this up.
Speaker 1: October twenty seventh, nineteen seventy nine, and I still haven't
Speaker 1: recovered mister Mays's residence. Happy ninety second birthday, Willie Mays.
Speaker 1: Now the injustice that Willy Mays suffered that nobody talks about.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've never heard him talk about it. This
Speaker 1: is something else that no fan believes today. The United
Speaker 1: States military used to draft Major League baseball players and
Speaker 1: NFL players and NBA players and send them into the
Speaker 1: service in the middle of their seasons, in the primes
Speaker 1: of their careers, even if there was no war in progress.
Speaker 1: They only did it a couple of times after saying
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, and usually that was thinly veiled racist
Speaker 1: political pressure, such as when they drafted Muhammad Ali in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six when he was heavyweight champion of the
Speaker 1: world and an activist Muslim and he was twenty four
Speaker 1: years old when everybody else getting drafted was eighteen. Remember that.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen fifty two they also drafted Willie Mays.
Speaker 1: He had come up from the Miners the year before
Speaker 1: and had led the New York Giants feen games back
Speaker 1: to the National League pennant, and he was the kind
Speaker 1: of all around whirlwind of a player nobody had ever
Speaker 1: seen before in Major League Baseball. And on May twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: thirty four games into his second season boom, he was
Speaker 1: drafted and inducted. And he missed the rest of that
Speaker 1: season and all of the nineteen fifty three season. I
Speaker 1: can't think of a parallel today. Maybe maybe they they
Speaker 1: draft in the middle of his second season somebody like
Speaker 1: Fernando Tatis and in the middle of May, he's gone
Speaker 1: for the rest of this year and next year because
Speaker 1: he has to go serve in the military. Now, they
Speaker 1: didn't draft Mickey Mantle, who also broke in in New
Speaker 1: York in nineteen fifty one, the way Mays did, And
Speaker 1: to be fair, Mickey Mantle had about four hundred medical
Speaker 1: problems that would have kept anybody out of the military,
Speaker 1: and it was all legit. But they also didn't draft
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifty one American League Rookie of the Year winner,
Speaker 1: Gil mcdouge of the Yankees, who was a white guy,
Speaker 1: or Walt Dropo, who was the Rookie of the Year
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty or Roy Sievers, who was the Rookie
Speaker 1: of the Year in nineteen forty nine, or or you
Speaker 1: get the point here. Now, trying to calculate should have
Speaker 1: beens in sports is a risky enough business, but you
Speaker 1: can get an approximation of what might have happened. If
Speaker 1: a player hits twenty homers in his first year and
Speaker 1: then misses two years, and then he comes back and
Speaker 1: he hits forty one homers in his first year back,
Speaker 1: you can excrapolate that he probably would have hit twenty
Speaker 1: seven homers in the first missing year and thirty four
Speaker 1: in the second missing year. Your numerical sequence is twenty
Speaker 1: homers and twenty seven homers, then thirty four homers, then
Speaker 1: forty one homers. You have to tinker a little bit
Speaker 1: with it in Maze's case, because he didn't miss all
Speaker 1: of that second season nineteen fifty two. He just missed
Speaker 1: from June on and he'd had a slow start. He'd
Speaker 1: only hit four homers in the first two months of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, so instead of twenty seven that year,
Speaker 1: maybe he only hits twenty four that year. So a
Speaker 1: good guess as to how many homers Willie Mays did
Speaker 1: not get to hit because he got drafted and all
Speaker 1: the white guys did not get drafted is all told
Speaker 1: fifty four. In real life, playing between nineteen fifty one
Speaker 1: and nineteen seventy three, Willy Mays finished with six hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty home runs. For most of the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: it was thought he was the man who would challenge
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth's career record, not Hank Aaron, but Willie Mays.
Speaker 1: Willie Mays hit six hundred and sixty homers, but if
Speaker 1: you give him those fifty four more homers he might
Speaker 1: have hit. If he hadn't been so curiously drafted in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, Willie Mays would have finished with seven
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteen home runs, seven hundred and fourteen, which
Speaker 1: is exactly how many Babe Ruth hit. So if he
Speaker 1: doesn't get drafted, maybe in nineteen seventy two and nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three and nineteen seventy four, we are seeing Willie
Speaker 1: Mays hit his seven hundredth career home run, challenging Babe
Speaker 1: Ruth's record, and then tying and breaking Babe Ruth's record,
Speaker 1: and then right behind him, Henry Aaron hits his seven
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteenth homer and then his seven hundred and
Speaker 1: sixteenth homer to break the all time record held by
Speaker 1: Willie Mays, still ahead of us on this edition of Countdown.
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos is in the news, as you will hear
Speaker 1: in a moment, And if Jeff Bezos is in the news,
Speaker 1: then his fiance Lauren Sanchez is in the news, and
Speaker 1: thus the fact that Trump's tabloid allies tried to blackmail
Speaker 1: both of them is in the news. Anybody remember the
Speaker 1: Stormy Daniels trial. We almost had a Lauren Sanchez trial,
Speaker 1: and thus I am inevitably reminded that I used to
Speaker 1: work both with her, a blackmail victim and a guy
Speaker 1: who tried to blackmail David Letterman coming up in things
Speaker 1: I promise not to tell, but first there's still more
Speaker 1: new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the
Speaker 1: mis grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute
Speaker 1: two days worst persons in the world. The bronze worse
Speaker 1: Senator Josh Hawley you may remember him from his raised
Speaker 1: fist to the traders just before the assault on the
Speaker 1: Capitol on January sixth. Well Sir, one of his former
Speaker 1: staffers is a financial backer of this new fascist disinfo site,
Speaker 1: Washington Reporter. That's the place that made up a story
Speaker 1: about Biden demanding that he and Trump could sit during
Speaker 1: next week's debate, which CNN, which is running the debate,
Speaker 1: immediately denied because it's not true, and Washington Reporter posted
Speaker 1: it anyway. Because Washington Reporter has the journalistic chops of
Speaker 1: cat turd. Hawley has helpfully retweeted that lie and adding
Speaker 1: a President Biden. Quote, he can't stand for ninety minutes,
Speaker 1: but he's one hundred percent able to be president. Have
Speaker 1: fun explaining that. Well, to explain something to Josh Haley,
Speaker 1: you have to speak slowly, as if you were talking
Speaker 1: to a four year old child. Because one of the
Speaker 1: things that the insurrection and the fascism makes us forget
Speaker 1: about Josh Holly is that he's an idiot. So, Josh, Joshua, Josh,
Speaker 1: look over here, look at the shiny object. Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: last State of the Union address was sixty seven minutes,
Speaker 1: and he stood up through the whole thing and he
Speaker 1: was the only one talking. The one the year before
Speaker 1: was seventy three minutes. Also, we're really going to talk
Speaker 1: about standing and movement in government type things, mister Holly,
Speaker 1: when the only thing you will be remembered for when
Speaker 1: you're dead will be that image of you running for
Speaker 1: your life from the same insurrectionists you had just saluted
Speaker 1: during the coup attempt, running through the Capitol and creating
Speaker 1: that freeze frame, forming with near perfect accuracy with your
Speaker 1: own body a swastika. You can't stand for ninety minutes.
Speaker 1: You can't run and look like a swastika. At the
Speaker 1: same time, I'll give Biden credit for that. Hawley can
Speaker 1: the runner's up worser the BBC. The BBC has an
Speaker 1: email newsletter of its job postings, and the demon of
Speaker 1: the twenty first century spellcheck has turned the latest edition
Speaker 1: of its email job newsletter into a disaster. Now, not
Speaker 1: the one at the top. There the opportunity to become
Speaker 1: the assistant producer in charge of Sliced Bread. That's not
Speaker 1: a typo, nor is it a toast related assignment. There's
Speaker 1: actually a show called Sliced Bread. This is the one
Speaker 1: at the bottom of this email, which is looking for
Speaker 1: an assistant producer of classical music for BBC Audio North.
Speaker 1: They note the job as part of the BBC's Quote
Speaker 1: Extend program for disabled people unquote, and then comes the
Speaker 1: shocker quote to apply. You should identify as dead, disabled
Speaker 1: or neurodivergent. I identify you as dead. That's diverse hiring.
Speaker 1: I would also explain a lot of the executives I've
Speaker 1: worked for, especially at NBC. Oh they were dead on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, a daily basis or intermittently or what
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I get it. The typo is not hard
Speaker 1: to unravel. It's supposed to read quote to apply, you
Speaker 1: should identify as death disabled or neurodivergent. Although if they're
Speaker 1: hiring dead people but our winner. Speaking of which, the
Speaker 1: worst Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, depicted
Speaker 1: in the gossip pages this week on vacation in Greece
Speaker 1: with his carefully reconstructed fiance my former Fox Sports colleague
Speaker 1: Lauren Sanchez. More about them coming up, but this about Bezos,
Speaker 1: who has apparently been informed while on vacation that his
Speaker 1: as they call corporate newspapers and newsletters, his little house
Speaker 1: organ is burning to the ground. The new publisher of
Speaker 1: the Washington Post tried to bury a story in that
Speaker 1: paper about his past violations of every known journalistic principle
Speaker 1: while he worked in England. He attacked another reporter at
Speaker 1: NPR who uncovered it. He's brought in ex Murdoch people
Speaker 1: to run the paper. And if democracy dies in darkness,
Speaker 1: this publisher, Will Lewis, has just turned off all the
Speaker 1: lights in the newsroom. The staff is in revolts, the
Speaker 1: readers have fled, and mister Bezos has now decided to
Speaker 1: send his employees an email of reassurance and a typo
Speaker 1: like the BBC's Dead for Deaf That would have been
Speaker 1: an improvement on this quote subject quality journalism. Team. I
Speaker 1: know you've already heard this from Will, but I want
Speaker 1: it to also weigh in directly. The journalistic standards and
Speaker 1: ethics at the Post will not change. To be sure,
Speaker 1: it can't be business as usual at the Post. The
Speaker 1: world is evolving rapidly and we do need to change
Speaker 1: as a business. With your support, we'll do that and
Speaker 1: lead this great institution into the future. But as the
Speaker 1: newsroom leaders who've been shaping and guiding our coverage, you
Speaker 1: also know our standards at the Post have always been
Speaker 1: very high. That can't change, and it won't. You have
Speaker 1: my full commitment on maintaining equality, ethics and standards we
Speaker 1: all believe in. A huge thank you for continuing to
Speaker 1: do the work that makes us all proud and makes
Speaker 1: this institution so important. Jeff, Wow, the latest estimate of
Speaker 1: Jef bezos Is worth is two hundred and one billion,
Speaker 1: two hundred million dollars. Yet he could not hire somebody
Speaker 1: to write something better than that piece of crap, something
Speaker 1: with at least some indication that he has an idea
Speaker 1: of what the problem is at the Washington Post. There
Speaker 1: are only four names in that entire email. One is Will,
Speaker 1: the publisher, who Bezos is going to have to get
Speaker 1: rid of, and the other three are quote the Post.
Speaker 1: You could change just a few words in there and
Speaker 1: tighten it up a little bit, and Bezos could repurpose
Speaker 1: that email as the fortune in a fortune cookie. I mean,
Speaker 1: how many platitudes can you fit into one paragraph? Post
Speaker 1: will not change business as usual evolving rapidly. Change is
Speaker 1: a business lead this great institution standards Post can't change.
Speaker 1: You have my full commitment. Make us all proud. He's
Speaker 1: got everything in there except push the envelope. Value added
Speaker 1: failure is not an option to whom it may concern.
Speaker 1: Employees must wash hands and let them eat cake. Jeff
Speaker 1: ps Sanchez says, Hi Bezos emailing it in and two
Speaker 1: days worst Parson and Lord. Jeff Bezos, the founder of
Speaker 1: Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, was being blackmailed
Speaker 1: by allies of Crazy Trump, who expected to get positive
Speaker 1: coverage for their leader of their cult. What they had
Speaker 1: on Bezos was he had a girlfriend. They had pictures.
Speaker 1: It would cost him hundreds of millions of dollars. Were
Speaker 1: his wife to find out, he said, that'll happen. In
Speaker 1: February twenty nineteen, Jeff Bezos went public, said his marriage
Speaker 1: was ending anyway. He was sorry about the pain this
Speaker 1: caused his wife, but he would now give her all
Speaker 1: she wanted, and the National Inquirer blackmailers could shove it
Speaker 1: amid everything else. It suggested to me that when you
Speaker 1: cannot figure out what happened to the people who once
Speaker 1: seemed to have principles, or at least seemed to have
Speaker 1: enmity towards crazy Trump, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, others, remember
Speaker 1: that the odds were amazingly small that the first time
Speaker 1: Trump's allies tried to blackmail somebody on his behalf, that
Speaker 1: they would find in Jeff Bezos the one guy who
Speaker 1: would say no on the first try. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I have assumed ever since that this process has been
Speaker 1: utilized for years on Trump's behalf, in business, inside politics
Speaker 1: and at its fringes, and that Bezos was not the
Speaker 1: first victim of this, just the first victim who said, few,
Speaker 1: this is why we have fuw money. But beneath all
Speaker 1: that important stuff was yet another occasion where my jaw
Speaker 1: dropped to the floor and I had to reattach it
Speaker 1: with l Ohmer's glue. The woman at the center of
Speaker 1: the blackmail, the woman for whom Jeff Bezos was going
Speaker 1: to leave his wife, was named Lauren Sanchez, and like
Speaker 1: everybody else in this twenty first century America, I used
Speaker 1: to work with her. Lauren was a reporter and sometimes
Speaker 1: anchor at Fox Sportsnet when I got there in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight. Only sometimes they wrote her a script once
Speaker 1: that actually read Roger Clemens ra is one of the
Speaker 1: greatest in his era, and she, of course read Roger Clemens'
Speaker 1: era is one of the greatest in his er. She
Speaker 1: was much better at interviewing Lakers players after games, particularly
Speaker 1: Shaquille O'Neill, even though he was more than two feet
Speaker 1: taller than she was, and she used to insist on
Speaker 1: interviewing him standing up. These little visits looked so odd
Speaker 1: on camera that I remember seeing one of her stories
Speaker 1: being fed in from the LA Forum and I asked
Speaker 1: the producer, were we actually putting that on the air
Speaker 1: or just onto the gag reel for Christmas? We did
Speaker 1: not overlap long there After, she gave birth to the
Speaker 1: child of NFL tight end Tony Gonzales. Long after she
Speaker 1: had ended her relationship with him. Lauren Sanchez was hired
Speaker 1: to anchor the news on Channel thirteen, which is a
Speaker 1: station that was apparently created because somebody would always have
Speaker 1: to be in last place in the news ratings, and
Speaker 1: it might as well be them. I was back visiting
Speaker 1: in LA in the spring of two thousand and two
Speaker 1: and dived in and out of as many newscasts as
Speaker 1: I could so I could see what my two ex
Speaker 1: employers there, and so many of my old colleagues and
Speaker 1: rivals were doing. That's when I saw it the worst
Speaker 1: or perhaps the best commercial for a local television news
Speaker 1: sweeps series in human history in any language. Sweeps series
Speaker 1: used to be local TVs bread and butter. During the
Speaker 1: weeks when the local ratings were tabulated and used to
Speaker 1: establish who was number one and thus how much everybody's
Speaker 1: commercials would cost, each station would do a series of
Speaker 1: special reports within each newscast. They were designed solely to
Speaker 1: be advertised, to be sponsored, and to be as salacious
Speaker 1: or silly or unbelievable or titillating or just as memorable
Speaker 1: as possible. When I was in local news in LA
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties, we had a series at
Speaker 1: Channel two with a very good reporter named Dorothy Lucy,
Speaker 1: and the series was called The Search for Slees. The
Speaker 1: commercials for The Search for Slees showed her riding around
Speaker 1: in a jacuzzi built into the back of a stretch
Speaker 1: limo with an old guy with a beard and a
Speaker 1: couple of bikini models in there too. That had been,
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, the low point of the Sweeps series.
Speaker 1: But now, as I watched in my hotel room in
Speaker 1: Santa Monica in the spring of two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: this is more or less what I heard the voiceover
Speaker 1: announcer say. This week, a special report, ca COP thirteen
Speaker 1: News anchor Lauren Sanchez brings you how to Meet a Baller. Ladies,
Speaker 1: find out where to meet the athlete of your dreams, Lakerers, Clippers, Kings, Dodgers, Angels.
Speaker 1: Do you want to meet him? Do you want to
Speaker 1: get to know him? Do you want to date him?
Speaker 1: How to beat a Baller? This week on the KCP
Speaker 1: thirteen News at ten with Lauren Sanchez, How to Meet
Speaker 1: a Baller. I'm not certain how they restored me to
Speaker 1: human form from the puddle into which I had dissolved.
Speaker 1: I do remember calling the desk to ask if it
Speaker 1: was still Tuesday. It felt like I had been out
Speaker 1: cold for several weeks. I was appalled, shocked, chagrined, nauseated, mortified, embarrassed, humiliated,
Speaker 1: And then I stopped, and as an angelic choir sang
Speaker 1: in the background, I changed my mind completely. This was
Speaker 1: not Sweep's series madness. This was not a woman debasing
Speaker 1: herself by teaching other women how to debase themselves, how
Speaker 1: to meet dollars. This was, for perhaps the first time
Speaker 1: in Sweeps series history, perhaps the first time in local
Speaker 1: television news history, a true expert, lending her panoramic learned
Speaker 1: comprehensive knowledge about one subject, requiring subtlety, insight, insider information,
Speaker 1: and the selflessness to share it with mere ordinary women viewers.
Speaker 1: How do you meet a baller? I would never have
Speaker 1: known who to ask. I never would have known to
Speaker 1: whom to send my wife or daughter or friend. Not really.
Speaker 1: I knew there were experts, there were scholars, there were
Speaker 1: fonts of wisdom. But Lauren Sanchez was the Einstein of
Speaker 1: meeting ballers. And even in the glimmering light of knowledge
Speaker 1: that radiated from her that week on Channel thirteen, Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: two decades ago. Even in the blinding aura of her brilliance,
Speaker 1: could she have known that the ultimate target of the
Speaker 1: Little Sweep series should have been No, mere Tony Gonzalez?
Speaker 1: Or do you want to meet him? Do you want
Speaker 1: to get to know him? Do you want to date him?
Speaker 1: It should have been do you want to meet him?
Speaker 1: Do you want to get to know him? Do you
Speaker 1: want to date him? How to meet a bezos in life?
Speaker 1: You just don't expect people you worked with for a
Speaker 1: few weeks, like Lauren Sanchez, to you wind up as
Speaker 1: part of modern American history. It just seems unlikely, not
Speaker 1: that they could be involved in a blackmail story like
Speaker 1: hers and she was a victim, but that you could
Speaker 1: have known her. And yet, for me this was the
Speaker 1: second time. On October first, two thousand and nine, it
Speaker 1: was the anniversary that reminded me of both of these stories,
Speaker 1: my friend David Letterman came out onto the stage of
Speaker 1: the CBS Late Night Show and revealed that he had
Speaker 1: had a series of consensual relationships with women on his staff.
Speaker 1: The studio audience laughed, assuming it was the start of
Speaker 1: some bit in which the guys at the Hello O
Speaker 1: Delhi would somehow of a roll of some sort. But
Speaker 1: Dave went on and on and on, and finally revealed
Speaker 1: he had been the victim of an extortion plot, and
Speaker 1: that he and the Manhattan DA's office set up a
Speaker 1: meeting with the blackmailer, who wanted two million dollars, with
Speaker 1: the cover story being that he had written a screenplay
Speaker 1: about Letterman that would reveal all the relationships, but he
Speaker 1: would sell the quote screenplay unquote two Letterman for two
Speaker 1: million dollars. Within hours, Letterman's blackmailer was identified by authorities.
Speaker 1: I saw the name pop up on my computer terminal, NBC,
Speaker 1: Robert Joel, Joe Halderman, and I looked at it, and
Speaker 1: I said, of course, Joe Halderman. He had been the
Speaker 1: assignment editor at CNN in New York from the day
Speaker 1: I broke into television in August nineteen eighty one until
Speaker 1: he left for CBS News a year later. All television
Speaker 1: assignment editors have to deny reporters camera crews. There are
Speaker 1: invariably scheduling conflicts, and ultimately there are always two stories
Speaker 1: to shoot for every one camera crew available. But Halderman
Speaker 1: used to enjoy denying us reporters crews. He used to
Speaker 1: like to mock us, to make us grovel, and then
Speaker 1: when you got to your story with your crew, he
Speaker 1: would page them and tell them to go cover something
Speaker 1: else and leave you stranded there. And personally he had
Speaker 1: absolutely no redeeming qualities. If you could travel back in
Speaker 1: time to the twenty two or twenty three year old
Speaker 1: me and explain who David Letterman would be and what
Speaker 1: his fame would be like, and how I'd be a
Speaker 1: guest on his show one night when a presidential candidate
Speaker 1: canceled at the last minute, and how somebody I already
Speaker 1: knew and had worked with at age twenty two or
Speaker 1: twenty three would try to blackmail him over staffers he'd
Speaker 1: slept with, and could I I would have interrupted you
Speaker 1: by that point and said, matter of factly, oh, it's
Speaker 1: Joe Halderman, right, of course, Halderman, total creep. You say
Speaker 1: he blackmails this letterbox guy. Frankly, forty year old me
Speaker 1: probably could have figured out the whole Lauren Sanchez thing
Speaker 1: for some time traveling quiz master as well. Although I
Speaker 1: will make no comparison between Joe Halderman and Lauren Sanchez.
Speaker 1: Lauren was very pleasant, and there is a lesson in
Speaker 1: that for you. It's not just nostalgia. It's not a
Speaker 1: brush with greatness, to use a lettermanesque term. Wherever you
Speaker 1: are in life or in your career, you may have
Speaker 1: yet to meet them, or you may have already met them.
Speaker 1: But this I know to be true. You have your
Speaker 1: own Lauren Sanchez and your own Joe Halderman already or
Speaker 1: already in the past. And whatever your first impressions about
Speaker 1: them were, or are or will be, you're damned right
Speaker 1: they are. And also keep in mind that thought I
Speaker 1: mentioned that I had about Bezos and the blackmail. Do
Speaker 1: you really think he could have been the first one
Speaker 1: they tried to blackmail into supporting Trump and the first
Speaker 1: one turned them down and went public? Don't think so.
Speaker 1: Did you see the pictures of Bezos and Lauren Sanchez
Speaker 1: on vacation. In the pictures they are the same height.
Speaker 1: Used to work with her, She's like five to two.
Speaker 1: He claims to be five to seven. Maybe, along with
Speaker 1: all the other work they threw in legbone extensions for free,
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. Contown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip.
Speaker 1: Shanelle arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister
Speaker 1: Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister Chanelle
Speaker 1: handled orchestration and keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
Speaker 1: Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged
Speaker 1: and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music
Speaker 1: is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch
Speaker 1: Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy
Speaker 1: musical comments are by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium
Speaker 1: organist ever our and out through today is my friend
Speaker 1: Tony Kornheiser, And everything else was pretty much my fault.
Speaker 1: Remember only you can promote Countdown the podcast. Send this
Speaker 1: to somebody who hasn't listened to it yet. Thank you.
Speaker 1: You need a receipt that is countdown for this. The
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty first day until the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four presidential election, the one two hundred and sixtieth day
Speaker 1: since convicted fellon Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the
Speaker 1: democratically elected government of the United States. Use the July
Speaker 1: eleventh sentencing hearing, use the mental health system, use presidential
Speaker 1: immunity if it happens, use the Biden campaign ads to
Speaker 1: stop him from doing it again. While we still damn.
Speaker 1: The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news
Speaker 1: warrants till then. I'm Keith Olremman. Good morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and good luck. Joe brig Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.