Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump's
Speaker 1: pull numbers have collapsed. There is no other word for
Speaker 1: it collapsed. Let me caveat this. Biden's poll numbers had collapsed.
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton's poll numbers had collapsed, Harry Truman's poll numbers
Speaker 1: had collapsed. Whole numbers collapsed all the damn time, relatively speaking,
Speaker 1: measured across the arc of American political history. If they
Speaker 1: had had them in eighteen sixty four, Abe Lincoln's poll
Speaker 1: numbers would have collapsed. But I do not think that
Speaker 1: any other presidential candidate's poll numbers have collapsed this late,
Speaker 1: this fast, after this much of a twin honeymoon of
Speaker 1: a convention and a failed assassination attempt. IPSOS polling released
Speaker 1: yesterday Harris by five forty two thirty seven. Last surveys
Speaker 1: taken Wednesday. In the July twenty third IPSOS poll, it
Speaker 1: had been Harris by three thirty seven thirty four. IPSOS
Speaker 1: also did repeat polling in the Big seven Swing states
Speaker 1: Harris by two fifty to forty eight fifty to forty eight.
Speaker 1: Those states are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: and Wisconsin. The last IPSOS poll of the same voters
Speaker 1: in these states also concluded July twenty third, it had
Speaker 1: been Trump by three. Trump has lost five points in
Speaker 1: the swing states in fifteen days, and not generically in
Speaker 1: the Swing states, these are the same respondents as in
Speaker 1: the previous polls changing their minds. Almost as important is
Speaker 1: where the surge for Kamala Harris is coming from. In
Speaker 1: the IPSOS polling two weeks ago, Robert F. Kennedy Junior
Speaker 1: was in their poll at ten percent nationally. He is
Speaker 1: now at four percent. If Trump's poll numbers have collapsed,
Speaker 1: Kennedy's have vanished without a trace. What is amazing about
Speaker 1: the swing state numbers, though, is that Trump has lost
Speaker 1: five points in fifteen days, even though the key issues
Speaker 1: in the swing states would still seem to benefit him.
Speaker 1: Fifty two percent of swing state voters told IPSOS that
Speaker 1: inflation and costs were one of the top issues for them.
Speaker 1: Thirty two percent set immigration, seventeen percent set housing costs.
Speaker 1: And it's still Harris. But it appears that the biggest
Speaker 1: issue for them in the Swing states and outside of
Speaker 1: them is Trump. The swing state voters still prefer him
Speaker 1: on the economy, but only by seven points. Now still
Speaker 1: on immigration, but only by thirteen. These numbers have collapsed.
Speaker 1: In June, these same Swing state voters favored Trump by
Speaker 1: twelve points on the economy, so he's lost five points there,
Speaker 1: twenty points on immigration. He's lost seven points on immigration.
Speaker 1: The Vice president also now crushes Trump on character issues.
Speaker 1: Who's more intelligent Harris by eight? Who cares more about
Speaker 1: people like them? Harris by four? Who's less lazy? Harris
Speaker 1: by four? Who's less weird? They polled on the word
Speaker 1: weird Harris by sixteen? And who in the Swing States
Speaker 1: is more moral? Harris by eighteen? And I can't repeat
Speaker 1: this enough. The voters just polled in the Swing States
Speaker 1: by IPSOS are the same individuals that ipso's polled in
Speaker 1: June and July. The margin of error, and by all
Speaker 1: rules of polling, her two point lead in the Swing
Speaker 1: States is a statistical tie. The margin of error, though,
Speaker 1: drops precipitously if you are actually asking the same people
Speaker 1: how their opinions have changed and how their opinions have changed.
Speaker 1: Rather remarkably, this is not even the best new polling
Speaker 1: news for Kamala Harris Marquette Law School released its national
Speaker 1: results very early Thursday morning for some reason, and among
Speaker 1: likely voters it's Harris fifty, Trump forty two, Harris by eight. Now,
Speaker 1: everybody has their own criteria for likely voters, so if
Speaker 1: you go back to just registered voters. In the Marquette poll,
Speaker 1: it's still Harris by six. The eight point margin looked
Speaker 1: like a wacky outlier until that IPSOS poll came out
Speaker 1: at five most intriguing among independent voters, Marquette has her
Speaker 1: ahead by sixty to forty twenty points among independents eighteen.
Speaker 1: When you include Kennedy and the others, and the day,
Speaker 1: it can lead to varying degrees of are you crapping
Speaker 1: me about how fast Harris has built a dominant lead
Speaker 1: over Trump in the key areas, with all trends working
Speaker 1: in her direction. But there is now near unanimity among
Speaker 1: polsters that Kennedy is in more trouble than bear meat
Speaker 1: in his fridge. Among independents, Harris fifty six, Trump thirty eight,
Speaker 1: Kennedy five, Kennedy five, Stein, I, Cornell West, and Oliver
Speaker 1: just watching scratch zero. Also, I didn't know who Oliver was.
Speaker 1: I had to go look. I was hoping it was
Speaker 1: John Oliver. No, it's Chase Chase Oliver of the Libertarian Party.
Speaker 1: He could be Oliver damn Chase for all I care
Speaker 1: wouldn't make much difference. What matters here is Kennedy's support.
Speaker 1: Half of it, maybe more was clearly from people who
Speaker 1: simply would not vote for Trump but for whatever reason
Speaker 1: would not vote for Joe Biden either, but now will
Speaker 1: vote for virtually everything Joe Biden stands for. One more
Speaker 1: note here from this Marquette Law poll, a couple of
Speaker 1: others have found Kamala Harris is at or near a
Speaker 1: slim net positive unfavorable versus unfavorable. Marquette, is your opinion
Speaker 1: of Kamala Harris favorable or unfavorable? Nationally? It's favorable by
Speaker 1: four points fifty one forty seven. She's above water by
Speaker 1: four points. Trump is seven points underwater, which would be
Speaker 1: superb for him if there still wasn't that post convention bump.
Speaker 1: Jd Vance. He is fourteen points under the couch cushions.
Speaker 1: And one more recheck of another opinionator, Nate Silver poll
Speaker 1: of polls changed it slightly. Kamala Harris forty six point four,
Speaker 1: Trump forty four point three. And the real value of
Speaker 1: this one is it gives you a blurry picture of
Speaker 1: the impact since she anointed Tim Walls on Monday, and
Speaker 1: the impact is that her support is up in five days,
Speaker 1: seven tenths of a point. Again, this could stop right now.
Speaker 1: This could be as good as it gets. And now
Speaker 1: I will repeat two things I have mentioned previously. One
Speaker 1: I mentioned seven minutes in about ten seconds ago, Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton's poll numbers once collapsed, then George hw Bush's poll
Speaker 1: numbers collapsed, then Ross Pro's poll numbers collapsed. This was
Speaker 1: all in one election. So if as Biden's departure three
Speaker 1: weeks ago this Sunday, it wasn't last year, it was
Speaker 1: three weeks ago this Sunday, If that and Harris's assent
Speaker 1: confirms something this startlingly good can happen this fast, remain
Speaker 1: vigilant that something that startlingly bad could also happen this fast.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, what we are seeing as of
Speaker 1: this moment is exactly why this unprecedented move was attempted,
Speaker 1: changing horses not midstream but mid tight rope to maybe,
Speaker 1: in our wildest dreams, get these results. And in those
Speaker 1: wildest dreams, nobody expected the misfast nobody, which leads me
Speaker 1: into the second thing I mentioned previously, and I mentioned
Speaker 1: it on Wednesday, July twenty fourth, And before I mentioned it,
Speaker 1: I took a deep breath and asked myself, do you
Speaker 1: really want to mention this already? But I did, and
Speaker 1: I'll repeat it. I have been thinking since no later
Speaker 1: than hours after President Biden dropped out, that there will
Speaker 1: come a point this year, this election, maybe this month,
Speaker 1: where we will all be saying, can you believe we
Speaker 1: came this close to not making Vice President Harris the nominee.
Speaker 1: I am not building the Joe Saved Democracy Again statues
Speaker 1: quite yet, but I am beginning to think maybe what
Speaker 1: they kind of could look like. Is anybody going to
Speaker 1: do anything about Trump's health crisis? Never mind his poll crisis,
Speaker 1: his health crisis, his quote news conference unquote was objectively
Speaker 1: twice as bad, four times as bad, forty times as
Speaker 1: bad as the President's performance at the debate. Throughout it
Speaker 1: bordered on and often crossed the line into fugue state.
Speaker 1: And this got almost no headlines. Is the New York
Speaker 1: Times opinion section now going to print six pieces at
Speaker 1: a time on how he must drop out his CNN
Speaker 1: going to swerve out of enabling the latest swift voting
Speaker 1: of a Democrat and his MSNBC's useless airy Melber going
Speaker 1: to stop platforming Stephen Miller to instead parade mental health
Speaker 1: experts to offer a dozen competing theories about which thing
Speaker 1: is wrong with Trump's brain? Are they going to just
Speaker 1: come close to how they addressed Joe Biden's exhaustion? Get
Speaker 1: to one tenth of it? The New York Times, The
Speaker 1: Washington Post, Politico, Axios, ABC, NBC, and CBS had no
Speaker 1: front page stories about the demented nature of his performance yesterday.
Speaker 1: Within an hour of its conclusion, each hid behind Trump's
Speaker 1: vague commitment to now do debates. Axios incredibly was leading
Speaker 1: an hour after the Trump event with quote Vice President
Speaker 1: Harris still hasn't given an interview or taken questions from
Speaker 1: voters since she became a presidential candidate. Shut up once again.
Speaker 1: If Axios is still wondering why I had to fire
Speaker 1: a tenth of its employees Wednesday, there's your problem right there.
Speaker 1: You suck to its credit to my amazement, CNN wrote
Speaker 1: a story about Trump's fugue state, and remarkably, it correctly
Speaker 1: described his performance, not as a news conference, but as
Speaker 1: a quote speech. I assume whoever was responsible for this
Speaker 1: has been beaten severely already. Exactly right CNN. Trump always
Speaker 1: sounds like he doesn't know where he was. This time
Speaker 1: he also looked like he didn't know where he was.
Speaker 1: I can't convey that. On a podcast when a question
Speaker 1: came from the right side of the room, he looked frightened,
Speaker 1: as if he had just discovered that there was a
Speaker 1: right side of the room. He looked lost. Several times.
Speaker 1: It appeared his eyes were no longer level. More shockingly,
Speaker 1: perhaps than anything else, he also looked pale. Can't convey that.
Speaker 1: I can convey the sounds part. I will not be
Speaker 1: labor all the crazy sounds he made, just a few,
Speaker 1: starting with what you or I would know would be
Speaker 1: the last thing to refer to just now, in light
Speaker 1: of the jd vance couch jokes.
Speaker 2: President She of China and I were very good friends.
Speaker 2: We met right here right in that except we had
Speaker 2: a beautiful sofa there as opposed to what we have
Speaker 2: right now. A lot of my people, a lot of
Speaker 2: the Mega as they call him, but the bass, and
Speaker 2: I think the bass is I think the Bassis seventy
Speaker 2: five percent of the country, far beyond the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: Kamala hars Sava is Jamaican American and she went to
Speaker 2: a historically black college. How is she only recently deciding
Speaker 2: to be black? Well, you'll have to ask her to
Speaker 2: that question, because she's the one that said it. I
Speaker 2: didn't say it, so you'll have to ask her. But
Speaker 2: you'll have to ask her about that. But to me
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. But to her from her standpoint, I
Speaker 2: think it's very disrespectful to both. Really, whether it's Indian
Speaker 2: or Black, I think it's very disrespectful. If you look
Speaker 2: at Martin Luther King when he did his speech, his
Speaker 2: great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate,
Speaker 2: same everything, same number of people, if not we had more.
Speaker 2: And they said he had a million people, but I
Speaker 2: had twenty five thousand people. But when you look at
Speaker 2: the exact same picture and everything's the same, because it
Speaker 2: was the fountains, the whole thing, all the way back
Speaker 2: from Lincoln to Washington, and you look at it and
Speaker 2: you look at the picture of his crowd, my preyer,
Speaker 2: we actually had more people. Millions of people were allowed
Speaker 2: to come into our country from prisons, from jails, from
Speaker 2: mental institutions, insane asylums. Even in Sana said that's ah,
Speaker 2: it's a mental institution on steroids.
Speaker 1: That asylum stuff underscores a point I've made previously. He
Speaker 1: does not understand that there is political asylum and then
Speaker 1: there are mental asylums, which grows increasingly ironic considering he
Speaker 1: may soon be in need of either or both. But
Speaker 1: the crowd size thing, that's perhaps way more revealing. It
Speaker 1: is not only a clear view of the desperation of
Speaker 1: his obsession with largest, most powerful, biggest, it's not only
Speaker 1: a clear view of his insatiable need to be right
Speaker 1: even when he is utterly wrong. But it's seven and
Speaker 1: a half years old. He has been arguing that he
Speaker 1: had the largest crowd in the history of I don't know,
Speaker 1: history of humanity, everything since the Sermon on the Mount.
Speaker 1: He's been arguing this since his inauguration. He has never
Speaker 1: been right. He has never stopped demanding that we change
Speaker 1: our minds and apologize to him, even though he has
Speaker 1: never been right, because he has to be right or
Speaker 1: he dies to be fair. Trump has somehow managed not
Speaker 1: to fall off his mental health crisis tightrope since at
Speaker 1: least the year twenty fifteen, maybe more like since at
Speaker 1: least the year nineteen fifty five. This point at which
Speaker 1: you expect him to start to say something than go
Speaker 1: glassy eyed and collapse at the podium may not be
Speaker 1: a warning of imminent disaster, but rather just some kind
Speaker 1: of horrible stasis. But even if this is as bad
Speaker 1: as it gets, it's still a crisis. It is beyond
Speaker 1: his evil, beyond his amorality, beyond his greed, beyond his
Speaker 1: anti democracy, beyond his racism. It alone is disqualifying. He
Speaker 1: is sick. Everything else is just detail. If Joe Biden
Speaker 1: could not run for a second term because he was
Speaker 1: merely having trouble expressing himself robustly enough in public, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump cannot run for a second term because he is
Speaker 1: simply unstable. A couple of other notes here, the one
Speaker 1: eighties he makes are still startling. It is still shocking
Speaker 1: to read week after week of his assaults on and
Speaker 1: even lawsuits against ABC and particularly George Stephanoppolos, and then
Speaker 1: suddenly hear him announce as if he had always felt
Speaker 1: this way, that he would do a presidential debate on
Speaker 1: ABC as scheduled on September tenth, as if they first
Speaker 1: asked him about it as he fell out of bed
Speaker 1: an hour before the news conference speech began. It is
Speaker 1: still shocking to hear a reporter ask him a question
Speaker 1: and Trump answer not that question, but answer something the
Speaker 1: reporter had mentioned tangentially in his or her preface. You
Speaker 1: got to ask simple questions that are not open to interpretation.
Speaker 1: It is still shocking to see CNN claim Trump's performance
Speaker 1: accomplished his goals, and they said this put Vice President
Speaker 1: Harris on the defensive. Crazy man puts vice president on defensive.
Speaker 1: It is still shocking to see news organization after news
Speaker 1: organization insist that a pivot is coming, or that a
Speaker 1: pivot has been demanded by Trump's handlers, or even that
Speaker 1: a pivot is still possible from a crazy man. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Washington Post did it as recently as Wednesday night.
Speaker 1: And it is still shocking to realize that nearly all
Speaker 1: of the other eight billion, two hundred million of us
Speaker 1: on this planet live on one plane of existence more
Speaker 1: or less in which we have some rudimentary understanding of
Speaker 1: how things work. At least a couple of the things
Speaker 1: directly affecting us in our jobs and our lives. But
Speaker 1: that Trump, after trying to force Joe Biden out of
Speaker 1: this race more or less NonStop since twenty nineteen, is
Speaker 1: now quoted as complaining in a phone call to an ally,
Speaker 1: It's unfair that I beat him, and now I have
Speaker 1: to beat her too. And anybody who has been following
Speaker 1: American politics at a rate of once a week or
Speaker 1: more for the last decade knows in their bones that
Speaker 1: Trump truly believes the country owes him some sort of
Speaker 1: unanimous decision to cancel this election and award him the
Speaker 1: presidency forever because he believes he beat Biden, and that
Speaker 1: the only thing keeping him from saying this out loud
Speaker 1: in so many words, is that his animal instinct tells
Speaker 1: him to wait to try to end the democracy until
Speaker 1: after he sees his power, not before. Once again, I ask,
Speaker 1: is anybody going to do anything about Donald Trump's health crisis?
Speaker 1: Also of interest here, Elon Musk posts a fake headline
Speaker 1: saying the British Labor Party is establishing internment camps for
Speaker 1: right wingers. I mean, I wish, but totally wrong, and
Speaker 1: no consequences for him, no acknowledgment, except there is a
Speaker 1: move growing inside the British Parliament to summon Musk to
Speaker 1: testify to them about what the hell he thinks he's doing.
Speaker 1: I will suggest a much better solution. It boils down
Speaker 1: to three words. Tower of London. That's next. This discountdown.
Speaker 1: This is countdown, with Keith old Wooman still ahead of
Speaker 1: us on this initiative countdown. To my knowledge, nobody has
Speaker 1: ever dramatized and turned into a play or film the
Speaker 1: Thurber story. That would make for the craziest, most mad
Speaker 1: cap adaptation. The Night the Bedfell might make for only
Speaker 1: a short film, but it could easily be merged with
Speaker 1: a couple of other stories from his life and hard
Speaker 1: times into a superb play. There is a lot of
Speaker 1: action in a confined space. Theurber, and a rare injection
Speaker 1: of ego into his storytelling, asserts in the story it
Speaker 1: makes a better recitation, and then comes back and laughs
Speaker 1: at himself for reciting it too often. But it does
Speaker 1: make a better recitation. So coming up on Fridays with
Speaker 1: Thurber once more, I will recite The Night the Bed
Speaker 1: Fell first. There are still more new idiots to talk about.
Speaker 1: The daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and dunning Kruger
Speaker 1: effects specimens who constitute two days worse persons in the world,
Speaker 1: the bronze worse. Marcellus Wiley. Marcellus Wiley is a one
Speaker 1: time Pro Bowl defensive end that has meant literally he
Speaker 1: played ten years. He went to the Pro Bowl once
Speaker 1: and then he checks notes. He was on ESPN and
Speaker 1: Fox Sports. Apparently. Oh he worked with Jason Whitlock. Oh,
Speaker 1: that explains this. Wiley, who now does YouTube videos, shared
Speaker 1: a text message he claims he received, which he says
Speaker 1: claims offered him twenty thousand dollars plus accommodations if he
Speaker 1: would attend the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this month,
Speaker 1: and he then proceeded to use this tech as some
Speaker 1: kind of proof that Democrats are buying off celebrities. Immediately
Speaker 1: quoting him, I said, oh, that's why, Megan, this stallion
Speaker 1: was out there toorking with Kamala Harris and them. Wiley said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, y'all paying me like PEPSI this ain't
Speaker 1: no soda. He was the captain of the Columbia football team.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to point that out. IVY League on
Speaker 1: IVY League violence right here. This is for people's political votes.
Speaker 1: This is to influence their lives to some degree. What
Speaker 1: they sent me this? Nah, So the Democrats are bribing celebrities,
Speaker 1: So why would they contact Marcellus Wiley twenty thousand dollars?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, we'll have to cancel all the advertising
Speaker 1: you spent twenty thousand dollars on Marcella's Wiley. Okay, here's
Speaker 1: spend another twenty thousand dollars to see if you can
Speaker 1: find out who the hell Marcellus Wiley is. Runner up
Speaker 1: Dan Scavino, Oh, we all know him. He thinks he's
Speaker 1: famous as opposed to infamous. He's like the social media
Speaker 1: guru for Trump and senior advisor to Trump. And he
Speaker 1: put this out on Twitter because he was never banned
Speaker 1: from Twitter. I don't think Hearing Biden wants back in
Speaker 1: the race after finally caps finally taking some time to
Speaker 1: realize what his quote friends unquote did to him leading
Speaker 1: up to his dropout letter posted via x on a
Speaker 1: Sunday afternoon, Hearing Biden wants back in the race. Where
Speaker 1: did he hear that? Well, if you've been paying attention,
Speaker 1: you'll remember that I'm noticed here that Trump had said it,
Speaker 1: Trump posted it. That's how how totally deranged. Trump's campaign
Speaker 1: has become since Biden dropped out and Kamala Harris took
Speaker 1: his place as the Democratic presidential nominee. That's how desperate
Speaker 1: they are. They have developed. Trump personally developed his own
Speaker 1: fanfic that Biden is going to force his way back in.
Speaker 1: He's going to storm the convention and somehow get all
Speaker 1: the delegates back and then lose to Trump because that's
Speaker 1: what Trump decided is going to happen. And Trump is
Speaker 1: three years old now, and he gets his way all
Speaker 1: the time. And this is how desperate they are. Trump
Speaker 1: makes something up and one of his lackeys, this Scavino clown,
Speaker 1: then says, hearing Biden wants back in the race, well,
Speaker 1: you heard it because the psychopath you work for made
Speaker 1: it up. I heard voices in my head tell me that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you're dealing with here. This is how desperate
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign is. Kill them and eat them. But
Speaker 1: our winner, speaking of strung out and lunatic Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: All right, this is a little complicated, but bear with
Speaker 1: me here. Somebody put out a faked headline from the
Speaker 1: London conservative fascist newspaper The Telegraph and put this out
Speaker 1: with no indication that it was satire or par or
Speaker 1: anything else. The headline read Keir Starmer, that's the new
Speaker 1: labor Prime Minister of Britain, Keir Starmer considering building emergency
Speaker 1: detainment camps on the Falkland Islands. The camps would be
Speaker 1: used to detain prisoners. Again, this is not true. This
Speaker 1: is a very cleverly faked headline, supposedly screenshot it off
Speaker 1: the Telegraph newspaper. The camps would be used to detain
Speaker 1: prisoners from the ongoing riots, as the British British prison
Speaker 1: system is already at capacity. The head of a fascist
Speaker 1: group in England Britain first, Ashley Simon, that's Ashley ashl
Speaker 1: Ea God sent this out and put a caption on
Speaker 1: top of it. We're all being deported to the Falklands.
Speaker 1: If you don't remember the Falklands. Britain had a nice
Speaker 1: little war in nineteen eighty two in which Margaret Thatcher
Speaker 1: was able to then claim that Britain had some kind
Speaker 1: of relevancy in international relations even though it didn't. And
Speaker 1: Musk put this thing out and it was seen by
Speaker 1: a million people in fifteen minutes before somebody told Musk
Speaker 1: that it was a fake or parody or something, and
Speaker 1: he was violating all of his own rules, and he
Speaker 1: added detainment cups in quotes as if they're planning mass
Speaker 1: executions or something. Because Musk has lost his goddamned mind
Speaker 1: if he ever had any control of it. The massive
Speaker 1: amounts of ozempic and other drugs have clearly turned him
Speaker 1: into a raging lunatic. In addition to this, he of
Speaker 1: course keeps calling for some would say advocating for civil
Speaker 1: war in the UK. He's mentioned it at least five
Speaker 1: times since last November, and Politico Europe reports that Musk
Speaker 1: may be summoned by British MPs over X's role in
Speaker 1: the race riots that have rocked the UK, in which
Speaker 1: online the Conservatives have stirred up complaints insistences that immigrants
Speaker 1: killed three young girls in Britain when it had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with immigrants, and they have gone to immigrant
Speaker 1: camps and immigrant reception areas and tried to kill the immigrants.
Speaker 1: That's how bad it's gotten. That's what happens when you
Speaker 1: let the right wing run rampant, rather than I don't know,
Speaker 1: emergency detainment camp somewhere. Can we borrow the Falkland Islands.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can send Farage there. Can we send
Speaker 1: you know, what's that that kid's name, Ben Shapiro, Send
Speaker 1: him there. Labor MPs are telling Politico Europe that they
Speaker 1: would press the billionaire X owner and other tech executives
Speaker 1: to answer questions about the role of social media platforms
Speaker 1: amid mounting unrest in the UK. Here's the thing. I
Speaker 1: like the idea of summoning him in front of Parliament
Speaker 1: because they do a pretty good job of not like
Speaker 1: our system of actually taking malefactors like Elon Musk and
Speaker 1: asking them pointed questions and then quoting what they'd said
Speaker 1: previously and threatening them with being charged with lying under oath.
Speaker 1: But here's a much simpler solution in England. I think
Speaker 1: they should move to the the tertiary stage of what
Speaker 1: to do with people like Elon Musk. You guys, you
Speaker 1: have still a Tower of London. I mean, we all
Speaker 1: know worldwide. It's one of the most famous things about England,
Speaker 1: about Europe. In the United States, it's one of the
Speaker 1: most famous things not about the United States. The Tower
Speaker 1: of London. We all know the Tower of London from
Speaker 1: something from a movie from Shakespeare from Richard's stories. You
Speaker 1: have a Tower of London. What is the point of
Speaker 1: having had a Tower of London for at least what
Speaker 1: eight hundred years? What is the point of having a
Speaker 1: Tower of London if you can't stick people like Elon
Speaker 1: Musk in it? And then when people say where is he?
Speaker 1: You say, he's in the Tower of London, and somebody
Speaker 1: gets it writ and says produce them and you go, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, we lost him like those princes in fourteen
Speaker 1: eighty three with the paperwork was rerouted to whale or somewhere,
Speaker 1: so we don't know where he is. Sorry. I mean
Speaker 1: this has worked for the British literally since fourteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: probably well before that. You got a problem, you got
Speaker 1: a guy's out of control, Send him to the tower
Speaker 1: and then lose his paperwork. Check back when we next
Speaker 1: excavate some of the mounds of dirt that we have
Speaker 1: for some unknown reason, on various floors of the Tower
Speaker 1: of London. Check back with us next time we go
Speaker 1: on a survey of the dirt five hundred years from now. Hey,
Speaker 1: look at this, it's a it's a skeleton with a
Speaker 1: nozepic needle. Sticking out of it. This must have been
Speaker 1: that Elon MUCKs guy. Elon just say he finally overdosed
Speaker 1: musk two days worst part sending in the world. James
Speaker 1: Thurber was a brilliant writer, and in his spare time,
Speaker 1: it was an equally brilliant, almost avant garde artist in
Speaker 1: the same body. His simple drawings to pick the most
Speaker 1: complex of emotions and comedic situations. His dogs are immortal.
Speaker 1: And then there were his captions. Well, I can't do
Speaker 1: anything with his drawings in a podcast, so I'll just
Speaker 1: read and I will read you now in this episode,
Speaker 1: what is probably his most famous story from my life
Speaker 1: in hard times, The Night the bed fell James Thurber.
Speaker 1: I suppose that the high water mark of my youth
Speaker 1: in Columbus, Ohio was the night the bed fell on
Speaker 1: my father. It makes a better recitation unless, as some
Speaker 1: friends of mine have said, one has heard it five
Speaker 1: or six times. And it does a piece of writing,
Speaker 1: for it is almost necessary to throw furniture around, shake doors,
Speaker 1: and bark like a dog to lend the proper atmosphere
Speaker 1: and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still,
Speaker 1: it did take place It happened then that my father
Speaker 1: had decided to sleep in the attic one night, to
Speaker 1: be away where he could think. My mother opposed the
Speaker 1: notion strongly because she said the old wooden bed up
Speaker 1: there was unsafe. It was wobbly, and the heavy headboard
Speaker 1: would crash down on father's head in case the bed
Speaker 1: fell and kill him. There was no dissuading him, however,
Speaker 1: and at a quarter past ten, he closed the attic
Speaker 1: door behind him and went up the narrow, twisting stairs.
Speaker 1: We later heard Amina's creakings as he crawled into bed. Grandfather,
Speaker 1: who usually slept in the attic bed when he was
Speaker 1: with us, had disappeared some days before. On those occasions,
Speaker 1: he was usually gone six or eight days, and returned
Speaker 1: growling and out of temper with the news that the
Speaker 1: Federal Union was run by a passel of blockheads, and
Speaker 1: that the Army of the Potomac didn't have any more
Speaker 1: chance than a fiddler's bitch. We had visiting us at
Speaker 1: the time, a nervous first cousin of mine named Briggs Beale,
Speaker 1: who believed that he was likely to cease breathing when
Speaker 1: he was asleep. It was his feeling that if he
Speaker 1: were not awakened every hour during the night, he might
Speaker 1: die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to setting an
Speaker 1: alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning, but I
Speaker 1: persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in my room,
Speaker 1: and I told him that I was such a light
Speaker 1: sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the same room
Speaker 1: with me, I would wake instantly. He tested me the
Speaker 1: first night, which I had suspected he would, by holding
Speaker 1: his breath after my regular breathing had convinced him I
Speaker 1: was asleep. I was not asleep, however, and called to him.
Speaker 1: This seemed to allay his feet years a little, but
Speaker 1: he took the precaution of putting a glass of spirits
Speaker 1: of camphor on a little table at the head of
Speaker 1: his bed in case I didn't arouse him until he
Speaker 1: was almost gone. He said he would sniff the camphor.
Speaker 1: A powerful reviver, Briggs was not the only member of
Speaker 1: his family who had his crotchets. Old aunt Melissa Belle,
Speaker 1: who could whistle like a man with two fingers in
Speaker 1: her mouth, suffered under the premonition that she was destined
Speaker 1: to die on South High Street because she had been
Speaker 1: born on South High Street and married on South High Street.
Speaker 1: Then there was Aunt Sarah Schauf, who never went to
Speaker 1: bed at night without the fear that a burglar was
Speaker 1: going to get in and blow chloroform under her door
Speaker 1: through a tube. To avert this calamity, for she was
Speaker 1: in greater dread of anesthetics than of losing her household goods.
Speaker 1: She always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in
Speaker 1: a neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note
Speaker 1: reading this is all I have. Please take it and
Speaker 1: do not use your chloroform, as this is all I have.
Speaker 1: Aunt Gracie Chauff also had a burglar phobia, but she
Speaker 1: met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars
Speaker 1: had been getting into her house every night for forty years.
Speaker 1: The fact that she never missed anything was to her
Speaker 1: no proof. To the contrary, she always claimed that she
Speaker 1: scared them off before they could take anything by throwing
Speaker 1: shoes down the hallway. When she went to bed, she
Speaker 1: piled where she could get at them handily, all the
Speaker 1: shoes there were about her house. Five minutes after she
Speaker 1: had turned off the light, she would sit up in
Speaker 1: bed and say hark. Her husband, who had learned to
Speaker 1: ignore the whole situation as long ago as nineteen o three,
Speaker 1: would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep.
Speaker 1: In either case, he would not respond to her tugging
Speaker 1: and pulling, so that presently she would arise, tiptoe to
Speaker 1: the door, open it slightly, and he a shoe down
Speaker 1: the hall in one direction, and its mate down the
Speaker 1: hall in the other direction. Some nights she threw them all,
Speaker 1: some nights only a couple of pear. But I am
Speaker 1: straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the
Speaker 1: night that the bed fell on father. By midnight we
Speaker 1: were all in bed. The layout of the rooms and
Speaker 1: the disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding
Speaker 1: of what later occurred. In the front room upstairs, just
Speaker 1: under father's attic bedroom, where my mother and my brother Herman,
Speaker 1: who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia
Speaker 1: or onward Christian soldiers, briggs Beale and myself were in
Speaker 1: a room adjoining this one. My brother Roy was in
Speaker 1: a room across the hall from ours. Our bull terrier
Speaker 1: Wrecks slept in the hall. My bed was an army cot,
Speaker 1: one of those affairs which were made wide enough to
Speaker 1: sleep on comfortably only by putting up flat with the
Speaker 1: middle section the two sides, which ordinarily hang down like
Speaker 1: the sideboards of a drop leaf table. When these sides
Speaker 1: are up, it is perilous to roll too far toward
Speaker 1: the edge, for then the cot is likely to tip
Speaker 1: completely over, bringing the whole bed down on top of
Speaker 1: one with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact, is
Speaker 1: precisely what happened about two o'clock in the morning. It
Speaker 1: was my mother who, in recalling the scene later first
Speaker 1: referred to it as the night the bedfellow on your father,
Speaker 1: always a deep sleeper and slow to arouse, I had
Speaker 1: lied to Briggs. I was at first unconscious of what
Speaker 1: had happened when the iron coot rolled me onto the
Speaker 1: floor and toppled over on me. It left me still
Speaker 1: warmly bundled up and unhurt, for the bed rested above
Speaker 1: me like a canopy. Hence I did not wake up,
Speaker 1: only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however,
Speaker 1: instantly awakened my mother in the next room, who came
Speaker 1: to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized
Speaker 1: the big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She
Speaker 1: therefore screamed, let's go to your poor father. It was
Speaker 1: this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling,
Speaker 1: that awakened Herman in the same room with her, he
Speaker 1: thought that mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical.
Speaker 1: You're all right, mama, he shouted, trying to calm her.
Speaker 1: They exchanged shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds. Let's
Speaker 1: go to your poor father, and you're all right. That
Speaker 1: woke up Briggs. By this time I was conscious of
Speaker 1: what was going on in a vague way, but did
Speaker 1: not yet realize that I was under my bed instead
Speaker 1: of on it. Briggs, awakening in the midst of loud
Speaker 1: shouts of fear and apprehension, came to the quick conclusion
Speaker 1: that he was suffocating and that we were all trying
Speaker 1: to bring him out. With a low moan, he grasped
Speaker 1: the glass of camphor at the head of his bed,
Speaker 1: and instead of sniffing it, he poured it over himself.
Speaker 1: The room reeked of camphor. Ugh ah choked Briggs like
Speaker 1: a drowning man, for he had almost succeeded in stopping
Speaker 1: his breath under the deluge of pungent spirits. He leaped
Speaker 1: out of bed and groped toward the open window, but
Speaker 1: he came up against one that was closed. With his hand,
Speaker 1: he beat out the glass, and I could hear it
Speaker 1: crash and tinkle on the alleyway below. He was at
Speaker 1: this juncture that I, in trying to get up, had
Speaker 1: the uncanny sensation of feeling my bed above me foggy
Speaker 1: with sleep. I now suspected, in my turn, that the
Speaker 1: whole uproar was being made in a frantic endeavor to
Speaker 1: extricate me from what must be an unheard of and
Speaker 1: perilous situation. Get me out of this, I bawled, Get
Speaker 1: me out. I think I had the nightmarish belief that
Speaker 1: I was entombed in a mine. O g go, gasp
Speaker 1: Briggs floundering in his camphor. By this time, my mother,
Speaker 1: still shouting, pursued by Hermann, still shouting, was trying to
Speaker 1: open the door to the attic in order to go
Speaker 1: up and get my father's body out of the wreckage.
Speaker 1: The door was stuck, however, and would not yield. Her
Speaker 1: frantic pulls on it only added to the general banging
Speaker 1: and confusion. Roy and the dog were now up, the
Speaker 1: one shouting questions, the other barking. Father, farthest away and
Speaker 1: soundest sleeper of all, had by this time been awakened
Speaker 1: by the battering on the attic door. He decided that
Speaker 1: the house was on fire. Oh come, okay, he wailed
Speaker 1: in a slow, sleepy voice. It took him many minutes
Speaker 1: to regain full consciousness. My mother, still believing he was
Speaker 1: caught under the bed, detected in his I'm coming, the
Speaker 1: mournful resigned note of one who was preparing to meet
Speaker 1: his maker. He's dying, she shouted. I'm all right, Briggs
Speaker 1: yelled to reassure her, all right. He still believed that
Speaker 1: it was his own closeness to death that was worrying Mother.
Speaker 1: I found at last the light switch in my room,
Speaker 1: unlocked the door, and Briggs and I joined the others
Speaker 1: at the attic door. The dog, who never did like Briggs,
Speaker 1: jumped for him, assuming that he was the culprit in
Speaker 1: whatever was going on, and Roy had to throw Rex
Speaker 1: and hold him. We could hear Father crawling out of
Speaker 1: the bed upstairs. Roy pulled the attic door open with
Speaker 1: a mighty jerk, and Father came down the stairs, sleepy
Speaker 1: and irritable, but safe and sound. My mother began to
Speaker 1: weep when she saw him. Rex began to howl. What
Speaker 1: in the name of God is going on here? Asked father.
Speaker 1: The situation was finally put together like a giant gigsaw puzzle.
Speaker 1: Father caught a cold from prowling around in his bare feet,
Speaker 1: but there were no other bad results. I'm glad, said mother,
Speaker 1: who all always looked on the bright side of things,
Speaker 1: that your grandfather wasn't here. I've done all the damage
Speaker 1: I can do here. Thank you for listening. Send this
Speaker 1: podcast to somebody who does not listen. We're in the
Speaker 1: home stretch here, Let's go. Brian Ray and John Phillip
Speaker 1: Shaneil the musical directors, have countdown, arranged, produced, and performed
Speaker 1: most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards.
Speaker 1: Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It
Speaker 1: was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical
Speaker 1: comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy
Speaker 1: Faust by name. The sports music is the Olberman theme
Speaker 1: from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davison
Speaker 1: appears courtesy of ESPN. Other music arranged and performed by
Speaker 1: the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my
Speaker 1: friend Jonathans from Breaking Bad. Everything else pretty much my fault.
Speaker 1: So that's countdown for this the eighty ninth day until
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four presidential election. They three hundred and
Speaker 1: tenth day since convicted feldon dementia, Jay Trump's first attempted
Speaker 1: coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Speaker 1: Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use the mental health system.
Speaker 1: You've got it. President Biden used presidential immunity to stop
Speaker 1: him from doing it again while we still can. And
Speaker 1: anti Semitic, anti immigration, insane Republicans, please stop shooting at Trump.
Speaker 1: The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday, Monday night. More accurately
Speaker 1: bulletins as the news requires until the next one. I'm
Speaker 1: Keith Oulrimman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.