Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Who
Speaker 1: could have guessed that a press secretary whose previous public
Speaker 1: speaking high watermark was either when she called the worst
Speaker 1: person in human history hilter or when she insisted there
Speaker 1: was a word damining, as in damining evidence. Who could
Speaker 1: have possibly guessed that this press secretary could manage to
Speaker 1: tweet her new administration into a position where some of
Speaker 1: its lawyers might go to jail for contempt of court.
Speaker 1: I mean, follow the components of this disaster in their
Speaker 1: chronological order. The first time Trump shot himself in the foot. Here,
Speaker 1: Trump issues this government shut down via the back door,
Speaker 1: pausing virtually all domestic spending and closing all the medicaid portals,
Speaker 1: utterly illegal, utterly unconscionable, utterly damaging to his own cult members.
Speaker 1: A judge then issues a temporary restraining order against the
Speaker 1: spending pause, whereupon Trump shoots himself in the foot. A
Speaker 1: second time, Trump's lawyers back away from the pause and
Speaker 1: insist the pause has been rescinded. The third time Trump
Speaker 1: shoots himself in the foot. Even Trump supporters in the
Speaker 1: cowering media realize Trump has just made himself look like
Speaker 1: an idiot. The second dramatic dictatorial edict he has issued
Speaker 1: and then had to back off of or emend in
Speaker 1: like twenty four hours. Trump is wounded, damaged, laughed. At
Speaker 1: the fourth time, Trump shoots himself in the foot, just
Speaker 1: this one time, just this one case. The fourth time,
Speaker 1: Press Secretary Caroline Levitt shoots him in the foot for
Speaker 1: him her tweet, this is not a recision of the
Speaker 1: federal funding freeze. It is simply a recision of themb memo.
Speaker 1: Why to end any confusion created by the court's injunction,
Speaker 1: the President's eos on federal funding remain in full force
Speaker 1: and effect and will be rigorously implemented. So the Press
Speaker 1: secretary says, Trump withdrew the memo about the funding freeze,
Speaker 1: that the judge had unfrozen, but that the freeze is
Speaker 1: still in effect no matter what some judge rules, and
Speaker 1: that Trump deliberately rescinded just the memo in order to
Speaker 1: evade the judge's ruling, and that's contempt of court, and
Speaker 1: Trump's lawyers are going to have to explain to this
Speaker 1: judge why he should not or in this case, why
Speaker 1: she should not put them in jail. Overnight or you know, forever,
Speaker 1: for deliberately ignoring her order and having this nitwit Levitt
Speaker 1: boast about ignoring her order. Oh and just to bury Trump.
Speaker 1: Still further on this, a second federal judge also ruled
Speaker 1: that the recision is meaningless and he's issued a court
Speaker 1: order that stays in effect, and Trump can call it
Speaker 1: whatever he wants in Levitt can call it whatever she wants.
Speaker 1: He can't freeze government spending just because he's president. Can't.
Speaker 1: I have said countless times democracy is preserved less by
Speaker 1: our efforts to save it than by the stupidity of
Speaker 1: those who are trying to destroy it. And these people
Speaker 1: are remarkably stupid. Trump is remarkably stupid. Caroline Levitt is
Speaker 1: remarkably stupid. She really did think the name of the
Speaker 1: Nazi guy was Hilter and that there was a word damining.
Speaker 1: And if you saw her first news conference, she really
Speaker 1: does smile vapidly at all the wrong times, like a robot,
Speaker 1: only like a robot you bought used at Sam's Club.
Speaker 1: Post warranty, I mentioned her public speaking high watermark. Her
Speaker 1: career watermark was getting a softball scholarship to Saint Anselm
Speaker 1: College in New Hampshire, or maybe it was revealing this
Speaker 1: month that she had three hundred and twenty six thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in unpaid campaign debts, two hundred thousand of which
Speaker 1: were improper donations, violating the contribution limit. This is from
Speaker 1: a congressional campaign from two years ago, when she got
Speaker 1: smoked by eight points, possibly because she's a Sam's Club
Speaker 1: robot who thinks it's damining about mister Hilter. Levitt makes
Speaker 1: Kaylee mcananney look like Madame Cure, she makes Sean Spicer
Speaker 1: look like honest Abe Lincoln. And she also factors into
Speaker 1: yet a separate case of just keep shooting your own
Speaker 1: foot off. The toes will be coming off any moment now,
Speaker 1: The New York Times. I mean, if bad Dad Bob
Speaker 1: had had a daylight Caroline Levitt had yesterday, Sodom Hussein
Speaker 1: would have been trying to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: ease him out, because as it unraveled for her, you
Speaker 1: put who at risk of contempt of court. This headline
Speaker 1: was still up at The New York Times about her quote,
Speaker 1: white House Press Secretary makes steely and unflinching debut. Caroline
Speaker 1: Levitt used her first briefing in the role to warn
Speaker 1: veteran reporters that they were increasingly irrelevant. Well, I'll say
Speaker 1: this much for her, She's not irrelevant. By the way.
Speaker 1: As an aside, META, which is short for Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: is Meta terrified of something Trump has on him. Meta
Speaker 1: just got into the who can collaborate more contest yesterday
Speaker 1: alongside the New York Times, Washington Post ABCCBS. Zuckerberg has
Speaker 1: settled a nuisance suit from Trump about canceling his account
Speaker 1: for twenty five million dollars. Because what you're gonna go
Speaker 1: to the trouble of bribing Trump twenty five million dollars
Speaker 1: when there's a subtle legal way to accomplish the same thing,
Speaker 1: all right? With that? As an a side back to
Speaker 1: the spending freeze chaos, there is a contrarian viewpoint about
Speaker 1: it that you should know that this utter fiasco by
Speaker 1: Trump order a freeze have a court overrule. You tell
Speaker 1: the court you are trying to evade its order, and
Speaker 1: how you are trying to evade its order, that they
Speaker 1: meant to do that. Charlie Savage, one of the great
Speaker 1: New York Times journalists, being buried by a couple of
Speaker 1: headline editors who have apparently begun the quixotic quest to
Speaker 1: drive the Gray Lady out of business. Charlie Savage wrote
Speaker 1: last night that quote Trump abruptly fired dozens of officials
Speaker 1: in the past few days, including inspectors general, a member
Speaker 1: of the National Labor Relations Board, and career prosecutors, in
Speaker 1: ways that apparently violated federal laws, setting up the possibility
Speaker 1: of lawsuits. But the prospect of getting dragged into court
Speaker 1: may be exactly what mister Trump's lawyers are hoping for.
Speaker 1: There is a risk that judges may determine that some
Speaker 1: of the dismissals were illegal, but any rulings in the
Speaker 1: President's favor would establish precedents that would expand presidential power
Speaker 1: to control the federal government. I mean his piece. Savage
Speaker 1: does not mention this fiasco over the spending freeze, or
Speaker 1: the other fiasco over the phony employee buyout program, or
Speaker 1: any of the other fiascos of the first nine days,
Speaker 1: but his point is clear. All of these freezes, included
Speaker 1: are could be to set up test cases so that,
Speaker 1: if there were any doubt, the Supreme Court could eventually
Speaker 1: hear them and begin to specify what exact rights Trump
Speaker 1: has as a dictator, freed from any checks and balances
Speaker 1: and completely liberated from the possibility of criminal prosecution later. Still,
Speaker 1: it's something of a Rube Goldberg way of doing this,
Speaker 1: and once the Supreme Court made up presidential immunity, all
Speaker 1: this as a four D chess kind of thing seems unnecessary.
Speaker 1: But I suppose, I suppose it's possible, if they were smart,
Speaker 1: if they had public support, which by the way, they don't.
Speaker 1: For all the boasting, he cannot say it too often.
Speaker 1: More people voted against Trump than for him last November,
Speaker 1: and our drunken Friend polling is back with this rather
Speaker 1: large outside the margin of error number. The Reuter's IPSOS
Speaker 1: poll taken a week ago Monday and Tuesday, showed Trump
Speaker 1: at his most popular only thirty nine percent disapproval. The
Speaker 1: new Reuter's IPSOS poll, taken over the weekend the weekend
Speaker 1: that followed Monday and Tuesday, shows his disapproval has ballooned
Speaker 1: back to forty six percent, up seven points after five
Speaker 1: days in office. I mean, that's impressive. Pardoning the January
Speaker 1: sixth terrorist was a huge mistake, sixty two percent disapproval.
Speaker 1: Another reason the Democrats should file impeachment bills about the
Speaker 1: were he six pardons, trying to end birthright citizenship fifty
Speaker 1: nine percent disapproval. Ending federal programs to hire women and
Speaker 1: minorities if you don't say that's what DEI is fifty
Speaker 1: nine percent disapproval. Pulling out of the Paris Climate Chords
Speaker 1: fifty six percent disapproval, and in the stupid realm calling
Speaker 1: it the Gulf of America seventy percent disapproval. Those geography
Speaker 1: classes are more popular than you thought. These are omens,
Speaker 1: auguries and four tents. Dire for Trump because this is
Speaker 1: all he's got. I just ran through the essences of
Speaker 1: his his worldview. He can't govern. He's still trying to
Speaker 1: stop shooting himself in the foot. In this context, you're
Speaker 1: problem with overthrowing democracy and replacing it with a dictatorial
Speaker 1: kleptocracy dedicated to revenge, cruelty, threats, and the specter of violence.
Speaker 1: Is that history teaches us when the components of this
Speaker 1: are so unpopular that they score polling numbers like that
Speaker 1: seventy percent against your nido idea and sixty percent over
Speaker 1: against your substantive ideas, History teaches us that in every country,
Speaker 1: in every century, such dictatorial kleptocracies are eventually met and
Speaker 1: eventually disempowered by a defiance, a defiance better skilled at revenge,
Speaker 1: better motivated to use cruelty, more gifted at targeting threats,
Speaker 1: more exact with its violence or warnings of violence. Let
Speaker 1: me say, at the outset, whatever form this takes here,
Speaker 1: and I do not know what that form will be,
Speaker 1: I truly hope it will not be violent. I do
Speaker 1: not want this. I would rather limit protest defiance to
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson's approach to slavery, hold the wolf by the ears,
Speaker 1: because you can neither hold him nor safely let him go.
Speaker 1: But in the last week it has seemed to me
Speaker 1: that to avoid it, there would have to be a major,
Speaker 1: nullifying intervention to remove Donald Trump and these moronic pirates
Speaker 1: who adhere to him. I actually, and I'm not sure why,
Speaker 1: have hopes such an intervention will take place, as unlikely
Speaker 1: as it seems at this moment. What kind of interventional
Speaker 1: it could be? A dozen Republicans saying enough the correct
Speaker 1: dozen Republicans could topple this administration tomorrow afternoon, or just
Speaker 1: two conservative Supreme Court justices saying enough, or even Trump's
Speaker 1: supporters suddenly cut off from all those government grants and
Speaker 1: aid saying enough, or it could be a financial rebellion
Speaker 1: led by the key Blue states, or a tax strike,
Speaker 1: general strike, or something worse. Any one of ten thousands
Speaker 1: somethings worse that I do not like to think about,
Speaker 1: and I think pretty much any one of them would work.
Speaker 1: Trump says, believes others will believe, may believe it himself
Speaker 1: keeps repeating that he turned on some sort of giant
Speaker 1: spigot in California and made it rain. The only thing
Speaker 1: that actually happened was just a reservoir undergoing maintenance coming
Speaker 1: back online. Whoever wrote Secretary of Combover's Rubio's International Aid
Speaker 1: freeze had to retract it and add a waiver or
Speaker 1: two or seven life saving medicine, medical services, food shelter,
Speaker 1: and subsistence, as well as essential supplies and reasonable cost
Speaker 1: to deliver such assistance not covered by this. Whoever froze
Speaker 1: the domestic aid and grants never realized everything they did
Speaker 1: thing was illegal, That money authorized by Congress to be
Speaker 1: spent must be spent, that not doing so is prohibited
Speaker 1: by the Impoundment Control Acted nineteen seventy four. And even
Speaker 1: if the Supreme Court were to again erase the law
Speaker 1: and erase the Constitution and sided with Trump, even if
Speaker 1: the Charlie Savage article is theoretically correct, all that Trump
Speaker 1: has done in the first week will be tied up
Speaker 1: in a thousand lawsuits in the lower courts. And whoever
Speaker 1: in the administration at all, I mean, who offered this
Speaker 1: non buyout buyout to every government employee A must be
Speaker 1: too stoned to understand what would happen to the world
Speaker 1: economy if you suddenly paid two million government union employees
Speaker 1: a buyout tomorrow. And B they forgot that The Supreme
Speaker 1: Court may have made the president immune from criminal prosecution
Speaker 1: for what he did in office, but he didn't make
Speaker 1: a goddamn one of Eli Musk and the Musk wannabes
Speaker 1: immune from prosecution. And just as importantly, when you stop
Speaker 1: all domestic government financial assistants, which is what Trump's Caroline
Speaker 1: Levitt says they're still doing, guess who that affects Trump supporters,
Speaker 1: civilian Trump supporters, and maybe more relevantly, Trump congressmen who
Speaker 1: have to go and get the votes of those Trump supporters.
Speaker 1: Just six hundred and forty four days from now and
Speaker 1: even they are beginning to say, you idiots put eighty
Speaker 1: undocumented immigrants on military planes that cost eight hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars per flight. You idiots trying to cont
Speaker 1: trillions from the government expenditures, reduce our tax burdens by
Speaker 1: trillions of dollars. You decided to deport a million people,
Speaker 1: so you're going to spend nine hundred and sixty seven billion,
Speaker 1: nine hundred million dollars of my money on that instead
Speaker 1: of spending it on me at all. The undocumented immigrants
Speaker 1: say nothing of the documented immigrants stop showing up on
Speaker 1: the farms and at the construction sites. And now a
Speaker 1: tomato costs how far is it going to go? Forty
Speaker 1: seven dollars each? Because nearly all of them are rotting
Speaker 1: in the fields. Oh, and the building industry grinds to
Speaker 1: a halt. It is all well and good to crash
Speaker 1: the system until the system turns out to be a
Speaker 1: clown car. And when you crash it, it bursts into
Speaker 1: flames and lights everything on fire. Because every immigrant food
Speaker 1: worker in this country is smarter and tougher than Trump,
Speaker 1: and every immigrant construction worker in this country will survive
Speaker 1: when tom Homan will not, and the Mark Millies, with
Speaker 1: or without a security detail, will always bury the Pete
Speaker 1: Keg breaths, if only because Mark Milly isn't an alcoholic,
Speaker 1: and every New Yorker, every single New Yorker, is more
Speaker 1: resilient and smarter than Christy effing Nome. An old woman
Speaker 1: wearing too much makeup coast playing in an ice uniform
Speaker 1: that looks like the vest belonging to a suicide bomber,
Speaker 1: also known as what she wears when she leaves the
Speaker 1: house to go murder the family dog seems to me.
Speaker 1: The one real risk to my scenario of some peaceful
Speaker 1: blowback is, of course, the cowardice of the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: as Robert F. Kennedy Junior yesterday denied at his hearing
Speaker 1: everything except that his name was Robert F. Kennedy Junior,
Speaker 1: denying he ever compared COVID lockdowns and vaccines to Nazi
Speaker 1: death Camps said, I never said that. Raphael Warnock read
Speaker 1: him the transcript of him saying it. Then Kennedy said, well,
Speaker 1: I wasn't comparing then, I was just comparing their effect.
Speaker 1: While Kennedy was doing that, they were still rumbling. Some
Speaker 1: Democrats like his law school roommate, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse might
Speaker 1: vote to confirm. Senator, I have always deeply respected and
Speaker 1: admired you. This, though, is existential. Kennedy is a madman.
Speaker 1: His irresponsibility will lead to Americans dying, especially children. If
Speaker 1: you vote to confirm him, Sheldon Whitehouse, you are dead
Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party dead. You are deader than Eric
Speaker 1: Adams is. New York Times is reporting our beloved mayor
Speaker 1: has gotten the Trump Department of Enforcers to consider dropping
Speaker 1: the federal investigation of him. Senator, you would be deater
Speaker 1: than Kathy Hochel, the soon to be ex governor of
Speaker 1: New York, who, like Adams, has pledged cooperation with Ice
Speaker 1: on these Trump gestapo raids in New York. Senator, you
Speaker 1: would be better than Hakeem Jeffries, and I'm sorry right now,
Speaker 1: Hakeem Jeffrey should be removed as minority leader NBC News quote.
Speaker 1: Less than forty eight hours after Trump was inaugurated, House
Speaker 1: Minority Leader A. Kim Jeffries held a closed door meeting
Speaker 1: with Democratic lawmakers to issue a warning and a clarion call.
Speaker 1: The new administration was going to flood the zone and
Speaker 1: Democrats couldn't afford to chase every single outrage or nothing
Speaker 1: was going to sink in for the American people, Jeffreys
Speaker 1: told them. According to a person in the room who
Speaker 1: requested an anemity to discuss the private meeting, Jeffreys urged
Speaker 1: members to focus their message on the cost of living
Speaker 1: along with border security and community safety. Quote. The House
Speaker 1: Republican Contract against America is an extreme plan that will
Speaker 1: not lower costs for everyday Americans, Jeffreys told reporters the
Speaker 1: next day, referring to the GOP agenda and spending cuts
Speaker 1: it is weighing. It will make our country more expensive. Congressman,
Speaker 1: the House Republican Contract against America. That's a line from
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety four midterms. If you're going to make
Speaker 1: a mistake, at least make a new one. Bottom line, Congressman,
Speaker 1: you are expected to do both of these things. If
Speaker 1: you want to emphasize kitchen table issues along with Trump's
Speaker 1: attempt to, you know, convert our form of government into
Speaker 1: a monarchy. Cool. Cool, I guess it won't hurt if
Speaker 1: you do the economy instead of the end of civilization
Speaker 1: as we know it. You get the f out. I'll
Speaker 1: support primarying you. Hell, I'll primary you myself, even if
Speaker 1: it means I have to move to Coney Island. At
Speaker 1: least they got a nice minor league ballpark in Coney Island.
Speaker 1: As their confirmation hearings now begin. Tulsa Gabbard and Cash
Speaker 1: Bettel were referred to by Russian TV propagandists as our
Speaker 1: Tulsi and our Cash. And you somehow think you have
Speaker 1: to campaign only on the price of eggs because you
Speaker 1: couldn't successfully figure out how to campaign last year on
Speaker 1: an anti dictatorship message. Get the f out of here.
Speaker 1: You are all on the brink of collaborating with the
Speaker 1: Nazis for the worst reason, because you're incompetent. Minority leader Jeffries,
Speaker 1: the cliff is feet in front of you. My advice
Speaker 1: is swerve. So here we are Republican stupidity versus democratic cowardice.
Speaker 1: I feel like singing the national anthem, and yet I
Speaker 1: still have hope our cowards will prevail over their morons,
Speaker 1: because boy are they morons. You heard, of course, that
Speaker 1: the wording in this government employee buyout program is almost
Speaker 1: identical to the wording in Elon Musk's employee buyout program
Speaker 1: for when he bought, crashed, and burned Twitter quote. Upon
Speaker 1: review of the below deferred resignation letter. If you wish
Speaker 1: to resign one select reply to this email. You must
Speaker 1: reply from your government account. A reply from an account
Speaker 1: other than your government account will not be accepted. To
Speaker 1: type the word resign into the body of this reply
Speaker 1: email hit send. Last day to accept the defird resignation
Speaker 1: program is February sex, twenty twenty five. Firstly, you you
Speaker 1: would accept a Trump buyout, a promise of money from
Speaker 1: Trump with his track record of stiffing employees on contractors,
Speaker 1: and as to this Muskian demand to unsubscribe from your job,
Speaker 1: click this link. In other words, to resign. Press one
Speaker 1: to accept as buyout compensation a previously owned Tesla instead
Speaker 1: of money. Press two to join a general stripe to
Speaker 1: unseat the fascists. Press three. Also of interest here in
Speaker 1: this all new edition of Countdown, they are this close
Speaker 1: to drinking kool aid for Trump. A congresswoman, and you
Speaker 1: can take the break here to guess which one. There's
Speaker 1: only like sixteen of them now. A congresswoman, A stupid congresswoman.
Speaker 1: Haven't narrowed it down at all. Have a stupid congresswoman
Speaker 1: has moved to add Trump to Mount Rushmore a bill
Speaker 1: in Congress to add Trump to Mount Rushmore. Unfortunately for her,
Speaker 1: her press release reads as if her bill says it's
Speaker 1: to put Trump's actual head on Mount Rushmore, which, come
Speaker 1: to think of it would be something we could all
Speaker 1: get behind. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown
Speaker 1: with Keith Openman still ahead on an all new edition
Speaker 1: of Countdown. I flashed back yesterday to the day I
Speaker 1: met Jim Thorpe's roommate at the nineteen twelve Olympics at
Speaker 1: a museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and that made
Speaker 1: me flash back to the day I met someone who
Speaker 1: knew someone who'd shaken the hand of Hitler. A lot
Speaker 1: of strange things happen when you're coming out of anesthesia. Also,
Speaker 1: this question related to all that, will we be playing
Speaker 1: that handshake game someday with a current dictator? I'm not
Speaker 1: shaking your hand ahead on things I promised not to tell.
Speaker 1: Can't believe I shook this guy's freaking hand. First, there's
Speaker 1: still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup
Speaker 1: of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effets specimens
Speaker 1: constitute two days. Other worst persons in the world, the
Speaker 1: Bronze Worse, The Washington Post, Penny Saber and Hot Sex News.
Speaker 1: Here's the new low and they find a new one
Speaker 1: daily under the British idiot they brought in to destroy
Speaker 1: the place. He's doing a great job. Anybody left, I
Speaker 1: don't mean anybody left for another paper. I'm just asking
Speaker 1: is there anybody left at the Washington Post? I mean
Speaker 1: I spoke to a reporter last week. I think he's
Speaker 1: still there. But it's been a week. This is the
Speaker 1: latest farce from what the Washington Post has become. It's
Speaker 1: an illustration. On one side is Bobby Kennedy, you know,
Speaker 1: the man without pants who likes to masturbate on the
Speaker 1: phone or on FaceTime. Bobby Kennedy, who would be in
Speaker 1: charge of health and human services, as in ending health
Speaker 1: and denying human services. He's on the left and he's
Speaker 1: in a pink reason they made his picture pink. And
Speaker 1: then over here on the other side is the is
Speaker 1: looking right, Bobby's looking left. On the right side, it's
Speaker 1: Michelle Obama and she's looking to the right and she's
Speaker 1: mostly blue. And in between there's a carrot, and what
Speaker 1: looks to be a radish, and either a strawberry or
Speaker 1: heart is in Michelle Obama's hair. And this is what
Speaker 1: this is the illustration for. Did RFK Junior or Michelle
Speaker 1: Obama say it about food? Take our quiz? Did democracy
Speaker 1: end in twenty seventeen or twenty twenty five? Take our quiz?
Speaker 1: Are you still reading the Washington Post? Or are you
Speaker 1: not seeing this? Take our quiz? Have we become collaborators
Speaker 1: with an evil empire that may or may not be
Speaker 1: willing to leave office when its term is over? Take
Speaker 1: our quiz. I have a suggestion. Take your quiz and
Speaker 1: shove it. Washington Post runner up Lauren Bobert, still congresswoman
Speaker 1: from Colorado, from the particularly dumb place in Colorado where
Speaker 1: they sent all the dumb people. She's complaining that that's right,
Speaker 1: the minimum wage is too high that many of our
Speaker 1: youth have lost the apportunity to mander the workforce. Do
Speaker 1: the high minimum wage requirements seven dollars and twenty five
Speaker 1: cents an hour? High taxes, insurance, and paid leave requirements
Speaker 1: are a few of many issues. As well paid leave requirements.
Speaker 1: Small business owners are unable to invest in first time workers,
Speaker 1: or provide them with skills training for their future. This
Speaker 1: was in response to a Thomas Massey tweet about how
Speaker 1: you shouldn't charge kids who are working taxes. Not an
Speaker 1: unreasonable suggestion from a lunatic like Thomas Massey, and then
Speaker 1: Bobert takes it completely somewhere else, which is kids should
Speaker 1: not have to work for minimum wage. They should work
Speaker 1: for less manual labor, less than seven dollars and twenty
Speaker 1: five cents an hour, stacking boxes, digging trenches, whatever it
Speaker 1: is you want, working in shoe factories, whatever it is
Speaker 1: she has in mind for manual labor, manual labor. Because
Speaker 1: of course seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour,
Speaker 1: that's still the minimum wage. That would be more than
Speaker 1: Lauren Bobert charges for manual labor. Think about it, but
Speaker 1: the winner worst another congresswoman who makes Lauren Bobert look
Speaker 1: like Geraldine Ferraro, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna. Real name Anna Meyerhoffer. Right,
Speaker 1: your arm is Mayor Hoffer. I've officially introduced legislation to
Speaker 1: put President Trump's face on Mount Rushmore. I swear to God,
Speaker 1: this is actual, This is a real thing. His remarkable
Speaker 1: accomplishments for our country and the success he will continue
Speaker 1: to deliver, deserve the highest recognition and honor on this
Speaker 1: iconic national monument. Let's get at carving. I do like
Speaker 1: the imagery though, but let's get carving. So she has
Speaker 1: a picture of Trump and a picture of her, and
Speaker 1: that stupid pictures of her smile, that fake smile with
Speaker 1: the fake lips and the fake face. And there it
Speaker 1: is the revised Mount Rushmore, Washington on the left, Jefferson
Speaker 1: looking over to the side, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and
Speaker 1: in front of them all Trump. Of course, Trump when
Speaker 1: he was like twenty eight years old. Breaking Representative Luna
Speaker 1: introduces legislation to carve President Trump on Mount Rushmore. See
Speaker 1: there's a problem with your language choice there, Congresswoman. You
Speaker 1: want to carve President Trump on Mount Rushmore. Let's get carving,
Speaker 1: she says, is that does the Secret Service know about this?
Speaker 1: To put President Trump's face on Mount rush Race. See
Speaker 1: I can go along with miss Luna here. Actually she
Speaker 1: wants to carve Trump's face and stick it on Mount Rushmore. Well,
Speaker 1: I believe reading this, Anna Paulina Luna means his face.
Speaker 1: Let's go Anna, Paulina Luna, write your arm Missus Meyerhoffer
Speaker 1: tick two days other worst person in the world. She
Speaker 1: was the number one story on the countdown, and things
Speaker 1: I promised not to tell on my way back from
Speaker 1: the endoscopy. I'm fine. Just as importantly, I didn't wake
Speaker 1: up during the endoscopy. Happily we did this once in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five. That will last me the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. I'm fine. Thank you for asking. It
Speaker 1: was waytown in Manhattan, and it occurred to me that
Speaker 1: although I've been there now twice in the last week
Speaker 1: or so, I had not been passed the fabulous Frank
Speaker 1: Lloyd WRIGHTE. Guggenheim Museum on Upper Fifth Avenue relative to
Speaker 1: Manhattan anyway since nineteen eighty two. I've been there twice
Speaker 1: in a week, and just because it's a downtown street
Speaker 1: and I don't spend a lot of time uptown, and
Speaker 1: it's passed the real museum row on Fifth Avenue. I'd
Speaker 1: been as north as by eighty ninth Street, something like that,
Speaker 1: but i'd never been as far as the Guggenheim for
Speaker 1: forty two and a half years, and I've been passed
Speaker 1: it twice in the last week, and it means only
Speaker 1: one thing to me. Oh, great art itself is great art.
Speaker 1: Frank Lloyd write all those stories the Guggenheim Museum means
Speaker 1: to me Abel Kiviat. I'll explain able Kiviat, but I
Speaker 1: also want to say that because my mind was emptying
Speaker 1: the remainder of the sedations slash anesthesia, which was strong
Speaker 1: enough so that I didn't wake up during it. This time,
Speaker 1: I also thought of, for some reason, the Midpoint game.
Speaker 1: You ever played the midpoint game? Like, this event happened
Speaker 1: this far in my past? And if I double that,
Speaker 1: what happened? You know, if it's ten years ago, what
Speaker 1: happened ten years ago? Exactly before that happened? What was that?
Speaker 1: The midpoint of relative is today? I think that's a
Speaker 1: fun game, and it popped into my head too, because
Speaker 1: strange things pop into your head as it's clearing, relatively speaking,
Speaker 1: and that led me, of course to the famous handshake game.
Speaker 1: We'll leave that for last. Let me tell you about
Speaker 1: Abel Kiviat In the old days here in New York,
Speaker 1: the New York Marathon, which now features like I don't know,
Speaker 1: seventy five million people running on a Sunday as I've
Speaker 1: described it many times, the New York Marathon, your worst neighbor.
Speaker 1: They block all the streets, no matter where you go,
Speaker 1: they're running there. They made the whole thing more and
Speaker 1: more intricate over the years. This started back in the
Speaker 1: old days, when there was no television, no radio, no publicity.
Speaker 1: CNN once sent a live truck, the only live truck
Speaker 1: they had to cover the start of the race on
Speaker 1: the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and they got this great idea,
Speaker 1: this unbelievable new idea, the first one perhaps ever in
Speaker 1: cable television. Cover it live, but keep the truck moving
Speaker 1: because the signal will work from all points of the
Speaker 1: Verizona Narrows Bridge. You'll get a live, moving shot of
Speaker 1: the start of the race. And they did it, and
Speaker 1: they were so proud of themselves. And then they forgot
Speaker 1: there was a toll booth and a low overhanging bridge
Speaker 1: across the toll booth, and live on television. CNN, in
Speaker 1: its first year, snapped its live truck's arm its mast
Speaker 1: in half. Nobody was injured. Mary Alice Williams, who ran
Speaker 1: the New York bureau for CNN, kept the destroyed sort
Speaker 1: of knuckle of the mast in a frame on her
Speaker 1: office wall, or as long as I knew her working
Speaker 1: at CNN in New York in those old days, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they got so little publicity for the New York Marathon
Speaker 1: that they were happy to have the CNN truck drive
Speaker 1: in front of the runners two thousand runners maybe in
Speaker 1: the first ones in the early eighties, so happy to
Speaker 1: have them there that they were willing to risk the
Speaker 1: runners lives because the guy driving the CNN truck did
Speaker 1: not think to stop at the toll booth. And I
Speaker 1: believe it was Mary Alice Williams's brother, but that may
Speaker 1: not be correct. I don't want to insult him. In
Speaker 1: any event, it was true that in those days, nobody
Speaker 1: cared about the New York Marathon unless nobody knew about
Speaker 1: the New York Marathon, and so they called us up
Speaker 1: one day. The head, the founder of the New York Marathon,
Speaker 1: a little man named Fred Leebow, who ran with a
Speaker 1: bicycle racer's cap from the eighties, a little tiny baseball
Speaker 1: cap only shrunk to the head with the brim pushed upwards.
Speaker 1: He walked around with that all the time, and he
Speaker 1: was I forget from where somewhere in Europe and he
Speaker 1: had a little European accent and he ran the marathon.
Speaker 1: He is the founder of the marathon. I think there
Speaker 1: is a statue to him, and it is deserved. He
Speaker 1: built it out of nothing, and he built it out
Speaker 1: of nothing. This way, I come back from a shoot
Speaker 1: at CNN in nineteen eighty two and there is a
Speaker 1: message for me, call Fred Libo at the New York
Speaker 1: City Marathon. It's like, okay, fine, we need a story.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can do something on the New York City Marathon.
Speaker 1: I'm the sports reporter. Why not. I call up the
Speaker 1: offices New York Roadrunners Club or whatever it was called,
Speaker 1: and I get this, This is the switchboard New York
Speaker 1: road Runners Club. Hi, Fred Libo's office, please, CNN returning
Speaker 1: her call, speaking even though I called him her, he
Speaker 1: was operating the switchboard. Well, it turned out that he said,
Speaker 1: we're going to have an event at the Guggenheim Museum
Speaker 1: for this man, Able Kiviat, and he's not actually going
Speaker 1: to run in the nineteen eighty two New York Marathon,
Speaker 1: but he's going to be like our starter and he's
Speaker 1: going to run a little bit. Becase, because Able's ninety
Speaker 1: four years old, and I said, I know exactly who
Speaker 1: he is. Oh I doct you know who he is?
Speaker 1: I said, he held like ten middle distance running records
Speaker 1: in this country. Is the top middle distance runner sprints
Speaker 1: and you know a thousand yards or whatever it was
Speaker 1: how they measured them in those days. How do you
Speaker 1: know that? I said, I have his his tobacco card
Speaker 1: they made. They used to make cards of great athletes.
Speaker 1: It was a set that had bowlers and golfers and
Speaker 1: Abel Kiviat in it, and it was one of my
Speaker 1: favorite sets of cards. So I knew who he was,
Speaker 1: and I went, he's still alive, yes, and he's a
Speaker 1: pis a pisser. And that's the first time I think
Speaker 1: I ever heard that in publicity language. So we arranged
Speaker 1: to go meet Abel Kiviat at this event. No other
Speaker 1: television cameras were there, as I remember, and they sat
Speaker 1: me next to Able Kiviat for lunch, and he was,
Speaker 1: in fact, as Fred Liebo described him, a pisser was
Speaker 1: Fred was not exaggerating. Abel talked like both my grandfather's
Speaker 1: and he was from somewhere in Queens and he said
Speaker 1: things like Tarty third Street and he was just marvelous,
Speaker 1: and he had a full head of hair, and he
Speaker 1: was shop as attack and he explained to me his
Speaker 1: history as a runner, and I was enthralled by it.
Speaker 1: A professional athlete from nineteen ten talking to me about
Speaker 1: the Olympics, while he was not officially professional, but you
Speaker 1: know what it was like then. This was marvelous to me.
Speaker 1: This man had been on a baseball card, essentially a
Speaker 1: track and field card. But it was like meeting I
Speaker 1: don't know cy young Christy Matthewson, abel kiveat all of
Speaker 1: an era. At some point we started talking about Abele's
Speaker 1: role in the nineteen twelve Olympics, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was Jim Thorpe's roommate, And I went, you what
Speaker 1: probably the greatest natural athlete of all time in the
Speaker 1: most different sports track and field basically invented professional football,
Speaker 1: basically popularized college football. He could kick, he could pass,
Speaker 1: he could block, he could receive. He sometimes did all
Speaker 1: these things in the same game. He also played pro baseball.
Speaker 1: He was also an actor, and he also achieved a
Speaker 1: modicum of success anyway in a society that completely denigrated
Speaker 1: the fact that he was a Native American, and he
Speaker 1: survived the forcible translation of him from a native American
Speaker 1: to a quote unquote modern American in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: one of the great people in our history. And this
Speaker 1: was his roommate. So he says, Abel does in his
Speaker 1: wonderful way, sounding like both my grandfather is from the Bronx.
Speaker 1: He says, Yeah, we went over to England to pick
Speaker 1: up the team in a boat. Went big boat, I said,
Speaker 1: like a cruise ship. Yeah, we're in a cruise ship.
Speaker 1: And we get over there and we meet them in
Speaker 1: Liverpool and they come on board, and then we go
Speaker 1: to the Olympics and we're out there in the a
Speaker 1: Sai Zephery. Was it Denmark? Was it Copenhagen? Was it Oslow?
Speaker 1: I forgot what we were. He's mentioned like four countries
Speaker 1: so far. But he's in there with them, and he says,
Speaker 1: the night before all the lords and ladies of England
Speaker 1: are there and all of our team and all of
Speaker 1: their team, and we're they're we're all in tusas. I
Speaker 1: had to borrow one. They had them on board this
Speaker 1: ship and we're having this this party, and sooner or
Speaker 1: later there's enough drink that every one of these athletes
Speaker 1: decides they're gonna run up and grab this. They had
Speaker 1: this huge chandelier and I went, my god, he could
Speaker 1: be my grandfather. That's how both my grandfathers pronounced the
Speaker 1: word chandelier. And in fact, one of my grandfathers was
Speaker 1: named Charbonier. He pronounced it chabanir like that. He should
Speaker 1: have been Charbonnier, and it should have been chandelier chandelier.
Speaker 1: They had this big chandelier and I don't know how
Speaker 1: high up that thing was, but it was huge, and
Speaker 1: the bottom rung, the bottom sparkler on this chandelier, I
Speaker 1: don't know, fifteen feet in the air off the ground,
Speaker 1: twenty feet. Well, the more we drink, the more we
Speaker 1: all start arguing which one of us can get up
Speaker 1: there and touch the bottom of this damn thing. And
Speaker 1: sure enough we try, and we put a hat down,
Speaker 1: and everybody puts in a dollar or a pound or
Speaker 1: five Bye, I forget what it was. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of money in there for nineteen twelve, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, we're doing this on nobody touches. And these
Speaker 1: are the greatest athletes in the world, probably forty percent
Speaker 1: of the greatest athletes in the world, and we're all
Speaker 1: there and none of us come close to this damn thing.
Speaker 1: And now the door opens to this banquet, and in
Speaker 1: walks Thorp, and we hadn't even noticed, really thought, wasn't
Speaker 1: there was a kind of a quiet guy. He's been
Speaker 1: out on shore drinking and he wobbles in and he
Speaker 1: looks at this, and he's wobbling past us, and he stops.
Speaker 1: He goes, hebe what's this? And I explained it to him,
Speaker 1: and he goes, how many of you have touched it?
Speaker 1: And I had to tell him none of us that
Speaker 1: touched it. And he said, you're kidding. How much is
Speaker 1: in the how much is in the hat? And we
Speaker 1: went through it was probably one hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: He says, hold on, He takes off his hat, hold
Speaker 1: my hat for me. We're j Abel, hold my jacket.
Speaker 1: I can leave the vest on, but I'm gonna unbutton it,
Speaker 1: and he says. Abel Kivat says. Jim Thorpe takes three
Speaker 1: steps backwards and three steps forward and propels himself up
Speaker 1: in the air towards this chandelier and not only touches
Speaker 1: it on the first try in a suit, but grabs
Speaker 1: it and we think, no, Jim, you're gonna bring down
Speaker 1: the whole chandelier. We're all gonna get killed. The night
Speaker 1: before the Olympics starts, Jim knew just when to let go.
Speaker 1: He falls gracefully to the ground, like you were showing
Speaker 1: a film backwards, lands almost in a bow. The hand
Speaker 1: that was just holding the chandelier sweeps down to the hat,
Speaker 1: picks it up, empties all the bills. He stuffs it
Speaker 1: in the pockets of his vest and his pants, asks
Speaker 1: me for on the night jacket and my hat, puts
Speaker 1: the hat on, takes it off and dofts it to everybody,
Speaker 1: and says, gentlemen, will see you in the morning, and
Speaker 1: walks off. Abel Kiviat explained that Jim Thorpe could do
Speaker 1: anything in athletics or anything else if you just showed
Speaker 1: him once how to do it. He said he'd never
Speaker 1: been a high jumper, certainly not a stationary high junker,
Speaker 1: a high jumper, while inebriated, greatest athlete of all time.
Speaker 1: He could take that microphone out of your hand, and
Speaker 1: with a little practice, he could do a better job
Speaker 1: than you could. And I said, well, this is my
Speaker 1: second year on the job, so I have no doubt
Speaker 1: anybody could do that. Ha ha, I like you, kid.
Speaker 1: So now Abele agrees to go the mandatory shot of
Speaker 1: the little old man running up Fifth Avenue and our cameraman,
Speaker 1: who coincidentally his grandfather had played for the New York
Speaker 1: Yankees briefly in nineteen twelve, Danny Danny Marra. Danny stands
Speaker 1: out side and is expecting little old man, who still jogs,
Speaker 1: to just sort of slowly waw, we're making fun of
Speaker 1: the little Danny rolls and he's looking for a long
Speaker 1: shot some b roll and Abel takes one step and
Speaker 1: shoots past Danny so fast that Danny does not have
Speaker 1: time to swing the camera around. The next thing I know,
Speaker 1: Abel is crossing whatever it was eighty seventh Street onto
Speaker 1: the other side. I have to go after him and
Speaker 1: bring him back. So now we rearrange the shot and
Speaker 1: able Kiveat runs in such a way that my cameraman
Speaker 1: shoots him going past us. I said, Abel still runs,
Speaker 1: and you see him take off, and the cameraman pans
Speaker 1: and then stops where I'm standing as Abel disappears into
Speaker 1: the distance. I said, he will not be running in
Speaker 1: this year's New York City Marathon on whatever the date was,
Speaker 1: which is good news for all of you who are
Speaker 1: Keith Alerman, CNN New York. That's what I was reminded
Speaker 1: of in the ten seconds we passed the Guggenheim Museum
Speaker 1: on my way back from my endosc But that also, chandelieh,
Speaker 1: that brought me to the midpoint game. You ever played
Speaker 1: the midpoint game? Like the day I met Abel Caveat
Speaker 1: and heard about Jim Thorpe and what truly a great
Speaker 1: athlete he was was roughly forty two years and seven
Speaker 1: months ago. So what happened forty two years and seven
Speaker 1: months before that? You're applying that same timeframe to the
Speaker 1: day I met him? How long ago is it since
Speaker 1: I met him? How long ago was it to this
Speaker 1: other event on the day I met him? So forty
Speaker 1: two years and seven months is roughly eighty five years ago.
Speaker 1: Forty two times two is eighty four and then seven
Speaker 1: and say, okay, nineteen forty maybe late nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: Got a lot of World War Two vibes in those dates.
Speaker 1: And this is the second time this week that happened.
Speaker 1: Because I was texting with my friend Sam Rosen, my
Speaker 1: first boss the Hall of Fame, voice of the New
Speaker 1: York Rangers hockey team. And we figured out that in
Speaker 1: six weeks or so, it will be exactly forty six
Speaker 1: years since he and I met, and he listened to
Speaker 1: my tape and he decided we should hire this idiot
Speaker 1: kid from Cornell at twenty and forty six years March
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, forty six years at the midpoint game
Speaker 1: forty six years before March nineteen seventy nine was March
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, and it was almost exactly the day
Speaker 1: FDR was sworn in for his first term as president.
Speaker 1: That's how long ago it really is that Sam Rosen
Speaker 1: and I met. That's how long ago it was that
Speaker 1: Abel Kiviat and I met. And then, of course, now
Speaker 1: we have two references to the Second World War in
Speaker 1: Hitler and I had to go off in that direction.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the Hitler handshake game on Twitter twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, twenty twenty three, where people were, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how many hands stood between themselves
Speaker 1: and Hitler, Like, okay, Queen Elizabeth obviously met her uncle
Speaker 1: Edward the seventh, and Edward the seventh met Hitler. I
Speaker 1: mean Queen Elizabeth at some point shook her uncle's hand,
Speaker 1: and Edward the Seventh shook Hitler's hand. So Queen Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: on this scale of how many people between you and
Speaker 1: Hitler is a one, the one being her uncle Edward
Speaker 1: the Seventh. But if you met Queen Elizabeth, she's standing
Speaker 1: between you and her uncle, and her uncle met Hitler,
Speaker 1: so that would be two people between you and Hitler.
Speaker 1: You are a two on this scale. It's not limited
Speaker 1: to meeting the Queen of England, though, because on March eighth,
Speaker 1: talk about anniversaries nineteen thirty eight, Herbert Hoover, former President
Speaker 1: of the United States, met Hitler forty minutes conversation and dinner.
Speaker 1: Can't imagine how much fun either of those things was.
Speaker 1: On the eighth of August nineteen fifty nine, and Herbert
Speaker 1: Hoover went to the Yankees Cleveland then Indians game Yankee Stadium,
Speaker 1: and they were holding Old Timer's Day where he met
Speaker 1: Baseball Greats Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Joe DiMaggio,
Speaker 1: and where Hoover threw out the first pitch. So Bob
Speaker 1: Feller and Joe DiMaggio met Hoover, who met Hitler so
Speaker 1: Feller and DiMaggio were each ones in this morbid game. However,
Speaker 1: if you met Bob Feller, and there was a point
Speaker 1: in this country where Bob Feller made so many personal
Speaker 1: appearances that the odds were like six to five in
Speaker 1: favor of you meeting Bob Feller and getting an autograph
Speaker 1: from him, the old joke was the scarcest Bob Feller
Speaker 1: item is an unautographed Bob Feller baseball. If you met
Speaker 1: Bob Feller, you would also be a two. It would
Speaker 1: be you, Bob Feller, Herbert Hoover Hitler two between you
Speaker 1: and Hitler. Same thing for DiMaggio. Well I met, I
Speaker 1: met Feller, so I would be at two. Except it
Speaker 1: continues this way. Orson Wells met Hitler. Orson Wells knew
Speaker 1: Joseph Cotton very well, and he knew my friend Norman
Speaker 1: Lloyd very well. They worked together, and my friend Gil
Speaker 1: Stratton they met a couple of times. Gil Stratton interviewed him,
Speaker 1: so they shook hands with Wells, who shook hands with Hitler.
Speaker 1: So they were ones on this. And I knew Gil
Speaker 1: and Norman and Joseph Cotton. I shook all their hands,
Speaker 1: so I would be a two, so try to top that.
Speaker 1: See what you are, and of course you want to
Speaker 1: be like a seventy four. You don't want to be
Speaker 1: a two, and you certainly don't want to be a one.
Speaker 1: And oddly enough, on a last note or next to
Speaker 1: last note here, I'm a one with On Frank. Can
Speaker 1: you believe that I knew a man very well, Peter Lesally,
Speaker 1: the great late TV talk show producer, executive producer, inspiration
Speaker 1: for David Letterman, the man who got Johnny Carson to
Speaker 1: the extra heights that nobody ever thought he'd really achieve
Speaker 1: to immortality in that field, and then worked with Letterman,
Speaker 1: and then worked with Craig Ferguson, and then took me
Speaker 1: out to dinner once because he was a huge fan
Speaker 1: of mine. Peter Lesali kind of casually just sort of
Speaker 1: threw out that he grew up going to school with
Speaker 1: Anne Frank. Yeah, we're in the same class. Knew I
Speaker 1: knew her brother. I think a little better, but yeah,
Speaker 1: Peter Lesali, I shook his hand one on the on
Speaker 1: Fronk scoreboard, which circles us back to the thought that,
Speaker 1: of course, if we're playing the Hitler handshake game on
Speaker 1: Twitter and other social media and other variations of that,
Speaker 1: and other midpoints of that. Will we someday be playing
Speaker 1: the Trump handshake game, in which case, unfortunately, if you
Speaker 1: have met me, you are a one on the Trump
Speaker 1: handshake gap. And the codicilt to that is always remember
Speaker 1: to wash your goddamned hands. You never know where that
Speaker 1: hand you just shook has been. I've done all the
Speaker 1: damage I can do here. Thank you for listening, especially
Speaker 1: to this last part. May all your handshakes be unaffected
Speaker 1: by infamy. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical
Speaker 1: directors who Countdown, have had nothing to do with this
Speaker 1: last segment, but they arranged, produced, and performed most of
Speaker 1: our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboard words. Mister
Speaker 1: Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and it
Speaker 1: was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty musical
Speaker 1: comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
Speaker 1: The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two,
Speaker 1: written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other
Speaker 1: music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer today is my friend, Larry David. Everything else was,
Speaker 1: as ever my fault, especially the part about the handshakes.
Speaker 1: That's countdown for today, just and fifty two days until
Speaker 1: the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term.
Speaker 1: The next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always Bolton's, as
Speaker 1: the news warrants remember in peach trumpet will not work
Speaker 1: now it will win the Democrats the midterms. Until next time,
Speaker 1: I'm Keith Oldraman good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, 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.