Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. On
Speaker 1: this day of the debate, there could not be a
Speaker 1: more potent metaphor for our political crisis, nor a more
Speaker 1: ominous one than the metaphor that is standing at twelve
Speaker 1: hundred s Street Northwest in Washington, where a three thousand
Speaker 1: pound replica of the Lincoln Memorial is at this hour
Speaker 1: melting in the hot sun, literally, as Trump tries to
Speaker 1: destroy democracy and Biden tries to destroy Trump. The climate
Speaker 1: disaster that has already begun and on which Trump would
Speaker 1: apply the finishing touches, has so imperiled the six foot
Speaker 1: tall wax statue of Lincoln outside of water Washington Elementary
Speaker 1: School that the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities
Speaker 1: has removed Lincoln's head quote to prevent it from falling
Speaker 1: and breaking. They are not saying this, but the other
Speaker 1: problem was. The other dire portent here was as climate
Speaker 1: change brought peak summer temperatures to Washington while it was
Speaker 1: still spring, the figure of mister Lincoln did not merely
Speaker 1: begin to melt. It began to slump. The torso began
Speaker 1: to slide outwards from the replica of the chair and
Speaker 1: his head to fall backwards onto its edge. Frankly, it
Speaker 1: had begun to look more like Ford's Theater than the
Speaker 1: Lincoln Memorial. At the debate, somebody asked Trump about this,
Speaker 1: ask him if he's in favor of beheading Lincoln before
Speaker 1: Lincoln's head falls off. Trump is always claiming he's been
Speaker 1: treated worse than Lincoln. This is dementia. Jay's chain chants
Speaker 1: to get even with him. Where we are practically, of course,
Speaker 1: on the day of this debate, is that the UGOV
Speaker 1: poll for the Economists that closed Tuesday continues to peg
Speaker 1: the national race at Biden forty two, Trump forty two,
Speaker 1: with or without Kennedy. But the same group of respondents
Speaker 1: predicts a Trump election by forty two thirty one, with
Speaker 1: twenty seven percent unsure. The same group has fifty four
Speaker 1: percent of all Americans saying they definitely or probably will
Speaker 1: watch the debate eleven percent more. There may be the
Speaker 1: numbers actually higher among partisans. Sixty four percent of Republicans
Speaker 1: polled say they are watching, fifty eight percent of Democrats.
Speaker 1: You Gov and the Economist also asked eleven specific questions
Speaker 1: about the debate, like who will be better at staying
Speaker 1: calm under pressure, which Biden wins handily forty eight to
Speaker 1: thirty one. Who will be more likely to lie in
Speaker 1: which it's Trump forty six to thirty four, and three
Speaker 1: questions are Trump landslides. Who is more likely to make
Speaker 1: personal attacks Trump by thirty nine points, who is likelier
Speaker 1: to go over their allotted time Trump by forty five points,
Speaker 1: and who is likelier to interrupt Trump by fifty two points.
Speaker 1: Morning Consult also did debate polling results based the percentage
Speaker 1: of voters who think it's very likely they will change
Speaker 1: who they plan to vote for based on the debate
Speaker 1: eleven percent. They dismiss this as a small number. Eleven
Speaker 1: percent of Trump and Biden voters are soft enough to
Speaker 1: be changed by the outcome of the debate, and Morning
Speaker 1: Consults says there are three demographic breakdowns of that eleven
Speaker 1: percent that could be big news for Joe Biden. The
Speaker 1: groups where Trump has made the biggest inroad since twenty
Speaker 1: twenty well. One in five voters under the age of
Speaker 1: thirty five is one of those groups, and they say
Speaker 1: they expect to change their vote based on the debate.
Speaker 1: One in five voters under the age of thirty five
Speaker 1: one in five Black voters, more than a quarter of
Speaker 1: all Hispanic voters expect say it's very likely they'll change
Speaker 1: who they plan to vote for based on this debate
Speaker 1: if Trump gives back those gains, especially because off this
Speaker 1: debate tonight he's cooked. But enough about melting Lincoln's and
Speaker 1: who's the biggest asshole at the debate? There is one
Speaker 1: pole number going into this thing that bluntly terrifies me.
Speaker 1: Several polls have already shown that as an issue questions
Speaker 1: phrased as the preservation of democracy or the health of
Speaker 1: democracy or threats against democracy, they have shown up repeatedly
Speaker 1: among the top handful of factors determining who is voting
Speaker 1: for whom. The Biden campaign point has gotten through the
Speaker 1: reality point of January sixth, and the rest of the
Speaker 1: realities of Trump's varied coup attempts. They have also gotten through.
Speaker 1: The problem is the voters in the six swing states
Speaker 1: President Biden won in twenty twenty, polled by The Washington
Speaker 1: Post and George Mason University, are asked who would do
Speaker 1: a better job handling threats to democracy in the US,
Speaker 1: and in those six states, they say Trump by forty
Speaker 1: four to thirty three Trump in Arizona, in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: they somehow think Trump will handle threats to democracy better.
Speaker 1: Along the new pets of the pollsters this year, the
Speaker 1: so called decider voters, the catch all for young voters,
Speaker 1: voters who are newly registered in the last two years,
Speaker 1: voters who are definitely not definitely attached to either candidate,
Speaker 1: voters who voted for different parties in the last two elections.
Speaker 1: They are a little closer on this thirty eight to
Speaker 1: twenty nine, but by a margin of nine points. They
Speaker 1: still think Trump would be better at handling threats to democracy. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, as we have learned every since twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: what you and I might think is meant by the
Speaker 1: phrase handling threats to democracy may not entirely overlap with
Speaker 1: what fascists in Georgia think it means. Some of them
Speaker 1: may be saying Trump will be better at it because
Speaker 1: he'll do a better job making sure that the threats
Speaker 1: to democracy succeed. But as much as we might hope
Speaker 1: that's what it means, it's not likely to be true
Speaker 1: for more than a handful of them, because in those
Speaker 1: six Swing States. Trump's message has gotten through as well,
Speaker 1: that the fact that he is being prosecuted for crimes
Speaker 1: because he was indicted for crimes, because he committed crimes,
Speaker 1: that that's actually an attack on democracy. Six out of
Speaker 1: ten voters in the Swing States say threats to democracy
Speaker 1: are extremely important to them. Seven out of ten Trump
Speaker 1: supporters say it, nearly eight out of ten Biden supporters
Speaker 1: say it, And yet in the Swing States they think
Speaker 1: Trump would be better to solve it. So if there
Speaker 1: is one overriding message to President Biden as they are
Speaker 1: micing him up tonight, it should be this. Those voters
Speaker 1: out there are ready to accept the idea that the
Speaker 1: nation is hanging by a thread, or to choose a
Speaker 1: metaphor more apt to the moment, that it is at
Speaker 1: risk of melting in the hot sun and having its
Speaker 1: head cut off so it doesn't fall off and break.
Speaker 1: But those voters out there do not fully grasp that
Speaker 1: Trump is the problem, that Trump is Hitler nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: one or Hitler nineteen thirty two. They do not fully
Speaker 1: grasp that prosecuting him is not a violation of democracy
Speaker 1: but a necessity if democracy is to be preserved. They
Speaker 1: are maybe as much as half of them still living
Speaker 1: in a world defined in the year eighteen thirty seven
Speaker 1: by the Danish author Hans Christian Anderson. The world of
Speaker 1: the Emperor's new Clothes is sitting there his gun pointed
Speaker 1: at Democracy's head, and somewhere around half of us see
Speaker 1: the exact opposite of that reality. I don't know how
Speaker 1: you fix that, mister President, even if you are on
Speaker 1: stage with this monster in front of one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty million Americans tonight. I can only say that the
Speaker 1: how part really is your choice and really is your job.
Speaker 1: And the only good news is you don't have to
Speaker 1: convince all of them, just a lot of them. You know,
Speaker 1: at the moment you are listening to this way more
Speaker 1: than I know at the moment I'm saying this about
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court ruling on this farcical anti democratic then
Speaker 1: why did we do that whole revolution against the British
Speaker 1: king concept of presidential immunity. The decision has been made.
Speaker 1: It was not revealed yesterday, though in a footnote, the
Speaker 1: Supremely Corrupt Religious Court says it would keep referring to
Speaker 1: x as Twitter and yeah, the government sure can ask
Speaker 1: social media sites to take down disinformation during a coup
Speaker 1: or a literal public health emergency. The Court will either
Speaker 1: announce its decision on presidential immunity today Thursday or on Friday.
Speaker 1: Logic would suggest that John Roberts at least would have
Speaker 1: wanted neither to upstage the debate tonight nor become a
Speaker 1: part of it by issuing this ruling beforehand. And you
Speaker 1: must remember that if Trump's supporters live in an emperor's
Speaker 1: new clothes world, Supreme Court justices live in a world
Speaker 1: in which they are the emperors, and the rest of
Speaker 1: us are just supposed to shut up and salute delaying
Speaker 1: the announcement of a decision, especially if there is any
Speaker 1: shred of actual law left at the Supreme Court and
Speaker 1: the decision on the question of is there presidential immunity
Speaker 1: is are you out of your effing mind? That would
Speaker 1: save them announcing it Friday, That would save them Trump's
Speaker 1: wrath in front of one hundred and twenty million television viewers.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, if it were left up to
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, and especially Martha and Alito,
Speaker 1: they would damn well be certain to announce the presidential
Speaker 1: immunity decision on debate day. In fact, they'd prefer to
Speaker 1: announce it just before the debate so that Martha Ann
Speaker 1: could get her promised on the secret recordings revenge against
Speaker 1: the media and specifically against CNN for its coverage of
Speaker 1: her and her flags. There is also one other practical consideration.
Speaker 1: If the Court has actually found that there is immunity
Speaker 1: for president actions as long as they are taken while
Speaker 1: in office and in an official capacity. Immediately thereafter, Joe
Speaker 1: Biden can literally arrest all of the justices during the
Speaker 1: debate if he wants, and he can arrest Trump too
Speaker 1: during the debate. And there's no hyperbole meant here, because,
Speaker 1: as I have suggested before this, the Court would be
Speaker 1: deciding that this is a monarchy or a dictatorship or
Speaker 1: any kind of strong man state you can think of.
Speaker 1: And therefore the president who invokes the Insurrection Act and
Speaker 1: declare Sam Alito or Donald Trump or Sean Hannity a
Speaker 1: terrorist and a threat to the country could never face
Speaker 1: accountability for it, outside of possible impeachment and removal from office.
Speaker 1: And of course that liability could be removed by simply
Speaker 1: also arresting any congressman or senator who was willing to
Speaker 1: vote for that. Somewhere, even in the adult, vengeful, destructive
Speaker 1: minds of Alito and Thomas, there must be awareness that
Speaker 1: if there is presidential immunity, they will be giving Joe
Speaker 1: Biden immediately a very stark choice. The court would be saying,
Speaker 1: the president is a king. You Biden, our president. You
Speaker 1: Biden can now act like a king, act for goodness
Speaker 1: and for America if you want, or you can refuse
Speaker 1: the crown like you're a modern day Richard the Third
Speaker 1: and not become king and instead sit around and wait
Speaker 1: until January when maybe you hand the literal power to
Speaker 1: be the first American king to this psychopath Trump your call.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is madness to think that in any
Speaker 1: vision of America that any of us have ever had,
Speaker 1: that such things must be considered. But that is where
Speaker 1: we are. It may be we have a choice of
Speaker 1: a good king or a bad king, and that the
Speaker 1: choice has to be made by the guy who would
Speaker 1: become the good king. That's the only choice we have.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Sam Alito. Now get in the van. You're
Speaker 1: under arrest, so you can see where they wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to announce that today. If that's what they're going to
Speaker 1: announce because the government knows where all the justices are
Speaker 1: right now. But if they wait, well, after all, tomorrow
Speaker 1: is Friday, and Roberts and Alito and Thomas and Corsich
Speaker 1: and Kavanaugh and Barrett would stand a better chance of
Speaker 1: just leaving the decision on somebody's desk and all of
Speaker 1: them fleeing arrest before it gets announced. Man, I wish
Speaker 1: I were joking, but hell, it all fits. I mean
Speaker 1: circling back to Garrison Elementary School on S Street in
Speaker 1: Washington after all, Yeah, this all makes sense. Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 1: is melting. Oh, there's Supreme Court to Quinnipiac. Term limits
Speaker 1: for Supreme Court justices approve seventy percent, and what motivates
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court? Politics are law? Law thirty two percent,
Speaker 1: politics sixty three percent. Once again, that includes a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are saying politics, Yeah, that's what we
Speaker 1: want them to do. Besides which, what the hell do
Speaker 1: they care? And circling back to the debate, Apparently Trump
Speaker 1: was supposed to do a thing yesterday with Byron Donald's
Speaker 1: at an Atlanta barber shop, but instead of showing up,
Speaker 1: he phoned it in to a group of black leaders there,
Speaker 1: and he repeated this, try my tacos because I love
Speaker 1: Hispanic people. Level racism claim that claim that he has
Speaker 1: African American support because he too has been arrested, and
Speaker 1: he had a mugshot taken, and the mugshot is more
Speaker 1: popular than Elvis Presley's mugshot.
Speaker 2: Like the mugshot, the mugshot is the best. It just
Speaker 2: beat Elvis Presley and Frank Sinata by a lot, by
Speaker 2: the way, Nada by a lot. But that's the number
Speaker 2: one bug shot of all time. It's really an amazing thing.
Speaker 2: Since it happened, the support among the Black community and
Speaker 2: the Hispanic community has skyrocket.
Speaker 1: By the way, Elvis Presley never had a mugshot taken.
Speaker 1: What Trump stupidly thinks is Elvis Presley's mugshot is Elvis's
Speaker 1: discharge photo from the army March nineteen sixty and his
Speaker 1: hair looking a little wild like that in that photo
Speaker 1: because not because he was arrested, because he knew he
Speaker 1: was about to start performing again and he was growing
Speaker 1: it out. But of course, what would Trump know about
Speaker 1: getting your photo taken while you're in the army. Now,
Speaker 1: the last time I have to annoy you with a reminder,
Speaker 1: I'll be live with special edition of Countdown on YouTube
Speaker 1: at the end of the debate roughly ten thirty Eastern tonight,
Speaker 1: and much of that will be included in tomorrow's edition
Speaker 1: of the podcast Wherever You podcast and on YouTube. And
Speaker 1: by the way, if you heard that story that NBC
Speaker 1: is going to use artificial intelligence to generate Olympic highlight
Speaker 1: clips to send to email subscribers with customized greetings and
Speaker 1: narrations from Al Michaels, I just wanted to point out
Speaker 1: that A. I am not using AI at all. I
Speaker 1: have enough trouble with real intelligence. And B many people
Speaker 1: are now assuming that because NBC is using AIL, that
Speaker 1: real Al is dead, which he is not. And C
Speaker 1: of all the people in the world to make into
Speaker 1: an AI figure first, Al Michaels also of interest here
Speaker 1: vote for Trump endorsed nutjob hung cow we're senator from Virginia,
Speaker 1: because he not only knows USA today is conspiring with
Speaker 1: the campaign of the incumbent Tim Kaine, but he knows
Speaker 1: this because the questions the newspaper sent him are in
Speaker 1: a different font That's next, This is Countdown. Lincoln's isn't
Speaker 1: the only head that's melting in Washington. I see this
Speaker 1: is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead of us on
Speaker 1: this edition of Countdown. The most talented person I have
Speaker 1: ever worked with should have been one of broadcasting's all greats.
Speaker 1: But if anybody ever had a more faithful and more
Speaker 1: fatal combination of bad luck and bad survival skills than
Speaker 1: this newscaster, I don't know who it would have been.
Speaker 1: The most challenged person I have ever worked with coming
Speaker 1: up in things I promised not to tell, But first
Speaker 1: there are still more new idiots to talk about. The
Speaker 1: daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger fec
Speaker 1: specimens who constitute two days worst persons in the world
Speaker 1: the Bronze. Anybody saying that George Latimer successfully primary ing
Speaker 1: Jamal Bowman Tuesday Night in the New York sixteenth is
Speaker 1: an indicator of divisions in the Democratic Party, or the
Speaker 1: end of the squad, or a defeat for the Progressives.
Speaker 1: Just because a record amount of money was spent on
Speaker 1: trying to oust Bowmen and successfully so, it does not
Speaker 1: mean it was the money that beat him. I am
Speaker 1: to the left of Bowmen politically. I have no use
Speaker 1: for Apak Latimer simply gives me the freaking creeps. But
Speaker 1: Bowman had flaws. And in saying that, I will point
Speaker 1: out that the Nevada GOP Committee member Seagal Chatta twice
Speaker 1: called mister Bowman a quote hood rat unquote and said
Speaker 1: he had to leave Congress because there was quote no
Speaker 1: Section eight housing there. And this woman Chatta is a
Speaker 1: stone cold racist representing a stone cold racist party, and
Speaker 1: I hope she burns in hell. But as to mister Bowman,
Speaker 1: he threatened Apack just before the election that he would
Speaker 1: show it, quote the power of the mfing South Bronx,
Speaker 1: And I guess that's all right, being from the Bronx.
Speaker 1: But of course his district, the New York sixteenth, does
Speaker 1: not include the South Bronx mfing or otherwise. Then there
Speaker 1: was the whole alarm jazz at the Cannon House Office
Speaker 1: building last October when he pulled the fire alarm just
Speaker 1: before the House vote on the stopgap funding bill designed
Speaker 1: to avert a government shutdown. Insisted it was an accident.
Speaker 1: He thought pulling the thing would open a door. And
Speaker 1: guess what if that's true, he's not very bright if
Speaker 1: it's not true. He pulled a fire alarm to try
Speaker 1: to stop a vote. Those are not good choices. And
Speaker 1: if you think of the squad and the Progressives lost
Speaker 1: on Tuesday because Bowman did a that's the district that
Speaker 1: includes my childhood home, and it may not be the
Speaker 1: most liberal district, but it's pretty damn liberal. And b
Speaker 1: how come down the street. In the fourteenth AOC beat
Speaker 1: her centrist challenger eighty two percent to eighteen. The problem
Speaker 1: was Bowman the runner up. Bally Sports, the regional sports
Speaker 1: networks that went under last year, may really have burst
Speaker 1: the balloon for baseball, basketball, and hockey. We have talked
Speaker 1: before about their bankruptcy and how it particularly affected baseball
Speaker 1: and forced several teams to literally give away their TV
Speaker 1: rights this season, including the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers,
Speaker 1: whose games are apparently being done by Tom Broclaw. All
Speaker 1: the way, I'm pronouncing words like a little same for
Speaker 1: the San Diego Padres. Remember last year when the Bally
Speaker 1: checks stopped coming and the Padres had to take out
Speaker 1: a fifty million dollar loan to meet payroll and they
Speaker 1: had to trade their superstar Jan Soto to the Yankees.
Speaker 1: That's because there was no TV money. Well, now we
Speaker 1: have reached the next level of future shock for baseball
Speaker 1: and for the other sports. The Miami Marlins TV situation,
Speaker 1: still being carried by Bally in Florida, is now in
Speaker 1: such disarray, not that it's a great product to begin with,
Speaker 1: but it's now in such disarray that between now and
Speaker 1: the end of July, the ball club is in essence
Speaker 1: offering to pay its own fans to watch the telecasts
Speaker 1: of the games. The Marlins are offering two free months
Speaker 1: of streaming their games on Bally. You then get stuck
Speaker 1: for twenty dollars a month. But if you sign up
Speaker 1: on like July thirty first, your two months carry you
Speaker 1: through the rest of the season. Doesn't get more fundamental
Speaker 1: nor more ominous than this. Last year you pay the
Speaker 1: Marlins to watch their games on TV. This year, the
Speaker 1: Marlins pay you to watch their games on TV. In Russia,
Speaker 1: Martlin's pay you but our winner the worst Republican Senate
Speaker 1: candidate Hung cow I used to play a little trick
Speaker 1: where the gossip site would call you and ask questions
Speaker 1: and was obvious it was either a lie they were
Speaker 1: going to publish, or something negative or just something controversial
Speaker 1: and they were going to publish usually the next day,
Speaker 1: whether I answered their questions or not. So what I
Speaker 1: would do would be to not answer their questions and
Speaker 1: then say on MSNBC that the New York Post was
Speaker 1: probably going to report this or Jossip was going to
Speaker 1: post that. But when I did it, I was not
Speaker 1: running for the Senate from Virginia? Was I? Yesterday afternoon?
Speaker 1: Not long after Representative Troy Nells finally stopped wearing the
Speaker 1: combat metal pin he had no right to wear because
Speaker 1: he never served in combat. Hung Cow tweeted, I want
Speaker 1: to give all of you a window into what it's
Speaker 1: like being a combat veteran who had the goal to
Speaker 1: run for public office against a career politician. Any veteran
Speaker 1: will read this with the same disgust. Imagine being asked
Speaker 1: to provide documentation of the dates and times al Qaeda
Speaker 1: shot at you. Imagine being asked, if you're a disabled veteran,
Speaker 1: why you don't have a purple heart. And by the way,
Speaker 1: maybe somebody can explain who wrote the questions in the
Speaker 1: other font that was copied and pasted into your email.
Speaker 1: Couldn't be the Caine campaign, could it? Dad? Mister Cow tweeted,
Speaker 1: screenshots of an email from the newspaper. This is Tom Vandenbrookett,
Speaker 1: reads Pentagon, correspondent for USA Today. I am working with
Speaker 1: my colleague Elizabeth Bayer. We are reporting on Hung Cow's
Speaker 1: recent statements about being shot at, blown up, and being scarred.
Speaker 1: We have the following questions, Where and when was he
Speaker 1: blown up? Was it the result of enemy action? Please
Speaker 1: provide documentation? Where and when was he shot at? Was
Speaker 1: it the result of enemy action? Please provide documentation. Please
Speaker 1: detail with day times and places that Cow spent outside
Speaker 1: the wire versus inside during his deployments. Why is a
Speaker 1: combat action ribbon not listed on his service record? Why
Speaker 1: is a purple heart not listed on his service record?
Speaker 1: Cow says that he is a one hundred percent disabled veteran.
Speaker 1: What is the nature of his disability and is it
Speaker 1: related to combat wounds? Why is a combat action ribbon
Speaker 1: not listed on his service record? Thank you, and we
Speaker 1: would appreciate your responses by the close of business. June
Speaker 1: twenty sixth, tweeted all that, so what have we learned here?
Speaker 1: Those of us who didn't know USA Today was working
Speaker 1: on a story about Hong Cow and what he claims
Speaker 1: is his service record. We now know that maybe he's
Speaker 1: padded it, or at least they have some sort of
Speaker 1: evidence that let them ask those questions. And those of
Speaker 1: us who didn't know that each campaign now know that
Speaker 1: each campaign only has its own personal type font and
Speaker 1: it can never use a different font, and if anybody
Speaker 1: else uses that font, it must have cut and repasted
Speaker 1: it from the Tim Kaine campaign. You heard the man.
Speaker 1: Also one other small detail, check this on Twitter X
Speaker 1: if you don't believe me, But if you look at
Speaker 1: the screenshot, you will notice that the smoking gun this
Speaker 1: guy Cow sees the different font. There's no different font,
Speaker 1: it's the same font. There seems to be two different
Speaker 1: sizes of the same font on the screenshot, but that
Speaker 1: may just be from the way he cropped the screenshots.
Speaker 1: In any event, Hung, when you are down to denying
Speaker 1: you padded your military record by trying to stir up
Speaker 1: a controversy over the font size on the email, you've
Speaker 1: probably already lost the argument. Cow. Two days worst person
Speaker 1: Hellwerd Howser will have more to say, and we'll answer
Speaker 1: the question how hot was it at Yankee Stadium yesterday?
Speaker 1: On the Sports Report at about a thirty.
Speaker 3: Five, and that man's name is Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1: Now how hot was it at Yankee Stadium? Bob Harris
Speaker 1: got to figure about. I once worked with a newscaster,
Speaker 1: the most talented person I have ever worked with, and
Speaker 1: he not only made an unbelievable blooper and one of
Speaker 1: the big radio stations in New York, but actor he
Speaker 1: did that, they warned him that if he ever did
Speaker 1: something like that again, they would fire him. And he
Speaker 1: did it again, and they fired him. His name was
Speaker 1: will Spence, and by the time he was eighteen years old,
Speaker 1: he was the news director of a radio station in Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and he was a substitute anchor at the age of
Speaker 1: eighteen on the top all news radio station in the
Speaker 1: COUNTRYCBS in New York eighteen. Not long after that, he
Speaker 1: went to NBC and was the original newsman on Don
Speaker 1: Imus's radio show. He jumped right from that to being
Speaker 1: a TV reporter on the NBC station in New York
Speaker 1: age twenty four twenty five, and the sky was the
Speaker 1: limit and he was simply a genius and fitting the
Speaker 1: best definition of that word, someone who could do something
Speaker 1: with ease that nobody else would even attempt. Will Spence
Speaker 1: was reporting for the NBC station Channel four in New
Speaker 1: York on New York's fiscal crisis of the late seventies,
Speaker 1: and he had scooped the competition and gotten details of
Speaker 1: a complicated rescue plan with debt transference and algorithms and
Speaker 1: adjusted interest rates, and not one moment of his important
Speaker 1: scoop was on camera. The people who gave him that
Speaker 1: story would not permit themselves to be recorded or even quoted.
Speaker 1: So Will simply had his cameraman set up at the
Speaker 1: foot of the steps of New York City Hall and
Speaker 1: said to him, follow me, stop at Park Row and
Speaker 1: then three to two one, and then Will began to walk.
Speaker 1: The cameraman was next to him, and he began to walk,
Speaker 1: and for two and a half minutes, with impeccable sentence,
Speaker 1: structure and diction and complete accuracy, Will Spence took this
Speaker 1: extraordinarily complicated rescue plan for New York's hemorrhaging finances with
Speaker 1: algorithms and explained it calmly, succinctly, expertly, simply a little
Speaker 1: touch of snark in his voice. And he kept walking
Speaker 1: and kept walking, and kept walking, and kept looking to
Speaker 1: the cameraman by his side, and then away into the
Speaker 1: ground and then back to the cameraman, and then he
Speaker 1: stopped on the sidewalk of Park Row, where he was
Speaker 1: perfectly framed by the Brooklyn Bridge Will Spence News Center
Speaker 1: for at City Hall. I couldn't do that in a
Speaker 1: million years, and I'm okay with doing stuff like that,
Speaker 1: to be fair. That was take two. On take one,
Speaker 1: Will had misstimed what he wanted to say and where
Speaker 1: he wanted to walk, and instead of he and the
Speaker 1: cameraman stopping on the sidewalk of the street Park Row,
Speaker 1: the cameraman stopped, but Will had not yet finished, so
Speaker 1: Will kept walking into the street itself, and the video
Speaker 1: then showed him diving out of the way as a
Speaker 1: garbage truck barreled toward him on Park Row at about
Speaker 1: forty five miles an hour. And that was the other
Speaker 1: side of Will Spence. For every act of genius, there
Speaker 1: was a garbage truck heading towards him with his name
Speaker 1: on it. I don't know what happened at Channel four,
Speaker 1: but I do know he got fired. I know that.
Speaker 1: When I met him in nineteen eighty, when I was
Speaker 1: twenty one and he was thirty, I was convinced he
Speaker 1: was closer to forty and on the morning shift of
Speaker 1: the New York radio station where we both worked. Will
Speaker 1: had a little trouble with his own schedule. He was
Speaker 1: supposed to be there at three point fifteen am and
Speaker 1: on the air for his first newscast at five am.
Speaker 1: The station was WNW, and it's decades old news sound
Speaker 1: was the bongabongas that sound, bogabanga, bogabonga, repeating endlessly. I
Speaker 1: saw Will Spence walk in one morning, paie as a
Speaker 1: sheet in his raincoat, gesticulating wildly with his left hand
Speaker 1: for a news desk assistant to hand him a script,
Speaker 1: any script, at exactly five am, No, actually a few
Speaker 1: seconds after five am, so late that the dish jockey
Speaker 1: was already playing the WNW news sound. And we were
Speaker 1: at about the eighth or ninth bonga bonga, And I
Speaker 1: saw him a small stack of copy jammed into his
Speaker 1: left hand by the desk assistant, a stack of copy
Speaker 1: he had not even looked at, with his raincoat still on,
Speaker 1: Sit down, throw his microphone toggle open and say, falllessly,
Speaker 1: you run at W News. It's eighty three degrees in
Speaker 1: reigning at five o'clock. I'm Will Spence, mayor Cutch, we'll
Speaker 1: meet this morning with representatives of the United Editions to
Speaker 1: discuss like he had been there for hours and written
Speaker 1: the copy himself and practiced it aloud for three or
Speaker 1: four times. From the standpoint of the viewer or the listener,
Speaker 1: Will could sound perfect when he had crafted a thing
Speaker 1: of genius, like the walking stand up on the fiscal crisis.
Speaker 1: But he could also sound perfect when he had just
Speaker 1: staggered into the booth having successfully found the location of
Speaker 1: the radio station on the eighth or ninth Bonga. And
Speaker 1: unfortunately that skill was his undoing. On the night of Wednesday,
Speaker 1: July sixteenth, nineteen eighty, Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan was
Speaker 1: in deep discussions with former president former Vice President Gerald
Speaker 1: Ford about Ford running with him as Reagan's vice president.
Speaker 1: It was unprecedented in American history. It led all the
Speaker 1: newscasts that night. It was the featured story on all
Speaker 1: the wire services. Books have been written about this evening
Speaker 1: and those discussions, and they all fell apart about eleven
Speaker 1: PM because Ford made it clear to Reagan that whoever
Speaker 1: was president, whoever was vice president, Ford expected them to
Speaker 1: be more or less co presidents. Before the calendar had
Speaker 1: turned to Thursday July seventeenth, nineteen eighty, the deal was dead.
Speaker 1: Reagan had selected George H. W. Bush as his running mate,
Speaker 1: and our timeline was irrevocably altered. How dare you sir?
Speaker 1: At about five hours later, and about twelve bongas into
Speaker 1: the five o'clock newscast on Thursday July seventeenth, in walked
Speaker 1: Will Spence, this time simply grabbing the first stack of
Speaker 1: copy he saw, falling into the announced booth, opening up
Speaker 1: his mic, and starting to read. Unfortunately, what he had
Speaker 1: grabbed was the previous night's nine pm newscast script news
Speaker 1: It's eighty three degrees in reigning at five o'clock. I'm
Speaker 1: Will Spence. It seems certain that American history being made.
Speaker 1: A man will run for president Deni Hiss running mate
Speaker 1: will be a former president the Republican nineteen eighty ticket,
Speaker 1: Reagan and Ford. Those who were there in the newsroom
Speaker 1: told me they were startled by how many people were
Speaker 1: at actually listening to the five am news and were
Speaker 1: willing to call in and complain and call Will Spence
Speaker 1: an idiot. Upper management wanted to call him something else fired,
Speaker 1: but He had a guardian angel at WNAW in the
Speaker 1: news director Sam Hall, who had also been his boss
Speaker 1: in the IMUS days, and Sam gave him another chance,
Speaker 1: but said do it again and you're gone. I really
Speaker 1: don't know what was wrong with Will. He told me
Speaker 1: he smoked a lot of weed. He said he was hypoglycemic.
Speaker 1: Somebody at WNBC said he used to sit at his desk,
Speaker 1: pressing his hands to his skull and mumbling tumors. I
Speaker 1: can feel them growing tumors. He was sometimes charming. He
Speaker 1: gave extraordinarily good career advice, sometimes constructively, and sometimes advice
Speaker 1: that was designed to leave you bleeding. During a commercial
Speaker 1: break preceding one of my short sportscasts, I sat down
Speaker 1: in the booth with him, and as an aggressively cheerful
Speaker 1: ad for a bank played in the background, Will let
Speaker 1: loose on me. So I heard him and this commercial
Speaker 1: for the bank mixed together juxtapose like this. You have potential, overman,
Speaker 1: but you have to change your entire delivery.
Speaker 3: We're the friendly bank.
Speaker 1: You can go up to Yankee Stadium, interview every player
Speaker 1: and every fan, and play all the little cuts you
Speaker 1: want on the radio. But you got nowhere If you
Speaker 1: can't read the script like a man.
Speaker 3: We're the bank that cares about you.
Speaker 1: Your nasal. You sound constipated. You get nowhere in this business.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I could read the phone book
Speaker 1: on the air and make it sound like the Bible.
Speaker 3: Come in and see our friendly tellers today.
Speaker 1: Shape up or you're fired, and by the way, fix
Speaker 1: your damned eyebrows. Manhattan Bank member FDI see now with sports.
Speaker 1: Good morning, Keith Olberman. I said nothing for a second,
Speaker 1: maybe more. I contemplated using a falsetto, and I finally
Speaker 1: stammered through my thirty seconds, got up to leave, and
Speaker 1: as Spence through to the weatherman. Spence said, and that
Speaker 1: sucked too. I was the only person left at WNAW
Speaker 1: who liked him, and I was beginning to hate him.
Speaker 1: He would take me aside sometimes and tell me that
Speaker 1: his first wife and her divorce lawyer were up in
Speaker 1: the blimp following him around the city. Sometimes he claimed
Speaker 1: they were working in cahoots with the news director Sam
Speaker 1: Hall to destroy him, when in fact Hall was the
Speaker 1: only thing standing between him and unemployment. Somebody once made
Speaker 1: a mild joke about him and his age in the newsroom,
Speaker 1: and he threw a stapler at them. He complained one
Speaker 1: of the women there was stalking him. In fact, he
Speaker 1: was stalking her, and inevitably, on October third, nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: he either made an impossibly unlucky grab for an old
Speaker 1: script during the seventeenth Bonga or something, or more like
Speaker 1: somebody in the newsroom set him up. Nobody need news.
Speaker 1: It's fifty five degrees in raining. At five o'clock. I'm
Speaker 1: Will Spence, the Whoope. John Paul the Second made history
Speaker 1: arriving in our city yesterday and today it took her
Speaker 1: tape parade, and then he will address the faithful at
Speaker 1: Madison Square Garden. Coverage the Pope all day and news
Speaker 1: that had happened on October third, nineteen seventy nine. This
Speaker 1: was now October third, nineteen eighty. Will Spence was reading
Speaker 1: literally year old news. As I recall, they fired him
Speaker 1: before his shift ended, maybe before the next newscast.
Speaker 3: Year old news.
Speaker 1: Months later, I was working at the RKO Radio network
Speaker 1: for my boss, Charlie Steiner, one of the voices of
Speaker 1: the Dodgers. Now when RKO expanded and started a second
Speaker 1: network and they brought in to run it, Sam Hall.
Speaker 1: Sam Hall hired a bunch of guys with great pipes,
Speaker 1: and he hired Spence ohr Man, I say it took
Speaker 1: my advice. Look at this. Something whizzed past me and
Speaker 1: stuck in a box of wire copy. It's a Brazilian
Speaker 1: throwing dagger. I have a collection. At RKO. On the
Speaker 1: night of the Grammys, Will interweaved a clip of every
Speaker 1: winning song into his script live on the air, throwing
Speaker 1: cartridges left and right. As he did it. The next
Speaker 1: hour he updated it with the latest winner. The next
Speaker 1: hour he updated it with the latest winter. After that
Speaker 1: it was utter unqualified genius. And he also told me
Speaker 1: at RKO there was a woman stalking him, who in
Speaker 1: fact he was stalking, And he addressed everybody by their
Speaker 1: job title, tape editor. Come here. And once they postponed
Speaker 1: a nine am staff meeting until three pm and didn't
Speaker 1: tell him before he drove in from his house in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: So he simply went to his Manhattan studio apartment and,
Speaker 1: as he told me, smoked pot for six hours. And
Speaker 1: then he came back and insulted literally every member of
Speaker 1: the forty person staff, went from one to the other
Speaker 1: to the other, saying as nasty a thing as he
Speaker 1: could think of about them. When our nicest, sweetest news
Speaker 1: editor stood up on her desk and screamed, Spence, get
Speaker 1: the f out of here before I kill you, before
Speaker 1: we all kill you. He was genuinely shocked ashen. He
Speaker 1: came over to me, A lot of the bravada was gone, Olderman,
Speaker 1: for God's sakes, help me, help me, Keith Well, I
Speaker 1: heard his life story. It took two hours. We went
Speaker 1: into Steiner's office. We stole two of Charlie's cigars and
Speaker 1: smoked them. It was the living embodiment of the phrase
Speaker 1: just because you're paranoid, it does not mean they are
Speaker 1: not out to get you. I was trying to think
Speaker 1: how to help him when days later news came that
Speaker 1: he had been hired as a TV reporter by another
Speaker 1: New York TV station, WABC. I witnessed news and then
Speaker 1: over there. On his first he was bitten by a
Speaker 1: dog and he wanted to go to the hospital to
Speaker 1: get checked out. They made him go out on another
Speaker 1: story instead. Dogs, garbage trucks. They all had Will's name
Speaker 1: on them. A decade later, Will wound up in LA
Speaker 1: where I had made my mark by then as a
Speaker 1: local TV sportscaster. He had been hired by a rival
Speaker 1: station and still did those incredible intricate walking stand ups
Speaker 1: now live every night, usually from a crime scene on
Speaker 1: the eleven o'clock news. One night, his own crew managed
Speaker 1: to not just sabotage him, but knock him down with
Speaker 1: a slow moving car, live on the air while he
Speaker 1: was declaiming into the camera. His last job at yet
Speaker 1: another LA station, he got because the aging woman anchor
Speaker 1: there fifteen years his senior, had taken a fancy to him.
Speaker 1: She got fired, He got fired, And one day the
Speaker 1: phone rang at MSNBC maybe two thousand and six. It
Speaker 1: was Will Spence. The Pope had sent a hit squad
Speaker 1: to kill him. He said the whole Catholic church was involved.
Speaker 1: Did I have the number of the woman who used
Speaker 1: to stalk him? It was far more awful than it sounds.
Speaker 1: I think somebody sent me an email. Early in April
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, I'm pretty sure that's how I
Speaker 1: found out Will Spence had driven his car at high
Speaker 1: speed into a bridge abutment in Ventura County, outside LA.
Speaker 1: There was a story that he had had heart problems
Speaker 1: and had just seen his doctor and gotten bad news,
Speaker 1: but we'll never know for sure. I went to put
Speaker 1: together a little tribute to him that night on Countdown,
Speaker 1: and online I could not find a single photo of him,
Speaker 1: nor any form of biography. Even now, there is one
Speaker 1: photo accompanying a sad tribute to him, published a couple
Speaker 1: weeks later in one of the newspapers in Ventura County.
Speaker 1: It was a tribute not unlike this one. What a
Speaker 1: wasted life, how much you wanted to hate him and couldn't.
Speaker 1: And on YouTube there is a tape of one Will
Speaker 1: Spence TV report from November eighteenth, nineteen eighty one Channel
Speaker 1: seven in New York. This talent who could decipher the
Speaker 1: plan to save New York City from bankruptcy and recite
Speaker 1: it as he walked, exists forever for two minutes and
Speaker 1: forty six seconds of his report on the marriage of
Speaker 1: Luke and Laura from ABC's General Hospital. And by the way,
Speaker 1: even it is brilliant. I've done all the damage I
Speaker 1: can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown musical directors
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillip Chaneil arranged, produced and performed
Speaker 1: most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass,
Speaker 1: and drums, Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. It was
Speaker 1: produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the
Speaker 1: Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The
Speaker 1: sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, written
Speaker 1: by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical
Speaker 1: and fithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best
Speaker 1: baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend
Speaker 1: Kenny Maine, and everything else was pretty much my fault.
Speaker 1: So that's countdown for this the one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: second day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the
Speaker 1: twelve hundred and seventieth day since convicted fellon Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: first attempt at coup against the democratically elected government of
Speaker 1: the United States. Use the July eleventh sentencing hearing, use
Speaker 1: the mental health system, use presidential immunity if it happens,
Speaker 1: to stop him from doing it again while we still can.
Speaker 1: A reminder we will be live again on YouTube after
Speaker 1: the tonight Join me should be about ten thirty Eastern
Speaker 1: and do send your link to this podcast to somebody
Speaker 1: who does not already listen, and if you don't like them,
Speaker 1: send it to a trumpist. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Bulletins is the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olderman.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
Speaker 1: Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.