Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
Speaker 1: am not a member of any organized political party. I
Speaker 1: am a Democrat. Will Rogers, of course, first quoted in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, quoted posthumously in fact, which is completely
Speaker 1: appropriate given how the rest of us feel right now.
Speaker 1: I am afraid it is going to keep going exactly
Speaker 1: like this until Joe Biden with jaws, or until all
Speaker 1: doubts are erased. And as we contemplate the upcoming NATO
Speaker 1: news conference, please tell me how all doubts would ever
Speaker 1: be erased. First, in this sequence of events, this Sisyphus
Speaker 1: and the hill and the rock jazz, the withdrawal will
Speaker 1: have been tamped down, or those talking it will have
Speaker 1: been bludgeoned and shamed, basically where we were on Monday.
Speaker 1: Then it will rise up again courtesy of the amazed,
Speaker 1: those who are amazed that it quieted down when the
Speaker 1: thing seems so obvious to them. Then someone with actual
Speaker 1: power here, like say Nancy Pelosi, will say something in
Speaker 1: code indirectly to the President via television that sounds like
Speaker 1: maybe you should think about getting out, But then she
Speaker 1: will dilute her own words a few minutes later to
Speaker 1: a different source. Then a few electeds will insist he leave,
Speaker 1: or they will seem to insist. Then celebrity democrats like
Speaker 1: say George Clooney will chime in, and everybody can make
Speaker 1: the same joke about it, like huh, good night and
Speaker 1: good luck Joe, and then somebody and yesterday it was
Speaker 1: an uninformed candidate for the Senate from New Jersey will
Speaker 1: wonder out loud and get into print if there is
Speaker 1: some way to force Joe Biden off the ticket, and
Speaker 1: there isn't, and the whole thing will calm down for
Speaker 1: as long as a day, maybe thirty six hours, and
Speaker 1: then a day or thirty six hours later, all start
Speaker 1: up all over again, and the cycle will keep going
Speaker 1: through the beginning of November. The only variety to the equation,
Speaker 1: the equation of evasion, will be when we hit those
Speaker 1: moments of existential dread like today, like mister Biden's scheduled
Speaker 1: news conference at the NATO summit. Oh what's on his
Speaker 1: schedule today?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Nothing much, just another bottomless pit he can fall into
Speaker 1: and take us with him. Oh no, even if he
Speaker 1: doesn't fall in, we'll get like twelve to twenty four
Speaker 1: hours of every one of his words being parsed on
Speaker 1: every news channel like they were from a newly discovered
Speaker 1: parchment from the Dead Sea scrolls. Ah, you're right, but
Speaker 1: don't use that Dead Sea Scrolls analogy where everybody can
Speaker 1: hear you. We're trying to avoid talking about his age.
Speaker 1: On February twenty eighth, twenty and twenty, Catherine Joan Bettingfield
Speaker 1: retired as Joe Biden's White House communications director to become
Speaker 1: head of the Environmental Defense Action Fund. She was once
Speaker 1: campaigned spokesperson for John Edwards, which really means she was
Speaker 1: campaign spokeswoman for the late Elizabeth Edwards, who should have
Speaker 1: been president. She worked in the Obama administration. She worked
Speaker 1: with Vice President Biden. She was deputy manager of his
Speaker 1: twenty twenty campaign. And if you can imagine this, I
Speaker 1: used to work for her father when he was an
Speaker 1: executive at CNN in my second stint there about two
Speaker 1: decades ago, and he very well might have been the
Speaker 1: only sane one in management there. So she is not
Speaker 1: a person of extremes or panic or indiscretion. And thus
Speaker 1: what she said yesterday matters more to me, and I
Speaker 1: hope more to you, than does what Nancy Pelosi said,
Speaker 1: I know firsthand better than almost anyone. Miss Bettingfield writes
Speaker 1: how smart the Biden team is about data at about
Speaker 1: ignore the noise. They are right that the game here
Speaker 1: is to convince voters, not pundits. But when the battle
Speaker 1: over the public data is so overwhelmingly negative, it's a
Speaker 1: good moment to put forward your theory of the case.
Speaker 1: If they have data that supports the path to victory
Speaker 1: that they see, they should put it out there now
Speaker 1: and help people who badly want to beat Trump rally
Speaker 1: around it. People want to see the path well exactly,
Speaker 1: less hand ringing, less where's your loyalty? Less nobody gets
Speaker 1: to tell Biden what to do. More data. The irony
Speaker 1: is there is data supporting the go with Joe conclusion.
Speaker 1: And again I remain agnostic about this, but Northeastern University
Speaker 1: is experimenting with advanced data and putting it together with polling.
Speaker 1: They call it Chip fifty, And the key to it
Speaker 1: isn't that advanced. Actually, it's not ask bunches of people
Speaker 1: several times a year. It's ask the same bunch of
Speaker 1: people several times a year, and doing so before and
Speaker 1: after the debate. To quote the Chip fifty report finds
Speaker 1: that Biden held on to ninety four percent of the
Speaker 1: people who said they would support him before the debate.
Speaker 1: For Trump, eighty six percent of people who said they
Speaker 1: would support him before the debate said they would do
Speaker 1: so after the debate. Project leader Northeastern professor David Lazar says,
Speaker 1: don't get too excited quoting him. What we see is
Speaker 1: that there is some churn, maybe ten percent or so
Speaker 1: of people change what they answer, but that the net
Speaker 1: result is not a movement away from Biden. If anything,
Speaker 1: it seems that Biden is holding on to his people
Speaker 1: somewhat better than Trump. Now, this is not decisive, and
Speaker 1: if it is relevant to the big question before the debate,
Speaker 1: Biden needed to grow his voter support, not just maintain it.
Speaker 1: If this is relevant to that, it's only and genturally so.
Speaker 1: But where's the White House on this? Don't hit democrats
Speaker 1: over the head with guilt or by pulling rank on them.
Speaker 1: This is the president's decision. Hit them over the head
Speaker 1: with retained support metrics weighted retained support ninety four percent
Speaker 1: is a hell of a lot of percent. Tell people
Speaker 1: about it, and tell people how the Biden campaign sees it.
Speaker 1: As a starting point for winning the election and burying
Speaker 1: Trump in the metaphorical Quicksand I said in February, and
Speaker 1: I said the night of the debate, and I said
Speaker 1: immediately after that that the worst outcome was the scenario
Speaker 1: in which this all played out in public and Biden
Speaker 1: dug in and those who doubted him kept coming back
Speaker 1: every forty eight hours and saying, oh, what about now
Speaker 1: are you leaving now? And yet here we are what
Speaker 1: about now? You're going to leave now? And the most
Speaker 1: powerful voices in the Democratic Party are themselves participating in this,
Speaker 1: playing this game, except it's not a game, it's a
Speaker 1: deadly dance. In February, Axios reported, quote, when White House
Speaker 1: aids appear on MSNBC's Morning Joe, they're often booked between
Speaker 1: seven and seven forty am ET. That's so they'll reach
Speaker 1: one crucial and loyal viewer President Biden. Unquote, Well guess
Speaker 1: what yesterday Nancy Pelosi went on that show at seven
Speaker 1: thirty nine am ET.
Speaker 2: It's up to the president to sucide if he is
Speaker 2: going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that
Speaker 2: decision because time is running short. The I think overwhelming
Speaker 2: support of the caucus. It's not for me to say.
Speaker 2: I'm not the head of the caucus anymore. But he's beloved,
Speaker 2: he is respected, and people want him to make that decision.
Speaker 1: He has me, he has said he has made the decision.
Speaker 1: He has said firmly this week he is going to run.
Speaker 1: Do you want him to run?
Speaker 2: I want him to do whatever he decides to do.
Speaker 2: And that's the way it is. Whatever he decides we
Speaker 2: go with. I think it's really important and I would
Speaker 2: hope everyone would join in. She let him deal with
Speaker 2: this NATO conference. This is a very big deal. Thirty
Speaker 2: heads of over, thirty heads of state are here. He
Speaker 2: is the host of it, and that means not just hosting.
Speaker 2: It means orchestrating the discussion and setting the agenda. And
Speaker 2: he's doing so magnificently. And I've said everyone, let's just
Speaker 2: hold off whatever you're thinking. Either tell somebody privately, but
Speaker 2: you don't have to put that out on the table
Speaker 2: until we see how we go this week.
Speaker 1: A clip from the best part of MSNBC's Morning Joe,
Speaker 1: the part where there was no Joe Scarborough seven thirty
Speaker 1: nine am to speak to the proverbial audience of one
Speaker 1: and when Nancy Pelosi showed up at her office hours later,
Speaker 1: she told ABC News, yes, she does think Biden can win,
Speaker 1: and she told CBS, I think the president is great,
Speaker 1: and there are some misrepresentations of what I have said.
Speaker 1: I never said he should reconsider his decision. The decision
Speaker 1: is the president's. I don't know what's happened in the
Speaker 1: New York Times that they make up news, but if
Speaker 1: that's why you're here, it isn't true. Unquote. So she
Speaker 1: said one thing in a very specifically fuzzy way, if
Speaker 1: you can forgive that contradiction in terms, presumably just to
Speaker 1: get the president's eyebrows to raise. Obviously, the point is
Speaker 1: she said he should make a decision, and of course
Speaker 1: he has not only insisted for ten days now that
Speaker 1: he's made his decision, but he put his decision in
Speaker 1: writing and sent it to all the congressional Democrats on Monday.
Speaker 1: And Nancy Pelosi is still a congressional Democrat. So why
Speaker 1: did she ask him to make a decision he's already
Speaker 1: made and then kind of walk that back while she
Speaker 1: was not on his favorite television show. I guess we
Speaker 1: should be happy this favorite television show is not the monsters,
Speaker 1: so it alarms him. So it gets a message through
Speaker 1: the bubble to Joe Biden without making it look like
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi is providing a platform or encouragement for the
Speaker 1: Joe must Go crowd, not encouraging them yet anyway, and
Speaker 1: managing to do so before a meeting scheduled today between Biden,
Speaker 1: aids and worried Democratic senators. Let's see how many of
Speaker 1: them show up to that. Yes, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the Democrats are doing exactly what the Republicans do when
Speaker 1: they want to get a message to Trump, go on
Speaker 1: TV and talk to the guy. And yes, there are
Speaker 1: many comparisons between Sean Hannity and Joe Scarborough. There's one
Speaker 1: other thing here, though, that Pelosi mentioned. If Biden were
Speaker 1: to choose to go, he certainly would not have done
Speaker 1: it before the NATO summit ended. He loves NATO. It's
Speaker 1: kind of an obvious statement to say, well, he's not
Speaker 1: going to do it before the NATO thing ends. Well,
Speaker 1: the NATO thing ends today, He's not going to go
Speaker 1: back in time and do it. I suppose the whole
Speaker 1: thing is an informal attempt to soften Biden up, to
Speaker 1: encourage him and him alone to bow out, or at
Speaker 1: least to see if it's possible that he might do that.
Speaker 1: I am comforted as an aside, really only by the
Speaker 1: fact that this idea, the use TV to twist a phrase,
Speaker 1: the medium is the messenger that it's not new. In fact,
Speaker 1: you are alive today in no small part because of
Speaker 1: the chief diplomatic correspondent of ABC News in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: a man named John Scally, and the fact that President
Speaker 1: Kennedy watched Scali's reports, and the chief KGB hood in Washington,
Speaker 1: Alexander Foeman, watched his reports, and when Premier Khrushchev needed
Speaker 1: a back channel to Kennedy to find some other way
Speaker 1: out of the nineteen sixty two Cuban missile crisis other
Speaker 1: than you know, blowing the world up, Foeman told Khrushchev
Speaker 1: they should just go use John Scally. So Foeman met
Speaker 1: Scali at a diner and pitched the essence of the deal.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, you know, saved the world from being blown up,
Speaker 1: and they talked about it over a ham sandwich. A
Speaker 1: service of ABC News, still using television newspeople to decide
Speaker 1: the fate of humanity. What a way to run a
Speaker 1: railroad or a nation. The White House, of course, is
Speaker 1: proving the bromide that insanity is doing the same thing
Speaker 1: over and over again and expecting different results. The taped
Speaker 1: interview with George Stephanoppolis on ABC last week, which was
Speaker 1: somehow supposed to address the President's failure in a live
Speaker 1: group setting, one on one taped interview, which produced more
Speaker 1: indistinct responses added to the confusion. One horrifying answer in
Speaker 1: which Biden clearly accepted the idea of losing to Trump,
Speaker 1: rather than saying over my day body or something similar,
Speaker 1: and as if that fix it project had not resulted
Speaker 1: in more damage that night, Stephanoppolis was then asked by
Speaker 1: some rando with a camera phone rolling on the streets
Speaker 1: of New York if he thought Biden should or could
Speaker 1: serve for another four year term, and rather than saying
Speaker 1: it's not my job to say that, George said no,
Speaker 1: he didn't, and it had been uploaded to TMZ within hours.
Speaker 1: The White House clearly thinks that all went well. They
Speaker 1: have now booked something totally different, a pre taped interview
Speaker 1: with NBC Lester Holtz, because that can't wind up like
Speaker 1: the one with George. The one with George was on
Speaker 1: ABC at eight pm. This one will be on at
Speaker 1: nine on NBC. AH Honest to god, I do not
Speaker 1: think the President of the United States has any you
Speaker 1: in cognitive issues. None. I think he gets tired and
Speaker 1: various speech problems are catching up with him at age
Speaker 1: eighty one, like various speech problems are catching up with
Speaker 1: me at age sixty five. I have only one doubt
Speaker 1: about one corner of his sanity, which is that he
Speaker 1: thinks Scarborough knows what he's talking about and is honest.
Speaker 1: But I do have a series of questions about those
Speaker 1: around him making decisions like this one about the NBC interview.
Speaker 1: I mean, if this goes poorly too, if Holt on
Speaker 1: a Friday is as bad as Stephanopoulos on the previous Friday.
Speaker 1: If the Biden campaign then goes to brainstorm for hours
Speaker 1: to figure out what to do next, and then somebody says, Fellas, Fellas,
Speaker 1: I got it, CBS put him on CBS. That's gotta work.
Speaker 1: This is simple news conferences one a week live, no
Speaker 1: taped interviews or town halls live. If he does well,
Speaker 1: this actually could all go away. If he doesn't well,
Speaker 1: there's your answer right there. And while I understand that
Speaker 1: the words of elected Democrats have to be restrained and
Speaker 1: that a solution to this either with the President staying
Speaker 1: on the ticket or leaving the ticket, that it rests
Speaker 1: on a certain gentleness will everybody is tiptoeing around this,
Speaker 1: and a king Jeffrey says, yes, Biden can win, but
Speaker 1: these are family discussions. You can almost see him doing the
Speaker 1: little button gesture with his lips. The rest of the
Speaker 1: neighborhood is burning to the ground, and nobody is being
Speaker 1: quiet about that. Clooney's obed in The Times begets more
Speaker 1: concern trolling from goddamn David Axelrod, who is becoming the
Speaker 1: mark pen of Pat Caddell's, and the genuine aspects of
Speaker 1: this crisis beget anonymous quotes to places like NBC News,
Speaker 1: in which sources close to the campaign say donations have
Speaker 1: quote absolutely shut off. That's a problem. Journalism or whatever
Speaker 1: our American system is, abhors a vacuum and celebrity op
Speaker 1: eds and bad news and leaks become the only news
Speaker 1: if you are quiet forever. Because while that Northeastern study
Speaker 1: is really insightful and positive, Politico reported bad polling for
Speaker 1: Biden here in New York just an eight point lead
Speaker 1: in this state. And now for the independent journalist Jacqueline Suite,
Speaker 1: Biden down in internal democratic polling in three swing congressional
Speaker 1: districts now held by Republicans, districts that Biden won four
Speaker 1: years ago, down by one point in the twenty second,
Speaker 1: down by double digits in the seventeenth and the nineteenth.
Speaker 1: And for God's sakes, please follow Kate Bettingfield's advice. I,
Speaker 1: for one, do not object to President Biden trying to
Speaker 1: hold onto the nomination like our lives depended on it.
Speaker 1: I would like to see him recognize, though, that it
Speaker 1: is actually the election upon which our lives depend And
Speaker 1: as MS Bettingfield suggests, tell us what the plan is electorally.
Speaker 1: One last piece of advice for the Biden campaign and
Speaker 1: for they get rid of Biden campaign as well. You
Speaker 1: are both moving towards the point of no return, and
Speaker 1: in our environment, the easiest way to identify that moment
Speaker 1: is the moment at which major news organizations, already corrupted
Speaker 1: by their corporate masters, no longer feel the need to
Speaker 1: make the slightest attempt to hide the fact that they
Speaker 1: are in the tank partially or completely for Trump and
Speaker 1: for fascism. And they are corporations. They don't even think
Speaker 1: about the nation. They just think about their profits. We
Speaker 1: are approaching that moment. In fact, we may have already
Speaker 1: arrived at it. I will never back away from my
Speaker 1: contention that the lead story the night of the CNN
Speaker 1: debate was not Biden's failures, nor even Trump's fire hose
Speaker 1: of lies, but the fact that CNN not only agreed
Speaker 1: to but seemingly offered to not fact check anything, not
Speaker 1: even occasionally. I have suggested here since this podcast began
Speaker 1: two years and twenty days ago, that some upper echelon
Speaker 1: of the companies that own every significant news organization in
Speaker 1: this country have had the same meeting in which the
Speaker 1: prospect of Trump seizing power again and thus this nation
Speaker 1: going fully fascist, is addressed, and the true threat is
Speaker 1: confronted in the boardrooms of our masters. So, of course,
Speaker 1: to the people who own the New York Times and
Speaker 1: the people who own the Washington Post, and the people
Speaker 1: who own NBC, and especially the right wing who comparatively
Speaker 1: newly own CNN, they will perceive the true threat as
Speaker 1: the threat to their profits. Is that why Jake Tapper
Speaker 1: and Dana Bash failed the minimum test of journalism. Now,
Speaker 1: did the owner go to them and say you can't
Speaker 1: say this? No, did the owner go to one of
Speaker 1: their boss's bosses and say that you bet your ass.
Speaker 1: When I was at NBC, the calls used to come
Speaker 1: from the president of NBC, Bob Wright, directly to the
Speaker 1: executive producer of My show, Phil Griffin. Asked about the
Speaker 1: upcoming presidential election, writes Bloomberg News from the annual Sun
Speaker 1: Valley Billionaires Retreat in Idaho. David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros.
Speaker 1: Discovery the man who brought you Chris licked the man
Speaker 1: who brought you the twenty two three CNN Live town
Speaker 1: hall and Trump infomercial financed by the fascist John Malone.
Speaker 1: David Zaslav quote said it mattered less to him which
Speaker 1: party wins as long as the next president was friendly
Speaker 1: to business. Quote. We just need an opportunity for deregulation
Speaker 1: so companies can consolidate and do what we need to
Speaker 1: to be even better. Unquote. Zaslav did not add Trump Land,
Speaker 1: Trump Land uber Alees because he didn't need to. That
Speaker 1: part can be safely assumed also of interest here well.
Speaker 1: Of course, one of Trump's longest standing confidence finally said it.
Speaker 1: One of them was going to just a question of
Speaker 1: which one you ever wonder why we cannot let Trump
Speaker 1: regain the controls no matter what. Remember that one of
Speaker 1: his henchmen has now called the Vice President of the
Speaker 1: United States the possible next president of the United States,
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris quote colored unquote. It only remains to see
Speaker 1: now if you can correctly choose from a few options
Speaker 1: as to who it was. When I say a few options,
Speaker 1: I mean like five or six thousand. That's next. This
Speaker 1: is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead
Speaker 1: of us on this ediative countdown. Since I just invoked
Speaker 1: corporate greed and corporate fascism and corporate influence over the news,
Speaker 1: it's a good time to tell again the story of
Speaker 1: my great grandfather who accidentally gave away at least sixty
Speaker 1: or seventy million dollars in about two minutes. But it's
Speaker 1: okay because the money went to a major American corporation.
Speaker 1: Things I promised not to tell coming up. But first
Speaker 1: there's still more new idiots to talk about. The daily
Speaker 1: roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
Speaker 1: who constitute today's worst persons in the world, The Brons
Speaker 1: worse the Federalist Society and Project twenty twenty five. Trump
Speaker 1: may be pretending he knows nothing of a document that
Speaker 1: made me think of the Gestapo Black Book, which they
Speaker 1: prepared for their invasion of London that never happened. It
Speaker 1: had the names and addresses of three thousand British citizens
Speaker 1: and organizations that were to be immediately rounded up or
Speaker 1: just shot. And the black Book included everybody from Winston
Speaker 1: Churchill to the Rotary Club. Well, the cat is kind
Speaker 1: of out of the bag about who knows what about
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five, let me quote. While former President
Speaker 1: Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind the policy plan,
Speaker 1: is on full display at the Republican National Convention. The
Speaker 1: Heritage Foundation signed onto the RNC as a convention sponsor.
Speaker 1: The group plans to host a policy fest in downtown
Speaker 1: Milwaukee on Monday, which is the day Trump will become
Speaker 1: the nominee of the Republican Party, and a following social
Speaker 1: event at a nearby bar. Who's reporting that The Washington Examiner,
Speaker 1: the right wing news outlet. Do they seem to be
Speaker 1: hiding it at all?
Speaker 3: By the way, hey, can we get somebody to send
Speaker 3: copy of Project twenty twenty five over to David Zaslavitt
Speaker 3: Warner Bros.
Speaker 1: Discovery.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, now tell him we want yeah,
Speaker 3: tell him. I want to know if he has any notes,
Speaker 3: any additions, anything he'd like, anything he doesn't like.
Speaker 1: Zazz Lab again, z z as in Nazi the runners
Speaker 1: up exo Planet HD one eight nine seven thirty three
Speaker 1: B because it stinks. This may be the first time
Speaker 1: I've made a planet, the entirety of a planet the
Speaker 1: worst persons in the world, because of course they're not
Speaker 1: in the world. They're in the universe, and they're an
Speaker 1: entire planet, so they'd actually be the worst persons in
Speaker 1: another world. AnyWho. Scientists made an exciting and pungent announcement
Speaker 1: about a nearby exo planet this week. According to news reports,
Speaker 1: planetary body with a likeness to Jupiter has one small problem.
Speaker 1: It smells of rotten eggs. Analyzing data governed gathered rather
Speaker 1: by the James Space Telescope, scientists discovered that exoplanet HD
Speaker 1: one eighty nine seventy three three B contains hydrogen sulfide,
Speaker 1: a colorless gas emitted by decaying organic matter with a
Speaker 1: strong egg like odor. In addition to hydrogen sulfide, researchers
Speaker 1: found carbon dioxide, oxygen, water, and heavy metals in the
Speaker 1: unique exoplanet's atmosphere. According to what was published in Nature
Speaker 1: magazine on Monday, it was initially discovered in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five. It is located approximately sixty five light years
Speaker 1: from Earth in the constellation Vulpecula. So you just make here,
Speaker 1: Just go out here, make a laught at the light,
Speaker 1: and then go up b FDR for sixty five light years.
Speaker 1: Some days that'll only get you to ninety sixth Street
Speaker 1: near the constellation Velpecula. Thought there was a hockey player's name, Bopecula,
Speaker 1: So a defenceman with the phoenix robe runners of the WHA.
Speaker 1: Now the reports we're getting all quoting nature have been
Speaker 1: cleaned up. They say that the place smells like rotten eggs.
Speaker 1: The BBC World News report on this was a little
Speaker 1: less coy. It noted in a priceless Eternal on screen
Speaker 1: graphic that quote the hydrogen sulfide on HD one eight
Speaker 1: nine seven three three B is also found in farts unquote.
Speaker 1: This is the BBC Foughts, speaking of which the winner,
Speaker 1: doctor Sebastian Gorka, the former advisor to the Hungarian fascist
Speaker 1: Victor Orban, the former Steve Bannon ass kisser, the guy
Speaker 1: who dyes his gray hair and gray beard with I
Speaker 1: don't know some of Rudy Giuliani's leftover shoe polish. The scumbags,
Speaker 1: so scumbag as she was actually fired by the Trump
Speaker 1: White House eight months in last time. The human fart
Speaker 1: who has still lingered around the fringes of the fascist
Speaker 1: community as an online common who is there to make
Speaker 1: sure the fascists continue to hate the right people. The
Speaker 1: asshole who wore the Nazi related tunic medal to Trump's
Speaker 1: inauguration in twenty sixteen. And he's the one who said it.
Speaker 1: Listen to what he's called Kamala Harris. Do these donors
Speaker 1: really think that Kamala Harris is going to do better
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania than Joe Biden? Would?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's siming because it can't it can't be anybody.
Speaker 1: Rob, You're being logical. Stop it all right, she's a
Speaker 1: Dei higher, right, she's a woman, she's colored, therefore she's
Speaker 1: got to be good, That's right. Sebastian Gorka has called
Speaker 1: the Vice President of the United States, whom he is
Speaker 1: not as smart as nor as successful, a Dei hire,
Speaker 1: and he has called her quote colored unquote. There are
Speaker 1: several unpleasant aspects to the possible replacement of Joe Biden
Speaker 1: on the Democratic ticket. When I say several, I mean
Speaker 1: several hundred. But there is at least one absolute positive.
Speaker 1: Making Kamala Harris the presidential nominee or better yet, the
Speaker 1: president in the event of an actual Biden retirement, would
Speaker 1: be irresistible to the stains of this world like Sebastian Gorka,
Speaker 1: and they would out themselves as the stinking, oxygen wasting
Speaker 1: human fart planets that they really are. In the interim,
Speaker 1: he's just Sebastian the racist Gorka two days, worst person
Speaker 1: in the world. Hey, maybe you'd like to Sebastian, you
Speaker 1: want to take a quick trip to HD one eight
Speaker 1: nine seven three three B. Yeah, it's sixty five light
Speaker 1: years away, so it's going to be a one way trip.
Speaker 1: Mother to the top of the countdown and the number
Speaker 1: one story in my favorite topic me and what is
Speaker 1: some much needed comic relief today. I think though my
Speaker 1: late father would never have agreed with that statement, not
Speaker 1: at all. My great grandfather told this story something like
Speaker 1: every day until he died. It was legendary in the family.
Speaker 1: There is considerable circumstantial evidence that it is all true,
Speaker 1: and the last possible date that it could have happened
Speaker 1: was one hundred and fourteen years ago, last Friday, September sixteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen oh eight. Anthony Zelenski was born in Crackoff in
Speaker 1: Poland in eighteen sixty eight. My sister just found some
Speaker 1: evidence that he changed the way his name was spelled,
Speaker 1: that it was originally Zelenski with two ys or two
Speaker 1: eyes at the end, just like the Ukrainian president. We're
Speaker 1: kind of pleased with her discovery. Antony, or as my
Speaker 1: father nicknamed him, the Great Financier, was a natural musician.
Speaker 1: He could sing, play any instrument, He could compose music
Speaker 1: and lyrics. He could teach you how to play. He
Speaker 1: could build or repat hair anything from a kazoo to
Speaker 1: a grand piano, and that from his late teens is
Speaker 1: how he made his money. He traveled all around Europe
Speaker 1: from maybe eighteen eighty six onwards, staying at rich people's
Speaker 1: houses for several days, teaching the girls had to sing
Speaker 1: and the boys how to play whatever was lying around
Speaker 1: the house, fixing the family harpsichord, cobbling together the odd flute.
Speaker 1: One day, we're guessing around eighteen eighty nine eighteen ninety,
Speaker 1: he traveled to the home of well off merchants in Odessa,
Speaker 1: then part of Russia, the Shevchenkos. He taught the boys
Speaker 1: how to sing and the girls had to play the organ,
Speaker 1: and then he fell in love with the youngest daughter, Matrona.
Speaker 1: The Sheefchenkos were not happy when they discovered them in
Speaker 1: love and chased my great grandfather and their daughter out
Speaker 1: of the house, out of the city, and out of
Speaker 1: the country. Antony went home to poland married his child bride,
Speaker 1: returned to crack Off, where all of his family then
Speaker 1: chased them out of that house, out of that city,
Speaker 1: and out of that country. Get lost with you and
Speaker 1: your Russian horror, he would later tell the nephew for
Speaker 1: whom my father was named Teddy. Antony and Matrona had
Speaker 1: to think fast it's eighteen eighty nine, eighteen ninety where's
Speaker 1: a hard working guy thrown out of Russia and Poland
Speaker 1: going to go? They arrived in New York City within weeks.
Speaker 1: As I said, he was a natural musician. He picked
Speaker 1: up English quickly, and supposedly within a month or two,
Speaker 1: he was leaving his wife, my great grandmother, in an
Speaker 1: apartment in the Bronx and getting on trains for distant
Speaker 1: cities as far west as Chicago, going to the rich
Speaker 1: people's homes and getting one hundred dollars to teach the music,
Speaker 1: write music, repair musical instruments, and then get right back
Speaker 1: on the train to New York. Though he earned a
Speaker 1: very good income doing this, especially for an immigrant, Antony
Speaker 1: and Matrona lived frugally, often without hot water in their home.
Speaker 1: Because my great grandfather was now driven, driven to avenge
Speaker 1: himself Teddy, he would tell his nephew, who told me, Dad,
Speaker 1: I save every dollar I can save. I in West,
Speaker 1: in the safest in westment in the world, the Polish
Speaker 1: national bonds. For one day, I shall return to the Krackoff.
Speaker 1: I shall buy the biggest house on top of the
Speaker 1: biggest hill and stand outside all day waiving my money
Speaker 1: at my relatives who made me and your aunt leave,
Speaker 1: and saying to them, f you, this is my goal.
Speaker 1: And on and on. This went for a decade and
Speaker 1: more until he went to Flint, Michigan, to do his
Speaker 1: usual routine to stay at the house of a prosperous American,
Speaker 1: write a family song, repair the broken tuba, teach the
Speaker 1: kids to play the guitar, and generally delight the family,
Speaker 1: in this case the family of a businessman who he
Speaker 1: remembered as mister Billy. Came the end of my great
Speaker 1: grandfather stay with mister Billy in Michigan and his family
Speaker 1: in Michigan, and mister Billy was so taken with Anthony
Speaker 1: Zelenski that he took him personally to the train station
Speaker 1: in Flint and went with him onto the platform to
Speaker 1: wait for the train. Zelinsky, he said, we have been
Speaker 1: delighted to have you here that I would be honored
Speaker 1: if you would accept instead of the five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: I owe you, please take one thousand dollars in stock
Speaker 1: certificates from my business. My way of saying thanks and
Speaker 1: hoping you can return and visit us again. My great
Speaker 1: grandfather said he was almost moved to tears by the gesture.
Speaker 1: But mister Billy, he explained, I live very inexpensively and
Speaker 1: I invest all my money in the world's safest in Westment,
Speaker 1: the Polish National Bonds. Mister Billy congratulated Antony on his prudence,
Speaker 1: but said, I believe I am at the cusp of
Speaker 1: the next great business in this country. I would again
Speaker 1: offer you this stock. I think you will make so
Speaker 1: much money that you could buy all the Polish National Bonds.
Speaker 1: My great grandfather, standing there on the train station in Flint, Michigan,
Speaker 1: fought for a moment. I know, mister Billy, you mentioned
Speaker 1: you own a manufactory in town. What is this you manufactur?
Speaker 1: Mister Billy said, we are in the automobile old business.
Speaker 1: Mister Zelinsky, my great grandfather lit up is the streets
Speaker 1: of New York are filled with automobiles. This is the
Speaker 1: coming thing. But I will still take the cash and
Speaker 1: in west in the world's safest in Westment the Polish
Speaker 1: National Bonds. The train was late. There was an awkward
Speaker 1: silence now between them, which my great grandfather finally broke.
Speaker 1: Do I know the name of your company, mister Billy,
Speaker 1: and mister Billy replied, well, that's the topic of the moment,
Speaker 1: mister Zelensky, and I must say, having gotten to know
Speaker 1: you a little bit, I'm not at all surprised you
Speaker 1: brought this subject up. Currently, my company is called Buick
Speaker 1: Motor Cars. My great grandfather said, Ah, yes, Buck, I've
Speaker 1: heard of Buck. You're changing the name. Not exactly, said
Speaker 1: mister Billy. I believe the automotive business is going to
Speaker 1: grow exponentially. But we have one large company in the field, Ford,
Speaker 1: and we have dozens of smaller ones like Buick. And
Speaker 1: I'm about to buy up several of my competitors and
Speaker 1: form one big company, bigger than Ford, and we will
Speaker 1: dominate automobiles for decades to come. Ah yes, said my
Speaker 1: great grandfather. And what will you call this behemoth? Mister
Speaker 1: Billy laughed again. You cut to the heart of the matter,
Speaker 1: mister Zelensky. We're debating that right now. We need a
Speaker 1: name that expresses our national stature. My great grandfather shook
Speaker 1: his head at the obviousness of this. The problem is
Speaker 1: an easy one. No, you use National National Motor Cars.
Speaker 1: Mister Billy laughed again. Your insight is extraordinary. That was
Speaker 1: our first thought as well, but would you believe there
Speaker 1: is a company in Indiana, of all places, they make
Speaker 1: electric automobiles which will never work, and they're called National
Speaker 1: Motor Vehicles. We need another name. American has also taken.
Speaker 1: Continental has taken it. Damn it, mister Zelensky. We can't
Speaker 1: think of a good name that isn't already taken. My
Speaker 1: great grandfather, who had just turned down the stock and
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars worth of the stock in this company,
Speaker 1: thought for a second, you wish to express the national,
Speaker 1: the American, the broadly available or available National? Continental? National?
Speaker 1: What is the word in English? The general the general
Speaker 1: availability of your vehiculars? Well, mister Billy, why not that?
Speaker 1: Why not general? General automobiles, general automotive, general motor car,
Speaker 1: maybe general motors. Now it was time for mister Billy
Speaker 1: to become pensive. Finally he spoke general motors. Hmmm, does
Speaker 1: have a certain ring to it, mister Zelinsky. Oh look
Speaker 1: here's your train. Mister Billy was, of course Billy Durant,
Speaker 1: and he owned Durant Dorge, and then he owned Buick,
Speaker 1: and then he consolidated thirteen auto manufacturers and ten parts
Speaker 1: and accessory companies together into as It was called the
Speaker 1: day Billy and his partners opened the escrow account Wednesday,
Speaker 1: September sixteenth, nineteen oh eight, General Motors Holding Company. My
Speaker 1: great grandfather, having gotten another five hundred dollars to invest
Speaker 1: in the world's safest investment instead of one thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in stock in not General Motors in nineteen oh eight,
Speaker 1: but the company that would become General Motors, and having
Speaker 1: given its chairman the name General Motors for free, waved goodbye,
Speaker 1: got on the train return to New York. He died
Speaker 1: fifteen years later. And to his credit, we know of
Speaker 1: the detail of this story because the person who told
Speaker 1: it to everyone with a laugh, with a warning to
Speaker 1: his relatives that none of them had the genes of
Speaker 1: a businessman either, was my great grandfather himself. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: this good self deprecating humor makes him my favorite of
Speaker 1: all my ancestors, and I hope wherever he went when
Speaker 1: he died in nineteen twenty three, his humor went with him.
Speaker 1: Because there were several postscripts to this story that lend
Speaker 1: it authenticity and induce further rage in his descendants. My
Speaker 1: father was very much alive in nineteen forty. He was
Speaker 1: an eleven year old boy with his uncle Teddy, Antony's nephew,
Speaker 1: living with my dad and grandparents and my uncles in
Speaker 1: the Bronx. My dad, who did not meet his grandfather,
Speaker 1: Antony Zelensky, said, there was a knock on the apartment
Speaker 1: door one day and he opened it to the site,
Speaker 1: as he put it, of the two best suits of
Speaker 1: clothing I had ever seen. The men wearing them asked
Speaker 1: for my dad's uncle. He got him, and the men
Speaker 1: began to speak Polish to Uncle Teddy. Gentlemen, we are
Speaker 1: here in America. You will please speak English in front
Speaker 1: of my family, mister Zelinsky. One of them said, we
Speaker 1: know that your uncle left you his investments in Polish
Speaker 1: national bonds. He was obviously a great patriot. We represent
Speaker 1: the Polish government in exile when we run the Nazis
Speaker 1: out of our homeland and freedom is again ours. I know, oh,
Speaker 1: your uncle would have and you would want the free
Speaker 1: Polish National state to not be burdened financially, to be unburdened.
Speaker 1: In fact, to the greatest possible degree, mister Zelenski, your
Speaker 1: uncle was the fourth largest private investor in Polish national
Speaker 1: bonds in North America. In fact, he was just behind
Speaker 1: the National Bank of Mexico. Will you retire his bonds
Speaker 1: for a nominal fee as a great Polish patriot. My
Speaker 1: dad was never sure how nominal the fee was, but
Speaker 1: he was convinced his uncle got less than five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars for what was at least one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in bonds during the year nineteen fifty or later. My
Speaker 1: dad did not spend his life wondering about his grandfather's
Speaker 1: magnificent moment of investment stupidity, but it would occasionally wake
Speaker 1: him in the middle of the night, and on his
Speaker 1: nightly commutes from Manhattan to our little home in the suburbs,
Speaker 1: he came to know the other regulars on the train,
Speaker 1: just like Don Draper did on Mad Men. In fact,
Speaker 1: and one of the regulars on the train turned out
Speaker 1: to be a stock historian. Eventually Dad told him the
Speaker 1: story of antony' Zelensky and Billy Durant and General Motors,
Speaker 1: and the stock historian invited him to stop by the
Speaker 1: office at lunch one day. Sit down, Ted, and I
Speaker 1: mean sit down ted. The historian showed his math. This
Speaker 1: was what one thousand dollars in buick in nineteen oh
Speaker 1: eight turned into when Billy Durant created General Motors in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh eight, and here's where it split, and see,
Speaker 1: and here's where it split again, and here's where it quartered.
Speaker 1: After they forced Durant out, and then he bought Chevrolet,
Speaker 1: and he came back in and took over General Motors again,
Speaker 1: and it split. And my father said, he started to sweat.
Speaker 1: Just tell me already, ted the thousand dollars your great
Speaker 1: grandfather turned down in General Motors in nineteen oh eight
Speaker 1: would now be worth approximately sixty million dollars, my father said.
Speaker 1: He struggled to not pass out his friend from the train,
Speaker 1: then said, plus the value of the name. I can't
Speaker 1: get that exactly, the stock historian said, but it's got
Speaker 1: to be another couple million, five ten maybe, especially if
Speaker 1: he'd taken stock in exchange for the name. There's one
Speaker 1: more twist to the knife. Well, so far, there's still
Speaker 1: plenty of time for more. When the Unions ran the
Speaker 1: Soviets out of Poland and Lech Valsa became President of
Speaker 1: the Free Poland in nineteen ninety, he gave a speech
Speaker 1: establishing the new government. He spoke naturally in Polish until
Speaker 1: that is, it was time to address one topic. The
Speaker 1: President read that part of the speech in English. My
Speaker 1: government will recognize and honor the following years of the
Speaker 1: Polish national bonds. My father called me in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: that night. He had spoken to his stock historian friend
Speaker 1: again and gotten a new rough estimate. My great grandfather
Speaker 1: had turned down sixty, maybe seventy million dollars in general
Speaker 1: motor stock to keep, say, one hundred thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: Polish bonds due in the year nineteen fifty, and lec
Speaker 1: Falessa had just said, we'll pay on those bonds that
Speaker 1: were doing nineteen fifty and so if great grandfather's nephew
Speaker 1: Teddy had just sat on them, those bonds would have
Speaker 1: been worth five or six million dollars. Keith, my father said, quietly,
Speaker 1: let me remind you again what the great financier my
Speaker 1: grandfather told everyone told all of us, none of us,
Speaker 1: none of us have the genes of a businessman. I've
Speaker 1: done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillips arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on
Speaker 1: the guitars, based in drums. Mister Schanelle handled orchestration and keyboards,
Speaker 1: produced by Tko Brothers, and it was not sponsored by
Speaker 1: General Motors. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions,
Speaker 1: were arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: Sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written
Speaker 1: by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical
Speaker 1: and fifthy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss. The best
Speaker 1: baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is my friend
Speaker 1: Stevie van Zandt, and everything else was pretty much my fault,
Speaker 1: except for the GM part, which was my great grandfather's.
Speaker 1: That's countdown for this one hundred and eighteenth day until
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four presidential election and the two hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty first day since convicted fellon Donald Trump's first
Speaker 1: attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Speaker 1: Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use the mental health
Speaker 1: system you've got it, mister president. Use presidential immune against
Speaker 1: him to stop him from doing it again while we
Speaker 1: still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bolton's as
Speaker 1: the news requires. Till then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning,
Speaker 1: good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.