Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
Speaker 1: has just floated reinstating the military draft. He put the
Speaker 1: words into the mouth of the last of his secretaries
Speaker 1: of Defense, and that guy, Christopher Miller, who sat back
Speaker 1: and watched January sixth unfold nearly as much as Trump did.
Speaker 1: Miller it was who dressed the draft up as a
Speaker 1: national service requirement. But make no mistake about it, Trump
Speaker 1: has now floated the one thing that would unquestionably lose
Speaker 1: him the election in a landslide, and it is a
Speaker 1: military draft. It seems to be targeted at eighteen, nineteen,
Speaker 1: and twenty year old American boys and girls, and maybe
Speaker 1: seventeen year olds as well. And it start with a
Speaker 1: mandatory military aptitude test administered by the Pentagon in your
Speaker 1: local high school. And any kid who refused to take
Speaker 1: that test might be prevented from graduating. And any school
Speaker 1: that hesitated to go along with this would lose all
Speaker 1: federal funding. So Trump, breaking precedent and using the American
Speaker 1: Army domestically to suppress protests and conceivably kill civilians he
Speaker 1: does not like, is not the bottom of the plan
Speaker 1: for the military dictatorship Part of the Trump dictatorship, those
Speaker 1: army soldiers and marines and whoever else firing on other Americans,
Speaker 1: many of them or most of them, or maybe all
Speaker 1: of them would be draftees. And when the Washington Post
Speaker 1: reported this and the story got no traction and no
Speaker 1: pickup at all. And even though the paper reported Trump
Speaker 1: had not expressly endorsed the draft himself, within six hours
Speaker 1: Trump posted an enraged, chaotic denial, reading quote, in fact,
Speaker 1: I never even thought of that idea, which even for
Speaker 1: Trump is a disastrously transparent non denial denial. Of course,
Speaker 1: he never thought of that idea. When has Donald Trump
Speaker 1: ever thought anything about a military draft except about how
Speaker 1: to dodge it? Somebody else thought of that idea. And
Speaker 1: that's somebody else is the former Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller.
Speaker 1: The burden of this trial balloon turned led balloon, now
Speaker 1: lead balloon that may have made somebody else the early
Speaker 1: front runner for the first Secretary of Defense in a
Speaker 1: Trump dictatorship. That burden has fallen on this idiot Miller,
Speaker 1: the ex soldier, defense contractor and weapons fetishist who took
Speaker 1: over at the Pentagon after an enraged Trump fired Mark
Speaker 1: Esper November twenty twenty, because Esper clearly would not let
Speaker 1: Trump use the military to overthrow the civilian government and
Speaker 1: void the election, the Post interviewed Christopher Miller, and Miller
Speaker 1: said a national service requirement should be quote strongly considered.
Speaker 1: He described the concept as a common rite of passage,
Speaker 1: one that would create a sense of shared sacrifice among
Speaker 1: America's youth unquote shared sacrifice, right, just like in Vietnam
Speaker 1: the military draft, a national service requirement, a shared sacrifice
Speaker 1: of fifty thousand Americans was the animating force behind all
Speaker 1: the protests of the nineteen sixties. It was such a
Speaker 1: third rail that the president who ended it was Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: And you can dress the draft up any way you want,
Speaker 1: but under a draft requirement, American citizens, almost always teenagers,
Speaker 1: almost always minorities, or economically or educationally deprived teenagers were
Speaker 1: forced against their will to go to Vietnam or somewhere
Speaker 1: else and kill or be killed. It reinforces the bonds
Speaker 1: of civility. Miller also told The Washington Post, why wouldn't
Speaker 1: we give that a try. If we're going to prepare
Speaker 1: for a great power competition, it's helpful to have a
Speaker 1: baseline understanding of the pool of potential military service members
Speaker 1: and their specific aptitudes prior. We don't have a mechanism
Speaker 1: now in our society that levins everyone and provides a
Speaker 1: common focus and a common vision. Let me translate this
Speaker 1: mad man Miller's euphemisms here, and how many goddamned mad
Speaker 1: men Miller does Trump have working for him anyway? A
Speaker 1: great power competition, as Christopher Miller said, is in fact
Speaker 1: some kind of war or near war conflict with China.
Speaker 1: Potential military service members, as Miller put it, are your
Speaker 1: kids who would be forced to take that aptitude test.
Speaker 1: The mechanism to provide a common focus and a common
Speaker 1: vision that would be the Draft. Trump tried to run
Speaker 1: away from this picture of a future America as military state,
Speaker 1: but the Draft plan is far enough along inside the
Speaker 1: fascist Republican Party that it is now chasing Trump. This
Speaker 1: is not some half baked dream of an American SS
Speaker 1: about which Miller just offhandedly mused to The Washington Post.
Speaker 1: This entire National service structure is inside Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: the Trump and Federalist Society blueprint Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: for converting this country into something more resembling Iran, and
Speaker 1: that part of Project twenty twenty five that includes the
Speaker 1: mandatory military exam and an interim and immediate step of
Speaker 1: greater access to secondary schools for military recruiters. That thing
Speaker 1: in Project twenty twenty five. That essay just happens to
Speaker 1: have been written by former Trump Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller.
Speaker 1: Now and before Trump got some understanding that any sign
Speaker 1: of him supporting a draft will instantly kill his campaign
Speaker 1: if handled correctly by the opposition, some of his sick
Speaker 1: offense had already endorsed it. To the Post. Quote I
Speaker 1: like the idea of national service, and I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about in wartime. That was said by Ohio idiot Senator JD. Vance,
Speaker 1: who is furiously peddling to become the vice presidential nominee.
Speaker 1: If he had not sufficiently come out in favor of
Speaker 1: conscription and forcing American teenagers to kill or be killed
Speaker 1: against their will, Vance then said something stupid and even macabre.
Speaker 1: He told the Post he wants more Americans to put
Speaker 1: quote some skin in the game unquote. Who knows if Vance,
Speaker 1: who appears ever more so to be an utterly moronic,
Speaker 1: deranged lunatic who knows if Vance realizes that his use
Speaker 1: of the words skin there may not be some kind
Speaker 1: of metaphor. Trump's non denial denial just does not hold up.
Speaker 1: This is his clientt ex Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller,
Speaker 1: whose chief of staff was Cash Patel Miller, who wrote
Speaker 1: up the plan for Project twenty twenty five, which Trump
Speaker 1: has sworn to implement, which includes a military draft that
Speaker 1: Senator Vance just endorsed. And if you're still not seeing
Speaker 1: this for what it is, the Post found disturbing enthusiasm
Speaker 1: from another man who was not only Trump's former Assistant
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs, but who was also
Speaker 1: in George W. Bush's administration. So he's one deal with
Speaker 1: the devil's shy of the elusive evil hat trick. His
Speaker 1: name impossibly is Rob Hood. And if the nightmare that
Speaker 1: opens up before US mandatory military proficiency tests for high
Speaker 1: school girls, roundups of defiant school administrators and students, a draft,
Speaker 1: if those parts of the nightmare were not horrifying enough,
Speaker 1: Hood was willing to say the even quieter part out loud,
Speaker 1: even louder, that our young people are losers and takers,
Speaker 1: and if they won't shape up. They need to be
Speaker 1: shaped up by a draft. Eighteen to twenty year olds
Speaker 1: would benefit from gaining who had told the paper quote
Speaker 1: a better appreciation for how great this country is. Who
Speaker 1: gave them their Social Security numbers? The United States government.
Speaker 1: There can be the takers, and there can be the givers.
Speaker 1: And once we're all a bunch of takers and there
Speaker 1: are no givers, this country will collapse. Un Quote Rob Hood,
Speaker 1: He's not a taker. The only thing he would take
Speaker 1: is your child's life. One more part of the Post's
Speaker 1: story merits quotation. The paper is paraphrasing the man whom
Speaker 1: Trump might now disappear after this public relations disaster. Quote.
Speaker 1: A national service requirement, Christopher Miller contends, would afford young
Speaker 1: people from across the country the opportunity to learn about
Speaker 1: and rely on one another. He and other advocates on
Speaker 1: the political rights say they believe the United States is
Speaker 1: losing its civil cohesion and view this as a solution.
Speaker 1: In other words, force all of the teenagers into camps
Speaker 1: and give them guns and teach them about our enemies.
Speaker 1: And as Trump said on television just this month, just
Speaker 1: this time, quote the enemy from within. They are doing
Speaker 1: damage to this country. Under Trump, the military would not
Speaker 1: be there to defend our allies. It would not be
Speaker 1: there just in the event of conflict. It would be mandatory.
Speaker 1: It would be fascistic, It would be used domestically, and
Speaker 1: it would be aimed at Trump's political opponents, his enemies.
Speaker 1: I never even thought of that idea. He belches. He
Speaker 1: didn't have to. Every dictator in history has already thought
Speaker 1: of that idea for him. And by the way, I
Speaker 1: am not exaggerating. I don't think about the impact this
Speaker 1: Washington Post story and just that Gateway drug in at
Speaker 1: the initial plan to make a military assessment of each
Speaker 1: high school kid in the United States mandatory, just that,
Speaker 1: the impact just that would have on Trump's campaign, if
Speaker 1: only it were to be handled correctly by Biden's campaign.
Speaker 1: Trump wants to reinstate the draft. The draft. There were
Speaker 1: revolutionaries blowing up buildings in this country because of the draft.
Speaker 1: The nineteen sixty eight Democratic Convention and most of its
Speaker 1: campaign was sabotaged because of the draft. The Lyndon Johnson
Speaker 1: presidency and the Great Society and the strides towards integration
Speaker 1: died because of the draft. One hundred thousand young men
Speaker 1: fled this country because of the draft. No protest movement
Speaker 1: in the half a century since has carried the weight
Speaker 1: of nor had the impact of those of the sixties
Speaker 1: and early seventies, because simply the draft was not a
Speaker 1: vague concept. Theft was literally life and death. Your life
Speaker 1: and death, My life and death. Is there a more
Speaker 1: powerful campaign message conceivable than Trump wants to draft your
Speaker 1: kids or Trump wants to force your kids to kill
Speaker 1: or be killed? Actually there is, because the voting age
Speaker 1: is not what it was in the nineteen sixties. The
Speaker 1: eighteen year olds vote now, So there is a more
Speaker 1: powerful campaign message, and it is this, Trump wants to
Speaker 1: draft you. Trump wants to force you to kill or
Speaker 1: be killed. Trump's legal status news remains in stasis. I
Speaker 1: will note that his former campaign staff for Jessica Denson,
Speaker 1: who broke the grip of Trump's non disclosure agreements and
Speaker 1: now hosts The lights On podcast, noted two side effects
Speaker 1: to his probation interview Monday, which have not only been
Speaker 1: criminally undercovered, but which could theoretically put Trump at further
Speaker 1: criminal risk. It is widely reported and Trump did not
Speaker 1: winally deny this. That at the end of the Zoom
Speaker 1: session he told the probation people in New York, quote,
Speaker 1: be safe. As a former Trump worker and courtroom opponent,
Speaker 1: she knows what the rest of us can only suspect here.
Speaker 1: Trump telling New York State Corrections employees to be safe.
Speaker 1: That's a threat. And even if the word threat is
Speaker 1: a little too strong at minimum, that's yet another stochastic warning.
Speaker 1: Be safe, not be well, be good, be happy, be healthy,
Speaker 1: but be safe. Be safe from what? Safe? Safe from
Speaker 1: Trump's mobs? What else? More tangibly miss Denson notes that
Speaker 1: in his probation interview, Trump confirmed he is in possession
Speaker 1: of his firearm at his home in Florida. Felons are
Speaker 1: not permitted to possess firearms in Florida, but he has
Speaker 1: now for thirteen days, longer than Hunter Biden possessed one separately.
Speaker 1: It now proves at least two state organizations forbid nominating
Speaker 1: felons for political office. Articles SEKX of the Nevada Republican
Speaker 1: State Party by Laws insists that that organization quote shall
Speaker 1: neither recognize nor support any candidate for public office who
Speaker 1: has been convicted of a felony or while serving in
Speaker 1: a public office, was impeached and convicted or removed from
Speaker 1: office for any reason, how close on the last one
Speaker 1: there got them on the first. Of course, there are
Speaker 1: Republicans there in the Republican Party of Nevada, so there
Speaker 1: is another article permitting them to behave immorally and override
Speaker 1: Article sixteen by a two thirds vote. Unresolved, however, is
Speaker 1: the matter of Trump and Washington State. Denny Westnead of
Speaker 1: the Seattle Times notes that since eighteen sixty five, Washington,
Speaker 1: before it was a state, has had a law barring
Speaker 1: felons from holding elected office. It was updated in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen to read that any registered voter can challenge the
Speaker 1: right of any candidate to be on the general election
Speaker 1: ballot in Washington State for any one of five reasons,
Speaker 1: including those candidates who were quoting convicted of a felony
Speaker 1: by a court of competent jurisdiction, the conviction not having
Speaker 1: been reversed nor the person's civil rights restored after the
Speaker 1: conviction columnis. Westneat quotes an attorney named David Vogel in
Speaker 1: Washington State who says, I have clients lined up. We're
Speaker 1: going to be all over pursuing a ballot challenge in
Speaker 1: Trump's case, mister Westnate notes plenty of presidential candidates have
Speaker 1: been thrown off Washington state ballots in the past, always
Speaker 1: from minor parties and also on the legal front, for
Speaker 1: reasons I can only shake my head at. And I'm
Speaker 1: beginning to think there may be a masochism requirement if
Speaker 1: you want to be both a prosecutor and a Democrat.
Speaker 1: The Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo
Speaker 1: have agreed to voluntarily testify to Jim Jordan's latest dog
Speaker 1: and pony show, which Jordan, for some reason, calls the
Speaker 1: House Judiciary Committee. Brag and Colangelo will appear on Friday
Speaker 1: July twelfth. And if you're saying, wait, July twelfth, July twelfth,
Speaker 1: why does that date ring a bell? It's because Thursday,
Speaker 1: July eleventh is still the date scheduled for Trump's sentencing. Happily,
Speaker 1: it's not like they'll actually be sending Trump to jail
Speaker 1: just one day before Bragg and Colangelo go and testify
Speaker 1: to the Jordan Star Chamber, you know, sending him to
Speaker 1: jail for illegal possession of a gun while felon or
Speaker 1: threatening the jury, or violating the gag order a dozen times,
Speaker 1: or committing the thirty four crimes he was convicted of.
Speaker 1: I know he's not going to jail. Jonathan Turley told
Speaker 1: me so. It also would be absurd to sends him
Speaker 1: to jail. He is an elderly first defender, nonviolent crime.
Speaker 1: He is an elder lee first offender.
Speaker 2: He is an elderly first Oh wait a minute, old Nancy,
Speaker 2: I'm an elderly first defender.
Speaker 1: I've been found guilty. The stormy jury had no doubt.
Speaker 1: I'm far too old to go to prison, Butterly says,
Speaker 1: I'm fine for the wide high. Thank you, Nancy foul
Speaker 1: and thank you soggy bottom boys. Elderly first offender all
Speaker 1: through his days. Also of interest here, Jonathan mar Is
Speaker 1: back the Politico quote reporter unquote was spent the last
Speaker 1: year talking about almost nothing except President Biden's age. Returns
Speaker 1: to complain that nobody is talking about President Biden's age,
Speaker 1: and he's doing this because Hunter Biden's conviction means that
Speaker 1: president is even older than and should drop out. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't know what Jonathan Martin is talking about, except
Speaker 1: that while he was talking about it, he also managed
Speaker 1: to invoke Aaron Sorkin. So for all I know, he
Speaker 1: may be reporting that Sorkin may have just borrowed something
Speaker 1: else from my life to make into a third TV series.
Speaker 1: That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: Olboman still ahead of us on this edition of Countdown.
Speaker 1: So there's a story in the TV sports world that
Speaker 1: Stephen A. Smith is about to sign another deal with
Speaker 1: ESPN and that the key bargaining point, reportedly is that
Speaker 1: he believes he must be paid more than ESPN pays
Speaker 1: that challenged guy it has on its air, Pat McAfee.
Speaker 1: And this made me laugh and flashback to nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: this time of year when there were more people watching
Speaker 1: ESPN studio shows than there are now, and I was
Speaker 1: the lead anchor of Supports Center, and they were paying
Speaker 1: me a little less than three hundred thousand a year,
Speaker 1: and I figured out the show was profiting like sixty
Speaker 1: million a year, and the rule of thumb in TV
Speaker 1: was ten percent goes to the talent, ten percent of
Speaker 1: the profit. That meant they should be paying me and
Speaker 1: Dan three million each. And I told this to one
Speaker 1: executive and then he looked like he was going to
Speaker 1: have a stroke, and now Smith wants twenty million for
Speaker 1: an audience that's only half as profitable as it was
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven, which means I need to tell
Speaker 1: you the saga of how I quit Sports Center twenty
Speaker 1: seven years ago and left for NBC, and then ESPN
Speaker 1: tried to rehire me. Coming up, but first, As ever,
Speaker 1: there are still more new idiots to talk about. The
Speaker 1: daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens,
Speaker 1: who we celebrate as two days worst persons in the world. However,
Speaker 1: the bronze worse. And I mean this affectionately. A Twitter
Speaker 1: exer self identifying only as a follower of mine named
Speaker 1: Art Martin. Art responded to a Nate Silver tweet, and
Speaker 1: he has struck me right in my guilt. Nate Silver's
Speaker 1: tweet began if I told you ten years ago, and
Speaker 1: it ended with would you be surprised? Mister Martin replied
Speaker 1: to Nate Silver with quote if I had told you
Speaker 1: ten years ago that Nate Silver would turn into someone
Speaker 1: as quote credible unquote as Chris Solicit, would you be surprised?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: As the kids say, Man, do I feel seen and
Speaker 1: not in a good Way, Nate Silver and Chris Solicit
Speaker 1: in the same tweet, two of my biggest guilts in
Speaker 1: my life. I'm sorry. I thought they added something. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that what they added would always have to
Speaker 1: be limited to single digit numbers. I'm sorry, couldn't have worked.
Speaker 1: Inter or Jonathan Turley in there like Aaron Sorkin, throwner
Speaker 1: up worser. Jonathan Martin of Politico. We've met him here before.
Speaker 1: You may remember Jonathan Martin from such worst person entries
Speaker 1: as I had him important Trump news, but I sat
Speaker 1: on it until I got a book deal, and I
Speaker 1: spent eighteen months calling Trump the front runner. Then the
Speaker 1: polls change, so I wrote an article saying Trump's the
Speaker 1: front runner. Not so fast, and most relevantly, Biden should
Speaker 1: stop calling David Axelrod a prick and admit he's too old.
Speaker 1: Now Jonathan Martin is back to the only topic he
Speaker 1: can handle, Biden's age, and he's back with the kind
Speaker 1: of brilliant take that will make America ring. If this
Speaker 1: is nineteen ninety nine and it invokes Aaron Sorkin quote
Speaker 1: in the Sorkin version of twenty twenty four, Hunter's conviction
Speaker 1: would be the escape hatch Biden takes to focus on
Speaker 1: family and drop out of the race, deferring to a
Speaker 1: Democrat who is not approaching eighty two here in reality,
Speaker 1: it will take the jaws of life to get Biden out,
Speaker 1: and Dems will continue what they've done for two years,
Speaker 1: grumbling but saying nothing in public. Okayst staff In the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four Sorkin version of twenty twenty four, Aaron
Speaker 1: Sorkin would not write this scene unless somebody else wrote
Speaker 1: it for him first, then it would mysteriously appear in
Speaker 1: his script. Also, mister Martin writes, Dems will continue what
Speaker 1: they've done for two years, grumbling but saying nothing in public. Why, Yes,
Speaker 1: Danny Konkannon's summer vacation relief guy. Not one Democrat has
Speaker 1: said anything in public about Joe Biden's age these last
Speaker 1: two years. Not one. Why are American news organizations imploding
Speaker 1: the unrecognizable, ever changing marketplace? Yes, the collapse of the
Speaker 1: media industry as a business. Absolutely that The Washington Post
Speaker 1: had ten people cover the Hunter Biden trial, and all
Speaker 1: of its tweets about the guilty verdict combined in the
Speaker 1: first five hours had gotten only sixty retweets because the
Speaker 1: Post doesn't understand that its audience doesn't give a crap,
Speaker 1: and the audience that did give a crap would never
Speaker 1: read the Post's coverage of that story. You bet you.
Speaker 1: But there's a fourth factor about which we will continue
Speaker 1: to do what we've done for two years, grumbling but
Speaker 1: saying nothing in public. I guess the quality of today's
Speaker 1: political journalists is so mediocre that there was actually a
Speaker 1: bidding war for this one note idiot Jonathan Martin, but
Speaker 1: our winner, Royce White. I love this guy, the ex
Speaker 1: NBA player whose principal campaign issues are his own rage
Speaker 1: and his own NBA career. His NBA career, which lasted
Speaker 1: exactly eight minutes and fifty five seconds. White was the
Speaker 1: Republican who lost to ilan Omar seventy five to twenty five.
Speaker 1: He is now poised to be the Republican nominee for
Speaker 1: the Senate in Minnesota to try to unseat Amy Klobashar.
Speaker 1: As The Daily Beast has extensively reported, mister eight minutes
Speaker 1: and fifty five seconds has had a campaign ethics complaint
Speaker 1: filed on him after it turned out some of his
Speaker 1: campaign money was spent at a strip club, and here
Speaker 1: come the g Strings, an all nude strip club in Florida,
Speaker 1: not Minnesota, A strip club called the gold Rush Cabaret
Speaker 1: would be Republican Senator White went on David Pacman's show,
Speaker 1: where the following exchange took place. Pac Man, your claim
Speaker 1: is there were filings which said you spent campaign funds
Speaker 1: at a strip club, but they were incorrect filings. White, No,
Speaker 1: they didn't say I spent the funds at a strip club.
Speaker 1: Or let's say they didn't say I spent the funds
Speaker 1: on strippers, Pacman. But it was spent at a strip club. Why, well,
Speaker 1: they sell food at the strip club, don't they A yes, yes, yes, food.
Speaker 1: You spent the money at the strip club on food
Speaker 1: the gold Rush Cabaret, Well, maybe the campaign was prospecting. Later,
Speaker 1: in the same interview, White, who had already said they
Speaker 1: didn't say I spent the funds on strippers, implied that
Speaker 1: it may have been somebody else in his campaign who
Speaker 1: who spent the money at the gold Rush Cabaret, not him,
Speaker 1: even though he just said it was him and it
Speaker 1: was it was spent on fine dining. Royce, I spent
Speaker 1: it on food at the strip club. White. I never
Speaker 1: heard that described as food before. I love this guy.
Speaker 1: He's his own series and he's today's worst person. And
Speaker 1: that's the word Latakos. There is a huge oral history
Speaker 1: of ESPN from twenty eleven by Jim Miller, and most
Speaker 1: of it is pretty good, but there's one line in
Speaker 1: it that triggered this recollection. The executive vice president of
Speaker 1: the company in nineteen ninety seven was named Howard Katz,
Speaker 1: and in this ESPN book he was quoted as saying,
Speaker 1: I didn't fire Keith. I just chose not to renew
Speaker 1: his contract. And then there's a couple of quotes from
Speaker 1: guys I never heard of who said, no, we fired him.
Speaker 1: None of it's true. Howard and I got along surprisingly
Speaker 1: well at ESPN and even better since, so I'm just
Speaker 1: going to assume he misremembered all this, and he's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, legally, he chose not to renew my contract
Speaker 1: early in nineteen ninety seven, and a couple of weeks later,
Speaker 1: instead he offered me a new four year contract which
Speaker 1: would have basically doubled my salary. And even after I
Speaker 1: had said no, thanks and I signed with NBC. The
Speaker 1: then president of ABC, Bob Eiger whatever happened to him,
Speaker 1: tried to get me to back out of the NBC deal,
Speaker 1: to renege on it, and then sign a new deal
Speaker 1: at ESPN. So they offered me two new deals after
Speaker 1: they didn't renew my old contract. See how this works.
Speaker 1: In ninety six and ninety seven, it was no secret
Speaker 1: that my first choice was to leave ESPN. I had
Speaker 1: come within hours of asking to be let out of
Speaker 1: my deal. In the summer of nineteen ninety six, a
Speaker 1: radio station in Chicago WMVP had wanted me to go
Speaker 1: do the afternoon drive show there, a mix of news
Speaker 1: and sports, and they were offering me twice the money
Speaker 1: I was getting to host SportsCenter, and I was ready
Speaker 1: to go. Loved it, had a great week there. They
Speaker 1: wined me, they died me, and everybody offered me a
Speaker 1: free beer, Welcome to Chicago, you're from out of town.
Speaker 1: And then ownership of the radio station simply pulled the
Speaker 1: plug on the station it was in thirty first place
Speaker 1: and said they could save a lot more money by
Speaker 1: simply rebroadcasting what was on FM radio. And eventually, and
Speaker 1: this would have been interesting had I gone to Chicago.
Speaker 1: Eventually the owners sold WMVP to ESPN. Anyway, My ESPN
Speaker 1: deal was set to expire on December thirty first, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, but they had the option to extend it
Speaker 1: for I can't remember either either for a year after
Speaker 1: that or two years, but they had to notify me
Speaker 1: really early in ninety seven, and instead, on February eighteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, Howard Katz proposed to my then agent
Speaker 1: that we tear up the contract and do a new
Speaker 1: four year deal that started at seven hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year and covered a radio show with Dan Patrick,
Speaker 1: and the Sunday edition of Sports and the sp Awards ceremonies,
Speaker 1: and the Internet and everything else. This was a lot
Speaker 1: of money for ESPN in nineteen ninety seven, seven hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year, so we played around with that
Speaker 1: for a while. But I didn't really want to go
Speaker 1: into radio full time, not then when I still had
Speaker 1: dark hair. So on April fourth, nineteen ninety seven, Howard
Speaker 1: Catz came back with another offer, three sports centers a
Speaker 1: week plus some radio, starting at five hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year. I noticed that this was less
Speaker 1: than the first offer, so two weeks later, at the
Speaker 1: first ever Jackie Robinson Night at Chase Stadium in New York,
Speaker 1: Howard came up to me and asked me, in front
Speaker 1: of everybody in our booth, ranging from Chris Berman to
Speaker 1: Robin Roberts, to all the producers, and briefly to President
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, he asked me if we were close on
Speaker 1: this new deal that he'd offered me. I got angry
Speaker 1: at him. He got angry at me for getting angry
Speaker 1: at him, and I said, you know, forget it. And
Speaker 1: what's more, it makes no sense for me to hang
Speaker 1: around here as a lame duck. Howard wait, Howard the duck,
Speaker 1: and he calmed down. He said I could look at
Speaker 1: other jobs and we'd let things cool off and talk
Speaker 1: again about a new deal in a few weeks after
Speaker 1: I looked around to see if it was something I'd
Speaker 1: rather do than be at ESPN, and if it still
Speaker 1: wasn't going anywhere, we would agree on a date early
Speaker 1: in the summer and I could leave six months before
Speaker 1: the contract officially ended. And then three huge things happened
Speaker 1: about this that most people still don't know to this day.
Speaker 1: Even after all that, When I called Phil Mushnick of
Speaker 1: the new York Post and Richard Sandomir of The New
Speaker 1: York Times, and I told them I would be leaving ESPN,
Speaker 1: and it appeared I would be going to go to
Speaker 1: Court TV to be the host and executive producer of
Speaker 1: my own sports show, four nights a week. I almost
Speaker 1: stayed at ESPN once it got out that I was leaving.
Speaker 1: I got a letter from a viewer who told me
Speaker 1: that his son, who had autism, had been at his
Speaker 1: other son's little league game, and when his brother banged
Speaker 1: out a base hit, this kid, who had rarely ever
Speaker 1: spoken in his life, suddenly shouted out one of my catchphrases.
Speaker 1: This guy said, he hit the ball real hard. Then
Speaker 1: there was a flyball, and the boy said it's deep,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's playable. Then they went home,
Speaker 1: and this virtually noncommunicative child began to draw illustrations of
Speaker 1: my catchphrases. For whatever reason, I had triggered some kind
Speaker 1: of blossoming by this child and his brother and his
Speaker 1: father sent me a book of the child's illustrations of
Speaker 1: my catchphrases. I am not trying to suggest I really
Speaker 1: had anything to do with this. It was good fortune
Speaker 1: and circumstance and probably something to do with the tone
Speaker 1: of my voice, nothing more. But I was very moved
Speaker 1: by this, and I remained so and by other things.
Speaker 1: People wrote to me or wrote in the press about
Speaker 1: how much the show Dan and I did men to them,
Speaker 1: and I went back to Howard Katz and I said, look,
Speaker 1: I know I've been impossible. You have to understand that
Speaker 1: from my perspective, the company has also been impossible. But
Speaker 1: Dan and I created too good a show to let
Speaker 1: it die. When I go here to Court TV, I'm
Speaker 1: only going to work Monday through Thursday on this new thing.
Speaker 1: If you will send a car to take me to
Speaker 1: and from Bristol every Sunday and give me some tokensal
Speaker 1: give me fifty thousand dollars or something, I'll just do
Speaker 1: the Sunday night show for you every week. You'll never
Speaker 1: see me. I'll never see you. It's the show that
Speaker 1: has the highest factor of management control. It's basically coloring
Speaker 1: in by numbers, and it reruns all morning on Monday.
Speaker 1: So forty percent of the people who see Dan and
Speaker 1: I during the week they see this one show. That's it.
Speaker 1: If you want some other stuff for me to do,
Speaker 1: like radio commentaries. Great, we can negotiate that, but we
Speaker 1: should not let this die. At least let's have it
Speaker 1: on once a week. And Howard Katz said, Okay, let
Speaker 1: me think about this. It sounds really good. And he
Speaker 1: got back to me the next day and he said
Speaker 1: it was the most difficult decision he had ever made
Speaker 1: in this business, but he just couldn't do it. It
Speaker 1: established too much of a precedent, especially the idea that
Speaker 1: somebody could work at ESPN and also at some other
Speaker 1: TV operation. He put it very bluntly. If ESPN was
Speaker 1: not the sole employer of its people, it could not
Speaker 1: control them by threatening to fire them. And he looked
Speaker 1: at me and he said, especially you, And in the
Speaker 1: same sentence he said, look, we'd love to continue the relationship,
Speaker 1: though we see lots of ways you could fit into
Speaker 1: ESPN Classic, like once a week or once a month
Speaker 1: or whatever, and we'd like to get in on the
Speaker 1: bidding for these radio commentaries that you're going to do
Speaker 1: on the side. Well, it all ended surprisingly amicably. I
Speaker 1: decided to go to MSNBC and NBC Sports instead of
Speaker 1: Court TV, and as I signed the contract, I called
Speaker 1: the ESPN president, Steve Bornstein and the head of Sports Center,
Speaker 1: John Walsh. I called them from the office of the
Speaker 1: head of NBC Sports, Dick Eversol, And in my diary,
Speaker 1: I can't tell if that was June nineteenth, nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven or June twentieth, nineteen ninety seven, but I made
Speaker 1: the calls, and it was Eversall's idea called them. Now
Speaker 1: call them right now, it'll matter later. The funniest thing
Speaker 1: was the following Monday, June twenty third, I was packing
Speaker 1: up my stuff in my house in Connecticut. I am
Speaker 1: all set, and I am officially beginning my first week
Speaker 1: not working for ESPN and instead working for NBC. And
Speaker 1: the phone rings and it's John Walsh in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: for something, and he has to talk to my agent immediately.
Speaker 1: Do you know where she is right now? Howard Katz?
Speaker 1: And I have just spoken with Bob Iger and he
Speaker 1: wants to present a primetime proposal to you for ABC
Speaker 1: and until you can continue at ESPN. And I laughed,
Speaker 1: and I said, John, I signed with NBC last week
Speaker 1: the World Series and the news show, oh and super
Speaker 1: Bowl stuff. Remember I called you from Dick Ebersoll's office.
Speaker 1: You remember it was Friday or Thursday, whatever it was,
Speaker 1: we're having the news conference today. And he is dead serious,
Speaker 1: and he says to me, oh oh oh, and there's
Speaker 1: a long pause. Well, well, I still need to talk
Speaker 1: to your agent. Well. I had known Bob Iger, who
Speaker 1: had apparently precipitated this phone call, since I was in
Speaker 1: college in nineteen seventy nine. He had given me an
Speaker 1: hour of his time just for career advice because I
Speaker 1: had interned at the TV station for which his first
Speaker 1: wife had been a news producer, Channel five in New York.
Speaker 1: I told that story I think two weeks ago, and
Speaker 1: Bob was wonderful to me. So I called Bob and
Speaker 1: I explained what had happened, and he said, Steve Bornstein
Speaker 1: only told me that you were leaving this morning. I'm
Speaker 1: very very sorry. I knew there were contentious negotiations about
Speaker 1: a new deal for you, but I had no clue
Speaker 1: it was at the point where you might actually leave.
Speaker 1: I should have known. That's my fault. That's why I
Speaker 1: told John to make the call. He did. Trust me.
Speaker 1: If I'd known would have been totally different. I would
Speaker 1: have made it right by you. You would have wanted
Speaker 1: to stay, and if it doesn't work at NBC. You
Speaker 1: call me directly and I'll bring you back here myself.
Speaker 1: I mean, the ending was so unexpectedly and surprisingly pleasant
Speaker 1: that even when my new bosses at MSNBC suddenly announced
Speaker 1: I think it was in newsweek that they were going
Speaker 1: to call my program The Big Show, which was our
Speaker 1: nickname for Sports Center at ESPN, the Big Show. But
Speaker 1: they hadn't told anybody at ESPN that we were going
Speaker 1: to call our MSNBC show the Big Show. It was
Speaker 1: me who got on the phone with Howard Katz and
Speaker 1: a couple of other people at ESPN to apologize and
Speaker 1: to make sure they were okay with it. So, even
Speaker 1: after my ESPN career was officially over and all chance
Speaker 1: of my returning was dead, we tried to revive it,
Speaker 1: both of us, Howard Katz and me, in good faith.
Speaker 1: And I don't think Bob Iger was blowing smoke at me.
Speaker 1: He had no reason to. And even after all that,
Speaker 1: the parting was non nuclear. I think they sent me
Speaker 1: a fruit basket for my first night at MSNBC on
Speaker 1: October first, and then it all blew up. John Walsh
Speaker 1: called the TV sports columnist at USA Today, Rudy Marski
Speaker 1: and gave him my first set of ratings from MSNBC
Speaker 1: just to try to make me look like I couldn't
Speaker 1: succeed without ESPN. Marski told me that direct quote, they
Speaker 1: want to punish you publicly. Walsh has been pressuring me
Speaker 1: to run the very poor ratings, and he said, I'm
Speaker 1: going to finally do it. I just wanted to give
Speaker 1: you a little warning and maybe you have a comment. Well,
Speaker 1: that set the tone for the next five years of warfare,
Speaker 1: and it was nuclear pretty quickly. But this impression that
Speaker 1: ESPN chose to dismiss me or not renew me, or
Speaker 1: not bring me back, it's nonsense. Howard did not not
Speaker 1: renew me. Instead, he offered to double my salary if
Speaker 1: I stayed. If I had signed with NBC, Iiger was
Speaker 1: still trying to get me to back up out after
Speaker 1: I had signed with NBC and stay at ESPN and ABC.
Speaker 1: The irony of this minor detail from about nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven printed in twenty eleven, I think is that I
Speaker 1: had already returned to ESPN by the time it was printed.
Speaker 1: I took an hour out of my day at MSNBC
Speaker 1: to go on with Dan Patrick on his ESPN radio
Speaker 1: show from two thousand and five through two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: A year after that book came out with that quote
Speaker 1: in it, twenty twelve, I was talking to the executives
Speaker 1: at ESPN about going back full time, and a year
Speaker 1: later I did to launch a nightly show on ESPN two.
Speaker 1: And that ended when they laid off like one hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars worth of talent salaries in twenty fifteen. But
Speaker 1: then I went back again in twenty eighteen and I
Speaker 1: did Sports Center, and I did baseball games on radio
Speaker 1: and on TV, and I did reports, and I did
Speaker 1: commentaries and did the not top ten plays of the week,
Speaker 1: and on and on and on, and finally we parted
Speaker 1: happily in the late summer of twenty twenty so I
Speaker 1: could return to political cover Bridge and I knew they
Speaker 1: wouldn't want that, and I didn't want to put it
Speaker 1: on ESPN, and the unlikely result of that my parting
Speaker 1: happiway in twenty twenty. On the books at Disney, I
Speaker 1: am listed as a Disney and ESPN retiree. I get
Speaker 1: benefits I retired from ESPN. I mean, they didn't give
Speaker 1: me a gold watch or anything. But I'm technically a retiree.
Speaker 1: And if you had predicted that in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: or twenty eleven, well you know the cliche. I bring
Speaker 1: all this up again because I don't know how often
Speaker 1: I have thought of that father and his two boys,
Speaker 1: and the one who started speaking, but only in my
Speaker 1: catch phrases. I would guess it's at least once a month.
Speaker 1: Those boys would have to be in their thirties by
Speaker 1: now or nearly, and I wonder often of what has
Speaker 1: become of them, and I sure hope they are well.
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. Countdown Musical directors Brian Ray and John
Speaker 1: Phillip Chanelle arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Speaker 1: Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums. Mister Chaneale
Speaker 1: handled orchestration and keyboards, and it was produced by Tko Brothers.
Speaker 1: Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged
Speaker 1: and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
Speaker 1: music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was
Speaker 1: written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. And
Speaker 1: our satirical and fifty musical comments are by Nancy Fauss,
Speaker 1: the best baseball stadium organist ever, who, of course accompanied
Speaker 1: me on the Trump Elderly Saw. Our announcer was my
Speaker 1: friend Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad and better call Saul
Speaker 1: and airplane. Everything else was pretty much my fault as usual.
Speaker 1: That's countdown for this the one hundred and forty seventh
Speaker 1: day until the twenty twenty fourth presidential election, and the
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty fourth day since convicted felon and
Speaker 1: first time elderly offender Donald Trump's first attempt at coop
Speaker 1: against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use
Speaker 1: the July eleventh sentencing hearing, use the mental health system,
Speaker 1: use presidential immunity if it happens, Use the not regularly
Speaker 1: given elector objection option to stop him from doing it
Speaker 1: again while waste can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Bolton says the news warrants till the next one. I'm
Speaker 1: Keith Olderman, good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 1: I'm an elderly first offender. I have been found guilty
Speaker 1: in the stormy jury had no nut and forn't you
Speaker 1: old to go to prison? But Turly says I'm fine
Speaker 1: for the word. The End Countdown with Keith Olreman is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.