Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Don't
Speaker 1: be silly, Stephen Miller. You're taking the fall. The fall
Speaker 1: for contemptive court in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the
Speaker 1: rogue deportation flight cases. The target to at least be fined,
Speaker 1: may be jailed for contemptive court in each is Stephen Miller. Ah,
Speaker 1: that's a shame, not Stephen Miller. The picture is clarifying slowly,
Speaker 1: the focus is sharpening painstakingly. But it seems evident now
Speaker 1: that contempt cases being built by District Judges Jeb Bosberg
Speaker 1: and Paula Zennis, the effort to get depositions about and
Speaker 1: charge so but he with contempt of court in the
Speaker 1: abduction of mister Abrago Garcia and the renditioning of dozens
Speaker 1: of others to L Salvador after Judge Bosberg ordered the
Speaker 1: plane to not take off. The slow, methodical attempt to finally,
Speaker 1: at long last, about damn time, holds somebody in the
Speaker 1: Trump crime administration responsible for something. This whole move to
Speaker 1: put somebody behind bars is in both courts targeting Stephen Miller.
Speaker 1: The finding by Judge Bosberg of probable cause for contempt
Speaker 1: citations against the Trump gang, and these depositions scheduled by
Speaker 1: Judge Zennis are apparently designed to confirm what Miller and
Speaker 1: the other Trumpian monsters are boasting about in private. Miller
Speaker 1: is the architect of the deportation scheme, and Miller is
Speaker 1: the architect of its essential baseline component of cruelty. The
Speaker 1: man who has allegedly hated Hispanics since a girl he
Speaker 1: asked out in high school turned him down is also
Speaker 1: the architect of the scheme to disobey the district court
Speaker 1: orders to bring Abrego Garcia home, and to disobey the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court in the process. That is what these courts
Speaker 1: are moving towards, proving the man who greets every warning
Speaker 1: from a court or an attorney or a human with
Speaker 1: a conscience to stop now before it is too late
Speaker 1: for him by getting louder and getting angrier and getting
Speaker 1: more monstrous. The man behind whatever step towards ethnic cleansing
Speaker 1: is next is clearly Stephen Miller. It sure looks like
Speaker 1: Judges Bosberg and Zennis want to put this ass behind bars.
Speaker 1: NBC News quote one figure seems to have more responsibility
Speaker 1: than anyone else for this mess. Trump advisor Stephen Miller,
Speaker 1: former Judge John E. Jones, the third now president of
Speaker 1: Dickinson College on a legal website quote, it's one big
Speaker 1: show of contempt for the court, rife with dishonest behavior,
Speaker 1: and I think Bosberg is entirely right to vindicate the
Speaker 1: authority of the court and commence these contempt proceedings. In
Speaker 1: the case of Judge Zennis, she's not there yet. What
Speaker 1: she's doing in stages is attempting to test the government's compliance.
Speaker 1: From one of my favorite analysts, Brian Foutler of Off Message, quote,
Speaker 1: most shrewd observers suspect that the contemner, the person who
Speaker 1: faces imprisonment for orchestrating defiance of a court order, is
Speaker 1: Stephen Miller, the monstrous TWRP fascist who conceived of Trump's
Speaker 1: lawless immigrant expulsion regime. Trump would likely and corruptly order
Speaker 1: DOJ not to try a contempt case against Miller or
Speaker 1: anyone else in his administration. A judge might then invoke
Speaker 1: his or her prerogative to a point outside council to
Speaker 1: stand in for the prosecution. DOJ might challenge the constitutionality
Speaker 1: of this judicial power. It was Miller who called Judge
Speaker 1: Zennis quote a Marxist judge who now thinks she's president
Speaker 1: of El Salvador. Why the back part of that would
Speaker 1: be a Trumpian insult since Trump owns the president of
Speaker 1: El Salvador. I do not know. But it turns out
Speaker 1: Miller has done more than just insult judges and defy
Speaker 1: their orders. The website TPM notes quote, a think tank
Speaker 1: founded by Stephen Miller, sued Chief Justice John Roberts and
Speaker 1: the office that administers the Judiciary, claiming that the White
Speaker 1: House should run the federal courts. The America First Legal
Speaker 1: Foundation sued, and the case ostensibly proceeds as a freedom
Speaker 1: of information lawsuit, with the Trump aligned group seeking access
Speaker 1: to judiciary records, but in doing so, it asks the
Speaker 1: courts to sed massive power to the White House. The
Speaker 1: bodies that make court policy and manage the judicial day
Speaker 1: to day operations should be considered independent agencies of the
Speaker 1: executive branch, the suit argues, giving the president, under the
Speaker 1: conservative legal movement theories, the power to appoint and dismiss
Speaker 1: people in key roles. So this isn't just Miller and
Speaker 1: Trump trying to ignore and defy the courts, it's them
Speaker 1: setting up conflict with the courts and defying them, and
Speaker 1: perhaps having Miller martyr himself by going to jail or
Speaker 1: fighting going to jail, and trying to build up maga
Speaker 1: rage against all judges, even the ones on the Trump
Speaker 1: owned Supreme Court. While TPM reports legal scholars are expressing
Speaker 1: both dismay and laughter at all, this we should express neither.
Speaker 1: Last week, after Ice arrested Judge Dugan in Wisconsin, Fox's
Speaker 1: NEPO baby Peter Doocey asked the White House official liar
Speaker 1: Caroline le quote, would you ever arrest a federal judge
Speaker 1: or even a Supreme Court justice? Instead of saying, of
Speaker 1: course not, Levitt's reply ended fascistically. Anyone who is breaking
Speaker 1: the law or obstructing federal law enforcement officials is putting
Speaker 1: themselves at risk of being prosecuted. Absolutely, does it make
Speaker 1: sense to behave like this? Does it make sense, even
Speaker 1: for Trump in his delusional state, to move so far
Speaker 1: towards active dictatorship that you start making John Roberts believe
Speaker 1: he could be arrested for refusing to enable Trump, even
Speaker 1: after Roberts issued a statement about the existential need to
Speaker 1: keep the judiciary intact and independent. No, of course, it
Speaker 1: does not make sense. It does not have to make sense.
Speaker 1: It's Stephen Miller, and of course it's Trump. Trump veering
Speaker 1: between preening that he is the mastermind of this anti American,
Speaker 1: anti humanity purge and insisting he knows nothing about it.
Speaker 1: Don't you need to follow the Constitution about their rights?
Speaker 1: He was asked yesterday. I don't know, he answers gullible
Speaker 1: deniability and the refusal to endorse the Constitution. Either way,
Speaker 1: Stephen Miller is the tumor inside the Maga brain. I
Speaker 1: want both these judges to charge Stephen Miller with contempt
Speaker 1: and send bailiffs to detain him. Whatever happens after that,
Speaker 1: I do not think it will be what Miller expects
Speaker 1: it to be. Plus, to take a page from the
Speaker 1: appeal to Heaven, folks, maybe we'll get really lucky and
Speaker 1: Miller will resist rest and it's no longer just judges.
Speaker 1: The next target of this regime, whose ability to restrain itself,
Speaker 1: even when restraining itself means furthering its own evil aims,
Speaker 1: seems to be disintegrating governors. Gestapo chief Tom Homan was
Speaker 1: asked about the guidance to state workers from Governor Tony
Speaker 1: Evers of Wisconsin to not stop ICE from carrying out
Speaker 1: actual deportation orders, but to seek guidance from legal counsel
Speaker 1: if they are confronted by ICE, or if ICE tries
Speaker 1: to get into state facilities, and to refuse demands for
Speaker 1: documents or other items demands from ICE without an Evers
Speaker 1: administration state attorney being there. Responding to Evers two orders,
Speaker 1: both of them about as pro Ice as anybody could
Speaker 1: actually be. The Homan squealed, quote, I meant what I said.
Speaker 1: You cannot support what we're doing, and you can support
Speaker 1: sanctuary cities if that's what you want to do. But
Speaker 1: if you cross that line to impediment or knowingly harboring
Speaker 1: and concealing an illegal alien, that's a felony, and we're
Speaker 1: treating it as such. Unquote. And of course, as we
Speaker 1: have seen, the trumpest human trafficking gang will not let
Speaker 1: judges or others not under its control decide where that
Speaker 1: line is or who has crossed it. They make up
Speaker 1: the laws as they go along. Homan has threatened the
Speaker 1: governor of Wisconsin and the governor of every Democratic state
Speaker 1: and going as they say in Hockey, from high to low.
Speaker 1: Last week, ICE conducted a raid in Irvine, California that
Speaker 1: they thought was so important that they did it in
Speaker 1: armored vehicles rolling past the overwatered lawns of the upscale
Speaker 1: part of that town. Deployed drones to record overhead video
Speaker 1: of the tanks, and sent the acting chief ICE thug
Speaker 1: todd Lyons to be there in person for this the crime.
Speaker 1: They have accused an unidentified suspect of committing, printing and
Speaker 1: posting flyers showing the photos, names and what may or
Speaker 1: may not be the phone numbers and locations of ICE
Speaker 1: agents in the Irvine area. The flyers are in Spanish.
Speaker 1: There are no home addresses. There's not even a suggestion
Speaker 1: that there should be retribution or threat against the Ice mobsters,
Speaker 1: just a warning to the community using publicly available information.
Speaker 1: And they wanted to record the purp walk from overhead
Speaker 1: with drones to make it prettier for Fox News and
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk and all the other propaganda outlets. And they
Speaker 1: brought the ICE director, though not Christy Noman eate new
Speaker 1: action dress up outfits to crow about it, brought him
Speaker 1: in in a tank. They are depraved monsters, happily like
Speaker 1: most praved monsters. They did not allow for the possibility
Speaker 1: that they are stupid, depraved monsters. The suspect wasn't home,
Speaker 1: and what he does doesn't even vaguely fit the law
Speaker 1: under which they were hoping to prosecute him. Persecute him,
Speaker 1: the ice slug lions claimed the flyers put targets on
Speaker 1: the agent's back. Nice work, mister Lyons, you just confirmed
Speaker 1: the info is accurate. As immigration attorney Aaron Reichland Melnick noted,
Speaker 1: the law in question that they want to use. Eighteen
Speaker 1: US Code one nineteen demands intent to quote, threaten, intimidate,
Speaker 1: or incite the commission of a crime of violence against
Speaker 1: the government representatives. A flyer that reads in Spanish watch
Speaker 1: out for them is not a threat. It is a
Speaker 1: response to a threat. It is fully protected under the
Speaker 1: First Amendment until Trump suspends the First Amendment. There two
Speaker 1: other next steps here. Trump and his minions have been
Speaker 1: examining if they can label foreign or foreign born cartel
Speaker 1: and gang member suspects who are inside this country as
Speaker 1: enemy combatants and thus deny them legal roots out if
Speaker 1: they are detained, or maybe even deny them access to
Speaker 1: legal counsel if they get away with this, it is
Speaker 1: then just a short leap to be able to do
Speaker 1: that to native born Americans. And if they can get
Speaker 1: away with that, combine it with Gestapo Tom Holman's threat
Speaker 1: to arrest governors, and the next judge or governor, or
Speaker 1: commentator or ordinary civilian who crosses Trump could not only
Speaker 1: then be arrested, but could be seized and declared an
Speaker 1: enemy combatant. And they could be in Gitmo or El
Speaker 1: Salvador before anybody else knows about it, or at least
Speaker 1: they could be in a GEO Group brand private prison.
Speaker 1: GEO is one of the leaders in this burgeoning field
Speaker 1: of privatize jails, especially the dangerous fetid ones. As the
Speaker 1: Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee noted back in January,
Speaker 1: GEO Group quote has faced criticism for safety violations, providing
Speaker 1: inadequate healthcare, and poor management practices. These actions have negatively
Speaker 1: impacted the welfare and rights of incarcerated individuals and the
Speaker 1: immigration detainees, and the GEO Group stands to earn hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars during the Trump administration, as ICE
Speaker 1: is its largest source of revenue unquote, and guess who
Speaker 1: has been lobbying for this company. Guess who has been
Speaker 1: lobbying for GEO Group, a heavy duty special interest firm
Speaker 1: called Ballard Partners. And guess who one of Ballard Partners
Speaker 1: in house registered lobbyists is somebody who could have a
Speaker 1: direct connection to the direction of money to the Geo
Speaker 1: private prison cartel, but certainly has an indirect connection to that.
Speaker 1: None other than Pam Bondi. Attorney General Senator Dick Durbin
Speaker 1: has now awakened and asked her to recuse from all
Speaker 1: prosecutions and DOJ business relating to immigration and other kinds
Speaker 1: of cases that would ultimately line GEO Group's pockets. My
Speaker 1: guess is that Bondi's answer, at least the one inside
Speaker 1: her otherwise empty head, would be something like recuse. Why
Speaker 1: would I recuse? Why would I stop helping getting more
Speaker 1: immigration prisoners into GEO prisons? Why the hell do you
Speaker 1: think he made me? Attorney General? So is John Fetterman
Speaker 1: in distress. We have two leaked stories and one leaked
Speaker 1: video implying just that. The video, which was from February,
Speaker 1: is of him refusing to wear his airplane seat belt
Speaker 1: outside his sweatshirt while a flight attendant patiently explains to
Speaker 1: him that he will be taken off the plane, and
Speaker 1: the plane will not take off if he doesn't. The stories,
Speaker 1: both from his former chief of staff, Adam Gentilsen, portray
Speaker 1: a senator so gone that last year he was quoting
Speaker 1: New York Magazine, avoiding the regular checkups advised by his doctors.
Speaker 1: He was preoccupied with the social media platform x, which
Speaker 1: he'd previously admitted had been a major accelerant of his depression.
Speaker 1: He drove his car so quote recklessly. Gentlesen said that
Speaker 1: staff refused to ride with him. He had also bought
Speaker 1: a gun unquote. The magazine quoted other staffers, former and current,
Speaker 1: who insists many of these mental health red flags are
Speaker 1: resuming right now. Just as Fetterman was denying the New
Speaker 1: York Magazine story and his wife was asking why is
Speaker 1: this a story, the old old video appeared, and then
Speaker 1: so did a second story in The New York Times,
Speaker 1: reporting that the same ex chief of staff wrote a
Speaker 1: letter to Fetterman's doctor a year ago this month about
Speaker 1: Fetterman's mental health. Quoting from the letter, I'm worried that
Speaker 1: if John stays on his current trajectory, he won't be
Speaker 1: with us for much longer. The Times added, quoting its reporter. Now,
Speaker 1: other former members of his staff, speaking on the condition
Speaker 1: of anonymity, report that their colleagues sometimes were frightened to
Speaker 1: be in the Senator's presence if he was in an
Speaker 1: amped up mood. Being in distress is no longer a
Speaker 1: disqualification for national office, of course, ask Trump, Ask a
Speaker 1: majority of Republicans in the House, and many of them
Speaker 1: in the Senate in a rare bit of bipartisanship. The
Speaker 1: only time being in distress comes into play anymore is
Speaker 1: when the sufferer votes against his own party's principles or
Speaker 1: a lack thereof, or against its interests. Fetterman, of course,
Speaker 1: was showing that in January, vowing to work with Trump
Speaker 1: and then joining Schumer in caving to the Republicans on
Speaker 1: a bill that, among other things, blocked any investigation of
Speaker 1: what the hell Elon Musk is doing to us speaking
Speaker 1: of being in distress. So sadly, the answer is, I
Speaker 1: don't care if Fetterman is sick or not. He's acting
Speaker 1: like a Trumpist. Get him out of the Senate and
Speaker 1: speaking of Trump and cognitive health as in Trump's cognitive
Speaker 1: living death, More and more and more evidence of more
Speaker 1: and more and longer and longer delusions meet the press
Speaker 1: yesterday about the coming explosive diarrhea form of inflation and
Speaker 1: the coming shortage of everything. Quote. I don't think a
Speaker 1: beautiful baby girl that's eleven years old needs to have
Speaker 1: thirty dollars. I think they can have three dollars or
Speaker 1: four dollars. Now you have to admit a party platform
Speaker 1: heading into the midterms of I'm taking your child's dolls
Speaker 1: away from them is novel. It's insane, but it's novel,
Speaker 1: at least for this country. Lenin and Stalin tried something
Speaker 1: like it. I mean, it's basically a modified version of
Speaker 1: taking candy from a baby. Oh, and pencils. In Trump's world,
Speaker 1: those eleven year old girls who just got a rock
Speaker 1: for Christmas also quote don't need to have two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty pencils. They can have five, because on top
Speaker 1: of everything else, after dolls, Trump believes and eleven year
Speaker 1: old's next favorite thing is pencils. A reminder that the
Speaker 1: eleven year olds who were introduced to politics and to
Speaker 1: Trump's insanity by just this quote, or who will be
Speaker 1: in the months and years to come, Those eleven year
Speaker 1: olds will be voting in the year twenty thirty two,
Speaker 1: so in case all the MAGA aren't in prison by
Speaker 1: then and they run a candidate, bookmark these quotes for
Speaker 1: those now eleven year olds. One also assumes Trump lost
Speaker 1: more veterans many of their groups are furious about his
Speaker 1: dictat that November eleventh Veterans Day is no longer Veterans Day.
Speaker 1: It is now Victory Day for World War One, and
Speaker 1: May eighth it will be this Thursday is now Victory
Speaker 1: Day for World War II, which, on top of being
Speaker 1: just nuts, also faces the minor difficulty that World War
Speaker 1: Two only ended when the Japanese surrendered on August fifteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five. Trump doesn't know that. Forgot it. Was
Speaker 1: consulting his Russian calendar and noticed they celebrate May ninth
Speaker 1: as victory Day. Well, now that's a coincidence. I guess
Speaker 1: we should just be happy he didn't rename Veterans Day
Speaker 1: Gulf of America Day, or Gulf between Trump's Ears Day. Also,
Speaker 1: Trump again claimed yesterday that gas is below two dollars
Speaker 1: in many states, like the state of advanced Dementia. One
Speaker 1: online commentator offered one thousand dollars to the first person
Speaker 1: to show him where in America gasoline is one dollar
Speaker 1: and ninety eight cents a gallon. Commentator still has his
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars because it is only one dollar ninety
Speaker 1: eight cents a gallon in the gas pumps of Trump's
Speaker 1: brain like the circles that you find in the windmills
Speaker 1: of Trump's mind. Of course, asked if it's quote okay
Speaker 1: in the short term to have a recession. Trump's answer
Speaker 1: in the same interview as a shrug and quote, look, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's everything's okay. This is a transition period. I think
Speaker 1: we're going to do fantastically. The White House tried to
Speaker 1: cover this quote up. Trump endorsed having a recession in
Speaker 1: that quote. They tried to cover this up by claiming
Speaker 1: that the yeah and the okay in the answer look yeah,
Speaker 1: it's everything's okay, we're filler words, and he never endorsed
Speaker 1: having a recession. He did. They also blamed all this
Speaker 1: on Biden's economy. But that imaginary dollar ninety eight cent
Speaker 1: to gallon gas, that's the Trump economy. Rationing dolls. Not
Speaker 1: sure whose economy that is sounds like stalins. Check your
Speaker 1: calendar to see if today it's Biden's economy day, or
Speaker 1: if it's Trump's economy day, or if it's possibly Obama's
Speaker 1: economy day, or if it's victory in World War three day,
Speaker 1: and Trump again Julius caesared his own lot to break
Speaker 1: the Constitution and run for a third term or just
Speaker 1: never leave office. So many people want me to do.
Speaker 1: I have never had requests so strong as that, But
Speaker 1: it's something that, to the best of my knowledge, you're
Speaker 1: not allowed to do. But there are many people selling
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty eight hat, because that's what this is
Speaker 1: all about, selling a hat. Making a decision like that
Speaker 1: based on the hat. The Constitution he don't know, Constitution
Speaker 1: hats he knows. Hats. Speaking of hats, there is still
Speaker 1: the Trump Pope photo. It is, I believe, blasphemy. Worse,
Speaker 1: it's mocking a religious leader who just died and those
Speaker 1: of his faith who are still mourning him. It has
Speaker 1: infuriated Catholics around the world. Some of them are just
Speaker 1: seeing it today and Pope hats off to Charlie Sykes
Speaker 1: who responded to it by calling Trump and quote absurd, juvenile,
Speaker 1: el chowed. I understand not everybody knows that last word
Speaker 1: c hode chowed, I'd advise you to google it, and hey,
Speaker 1: President Ted Bundy Trump, if you're thinking of resigning the
Speaker 1: presidency to become pope, you have my full one hundred
Speaker 1: percent endorsement. If not, you know what would make your
Speaker 1: cult just as amused as that that Pope Trump picture.
Speaker 1: Put another one of these out, only only to pict
Speaker 1: yourself as the prophet Muhammad. The reaction to that would
Speaker 1: be huge. By the way, a House Democrat has now
Speaker 1: moved to impeach Trump and it got zero attention. Shri
Speaker 1: Thanadar of Michigan did it seven articles. Al Green still
Speaker 1: has plans for his own set, though he may combine
Speaker 1: now with Thanadar. The reaction from the Democratic leadership to this,
Speaker 1: The chair of the Democratic House Caucus gave, naturally the
Speaker 1: wrong answer, quote. Impeachment is at times a tool that
Speaker 1: can be used. This president is no stranger to that.
Speaker 1: He's been impeached twice. This is pete agiar speaking. But
Speaker 1: we don't have any confidence that House and Senate Republicans
Speaker 1: would do their jobs, and so this is not an
Speaker 1: exercise that we're willing to undertake. So what you don't
Speaker 1: file to impeach because you're guaranteed to remove him from office.
Speaker 1: You don't file to impeach because you're guaranteed to pass
Speaker 1: the articles. You don't even file to impeach because you're
Speaker 1: guaranteed to vote on your motion. You file to impeach
Speaker 1: because the bastard should be impeached. And because, as I've
Speaker 1: shown before, serious impeachment attempts, even the ones that go nowhere,
Speaker 1: are always except for the second Trump impeachment and the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two midterms, they are always followed by a
Speaker 1: victory by the impeaching party in the next election, House, Senate, presidency,
Speaker 1: sometimes all three, even in twenty twenty two, and it
Speaker 1: didn't work. The Democratic loss in the mid terms was
Speaker 1: far smaller than predicted. The only hesitation should be about
Speaker 1: this growing attempt to repurpose impeachment by MAGA. There is
Speaker 1: apparently a viewpoint from the more realistic members of that
Speaker 1: cult that by this time next year, Trump will have
Speaker 1: wiped out any chance they have of retaining the House
Speaker 1: and maybe even the Senate, and that a serious impeachment
Speaker 1: attempt and their response to it to protect Trump could
Speaker 1: be the only Republican campaign platform, their only rallying cry.
Speaker 1: You must put us back even after we caused the
Speaker 1: new depression, because otherwise the Democrats will impeach Trump and
Speaker 1: throw him out of office the day after they take
Speaker 1: over the House in the Senate. In that case, if
Speaker 1: this really does develop as not just a Republican running slogan,
Speaker 1: but the only one, let's pause, let's research a little bit.
Speaker 1: We don't have to do this today. Let's pause the
Speaker 1: final decision on impeachment to see how much the fascists
Speaker 1: run with it and run on it. Or maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: we could see some polling on it. Maybe, I mean,
Speaker 1: I understand the pollsters have lost all self confidence, and
Speaker 1: with good reason, which brings me to this final whopper.
Speaker 1: CNN's Harry Enton does a good job, albeit an often frantic,
Speaker 1: unintelligible one, which appears to be what is required now
Speaker 1: to be a cable news pollster, But he screwed up
Speaker 1: big His survey who would be doing a better job
Speaker 1: as president? Registered voters who said they voted in the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four election. He says these numbers should be
Speaker 1: a major wake up call for Democrats who would be
Speaker 1: doing a better job as president? Results forty five percent,
Speaker 1: Harris forty three percent same twelve percent. Firstly, Harris, no
Speaker 1: offense to Vice President Harris. But the Democrat you put
Speaker 1: into this polling is the one who just lost, who
Speaker 1: reeks of the last loss fairly or unfairly. Why didn't
Speaker 1: you put Hillary in there, or Michael Ducacas or General
Speaker 1: George McClellan. And how about just asking Trump versus anybody else?
Speaker 1: Another version of the poll? I want to see, how
Speaker 1: about I want to change my vote? How does I
Speaker 1: want to change my vote? Due in polling? Also these
Speaker 1: results Harry Trump better job forty five percent, Harris better
Speaker 1: job forty three percent, and twelve percent who answered same.
Speaker 1: Doesn't that mean, let's see, forty three plus twelve is
Speaker 1: fifty five. Doesn't that mean that fifty five percent of
Speaker 1: voters now think Harris would have done better or at
Speaker 1: least as well as Trump. Or you could read it
Speaker 1: a third way, that fifty seven percent of voters now
Speaker 1: think Trump is doing better or at least as well
Speaker 1: as Harris would have. Doesn't that mean the poll has
Speaker 1: three conflicting results? Exactly? What use is a goddamn poll
Speaker 1: with three goddamned conflicting goddamned results? Oh, silly me, This
Speaker 1: is the use right right to kill a few hours
Speaker 1: on CNN, and more importantly, to give CNN something new
Speaker 1: with which to suck up to Trump. Also of interest,
Speaker 1: here there's a worse person in the world and a
Speaker 1: best person in the world. In the same story, a
Speaker 1: pretend reporter from Tucker Carlson's Daily Cancer tries to troll
Speaker 1: Congresswoman Elan Omar over Trump's constitutional renditions, and she gives
Speaker 1: him a six word answer, and the last two words
Speaker 1: rhyme with kluck cough, and here we go again. Tomorrow
Speaker 1: is the anniversary of the day Roger Banister became the
Speaker 1: first human being to run a mile in less than
Speaker 1: four minutes. Except for the one small detail that he
Speaker 1: wasn't the first human being to run a mile in
Speaker 1: less than four minutes, not by at least two hundred years,
Speaker 1: maybe by at least a thousand years. I got to
Speaker 1: explain this every year while half the news outlets in
Speaker 1: the world get it wrong. Again. Roger Banister was not
Speaker 1: the first human being to run a mile in less
Speaker 1: than four minutes. He wasn't even the first guy in
Speaker 1: England to do it. That's next. This is countdown. This
Speaker 1: is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on this edition
Speaker 1: to countdown it is that time again. Tomorrow is the
Speaker 1: anniversary of the day in nineteen fifty four on which
Speaker 1: Roger Banister became the first human to run a mile
Speaker 1: in less than four minutes. Except for one thing, He
Speaker 1: clearly wasn't the first human to run a mile in
Speaker 1: less than four minutes, and we've celebrated him for no
Speaker 1: good reason now for seventy one years the day Roger
Speaker 1: Banister did not break the four minute carrier. Next in
Speaker 1: Sportsball Center First, Believe it or not, there's still more
Speaker 1: new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miss Grants,
Speaker 1: morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute the latest
Speaker 1: other worse persons in the world the Bronze worse. It's
Speaker 1: a tie to Trump robots, White House Press secretary. You
Speaker 1: can't spell Caroline without le and you can't spell Levitt
Speaker 1: without lie. Get her quote here. DEI seeks to divide
Speaker 1: and pit Americans. They gainst each other based on immutable characteristics.
Speaker 1: President Trump put an end to it. In President Trump's America.
Speaker 1: Individual dignity, hard work, and excellence are the only things
Speaker 1: that will determine if you get ahead. Or if you
Speaker 1: lie on behalf of a psychopath, that'll get you ahead, Caroline.
Speaker 1: Or if you get a full scholarship to play a
Speaker 1: softball at Saint Anselm's. Or if you're an idiot but
Speaker 1: you have a television smile and you look like the
Speaker 1: beer waitress on the bottle of Saint Paul Girl Beer,
Speaker 1: in which case, you, Caroline Levitt, are a different kind
Speaker 1: of dei hire, aren't you. She's tied with somebody who
Speaker 1: could challenge Levitt for dumbest by their own definition dei hire.
Speaker 1: In the Trump junta, Laurie Chavez de Rimmer, the Secretary
Speaker 1: of Labor, or more correctly, the Secretary of ripping off
Speaker 1: labor the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, issued a statement
Speaker 1: correctly excoriating Trump for the tariff hallucination and the unnecessary
Speaker 1: trade wars that will essentially shut down America's ports in
Speaker 1: the next few months and get a lot of longshoremen
Speaker 1: and warehouse people fired because, as the statement ended of
Speaker 1: quote a president's whims unquote. Secretary Chafez de Rimmer was
Speaker 1: brought on to CNN to respond, and she correctly repeated
Speaker 1: a memorized statement about how the Longshoreman's Union was essentially
Speaker 1: in agreement with Trump because they all wanted great trade.
Speaker 1: It's technically true. It's true in the same sense that
Speaker 1: I am in agreement with Trump because both of us
Speaker 1: want air so we don't stop breathing and die. I
Speaker 1: prefer to make efforts to have clean air. Trump prefers
Speaker 1: to have efforts to have poisonous air because he makes
Speaker 1: money off of it. But we degree we want air.
Speaker 1: But when anchor Pamela Brown kept hitting that one phrase,
Speaker 1: a president's whims, it was clear Secretary of Chavez Duremer
Speaker 1: didn't know what the word whims means. Brown said, whims,
Speaker 1: and it's nice to see a newsperson, especially on CNN,
Speaker 1: who is still astonished by the twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: hot and cold running bullshit coming out of this dictatorship.
Speaker 1: Raymer replied that quote sounded exactly in line with the president,
Speaker 1: to which CNN's Brown replied, in frustrated astonishment, they're criticizing him.
Speaker 1: Good for you, as to the secretary, never admit, never apologize,
Speaker 1: never fail to use your stupidity against them. As in aside,
Speaker 1: Secretary of Chavez, d Rahmer's great uncle has a star
Speaker 1: on Hollywood Walk of Fame, in part because in a
Speaker 1: Disney film once he played a tree squirrel. The runner
Speaker 1: your runner up, you could speak better than I could,
Speaker 1: That's for sure, the runner up. Speaking of tree squirrels.
Speaker 1: Jesse Waters, the Fox guy with the skeletons in his
Speaker 1: closet who hosts the eight PM show, Not the one
Speaker 1: with the skeletons in his closet who hosts the five
Speaker 1: PM show or the midnight show, nor any of the
Speaker 1: ones who have skeletons in their closet who hosts the
Speaker 1: other shows. Jesse, the one at eight o'clock, is so
Speaker 1: dumb that it is remarkable that he's not in the
Speaker 1: Trump cabinet. The Trump Government of the Undead is so
Speaker 1: secretive about Doge or Douche or whatever it's called, that
Speaker 1: they wanted to prosecute people who revealed the names of
Speaker 1: some of Musk's degenerates who were illegally wiping out entire
Speaker 1: government departments. But they brought waters At a Fox video
Speaker 1: crew into the Doge Douche Dungeon, and Musk gave the
Speaker 1: Fox propaganda addict some fresh crack. He gave them and
Speaker 1: Jesse Waters a tour of the place. And guess who
Speaker 1: blew the thing. Waters clipped the video of him and
Speaker 1: Musk and posted it with this caption exclusive an inside
Speaker 1: like at the Caves of Bureaucracy with Doge. For several minutes,
Speaker 1: I had no idea what he meant, an inside like
Speaker 1: at the Oh that's look, meathead, an inside look, Jesse,
Speaker 1: an inside look at the caves of bureaucracy. Just read
Speaker 1: these things aloud before you hit send. It takes a
Speaker 1: second and it saves you all sorts of typos. Also,
Speaker 1: don't ever go in a cave with Elon Musk. Just don't.
Speaker 1: But our winner, Miles Morrell, how much morell do we have?
Speaker 1: We got Miles Morrell. Miles says he'll be a congressman someday.
Speaker 1: Right now, though he is a quote reporter unquote with
Speaker 1: the Daily Cancer Foundation, which for obvious reason in public
Speaker 1: calls itself the Daily Caller Foundation, but it was launched
Speaker 1: by Tucker Carlson. It's the Daily Cancer Foundation anyway. Miles
Speaker 1: doesn't even try. He claims to be a reporter, and
Speaker 1: yet his homepage photo is him doing two thumbs up
Speaker 1: in front of a Trump plane. That's two thumbs up,
Speaker 1: presumably to match the fact that his two eyes are
Speaker 1: on the two opposite eyes of a sides of his
Speaker 1: own head. Miles tried to interview Congresswoman Ilhan Omar the
Speaker 1: other day. I have my problems with the congresswoman, but
Speaker 1: every time I think they amount to something important, she
Speaker 1: wins me back over. Listen carefully to Miles trying to
Speaker 1: do an interview with the congresswoman. Or if you don't
Speaker 1: like cuss words, A, why are you listening to this podcast?
Speaker 1: And B, don't listen carefully to this SoundBite congress want Omar.
Speaker 1: I'm Miles Morale with a Daily Caller News Foundation. Do
Speaker 1: you think more of your Democratic college should be traveling.
Speaker 2: To El Salvador to advocate on behalf of the bit
Speaker 2: to Goo Garcia, I think you should.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sorry, what Congress? Who should you? Why me
Speaker 1: if you're asking any of my questions right now? But
Speaker 1: here you are. Yeah? Thanks, glorious. If this were every
Speaker 1: Democrat's answer to the right wing propagandists who try to
Speaker 1: troll them, simply put, there would be few right wing propagandists. Miles,
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of the line in Monty Python's Life of
Speaker 1: Brian when Brian says that to the crowd swarming his home,
Speaker 1: and they reply, oh how shall we f off? Oh
Speaker 1: lord morel of the daily Cancer, Today's other worst person
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: This is sports Senate. Wait, check that not anymore. This
Speaker 2: is countdown with Keith Ulberman.
Speaker 1: From six oh four pm prevailing local time in England
Speaker 1: on the early evening of Thursday May sixth, nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: continuing until the day the man died on March third,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. Not a day went by, probably not an
Speaker 1: hour went by without somebody congratulating Roger Banister on becoming
Speaker 1: or having become, or being or forever being or being
Speaker 1: immortalized by being the first human to run a mile
Speaker 1: in four minutes or less, the man who broke the
Speaker 1: four minute mile. Except for one small detail, he wasn't.
Speaker 1: We cannot now comprehend what a big deal this really was.
Speaker 1: Neil Armstrong, Times, Charles Lindbergh plus George Washington Maybe. The
Speaker 1: next day, The New York Times published ten different stories
Speaker 1: about Roger Banister breaking the four minute mile barrier, plus
Speaker 1: an editorial. An editorial on the editorial page that asked
Speaker 1: if anybody in world history would ever do it again?
Speaker 1: Roger Gilbert Banister began the Times on the front page
Speaker 1: ran a mile in three minutes fifty nine point four
Speaker 1: seconds tonight to reach one of man's hitherto unattainable goals.
Speaker 1: There's just one problem. Not only was Roger Banister probably
Speaker 1: not the first man to run a mile in less
Speaker 1: than four minutes, but there is also a lot of
Speaker 1: evidence that that record was broken in May of seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy by a guy who sold fruits and vegetables from
Speaker 1: a push cart on the streets of London, a guy
Speaker 1: named Parrot. Sixty nine years later, and this is still
Speaker 1: the most famous run in the history of the world.
Speaker 1: May sixth, nineteen fifty four, on an ordinary spring evening
Speaker 1: at the if Lee Road Track at Oxford University in England,
Speaker 1: even as an unfavorable wind worked against him, Roger Banister
Speaker 1: ran through the tape in three point fifty nine to
Speaker 1: four and ran directly into not just sports history, but
Speaker 1: human history, the four minute mile, the first human ever
Speaker 1: to run that far that fast, like the first man
Speaker 1: on the moon. No matter how much farther we go,
Speaker 1: but glory is his, indefinitely, forever, always eternal, immortal. Neil Armstrong,
Speaker 1: but in shorts or there had already been a four
Speaker 1: minute mile run in seventeen seventy, And Banister has no
Speaker 1: more claim to immortality than do you or I. And
Speaker 1: this is really a story about bureaucracy supporting bureaucracy, and
Speaker 1: what the experts call recency bias, and a lot of racism.
Speaker 1: And the story should be about a guy who used
Speaker 1: to sell fruits and vegetables on the streets of London,
Speaker 1: and who ran his spare time for money in the
Speaker 1: decade before the American Revolution. And his name was Parrot,
Speaker 1: as in look, maby, I know a dead parrot when
Speaker 1: I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
Speaker 1: We begin in the pages of a British book dated
Speaker 1: from seventeen ninety four, which seems to be for you
Speaker 1: back to the future fans, a kind of Gray's Sports Almanac.
Speaker 1: The seventeen ninety four tome bears an amazingly modern title
Speaker 1: The Sports Magazine, and its chronology of top sports events
Speaker 1: of recent years past includes for the year seventeen seventy
Speaker 1: this quote seventeen seventy May ninth, James Parrot a costermonger.
Speaker 1: A costermonger sold fruits and vegetables from a pushcart on street.
Speaker 1: James Parrott, a costumonger, ran the length of Old Street viz.
Speaker 1: From the charterhouse wall in Goswell Street to Shoreditch Church Gates,
Speaker 1: which is a measured mile, in four minutes. Fifteen guineas
Speaker 1: to five were betted he did not run the ground
Speaker 1: in four minutes and a half. So that's it. I
Speaker 1: am besmirching the immortality of Saint Roger Banister and everything
Speaker 1: you will see in the newspapers about him over the
Speaker 1: weekend because of fifty one words about some guy racing
Speaker 1: against an eighteenth century watch in the year seventeen seventy,
Speaker 1: and the story wasn't even published until twenty four years later. Seriously, seriously,
Speaker 1: there is nothing else to say about James Parrott. That
Speaker 1: snippet from that book is all that researchers have ever
Speaker 1: found or found out about James Parrott. No obituary, no nothing,
Speaker 1: no four minute mile, no confirmation he ever existed. Besides which,
Speaker 1: as every modern sports fan will tell you, the athletes
Speaker 1: of today are the great, greater, greatest of all time. Goats.
Speaker 1: If the record book says nobody ran a four minute
Speaker 1: mile until nineteen fifty four. Of course, the record books
Speaker 1: are right. Since seventeen seventy, humans have evolved, health has evolved,
Speaker 1: training has evolved. Why in seventeen seventy you couldn't even
Speaker 1: accurately measure a mile, let alone measure exactly four minutes. Actually,
Speaker 1: agricultural chains, designed to resolve who owned what property and
Speaker 1: where international borders were had been introduced in sixteen twenty
Speaker 1: and have proved to be at worst only off by
Speaker 1: around two fifths of an inch over a mile. And
Speaker 1: if you're saying agracultural chains, you don't use agricultural chains
Speaker 1: in sports, let me ask you this. What do they
Speaker 1: use in National Football League games to check whether or
Speaker 1: not it's a first down? Okay, we're giving them the
Speaker 1: accuracy of the agricultural chains we still use today in
Speaker 1: our pro sports. You could measure several blocks of London
Speaker 1: in seventeen seventy and say from way back there to
Speaker 1: right over here in front of the church, that is
Speaker 1: exactly a mile, Governor, But how would you time it
Speaker 1: four minutes exactly? What? Did they use? A really good
Speaker 1: sundial No, that had a thing called a chronometer. The
Speaker 1: chronometer was perfected by seventeen sixty one. You may know
Speaker 1: the chronometer as a Swiss watch, or as you might
Speaker 1: also know it a rolex. So this Parrot runs a mile,
Speaker 1: or maybe he runs a mile plus two fifths of
Speaker 1: an inch, and he is timed by several guys with rolllexes,
Speaker 1: and they all have the same score. He did it
Speaker 1: in exactly four minutes. If you're still not convinced, if
Speaker 1: you're still googling Roger Banister's descendants so they can sue
Speaker 1: this idiot Olderman in his podcast, let me emphasize the
Speaker 1: part that convinced me that a man named Parrot did
Speaker 1: run a four minute mile two months and four days
Speaker 1: after the Boston massacre unleashed the events that would culminate
Speaker 1: in the American Revolution. Permit me to reread that last
Speaker 1: sentence about James Parrot's run from Gray's Sports almana I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: from the Sporting magazine of seventeen ninety four. Quote, fifteen
Speaker 1: guineas to five were betted he did not run the
Speaker 1: ground in four minutes and a half. This guy Parrot
Speaker 1: bet on himself and got three to one odds, and
Speaker 1: the five guineas wagered. Here that would be worth about
Speaker 1: fifty five hundred dollars in today's money, meaning this was
Speaker 1: no eighteenth century Roger Banister hoping to break a record
Speaker 1: for Queen and Country. This was a guy who did
Speaker 1: this for money, for the equivalent in winnings of about
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand dollars, at least as much as his annual
Speaker 1: income might have been selling fruits and vegetables from a cart,
Speaker 1: and the way it's phrased in that magazine, we don't know.
Speaker 1: If more than one bet of fifteen guineas to five
Speaker 1: was placed, he might have won thirty four thousand dollars
Speaker 1: or fifty one thousand dollars or five hundred and ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Because this was for money, the loser or
Speaker 1: losers who bet he could not finish the race in
Speaker 1: four and a half minutes had to be satisfied that
Speaker 1: he had done it in less than four and a half,
Speaker 1: in this case, in four As we know from our
Speaker 1: own times, losers now like to claim they didn't lose,
Speaker 1: and will go to any length to convince others they
Speaker 1: did not lose. But James Parrott got his money, which
Speaker 1: means that the loser or losers believed James Parrott really
Speaker 1: raised a mile and did it in four minutes. I'm
Speaker 1: sold antiquated books and four minute miles round one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty three years before the first four minute mile,
Speaker 1: and costermongers and agricultural change. They may come and go
Speaker 1: and may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, but money is money,
Speaker 1: and James Parrott was given the equivalent of his annual
Speaker 1: salary at least once because somebody who thought he could
Speaker 1: not do it agreed, Yeah, I was wrong. He really, really,
Speaker 1: really really did just run the mile in four minutes. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, the whole account in the book could be wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm old enough that I was actually on the air
Speaker 1: doing sportscast on the radio network of United Press International
Speaker 1: on April twenty first, nineteen eighty when Rosie Ruiz quote
Speaker 1: one unquote the Boston Marathon. Then it turned out two
Speaker 1: people had seen Rosy Ruiz burst out of the crowd
Speaker 1: of spectators on Commonwealth Avenue and start running alongside the
Speaker 1: men runners. And then it turned out that while she
Speaker 1: was supposedly completing the nineteen seventy nine New York Marathon,
Speaker 1: she had struck up a conversation with a freelance photographer
Speaker 1: on the subway, and the two of them went to
Speaker 1: the finish line together, and Rosie Ruiz then told officials
Speaker 1: she had just finished the race. And Rosie Ruiz was
Speaker 1: a total fraud in two different marathons. Maybe the seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy four minute mile of James Parrott was just inaccurate.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was just an inside joke or a misheard
Speaker 1: rumor or a typo, or he took the subway with
Speaker 1: Rosie Ruiz, or it was a joke by whoever wrote
Speaker 1: the book. I've told you the story before about the
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve Saint Louis Brown's second baseman named Proctor, and
Speaker 1: nobody could find anything about him. And then it turned
Speaker 1: out Procter was the Western Union operator who used to
Speaker 1: make up all the official scorecards after each game, and
Speaker 1: one day he decided he always wanted to be a
Speaker 1: Major League ballplayer, so he put himself in the scorecard.
Speaker 1: Maybe James Parrott was the author of this the sports
Speaker 1: magazine or his four minute miles and Monty Python jokes go. Now,
Speaker 1: that's what I call a dead parrot. So if it's
Speaker 1: a mistake, if it's a typo, if it's a hype job,
Speaker 1: if it's Rosie Ruiz, if it's Leu Proctor, Roger Banister
Speaker 1: is safe. Now he's not because there was also a
Speaker 1: runner named Powell, and Powell in seventeen eighty seven said
Speaker 1: he could run a mile in four minutes, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't messing around. He bet a thousand guineas that he
Speaker 1: could do it, one point one million dollars in today's money.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but he ran on a famous
Speaker 1: English running track near Hampton Court, and five days before
Speaker 1: Christmas of seventeen eighty seven, he ran a time trial
Speaker 1: so that the gamblers could all come over and see
Speaker 1: what shape he was in and whether they should bet
Speaker 1: for him or bet against him. And he did it
Speaker 1: in the time trial in four minutes and three seconds.
Speaker 1: And when Powell said the betters could see what shape
Speaker 1: he was in, he really meant it. He was dedicated
Speaker 1: to his cause. Five days before Christmas and this guy
Speaker 1: ran a mile naked. All that was in the papers.
Speaker 1: What happened to the actual race, Yes, we don't know that.
Speaker 1: Nobody has ever found that newspaper. Nobody's ever found an
Speaker 1: account of the race. Only the time trial so we
Speaker 1: have to go under the assumption that Powell never did
Speaker 1: better than four to oh three. But once again, Roger
Speaker 1: Banister's four minute mile has withstood the test of time.
Speaker 1: Kinda bah, No, Actually it hasn't. There's also another guy
Speaker 1: named Weller. Weller was famous enough as a professional runner
Speaker 1: of the time that when he said he could run
Speaker 1: a mile on the Banbury Road in Oxford, the newspapers
Speaker 1: of the day all showed up to preview it, to
Speaker 1: talk about his two brothers, who were also professional runners,
Speaker 1: and to cover his attempt on October tenth, seventeen ninety six.
Speaker 1: And there it is in the papers. Weller of Oxford
Speaker 1: runs a mile in three minutes fifty eight seconds, not
Speaker 1: only one hundred and fifty eight years before Roger Banister,
Speaker 1: but a second and a half faster than Roger Banister.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. If somebody really ran a mile
Speaker 1: in three fifty nine or three fifty eight at the
Speaker 1: time of the American Revolution, wouldn't that stand out as
Speaker 1: such an impossible performance, then, such an anomaly so startling
Speaker 1: that it would be viewed in the same way we
Speaker 1: would view news coming up on Monday, that somebody now
Speaker 1: had just run the mile in three minutes flat. I mean,
Speaker 1: if somebody ran the mile in three minutes flat, we
Speaker 1: would check to see if the guy was a space
Speaker 1: alien or a time traveler. Wouldn't They have been amazed
Speaker 1: on October tenth, seventeen ninety six, disbelieving what they had heard,
Speaker 1: not at all. And that's the second half of the
Speaker 1: story of the day. Roger Banister did not break the
Speaker 1: four minute barrier. Research and computers and simulations show that
Speaker 1: people in the seventeen eighties were consistently running the mile
Speaker 1: in four minutes and eighteen seconds, four minutes and twenty seconds,
Speaker 1: four minutes and fifteen seconds, if the info about is right,
Speaker 1: three minutes and fifty eight seconds. All the time, these
Speaker 1: numbers were being put up by all kinds of runners.
Speaker 1: So a four minute mile would have been great, but
Speaker 1: not out of context, not in seventeen ninety six. And
Speaker 1: then you have to ask, if it happened, where are
Speaker 1: all those records. Who were all those four minute eighteen
Speaker 1: guys and four minute three second guys and three fifty
Speaker 1: eight guys. What happened to the records? Well, see that's
Speaker 1: another scandal. Those eighteenth century records were erased in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Because richer, slower people in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: wanted to say they held the records, they erased the
Speaker 1: record book. That part of the story, and the additional
Speaker 1: sad truth that much of the claims about Roger Banister
Speaker 1: are really really racist. Next, we know Roger Banister really
Speaker 1: did run a three minute and fifty nine second mile
Speaker 1: on May sixth, nineteen fifty four in England. It was
Speaker 1: timed and announced to a waiting crowd by no less
Speaker 1: a figure than Norris mcwherder, who was later the founder
Speaker 1: or co founder of the Guinness Book of World Records.
Speaker 1: And everybody who was there saw history and was part
Speaker 1: of an impossible dream coming true. And as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: the next day the New York Times actually had an
Speaker 1: editorial asking whether or not anybody would ever do it again.
Speaker 1: There is considerable evidence, as I've laid out here, that
Speaker 1: it was done before, like two hundred years before. But
Speaker 1: if you were still not convinced that, no, no matter
Speaker 1: what else it was, Roger Banister's three minute fifty nine
Speaker 1: point four second mile on May sixth, nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: was not first four minute mile. If James Parrott and
Speaker 1: the naked runner Powell of Hampton Court and Weller seventeen
Speaker 1: ninety six. Don't convince you there is also this. There
Speaker 1: is a sports historian named Peter Radford, himself the bronze
Speaker 1: medalist in two sprints at the nineteen sixty Olympics in Rome,
Speaker 1: and he brought the story of Parrot and Powell and
Speaker 1: Weller to the forefront in the British press nearly twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. This man found them because he was looking
Speaker 1: for and finding the records of more than six hundred
Speaker 1: running races in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Running against
Speaker 1: the clock, against each other, usually for money, was not
Speaker 1: only the most popular professional sport in Britain at that time,
Speaker 1: it was also probably the first. And with so many
Speaker 1: races and especially winning and losing times recorded, Peter Radford
Speaker 1: had data to work with. When guys didn't run a
Speaker 1: four minute mile, how fast did they run it? How
Speaker 1: fast were these professionals going the average over other distances
Speaker 1: in say seventeen eighty nine, what was the range of times?
Speaker 1: And his computer looked at all of these races, six
Speaker 1: hundred or so, and all of the times and all
Speaker 1: of the speeds, and it spit out this conclusion. Factoring
Speaker 1: in the margin of error, Radford wrote, the best possible
Speaker 1: one mile time would be anywhere between four minutes, thirteen
Speaker 1: seconds and exactly four minutes. So no, you cannot say
Speaker 1: James Parrott ran the first four minute mile in seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy and Weller ran the first sub four minute mile
Speaker 1: in seventeen ninety six, not with certainty, but I think
Speaker 1: you can say with certainty that somebody did it before
Speaker 1: the year eighteen hundred, and that when Roger Banister crashed
Speaker 1: through the tape at Oxford at six oh four Greenwich
Speaker 1: meantime on the evening of Thursday May sixth, nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: and the track announcer Norris McWhorter announced that Roger Banister's
Speaker 1: time in the mile was and he gave it a
Speaker 1: desperately long pause, by all accounts for a minute fifty
Speaker 1: nine unfall ten seconds. The moment that happened, Roger Banister
Speaker 1: became at best the second man to run a mile
Speaker 1: in four minutes or less, but more likely he was
Speaker 1: like the twenty second or the two hundred and twenty second.
Speaker 1: So why why didn't anybody know this? Why did Roger
Speaker 1: Banister live a life of unceasing, undiminished and sorry, undeserved fame.
Speaker 1: And that guy Weller who may have run the race
Speaker 1: a second faster and one hundred and fifty eight years earlier,
Speaker 1: why don't we even know Weller's first name? All sports
Speaker 1: are based on history. Records are made to be broken.
Speaker 1: The older the record, the louder the break. Who screwed
Speaker 1: this up? How did we lose Weller in the nooks
Speaker 1: and cranny of history. We didn't lose them. It wasn't
Speaker 1: an error. It was deliberate. And that's where this gets
Speaker 1: to be a crime. Our historian and ex Olympic runner
Speaker 1: mister Radford quoted another ancient book, British Rural Sports by J. H. Walsh,
Speaker 1: which was published in eighteen eighty eight, and in it
Speaker 1: all the dozens of speed and distant events had two
Speaker 1: sets of records. One for professionals like Parrot and Powell
Speaker 1: and Weller, the ones who ran for money, the ones
Speaker 1: on whom people bet, the ones who bet on themselves.
Speaker 1: There was that set of records, and then another set
Speaker 1: of records which was given far more weight and far
Speaker 1: more importance for the amateurs. By the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: Radford wrote, the professional records had been erased from these books, expunged,
Speaker 1: not forgotten, removed. Why because the professionals were far better
Speaker 1: than the amateurs. No amateur held the record in the mile.
Speaker 1: It was all professionals, but the amateurs were in charge.
Speaker 1: They were the British upper class. They raced not for money,
Speaker 1: but for sport. So the amateurs simply did what the
Speaker 1: upper class always does in this situation. They erased the
Speaker 1: records of all the professionals. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: they also erased all records set by women. The British
Speaker 1: obsession with the superiority of the amateur over the professional.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen the movie Chariots of Fire, you
Speaker 1: already know exactly what I mean. It spread throughout the
Speaker 1: world through the Olympics. That's why Jim Thorpe lost all
Speaker 1: his gold medals from the nineteen twelve Games. Why the
Speaker 1: greatest all around athlete ever died in poverty because he
Speaker 1: had once played minor league baseball to make some money
Speaker 1: in the summer, and everybody knew about it, and nobody
Speaker 1: thought they'd hold it against it, But then they held
Speaker 1: it against him. He was a professional, so his records
Speaker 1: did not count like James Parrot or fill in the
Speaker 1: blank here Powell or I don't remember his first name Weller.
Speaker 1: So the world record in the mile as of the
Speaker 1: year eighteen sixty one was credited to a man, an
Speaker 1: amateur named Matthew Green. Matthew Green was the fastest man
Speaker 1: in human history four minutes and forty six seconds. Four
Speaker 1: minutes and forty six seconds. In my twenties, I might
Speaker 1: have come close to that number. By nineteen thirteen, the
Speaker 1: International Amateur Athletics Federation had taken over, and it recognized
Speaker 1: a runner from Cornell, not me, a different runner from Cornell,
Speaker 1: as the all time outdoor record holder in the mile
Speaker 1: four minutes and thirteen seconds, John Paul Jones, one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty three years after James Parrott. The indoor record
Speaker 1: in the mile was then held by a man named
Speaker 1: Abel Kiviat four eighteen and two. I met Abel Kiviat.
Speaker 1: I interviewed him when he was ninety. I wish I
Speaker 1: had known about James Parrot. Then I didn't. Abel and
Speaker 1: I talked about his roommate at the nineteen twelve Olympics,
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe got to tell you that story sometime too,
Speaker 1: But boy, Abel Kiviat and I could have had a
Speaker 1: conversation about amateurs versus professionals and whether or not his
Speaker 1: record was actually a record. Anyway, you can see where
Speaker 1: this is all going, and we are almost at our
Speaker 1: proverbial finish line. Not only did history forget the great
Speaker 1: athletes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries like Parrot and
Speaker 1: Powell and Weller, who if they did not break the
Speaker 1: four minute mile, they came damn close and did a
Speaker 1: lot better than my friend Abel Kiviat did, or my
Speaker 1: Cornell guy John Paul Jones, to say another, of Matthew
Speaker 1: Green four minutes and forty six seconds, What did you
Speaker 1: do stop for lunch? Not only were the remarkable athletes
Speaker 1: like Parrot and Powell and Weller forgotten, they were buried deliberately.
Speaker 1: It makes the subject of the Roger Banister four minute
Speaker 1: mile that everybody celebrates with almost undiminished astonishment every year
Speaker 1: at this time. It makes all this a little less
Speaker 1: trivial and a little bit more nefarious and wrong and ugly.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Ugly and Banister, there is one other component
Speaker 1: to this story. In the nineteen nineties, having been the
Speaker 1: god of the four minute mile for four decades, having
Speaker 1: been celebrated every day for breaking a record that was
Speaker 1: probably broken one hundred and eighty three years before. Roger
Speaker 1: Banister was asked about the new generation of runners, those
Speaker 1: of African descent on September twelfth, nineteen ninety five, Sir
Speaker 1: Roger Banister explained, quote, it's certainly obvious when you see
Speaker 1: an all black sprint final that there must be something
Speaker 1: rather special about their anatomy or physiology which produces these
Speaker 1: outstanding successes. And indeed there may be, but we don't
Speaker 1: know what it is. Some countries have the good fortune
Speaker 1: to have a high proportion of black sprinters and hurdlers
Speaker 1: end quote. Nineteen years later, Banister was still driving right
Speaker 1: into the Eugenics lane, sounding just enough like Jimmy the
Speaker 1: Greek Snyder to make you squirm. I love watching people
Speaker 1: like Usain Bolt, Banister said. The West Africans, of course,
Speaker 1: have an inbuilt advantage, having been transported as slaves to
Speaker 1: the West Indies. Only the toughest endured. They have astonishing
Speaker 1: muscle composition, with those fast fibers and superior genes. I
Speaker 1: will leave it to you and to his maker. An
Speaker 1: assessment of how much of Roger Banister was patronizing, how
Speaker 1: much was him trying to rationalize how his time had
Speaker 1: been bettered by nearly ten percent, and how much of
Speaker 1: it was just sheer racism. But I will note that
Speaker 1: in what Banister said is another reason to believe that
Speaker 1: the idea that he was the first human to run
Speaker 1: a four minute mile is laugh out loud ridiculous. What
Speaker 1: about all of the runners of color over the centuries,
Speaker 1: over the millennia, in Africa and South America and elsewhere
Speaker 1: on this globe. By Banister's own disturbing logic, certainly some
Speaker 1: of them must have beaten him to breaking the four
Speaker 1: minute tape. No, let me close with this, I don't
Speaker 1: know for certain who ran the first four minute mile
Speaker 1: or when. For all we know, it was broken two
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and for that matter, so was the
Speaker 1: present world record of three point forty three point thirteen.
Speaker 1: Might have been James Parrott or Powell or Weller whose
Speaker 1: first names we don't know, or someone so lost to
Speaker 1: history that we don't know their first name or their
Speaker 1: last name, or their country. We don't know who who
Speaker 1: it was. But no matter what you hear, or see
Speaker 1: or read, in this Weekend Ahead. It's sure as hell
Speaker 1: was not Roger Banister, which brings us lastly to missus
Speaker 1: Roger Banister, Moira Elva Jacobson Banister, daughter of a Swedish economist.
Speaker 1: According to Roger Banister, his wife didn't know a lick
Speaker 1: about sports, let alone about running, let alone about him
Speaker 1: running for a time. Roger Banister once said, my wife
Speaker 1: thought I had run four miles in one minute. You know,
Speaker 1: as I've been thinking about this and researching that story,
Speaker 1: you might as well go with that. Four miles in
Speaker 1: one minute no more ridiculous than thinking that Roger Banister
Speaker 1: was the first man to run one mile in four minutes.
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do here for
Speaker 1: one day. Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John
Speaker 1: Phillip Schanel, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and
Speaker 1: performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration
Speaker 1: and keyboards. Mister Ray was on guitars, the bass and
Speaker 1: the drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. And no,
Speaker 1: Roger Bannister did not become the first human being to
Speaker 1: run the four minute mile. Not in the whole of
Speaker 1: that Millennium christ Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
Speaker 1: by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The
Speaker 1: sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written
Speaker 1: by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music
Speaker 1: arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My
Speaker 1: announcer today was my friend, Nancy Faust. Everything else was,
Speaker 1: as ever, my fault. So let's countdown for today, Day
Speaker 1: one hundred and six of America held hostage, just three
Speaker 1: and fifty seven days until the scheduled end of his
Speaker 1: lame duck and lame brained term. Unless the Deep State
Speaker 1: removes him sooner, What where the actuarial tables do? The
Speaker 1: next scheduled countdown is Thursday, as always bulletins, as the
Speaker 1: news warrants, remember in peach Trump, it won't work now.
Speaker 1: It will, however, win the Democrats the mid terms. And
Speaker 1: I want some polling on a presidential recall vote. How
Speaker 1: difficult is this? Stop with the focus groups? Chuck until
Speaker 1: next time. I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
Speaker 1: and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.