Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
Speaker 1: correct question has been lying there, hidden invisible in the
Speaker 1: forest for the trees. Mary Trump finally saw it, and
Speaker 1: she has asked it. Quote, why the hell do they
Speaker 1: keep giving him cognitive tests? That's it, isn't it? I'll
Speaker 1: add a corollary, why the hell do they keep giving
Speaker 1: him cognitive tests? Almost exactly six months apart? He's boasting
Speaker 1: again about having passed one. We believe it was three
Speaker 1: weeks ago Friday, October tenth, that Walter Reid, but who knows,
Speaker 1: during what they first called his annual physical until somebody
Speaker 1: realized he'd already had his annual physical last spring when
Speaker 1: he also boasted about having just taken one April eleventh.
Speaker 1: That's two cognitive tests April eleventh and probably October tenth.
Speaker 1: Those dates are six months apart, one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: two days. If they are not giving him pre scheduled
Speaker 1: cognitive tests every six months, that's a hell of a coincidence.
Speaker 1: Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests?
Speaker 1: And I'll add a second carollary to Mary Trump's real question,
Speaker 1: why did they give him an MRI this time? Is
Speaker 1: this the first MRI. What was it of I mean,
Speaker 1: it may be irrelevant. I once had an MRI to
Speaker 1: see how my sinuses were draining into the back of
Speaker 1: my throat. You really can get MRIs for almost trivial stuff,
Speaker 1: but you do not get cognitive tests for trivial stuff
Speaker 1: every six months. And we know all this because Trump
Speaker 1: can't stop himself. He keeps talking about these tests. He
Speaker 1: keeps thinking he's he's won some sort of game show
Speaker 1: or scholarship or Nobell cognitive test prize. On board air
Speaker 1: Force one this week he boasted reporters about acing the
Speaker 1: MRI and about passing the cognition test three weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Trump first tried to insist it was an IQ test
Speaker 1: so he could insult representatives of Casio Cortes and Crockett.
Speaker 1: Then he slipped and he admitted it was a cognitive test,
Speaker 1: and then he described the test. This was this past Monday,
Speaker 1: a board air Force one.
Speaker 2: Have her passed. Like the exams that I decided to
Speaker 2: take when I was at Walter Reine, I took that
Speaker 2: was a very hard They really have to do tests,
Speaker 2: I guess in a certain way. But the cognitive tests
Speaker 2: let AOC go against Trump, Let Jasmin go against from
Speaker 2: why do they get a jazz? And the first couple
Speaker 2: of questions, there is a tiger an elephant that you have,
Speaker 2: you know, when you get up to about five or six,
Speaker 2: and then when you get up to ten and twenty
Speaker 2: and twenty five, they couldn't come close to answering any
Speaker 2: of those questions.
Speaker 1: And this why do they keep giving him cognitive tests?
Speaker 1: The audio a little less clear was also from onboard
Speaker 1: Air Force one from April eleventh, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be a little different than they took
Speaker 2: a cocnitive tests.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I want to tell you whether.
Speaker 2: That I got a reanswer, right as I've.
Speaker 1: Done about lord times and I've taken I've taken the
Speaker 1: cognitive tests.
Speaker 2: Any four times.
Speaker 1: I'm done.
Speaker 2: I've got nothing wrong. That's when the American people want.
Speaker 1: That was during his twenty twenty five annual physical, his
Speaker 1: first annual physical. Why the hell do they keep giving
Speaker 1: him cognitive tests? And it's not like these are the
Speaker 1: only two person woman man camera TV. That was now
Speaker 1: five years and three months ago, Like.
Speaker 3: You'll go person, woman, man camera TV. So they say,
Speaker 3: could you repeat that? So I said, yeah, so it's
Speaker 3: person woman, man camera TV. Okay, that's very good. If
Speaker 3: you get it in order, you get extra points.
Speaker 1: He said he had taken that test recently at Walter
Speaker 1: Reed recently in twenty twenty. Sometime after that, his own
Speaker 1: White House physician said that Trump had taken the Montreal
Speaker 1: Cognitive Assessment in twenty eighteen. Why the hell do they
Speaker 1: keep giving him cognitive tests? A cognitive test and he
Speaker 1: has used the word this time A dementia or other
Speaker 1: brain impairment screening test simple triage on October tenth. That's one.
Speaker 1: Then there's the one in April. That's two. He was
Speaker 1: boasting in January of last year about having passed one,
Speaker 1: kept boasting about it through the spring. Only the animals
Speaker 1: they asked him about in that one were different than
Speaker 1: the ones he just mentioned in the one he just took.
Speaker 1: Was that a third test? Last year? Throughout Biden's presidency,
Speaker 1: Trump talked about these tests. In twenty twenty, he repeatedly
Speaker 1: challenged Biden to take one. He said in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: he had recently taken one. That's three or four. We
Speaker 1: know for sure. He took the Montreal Cognitive in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: That was definitely at least the fourth, probably the fifth.
Speaker 1: Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests?
Speaker 1: That's two in the last six months, seemingly time to
Speaker 1: be six months apart. That is certainly four in the
Speaker 1: last six years. He has previously said he's taken four
Speaker 1: of these tests, maybe five, he can't remember. It could
Speaker 1: easily be five. In fact, it could easily be six.
Speaker 1: Anybody remember when he disappeared way back when, around oh
Speaker 1: decades a labor day after that three and a half
Speaker 1: hour farewell roast of a cabinet meeting, where was he?
Speaker 1: Did they test him then? Then he disappeared for another
Speaker 1: five days at the end of September. Did they test
Speaker 1: him then? Well, we are deep in the woods again.
Speaker 1: Let us return to the simplicity of the Mary Trump question.
Speaker 1: It is absolutely certain that they keep giving the President
Speaker 1: of the United States tests to see if he can
Speaker 1: pass the minimum standard for cognitive capacity, to pass the
Speaker 1: minimum simplest threshold for not having some form of impairment,
Speaker 1: maybe dementia. It certainly is a reasonable inference to suggest
Speaker 1: that giving them on April eleventh and October tenth suggests
Speaker 1: they are now scheduling for regular tests, and although he
Speaker 1: slipped in his rush to try to explain how much
Speaker 1: smarter he is than Jasmine Crockett or Alexandria or Casio
Speaker 1: Cortes or whichever elected Democratic woman of color is next
Speaker 1: on his shit list, it is clear that at some
Speaker 1: point somebody convinced him, or he convinced himself, that this
Speaker 1: was an IQ test and that he's, to quote his
Speaker 1: own words again, a very stable genius. It says so
Speaker 1: on the test with the picture of the giraffe on it.
Speaker 1: Even though the only word in that description of very
Speaker 1: stable genius that appears to apply is very. We can
Speaker 1: all agree Donald Trump is very There are two little
Speaker 1: side points I'd like to make before we drop this
Speaker 1: for now. I often wonder where he conflated the concept
Speaker 1: of political asylum and mental asylums. He can't shake it.
Speaker 1: He says it every two weeks. He will never be
Speaker 1: convinced that people were here because they were granted asylum
Speaker 1: are therefore from asylums. This can be simple, good old
Speaker 1: fashioned American stupidity. He deduced this when he was a kid,
Speaker 1: the way a kid I knew at age thirteen insisted
Speaker 1: the phrase was for all intensive purposes, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: Trump would not and could not shake his mistake about
Speaker 1: the word asylum or this asylum stuff is somehow wedged
Speaker 1: into his mind because it's connected to his own experience
Speaker 1: with psychological exams, which he must have taken as a kid, since,
Speaker 1: as his own father euphemistically put it decades ago, Trump
Speaker 1: was a rough kid who had to be taken out
Speaker 1: of the public schools and sent to the New York
Speaker 1: Military Academy NIMA because well, in my prep school days,
Speaker 1: when our football and hockey and basketball and baseball teams
Speaker 1: used to play against NIMA, all the kids at NeiMa
Speaker 1: were supposedly there because some authority had given Dad a choice.
Speaker 1: It's there or it's the reformatory. I just keep wondering
Speaker 1: if the word asylum is stuck inside Trump because he
Speaker 1: had to face that as a kid. Did the folks
Speaker 1: threaten him with it? The second point is less speculative.
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard this before that clip I played from April.
Speaker 1: The last time he was boasting about the last cognitive
Speaker 1: test he passed. He said that at Walter Reed they
Speaker 1: gave him a thorough physical exam as well, and it
Speaker 1: showed he had a good heart and a very good soul.
Speaker 1: You heard me a good song. Your physical showed that
Speaker 1: your soul is just fine. It's not an irregular soul,
Speaker 1: and your soul is not hyper extended, and you don't
Speaker 1: have Pyrone's soul disease. Why the hell do they keep
Speaker 1: giving him cognitive tests? I think contained in that last
Speaker 1: clip that might be our answer right there. Meanwhile, in
Speaker 1: another endless topic, Trump has said something that sounds like
Speaker 1: he's not going to try to stay in office past
Speaker 1: January twentieth, twenty twenty nine, and since it was preceded
Speaker 1: by only one full minute of lies about how great
Speaker 1: the economy is and how he got peace in the
Speaker 1: Middle East, and how nobody's ever been as popular as
Speaker 1: he is, Why the hell do they keep giving him
Speaker 1: cognitive tests? The nation's most gullible people, the Washington Press Corps,
Speaker 1: seems to have concluded that he's not trying to mislead, dissemble,
Speaker 1: or you know, just lie to them again. The British kid,
Speaker 1: it's always a goddamn British kid, who they supposedly had
Speaker 1: fired as the editor of the playbook newsletter for Politico
Speaker 1: months ago, but he's still there. Yesterday, wrote, So even
Speaker 1: Trump says the Constitution is clear on this point. Can
Speaker 1: we all now put this to bed? No, Sonny, we
Speaker 1: can't because you didn't ask Trump what the word clear means,
Speaker 1: did you? Huh?
Speaker 3: Huh huh.
Speaker 1: Persuading for Johnson says that he told you that there's
Speaker 1: no time to amend the constitution to allow.
Speaker 2: You to serve a third term.
Speaker 1: Is that an accurate representation.
Speaker 2: Of I don't want to even talk about that, because
Speaker 2: you know, the sad thing is I have my highest
Speaker 2: numbers I've ever had, and I would say that if
Speaker 2: you read it, it's pretty clear I'm not allowed to run.
Speaker 2: Stumid I missed him.
Speaker 1: Dear listener, if you would please get out your meme
Speaker 1: of the guy tapping his head to indicate how smart
Speaker 1: he is. Can't be accused of trying to run for
Speaker 1: a third term if you cancel the twenty twenty nine
Speaker 1: election or make some other extra constitutional violence based attempt
Speaker 1: to not leave the White House. Huh? There is still
Speaker 1: something rattling around in that damaged brain of Trump's. Hi
Speaker 1: the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests that
Speaker 1: assumes there will be some sort of mass uprising by
Speaker 1: others to keep him in power forever, one that he
Speaker 1: may or may need to himself stoke or can happen organically.
Speaker 1: And if you don't believe that, let me ask you
Speaker 1: what was January sixth. Trump has specifically said he didn't
Speaker 1: think he would want to run as vice president and
Speaker 1: let somebody else occupy the presidency ceremonially while he runs
Speaker 1: the country. But again, what part of that is a no?
Speaker 1: I don't think I'd like to do it. Oh I
Speaker 1: did it anyway. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson,
Speaker 1: taking time off from and acting the passive aggressive dissolving
Speaker 1: of Congress and taking even more time off from his
Speaker 1: busy schedule of not knowing anything about the latest news
Speaker 1: or controversy or the rules of the House, he said
Speaker 1: he didn't see a path for Trump to serve a
Speaker 1: third term, quoting, Hey, and I have talked about the
Speaker 1: constrictions of the Constitution. Again, where's the no. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, the only escaped circus elephant in the Senate,
Speaker 1: Tommy Tubberville, said, if Trump wanted to quote, go round
Speaker 1: the constitution quote, don't ever close a book on him.
Speaker 1: And of course, Steve Bannon told the economists that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't listen to Trump that there is a plan in
Speaker 1: place to keep Trump in place in office, and quote
Speaker 1: at the appropriate time, we'll lay out what the plan is.
Speaker 1: It's easy to dismiss morons like Tubberville and mentally damaged
Speaker 1: fascists like Bannon and presume this is all bluster. It
Speaker 1: is not all bluster if it is not obvious that
Speaker 1: while you and I and a vast majority of Americans
Speaker 1: have been raised to believe the Constitution and the laws are,
Speaker 1: if perhaps not, the sacred documents the Republicans like to
Speaker 1: pretend they believe they are. We believe they are there
Speaker 1: to keep chaos and evil in relative check. But Trump
Speaker 1: and the snakes he has enabled and supported see them
Speaker 1: merely as inconvenient impediments. For at least four years, they
Speaker 1: have been building up the phony resume for the revisionists
Speaker 1: drawn out of thin air. View of the twenty second
Speaker 1: Amendment term limits, it's two terms. That's it. Plus you
Speaker 1: can serve out up to two years of somebody else's
Speaker 1: unexpired term and then get elected twice. That's it. Two elections.
Speaker 1: An absolute hard time limit of nine years and one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty three days, not one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: two days, because there'd have to be a leap year
Speaker 1: if you took the end of somebody else's unserved term.
Speaker 1: The revisionist version of this, of course, is that this
Speaker 1: only applies to someone being elected to two concective terms.
Speaker 1: This useful bullshit rationalizes that from the twenty second Amendment
Speaker 1: point of view, Trump is right now only in his
Speaker 1: first term. As I've pointed out countless times, this bullshit
Speaker 1: also has the invaluable benefit of keeping Obama or Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton or George Bush, for whatever that's worth, from ever
Speaker 1: running again. Only Trump. It's nonsense, of course. Presidential immunity
Speaker 1: is nonsense. Of course, masked anonymous thug probably recruited from
Speaker 1: right wing militia shooting ministers in the face with tear
Speaker 1: gas while calling themselves ice is also nonsense. Actually, thanks
Speaker 1: to Trump, and thanks to this corrupt decrepit soul is
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, what sixty percent, seventy percent, one hundred percent
Speaker 1: of American public life is now nonsense. Go to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court with the non consecutive terms fantasy and see
Speaker 1: how quickly sam Alito can turn that into law. Still,
Speaker 1: my gut has always told me that the extra constitutional
Speaker 1: theft that Trump favors and really dreams about the most
Speaker 1: is not some loophole shot into the twenty second Amendment
Speaker 1: by Missus Alito and her flags, nor even a military takeover.
Speaker 1: What he wants is for everybody to just agree with
Speaker 1: him that a he deserves another term because those evil
Speaker 1: Democrats wasted so much of his first term with the
Speaker 1: investigation of the Russia Russia Russia truth about his conspiracies
Speaker 1: with Putin, and that b he deserves another term, maybe
Speaker 1: a fourth one, because the twenty twenty election was quote
Speaker 1: stolen from him, even though he was president at the
Speaker 1: time and all the institutions that supervised the elections and
Speaker 1: investigated his nonsensical charges for the last five years were
Speaker 1: under his control. Either way, Trump does not want to
Speaker 1: have to be elected again in twenty twenty nine because
Speaker 1: another election means another chance to lose an election. He
Speaker 1: wants to remain president because everybody says he's so wonderful
Speaker 1: that there's no need to even have a vote. He
Speaker 1: could lose an election. He could lose a coup attempt.
Speaker 1: Hell son of a bitch, did lose a coup attempt?
Speaker 1: Didn't he a simple acclamation though, in which everybody names
Speaker 1: him homecoming King and scored a perfect score on his
Speaker 1: acuity IQ test and President again, simple acclamation. That's what
Speaker 1: he wants. And if you have to do something with
Speaker 1: that annoying constitution to make that happen, what you do
Speaker 1: is simply find a way to say, of course he
Speaker 1: only gets two terms, and of course he knows he
Speaker 1: can't run for a third one. It says so in
Speaker 1: the Constitution. He just said it on tape. But where
Speaker 1: does it say we can't change how long his second
Speaker 1: term is. Why don't we just amend that other part
Speaker 1: of the Constitution that nobody looks at, Article two, Section one,
Speaker 1: clause one, so that it says a president shall hold
Speaker 1: his office during the term of four years, but this
Speaker 1: president shall hold his office during the term of eight
Speaker 1: years or twelve or eleveny billion. Also of interest here, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's more Brits running American news operations into the ground,
Speaker 1: the one they found to finally complete the destruction of CNN.
Speaker 1: Went to the White House to kiss Trump's ass and
Speaker 1: the ass of every Trump staffer, and before he got
Speaker 1: to his home, there was a tweet from a Trump
Speaker 1: spokesman mocking him for trying to appease Trump. Congratulations Neville Chamberlain.
Speaker 1: But don't worry. CNN is going to be merged into MSNBC,
Speaker 1: and the right wing has its candidate to run MSNBCNN.
Speaker 1: It's a former Miss Arizona now studying for a doctorate
Speaker 1: in Bible studies at Liberty University. Who reads the most
Speaker 1: Bazooka Joe comic strips shall get the doctorate in Bible
Speaker 1: Studies at Liberty. You know who this is. They want
Speaker 1: to run a combined MSNBC CNN Charlie Kirk's widow. Because
Speaker 1: this is hell, isn't it? That's next? This is Countdown.
Speaker 2: This is Countdown with Keith Olberman, who can predict almost anything.
Speaker 1: Still ahead on this all new episode of Countdown. All
Speaker 1: this La Dodgers World Series stuff reminds me to remind
Speaker 1: you that not only did I correctly predict the Kirk
Speaker 1: Gibson home run that won Game one of the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight World Series and then sent them on their
Speaker 1: way to their upset of the Oakland A's to win
Speaker 1: that World series, but I did it as the innings
Speaker 1: started in which he hit it, and I predicted it
Speaker 1: as part of an answer to a question that my
Speaker 1: friend Alexis Denny, who you just heard, asked me, and
Speaker 1: she was a witness to this impossible prediction that was
Speaker 1: not at all serious, the Kirk Gibson home run, and
Speaker 1: I told you so. Next in things I promise not
Speaker 1: to tell first believe it or not, there's still more
Speaker 1: new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miscrants,
Speaker 1: morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other
Speaker 1: worst persons in the world at the Bonds worse Steve Bannon.
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon says Zoran Mom, Danny has quote got to
Speaker 1: be sent out of the country, that they have to
Speaker 1: denaturalize him. But think about what would happen if we
Speaker 1: did this instead, to Steve Bannon, think of how much
Speaker 1: affordable housing we could be filled in the space that
Speaker 1: this fat, ugly slob now wastes and occupies. Runner up
Speaker 1: Rich Greenfield, who is a conservative media pest, identifies as
Speaker 1: a critic, as quoted by Max Tenney of Semaphore, this
Speaker 1: is his genius idea. Let's take this a step further.
Speaker 1: Merging NBC Universal with Warner Bros. Discovery would combine NBC, MSNBC,
Speaker 1: and CNN. Under one roof, he writes, We've been thinking
Speaker 1: about how NBC Universal could completely shift the perceived biased
Speaker 1: narrative at NBC, MSN NOW and CNN, similar to what
Speaker 1: Paramount is attempting with its acquisition of the Free Press
Speaker 1: and appointing Barry Weiss as editor in chief of CBS
Speaker 1: News enter Erica Kirk, who leads the nonprofit Turning Point
Speaker 1: USA and is the widow of Charlie Kirk. What if
Speaker 1: Comcast agreed to bring Kirk in as editor in chief
Speaker 1: of the combined news unit upon closing Sure, at first,
Speaker 1: blush it sounds crazy, by the way, sir, at four
Speaker 1: three hundred and twenty second, blush, it sounds crazy. Err
Speaker 1: But Trump loves a deal. F Trump f his deals,
Speaker 1: and Brian Roberts needs to think big and differently. Yes,
Speaker 1: kick Trump in the metaphorical nuts. That would be a
Speaker 1: different thought. The combined NBC, MSNBCCNN could also add a
Speaker 1: conservative ombudsman, as CBS News did with Kenneth R. Weinstein.
Speaker 1: Ombudsman here is used metaphorically. What they have as a snitch,
Speaker 1: what they have as a a collaborator, what they have
Speaker 1: as a political officer inside CBS News, who is there
Speaker 1: to turn in the liberals? Worth noting Comcast made a
Speaker 1: sizable donation to Trump's White House ballroom renovation, which is
Speaker 1: unsurprisingly harfy. NBC and MSNBC staff, Well that's because, mister
Speaker 1: rich Greenfield, it's a bribe. News organization should not be
Speaker 1: anywhere near something like this, especially if it's a bribe
Speaker 1: of a corrupt president leading a corrupt movement full of
Speaker 1: corrupt people who have no soul and are all going
Speaker 1: to hell. Have a nice day, maggot, What a great idea.
Speaker 1: Scowling angry, justifiably angry, mind you widow of an assassinated
Speaker 1: right wing nutjob who all the members of the right
Speaker 1: wing think was Jesus or Trump or Jesus Trump or something.
Speaker 1: Put her in charge of NBC News slash MS now
Speaker 1: slash CNN when she has no news experience and all
Speaker 1: of their combined news organizations are bailing water as it is,
Speaker 1: and incidentally, they're populated by people connected to me. The
Speaker 1: anchor of the NBC Nightly News used to be my
Speaker 1: production assistant. What could go wrong if you are hankering
Speaker 1: for the day is when there were only three TV
Speaker 1: networks doing only half an hour of news a night. Hey,
Speaker 1: we may get back there and damned fast. But this
Speaker 1: is the way they think. The presumption on the right
Speaker 1: is that the left has been making up the news
Speaker 1: because it contains things the right doesn't like. Therefore it
Speaker 1: can't be real. It must be some sort of propaganda.
Speaker 1: They really think this. If they wanted it to be
Speaker 1: sunny and it turns out to be rain, they will
Speaker 1: blame the liberal weather man rather than say, oh it's raining.
Speaker 1: So necessarily, the solution to a combined NBC, MSNBC and
Speaker 1: CNN under one roof would be to put a woman
Speaker 1: with absolutely no experience and nothing but vendettas in charge
Speaker 1: of the operation, because the Barry Weiss thing at CBS
Speaker 1: is already going so well. The point is, as has
Speaker 1: been pointed out here. I read the piece from what
Speaker 1: was her name, Emily le Pato. I may be getting
Speaker 1: that wrong, that all Barry Weiss is going to get
Speaker 1: to do is preside over the end of CBS News
Speaker 1: and the firing of everybody there. And if she has
Speaker 1: a reputation, it will be destroyed. So if you want
Speaker 1: to ruin Erica Kirk's life again, put her in charge
Speaker 1: of NBC, CNN, MSNBC people are too stupid, but our winner,
Speaker 1: speaking of ruining television news, Mark Thompson of CNN once again,
Speaker 1: it's funny that the fascists are on this anti immigrant
Speaker 1: kick when it's clear the most dangerous immigrants to this
Speaker 1: country are pasty white guys from England or countries that
Speaker 1: were English colonies, Australia and the Murdochs South Africa and
Speaker 1: musk and the other guys the UK and people like
Speaker 1: Mark Thompson. More impressively, why do so many submissive, loser
Speaker 1: Trump appeasers from England get put in charge of America
Speaker 1: news organizations and then promptly give in to Trump and
Speaker 1: then immediately get humiliated by Trump. A story from our
Speaker 1: friends at Oliver Darcy's newsletter status. During a trip to
Speaker 1: DC last week, CNN CEO Mark Thompson made a visit
Speaker 1: to the White House, where he promoted the network's new
Speaker 1: streaming service. He wanted to get members of the Trump
Speaker 1: administration up to speed on what the new CNN streaming operation.
Speaker 1: I remember the last guy they put in charge of CNN.
Speaker 1: His big deal was getting rid of the new CNN
Speaker 1: streaming operation. Now we have a whole new approach, which
Speaker 1: is another new CNN streaming operation, which the guy who
Speaker 1: succeeds Mark Thompson can then turn down because that's what
Speaker 1: works in management. What did the last guy do? He
Speaker 1: invented an elixir that gives everyone eternal life, Let's burn
Speaker 1: all of it. What don't we want? Who wants eternal life?
Speaker 1: My policy is what shortened lives? Anyway, Mark Thompson went
Speaker 1: into the White House and tried to sell the Trump
Speaker 1: people on being nicer to CNN, on appearing on CNN more,
Speaker 1: on promising that CNN would be nicer to Trump. After
Speaker 1: every move they've made towards Trump since twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: when Chris licked my whatever began this process, every move
Speaker 1: CNN has made has destroyed what was left of CNN.
Speaker 1: Let's do more of that. Not only that. I will
Speaker 1: buy CNN eternal life under the Trump administration, and all
Speaker 1: of the MAGA will watch CNN and it's not a trap,
Speaker 1: and it's not stupid, and you're not appeasing the Hitler
Speaker 1: of America. No, you're not doing any of those things,
Speaker 1: Mark Thompson. The tweet from Oliver Darcy's status with This
Speaker 1: scoop about Mark Thompson's visit to the White House was
Speaker 1: retweeted by Stephen Chung, the mincing Trump spokesman, who simply
Speaker 1: retweeted it with the purple devil smile. In other words,
Speaker 1: even Stephen Chung knows that Mark Thompson was brought in
Speaker 1: so that he could obey in advance to Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and they immediately rewarded him by humiliating Mark Thompson online.
Speaker 1: As George Conway put it, they're laughing at you, and
Speaker 1: they are because Mark Thompson, pasty white guy thrown out
Speaker 1: of England, now the head of CNN promoting the streaming service.
Speaker 1: The last guy killed off is today's worst person. And
Speaker 1: the exact anniversary anniversary number thirty seven of Kirk Gibson's
Speaker 1: famous home run to win Game one of the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight World Series has long since passed. But before
Speaker 1: we get too far away from the idea of Kirk
Speaker 1: Gibson's La Dodgers in the World Series, I wanted to
Speaker 1: tell this story once again. Only a couple of times
Speaker 1: in my life have I been visited by the muse
Speaker 1: of prediction. I once correctly predicted that Bucky Dent of
Speaker 1: the New York Yankees would hit a home run to
Speaker 1: win an American League playoff game between the Yankees and
Speaker 1: the Red Sox in Fenway Park when my friends sitting
Speaker 1: next to me, the Red Sox fan was expressing premature
Speaker 1: jocularity that a Yankee had flied out to center field
Speaker 1: with the tying runs on base and said, oh, thank
Speaker 1: goodness that it's no home run threat. I then spent
Speaker 1: five minutes explaining to him why Dent would necessarily now
Speaker 1: hit a home run to win the game and the pennant,
Speaker 1: which he then did. The other time was the Kirk
Speaker 1: Gibson story in nineteen eighty eight, and this was in
Speaker 1: direct response to a question asked to me by a
Speaker 1: friend of mine then and now named Alexis Denny. So
Speaker 1: just sit back and I say this and tell you
Speaker 1: this story with the full awareness that these two predictions
Speaker 1: of titanically important baseball events must be taken in the
Speaker 1: context of the probability that the number of times I
Speaker 1: had similar ecstatic visions of things that were about to
Speaker 1: happen that did not happen, including say, the New York
Speaker 1: Yankees winning the nineteen sixty eight World Series, when they
Speaker 1: finished I think sixth. The number that did not happen
Speaker 1: is one thousand or more. The number that did happen
Speaker 1: is two. But Kirk Gibson was among them. Half of
Speaker 1: the Dodgers starting lineup that had won the National League
Speaker 1: Pennant was hurt and the other half was not that
Speaker 1: impressive to begin with. National League Most Valuable Player Kirk
Speaker 1: Gibson had nearly destroyed his left hamstring in Game two
Speaker 1: of that playoff series that David Cohne had written about,
Speaker 1: and Gibson had ripped up his right knee in Game seven.
Speaker 1: He was assumed to be out of the World Series,
Speaker 1: but he was still on the Dodger roster, and the
Speaker 1: joke was that was only because the Dodgers literally did
Speaker 1: not have any other healthy players under contract, and their
Speaker 1: only other option was to activate sixty one year old
Speaker 1: manager Tom Lesarda. Anyway, the Dodgers had actually led Game
Speaker 1: one against the powerful Oakland A's to nothing after the
Speaker 1: first inning, but by the ninth they were trailing four
Speaker 1: to three, with literally three of the worst hitters in
Speaker 1: the National League due up, and then the pitcher. I
Speaker 1: was there covering the game for KCBS Channel two in
Speaker 1: LA and my pal Alexis Denny, news and sports producer
Speaker 1: for CBS Network News in Los Angeles, made our way
Speaker 1: together down to the tiny alcove from the press box,
Speaker 1: the alcove between the clubhouses, from which we could see
Speaker 1: just a sliver of the field, pretty much just the
Speaker 1: pitcher and the batter, framed by a hot dog stand
Speaker 1: as the Oakland relief ace. Dennis Eckersley warmed up to
Speaker 1: pitch the bottom of the ninth, and he had given
Speaker 1: up exactly nine hits in his previous eighteen games, in
Speaker 1: fourteen of which he had recorded saves. Alexis asked me,
Speaker 1: simply and appropriately, so what are we going to ask
Speaker 1: Eck after this game is over? And, matter of factly,
Speaker 1: without any emotion, certainly without any sense of predicting anything,
Speaker 1: I said, We're going to ask Eck about this game
Speaker 1: losing home run he's about to give up to Kirk Gibson.
Speaker 1: Alexis looked at me. Funny, I mean, funnier than usual.
Speaker 1: What Gibson's not playing? He's hurt. I looked at her
Speaker 1: with mild annoyance. Oh, come on, you know it has
Speaker 1: to happen. I can only describe my feeling at that
Speaker 1: time as being exactly what had been a decade before,
Speaker 1: at another playoff game in Boston, with the Red Sox
Speaker 1: leading the Yankees to nothing in the top of the seventh,
Speaker 1: with two Yankees on and New York shortstop Bucky Dent
Speaker 1: coming up, and my best friend, the Red Sox fan,
Speaker 1: exhaling when the last batter had popped out and saying,
Speaker 1: thank goodness, Dent is no home run threat. And I
Speaker 1: began to speak in tongues, and what I was saying
Speaker 1: was about how his hubristic remark about Dent would now
Speaker 1: necessarily cause to happen next. What would happen next? A
Speaker 1: three run home run by Bucky Dent, and it would
Speaker 1: be all his fault, and then Dent hit the homer.
Speaker 1: Neither the Dent nor the Gibson home run predictions were
Speaker 1: really predictions. I felt no sense of investment in it.
Speaker 1: I didn't race to put down a bet. I suppose
Speaker 1: that at some other games I had made equally impossible
Speaker 1: announcements of events that did not happen, but I have
Speaker 1: never been given to that, so if I did do it,
Speaker 1: it was only a couple of times. My batting average
Speaker 1: is like four or five hundred on these and anyway,
Speaker 1: these weren't calculations or analyzes on my part. I just
Speaker 1: felt like I was running about five minutes ahead of
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. And these things. Danse home
Speaker 1: run in nineteen seventy eight, Gibson's home run in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, these things had already happened. AnyWho, Mike Davis
Speaker 1: of the Dodgers walked stole second base with two outs. Gibson,
Speaker 1: to the shock of everybody except me, managed somehow to
Speaker 1: climb up the three steps of the Dodger dugout and
Speaker 1: waddle out to home plate, and then, on a three
Speaker 1: to two pitch, hit the game winning home run. Like
Speaker 1: I said, as Dodger Stadium shook and we prepared to
Speaker 1: go into the clubhouses, Alexis Denny gave me a look
Speaker 1: that I still can't really describe. But thirty five years later,
Speaker 1: I know that since that night she has not been
Speaker 1: fully convinced that I am of this earth. I got
Speaker 1: it right. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. Most of our countdown music was arranged,
Speaker 1: produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillips. Schanel
Speaker 1: our musical directors of Countdown, and it was produced by
Speaker 1: Tko Brothers, mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums, mister
Speaker 1: Chanelle on orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical
Speaker 1: comments are by the best baseball stadium Gonnest ever in
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two, which was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy
Speaker 1: of ESPN Inc. Some other music was arranged and performed
Speaker 1: by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is
Speaker 1: my friend Alexis Denny Witness. Everything else was, as always
Speaker 1: my fault. That's countdown for today, Day two hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty four of America held hostage again, just seventy nine
Speaker 1: days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and
Speaker 1: lame brained term unless he's removed sooner by Maga and Epstein,
Speaker 1: or that pavement patch on his hand, or the tail
Speaker 1: and hall or his jet made out of poop, or
Speaker 1: the r K he's building, or the next cognitive test.
Speaker 1: The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck Hit,
Speaker 1: the post, hit, the post, oh Hit, the Post. Countdown
Speaker 1: with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.