October 23, 2024 • 46 mins
SERIES 3 EPISODE 55: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The obvious problem with John Kelly going on the record and saying yes, I heard Trump say quote “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had” is that a huge number of his supporters will applaud it.
And the obvious problem with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic quoting those who were there as Trump was told the cost of the funeral he’d offered to pay for, for a murdered U-S soldier named Vanessa Guillen, and Trump screamed “It doesn’t cost 60-thousand bucks to bury an effing Mexican!” is that even MORE of Trump’s supporters will applaud THAT.
Because the real, disgusting, nauseating truth behind the revelations in the Goldberg Atlantic piece is that it touches the third and FOURTH rails of Donald Trump’s America: many of his people believe whoever is in charge SHOULD be supported by and in fact kept in power by “the kind of generals Hitler had.” The antisemites in the Trump cult love it. And the ones who aren’t antisemites just authoritarians love it even if they’re queasy about the antisemitism. And the ones who aren’t antisemites or authoritarians but have always secretly believed the word “Democracy” was just another brand name or FLAVOR love it because it posits a kind of America not just where MIGHT makes RIGHT, but where ONLY might makes right.
And if there is anybody missing from the Trump Coalition of Evil, anybody who ISN’T inspired by “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had” they are certainly covered by “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury an effing Mexican” because if violence and militarism are the Trumpian third rail, racism and specifically anti-Hispanic racism are the FOURTH rail.
MEANWHILE:19% of Republicans think if Trump loses he should just seize power (28% of Mormon Americans). The latest great polling numbers for Kamala Harris? In July she was getting less than half of voters under 35. She's now getting 60% And it sounds ridiculous: Ex-Flamenco Correspondent and Trump concierge judge Aileen Cannon as Attorney General?
Honestly - how much more could she do for Trump than Merrick Garland has?
B-Block (26:29) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jeremy Peters of The New York Times says on MSNBC (with help from Katy Tur) that Kamala Harris is not as clear in her speaking as is Trump. Newsweek Magazine isn't certain if that photo of Trump in a Pittsburgh Steelers 100 pounds lighter and 40 years younger MIGHT BE A FAKE. And Trump's own campaign can't spell "Steelers" - and in a very Freudian way.
C-Block (36:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: More of my atypical World Series previews: Why I'm adopting ex-Yankees manager Ralph Houk's attitude towards the team he, like I, grew up with: "Piss on the Yankees."
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
obvious problem with General John Kelly going on the record
and saying, yes, I heard Trump say quote I need
(00:27):
the kind of generals that Hitler had is that a
huge number of his supporters will applaud this. And the
obvious problem with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic quoting those
who were there and notes taken at the meeting as
Trump was told the cost of the funeral he had
offered to pay for for a murdered US soldier named
Vanessa Gien, and Trump screamed, quote, it doesn't cost sixty
(00:51):
thousand bucks to bury an e fing Mexican, don't pay
it is that even more of Trump's supporters will applaud that,
because the real disgusting, nauseating truth behind the revelations in
the Goldberg Atlantic piece is that it touches the third
and fourth rails of Donald Trump's America. Many of his
(01:13):
people believe whoever is in charge should be supported by
and in fact kept in power by the kind of
generals Hitler had. The anti Semites and the Trump cult
love it, obviously, and the ones who aren't anti Semites
just authoritarians love it, obviously, even if they're queasy about
the anti Semitism and the ones who aren't anti Semites
(01:36):
and aren't authoritarians but have always just secretly believed the
word democracy was merely another brand name or flavor of government.
They love it because it posits a kind of America
not just where might makes right, but where only might
makes right, and where only whites have might. And if
(01:58):
there is anybody missing from the Trump coalition of evil,
anybody who isn't inspired by the kind of generals that
Hitler had, they are certainly covered by It doesn't cost
sixty thousand bucks to bury an effing Mexican. Because if
violence and militarism are the Trumpian third rail, racism and
(02:19):
specifically anti Hispanic racism are the Trumpian fourth rail. The
rest of us have danced around this reality because the
alternative is to recognize just how much larger it is
than we want to believe in our worst moments, just
how much racism still seeps into the brains not just
of the Trumpsts, but of some of the moderates we know,
(02:42):
and even some of the liberals we know. But since
Trump came down that escalator so excited by what he
was about to say, denigrating immigrants and Mexicans, that he
almost bothered to move and walk rather than just stand
there in gelatinous pride and ride down the escalator. That's
(03:04):
that moment. This has not been about undocumented immigration or
even illegal aliens. It's been entirely about Hispanics. In exactly
the same way the first two hundred years of our
history was at route entirely about African Americans. And the
reason we have never solved this Hispanic immigration crisis, the
(03:26):
reason the Republicans have made sure for forty goddamned years
that there always has been an immigration crisis and always
will be an immigration crisis, was to give their people
somebody to hate. Only Trump, after a life in which
he inexplicably was not killed by some kid at NIMA,
(03:49):
the New York Military Academy who snapped after being dangled
out a window by Trump one time too many, or
he wasn't killed by somebody else's husband, or he wasn't
killed by drugs or disco or whatever in the seventies,
a life in which he started by believing he was
immortal and untouchable and that there were no consequences, but
(04:10):
he got worse from there. Only Trump would have been
stupid enough to tear up this exquisite stitching of the
quilt of excuses for why the immigration crisis wasn't actually
an immigration crisis, but just an excuse to let the
pasty white folks hate the brown people and blame them
(04:32):
and abuse them, and all the while make sure that
there never really was any significant change to the importation
of migrant labor from Mexico and Latin America. Hell, let's
drop the euphemisms. There never really was any significant change
to the importation of virtual slave labor from Mexico and
Latin America and Puerto Rico for that matter, because they
(04:53):
actually tried that once in the state of Georgia thirteen
years ago. They promised roundups, they did some deportations, and
guess what, all the the people in this country in Georgia,
without documentation, got the hell out of Georgia before the
deadline and went and worked the farms in other states,
(05:14):
and something like three hundred million dollars worth of Georgia
crops rotted in the fields because guess who would not
harvest it? The fat, stupid white people in Georgia who
had kicked out all the immigrants. The new problem, of course,
the new twist in this, the new reason his supporters
will cheer Trump insulting this poor woman, Private Vanessa Gien,
(05:38):
murdered at her army base, and cheer his use of
the phrase it doesn't cost sixty thousand bucks to bury
an effing Mexican and the follow up, don't pay it?
Can you believe it? Effing people trying to rip me off?
Is that Trump, of course, is insane. Somewhere along the
line he forgot that the only way you can keep
(05:59):
the machine going harvest the crops, keep the restaurant open,
not pay the fry cook, and make sure they are
all here so that the fat, stupid white people get
away with hating them. Because what are these immigrants going
to do? Complain? We've made sure they are here illegally,
and if they complain they can and are deported daily.
(06:20):
The only way you keep that machine going is to
not let somebody insane like Trump tell the truth that
what you see now is the way it has been
carefully crafted, mostly by Republicans, for forty goddamned years, in
a way that even Eric Blair, writing as George Orwell
never foresaw, not the two minutes hate from the novel
nineteen eighty four, but the endless hate, the perpetual hate.
(06:45):
You can't have Trump tell the truth that this is
built into the American economy and cannot be altered unless
the Republicans stop hating, or unless, like he wants, they
start hating more and actually try to round up all
the Hispanics and put them in concentration camps and deport
some and probably kill way more, which is what Trump
(07:06):
is going to do, which over the course of his
decade poisoning the United States of America, he has spread
to his cult. So now they have no concept, no
moment's thought that without the people he has told them
it is okay to despise and blame for everything and
probably kill America, particularly red state America, will fall apart.
(07:30):
They don't understand this. They don't understand that because the
quote effing Mexicans, Trump thinks it costs him too much
to bury. They keep the nation running, and to think
like Trump for a second, they help the productive parts
of this country underwrite the money losing states and permit
them the fat wi pasty white people to go to
(07:52):
their beloved McDonald's, which is now just another symbol for
more corporate hoaring and stunt staging for fascism. After that
pathetic Trump immorality play over the weekend, and now these
people can go to goddamned McDonald's and get a goddamn
big mac made of crap that would cost them otherwise
(08:14):
thirty seven dollars and ninety eight cents. Have a happy meal.
Here's change. Back on your one hundred. But back to Hitler.
If you have not read mister Goldberg's piece in The Atlantic,
I urge you to do so. I won't further steal
his thunder except to quote three long passages and to
(08:35):
underscore one truly new and disturbing bit of information in
the context of another news development unrelated to the story.
Let me quote him about General Kelly. This week, I
asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when
Trump raised the subject of German generals, Kelly responded by asking,
(08:56):
do you mean Bismarck's generals? He went on, I mean,
I knew he didn't know who Bismarck was or about
the Franco Prussian War. I said, do you mean the
Kaiser's generals? Surely you can't mean Hitler's generals, and he said, yeah, yeah,
Hitler's generals. I explained to him that Rommel had to
(09:16):
commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.
Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel. This
wasn't the only time, Goldberg writes Kelly felt compelled to
instruct Trump on military history. In twenty eighteen, Trump asked
Kelly to explain who the good guys were in World
War One. Kelly responded by explaining simple rule, presidents should,
(09:40):
as a matter of politics and policy, remember that the
good guys in any given conflict are the country's allied
with the United States. There is a sketch by the
group Kids in the Hall in which an actress played
by the Great Dave Foley gets up to accept an
(10:01):
award and thanks her manager and thanks the audience, and
thanks her director, and thanks her agent adds oh, and
thank Hitler and waits for the applause, and instead it's
her manager played by the great Kevin MacDonald, dragging her
off the stage while she complains that they did an
applaud and he says, with terror in his voice, do
you think Hitler? And she matter factly says, oh, I
(10:22):
never did no, And half the time I read something
about Trump and Hitler, I am waiting for Trump's Dave
Foley moment when Trump gets up there and literally thanks Hitler.
And now reading all of this, I realize it's already happened.
It was just in private. Let me cutting out of
(10:43):
Goldberger's conclusion because it circles back to my starting point here,
and then I'll drop the new info he broke. One day,
he writes, in the first year of Trump's presidency, I
had lunch with Jared Kushner, Trump's son in law, in
his White House office. I turned the discussion as soon
as I could, to the subject of his father in
law's character. I mentioned one of Trump's recent outbursts and
(11:04):
told Kushner that, in my opinion, the president's behavior was
damaging to the country. I cited as I tend to
do what is in my view, Trump's original sin, his
mockery of John McCain's heroism. This is where our conversation
got strange and noteworthy. Kushner answered in a way that
made it seem as though he agreed with me. Quote,
(11:24):
no one can go as low as the president. He said,
you shouldn't even try. I found this baffling for a moment,
he writes, But then I understood Kushner wasn't insulting his
father in law. He was paying him a compliment. In
Trump's mind, traditional values, values, including those embraced by the
armed forces of the United States, having to do with honor,
(11:46):
self sacrifice, and integrity, have no merit, no relevance, and
no meaning. Unquote. See you and I are appalled by
the Hitler's general's quote and the effing Mexican quote. And
by next week Trump will be selling mrch or soliciting
donations based on those quotes. In any event, here is
(12:11):
the new stuff about Trump's other role models, not the
old Nazis, but the current Chinese quoting him again on
separate occasions. In twenty twenty, Trump held private conversations in
the White House with National security officials about the George
Floyd protests quote. The Chinese generals would know what to do,
(12:32):
he said, according to former officials who described the conversations
to me, referring to the leaders of the People's Liberation Army,
which carried out the Tiananmen Square massacre in nineteen eighty nine,
Trump's desire to deploy US troops against American citizens is
well documented. During the nerve racking period of social unrest
following Floyd's death, Trump asked Milly and Esper, a West
(12:54):
Point graduate and former infantry officer, if the army could
shoot protesters. Trump seen unable to think straight and calmly,
Esper wrote in his memoir, the protest and violence had
him so enraged that he was willing to send in
active duty forces to put down the protesters. Worse yet,
he suggested we shoot them. I wondered about his sense
(13:16):
of history, of propriety and of his oath to the constitution.
As pertold National Public Radio in twenty twenty two, we
reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly
at General Milly and said, can't you just shoot them?
Just shoot them in the legs or something. When defense
officials argued against Trump's desire, the president screamed, according to witnesses,
(13:37):
you are all efing losers. Now Here's why that's a problem,
Because Trump and his cults are not only ready for
a fight like that, they are spoiling for one, and
(13:58):
they are spoiling for one next month. Polling by the
Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution suggests that
if Trump loses two weeks from now, just slightly less
than one in five Republicans thinks he should declare the
results invalid and do whatever it takes to seize power.
(14:20):
The actual number is nineteen percent, but among those who
trust Fox News the most of all news outlets, it's
thirty percent who think Trump should do this. For those
who trust Fox and or the even more extreme propaganda channels,
it's forty one percent. Also, thirty percent of Republicans quote
believe that true American patriots may have to resort to
(14:43):
violence to save the country. This poll being commissioned by
a religious group. After all, they broke it down by religion.
Twenty eight percent of Evangelical Protestant Republicans think violence may
be needed, as do and this may surprise you twenty
eight percent of Mormons, sorry, Mitt Low. The end of
(15:05):
the religious pro violence scale is ten percent, and that
would be Jewish Republicans. Happily, there does seem to be
a growing consensus on this front. Forty nine percent of
Americans in this survey, Americans of all political parties, faiths,
and heritage agree there is a real danger Trump will
(15:25):
use the presidency to become a dictator. Do I think
the nation will erupt in organized, sustained violence after the election,
I do not sporadic violence terrorism or terrorism adjacent violence. Yes, yes,
I would prepare yourself for that. And I hate to
(15:48):
sound anything like one of the people in that poll
I just quoted by Nay. I am comforted at night
by reminding myself that Trump and the Trump cult dreams
of seeing tanks on the streets. And forgive me for this,
but I'm comforted by the realization that if if it
comes to that, if it comes to that next month,
(16:08):
or in December or in January, it'll be grim, and
it will be tragic, and it will be satisfying to
see all the trumpe Ists suddenly realize that the tanks
in the streets aren't theirs. The tanks in the streets
(16:28):
are Americas. A couple of poll notes as breaking news yesterday,
I told you the Emerson poll found that around twenty
percent of voters had chosen Harris or Trump in the
last month. So late deciders were breaking sixty to thirty
(16:51):
seven for the vice president. And how much that could
mean in net vote gain. It could give her twenty
five twenty seven thousand net votes her votes minus his
votes just in Pennsylvania, eb. Seven hundred thousand nationwide. Now,
CNBC reports from its polling that young voters are also
(17:12):
breaking late for Kamala Harris. In similar numbers, voters under
thirty five are now sixty to forty for Harris over Trump,
and that was not the way it was in July.
It was Harris forty six, Trump thirty four, with twenty
one percent favoring a third party candidate like the Secretary
of Phone Sex. In other words, voters under thirty five
(17:34):
grew up. So Harris leads Trump by twenty points in
voters under thirty five, and in twenty twenty Joe Biden
won by twenty points with voters under thirty five. If you,
for some reason, like the less reliable metapolling, you gov
for the Times of London and Reuter's ipsos have Harris
(17:56):
by three. In new polls, Morning Consult has Harris by four.
There's also a rash of junk polls showing Trump tied
or head. One of them showing him ahead in New
Mexico was literally made up by one of his crazier
ex ambassadors. She has been ahead of him by seven
and a half points or more in New Mexico with
(18:17):
virtually no change, a solid series of straight lines across
the bar graph for more than a month, and a
reminder from weeks ago that this was planned because when
he declares on election night that he won, or he
declares afterwards that he must have been robbed, because otherwise,
why would these polls I'm holding have said he was winning.
(18:38):
These chunk poles, the ones that are coming out right now,
will give him something to hold in his hand besides
his Arnold Palmer. One more. ABC News reported last night
(19:00):
that a quote proposed personnel roster circulating within Trump's can
campaign and transition operation lists Aileen Cannon, the federal judge
who threw out Trump's classified documents case, Eileen Cannon as
a possible candidate for Attorney General. No in this country.
(19:22):
Two things, how could she possibly be worse than Merrick Garland?
And how could she possibly wind up doing more for
Trump than Merrick Garland? Secondly, Cannon the former yoga and
flamenco correspondent of the Miami Nuevo Herald, and I wish
I were making that up. Is clearly more qualified to
(19:45):
be Attorney general than she is a federal judge. LEBC
says she is the second name on the list out
of nearly a dozen ages led by j Clayton, former
Chairman of the SEC. Trump's expert on how to make
illegal legal, Mike Davis, is on the list, as is
Jeffrey Can I p on my pants now Clark, who
(20:06):
tried to freelance a coup during the transition and was
then the victim of a putdown that will never die
down from the Justice Department exec. Richard Donahue. You're an
environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office
and we'll call you when there's an oil spill. I'm
not sure what to make of this story because it
is literally too bad to be true. I mean, what
(20:30):
kind of leak could cut through the noise and actually
look too corrupt, too quid pro quo even for Trump.
What against the background of his utter corruption, his Dorian
Gray's portrait life, what could look worse than that? It's
(20:50):
possible the Democrats made this up or got this out
and it's true. On the other hand, like I said,
how could she ever be worse than Merrick Garland also
of interest here well in news about my exes Olivia.
(21:11):
Newsy had no events scheduled last night, so it'll be
Katie Turr news instead, And I, of course, will continue
to pretend to be weary of all this and broken
inside and beyond the reach of its implications now, while
in fact I'm enjoying the absolute emmer effing hell out
(21:35):
of all of it. That's next, This is countdown. This
is countdown, with Keith Olberman still ahead on this initiative countdown.
(22:10):
Maybe the idea and ending the Baseball playoffs on a
Sunday but not starting the World Series until Friday is
to force sportscasters and even ex sportscasters to continue to
do more and more World Series previews. Well, you guys
asked for it. Another World Series preview of a different nature.
The New York Yankees host game one Friday night, and
(22:32):
I'm as always rooting against them, which is rather amazing
because from the age of seven through the start of
my professional career, and again in my thirties and forties,
when one friend of mine from my childhood was the
PR director and another friend of mine from my early
career was the team manager. I was as big a
Yankee fan as there was. I worked for the Yankees
once a year. George Steinbrenner wanted me to be the
(22:55):
voice of the Yankees on TV. I used to announce
their old timers game like my dad before me. I
was a season ticket holder at Yankee Stadium. Our combined
run one was forty one years. And then, to quote
the man who was manager of the team when I
was a kid, Ralph Hauke. When I introduced myself to
him in nineteen eighty three and told him he was
(23:15):
my Yankee manager and always would be, he said, thank you.
Nothing personal but piss on the Yankees. The World Series
preview and the day the Yankees got me fired from
a job at Baseball state run television MLB network that
I hadn't even agreed to take yet, piss on the
Yankees coming up in things I promised not to tell first.
(23:38):
There are still more new idiots to talk about. The
daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger
effects specimens who don't work for the Yankees and who
constitute todays worse persons in the Brons worse. Jeremy Peters
of the New York Times, the Yankees of newspapers, working
with that little fascist Midday on Clay at MSNBC as
(24:00):
well does mister Peters. This was actually said on MSNBC,
And I will save until the end the identity of
the news model whose question provoked this amazing, condensed, compromised
partisan stupidity on the part of this guy Peters question,
do you think she that would be Vice President Kamala Harris,
(24:20):
Democratic nominee for president if you hadn't heard Do you
think she's being clear enough? Peters answers. I think in
some of these interviews you and I have both heard it.
But clarity is not always her strong suit. When you
contrast her with somebody with Donald Trump, who you pretty
much know what he's saying every time he opens his mouth,
(24:40):
for better or worse, she does have a messaging problem.
This man Peters is employed by the New York Times,
brought onto what is in theory a television news network,
insisting that you pretty much know what Trump's saying every
time he opens his mouth, But Kamala Harris isn't clear enough.
Trump is this close to speaking in tongues. Well, I
(25:04):
like the other Hey, when Trump was asked what is
your plan to ban artificial foods? And he answered Bobby Kennedy. Right,
everybody likes Bobby Kennedy and he's so big into the
healthy food and women things, everything he wants to do things. Yes,
that's clear. That's much more clear than Kamala Harris. Question,
(25:24):
what is your plan to ban artificial foods? Answer? Bobby
Kennedy is big into the healthy food and women. Yeah,
I've heard that. I mean, I know Kennedy will be
boosting FaceTime usage, but any idea what that has to
do with banning artificial food mister Kennedy, the Secretary of
Phone Sex said today. It was mister Peters, who, after
(25:46):
the debate, had argued that Kamala Harris had failed to
give undecided voters what they really wanted, the fine print,
specific policy details at length at a debate on TV,
owned his promise, which MSNBC talking head hosted Peters that
day and asked that question that let him lie about
Trump being clear and Harris not being clear enough. Why
(26:07):
it's Katie Turr who with Kirsten Cinema slowly disappearing from
the Senate like the cheshire Cat and Olivia Newsy, now
being fired at New York Magazine and unlikely to ever
get any job requiring, you know, trust her honesty ever
again while she sues the creepy guy at Politico, she
was planning to marry and write a book with With
them out of the picture, it is Katie who has
(26:28):
vaulted back into the position of which of my exes
I am currently the most ashamed of. You can depend
on Keith about women. He always gets them wrong. The
runner up worser Newsweek magazine. Years ago, my late friend
Howard Feineman left his lead role at Newsweek to go
work for the Huffington Post, which then and I guess
(26:51):
now too, but then certainly sounded like a website for
people who like to inhale paint. And it was the
first time I realized that all the established news brands
of my youth were in desperate, desperate trouble long term.
I mean, Newsweek wasn't the first to succumb my first
home UPI even by then two thousand and six seven
(27:11):
eight was putting out other people's press releases, and like
only one or two a week, Sports illustrated as a
betting site. Others are just expiring URLs. But if there
was any doubt, Newsweek is done. This was its post
at midday Monday, a photo of Trump at a sports stadium,
(27:32):
presumably one in Pittsburgh somewhere, with the caption Donald Trump
has shared what is likely an AI generated image on
his truth social account showing him as a player for
the Pittsburgh Steelers. Wait, what makes you think that? Just
because the image showed Trump in football pads, wearing a Steelers' uniform,
(27:54):
weighing maybe one hundred pounds less than he does, about
forty years younger than he is, and not looking like
he was about to succumb to a disease or something.
Didn't Donald try to play quarterback for the Steelers in
the late sixties? Oh no, no, I'm thinking the other
guy reminds me always of Donald Trump's name. His name
was Dick Shiner. I think I'm kidding. Dick Shiner Shi
(28:19):
n e Er look him up. Also played for the
New York Giants for a while. Giants Get Dick Shiner
was the headline anyway. So, nine hours after posting this
idea that maybe that image of Trump wearing the forty
seven on a Steelers uniform maybe that was ai. Nine
hours later, one of the three or four people at
(28:41):
Newsweek finally saw the social media blowback to their incredibly
stupid posts, and they changed the article. So as of
Monday night, the headline on the story itself, but not
the tweet, had been changed to quote Trump posts fake
image of himself as a star NFL player. You think, oh,
wait to go out on a limb there, Newsweek. On
(29:03):
the other hand, if The New York Times and Jeremy
Peters had done the story, it would have been Trump
shows his athletic side in creative post, but our winner
the worst, same topic, same football team, and the Trump campaign.
It is a little over a week since the Trump
candidate for the Senate in Pennsylvania, David McCormick, had his
(29:23):
own problem with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He posted what red like.
Whether or not he was really too dumb to tell
the difference between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles.
Whether or not he's really that stupid is unclear, but
it reads like he's that stupid, quoting it pictures of
him four different pictures of him in Eagles green with
Eagles fans outside the Eagles stadium. Fun tailgate in Philly.
(29:47):
Today football emoji excited to watch the Steelers throttle the Raiders,
Republican senate candidate in Pennsylvania. Why the Steelers should prove
so troubling for Republicans or Newsweek or anybody else is
hard to say. They have been in the National Football
League since the Rooney family got a franchise in nineteen
(30:08):
thirty three and named it the Pittsburgh Football Pirates. Then
in nineteen forty they said enough of this confusion, and
they paid tribute to the city steel industry by renaming
the team the Steelers, named for Steel Steel with two
e's and then an R and an S added at
the end. There stee L E R S Stealers. They're
(30:35):
the sixth oldest franchise in the NFL. They're a pretty
big fing deal. The Trump campaign does not know how
to spell the team name. It has sent out one
of its forty four million daily fundraising emails focusing on
Trump's most important campaign finish line statements, his stunt not
actually working, serving French fries to people who weren't really
(30:55):
customers and weren't really surprised to see him there at
a fascist McDonald's that wasn't really open, and the other
one was going to a Pittsburgh Steelers game. The fundraising
email in full, Trump Vance twenty twenty four. The little
button in the corner that says shop can't stop, won't
stop working at McDonald's a town hall, a Stealers game.
(31:17):
No one is working harder than President Trump to better
I'm not paying a lot for this funeral a Steelers game.
It reads s t e a l e r s.
Why that has the word steal in it? S t
e a l as in thief, as in Trump, Donald
(31:40):
Trump of the Steelers, s t e a l e
r s Steelers, Steelers. Sometimes the jokes just right themselves.
Two days worst Fars sending and the annually at this
(32:10):
time of year, somebody asks me, why aren't you at
that All Baseball network? Seems like you'd be a natural,
And I say you mean MLB Network and they say yeah,
and I say sit down. You got to hear this story.
The owners of at least five different Major League Baseball
teams have tried to get me fired over the years,
and one, the New York Yankees, kind of succeeded. On
(32:33):
November twenty six, twenty twelve, why agent followed the instructions
of Tony Petiti, then the president of the TV publicity
channel owned by Major League Baseball MLB Network, and called
Petiti to finalize a deal by which I would join
the channel to do a daily show, probably at five
thirty at night. It was going to be weird. MLB
Network and its sister hockey channel, NHL Network originate in
(32:56):
the same studios in Caucus, New Jersey, that MSNBC used
every day from the day I started there in October
nineteen ninety seven through the day in October two thousand
and seven when NBC finally moved us to New York City.
I had been asked to do something for MLB Network
in two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine,
before it ever got on the air. The request came
(33:18):
directly from the then Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Ceilig. He
also asked me to write for Baseball's website MLB dot Com.
We actually got that done, but the TV show was
impossible because of my schedule until I was a free
agent in the fall of twenty twelve. So I was
invited in the fall of twenty twelve to do a
couple of guest appearances at MLB Network, and they went well,
(33:40):
except for this crazy deja vu kind of thing that
hit me when I went into the building and found
that while Baseball had spent sixty million dollars to upgrade
all the technical stuff in the studio designs, they had
not touched anything else from the MSNBC era. The carpet
tiles were the same, the ping pong table in the
(34:02):
break croom was the same. The sign on the back
of the bathroom door telling you who to call if
the John overflows were the same. It was like having
a dream where you're back in your childhood home and
everything is exactly the way it was, including the creeks
and the floorboards, except oh, by the way, there's a
nuclear reactor in the middle of your den, and you
(34:24):
keep saying, where did that come from? Anyway, the guest
appearances on MLB Network went well, and this guy Petit,
the president, asked if I would fill in for two
days on their new morning show the week of Thanksgiving
twenty twelve. I certainly knew how to get to the building.
I did the shows with Brian Kenny and Ken Rosenthal
and Bob Costas's son, Keith and Alana Rizzo, and we
(34:46):
had a good time. And Tony Pettiti, the president of
MLB Network, attended the meetings that we would have before
and after each show. I mean full staff meetings, fifteen
or so people standing around a bunch of cubicles, and
in front of all of them, Tony Pettiti began asking
me if I thought my new sh for MLB Network
would do better at five or five thirty, and if
(35:08):
I agreed with him that I should work only during
the baseball season and spring training and playoffs and winter
meetings and then stay fresh by taking the rest of
the year off. He asked me if there were people
on the staff of the morning show who I would
like to work with. I mean, this is in front
of all of the staff of the morning show. He
warned me they couldn't pay me the kind of salary
(35:28):
I was used to, and I said that happily, the
kind of salary I was used to meant I did
not need the kind of salary I was used to.
He told me to remind my agent to call him
the monday after Thanksgiving. He wished me a happy Turkey,
and everybody left, and everybody heard his plans, and a
couple of the producers asked me if I was recommending
them to be on my new show on MLB network. So,
(35:51):
how come I don't have a new show on MLB Networker,
how come we're not celebrating the tenth anniversary of my
new show on MLB Network. Well, on Monday afternoon, my
agent calls me and says he's just gotten off the
phone with Tony Pettiti and it was the strangest conversation
he had had since he became an agent. No let
me rephrase that, he said, because it wasn't a conversation,
(36:13):
it was an attempted conversation. I kept asking him what
he told me to call him about, and he would
then say nothing. Initially I did not understand what you
mean he said nothing, My agent said he meant literally that.
I say, so, Tony, what's your offer to Keith? And
then there was silence, and I thought the phone call
had dropped out. So I said, Tony, are you there?
(36:36):
And he say sure, I am so Again I asked him,
you know, what's your offer to Keith? And again literally silence,
only this time I can hear him breathing. I tried
like ten different ways. Are we talking about Keith now silence?
Is there a reason you're being silent about Keith? Tony silence?
If I changed the subject, talked about somebody else, he
(36:57):
was his normal self. If I mentioned your name, he
went silent. The next day, the agent calls me back.
Petiti just did this again with me on the phone.
He wouldn't speak, literally, wouldn't say any words in any
language if I mentioned your name. Took me a long
time to find out what had actually happened. The next
(37:19):
baseball season, after I'd gone back to work at ESPN,
I'm at a game. There's one of the MLB network
officials whom I'd met on my two days before Thanksgiving
twenty twelve, and this person comes up to me and apologizes.
We all heard what happened. It's so embarrassing. Petiti is
such a coward. The Yankees got to him and another club,
I never found out which one. There was some kind
(37:41):
of conference call a Monday after Thanksgiving to tell the
teams about your new show, and whoever was on the
call for the Yankees went ballistic. They said something like,
if you put him on MLB Network, we will disable
your cameras. At Yankee Stadium and never let any of
you inside the building again. Instantly I knew why the
Yankees would have done that. I was, and my father
(38:03):
before me, ac He's and ticket holder for forty two
years for Yankee games, and for ten of those years,
I was also one of the two announcers who did
a kind of play by play over the public address
system at Yankee Stadium on Old Timer's Day. And then
one day in twenty eleven, I tweeted a photo of
a Yankee employee in the stands giving some sort of
(38:25):
hand signals to Alex Rodriguez in the on deck circle.
The guy was clearly telling Alex Rodriguez what the last
pitch had been. It wasn't cheating, it was helping a
supposed superstar who apparently could not figure out for himself
from on the field what the last pitch had been.
(38:46):
I tweeted the photo. Major League Baseball called the Yankees
and told them to cut it out. The Yankees and
a Rod looked stupid in the newspapers, and the Yankees'
management said they were not mad at me. And then
three months later, days before Old Timer's Day, they leaked
to the papers that I had been fired as Old
Timer's Day play by play man because I had tweeted
that photo of Alex Rodriguez and the guy in the stands,
(39:10):
so rather naturally, my response was to not renew my
season tickets. And my tickets were right behind home plate
and they cost like four hundred thousand dollars a year,
and relax, I gave about seventy percent of them to
make a wish. But the Yankees, being the Yankees, were
furious that I would not give them four hundred thousand
dollars a year anyway, so they told MLB Network if
(39:32):
MLB Network gave me a show, they would unplug MLB
Networks cameras. Actually they did more than that. I asked
my friend, the MLB network official, the real puzzler of
the saga, why this MLB Network president Tony Petiti, literally
would not speak, would not say anything, not even deals
off to my agent. Oh. The official said, the Yankees
(39:56):
were specific about that if you say anything to him
or his people, we will get you fired. So Fetiti
took it literally. He said, if you or your agent called,
to just give you the silent treatment. These are adults,
mind you, and they say that on air talent are
the Prima Donnas. As I said, the Yankees are the
(40:19):
closest of five different teams who tried to have actually
gotten me fired sort of. When I was in local
news in Los Angeles, Jackie Autrey, the woman who went
from being Gene Autry's banker to being his second wife,
tried to get me fired from my station in LA
because I had criticized their team, the California Angels. She
tried again a few years later after I got to ESPN.
(40:40):
Then there were the Tampa Bay Rays, well, the Devil
Rays at that point, whose first owner, Vince Namoli, was
convinced I had a vendetta against his team and was
making up stories about them that were accidentally true. He
could not conceive that somebody in his organization who he paid,
actually hated him so much that this person called me
(41:01):
up and volunteered to feed me anything bad that went
on there. But that is exactly what happened. So that's
the Yankees, the Angels, and the Rays, and there's a
mystery fifth team that was also involved in the MLB
network thing. And then there were the Chicago White Sox.
One of their co owners, Eddie Einhorn, was a big
fan of mine, But for forty four years the team
(41:23):
has been run by the other co owner, Jerry Reinsdorf.
And Jerry Reinsdorf was one of the key figures in
the strike that killed the nineteen ninety four baseball season.
During that terrible winter that followed, my sources in the
Baseball Players Association showed me a copy of their offer
to the owners. The owners were led by Rhinsdorf, and
(41:43):
in the player's offer, they were willing to actually negotiate
one of the players Union's sacred cows, salary arbitration. They
were willing to cut it or maybe eliminate it outright.
But after complaining about salary arbitration for twenty years, the
owners committee, led by this Reinsdorf idiot, turned the players down.
(42:06):
Apparently most of the owners did not know that Rhinsdorff
had passed on a chance to eliminate salary arbitration, a
kind of automatic inflation thing within baseball contracts. And they
came down on Hinsdorff like a ton of bricks. What
do you mean you turned down the chance to stop
salary arbitration. So naturally he blamed me, and he called
(42:28):
up ESPN and he demanded they fire me, which, to
their credit, they never did do. Revenge is a dish
which people of taste prefer to eat cold, goes the
old Italian proverb. Reinsdorf is today despised within baseball. He
has once again ruined the Chicago White Sox. The Tampa
Bay Ray's owner, name Oli, sold the team unknowingly, obviously
(42:51):
to a man named Stuart Sternberg, who turned out to
be married to a friend of mine from college. So
whenever the Rays would come into New York, I would
sit with Stu and his wife Lisa in their box.
Their eldest son interned for me. MLB Network, which started
out pretty good, is now just a propaganda machine in
which every team is unbeaten and every player is the
greatest ever. And they fired their best reporter, Ken Rosenthal
(43:14):
because he dared to write something critical of the idiot
commissioner Robert Manfred. So go Dodgers. I mean, you know,
(43:37):
my late friend and hero, Vin Scully Dodgers. Dodgers. Dodgers
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. We're now back to five episodes a week,
posting nightly just after midnight Eastern nine Pacific. Follow me
for the podcast promo videos on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x,
Instagram and instau. Once again, there is a Monday Countdown.
(43:59):
Please send this podcast or tell somebody about it. Send
it to them. Does not know they need to listen
to this podcast, but should. It's called Countdown. We've discussed
how my late hero and friend mister Scully told me
he was offered the Yankees announcing job in nineteen sixty four,
offered the chance to go home again to the Metropot
(44:20):
New York area, and again in nineteen sixty seven. He said, no, thanks,
I'll stay here. Thank you very much. I mentioned that
once on the air and Southern California erupted, Oh we
almost lost been fifty years ago. Brian Ray and John
Phillip Schanel, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and
(44:40):
performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle had little orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust. Sports Music is the Overman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other
(45:01):
music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
My announcer today is my friend John Deane, Dodgers fan.
Everything else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for today,
one weekend, six days until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
the three and eighty seventh day since convicted felon dissociative
(45:23):
fugue Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Use the election, use the
mental health system, use presidential immunity to keep him from
doing it again while we still have a chance. The
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news requires
until the next one. I'm Keith Oulderman. Good Morning, good afternoon,
(45:45):
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oulderman is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
(46:08):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
obvious problem with General John Kelly going on the record
and saying, yes, I heard Trump say quote I need
(00:27):
the kind of generals that Hitler had is that a
huge number of his supporters will applaud this. And the
obvious problem with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic quoting those
who were there and notes taken at the meeting as
Trump was told the cost of the funeral he had
offered to pay for for a murdered US soldier named
Vanessa Gien, and Trump screamed, quote, it doesn't cost sixty
(00:51):
thousand bucks to bury an e fing Mexican, don't pay
it is that even more of Trump's supporters will applaud that,
because the real disgusting, nauseating truth behind the revelations in
the Goldberg Atlantic piece is that it touches the third
and fourth rails of Donald Trump's America. Many of his
(01:13):
people believe whoever is in charge should be supported by
and in fact kept in power by the kind of
generals Hitler had. The anti Semites and the Trump cult
love it, obviously, and the ones who aren't anti Semites
just authoritarians love it, obviously, even if they're queasy about
the anti Semitism and the ones who aren't anti Semites
(01:36):
and aren't authoritarians but have always just secretly believed the
word democracy was merely another brand name or flavor of government.
They love it because it posits a kind of America
not just where might makes right, but where only might
makes right, and where only whites have might. And if
(01:58):
there is anybody missing from the Trump coalition of evil,
anybody who isn't inspired by the kind of generals that
Hitler had, they are certainly covered by It doesn't cost
sixty thousand bucks to bury an effing Mexican. Because if
violence and militarism are the Trumpian third rail, racism and
(02:19):
specifically anti Hispanic racism are the Trumpian fourth rail. The
rest of us have danced around this reality because the
alternative is to recognize just how much larger it is
than we want to believe in our worst moments, just
how much racism still seeps into the brains not just
of the Trumpsts, but of some of the moderates we know,
(02:42):
and even some of the liberals we know. But since
Trump came down that escalator so excited by what he
was about to say, denigrating immigrants and Mexicans, that he
almost bothered to move and walk rather than just stand
there in gelatinous pride and ride down the escalator. That's
(03:04):
that moment. This has not been about undocumented immigration or
even illegal aliens. It's been entirely about Hispanics. In exactly
the same way the first two hundred years of our
history was at route entirely about African Americans. And the
reason we have never solved this Hispanic immigration crisis, the
(03:26):
reason the Republicans have made sure for forty goddamned years
that there always has been an immigration crisis and always
will be an immigration crisis, was to give their people
somebody to hate. Only Trump, after a life in which
he inexplicably was not killed by some kid at NIMA,
(03:49):
the New York Military Academy who snapped after being dangled
out a window by Trump one time too many, or
he wasn't killed by somebody else's husband, or he wasn't
killed by drugs or disco or whatever in the seventies,
a life in which he started by believing he was
immortal and untouchable and that there were no consequences, but
(04:10):
he got worse from there. Only Trump would have been
stupid enough to tear up this exquisite stitching of the
quilt of excuses for why the immigration crisis wasn't actually
an immigration crisis, but just an excuse to let the
pasty white folks hate the brown people and blame them
(04:32):
and abuse them, and all the while make sure that
there never really was any significant change to the importation
of migrant labor from Mexico and Latin America. Hell, let's
drop the euphemisms. There never really was any significant change
to the importation of virtual slave labor from Mexico and
Latin America and Puerto Rico for that matter, because they
(04:53):
actually tried that once in the state of Georgia thirteen
years ago. They promised roundups, they did some deportations, and
guess what, all the the people in this country in Georgia,
without documentation, got the hell out of Georgia before the
deadline and went and worked the farms in other states,
(05:14):
and something like three hundred million dollars worth of Georgia
crops rotted in the fields because guess who would not
harvest it? The fat, stupid white people in Georgia who
had kicked out all the immigrants. The new problem, of course,
the new twist in this, the new reason his supporters
will cheer Trump insulting this poor woman, Private Vanessa Gien,
(05:38):
murdered at her army base, and cheer his use of
the phrase it doesn't cost sixty thousand bucks to bury
an effing Mexican and the follow up, don't pay it?
Can you believe it? Effing people trying to rip me off?
Is that Trump, of course, is insane. Somewhere along the
line he forgot that the only way you can keep
(05:59):
the machine going harvest the crops, keep the restaurant open,
not pay the fry cook, and make sure they are
all here so that the fat, stupid white people get
away with hating them. Because what are these immigrants going
to do? Complain? We've made sure they are here illegally,
and if they complain they can and are deported daily.
(06:20):
The only way you keep that machine going is to
not let somebody insane like Trump tell the truth that
what you see now is the way it has been
carefully crafted, mostly by Republicans, for forty goddamned years, in
a way that even Eric Blair, writing as George Orwell
never foresaw, not the two minutes hate from the novel
nineteen eighty four, but the endless hate, the perpetual hate.
(06:45):
You can't have Trump tell the truth that this is
built into the American economy and cannot be altered unless
the Republicans stop hating, or unless, like he wants, they
start hating more and actually try to round up all
the Hispanics and put them in concentration camps and deport
some and probably kill way more, which is what Trump
(07:06):
is going to do, which over the course of his
decade poisoning the United States of America, he has spread
to his cult. So now they have no concept, no
moment's thought that without the people he has told them
it is okay to despise and blame for everything and
probably kill America, particularly red state America, will fall apart.
(07:30):
They don't understand this. They don't understand that because the
quote effing Mexicans, Trump thinks it costs him too much
to bury. They keep the nation running, and to think
like Trump for a second, they help the productive parts
of this country underwrite the money losing states and permit
them the fat wi pasty white people to go to
(07:52):
their beloved McDonald's, which is now just another symbol for
more corporate hoaring and stunt staging for fascism. After that
pathetic Trump immorality play over the weekend, and now these
people can go to goddamned McDonald's and get a goddamn
big mac made of crap that would cost them otherwise
(08:14):
thirty seven dollars and ninety eight cents. Have a happy meal.
Here's change. Back on your one hundred. But back to Hitler.
If you have not read mister Goldberg's piece in The Atlantic,
I urge you to do so. I won't further steal
his thunder except to quote three long passages and to
(08:35):
underscore one truly new and disturbing bit of information in
the context of another news development unrelated to the story.
Let me quote him about General Kelly. This week, I
asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when
Trump raised the subject of German generals, Kelly responded by asking,
(08:56):
do you mean Bismarck's generals? He went on, I mean,
I knew he didn't know who Bismarck was or about
the Franco Prussian War. I said, do you mean the
Kaiser's generals? Surely you can't mean Hitler's generals, and he said, yeah, yeah,
Hitler's generals. I explained to him that Rommel had to
(09:16):
commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.
Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel. This
wasn't the only time, Goldberg writes Kelly felt compelled to
instruct Trump on military history. In twenty eighteen, Trump asked
Kelly to explain who the good guys were in World
War One. Kelly responded by explaining simple rule, presidents should,
(09:40):
as a matter of politics and policy, remember that the
good guys in any given conflict are the country's allied
with the United States. There is a sketch by the
group Kids in the Hall in which an actress played
by the Great Dave Foley gets up to accept an
(10:01):
award and thanks her manager and thanks the audience, and
thanks her director, and thanks her agent adds oh, and
thank Hitler and waits for the applause, and instead it's
her manager played by the great Kevin MacDonald, dragging her
off the stage while she complains that they did an
applaud and he says, with terror in his voice, do
you think Hitler? And she matter factly says, oh, I
(10:22):
never did no, And half the time I read something
about Trump and Hitler, I am waiting for Trump's Dave
Foley moment when Trump gets up there and literally thanks Hitler.
And now reading all of this, I realize it's already happened.
It was just in private. Let me cutting out of
(10:43):
Goldberger's conclusion because it circles back to my starting point here,
and then I'll drop the new info he broke. One day,
he writes, in the first year of Trump's presidency, I
had lunch with Jared Kushner, Trump's son in law, in
his White House office. I turned the discussion as soon
as I could, to the subject of his father in
law's character. I mentioned one of Trump's recent outbursts and
(11:04):
told Kushner that, in my opinion, the president's behavior was
damaging to the country. I cited as I tend to
do what is in my view, Trump's original sin, his
mockery of John McCain's heroism. This is where our conversation
got strange and noteworthy. Kushner answered in a way that
made it seem as though he agreed with me. Quote,
(11:24):
no one can go as low as the president. He said,
you shouldn't even try. I found this baffling for a moment,
he writes, But then I understood Kushner wasn't insulting his
father in law. He was paying him a compliment. In
Trump's mind, traditional values, values, including those embraced by the
armed forces of the United States, having to do with honor,
(11:46):
self sacrifice, and integrity, have no merit, no relevance, and
no meaning. Unquote. See you and I are appalled by
the Hitler's general's quote and the effing Mexican quote. And
by next week Trump will be selling mrch or soliciting
donations based on those quotes. In any event, here is
(12:11):
the new stuff about Trump's other role models, not the
old Nazis, but the current Chinese quoting him again on
separate occasions. In twenty twenty, Trump held private conversations in
the White House with National security officials about the George
Floyd protests quote. The Chinese generals would know what to do,
(12:32):
he said, according to former officials who described the conversations
to me, referring to the leaders of the People's Liberation Army,
which carried out the Tiananmen Square massacre in nineteen eighty nine,
Trump's desire to deploy US troops against American citizens is
well documented. During the nerve racking period of social unrest
following Floyd's death, Trump asked Milly and Esper, a West
(12:54):
Point graduate and former infantry officer, if the army could
shoot protesters. Trump seen unable to think straight and calmly,
Esper wrote in his memoir, the protest and violence had
him so enraged that he was willing to send in
active duty forces to put down the protesters. Worse yet,
he suggested we shoot them. I wondered about his sense
(13:16):
of history, of propriety and of his oath to the constitution.
As pertold National Public Radio in twenty twenty two, we
reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly
at General Milly and said, can't you just shoot them?
Just shoot them in the legs or something. When defense
officials argued against Trump's desire, the president screamed, according to witnesses,
(13:37):
you are all efing losers. Now Here's why that's a problem,
Because Trump and his cults are not only ready for
a fight like that, they are spoiling for one, and
(13:58):
they are spoiling for one next month. Polling by the
Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution suggests that
if Trump loses two weeks from now, just slightly less
than one in five Republicans thinks he should declare the
results invalid and do whatever it takes to seize power.
(14:20):
The actual number is nineteen percent, but among those who
trust Fox News the most of all news outlets, it's
thirty percent who think Trump should do this. For those
who trust Fox and or the even more extreme propaganda channels,
it's forty one percent. Also, thirty percent of Republicans quote
believe that true American patriots may have to resort to
(14:43):
violence to save the country. This poll being commissioned by
a religious group. After all, they broke it down by religion.
Twenty eight percent of Evangelical Protestant Republicans think violence may
be needed, as do and this may surprise you twenty
eight percent of Mormons, sorry, Mitt Low. The end of
(15:05):
the religious pro violence scale is ten percent, and that
would be Jewish Republicans. Happily, there does seem to be
a growing consensus on this front. Forty nine percent of
Americans in this survey, Americans of all political parties, faiths,
and heritage agree there is a real danger Trump will
(15:25):
use the presidency to become a dictator. Do I think
the nation will erupt in organized, sustained violence after the election,
I do not sporadic violence terrorism or terrorism adjacent violence. Yes, yes,
I would prepare yourself for that. And I hate to
(15:48):
sound anything like one of the people in that poll
I just quoted by Nay. I am comforted at night
by reminding myself that Trump and the Trump cult dreams
of seeing tanks on the streets. And forgive me for this,
but I'm comforted by the realization that if if it
comes to that, if it comes to that next month,
(16:08):
or in December or in January, it'll be grim, and
it will be tragic, and it will be satisfying to
see all the trumpe Ists suddenly realize that the tanks
in the streets aren't theirs. The tanks in the streets
(16:28):
are Americas. A couple of poll notes as breaking news yesterday,
I told you the Emerson poll found that around twenty
percent of voters had chosen Harris or Trump in the
last month. So late deciders were breaking sixty to thirty
(16:51):
seven for the vice president. And how much that could
mean in net vote gain. It could give her twenty
five twenty seven thousand net votes her votes minus his
votes just in Pennsylvania, eb. Seven hundred thousand nationwide. Now,
CNBC reports from its polling that young voters are also
(17:12):
breaking late for Kamala Harris. In similar numbers, voters under
thirty five are now sixty to forty for Harris over Trump,
and that was not the way it was in July.
It was Harris forty six, Trump thirty four, with twenty
one percent favoring a third party candidate like the Secretary
of Phone Sex. In other words, voters under thirty five
(17:34):
grew up. So Harris leads Trump by twenty points in
voters under thirty five, and in twenty twenty Joe Biden
won by twenty points with voters under thirty five. If you,
for some reason, like the less reliable metapolling, you gov
for the Times of London and Reuter's ipsos have Harris
(17:56):
by three. In new polls, Morning Consult has Harris by four.
There's also a rash of junk polls showing Trump tied
or head. One of them showing him ahead in New
Mexico was literally made up by one of his crazier
ex ambassadors. She has been ahead of him by seven
and a half points or more in New Mexico with
(18:17):
virtually no change, a solid series of straight lines across
the bar graph for more than a month, and a
reminder from weeks ago that this was planned because when
he declares on election night that he won, or he
declares afterwards that he must have been robbed, because otherwise,
why would these polls I'm holding have said he was winning.
(18:38):
These chunk poles, the ones that are coming out right now,
will give him something to hold in his hand besides
his Arnold Palmer. One more. ABC News reported last night
(19:00):
that a quote proposed personnel roster circulating within Trump's can
campaign and transition operation lists Aileen Cannon, the federal judge
who threw out Trump's classified documents case, Eileen Cannon as
a possible candidate for Attorney General. No in this country.
(19:22):
Two things, how could she possibly be worse than Merrick Garland?
And how could she possibly wind up doing more for
Trump than Merrick Garland? Secondly, Cannon the former yoga and
flamenco correspondent of the Miami Nuevo Herald, and I wish
I were making that up. Is clearly more qualified to
(19:45):
be Attorney general than she is a federal judge. LEBC
says she is the second name on the list out
of nearly a dozen ages led by j Clayton, former
Chairman of the SEC. Trump's expert on how to make
illegal legal, Mike Davis, is on the list, as is
Jeffrey Can I p on my pants now Clark, who
(20:06):
tried to freelance a coup during the transition and was
then the victim of a putdown that will never die
down from the Justice Department exec. Richard Donahue. You're an
environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office
and we'll call you when there's an oil spill. I'm
not sure what to make of this story because it
is literally too bad to be true. I mean, what
(20:30):
kind of leak could cut through the noise and actually
look too corrupt, too quid pro quo even for Trump.
What against the background of his utter corruption, his Dorian
Gray's portrait life, what could look worse than that? It's
(20:50):
possible the Democrats made this up or got this out
and it's true. On the other hand, like I said,
how could she ever be worse than Merrick Garland also
of interest here well in news about my exes Olivia.
(21:11):
Newsy had no events scheduled last night, so it'll be
Katie Turr news instead, And I, of course, will continue
to pretend to be weary of all this and broken
inside and beyond the reach of its implications now, while
in fact I'm enjoying the absolute emmer effing hell out
(21:35):
of all of it. That's next, This is countdown. This
is countdown, with Keith Olberman still ahead on this initiative countdown.
(22:10):
Maybe the idea and ending the Baseball playoffs on a
Sunday but not starting the World Series until Friday is
to force sportscasters and even ex sportscasters to continue to
do more and more World Series previews. Well, you guys
asked for it. Another World Series preview of a different nature.
The New York Yankees host game one Friday night, and
(22:32):
I'm as always rooting against them, which is rather amazing
because from the age of seven through the start of
my professional career, and again in my thirties and forties,
when one friend of mine from my childhood was the
PR director and another friend of mine from my early
career was the team manager. I was as big a
Yankee fan as there was. I worked for the Yankees
once a year. George Steinbrenner wanted me to be the
(22:55):
voice of the Yankees on TV. I used to announce
their old timers game like my dad before me. I
was a season ticket holder at Yankee Stadium. Our combined
run one was forty one years. And then, to quote
the man who was manager of the team when I
was a kid, Ralph Hauke. When I introduced myself to
him in nineteen eighty three and told him he was
(23:15):
my Yankee manager and always would be, he said, thank you.
Nothing personal but piss on the Yankees. The World Series
preview and the day the Yankees got me fired from
a job at Baseball state run television MLB network that
I hadn't even agreed to take yet, piss on the
Yankees coming up in things I promised not to tell first.
(23:38):
There are still more new idiots to talk about. The
daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger
effects specimens who don't work for the Yankees and who
constitute todays worse persons in the Brons worse. Jeremy Peters
of the New York Times, the Yankees of newspapers, working
with that little fascist Midday on Clay at MSNBC as
(24:00):
well does mister Peters. This was actually said on MSNBC,
And I will save until the end the identity of
the news model whose question provoked this amazing, condensed, compromised
partisan stupidity on the part of this guy Peters question,
do you think she that would be Vice President Kamala Harris,
(24:20):
Democratic nominee for president if you hadn't heard Do you
think she's being clear enough? Peters answers. I think in
some of these interviews you and I have both heard it.
But clarity is not always her strong suit. When you
contrast her with somebody with Donald Trump, who you pretty
much know what he's saying every time he opens his mouth,
(24:40):
for better or worse, she does have a messaging problem.
This man Peters is employed by the New York Times,
brought onto what is in theory a television news network,
insisting that you pretty much know what Trump's saying every
time he opens his mouth, But Kamala Harris isn't clear enough.
Trump is this close to speaking in tongues. Well, I
(25:04):
like the other Hey, when Trump was asked what is
your plan to ban artificial foods? And he answered Bobby Kennedy. Right,
everybody likes Bobby Kennedy and he's so big into the
healthy food and women things, everything he wants to do things. Yes,
that's clear. That's much more clear than Kamala Harris. Question,
(25:24):
what is your plan to ban artificial foods? Answer? Bobby
Kennedy is big into the healthy food and women. Yeah,
I've heard that. I mean, I know Kennedy will be
boosting FaceTime usage, but any idea what that has to
do with banning artificial food mister Kennedy, the Secretary of
Phone Sex said today. It was mister Peters, who, after
(25:46):
the debate, had argued that Kamala Harris had failed to
give undecided voters what they really wanted, the fine print,
specific policy details at length at a debate on TV,
owned his promise, which MSNBC talking head hosted Peters that
day and asked that question that let him lie about
Trump being clear and Harris not being clear enough. Why
(26:07):
it's Katie Turr who with Kirsten Cinema slowly disappearing from
the Senate like the cheshire Cat and Olivia Newsy, now
being fired at New York Magazine and unlikely to ever
get any job requiring, you know, trust her honesty ever
again while she sues the creepy guy at Politico, she
was planning to marry and write a book with With
them out of the picture, it is Katie who has
(26:28):
vaulted back into the position of which of my exes
I am currently the most ashamed of. You can depend
on Keith about women. He always gets them wrong. The
runner up worser Newsweek magazine. Years ago, my late friend
Howard Feineman left his lead role at Newsweek to go
work for the Huffington Post, which then and I guess
(26:51):
now too, but then certainly sounded like a website for
people who like to inhale paint. And it was the
first time I realized that all the established news brands
of my youth were in desperate, desperate trouble long term.
I mean, Newsweek wasn't the first to succumb my first
home UPI even by then two thousand and six seven
(27:11):
eight was putting out other people's press releases, and like
only one or two a week, Sports illustrated as a
betting site. Others are just expiring URLs. But if there
was any doubt, Newsweek is done. This was its post
at midday Monday, a photo of Trump at a sports stadium,
(27:32):
presumably one in Pittsburgh somewhere, with the caption Donald Trump
has shared what is likely an AI generated image on
his truth social account showing him as a player for
the Pittsburgh Steelers. Wait, what makes you think that? Just
because the image showed Trump in football pads, wearing a Steelers' uniform,
(27:54):
weighing maybe one hundred pounds less than he does, about
forty years younger than he is, and not looking like
he was about to succumb to a disease or something.
Didn't Donald try to play quarterback for the Steelers in
the late sixties? Oh no, no, I'm thinking the other
guy reminds me always of Donald Trump's name. His name
was Dick Shiner. I think I'm kidding. Dick Shiner Shi
(28:19):
n e Er look him up. Also played for the
New York Giants for a while. Giants Get Dick Shiner
was the headline anyway. So, nine hours after posting this
idea that maybe that image of Trump wearing the forty
seven on a Steelers uniform maybe that was ai. Nine
hours later, one of the three or four people at
(28:41):
Newsweek finally saw the social media blowback to their incredibly
stupid posts, and they changed the article. So as of
Monday night, the headline on the story itself, but not
the tweet, had been changed to quote Trump posts fake
image of himself as a star NFL player. You think, oh,
wait to go out on a limb there, Newsweek. On
(29:03):
the other hand, if The New York Times and Jeremy
Peters had done the story, it would have been Trump
shows his athletic side in creative post, but our winner
the worst, same topic, same football team, and the Trump campaign.
It is a little over a week since the Trump
candidate for the Senate in Pennsylvania, David McCormick, had his
(29:23):
own problem with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He posted what red like.
Whether or not he was really too dumb to tell
the difference between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles.
Whether or not he's really that stupid is unclear, but
it reads like he's that stupid, quoting it pictures of
him four different pictures of him in Eagles green with
Eagles fans outside the Eagles stadium. Fun tailgate in Philly.
(29:47):
Today football emoji excited to watch the Steelers throttle the Raiders,
Republican senate candidate in Pennsylvania. Why the Steelers should prove
so troubling for Republicans or Newsweek or anybody else is
hard to say. They have been in the National Football
League since the Rooney family got a franchise in nineteen
(30:08):
thirty three and named it the Pittsburgh Football Pirates. Then
in nineteen forty they said enough of this confusion, and
they paid tribute to the city steel industry by renaming
the team the Steelers, named for Steel Steel with two
e's and then an R and an S added at
the end. There stee L E R S Stealers. They're
(30:35):
the sixth oldest franchise in the NFL. They're a pretty
big fing deal. The Trump campaign does not know how
to spell the team name. It has sent out one
of its forty four million daily fundraising emails focusing on
Trump's most important campaign finish line statements, his stunt not
actually working, serving French fries to people who weren't really
(30:55):
customers and weren't really surprised to see him there at
a fascist McDonald's that wasn't really open, and the other
one was going to a Pittsburgh Steelers game. The fundraising
email in full, Trump Vance twenty twenty four. The little
button in the corner that says shop can't stop, won't
stop working at McDonald's a town hall, a Stealers game.
(31:17):
No one is working harder than President Trump to better
I'm not paying a lot for this funeral a Steelers game.
It reads s t e a l e r s.
Why that has the word steal in it? S t
e a l as in thief, as in Trump, Donald
(31:40):
Trump of the Steelers, s t e a l e
r s Steelers, Steelers. Sometimes the jokes just right themselves.
Two days worst Fars sending and the annually at this
(32:10):
time of year, somebody asks me, why aren't you at
that All Baseball network? Seems like you'd be a natural,
And I say you mean MLB Network and they say yeah,
and I say sit down. You got to hear this story.
The owners of at least five different Major League Baseball
teams have tried to get me fired over the years,
and one, the New York Yankees, kind of succeeded. On
(32:33):
November twenty six, twenty twelve, why agent followed the instructions
of Tony Petiti, then the president of the TV publicity
channel owned by Major League Baseball MLB Network, and called
Petiti to finalize a deal by which I would join
the channel to do a daily show, probably at five
thirty at night. It was going to be weird. MLB
Network and its sister hockey channel, NHL Network originate in
(32:56):
the same studios in Caucus, New Jersey, that MSNBC used
every day from the day I started there in October
nineteen ninety seven through the day in October two thousand
and seven when NBC finally moved us to New York City.
I had been asked to do something for MLB Network
in two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine,
before it ever got on the air. The request came
(33:18):
directly from the then Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Ceilig. He
also asked me to write for Baseball's website MLB dot Com.
We actually got that done, but the TV show was
impossible because of my schedule until I was a free
agent in the fall of twenty twelve. So I was
invited in the fall of twenty twelve to do a
couple of guest appearances at MLB Network, and they went well,
(33:40):
except for this crazy deja vu kind of thing that
hit me when I went into the building and found
that while Baseball had spent sixty million dollars to upgrade
all the technical stuff in the studio designs, they had
not touched anything else from the MSNBC era. The carpet
tiles were the same, the ping pong table in the
(34:02):
break croom was the same. The sign on the back
of the bathroom door telling you who to call if
the John overflows were the same. It was like having
a dream where you're back in your childhood home and
everything is exactly the way it was, including the creeks
and the floorboards, except oh, by the way, there's a
nuclear reactor in the middle of your den, and you
(34:24):
keep saying, where did that come from? Anyway, the guest
appearances on MLB Network went well, and this guy Petit,
the president, asked if I would fill in for two
days on their new morning show the week of Thanksgiving
twenty twelve. I certainly knew how to get to the building.
I did the shows with Brian Kenny and Ken Rosenthal
and Bob Costas's son, Keith and Alana Rizzo, and we
(34:46):
had a good time. And Tony Pettiti, the president of
MLB Network, attended the meetings that we would have before
and after each show. I mean full staff meetings, fifteen
or so people standing around a bunch of cubicles, and
in front of all of them, Tony Pettiti began asking
me if I thought my new sh for MLB Network
would do better at five or five thirty, and if
(35:08):
I agreed with him that I should work only during
the baseball season and spring training and playoffs and winter
meetings and then stay fresh by taking the rest of
the year off. He asked me if there were people
on the staff of the morning show who I would
like to work with. I mean, this is in front
of all of the staff of the morning show. He
warned me they couldn't pay me the kind of salary
(35:28):
I was used to, and I said that happily, the
kind of salary I was used to meant I did
not need the kind of salary I was used to.
He told me to remind my agent to call him
the monday after Thanksgiving. He wished me a happy Turkey,
and everybody left, and everybody heard his plans, and a
couple of the producers asked me if I was recommending
them to be on my new show on MLB network. So,
(35:51):
how come I don't have a new show on MLB Networker,
how come we're not celebrating the tenth anniversary of my
new show on MLB Network. Well, on Monday afternoon, my
agent calls me and says he's just gotten off the
phone with Tony Pettiti and it was the strangest conversation
he had had since he became an agent. No let
me rephrase that, he said, because it wasn't a conversation,
(36:13):
it was an attempted conversation. I kept asking him what
he told me to call him about, and he would
then say nothing. Initially I did not understand what you
mean he said nothing, My agent said he meant literally that.
I say, so, Tony, what's your offer to Keith? And
then there was silence, and I thought the phone call
had dropped out. So I said, Tony, are you there?
(36:36):
And he say sure, I am so Again I asked him,
you know, what's your offer to Keith? And again literally silence,
only this time I can hear him breathing. I tried
like ten different ways. Are we talking about Keith now silence?
Is there a reason you're being silent about Keith? Tony silence?
If I changed the subject, talked about somebody else, he
(36:57):
was his normal self. If I mentioned your name, he
went silent. The next day, the agent calls me back.
Petiti just did this again with me on the phone.
He wouldn't speak, literally, wouldn't say any words in any
language if I mentioned your name. Took me a long
time to find out what had actually happened. The next
(37:19):
baseball season, after I'd gone back to work at ESPN,
I'm at a game. There's one of the MLB network
officials whom I'd met on my two days before Thanksgiving
twenty twelve, and this person comes up to me and apologizes.
We all heard what happened. It's so embarrassing. Petiti is
such a coward. The Yankees got to him and another club,
I never found out which one. There was some kind
(37:41):
of conference call a Monday after Thanksgiving to tell the
teams about your new show, and whoever was on the
call for the Yankees went ballistic. They said something like,
if you put him on MLB Network, we will disable
your cameras. At Yankee Stadium and never let any of
you inside the building again. Instantly I knew why the
Yankees would have done that. I was, and my father
(38:03):
before me, ac He's and ticket holder for forty two
years for Yankee games, and for ten of those years,
I was also one of the two announcers who did
a kind of play by play over the public address
system at Yankee Stadium on Old Timer's Day. And then
one day in twenty eleven, I tweeted a photo of
a Yankee employee in the stands giving some sort of
(38:25):
hand signals to Alex Rodriguez in the on deck circle.
The guy was clearly telling Alex Rodriguez what the last
pitch had been. It wasn't cheating, it was helping a
supposed superstar who apparently could not figure out for himself
from on the field what the last pitch had been.
(38:46):
I tweeted the photo. Major League Baseball called the Yankees
and told them to cut it out. The Yankees and
a Rod looked stupid in the newspapers, and the Yankees'
management said they were not mad at me. And then
three months later, days before Old Timer's Day, they leaked
to the papers that I had been fired as Old
Timer's Day play by play man because I had tweeted
that photo of Alex Rodriguez and the guy in the stands,
(39:10):
so rather naturally, my response was to not renew my
season tickets. And my tickets were right behind home plate
and they cost like four hundred thousand dollars a year,
and relax, I gave about seventy percent of them to
make a wish. But the Yankees, being the Yankees, were
furious that I would not give them four hundred thousand
dollars a year anyway, so they told MLB Network if
(39:32):
MLB Network gave me a show, they would unplug MLB
Networks cameras. Actually they did more than that. I asked
my friend, the MLB network official, the real puzzler of
the saga, why this MLB Network president Tony Petiti, literally
would not speak, would not say anything, not even deals
off to my agent. Oh. The official said, the Yankees
(39:56):
were specific about that if you say anything to him
or his people, we will get you fired. So Fetiti
took it literally. He said, if you or your agent called,
to just give you the silent treatment. These are adults,
mind you, and they say that on air talent are
the Prima Donnas. As I said, the Yankees are the
(40:19):
closest of five different teams who tried to have actually
gotten me fired sort of. When I was in local
news in Los Angeles, Jackie Autrey, the woman who went
from being Gene Autry's banker to being his second wife,
tried to get me fired from my station in LA
because I had criticized their team, the California Angels. She
tried again a few years later after I got to ESPN.
(40:40):
Then there were the Tampa Bay Rays, well, the Devil
Rays at that point, whose first owner, Vince Namoli, was
convinced I had a vendetta against his team and was
making up stories about them that were accidentally true. He
could not conceive that somebody in his organization who he paid,
actually hated him so much that this person called me
(41:01):
up and volunteered to feed me anything bad that went
on there. But that is exactly what happened. So that's
the Yankees, the Angels, and the Rays, and there's a
mystery fifth team that was also involved in the MLB
network thing. And then there were the Chicago White Sox.
One of their co owners, Eddie Einhorn, was a big
fan of mine, But for forty four years the team
(41:23):
has been run by the other co owner, Jerry Reinsdorf.
And Jerry Reinsdorf was one of the key figures in
the strike that killed the nineteen ninety four baseball season.
During that terrible winter that followed, my sources in the
Baseball Players Association showed me a copy of their offer
to the owners. The owners were led by Rhinsdorf, and
(41:43):
in the player's offer, they were willing to actually negotiate
one of the players Union's sacred cows, salary arbitration. They
were willing to cut it or maybe eliminate it outright.
But after complaining about salary arbitration for twenty years, the
owners committee, led by this Reinsdorf idiot, turned the players down.
(42:06):
Apparently most of the owners did not know that Rhinsdorff
had passed on a chance to eliminate salary arbitration, a
kind of automatic inflation thing within baseball contracts. And they
came down on Hinsdorff like a ton of bricks. What
do you mean you turned down the chance to stop
salary arbitration. So naturally he blamed me, and he called
(42:28):
up ESPN and he demanded they fire me, which, to
their credit, they never did do. Revenge is a dish
which people of taste prefer to eat cold, goes the
old Italian proverb. Reinsdorf is today despised within baseball. He
has once again ruined the Chicago White Sox. The Tampa
Bay Ray's owner, name Oli, sold the team unknowingly, obviously
(42:51):
to a man named Stuart Sternberg, who turned out to
be married to a friend of mine from college. So
whenever the Rays would come into New York, I would
sit with Stu and his wife Lisa in their box.
Their eldest son interned for me. MLB Network, which started
out pretty good, is now just a propaganda machine in
which every team is unbeaten and every player is the
greatest ever. And they fired their best reporter, Ken Rosenthal
(43:14):
because he dared to write something critical of the idiot
commissioner Robert Manfred. So go Dodgers. I mean, you know,
(43:37):
my late friend and hero, Vin Scully Dodgers. Dodgers. Dodgers
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. We're now back to five episodes a week,
posting nightly just after midnight Eastern nine Pacific. Follow me
for the podcast promo videos on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x,
Instagram and instau. Once again, there is a Monday Countdown.
(43:59):
Please send this podcast or tell somebody about it. Send
it to them. Does not know they need to listen
to this podcast, but should. It's called Countdown. We've discussed
how my late hero and friend mister Scully told me
he was offered the Yankees announcing job in nineteen sixty four,
offered the chance to go home again to the Metropot
(44:20):
New York area, and again in nineteen sixty seven. He said, no, thanks,
I'll stay here. Thank you very much. I mentioned that
once on the air and Southern California erupted, Oh we
almost lost been fifty years ago. Brian Ray and John
Phillip Schanel, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and
(44:40):
performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle had little orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust. Sports Music is the Overman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other
(45:01):
music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
My announcer today is my friend John Deane, Dodgers fan.
Everything else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for today,
one weekend, six days until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
the three and eighty seventh day since convicted felon dissociative
(45:23):
fugue Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Use the election, use the
mental health system, use presidential immunity to keep him from
doing it again while we still have a chance. The
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news requires
until the next one. I'm Keith Oulderman. Good Morning, good afternoon,
(45:45):
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oulderman is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
(46:08):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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