November 7, 2023 • 46 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 69: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is a damp drizzly November in our polls, but Dementia J. Trump not only inadvertently confessed to fraud at his New York trial but also managed to repeat - on the record - that he has no idea what year this in, nor when his presidency ended. The first will cost him $250,000,000 in cash and all his New York properties. The second could cost him his bid to seize power in 2025.
And it had better. You saw Trump’s plan for a Special Prosecutor to attack anybody named Biden, and deliberately politicizing the Department of Justice, and this Project 2025 and Trump’s White House Budget Director Russ Vought going on the record to say that TO politicize the DOJ quote “You don’t need a statutory change at all, you need a mindset change. You need an attorney general and a White House Counsel’s Office that don’t view themselves as trying to protect the department from the president” which I think is even nastier sounding in the original Russian when Stalin devised it. Trump is convinced he made mistakes during his presidency and he won’t repeat them and the foremost of those mistakes was NOT to install a military dictatorship. Quoting The Washington Post, his team of evils is "drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.” And the creature at the center of that plot is Jeffrey Clark, indicted in Georgia, unindicted co-conspirator in Washington, would-be Attorney General, the environmental lawyer who wants to turn the world over to the least pro-environment person on the dying planet. Clark devised the last-minute January 2021 plot for the DOJ to seize voting machines and when told that if Trump stayed in office there would be riots in every major city he answered “Well, that’s why there’s an insurrection act.” Just remember that by August 1934 Hitler re-shaped the entire judiciary of Germany so that every judge and prosecutor had to swear an oath TO HIM and apparently the total number of resignations was one guy, a prosecutor in Wuppertal and his name was Martin Gauger and he wound up fleeing to the Netherlands and the Nazis caught him and sent him to Buchenwald and he was dead by 1941 and Trump has a four-year head start on Hitler.
And then there are the polls. I'd love if they looked differently. On the other hand, no incumbent president hasn't been underwater to an opposition opponent - real or generic - at this point in the timeline in decades. And amid the calls to dump Biden, who's your choice? Who else are you willing to bet democracy on?
B-Block (26:12) IN SPORTS: Cubs double the all-time salary for a baseball manager to hire Craig Counsell away from the Brewers (and outbid the Mets for him). Lovely guy. Has managed his team to six playoff series and lost five times. Mets go to Plan B, Cleveland gets one, All-time worst World Series TV ratings and don't dismiss them: baseball's business model DEPENDS on the game getting MORE money from TV each year, not less (31:18) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Sarah Huckabee does what the lectern tells her. Boris Johnson shows he REALLY doesn't know what a hair dryer is for. And Speaker Mike Johnson gets weirder and weirder: what do you mean you and your 17-year old son exchange updates on your porn usage?
C-Block (32:34) THINGS I PROMISE NOT TO TELL: On busy baseball days like this one somebody always asks me why I don't work for that baseballl network. Wellllll... I was gonna, but one team got me fired before they had finished hiring me!
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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. To
paraphrase Herman Melville and Moby Dick, it is a damp,
(00:26):
drizzly November in our polls. Also dementia. J Trump made
a fool of himself at his trial, and he did
more dementia things, including forgetting when he was president and
when he wasn't and oh, by the way, he confessed.
Trump also has a plan to use the military to
quell protests if he has another inauguration day in twenty
twenty five, and Jack Smith has filer warning that he
(00:48):
will prove at trial that Trump not only set January
sixth quote in motion, but that he has rewarded his
thugs ever since, even the ones in the January sixth choir,
which would be the choir Trump preaches to. But the
true headline today is clearly this Trump's attorney, Alina Habba,
(01:09):
really thinks Trump is going to pay her.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Then, why exactly am I being paid as an attorney?
And why exactly are taxpayer dollars being used in this courtroom.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
You're not being paid, You're not going to be paid.
Trump's going to stiff you on the bill. Trump stiffs
everybody on the bill, and let's do their New York
City fraud trial first, because after what he said on
the stand yesterday, even if he gets hit by lightning
today and turns into an actual human being and he
decides to pay his bills, he might not have the
money to do so because he confessed and he just
(01:49):
avoided contempt of court, and in yet another public venue,
he has showed he is one hundred percent out of
his mind. Prosecutor Kevin Wallace gives Trump a copy of
his company's financial statement. Mister Trump, the court officer is
handing you PX four one six Deutsche Bank Term Loan
Agreement twenty twelve. Let's go to page six. Is that
(02:10):
your signature? Trump answers yes. Page one hundred and five
the guarantee. Did you sign it again? Trump answers yes.
This says the prosecutor. Wallace quotes in order to induce lending.
You see that? And Trump answers yes. And the prosecutor says,
little Roman I it says as of June thirty, twenty eleven.
(02:34):
Do you believe it was true and accurate? And Trump says, yeah,
I do. That's a confession. The document was signed to
quote in due lending. That's a confession to a motive
for fraud. And Trump testified that it required him to
sign the guarantee that the financial statement was true and
(02:56):
the financial statement was not true. That's a confession to fraud.
And the prosecutors only had to prove that there was
fraud to the judge who already said, yeah, there's fraud.
And the judge Ngern, whom Trump has now insulted in
court rather than just outside of it. He will rule
(03:18):
on the case after the last witness tomorrow, Ivanka Trump,
who must have something Letitia James and Kevin Wallace think
will sink daddy oops. And as the former federal prosecutor
Joyce White noted, Trump's admission here, I signed this. I
guaranteed it was true. I did it to get the loan.
That is my signature next to in order to induce lending.
(03:40):
That means that if Trump tries to appeal the eventual
guilty verdict and the two hundred and fifty million dollar
penalty and what else from Judge Ern. Because Ngron said
before the trial actually started that the facts established there
had been fraud by the Trump Corporation. The appeals court
will say over here this part of your testimony, Trump,
this is you confessing he's finished quarter of a million
(04:03):
dollars in penalty and barred from real estate in New York.
So if you were thinking on bidding on Trump Tower,
get your bid ready. But for God's sake, remember it's
going to cost money to rename the place I'm thinking,
Arthur Engron Memorial Peace Plaza. And still Elena Habba is
(04:25):
actually lucky she and her client did not end the
day at Riker's Island for contempt of court. Judge Engron
went all Oliver Cromwell on Trump. Cromwell, it was, who said,
I beseech you in the bowels of Christ. Think it
possible you may be mistaken? All anger On left out
Christ in the bowels. But he said to Trump's lawyers,
I beseech you to control him if you can. If
(04:48):
you can't, I will. I will excuse him and draw
every negative inference that I can. But Haba, America's leading
expert on parking lot law yelled at anger On, you
are here to hear so what he has to say.
Anger On yelled at her to sit down and added, no,
(05:09):
I am not here to hear what he has to say,
I am here to hear him answer questions. The attorney
spokesmodel was offended.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I was told to sit down today, I was yelled at,
and I've had a judge who is unhinged slamming a table.
Let me be very clear, I don't tolerate that in
my life. I'm not going to tolerate it here.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
What moren okay? If Trump can refer to a Perry
Mason moment during this trial, I can refer to a
Perry Mason character. Hamilton Berger was the district attorney who,
during the life of the TV series prosecuted two hundred
and twenty five of Perry Mason's clients, and two hundred
and twenty three of them were found not guilty. Lena
(05:53):
Habba is Trump's Hamilton Burger. And then there's the dementia
j part. The attorney Kevin Wallace asks Trump if he
prepared the twenty twenty one Trump Organization corporate statement. He says,
I was so busy in the White House focusing on
Russia and China and keeping our country safe, and Wallas
matter of factly says that the thing was filed in
(06:15):
the summer. You weren't President then and now it's on
a court record that Trump either can't remember when he
was president, and for God's sake, I know we've only
had forty six of them, but I bet the other
forty five could remember when they were president and when
they weren't. Or he'll just lie and say whatever he
(06:36):
thinks best serves him, not only without regard to the truth,
but without regard to whether or not it's an easily
proved lie, which is pathological lying that is a symptom
of borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder, or anti
social personality disorder, or all of them, or, as Noel
Coward put it so much more simply, the fact that
(06:57):
Trump is obviously definitely nuts. I wasn't president in the
summer of twenty twenty one, thank you, Nancy Faust. Trump
(07:42):
is obviously definitely nuts and getting worse. Trump is this
close to saying with the new dictator of San Marcos
Esposito in the movie Bananas said when he came out
after the revolution and announced, quote, all citizens will be
required to change their underwear every half hour. Underwear will
be worn on the outside so we can check. And
(08:05):
in the same speech, In an update to a previous
moment of dementia Jay, he actually corrected his previous gaff
of saying that Victor Orbon was the strong man of Turkey,
and he promptly said that Orbon's real country, Hungary, shares
a border with Russia. Yeah, the countries are six hundred
(08:25):
and twenty miles apart at their closest non intersection. Underwear
we'll be worn on the outside so we can check.
The election is now a year from this past Sunday,
and the major task for all of us, and I
guess I have more of an opportunity to do this
than you do, is to spend as much of the
next year as possible emphasizing how old and how crazy
(08:49):
Trump is. He will wind up in jail, or he won't.
You and I will not be on the juries. When
you see stuff like Sunday's Washington Post piece, send it
to everybody. Hell, send this podcast to anybody who's not subscribed. Well, yeah,
I know that's self serving. That will make me some
(09:11):
more money, probably fifty cents each. I'm, by the way,
not doing this for the money. I'm doing this because
I like most people and all dogs, and i'd like
to see the planet continue past the year twenty twenty five.
I ain't doing it for the money anyway. My name
is Elma J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion in
a yacht. No wait, that's Trump. You saw the post
(09:33):
piece on Sunday, did you not. I mean, the deeper
into it you got, the more you'd find out about
Trump's plan for a special prosecutor to attack anybody named Biden,
and his plan to deliberately politicize the Department of Justice
and this project twenty twenty five thing, and Trump's White
House Budget Director Russ Vote going on the record to
say that to politicize the DOJ quote, you don't need
(09:56):
a statutory change at all. You need a mindset change.
You need an Attorney General and a White House Counsel's
Office that don't view them themselves as trying to protect
the Department from the President, which I think is even
nastier sounding in the original Russian from when Stalin devised
that Deeper in that piece, you'll read about turning all
(10:18):
White House strategy over to Stephen Miller and Steve Vannon
and Roger Stone and Laura Lomer and Denesh Desuza and
General Flynn, and of Trump's plans for the prosecutions of
Mark Milly and John Kelly and Ty Cobb and Bill Barr,
and prosecuting Miller and Kelly and Cobb would be indefensible,
(10:38):
and prosecuting Barr would be okay, Okay, that'd be wrong too,
damn it. But you only really need the first paragraph
of that piece by Isaac Arnsdorf, Devlyn Barrett, Josh Dawzy
Washington Post this past Sunday. You only need the first
(10:59):
paragraph to make the point that Trump is convinced he
made mistakes during his presidency and he will not repeat them,
and the foremost of those mistakes was not to install
a military dictatorship. Quote. Donald Trump and his allies have
begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government
to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term,
(11:20):
with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate
or prosecute at his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke
the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to
allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations. You
heard it, Insurrection Act. On January twentieth, twenty twenty five,
(11:43):
and the creature at the center of that floy is
once again Jeffrey Clark, indicted in Georgia, unindicted co conspirator
in Washington would be Attorney General, the environmental lawyer who
wants to turn the world over to the least pro
environment person on our dying planet. Clark who devised the
(12:05):
last minute January twenty twenty one plot for the DOJ
to seize all the voting machines. And when he was
told that if Trump stayed in office after January twentieth,
there would be riots in every major city, he answered, well,
that's why there's an insurrection Act. This post story notes
he is now at the think tank of this guy
russ vote and quote is leading the work on the
(12:28):
Insurrection Act under Project twenty twenty five. And just remember
that by August nineteen thirty four, Hitler reshaped the entire
judiciary of Germany so that every judge and prosecutor had
to swear an oath to him personally. And apparently the
total number of resignations from the entirety of the German
(12:49):
judicial system was one guy, a prosecutor in Voopertahl, and
his name was Martin Gauger. And he wound up fleeing
to the Netherlands, and then the Nazis caught him and
they sent him to Bukenbald and he was dead by
nineteen forty one. One guy, and Trump already has a
head start on Hitler. He had four years to seed
the courts with his own people. And by the way,
(13:12):
if you think Clarence Thomas or Alito are going to
refuse the new swear to Trump oath, you are insane.
Attorney General Alina Hubba today announced the indictment today of
Arthur Ungern, a former judge in what is now the
sixth Military District of New York. Oh yeah, that one
guy's name russ vote vote too ironic to be believed.
(13:37):
So it's probably fair to say that it's a question
of who jails whom first. And as to the guy
currently on the clock, you have already heard my raging
against the two Obama appointees and the Biden one who
stayed Judge Tutkins gag order and gave Trump until at
least the seventeenth to try to get Jack Smith killed
by Trump mobs. So I don't have to go through
all that again except for me to say that it
(14:00):
is the job of the judiciary to protect the laws
and safety and citizenry and continuity of the United States
of America, and since the rest of our institutions have failed,
that goddamn better realize that they must be as aggressive
with Trump as he would be in trying to roll
back freedoms during his fourth Reich. Here, on the other hand,
(14:20):
Jack Smith is clearly giving as good as he gets
on Trump's other motions. Yesterday, Smith answered the bid to
dismiss the entire election subversion prosecution on constitutional grounds. Trump's
argument that was just another election challenge like the ones
in eighteen hundred and eighteen twenty four, in eighteen seventy six,
in nineteen sixteen two thousand notably absent from any of
(14:42):
these historical episodes, However, Smith writes, drily is any attempt
by any person to use fraud and deceit to obstruct.
He adds quote, the defendant stands alone in American history
for his alleged crimes. No other president has engaged in
conspiracy and obstruction to overturn valid election results and illegitimately
(15:03):
retain power. Guy, He's got you there, don He also
defintely deflected the Trump claim that if he can prove
he really believed the election was rigged, that means he
was just, you know, patriotically presidenting. Even if the defendant
could supply admissible evidence of his own personal belief that
(15:24):
the election was quote rigged or quote stolen, it would
not license him to deploy fraud and deceit to remedy
what he perceived to be a wrong, and it would
not provide a defense to the charge. Smith also filed
on a Trump complaint of vindictive prosecution. That would be
Trump's case that Biden is behind this and it's being
done only to impact the election. I wish there are
(15:48):
times when the resemblance between the Special Council and the
actor who used to play Captain Obvious in the Hotels
dot Com commercials is more than just physical. And in
a third filing, Captain Special Counsel replied to a complaint
by the Trump ambulance Chasers that I had not heard
about until this filing back yesterday. Dementia Jay's lawyers, hereafter
(16:12):
identified as the Unpaid, apparently wanted to strike what they
called inflammatory allegations relating to Trump's attempted coup. Apparently, Jack
Smith not only is not having that, but he has
warned Trump's lawyers that he will not only prove that
Trump started the insurrection, but that he continues to this
day to reward his thugs and his mobs. Smith notes
(16:34):
the references to pardoning them and to Trump's refusal to
criticize or condemn them, and then the fatal thrust quote.
The government will also produce evidence of the defendant's public
support for and association with the January sixth Choir, a
group of particularly violent January sixth defendants. Excellent, see if
(16:59):
you can get them sentenced to more time for their
crap off key song too. I mean some he should
go to jail for their crap off key song, Which
brings us back to the polls. The New York Times
polling released Sunday that indicates Biden is behind in five
of the six critical swing states by four in Pennsylvania,
(17:21):
five in Arizona and Michigan, six in Georgia, ten in Nevada.
That he's hemorrhaging minority voters, especially Hispanics and Blacks and Muslims,
and in the wake of the Gaza War Arab Americans,
would I like to see the numbers the other way. Yeah,
is it time to send President Biden to go live
on a farm upstate? Which was pretty much the suggestion
(17:44):
of David Axelrod Sunday after he saw these poles. No,
I think you're seeing that David Axelrod really really, really
overachieved in two thousand and eight. But here are a
few points to consider. A who's Biden's replacement? Going with Newsom?
Are you you want the vice president? You're going to
(18:09):
talk Michelle Obama into running? Who's the better option? B
The Times poll has an unidentified generic other Democrat beating
Trump by eight points. Well, let's get anybody. There has
(18:29):
yet to be a single poll at this stage of
any presidency in which that generic other candidate from the
other party did not beat the incumbent handily, because he
or she does not exist. Generic other does not have
any baggage, and generic other exists in the voter's mind
(18:51):
in whatever shape the voter wants c In July twenty eleven,
Barack Obama was in a statistical tie with a generic Republican.
Four months earlier, he had been a head by eleven points.
In July twenty eleven, polling showed that the most visible
Republican candidate for president was Michelle Bachman. Michelle Bachman, the
(19:20):
lists of presidents who were re elected in cakewalks who
a year out were being badly beaten in the polls
starts with Ronald Reagan and carries through Clinton and Obama.
D That's because, even at this seemingly late date, all
presidential polls are not who you're going to vote for
(19:41):
A or B. They are, as Congressman Brendan Boyle aptly
noted yesterday, they are referenda on the incumbent. Those poll
numbers Sunday are about Joe Biden and Joe Biden alone,
and people think he caused inflation, and they think he's
too old. And as I noted last week, forty three
percent think they are both too old. And yet Biden
(20:02):
still wins that cohort in a sixty one to fifteen landslides.
So if you can get another five percent to believe
that Trump is just as old and unreliable as Biden,
Biden will win by one hundred electoral votes. E you
don't believe that's still true. Buried in the Times poll
was the mirror scenario Biden in this question is the
(20:23):
Democratic nominee, and not Trump but some generic other Republican
opposes him. The result, the Republicans win by sixteen points,
and f want to get back some of that hemorrhaging
minority vote. Well, we haven't seen the Democratic presidential ads yet.
(20:43):
The one in which Trump trashes black lives matters and
wants to deploy troops against George Floyd protesters. The other
one in which Trump starts his political life by calling
Mexicans rapists and drug dealers. The other other one in
which Trump explains his Muslim ban, or has his Secretary
of the Interior now Congress and Ryan and Zinkie introducing
(21:06):
a bill banning Palestinians from entering this country which he
filed Check's notes yesterday. Or the other other one in
which Carrie Lake says on Newsmax last night that isis
was created and terrorism was started because the United States
sent financial support to Israel. How did Biden win reelection
(21:30):
under all the circumstance, Well, I got one hundred percent
of the minority vote. Should the possibility of a different
Democratic nominee next year be raised? Absolutely? Always? Twenty four
to seven. Show me something conclusive that another Democrat would
Trounce Trump, give me a name, Give me who you
(21:51):
would rather bet the future of democracy on, and bet
that there would never be an insurrection act invoked on
Inauguration Day on and give me the reasons. And I
will take my old friend Joe by the hand, and
I will walk him directly under the bus, and I
will jump under it with him if need be also
(22:17):
of interest here, Oh boy, I am telling you they
are going to remember Speaker Mike Johnson as that really
weird one from the year when the Republicans had eleven
different Speakers of the House. This was the one with
the porn usage app Oh boy. And for the fourth
time in a span of six seasons, the New York
(22:37):
Mets have hired a new manager with no previous experience.
None has made it to a third season, None has
gotten a second job. One didn't even make it through
his third month. Let's go Mets. That's next. This is countdown.
This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
This is Sports Senate. Wait, check that not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith Ulberman.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
In Sports Dateline Chicago, Okay, Craig Council, manager of the
Milwaukee Brewers baseball team, was given permission to talk to
the New York Mets about their open managerial job, and
the man who he talked to was the mets new president,
who had been the Brewer's president until last month. There
(23:43):
were late reports Council would also talk about the Cleveland
managerial opening. So naturally, yesterday Craig Council was named manager
of the Chicago Cubs for more than eight million dollars
a year, when the previous record for a baseball manager
was about four and a half million, plus incentives. Also,
the Cubs had to fire their popular incumbent manager, David
(24:06):
Ross yesterday to make room for Counsel. Also, Council had
been a Brewer employee continuously since two thousand and seven,
and when he was a kid, his father worked for
the Brewers. Also, he's taken his team to six playoff
series and lost five of those playoff series. And he's
(24:27):
a great guy. But seriously, a bidding war dateline New York.
So the Mets were reportedly shocked that Council wanted that
much money, so they instead have reportedly hired New York
Yankees bench coach. I got the name here somewhere, who
is it? This time? More Mets managers than I have
(24:47):
had telecasts. Where's it Carlos Mendoza, forty three years old.
I got nothing against Carlos Mendoza. But this is the
second manager the Mets have hired from the Yankee staff
in four years. The other was Carlos Beltron, whom they
had to fire weeks later. It turned out he was
a centerpiece in the Houston Astros sign stealing scandal. Moreover,
(25:10):
this is the Mets recent managerial history. They fired Terry Collins,
who had already managed six years in the majors before
they had hired him. They fired Collins after the twenty
seventeen season and faced him with Mickey Callaway. No experience
as a manager, turned out to be a sexual harassment dude.
They fired him. Then they hired Beltron, who didn't last
until spring training. Then they promoted coach Luis Rojas. No
(25:34):
experience two years of him, and they decided they needed experience,
so they hired Buck Showalter, who had already managed twenty years,
including formerly with the Yankees. Now Mendoza no years, pendulum
swings every two seasons. That would be called bad business.
(25:54):
Dateline Cleveland. So there's a job now open in Chicago,
but Cleveland at least got its man to succeed my
friend Terry Francona Stephen Vote, longtime backup catcher in Oakland
and San Francisco, among other stops. And the man who
does the best impression of a basketball referee in baseball history.
And I don't know if that came up or not
(26:15):
during the interview, but in this already wacky baseball offseason,
why not and dateline New York MLB headquarters. When I
said the World Series TV ratings would not average ten
million per game, little did I know they barely averaged
nine million a game. The final number is nine million,
(26:37):
one hundred and ten thousand per least World Series watched
ever and of more relevance, a twenty three percent decline
from last year. And that's not because there were fewer
games than last year. That's twenty three percent for the average.
And again from my fellow fans who say what I
used to say, oh, it means more baseball for me. Remember,
(26:58):
the entire financial structure of the sport is based on
baseball being able to get had more money for telecasts
next year than it did for telecasts last year, and
in the last year, nearly the entire regional sports TV industry.
The money spigot for individual teams collapsed. In the case
(27:21):
of ballet sports, it literally went bankrupt, and baseball itself
had to take over the costs of producing some games,
particularly in San Diego, where the Padres wound up fifty
million dollars short for payroll and other expenses in September.
And now these World Series ratings. This would be, I believe,
called Augur's dire and omens ominous. Still ahead on countdown
(28:06):
with all that baseball news. It happened again yesterday. Somebody
asked me on the street, why aren't you at that
network that covers nothing but baseball? And I say, real,
I was supposed to be, but then one particular Major
League Baseball team got me fired before I actually got hired.
Next in things I promised not to tell first time
for the daily round up of the miss Grants, morons
(28:28):
and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons
in the world. Worse Governor Sarah Huckabye Sanders of Arkansas,
Where is it Harah's suckabye snat? I can't remember her name?
Sarah Sarah Huckabye Sanders NBC News says she will endorse
Trump tomorrow. She was his press secretary. I'm waiting for
(28:51):
her eyes to cross and her metallic voice to twist
into a robotic monotone, and for her to say, my
nineteen thousand dollars Electern told me to endorse Trump. Olbay
the nineteen thousand dollars Electern worser uncombed former British Prime
Minister Boris Johnson, soon to be a right wing UK newscaster.
(29:12):
He may yet wind up in prison for how he
mishandled COVID in Great Britain as Prime minister. For now,
a mental health facility is just as likely a destination.
His former top advisor when he was the Prime Minister,
Dominic Cummings, has testified that early in the pandemic, Johnson
showed his staff a YouTube video of a purported cure
(29:33):
and asked them if it would work if, as the
video suggested, blowing a quote special hair dryer up your
nose could kill the virus. Like you didn't know already
that Boris Johnson has no earthly clue what a hair
dryer does. But worst of all, speaker Mike Johnson, Boris Johnson,
(29:58):
Mike Johnson say, that's a lot of ugly Johnson's In
one show, Yes, the speaker out a fundraising email with
a typo in it that reads, I refuse to put
people over politics. At least I think it's a typo.
And yes, that whole story of his grown black son
that he and his wife informally adopted, only adopted him
(30:19):
three years or something before he got married. Story don't
hold together. Sure, sure it's fine, Sure, sure, no, This
is the porn story, the fifth string speaker of the house,
Mike Johnson porn story, the Twitter account receipt. Maven caught
this video from a church conference just last year, in
which Johnson explained his use of an app called You're
(30:43):
ready for this Covenant Eyes quote, it scans all the
activity on your phone, on your devices, your laptop, what
have you? We do all of it, Johnson has shown
saying on video, it sends a report to your accountability partner.
My accountability partner right now is Jack my Son. What
is this accountability about? If porn appears on your phone
(31:08):
or your devices, or your laptop or your what have
you to? Continued the Johnson quote. So he and I
get a report about all the things that are on
our phones, all of our devices once a week. If
anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. Wait,
so this guy Johnson gets a report about what porn
(31:30):
his son Johnson is watching, and more disturbingly, his son
gets a report about what porn the speaker of the
house his father watches. Mike Johnson's son is seventeen. Why
are you? Why are you sending him porn usage updates? Also,
speaker Johnson added, I'm proud to tell you my son
(31:51):
has got a clean slate. But Johnson never addressed whether
he himself has clean slate. So I'll say it again.
When they find out what's in Mike Johnson's closet, it
(32:13):
is guaranteed to also include the doors to a whole
another series of closets. Mike Son, did you get my
PUU my porn usage update? Johnson two days worst person
in the world. Annually at this time of year, somebody
(32:52):
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 owner
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 November twenty six,
(33:15):
twenty twelve, my 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 the same studios
(33:38):
in scaucas 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 directly from
(33:59):
the then Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Ceiling. He also asked
me to write for Baseball's website at 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
(34:20):
well 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
(34:42):
the break room was the same. The signs on the
back of the bathroom door telling you who to call
if the Jahn 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 day. Then
(35:05):
you 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
(35:27):
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 Pezziti began asking
me if I thought my new show for MLB Network
would do better at five or five thirty, and if
(35:49):
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
(36:09):
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,
(36:32):
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 Petiti 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,
(36:54):
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 do
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?
(37:17):
And he say sure, I am so Again I ask 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
(37:38):
was his normal self. If I mentioned your name, he
went silent. The next day, the agent calls me back.
Fatiti 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
(38:00):
baseball season, after I'd gone back to work at ESPN,
I'm out 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. Patiti is
such a coward. The Yankees got to them and another club.
I never found out which one. There was some kind
(38:22):
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 them 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
(38:44):
before me, a season 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 Timers Day. And then one
day in twenty eleven, I tweeted a photo of a
Yankee employee in the stands giving some sort of hand
(39:06):
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. I
(39:28):
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.
(39:51):
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
(40:13):
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
(40:37):
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 called 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
(40:59):
are the closest of five different teams who tried to
act have actually gotten me fired. When I was in
local news in Los Angeles, Jackie Autrey, the woman who
went from being Gene Autrey'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.
(41:21):
Then there were the Tampa Bay Rays, well the Devil
Rays at that point, whose first owner, Vince Nimoli, 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
(41:42):
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 been run
(42:05):
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 Reinsdorf, and in the player's offer,
(42:26):
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. Apparently most of
(42:48):
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
Reinsdorff 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 up ESPN and
(43:10):
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.
Ryansdorff 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 to a man
(43:32):
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, because he dared
(43:56):
to write something critical of the idiot commissioner Robert Manfred
and mister Renege on the offer Petiti. He really got
his Three years later, he was promoted to deputy Commissioner
of Baseball, but that new commissioner, Manfred squeezed him out
and he had to go work as the president of
some e sports company in twenty twenty, and then they
(44:17):
offered him a year later. And I have not heard
anything about Tony Pettiti since. Literally it's been absolute silence,
not a single spoken word. And why does that sound
so familiar? Well, yes, I'm still pissed about it. The
(44:49):
good news is, of course, like last winter had a
Hall of Fame announcement on MLB network and I had
thirty five thousand viewers. So my podcast is outrating what
would have been my network. Okay, I've done all the
damage I can do here. Thanks, thank you for listening.
Countdown has come to you from the Vin Scully Studio
at the Olderman Broadcasting Empire ruled headquarters in New York Countown.
(45:13):
Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced
and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers other music, including
other Beethoven tunes, were arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed. Sports music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
And it was written by Mitch Warren Davis. We call
(45:34):
it the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical and
pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball
stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Dennis Leary,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. Let's count
down for this, the one thy and thirty sixth day
since dementia J Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
(45:54):
elected government of the United States. Convict him now while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday. Bulletin
says the news warrants till then. I'm Keith Olraman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(46:23):
Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. To
paraphrase Herman Melville and Moby Dick, it is a damp,
(00:26):
drizzly November in our polls. Also dementia. J Trump made
a fool of himself at his trial, and he did
more dementia things, including forgetting when he was president and
when he wasn't and oh, by the way, he confessed.
Trump also has a plan to use the military to
quell protests if he has another inauguration day in twenty
twenty five, and Jack Smith has filer warning that he
(00:48):
will prove at trial that Trump not only set January
sixth quote in motion, but that he has rewarded his
thugs ever since, even the ones in the January sixth choir,
which would be the choir Trump preaches to. But the
true headline today is clearly this Trump's attorney, Alina Habba,
(01:09):
really thinks Trump is going to pay her.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Then, why exactly am I being paid as an attorney?
And why exactly are taxpayer dollars being used in this courtroom.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
You're not being paid, You're not going to be paid.
Trump's going to stiff you on the bill. Trump stiffs
everybody on the bill, and let's do their New York
City fraud trial first, because after what he said on
the stand yesterday, even if he gets hit by lightning
today and turns into an actual human being and he
decides to pay his bills, he might not have the
money to do so because he confessed and he just
(01:49):
avoided contempt of court, and in yet another public venue,
he has showed he is one hundred percent out of
his mind. Prosecutor Kevin Wallace gives Trump a copy of
his company's financial statement. Mister Trump, the court officer is
handing you PX four one six Deutsche Bank Term Loan
Agreement twenty twelve. Let's go to page six. Is that
(02:10):
your signature? Trump answers yes. Page one hundred and five
the guarantee. Did you sign it again? Trump answers yes.
This says the prosecutor. Wallace quotes in order to induce lending.
You see that? And Trump answers yes. And the prosecutor says,
little Roman I it says as of June thirty, twenty eleven.
(02:34):
Do you believe it was true and accurate? And Trump says, yeah,
I do. That's a confession. The document was signed to
quote in due lending. That's a confession to a motive
for fraud. And Trump testified that it required him to
sign the guarantee that the financial statement was true and
(02:56):
the financial statement was not true. That's a confession to fraud.
And the prosecutors only had to prove that there was
fraud to the judge who already said, yeah, there's fraud.
And the judge Ngern, whom Trump has now insulted in
court rather than just outside of it. He will rule
(03:18):
on the case after the last witness tomorrow, Ivanka Trump,
who must have something Letitia James and Kevin Wallace think
will sink daddy oops. And as the former federal prosecutor
Joyce White noted, Trump's admission here, I signed this. I
guaranteed it was true. I did it to get the loan.
That is my signature next to in order to induce lending.
(03:40):
That means that if Trump tries to appeal the eventual
guilty verdict and the two hundred and fifty million dollar
penalty and what else from Judge Ern. Because Ngron said
before the trial actually started that the facts established there
had been fraud by the Trump Corporation. The appeals court
will say over here this part of your testimony, Trump,
this is you confessing he's finished quarter of a million
(04:03):
dollars in penalty and barred from real estate in New York.
So if you were thinking on bidding on Trump Tower,
get your bid ready. But for God's sake, remember it's
going to cost money to rename the place I'm thinking,
Arthur Engron Memorial Peace Plaza. And still Elena Habba is
(04:25):
actually lucky she and her client did not end the
day at Riker's Island for contempt of court. Judge Engron
went all Oliver Cromwell on Trump. Cromwell, it was, who said,
I beseech you in the bowels of Christ. Think it
possible you may be mistaken? All anger On left out
Christ in the bowels. But he said to Trump's lawyers,
I beseech you to control him if you can. If
(04:48):
you can't, I will. I will excuse him and draw
every negative inference that I can. But Haba, America's leading
expert on parking lot law yelled at anger On, you
are here to hear so what he has to say.
Anger On yelled at her to sit down and added, no,
(05:09):
I am not here to hear what he has to say,
I am here to hear him answer questions. The attorney
spokesmodel was offended.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I was told to sit down today, I was yelled at,
and I've had a judge who is unhinged slamming a table.
Let me be very clear, I don't tolerate that in
my life. I'm not going to tolerate it here.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
What moren okay? If Trump can refer to a Perry
Mason moment during this trial, I can refer to a
Perry Mason character. Hamilton Berger was the district attorney who,
during the life of the TV series prosecuted two hundred
and twenty five of Perry Mason's clients, and two hundred
and twenty three of them were found not guilty. Lena
(05:53):
Habba is Trump's Hamilton Burger. And then there's the dementia
j part. The attorney Kevin Wallace asks Trump if he
prepared the twenty twenty one Trump Organization corporate statement. He says,
I was so busy in the White House focusing on
Russia and China and keeping our country safe, and Wallas
matter of factly says that the thing was filed in
(06:15):
the summer. You weren't President then and now it's on
a court record that Trump either can't remember when he
was president, and for God's sake, I know we've only
had forty six of them, but I bet the other
forty five could remember when they were president and when
they weren't. Or he'll just lie and say whatever he
(06:36):
thinks best serves him, not only without regard to the truth,
but without regard to whether or not it's an easily
proved lie, which is pathological lying that is a symptom
of borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder, or anti
social personality disorder, or all of them, or, as Noel
Coward put it so much more simply, the fact that
(06:57):
Trump is obviously definitely nuts. I wasn't president in the
summer of twenty twenty one, thank you, Nancy Faust. Trump
(07:42):
is obviously definitely nuts and getting worse. Trump is this
close to saying with the new dictator of San Marcos
Esposito in the movie Bananas said when he came out
after the revolution and announced, quote, all citizens will be
required to change their underwear every half hour. Underwear will
be worn on the outside so we can check. And
(08:05):
in the same speech, In an update to a previous
moment of dementia Jay, he actually corrected his previous gaff
of saying that Victor Orbon was the strong man of Turkey,
and he promptly said that Orbon's real country, Hungary, shares
a border with Russia. Yeah, the countries are six hundred
(08:25):
and twenty miles apart at their closest non intersection. Underwear
we'll be worn on the outside so we can check.
The election is now a year from this past Sunday,
and the major task for all of us, and I
guess I have more of an opportunity to do this
than you do, is to spend as much of the
next year as possible emphasizing how old and how crazy
(08:49):
Trump is. He will wind up in jail, or he won't.
You and I will not be on the juries. When
you see stuff like Sunday's Washington Post piece, send it
to everybody. Hell, send this podcast to anybody who's not subscribed. Well, yeah,
I know that's self serving. That will make me some
(09:11):
more money, probably fifty cents each. I'm, by the way,
not doing this for the money. I'm doing this because
I like most people and all dogs, and i'd like
to see the planet continue past the year twenty twenty five.
I ain't doing it for the money anyway. My name
is Elma J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion in
a yacht. No wait, that's Trump. You saw the post
(09:33):
piece on Sunday, did you not. I mean, the deeper
into it you got, the more you'd find out about
Trump's plan for a special prosecutor to attack anybody named Biden,
and his plan to deliberately politicize the Department of Justice
and this project twenty twenty five thing, and Trump's White
House Budget Director Russ Vote going on the record to
say that to politicize the DOJ quote, you don't need
(09:56):
a statutory change at all. You need a mindset change.
You need an Attorney General and a White House Counsel's
Office that don't view them themselves as trying to protect
the Department from the President, which I think is even
nastier sounding in the original Russian from when Stalin devised
that Deeper in that piece, you'll read about turning all
(10:18):
White House strategy over to Stephen Miller and Steve Vannon
and Roger Stone and Laura Lomer and Denesh Desuza and
General Flynn, and of Trump's plans for the prosecutions of
Mark Milly and John Kelly and Ty Cobb and Bill Barr,
and prosecuting Miller and Kelly and Cobb would be indefensible,
(10:38):
and prosecuting Barr would be okay, Okay, that'd be wrong too,
damn it. But you only really need the first paragraph
of that piece by Isaac Arnsdorf, Devlyn Barrett, Josh Dawzy
Washington Post this past Sunday. You only need the first
(10:59):
paragraph to make the point that Trump is convinced he
made mistakes during his presidency and he will not repeat them,
and the foremost of those mistakes was not to install
a military dictatorship. Quote. Donald Trump and his allies have
begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government
to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term,
(11:20):
with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate
or prosecute at his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke
the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to
allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations. You
heard it, Insurrection Act. On January twentieth, twenty twenty five,
(11:43):
and the creature at the center of that floy is
once again Jeffrey Clark, indicted in Georgia, unindicted co conspirator
in Washington would be Attorney General, the environmental lawyer who
wants to turn the world over to the least pro
environment person on our dying planet. Clark who devised the
(12:05):
last minute January twenty twenty one plot for the DOJ
to seize all the voting machines. And when he was
told that if Trump stayed in office after January twentieth,
there would be riots in every major city, he answered, well,
that's why there's an insurrection Act. This post story notes
he is now at the think tank of this guy
russ vote and quote is leading the work on the
(12:28):
Insurrection Act under Project twenty twenty five. And just remember
that by August nineteen thirty four, Hitler reshaped the entire
judiciary of Germany so that every judge and prosecutor had
to swear an oath to him personally. And apparently the
total number of resignations from the entirety of the German
(12:49):
judicial system was one guy, a prosecutor in Voopertahl, and
his name was Martin Gauger. And he wound up fleeing
to the Netherlands, and then the Nazis caught him and
they sent him to Bukenbald and he was dead by
nineteen forty one. One guy, and Trump already has a
head start on Hitler. He had four years to seed
the courts with his own people. And by the way,
(13:12):
if you think Clarence Thomas or Alito are going to
refuse the new swear to Trump oath, you are insane.
Attorney General Alina Hubba today announced the indictment today of
Arthur Ungern, a former judge in what is now the
sixth Military District of New York. Oh yeah, that one
guy's name russ vote vote too ironic to be believed.
(13:37):
So it's probably fair to say that it's a question
of who jails whom first. And as to the guy
currently on the clock, you have already heard my raging
against the two Obama appointees and the Biden one who
stayed Judge Tutkins gag order and gave Trump until at
least the seventeenth to try to get Jack Smith killed
by Trump mobs. So I don't have to go through
all that again except for me to say that it
(14:00):
is the job of the judiciary to protect the laws
and safety and citizenry and continuity of the United States
of America, and since the rest of our institutions have failed,
that goddamn better realize that they must be as aggressive
with Trump as he would be in trying to roll
back freedoms during his fourth Reich. Here, on the other hand,
(14:20):
Jack Smith is clearly giving as good as he gets
on Trump's other motions. Yesterday, Smith answered the bid to
dismiss the entire election subversion prosecution on constitutional grounds. Trump's
argument that was just another election challenge like the ones
in eighteen hundred and eighteen twenty four, in eighteen seventy six,
in nineteen sixteen two thousand notably absent from any of
(14:42):
these historical episodes, However, Smith writes, drily is any attempt
by any person to use fraud and deceit to obstruct.
He adds quote, the defendant stands alone in American history
for his alleged crimes. No other president has engaged in
conspiracy and obstruction to overturn valid election results and illegitimately
(15:03):
retain power. Guy, He's got you there, don He also
defintely deflected the Trump claim that if he can prove
he really believed the election was rigged, that means he
was just, you know, patriotically presidenting. Even if the defendant
could supply admissible evidence of his own personal belief that
(15:24):
the election was quote rigged or quote stolen, it would
not license him to deploy fraud and deceit to remedy
what he perceived to be a wrong, and it would
not provide a defense to the charge. Smith also filed
on a Trump complaint of vindictive prosecution. That would be
Trump's case that Biden is behind this and it's being
done only to impact the election. I wish there are
(15:48):
times when the resemblance between the Special Council and the
actor who used to play Captain Obvious in the Hotels
dot Com commercials is more than just physical. And in
a third filing, Captain Special Counsel replied to a complaint
by the Trump ambulance Chasers that I had not heard
about until this filing back yesterday. Dementia Jay's lawyers, hereafter
(16:12):
identified as the Unpaid, apparently wanted to strike what they
called inflammatory allegations relating to Trump's attempted coup. Apparently, Jack
Smith not only is not having that, but he has
warned Trump's lawyers that he will not only prove that
Trump started the insurrection, but that he continues to this
day to reward his thugs and his mobs. Smith notes
(16:34):
the references to pardoning them and to Trump's refusal to
criticize or condemn them, and then the fatal thrust quote.
The government will also produce evidence of the defendant's public
support for and association with the January sixth Choir, a
group of particularly violent January sixth defendants. Excellent, see if
(16:59):
you can get them sentenced to more time for their
crap off key song too. I mean some he should
go to jail for their crap off key song, Which
brings us back to the polls. The New York Times
polling released Sunday that indicates Biden is behind in five
of the six critical swing states by four in Pennsylvania,
(17:21):
five in Arizona and Michigan, six in Georgia, ten in Nevada.
That he's hemorrhaging minority voters, especially Hispanics and Blacks and Muslims,
and in the wake of the Gaza War Arab Americans,
would I like to see the numbers the other way. Yeah,
is it time to send President Biden to go live
on a farm upstate? Which was pretty much the suggestion
(17:44):
of David Axelrod Sunday after he saw these poles. No,
I think you're seeing that David Axelrod really really, really
overachieved in two thousand and eight. But here are a
few points to consider. A who's Biden's replacement? Going with Newsom?
Are you you want the vice president? You're going to
(18:09):
talk Michelle Obama into running? Who's the better option? B
The Times poll has an unidentified generic other Democrat beating
Trump by eight points. Well, let's get anybody. There has
(18:29):
yet to be a single poll at this stage of
any presidency in which that generic other candidate from the
other party did not beat the incumbent handily, because he
or she does not exist. Generic other does not have
any baggage, and generic other exists in the voter's mind
(18:51):
in whatever shape the voter wants c In July twenty eleven,
Barack Obama was in a statistical tie with a generic Republican.
Four months earlier, he had been a head by eleven points.
In July twenty eleven, polling showed that the most visible
Republican candidate for president was Michelle Bachman. Michelle Bachman, the
(19:20):
lists of presidents who were re elected in cakewalks who
a year out were being badly beaten in the polls
starts with Ronald Reagan and carries through Clinton and Obama.
D That's because, even at this seemingly late date, all
presidential polls are not who you're going to vote for
(19:41):
A or B. They are, as Congressman Brendan Boyle aptly
noted yesterday, they are referenda on the incumbent. Those poll
numbers Sunday are about Joe Biden and Joe Biden alone,
and people think he caused inflation, and they think he's
too old. And as I noted last week, forty three
percent think they are both too old. And yet Biden
(20:02):
still wins that cohort in a sixty one to fifteen landslides.
So if you can get another five percent to believe
that Trump is just as old and unreliable as Biden,
Biden will win by one hundred electoral votes. E you
don't believe that's still true. Buried in the Times poll
was the mirror scenario Biden in this question is the
(20:23):
Democratic nominee, and not Trump but some generic other Republican
opposes him. The result, the Republicans win by sixteen points,
and f want to get back some of that hemorrhaging
minority vote. Well, we haven't seen the Democratic presidential ads yet.
(20:43):
The one in which Trump trashes black lives matters and
wants to deploy troops against George Floyd protesters. The other
one in which Trump starts his political life by calling
Mexicans rapists and drug dealers. The other other one in
which Trump explains his Muslim ban, or has his Secretary
of the Interior now Congress and Ryan and Zinkie introducing
(21:06):
a bill banning Palestinians from entering this country which he
filed Check's notes yesterday. Or the other other one in
which Carrie Lake says on Newsmax last night that isis
was created and terrorism was started because the United States
sent financial support to Israel. How did Biden win reelection
(21:30):
under all the circumstance, Well, I got one hundred percent
of the minority vote. Should the possibility of a different
Democratic nominee next year be raised? Absolutely? Always? Twenty four
to seven. Show me something conclusive that another Democrat would
Trounce Trump, give me a name, Give me who you
(21:51):
would rather bet the future of democracy on, and bet
that there would never be an insurrection act invoked on
Inauguration Day on and give me the reasons. And I
will take my old friend Joe by the hand, and
I will walk him directly under the bus, and I
will jump under it with him if need be also
(22:17):
of interest here, Oh boy, I am telling you they
are going to remember Speaker Mike Johnson as that really
weird one from the year when the Republicans had eleven
different Speakers of the House. This was the one with
the porn usage app Oh boy. And for the fourth
time in a span of six seasons, the New York
(22:37):
Mets have hired a new manager with no previous experience.
None has made it to a third season, None has
gotten a second job. One didn't even make it through
his third month. Let's go Mets. That's next. This is countdown.
This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
This is Sports Senate. Wait, check that not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith Ulberman.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
In Sports Dateline Chicago, Okay, Craig Council, manager of the
Milwaukee Brewers baseball team, was given permission to talk to
the New York Mets about their open managerial job, and
the man who he talked to was the mets new president,
who had been the Brewer's president until last month. There
(23:43):
were late reports Council would also talk about the Cleveland
managerial opening. So naturally, yesterday Craig Council was named manager
of the Chicago Cubs for more than eight million dollars
a year, when the previous record for a baseball manager
was about four and a half million, plus incentives. Also,
the Cubs had to fire their popular incumbent manager, David
(24:06):
Ross yesterday to make room for Counsel. Also, Council had
been a Brewer employee continuously since two thousand and seven,
and when he was a kid, his father worked for
the Brewers. Also, he's taken his team to six playoff
series and lost five of those playoff series. And he's
(24:27):
a great guy. But seriously, a bidding war dateline New York.
So the Mets were reportedly shocked that Council wanted that
much money, so they instead have reportedly hired New York
Yankees bench coach. I got the name here somewhere, who
is it? This time? More Mets managers than I have
(24:47):
had telecasts. Where's it Carlos Mendoza, forty three years old.
I got nothing against Carlos Mendoza. But this is the
second manager the Mets have hired from the Yankee staff
in four years. The other was Carlos Beltron, whom they
had to fire weeks later. It turned out he was
a centerpiece in the Houston Astros sign stealing scandal. Moreover,
(25:10):
this is the Mets recent managerial history. They fired Terry Collins,
who had already managed six years in the majors before
they had hired him. They fired Collins after the twenty
seventeen season and faced him with Mickey Callaway. No experience
as a manager, turned out to be a sexual harassment dude.
They fired him. Then they hired Beltron, who didn't last
until spring training. Then they promoted coach Luis Rojas. No
(25:34):
experience two years of him, and they decided they needed experience,
so they hired Buck Showalter, who had already managed twenty years,
including formerly with the Yankees. Now Mendoza no years, pendulum
swings every two seasons. That would be called bad business.
(25:54):
Dateline Cleveland. So there's a job now open in Chicago,
but Cleveland at least got its man to succeed my
friend Terry Francona Stephen Vote, longtime backup catcher in Oakland
and San Francisco, among other stops. And the man who
does the best impression of a basketball referee in baseball history.
And I don't know if that came up or not
(26:15):
during the interview, but in this already wacky baseball offseason,
why not and dateline New York MLB headquarters. When I
said the World Series TV ratings would not average ten
million per game, little did I know they barely averaged
nine million a game. The final number is nine million,
(26:37):
one hundred and ten thousand per least World Series watched
ever and of more relevance, a twenty three percent decline
from last year. And that's not because there were fewer
games than last year. That's twenty three percent for the average.
And again from my fellow fans who say what I
used to say, oh, it means more baseball for me. Remember,
(26:58):
the entire financial structure of the sport is based on
baseball being able to get had more money for telecasts
next year than it did for telecasts last year, and
in the last year, nearly the entire regional sports TV industry.
The money spigot for individual teams collapsed. In the case
(27:21):
of ballet sports, it literally went bankrupt, and baseball itself
had to take over the costs of producing some games,
particularly in San Diego, where the Padres wound up fifty
million dollars short for payroll and other expenses in September.
And now these World Series ratings. This would be, I believe,
called Augur's dire and omens ominous. Still ahead on countdown
(28:06):
with all that baseball news. It happened again yesterday. Somebody
asked me on the street, why aren't you at that
network that covers nothing but baseball? And I say, real,
I was supposed to be, but then one particular Major
League Baseball team got me fired before I actually got hired.
Next in things I promised not to tell first time
for the daily round up of the miss Grants, morons
(28:28):
and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons
in the world. Worse Governor Sarah Huckabye Sanders of Arkansas,
Where is it Harah's suckabye snat? I can't remember her name?
Sarah Sarah Huckabye Sanders NBC News says she will endorse
Trump tomorrow. She was his press secretary. I'm waiting for
(28:51):
her eyes to cross and her metallic voice to twist
into a robotic monotone, and for her to say, my
nineteen thousand dollars Electern told me to endorse Trump. Olbay
the nineteen thousand dollars Electern worser uncombed former British Prime
Minister Boris Johnson, soon to be a right wing UK newscaster.
(29:12):
He may yet wind up in prison for how he
mishandled COVID in Great Britain as Prime minister. For now,
a mental health facility is just as likely a destination.
His former top advisor when he was the Prime Minister,
Dominic Cummings, has testified that early in the pandemic, Johnson
showed his staff a YouTube video of a purported cure
(29:33):
and asked them if it would work if, as the
video suggested, blowing a quote special hair dryer up your
nose could kill the virus. Like you didn't know already
that Boris Johnson has no earthly clue what a hair
dryer does. But worst of all, speaker Mike Johnson, Boris Johnson,
(29:58):
Mike Johnson say, that's a lot of ugly Johnson's In
one show, Yes, the speaker out a fundraising email with
a typo in it that reads, I refuse to put
people over politics. At least I think it's a typo.
And yes, that whole story of his grown black son
that he and his wife informally adopted, only adopted him
(30:19):
three years or something before he got married. Story don't
hold together. Sure, sure it's fine, Sure, sure, no, This
is the porn story, the fifth string speaker of the house,
Mike Johnson porn story, the Twitter account receipt. Maven caught
this video from a church conference just last year, in
which Johnson explained his use of an app called You're
(30:43):
ready for this Covenant Eyes quote, it scans all the
activity on your phone, on your devices, your laptop, what
have you? We do all of it, Johnson has shown
saying on video, it sends a report to your accountability partner.
My accountability partner right now is Jack my Son. What
is this accountability about? If porn appears on your phone
(31:08):
or your devices, or your laptop or your what have
you to? Continued the Johnson quote. So he and I
get a report about all the things that are on
our phones, all of our devices once a week. If
anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. Wait,
so this guy Johnson gets a report about what porn
(31:30):
his son Johnson is watching, and more disturbingly, his son
gets a report about what porn the speaker of the
house his father watches. Mike Johnson's son is seventeen. Why
are you? Why are you sending him porn usage updates? Also,
speaker Johnson added, I'm proud to tell you my son
(31:51):
has got a clean slate. But Johnson never addressed whether
he himself has clean slate. So I'll say it again.
When they find out what's in Mike Johnson's closet, it
(32:13):
is guaranteed to also include the doors to a whole
another series of closets. Mike Son, did you get my
PUU my porn usage update? Johnson two days worst person
in the world. Annually at this time of year, somebody
(32:52):
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 owner
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 November twenty six,
(33:15):
twenty twelve, my 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 the same studios
(33:38):
in scaucas 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 directly from
(33:59):
the then Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Ceiling. He also asked
me to write for Baseball's website at 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
(34:20):
well 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
(34:42):
the break room was the same. The signs on the
back of the bathroom door telling you who to call
if the Jahn 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 day. Then
(35:05):
you 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
(35:27):
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 Pezziti began asking
me if I thought my new show for MLB Network
would do better at five or five thirty, and if
(35:49):
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
(36:09):
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,
(36:32):
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 Petiti 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,
(36:54):
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 do
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?
(37:17):
And he say sure, I am so Again I ask 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
(37:38):
was his normal self. If I mentioned your name, he
went silent. The next day, the agent calls me back.
Fatiti 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
(38:00):
baseball season, after I'd gone back to work at ESPN,
I'm out 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. Patiti is
such a coward. The Yankees got to them and another club.
I never found out which one. There was some kind
(38:22):
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 them 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
(38:44):
before me, a season 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 Timers Day. And then one
day in twenty eleven, I tweeted a photo of a
Yankee employee in the stands giving some sort of hand
(39:06):
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. I
(39:28):
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.
(39:51):
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
(40:13):
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
(40:37):
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 called 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
(40:59):
are the closest of five different teams who tried to
act have actually gotten me fired. When I was in
local news in Los Angeles, Jackie Autrey, the woman who
went from being Gene Autrey'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.
(41:21):
Then there were the Tampa Bay Rays, well the Devil
Rays at that point, whose first owner, Vince Nimoli, 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
(41:42):
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 been run
(42:05):
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 Reinsdorf, and in the player's offer,
(42:26):
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. Apparently most of
(42:48):
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
Reinsdorff 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 up ESPN and
(43:10):
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.
Ryansdorff 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 to a man
(43:32):
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, because he dared
(43:56):
to write something critical of the idiot commissioner Robert Manfred
and mister Renege on the offer Petiti. He really got
his Three years later, he was promoted to deputy Commissioner
of Baseball, but that new commissioner, Manfred squeezed him out
and he had to go work as the president of
some e sports company in twenty twenty, and then they
(44:17):
offered him a year later. And I have not heard
anything about Tony Pettiti since. Literally it's been absolute silence,
not a single spoken word. And why does that sound
so familiar? Well, yes, I'm still pissed about it. The
(44:49):
good news is, of course, like last winter had a
Hall of Fame announcement on MLB network and I had
thirty five thousand viewers. So my podcast is outrating what
would have been my network. Okay, I've done all the
damage I can do here. Thanks, thank you for listening.
Countdown has come to you from the Vin Scully Studio
at the Olderman Broadcasting Empire ruled headquarters in New York Countown.
(45:13):
Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced
and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers other music, including
other Beethoven tunes, were arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed. Sports music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
And it was written by Mitch Warren Davis. We call
(45:34):
it the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical and
pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball
stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Dennis Leary,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. Let's count
down for this, the one thy and thirty sixth day
since dementia J Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
(45:54):
elected government of the United States. Convict him now while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday. Bulletin
says the news warrants till then. I'm Keith Olraman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(46:23):
Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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