December 19, 2023 • 42 mins
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: In his three-day orgy of insults, expanding his list of those who are "poisoning our nation's blood" from Hispanics to Africans and Asians, praising dictators and echoing Hitler, it's understandable that most of us missed it. But Trump also explained the one rug that will really tie his totalitarian room together: he's going to indemnify the police.
Translation: under Trump, the cops can kill George Floyd and be certain they will face no legal liability. They can kill YOU and be certain they will face no legal liability. It is literally a license to kill, a license granted to the 700,000 police officers at all state and city levels in this nation. Who already have weapons. Who already have tanks. Who already have affinity to Trump and the fascism and white supremacism he's selling.
And now they will be freed of all restraint. And they'll owe that freedom to Trump.
They will become Trump's stormtroopers and his little SS. And if invoking the Insurrection Act to use the National Guard against unarmed civilians is too sharp-edged for some of his under-Fuhrers, Trump can simply dispatch local cops to shoot up a Black Lives Matter protest. Or an anti-Cop City protest. Or just an anti-Trump protest.
It may be his most totalitarian revelation since.
And naturally, the New York Times follows it with an op-ed titled "The Secret of Trump’s Appeal Isn’t Authoritarianism” and Axios begins the last full business week of the year with 1,000 words on Trump and not one of them mentions his plan to take over the cops or his quoting Hitler or his praising Xi and Kim. Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen have shown that they - and so many other institutions we think would recoil from authoritarianism - are in fact ready to serve them, just as long as they can continue to make profits. Axios has 1,000 words on Trump and they are all positive and normalizing and praising him fo having "much greater power than in his first term and fewer restraints on carrying out his political agenda.”
His political agenda is Totalitarianism, you useless slobs.
B-Block (22:22) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Ruby Goodman and Shaye Moss are awarded $148 million from Giuliani. Giuliani re-slanders them. They sue again. He re-re-slanders them against last night. Clarence Thomas wasn't being bought; he was prostituting himself. Congressmen ask him to recuse. Mayor Eric Adams says NYC is the greatest because any day could be 9/11. (28:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Wreaths Across America, Laura Loomer and the Senate staffer who was just, uh, receiving testimony. And the new allegation: that wasn't the first staffer CPAC's Matt Schlapp allegedly groped.
C-Block (35:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tells you something that a week ago somebody who didn't know asked me about the legendary sportscaster for whom I interned in 1978. That means he's been famous for 80 years, the last 10 of them after he passed away. The story of The Amazin' Bill Mazer.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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. Trump
has promised to turn every American cop into a lawless
(00:26):
stormtrooper and every domestic police force into a miniature SS.
And the volume of his sadistic fascist threats is so
large and so loud that when he said this, nobody noticed.
He wants to co opt every law officer in this country,
all seven hundred thousand of them, all armed, and in
(00:46):
the last twenty years, nearly all of them equipped with
military style weapons and vehicles and surveillance equipment, and make
each and every one of them, in essence untouchable by law,
beholden to no one, responsible ultimately only to the person
who liberated them from all legal restraints, him Durham, New Hampshire.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I am also going to indemnify all police offices.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
This is a big.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thing, and it's a brand new thing, and I think
it's so important.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I'm going to indemnify, through the federal government all police
officers and law enforcement officials throughout.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
The United States from being destroyed by the radical left
for taking strong actions against crime.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
What do you think he means by indemnify. I'm going
to indemnify through the federal government, all police officers indemnify,
relieve of legal liability for their actions. To cut to
the chase on this, he means that the next Derek
Chauvan who tortures George Floyd to death on Minneapolis City
(01:55):
Street cannot be arrested, cannot be prosecuted, cannot be sued,
cannot be stopped, no legal responsibility or liability for his actions.
And if there are no longer any means of stopping
the cops from harassing people or beating people or killing people,
cops will no longer have any need to even pretend
that the people they are harassing or beating or killing
(02:17):
are actually guilty of anything they are then the ss
We already know wide swaths of the nation's eighteen thousand
state and local police forces range from wild conservatism to
full on fascism and white supremacism and QAnon and election
denihalism and trumpsm We already know that since nine eleven,
(02:39):
the nation's police forces have equipped themselves as if all
the world's terrorists are going to descend tomorrow morning on
say Franklin, Indiana, population twenty five thousand, which is why
the cops there bought themselves an m RAP, a mine
resistant armored vehicle, just like a dozen other small county
(03:01):
police forces did in the last decade in Indiana alone. Moreover,
and just as dangerously, they in big and small towns alike,
have trained now generation after generation of rookies who have
become veterans, and the chiefs and trainers to believe that
the purpose of the police is to protect the police,
(03:25):
that all civilians are threats, because all terrorists pose as civilians,
and anybody who don't know personally as a potential terrorist.
And I wouldn't be too certain about everybody you do
know personally. If most of America has suffered for twenty
two years now with undiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder, nearly
all of law enforcement has. We now feed service veterans
(03:48):
into police forces, the ones who don't go into the
Republican Party, and we now know that they are literally
suffering widespread physical brain damage just from using, from handling
the twenty first century weapons of war. And now Trump
promises to indemnify them against any legal responsibility. For what
(04:12):
was the rest of that, He said, I'm.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Going to indemnify through the federal government, all police officers
at law enforcement officials throughout.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
The United States from being destroyed by the radical left
for taking strong actions against crime.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yeah, I wonder what kind of strong actions Trump is
talking about. Failure to read them their Miranda rights, I
don't think so, shooting them, killing them in the backseat
of cop cars, and again, no longer even needing an
excuse like selling cigarettes one at a time, or passing
a counterfeit twenty or being a twelve year old carrying
(04:50):
a toy gun. How about menacing in a crowded public place,
A crowded public place that is crowded because there is
a protest in progress, an anti violence protest, an anti
cop City Atlanta pest, an anti Trump protest. If seven
hundred thousand American cops are suddenly out from under the
(05:11):
yoke of any laws that could even occasionally hold them
accountable for murdering people, what is to stop trump indemnified
cops from shooting into a crowd of unarmed protesters. This,
remember would also be in addition to Trump using the
National Guard to quell political protest. This would be in
(05:35):
addition to what Trump staffers would not deny, or at
least considerations of invoking the Insurrection Act on January twentieth,
twenty twenty five, and leaving it invoked. This would be
in addition to Trump's jovial promise to be a dictator,
but only on day one. Haha, I'm only kidding. No,
I'm not yes, i am no, I'm not indemnified police,
(05:59):
the Trump waffa. It is one of those moments of
impossibility when the same thing is both stunning and to
be expected. That Trump could go on a three day
orgy of threats against democracy, quoting Putin and praising dictators
like she and Kim Jong un, guaranteeing mass deportations at
(06:23):
very slowly moving his own Overton window from mass deportations
of undocumented immigrants, which is bad enough to just mass
deportations without any qualifiers or categories. He's done all that.
He's vowed personal vengeance, dressed up as de weaponizing the
Department of Justice, the one that just indicted the actual
(06:43):
president's son. He called the morons he inspired to attack
the Capitol on January sixth, hostages. He insisted we were
all better off under him as president in twenty nineteen
with burgeoning unemployment, and in twenty twenty with COVID, and
of course, he reiterated his favorite Hitler imagery about immigrants
poisoning the blood of the nation and now extending who
(07:06):
he means. Now he is promising his audience he will
remove the people from Africa too, and Asia and framing
immigration as a quote invasion. This is like a military invasion,
he said. Drugs, criminals, gang members, and terrorists. They're taking
over our cities. It is stunning and it is to
(07:29):
be expected that he could go through all that, all
of which he has either stated before, often word for word,
or implied at or hinted at. And the nation and
even its reporters who are alert to the totalitarianism that
Trump is now selling, offering, promising, demanding that all of
(07:50):
them and everybody else, almost everybody missed this one little
fascist rug that really ties the room together. The Trump Police,
they will no longer be responsible to anybody, but they
will have Trump to think. And it's not like he's
(08:12):
going to have to recruit them, or train them, or
equip them or even buy them uniforms. They are in
your town, down your street today. They have m wraps.
It is the nature of man not to be taken
(08:32):
unaware by the evil and the madness of other men,
nor the rapidity and energy with which they will enact
that evil. Not to be surprised by the sheer, banality
and mundanity with which they will happily kill millions because
they can. It is rather the nature of man to
(08:52):
receive warning after warning after warning, and ignore each one
of them. Because the default position of almost everybody, the
smart people, the dumb ones, the quiet ones, the loud ones,
the fault position of all of us is it's difficult
to imagine things that are not currently happening. We are
(09:14):
always warned when the trumps appear. Hitler tried to overthrow
the German government in nineteen twenty three. They jailed him.
He promised more and worse next time. They let him
out of jail early for good conduct. The German Conservatives
needed him for political leverage. He promised, if given power,
(09:36):
he would persecute the Jews and all the other politicians.
They made him Chancellor. The British were told by their
industrial spies in German factories that Hitler was secretly rearming,
especially building planes by the thousands. The British government laughed
because that would be against the Treaty of Versailles and
(09:56):
Germany certainly didn't want a repeat of the World War.
Our country was warned about Hitler at about the Japanese
I mean, in nineteen twelve, Billy Mitchell predicted war with Japan.
In nineteen twenty four, he predicted the attack on Pearl Harbor,
and in retrospect, the only thing Osama bin Laden did
not do in advance was tell this country which day
(10:16):
he planned to attack on and exactly which buildings he
planned to attack. The last MSNBC show I did in
January nineteen ninety eight, before the Clinton Lewinsky sinkhole opened up,
we had a terrorism and military expert on named Jim
Dunagan who said we were so unprepared. Al Qaeda could
drive down Lower Broadway with a truck and habits guys
(10:41):
toss handfuls of anthrax out the back door Lower Broadway.
Dunnagan nearly got the address right. We are always warned
in large part because one of the aspects of fanaticism
Hitler's fanaticism, the Japanese militarists fanaticism trump spanaticism. It almost
(11:03):
always comes attached to unbelievable arrogance and boastfulness, and not
knowing when to shut the hell up. It's not just
that Trump intends to turn the United States into a
totalitarian state. It's that he wants everybody to love him
for doing this, and therefore he cannot possibly not tell
(11:27):
everybody about it in increasing detail. I mean indemnifying the
police for taking strong actions against crime, the police, anything
else you need to know, his plans, his sadism, his vengeance,
the already extant rosters of stormtroopers, already ubiquitously spaced across
(11:51):
the land, and just ready for that indemnification when the
symbolism too, I mean, honest to God, the police. Why
do you think they call it a police date? And
of course, besides the warnings we ignore, the Washington Post
(12:12):
finally used all the actual words actually headlined Trump quoting
Putin about Biden, and they put it on page ten.
Besides the warnings that we ignore. The other universality of
the death of representative government and its replacement by totalitarianism
is the willingness, even the eagerness, of the institution supposedly
(12:34):
devoted to and dependent on representative government to signal that no,
they are ready at a moment's notice to screw this
silly democracy crap and embrace and serve dictatorship. Yes, sir,
I have said, I literally don't know how many times
I have truly lost count that at every actual news
(12:57):
organization in America except maybe Pro Publica and Democracy Now,
I have said countless times that at every news organization
in America, they have had the meeting. Now, the quote
newspeople unquote may not have been there at the meeting,
They may not have even known about the meeting. But
the people who decide where the money goes and who
(13:19):
still works there and who doesn't work there anymore, they
have had the meeting at which the key deciders sit
around and game plan Trump's return to power, and then
they ask the essential vital life or death questions, just
as you and I do, only theirs are as an example,
if Trump regains control, how do we at NBC, Universal
(13:42):
and Comcast defend our profits even though we have already
seen what that did to CNN and what that reinforces
at NBC News and ABC and CBS. This kind of
dilettanti ish, Well, we don't actually live in America, so
we don't have a dog in this hunt delusion, as
(14:05):
if Trump were running to become dictator of Belarus, as
if everybody you see on MSNBC lived in a cloud
somewhere above the fricka Still, whenever I say these meetings
have taken place at your local popular, seemingly reliable news organization,
I get responses that are to be polite about it, disbelieving,
(14:29):
And yet now here it is in front of your
eyes on one day. What two seemingly neutral pro freedom
of the press outlets do after they hold the meetings,
not just the obvious one that would have been The
New York Times op ed yesterday titled the secret of
Trump's appeal Isn't Authoritarianism, which claims, no, it's not the
(14:53):
fact that he wants to turn the country into a
totalitarian state and all the masochists and the Sadists support that.
It's because he's such a moderate. It was written by
the founder of a far right online magazine that spends
all of its time pretending not to be a far
right online magazine, and occasionally it will have ultra leftists
(15:14):
attack democracy and democrats from the lefts he therefore it's balanced.
We have both kinds of music, country and Western. No, No,
that was the obvious one. The more insidious one. The
lead item in the first newsletter and the lead item
on the political website Axios on the Monday morning of
(15:35):
the last full business week of the year, A thousand
words by its co founders Jim Vandehi and Mike Allen
about Trump, about Trump indemnifying the cops right, about Trump
using the poisoning of the blood imagery again, about now
implying he's going to expel illegal immigrants from Africa, or
(15:57):
maybe legal immigrants from Africa, or maybe he's going to
expel African Americans. About praising Shijingping or Kim Jong Ollen
or the Putin quote. Now, if former President Trump wins
next year, he'd have much greater power than in his
first term and fewer restraints on carrying out his political agenda.
(16:17):
His political agenda like William Jennings Bryan's political agenda about
not letting mankind be crucified on a cross of gold,
or more like Mike Trump's political agenda being destroying democracy
and getting the cops the permission to kill people. He
Trump does not like political agendas. It was edia means
(16:41):
political agenda. That's thanks to the trifecta of a more
compliant Cabinet, Government, Workforce, and Congress Allan and Vanda Hi
Wright in such a bubbly way that it reads like
an application for a Trump contract for something, and perhaps
it is what's happening. Trump, if he wins, will enjoy
vigorous backing from the vast majority of GOP leaders and
(17:03):
rank and file Republicans. His biggest critics will be long gone.
I don't remember exactly when I met Mike Allen two
thousand and seven. Six struck me as one of the
weirdest people I've ever met. Vanda Hih looked like he
was casing the joint. So his biggest critics, they write,
(17:27):
will be long gone. Of course, Alan and Vanda High
will still be there. If Trump wins, he will enjoy
vigorous backing from conservatives fearful of being sent to concentration
camps to join his biggest critics, who will be long gone.
Now I wrote that last one. I will spare you
the rest of this kissing of the fascist ass by
(17:48):
Axios except for the unmissible conclusion quote. The bottom line,
Trump would have a year's long head start with Congress.
Yet another way he'd leverage the most sophisticated preparation in
history by an out of power party. Not one value judgment,
not one moral judgment, not one negative word. And I'm
(18:13):
not asking for Axios to indorse the continuation of the
Biden administration. I would just like Axios to indorse the
continuation of democracy. Also of interest here, so the conservative
money did not go looking for Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas
(18:37):
made a passive aggressive threat to resign while Bill Clinton
was president unless somebody figured out a way to get
him more cash. I mean, who was going to pay
for his loan for his new RV. And thus fell
the money from the sky And a quick quiz which
Mayor of New York got suited again for lying about
election workers. He just lost a suit too, and responded
(18:59):
by lying about them again for a third time, And
which Mayor of New York just said that what makes
the city the greatest on the globe is that on
any given morning, you could wake up to celebrate a
new business opening, or you could witness a plane crashing
into our trade center. That's next, do an all new
edition of Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Overman. Oh
(19:32):
Scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark,
some predictions. Date line, Atlanta, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss
were awarded one hundred and forty eight million dollars by
a jury after Rudy Giuliani lied about them and slandered them.
Giuliani went out after the verdict last week and insisted
what he said was true and they were guilty. So
(19:54):
they sued him again yesterday, this time seeking not money
but a restraining order preventing him from lying about them again,
whereupon he went on Newsmax last night and lied about
the again. Looks like their next lawsuit will have to
ask the court to epoxy Rudy's lips together. Dateline Presidential Immunity,
(20:15):
Imaginary Land. Two hearings on it now. The Supreme Court
wants Trump's answer by four pm tomorrow on Jack Smith's
petition for search on it that is cut to the
Chase Clarence rule. Now. The US Appeals Court Smith does
not want to wait for on this now says it
will conduct its hearing on Tuesday, January ninth. Dateline the
(20:39):
Supreme Court and lo it is a Christmas miracle. Pro Publica,
quoting public and private records that prove that early in
the year two thousand, Justice Thomas began to muse people
inside the court and out about his little problem. He
just wasn't making enough money, and there was that new
RV to pay for. He might he conveyed to Congressman
(21:02):
Cliff Stearns, who is good enough to write a letter
about it to Thomas that is in the archives, he
would have to resign and go make some money perhaps
whatever it was. Clarence thought people would be willing to
pay him for besides corruption anyway, Remember Bill Clint was
still present in the year two thousand and Clarence had
not yet made sure George W. Bush would succeed him.
(21:23):
Quote his importance as a conservative was paramount. Stearns said
recently in connection with the Pro Publica reports. We wanted
to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and
he was being paid properly. And lo there felleth from
the sky people to pay off his RV loan and
start flying him around the world and hiring his wife
(21:45):
for bull crap jobs involving insurrection and sedition. And our
understanding of Thomas's judicial prostitution changes. He wasn't accepting money
to rule in specific ways on specific cases. He was
blackmailing Conservative America into paying him not to resign and
(22:07):
leave the seat open for a liberal dateline Capitol Hill,
Golly guests, which Supreme Court justice has been asked by
seven congressmen to recuse himself from that ruling on Trump's
imaginary presidential immunity? Why yes, Clarence Thomas. Good guess what
(22:28):
a coincidence because his wife was involved in that whole
overthrowing the governmentee thing on Trump's behalf. I know, Ginny Thomas,
She's everywhere. Congressman Hank Johnson signed this, Connolly is on it,
Sheila Jackson, Lee Raskin. They sent it to Clarence in
a letter. I'm just hoping that they folded up a
(22:49):
fifty dollars bill insigned that layer because you know what,
Clarence's new RV. It ain't gonna pay for itself. And
dateline New York City Circling back to New York mayors,
haven't heard from Mayor Eric Adams lately. Well, he was
on Picks on Politics Sunday with Dan Mannarino on WPIXTV
(23:11):
Channel eleven here, and Dan asked him something about what
made twenty twenty three the year? It was the Softbally
of softball questions, and the mayor said, it's the city
because New York is the greatest place in the world,
because you never know if today is going to be
another nine to eleven. Wait, what.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
When you look at the totality of the year, if
you had to describe it and it's up to do
in one word, what would that word be?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
And tell me why New.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
York This is a place where every day you wake
up you could experience everything from a plane crashing into
our trace center to a person who's celebrating a new
business that's open. This is a very, very complicated city
and that's why this is the greatest city on the globe.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
You know, Mayor Adams, you should try to work that
in to the next advertising campaign for us. You know,
I love New York twenty first century version. It's fun city.
Stop by. Maybe there'll be another terrorist attack while you're
hear paid for it by the City of New York,
Eric Adams, Mayor. You know, I come to think of
(24:45):
it every once in a while. I think, Mayor Adams,
is the terrorist attack that has been sent upon us
for this century still to come. On an all new
edition of Countdown, I was asked about him the other day,
Not Mayor Adams, this other gentleman. I was his intern,
and that was in the year nineteen seventy eight, and
by then he had already been in the business for
(25:06):
thirty six years. And I was asked about him in
December twenty twenty three. That tells you what an impact
he had on people. His story next in a new
edition of Things, I promise not to tell first time
for the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days worse persons
in the world. The bronze worse wreaths across America. Yes,
(25:31):
I'm slamming wreaths across America. Three days after thirty thousand
volunteers showed up at the National Cemetery at Arlington to
take the wreaths they provide free and honor the fall
on at the two hundred and sixty thousand graves in
the National Cemetery. And they're just a fraction of the
three million volunteers who decorated graves around the country this
(25:53):
weekend passed. This is not about the volunteers, nor the debt,
nor the honoring. This is about the self dealing. In
the last six years, the amount of money Wreaths Across
America has gotten has doubled to thirty million a year.
Donors pay seventeen dollars for each wreath. About five dollars
of that goes to the civic and youth groups that
(26:15):
help sell the wreaths. Works out to around a million
and a half a year to those charities, and then
about twenty one and a half million a year three
quarters of its annual revenue goes to the company that
makes the wreaths, Worcester Wreath Company. Now it's quite a
coincidence that the Worcester family still owns the Worcester Wreath
(26:38):
Company when the executive director of Wreaths Across America is
Karen Wooster and three of the other members of the
board of Wreaths Across America are also members of the
Worcester family. And yes, that light bulb going off over
your head, it's accurate. The same family which runs the
charity is the same family which profits by selling the
(27:01):
wreaths to the charity one million dollars a year, and oh,
by the way, shipping the wreaths that's largely donated separately,
So nobody's paying for that, and a lot of organizations
that gadfly charities to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen,
say yeah, this is happening on this This really tawdry
look was first reported not by some left wing organization
(27:24):
or mainstream media outlook, by Military Times dot com. The
runner up worser right wing nutjob Laura Lunier, although I
think she spells Atlmer. Laura Lunier has a vague relationship
with reality and with the truth. Her latest processing issue,
as reported by America's leading George Santos scholar Jacqueline Sweet Lumer,
(27:50):
insists that a Foreign Agent Registration Act filing shows that
the goofball staffer from Senator Cardin's office, who was caught
on video in the Senate hearing room receiving testimony that
he's a f are an agent he works for the
Dominican Republic, says, so right here, it's a scandal. He
could be blackmailed, even though Laura Lunier doesn't explain that
(28:16):
after that tape, I mean, what's left to blackmail him with?
Of course it doesn't say he's a foreign agent. Laura
Lunier is that most dangerous of combinations, not too bright
and not too worried about the truth. The form that
she screenshotted and presented just a portion of shows that
(28:38):
somebody who was a representative of the Dominican government sent
the staffer an email, in fact, sent hundreds of Senate
Office staffers emails. That's all it says. The staffer is
not the Dominican agent. He and hundreds of others were
sent emails by a Dominican agent. Senate staffers get emails
(29:02):
from representatives of other countries. That's what the system is for,
to show when the other countries have reached out to
Senate and how staff in her race to try to
stir up a scandal. This woman lomer has made a
fool out of herself again. But our winners, speaking of which,
the worst seapack and the guy who is still somehow
(29:24):
It's chairman. Nearly a year after he was engulfed in
an actual scandal, the prophetically named Matt Slap, you may
recall Matt Schlap was sued for allegedly groping a male
campaign staffer in October twenty twenty two. A staffer on
the Senate campaign of herschel Walker remember herschel Walker. Washington
(29:47):
Post now reports that is part of discovery for his lawsuit,
the alleged victim discovered and added to the lawsuit two
prior incidents involving Matt Schlap that the plaintiff says Seapack
knew about and did nothing about an attempt to kiss
an employee at a Seapack part in twenty seventeen and
last year what sounds like an interesting night exploring conservative
(30:09):
values when Slapp was accused of stripping to his underwear
and rubbing up against another guy without the other guy's consent.
And the new aspect of the suit is the claim
that Seapac knew and did nothing and let Slap loose
on an unsuspecting world. Matt, Hey, I was only talking
about polling Slap Today's worst person in the world. All right,
(30:49):
here's Bill Maser c one December nineteenth, three two one,
and now to the number one story on the Countdown.
And I was literally asked about him the other day
by somebody who did not know I knew him, And
basically I had one of those instantaneous moments that proved
(31:12):
that Marcel Proust was right. If you try to remember
something or someone from your youth. Good luck. You might
get a vague image. It might be right, it might
be wrong. But if you are unexpectedly reminded of the
moment or the person, you can, for at least a
brief instant, be transported back to them and to that time,
(31:36):
as certainly as if you had a time machine. The
man's name was spoken, and suddenly I was nineteen years
old again, in a brand new seersucker suit, stepping in
from the always broiling midday sun of midtown Manhattan before
the subways had air conditioners, and into the seductive cool
(31:57):
of a television newsroom, seven long hours before the broadcast
was to begin, when all the elements are in place
except the panic and the rushing and the shouting, when
you can still quietly discuss which story should be the
lead on the newscast, rather than threatening to kill somebody
who tried to stop you from going with the fire,
(32:18):
instead of a boating accident, when the film hasn't even
been shot, let alone developed yet, And yes, in nineteen
seventy eight it was still film. They were just making
the conversion from film to videotape, and they were using both,
and half the stories could be instantly assembled videotape, but
(32:39):
the other half were maddeningly delayed until the kid ran
the film to the lab in the basement and waited
for it to be developed. And yeah, I was often
that kid, And I think I might be the youngest
person in this country who can say he ran the
news film to the lab to be developed. Anyway, the
man whose name was mentioned to me was the first
(33:00):
to succeed on radio in a big city in this
country by simply talking sports with listeners who phoned in.
This was in Buffalo, New York in the nineteen forties
and nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, though he was not
from there, born in Kiev, emigrated to Brooklyn as an
infant pre med at Michigan, a quick radio stint in
(33:21):
Grand Rapids, and the apt decision to not go by
his given name of Morris Maser. Then to the war,
then to Buffalo and the role of the sportscaster in
town on TV, on radio on the newscasts of the
original Buffalo Bills of the Minor League Baseball Buffalo Bisons
and the Minor League Hockey Buffalo Bisons. Bill not Morris
(33:42):
Bill Maser. Bill Maser came home to New York City
in the early sixties, and whether you like it or
hate it, sports talk started with him, and it did
not get much better than him. And what he did
was not what you see now, where people like Steven A.
Smith and Chris Russo are paid to kill as much
(34:02):
time as possible, where people like Skip Bayless paid to
turn anything into a controversy and anything good into something bad.
Bill Maser talked to people knowledgeably, pleasantly, rarely raising his voice.
He talked to athletes, other reporters, fans, and he had
(34:22):
a singular advantage. Before Internet, before the sports history industry, hell,
before the first edition of the Baseball Encyclopedia came out,
Bill Maser knew everything. This was largely because he had
a virtually photographic memory. Bill could of an instant tell
you who won the one hundred meter dash at the
nineteen thirty two Olympics in Los Angeles, because he knew
(34:45):
how all six finishers did that. It was Eddie Tolan,
then Ralph Metcalf, then Jonath of Germany, then George Simpson,
then Danny Joubert, and then the Japanese Yoshioka. And then
he mentioned that Eddie Tolan's cousin was the outfielder Bobby
tolenan of the Cincinnati Reds. And before you knew it,
he was asking you who had the greatest outfield arm ever?
And I mentioned this because I can remember parts of
(35:08):
the conversation I had with him that followed that question
about the nineteen thirty two Olympic one hundred meters. Bill
Maser saw the list of finishers once and remembered it
for the rest of his life. Bill also did television
network stuff. He worked NFL football for CBS, sidelines in
the studio and the scoreboard shows. He did hockey, He
(35:31):
did color he did play by play, did local games
of the New York Rangers. He did the network broadcast
on CBS. He did the Knicks, the Rangers, the Nets,
the Islanders, the local sports on Channel five here. And
he had interns, And in the summer of nineteen seventy
eight at Channel five in my seersucker suit, I was
one of them. Did he take me under his wing?
(35:54):
That wasn't his style? Did he let me essentially produce
his show, choose the highlights for him? Watch as he
showed me tricks on how to narrate the those highlights.
Ask me why he was including some stories and not others.
Explain that it was okay to make a mistake as
long as you corrected yourself as soon as you found out.
(36:17):
Nod with amusement but approval. When the actual producer said
that one night that Bill was going to take off,
they should let me fill in for him. Yes to
all that he treated his interns like equals. And then
there was that memory thing. He used to ask him
a trivia question on the air every night, a question
(36:38):
sent in by a viewer Stump the Amazing Maser in
the commercial before the sports on the ten o'clock news
on Channel five, And usually he'd start to actually answer
it reflexively, and the news anchor John Rowland would say,
what are you doing? We want them to stay through
the commercial to find out if you know the answer,
and they'd both laugh, and it was obvious that Bill
had started to answer so that nobody would ever think
(36:58):
he was dashing off during the commercial to find the
answer in a book somewhere. The newscast Your Roland even
mock the whole thing one night. This is from Eddie
Spaghetti of Sheepshead Bay Amazing on Sunday, April twenty second,
nineteen seventy nine, the Rangers defeated the Philadelphia Flyers six
nothing at the Garden behind John Davidson shutout to take
(37:19):
a commanding three games to one lead in the Stanley
Cup semifinals. By this point Bill looked somewhere between amused
and be mused. The question included the key details, What
on earth could the question be? John Rowland resumed seventeen thousand,
three hundred and eighty fans were at Madison Square Garden
that night. Give their names and addresses. Bill Mazer did
(37:44):
not even laugh. Aaron Albert A. One hundred and twenty
five Bedford Avenue, Apartment four L, Brooklyn, New York. Aaron
Albert C. Seventeen Golf Courseway, Nutley, New Jersey. Aaron Albert V.
The director faded to black. I saw him last around
two thousand and eight in the old Yankee Stadium. He
(38:07):
was alone in the clubhouse and shaking his head slowly.
I went up and said, hello, my god, Keith. He said,
very quietly, other than Jeter, I don't know anybody here anymore.
I told him the hell he didn't, he knew me.
We talked for half an hour. I was his intern
one summer, and the next July I was covering the
(38:29):
same games and press conferences he was, And not once
did he claim he discovered me. He introduced me to
everybody I did not know. I had the good fortune
to have this young man as my intern last year.
I'm very proud of him. It was always like that,
that conversation about the nineteen thirty two Olympic one hundred
meters that was at his desk in the seductively cool
(38:49):
newsroom at Channel five one evening when I was still
his intern, and it ended with me saying Dwight Evans
of the Boston Red Sox had as good an outfield
arm as I had ever seen, for whatever that was worth.
And Bill said that was a good choice, but he
didn't quite measure up to Meryl Hogue. Meryl Hogue in
the thirties with the Yankees, I added, and the Browns,
(39:13):
No corrected Bill, just the Yankees. He played only for
the Yankees. I was in a pickle. Bill Mazer was wrong.
I stated my evidence, Bill, I have a nineteen forty
baseball card of Merril Hogue with the Saint Louis Browns.
Bill Maser's side must be a misprint, he said quietly.
(39:36):
He then rose dramatically from his chair, cleared his throat,
and as he reached to unlock the drawer that contained
his copy of the finally published Baseball Encyclopedia. He was
always an early adopter of new tech, he said to
one of the producers. It's always like this with these kids.
He thumbed through the book. Ye has Hogue. Here it
(39:57):
is nineteen thirty six, Yankees nineteen thirty seven, Yankees nineteen
thirty eight, Yankees nineteen thirty nine. Brown Bill went silent.
He replaced his copy of the Baseball Encyclopedia and sat
down slowly and silently. He did not look at me,
but rather at the news producer Stanley Pinsley was his name,
(40:21):
and as he had taught me, Bill corrected himself this
in turn. He finally said, this one is almost as
good as me. That's all I really wanted. I had
unintentionally stumped the amazing Maser. Bill Maser died at Danbury, Connecticut,
(40:43):
in October of twenty thirteen, at the age of ninety two,
and people are still asking me about him. Congratulations Bill,
and thank you. I've done all the damage I can
(41:10):
do here. Thank you for listening. Do me a solid
and tell somebody who does not listen to listen. Countdowns
come to you from the Vin Scully Studios at the
Olderman Broadcasting Empire in New York. Spread the word about
the podcast. If you would, Facebook would be an especially
fertile ground like I wouldn't know. I've never actually gone
on Facebook. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip
(41:32):
Schanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister
Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
bass and drums, produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including
some of the Beethoven compositions, 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 and we
call it the Olderman Theme from ESPN two. Our satirical
(41:56):
and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the best
baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend
Howard Feineman. Everything else was pretty much my fault. That's
countdown for this The one thousand and seventy eighth day
since dementia Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Use the Insurrection Act
against him and them while we still can. The next
(42:20):
scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants till
then on Keith Olreman, Good Morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production
(42:47):
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. Trump
has promised to turn every American cop into a lawless
(00:26):
stormtrooper and every domestic police force into a miniature SS.
And the volume of his sadistic fascist threats is so
large and so loud that when he said this, nobody noticed.
He wants to co opt every law officer in this country,
all seven hundred thousand of them, all armed, and in
(00:46):
the last twenty years, nearly all of them equipped with
military style weapons and vehicles and surveillance equipment, and make
each and every one of them, in essence untouchable by law,
beholden to no one, responsible ultimately only to the person
who liberated them from all legal restraints, him Durham, New Hampshire.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I am also going to indemnify all police offices.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
This is a big.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thing, and it's a brand new thing, and I think
it's so important.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I'm going to indemnify, through the federal government all police
officers and law enforcement officials throughout.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
The United States from being destroyed by the radical left
for taking strong actions against crime.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
What do you think he means by indemnify. I'm going
to indemnify through the federal government, all police officers indemnify,
relieve of legal liability for their actions. To cut to
the chase on this, he means that the next Derek
Chauvan who tortures George Floyd to death on Minneapolis City
(01:55):
Street cannot be arrested, cannot be prosecuted, cannot be sued,
cannot be stopped, no legal responsibility or liability for his actions.
And if there are no longer any means of stopping
the cops from harassing people or beating people or killing people,
cops will no longer have any need to even pretend
that the people they are harassing or beating or killing
(02:17):
are actually guilty of anything they are then the ss
We already know wide swaths of the nation's eighteen thousand
state and local police forces range from wild conservatism to
full on fascism and white supremacism and QAnon and election
denihalism and trumpsm We already know that since nine eleven,
(02:39):
the nation's police forces have equipped themselves as if all
the world's terrorists are going to descend tomorrow morning on
say Franklin, Indiana, population twenty five thousand, which is why
the cops there bought themselves an m RAP, a mine
resistant armored vehicle, just like a dozen other small county
(03:01):
police forces did in the last decade in Indiana alone. Moreover,
and just as dangerously, they in big and small towns alike,
have trained now generation after generation of rookies who have
become veterans, and the chiefs and trainers to believe that
the purpose of the police is to protect the police,
(03:25):
that all civilians are threats, because all terrorists pose as civilians,
and anybody who don't know personally as a potential terrorist.
And I wouldn't be too certain about everybody you do
know personally. If most of America has suffered for twenty
two years now with undiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder, nearly
all of law enforcement has. We now feed service veterans
(03:48):
into police forces, the ones who don't go into the
Republican Party, and we now know that they are literally
suffering widespread physical brain damage just from using, from handling
the twenty first century weapons of war. And now Trump
promises to indemnify them against any legal responsibility. For what
(04:12):
was the rest of that, He said, I'm.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Going to indemnify through the federal government, all police officers
at law enforcement officials throughout.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
The United States from being destroyed by the radical left
for taking strong actions against crime.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yeah, I wonder what kind of strong actions Trump is
talking about. Failure to read them their Miranda rights, I
don't think so, shooting them, killing them in the backseat
of cop cars, and again, no longer even needing an
excuse like selling cigarettes one at a time, or passing
a counterfeit twenty or being a twelve year old carrying
(04:50):
a toy gun. How about menacing in a crowded public place,
A crowded public place that is crowded because there is
a protest in progress, an anti violence protest, an anti
cop City Atlanta pest, an anti Trump protest. If seven
hundred thousand American cops are suddenly out from under the
(05:11):
yoke of any laws that could even occasionally hold them
accountable for murdering people, what is to stop trump indemnified
cops from shooting into a crowd of unarmed protesters. This,
remember would also be in addition to Trump using the
National Guard to quell political protest. This would be in
(05:35):
addition to what Trump staffers would not deny, or at
least considerations of invoking the Insurrection Act on January twentieth,
twenty twenty five, and leaving it invoked. This would be
in addition to Trump's jovial promise to be a dictator,
but only on day one. Haha, I'm only kidding. No,
I'm not yes, i am no, I'm not indemnified police,
(05:59):
the Trump waffa. It is one of those moments of
impossibility when the same thing is both stunning and to
be expected. That Trump could go on a three day
orgy of threats against democracy, quoting Putin and praising dictators
like she and Kim Jong un, guaranteeing mass deportations at
(06:23):
very slowly moving his own Overton window from mass deportations
of undocumented immigrants, which is bad enough to just mass
deportations without any qualifiers or categories. He's done all that.
He's vowed personal vengeance, dressed up as de weaponizing the
Department of Justice, the one that just indicted the actual
(06:43):
president's son. He called the morons he inspired to attack
the Capitol on January sixth, hostages. He insisted we were
all better off under him as president in twenty nineteen
with burgeoning unemployment, and in twenty twenty with COVID, and
of course, he reiterated his favorite Hitler imagery about immigrants
poisoning the blood of the nation and now extending who
(07:06):
he means. Now he is promising his audience he will
remove the people from Africa too, and Asia and framing
immigration as a quote invasion. This is like a military invasion,
he said. Drugs, criminals, gang members, and terrorists. They're taking
over our cities. It is stunning and it is to
(07:29):
be expected that he could go through all that, all
of which he has either stated before, often word for word,
or implied at or hinted at. And the nation and
even its reporters who are alert to the totalitarianism that
Trump is now selling, offering, promising, demanding that all of
(07:50):
them and everybody else, almost everybody missed this one little
fascist rug that really ties the room together. The Trump Police,
they will no longer be responsible to anybody, but they
will have Trump to think. And it's not like he's
(08:12):
going to have to recruit them, or train them, or
equip them or even buy them uniforms. They are in
your town, down your street today. They have m wraps.
It is the nature of man not to be taken
(08:32):
unaware by the evil and the madness of other men,
nor the rapidity and energy with which they will enact
that evil. Not to be surprised by the sheer, banality
and mundanity with which they will happily kill millions because
they can. It is rather the nature of man to
(08:52):
receive warning after warning after warning, and ignore each one
of them. Because the default position of almost everybody, the
smart people, the dumb ones, the quiet ones, the loud ones,
the fault position of all of us is it's difficult
to imagine things that are not currently happening. We are
(09:14):
always warned when the trumps appear. Hitler tried to overthrow
the German government in nineteen twenty three. They jailed him.
He promised more and worse next time. They let him
out of jail early for good conduct. The German Conservatives
needed him for political leverage. He promised, if given power,
(09:36):
he would persecute the Jews and all the other politicians.
They made him Chancellor. The British were told by their
industrial spies in German factories that Hitler was secretly rearming,
especially building planes by the thousands. The British government laughed
because that would be against the Treaty of Versailles and
(09:56):
Germany certainly didn't want a repeat of the World War.
Our country was warned about Hitler at about the Japanese
I mean, in nineteen twelve, Billy Mitchell predicted war with Japan.
In nineteen twenty four, he predicted the attack on Pearl Harbor,
and in retrospect, the only thing Osama bin Laden did
not do in advance was tell this country which day
(10:16):
he planned to attack on and exactly which buildings he
planned to attack. The last MSNBC show I did in
January nineteen ninety eight, before the Clinton Lewinsky sinkhole opened up,
we had a terrorism and military expert on named Jim
Dunagan who said we were so unprepared. Al Qaeda could
drive down Lower Broadway with a truck and habits guys
(10:41):
toss handfuls of anthrax out the back door Lower Broadway.
Dunnagan nearly got the address right. We are always warned
in large part because one of the aspects of fanaticism
Hitler's fanaticism, the Japanese militarists fanaticism trump spanaticism. It almost
(11:03):
always comes attached to unbelievable arrogance and boastfulness, and not
knowing when to shut the hell up. It's not just
that Trump intends to turn the United States into a
totalitarian state. It's that he wants everybody to love him
for doing this, and therefore he cannot possibly not tell
(11:27):
everybody about it in increasing detail. I mean indemnifying the
police for taking strong actions against crime, the police, anything
else you need to know, his plans, his sadism, his vengeance,
the already extant rosters of stormtroopers, already ubiquitously spaced across
(11:51):
the land, and just ready for that indemnification when the
symbolism too, I mean, honest to God, the police. Why
do you think they call it a police date? And
of course, besides the warnings we ignore, the Washington Post
(12:12):
finally used all the actual words actually headlined Trump quoting
Putin about Biden, and they put it on page ten.
Besides the warnings that we ignore. The other universality of
the death of representative government and its replacement by totalitarianism
is the willingness, even the eagerness, of the institution supposedly
(12:34):
devoted to and dependent on representative government to signal that no,
they are ready at a moment's notice to screw this
silly democracy crap and embrace and serve dictatorship. Yes, sir,
I have said, I literally don't know how many times
I have truly lost count that at every actual news
(12:57):
organization in America except maybe Pro Publica and Democracy Now,
I have said countless times that at every news organization
in America, they have had the meeting. Now, the quote
newspeople unquote may not have been there at the meeting,
They may not have even known about the meeting. But
the people who decide where the money goes and who
(13:19):
still works there and who doesn't work there anymore, they
have had the meeting at which the key deciders sit
around and game plan Trump's return to power, and then
they ask the essential vital life or death questions, just
as you and I do, only theirs are as an example,
if Trump regains control, how do we at NBC, Universal
(13:42):
and Comcast defend our profits even though we have already
seen what that did to CNN and what that reinforces
at NBC News and ABC and CBS. This kind of
dilettanti ish, Well, we don't actually live in America, so
we don't have a dog in this hunt delusion, as
(14:05):
if Trump were running to become dictator of Belarus, as
if everybody you see on MSNBC lived in a cloud
somewhere above the fricka Still, whenever I say these meetings
have taken place at your local popular, seemingly reliable news organization,
I get responses that are to be polite about it, disbelieving,
(14:29):
And yet now here it is in front of your
eyes on one day. What two seemingly neutral pro freedom
of the press outlets do after they hold the meetings,
not just the obvious one that would have been The
New York Times op ed yesterday titled the secret of
Trump's appeal Isn't Authoritarianism, which claims, no, it's not the
(14:53):
fact that he wants to turn the country into a
totalitarian state and all the masochists and the Sadists support that.
It's because he's such a moderate. It was written by
the founder of a far right online magazine that spends
all of its time pretending not to be a far
right online magazine, and occasionally it will have ultra leftists
(15:14):
attack democracy and democrats from the lefts he therefore it's balanced.
We have both kinds of music, country and Western. No, No,
that was the obvious one. The more insidious one. The
lead item in the first newsletter and the lead item
on the political website Axios on the Monday morning of
(15:35):
the last full business week of the year, A thousand
words by its co founders Jim Vandehi and Mike Allen
about Trump, about Trump indemnifying the cops right, about Trump
using the poisoning of the blood imagery again, about now
implying he's going to expel illegal immigrants from Africa, or
(15:57):
maybe legal immigrants from Africa, or maybe he's going to
expel African Americans. About praising Shijingping or Kim Jong Ollen
or the Putin quote. Now, if former President Trump wins
next year, he'd have much greater power than in his
first term and fewer restraints on carrying out his political agenda.
(16:17):
His political agenda like William Jennings Bryan's political agenda about
not letting mankind be crucified on a cross of gold,
or more like Mike Trump's political agenda being destroying democracy
and getting the cops the permission to kill people. He
Trump does not like political agendas. It was edia means
(16:41):
political agenda. That's thanks to the trifecta of a more
compliant Cabinet, Government, Workforce, and Congress Allan and Vanda Hi
Wright in such a bubbly way that it reads like
an application for a Trump contract for something, and perhaps
it is what's happening. Trump, if he wins, will enjoy
vigorous backing from the vast majority of GOP leaders and
(17:03):
rank and file Republicans. His biggest critics will be long gone.
I don't remember exactly when I met Mike Allen two
thousand and seven. Six struck me as one of the
weirdest people I've ever met. Vanda Hih looked like he
was casing the joint. So his biggest critics, they write,
(17:27):
will be long gone. Of course, Alan and Vanda High
will still be there. If Trump wins, he will enjoy
vigorous backing from conservatives fearful of being sent to concentration
camps to join his biggest critics, who will be long gone.
Now I wrote that last one. I will spare you
the rest of this kissing of the fascist ass by
(17:48):
Axios except for the unmissible conclusion quote. The bottom line,
Trump would have a year's long head start with Congress.
Yet another way he'd leverage the most sophisticated preparation in
history by an out of power party. Not one value judgment,
not one moral judgment, not one negative word. And I'm
(18:13):
not asking for Axios to indorse the continuation of the
Biden administration. I would just like Axios to indorse the
continuation of democracy. Also of interest here, so the conservative
money did not go looking for Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas
(18:37):
made a passive aggressive threat to resign while Bill Clinton
was president unless somebody figured out a way to get
him more cash. I mean, who was going to pay
for his loan for his new RV. And thus fell
the money from the sky And a quick quiz which
Mayor of New York got suited again for lying about
election workers. He just lost a suit too, and responded
(18:59):
by lying about them again for a third time, And
which Mayor of New York just said that what makes
the city the greatest on the globe is that on
any given morning, you could wake up to celebrate a
new business opening, or you could witness a plane crashing
into our trade center. That's next, do an all new
edition of Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Overman. Oh
(19:32):
Scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark,
some predictions. Date line, Atlanta, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss
were awarded one hundred and forty eight million dollars by
a jury after Rudy Giuliani lied about them and slandered them.
Giuliani went out after the verdict last week and insisted
what he said was true and they were guilty. So
(19:54):
they sued him again yesterday, this time seeking not money
but a restraining order preventing him from lying about them again,
whereupon he went on Newsmax last night and lied about
the again. Looks like their next lawsuit will have to
ask the court to epoxy Rudy's lips together. Dateline Presidential Immunity,
(20:15):
Imaginary Land. Two hearings on it now. The Supreme Court
wants Trump's answer by four pm tomorrow on Jack Smith's
petition for search on it that is cut to the
Chase Clarence rule. Now. The US Appeals Court Smith does
not want to wait for on this now says it
will conduct its hearing on Tuesday, January ninth. Dateline the
(20:39):
Supreme Court and lo it is a Christmas miracle. Pro Publica,
quoting public and private records that prove that early in
the year two thousand, Justice Thomas began to muse people
inside the court and out about his little problem. He
just wasn't making enough money, and there was that new
RV to pay for. He might he conveyed to Congressman
(21:02):
Cliff Stearns, who is good enough to write a letter
about it to Thomas that is in the archives, he
would have to resign and go make some money perhaps
whatever it was. Clarence thought people would be willing to
pay him for besides corruption anyway, Remember Bill Clint was
still present in the year two thousand and Clarence had
not yet made sure George W. Bush would succeed him.
(21:23):
Quote his importance as a conservative was paramount. Stearns said
recently in connection with the Pro Publica reports. We wanted
to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and
he was being paid properly. And lo there felleth from
the sky people to pay off his RV loan and
start flying him around the world and hiring his wife
(21:45):
for bull crap jobs involving insurrection and sedition. And our
understanding of Thomas's judicial prostitution changes. He wasn't accepting money
to rule in specific ways on specific cases. He was
blackmailing Conservative America into paying him not to resign and
(22:07):
leave the seat open for a liberal dateline Capitol Hill,
Golly guests, which Supreme Court justice has been asked by
seven congressmen to recuse himself from that ruling on Trump's
imaginary presidential immunity? Why yes, Clarence Thomas. Good guess what
(22:28):
a coincidence because his wife was involved in that whole
overthrowing the governmentee thing on Trump's behalf. I know, Ginny Thomas,
She's everywhere. Congressman Hank Johnson signed this, Connolly is on it,
Sheila Jackson, Lee Raskin. They sent it to Clarence in
a letter. I'm just hoping that they folded up a
(22:49):
fifty dollars bill insigned that layer because you know what,
Clarence's new RV. It ain't gonna pay for itself. And
dateline New York City Circling back to New York mayors,
haven't heard from Mayor Eric Adams lately. Well, he was
on Picks on Politics Sunday with Dan Mannarino on WPIXTV
(23:11):
Channel eleven here, and Dan asked him something about what
made twenty twenty three the year? It was the Softbally
of softball questions, and the mayor said, it's the city
because New York is the greatest place in the world,
because you never know if today is going to be
another nine to eleven. Wait, what.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
When you look at the totality of the year, if
you had to describe it and it's up to do
in one word, what would that word be?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
And tell me why New.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
York This is a place where every day you wake
up you could experience everything from a plane crashing into
our trace center to a person who's celebrating a new
business that's open. This is a very, very complicated city
and that's why this is the greatest city on the globe.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
You know, Mayor Adams, you should try to work that
in to the next advertising campaign for us. You know,
I love New York twenty first century version. It's fun city.
Stop by. Maybe there'll be another terrorist attack while you're
hear paid for it by the City of New York,
Eric Adams, Mayor. You know, I come to think of
(24:45):
it every once in a while. I think, Mayor Adams,
is the terrorist attack that has been sent upon us
for this century still to come. On an all new
edition of Countdown, I was asked about him the other day,
Not Mayor Adams, this other gentleman. I was his intern,
and that was in the year nineteen seventy eight, and
by then he had already been in the business for
(25:06):
thirty six years. And I was asked about him in
December twenty twenty three. That tells you what an impact
he had on people. His story next in a new
edition of Things, I promise not to tell first time
for the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days worse persons
in the world. The bronze worse wreaths across America. Yes,
(25:31):
I'm slamming wreaths across America. Three days after thirty thousand
volunteers showed up at the National Cemetery at Arlington to
take the wreaths they provide free and honor the fall
on at the two hundred and sixty thousand graves in
the National Cemetery. And they're just a fraction of the
three million volunteers who decorated graves around the country this
(25:53):
weekend passed. This is not about the volunteers, nor the debt,
nor the honoring. This is about the self dealing. In
the last six years, the amount of money Wreaths Across
America has gotten has doubled to thirty million a year.
Donors pay seventeen dollars for each wreath. About five dollars
of that goes to the civic and youth groups that
(26:15):
help sell the wreaths. Works out to around a million
and a half a year to those charities, and then
about twenty one and a half million a year three
quarters of its annual revenue goes to the company that
makes the wreaths, Worcester Wreath Company. Now it's quite a
coincidence that the Worcester family still owns the Worcester Wreath
(26:38):
Company when the executive director of Wreaths Across America is
Karen Wooster and three of the other members of the
board of Wreaths Across America are also members of the
Worcester family. And yes, that light bulb going off over
your head, it's accurate. The same family which runs the
charity is the same family which profits by selling the
(27:01):
wreaths to the charity one million dollars a year, and oh,
by the way, shipping the wreaths that's largely donated separately,
So nobody's paying for that, and a lot of organizations
that gadfly charities to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen,
say yeah, this is happening on this This really tawdry
look was first reported not by some left wing organization
(27:24):
or mainstream media outlook, by Military Times dot com. The
runner up worser right wing nutjob Laura Lunier, although I
think she spells Atlmer. Laura Lunier has a vague relationship
with reality and with the truth. Her latest processing issue,
as reported by America's leading George Santos scholar Jacqueline Sweet Lumer,
(27:50):
insists that a Foreign Agent Registration Act filing shows that
the goofball staffer from Senator Cardin's office, who was caught
on video in the Senate hearing room receiving testimony that
he's a f are an agent he works for the
Dominican Republic, says, so right here, it's a scandal. He
could be blackmailed, even though Laura Lunier doesn't explain that
(28:16):
after that tape, I mean, what's left to blackmail him with?
Of course it doesn't say he's a foreign agent. Laura
Lunier is that most dangerous of combinations, not too bright
and not too worried about the truth. The form that
she screenshotted and presented just a portion of shows that
(28:38):
somebody who was a representative of the Dominican government sent
the staffer an email, in fact, sent hundreds of Senate
Office staffers emails. That's all it says. The staffer is
not the Dominican agent. He and hundreds of others were
sent emails by a Dominican agent. Senate staffers get emails
(29:02):
from representatives of other countries. That's what the system is for,
to show when the other countries have reached out to
Senate and how staff in her race to try to
stir up a scandal. This woman lomer has made a
fool out of herself again. But our winners, speaking of which,
the worst seapack and the guy who is still somehow
(29:24):
It's chairman. Nearly a year after he was engulfed in
an actual scandal, the prophetically named Matt Slap, you may
recall Matt Schlap was sued for allegedly groping a male
campaign staffer in October twenty twenty two. A staffer on
the Senate campaign of herschel Walker remember herschel Walker. Washington
(29:47):
Post now reports that is part of discovery for his lawsuit,
the alleged victim discovered and added to the lawsuit two
prior incidents involving Matt Schlap that the plaintiff says Seapack
knew about and did nothing about an attempt to kiss
an employee at a Seapack part in twenty seventeen and
last year what sounds like an interesting night exploring conservative
(30:09):
values when Slapp was accused of stripping to his underwear
and rubbing up against another guy without the other guy's consent.
And the new aspect of the suit is the claim
that Seapac knew and did nothing and let Slap loose
on an unsuspecting world. Matt, Hey, I was only talking
about polling Slap Today's worst person in the world. All right,
(30:49):
here's Bill Maser c one December nineteenth, three two one,
and now to the number one story on the Countdown.
And I was literally asked about him the other day
by somebody who did not know I knew him, And
basically I had one of those instantaneous moments that proved
(31:12):
that Marcel Proust was right. If you try to remember
something or someone from your youth. Good luck. You might
get a vague image. It might be right, it might
be wrong. But if you are unexpectedly reminded of the
moment or the person, you can, for at least a
brief instant, be transported back to them and to that time,
(31:36):
as certainly as if you had a time machine. The
man's name was spoken, and suddenly I was nineteen years
old again, in a brand new seersucker suit, stepping in
from the always broiling midday sun of midtown Manhattan before
the subways had air conditioners, and into the seductive cool
(31:57):
of a television newsroom, seven long hours before the broadcast
was to begin, when all the elements are in place
except the panic and the rushing and the shouting, when
you can still quietly discuss which story should be the
lead on the newscast, rather than threatening to kill somebody
who tried to stop you from going with the fire,
(32:18):
instead of a boating accident, when the film hasn't even
been shot, let alone developed yet, And yes, in nineteen
seventy eight it was still film. They were just making
the conversion from film to videotape, and they were using both,
and half the stories could be instantly assembled videotape, but
(32:39):
the other half were maddeningly delayed until the kid ran
the film to the lab in the basement and waited
for it to be developed. And yeah, I was often
that kid, And I think I might be the youngest
person in this country who can say he ran the
news film to the lab to be developed. Anyway, the
man whose name was mentioned to me was the first
(33:00):
to succeed on radio in a big city in this
country by simply talking sports with listeners who phoned in.
This was in Buffalo, New York in the nineteen forties
and nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, though he was not
from there, born in Kiev, emigrated to Brooklyn as an
infant pre med at Michigan, a quick radio stint in
(33:21):
Grand Rapids, and the apt decision to not go by
his given name of Morris Maser. Then to the war,
then to Buffalo and the role of the sportscaster in
town on TV, on radio on the newscasts of the
original Buffalo Bills of the Minor League Baseball Buffalo Bisons
and the Minor League Hockey Buffalo Bisons. Bill not Morris
(33:42):
Bill Maser. Bill Maser came home to New York City
in the early sixties, and whether you like it or
hate it, sports talk started with him, and it did
not get much better than him. And what he did
was not what you see now, where people like Steven A.
Smith and Chris Russo are paid to kill as much
(34:02):
time as possible, where people like Skip Bayless paid to
turn anything into a controversy and anything good into something bad.
Bill Maser talked to people knowledgeably, pleasantly, rarely raising his voice.
He talked to athletes, other reporters, fans, and he had
(34:22):
a singular advantage. Before Internet, before the sports history industry, hell,
before the first edition of the Baseball Encyclopedia came out,
Bill Maser knew everything. This was largely because he had
a virtually photographic memory. Bill could of an instant tell
you who won the one hundred meter dash at the
nineteen thirty two Olympics in Los Angeles, because he knew
(34:45):
how all six finishers did that. It was Eddie Tolan,
then Ralph Metcalf, then Jonath of Germany, then George Simpson,
then Danny Joubert, and then the Japanese Yoshioka. And then
he mentioned that Eddie Tolan's cousin was the outfielder Bobby
tolenan of the Cincinnati Reds. And before you knew it,
he was asking you who had the greatest outfield arm ever?
And I mentioned this because I can remember parts of
(35:08):
the conversation I had with him that followed that question
about the nineteen thirty two Olympic one hundred meters. Bill
Maser saw the list of finishers once and remembered it
for the rest of his life. Bill also did television
network stuff. He worked NFL football for CBS, sidelines in
the studio and the scoreboard shows. He did hockey, He
(35:31):
did color he did play by play, did local games
of the New York Rangers. He did the network broadcast
on CBS. He did the Knicks, the Rangers, the Nets,
the Islanders, the local sports on Channel five here. And
he had interns, And in the summer of nineteen seventy
eight at Channel five in my seersucker suit, I was
one of them. Did he take me under his wing?
(35:54):
That wasn't his style? Did he let me essentially produce
his show, choose the highlights for him? Watch as he
showed me tricks on how to narrate the those highlights.
Ask me why he was including some stories and not others.
Explain that it was okay to make a mistake as
long as you corrected yourself as soon as you found out.
(36:17):
Nod with amusement but approval. When the actual producer said
that one night that Bill was going to take off,
they should let me fill in for him. Yes to
all that he treated his interns like equals. And then
there was that memory thing. He used to ask him
a trivia question on the air every night, a question
(36:38):
sent in by a viewer Stump the Amazing Maser in
the commercial before the sports on the ten o'clock news
on Channel five, And usually he'd start to actually answer
it reflexively, and the news anchor John Rowland would say,
what are you doing? We want them to stay through
the commercial to find out if you know the answer,
and they'd both laugh, and it was obvious that Bill
had started to answer so that nobody would ever think
(36:58):
he was dashing off during the commercial to find the
answer in a book somewhere. The newscast Your Roland even
mock the whole thing one night. This is from Eddie
Spaghetti of Sheepshead Bay Amazing on Sunday, April twenty second,
nineteen seventy nine, the Rangers defeated the Philadelphia Flyers six
nothing at the Garden behind John Davidson shutout to take
(37:19):
a commanding three games to one lead in the Stanley
Cup semifinals. By this point Bill looked somewhere between amused
and be mused. The question included the key details, What
on earth could the question be? John Rowland resumed seventeen thousand,
three hundred and eighty fans were at Madison Square Garden
that night. Give their names and addresses. Bill Mazer did
(37:44):
not even laugh. Aaron Albert A. One hundred and twenty
five Bedford Avenue, Apartment four L, Brooklyn, New York. Aaron
Albert C. Seventeen Golf Courseway, Nutley, New Jersey. Aaron Albert V.
The director faded to black. I saw him last around
two thousand and eight in the old Yankee Stadium. He
(38:07):
was alone in the clubhouse and shaking his head slowly.
I went up and said, hello, my god, Keith. He said,
very quietly, other than Jeter, I don't know anybody here anymore.
I told him the hell he didn't, he knew me.
We talked for half an hour. I was his intern
one summer, and the next July I was covering the
(38:29):
same games and press conferences he was, And not once
did he claim he discovered me. He introduced me to
everybody I did not know. I had the good fortune
to have this young man as my intern last year.
I'm very proud of him. It was always like that,
that conversation about the nineteen thirty two Olympic one hundred
meters that was at his desk in the seductively cool
(38:49):
newsroom at Channel five one evening when I was still
his intern, and it ended with me saying Dwight Evans
of the Boston Red Sox had as good an outfield
arm as I had ever seen, for whatever that was worth.
And Bill said that was a good choice, but he
didn't quite measure up to Meryl Hogue. Meryl Hogue in
the thirties with the Yankees, I added, and the Browns,
(39:13):
No corrected Bill, just the Yankees. He played only for
the Yankees. I was in a pickle. Bill Mazer was wrong.
I stated my evidence, Bill, I have a nineteen forty
baseball card of Merril Hogue with the Saint Louis Browns.
Bill Maser's side must be a misprint, he said quietly.
(39:36):
He then rose dramatically from his chair, cleared his throat,
and as he reached to unlock the drawer that contained
his copy of the finally published Baseball Encyclopedia. He was
always an early adopter of new tech, he said to
one of the producers. It's always like this with these kids.
He thumbed through the book. Ye has Hogue. Here it
(39:57):
is nineteen thirty six, Yankees nineteen thirty seven, Yankees nineteen
thirty eight, Yankees nineteen thirty nine. Brown Bill went silent.
He replaced his copy of the Baseball Encyclopedia and sat
down slowly and silently. He did not look at me,
but rather at the news producer Stanley Pinsley was his name,
(40:21):
and as he had taught me, Bill corrected himself this
in turn. He finally said, this one is almost as
good as me. That's all I really wanted. I had
unintentionally stumped the amazing Maser. Bill Maser died at Danbury, Connecticut,
(40:43):
in October of twenty thirteen, at the age of ninety two,
and people are still asking me about him. Congratulations Bill,
and thank you. I've done all the damage I can
(41:10):
do here. Thank you for listening. Do me a solid
and tell somebody who does not listen to listen. Countdowns
come to you from the Vin Scully Studios at the
Olderman Broadcasting Empire in New York. Spread the word about
the podcast. If you would, Facebook would be an especially
fertile ground like I wouldn't know. I've never actually gone
on Facebook. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip
(41:32):
Schanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister
Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
bass and drums, produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including
some of the Beethoven compositions, 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 and we
call it the Olderman Theme from ESPN two. Our satirical
(41:56):
and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the best
baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend
Howard Feineman. Everything else was pretty much my fault. That's
countdown for this The one thousand and seventy eighth day
since dementia Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Use the Insurrection Act
against him and them while we still can. The next
(42:20):
scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants till
then on Keith Olreman, Good Morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production
(42:47):
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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