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Countdown with Keith Olbermann
IF ANDREW CAN'T BE PRINCE BECAUSE OF EPSTEIN, TRUMP CAN'T BE PRESIDENT BECAUSE OF EPSTEIN - 11.3.25
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This is an iHeart podcast. Nothing in life is free except this free $10 that better picks is offering. Download the Better app, pick more or less on player stats, watch the games and win some cash. It's that simple. Must be 21 or older in a jurisdiction where Better Picks operates. Terms and conditions apply. Better Picks Sports just got better. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's TR trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America. Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on spinquest. And there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users and get $30 coin packs for just $10. All the table games you love with hundreds of slot games and real cash Prizes. That's at spinquest.coms P-I N Q U-E-S-T.com Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. What's that sound? That's the sound of Downy Unstoppable scent beads going into your washing machine and giving your clothes freshness that lasts all day long. There it is again. It's like music to your ears. Or more like music to your nose. That freshness is irresistible. Let's get a Downy Unstoppables bottle shake. And now a sniff solo. Nice with Downy Unstoppables you just toss wash wow for all day freshness. Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. If Andrew can no longer be Prince because of Jeffrey Epstein, Trump can no longer be president because of Jeffrey Epstein. I think Trump understands this. I have no doubt Mike Johnson understands this. I believe even large swaths of the otherwise imbecilic MAGA understand this. It is why Trump and Johnson and the others are starving the needy, dissolving Congress, destroying the domestic balance of power, gutting the work infrastructure at airports, government agencies, services. It is why they are even cutting the legs out from under every Republican candidate in tomorrow's handful of elections. Andrew has been convicted of nothing relative to Epstein. Trump has been convicted of nothing relative to Epstein. There are no astounding legal findings against Andrew. There are no astounding legal findings against Trump. There are probably no smoking guns about Andrew in the Epstein files. There are probably no smoking guns about Trump in the Epstein files. Nevertheless, if Andrew can no longer be Prince because of Jeffrey Epstein, Trump can no longer be President because of Jeffrey Epstein. Since May we have known that even Trump's own corrupt, servile Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump that he is in the Epstein files. This was reported by a Murdoch newspaper. Murdoch newspapers may only be 50% true, but no Murdoch newspaper would ever print anything false that would damage Trump. Trump's name is reportedly even in the binders Bondi handed out to right wing propagandists back in February, back when it served Trump to pretend he was going to release the Epstein files. Trump is in the Epstein files. Andrew. Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is in the Epstein files. Though the parallels are potent and meaningful, there are actually developments that turn against both men and involve both men in England. The idea, forgive me, the vibe is growing that Andrew Windsor may somehow testify or make a statement about what he knows about Epstein. And let's not kid ourselves, what anybody knows about Epstein now means what do you know about Epstein and Trump? The idea that he could compose a statement specifically for the US Congress or somehow be interviewed by Congress. That was the second lead story on BBC News all day Friday, surpassed only by the hurricane devastation in Jamaica. The seemingly preposterous idea is not preposterous. They are damned serious about this. They are quoting obscure democratic congressmen pushing for something, anything to at least force the end of the Trump Mike Johnson MAGA cover up of Trump's connections to Epstein. And more importantly, the BBC is quoting the King Charles's statement, the one in which he essentially kicked his own brother out of the family, ended quote. Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been and will remain with the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse in the uk. It is taken as almost a given that the most obvious and influential way to turn those sympathies into something meaningful and restorative is to have Andrew do something what could serve justice and protect this king and the next one and yet not require Andrew to self immolate legally than for Andrew to tell everything he knows, or at least everything he knows that won't get him jailed or sued again. This sounds far fetched. It is not. Ideas like this, things extrapolated from news stories do not appear on the BBC or the other British news networks. Spontaneously they are floated. There are people with more than a passing connection to the Royal Family who are floating that idea. Have Andrew reveal what he knows about others. Guess which other something else that has just happened that has kicked this into high gear shows the impunity with which Trump believes he is acting when it comes to the fact that he is in the Epstein files and the likelihood that Andrew knows something about those horrific details. That party Friday night, that Great Gatsby Halloween party with 1920s indulgences, while Trump is cutting off SNAP funding to what he sees as the meaningless rabble with dancing girls or if you prefer strippers, maybe massage givers, one of them in a giant martini glass from the insipid Playboy cartoon of the 60s. The imagery is amazing and sometimes you think God damn it, Trump wants to get caught. For now it is Trump's middle finger to all those who want him prosecuted for the crimes of his presidency and the crimes of his life before and for his cover up of Epstein now that he realizes he is at risk. Trump's self awareness of risk is a stunningly variable thing. Only he would be stupid enough to throw a Gatsby party while his Secretary of the treasury is saying parts of our economy are now in a recession. Only Trump would throw a Gatsby party with himself as Gatsby in the middle of his own sex ring crisis. I'm going way out on a limb here. I'm guessing Trump never read the Great Gatsby. I'm guessing Trump never found out what happens to Gats. We don't know for certain. All the Epstein files contain about Andrew or Trump inside the degraded, nauseating world of Trump. The degree of difference between Andrew and Trump is largely the fact that Andrew was sued by the late Virginia Giuffre and he settled that case three years ago with no admission of wrongdoing and that Andrew had done a self defenestrating television interview with the BBC in 2019 in which his denial was based on the extraordinary claim that when Virginia Giuffre said she saw him sweaty at a nightclub, it destroyed her credibility and proved her a liar because he had literally lost the ability to sweat while he was serving as a helicopter pilot during the Falklands War. Of course it was Falkland's disease. There are also legal processes that differ. Obviously Trump, whether he believes in checks and balances or not, is protected by them. Andrew, meanwhile, has been slowly shrunken by his own family and what amounts to a monarchy that has absolute power only over its own family members. There are virtually no checks or balances in that regard in England. When in 2022 an American judge let the Giuffre case against him continue, the Late Queen removed all of Andrew's milit titles but one. When this past January, newly revealed text messages indicated Andrew had kept in contact with Epstein months after insisting he had cut Epstein off, Andrew's future was doomed. When a second scandal involving a Chinese spy swallowed up what was left of Andrew's credibility, his brother the King first removed his title, Duke of York. That was two weeks ago. Then a week ago today, he was heckled, apparently by a member of the public about Andrew. Finally, last Thursday, the King realized that was insufficient and took away his royal status entirely. Apparently he gets to stay in a royal home. He is still in the line of succession, but even that could change. He is no longer Prince Andrew. He is Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. Now, about the only thing left is to force him to change his name to what the Windsors called themselves before the First World War, back when they still didn't have to hide their German origins. The only thing left is to force him to change his name to Andy Sachs Coburg or to prosecute him in civilian court if he does not somehow atone by telling all he knows. The point is Trump neither has to face the slow but absolute justice and anger of a royal family. There is nobody to force him out. It's hardly likely to ever come up. But even the 25th Amendment has a built in appeals process in which a president deemed unfit by his own cabinet and his own political party could still fight back against removal and delay it for weeks or months or who knows how long by legal means through the House and Senate. And presumably, given Trump's history of illegality and disrespect for our system, by using the Supreme Court. And if that somehow failed, Trump presumably could use the military against the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court against J.D. vance and the Cabinet against you, me, whoever. Nevertheless, all of those nuclear options that are available to Trump and not to Andrew would have been available to Nixon or had it come to that, to Clinton or any other President. They all had those choices. They did not have the evil and the psychosis to use some of them. But Nixon came surprisingly close. A President of the United States is simply by dint of control of the military. And if he ceases to believe in checks and balances or is manifestly insane, he is the most powerful man in the world to a madman. We have given that power. If we survive our mistake, we might want to look into fixing this. But for the here and now, this is the relevant point. The evidence against them both is about the same. The shame of them both were they capable of shame would be about the same. The shame we should feel that the United Kingdom, no matter how slowly it moved, finally moved to expunge its shame and began to try to repair the personal damage its criminal has caused. While we are stuck still suffering at the whims of our criminal, our shame should be boundless. Because if Andrew can no longer be Prince because of Jeffrey Epstein, Trump can no longer be President because of Jeffrey Epstein. And so Trump continues his shutdown to make sure there is no vote to release the Epstein files. To make sure there is no Congresswoman Rehalva to be the last vote to force the release of the Epstein files. Because they will knock at least one more support out from under Trump's ability to stay in office if they are released. And they will knock at least one more support out from under his successors and enablers and apologists from staying in public life. Don't take my word for this. Even the craziest of maga know what this is and why and what and will happen when the dam breaks. Because the dam will break. Because even a self denying puppet like Mike Johnson can't keep it up forever. This is Congressman Thomas Massie. He's calling it the Schumer shutdown, but I'm calling it the Epstein recess. Not only are we shut down, we're in recess. And that's unconventional, unprecedented. Gabby Massie is right. Holy cow. I never thought I'd say anything close to that. Yes, there are other games Republicans are playing. They have calculated, wrongly that they can damage the Democrats by in essence, closing the gates and further converting the Trump administration into just a theft ring that at this moment is doing nothing for the citizens of this country and is in fact simply stealing our money from us by literally continuing taxation without representation. Note the New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikey Sherrill actually says in an ad that it's time for the state of New Jersey to claw back the billions in federal tax money that it sends to Washington and does not get back. She is threatening what I keep talking about here, a federal tax boycott to break this. Meanwhile, back to the shutdown. You heard the Secretary of Agriculture right as she confirmed the emergency SNAP funds, designed to be used when regular funding is unavailable in an emergency. They can't be used in this emergency because that regular funding is unavailable. So no emergency funds because it's an emergency. A Trump fabricated emergency. She then issued what seemed to be, at least at its start, a heartfelt conclusion that anybody who needs SNAP benefits in this country that has hot and cold running Money in every building and God damned President Gatsby Halloween parties. Anybody who needs SNAP benefits in a country this rich is the victim of bipartisan failure. My message to America is first, the fact that your government is failing you right now. That poverty is not red or blue. It is not a Republican or Democrat issue. It doesn't matter who you voted for or even if you voted that. If you are in a position where you can't feed your family and you're relying on that $187 a month for an average family in the SNAP program that we have failed you, then, then Speaker Mike Johnson got off his anti porn app for a second and came to the rescue with one of the most singularly dishonest non credible statements any politician has made in my lifetime. It's up there with that statement is no longer operative and it's clarifying. When she says we have failed you, she means we the Democrats. Okay? He almost knocked down Secretary Sugar Baker. I'm sorry, Secretary Rollins, to get to that microphone to say that courts have ruled the SNAP benefits must be paid. Trump is stalling now, using that ruling to stall further by asking the courts, seemingly in great concern, to show him how to not break the law. Scumbag. However, just as a reminder that this country is not only a bunch of lemmings following Trump off a moral cliff, even though real lemmings don't commit mass suicide, that was literally a horrific Disney stunt for a movie. To counter our sometimes hopeless state, there is the story of Manny's Deli on Jefferson in Chicago. Starting today, Manny's Deli has promised a family sized meal to anyone presenting a SNAP card this week. I suspect they will be inundated. They have started a GoFundMe. The title on the GoFundMe site is Snap Benefits Relief Fund. So if you feel you need to do something, there you go. Remember Mary Trump's question last week? Why do they keep giving her uncle cognitive tests? Why do they keep giving him tests? Not why do they give him tests, why do they keep. I wanted to reframe that question in light of what to me is even more relevant every time I think about this, the timing, six months between the tests and the MRI or MRIs connected to the test, they're checking for physical deterioration and cognitive deterioration in tandem. Connected. Those are Alzheimer's tests, aren't they? Or something like that. It shouldn't be shocking. Yet I find it is. However we phrase Mary Trump's question, why do they keep giving Trump cognitive tests? Trump always provides enough answers. It is evident he heard about Russia testing a nuclear powered missile and thanks to whatever is wrong with him, he only heard testing nuclear missile and then ordered testing of nukes by this country. As dangerous and useless a thing as we could do. Besides electing him twice, he's also repeating himself. Worked really hard 24 7, took in trillions of dollars and Chuck Schumer said Tripp was a total dud even though he knows it was a spectacular success. Words like that are almost treasonous. Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. I'm wondering if somebody actually convinced him they're not the next post attacking Seth Meyers. No talent, no ratings, 100% anti Trump, which is probably illegal. So still a no. But now the crime of criticizing Trump has been reduced from almost treason to probably illegal. And then there was the one that flashed back to the good old simple days of South Car D D D D South C A R E R D D d d south ker d south cara duh. To which Gavin Newsom's social media whiz added the extra Ds stand for dementia. And of course, Newsom was on Meet the Press yesterday, and the amazingly unqualified Kristen Welker asked him if his running spoof of Trump's psychosis and fragility served only to normalize Trump's behavior. And and I think he's done a marvelous job. He may have found his niche, but I'm just sorry he didn't. Gavin Newsom just didn't say what he could have said that would have caused the cancellation of Meet the Press. He could have said no, Kristen, you doing softball interviews with Trump and his criminal gang. That's what's serving to normalize Trump's behavior. One bit of comic relief unrelated to politics or Welker or Newsom or anybody else on social media. You may have seen it. Hope it gives you a second laugh. Now, someone posted two shots of a men's room at the football stadium at Missouri State, where above a row of urinals are two windows through which you can see the end zone of the football stadium and the scoreboard of the football stadium, to which photographer Andrew Stein writes, quote, you have a real stadium naming rights opportunity here. PNC Bank. Oh my God. PNC Bank. Also of interest here in an all new edition of Countdown, the election is tomorrow, but Andrew Cuomo has actually proclaimed himself mayor of New York already. Actually, that's not a bad plan, considering nobody else is going to. And yes, the baseball World Series ended exactly the way I said it would, with everybody demanding that Fox never interview a manager in the middle of a game ever, ever again. That used to be my job. Well, everything used to be my job, but that used to be my job. I have thoughts on this and the story for you of the one time the in game interviewer mattered, the riot that nearly ensued and how it all ended with me basically being ordered to go sit on George Steinbrenner's lap. That's next. This is Countdown, PNC Bank.
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Nothing in life is free except this $10 that better picks is offering. Download the Better app, Pick more or less on your favorite player's stats, watch the games and win some cash. It's that simple. Must be 21 or older in a jurisdiction where Better Picks operates. Terms and conditions apply. Better Picks Sports just got better. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News Reporting for America. Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on spinquest. And there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get $30 coin packs for just $10. All the table games you love with hundreds of slot games and real cash Prizes. That's at spinquest.com S P I N Q U S T.com Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. This is COUNTDOWN with Keith Olbermann. Still ahead on this all new episode of countdown, the World Series proved the United States and Canada can still agree on one thing. No more God damned interviews of the managers during game seven. Everybody in baseball pleads, in fact, no interviews during games ever or reports from the dugouts unless there really is News. And it's 25 years now since I did that job, but I did it for 40 games and I think there were only three times in like four years they really needed me in the dugout to break news to the TV audience. On the other hand, one of them was when only by the slimmest of margins did Fenway park not erupt in a mid game riot involving the Yankees, angry Boston cops and all the drunken Red Sox fans in the stands. And that led to me being ordered to sit virtually in the lap of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Yes, I'm a dugout reporter. Here's why we shouldn't have dugout reporters except once in a while. Next in things I promise not to tell first, believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miscreants morons and dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world at the bronze worst. Scott Jennings. You know this fop? This is the CNN guy who looks like Kermit the Frog and spends three quarters of his time making faces to the camera and he was crowing about ending Jimmy Kimmel's career. And I wrote back on Twitter your next mfer, meaning his career obviously. And he reported it to the FBI and to Director I'll take it in cash Patel because I threatened to to harm his career. This self martyring paranoid idiot they put on CNN and he tries to beat up liberals and they still can't get anybody to watch. Lawrence o' Donnell, who I do not support, clocked this guy Jennings, who I do not support on msnbc, which I do not support. And by the way, which is weirder, the fact that I retired from ESPN five years ago after all that sturm and drang meant I'm officially a Disney retiree. Or the fact that if I make it to a week from this Saturday when they change to Ms. Now, I will have professionally and personally outlasted msnbc. Anyway, Lawrence doesn't do much on the air that somebody else didn't do first in like 2007, but this was good. He accused Scott Jennings of Going crazy town Maga for the money. Scotty no, like quote, there's this lunatic on MSNBC at 10 o' clock every night named Lawrence O'. Donnell. I had sort of forgotten that he was a thing, but I guess he still has a show and he went crazy on yours truly the other night. He tweeted about this too. Rule 1, if you do a podcast or a radio show or a TV show or a tweet about somebody's irrelevance, you just self owned. They're relevant to you, aren't they? I'm not saying Lawrence o' Donnell is irrelevant. I'm not saying Scott Jennings is irrelevant by talking about them, I'm making them relevant if they somehow were not relevant before. And Scott Jennings, when he says Lawrence o' Donnell is irrelevant, is lying because he's saying it. Secondly, Jennings claimed the show he is on. Abby Phillip platforms fascists is beating Lawrence O' Donnell by 30% in the advertising demo. I don't know where he got that number. But in October, CNN and MSNBC for most of primetime programming hit record lows in all categories. So you're arguing about 12 viewers or 10 viewers, but MSNBC's total audience is still 60% larger than CNN's and that applies for Lawrence O', Donnell, about 60% larger than Scott Jennings, who's irrelevant. Neither of you is irrelevant. We're talking about you. The runner up. Also not irrelevant, also not truthful. Caroline Levitt, you saw what Trump did to the Lincoln bathroom in which he took out the sort of staid 1940s art deco green tile style and said it was inappropriate for the Lincoln era. And he put in statuary marble and he said this was very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln and in fact could be the marble that was originally there. Because Trump, unable to process anything he did not personally witness, thinks that Lincoln, who needed to borrow money to get guns to try to defend Fort Sumter, he put marble in the White House. Trump thinks Lincoln put marble in the White House. Trump thinks all the other presidents are just like him, batshit crazy. But Caroline Lang Levitt, who is there to make Trump seem like he's not trying to kill us all, looked at the pictures and read. When I first learned a toilet like that existed inside the White House, I was horrified. President Trump is making the people's house more elegant and beautiful for generations of Americans to come. Idiot. The next one can just rip all the marble out and it put, put in, I don't know, outhouse Brown. Caroline is upset because there is Indoor plumbing in the White House. I mean, her job, after all, her job is to throw Trump's poop at America. But our winner, once again, it's Andrew Cuomo. I don't need to go on forever about Andrew Cuomo, although I have. Although the chief apologist and retributionist from his governor days, Melissa derosa. She threatened a student at Cornell who asked about Cuomo's sexual harassment history at a seminar there, per the Cornell Daily sun, for which I worked for one night. God forbid anyone in your family is ever falsely accused. Well, who? Who in Andrew Cuomo's family was falsely accused? God forbid anyone in your family is ever falsely accused. And then someone runs around and calls them disgraced and asked how you can stand by them. I hope you don't have to deal with that moment. Watch yourself when you say things like that in public or if you want to be taken seriously. Melissa derosa threatens a Cornell student. God forbid. Melissa derosa. You find yourself on the advisory board of Cornell's Department of Communications, and then you threaten one of the Cornell students and the most famous graduate of the Cornell Department of Communication. Hi. Hello, how are you? Calls his pals in the administration and says, get rid of this clown. She's hurting the school and threatening the students. But back to the main point. Her idiot boss, a New York Daily News reporter named Josie Stratman, caught this. All credit to her. Cuomo did a Google Meet last week. And of course, like all zoom like calls, you enter your name on a Google and it is superimposed above or over or below your image. And what did Cuomo still losing the mayor election by double digits. The election is tomorrow. What did he put in as his name on the Google Meet? Mayor Cuomo. It says Mayor Cuomo in the lower left hand corner of the picture of him staring daggers into the camera as usual. Hope you framed a screenshot of that boy, because that's the only time anybody's gonna call you that Andrew. Of course, you could legally change your first name to Mayor if it means that much to you. Cuomo, today's other worst person in the world.
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Not everyone can be good at fantasy football and at Better. We understand that. That's why we're giving you $10 for free just for signing up. Download the Better App. Pick more or less on player stats, watch the games and win some cash. It's that simple. Better picks available in 33 states including including Texas, California and Georgia. Download the Better app today. That's better B E T R and get a free $10. No deposit necessary. Must be 21 or older in a jurisdiction where Better Picks operates. In terms of conditions apply. Better Picks Sports just got better. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage B feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America. That's the sound of James adding long lasting gain scent boosters to his laundry this morning. Several hours later, James sniffs the irresistible scent of gain on his shirt. Ah gain. Several hours later, James has even caught the attention of his mother in law and she never gives him attention. Ooh, you smell amazing James. Oh thanks Mom. I love you too. I never said that. Add Gain scent boosters to your laundry. Add joy to your day. The World Series is over and after the Jays somehow managed to outworse the Dodgers in critical situations. The Dodgers are the first repeat world champions since 2000 and the first in the National League since 1976, and thus they almost guarantee that the owners will use this as an excuse to again lock out the players year after next or try to force the players to strike. In the owners continuing hope to get a hard salary cap, something they have been looking for longer than King Arthur looked for the Holy Grail and with as much success. See total lack of competitive balance. The same team has won two in a row. Let's cancel the 2027 season. It's the players fault. All right. There'll be plenty of time to talk about that later on. Noting only that the Dodgers, Yoshimo Yamamoto is expected to pitch again tonight in game nine. In our number one story on the countdown, I am a former Baseball Network TV dugout reporter. Here's why we should eliminate interviews with players and managers with dugout reporters during the game unless there is really news. Really, really, really, really news. Having watched all the World Series since 1966, they always teach us the same old things, but in new ways. First, baseball played well can make for a boring World Series. And baseball played badly can make for a thrilling one. Second, those artifacts, this guy's glove, that guy's shirt, the other guy's jock, the ones that go to the hall of Fame, and they make a big deal about that. They may go on display at the hall of Fame for a while, but in fact, all of them, soon or late, wind up on a shelf or in a drawer in a giant subterranean storage vault almost nobody ever sees. They have like 14 Pete Rose uniforms there. For all I know, they have Pete Rose there. Third, there have never been greater pitchers than today. There have never been greater hitters than today. There have never been greater runners than today. There have never been greater fielders than today. Yet the number of guys per team who can actually play baseball without what are literally written instructions that they keep in their back pockets or of their uniforms, the number of those guys is down to about three per team. And a friend of mine who has been a major league play by play announcer for decades says, no, I'm wrong. It's actually about two per team. And the other thing the World Series teaches us year after year, don't do so many interviews. In the 60s, they used to have people doing interviews of celebrity fans during the games. They were pointless. They wasted time. Now they interview managers and players during the game. They're pointless. They waste time. You should have a reporter in each dugout or next to each dugout. You should go to them when there is news, not while the manager is trying to signal to his players where to play defensively and you're going to interview him. Then I was the dugout guy for 12 World Series games and 16 league championship games on two networks. Also two All Star games. And in the All Star Games, a dugout reporter is not only a good idea, but an essential one. More interviews means less meaningless commentary about the meaningless All Star Game. But in literally 40 games in dugouts on TV, I covered three actual stories. Three, the rest of the time I didn't even need to have a battery in my microphone. I could have pre recorded my stuff in a studio somewhere. Three stories that the viewer cared about. Three stories that I cared about. The rest Heredia is warming up in the bullpen, Joe. The rest was filler. Oddly, of those three, two of them happened in the same weekend, and they will not hang the 1999American League Championship Series in any kind of sports art museum. There was bad pitching, bad defense, bad hitting, and especially bad sportsmanship by players and fans alike. But for me, covering the New York Yankees through all five games from the unique vantage point of a corner of their dugout, it was perfection. The good stuff started in Game 3 on Saturday, October 16, 1999, and it featured the return of the former Red Sox hero Roger Clemens in the uniform of the hated Yanks to Fenway Park, Boston I don't have much time for Roger Clemens, but I was a witness to two occasions, possibly the only two occasions of his life, when he received the raw deal rather than dishing it out. The fans at Boston Fenway park blamed Clemens for leaving the Old Town team two years previously when it was a decision actually made by Red Sox management. So they serenaded and booed him out of that game after just 15 batters and just over two innings. And our Fox TV cameras caught them tearing down Roger Clemens banners which hung outside the park. Poor Roger, completely rattled, fell apart like a $12 fake Rolex, and from where I sat between the third base camera and the Yankee dugout, you could ashen. The game got out of hand quickly, a theme for the series. Boston led 13 nothing in the seventh inning. One of the oddities of my seat was that between me and the Yankee bench was a low railing and very ancient chicken wire fence that had been painted over annually for something like since the First World War. But next to the fence, on the player's side, was the dugout bathroom. It was really just a door, a urinal. So at some point every Yankee player came down to that end of the dugout, and almost always they said hi, and then, excuse me a minute. Late in the game, as it got dark, the Yankees superb Cuban emigre pitcher Orlando El Duque Hernandez made that trek and said hi, but did not go into the tiny bathroom in the dugout at Fenway Park. Instead, he sat down on the steps right next to the little chicken wire fence and he said, keith, can I ask you a question? I was startled. The official line was El Duque. Hernandez did not speak any English. I Pointed this out to him. He laughed. You'll keep my secret? You know how much time I saved not doing interviews in English? He got an occasional conjugation wrong. Otherwise his English was perfect. He got to his question. Keat, why'd you leave SportsCenter? You and Dan were so good, way downtown, bang. They're not gonna get em. I suspect anybody sitting in the stands in the 10 rows nearest me could hear my laughter. Orlando, I left SportsCenter before you left Cuba. How did you see us? He said, we have nothing in Cuba, but we have baseball fields and we have satellites. It's deep and I don't think it's playable. I was stunned. I had already discovered that nearly Every American born major league player of 1999 knew me by voice, let alone by sight. But this Cuba thing and El Duque reciting my old SportsCenter catchphrases was a genuine surprise. Oh, yes, you and Dan, you teach me a lot of my English. What's the one for the hockey? Can't believe I shook that guy's freaking hand. I love that. Why'd you leave? I tried to explain it was mostly geography. That if when he had pitched briefly in the International League, he ever faced the team in Pawtucket, Rhode island, that that was kind of where ESPN was, only it was more remote, much smaller town. Oh, El Duque said, like Cuba, but with snow. And I said, yeah, that was it exactly. And now I was living in Los Angeles and I owned a big house on the beach. Okay, I get it. Listen, you see me in the park, you say, hi. There's nobody around. We talk. Okay? If I say nothing, don't be offended. I'm just making sure everybody still knows I don't speak English. Orlando Hernandez did not get here till he was 32 years old. He pitched until he was 41. If he'd gotten here when he was 22, he'd be in the hall of Fame. And then he would have been the color man on the game of the week. He pitched three years for the Yankees and two for the Mets while I lived in New York, and it was always a pleasure to see him. Keith, you still collecting baseballs? You want this one? I walked by Ray Bonds with this one. So that was game three on the Saturday. On the Sunday, I awoke to see my picture in the Boston Globe. In those days, the newspapers all used to have columnists who wrote about nothing but TV and radio sportscasts. No, seriously. I had been a sportscaster on local TV in Boston 15 years earlier, in 1984. And I'd been to Fenway park as long before as 1966. And yet I had grown up a Yankee fan in New York. I explained that even then I was also a fan of of the long suffering Red Sox fans. Now, this was too complicated for some people at the Boston Globe, which quoted me correctly as saying I always felt an affinity with the fans. But then under my picture in the article, used the caption olbermann, Red Sox fan. Still wondering how they got that wrong, I did my pregame TV stuff for Fox, then climbed over the little chicken wire fence back into my spot for in game dugout reporting. And as the top of the first inning began of the fourth game, the Yankees leadoff man Chuck Knobloch moved towards the plate. And as he did, it was the cleanup hitter, Bernie Williams, walking towards me, presumably to use that little urinal in a closet. Wrong again. It's meet Keith weekend. Hey, Keith, he said in his lyrical voice, extending a hand to shake Bernie Williams. Like I didn't know who it was. Say, listen, I was reading the paper. Are you a Red Sox fan? For a moment I put aside the fact that the game, the playoff game, had now started and the guy up three batters from now was asking me about a typo in the Boston Globe. Bernie Williams was never accused of burning himself out with too much competitive focus. That's just who he was. I explained the mistake as quickly as I could. Oh, I thought so. Okay, good. I'm glad, because you can be a fan of anybody you want, but I don't think it would be right to have a Red Sox fan in our dugout. I agreed with him. Just as Chuck Knobloch singled and the number two hitter, Derek Jeter, advanced to the plate and the third hitter, Paul o', Neill, went out to the on deck circle. And that's when Bernie Williams surprised me more than Orlando Hernandez had. Plus, Bernie went on, doesn't your mom still have Those seats, like 10 rows back of our dugout at Yankee Stadium? This was before my mother became famous for getting hit by a very badly thrown ball. The next year, I asked Bernie Williams how the hell he knew where my mother sat. Well, you. You've had seats there since the 70s, haven't you? I just stared at him. Oh, Keith, it's my job to know that. I said. No, it isn't. It's your job to play center field for the Yankees. This was just about the time Derek Jeter grounded out and Paul o' Neill left the on deck circle. And Bernie Williams was supposed to be in the on deck circle. I know your mom. I see her. Nice lady. So, anyway, I interrupted him. Bernie Jeter just grounded out, and Knobloch went to second, and o' Neill is up with one out. Shouldn't you get out there? He looked back at the field of play. Oh, yeah, you're right. He stuck out his hand again. Nice visiting with you. Let's talk more later. And just. Just double checking. You're not a Red Sox fan, right? Bernie Williams got three hits in that game. Another New York sports reporter once said that if he concentrated on baseball, really concentrated, Bernie Williams would either be so good that he would hit.400 or he would be so stressed out that he would become a serial killer. In this game, the Yankees scored six runs in the ninth, and there was a play so controversial that when the Red Sox manager got himself ejected over it, the home fans littered the field with debris. Almost all of it was just plastic soda bottles, but still, there was a couple of flasks thrown, too. Yankees manager Joe Torrey ordered his team off the field, and play was suspended. As the plastic bottles continued to fly, and via my earpiece, which I listened to, even if Chris Matthews never listened to his, my producer ordered me onto the field, and I did as I was told, and I set up in front of the camera, right in front of the dugout full of Yankee players. A plastic bottle whizzed past my head, and I half wondered if Bernie Williams had thrown it just in case I was a Red Sox fan. Almost immediately, a Fenway park security guy started swearing at me in Boston and told me if I didn't get off the field and into the seats immediately, he'd have me arrested. This time I could actually hear some of the Yankees laughing. Get over that fence right now. Sit your backside down in that seat and do not move. My producer heard all this through my microphone and told me to comply. I didn't even look around. I just went over the fence. I sat down in the front row where I'd been ordered to, and that's when the guy sitting next to me said, hi. And I realized the guy sitting next to me was George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees. I said, hi. You want to say something about this on tv? And George, who loved me as I loved him, said, sure. And my producer heard all this through to the microphone as well. The announcers immediately threw it to me, and I said seven words. George Steinbrenner, your thoughts on all this. He proceeded to very pleasantly blame the Red Sox fans for being drunk, Blame Fenway Security for letting a riot start, blame baseball officials for not immediately forfeiting the game to his club, and blame the Boston manager for inc. The crowd. I had said to George, I would ask a follow up, but you seem to have covered everything. And so I threw it back to the play by play booth. Steinbrenner's remarks made every newspaper in the country, and in many accounts I was noted as the interview. And frankly, I didn't really do anything. The next night the Yankees won the series in five games and the fifth game was devoid of Cuban pitchers confiding they were fans or Bernie Williams quizzing me about my fandom or me being ordered onto the field during a riot only to be thrown off of it and directed into the seat next to the owner of the Yankees. All I had to do on this night was get into the Yankee clubhouse two innings before the game ended so I could cover the celebrating players and the award presentation. The excitement of the weekend clearly was over. I would just say hi to these guys, they'd throw champagne in my direction and then I'd throw it back to Joe Buck. I was on a platform bleached in a camera light as the technicians checked their stuff. The game was still going on when the clubhouse door slammed open and in strutted the Yankee second baseman, Chuck Knobloch. He was swearing profusely, profoundly and proficiently. He had been having trouble throwing ground balls away, and as the eighth inning started, Yankee manager Tory had removed him, denying him a chance to be in the on field celebration of the pennant. Knobloch was enraged, so enraged that he never saw me or the platform or the camera lights. He used all the known expletives and directed all of them, all at his own manager. The Yankees PR guy, a childhood friend of mine, rushed over to insist that I could not report what I had just heard. He was a little shocked when I agreed with him. I'm here as a lighting prop, I told him. Knobloch has a perfect right to expect there'd be no reporters in the clubhouse during the game. If he says it again afterwards, I'll say I heard it just now. Otherwise I'm not saying anything. There is, of course, a punchline even to this and this extraordinary weekend. The next summer, Chuck Knobloch's career as a second baseman ended because he completely lost the ability to throw an ordinary, uncomplicated baseball to first base, since similar cases of the yips seemed to afflict players whose baseball centric fathers had gotten sick or jailed or something. And Knobloch's dad had just entered the final stages of Alzheimer's. It was probably that the last disastrous throw he made the next year, on June 17, 2000, bounced off the Yankee dugout and spun weirdly and hit a woman in the box seats. The woman was my mother, the one where Bernie Williams knew where she sat. All the things that followed since I was in the studio that day doing the highlights for the Fox game of the week. They require their own segment of this. But the one thing that has always mystified me was how Chuck Knobloch did not know not to throw the ball where he did, because at some point Bernie Williams must have warned him. Hey, hey, Chuck, don't do it. There, that's where Keith Olbermann's mother sits. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening this close to a riot. My God, I don't know what would have happened. They were all totally drunk and the Yankee players were ready to go. Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by John Philip Chanel and Brian Ray, our musical directors of Countdown and produced by TKO Brothers. Mr. Chennail handled orchestration and keyboards. Mr. Ray was on guitar, space and drums. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust. The Olbermann theme from ESPN2, written by Mitch Warren Davis appears courtesy of ESPN Inc. It's the sports music. Other music arranged and performed by the group. No horns allowed. My announcer today was my friend. Since I was talking about Fenway, I thought he was the right choice. Dennis Leary. Everything else was, as always, my fault. That's Countdown for today. Day 288 of America held hostage again. But just 1,175 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term. Unless he is removed sooner by Maga and Epstein or that patch of pavement on his hand or a stuck escalator or some Tylenol or his jet made out of poop. Or the Alzheimer's test. Six months from now, the next scheduled countdown will be Thursday. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Yo, do you know Ball? We'll come through with a free $10 from Better Picks. Download the Better app, Pick more or less on your favorite player stats, watch the games and win some cash. That simple. Must be 21 or older. In a jurisdiction where better picks operates, Terms and conditions apply. Better picks. Sports just got better. That's the sound of James adding long lasting Gain scent boosters to his laundry this morning. Several hours later, James sniffs the irresistible scent of gain on his shirt. Ah gain. Several hours later, James has even caught the attention of his mother in law and she never gives them attention. Oh, you smell amazing James. Oh thanks mom. I love you too. I never said that. Add Gain scent boosters to your laundry. Add joy to your day. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, Campside Media and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the nimrods who almost pulled it all. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer. That was dumb. Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest.
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Stories of the day.
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My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. Stories that move markets. Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut impact politics, change businesses. This is a really stunning development for the AI world and how you think about your bottom line. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iheart pod.