← Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
LANDSLIDE LESSON: DEMS CAN RUN SIMULTANEOUSLY ON MONEY ISSUES AND TRUMP - 11.6.25
00:59:29
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iHeart Podcast Announcer
I turned off news altogether.
- [00:39]
Commercial Narrator
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
- [00:43]
Keith Olbermann
It's the rage bait.
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Better Picks Advertiser
It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little.
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NBC News Announcer
NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News Reporting for America.
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Keith Olbermann
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- [02:36]
Keith Olbermann
Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartradio. First full night of sleep in more than one year. Not an analogy. Literally Tuesday night. First full uninterrupted boring night of sleep in more than a year. And what was my reward to wake up to Trump beginning a climb down from the shutdown to wake up to Mayor elect Mamdani and governor elect Sherrill and governor elect Spanberger and Prop 50 passing and every one of Virginia's 95 counties getting more blue. To wake up to the reality that Trump has absolutely no idea he got the shit kicked out of him and that Trump is deranged syndrome is fatal, not fixable. To wake up to the reality that the real outcome of the elections in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, California and everywhere else was Trump's sense of permanence, his own sense that the murder he's been getting away with, he'll continue to get away with. And the sense of his supporters and the sense of the moronic political media and even the sense of some of us resisting him, their sense that he will continue to get away with it gone. Permanence is the default position of almost all politicians, and especially the corrupt and stupid ones. Permanence is the default position of all mainstream political reporters and analysts, and the higher up the food chain they are, the more they cling to permanence cause mortgages I have long thought that the most perceptive analysis of politicians ever, anywhere was unintentional, and it is in the last place you would look for it. The Beatles movie Help from the Leo McKern character, the hazily defined Eastern religious sacrificial cult leader Clang. The sacrificial ring is missing. Clang says something must be done. Without the ring there will be no sacrifice. Without the sacrifice there will be no congregation. Without the congregation, no more me. His deputy then says, this is so. So Clang hits him. Clang is Trump. Clang is also JV Vance. Clang is also Van Jones. Clang is also Eric Adams. Clang is also Andrew Cuomo. Clang is also Chris Cuomo. Klang is also Chris Matthews. Clang is also Matthew Iglesias. I could go on. Oh yeah. Clang is everybody on Fox? No more me. Trump wasn't on the ballot. Trump screamed in pain at 10pm Tuesday night and shut down were the two reasons that Republicans lost elections tonight. Bullshit. Poor Trump. There is a news flash in there and I'll get to that in a moment. But first, while we are watching him squirm, let's remember to make him squirm even harder. Trump not only was on the ballot, every ballot, but he was on the ballot in the worst possible way. Everybody could vote no on him, but it was almost impossible to vote yes. The lame duck politician's worst nightmare to paraphrase another Unlikely source, the 60s and 70s political impressionist David Fry, A lame duck like Trump can only accept blame. He cannot accept responsibility. As Frey said, and he said it in an immaculate impersonation of Richard Nixon, those who are to blame lose their jobs. Those who are responsible do not. Trump is to blame. Actually, there are two news flashes in what he said and wrote. The second one is these results may increase slightly the chance he goes full dictator so there aren't any more elections cuz he knows he's going to lose them all from here on in. Whatever you think the odds are on that maybe they went up 1 or 2%. But the more immediate news flash he repeated to Senate Republicans in a White House breakfast yesterday, which if it did not feature Trump throwing ketchup at them, it could have. In his panicked post he blamed the shutdown to the Republicans in the Senate at the breakfast he blamed the shutdown. He, quoting the report, said that the GOP is getting hurt more by the shutdown than Democrats because they are in charge in Washington per se. Source well, it's finally happened on one issue, the shutdown. Trump is of course 100% correct. He may be wrong about nearly everything. He is usually either repeating something he misheard in 1972 or something that happened to him in a dream in 1955. He may have just again told the media that you can't buy gas or groceries without id, possibly because the last time he actually bought groceries with mommy she paid by check and you had to show the manager an ID to use the check, which is how it worked in the 60s. I know, I was there. My mommy did it too. Of course the Republicans are blamed for the shutdown. Trump is blamed for the shutdown. It's their shutdown. But Trump still believes this is fixable by eliminating the filibuster. Because Trump's Republicans may differ from, say, Dick Cheney's Republicans in a million ways, but one core way they are identical is they are fully committed to the bit if you do something evil and it doesn't work, if it doesn't scare people into voting for you, your mistake clearly was it wasn't evil enough. Do it more, do it worse. Whatever doesn't work, do it again. Do it more. Senate Republicans will not nuke the filibuster for the same reason that Kyrsten Sinema would not nuke the filibuster and the same reason most mainstream Democrats won't nuke the filibuster, but just won't say so. The filibuster is the only thing that keeps the Senate alive. At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future. The Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck wrote, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. The Senate is only a hundred of them, men and women appointed to guard the pass. But that's who Maeterlink meant. If they cannot build a dam against every reform, if there isn't a now impossible to reach majority of 60 on nearly everything, the House will go from about 20% of national legislative power to about 90%. The Senate won't count anymore. How is a minority party senator supposed to sell his vote if his vote can no longer cause the toilets to overflow? At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to make sure the toilets overflow. I kind of doubt Trump quoted Meterlink, even my revised version of Meterlink, when Lindsey Graham allegedly yelled at him yesterday about the filibuster. I kinda doubt Graham even quoted Clang. Maybe the part about no more me, but you get the point. That he has been repudiated has not yet fully dawned on Trump. But that the shutdown has been repudiated. What has dawned on him? He realizes that what he thought was a plus is in fact a disaster. He has a solution to shoot the filibuster and get everything he wants done and done now. But not even his Senate toadies will do that. He will eventually therefore panic and move to another solution. He alone can end the shutdown. He will sell out his Senate toadies. He will make Mike Johnson look like an idiot. He to the 22% of the country that does not yet know he's an idiot, he will proclaim himself a hero. It will be like Trump and China and the soybeans. Look at me, I'm the hero. I just got the Chinese to agree to buy as many soybeans as they were buying before. I created this crisis. Look at me, I'm the hero. I just got the government to be open just like it was before. I created the crisis where it closed. Me, me, me. I, I, I. Trump. Trump. Trump. Okay, out of the weeds, into the lessons. The lessons of the Democratic landslide. First, socialism was not on the ballot. Democratic socialist? What the hell's that? This country has been capitalist socialist for at least 92 years since FDR was sworn in. Maybe since 1913 when the 16th amendment passed and we established a federal income tax. Maybe 1776. Keep your God damn government hands off my socialist Medicare, off my socialist Medicaid off my socialist Social Security off my socialist blue state support for financially insoluble red states. Mamdani a Socialist did you see the exit polls in New York? Do you consider yourself a democratic socialist? 69% of New York's voters said no, 25% said yes. 3% of New York voters who said yes, we're Democratic socialists also said we're voting for Andrew Cuomo. The word socialism is meaningless. Mamdani beat the shit out of Cuomo. The old school corrupt antediluvian machine politics. Typical crap shack New York Democrat in the primary and after the old school corrupt anti diluvian machine political typical crap shack billionaires like Mike Bloomberg and Bill Ackman spent tens of millions of dollars to prop up the old school corrupt antediluvian machine politics. Typical crap shack New York Democrat and got three quarters of Republicans to vote for him after that making Cuomo the fusion all evil parties candidate and got seven out of 10 Trump supporters in New York to vote for Cuomo. Even after all that Mamdani beat the shit out of him. Again. Lesson here. Trump is undiluted untreatable political death in blue states. He is though becoming political death in purple states. He is moving inexorably towards becoming political death in red states. This is what we found out during the Democratic landslide. The other lessons Mamdani ran on your money issues and that Trump equals death. Not difficult, easy to remember. Useful on all occasions. Your money issues and Trump equals death. Worked in New York where they elected a socialist who got majority support from Democrats who aren't socialists. Worked in Virginia where they elected as governor and ex congresswoman born in Jersey. Worked in Jersey where they elected as governor and ex congresswoman born in Virginia. Your money issues and Trump death. Both of them useful on all occasions. It's a floor wax and a dessert topping. Other other lessons Chuck Schumer resign at least as Senate Minority leader. You were one of Maeterlink's thousand men appointed to guard the past. Guess what? The future got past you. Resign. Get out of the way. David Axelrod and Van Jones who criticized Mamdani's victory speech. Let me paraphrase yet another pop reference, another movie. The Sweet Smell of Success. Burt Lancaster as the monstrous gossip columnist JJ Hunsecker. Van David, you're politically dead son. Get yourself buried. Governor elect Spanberger, Congratulations. Now fix the toilet that you caused to overflow. Why is it that everybody keeps thinking somebody running in a city, admittedly an enormous city, that that is the deciding race? Well, maybe governor elect because right now, in all of Virginia, 42,000 square miles, the population is only 333,000 people, more than in New York City, 468 square miles. Asked about Mamdani, saying he had won the fight for the soul of the future of the Democratic Party, probably a boast that he didn't need to make, Spanberger reposted. Then maybe he should be a Democrat. Madam Governor, elect S T F U a new rule here. We are here to save democracy. We are here to to end the Trumpists. We are here to save America, not to polish our own asses. Trump fired thousands of Virginians and backed a raving lunatic who had a one issue campaign that apparently only she and Riley Gaines give an F about. Maybe you could chill on taking potshots at Mamdani and get back to business having been gifted a landslide by Donald Trump. Or. Or go ahead, get on the Chuck Schumer bandwagon. And I mean that literally. I completely believe now that Chuck Schumer travels by horse drawn bandwagon. Whoa, slow down. We must be going eight, nine miles an hour. Gabby. No human can survive this speed. Other, other, other lessons, more philosophical. The pundits were wrong. Of course the pundits were wrong. The rule of punditry is only leap to the most obvious, least uncertain conclusion. A poll shows the Democratic Party is less popular than it used to be. Well, that must be because nobody wants to vote Democratic or ever will vote Democratic again. Except if you'd read the second line of the story. The second line on the poll result indicated that most of those who were dissatisfied with the Democratic Party were Democrats who thought that the Democrats were not fighting hard enough against Trump and the economic disaster of our times. Look, there are only two possibilities for that. The Democratic brand is damaged. Bullshit. It's either that yes, Democrats are less popular generally. And when put to the first hundred or so tests, the first hundred or so important votes this Tuesday, it didn't matter at all because the final was Democrats, 100 Republicans. Nothing. They were just watching. It's either that or it's what I just said. Democrats want more Mandani, less Cuomo, more Newsom, less Schumer, more punches thrown, less moderate third way crap. And by the way, you know what way the third way is? The third way is losing badly. That's what the third way is. First way is winning. Second way is losing. Third way is losing badly. I want this new group running the Democrats first way. Other, other, other, other lessons. You cannot fire all of Northern Virginia and then win Virginia you cannot gestapo Latinos and win Latinos or most non Latinos. You can't starve America and win America and you can't threaten and abuse Jewish voters and win Jewish voters. Anybody notice that Trump before the New York election, quote, any Jewish person that votes for Zoran Mamdani, a proven and self professed Jew hater, is a stupid person. Anybody else notice that for a guy who claims to be a friend to Jews, a protector of the Jewish people, an honorary Jew, Trump sure calls Jewish people quote, disloyal and quote ungrateful and quote stupid a lot. One last lesson. You know why Mamdani won the messages. Obviously the actual seven word templates, all Democrats everywhere should run on your money issues and Trump equals death. But the other part is almost as simple. He looks and sounds like he's good at this. Good at campaigning, good at talking to actual people off the cuff. Good at making government actually do good stuff. Obama looked and sounded like that. John F. Kennedy looked and sounded like that. Even Trump looked like a dumbed down version of that. What bad people think a good person looks and sounds like. We underrate one word. In assessing everything in life, but especially in public life, the word is good. We delve and analyze and dissect and cross tab and chew and punditize and rehash and deep dive and, and, and, and and we miss the essential. Most people are not good at their jobs. Most TV shows are not good. Most films are not good. Most street repairs are not good. Most food is not good. Not. Most people are not good at stuff. But especially when that stuff benefits others, charity stuff, public services stuff like the Motor Vehicles Bureau and especially, especially government. We're not looking for Christ fresh off the cross to go and pave our streets with gold. People just want a government that can keep the toilets from overflowing. Thank you Zoran Mamdani and Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger though. I'm watching you. Thank you. And there, there it is. Your mandate. Spread the gospel of your money issues and Trump equals death. And Jesus Christ keep the toilets from overflo. Only one other thing I really wanted to mention. As you know, Dick Cheney has died. There's enough sane washing going on without me adding to it. I remember Dick Cheney for, you know, being the architect of the plan to exploit 911 as an excuse to go into Iraq, which replaced the original Bush plan, which was to just do it and say why? Just cuz I remember Dick Cheney for being named by Bush to chair the search committee to select Bush as vice president and Cheney came back and recommended himself. I have found that I am the best candidate, and I remember him for standing up at what sports people used to call nut cutting time for America. Yes or no? Capitalist, socialist democracy or dictatorship. He chose capitalist socialist democracy. Good. Finish up strong. Keep the world safe for people like Dick Cheney and me to hate each other. And I remember him for what he said in describing my friend Mo Rocca when Mo Rocca hosted the Radio and Television Correspondence association dinner in D.C. in April 2008. Among his other credits, Mo used to host a TV show called Things I Hate about you. I'm sure I've seen that program, only I believe it's now called Countdown with Keith Overman. Keith's not here tonight to savor my company. Now, some people hear that and say that means Dick Cheney hated me. And some people hear that and say that means Dick Cheney believed I hated him. And I say, can't we all get along? Both of those mean I pissed Dick Cheney off when he was vice president. And that, that clip right there, that was when I knew my work there was done. Rest in peace, Dick Cheney, I guess. Because yes, it can be a floor wax and a dessert topping. That is what makes America great. Saturday Night Live reference if you don't get it by now, also of interest here, winsome Earl Sears lost the race for governor of Virginia by 15 points in a state the Republican Party won four years ago this month by 2 points. So I would never metaphorically kick a candidate, even a crazy MAGA lunatic, while they're down. The hell I wouldn't. She shares worst person honors. That's next. This is an all new landslide edition of Countdown.
- [26:25]
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- [27:42]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
I turned off news altogether.
- [27:45]
Commercial Narrator
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
- [27:49]
Keith Olbermann
It's the rage bait.
- [27:52]
Better Picks Advertiser
It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe you we could calm down a little.
- [28:01]
NBC News Announcer
NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.
- [28:13]
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- [28:35]
Keith Olbermann
To play social casino void where prohibited.
- [28:37]
Commercial Narrator
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- [28:42]
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- [29:13]
Keith Olbermann
This is Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Still ahead on this all new edition of countdown, there is yet another new committee to nominate and elect new members of baseball's hall of Fame, about which the odds are pretty good. You care nothing. However, you may be entertained by the story of one of the previous committees which once elected, at least once elected a new member of baseball's hall of Fame by accident via something referred to as courtesy votes because they wanted to make one of their guys who wasn't quite a Hall of Famer feel good. And too many of them decided to vote for him to make him feel good. And now he's got a plaque at the hall of Fame. I also have thoughts on the actual nominees and the process and what could be done to fix it and why they will never fix it. It's a deliberate choice. Ahead in sports, 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. Laura Loomer. I don't know quite how history will look at Laura Loomer. I suspect it will be looking at her briefly and soon. As in she will soon be history. She's now a Pentagon correspondent for I. I made it up news. I don't know. I don't know. I don't understand any of it. She's repulsive, stupid and servile. What I don't understand is why she's not Vice President. Laura Loomer, though, has now, and this is a theme for today, has now crossed some sort of Rubicon in which she is pissing off the people who put her where she is. Roger Stone, somehow still alive, was her role model and to some degree her mentor. And Roger Stone, something happened that caused him to post this. I have never taken a penny to post anything on social media. Laura Loomer takes thousands and thousands of dollars to front for others and spread their lies. Who is paying you, Laura? You won't be able to double talk your way out of this. You're not that smart. Answer the question. Who are you? His word, not mine. Whoring for Laura. Roger Stone. 3:59am Jacob Morley's ghost came to visit. Roger Stone and his oddly shaped head. Huh? And if that were not enough, there is the runner up were, sir, all those in his history who supported Tucker Carlson. And we'll just take Ben Shapiro out because he's the latest guy to sit here going, I never knew Tucker Carlson was. Was the devil. My God, where have you people been? I'll read this from Oliver Darcy's newsletter. The MAGA civil war that erupted last week is showing no signs of letting up. On Monday, the Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro dedicated his entire show to go scorched earth on Tucker Carlson over his decision to host the Holocaust denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes for a softball chat. Holocaust denying white nationalist. He's an anti Semite. He's called himself an anti Semite. He's slime. He's scum. Shapiro slammed Carlson as an intellectual coward, a dishonest interlocutor and a terrible friend. Yeah. And blamed him for Nazism being normalized within the mainstream Republican Party. Yeah. And he didn't stop there. Shapiro said Carlson, quote, was aided, abetted, celebrated for normalizing Nazism within the Republican Party by the Heritage Foundation. The issue here is that Tucker Carlson decided to normalize and fluff Nick Fuentes and that the Heritage foundation then decided to robustly defend that performance. Wait, are you telling me the Heritage foundation is corrupt and full of Nazi adjacent people? Really? And that Tucker Carlson is a dishonest coward? Really? I mean, Tucker Carlson fired by literally all the cable news networks from prominent shows on each one of them in a span of less than 20 years after rising to the top at all three of them. Fired not oh, his contract ran out. Oh, Olbermann always likes to leave jobs. No, no, no. Fired like one day there, one day not there. The surprise by people like Ben Shapiro, the Ben Shapiro's and the Roger Stones and the Donald Trumps and everybody else. Tucker Carlson has not changed your ability to lie to yourselves. That Tucker Carlson was not this anti Semite adjacent bastard with no redeeming qualities whatsoever and that that maniacal laugh of his was not some sort of performance. It was the result of something wrong with his brain that has always been there. And by the way, he's the second generation Carlson who is like this. His father was just, just the same way. The problem here, we've already established that Tucker Carlson is slime and scum. The problem here, Roger Stone with Laura Loomer. The problem here, Ben Shapiro with Carlson. Tucker Carlson is you, not him, as I believe it was. Marcus Aurelius pointed out, every day in the world you see deceit, dishonesty, retribution, selfishness, vice, corruption, and yet you're surprised. At what point does that become your fault? Love that, Marcus Aurelius. And still there are two people who are worse who share today's worst persons in the world championship. A guy named Charlie Hurt who appears on Fox News as a sometimes host. He started his career in journalism, so to speak, as a scab during the Detroit times strike of 1995 and later, worse, he was the D.C. editor of the New York Post and an early Trumpist. And he was interviewing Winsome Earl Sears, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia. The woman who laughed at the idea that because she was anti LGTBQ that this was some sort of prejudice on her part and just said it's not prejudice, it's reality. I mean, not a stable, not of this earth. This woman, Winsome Earl Sears. And they share the award because Charlie Hurt, the nice thing again, I suppose I shouldn't really come down so hard on Ben Shapiro and Roger Stone because the nice thing is to see the look of shock on the face of the people who realize that these really dangerous, dangerous and bigoted individuals that they have supported are both dangerous and bigoted. And boy, oh boy, Charlie Hurt sure revealed himself and Winsome Earl Sears sure revealed herself in this interview. You should look it up. You should watch the video. It's really bad. It's so bad that it would not get applause from Trump, charlie Hurt said. We did go through years of lectures about how it was important to vote for Barack Obama as this historic black candidate for him to have an opportunity to help out the first black female governor. Explain to me, he said to Winsome Earl Sears, I can't square this. The gist of what he was saying was he could not understand why Barack Obama did not support the Republican nut job Winsome Earl Sears merely because she was black. And she, of course, agreed with this. Last year, she said, he told everybody to vote for the black woman. Well, here I am. Here I am. And now he's singing a different tune. Hypocrisy all the way. The fundamental issue, of course, was that there needed to be some diversity within a party and among candidates. But you shouldn't have voted for Barack Obama, and he said as much if you did not agree with at least most of the ideas that he stood for. This seems to have eluded Winsome Earl Sears, along with most of the rest of life here on this dimension. And it seems to have eluded Charlie Hurt, who thinks that everybody voted for Obama because he was black. So by that logic, Winsome Earl Sears, you voted for Kamala Harris last year and this guy Hurt, the Detroit Times guy, he voted for Abigail Spanberger in the Virginia race because he and Spanberger are both white. Is that what you're telling me? Winsome Earl Sears Moron. Charlie Hurt Scab Today's Worst Persons Ready to hear this baseball story in the world? Foreign.
- [40:06]
Commercial Narrator
Sports fans, let's talk about your couch. You've probably spent more time on it than your favorite team spends on the field. But let's be real. Not all couches are MVP material. Some are bench warmers. Sure, they're nice to look at but fold under pressure. Others sag like the they've already played a full season. Enter Anabe. Fully washable, cloudsoft and modular, it's ready for the big leagues. Spill at a game day party. Toss the covers in the machine. No fouls called. Whether you're celebrating a win, nursing a loss or just watching the highlights, Anabay has you covered. Starting at just 6.99 plus get up to 60% off with their early Access Black Friday sale. Make your couch the true MVP visit washablesofas.com to get your annabe sofa up to 60 off this Black Friday. That's washablesofas.com.
- [41:06]
Keith Olbermann
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 catch the that simple must be 21 or older. In a jurisdiction where Better Picks operates, terms and conditions apply. Better Picks Sports just got better.
- [41:23]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
I turned off news altogether.
- [41:25]
Commercial Narrator
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
- [41:30]
Keith Olbermann
It's the rage bait.
- [41:32]
Better Picks Advertiser
It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little bit.
- [41:42]
NBC News Announcer
NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.
- [41:52]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
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- [42:52]
Keith Olbermann
She said Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night.
- [42:55]
Paper Ghosts Podcast Narrator
Along the Central Texas plains, teens are dying, suicides that don't make sense. Strange accidents and brutal murders in what seems to be a plot ripped straight out of breaking Bad.
- [43:11]
Keith Olbermann
Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people.
- [43:14]
Bloomberg News Podcast Host
There are people out there that absolutely know what happened.
- [43:18]
Paper Ghosts Podcast Narrator
Listen to Paper Ghosts, the Texas teen murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [43:40]
Keith Olbermann
This is SportsCenter. Wait, check that. Not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Olbermann in Sportsball center. Tonight, you've heard the phrase inside baseball. I mean used in a non baseball context. Inside baseball. It comes from baseball. It's about stuff that's so inside the game, so meaningful only to people who really follow it, that it tends to be a little arcane or boring for people who do not Follow baseball intently. However, I do have one hook that may interest you in the subject of the latest baseball. Baseball hall of Fame veterans ballot. They've nominated eight fairly recent players, players whose careers began, or prominence began anyway, 1980 or later. For me, those are my friends. For you, they may be figures from baseball's ancient past who might as well have played in 1866. Nevertheless, I always think of the same story whenever a new veterans committee gets together to try to decide who is a baseball hall of fam and who is not. In the 70s and 80s, there was one committee, the Veterans Committee, that included some of the great luminaries of the game, including Ted Williams, who used to vote on who else got into the hall of Fame besides him. And one of the things Ted Williams did constantly was vote for his friends, vote for those few players that he had personal respect for who tended to be pitchers who were able to get him out. He for years voted annually for a pitcher from Cleveland named Mel Harder, who pitched for 20 years and then was a very successful pitching coach, but whose lifetime record was about 500. He won as many as he lost. There wasn't anything exceptional about his strikeout totals or his modern day subtle statistics or his game result statistics, or any of the metrics that are used to assess pitchers today. But Ted Williams couldn't get a hit off of him to save his life. And therefore to Ted Williams, that made Mel Harder a Hall of Famer. But the other thing that Ted Williams did and many of his contemporaries on the old veterans committee, and this is a legend more than it is a factually documented story, but I believe after 40 years or 50 years of hearing this story, I believe it is true. They also, besides constantly having to tamp down Ted's enthusiasm for otherwise obscure players, he just wasn't any good against. They had to keep him from doing what he liked to do, which was to throw a vote to those friends who he didn't really think were hall of Famers, but he wanted them to know somebody voted for them. These were called courtesy votes. And year after year somebody on the hall of Fame veterans committee would issue a courtesy vote for a long time catcher and Detroit Tigers executive named Rick Ferrell, supposedly one of the true gentlemen of the game and a who I believe lasted 18 years as a catcher in the American League, even though I think he only played in 100 games in the 154 game schedule of the time once or twice in his life he was sort of a regular player, but not really, and he certainly was not An All Star, and he certainly was not a Hall of Famer. And every year Ted Williams would say to his friends on the committee, all right, who's casting the courtesy vote for Rick Farrell? Or let's get Rick three votes this year, when I guess whatever, six or seven were needed for election. And inevitably, I guess, given the amount of alcohol that might have been consumed at these annual meetings and the hall of Fame voters, the baseball writers don't meet, they just mail in ballots. But the members of the Veterans Committee used to meet in person, usually in Florida, usually starting at lunch with alcohol and concluding sometime after dinner with alcohol. They would get together and then they would vote. And people would forget what they were supposed to vote and who they were supposed to vote for. And there came the announcement that if, say, the threshold for votes for election for anybody that year was seven votes, there it was, Rick Ferrell, eight votes. Look them up. Rick Ferrell is in the Baseball hall of Fame. Supposedly, that is how a great and very popular, but not quite hall of Fame shortstop named Rabbit Moranville got into the hall of Fame. But I don't have many details about that. The Rick Ferrell story I have from one witness who says what he remembers of that rather sauced evening consisted of what I just told you. So anytime there is an announcement that there's going to be a committee meeting to vote to elect new hall of. Keep thinking somebody's gonna get in by accident again. Yes, there it was the other day, the Baseball hall of Fame announcing that it was going to conduct another committee, yet another variation. This is the golden age since the 80s vote. And then next year will be the 17th century vote. And then the year after that will be the people whose names start with the letter Q vote. It's so stupid, complicated, inconsistent. It gets changed every couple of years. And of course, the reason they do that is otherwise no one would be of have any interest whatsoever in the hall of Fame vote. The controversies about who's in the hall of Fame and who's not in the hall of Fame will never be resolved because they manage to keep you talking about it. I'm talking about it now. I happen to be talking about something a little bit more, again, arcane, but I'm still talking about it. And if they had perfected, which would probably be easily done, a system for the hall of Fame that would satisfy everybody, people would stop arguing about it. They just say, well, the system produces X number of hall of Famers every year or people with these kind of credentials. Yay. That's the way they do it in Japan, there is a statistical hall of Fame. If you get, I don't know what the total is, 375 home runs, you are in the statistical hall of Fame and automatically in the general hall of Fame. And they are premier to elect additional people who don't meet those criteria statistically to the general hall of Fame. But there is an automatic threshold hall of Fame. One of my ideas that again would defeat the whole purpose of the controversy would be to have a four tiered hall of Fame. You'd have that statistical hall of Fame in which I guess if you hit 600 homers, you're in. And then there could be the all time greats, the immortals, the Babe Ruths, the I guess we're expecting Shohei Ohtani, but not quite yet. Folks like that, Henry Aaron, Roberto Clemente. Then there'd be a second tier or third tier in this case for players who were unable for whatever reason to complete their careers or their expected careers. Pitchers like Sandy Koufax, who retired at age 30 because doctors said the next pitch might not only be your last, but you may use your arm for the last time throwing that pitch. You may literally really not be able to use your arm for anything. All the nerves may be dead. And he went, I'm going to quit. And he did. And his records do not. His compilation records do not match that of far lesser pitchers, although he is considered perhaps the greatest five season pitcher of all time. But you could have a category of hall of Famers who only had five great years for whatever reason. The late catcher of the New York Yankees, Thurman Munson, could fit into that because he died in the middle of the his 11th season in major League Baseball and never fulfilled or went downhill from there because he was not alive to do so. The last category of our four tier hall of Fame would be everybody else whose statistical performance is such that they should be in the hall of Fame but had some sort of blemish in their personal conduct. Pete Rose, gambling. The problem with underage dating, which I think we have to call it that legally, although it's probably closer to pedophilia. Pete Rose, as I said, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, the steroid users of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox who were involved in a plot to throw the World Series that year. Some of them may have thrown the World Series and some of them may have not thrown the World Series. Almost all of them got money to Do. So you could put them all in there and they could be, I don't know, in a room that isn't totally lit, or they could have bad portraits of themselves or like, I don't know, a sound of booing being piped into the room in which their plaques would remain for eternity. But you would say, all right, Pete Rose is in the hall of Fame. Flawed human being who, oh, by the way, got more hits than anybody else. So that's the solution. And of course it will never be done because it would eliminate most of the arguments and then we wouldn't have these conversations. But back to the original point. I wanted to discuss the qualifications of these eight guys. Again, this sorting out. This latest category is players who achieved prominence in the game after 1980. Not owners, not managers, players just on the field stuff. There'll be an owner manager Vote later, 70 years from now. I don't know. I've completely lost the plot on what they are doing to elect people to the hall of Fame. Okay, here are the nominees. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are on the list. All that is needed from this committee is 75% of the vote and they are in the hall of Fame despite everything that happened. And there's no tiered structure now. So the, the plaque for Barry Bonds probably would not say his head grew bigger at the age of 33, even though that's physically impossible unless you're doing human growth hormone. It probably wouldn't say that. So he could get into the hall of Fame and somebody might be planning to cast a courtesy vote for him right now. So Bonds and Clemens are there. Gary Sheffield, who also at times faced accusations of deliberately throwing away baseballs in protest to how his team was treating him and deliberately using performance enhancing drugs, although nothing I believe in Sheffield's case was ever proved. Jeff Kent, a great second baseman, considered to be a jackass, generally speaking. Dale Murphy, the exact opposite of that. Two time most valuable player of the Atlanta Braves, one of the most beloved figures in sports anywhere in the last half century. And a man who, after I believe, the first of those MVP awards, the moment the season ended, got on a plane and went to Florida to play in the instructional league because he wasn't doing well enough the last month of the season. I have asked Dale Murphy about this, a man I have had the pleasure of knowing since the early 80s, and he then says, well, to be fair, I'd had a very bad finish to the season and I was a little hurt. I needed basically to do some rehab and get my swing back and I said, I don't care why you were there. Nobody else in the history of baseball has ever won the most Valuable Player award and then gone to the instructional league to work on things to get better for the next year. So Murphy is on that list, along with Carlos Delgado, who was a good and power hitting catcher and first baseman for the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Mets. Don Mattingly, who once again does not have a Hall of Fame ring even as a coach with the Toronto Blue Jays. And the less I say about that, probably the better. But Don Mattingly, longtime first baseman for the Yankees, limited in particular power numbers later on in his career because of a bad back in my hall of Fame. He would get in in the limited career category. He would be in those guys who did not do what they might have done. He might be next to Adi Joss, the great Cleveland pitcher of the early 1900s. Go and look him up to see why. And then the eighth nominee, Fernando Valenzuela, the legendary pitcher of the Los Angeles dodgers who set LA aflame in 1981 in a good sense. When not expected to make the Dodgers starting rotation, he wound up pitching opening day and throwing a string of shutouts and creating Fernando Mania and. And. And actually introducing almost for the first time the Hispanic Latino crowd to the Dodgers. The Dodgers were not the darlings of that audience until Fernando Valenzuela came along. And Mexican baseball players were not largely recruited or sought in major league bas until Fernando Valenzuela. The problem is, as with Mattingly, that there were limitations. Fernando Valenzuela was a great pitcher for three or four years and then he began a rather rapid decline that was hastened by injuries and by eating. And he hung on for six or seven years, during which he dropped down to mediocre and getting released twice or three times a year. And yet he is a Hall of Fame nominee. There is a statistic that baseball people use with varying degrees of confidence in it called Wins above Replacement War. It is a complicated formula that tries to take in everything from a player's natural talent to how he did and how that was influenced by how his home ballpark fit him him as opposed to not fitting other players and what he did relative to the seasons in which he played, which I think is a valuable barometer. It comes up with one large number which can be added to if you play 25 years instead of 12, but which gives you, although I don't think I would sign onto it as the only arbiter for who's better Than whom? It does give you relative statistics. For instance, Barry Bonds war is 162. Roger Clemens is 139.2. Next on the ballot is Gary Sheffield, 60.5. So Gary Sheffield, the third highest war among these eight nominees, is less than half of the second nominee. And it's just a little bit better than a third of the first nominee. Jeff Kent 55.4, Dale Murphy 46.5, Delgado 44.4, Mattingly 42.4 and Valenzuela 8th at 41.4. I think among all of these, I would not and could not still under these circumstances vote for Barry Bonds or for Roger Clemens. I cannot do it. I do not know how much of their careers owes to performance enhancing drugs. I do know that they made a decision to go and use them. And like the hall of Famer or would be hall of Famer Shoeless Joe Jackson, no matter what you were when you made that decision to do something morally bankrupt, you made the decision to do something morally bankrupt. You do not get credit for the time. You were not morally bankrupt, you kind of forfeit it. You only get one moral bankruptcy assessment unless you decided to come clean at the end and ask for forgiveness. And we have not heard that from Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens. I suspect if either of them had at any point said, yes, I use these drugs, I was wrong. It threw the balance of the game out of whack for the entirety of my career. And I hope nobody ever does them again. If they had done that, I think they probably would have gotten into the hall of Fame legitimately and quickly and could still do that. But there is one thing about being a competitor like those two men that makes that impossible. They could not do that. I would vote, even though he is literally one quarter of the war of Barry Bonds, I would vote for Dale Murphy. This is why I don't have a vote for all my analysis. And I think my baseball historian skills are comparable to almost anybody. I do have personal prejudices. I've always been delighted to see Dale Murphy and I'd like to see him in the hall of Fame. But if you are saying, okay, we're not going to count character, we're not going to make that an issue. We're going to put Bonds and Clemens on the ballot. Well, maybe, maybe there should be some extra credit given to the good guys of the game like Murphy. Maybe Murphy should be in the. In the war, the winds above replacement of ethics. Maybe he should be credited with 40 points. What I found most interesting among all of these. And no, I would not vote for Mattingly, even though I've known him forever and he and I have one running joke that dates to the mid-90s, if you can imagine such a thing. Thing. I would not vote for Mattingly under these circumstances. Although I would welcome him into a tiered hall of Fame. I would also not vote for Valenzuela. Again, the same thing. If you're going to have part of the hall of Fame in which a guy is the biggest figure in baseball and changes the sport in one community for a while, yes, I could see it. But that's not the rules right now. And again, if we're going to put in Valenzuela, we're going to put in Mattingly, we're going to put in Tim Lincecum, we're going to put in Buster Posey, we're going to put in a lot of guys, guys who really don't have hall of Fame careers, but had hall of Fame five year spans. And again, there's a lot of space in Cooperstown, New York, as they said in a somewhat flawed movie in which a friend of mine, Josh Charles appeared, called Cooperstown. It's a rural area. There's lots of extra space in Cooperstown. You could add 100 or 200 hall of Famers and not really have to knock any other buildings down. Why not? Why not have more hall of Famers? Why not let these guys charge more for their autographs? Why not say we don't have just 300 or 400 hall of Fame, we have 500 hall of Fame players. What's the difference? So I'd like a big hall of Fame, but until we have a big hall of Fame, I can't vote for Fernando, I can't vote for Don Mattingly. No on Carlos Delgado, no on Jeff Kent, a good second baseman, but not a great one, and no on Gary Sheffield, in part because there are two guys of this era, era who are not nominated who I would actually have as my second and third votes. Dwight Evans had the best outfield arm I ever saw until the time of ichiro Suzuki. His War 67.2 would place him third on this list. And Keith Hernandez, the first baseman of the New York Mets and now their commentator and first baseman of the St. Louis Cardinals, had a war of 60.4 which would put him right behind the number three guy on this list, Gary Sheffield at 60.5. Keith Hernandez was the most impressive and the most aggressive defensive player I have ever seen. He played first base the way a really talented safety, played safety in the National Football League. Or the way a pass rusher, a linebacker like Dick Butkus, played that position in the National Football League. Or the way a good goaltender plays it in hockey. He said, let me stop the offense. And he was a very good hitter as well and one time MVP of the National League. So that's the way I would do it. But of course, as I said, if they were to adopt my plans, which I have been proposing more or less continuously since. Let me check my notes here. The first article I wrote about redoing the hall of Fame vote was in, oh, 1981. Oh, no, that's not the first one. I wrote one in 1978 when Dale Murphy was a rookie. They still haven't gotten around to approving it. In fact, every time they talk about changes in the hall of Fame, I don't even get a goddamn courtesy vote. I do like that idea of having the hall of Fame, though, with a Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens steroid era place with Mark McGuire and Pete Rose in it and Joe Jackson and a lot of the other players who were thrown out of the game for gambling and other nefarious acts. I like that. And you keep the lights low and you know, if you really want to go in there, you have to like, rent a flashlight. I think I'm onto something here. Could be the decline of my own mental faculties, but I'm onto something. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chenale, our musical directors of Countdown. It was produced by TKO Brothers. Mr. Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and Mr. Chennail handled orchestration and keyboard. You know, you could put the designated hitters in the limited career category too, because they're not actually hall of Famers because they don't play defense. I'll do a commentary about that sometime. Gist of it being in the old days, somebody who fielded so badly that he could not have been a regular hitter, wasn't a regular hitter and usually wasn't in the major leagues. How many guys made it to the major leagues and now to the hall of Fame because they instituted this rule? Who otherwise would have spent their years, their lives, playing for Salt Lake City of the Pacific Coast League? Not that there's anything wrong with that. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust. The Older men theme from ESPN2, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Is the sports music, other music arranged and performed by the group no horns allowed. My announcer today was my friend Mariner Kenny Main, who will vote for anybody from Seattle. Everything else was, as always, my fault. That's Countdown for today. Day 291 of America held hostage again, and just 1,172 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brain term. Unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and Jeffrey Epstein and the pavement patch on his hand or Tylenol or the jet made out of poop or his next scheduled Alzheimer's test. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
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NBC News Announcer
Foreign.
- [68:02]
Keith Olbermann
With Keith Ulberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to score when your favorite player does well? You can't unless you download Better Picks. Who's giving away a free $10? Download the Better app, pick more or less on your favorite player's status, 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, she said. Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night.
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Paper Ghosts Podcast Narrator
Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying, suicides that don't make sense, strange accidents and brutal murders in what seems to be a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad.
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Keith Olbermann
Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people.
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Bloomberg News Podcast Host
There are people out there that absolutely know what happened.
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Paper Ghosts Podcast Narrator
Listen to Paper ghosts, the Texas teen murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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This is Jim.
- [69:05]
Keith Olbermann
Hello.
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Jim started advertising with iHeartRadio way back.
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Keith Olbermann
In April, and now I have customers out the door.
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And this is Sarah.
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Bloomberg News Podcast Host
Hi.
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She's started putting a portion of her marketing dollars in podcasting back in June.
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Business is booming.
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Keith Olbermann
That's why I'm working on a Saturday.
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Bloomberg News Podcast Host
The big take Podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day.
- [69:39]
Keith Olbermann
My fellow Americans, this is liberation day.
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Bloomberg News Podcast Host
Stories that move markets.
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iHeart Podcast Announcer
Chair Powell opened the door to this.
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Bloomberg News Podcast Host
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.
- [70:06]
iHeart Advertising Representative
I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money.
- [70:10]
Keith Olbermann
And now we're back making this new.
- [70:12]
Paper Ghosts Podcast Narrator
Podcast called Business History, about the best.
- [70:16]
Keith Olbermann
Ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible.
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iHeart Advertising Representative
Ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business.
- [70:24]
Keith Olbermann
First episode, how Southwest Airlines used cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. Listen to Business history on the iHeartRadio.
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Paper Ghosts Podcast Narrator
App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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iHeart Podcast Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast.