← Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
TRUMP DEMENTIA: 14TH TIME HE'S CLAIMED GAS PRICES "JUST HIT $1.98" - 12.8.25
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- [00:00]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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Keith Olbermann
Most people think their insurance will cover them when disaster strikes. The truth? Many are wrong. You pay premiums and assume you're protected until the fine print hits exclusions, limits, loopholes. Suddenly that coverage isn't coverage at all. My policy advocate reviews your policies, Home, Auto, Life and breaks them down in plain English. They show what's really covered and what isn't. It costs just 27 cents a day, less than a cup of coffee. For peace of before you assume you're covered, go to mypolicyadvocate.com you might be shocked at what you find.
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Keith Olbermann
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This is Trainer Games.
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Keith Olbermann
Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.
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Shh.
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Podcast Advertiser/Host
You won't believe what my new friend just told me about dinosaurs. Is your child having conversations you never imagined? Are they learning without realizing it? It's not a tablet. It's not a toy. It's Meco Mini plus, the AI powered companion that turns curiosity into endless learning. Hear the of playtime. Meet the extraordinary Meco Mini Plus. Only at Costco, decluttering is everything. It clears your space, your mind, and it can give you shopping power. With Trashy Just buy a trashy bag, fill it with anything you no longer need, then ship it free and earn rewards Points instantly. Earn points even faster when you shop exclusive trashy deals and redeem them for gift cards to brands you love or even donate them to charity. It's never been easier to turn clutter into shopping power. Get started today at@trashyio that's T R A S H I E I O.
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- [02:45]
Keith Olbermann
Is a production of iheartradio.
- [03:02]
It's not just simple gaslighting about the price of gas. It is neurological disintegration. It is obsessive repetition of the same lie. And the most terrifying part of all, Trump seems to be unaware that he is presenting this as something brand new, as if it were the first time, when in fact he blurts out in shock and excited surprise this same God damned thing an average of once every two weeks.
- [03:34]
And still thinks it's the first time. Saturday on social media gasoline hit $1.99 a gallon yesterday in certain states.
- [03:44]
Since the 17th of April. This is the 14th time he has claimed as if it were true, but more importantly as if it were breaking news that gas just hit $98 or $1.99 14 separate times and each time he has been expecting the world to share his surprise. It's the goddamned Adam Sandler Drew Barrymore movie, 50 First Dates where she has no short term memory and every day she forgets that they're dating. Only this is the President of the United States, not Drew effing Barrymore. And every day, or nearly every day he forgets where the F he is and what the F just happened. Even about the price of gas.
- [04:32]
April 17 quote you have gasoline that hit a dollar 98 yesterday in a couple of states. April 18. The next day literally already forgot. Quote gasoline in three states hit $1.98 a gallon. April 22 quote I see that we had a couple of states where gasoline was at a $98 a gallon. April 23rd gasoline is less than $2 a gallon in Alabama. May 2nd quote gasoline just broke $1.98 a gallon, lowest in years. May 19th quote they're buying gasoline now for a $99. And by the way, they had asked him about cutting SNAP benefits. July 1 quote Gasoline just hit $1.99 in five states. July 1 minutes later quote we just hit in five states, $1.99 $1.98.
- [05:24]
July 9 quote there's two states, three states that were selling gasoline at $1.99. You haven't seen that for a long time. July 22 on Twitter we hit $1.99 a gallon today in five different states that got a community note. Then something happened. Nothing till October 29th. And on October 29th quote, we're going to see $2 gasoline pretty soon. November 6th quote we're almost $2 for gasoline. December 2nd quote $1.99 in some places we're gonna be, I think at $2 a gallon we could Even crack that at some point. And then December 6th, Saturday, back to gasoline, just hit $1.99, like he hadn't mentioned it 14 times in 28 weeks.
- [06:20]
So what about that brief pass by of reality between July 22 and October 29, where he got a vague idea that what he'd been saying or thinking about $1.98 a gallon of gas was not reality, when his broken brain apparently reset and he decided it had not happened yet, but he had new breaking news that it would.
- [06:44]
I will point out, reminding you first of the logical fallacy about how event A can happen and then event B can happen. And that does not automatically mean event A caused event B. That October 29th was two and a half weeks after his physical at Walter Reed with the MRI and God knows what else. But now he's got a giant patch bandage above the veins on his right hand.
- [07:09]
Here we have, in real time, evidence of Trump's dementia, and I use the term dementia generically. It could be any neurological crisis. But here is a log of him saying the same thing, wildly untrue, mathematically off by roughly 50% of not just saying it 14 different times, but saying it with the delight and surprise and pride, and for him, the sincerity of somebody who just found out the good news.
- [07:37]
And that is a classical symptom of neurological collapse.
- [07:43]
Gaslighting. Yeah, this is that rare occasion where it would be better if this was just another one of his sleazy lies or another 14 of his sleazy lies, like his unshakable stupidity about political asylum being the same as insane asylum. For once, it is not his deception that matters. It is his personal conviction that it's new.
- [08:09]
It is a nightmare. And it is proof that invoking the 25th Amendment is imperative and won't happen.
- [08:18]
It won't happen any more than Trump realizing he already told that lie about the price of a gallon of gas, will happen.
- [08:47]
And incidentally, they have tracked down where the initial falsehood got into his brain and took up residence there as surely as if it were one of Bobby Kennedy's worms. In April, the oil industry reported that the price of unblended gasoline as it arrives in this country was, you guessed it, $1.98 a gallon. Of course, you cannot put the unblended gasoline in your car. It might blow up the blending that is required before that can happen. Putting it in your car, that is, adds about a dollar per gallon. So gasoline, in fact, had just hit $2.98 a gallon. But he heard $1.98.
- [09:27]
And it is there and brand new and exciting to him every week and day since.
- [09:34]
Which leads me to the question, what's the price of pipe bombs these days? The FBI, this FBI, his FBI arrests a guy for January 5, 2021's placement of pipe bombs at DNC and RNC headquarters in Washington and he reportedly has confessed and is a 2020 election denier. And this was placed somewhere behind the soccer world effing cup as a lead news story. And the story had been sourced everywhere from NBC to CNN to Fox News. Not a deep state plot. Who to thunk it? Not a D.C. police officer slandered by Glenn Beck's website. Not somebody made up, fabricated by the now FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. And this happens at its crickets. If that had been anything but another lunatic under the delusion that Trump actually won the 2020 election, that he lost, this would have been wall to on every news organization in America trying to suck up to Trump. But the media instead skated past it like it didn't effing matter. And somehow Bongino is still in office rather than in jail, even though even Sean Hannity called him out for his 2021 lies. That this was anti Trump or an inside job or a massive FBI cover up as massive as your hair, Bungino. Bungino proudly now says, I was paid in the past for my opinions. One day I'll be back in that space. But that's not what I'm paid for now. I'm paid to be your deputy director and we base investigations on facts. So formerly a lying whore, now not lying, just a Trump whore and in the future a whore again. And if we're going to put you in any space whatsoever, can I suggest it be the space that contains the sun?
- [11:33]
Now, please let me circle back briefly to Trump's brain. Washington Post on what has become the airplane hangar he is building next to the White House. Quote, on Tuesday, Trump said during a Cabinet meeting that the pile drivers operate all night and have created a disagreement in his marriage. The president says he loves the sound, while First Lady Melania Trump has asked him to make the constant pounding stop, a request he's denied.
- [12:06]
Sorry, darlin, that's progress. Trump said he told her, unquote.
- [12:12]
What was she on a zoom call?
- [12:15]
Holy cow.
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The pile drivers operate all night. Just saying here, but I bet that's the first time Trump and Melania have discussed pile driving in like 18 years.
- [12:38]
Now about a couple of Smiths. Maybe the last chance to finally punish Trump for His treachery with Putin and Russia comes next week when Jack Smith is supposed to be grilled in closed door testimony by the House Committee on whatever bullshit it is this time. This is Jim Jordan's committee this time. And whereas the MAGA monkeys think Jim Jordan's gonna get Smith on behalf of Vladimir Trump, I would think a likelier outcome, maybe half of 1%, as Jordan winds up incriminating himself in some way in the questions and Smith finally puts him in jail anyway. Jack Smith, of course, is trying to get this all made public. He may join a suit to make what he found public, and he is certainly acting to try to make this hearing in front of Congress public and on the record, which of course would allow him to get in a lot of the findings of his investigation into Trump's treachery. And any and all measures that could be taken to enable that should be effected because there was, is, and will continue to be a conspiracy involving Donald Trump at one end and Russia and Russian intel and Russian leadership at the other. There is all the hoax claims will never erase this. If Trump escapes justice, others will not.
- [14:03]
The further away we get from Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump, the more we understand that Merrick Garland will go down in history as one of the great and most damaging idiots in our history. I mean, so damaging he could have been Trump's Attorney General. It slipped by this story because there are only the 2,400 hours in a Trumpist day. But the Carol Lennig book on prosecuting the scumbag has all sorts of maddening details. If your BP is high, skip this part. Yes, Smith did try to get Eileen Cannon removed as the judge in Florida in the documents case. I'll quote. In August 2024, as Smith and his team were finishing up their appeal of Cannon's ruling, he had also secretly concluded that Cannon should be removed as the presiding judge. Smith presented the appeal to Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Pradilonger for her approval as special counsel regulations required. He also asked her if he could seek to have Cannon removed by the appellate court, an unprecedented move for a special counsel. Smith's team believed Cannon had made decisions that strained the law or bypassed precedent, many of them favoring Trump. In one episode that had surprised prosecutors, Cannon issued a sealed order in August 2023, launching an investigation into potential prosecutorial misconduct. Citing news reports, Cannon did not specify what reports she was hearing. But the day before her order, the conservative Fox News television program Life Liberty 11 had featured a Trump defense attorney accusing Smith's team of strong arm tactics, the very tactics Cannon wanted to dig into.
- [15:57]
The final straw for Smith came when Cannon dismissed the case, citing Thomas non binding opinion. In other words, this all turned on something that Mark Levin had on Fox.
- [16:11]
Prelogar approved the appeal of Cannon's ruling, but rejected Smith's plan to seek the judge's removal, saying he didn't have a strong enough basis to do so. Smith decided not to ask Garland to overrule Prelogar. If Smith had asked and Garland then turned him down, the Justice Department would have been required to notify Congress and the disagreement would surely have become public.
- [16:37]
So that's why he didn't go to remove Eileen Cannon, because he didn't know whether or not the Attorney General of the United States was smart enough to realize that they had a corrupt judge ruling on their case.
- [16:52]
To them, the consequences of that becoming public were too risky. Sorry. I mean, that's where we ended after we had started the day of the Mar? A Lago search, discovering the troves of secret documents that Trump stole in August 2022, Assistant Attorney General Matt Olson was briefed about the appalling crime and what the search produced. And again from Lennig quote Olson turned to his top Justice Department expert on the mishandling of classified records, Julie Edelstein, to ask what they should do next. She delivered a startling assessment. If it was anybody else, we would arrest him tomorrow, edelstein said knowingly. Taking classified documents outside of a secure government facility was a crime, plain and simple, she explained. Trying to conceal them after receiving a May subpoena to return all classified records as Trump had made the crime far worse, she argued. But Olson's team knew that with Trump, all bets were off. The Justice Department would invariably treat the former president more gingerly.
- [18:02]
One more then we'll move on to Smith. 2. The failure of Merrick Garland. It's almost indescribably broad and far reaching. Garland watched Cassidy Hutchinson, the courageous White House aide, at the January 6 hearings. He watched on TV because why would he have pressed to get her testimony? What was he, the attorney General? He had all the time in the world, after all, and it turned out he had virtually none of the smarts in the world. Leonig reports. Merrick Garland turned to a colleague as Cassidy Hutchinson told her story and asked, did we know about her? And the aide answered, no, sir.
- [18:52]
Honestly. The attempts to prosecute Jack Smith and Comey and Tish James and the others are blights upon the history of human government.
- [19:01]
But if Trump went after Merrick Garland and tried to put him behind bars. I wouldn't lift a finger to stop him.
- [19:07]
There is one item of hope with Jack Smith. The watchdog group American oversight got the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to confirm that the former flamenco correspondent of the Miami Nuevo Herald, Eileen Cannon, has been guilty of an undue delay in ruling on the American Oversight suit to force the Release of Volume 2 of the Jack Smith Report, the smoking gun book. The court has given cannon 60 days, which should be up right after the new year. But of course, Trump has moved to block this because after all, Eileen Cannon is his concierge judge. He's an. She's an employee of his.
- [19:48]
Someday.
- [19:52]
Now, about the other Smith. Anybody remember Jill Stein? Chase Oliver? Cornell West.
- [20:02]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has he been in as as Robert, as RFK Jr. Been in the news at all lately?
- [20:09]
Any of the other assholes who ran or pretended to run for president as nominal liberals or Democrats in 2016 or 20 or 24? I mean, remember that Kennedy claimed to be a Democrat and a human being.
- [20:24]
And there were of course all funded by conservative groups and lunatics and even groups with direct ties to Trump and maga. Remember the spoilers, the stalking horses, the true enemies of democracy? I think the first 2028 version of them is now among us, warming up in the bullpen and his name is Stephen A. Smith. Smith, as in Jack Smith, but without the, you know, ethics or patriotism.
- [20:59]
You have heard here and elsewhere that Stephen A. Smith is running one of those campaigns to get people to convince him to run for the president because there's nobody else. Oh, if I have to. Oh, okay.
- [21:12]
He has been doing this for many months now on his hilariously knowledge free political podcast and on the hilariously Sheep in Sheep's Clothing conservative channel that claims to be a neutral news nation, the nick at night of old newscasters. And he's been doing this with multiple appearances on the show of his own friend Sean Hannity. Now just that should be enough to dismiss any notion anybody might have that Stephen A. Smith is a liberal or has an IQ in three digits or is a Democrat or is anything but a tool. I think, and this is a hunch, I think he is a tool, or maybe a tool of more right wing funders looking to throw out a spoiler. I mean, think about it. Stephen A. Smith is a MAGA billionaire's idea of somebody who would appeal to left wing voters. But happily for democracy, Stephen A. Smith is a moron. The ESPN act works on ESPN because honestly, it's a pretty good act. I say this as somebody who used to have a pretty good act on espn.
- [22:29]
Ultimately, no matter what the act is, whether it's sincerity and intelligence and witty, brilliant humor or it's Stephen A. Smith, how often is it important?
- [22:41]
Once a year, maybe.
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I say this as frankly one of the pillars of ESPN's history. That was the point. We were there when it mattered. And also the other 364 days of the year.
- [22:58]
So he does the same bit. The ESPN act on Hannity's show the other day, but about politics and announces he has breaking news and as one critic on Twitter noted with evident astonishment, probably never saw him on espn. Then he gave an opinion. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's Stephen A. All. All in one, one motion. Is it an act? No. Stephen A. Smith no longer knows that there is a difference between breaking news and his opinion.
- [23:30]
Happily, Stephen A. Smith is a moron. And he's also mailing this politics stuff in. He just is not doing the work, clearly. I mean, you can criticize him for lots of stuff. And I've known him 20 years and we'd always gotten along well enough until he decided to become a political prostitute like this. But, you know, for all of my criticisms of him, he rarely just gets basic sports facts wrong. Like, he knows the Syracuse Nationals moved to Philadelphia in the 60s. He knows that.
- [24:06]
He gets, like one political fact wrong per hour. It's hilarious. So after some nonsense speech to Hannity the other night about how Gavin Newsom can't win unless he goes to the middle because Ro Kana, quick, ask Stephen who Ro Kana is. Stephen A. Announced that Newsom can't win because of Hannity, because Newsom went on Hannity show when Newsom, as you will recall, debated Ron Santa.
- [24:40]
Unquote.
- [24:43]
Presumably, that's what Stephen A. Thinks. The name of the governor of Florida is Ron Santis. Leave off the DUH for.
- [24:55]
I don't know, diminutive. It's Stephen. It's Ron. Duh. Santis.
- [25:05]
As in duh.
- [25:11]
Clearly, Stephen A. Smith has conflated Ron DeSantis and Baseball hall of Famer Ron Santo, and for good measure, disgraced ex congressman George Santos as well. Hell, throw in Simpson's character Santos El Helper. Christ.
- [25:30]
If sports Stephen A. Smith were doing one of his phony debate shows with Politics Stephen A. Smith, there would be nothing left of Politics Stephen A. Smith but a tip on the bill for dinner of one and a half percent.
- [25:54]
Which reminds me that we have not just entered a time in which Trump's utter deficiency on the world Stage has begun to harm individual Americans in America and make people think, Stephen A. Smith, well, maybe he could be President of the United States. Yeah, the rest of us are dead. It's always that way. Trump's conviction that he only understands anything when he doesn't even know what an MRI is for has always been there. His kind of stupidity doesn't just happen. It has to be nurtured and grown for years or decades, like a colony of termites. But it is appearing now on multiple fronts, and there has to be some sort of official, formal, seemingly meaningless, but actually deeply meaningful response. And when Trump's special representative to the Ukraine Russia crisis, another imbecile named Witkoff, I believe his first name is half, turns out to be carrying water, not even for Trump, but for Putin. The termites are at the front door and they're standing on each other's shoulders and hitting the doorbell. If Putin says he cannot sign a deal with Ukraine because he doesn't believe the government of Ukraine is legitimate, someone from this country has to stand up and tell him that he has no choice. And if he refuses, we will use all measures to starve him and his country into the ground. And if India buys oil from him to keep him afloat, we will starve India into the ground. There's lots of things we can do to destabilize those governments. We must treat him as Marco Rubio dreams of treating Maduro of Venezuela. We must see not the leader of some other superpower, but we must see Putin for what he is, a desperate dictator of a dissolving country that has bounced its last payroll checks to its soldiers. We should have not a Marco Rubio, but somebody in his place who can recognize that enough pressure, just verbal pressure applied in the right place and that unpaid Russian military might very well decide to remove Putin on its own.
- [27:52]
So we damn well better get that message out to them and to Putin and to the rest of America. We, the sane people, we need to get the message out as loudly and quickly as possible. And, of course, we can't. Officially, the Trump government is not an American government. It is corrupt beyond redemption. It is influenced, manipulated, controlled, owned by others who are not in this country.
- [28:21]
And so, since we can't until and unless the Democrats amass enough of a legislative majority to impeach and remove this glowing orange turd and the even dumber people around him, until that point, we need what we do not have, which is a structure akin to the British opposition shadow government. The Conservatives in Britain have a shadow defence minister, a Shadow chancellor and senior shadow leaders who can at a moment's notice articulate their party's vision of foreign or domestic policy. When something big happens, you hear from the government and then you hear from the shadow spokesman or the shadow secretary of whatever. We need that.
- [29:08]
That is why the support given to America's service members who have faced or will face illegal orders from a corrupt and lawless commander in chief and his moron Secretary of defense, the support from the six members of the House and Senate, that should not be the end of that. That should be the template. There should be a show, a half an hour of that. Six Democrats every.
- [29:36]
The howling, hysterical, murderous threats of Trump and pond scum like Stephen Miller and Derek Van Orden should not give anyone pause. It should give them inspiration to realize this hit home perfectly. And to make videos like that once a week. We need six more Democratic national officeholders with international experience to now make the video about Putin and the need for regime change in Russia and threats to India. We need six more Democratic national officeholders who have served with American units in foreign countries, relying on local help to make that video about how John Ratcliffe has betrayed our allies in advance by agreeing to throw everybody out from Afghanistan because one guy went crazy.
- [30:23]
We need six more Democratic national office holders who, unlike Trump, have both read and sworn to uphold the Constitution, to make that video about how Trump's threat to kill the first six is a violation of everything this country's ever stood for and how it demands his legal removal from office as quickly as possible. We need a shadow democratic government in this country now, not merely to advance democratic electoral goals, not merely to afford our citizens a breath of fresh air, of reality from people who are not spectacularly stupid and lost and all seem stoned out of their gourds. We need a shadow government in this country for more than one reason, and one reason more than any other, because the official government of this country isn't any good at anything anymore.
- [31:22]
Now, for the view of the competent people here, is Senator also of interest here? Yes, There was somebody out there rationalizing Trump falling asleep at last week's cabinet meeting 10 times because 79 year old men do that. It's not unusual, he says. Only this guy rationalizing that is a man who is still poisoning CNN every day and America every day with advertisements for his own book, which was about the mental acuity of Joe Biden. Yes, Jake Tapper, the worst person in the world. Next. Most people think their insurance will cover them when disaster strikes. The truth, Many are wrong. You pay premiums and assume you're protected until the fine print hits exclusions, limits, loopholes. Suddenly that coverage isn't coverage at all. My policy advocate reviews your policies, Home, Auto, Life and breaks them down in plain English. They show what's really covered and what isn't. It costs just 27 cents a day less than a cup of coffee. For peace of mind before you assume you're covered, go to mypolicyadvocate.com you might be shocked at what you find.
- [32:34]
Commercial Announcer
Mypolicyadvocate.com 10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.
- [32:47]
You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.
- [32:56]
Keith Olbermann
This is where mindset comes in.
- [32:57]
Commercial Announcer
Someone will be eliminated.
- [33:00]
Keith Olbermann
Pressure is coming down.
- [33:02]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
This is Trainer Games.
- [33:04]
Keith Olbermann
Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.
- [33:07]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
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- [33:37]
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Come for the Black Friday seasonal savings stay for the award winning Reporting for a limited time access to the Washington Post is just 99 cents. That's unlimited access to all of the posts for only 99 cents every four weeks. That's a great deal for the first year. After that it'll cost $12 every four weeks. You can cancel anytime. But don't wait. This Black Friday seasonal offer won't be here for long. Go to washingtonpost.com iheart and grab this deal before it's gone. That's washingtonpost.com iheart Decluttering is everything.
- [34:11]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
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- [35:10]
Keith Olbermann
George Carlin. Pleasure to have you here. Thank you. This is the best news show ever. I told that to one of your producers and I want you to know that I've seen them all and it's, it's just the first, especially the first 35 minutes. Thank you, sir. It's just, just unparalleled. I got bad news. Between you and I, we got six minutes to completely screw that into the ground. Okay, that's good.
- [35:48]
Still ahead on this all new edition of Countdown. Here we go again. Another sports team owner is claiming his franchise is not actually profitable. Usually this is what you would think it would be. Bullshit. As I will explain, there's a great history story about this in the LA Dodgers, but it requires a special degree of bullshittitude to try to sell it today in 2025 when the team you own is the New York Yankees.
- [36:19]
On the verge of going out of business. Arya Halsteinbrenner. Gonna have to reuse last year's uniforms, dipshit. Next. 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.
- [36:39]
The Bronze. Worse. Vince Shlomi. Does that name ring a distant chord? Think back, Hearken back. The Shamwow guy, the slap chop guy. The carnival barker who used to sell the chamois and slap chop crap items in these high speed breakneck straight to TV pitches with double entendres and complaints about. He couldn't, Couldn't keep this up all day. And everybody laughed because it really was a great shtick until. Until Vince Shlomi was arrested in Miami beach in 2009 after a fight with a lady of the evening who he said bit his tongue and wouldn't let go. I guess because he couldn't keep that up all day either. Well, guess what Vince Shlomi's doing now.
- [37:31]
Yes, sir, you got it. He has filed to run for the House of Representatives. No. In this country. From.
- [37:43]
Texas as a Republican to Destroy Wokeism in memory of Charlie Kirk.
- [37:59]
I mean, you laugh, but right now, who would make more sense as speaker of the House? Mike Johnson or the Slap Chop guy.
- [38:10]
The runner up werser. Our perpetual heroine, Bari Weiss, the new boss of CBS News, is running out of talent. There was an old Mary Tyler Moore episode which I really enjoyed when it first came out, still very funny, in which Lou Grant tells her, as the assistant news director at WJMTV in Minnesota, tells her to fire the newscaster and replace him with a sportscaster rather and replace him with a new sportscaster. And she fires the sportscaster and then, then there's nobody to do the sports and she can't find a new sportscaster and all the other candidates are worse. And, and Lou says to her, finally, hey, this is the advice I thought you didn't need. Never fire your old sportscaster until you've hired your new sportscaster.
- [39:02]
Gotta laugh around my offices for 30 years easily. Well, sir, Bari Weiss didn't hear that one. Barry Weiss didn't see that episode of Mary Tyler Moore. I doubt Bari Weiss knows who the hell Mary Tyler Moore was. Mary Tyler Moore was successful.
- [39:19]
John Dickerson has already walked out as co anchor of the CBS Evening News. Now my friend, certainly acquaintance, acquaintance, friend for acquaintance. Maurice dubois is also gone. He's leaving.
- [39:34]
So who, Barry, who anchors the CBS Evening News? You've run out of anchors. You have fired your anchors of the CBS Evening News before you have hired your new anchors of the. Never fire your anchor of the CBS Evening News before you hire your new anchor of the CBS Evening News. Who you gonna get? The slapjob guy? I'm sorry, he's busy running for Congress. Cause he can't do this all day. Who are you gonna get, Barry? The disinterred ghost of Walter Cronkite, CBS News?
- [40:08]
I suffice and survive on the taste of. Of human brain Smaller Cronkite, CBS News. But our winner even worse than all that, Jake Tapper still at cnn, where the audience is now approaching from a downwards direction, like.
- [40:29]
The coyote and the roadrunner and the coyote thing. It is now approaching downwards. What we had there in terms of an audience when I got to CNN at the end of day the year one in 1981. No, it wasn't in black and white because they hadn't invented color TV yet. You may recall that Jake Tapper refused to fact check Trump during the Trump Biden debate last year, thus putting his thumb on the scale for Trump. And they had all sorts of wonderful rationalizations for it, but they put their thumbs on the scale. I think that was his thumb. Then Jake wrote a book about Biden's frailty and he spent the first half of this year selling it on CNN in the middle of the news every 14 seconds or so. Old, flailing, lost. Old flailing lost. Old flailing lost. Even after he was no longer president and the guy in the office was old and flailing and lost. So after last week's three hour Trump Cabinet meeting where Trump kept falling asleep with Jake Tapper tried for quite a while to mock Trump and mock the Trumpist explanation that he was just keeping his eyes closed so he could concentrate on what the speaker was saying. And then Jake ran out of bullshit. He ran out of the ability to try to be neutral. Jake Tapper showed his real colors. He's 79 years old, Jake Tapper said earnestly. This is not abnormal for a 79 year old to be sleeping.
- [42:07]
Jake. Jake. You're a whore, Jake. And a hypocritical one. Tapper today's other worst person in the world.
- [42:25]
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- [42:59]
Commercial Announcer
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- [43:21]
Keith Olbermann
This is where mindset comes in.
- [43:23]
Commercial Announcer
Someone will be eliminated.
- [43:25]
Keith Olbermann
Pressure is coming down.
- [43:27]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
This is Trainer Games.
- [43:29]
Keith Olbermann
Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.
- [43:32]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
Then the space hamster flew his hot air balloon all the way to the bottom of the ocean. Where did that story come from?
- [43:41]
Keith Olbermann
Book?
- [43:41]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
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- [44:03]
Commercial Announcer
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- [45:39]
Keith Olbermann
To the number one story on the countdown. Here we go again. It's a tradition as old as the business itself. But more to our purposes, it is a story as old as the business of sports itself.
- [45:53]
The owner of a sports franchise, a troubled young man named Hal Steinbrenner, wants you to believe that the franchise he owns may not have made a profit last year. The franchise is called the New York Yankees, and if the New York Yankees did not make a profit last year, Major League Baseball should just go the hell out of business right now. Stop wasting all that money on the electricity bill to put the lights on in the stadiums. If it's that bad, just go away. Which it's not.
- [46:24]
Years ago, the Yankees banned me when I suggested that all that Hal Steinbrenner had in common with his father, my friend George Steinbrenner, was his ability to get angry instead of smart, which his father did occasionally, but which Hal does All the damn time. I suggested that to be certain, at least for me to be certain that Hal was George's son, I would need to see a paternity test. Well, I still haven't seen it. And the Yankees being the Yankees, have not been back at Yankee Stadium where they made me pay because I will not pay them again. Been back to work a couple of times. If I never go there again in my life, it's their loss.
- [47:03]
A reporter suggested recently to Hal Steinbrenner that Forbes magazine had calculated that while the Yankees player payroll was over $300 million, their revenues were over $700 million. Is it fair, the reporter asked, to assume the Yankees made a profit last season? No, it's not fair, actually, Hal said in that wonderfully charming way of his. So you lost money or you broke even? I don't want to get into it, but that's not a fair statement or an accurate statement.
- [47:36]
Okay, Hal, Sure. Forbes put the value of the franchise that his dad paid. It was actually about 7 million. They bumped it up to make the sellers CBS look a little bit better. About 7 million in 1972. Very little of it his own money. Forbes put the value now of that franchise that dad paid 7 million for a little over half a century ago at 5 1/4 billion dollars as of 2021. Now Forbes says the Yankees are worth 8.2 billion. That's almost 3 billion more than just four years ago. And I can't even do the math relative to the price from 1972. 7 million, 8.2 billion. It's like 11 billion times more.
- [48:24]
3 billion more than four years ago, Hal. But no, you didn't make money last year. How is that possible? Well, because accounting can make the money do everything except stand up and sing the score from Hamilton. And sometimes the accounting doesn't even have to be creative. I found this out decades ago when I worked local TV sports in la. And this story is secondhand, but I'm pretty sure Gil Stratton told it to me. And Gil was gold if you've ever seen the movie Stalag 17. And if you haven't, you should, like right now. Gil played William Holden's right hand man, Cookie. And Gil narrates the film too. And he was in the Wild One with Marlon Brando. And he co starred on Broadway with Judy Garland. And Gil was a baseball umpire. And Gil was the number one TV sportscaster in LA from 1954 to about 1975. And he stayed on the air so long that eventually he worked with me and then for me. And he never complained about that once. Loved the business, loved doing it, and he knew everything that had ever happened in Los Angeles in a city that almost deliberately erases its past as quickly as possible. Gil was one of those living history books, and I always tell this one story of his whenever a sports owner or commissioner says his team or league lost money. After some research, it turns out the year of the story has to have been 1964. From the details in the anecdote, we know the Dodgers had won the World Series the year before, but had not been in the pennant race in the year in question. So that had to be 1968 or earlier, because one of the three men in the story, the Dodgers vice president Fresco Thompson, passed away on November 30, 1968. So the 1964 season, which it has to be, ends at Dodger Stadium 58 years ago this week, late on the afternoon of Sunday, October 4th. The Dodgers have just won, but it's not enough to save them from a losing season. 80 and 82. Just under 14,000 people have paid to get in, which means 2,228,751 souls have dropped some cash into the till of the infamous Dodgers owner, Walter O'. Malley. That was a lot of fans in 1964. The stench of Walter O' Malley reeks through history. He is still the villain in sports in New York City, where he moved the Brooklyn Dodgers out, something from which the borough of Brooklyn has never recovered, even though the historical record is pretty clear that the Dodgers did have an attendance problem in Brooklyn and the city of New York did not think it was worth it to merely sell o' Malley the land he thought was ideal for a sports stadium. O' Malley was right about the land. The land is now where they put the Barclays center, an arena at public expense. O' Malley wanted to pay for his building himself. Anyway, back to 1964. A sixth place Dodgers season has just ended, and either that day or the next day or the day after that, 58 years ago this week, one of the three men who basically run the franchise, vice president and general manager Buzzy Bavassi, leans in through the doorway of Walter OMalley's office in Dodger Stadium, where the man who got rich foreclosing on mortgages during the Depression, including the mortgage on the Dodgers. That's how he became the owner. He is, as usual, sitting behind his desk, thumbing through accountants ledgers, smoking a large cigar and using a long plastic holder.
- [51:58]
See you at the Winter meetings. Boss o' Malley never looks up from his financial books. Uh, at least we had a decent fiscal year. I mean, with Koufax hurt and all. Now o' Malley looks up and he growls, what do you mean, decent fiscal year? We lost $2 million. Walter O' Malley does not now have to tell Buzzy Bavassi to leave his office, because Buzzy Babese feels as if he has just been shot. We lost $2 million, he thinks to himself. We lost $2 million. $2 million. The hallway of the executive offices of the Dodgers on the lodge level of Dodger Stadium swirls around him. Two million. Just four years earlier, when baseball had sold the rights to put an expansion franchise in that same city, Los Angeles, to Gene Autry, the price had been $2,100,000. Two million was literally the price of a major league baseball franchise in the early 60s. Buzzy Babesi staggered down the hallway. The sweat poured from every part of his body. His vision blurred, and he found it difficult to breathe. He almost fell into the open doorway of the third man who ran the Dodgers, the other senior vice president, Fresco Thompson. Buzz Fresco said with considerable alarm. You okay? Buzzy Bavaizzi barely croaked the word no, but the rest of the sentence he fairly shouted, o' Malley just told me we lost $2 million this year.
- [53:30]
Fresco Thompson laughed, and now Bavassi's terror turned to anger. What in the hell are you laughing at? 2 million. We lost 2 million. Don't you know what this means? We'll have to fire everybody. We'll have to trade Koufax at least. We have to trade Maury wills. We drew 2 million and we lost 2 million. And now the worst suddenly occurs to Buzzy Babesi. Jesus, Fresco. He's gonna fire one of us, isn't he? Babesi had not noticed Fresco's Thompson's laughter growing. You Italian idiot. Babassi. Only Fresco Thompson did not say Italian. How long you been working for this guy o'? Malley? Bavassi spit out the answer. 1950, Thompson calmly replied. Yeah, nearly as long as I have. And you still haven't figured him out? Buzzy Bavasi was lost. The franchise was teetering on bankruptcy in front of their eyes. But Thompson was focused for some reason on how long they had each known Walter o'. Malley. They were all about to get fired by Walter o'. Malley. Fresco Thompson stood up and put his arm around his still shaken colleague. When O' Malley says we lost 2 million this year, Buzz, what that greedy bastard means is last year when we won the World Series, we made a profit of $6 million. This year, when we finished in sixth place, we only made a profit of $4 million. So in his mind that means this year we lost 2 million. We didn't lose 2 million, we made 4 million.
- [55:16]
So the next time you hear the owner of a sports franchise or the commissioner of a sports league tell you it or he has, quote, lost $1170 billion, just remember this is almost always Walter O' Malley math. And it only means that's how much lower this year's phenomenal profits are compared to last year's phenomenal profits.
- [55:54]
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 Phillip Chenale, our musical directors of Countdown. It was produced by TKO Brothers. Mr. Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and Mr. Chenale handled orchestration and keyboard. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust. The Old Rim and theme from ESPN2 written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN is the sports music. Why I didn't use it just now with the George and Hal Steinbrenner story, I don't know. Sorry. Other music arranged and performed by the group no Horns Allowed. My announcer today was from an interview I did in 2008 with the late, great immortal George Carlin. Everything else was, as always, my fault. Let's Countdown for today. Day 322 of America held hostage again, but just 1,141 days until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck and lame brained term. Unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and Jeffrey Epstein or the next mystery mri, or he drops a FIFA peace trophy on his own head. Who knows what he put the medal on himself.
- [57:14]
Till the next edition, I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night and good luck.
- [57:30]
Foreign.
- [57:37]
Countdown 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. Most people think their insurance will cover them when disaster strikes. The truth? Many are wrong. You pay premiums and assume you're protected until the fine print hits, exclusions, limits, loopholes. Suddenly that coverage isn't coverage at all. My policy advocate reviews your policies, Home, auto, life and breaks them down in plain English. They show what's really covered and what isn't. It costs just 27 cents a day, less than a cup of coffee for peace of mind. Before you assume you're covered, go to mypolicyadvocate.com you might be shocked at what you find.
- [58:23]
Commercial Announcer
Mypolicyadvocate.com 10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.
- [58:37]
You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.
- [58:45]
Keith Olbermann
This is where mindset comes in.
- [58:47]
Commercial Announcer
Someone will be eliminated.
- [58:49]
Keith Olbermann
Pressure is coming down.
- [58:52]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
This is Trainer Games.
- [58:54]
Keith Olbermann
Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.
- [58:56]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
Then the space hamster flew his hot air balloon all the way to the bottom of the ocean. Where did that story come from? Book Dream? Nope. It came from a conversation. Meet Mikomini, the AI companion that co creates personalized story adventures with your child in real time. What color was the hamster's cape and what did he pack for lunch? Unlock your child's imagination. Discover Miko Mini plus and the Magic of AI Exclusively at Costco.
- [59:27]
Commercial Announcer
Come for the Black Friday seasonal savings. Stay for the award winning reporting for a limited time access to the Washington Post is just 99 cents. That's unlimited access to all of the posts for only 99 cents every four weeks. That's a great deal for the first year. After that it'll cost $12 every four weeks. You can cancel anytime, but don't wait. This Black Friday seasonal offer won't be here for long. Go to washingtonpost.com iheart and grab this deal before it's gone. That's washingtonpost.com iheart Hear that?
- [60:00]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
It's the sound of truly immersive audio thanks to Vizio's new 4.1 soundbar and it's now available at Walmart. Powered by Dolby Atmos and DTS X Experience rich cinematic sound with two wireless surround speakers and a compact wireless subwoofer that puts you in the center of your entertainment. All without the clutter of cables. Stream your favorite music radio and podcasts with the iHeartRadio app and trust us, your music has never sounded this Good. Head to Walmart.com and upgrade your sound game today. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.