← Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
TRUMP IS TALKING ABOUT HIS MORTALITY AGAIN. AND WEAPONS - 10.9.25
00:48:12
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Keith Olbermann
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Keith Olbermann
With Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. Now, I don't want to leave the incorrect impression that I am opposed to this, but Trump is talking about his own mortality, or his own career mortality, or going to heaven, or all of the above again. At the same time, he's talking about declaring insurrections and jailing more political opponents like Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker and any one of a dozen judges, including at least one he appointed. Not prosecuting them this time, just jailing them. And as if it could get any worse, he specifically segued from the issue of wanting to prove to God that he's been good to how great all those missiles are at his naval base. Honestly, I don't know why the few remaining news organizations do not have entire departments devoted to analysis about which part of Trump's insanity is in charge today.
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Donald Trump
It'll be very hard to be a good country. You know, there's no reason to be good. I want to be good because you want to prove to God that you're good, so you go to that next step, Right? So that's very important to me. I think it's really very important. And yesterday was amazing. We went out, we went to the naval base, the largest in the world, actually. And I saw things that were incredible. The level of, of just. I don't want to use the word weapons, but they are weapons.
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Keith Olbermann
The missiles are flying. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Quote, Chicago mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ICE officers. Governor Pritzker also, unquote, you could read that as saying that the Chicago mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Governor Pritzker, but I don't think that's what Trump meant. Then again, who knows? You and I know it should be Trump in jail because he's not only broken laws, he's nearly collected the complete set of broken laws already. To say nothing of him being in some kind of psychiatric facility, because whatever is wrong with him, it's going faster to say nothing of his. Renfield Stephen Miller, who talk about having news departments devoted to studying what's wrong with him today. Stephen Miller is manipulating Trump's untetheredness to reality and convincing Trump there really are insurrections. And that Cash Patel isn't crazy when he says 5% of Chicago residents are active gang members. And, and, and, and Trump has long been one of those. Does what the last person to talk to him tells him people Miller has refined this into a self fulfilling prophecy machine. Tell Trump there is an insurrection in Portland. No, no, Chicago. Chicago turns out is easier right now. Tell him there's ICE agents imperiled. Get him to send troops to Chicago. What troops? Who knows which ones are the worst, the most paranoid, the least traceable. Get the troops to try to provoke Chicago residents and if they succeed, show that to Trump on Fox and get him to declare whatever the residents do to be an insurrection. And poof. Stephen Miller has just fabricated an insurrection out of nothing in Chicago. This formula is how they get Trump to do anything. Really. The whole mechanism of jailing his opponents has never been clearer than right now. You keep firing prosecutors until somebody, the one who won Miss Uncongeniality in the beauty pageant is willing to sign the documents and bang. James Comey is indicted. And you can say, see Mr. President, he's been indicted. It's on Fox News, even though ABC reported yesterday that Trump's main government witness will testify that Comey told him not to leak to the media. And this witness will almost certainly be branded a hostile witness. And the motion to dismiss will be filed by Comey's defense by a week from next Monday, the 20th, as will the motion to unseat the fraudulently appointed hairdo prosecutor. And the judge yesterday said, no, we're not slow tracking this process just so you can keep telling Trump, look, the Comey trial is now three months long. Your damn indictment was a page and a half what Miller and Patel and Pam Bondi do. And once again, my judgment was proved correct from 2006, I think it was, when Pam Bondi hit on me outside the men's room in the PBS station in Tampa. I think. I think I said to her, I'm just getting in the car. I gotta go to the airport to go to the moon. Anyway, what they all do when the judge rules in favor of the motion to dismiss the indictment of James Comey, I'm not sure. Maybe just pull Trump's TVs out of the wall. I've never understood why they didn't just set up their own version of Fox News in the White House basement or something and tailor 24 hours of programming just to him. I mean, Laura Ingram would work there instead in a heartbeat. I mean, for the same money, maybe less. Only one demand would, which would be that you'd have to give Laura three hours instead of one. I guess they don't need a fake Fox News of their own when they have the fake Fox News that Rupert Murdoch gives them for free. Although they are always running the risk something will happen in the real world that Fox will have to report anyway and Trump will see it, which is why you will still see these spasms of rage by him against Fox. Still, it's largely a good and efficient system, and it's not very much larger nor more original in scope than the means by which the MAGA cult itself is manipulated. Decide what you want the outcome to be. Create a phony news narrative that supports it, especially if you can work in paranoia and racism and disguise them as something else. Have some faithful MAGA Republican say it while a fax camera is on him or on her. Put that on Fox. Trump sees it. The cult sees it. It becomes their reality. There are pitfalls. What do you do when Fox lies and CNN or the Washington Post? Tell the truth. Well, sir, you buy CNN and the Washington Post and you convert them to MAGA parrots. Yeah. Well, what then? What do you do about CBS News? Oh, you buy CBS News and you convert it and you put an actual parrot named Barry Weiss in charge, which I will get to at length in a moment with the mystery of the broken number three CBS pencils story. Anyway, when the process creates an uncomfortable clash for one of Trump's slaves, like Speaker Mike Tiny Johnson, between Trump reality and reality reality, Johnson can then just employ the universal solvent the three monkeys process. I didn't see it, I didn't hear it, I didn't say it. Should Mayor Johnson of Chicago and Governor Pritzker of Illinois be in prison? Speaker Johnson, do you agree that the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois should be in prison? Should they be in prison?
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Should the Mayor of Chicago and the.
- [09:34]
Keith Olbermann
Governor of Illinois be in prison? I'm not the Attorney General, I'm the Speaker of the House and I'm trying to manage the chaos here. I'm not following the Day to Day on that. Sure, Trump's invading cities, threatening elected officials, and like every 11th of those officials is somebody Trump once appointed or favored or defended. You remember Mike Pence, don't you? Mike Johnson? What are you going to do on that day when you are Mike Pence, but you're not following the day to Day. We're all day to day. Mike Johnson. Mike, of course, then proceeded to go into the details of the Day to Day because like everything else, it's bullshit multiplied by stupidity. And unfortunately, most of our Trump infested nation either doesn't understand or doesn't know about it. And then there's that tiny sliver that actually supports it, which looks sometimes like a majority because we forget the majority actually has no idea about this because it's got nothing to do with entertainment news or sports news. Oh, Ronaldo is worth a billion dollars now. Yes, I know who he is. Why do I care how much money he has? Why don't you do a segment on instead whether or not at 40 he's still any good at the soccer? Mike Johnson actually blew that one. Mike Johnson should have said, I'm not following the day to day. In fact, this morning I spent in retreat praying. And I took a vow of silence and a vow to not follow the day to day. Amen. Thank you, Jesus. The missiles are flying. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. The idea that they all know Trump's nuts and they believe they have simply learned to ride that wave and not drown is in fact part of the Trump origin story in February 2017. I looked it up 2-13-2017. I was, if you can imagine this, one of three guests in the Bloomberg building here in Fun City on the Charlie Rose show, which used to run on PBS and Bloomberg before Charlie's little problem with knowing where his pants and hands were at a given moment. When that cropped up, there was a guest host, Judd Apatow, and this lineup, if you can imagine Republican strategist Ed Rollins, with whom I had shared grudging respect and a glimmer of like for about 20 years by that point. And Maggie Haberman, for God's sake, and me, Rollins and Apatow took me seriously. Haberman was condescending and dense. I mentioned several times during the taping that we were all kind of missing the big picture, that all the analysis of what Trump had done was discounting this fact that there had been nothing in Trump's first three or four weeks in office that contradicted the idea that he was crazy. And I made a few references back to the piece that I read here last week, which had been written the year before. Could Trump pass a Sanity test? Well, as we finished this surprisingly informative and nonviolent show, even though Maggie Haberman was there and cameras were powered down and mics put away, Ed Rollins extended his hand and smiled and it looked sincere and he said he always enjoyed our conversations even though he often thought I was crazy. He then laughed and said, but you know about crazy about your Trump sanity test. There was a long pause and then Ed Rollins said, you know he is crazy. Ed Rollins gathered his belongings and made for the studio exit door. Of course he's crazy, Keith. I don't know why you need a test. Every once in a while the degradation and deterioration of American society, and particularly American journalism, just sort of seeps into the background and we stop looking at how remarkable it actually is. At any other point in our history, if the daughter in law of the President of the United States had her own nominal news show on a cable news channel, it would be a scandal of unbelievable proportions. It Even if she were qualified, Lara Trump is qualified in the sense that she's almost as stupid as a native born Trump. But we no longer notice these things. I was thinking of Lara Trump because she is wonderfully incompetent, even in her role as propagandist on Fox News, lobbing softballs at people who are barely able to answer softballs on behalf of her father in law. She is both the question and the answer. But I was thinking about her because I was trying to find somebody in my mind who would Be worse than Bari Weiss to run CBS News. Bari Weiss, if you don't know who she is, has failed upwards from being the naivete and dumbing down editor of New York Times Opinions. She was encouraged to leave and left and formed a new place called the Free Press, which is of course like everything else with a name on it in media today, it is the exact opposite of its title. It is not the Free Press. It is not free. There is nothing to do with freedom of the press in it. It is just another rationalization for fascism blog. And for some reason, because it has been dumbed down, it is essentially a substack for idiots. It was worth $150 million to the Ellison people, partially because they are still trying to curry favor with Trump. And this was another way of lifting up fascists who don't get enough help in this society. As you know, there is no oppressed group in this country today like fascists, except short, unappealing fascists. They are even in worse positions than regular fascists. So in any event, Bari Weiss was bought out for about $150 million. That's one of the reports of her Free Press site. And as part of the deal she was put in charge of CBS News. And I was just thinking, would Lara Trump be worse or better for CBS News? Well, Lara Trump has now about a year's worth of experience in television, so she'd be better qualified than Bari Weiss. We are watching once again those organizations in the news when they are needed the most in the history of this country, not only failing but voluntarily jumping off cliffs. Here's the first step. You build up a center and left intelligence audience that has come to depend upon you over the decades as the Washington Post did, as CNN did. You make no bones about the fact that the thing probably does tend to lean a little bit liberal because, well, facts, as they say, do lean a little bit liberal. But money leans in both directions and especially leans on liberals. And so no matter the news organization or its origins or its history or its importance at the moment, if it can be sold, it will be sold and usually to the wrong person, even to a who does the right thing at first and then figures, oh no, this is hurting my other products. And also it's encouraging Trump to blackmail me. Hi, Jeff Bezos talking to you. Bezos apparently got away with it the first time he announced that he was being blackmailed and he wasn't going to subject himself to it or his now ex wife. And he stood up nobly in the Washington Post was there to Say that democracy dies in darkness and it was going to shine the light. And then something else happened and we don't know what it is. But then he got married to Lauren Sanchez and all the fascists came to the wedding. And the next thing you know, the Washington Post is throwing all of its traditions and all of its readers out the effing window. There is a report from the invaluable and irreplaceable Oliver Darcy of status, formerly of cnn, who is so important that I would expect him to be bought by an Ellison anytime now. About more changes at the Washington Post this week. Benji Sarlin, the editor, he reports is gone. Benji used to work with me. He was on Countdown and several other people, according to people familiar with the matter, are out. Contractors were not spared, he says. The legendary journalist Mark Fisher is out who'd been with the Post for nearly four decades. The Pulitzer Prize winner David Hoffman is gone. Jack Schaefer, who I know, the media critic is gone. And the economic columnist Heather Long, all out at the Washington Post. This while the aforementioned Barry Weiss is taking over CBS News. Actually it's Larry Ellison and my old friend Jeff Schell who having been basically career ended at NBC by oh, Jeff Shell got another chance and now will do whatever the fascists want. He is now running CBS News along with the Ellisons and Bari Weiss, who I believe has the following experience in television. She's managed to turn a set on once. And the statement from Larry Ellison going into this debacle in which CBS News will be what remains of it totally dismantled and destroyed and everybody who works there forever have the stink of being in at the end in which the place was killed from the inside deliberately so that it would be silenced. Not that CBS News is the leader in anything, but it is part of the firmament, part of that remaining now porous, see through skeleton of American journalism. It's also its value. Like in some respects recently, the Washington Post is more symbolic than anything else. It's as if the Democratic Congressional Committee were now run by Hawley of Missouri. Well, we like he looks better in the pictures we name. I know he's not a Democrat, but he's really good. Larry Ellison, who made money in tech, did a Wall Street Journal interview Monday in which he said, quote, we want CBS to speak to that 70% of the audience that would really define themselves at center left to center right. Wow, you do see, nobody ever thought about that trying to maximize the audience. Nobody in American media ever thought once about trying to maximize the audience. Well, what a Genius. Larry Ellison is. He's going to go for a larger audience. Reminds me of the Bob and Ray character from their political sketch. The guy's running for president and they said, which party's nomination you're going for? And he went. I figured out a mistake that they've all made. I'm going for both of them. That way I can get all the votes. We want CBS to speak to that 70% of the audience that would really define themselves at center left to center right. Mr. Ellison, I understand you don't know any of this because you've spent the last couple of decades simply counting money. And if you're willing to spend your entire life dealing with money, you can make all the money in the world and miss everything else that happens in it. Like the fact that all those people at center left no longer want to talk to all those people at center right and vice versa. And more importantly, they do not respect nor understand nor even acknowledge the existence of the other side's institutions, like CBS News, like the Washington Post, like cnn. So what Ellison is doing at CBS with Barry Weiss is to replace everything that exists in the history of CBS News, from Edward R. Murrow to Dan Rather to Katie Couric, for God's sakes, every thing in that entire roster, good, bad and okay, will be replaced by right wing sewer droppings like Barry Weiss. And then just magically assume because you have dumbed it down and made it available to right wing and center right people, that they will now start watching it too. I mean, where are those left wing people going to go? It's not like there are other news networks. CNN did this and self destructed. The ratings at CNN were competitive with MSNBC's three years ago. Then we all got licked, Chris. Licked. As this podcast began, so too did his reign of terror inside cnn. We saw what happened. Everybody thought, what a failure that was. No, it was a total success. They brought him in there to do that, to discredit everything that CNN did, to destroy everything that worked well, to take people off the air who were functioning in unusual positions because they were kind of protected. Like Don Lemon, who had a purpose in this media firmament and who they immediately put in a position where he could not be comfortable with the people he was working with. Is that Don Lemon's fault? On a personal basis, yes. But anybody who would look at that situation and say, we're getting our money's worth out of Don Lemon, let's move him into a position where we can't possibly get 35 cents out of him. It's their fault. Then CNN did it. Washington Post did it. Million and a half cancellations, something like that, in subscriptions. And now CBS under Barry Weiss, the former naivete and dumbing down editor from New York Times opinions. A quote that the New York Times a little too late, used in its profile of Ms. Weiss as she ascended to the throne at CBS News. She told the Federalist Society, the influential conservative legal group. You know, like the way the Luftwaffe was influential. She told them, according to the Times in 2023. Ms. Weiss, who is married to a woman, quote, I know that there are some people in this room who don't believe that my marriage should have been legal. And that's okay because we're all Americans who want lower taxes. Sure, you don't have to respect my human rights. As long as we all keep more money. This is the creature now running CBS News as editor in chief. Sure, we'll send these people to prison camps. Sure, we'll raid their homes and march their children naked into vans while pretending we are opposed to pedophilia. Sure, we'll do that. As long as our taxes come down. That's my job as the editor in chief of CBS News because I've got my marriage and it's okay. And you guys are going to leave me alone because I'm doing your bidding here. I believe if you look carefully, Ms. Weiss, the deal you have made is not with CBS News and the Ellisons, but with the devil. I close from something that Oliver Darcy again wrote. And sometimes I feel as if I should just read his. His piece, his. His newsletter. When it comes to the media, I'm quoting him, quoting Max Tanny from Semaphore. Very. Weiss met apparently with the employees of CBS News as they sat there trying to figure out what else they could do for a living, or at least where else they could do it. And her last line to them, her exhortation to them, was, according to Tanny of Semaphore, let's do the fucking news. The line, as Mr. Darcy writes, seemingly intended as a hip, rallying cry, hit the wrong note, you think? Instead leaving a number of staffers cringing, as the Independent's Justin Baragona reported. One CBS staffer told our Natalie Korach that they actually laughed at the remark. Suffice to say, if Weiss wants to actually win over the hearts and minds of the staffers she now leads, she's going to need to do a lot better than that. Well, that's almost unnecessary. She told the people At CBS News, the people who have helped to maintain CBS News in an environment that is anti news, anti intelligence, anti washing your clothes, anti not smelling like conservatives, they have kept this place together. And she's telling them, let's do the fucking news. As if you have ever done anything connected to news in your life, you immoral, total loser. Bari Weiss. But some things never change. The last time I worked for CBS and CBS News was 1991. I was the lame duck sports director of Channel 2 case, CBS in Los Angeles owned and operated station. Our sportscast usually finished second in the ratings, but the newscast finished third. And they were paying me quite a lot of money. And they had an option for another two years of quite a lot of money, about $500,000 a year. And they had a newscaster who wasn't very good at it, who they thought they could make back into the sportscaster and thus just eliminate my position. Not just get rid of me and get somebody cheaper, but literally zero out the cost of key Olbermann save $500,000 in their position. I probably would have not picked up the option to I had been notified of this, but because it was CBS and because I actually am a professional and always have been, and I've always been in this position trusted to stay on even after my employers have told me, no, we're going to fire you in three months, we'd like you to continue to do things. I stayed at CBS and among other things, there was a day in late 1991 when I had already been a lame d and had already, I think, negotiated a deal to go to ESPN. In the beginning of the new year of 1992, I went to the Los Angeles Forum, the then home of the LA Lakers, and anchored from the field in a space that was the smallest place I've ever actually anchored from Magic Johnson's news conference in which he announced he had hiv. And nothing can permit me to explain to you what that was like, because that was presumed at that point by everybody in that room except Magic Johnson to be a death sentence. If you look at the videotapes of every station and everybody on the air and everybody they interviewed, we're all white as sheets and it's not some sort of interference with the signal from the basement of the LA Forum, it was a death sentence. Except he didn't think so. And he was right and we were all wrong. And now, just on top of everything else, God bless him, he owns the entire town of Los Angeles. He owns half the Dodgers, he owns every theater in Los Angeles, bless him. I always liked Buck. I called him that because he said, call me Buck. My friends call me Buck. Okay, so now I'm the lame duck sports director and the station's in third place again. And it's kind of a golden time for me. It was the time I enjoyed the job the most because there really wasn't anything I could screw up. And so if there were any restraints on what I was saying on The CBS Channel 2 Action News in Los Angeles, they all went away. I just said what I felt. And so I'm called into a meeting in the news director's office. Now, this was, I think, the fourth news director who I worked for at CBS in la, and his name was Jose Rios. And he was a very successful news director, though not at Channel two. Then he had just been promoted from managing editor of the newscasts after the last guy had been marched out, because he was not all there in the office. I believe they'd had something like 15 news directors in 18 years. And the woman who served as the assistant to all of them said one of them used to sit in the closet in the news director's office without his pants on. I said, how long did he last? And she just laughed at me. I did not realize that I had produced a double entendre. So this is the office we're in. It had been the control room years and years earlier. So it was a giant office beautifully appointed by the news director who hired me there. And now two news directors later, the guy who's sort of overseeing the waning weeks of the Keith Olbermann experience has got all of us in the newsroom. The ratings have come out. We're even further in third place behind NBC and ABC than we have before. The station has been in third place for 16 years, ever since the suits in New York decided that winning every ratings book between 1954 and 1975 was insufficient. And when they finished tied for second or tied for first in the spring of 1975 at just 11 o', clock, they won at 6, and they were tied for first at 11. They had to fire all the anchors, who all then dispersed to the other stations. And all of their viewers went with them. Because that's what happens when you get rid of the people that people are used to watching, as Barry Weiss will soon discover, and the Ellisons and Jeff shell. This is 1991. This is before these decisions were based on what you felt politically. This was simply a. Of what the ratings looked like and how much money you were paying for the ratings and whether or not they could get the ratings with somebody cheaper. So I'm sitting in this meeting and at the beginning of it, the assistant to Jose Rios. And as I said, he went on to a very successful career as the news director at Channel 11. And I loved working with him. This is not about him. Somebody told him to do this. He came in and decided to do one of these. I was flashbacked to the movie the Natural, in which a hypnotherapist is brought in to try to convince Robert Redford's baseball team that losing is a disease as contagious as bubonic plague, that kind of thing. We did a little exercise in trying to break the third place habit. And so what he did, Jose's assistant, I believe her name was Sherry Friess, handed us all number three pencils. Pencils. Not number two pencils, but number three pencils. They had boxes and boxes of these things and they handed them to everybody in the room, probably 70 to 100 staffers. And on cue, we were all supposed to break the pencil. When Jose said 3, 2, 1. We were supposed to snap the pencils in half and break the number three habit. You get it? I believe I was the only person in that room who knew they would not be working there for certain in six or seven weeks time. And so guess what? I didn't break the pencil. And people looked at me like I had just destroyed the magic. You didn't break the pencil. And I went, my pencil is just fine, thank you very much. Tout chat change tout celle estime chose Barry Weiss. Let's do the fucking news. To professionals. From an utter amateur. Let's do the effing news. Because I guess CBS no longer has a whole big supply of number three pencils. Also of interest here, the Bad Bunny blowback has reached Congresswoman Barney Rubble. Marjorie stupid Green wants to make English the official language in response to Bad Bunny being selected to perform actual at the Super Bowl. Which English. The official language, I guess, means Marjorie Taylor Greene is no longer allowed to talk ever again. Because whatever that is she's speaking, it ain't English. That's next. This is Countdown.
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Keith Olbermann
The.
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Keith Olbermann
Learn more@probane.com Take a deep dive into.
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- [37:04]
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 just the first, especially the first 35 minutes. Thank you sir. It's just unparalleled. I got bad news between you and I. We got six minutes to completely screw that in the ground. Okay, that's good. Oh, thank you George from wherever you are. I needed that today. Still ahead on this Edition of Countdown. Haven't done Thurber in a while. Thursdays with Thurber and I want to go back to the piece that most bizarrely gives me the most comfort in times like these which turn out pretty much to be 247 at the moment. A box to hide in. 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. The runner up worst, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the cockroach of the judiciary breaking. I'm launching undercover operations to infiltrate and uproot leftist terror cells in Texas. Leftist political terrorism is a clear and present danger. I should have pronounced it in Texan. Leftist political terrorism is clear and present danger. There can be no compromise with those who want us dead. Well, number one, that's your wife you're talking about, right? Those who want you dead. Cause this, this. This is undercover operations. Is this gonna be different, Ken, from what you normally do? I mean, normally your undercover operations result in your wife suing you for divorce. Keep your eye on the prize, Ken. Runner up, everybody's favorite congressman from the CTE District, Derek Van Orden. He uses a bad word in here and also shows some serious brain damage. So stand well back from your listening device. Civics 101. The Senate requires 60 votes to pass a bill. There are only 53 Republicans in the Senate. That means seven Democrats would have to vote for the bill. Or six could vote for it and J.D. vance would cast the tiebreaker. Follow me for more. Shit you should have learned in fourth grade. Well, evidently Derek dropped out in the third grade. That. That 60. That's only for cloture. Cloture votes? No, not cloak, not clo. Sure. C L O T U R E. Should I spell it for you? Things like nominations, budget reconciliations, House rules. House rules changes the meat and potatoes of the Senate. Still a simple majority. 5149 or 51. 50. That's why the Vice President can break a 5050 tide Dewick. Only there isn't one at the moment. So no, Vance can't vote to create a 60th vote. See how this works now? Civics 101. My God. He failed the course to get into Civics 101. Honest. Congressman, I'm confident there is a walk in clinic somewhere in Wisconsin where they can take you right now and scan your brain and see if whatever it is is reversible. It could easily be the onset of something serious. Your brain does not work correctly. Here's the frightening there's somebody in Congress worse than him. Our winner. Marjorie Stupid Greene. Never mind the fact that she figured out that Obamacare is necessary to keep the cost of her own family's medical premiums from doubling. That's just one burst of intelligence in a sea of gurgling crap. Bad Bunny says America has four months to learn Spanish before his perverse unwanted performance at super bowl halftime by the way, Speaker Johnson wants Lee Greenwood to perform. Lee Greenwood One hit wonder, 83 years old, 99% of the country has no idea who he is or that he's alive. Bad Bunny says America has four months to learn Spanish before his pervert unwanted performance at the super bowl halftime it would be a good time to pass my bill to make English the official language of America and the NFL needs to stop having demonic sexual performances during its halftime shows. I know, madam, we need to leave the demonic sexual performances to you in the privacy of your own gym. But Marjorie Taylor Greene, you want to make English the official language? When you said that we were being pushed around by the gazpacho police. When you said rights were being fragrantly violated? When you insisted that something was like a peach tree dish? Marge, if you make English the official language, you'll have to go to jail because that's not what you're speaking. Dim bulb. Marjorie Taylor she fails English and Van Orden fails fourth grade social studies. Green Today's other worst person in the world? Gazpacho Police.
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- [45:21]
Keith Olbermann
Learn more@probane.com Take a deep dive into.
- [45:25]
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- [46:00]
Keith Olbermann
It'S been a long week, and every time I find myself thinking it's been a long week, I like to turn to my book of James Thurber. And it's Fridays with Thurber. And it's been a few Fridays since I've done any James Thurber. And so let's start at the beginning. As I've mentioned many times, I read this story first aloud in a class in College in 1979, and a friend of mine came up to me and said, you should forget that sportscasting thing. You should read Thurber for a living. And I said, yeah, that'll ever happen. This is, for some reason, salvation for me, catharsis, and every other emotion that is appropriate after it has been a long week. A Box to Hide in by James Thurber I waited till the large woman with the awful hat took up her sack of groceries and went out peering at the tomatoes and the lettuce on her way. The clerk asked me what mine was. Have you got a box? I asked. A large box. I want a box to hide in. You want a box? He asked. I want a box to hide in, I said. What do you mean? He said. You mean a big box? I said. I meant to a big box big enough to hold me. I haven't got any boxes, he said. Only cartons that cans come in. I tried several other groceries and none of them had a box big enough for me to hide in. There was nothing for it but to face life out. I didn't feel strong, and I'd had this overpowering desire to hide in a box for a long time. What do you mean you want to hide in this box? One grocer asked me. It's a form of escape, I told him. Hiding in a box. It circumscribes your worries and the range of your anguish. You don't see people either. How in the hell do you eat when you're in this box? Asked the grocer. How in the hell do you get anything to eat? I said I had never been in a box and didn't know but that that would take care of itself. Well, he said finally, I haven't got any boxes, only some pasteboard cartons that cans come in. It was the same every place. I gave up when it got dark and the groceries closed and hid in my room again. I turned out the light and lay on the bed. You feel better when it gets dark? I could have hid in a closet, I suppose, but people are always opening doors. Somebody would find you in a closet. They would be startled, and you'd have to tell them why you were in the closet. Nobody pays attention to a big box lying on the floor. You could stay in it for days and nobody'd think to look in it. Not even the cleaning woman. My cleaning woman came the next morning and woke me up. I was still feeling bad. I asked her if she knew where I could get a large box. How big a box you want? She asked. I want a box big enough for me to get inside of, I said. She looked at me with big dim eyes. There's something wrong with her glands. She's awful, but she has a big heart, which makes it worse. She's unbearable. Her husband is sick and her children are sick, and she is sick, too. I got to thinking how pleasant it would be if I were in a box now and didn't have to see her. I'd be in a box right there in the room and she wouldn't know. I wondered if you had a desire to bark or laugh when someone who doesn't know walks by the box you're in. Maybe she would have a spell with her heart. If I did, that would die right there. The officers and the elevator man and Mr. Gramage would find us funny. Doggone thing happened at the building last night. The doorman would say to his wife, I let in this woman to clean up 10F and she never come out, see. She's never in there more' n an hour but she never come out, see. So when it got time for me to go off duty, why, I says to Krennic, who was on the elevator, I says, what the hell you suppose has happened to that woman? Cleans 10F. He says he didn't know. He says he never seen her after he took her up. So I spoke to Mr. Grammage about it. I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Grammage, I says, but there's something funny about that woman. Clean's 10F. So I told him so he said we better have a look. And we all three goes up and knocks on the door and rings the bell, see, and nobody answers. So he said we'd have to walk in. So Krennic opened the door and we walked in. And here was this woman cleans the apartment, dead as a herring on the floor. And the gentleman that lives there was in a box. The cleaning woman kept looking at me. It was hard to realize she wasn't dead. It's a form of escape, I murmured. What say? She asked dully. You don't know of any large packing boxes, do you? I asked. No, I don't, she said. I haven't found one yet. But I still have this overpowering urge to hide in a box. Maybe it will go away. Maybe I'll be alright. Maybe it will get worse. It's hard to say. 36 years since I first read that in public. Still didn't get any better at it. 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 guitar's bass and drums. Mr. Chennail handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best base baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust. The Olbermann theme from ESPN2, written by Mitch Warren Davis, is courtesy of ESPN Inc. That's the sports music when we do sports. Other music arranged and performed by the group. No horns allowed. My announcer today was my late friend and inspiration, George Carlin. Everything else was, as always, my fault. That's Countdown for today. Day 263 of America held hostage again. But just 1200 days, even 1200 until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck and lame brain term. Unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and Jeffrey Epstein or that pavement patch on his hand or some stuck escalator somewhere, or the psychopathy test, or Tylenol, or that judge guy he doesn't like. Or. Or that judge girl or some Illinois politician. The list lengthens.
- [53:28]
Emily Maitlis / Jon Sopel
Or, or, or.
- [53:29]
Keith Olbermann
The next scheduled countdown is Monday. I'll warn you right here. I may take this off. I don't know if you noticed a certain struggle recently, but in addition to the fact that I'm having some vision problems, it's not permanent. It's just a. It's. You don't want to know what it is, but it's temporary. It's just lasting longer than it should. In addition to that, my back went out. It's like, oh my God, what am I an old. Yes, I am an old man. Oh, well, I may take the day off. We'll see. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Maybe. Maybe not till then. Or whenever. I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. 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.
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The News Agents. We're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why? From me, Emily Maitlis and me, John Sopel with Global's award winning podcast the News Agents dropping daily covering everything you need to know about politics and current affairs.
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The News Agents on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free Iheart app and search the newsagents to start listening.
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- [56:20]
Keith Olbermann
Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only cardi b my marriage. I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had that this was not given to me. I worked my ass off for me. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [56:51]
Emily Maitlis / Jon Sopel
This is an iHeart podcast.