← Countdown with Keith Olbermann
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- [00:00]
Donald Trump
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:05]
Keith Olbermann
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- [00:43]
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- [02:50]
Keith Olbermann
Terms Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of Iheart. Donald John Trump cannot continue as President of the United States. He is at this moment having a full scale psychological breakdown, obviously. So we're agreed. Good. However, lost in this quicksand of this latest Trump full length, complete and total 72 hours of delusion of something just this side of a fugue state, Trump has let it slip. He has provided enough clues to suggest that his next insane scheme may be a rollout of an absolutely fabricated, amazingly intricate, high octane, full volume cell of the conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was not only fixed, but that it was fixed by Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and that's why we renditioned him. You heard me. Trump revealed intentionally. I think he had a question planted at that Putinesque multi hour dissociative episode, only with reporters present that they may be about to start an attempt to gaslight and sane wash at the same time. Some sort of Maduro confession to fixing it for Biden and then pardoning Maduro and prosecuting Biden. And who knows if Trump takes it further and tries to apply whatever this is supposed to mean to the midterms or to this continuing quixotic anti constitutional belief that he's entitled to a third term, who knows if his brain will not have oozed out his ears by then or by next week. But I think the first part is true. I think they are really going to try the first part. They're gonna try to draw all the imaginary lunatic threads together and make them into one giant imaginary lunatic plot to quote, prove quote Trump quote won quote the 2020 election thanks to Maduro. This has been the holy Grail down at the flat earth. Spontaneous human combustion. There wasn't a moon landing end of the Trumpist spectrum. And I don't know why this came up this week unless Trump has decided that he has no way out of Minnesota except letting ICE slowly just vanish the way he had to let the war on California slowly just vanish and that even Trump knows Greenland is petering out and now it's obvious he has lost all interest in Iran and now his cult is Getting really bored with the Nobel Peace Prize stuff since he already got one, even though it's, you know, used. Trump shortly will be trying to sell and expecting the congressional and senatorial whores he owns to endorse one of the favorite, albeit dumbest, conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. That it was fixed for President Biden by software designed, created, financed, shat by Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. In reality, Nicolas Maduro is a man who struggles to successfully zipper his own windbreaker. But since long before the 2020 election, the Trump gang has been pushing this nonsense that somebody or some company or some magical force in Venezuela fixed all the voting machines. Because for six years now, it has been evident that nothing in Trump's damaged mind is capable of processing the reality that he lost. Those around him had largely tamped down the Maduro rigged that election, you know, delusion. But of course, in the last year, those who could tamp him down have lost all influence on him. He weeded out those who were good at it. And as previously noted, Trump's mental incapacity and his utter certainty that he is right and the rest of us are wrong grows by the hour. And then at that news conference, Trump really spilled the beans on this. He didn't do a lot. He didn't do it for a long time. But if you were listening carefully, amid all of the truly delusional, nonsensical, no line of thought dreck, there were two gems on the pile of Trump shaped dung. There is an alternative way to interpret this country's extralegal kidnapping of the dictator of Venezuela on the pretext of leaving his deputy in charge of that country, when in fact she was the one our own anti drug trafficking agencies were focused on, not him. Blowing up the Venezuelan fishing boats and the Venezuelan fishermen and going in and renditioning another leader might have had some vague connection to the international drug trade. But this alternate theory, which makes just as much lack of sense, it was that it was in reality to accomplish just one thing. To get Maduro into a US prison, to get him under Trump's control and then get him to confess or confirm or invent some story in which no, Biden didn't win in 20. Trump really won in 2020. And he, Nicolas Maduro and his Venezuelan mastermind somehow used space lasers, probably to change Trump votes to Biden votes by, by the billions. If you can still hear me over your own laughter or uncontrollable tears, let me remind you of Trump's phone call from July 25, 2019 to the then non household president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, which was in essence an extortion attempt whereby Trump would supply Ukraine with weapons he was already obligated to supply by treaty in exchange for a little favor in which Zelensky would provide or produce or simply make up evidence that 15 months ahead of the 2020 election, Joe Biden was being investigated in Ukraine for corruption. It was a simple and itself corrupt trade. Trump would extort fabricated slander against his lead likely opponent in 2020 in exchange for the weapons with which Zelenskyy might save, you know, the lives of his people. It's a hostage situation. In any event, you might remember Trump got impeached for it. Maybe you read about that, the first impeachment of the two. Well already you can see what Trump learned from all that. A simple one to one agreement with another president is insufficient and in fact dangerous. A box of phony documents smearing Biden would have been insufficient and dangerous in any way. Zelenskyy didn't share Trump's gift for corruption. What Trump realized at the end of this, that he needed needs was something more dramatic and seemingly unanswerable, like a prison cell confession from Nicolas Maduro, drug kingpin, victim of OH US army gallantry. A confession from Maduro that He fixed the 2020 election for Biden. Cuz we've never had an explanation on how it was done. And this guy would say anything. It's Nicholas Effing Maduro. And whether or not they pull this off, whether or not it gets far enough for them to devote all of the resources of the United States of America to selling you this bullshit, whether or not they can convince people it's real. Trump on Tuesday made two comments that confirmed he sure as hell is going. Comment 1 unsolicited.
- [10:58]
Donald Trump
It's a rigged election. Everybody knows that now. And by the way, numbers are coming out that show it even more plainly. We caught them.
- [11:06]
Keith Olbermann
We caught them, we caught them. Now Trump is incapable of not lying. So he could have said that at any time. But the key to interpreting and understanding Trump's lies is to remember that he sells them so well because he has convinced himself that they are not lies. It may be only temporary, but he believes that's true. Maybe he believes it for half an hour, half a day, who knows? And what he needs is, and it may be only a temporary fix, temporary support, but inevitably he needs somebody saying something to him about the subject, or he sees something on Fox News or he reads a post, or more importantly looks at a meme on truth social cuz I'm not fully convinced he's literate and that supplies him anew with the bullshit he needs to turn around and try to sell these fantasies to the Marx out there, his supporters. So what happened here? Or more correctly who lied to him and said something had happened with Maduro and that translated in his diseased dissolving cortex into we caught them. That was also provided Tuesday by one of those propaganda plants who have replaced about one third of the journalists who are trotted in to read pre written quote questions unquote, which are designed to get Trump to remember that it is now time to roll out a conspiracy theory slowly in advance before later detonating the whole megaton package of bullshit this plant is. And nobody yet connected to the Trump disinformation complex has ever been better described by that word plant in all of its meetings. This plant is named Cara Castro Nuova and she is an ex boxer, not an IFC fighter. A real old fashioned punch you in the face, cross eyed woman boxer whose journalistic resume runs the entire gamut. I mean listen to this series of great experiences in news. She's gone from NBC's dieting show the Biggest Loser to voice artistry work on the video game Grand Theft Auto to her current position White House correspondent for the Mike Lindell News TV network, Pillow Talk. Laugh all you want, but this background, with this background, Cara Castro Nuevo is like only two notches down on the journalistic scoreboard from Barry Weiss and only one notch down from Stephen A. Smith. Still, when it was time for Ms. Castro Nuova to deliver her line about Maduro, to read it off a card in front of her face or off of her phone, it was hard to tell which. For somebody who could actually go into Madison Square Garden and and hit somebody else in front of people in the face, she sure was terrified.
- [14:17]
Cara Castronova
Thank you so much President Trump. Carol Castronova from Lindell TV and you spoke earlier about the 2020 election. Now that Maduro, Maduro is in US custody and he was criminally charged, has any more information emerged that you could share with us regarding Venezuelan election software and Venezuelan ties to tampering with the 2020 election? And would you consider speaking to Maduro personally in prison in New York to get some answers on Venezuela's involvement with the 2020 election?
- [14:45]
Donald Trump
No, I don't think I would be doing that. I think my lawyers would be very unhappy if I did. Yeah, they've learned some things.
- [14:54]
Keith Olbermann
So would Trump go and talk to Maduro personally in jail about the 2020 election. Like Jack Ruby wanting to meet with the Supreme Court justices after the Kennedy assassination? No, no, of course not. Have Trump's scumbags already gone and talked to Maduro personally about the 2020 election? Sure. And Trump says they've learned some things, and as you heard earlier, we caught them. It's not hard to construct the rest of this in your own mind. You don't really need me for this part. They proceed with the prosecution of Maduro, and then Trump produces a few more shots across Joe Biden's bow. He hinted at prosecuting Biden last week for what he suggested was illegally being president. And he's hinted again this week, quote, biden and the radical left thugs that surrounded the resolution desk in the Oval Office. And of course, the illegal use of the auto pen. They should be in jail. As we know, those posts and memos to Pam Bondi are interchangeable. And oh, by the way, it's the Resolute desk. Grandpa.
- [16:07]
Donald Trump
We are thousands of miles away, separated by a giant ocean. It's a war that should have never started. And it wouldn't have started if the 2020 US presidential election weren't rigged. It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It's probably breaking news, but it should be. It was a rigged election. Can't have rigged elections.
- [16:35]
Keith Olbermann
So first he softens up the field with some more not so veiled threats against Biden and his administration. Then at some point, there is a bombshell leak that Maduro is ready to confess that he has information vital to and QAnon about the 2020 election. And a wave of panic sweeps through Magaland that they're gonna Epstein him in present. And by Epstein I mean suicide him. I don't mean Trump breaking the law and covering up all the Maduro documents that he was required to release a month ago, like all the Epstein documents. And then there's some kind of in jail interview. Martha MacCallum would be okay. Tony Decouple would be better. Of course, he might be working for Mike Lindell TV by then anyway. Finally there is a congressional hearing. James Comer would be nice. Jim Jordan would be better. And then presto changeo. Maduro either gets pardoned. Remember the joke when they kidnapped him, Maduro should just go into court the first minute and say, what are the charges? Then say, I plead guilty. Then say in the same breath, okay, so I'm a drug dealer. Where's my pardon? Trump Maduro gets pardoned or his sentence gets reduced to time served, or they give him his own island somewhere, or. This is the CBS Evening News with Nicolas Maduro. Okay, I may be getting carried away here, but this is the next scam. Whether it is of any practical use or not is debatable. But no matter the answer, it is essential that Trump convinces everybody he really won because of yet another version of our old friend annosagnosia. The thought that somewhere, somebody believes he lost. Truly, 250, 275 million Americans believe that at least, but he doesn't believe that either. The thought that anybody believes he's a loser, that they laugh at him about 2020, this is intolerable to Trump still, forever. It is unfixable. He will die, and his last thought will be about the 2020 election. But the point now, to our purposes right now, is that no matter what Trump has accomplished in the last year of hell, and as impossible as this sounds, there is some comfort to the reality that his hell has been worse than ours because he is so deeply mentally disturbed. And the thought that people repudiated him, that he did not defeat an opponent, that he lost an election, is always there, waiting to blank out the vision of life in front of him. It's always there to ruin even his most evil fun. And so we had the zelensky bullshit of 2019, and I think what we learned this week is we are probably going to have the Maduro bullshit of 20. Now, I should go back to my original premise here, that he cannot continue as president once again. No shit, Keith. Wow, you really stayed up nights thinking about that one. How to fix this when there are still only motives for his enablers to keep him there, and there are as yet, no real motives for them to get him out of there? I still don't know. I saw a member of the British House of Lords ask in public when Trump's Republican supporters would turn on him. This was a conservative British peer, the upper crust of the Conservatives, the sons and grandsons of the guys who wanted to make a deal with Hitler. And he thinks the Republicans will eventually turn on Trump and are about to do well. Why you turn on him. And if you succeed and he's out of power, he can't pardon you. If you turn on him, you lose your power probably immediately. You lose your seat in Congress or the Senate or wherever else you are. If you turn on him, you lose all the money that is being siphoned to you, all the stock tips you get in advance, all the access to pardons for your friends. If you turn on him. The Epstein files are released possibly before nightfall. So no, I. I'm sorry, I don't have a fix yet. I don't know when this became my personal responsibility, but nobody else seems to be interested in trying to solve it. But I do have an endless supply of analogies and that thing Tuesday, other than the Maduro part, was like watching a movie length version of an all time classic Saturday Night Live sketch that might be before your time. The great Dan Aykroyd in full six foot tall, giant bosomy attire portraying the French chef, the famed Julia Child on PBS who talked like this. Save the liver. Only he portrayed her having just sliced up chicken and accidentally cutting her wrist and bleeding unbelievably profusely and quickly beginning to pass out from loss of blood, all while still trying to continue her show and her cooking lesson. Ackroyd begins to almost sing Save the liver, Save the liver. And bounce from topic to topic to topic and he she ends up with I remember when I was a little girl and my mother said to me.
- [22:54]
Donald Trump
We had a place called Creedmoor. Creedmoor. Did anybody know that? Creedmoor. It was a big I said, mom, why are those bars on the building? I used to play Little League baseball there. A place called Cunningham park, who's quite the baseball player, you wouldn't believe. But I said to my mother, mom, she would be there, always there for me. She said, son, you could be a professional baseball player. I said, thanks Mom. I said, why are those bars on the windows? Big building. Big, powerful building.
- [23:30]
Keith Olbermann
Everything but save the liver. Thank you Julia Child, Trump, baseball and insane asylums. By the way, exhaustive studies of the surviving box scores from Trump's three years as the first baseman at nema, the New York Military Academy. He went there instead of to reform school, show that this future hall of Famer Mommy told him so, had a high school career batting average of.138. I mean, that's less than mine. The rest of Trump's brain bleeding out like Ackroyd's version of Julia Child was reflected in his overnight social media dump that preceded that press conference leaking the texts from Emmanuel Macron and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and retweeting the guy who said the real enemy is NATO and the UN and that Greenland meme and the Greenland Canada meme and the threat to tariff French wines if Trump doesn't get Macron to pony up a billion dollars to jump to Trump's new alternate un the Legion of Doom or whatever he's calling it and his insistence that he doesn't care about the Nobel. But Norway does fix the Nobel Prizes. And isn't it too bad there are too many insane killers around you that you can't talk to? Does he own a mirror? And then the only one that really mattered. Whereas if we needed a reminder that it is not that Trump does not feel anything for other people, it is that Trump cannot really process the idea that there are other people on this planet and that there are things in their lives that have nothing to do with Trump. Renee Goode's wife, Per Trump, is a liar who never cared about her, didn't care about her as she watched her being murdered by an ICE thug. No, no, no, no. It was clear because she sang like an opera singer, like a professional opera singer. So loud. A professional agitator who did not respond the right way, according to Trump, to witnessing her wife being murdered, didn't have the right kind of pain, according to Donald Trump, when street thugs working for Donald Trump killed Renee Goode. But Renee Goode's father, he's important here because Renee Good's father is a Trumpist.
- [25:52]
Donald Trump
When she was shot, there was another woman that was screaming, shame, shame, shame, shame.
- [25:58]
Keith Olbermann
Right?
- [25:58]
Donald Trump
You saw it so loud, like a professional opera singer. She was, she was so loud and so professional. She wasn't a woman that was hurt like, oh, my heart's injured. She was a professional shame, shame. She's screaming, shame, shame. I said, that's not a normal person. That's. That's a professional. These are professional agitators and professional people that want to see our country do badly. I felt horribly when I was told the young woman who was had the tragedy, it's a tragedy, it's a horrible thing. Everybody would say, ICE would say the same thing. But when I learned her parents, and her father in particular is like, I hope he still is, but I don't know. Was a tremendous Trump fan. He was all for Trump, loved Trump. And, you know, it's terrible. I was told that by a lot of people. They said, oh, he loves you. He was. I hope, I hope he still feels that way. I don't know, it's a hard, hard situation. But her father was a tremendous. And parents were tremendous Trump fans.
- [27:14]
Keith Olbermann
And so there is the true lesson of Trump's invasion of Minnesota, his terrorism against that state and its people, his white trash racism towards Somali Americans, the evolution of his white trash racism towards African Americans. When Trump and his white trash father were prosecuted for it by the Nixon administration in 1973, there is the true lesson of ICE's refusal to pay medical bills for the injuries and illnesses its Gestapo has inflicted on our neighbors and our friends and our citizens. The true lesson of the laws that were supposed to protect those people and us. The true lesson of the fact that the FBI found cause to investigate the murder of Renee Good but dropped it so the Department of Justice could instead keep the focus on trying to prosecute Mayor Frey and Governor Walz for what they said about ice, for what you may say next about ICE or anything else Trump doesn't like you saying. Therein lies the true lesson of all the horrors that have played out thanks wholly to the madness of the terrorist Donald John, we discover that the true lesson, the true tragedy, the true crisis, is something else altogether. That the true victim here is Trump because the woman he murdered by proxy was the daughter of one of his fans. And the unbelievable the unbearable may now happen to Trump. Her father may, for some reason, not be a Trump fan anymore. In passing congrats to the Vice President and the Second lady of the United States, JB and USHA Vance, the latter the Second Lady, I have only now learned. I was this many days old when I found out that the Vice President's wife goes by the unfortunate acronym of S L O T U S Slotus. How slow is she exactly? Slot us? Who you calling a slot? Well, anyway, my congratulations because they have a fourth child on the way. And my congratulations particularly to Mrs. Vance. Your couch motif lingerie has worked yet again. Oh, the pillows also of interest here. So you'd think if you'd been on TV doing the news for an hour or more every night for nearly a quarter of a century, and you were on a network that was once widely thought to be liberal and once widely thought to be anti Trump and once widely watched, that you would not react with a condescending, disbelieving smirk when a sitting United States senator finally came out and said to you, trump is insane, you might think that. Then again, you are not Anderson effing Cooper. That idiot is next. This is an all new episode of Countdown. Here's something that'll freak you out. Most people think their insurance will cover them if disaster strikes. But here's the many are wrong. You pay your premiums, you assume you're protected. Then the fine print hits, exclusions, limits, loopholes, and suddenly that coverage you counted on isn't really coverage at it's not your agent's fault. Their job is to sell policies. But you need someone in your corner who protects you, not the insurance company. My policy advocate takes your actual policies home, life, auto, whatever you got and breaks them down in plain English. They show you what's really covered and what isn't. Here's the best part. Costs just 27 cents a day. That's less than a cup of coffee for peace of mind to make sure your family is protected when it matters most. When a disaster hits, you don't want surprises. You want certainty. So before you assume you're covered, go to mypolicyadvocate.com let them review your policy. You might be shocked at what you find. MyPolicyAdvocate.com support for the show comes from.
- [31:31]
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- [32:40]
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- [33:18]
Keith Olbermann
Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. This is COUNTDOWN with Keith Olbermann. Still ahead on this all new edition of Countdown, this time of year, just 49 years ago and I am at LaGuardia Airport in New York about to board a flight along with the president of Cornell University. And that's when I and I alone look out the window towards where the plane is parked and I notice they are trying to repair the undercarriage with paper towels. Paper towels that they are stuffing up into the underside of the craft. I swear next in things I promise not to tell first, believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miscreants morons and dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world, the Bronze worst, the NFL Buffalo Bills. Chapter 117 of the punishment that is being the Buffalo Bills. They lose their NFL playoff game 33:30 to the Denver Broncos. Then the next morning they fired their head coach. And then the screw ups began. Their posted press release begins. The Buffalo Bills announced that Sean McDermott has been relieved of his duties as head coach. And then they launched into the obligatory oh, but we still love him from owner Terry Pegula. And Terry Pegula's quote is, Sean has done an admiral job of leading our football team. Sean has done an admirable job of leading our football team. Aye aye, matey. If your owner thinks the adjective is admiral, not admirable, the problem isn't the coach. And if your owner still hasn't had the post with the typo deleted like three days later, the problem isn't going to be fixed. Admiral iceberg straight ahead. The runner up, Werser Labor Secretary Laurie Chavez Darimer going down with her ship or something under investigation by the inspector general in her department who is a former Republican congressman. Now you may remember Chavez Darimer from her proclamation that she was elected labor secretary. Somebody has to explain the elections to her and her later decision to hang a giant Kim Jong un style building sized banner of Trump from the top of the Labor Department headquarters. Well, it turns out she's had time to do other things, like one of the staffers in her own office, allegedly an affair with somebody who works for her in the Department of Labor. And telling her office leaders to fabricate unofficial or rather official trips to make it look like these gallivantings with her bow were actually listening to hers about labor issues nationally, labor issues in places such as the Angels strip club outside Portland. But that's not why she's on the list. I don't judge people here more than once a minute. I don't judge people here. And remember, every moment that a Trump Cabinet family member is breaking his or her marital oath is one less moment they are spending screwing the country. No, she wins the silver because secretary Laurie Chavez, Durimer's attorney, is named Dr. Nick Oberheiden. Hmm. Her lawyer is Dr. Nick like from the Simpsons. Hi everybody. But Dr. Nick as a lawyer. So he's half Dr. Nick and half Lionel Hutz. What could possibly go wrong? But the winner worst a tie. And its two people who belong together as two of the most overrated journalists of the generation. We start with one. A Jim Vande Hei, co founder of Politico, a co founder of Axios and obviously already heading to hell for those two accomplishments. But as the nation dissolves around him and politics becomes nothing but insanity, bribery, violence and cowardice, Jim Vande Hei has his finger on the pulse of America in crisis. He posts quote, axios quizzed nearly 20 Democrats viewed as possible 2028 contenders on trans rights. Almost all ducked it. We asked, what is your response to the question can a man become a woman? Rom the rare Dem to speak bluntly, there it is, the pressing question of our time. And I guess it was asked simply in order to be able to write that seeming throwaway at the end. Rom the rare demons to speak bluntly, Rahm, since you probably don't know, is Rahm Emanuel, Clinton and Obama B list staffer, the forgotten former mayor of Chicago and one of the new crop of those, like Stephen A. Smith, suffering from the disease known as sure, nobody knows who the f I am, but I'm gonna be president next time. I swear. I swear. President, no. Of America. And he spoke bluntly about the decisive issue of the 2028 primaries and general which is how you answer possibly the dumbest of all the MAGA smeary talking points had to find something they could compliment Rahm Emanuel about. And that's what it was. Sharing honors with the guy who made this crap up. Jim Vande Hei, somebody from a very rare category, journalist journalists even more overrated than Jim Vande Hei, CNN's Anderson Cooper. Now in year 25 of the world's longest running failed marketing campaign. Millions and millions of dollars have been spent by owner after owner after owner of CNN to make him America's newsman. And he has still never won his own time slot and cable. He still never actually produced a commentary or even an observation that you can remember. I admit he's gone to a lot of crises and done crisis porn, and his eyes have always matched his bulletproof vest. But his greatest accomplishment to date is getting drunk on New Year's Eve and giggling. I mean, it is. Although the remark that brings him onto this list alongside Jim Vande Hei is somewhere among his top 10 failures. Are you ready? Cooper on CNN praises European leaders for looking for an off ramp with Trump about Greenland and then asks Senator Ruben Gallego if he really thinks there is such an off ramp. And Gallego let her rip. Gallego replies, quote, no, I've been very clear. He is a madman. He is insane. He's only thinking about himself. He. At which point Cooper interrupts, Cooper screws up his face. Cooper gives him that I really need to get my eyes examined look. I can't see anything with these glasses. Is that my car on fire in the parking lot? You know that look. Whereupon Anderson Cooper then says, shocked, as if it has never occurred, not just to him, but it has never occurred to anybody in the history of the world before, quote, you really think he's insane? Gallego interrupts back, yes, I'm sorry, where are we at this moment that we don't understand what's happening in this country? He is not rational right now. None of this is rational. Everyone needs to stop pretending this is rational. So Gallego, even after being interrupted by this idiot Anderson Cooper, gives him a perfect chance to redeem himself, to come back and be a journalist for once, to be on TV with some value more than a trained chimpanzee would have reading your script for you. You should not be fungible with well educated animals of the jungle. And yet Anderson Cooper is afforded the opportunity to come back and respond to. Everyone needs to stop pretending this is rational subtext, Anderson. I'm talking about you. And what does he say? He does not say Trump isn't just insane, he's having a breakdown. He instead, Anderson Cooper. He instead mumbles, senator Reuben Gardego, I appreciate your time tonight. Thanks very much. Holy crap. That was it. When you think sometimes, why are we in this mess? How did we get here? How did it get worse? Where does Anderson Cooper buy his clothes? What boys department at JCPenney would sell them to him? How did some part of the establishment not push back against any of this since 2000 f ing 15? Think of Anderson Cooper in the earliest days of year 12 of this, Whitman's sampler of all the imagined hells who's looking like he's just eaten some prunes so he can dismiss a US Senator who is actually willing to tell the truth and interrupt that U.S. senator and say, you really think he's insane? Yes, he's insane. Emmerfer he's insane. Anderson Cooper, get on your goddamn TV show and tell people. Start telling them at the start of the hour and don't stop till it's the end of the hour. Anderson yeah, I really think he's insane. And you know what Anderson? I think you're still just the host of the Mole pretending to be a newsman. Cooper Two Days with Jim vandehei Other Worse Persons in the World 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. 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Keith Olbermann
Forget.
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Keith Olbermann
To play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more detail. Things I Promised not to tell and this one is about Dale Corson Dale Corson was president of Cornell University when I got there as an undergraduate in a preceding century. He served from 1969 to 1977. He had been before that in their physics department for 23 years. He helped design the school's synchrotron, he chaired the physics department, he was dean of the College of Engineering, and he was co discoverer of astatine, which is element number 85 and okay, it's time to face this. What have you done with your life? Dale Corson co Discovered an element I was staring out the waiting room window at the Allegheny airplane that we were supposed to have already boarded on a frigid New York morning in January of 1977. Allegheny, which became U.S. air but was colloquially known as Agony Airlines. These were the days when the bus monopoly in this country meant that the flight from New York to Ithaca, New York cost just a couple bucks more and was far easier than the bus did. If you didn't mind the occasional stop in the Rome Utica Airport and the continuous feeling that we were flying low enough that you could reach out the window and pull fruit off the trees. Not an issue. In January of 1977. There was just snow everywhere. These were also the days when you boarded a small flight upstate by first sitting in a room 20 yards from where the large propeller plane rested, then going out a nondescript ordinary door and then up a staircase with wheels. No security, no formality, and judging by the fact that we were now 20 minutes late for boarding, no punctuality. That's when I noticed the two Allegheny employees skipping down the stairs from the airplane and ducking under the belly of the craft and pointing with cartoon like animation at the underside. I'm fairly confident my astonishment has added this detail, but when I picture the performance, and from where we all sat behind soundproofed windows, they were two mimes. You couldn't hear anything, but I swear I saw one of them slap his own forehead and point upwards. Suddenly, as if trying to act out the word eureka, the one guy bolted up the stairs back into the airplane. And as I waited, wondering what he would bring down, he traipsed back down those stairs with astonishing rapidity, returning with what seemed to be a large floppy object waving in the cold January wind. An object maybe 6, 8 inches high, maybe a foot long. And it was only when he peeled the top off of this object and handed it to his taller colleague that I realized what I was seeing, what he was holding. The man had a stack of paper towels in his hand, a stack of paper towels that he had brought down from the airplane to where they were looking at the underside of the airplane that we were supposed to fly in that airplane to Ithaca, New York. As the guy's buddy raised one hand over his head and then another hand over his head and then another hand over his head, the horror finally dawned on me in full. There was something wrong with the plane, something that these guys thought they could fix by stuffing paper towels into it. Suddenly I was in a William Shatner Twilight Zone episode. The other passengers in the waiting room dozed, or were immersed in their newspapers, or were simply not looking. I alone could see the gremlins guaranteeing our doom by trying to fix a plane with some bounty paper towels. Or perhaps George Carlin's observations about doctors had been transposed to this scene qualitatively, provably. Somewhere on earth there had to be, literally the world's worst airplane. And we were about to get on it. I was still a few weeks shy of my 18th birthday and I had no idea what to do. Oddly, it really didn't dawn on me that bottom line, I didn't have to get on the airplane. I could let everybody else in the room go to their doom. I didn't think of that. I felt like I had to do something. So I looked around at the disinterested airline staff, my soon to be co victims, all inattentive to the mad evidence of our impending disaster. And then I heard the rustle of a newspaper being folded up and put away. And appearing from behind it was a man in a hat and old framed glasses, and I recognized him at once. He looked a little like Leo G. Carroll from the man from uncle and north by Northwest, but in fact he was Cornell University President Dale Corson. I was never, and since then have never been so happy to see an authority figure in my life. I screwed up the courage to go over to President Corson. I checked back over my shoulder to make certain that Laurel and Hardy were still forcing the paper towels into the Allegheny Disastro liner, and then I spoke squeakily and hurriedly. President Corson, you don't know me, but I'm a Cornell student. Class is 79. Hi. I think think there's something you need to see about our plane out there. Even just as a scientist, you need to see it. And I gestured behind me a little too wildly. I remember the amused but indulgent look on that magnificently craggy face of his as he rose wordlessly, and I remember just as well how quickly that look changed to astonishment and then anger. He put his hand on my shoulder. Son, you might as well have a seat. Don't worry, you and I are not getting on that plane. I lingered just long enough to hear fragments of what he said to the Allegheny gate attendant and how his voice got slightly louder and his tone slightly crisper with each sentence. We have students and faculty here, he said, and if I remember correctly, your airline does some promotion on campus. And finally, something about if you'd ever like to use our airspace again. But to be fair, my imagination may be adding that last line regardless. Within five minutes there was an announcement that flights such and such to Ithaca had been canceled due to equipment problems. I chuckled at the word equipment and I saw President Corson chuckling too. It wasn't equipment problems, it was paper towel problems. We would all be transferred, the announcement said, to an Allegheny jet leaving for Elmira, New York in about 20 minutes and then bused to Ithaca at no additional charge in the confusion of changing gates, maybe even terminals for all I know. I lost sight of President Courson. But as I got onto our sleek, not 50 years old towel free jet to Elmira, I saw him again, seated near the front. He smiled up at me. I thanked him for taking care of us, and he laughed. That's what I'm here for. And then he said, by the way, good work. And then he asked me what my school and my major were, and I told him communications. Really? Have you considered engineering? And I told him my dad was an architect and that the actual math and the physics and the hard work were the bane of his existence and I would never do it in a million years as well as he could, and he hated every minute of it. And Corson laughed again. And he said, yes, I can understand that. Well, clearly, at least you have the eye of a reporter. I guess that's. That's some consolation. I've done all the damage I can do. Here, get the paper towels. Thank you for listening. Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray on guitars, bass and drums, and John Philip Chenale handling orchestration and keyboards. And they, of course, are our musical directors of Countdown. It was produced by TKO Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust. The sports music is the obermann Theme from ESPN2, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group no horns allowed. My announcer today is my friend Kenny Main. This program was produced by Ted. Everything else was, as always, my fault. And that's Countdown for today. Day 364, 65, 66, 367 of America held hostage again. So, on the other hand, just 1094 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term, unless he is removed sooner by Maga and Epstein and affordability and marble armrests and Venezuela and his ice Gestapo. And of course, Greenland. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Bulletins as the news warrants. Until the next one. I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your PODC podcasts. Here's something that'll freak you out. Most people think their insurance will cover them if disaster strikes. But here's the truth. Many are wrong. You pay your premiums, you assume you're protected. Then the fine print hits. Exclusions, limits, loopholes, and suddenly that coverage you counted on isn't really coverage at all. It's not your agent's fault. Their job is to sell policies. But you need someone in your corner who protects you, not the insurance company. Company. My policy advocate takes your actual policies, home, life, auto, whatever you got and breaks them down in plain English. They show you what's really covered and what isn't. Here's the best part. Costs just 27 cents a day. That's less than a cup of coffee for peace of mind, to make sure your family is protected when it matters most. When a disaster hits, you don't want surprises. 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