← Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
TRUMP TACOS ON PORTLAND INVASION; HINTS HE CAN BESTOW IMMORTALITY - 9.29.25
01:22:16
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Keith Olbermann
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Keith Olbermann
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Keith Olbermann
Where do you see the business actually heading?
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Featuring the iconic journalists of Variety and hosted by co Editor in Chief Cynthia.
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- [03:05]
Keith Olbermann
Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump is escalating his terror campaign against you. If you oppose him, if you criticize him, if you even question him, he will try to call you a terrorist. He will try to put you on a terrorism blacklist. And if that doesn't work, he will try to arrest you. And if that doesn't work, he will invade your state and terrorize it. Plus, just to bring this up a notch, his insanity is growing. And it certainly looks like he wanted his social media followers this weekend to think he can bestow upon them the gift of immortality. Good morning. Actually, there is a glimmer of hope. It is essential to remember that with Trump, there is a middle. Once in a blue moon, usually there are only the extremes. He is a madman capable of bombing an American city. On the other hand, he can be flattered into inactivity and better still, any true resistance and the taco cliche becomes reality. Governor Kotech of Oregon and local leaders, including Republican leaders, pushed back on this war ravaged Portland craft, and they either scared Trump enough or made him somehow realize he was also making a fool of himself. There have been 29 arrests related to the robust but almost painfully peaceful 116 day old protests outside ICE headquarters in Portland. But 22 of those 29 arrests were before July 4th. There is no trouble to photograph anymore. And to sell this to his idiots, Trump needs new photographs because the leaves are changing color. So now NBC asks him about Oregon yesterday and all of a sudden it's quote, well, I mean, we're certainly looking at it. You can't have that. We don't want that. They're attacking our ICE facility and they're attacking other federal buildings. Translation, Oregon has been tacoed. Oregon has now become like one of my two weeks announcements about Putin. We're certainly looking at it like he's looking at Chicago, like he's looking at New York, like he's looking at whatever hallucination has just appeared before his jaundiced eyes. Tacos for the table. Everybody want tacos. Everybody gets tacos. You get a taco and you get a taco and you get a taco and you get A taco. So Oregon seems to be on hold. However, the darker new development is full speed ahead. At its best, it is a kind of terror blacklist to try to bankrupt, dirty up or otherwise damage his critics and people, people who prosecuted him for, you know, his crimes. And thus, like any criminal, Trump has vowed to at least metaphorically kill them. At its worst, though, it's something close to a complete suspension of the First Amendment and outright overt government sponsored terror. It is national security Presidential Memorandum 7, which they put out Thursday and which if implemented really definitionally makes the United States a fascist country. Do not be confused. It is not one of those tough sounding, but legally almost meaningless executive orders. It is a weighty policy memo which the White House claims carries, quote, the force of law, which is addressed to the Secretaries of State, treasury and Homeland and the Attorney General and other people who would be probably unemployed without Trump. It begins with, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution. Meaning if this is challenged because it's blatantly illegal and unconstitutional, Trump will defend it to the Supreme Court with the Federalist Society Article 2 Inherent Powers bullshit. And if you challenge it, he will say you are trying to overthrow the Constitution. This memo was written so Trump can try to claim that anybody doing anything he does not like is a terrorist, or funding terrorists or supporting terrorists. Sweeping new powers to investigate and target organizations, groups, individuals, entities. Entities. I assume he means ghosts. Anything. And anybody who give off any of the following. Indica. That's the word they use. I N D I C A Indica of violence. You ready? Anti Americanism, anti capitalism, anti Christianity. Support for the overthrow of the United States government. J6 extremism on migration. Extremism on race. Extremism on gender. Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family. Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion. Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality. Oh, that's all sounds like a dating profile for Stephen Miller to me. And hostility towards those who hold traditional American values on morality. That's hostility towards those that Trump is one of those, right? He holds hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality, doesn't he? Christ, that list. The only thing he left out was. I didn't get a harrumph out of that guy. Trump's declaration of war on the bogey men that he and Stephen Miller and Project 2025 just created in the basement somewhere actually begins, quote, heinous assassinations and other acts of political violence in the United States have dramatically increased in recent years. Well, yeah, you intended them to increase. That's why they increased. Even in the aftermath of the horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk, some individuals who adhered to the alleged shooter's ideology. Uh huh. Embraced and cheered this evil murder while actively encouraging more political violence. Charlie Kirk is the Reichstag. Fire in a presidential memorandum and you'll notice assassinations in there is plural. So he's mentioning the killing of the Minnesota Democrats. No, he's mentioning the murder of the healthcare executive and, quote, the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And if you're saying what assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, that was the one where the guy got near Kavanaugh's home, realized what he was doing, called 911, and asked the police to come and stop him because he felt like he might have lost control of himself. All assassination attempts should be like that one. And the right, incidentally, is still milking the death of Charlie Kirk so hard that Trump doesn't even mention the assassination attempt on himself until three sentences later. He does mention a shooting targeting an ICE facility in Dallas without mentioning that the victims were detainees, and his administration will not mention that and claims it's all part of a, quote, culmination of sophisticated organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. No, those are not the lyrics to the Trump national anthem as sung by the January six Foggy Bottom Boys. It is what Trump is doing, but he claims he isn't. But he claims you are. Regardless, soon or late, Trump will use this or threaten to use this against civilians, against Democrats, against political commentators, against anybody who doesn't harrumph the right's level of madness. Its desire to figuratively or literally start killing liberals is at fever pitch, exacerbated by its growing shock that, outside its bubble, it's not just that nobody thought Charlie Kirk was Jesus, it's that barely anybody knew who Charlie Kirk was. The madness is so pervasive and so far from any kind of logical through line that Gavin Newsom mocked another Trump tweet by posting, stephen Miller is a fascist. Miller retweets that with, why did you call me that? Sebastian Gorka then tweets, that's what you called Charlie Kirk. Then one of you assassinated him. Why are you inciting murder? Derek Van Orden, the congressman representing CTE and ptsd, then tweets, this reaches the threshold of domestic terrorism. This is no longer inflammatory. It's criminal. Calling somebody a fascist is now incitement to murder and a crime and domestic terrorism. Well, okay, none of these people, including Miller himself, even remember that before they resumed their dictatorship, Miller tweeted that the Biden administration was, quote, fascist. And in a different tweet, he called that administration fascist tyranny. And then he tweeted about an investigation of musk, which meant, quote, we now live in a fascist country. And in a fourth one, he tweeted, the Democrat party is now a fascist party. Plus all the times Trump called liberals fascists. So let's, let's see. Calling somebody a fascist on Twitter is a crime. Miller called Biden and every Democrat in the country a fascist. So that'll be, let's see. Carry the two. 153,045,000 counts of criminal domestic terrorism against defendant Stephen Miller. Please pay at the desk. There are two messages here. One is, if you do not submit to National Security presidential memorandum number seven, which is not to be confused with strawberry letter number 23, you will be invaded or accused of terrorism or both. The other message is, we will eventually start killing all of you. The bloodlust on the right is reaching orgiastic proportions. But until then, in the interim, we're just gonna roll out a blacklist, quote, corrupt and totally Trump deranged. Lisa Monaco, a purported pawn of legal lightweight Andrew Weissman, was a senior national security aide under Barack Hussein Obama and a lawfare and weaponization obsessed deputy Attorney General under crooked Joe Biden and Lisa's puppet boss, Attorney General Merrick Garland, who are all architects of the worst ever deep state conspiracy arm asleep already. But later on he gets to this. She's been shockingly hired as the President of global affairs from Microsoft in a very senior role with access to highly sensitive information. Monaco's having that kind of access is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to stand. She is a menace to US national security, especially given the major contracts Microsoft has. The United States government, because of many wrongful acts, it is my opinion that Microsoft should immediately terminate the employment of Lisa Monaco. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I'm not crazy at all. It's a blacklist trying to get somebody fired because of what you tell everybody else is their belief system. You know, that Donald Trump, a criminal, should be in jail, not in the White House. This is classic McCarthyism with the kind of red scare, pitchforks and torches as old as the nation itself, but mixed with a new ingredient, the insanity and sadism of this President of the United States of America. And mixed with a new planning twist, the softening up of the audience in advance of supporters to this indict Comey smear Monaco insist that calling someone a terrorist is domestic terrorism. Insisted calling someone a fascist is domestic terrorism. Except when Stephen Miller or Trump calls somebody a fascist, put out a memo saying anti Christianity is one of the terrorist act Indica. Remember, don't have to be true. His cult don't even have to believe it's true. It's enough he says it, no matter how far from reality he and they might be. Happily, Democrats are fighting back. And when I say Democrats are fighting back, I mean Democrats are not fighting back. Akeem Jeffries on one of the previous details of Trump's switch to Overdrive on declaring all Democrats terrorists, Akeem tweeted, quote, the Trump administration's threat to deploy troops in Portland is unlawful. Here's a thought. He writes, focus on protecting the healthcare of the American people. That'll scare him off. Akeem. He never heard language like that before. Oh no, I've forgotten. To protect the healthcare of the American people. I've misspent my presidency. Oh, no. Let me call Hakeem Jeffries immediately and fix my woeful crimes. Oh, no. Zakim Jeffries told me to. I know what you're saying. You're saying Keith Akeem Jeffries. Who in the hell is Akeem Jeffries? Okay, so about Jim Comey. Jim Comey was indicted. So he could be indicted. The case is nonsense. They sent this beauty pageant contestant. No, no, literally. I'm not slurring her, just cuz she has TV hair. This sort of lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, she was in the Miss Colorado contest. I believe she won Miss Uncongeniality. They sent this poor woman out just to get something out of a grand jury so they could dirty Comey up and say, we indicted Comey, we're not failures. And they indicted him because. Because Trump got indicted. So with Comey, there's no crime. Only 61% of a grand jury voted yes on only 66% of the charges presented to it. There's no crime and no evidence. Prosecutors had given Ms. Uncongeniality a detailed memo saying there's no case on perjury, there's no case on obstruction. Don't even. Not even probable cause. And after an investigation that took months, the only evidence they found, they told her, that will exonerate Comey. If you go to trial. Dumb f. And there's no crime and no evidence and no prosecutor. Halligan really is an idiot. No senior U.S. prosecutor would sign the charges or any other grand jury documents. She's never tried a criminal case. They're not sure anybody currently working for Trump will be willing to try this case. There's no crime and no evidence and no prosecutor, and she has no clue. Halligan handed to the judge two different versions of this indictment, one listing two counts and one listing three counts. And she had signed the both. And when the judge said, you signed both, you can't sign both, she didn't know she had signed both. But how does my hair look? There's no crime and no evidence and no prosecutor, and she has no clue. And there's almost no support among Trump lawyers. Andrew McCarthy on Fox. I don't think there's a case. It seems to be premised on something that's not true. I don't think this case even gets to trial. Megan Kelly, who was a lawyer once before she found out they did not allow you to take camera filters into court with you, said the case was so lean, it was, quote, shot up with Ozempic. Ben Shapiro, quote, the indictment is quite weak. It's unlikely to survive in court. The propagandist and fabulous John Solomon said it was the thinnest worded document he'd ever seen. So, of course, Trump keeps insisting this is the worst crime in human history. And he's guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. When I was a kid, President Nixon said something that vaguely indicated that he, Dick Nixon, thought Charles Manson was guilty. And they almost had to dismiss the charges against Manson and the whole cult because a president chiming in on a criminal case was considered an unficilified possible poisoning of the jury pool. And if that isn't enough of an ick factor, there's Stephen Miller involved in this, too. Quote, what James Comey did is truly one of the most severe assaults on our freedoms and liberties that has occurred in the whole history of this nation. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. Almost concurrently, Miller's wife Katie got off her broom, went on Fox, and Jesse Waters asked her, actually asked her, what is it like being married to such a sexual matador? To which she answered, like, this was not something that only crazy people ask and only crazier people answer. She answered, he is an incredibly inspiring man who gets me going in the morning with his speeches being like, let's start the day. I am going to defeat the left and we are going to win. Well, as they say, whatever turns you on. But can we back up just a second? Jesse Waters what does sexual matador even mean? Stephen Miller is a sexual matador. What. What that means. He. He screams Olay a lot. It means that sooner or later, his afternoon is going to end with him getting gored in the groin. Play with the matador. Get the horror horns. Also, Comey was indicted in part because Trump was just humiliated by Jimmy Kimmel and Trump needed something to make him look less gored in the groin because something is up with Trump's mental health and overall health, too, but mostly because Trump was indicted. He's still humiliated by that. They pretend he's not. He pretends he's not. He is still. Comey is indicted because now when Trump's people think indicted government officials, they think they all do it. They all get indicted. Remember how good it felt when Trump got indicted? I'm so indicted and I just can't fight it I'm about to go to jail and America likes it. I'm so indicted my defense ain't airtighted and I know, I know the unindicted co conspirators can bite it. Bite it. Thank you, Nancy Faust. Couple of other notes that I'll finally pay off on. That thing I mentioned at the start about Trump kind of promising his followers immortality. You saw the House Dems actually doing something smart. Cherry picking more Epstein estate documents. They released screenshots showing Epstein meetings with Steve Bannon on 216 19, with Peter Thiel on 1127 17, a potential visit to Epstein's island for Elon Musk on 126 14. Prince Andrew 51200 is listed as a passenger on Epstein's jet. And the simple message quote, doj must release the Epstein files now accompanied. These little screenshots don't overplay Epstein. At the moment, Trump has managed to bury a lot of it, ironically using Charlie Kirk's body to do it. But it will be back. Just keep it warm. But did you see Trump inadvertently confessing to January 6th? Yeah. The aforementioned John Solomon completely repurposed an FBI report that 274 or 275 or more than 250 bureau agents went to the Capitol during January 6th. The MAGAs keep changing the numbers. Solomon, then Glenn Beck, then other outlets immediately branded them as plain clothes plants. FBI sent plain clothes plants provocateurs, thus creating 274 new Ray Epps provocateur conspiracy theories. Trump then posted one of these articles. Oops. Let me see if I've got this straight. Trump, Trump's FBI 2025 run by a Trump appointee as Trump FB leaks that Trump's FBI 2021, run by the previous Trump appointee as Trump FBI director, sent 274 Trump FBI agents into the crowd on January 6th to foment a Trump coup on Trump's behalf. While Trump controlled the FBI and Trump controlled the doj, and Trump controlled law enforcement and Trump controlled the military. Well, thanks for the confession. The Trump confession, Trump it fell to Cash Patel to do the cleanup on aisle six. He said the agents showed up at 2:30 in the afternoon because there just weren't enough actual cops there to do so. And the FBI is a lot of things, but incompetent with guns and controlling crowds is not one of them. Still, nice confession, Trump. Then we have the dumbest Democrat of the week and it's one of our crack staff here in New York. Boy, oh boy, do we have the worst Democrats in the country. Eric Adams. I guess the Cava bag arrived. So he ended his campaign yesterday, allowing everybody to focus on the corruption of only Cuomo. But he's still going to be on the ballot. He will still siphon votes from Cuomo. If you supported Adams and your second choice was Mamdani, you've probably heard about Adams dropping out. I don't know if that's true. If you supported Cuomo. Still, the dumbest Democrat of the week is not him. And it's not the aforementioned Jeffries. It's the senator to Nowhere, Kirsten Gillibrand. I'll just read this from Politico. Quote Gillibrand has circulated an invitation obtained by Playbook for a Napa retreat for the DSCC, the Senate fundraising committee for Democrats, on October 13th and 14th. Should the government shut down next week, that's this week. The retreat could fall on what might be day 12 of a shutdown. The itinerary features accommodations at the Hotel Yountville with a resort and spa that extends a Tuscan European vibe, and a wine tour and dinner at the Staglin Family Vineyards amid its wine cave. The plans for the luxury trip come amid Trump administration threats of mass firings of federal workers. A Democrat briefed on the event tells us it's also slated to include Representative Haley Stevens, D Michigan, who's campaigning for her state's open Senate seat. As a gritty daughter of the Midwest, a Monty Python line comes to my mind. There's not wrong with gala luncheons. I've had more gala luncheons than you've had hot dinners. But optics? Anybody? Anybody at all? You know when they put D and Y next to somebody Like Kirsten Gillibrand, Jill Brand in her case, it's necessary. So you, so you have some idea that she claims to be a Democrat. And as to the optics, if, if, if they knew optics, they wouldn't have appointed this zero Gillibrand as senator in the first place. When they appointed her to replace Hillary as senator in 2009, I had literally never heard of her. And given her track record since, you know, I have still never heard of her. And now immortality. And again, I want to be clear, I'm saying immortality, not immorality. Trump posted and then deleted over the weekend an AI video of what would have looked to the uninformed like a clip from his own daughter in law. Lara's Fox News show, complete with an AI Lara Trump and an AI video of Trump reading from a printed script at his desk about a new med bed card which Trump is going to give to every American. Huh? What the hell's a med bed? Well, it is the basis of several really big conspiracy theories, all variations on the idea that there are new beds, new medical technology now capable of basically, you know, bestowing immortality, undoing aging, healing, everything. Why am I trying to summarize this when we have right here with us AI Donald Trump and AI Lara Trump and AI Fox News. Everything except Jesse Waters asking about sexual matadors. AI Fox News and Donald and Lara Trump are here to summarize it. Trump posted this Breaking Now, President Donald.
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Announcer (Washable Sofas Ad)
J. Trump has announced a historic new health care system, the launch of America's first med bed hospitals, and a national med bed card for every citizen.
- [29:43]
Keith Olbermann
Every American will soon receive their own medbed card. With it, you'll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctors in the nation. Equipped with the most advanced technology in the world, these facilities are safe, modern and designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength. This is the beginning of a new era in American health care.
- [30:07]
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In this first phase, only a limited number of med bed cards will be released. Registration details will be announced very soon.
- [30:15]
Keith Olbermann
Now you can tell it's AI because Trump's reading of the script is too good. Also, Lara Trump doesn't have a deviated septum in that one. And in the video, the Fox News graphics are wrong. There aren't any typos in them. Plus, of course, there is no such thing as a med bed or a medbed card. But why did Trump post this, then delete it? Was he just trying to co opt the conspiracy theory? Among the qanons, Trump announced med beds and then, and then Then and then they made him delete it. Or is he going that Looney Tunes that he thinks they exist? Or is he so sick that he's thinking, boy, I could sure use a med bed right now. Too bad it's just a conspiracy theory. I mean, honestly, we all knew he was crazy, but how does he keep getting more crazy? Like we keep getting half the distance to the goal line. There is a postscript to the Q and on conspiracy about this. One of the wilder offshoots is remember the insistence, what was it, two years ago, three years ago, that President John F. Kennedy was still alive and his son, you know, John F. Kennedy, presumably with his head all epoxied together and stuff. The tertiary syphilis version of the med bed conspiracy theory is that JFK has been kept alive since 1963 in a med bed, which is ridiculous. And also such stupid, wasteful misuse of a creative conspiracy theory. Because who would believe that, that there have been med beds for 62 years and nobody knows about them and, and, and that they've kept JFK alive in this and, and he hasn't gone on any dates or anything. And it's so stupid. Who would believe this now if they pointed it at RFK Jr. With his face looking like the ass of a 5000 year old Egyptian mummy and they said RFK Jr. Is being kept alive, he goes home at night and sleeps on a med bed. That I would believe. Well, it looks like a 5,000 year old Egyptian mummy's ass. Also of interest here, that post hit job I told you about last week while it came out, if you didn't hear about it, it was because even for the post it was really, really, really weak. The big breaking news about me is I was rude at a restaurant in the last century in 1997 and the Post has just found this out in 2025. No, I'm not kidding. But more importantly, the true big news, ladies and gentlemen, it is now at this moment, Stevie Week. That's next. This is Countdown.
- [33:30]
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- [35:16]
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Lot going on in Hollywood. How are you supposed to stay on top of it all? Variety has the solution. Take 20 minutes out of your day and listen to the new daily Variety podcast for breaking entertainment news and expert perspectives.
- [35:30]
Keith Olbermann
Where do you see the business actually heading?
- [35:32]
Cynthia Littleton
Featuring the iconic journalists of Variety and hosts, hosted by co editor in chief Cynthia Littleton.
- [35:38]
Keith Olbermann
The only constant in Hollywood is change.
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Cynthia Littleton
Open your free iHeartradio app, search daily Variety and listen now.
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- [36:17]
Keith Olbermann
This is Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Still ahead on this edition of countdown, it's Stevie Week. Thirteen years ago tomorrow, Unplanned, unimagined, I was born again in dogs. Better late than never. I've told you most of my dog stories. I've told you most of my bad Olivia newsi stories. This is a good Olivia newsi story. The day our dog Stevie adopted us 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 runner up Worse Isabel Vincent, New York Post I told you this was coming. She was the writer who must have done something bad there and they demoted her from covering what passes for news in the New York Post to writing the same semiannual bullshit. Keith Ullerman is our bad Mean Liberal of the Week article that the New York Post has been writing about me since like 1990. This was not one of the Post's better efforts. It was neither imaginative nor true. It relied on three things. A comment from my former agent who I fired for professional misconduct 15 years ago. A story I have never told. I have never intended to tell it. I may tell it later. I'm still thinking about it. It frankly, it made me worry more about her health more than anything else. I'll get to that later maybe. But beyond that, they wrote two things that made me laugh out loud. I don't read the articles anymore. I learned to do that. Other people send me tidbits and I laughed at both of these. Most of the quotes about how terrible I was and how everybody hated me at ESPN were from Sage Steele, whom ESPN reprimanded when she went in and said she didn't want to work with me because I was a liberal whom ESPN fired after she trashed them about vaccines, who has turned into a right wing nut job because nobody in television will touch her. The former host of the NBA Finals and the six o' Clock Sports center and the Miss America contest. She goes from that to interviewing Russell Brand on podcasts. Most importantly, she, the authority on me, has met me once in her entire life. Once. And that was when she came to New York to co anchor SportsCenter from my office instead of hers so she could suck up to me. I mean really, she's the authority. I mean I don't think she could tell you how tall I am without googling it. But the best part was a story that they added and it's anonymous. Which I mean, just listen to this. No source of somebody who said they heard I was once rude to the wait staff, to the servers or somebody at the White Birch Inn in Southington, Connecticut. I mean tears welled in my eyes when I read this cause I know what the backstory has to have been to this. The White Birch was a nice little family owned kind of half diner, half rustic Inn, small little restaurant that was positioned perfectly. It and a McDonald's across the street were the only other businesses within like half a mile of ESPN world headquarters in Bristol. After the friendlies closed, there was literally nothing else. There were very few street lights. I wasn't sure the whole street had electricity. There was a. There was a tractor, a small tractor, like a half lawn, half small farm tractor place about three quarters of a mile down by the highway. That was it anyway. The White Birch. Decent omelets, nice people. Sat right on the town line between Southington, where I lived, and Bristol, where ESPN was. And I was rude to somebody there before the White Birch closed. The White Birch doesn't exist anymore. It turns out the White Birch closed in 1998. The last time I would have been there would have been 1997. Literally the last time I was in this place the New York Post wrote about last week was 28 years ago. Then ESPN bought the land on which the White Birch stood, and they destroyed the White Birch. They leveled it. And somebody thought I was rude to them. I mean, honestly, the worst thing you can find on me is something I said or didn't say, or one day I tipped 15% instead of 20% or who knows what. And it was anonymous, from 28 years ago. I mean, Ms. Vincent, you couldn't find an anonymous source who said I passed gas during a World Series telecast 28 years ago? Something that would have made your hit job look less stupid, less like a hit job by the New York Post. On the New York Post, as I told the author, if I'd written anything that bad when I worked for Murdoch, he'd have fired me. Oh, right, Murdoch did fire me. Then he had to pay me $100,000 a month for eight months anyway. I wonder if that will happen to Ms. Vincent. I don't think so. The runner up, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, or whoever that is, who did the body snatcher, bit with him and turned him into just another Trump political prostitute with a bad comb over. Friday night, Marco Rubio's State Department tweeted this. And I'm reading the handle part verbatim, so you get the point, since this is audio and not video and you can't see this. Department of State Department. Earlier today, Colombian President Gustavo Petro stood on an NYC street and urged US soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence. First off, tweeting this out is the Barbra Streisand effect. Did you know he did this? He stood on an NYC street. I presume you mean New York City. I'm sorry, you could not be troubled to spell out New York. Marco Minion stood on an NYC straight and urged US soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence. I looked up the story to see what that was all about right here in big city. Like, wow, I need to follow Colombian President Gustavo Petro. We will revoke Petro's visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions. Well, that's a stupid and amateurish thing to do in diplomatic circles. But on the Trump scale of stupid and amateurish things, it's only like a 4. Stupid and amateurish thing. I mean, you could see it's an irrational response to this, but it's not totally based on, you know, an imaginary giant Gila monster in Portland that you have to send terrorists in to destroy. This is like, well, alright, you know, telling US troops to disobey orders, that's touchy. Anyway, the point is not that at all. The point is the Petra that gets a 10 because Marco's department tagged Gustavo Petro. And Gustavo Petro is not the handle of the President of Colombia. Gustavo Petro. He's Petro. Gustavo, this Istavo Petro is the Gustavo Petro who appears to be a video game magazine writer and Star wars addict who posts that his home is on the outer rim. Sorry, Gustavo, your visa has been revoked. Yours and Boba Fett's. My God, what amateurs. If we don't all die because of an accidental nuclear war in which one of These morons drops 10 gigatons on Mississippi or something, we'll be lucky. That's my greatest fear. Not, not a Trump takeover, not, not a dictatorship. None of those things. My fear is somebody says, maybe Marco Rubio. What does this button do? And you realize it's just amazing when you think about this, but Marco Rubio's entire life peaked the day he gave the response to the State of the Union and he had to stop in the middle of it to grab a bottle of water that was like just out of his reach on the left side. And he. And he was trying to pretend nobody would notice, even though it was on national television live. Imagine this. There's somebody worse than that. Our winner. One of the all time greats of worst persons, one of the stupidest people I have ever known, Newt Gingrich. Let me just read this thing because this has got everything that Newt Gingrich's life was wasted on, including this tone of righteous indignation as he slowly lights the match to blow himself to hell. Why did Congresswoman Spanberger vote against the continuing resolution to keep the government open. She wants to be governor of Virginia and yet Virginians who work for the federal government will be directly hurt by her vote. She should be voting to keep the government open and federal employees in the jobs, not not for a shutdown and layoffs or even firings for her constituents. 4:50pm Sept. 25, 2025 at Newt Gingrich Ooh, sick burn Newt. That'll get that other candidate, that lunatic woman the Republicans are running Winsome Newsom, Sensome, Sears, Roebuck, whatever her name is. That'll get her elected because Spanberger didn't vote to keep the government. So you're asking why Abigail Spanberger did not vote for the continuing resolution bill which was presented to Congress to the House of Representatives for a vote on the 16th of September? Is that right Newt? You're asking why she did not vote in the House for this bill on the 16th of September? Well, Newt, perhaps it's because Abigail Spanberger is no longer a member of the House of Representatives. She did not stand for reelection Newt a year ago, instead choosing to run for governor of Virginia where Newt lives and has a business and isn't paying attention. Spanberger has not been in the House of Representatives since her term expired on January 3rd of this year and Newt does not know this. It's 257 days between her last day in the House and the vote. He's complaining about that she didn't illegally vote in. Newt is mad at her for not voting illegally when she's a member of the House Alumni Association. It's like asking why you haven't seen President Ulysses S. Grant recently. Newt No, I have no idea why he wasted millions of dollars in nine months of America's political dialogue while the 911 terrorists were plotting against us and he impeached Bill Clinton only to see Clinton keep his job and have his approval ratings go up while Newt got fired and lost his job as Speaker Gingrich Today's Other Worst Person in the World A little early today to our number one story and things I promise not to tell on my favorite topic, my dogs. Today I have four dogs. Last year during Stevie week it was just three. My elder Rescue Minet, the guy who came to me in a dementia like trance and after we took out all of his rotten teeth within months he was leaping over the white stripes in the crosswork walk like an Olympian just for the hell of it. Minet got to his 17th birthday on a Monday in July of 2024. He took his last walk on a Thursday. He got his legs kind of crossed up on the way back. Didn't look good. He stopped eating on that Friday. And then he gently and peacefully died in my arms on that Sunday, as if he were saying, hey, babe, I made it to 17. Thanks for the use of the hall. It's been great. Bye now. Ted. My first rescue, who is seated at my feet as I record this is still going strong. At seven and a half, he is a handsome devil and the beneficiary of heart surgery when he was about 8 months old. He's probably going to need more heart surgery as it turns out. He is my son. Certainly as if he had two legs and was in the second grade. He flirts with girls, human girls. He did it last night on our walk. And he plays ball. He also owns. He owns the world. Just. Just ask him. This is. This is his world. He has also bravely borne the appearance of a kid brother. Kit is 15 months old. He too had heart surgery as a puppy. He aced it. Kit looks like a toy come to life. He greets strangers on the street. He was born a month before the Great Leaper Minet died at 17. The name Minet is colloquial French for kitty. And I have no doubt Minet in some way sent his virtual namesake Kit to me with the quick message, go see this guy. He'll take care of you. Rose is 11 now. A beautiful, austere, classic girl. Little, tough to know, Very sincere too. If she could speak, she would be the one who would address me as Father. As in, oh, father, you're being sentimental again. And then there is Stevie. Stevie, 13 years and what now? 3 months old and tougher than all of you and me put together. Beautiful, sometimes belligerent, always asking, is there a treat involved? And always indispensable. And as late as 3:00pm Eastern Time on September 30, 2012, 13 years ago tomorrow, not one word of any of what I have just said would have made any sense to me whatsoever. I had never had a dog in my life. Cause allergies, mine and my mother's, and travel and work. And then Olivia Newsi looked at me and said, I need a puppy fix. Her family dog was dying. She didn't say it. Her folks wouldn't say it. The dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Casey, did her best to be the only truthful one in the bunch. She was moving purposefully and unsteadily with every step and looking out at her world with a seeming mixture of acceptance and sadness and regret that the one time she really needed these bipeds to speak for her on her behalf, they just couldn't or wouldn't do it. I just need, Olivia told me, for dogs not to mean sadness. Just for a couple of minutes, Just for a while. Can we go to that pet shop on Lex? I mumbled that well, we could go, of course, but that I had resisted the dog entreaties of the 11 girlfriends before her and I would successfully resist hers as well. I had always loved dogs, but I was allergic, and more importantly, my doctors had all said that hypoallergenic dogs were a crapshoot, and Olivia said, I do not want a dog. I am not trying to convince you to get me a dog or us a dog. I just want to hold a puppy for a little while and have you there with me. She paused, as she always did when she felt both hopeless and angry at being at the mercy of feelings, and she lapsed into her version of the shrug emoji. As sappy as all this sounds, and it did sound sappy, Olivia was not sentimental. We used to look at each other in stark shock that she, the prematurely cynical girl, and me, the everlastingly cynical old guy, had proved the maxim about the cynics just being the disappointed romantics of this world. And then we'd giggle and then I'd insult her or she'd insult me and the next thing you knew we were insulting some politician. This was different. Casey was dying and Olivia didn't know how to deal with it. But to her credit she recognized she needed some self care and she needed my support as she got that self care. So we left for the pet shop in mid afternoon and I told her my true fear was that that my native but dormant shared affinity with dogs would all of a moment spring fully grown from my soul and I would blurt, I'll take all of them. I mean, even then, what kind of life could I offer a dog? I was on television, thus I was always in a television studio, thus never home for play or walks or just the prevention of canine loneliness. Olivia lived with me nearly all the time but was out of town half the time too. On stories I was clueless as to every aspect of the dog thing. I had littered the continent with dead house plants. I no longer thought myself ever capable of pulling my own ego out of my backside sufficiently to take care of fish. I had literally not had a pet of any kind since 1967. I had come to terms with living in a wistful hazy world in which I might inadvertently have a dog pal for a few minutes, but but almost never indoors, and never without the pang of knowing that the hello itself contained the start of the goodbye. And I was allergic. I was allergic to the obvious big furry, friendly dogs. There was an incident once on a plane when I didn't know there was a dog on board, in fact sitting right behind me, and we almost landed the plane on an emergency basis because I'd stopped breathing. I was allergic. I might be allergic even to the ones that were billed as non allergic. I could be in the same room with a dog for an hour, often longer, without incident, but to hold or touch them within half an hour I would start to feel my throat swelling and closing. And if I disobeyed this immutable canon, the buried tears of permanent exclusion from dog world might be replaced by the far worse ones of separation and loss. Coming back to the present day, literally, it's two weekends ago, I had to send back a rescue dog because I was allergic to her. We didn't know she was a mix, and I was allergic to whatever the mix was. She was here two hours. She's fine. The rescue is fine. She will be fine. I'm helping with her recovery. I am still processing my guilt if that had happened to me at any point in the past, especially in 2012, to reject worse, to betray the love of a dog, to send it back. What happened then? Anyway, I went with her, and as Olivia and I approached the shop, there was, as there almost always is, a small crowd kind of undulating around it. The narrow sidewalks of Lexington Avenue make these human clots easier to form, even late on the first Sunday of autumn. There is also an obstacle course there of grates and cellar doors and bikes chained to poles and parking meters and canopies for diners and restaurants and mattress showrooms and other places that aren't quite seedy but also are not your first choice. The uptown edges of the grime and noise that constitute the maze of the 59th Street Bridge lend the place a congested feel even when it's otherwise quiet. We are also three blocks up from the trying just a little too hard merchandising of Bloomingdale's. There are unwashed delivery trucks, double parked 365 days a year there and then totally out of place amid the prosaic trappings of a big city. At its most meh. There they are, bouncing off each other, tearing infinitely at other tiny heads and tails and paws, doing a seeming pantomime of dismemberment Their yips and the crunch of the shredded cavorting paper are just audible through the glass and over the din of the street. They create an oasis of cute. And just in case you can't tell what they are, there was this big neon sign above their street front window that read puppies. Don't make me go in, I pleaded. She reassured me, we'd go in, she'd hold the dog. All I had to do was take a picture. A minute, tops. You don't understand. I reached for her hand. What I'm trying to say is, I've always wanted a dog. I could never have one. Just as the door to the shop opened, she grabbed my arm, Olivia pulled forcefully, swore at me and muttered, you'll survive. Man up. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact. My inner dialogue as we moved towards puppies and past puppies, and the appearance of a small staircase to a training loft confirmed we were now going under puppies. And in the deepest recesses of the shop, there was a wall of puppies to our right, three cages high, six across, all a yellowish beige behind a reddish brown Formica countertop. And then a structural beam, and then three cages high and two cages across, and then a corner with a small visiting pen built into the countertop. And then, front of me, the Hollywood Squares of puppies. Three high, three across, nine puppies, all of them staring at me and screaming at me and making eye contact. A salesman introduced himself as Jeffrey. Jeffrey asked Olivia if there was any dog she wanted him to bring to her. Let me see the Maltese, she said. The girl. In that moment, two things struck me. Firstly, this was my cue to get my phone out and prepare to take the photo of her with the puppy. Secondly, the dog, whom the salesman was now temporarily liberating from the surprisingly spare cage, was the only living soul inside the pet shop besides me, who was not making any damn noise at all. Every other dog was perfecting its adolescent bark. The cats were making a bewildering variety of noises. And was that actually a Norwegian blue? Parrot squawk I just heard. Remarkable bird, the Norwegian blue, isn't it? Beautiful plumage. But this Maltese said nothing. She looked like her torso would easily fit in one of my hands. And if she was three pounds, a quarter of that was hair and half of that was curled. And presumably somebody had to come by every day to turn what sat atop her head into a mohawk up top and a mullet in the Back, she was in a cage with another dog. Her brother. Her cage mate brother seemed a little bigger, but his eyes were clearly smaller than hers. Their color was immediately visible, even if he still had forlorn hopes of avoiding eye contact. His eyes shone. Her eyes were illuminated. He tried to get past her into the salesman's arms. She simply lifted up her head towards him. It actually crossed my mind that she looked like she was about to say, hi, Jeffrey, how are you today? He put her gently down in that playpen at the right corner of the counter. Olivia asked if she could pick her up and nodded to me to get the camera ready. Honestly, jeffrey confided, this is the sweetest dog we've had here in months. I mean, I say that every day to almost everybody, about almost every dog, but this time I'm actually not lying. Olivia cradled the little Maltese in her arms with the dog's head facing to my right. I tapped the camera on the phone. My hand was actually shaking, and as I centered up Olivia and the puppy in the frame, the Maltese suddenly wiggled upright, placed her front paws on Olivia's shirt near her neck, and just as I snapped the image, the dog reached up and kissed my girlfriend on the lips. To this day, on occasion, I am completely incapable of remembering anything that happened in my life before that exact moment. Olivia made the appropriate sounds of human approval. Geoffrey began discussing how little grooming the Maltese breed needed and the great price he could give us. And even as my head spun, it seemed silly to me that he was calculating the tax on something that was obviously, timelessly and eternally priceless. Olivia said something about how we needed a minute outside to discuss it and handed the puppy back to Jeffrey. The dog looked at us sweetly, separately in turn, and if she had said, nice to meet you, I wouldn't have been a bit surprised. Then, as the pup went back into the cage with her brother, something extraordinary happened. The little girl was reaching her head up towards the spout of the cage's water bottle with the same graceful movement she'd just made to bestow the kiss on Olivia, when her brother abruptly body slammed her out of the way and her tiny frame bounced off the side of the cage. Then, to my shock and confusion, I heard a deep, threatening growl, a vengeful reverberating throughout the pet shop. My shock was because the growl was coming from me. The next sounds were from Olivia. My God, what's wrong with you? I didn't know it at the time, but as we turned to fight our way back to the street to have this conversation that we weren't going to have because we were leaving. I evidently half skidded into a display full of chew toys and bones I couldn't see, but I didn't recognize my own tears until they hit the edges of my lips. Somehow I managed to say it again, this time in despair. I always wanted a dog, but I could never have one. I'm sorry. Olivia finally figured out what had happened. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm an asshole. Newsy was now helping me to hold myself upright, steering me towards the door to the street. I didn't listen to you. I'm an asshole. I'm an asshole. You told me and I didn't believe you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. The stories came pouring out, all jumbled, one on top of the other. Tiny, the Saint Bernard who only wanted to embrace me, and the McConnell's mutt next door. Boots used to sit on my lap and Tiny didn't make me sneeze. He and the McConnells had three boys and a mother who baked cookies by the car load lot. And Boots never left their side and I was always at their house. And if I was allergic, how was it that I never once had a problem with Boots? How in the hell did that work, huh? And what about Vladimir, that stray cat that my sister found? I used to live in the garage and behaved like a dog and liked to be carried around like a baby. And how allergic was I? And that beautiful, beautiful little Maltese reached up and kissed you on the mouth. And the one time I took my dad's movie camera to the McConnell's house, half of the film I made was of Boots. And what if went back and got the allergy shots again? It was my mother who said she was really allergic, so I must be allergic and what's the use? The little Maltese was perfect and the next person who sees her is gonna snap her up in an instant. And I asked them just to let me try a little dog who wouldn't shed. And the only thing my mother would let me have were lizards and I could take a Zyrtec every day. And I'm so sorry, Tiny. I didn't realize. And I never said goodbye to Boots. And the Maltese is gone. She's gone. She's gone. She's my dog. I know it. I could feel it. She's my dog and she's gone. What happened next? Beggars fiction. And if Olivia's later life could beggar fiction and it could involve RFK Jr. Why shouldn't this part of her life from more than a decade ago. Involve Rudy Giuliani Rudy Effing Giuliani and his part of the story of Stevie Day and what happened to Stevie next. This is countdown.
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Back to the number one story on the Countdown and the day I fell in love with a dog for the first time and my girlfriend, the former girlfriend Olivia Nuzi, and I left her in the pet shop and went home. We were walking up Park Avenue, me mid meltdown, somehow nearing the armory on Park Avenue one block west and four blocks north of that pet shop. To her credit, Olivia had kept me from throwing myself into traffic or dissolving into a puddle on East 62nd Street. The overwhelming sensation was not one of having left the tiny puppy in the shop, but of having left a part of myself in that shop that was my dog. I had never been more certain of anything in my life, and what was worse was she was obviously going to be taken snapped up by somebody else even before I could get back there. Who could resist her? I certainly hadn't. My chaotic stream of consciousness monologue paused only when I had no choice but to shut up and gasp for breath, and the comments with which Olivia tried to soothe me in these interstices were self abnegating and solemn. She had talked me off the limb of my certainty that the dog had already been sold and was now steering me back towards sanity. I had to, she said later. You were having a breakdown. She said we should go home, and if I wanted to talk seriously about the practicalities of owning a dog, we could do that and still get the puppy the next morning, even if it meant delaying her scheduled departure next morning for dc. Don't worry, I'm sure she's still there. They were getting ready to close. Didn't you notice that? She'll be there in the morning for the first time, I exhaled and then immediately went right back into a full panic. Wait, she's still in there. She's. She's. I sniffled anew and the tears resumed. She's in that cage with that brother of hers in the basement somewhere. Before Olivia could try to answer that, and I swear this is true, Rudy Giuliani spilled down the stairs from the Park Avenue Armory. A cop suddenly appeared from a different nowhere and put out an arm and firmly asked us to stop walking, and Giuliani scuttled rodent like into his waiting car. A wife was with him. I did not and do not know which number. The driver was already closing the door behind them when I shouted at Rudy, how come my dog has to spend the night in a cage while that asshat is allowed to roam around this city without a leash on? Later that evening, recalling my remark, Olivia said that was the first moment she thought we might just get home safe and sound after all and I would not have to be institutionalized. Didn't take more than 10 minutes to get back to my apartment from there, and we walked it in silence. I had long since saturated my handkerchief and some tissues Olivia had had in her pockets. I was breathing deeply and restoratively now, and the sniffle frequency was reduced to once or twice per block. My mind, though, was crowded with dogs I had known Boots, Tiny Vladimir, the cat who was not a dog but might as well have been. Even Olivia's little Casey, dying out in her parents home in Jersey and unaware of the seismic events which she had set in motion that day. Other dogs to all the dogs in all of the stories of James Thurber that I had read on television every night, I had smiled along with his poetic, loving descriptions of them but never confessed that I loved them as he must have. There was Samantha, who my late friend Bruce Hagen used to bring everywhere, including our college radio station newsroom. Samantha was big enough to have had license plates, the first really big dog who didn't frighten me. There was my great aunt's Yorkie, or maybe Morky, whose gas was so potent that the Christmas just before I turned nine, my great uncle said he was convinced the dog had been a German terror weapon at Chateau Terry, and he and I had bonded because I, just before I was nine, already knew what Chateau Terry was. There was Nelly McNally, the only dog that any of my sometimes out of town girlfriends ever had actually put on the phone with me. In my mind they all stood before me, all lined up, all quiet, all smiling smuggly with the kindest type of I told you so look on their gorgeous faces and dozens more behind them, vague shapes and sizes, dogs who had belonged to neighbors or co workers past who are just chance encounters on the streets of any of a dozen cities decades earlier. There were moments in which I glimpsed this scene in my head and I saw all the dogs who'd ever lived. No, I'm sorry, olivia said. I shouldn't have been that selfish. But Now I was disagreeing with her. And as I unlocked our apartment door, I began to tell her of the dogs I had just been communing with and what had suddenly become necessary, urgent, inevitable and perfect, but about which I needed as much detail as I could from her in as short a period as possible. And she tried. Well, you just take the dog wherever you can. My parents have been saying this a lot lately. Now they regret not doing more things with Casey. Not adventures, not just to the park or outside. Just take her with you. Just go out into the yard or just hold her while you watch tv. You just let the dog in. We went through topic after topic. Cleaning, training, poop handling, walks, food, puppy sitters, moving books off ground level shelves, discipline, and most importantly, a backup plan in case this epiphany was false and I was still allergic or terrified or incompetent at it, or all three. Olivia was, again, extraordinarily helpful. I don't think it'll take much to convince my parents to take her. I mean, after Casey recovers, I can take her to DC tomorrow in the car. I'll bring her back next weekend. So in the interim, you can get the apartment ready and you can get you ready. And you don't have to go in at the deep end. You have some time to prepare. I interrupted Olivia with a kiss. Listen, let's go get her before they close. I don't want to wait. I'm still terrified somebody else will realize how extraordinary she is. Unexpectedly, I had a sudden moment of doubt. This isn't just me having a breakdown, right? I mean, Olivia, she is extraordinary, isn't she? You know dogs. Olivia stopped being nice and now, for the first time, looked at me like I had just gone crazy. Even though I had gone crazy several moments before. She said, obviously, that kiss, that kiss that the dog gave me, that was a real kiss. The pets shop had stayed open, partly because Olivia, again to her eternal credit, phoned them as we hit the street outside the apartment building, and partly because they said they knew you were coming back. Jeffrey said, you just see it sometimes. Also, you seemed kind of emotional. Olivia again helpfully mentioned that in fact I had had a breakdown. They had all the paraphernalia ready for me. Little aqua colored bed, a series of attached gates that could be used as a pen or a barrier. Gates which I still have. I got them out of the closet a week ago. There was a small pink blanket. There was a bag of training pads and the plastic holder for the pads. There was enough dry food to last A month. There was some horrific wet food that looked like a discarded early design for liverwurst. There was a few chew toys in a bag, a bright pink harness and a leash as light as a ribbon, a black carrying bag and paperwork with the puppy's family tree, which to my astonishment, stretched back beyond her birth three months earlier through the six preceding generations, all the way back to six entire years earlier. The stuff they sold me could have included a moped and a stock portfolio to guarantee her college education and a Maltese sized typewriter with a 20 year supply of replacement ribbons and I would have also bought them. A nice lady named Ellie tried to train me to be a dog owner in about 94 seconds and handed me a voucher for a vet and a checklist of stuff to do. I signed a credit card bill. I think I used my own name. I absolved myself of the guilt of not getting a sheltered dog because I was allergic and kind of had to go to the shop and go the route of the bread dog and vowed that I would do something for shelter dogs someday. Plus, I was not looking for a dog. I'd actually fallen in love at first sight. And lastly, because no matter the obvious and often tragic flaws in that system of breeding, there was no arguing with the fact that those who came from a pet shop had as much of a right to a happy life as any other dog. At that moment, they produced her from the back room behind the block of cages where we had first seen her. Her curls had been fluffed up and her hair freshly brushed. It would be lovely to say that the little Maltese made eye contact from across the shop floor, or was aware of our presence, or yipped happily at seeing me again, and it would be completely untrue. The little Maltese calmly scanned the room and only occasionally glanced up at the manager who carried her and didn't look at us once until she was, without ceremony or comment, handed over to me, whereupon she immediately twisted out of my trembling hands, stuck her front paws up on my chest as she had Olivia's and reached up to give me a kiss on the lips and another and a third, and my sunglasses conveniently hid the tears that welled up again. I managed to ask if they all did that, and no, came the answer from that original salesman, Jeffrey. Honestly, sweetest pup we've had here in months. Loves people. I'm sad to see her go. I marveled at how light she was and yet how articulated and strong her body was. Her eyes were far more beautiful than I had realized, oversized even for a puppy almost no white visible, the reflection off the deep brown irises almost iridescent. And more astonishingly, this little soul who was about 1 212th my age and 1 87th my weight and who had a great great great great grandmother born in 2006, as opposed to my great great great great grandmother who was born in 1767. She was meeting and holding my gaze with her own. Whatever I was seeing in her eyes, whatever of the inner being I was actually processing, she seemed to be doing her equivalent vetting of me. I kissed her and was by now not surprised when she kissed me again. The little tongue poked out a fraction of an inch, just enough so any one of us dumb unsubtle bipeds could tell she meant. And then she relaxed from her upright pose, settled back into my arms, her head in the crook of my right elbow, in an attitude I would soon discover she would repeat every time I ever picked her up, right through to about an hour ago. I guess it was an hour, hour and a half, maybe two hours, before suddenly it dawned on me what her name was. She was Stevie. It was the haircut. She had the haircut of Stevie Nicks. Stevie. Olivia did not like it at all. Not at first. Within a week she was saying I was wrong again. You got that exactly right. She is a effing Stevie, all right. Olivia's dog, Casey, who started all this, died within the month. Month. And soon Olivia and I were back in that same pet shop, Olivia solemnly telling me we were going to get her folks a new dog, make the decision for her, thus taking the guilt away from them. In point of fact, Olivia could not make up her mind which of two dogs to get her folks. That's when I was hit by a bolt of inspiration as unexpected as the day Stevie rescued me. I said, wait, if we get one dog, that dog will always be Casey's replacement. That doesn't sound fun. But if we got them both, your folks won't feel guilty at all. I asked Jeffrey, you got a price on the two of them? Jeffrey looked at me like I was insane. Olivia looked at me like I was insane. I said, look, I haven't figured this out completely, but this just makes sense. Two dogs as a team. Neither of them will be a replacement. Together they'll be successors. Just work with me on this. Olivia left the next day for her folks house with Holly the albino chihuahua, and Milo the Maltese. And it was genius of her. She named the dogs in advance so that when she brought them in to meet her grief stricken Folks, they weren't just dogs. I'd like you to meet Holly and Milo. They were individuals. If you're ever in this situation where you want to give somebody a dog and you don't know if they want them or don't know if they're going to take them, name the dog in advance. Well, it didn't work. Olivia texted me that her mother would not even look at them. I don't want Holly and Milo. I want Casey. She said. She was seated in a darkened room holding the dead dog's picture. I said, all right, give it half an hour. Keep the car there. Worst thing happens here. You and I, we suddenly have three dogs. I like dogs. Stevie likes dogs. You like dogs. There are far worse outcomes. Here. Give it half an hour. Twenty minutes later, I get another text from Olivia. It's a photo with the caption, my God, it worked. The picture is of Mr. And Mrs. Newsy rolling on the floor laughing with Holly and Milo. 20 minutes. 20 minutes. From suicidal despair to rolling on the floor with puppies. The solution to the problems of dogs is more dogs. Olivia's parents are long gone. I liked them both, and they liked me. I'd love to know what happened to the dogs. I do know Milo was a cousin of Stevie's. More importantly, I do know Holly and Milo and Olivia's parents made each other happy. And after that, her parents treated me like gold. And every Christmas, we would all gather at their house with all the dogs. Dogs, plural. Olivia and I went and got Rose, Stevie's sister, a year later. And after Olivia and I broke up, I happened to run into, at a pet shop, of course, the woman who leads the American Maltese association rescue group. Of course I did. I was walking Stevie and Rose a year later. Ted, my rescue with the bad heart arrived, and he had surgery, and he's fine. Michu, my other rescue with the bad heart, was here for just a couple of months. He had a very happy life. He just didn't have a very long one. Mine got here just before his 15th birthday, left, as I said, just after his 17th. He and Michaud are now commemorated with tattoos. They are with me always. It's a crowd. Who's that old man with those tiny dogs? But then again, I wasted the first 53 years of my goddamned life living without a dog. So I had to make up for lost time. As many dogs as I can fill into the rest of my life, I'm gonna. Mine's roster spot will be filled again. There will be a dog in need soon enough. All the stuff you see for me about dogs on Twitter, all the dog videos, all the fundraising requests, all of this from one crowded hour 13 years ago tomorrow when it became official I had been adopted. So as you join me in shaking your head about the Olivia Newsie stories, Vanity Fair's new West coast and sexting politicians editor, or you laugh or like me, you do both. Do what I try to do. Remember, Remember this Olivia Newsi story too. So thanks O. Stevie sends her back. 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. Chenale handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust. My accompanyist company, NIST Co. She played the organ while I sang the ultraman theme from ESPN2 written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN is the sports music other music arranged and performed by the group no horns allowed. It occurs to me that the musical staff of this show exceeds the editorial staff of this show by at least five or six, eight to one, maybe more. My announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else was, as always, my fault. So that's Countdown for today. Day 243 of America held hostage again, just 1,220 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck lame brained term. Unless he is removed sooner by Maga and Trumpstein or by that pavement patch on his hand. And maybe it is a pothole or a stuck escalator or Jimmy Kimmel or Tylenol. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. Until then, I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night and good luck. Want some food, do you? I'm Sit, Stevie, sit. 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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Keith Olbermann
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