UNSTABLE TRUMP THREATENS POPE; MELANIA RESTARTS EPSTEIN SCANDAL - 4.13.26

Summary

Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Episode: “UNSTABLE TRUMP THREATENS POPE; MELANIA RESTARTS EPSTEIN SCANDAL - 4.13.26”

Podcast Date: April 13, 2026

Host: Keith Olbermann

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Overview

In this episode, Keith Olbermann delivers his trademark blend of political analysis, media critique, and personal anecdotes, centered on Donald Trump’s unhinged social media attacks—this time targeting the Pope—and the shocking resurgence of the Epstein scandal, courtesy of Melania Trump. Olbermann argues that Melania’s recent speech not only reignited attention on Epstein, but may spell significant political damage for Trump. Interwoven are wide-ranging commentaries on global affairs (notably Iran and Hungary), the mechanics of political media scandals, and a reflective sports segment on returning to ESPN, peppered with humor and trenchant asides.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Trump’s Social Media Meltdown: Attack on Pope Leo and Messianic Delusion

Timestamp: 00:45–06:43

• Trump publicly attacks Pope Leo online, accusing him of being "weak on crime" and "weak on nuclear weapons" ([00:45]).
• Trump bizarrely claims that if he weren’t in the White House, Pope Leo “wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”
• Follow-up: Trump posts an AI illustration of himself in flowing white "Jesus-like" robes, healing a patient surrounded by patriotic symbols and notable figures.
  • “In Trump’s right hand, there is some kind of glowing light, origin unknown, possibly originating in Trump’s ass.” (Olbermann, [01:41])
  • The illustration was widely mocked online: “Trump has finally released his health care plan.” (Patriot Takes/Olbermann, [04:09])
• Trump’s attack triggers confusion and media uproar. In a hasty press interaction, Trump doubles down, misremembers COVID-era priest arrests, and again accuses Pope Leo of favoring nuclear proliferation.
  • Quote: “We don’t like a pope that’s going to say it’s okay to have a nuclear weapon … I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo. He’s a very liberal person …” (Trump, [05:47])

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2. Melania Trump Reignites the Epstein Scandal

Timestamp: 06:43–14:13

• Melania Trump delivers a 535-word, clumsy and defensive speech, unexpectedly reviving the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
  • “You may think I’m crazy, but I believe that lousy … Babel may be the tipping point for the insane tower of Babel that has been Trump’s empire of lies and threats … Melania Trump, face of the resistance. I know.” (Olbermann, [07:23])
• Olbermann emphasizes the significance: Melania “undid a month of world shaking cataclysm caused by her idiot husband to try to bury the Epstein story and his cover up” ([08:12]).
• Melania insists on congressional hearings for Epstein’s victims, contradicting Trump’s dismissals of the Epstein story.
  • "First lady says Epstein today, Epstein tomorrow, Epstein forever." (Olbermann, [09:54])
• Olbermann analyzes the speech’s linguistics: Me (7x), I (17x), Epstein (16x), never (9x), lie (3x), victim (5x), and notes she never defended Trump directly.
  • “She never protected him, she never defended him, she never rallied to his side. He was an afterthought. He was trivial. He was, he is, on his effing own.” (Olbermann, [14:10])

Notable Quote

• “That was not a speech to end a controversy. That was a speech designed to deliberately invoke the Streisand effect and not only reintroduce the entire Epstein nightmare … That was a preemptive strike to raise not just uncomfortable questions for Donald Trump, but fatal ones.” (Olbermann, [11:00])

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3. Amanda Ungaro: The Model, the Connection, and the Epstein Web

Timestamp: 14:13–23:19

• Olbermann provides background on Amanda Ungaro, formerly connected to Paolo Zampoli (owner of ID Models); she insists she was never trafficked or abused by Epstein.
• Ungaro’s recent deportation and subsequent press interviews suggest she may hold explosive information.
  • “I have nothing left to lose in my life. I will tear down the entire system. Be careful with me, bitch.” – Ungaro’s tweet to Melania Trump ([20:19])
• Olbermann speculates on the deeper implications if Trump or his allies were involved in Ungaro’s deportation: “It is the bottomless pit of Trump Epstein stories. … It's entirely about the rot that Epstein and Trump spread across this country and this world.” ([22:10])
• Ironically, Olbermann muses, “it may turn out that the loathsome Melania Trump is … a truth teller in all this. Oh, God.” ([22:44])

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4. Global Turmoil: Hungary, Iran, and the Erosion of Trump’s Support

Timestamp: 23:19–30:44

• Viktor Orban, staunch ally, loses his election in Hungary—Olbermann gleefully thanks JD Vance for his failed support visit ([23:19]).
• Trump's core base is eroding: “Trump in the new CBS poll has lost. Lost whites without college degrees, his core morons. In 15 months he went from 68% approval … to 48% … a net swing of minus 40 points.” ([25:22])
• Middle East crisis: Trump threatens to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, risking war with the entire world. Houthis begin blockading Bab el-Mandeb, compounding the global oil crisis.
• Olbermann predicts Trump’s foreign policy will unravel rapidly, and speculates on likely escalation and chaos.

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5. The Eric Swalwell Scandal: Gossip, Roger Stone, and Media Mechanics

Timestamp: 30:44–35:07

• Olbermann critiques the scandal surrounding Eric Swalwell, dismisses theories that Roger Stone single-handedly engineered it, and offers a veteran’s look at how media and political gossip actually spreads.
  • “Any good news organization on stories they don’t report, they make hundreds of calls on a story like this … Stone was just the most scumbagish of them.” ([32:10])
• Personal anecdote: Olbermann shares his early knowledge of Matt Lauer’s demise at NBC, driving home the point that political news rarely breaks from a single orchestrator, but from collective insider chatter.

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6. “Worst Persons in the World” Segment

Timestamp: 37:56–50:47

• Chuck Todd lambasted for “Both Sidesism” on Trump’s potential blanket pardons ([37:56])
• Humorous media corrections: Brene Brown’s “solidly in my fuck it era” vs. “fucking era” and GQ’s “improvised explosive device” misquoted as “intrauterine device.”
• Ridicule of Bryson DeChambeau and sports gambling partnership for a commercial depicting violence against extraterrestrials, “If there is life anywhere else in the universe … Bryson DeChambeau will try to beat that extraterrestrial to death with a couple of golf clubs.” ([50:28])

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7. ESPN Reflections: Returning After “Nuclear War”

Timestamp: 51:20–81:29

• Extended, self-deprecating reflection on Olbermann’s tumultuous history with ESPN, including multiple departures and returns likened to “Rip Van Winkle.”
• Anecdotes about behind-the-scenes negotiations, media coverage of exits, and humorous rivalries with Fox Sports.
• On the rollercoaster transitions: “The amount of preparation time for a one hour radio sports show is not like a one hour television show about politics, which requires about seven hours of preparation. … A one hour radio sports show can require as little as 90 seconds preparation.” ([58:15])
• COVID-19’s impact on sports and sudden, unplanned ESPN “retirement”: “I became an ESPN retiree. … The guy who spent the better part of his life in nuclear war with ESPN.” ([80:21])
• Wry conclusion: “So now when things go wrong at ESPN … I can point at the TV like that Leonardo DiCaprio meme ... With my retiree status in mind, hey, I’m a retiree. My money is wrapped up in your show. Stop screwing it up.” ([81:29])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Trump attacked the Pope … and then he came back not an hour later, pretending that he, Trump, is God, godlike, capable of healing.” (Olbermann, [00:45])
• “Melania Trump, Epstein scandal Rush Chairman. Damn glad to meet you.” (Olbermann, [06:43], [10:23], [23:19])
• “Melania Trump hung Donald Trump out to dry about Epstein in the speech—by omission, by the fact of giving the speech, by commission.” (Olbermann, [14:13])
• “If that extraterrestrial comes here … and the first human the extraterrestrial meets is Bryson DeChambeau, Bryson DeChambeau will try to beat that extraterrestrial to death with a couple of golf clubs.” (Olbermann, [50:28])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Trump attacks Pope, claims godlike status: [00:45–06:43]
• Melania Trump’s speech and Epstein scandal: [06:43–14:13]
• Amanda Ungaro and model agency connection: [14:13–23:19]
• Hungary, Iran crises, Trump’s waning base: [23:19–30:44]
• Eric Swalwell, media gossip, Roger Stone: [30:44–35:07]
• “Worst Persons in the World” segment (Chuck Todd, media mishaps, DeChambeau ad): [37:56–50:47]
• ESPN saga – Olbermann’s career stories: [51:20–81:29]

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Tone and Language

Olbermann’s tone is sharp, sardonic, and often biting—mixing factual reporting with satire, exasperation, and self-aware humor. The language is vivid and pointed, laced with pop culture references, running gags (e.g., "Melania Trump, Epstein scandal Rush Chairman"), and industry in-jokes.

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For Listeners New to the Podcast

This episode exemplifies Olbermann’s approach: thoughtful political critique, contempt for what he sees as the absurdity and venality of Trump-era politics, and an insider’s take on both Washington and media machinations. While laced with humor, the episode delivers serious warnings about the stability of U.S. governance and the lingering threat of the unresolved Epstein scandal—and highlights Melania Trump’s surprise role as a narrative disruptor with potentially far-reaching ramifications.

Transcript

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[Keith Olbermann]

Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartradio. As I ready to publish the podcast today Trump Decided to Attack the Pope Online I'll say that again. Trump attacked the Pope Pope Leo online, and then he came back not an hour later, pretending that he Trump is God, godlike, capable of healing. Pope Leo is weak on crime, he wrote. Weak on nuclear weapons. Oh my God, a no nukes Pope. How will the world survive? Trump added that Leo does not sit well with me, nor does the fact that he meets with Obama sympathizers. Trump concluded the Pope is hurting the Catholic Church and added, I like his brother Louis much better than I like him because Louis is all maga. That is correct. Lewis is retired Navy with an online vocabulary to match. But he would not make that good a pope because, you know, Lewis wasn't even a priest. Trump concluded in a typically modest bit of Trumpist insanity, if I wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the Vatican. Once again, can't have those religious leaders opposing nuking Iran, can you? But wait, that turned out to just be the warm up for Trump's trolley truly jumping the track. 46 minutes later, Trump posted, Not a repost. This was original to his account, an illustration, probably AI, of himself in flowing white Jesus like robes and some kind of red tunic draped around his shoulders. Trump's left hand is on the forehead of a sleeping man who appears to be wearing a hospital gown. In Trump's right hand, there is some kind of glowing light, origin unknown, possibly, possibly originating in Trump's ass. Also in the scene, a nurse, a soldier, a woman who might be the patient's wife, a bearded vet who looks unexpectedly like the former San Antonio spurs basketball coach Gregg Popovich. The Lincoln Memorial and the Statue of Liberty are in the Background behind Trump the healer, there are some really big eagles in the sky and something really big with three points coming out of its head, flying by. And you'd say that must be the Statue of Liberty. Only the angry Statue of Liberty. And you don't want to see the Statue of Liberty when she's angry. Except, as I mentioned, the Statue of Liberty is also in the background of this scene, next to the Lincoln Memorial, behind Trump as Jesus, who can heal

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

people with the magic light coming out of his palm.

[Keith Olbermann]

Now, it's just me, but the patient that Trump is healing in this illustration that Trump himself posted last night. Or perhaps he has just sunk into a coma after listening to Trump talk too much, too long about his ballroom. It's just me, but I think the patient is George W. Bush. The website Patriot Takes reposted all this with the wry comment, Trump has finally released his health care plan. President of the United States posted these two things tonight after attacking the Pope after promising a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz that would be a competing blockade to the blockade the Iranians already have going there after watching his boy Orban get smoked in the Hungarian election. And just before one more Trump post. Again, no text, just a render rendering, this time not of the man being cured of a bald patch or something by Trump and his magic light, just a rendering of a Trump hotel or an apartment building. It's gold. It's got a big Trump logo on it. It's 60 to 70 stories high, and it's on the moon. There are no other buildings around it, no services, and most interestingly, there are no people in or around Trump Moon Plaza. And having lived in a Trump building, I can tell you that tracks the President of the United States, everybody. So nine minutes after the attack on the Pope, Trump met with pool reporters upon his return to Joint Base Andrews from Florida last night and was asked, hey, why'd you go after the Pope, the spiritual leader of 1,400,000,000 Catholics worldwide, 72,000,000 of them at least in the U.S. and you will notice in his answer, Trump gets it wrong on the timing of when certain religious figures were arrested for violating Covid standards. That was in 2020, when he was president. And he gets it wrong and says Pope Leo is in favor of nuclear weapons. Why did you attack Pope Leo on Truth Social?

[Donald Trump (quoted)]

I don't think he's doing a very good job. He likes crime, I guess. He hit us. Think of it. He's worried about fear. What about the fear when the minister and the priests and all of those Great people that were arrested during COVID and in many cases they're outside 10ft apart and they were arrested. So we don't like it. We don't like a pope that's going to say that it's okay to have a nuclear weapon. We don't want a pope that says crime is okay in our cities. I don't like it. I'm not a big fan of Pope Leo. He's a very liberal person and he's a man that doesn't believe in stopping crime. He's a man that doesn't think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world. I'm not a fan of Poppleo, so

[Keith Olbermann]

if there is a God, he has the chance to do the funniest thing ever. Hi. Melania Trump, Epstein scandal Rush chairman. Damn glad to meet you. If I say her speech, 535 words, most of them mispronounced, all of them defensive and suspicious and a couple dozen of them totally unintelligible. If I say that was the single most important public statement by anybody connected to Trump in the last decade, I cannot help but think. You may think I'm crazy, but I believe that lousy. How is your English possibly worse now than it was 25 years ago. Babel may be the tipping point for the insane tower of Babel that has been Trump's empire of lies and threats and bribes and blackmail. Melania Trump the face of the resistance. I know. Orban topples in Hungary. Trump basically ends the ceasefire and threatens war against every country in the world if they send a ship through the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis are now trying to blockade the other shipping bottleneck there, Bob El Mandeb, JV Vance flunked out in Islamabad and Hungary. Trump is staring at cleavage at the cage fighting in Miami. Swalwell self defense Straits while on fire. I know, I know, I know a lot on the Melania Trump speech and this bizarre story of Amanda Ungaro, ex partner of the grubby looking model agency owner who actually introduced the first lady to Trump. That has been to me the only headline since it happened. It is potentially fatal to Trump's presidency. And even if it is not fatal to Trump's presidency, it has already begun to wound him in three or four different ways. Firstly, almost every commentary and every analysis of the Melania Trump speech not only misses the forest for the trees, it misses the continent of original growth. Woodlands for the trees. She personally, out of nowhere Thursday moved the Epstein story back to center stage. A month of world shaking cataclysm caused by her idiot husband to try to bury the Epstein story and his cover up of the Epstein story. And in 535 words she undid all that. Epstein island revisited. Never mind Iran. We can talk about Iran later. We can wait till you're done talking about Iran. Trump is insisting the Jeffrey Epstein story is over. His wife, the one who was not buried at the golf course, also the one whose lips are not glued shut by a non disclosure agreement. His wife, the current one, is insisting that there have to be congressional hearings for Epstein's victims. President says Epstein over Epstein hoax. Epstein nothing. First lady says Epstein today, Epstein tomorrow. Epstein forever.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Hi.

[Keith Olbermann]

Melania Trump, Epstein scandal Rush Chairman. Damn glad to meet you. And then she garotted Trump. The speech, it's a travail. It causes headaches.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Did you listen to that speech?

[Keith Olbermann]

May be easier. Did you read it? It was 535 words. It could have been reduced to five. Those fives would have been. I'm not taking the fall. That was not a speech to end a controversy. That was a speech designed to deliberately invoke the Streisand effect and not only reintroduce the entire Epstein nightmare and the entire Trump campaign, promising to expose everything about Epstein and Trump's personal, elaborate, tireless, ceaseless cover up of Epstein. That was a preemptive strike to raise not just uncomfortable questions for Donald Trump, but fatal ones for Donald Trump. Why that speech? Why now? What she's talking about, what is it? Why did she do it now? What heretofore unknown scandal was about to break? Is she defending herself from it? Or is she giving a 535 word promo for coverage of it? So now we've got Epstein largely relegated to the background, just as Trump wanted when those two animating principles of his monstrous, soulless quasi human life crossed the need to save himself, even if it kills millions. And the sadistic desire to blow stuff up, especially if brown people have been using that stuff. He always wanted to blow up Iran, but now he had a need to, to distract from Epstein. And as badly as this unplanned hey kids, let's go out in the backyard and start a war. Quagmire has gone. That's the exact degree and amount to which the distraction had gone. Well, the distraction worked. The Epstein story was barely alive. He even got away with firing the Attorney General who screwed it up, PA Gandhi. During the Iran distraction, Epstein dropped off the BBC. Epstein dropped out of the dispatches of the Agence France Press. Epstein stopped being updated daily on the Wagga Wagga nightly news in Australia. And Melania put it all back where

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

it had been before Iran.

[Keith Olbermann]

And as a third consequence, she also largely erased Iran as a means of further distracting from Epstein. Distracting anymore in the future. Her speech, bizarre, unexpected, inscrutable, took back the spotlight. The next time she speaks, or anybody thinks she might speak, or the story that evidently provoked this about the model's agent's ex partner Amanda Ungaro, advanced like oh, maybe Amanda Ungaro's interview scheduled on CNN today. The next time anything else happens on this story, Iran stops because Melania Trump changed the Epstein story from Epstein. Disgusting. Donald More Epstein, Prince Charles Epstein, Epstein, Trump, Trump to why the F is Melania Trump talking about this? And yet there was one more, one more even more masterful stroke that was

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

her saying, I'm not taking the fall.

[Keith Olbermann]

In that speech, she used the word me seven times. She used the word I 17 times. She used Epstein's name 16 times. She denied her involvement. She said never nine times. She said lie three times, she said victim five times. And not once did she mention her husband Fats. She referred to him and meeting him, but nothing about this story. He doesn't exist for the purposes of the story that she told. There were less than 400 other words in the whole goddamn speech and none of them were used to say anything like my husband is innocent. She barely mentioned him except to deny that Epstein introduced them. She used the word we, but not to insist that we as in she and her husband were uninvolved. She never expressed the slightest concern for him or how this story affects him. She never protected him, she never defended him, she never rallied to his side. He was an afterthought. He was trivial. He was, he is on his effing own. The age old cliche is damning with faint praise. Well, what the hell is it when it's not faint praise but no praise of any kind at all? Melania Trump hung Donald Trump out to dry about Epstein in the speech by omission, by the fact of giving the speech by commission. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna were two randos in the comments. Compared to the First Lady. This speech was so important, so damning, so destructive to all the doors and barricades and flack that Trump has put up between himself and Jeffrey Epstein dead and Jeffrey Epstein alive and Jeffrey Epstein covered up. But Trump doesn't have any distractions left to use. I mean, does he think we are going to go back to war with Iran again so he can. Jack's headlines distract from the Melania Epstein cover up. It will not work. Something caused her to snap. She snapped. In doing so, she snapped him in half. Hi, Melania Trump, Epstein scandal Rush Chairman. Damn glad to meet you. In brief. And I do want to get to, you know, Orban falling in Hungary. Thanks a lot. JD Vance and the war in Iran that has gotten so bad that Trump himself suggested simply filling the Strait of Hormuz with American gunships. But a favorite Trump Washington Post columnist had an idea that was even worse. Simply kill the Iranian negotiators who refused to say yes when J.D. vance presented Trump's list of demands to a country that is absolutely certain it has beaten the United States. I do want to get back to all that, but we need a small explainer here on Amanda Ungaro. She was the partner of Paolo Zampoli, owner of ID Models. This guy looks vaguely like my friend Stevie Van Zant. Only the way suits fit this guy Zampoli, it makes Stephen in his E Street Band garb look like he's wearing a tux. Steve cleans up nice. Zampoli looks Zampolian. Anyway, Ungaro came here aboard Epstein's plane. Insists she was never trafficked or abused. Had no complaint with Epstein. She and this Zampoli guy had a child in 2010. She then left modeling. They knew the Trumps. They dined. She found everything the Trumps did boring. She hated Mar?

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

A Lago.

[Keith Olbermann]

She and the partner broke up in 2023. She left Zampoli. She took no money. She and Zampoli fought over custody of their son. She married a doctor, and one day they came to arrest the doctor for fraudulent practices and to take her in on visa charges. Zampoli finds out about the mother of his child being imprisoned. And according to the New York Times, he then calls ICE with the simple message, don't release her, deport her. Then I get custody of the kid. Zempoli denies this. He never did it. And so what if he did? He says she was guilty and they would have deported her anyway and he would have wound up with the boy anyway, which is a really lousy way

[Dan Patrick]

to try to make yourself look innocent.

[Keith Olbermann]

So now she is deported to Rio de Janeiro, and the news begins to leak last week that she's done interviews. The one in CNN is rumored for today, the one in the Brazilian paper El Pais was published yesterday. Now it's war, she says. I kept quiet for years and because of that people judge me. They ask me, why are you speaking now? Because the man would not let me live in peace. I tried. I left the relationship with nothing. Left my son at boarding school and went to work. It was not enough for him to destroy me during 20 years of relationship. He wanted to destroy me again when I started a new life. When I got marri.

[Dan Patrick]

I empathize. I feel for you.

[Keith Olbermann]

There's no mention of Melania Trump in

[Dan Patrick]

the interview in Brazil.

[Keith Olbermann]

The Epstein connection. She says she met him once. The Zampoli guy seems to have emailed him once. The end their Epstein connection is that it wasn't Epstein who introduced Melania to Trump. It was Zampoli. Then last Wednesday, Ungaro posted a couple of tweets, replies to Melania Trump on the FLOTUS account, vague except for the threat they contained. I have nothing left to lose in my life. I will tear down the entire system. Be careful with me, bitch. I assume they translated this for Melania into beach. Going out on a limb here. There may be more to this story than we know right now. If Trump is involved directly in the personal, vengeful targeting of this woman who lived here for 20 years and has, yes, a birthright citizen child or somebody intervened by or on behalf of Trump for the man who introduced him to his wife, who just got up and gave a speech putting the Epstein investigation directly back on her own husband of the President of the United States. If that's the case, or anything similar to it. It's not just a story. It's a week of stories. It's a month of stories. It's a presidency full of stories. It is the bottomless pit of Trump Epstein stories. And the irony is, it's barely about Epstein. It's entirely about the rot that Epstein and Trump spread across this country and this world. And it may turn out that the loathsome Melania Trump is, I can't believe I'm gonna say this, A truth teller in all this. Oh, God. And that smarmy spokesmodel guy who's making the rounds of right wing media defending her and once again saying nothing, nothing at all, in defense of Trump. Just talking about her Donald. Donald who? Mark Beckman is her spokesman. Melania is a serious person and she's ready to create serious implications. For whom? Mark Beckman. You may know him from such projects as The Melania movie 2026 and the Matt Gates show 2025, and of course, the upcoming Melania Does Donald 2027. I made the last one up. But this cynical Unintelligible, perpetually dyspeptic woman, Melania Konov's Trump from Poland or Slovenia or from. I don't care.

[Dan Patrick]

Do you?

[Keith Olbermann]

As a truth teller?

[Dan Patrick]

Well, hell, why not?

[Keith Olbermann]

She's already done more to revive the Epstein saga than anybody else. Anybody else, and let me correct myself, Epstein sagas. I'm Melania Trump, Epstein, scandal rush Chairman. Damn glad to meet you. Meanwhile, a little further afield, if it weren't satisfying enough to see a fat fascist f get the crap kicked out of himself in the elections in Hungary, I want to thank JD Vance for going all the way there to campaign for Viktor Orban and thus get the crap of Orban's failed dictatorship all over his shoes, his floor shime shoes. It is extraordinary that Orban, who is even more openly run by Putin than Trump, is actually conceded same day as the election yesterday, although there is still plenty of time for him to stage a fake security crisis. Trump, beaten so badly that the Democrats have a super majority, if that comes to pass, would not concede. Hell, he hasn't conceded 2020 yet because he is a broken brained, deranged, psychopathic twerp. Trump's last words in this life will probably be, I will live forever. Polling now suggests if anything happens to him before the midterms. Yeah, look for Mike Johnson. It'll be the Republican Senate or House election committees will be the primary suspects. Incredibly, Trump in the new CBS poll has lost. Lost whites without college degrees, his core morons. In 15 months, he went from 68% approval with them in February of last year, 32% disapproval to 48% approval, 52% disapproval. Now, that is a net swing of minus 40, 40 points. He lost. The Shah of Iran didn't even lose 40 points in a little over a year as to Iran. And there goes the ceasefire. Trump has now threatened to blow up any ship that pays a toll at the Strait of Hormuz. In other words, he has threatened war against every country on Earth. Good call, Grandpa Shardy. Now, what are you gonna do about Bob El Mandeb? No, no, no, sorry, he's not a friend of Melania's. All right, drag Trump off the golf course. Explain to him what that is. It's the other bottleneck for most shipped oil from the Gulf. If you go through Suez, you gotta go through Hormuz. And Bob El Mandeb. 3.3 million barrels a day through Bob El Mandeb. It's near Yemen. And what do you know? As predicted as everybody but Trump expected, the Houthis have been laying back waiting for their moment to aid their Iranian sponsors and they seem to be moving to block Bob El Mandeb to board ships trying to go through. Nice job President. Brain liquefaction. This sure is going great. What? 21 hours of negotiations with the US team led by serial idea book title borrower JD Vance and we somehow didn't get world peace. See, there was a slight miscalculation by the American negotiators that Trump sent. They went in expecting surrender terms from Iran when Iran understands, like the rest of the world understands, that it has won because it is still intact because all it lost was a few aging bureaucrats. Would this country collapse if somebody knocked off some of our aging bureaucrats? Hell, we have so many aging bureaucrats who'd notice. Whatever happened to that McConnell guy blown up by Iran?

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

How can you tell?

[Keith Olbermann]

Alito, the real problem looming at the near horizon is the reality that at some point Trump is going to have to cut off Israel, talk them out of this. Get off the team. There are no breaks in Israel, their government. Netanyahu needs a forever war to stay in power and he will not stop. And he needs to stay in power to stay out of jail. Even the Wall Street Journal reports Iran still has thousands of ballistic missiles and launchers secure in underground storage. China is shipping new ordinance to Iran and new air defense systems. The Ayatollah farms continue to prod new litters. Al and the Strait of Hormuz is, as even Trump has discovered, filled with landmines or water mines. But alas, the one thing we apparently did destroy in Iran was all the infrastructure required for Iran to remove the mines. What happens when to save his own presidency, Trump has to cut bait with Israel? Oil. What happens when oil will flow through Hormuz and Bob El Mandeb? Only if Iran is intact will Trump actually get to the point where this country has to side with Iran and against Israel to keep Trump's precious gallon of gas under $10. Oil. Oil uber allies. I mean, what is Trump going to do instead of turning against Israel when that point arrives? Endorse wind farms and solar power? Trump's entire foreign policy has about three weeks to live. And then who knows? Three weeks. Like the Eric Swalwell candidacy. Look, I get it. I thought he was terrific, too. He's not. The evidence is overwhelming. It is not based only on anonymous victims. It is not connected to Roger Stone. It is not a plot to Franken Swalwell and elect a Republican governor of California. It is a classic politician Gone bad saga. It was Ali Simarco who went on record accusing Swalwell of things that could put him in jail. Nevermind put him out of that race. And Samarco's husband, the Democratic strategist Adam Parkomenko, made an inarguable point about the apologist's refuge. Oh, there are anonymous accusers. It must be fake to quote him. A number of women received cease and desist letters from Eric Swalwell. My wife did not. Every woman involved, except my wife who went on the record has remained anonymous. So here's the question no one can ignore. How did he know who to send those letters to if they were anonymous?

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Yeah, as the kids say this,

[Keith Olbermann]

and as to Stone, he absolutely did tell Alex Jones that the Swalwell story was going to explode a few hours before it broke in the media. That's mighty thin evidence if you really think Roger Stone caused it to happen. Roger Stone would like to you to think he caused it to happen, just like Roger Stone would like you to think that's his real hair. But people talk. And political operatives, all of whom have seemingly worked for all of the elected officials now alive, local, state and national in this country and sometimes in other countries, all the political operatives who do know each other, they're like the Borg from Star Trek and they talk like 19th century housemaids used to. Any good news organization, San Francisco Chronicles, cnn, NBC. Anybody who reported on the Swalwell story. Any good news organization on stories they don't report, they make hundreds of calls on a story like this. You, you worked with Smith, who worked with Jones, who worked for Swalwell. Could this be true or should we drop it off the record? Just give me some guidance. Stone told Alex Jones that the Swalwell story was going to explode hours before it broke.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Wow.

[Keith Olbermann]

A thousand political people could have done that. A thousand political people could have told Alex Jones hours, maybe days. It's likely Stone was one of the last to find out. Stone was just the most scumbagish of them. Naturally. And that's the razor's edge to breaking any story in any field. How do you get background confirmation? 3rd sources, 5th sources, 53rd sources who are just guiding you as to whether or not you're full of crap. How do you do it without giving the story away to them? Well, you work fast. And I will close by telling of my own experience with something like this. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving in 2017, a friend of mine called me and told me Matt Lauer was about to go up in flames at NBC she had a vague idea of what it was about women and violence. No other details, just that it was very bad and he was done. It may say, she said, this is the long Thanksgiving weekend, but nobody at our alma mater is on vacation. Sure enough, NBC vaporized Matt Lauer. The president, the idiot. Andy Lack went to his apartment here in New York late the following Tuesday the 28th. And in the interim between Wednesday and Tuesday, the story didn't break, it didn't leak, it wasn't hinted at. My source found out about it on Wednesday the 22nd. I found out about it later on Wednesday the 22nd. Matt Lauer found out about it on Tuesday the 29th. My source hadn't worked at NBC in 10 years. I hadn't worked at NBC in six years. People talk. People gossip. If you believe Roger Stone orchestrated Eric Swalwell's self defenestration after he set himself ablaze, then you can also believe that my friend and I, we're the ones who fired Matt Lauer and and we didn't. Also of interest here, my record for the longest span between anchoring consecutive editions of SportsCenter 21 years and 2 months has now been broken. I will introduce you to the new Rip Van Winkle. And speaking of getting offed by NBC, like Matt Lauer, Chuck Chuck Todd is outraged about Trump's plan to prepardon his administration members. And Chuck has put the blame entirely on Joe Biden because Chuck Todd's career

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

may be over, but his both sidesist idiocy is forever.

[Keith Olbermann]

That's next. This is countdown.

[Serving Pancakes Podcast Host]

Early birds always rise to the occasion for summer vacation planning because early gets you closer to the action.

[Keith Olbermann]

So don't be late.

[Serving Pancakes Podcast Host]

Book your next vacation early on VRBO and save over $120. Rise and shine. Everest Savings $141. Select homes only on the Serving Pancakes podcast, conversations about volleyball go beyond the court. Today we have a little best friend compatibility test. Okay, how long have we been best friends for?

[VRBoCare/Grainger Commercial Announcer]

Since the day we met.

[Serving Pancakes Podcast Host]

As the League1 volleyball season heads towards its final stretch, there's no better time to tune in. We really are like yin and yang, vodka and tequila. You'll hear unfiltered analysis behind the scenes stories and conversations with leaders making an impact across the sport. Today we have Logan Lednecki. I feel like our fan base in general is very connected. Just like a comforting feeling getting to play at home. Whether you're following the final push of love season or just love the game, serving Pancakes brings you closer to the action and the people shaping the future of volleyball. Jordan Thompson had that microphone out. God forbid we make mistakes or cuss at our coach like one time or two times. Open your free iHeartRadio app search serving pancakes and listen now this has been serving pancakes. And we'll catch you on the flip side, okay?

[VRBoCare/Grainger Commercial Announcer]

Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.

[Lily Herman]

Ready for a different take on Formula One? Look no further than no Grip, a new podcast tackling the culture of motor racing's most coveted series. Join me, Lily Herman, as we dive into the underexplored podcast pockets of F1, including the astrology of the current grid.

[Keith Olbermann]

Lewis Hamilton, Capricorn Sun, Cancer Moon.

[VRBoCare/Grainger Commercial Announcer]

Wouldn't you know it? Michael Schumacher is also a Capricorn Sun, Cancer moon.

[Lily Herman]

The story of the sport's most consequential driver Strike. We have one man who, upon hearing that he was going to be fired, freaked out and apparently climbed out the window of the bathroom. And was Daniel Ricardo's illustrious F1 career a success story, a cautionary tale, or sleep? Some combination of both?

[Serving Pancakes Podcast Host]

He started getting all this attention and he maybe started to think, I'm bigger than this. I'm better.

[Lily Herman]

And plenty of other mishaps, scandals and sagas that have made Formula One a delightful, decadent dumpster fire for more than 75 years. Listen to no Grip on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Keith Olbermann]

This is Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Still ahead on this all new edition of Countdown, after an absence of 20, 23 years, my friend Rich Eisen went back to Bristol, Connecticut last night to anchor ESPN's SportsCenter for the first time since 2003. Thus, he breaks my record for Rip Van Winkling that show, which was 21 years and a couple months. And in TV sports terms, this is the equivalent of Cal Ripken breaking the Lou Gehrig consecutive games played streak. Nobody, he thought that anybody could create a longer gap between SportsCenter shows and the Rip Van Winkle effect at ESPN is real. Nothing would have looked familiar to him as nothing looked familiar to me. The saga of my nuclear departure from ESPN in 1997, my unexpected return to ESPN in 2005, my re return in 2013, my re re return in 2018. Next, in another thing, I promised not to tell first. In the interim, we always have 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. This edition is dedicated to Chuck Todd. Chuck Todd, who still has not absorbed why NBC fired him from Meet the Press, nor why he became an online punchline. It's the Both Sidesism, Chuck, and you've done it again. And it's uninformed. Both sides ism After Trump said he might issue blanket pardons for all members of his administration, preemptively, Chuck blamed Joe Biden. I quote, perhaps Trump would have done this regardless. But let's not forget Biden created this preemptive pardon precedent. The only good news that might come out of this pardon corruption we will get a bipartisan supported constitutional amendment to create a congressional nullification process for all presidential pardons. A. No, we won't, Chuck. The Republicans will never do anything to limit a president's powers. They also, these Republicans, they certainly won't because they can't see more than their own lives ahead. Half of them will still need pardons even after Trump is dead. The Republicans won't support limiting a president's powers, particularly pardoning. Half of them. Literally half of them would go to jail. And B Chuck, who created the preemptive pardon? Who was the president before Joe Biden? Again? The president before Joe Biden was. Was Bill Clinton? Lyndon Johnson? Chester Allen? Arthur? No. Oh, right. The president before Biden was Donald Trump. And he pardoned General Flynn and Steve Bannon and Elliot Broidy and Paul Manafort, his campaign manager. And he pardoned Jeanine Pirro's ex husband. Chuck is such a classic. The Medalists, the bronze. Worse, the Financial Times, the newspaper. There are meaningless quotation errors. I once told a newspaper that I felt like a guy in a life raft who had been picked up by the QE2, as in the luxury liner the QE2, the Queen Elizabeth 2. And the guy wrote instead that I felt like I was picked up by the kiwi comma 2T double O. But this, this is. That didn't matter. It was just dumb. This matters. I am quoting the FT verbatim. Not suitable for work. Correction. Brene Brown Researcher Brene Brown was misquoted in an interview published on April 6, she described herself as solidly in my fuck it era, rather than, quote, solidly in my fucking era. Yeah, it is kind of good that they corrected that. On the other hand, it's like losing a paternity case. I mean, you have to deny that you're solidly in your fucking era, madam. In several places on social media, the Correction to the FT's correction was responded to with the best correction of all time, which dates to, I think, 2019 from one of my alma maters, GQ magazine. Note this story has been updated. Alexander Vindman received a Purple Heart after being wounded by an IED or improvised explosive device, not an IUD or intrauterine device. We regret the error. Honey, have you got your ied? I don't know, but let's talk to Brene Brown again about whether or not she's solidly. Okay, all right. Okay. You can listen. Okay. You can bring the kids back into the room. The rest of it I got is sound effects and insults. That's all right. It's fine. From here on in, I think the runner up, worser, whoever set up the 250th anniversary Commonwealth Concert Series event Thursday in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The chocolate factory, where thousands of people work to make. Make that delight with and without nuts, as the great Lowell Thomas once said, and then started to laugh on CBS Radio for five minutes. Chocolate Town, where thousands of workers make chocolate with and without nuts. Governor Josh Shapiro was in Hershey, I believe, along that main artery there, which is called, what, the Hershey Parkway. Governor Josh Shapiro and I told you you could bring the kids back into the room. Governor Josh Shapiro and a bunch of historical reenactors. There was a Ben Franklin. There was a Betsy Ross. There were some others. They put up a large, heavy backdrop banner behind the lectern and mike to announce the 250th anniversary Commonwealth Concert Series in Pennsylvania. And then with this big, heavy backdrop banner behind the governor and Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross, here comes the wind. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the newly refurbished,

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

refashioned, redone Point State Park.

[Keith Olbermann]

Oh, yes. Whoa. Everybody okay?

[VRBoCare/Grainger Commercial Announcer]

We are all fine.

[Keith Olbermann]

You okay? Everyone is fine.

[VRBoCare/Grainger Commercial Announcer]

This is such an exciting announcement that

[Keith Olbermann]

the world is falling apart over it. Yes, quite all right, Dr. Franklin?

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

I think so.

[VRBoCare/Grainger Commercial Announcer]

Yes.

[Keith Olbermann]

Okay.

[Dan Patrick]

We are all good.

[Keith Olbermann]

We're holding on. All right, all right. Pipe down. Betsy Ross. One goddamned flag and she thinks she's Abigail Adams. Zip it. None were injured, though. As we begin to see names surface for the 2028 Democratic nomination, Governor Shapiro should think really seriously about cymbals and omens, augurs and portents dire. How'd your event go? I almost got crushed by the 250th anniversary of our country banner. Oh, but our winner, the worst golfer, Bryson DeChambeau and Kalshee. Kalshee is that bet on anything site that is ruining what little is left of our lives that hadn't already been ruined by the Internet and Rupert Murdoch. If you are unfamiliar with golf, first off, congratulations. There is no less interesting sport with less interesting participants, which overrates its big events like the Masters. More especially the masters, which until 30 years ago was actually still kinda segregated. There's no less interesting sport with less interesting participants which wastes more physical space for less interesting purposes. As Churchill pointed it out, you hit a ball with an implement ill designed for the purpose and then you go chase it. But if you are lucky and you don't know your golf. Bryson DeChambeau, this guy I mentioned, starts with the reputation of being a dick. Even the other golfers hate him. Even golf fans hate him. Unsurprisingly, Mr. DeChambeau is now doing commercials for Kalsheet and one of them is so clever and self congratulatory that it probably has yet to dawn on the agency and the client that they are really hurting themselves with it. Even DechamBeauty, a dick, looks worse somehow after this thing. In it you see Bryson DeChambeau's Caddy and they're talking. He has to talk to Bryson DeChambeau. DeChambeau pays him. DeChambeau and the Caddy are discussing betting on betting sites and DeChambeau says something about that you can bet on alien sightings. Cut to the sand trap on the golf course where a UFO has clearly just crashed and your standard cliched Martian extraterrestrial with the Reynolds wrapped skin and the big eyes has crawled out and is moaning in agony in the sand trap. Possibly he's moaning in agony because he realizes he's crashed in a golf course and may have to watch golf. Anyway, DeChambeau asks if they can bet on alien sightings and the caddy says yes, yes you can. And clearly DeChambeau has a bet against alien sightings or for some reason is interested in the outcome of the betting on alien sightings because you can see once again the gravely injured extraterrestrial again in close up. And the caddy says, you can't leave him like that. And DeChambeau says, I know. And he walks back to the golf cart and he pulls out a couple of Clubs, sticks them under his arm, and walks resolutely and grimly towards the moaning extraterrestrial whom he is clearly going to kill. Now I get it. It's TV. It's supposed to be stupid. I've worked in TV off and on since 1981, and it's a TV commercial, so it's supposed to be even more stupid. I've done TV commercials since the first one's in Boston in 1984. And it's a TV commercial featuring golf, so it's supposed to be as stupid as humanly possible, extending into extraterrestrial stupid. And in this cynical time, if there were anything left to be upset by, nothing is sacred. But I'd just like to point out that the message here from the Kalshee Wagering site and from this guy, DeChambeau, Bryson DeChambeau, and from the PGA Golf Tour, and thus from its most recent event, the Masters, the message from all of them is that if there is life anywhere else in the universe, and that life form comes here, God knows why, confirming that we are not alone in this vast space, that perhaps we could be helped by a species smarter than us that knows how to force the 25th Amendment. That perhaps there is some meaning to life, some chance that mankind might endure despite its own mistakes, some solution for the poisoning of our atmosphere and the general lowering in IQ of our leaders. If that extraterrestrial comes here and comes to Earth and confirms all that by his mere presence. And the first human the extraterrestrial meets is Bryson DeChambeau. Bryson DeChambeau will try to beat that extraterrestrial to death with a couple of golf clubs. Bryson, I can bet on anything. Can I? Can I bet on the extraterrestrial here? Dechambeau, Today's other, as in having the extraterrestrial not only survive the attack, but take the clubs from Bryce into DeChambeau's hands, and then, well, you get the

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

rest of the picture.

[Keith Olbermann]

Today's other worst person in the universe. See, the premise of that joke is when DeChambeau goes over to beat the hell out of the extraterrestrial and kill him, then the extraterrestrial just takes the thing from him. And then. Going back to Bristol, Bristol, Bristol. Going back to Bristol.

[Dan Patrick]

Man, I don't think so. My friend Rich Eisen, who I actually

[Keith Olbermann]

walked in the door for the first

[Dan Patrick]

time at ESPN 30, 31, 170 years ago, returned there last night to do an edition of SportsCenter for the first time in 20 years. I'm sure he had exactly the same experience, mentally that I did the two times I went back. And the first time I went back to do an edition of SportsCenter, which was in 2018, a brief interruption from the last time I had done it, which was 1997. It was exactly like the story of Rip Van Winkle, who wakes up after a quick nap to find out that 20 years have passed and all of a sudden he's in the middle of a gigantic city when he thought the whole world was about a block and a half long when he lay down there seconds before. I'm sure Rich had a great time. Very warm, very nostalgic. And it's always better to resolve your previous burned bridges. Burned bridges by ESPN in his case, burned bridges by me and ESPN in mine.

[Keith Olbermann]

In any event, with that and the

[Dan Patrick]

news story as the preamble to the number one story on the countdown and

[Keith Olbermann]

going back to Bristol. Bristol. Bristol. Going back to Bristol.

[Dan Patrick]

I don't think so. I left ESPN in a storm of controversy that can only be guessed at now by people who were not functioning in the media world or functioning consumers on a daily basis. Of ESPN in the 1995, 6, 7 era, you cannot imagine that there were

[Keith Olbermann]

people whose job it was to.

[Dan Patrick]

To cover what was happening at ESPN and the other networks, but ours included. And that when, after months of uncertainty

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

and indecision, I made up my mind and decided to leave, I was able

[Keith Olbermann]

to leak the story to two different New York newspapers, each of which played

[Dan Patrick]

it prominently in their sports sections.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Today, it would not get mentioned in two newspapers in America.

[Dan Patrick]

It was a big deal then.

[Keith Olbermann]

It was a big deal when Rich

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

left for the NFL Network about 10 years later.

[Keith Olbermann]

It was still a big deal when

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

I started to negotiate to go back to ESPN myself. But you can't imagine what it was like in 1997 and the amount of attention this got, and particularly it. Nobody remembers this and it didn't last

[Keith Olbermann]

very long, but it was a cordial farewell, although it was later written up

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

to be nuclear war and it became that.

[Keith Olbermann]

Certainly it was a cordial farewell.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

And now, with the perspective of more than or nearly three decades since my first departure from espn, as opposed to my second, third or fourth departures from espn, all of which were amicable. It has a great lesson to it,

[Keith Olbermann]

which is, as I have suggested previously, it's much better when the bridges have

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

been burnt to take the tunnel. There was a famous line which was an adaptation of one of my lines from one of the PR people at ESPN who said, keith didn't just burn the bridges here he napalmed them. This was a variation on something I had said on Tom Snyder's show previously, a few weeks previously, late in 1997, which was I had not just burned the bridges, I had also managed to burn the river.

[Dan Patrick]

In any event, I am wandering off into the, as I said, nuclear war of 1997 rather than talk about the real point here, which was going back there first in 2013, then again briefly in 2015, and then finally for my retirement tour in 2018, none of which could have been possibly predicted the day I walked out of there in late June of 1997 with a going away party that lasted until sunrise. I'm not going to tell those stories regardless to the ESPN return. After I went into news and burned all the way through those experiences and there was never any doubt that that was the way it was going to end. I was both difficult with management and I was insistent on editorial input or control or both. And I insisted on telling the truth. And frankly, the people at NBC no longer were interested in the truth. They interested in trying to get an audience that did not exist, which was some sort of neutral news audience that had long since vanished from cable news. But it was inevitable. And as they improperly suspended me for violating the NBC News codes, even though they had written a contract in which they specifically insisted I sign a document that said I was not an NBC News employee and thus not subject to the NBC News codes, well, that was the end of that contract and they owed me a lot of money. And Al Gore and his people offered me even more money. And I went over there and one day they ran out of money and decided to blame me for it and decided to stop paying me. And I had to sue them as I had threatened to sue NBC. The outcome of all of these outcomes combined simply was I got enough money by the year 2012 to have no more need of working again in my life. And yet here I am, still working, because that's what we're supposed to do. But I don't have to do it and I don't do it when I don't want to do it. And that in fact is nirvana, not the band. The State of existence. Okay, around 2011, as the thing began to collapse at Current TV, first off, negotiations began and continued off and on through 2021 for me to go back to MSNBC. But they resumed with an unlikely candidate for a return. ESPN was interested in having me come back. I had maintained a foothold within sports and in fact within ESPN. Although it was nuclear war, by 2005, the ESPN radio network asked me to come back and help Dan Patrick out, who was having some trouble with his radio show on espn. I became a host once a week for an hour of Dan show co host with him. And then that went so well. They gave me a huge amount of money for ESPN, more than they had

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

paid me to do SportsCenter to do one hour a day with Dan.

[Dan Patrick]

And it was great and refreshing and it was a wonderful, a wonderful pressure

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

valve for all the stuff I had

[Dan Patrick]

to do in politics. And every day I'd go over to

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

a studio or do a studio shot

[Dan Patrick]

from my own home for an hour from 3 to 4 o' clock and

[Keith Olbermann]

I would be, I would be freshened,

[Dan Patrick]

I would have my, my palate cleansed and we'd laugh and have fun about

[Keith Olbermann]

the good old days.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

And the amount of preparation time for a one hour radio sports show is not like a one hour television show about politics which requires about seven hours of preparation. If you go really, really fast. A one hour radio sports show can require as little as 90 seconds preparation.

[Keith Olbermann]

What are we talking about? Okay, have you got any printouts on that? Okay. All right. Are there sandwiches?

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

That's the preparation for some of the hours that Dan and I did. And we just went on and talked about our reactions which were pretty much going to be the same whether we had de read into a subject or not, or at least mine were. I think Dan got a little bit more in depth because he had to

[Dan Patrick]

do three hours of the show. So I had gone back and there

[Keith Olbermann]

was peace if not resolution.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

And there were various articles that would come out about the war between ESPN and Keith Olbermann and then Keith Olbermann and espn. And I didn't like that person and that person didn't like me and they wouldn't put my name in any of the annual shows. Doing the history of espn, there were all kinds of petty, silly things, but

[Dan Patrick]

in fact they were petty.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Paying me like $350,000 a year to go on Dan's radio show. So that passed when Dan left ESPN in 2007. And again we were distant, but not uncomfortably. So I went to work with NBC Sports in addition to the MSNBC show and did the Sunday Night football show from 2007 through the 2009 season. And I did other sports projects here and there for NBC and other outfits and had a good time generally. I did a blog and a daily blog for MLB.com and was going to be involved in baseball's new TV network when it went on the air in 2009. So I still had a presence in sports much bigger than I do now and a knowledge of sports much greater than I have now. Anyway, so now we're talking about 2011 and 2012. And the news game has pretty much run its course because there aren't other networks or channels that are going to carry a show about political opinions. There's CNN maybe, and msnbc. And I've already worked twice for MSNBC by this point, and they have breached my contract. And I had to threaten to sue them for umpteen million dollars and they had to pay me umpteen million dollars so I would not sue them. And I had to leave by mutual consent, obviously, because who wants to stay at a place where you are suing your boss? As pleasant as is, in theory, it has practical problems. Like if you leave your office, perhaps they'll change the locks while you're out in the bathroom room. I'm not saying they did that. I'm just saying I know they contemplated it.

[Keith Olbermann]

So I thought also it probably would

[Dan Patrick]

be a good idea if going back to the idea of the Dan Patrick Show, a palette cleanse of a couple of years was in order. And so my agents and I began to discuss with ESPN the possibility of going back there. They had developed the agents, that is a very good relationship with a man named John Skipper, who was the new president of ESPN and who, unlike most of his predecessors, really thought that it was necessary to have sportscasters. There was a president of ESPN whose dream it was to never have any sportscaster appear on camera so that they would not get famous enough or even recognizable enough that you had to pay them six figures. This was actually his goal at the height of ESPN's monopoly, when there was nothing else worth watching in cable sports news. After CNN took its show off the air and there was no competition for SportsCenter, this man really dreamt of having a sportscast with no sportscasters. The new guy, Skipper, had a totally different attitude. If anything, he overvalued sportscasters. And so we began a series of negotiations with him and the people close to him who my agents knew. And we had meetings, clandestine meetings in suburban New York and out in the wilds of Connecticut with people that I had worked with at espn. Principal among them Norby Williamson, who was the producer of SportsCenter the day I got there in 1992, and then was the the executive producer of ESPN2 when we launched it in 1993 and who by this point was pretty much in charge of everything done in the studio at ESPN and who desperately wanted me to come back and do SportsCenter or something. And so throughout 2012, we discussed this in secret meetings. And Norby had a plan that got to this stage of near fruition.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

He told me to keep a couple

[Dan Patrick]

of Sundays open in, in September of 2012, because what he wanted to do was reach an agreement with me, a contract, sign it on a Sunday afternoon in Connecticut, put me in a hotel room with all the equipment that I would need to write and prepare an addition of the Sunday Night Sports center for a night in September, a Sunday in September 2012. And simply five or 10 minutes before SportsCenter was to go on that night, go from the hotel room to the studio at ESPN, sit down at the desk where SportsCenter was being done, to the total surprise of the co anchor, whoever that was, and taking the place of somebody who was essentially a beard, a fake anchor, who had prepared the whole show and who would now say, good to see you, Keith, and then would walk off and then we would start SportsCenter and not announce to anybody that I had come back to espn, but simply have me appear maybe with

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

one promo in the middle of the

[Dan Patrick]

Sunday Night Football game or Sunday Night baseball game, whatever it was at the time. And next, SportsCenter with, with Keith Ullerman. That can't be right. Play the theme. That was what he wanted to do. And he said, keep these days open. Well, we got to the point where he then called me and said, it's not going to work. It's going to not work, and it's not going to work this winter. It's going to be something we have to revisit next year. You'll just have to sit at home and count all of your news money. And I went, oh, well, all right, fine. So we revisited it in 2013, and

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

there really wasn't any motivation for ESPN to do this.

[Dan Patrick]

And there's also a significant drawback to what was going on. As I said, I was involved in a lawsuit against these people from Current tv.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

And it dawned on me one day

[Dan Patrick]

that if I were running a television network and thinking of hiring some guy, no matter how talented or useful he might be, if he was actively suing

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

his previous employer, I might be reluctant

[Dan Patrick]

to hire him on the simple premise that if he sued his previous employer,

[Keith Olbermann]

what's to assure me that he's not

[Dan Patrick]

gonna sue me, his current employer? I thought that made a lot of sense. And in discussions with the people at

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

ESPN again, John Skipper, Norby Williamson, many

[Dan Patrick]

other folks, that seemed to be the overarching point of view. Well, happily we took the lawsuit to mediation and there was an opportunity for me to both not go to court and to end the whole thing and to get the money. And I saw it as a great opportunity to also resume my career after one year of being absolutely radioactive. And sure enough, this doubled ESPN's enthusiasm for bringing me back after almost, what, 16 years away. The other thing that motivated them was

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

one of the great strategical, delightful, mean

[Dan Patrick]

spirited practical jokes, black ops, rat effing, to use the Nixon administration term, things

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

I have ever heard of in any industry, but particularly intelligent.

[Dan Patrick]

Two things happened that accentuated the need

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

for them to rehire me to go

[Dan Patrick]

and do something at ESPN.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Originally it was to be SportsCenter, but

[Dan Patrick]

then they had a better idea. Fox Sports, for whom I had worked

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

in 1999, 2000 and 2001, trying to build up something that would eventually compete with ESPN, particularly SportsCenter.

[Dan Patrick]

They underfunded it and that thing went up in dust, but I got my money there too.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Now here, 20 years later, they're gonna

[Dan Patrick]

try it again again, or 10 years

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

later they're gonna try it again.

[Keith Olbermann]

And in fact, they're going to roll

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

out two new networks. And it dawned on the folks at espn, Skipper in particular, that what he could do would be hire me, put me on ESPN2, and whatever the ratings would be for my show on ESPN2, they would presumably be double what Fox Sports was able to get in its earliest stages, its premiere week, it's premier month, and they could point to the ratings and say, we don't even look at what they're doing against SportsCenter on ESPN. Look at how poorly they're doing against

[Dan Patrick]

our second offering at that hour at

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

11 o', clock, Keith Olbermann's new show. Isn't this ridiculous? How much money is Fox going to waste on this project? But then I believe my people, Nick Khan, who was my agent and then went on to run wrestling in a move I still don't quite understand, Nick Khan, I believe, suggested to John Skipper that there was something even more evil he could do.

[Keith Olbermann]

Do.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Fox did one thing right. Fox played the media, the media covering television and has always played them extraordinarily well. They wind them, they dined them, they flew them places, they gave them free stuff. And what they were going to do in the summer of 2013 was to fly them all to Los Angeles. And now we're not talking about newspapers Sending reporters because there were fewer and fewer of them. We're now talking about bloggers. Bloggers, who is the proverbial jokes go have never been out of their mother's basement before, suddenly get a first class air ticket to Los Angeles for a couple of days in a good hotel and a lot of free food and a party. Probably half of them had never been

[Dan Patrick]

to a party before.

[Keith Olbermann]

It's the launch party for Fox Sports

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

1 and Fox Sports 2. And in the middle of the second day or the first day, there comes the announcement over the wire that ESPN has rehired me. It was 1997 when I left and now at 2013 I'm going back. And we actually got phone video from people we had planted at the Fox sports party with five or six hundred people and maybe 100 reporters and bloggers there about to write about Fox Sports this and Fox Sports 2 that and the new Regis Philbin sports show and all the other things they had planned on all these great programs and the money they were spending. And they're all there on Fox's dime in Los Angeles. And all of a sudden across their phones comes the bul from I guess the New York Times, Keith Olbermann returning to espn War over. And we have video of them all leaving the party, leaving the Fox Sports publicity party to go write stories about ESPN and me.

[Keith Olbermann]

Ha ha ha. Take that Rupert Murdoch.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

And he's still going.

[Dan Patrick]

Anyway, so that was the first one. And, and the motivation was to provide a buffer in the ratings against the ESPN too. And if the show suc did great, we had a two year contract, they paid me for them an unbelievably large amount of money. And, and it didn't make any headroom in terms of, or headway in terms of the ratings. And when Skipper turned out to have had a small problem with dependency and other stuff and had over budgeted the amount of talent and had to fire like 35 on air people, he fired all the people whose contracts were up, which makes sense, that included me. And although they buried this, it included my high school classmate Chr Berman. We were both fired by ESPN in 2015. So in any event, I wandered back after that, not really with much of a complaint about how they had treated me, because that was the deal going in. It's two years. If it, if it does more than we expect, then we'll do some more. And if it doesn't, we'll just part as friends this time. And in the interim the whole idea of alderman ESPN nuclear war will have been erased by two years of friendly cooperation and good programs and a lot of jokes. And that's exactly what happened. By the end of those two years. I was invited to all the ESPN events, I went to all of the parties. The only thing I did not do in that two year span was to do SportsCenter. Okay, so now I go back into politics and unfortunately that's the start of the Trump era. And I devoted 2015 and 16 and 17 to that. And I was at a, at an Apple store and ran into two guys who, in their late 30s or early 40s, must have been the youngest people who had watched SportsCenter in the early 90s on a regular basis. They were kids on the west coast for whom it was the 8pm Sports Center. And they took me aside and thus took me two hours to buy a phone because they just were regaling me with stories of why they didn't watch SportsCenter anymore. And it didn't have anything to do with the changes in the industry or the availability of highlights or the fact that everybody knew the scores long before SportsCenter was on. As opposed to the old scenario in which we were telling you the scores for the first time and certainly showing you the highlights for the first time, we had first use of all that video, basically. It wasn't that they just thought the new versions of the show didn't live up to the panache of 1995. And me and Dan and Rich Eisen and Stuart Scott and Kenny Main and Larry Beal and Jack Edwards and Linda Cohn and, and, and everybody, everybody. The worst person on ESPN SportsCenter in 1995 would have been the star of ESPN SportsCenter in 2017. And I left this buying of a phone. So sad, because there are many things one can say about this podcast or the resistance video series for GQ or the show at MSNBC or any of the other work I've done against George Bush, against Donald Trump, against fascism. There's many things that can be said for them, and in many cases they're extraordinary in their the degree of rewarding and satisfaction that they provide and a sense of actually doing something important. But there's one thing they rarely were fun. And in nineteen 2017, rather I was already 58 years old and pushing 59 and thinking, if I'm ever going to enjoy being on television again, I better find out some way of doing that now. And so I called John Skipper and we started talking about my going back to ESPN for, if you count the Dan Patrick Show, a Fourth time. Why not? We'd done it successfully, he and I and Norby Williamson in 2013. He put Norby on it. We had a series of meetings again, just like 2012 and 13.

[Keith Olbermann]

Here we go again.

[Dan Patrick]

Keith's coming back in secret.

[Keith Olbermann]

Skipper is all excited about it.

[Dan Patrick]

Skipper and I meet for drinks every couple of weeks.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

We talk about things like me doing

[Keith Olbermann]

baseball play by play.

[Dan Patrick]

Could you do game by yourself?

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

I've always enjoyed the way Vin Scully does baseball games.

[Dan Patrick]

Just here him and I was like, well, he's Vin Scully, but that you'd be the number two best solo sportscaster doing baseball games. Well, no, there'd be. Vin would be number one and there'd be no numbers two through 1,000. And I would be number 1,001. Better than being last. And I. I couldn't convince him it was a bad idea. But we talked about my doing baseball games and we talked about my doing all kinds of other things and Sports Center. So finally, we're about to announce this and I wrap up the GQ video series. The resistance, it's all over. And I wish everybody the most luck

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

they can have on it, but I

[Dan Patrick]

can't possibly continue it. It's killing me. It's literally causing me my health to

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

decline because it was so much not fun.

[Dan Patrick]

So now here we are in 2017, running towards Christmas. We're about to announce this once again.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

And this is the thing I look for in all job negotiations. Since when somebody says, keep these days

[Dan Patrick]

open because this is when we're going to announce it. That's when I know it's about to

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

explode and bad things are going to happen within two days of the same idea that Norby Williamson had had in 2012 of having me just show up

[Dan Patrick]

on the air with no announcement.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

I wake up one morning and there is a text on my phone. We're literally going to announce the new deal within three days of the morning

[Dan Patrick]

I am waking up to, there is

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

a text on my phone from my friend Jeff Marek, the hockey maven of

[Dan Patrick]

Toronto, Ontario and environs. I know he's not from Toronto.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

I'm sorry I didn't mention the individual cities that you've mentioned in conversation all these years, Jeff. In any event, here is a text on my phone from Jeff saying, John Skipper resigned. And I'm looking at the phone thinking of the implications of this and knowing it can't be real. Why would John Skipper have resigned as president of ESPN when we're two days away from making this deal that I just quit. Quit My job for what the hell is this? And I said, this is the damnedest dream I've ever had because the phone

[Dan Patrick]

in my hand has weight.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

I've never had a dream before in which the things had weight that I could feel.

[Keith Olbermann]

Oh my God, it's not a dream.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

John. Skipper had resigned for the reasons I referred to earlier. And now ESPN was in the control of nobody. And the deal I was about to make was, was totally frozen and there

[Dan Patrick]

was no one to approve it.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

And they had to bring a former president out of retirement to be acting president so there wouldn't be anybody in charge, not for months, not for years. And the plan which at that point was me moving back to Bristol to do the 6 o' clock sports center by myself every day for a period of six months, maybe a year in Bristol, Connecticut.

[Keith Olbermann]

And by the way, the home that

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

I owned in Southington, adjoining Bristol, Connecticut in 1990 through 1997 was available again

[Keith Olbermann]

and they were going to buy it for me.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

So all this was going to be the case and I was going to move up there and then come back

[Dan Patrick]

and we'd start doing SportsCenter from the

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

city sometime in, in 2019 probably. And, and nobody is going to make this deal because no one is going to make any deal and the whole place is frozen and nobody knows what happened to Skipper and nobody knows what's going to happen next and nobody knows if there's going to be an ESPN tomorrow afternoon. And I guess we're not going to announce my new deal. Norby Williamson is many things and has been criticized by many people and I certainly was one of them, particularly in the 90s. But my God, Norby Williamson, in that environment, which was essentially nuclear winter, managed to pull together a deal in which I was hired to do a number of sports centers every week from New York and produce various other segments for shows for sports centers, pieces on baseball history, obituaries, reports on this event, essays for the super bowl coverage, this, that, the other thing, and go and do baseball games on the radio, even though I had no experience and do a couple of them on tv and I was okay at it and would have been really good if I had been able to take a couple of years and go to the Carolina League and learn how to actually do play by play. Because if you're a 59 year old rookie play by play announcer, you suddenly discover there are things you really did need to work on in 1983 that you never knew anything about. All right, so we now slowly roll out this whole program and now I'm going to do SportsCenter. And now I'm Bristol, Connecticut, early in 2018, and it is Rip Van Winkle. There is no semblance of the place that I left. I recognized exactly one part of one hallway was untouched. Down in the basement, down in the basement of the engineering room where our old studio was, there was one corner where the engineers, when they would get 20 or 24 pizzas for everybody, eat to eat during special events, would lay the pizzas out on table one corner. The tables were still there. Everything else at ESPN was changed. The pizza table was still intact. So I went through my Rip Van Winkle experience and did a bunch of sports centers, and we did them from New York and we did them from Bristol, and I stayed in Bristol, and I did Baseball Tonight from Bristol, and I did games on the road and I did this and I did that, and I got some illnesses and had to have some surgery, and I had to cut back on the amount of work I was able to do in 2019. But into early 2020, we had begun negotiations on another contract, me to stay at ESPN as I approached my 62nd year on this planet. And that's when Covid hit.

[Dan Patrick]

And there was no sports. And you know what they don't need if there's no Sports? Sportscasters, particularly SportsCenter Sportscasters. To Norby Williamson's credit, he found something for me to do. I did a weekly piece for them, which was highlights of old highlights, old funny highlights with new jokes attached to them. It wasn't bad, all things considered. And there really wasn't anything to do and no indication that when things cleared up, whenever that was going to be, that they were ever going to reopen that New York studio or continue the expense of having SportsCenter done partially from Bristol, Bristol, Bristol and New York. And so looking at the 2020 presidential election coming up in the horizon in the summer of 2020, I said, I think I should. I should stop being with espn. And Norby was like, why don't you think we're going to rehire you when everything clears up and your contract's up? And I said, you might. I wouldn't. I mean, I'm. I'm. I'm happy to, and maybe we can revisit it, but. But I'm going to be sitting here not working for you when I should try to do something about this Biden Trump election.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

Okay.

[Dan Patrick]

I didn't know at the time that this allowed him to alter his headcount at ESPN and, And save a little money and change his budget a little bit and make things better for everybody else. But the end result of this was absolutely the last thing that anybody would have predicted at any point in the history of the world prior to this announcement. In the middle of COVID as we began to come out of it and the vaccine was evident on the horizon and the reopening of sporting events began and people started to trickle back into the stadiums and go outside and do ordinary things again, and life began to return to normal. And Trump was defeated in the 2020 election as he was. As all this happened, ESPN announced that I had retired from ESPN. I didn't even know that was the plan. I became an ESPN retiree. I to this day get money from ESPN as a retiree, as a Disney cast member who retired me, the guy who spent the better part of his life in nuclear war with espn. ESPN competing against ESPN trying to knock it down or negotiating to go back there. The sturm and the drong ended with me as a retiree. So now when things go wrong at ESPN and people do things they should not do, I'm gonna leave names out of it just for once.

[Interviewer/Interlocutor]

But when they do things that they

[Dan Patrick]

should not do on ESPN, I can point at the TV like that Leonardo DiCaprio meme and point at it. And I can say with that meme in mind, mind. And with my retiree status in mind,

[Keith Olbermann]

hey, I'm a retiree. My money is wrapped up in your show. Stop screwing it up. Like Bryson DeChambeau approach, approaching the alien with a couple of golf clubs. The extraterrestrial on the golf course. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Sorry, the commercial still pisses me off. What would this golfer do if we had an ET actually land here? Beat him to death over a bet. Thanks for listening. Our musical directors of Countdown are John Phillip Chenaud on keyboards and handling the orchestration, and Brian Ray on the bass, drums and guitars. Their work is produced by TKO Brothers. Nancy Foust, the best baseball stadium organist ever, is responsible for the satirical and pithy musical comments. When we play the sports music, it's the old Olderman show. Theme from ESPN2, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Going back to Bristol, Bristol, Bristol, Bristol. Other music arranged and performed by the group no horns allowed. My announcer today was my friend, Nancy Foust. This program was produced today by Ted, Stevie Rose and Kit. Everything else was, as always, my fault. That's Countdown for today, day 449 of America held hostage again, just 1,014 days until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck and lame brained term, unless he is removed sooner by the Trump Memorial Arch and Grill, knowing his construction standards don't stand under it. Mr. President. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. Bulletins as the news merits. Till the next one. I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and and good luck pronouncing my own name. 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 podcast.

[Serving Pancakes Podcast Host]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.