Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. And we're back to counting how many angels are dancing on the head of one particular pin. We're better still, how many of Stormy Daniels wrenches are dancing inside the monkey works. NBC reports the Stormy Daniels grand Jury is back in the saddle today in New York. First, CNN said it was on standby, then they switched to its back about eight thirty last night. Both networks hint at additional witness testimony. Politico says it's an old witness coming back to rebut a new witness, which would be Michael Cohen. CNN says it could be a new witness and even floated the name of Stormy Daniels and says the delay has been DA Alvin Bragg and his prosecutors trying to decide if the best rebuttal of the new witnesses from the old witness Cohen or the new witness to be announced. The right wing blogosphere is quoting a Fox analyst saying the DA hid six hundred pages of exculpatory evidence, or is it six thousand or is it sixty thousand, but not one Fox story makes the slightest reference to this nor to its own supposed analyst. Nobody, but nobody thinks there'd actually be an indictment today, which means, given how this story has been going for the last week, it is time for Captain Reynaud to say, round up the usual suspects. The only participant in all of this to go on the record is a Trump lawyer, and one with a terrible reputation, and he testified Monday in order to try to impeach the witness, Michael Cohen. And he says he quote through a wrench in their monkey works, which would be a great headline, except, of course it's through a monkey wrench into the works, because there's no such thing as monkey works. Then there appeared a twenty eighteen letter in which Cohen lied to the Feds that he made the payment to Stormy Daniels, and the Trump apologist all said, aha, and everybody else said, we already knew Cohen lied to the Feds about that payment. That's why he went to jail. But even that claim of throwing a wrench in their monkey works by the Trump mouthpiece Robert Costello does not add up, because if Costello really did damage Cohen on Monday. Cohen was at the courthouse Monday waiting to be called back in, and he wasn't, and he wasn't Tuesday, and he wasn't yesterday. If your head already hurts, that's Trump's plan. That has been Trump's plan since the nineteen seventies. Whenever he has been in trouble, whether it is presidential trouble or indictment trouble or football trouble, he has flooded the zone with them feces. This is why he has eleventy billion different lawyers. If one tells the truth and that truth gets Trump in trouble, Trump just as a new lawyer, betray the old lawyer and blame the old lawyer if the story is too easy to follow. Trump had Michael Cohen pay a porn star to keep quiet about an affair so it wouldn't come out before the election. And that's a bribe and an illegal business records felony, and an illegal campaign contribution. Trump makes sure he throws different attorneys and different spokespeople and different right wing media sycophants to attack each part of the story separately, so quickly, so loudly, and so voluinously that you no longer have any idea what anybody is talking about. And if you like to think meta here, if Trump was really convinced that the stormy Daniel's case would not lead to him being indicted and arrested, the biggest scam he could ever pull would be too dramatically announced that he was about to be arrested, because he could raise a lot of campaign money off of the outrage. And then when it didn't happen, when he wasn't arrested, he could claim he stopped them from arresting him, or his supporters stopped them from arresting him, or the fundraising stopped them from arresting him, or Gods stopped them from arresting him. Then he could make sure a long sympathetic and easily led newspaper person like just to pick a name, Magga Haberman could find out that Trump is sitting at Marilago saying that a purp walk with cameras and reporters could be fun, and obviously she'd write that, and then he'd look brave and valiant and defiant in him martyr, because he's not just willing to face the proverbial firing squad, but he's willing to face it without a blindfold unless he really is arrested, and then he's got a different problem because he comes out of that one one of two ways, like I suggested yesterday, Suddenly he's Glorious Swanson playing Norma Desmond right after she murders the guy in Sunset Boulevard, and she thinks she's making her movie come back and she's a star, when in fact it is a purp walk and she's nuts. And at the opposite end of that spectrum, Trump could be in trouble boasting about how much fun a purp walk would be when the DA's office has already said there will not be a purp walk, and then they arrest Trump, and to get the effect Trump has already promised, he would have to walk out in front of the cameras voluntarily holding his hands tightly behind his back, as if he'd been handcuffed like a mime. Happily, As the Stormy Daniel's case gets cloudier, the Marilago documents case keeps getting clear. ABC first reported Tuesday night that the judge called Trump's assertions last May that he had given all the him It's back part of a quote, criminal scheme, and she said that the Special Counsel Jack Smith had shown quote prima facie evidence showing that the former president had committed criminal violations. ABC also reported that the stuff Trump lawyer Evan Corkrane now had to turn over to Smith included transcripts of quote, private audio which appeared to be recordings Corkrane made of Trump. Then came the bizarre overnight appeal process by Trump to block the waiver of attorney client privilege with Corkrane, which turned out against Trump and which will apparently not be taken to a higher court. Though this is Trump, and if he ever stopped paying lawyers to do useless things for him, thousands of attorneys would almost instantly starve on the streets within hours, and the world economy would collapse. Now ABC has more informed reporting that there are six topics about which Evan Corkran has been ordered to give his testimony to the Special Counsel Smith. One was Trump or anybody working for Trump aware of this certification document that's at the center of the thing, the document that Corkoran wrote and had Christina Bob sign, which they then turned over the Department of Justice. After what the document falsely says, was Trump voluntarily turning over any remaining documents he still held at Marilago last spring? Whoever signed that maybe guilty of perjury. Whoever wrote it may be guilty of perjury. Whoever ordered it may be guilty of subordination of perjury. Topic number two. Smith wants Corkran to answer specifically, did Trump approve the claim in that document that there had been a quote diligent search and did Trump approve of the certification then being given to the government. Number three. Corcoran also has to testify about what steps he took to determine where the classified documents were at Marilago and why he thought they were all in the storage room. This all goes back to the idea of did you just take Trump's word for it? And did Trump tell you just to take his word for it. Four. Corkran has to explain why they made Christina Bob the fall Gal the designated custodian of all the documents Trump held as an aside. I'm betting the answer is nobody likes her. Five. Corkran has to explain if he talked to Bob about this, and if so, what did they say the custodian part, not the nobody likes her part. And six and this all goes back to the idea that Trump knew what he was doing when a document that lied and said, all those classified documents, I've turned them all over again. Here the signatures of a couple of lawyers that Trump knew that in advance and knew it was a lie in advance. It goes to four knowledge of a crime and elevates the whole thing monumentally. That's sixth one. There was a phone call between Corkran and Trump on June twenty fourth, the same day that the grand jury subpoena demanding Trump turn over the surveillance footage of the Marilago storage room, which the Department of Justice believed would show people moving boxes in and out of it. The same day that subpoena showed up at Marilago. This is a no brainer. Smith gets to ask Corkran specifics about his call with Trump that day, just happening to be the same day as the subpoena arrived. Plus Smith gets all the documents and that tantalizing transcript Corcoran has, which we already knew. So there it is in the courtrooms of New York and Washington. Clear as a bell. We know exactly what's going to happen from here on in, unless somebody else throws a monkey wrench into the works, or we're a wrench into the into the monkey works, or the wait, unless somebody throws a monkey into the wrench works. He's this year minky a monkey into the wrench works, still ahead of us in this edition of Countdown. For seven months, I've been telling you how new management, namely the paste eating guy, has been pushing CNN to the right under the guise of balance. Now looks like it started at MSNBC, which has just hired a former Republican governor and made one of its hosts welcome him like anybody watching MSNBC wanted to see a Republican governor, and the host stood up to this perversion, like like somebody who really likes that NBC money. You know what happens when you elect a new chair of your state Republican party and you select the woman who believes abortion is just to cover up of satanic child sacrifice and that demonic possession can be transmissible by sex with demons. Well, what happens is you get tweets over your party's name comparing gun control to the Holocaust, complete with pictures of the wedding rings of thousands of Holocaust victims. Good move Michigan, and it's official local television sportscasting is dead. I know this because it's in Sports Illustrated magazine. Also because I wrote an article predicting this in a different magazine in January of nineteen ninety two. That's next, this discountdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead. We're doing this out of order today because worse Persons is way more interesting than the sports segment is. But coming up. I used to be a local TV sportscaster. I did the sports segment on the news three times a night, six days a week. No, really, they used to have sportscasters on the local news. That apparently is coming to an end. I come not to praise local TV sportscasting, but to burying it. Next first time for the daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's whereas persons in the world. The Bronze everybody, from Trump who demanded a boycott to Greta van Sustran, who called for a congressional investigation to Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Mike Lee who wrote a letter threatening dire consequences and insisted this was liberal censorship. What am I talking about about Newsmax and Direct TV? Remember this, It was only last month Direct TV dropped Newsmax, and the whiney but hurt snowflake fascists like Cruise demanded, I don't know firing squads. We all told them, no, it's not censorship. Newsmax gave its channel for free to Direct TV, and then one day Newsmax said to Direct TV, look, instead of free, we'd like you to give us thirteen million dollars a year for it, and Direct TV said, are you kidding? For that crap? Direct TV and Newsmax have now made a deal. Terms not disclosed. Newsmax will be back on the satellite provider. The head of Newsmax now says it's great. The Direct TV quote clearly supports diverse voices, including conservative ones and Cruz and Graham and Trump and all the other morons who were wrong. Cruise is still insisting its censorship because Ted Cruz is the dumbest, most cynical, most manipulative son of a bitch in the Senate. And I might remind you that Kirsten Cinema is in the Senate. The runners up are melbur and MSNBC. Look, I've been there. Your TV employer wants you to do something that's obviously wrong, obviously insults your audience, obviously degrades you, and violates your own morals and principles, and the point of your entire career obviously shows that your employers are trying to kiss the Republican's ass. I've been there, Ari Melburn, I've been there at MSNBC. In fact, they tried to put Michael Savage on my show in two thousand and three, and then in two thousand and ten they tried to put a whole slew of Republican contributors on my show. I know your dilemma just because in two thousand and three I called a cab to lead the studio and told them I was quitting before I put Michael Savage on my show, and just because in two thousand and ten I sit Republican contributors Final Straw and I quit a month later. But I get it. Not everybody can do that. Not everybody puts the audience or their own credibilit first. You do, you, Ariy Melbourne. But when MSNBC, which keeps firing liberals and demoting diverse voices, when they made you announce that it had hired for money former Ohio Governor John Kasik as a Republican contributor to your show into MSNBC. Did you have to show a super cut of all of Kasik's great Republican moments and then act so excited that he would be there and got paid to lie about Republicans and America on MSNBC. We appreciate your being here and welcome, but like I said, I've been there. Of course I stopped it from happening, and you didn't. But I understand your dilemma and the money. But our winners the new chair of the Michigan State GOP and her organization, Christina Caramo. Christina Caramo is the crazy person election denier, sex with Demon's nutbag who was elected a month to go to run the party in Michigan. And I don't want to tell you Republicans how to run your local fascist chapter, but I'm thinking long term. Even for you guys, Christina Caramo is not really going to help, and if you're smart, which you're not, you would get rid of her, like, well, what time is it now? Inside the next hour? The Michigan GOP has tweeted, supposedly in defensive gun rights, this message quote. History has shown us that the first thing a government does when it wants total control over its people is to disarm them. President Reagan once stated, if we lose freedom here, there is nowhere to escape to. This is the last stand on earth. Hashtag to a and below that is a little meme. It's a photo. It's a photo from a Nazi death camp during the Holocaust showing thousands of rings, with the caption quote, before they collected all these wedding rings, they collected all the guns. Now, obviously it's unconscionable and grotesque to use imagery from the Holocaust and compare it to pretty much anything, but particularly to the Second Amendment debate. But it's also factually stupid and the inaccurate. Strict laws against gun ownership in Germany were established by the German Republic in the nineteen twenties. The Nazis actually loosened those laws in many cases. Also, the Second Amendment doesn't have a damn thing to do with gun ownership in this country. That's why the word ownership isn't in the Second Amendment. Oh and Christina Caramo and her clique of psychos who have taken over the Michigan GOP. They're aligned in terms of policy, hatred, prejudice, and mental instability with the nazis not against them. So Christina Caramo and the tasteless, clueless, gutless Michigan Republican Party, shut the f up. You are two days worst persons. And this is Sports Center. Wait check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman in Sports. About one hundred and seventy two different people have sent me an article from Sports Illustrated called the Death of the Local sports Anchor by John Worthime. The subheadline is marvelous. They were once gods walking among their immortals. Now they're lucky to get two minutes. The Peace centers on the last day of a local TV sportscaster in Los Angeles named Fred Rogan after forty two years on the job. There, I reported on his demise in January and noted that when he had been there seven or eight years on Channel four, I had been there two or three years on Channel two. Back then, Fred Rogan had a well, let's just call it a bit of a substance problem. He projected a nice kid next door persona. But after I made a joke about him on the air, he called me up and said he had a tape of everything I'd ever said about him, and he was going to kill me. He also used to steal stories from other stations, which we squelched. Once by teasing a story about a trade that never happened. I did not put it in my sportscast. Fred put it in his. Once I got a call from a kid who said Fred Rogan was about to give him an internship over there at Channel four, but had instructed him that he had one last task to accomplish. And the kid said, I have to call you up and tell you to go f yourself. The kid was named Bill Weir. He later became a sportscaster in La matter of fact and a news reporter, and I think he's still at CNN. And the day he called me in nineteen nineteen ninety one, I told him, you do realize I will never stop telling this story about you, and I haven't hi Bill anyway. The Sports Illustrated pieces about the death of local TV sportscasting while we were all wildly overpaid. That's why most of us did it. The best I ever saw at local TV sportscasting, Glenn Brenner in Washington made a million a year, and he was worth every penny of it. I went from making seventy two grand at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles on a Friday in nineteen eighty eight to making five hundred grand at KCBS in Los Angeles two days later. It was fun. Then came ESPN, so I went to ESPN. Anyway, there's a quote in work Times Sports Illustrated piece from me about the amount of publicity we local sportscasters used to get. Quote. Keith old Remain, another LA sports anchor in the nineteen eighties, once remarked during an earthquake, your chances were one in three of being crushed by a Fred Rogan billboard unquote. Fittingly to the point that local sportscasting is being phased out, I said that in nineteen eighty six. Anyway, Worth Time notes that a Boston station announced in January it was testing a six pm newscast with no sports at all, and that rang a distant bell and made me look at my cobwebs strewn archives. It seems to me that I had written a piece about the eventual extinction of the local TV sportscaster. And there it was from La Style Magazine, a gorgeous monthly publication which naturally went out of business because magazines are like local TV sportscasters. The piece isn't too long, and it's pretty prescient, given it was written thirty one years ago, so I thought, it's my podcast. If you don't care, you can skip ahead. I'm not going to take it personally, or just shut it off. We'll see you tomorrow. Anyway. This was printed in either ju or February nineteen ninety two, and the only thing I've changed in it is the references to years and times, because guess what, nineteen eighty five is not seven years ago anymore. She's anyway, here goes when I came to LA seven years ago in nineteen eighty five. The other principal sportscasters were Jim Hill, Stu Nahan, Ted Dawson, Scott Saint James and Tom Kelly. Dawson and Saint James were distinguished from the others by being the loudest, Nahan and Kelly by being the oldest, and Hill by being the guy who always got the interview but never asked the question. Otherwise, their programs were all the same scores, highlights, previews, predictions, an occasional rant, and a periodic rave, but at least they reported sports news. It was always my viewpoint that sports was not covered seriously enough, while at the same time it was covered way too seriously. The business of sports, the hippocracy, the violence, the human tragedies, and triumphs were usually glossed over so a few more home runs could be shown simultaneously. Sportscasters refused to comment on the twenty percent of sports that is basically absurd, from events like tractor polls and motorcycle racing on ice two fans dressed up as slabs of luncheon meat. The problem was that, with the advent of cable TV and the competition it brought to local sports coverage, the local television news sportscast needed to be retooled so that it would cover the extremes of the spectrum and not just the routine middle. With this retooling, however, a Pandora's box was open. While the viewers tended to respect the serious reporting and criticism, they were driven flat out bonkers by those guys dressed up as salamis. Viewers quietly enjoyed the memorial to Roger Marris that I did once, but they telephoned my station in droves demanding that we keep playing videotape from a New Year Giants super Bowl party showing tiny Tim getting hit in the privates with a snowball. A few months after I had arrived in La Nahan was out at Channel four and Fred Rogan had begun his non stop descent into the full time coverage of fans dressed as salamis. Vic the Brick Jacobs was imported by Channel thirteen and started throwing things at the camera. Channel seven unleashed Todd Donahoe, who, on the night that former Angels pitcher Donnie Moore shot and wounded his wife and then killed himself, still began his sportscast with the trivia question, as it will eventually prove for all local sportscasters around the nation. Inside this Pandora's box was also the doomsday machine. Sports news was always included in TV newscast because there was an unwritten law that it had to be. So what if even in the pre cable days of the seventies and early eighties, an average of only fifteen percent of local viewers, it was found, actually care about the subject. In Los Angeles, the male audience that made up the bulk of that fifteen percent now gets home after the four, five, and six o'clock newscasts are over and goes to sleep before the eleven o'clock begins. In between, in addition to a swarm of ball games, sports fans can now watch a half hour cable sportscast at eight, an hour long one at eight thirty, a local half hour at ten, and two competing half hours at eleven thirty. These guys just don't watch the local newscasts anymore. By the end of my tenure at KCBS, management was claiming the audience for the five o'clock newscast was three quarters women, women who actually got angry when they saw news time wasted on sports that could have been devoted on something important like Madonna. So in local news, a masset of television that is losing viewers of all kinds and losing money in all kinds of frightening amounts. Sportscasts are becoming a liability. They require a large department of producers, the services of videotape editors, and a huge salary outlay. Talent agents whose lives and livelihoods depend on such information. Confirmed that last year fully half of the on air sportscasting jobs that opened up on local stations around the country were not filled. Last year being nineteen ninety one. In La, k NBC cutback from three sportscasters to two, KCBS replaced its number two guy with a freelancer, and after my departure, had for a time no staff sportscasters. As yet, local stations have merely been cutting back on sports coverage. In a span of a few months last year, KCBS reduced the daily average of twelve minutes of sports in its newscasts to seven and a half minutes. At KNBC, Rogan's Bellweather Sunday Night Sports Law forty percent of its audience between May nineteen eighty nine and November nineteen ninety one, and the show was relegated to a later time slot, and the pressure from cable is increasing. My new employer, ESPN again, this is nineteen ninety two. My new employer, ESPN is cooking up a second network that would be nothing less than a perpetual sportscast, all highlights, all the time, forever. Inevitably, sportscast will begin to disappear outright from the local news. Floating around CBS headquarters is an outline for eliminating them in such cities as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles, first from the afternoon newscasts and then from the late night versions. Local team highlights would still be shown narrated by newscasters. Weekend coverage will continue, and the local postgame show tacked onto a network sporting event, will flourish, but the Sunday night wrap up shows will vanish. Someday somewhere, I'll have this conversation with some youngster, way back before the turn of this entry, I used to do the sports on some stations in Los Angeles. What the Dodgers, the kid will say, the Lakers, No, all of them. I used to show all the highlights on the news on the news, Sports on the news honest to God, he'll look at me and then screw his face up in confusion. Why so, that was my prophecy in LA Style magazine in nineteen ninety two, got us say the local sports cast has lasted way longer than I expected it would thirty one years ago, although the salaries didn't. When I went to ESPN to do Sports Center, I was making about two fifths of what I had been paid in LA. That was a surprise. When I went back to ESPN in twenty thirteen, I was making about as much as all the local TV sportscasters in New York City combined, and I was maybe the twentieth highest paid guy at ESPN. Anyway, while we're on this subject, this Rogan fella and I had one memorable contest that pertained to the greatest scoop I have ever gotten in my life, a scoop for which I did almost nothing. I earned none of the credit that I got. And then came Awards season, and well I got my come upance. Fred Rogan cleaned my clock. Next, finally, I number one story on the countdown Things I promised not to tell. And back to my favorite topic me, This is thirty four years ago. So it was August eighth, nineteen eighty eight on the West coast. But by the time I got the story on the air at ten PMPDT and it made all the wires that made it August ninth, nineteen eighty eight. So happy double Day Anniversary, Wayne Gretzky. Just after dinner, the phone rang in my office at Channel five in La Hi, I'm a viewer. I took a deep breath. You never knew where a call that started like that was going to end up. I just wanted to Janoah. I was out golfing at Riviera at the Riviera Clubs afternoon and Bruce McNall, the owner of the Kings, well, he just walked through the locker room saying, hey, guys, if you want to buy your seasoned King's tickets, do it now. I just traded for Wayne Gretzky. The price is going to go up next week. To be polite to the viewer, I asked a few questions, but frankly, the story was pretty stupid. This was the second week of August nineteen eighty eight, and there was a lot of talk that the Edmonton Oilers, We're going to trade Wayne Gretzky, the most famous player in hockey, and there was nearly as much talk that that trade would send him to us in LA. But the owner of the Kings just telling passers by at random in a golf clubhouse that he had just made the trade. I was suspicious that I was being pranked. Fifteen minutes later, my phone rang again. Hi, I'm a big fan of yours and I watch every night. Here we go again. I was just having lunch with a friend of mine out here at the golf course in bel Air, And in like an hour later, freaking Bruce McNall shows up in the dining room and asks for everybody's attention, and he says he's just completed the deal for Wayne Gretzky. And and now I was beginning to get actually worried. I was a lame duck as the sports director of Channel five in Los Angeles, and four months there had been rumors that I was moving down the street to Channel two in Los Angeles. There had been these rumors mostly because I was moving down the street to Channel two. The deal had been done months earlier. We were going to announce it that week. In fact, as these two guys called in I had actually been busily packing up my Channel five office. My thought now was that the sportscaster at the local NBC station, who had a bit of a substance problem and a nasty temper and a real dislike for the fact that I was nearly as popular as he was, was setting me up. I had once managed to mislead him into thinking we were about to break a story about a big LA football trade. There was no breaking story because there was no trade, and he had actually mentioned it on the air, having clearly stolen it from me because I was the one who had made it up. And oh was he furious at me? For all I knew he wanted to embarrass me three weeks before I moved into direct competition with him at five, six and eleven. This August eighth, nineteen eighty eight was in fact my first day back after I had burned all my Channel five vacation time, And for all I knew, this guy at NBC had been having his staffers call me for a week with made up sightings of McNall confirming a Gretzky trade that frankly I never believe was going to happen. I mean not to get two sidetracked here. But one day my phone rang and it was a kid who said, I'm mister Oberman. I'm sorry, but I'm a finalist to be an intern here at Channel four for Fred Rogan, and mister Rogan says I can have the spot, but only if I call you up right now and say I'm sorry. If I call you up and I tell you to go f yourself, the kid did not say f To his credit, he used his real name, Bill Weir. He later became a sportscaster for the third Network station in LA, then a correspondent for ABC and now CNN and I have not let a year go by since without reminding him of his f yourself internship phone call. He said life paid him back by making him work with the guy for several months. Anyway, back to Gretzky Night, two supposed listeners have called to say that Bruce McNall, the owner of the La Kings, is apparently trapsing through golf locker rooms and dining rooms at country clubs to tell them he has completed a trade for the babe Ruth of hockey, Wayne Gretzky. And they're calling me because they like me I'm suspicious, And now the phone rings again. This guy was playing golf at the La Country Club. Same story. McNall, by your kream's tickets. No, I just got Gretzky. The next caller had been at yet a fourth club. I think will share or something. If this was at prank, it was a big one, and bluntly I had begun to admire it. Finally came a fifth call. You don't known me, but I watch you every night. I stumbled onto a story. I think you'll want to run tonight. I said, which golf course were you at? And he said, excuse me. I was in my office all day, and so was my missus. She's on the phone with me. She works for Bruce McNall, the Kings. This time I grabbed a pencil, honey, why don't you take it from here? And she did. She worked in the finance office and she had, literally, she said, just made out a check for fifteen million dollars to the owner of the Edmonton Oilers, Peter Pocklington. She said, and the note memo, were you white? Write what it's for? I was told to put in Wayne Gretzky. She also had seen the trade contract identified the players that Kings were going to give up with the fifteen million to get Gretzky. They were Jimmy Carson and Martin Zellela. There were also draft choices, but she didn't know or didn't remember the specifics of which ones. Now, breathless, I asked her if I could call her back through the switchboard of the LA Forum where the Kings and McNall's offices were, just to confirm she was who she said she was. She said I could, I did, she was. I believe. In fact, she turned out to be the only person on the McNall financial team that did not get charged with something. So now I went in to talk to my news director and to the producer of our newscast. We were not on until ten PM. It was now about seven. They were very excited, and they said that given that I had exact details from a King's source, plus the four witnesses to the owner of the team shooting off his big bazoo at every golf course he could reach, that we should run it, and that we should run it as the lead news story right at the start of the newscast that night, which we did. The Kings would not confirm it, obviously, but as soon as I got off the air with my sportscast the second time I reported this story, a reporter from the Associated Press was on the phone asking me to read him my script, which he then quoted word for word and put out on their sportswire. It was on the back page of the New York Post. The next day, my friends called me from New York to say, Hey, your sportscast is on the back page of the New York Post along with this big picture of Wayne Gretzky. The leak caused the Kings to move up the announcement of the deal from their original plan, which was Thursday the eleventh, to the next night, Tuesday the ninth. A King's vice president told me at the press conference that the Oilers were in rage because they had wanted to hold off until the eleventh because the deadline for their season ticket holders to get their deposits back were Wednesday the tenth. The Kings were nice enough to let me of all the TV guys interviewed Gretzky First Live, and I congratulated Wayne on the move, and he actually congratulated me on the scoop, and I said I didn't do anything but answer the phone, and he thought about it for a second and said pretty much the same for me, and we've been friendly ever since. But the laziest scoop of all time did eventually come back with a sting for me and some payback. A year later, we all submitted our best stories for consideration for the local Emmy for Best TV Sports Reporting for the calendar year nineteen eighty eight. I submitted Surprise, Surprise, the Gretzky scoop. The Emmys were always judged by a committee of television types from a different city, so he didn't have that home la Bias. And the guy from NBC, who I had first thought was pranking me about the Gretzky story, had somehow found out that the Emmys for nineteen eighty eight would be judged in nineteen eighty nine in Ohio. In Columbus, Ohio, I think. So he managed to get an interview with MORGANA the Kissing Bandit, who was this scantily clad bucksom woman you may remember, who in the old days of innocence, used to bribe her way onto Major League Baseball fields and bounce out onto the plate or the mound, and she'd go and kiss stars like George Brett and Nolan Ryan during games. Morgana. Morgana Roberts lived near Columbus, Ohio, so sure enough, at the Emmy's the next year, my exclusive report of the trade of Hockey's greatest player, Wayne Gretzky was one of the finalists for the Los Angeles Best TV Sports Reporting Emmy. But in the ceremony, and it was at Old Landmark Hotel in Pasadena, they showed clips of all the pieces that were finalists and then announced that the winner was Fred Rogan k NBC. For being chased by Morgana the Kissing bandit, my agent stood up and booed. My girlfriend punched me in the arm and said, let's get out of here and go drinking. We left. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitars based and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers, and the mystery villain was Wayne Gretzky. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No horns allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was John Deane. Everything else is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight hundred and seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now while we still can, or if it's already happened as you listen to this, arrest him again while we still can. The next schedule countdown is tomorrow, So until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. And we're back to counting how many angels are dancing on the head of one particular pin. We're better still, how many of Stormy Daniels wrenches are dancing inside the monkey works. NBC reports the Stormy Daniels grand Jury is back in the saddle today in New York. First, CNN said it was on standby, then they switched to its back about eight thirty last night. Both networks hint at additional witness testimony. Politico says it's an old witness coming back to rebut a new witness, which would be Michael Cohen. CNN says it could be a new witness and even floated the name of Stormy Daniels and says the delay has been DA Alvin Bragg and his prosecutors trying to decide if the best rebuttal of the new witnesses from the old witness Cohen or the new witness to be announced. The right wing blogosphere is quoting a Fox analyst saying the DA hid six hundred pages of exculpatory evidence, or is it six thousand or is it sixty thousand, but not one Fox story makes the slightest reference to this nor to its own supposed analyst. Nobody, but nobody thinks there'd actually be an indictment today, which means, given how this story has been going for the last week, it is time for Captain Reynaud to say, round up the usual suspects. The only participant in all of this to go on the record is a Trump lawyer, and one with a terrible reputation, and he testified Monday in order to try to impeach the witness, Michael Cohen. And he says he quote through a wrench in their monkey works, which would be a great headline, except, of course it's through a monkey wrench into the works, because there's no such thing as monkey works. Then there appeared a twenty eighteen letter in which Cohen lied to the Feds that he made the payment to Stormy Daniels, and the Trump apologist all said, aha, and everybody else said, we already knew Cohen lied to the Feds about that payment. That's why he went to jail. But even that claim of throwing a wrench in their monkey works by the Trump mouthpiece Robert Costello does not add up, because if Costello really did damage Cohen on Monday. Cohen was at the courthouse Monday waiting to be called back in, and he wasn't, and he wasn't Tuesday, and he wasn't yesterday. If your head already hurts, that's Trump's plan. That has been Trump's plan since the nineteen seventies. Whenever he has been in trouble, whether it is presidential trouble or indictment trouble or football trouble, he has flooded the zone with them feces. This is why he has eleventy billion different lawyers. If one tells the truth and that truth gets Trump in trouble, Trump just as a new lawyer, betray the old lawyer and blame the old lawyer if the story is too easy to follow. Trump had Michael Cohen pay a porn star to keep quiet about an affair so it wouldn't come out before the election. And that's a bribe and an illegal business records felony, and an illegal campaign contribution. Trump makes sure he throws different attorneys and different spokespeople and different right wing media sycophants to attack each part of the story separately, so quickly, so loudly, and so voluinously that you no longer have any idea what anybody is talking about. And if you like to think meta here, if Trump was really convinced that the stormy Daniel's case would not lead to him being indicted and arrested, the biggest scam he could ever pull would be too dramatically announced that he was about to be arrested, because he could raise a lot of campaign money off of the outrage. And then when it didn't happen, when he wasn't arrested, he could claim he stopped them from arresting him, or his supporters stopped them from arresting him, or the fundraising stopped them from arresting him, or Gods stopped them from arresting him. Then he could make sure a long sympathetic and easily led newspaper person like just to pick a name, Magga Haberman could find out that Trump is sitting at Marilago saying that a purp walk with cameras and reporters could be fun, and obviously she'd write that, and then he'd look brave and valiant and defiant in him martyr, because he's not just willing to face the proverbial firing squad, but he's willing to face it without a blindfold unless he really is arrested, and then he's got a different problem because he comes out of that one one of two ways, like I suggested yesterday, Suddenly he's Glorious Swanson playing Norma Desmond right after she murders the guy in Sunset Boulevard, and she thinks she's making her movie come back and she's a star, when in fact it is a purp walk and she's nuts. And at the opposite end of that spectrum, Trump could be in trouble boasting about how much fun a purp walk would be when the DA's office has already said there will not be a purp walk, and then they arrest Trump, and to get the effect Trump has already promised, he would have to walk out in front of the cameras voluntarily holding his hands tightly behind his back, as if he'd been handcuffed like a mime. Happily, As the Stormy Daniel's case gets cloudier, the Marilago documents case keeps getting clear. ABC first reported Tuesday night that the judge called Trump's assertions last May that he had given all the him It's back part of a quote, criminal scheme, and she said that the Special Counsel Jack Smith had shown quote prima facie evidence showing that the former president had committed criminal violations. ABC also reported that the stuff Trump lawyer Evan Corkrane now had to turn over to Smith included transcripts of quote, private audio which appeared to be recordings Corkrane made of Trump. Then came the bizarre overnight appeal process by Trump to block the waiver of attorney client privilege with Corkrane, which turned out against Trump and which will apparently not be taken to a higher court. Though this is Trump, and if he ever stopped paying lawyers to do useless things for him, thousands of attorneys would almost instantly starve on the streets within hours, and the world economy would collapse. Now ABC has more informed reporting that there are six topics about which Evan Corkran has been ordered to give his testimony to the Special Counsel Smith. One was Trump or anybody working for Trump aware of this certification document that's at the center of the thing, the document that Corkoran wrote and had Christina Bob sign, which they then turned over the Department of Justice. After what the document falsely says, was Trump voluntarily turning over any remaining documents he still held at Marilago last spring? Whoever signed that maybe guilty of perjury. Whoever wrote it may be guilty of perjury. Whoever ordered it may be guilty of subordination of perjury. Topic number two. Smith wants Corkran to answer specifically, did Trump approve the claim in that document that there had been a quote diligent search and did Trump approve of the certification then being given to the government. Number three. Corcoran also has to testify about what steps he took to determine where the classified documents were at Marilago and why he thought they were all in the storage room. This all goes back to the idea of did you just take Trump's word for it? And did Trump tell you just to take his word for it. Four. Corkran has to explain why they made Christina Bob the fall Gal the designated custodian of all the documents Trump held as an aside. I'm betting the answer is nobody likes her. Five. Corkran has to explain if he talked to Bob about this, and if so, what did they say the custodian part, not the nobody likes her part. And six and this all goes back to the idea that Trump knew what he was doing when a document that lied and said, all those classified documents, I've turned them all over again. Here the signatures of a couple of lawyers that Trump knew that in advance and knew it was a lie in advance. It goes to four knowledge of a crime and elevates the whole thing monumentally. That's sixth one. There was a phone call between Corkran and Trump on June twenty fourth, the same day that the grand jury subpoena demanding Trump turn over the surveillance footage of the Marilago storage room, which the Department of Justice believed would show people moving boxes in and out of it. The same day that subpoena showed up at Marilago. This is a no brainer. Smith gets to ask Corkran specifics about his call with Trump that day, just happening to be the same day as the subpoena arrived. Plus Smith gets all the documents and that tantalizing transcript Corcoran has, which we already knew. So there it is in the courtrooms of New York and Washington. Clear as a bell. We know exactly what's going to happen from here on in, unless somebody else throws a monkey wrench into the works, or we're a wrench into the into the monkey works, or the wait, unless somebody throws a monkey into the wrench works. He's this year minky a monkey into the wrench works, still ahead of us in this edition of Countdown. For seven months, I've been telling you how new management, namely the paste eating guy, has been pushing CNN to the right under the guise of balance. Now looks like it started at MSNBC, which has just hired a former Republican governor and made one of its hosts welcome him like anybody watching MSNBC wanted to see a Republican governor, and the host stood up to this perversion, like like somebody who really likes that NBC money. You know what happens when you elect a new chair of your state Republican party and you select the woman who believes abortion is just to cover up of satanic child sacrifice and that demonic possession can be transmissible by sex with demons. Well, what happens is you get tweets over your party's name comparing gun control to the Holocaust, complete with pictures of the wedding rings of thousands of Holocaust victims. Good move Michigan, and it's official local television sportscasting is dead. I know this because it's in Sports Illustrated magazine. Also because I wrote an article predicting this in a different magazine in January of nineteen ninety two. That's next, this discountdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead. We're doing this out of order today because worse Persons is way more interesting than the sports segment is. But coming up. I used to be a local TV sportscaster. I did the sports segment on the news three times a night, six days a week. No, really, they used to have sportscasters on the local news. That apparently is coming to an end. I come not to praise local TV sportscasting, but to burying it. Next first time for the daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's whereas persons in the world. The Bronze everybody, from Trump who demanded a boycott to Greta van Sustran, who called for a congressional investigation to Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Mike Lee who wrote a letter threatening dire consequences and insisted this was liberal censorship. What am I talking about about Newsmax and Direct TV? Remember this, It was only last month Direct TV dropped Newsmax, and the whiney but hurt snowflake fascists like Cruise demanded, I don't know firing squads. We all told them, no, it's not censorship. Newsmax gave its channel for free to Direct TV, and then one day Newsmax said to Direct TV, look, instead of free, we'd like you to give us thirteen million dollars a year for it, and Direct TV said, are you kidding? For that crap? Direct TV and Newsmax have now made a deal. Terms not disclosed. Newsmax will be back on the satellite provider. The head of Newsmax now says it's great. The Direct TV quote clearly supports diverse voices, including conservative ones and Cruz and Graham and Trump and all the other morons who were wrong. Cruise is still insisting its censorship because Ted Cruz is the dumbest, most cynical, most manipulative son of a bitch in the Senate. And I might remind you that Kirsten Cinema is in the Senate. The runners up are melbur and MSNBC. Look, I've been there. Your TV employer wants you to do something that's obviously wrong, obviously insults your audience, obviously degrades you, and violates your own morals and principles, and the point of your entire career obviously shows that your employers are trying to kiss the Republican's ass. I've been there, Ari Melburn, I've been there at MSNBC. In fact, they tried to put Michael Savage on my show in two thousand and three, and then in two thousand and ten they tried to put a whole slew of Republican contributors on my show. I know your dilemma just because in two thousand and three I called a cab to lead the studio and told them I was quitting before I put Michael Savage on my show, and just because in two thousand and ten I sit Republican contributors Final Straw and I quit a month later. But I get it. Not everybody can do that. Not everybody puts the audience or their own credibilit first. You do, you, Ariy Melbourne. But when MSNBC, which keeps firing liberals and demoting diverse voices, when they made you announce that it had hired for money former Ohio Governor John Kasik as a Republican contributor to your show into MSNBC. Did you have to show a super cut of all of Kasik's great Republican moments and then act so excited that he would be there and got paid to lie about Republicans and America on MSNBC. We appreciate your being here and welcome, but like I said, I've been there. Of course I stopped it from happening, and you didn't. But I understand your dilemma and the money. But our winners the new chair of the Michigan State GOP and her organization, Christina Caramo. Christina Caramo is the crazy person election denier, sex with Demon's nutbag who was elected a month to go to run the party in Michigan. And I don't want to tell you Republicans how to run your local fascist chapter, but I'm thinking long term. Even for you guys, Christina Caramo is not really going to help, and if you're smart, which you're not, you would get rid of her, like, well, what time is it now? Inside the next hour? The Michigan GOP has tweeted, supposedly in defensive gun rights, this message quote. History has shown us that the first thing a government does when it wants total control over its people is to disarm them. President Reagan once stated, if we lose freedom here, there is nowhere to escape to. This is the last stand on earth. Hashtag to a and below that is a little meme. It's a photo. It's a photo from a Nazi death camp during the Holocaust showing thousands of rings, with the caption quote, before they collected all these wedding rings, they collected all the guns. Now, obviously it's unconscionable and grotesque to use imagery from the Holocaust and compare it to pretty much anything, but particularly to the Second Amendment debate. But it's also factually stupid and the inaccurate. Strict laws against gun ownership in Germany were established by the German Republic in the nineteen twenties. The Nazis actually loosened those laws in many cases. Also, the Second Amendment doesn't have a damn thing to do with gun ownership in this country. That's why the word ownership isn't in the Second Amendment. Oh and Christina Caramo and her clique of psychos who have taken over the Michigan GOP. They're aligned in terms of policy, hatred, prejudice, and mental instability with the nazis not against them. So Christina Caramo and the tasteless, clueless, gutless Michigan Republican Party, shut the f up. You are two days worst persons. And this is Sports Center. Wait check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman in Sports. About one hundred and seventy two different people have sent me an article from Sports Illustrated called the Death of the Local sports Anchor by John Worthime. The subheadline is marvelous. They were once gods walking among their immortals. Now they're lucky to get two minutes. The Peace centers on the last day of a local TV sportscaster in Los Angeles named Fred Rogan after forty two years on the job. There, I reported on his demise in January and noted that when he had been there seven or eight years on Channel four, I had been there two or three years on Channel two. Back then, Fred Rogan had a well, let's just call it a bit of a substance problem. He projected a nice kid next door persona. But after I made a joke about him on the air, he called me up and said he had a tape of everything I'd ever said about him, and he was going to kill me. He also used to steal stories from other stations, which we squelched. Once by teasing a story about a trade that never happened. I did not put it in my sportscast. Fred put it in his. Once I got a call from a kid who said Fred Rogan was about to give him an internship over there at Channel four, but had instructed him that he had one last task to accomplish. And the kid said, I have to call you up and tell you to go f yourself. The kid was named Bill Weir. He later became a sportscaster in La matter of fact and a news reporter, and I think he's still at CNN. And the day he called me in nineteen nineteen ninety one, I told him, you do realize I will never stop telling this story about you, and I haven't hi Bill anyway. The Sports Illustrated pieces about the death of local TV sportscasting while we were all wildly overpaid. That's why most of us did it. The best I ever saw at local TV sportscasting, Glenn Brenner in Washington made a million a year, and he was worth every penny of it. I went from making seventy two grand at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles on a Friday in nineteen eighty eight to making five hundred grand at KCBS in Los Angeles two days later. It was fun. Then came ESPN, so I went to ESPN. Anyway, there's a quote in work Times Sports Illustrated piece from me about the amount of publicity we local sportscasters used to get. Quote. Keith old Remain, another LA sports anchor in the nineteen eighties, once remarked during an earthquake, your chances were one in three of being crushed by a Fred Rogan billboard unquote. Fittingly to the point that local sportscasting is being phased out, I said that in nineteen eighty six. Anyway, Worth Time notes that a Boston station announced in January it was testing a six pm newscast with no sports at all, and that rang a distant bell and made me look at my cobwebs strewn archives. It seems to me that I had written a piece about the eventual extinction of the local TV sportscaster. And there it was from La Style Magazine, a gorgeous monthly publication which naturally went out of business because magazines are like local TV sportscasters. The piece isn't too long, and it's pretty prescient, given it was written thirty one years ago, so I thought, it's my podcast. If you don't care, you can skip ahead. I'm not going to take it personally, or just shut it off. We'll see you tomorrow. Anyway. This was printed in either ju or February nineteen ninety two, and the only thing I've changed in it is the references to years and times, because guess what, nineteen eighty five is not seven years ago anymore. She's anyway, here goes when I came to LA seven years ago in nineteen eighty five. The other principal sportscasters were Jim Hill, Stu Nahan, Ted Dawson, Scott Saint James and Tom Kelly. Dawson and Saint James were distinguished from the others by being the loudest, Nahan and Kelly by being the oldest, and Hill by being the guy who always got the interview but never asked the question. Otherwise, their programs were all the same scores, highlights, previews, predictions, an occasional rant, and a periodic rave, but at least they reported sports news. It was always my viewpoint that sports was not covered seriously enough, while at the same time it was covered way too seriously. The business of sports, the hippocracy, the violence, the human tragedies, and triumphs were usually glossed over so a few more home runs could be shown simultaneously. Sportscasters refused to comment on the twenty percent of sports that is basically absurd, from events like tractor polls and motorcycle racing on ice two fans dressed up as slabs of luncheon meat. The problem was that, with the advent of cable TV and the competition it brought to local sports coverage, the local television news sportscast needed to be retooled so that it would cover the extremes of the spectrum and not just the routine middle. With this retooling, however, a Pandora's box was open. While the viewers tended to respect the serious reporting and criticism, they were driven flat out bonkers by those guys dressed up as salamis. Viewers quietly enjoyed the memorial to Roger Marris that I did once, but they telephoned my station in droves demanding that we keep playing videotape from a New Year Giants super Bowl party showing tiny Tim getting hit in the privates with a snowball. A few months after I had arrived in La Nahan was out at Channel four and Fred Rogan had begun his non stop descent into the full time coverage of fans dressed as salamis. Vic the Brick Jacobs was imported by Channel thirteen and started throwing things at the camera. Channel seven unleashed Todd Donahoe, who, on the night that former Angels pitcher Donnie Moore shot and wounded his wife and then killed himself, still began his sportscast with the trivia question, as it will eventually prove for all local sportscasters around the nation. Inside this Pandora's box was also the doomsday machine. Sports news was always included in TV newscast because there was an unwritten law that it had to be. So what if even in the pre cable days of the seventies and early eighties, an average of only fifteen percent of local viewers, it was found, actually care about the subject. In Los Angeles, the male audience that made up the bulk of that fifteen percent now gets home after the four, five, and six o'clock newscasts are over and goes to sleep before the eleven o'clock begins. In between, in addition to a swarm of ball games, sports fans can now watch a half hour cable sportscast at eight, an hour long one at eight thirty, a local half hour at ten, and two competing half hours at eleven thirty. These guys just don't watch the local newscasts anymore. By the end of my tenure at KCBS, management was claiming the audience for the five o'clock newscast was three quarters women, women who actually got angry when they saw news time wasted on sports that could have been devoted on something important like Madonna. So in local news, a masset of television that is losing viewers of all kinds and losing money in all kinds of frightening amounts. Sportscasts are becoming a liability. They require a large department of producers, the services of videotape editors, and a huge salary outlay. Talent agents whose lives and livelihoods depend on such information. Confirmed that last year fully half of the on air sportscasting jobs that opened up on local stations around the country were not filled. Last year being nineteen ninety one. In La, k NBC cutback from three sportscasters to two, KCBS replaced its number two guy with a freelancer, and after my departure, had for a time no staff sportscasters. As yet, local stations have merely been cutting back on sports coverage. In a span of a few months last year, KCBS reduced the daily average of twelve minutes of sports in its newscasts to seven and a half minutes. At KNBC, Rogan's Bellweather Sunday Night Sports Law forty percent of its audience between May nineteen eighty nine and November nineteen ninety one, and the show was relegated to a later time slot, and the pressure from cable is increasing. My new employer, ESPN again, this is nineteen ninety two. My new employer, ESPN is cooking up a second network that would be nothing less than a perpetual sportscast, all highlights, all the time, forever. Inevitably, sportscast will begin to disappear outright from the local news. Floating around CBS headquarters is an outline for eliminating them in such cities as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles, first from the afternoon newscasts and then from the late night versions. Local team highlights would still be shown narrated by newscasters. Weekend coverage will continue, and the local postgame show tacked onto a network sporting event, will flourish, but the Sunday night wrap up shows will vanish. Someday somewhere, I'll have this conversation with some youngster, way back before the turn of this entry, I used to do the sports on some stations in Los Angeles. What the Dodgers, the kid will say, the Lakers, No, all of them. I used to show all the highlights on the news on the news, Sports on the news honest to God, he'll look at me and then screw his face up in confusion. Why so, that was my prophecy in LA Style magazine in nineteen ninety two, got us say the local sports cast has lasted way longer than I expected it would thirty one years ago, although the salaries didn't. When I went to ESPN to do Sports Center, I was making about two fifths of what I had been paid in LA. That was a surprise. When I went back to ESPN in twenty thirteen, I was making about as much as all the local TV sportscasters in New York City combined, and I was maybe the twentieth highest paid guy at ESPN. Anyway, while we're on this subject, this Rogan fella and I had one memorable contest that pertained to the greatest scoop I have ever gotten in my life, a scoop for which I did almost nothing. I earned none of the credit that I got. And then came Awards season, and well I got my come upance. Fred Rogan cleaned my clock. Next, finally, I number one story on the countdown Things I promised not to tell. And back to my favorite topic me, This is thirty four years ago. So it was August eighth, nineteen eighty eight on the West coast. But by the time I got the story on the air at ten PMPDT and it made all the wires that made it August ninth, nineteen eighty eight. So happy double Day Anniversary, Wayne Gretzky. Just after dinner, the phone rang in my office at Channel five in La Hi, I'm a viewer. I took a deep breath. You never knew where a call that started like that was going to end up. I just wanted to Janoah. I was out golfing at Riviera at the Riviera Clubs afternoon and Bruce McNall, the owner of the Kings, well, he just walked through the locker room saying, hey, guys, if you want to buy your seasoned King's tickets, do it now. I just traded for Wayne Gretzky. The price is going to go up next week. To be polite to the viewer, I asked a few questions, but frankly, the story was pretty stupid. This was the second week of August nineteen eighty eight, and there was a lot of talk that the Edmonton Oilers, We're going to trade Wayne Gretzky, the most famous player in hockey, and there was nearly as much talk that that trade would send him to us in LA. But the owner of the Kings just telling passers by at random in a golf clubhouse that he had just made the trade. I was suspicious that I was being pranked. Fifteen minutes later, my phone rang again. Hi, I'm a big fan of yours and I watch every night. Here we go again. I was just having lunch with a friend of mine out here at the golf course in bel Air, And in like an hour later, freaking Bruce McNall shows up in the dining room and asks for everybody's attention, and he says he's just completed the deal for Wayne Gretzky. And and now I was beginning to get actually worried. I was a lame duck as the sports director of Channel five in Los Angeles, and four months there had been rumors that I was moving down the street to Channel two in Los Angeles. There had been these rumors mostly because I was moving down the street to Channel two. The deal had been done months earlier. We were going to announce it that week. In fact, as these two guys called in I had actually been busily packing up my Channel five office. My thought now was that the sportscaster at the local NBC station, who had a bit of a substance problem and a nasty temper and a real dislike for the fact that I was nearly as popular as he was, was setting me up. I had once managed to mislead him into thinking we were about to break a story about a big LA football trade. There was no breaking story because there was no trade, and he had actually mentioned it on the air, having clearly stolen it from me because I was the one who had made it up. And oh was he furious at me? For all I knew he wanted to embarrass me three weeks before I moved into direct competition with him at five, six and eleven. This August eighth, nineteen eighty eight was in fact my first day back after I had burned all my Channel five vacation time, And for all I knew, this guy at NBC had been having his staffers call me for a week with made up sightings of McNall confirming a Gretzky trade that frankly I never believe was going to happen. I mean not to get two sidetracked here. But one day my phone rang and it was a kid who said, I'm mister Oberman. I'm sorry, but I'm a finalist to be an intern here at Channel four for Fred Rogan, and mister Rogan says I can have the spot, but only if I call you up right now and say I'm sorry. If I call you up and I tell you to go f yourself, the kid did not say f To his credit, he used his real name, Bill Weir. He later became a sportscaster for the third Network station in LA, then a correspondent for ABC and now CNN and I have not let a year go by since without reminding him of his f yourself internship phone call. He said life paid him back by making him work with the guy for several months. Anyway, back to Gretzky Night, two supposed listeners have called to say that Bruce McNall, the owner of the La Kings, is apparently trapsing through golf locker rooms and dining rooms at country clubs to tell them he has completed a trade for the babe Ruth of hockey, Wayne Gretzky. And they're calling me because they like me I'm suspicious, And now the phone rings again. This guy was playing golf at the La Country Club. Same story. McNall, by your kream's tickets. No, I just got Gretzky. The next caller had been at yet a fourth club. I think will share or something. If this was at prank, it was a big one, and bluntly I had begun to admire it. Finally came a fifth call. You don't known me, but I watch you every night. I stumbled onto a story. I think you'll want to run tonight. I said, which golf course were you at? And he said, excuse me. I was in my office all day, and so was my missus. She's on the phone with me. She works for Bruce McNall, the Kings. This time I grabbed a pencil, honey, why don't you take it from here? And she did. She worked in the finance office and she had, literally, she said, just made out a check for fifteen million dollars to the owner of the Edmonton Oilers, Peter Pocklington. She said, and the note memo, were you white? Write what it's for? I was told to put in Wayne Gretzky. She also had seen the trade contract identified the players that Kings were going to give up with the fifteen million to get Gretzky. They were Jimmy Carson and Martin Zellela. There were also draft choices, but she didn't know or didn't remember the specifics of which ones. Now, breathless, I asked her if I could call her back through the switchboard of the LA Forum where the Kings and McNall's offices were, just to confirm she was who she said she was. She said I could, I did, she was. I believe. In fact, she turned out to be the only person on the McNall financial team that did not get charged with something. So now I went in to talk to my news director and to the producer of our newscast. We were not on until ten PM. It was now about seven. They were very excited, and they said that given that I had exact details from a King's source, plus the four witnesses to the owner of the team shooting off his big bazoo at every golf course he could reach, that we should run it, and that we should run it as the lead news story right at the start of the newscast that night, which we did. The Kings would not confirm it, obviously, but as soon as I got off the air with my sportscast the second time I reported this story, a reporter from the Associated Press was on the phone asking me to read him my script, which he then quoted word for word and put out on their sportswire. It was on the back page of the New York Post. The next day, my friends called me from New York to say, Hey, your sportscast is on the back page of the New York Post along with this big picture of Wayne Gretzky. The leak caused the Kings to move up the announcement of the deal from their original plan, which was Thursday the eleventh, to the next night, Tuesday the ninth. A King's vice president told me at the press conference that the Oilers were in rage because they had wanted to hold off until the eleventh because the deadline for their season ticket holders to get their deposits back were Wednesday the tenth. The Kings were nice enough to let me of all the TV guys interviewed Gretzky First Live, and I congratulated Wayne on the move, and he actually congratulated me on the scoop, and I said I didn't do anything but answer the phone, and he thought about it for a second and said pretty much the same for me, and we've been friendly ever since. But the laziest scoop of all time did eventually come back with a sting for me and some payback. A year later, we all submitted our best stories for consideration for the local Emmy for Best TV Sports Reporting for the calendar year nineteen eighty eight. I submitted Surprise, Surprise, the Gretzky scoop. The Emmys were always judged by a committee of television types from a different city, so he didn't have that home la Bias. And the guy from NBC, who I had first thought was pranking me about the Gretzky story, had somehow found out that the Emmys for nineteen eighty eight would be judged in nineteen eighty nine in Ohio. In Columbus, Ohio, I think. So he managed to get an interview with MORGANA the Kissing Bandit, who was this scantily clad bucksom woman you may remember, who in the old days of innocence, used to bribe her way onto Major League Baseball fields and bounce out onto the plate or the mound, and she'd go and kiss stars like George Brett and Nolan Ryan during games. Morgana. Morgana Roberts lived near Columbus, Ohio, so sure enough, at the Emmy's the next year, my exclusive report of the trade of Hockey's greatest player, Wayne Gretzky was one of the finalists for the Los Angeles Best TV Sports Reporting Emmy. But in the ceremony, and it was at Old Landmark Hotel in Pasadena, they showed clips of all the pieces that were finalists and then announced that the winner was Fred Rogan k NBC. For being chased by Morgana the Kissing bandit, my agent stood up and booed. My girlfriend punched me in the arm and said, let's get out of here and go drinking. We left. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitars based and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers, and the mystery villain was Wayne Gretzky. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No horns allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was John Deane. Everything else is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight hundred and seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now while we still can, or if it's already happened as you listen to this, arrest him again while we still can. The next schedule countdown is tomorrow, So until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.