SERIES 3 EPISODE 58: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
As Kamala Harris's lead among Hispanic voters nearly triples in less than a month, one of Trump's preliminary speakers at his Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden attacks them. “These Latinos, they love making babies, too" says somebody named Hinchcliffe.“There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.”
If a crass attack against 12% of the nation's likely voters would not cause enough damage to Trump in the final week, Hinchcliffe then added "There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico."
As even Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott attacks the remarks, a Trump flunky tries to distance itself from the extraordinary attacks saying they don't represent the campaign. At the same time, Donald Trump Jr re-posted video of the remarks.
There is a day in each failed presidential candidacy where the losing candidate woke up with his chances of BECOMING president still intact, but went to bed with them irrevocably destroyed. I think for Trump that day was yesterday. The viability of his candidacy has largely depended on his growing support among Latinos.
450,000 residents of Pennsylvania self-identify as Puerto Rican – 127,114 of them in PhILLY and 33,531 in Allentown. 100,000 residents of North Carolina do so. 65-thousand in Wisconsin. 50,000 Michiganders. To say nothing of a million Floridians and a quarter million Texans.
EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT HISPANIC THERE WAS PLENTY OF HATE TO GO AROUND: Stephen Miller echoes Goebbels. Elon Musk, Dr. Phil, Hulk Hogan and Tucker Carlson beclown themselves. just as the German-American Bund discovered in 1939 when they paraded the swastika into the old Madison Square Garden, there is something about parading Trump’s backed-up sewer of hateful has-beens into the heart of bright blue New York City to scream their filth. Somehow the context, the location, underscores that they not only believe this, they not only see a future only for white people and others who have been approved BY white people, they not only think they are a majority, they not only think Trump is beloved, they not only think the tens of millions of us who repudiate their bestiality and their hatred and their racism are somehow just PRETENDING to repudiate these things but most of all, WORST of al these scumbags think they’re going to get away with it.
And against a fresh background, we are reminded what shame they have brought to us.
Meanwhile the interior numbers for Harris continue to explode. In the ABC poll, likely African-American voters are now hers… NINETY to seven. The CBS poll has her up by 1 despite something curious in the very first interior number. She leads among women by 12 points. He only leads among men by nine. If that difference is correct, she wins.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Here the Monday Countdown headlines. There is a day in each failed presidential campaign where the losing candidate wakes up with his chances of becoming presidents still intact, but goes to bed with them irrevocably destroyed. I think for Trump that day was yesterday. The viability of his candidacy has largely depended on his growing support among Latinos. This was Trump's warm up act yesterday at the rally at Madison Square Garden, New York.
These Latinos they love making babies too. Just know that they do. They do. There's no pulling out, they don't do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country, Republicans of the Party with a good sense of humor. I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now.
Yeah.
I think it's called Puerto Rico.
That is a self described, inaccurately self described comedian named Tony Hinchcliff. It is literally possible that Tony Hinchcliff just clinched the election for Kamala Harris hours earlier, ABC News had reported polling, while giving the vice president a national lead of four points among likely voters, that her support among Hispanic voters had been twelve points fifty five to forty three at the start of this month, but that it had now grown to sixty four percent to thirty four percent, thirty points over Trump, the lead nearly tripling in three weeks before or that idiot said what he said, and Latinos or Hispanics, or more accurately and respectfully, the various groups that make up a diaspora of connected heritages are hardly a uniform voting block, but this moron Hingecliff managed to offend them all and single out Puerto Ricans. Four hundred and fifty thousand residents of Pennsylvania self identify as Puerto Rican, one hundred and twenty seven thousand, one hundred and fourteen of them in Philadelphia, thirty three thousand, five hundred and thirty one of them in Allentown. One hundred thousand residents of North Carolina identify as Puerto Rican, sixty five thousand in Wisconsin, fifty thousand Michiganders, to say nothing of one million Floridians and a quarter million Texans. And of course there's that other issue. Twelve percent of likely voters nationwide are Hispanic and by the way, about that one million in Florida. Within four hours of this bonehead Hinchcliff's career ender, and I mean career ender for Trump, Miami Congresswoman Maria Salazar and Florida Senator Rick Scott repudiated Hinchcliff and the joke and the insult. Rick Scott, Voldemort's less well known brother. Even Rick Scott realized what a disaster this was for Trump and MAGA and the Republicans and this election. As to everybody who is not Hispanic, don't worry. Trump hates you too. You are still part of the enemy within which he mentioned yesterday again and again and again and again. You are part of that group, along with the Latinos and Blacks and Jews and Muslims and transgendered and Democrats and injured military and media and critics and judges. Because the final masks all fell away yesterday and they all reveled in their racism, and the raging, murderous hate came pouring out in a way that would have shamed the previous American Nazis who soiled the stage at the previous Madison Square Garden in nineteen thirty nine. America is for Americans and Americans only. That was Stephen Miller Gurbels without hair, Trump's personal fountain of hate, screaming America is for Americans and Americans only. Had this been true in nineteen oh five, when Stephen Miller's ancestors were trying to escape Paul Grom's in Russia, yearning to breathe free, they would have died tempest, tossed, or at the Cossacks sword, and Stephen Miller would never have existed. Incidentally, America is for Americans and Americans only. Stephen Miller just called for the deportation of Milania Trump, of Elon Musk, of exsuming and removing Trump's dead mother, oh On. Just to make sure everybody was a speaker made a joke about for Halloween, how African Americans were carving not pumpkins but watermelons, and the music they've played right before introducing Congressman Byron what the FM I doing here? Donald's it was Dixie, the Civil War anthem of the Confederacy. The most racist lines in the most racist song of the nineteenth century, there are no more masks. It is an absolute fact that each losing presidential candidate has an expiration day. Often it is election day itself, obviously, sometimes days or weeks after ask Al Gore or Governor Sam Tilden from eighteen seventy six. Sometimes it won't be identifiable for weeks or months until after it happens. Mitt Romney made his remarks about the forty seven percent on May seventeenth. David Korn published the tape on September seventeenth. Romney still seemed viable as a candidate on October seventeenth, No, he was done on May seventeenth. McCain lost on September twenty third, when he inexplicably suspended his campaign in a stunt in which he claimed he had to instead go deal with the two thousand and eight fiscal crisis, as if he were not confident enough to do both at the same time. The same day, he bailed out of a free hour of one on one network TV publicity with David Letterman and lied to Letterman about what he was doing instead, and wound up watching in horror as Letterman could find only one other political guest at what was literally the last minute before the taping started, and that guest was me if Yesterday's was Trump's swan song, It came with the most bitter of ironies, although that too is part of the tradition of, to paraphrase the film the sweet smell of success. Your campaign is dead, son, get yourself buried the ironies Here in Philadelphia, a two minute Trump commercial during the telecast of the Eagles football game seen by all of those Puerto Ricans who live in Philadelphia. That two minute commercial was about how the country had gone to hell under Biden and Harris and their presidency. The video was of protests during the Trump presidency and the irony back at the garden. Trump didn't really say anything unusual for him, didn't say anything outlandish, didn't say much noteworthy, probably didn't say the worst things said all day. But there is a danger when you change the background, when you alter the colors, when you swap out the venues, when you in effect improve the lighting. For nearly a decade now, the Trump rallies have got less and less shocking each time because to the majority of America, why would it still be shocking that Trump could fill the stage behind him with hateful trash in Tupelo or prayer to Sheen Wisconsin or zebulon North Carolina. After a while, the parades of local politicians who have prostituted themselves to touch the hem of Trump's garment all blend into one. Of course, they did that They are racists now, racists tomorrow, racists forever. But just as the German American Bund discovered in nineteen thirty nine when they paraded the swastika into the old Madison Square Garden, here there is something about parading Trump's backed up sewer of hateful has beens where people can see them. Hulk Hogan is still alive, elon Musk, Doctor Phil Tucker Carlson. You brought them into the heart of bright blue New York City to scream their filth. Somehow that contexts that location underscores that they not only believe this, They not only see a future only for white people and others who have been approved by white people. They not only think they are a majority. They not only think Trump is beloved. They not only think the tens of millions of us who repudiate their best reality and their hatred and their racism are somehow just pretending to repudiate these things. But most of all, worst of all, these scumbags think they're going to get away with it. I mean they got away with it last night, police protection, private protection, guns and not what would have happened otherwise, Thank goodness, not one of them was dragged off the stage by New Yorkers and beaten senseless or better yet, gently escorted to Bedlow's Island and chained there overnight with their eyes taped open so they would be forced to read Emma laz poem in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The essential point is, because of the context, there was an actual surprising quality to that thing. Yesterday, a corporate ethics expert once noted as Rupert Murdoch and his board of directors and executives and other whores publicly tried to avoid all responsibility for Rupert's hacking of the voicemails of a murdered child. The corporate ethics expert said, I don't think they realize we can see them. Ever heard of Charles Lindbergh. Charles Lindbergh was the first man to cross the Atlantic in a solo flight from the day he landed at Le Bourge Airfield in Paris on May twenty first, nineteen twenty seven. He was the most popular man in America and probably in the entire world. Even as he began to speak out defending Nazism in the late thirties, he was still in the top five most popular at least. And then he went to Madison Square Garden on October thirtieth, nineteen forty one, and he insisted the only threat to America was the Jews and their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, our government. And Lindberg insisted there was no true threat to America by any foreign power. And thirty nine days later the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and four days after that, Hitler declared war on us. And when Charles Lindbergh died, first off, there was applause and cheers, But secondly, the obituaries were all about his Nazism first and the airplane thing. Second. You know whose obituary is going to read like that, Elon Musk's. Lindbergh's hate was not born that night at Madison Square Garden, October thirtieth, nineteen forty one, and it was not born in nineteen thirty nine when the German America and Bund went to that place, And it wasn't born in nineteen twenty seven. What was born at Madison Square Garden and what was born at the new Madison Square Garden last night was something that had become dulled or paved over, or maybe we had never recognized it before, or we could no longer see it because the background was bluntly somewhere you and I would never go city. What was paved over was the shame, the shame that Donald Trump has brought us, the shame that these perverted, warped, barely sentient racists live here. The shame that we have to end on November fifth. Man, Look, it's not just shame and vibes and shock and blowing. Whatever margins you had among the Latino and Hispanic voters were at that easy, Trump would have been pushed on to the next down escalator in twenty fifteen, and by now he would have long since arrived in hell. There are also the practicalities. The ABC IPSOS poll yesterday did put her up by four. The Big Village poll closed last Wednesday, Harris by seven, and I don't believe that any more than I believe any of the Trump garbage poles. However, as I always suggest here, and I think the theme of the last two months follow the bouncing poles, confirms the interior numbers of poles can be of actual value. In the ABC poll, likely African American voters are now hers by ninety to seven. CBS poll which came out yesterday has her up by one nationally, despite something curious In the very first interior number. She leads among women by twelve points. He only leads among men by nine points. If that difference is correct, she wins handily. And the New York Times Siena poll a month ago, its respondents gave Trump a thirteen point edge on handling the economy. The edge is now six points. The Times poll also claims that fifteen percent of the electorate is still not fully decided. Those leaners likely's probably's Harris forty two, Trump thirty two. I have already underscored the late decider data from the Emerson poll last week. This just confirms it. Late deciders are going sixty percent for Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris is closing. Will this show up in all the polls. Probably. Not. If it does show up, don't worry, they'll wait it differently to make sure it doesn't show up. Will it show up in the election? Probably, there are paths to the electoral College in which it doesn't matter, and it didn't happen in time, and Trump still wins. But as I said at the start, not if enough people hear what Trump's minion said here in New York yesterday, not what Trump said, what that guy Hinchcliffe said, God, we have to build him a statue here outside Madison Square Garden at minimum, so the pigeons have something new to crap on. I have a friend on the campaign, and originally I thought to start this episode with a vaguely clouded up version of his optimism and confidence at this late date. And then I heard a clip from somebody else in the campaign, and I was genuinely surprised because this other person is not only one of my friend's bosses, but this person has from the start of the campaign been traying the Harris campaign as the underdogs, and all of a sudden, this person has switched her tone completely.
It's very exciting the number of young people, you know, I've begun to really point out the first time voters who are there is now people are actually registered, and it's very exciting, and the momentum is with us.
I know that voice from somewhere. A quick thought in passing on the cowardice of the owners of the Los Angeles Times in the Washington Post LA, It's the Times. For more than half a century, this has been true about whoever has run the LA Times. They could f up a two car funeral. As to the Post. What Bezos kills the routine? Nobody but Trump would have even noticed post endorsement of Harris. Then Trump immediately gets to meet with Bezos's rocket company. Coincidence, no doubt. I have mentioned it many times, always in praise of Bezos, that he resisted the attempt to blackmail him into throwing the post towards Trump when they tried to blackmail him over Laurence Sanchez while he was still married. See now, I'm a pretty devious guy, at least in thought seldom indeed, I'm kind of ashamed of that. But I have to confess. What did not occur to me was what would happen if Trump's cronies were still blackmailing Jeff Bezos? Are still blackmailing Jeff Bezos? Well, he'd he'd bury a Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris. Wouldn't he back with a full edition tomorrow? Until good Night 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.