Countdown with Keith OlbermannSERIES 3 EPISODE 64: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Yeah, I heard it too.
I heard him he "shouldn't have left" the White House when his term ended. And I heard him say AT his rally that he wouldn’t mind people shooting at the reporters COVERING his rally. And I guess it’s shocking. Except he’s been saying these things (a little more coded) since 2015, and he said the shooting thing about Liz Cheney last Thursday night. And after all he is going through what the shrinks call “disinhibition” AT the rallies where he loses all sense of what he should say in private not public.
But that’s not what got me. I heard something I have never heard before. WHEN he said he wouldn’t mind people shooting the "fake news," he said he wouldn’t mind them shooting THROUGH "the fake news" - THROUGH it - AT him. Doesn’t that sound kind of… what’s the word? Suicidal?
Plus: I understand that we are inside the 48 hour bubble before the election and the pressure is like 887 Atmospheric Units and our rage against this creature and his cult that wants to burn this country to the ground – burn this world to the ground – and our amazement that there is ANYBODY voting for him – that RAGE is at unbearable levels – but… didn’t he sound kinda dead yesterday? At one point he was inaudible. At another, in North Carolina, he thought he was in Pennsylvania. Throughout, he sounded exactly like Hal the Computer in the movie “2001” when they unplugged him.
PRACTICALLY SPEAKING on the eve of the election, the polls continue to support a Harris victory (size TBD) and this shocking poll where she's up by 3 in Iowa hides an even more shocking number (she's ahead by 20 among women in the whitest part of the midwest). And the reaction to the pollster who published this 21 point swing from June tells you all you need to know about polling. They have previously insisted Ann Selser was an immortal. Now they're saying she's making the rest of them look bad by not tailoring her poll to fit their narrative.
B-Block (30:33) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A Trumpist has vowed to "castrate himself on camera" if Harris wins Iowa (if you're a Trumpist, haven't you already castrated yourself?). Chris Cillizza 2024 mocks everybody who didn't buy the conventional wisdom about the vice presidency (evidently including Chris Cillizza 2020, who had disproved it), and courtesy Tim Alberta in The Atlantic, we find a new reason to hate Trump. This is the real reason he's so mad Biden dropped out. Trump thought he had the perfect nickname for the President - and it's appalling.
C-Block (37:48) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I call it The Annual Day I Get Trapped Inside My Home Day. You know it - and may have seen it on TV yesterday - as "The New York City Marathon."
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Yeah, I heard it too. I heard him say maybe he should never have left office. I heard him say at his rally that he wouldn't mind people shooting at the reporters covering his rally, And I guess it's shocking, except he's been saying those things a little bit more coded since twenty fifteen and twenty twenty, respectively. And he said the thing about shooting about Liz Cheney last Thursday night, And after all, he is going through what the shrinks call disinhibition at the rallies, where he loses all sense of what he should say in private not public. And he talks about the size of Arnold Palmer's putter, and he tries to make a joke about his grabbing them access Hollywood tape, ha ha, and he simulates oral se with the microphone, and yeah, back on Earth one, that's still all shocking. But that's not what got me. On the Sunday before the election, I heard something I have never heard before from Trump when he said he wouldn't mind people shooting the press. He said he wouldn't mind them shooting through the press through it at him, shooting at him? Doesn't that sound kind of what's the word suicidal?
I have a piece of glass over here, and I don't have a piece of glass there, and I have this piece of glass here, But all we have really over here is the fake news.
Man, And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news.
And I don't mind that so much.
Just I don't mind.
I don't mind that.
I mean, even within the boundaries of the wildest conspiracies. At Butler, a maga gun nut did shoot at Trump. This man has been shot or shot at and he's saying, well, if you're gonna shoot at me again, at least he'll be through my enemies. That's insanity. I mean, even compared to a traditional Trump that's insanity. Plus again, I understand that we are inside the forty eight hour bubble before the election, and the pressure in here is like eight hundred and eighty seven atmospheric units, and our rage against this creature and his cult that wants to burn this country to the ground, that wants to burn this world to the ground, and our amazement that there is anybody voting for him, that that rage is at unbearable levels. But didn't he sound kind of dead yesterday too. I'm not really daydreaming here or trying to express wish fulfillment. But Christ, listen to him. Listen to how he says I'm smart. In this next clip, he sounds utterly defeated. He sounds like the life is draining out of him. In fact, what he sounds like is he sounds exactly like how the computer in the movie two thousand and one when they unplugged him.
I'm a pretty smart guy. I have genetic Do you believe in genetics? I do you know? Fast race sources produce fast race sources.
Whether you like it or not.
But I'm a very I believe in it, and I'm smart.
I mean, I would not have been surprised if Trump had then started to sing Dasy days give me your On the other hand, if in June you were leading the most reliable, most revered state poll in the nation, the Selleser Poll in Iowa, by eighteen points, and even on September fifteenth, you were still leading the Sealeser poll in Iowa by four points, and three nights before the election, suddenly you're losing the Selleser poll in Iowa by three points, you'd be singing, Daisy two, I'm afraid Milagna, Milaennia. My lead is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I have a lot to say about the Iowa poll and the polls in general in a moment. But let's not leave this issue of cheap, amateur psychoanalysis here just yet. I mean, in the midst of these tons of pressure, we sometimes forget this. But if Trump does not win, or does not stage an armed, violent revolution to regain power, he is going to jail. He is going to die there. And I don't know how many others in this campaign will go to jail. And I do not know what happens inside a brain that has lived seventy eight years inside a fantasy of his and his mother's creation, and never truly been challenged by reality or merely by greater force. What happens to that brain when it must contend with the prospect that all of this could happen, or most likely will happen, or is happening right now. According to Trump internal polling, almost alone in prominent polling, The New York Times Siena poll has him alive in the swing states, tied in Michigan and Pennsylvania, ahead in Arizona, and his campaign promptly responded to that yesterday by issuing a statement accusing The Times of promulgating a quote voter suppression poll designed to dampen his voter's enthusiasm. Siena pol is his best poll right now. So what's the translation of that? Well, they needed that poll from the Times to claim he's ahead in Michigan and Pennsylvania and everywhere else, because clearly he's not. There are very bad things happening inside Trump world right now, and inside Trump I mean like things that happen inside bridges when they collapse. I mean yesterday, late yesterday in Kinston, North Carolina, Trump told the crowd they had a great Republican Senate candidate there, David McCormick. David McCormick is the Senate candidate in Pennsylvania. I can't get past how he sounded yesterday. How his statement about the quote fake news unquote did indeed include a not at all hidden stochastic call for people to murder news reporters but by shooting through them at him. You know the old joke about the circular firing squad. Even a madman would recognize that Trump has proposed something worse than a circular firing squad. He's proposed standing behind the guys the firing squad is aiming at. Even a madman would recognize that the odds would be pretty good that whatever happened to the reporters who were shot through, Trump would also get shot. I think this is going to be one of those episodes of this podcast in which I inundate you with pop culture references from forty years ago. But here's a slightly more recent one, and it's probably one you don't know about. You may recall House of Cards, which was very entertaining until they abandoned the speed and intensity of the original British version with the late great Ian Richardson, and slowed down the series to a ratio of about one minute of show per one minute of real life. You know, next week in episode eight hundred and ninety seven, the President say, and of course then there was the whole Evan k ac Spey thing. But in the original book. This is the point in the original book on which both the British and American series are based, and the book is not that great. Actually, the British TV series is perfect. In the book, the psychotic Prime Minister with murder in his soul does not kill the reporter and does not throw her to her death, but in fact gets caught, and the story ends with him jumping from a courtyard high atop the houses of Parliament, but not before lighting himself on fire. I'm not sure what kind of betting odds you can get on that from polymarket. Right now, there is a day minus won the most extraordinary of ironies. The New York Times leads its Trump coverage by making something Trump said into far more than I think he meant. Quote. Former President Donald J. Trump told supporters on Sunday that he shouldn't have left the White House at the end of his term during an end of campaign rally. Michael Gold and Maggie Haberman wrote that, and I am ever more convinced after reading it that the bottom line for both of them is they are not that smart. They just aren't. Yes, this is me defending what Trump said about how he shouldn't have left the White House when his term ended. This is me sane washing Trump. He meant he shouldn't have left, like he shouldn't have been voted out, or he shouldn't have been forced to leave, or I mean in terms of insurrection and coup and revolution and dictatorship. He says twenty three things a day far worse than this.
Who we had the safest in the history of our country the day that I left. I shouldn't have left, I mean honestly, because we did so we did so well.
But that goes into the New York Times for all time. Out of the headline, Trump tell supporters he shouldn't have left the White House. And if you didn't hear or see that clip, you would never know there was any context to it whatsoever. So maybe this is the Times attempt at to make good after a decade of adding context and caveats to Trump's madness that didn't exist and he didn't deserve own. CNN did it too. They wrote the article as well, says he shouldn't have left the White House. So now it's official that's what he said. Can't win them all, don So to summarize the Trump closing argument as publicly perceived is, please shoot reporters, even if that means shooting me. And I want to see is Cheney with nine guns firing pointed at her face. And Porto Rico is garbage. And when I tried to jiu jitsu the garbage image into a bloody shirt. From my side, I couldn't manage to find the handle on the garbage truck door. And Arnold Palmer never had a short game, and watch as I fell out my microphone a week after I made a joke on this topic about Kamala Harris and the crazy general and doctor Strangelove who started nuclear war against Russia because he believed fluoridation of the water supply was a communist plot. Was right. So I'm gonna let RFK Junior and floridation and vaccination all get together in the same place where RFK will end them all. And he in fact and every aation except FaceTime masturbation. And I shouldn't have left the White House even after I lost the election. I can't imagine where his poll lead went in Iowa after that. Okay, about the polls before we go back to the Iowa Shaker. Last polls from Pennsylvania Muhlenberg College Harris forty nine, Trump forty seven, Marrist also Harris by two times, Sienna tied and they're angry about it. Ohio Miami University poll. Trump is only up by three Florida before Tony winch Slip or whatever his name was. In October, Trump led Harris among Hispanic voters in Florida forty eight to forty one. She now leads him eighty five to eight. So those quote jokes we could go yesterday, those quote jokes unquote, they cost him fifty two points among all Hispanic voters in Florida. The numbers in Pennsylvania and the other states with large Puerto Rican populations. Scheduling Saturday, yesterday and today ten stops by Trump. Four in North Carolina. Their internals in North Carolina are bad and they weren't helped when it was clear he did not know he was in North Carolina. And you've heard the bluster that he went to Colorado and New Mexico. He went to Colorado and New Mexico. He's expanding his maps. Their internals indicate they have a chance in Colorado and New Mexico. Axios reports he went to Aurora and Albuquerque. Quote not because his team thinks he'll win Colorado or New Mexico, but because he liked the backdrops. To talk about illegal immigration? Is it loll or Lowell? Now Iowa and that poll and the credibility of the polster and sells her. She only does Iowa polls. She doesn't do weighted polls, she doesn't subtract. She asks a bunch of people based on how they fit into the demographics of Iowa and its voting patterns and its concerns. And she's the one who insisted that first time voters would dominate the Iowa Democratic caucuses like by sixty percent, and they would create a world changing upset. This was in the year two thousand and eight. The upsetee was Hillary Clinton and the upset tour was Barack Obama. And the rest is and sells are getting almost everything right. Since her last poll for the Iowa Senate twenty twenty two, the Republican by twelve and the Republican won by twelve. For the presidency in twenty twenty, she had Trump winning Iowa by seven. He won by eight. Iowa Senate twenty twenty Republican by four. It was Republican by seven. Governor in twenty eighteen, she messed up. She had the Democrat winning by two and the Democrat lost by three twenty sixteen presidency, though Trump by seven was Trump by nine fourteen Senate Republican by seven, it was Republican by eight. Twenty twelve president, she had Obama by five. He won Iowa by six, and we know about two thousand and eight. Ann Selzer is the best polster in the nation. They wrote at Nate Silver's five thirty eight dot com in twenty sixteen. She started polling neighborhood moms when she was five, asking them whether a family nickname was insulting to her. But of course, now Nate Silver, who doesn't work for five thirty eight anymore, dismisses Ann Selzer as an outlier, and other experts insist no swing state swings so dramatically in a presidential race in one cycle like she's now predicting in Iowa, even though, as I just mentioned, Obama won Iowa by six in twenty twelve and then Trump won it by nine in twenty sixteen, which seems to me like a swing of fifteen points in one cycle. Besides which, as always, it really is the interior numbers that matter most. Here, Selzer has Harris leading among women in perhaps the whitest, most Midwestern state. We have by twenty points. That suggests an undercurrent of undying rage against the Roe v. Wade reversal and the Trump handmaid's tail campaign that we have not seen show up per se in any polling, only in every vote since the Supreme Court did what it did. She has found it and quantified it, and the number is two zero. Politico then adds, in most Unpolitico fashion, that the poll quote also shows voter sixty five and older, a block that typically favors Republicans, breaking for Harris. That's particularly true among senior women, who the survey found supporting Harris by more than two to one compared to senior men, who favor her by just two points. That jibs with the Harris campaign's internal research, which shows the VP continuing to make gains with women and inroads with seniors, according to a senior campaign official granted anonymity to discuss the private data, and it builds upon other positive signs. Harris's team has seen at this late stage that the split screen between Harris's focus and forward looking closing message and Trump's discursive in person appearances, which veer widely away from the discipline message of his campaign's TV ads and the remarks loaded onto his teleprompters is helping to drive late deciding voters to her side. She's talking about issues and how crazy he is, and he's saying, it's okay if you want to shoot me, but shoot those reporters first. I have been hearing this about what they have in the Harris campaign locked files since July, and I've been mentioning it since July, and I've been adding my own little mediocre analysis to it since late July. She's growing, he he's shrinking, and Nate Silver can't handle that because even though his old site said she was the best polster in the nation, he's using all the new bells and whistles she won't use. He's saying Trump is a slight favorite. Listen to what he wrote, and listen for the new in word in polling Herding. Releasing this poll took an incredible amount of guts because, let me state this as carefully as I can, if you had to play the odds this time, Selzer will probably be wrong. Harris's chances of winning Iowa nearly doubled an hour model from nine percent to seventeen percent tonight, which isn't nothing. Polymarket shows a similar trend, moving from six percent to eighteen percent after the survey. Polymarket is a wagering site run by a fascist that, by the way, pays Nate Silver. Anyway, he continues that still places Harris's odds at around five to one against not five feet from where I'm sitting. Incidentally, is my framed copy of the nineteen forty eight Chicago Tribune. Dewey defeats Truman. The poll has a reasonable sample size eight hundred and eight likely voters. Still, the margin of error for the difference separating the candidates in a poll of that size is plus six point six. That means, in theory, in ninety five out of one hundred cases, the real number should be somewhere between Trump punch run thing Man Wow Wait Wow Wow wait wow. Nate Silver as Charlie Brown's teacher, so if he doesn't have a degree in that. There was also a second Iowa poll out tonight, he wrote Saturday, from Emerson College, that showed Trump leading by exactly that nine point margin from twenty twenty. Emerson is a firm that does a lot of herding, so you ought to account for that. They virtually never publish a survey that defies the conventional wisdom. However, for what it's worth, their margin of error runs from Trump plus fifteen point seven to Trump plus two point five. In other words, Nate is saying that the Emerson poles of no value, except he just said it was more important than the saleser pole, and he is so mad at Selzer for not being part of the herd. Earlier this week, Nate Silver wrote about how dangerous herding was in polling herding quote took a lot of guts to publish this. In other words, polsters are fixing their polls, writes Nate Silver, altering who is a likely voter in their own polls to change the results, suppressing their own polls. He's suggesting that Selzer had the option to not publish this poll. I hate to use this verb, but faking their own polls to protect themselves rather than to add to what we understand about what might be happening out there, meaning their data could be dismissed in whole or in part. And all they're doing this for is the money. And if you are involved in covering the future of this nation and your only motive is money. F you do you think I do this for money? Do you think I ever did it for money? Now, maybe initially I did it for money, and then at some point you have enough money and you don't have to do this anymore unless you feel it has some value. And the first rule of having some value is it has to be true. Oh, I don't like the results of our poll. Change who the likely voters are. Get rid of all those Harris voters. Get rid of all those women, senior women. Why would they be interested in abortion rights? Their data could be dismissed entirely, especially if they're Anne out there in Des Moines where her afe is on the same block as not one, but two different knitting shops. You know where I read that about the knitting shops. I read that in the article about her at five thirty eight dot com before they fired Nate silver As. I said, pop culture Overload podcast because for the life of me, I do not know what there will be to put into tomorrow's episode. I may not even do one on Wednesday unless we have a landslide or something to talk about, or it might be six minutes long. I have no idea what there will be left to talk about. But I cannot leave this polling issue while it is so prominent without going back to my favorite movie of all time in Network, the dark and still disturbingly perfectly prescient view of the politics and news media of tomorrow, as seen from what we thought were the dark and disturbing days of nineteen seventy six. Ha ha. The cronkite type network newscaster goes nuts, announces suddenly that he's going to kill himself on the air, and of course the ratings go through the roof. Next thing you know, he has the top rated show on television. And of course they dumb it down as much as possible. They expand it to sixty minutes. They call it the Network News Hour, like it was the Smothers Brother's Hour or the Ted mac Amateur Hour, and they put in all these nightly familiar segments. One called Skeletons in the Closet with Miss Mattahari celebrity gossip like you know half of what you hear or see on all news radio or TV today. Then it was laughable that anybody would even think to put that on television. They're Sybil the Soothsayer with her predictions for the future, like you know, every political pundit and every single goddamned sportscast on the continent, including your opportunity to bet on each prediction for the future these guys have just made. Then it's the emmis truth Department with Jim Webbing a mixture of lawsuits and conspiracy theories. We don't have any of that in television news. And of course, then the news anchor himself, Howard Beale, doesn't do any news anymore. He just goes on these endless political and sociological rants, and he tells people to flood the White House with telegrams, and then he passes out on the air, and golly, has that happened anywhere? Has any of the newscasters just become commentatorus? Maybe I should leave this part of the subject alone. But as disturbing as any of these nightly segments on what we saw as a hyperbolic, impossible, prostituted future for television news was another nightly segment on the network News Hour devoted to one of the most shunned, most unreliable, most avoided components of what was then the cheapest and cheaper forms of news. The segment was called Vox POPULARI. And it was no host for that. There was no Miss Matta Harry, there was no Jim Webbing. It was just a computer, a big computer, and it was spitting out every night something as impossible and sleazy and unnewsworthy as skeletons in the closet or Sybil to Sooox's share. And what it was spitting out was public opinion, polls, shoes share, good evening. Tom Broker also of interest here, almost ran into him at the Animal Medical Center in New York. They said, oh, he's Tom Broker, was going to be here at two o'clock. I went, I'll be out by one fifty nine. Also of interest here, the definition of a pundit is to mock everybody who took position A instead of position B, having forgotten that same pundit had previously mocked everybody who took position B instead of position A. And now we know why Trump is still so pissed off that Biden dropped out. According to Tim Alberta in the Atlantic, Trump thought he had a perfect nickname for Joe Biden, a perfect self damning totally not a confession about Trump nickname for Joe Biden. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on this editiontive countdown. Yeah, I never found out if Brokaw was coming in for treatment or the last guy stumbled past my home just a few hours ago. And they'll be coming around to remove the barricades any month now. You know it. You may have seen it on television yesterday as the New York City Marathon. I know it as the annual day I Am trapped in my apartment day next in things I promise not to tell first, there are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days worse persons in the world. Where's persons in the world? Lebron's worst Republican operative, Joey Mannorino, Joey's not particularly bright. Kamala Harris is not winning IOWA, he posted Saturday night. I'm so certain of it. I'll castrate myself on camera if it happens. These people are just full of absolute whatever. Sh Astris t absolute shot, Joey, I mean, you're not that bright. It could be anything absolute shot. In the final days of this election. Joey castrate yourself on camera. I mean you're you're a trumpists. You're castrating yourself on camera again worser. Oh good lord. If there were no Chris Solissa, some writer would win all the awards for having created him. This is from last Friday. Tell me again, why picking the popular democratic governor of the state you absolutely have to win as VP didn't make sense? Okay, so we all decided to look into this and how to tell Chris about how picking the popular governor of the state you absolutely have to win as VP didn't make sense? And we found this from twenty twenty CNN. Sometime this week, maybe as soon as today, Joe Biden will announce his vice presidential running mate. Until that moment, speculation over who he might pick and why will run rampant in the vast majority of it will be totally wrong. Why there's no part of politics and campaigns more dictated by arcane conventional wisdom than the beepstakes. That conventional wisdom goes like this. The presidential nominee is primarily guided by the electoral map when making his or her pick. The person who winds up as the choices someone the presidential candidate believes will help him deliver a particular swing state or an area that the ticket badly needs in order to win. The problem with that thinking, wrote CNN in twenty twenty. A vice presidential pick has not been the critical piece of carrying a state or a region since wait for it, Lyndon B. Johnson in nineteen sixty. And that unanswerable argument for why picking the governor of the state you absolutely have to win his VP didn't make any sense was by Chris Salissa. He's stunning. It's absolutely least stunning. The man must never have read anything he has written in his life, and he can't possibly own a mirror or a phone. Worst though, Trump bey himself. This is from Tim Alberta in The Atlantic. You remember Tim, He was the guy who killed and buried Chris lickt. I urge you to read the entirety of his piece on how this election has spun out of control for Trump because truly I admire and respect Kamala Harris, but if she is elected, it will be at least half because Trump effing blew this. Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe the whole point is Trump is Trump. He could have been winning by one hundred points and still could have blown it. But Tim Alberta, who buried licked, I think he has now buried Trump. Let me just quote this, and I forgive you, or ask for your forgiveness in advance, and forgive you too if you laugh for some of the language in this. It's not mine. It's Trump's quote at the end of June, in the after glow of a debate performance that would ultimately prompt President Joe Biden to end his campaign for reelection, Tim Alberta writes, Donald Trump startled his aids by announcing that he'd come up with a new nickname for his opponent. Quote the guys a retard. He's retarded. I think that's what I'll start calling him unquote. Trump declared aboard his campaign plane in route to a rally that evening. According to three people who heard him make the remarks, quote retarded Joe Biden unquote. The staffers present and with ours others who had heard about the epithet second hand, pleaded with Trump not to say this publicly. They warned him that would antagonize the moderate voters who'd been breaking in their direction while engendering sympathy for a politician who at that moment was the subject of widespread ridicule. Ule As Trump demurred, musing that he might debut the nickname at that night's event. His staffers puzzled over the timing. Biden was on the ropes. Poles showed Trump jumping out to the biggest lead he'd enjoyed in any of his three campaigns for the presidency. Everything was going right for the Republican Party and its nominee. Why would he jeopardize that for the sake of slinging a juvenile insult? Unquote? Well, Tim Alberta, I can answer your rhetorical question because Trump's an asshole, and also because this is a reminder that sometimes the oldest cliches are the best one. Every Republican accusation is a confession. Donald Trump two days worst Person and the New York City Marathon. I have nothing against the New York City Marathon, but I will say this, it's extraordinary to have seen the thing grow as it has since my earliest days as a reporter. In the late seventies and early eighties, when I was at CNN, I got a phone call one day from a guy claiming to be the publicist for the New York Marathon, which was a big thing. Ten or fifteen thousand people would run it every year, but in some places they had to dodge traffic because police would not shut down all the streets for the early years of the New York City Marathon, and the publicist said, look, if you'd like to talk to our founder, Fred Leebow, who invented this and got it off the ground as a rival to the Boston Marathon, or if you'd like to talk to Bill Roydgers who's running in it and is internationally famous as a runner, or several other internationally famous American runners. We can arrange this for you. If you'd like to just call us in the office when you have time to come talk to us. We'll make it happen. And I called and I got this answer, Hello New York City Marathon. I said, yes, Hi, Fred Libo's office, please, And the man said speaking the head of the New York City Marathon was answering the switchboard, and it soon proved that Fred Libo was the same guy who had posed as the publicist. He was, in fact the entirety of the management structure of the New York City marathon as of nineteen eighty two, I guess the first time I would have covered the race. And when I said CNN was interested in doing a preview of the New York Marathon, Oh, that's great, he said, in a rather thick European accent. That's great. When would you like us to meet you? I said, well, don't you have a set press time or schedule? No, no, we'll we'll arrange it for you. When can you be here? It was literally one of those things, what time do you want to do this? When can you be here? And I said, well, it looks like I can get the crew at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Great, and I said okay, And then Fred Liebo said where would you like us to be? That's where the New York City Marathon was forty years ago compared to today, when they shut down my block and make it impossible for anybody who does not have identification showing that they live there to walk through without a special pass. Congratulations on doing that. There's another story from CNN days. It actually precedes my story. It's one of the first big events that CNN tried to cover live and again. Now the rights to carry the New York Marathon on television live costs millions of dollars and are sold exclusively to whoever. I can't imagine anybody actually watching people run as a sporting event, but there it is, certainly not in a marathon format. It takes a little long. But in those days, if you wanted to put the New York City Marathon on television, all you had to do was point a camera at it. And so the CNN idea was, let's get the start of the marathon from the Verrizanto Narrows Bridge. Let's put it on live, and let's actually try to do something that has never been done before. Let's move our truck and show not just the start of the marathon, but we'll be several hundred yards ahead of the front runners, and we'll show that marathon live for forty five seconds or a minute until our signal gives way, until we are no longer able to be live. That was the thinking. So they did this and were surprised, and I'm sure this was nineteen eighty right after CNN signed on, And sure enough, they drove the truck and pointed the camera outside the back window, and they got the start of the marathon and the on going off in this scene of people running towards the truck, and then suddenly the signal was lost and there was this sound heard before the signal was lost. Oh shut, and that was it. What had happened was in those days to do a live signal from a moving truck, you couldn't just stick up a little antenna, which you can do now. You had to have a whole, essentially arm sticking up a six foot tall mast that had to stick up above the truck like well, you know when the electricity company comes to repair your down power lines. One of those things. It didn't have a cage at the top of it for somebody to stand in, but it would have supported somebody easily. A six foot tall, probably one or two foot diameter mast, and they were driving along the Verizona Narrows Bridge with it and didn't realize that there were low lying overpasses on the Verizono Narrow's Bridge for maintenance and painting and whatnot, and sure enough they drove right into one and the damn thing snapped in half. For many years thereafter, Mary Alice Williams, who was the main CNN anchor in New York and also the vice president of the company and also the bureau chief of CNN in New York, had framed on her wall what looked to be something left over from a drain at somebody's house. It was a bent piece of metal with a damage mark in the middle. She had it framed on her wall, and I once asked her what it was, And that's how I know this story, because what it was was the CNN Live truck mast that got snapped in half while they were covering the nineteen eighty New York City Marathon live. The New York Marathon, of course, was also the home of Rosie Ruiz, who later claimed to have been the winner of the Boston Marathon. She'd gotten into the Boston Marathon by claiming she had run in the New York City Marathon, and then it turned out in both races. The reason she had done so well when she was not internationally known, nor ranked, nor known to have run a race in less than three hours, Rosie Ruiz in both the New York City Marathon and the Boston Marathon of the eighties solved the problem that faces so many many runners, that was dead spots when you hit the so called wall. She got around the wall by traveling part of the route by a subway. In fact, she met up intentionally obviously with one of the reporters who covered her as she was being given the laurels for winning one of the marathons. And one of the reporters said, wait a minute, I saw that woman on the subway on my way over here. And that's how the whole Rosy Ruiz story unraveled. Later efforts to promote the New York Marathon introduced me to a man I have mentioned here before, Abel Kiviat. Abel Kiviat was one of the top milers in American track and field in the early years of the twentieth century, I mean nineth He was a guy from Queen's with a remarkable accent, and his ninetieth birthday coincided with a day they wanted to publicize the New York Marathon. So the publicity for this was at the Guggenheim Museum, which was only half as old as Abel was. And Abel came down and talked with his remarkable Queen's accent, and he was telling us stories about how he won a race in Waltham, Massachusetts in nineteen ten and he still had the clock that they gave him, the watch they gave him for winning the race, and he said, run to the damn sight better than I do. And then we went outside and my producer had this great idea that we'd get able to run a couple of steps down Fifth Avenue, and we put that in the piece, and of course Abel, who was still running for health reasons. Abel decided that he would show us exactly what a ninety year old man could do while running, and he shot past the cameraman and we had to ask him to do it again because he was about fifty four times faster than the cameraman mentioned or thought was going to happen. Kivat the most interesting part of this, and I wish I had gone even into more detail with him than I did back in those days. In nineteen eighty two, when I got to interview him, Able Kiviat revealed he had been Jim Thorpe's roommate at the nineteen twelve Olympics. I've told the story in great depth, and I won't do so here, but he said basically that Jim Thorpe could do anything you could do better than you could do it, and all he needed was to watch you do it two or three times. He said, literally, he could take that microphone out of your hands, and a couple of days from now he'd be better at it than you would be. And I said, well, I don't doubt that, but give me a better example of it. And he told the story of how one night all the English and the American athletes were trying to jump up and touch the bottom prong of a chandelier, or as he said it very endearingly, just like both of my Bronx New York grandparents, the chambalier, the bottom of the chandelier. He said. They were all having a nice time on board the ship in which they lived at the nineteen twelve Olympics, and Thorpe was out drinking on the town somewhere back on the mainland, and he came out on a boat and back to their boat that they were occupying, the ship they were all living on, and all night all of the great athletes of the world, including all the high jumpers, tried to reach up and grab the bottom of this chandelier, just touch it. And now there was a pool of perhaps several hundred dollars sitting in a hat on the floor. Thorpe, he says, staggers in, looks up at the scene and goes, what's going on? Fellas they explain it to him, and he goes, oh, okay. He takes off his jacket. He does not take off his vest. He unbuttons it and simply steps back three steps. And as Abel described it, he doesn't even do a run and start. He just reaches up and grabs the bottom piece of the chandelier and hangs on to it, and we think the whole damn thing's coming down on top of us. He lets go after a few seconds, and in one sweeping gesture, he reaches down, takes the hat, turns it over, grabs all the bills as they fall, stuffs them in his pocket, puts his own hat back on his head, and says, have a good night, gentlemen. That was who Jim Taupe was, all right. So that's the New York Marathon. And if I think of the New York Marathon, I necessarily think of the Los Angeles Marathon, which started when I was a sportscaster in LA and I was working for the radio station that somehow got the rights. I suspect we were paid to do this, got the rights to do radio play by play of a marathon. Now, think about this. Once in high school, I once tried to do radio play by play of a swim meet, which is really problematic if you lose your indications of who is in which lane because the swimmers go underwater. But try to do eight or ten hours of live coverage of a marathon on a news radio station. That's what we did. And since I was the sportscaster, they made me co anchor with the lead newscaster, and we set up in front of a gas station. That's what it was, a gas station near the start line of the Los Angeles Marathon, right next to the coliseum in downtown LA. And at just the beginning of the race, two minutes beforehand, they said, by the way, we want you, Keith, We want you to do the play by play of the race starting And I said from where? They said, from right here? And I said, I can't even see the starting line from here. We're going to see them all run past us. But we're I don't know, a thousand yards from the start of the race. I mean I can see them all down there. What do you want me to say? They said, okay, no, we thought of that. We have a solution to it. And one of the engineers produced for me to stand on a folding metal chair that lifted me oh two and a half feet off the ground, and by the way, wasn't even steady, and they said call it from there. And I did not have the heart to tell my producers at CANX radio in Los Angeles that I couldn't see a damn thing. I just made it up as we went along. But for the next year's race, they had thought about this and remembered the problem that it represented. So they got a wireless mic and they gave it to me, and they said, about ten minutes before the race is supposed to start, we want you to go out onto that island that is on the other side of the intersection where the marathon starts, so you'll be thirty yards away from the marathon start line. You'll be facing it, and then we will throw it out to you in thirty or forty seconds before the gun goes off, and you can describe what that looks like. And I can describe what it looks like because I have had this nightmare once a month since the first time. We did this in I think nineteen eighty seven, with me out in the island, twenty or thirty yards away from the front line of the LA Marathon, which was at that point maybe eighteen or twenty thousand people. A gun goes off. You are standing by yourself, you are three inches off the pavement, and suddenly eighteen or twenty thousand people start running at high speed directly towards you. Think about that one for a while, and you can understand some of the problems that I've had in my life and my career ever since. Persecution, problems, paranoia, if you want them, go stand in front of the traffic island, twenty thirty yards in front of a marathon starting and let eighteen thousand people run at you, even if you were normal to begin with. And I'm making no claims about that that will change you in a hurry. Marathons I have survived by Keith Olberman, things I promised not to tell. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening, Follow me for the podcast promos. The videos now on TikTok, Blue Sky, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram threads, and of course Blue You. I believe that's the name of Trump's social media platform, isn't it. Please send this podcast to somebody who does not know they need to listen, but should try to come up with something for Tomorrow and Wednesday. There are no guarantees, but two hundred thousand people listened and watched Fridays, so I got to do something. I suppose. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, the musical directors of Countdown, have arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle is on orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko brows that our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organists ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Ulderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else was pretty much my fault. The podcast was produced by in Studio Kit. That's countdown for today, one one day until the twenty twenty four presidential election. I'm sure it will be fine and the three hundred and ninety ninth day since convicted felon dissociative fugue Jay Trump got away with his first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use your vote, use the mental health system, use presidential immunity, mister Biden to keep him from doing this again while we still have a chance to stop the mother, etc. The next scheduled count down as tomorrow bulletins as the news requires. Till then, I'm Keith Alberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
