Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production of I Heart Radio. Trump has confessed he may or may not know it, but he has now confessed on the record to possessing all the government documents classified or otherwise found at mari Lago. The second paragraph of his new new attorney's response filed last night to the Department of Justice bombshell from Tuesday night, closes with the assertion that the government quote has filed an extraordinary document with this court, suggesting the d o J and the d o J alone should be entrusted with the responsibility of evaluating its unjustified pursuit of criminalizing a former president possession of personal and presidential records. Second paragraph states as fact that Trump had quote possession of personal and presidential records. Nothing was planted, nothing was sent there by a rogue employee from mailboxes, etcetera. Nothing was there by accident. A former president's possession of personal and presidential records is at the core of this case, and on his social media platform last night, Trump insisted he didn't strew all those classified documents on his cheesy Marilago carpet. In that photo, the FBI quote took them out of curtains and spread them around on the carpet. They dropped them, not me, So he confessed to having the documents again. Thus, if Trump has confessed to having all the documents the FBI reclaimed on August eight and earlier in the answer to the d O J. Finling, he his lawyers must be claiming to the judge that all those personal and presidential records that he possessed had been declassified, as Trump has been saying NonStop for weeks, and thus this is just a trivial book keeping mistake being inflated into a death penalty case. No. As phrased in Politico by Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein, and Nicholas wou quote, Trump's legal team notably avoided echoing an assertion that their client resurfaced earlier in the day, that he had declassified the documents at issue in the dispute end quote. So legally, first Trump admits he had the documents, and then legally Trump does not claim he declassified the documents, any of them. That is a confession. It's two confessions, to possession of government records and to possession of classified documents. The only thing Trump's lawyers assert in The answer they sent last night to the government's filing is that there should be a special master who will decide what part of the undeclassified documents they and their client have now legally admitted he took. What part of those documents might be subject to executive privilege. With a former president not having any executive privilege to privilege, how has Trump not been indicted? Where's the purp walk, Where's the raincoat thrown over his face? Where's the finger painting? Where's the sketches by all the courtroom artists. Trump has confessed and handed the confession to the judge. Incredibly, Bloomberg News reports the Department of Justice is terrified of being accused of interfering with an election. Not election, but the nove Bird mid terms in which Trump is not running, in which no member of his family is running. Federal prosecutors are likely to wait until after the November election to announce any charges against Donald Trump, writes Chris Strom of Bloomberg. If they determined he broke laws, according to people familiar, I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but he confessed breaking laws. Read the note from his lawyers to resume the Bloomberg reporting quote. Under longstanding departmental policy, prosecutors are barred from taking investigative steps or filing charges for the purpose of effecting an election or helping a candidate or party traditionally sixty days before an election. This year, that would be by September ten, which makes it unlikely anything would be announced until after November eight, said people who asked to remain anonymous, speaking about potential Justice Department act well, potential Justice Department in actions. How in the hell does this apply to Trump since he isn't running the tortured How many angels can dance on the head of a pin do o j logic here is, Yeah, he isn't running in November, but people he has indorsed are running in November. Well, that's ducky. So if tomorrow I endorse a bunch of candidates in the mid terms, and then after that I go over and hold up the bank around the corner from my house, the Department of Justice will wait until November nine to indict me, giving me two months to I don't know, spend the money or destroy the evidence, or just leave the continent. Every day, for the last seven years, Donald Trump has lit this country on fire, and every night we've all had to put out the flames. And now he's shipping in tankers full of gasoline and a million boxes of matches. But go on tell me how you can't apply the law to a treason is desperate bastard until November nine, because God forbid, you heard all the treason his desperate bastards. He's also endorsed for the mid term elections. Moreover, you are extending this ludicrous delay to Trump because the reason we are dealing with his potential arrest only sixty eight days from the mid terms is he dragged his feet about returning those documents he had illegally in January, and he dragged his feet about returning those documents he still illegally had in June, and he dragged his feet about filing the motion for the Grand Special Master poo bah. We are up against the election rule because the suspect has manipulated the system, and in turn, the refusal to act against him means the Department of Justice still has its thumb on the election scale anyway, because not indicting him winds up favoring all the candidates he endorsed and every other Republican on the ballot. It is absolute madness. This is national security we're talking about, not politics. This is nuclear weapons secrets, not the fact that we don't like this guy or trust him. This is the identity of US intelligence sources around the world, life or death for human assets, not Donald Trump's hair. The damned mid terms should not have anything to do with his arrest in the first place. And that's even more true because he is the one who delayed this to this date. He should be charged, arrested, and detained without bail. Before I finished the sentence, I am speaking to you now, and this is only going to get worse in the next sixty eight days before the mid terms. The d O J filing and the now immortal carpet photo are still slow, only giving up their secrets in the photo, several of the documents on the floor have dates on them. After thirty six hours of study, it has proved that one of them has the date May nine, two eighteen on it. And May nine, two eighteen is the day after Trump sabotaged the Iran nuclear deal. Donald Trump may have stolen documents about the Iran nuclear deal, but we can't charge him for because of the midterms, and in the filing there are references to documents marked HC S DASH oh that's Human Control System Operations to find as quote used to protect exceptionally fragile and unique intelligence community clandestine human intelligence operations and methods people. There are other references in the filing to T S slash s A P and S slash f r D and that is top secret, special access program, secret formerly restricted data, and that means nuclear weapons as designated by the Atomic Energy Act, nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons information. And there are references to those out of date passports to that Trump wind about in the government filing wind that they had been mixed in with the stolen documents and they were taken from him. Several analysts are suggesting that the passports maybe the smoking guns that proved Trump handled those documents himself, boxed them himself, stole them himself, because what somebody else stuffed his passports in among the docks. Somebody else did that, and he just happened to immediately know after the search that his passports were gone. He just guessed. And let me remind you again, all this is on top of the fact that Donald Trump's lawyers filed a document with the court last night that confirms Trump had possession of all the documents and makes no claim that he ever declassified any of them. Do we need more? One of his idiot attorneys may have also convicted him of the violations of the Espionage Act in her role in one of the other Trump cases, the New York State investigation of the Trump Organization finances. Alina Haaba told the New York Court on May five that she had complied with its orders and she had conducted a quote diligent unquote search for records. Per Turning to the New York case she searched, she said through quote all desks, drawers, nightstands, dressers, closets, etcetera at our lago, which means she saw or handled, or read, or who knows, took pictures of with her phone all the classified documents Trump had stashed in the desks, drawers, night stands, dressers, closets, etcetera at mari lago. Last night's Trump filing means he has dropped the entire excuse that these documents were planted, that they were plants. But one begins to think this Elena Habba may herself be a plant. By either definition of the word. This is Elena Habba on Wednesday explaining on a right wing network that now I can't even summarize it, just listen to the damn thing. So what they did was to try and criminalize Donald Trump, as they always do. They found these three mundane statues espionage and the two others obstruction, and they're trying to claim that there was some sort of criminal activity. Dane statutes, you say, like espionage mundane. Espionage is now mundane. It's a mundane statute. It's a mundane kind of statute. It's so mundane that when we mundanely convicted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of it, we then mundanely executed them in the mundane electric mundane chair. Idiot and Trump's Republican friends have also officially run out of excuses. Governor Curling Iron of South Dakota, also known as Christy Nome, is sticking to the they were planted argument that Trump has just denied. Alan Dershowitz just said that with the carpet photograph, the Department of Justice is guilty of giving classified documents to our enemies, and the dumbest of them all, Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado wonders if anybody has yet considered the possibility that Trump just took those documents because he's writing his memoirs like Trump could spell memoirs. This is an open and shut case. Last night Trump confessed to possession of the documents and handed the confession to the court, and in that confession his lawyers did not even mention the word declassified. It's such an open and shut case that the former federal prosecutor, who has been writing story after story for the Murdoch owned New York Post saying the Department of Justice has no case and there will be no charges against Trump, read the government filing and wrote, in effect, hopes I was wrong. They have all the evidence of obstruction of justice they need. That's a game changer. There will be charges, then charge him already, Even the New York Post is on board. My god, Trump confessed he may be on board. Lastly, as if we needed more, there is always more. You will recall the case of Edwards Snowdon, the n S a contractor who stole top secret documents that damaged American intelligence around the world, and then he fled to Russia while this government was unsealing two charges of espionage that mundane crime against him, As the sportswriter Jeff Perlman notes, as that happened, somebody got onto Twitter and wrote, of Edward Snowden in June two thousand, quote, how did Snowdon get access to top secret US records? He then gave or sold those records trader? And then the same guy also tweeted call it any way you like, but Snowdon is a trader. When our country was great, do you know what we did to traders? Well, you already know who that was, calling those who accessed or took or sold top secret US records, hey trader, and implying that traders should be executed. You already know who wrote that, right, those tweets from two thousand thirteen, we're by Donald Trump. And oh, by the way, Trump confessed last night. Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Still ahead on countdown. I'm gonna need a little more water for the crazy pills. Congrats Sarah Palin on losing the Alaska House seat that had been in the hands of Republicans for half a century. Well done, Chuck Todd tweets out a link to a quote that he thinks confirms he hasn't been fired. Unfortunately the quote is fake, and Serena Williams says, hello, a little second ranked player in the world, and then goodbye, a little second ranked player in the world. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman coming up. Was the founder of the Proud Boys arrested by the FBI in the middle of his streaming show or did he just leave early to go on vacation in the South France? First, in each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need whom you can help. Every dog has its day, and we go to the pound in Downey in southern California. Arnold is seven. He's got a big tongue hanging out smile. He's a ninety two pound Rottweiler. But he's so calm that they literally would let you walk in tomorrow and adopt him take him home right away. He's that calmn with people, and if somebody doesn't do that, they're gonna put Arnold on the kill list. They are overcrowded beyond words. To find out more about our Old and the other dogs on death row at Downey Please check my Twitter feed for dogs in need at Tom Jumbo Grumbo. Look for the tweet about Arnold. If you can't help him, just retweeting that tweet can make a huge difference. And thank you very much. Coming up on countdown, Chuck Todd wants you to know that he has not been fired as the host of Meet the Press, not yet anyway, but he did it in the most Chuck Todd way possible. Worst persons Coming up first, postcripts to the news, some headlines, some thoughts, some snark, dateline shooto Alaska. I always used to say of Sarah pale And that woman is an idiot, But now I can say again that woman is a loser. In the special election to succeed the late Alaska Congressman Don Young, ranked choice voting has done Palin in. She needed six of the second place rankings from those who voted for another Republican Nick Begich, show I got fifty. So Alaska's lone house rap will be Democrat Mary Peltola, an indigenous Alaska who is actually a friend of Palin's. The Palins once give gave the Peltola's their trampoline only in Alaska. She will be in the House through the end of the year. She will again face Palin in another election for the full time seat this November. Since there's a Palin story, I must buy law again. Read the singular and never to be matched description of her after the vice presidential debate October eight, written by Rich Lowry of The National Review. Quote, a very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It's one of the keys to the successive say Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen? Well that's a terrifying thought. Who comes through the screen and grabs you by the wrote Palin two projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who when Palin dropped her first wink, set up a little straighter on the couch and said, hey, I think she just winked at me. And her smile by the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling, it was almost mesmerizing. Its tint little starbursts through the screen, ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned. It's either something you have or you don't. And man, she's got it. No, no, she doesn't. Dateline Pennsylvania. If you think Doug Mastriano, who must go to sleep dreaming of fighting at Gettysburg for the South, would be a disaster as governor of Pennsylvania turns out his possible secretary state might be worse. Media Matters for America reports that two years ago, on nine eleven, Tony Shoop posted twenty nine separate and eleven truth or conspiracy theories, including that the crash of Flight ninety three in Pennsylvania was faked. M m f A also reports Shoop has called Q and on a very valuable resources and pizza gate quote absolutely real and date line Madison, Wisconsin. What do you do after you've been a fake elector who signed the fake electoral slate paperwork that may still land all the election fraud stories and fake electors in prison? If you are Pam Travis, you go to work for the re election campaign of the dead eyed Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. Of course you do. Johnson spokesperson has confirmed Travis's employment, but added quote, she's a grassroots staffer, answering phones this is being blown way out of proportion, or is it this is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith in Sports Serena Williams continues her Jimmy Connor's impression at the US Open. At the age of forty one, she has now knocked off the second ranked player in the world, a net Contivate seven six two six six two. And it's not like Contivate had a bad night. It's just that Serena shot eleven aces passed her. Thank you, Nancy Faust. What was that about? Connors, at age thirty eight and eight years removed from his last Open title, Jimmy Connors Rallied from two sets down and three zip in the third to win his opening match against Patrick McEnroe. By the time Connors had beat Paul Harhus to get to the Semis, he had already turned thirty nine and I got blown out in that last match, but he had re energized the US Open and the after globe lasted several years baseball. It can't be Why did they do this? When the Miami Marlins activated picture Trevor Rogers from the injured list, they had to get rid of somebody, so they designated for assignment another picture reliever Jake fish Man. Yes, the Marlins dropped a player named fish Man. They threw him back catch and release. Fishman of the Marlins was one of those guys like Johnny Padres of the Padres or Butch Metzker of the Mets, or Jose Cardinal of the Cardinals, Ted Cox of the Red Sox, Mini Mendoza of Minnesota, Jason Castro the Astro, and Angel Bravo who played for the Reds and the Padres, but neither the Angels or the Bravos. And among active players Rangers Suarez of Philly who has never played for the Rangers, and Colorado Picture den Elsa Lament who has yet to pitch for Lamets. Big Night in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, thirty five years ago. Last night, the Reading Phillies of the Eastern League led the Williamsport Bills of the Eastern League one nothing. In the fifth inning. Redding's Rick Lundblade was at third base when the Williamsport catcher Dave Bresnahan asked the umpire behind the plate, Scott Potter, for time out. Presnihan said there was something wrong with his glove and he needed to run to the dugout to switch to his backup glove, and the ump agreed. It only took a moment. On the next pitch, Bresnahan tried to pick off that runner at third Lundblade, but instead threw the ball over his third baseman's head and into the outfield. The runner Lundblade trotted home, where Bresnahan tagged him out with the baseball. Pandemonium reigned for several months. Nobody knew actually what had happened. Then Redding's manager put the pieces together. Literally. When catcher Bresnahan had changed gloves, his new one had contained a potato. He had not thrown a baseball into the outfield. He had thrown a potato. It came apart when it landed, and there were little pieces in left field. The crowd roared. When everybody figured this out, the umpire potter said the runner was not out and the run had to count. And it quickly turned out bresd Han had been planning this practical joke with the potato for weeks. His teammates were in hysterics. Even some of the Redding players were delighted. The management of the Williams Sport Bills were not. The next day, they in their Major League affiliate, Cleveland fired Dave breast Hand caught him from the roster. Bresd Hand later admitted he didn't think he had much of a career left anyway. He was twenty five years old, playing in Double A minor league baseball and hitting one fifty. He never played again, but within a week Dave Bresdhand was a guest on David Letterman Show and on the TV Baseball Game of the Week. The following May, the Williams Sport Bills, in an incredible reversal, held Dave breast Hand Night and retired his uniform number. In two thousand seven, on the twentieth anniversary of Potato Gate, a new Williams Sport team called the Crosscutters also retired bresne Han's uniform number, and they inducted him into their Hall of Fame. Last night, thirty five years to the day of Potato Ball, the team changed their name for one night only to the Williams Sports Great Potato Capers and thousands of Spans Welcome to Dave Bresnahan back, and the players all wore special uniforms bearing images of potatoes and bearing Dave Bresnahan's name, all of which adds up to the following. If he was not before, Dave Bresnahan certainly is now more well known than his great uncle, well, who the hell is his great uncle Roger Bresnahan, who is not just a former Major League player and manager, but a Hall of Fame player and manager, as one of the best of the early catchers without potatoes still ahead, it's back to school time, and I want to tell you about my college professor who nearly failed us all after his favorite football team lost a game in one of the worst chokes in sports history. First, the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world, lebronze to the folks at Odyssey Radio and Audio and podcasts and stuff. Evidently somebody in quality control took the month off. First, it was a spot that announced the Odyssey Baseball Player of the Week, that rendering audio streams of Major League games like forty million times in one week, saluting Chicago White Sox pitcher Johnny Quto mispronounced his name like that three times in thirty seconds. Quto, It's quato c u e t o. He has been a major league pitcher since two thousand eight. It's always been quato. That spot has been mercifully retired. But now some Odyssey music news spot is running forty million times all day everywhere reporting the remix of the Beatles album by the producers son of the legendary producer of the Beatles, George Martin, Giles Martin his son, except Odyssey has called him Gills Gills Martin. Maybe he's half fish. The runner up. Gavin mckinnis, the comically bearded founder of the hilariously misnamed Proud Boys fascist poser group troubled with declining influence. He was in the middle of a live scream a week ago when he indicated somebody had entered his Bronx studio without his permission. Mckinnis got off, went off camera, was heard talking off microphone, and has not been seen since. For days. His right wing nut job fans were convinced mckinnis had been arrested, presumably by the FBI, but a mckinnis confidant named Owen Benjamin has now posted what he says is a text exchange with mckinnis. Benjamin expresses his concern, and mckinnis supposedly replies, quote prank, don't tell. Benjamin responds, so you're just gonna pretend the FBI rated your studio. Tons of people are texting me freaking out. Mckinnis's purported response, I never said they did. L A magazine has a cute PostScript. It reports Gavin mckinnis wasn't arrested. He went on vacation with his wife to the south of France, which is exactly like being rated by the FBI. If you're an idiot, mckinnis may need a lawyer, May I suggest Elena Habba. But our winner Chuck Todd, host of NBC's Meet the Press, at least he was the last time I checked. But Todd is now shot back against the reports that he's not going to be the host much longer. The Daily Beast Lackland Cartwright is standing by his reporting from Monday that the removal of his longstanding executive producer after a ratings drop of one year is a possibly fatal sign for Chuck Todd. Quoting Cartwright, NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker is being groomed to replace Todd. Multiple insiders with knowledge of the matter said, and he quoted the multiple insider asking, at what point does anyone have the balls to say, maybe the problem is the face of it. At dinner time yesterday the face of it, Chuck Todd cryptically tweeted a link, just a link, no comment, just a link to dictionary dot com and the quote definition of the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated unquote. An hour later, Todd tweeted another link, just the link, no comment, just a link to YouTube and a video of the embattled quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, Aaron Rodgers, spelling out the word relax. Exactly what Chuck is going for here is unclear, but that link he tweeted for the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated, it sends you to dictionary dot COM's entry for that familiar phrase, which is quote the text of a cable sent by Mark Twain from London to the press in the United States after his obituary had been mistakenly published. Mark Twain never sent that cable and never said or wrote that sentence. On June one, and English based journalist from the New York Journal got all hold of Twain to comment on rumors that Twain was dying in poverty in London. The reporter explained he found Twain in fact living in luxury in Chelsea in London, and that Twain told him the rumor had originated when a cousin of his had become gravely ill in St. Louis. Quoting Mark Twain, the report of my illness grew out of his illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration. In short, Chuck Todd tweeted out a link to something that was never said in a cable that was never sent about a story that was never published, which is kind of Chuck Todd in a nutshell Chuck accuracy, shm accuracy Todd two Day's worst person in the World. Finally to the number one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell so September again. I literally don't know anybody who ever shakes the childhood dread of back to school days in August and the beginning of September. Third grade, high school, college, doesn't matter. Forty four degrees, ninety four degrees doesn't matter. It's September, and by now the dread even if you liked. School remains until the day you die, especially if it invokes memories like the one I have about the day I nearly failed a four credit course in college because of a fumble in a professional football game. Forty four years ago. This week, I actually walked reluctantly but proudly into a class at Cornell University, if I remember correctly, To get into Professor Joel Sylby's nine Century American History course, eight credits spanning two semesters, I had to get special permission for the History department because I was not a history major. I just took all the history classes they would let me, and this was one of the best ones. And I remember Professor Silby's first lecture and the accent and the mannerisms that quickly identified him not only as a fellow native New Yorker, but as a brooke Knight and a Brooklyn Knight fan of, as he quickly told us the New York football giants. What Professor Joel Silby said next caused the I think it was two hundred or so other students in the lecture hall to laugh, all of them except me, because I was the sports director of the Cornhill Student owned radio station, and in those days you could actually know everything about and everybody in all the national sports off the top of your head. And usually that meant you could figure out all the teams and all the sports that had the slightest chance of succeeding, and all the teams and all the sports that did not end. The New York Football Giants did not. I want you to know, I grade the papers, not the teaching assist me, and I happen to be a lifelong, therefore long suffering fan of the New York Football Giants. I saw my first Giants game in nineteen forty five, and over the years I happened to develop this habit of grading your papers on Sunday afternoons and evenings right after I watch my New York Football Giants. So, to some degree great or small, your grade will depend on how well the New York Football Giants do in this nineteen seventy eight National Football League season. On ninety nine of Joel Silby students laughed, I emitted a low moan, since they had gone to five NFL championship games in the six seasons ending in nineteen sixty three and lost all five. By the way, the Giants had had exactly two winning seasons, and they had lost nine of fourteen games the year before nineteen seventy seven. Though they had opened this nineteen seventy eight season with a narrow victory over a very bad Tampa Bay team, and the first half of their schedule had as many as four more opponents who they might be better than. They would be lucky to win two games in the second half of the season. When I got back to the radio station, I looked at the Giants schedule and Professor Sylvie's class schedule, and I circled one critical day when the schedules converged, Sunday, November. Our term papers were due on Thursday. The he could actually read them all after the Giants Eagles game that night in the following day. Amazingly, your New York Football Giants actually opened the season winning three of their first four. In the middle of October, they were still five and three, and in the history lecture room, Professor Sylvie was very happy, and he often recreated highlights of his glorious Giants pleasing success, and he was furiously fan boeing on the new quarterback they brought in from the Canadian League, Joe Pisarcik. If you are a football history fan, or god forbid, a fan of the New York Football Giants, you already know where I'm going with this. The Giants lost the next three games, and then our term papers were due on November sixteenth, and Joel Silby turned morose, and I was at the radio station watching the Giants Eagles game of the nineteenth on a big black and white TV in the lounge when my nightmare unfolded impossibly. The Giants led the much better Philadelphia Eagles fourteen nothing after the first quarter, for Sargic threw two touchdown passes. After the third quarter, it was still seventeen to six Giants. Then the Eagles scored, and they were driving to go ahead with a minute and a half left in the game, when the impossible happened deep in Giants territory. The Philly quarterback through an interception with eighty three seconds left and in possession of the ball. The Giants led seventeen. The crowd at the radio station was ecstatic. I was even more at static. All the Giants now had to do was stall and have the quarterback fall on the ball, maybe twice, as if he had heard me. The quarterback Joe Pisarchic fell on the ball. Then he nearly killed me by handing the ball off to his running back, Larry Zonka, who plowed up the middle to get a first down and burn another thirty seconds off the clock. The Eagles called their last time out, thirty one seconds left, thirty one seconds to my grade and Joel Silby's nineteenth century American history class probably ending up being half or maybe even a full grade better than I deserved. All Joe Pisarchic had to do was falling the damn ball again and it was over. However, on the Giant sideline, offensive coordinator Bob Gibson decided that the safe play, the winning play, was for Joe pas Archic to hand the ball off again to Larry Zanka. And now that might have been the right play, only Bob Gibson and everybody else failed to tell Arizonka. Larry Zanka assumed he was there just to block for Joe Pisarchic, as Joe Pisarchic collapsed to the turf and ran out the clock and got me a better grade. Instead, Pisarchik handed the ball to where Zanka's hands should have been, except Larry Zanka was in a blocking stance and Pisarchic in fact handed it off directly to Larry Zonka's helmet. I screamed. The ball bounced once off the turf and directly into the hands of Philadelphia cornerback Herman Edwards. I continued to scream. There was nobody near Edwards, and he scooted twenty six yards into the end zone, and the Giants lost the damn game nineteen seventeen in the last seconds, And as the Giants fans at the radio station shouted or moaned or swore, I could see Professor Joel Silby shutting off the TV, grabbing our papers and sentencing us to hell, and I continued to scream. Our term papers were returned on Tuesday the twenty one, just before school broke for Thanksgiving. Actually was thankful I got either a B or a B plus. I can't find the paper. It should be somewhere in a box. There was a rumor which I was never able to confirm, that my B or B plus was the highest grade in the class. I can confirm I saw classmates most far more prepared and astute than myself. Most of them history majors looking at their grades and blanching visibly. One girl cried, a CEE, really a ce Professor Joel Silby said, much of our grade would depend on how well the New York Football Giants did in that national football season, and my god, they had just sustained a loss so bad that it has still talked about to this day. My classmates did not listen, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee there is a PostScript. The PostScript takes place thirty two and one half years later. I returned to Cornell in March of two thousand eleven to give a lecture and teach a series of classes to students who no longer afterwards felt they had gotten their full money from the university. My alma mater was very kind to me. They gave me a tour of the secret places they never would have shown me when I was a struggling student, like where they kept Cornell's copy of the Gettysburg address. And they promised me something special for lunch the first day, And sure enough I was dropped off at a restaurant, and there, rising from a table to greet me with applause, were Cornell's official historian and former Professor Glenn Altshuler, and they're very famous history Professor Walter la Faber and I swear Professor Joel Silby, and they were fans of mine. Of course, I could not leave well enough alone. After a few minutes of very pleasant conversation with Mr alt Schuler and Professor la Faber and Professor Sylby, I brought up the night term paper joke sargic handoff story. Professor la Faber looked at Professor Sylby like Professor Sylvie was out of his mind. Is that true? And Sylvie smiled and said, yes, yes it is. And then Joel Silby looked off into the distance as if he were peering backwards through time. That's when you could really enjoy being a professor. He then looked back at me and smiled, Keith, you won't believe this, but I actually graded those papers pretty fairly, and I didn't follow through on my original plan. After the fumble, I actually turned off the TV and I sat there for a few minutes and I asked my soul if it was okay for me to take my revenge on the universe by failing all of you. La favorite gulped. Oh, said Sylvie, it was so great to be a professor back then. I laughed so much ahead tears in my eyes. And then Silby said, okay, okay, maybe I was a little unfair to you guys, but you know, it's the Giants and you have to take this as a whole. The year they won their first Super Bowl was that eighty six. The final exam in that class was like two days after they finished the regular season, fourteen and two, eight o'clock in the morning. So I go to the final c which I never do, and I waited until they were all sitting there sweating, and I said, remember last September when I told you your grade will depend on how well the New York Football Giants doing this nineteen eight six National Football League season, And it was just silence, and I said, well, if you didn't notice, they went fourteen and two, and I haven't been this happy since when they won the title in nineteen fifty six. So guess what, there's no final exam. And nobody moved. So I said it again, there's no final exam, Go home, go study for something else. Y'all get a's. And then there was a couple of seconds of silence, and they all simultaneously realized that was not kidding, and everybody cheered and ran out into the sunshine. So with me and professor's Ault, Shuler and la Faber now in tears. Silby said, see it evens out? And I said, the hell it does. I graduated in nine seventy nine. How does it canceled final in six? Even it out for me? Fella? Joel Silby thought for a second, and then he said, well, I am buying you lunch. I've done all the damage I can do here. This is where I ask you to rate and review the podcasts. One month in and we are number four in the charts for news among all podcasts. Tell them we're better than that? Why. The Countdown theme from Beethoven's Ninth arranged, produced and performed by Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. All orchestration and key boards by John Philip Channel guitarist, bass and drums by Brian Ray. Produced by t k O Brothers. The other Bethsoven selections have been arranged and performed by No horns allowed our sports music. The Alderman ESPN two theme was written by Mitch Warren Davis and a peers courtesy of ESPN, incorporated musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever At our announcer today was the one and only Larry David. Let's countdown for this the six and third day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. We'll have a new episode for you tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production of I Heart Radio. Trump has confessed he may or may not know it, but he has now confessed on the record to possessing all the government documents classified or otherwise found at mari Lago. The second paragraph of his new new attorney's response filed last night to the Department of Justice bombshell from Tuesday night, closes with the assertion that the government quote has filed an extraordinary document with this court, suggesting the d o J and the d o J alone should be entrusted with the responsibility of evaluating its unjustified pursuit of criminalizing a former president possession of personal and presidential records. Second paragraph states as fact that Trump had quote possession of personal and presidential records. Nothing was planted, nothing was sent there by a rogue employee from mailboxes, etcetera. Nothing was there by accident. A former president's possession of personal and presidential records is at the core of this case, and on his social media platform last night, Trump insisted he didn't strew all those classified documents on his cheesy Marilago carpet. In that photo, the FBI quote took them out of curtains and spread them around on the carpet. They dropped them, not me, So he confessed to having the documents again. Thus, if Trump has confessed to having all the documents the FBI reclaimed on August eight and earlier in the answer to the d O J. Finling, he his lawyers must be claiming to the judge that all those personal and presidential records that he possessed had been declassified, as Trump has been saying NonStop for weeks, and thus this is just a trivial book keeping mistake being inflated into a death penalty case. No. As phrased in Politico by Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein, and Nicholas wou quote, Trump's legal team notably avoided echoing an assertion that their client resurfaced earlier in the day, that he had declassified the documents at issue in the dispute end quote. So legally, first Trump admits he had the documents, and then legally Trump does not claim he declassified the documents, any of them. That is a confession. It's two confessions, to possession of government records and to possession of classified documents. The only thing Trump's lawyers assert in The answer they sent last night to the government's filing is that there should be a special master who will decide what part of the undeclassified documents they and their client have now legally admitted he took. What part of those documents might be subject to executive privilege. With a former president not having any executive privilege to privilege, how has Trump not been indicted? Where's the purp walk, Where's the raincoat thrown over his face? Where's the finger painting? Where's the sketches by all the courtroom artists. Trump has confessed and handed the confession to the judge. Incredibly, Bloomberg News reports the Department of Justice is terrified of being accused of interfering with an election. Not election, but the nove Bird mid terms in which Trump is not running, in which no member of his family is running. Federal prosecutors are likely to wait until after the November election to announce any charges against Donald Trump, writes Chris Strom of Bloomberg. If they determined he broke laws, according to people familiar, I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but he confessed breaking laws. Read the note from his lawyers to resume the Bloomberg reporting quote. Under longstanding departmental policy, prosecutors are barred from taking investigative steps or filing charges for the purpose of effecting an election or helping a candidate or party traditionally sixty days before an election. This year, that would be by September ten, which makes it unlikely anything would be announced until after November eight, said people who asked to remain anonymous, speaking about potential Justice Department act well, potential Justice Department in actions. How in the hell does this apply to Trump since he isn't running the tortured How many angels can dance on the head of a pin do o j logic here is, Yeah, he isn't running in November, but people he has indorsed are running in November. Well, that's ducky. So if tomorrow I endorse a bunch of candidates in the mid terms, and then after that I go over and hold up the bank around the corner from my house, the Department of Justice will wait until November nine to indict me, giving me two months to I don't know, spend the money or destroy the evidence, or just leave the continent. Every day, for the last seven years, Donald Trump has lit this country on fire, and every night we've all had to put out the flames. And now he's shipping in tankers full of gasoline and a million boxes of matches. But go on tell me how you can't apply the law to a treason is desperate bastard until November nine, because God forbid, you heard all the treason his desperate bastards. He's also endorsed for the mid term elections. Moreover, you are extending this ludicrous delay to Trump because the reason we are dealing with his potential arrest only sixty eight days from the mid terms is he dragged his feet about returning those documents he had illegally in January, and he dragged his feet about returning those documents he still illegally had in June, and he dragged his feet about filing the motion for the Grand Special Master poo bah. We are up against the election rule because the suspect has manipulated the system, and in turn, the refusal to act against him means the Department of Justice still has its thumb on the election scale anyway, because not indicting him winds up favoring all the candidates he endorsed and every other Republican on the ballot. It is absolute madness. This is national security we're talking about, not politics. This is nuclear weapons secrets, not the fact that we don't like this guy or trust him. This is the identity of US intelligence sources around the world, life or death for human assets, not Donald Trump's hair. The damned mid terms should not have anything to do with his arrest in the first place. And that's even more true because he is the one who delayed this to this date. He should be charged, arrested, and detained without bail. Before I finished the sentence, I am speaking to you now, and this is only going to get worse in the next sixty eight days before the mid terms. The d O J filing and the now immortal carpet photo are still slow, only giving up their secrets in the photo, several of the documents on the floor have dates on them. After thirty six hours of study, it has proved that one of them has the date May nine, two eighteen on it. And May nine, two eighteen is the day after Trump sabotaged the Iran nuclear deal. Donald Trump may have stolen documents about the Iran nuclear deal, but we can't charge him for because of the midterms, and in the filing there are references to documents marked HC S DASH oh that's Human Control System Operations to find as quote used to protect exceptionally fragile and unique intelligence community clandestine human intelligence operations and methods people. There are other references in the filing to T S slash s A P and S slash f r D and that is top secret, special access program, secret formerly restricted data, and that means nuclear weapons as designated by the Atomic Energy Act, nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons information. And there are references to those out of date passports to that Trump wind about in the government filing wind that they had been mixed in with the stolen documents and they were taken from him. Several analysts are suggesting that the passports maybe the smoking guns that proved Trump handled those documents himself, boxed them himself, stole them himself, because what somebody else stuffed his passports in among the docks. Somebody else did that, and he just happened to immediately know after the search that his passports were gone. He just guessed. And let me remind you again, all this is on top of the fact that Donald Trump's lawyers filed a document with the court last night that confirms Trump had possession of all the documents and makes no claim that he ever declassified any of them. Do we need more? One of his idiot attorneys may have also convicted him of the violations of the Espionage Act in her role in one of the other Trump cases, the New York State investigation of the Trump Organization finances. Alina Haaba told the New York Court on May five that she had complied with its orders and she had conducted a quote diligent unquote search for records. Per Turning to the New York case she searched, she said through quote all desks, drawers, nightstands, dressers, closets, etcetera at our lago, which means she saw or handled, or read, or who knows, took pictures of with her phone all the classified documents Trump had stashed in the desks, drawers, night stands, dressers, closets, etcetera at mari lago. Last night's Trump filing means he has dropped the entire excuse that these documents were planted, that they were plants. But one begins to think this Elena Habba may herself be a plant. By either definition of the word. This is Elena Habba on Wednesday explaining on a right wing network that now I can't even summarize it, just listen to the damn thing. So what they did was to try and criminalize Donald Trump, as they always do. They found these three mundane statues espionage and the two others obstruction, and they're trying to claim that there was some sort of criminal activity. Dane statutes, you say, like espionage mundane. Espionage is now mundane. It's a mundane statute. It's a mundane kind of statute. It's so mundane that when we mundanely convicted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of it, we then mundanely executed them in the mundane electric mundane chair. Idiot and Trump's Republican friends have also officially run out of excuses. Governor Curling Iron of South Dakota, also known as Christy Nome, is sticking to the they were planted argument that Trump has just denied. Alan Dershowitz just said that with the carpet photograph, the Department of Justice is guilty of giving classified documents to our enemies, and the dumbest of them all, Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado wonders if anybody has yet considered the possibility that Trump just took those documents because he's writing his memoirs like Trump could spell memoirs. This is an open and shut case. Last night Trump confessed to possession of the documents and handed the confession to the court, and in that confession his lawyers did not even mention the word declassified. It's such an open and shut case that the former federal prosecutor, who has been writing story after story for the Murdoch owned New York Post saying the Department of Justice has no case and there will be no charges against Trump, read the government filing and wrote, in effect, hopes I was wrong. They have all the evidence of obstruction of justice they need. That's a game changer. There will be charges, then charge him already, Even the New York Post is on board. My god, Trump confessed he may be on board. Lastly, as if we needed more, there is always more. You will recall the case of Edwards Snowdon, the n S a contractor who stole top secret documents that damaged American intelligence around the world, and then he fled to Russia while this government was unsealing two charges of espionage that mundane crime against him, As the sportswriter Jeff Perlman notes, as that happened, somebody got onto Twitter and wrote, of Edward Snowden in June two thousand, quote, how did Snowdon get access to top secret US records? He then gave or sold those records trader? And then the same guy also tweeted call it any way you like, but Snowdon is a trader. When our country was great, do you know what we did to traders? Well, you already know who that was, calling those who accessed or took or sold top secret US records, hey trader, and implying that traders should be executed. You already know who wrote that, right, those tweets from two thousand thirteen, we're by Donald Trump. And oh, by the way, Trump confessed last night. Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Still ahead on countdown. I'm gonna need a little more water for the crazy pills. Congrats Sarah Palin on losing the Alaska House seat that had been in the hands of Republicans for half a century. Well done, Chuck Todd tweets out a link to a quote that he thinks confirms he hasn't been fired. Unfortunately the quote is fake, and Serena Williams says, hello, a little second ranked player in the world, and then goodbye, a little second ranked player in the world. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman coming up. Was the founder of the Proud Boys arrested by the FBI in the middle of his streaming show or did he just leave early to go on vacation in the South France? First, in each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need whom you can help. Every dog has its day, and we go to the pound in Downey in southern California. Arnold is seven. He's got a big tongue hanging out smile. He's a ninety two pound Rottweiler. But he's so calm that they literally would let you walk in tomorrow and adopt him take him home right away. He's that calmn with people, and if somebody doesn't do that, they're gonna put Arnold on the kill list. They are overcrowded beyond words. To find out more about our Old and the other dogs on death row at Downey Please check my Twitter feed for dogs in need at Tom Jumbo Grumbo. Look for the tweet about Arnold. If you can't help him, just retweeting that tweet can make a huge difference. And thank you very much. Coming up on countdown, Chuck Todd wants you to know that he has not been fired as the host of Meet the Press, not yet anyway, but he did it in the most Chuck Todd way possible. Worst persons Coming up first, postcripts to the news, some headlines, some thoughts, some snark, dateline shooto Alaska. I always used to say of Sarah pale And that woman is an idiot, But now I can say again that woman is a loser. In the special election to succeed the late Alaska Congressman Don Young, ranked choice voting has done Palin in. She needed six of the second place rankings from those who voted for another Republican Nick Begich, show I got fifty. So Alaska's lone house rap will be Democrat Mary Peltola, an indigenous Alaska who is actually a friend of Palin's. The Palins once give gave the Peltola's their trampoline only in Alaska. She will be in the House through the end of the year. She will again face Palin in another election for the full time seat this November. Since there's a Palin story, I must buy law again. Read the singular and never to be matched description of her after the vice presidential debate October eight, written by Rich Lowry of The National Review. Quote, a very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It's one of the keys to the successive say Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen? Well that's a terrifying thought. Who comes through the screen and grabs you by the wrote Palin two projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who when Palin dropped her first wink, set up a little straighter on the couch and said, hey, I think she just winked at me. And her smile by the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling, it was almost mesmerizing. Its tint little starbursts through the screen, ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned. It's either something you have or you don't. And man, she's got it. No, no, she doesn't. Dateline Pennsylvania. If you think Doug Mastriano, who must go to sleep dreaming of fighting at Gettysburg for the South, would be a disaster as governor of Pennsylvania turns out his possible secretary state might be worse. Media Matters for America reports that two years ago, on nine eleven, Tony Shoop posted twenty nine separate and eleven truth or conspiracy theories, including that the crash of Flight ninety three in Pennsylvania was faked. M m f A also reports Shoop has called Q and on a very valuable resources and pizza gate quote absolutely real and date line Madison, Wisconsin. What do you do after you've been a fake elector who signed the fake electoral slate paperwork that may still land all the election fraud stories and fake electors in prison? If you are Pam Travis, you go to work for the re election campaign of the dead eyed Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. Of course you do. Johnson spokesperson has confirmed Travis's employment, but added quote, she's a grassroots staffer, answering phones this is being blown way out of proportion, or is it this is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith in Sports Serena Williams continues her Jimmy Connor's impression at the US Open. At the age of forty one, she has now knocked off the second ranked player in the world, a net Contivate seven six two six six two. And it's not like Contivate had a bad night. It's just that Serena shot eleven aces passed her. Thank you, Nancy Faust. What was that about? Connors, at age thirty eight and eight years removed from his last Open title, Jimmy Connors Rallied from two sets down and three zip in the third to win his opening match against Patrick McEnroe. By the time Connors had beat Paul Harhus to get to the Semis, he had already turned thirty nine and I got blown out in that last match, but he had re energized the US Open and the after globe lasted several years baseball. It can't be Why did they do this? When the Miami Marlins activated picture Trevor Rogers from the injured list, they had to get rid of somebody, so they designated for assignment another picture reliever Jake fish Man. Yes, the Marlins dropped a player named fish Man. They threw him back catch and release. Fishman of the Marlins was one of those guys like Johnny Padres of the Padres or Butch Metzker of the Mets, or Jose Cardinal of the Cardinals, Ted Cox of the Red Sox, Mini Mendoza of Minnesota, Jason Castro the Astro, and Angel Bravo who played for the Reds and the Padres, but neither the Angels or the Bravos. And among active players Rangers Suarez of Philly who has never played for the Rangers, and Colorado Picture den Elsa Lament who has yet to pitch for Lamets. Big Night in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, thirty five years ago. Last night, the Reading Phillies of the Eastern League led the Williamsport Bills of the Eastern League one nothing. In the fifth inning. Redding's Rick Lundblade was at third base when the Williamsport catcher Dave Bresnahan asked the umpire behind the plate, Scott Potter, for time out. Presnihan said there was something wrong with his glove and he needed to run to the dugout to switch to his backup glove, and the ump agreed. It only took a moment. On the next pitch, Bresnahan tried to pick off that runner at third Lundblade, but instead threw the ball over his third baseman's head and into the outfield. The runner Lundblade trotted home, where Bresnahan tagged him out with the baseball. Pandemonium reigned for several months. Nobody knew actually what had happened. Then Redding's manager put the pieces together. Literally. When catcher Bresnahan had changed gloves, his new one had contained a potato. He had not thrown a baseball into the outfield. He had thrown a potato. It came apart when it landed, and there were little pieces in left field. The crowd roared. When everybody figured this out, the umpire potter said the runner was not out and the run had to count. And it quickly turned out bresd Han had been planning this practical joke with the potato for weeks. His teammates were in hysterics. Even some of the Redding players were delighted. The management of the Williams Sport Bills were not. The next day, they in their Major League affiliate, Cleveland fired Dave breast Hand caught him from the roster. Bresd Hand later admitted he didn't think he had much of a career left anyway. He was twenty five years old, playing in Double A minor league baseball and hitting one fifty. He never played again, but within a week Dave Bresdhand was a guest on David Letterman Show and on the TV Baseball Game of the Week. The following May, the Williams Sport Bills, in an incredible reversal, held Dave breast Hand Night and retired his uniform number. In two thousand seven, on the twentieth anniversary of Potato Gate, a new Williams Sport team called the Crosscutters also retired bresne Han's uniform number, and they inducted him into their Hall of Fame. Last night, thirty five years to the day of Potato Ball, the team changed their name for one night only to the Williams Sports Great Potato Capers and thousands of Spans Welcome to Dave Bresnahan back, and the players all wore special uniforms bearing images of potatoes and bearing Dave Bresnahan's name, all of which adds up to the following. If he was not before, Dave Bresnahan certainly is now more well known than his great uncle, well, who the hell is his great uncle Roger Bresnahan, who is not just a former Major League player and manager, but a Hall of Fame player and manager, as one of the best of the early catchers without potatoes still ahead, it's back to school time, and I want to tell you about my college professor who nearly failed us all after his favorite football team lost a game in one of the worst chokes in sports history. First, the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world, lebronze to the folks at Odyssey Radio and Audio and podcasts and stuff. Evidently somebody in quality control took the month off. First, it was a spot that announced the Odyssey Baseball Player of the Week, that rendering audio streams of Major League games like forty million times in one week, saluting Chicago White Sox pitcher Johnny Quto mispronounced his name like that three times in thirty seconds. Quto, It's quato c u e t o. He has been a major league pitcher since two thousand eight. It's always been quato. That spot has been mercifully retired. But now some Odyssey music news spot is running forty million times all day everywhere reporting the remix of the Beatles album by the producers son of the legendary producer of the Beatles, George Martin, Giles Martin his son, except Odyssey has called him Gills Gills Martin. Maybe he's half fish. The runner up. Gavin mckinnis, the comically bearded founder of the hilariously misnamed Proud Boys fascist poser group troubled with declining influence. He was in the middle of a live scream a week ago when he indicated somebody had entered his Bronx studio without his permission. Mckinnis got off, went off camera, was heard talking off microphone, and has not been seen since. For days. His right wing nut job fans were convinced mckinnis had been arrested, presumably by the FBI, but a mckinnis confidant named Owen Benjamin has now posted what he says is a text exchange with mckinnis. Benjamin expresses his concern, and mckinnis supposedly replies, quote prank, don't tell. Benjamin responds, so you're just gonna pretend the FBI rated your studio. Tons of people are texting me freaking out. Mckinnis's purported response, I never said they did. L A magazine has a cute PostScript. It reports Gavin mckinnis wasn't arrested. He went on vacation with his wife to the south of France, which is exactly like being rated by the FBI. If you're an idiot, mckinnis may need a lawyer, May I suggest Elena Habba. But our winner Chuck Todd, host of NBC's Meet the Press, at least he was the last time I checked. But Todd is now shot back against the reports that he's not going to be the host much longer. The Daily Beast Lackland Cartwright is standing by his reporting from Monday that the removal of his longstanding executive producer after a ratings drop of one year is a possibly fatal sign for Chuck Todd. Quoting Cartwright, NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker is being groomed to replace Todd. Multiple insiders with knowledge of the matter said, and he quoted the multiple insider asking, at what point does anyone have the balls to say, maybe the problem is the face of it. At dinner time yesterday the face of it, Chuck Todd cryptically tweeted a link, just a link, no comment, just a link to dictionary dot com and the quote definition of the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated unquote. An hour later, Todd tweeted another link, just the link, no comment, just a link to YouTube and a video of the embattled quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, Aaron Rodgers, spelling out the word relax. Exactly what Chuck is going for here is unclear, but that link he tweeted for the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated, it sends you to dictionary dot COM's entry for that familiar phrase, which is quote the text of a cable sent by Mark Twain from London to the press in the United States after his obituary had been mistakenly published. Mark Twain never sent that cable and never said or wrote that sentence. On June one, and English based journalist from the New York Journal got all hold of Twain to comment on rumors that Twain was dying in poverty in London. The reporter explained he found Twain in fact living in luxury in Chelsea in London, and that Twain told him the rumor had originated when a cousin of his had become gravely ill in St. Louis. Quoting Mark Twain, the report of my illness grew out of his illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration. In short, Chuck Todd tweeted out a link to something that was never said in a cable that was never sent about a story that was never published, which is kind of Chuck Todd in a nutshell Chuck accuracy, shm accuracy Todd two Day's worst person in the World. Finally to the number one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell so September again. I literally don't know anybody who ever shakes the childhood dread of back to school days in August and the beginning of September. Third grade, high school, college, doesn't matter. Forty four degrees, ninety four degrees doesn't matter. It's September, and by now the dread even if you liked. School remains until the day you die, especially if it invokes memories like the one I have about the day I nearly failed a four credit course in college because of a fumble in a professional football game. Forty four years ago. This week, I actually walked reluctantly but proudly into a class at Cornell University, if I remember correctly, To get into Professor Joel Sylby's nine Century American History course, eight credits spanning two semesters, I had to get special permission for the History department because I was not a history major. I just took all the history classes they would let me, and this was one of the best ones. And I remember Professor Silby's first lecture and the accent and the mannerisms that quickly identified him not only as a fellow native New Yorker, but as a brooke Knight and a Brooklyn Knight fan of, as he quickly told us the New York football giants. What Professor Joel Silby said next caused the I think it was two hundred or so other students in the lecture hall to laugh, all of them except me, because I was the sports director of the Cornhill Student owned radio station, and in those days you could actually know everything about and everybody in all the national sports off the top of your head. And usually that meant you could figure out all the teams and all the sports that had the slightest chance of succeeding, and all the teams and all the sports that did not end. The New York Football Giants did not. I want you to know, I grade the papers, not the teaching assist me, and I happen to be a lifelong, therefore long suffering fan of the New York Football Giants. I saw my first Giants game in nineteen forty five, and over the years I happened to develop this habit of grading your papers on Sunday afternoons and evenings right after I watch my New York Football Giants. So, to some degree great or small, your grade will depend on how well the New York Football Giants do in this nineteen seventy eight National Football League season. On ninety nine of Joel Silby students laughed, I emitted a low moan, since they had gone to five NFL championship games in the six seasons ending in nineteen sixty three and lost all five. By the way, the Giants had had exactly two winning seasons, and they had lost nine of fourteen games the year before nineteen seventy seven. Though they had opened this nineteen seventy eight season with a narrow victory over a very bad Tampa Bay team, and the first half of their schedule had as many as four more opponents who they might be better than. They would be lucky to win two games in the second half of the season. When I got back to the radio station, I looked at the Giants schedule and Professor Sylvie's class schedule, and I circled one critical day when the schedules converged, Sunday, November. Our term papers were due on Thursday. The he could actually read them all after the Giants Eagles game that night in the following day. Amazingly, your New York Football Giants actually opened the season winning three of their first four. In the middle of October, they were still five and three, and in the history lecture room, Professor Sylvie was very happy, and he often recreated highlights of his glorious Giants pleasing success, and he was furiously fan boeing on the new quarterback they brought in from the Canadian League, Joe Pisarcik. If you are a football history fan, or god forbid, a fan of the New York Football Giants, you already know where I'm going with this. The Giants lost the next three games, and then our term papers were due on November sixteenth, and Joel Silby turned morose, and I was at the radio station watching the Giants Eagles game of the nineteenth on a big black and white TV in the lounge when my nightmare unfolded impossibly. The Giants led the much better Philadelphia Eagles fourteen nothing after the first quarter, for Sargic threw two touchdown passes. After the third quarter, it was still seventeen to six Giants. Then the Eagles scored, and they were driving to go ahead with a minute and a half left in the game, when the impossible happened deep in Giants territory. The Philly quarterback through an interception with eighty three seconds left and in possession of the ball. The Giants led seventeen. The crowd at the radio station was ecstatic. I was even more at static. All the Giants now had to do was stall and have the quarterback fall on the ball, maybe twice, as if he had heard me. The quarterback Joe Pisarchic fell on the ball. Then he nearly killed me by handing the ball off to his running back, Larry Zonka, who plowed up the middle to get a first down and burn another thirty seconds off the clock. The Eagles called their last time out, thirty one seconds left, thirty one seconds to my grade and Joel Silby's nineteenth century American history class probably ending up being half or maybe even a full grade better than I deserved. All Joe Pisarchic had to do was falling the damn ball again and it was over. However, on the Giant sideline, offensive coordinator Bob Gibson decided that the safe play, the winning play, was for Joe pas Archic to hand the ball off again to Larry Zanka. And now that might have been the right play, only Bob Gibson and everybody else failed to tell Arizonka. Larry Zanka assumed he was there just to block for Joe Pisarchic, as Joe Pisarchic collapsed to the turf and ran out the clock and got me a better grade. Instead, Pisarchik handed the ball to where Zanka's hands should have been, except Larry Zanka was in a blocking stance and Pisarchic in fact handed it off directly to Larry Zonka's helmet. I screamed. The ball bounced once off the turf and directly into the hands of Philadelphia cornerback Herman Edwards. I continued to scream. There was nobody near Edwards, and he scooted twenty six yards into the end zone, and the Giants lost the damn game nineteen seventeen in the last seconds, And as the Giants fans at the radio station shouted or moaned or swore, I could see Professor Joel Silby shutting off the TV, grabbing our papers and sentencing us to hell, and I continued to scream. Our term papers were returned on Tuesday the twenty one, just before school broke for Thanksgiving. Actually was thankful I got either a B or a B plus. I can't find the paper. It should be somewhere in a box. There was a rumor which I was never able to confirm, that my B or B plus was the highest grade in the class. I can confirm I saw classmates most far more prepared and astute than myself. Most of them history majors looking at their grades and blanching visibly. One girl cried, a CEE, really a ce Professor Joel Silby said, much of our grade would depend on how well the New York Football Giants did in that national football season, and my god, they had just sustained a loss so bad that it has still talked about to this day. My classmates did not listen, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee there is a PostScript. The PostScript takes place thirty two and one half years later. I returned to Cornell in March of two thousand eleven to give a lecture and teach a series of classes to students who no longer afterwards felt they had gotten their full money from the university. My alma mater was very kind to me. They gave me a tour of the secret places they never would have shown me when I was a struggling student, like where they kept Cornell's copy of the Gettysburg address. And they promised me something special for lunch the first day, And sure enough I was dropped off at a restaurant, and there, rising from a table to greet me with applause, were Cornell's official historian and former Professor Glenn Altshuler, and they're very famous history Professor Walter la Faber and I swear Professor Joel Silby, and they were fans of mine. Of course, I could not leave well enough alone. After a few minutes of very pleasant conversation with Mr alt Schuler and Professor la Faber and Professor Sylby, I brought up the night term paper joke sargic handoff story. Professor la Faber looked at Professor Sylby like Professor Sylvie was out of his mind. Is that true? And Sylvie smiled and said, yes, yes it is. And then Joel Silby looked off into the distance as if he were peering backwards through time. That's when you could really enjoy being a professor. He then looked back at me and smiled, Keith, you won't believe this, but I actually graded those papers pretty fairly, and I didn't follow through on my original plan. After the fumble, I actually turned off the TV and I sat there for a few minutes and I asked my soul if it was okay for me to take my revenge on the universe by failing all of you. La favorite gulped. Oh, said Sylvie, it was so great to be a professor back then. I laughed so much ahead tears in my eyes. And then Silby said, okay, okay, maybe I was a little unfair to you guys, but you know, it's the Giants and you have to take this as a whole. The year they won their first Super Bowl was that eighty six. The final exam in that class was like two days after they finished the regular season, fourteen and two, eight o'clock in the morning. So I go to the final c which I never do, and I waited until they were all sitting there sweating, and I said, remember last September when I told you your grade will depend on how well the New York Football Giants doing this nineteen eight six National Football League season, And it was just silence, and I said, well, if you didn't notice, they went fourteen and two, and I haven't been this happy since when they won the title in nineteen fifty six. So guess what, there's no final exam. And nobody moved. So I said it again, there's no final exam, Go home, go study for something else. Y'all get a's. And then there was a couple of seconds of silence, and they all simultaneously realized that was not kidding, and everybody cheered and ran out into the sunshine. So with me and professor's Ault, Shuler and la Faber now in tears. Silby said, see it evens out? And I said, the hell it does. I graduated in nine seventy nine. How does it canceled final in six? Even it out for me? Fella? Joel Silby thought for a second, and then he said, well, I am buying you lunch. I've done all the damage I can do here. This is where I ask you to rate and review the podcasts. One month in and we are number four in the charts for news among all podcasts. Tell them we're better than that? Why. The Countdown theme from Beethoven's Ninth arranged, produced and performed by Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. All orchestration and key boards by John Philip Channel guitarist, bass and drums by Brian Ray. Produced by t k O Brothers. The other Bethsoven selections have been arranged and performed by No horns allowed our sports music. The Alderman ESPN two theme was written by Mitch Warren Davis and a peers courtesy of ESPN, incorporated musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever At our announcer today was the one and only Larry David. Let's countdown for this the six and third day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. We'll have a new episode for you tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.