Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Congratulations Kevin McCarthy, you have now impeached yourself. It is going so well for soon to be former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that a senior Republican lawmaker has now told Semaphore News that this ends when quote the whole family kills each other. I think we're close to that right now. We are in maybe the Godfather to stage. That's right. Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans got their wish, the framework of a Joe Biden impeachment, and in less than seventy two hours they have so completely obscured it and overshadowed it and knocked it off the front page that not even the right wing outlets are talking about it. They are talking about Kevin McCarthy, and the Godfather imagery is just the tip of it. It is going so well for the soon to be former House Speaker McCarthy that he met with his House conference. He dared them to oust him as speaker, and then he swore at them, go ahead, I'm not effing scared of it. Move the effing motion. It's going so well for soon to be former House Speaker McCarthy that a Republican Congressional Aid now says that the Freedom Caucus members are quote hell bent on losing the majority for the GOP in the House. And this is only day three, only day three of Kevin McCarthy's impeachment inquiry, which by late on day one had become Kevin McCarthy's illegal impeachment inquiry, and which now after day two has become Kevin McCarthy's imploding legal impeachment inquiry. McCarthy's grand strategy appease Trump by dirtying up Hunter Biden, so you can pretend to impeach Joe Biden, rip draconian cuts through every limb of the federal budget, solidify your own control of the House, position you were signed for next year's election, and stage first a stunt shutdown of the government and then ride in on a paper mache whitehorse to resolve the stunt shutdown of the government. Has all collapsed. McCarthy had to punch on the shutdown, then he had to punch on the punt of the shutdown, and he is now struggling to pass something to maybe keep the government afloat just for a month, or shut it down he is now under attacked by his right wing, his left wing, and by Trump. And of course, the forgotten keys to this whole spit storm McCarthy has brought down on his own head are standing silently in the back of the room. The Democrats. If a vote to fire McCarthy technically called a motion to vacate the chair actually comes to the floor, there are two hundred and thirteen Democratic votes to destroy Kevin McCarthy. Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies is not saying this, of course, but strategically it's obvious. Why wouldn't you want to see the majority stab its own speaker in the back for the first time in the history of the House of Representatives. I mean, the strategy and the policy implications are one thing. The fact that they'd be wasting their time on that and nothing else is another. But two hundred and thirteen Democrats would vote to oust Kevin McCarthy just for the sheer joy of it. And if they do anti McCarthy, Republicans need only five votes from their own side. It's hilarious, and they never learn this would be the first ouster of a serving speaker, only because when twenty five years ago After the disastrous nineteen ninety eight midterms, Republican leadership got Newt Gingrich in a room and explained to him he was not leaving that room as Speaker. Newt had the presence of mind to take the clean way out, and he still does have that lucrative career in Fox News guest hits and hosting infomercials. Anyway, McCarthy, who was not smart enough to know the Gangrich nineteen ninety eight story, let alone use it as a template to avoid creating his current drama, in which he is not only the hostage but also the guy who showed the hostage takers how to take the hostage. Kevin McCarthy is probably not smart enough when it comes to this to quit. So the house will suspend while they hose down what's left of him off the walls, and then, if we're all real quiet, through our windows and doors will come the faint but unmistakable sound of President Biden laughing his ass off. Hunter Biden may be laughing by that time as well. He has now in fact sued an ex Trump thug over the laptop which now may turn out to really be a hacked iPhone uploaded onto a laptop and suddenly the repairman guy with the eyes going out of either side of his head, and Rudy and everybody else, they are all positioned for all kinds of exciting new criminal charges, and Rudy, Rudy may experience an entirely different kind of motion to vacate after yesterday's gun charges. Hunter Biden is also in the unique position of being defended by Republicans Second Amendment nut jobs, and the charges are dubious enough, especially in the context of the previous plea deal, that he may have a malicious prosecution case against his father's Department of Justice. And I love Jack Smith, but seeing Merrick Garland fired because he prosecuted the President's son in a demented bid to seem balanced politically would be an early Christmas present that I would always cherish. And best of all, to quote Daffy and Bugs, duck season, wabbit season, duck season, wabbit season, duck season, whistleblower season. The FBI whistleblower who's whistle blowing about the anti Hunter Biden whistleblower has confirmed his identity. He is Jonathan Boma, and he says he went to his boss in the FBI in Los Angeles in twenty nineteen, with uncorroborated but strong information that dirtied up Hunter Biden and his boss was all ears, But then Burma presented part two of this quote. When I attempted to provide information that Rudy Giuliani may have been compromised by individuals suspected of being involved in Russian counter intelligence influence operations, he his boss shut me down, and the meeting ended. I came to know that Giuliani had received three hundred thousand dollars from Pabel Fuchs unquote, and then Agent Buma goes on to explain Fuchs' ties to corruption in Ukraine and his ties to Putin and his ties to what's this name here, Trumum, and how his bosses at the FBI did not want to know anything about anybody except Hunter Biden. Oops. Maybe the best part of this, apart from the clumsy but colorful analogy to al Pacino killing off the heads of the rival families in Godfather Too, is the fact that as this has played out, the Orange Man behind the Orange Curtain has not as much as posted one sentence of support for his latest Renfield. All right, I got the Wizard of Oz and Dracula working in the same sentence, It's the end of the week and I've been sick. Shoot me add Kevin McCarthy's name to the list of those who have done Trump's bidding for him, and then turned around to receive at least the grumbled thanks, only to find an empty space where Trump used to be. Trump, of course, was too busy yesterday, being interviewed by one x NBC News wash out named Megan Kelly and by one future x NBC News wash out named Kristin Welker. The Welker Big Splash sit down for her meet the Press debut was in fact, arguably worse than expected. They threw clips of it on Nightly News with Lester Holt, and in one Trump says to her that he could have pardoned himself, and he makes up a bunch of stories about that and legal authorities and how he would never really do that, and she just smiles vapidly at him, and instead of saying you do know, we all know you're lying, or even just honey, please, she says, even if you were reelected, as if she were asking some nitwit in a dateline story, whether or not he would go to the prom with the murder victim all over again. And then she asks him what he thinks about Hunter Biden, which is like saying, for my next question, President Trump, free topic, say whatever you want. And then he moves on to say, you mean, because I challenge an election, they want to put me in jail. And instead of saying something like, well anything, literally say anything, she just stares vapidly, and then they cut to Lester Holt, and Lester stares vapidly, and then Lester says he had a pretty interesting answer, and you are reminded that Lester Holt reached the apogee of his journalistic career in his cameo at the end of the movie The Fugitive In nineteen ninety three, as an aside, I flashed back to the week they moved MSNBC from New Jersey into thirty Rock, and my office was set up next to the nightly news writing area, and I was genuinely shocked, and I was forty eight years old at the time. I was genuinely shocked that while their newscast was on the air, the producers and writers of Nightly News with Brian Williams were sitting there and openly hissing and booing at the TV monitors and mocking Brian Williams as he was on camera in a studio down the hall, and one of them was doing an impression of him. And I realize now that if those same people could have seen what Lester Holt and Kristin Welker would be doing on the same newscast roughly sixx teen years to the day later, they would have been rushing into the studio crying and embracing Brian Williams as the burrow of his time. More relevant to our story, however, was the other interview Trump did with Megan Kelly. Meghan Kelly, who is marching rapidly and inexorably towards being Carrie Lake two. As I noted here yesterday, Judge Aileen Cannon slapped a gag order on Trump publicly discussing the classified information he stole that is at the center of the Florida trial. Trump does not quite violate that gag order, but he once again, and this is at least the twelfth time, does violate the instructions from Judge Tanya Chutkin in Washington about obstructing justice in that case, or threatening the witnesses, or jeopardizing or slandering the prosecution. Let's count how long it takes him to do any of that in this clip here? Okay, one, Well, actually that's the answer. One.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Congratulations Kevin McCarthy, you have now impeached yourself. It is going so well for soon to be former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy that a senior Republican lawmaker has now told Semaphore News that this ends when quote the whole family kills each other. I think we're close to that right now. We are in maybe the Godfather to stage. That's right. Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans got their wish, the framework of a Joe Biden impeachment, and in less than seventy two hours they have so completely obscured it and overshadowed it and knocked it off the front page that not even the right wing outlets are talking about it. They are talking about Kevin McCarthy, and the Godfather imagery is just the tip of it. It is going so well for the soon to be former House Speaker McCarthy that he met with his House conference. He dared them to oust him as speaker, and then he swore at them, go ahead, I'm not effing scared of it. Move the effing motion. It's going so well for soon to be former House Speaker McCarthy that a Republican Congressional Aid now says that the Freedom Caucus members are quote hell bent on losing the majority for the GOP in the House. And this is only day three, only day three of Kevin McCarthy's impeachment inquiry, which by late on day one had become Kevin McCarthy's illegal impeachment inquiry, and which now after day two has become Kevin McCarthy's imploding legal impeachment inquiry. McCarthy's grand strategy appease Trump by dirtying up Hunter Biden, so you can pretend to impeach Joe Biden, rip draconian cuts through every limb of the federal budget, solidify your own control of the House, position you were signed for next year's election, and stage first a stunt shutdown of the government and then ride in on a paper mache whitehorse to resolve the stunt shutdown of the government. Has all collapsed. McCarthy had to punch on the shutdown, then he had to punch on the punt of the shutdown, and he is now struggling to pass something to maybe keep the government afloat just for a month, or shut it down he is now under attacked by his right wing, his left wing, and by Trump. And of course, the forgotten keys to this whole spit storm McCarthy has brought down on his own head are standing silently in the back of the room. The Democrats. If a vote to fire McCarthy technically called a motion to vacate the chair actually comes to the floor, there are two hundred and thirteen Democratic votes to destroy Kevin McCarthy. Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies is not saying this, of course, but strategically it's obvious. Why wouldn't you want to see the majority stab its own speaker in the back for the first time in the history of the House of Representatives. I mean, the strategy and the policy implications are one thing. The fact that they'd be wasting their time on that and nothing else is another. But two hundred and thirteen Democrats would vote to oust Kevin McCarthy just for the sheer joy of it. And if they do anti McCarthy, Republicans need only five votes from their own side. It's hilarious, and they never learn this would be the first ouster of a serving speaker, only because when twenty five years ago After the disastrous nineteen ninety eight midterms, Republican leadership got Newt Gingrich in a room and explained to him he was not leaving that room as Speaker. Newt had the presence of mind to take the clean way out, and he still does have that lucrative career in Fox News guest hits and hosting infomercials. Anyway, McCarthy, who was not smart enough to know the Gangrich nineteen ninety eight story, let alone use it as a template to avoid creating his current drama, in which he is not only the hostage but also the guy who showed the hostage takers how to take the hostage. Kevin McCarthy is probably not smart enough when it comes to this to quit. So the house will suspend while they hose down what's left of him off the walls, and then, if we're all real quiet, through our windows and doors will come the faint but unmistakable sound of President Biden laughing his ass off. Hunter Biden may be laughing by that time as well. He has now in fact sued an ex Trump thug over the laptop which now may turn out to really be a hacked iPhone uploaded onto a laptop and suddenly the repairman guy with the eyes going out of either side of his head, and Rudy and everybody else, they are all positioned for all kinds of exciting new criminal charges, and Rudy, Rudy may experience an entirely different kind of motion to vacate after yesterday's gun charges. Hunter Biden is also in the unique position of being defended by Republicans Second Amendment nut jobs, and the charges are dubious enough, especially in the context of the previous plea deal, that he may have a malicious prosecution case against his father's Department of Justice. And I love Jack Smith, but seeing Merrick Garland fired because he prosecuted the President's son in a demented bid to seem balanced politically would be an early Christmas present that I would always cherish. And best of all, to quote Daffy and Bugs, duck season, wabbit season, duck season, wabbit season, duck season, whistleblower season. The FBI whistleblower who's whistle blowing about the anti Hunter Biden whistleblower has confirmed his identity. He is Jonathan Boma, and he says he went to his boss in the FBI in Los Angeles in twenty nineteen, with uncorroborated but strong information that dirtied up Hunter Biden and his boss was all ears, But then Burma presented part two of this quote. When I attempted to provide information that Rudy Giuliani may have been compromised by individuals suspected of being involved in Russian counter intelligence influence operations, he his boss shut me down, and the meeting ended. I came to know that Giuliani had received three hundred thousand dollars from Pabel Fuchs unquote, and then Agent Buma goes on to explain Fuchs' ties to corruption in Ukraine and his ties to Putin and his ties to what's this name here, Trumum, and how his bosses at the FBI did not want to know anything about anybody except Hunter Biden. Oops. Maybe the best part of this, apart from the clumsy but colorful analogy to al Pacino killing off the heads of the rival families in Godfather Too, is the fact that as this has played out, the Orange Man behind the Orange Curtain has not as much as posted one sentence of support for his latest Renfield. All right, I got the Wizard of Oz and Dracula working in the same sentence, It's the end of the week and I've been sick. Shoot me add Kevin McCarthy's name to the list of those who have done Trump's bidding for him, and then turned around to receive at least the grumbled thanks, only to find an empty space where Trump used to be. Trump, of course, was too busy yesterday, being interviewed by one x NBC News wash out named Megan Kelly and by one future x NBC News wash out named Kristin Welker. The Welker Big Splash sit down for her meet the Press debut was in fact, arguably worse than expected. They threw clips of it on Nightly News with Lester Holt, and in one Trump says to her that he could have pardoned himself, and he makes up a bunch of stories about that and legal authorities and how he would never really do that, and she just smiles vapidly at him, and instead of saying you do know, we all know you're lying, or even just honey, please, she says, even if you were reelected, as if she were asking some nitwit in a dateline story, whether or not he would go to the prom with the murder victim all over again. And then she asks him what he thinks about Hunter Biden, which is like saying, for my next question, President Trump, free topic, say whatever you want. And then he moves on to say, you mean, because I challenge an election, they want to put me in jail. And instead of saying something like, well anything, literally say anything, she just stares vapidly, and then they cut to Lester Holt, and Lester stares vapidly, and then Lester says he had a pretty interesting answer, and you are reminded that Lester Holt reached the apogee of his journalistic career in his cameo at the end of the movie The Fugitive In nineteen ninety three, as an aside, I flashed back to the week they moved MSNBC from New Jersey into thirty Rock, and my office was set up next to the nightly news writing area, and I was genuinely shocked, and I was forty eight years old at the time. I was genuinely shocked that while their newscast was on the air, the producers and writers of Nightly News with Brian Williams were sitting there and openly hissing and booing at the TV monitors and mocking Brian Williams as he was on camera in a studio down the hall, and one of them was doing an impression of him. And I realize now that if those same people could have seen what Lester Holt and Kristin Welker would be doing on the same newscast roughly sixx teen years to the day later, they would have been rushing into the studio crying and embracing Brian Williams as the burrow of his time. More relevant to our story, however, was the other interview Trump did with Megan Kelly. Meghan Kelly, who is marching rapidly and inexorably towards being Carrie Lake two. As I noted here yesterday, Judge Aileen Cannon slapped a gag order on Trump publicly discussing the classified information he stole that is at the center of the Florida trial. Trump does not quite violate that gag order, but he once again, and this is at least the twelfth time, does violate the instructions from Judge Tanya Chutkin in Washington about obstructing justice in that case, or threatening the witnesses, or jeopardizing or slandering the prosecution. Let's count how long it takes him to do any of that in this clip here? Okay, one, Well, actually that's the answer. One.

We have a deranged guy named Jack Smith who's been overturned at the Supreme Court a number of times. And he gets overturned, you know, it gets overturned because he goes too far. They don't even mention the Presidential Records Act. This is all about the Presidential Records Act. I'm allowed to have these documents. I'm allowed to take these documents classified or not classified, and frankly, when I have them, they become unclassified.

We have a deranged guy named Jack Smith who's been overturned at the Supreme Court a number of times. And he gets overturned, you know, it gets overturned because he goes too far. They don't even mention the Presidential Records Act. This is all about the Presidential Records Act. I'm allowed to have these documents. I'm allowed to take these documents classified or not classified, and frankly, when I have them, they become unclassified.

People think you have to go through a ritual. You don't. Also all the stuff after he again attacked the special counsel, and I keep thinking, that has got to be one of the extra judicial statements that Smith and Chutkin and Trump's lawyers are addressing under seal. All the other stuff that followed that, all of it lies, all of it. The Presidential Records Act says nothing like that. In fact, it says the exact opposite of that. And if you are expecting Megan Kelly to push back. Just because she's a lawyer, then you're probably expecting this. Knitwit Welker pushed back on a similar answer, but NBC decided to hold the clip to play it on Sunday rather than run a clip last night, a clip of what would have been the biggest journalism story and one of the biggest governmental stories of the year, in which an interviewer with access to Trump actually challenged him about something by saying, not even saying, you're a goddamned liar, but that's not true. I happen to have the presidential record act here. I will now read it aloud in its entirety. And then you just sit there and wait until Trump storms off the set or whatever he does. And that's how you make a big splash in your first Meet the Press interview with Trump. Rather than you know, asking the series of questions, Kristin Welker asked that each had the exact same journalistic atomic number, the same journalistic atomic number as quote, how do you feel? Unquote Okay, So back to Washington and Kevin, I send impeachment inquiry bomb into room where our president and son who gets blown up? Me McCarthy delightfully, the new questions reverberating around Washington now are not at all about the President or his son, but about McCarthy and who would be the next Speaker, and whether that would be James Comer, who once again has lied about just trying to see Hunter Biden's bank records when Hunter Biden's attorneys offered to have their client meet with him in February last February, and Comer ignored the offer because, of course, a cooperative Hunter Biden is of no use to Jamie Comer's political assassination. No Pants Party. And I sit here and I almost pray that somebody in the Democratic Party has the vision now to say, the Republicans are in trouble, right now, real trouble. Let's make sure they stay in trouble. In fact, let's make sure we make it far, far worse for them. McCarthy is self destructing. Let's take care of the guy behind McCarthy. This is the time release the Comber. It was November of last year when I first brought this up, and I just hope the Democrats thought not yet, rather than we cannot lower ourselves to addressing the lives of a Republican using his committee chairmanship for political assassination by you know, going out there and spreading truth. In twenty fifteen, James Comer chairman of the House Obstruction of Justice Committee and possible successor to Kevin McCarthy, though they insist on calling that the Oversight Committee. He was credibly accused in twenty fifteen of physically and mentally abusing his college girlfriend from the early nineteen nineties, and credibly accused of calling her mother and threatening the girlfriend's life to her mother, and credibly accused of becoming enraged after finding out that his girlfriend had written in his real name on the paperwork at the abortion clinic that the quote pro life unquote James Comber had driven her to to end their pregnancy ohen she still had that paperwork in a safe deposit box. Comer ran for governor of Kentucky in twenty fifteen, and as the Republican primary came to an end that year, he was hit with that double scandal. His girlfriend of the early nineties, a woman named Marilyn Thomas, who was still a Republican, accused him of hitting her, of threatening her, of separating her from her family, of being quote toxic, abusive, and caused me a lot of suffering. Everything I did, everywhere I went, and everyone with whom I interacted had to be approved. Consequences were violent and swift. Otherwise unquote well, when that broke in twenty fifteen, a Republican state senator in Kentucky promptly an angrily defended the girlfriend. He said she'd known Marilyn Thomas since nineteen ninety five. Her college roommate rushed to defend Marilynd Thomas, saying she'd seen all that abuse in real time, and her mother said Comber had called their home in the middle of the night and threatened her daughter. All of this was front page news in Kentucky in twenty fifteen, and then Jamie Comer lost the primary for governor and he was not news anymore. And because this is the other biggest thing wrong with the news media, the Maryland Thomas story and the violence allegation and the threat allegation and the abortion allegation, they just vanished. If the Democrats are smart, they make and they can put whatever distance they want to between it and the party itself, they make James Comer and what he did to Marilynd Thomas at Western Kentucky University in nineteen ninety one. The story right now, pile it out there on top of Kevin McCarthy. Right now, call a news conference. Leak as story, leak a dozen stories. Give Kristen Welker a ring. You want oversight, mister chairman, or if she called you, Jamie Comber, you got it. What about Marilyn Thomas, Jamie Comber. Why haven't you addressed Maryland Thomas? Jamie Comber. I don't see any stories about Marilyn Thomas in twenty nineteen, Jamie Comber, What did you do to suppress the coverage of Maryland Thomas? Jamie Comber? What about the abortion, Jamie Comber? What about the abortion paperwork? Jamie Comber? Is any of it on your laptop? Jamie Comer? You you don't like this. It makes you uncomfortable, even though it has a quality peculiar to the American political scene of twenty twenty three in that it happens to be true, even though the Republican version of this is for Marjorie Taylor Green to show, oh Hunter Biden revenge porn. Oh, by the way, revenge porn that now appears to have been stolen out of his phone or his phones backup at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, Chairman, But this him beating his college girlfriend. This makes you uncomfortable, tough. Also of interest here, Hey, Bill Maher, who I now know forty five years. He used to be just too lazy or too stupid to understand the political stories. He's so glibly screwed up every Friday night on HBO as US guests who are out there for the publicity and the free first class air travel, just noded our heads and said it'll be over soon. And then there's a room full of drinks. And once upon a time when we were in college together, he was so annoying that I have not started to fight since nineteen sixty seven. I was ready to punch him in the face in like thirty seconds. That used to be the definition of Bill Maher. But now, in the middle of the writer's strike and the actors strike, Bill Maher has decided he's had enough of these annoying scribes and their need for you know, food, So he's going to restart his show on HBO every week. And you know what that makes Bill Maher right a scab, a goddamned scab. I'll talk about that for ten twenty minutes. Maybe Bill Maher scab scab, scab scab. That's next. This is countdown, scab. This is Countdown with Keith Elberman, still ahead on Countdown, A doubleheader Fridays with Thurber and coming up on a very topical things. I promised not to tell the day I met Bill Maher asshole. Turned out that day was about twenty years earlier than either of us had remembered, and he became an asshole about forty years earlier than most of you understood. First time for the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger Effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. Spoiler alert, the winner is Bill Maher. But first the bronze to Congresswoman Lauren No, this dress fits, I'll make it fit Bobert. You saw the video of her being ejected from a Denver theater for vaping and for singing along and for illegally recording the stage version of Beetlejuice. The thirty six year old grandmother's date was reportedly an Aspen bar owner named Quinn Gallagher and who cares. I mean, who cares. Bobert is a nitwit. The nation is full of nitwits. Her odds of meeting her end because her mouth mysteriously seals shut and traps an unsurvivable amount of hot air in her lungs, they're about two to one in favor k Sarah live and let live. But this tears it. Bobert and the rest of her nihilist Nazi party are still pushing the drag queens and LGBTQ perge stuff and this guy Gallagher, the bar owner. In January, the bar hosted quote a Winter Wonderland burlesque and drag show at the bar of Lauren Bobert's boyfriend, starring Ken Dramatic. I mean, it's one thing to jeopardize the lives of people because of how they behave or dress, or that you don't like them. It's quite another to jeopardize the lives of people because of how they behave, or live or dress when you don't even care and you are just doing it to stir outrage. Watch out for those sealed lips. Bobert, the runner up, Drew barrymore Well, it was a nice career. In May, the actress and TV talk show host pulled out of her gig as MC of the MTV Movie and TV Awards in solidarity with the writers' strike, and that solidarity lasted a solid three months. She says she's bringing her show back without writers. And if you think, oh, it's a talk show, it doesn't have to have writers, it just has to have talk. It has writers. Trust me, I've done talk shows. I've hosted talk shows. I've been on talk shows. It's more writers than say Countdown had. Now her writers will be scab writers, and she will also be a scab Drew Scab Barrymore of the Drew Scab Barrymore Show. But our winner is this is a surprise. It's Bill Maher. I have a confession. Now. I don't think I've ever actually said this before. I have been on his HBO show several times, and I had him on my old MSNBC show because the publicity was useful, and they would, by the way, fly guests to Los Angeles first class on their dime, so it was work and a free flight. And to get it, all you had to do was sort of pretend you didn't hate Bill Maher. I'm guilty. I pretended I didn't hate Bill Maher in point of fact, as you will hear today, I have hated Bill Maher continuously since the spring of nineteen seventy Flipping eight and went to college with him. For a long time. Mar's show was a good venue to reach a liberal audience until he began to turn into a complete fascist. So I last went on the show the night Trump was inaugurated, and in fact I canceled an appearance scheduled for later in twenty seventeen. So I'm not just now bailing on this useless idiot. I bailed six years ago because mar now has announced that his HBO show is also like Drew Barrymore's returning despite the writer's strike quote, it has been five months and it is time to bring people back to work. The writers have important issues that I empathize with and hope they are addressed to their satisfaction. But they are not the only people with issues, problems, and concerns. Bill says he will quote honor the spirit of the strike by not doing a monologue or other written style pieces. Well as an aside, that's good news because not one of his monologues or other pieces has been funny. Since about in ten, twenty eleven. But listen to this quote. But the heart of the show is an off the cuff panel discussion that aims to cut through the bullshit and predictable partisanship, and that will continue. I've been in these panel discussions. A couple of them were. Okay, Frankly, you know how I feel about Chris Matthews. Chris Matthews did panel discussions better than Bill Maher does. I think it was twenty fifteen when they finally invited me on and I said, all right, I'll come out, I'll take the free flight and I'll do the one on one interview. But these panels, you know what they are. They're just they're bullshit and predictable partisanship. And Bill doesn't understand the issues. I'd like to be left out of those. And the producer says, I understand, and you're right, Bill doesn't understand any of it. Doesn't even try anymore. But you kind of have to be on the panel, all right. It's still a free flight and a free hotel room, okay, Finn. The panels are terrible, The panel guests are terrible. They're usually c list at best. When I was on the panels, I was terrible to cut through. To use Bill's word, the bullshit here. What Bill Maher is doing right now is as always putting himself first and then finding some rationalization to do so. This is about saving his boss, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief HBO boss David Zaslab, the one who says HBO is a bad name, so he changed it to Max David'saz Lab is the evil villain at the heart of this strike that the studio's forced and the Hollywood media machine, much to his surprise, is drying up and dying, and he is being blamed every day of the week. The writers and the actors have been amazingly solid and courageous except for Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher, and the studios are losing these strikes. So Bill is going to help the studios by being a scab, by siding with the corporations over the writers and the actors who are on a legal and justified strike. Which is especially funny because, as I'll get to in a moment, the day I met Bill Maher, he called me a quote corporate sellout, which is what he is now, a corporate sellout and a scab. And a reminder, by the way, particularly to liberals, but to in fact anybody contemplating going on Real Time now or when the writers and actors win the strike. If you go on real Time on HBO, you too will be a scab. This will be a particularly bad look. Democrats and lists will be kept Bill. By the way, without writers, the new Scab edition of Real Time with Bill Maher will be about eighty three seconds law, not counting all the time that mar leaves so he can laugh at his own jokes in a desperate attempt to make them seem funny rather than just stupid. Mar scab two days. Worst person in the world, and he's a scab. Sometime in nineteen eighty five or nineteen eighty six I saw a movie on cable called DC Cab. There was a character, and it clearly the actor portraying him was talented and funny, but for some reason I felt like I knew him from somewhere, and I really didn't like him. I remember the feeling was so strong that I stuck around to watch the credits to find out who he was. His name was Bill Mayher mah e er Well. I had a teacher named Bill Mayer, but his name had a y in it. He was my advisor in high school. Now it wasn't him, but I knew three things. He was talented, I didn't like him, and I knew him from somewhere. This is pre internet, of course, so no way to find out where I knew him from. Hallowell's annual film guide would be my best bet. Maybe he'd be in the new one coming out. Checked calendar just eight or nine months from now. Eventually I found out Bill Maher was in the year ahead of mine at Cornell University. He was not at my radio station. He was not in my college. Maybe I knew him from a class somewhere. I could never nail it down. I like to say I have a photographic memory, but it's all polaroids, and I haven't always bothered to label them. Almost everything that ever happened he is stuck inside this big empty head of mine. But often key details like who, what, when and where are just missing. Never wrote him down, and honestly, in this case, it was not worth the effort. I knew I was was the right word. The word was aware of him when we were both in college. Occasionally, especially after I went from ESPN to MSNBC in nineteen ninety seven. A writer would note the coincidence of university and years and ask me about it, and I would say just that I don't remember if he was in a class with me or I knew him somehow, but I was aware of Bill Maher. And then twenty two years ago, this month, November twenty third, two thousand, I went on his old show, Politically Incorrect, used to be the late night show on ABC. This was when I was doing sports for Fox in LA and it was an all sports episode. Lennox Lewis, the boxer, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Todd Zeal the first basement of the New York Mets, and me from Fox Sports. When I met Bill Maher before the show, I asked him about Cornell and whether or not we ran into each other. I didn't know anybody there. I didn't see anybody. I didn't go comedy anywhere. I didn't talk to anybody. I didn't meet you. Okay, excuse me. That settles it. Except during the recording of the show, when Mark contradicted me on some point. I got angry at him, and there was no reason to get angry at him, so I dismissed the anger, and I dismissed the moment, except on the way home, I kept thinking, I know him from school somehow, no matter what he says, and I know I didn't like him in school. In the next decade, Bill switched to his weekly HBO political show, and I went back and turned MSNBC into a political network. And the Internet happened so that Cornell juxtaposition became easier for reporters to stumble over, so I would tell them the same thing. I can't remember the details, but for twenty nine years now I have been convinced I was aware of Bill Maher at Cornell. Finally came the day March twentieth, two thousand and nine, when they asked me to go on Real Time and Bill Maher Cornell University seventy eight asked me Cornell University seventy nine something about colleges, and I said, well, as you know, we overlapped at Cornell, and I don't know if we met, but I was aware of you there, and he intermrupted and said, no, you weren't, and I just went back and answered his question. Now, after every episode of his program, Mar has or at least had a little party backstage, I mean catered with booze and with more guests than there are people in the studio audience, and usually a bunch of models having done that show four times, where they will fly you in first class and put you up for the weekend in LA just to do their show, and there's a party. I began to suspect that, like many of the guests, Bill Maher does the show just so he can have the party. Anyway. Not long after it started, it overcomes Mar and he's mad at me, and mind you, even if his allegation that he is five feet eight is correct, I'm just under six ' four, so he's giving up a lot of height during an art argument, and he starts yapping about how I should stop saying I was a way heir of him at Cornell and I'm just trying to get publicity off something that never happened. And who could remember that kind of crap anyway? And he never talked to anybody in four years in college because quote except for the Ethica high school students I sold drugs to unquote. And I notice he's getting heated, and this is just triggering that core belief of mine that I was aware of him in college and I didn't like him, And now it becomes clear to me he didn't like me either. He's getting loud enough and he's swinging his arms around now and it looks kind of funny, but apparently it happens in the office sometimes. And this is when Scott Carter, who was the executive producer whom I definitely did know since like nineteen ninety two when he worked at Comedy Central with my friend Alan Havy, Scott Carter comes over to defuse the situation. Scott was a three piece suit kind of guy with the thumbs tucking a vest, who would call a group of men fellows, as in say fellows. So Scott comes over and says, say fellows with your Cornell alumni reunion here, And of course this makes Bill Maher even angrier. Let me ask you something. I used to drive down from Hobart to see concerts at Cornell. Have to say, I think Cornell was the leading concert school in the nation back in our day. And now Scott starts to list who he saw in concert at Cornell, Robert Palmer and the famous Grateful Dead concert at Cornell at Barton Hall. He was there, and I say, I went to Springsteen, and Mar mumbles something about Loggins and Messina, and I know what Carter's doing here. He's diffusing. And we do a couple of rounds of who saw which Cornell concert? And finally I say, I can top both of you comic geniuses. I saw Robert Klein in concert at Cornell. Now it is criminal, but there's an excellent chance you may not know who Robert Klin is, suffice to say as prominent a comedian in the sixties seventies eighties as George Carlin or Richard pryor HBO itself was built on annual George Carlin concerts and annual Robert Klein concerts and everybody else. And Robert Kline wasn't quite as deep or eternal as George Carlin, but he was really on the money during Watergate and during Reagan. So I say, I saw Robert Klein in concert at Cornell, and Mar looks at me funny and not angrily, and says quietly, I was at that too. I saw Robert Klein too, And I don't really register that Mar's mood has now utterly changed. He's not angry, he's confused. Well, I say, I can still top you, because after that concert I interviewed Robert Klein. Now Bill Maher starts to squint, and he looks at me, and he looks at Scott Carter, and he looks back at me, and he says, wait, I interviewed Kleine after that concert too. And I'm smiling through all this, and smiling and smiling and smiling, and then suddenly, simultaneously it hits Bill Maher and me at the same moment, in the same fullness of detail, and I stop smiling, and I shout at Bill Maher, you and he pulls his arms in towards his stomach and kind of bends forward at the waist and covers his face with his hands, and he says, oh God, I'm so sorry, Jesus, it can't be. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And while the anger wells up inside me so powerfully, I can almost see it in my own eyeballs. Bill Maher's concert going producer Scott Carter is really confused. Say, fellows, did I miss something or did I have a brief stroke or episode? And I say, Bill, and I just remembered how I happen to be aware of him in school, and Mar still has got his hands over his face. People are looking at us, and Bill is shouting apologies, and I say you want to tell him or should I? And mar just shakes his body no and mumbles, oh God, you do it. I can't, I can't, I can't, And it all came back to me. For years, I would tell people the story of the Robert Klein concert at Cornell University in nineteen seventy eight. Our radio station co sponsored his appearance along with the Corneill Concert Commission, and in the contract we specified that a couple of us real comedy nerds at the radio station would get to go backstage afterwards and tape a brief ten or fifteen minute interview with Robert Klin. Basically, we paid him not much, but we paid him to do an interview. And when my pal Andy Grossman and I get backstage to talk to Robert Klein, and we have our two microphones and two mike stands and three tape recorders, there is this guy, this short guy, and he's yelling at the chief of the Cornaill Concert Commission. And he's yelling at Robert Clin's manager, and he's demanding that he should get to interview Robert Clin because, like Klein, this kid says he is a stand up comedian and he publishes the Cornell Humor Magazine. And he points at me and he says he should get priority over these quote corporate sellouts from the Cornell Radio station. I hated him on site. Oh wait, I say to him in nineteen seventy eight. And he's small and he's got dirty, stringy hair and he's loud, and I say, you are the publisher of the Cornell Humor magazine, the Cornell Widow. And he snorts and says, I wouldn't get caught dead publishing that corporate sellout, Cornell Widow. And so I say, oh so, then that means you're the publisher of the Cornell Alternative Humor magazine, the Not So Big Red or whatever it is they call it. He says, no way, they are corporate sellouts. I publish this. And he pulls out a stack of mimeographed pages stapled together and there's like a drawing on the front of a naked girl and handwritten it says it's his comedy magazine and I look at Robert Klein's manager and I say, so, it's ten o'clock and if you leave now while this idiot is screwing this up, the limo can still get mister Klein to Elaine's in the city before it closes, right, And the manager is wildly impressed, you know of Elaine's. And I said yes, and I felt like an adult. And I also said, if we give this guy five minutes of our time right now while we're setting up our tape recorders, can we still have ten minutes with mister Klein. And the manager says, good plan. I like the way you think, and he points to the kid and gestures for him to come along. No, the kid shouts, I want half an hour. These corporate sellouts deserve nothing. And now I'm getting angry. I say, buddy, so far all the corporations in the world have paid me about one hundred bucks. So I threatened him. Now, mind you, I believe this is literally true. Since nineteen sixty seven, when I was eight years old, I have started two fistfights two in fifty five years. I am a man of peace. I am loud, but I am a man of peace. But I say to this guy. You now have two choices, kid, five minutes with Robert Klein or I hit you in the face. And he runs to where client's manager is still gesturing towards him, and he screams, Carpred, sell out, and he disappears to do his interview, and behind him he leaves his little homemade mimiograph ten or twelve page humor publication, and I pick it up and I read it and register it and dismiss it before I leave the building. And if I had only remembered what it said on the cover, all the years of mystery and I was aware of him, and all that would never have happened, because the cover of the magazine read Bill Maherr's Comedy mag Magazine by Bill maher And now back in well technically this is correct, back in real time, at the party in the Hollywood studio in two thousand and nine, the producer Scott Carter says nothing, and Bill maher is still doubled over in shame, and I say, are you satisfied that I was aware of you? And he mumbles yes, And I say, will you ever question my memory again? And he mumbles no. And he says, if I need him to do my show or a charity benefit or something. Just call and he says he's ashamed, and he offers me his hand to shake, and we shake, and finally I say, and by the way, Bill Maher, if Bill Maher's comedy magazine by Bill Maher, are you a corporate sellout? And he says kind And that's how I was aware of Bill Maher in college. I have argued before that James Thurber is the greatest American humorist. And it dawns on me that the argument is not unlike the idea that shohe Otani of the Los Angeles Angels is almost automatically the most valuable player in baseball each year because he is an All Star hitter and an All Star pitcher in the same body. James Thurber was a brilliant writer, and in his spare time, he was an equally brilliant, almost avant garde artist in the same body. His simple drawings to pick the most complex of emotions and comedic situations. His dogs are immortal. And then there were his captions. Well, I can't do anything with his drawings in a podcast, so I'll just read and I will read you now in this episode what is probably his most famous story from my life in hard times, The Night the Bed Fell James Thurber. I suppose that the high water mark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio was the night the bed fell on my father. It makes a better recitation unless, as some friends of mine have said, one has heard it five or six times, than it does a piece of writing. For it is almost necessary to throw furniture around, shake doors, and bark like a dog to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still it did take place. It happened then that my father had decided to sleep in the attic one night, to be away where he could think. My mother opposed the notion strongly because she said the old wooden bed up there was unsafe, It was wobbly, and the heavy headboard would crash down on father's head in case the bed fell and kill him. There was no dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten he closed the attic door behind him. He went up the narrow, twisting stairs. We later heard I'm in his creakings as he crawled into bed. Grandfather who usually slept in the attic bed when he was with us, had disappeared some days before. On those occasions, he was usually gone six or eight days, and returned growling and out of temper with the news that the Federal Union was run by a passel of blockheads, and that the Army of the Potomac didn't have any more chance than a fiddler's bitch. We had visiting us at the time, a nervous first cousin of mine named Briggs Beale, who believed that he was likely to cease breathing when he was asleep. It was his feeling that if he were not awakened every hour during the night, he might die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to setting an alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning, but I persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in my room, and I told him that I was such a light sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the same room with me, I would wake instantly. He tested me the first night, which I had suspected he would, by holding his breath after my regular breathing, had convinced him I was asleep. I was not asleep, however, and called to him. This seemed to allay his fears a little, but he took the precaution of putting a glass of spirits of camphor on a little table at the head of his bed in case I didn't arouse him until he was almost gone. He said he would sniff the camphor. A powerful reviver, Briggs was not the only member of his family who had his crotchets. Old Aunt Melissa Belle, who could whistle like a man with two fingers in her mouth, suffered under the premonition that she was destined to die on South High Street because she had been born on South High Street and married on South High Street. Then there was Aunt Sarah Schauf, who never went to bed at night without the fear that a burglar was going to get in and blow chloroform on under her door through a tube. To avert this calamity, for she was in greater dread of anesthetics than of losing her household goods, she always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in a neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note reading this is all I have. Please take it and do not use your chloroform, as this is all I have. Aunt Gracie's chauf also had a burglar phobia, but she met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars had been getting into her house every night for forty years. The fact that she never missed anything was to her no proof. To the contrary, she always claimed that she scared them off before they could take anything by throwing shoes down the hallway. When she went to bed, she piled where she could get at them handily, all the shoes there were about her house. Five minutes after she had turned off the light, she would sit up in bed and say hark. Her husband, who had learned to ignore the whole situation as long ago as nineteen o three, would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep. In either case, he would not respond to her tugging and pulling, so that presently she would arise, tiptoe to the door, open it slightly, and heave a shoe down the hall in one direction, and its mate down the hall in the other direction. Some nights she threw them all, some nights only a couple of pear. But I am straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the night that the bed fell on father. By midnight we were all in bed. The layout of the rooms and the disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding of what later occurred. In the front room upstairs, just under father's attic bedroom, where my mother and my brother Hermann, who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia or onward Christian soldiers, briggs Beale and myself were in a room adjoining this one one. My brother Roy was in a room across the hall from ours. Our bull terrier Wrecks slept in the hall. My bed was an army cot, one of those affairs which were made wide enough to sleep on comfortably only by putting up flat with the middle section the two sides, which ordinarily hang down like the sideboards of a drop leaf table. When these sides are up, it is perilous to roll too far toward the edge, for then the cot is likely to tip completely over, bringing the whole bed down on top of one with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact, is precisely what happened about two o'clock in the morning. It was my mother who, in recalling the scene, later first referred to it as the night the bed fell on your father, Always a deep sleeper and slow to arouse, I had lied to Briggs. I was at first unconscious of what had happened when the ironcot rolled me onto the floor and toppled over on it left me still warmly bundled up and unheard, for the bed rested above me like a canopy. Hence I did not wake up, only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however, instantly awakened my mother in the next room, who came to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized. The big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She therefore screamed, let's go to your poor father. It was this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling, that awakened Herman in the same room with her, He thought that mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical. You're all right, Mama, he shouted, trying to calm her. They exchanged shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds. Let's go to your poor father, and you're all right. That woke up Briggs. By this time I was conscious of what was going on in a vague way, but did not yet realize that I was under my bed instead of on it. Briggs, awakening in the midst of loud shouts of fear and apprehension, came to the quick conclusion that he was suffocating, and that we were all trying to bring him out. With a low moan, he grasped the glass of camphor at the head of his bed, and instead of sniffing it, he poured it over himself. The room reeked of camphor ugh ah choked Briggs like a drowning man, for he had almost succeeded in stopping his breath under the deluge of pungent spirits. He leaped out of bed and groped toward the open window, but he came up against one that was closed. With his hand, he beat out the glass, and I could hear it crash and tinkle on the alleyway below. It was at this juncture that I, in trying to get up, had the uncanny sensation of feeling my bed above me foggy with sleep. I now suspected, in my turn that the whole uproar was being made in a frantic endeavor to extricate me from what must be an unheard of and perilous situation. Get me out of this, I bawled, Get me out. I think I had the night marrish belief that I was entombed in a mine. Oh gasp, Briggs floundering in his camphor. By this time, my mother, still shouting, pursued by Hermann, still shouting, was trying to open the door to the attic in order to go up and get my father's body out of the wreckage. The door was stuck, however, and would not yield. Her frantic pulls on it only added to the general banging and confusion. Roy and the dog were now up, the one shouting questions, the other barking. Father, farthest away and soundest sleeper of all, had by this time been awakened by the battering on the attic door. He decided that the house was on fire. Oh coming, okaming, he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice. It took him many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother, still believing he was caught under the bed, detected in his I'm coming, the mournful resigned note of one who was preparing to meet his maker. He's dying, She shouted, I'm all right. Briggs yelled to reassure her, I'm all right. He still believed that it was his own closeness to death that was worrying Mother. I found at last the light switch in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs and I joined the others at the attic door. The dog, who never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that he was the culprit in whatever was going on, and Roy had to throw Rex and hold him. We could hear Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled the attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father came down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound. My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex began to howl. What in the name of God is going on here? Asked father. The situation was finally put together like a giant gigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were no other bad results. I'm glad, said Mother, who always looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven's selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of the ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the nine and eighty third day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Convict him now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Monday or Tuesday. I gotta tell you, I gotta shake this throat thing. So if there's no real news over the weekend, I'm just gonna take Monday off. Okay, one way or the other. Your subscription will notify you and bulletins as the news warrants anyway, because me, I'm your local neighborhood masochist till then I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Bill maher is a Scab Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.