Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. A ton of bricks is about to fall on a conservative icon of the Supreme Court, another one. Pro Publica is clearly poised to expose that the fascistic Samuel Alito, the man who overturned Roe v. Wade and cited a seventeenth century which sentencing judge as he did so, has his own version of Clarence Thomas's Harlan Crowe. And Alito's Harlan Crowe is named Paul Singer, and Paul Singer is a billionaire hedge fund manager and one of the funders of the fascist website The Washington Free Beacon. And whatever exactly it is that Pro Publica has compiled, it is bad enough that Alito not only has issued that rarest of denials, the preemptive denial, but he has done so in the form of a really sloppy, panicky op ed that the Wall Street Journal editorial page rushed to publish last night, and in so doing, the Journal and Alito pretty much confirmed who the Journal's informed sources have been close to the court, dating back to even before they speculated that John Roberts was trying to talk a few other justices down from the Roe v. Wade ledgend into a compromise that their informed sources are all named sam Alito, and sam Alito has been leaking Supreme Court debates and decisions like a sieve and could, at least, in theory, be prosecuted for it. For what Alito denies that Pro Publica hasn't accused him of yet. It appears Alito accepted at least a free flight on a private jet to Alaska from this singer, yet did not recuse himself from a case before the Court that was worth as much as two billion, five hundred million dollars to a company owned in part by this singer. Alito says he didn't know Singer had anything to do with the company. Even if he did, he didn't have to recuse. He didn't know the seat on the plane had any value. He wouldn't have had to disclose it even if he had to and had known, and had to and had known. And if you think I'm being gratuitous when I describe Alito's response to this in the paper as sloppy and panicky, he refers in his first sentence in the Wall Street Journal to a quote financial disclose report. This is Alito, who isn't honest, isn't democratic, isn't law abiting, but is also fiercely arrogant and never panics. And he wrote this thing so fast he eluded his own spell check. Alito's opinions and dissents sometimes strain logic and credulity, but even he has never written anything this laugh out loud funny as an excuse for something quote. As for the flight, mister Singer and others had already made a rain to fly to Alaska when I was invited shortly before the event, and I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant. It was my understanding that this would not impose any extra cost on mister Singer. This is exactly the same as going to the airport and asking the nice man over at Delta if you can have a seat to Paris, and then when it's time to pay, you say, I don't have to pay anything. The seat would have otherwise been vacant. It was my understanding that this would not impose any extra cost on mister Delta. And to take the lack of logic one step further, if Delta actually then said, ah, yeah, you're right, skip it whatever, you then leave the cost of that flight off your taxes, because if it had value, why did they give it to you for nothing? I mean, even for Alito. None of this is really convincing. And the I don't know him. I didn't have to know that I knew him. I didn't have to disclose it in this seat was empty anyway defense is so weak that it's about a foot away from saying I ran out of gas, I had a flat tire, I didn't have enough money for cab fair my tucks didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake, a terrible flood, locust. There wasn't my fall.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. A ton of bricks is about to fall on a conservative icon of the Supreme Court, another one. Pro Publica is clearly poised to expose that the fascistic Samuel Alito, the man who overturned Roe v. Wade and cited a seventeenth century which sentencing judge as he did so, has his own version of Clarence Thomas's Harlan Crowe. And Alito's Harlan Crowe is named Paul Singer, and Paul Singer is a billionaire hedge fund manager and one of the funders of the fascist website The Washington Free Beacon. And whatever exactly it is that Pro Publica has compiled, it is bad enough that Alito not only has issued that rarest of denials, the preemptive denial, but he has done so in the form of a really sloppy, panicky op ed that the Wall Street Journal editorial page rushed to publish last night, and in so doing, the Journal and Alito pretty much confirmed who the Journal's informed sources have been close to the court, dating back to even before they speculated that John Roberts was trying to talk a few other justices down from the Roe v. Wade ledgend into a compromise that their informed sources are all named sam Alito, and sam Alito has been leaking Supreme Court debates and decisions like a sieve and could, at least, in theory, be prosecuted for it. For what Alito denies that Pro Publica hasn't accused him of yet. It appears Alito accepted at least a free flight on a private jet to Alaska from this singer, yet did not recuse himself from a case before the Court that was worth as much as two billion, five hundred million dollars to a company owned in part by this singer. Alito says he didn't know Singer had anything to do with the company. Even if he did, he didn't have to recuse. He didn't know the seat on the plane had any value. He wouldn't have had to disclose it even if he had to and had known, and had to and had known. And if you think I'm being gratuitous when I describe Alito's response to this in the paper as sloppy and panicky, he refers in his first sentence in the Wall Street Journal to a quote financial disclose report. This is Alito, who isn't honest, isn't democratic, isn't law abiting, but is also fiercely arrogant and never panics. And he wrote this thing so fast he eluded his own spell check. Alito's opinions and dissents sometimes strain logic and credulity, but even he has never written anything this laugh out loud funny as an excuse for something quote. As for the flight, mister Singer and others had already made a rain to fly to Alaska when I was invited shortly before the event, and I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant. It was my understanding that this would not impose any extra cost on mister Singer. This is exactly the same as going to the airport and asking the nice man over at Delta if you can have a seat to Paris, and then when it's time to pay, you say, I don't have to pay anything. The seat would have otherwise been vacant. It was my understanding that this would not impose any extra cost on mister Delta. And to take the lack of logic one step further, if Delta actually then said, ah, yeah, you're right, skip it whatever, you then leave the cost of that flight off your taxes, because if it had value, why did they give it to you for nothing? I mean, even for Alito. None of this is really convincing. And the I don't know him. I didn't have to know that I knew him. I didn't have to disclose it in this seat was empty anyway defense is so weak that it's about a foot away from saying I ran out of gas, I had a flat tire, I didn't have enough money for cab fair my tucks didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake, a terrible flood, locust. There wasn't my fall.

I swear I got.

I swear I got.

Owen. Besides the sense that Alito's move let's blow up pro Publica before they publish, suggests this is about way more than one free ride on what the spare tire in the back of the plane, and apart from the Wall Street Journal's willingness to print this from Alito, and as noted, apparently not even proof read it, And apart from the reinforcement of the theory that Alito leaks to the journal that's why he sent them this rather than say, sending it to oh, pro Publica in a what do you call those things? Email? And apart from the fact that the former FBI executive Pete Struck wrote last night, wait an Alito free private luxury jet trip to Alaska with Paul Singer, the same Paul Singer who initially funded Fusion GPS's OPO work on Donald Trump World, Sure is funny unquote. Besides all that, there's also another irony in here. The case that Pro Publica will presumably identify as dirty was a suit involving NML Capital and others against the government of Argentina. In two thousand and one. Argentina defaulted on ninety five billion dollars worth in bonds and offered creditors thirty three cents on the dollar. NML Capital refused and sued, and up it went to the Supreme Court, and nine years ago this month, Scotis voted seven to one in favor of NML Capital and the others. And guess what that dissent, the one that wasn't Alito and there's a newspaper column which shows Paul Singer's involvement in the case before the court, and it's not exactly subtle. The case included quote a subsidiary of Paul Singer's Elliott Management called NML Capitol, which is owed some two point five billion in principle and back interest unquote. And that newspaper piece was published on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. And sam Alito might be able to get away with a lot of denials in his life, but not one person is ever going to believe him when he says, I don't read the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Meanwhile, Dementia J. Trump is at it again, his stalking horse running against Biden, the famous and crazy political fortunate sun guy. He and the other Republicans and the Libertarians are propping up as a challenger to try to sew chaos in the Democratic primaries. You know the name of the man I'm talking about, right, Robert F. Kennedy Junior. Right, No, sorry, you got the name wrong.

Owen. Besides the sense that Alito's move let's blow up pro Publica before they publish, suggests this is about way more than one free ride on what the spare tire in the back of the plane, and apart from the Wall Street Journal's willingness to print this from Alito, and as noted, apparently not even proof read it, And apart from the reinforcement of the theory that Alito leaks to the journal that's why he sent them this rather than say, sending it to oh, pro Publica in a what do you call those things? Email? And apart from the fact that the former FBI executive Pete Struck wrote last night, wait an Alito free private luxury jet trip to Alaska with Paul Singer, the same Paul Singer who initially funded Fusion GPS's OPO work on Donald Trump World, Sure is funny unquote. Besides all that, there's also another irony in here. The case that Pro Publica will presumably identify as dirty was a suit involving NML Capital and others against the government of Argentina. In two thousand and one. Argentina defaulted on ninety five billion dollars worth in bonds and offered creditors thirty three cents on the dollar. NML Capital refused and sued, and up it went to the Supreme Court, and nine years ago this month, Scotis voted seven to one in favor of NML Capital and the others. And guess what that dissent, the one that wasn't Alito and there's a newspaper column which shows Paul Singer's involvement in the case before the court, and it's not exactly subtle. The case included quote a subsidiary of Paul Singer's Elliott Management called NML Capitol, which is owed some two point five billion in principle and back interest unquote. And that newspaper piece was published on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. And sam Alito might be able to get away with a lot of denials in his life, but not one person is ever going to believe him when he says, I don't read the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Meanwhile, Dementia J. Trump is at it again, his stalking horse running against Biden, the famous and crazy political fortunate sun guy. He and the other Republicans and the Libertarians are propping up as a challenger to try to sew chaos in the Democratic primaries. You know the name of the man I'm talking about, right, Robert F. Kennedy Junior. Right, No, sorry, you got the name wrong.

And Biden he's got somebody at twenty one percent. I just saw a number twenty one percent, jfk Junior, who's a very nice person. I know him very well. He's a very very fine person. He's a twenty one percent.

And Biden he's got somebody at twenty one percent. I just saw a number twenty one percent, jfk Junior, who's a very nice person. I know him very well. He's a very very fine person. He's a twenty one percent.

That from the second half of his interview with Brett Behar on Fox News Channel. And I have to admit Brett Behar made me happy. JFK. Junior says dementia. J Trump bear more in exhaustion than an anger, says Robert. Robert Trump never even notices it. He thinks that's JFK. Junior. As to the rest of the Trump interview, in a surprising development, Trump did not confess again to any or all of the thirty seven counts in the document's case, so we'll just have to stick with all of his confessions from part one on Monday night. In another surprise, there is that rarest of political news stories now new polling that is both insightful and newsworthy. The NBC poll shows fifty nine percent of Americans think Trump should end his campaign now, and eleven percent more say he should if convicted. A majority approves of the indictments. Those seventy one percent say politics played a role in the decision to charge him. But what does the word politics mean here? If I think he should never hold political office again? Is that politics? If I think our system of politics and government will only be preserved if he is in jail. Is that politics? Is it? For the average respondent to this NBC poll? What does politics mean? What isn't politics? Anyway? There is news in the poll. The percentage of Republicans who think he should end his campaign now is twenty six percent, and that is still on the margins, but keep it filed somewhere. It's a quarter of Republicans who think he should drop out today because also the Republican's first choice for their nominee is still Trump, but it's now forty seven percent. A month ago it was fifty three percent. And the biggest growth among the other candidates is impossibly enough Pence. Pence has gone from six percent to nine percent. But the real inside statistic. One month ago, before the indictments, Trump was viewed favorably by seventy seven percent of Republican voters. Now sixty seven percent of Republican voters. A ten point drop in anything is a trend worth keeping an eye on. Watch that one the next time they ask after the next round of indictments. By the way, if you heard that the trial of the United States of America versus dementia Jay Trump has been slated to commence by the Trump appointed judge Eileen Cannon on August fourteenth. Relax, don't make your reservations. Not one person who has ever been in the same room as a law textbook thinks it'll actually start that day. Canon is notorious for choosing the earliest date possible and then letting the delays start knocking it back from there. Besides which, we also have to wait for Alito's next op ed in the Journal denying that he knows Trump. By the way, I also have a message for conservatives who are angry about Hunter Biden's plea deal and Trump's indictment and Trump's other indictment and Trump's upcoming indictment and Trump's later indictments. The message for conservatives is this, we don't care the rest of us. We don't care anymore what you think you believe. Laws do not apply to you, and especially not to dementia. J Trump and you bemoan weaponized government when the only thing you really object to it about it is you believe you do not own the weapon permanently. Think what you like. You're wrong. We never should have indulged you nor are good with you. We're gonna stop that now. We don't care anymore. The country is not biased against you. Just because you're paranoid, that does not mean they are out to get you. The hunter Biden prosecutor was appointed by Trump. This FBI director was appointed by Trump, and the only political pressure applied to the Trump documents investigation was on his behalf. The Biden administration gave him a full year to give it all back, and then gave him more time after that, and even now it would probably take a plea deal with him. And oh, by the way, Trump is incredibly guilty. He's treason us and traitorous enough to merit capital punishment, which he will not get. Because we are squeamish. And if you don't believe all that reality, we don't care. We don't care anymore. Believe what you want, you believe what you want anyway. This is where reality leaves you behind, and the argument ends, we don't care. There are still millions of rational Americans, and by that I mean people who are not conservative, who still in their hearts think that they might be able to convert Grandpa or talk their old friend back off. The QAnon ledge forget them. It has not worked, it will not work. Stop wasting your time. I don't know what we do about them now, but essentially they are dead, and I might add for many of them, the fuel to their insane conservative fire is our efforts to fix them. I will not fix them. You will not fix them. They will make it back to reality, or they won't. You should save your energy for the effort to rehabilitate them if they actually do seek help. Otherwise, our focus can only be this, defeat them, kicking their cult leaders out of office, stripping their attorneys of their law degrees, marginalizing them in culture and entertainment and business. They think they are marginalized anyway, Why shouldn't we gain the advantages that would come with that, and with the blame which they already heap upon us. The Hunter Biden plea deal matters because in some senses it draws a perfect picture of the destabilized terrain upon which conservatism is built. Here is a Nepo baby. Well, Nepo babies, that's the point of conservatism. He's got hookers and blow the breakfast of conservatism. He's a gun owner, the real addiction of conservatism. He's got his inalienable Second Amendment rights, the litmus test of conservatism, and he was prosecuted by a weaponized Department of Justice, the stigmata of conservatism. And they've had to treat him their brother like an enemy. Hookers in blow and the Second Amendment walking over this bed of hot coals has shaken the conservative movement. There are only so many rationalizations. Well, he had the wrong kind of hookers, and about the guns. He didn't shoot anybody. And the guy at Justice who got him to plead to an ownership while drug abusing charge that they never prosecute. That guy was appointed by Trump hunter Biden has deranged them well. Also of interest here well well, Embers from the Elon Musk Joe Rogan, Peter Hotez debate thing with the JFK RFK senior junior whoever jf r K, I'll take it from Laguardi instead, whoever it is. Embers from that flared up again yesterday and Meghan Kelly involved long enough to make worse persons, and not because they threw water on her and then she said she was melting. In fact, she said that's next. This is kind of this is countdown with Keith Alboman postscripts to the news. Some headlines, some updates, some stark, some prediction s date line New York Times headquarters here in bigtown. Do you see what happens? Do you see what happens? Larry? Do you see what happens? When you don't know? You're the butt of a long running internet joke. No, not Larry David. For years, people have made fun of The New York Times for its op ed pages, particularly when those pages try to force culture into a political box or politics into a cultural box, or sometimes both at the same time. One running gag, advanced brilliantly by the Twitter account New York Times pitch Bot, is the painful Maureen Dowd column in which a movie or musical plot is twisted to fit her thesis. The most recent quote job Dick Orcas are attacking pea quads all over the world, but the only great whale Biden is hunting is orange by Maureen Dowd. No, she didn't really write that. Another theme is the in This Ohio Diner Times formula and the frequently seen column titled how X Explains America. You can put anything you want to into the X movie book. TV series. Yesterday, The New York Times either leaned into the gag, or much more likely, stumbled into it without knowing. It devoted nearly all of its op ed section to a series of how X explains America, How Ted Lasso explains America, How Her explains America, How a Hazard of New Fortunes explains America. How Ragged Dick explains America, How The Great Gatsby explained America, How South Park explains America. How Rappers Delight explains America. There were seventeen of them in all, presented in full seriousness. Only one was missing. How Bad New York Times Editing explains America. Even more harrowing, Yesterday's New York Times opinion section featured very possibly the most irrelevant trivial thing ever printed in The New York Times. A guest op ed was titled what America could learn from Skip and Shannon Undisputed. Skip and Shannon Undisputed. For those few of you who don't know what it is, is a television show kind of It is a cable sports debate program ripped off from an ESPN cable sports debate program for which Fox Sports literally hired away from an ESPN Sports debate program a host called Skip Bayless. All such programs are the same, with the exception of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, which is the only one of all of them, and there are seventeen million on the air right now, designed to be as succinct as possible half an hour in total, about a minute maybe ninety seconds per topic tops. All the others are there for only one reason, to kill as much TV or radio time as possible. The heroes of this profession, the well paid ones, are those who can say one thing and take twenty seven minutes to do it, and then say it again and kill off another twenty seven minutes, or, to put it in their terms, to kill off twenty seven minutes of time, and then to kill off time in the total of twenty seven minutes. A hint of racism underneath the conversation usually helps, to say nothing of a strict avoidance of anything more complicated than who is undoubtedly the greatest player of all time? This week. Fox hired Away Bayless from ESPN in twenty sixteen, and six and a half years later, the Bayles Show on Fox averages two hundred thousand viewers a day at this rate of growth. It debuted with one hundred and seven thousand viewers, so let's say it's adding one hundred thousand every six and a half years. That means it will reach a million viewers a show sometime in the year twenty seventy five, or it would have if Bayless's co host, Shannon Sharp had not announced he's leaving. Anyway, I read this New York Times op ed written by an editor of a Catholic literary journal, twice, and I'm still not sure what America could learn from Skip and Shannon undisputed, other than that that which may surprise some of the millions who used to watch this Bayliss on ESPN, which is that he did not retire or die in twenty sixteen. He merely went to Fox. The piece seems to suffer from something I have never seen before, the contention that sports debate on TV and radio is well done, or is somehow necessary, or would somehow be missed if it all disappeared tomorrow, or shows us how different people can talk to each other productively or something without I guess, stabbing each other, or that people watch and like Skip Bayless, or know what the name of Fox's cable sports network is I used to work for Fox's cable sports network. I was the senior correspondent for Fox's cable Sports network. And I don't even know what the name of it is. But now it's in the New York Times. It belongs to the Ages. It's all the news that fits. I am expecting The New York Times will soon offer me an op ed titled how what America could learn from Skipp and Shannon Undisputed Explains America by Maureen Dowd. Still ahead. Oh boy, he got me talking about Citizen Kane, the Great movie again, And so I had to tell the story of the day I met one of its stars and did not know I had met him until after he left. Not good, Keith, Not good. Next in things I promised not to tell. First the daily round up of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world Brons. The twenty twenty four Paris Olympic Organizing Committee, its headquarters in San Denis, outside Paris, and the French public body in charge of building projects for next summer's Olympics both got little visits yesterday raided by the French department in charge of investigating financial crimes. The president of the French Olympic Organizing Committee had resigned last month. France's national rugby and soccer federation chiefs both resigned earlier this year. Remind me again why we have Olympics. The runner up, Liz Truss, does that name ring a bell, a distant bell? You know she was Prime Minister of Great Britain last year. Then again, who wasn't And when she took office there was just a little expectation that Liz Trust wasn't going to make it. London's newspaper, The Daily Mail, started a live stream of ahead of Lettuce to see which would last longer. The Lettus or Liz Trusts forty four days letter. Having crashed the British economy and lost the support of her own party, Liz Trust was forced out. The Lettuce won, but no hard feelings. Asked by the Irish network RTE what she thought of the live, local and late breaking Lettuce, Liz Trust has now replied. She snapped at the question, then said quote, I don't think it was particularly funny. I think it's quare Isle Liz. Yeah, but think about how the lettuce feels. But our winner, Megan Kelly, the fired Fox and NBC starlett who now keeps the world's camera filter manufacturers in business, largely because I don't want to have to go through all this again. I'm going to assume you know the entire Joe Rogan RFK junior doctor Peter Hotes debate nonsense. Any who Hotes has now tweeted that he's hoping to stay on Twitter and other social media, but it's stranger than ever, especially for scientists like him. Kelly thereupon chimed in with a two word message for doctor Hotes quote grow up, unquote grow up. Megan Kelly is the shrillest, whiniest, most self absorbed, most self martyring, loudest crying complainer on Twitter. She is a veritable overflowing toilet of umbrage and unrighteous indignation. And she is telling somebody else, somebody who actually contributes something to society, to grow up. Megan. What is her appeal again, Kelly Today's worst parson and the world. Now to the number one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell and I swear I thought, I heard her say, Carleton, this was also December in nineteen eighty five in Los Angeles, and if you've never spent Christmas in a warm metropolitan area for the first time in your life, you do not know what disorientation really is. I had just completed three months in my new job as the sports director of Channel five in LA. I had spent most of November adjusting not only to it not getting cold, but to the fact that almost nobody else noticed that it was not getting cold, except one of our production assistants, who sprinted through the parking lot and up the stairs into the little bungalow on the KTLA lot in Hollywood that housed our sports department. He shivered like a dog, shaking himself awake, and announced, my god, it's bitter out there. Bitter. I checked. It was forty nine degrees. So December nineteen eighty five was already weird enough. I was doing well in LA Being three thousand miles away from everyone and everything I knew had been surprisingly helpful, and there was no ramp up time for my work. I'd already won a couple of Best Sportscaster awards, and then the top All News radio station was asking me to come over every afternoon and split the afternoon drive sportscasting shift with a guy who'd been on the air there literally for thirty years, who's one of the voices in the background and The Godfather Part two? And now somehow my producer, Ron Grelnick, and I were headed to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel to go interview Mickey Mantle. For the average LA sportscaster, there really wasn't much reason to interview Mickey Mantle, which is why all of them at the bigger three network stations had turned down the offer of a sit down interview. But I was a New Yorker and had been three months earlier, and thus Mickey Mantle was my idol. And moreover, when I became a baseball fan in nineteen sixty seven, my folks bought tickets specifically behind first base at Yankee Stadium because they had just moved Mantle there from the outfield. And as my dad said, when you are an old man, you will say the greatest thing you ever saw in baseball was Mickey Mantle, so you might as well see as much of him as you can. Well, I'm an old man now, and my dad was exactly right. Mantle was on a tour publicizing some kind of hitting video and he would do one exclusive interview with an LA station at like exactly five pm on that night in December nineteen eighty five. And to get it you had to agree to give the video exactly one plug and ask him one question about it. But otherwise you could ask whatever you wanted. He had fifteen minutes then he was going out to dinner. Yeah, yeah, that was it dinner. So Ron and I pulled up to the Beverly Wilshire in his car, and I had never been in, but I had walked past it a dozen times, and I knew there was a new wing and an old wing. And as Ron tried to park, I tried to find the room where Mantle would be waiting for us, so I could be there to meet the camera crew that was joining us from some other shoot somewhere. And also because he was Mickey Mantle. I had met him before. I had even interviewed him briefly for CNN, but nothing like this, nothing like a sit down interview, just me and him. The room number was something like eight ninety seven, could have been five ninety seven. Could have been twelve ninety seven, but it was basically the highest number there could be on a given hotel floor. And I saw the elevator just pass the registration desk and up. I went to the eighth floor, and it was a deserted labyrinth, turn after turn and nobody there. And then suddenly I turned a corner, and walking towards me was the most elegantly dressed older couple I had ever seen to that or since she was wearing a mink stole atop a beautiful gown, and she had a diamond necklace big enough to induce cramps. She had a piercing, glistening set of deep brown eyes. She looked to be in her mid to late fifties, but might have been older. He was older, maybe eighty, but with a full head of thick and wiry hair. He was tall, thin, extraordinarily elegant in a perfect tuxedo. But all of this was overwhelmed, almost erased, by one fact that startles me still thirty seven years later. This man was wearing a cape. I'm pretty confident that I had never seen a man wearing a cape before. I know I have not seen one since I have been looking, and yet it looked so good on him that I can recall briefly thinking, Keith, maybe you should by a cape. This couple was perfect. We seem to be the only people on the floor. The hallway wasn't all that wide. I said, good evening as I passed. She said good evening, and in so doing revealed a British accent, and he mumbled at evening and revealed what sounded like the lingering minor aftermaths of a minor stroke. They walked their way, I walked mine, and my focus returned to finding Mickey Mantle in room eight ninety seven. The numbers of the rooms I was passing were like eight eleven and eight fourteen, And after a few more turns of the labyrinth that dawned on me that I must be in the old wing of the Beverly Wilshire, and the high numbers like eight ninety seven must have been in the new Wing of the Beverly Wilshire. I also noticed that I had not passed a doorway or a vestibule or some kind of connecting bridge to the new wing, so I had better make it back to the elevator and the lobby before Ron or the camera crew made the same mistake I had. Because Mickey Mantle was waiting, I reversed course. I began to trot. After three or four more of these labyrinthine turns, I found, to my shock that the perfectly elegant older couple he was wearing a cape, was standing exactly where I had left them. She laughed. She mentioned something about the higher numbers being in the new wing and everybody made that mistake. I thanked her, and then she said, you're the young man who does the spots on the television, aren't you. And I had gotten pretty popular pretty fast there, but being recognized was still very surprising and pleasantly so. And I said that, and I introduced myself, So nice to meet you. She said, I'm Patricia Carlton. And this she pointed to the guy in the cape is my husband. He slowly extended a hand but shook mine vigorously, and I'm Joseph Carlton. Missus Carlton was very excited. You know, Joe and I we really are not fans of the sports, but whenever we were at home in Palm Springs, we make sure we stay up until the end of the ten o'clock news so we could walk you. Joe nodded and smiled in the cape. You know, so clearly enjoying yourself that we find ourselves enjoying it too. That's really quite remarkable. I was genuinely touched and remain so I explained my dilemma. I treated them as you are supposed to treat viewers, gratefully and solicitously, and I asked them if they were going to the lobby, and if I might walk with them so I didn't get any further lost. We'd be delighted. I must ask you, mister fishman, who does the news on your program? Is that his real hair? She saw my shock at the question. Joe and I have often worn wigs, and we can't be certain. That means if it is a wig, it's a good one. We reached the elevator bank and I pushed down. He was walking slowly. He must have had a stroke. Still, he was an imposing figure of a man, and not just because he was wearing a cape. As I steered them away from the subject of our anchorman's to pay and talked instead about my Mickey Mantle interview, I realized he looked extremely familiar like I knew him. Joseph Carleton kept rolling the name over in my mind, and Patricia Carlton, who are they? The elevator light went off and a very loud bell sounded. The doors opened, and there was my producer, Ron and the two man camera crew, and the reporter who had been with them on the previous story, Sam chu Lynn, who had stayed with him because he wanted to meet Mickey Mantle. And as I joked to my new friends Joe and Patricia Carlton, oh look, here's my camera crew. It's four members made no motion to even leave the elevator. They all looked dumb struck. Sam chu Lynn's eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head. I assumed this was because my new friend Joe was wearing a cape. Finally I got the crew to move. I held the door open so Joe and Patricia could get into the elevator. I actually said, such a pleasure to meet you, and of course, thank you so much for watching Channel five News at ten, and she smiled warmly, and he managed to quick wave and the doors closed. And only at that exact moment did it dawn on me where I knew him from the blood now drained from my face. As I turned to talk to the camera crew and Ron and Sam, Uh, you guys knew who those two people were, right, Sam laughed at me. Of course he did, didn't you? And I sighed, oh my god. She said her name was Patricia Carleton and that was her husband, Joseph Carleton. And she said it that way because she's British. And that's how if you're British you would say the name Cotton. She's Patricia Cotton and he's Joseph Cotton, who was in Citizen Kane. I remember actually put my hand on the law on my face in my other hand. I just met Joseph Cotton and I didn't recognize him. The cameraman, Martin Klancy, also often said things like this, said pretty stupid of you, huh? And I said, no, you have no idea how stupid. I mean, obviously I know who Joseph Cotton is. And Sam Chulin said, are you sure about that? I gave him a dirty look and I said, no, it's worse than this. In nineteen forty eight, the president of the International Joseph Cotton Fan Club was my mother. There is a picture of that man with my mother from like thirty seven years ago at the Stork Club. They all laughed. Then Sam Chulin said, in that photo, is he wearing that cape? My gaff did serve to relax me a little for the interview with Mantle. My gaff. When I get over it, i'll let you know. So anyway, we all reached room eight ninety seven or whatever it was in the new Wing the Beverly Wilshire, and as the crew set up, I managed to tell the story of the Cottons to Mickey Mantle and he said, yeah, I saw them in the lobby a couple hours ago. He's a great actor. I met him in New York, must be thirty years ago. Did you say hi? Oh right, you just told me you didn't recognize him. Mickey Mantle was busting my chops, as I said. I had met him before, even interviewed him before, but this was our first sit down and he was in a good mood, even expansive and playful, and at one point he stunned me. I said, I know you only have a couple of minutes left, so forgive me if I'm bringing up something that takes more than a couple of minutes, and he interrupted and he said, take as much time as you need. I'm enjoying us talking. So I asked him about this one subject, how he felt about what he did in his career considering how injured he was. When he retired. Mickey Mantle was third all time in homers. He hit three hundred ten times. He played in twelve World Series on one bad knee and one worse knee. Mantle got very reflective and self critical. We use this SoundBite at the end of his obituary that I would do for ESPN a decade later. If I'd known I was going to live so long, he told me, I would have taken better care of myself and done better. I said, well, he'd done pretty good. I could have done better. I thanked him. Then, as the cameraman moved to get the shots of me nodding and repeating a question or two, Mickey Mantle said that was really good. I flushed. I got to ask you something. Can you give me some pointers? I suddenly had no idea what the word pointers meant? Pointers? What are pointers? Mantle said he was going to do some Yankee games the next year on cable with Mel Allen I'm doing interviews after games. I'm no damn good at interviews. Just now, you were moving from topics to topics, so smooth, Hew, you keep all the questions in your head now, I laughed. I didn't keep them in my head. Didn't you see my cheat card? And he laughed and he said no, And I showed it to him. I said, it's just a business card with like seven keywords written on the back. If I think i might freeze up because I'm nervous because I'm interviewing Mickey Mantle, or I just met Joseph Cotton and I didn't recognize him, I make one of these cards. I hide it in the palm of my hand, and if I get stuck, I could just look down quickly and see one of the words, and I've got the question. I've got this card to remind me. Mickey Mantle's eyes glowed. But wait, he said, we're using these mics, and he pointed to the clip on on his shirt, so you don't have to hold mike. What do you do if you have to hold the mic like I'll have to in an interview after a ballgame. What if the card would fall out or you have to shake hands with the player, and I said, well, just write the words on your hand whichever hand is holding the mic, like below the thumb. Mickey Mantle looked at me as if I had just given him the secret of eternal life. Wow, he said, that's great, I'm going to write this down. Thanks, and we were packed up, and he actually walked me to the hotel room door and gave me a double handed handshake. So it had been a big day, even if I didn't realize it was Joseph Cotton. Mickey Mantle had asked me for advice about anything. Somehow I had thought of something to tell him, and he was really happy about the advice, and of course this provided a punchline. The following spring, we were in the studios at KTLA, watching on the satellite feed as the Yankees first cable telecast of the nineteen eighty six season ended, and sure enough they threw it down to Mickey Mantle on the field interviewing some player, and one of my producers said, oh, let's see if he remembers the lesson you gave him, and another one said, here's your student, Mickey Mantle, And sure enough, after the first answer, Mickey Mantle pauses, and I know he can't remember what he wanted to ask next, And sure enough I see him cheat his look down slightly towards the hand holding the microphone, and the next thing I see he's kind of tilted the microphone sideways and he's asking the question. But you can barely hear him because the mic is pointing off at a forty five degree angle, because he has written his key reminder words not below the thumb on the outside part of his hand, but on the palm side of his hand, and he's had to move the mic out of the way to read the words on the palm of his hand. And the producer says, ha ha, Well, now Mickey Mantle hates you. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel The Countdown musical directors guitars Mason, drums by Brian Ray, All, orchestration in keyboard words by John Phillip Schaneil, and it was produced by TKO Brothers, John, Brian and Me. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis, appearing courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Larry David, and everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight hundred and ninety seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

That from the second half of his interview with Brett Behar on Fox News Channel. And I have to admit Brett Behar made me happy. JFK. Junior says dementia. J Trump bear more in exhaustion than an anger, says Robert. Robert Trump never even notices it. He thinks that's JFK. Junior. As to the rest of the Trump interview, in a surprising development, Trump did not confess again to any or all of the thirty seven counts in the document's case, so we'll just have to stick with all of his confessions from part one on Monday night. In another surprise, there is that rarest of political news stories now new polling that is both insightful and newsworthy. The NBC poll shows fifty nine percent of Americans think Trump should end his campaign now, and eleven percent more say he should if convicted. A majority approves of the indictments. Those seventy one percent say politics played a role in the decision to charge him. But what does the word politics mean here? If I think he should never hold political office again? Is that politics? If I think our system of politics and government will only be preserved if he is in jail. Is that politics? Is it? For the average respondent to this NBC poll? What does politics mean? What isn't politics? Anyway? There is news in the poll. The percentage of Republicans who think he should end his campaign now is twenty six percent, and that is still on the margins, but keep it filed somewhere. It's a quarter of Republicans who think he should drop out today because also the Republican's first choice for their nominee is still Trump, but it's now forty seven percent. A month ago it was fifty three percent. And the biggest growth among the other candidates is impossibly enough Pence. Pence has gone from six percent to nine percent. But the real inside statistic. One month ago, before the indictments, Trump was viewed favorably by seventy seven percent of Republican voters. Now sixty seven percent of Republican voters. A ten point drop in anything is a trend worth keeping an eye on. Watch that one the next time they ask after the next round of indictments. By the way, if you heard that the trial of the United States of America versus dementia Jay Trump has been slated to commence by the Trump appointed judge Eileen Cannon on August fourteenth. Relax, don't make your reservations. Not one person who has ever been in the same room as a law textbook thinks it'll actually start that day. Canon is notorious for choosing the earliest date possible and then letting the delays start knocking it back from there. Besides which, we also have to wait for Alito's next op ed in the Journal denying that he knows Trump. By the way, I also have a message for conservatives who are angry about Hunter Biden's plea deal and Trump's indictment and Trump's other indictment and Trump's upcoming indictment and Trump's later indictments. The message for conservatives is this, we don't care the rest of us. We don't care anymore what you think you believe. Laws do not apply to you, and especially not to dementia. J Trump and you bemoan weaponized government when the only thing you really object to it about it is you believe you do not own the weapon permanently. Think what you like. You're wrong. We never should have indulged you nor are good with you. We're gonna stop that now. We don't care anymore. The country is not biased against you. Just because you're paranoid, that does not mean they are out to get you. The hunter Biden prosecutor was appointed by Trump. This FBI director was appointed by Trump, and the only political pressure applied to the Trump documents investigation was on his behalf. The Biden administration gave him a full year to give it all back, and then gave him more time after that, and even now it would probably take a plea deal with him. And oh, by the way, Trump is incredibly guilty. He's treason us and traitorous enough to merit capital punishment, which he will not get. Because we are squeamish. And if you don't believe all that reality, we don't care. We don't care anymore. Believe what you want, you believe what you want anyway. This is where reality leaves you behind, and the argument ends, we don't care. There are still millions of rational Americans, and by that I mean people who are not conservative, who still in their hearts think that they might be able to convert Grandpa or talk their old friend back off. The QAnon ledge forget them. It has not worked, it will not work. Stop wasting your time. I don't know what we do about them now, but essentially they are dead, and I might add for many of them, the fuel to their insane conservative fire is our efforts to fix them. I will not fix them. You will not fix them. They will make it back to reality, or they won't. You should save your energy for the effort to rehabilitate them if they actually do seek help. Otherwise, our focus can only be this, defeat them, kicking their cult leaders out of office, stripping their attorneys of their law degrees, marginalizing them in culture and entertainment and business. They think they are marginalized anyway, Why shouldn't we gain the advantages that would come with that, and with the blame which they already heap upon us. The Hunter Biden plea deal matters because in some senses it draws a perfect picture of the destabilized terrain upon which conservatism is built. Here is a Nepo baby. Well, Nepo babies, that's the point of conservatism. He's got hookers and blow the breakfast of conservatism. He's a gun owner, the real addiction of conservatism. He's got his inalienable Second Amendment rights, the litmus test of conservatism, and he was prosecuted by a weaponized Department of Justice, the stigmata of conservatism. And they've had to treat him their brother like an enemy. Hookers in blow and the Second Amendment walking over this bed of hot coals has shaken the conservative movement. There are only so many rationalizations. Well, he had the wrong kind of hookers, and about the guns. He didn't shoot anybody. And the guy at Justice who got him to plead to an ownership while drug abusing charge that they never prosecute. That guy was appointed by Trump hunter Biden has deranged them well. Also of interest here well well, Embers from the Elon Musk Joe Rogan, Peter Hotez debate thing with the JFK RFK senior junior whoever jf r K, I'll take it from Laguardi instead, whoever it is. Embers from that flared up again yesterday and Meghan Kelly involved long enough to make worse persons, and not because they threw water on her and then she said she was melting. In fact, she said that's next. This is kind of this is countdown with Keith Alboman postscripts to the news. Some headlines, some updates, some stark, some prediction s date line New York Times headquarters here in bigtown. Do you see what happens? Do you see what happens? Larry? Do you see what happens? When you don't know? You're the butt of a long running internet joke. No, not Larry David. For years, people have made fun of The New York Times for its op ed pages, particularly when those pages try to force culture into a political box or politics into a cultural box, or sometimes both at the same time. One running gag, advanced brilliantly by the Twitter account New York Times pitch Bot, is the painful Maureen Dowd column in which a movie or musical plot is twisted to fit her thesis. The most recent quote job Dick Orcas are attacking pea quads all over the world, but the only great whale Biden is hunting is orange by Maureen Dowd. No, she didn't really write that. Another theme is the in This Ohio Diner Times formula and the frequently seen column titled how X Explains America. You can put anything you want to into the X movie book. TV series. Yesterday, The New York Times either leaned into the gag, or much more likely, stumbled into it without knowing. It devoted nearly all of its op ed section to a series of how X explains America, How Ted Lasso explains America, How Her explains America, How a Hazard of New Fortunes explains America. How Ragged Dick explains America, How The Great Gatsby explained America, How South Park explains America. How Rappers Delight explains America. There were seventeen of them in all, presented in full seriousness. Only one was missing. How Bad New York Times Editing explains America. Even more harrowing, Yesterday's New York Times opinion section featured very possibly the most irrelevant trivial thing ever printed in The New York Times. A guest op ed was titled what America could learn from Skip and Shannon Undisputed. Skip and Shannon Undisputed. For those few of you who don't know what it is, is a television show kind of It is a cable sports debate program ripped off from an ESPN cable sports debate program for which Fox Sports literally hired away from an ESPN Sports debate program a host called Skip Bayless. All such programs are the same, with the exception of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, which is the only one of all of them, and there are seventeen million on the air right now, designed to be as succinct as possible half an hour in total, about a minute maybe ninety seconds per topic tops. All the others are there for only one reason, to kill as much TV or radio time as possible. The heroes of this profession, the well paid ones, are those who can say one thing and take twenty seven minutes to do it, and then say it again and kill off another twenty seven minutes, or, to put it in their terms, to kill off twenty seven minutes of time, and then to kill off time in the total of twenty seven minutes. A hint of racism underneath the conversation usually helps, to say nothing of a strict avoidance of anything more complicated than who is undoubtedly the greatest player of all time? This week. Fox hired Away Bayless from ESPN in twenty sixteen, and six and a half years later, the Bayles Show on Fox averages two hundred thousand viewers a day at this rate of growth. It debuted with one hundred and seven thousand viewers, so let's say it's adding one hundred thousand every six and a half years. That means it will reach a million viewers a show sometime in the year twenty seventy five, or it would have if Bayless's co host, Shannon Sharp had not announced he's leaving. Anyway, I read this New York Times op ed written by an editor of a Catholic literary journal, twice, and I'm still not sure what America could learn from Skip and Shannon undisputed, other than that that which may surprise some of the millions who used to watch this Bayliss on ESPN, which is that he did not retire or die in twenty sixteen. He merely went to Fox. The piece seems to suffer from something I have never seen before, the contention that sports debate on TV and radio is well done, or is somehow necessary, or would somehow be missed if it all disappeared tomorrow, or shows us how different people can talk to each other productively or something without I guess, stabbing each other, or that people watch and like Skip Bayless, or know what the name of Fox's cable sports network is I used to work for Fox's cable sports network. I was the senior correspondent for Fox's cable Sports network. And I don't even know what the name of it is. But now it's in the New York Times. It belongs to the Ages. It's all the news that fits. I am expecting The New York Times will soon offer me an op ed titled how what America could learn from Skipp and Shannon Undisputed Explains America by Maureen Dowd. Still ahead. Oh boy, he got me talking about Citizen Kane, the Great movie again, And so I had to tell the story of the day I met one of its stars and did not know I had met him until after he left. Not good, Keith, Not good. Next in things I promised not to tell. First the daily round up of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world Brons. The twenty twenty four Paris Olympic Organizing Committee, its headquarters in San Denis, outside Paris, and the French public body in charge of building projects for next summer's Olympics both got little visits yesterday raided by the French department in charge of investigating financial crimes. The president of the French Olympic Organizing Committee had resigned last month. France's national rugby and soccer federation chiefs both resigned earlier this year. Remind me again why we have Olympics. The runner up, Liz Truss, does that name ring a bell, a distant bell? You know she was Prime Minister of Great Britain last year. Then again, who wasn't And when she took office there was just a little expectation that Liz Trust wasn't going to make it. London's newspaper, The Daily Mail, started a live stream of ahead of Lettuce to see which would last longer. The Lettus or Liz Trusts forty four days letter. Having crashed the British economy and lost the support of her own party, Liz Trust was forced out. The Lettuce won, but no hard feelings. Asked by the Irish network RTE what she thought of the live, local and late breaking Lettuce, Liz Trust has now replied. She snapped at the question, then said quote, I don't think it was particularly funny. I think it's quare Isle Liz. Yeah, but think about how the lettuce feels. But our winner, Megan Kelly, the fired Fox and NBC starlett who now keeps the world's camera filter manufacturers in business, largely because I don't want to have to go through all this again. I'm going to assume you know the entire Joe Rogan RFK junior doctor Peter Hotes debate nonsense. Any who Hotes has now tweeted that he's hoping to stay on Twitter and other social media, but it's stranger than ever, especially for scientists like him. Kelly thereupon chimed in with a two word message for doctor Hotes quote grow up, unquote grow up. Megan Kelly is the shrillest, whiniest, most self absorbed, most self martyring, loudest crying complainer on Twitter. She is a veritable overflowing toilet of umbrage and unrighteous indignation. And she is telling somebody else, somebody who actually contributes something to society, to grow up. Megan. What is her appeal again, Kelly Today's worst parson and the world. Now to the number one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell and I swear I thought, I heard her say, Carleton, this was also December in nineteen eighty five in Los Angeles, and if you've never spent Christmas in a warm metropolitan area for the first time in your life, you do not know what disorientation really is. I had just completed three months in my new job as the sports director of Channel five in LA. I had spent most of November adjusting not only to it not getting cold, but to the fact that almost nobody else noticed that it was not getting cold, except one of our production assistants, who sprinted through the parking lot and up the stairs into the little bungalow on the KTLA lot in Hollywood that housed our sports department. He shivered like a dog, shaking himself awake, and announced, my god, it's bitter out there. Bitter. I checked. It was forty nine degrees. So December nineteen eighty five was already weird enough. I was doing well in LA Being three thousand miles away from everyone and everything I knew had been surprisingly helpful, and there was no ramp up time for my work. I'd already won a couple of Best Sportscaster awards, and then the top All News radio station was asking me to come over every afternoon and split the afternoon drive sportscasting shift with a guy who'd been on the air there literally for thirty years, who's one of the voices in the background and The Godfather Part two? And now somehow my producer, Ron Grelnick, and I were headed to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel to go interview Mickey Mantle. For the average LA sportscaster, there really wasn't much reason to interview Mickey Mantle, which is why all of them at the bigger three network stations had turned down the offer of a sit down interview. But I was a New Yorker and had been three months earlier, and thus Mickey Mantle was my idol. And moreover, when I became a baseball fan in nineteen sixty seven, my folks bought tickets specifically behind first base at Yankee Stadium because they had just moved Mantle there from the outfield. And as my dad said, when you are an old man, you will say the greatest thing you ever saw in baseball was Mickey Mantle, so you might as well see as much of him as you can. Well, I'm an old man now, and my dad was exactly right. Mantle was on a tour publicizing some kind of hitting video and he would do one exclusive interview with an LA station at like exactly five pm on that night in December nineteen eighty five. And to get it you had to agree to give the video exactly one plug and ask him one question about it. But otherwise you could ask whatever you wanted. He had fifteen minutes then he was going out to dinner. Yeah, yeah, that was it dinner. So Ron and I pulled up to the Beverly Wilshire in his car, and I had never been in, but I had walked past it a dozen times, and I knew there was a new wing and an old wing. And as Ron tried to park, I tried to find the room where Mantle would be waiting for us, so I could be there to meet the camera crew that was joining us from some other shoot somewhere. And also because he was Mickey Mantle. I had met him before. I had even interviewed him briefly for CNN, but nothing like this, nothing like a sit down interview, just me and him. The room number was something like eight ninety seven, could have been five ninety seven. Could have been twelve ninety seven, but it was basically the highest number there could be on a given hotel floor. And I saw the elevator just pass the registration desk and up. I went to the eighth floor, and it was a deserted labyrinth, turn after turn and nobody there. And then suddenly I turned a corner, and walking towards me was the most elegantly dressed older couple I had ever seen to that or since she was wearing a mink stole atop a beautiful gown, and she had a diamond necklace big enough to induce cramps. She had a piercing, glistening set of deep brown eyes. She looked to be in her mid to late fifties, but might have been older. He was older, maybe eighty, but with a full head of thick and wiry hair. He was tall, thin, extraordinarily elegant in a perfect tuxedo. But all of this was overwhelmed, almost erased, by one fact that startles me still thirty seven years later. This man was wearing a cape. I'm pretty confident that I had never seen a man wearing a cape before. I know I have not seen one since I have been looking, and yet it looked so good on him that I can recall briefly thinking, Keith, maybe you should by a cape. This couple was perfect. We seem to be the only people on the floor. The hallway wasn't all that wide. I said, good evening as I passed. She said good evening, and in so doing revealed a British accent, and he mumbled at evening and revealed what sounded like the lingering minor aftermaths of a minor stroke. They walked their way, I walked mine, and my focus returned to finding Mickey Mantle in room eight ninety seven. The numbers of the rooms I was passing were like eight eleven and eight fourteen, And after a few more turns of the labyrinth that dawned on me that I must be in the old wing of the Beverly Wilshire, and the high numbers like eight ninety seven must have been in the new Wing of the Beverly Wilshire. I also noticed that I had not passed a doorway or a vestibule or some kind of connecting bridge to the new wing, so I had better make it back to the elevator and the lobby before Ron or the camera crew made the same mistake I had. Because Mickey Mantle was waiting, I reversed course. I began to trot. After three or four more of these labyrinthine turns, I found, to my shock that the perfectly elegant older couple he was wearing a cape, was standing exactly where I had left them. She laughed. She mentioned something about the higher numbers being in the new wing and everybody made that mistake. I thanked her, and then she said, you're the young man who does the spots on the television, aren't you. And I had gotten pretty popular pretty fast there, but being recognized was still very surprising and pleasantly so. And I said that, and I introduced myself, So nice to meet you. She said, I'm Patricia Carlton. And this she pointed to the guy in the cape is my husband. He slowly extended a hand but shook mine vigorously, and I'm Joseph Carlton. Missus Carlton was very excited. You know, Joe and I we really are not fans of the sports, but whenever we were at home in Palm Springs, we make sure we stay up until the end of the ten o'clock news so we could walk you. Joe nodded and smiled in the cape. You know, so clearly enjoying yourself that we find ourselves enjoying it too. That's really quite remarkable. I was genuinely touched and remain so I explained my dilemma. I treated them as you are supposed to treat viewers, gratefully and solicitously, and I asked them if they were going to the lobby, and if I might walk with them so I didn't get any further lost. We'd be delighted. I must ask you, mister fishman, who does the news on your program? Is that his real hair? She saw my shock at the question. Joe and I have often worn wigs, and we can't be certain. That means if it is a wig, it's a good one. We reached the elevator bank and I pushed down. He was walking slowly. He must have had a stroke. Still, he was an imposing figure of a man, and not just because he was wearing a cape. As I steered them away from the subject of our anchorman's to pay and talked instead about my Mickey Mantle interview, I realized he looked extremely familiar like I knew him. Joseph Carleton kept rolling the name over in my mind, and Patricia Carlton, who are they? The elevator light went off and a very loud bell sounded. The doors opened, and there was my producer, Ron and the two man camera crew, and the reporter who had been with them on the previous story, Sam chu Lynn, who had stayed with him because he wanted to meet Mickey Mantle. And as I joked to my new friends Joe and Patricia Carlton, oh look, here's my camera crew. It's four members made no motion to even leave the elevator. They all looked dumb struck. Sam chu Lynn's eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head. I assumed this was because my new friend Joe was wearing a cape. Finally I got the crew to move. I held the door open so Joe and Patricia could get into the elevator. I actually said, such a pleasure to meet you, and of course, thank you so much for watching Channel five News at ten, and she smiled warmly, and he managed to quick wave and the doors closed. And only at that exact moment did it dawn on me where I knew him from the blood now drained from my face. As I turned to talk to the camera crew and Ron and Sam, Uh, you guys knew who those two people were, right, Sam laughed at me. Of course he did, didn't you? And I sighed, oh my god. She said her name was Patricia Carleton and that was her husband, Joseph Carleton. And she said it that way because she's British. And that's how if you're British you would say the name Cotton. She's Patricia Cotton and he's Joseph Cotton, who was in Citizen Kane. I remember actually put my hand on the law on my face in my other hand. I just met Joseph Cotton and I didn't recognize him. The cameraman, Martin Klancy, also often said things like this, said pretty stupid of you, huh? And I said, no, you have no idea how stupid. I mean, obviously I know who Joseph Cotton is. And Sam Chulin said, are you sure about that? I gave him a dirty look and I said, no, it's worse than this. In nineteen forty eight, the president of the International Joseph Cotton Fan Club was my mother. There is a picture of that man with my mother from like thirty seven years ago at the Stork Club. They all laughed. Then Sam Chulin said, in that photo, is he wearing that cape? My gaff did serve to relax me a little for the interview with Mantle. My gaff. When I get over it, i'll let you know. So anyway, we all reached room eight ninety seven or whatever it was in the new Wing the Beverly Wilshire, and as the crew set up, I managed to tell the story of the Cottons to Mickey Mantle and he said, yeah, I saw them in the lobby a couple hours ago. He's a great actor. I met him in New York, must be thirty years ago. Did you say hi? Oh right, you just told me you didn't recognize him. Mickey Mantle was busting my chops, as I said. I had met him before, even interviewed him before, but this was our first sit down and he was in a good mood, even expansive and playful, and at one point he stunned me. I said, I know you only have a couple of minutes left, so forgive me if I'm bringing up something that takes more than a couple of minutes, and he interrupted and he said, take as much time as you need. I'm enjoying us talking. So I asked him about this one subject, how he felt about what he did in his career considering how injured he was. When he retired. Mickey Mantle was third all time in homers. He hit three hundred ten times. He played in twelve World Series on one bad knee and one worse knee. Mantle got very reflective and self critical. We use this SoundBite at the end of his obituary that I would do for ESPN a decade later. If I'd known I was going to live so long, he told me, I would have taken better care of myself and done better. I said, well, he'd done pretty good. I could have done better. I thanked him. Then, as the cameraman moved to get the shots of me nodding and repeating a question or two, Mickey Mantle said that was really good. I flushed. I got to ask you something. Can you give me some pointers? I suddenly had no idea what the word pointers meant? Pointers? What are pointers? Mantle said he was going to do some Yankee games the next year on cable with Mel Allen I'm doing interviews after games. I'm no damn good at interviews. Just now, you were moving from topics to topics, so smooth, Hew, you keep all the questions in your head now, I laughed. I didn't keep them in my head. Didn't you see my cheat card? And he laughed and he said no, And I showed it to him. I said, it's just a business card with like seven keywords written on the back. If I think i might freeze up because I'm nervous because I'm interviewing Mickey Mantle, or I just met Joseph Cotton and I didn't recognize him, I make one of these cards. I hide it in the palm of my hand, and if I get stuck, I could just look down quickly and see one of the words, and I've got the question. I've got this card to remind me. Mickey Mantle's eyes glowed. But wait, he said, we're using these mics, and he pointed to the clip on on his shirt, so you don't have to hold mike. What do you do if you have to hold the mic like I'll have to in an interview after a ballgame. What if the card would fall out or you have to shake hands with the player, and I said, well, just write the words on your hand whichever hand is holding the mic, like below the thumb. Mickey Mantle looked at me as if I had just given him the secret of eternal life. Wow, he said, that's great, I'm going to write this down. Thanks, and we were packed up, and he actually walked me to the hotel room door and gave me a double handed handshake. So it had been a big day, even if I didn't realize it was Joseph Cotton. Mickey Mantle had asked me for advice about anything. Somehow I had thought of something to tell him, and he was really happy about the advice, and of course this provided a punchline. The following spring, we were in the studios at KTLA, watching on the satellite feed as the Yankees first cable telecast of the nineteen eighty six season ended, and sure enough they threw it down to Mickey Mantle on the field interviewing some player, and one of my producers said, oh, let's see if he remembers the lesson you gave him, and another one said, here's your student, Mickey Mantle, And sure enough, after the first answer, Mickey Mantle pauses, and I know he can't remember what he wanted to ask next, And sure enough I see him cheat his look down slightly towards the hand holding the microphone, and the next thing I see he's kind of tilted the microphone sideways and he's asking the question. But you can barely hear him because the mic is pointing off at a forty five degree angle, because he has written his key reminder words not below the thumb on the outside part of his hand, but on the palm side of his hand, and he's had to move the mic out of the way to read the words on the palm of his hand. And the producer says, ha ha, Well, now Mickey Mantle hates you. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel The Countdown musical directors guitars Mason, drums by Brian Ray, All, orchestration in keyboard words by John Phillip Schaneil, and it was produced by TKO Brothers, John, Brian and Me. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis, appearing courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Larry David, and everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight hundred and ninety seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

Twenty percent JFK Junior, who's a very nice person. I know him very well.

Twenty percent JFK Junior, who's a very nice person. I know him very well.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.