Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? Remember when he said he'd be a dictator, but only on day one? It's day one. The best joke of the year. The great thing about moving Trump's inauguration to the rotunda, writes Biden Harris advanced man Doug Landry, is that all of his supporters already know how to get there. Can't top that capitulation. Nation CBS is discussing settling the most nonsensical lawsuit Trump has ever filed, because the settlement would actually be a wonderfully legal bribe. And Ramaswami, or as we called him, the schwam gone. Hey, what do you know? The Department of from an efficiency actually has cut some waste. Like you, I would have preferred to have skipped Trump altogether today. I would rather eulogize Yuke, my late friend Bob Buker, and I will at length at the end of this edition. Instead, as you are hearing this, it may have already happened. And thus I am speaking to you from the distant past, the good old days. Unless to take that Doug Landry joke to its natural step trump ists storm the Capitol again and coup again. He had to go inside because somebody told Trump about the thirty one days William Henry, it's just cold, Harrison. It says something that Trump would rather be viewed to somebody who cannot handle temperatures higher than Obama and a crowd of two million did in two thousand and nine. Then face the reality that nobody was going to show up for his goddamned speech. I mean, hotel rooms in downtown DC were already easily available thirty percent unbooked, compared to five percent for Trump eight years ago and two percent for Obama fifteen years ago. And that was before Grandpa Shardy found an excuse to downsize further. So you're saying your parade is going to be inside the hockey rink. It's just you driving around in circles in front of a small crowd. What a perfect metaphor, Thank you, moron. Well, what do we know about the coronation speech? The baseline is, of course, whatever he says, he's lying. The point of this speech, as we later figured out, was the point of the twenty seventeen speech, was to lie about how bad thing were in the country to pretend that a country moving along about b B plus grade was actually an f and falling, and then later after his nut job policies sent us plummeting down to CNUS or D plus, he could point at empirical data and claim the nation has grown to D plus, not descending from B plus. Trump told ABC on Saturday that the speech would be about unity, strength, and fairness. Unity obviously means everybody has to do what he says. Strength would be what he calls bullying and manipulation, and of course fairness is nobody's fair to him. He'll be seeming to talk to his base, is actually talking to himself. He'll be boastful and crazy because he has no shame and no awareness and is not actually a living human being. He will be almost dissociated because all that crap on the camp where he got crazier and crazier every week that hasn't stopped. If you look carefully, his eyes are no longer going in the same direction. He'll be increasingly belligerent because he thinks he got a landslide. He thinks he's in charge now, and somewhere in his going to say soul, he believes he will be in charge forever. He will claim afterwards it would have been the biggest crowd at any inauguration, That's why he moved it inside. He can't be disproved now when he claims that, And of course they will lie about the size of the TV audience by saying but streaming he got eight hundred and seventy five billion views on Twitter. As Most importantly, though, the Democratic response, which will be nothing as usual. We are inert trying to fight the last war, trying to gain power in the party rather than to unify and gain enough power to push back against Trump enough that every Republican move costs that him at minimum personal pain and shame. We can't prevent any of this, but we can leave a lot of black and blue marks. That has to be the goal, and we're not even doing that. No Democrat will say everything Trump just said today is a lie. None will say he lowered the bar to make himself look better when he fails. None will say he's a convicted felon. No Democrat is putting everything on the line. No Democrat will have the presence of mind to ignore protocol and offer a rebuttal, even though we have not yet had an inauguration rebuttal speech. Who the hell says we can't somebody get up on a box somewhere and tell the truth. Even Fetterman, our senator, with the acuity of a toy with googly eyes stuck on it, has been towing the line of tradition and quizzlinging. Most ominously, the mayor of New York will become our first full fledged VH democrat. I mean he's nominally a democrat. I guess he will trade the lives of immigrants and refugees here in exchange for a pardon. That's the scenario that is shaping up. Eric Adams needs to be removed immediately by any means that are even vaguely legal. He is a danger to the community in which I live. Sorry for focusing on that part. I will again quote Jean Renoir, the French filmmaker, and his masterpiece Rules of the Game. Rules of the Game, coming out in nineteen thirty nine, accurately forecast that the French were so self absorbed and corrupt that when the Nazis came, they would offer almost no resistance. Renoir, as the hero's buddy octav says something about the corruption and lack of morals, and lack of courage and just playing, lack of effort to stand up for what's right. He says that everybody has a self interest that's far more important to them than courage or self sacrifice or bravery or just taking a goddamn chance. And it is a quote that has come to symbolize the France that folded like a card table in one month to Hitler's onslaught and the VSH France full of more collaborators than the Germans believed possible. Octav says, you see, in this world, there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons. Everybody in the Democratic Party has his reasons. Everybody in the media, certainly those who own and run the media, has his reasons. And there's way more from the pathetic, useless, waste of oxygen billionaires who are so scared that they won't be able to make more money this year than they did last year, at which point I guess they have to face the realization that they have no long vives, no point in existing other than greed and no souls. Or, to put it more succinctly, Lauren's next implants ain't paying for themselves, are they? Jeff much more ahead on media capitulation by the Washington Post, the time, CNN, but new one on the list CBS. But first, I am I find surprisingly hopeful because these guys are fantastically incompetent. The trumpest restoration, they managed to overshadow this by spending the weekend having Mike Johnson erase the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee because he offended Trump, and then having Congresswoman Anna Paulina Lunatic file a motion to erase Mike Johnson because he won't let her vote from home the weekend before the restoration, and Johnson all but admitted he's not going to pardon all the January sixth psychopaths. And all that overshadowing the inauguration was after they leaked the big shock they had planned for this week. It's hard to remember so far back, but as of sunset on Friday, Trump had a secret plan to conduct surprise deportation raids in Chicago starting tomorrow, maybe even today. By eight thirty Friday night, that great oozing eraser headhaired Jesse Waters had announced the rais on Fox and it was in the Wall Street goddamned journal. Before midnight, police officials in Chicago had already gone on the record saying they would provide no immigration data to ICE and no help. And by Saturday morning it was obvious that delirious Trumpists couldn't keep their great big bazoos shut long enough to maintain the surprise that is necessary for a surprise deportation raid. That's why they call it a surprise. Do not misunderstand me. I am delighted they screwed it up, but I'm surprised they didn't wind up publishing the names of all the intended migrant targets. The leak was so total that yesterday the organizer of Trump's Final Solution, Tom Hoeman emphasis on the hoe, was admitting, they'll probably cancel these raids because, well, you can answer that the leaks were either terribly stupid screw up or they were deliberate, and this gives them an excuse to not run these impossibly expensive and inefficient roundups that will please the Trump rabble but infuriate every Trump friendly business in America and restart inflation. I'm still betting on boastful stupidity rather than a way to undo your big mistaken plans because, of course Trump always chooses idiots. Secretary of Homeland Security Christy confirmed my nomination, or I'll shoot this dog gnome FBI director Cash keep your eye on the prize. I'll try anyway. Patel entrepreneur is Vivek Ramaswami and Elon Musk in charge of government efficiency just Musk entrepreneur Ramaswami is already out because he's running for governor of Ohio. He's no longer at the Government Efficiency Department. Yeah, I know he's gonna need more than one lesson about maga racism. And he's gonna get more than one lesson about maga racism this Friday. By the way, on that one word, the Merriam Webster dictionary social media feeds reminded us that in French, the language from which it originates, entrepreneur originally meant funeral director. These guys are skilled in that, only skilled in purging each other and enforcing political dogma and selling lies to morons. I mean they managed to get rid of Ramaswami the day before he was supposed to start. They have repeatedly proven themselves utterly incapable of actually governing, utterly so has the Republican Party, especially when it's in the White House. It is a dirty little secret the far right would prefer you to forget. But as the Republicans have gotten more and more fascist, exactly one of them has been re elected president in the last forty years. That was George W. Bush. And he wouldn't have if Ohio had gone to carry And there were enough questions in Ohio about fake terror alert during the counting that should have been cleared up, but never were. These guys aren't actually good at anything. They weren't good at making America great again for four years, or he wouldn't be able to run on that, would he. They weren't good at anything. When COVID hit and it and the economic fallout destroyed Trump's campaign in twenty twenty, I mean, goddamn it. Trump couldn't even pull off a coup correctly. The other thing that happens at noon is the start of the MAGA race to succeed Trump. The lesson he will have taught them all is to ignore all the rules, erase all the loyalties, break all the laws, and kill anybody who gets in the way, especially if they're MAGA and trying to stop them from running MAGA, and there will be what a hundred of them who think he will not be still around to choose the next cult leader one way or the other, and so their targets will be for the next four years each other. The uniformity of the cult rank, very rank and file will also break starting at noon, as Elon Musk and Ramaswami found out, the real fervent psychotics hate immigrants, all immigrants, all minorities, all accents, but their own, anybody brown. The idea of Trump pushing for this tool. Ramaswami with this troll doll haircut to replace bants in the Senate from Ohio shows also that Trump has lost touch and maybe lost control of his most rabid morons. Steve Bannon wants Musk deported for Christ's sake. Trump doesn't know this. He may wake up to a day very soon where he is viewed as not far enough to the right for them, in which case he's cooked. I mean, if somebody he could seize control of this fascist authoritarian movement before Trump is supposed to leave office, why would they wait. The historical figure Trump might most closely resemble is actually Henry the eighth without the skills or the intelligent daughter. The fictional character he might most closely resemble is probably Milo Minderbinder from Catch twenty two. In Joe Heller's Indescribable novel, Milo Minderbinder rises from a supply sergeant to basically the owner of Europe. He keeps trading food and stealing parachutes and investing in black markets, and the next thing you know, he's made a deal with the Germans for the Americans to bomb their own air base in Italy, and he has his own army, and the military police suddenly don't have the insignia MP on their uniforms anymore. It's been replaced by the insignia with the letters MM for Milominderbinder. Milominder Binder, if he didn't figure this out, is the metaphor for America, which came out of the Second World War in large part owning half of Europe. Heller never really explains how the character of mielominder Binder does this in the plot in the novel in that universe, but it is presumed that Milo has only accomplished it by using the efficiency and rigidity of the military structure and This is my only real fear with Trump and this clown car administration of his, At least today, it's my only real fear. He he wants to use the military to shoot civilian protesters. That's bad enough, but the real problem becomes if you see him use the military for support in areas that not even remotely connected to weapons or the maintenance of order. I mean, this is for bollock, obviously, but if he somehow gets the military involved in enforcing tariffs or banning TikTok or not banning TikTok, or rebanning TikTok, or revoking the two term limit, if the military is somehow involved in that, then you can start to really worry. Before we leave the inauguration of the ineligible moron elect Milo Minderbinder Trump. Let me add an ironic twist to this in the movie version of Catch twenty two, which is still underappreciated. It's really a classic. Many assessments contemporary ones when the movie came out was that it was a failure. Milo Minderbinder is played by in over the top brilliance that we could have never known at the time was the pinnacle of his career and maybe his life. Milo Minderbinder is performed by John Voight. John Voight, the guy who now does not know where he is, who Trump suddenly designated as one of his three special envoys to Hollywood, the others being Sylvester Stallone and mel Gibson. And of course Gibson probably blew the whole thing by immediately saying he read about it on Twitter x nobody called him. Stallone and Gibson of course cannot act their ways out of a paper bag and never could. But Voight once could have when he was Milo Minderbinder. Beware Milo Minderbinder. The real threat right now is when Milo Minderbinder takes over state run media like CBS and CNN. In the Washington Post and the New York Times, you thought I meant TikTok and Trump's latest stunt saving TikTok from the awful illegal ban that he introduced, provided they sell fifty percent of it to the US government, because we should privatize the post office. But we need to have an official government social media propaganda outlet as an aside. What happened to government efficiency? Trump already has an official government social media propaganda outlet. It's called twitter x. And also, where have I seen this before? I won't burn your business down if you sell me fifty percent of us. Where have I seen this? Oh? That's right? Organized crime? Now. When I said the real threat is when Milo minder Binder takes over state run media, I did not mean TikTok. I met CBS and CNN and The Post and the Times, but especially CBS. It is hard to believe that the owners of CBS paramount could out Weasele Warner Bro those Discovery or Zuckerberg or Bezos or anybody else. But they have. Somebody at CBS News screwed up the editing of that Kamala Harris interview in the summer, and they attached in two different formats, two different answers to one of their questions to her. Journalistically sloppy, indefensible, probably the result of insufficient staffing by cheap bosses. But Trump sued under a Texas law that was designed to protect people against fraudulent TV ads, you know, for ads like Trump University. He is claiming the editing mistake was legally fraud. He is suing for fraud. It's a nuisance lawsuit, of course, But your nuisance lawsuit is the corporate half of fascist America's golden opportunity. Paramount and CBS have, according to The Wall Street Journal, discussed settling this nonsense case bribing Trump with settlement money the way ABC and Disney bribed Trump by settling the nuisance lawsuit against George Stephanopolis a clean, legal, disguised way to bribe a sitting president, especially since his new FCC chairman, of whom Goebbels would be proud, has already threatened Paramount's planned merger with sky Dance. The impact is obvious. I have friends at CBS News. I will protect them by leaving their names out of it, but they know damn well like my friends at ABC News already know that their corporate bosses not only will not lift a finger to defend journalism, any journalism, even their own, but will now take this chance to piss all over their newspeople to disguise a bribe as some kind of legal apology. What's worse, of course, is that every time a news outlet does not fight back against this misuse of that Texas fraud law or some or bullshit laws, it becomes more legitimate in the eyes of the courts. Iowa has a similar law. Under it, Trump is suing the Des Moines Register polster because her pre election poll did not show him ahead enough. Trump is this close to suing some weatherman forgetting the forecast wrong, and CBS is on Trump's side. Other vshy capitulation is less shocking, but no less sleazy. CNN, which, under that balloon with glasses David Zaslav, dismembered itself to please the fascists, lost virtually all of its audience and perverted a halfway decent nighttime hour and made it instead a platform for the hateful. Scott Jennings found something left to destroy there in time for Trump's coronation. Hey, we found something good here in the back. Kill it with fire. The bonehead Thompson they brought into save CNN from the last bonehead they brought into Save CNN reportedly phoned Jim Acosta last week and told him his ratings were so good, often better than CNN Primetime, admittedly a low bar, but still an impressive accomplishment, that he was going to get a promotion instead. Acosta, of one hour at ten in the morning, you're gonna get two hours starting at midnight. Isn't that great more airtime? And technically it's still in the morning. CNN's midnight ratings are slightly better than those of this podcast. I mean, you look at those numbers now and you wonder, is it worth turning on all the lights in the studio? Does it cost less to broadcast CNN in black and white? These are what the ratings make you think. I've had shows with ratings like that. That was what MSNBC was like about two thousand and four. Well, obviously everybody in the world knows that this is an attempt to get Acosta, who has treated Trump honestly and fearlessly and journalistically for years, to quit. I assume their next offer to him will be you don't want two hours at midnight, Well, how about this as a second choice, how about three hours at midnight. They did this once. CBS did it once in Los Angeles to a sportscaster they did not like who was under contract, and they made him come in and write the four o'clock news am to get him to quit, because it didn't say in his contract that they couldn't make them come in and write the news at four am. As noted by Oliver Darcy, who broke this story about Acosta CNN. The day after this CNN loser tried to get a cost It to quit with a phony promotion. A Costas signed off his show, The One That's Still on at ten am by noting one line from President Biden's farewell address. Costa said, Biden quote warned, the free press is crumbling in this country. I would add that's only if we, the people let that happen. I admire both Biden and a Costa, but they are mistaken. We have already let it happen. The Washington Post is dead. The New York Times is doing its best to follow the Post off the Lemming memorial cliff two headlines just from yesterday Washington memo, Defiance is Out, Deference is in. Trump returns to a different Washington as Donald J. Flatchlent Grandpa, prepares to take the oath of office for a second time. Much of the world seems to be bowing down to him, and demoralized opponents are rethinking the future. This might be read as a desperate please from somewhere inside the Times headline department, get me out of here. And because the headlines are now apparently being written in that department by Times pitch bots Satiris Doug J. Balloon not his real name, from a top Ezra Klein's column, as if Ezra Kline needed any help being the dog in the hat in the burning room quote opinion, Ezra Kleine Trump barely won the election. Why doesn't it feel that way? Because Ezra, the Times is run by cowards. Not to be fair, they are not as big cowards as Jeff Bezos and his jackasses. The Post version of the same story, Trump has already conquered DC even before taking office. His triumphant returned power stands in stark contrast to his divisive entry in two thousand and seven and departure in twenty twenty one. I mean, honest to God, why not just replace the Washington Post masthead Jeff with a shot of Laurence Sanchez smooching a picture of Trump. Well, they can't do that because they already have done something far worse to the postmasthead. They are keeping what is now obvious says just another marketing slogan, democracy dies in darkness. The last two words were so what they cut them off? I guess, But they are adding a new mission statement that reeks of a forty six person committee and several dozen focus groups. That mission statement for the Washington Post, Riveting Storytelling for all of America. This is inside edition. Oh no, it's the Washington Post, Riveting Storytelling for all of America. I am told that that one out over the runner up. I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muffler. More correctly, I'm not gonna pay a lot for this dictatorship. Bon chance, everybody, also of interest here in memory of Bob Buker, who helped give me the confidence to actually join him on the World Series telecasts. But first, the worst, and I'm just gonna say this and let you figure it out. And it's real. It's actually a new marketing slogan for a new product. It's a real marketing slogan. And it's quote, it's soup you can suck on. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman. Oberman still ahead on countdown. The second worst thing probably about getting old, not very old, just old old, regular old, is having to watch nearly all those older than you who accepted you in what was their field and then became theirs and yours watched them pass on, especially when they are widely beloved standard setters in those fields, like the late Bob Buker. Bob Buker in Memoriam. Next first, there are still more new idiots to talk about, the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world. Lebron's worse Rand Paul. Rand Paul became a senator. People pointed at him and said, this guy is a senator. Now there's a whole crowd of Rand Paul's in the Senate and especially in the House, so he doesn't look quite as stupid. Every once in a while, though, Rand is here to remind you he's unbelievably stupid.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? Remember when he said he'd be a dictator, but only on day one? It's day one. The best joke of the year. The great thing about moving Trump's inauguration to the rotunda, writes Biden Harris advanced man Doug Landry, is that all of his supporters already know how to get there. Can't top that capitulation. Nation CBS is discussing settling the most nonsensical lawsuit Trump has ever filed, because the settlement would actually be a wonderfully legal bribe. And Ramaswami, or as we called him, the schwam gone. Hey, what do you know? The Department of from an efficiency actually has cut some waste. Like you, I would have preferred to have skipped Trump altogether today. I would rather eulogize Yuke, my late friend Bob Buker, and I will at length at the end of this edition. Instead, as you are hearing this, it may have already happened. And thus I am speaking to you from the distant past, the good old days. Unless to take that Doug Landry joke to its natural step trump ists storm the Capitol again and coup again. He had to go inside because somebody told Trump about the thirty one days William Henry, it's just cold, Harrison. It says something that Trump would rather be viewed to somebody who cannot handle temperatures higher than Obama and a crowd of two million did in two thousand and nine. Then face the reality that nobody was going to show up for his goddamned speech. I mean, hotel rooms in downtown DC were already easily available thirty percent unbooked, compared to five percent for Trump eight years ago and two percent for Obama fifteen years ago. And that was before Grandpa Shardy found an excuse to downsize further. So you're saying your parade is going to be inside the hockey rink. It's just you driving around in circles in front of a small crowd. What a perfect metaphor, Thank you, moron. Well, what do we know about the coronation speech? The baseline is, of course, whatever he says, he's lying. The point of this speech, as we later figured out, was the point of the twenty seventeen speech, was to lie about how bad thing were in the country to pretend that a country moving along about b B plus grade was actually an f and falling, and then later after his nut job policies sent us plummeting down to CNUS or D plus, he could point at empirical data and claim the nation has grown to D plus, not descending from B plus. Trump told ABC on Saturday that the speech would be about unity, strength, and fairness. Unity obviously means everybody has to do what he says. Strength would be what he calls bullying and manipulation, and of course fairness is nobody's fair to him. He'll be seeming to talk to his base, is actually talking to himself. He'll be boastful and crazy because he has no shame and no awareness and is not actually a living human being. He will be almost dissociated because all that crap on the camp where he got crazier and crazier every week that hasn't stopped. If you look carefully, his eyes are no longer going in the same direction. He'll be increasingly belligerent because he thinks he got a landslide. He thinks he's in charge now, and somewhere in his going to say soul, he believes he will be in charge forever. He will claim afterwards it would have been the biggest crowd at any inauguration, That's why he moved it inside. He can't be disproved now when he claims that, And of course they will lie about the size of the TV audience by saying but streaming he got eight hundred and seventy five billion views on Twitter. As Most importantly, though, the Democratic response, which will be nothing as usual. We are inert trying to fight the last war, trying to gain power in the party rather than to unify and gain enough power to push back against Trump enough that every Republican move costs that him at minimum personal pain and shame. We can't prevent any of this, but we can leave a lot of black and blue marks. That has to be the goal, and we're not even doing that. No Democrat will say everything Trump just said today is a lie. None will say he lowered the bar to make himself look better when he fails. None will say he's a convicted felon. No Democrat is putting everything on the line. No Democrat will have the presence of mind to ignore protocol and offer a rebuttal, even though we have not yet had an inauguration rebuttal speech. Who the hell says we can't somebody get up on a box somewhere and tell the truth. Even Fetterman, our senator, with the acuity of a toy with googly eyes stuck on it, has been towing the line of tradition and quizzlinging. Most ominously, the mayor of New York will become our first full fledged VH democrat. I mean he's nominally a democrat. I guess he will trade the lives of immigrants and refugees here in exchange for a pardon. That's the scenario that is shaping up. Eric Adams needs to be removed immediately by any means that are even vaguely legal. He is a danger to the community in which I live. Sorry for focusing on that part. I will again quote Jean Renoir, the French filmmaker, and his masterpiece Rules of the Game. Rules of the Game, coming out in nineteen thirty nine, accurately forecast that the French were so self absorbed and corrupt that when the Nazis came, they would offer almost no resistance. Renoir, as the hero's buddy octav says something about the corruption and lack of morals, and lack of courage and just playing, lack of effort to stand up for what's right. He says that everybody has a self interest that's far more important to them than courage or self sacrifice or bravery or just taking a goddamn chance. And it is a quote that has come to symbolize the France that folded like a card table in one month to Hitler's onslaught and the VSH France full of more collaborators than the Germans believed possible. Octav says, you see, in this world, there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons. Everybody in the Democratic Party has his reasons. Everybody in the media, certainly those who own and run the media, has his reasons. And there's way more from the pathetic, useless, waste of oxygen billionaires who are so scared that they won't be able to make more money this year than they did last year, at which point I guess they have to face the realization that they have no long vives, no point in existing other than greed and no souls. Or, to put it more succinctly, Lauren's next implants ain't paying for themselves, are they? Jeff much more ahead on media capitulation by the Washington Post, the time, CNN, but new one on the list CBS. But first, I am I find surprisingly hopeful because these guys are fantastically incompetent. The trumpest restoration, they managed to overshadow this by spending the weekend having Mike Johnson erase the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee because he offended Trump, and then having Congresswoman Anna Paulina Lunatic file a motion to erase Mike Johnson because he won't let her vote from home the weekend before the restoration, and Johnson all but admitted he's not going to pardon all the January sixth psychopaths. And all that overshadowing the inauguration was after they leaked the big shock they had planned for this week. It's hard to remember so far back, but as of sunset on Friday, Trump had a secret plan to conduct surprise deportation raids in Chicago starting tomorrow, maybe even today. By eight thirty Friday night, that great oozing eraser headhaired Jesse Waters had announced the rais on Fox and it was in the Wall Street goddamned journal. Before midnight, police officials in Chicago had already gone on the record saying they would provide no immigration data to ICE and no help. And by Saturday morning it was obvious that delirious Trumpists couldn't keep their great big bazoos shut long enough to maintain the surprise that is necessary for a surprise deportation raid. That's why they call it a surprise. Do not misunderstand me. I am delighted they screwed it up, but I'm surprised they didn't wind up publishing the names of all the intended migrant targets. The leak was so total that yesterday the organizer of Trump's Final Solution, Tom Hoeman emphasis on the hoe, was admitting, they'll probably cancel these raids because, well, you can answer that the leaks were either terribly stupid screw up or they were deliberate, and this gives them an excuse to not run these impossibly expensive and inefficient roundups that will please the Trump rabble but infuriate every Trump friendly business in America and restart inflation. I'm still betting on boastful stupidity rather than a way to undo your big mistaken plans because, of course Trump always chooses idiots. Secretary of Homeland Security Christy confirmed my nomination, or I'll shoot this dog gnome FBI director Cash keep your eye on the prize. I'll try anyway. Patel entrepreneur is Vivek Ramaswami and Elon Musk in charge of government efficiency just Musk entrepreneur Ramaswami is already out because he's running for governor of Ohio. He's no longer at the Government Efficiency Department. Yeah, I know he's gonna need more than one lesson about maga racism. And he's gonna get more than one lesson about maga racism this Friday. By the way, on that one word, the Merriam Webster dictionary social media feeds reminded us that in French, the language from which it originates, entrepreneur originally meant funeral director. These guys are skilled in that, only skilled in purging each other and enforcing political dogma and selling lies to morons. I mean they managed to get rid of Ramaswami the day before he was supposed to start. They have repeatedly proven themselves utterly incapable of actually governing, utterly so has the Republican Party, especially when it's in the White House. It is a dirty little secret the far right would prefer you to forget. But as the Republicans have gotten more and more fascist, exactly one of them has been re elected president in the last forty years. That was George W. Bush. And he wouldn't have if Ohio had gone to carry And there were enough questions in Ohio about fake terror alert during the counting that should have been cleared up, but never were. These guys aren't actually good at anything. They weren't good at making America great again for four years, or he wouldn't be able to run on that, would he. They weren't good at anything. When COVID hit and it and the economic fallout destroyed Trump's campaign in twenty twenty, I mean, goddamn it. Trump couldn't even pull off a coup correctly. The other thing that happens at noon is the start of the MAGA race to succeed Trump. The lesson he will have taught them all is to ignore all the rules, erase all the loyalties, break all the laws, and kill anybody who gets in the way, especially if they're MAGA and trying to stop them from running MAGA, and there will be what a hundred of them who think he will not be still around to choose the next cult leader one way or the other, and so their targets will be for the next four years each other. The uniformity of the cult rank, very rank and file will also break starting at noon, as Elon Musk and Ramaswami found out, the real fervent psychotics hate immigrants, all immigrants, all minorities, all accents, but their own, anybody brown. The idea of Trump pushing for this tool. Ramaswami with this troll doll haircut to replace bants in the Senate from Ohio shows also that Trump has lost touch and maybe lost control of his most rabid morons. Steve Bannon wants Musk deported for Christ's sake. Trump doesn't know this. He may wake up to a day very soon where he is viewed as not far enough to the right for them, in which case he's cooked. I mean, if somebody he could seize control of this fascist authoritarian movement before Trump is supposed to leave office, why would they wait. The historical figure Trump might most closely resemble is actually Henry the eighth without the skills or the intelligent daughter. The fictional character he might most closely resemble is probably Milo Minderbinder from Catch twenty two. In Joe Heller's Indescribable novel, Milo Minderbinder rises from a supply sergeant to basically the owner of Europe. He keeps trading food and stealing parachutes and investing in black markets, and the next thing you know, he's made a deal with the Germans for the Americans to bomb their own air base in Italy, and he has his own army, and the military police suddenly don't have the insignia MP on their uniforms anymore. It's been replaced by the insignia with the letters MM for Milominderbinder. Milominder Binder, if he didn't figure this out, is the metaphor for America, which came out of the Second World War in large part owning half of Europe. Heller never really explains how the character of mielominder Binder does this in the plot in the novel in that universe, but it is presumed that Milo has only accomplished it by using the efficiency and rigidity of the military structure and This is my only real fear with Trump and this clown car administration of his, At least today, it's my only real fear. He he wants to use the military to shoot civilian protesters. That's bad enough, but the real problem becomes if you see him use the military for support in areas that not even remotely connected to weapons or the maintenance of order. I mean, this is for bollock, obviously, but if he somehow gets the military involved in enforcing tariffs or banning TikTok or not banning TikTok, or rebanning TikTok, or revoking the two term limit, if the military is somehow involved in that, then you can start to really worry. Before we leave the inauguration of the ineligible moron elect Milo Minderbinder Trump. Let me add an ironic twist to this in the movie version of Catch twenty two, which is still underappreciated. It's really a classic. Many assessments contemporary ones when the movie came out was that it was a failure. Milo Minderbinder is played by in over the top brilliance that we could have never known at the time was the pinnacle of his career and maybe his life. Milo Minderbinder is performed by John Voight. John Voight, the guy who now does not know where he is, who Trump suddenly designated as one of his three special envoys to Hollywood, the others being Sylvester Stallone and mel Gibson. And of course Gibson probably blew the whole thing by immediately saying he read about it on Twitter x nobody called him. Stallone and Gibson of course cannot act their ways out of a paper bag and never could. But Voight once could have when he was Milo Minderbinder. Beware Milo Minderbinder. The real threat right now is when Milo Minderbinder takes over state run media like CBS and CNN. In the Washington Post and the New York Times, you thought I meant TikTok and Trump's latest stunt saving TikTok from the awful illegal ban that he introduced, provided they sell fifty percent of it to the US government, because we should privatize the post office. But we need to have an official government social media propaganda outlet as an aside. What happened to government efficiency? Trump already has an official government social media propaganda outlet. It's called twitter x. And also, where have I seen this before? I won't burn your business down if you sell me fifty percent of us. Where have I seen this? Oh? That's right? Organized crime? Now. When I said the real threat is when Milo minder Binder takes over state run media, I did not mean TikTok. I met CBS and CNN and The Post and the Times, but especially CBS. It is hard to believe that the owners of CBS paramount could out Weasele Warner Bro those Discovery or Zuckerberg or Bezos or anybody else. But they have. Somebody at CBS News screwed up the editing of that Kamala Harris interview in the summer, and they attached in two different formats, two different answers to one of their questions to her. Journalistically sloppy, indefensible, probably the result of insufficient staffing by cheap bosses. But Trump sued under a Texas law that was designed to protect people against fraudulent TV ads, you know, for ads like Trump University. He is claiming the editing mistake was legally fraud. He is suing for fraud. It's a nuisance lawsuit, of course, But your nuisance lawsuit is the corporate half of fascist America's golden opportunity. Paramount and CBS have, according to The Wall Street Journal, discussed settling this nonsense case bribing Trump with settlement money the way ABC and Disney bribed Trump by settling the nuisance lawsuit against George Stephanopolis a clean, legal, disguised way to bribe a sitting president, especially since his new FCC chairman, of whom Goebbels would be proud, has already threatened Paramount's planned merger with sky Dance. The impact is obvious. I have friends at CBS News. I will protect them by leaving their names out of it, but they know damn well like my friends at ABC News already know that their corporate bosses not only will not lift a finger to defend journalism, any journalism, even their own, but will now take this chance to piss all over their newspeople to disguise a bribe as some kind of legal apology. What's worse, of course, is that every time a news outlet does not fight back against this misuse of that Texas fraud law or some or bullshit laws, it becomes more legitimate in the eyes of the courts. Iowa has a similar law. Under it, Trump is suing the Des Moines Register polster because her pre election poll did not show him ahead enough. Trump is this close to suing some weatherman forgetting the forecast wrong, and CBS is on Trump's side. Other vshy capitulation is less shocking, but no less sleazy. CNN, which, under that balloon with glasses David Zaslav, dismembered itself to please the fascists, lost virtually all of its audience and perverted a halfway decent nighttime hour and made it instead a platform for the hateful. Scott Jennings found something left to destroy there in time for Trump's coronation. Hey, we found something good here in the back. Kill it with fire. The bonehead Thompson they brought into save CNN from the last bonehead they brought into Save CNN reportedly phoned Jim Acosta last week and told him his ratings were so good, often better than CNN Primetime, admittedly a low bar, but still an impressive accomplishment, that he was going to get a promotion instead. Acosta, of one hour at ten in the morning, you're gonna get two hours starting at midnight. Isn't that great more airtime? And technically it's still in the morning. CNN's midnight ratings are slightly better than those of this podcast. I mean, you look at those numbers now and you wonder, is it worth turning on all the lights in the studio? Does it cost less to broadcast CNN in black and white? These are what the ratings make you think. I've had shows with ratings like that. That was what MSNBC was like about two thousand and four. Well, obviously everybody in the world knows that this is an attempt to get Acosta, who has treated Trump honestly and fearlessly and journalistically for years, to quit. I assume their next offer to him will be you don't want two hours at midnight, Well, how about this as a second choice, how about three hours at midnight. They did this once. CBS did it once in Los Angeles to a sportscaster they did not like who was under contract, and they made him come in and write the four o'clock news am to get him to quit, because it didn't say in his contract that they couldn't make them come in and write the news at four am. As noted by Oliver Darcy, who broke this story about Acosta CNN. The day after this CNN loser tried to get a cost It to quit with a phony promotion. A Costas signed off his show, The One That's Still on at ten am by noting one line from President Biden's farewell address. Costa said, Biden quote warned, the free press is crumbling in this country. I would add that's only if we, the people let that happen. I admire both Biden and a Costa, but they are mistaken. We have already let it happen. The Washington Post is dead. The New York Times is doing its best to follow the Post off the Lemming memorial cliff two headlines just from yesterday Washington memo, Defiance is Out, Deference is in. Trump returns to a different Washington as Donald J. Flatchlent Grandpa, prepares to take the oath of office for a second time. Much of the world seems to be bowing down to him, and demoralized opponents are rethinking the future. This might be read as a desperate please from somewhere inside the Times headline department, get me out of here. And because the headlines are now apparently being written in that department by Times pitch bots Satiris Doug J. Balloon not his real name, from a top Ezra Klein's column, as if Ezra Kline needed any help being the dog in the hat in the burning room quote opinion, Ezra Kleine Trump barely won the election. Why doesn't it feel that way? Because Ezra, the Times is run by cowards. Not to be fair, they are not as big cowards as Jeff Bezos and his jackasses. The Post version of the same story, Trump has already conquered DC even before taking office. His triumphant returned power stands in stark contrast to his divisive entry in two thousand and seven and departure in twenty twenty one. I mean, honest to God, why not just replace the Washington Post masthead Jeff with a shot of Laurence Sanchez smooching a picture of Trump. Well, they can't do that because they already have done something far worse to the postmasthead. They are keeping what is now obvious says just another marketing slogan, democracy dies in darkness. The last two words were so what they cut them off? I guess, But they are adding a new mission statement that reeks of a forty six person committee and several dozen focus groups. That mission statement for the Washington Post, Riveting Storytelling for all of America. This is inside edition. Oh no, it's the Washington Post, Riveting Storytelling for all of America. I am told that that one out over the runner up. I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muffler. More correctly, I'm not gonna pay a lot for this dictatorship. Bon chance, everybody, also of interest here in memory of Bob Buker, who helped give me the confidence to actually join him on the World Series telecasts. But first, the worst, and I'm just gonna say this and let you figure it out. And it's real. It's actually a new marketing slogan for a new product. It's a real marketing slogan. And it's quote, it's soup you can suck on. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman. Oberman still ahead on countdown. The second worst thing probably about getting old, not very old, just old old, regular old, is having to watch nearly all those older than you who accepted you in what was their field and then became theirs and yours watched them pass on, especially when they are widely beloved standard setters in those fields, like the late Bob Buker. Bob Buker in Memoriam. Next first, there are still more new idiots to talk about, the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world. Lebron's worse Rand Paul. Rand Paul became a senator. People pointed at him and said, this guy is a senator. Now there's a whole crowd of Rand Paul's in the Senate and especially in the House, so he doesn't look quite as stupid. Every once in a while, though, Rand is here to remind you he's unbelievably stupid.

Since Senator Johnson brought up California fires, I have to interject here. We talked about burn policies. You know, these are local policies, how we try to not have so much brush and things like that. They're also next to the largest body of water in the world, the Pacific Ocean. So I see these homes all burning on the beach in Malibu, and I'm like, Wow, if they just had a generator in a hose, you start sucking the water out of the Pacific Ocean.

Since Senator Johnson brought up California fires, I have to interject here. We talked about burn policies. You know, these are local policies, how we try to not have so much brush and things like that. They're also next to the largest body of water in the world, the Pacific Ocean. So I see these homes all burning on the beach in Malibu, and I'm like, Wow, if they just had a generator in a hose, you start sucking the water out of the Pacific Ocean.

But you could do more than that.

But you could do more than that.

You could pump it and put it in cisterns up in the hills a mile or two in. You know it doesn't rain very much there. But why don't they take the ocean water, put it in cisterns and have a bunch of water ready when a wildfire shows up? But it's like once again bad local government.

You could pump it and put it in cisterns up in the hills a mile or two in. You know it doesn't rain very much there. But why don't they take the ocean water, put it in cisterns and have a bunch of water ready when a wildfire shows up? But it's like once again bad local government.

All you need is a generator and a hose, and you start sucking the water out of the Pacific Ocean. You have any idea how long the hose would have to be? More on Also, salt water in a hose through a pump, the thing will last three days. Why don't they take the ocean water and put it in cisterns, have a bunch of water ready when a wildfire shows up? Well, things burn in fires, like cisterns or hair pieces. This idiot is not just an idiotic senator. He's still a doctor, runner up worser the General Mills Company. This is still I'm seeing this. I double and triple checked it to make sure it was not satire. It's not satire. This is still on their website. General Mills is introducing a new product the headline soup you Can Suck On, Introducing Progresso Soup Drops, the ultimate cold and flu season comfort It's Progresso chicken noodle soup like you never expected, a convenient, on the go soup experience available this National Soup Month. Enjoy soup like never before. Progresso your go to for comforting Premium soups is innovating beyond expectations this cold and flu season with the launch of the first ever limited edition soup drops. What's a soup drop? Well, it's soup you can suck on. Please do your own suck on joke here, I am above that prey. What this is, of course, is like a piece of like a cough drop, cold, presumably sticky, clammy hard, but mostly cold. Except it's chicken noodle flavored. So it's like it's like congealed chicken noodle soup stuff. You just let's sit there in the bowl for a couple of days. Not at General Mills. That's a half full attitude towards your bowl of soup. We can sell this. So what if it's not hot like soup or tasty like soup, or even somehow viscerally pleasing like soup, which, by the way, you can suck on. You can suck on soup. No, no, it has none of those properties except it's it's it's soup, you can suck on. Speaking of suck the winter worst Trump, I'll just quote from Politico, shall I? The incoming Trump White House is planning on changing the colors of White House badges for employees when it comes back Monday, that would be today, to make them platinum and gold instead of the traditional blue and green. To people familiar with the change told our colleague Daniel Lippman, platinum badges will be used to denote West Wing access. Gold badges will get you access to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the new Executive Office Building. So like everything else in the world, Trump is obsessed with gold badges and platinum badges. Now White House staff and other members of the dictatorship will look like the check in people at a holiday inn in Keyahcook, Iowa. It dawned on me while I lived in a Trump building surrounded by the cheap, sprayed on looking dull gold color. I don't know if it was tin or I don't know what it was. I never figured out what the metal was. Might have been hardened aluminum foil. But Trump is obsessed by it. And by the way, I lived in the Trump building that had the least amount of it. I literally said to Katie Churr as we bought that part apartment that if it had one percent more gold, I would never have moved in there. It just looks like crap. But it dawned on me then that Trump has no idea gold to him means good. The words are spelled similarly. His hair is now that same crap gold color. And then I began to think, does he not know that the gold you see in the walls of his buildings and on his head and everywhere else, that that's not actual actual gold. Do you think Trump has ever realized that gold paint and gold plastic and gold bronzer and gold badges are not made of actual gold. I don't think so. And while we're here at Trump, I am pleased to announce that Peggy Shwinn he has posted, will be our next United States Deputy Secretary of Education. Peggy as a strong record of delivering results for children and families, has served as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education. At the Texas Education Agency, Peggy was also the assistant set. Her name is Penny. She's not Peggy Shwin, She's Penny Shwin. I assume this will be resolved the new Trump way by having Penny change her name to Peggy, because Grandpa Shardy is never wrong. General Lissimo blocking his own TikTok ben and calling it a win and then calling it Peggy Trump two days worst Parson and the world. The name is Penny, your damn And lastly, as I said at the beginning, I would rather spend my day talking to you about my late friend Bob Buker, who died Thursday at the age of ninety. At the age of ninety, people knew he was ninety, and still people were surprised he was ninety, and they were surprised that he left us, because he always seemed about thirty five. And to my knowledge, he was a friend of everybody in baseball and most people in entertainment, and certainly was beloved by his listeners and viewers in Milwaukee, where he did the Milwaukee Brewers games from almost the day they started being the Milwaukee Brewers. If you're not familiar with Bob Uker's work, it is perhaps summarized by one story. For generations former baseball players and other athletes had made marks as broadcasters by being self deprecating Dizzy Dean, whose vocabulary was so bad and whose grammar was so random that there was once a petition signed by the school teachers of America to get him to stop doing the broadcasts of New York Yankees and other games on radio in the forties and fifties. Dizzy Dean was self deprecating, but it was so ham handed that it wasn't that funny. My late friend Joe Garagiola sort of perfected it. He was much more light and much more entertaining, and his jokes about his playing career were much more funny. But even he did not have the Bob Yucher secret. Not everything Bob Yuker did was spontaneous, but everything knew he did was spontaneous. His jokes were truly creative genius. He made them up as he went along, and he almost always hit it out of the park, and they were delivered deadpan. He had a natural understanding of comedic rhythm that nine out of ten comedians never get close to the perfect example. One of his oldest jokes about when his hometown team, the Milwaukee Brewers, signed him out of high school in the nineteen fifties. They came to my house and my dad said how much? And they said twenty thousand dollars and my father said, we don't have that kind of money. No laugh, no knowing grin, no acknowledgment that the audience figured it out, perfect comedic delivery. He was a good actor. He was a good baseball announcer and very insightful, and even at the age of eighty nine and ninety, was still better than most of the other radio announcers out there. But what he was a genius at was humor. Like that, humor at his expense, based in reality, with an unexpected ending, a reversal that left you going left as the story went right, and always got him laughs. He would repeat the ones that got of the most laughs. He wasn't a moron, he didn't throw things away that worked, But his key to success was all of that. Humor was part of him. He'd been that way as a player. Famously, he posed for the nineteen sixty five I believe Saint Louis Cardinals team picture, sitting next to the great Cardinals picture Bob Gibson in a day when there was still considerable segregation in this country, and there was certain political campaigning done on the idea that we've done enough for these people already. That was basically the Republican campaign in nineteen sixty six. And in the front row of the Cardinals team picture, Bob Gibson, an African American, Bob Buker, not an African American, seated next to each other, held hands as they took the photo. They got several snaps in before somebody on the team in the picture burst out laughing. It would have gone through nobody, nobody involved in the photography noticed it, and then they said, Okay, Uker, you get in the back row. He was that kind of guy. I had known Bob since the nineteen seventies because even though I was first when I met him in college and a college broadcaster. I was sitting next to him on the bench one day before a Milwaukee Brewers New York Yankees game and he said, Hey, I'm Bob Yker, and I said, I gathered that I'm Keith, and he wanted to hear about my story, who I was, why I was in radio, but I had a camera with me. And then as I moved up the chain, and he was a superstar in comedy, in acting, in baseball, he followed my career. Hey, you know, I remember I met you. You were just this college punk kid, and I said, this kid's got something here. I don't know what it is. I said, you didn't tell me that. He said, I don't need the competition. Big laugh, slap on the back, Alibastia pal every time. And I'd love to say, well, we had a special relationship, nothing of the kind. Thousands of people have a story about Bob Ucker encouraging them one way or the other, a great positive forcing life. And this doesn't even touch on the quality of the light beer commercials. It doesn't touch on the major league role of the typical baseball announcer. There are more people that I know who knew nothing about baseball could not believe, having seen that movie Major League, that Bob Bucker was an actual Major League baseball announcer and a prominent one. They thought he was just a great actor doing a bit like Hank Azaria later who did a series about an unintentionally funny baseball announcer. They thought Bob Bucker was an actor. No, No, he was just doing an exaggerated and again self deprecating, dead pan version of himself. I really got to know Bob in nineteen ninety seven. I was assigned after I joined MSNBC and NBC Sports, the first big thing I did after launching my cable news program in October of nineteen ninety seven, Like a week later, I hit the road. I was the new guy on the NBC Sports World Series team, fulfilling the childhood dream. Bob Costas was the play by play man, Joe Morgan and Bob Yucker were the color announcers, and Hannah Storm and I did the pregame show and I was in the dugouts during the World Series game. A lot of childhood dreams fulfilled all at once. And with that, of course, even though I was thirty eight years old, there was a little nervousness. I had established myself at ESPN was just trying something new in news, and here I was stepping back for the first time in several months since I left Sports Center into sports and not certain of what I was doing. I wasn't that good a reporter. I'd be fine on the pregame show, in the postgame show, but who knew what I was going to say during the game. Sitting in the dugouter next to it where I didn't belong anyway, I wasn't sure I belonged in the whole operation. And the first meeting on the road in Miami for the Florida Marlins Cleveland Indians World Series as they were known at the time, I come down for the breakfast before the first meeting, and there in line ahead of me at the buffet, Bob Buker, Hey, pal, congratulations man. I saw that first news show the other day. That was great. He says, Cee. Now, I'm just worried about one thing, and I said, well, I'm worried about a lot of things. He goes, it'd be fine. I said, what's bothering you? Youuke? He said, I'm now just the second funniest guy on our World Series crew. And of course, if you're in there with Bob Buker, you better be dead paned back. You better give it back to him. I know there's a joke coming in here somewhere, or at least I thought there was. I said, Okay, I'll play who's now the funniest guy on our World Series crew? And then I mentioned a name of somebody we all hated, so it was like, so, who's first? Blankety blank? He roared say that on the air, I dare you? Then after I laughed and he laughed, and he tapped me on the chest. You pal imagine that for your first World Series game. That's why he was a great catcher who didn't hit and was not considered that great a fielder, and lasted six seasons in the major leagues and was traded back to the team that he started with because they missed him, and then hired as a coach and that didn't work out. A story, I'll tell him a little bit. He was a great asset to any organization he was with. That's what it was about. Like before his first World Series game, like my first World Series game, I got tapped on the chest Bob Bob Yuker telling me he thought I was funnier than he was before his first World Series game. He went out to the warning track in the outfield in Saint Louis and grabbed the tuba from the band that was playing on the warning track before Game one of the nineteen sixty four World Series and began to play the tuba. There are photos of him, you can find them on Google. Uker tuba and there he is, I think, with Roger Craig, a pitcher with that team, holding in his laughter as usual. It's like, where's Uker. He's supposed to warm up Gibson, and of course the answer was he's naturally, he's out in center field playing the tuba. I shared a photo on social media after Bob died, after the Brewers announced he had passed away. It's from twenty twelve. It's at City Field in New York, in the press box before Brewers Mets game, and I didn't want to take any chances. I took the subway out on a desperately humid day even for New York in the middle of summer, and my polo shirt is like it looked like it was a pattern. It's half subway sweat was a light green, I think, and then over here it's a dark green and it's just me sweating on my way, out standing all the way on the seven train, and we pose for a photo because I said, Bob, I know you like forty years and I don't have a photo with you. Let's take care of that right now, pal. And he's in a nice shirt and tie. He's ready to go. And I think he was only on the radio. And he's still in a nice shirt and tie, and he says, as we're about to take the photo, he gives a quick glance over to my sweaty shirt and a big sweat stain. And I mean it's the size of a football, my sweat stain, he says. Just before they take the photo, he says, you know, you didn't have to get all nervous just for me. Keith standard yuke stuff. Occasionally you were the point of the joke. Mostly he put himself in a position of seeming dim or not understanding or as in the story with his father willing to sign with the Milwaukee Braves in nineteen fifty seven and pay them twenty thousand dollars for the privilege. Sean Casey, the former Major League Baseball player and now an MLB network host and a podcaster himself, told a story over the weekend that was worth mentioning, although I encourage you to find it on social media because his version of it has been edited to show what he's talking about. But when Casey came to bat to borrow an old poem, Casey at the bat would as a timing device to get him in sync with his swing and everything else, and he was a damn good hitter. Sean Casey used to raise his back foot his left foot in the batter's box three times, three separate times. He basically flexed at the knee, just as a quirk, as a timing device to keep him and ready for the pitch. All the hitters have something. His was a series of leg lifts in the middle of a bat, and he always did three of them. And as Casey told the story, his Cincinnati Reds went into Milwaukee one day and he stood in at the plate and lifted the leg and the entire Milwaukee crowd shouted one, and he didn't know whether that was for him or what? Are they all ordering a beer at the same time. He does it again two, the whole crowd thirty forty thousand people, and he doesn't know what's going on, And then he does the third one, and they all of course shout surprisingly enough free. He later put it all together and found out because Bob Yucker came down after the game and said, Hey, case how'd you like a crowd chatting along with you. Yuker had set it up, and this is the Yuker practical joke. It's one thing to get, say, a bunch of players to chant when another player raises his leg and count them down. He got the whole crowd. He've been telling the audience of his broadcasts for days that the Cincinnati Reds were coming to town and Sean Casey did this thing with his leg before each at bat, and they should help him by doing this practical joke on Sean Casey, who was a great guy, and we should have him here on the browers. He'd fit in right well here and count off his leg lifts. And they did it for the entire series. That was a Euker practical joke. He had thirty thousand assistants. One thing that I asked Bob Bucker about was this startling stat I mentioned the nineteen sixty five Saint Louis Cardinals and the hand holding photo, which was of course retaken, although you can find the original. They did print it out and Bob kept it and every time he went on the Tonight show he showed it. The nineteen sixty five, Saint Louis Cardinals had thirty five players on their roster all year. I mean, nowadays baseball teams approach one hundred different players on a roster. Certainly fifty sixty five had thirty five different Saint Louis Cardinals at one point or the other. The starting catcher was Tim McCarver, who went on to a career in baseball broadcasting as a baseball broadcaster with a sense of humor and was probably more prominent within baseball broadcasting circles than Bob Bucker ever was, although Bob Bucker was also an actor and a commercial pitch man. But so that's Tim McCarver and Bob Buker were the Cardinals catchers. The first baseman was Bill White, who for twenty five years was a play by play announcer for the New York Yankees, and he was an ABC Game of the Week announcer. The second baseman was Julian Jabber, And Yuke told me once as I was going through this list with him that Jabber he thought had done Winter League broadcasts back in his native Dominican Republic, if we weren't sure about that, And I've never been able to nail it down. But let's say he's right. Why wouldn't he be. That's four broadcasters on this one team out of thirty five players. Oh wait, there's more. The shortstop Dick Groat was for forty years. Here's the color man on the basketball broadcast on radio for the University of Pittsburgh. The outfield the starting outfield of the sixty five Cardinals was Kurt Flood, who, apart from his role in baseball free agency and the Change in the Game, later did Oakland A's games on the radio. He was flanked by Lou Brock, the left fielder future White Sox and Game of the Week announcer, and in right field by Mike Shannon, who would become the Cardinals announcer for forty seasons. Among the pitchers were Bob Gibson, the handholding friend of Bob Bucker, future host of the Cardinals radio pregame show and an occasional announcer on Games of the Week as well. Nelson Briles was a rookie on that team. He was to become an announcer on Pirates broadcast and Mariners broadcast and the original Baseball Cable broadcast on the USA Network, and another pitcher on that team was named Bob Perky, who, when he retired the next year, became a local sportscaster on the local news in Pittsburgh. And on the bench was an outfielder first baseman named Tito Francona who had a six year old kid named Terry who used to hang out at the ballpark in Saint Louis, and eventually he spent a year as the color man on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball. So that's thirty five players, eleven of whom became announcers, including Bob Buker, who would be in the Announcer Hall of Fame, and Tim McCarver who would be in the Announcer Hall of Fame, and Mike Shannon who would probably be in the announcer Hall of Fame, and Bill White who would be in the announcer Hall of Fame and should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame anyway, thirty five players, eleven of whom became from full time professional announcers at least briefly, and the twelfth whose son became an announcer. I asked Bob Buker what those bus rides were like with the nineteen sixty five Saint Louis Cardinals. So bad I demanded a trade pal. They sure showed me. They traded me to Philadelphia. Bob Ucker's career began, and not a lot of people know this. To quote Michael Kine, not a lot of people notice. Bob Uker's career as an announcer actually happened kind of by accident. He certainly had no intention of becoming a baseball announcer. At the end of his active career with the Atlanta Braves in nineteen sixty seven, they released him but said, we have a deal for you next year. Come to spring training as a free agent without a contract as a player, and either you make the team because we need somebody to catch our knuckleball pitcher Phil Nikro, or we'll make you a coach. You can be the bullpen catcher and we'll have you do in addition to the coaching, you can be one of our community speakers. The teams don't do this much anymore, but each team in the sixties and seventies used to try to promote the franchise because the average attendance at a Major League Baseball game in nineteen sixty eight was probably about thirteen thousand people. They used to have speakers bureaus, and each team had between two and ten guys who went around to whatever kind of assembly requested somebody from the Atlanta Braves. If you had two hundred people in a room and wanted somebody from the Braves, they'd send Bob Yucker. That was the plan. Then in the spring of nineteen sixty eight, there was some kind of and obviously you don't go and ask the man about this, but there was some kind of altercation at a bar in spring training in Florida, West Palm Beach, I presume, which is where the Braves trained. Then, in nineteen sixty eight, Bob Yucker, for whom they took the promotional photograph of him in the Atlanta Braves brand new nineteen sixty eight uniforms, as a coach because he was past his prime as a playing career. He would interject here and say, I never had a prime as a playing career. He was going to be a coach, And they took the picture, and then something happened at a bar and they said, we can't put you in uniform anymore, so we're going to punish you you can only do the speaking engagements. And one of our announcers also does a lot of college football and other assignments during the season and likes to take time off. So we'll give you like ten games to be an announcer for us. And he did some fill in work in Atlanta, and then somebody in Milwaukee said come home and do the same for us, And he was a fill in for the Brewers and a coach sometimes instructor for them, And in nineteen seventy one and seventy two he gradually moved into the booth and the rest is history through last season when he worked while ill, and he probably would have continued to work with them in some capacity next year. So his career, all this, all this was spontaneous, as he was after he got fired from the job. He actually wanted bullpen coach another former Brewers catcher, and he was particularly coached close to all catchers in his playing career and afterwards was named Jonathan Lucroix. And Jonathan Lucroix shared on social media a text exchange which I think sums Bob Youuger up and emphasizes the point I made before self deprecation comedic timing and dead pan humor. There were no arrows, no knowing smiles given to tell you to telegraph that here comes the punchline. I mean, I like to think of myself as a fairly spontaneous guy, and my reputation at SportsCenter was doing pretty good ad libbed highlights with jokes in them. But most of them were jokes I tried out at least once before we got on the air. Sometimes it was spontaneous, completely spontaneous, but usually it was spontaneous and then repeated. I give myself credit for that. Bob was just spontaneous. The really good stuff. As I said before, he would reuse later, but almost all of it follows this exact text chain Jonathan Lucroix was good enough to share on social media. It was after a harrowing collision at the plate in twenty nineteen, one of the last times that a base runner came into home plate and basically blew the catcher up, as we used to say, they had to cart Jonathan lucroy off the field, and that night Bob Buker texted LUCROI hope you're doing okay, Luke, get better soon. No punctuation of course, Hey, Yuke, concussion and broken nose, I just got way better looking. Kind of a standard line, but pretty good for a baseball player, Lucroy wrote back. Uker responds, sorry to hear that, Luke. That was a hell of a wreck. Nothing you could do. Hope you're getting better. Hello to Sarah and the kids. I had a similar incident, but it was from my own team. Again, there's no exclamation point, there's no winky emoji, and he's using other emojis throughout this. Bob had that kind of sense of humor. You didn't have to sweat get all nervous just for me, pal. Thanks for checking in, you writes, and I hope you'll get better quick. Always great to hear from you. Would rather have it as a normal check in, but thanks and get well, Bob Buker, guy who cared. Kind of took the edge off that, let you know you mattered to him, supported you when you needed support through in a free joke, spontaneous at least the first time he said it. The world lost a creative genius in terms of humor, in terms of self deprecation, in terms of timing, in terms of effortlessness, and everybody lost a good friend, Bob Buker rest in peace. And I'll add one more thing. No, he was not the second funniest guy in the nineteen ninety seven World Series NBC broadcast team. He was, as always the first. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening, Good luck today. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. Sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Larry David doing his impression of the PA announcer at Yankee Stadium, Bob Shephard, in honor of Bob Uker. Everything else was as my fault. That's countdown for today, Doomsday the Reducks, but just sixty two days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained and totally constitutionally ineligible term, probably and he's already screwed it up. Oh it's cold. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. As always, bulletins is the news warrants till next time. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Howtown 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.