Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. It's the smoking gun that keeps on smoking. Now. We are reliably informed that on the Bedminster tape, the Trump tape, the first Trump tape, Trump is heard lamenting that he did not declassify the Mark milly Iran document that he's talking about with the ghostwriters for Mark Meadows. This ratchets up Trump's self immolation and self incrimination. Hugo Lowell in The Guardian with the scoop quote. For several minutes of the audio recording, the sources said, Trump talks about how he cannot discuss the document because he no longer possesses the sweeping presidential power to declassify now out of office, but suggests that he should have done so when he was still in the White House, and yet on the tape he discusses the document that he says he cannot legally discuss anymore. The Trump smoking gun tape has remarkable synchronicity with the Watergate smoking gun tape, which ended the Nixon presidency, The one from six days after the Watergate break in in which Richard Nixon orders and gives specific ideas for the cover up in which he pre confesses to all the crimes of the calendar. The Supreme Court ordered that tape released on July twenty fourth, nineteen seventy four, and within two weeks Nixon was an ex president and for a time at least was facing prosecution. And now, as I outlined in Wednesday Night's special bulletin edition of this podcast, there is a Trump smoking gun tape in which Trump two pre confesses the story that in July twenty twenty one, Trump regaled two ghostwriters for Meadows autobiography with tales of this Mark mill four page plan for war with Iran, and he seemed to be holding the actual Iran document in his hands. The writers were taping the conversation. Trump's press deputy, Margot Martin, was taping the conversation. Trump knew they were taping the conversation. Thus there is a real time recording of him breaking the law by revealing the existence of the secret document to people who were not allowed to know that it existed. And in the same recording he breaks the law again by revealing the outlines of a military war plan. And in the same recording he reveals the limitations of his right even as president to declassify the document he is illegally quoting Richard Nixon would get a headache from all this. CNN broke the original story, and I promulgated last night's special edition. Every major news organization has produced its own version, adding some details clarifying others. The New York Times confirms something you will hear about in depth shortly that Trump was recorded on many occasions in twenty twenty one for books and other purposes, and his aide, Miss Martin, did the recording. The Times ads investigators have several, if not all, of the recordings of book interviews that mister Trump gave. In one interview, mister Trump said he had taken nothing of great urgency when asked if he had anything in his possession unquote, echoing his answer in the town Hall about whether he'd shown secret documents to anyone not really. Back in The Guardian, Hugo Lowell reports that the Milli document in question, which The Times notes Trump was wrong about it was not written by Millie, was returned to the National Archives. It is not still out there loose in Jersey somewhere. Quoting Loll Trump's lawyers identified in what was returned to nar a document matching the characterization of the classified report on Iran referenced than the July twenty twenty one recording. The Washington Post defintely begins its piece by writing special counsel Jack Smith has obtained a twenty twenty one recording in which Donald Trump appears to brag about having a classified document related to Iran, brag being a stronger word than used in any other report, and also an interesting bit for the Freudians, given that the name of the Manhattan District attorney who indicted Trump is Brag. The right wing media, when they have even bothered with this story, have stuck to the predictable angle that this is not about classified documents, that this is about our hero, Donald Jesus Trump averting war with Iran by repeatedly rejecting the entreaties of the warmongers like Mark Milly. Current Trump attorney James Trusty stuck to the magic wand theory in an interview late last night with CNN, namely that Trump could have easily declassified the Iran document and anything else early on his flight to marri Lago from Washington on January twentieth, twenty one, one, As if this were Frickin' Hogwarts and Trump was Harry Potter, though the Hogwarts part fits. And with that the story as I covered it, and last night's bullet the smoking Gun, Donald Trump is on tape not just admitting that after he left office he kept classified top secret military plans for an American attack on Iran, for war against Iran, not just admitting he kept those, but boasting he kept those and describing the details of the American attack strategy on Iran and attributing the document and the plans to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and describing the document at least four people, none of whom had the requisite security clearance to even know that the document existed, let alone hear any of the details, and saying he would like to share those details with them, and then acknowledging he couldn't share those details with them, because even an ex president can't just declassify whatever he wants and acting as if he is holding the top secret documents in his hands and he is talking about them. And this happened in a conversation that took place not at Mari Lago, but at his other golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, and the recorded conversation took place in July twenty twenty one, before Trump had returned any of the documents he stole, and two of the other people were there working on the autobiography of his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and one of the others was Trump's former White House press aide, Margo Martin. And Trump knew he was being recorded, and there is some indication now that Trump demanded that he be recorded, and the story of this meeting appears in the Mark Meadows autobiography. And this may only be the tip of the Trump tapes. Iceberg, quoting CNN's exclusive during the summer of twenty twenty one, sources say multiple people were making recordings of Trump as he held conversations with journalists and biographers unquote. And this tape is in the hands of Special Counsel Jack Smith, and Trump's lawyers should be meeting with Smith now and asking for a plea deal now, because on this tape, Trump not only confesses to repeated violations of the Espionage Act worth ten years in jail per violation, but maybe even more importantly than the galling thought of this thug Trump stealing our military plans for attacking Iran and keeping them at some cheesy golf course in New Jersey. More galling than that, Trump, in his own words on his own tape, also erases the pillar of his specious defense that a president can declassify anything he wants to just by thinking about it or saying it or it's automatic. He is, in one two minute span, literally committing one crime, confessing to other crimes, disavowing his only possible defense for committing any of the crimes, admitting he knew in real time that sharing classified information was itself a crime, and expanding the scope of where he illegally kept classified documents not just in mar Lago but in New Jersey. The smoking gun, and with that little throwaway line about multiple people making recordings of Trump in twenty twenty one, not just the smoking gun, but very likely a smoking gun in a weapons depot full of nothing but smoking guns. Ask Jack Smith for a plea deal. Hell, Trump should just cut to the chase and ask President Biden for a pardon deal, because if you have not had enough crime cliches yet. In the smoking Guns and the tips of icebergs, there is also the inevitable can of worms, because apart from the crimes on the Trump tape, the ones we already know about, the ones there is already hard evidence of. In his own voice on the Trump Tape, the first Trump Tape, Trump was willing to break the law and reveal the existence of an ultra secret, classified military war document about bombing Iran for the purpose of trying to make Mark Milli look bad after a series of articles had just come out two years ago in which it was revealed Milli had gone above and beyond the call of duty to put obstacles in the way of Trump launching a preemptive attack on Iran in the waning days of his administration, kind of international Reichstag fire as a pretext for Trump to declare state of emergency in this country, yet another prong of Trump's multifaceted coup attempt. Trump was waving around the Iran Plan or papers he implied were the Iran Plan in order to refute Milli, to show that Milli was just as ready to bomb Iran as he was. Trump was willing to break these laws, willing to share our war plans on how if we had to to bomb Iran and subvert the entire necessary security structures of this country to make himself look better on one or two pages on one of the hundreds of books about his damnable administration. He was willing to do it with, not necessarily Mark Meadows. We have no indication that Mark Meadows was at this meeting. He was willing to do it with two researchers who helped Meadows with the book and didn't even get credited on the cover or the jacket, and Hugo Lowell in The Guardian now adds this document was classified quote secret unquote, and that the Trump aid Margot Martin, was asked about this milli iran document in front of the Grand Jury in March, and she also had her laptop and her electronic devices imaged by the Department of Justice. And also that it was Trump who wanted the meeting with the Meadows people recorded because he doesn't trust journalists. But now comes the question if he was willing to tell them about this, who else was he willing to confirm to the existence of this document or willing to read it to, or show it to or sell it to. Would another government in the Middle East want to hear about American plans to bomb Iran? What Israel? What Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia, with whom Trump has had a series of intricate business deals for decades, including the promotion of this sportswashing Saudi Live Golf tour. Just last week, The New York Times reported the Jacksmith's office had issued subpoenas to all the Trump companies for all business dealings since twenty seventeen with seven specific countries, including Saudi Arabia, Oman, the Ua, Kuwait. All of it based on a theory that the documents he stole may have found their way into those Trump business dealings with those countries. Is the Milli Iran Plan document? One of those documents. Did it go to the Saudis? If it did, here we are back again in eighteen US Code seven ninety four. Gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government, giving a foreign government our defense information and a plan promulgated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for starting a war and bombing Iran. You know that would fall under the definition of defense information. Anybody guilty of doing that quote shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life, except that the sentence of death shall not be imposed unless the jury further finds that the offense resulted in the identification by a foreign power of an individual acting as an agent of the United States, and consequently the death of that individual, or it directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, early warning systems, or other means of defense or retaliation against large scale attack, semi coolon war plans, semi colon communications, intelligence or cryptographic information, semicolon, or any other major weapons system or major element or defense strategy. How many of those did he do? In this five six seven, I have moved away from what we have just learned on this watershed day to what might be out there yet to learn. And even I don't really think that anybody would try to prosecute a death penalty case against Donald Trump. But we sure as hell have not moved that far away from what we already do know, and it is already serious enough that we are not far from quote shall be punished by death or by the imprisonment for any term of years or for life. And just listen to this quotation that is almost certainly drawn from the meeting at which Trump seemed to brandish the Milli memo as it is described in the Meadows book. And sorry, I'm not buying the whole book to read the whole excerpt. I'm not given Mark Meadows my checks Amazon for price of book six dollars and sixty five cents. Trump Meadows or ghost writers rights quote recalls a four page report typed up by Mark Milly himself. It contained the general's own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency. Unquote. In the Meadows autobiography version of the meeting, Jack Smith has this recording of Trump revealed enough that just repeating all that in that loan quote or more to the Saudis or to anybody else, to the Canadians, that is eighteen US Code seven ninety four, gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government espionage prison. There are four other very relevant points here. Who gave Jack Smith the tape gave or gave up mentioned that. Nowhere in the CNN piece is there anything indicating that Mark Meadows was at the Smoking Gun meeting that was recorded. But there's certainly nothing indicating that the tape, which was recording an interview conducted for meadows own autobiography would not belong to Meadows or at minimum to his publisher. Or then there is this alternate theory that perhaps this is the Margo Martin tape, and Meadows is obviously not the only possible source for the tape, but he is one of the possibilities, probably the lead possibility, and that in turn again raises the possibility that Mark Meadows has flipped on Donald Trump. It's only last Wednesday that CNN put out a story reading quote a source close to Trump's legal team said Trump's lawyers have had no contact with Meadows and his team and are in the dark on what Meadows is doing in the investigation. It also quoted one Trump advisor as saying, we've all heard the same rumors. No one really knows what he's doing. Though, sounds like what Mark Meadows was doing was doing a thorough inventory of every damn thing Trump said on damn tapes. Second additional point, we know from CNN and other reporting that Smith's team has asked General Milly about the document about the Trump tape. First Trump tape, it seems that was not in front of the grand jury, but in an interview, but it's weirdly phrased in the CNN piece. Others have clearly been asked about it on the record in front of the jurors, including Margot Martin of Trump's staff. Third additional point. Up until this story, almost everything leaking out of the Special Council's Office has been about Trump committing obstruction of justice, hiding documents, hiding documents from his own attorney, having a box mover who was caught on security tape who knows nothing about anything or penis, but is somehow clever enough to suddenly go ask the Marri Lago it guy how long before mister phelps this tape will self destruct? But this story is about the meat of an underlying crime, the theft of secret war plans. Not of obstruction, not of destruction of evidence, but of stealing a classified document, sharing knowledge of its existence with people who are not supposed to know of its existence, including book researchers, for Christ's sakes, pining to read it to them, making veiled references to its contents, but aware guilty for knowledge, aware that he is prevented by law from doing so, and could not just declassify stuff at will. This is the meal, and the obstruction is just the dessert. Federal prosecutors occasionally prosecute just the dessert, but they are much more likely to prosecute him diduction if there is something substantial behind the obstruction and if the perpetrator knew he would be committing a crime. If he committed a crime and then he goes and commits the crime, that's pretty substantial. Plus the document. As the former Trump lawyer Ty Cobbs said on CNN about the Special Council's Office right now, quote, I think they have their foot on Trump's neck. And the fourth and final additional point Bedminster. This happened at Bedminster, not at Mari Lago. And if for some reason the Special Council's Office has not yet done an inch by inch search there, it needs to be out there by sunrise. Where is this document now? Is it still at Bedminster? Should we go and get it? And it moves an inn at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster from the macabre and the silly and the category of great joke, buzz I must tell Muffy, let's go go to Martini to the category of is this possible? I mean what follows is I hope pure political science fiction and the product of having read every single Sherlock Holmes story and seeing way too much Monty Python. I hope this is as crazy as it might sound. But all of a sudden, I'm not sure anymore. You are Trump. You have this ultra secret military national defense document, and one of your attorneys finds out and he tells you in twenty twenty one or twenty twenty two that if they find it here, they can prosecute you, and if they convict you, they could put you in jail for the rest of your life or worse. You must return this document immediately and hope they let it go. But your Trump, of course, you will not return it. You're Trump, You're immortal, You're guilty of nothing. You never do what somebody tells you too, that's for suckers. But the Iran document could be damning somehow. You know this through the haze of your own ego. You know you have to get rid of it. What do you do with it? You can't destroy it, you can't burn it. What if you somehow leave evidence that you did that? Now there would be two charges against you. What do you do with that document stolen war plans at Bedminster? Where could you put it where they'll not only never find it, but never think to look for it. Moreover, where they would never have the audacity to search for it. On Wednesday, July twentieth, twenty twenty two, at the Bedminster Golf Course in Bedminster, New Jersey, the First Tea and the Magnificent Main Golf Clubhouse, the body of Ivanna Marie is On Eichkova Trump, first wife of the forty fifth President of the United States, was laid to rest in a beautiful private ceremony, buried quote in a rose gold hued casket unquote very large, rose gold hewed casket. Never mind, lock her up, dig her up. Okay. The rest of this podcast is the original episode from Wednesday, May thirty first, So if you've heard it already, no need to listen again to how the LA Dodgers screwed up Pride Night beyond all recognition, or how Mike Flynn is now selling sperm and I will not take it personally if you hit stop right now. I hope to update this for a new Thursday, June first edition, but there's one more complication. Turns out. I may have walking pneumonia, just walking pneumonia. No boogie woogie flu. I've actually been off and on woozy the last few weeks. The voice is beginning to go, finally getting it looked at, and I have the stamina of This is how not good I feel. I don't feel good enough to come up with another simile. Sorry, Keith at his doctors. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith over me. This is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Aulberman in sports. How could it possibly go more wrong for the Los Angeles Dodgers. First, they invited a satirical fundraising drag group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Pride Night at Dodgers Stadium. Then, when the infamous Catholic League, which is actually just one obnoxious guy named Bill, came after them for doing that, they disinvited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from Pride Night. Then, after blowback, including support for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from actual Catholic nuns, the Dodgers reinvited them. On Monday. Relief pitcher Anthony Bass of the Toronto Blue Jays posted a video from some guy calling for boycotts of Target and Bud happily leaving the Dodgers out of it. This is evil, This is demonic, said the video that Bass posted. Yesterday, Bass issued a stiff, thirty second apology that looked like a very well rehearsed live hostage video. A baseball blogger named Tyrone Palmer noted Anthony Bass is calling for a boycott of Target. Judging by his four point five zero er and four walks per nine innings, it looks like he's been boycotting targets all season long. Almost simultaneous to Bass's forced to apology, another mediocre pitcher named Trevor Williams of Washington Nationals posted a two screenshot screed in which he said he was quote deeply troubled that the Dodgers were inviting the Sisters, claimed the decision was a quote violation of the Dodgers' discrimination policy, and encouraged his quote fellow Catholics to reconsider their support of an organization that allows this kind of mockery of its fans to occur. Williams is not quite as bad as Bass, but if he disappeared from baseball tomorrow, you probably would not notice, and he might because while he might not be as bad as Bass. Bass also did not attack another team, the La Dodgers, no less, and encouraged fans to boycott them. You're in the same business, pal, or at least you were. The whole thing just keeps getting worse and worse because of one decision. This Catholic league, which convinced the Dodgers to uninvite these crazy drag nuns, is actually just one guy named Bill Donahue, a loud mouthed homophobe and bully. All the cable networks figured him out in the nineties and stopped putting him on. When the Dodgers finally figured that out, they reversed course and reinvited the Sisters. But then last week, the Dodgers team leader, the veteran pitcher Clayton Kershaw, personally announced that the Dodgers would also be staging Christian Faith and Family Day after an interruption that began with the pandemic. Now it becomes evident that Kershaw decided to announce this himself. Quote. I think we were always going to do Christian Faith Day this year, but I think the timing of our announcement was sped up, Kershaw told the La Times. Yes, it was in response to the highlighting of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence by the Dodgers. So Kershaw announced his team was going to hold a Christian event, boxing the Dodgers into holding the Christian event. The team will not comment about its own star and just complicate this more. Kershaw has always participated in Pride Night, Quoting him again, this has nothing to do with the LGBTQ community or Pride or anything like that. This is simply a group that was making fun of a religion that I don't agree with. Moral When Bill Donahue of the Catholic quote league unquote calls, whatever bad thing you think he's trying to make happen, there is really only one bad thing that can happen, and that is this. You can forget that when Bill Donahue calls, you most immediately hang up on him. Another moment of baseball fund At least this one's between the lines sort of. First, the Houston Astros mocked the fans of the Oakland A's, the moribund, lame duct team that's probably moving to Las Vegas after ownership basically starved the franchise to death over the last five years. The Astros tweeted a video of their offensive explosion in Oakland recently with this caption ten runs in front of tens of fans. This was retweeted forty six hundred times. It got seventeen thousand likes and seven million views, and then amid the criticism, the Astros deleted the tweets, thereby making it twice as bad. And the beginning of the end of TV sports as we know it is underway or something like that. The terminology here gets kind of confusing. The Sports Business Journal reports that Diamond Sports Group, which runs the Bally Sports regional Networks, which carried dozens of local team broadcasts in many sports and which went bankrupt in March, has for the first time forfeited its rights to one of those teams games. It has told the San Diego Padres it will not be making its next payment to them on the twenty year one point two billion dollar deal, and so the TV rights for the Padres revert back to the Padres. And I guess now the announcers will just have to go door to door every morning asking if anybody wants to watch that night's game and how much they'd be willing to pay for it, Thank you, Nancy Faust. And if you're wondering where tennis gets its reputation for disconnection from reality. At the French Open, Marta Kostiuk lost to number two women seed Arena Sabelenka. Costiuk refused to shake Sabolenka's hand after the match. She never shakes Sabolenka's hand after the match, and they always play and yes, it is because Costiuk is from Ukraine and Sabolenka is from Belarus, which supports Russia's terrorism in Ukraine. And Costiuk will not shake her hand and did not shake her hand, and the French Open crowd at Roland Garo Stadium promptly booed the Ukrainian for not shaking her hand. And this is how stupid that is. Costiuc of Ukraine said she was embarrassed for the French crowd for booing her, But then Sabolenka of Belarus said even she was amazed that the French crowd had booed Costiuk. When both players in this dynamic say you've screwed up you've screwed up coming up. One day, I was the mild mannered host of a mild mannered news magazine on MSNBC that led the show with stories like, oh, the new edition of the Farmer's Almanac is out, let's go live to the publisher, or tonight we devote the hour to Saturday Night Live's newest breakout star, Chris Catan. And then the next day I was anchoring the State of the Union broadcast and getting quoted by politicians as I was yesterday by Chip Next First, the daily round up of the miss Grants, Morons and Dunning Kruger EFTs specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world The Bronze. Kayleie Campbell Layton, posting on Facebook identifying as the wife of Ryan Layton, a marine based in twenty nine Palms, California, quote, Biden left many military service dogs to die in cobble after the evacuation. I'm calling for public execution of this old man, and you can't change my mind. Now. I'm a dog lover, and the fate of the service dogs in Afghanistan grieves me, as any dog at risk grieves me. And this woman has also done the military is racist against white people posts and videos about target and she should have been arrested already for this threat against the president, and her husband needs to be thrown out of the Marines and directly into well. I'm assuming Congress Ryan chip Layton runner up, Elon Musk shot and Chaser time shot. We all told him so. We told him the blue checks are not status symbols, they're ID cards, but he didn't listen because he's a super genius. Yesterday, an account called aoc press began impersonating Congresswoman Alexandria Orcasio Cortes, and it had a blue check mark, and some of its tweets included wild policy statements, and thus the new cognizantity of Twitter. Those with grilled cheese for brains, who also paid ninety six dollars a year for a blue check mark that's bigger than their private parts, they began to believe it really was the congresswoman saying these stupid things. And that's when Musk replied to one of the fake accounts tweets thereby amplifying it no pain, no gain, also no brain, no pain, and no brain, no shame. If that's the shot. Here's the chaser. Yesterday, Fidelity Investments, which put money in when Musk bought Twitter, wrote down the value of its share of the company and his He bought it for forty four billion. Fidelity says it is now worth fifteen billion. Elon bought it all right, but the winner Michael Flynn, Yeah, that one, not the whole treason and overthrowing the government start. This is his new venture. He is described as a founding partner of for the Viewer, which is one stop shopping for the vaxer crowd. Quote an online community of health conscious COVID nineteen unvaccinated people, where health conscious individuals who have rejected the vaccine can connect and find everything they need. Friendships, dating, curated news, service providers, doctors, blood donors, fertility options, jobs, shopping events, etc. Wait what was that last one? And blood donors No, no, no, before that, doctors, blood donors, fertility options, fertility options. You mean you mean it's an unvaccinated sperm bank. Michael Flynn is now selling unvaccinated sperm. Michael Well selling sperm? Is I guess better than selling out the country.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. It's the smoking gun that keeps on smoking. Now. We are reliably informed that on the Bedminster tape, the Trump tape, the first Trump tape, Trump is heard lamenting that he did not declassify the Mark milly Iran document that he's talking about with the ghostwriters for Mark Meadows. This ratchets up Trump's self immolation and self incrimination. Hugo Lowell in The Guardian with the scoop quote. For several minutes of the audio recording, the sources said, Trump talks about how he cannot discuss the document because he no longer possesses the sweeping presidential power to declassify now out of office, but suggests that he should have done so when he was still in the White House, and yet on the tape he discusses the document that he says he cannot legally discuss anymore. The Trump smoking gun tape has remarkable synchronicity with the Watergate smoking gun tape, which ended the Nixon presidency, The one from six days after the Watergate break in in which Richard Nixon orders and gives specific ideas for the cover up in which he pre confesses to all the crimes of the calendar. The Supreme Court ordered that tape released on July twenty fourth, nineteen seventy four, and within two weeks Nixon was an ex president and for a time at least was facing prosecution. And now, as I outlined in Wednesday Night's special bulletin edition of this podcast, there is a Trump smoking gun tape in which Trump two pre confesses the story that in July twenty twenty one, Trump regaled two ghostwriters for Meadows autobiography with tales of this Mark mill four page plan for war with Iran, and he seemed to be holding the actual Iran document in his hands. The writers were taping the conversation. Trump's press deputy, Margot Martin, was taping the conversation. Trump knew they were taping the conversation. Thus there is a real time recording of him breaking the law by revealing the existence of the secret document to people who were not allowed to know that it existed. And in the same recording he breaks the law again by revealing the outlines of a military war plan. And in the same recording he reveals the limitations of his right even as president to declassify the document he is illegally quoting Richard Nixon would get a headache from all this. CNN broke the original story, and I promulgated last night's special edition. Every major news organization has produced its own version, adding some details clarifying others. The New York Times confirms something you will hear about in depth shortly that Trump was recorded on many occasions in twenty twenty one for books and other purposes, and his aide, Miss Martin, did the recording. The Times ads investigators have several, if not all, of the recordings of book interviews that mister Trump gave. In one interview, mister Trump said he had taken nothing of great urgency when asked if he had anything in his possession unquote, echoing his answer in the town Hall about whether he'd shown secret documents to anyone not really. Back in The Guardian, Hugo Lowell reports that the Milli document in question, which The Times notes Trump was wrong about it was not written by Millie, was returned to the National Archives. It is not still out there loose in Jersey somewhere. Quoting Loll Trump's lawyers identified in what was returned to nar a document matching the characterization of the classified report on Iran referenced than the July twenty twenty one recording. The Washington Post defintely begins its piece by writing special counsel Jack Smith has obtained a twenty twenty one recording in which Donald Trump appears to brag about having a classified document related to Iran, brag being a stronger word than used in any other report, and also an interesting bit for the Freudians, given that the name of the Manhattan District attorney who indicted Trump is Brag. The right wing media, when they have even bothered with this story, have stuck to the predictable angle that this is not about classified documents, that this is about our hero, Donald Jesus Trump averting war with Iran by repeatedly rejecting the entreaties of the warmongers like Mark Milly. Current Trump attorney James Trusty stuck to the magic wand theory in an interview late last night with CNN, namely that Trump could have easily declassified the Iran document and anything else early on his flight to marri Lago from Washington on January twentieth, twenty one, one, As if this were Frickin' Hogwarts and Trump was Harry Potter, though the Hogwarts part fits. And with that the story as I covered it, and last night's bullet the smoking Gun, Donald Trump is on tape not just admitting that after he left office he kept classified top secret military plans for an American attack on Iran, for war against Iran, not just admitting he kept those, but boasting he kept those and describing the details of the American attack strategy on Iran and attributing the document and the plans to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and describing the document at least four people, none of whom had the requisite security clearance to even know that the document existed, let alone hear any of the details, and saying he would like to share those details with them, and then acknowledging he couldn't share those details with them, because even an ex president can't just declassify whatever he wants and acting as if he is holding the top secret documents in his hands and he is talking about them. And this happened in a conversation that took place not at Mari Lago, but at his other golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, and the recorded conversation took place in July twenty twenty one, before Trump had returned any of the documents he stole, and two of the other people were there working on the autobiography of his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and one of the others was Trump's former White House press aide, Margo Martin. And Trump knew he was being recorded, and there is some indication now that Trump demanded that he be recorded, and the story of this meeting appears in the Mark Meadows autobiography. And this may only be the tip of the Trump tapes. Iceberg, quoting CNN's exclusive during the summer of twenty twenty one, sources say multiple people were making recordings of Trump as he held conversations with journalists and biographers unquote. And this tape is in the hands of Special Counsel Jack Smith, and Trump's lawyers should be meeting with Smith now and asking for a plea deal now, because on this tape, Trump not only confesses to repeated violations of the Espionage Act worth ten years in jail per violation, but maybe even more importantly than the galling thought of this thug Trump stealing our military plans for attacking Iran and keeping them at some cheesy golf course in New Jersey. More galling than that, Trump, in his own words on his own tape, also erases the pillar of his specious defense that a president can declassify anything he wants to just by thinking about it or saying it or it's automatic. He is, in one two minute span, literally committing one crime, confessing to other crimes, disavowing his only possible defense for committing any of the crimes, admitting he knew in real time that sharing classified information was itself a crime, and expanding the scope of where he illegally kept classified documents not just in mar Lago but in New Jersey. The smoking gun, and with that little throwaway line about multiple people making recordings of Trump in twenty twenty one, not just the smoking gun, but very likely a smoking gun in a weapons depot full of nothing but smoking guns. Ask Jack Smith for a plea deal. Hell, Trump should just cut to the chase and ask President Biden for a pardon deal, because if you have not had enough crime cliches yet. In the smoking Guns and the tips of icebergs, there is also the inevitable can of worms, because apart from the crimes on the Trump tape, the ones we already know about, the ones there is already hard evidence of. In his own voice on the Trump Tape, the first Trump Tape, Trump was willing to break the law and reveal the existence of an ultra secret, classified military war document about bombing Iran for the purpose of trying to make Mark Milli look bad after a series of articles had just come out two years ago in which it was revealed Milli had gone above and beyond the call of duty to put obstacles in the way of Trump launching a preemptive attack on Iran in the waning days of his administration, kind of international Reichstag fire as a pretext for Trump to declare state of emergency in this country, yet another prong of Trump's multifaceted coup attempt. Trump was waving around the Iran Plan or papers he implied were the Iran Plan in order to refute Milli, to show that Milli was just as ready to bomb Iran as he was. Trump was willing to break these laws, willing to share our war plans on how if we had to to bomb Iran and subvert the entire necessary security structures of this country to make himself look better on one or two pages on one of the hundreds of books about his damnable administration. He was willing to do it with, not necessarily Mark Meadows. We have no indication that Mark Meadows was at this meeting. He was willing to do it with two researchers who helped Meadows with the book and didn't even get credited on the cover or the jacket, and Hugo Lowell in The Guardian now adds this document was classified quote secret unquote, and that the Trump aid Margot Martin, was asked about this milli iran document in front of the Grand Jury in March, and she also had her laptop and her electronic devices imaged by the Department of Justice. And also that it was Trump who wanted the meeting with the Meadows people recorded because he doesn't trust journalists. But now comes the question if he was willing to tell them about this, who else was he willing to confirm to the existence of this document or willing to read it to, or show it to or sell it to. Would another government in the Middle East want to hear about American plans to bomb Iran? What Israel? What Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia, with whom Trump has had a series of intricate business deals for decades, including the promotion of this sportswashing Saudi Live Golf tour. Just last week, The New York Times reported the Jacksmith's office had issued subpoenas to all the Trump companies for all business dealings since twenty seventeen with seven specific countries, including Saudi Arabia, Oman, the Ua, Kuwait. All of it based on a theory that the documents he stole may have found their way into those Trump business dealings with those countries. Is the Milli Iran Plan document? One of those documents. Did it go to the Saudis? If it did, here we are back again in eighteen US Code seven ninety four. Gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government, giving a foreign government our defense information and a plan promulgated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for starting a war and bombing Iran. You know that would fall under the definition of defense information. Anybody guilty of doing that quote shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life, except that the sentence of death shall not be imposed unless the jury further finds that the offense resulted in the identification by a foreign power of an individual acting as an agent of the United States, and consequently the death of that individual, or it directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, early warning systems, or other means of defense or retaliation against large scale attack, semi coolon war plans, semi colon communications, intelligence or cryptographic information, semicolon, or any other major weapons system or major element or defense strategy. How many of those did he do? In this five six seven, I have moved away from what we have just learned on this watershed day to what might be out there yet to learn. And even I don't really think that anybody would try to prosecute a death penalty case against Donald Trump. But we sure as hell have not moved that far away from what we already do know, and it is already serious enough that we are not far from quote shall be punished by death or by the imprisonment for any term of years or for life. And just listen to this quotation that is almost certainly drawn from the meeting at which Trump seemed to brandish the Milli memo as it is described in the Meadows book. And sorry, I'm not buying the whole book to read the whole excerpt. I'm not given Mark Meadows my checks Amazon for price of book six dollars and sixty five cents. Trump Meadows or ghost writers rights quote recalls a four page report typed up by Mark Milly himself. It contained the general's own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency. Unquote. In the Meadows autobiography version of the meeting, Jack Smith has this recording of Trump revealed enough that just repeating all that in that loan quote or more to the Saudis or to anybody else, to the Canadians, that is eighteen US Code seven ninety four, gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government espionage prison. There are four other very relevant points here. Who gave Jack Smith the tape gave or gave up mentioned that. Nowhere in the CNN piece is there anything indicating that Mark Meadows was at the Smoking Gun meeting that was recorded. But there's certainly nothing indicating that the tape, which was recording an interview conducted for meadows own autobiography would not belong to Meadows or at minimum to his publisher. Or then there is this alternate theory that perhaps this is the Margo Martin tape, and Meadows is obviously not the only possible source for the tape, but he is one of the possibilities, probably the lead possibility, and that in turn again raises the possibility that Mark Meadows has flipped on Donald Trump. It's only last Wednesday that CNN put out a story reading quote a source close to Trump's legal team said Trump's lawyers have had no contact with Meadows and his team and are in the dark on what Meadows is doing in the investigation. It also quoted one Trump advisor as saying, we've all heard the same rumors. No one really knows what he's doing. Though, sounds like what Mark Meadows was doing was doing a thorough inventory of every damn thing Trump said on damn tapes. Second additional point, we know from CNN and other reporting that Smith's team has asked General Milly about the document about the Trump tape. First Trump tape, it seems that was not in front of the grand jury, but in an interview, but it's weirdly phrased in the CNN piece. Others have clearly been asked about it on the record in front of the jurors, including Margot Martin of Trump's staff. Third additional point. Up until this story, almost everything leaking out of the Special Council's Office has been about Trump committing obstruction of justice, hiding documents, hiding documents from his own attorney, having a box mover who was caught on security tape who knows nothing about anything or penis, but is somehow clever enough to suddenly go ask the Marri Lago it guy how long before mister phelps this tape will self destruct? But this story is about the meat of an underlying crime, the theft of secret war plans. Not of obstruction, not of destruction of evidence, but of stealing a classified document, sharing knowledge of its existence with people who are not supposed to know of its existence, including book researchers, for Christ's sakes, pining to read it to them, making veiled references to its contents, but aware guilty for knowledge, aware that he is prevented by law from doing so, and could not just declassify stuff at will. This is the meal, and the obstruction is just the dessert. Federal prosecutors occasionally prosecute just the dessert, but they are much more likely to prosecute him diduction if there is something substantial behind the obstruction and if the perpetrator knew he would be committing a crime. If he committed a crime and then he goes and commits the crime, that's pretty substantial. Plus the document. As the former Trump lawyer Ty Cobbs said on CNN about the Special Council's Office right now, quote, I think they have their foot on Trump's neck. And the fourth and final additional point Bedminster. This happened at Bedminster, not at Mari Lago. And if for some reason the Special Council's Office has not yet done an inch by inch search there, it needs to be out there by sunrise. Where is this document now? Is it still at Bedminster? Should we go and get it? And it moves an inn at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster from the macabre and the silly and the category of great joke, buzz I must tell Muffy, let's go go to Martini to the category of is this possible? I mean what follows is I hope pure political science fiction and the product of having read every single Sherlock Holmes story and seeing way too much Monty Python. I hope this is as crazy as it might sound. But all of a sudden, I'm not sure anymore. You are Trump. You have this ultra secret military national defense document, and one of your attorneys finds out and he tells you in twenty twenty one or twenty twenty two that if they find it here, they can prosecute you, and if they convict you, they could put you in jail for the rest of your life or worse. You must return this document immediately and hope they let it go. But your Trump, of course, you will not return it. You're Trump, You're immortal, You're guilty of nothing. You never do what somebody tells you too, that's for suckers. But the Iran document could be damning somehow. You know this through the haze of your own ego. You know you have to get rid of it. What do you do with it? You can't destroy it, you can't burn it. What if you somehow leave evidence that you did that? Now there would be two charges against you. What do you do with that document stolen war plans at Bedminster? Where could you put it where they'll not only never find it, but never think to look for it. Moreover, where they would never have the audacity to search for it. On Wednesday, July twentieth, twenty twenty two, at the Bedminster Golf Course in Bedminster, New Jersey, the First Tea and the Magnificent Main Golf Clubhouse, the body of Ivanna Marie is On Eichkova Trump, first wife of the forty fifth President of the United States, was laid to rest in a beautiful private ceremony, buried quote in a rose gold hued casket unquote very large, rose gold hewed casket. Never mind, lock her up, dig her up. Okay. The rest of this podcast is the original episode from Wednesday, May thirty first, So if you've heard it already, no need to listen again to how the LA Dodgers screwed up Pride Night beyond all recognition, or how Mike Flynn is now selling sperm and I will not take it personally if you hit stop right now. I hope to update this for a new Thursday, June first edition, but there's one more complication. Turns out. I may have walking pneumonia, just walking pneumonia. No boogie woogie flu. I've actually been off and on woozy the last few weeks. The voice is beginning to go, finally getting it looked at, and I have the stamina of This is how not good I feel. I don't feel good enough to come up with another simile. Sorry, Keith at his doctors. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith over me. This is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Aulberman in sports. How could it possibly go more wrong for the Los Angeles Dodgers. First, they invited a satirical fundraising drag group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Pride Night at Dodgers Stadium. Then, when the infamous Catholic League, which is actually just one obnoxious guy named Bill, came after them for doing that, they disinvited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from Pride Night. Then, after blowback, including support for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from actual Catholic nuns, the Dodgers reinvited them. On Monday. Relief pitcher Anthony Bass of the Toronto Blue Jays posted a video from some guy calling for boycotts of Target and Bud happily leaving the Dodgers out of it. This is evil, This is demonic, said the video that Bass posted. Yesterday, Bass issued a stiff, thirty second apology that looked like a very well rehearsed live hostage video. A baseball blogger named Tyrone Palmer noted Anthony Bass is calling for a boycott of Target. Judging by his four point five zero er and four walks per nine innings, it looks like he's been boycotting targets all season long. Almost simultaneous to Bass's forced to apology, another mediocre pitcher named Trevor Williams of Washington Nationals posted a two screenshot screed in which he said he was quote deeply troubled that the Dodgers were inviting the Sisters, claimed the decision was a quote violation of the Dodgers' discrimination policy, and encouraged his quote fellow Catholics to reconsider their support of an organization that allows this kind of mockery of its fans to occur. Williams is not quite as bad as Bass, but if he disappeared from baseball tomorrow, you probably would not notice, and he might because while he might not be as bad as Bass. Bass also did not attack another team, the La Dodgers, no less, and encouraged fans to boycott them. You're in the same business, pal, or at least you were. The whole thing just keeps getting worse and worse because of one decision. This Catholic league, which convinced the Dodgers to uninvite these crazy drag nuns, is actually just one guy named Bill Donahue, a loud mouthed homophobe and bully. All the cable networks figured him out in the nineties and stopped putting him on. When the Dodgers finally figured that out, they reversed course and reinvited the Sisters. But then last week, the Dodgers team leader, the veteran pitcher Clayton Kershaw, personally announced that the Dodgers would also be staging Christian Faith and Family Day after an interruption that began with the pandemic. Now it becomes evident that Kershaw decided to announce this himself. Quote. I think we were always going to do Christian Faith Day this year, but I think the timing of our announcement was sped up, Kershaw told the La Times. Yes, it was in response to the highlighting of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence by the Dodgers. So Kershaw announced his team was going to hold a Christian event, boxing the Dodgers into holding the Christian event. The team will not comment about its own star and just complicate this more. Kershaw has always participated in Pride Night, Quoting him again, this has nothing to do with the LGBTQ community or Pride or anything like that. This is simply a group that was making fun of a religion that I don't agree with. Moral When Bill Donahue of the Catholic quote league unquote calls, whatever bad thing you think he's trying to make happen, there is really only one bad thing that can happen, and that is this. You can forget that when Bill Donahue calls, you most immediately hang up on him. Another moment of baseball fund At least this one's between the lines sort of. First, the Houston Astros mocked the fans of the Oakland A's, the moribund, lame duct team that's probably moving to Las Vegas after ownership basically starved the franchise to death over the last five years. The Astros tweeted a video of their offensive explosion in Oakland recently with this caption ten runs in front of tens of fans. This was retweeted forty six hundred times. It got seventeen thousand likes and seven million views, and then amid the criticism, the Astros deleted the tweets, thereby making it twice as bad. And the beginning of the end of TV sports as we know it is underway or something like that. The terminology here gets kind of confusing. The Sports Business Journal reports that Diamond Sports Group, which runs the Bally Sports regional Networks, which carried dozens of local team broadcasts in many sports and which went bankrupt in March, has for the first time forfeited its rights to one of those teams games. It has told the San Diego Padres it will not be making its next payment to them on the twenty year one point two billion dollar deal, and so the TV rights for the Padres revert back to the Padres. And I guess now the announcers will just have to go door to door every morning asking if anybody wants to watch that night's game and how much they'd be willing to pay for it, Thank you, Nancy Faust. And if you're wondering where tennis gets its reputation for disconnection from reality. At the French Open, Marta Kostiuk lost to number two women seed Arena Sabelenka. Costiuk refused to shake Sabolenka's hand after the match. She never shakes Sabolenka's hand after the match, and they always play and yes, it is because Costiuk is from Ukraine and Sabolenka is from Belarus, which supports Russia's terrorism in Ukraine. And Costiuk will not shake her hand and did not shake her hand, and the French Open crowd at Roland Garo Stadium promptly booed the Ukrainian for not shaking her hand. And this is how stupid that is. Costiuc of Ukraine said she was embarrassed for the French crowd for booing her, But then Sabolenka of Belarus said even she was amazed that the French crowd had booed Costiuk. When both players in this dynamic say you've screwed up you've screwed up coming up. One day, I was the mild mannered host of a mild mannered news magazine on MSNBC that led the show with stories like, oh, the new edition of the Farmer's Almanac is out, let's go live to the publisher, or tonight we devote the hour to Saturday Night Live's newest breakout star, Chris Catan. And then the next day I was anchoring the State of the Union broadcast and getting quoted by politicians as I was yesterday by Chip Next First, the daily round up of the miss Grants, Morons and Dunning Kruger EFTs specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world The Bronze. Kayleie Campbell Layton, posting on Facebook identifying as the wife of Ryan Layton, a marine based in twenty nine Palms, California, quote, Biden left many military service dogs to die in cobble after the evacuation. I'm calling for public execution of this old man, and you can't change my mind. Now. I'm a dog lover, and the fate of the service dogs in Afghanistan grieves me, as any dog at risk grieves me. And this woman has also done the military is racist against white people posts and videos about target and she should have been arrested already for this threat against the president, and her husband needs to be thrown out of the Marines and directly into well. I'm assuming Congress Ryan chip Layton runner up, Elon Musk shot and Chaser time shot. We all told him so. We told him the blue checks are not status symbols, they're ID cards, but he didn't listen because he's a super genius. Yesterday, an account called aoc press began impersonating Congresswoman Alexandria Orcasio Cortes, and it had a blue check mark, and some of its tweets included wild policy statements, and thus the new cognizantity of Twitter. Those with grilled cheese for brains, who also paid ninety six dollars a year for a blue check mark that's bigger than their private parts, they began to believe it really was the congresswoman saying these stupid things. And that's when Musk replied to one of the fake accounts tweets thereby amplifying it no pain, no gain, also no brain, no pain, and no brain, no shame. If that's the shot. Here's the chaser. Yesterday, Fidelity Investments, which put money in when Musk bought Twitter, wrote down the value of its share of the company and his He bought it for forty four billion. Fidelity says it is now worth fifteen billion. Elon bought it all right, but the winner Michael Flynn, Yeah, that one, not the whole treason and overthrowing the government start. This is his new venture. He is described as a founding partner of for the Viewer, which is one stop shopping for the vaxer crowd. Quote an online community of health conscious COVID nineteen unvaccinated people, where health conscious individuals who have rejected the vaccine can connect and find everything they need. Friendships, dating, curated news, service providers, doctors, blood donors, fertility options, jobs, shopping events, etc. Wait what was that last one? And blood donors No, no, no, before that, doctors, blood donors, fertility options, fertility options. You mean you mean it's an unvaccinated sperm bank. Michael Flynn is now selling unvaccinated sperm. Michael Well selling sperm? Is I guess better than selling out the country.

Flynn two days worst person in the sperm.

Flynn two days worst person in the sperm.

Still ahead on Countdown. Chip Roy is not the first to invoke my name happily or otherwise in Congress or the Senate or whatnot. Dick Cheney and John McCain both muttered angry jokes in my direction within days of each other. And then there was the night I anchored the nineteen ninety eight State of the Union, when two weeks earlier I was not even a political correspondent, not even close. That's saga. Next. First, in each tradition of Countdown, we feature a dog. Indeed, you can help. Every dog has its day. This is about Bentley. Bentley is a big black dog with big ears, and he's pretty calm and pretty happy. And somebody in Fullerton, California rescued him from a pound and clearly did not quite get the whole what do we do next part and simply took Bentley to a dog boarding place, a kennel, an upscale kennel that calls itself a pet lodge, and it got him a space, and it left him there for two hundred and eighteen nights at thirty eight dollars a night and eighty four dollars to board one healthy dog. My friend Alana Rizzo from MLB network and her rescue. Gidri's Guardian is contributing to ransoming Bentley and she could use your financial help. You can find her on Twitter at Gidresguardian dot org or on my Twitter feeds. I thank you and Bentley thanks you from the Dog Hotel in California, where you can check out but you can never leave. Now to the number one story on the countdown and things I promised not to tell and the state of the Union nineteen ninety eight. When I left ESPN and signed with MSNBC the first time in nineteen ninety seven, it was not to become a political commentator nor even anchor. I went there to do what the president of NBC News America needed most, a live, hour long news magazine show from Secaucus, New Jersey. So unfocused that on consecutive nights we led with the threat of a terrorist group called al Qaeda, and then the next night we led with the publication of the Farmers Almanac. I mean, this was the news at eight pm, the lead story that published the Farmers Almanac. Again, here's our live guest, the publisher. Here's a gunner rain next year.

Still ahead on Countdown. Chip Roy is not the first to invoke my name happily or otherwise in Congress or the Senate or whatnot. Dick Cheney and John McCain both muttered angry jokes in my direction within days of each other. And then there was the night I anchored the nineteen ninety eight State of the Union, when two weeks earlier I was not even a political correspondent, not even close. That's saga. Next. First, in each tradition of Countdown, we feature a dog. Indeed, you can help. Every dog has its day. This is about Bentley. Bentley is a big black dog with big ears, and he's pretty calm and pretty happy. And somebody in Fullerton, California rescued him from a pound and clearly did not quite get the whole what do we do next part and simply took Bentley to a dog boarding place, a kennel, an upscale kennel that calls itself a pet lodge, and it got him a space, and it left him there for two hundred and eighteen nights at thirty eight dollars a night and eighty four dollars to board one healthy dog. My friend Alana Rizzo from MLB network and her rescue. Gidri's Guardian is contributing to ransoming Bentley and she could use your financial help. You can find her on Twitter at Gidresguardian dot org or on my Twitter feeds. I thank you and Bentley thanks you from the Dog Hotel in California, where you can check out but you can never leave. Now to the number one story on the countdown and things I promised not to tell and the state of the Union nineteen ninety eight. When I left ESPN and signed with MSNBC the first time in nineteen ninety seven, it was not to become a political commentator nor even anchor. I went there to do what the president of NBC News America needed most, a live, hour long news magazine show from Secaucus, New Jersey. So unfocused that on consecutive nights we led with the threat of a terrorist group called al Qaeda, and then the next night we led with the publication of the Farmers Almanac. I mean, this was the news at eight pm, the lead story that published the Farmers Almanac. Again, here's our live guest, the publisher. Here's a gunner rain next year.

I had.

I had.

Regrets. Anyway, the good part of the job was sports. I hosted baseball in the World Series and even did some Super Bowl stuff for NBC, and in mid January of nineteen ninety eight I flew to the West Coast to work on that and do this magazine show, The Big Show on MSNBC from entertainment venues in LA, most of them associated with NBC. On the afternoon of Tuesday, January twentieth, nineteen ninety eight, we were on the set of Third Rock from the Sun preparing to interview at Star John Liscow when my producer, Phil Griffins sidled over, You, my little friend, are about to become a political host. The President got caught with some chippy in the White House chippy, oh not sex. Sex looks like just you know, and then he lied about it in the deposition Saturday. I asked him how to the hell anybody knew about what the deposition said when it was just four days after he gave the deposition and those things are supposed to be you know, secret. Beach me Drudge put it out yesterday, and I asked him if credible news organizations like NBC were actually quoting an internet guy best known for his hat about what was a potentially impeachable offense. A lot of people were close on this story. Griffin said, we were close. Lisa Myers almost had it. Sunday Night. Newsweek finally put out a more detailed version about ninety minutes ago. It was their scoop. Drudge just stole it from them. I think it was Isakov who wrote it. You'll have to interview Tim Russer to lead the show. The president may resign. We'll do it from right here. You back that up. What was that you said, we'll do it from right here, part about the president resigning? Oh, yeah, the president might resign. Thus, half an hour later, I was hooked up my satellite with Tim Russard from the Washington Bureau, listening to him outline the possibilities that the president might resign before sunrise. I nodded with as much gravitas as I could fake, despite the elements of farce that were apparently obvious only to me in the story and in where I was seated. In the background of my close up stood the refrigerator from the kitchen set of Lithgo's show Third Rock from the Sun, and on the refrigerator, complete with its decorative magnets, speaking their silent and suddenly completely hip gag. The magnets were a banana surrounded on either side by a strawberry. Phil. I said to Phil, as we tried to plan a smooth transition from that taped Russert interview about the possibility from a resignation of the president, to a taped interview with John Lithgow, and then back to the live speculations of a couple of political writers for the rest of the hour. We're not going to have to do this every day, are we, Griffin laughed, Of course not. What do you think this is the end of the world. He was right. We did not do it every day. We did it for two hundred and eighteen consecutive shows, starting that night with the banana and the strawberry magnets over my shoulder. Our ratings kept doubling. Following Tuesday, my thirty eighth birthday, I was back in New York hosting a roundtable of political heavyweights in the hour leading up to Bill Clinton State of the Union address that night, and the lack of NBC News and Phil Griffin had decided that I should host a second live report once the NBC network guys Russert, Tom Brokaw a couple of others had wrapped up their analysis, which we were also carrying on MSNBC, so I would come on at eleven o'clock after Brokaw and Russert two hours, My little friend, this is our nightline. I was doing my best to keep a straight face when during a commercial break at maybe eleven forty five, maybe midnight, halfway through my wrap up show, Griffin materialized next to my anchor desk. He had this stunned but not unhappy look, like when he used to smoke a lot of dope when we worked together in the eighties. We have the preliminary ratings, my little friend, I hope you're sitting down, I pointed at myself seated in the chair. The pregame show that did a one point one. Our average rating at MSNBC before this presidential stuff came up had been an zero point three. This was now four times the previous ratings. In the past week, it had surged to an zero point six, and Griffin had insisted to me that Andy Lack was so happy he had wet his pants. But this is the kicker here, buddy. We have the immediate since the President finally stopped talking speech, did an eight, broke on Russer the wrap up, did an six. Since eleven o'clock, you've been doing a one point seven. You have had three times the audience of Tom Brokaw, three times the audience of the old man himself. This isn't just people crossing over from NBC to watch more. This is people watching the speech, turning off the old man, then turning back at eleven to watch you. I tried to assimilate what he was telling me. For the first time in my life, my ego refused to cooperate. The stage manager barked his queue of thirty seconds until the end of the commercial break. Phil Griffin shook my hand. Oh, and by the way, that thing you said at the start of the hour about it. It was as if the Intern had opened the door to the chamber and said, mister speaker, the President of the United States. That's already included in the Associated Press story one point seven, my little friend, don't f it up. Actually you can't f it up. We're in for the long haul now. Revel in it. Me quoted about the Clinton Lewinsky story in the main coverage of the State the Union address on the Associated Press Wire. Eight months after I stopped giving the scores of the Greater Stuttgart Invitational tennis tournament on ESPN, I had this sudden, horrible feeling that the usually slow to decide American viewing public had instantly concluded that, for some reason elusive even to me, they really like to hear me talk about the whereabouts of the president's penis. If I could have figured out how to f up the rest of the hour, I would have done it right then I didn't. The next day it got worse. The ratings were so great last night, buddy, they want us to go live every night at eight and eleven only about the President. The eleven is going to be called crisis in Washington. Finally we get what we want. Phil Griffin was dancing around, it'll be our nightline. Since joining MSNBC, I had not taken any time off, and I actually had a vacation booked in Hawaii the next week with a young lady. Uh yeah about that. Phil finally announced, well, that's what we have to talk about, Keith. They want you to commit to this for at least six weeks, so it's this or Hawaii. I explained Hawaii to Phil. Lac said he'd probably pay for you to go do that whenever this is over. I said, in my opinion that probably would not be good enough, and Griffin said neither did he, but that it was just for openers, and Lack told him that I could have three wishes, and I could anchor NBC nightly News at least on the weekends and a couple of times during the week Just personally, I'd recommend you do it. I got the impression that the show's going to happen whether we agree to it or not, Griffin said. He mentioned something about Brian Williams or maybe John Gibson being poor second choices, but viable ones. He said, viable ones. I told Phil I had some calls to make. Griffin suggested Lack needed a decision within the hour, that he wanted White House and Crisis on there that night. Wait, that didn't sound like what he'd called it before, Phil. Is it white House in crisis or Crisis in Washington? Phil Griffin seemed introspective for a moment, then got in touch with the news executive within what's the difference it's going to be our nightline. I almost suggested to him that that should be the title MSNBC presents it's going to be our Nightline. On and on This went for weeks four months. I mocked the story. The ratings went up. I tried to quit the show. The ratings went up. I gave a speech insulting the network for covering the story. Twenty four to seven. The ratings went up. Fox Sports approached me and offered me five times when NBC was paying me to go out to LA to do their sportscast LA, which was kind of near Hawaii, nowhere near the Clinton Lewinski story. And the ratings went up, and I was debating all this and the fact that I had a contract and I had agreed to do it. And then one night in early spring, I got home after another night of this crap. I put my feet up. I was half watching something on NBC while really just staring off into the distance, wondering what I had done to deserve this, mulling my own future, when the snare drum and the violent string section of an NBC news promo interrupted me. Wednesday, on a very special edition of Nightline, Jane Paully and the former Miss America. There she was for a second, had tilted her look grave, journalistic, even scholarly. Jane Paully, the ten year host of NBC's landmark Today Show, the one who had then switched to primetime because the journalism had slowly ebbed out of morning television and she couldn't do it anymore. She was sitting there in a two shot with a Miss America from too many Miss Americas ago, the former brunette, former redhead, now former blonde, whose jet black hair made her look a little frightening. Why the hell was Jane Paully interviewing her on the signature albeit superficial NBC thrice weekly magazine show Nightline No less Well, in a split second, the promo gave me my answer, Jane, did you have sex with the President of the United States? Ex Miss America? Yes, Yes I did, announcer That's Wednesday on a very special edition to Nightline only on NBC America's news source. With genuine terror, I screamed, I shouted aloud to no one, check please, and I called my agent to talk about Fox. I've done all the damage I can do. Here. Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, who are the countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Janelle, guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis. Courtesy of ESPN eight. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer was my friend Stevie van zandt everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight hundred and seventy sixth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Till then I'm the ever important policy Genius Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

Regrets. Anyway, the good part of the job was sports. I hosted baseball in the World Series and even did some Super Bowl stuff for NBC, and in mid January of nineteen ninety eight I flew to the West Coast to work on that and do this magazine show, The Big Show on MSNBC from entertainment venues in LA, most of them associated with NBC. On the afternoon of Tuesday, January twentieth, nineteen ninety eight, we were on the set of Third Rock from the Sun preparing to interview at Star John Liscow when my producer, Phil Griffins sidled over, You, my little friend, are about to become a political host. The President got caught with some chippy in the White House chippy, oh not sex. Sex looks like just you know, and then he lied about it in the deposition Saturday. I asked him how to the hell anybody knew about what the deposition said when it was just four days after he gave the deposition and those things are supposed to be you know, secret. Beach me Drudge put it out yesterday, and I asked him if credible news organizations like NBC were actually quoting an internet guy best known for his hat about what was a potentially impeachable offense. A lot of people were close on this story. Griffin said, we were close. Lisa Myers almost had it. Sunday Night. Newsweek finally put out a more detailed version about ninety minutes ago. It was their scoop. Drudge just stole it from them. I think it was Isakov who wrote it. You'll have to interview Tim Russer to lead the show. The president may resign. We'll do it from right here. You back that up. What was that you said, we'll do it from right here, part about the president resigning? Oh, yeah, the president might resign. Thus, half an hour later, I was hooked up my satellite with Tim Russard from the Washington Bureau, listening to him outline the possibilities that the president might resign before sunrise. I nodded with as much gravitas as I could fake, despite the elements of farce that were apparently obvious only to me in the story and in where I was seated. In the background of my close up stood the refrigerator from the kitchen set of Lithgo's show Third Rock from the Sun, and on the refrigerator, complete with its decorative magnets, speaking their silent and suddenly completely hip gag. The magnets were a banana surrounded on either side by a strawberry. Phil. I said to Phil, as we tried to plan a smooth transition from that taped Russert interview about the possibility from a resignation of the president, to a taped interview with John Lithgow, and then back to the live speculations of a couple of political writers for the rest of the hour. We're not going to have to do this every day, are we, Griffin laughed, Of course not. What do you think this is the end of the world. He was right. We did not do it every day. We did it for two hundred and eighteen consecutive shows, starting that night with the banana and the strawberry magnets over my shoulder. Our ratings kept doubling. Following Tuesday, my thirty eighth birthday, I was back in New York hosting a roundtable of political heavyweights in the hour leading up to Bill Clinton State of the Union address that night, and the lack of NBC News and Phil Griffin had decided that I should host a second live report once the NBC network guys Russert, Tom Brokaw a couple of others had wrapped up their analysis, which we were also carrying on MSNBC, so I would come on at eleven o'clock after Brokaw and Russert two hours, My little friend, this is our nightline. I was doing my best to keep a straight face when during a commercial break at maybe eleven forty five, maybe midnight, halfway through my wrap up show, Griffin materialized next to my anchor desk. He had this stunned but not unhappy look, like when he used to smoke a lot of dope when we worked together in the eighties. We have the preliminary ratings, my little friend, I hope you're sitting down, I pointed at myself seated in the chair. The pregame show that did a one point one. Our average rating at MSNBC before this presidential stuff came up had been an zero point three. This was now four times the previous ratings. In the past week, it had surged to an zero point six, and Griffin had insisted to me that Andy Lack was so happy he had wet his pants. But this is the kicker here, buddy. We have the immediate since the President finally stopped talking speech, did an eight, broke on Russer the wrap up, did an six. Since eleven o'clock, you've been doing a one point seven. You have had three times the audience of Tom Brokaw, three times the audience of the old man himself. This isn't just people crossing over from NBC to watch more. This is people watching the speech, turning off the old man, then turning back at eleven to watch you. I tried to assimilate what he was telling me. For the first time in my life, my ego refused to cooperate. The stage manager barked his queue of thirty seconds until the end of the commercial break. Phil Griffin shook my hand. Oh, and by the way, that thing you said at the start of the hour about it. It was as if the Intern had opened the door to the chamber and said, mister speaker, the President of the United States. That's already included in the Associated Press story one point seven, my little friend, don't f it up. Actually you can't f it up. We're in for the long haul now. Revel in it. Me quoted about the Clinton Lewinsky story in the main coverage of the State the Union address on the Associated Press Wire. Eight months after I stopped giving the scores of the Greater Stuttgart Invitational tennis tournament on ESPN, I had this sudden, horrible feeling that the usually slow to decide American viewing public had instantly concluded that, for some reason elusive even to me, they really like to hear me talk about the whereabouts of the president's penis. If I could have figured out how to f up the rest of the hour, I would have done it right then I didn't. The next day it got worse. The ratings were so great last night, buddy, they want us to go live every night at eight and eleven only about the President. The eleven is going to be called crisis in Washington. Finally we get what we want. Phil Griffin was dancing around, it'll be our nightline. Since joining MSNBC, I had not taken any time off, and I actually had a vacation booked in Hawaii the next week with a young lady. Uh yeah about that. Phil finally announced, well, that's what we have to talk about, Keith. They want you to commit to this for at least six weeks, so it's this or Hawaii. I explained Hawaii to Phil. Lac said he'd probably pay for you to go do that whenever this is over. I said, in my opinion that probably would not be good enough, and Griffin said neither did he, but that it was just for openers, and Lack told him that I could have three wishes, and I could anchor NBC nightly News at least on the weekends and a couple of times during the week Just personally, I'd recommend you do it. I got the impression that the show's going to happen whether we agree to it or not, Griffin said. He mentioned something about Brian Williams or maybe John Gibson being poor second choices, but viable ones. He said, viable ones. I told Phil I had some calls to make. Griffin suggested Lack needed a decision within the hour, that he wanted White House and Crisis on there that night. Wait, that didn't sound like what he'd called it before, Phil. Is it white House in crisis or Crisis in Washington? Phil Griffin seemed introspective for a moment, then got in touch with the news executive within what's the difference it's going to be our nightline. I almost suggested to him that that should be the title MSNBC presents it's going to be our Nightline. On and on This went for weeks four months. I mocked the story. The ratings went up. I tried to quit the show. The ratings went up. I gave a speech insulting the network for covering the story. Twenty four to seven. The ratings went up. Fox Sports approached me and offered me five times when NBC was paying me to go out to LA to do their sportscast LA, which was kind of near Hawaii, nowhere near the Clinton Lewinski story. And the ratings went up, and I was debating all this and the fact that I had a contract and I had agreed to do it. And then one night in early spring, I got home after another night of this crap. I put my feet up. I was half watching something on NBC while really just staring off into the distance, wondering what I had done to deserve this, mulling my own future, when the snare drum and the violent string section of an NBC news promo interrupted me. Wednesday, on a very special edition of Nightline, Jane Paully and the former Miss America. There she was for a second, had tilted her look grave, journalistic, even scholarly. Jane Paully, the ten year host of NBC's landmark Today Show, the one who had then switched to primetime because the journalism had slowly ebbed out of morning television and she couldn't do it anymore. She was sitting there in a two shot with a Miss America from too many Miss Americas ago, the former brunette, former redhead, now former blonde, whose jet black hair made her look a little frightening. Why the hell was Jane Paully interviewing her on the signature albeit superficial NBC thrice weekly magazine show Nightline No less Well, in a split second, the promo gave me my answer, Jane, did you have sex with the President of the United States? Ex Miss America? Yes, Yes I did, announcer That's Wednesday on a very special edition to Nightline only on NBC America's news source. With genuine terror, I screamed, I shouted aloud to no one, check please, and I called my agent to talk about Fox. I've done all the damage I can do. Here. Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, who are the countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Janelle, guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis. Courtesy of ESPN eight. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer was my friend Stevie van zandt everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight hundred and seventy sixth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Till then I'm the ever important policy Genius Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

The ever important policy Genius Keith Olberman. Biden has still kicked McCarthy's.

The ever important policy Genius Keith Olberman. Biden has still kicked McCarthy's.

But 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.

But 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.