Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The journalistic malpractice was so thorough, the internal staff rage so vituperative, and the on air ratings so amazingly underwhelming that if Anderson Cooper or Wolf Blitzer or Jake Tapper or all three of them went into the office of Chris Licht's boss this afternoon and said that the Trump town hall was the final straw, and it had damaged theirs and the network's credibility, and they were walking out. Chris Licht would be gone from CNN by Monday. It was that bad. And then there is Anderson Cooper. Anderson Cooper began his program last night regretting that cnae were quote staying in their silos. He directed his infamous and long standing condescension to his own audience or whatever was left of it after the Trump debacle. Now he said, maybe you haven't been paying attention to him since he left office, thinking it can't happen again. Anderson Cooper's premise that to understand Trump and the threat he poses, we have to approve of CNN's capitulation to and collaboration with him is absurd, indefensible, and sanctimonious, instead of using his platform to bravely recognize that the threat of Trump is paralleled within CNN by the threat of Chris Lickt and the Conservatives He's prostituted the network for. Instead of showing just some guts, Anderson Cooper decided to try to guilt whoever was left to watch CNN last night. I worked with Anderson Cooper at CNN in two thousand and one and two thousand and two, and I never got his appeal then or since. To me, he has been a living, breathing marketing experiment, a failed marketing experiment. The ratings have reflected that this attack on his own viewers confirmed that shame on him. I'm going to do my best to simplify the ratings thing. There are two ratings. One is for total audience, the number of people who watched, which is useful from a political point of view and certainly from a boastfulness point of view. But then there is the demo audience viewers aged twenty five to fifty four. That is the only number that the advertisers look at. It's the only one the executives look at. The CNN town Hall drew three million, three hundred and eight thousand total viewers. It drew seven hundred and eighty one thousand demo viewers. Both of those numbers are roughly what they get on an average day at ABC's Good Morning America. That total audience that Trump drew on CNN was a little more than half of what NBC Nightly News gets every evening. The demo audience was ten percent less than what NBC gets every evening, and all of the ratings were less than CNN's twenty twenty town hall with Joe Biden. And the Trump disaster made no inroads for CNN's streaming services either. Barely one hundred thousand people watched it that way. And you'll hear none of this from CNN, because it can rightly boast about how many more people watched it than did Fox or MSNBC, or how many times larger the audience was than what CNN usually gets. But all of that is whistling past graveyards, and there is one more set of numbers to go through, because they prove that CNN and Chris Licked got nothing out of this, not even in the most base principles. Be damned, profit, be praised, money, grubbing way. They got nothing. One hour after the Hinden Trump crashed and burned live on CNN, the ratings bump that Chris licked expected was gone. In the ten o'clock hour, CNN was back to third place, half a million total viewers behind Fox, three hundred thousand behind MSNBC. Three quarters of that total audience had vanished before midnight. By the eleven o'clock hour, that demo audience of seven hundred and eighty one thousand had shrunk back to one hundred and eighty six thousand. They got nothing out of it. Nobody stayed to watch what followed. Nobody saw it and said, I like this new CNN. I'm going to try out their other shows. I mean, I was reminded of Herman Melville describing the sinking of the Peace Quad at the end of Moby Dick. For an instant, the transit boat's crew stood still, then turned the ship great, God, where is the ship now? Small fowls flew screaming over the yawning gulf. A sullen white surf feed against its steep sides. Then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on. As it rolled five thousand years ago. The end, the ratings bump, great God, where is the ratings bump? Bad news? Chris licked your boat sank the end, and the price of that mediocre audience will continue to be paid for by CNN for months and for years to come, because, as I said here yesterday, she should e Gene Carroll now says she may sue Trump for defamation again for what he said on CNN. And she added she didn't say anything earlier because she was asleep during the program, which means she and CNN management were on equal footing there. I think overall there were only three kinds of reactions to the CNN televised abortion, and one of them was almost irrelevant, the tepid forced defense of the event as newsworthy or as a reminder of the walking evil that is Trump. Virtually all of the reactions seemed to divide into just two other kinds. First, that it was a violation of everything CNN once stood for, a repertorial cataclysm, a betrayal of its audience and its reporters and its traditions, a self defenestration valuable only as a reminder to American media that to turn live television over to a lying madman, is itself a form of madness? And the second main reaction was summarized by an online poll yesterday that asked, simply, do you think President Trump beat CNN last night? The people who were not enraged by the CNN Trump infomercial shouted as if one we owned the libs Merca. CNN did not gain their respect. It did not gain a conservative audience for a future Caitlyn Collins primetime show. I believe they'll be going with the title no It's not mister President with Caitlyn Collins. CNN did not gain any future viewership of any kind. They were all gone within an hour and a half. The extra crowd rushed for the exits. As I have outlined, the people who liked it liked it because they perceived it as damaging CNN, as bringing pain to CNN viewers. That is what Chris Licked sold CNN's soul for his story and his boss's story of why they did this and why they had fired liberal hosts and why they had rewarded conservative hosts and why they were platforming Trump slaves, is that they will regain CNN's old status, That they will present both sides, and they will serve the great middle, and everyone will be having a voice that is heard. And while it is possible that this is not a cover story, and Chris licked and the others actually believe this nonsense, their problem is both sides want nothing to do with the other side, and the great middle no longer exists. And giving away editorial control over your network live for seventy minutes, whether to the worst Republican demagogue in American history or some hypothetical worst Democratic demagogue in American history, some new Huey Long, that's not going to positively impact your ratings one bit. And yet, as Chris Lickt got on an editorial call with his staff at nine am yesterday and boasted that Caitlin Collins was a rock star and look at all the news we made and no Chris news networks cover news. They don't make news. Ask an adult next time. And as CNN made sure those comments were heard by or leaked to x CNN media guy Brian Stelter and a Washington Post media guy, and as maybe a dozen different CNN people on airon afnonymously bemoaned the disaster of the Trump Town Hall. Not one of those voices went on the record, except for one. Oliver Darcy, the company's media reporter, was out with the Reliable Sources newsletter that he took over from Stelter about three hours after the fiasco ended Wednesday night. And he is an efing hero, an efing hero in danger of losing his job, but an efing hero. Nonetheless, Oliver Darcy began this CNN newsletter, this CNN product, this CNN promotional device. He began it with quote, it's hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening. Note pleased that Darcy used that word served to criticize CNN. Just after midnight, un less than nine hours later, Chris Lickt would use that same word served to defend CNN. After Darcy's pointed first sentence, there followed no fewer than thirteen lurid on the record criticisms of the program and of Lickt and of CNN. Darcy included the CNN defenses and the pathetic boasts about how well it all went. He is a brave man. The aforementioned Tapper, Blitzer, and especially Cooper are not brave men. They could learn something from him, So could the national CNN correspondent Kristin Holmes, who actually wrote this two mornings ago. Quote Trump's CNN town hall is a sign of a broader and more traditional campaign strategy. The town hall event in New Hampshire Wednesday evening joins a list of other signs that Trump is adopting a more traditional campaign in his third run for the White House. CNN published that at seven am Wednesday, and, as the cliche goes, it did not age well. One last worst point this perhaps enters a realm I'm going to call television political science fiction. Why haven't we heard anything more about the quote deal that the day before the broadcast, Trump said CNN gave him the deal. We are all operating under the assumption I am that licked and CNN and Collins screwed up, screwed up by doing this live, screwed up by doing it with an audience, screwed up by doing it with a wildly pro Trump audience, screwed up by having a persistent but impotent questioner who really did seem to think that simply gain saying Trump would somehow get him to stop lying. After seventy five years of lying. But what if they didn't screw up? What if that was the plan? What if that was the deal. CNN is rightfully desperate to get those fantastic Trump ratings back. They were ratings like none other, and they want them back. They made me a deal. I couldn't refuse that word deal. It was so alarming that even right winger Bill Mitchell, formerly a rabid and often irrational Trump supporter, now booming Ron DeSantis, noticed, quote, what kind of deal? Would that be? A promise he would only get softball questions, A promise the crowd would be handpicked favorable to him. Will Trump be provided the questions ahead of time? What kind of deal? I don't remember. I may have mentioned before that CNN chairman Chris Lickt and I worked at MSNBC simultaneously for six long years. Thus I can say I know him to be devious, underhanded, amoral, willing to do anything to accumulate power, and willing to do anything for anybody who can give him that power. So do I know for a fact that he made any kind of deal with Trump for the questions, for access to the questions beforehand? No? I know none of those things. I know only that if evidence were produced that the answer to any or all of those rhetoricals is yes, I wouldn't even bat an eyelash in surprise. It's Chris lickt You'll notice I left out the part about a promise the crowd would be handpicked favorable to him that mister Mitchell mentioned, because we already knew the crowd would be ringers. It was to be made up exclusively of those registered to vote in the Hampshire Republican primary, and Trump was pulling above sixty percent in that state. I will note CNN made a point of saying, again and again until the broadcast ended, that it had carefully selected the audience. There is no doubt it selected the questions from the audience. I think there is doubt, however, that this was all the product of Chris Licht's incompetence. He is a man of many different skills. This could easily have been the product of Chris Licht's evil. To try to wrap this up on a slightly lighter note, there is Licht and his choice of words. Again, that conference call that everybody in the Western world seems to have been on except you and me on it licked said quote. America was served very well by what we did last night. Wait Served, Served, Served, seen the most terrifying episode from the original Twilight Zone Lately, mister viewer, mister viewer, don't get on that network. The rest of the book to serve America. It's it's a cookbook. Hellow, mister Chambers still ahead on this edition of Countdown. It is interesting that other than Cooper's self righteous pedantry, nobody on CNN defended any of this, any of it except one on air person, one on air person who just couldn't stop praising Caitlyn Collins. And I'm wondering if that's because if they do promote Caitlyn Collins to primetime, that one person who so praised her will be the senior anchor in the mornings. Worst persons coming up and hewing back to the Trump part of this disaster, it's Fridays with Thurber, and there is one Thurber story above all others that continues to fit the reality of his depravity being mistaken for power. The greatest men in the world. First, it looks more and more like President Biden really might use the Fourteenth Amendment to bypass the Republican hostage takers who are threatening default on the national debt. The question is do you sue or do you wait to get sued? That's next, This discountdown. This his countdown with Keith old Woman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark, some predictions, dateline, Washington, more and more signs that the administration may actually do something innovative and strident about the debt ceiling. The follow up meeting at the White House today has been canceled. Speaker McCarthy says it's because there has not been enough progress. Others in DC say this is because the President is in fact willing to try the fourteenth Amendment, willing to try to bypass the Republican hostage drama altogether by saying he is constitutionally obligated to pay the national debt, and it says so in the fourteenth. The process has been debated, though when Joe Biden hinted at this the other day, he indicated it would have to be litigated, implying he would do it. Others would then sue to stop him. But the Cornell law professor Michael Dorf says he's got it. Backwards that people in favor of using the amendment should sue first. They should claim in court that any failure or delay by the government in paying them what it owes them would cause profound injury. Dorff says a suit like that was in fact filed. On Monday. The NAGE, the National Association of Government Employees, sued FED chair Janet Yellen on other grounds, trying to get a judge to rule that the debt default concept is illegal because of separation of powers and the Fifth Amendment, and that the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional. Now, look, we are here now in deep, deep legal waters, and I'm getting dizzy, and I feel like the Pea quad is sinking again. But I think I understand this, and whatever it is, it's a damn sight better of a plan than defaulting or giving into this mount to bank. Kevin McCarthy, Thank you, Nancy Faust and Dateline, New York. The Manhattan District Attorney today charges Daniel J. Penny in the choke hold death of the houseless man in the New York Subway, Jordan Neely, second degree manslaughter on a simple premise a man threatening people in public, like on a subway train might be restrained or even injured in the process by good Samaritans, and the good Samaritans get a medal, but choking the man to death is not any of that. The other problem here is that virtually every news story refers to the now defendant Daniel J. Penny as a quote marine veteran, as if we were back on the Pea quad as I mentioned in the a Bloc and just now. His military status has got nothing to do with this. In fact, it gives him a benefit of the doubt he clearly does not deserve. If the roles had been reversed and Penny had been choked to death by a disturbed man named Jordan Neely, the headlines would be calling Jordan Neely something like the subway strangler, coming up Fridays with Thurber and only one story that he could possibly offer to us today, the greatest man in the World. First, the daily round up of the miss Greens, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The Bronze Tony Nunziato. Tony is standing by his guy, George Santos. George Santos, who has been charged with everything but stealing false teeth off the corpses in the mortuary. But Tony Nunziado says he is not ready to call for Santos' resignation from Congress. I'll wait to see what they say in court, Nunziado says, Especially lately, we see many people being indicted, but they were wrong. Day was set free. And who is this Tony Nunziato who is so optimistic about the chance that somehow they've got the wrong guy for all thirteen George Santos indictments. Tony Nunziado is chairman of the Republican Party of Queens. And when you are the chairman of the Republican Party of Queens, it must be very difficult to say yes, all right, I'll give up on the first guy we actually got elected to the House in a million years. The runner up, this Vivek Ramaswami. Guy. I am beginning to think there are people supporting his long shot bid for the Republican presidential nomination just for the larfs, just because he's so dumb. Ramaswami is thirty seven years old and is big. We have to change the constitution, idea and they all have big we have to change the constitution ideas. His is he wants to raise the voting age. He wants to raise it from eighteen to twenty five unless you are in the military, or you are a first responder, or you pass the same civics test they give people who are applying for US citizenship. Now, I mean, the civics test idea is not a bad one, But give me one example of anybody in this country getting smarter about civic responsibility between eighteen and twenty five that they'd automatically not have to take the test. I mean, make it between eighteen and ninety five. Nobody knows civics in this country anymore. I mean, be careful on this. If you're actually going to institute a civic awareness test before voting, you might shave the voting population down to like one hundred thousand people. But that's besides the point. Let's say Ramaswami somehow becomes the Republican nominee and he really pushes this raise the voting age thing, and you are eighteen next year, or you are say nineteen or a young twenty, and he expects you to vote for him with the premise that voting for him would be He's going to take away your right to vote for him again in twenty twenty eight. Who is going to do this. I'll vote for him, and then I won't vote for him because he won't let me vote anymore. More importantly, who's dumb enough to run for office and say vote for me and I'll take away your right to vote. Ramaswami is just a dope, but the winner. Poppy Harlow one of the two surviving co hosts of CNN's Morning show. And look, we all get it. We've all worked with a Poppy Harlow. Management could come over and poop in their hat, and your own Poppy Harlow would just congratulate them on their aim. But her tweet about the you know is just wow. Quoting what Caitlin Collins showed the world last night was a masterclass in interviewing, real time, fact checking, and holding power to account. She is unflappable and was born for moments like this. So much love and respect. Unquote. It's just a little over the top. Pop makes me think that the internal dialogue here is I got rid of that loser Don Lemon and now Colin's just self destructed and soon to be mine, all mine. CNN This Morning with Poppy Harlow. Poppy CNN This Morning with Poppy Harlow. Just Poppy Rlow. You got it, Harlow. Two days worst Poppy in the world. Still ahead on Countdown, with all the headlines, there is only one Ferber story with which to resume our Friday readings, A tale as fresh as if it were written right after the Trump town hall by people who then stop watching CNN. The Greatest Man in the World. Next First, in each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog. Indeed you can help. Every dog has its day. The irony of the name of the seventy seven pound brindle Micks puppy that they are ready to kill at the New York Pound is almost too much to bear. He's called Free. His human dumped Free there, left him to die, said he couldn't pay for him anymore. Just twelve days ago. Free knows he's been abandoned. His usual affectionate nature is gone. He's seventeen months old, and the biggest complaints against him had been if you give him a treat and for some reason to try to take the treat away, he growls, and he's excitable to the point of being pushy. Well, I'm excitable to the point of being pushy for this, they will kill him. He needs an adopter or a foster or our pledges to help a rescue save him. Look for free on my Twitter feeds. I thank you and free. Thanks you to the master the work of James Thurber. There is a short film of this story. I don't think it really does it justice. I don't think anything does it justice. Occasionally, real life does do it justice. I've thought I've seen this story playing out in real time in this country almost every day for about seven years. Sit back and relax, if relax is the right word for it. For the Greatest Man in the World by James Thurber. Looking back on it now from the vantage point of nineteen forty one can only marvel that it had not happened. Long before it did. The United States of America had been ever since Kitty Hawk blindly constructing the elaborate petard by which, sooner or later it must be hoist. It was inevitable that someday there would come, roaring out of the skies a national hero of insufficient intelligence, background and character, successfully to endure the mounting orgies of glory prepared for aviators who stayed up for a long time or flew a great distance. Both Lindbergh and Byrd, fortunately for national decorum and international amity, had been gentlemen, So had our other famous aviators. They wore their laurels gracefully, withstood the awful weather of publicity, married excellent women, usually fine family, and quietly retired to private life and the enjoyment of their varying fortunes. No untoward incidents on a worldwide scale marred the perfection of their conduct on the perilous heights of fame. The exception to the rule was, however, bound to occur, and it did in July nineteen thirty seven, when Jack pal smirch erstwhile mechanics helper in a small garage in Westfield Eye, flew a secondhand, single motored Brestaban Dragonfly three monoplane all the way around the world without stopping. Never before in the history of aviation had such a flight as Smirches even been dreamed of. No one had even taken seriously the weird floating auxiliary gas tanks invention of the mad New Hampshire professor of astronomy, doctor Charles Lewis, Gresham, upon which Smirch placed full reliance. When the garage worker, a slightly built, surly unprepossessing young man of twenty two, appeared at Roosevelt Field early in July nineteen thirty seven, slowly chewing a great quid of scrap tobacco, and announced, nobody ain't seen no flying yet. The newspapers touched briefly and satirically upon his projected twenty five thousand mile flight. Aeronautical and automotive experts dismissed the idea kurt, implying that it was a hoax, the publicity stunt. The rusty, battered second hand plane wouldn't go, the Gresham auxiliary tanks wouldn't work. It was simply a cheap joke. Smirch, however, after calling on a girl in Brooklyn who worked in the flap folding department of a large paper box factory, a girl whom he later described as his sweet Bitituty climbed nonchalantly into his ridiculous plane at dawn the memorable seventh of July nineteen thirty seven, spit a curve of tobacco juice into the still air, and took off, carrying with him only a gallon of bootleg gin and six pounds of salami. When the garage boy thundered out over the ocean, the papers were forced to record in all seriousness that a mad, unknown young man his name was variously misspelled, had actually set out upon a preposterous attempt to span the world in a rickety one engine contraption, trusting to the long distance refueling device of a crazy schoolmaster. When nine days later, without having stopped once, the tiny plane appeared above San Francisco Bay, headed for New York, spluttering and choking, to be sure, but still magnificently and miraculously aloft the headlines, which long since had crowded everything else off the front page. Even the shooting of the Governor of Illinois by the Valetti Gang swelled to unprecedented size, and the news stories began to run to twenty five and thirty columns. It was noticeable, however, that the accounts of the epoch making flight touched rather lightly upon the aviator himself. This was not because the facts about the hero as a man were too meager, but because they were too complete. Reporters who had been rushed out to Iowa when Smirch's plane was first sighted over the little French coast town of Serlee Lemaire to dig up the story of the great man's life, had promptly discovered that the story of his life could not be printed. His mother, a sullen short order cook and a shack restaurant on the edge of a tourist's camping ground near Westfield, met all inquiries as to her son with an angry and the hell with him a hoppy drowns. His father appeared to be in jail somewhere for stealing spotlights and lap robes from tourists automobiles. His young brother, a weak minded lad, had but recently escaped from the Preston, Iowa Reformatory and was already wanted in several Western towns for the theft of money order blanks from post offices. These alarming discoveries were still piling up at the very time that Pal Smirch, the greatest hero of the twentieth century, blear eyed, dead for sleep, half starved. Was his crazy junk heap high above the region in which the lamentable story of his private life was being unearthed, headed for New York, and a greater glory than any man of his time had ever known. The necessity for printing some account in the papers of the young man's career and personality had led to a remarkable predicament. It was, of course, impossible to reveal the facts, for a tremendous popular feeling in favor of the young hero had sprung up like a grass fire when he was halfway across Europe on his flight around the globe. He was therefore described as a modest, chap taciturn blonde, popular with his friends, popular with girls. The only available snapshot of Smirch, taken at the wheel of a phony automobile in a cheap photo studio at an amusement park, was touched up so that the little vulgarian looked quite handsome. His twisted leer was smoothed into a pleasant so the truth was in this way kept from the youth's ecstatic compatriots. They did not dream that the Smirch family was despised and feared by its neighbors in the obscure Iowa town, nor that the hero himself, because of numerous unsavory exploits had come to be regarded in Westfield as a nuisance and a menace. Pal's smirch had the reporters discovered once knife the principle of his high school, not mortally, to be sure, but he had knifed him, and on another occasion, surprised in the act of an stealing altar cloth from a church, he had bashed the sexton over the head with a pot of Easter lilies. For each of these offenses he had served a sentence in the reformatory. Inwardly, the authorities, both in New York and in Washington, prayed that an understanding providence might, however awful, such a thing seemed, bring disaster to the rusty, battered plane in its illustrious pilot, whose unheard of flight had aroused the civilized world to hosannas of hysterical praise. The authorities were convinced that the character of the renowned aviator was such that the limelight of adulation was bound to reveal him to all the world as a congenital hooligan, mentally and morally unequipped to cope with his own prodigious fame. I trust, said the Secretary of State, at one of the many secret Cabinet meetings called to consider the national dilemma. I trust that his mother's prayer will be answered, by which he referred to missus Emma's. Smirch's wish that her son might be drowned was, however, too late for that Smirch had leaped the Atlantic and then the Pacific as if they were mill ponds. At three minutes after two o'clock on the afternoon of July seventeenth, nineteen thirty seven, the garage boy brought his idiotic plane into Roosevelt Field for a perfect three point landing. It had, of course been out of the question to arrange a modest little reception for the greatest flier in the history of the world. He was received at Roosevelt Field with such elaborate and pretentious ceremonies as rocked the world. Fortunately, however, the warren and spent hero promptly swooned, had to be removed bodily from his plane, and was spirited from the field without having opened his mouth once. Thus he did not jeopardize the dignity of his first reception, a reception illumined by the presence of the secretaries of War and the Navy, Mayor Michael J. Moriarty of New York, the Premier of Canada, Governors Fannamine Groves, mcpheeley and Critchfield, and a brilliant array of European diplomats. Smirch did not, in fact come too in time to take part in the gigantic hullabaloo arranged at City Hall for the next day. He was rushed to a secluded nursing home and confined in bed. It was nine days before he was able to get up, or, to be more exact, before he was permitted to get up. Meanwhile, the greatest minds in the country in solemn assembly, had arranged a secret conference of city, state and government officials, which Smirch was to attend for the purpose of being instructed in the ethics and behavior of heroism. On the day that the little mechanic was finally allowed to get up in dress and for the first time in two weeks, took a great chew of tomacco, he was permitted to receive the newspaper men this by way of testing him out. Smirch did not wait for questions. Use guys, he said, and the Times man winced use guys. Can tell a cock eyed world that I put it over on Lindberg. See yeah, man, an assaid, I'm two frogs. The two frogs. It was a reference to a pair of gallant French flyers who, in attempting to flight only halfway round the world, had two weeks before unhappily been lost at sea. The Times Man was bold enough at this point to sketch out for Smirch the accepted formula for interviews in cases of this kind. He explained that there should be no arrogant statements belittling the achievements of other heroes, particularly heroes of foreign nations. Ah the hell with that, said Smirch. I did it. See I did it, and I'm talking about it. And he did talk about it. None of this extraordinary interview was, of course printed. On the contrary, the newspapers, already under the discipline direction of a secret directorate created for the occasion and composed of statesmen and editors, gave out to a panting and restless world that Jackie, as he had been arbitrarily nicknamed, would consent to say only that he was very happy, and that anyone could have done what he did. My achievement has been I fear lightly exaggerated. The Times Man's article had him protest with a modest smile. These newspaper stories were kept from the hero, a restriction which did not serve to abate the rising malevolence of his temper. The situation was indeed extremely grave for Palell. Smirch was, as he kept insisting, raring to go. He could not much longer be kept from a nation clamorous to lionize him. It was the most desperate crisis the United States of America had faced since the sinking of Belusitania. On the afternoon of the twenty seventh of July, Smirch was spirited away to a conference room in which were gathered mayors, governors, government officials, behaviorist, psychologists, and editors. He gave them each a limp moist paw, and a brief, unlovely grin, hi, he said. When Smirch was seated, the Mayor of New York arose, and, with ob his pessimism, attempted to explain what he must say and how he must act when presented to the world, ending his talk with a high tribute to the hero's courage and integrity, The mayor was followed by Governor Fannman of New York, who, after a touching declaration of faith, introduced Cameron Spottiswood, second Secretary of the American Embassy in Paris, the gentleman selected to coach Smirch in the amenities of public ceremonies. Sitting in a chair with a soiled yellow tie in his hand and his shirt open at the throat, unshaved, smoking a rolled cigarette, Jack Smirch listened with a leer on his lips. I get you, I get you, He cut in nastily. You want me to act like a softie? Huh? You want me to act like that memny memny baby face lind big huh, Well nuts to that. See. Everyone took in his breath sharply. It was a sigh and a hiss. Mister Lindbergh began a United States Senator purple with rage, and mister bird Smirch, who was paring his nails with a jackknife, cut in again. Boyd. He exclaimed, Oh, for God's sake, that big somebody shut off the blasphemies with a sharp word. A newcomer had entered the word the room. Everyone stood up, except Smirch, who was still busy with his nails, and he did not even glance up. Mister Smirch, said someone sternly. The President of the United States. It had been thought that the presence of the chief Executive might have a chastening effect on the young hero, and the former had been, thanks to the remarkable cooperation of the press, secretly brought to the obscure conference room. A great painful silence fell. Smirch looked up, waved a hand at the President. How you coming, he asked, and began rolling a fresh cigarette. The silence deepened. Someone coughed in a strained way. Jesuits hot, ain't it, said Smirch. He loosened two more shirt buttons, revealing a hairy chest and the tattooed word sadie enclosed in a stenciled heart. The great and important men in the room, faced by the most serious crisis in American history, exchanged worried frowns. Nobody seemed to know how to proceed. Come on, come on, said Smirch. Let's get the hell out of here. Why do I start cutting in on the parties? Eh? And when is there gonna be this in it? He rubbed a thumb and forefinger together meaningly, money, exclaimed a state senator shocked. Pale. Yeah money, said pal, flipping his cigarette out of the window. And big money. He began rolling a fresh cigarette. Big money, he repeated, Frowning over the rice paper. He tilted back in his chair and leered at each gentleman separately, the leer of an animal that knows its power, the leer of a leopard loose in a bird and dog shop. Ah, for God's sake, let's get someplace where it's cool, he said. I've been cooped up plenty for three weeks. Smirch stood up and walked over to an open window, where he stood staring down into the street nine floors below. The faint shouting of newsboys floated up to him. He made out his name, hot Dog, he cried, grinning ecstatic. He leaned out over the sill. You tell um babies, he shouted down, Hot diggity Dog. In the tense little knot of men standing behind him, a quick, mad impulse flared up. An unspoken word of appeal of command seemed to ring through the room, yet it was deadly silent. Charles K. L Brand, secretary to the Mayor of New York City, happened to be standing nearest smirch. He looked inquiringly at the President of the United States. The President, pale grim nodded shortly. Brand a tall, powerfully built man wants to tackle at Rutgers University, stepped forward, seized the greatest man in the world by his left shoulder and the seat of his pants, and pushed him out the window. My god, he's fallen out the window, cried a quick witted editor. Get me out of here, cried the President. Several men sprang to his side, and he was hurriedly escorted out of a door toward a side entrance of the building. The editor of the Associated Press took charge. Being used to such things crisply, he ordered certain men to leave, others to stay. Quickly. He outlined a story which all the papers were to agree on, sent two men to the street to handle that end of the tragedy. Commanded a senator to sob and two congressmen. I go to pieces nervously. In a word, he skillfully set the stage for the gigantic task that was to follow, the task of breaking to a grief stricken world. The sad story of the untimely accidental death of its most illustrious and spectacular figure. The funeral was, as you know, the most elaborate, the finest, the solemnest, and the saddest ever held in the United States of America. The monument in Arlington Cemetery, with its clean white shaft of marble and the simple device of a tiny plane carved on its base, is a place for pilgrims in deep reverence to visit. The nations of the world paid lofty tributes to Little Jackie Smirch, America's greatest hero. At a given hour, there were two minutes of silence throughout the nation. Even the inhabitants of the small, bewildered town of Westfield, Iowa, observed this touching ceremony. Agents of the Department of Justice sought that one of them was especially assigned to stand grimly in the doorway of a little shack restaurant on the edge of the tourist's camping ground just outside the town. There, under his stern scrutiny, Missus Emma Smirch bowed her head over two Hamburger steaks sizzling on her grill, bowed her head and turned away, so that the secret serviceman could not see the twisted, strangely familiar leer on her lips. The Greatest Man in the World by James Thurber. Of all the Thurber works, I really think that is the one you could most easily update, expand upon, and make into a twenty first century movie. 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 Phillip Schanel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad. Everything else is pretty much my fault, and I thank you for bringing us to two hundred episodes of this thing. A couple of them have been slightly updated, but you know what I mean. Two hundred anyway, that's countdown for this, the eight hundred and fifty seventh days since Donald Try I'm 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 Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The journalistic malpractice was so thorough, the internal staff rage so vituperative, and the on air ratings so amazingly underwhelming that if Anderson Cooper or Wolf Blitzer or Jake Tapper or all three of them went into the office of Chris Licht's boss this afternoon and said that the Trump town hall was the final straw, and it had damaged theirs and the network's credibility, and they were walking out. Chris Licht would be gone from CNN by Monday. It was that bad. And then there is Anderson Cooper. Anderson Cooper began his program last night regretting that cnae were quote staying in their silos. He directed his infamous and long standing condescension to his own audience or whatever was left of it after the Trump debacle. Now he said, maybe you haven't been paying attention to him since he left office, thinking it can't happen again. Anderson Cooper's premise that to understand Trump and the threat he poses, we have to approve of CNN's capitulation to and collaboration with him is absurd, indefensible, and sanctimonious, instead of using his platform to bravely recognize that the threat of Trump is paralleled within CNN by the threat of Chris Lickt and the Conservatives He's prostituted the network for. Instead of showing just some guts, Anderson Cooper decided to try to guilt whoever was left to watch CNN last night. I worked with Anderson Cooper at CNN in two thousand and one and two thousand and two, and I never got his appeal then or since. To me, he has been a living, breathing marketing experiment, a failed marketing experiment. The ratings have reflected that this attack on his own viewers confirmed that shame on him. I'm going to do my best to simplify the ratings thing. There are two ratings. One is for total audience, the number of people who watched, which is useful from a political point of view and certainly from a boastfulness point of view. But then there is the demo audience viewers aged twenty five to fifty four. That is the only number that the advertisers look at. It's the only one the executives look at. The CNN town Hall drew three million, three hundred and eight thousand total viewers. It drew seven hundred and eighty one thousand demo viewers. Both of those numbers are roughly what they get on an average day at ABC's Good Morning America. That total audience that Trump drew on CNN was a little more than half of what NBC Nightly News gets every evening. The demo audience was ten percent less than what NBC gets every evening, and all of the ratings were less than CNN's twenty twenty town hall with Joe Biden. And the Trump disaster made no inroads for CNN's streaming services either. Barely one hundred thousand people watched it that way. And you'll hear none of this from CNN, because it can rightly boast about how many more people watched it than did Fox or MSNBC, or how many times larger the audience was than what CNN usually gets. But all of that is whistling past graveyards, and there is one more set of numbers to go through, because they prove that CNN and Chris Licked got nothing out of this, not even in the most base principles. Be damned, profit, be praised, money, grubbing way. They got nothing. One hour after the Hinden Trump crashed and burned live on CNN, the ratings bump that Chris licked expected was gone. In the ten o'clock hour, CNN was back to third place, half a million total viewers behind Fox, three hundred thousand behind MSNBC. Three quarters of that total audience had vanished before midnight. By the eleven o'clock hour, that demo audience of seven hundred and eighty one thousand had shrunk back to one hundred and eighty six thousand. They got nothing out of it. Nobody stayed to watch what followed. Nobody saw it and said, I like this new CNN. I'm going to try out their other shows. I mean, I was reminded of Herman Melville describing the sinking of the Peace Quad at the end of Moby Dick. For an instant, the transit boat's crew stood still, then turned the ship great, God, where is the ship now? Small fowls flew screaming over the yawning gulf. A sullen white surf feed against its steep sides. Then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on. As it rolled five thousand years ago. The end, the ratings bump, great God, where is the ratings bump? Bad news? Chris licked your boat sank the end, and the price of that mediocre audience will continue to be paid for by CNN for months and for years to come, because, as I said here yesterday, she should e Gene Carroll now says she may sue Trump for defamation again for what he said on CNN. And she added she didn't say anything earlier because she was asleep during the program, which means she and CNN management were on equal footing there. I think overall there were only three kinds of reactions to the CNN televised abortion, and one of them was almost irrelevant, the tepid forced defense of the event as newsworthy or as a reminder of the walking evil that is Trump. Virtually all of the reactions seemed to divide into just two other kinds. First, that it was a violation of everything CNN once stood for, a repertorial cataclysm, a betrayal of its audience and its reporters and its traditions, a self defenestration valuable only as a reminder to American media that to turn live television over to a lying madman, is itself a form of madness? And the second main reaction was summarized by an online poll yesterday that asked, simply, do you think President Trump beat CNN last night? The people who were not enraged by the CNN Trump infomercial shouted as if one we owned the libs Merca. CNN did not gain their respect. It did not gain a conservative audience for a future Caitlyn Collins primetime show. I believe they'll be going with the title no It's not mister President with Caitlyn Collins. CNN did not gain any future viewership of any kind. They were all gone within an hour and a half. The extra crowd rushed for the exits. As I have outlined, the people who liked it liked it because they perceived it as damaging CNN, as bringing pain to CNN viewers. That is what Chris Licked sold CNN's soul for his story and his boss's story of why they did this and why they had fired liberal hosts and why they had rewarded conservative hosts and why they were platforming Trump slaves, is that they will regain CNN's old status, That they will present both sides, and they will serve the great middle, and everyone will be having a voice that is heard. And while it is possible that this is not a cover story, and Chris licked and the others actually believe this nonsense, their problem is both sides want nothing to do with the other side, and the great middle no longer exists. And giving away editorial control over your network live for seventy minutes, whether to the worst Republican demagogue in American history or some hypothetical worst Democratic demagogue in American history, some new Huey Long, that's not going to positively impact your ratings one bit. And yet, as Chris Lickt got on an editorial call with his staff at nine am yesterday and boasted that Caitlin Collins was a rock star and look at all the news we made and no Chris news networks cover news. They don't make news. Ask an adult next time. And as CNN made sure those comments were heard by or leaked to x CNN media guy Brian Stelter and a Washington Post media guy, and as maybe a dozen different CNN people on airon afnonymously bemoaned the disaster of the Trump Town Hall. Not one of those voices went on the record, except for one. Oliver Darcy, the company's media reporter, was out with the Reliable Sources newsletter that he took over from Stelter about three hours after the fiasco ended Wednesday night. And he is an efing hero, an efing hero in danger of losing his job, but an efing hero. Nonetheless, Oliver Darcy began this CNN newsletter, this CNN product, this CNN promotional device. He began it with quote, it's hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening. Note pleased that Darcy used that word served to criticize CNN. Just after midnight, un less than nine hours later, Chris Lickt would use that same word served to defend CNN. After Darcy's pointed first sentence, there followed no fewer than thirteen lurid on the record criticisms of the program and of Lickt and of CNN. Darcy included the CNN defenses and the pathetic boasts about how well it all went. He is a brave man. The aforementioned Tapper, Blitzer, and especially Cooper are not brave men. They could learn something from him, So could the national CNN correspondent Kristin Holmes, who actually wrote this two mornings ago. Quote Trump's CNN town hall is a sign of a broader and more traditional campaign strategy. The town hall event in New Hampshire Wednesday evening joins a list of other signs that Trump is adopting a more traditional campaign in his third run for the White House. CNN published that at seven am Wednesday, and, as the cliche goes, it did not age well. One last worst point this perhaps enters a realm I'm going to call television political science fiction. Why haven't we heard anything more about the quote deal that the day before the broadcast, Trump said CNN gave him the deal. We are all operating under the assumption I am that licked and CNN and Collins screwed up, screwed up by doing this live, screwed up by doing it with an audience, screwed up by doing it with a wildly pro Trump audience, screwed up by having a persistent but impotent questioner who really did seem to think that simply gain saying Trump would somehow get him to stop lying. After seventy five years of lying. But what if they didn't screw up? What if that was the plan? What if that was the deal. CNN is rightfully desperate to get those fantastic Trump ratings back. They were ratings like none other, and they want them back. They made me a deal. I couldn't refuse that word deal. It was so alarming that even right winger Bill Mitchell, formerly a rabid and often irrational Trump supporter, now booming Ron DeSantis, noticed, quote, what kind of deal? Would that be? A promise he would only get softball questions, A promise the crowd would be handpicked favorable to him. Will Trump be provided the questions ahead of time? What kind of deal? I don't remember. I may have mentioned before that CNN chairman Chris Lickt and I worked at MSNBC simultaneously for six long years. Thus I can say I know him to be devious, underhanded, amoral, willing to do anything to accumulate power, and willing to do anything for anybody who can give him that power. So do I know for a fact that he made any kind of deal with Trump for the questions, for access to the questions beforehand? No? I know none of those things. I know only that if evidence were produced that the answer to any or all of those rhetoricals is yes, I wouldn't even bat an eyelash in surprise. It's Chris lickt You'll notice I left out the part about a promise the crowd would be handpicked favorable to him that mister Mitchell mentioned, because we already knew the crowd would be ringers. It was to be made up exclusively of those registered to vote in the Hampshire Republican primary, and Trump was pulling above sixty percent in that state. I will note CNN made a point of saying, again and again until the broadcast ended, that it had carefully selected the audience. There is no doubt it selected the questions from the audience. I think there is doubt, however, that this was all the product of Chris Licht's incompetence. He is a man of many different skills. This could easily have been the product of Chris Licht's evil. To try to wrap this up on a slightly lighter note, there is Licht and his choice of words. Again, that conference call that everybody in the Western world seems to have been on except you and me on it licked said quote. America was served very well by what we did last night. Wait Served, Served, Served, seen the most terrifying episode from the original Twilight Zone Lately, mister viewer, mister viewer, don't get on that network. The rest of the book to serve America. It's it's a cookbook. Hellow, mister Chambers still ahead on this edition of Countdown. It is interesting that other than Cooper's self righteous pedantry, nobody on CNN defended any of this, any of it except one on air person, one on air person who just couldn't stop praising Caitlyn Collins. And I'm wondering if that's because if they do promote Caitlyn Collins to primetime, that one person who so praised her will be the senior anchor in the mornings. Worst persons coming up and hewing back to the Trump part of this disaster, it's Fridays with Thurber, and there is one Thurber story above all others that continues to fit the reality of his depravity being mistaken for power. The greatest men in the world. First, it looks more and more like President Biden really might use the Fourteenth Amendment to bypass the Republican hostage takers who are threatening default on the national debt. The question is do you sue or do you wait to get sued? That's next, This discountdown. This his countdown with Keith old Woman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark, some predictions, dateline, Washington, more and more signs that the administration may actually do something innovative and strident about the debt ceiling. The follow up meeting at the White House today has been canceled. Speaker McCarthy says it's because there has not been enough progress. Others in DC say this is because the President is in fact willing to try the fourteenth Amendment, willing to try to bypass the Republican hostage drama altogether by saying he is constitutionally obligated to pay the national debt, and it says so in the fourteenth. The process has been debated, though when Joe Biden hinted at this the other day, he indicated it would have to be litigated, implying he would do it. Others would then sue to stop him. But the Cornell law professor Michael Dorf says he's got it. Backwards that people in favor of using the amendment should sue first. They should claim in court that any failure or delay by the government in paying them what it owes them would cause profound injury. Dorff says a suit like that was in fact filed. On Monday. The NAGE, the National Association of Government Employees, sued FED chair Janet Yellen on other grounds, trying to get a judge to rule that the debt default concept is illegal because of separation of powers and the Fifth Amendment, and that the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional. Now, look, we are here now in deep, deep legal waters, and I'm getting dizzy, and I feel like the Pea quad is sinking again. But I think I understand this, and whatever it is, it's a damn sight better of a plan than defaulting or giving into this mount to bank. Kevin McCarthy, Thank you, Nancy Faust and Dateline, New York. The Manhattan District Attorney today charges Daniel J. Penny in the choke hold death of the houseless man in the New York Subway, Jordan Neely, second degree manslaughter on a simple premise a man threatening people in public, like on a subway train might be restrained or even injured in the process by good Samaritans, and the good Samaritans get a medal, but choking the man to death is not any of that. The other problem here is that virtually every news story refers to the now defendant Daniel J. Penny as a quote marine veteran, as if we were back on the Pea quad as I mentioned in the a Bloc and just now. His military status has got nothing to do with this. In fact, it gives him a benefit of the doubt he clearly does not deserve. If the roles had been reversed and Penny had been choked to death by a disturbed man named Jordan Neely, the headlines would be calling Jordan Neely something like the subway strangler, coming up Fridays with Thurber and only one story that he could possibly offer to us today, the greatest man in the World. First, the daily round up of the miss Greens, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The Bronze Tony Nunziato. Tony is standing by his guy, George Santos. George Santos, who has been charged with everything but stealing false teeth off the corpses in the mortuary. But Tony Nunziado says he is not ready to call for Santos' resignation from Congress. I'll wait to see what they say in court, Nunziado says, Especially lately, we see many people being indicted, but they were wrong. Day was set free. And who is this Tony Nunziato who is so optimistic about the chance that somehow they've got the wrong guy for all thirteen George Santos indictments. Tony Nunziado is chairman of the Republican Party of Queens. And when you are the chairman of the Republican Party of Queens, it must be very difficult to say yes, all right, I'll give up on the first guy we actually got elected to the House in a million years. The runner up, this Vivek Ramaswami. Guy. I am beginning to think there are people supporting his long shot bid for the Republican presidential nomination just for the larfs, just because he's so dumb. Ramaswami is thirty seven years old and is big. We have to change the constitution, idea and they all have big we have to change the constitution ideas. His is he wants to raise the voting age. He wants to raise it from eighteen to twenty five unless you are in the military, or you are a first responder, or you pass the same civics test they give people who are applying for US citizenship. Now, I mean, the civics test idea is not a bad one, But give me one example of anybody in this country getting smarter about civic responsibility between eighteen and twenty five that they'd automatically not have to take the test. I mean, make it between eighteen and ninety five. Nobody knows civics in this country anymore. I mean, be careful on this. If you're actually going to institute a civic awareness test before voting, you might shave the voting population down to like one hundred thousand people. But that's besides the point. Let's say Ramaswami somehow becomes the Republican nominee and he really pushes this raise the voting age thing, and you are eighteen next year, or you are say nineteen or a young twenty, and he expects you to vote for him with the premise that voting for him would be He's going to take away your right to vote for him again in twenty twenty eight. Who is going to do this. I'll vote for him, and then I won't vote for him because he won't let me vote anymore. More importantly, who's dumb enough to run for office and say vote for me and I'll take away your right to vote. Ramaswami is just a dope, but the winner. Poppy Harlow one of the two surviving co hosts of CNN's Morning show. And look, we all get it. We've all worked with a Poppy Harlow. Management could come over and poop in their hat, and your own Poppy Harlow would just congratulate them on their aim. But her tweet about the you know is just wow. Quoting what Caitlin Collins showed the world last night was a masterclass in interviewing, real time, fact checking, and holding power to account. She is unflappable and was born for moments like this. So much love and respect. Unquote. It's just a little over the top. Pop makes me think that the internal dialogue here is I got rid of that loser Don Lemon and now Colin's just self destructed and soon to be mine, all mine. CNN This Morning with Poppy Harlow. Poppy CNN This Morning with Poppy Harlow. Just Poppy Rlow. You got it, Harlow. Two days worst Poppy in the world. Still ahead on Countdown, with all the headlines, there is only one Ferber story with which to resume our Friday readings, A tale as fresh as if it were written right after the Trump town hall by people who then stop watching CNN. The Greatest Man in the World. Next First, in each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog. Indeed you can help. Every dog has its day. The irony of the name of the seventy seven pound brindle Micks puppy that they are ready to kill at the New York Pound is almost too much to bear. He's called Free. His human dumped Free there, left him to die, said he couldn't pay for him anymore. Just twelve days ago. Free knows he's been abandoned. His usual affectionate nature is gone. He's seventeen months old, and the biggest complaints against him had been if you give him a treat and for some reason to try to take the treat away, he growls, and he's excitable to the point of being pushy. Well, I'm excitable to the point of being pushy for this, they will kill him. He needs an adopter or a foster or our pledges to help a rescue save him. Look for free on my Twitter feeds. I thank you and free. Thanks you to the master the work of James Thurber. There is a short film of this story. I don't think it really does it justice. I don't think anything does it justice. Occasionally, real life does do it justice. I've thought I've seen this story playing out in real time in this country almost every day for about seven years. Sit back and relax, if relax is the right word for it. For the Greatest Man in the World by James Thurber. Looking back on it now from the vantage point of nineteen forty one can only marvel that it had not happened. Long before it did. The United States of America had been ever since Kitty Hawk blindly constructing the elaborate petard by which, sooner or later it must be hoist. It was inevitable that someday there would come, roaring out of the skies a national hero of insufficient intelligence, background and character, successfully to endure the mounting orgies of glory prepared for aviators who stayed up for a long time or flew a great distance. Both Lindbergh and Byrd, fortunately for national decorum and international amity, had been gentlemen, So had our other famous aviators. They wore their laurels gracefully, withstood the awful weather of publicity, married excellent women, usually fine family, and quietly retired to private life and the enjoyment of their varying fortunes. No untoward incidents on a worldwide scale marred the perfection of their conduct on the perilous heights of fame. The exception to the rule was, however, bound to occur, and it did in July nineteen thirty seven, when Jack pal smirch erstwhile mechanics helper in a small garage in Westfield Eye, flew a secondhand, single motored Brestaban Dragonfly three monoplane all the way around the world without stopping. Never before in the history of aviation had such a flight as Smirches even been dreamed of. No one had even taken seriously the weird floating auxiliary gas tanks invention of the mad New Hampshire professor of astronomy, doctor Charles Lewis, Gresham, upon which Smirch placed full reliance. When the garage worker, a slightly built, surly unprepossessing young man of twenty two, appeared at Roosevelt Field early in July nineteen thirty seven, slowly chewing a great quid of scrap tobacco, and announced, nobody ain't seen no flying yet. The newspapers touched briefly and satirically upon his projected twenty five thousand mile flight. Aeronautical and automotive experts dismissed the idea kurt, implying that it was a hoax, the publicity stunt. The rusty, battered second hand plane wouldn't go, the Gresham auxiliary tanks wouldn't work. It was simply a cheap joke. Smirch, however, after calling on a girl in Brooklyn who worked in the flap folding department of a large paper box factory, a girl whom he later described as his sweet Bitituty climbed nonchalantly into his ridiculous plane at dawn the memorable seventh of July nineteen thirty seven, spit a curve of tobacco juice into the still air, and took off, carrying with him only a gallon of bootleg gin and six pounds of salami. When the garage boy thundered out over the ocean, the papers were forced to record in all seriousness that a mad, unknown young man his name was variously misspelled, had actually set out upon a preposterous attempt to span the world in a rickety one engine contraption, trusting to the long distance refueling device of a crazy schoolmaster. When nine days later, without having stopped once, the tiny plane appeared above San Francisco Bay, headed for New York, spluttering and choking, to be sure, but still magnificently and miraculously aloft the headlines, which long since had crowded everything else off the front page. Even the shooting of the Governor of Illinois by the Valetti Gang swelled to unprecedented size, and the news stories began to run to twenty five and thirty columns. It was noticeable, however, that the accounts of the epoch making flight touched rather lightly upon the aviator himself. This was not because the facts about the hero as a man were too meager, but because they were too complete. Reporters who had been rushed out to Iowa when Smirch's plane was first sighted over the little French coast town of Serlee Lemaire to dig up the story of the great man's life, had promptly discovered that the story of his life could not be printed. His mother, a sullen short order cook and a shack restaurant on the edge of a tourist's camping ground near Westfield, met all inquiries as to her son with an angry and the hell with him a hoppy drowns. His father appeared to be in jail somewhere for stealing spotlights and lap robes from tourists automobiles. His young brother, a weak minded lad, had but recently escaped from the Preston, Iowa Reformatory and was already wanted in several Western towns for the theft of money order blanks from post offices. These alarming discoveries were still piling up at the very time that Pal Smirch, the greatest hero of the twentieth century, blear eyed, dead for sleep, half starved. Was his crazy junk heap high above the region in which the lamentable story of his private life was being unearthed, headed for New York, and a greater glory than any man of his time had ever known. The necessity for printing some account in the papers of the young man's career and personality had led to a remarkable predicament. It was, of course, impossible to reveal the facts, for a tremendous popular feeling in favor of the young hero had sprung up like a grass fire when he was halfway across Europe on his flight around the globe. He was therefore described as a modest, chap taciturn blonde, popular with his friends, popular with girls. The only available snapshot of Smirch, taken at the wheel of a phony automobile in a cheap photo studio at an amusement park, was touched up so that the little vulgarian looked quite handsome. His twisted leer was smoothed into a pleasant so the truth was in this way kept from the youth's ecstatic compatriots. They did not dream that the Smirch family was despised and feared by its neighbors in the obscure Iowa town, nor that the hero himself, because of numerous unsavory exploits had come to be regarded in Westfield as a nuisance and a menace. Pal's smirch had the reporters discovered once knife the principle of his high school, not mortally, to be sure, but he had knifed him, and on another occasion, surprised in the act of an stealing altar cloth from a church, he had bashed the sexton over the head with a pot of Easter lilies. For each of these offenses he had served a sentence in the reformatory. Inwardly, the authorities, both in New York and in Washington, prayed that an understanding providence might, however awful, such a thing seemed, bring disaster to the rusty, battered plane in its illustrious pilot, whose unheard of flight had aroused the civilized world to hosannas of hysterical praise. The authorities were convinced that the character of the renowned aviator was such that the limelight of adulation was bound to reveal him to all the world as a congenital hooligan, mentally and morally unequipped to cope with his own prodigious fame. I trust, said the Secretary of State, at one of the many secret Cabinet meetings called to consider the national dilemma. I trust that his mother's prayer will be answered, by which he referred to missus Emma's. Smirch's wish that her son might be drowned was, however, too late for that Smirch had leaped the Atlantic and then the Pacific as if they were mill ponds. At three minutes after two o'clock on the afternoon of July seventeenth, nineteen thirty seven, the garage boy brought his idiotic plane into Roosevelt Field for a perfect three point landing. It had, of course been out of the question to arrange a modest little reception for the greatest flier in the history of the world. He was received at Roosevelt Field with such elaborate and pretentious ceremonies as rocked the world. Fortunately, however, the warren and spent hero promptly swooned, had to be removed bodily from his plane, and was spirited from the field without having opened his mouth once. Thus he did not jeopardize the dignity of his first reception, a reception illumined by the presence of the secretaries of War and the Navy, Mayor Michael J. Moriarty of New York, the Premier of Canada, Governors Fannamine Groves, mcpheeley and Critchfield, and a brilliant array of European diplomats. Smirch did not, in fact come too in time to take part in the gigantic hullabaloo arranged at City Hall for the next day. He was rushed to a secluded nursing home and confined in bed. It was nine days before he was able to get up, or, to be more exact, before he was permitted to get up. Meanwhile, the greatest minds in the country in solemn assembly, had arranged a secret conference of city, state and government officials, which Smirch was to attend for the purpose of being instructed in the ethics and behavior of heroism. On the day that the little mechanic was finally allowed to get up in dress and for the first time in two weeks, took a great chew of tomacco, he was permitted to receive the newspaper men this by way of testing him out. Smirch did not wait for questions. Use guys, he said, and the Times man winced use guys. Can tell a cock eyed world that I put it over on Lindberg. See yeah, man, an assaid, I'm two frogs. The two frogs. It was a reference to a pair of gallant French flyers who, in attempting to flight only halfway round the world, had two weeks before unhappily been lost at sea. The Times Man was bold enough at this point to sketch out for Smirch the accepted formula for interviews in cases of this kind. He explained that there should be no arrogant statements belittling the achievements of other heroes, particularly heroes of foreign nations. Ah the hell with that, said Smirch. I did it. See I did it, and I'm talking about it. And he did talk about it. None of this extraordinary interview was, of course printed. On the contrary, the newspapers, already under the discipline direction of a secret directorate created for the occasion and composed of statesmen and editors, gave out to a panting and restless world that Jackie, as he had been arbitrarily nicknamed, would consent to say only that he was very happy, and that anyone could have done what he did. My achievement has been I fear lightly exaggerated. The Times Man's article had him protest with a modest smile. These newspaper stories were kept from the hero, a restriction which did not serve to abate the rising malevolence of his temper. The situation was indeed extremely grave for Palell. Smirch was, as he kept insisting, raring to go. He could not much longer be kept from a nation clamorous to lionize him. It was the most desperate crisis the United States of America had faced since the sinking of Belusitania. On the afternoon of the twenty seventh of July, Smirch was spirited away to a conference room in which were gathered mayors, governors, government officials, behaviorist, psychologists, and editors. He gave them each a limp moist paw, and a brief, unlovely grin, hi, he said. When Smirch was seated, the Mayor of New York arose, and, with ob his pessimism, attempted to explain what he must say and how he must act when presented to the world, ending his talk with a high tribute to the hero's courage and integrity, The mayor was followed by Governor Fannman of New York, who, after a touching declaration of faith, introduced Cameron Spottiswood, second Secretary of the American Embassy in Paris, the gentleman selected to coach Smirch in the amenities of public ceremonies. Sitting in a chair with a soiled yellow tie in his hand and his shirt open at the throat, unshaved, smoking a rolled cigarette, Jack Smirch listened with a leer on his lips. I get you, I get you, He cut in nastily. You want me to act like a softie? Huh? You want me to act like that memny memny baby face lind big huh, Well nuts to that. See. Everyone took in his breath sharply. It was a sigh and a hiss. Mister Lindbergh began a United States Senator purple with rage, and mister bird Smirch, who was paring his nails with a jackknife, cut in again. Boyd. He exclaimed, Oh, for God's sake, that big somebody shut off the blasphemies with a sharp word. A newcomer had entered the word the room. Everyone stood up, except Smirch, who was still busy with his nails, and he did not even glance up. Mister Smirch, said someone sternly. The President of the United States. It had been thought that the presence of the chief Executive might have a chastening effect on the young hero, and the former had been, thanks to the remarkable cooperation of the press, secretly brought to the obscure conference room. A great painful silence fell. Smirch looked up, waved a hand at the President. How you coming, he asked, and began rolling a fresh cigarette. The silence deepened. Someone coughed in a strained way. Jesuits hot, ain't it, said Smirch. He loosened two more shirt buttons, revealing a hairy chest and the tattooed word sadie enclosed in a stenciled heart. The great and important men in the room, faced by the most serious crisis in American history, exchanged worried frowns. Nobody seemed to know how to proceed. Come on, come on, said Smirch. Let's get the hell out of here. Why do I start cutting in on the parties? Eh? And when is there gonna be this in it? He rubbed a thumb and forefinger together meaningly, money, exclaimed a state senator shocked. Pale. Yeah money, said pal, flipping his cigarette out of the window. And big money. He began rolling a fresh cigarette. Big money, he repeated, Frowning over the rice paper. He tilted back in his chair and leered at each gentleman separately, the leer of an animal that knows its power, the leer of a leopard loose in a bird and dog shop. Ah, for God's sake, let's get someplace where it's cool, he said. I've been cooped up plenty for three weeks. Smirch stood up and walked over to an open window, where he stood staring down into the street nine floors below. The faint shouting of newsboys floated up to him. He made out his name, hot Dog, he cried, grinning ecstatic. He leaned out over the sill. You tell um babies, he shouted down, Hot diggity Dog. In the tense little knot of men standing behind him, a quick, mad impulse flared up. An unspoken word of appeal of command seemed to ring through the room, yet it was deadly silent. Charles K. L Brand, secretary to the Mayor of New York City, happened to be standing nearest smirch. He looked inquiringly at the President of the United States. The President, pale grim nodded shortly. Brand a tall, powerfully built man wants to tackle at Rutgers University, stepped forward, seized the greatest man in the world by his left shoulder and the seat of his pants, and pushed him out the window. My god, he's fallen out the window, cried a quick witted editor. Get me out of here, cried the President. Several men sprang to his side, and he was hurriedly escorted out of a door toward a side entrance of the building. The editor of the Associated Press took charge. Being used to such things crisply, he ordered certain men to leave, others to stay. Quickly. He outlined a story which all the papers were to agree on, sent two men to the street to handle that end of the tragedy. Commanded a senator to sob and two congressmen. I go to pieces nervously. In a word, he skillfully set the stage for the gigantic task that was to follow, the task of breaking to a grief stricken world. The sad story of the untimely accidental death of its most illustrious and spectacular figure. The funeral was, as you know, the most elaborate, the finest, the solemnest, and the saddest ever held in the United States of America. The monument in Arlington Cemetery, with its clean white shaft of marble and the simple device of a tiny plane carved on its base, is a place for pilgrims in deep reverence to visit. The nations of the world paid lofty tributes to Little Jackie Smirch, America's greatest hero. At a given hour, there were two minutes of silence throughout the nation. Even the inhabitants of the small, bewildered town of Westfield, Iowa, observed this touching ceremony. Agents of the Department of Justice sought that one of them was especially assigned to stand grimly in the doorway of a little shack restaurant on the edge of the tourist's camping ground just outside the town. There, under his stern scrutiny, Missus Emma Smirch bowed her head over two Hamburger steaks sizzling on her grill, bowed her head and turned away, so that the secret serviceman could not see the twisted, strangely familiar leer on her lips. The Greatest Man in the World by James Thurber. Of all the Thurber works, I really think that is the one you could most easily update, expand upon, and make into a twenty first century movie. 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 Phillip Schanel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad. Everything else is pretty much my fault, and I thank you for bringing us to two hundred episodes of this thing. A couple of them have been slightly updated, but you know what I mean. Two hundred anyway, that's countdown for this, the eight hundred and fifty seventh days since Donald Try I'm 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 Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.