Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Make no mistake about what this is. This is Donald Trump's terrorist attack on Los Angeles and with its undercurrent of warning and preview to and against all the other metropolitan areas still free of MAGA fascism. It is also Donald Trump's terrorist threat against all of America. What else do you call it? What else can you call it? When you send in an unknown number of massed gestapo, fired with authoritarian and racist fervor, their consciences muted by decades of hateful rainwashing to seize, violate, and disappear civilians largely from one ethnic group, from their homes, from their streets, from their children's high school graduation ceremonies, and then send them to anywhere. Send them to torture camps in lethally dangerous foreign countries. Send them to the basements of the ice facility in La overnight without water or food or electricity. Send them to wherever you want to keep them, while often farcical legal cases are manufactured against them, as in the story of kilmar Abrego Garcia. What else do you call it? When, on top of this preliminary stage of ethnic cleansing, you begin to beat and threaten and seize those patriotic Americans protesting Donald Trump's use of the Constitution as something with which he can wipe his ass. What else do you call it when, after these unforgivable, disqualifying acts, you bypass the Police Department of Los Angeles, and you bypass the Mayor of Los Angeles, and you bypass the Governor of California, all of whom correctly describe the proportions of the clashes over the Nazi like raids as minor events. When you bypass these clear and sober conclusions, and you nationalize two thousand California National Guardsmen and pit them against their fellow residents, and pit them against perhaps their own relatives, and then you get the unstable, hallucinating Secretary of Defense ready to send in active duty Marines because people tried to save their neighbors and their relatives from existential life and death kidnapping by ice. What else do you call it? When the fiendish, demented, Hispanic hated advisor and Bigot refers to all of this as quote an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States, when it is in fact a handful of people exercising their protected constitutional rights in the parking lot of a goddamned home depot. It is terrorism. It is designed to cause terror and panic. It is designed to either use violence or the threat of violence to effect political change, extra legally performed by masked and helmeted, faceless men and women with weapons of war on the streets of America's second largest city, to stage an ice riot and then show what are literally seconds of self defense by civilians, again and again on what are nominally teleb news channels now subverted and perverted into propaganda machines, to warn with vague, unstated menace that this will be re enacted every day for the next month in southern California and then where New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, where by coincidence, there will be a parade of military hardware at the end of this week, of parade that would have made Stalin and the Kremlin blush, to celebrate the birthday of the quote commander in chief unquote, the one who did everything he could five times to avoid serving in the military, to avoid even the kind of lip service service completed by the George W. Bushes of this world it is terrorism. It is Donald Trump's terrorism. It is Donald Trump's terrorist attack on Los Angeles on all of us call it what it is. The reality of the events on the ground in southern California is something altogether different. The LAPD, fantastically fascist and reliably racist, almost without interruption for nearly a century and a half, says there is no threat, No National Guard is required, no goddamn marines. They have it covered. The news in Los Angeles, used to true disaster and threat as recently as the wildfires, and as far back as the Watts riot and the Rodney King Riot and the zoot Suit riots, gave as much coverage yesterday to the Pride Parade in West Hollywood, largely because there were more people on the streets at the Pride parade. The all news radio station, which we'll switch to wall to wall disaster coverage anytime an earthquake hits more than four point five on the Richter scale, moved quickly yesterday from the clashes and the calls from liberal government officials for calm and non violence, from the trumpest deliberate escalation to the Stephen Miller wet dream of using the American military to shoot American civilians on the streets of American cities. They moved from their coverage of all that to reporting instead on a true urgent threat in the community. It is graduation season and forty six hundred customers lost power in Westminster, California, over the weekend because too many people lost control of too many metallic congratulations balloons and they shorted out overhead power lines. That is the reality of what it's like in southern California right now. It's pretty much like every other day. Send in the Marines to deal with that. Pete Hegseth. Let's see your warrior ethos applied to the fight against shiny, unidentified flying objects that might be an attack because they're going first for the infrastructure. Let's see heg Seth against the balloons, the warrior ethos embodied by an idiotic Secretary of Defense who uses more hair product than Lady Gaga. Make no mistake about what this is. I first warned about this sequence of events early in two thousand goddamned sixteen. First Trump activates racism against Hispanic people, or against any people, then he invents an excuse to demonize them. Then he starts to round them up. Then his cronies profit off the private concentration camps that have to be built for them. Then he starts to round up anybody who tries to defend the rights of his victims. Then he cuts to the chase and sends in the National Guard and finally the Army, and hopefully shoots them all. Then he declares there's an invasion, and he says the threat, the threat he manufactured and the prostitutes in his bureaucracy would nurture and escalate. He says, the threat is now national, and everyone is now at risk, and your constitution will have to be suspended one right at a time. Trump's attack on southern California, his invasion of Southern California, means we are at about square two of this sequence. Even the usually hapless Politico made no mistake about what this is Trump's Rubicon moment. It wrote, well, it is essential Trump and his dreams of dictatorship do not make it to the other side of that river. But believe it or not, almost miraculously, there is a way to stop Trump here and now and to destroy his plans and perhaps his presidency immediately. And by chance, this way was voiced before Trump began down the path that will end with either America or Trump here, but not both. This literally came out the day before. It was on Friday. It was in Gavin Newsom's unexpected spine growth at his embracing something else I have been talking about since two thousand goddamn sixteen. There is one certain, nonviolent, unstoppable way to undo everything imposed upon the people of this long suffering nation by this dictatorial, fascist, minority bullshit regime. Gavin Newsom and the state government of California have now threatened to lead a tax strike. Newsom and California's State Assembly are ready to defund the Trump dictatorship.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Make no mistake about what this is. This is Donald Trump's terrorist attack on Los Angeles and with its undercurrent of warning and preview to and against all the other metropolitan areas still free of MAGA fascism. It is also Donald Trump's terrorist threat against all of America. What else do you call it? What else can you call it? When you send in an unknown number of massed gestapo, fired with authoritarian and racist fervor, their consciences muted by decades of hateful rainwashing to seize, violate, and disappear civilians largely from one ethnic group, from their homes, from their streets, from their children's high school graduation ceremonies, and then send them to anywhere. Send them to torture camps in lethally dangerous foreign countries. Send them to the basements of the ice facility in La overnight without water or food or electricity. Send them to wherever you want to keep them, while often farcical legal cases are manufactured against them, as in the story of kilmar Abrego Garcia. What else do you call it? When, on top of this preliminary stage of ethnic cleansing, you begin to beat and threaten and seize those patriotic Americans protesting Donald Trump's use of the Constitution as something with which he can wipe his ass. What else do you call it when, after these unforgivable, disqualifying acts, you bypass the Police Department of Los Angeles, and you bypass the Mayor of Los Angeles, and you bypass the Governor of California, all of whom correctly describe the proportions of the clashes over the Nazi like raids as minor events. When you bypass these clear and sober conclusions, and you nationalize two thousand California National Guardsmen and pit them against their fellow residents, and pit them against perhaps their own relatives, and then you get the unstable, hallucinating Secretary of Defense ready to send in active duty Marines because people tried to save their neighbors and their relatives from existential life and death kidnapping by ice. What else do you call it? When the fiendish, demented, Hispanic hated advisor and Bigot refers to all of this as quote an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States, when it is in fact a handful of people exercising their protected constitutional rights in the parking lot of a goddamned home depot. It is terrorism. It is designed to cause terror and panic. It is designed to either use violence or the threat of violence to effect political change, extra legally performed by masked and helmeted, faceless men and women with weapons of war on the streets of America's second largest city, to stage an ice riot and then show what are literally seconds of self defense by civilians, again and again on what are nominally teleb news channels now subverted and perverted into propaganda machines, to warn with vague, unstated menace that this will be re enacted every day for the next month in southern California and then where New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, where by coincidence, there will be a parade of military hardware at the end of this week, of parade that would have made Stalin and the Kremlin blush, to celebrate the birthday of the quote commander in chief unquote, the one who did everything he could five times to avoid serving in the military, to avoid even the kind of lip service service completed by the George W. Bushes of this world it is terrorism. It is Donald Trump's terrorism. It is Donald Trump's terrorist attack on Los Angeles on all of us call it what it is. The reality of the events on the ground in southern California is something altogether different. The LAPD, fantastically fascist and reliably racist, almost without interruption for nearly a century and a half, says there is no threat, No National Guard is required, no goddamn marines. They have it covered. The news in Los Angeles, used to true disaster and threat as recently as the wildfires, and as far back as the Watts riot and the Rodney King Riot and the zoot Suit riots, gave as much coverage yesterday to the Pride Parade in West Hollywood, largely because there were more people on the streets at the Pride parade. The all news radio station, which we'll switch to wall to wall disaster coverage anytime an earthquake hits more than four point five on the Richter scale, moved quickly yesterday from the clashes and the calls from liberal government officials for calm and non violence, from the trumpest deliberate escalation to the Stephen Miller wet dream of using the American military to shoot American civilians on the streets of American cities. They moved from their coverage of all that to reporting instead on a true urgent threat in the community. It is graduation season and forty six hundred customers lost power in Westminster, California, over the weekend because too many people lost control of too many metallic congratulations balloons and they shorted out overhead power lines. That is the reality of what it's like in southern California right now. It's pretty much like every other day. Send in the Marines to deal with that. Pete Hegseth. Let's see your warrior ethos applied to the fight against shiny, unidentified flying objects that might be an attack because they're going first for the infrastructure. Let's see heg Seth against the balloons, the warrior ethos embodied by an idiotic Secretary of Defense who uses more hair product than Lady Gaga. Make no mistake about what this is. I first warned about this sequence of events early in two thousand goddamned sixteen. First Trump activates racism against Hispanic people, or against any people, then he invents an excuse to demonize them. Then he starts to round them up. Then his cronies profit off the private concentration camps that have to be built for them. Then he starts to round up anybody who tries to defend the rights of his victims. Then he cuts to the chase and sends in the National Guard and finally the Army, and hopefully shoots them all. Then he declares there's an invasion, and he says the threat, the threat he manufactured and the prostitutes in his bureaucracy would nurture and escalate. He says, the threat is now national, and everyone is now at risk, and your constitution will have to be suspended one right at a time. Trump's attack on southern California, his invasion of Southern California, means we are at about square two of this sequence. Even the usually hapless Politico made no mistake about what this is Trump's Rubicon moment. It wrote, well, it is essential Trump and his dreams of dictatorship do not make it to the other side of that river. But believe it or not, almost miraculously, there is a way to stop Trump here and now and to destroy his plans and perhaps his presidency immediately. And by chance, this way was voiced before Trump began down the path that will end with either America or Trump here, but not both. This literally came out the day before. It was on Friday. It was in Gavin Newsom's unexpected spine growth at his embracing something else I have been talking about since two thousand goddamn sixteen. There is one certain, nonviolent, unstoppable way to undo everything imposed upon the people of this long suffering nation by this dictatorial, fascist, minority bullshit regime. Gavin Newsom and the state government of California have now threatened to lead a tax strike. Newsom and California's State Assembly are ready to defund the Trump dictatorship.

Donald Trump is threatening to defund California, but it's econ one oh one. California is a donor state. We provide over eighty billion dollars more in tax revenue to the federal government than the federal government provides to the people of the state of California. We help pay federal bills. So if Donald Trump's going to continue to threaten forty million Americans that live in California, maybe we should consider it withholding those resources.

Donald Trump is threatening to defund California, but it's econ one oh one. California is a donor state. We provide over eighty billion dollars more in tax revenue to the federal government than the federal government provides to the people of the state of California. We help pay federal bills. So if Donald Trump's going to continue to threaten forty million Americans that live in California, maybe we should consider it withholding those resources.

God yes, especially after the Iice Gestapo riots in La there's more. Quote. I'll use every legal and constitutional tool available to defend California, says the State Assembly Speaker Robert Reebos in the wake of the Trump threat to cut off any federal money that he can that is owed to California, quoting again, we must look at every option, including withholding federal r taxes. That's six hundred and ninety two billion dollars in federal taxes paid by California and its residents per year. The figure that Newsom quoted there the eighty billion. That's the gap. Eighty billion is what California donates to the Red States or has stolen from it by the Red States. The actual figure paid every year into the federal government by the state of California is six hundred and ninety two billion dollars. Doje this, Trump, Governor do it? Do it now? Do it in every Blue state. The gap is bigger in New York. Do it, and they will be metaphorically starving in the streets of the Red States by this Friday. I have been saying for eight years that ultimately it will come down to this, that the last line of defense of this country and its future and its democracy is not civil war or mass protest or judicial resurrection, but rather shutting down the Blue state ATM I have said that ultimately, if this means you and I have to stop paying our federal taxes and run those risks, so be it. Of course, there is an obvious problem with that. If one hundred percent of US stop paying our federal taxes, the administration falls and Trump flees the country by the end of the week. If one percent of us stop paying our federal taxes, you and I will get arrested and prosecuted. I hate to break this to you, but this is not the greatest generation. And the number of us who would actually take that risk now in this America, well, that one percent figure I just quoted my be wildly optimistic, to say nothing of the increasingly automatic nature of federal tax deductions. How many of us can actually stop paying our federal taxes. But what Newsom and California speaker Rivas are talking about is way different, and way better, and way more deadly. It is not you and I taking the risk now. It is the state of California taking the lead. It is not a consumer tax strike. It is a declaration of economic war by the most economically powerful state in the nation, the fourth biggest economy in the world, against Donald Trump and the leech states that put him in power and currently control the country as a minority and control us the majority, and are endeavoring at this moment to make slaves out of us. But here it is Gavin Newsom taking the risk, California taking the risk, leaders leading. Damn governor. If you do this, if you just carry this threat out far enough and long enough to break Trump, I'll not only forgive you your sillery pandering to the fascists on that podcast, I'll work for your presidential campaign. I'll nominate you myself. I'll carry you to the convention. This is the best option to defeat Trump and restore the vaguely fair of America of twenty sixteen that we have seen since twenty sixteen. Biden and Garland screwed the pooch on convicting Trump, and he might have run out the clock anyway, And even if he didn't, he would have run from prison. And even if he didn't do that, somebody else would have run on a promise to pardon him and restore him. In many ways, but especially this one, Donald Trump is a cockroach but this, this is gold gold, because there are no nuclear options left to Trump with which he can get withheld taxes out of the hands of California. You can't do it with the National Guard. You can't do it with marines. You can't do it with Pete Hegseth's hair moose. You can't do it with court orders. You can't do it without the state's cooperation. And even though I am sitting here looking at New York's key Democrats, likely being not just Kathy Hochel but also Andrew Cuomo, it could even inspire the other Blue states in the same boat to reassert economic control of this nation and break the Red states tomorrow. That economic disparity is extraordinary. Calculating it is extraordinarily difficult. Newsom's number. California pays in eighty billion a year more than it gets out in the federal funds Trump has threatened to cut off. That's almost certainly better and more accurate than anything I could come up with. A decade ago, Business Insider produced a startling number. The twenty two reddest states in the country were taking out four hundred and twenty five billion a year from the federal government, more than they were putting in New York's figure as a so called donor state, essentially by itself kept the state of South Carolina alive. Texas, where fully a quarter of state revenue comes from the federal government, does not go bankrupt every year only because that money that the taxpayers in California and Illinois and Minnesota put in never see again and goes to Texas goes to Texas. And on top of the pure economics, there is the unmitigated hypocritical gall of the Maga states. They survive because of that part of our nation that has always been socialist share the wealth. Florida is socialist. Florida gets a kind of state to state social security or medicare. Perhaps is the more accurate comp socialist hell socialist? From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Florida is communist. As a worthwhile aside. Search that phrase and you will see that a lot of people seem to think from each according to his ability comes from the Bible. Back to the point, Newsome, we pay over eighty billion dollars more in taxes than we get back. Maybe it's time to cut that off, Speaker Revas. We must look at every option, including withholding federal taxes. Oh hellelujah. This is the Manhattan Project of the war against Trump. This and maybe just the threat of this, maybe just the first steps towards this. They are enough to get almost any concession needed from the Red States, because the government in those states would literally run out of money within months at most. The Rockefeller Institute of Government has the stark numbers, and they will amaze you. Nearly a third of the budget in Montana is federal money, yours mine, California's thirty percent, in Kentucky, thirty percent in Louisiana, twenty nine percent in Alaska and Wyoming, twenty seven in West Virginia. The entire framework of Republican deceit and the maga cloud of cult worship would crumble before the economic reality of everything suddenly tomorrow shutting off in Louisiana. But the Blue States, wouldn't the federal funds stop arriving in the Blue States? Too? Sure? They would, too bad. There wouldn't be any handy pot of you know, say, money California did not send to Trump, which would be eighty billion dollars larger than it would have been otherwise. Seven hundred billion, probably just sitting there because the Blue states keep the Red ones alive out of patriotism and goodwill. And if Trump really wants to f with our generosity, he will find out, and he will find out so fast that I think historians will never find any trace or record of him or his presidency. Let's circle back to Ice and Los Angeles and the man who is rapidly becoming the Colonel Dreyfus of our twenty first century. Prejudiced, morally bankrupt, racist prosecution, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. There are two remarkable things about this persecution. One is that Trump and Trump's whores spent weeks insisting that even if he was kidnapped without cause, there was now no way to ever get him back from El Salvador. Oh wait, there he is. He's in Nashville now. The second is how have his attorneys not yet filed a suit charging the government with what Trump and his idiots are almost boasting about that they have now maliciously prosecuted him. This is a crime. People must go to jail for this. Pam Bondi would be an excellent choice, and mister a Brigo Garcia must receive millions in damages period, traffic stop years ago, no evidence, no case, no charges, no nothing. You may leave. He's then kidnapped by Ice disappeared out of our country. Even the Trump lawyer admits to the court that they grabbed a man not deserving of prosecution, let alone rendition, and while they try to keep him in a torture chamber for the rest of his life, they manufacture a case for him based on the traffic stop which produced the conclusion of his innocence. Sue them, Sue them now. Also, you're not paying him his money with any of California's money. As the weekend in La underscored so brutally, Ice is out of control. Its brown shirts are out of control. The fiends directing them directing Ice are out of control and making it all worse. They are all incompetent morons. They are simultaneously insisting that protesters cannot wear masks nor shield their identities, while insisting that their own agents must wear masks and shield their identities, a violation of every tenet of law enforcement in this country's history. Not protective helmets, not life preserving vests, masks, masks for one purpose, masks so they can be masked and unidentifiable men with guns who say they are from the government and operating lawfully, except they are dressed as terrorists dress. Online, Trump congratulated these his stormtroopers on how well they had done in LA. He posted this hours before they got there. Naturally, because Trump is effing crazy and Trump unilaterally declared as dictators do that masks cannot be worn anymore by US civilians at protests. What do these people have to hide and why? He asked, ask that of Ice, shithead. Happily Trump and Ice are so bad at this. Tom Holman said he thinks somebody is going to lose their life during this stuff in LA. If you want to volunteer, Tom, it's over there. The US Marshal Service has now confirmed it. Last month, while raiding the immigration court in Tucson, Arizona, as cynical and diseased a tactic, as could be imagined, Ice seized a US marshal. He quote fit the general description of a subject being sought by Ice the Marshal's Service, and I'll translate that he was Hispanic. Then there is this buffoon Lions who runs the Gestapo, who is complaining about the risks that his bullies and racists are subjected to because they are doing the same thing terrorists do, because they are enforcing a laws that are not laws, or be in the best possible interpretation, they are enforcing laws that are not just, that are not American. This guy went on Fox News and tried to martyr himself over the comments by the mayor of Boston. Quote what Mayor Wu said was disgusting. She actually compared us to a neo Nazi group. Here I am on January sixth. Yeah, it was June sixth, and he said January sixth. Here I am on January sixth. The comparison to a neo Nazi group immediately threw todd Lyons into a form of Freudian slip in which he thought of January sixth and Trump's other neo Nazi group on that subject, it has noted that Trump's main defense for his deliberate inactivity on January sixth was that he had no means of knowing how to call in the National Guard for something that was blocks away from where he was sitting on his fat, useless ass eating cheeseburgers. And yet he just called in the National Guard from where he sat on his fat, useless ass eating cheeseburgers for something twenty seven hundred miles away. And we've been saying Trump can't learn. And of course then there is the mondanity of hypocrisy on the personal level, the individual bankruptcy of those involved in this. The mobilization of the California Guard had to go through Homeland Security Secretary Christy shoot 'em Upnome now with eight new action dress up outfits. It had to go over the head of the individual actually in charge of the California National Guard, Governor Newsom. Secretary Nome was all four riding roughshot over the States. Here's Secretary Nome while Governor February first of last year, quote, South Dakota is united in our support of our state's constitutional rights to defend itself. Democrats are encouraging Biden to federalize the National Guard to take that power away from the states. I will always stand to defend states rights. Christinome eight forty one a m. Two one twenty four. Well, now we know exactly how long forever is the time between two to one twenty four and six eight twenty five. I would suggest Christy nom has sold her soul. But Obviously that happened long ago. Presumably they removed it last time she went in for a touch up. And lastly, on the subject of personal failure and the mundanity of hypocrisy, there is the chairman of Disney, my former friend, Bob Iiger. You will recall Bob sold his soul months ago when he turned Trump's idiotic lawsuit against ABC News over a George Stephanoppolis interview into an opportunity to wipe the illegality off of a bribe. And this is what Bob bought with that. Terry Moran, the reporter the White House agreed to after Eiger seated even more of ABC's independence in arranging an interview with the dementia patient in chief. Terry Moran wrote a sober, clear, cool headed, accurate analysis of the emotional disturbance inside Stephen Miller that is suggested daily by Miller's public hysteria about LA. In about a thousand matters before LA, but of course Miller is from LA. Moran posted this, then deleted it. I'm not sure why Terry did that. Miller went on and on online about this Sunday, insisting it proved media bias and blah, blah blah, we get it, your nuts and it'sisted. The most important part was blah blah blah, we get it. The Hispanic girl at Santa Monica High School wouldn't go out with you. What Miller did not do was deny anything that Terry Moran wrote about him. Meanwhile, all the White House and its resident nitwit Caroline his name was Hilter Levitt wanted to talk about yesterday was how ABC better punished Terry Moran, and it did. Bob Eiger's company suspended him. Time frame undecided, pending further evaluation. A reporter reporting the truth gets suspended by Bob fing Iiger. Jesus H. Christ. Bob, the people of ABC News and the people in every ABC newsroom in America, and the people at ESPN and at every other Disney property dealing in the coverage of the world should walk out in protests, should walk off their shows today because guess what. My old friends in both shops, guess what. Robin Roberts, guess what, Chris Berman, guess what? Everybody You'll be next. Bob has no choice but to sell you all out. Now he is a Trump whore. Now, when I met Bob forty seven years ago, he told me his dream was to be on the air sportscaster. Circumstances, he said, led him instead into management, and he would have had no complaints about the life he expected he would then lead, but it would still be his second choice. He would still die still wanting to be a sportscaster or a newscaster and having never done so. Well, here's a chance, Bob really whore yourself out. Bob, take everybody at ABC off the air whom Trump doesn't like, and Bob, that would be everybody, and Bob just go on the air and do all the effing newscasts yourself. By the way, for thirty odd years, from nineteen seventy nine to like twelve thirteen, I believed what Bob had told me in his office at Wide World of Sports about why he stopped being on air and went into the business and budgeting end instead and what would happen to him as a result. And then I met his longtime assistant, Pat Philly when Pat was president of News for Comcast, and I told her that story and how much I admired Bob because he gave a great piece of advice with that, and Pat Philly laughed and said, oh, Bob Keith, he told you that he stopped being a sportscaster because he sucked. Also of interest, here, what do you mean? Jake Tapper claims his Biden book sold one hundred and fifty thousand copies, but the official Nielsen book scan data says it's less than half of that. What could have caused that kind of discrepancy? You don't think a former newscaster who sold his soul to please Trump would would No, it's unthinkable. That's next. This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on this edition of Countdown. I saw him the other day, a videotape of him. It may not have the biggest audience on YouTube, but my god, if you ever wanted to see one out of every newscast from say, the year nineteen seventy eight, you now can. And there he was anchoring the Channel five ten o'clock news. And if I didn't find myself on this videotape of that edition of the Channel five ten o'clock news, often that year, if you looked in the background of the news room shots during the Channel five ten o'clock news, you would see me Keith the nineteen year old intern. His name was Bill Jorgensen, and in a matter of speaking, he was my first anchor. Man. Boy, was he terrific and over the top and an inspiration to every one of us who was ever anti management, you know, like I have been once or twice a week for half a century. Anyway, let me tell you about my summer as an intern for Bill Jorgenson, including the story of the day they fired him and he allegedly said, if I have to go, I'm taking all of you with me. Next in things I promised not to tell first, believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute two Day's other worst person in the world Lebron's worse. Some leftover takes from those with Maga disease who could not process the musk Trump crap just too good to ignore, two of them from denesh De'suza, and a troll account with four hundred or so followers that got amplified when Alex Jones replied to this the troll first Buck millions, that's the name of the account buck millions. Now you understand the pain in Dan Bungino's eyes when you see him on any public media. He knows, he knows the reasons the Epstein list won't drop. He knows the assassination was faked. He knows the level of the grift with foreign money in Middle Eastern countries. Sad to see, to which Alex Jones replied, maybe two words, maybe, oh my god, though that phrase. The pain in Dan Bung's eyes, The pain in Dan Bongino's eyes comes from a having to work for a living for the first time, and b when, just like Rudy Giuliani, the mascara he uses to draw in his hair begins to run and runs into his eyes. The pain in Dan Bungino's eyes. Then quit, Go back to whatever the hell was you were doing before Christ The Decusan one was even wilder. Is this some sort of perverse scheme to force the release of the Epstein files? How great it would be to have a horde of bad guys publicly exposed? Then Trump and Elon break out the Champagne. Elon says, told you I could get Democrats to screen for that list. Laughter, exclamation point The confidence from this idiot that that was four d chess by Trump and Musk to publicly expose a horde of bad guys when Trump and Musk are the bad guys lasted only ten minutes. Even Desuza came back to announce literally ten minutes later, five forty one pm five to fifty one pm. Keeping your team together is one of the great challenges of leadership. Is it even conceivable the Democrats would alienate George and Alex Soros the way the GOP has alienated Elon Musk. Doesn't matter whose fault it is, this is an unmitigated disaster for our side. So okay, first off, you've just compared your man Musk to George Soros. Still, the best part of this is Desuz's first tweet and his conclusion that this was some sort of wrestling, fake fight move, ending with the quote laughter the runner up worser good old Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson and their BBB Bullshit Biden Book. I'll read what Lachlan Cartwright wrote about this in breaker quote. Despite claims it has sold one hundred and fifty thousand copies, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Biden book, Original Sin has sold seventy thousand copies through the end of May. Per Nielsen Book Scan data, the duo sold seventeen thousand books last week, down fifty three thousand copies from the first week, thanks in large part to NonStop promotion on CNN. There wasn't the promotion on CNN that caused the drop. It was the promotion. You know what he means now, you know, an exaggeration of book sales by more than say, fifty percent. That makes Jake Tapper and that gossip columnist Alex Thompson look pretty bad. On the other hand, maybe there's nothing actually nefarious here. Maybe Jake Tapper is just beginning to have mental acuity problems. Anyway, I'm sure the book will sell so much better when to steal the old Chevy Chase joke from Saturday Night Live. When it will sell so much better because they bypassed the traditional paperback version and the publishers go straight to confetti. The runner up worser New York State Senator Jessica Ramos and disgraced ex governor but still Sleezbag Andrew Cuomo, both of them candidates for mayor here in fun City. They are also reprehensible political reptiles. Friday Ramos endorsed Cuomo. She has the right to do that. It of course means you are dead in the Democratic Party, even here in New York with the worst Democratic party in a blue state in world history. But you go right into the garbage disposal politically in this one for doing this. But you can do it. It's okay, go ahead, endorse him. But Ramos's perfidy is special because there were reports that her campaign has not been paying its bills, and then suddenly, right after this endorsement, rumors that she'd been promised to spots in a Cuomo administration if the Democrat in name only, hell human in name only wins city Hall. To continue our lovely streak of finding the worst possible people to run big town, Jessica Ramo said, with Trump threatening to bulldoze New York and take us backward, we need someone in city Hall who knows how to hold the line and deliver under pressure. Even that is kind of normal, even though Cuomo is clearly Trump's choice in this election here and Trump opened an investigation of Cuomo, but not charges, so he can always blackmail Mayor Cuomo with charges into selling the city out to save his own worthless ass. But there's more here about Ramos the idea that she endorsed Cuomo on June sixth as the best person to defend New York City against Trump. Politico New York for Jeff Colton posted this. It was a fundraiser email from Jessica Ramos. That's the same Jessica Ramos about Cuomo. That's the same Cuomo. On May fifteenth, Jessica Ramos, Cuomo is the Democratic Party's Trump full stop. So on May fifteenth, Jessica Ramos describes Cuomo correctly as the Democratics Party's Trump full stop. June sixth, twenty two days later, twenty two she endorses him as the only candidate to save New York from Trump. That's the kind of total moral nihilism, total corruption, total hypocrisy that is so rare in today's world. Bravo, Jessica Ramos. You may be too unprincipled even to be a republican. Jessica Ramos and Andrew, don't worry. I'm not too unprincipled even to be a Republican Cuomo. Today's other worse Bison's It's ten pm. Do you know where your children are?

God yes, especially after the Iice Gestapo riots in La there's more. Quote. I'll use every legal and constitutional tool available to defend California, says the State Assembly Speaker Robert Reebos in the wake of the Trump threat to cut off any federal money that he can that is owed to California, quoting again, we must look at every option, including withholding federal r taxes. That's six hundred and ninety two billion dollars in federal taxes paid by California and its residents per year. The figure that Newsom quoted there the eighty billion. That's the gap. Eighty billion is what California donates to the Red States or has stolen from it by the Red States. The actual figure paid every year into the federal government by the state of California is six hundred and ninety two billion dollars. Doje this, Trump, Governor do it? Do it now? Do it in every Blue state. The gap is bigger in New York. Do it, and they will be metaphorically starving in the streets of the Red States by this Friday. I have been saying for eight years that ultimately it will come down to this, that the last line of defense of this country and its future and its democracy is not civil war or mass protest or judicial resurrection, but rather shutting down the Blue state ATM I have said that ultimately, if this means you and I have to stop paying our federal taxes and run those risks, so be it. Of course, there is an obvious problem with that. If one hundred percent of US stop paying our federal taxes, the administration falls and Trump flees the country by the end of the week. If one percent of us stop paying our federal taxes, you and I will get arrested and prosecuted. I hate to break this to you, but this is not the greatest generation. And the number of us who would actually take that risk now in this America, well, that one percent figure I just quoted my be wildly optimistic, to say nothing of the increasingly automatic nature of federal tax deductions. How many of us can actually stop paying our federal taxes. But what Newsom and California speaker Rivas are talking about is way different, and way better, and way more deadly. It is not you and I taking the risk now. It is the state of California taking the lead. It is not a consumer tax strike. It is a declaration of economic war by the most economically powerful state in the nation, the fourth biggest economy in the world, against Donald Trump and the leech states that put him in power and currently control the country as a minority and control us the majority, and are endeavoring at this moment to make slaves out of us. But here it is Gavin Newsom taking the risk, California taking the risk, leaders leading. Damn governor. If you do this, if you just carry this threat out far enough and long enough to break Trump, I'll not only forgive you your sillery pandering to the fascists on that podcast, I'll work for your presidential campaign. I'll nominate you myself. I'll carry you to the convention. This is the best option to defeat Trump and restore the vaguely fair of America of twenty sixteen that we have seen since twenty sixteen. Biden and Garland screwed the pooch on convicting Trump, and he might have run out the clock anyway, And even if he didn't, he would have run from prison. And even if he didn't do that, somebody else would have run on a promise to pardon him and restore him. In many ways, but especially this one, Donald Trump is a cockroach but this, this is gold gold, because there are no nuclear options left to Trump with which he can get withheld taxes out of the hands of California. You can't do it with the National Guard. You can't do it with marines. You can't do it with Pete Hegseth's hair moose. You can't do it with court orders. You can't do it without the state's cooperation. And even though I am sitting here looking at New York's key Democrats, likely being not just Kathy Hochel but also Andrew Cuomo, it could even inspire the other Blue states in the same boat to reassert economic control of this nation and break the Red states tomorrow. That economic disparity is extraordinary. Calculating it is extraordinarily difficult. Newsom's number. California pays in eighty billion a year more than it gets out in the federal funds Trump has threatened to cut off. That's almost certainly better and more accurate than anything I could come up with. A decade ago, Business Insider produced a startling number. The twenty two reddest states in the country were taking out four hundred and twenty five billion a year from the federal government, more than they were putting in New York's figure as a so called donor state, essentially by itself kept the state of South Carolina alive. Texas, where fully a quarter of state revenue comes from the federal government, does not go bankrupt every year only because that money that the taxpayers in California and Illinois and Minnesota put in never see again and goes to Texas goes to Texas. And on top of the pure economics, there is the unmitigated hypocritical gall of the Maga states. They survive because of that part of our nation that has always been socialist share the wealth. Florida is socialist. Florida gets a kind of state to state social security or medicare. Perhaps is the more accurate comp socialist hell socialist? From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Florida is communist. As a worthwhile aside. Search that phrase and you will see that a lot of people seem to think from each according to his ability comes from the Bible. Back to the point, Newsome, we pay over eighty billion dollars more in taxes than we get back. Maybe it's time to cut that off, Speaker Revas. We must look at every option, including withholding federal taxes. Oh hellelujah. This is the Manhattan Project of the war against Trump. This and maybe just the threat of this, maybe just the first steps towards this. They are enough to get almost any concession needed from the Red States, because the government in those states would literally run out of money within months at most. The Rockefeller Institute of Government has the stark numbers, and they will amaze you. Nearly a third of the budget in Montana is federal money, yours mine, California's thirty percent, in Kentucky, thirty percent in Louisiana, twenty nine percent in Alaska and Wyoming, twenty seven in West Virginia. The entire framework of Republican deceit and the maga cloud of cult worship would crumble before the economic reality of everything suddenly tomorrow shutting off in Louisiana. But the Blue States, wouldn't the federal funds stop arriving in the Blue States? Too? Sure? They would, too bad. There wouldn't be any handy pot of you know, say, money California did not send to Trump, which would be eighty billion dollars larger than it would have been otherwise. Seven hundred billion, probably just sitting there because the Blue states keep the Red ones alive out of patriotism and goodwill. And if Trump really wants to f with our generosity, he will find out, and he will find out so fast that I think historians will never find any trace or record of him or his presidency. Let's circle back to Ice and Los Angeles and the man who is rapidly becoming the Colonel Dreyfus of our twenty first century. Prejudiced, morally bankrupt, racist prosecution, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. There are two remarkable things about this persecution. One is that Trump and Trump's whores spent weeks insisting that even if he was kidnapped without cause, there was now no way to ever get him back from El Salvador. Oh wait, there he is. He's in Nashville now. The second is how have his attorneys not yet filed a suit charging the government with what Trump and his idiots are almost boasting about that they have now maliciously prosecuted him. This is a crime. People must go to jail for this. Pam Bondi would be an excellent choice, and mister a Brigo Garcia must receive millions in damages period, traffic stop years ago, no evidence, no case, no charges, no nothing. You may leave. He's then kidnapped by Ice disappeared out of our country. Even the Trump lawyer admits to the court that they grabbed a man not deserving of prosecution, let alone rendition, and while they try to keep him in a torture chamber for the rest of his life, they manufacture a case for him based on the traffic stop which produced the conclusion of his innocence. Sue them, Sue them now. Also, you're not paying him his money with any of California's money. As the weekend in La underscored so brutally, Ice is out of control. Its brown shirts are out of control. The fiends directing them directing Ice are out of control and making it all worse. They are all incompetent morons. They are simultaneously insisting that protesters cannot wear masks nor shield their identities, while insisting that their own agents must wear masks and shield their identities, a violation of every tenet of law enforcement in this country's history. Not protective helmets, not life preserving vests, masks, masks for one purpose, masks so they can be masked and unidentifiable men with guns who say they are from the government and operating lawfully, except they are dressed as terrorists dress. Online, Trump congratulated these his stormtroopers on how well they had done in LA. He posted this hours before they got there. Naturally, because Trump is effing crazy and Trump unilaterally declared as dictators do that masks cannot be worn anymore by US civilians at protests. What do these people have to hide and why? He asked, ask that of Ice, shithead. Happily Trump and Ice are so bad at this. Tom Holman said he thinks somebody is going to lose their life during this stuff in LA. If you want to volunteer, Tom, it's over there. The US Marshal Service has now confirmed it. Last month, while raiding the immigration court in Tucson, Arizona, as cynical and diseased a tactic, as could be imagined, Ice seized a US marshal. He quote fit the general description of a subject being sought by Ice the Marshal's Service, and I'll translate that he was Hispanic. Then there is this buffoon Lions who runs the Gestapo, who is complaining about the risks that his bullies and racists are subjected to because they are doing the same thing terrorists do, because they are enforcing a laws that are not laws, or be in the best possible interpretation, they are enforcing laws that are not just, that are not American. This guy went on Fox News and tried to martyr himself over the comments by the mayor of Boston. Quote what Mayor Wu said was disgusting. She actually compared us to a neo Nazi group. Here I am on January sixth. Yeah, it was June sixth, and he said January sixth. Here I am on January sixth. The comparison to a neo Nazi group immediately threw todd Lyons into a form of Freudian slip in which he thought of January sixth and Trump's other neo Nazi group on that subject, it has noted that Trump's main defense for his deliberate inactivity on January sixth was that he had no means of knowing how to call in the National Guard for something that was blocks away from where he was sitting on his fat, useless ass eating cheeseburgers. And yet he just called in the National Guard from where he sat on his fat, useless ass eating cheeseburgers for something twenty seven hundred miles away. And we've been saying Trump can't learn. And of course then there is the mondanity of hypocrisy on the personal level, the individual bankruptcy of those involved in this. The mobilization of the California Guard had to go through Homeland Security Secretary Christy shoot 'em Upnome now with eight new action dress up outfits. It had to go over the head of the individual actually in charge of the California National Guard, Governor Newsom. Secretary Nome was all four riding roughshot over the States. Here's Secretary Nome while Governor February first of last year, quote, South Dakota is united in our support of our state's constitutional rights to defend itself. Democrats are encouraging Biden to federalize the National Guard to take that power away from the states. I will always stand to defend states rights. Christinome eight forty one a m. Two one twenty four. Well, now we know exactly how long forever is the time between two to one twenty four and six eight twenty five. I would suggest Christy nom has sold her soul. But Obviously that happened long ago. Presumably they removed it last time she went in for a touch up. And lastly, on the subject of personal failure and the mundanity of hypocrisy, there is the chairman of Disney, my former friend, Bob Iiger. You will recall Bob sold his soul months ago when he turned Trump's idiotic lawsuit against ABC News over a George Stephanoppolis interview into an opportunity to wipe the illegality off of a bribe. And this is what Bob bought with that. Terry Moran, the reporter the White House agreed to after Eiger seated even more of ABC's independence in arranging an interview with the dementia patient in chief. Terry Moran wrote a sober, clear, cool headed, accurate analysis of the emotional disturbance inside Stephen Miller that is suggested daily by Miller's public hysteria about LA. In about a thousand matters before LA, but of course Miller is from LA. Moran posted this, then deleted it. I'm not sure why Terry did that. Miller went on and on online about this Sunday, insisting it proved media bias and blah, blah blah, we get it, your nuts and it'sisted. The most important part was blah blah blah, we get it. The Hispanic girl at Santa Monica High School wouldn't go out with you. What Miller did not do was deny anything that Terry Moran wrote about him. Meanwhile, all the White House and its resident nitwit Caroline his name was Hilter Levitt wanted to talk about yesterday was how ABC better punished Terry Moran, and it did. Bob Eiger's company suspended him. Time frame undecided, pending further evaluation. A reporter reporting the truth gets suspended by Bob fing Iiger. Jesus H. Christ. Bob, the people of ABC News and the people in every ABC newsroom in America, and the people at ESPN and at every other Disney property dealing in the coverage of the world should walk out in protests, should walk off their shows today because guess what. My old friends in both shops, guess what. Robin Roberts, guess what, Chris Berman, guess what? Everybody You'll be next. Bob has no choice but to sell you all out. Now he is a Trump whore. Now, when I met Bob forty seven years ago, he told me his dream was to be on the air sportscaster. Circumstances, he said, led him instead into management, and he would have had no complaints about the life he expected he would then lead, but it would still be his second choice. He would still die still wanting to be a sportscaster or a newscaster and having never done so. Well, here's a chance, Bob really whore yourself out. Bob, take everybody at ABC off the air whom Trump doesn't like, and Bob, that would be everybody, and Bob just go on the air and do all the effing newscasts yourself. By the way, for thirty odd years, from nineteen seventy nine to like twelve thirteen, I believed what Bob had told me in his office at Wide World of Sports about why he stopped being on air and went into the business and budgeting end instead and what would happen to him as a result. And then I met his longtime assistant, Pat Philly when Pat was president of News for Comcast, and I told her that story and how much I admired Bob because he gave a great piece of advice with that, and Pat Philly laughed and said, oh, Bob Keith, he told you that he stopped being a sportscaster because he sucked. Also of interest, here, what do you mean? Jake Tapper claims his Biden book sold one hundred and fifty thousand copies, but the official Nielsen book scan data says it's less than half of that. What could have caused that kind of discrepancy? You don't think a former newscaster who sold his soul to please Trump would would No, it's unthinkable. That's next. This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on this edition of Countdown. I saw him the other day, a videotape of him. It may not have the biggest audience on YouTube, but my god, if you ever wanted to see one out of every newscast from say, the year nineteen seventy eight, you now can. And there he was anchoring the Channel five ten o'clock news. And if I didn't find myself on this videotape of that edition of the Channel five ten o'clock news, often that year, if you looked in the background of the news room shots during the Channel five ten o'clock news, you would see me Keith the nineteen year old intern. His name was Bill Jorgensen, and in a matter of speaking, he was my first anchor. Man. Boy, was he terrific and over the top and an inspiration to every one of us who was ever anti management, you know, like I have been once or twice a week for half a century. Anyway, let me tell you about my summer as an intern for Bill Jorgenson, including the story of the day they fired him and he allegedly said, if I have to go, I'm taking all of you with me. Next in things I promised not to tell first, believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute two Day's other worst person in the world Lebron's worse. Some leftover takes from those with Maga disease who could not process the musk Trump crap just too good to ignore, two of them from denesh De'suza, and a troll account with four hundred or so followers that got amplified when Alex Jones replied to this the troll first Buck millions, that's the name of the account buck millions. Now you understand the pain in Dan Bungino's eyes when you see him on any public media. He knows, he knows the reasons the Epstein list won't drop. He knows the assassination was faked. He knows the level of the grift with foreign money in Middle Eastern countries. Sad to see, to which Alex Jones replied, maybe two words, maybe, oh my god, though that phrase. The pain in Dan Bung's eyes, The pain in Dan Bongino's eyes comes from a having to work for a living for the first time, and b when, just like Rudy Giuliani, the mascara he uses to draw in his hair begins to run and runs into his eyes. The pain in Dan Bungino's eyes. Then quit, Go back to whatever the hell was you were doing before Christ The Decusan one was even wilder. Is this some sort of perverse scheme to force the release of the Epstein files? How great it would be to have a horde of bad guys publicly exposed? Then Trump and Elon break out the Champagne. Elon says, told you I could get Democrats to screen for that list. Laughter, exclamation point The confidence from this idiot that that was four d chess by Trump and Musk to publicly expose a horde of bad guys when Trump and Musk are the bad guys lasted only ten minutes. Even Desuza came back to announce literally ten minutes later, five forty one pm five to fifty one pm. Keeping your team together is one of the great challenges of leadership. Is it even conceivable the Democrats would alienate George and Alex Soros the way the GOP has alienated Elon Musk. Doesn't matter whose fault it is, this is an unmitigated disaster for our side. So okay, first off, you've just compared your man Musk to George Soros. Still, the best part of this is Desuz's first tweet and his conclusion that this was some sort of wrestling, fake fight move, ending with the quote laughter the runner up worser good old Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson and their BBB Bullshit Biden Book. I'll read what Lachlan Cartwright wrote about this in breaker quote. Despite claims it has sold one hundred and fifty thousand copies, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Biden book, Original Sin has sold seventy thousand copies through the end of May. Per Nielsen Book Scan data, the duo sold seventeen thousand books last week, down fifty three thousand copies from the first week, thanks in large part to NonStop promotion on CNN. There wasn't the promotion on CNN that caused the drop. It was the promotion. You know what he means now, you know, an exaggeration of book sales by more than say, fifty percent. That makes Jake Tapper and that gossip columnist Alex Thompson look pretty bad. On the other hand, maybe there's nothing actually nefarious here. Maybe Jake Tapper is just beginning to have mental acuity problems. Anyway, I'm sure the book will sell so much better when to steal the old Chevy Chase joke from Saturday Night Live. When it will sell so much better because they bypassed the traditional paperback version and the publishers go straight to confetti. The runner up worser New York State Senator Jessica Ramos and disgraced ex governor but still Sleezbag Andrew Cuomo, both of them candidates for mayor here in fun City. They are also reprehensible political reptiles. Friday Ramos endorsed Cuomo. She has the right to do that. It of course means you are dead in the Democratic Party, even here in New York with the worst Democratic party in a blue state in world history. But you go right into the garbage disposal politically in this one for doing this. But you can do it. It's okay, go ahead, endorse him. But Ramos's perfidy is special because there were reports that her campaign has not been paying its bills, and then suddenly, right after this endorsement, rumors that she'd been promised to spots in a Cuomo administration if the Democrat in name only, hell human in name only wins city Hall. To continue our lovely streak of finding the worst possible people to run big town, Jessica Ramo said, with Trump threatening to bulldoze New York and take us backward, we need someone in city Hall who knows how to hold the line and deliver under pressure. Even that is kind of normal, even though Cuomo is clearly Trump's choice in this election here and Trump opened an investigation of Cuomo, but not charges, so he can always blackmail Mayor Cuomo with charges into selling the city out to save his own worthless ass. But there's more here about Ramos the idea that she endorsed Cuomo on June sixth as the best person to defend New York City against Trump. Politico New York for Jeff Colton posted this. It was a fundraiser email from Jessica Ramos. That's the same Jessica Ramos about Cuomo. That's the same Cuomo. On May fifteenth, Jessica Ramos, Cuomo is the Democratic Party's Trump full stop. So on May fifteenth, Jessica Ramos describes Cuomo correctly as the Democratics Party's Trump full stop. June sixth, twenty two days later, twenty two she endorses him as the only candidate to save New York from Trump. That's the kind of total moral nihilism, total corruption, total hypocrisy that is so rare in today's world. Bravo, Jessica Ramos. You may be too unprincipled even to be a republican. Jessica Ramos and Andrew, don't worry. I'm not too unprincipled even to be a Republican Cuomo. Today's other worse Bison's It's ten pm. Do you know where your children are?

The tragedy on twenty eighth Street with nine Nixon talks about the dumping of Spiro Agnew Money lives still on the line in Holland Tonight, I'm for the Gossips, Jackies, German Friends, Sanville Jorgensen's this is the ten o'clock News.

The tragedy on twenty eighth Street with nine Nixon talks about the dumping of Spiro Agnew Money lives still on the line in Holland Tonight, I'm for the Gossips, Jackies, German Friends, Sanville Jorgensen's this is the ten o'clock News.

That was who anchored the newscast on which I was an intern when I was nineteen years old, And you can probably understand my uncertainty that I had the skills, or the voice, or the shock of white hair to last, say, one hour in the business. Thankfully, they did not all sound like Bill Jorgenson. He was a news anchorman in Columbus, Ohio in the fifties, Cleveland starting in nineteen sixty one, and New York from nineteen sixty seven through nineteen eighty three. He pioneered the concept of the ten o'clock news here, when all the other stations had network dramas on or reruns, The newscast aimed to tell you everything that happened that day in one hour, seriously everything. This was made more plausible by the fact that Bill Jorgenson kinda sounded like God. He did not suffer fools gladly, and he thought all television executives were fools. I'd like to say I got that from him, but I doubt it. By nineteen seventy eight, year twelve for him in New York, he had pretty much run out of patience with the executives at Channel five, and he was beginning to lash out, and everybody agreed a month or two off would be a good idea. So he bought a win of Bago and he and the wife took off to see America on a sabbatical. They laughed about a week or ten days before my internship at Channel five started. My story with Bill Jorgensen can be summarized in four phone calls. My first week at the news assignment desk. The phone rings. I am a clank call for anyone from Kansas City, Missouri, from Bill Jorgensen. Will you accept the charges impulsively? I made an executive decision, we will operator. The next voice seemed to be coming not from the phone, not from Kansas City, but from some sort of pa system vibrating above the city, from way above my head, this is Jorgensen. Get me Monsky, please, Monsky, Mark Monsky, or as it said in the credits to our newscast, Mark bvs Monsky, Director of News, Mark B von Summer Monsky, the boss, the news director. The bad news was Mark Bee von Summer Monsky carried a gun. The good news was he liked me. I told his secretary. His secretary handled the call got Monsky. Three minutes later, Monsky came out and said to all of us at the desk, me included for God's sake, Jorgenson just called from Kansas City. They were having breakfast at the International House of Pancakes. They come out, he and the wife to the parking lot, and somebody has stolen the winebago. We got to get them out of there. They have nothing. Wire them some cash or something. Hereupon, the news director reached into his pocket and grabbed a stack of bills. Here's five hundred bucks. The sabbatical had not started all that well. On the other hand, only once before in my life had I seen five hundred dollars in cash. The sabbatical had been noticed. However, We interns were given instructions on what to do when we got phone calls like well, like phone call number two. What happened to Belle Jargenson asked the woman who said she was from Booton, New Jersey. He's on assignment, ma'am, I said, we expect him back in I believe two weeks, perhaps sooner. She laughed at me, Yeah, sabbatical like you bastards assigned George Sharmon to a sabbatical. There had been three primary anchors of the Channel five ten o'clock news, Jorgensen, his deputy George Sharmon, who also had a shock of white hair, and their deputy, Bill McCreery. And then one day George Sharmon was gone and a new kid from California had replaced him. They did this to the assignment desk one weekend as well. I was interning for Steve, the assignment editor, on Friday and said goodbye and have a nice weekend to him, and he said the same to me. And then on Monday, I was working for Joe, the new assignment editor. I said to my first mentor at Channel five, a researcher named Stanley Pinsley, as as quick as death. And Stanley paused and he congratulated me. You figured out the entire news business and you're only nineteen Bill Jorgensen came back to the newsroom soon after. I had not known him before, I didn't really know him now. He came out of his office only occasionally, might as well have won to worn a hood over his head, no eye contact. He ducked out a side door one night that they didn't fire the assignment editors. So at nine forty five we all sat back and prepared to finally exhale after a crazy day and watch the actual newscast in progress. And now comes phone call number three Channel five News. This is Jorgenson. Who's this? I thought quickly, I'm an intern. You wouldn't know me, he thought quickly. Fair enough. Tell Gary, Kay and Trophy and Jay tell them the elevator to the studio is stuck. Use the stairs. Goodbye. Told I went back to producer's row. Hey, Bill just called to tell you the elevator to the studio is stuck, so use the stairs. Jay, who I believe was the director that night, looked up optimistically. Is he on it? When I shook my head no. The look of disappointment verging on tears on Jay's face remains to this day indescribable. Towards the end of my internship, things went south with Bill Jorgenson and he took another sabbatical. Now the newscast was anchored by the kid from California whose name was John Rowland and Bill McCreary, and they were great to me, as was Bill Mazer, the sportscaster for whom I interned half the time. They were all great to me. My friend Stanley Pinsley was the writer, Bobby Campbell, all of them. Bill McCreary also did the sports on Fridays, and one Friday, he and Bill Maser were going to both be off and their backup was to and they and the sports producer Cliff Gelb decided I should do the sports cast, and they were serious. Mark bvs Monsky told them, no, no, you're not serious. Even he said, soon enough, kid, you'll do it. Soon enough. I went back to Cornell for my senior year, and I realized our newscasts, which were unsurpassed for a college radio station, We're running at about nine miles an hour, while Bill Jorgenson's ten o'clock news was doing one hundred, one hundred and twenty sometimes two hundred and fifty miles an hour. I thought to myself you're gonna have to step it up a little. Anyway. One night the next March, there's a ring in my apartment at two oh seven Delaware Avenue, Ithaca, New York, and it's a phone call, phone call number four, and it's my friend Stanley Pinsley calling from channel five. And I'm going to emphasize this is what he told me in nineteen seventy nine. It was only later confirmed for me by one other source. So who knows, Uh, you missed it, Bubby Stanley said, Jargonson's back. Well, he was back. He comes in, he does a week, he's shaky as hell. Monsky and the general manager take him to lunch. They tell him we're letting you go, and he's like, okay with it. He's very calm. He has a little meeting with the senior staff and he thanks everybody and he apologizes and everybody does, ah great, But you know, he just wasn't right, even for him. So today, evidently before I got in, he's got a little practical joke to play on everybody. And from what he said as they took him out of the building, he thought this would show everybody he was handling his firing. Okay, so I guess about five, he comes out of his office carrying this big box and on each side of the box it's got one word stenciled on it, Dynamite. And he stands by producer's row and he says, if I have to go, I'm taking all ues with me. And the box doesn't look real, but who knows with Jorgensen. So Choffey hits him high and Gary Kay hits him low, and Jay grabs the boxes. It falls, and that's the last we've seen at Jorgenson. I understand when he's resting somewhere. I'm sorry you missed it. On March fourteenth, nineteen seventy nine, Channel five in New York announced that Bill Jorgensen had resigned, and his lawyer told The New York Times he had quit to go do something better. And I just assumed, well, even as crazy as I found television news in my slice of my internship, that would be the end of him. And then on April sixth, Stanley calls me again, Bobby, guess who's the new anchor guy at Channel eleven? Jargonson? What a business? You sure you want those job referrals? He started on the Channel eleven news at ten on April twenty third, nineteen seventy nine. He'd barely been off the air one month. He lasted four years. He was ninety six when he died, according to his daughter, on March thirteenth. Nobody noted this, but March thirteenth. This March thirteenth was the fifty seventh anniversary of the first edition of Channel five to ten o'clock News with Bill Jorgenson. Even his obituary in The New York Times said, quote, mister Jorgenson struggled with station management. Clearly he did not struggle enough, however, to outweigh his skill and his drive, and his brilliance and his dedication to journalism, and his voice, and especially his sign off. He was, now that I think of it, the last newscaster I knew who had his own sign off.

That was who anchored the newscast on which I was an intern when I was nineteen years old, And you can probably understand my uncertainty that I had the skills, or the voice, or the shock of white hair to last, say, one hour in the business. Thankfully, they did not all sound like Bill Jorgenson. He was a news anchorman in Columbus, Ohio in the fifties, Cleveland starting in nineteen sixty one, and New York from nineteen sixty seven through nineteen eighty three. He pioneered the concept of the ten o'clock news here, when all the other stations had network dramas on or reruns, The newscast aimed to tell you everything that happened that day in one hour, seriously everything. This was made more plausible by the fact that Bill Jorgenson kinda sounded like God. He did not suffer fools gladly, and he thought all television executives were fools. I'd like to say I got that from him, but I doubt it. By nineteen seventy eight, year twelve for him in New York, he had pretty much run out of patience with the executives at Channel five, and he was beginning to lash out, and everybody agreed a month or two off would be a good idea. So he bought a win of Bago and he and the wife took off to see America on a sabbatical. They laughed about a week or ten days before my internship at Channel five started. My story with Bill Jorgensen can be summarized in four phone calls. My first week at the news assignment desk. The phone rings. I am a clank call for anyone from Kansas City, Missouri, from Bill Jorgensen. Will you accept the charges impulsively? I made an executive decision, we will operator. The next voice seemed to be coming not from the phone, not from Kansas City, but from some sort of pa system vibrating above the city, from way above my head, this is Jorgensen. Get me Monsky, please, Monsky, Mark Monsky, or as it said in the credits to our newscast, Mark bvs Monsky, Director of News, Mark B von Summer Monsky, the boss, the news director. The bad news was Mark Bee von Summer Monsky carried a gun. The good news was he liked me. I told his secretary. His secretary handled the call got Monsky. Three minutes later, Monsky came out and said to all of us at the desk, me included for God's sake, Jorgenson just called from Kansas City. They were having breakfast at the International House of Pancakes. They come out, he and the wife to the parking lot, and somebody has stolen the winebago. We got to get them out of there. They have nothing. Wire them some cash or something. Hereupon, the news director reached into his pocket and grabbed a stack of bills. Here's five hundred bucks. The sabbatical had not started all that well. On the other hand, only once before in my life had I seen five hundred dollars in cash. The sabbatical had been noticed. However, We interns were given instructions on what to do when we got phone calls like well, like phone call number two. What happened to Belle Jargenson asked the woman who said she was from Booton, New Jersey. He's on assignment, ma'am, I said, we expect him back in I believe two weeks, perhaps sooner. She laughed at me, Yeah, sabbatical like you bastards assigned George Sharmon to a sabbatical. There had been three primary anchors of the Channel five ten o'clock news, Jorgensen, his deputy George Sharmon, who also had a shock of white hair, and their deputy, Bill McCreery. And then one day George Sharmon was gone and a new kid from California had replaced him. They did this to the assignment desk one weekend as well. I was interning for Steve, the assignment editor, on Friday and said goodbye and have a nice weekend to him, and he said the same to me. And then on Monday, I was working for Joe, the new assignment editor. I said to my first mentor at Channel five, a researcher named Stanley Pinsley, as as quick as death. And Stanley paused and he congratulated me. You figured out the entire news business and you're only nineteen Bill Jorgensen came back to the newsroom soon after. I had not known him before, I didn't really know him now. He came out of his office only occasionally, might as well have won to worn a hood over his head, no eye contact. He ducked out a side door one night that they didn't fire the assignment editors. So at nine forty five we all sat back and prepared to finally exhale after a crazy day and watch the actual newscast in progress. And now comes phone call number three Channel five News. This is Jorgenson. Who's this? I thought quickly, I'm an intern. You wouldn't know me, he thought quickly. Fair enough. Tell Gary, Kay and Trophy and Jay tell them the elevator to the studio is stuck. Use the stairs. Goodbye. Told I went back to producer's row. Hey, Bill just called to tell you the elevator to the studio is stuck, so use the stairs. Jay, who I believe was the director that night, looked up optimistically. Is he on it? When I shook my head no. The look of disappointment verging on tears on Jay's face remains to this day indescribable. Towards the end of my internship, things went south with Bill Jorgenson and he took another sabbatical. Now the newscast was anchored by the kid from California whose name was John Rowland and Bill McCreary, and they were great to me, as was Bill Mazer, the sportscaster for whom I interned half the time. They were all great to me. My friend Stanley Pinsley was the writer, Bobby Campbell, all of them. Bill McCreary also did the sports on Fridays, and one Friday, he and Bill Maser were going to both be off and their backup was to and they and the sports producer Cliff Gelb decided I should do the sports cast, and they were serious. Mark bvs Monsky told them, no, no, you're not serious. Even he said, soon enough, kid, you'll do it. Soon enough. I went back to Cornell for my senior year, and I realized our newscasts, which were unsurpassed for a college radio station, We're running at about nine miles an hour, while Bill Jorgenson's ten o'clock news was doing one hundred, one hundred and twenty sometimes two hundred and fifty miles an hour. I thought to myself you're gonna have to step it up a little. Anyway. One night the next March, there's a ring in my apartment at two oh seven Delaware Avenue, Ithaca, New York, and it's a phone call, phone call number four, and it's my friend Stanley Pinsley calling from channel five. And I'm going to emphasize this is what he told me in nineteen seventy nine. It was only later confirmed for me by one other source. So who knows, Uh, you missed it, Bubby Stanley said, Jargonson's back. Well, he was back. He comes in, he does a week, he's shaky as hell. Monsky and the general manager take him to lunch. They tell him we're letting you go, and he's like, okay with it. He's very calm. He has a little meeting with the senior staff and he thanks everybody and he apologizes and everybody does, ah great, But you know, he just wasn't right, even for him. So today, evidently before I got in, he's got a little practical joke to play on everybody. And from what he said as they took him out of the building, he thought this would show everybody he was handling his firing. Okay, so I guess about five, he comes out of his office carrying this big box and on each side of the box it's got one word stenciled on it, Dynamite. And he stands by producer's row and he says, if I have to go, I'm taking all ues with me. And the box doesn't look real, but who knows with Jorgensen. So Choffey hits him high and Gary Kay hits him low, and Jay grabs the boxes. It falls, and that's the last we've seen at Jorgenson. I understand when he's resting somewhere. I'm sorry you missed it. On March fourteenth, nineteen seventy nine, Channel five in New York announced that Bill Jorgensen had resigned, and his lawyer told The New York Times he had quit to go do something better. And I just assumed, well, even as crazy as I found television news in my slice of my internship, that would be the end of him. And then on April sixth, Stanley calls me again, Bobby, guess who's the new anchor guy at Channel eleven? Jargonson? What a business? You sure you want those job referrals? He started on the Channel eleven news at ten on April twenty third, nineteen seventy nine. He'd barely been off the air one month. He lasted four years. He was ninety six when he died, according to his daughter, on March thirteenth. Nobody noted this, but March thirteenth. This March thirteenth was the fifty seventh anniversary of the first edition of Channel five to ten o'clock News with Bill Jorgenson. Even his obituary in The New York Times said, quote, mister Jorgenson struggled with station management. Clearly he did not struggle enough, however, to outweigh his skill and his drive, and his brilliance and his dedication to journalism, and his voice, and especially his sign off. He was, now that I think of it, the last newscaster I knew who had his own sign off.

There's our report for tonight, Bill Jorgenson, for Channel five News. Thanking you for your time this time until next time.

There's our report for tonight, Bill Jorgenson, for Channel five News. Thanking you for your time this time until next time.

I've done all all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. He was the best, and in retrospect he was the most fun. Most of our countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel, our musical directors of Countdown, also a couple of fun guys. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The Olberman theme for me ESPN two, which was written by Mitch Warren Davis A Piers courtesy of ESPN, Inc. That's our sports music. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Larry David. Everything else was as ever my fault. That's countdown for today, Day one hundred and forty one of America held hostage just twenty three days until the scheduled end of Trump's leafy duck and lame brained term unless putin or Musk remove him sooner, where the actuarial tables do, or we do, or a bluestate tax boycott and strike do. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow for the latest on LA and on a subject that went from a ten on everybody's radar to a zero. Remember Trump versus Musk Till the next one. I'm Keith Olderman. Thank you for your time, this time until next Time. Countdown with Keith Oulderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I've done all all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. He was the best, and in retrospect he was the most fun. Most of our countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel, our musical directors of Countdown, also a couple of fun guys. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The Olberman theme for me ESPN two, which was written by Mitch Warren Davis A Piers courtesy of ESPN, Inc. That's our sports music. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Larry David. Everything else was as ever my fault. That's countdown for today, Day one hundred and forty one of America held hostage just twenty three days until the scheduled end of Trump's leafy duck and lame brained term unless putin or Musk remove him sooner, where the actuarial tables do, or we do, or a bluestate tax boycott and strike do. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow for the latest on LA and on a subject that went from a ten on everybody's radar to a zero. Remember Trump versus Musk Till the next one. I'm Keith Olderman. Thank you for your time, this time until next Time. Countdown with Keith Oulderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.