Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio. So there was a red wave, a wave goodbye to your tsunami. Am I right? Sanity got up off the match. We beat the undead zombies with some well placed shovels. Fetterman defeated Oz. Free crudities for everybody, mass Triano. The election denier lost, Cox, the election denier lost, Zelden, Michael's Bailey, Jensen and Crockett in Minnesota. Tutor Fricking Dixon bluntly this could turn out to be the best mid terms for any first term president in decades. Joe Biden goes in one day from nomination Dark Horse two superhero Dark Brandon. Even Lindsey Graham says it was definitely not a Republican wave. The economy doomed the Democrats. No, everybody forgot about the Supreme Court and abortion. No, election denial was more important than democracy. No, And as a bonus, regardless of who ultimately gets the House seems like the Republicans, and who gets the Senate seems like the Democrats. Trump is already getting skewered by his own people. John Fetterman is the Senator elect from Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro is the Governor elect of Pennsylvania. Westmore is the governor elect of Maryland. Moura Healey wins in Massachusetts. Senator Hassan re elected in New Hampshire. Senator Murray re elected in Washington. Brian Shots reelected in Hawaii. Fox News was the first to call Michigan for Governor Whittmer, Governor Pritzker, and Senator Duckworth reelected in Illinois. Senator Bennett in Colorado. Governor hokel elected in New York. Governor McKee re elected in Rhode Island. Governor Waltz re elected in Minnesota. Governor Evers re elected in Wisconsin, defeating the Republican who said no Republican would ever lose another election. There after, he won by Felicia. Abortion rights confirmed by ballot measures in California and Michigan and Vermont. Secretary of State in Michigan, Jocelyn Benson beats that demonic sex Lady Karamo Representatives Abigail span Berger and Jennifer Weston in Virginia one over lunatic Deniers, though Elaine Luria lost. Marcy Captor Clock the military Liar j R. Madjuski, Whiley Nickel edges Cawthorne Clone Bohines. In North Carolina, gen Z Democrat Maxwell Atajandro Frost won a House seat for more Orlando. He's twenty five. The Georgia Senate will probably wind up in a runoff or a recount or both. We'll see. Even Lauren Bobert, a prohibitive favorite, was on the ropes against the Democrat Adam Frish in Colorado with more than eighty five in votes being counted like one per day, more like no bert Am I right, they would have to escort her out of the Capitol. But Matt Gates was reelected, won the youth vote. Also Marjorie Trailer Park Green, Joe Uli Wilson, Virginia Fox, Governor's abbot Kemp Gnome Scott Ivy, and the Oklahoma bone head Kevin Stitt, all re elected. J De Vance won in Ohio, Marco Rubio was reelected, Chuck Grassley was reelected, even though we're not sure he's still alive, And Sarah Huckabee is the governor elect of Arkansas so she can resume her career as a serial liar in her home state. Still no ad tsunami no red wave, and why not. There was one nugget in the early exit polls that was noted and then discarded. Suburban women nationwide went fifty seven Democrats. Biden had won them by fifty six. So congratulations to Politico and Yahoo and Reuter's congratulations on burying your own polls that showed the Democrats ahead in the generic congressional ballot. So you could tow the line with the corporate red narrative the unresolved races. The Republicans are clearly softening everybody up for more cheating charges and five will get you ten that no mainstream reporter points out that claiming this will catch them in an error of logic. The spiel has been that only votes counted before sunrise Wednesday should actually count like they were in the the good old days from I don't know Trump's last adder all overdose, but if the Democrat leading as of sunrise Wednesday, the Republicans would say that is cheating. In Arizona, when of the vote had been counted, Katie Hobbs was clocking carry Lake by fourteen points and Mark Kelly was thumping Blake Masters by eighteen. By the rule of Trump Hobbs and Kelly are the winners. The Republican problem in Arizona was evident and viewable in real time even before vote results started to pile in early in the day. Tabulators at around forty five of the voting locations in Maricopa County, that's Phoenix broke. Those are not voting machines. You complete your ballot, then you stick it in the tabulator. If the tabulator is not working, you put the ballot in a sealed ballot box and it is tabulated later when the tabulator is working. It's not even a clerical error, it's a machine that's not working right. But the Republicans seized on this as if it had been an invasion from Nicaragua. They demanded a judge extend voting hours there by three hours, even though nobody was kept from voting or even delayed from voting. The judge denied it, so they immediately used that as an excuse for a loss that had not happened yet. And then Fox Brett Bear, who pretends to be a news anchor, said, quote, for it to happen here, for it to happen now in this way is kind of strange. Even though it was not strange at all. And the real giveaway. Mark Fincham, the psycho guy in the Cowboy had running to run the elections and stop them, then tweeted, in cold panic, while voting was still going on in Arizona, quote, we need two hundred k more votes. Please text and call your family and friends to check on them. We need them to get to the polls. A sap. Well, I don't have a lot of relatives, but I don't know anybody who's got a family with more than two people in it. And then Carrie Lake, the failed small market local newscaster or for you, Harry Potter and the dolorous umbrage of Arizona, blamed her early shellacking on the tabulators, and she looked tiny and frail and small market as she did so. And now finally, the bonus of all bonuses. You know who's getting blamed. Trump is getting blamed. An analyst said this last night. This is a searing indictment of the Republican Party. The analyst was Mark Teesson on Fox News. The Fox News White House corresponded tweeted, GOP source tells me quote, if it wasn't clear before, it should be now we have a Trump problem. Trump, of course, did not bigfoot every Republican candidate by announcing Monday, but he did try to make election day about himself mob boss, threatening de Santis and McConnell and most importantly reporters. Again, you will remember his rally promise to reporters or publishers to reveal their sources by threatening to send them to prison to be raped. There Rolling Stone reporting on Tuesday, Trump actually asked one of his lawyers how to put reporters in jail. But the big background story of the mid terms. Trump gave an interview to the Network News Nation. It was fawning and self congratulatory, but it has turned out to be prophetic. Tonight, win or lose the results for Republicans. Um how much of that will be because of Donald Trump? Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit, and if they lose, I should not be blamed at all. Okay, but it will probably be just the opposite. When they win, I think they're going to do very well. I'll probably be given very little credit. Even though in many cases, right, you are insane as that was Trump was not wrong about that part. He endorsed three thirty candidates, and even if the Republicans man narrow victories and take both the House and the Senate, he will take a huge hit. And the ones who will hit him fastest will be Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, especially after the guy Trump did not like in Colorado who got the GOP nomination. Anyway, Joe O. Day lost the Senate race. Trump showed his party what this all means to him. He posted, oh Day lost big, make America great again, as if the seat had not been won by the Democrats. They're blaming Trump. But back to the main point. Call me a cock eyed optimist. Of course, I am well known as Captain Positive. But I look at the mid terms this way. Maybe, just maybe more than fifty of our friends and neighbors are still not crazy enough to give up democracy in exchange for a dollar off a gallon of gas. Maybe more than fifty of us would still not swap lower prices for dessert for deciding who's president based on who has the largest support from street gangs. Maybe more than fifty of Americans would still not agree to seeing their neighbors carted off to concentration camps. Even if it did mean those who were left would get vouchers to send their kids to religious schools. What a night. Thank you for your attention. We hope you enjoyed the two mid terms, or as they will forever be known from here on in the Red Dribble. Still ahead, the newest witness interviewed by the One six Commission is so important they're keeping his name secret. But AOC names names. Well, she names one name. Can you guess which right winger precipitates the most death threats against her? And speaking of the right wing, I have alluded to this many times, but I have never told the important part of the story before. All Right, nearly a quarter century ago, I went out on two dates with Laura Ingram, though to be fair, the second one was actually closer to me being kidnapped. What she revealed about that vast right wing conspiracy Hillary Clinton identified remains with me to this day, as do the scars. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith old Woman still ahead on countdown. Tucker Carlson versus Peacock versus Brett Farve for worst person dishonors. That's a fight. And everybody who has ever dated has made a mistake. Mine was named Laura Ingram. But there's a little bit more to that story, and it applies to today's tical scene. First, in each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need. You can help. Every dog has its day. You saved Ace from the crisis at the New York Pound. Now somebody needs to rescue Princess Wiggles. She's shy, uncertain around dogs, but she could be adopted tomorrow maybe better. Pledges to help a rescue outfit pull her out because she has contracted pneumonia in the pound, and the pounds response to that illness is, of course, to blame the dog and kill it as quickly as possible. The sadness here the pneumonia is really treatable. You don't want her around other dogs for a while, but even that can change quickly. Princess Wiggles is my pinned tweet at tom Jumbo Grumbo. If you can foster or adopt her, or pledge to help rescue, please respond to the tweet retweet If you can, I thank you, and Princess Wiggles thanks you. Pot Scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions, stateline, Washington. The January six Committee has interviewed the driver of the suv in which Trump traveled on the day of the coup attempt. He is the one Cassidy Hutchinson testified was at the wheel when Trump tried to grab the wheel and grab the driver and get himself to the capital to lead the assault. He has not been named publicly. It is an important bit of the narrative, but the fixation on it, even to show Trump's for knowledge or willing participation in the violence, seems a little overwrought. There may be more to this than even we know from Cassidy Hutchinson dateline, charmel shake at COP seven in Egypt. You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? COP is getting no coverage here it should. It is the seven International Conference on Climate Change, and there's actually a good development. The small countries are getting wiped out by climate change effects. First, the large ones have been refusing to help them financially. That may be changing at COPE. Before this session only Scotland has offered any money two million dollars. Now Australia has pledged fifty million, Denmark thirteen, Ireland, ten, the Scots five point seven more. Of course, the money needs to be in the billions. The United States pledge. Well, we've offered the country's a laurel and hearty welcome and dateline Kiev. Apparently, after gentle pressure from this country, Ukrainian President Voladimir Zelenski has changed a vital position. He would, he says, now negotiate with Russia even if Putin is not deposed to end the war. He is to stick though to his basic precepts, safeguards for Ukrainian territorial integrity, justice for Russian war criminals, and compensation from the Kremlin. This is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith in Sports. Dusty Baker, at age seventy three and newly crowned first time World Series winning manager, the oldest manager ever to win the World Series, says he will be back to run the Houston Astros again next season. Dusty says nothing has been signed, but both sides are agreed to it. Dusty Baker is beloved in the game, but here is an inside tip about the strength of his beloveditude and how it has grown over the years. One thing that happens to all baseball reporters and fans. Is this sequence of events. When you are a kid, most managers are older than your parents, maybe your grandparents. When you start reporting, there are now managers that you remember seeing as a player. As you age, suddenly all the managers were guys you covered as a player. Later on you find out you are older than some or most of the managers. If you're me, a guy gets named manager of the Yankees, who you met when he was thirteen years old. Finally, you get to the point where you can count the managers who are older than you on the fingers of one hand, so you root for them desperately so they manage forever. That's Dusty Brian Snicker of the Braves and Buck show Alter of the Mets. For me, the others are all younger than the poet Ralph Humphreys was the son of a major leaguer who played briefly for the eight three New York Giants. He wrote a magnificent poem about how baseball fans go from infancy to old age while the damn players just get younger. It's called polo grounds and it ends with this time is of the essence the crowd and players are the same age always, but the man in the crowd is older every season. Come on, play ball. When relief pitcher Jesse Roscoe joined the New York Yankees at the age of forty six in his twenty fourth Major League season, one of three teams he pitched for that year, when I was only forty four and had known him since he was twenty two and I was twenty, I said to him, Jess, if you ever get to the point where they're not offering you enough money so you keep on pitching, I know like twenty guys my own age who will throw in ten grand each to you just so you can keep pitching. And Jesse, we can keep saying, thank God, there's at least one ball player who's still older than I am. A ball player who is older than I am would have to be already sixty four years old late six e four by opening day ahead, we'll go backwards in time and talk about the time I went out with Laura Ingram and then the time that she tried to kidnap me. First, the daily roundup of the miscrants, morons, and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute two day's worst persons in the World le Bronze, the NBC Peacocks service, which has announced exactly what you needed to see, a three part series premiering at the end of the month called Casey Anthony, Where the Truth Lies. If you don't know the name Casey Anthony, lucky you. I'm not gonna say. She was the center of the last tabloid case to get wall to wall TV coverage, But when her daughter disappeared and was then found dead, her trial was wall to wall. She was found not guilty, and now NBC is doing a series on her so everybody can make money. I mean, man, why not a streaming series about Jeffrey Dahmer while you're at wait what? There has been one? Oh for Christ the runner up Everybody's Favorite Flailing football star X star Brett Farve scandal, the scandal where he redirected state welfare funds to build a volleyball stadium for his daughter to play in that Mississippi state. Now this is a new scandal. Farv is the largest outside investor in two companies claiming they are developing a nasal spray to prevent concussions and a cream to treat them. Just rub it in your brain. A million dollars at least he invested in this ESPN reporting that the company is both owned by Jake Van Landingham, Prevacus and press all m d exaggerated the effectiveness of the drugs and overstated their own connections to the NFL. And this is all to be found in court documents. Plus that Mississippi welfare money scandal with the volleyball court. Van Landingham got two more than two million bucks out of it. He says, I had no idea this was welfare money. And I've always been an up standing person when it comes to research. Speaking of upstanding, exaggeration and overstatement, don't forget the time far sent pictures of his junk to a fellow employee of the New York Jets. Exaggeration indeed. But our winner the jimminy glick of Fox News Tucker Carlson. We sometimes forget that behind the buffoonish appearance and girly voice lies a well. What Congresswoman Alexandriacasio Cortez called him on the syndicated radio show The Breakfast Club, a stochastic terrorist. Let me quote her. I can tell you a hundred and ten percent one of the largest sources of death threats I get is Tucker Carlson. Every time that dude put my name in his mouth the next day. This is like what stochastic terrorism is, when you use a very large platform to turn up the temperature and target an individual until something happens, and then when something happens, because it's indirect, you say, oh, I had nothing to do with that. Tucker Carlson, God forbid anything happens. He plays a massive role in political violence, like it comes on his doorsteps specifically exactly, congresswoman exactly. And I can add he's also an identity thief and a megalomaniac and a horrible human being. Tucker, don't forget. I also whitewashed Kanye West the anti semite, the day before he destroyed himself. Carlson two days worst Person and the World to the number one story on the Countdown. In my favorite topic, Me and Things, I promised not to tell my tattered little diary from informs me the twenty five years ago. This week, in the second month of my news career at MSNBC, one of my guests for the first time was one of the network's original contributor commentators. Original MSNBC talent Laura Ingram. This began a process that ended in us going out on two dates, and something she told me on the first of these dates has resonated with me literally every month since and is relevant to politics today. I know, I know, I did not so much date her as survive her. Even then before nine eleven helped to slide her cheese off her cracker. I find a diary entry referring to her as Hurricane Laura. That was March. Beware the odds of March Julius Caesar. I didn't, honestly, and God helped me. Nearly forty eight years of dating, I have not been a kiss and teller. I have dated. I don't know dozens, and we're a couple of hundred, actually thirteen seriously, with maybe three exceptions. You don't know any of their name. One of them, now a political writer, basically lived with me for three years. I keep that confidence. So why am I telling this story violating that? Because not three months after that first date, when we were still going out, Laura Ingram asked me if she could look at a speech I was going to give it Cornell's graduation weekend and offer suggestions. This is so long ago. I literally facted it to her. Sure enough, a couple of days later, I'm watching Imus in the morning, which was televised by my network MSNBC, and they're on his desk. In front of him is the fact copy of my speech, and he is reading from my facts. I could recognize the exact sequence of the vertical stripes. My cheap facts machine used to streak all of my outgoing pages with Laura used to go on his show a lot, so to curry favor with Imus, she sent him the speech without asking me. As I told her that day, all bets are now off. So I've told parts of this story before, like She had been a Supreme Court clerk for Clarence Thomas, and our first date consisted of taking me on an insider's tour of the court and having me sit in his chair in tribute to him. I did not say or do anything constructive. She then cooked me the largest steak I had ever seen that did not have a rodeo cowboy riding on it, and we watched a woman later discredited because she could not keep her stories straight, go on sixty minutes and make allegations against Bill Clinton. This is my perfect date, Laura told me seared into my memory. But the important Laura Ingram story sitting there in the middle of all the debris. I don't think I've ever told this. The first date was only about six weeks after the then First Lady Hillary Clinton got on the Today Show and blamed the at best exaggerated scandal about her husband and Monica Lewinsky on the quote vast right wing conspiracy. That is sound stupid, Laura said that night, as she showed me her small office upstairs, I expected that she was about to decry the idea that Republicans would exploit television, talk radio and the brand new Internet to try to bring down a president from the other party. And I said, so naive little boy that I was no, not that, of course we're doing that. She was kind of offended that I doubted the conspiracy part, I explained, I had only been covering politics for two months. At the end of the day, she said, end of the day, constantly, at the end of the day, it's that vast part. It's not vast, vast right wing conspiracy. Why, I bet there's not even thirty of us. Laura Ingram then explained that she was essentially the central desk for what she called the miniature right wing conspiracy. She showed me a tied page that had the facts numbers of about two dozen people. There at the top are the sources. She said. There was Ted Olsen, the attorney, founder of the so called Arkansas Project and the husband of Barbara Olsen, a constant presence as a talking head on cable news. She later died on nine eleven. Everybody liked her. There were several numbers in the office of Independent Council ken Starr. One of them read B. Kavanaugh. I said, who's that? She said, nobody impartant. The only other name I remember was Spencer Abraham, who then was a senator from Michigan. She said, they, including the people in ken Starr's office, sent her all the rumors, the ideas, stuff about Clinton. Stuff they made up, and she distributed them to the other parts of the list. That's these numbers. One number was marked Hannity Radio, another Hannity TV, O'Reilly Radio, O'Reilly TV. There was one for Limbaugh. There was one mark Justice Thomas, and I pointed to it. He likes to stay and farmed. Now, maybe the most important name is not on that list. That's Matt Dredge. She said. Matt Drudge used all her stuff, but he didn't want any of it to be traceable, very big on not traceable, So I never facts it to him, She said, I just give it to my brother. This is when she still liked her brother. He sees Drudge all the time. He gives the stuff to Drudge. Now over here is my baseball collection. See, there were reasons to go out with her. At the time, I could think only of an old cartoon I had once seen. It was an octopus working in the post office, using all eight of its limbs to sort the mail. But every couple of weeks it dawns on me afresh. Then I was actually a witness to one of the earliest configurations of the machinery. And there is no doubt today whether it is vast or miniature. It's beast, the machinery that links the right wing politicians and those who are supposed to be above the fray, like Supreme Court justices and special prosecutors and people like that. They're with the right wing publicity outlets that pretend to be news organizations like Fox and Drudge and O. A. N. And Newsmax, and the ones that don't even pretend, like those who succeeded Limbaugh. This machine is, in fact, everything that your typical paranoid conservative, Republican fascist trumpist thinks is being run by George Soros or Bill Gates or Dr Fauci or me. You want to be able to say, there are reports or accusations about some Democrat or a liberal figure or celebrity. Well, somebody puts a rumor in at one end of the machinery, or somebody makes up a rumor at one end of the machinery. It is then sent to dozens of other people. They repeat it, voila. Suddenly there are reports. The reports then get fed back to Fox News or Bright Bart or the Wall Street Journal or the Supreme Court, or they're just tweeted by a thousand bots simultaneously. You want to push this ancient racist, anti Semitic paranoia called the Great Replacement, but you want it to come out washed clean enough that soulless opportunists like at least Stephanic and jd Vance can say it aloud on the campaign trail without forfeiting their candidacies. This is the machinery, and I saw the machinery when it was just a list of twenty and thirty people, And at that moment I barely recognized the importance of what I saw. Then again, I was still on that night, recovering from not just the giant steak, but something far more visceral. Earlier that day, as we were leaving the Supreme Court, Laura Ingram had boasted about getting even with an ex boyfriend by going back into what had been their house and putting up exact copies of all the photos of the two of them together that he had taken down from his walls. And when he got smart and changed the locks, she went back again to finish the job. Found her key didn't work so naturally as you would. She stuffed his garden hose through the mail slot of his front door and turned on the outdoor Spiggott ten thousand. Now I was wearing the hirn went Flora's ruined, she said proudly, And part of me screamed, flee, flee. Now I didn't flee. Later, as I tried to sleep, two noises kept me awake, snoring, not my own, and Laura's dog. Laura's dog kept talking in his sleep. I mean almost in syllables, yeah like that. It was something like degrees out and I was on the second floor. And yet I resolved that if her dog really did make that last leap to formulate actual syllables. And it turned out her dog was the one telling her what to do, I was simply going to leave by the window without bothering to open it first. The next morning, Laura and I walked her dog. We got to an empty field. She threw a tennis ball, He went and got it. She cocked her arm back again. He took off, loving life as he did. She did not throw it. He went forty fifty sixty feet, then stopped and looked back at her with such disappointment and and even a sense of betrayal, and she said, loudly, without a trace of affection for him or anything else, wait far at which is when I realized I was being courted to be the next dog. A few weeks later, back home in New York, I got home from working in early morning shift filling in for the commentator Paul Harvey at ABC Radio. I was just waking up from a tortured nap when the phone rang. It's Laura. I'm downstairs. We're going to my old law firms party at the museum. I said. I was exhausted. We're going, or I'll just stay here at this pay phone outside your planes calling you all night. We went the next option opportunity probably was going to be me on the wrong end of the hostage drama. Turned out she was not invited to her party. We're crashing it. I'm going to drink heavily. Frankly, it was a great party. I got to meet Hillary Clinton's mother and her brother. And if you think the fascists are completely sincere about everything, even their neuroses and their paranoia, no, Laura Ingram hugged Hillary Clinton's mother and Hillary Clinton's brother. They seem to be friends. Later we wound up meeting friends of her in the Oak bar at the Plaza Hotel, where she kept drinking. I was astonished. After about her sixth Cosmopolitan on top of everything she'd had at the party, she began to droop her head, nodding like a bobble head doll. Her friends said, Okay, that's it, we'll take care of the check. You take care of her. She had not gotten a hotel room or anything, and if you've ever heard of anybody who needed to be poured into a cab because they were so drunk. You don't really know what that means until you have to pour them into a cab. Frankly, I wanted to put her in a hotel somewhere, but the spectacle would have made the gossip pages. She basically could not stand up, so I took her to my apartment, put her into my bed, and I went and slept on the couch at the far end of the apartment, which is where I was hours later in the morning when she woke me up because she came parading through using my phone to call my assistant to get a car sent to my address to take her to the airport, and to make sure that everybody in my office knew she had stayed overnight at my apartment. And all I kept thinking was why didn't I follow my instincts. My instincts said flee, I fleed. Not, of course, if I had fled, I would have missed seeing the telephone tree of the miniature right wing conspiracy, wouldn't I I've done all the damage I can do here. Thanks for listening. Follow the podcast If you can tell a friend We're number one among news and political podcast not produced by a network. Here are the credits. Most of the music, including our theme from Beethove and Ninth, was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Shanelle, guitars based and drums by Brian Ray and produced by t Ko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever Our announcer today was Jonathan Banks, and everything else is pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this the six hundred and seventy third day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now, why all we still can a new episode tomorrow till Man Keith Olberman, good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of i heart Radio. For more prod cast from i heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio. So there was a red wave, a wave goodbye to your tsunami. Am I right? Sanity got up off the match. We beat the undead zombies with some well placed shovels. Fetterman defeated Oz. Free crudities for everybody, mass Triano. The election denier lost, Cox, the election denier lost, Zelden, Michael's Bailey, Jensen and Crockett in Minnesota. Tutor Fricking Dixon bluntly this could turn out to be the best mid terms for any first term president in decades. Joe Biden goes in one day from nomination Dark Horse two superhero Dark Brandon. Even Lindsey Graham says it was definitely not a Republican wave. The economy doomed the Democrats. No, everybody forgot about the Supreme Court and abortion. No, election denial was more important than democracy. No, And as a bonus, regardless of who ultimately gets the House seems like the Republicans, and who gets the Senate seems like the Democrats. Trump is already getting skewered by his own people. John Fetterman is the Senator elect from Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro is the Governor elect of Pennsylvania. Westmore is the governor elect of Maryland. Moura Healey wins in Massachusetts. Senator Hassan re elected in New Hampshire. Senator Murray re elected in Washington. Brian Shots reelected in Hawaii. Fox News was the first to call Michigan for Governor Whittmer, Governor Pritzker, and Senator Duckworth reelected in Illinois. Senator Bennett in Colorado. Governor hokel elected in New York. Governor McKee re elected in Rhode Island. Governor Waltz re elected in Minnesota. Governor Evers re elected in Wisconsin, defeating the Republican who said no Republican would ever lose another election. There after, he won by Felicia. Abortion rights confirmed by ballot measures in California and Michigan and Vermont. Secretary of State in Michigan, Jocelyn Benson beats that demonic sex Lady Karamo Representatives Abigail span Berger and Jennifer Weston in Virginia one over lunatic Deniers, though Elaine Luria lost. Marcy Captor Clock the military Liar j R. Madjuski, Whiley Nickel edges Cawthorne Clone Bohines. In North Carolina, gen Z Democrat Maxwell Atajandro Frost won a House seat for more Orlando. He's twenty five. The Georgia Senate will probably wind up in a runoff or a recount or both. We'll see. Even Lauren Bobert, a prohibitive favorite, was on the ropes against the Democrat Adam Frish in Colorado with more than eighty five in votes being counted like one per day, more like no bert Am I right, they would have to escort her out of the Capitol. But Matt Gates was reelected, won the youth vote. Also Marjorie Trailer Park Green, Joe Uli Wilson, Virginia Fox, Governor's abbot Kemp Gnome Scott Ivy, and the Oklahoma bone head Kevin Stitt, all re elected. J De Vance won in Ohio, Marco Rubio was reelected, Chuck Grassley was reelected, even though we're not sure he's still alive, And Sarah Huckabee is the governor elect of Arkansas so she can resume her career as a serial liar in her home state. Still no ad tsunami no red wave, and why not. There was one nugget in the early exit polls that was noted and then discarded. Suburban women nationwide went fifty seven Democrats. Biden had won them by fifty six. So congratulations to Politico and Yahoo and Reuter's congratulations on burying your own polls that showed the Democrats ahead in the generic congressional ballot. So you could tow the line with the corporate red narrative the unresolved races. The Republicans are clearly softening everybody up for more cheating charges and five will get you ten that no mainstream reporter points out that claiming this will catch them in an error of logic. The spiel has been that only votes counted before sunrise Wednesday should actually count like they were in the the good old days from I don't know Trump's last adder all overdose, but if the Democrat leading as of sunrise Wednesday, the Republicans would say that is cheating. In Arizona, when of the vote had been counted, Katie Hobbs was clocking carry Lake by fourteen points and Mark Kelly was thumping Blake Masters by eighteen. By the rule of Trump Hobbs and Kelly are the winners. The Republican problem in Arizona was evident and viewable in real time even before vote results started to pile in early in the day. Tabulators at around forty five of the voting locations in Maricopa County, that's Phoenix broke. Those are not voting machines. You complete your ballot, then you stick it in the tabulator. If the tabulator is not working, you put the ballot in a sealed ballot box and it is tabulated later when the tabulator is working. It's not even a clerical error, it's a machine that's not working right. But the Republicans seized on this as if it had been an invasion from Nicaragua. They demanded a judge extend voting hours there by three hours, even though nobody was kept from voting or even delayed from voting. The judge denied it, so they immediately used that as an excuse for a loss that had not happened yet. And then Fox Brett Bear, who pretends to be a news anchor, said, quote, for it to happen here, for it to happen now in this way is kind of strange. Even though it was not strange at all. And the real giveaway. Mark Fincham, the psycho guy in the Cowboy had running to run the elections and stop them, then tweeted, in cold panic, while voting was still going on in Arizona, quote, we need two hundred k more votes. Please text and call your family and friends to check on them. We need them to get to the polls. A sap. Well, I don't have a lot of relatives, but I don't know anybody who's got a family with more than two people in it. And then Carrie Lake, the failed small market local newscaster or for you, Harry Potter and the dolorous umbrage of Arizona, blamed her early shellacking on the tabulators, and she looked tiny and frail and small market as she did so. And now finally, the bonus of all bonuses. You know who's getting blamed. Trump is getting blamed. An analyst said this last night. This is a searing indictment of the Republican Party. The analyst was Mark Teesson on Fox News. The Fox News White House corresponded tweeted, GOP source tells me quote, if it wasn't clear before, it should be now we have a Trump problem. Trump, of course, did not bigfoot every Republican candidate by announcing Monday, but he did try to make election day about himself mob boss, threatening de Santis and McConnell and most importantly reporters. Again, you will remember his rally promise to reporters or publishers to reveal their sources by threatening to send them to prison to be raped. There Rolling Stone reporting on Tuesday, Trump actually asked one of his lawyers how to put reporters in jail. But the big background story of the mid terms. Trump gave an interview to the Network News Nation. It was fawning and self congratulatory, but it has turned out to be prophetic. Tonight, win or lose the results for Republicans. Um how much of that will be because of Donald Trump? Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit, and if they lose, I should not be blamed at all. Okay, but it will probably be just the opposite. When they win, I think they're going to do very well. I'll probably be given very little credit. Even though in many cases, right, you are insane as that was Trump was not wrong about that part. He endorsed three thirty candidates, and even if the Republicans man narrow victories and take both the House and the Senate, he will take a huge hit. And the ones who will hit him fastest will be Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, especially after the guy Trump did not like in Colorado who got the GOP nomination. Anyway, Joe O. Day lost the Senate race. Trump showed his party what this all means to him. He posted, oh Day lost big, make America great again, as if the seat had not been won by the Democrats. They're blaming Trump. But back to the main point. Call me a cock eyed optimist. Of course, I am well known as Captain Positive. But I look at the mid terms this way. Maybe, just maybe more than fifty of our friends and neighbors are still not crazy enough to give up democracy in exchange for a dollar off a gallon of gas. Maybe more than fifty of us would still not swap lower prices for dessert for deciding who's president based on who has the largest support from street gangs. Maybe more than fifty of Americans would still not agree to seeing their neighbors carted off to concentration camps. Even if it did mean those who were left would get vouchers to send their kids to religious schools. What a night. Thank you for your attention. We hope you enjoyed the two mid terms, or as they will forever be known from here on in the Red Dribble. Still ahead, the newest witness interviewed by the One six Commission is so important they're keeping his name secret. But AOC names names. Well, she names one name. Can you guess which right winger precipitates the most death threats against her? And speaking of the right wing, I have alluded to this many times, but I have never told the important part of the story before. All Right, nearly a quarter century ago, I went out on two dates with Laura Ingram, though to be fair, the second one was actually closer to me being kidnapped. What she revealed about that vast right wing conspiracy Hillary Clinton identified remains with me to this day, as do the scars. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith old Woman still ahead on countdown. Tucker Carlson versus Peacock versus Brett Farve for worst person dishonors. That's a fight. And everybody who has ever dated has made a mistake. Mine was named Laura Ingram. But there's a little bit more to that story, and it applies to today's tical scene. First, in each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need. You can help. Every dog has its day. You saved Ace from the crisis at the New York Pound. Now somebody needs to rescue Princess Wiggles. She's shy, uncertain around dogs, but she could be adopted tomorrow maybe better. Pledges to help a rescue outfit pull her out because she has contracted pneumonia in the pound, and the pounds response to that illness is, of course, to blame the dog and kill it as quickly as possible. The sadness here the pneumonia is really treatable. You don't want her around other dogs for a while, but even that can change quickly. Princess Wiggles is my pinned tweet at tom Jumbo Grumbo. If you can foster or adopt her, or pledge to help rescue, please respond to the tweet retweet If you can, I thank you, and Princess Wiggles thanks you. Pot Scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions, stateline, Washington. The January six Committee has interviewed the driver of the suv in which Trump traveled on the day of the coup attempt. He is the one Cassidy Hutchinson testified was at the wheel when Trump tried to grab the wheel and grab the driver and get himself to the capital to lead the assault. He has not been named publicly. It is an important bit of the narrative, but the fixation on it, even to show Trump's for knowledge or willing participation in the violence, seems a little overwrought. There may be more to this than even we know from Cassidy Hutchinson dateline, charmel shake at COP seven in Egypt. You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? COP is getting no coverage here it should. It is the seven International Conference on Climate Change, and there's actually a good development. The small countries are getting wiped out by climate change effects. First, the large ones have been refusing to help them financially. That may be changing at COPE. Before this session only Scotland has offered any money two million dollars. Now Australia has pledged fifty million, Denmark thirteen, Ireland, ten, the Scots five point seven more. Of course, the money needs to be in the billions. The United States pledge. Well, we've offered the country's a laurel and hearty welcome and dateline Kiev. Apparently, after gentle pressure from this country, Ukrainian President Voladimir Zelenski has changed a vital position. He would, he says, now negotiate with Russia even if Putin is not deposed to end the war. He is to stick though to his basic precepts, safeguards for Ukrainian territorial integrity, justice for Russian war criminals, and compensation from the Kremlin. This is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith in Sports. Dusty Baker, at age seventy three and newly crowned first time World Series winning manager, the oldest manager ever to win the World Series, says he will be back to run the Houston Astros again next season. Dusty says nothing has been signed, but both sides are agreed to it. Dusty Baker is beloved in the game, but here is an inside tip about the strength of his beloveditude and how it has grown over the years. One thing that happens to all baseball reporters and fans. Is this sequence of events. When you are a kid, most managers are older than your parents, maybe your grandparents. When you start reporting, there are now managers that you remember seeing as a player. As you age, suddenly all the managers were guys you covered as a player. Later on you find out you are older than some or most of the managers. If you're me, a guy gets named manager of the Yankees, who you met when he was thirteen years old. Finally, you get to the point where you can count the managers who are older than you on the fingers of one hand, so you root for them desperately so they manage forever. That's Dusty Brian Snicker of the Braves and Buck show Alter of the Mets. For me, the others are all younger than the poet Ralph Humphreys was the son of a major leaguer who played briefly for the eight three New York Giants. He wrote a magnificent poem about how baseball fans go from infancy to old age while the damn players just get younger. It's called polo grounds and it ends with this time is of the essence the crowd and players are the same age always, but the man in the crowd is older every season. Come on, play ball. When relief pitcher Jesse Roscoe joined the New York Yankees at the age of forty six in his twenty fourth Major League season, one of three teams he pitched for that year, when I was only forty four and had known him since he was twenty two and I was twenty, I said to him, Jess, if you ever get to the point where they're not offering you enough money so you keep on pitching, I know like twenty guys my own age who will throw in ten grand each to you just so you can keep pitching. And Jesse, we can keep saying, thank God, there's at least one ball player who's still older than I am. A ball player who is older than I am would have to be already sixty four years old late six e four by opening day ahead, we'll go backwards in time and talk about the time I went out with Laura Ingram and then the time that she tried to kidnap me. First, the daily roundup of the miscrants, morons, and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute two day's worst persons in the World le Bronze, the NBC Peacocks service, which has announced exactly what you needed to see, a three part series premiering at the end of the month called Casey Anthony, Where the Truth Lies. If you don't know the name Casey Anthony, lucky you. I'm not gonna say. She was the center of the last tabloid case to get wall to wall TV coverage, But when her daughter disappeared and was then found dead, her trial was wall to wall. She was found not guilty, and now NBC is doing a series on her so everybody can make money. I mean, man, why not a streaming series about Jeffrey Dahmer while you're at wait what? There has been one? Oh for Christ the runner up Everybody's Favorite Flailing football star X star Brett Farve scandal, the scandal where he redirected state welfare funds to build a volleyball stadium for his daughter to play in that Mississippi state. Now this is a new scandal. Farv is the largest outside investor in two companies claiming they are developing a nasal spray to prevent concussions and a cream to treat them. Just rub it in your brain. A million dollars at least he invested in this ESPN reporting that the company is both owned by Jake Van Landingham, Prevacus and press all m d exaggerated the effectiveness of the drugs and overstated their own connections to the NFL. And this is all to be found in court documents. Plus that Mississippi welfare money scandal with the volleyball court. Van Landingham got two more than two million bucks out of it. He says, I had no idea this was welfare money. And I've always been an up standing person when it comes to research. Speaking of upstanding, exaggeration and overstatement, don't forget the time far sent pictures of his junk to a fellow employee of the New York Jets. Exaggeration indeed. But our winner the jimminy glick of Fox News Tucker Carlson. We sometimes forget that behind the buffoonish appearance and girly voice lies a well. What Congresswoman Alexandriacasio Cortez called him on the syndicated radio show The Breakfast Club, a stochastic terrorist. Let me quote her. I can tell you a hundred and ten percent one of the largest sources of death threats I get is Tucker Carlson. Every time that dude put my name in his mouth the next day. This is like what stochastic terrorism is, when you use a very large platform to turn up the temperature and target an individual until something happens, and then when something happens, because it's indirect, you say, oh, I had nothing to do with that. Tucker Carlson, God forbid anything happens. He plays a massive role in political violence, like it comes on his doorsteps specifically exactly, congresswoman exactly. And I can add he's also an identity thief and a megalomaniac and a horrible human being. Tucker, don't forget. I also whitewashed Kanye West the anti semite, the day before he destroyed himself. Carlson two days worst Person and the World to the number one story on the Countdown. In my favorite topic, Me and Things, I promised not to tell my tattered little diary from informs me the twenty five years ago. This week, in the second month of my news career at MSNBC, one of my guests for the first time was one of the network's original contributor commentators. Original MSNBC talent Laura Ingram. This began a process that ended in us going out on two dates, and something she told me on the first of these dates has resonated with me literally every month since and is relevant to politics today. I know, I know, I did not so much date her as survive her. Even then before nine eleven helped to slide her cheese off her cracker. I find a diary entry referring to her as Hurricane Laura. That was March. Beware the odds of March Julius Caesar. I didn't, honestly, and God helped me. Nearly forty eight years of dating, I have not been a kiss and teller. I have dated. I don't know dozens, and we're a couple of hundred, actually thirteen seriously, with maybe three exceptions. You don't know any of their name. One of them, now a political writer, basically lived with me for three years. I keep that confidence. So why am I telling this story violating that? Because not three months after that first date, when we were still going out, Laura Ingram asked me if she could look at a speech I was going to give it Cornell's graduation weekend and offer suggestions. This is so long ago. I literally facted it to her. Sure enough, a couple of days later, I'm watching Imus in the morning, which was televised by my network MSNBC, and they're on his desk. In front of him is the fact copy of my speech, and he is reading from my facts. I could recognize the exact sequence of the vertical stripes. My cheap facts machine used to streak all of my outgoing pages with Laura used to go on his show a lot, so to curry favor with Imus, she sent him the speech without asking me. As I told her that day, all bets are now off. So I've told parts of this story before, like She had been a Supreme Court clerk for Clarence Thomas, and our first date consisted of taking me on an insider's tour of the court and having me sit in his chair in tribute to him. I did not say or do anything constructive. She then cooked me the largest steak I had ever seen that did not have a rodeo cowboy riding on it, and we watched a woman later discredited because she could not keep her stories straight, go on sixty minutes and make allegations against Bill Clinton. This is my perfect date, Laura told me seared into my memory. But the important Laura Ingram story sitting there in the middle of all the debris. I don't think I've ever told this. The first date was only about six weeks after the then First Lady Hillary Clinton got on the Today Show and blamed the at best exaggerated scandal about her husband and Monica Lewinsky on the quote vast right wing conspiracy. That is sound stupid, Laura said that night, as she showed me her small office upstairs, I expected that she was about to decry the idea that Republicans would exploit television, talk radio and the brand new Internet to try to bring down a president from the other party. And I said, so naive little boy that I was no, not that, of course we're doing that. She was kind of offended that I doubted the conspiracy part, I explained, I had only been covering politics for two months. At the end of the day, she said, end of the day, constantly, at the end of the day, it's that vast part. It's not vast, vast right wing conspiracy. Why, I bet there's not even thirty of us. Laura Ingram then explained that she was essentially the central desk for what she called the miniature right wing conspiracy. She showed me a tied page that had the facts numbers of about two dozen people. There at the top are the sources. She said. There was Ted Olsen, the attorney, founder of the so called Arkansas Project and the husband of Barbara Olsen, a constant presence as a talking head on cable news. She later died on nine eleven. Everybody liked her. There were several numbers in the office of Independent Council ken Starr. One of them read B. Kavanaugh. I said, who's that? She said, nobody impartant. The only other name I remember was Spencer Abraham, who then was a senator from Michigan. She said, they, including the people in ken Starr's office, sent her all the rumors, the ideas, stuff about Clinton. Stuff they made up, and she distributed them to the other parts of the list. That's these numbers. One number was marked Hannity Radio, another Hannity TV, O'Reilly Radio, O'Reilly TV. There was one for Limbaugh. There was one mark Justice Thomas, and I pointed to it. He likes to stay and farmed. Now, maybe the most important name is not on that list. That's Matt Dredge. She said. Matt Drudge used all her stuff, but he didn't want any of it to be traceable, very big on not traceable, So I never facts it to him, She said, I just give it to my brother. This is when she still liked her brother. He sees Drudge all the time. He gives the stuff to Drudge. Now over here is my baseball collection. See, there were reasons to go out with her. At the time, I could think only of an old cartoon I had once seen. It was an octopus working in the post office, using all eight of its limbs to sort the mail. But every couple of weeks it dawns on me afresh. Then I was actually a witness to one of the earliest configurations of the machinery. And there is no doubt today whether it is vast or miniature. It's beast, the machinery that links the right wing politicians and those who are supposed to be above the fray, like Supreme Court justices and special prosecutors and people like that. They're with the right wing publicity outlets that pretend to be news organizations like Fox and Drudge and O. A. N. And Newsmax, and the ones that don't even pretend, like those who succeeded Limbaugh. This machine is, in fact, everything that your typical paranoid conservative, Republican fascist trumpist thinks is being run by George Soros or Bill Gates or Dr Fauci or me. You want to be able to say, there are reports or accusations about some Democrat or a liberal figure or celebrity. Well, somebody puts a rumor in at one end of the machinery, or somebody makes up a rumor at one end of the machinery. It is then sent to dozens of other people. They repeat it, voila. Suddenly there are reports. The reports then get fed back to Fox News or Bright Bart or the Wall Street Journal or the Supreme Court, or they're just tweeted by a thousand bots simultaneously. You want to push this ancient racist, anti Semitic paranoia called the Great Replacement, but you want it to come out washed clean enough that soulless opportunists like at least Stephanic and jd Vance can say it aloud on the campaign trail without forfeiting their candidacies. This is the machinery, and I saw the machinery when it was just a list of twenty and thirty people, And at that moment I barely recognized the importance of what I saw. Then again, I was still on that night, recovering from not just the giant steak, but something far more visceral. Earlier that day, as we were leaving the Supreme Court, Laura Ingram had boasted about getting even with an ex boyfriend by going back into what had been their house and putting up exact copies of all the photos of the two of them together that he had taken down from his walls. And when he got smart and changed the locks, she went back again to finish the job. Found her key didn't work so naturally as you would. She stuffed his garden hose through the mail slot of his front door and turned on the outdoor Spiggott ten thousand. Now I was wearing the hirn went Flora's ruined, she said proudly, And part of me screamed, flee, flee. Now I didn't flee. Later, as I tried to sleep, two noises kept me awake, snoring, not my own, and Laura's dog. Laura's dog kept talking in his sleep. I mean almost in syllables, yeah like that. It was something like degrees out and I was on the second floor. And yet I resolved that if her dog really did make that last leap to formulate actual syllables. And it turned out her dog was the one telling her what to do, I was simply going to leave by the window without bothering to open it first. The next morning, Laura and I walked her dog. We got to an empty field. She threw a tennis ball, He went and got it. She cocked her arm back again. He took off, loving life as he did. She did not throw it. He went forty fifty sixty feet, then stopped and looked back at her with such disappointment and and even a sense of betrayal, and she said, loudly, without a trace of affection for him or anything else, wait far at which is when I realized I was being courted to be the next dog. A few weeks later, back home in New York, I got home from working in early morning shift filling in for the commentator Paul Harvey at ABC Radio. I was just waking up from a tortured nap when the phone rang. It's Laura. I'm downstairs. We're going to my old law firms party at the museum. I said. I was exhausted. We're going, or I'll just stay here at this pay phone outside your planes calling you all night. We went the next option opportunity probably was going to be me on the wrong end of the hostage drama. Turned out she was not invited to her party. We're crashing it. I'm going to drink heavily. Frankly, it was a great party. I got to meet Hillary Clinton's mother and her brother. And if you think the fascists are completely sincere about everything, even their neuroses and their paranoia, no, Laura Ingram hugged Hillary Clinton's mother and Hillary Clinton's brother. They seem to be friends. Later we wound up meeting friends of her in the Oak bar at the Plaza Hotel, where she kept drinking. I was astonished. After about her sixth Cosmopolitan on top of everything she'd had at the party, she began to droop her head, nodding like a bobble head doll. Her friends said, Okay, that's it, we'll take care of the check. You take care of her. She had not gotten a hotel room or anything, and if you've ever heard of anybody who needed to be poured into a cab because they were so drunk. You don't really know what that means until you have to pour them into a cab. Frankly, I wanted to put her in a hotel somewhere, but the spectacle would have made the gossip pages. She basically could not stand up, so I took her to my apartment, put her into my bed, and I went and slept on the couch at the far end of the apartment, which is where I was hours later in the morning when she woke me up because she came parading through using my phone to call my assistant to get a car sent to my address to take her to the airport, and to make sure that everybody in my office knew she had stayed overnight at my apartment. And all I kept thinking was why didn't I follow my instincts. My instincts said flee, I fleed. Not, of course, if I had fled, I would have missed seeing the telephone tree of the miniature right wing conspiracy, wouldn't I I've done all the damage I can do here. Thanks for listening. Follow the podcast If you can tell a friend We're number one among news and political podcast not produced by a network. Here are the credits. Most of the music, including our theme from Beethove and Ninth, was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Shanelle, guitars based and drums by Brian Ray and produced by t Ko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever Our announcer today was Jonathan Banks, and everything else is pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this the six hundred and seventy third day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now, why all we still can a new episode tomorrow till Man Keith Olberman, good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of i heart Radio. For more prod cast from i heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.