Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio, Arnold Palmer's putts and Donald Trump's nuts. You are here at this point in the map of madness where the New York Times in Politico tried to get away with lying and reporting that Trump's Arnold Palmer penis length monologue. The first thing he has seemed actually interested in in weeks
was just quote telling golf stories. We are also at that stage of this madness where oh, by the way, Trump went to work at a McDonald's yesterday, so at least McDonald's got its clown back. And following Fox polling positing that Trump leads nationally but Vice President Harrison reads these swing states by six and she's going to win the electoral college without winning the popular vote, we now have Nate Silver forecasting that Harris will win the popular
vote and the electoral college. And he still thinks Trump has a fifty three percent chance of winning, because I believe the odds are now one hundred percent, that the polling and forecasts have now lost all meaning. So we will have to land this plane ourselves, and on instruments too. And don't call me. Surely you've heard the Arnold Palmers stuff.
So I'll come back to that. The McDonald's thing can be summarized as yet another event we see as a buffoonish disaster, but his cultists and bosses think was a triumph of populism, even as he saw them figuratively making the sausage, literally making the fries. Trump managed to reassure his puppet masters like Elon Musk, that he would never raise the minimum wage, while still managing to extol the beauty of the process and the work he'd witnessed at firsthand.
And then you realize he was talking about the beauty of the French fries. So the forecasting, the five point thirty eight average is down to a Harris lead of one point eight. The Times average is Harris plus one, ahead by a whisker in Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Harris behind by a whisker in Michigan. The Bullfinch poll, on the other hand, has Harris ahead in Michigan by eight, so it's either too close to call or eight points.
The new Tip poll released yesterday is Trump plus two, which I would be a lot more worried about if the previous Tip pole released Saturday hadn't been Harris plus one. And if your pole, even if your tracking pole swings three points in twenty four hours, see your physician about your poll Arnold Palmer, which brings me back to Nate Silver. Who does he see winning the popular vote? Harris seventy
three percent chance of that? How much of the popular vote does he see her winning fifty and a half percent? That would be a majority. How many electoral votes would that giver? He says two hundred and seventy one to Trump's two hundred and sixty seven. So who is he forecasting to win? Trump fifty three percent chance? He says this based on forty thousand simulations. She gets more Electoral College votes and more popular votes, and he wins forty
thousand simulations. You say, Nate, Nate, I'm beginning to thank you yourself for one of the simulations. If there were any remaining faith in the institution of polling, it has been more than erased by the loss of any remaining faith in American journalism. I'm not going to play the entirety of Trump's hemorrhage inspired or tumor caused or madness in speech from Saturday. I do want to repeat two parts of it to emphasize the media cover up that
has followed. By way of introduction, I will mention that for a putatively straight man, Trump spends an awful lot of time talking about other men's penises and using expletives to demean women. He took showers with the other pros that came out of there.
They said, Oh my god, that's unbelievable. I had to say it. I had to say, we have women that are highly sophisticated here, but they used to look at our Eliza bed. So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you've had enough that.
You just can't take it anymore.
We can't stand you.
You're a shit vice president. So you're covering that scatological and genitalia ridden speech for the New York Times, and your response is vote. Donald Trump opened his rally at the Arnold Palmer Airport in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, with a ten minute monologue about the golfer for which the airport is named and who grew up here in the most pivotal
battleground state. With election day in just seventeen days, the former president spent the entire opening telling Arnold Palmer golf stories before finally launching in on the border Michael Gold reporter, Unless Trump said Arnold Palmer played golf using his penis,
those were not Arnold Palmer golf stories. That was a ten minute dissertation that concluded with a story about the dead golfer's genitalia given by a manifestly insane presidential candidate, so crazy and so guilty of so many crimes that if he regains the White House it will almost certainly required armed force to remove him. The Times would attempt to clean up its latest sanewashing disaster. This is what
one hundred and seventy eight of them. By the what if Biden had said this scale, They tried to clean
it up with something that was arguably worse. The same paper that hung thirty news stories off one quote in the corrupt Special Council Report from the Republican Operative Robert Hurr about Biden's mental well being suddenly decided, yeah, okay, we can put speculation or conclusion or analysis or guesswork into a story about Trump's madness and ask why the f he has just said something insane, and this is
what we write quote. It was unclear if the outbursts and insults were an expression of his frustration as the campaign grinds on, or of his reflexive desire to entertain his crowds. At her own events on Saturday, miss Harris called attention to mister Trump's temperament and his tendency to go off script and ramble unquote Michael Gold again, who
I hope has fled the country already. You may have noticed Michael Gold offered two possible explanations and only two for Trump talking about penises and calling an African American woman quote shit unquote, and they were frustration or a desire to entertain ha ha. It's a minstrel show, right, And neither of them were. Trump is a full on KKK level racist and a rapist in spirit, if not an absolute literal legal fact. And or Trump is absolutely
positively nuts. The Times later put together a thumbsucker about Trump's supporters being worried about him. But I'm afraid at the next cocktail party, somebody's going to have to explain to ag Selzberger the publisher and Joe Kahn, the editor that regardless of how this election turns out, they're done. The Times is done. The Times actually more likely through stupidity at a succession of Nepo baby publishers than by wilful fascistic sympathies. They've actually destroyed the reputation of The
New York Times. And somewhere in Hell, Spiro Agnew and Pat Buchanan are laughing, and yeah, I know, Pat Buchanan isn't dead yet. I'm just trying to be upbeat here for a moment. The nightmare, the true nightmare, is that The Times has been front row for one of the greatest, unprecedented, long running political stories in human history, just on to
sell more newspapers. First draft of history level. I mean, this Trump saga is up there with the rise of Hitler and the mid press conference suicide of the Pennsylvania State Treasurer and the death of President Farat of France at eighteen ninety nine, with his mistress atop him and both of them atop the presidential desk. The madness of King Trump and The Times could have owned this story
for all time. But the Salzburger Khan idea of how to cover this presidential race is to put the digits in the year twenty twenty four in alternating red and blue boxes that look like kids wooden number blocks. Ooh,
that's journamalism. It continues to not be limited to the time. Sadly, a news organization with a real fascism problem dos Politico still, the employer of Ryan Lizza, also not only missed the point Saturday, but buried the point and emphasized that if there is not a provable case to be made that the media is utterly controlled by the fascists, there is one to be made that the media lives in utter
terror of the fascists. Politico. Trump appears energetic in scattered Pennsylvania speech, and then the little picture of him with the link to the article reads, Trump appears energetic in scattered Pennsylvania speech. Yes, he was energetic talking about penises. Energetic Trump Schwantz twenty twenty four Energy. Other news organizations, most notably the Associated Press, got a completely right headline.
Trump kicks off a Pennsylvania rally by talking about Arnold Palmer's genitalia correct, legally protectable, not weighted in any way, letting the horror of the reality tell the story for you, not even throwing in adjectives like energetic. Trump kicks off a Pennsylvania rally by talking energetically about Arnold Palmer's genitalia. Or Trump kicks off a Pennsylvania rally by talking about Arnold Palmer's energetic genitalia. No, none of that, just the facts, ma'am.
Even the Washington Post got it past its deflavorizing machine. Trump fixates on Arnold Palmer as all men in showers during profane rally, although the writing on that is weak. That kind of sounds like Trump was in the shower during the rally, or he was providing the showers. And oops,
there we are back at the Russian pee tape. Seriously, it is a terrifying thing to realize that Fox News did a better job by several light years questioning Trump's distortion field than did The New York Times this past weekend.
Yet there it is Howard Kurtz, blown out by the Washington Post, blown out by CNN, and only a media critic while he was there, now forced to scrap for crumbs in murdoch Land weekends, sat face to face with Trump and not only questioned Trump's original lie, but also his lie to cover his original lie.
You're a famous line about Springfield, Ohio, and I take your point that fifteen to twenty thousand legal Haitian immigrants settling in that area causes a lot of friction. But when you said, you know, it's gone viral there they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. You say, you're just reporting what had been said. But why not say, now, well, look that turned out not to be true.
I don't know. I don't know if it's true or not true. I read to this.
You don't know if it's true or not true. Now it's been to month. Well what about the goose, the geese?
What about the geese?
What happened there?
They were all missing?
I was one, They say, he hell, he's how I have no idea.
Howard effing Kurtz won New York Times. Nothing, it's a final. Oh yeah. The geese thing was also debunked. It was a groundskeeper at the golf course who shot the geese, not a Haitian, not an immigrant, A Carl Spackler. Oh no, wait, Howard Kurts two New York Times. Nothing. It must have been a double header. Howard got him to double down on the enemy within Hitlerism.
If you talk about the enemy within, there's enemies America's enemies outside the enemy within is a pretty ominous phrase if you're talking about other Americans. Accurate, I mean, I think it's accurate. And we were talking about and.
You know, I heard that the show The Enemy Donald Trump's entire world is a lie. He reposted something that actually reads January sixth will go down in history as the day the government staged a riot. There's a picture of the attempted coup to cover up the fact that they certified a fraudulent election. January sixth, the day the
government staged a riot, certified a fraugilent election. So Trump's morons are now so moronic and so unchallenged by the media that he could repost that and nobody in The Times or anywhere else bothered to even write about it and write, Hey, wait a minute, the government staged a riot on January sixth, twenty twenty one. I might have to look this up, but the way I remember it, the government was the was the Trump government, wasn't it. Can we ask Maggie Haverman, She'll remember who is a
president on January sixth, twenty twenty one. Who staged the riot? I mean, the media had the essence of an unprecedented scandal involving Trump and Russia before he was elected, and they blew it. And when the cover up came out,
they swallowed the cover up. And the scandal is so obvious and needs so little work, so few threads to be pulled on that even now, Trump's own director of National Intel Diligence, a backwoods congressman named Dan Coates, is still telling Bob Woodward that he still suspects Putin is still blackmailing Trump. Did you read about that? No, you read about Arnold Palmer's golf stories. The entire media please remember to include Elon Musk and Joe Rogan and the
QAnon ecosphere in that phrase. They are the media to these people just as much as CBS News is. It's all the same now. The entire media is ninety five percent a lie designed to make the liar's money and to make Trump the dictator, period. But the New York Times has pretty kids number blocks red blue, red blue. See how that works, journalism, Use it or lose it.
On January twentieth, and if you think you're going to placate him on this, mister sealzburger By prostituting yourself between now and then join the long list of those who figured they could handle him and wound up with nothing.
My ex SportsCenter co anchor the Dits Sage Steele, went full Maga, got fired, full fascist, assumed the Maga martyrdom robes, and then got to MC a town hall for Trump yesterday, And because she mentioned the wrong football team, the Trump crowd booed the hell out of her and Trump got her name wrong. Congratulations, Sage, you sold your soul and you have won a customized Maga hat with your name on it misspelled. Mister Selzburger, you and your Times executives
and editors are becoming Sage Steel. You will have helped end democracy in America or damn near done. So those of us who survive will remember. So, how did we get here? How a week and a day before the election could we possibly be in this situation? I have some thoughts. These thoughts are summarized by two words, Mike Tyson, that's next. This is countdown. So what I asked before
the break, how did we get here? How are we one weekend, one day to the election, And how is it possible that the polls show anything other than a double digit lead for the Party of the non racist able to read non conspiracy theory candidate. How are we in a place where one genuinely insane man in Donald Trump is promising to appoint another one, Robert F. Kennedy Junior to his cabinet? What as Secretary of Phone Sex.
The answer is two words, Mike Tyson. You may recall that by marriage and adoption, Mike Tyson and I are cousins, distant cousins. Legally we are distant cousins. The boxing trainer custom Otto actually cared about the troubled and even abandoned or orphaned kids he took on as fighters. He became legal guardian for several of them, including Tyson, who told me that Cus really was his father. Okay, that's his half. My half is Cuss's niece, Geraldine. Jerry married my uncle John.
They were married for more than sixty years. She was my aunt Jerry. When I met him decades ago in La Tyson was surly and threatening and then I mentioned Jerry and his eyes lit up. You're her nephew, cousin.
It was custom Otto and his associate Kevin Rooney, who perfected the management of Tyson's medication in such a way that they could keep him stable nearly all the time, and then they would gradually lower the dose on the meds in the weeks and the days before a fight, so that all of Tyson's maniacal energy, murderous intent would
appear in the ring and only in the ring. Customatto died in nineteen eighty five when Tyson was nineteen and on the verge of greatness, and he left care of Mike, both as a boxer and as a person, to Kevin Rooney. And then in nineteen eighty eight, two men stepped in to try to take over Mike Tyson's contract and Mike Tyson's life, and the two men were Don King and
Donald Trump. And Don King said Tyson should be making millions more than he did under Rooney and the manager Bill Cayton, and Trump showed Tyson the world of jet setters. When Tyson complained that the drugs that he needed to keep life manageable and to keep him from, you know, driving into trees and trying to kill people, that those drugs made him sleepy and uncomfortable and unhappy, Trump told Tyson,
why are you taking them? You're the youngest heavyweight im in this, or you can do it to you tell them what drugs you'll take. They don't know you, who knows if the drugs really do you any good. You're not the trouble kid anymore. You're an adult man. You're the champion you got. You remind me of Arnold Palmer. Dump these idiots making money off you, Trump said, and come with me and Don King, and we won't make
you take those drugs. For a long time, I thought this was just Trump's pitch to get his fingers into Tyson's career and money. But now I begin to think it's Trump's philosophy of life, and it applies to those people who endlessly, desperately and permanently support Trump no matter what he does, no matter what he says, no matter how he lies, no matter how he fails them, no matter who's shlong he talks about, no matter what he
does to them. Between now and next Tuesday, Trump gives to his apocalyptic health Gate portion of America the license to metaphorically take the drugs or no doubt literally in many occasions. You hate black people, and you've been pretending all the time this is America Land of the free. They are the ones getting special treatment. You are the victims of racism. You are uneducated, and even life's simplest tasks confuse and scare you. Education is unnecessary. Your natural
common sense. Why that's much more valuable than a thousand degrees from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania purchased after the fact by major donations by your father. Oh maybe that's a bad example. You are told you have failed in life, that you're lazy, that you're an underachiever. You've let people down. Know you are the victims. They are out to get you. They rigged the system so you would fail. Look at what they did to me,
the multi millionaire, a multi billionaire victim. Look at the great men in life and what they did to them. Look at they did the Alphonse Capone and Hannibal Lecter and Arnold Palmer. You have to have self discipline to get something out of your life. You have to control your impulses. You have to listen to your boss, or your wife, or your government when they're trying to keep you from getting killed by a disease. Nobody knows anything about the hell. You have to listen to them. You're
not the troubled kid anymore. You're an adult man, a champion of God. Work with me, and not only won't I make you ever do anything you don't want to do. I'll let you do whatever you want to do. Well, you know how that turned out. You know how it turned out for Mike Tyson. The next thing you know, Mike Tyson has a giant face tattoo that looked like he'd had a really bad collision with a wrought iron bird feeder, and he'd been convicted of rape, and he
was living in a prison for three years. And we know how it worked out for America. America got Trump and four years in his prison, and now nearly half of us are saying four more years in prison. I don't know, but none of my failed life is my fault. Where the hell do I sign? I've done all the damage I can do here? Thank you for listening. We're now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly just
after midnight Eastern. Follow me for the podcast promo videos on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram, and U tak. Once again, as you are listening to it now, there is a Monday countdown. Please send it to somebody who does not know that they need to listen to this, but should, and as I say, at other points in this broadcast, while they still can. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schenel, musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed
most of our music. Mister Chanel handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. Sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Everything
else was pretty much my fault. It's countdown for today two weeks in a day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, three hundred and eighty fifth day since convicted felon dissociative fugue Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. You know that coup that was staged by the government, Oh my god,
Trump was the government. I've been fooled, Use the election, use the metal health system, use presidential immunity to keep him from doing it again while we still have a chance. He's found his life, my wife's work at McDonald's. Let's send him there. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news requires. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.