Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The obvious problem with General John Kelly going on the record and saying, yes, I heard Trump say quote I need the kind of generals that Hitler had is that a
huge number of his supporters will applaud this. And the obvious problem with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic quoting those who were there and notes taken at the meeting as Trump was told the cost of the funeral he had offered to pay for for a murdered US soldier named Vanessa Gien, and Trump screamed, quote, it doesn't cost sixty thousand bucks to bury an e fing Mexican, don't pay it is that even more of Trump's supporters will applaud that,
because the real disgusting, nauseating truth behind the revelations in the Goldberg Atlantic piece is that it touches the third and fourth rails of Donald Trump's America. Many of his people believe whoever is in charge should be supported by and in fact kept in power by the kind of
generals Hitler had. The anti Semites and the Trump cult love it, obviously, and the ones who aren't anti Semites just authoritarians love it, obviously, even if they're queasy about the anti Semitism and the ones who aren't anti Semites and aren't authoritarians but have always just secretly believed the word democracy was merely another brand name or flavor of government. They love it because it posits a kind of America not just where might makes right, but where only might
makes right, and where only whites have might. And if there is anybody missing from the Trump coalition of evil, anybody who isn't inspired by the kind of generals that Hitler had, they are certainly covered by It doesn't cost sixty thousand bucks to bury an effing Mexican. Because if violence and militarism are the Trumpian third rail, racism and
specifically anti Hispanic racism are the Trumpian fourth rail. The rest of us have danced around this reality because the alternative is to recognize just how much larger it is than we want to believe in our worst moments, just how much racism still seeps into the brains not just of the Trumpsts, but of some of the moderates we know,
and even some of the liberals we know. But since Trump came down that escalator so excited by what he was about to say, denigrating immigrants and Mexicans, that he almost bothered to move and walk rather than just stand there in gelatinous pride and ride down the escalator. That's that moment. This has not been about undocumented immigration or even illegal aliens. It's been entirely about Hispanics. In exactly the same way the first two hundred years of our
history was at route entirely about African Americans. And the reason we have never solved this Hispanic immigration crisis, the reason the Republicans have made sure for forty goddamned years that there always has been an immigration crisis and always will be an immigration crisis, was to give their people
somebody to hate. Only Trump, after a life in which he inexplicably was not killed by some kid at NIMA, the New York Military Academy who snapped after being dangled out a window by Trump one time too many, or he wasn't killed by somebody else's husband, or he wasn't killed by drugs or disco or whatever in the seventies, a life in which he started by believing he was immortal and untouchable and that there were no consequences, but
he got worse from there. Only Trump would have been stupid enough to tear up this exquisite stitching of the quilt of excuses for why the immigration crisis wasn't actually an immigration crisis, but just an excuse to let the pasty white folks hate the brown people and blame them and abuse them, and all the while make sure that there never really was any significant change to the importation of migrant labor from Mexico and Latin America. Hell, let's
drop the euphemisms. There never really was any significant change to the importation of virtual slave labor from Mexico and Latin America and Puerto Rico for that matter, because they actually tried that once in the state of Georgia thirteen
years ago. They promised roundups, they did some deportations, and guess what, all the the people in this country in Georgia, without documentation, got the hell out of Georgia before the deadline and went and worked the farms in other states, and something like three hundred million dollars worth of Georgia crops rotted in the fields because guess who would not harvest it? The fat, stupid white people in Georgia who
had kicked out all the immigrants. The new problem, of course, the new twist in this, the new reason his supporters will cheer Trump insulting this poor woman, Private Vanessa Gien, murdered at her army base, and cheer his use of the phrase it doesn't cost sixty thousand bucks to bury an effing Mexican and the follow up, don't pay it? Can you believe it? Effing people trying to rip me off?
Is that Trump, of course, is insane. Somewhere along the line he forgot that the only way you can keep the machine going harvest the crops, keep the restaurant open, not pay the fry cook, and make sure they are all here so that the fat, stupid white people get away with hating them. Because what are these immigrants going to do? Complain? We've made sure they are here illegally, and if they complain they can and are deported daily.
The only way you keep that machine going is to not let somebody insane like Trump tell the truth that what you see now is the way it has been carefully crafted, mostly by Republicans, for forty goddamned years, in a way that even Eric Blair, writing as George Orwell never foresaw, not the two minutes hate from the novel nineteen eighty four, but the endless hate, the perpetual hate.
You can't have Trump tell the truth that this is built into the American economy and cannot be altered unless the Republicans stop hating, or unless, like he wants, they start hating more and actually try to round up all the Hispanics and put them in concentration camps and deport some and probably kill way more, which is what Trump is going to do, which over the course of his decade poisoning the United States of America, he has spread
to his cult. So now they have no concept, no moment's thought that without the people he has told them it is okay to despise and blame for everything and probably kill America, particularly red state America, will fall apart. They don't understand this. They don't understand that because the quote effing Mexicans, Trump thinks it costs him too much
to bury. They keep the nation running, and to think like Trump for a second, they help the productive parts of this country underwrite the money losing states and permit them the fat wi pasty white people to go to their beloved McDonald's, which is now just another symbol for
more corporate hoaring and stunt staging for fascism. After that pathetic Trump immorality play over the weekend, and now these people can go to goddamned McDonald's and get a goddamn big mac made of crap that would cost them otherwise thirty seven dollars and ninety eight cents. Have a happy meal. Here's change. Back on your one hundred. But back to Hitler. If you have not read mister Goldberg's piece in The Atlantic,
I urge you to do so. I won't further steal his thunder except to quote three long passages and to underscore one truly new and disturbing bit of information in the context of another news development unrelated to the story. Let me quote him about General Kelly. This week, I asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when Trump raised the subject of German generals, Kelly responded by asking,
do you mean Bismarck's generals? He went on, I mean, I knew he didn't know who Bismarck was or about the Franco Prussian War. I said, do you mean the Kaiser's generals? Surely you can't mean Hitler's generals, and he said, yeah, yeah, Hitler's generals. I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler. Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel. This wasn't the only time, Goldberg writes Kelly felt compelled to
instruct Trump on military history. In twenty eighteen, Trump asked Kelly to explain who the good guys were in World War One. Kelly responded by explaining simple rule, presidents should, as a matter of politics and policy, remember that the good guys in any given conflict are the country's allied
with the United States. There is a sketch by the group Kids in the Hall in which an actress played by the Great Dave Foley gets up to accept an award and thanks her manager and thanks the audience, and thanks her director, and thanks her agent adds oh, and thank Hitler and waits for the applause, and instead it's her manager played by the great Kevin MacDonald, dragging her off the stage while she complains that they did an applaud and he says, with terror in his voice, do
you think Hitler? And she matter factly says, oh, I never did no, And half the time I read something about Trump and Hitler, I am waiting for Trump's Dave Foley moment when Trump gets up there and literally thanks Hitler. And now reading all of this, I realize it's already happened. It was just in private. Let me cutting out of Goldberger's conclusion because it circles back to my starting point here,
and then I'll drop the new info he broke. One day, he writes, in the first year of Trump's presidency, I had lunch with Jared Kushner, Trump's son in law, in his White House office. I turned the discussion as soon as I could, to the subject of his father in law's character. I mentioned one of Trump's recent outbursts and told Kushner that, in my opinion, the president's behavior was damaging to the country. I cited as I tend to do what is in my view, Trump's original sin, his
mockery of John McCain's heroism. This is where our conversation got strange and noteworthy. Kushner answered in a way that made it seem as though he agreed with me. Quote, no one can go as low as the president. He said, you shouldn't even try. I found this baffling for a moment, he writes, But then I understood Kushner wasn't insulting his
father in law. He was paying him a compliment. In Trump's mind, traditional values, values, including those embraced by the armed forces of the United States, having to do with honor, self sacrifice, and integrity, have no merit, no relevance, and no meaning. Unquote. See you and I are appalled by the Hitler's general's quote and the effing Mexican quote. And by next week Trump will be selling mrch or soliciting
donations based on those quotes. In any event, here is the new stuff about Trump's other role models, not the old Nazis, but the current Chinese quoting him again on separate occasions. In twenty twenty, Trump held private conversations in the White House with National security officials about the George
Floyd protests quote. The Chinese generals would know what to do, he said, according to former officials who described the conversations to me, referring to the leaders of the People's Liberation Army, which carried out the Tiananmen Square massacre in nineteen eighty nine, Trump's desire to deploy US troops against American citizens is
well documented. During the nerve racking period of social unrest following Floyd's death, Trump asked Milly and Esper, a West Point graduate and former infantry officer, if the army could shoot protesters. Trump seen unable to think straight and calmly, Esper wrote in his memoir, the protest and violence had him so enraged that he was willing to send in active duty forces to put down the protesters. Worse yet,
he suggested we shoot them. I wondered about his sense of history, of propriety and of his oath to the constitution. As pertold National Public Radio in twenty twenty two, we reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly at General Milly and said, can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something. When defense officials argued against Trump's desire, the president screamed, according to witnesses,
you are all efing losers. Now Here's why that's a problem, Because Trump and his cults are not only ready for a fight like that, they are spoiling for one, and they are spoiling for one next month. Polling by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution suggests that if Trump loses two weeks from now, just slightly less than one in five Republicans thinks he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to seize power.
The actual number is nineteen percent, but among those who trust Fox News the most of all news outlets, it's thirty percent who think Trump should do this. For those who trust Fox and or the even more extreme propaganda channels, it's forty one percent. Also, thirty percent of Republicans quote believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country. This poll being commissioned by a religious group. After all, they broke it down by religion.
Twenty eight percent of Evangelical Protestant Republicans think violence may be needed, as do and this may surprise you twenty eight percent of Mormons, sorry, Mitt Low. The end of the religious pro violence scale is ten percent, and that would be Jewish Republicans. Happily, there does seem to be a growing consensus on this front. Forty nine percent of Americans in this survey, Americans of all political parties, faiths, and heritage agree there is a real danger Trump will
use the presidency to become a dictator. Do I think the nation will erupt in organized, sustained violence after the election, I do not sporadic violence terrorism or terrorism adjacent violence. Yes, yes, I would prepare yourself for that. And I hate to sound anything like one of the people in that poll I just quoted by Nay. I am comforted at night by reminding myself that Trump and the Trump cult dreams
of seeing tanks on the streets. And forgive me for this, but I'm comforted by the realization that if if it comes to that, if it comes to that next month, or in December or in January, it'll be grim, and it will be tragic, and it will be satisfying to see all the trumpe Ists suddenly realize that the tanks in the streets aren't theirs. The tanks in the streets
are Americas. A couple of poll notes as breaking news yesterday, I told you the Emerson poll found that around twenty percent of voters had chosen Harris or Trump in the last month. So late deciders were breaking sixty to thirty seven for the vice president. And how much that could mean in net vote gain. It could give her twenty five twenty seven thousand net votes her votes minus his
votes just in Pennsylvania, eb. Seven hundred thousand nationwide. Now, CNBC reports from its polling that young voters are also breaking late for Kamala Harris. In similar numbers, voters under thirty five are now sixty to forty for Harris over Trump, and that was not the way it was in July. It was Harris forty six, Trump thirty four, with twenty one percent favoring a third party candidate like the Secretary of Phone Sex. In other words, voters under thirty five
grew up. So Harris leads Trump by twenty points in voters under thirty five, and in twenty twenty Joe Biden won by twenty points with voters under thirty five. If you, for some reason, like the less reliable metapolling, you gov for the Times of London and Reuter's ipsos have Harris by three. In new polls, Morning Consult has Harris by four. There's also a rash of junk polls showing Trump tied or head. One of them showing him ahead in New Mexico was literally made up by one of his crazier
ex ambassadors. She has been ahead of him by seven and a half points or more in New Mexico with virtually no change, a solid series of straight lines across the bar graph for more than a month, and a reminder from weeks ago that this was planned because when he declares on election night that he won, or he declares afterwards that he must have been robbed, because otherwise, why would these polls I'm holding have said he was winning.
These chunk poles, the ones that are coming out right now, will give him something to hold in his hand besides his Arnold Palmer. One more. ABC News reported last night that a quote proposed personnel roster circulating within Trump's can campaign and transition operation lists Aileen Cannon, the federal judge who threw out Trump's classified documents case, Eileen Cannon as a possible candidate for Attorney General. No in this country.
Two things, how could she possibly be worse than Merrick Garland? And how could she possibly wind up doing more for Trump than Merrick Garland? Secondly, Cannon the former yoga and flamenco correspondent of the Miami Nuevo Herald, and I wish I were making that up. Is clearly more qualified to be Attorney general than she is a federal judge. LEBC says she is the second name on the list out of nearly a dozen ages led by j Clayton, former
Chairman of the SEC. Trump's expert on how to make illegal legal, Mike Davis, is on the list, as is Jeffrey Can I p on my pants now Clark, who tried to freelance a coup during the transition and was then the victim of a putdown that will never die down from the Justice Department exec. Richard Donahue. You're an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office and we'll call you when there's an oil spill. I'm not sure what to make of this story because it
is literally too bad to be true. I mean, what kind of leak could cut through the noise and actually look too corrupt, too quid pro quo even for Trump. What against the background of his utter corruption, his Dorian Gray's portrait life, what could look worse than that? It's possible the Democrats made this up or got this out and it's true. On the other hand, like I said, how could she ever be worse than Merrick Garland also of interest here well in news about my exes Olivia.
Newsy had no events scheduled last night, so it'll be Katie Turr news instead, And I, of course, will continue to pretend to be weary of all this and broken inside and beyond the reach of its implications now, while in fact I'm enjoying the absolute emmer effing hell out of all of it. That's next, This is countdown. This is countdown, with Keith Olberman still ahead on this initiative countdown.
Maybe the idea and ending the Baseball playoffs on a Sunday but not starting the World Series until Friday is to force sportscasters and even ex sportscasters to continue to do more and more World Series previews. Well, you guys asked for it. Another World Series preview of a different nature.
The New York Yankees host game one Friday night, and I'm as always rooting against them, which is rather amazing because from the age of seven through the start of my professional career, and again in my thirties and forties, when one friend of mine from my childhood was the PR director and another friend of mine from my early career was the team manager. I was as big a Yankee fan as there was. I worked for the Yankees once a year. George Steinbrenner wanted me to be the
voice of the Yankees on TV. I used to announce their old timers game like my dad before me. I was a season ticket holder at Yankee Stadium. Our combined run one was forty one years. And then, to quote the man who was manager of the team when I was a kid, Ralph Hauke. When I introduced myself to him in nineteen eighty three and told him he was my Yankee manager and always would be, he said, thank you.
Nothing personal but piss on the Yankees. The World Series preview and the day the Yankees got me fired from a job at Baseball state run television MLB network that I hadn't even agreed to take yet, piss on the Yankees coming up in things I promised not to tell first. There are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who don't work for the Yankees and who
constitute todays worse persons in the Brons worse. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times, the Yankees of newspapers, working with that little fascist Midday on Clay at MSNBC as
well does mister Peters. This was actually said on MSNBC, And I will save until the end the identity of the news model whose question provoked this amazing, condensed, compromised partisan stupidity on the part of this guy Peters question, do you think she that would be Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic nominee for president if you hadn't heard Do you think she's being clear enough? Peters answers. I think in some of these interviews you and I have both heard it.
But clarity is not always her strong suit. When you contrast her with somebody with Donald Trump, who you pretty much know what he's saying every time he opens his mouth, for better or worse, she does have a messaging problem. This man Peters is employed by the New York Times, brought onto what is in theory a television news network, insisting that you pretty much know what Trump's saying every time he opens his mouth, But Kamala Harris isn't clear enough.
Trump is this close to speaking in tongues. Well, I like the other Hey, when Trump was asked what is your plan to ban artificial foods? And he answered Bobby Kennedy. Right, everybody likes Bobby Kennedy and he's so big into the healthy food and women things, everything he wants to do things. Yes, that's clear. That's much more clear than Kamala Harris. Question, what is your plan to ban artificial foods? Answer? Bobby Kennedy is big into the healthy food and women. Yeah,
I've heard that. I mean, I know Kennedy will be boosting FaceTime usage, but any idea what that has to do with banning artificial food mister Kennedy, the Secretary of
Phone Sex said today. It was mister Peters, who, after the debate, had argued that Kamala Harris had failed to give undecided voters what they really wanted, the fine print, specific policy details at length at a debate on TV, owned his promise, which MSNBC talking head hosted Peters that day and asked that question that let him lie about
Trump being clear and Harris not being clear enough. Why it's Katie Turr who with Kirsten Cinema slowly disappearing from the Senate like the cheshire Cat and Olivia Newsy, now being fired at New York Magazine and unlikely to ever get any job requiring, you know, trust her honesty ever again while she sues the creepy guy at Politico, she was planning to marry and write a book with With them out of the picture, it is Katie who has vaulted back into the position of which of my exes
I am currently the most ashamed of. You can depend on Keith about women. He always gets them wrong. The runner up worser Newsweek magazine. Years ago, my late friend Howard Feineman left his lead role at Newsweek to go work for the Huffington Post, which then and I guess now too, but then certainly sounded like a website for people who like to inhale paint. And it was the first time I realized that all the established news brands of my youth were in desperate, desperate trouble long term.
I mean, Newsweek wasn't the first to succumb my first home UPI even by then two thousand and six seven eight was putting out other people's press releases, and like only one or two a week, Sports illustrated as a betting site. Others are just expiring URLs. But if there
was any doubt, Newsweek is done. This was its post at midday Monday, a photo of Trump at a sports stadium, presumably one in Pittsburgh somewhere, with the caption Donald Trump has shared what is likely an AI generated image on his truth social account showing him as a player for
the Pittsburgh Steelers. Wait, what makes you think that? Just because the image showed Trump in football pads, wearing a Steelers' uniform, weighing maybe one hundred pounds less than he does, about forty years younger than he is, and not looking like he was about to succumb to a disease or something. Didn't Donald try to play quarterback for the Steelers in the late sixties? Oh no, no, I'm thinking the other guy reminds me always of Donald Trump's name. His name
was Dick Shiner. I think I'm kidding. Dick Shiner Shi n e Er look him up. Also played for the New York Giants for a while. Giants Get Dick Shiner was the headline anyway. So, nine hours after posting this idea that maybe that image of Trump wearing the forty seven on a Steelers uniform maybe that was ai. Nine hours later, one of the three or four people at Newsweek finally saw the social media blowback to their incredibly
stupid posts, and they changed the article. So as of Monday night, the headline on the story itself, but not the tweet, had been changed to quote Trump posts fake image of himself as a star NFL player. You think, oh, wait to go out on a limb there, Newsweek. On the other hand, if The New York Times and Jeremy Peters had done the story, it would have been Trump shows his athletic side in creative post, but our winner the worst, same topic, same football team, and the Trump campaign.
It is a little over a week since the Trump candidate for the Senate in Pennsylvania, David McCormick, had his own problem with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He posted what red like. Whether or not he was really too dumb to tell the difference between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles. Whether or not he's really that stupid is unclear, but it reads like he's that stupid, quoting it pictures of him four different pictures of him in Eagles green with
Eagles fans outside the Eagles stadium. Fun tailgate in Philly. Today football emoji excited to watch the Steelers throttle the Raiders, Republican senate candidate in Pennsylvania. Why the Steelers should prove so troubling for Republicans or Newsweek or anybody else is hard to say. They have been in the National Football League since the Rooney family got a franchise in nineteen
thirty three and named it the Pittsburgh Football Pirates. Then in nineteen forty they said enough of this confusion, and they paid tribute to the city steel industry by renaming the team the Steelers, named for Steel Steel with two e's and then an R and an S added at the end. There stee L E R S Stealers. They're the sixth oldest franchise in the NFL. They're a pretty big fing deal. The Trump campaign does not know how
to spell the team name. It has sent out one of its forty four million daily fundraising emails focusing on Trump's most important campaign finish line statements, his stunt not actually working, serving French fries to people who weren't really customers and weren't really surprised to see him there at a fascist McDonald's that wasn't really open, and the other one was going to a Pittsburgh Steelers game. The fundraising
email in full, Trump Vance twenty twenty four. The little button in the corner that says shop can't stop, won't stop working at McDonald's a town hall, a Stealers game. No one is working harder than President Trump to better I'm not paying a lot for this funeral a Steelers game. It reads s t e a l e r s. Why that has the word steal in it? S t e a l as in thief, as in Trump, Donald Trump of the Steelers, s t e a l e r s Steelers, Steelers. Sometimes the jokes just right themselves.
Two days worst Fars sending and the annually at this time of year, somebody asks me, why aren't you at that All Baseball network? Seems like you'd be a natural, And I say you mean MLB Network and they say yeah, and I say sit down. You got to hear this story. The owners of at least five different Major League Baseball teams have tried to get me fired over the years,
and one, the New York Yankees, kind of succeeded. On November twenty six, twenty twelve, why agent followed the instructions of Tony Petiti, then the president of the TV publicity channel owned by Major League Baseball MLB Network, and called Petiti to finalize a deal by which I would join the channel to do a daily show, probably at five
thirty at night. It was going to be weird. MLB Network and its sister hockey channel, NHL Network originate in the same studios in Caucus, New Jersey, that MSNBC used every day from the day I started there in October nineteen ninety seven through the day in October two thousand and seven when NBC finally moved us to New York City. I had been asked to do something for MLB Network in two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine, before it ever got on the air. The request came
directly from the then Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Ceilig. He also asked me to write for Baseball's website MLB dot Com. We actually got that done, but the TV show was impossible because of my schedule until I was a free
agent in the fall of twenty twelve. So I was invited in the fall of twenty twelve to do a couple of guest appearances at MLB Network, and they went well, except for this crazy deja vu kind of thing that hit me when I went into the building and found that while Baseball had spent sixty million dollars to upgrade all the technical stuff in the studio designs, they had not touched anything else from the MSNBC era. The carpet tiles were the same, the ping pong table in the
break croom was the same. The sign on the back of the bathroom door telling you who to call if the John overflows were the same. It was like having a dream where you're back in your childhood home and everything is exactly the way it was, including the creeks and the floorboards, except oh, by the way, there's a nuclear reactor in the middle of your den, and you
keep saying, where did that come from? Anyway, the guest appearances on MLB Network went well, and this guy Petit, the president, asked if I would fill in for two days on their new morning show the week of Thanksgiving twenty twelve. I certainly knew how to get to the building. I did the shows with Brian Kenny and Ken Rosenthal and Bob Costas's son, Keith and Alana Rizzo, and we had a good time. And Tony Pettiti, the president of MLB Network, attended the meetings that we would have before
and after each show. I mean full staff meetings, fifteen or so people standing around a bunch of cubicles, and in front of all of them, Tony Pettiti began asking me if I thought my new sh for MLB Network would do better at five or five thirty, and if I agreed with him that I should work only during the baseball season and spring training and playoffs and winter meetings and then stay fresh by taking the rest of
the year off. He asked me if there were people on the staff of the morning show who I would like to work with. I mean, this is in front of all of the staff of the morning show. He warned me they couldn't pay me the kind of salary I was used to, and I said that happily, the kind of salary I was used to meant I did not need the kind of salary I was used to. He told me to remind my agent to call him
the monday after Thanksgiving. He wished me a happy Turkey, and everybody left, and everybody heard his plans, and a couple of the producers asked me if I was recommending them to be on my new show on MLB network. So, how come I don't have a new show on MLB Networker, how come we're not celebrating the tenth anniversary of my new show on MLB Network. Well, on Monday afternoon, my agent calls me and says he's just gotten off the phone with Tony Pettiti and it was the strangest conversation
he had had since he became an agent. No let me rephrase that, he said, because it wasn't a conversation, it was an attempted conversation. I kept asking him what he told me to call him about, and he would then say nothing. Initially I did not understand what you mean he said nothing, My agent said he meant literally that. I say, so, Tony, what's your offer to Keith? And then there was silence, and I thought the phone call had dropped out. So I said, Tony, are you there?
And he say sure, I am so Again I asked him, you know, what's your offer to Keith? And again literally silence, only this time I can hear him breathing. I tried like ten different ways. Are we talking about Keith now silence? Is there a reason you're being silent about Keith? Tony silence? If I changed the subject, talked about somebody else, he was his normal self. If I mentioned your name, he went silent. The next day, the agent calls me back. Petiti just did this again with me on the phone.
He wouldn't speak, literally, wouldn't say any words in any language if I mentioned your name. Took me a long time to find out what had actually happened. The next baseball season, after I'd gone back to work at ESPN, I'm at a game. There's one of the MLB network officials whom I'd met on my two days before Thanksgiving twenty twelve, and this person comes up to me and apologizes. We all heard what happened. It's so embarrassing. Petiti is such a coward. The Yankees got to him and another club,
I never found out which one. There was some kind of conference call a Monday after Thanksgiving to tell the teams about your new show, and whoever was on the call for the Yankees went ballistic. They said something like, if you put him on MLB Network, we will disable your cameras. At Yankee Stadium and never let any of you inside the building again. Instantly I knew why the
Yankees would have done that. I was, and my father before me, ac He's and ticket holder for forty two years for Yankee games, and for ten of those years, I was also one of the two announcers who did a kind of play by play over the public address system at Yankee Stadium on Old Timer's Day. And then one day in twenty eleven, I tweeted a photo of a Yankee employee in the stands giving some sort of hand signals to Alex Rodriguez in the on deck circle.
The guy was clearly telling Alex Rodriguez what the last pitch had been. It wasn't cheating, it was helping a supposed superstar who apparently could not figure out for himself from on the field what the last pitch had been. I tweeted the photo. Major League Baseball called the Yankees and told them to cut it out. The Yankees and a Rod looked stupid in the newspapers, and the Yankees'
management said they were not mad at me. And then three months later, days before Old Timer's Day, they leaked to the papers that I had been fired as Old Timer's Day play by play man because I had tweeted that photo of Alex Rodriguez and the guy in the stands, so rather naturally, my response was to not renew my season tickets. And my tickets were right behind home plate and they cost like four hundred thousand dollars a year, and relax, I gave about seventy percent of them to
make a wish. But the Yankees, being the Yankees, were furious that I would not give them four hundred thousand dollars a year anyway, so they told MLB Network if MLB Network gave me a show, they would unplug MLB Networks cameras. Actually they did more than that. I asked my friend, the MLB network official, the real puzzler of the saga, why this MLB Network president Tony Petiti, literally would not speak, would not say anything, not even deals
off to my agent. Oh. The official said, the Yankees were specific about that if you say anything to him or his people, we will get you fired. So Fetiti took it literally. He said, if you or your agent called, to just give you the silent treatment. These are adults, mind you, and they say that on air talent are the Prima Donnas. As I said, the Yankees are the closest of five different teams who tried to have actually
gotten me fired sort of. When I was in local news in Los Angeles, Jackie Autrey, the woman who went from being Gene Autry's banker to being his second wife, tried to get me fired from my station in LA because I had criticized their team, the California Angels. She tried again a few years later after I got to ESPN. Then there were the Tampa Bay Rays, well, the Devil Rays at that point, whose first owner, Vince Namoli, was convinced I had a vendetta against his team and was
making up stories about them that were accidentally true. He could not conceive that somebody in his organization who he paid, actually hated him so much that this person called me up and volunteered to feed me anything bad that went on there. But that is exactly what happened. So that's the Yankees, the Angels, and the Rays, and there's a mystery fifth team that was also involved in the MLB network thing. And then there were the Chicago White Sox.
One of their co owners, Eddie Einhorn, was a big fan of mine, But for forty four years the team has been run by the other co owner, Jerry Reinsdorf. And Jerry Reinsdorf was one of the key figures in the strike that killed the nineteen ninety four baseball season. During that terrible winter that followed, my sources in the Baseball Players Association showed me a copy of their offer
to the owners. The owners were led by Rhinsdorf, and in the player's offer, they were willing to actually negotiate one of the players Union's sacred cows, salary arbitration. They were willing to cut it or maybe eliminate it outright. But after complaining about salary arbitration for twenty years, the owners committee, led by this Reinsdorf idiot, turned the players down. Apparently most of the owners did not know that Rhinsdorff had passed on a chance to eliminate salary arbitration, a
kind of automatic inflation thing within baseball contracts. And they came down on Hinsdorff like a ton of bricks. What do you mean you turned down the chance to stop salary arbitration. So naturally he blamed me, and he called up ESPN and he demanded they fire me, which, to their credit, they never did do. Revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold, goes the old Italian proverb. Reinsdorf is today despised within baseball. He
has once again ruined the Chicago White Sox. The Tampa Bay Ray's owner, name Oli, sold the team unknowingly, obviously to a man named Stuart Sternberg, who turned out to be married to a friend of mine from college. So whenever the Rays would come into New York, I would sit with Stu and his wife Lisa in their box. Their eldest son interned for me. MLB Network, which started out pretty good, is now just a propaganda machine in which every team is unbeaten and every player is the
greatest ever. And they fired their best reporter, Ken Rosenthal because he dared to write something critical of the idiot commissioner Robert Manfred. So go Dodgers. I mean, you know, my late friend and hero, Vin Scully Dodgers. Dodgers. Dodgers 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 nine Pacific. Follow me for the podcast promo videos on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x,
Instagram and instau. Once again, there is a Monday Countdown. Please send this podcast or tell somebody about it. Send it to them. Does not know they need to listen to this podcast, but should. It's called Countdown. We've discussed how my late hero and friend mister Scully told me he was offered the Yankees announcing job in nineteen sixty four, offered the chance to go home again to the Metropot New York area, and again in nineteen sixty seven. He said, no, thanks,
I'll stay here. Thank you very much. I mentioned that once on the air and Southern California erupted, Oh we almost lost been fifty years ago. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle had little 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 Overman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my friend John Deane, Dodgers fan.
Everything else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for today, one weekend, six days until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the three and eighty seventh day since convicted felon dissociative fugue Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the election, use the mental health system, use presidential immunity to keep him from doing it again while we still have a chance. The
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news requires until the next one. I'm Keith Oulderman. Good Morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oulderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.