DONALD TRUMP: THAT'S "DONALD" WITH 47 L's - 12.15.25

terrorists know it. Even Trump knows it. Since the House passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act on November nineteenth, Trump has been sinking in quicksand sinking, and not more than one or two of his more insane, more desperate colleagues have even gotten close enough to hand him a rope for fear of being pulled down with him. His losing streak is today twenty seven days long, his latest losing streak,

and they are beginning to blame him. We are facing almost certain defeats, says the purulent face of the RNC Joe Gruders about the midterms. Then, quote, this is an absolute disaster. Then if that wasn't clear enough, quote there's no sugarcoating it. This is a pending, looming disaster headed our way. And then I think, quoting me, quoting the late football owner Al Davis Gruters, says, the chances are Republicans will go down, and will go down. Hod just lose, baby,

and boy has Trump been losing. He called affordability a hoax, got his arm twisted by his economists who know the last thing it is is a hoax. Tried to give a speech saying he will fix affordability rather than being crush under its weight politically, and still could not stop himself. Could not not mock those advisors, and not mock America, and not mock his own speech, and not mock affordability again, and even not mock the charts they gave him, and

not mock Christmas presents. Quote you don't need thirty seven

dollars for your daughter two or three? Is nice, she thinks, santi the results the next day, the Democrat Eileen Higgins swamped the MAGA loser in the election for mayor of Miami, and the Republicans coughed up what was thought to be a permanently red seat in the state House in Georgia, and Trump still kept mocking affordability, and Trump even mocked Trump twenty eighteen, twenty eighteen when he was caught saying shithole countries, and he denied he said shithole countries, and

he lied and said he didn't say it, and his people who there and heard him say it, they lied and said he didn't say it. And now he says he did say it, and he said it again, and he said it about Somalia. And I don't know what it is, but somehow this group he has attacked seems to have been respected in this country, even by Republicans. And the shithole in question looks like Trump's mouth. And then there's nearby Indiana. Indiana is not a hot prospect to join the new Left, and it never has been.

And yet Mike Pence was from there. And the Indiana Republicans who stared Trump down when he threatened to cut off all federal funding if they didn't readdistrict the way he wanted him to there from there, and they told him to go f himself. And then the Maga lieutenant governor, whose name is Micah Beckwith and is exactly as dumb as that sounds, first posted that threat online then deleted the post, and then, when confronted by reporters, repeated the

threat almost word for word. Quote, Yes, these conversations happened. Beckwith said this to Politico. But it's not a threat, it's an honest conversation about who does the White House want to partner with. There are forty nine other states competing for all kinds of projects. Indianatol the White House today. They don't want to be a good partner to the Trump administration. And I suspect the White House will look

to partner with other states before US. But did they actually say, here are projects you could lose out on if you do not deliver for us. Political Politico asked them that question, and mister Beckwith answered, quote, yes, unbelievable. Hey, Becky, One, don't blackmail. Two, don't blackmail people who aren't going to give in to blackmail. Three, when your blackmail fails, don't

advertise that it's failed. And four, when you realize the validity of point three and you try to bury your advertisement, don't go back and advertise it again. Indiana thus becomes multiple Trump losses. He loses there like three times, and he also loses wherever he decides the next Indiana is and he looks, well, what's the opposite of impregnable? He looks pregnable. And there are multiple, multiple l's, not just Indiana,

these beauty pageant also rans. He's tried to dress up as US attorneys Julianne Murray in Delaware Gone, the slimy Elina Haba Gone, Miss Uncongeniality, Lindsay Halligan going seven of them, by Trump's own admission going. And Trump's replacement evil plan is to eliminate blue slips in the Senate the way home state senators keep unqualified nominees from being qualified by

the whores still working for the would be dictator. And John has responded to this by saying no, and Chuck Grassley has responded to this by saying, no, that's two more els in one game. No three l's in one game.

He'd already tried to get them to eliminate the filibuster too, els el's els marching into the White House just in time for the construction permits to be denied for the new combination ballroom and Trump egos storage Hangar, I don't know what's going to happen to Obamacare, but He's not gonna gut it or replace it with the latest lame brained idea for a new scheme. Ran Paul's brilliant plan for you to buy your insurance on Amazon or at Sam's Club or at Costco. He Randy, maybe I can

buy my insurance from your neighbor. He seemed to come out of his problems. Okay, Trump's healthcare plan fell in the Senate. Maybe he can find a new one on Amazon. Rdreie Taylor Green remains under the influence of a possibly transient but definitely tertiary stage case of conscience in open rebellion, planning one final bid to unseat Speaker Johnson before she leaves the House. The two thousand dollars tariff checks are gone,

The Doge checks never happened. Buy your own insurance checks have apparently been replaced by Domino's new avoid thenoid insurance. Trump's approval numbers are frozen Pizza economy approvals down to thirty one percent, and if the Obamacare subsidies expire, that approval will drop below thirty and maybe take his overall approval with it. Because even his people realize he is turning this place into a shithole country. The Trump ells

are everywhere. You can't spell kilmar Abrego, Garcia without a Trump l. The courts have ordered him to let go of the LA National Guard troops. He's losing in wars. He said he'd already settled, or would settle in twenty four hours or twenty four days or twenty four weeks. Ukraine is further from peace than ever. The Thailand Cambodia war, Trump said he ended on Friday, resumed on Saturday. His peace in the Middle East saw the Israelis kill a

top Hamas commander over the weekend. An attack in Syria three Americans dead, including two service members, and he promised serious retaliation. And he would have sounded tougher if he'd said, I'm going to hit you real hard, like I said at the top. There are so many els, And for twenty seven days at least, there have been nothing but els that even Trump has begun to notice. So add that to the list of els. His ability to believe

his own bullshit is showing holes. He still clings to this financial imbecility that tariffs will turn the economy into a money printing machine, even for people not named Trump or Musk or Bezos. But even he has now told the Wall Street Journal, Yeah, he doesn't know when that money printing machine will actually turn on. The Journal interviewed him Friday in the Oval, and he must have stepped in some reality and couldn't get it off his shoes,

quoting them. Quoting him, he acknowledged that he couldn't predict if that would translate into political gains for Republicans next fall. Asked whether Republicans would lose the House in November, Trump said quote, I can't tell you. I don't know when all of this money is going to kick in narrator, It didn't kick in. Wait, there's more. Quote. I've created the greatest economy in history, but it may take people a while to figure all these things out. Oh they've

figured it out, Donald, They figured it out. Saturday night, when rushing, stumbling, waddling to grab at it, almost literally climbing over the bodies of dead students to claim he had found their killer, Trump posted this quote, I have been briefed on the shooting that took place at Brown University in Rhode Island. The FBI is on the scene, the suspect is in custody. God bless the victims and the families of the victim's exclamation point, F you, buddy,

you've stepped on your dick again. You've stepped on your tiny dick again. While millions mourned and questioned, what is wrong with this goddamn country that we throw school kids, whether toddlers or teenagers, into the volcano like we were practicing the human sacrifice madness of the Aztecs, just to protect your right to walk around with a gun. Sure, what's another bunch of human hearts? What's another bunch of kids? As long as people know that Trump alone has found

the real killer. Way, what's that you're saying? They haven't found the real killer. Hadn't found the real killer when he posted that. So now in just three months, Trump's bubbleheaded FBI director who didn't know the job meant work. He thought it only met a free jet. He wrongly said they'd caught the Charlie Kirk assassin. And now Trump has made the same mistake and tried to blame his

mistake on others. And when you do that, and when you post that, you open yourself up to attacks from the other side, like Chris Murphy attacked on State of the Union yesterday. He said it opaquely, he said it with nuance. But make no mistake, this is a US senator blaming the President of the United States for this gun attack and the next gun attack quote. Right now, we don't have the leadership in Washington to do anything

anything to respond to the shooting this weekend. Trump has been engaged in a pretty deliberate campaign to try to make violence more likely in this country, and I think you're unfortunately going to see the results of that on the streets of America. He's knowingly restoring gun rights to dangerous people. He is cutting off grants that have bipartisan support to try to interrupt violence in our cities or to try to get necessary mental health resources to families

and children in need unquote. As I said earlier, this has been going on all of these els since at least the nineteenth of November, when enough MAGA congressmen realized that only one of these things could happen. They could continue to help Trump hide the Epstein files, or they could get re elected. That's why, of all these els, the biggest Trump loss in the last twenty seven days may have been the release of those four pictures of

him with Jeffrey Epstein. The photos show nothing. The photos would therefore normally mean nothing, but they serve as a reminder that Trump tried to stop you from seeing photos of him with Epstein, that those photos that were released weren't part of that tranch in the files. That doesn't matter. It only raises a kind of instinctive speculation about how

much worse those other Epstein Trump photos might be. It keeps the Epstein story alive when Trump could have killed it weeks ago, months ago, even if there was stuff more incriminating about him than say, a drawn of the naked woman made out to Epstein that he may or may not have drawn. But he's sure as shit signed right over the naughty bits. Instead of moving Epstein off the table and out of the picture, he's letting it

drip drip drip on him. The photos mean nothing, yet here they are just another element that says this is Trump's scandal. The way the constant coverage of Clinton Lewinsky, even when there was no actual news for days, for weeks, kept that front of mind for all of the year nineteen ninety eight. I'll tell you something at MSNBC in nineteen ninety eight the promo. But used to ask our staffers every day to give them something, anything, a news morsel that could turn into a thirty second promo for

tomorrow's show. And on Thursday they used to have to turn something into a promo for Monday's show. Monday on the White House in crisis, we were locking in the crisis four days in advance. We were programming the crisis. And when we hit Friday, and those files are by law required to be released, whatever is released will be another Trump L. And whatever isn't released will be another Trump L. And lord knows how many l's there will be if there's something actually startling in the files. And

that's the point. It doesn't have to be a good scandal to be a gripping scandal. It just has to have new stories every day. That's what Clinton Lewinsky's true meaning was. And as Philip Bump pointed out, Trump basically got elected by knowing this. There wasn't crap actually in wiki leaks or her emails, except that there was only

something new in them. So in some more losses than the nineteen sixty two New York mets, or if you are a current New York Mets fan more losses than the twenty twenty five twenty six offseason New York Mets. And maybe it's only one hour a week, but even Trump knows it. During that hour, and way more than one hour a week, the Trump media industrial complex knows it. It's not my habit to quote the insufferable, inexhaustible phony

Peggy Noonan. But when there's a column in the goddamned Rupert Murdoch goddamned Wall Street Journal titled quote Trump may be losing his touch, Yeah, I'm quoting it. One hundred and thirty six words. I swear that's it for this year. Just one hundred and thirty six words. And don't be thrown by the imaginary world in which Peggy Noonan lives. She still thinks Ronald Reagan isn't in hell, and now she thinks Charlie Kirk was a mediating force inside the

Trump cult. Okay, just go with that, But the other points she makes are salient and deadly. Quote outside Washington, mister Trump's base is fighting with itself. America first is saying I'm not maga conspiracies all over Israel killed Charlie the assassination of Charlie Kirk, she writes, looks increasingly like an epical event. Did he understand how much he was holding together the Trumpian right Without the force of his mediating presence, they are cracking up percolating below unseen is

the price you pay in time for success? The President's border triumph, sorry what? The president's border triumph will likely weaken his and maga's political position. He shut down illegal immigration on the southern border, which had been more less open for decades. But it was anger at illegal immigration noonan rights that kept his base cleaved to him and allied with each other. Remove the issue that made you, and you can no longer use it to gain votes

or maintain unity. Unquote Oh no, oh, dear Trump's lost his touch. God damn shame not going to affect those midterms and give us enough Democratic congressman to impeach him and enough Democratic senators to remove him. Is it? Oh? Really you think so wow? That'll be fun? Let me quote this RNC blob gruters again, quoting me again, quoting al Davis again. Republicans will go down and will go

down hobb okay. Two quick media notes The CBS evening news about Barry Weiss, edited by Barry Weiss, anchored by Barry Weiss, starring Barry Weiss, is not going so well. If she had not been put there to do something bad like this, her stay on this job might be as long as RONA. Romney's glorious hour and a half

as an MSNBC commentator. It was Brian Steinberg and Variety who noticed this, and to whom all credit goes, And I'm just going to quote him and read his story from Variety that Barry Weiss town hall with Erica Kirk, the merry widow, the woman who used all the eyeliner left over after jd Vance got done. No real advertiser was willing to buy time on it. No real advertiser was

willing to buy time on the CBS television network. Mister Steinberg writes headline, Big advertisers appear wary of CBS News's Barryweiss town Hall format during a Saturday night town hall led by Barry Weiss, the recently named editor in chief of CBS News, and I believe she liked the article so far most of Madison Avenue sought an off ramp.

Steinberg writes the News special aired at eight pm on Saturday, one of the least watch hours in broadcast TV, and that may have contributed to a relative dearth of top advertisers appearing to support the show during the hour. Commercial breaks were largely filled with spots from direct response advertisers, including the taietary supplement super Beats, the home repair service HomeServe dot com, and Carfax, a supplier of auto ownership data.

Viewers of the telecast on WCBS, CBS's flagship station in New York even saw a commercial for Giampet, the terra cotta figure that sprouts plant life after a few weeks. I wonder if CBS will still sprout plant life after a two weeks, continuing the article quote. A more moneyed class of sponsors was evident during the first commercial break, appearing in the nine pm hour on CBS a rebroadcast of a twenty twenty four episode of forty eight Hours.

Marketers appearing included Amazon, Ferrero Group, and Procter and Gamble. Unquote, uh oh, Congratsbery Weiss and the Ellisons. You've turned CBS News into overnights. On superstation WTBS in nineteen seventy six, got a Ginsu knife collection for sale Airberry. But wait, what was that again about chiapets? Viewers of the telecast on WCBS. CBS was flagship station in New York even saw commercial for Chiapet the terracotta figure that sprout's plant

life after a few weeks. Oh my god, Chia Pet Company, I'll give you one thousand dollars if you make a

Barry Weiss chia pet. Please, oh please, please, please please please. Meanwhile, something that a week ago would have outdrawn the Barry Weiss town Hall with Tammy fay Baker Kirk may now belong to the Ages as well as Vivid as parts of the latest Ryan Lizzer response to Olivia Newsy may have been the whole thing has collapsed under the realization that actually the only guaranteed audience for Lizz's segments have been Olivia's other exes. Hey her book first week out,

first publication week, maximum visibility. As you probably have not heard, her book, the first week sold. With all that publicity, including the most thorough job of The New York Times ever missing the lead and the next twenty off leads in its history, that book sold and sixty five copies a book that sold five thousand copies the same week,

placed fiftieth among nonfiction sellers. Not great, Bob. So, barring anything else that might come up later on in this to which I could add something that is either relevant or true, I'll bow out here. But I do want to read one last paragraph, because this is the easiest way for me to get mister lendsa an answer he apparently needs. Let me quote him. Quote Olivia, this person said was starting to tell people that I might kill her.

I tried to explain that Olivia watched a lot of Law and Order growing up and has an active imagination, especially when it comes to being killed. She feared that her mother would kill her. She had told me that she thought Keith might kill her, and now I have to assume she told Keith the same thing about me. Of course, she repeatedly told me that she feared Bobby would kill her. Now she was saying that I might

kill her. I never heard her say one way or the other about Mark Sandford's level of interest in killing her. That's a good line. So many people were out to kill her, and yet here she was, at thirty one,

somehow very much alive. End quote. Okay, Ryan. I haven't talked to her since twenty fifteen, and by the way, every contact I've had with her since twenty fifteen was about what to do with her clothes or about the health of what had been our dogs, about which she had no interest, for which I will never forgive her,

and which I think summarizes her. Once I did post on Facebook twenty eighteen, maybe that the place in Central Park that you two guys like to hang out at was my utter coincidence, right on the path I walked the dogs every day, and way too near my home, and it was a miracle we hadn't run into each other already. So maybe we should all make that our DMZ. But about the killing her question, exhale Ryan, she never told me she thought you might kill her. She only

told me she thought you were stalking her. Also of interest, here a top governor tries to insist Democrats have a hand in political violence in this country. And this would just be stupid if this governor weren't a Democrat, and if he weren't the democratic governor whose fascist haters tried to burn him and his family alive in their own home during passover. Worst Persons is next This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Oberman still ahead on this

edition of Countdown. Sixty five years ago this month, a little boy named Theo Dall was hit by a New York City cab while being pushed across the street in his baby carriage. He was never the same, nor was his father, who, in part to entertain his stricken son,

wrote a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And although the next development was not quite on that level of importance, the writing of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory led me to write to Theo's dad, who was the legendary both good and bad legendary Roal Doll, to write him a fan letter, and he wrote back, and he wrote back again, And these letters are referenced somehow in

Roald Dahl's official biography. This very strange story ahead in things I promised not to tell first of believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the disagreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world. The runner up to the runner up Bronze, Anna Paulina Luna the congresswoman from Smolensk. I know, I'm sorry, I got that wrong from Florida. Problem is she might as

well be and it might as well be Smolensk. The Russian Embassy in the US social media account has posted her photo and quote at the invitation by at Rep. Luna, Ambassador Dartkiev visited her Christmas reception on Capitol Hill. Wonderful event with warm atmosphere and exceptional hospitality. Continue working to

make Russian American relations great again. Yeah. Sorry, anybody who thinks we should have great relations with Russia before the Russians overthrow the Putent dictatorship is to totally loyal to this country, but really dumb. Not loyal and dumb. Sorry, Russia is our enemy, but there are degrees of how

truly not you can be. And from the Twitter ex account of the gadfly Jay in Kiev comes this addendum to that photo of Luna to whom the Russians gave their JFK quote files unquote, because why would they ever give America fake historical records or disinformation? Jay in Kiev notes and quoting him since August when her and Steve Whitcoff met some of Putin's representatives at a Miami hotel

owned by Russian business partner of Witcoff. US Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna has been a prolific member of the Russian government's Paid Influencers program, turning her ex timeline into display case of NonStop Kremlin talking points. Jay in Kiev writes and continues, what she does isn't illegal. Today she gleefully met her handler unquote yikes. I don't know if she's a paid influencer or a paid Influencer's program member. That's

Jay's assertion. I do know she operates under an adopted name. She was born Anna Paulina Meyerhoffer. Right, your arm is Meyerhoffer, and she has the IQ of a goldfish on a good day to goldfish. The runner up worser, Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Now, look, I get what he's trying to do here, but it's Pollyanna to the point of ridiculousness. Worse,

it's Pollyanna to the point of John fetterman esque. Remember that they tried to burn the governor and his family alive and burn them to death in his home in the Governor's residence just last April during the holidays, and he is still both sides political violence in America. Governor Shapiro writes, quote, it shouldn't be hard to mourn the loss of the Minnesota Speaker of the House, Melissa Hortman,

after she was gunned down in her bed. It shouldn't be hard to follow Erica Kirk's eulogy with an amen and a prayer for her and her family. We have a crisis of political violence in this country and it requires all of us to do better every time. No, we don't. We have a crisis of conservative, fascist, maga republican political violence in this country. And I will say this again, the assassination of Charlie Kirk was and is indefensible,

But so was Charlie Kirk. He was a terrible destructive force. And the sane washing of him calls for the execution of President Biden. Things like that that he did forcing kids to watch public hangings, that he called for putting public hangings on TV. Charlie Kirk called for that Saine washing. All that is appalling, And I get what Josh Shapiro is trying to do, but my god, man, the right wingers tried to burn you to death, and you are acting like this guy was Saint Charlie of Kirk and

his rage filled wife is Jackie Kennedy. Preach all the condemn all political violence sermons you want, Governor, but the right is going to continue to attack physically Democrats and liberals and you know, our form of government, and as it turns out, any Republican who disagrees with them, like the ones in Indiana, and then they will insist that it's only the liberals who do all the political violence. Governor, They're gonna do that as they have now for twenty years.

You should not help them. They are doing fine on this by themselves. Do not join the both sides in parade, Governor, especially since these are the people who tried to kill you. But our winner is Howard Lutnik, chief bullshit advisor to Trump. I mean, there are lots of toadies and there are lots of liars around Trump, but this guy may be the champion. I am indebted to my former NBC colleague

Carl Kintenia on this one. It's priceless. As Carl noted on Face the Nation on April sixth of this year, Lutnik said, quote, the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones, That kind of thing is going to come to America. The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones, That kind of thing is

going to come to America. Then Lutnick, same guy, same topic, goes on CNBC last Thursday, and he says, quote, Remember Americans don't have millions of people to screw in little screws in iPhones, but we do have capacity to run robotics. Remember Americans don't have millions of people to screw in little screws in iPhones, but we do have capacity to run robot So Trump's ass kissing bullshit artist is bullshitting

us in both directions. In April, Howard Lutnik promised that Trump's America would be where millions of us would be screwing in the little screws to make iPhones. By December, he is promising that Trump's America will be where millions of us will not be screwing in the little screws

to make iPhones. The arrogance and the degree to which this man will say anything to try to make it seem like Trump isn't screwing this economy into the ground is seriously astonishing, even in the context of the world in which we live today. Howard, may I suggest you screw your little screws in yourself, Lutnik Today's other worst person in the world. If the name Royal Dahl does

not immediately ring a bell for you. He was the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and thus the creator of Willy Wonka, and he wrote James and the Giant Peach, and all of his kids books combined have sold about a quarter of a billion copies Dead since nineteen ninety. Two years ago, Forbes placed Dall first on its list of the top earning dead celebrities, ahead of

Prince and Michael Jackson. Royal Dahl made about five hundred and thirteen million dollars in twenty twenty one, compared to thirteen million by the late John Lennon. And that is where the problems began. And if you have not heard about the problems, the first is Royal Dahl was often, as somebody on Twitter put it succinctly, he was often the C word. He was at times anti Semitic, racist, misogynistic, and cruel, and his writing was at times anti Semitic, racist, misogynistic,

and cruel. None of that has ever really slowed down his book sales, though, largely because first, kids who read books are actually smarter than nearly every adult thinks they are. And second, it seemed then and now that the more problematic a lot of Doll's characters were, the smarter he made them. The Umphilumpas of Willy Wonka are not Doll's finest moments. On the other hand, they do run everything in the chocolate factory. They know everything about the ticket

winning kids and their foibles. And when Violet turns into a giant blueberry, and when Veruka gets devoured by squirrels, it is the Umphilumpas who know how to save them. So apparently the Umphluopas are doctors, or at least paramedics. Anyway, the reason Royal Dahl made five hundred and thirteen million dollars thirty one years after he died was that his

estate sold the rights to the books to Netflix. By then, the book publishers had already brought in a company of so called sensitivity readers to rewrite the more troublesome parts of Dol's work. We're seeing the first results of this now, and it is literally what George Orwell described in his novel nineteen eighty four, erasing the past, replacing it with a new past, and leaving no indication that any editing

or changing was done. While I'm assuming it still says that in nineteen eighty four, presumably all of that could be edited out of Orwell and we'd never know, right. But it's even worse than that, because the edits are being made not because of some pure if misguided desire to make changes reflecting the changes in morays and respect

changes even the author might want to make. They're being done so that the books, according to the publisher, can continue to be enjoyed by all today, meaning they did this to literally sell more books. This is not even about why intentioned censorship. It's about profit. And if all that were not bad enough, the rewriting of ro al Dahl has from a quality viewpoint, gone about as well as the so called restoration of the painting of Jesus in Spain in twenty twelve. The painting is now known

as monkey Christ or potato Jesus. Apart from the wholesale elimination of words like fat and ugly, the publishers have decided to take out references that no kid would ever notice. She went to India with Rudyard Kipling becomes she went to California with John Steinbeck. Why. In his story The Witches, Roul Dahl has the hero believe that all witches are bald and wear wigs and gloves, and that's a way

to check. Don't be foolish, my grandmother said. You can't go around pulling the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it and see what happens. That would be an admonition not to believe that everybody with a wig is a witch. It has now been changed to don't be foolish, my grandmother said. Besides, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that.

It's like Shakespeare. Now. Look, it is one thing if you are giving a public reading of Tom Sawyer, and you may want to drop a couple of words here and there. I have performed James Thurber's stories since twenty ten on TV on radio on this podcast in Person, his epic story by the way, forecasting Trump the greatest man in the World, is coming up shortly. Thurber's daughter Rosie offered me the right to edit anything I felt I needed to edit for time or for taste, and

said there was plenty in there. Her dad would be mortified by today that he wrote. Letting me edit it, though, is like saying, hey, you have a heart, so that means you can perform heart surgery. But the goal in

doing that is to change as little as possible. There are adjectives that were once perfectly normal and seemingly liberal, and once thought even to be complimentary that you really need to just skip, So when you're reading them aloud, just skip them, but erase them permanently forever from Thurber's books,

when maybe a note to new readers would be sufficient warning. Plus, if I'm changing anything about Thurber while transforming his work into a different medium like podcasts, I am necessarily going to edit things. A movie might leave out nine tenths of any novel, but just reading a novel aloud might change something as important as the emphasis on the way certain words were said from the way the author intended that emphasis to be. Besides which, all those changes are temporary.

I'm not altering Thurber's text. I'm altering my reading of his text next. And the same goes for Royal Dahl. And a lot of people saying this are people who do not like Royal Dall. Sir Solomon rushed. He wrote, he was a self confessed anti Semite with pronounced racist leanings, and he joined in the attack on me back in nineteen eighty nine. Royal Dahl was no angel. But this is absurd censorship, puffin books and the doll estate should

be ashamed, because that's the point. If we're going to edit or otherwise circumscribe every book or author, or film or producer with a significant problem, we're going to wind up with a world library of about fifty books and ten films. I mean, this isn't Florida. And artists, like people, are rarely all good or all bad, and often they have huge disturbing flaws which can, in their own way, teach you what not to do or be in life.

The publishers defended doing this on the premise that Roald Dahl's works have always been edited and modified, that he permanently changed the description of those umpah lumpas several times to make it less offensive. And again that misses the point he made those changes, not his publishers, not his literary estate, not you, not me, him. And if you're wondering why I'm going on so long about this, it's

because this is personal for me. I think I learned that truth that almost everybody is a mix of good and bad, often in big, bright, ugly letters, often with extraordinary self contradictions. I learned all that from Royal Dahl. Sometime in the second half of March nineteen sixty six, a letter unlike any other I had seen before arrived at our little house in the suburbs of New York City, where my parents packed me off each morning to the

third grade. The words par Avian were printed in the upper left, and the postmark was from somewhere called Great Missenden, and the address see was me. It was a letter from Royal Dahl. I had a number of very special teachers in my life, but the first of them was Missus Marjorie Plant, who survived an entire school year of me. In nineteen sixty five and nineteen sixty six, we sidled down the hallway to miss Ritz for an hour or so of math every day, but the rest of the

time we were Missus Plant's class. And when she was not leading us out to the glorious natural meadow in the pond just behind the elementary school and teaching us the name of every plant and every tree and every bird, she was reading to us, or getting us to read to her, or one day asking each of us to name our favorite author. Well, I didn't hesitate. My dad read to me each night, and it's probable somebody else's

book was first. And I know he later read me Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming, But the first books for me were Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach by Royl Doll. And I don't know how many times Dad read each of them to me, but I now do know that somehow those books conveyed to me that books didn't just happen, That a grown up like my dad had written them deliberately

for kids to read and to listen to. And this man had clearly included jokes that the kids would get, but the grown ups didn't seem to notice, and This was this man's job, the way being a draftsman and later an architect was my dad's job. That you could do this and people would pay you. This is how I understood about this. A thousand other writers and broadcasters

flashed out the details and the specifics for me. But the man who opened the first door into the world in which perhaps I could write for a living was ro Al Dahl. So, Keith, who's your favorite author, Missus Plant, asked ro Al Dahl. Missus Plant, knowing her and knowing me, she probably said I knew it, and soon after she explained that we had an assignment that day. We were all going to write. Great. I thought, I'll write another book.

I had already written something like forty books in Missus Plant's class, two or three pages with illustrations, with construction paper, covers, with staples, with titles. I wasn't just going to be a writer like Royal Dahl. I already was one. Not a book today, Keith, she said, I want you all to write a letter to your favorite author. I know how to get your letters to your author, so you

don't have to worry about that part. You can ask them anything you want in the letter you can tell them anything about yourself, but I especially want you to tell them why you like their books, and who you are and how old you are. And on that day in March nineteen sixty six, my favorite author had written me back. I had a sense immediately of it being a special occasion. I believe only one author besides Royal Dahl,

replied to anybody in our class. I do know the school thought it was a big enough deal to call the town newspaper to do a story on it. It's not as if I forgot the story, or the letter or the sense of wonder at its arrival, either. But despite the coverage in the weekly Hastings News, it still

seemed like a very private family kind of thing. And then in twenty ten, somebody told me, maybe it was the publisher, that the private family thing had made it into the authorized biography of roy Al Dahl, a book called Storyteller by Donald Sturrock. He wrote this next part, I did not. I think it's okay for me to bother it here, quoting mister Sturrock, his stories were encouraging children the world over to read books, and that many of them loved his stories so much that they felt

impelled to write and tell him so. The current rate of letters from children in the US is between fifty and sixty a week. He had written to Mike Watkins in nineteen sixty six. I try to answer them all with a postcard. Roald was always a diligent and engaging correspondent, and if he was in the right mood and thought a child's letter particularly imaginative, he or she would receive

a fuller and more memorable response. When the sports journalist and television anchorman Keith Olberman was seven years old and head of maps in his class at school, he wrote to Dahl from Hastings on Hudson in New York and told him at some length about his own writing ambitions and successes. Roald's reply was thoughtful, generous, and full of gentle ironic humor. My dear Keith, he began, It was

wonderful to receive a letter from a fellow author. It meant so much more than the usual ordinary message from a mere reader. As head of maps, you will be able to calculate very easily what a long way your letter had to travel in order to reach me in this little village, thousands of miles The postman, an elderly fellow who comes on foot, knocked on the door this morning, said I have a letter from you, from Kay Ulderman of Hastings, USA. I said, how do you know? He said,

it says so on the envelope. He is a very inquisitive postman, and he likes to know who is writing to me. Who is Ulberman, asked the postman. I opened the letter and read it. He is a writer, I said, he has written more books than me. Oldraman's parents later told the local newspaper that the letter had given the boy the kick of his young life. Missus Ulriman added that it just about proves that there are still some very nice people left in this old, beat up world.

If all adults acted with such loving attention to children, would it not be wonderful? Dahl was quite sincere when he argued that he thought children alone were decent judges of whether a book written for them was any good

or not. In nineteen sixty two, he had written to a child critic of James and the Giant Peach to tell him that up to now, a whole lot of grown ups have written reviews, but none of them have really known what they were talking about, because a grown up talking about a children's book is like a man talking about a woman's hat. The author, mister Sterrock not only put me in the authorized biography of Royal Dall,

he also put me in the index there. I am right between David Ogilvie, the advertising legend, and Sir Laurence Olivier. Left out of Sterrock's account and the quotes from my mother was the fact that mom was a fan of the actress Patricia Neil, Royal Dahl's wife, and she had read horror stories about their marriage and about Neil's stroke

and Dol's tough love during her recovery. As I began to appreciate her point of view and Dall's books at the same time and his letter to me, I began to formulate a theory that not everybody was just one thing, that you could be good and bad and shouldn't be judged on just half of yourself. Naturally, I wrote my new pen pal back he had mentioned having a son

about my age. In fact, Theo Dahl had been born in New York just like I was, but at the age of four months in his baby carriage, Theo was hit by a cab, and his injuries were so profound that for a while he was blind and Royal Dahl himself had helped to develop a shunt used to drain swelling in Theo's brain to make his life better and more worthwhile I did not know any of this when I mentioned, among other mundating details, that a seven year old was likely to tell an adult in a letter

that my middle name was Theodore. I also apparently included some poems I had written. And I know this because sure enough Rol Dahl wrote back again. This next letter did not come for nearly a year. My dear Keith. It begins dated February second, nineteen sixty seven. Your last letter was a very good one, So were the poems. Imagine the impact of that from your favorite writer right

after your eighth birthday. But Doll went on, I hope you will not become a poet when you grow up, because poets have a terribly hard time earning a living. I am writing a musical film, he went on, for Dick van Dyke, based roughly on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the Flying Motor Car. Could I have mentioned liking this book by a different author in my letter to him or did he just decide to announce it to me.

We'll be making it here in England next summer, and you can go and see it in nineteen sixty eight, when you are nine years old. You will be impressed at the things this car is going to do. With love from Roal Dahl, I'm sure I wrote again. I can almost remember he did not write back. I do not recall holding it against him, nor do I now. I do recall that when I followed his instructions and went to see his movie. I think, in fact it was my tenth birthday party in early nineteen sixty nine.

I was disappointed. Too much girl chasing, not enough car flying. Still almost no one is all good or all bad, And every new reissue of every Royal Doll book could include a twenty page treatise about what was bad about him and the negativities in that book and his other writings, just so long as it is included instead of rather than in addition to the nonsensical rewrites that Puffin publishing

is produced. Also, I think it might be appropriate to mention that though the letters from kids just in the US just in nineteen sixty six totaled around what twenty five hundred, he tried to answer them all with a postcard, or if you were very lucky, a letter, or if you were very very lucky, two letters, and to mention forty three years later in his official biography, I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.

Most of our countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, our musical directors who Countdown, and it was produced by TKO Brothers. Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The Olderman theme from ESPN two by Mitch Warren Davis appears courtesy of ESPN, Inc. And is our

sports music. And some other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my friend Dennis Leary. Everything else was, as always my fault. So that's countdown for today. Day three hundred and thirty of America held hostage again about just one and thirty three days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brain term unless he is removed sooner by Maga and Epstein or Indiana or Anosagnosia or Taile and

All or affordability or the second Strike video. The next scheduled edition of Countdown is Thursday. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts