FOX NEWS POLL: SEVEN POINT SWING TO BIDEN IN THREE MONTHS - 6.20.24

News poll in June. A top Midwestern political reporter says the Trump campaign is now warning local media that it will vet all questions for Trump at the Republican Convention and only give access to Trump to those local outlets whose questions have been approved in advance and one week before the debate, As rumors continue to swirl that Trump will back out as soon as he can find some

way to blame it on Biden. It is not only a certainty now that Robert Kennedy Junior will not be at the debate, but it's beginning to look like he is on far fewer state ballots than his campaign has been claiming. The Fox polling first, Trump has led the Fox Beacon Shaw poll every month since October. He was

still ahead last month by a point. Trump also led Biden in the five candidate version of the Fox poll by five points in March, by six points last November, and Biden is now also ahead in that crowded field by one point. There are three remarkable internal numbers doesn't sound like much, but Fox says thirty two percent of its respondents now believe the economy is in excellent or good shape, and that is the high water mark for

the entire Biden presidency. Fox also says voter confidence in Biden on the economy has swung wildly towards the president. They favor Trump by five points on the issue, but last month they favored Trump over Biden by thirteen points. And Fox's poll also suggests that seventy three percent of Black voters support Biden. Fox notes, I'll say that again.

Fox notes that at this point in twenty twenty, their poll said he had the support of seventy nine percent of black voters and wound up hugely overperforming in that number, getting ninety one percent of the actual votes. So Fox says Biden has a slim lead over Trump among registered voters, and within that a three point swing in one month, a seven point swing in three months. He has an eight point swing towards Biden on the economy, and he has the highest approval on the economy he has ever had.

So what is the headline sitting atop the Fox News website story about the Fox News poll now showing Biden ahead of Trump and surging. Quote Fox News poll Biden Trump matchup tilts toward one candidate. If their viewers and readers go to their homepage and they do not click through, they will assume Trump is surging in the polls, when

in fact his support is ebbing away. Yes, it sure looks like the scene in Citizen Kane where Orson Wells loses the election and they have to choose which banner headlined to print on his newspaper, and they go with fraud at polls. But contrary to the other meme, you do have to give them credit. Fox is corrupt as hell, but they are really good at it. And as a PostScript to this, that seven point three months swaying to

Biden represents perfect timing in one respect. Axios has now published this headline one Big Thing DEM's Fear Biden Loss over a piece insisting Biden is losing in every poll and has made no progress in any poll, and it

trashes everything about the Biden campaign. And it quotes yet another disaffected semi conservative ex Democrat you were not sure was still alive, named Howard Wolfson, saying if the election were today, Biden would lose it, saying that Biden learned the wrong lessons about twenty twenty and twenty twenty two, and is mistaken in hitting Trump on his convictions and

his dictatorship. Says Biden only won in twenty twenty because Democrats coalesced to stave off Bernie Sanders, and the Axio story includes the phrase quote many senior Democrats, including some of President Biden's aides, doubt his theory for victory, which relies on voter fears about January sixth, political violence, democracy, and Donald Trump's character. And yet the Axios piece never

actually says on what Biden should be running instead. And that's just the worst of the kind of peace that looks like it should have been narrated by a shivalant

Sean Hannity. It gets posted, it's their lead story, and hours later outcomes of Fox poll showing Biden ahead and surging and even surging on the economy a week before the first debate, and there's more signs of Trump panic trading interview access to Trump in exchange for letting the campaign vet your questions to Trump ask a question about, of all things, the twenty twenty election and you're gone. Yes.

According to the political editor of the NBC television affiliate in Saint Louis, Mark Maxwell of Channel five KSDK, this is not some local liberal. This is a standard, play it straight local TV politics specialist. And what he said in an interview with Heartland Signal and It's radio station WCPO that they released viraly yesterday is probably not as shocking as it should be, given the fact that Trump has corrupted everything he's come close to, except perhaps the

Visiting Nurse Association. It's not as shocking as it should be to hear this, but it's still pretty shocking.

But if you ask about the twenty twenty election, you're out. People that I'm hearing from are saying, like, well, that's bogus. We're not going to play ball like that. I mean, it's not how this works. You don't get to screen our questions. But for as much as a bluster about twenty twenty being stolen all this, there're very sentence to us.

sixty percent in one month. And when Trump is talking about the twenty twenty election, he is not talking about immigration, And again going back to the Fox pole, his trust lead over Biden on immigration dropped from thirteen points to nine points in one month. And the same Trump campaign bosses who Rick Wilson said day before yesterday are telling journalists off the record they can't control their candidate anymore.

Are convinced that his edge is on the economy and on immigration, and he's pissing it away talking about the wrong election. Here, of course, is one other large reason they don't want Trump talking about twenty twenty to local TV reporters or anybody else, because when he does, he

sounds even more crazy than usual. Ramin Setuda, the author of the new book on The Apprentice, with even more jaw droppers from his six different interviews with Trump, like how he confidently told me that Joan Rivers voted for him when he ran for president. Joan Rivers died on

September fourth, twenty fourteen. And if, like me, you were thinking maybe maybe she voted for him in a primary in twenty eleven, twenty twelve, didn't he start to run in two thousand and eleven, twenty twelve, Trump pulled out before the primary started. He also says that in one of his other interviews that his first interview with Trump was more than a month after Trump was thrown out of office. Quote, there was one day where Trump told me he needed to go upstairs to deal with Afghanistan.

Unless that is a metaphor for the call of nature. In March twenty twenty one or later, Trump either thought he was still president of the United States and had to go deal with Afghanistan, or he thought he could get away with lying to a magazine editor and author that he was still president and had to go deal with Afghanistan, each of which either of which is you know nuts. The more you hear we are now still less than forty eight hours after Trump called President Biden

Joe Bride. The more you hear, the more you listen to that story from Saint Louis that the Trump campaign wants to know the questions in advance, and the more you ask yourself, they only want to know the questions in advance. I mean, at Trump's rate of decline, they're going to start providing the reporters with the only questions they are allowed to ask him, or they may start

just handing out tapes of Trump answering questions asked by himself. Okay, so what about the debate and would Kennedy sue to get into the debate, Well, this much is clear. The Washington Post has concluded there is no way Bob Kennedy meets the qualifications to be on the stage at CNN had quarters in Atlanta one week from tonight. The deal is presumptive nominee of one of the two major parties.

You can be on stage, or you're in an outside party that's on enough state ballots to earn at least two hundred and seventy electoral votes, and you are getting fifteen percent or more in at least four respected national polls. Leaving aside the question whether or not there are four respected national polls, the Washington Post says, so far, if the RFK Junior campaign won all the states where he's actually on the ballot, he would get an electoral vote

count of one hundred. That would be Delaware, Michigan, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah, all of which say he has qualified. And California and Hawaii, where Kennedy is not yet on the ballot but is the presumptive nominee of smaller parties which have already begun the process of qualifying. Everywhere else, Robert F. Kennedy Junior says he is on the ballot. He is

definitely wrong, and he may be lying. The Post reports that in California, Florida, Hawaii, South Carolina, and Texas, Kennedy has done some of the work, submitted ballot petitions or been nominated by a party that previously qualified in that state, but that he has not been officially certified yet in any of those This is how precarious, it is for Kennedy in Florida. In Florida, he has been nominated for president by the Reform Party, the Ross Parro Reform Party.

Ross Parro the third party independent who helped sink the first George Bush in nineteen ninety two. Ross Perot died in twenty nineteen, and Ross Parrot's Reform Party died last year and it dropped off the ballot in Florida. They are trying to requalify and then in turn qualify Kennedy as the Reform Party candidate. Thing is said in Florida. So back to the immediate concern that the only way Kennedy will be at the debate is in spirit. Hell,

I'll be at the debate in spirit. We'll be doing another live countdown podcast right after the debate on YouTube, just like the one the night of the State of the Union. But will Trump be there? And if he's there, will he really be? You know? There? Even The New York Times has put out a piece suggesting Trump is lowering expectations for his own success and what he's told

his cult will be Biden's failure. And again, circling back to that Fox poll, they actually ask their registered voters who will win next Thursday, As if there has been anything resembling a consensus about who won a given presidential debate since Ronald Reagan. They are picking Trump, but only by fifty to forty five. Also asked how important several key issues are to voter's decisions on who to choose, and the vaguely phrased ones get basically ninety eight percent somewhat,

very or extremely important. Like the candidate's leadership skills Are they somewhat, very or extremely important? The candidate's age and mental soundness are they very blah blah blah blah blah. You might as well ask if you will choose between them based on which one of them is the old white dude. But the answers to the how important to your vote is the candidate's performance in the debates, that's

at least a little sharpened. I think it's fair to say nobody is rooting for their candidate to do an Ian McKellen into the orchestra pit. They expect their guy's performance to be at least intelligible. Thirty percent say that performance is extremely important to their vote, twenty five percent say very important, thirty one percent say somewhat important meeting that the eye don't give a crap about. The debate

number is only thirteen percent. That's not a lot, And it again underscores a question being seriously asked behind the scenes at the Trump campaign and of course in public loudly and seriously pitched by the Trump campaign about Biden. What happens if Trump calls Biden Obama during the debate. What if Biden doesn't do any of the dubious things

the right wing echo chamber has lied about. What if Trump starts talking about how in nineteen eighty eight he got voted for by Joan Rivers or Johnny Rivers or Doc Rivers Over the weekend in Detroit at the Black Church all the white people go to, Trump suggested he might deliberately lose the debate to make sure Joe Biden does not drop out of the campaign. Drop out, you know, to be replaced as the Democratic candidate by the former first Lady Joan Rivers. I'll be there. I'll be at

the debate at least on YouTube. Also of interest, here, I already quoted Citizen Kane once and I'm gonna do it again. Fox had to pay Dominion Voting Systems seven hundred and eighty seven and a half million dollars to settle its lawsuit over Fox's lies about Dominion voting systems. But now a Fox host is insisting all the videos Fox has doctored and clipped and decontextualized, they are all legit and not doctored and not clipped and not decontextualized.

And it's everybody else who is lying about Fox. The citizen Kane quote. If it was anybody else, I'd say that what's going to happen to you would be a lesson to you. Only you're gonna need more than one lesson, and you're gonna get more than one lesson. That's next. This is countdown.

American announcer or analyst in its announced booth. As the tributes continued to pour in four Mays, who died Tuesday afternoon at the age of ninety three, I did want to mention one snapshot of one small trivial moment in his career that illustrates something not being frequently mentioned in the descriptions of the extraordinary talents of Willie Mays, his

extraordinary intelligence, how much he knew about the game. He played On the twenty fifth of July in nineteen sixty seven at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, the Giants and the visiting New York Mets were scoreless. In the bottom of the third inning, Heyesiuss Alou and Bobby Ethridge of the Giants singled, and Willie Mays was up next, and he lined a sure two base hit, a double that scored Alu. But as Ethridge chugged into third base, Mays

stunned everybody in the ballpark. He deliberately stopped at first base. No injury, no stumble, no hesitation, no misreading of the play, no fear of the outfielder's arm. He just turned a

double into a single. And he explained later that he had done so deliberately, that he had turned a double into a single so that first base would not be open, unoccupied, and so the Mets would not then walk the next Giants hitter, the slugger Jim ray Hart, so that the Mets pitcher Jack Fisher could pitch instead to first baseman Jack Hyatt, who hit after Heart did. Mays said, he knew that Heart hit Fisher very well. Now this is pre internet in nineteen sixty seven. This is pre pitcher

versus hitter matchup data. This is almost pre scouting. Willie Mays just knew that Hart hit this pitcher, Jack Fisher, real well. And because first base was not open, the Mets did not intentionally walk Hart, and Heart promptly hit a three run homer off Jack Fisher, and the Giants

wound up winning five to four. If you look it up now, you will find out that lifetime this Jim ray Hart hit three thirty nine lifetime in sixty two plate appearances against Jack Fisher, the highest that Heart hit against any pitcher he faced more than forty five times in his career, and before we could look that up somewhere, Willie Mays knew that. So yes, the catch, the home runs, the stolen bases, the ability to judge what was going to happen next, Yes, all of it valid and to

be remembered forever about Willy Mays. But the fact that Willy Mays turned his double into a single so that Jim ray Hart would get to hit against the pitcher he hit really well, and Jim ray Hart hit the home run that guaranteed the Giant's victory. That's who Willy Mays really was. Eight line in Toronto, Ontario, in Canada. Infielder Justin Turner of the Blue Jays, generally speaking, one of the more thoughtful of baseball's players, has had one

of the worst ideas of all time. Appearing on the Foul Territory TV streaming show, mister Turner was asked what he would do if they let him be commissioner for a day, and he has suggested expanding baseball to thirty two teams, scrapping the current American and National League formats, and rearranging things so that the World Series every year would be an Eastern team versus a Western team. The television audience for the Baseball World Series peaked in nineteen

seventy eight. It was an average of forty four million viewers per game. Last year, the average was just under five million viewers per game, so the audience is about one tenth what it was in nineteen seventy eight, even though the population is one third larger than it was in nineteen seventy eight. Why did the World Series die? A thousand reasons, but one of them shows up in what happened to the ratings Starting about nineteen ninety six.

The Braves and the Yankees still got twenty five million viewers per game that year. Then the next season they began interleague play. Teams from the American League and the National League had never faced each other except in exhibitions or in the World Series since the American League opened for business in nineteen oh one. The point was the

teams and the leagues were distinct. The World Series was utterly novel, and it was that thing that all sports leagues try to fabricate today, an actual organic rivalry between everybody who followed the American League and everybody who followed the National League. Most American League fans hated the National League, or at least disrespected it, and vice versa. This was true because, well, I'll give you this example. When my grandfather died in nineteen eighty seven, he died hating the

American League. He would watch the World Series and the All Star Game and route against the American League team. He would mock the American League New York Yankees. He would insist they played in the weaker league than did his National League New York Mets. His hatred in nineteen eighty seven owed to something that had happened in July

of nineteen o three. He was a little boy then, when the star shortstop of his National League New York Giants, George Stacey Davis, jumped to the Chicago White Sox of the brand new American League that had been in nineteen oh two. In nineteen oh three, Davis jumped back to the New York Giants, but as part of the peace settlement between the warring leagues that happened right about then, Davis was ordered back to Chicago. Grandpa was still angry

about what they did to his Giants. Eighty four year years later. Hatreds like that were inherited, cultivated, cherished, maintained. My mother became a New York Yankees fan entirely because her father, my grandfather, was pissed off by that. You may try to create rivalries that resemble that in any sport, in any time. In fact, they form only from true hatred. It was Coke versus Pepsi. It was Ford versus Chevrolet.

It was forgive me, Republican versus Democrat. And then Baseball stopped keeping the leagues separate, stopped making the World Series the battle the only battle between the leagues, and it suddenly didn't mean that much. Interleague play began in nineteen ninety seven. That nineteen ninety six World Series audience had been twenty five million viewers a game. Within four years,

they were down to eighteen million per game. Since two thousand and four, when the Red Sox played and finally won, the average has been more than twenty million viewers a game only once. It was last as many as fourteen million six years ago. If you want to make the World Series live again, you have to make it interesting to fans whose personal teams are not playing in it. That used to be everybody, because you were a fan of a team, but also a fan of a league

that may not be salvageable. It may be too late. But what baseball should do is eliminate interleague play immediately and see if it can bring the league versus league rivalry back to life. And if that doesn't work, try something else stupid, like East versus West, or alphabetical order

versus numerical Who knows what? Because Grandpa wasn't just still angry about George Stacey Davis eighty four years later, he was also convinced that the National League played real baseball, but that the American League was not only weak and bad, but that it was fixed, fixed so that the Yankees would win the pennant nearly every year. You can't buy that kind of devotion from customers. The crazy has to

be organic. Sorry, justin Turner, Baseball has been steadily eliminating the crazy, and it has made its world series small. Thank you. Nancy Fowl still ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. It's hot here, I mean it's not that hot. It's hotter in a lot of other places here, and it's only going to get hotter. And there was a nice strong wind here yesterday and that is often the difference between life and death in this city above

ground anyway, not in the subways. In the subways where it's always hellish, and when they say the real feel is ninety two degrees, I flashback to the relatively recent past here when not all of our subway cars had air conditioning, and that in turn reminds me of the morning I got into one of those non air conditioned subway cars after having had a few years the day and the night before like forty beers coming up in things I promise not to tell. But first there are

still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens, who we celebrate as today's worst persons in the world. Lebrons worse. And this is going to piss off a lot of reporters. David Carr, the former media reporter and long form writer of the New York Times. This is kind of unfair because he's dead. He died in twenty fifteen.

He died in the Times newsroom. But I was surprised to have just discovered that Georgetown University held an event this week honoring Carr's memory. In which David Carr was saluted by a room full of former colleagues and other journalists. Let me state at the outset that I've never heard anybody who worked with him who said anything except that David Carr was the best mentor in the world, That he was a singular influence in their success, that he

was a constant inspiration and support. And I don't doubt any of that, not for a moment, nor that his recovery from addiction was inspirational and heroic. And he was such a crack addict at one point that he once left his newborn twins in a freezing car and they were underweight because his girlfriend was also an addict. He left them in a freezing car so he could go buy and use more drugs. That's how bad it was. And he overcame. That journalists can celebrate a good man,

an inspiration, a friend. That's not what I'm criticizing. But please do not do what they also did, which was to celebrate David Carr as a good journalist. I noticed this when he died in February twenty fifteen. The grief and the plaudits filled social media and touched my heart. There were dozens, probably hundreds, and they were all reporters

and colleagues. There was not one one word from anyone, as near as I could tell, not one word from anybody that David Carr had reported on or written about. Often that happens. People tell tough truths and are hated for telling the tough truths. It's happened to me every once in a while. But that's not what happened here. That happened here because David Carr constantly violated the most basic premises of journalism. He did a story on me

for The Times in twenty eleven. I was warned by people he had written about before, don't let him talk to you. He's already written the piece in his head. It was three thousand words. I guess it was okay. I remember not liking it when it came out. I read it again the other day and it was it was kind of foolish. They spent some money on a cartoon of me. The cartoon looked nice, the publicity was great when I needed it for a new show on

a new network. But the point is, when the article was written, NBC had just breached my contract and we had settled that with an agreement full of non disparagement clauses and non disclosure agreements. Blah blah blah. They couldn't trash me. I couldn't trash them. There was an arbitrator who oversaw this, who eventually find NBC like one hundred

thousand dollars for violating it for disparaging me anyway. And I had also left to start a rival news organization at Current TV and then as now, NBC likes to dirty people up when they leave NBC, and they were going to dirty me up. And I told David carr All this. Some of it I told him on the record, and some of it I couldn't tell him about then, and he even put it in the piece. He even inadvertently may have identified one of his anonymous sources for

this story. He wrote of MSNBC's president, who was notorious for calling up New York writers The Post and The Daily News and The Times and offering them off the record comments. He wrote quote Phil Griffin was president of MSNBC did not return calls or emails requesting a comment.

Employees of MSNBC were prevented from speaking on the record by non disclosure agreements signed when Olderman left and by the way, at that point, it was a violation of the non disclosure agreement to acknowledge there was a non

disclosure agreement. NBC violated it even telling him that. And note his use of that word on the record, because David Carr granted at least one NBC employee the right to say anything they wanted off the record about me, which actually is fine except in one set of circumstances, except if there's one problem. Whoever he talked to lied to him. Carr wrote that I isolated myself in my office to avoid people. No, I was isolating myself in

my office to write an hour's worth of scripts. He wrote that I might have felt slighted, underappreciated, and ignored MSNBC. That never happened. I felt a lot of things there, but never I've never felt a ignored. I often felt leave me alone. I never felt ignored. He wrote that I made demands for a renegotiated contract and an extension.

I never demanded a renegotiated contract nor an extension. When we tried to settle the breach of contract, I offered some terms under which I would stay and ask for their terms. I don't know if that was the same thing. But I never demanded a contract renegotiation. Quote. There were times when he threatened not to come to work. Not true. Not once. He wrote that there were substitute hosts on standby if I didn't show up, which happened once in

nineteen ninety eight. When the substitute host was on standby. His name was John Gibson, and he was there because I had kidney stones. Only time it happened, he didn't mention the kidney stones. He wrote that very senior people spent hours talking him. That would be me off a ledge and into the town car that would take him to the studio. Not once, not ever. Quote. When he wasn't threatening not to show up, he was threatening to quit.

Never did either of those things. Carr wrote that my criticisms of Fox News, and this was the part that really did piss me off, were mere enmity. That was the word he used, because I needed an enemy on the air. It is not true. They were in there because in twenty eleven Fox News was on its way to becoming what it is now, and people like him did not believe that was going to happen, and so they just assumed I was doing it to get ratings.

Now again, sometimes untrue things get into the newspapers, even into the New York Times. Even that many in one story is not enough to slam a guy nearly a decade after he died in the middle of their newsroom. Sources embellish, sources, spin, sources lie to you, and a reporter cannot always check everything for the truth or non

truth behind the fact that the guy said it. But the reason I have pointed out all of these stories in detail, all these stories gotten anonymously from somebody or many somebody's at NBC, is that even though the late David Carr spent a full day with me and did a separate long interview with me on another day, and sent countless follow up emails with further questions, he never

asked me about any of those stories. He never asked me about the supposed threats not to show up, the ones that didn't happen, and not the stuff about the substitute host who was on standby because you know, kidney Stones, none of it. He never asked me. New York Times reporter media reporter never asked me to confirm, contradict, deny,

or no comment, never asked me. And most journalists will tell you that if you don't ask the subject of your story about a negative tale about them, or a sourced piece of information or something anonymously given to you, or some gossip, the reason you are not asking is is you don't want a good paragraph or anecdote to be destroyed by a denial or by being disproved. David Carr never asked me about any of those juicy pieces

of gossip which weren't true, which he didn't check. And there's something else that seems to me that erases any reasons to hold him up as a role model for journalists. What are the classic switcherous reporters use? It was suggested to me once and I just couldn't do it, is to ask the subject of your story to do something, and then you leave out the fact that you asked. You make it look like the subject of the story

just did it. There are three references at least in this story to the media blitz that I was doing and my flogging my new show. There is not one reference to the fact that David Carr asked to interview me, not the other way around. To read the piece, you would think. He did not ask me endless follow up question by email, and the story that became many late night email conversations that were part of a blitz of press to advance my career. Over dinner at a game

at Yankee Stadium, I paid for his ticket. He and The Times never reimbursed me. By the way, He asked me to explain in as much detail as possible the technical process of reading the teleprompter on TV. So I did in intricate detail. Mostly I quoted Tom Snyder's intricate technical explanation of the teleprompter. He closed the piece with three plus paragraphs about that that are designed to make it look like I just launched into it, never says

he asked. It begins with he knows exactly what to do when the red light on the camera beckons him to begin talking, and the piece ends with he looked like that guy on television, the one who likes the camera. Yeah, no, no, I was just answering his question. I hadn't thought of David Carr or the story or this little journal ethics limbo dance that he did. Hadn't thought of him or

it for years. I certainly hadn't spent all the time since twenty fifteen thinking when's the right time to trash a dead guy from the Times who broke all their journalistic rules at my expense and considering that ticket literally at my expense. But a couple of months ago, one of my friends who Carr interviewed for the piece, brought up the interview. Something had reminded her about it, and she wanted to tell me. She was still furious at the questions he asked her the moment I left the room,

tell me the worst thing you can about him. It was thirteen years ago. She's madder now than I was then. And then came the social media stuff from the thing at Georgetown remembering his work. So again, the people who were there, Jake Tapper, Amanda Ripley, Eric Wemple, Brian Stelter, others, they get together to honor a departed friend, to honor a mentor, to salute the memory of a courageous inspiration. I honor them for doing that, but let's not pave

over reality here. Nobody he wrote about said anything about him when he died, Not anything nice, just not anything. As a journalist, the late David Carr was a corner cutter. You may want to be the David Carr kind of colleague, you do not want to be the David Carr kind of journalist. Okay, back to this decade and the living sort of the runner up worser, Trump again ettd. Every team Trump touches dies this. He wrote on Saturday night. Wow co. The Florida Panthers are a fantastic ice hockey team.

They're three and zero against the very good Edmonton Oilers from Canada. They're down one to nothing tonight, but it's still early. Hopefully they will put them away. Very impressive in sports. We call this bandwagoning and ETTD or ETTTD. The Florida Panthers were leading the Stanley Cup Finals in ice hockey. Who the hell calls it ice hockey? For those of you who've just arrived on Earth, it's ice hockey.

They were leading three games to none, and they were only trailing the Edmonton Oilers in Game four one to nothing, two goals, and they win the Stanley Cup. When Trump wrote and posted what I just read you, and then they went to hell on a Trump basket. Florida lost that fourth game Saturday night, not one to nothing, but a little bit worse than that. They gave up eight goals. They lost eight to one. Then Tuesday night they lost again again, missing the chance to clinch the Stanley Cup

five to three. They now lead Edmonton three games to two, and Edmonton's chance to tie the series up and set up Florida for the worst choke in hockey history is Friday Night. Because ettd every team Trump Tart touches dies, but our winner the worst. Greg Guttfeld of Fox Fox has been actively altering and editing video of the President to make him seem feeble or lost, when of course it is the boy they pimped for Trump, who called the president Joe Bride, who called his own doctor Ronnie

Jackson Ronnie Johnson. And that's just since Sunday, stay tuned, there'll be more. But that's what they do Fox News. They're whores. That's what I tried to tell David Carr in twenty eleven, and he wrote it up like it was just a marketing scheme for MSNBC or Current TV. Gutfeld wins this award today because he went a little further than just being a whore. He insisted on air that it's everybody else who's lying. It's not Fox quote. When we see something we've edit the media is not

because they're the engine behind their hoaxes. The Dems in the media are lucky we don't match their dishonesty. By the way, Fox News top rated cable TV network or cable news network always often the top rated cable TV network. They're the media. They're in fact the establishment media. Anyway, to resume Gutfeld's quote, when we see something, we've had it the media is not because they're the engine behind their hoaxes. The Dems in the media are lucky we

don't match their dishonesty. We could, we don't. We don't have to because basically we don't have to make up crap. Well, of course you don't have to make up crap, Gutfeld, it's provided to you by Rupert Murdoch. Greg, you don't make up crap. You just paid Dominion seven hundred and eighty seven million, five hundred thousand dollars to settle their suit against you for making up crap because Rupert Murdoch had too much money. Gutfeld two days, worst person in

the world. It's not a marketing point to the number one story on the countdown and my favorite topic me and how I learned not to drink. Anybody over the age of twenty seven and the number may actually be way lower than that can look back in genuine horror at a day on which they did something alarming or potentially physically injurious or fatal at a much younger age. For me, since the day I turned twenty three and

a half on July twenty seventh, nineteen eighty two. That day was July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty two, and I remember on my twenty third and half birthday being kind of surprised that I had made it through the previous three days. July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty two is one of those timeless, airless, stultifying summer sundays in New York that can arrive and sit on your head and do its best to smother you. It can get there anytime from the end of May until the middle of September.

I was invited to a party on Long Island, Scias it Maybe, where nine college friends were already having a great time drinking. My friend Peter rented a duplex there and shared it with some radio colleagues of his, including impossibly the former New York Rangers hockey player Pete Stemkowski. My friend Glenn Cornelius, who we would lose when he turned thirty nine and whose name is on the studios of our Cornell radio station's new facility along with my

dad's was there. He was in charge of grilling the burgers, and his wife was there. Then my friend Peter's parents, and a pal who used to be Pat Lions and a T shirt but is now Patrick J. Lyons of the Foreign desk of the New York Times thank you in a beard and a three piece suit that makes them look like Britain's ambassador to this country. In eighteen ninety seven, I mention all this because it is in

my diary for the next day. I don't actually remember it, and I don't actually remember it because it was so damn hot that I would not leave Peter's well air conditioned living room even to go grab a burger that Glenn Cornelius was fixing with expert precision. I just sat there. I just sat there and drank beer. Mind you, I didn't drink a lot in college or thereafter. I was

never once carted in my life. I think I got my first bar beer at the age of thirteen, But as of that day in nineteen eighty two, I don't believe I had ever had something to drink on three consecutive days, and I probably hadn't had anything to drink on two consecutive days more than four or five times in my life. But that day was so oppressive, so unpleasant, that I just kept drinking beer, and I did not stop.

From my arrival at two or three PM until my departure just before ten, I had a beer in my hand for seven eight hours without interruption. In those days, if I stuck to one kind of beverage, I would neither stay obviously drunk, nor would I get a hangover. I do not know how many beers I had that stultifying afternoon and evening. If I only got a new beer every fifteen minutes, that would still be twenty eight or thirty beers. Might have been less, might have been more.

My guess is it was more closer to forty. I recall having the presence of mind to ask my friends Peter, pat and Glenn not merely to take me to the train station so I could get back to my apartment in the city, but to stay with me on the platform to make sure I got on the train rather

than falling in front of it. I also remember them going so far as to make sure not just that I got on, but that I sat down, And I recall being overjoyed at the train's air conditioning, considering that at ten PM that night at the train station it

was still ninety degrees out. I'm pretty sure I splurged, and it was a splurge in those days for a cab back from Penn Station to my home on the other side of town, even though my salary is the national sports correspondent for CNN, was twenty six thousand dollars a year. And never once in all of this boozy time did I forget that not only was I do in at CNN at nine thirty the following morning, but that I was also due in at my part time job as the backup sportscaster on a New York radio

station WNAW at four the next morning. It was past eleven PM when I got into my apartment, whose air conditioner was poorly designed for the purpose and did little bit blow air around. Though still wobbly from drink twenty eight beers thirty forty. I immediately set two alarms for three am, four hours. Hence, I got a huge block of ice out of my freezer. I put it in the tub in front of my giant room fan. I

took a delightful shower. I did not dry off. I simply wrapped myself in my bed sheep, and I fell asleep. I woke up to the alarms three and a half hours later, slightly less drunk, but not much less drunk. I showered again, shaved and still drunk, put on a suit, shirt and tie, checked the temperature, which had cooled all the weight down to a balmy eighty eight, and still drunk. I walked in the middle of the night through the risky New York of nineteen eighty two to the radio

station fourteen blocks downtown. But of course it was morning, and morning, whether you are drunk or not, still drunk means breakfast. So I stopped at the best all night diner among several that were open along the route, and I got something to go, eggs, bacon and sausage, a little French toast, orange juice, coffee, and of course two pieces of pastry. And I carried it and I was still drunk into WAW Radio Metro Media Radio in New York.

I greeted, still drunk, the newscasters and producers. I grabbed the role of sports wire copies still drunk that had been churning out since about six pm the night before, and still drunk, found the stories I needed, and still drunk while I ate my breakfast that with today sustained me for three and a half weeks. I wrote my first sports cast to air at five thirty AM. I finished it. I looked at the clock. It was four

to thirty AM. So since the sports stories rarely changed on the morning shift, I still drunk wrote the six thirty sports cast as well, and then the seven to thirty, and still drunk, and it's still being only five ten am. I wrote the last of the sports cast, the eight to thirty. In point of fact, drunk, I was working

faster than I normally did. A perusal of world history suggests that the stories of the morning included the Yankees losing six to four of the Angels, with ex Yankee Reggie Jackson going one for three in front of fifty one thousand, five hundred and sixty one sweating fans at Yankee Stadium, that Dave Kingman made two unassisted double plays at first base for the Mets as they lost three to two, with the victorious Padres, placing the tragic second

basement Alan Wiggins on the disabled list because he had been arrested for cocaine possession, and that goalie Hubert Berkenheimer starred as the New York Cosmos won their fifth straight game eleven straight at home over the San Diego Soccers. An ill fated Olympic sort of thing called the National Sports Festival was well underway in Indianapolis. It was as boring then as it sounds now, no matter how drunk

your sportscasterre happened to be. At five point thirty am, I went on the air, still drunk and read my script flawlessly. By six point thirty I was beginning to sober up. At seven, I was a little headachey. At eight thirty, I was now one hundred percent not drunk. I said goodbye to all of my radio colleagues. I checked the temperature, now back up to ninety three degrees, and I went out and walked one block to the downtown subway train that would take me to the World

Trade Center. And the eight hour day that awaited me as a reporter out in the field with a camera crew. And oh, by the way, in nineteen eighty two, that particular subway line did not have air conditioning. My diary entry leaves out the story that I covered that day for CNN, but it does note that I made a tape of the drunken radio sports casts and listened that evening and enjoined them immensely because I had no memory

of researching, composing, writing, or reading them whatsoever. My diary also says I made dinner plans with a girl at WNW who I was dating, and I flirted with another woman at CNN who said that my new publicity photos had made me look like a puppy dog. She and I also made dinner plans. This is like a month and a half of life for me today, or even at the age of thirty three, let alone twenty three.

I remember, either that day or the next, possibly as I listened to the sportscasts I had done while on still drunken autopilot, that it was very impressive to me that I had managed to do all this without swearing on radio or fainting while standing up and holding a CNN microphone out into the ninety three degree heat, or getting unwell in front of either of those girls, that I could, in the parlance of those just post madmen years,

hold my alcohol. And then I also remember that, just as quickly I remembered in nineteen eighty two the names of some of my father's uncles and some of my mother's cousins who they had told me had all died around the age of forty forty five because bluntly they could also hold their alcohol. Where I got the phrase I did, I don't know, but I did think of it that night. It's not you are holding your alcohol.

It's called functional alcoholism. And functional alcoholism will allow you to drink forty beers one night and then work from four am to six pm the next. Then later it'll come back and you know, kill you. Since that episode in July nineteen eighty two, the number of times I have had double digit drinks on one day is one.

I was thirty seven. I was going to a party celebrating what everybody else was believing was me joining their Chicago radio station, but which I alone knew management had instead decided to close that radio station and fire all of them, and before I left my hotel, I took a bunch of the hotel business cards with me because I wasn't sure I'd still be able to speak later that night. I wanted a card so I could just

head it to the cab driver. And that is exactly what happened, and legitimately, I do not believe that in all the years since then, and that's nineteen ninety six, I have ever had anything to drink two days in a row, and that street probably goes back to nineteen eighty two as well, never have anything to drink two days in a row. And not to preach, but may I suggest that you shouldn't either. I've done all the

damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two written by Mitch Warren

Davis courtesy of ESPN. In our satirical and fifthy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer was my friend Kenny Maine, and everything else

was as usual, pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the one hundred and fortieth day until the twenty twenty fourth presidential election and the two hundred and sixty first day since convicted felon Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the July eleventh sentencing hearing, use the mental health system, use presidential immunity if it happens, to stop him from

doing it again while we still can. A reminder we will be live again on YouTube after the debate a week from tonight if Trump shows up. And also please send your link to this podcast to somebody who does not already listen. It is free after all. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the new warrants till then. I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio.

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