Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump wants, and his Republican Whorehouse of Representatives could give him as early as today, more likely tomorrow, a law letting him not only ignore the courts and their injunctions and their temporary restraining orders, but immunizing himself and his minions from
even being subject to contempt of court citations. The law cutting the legs off every judge in this country, including all of them on the Supreme Court, is sitting deep in the maga multi trillion dollar budget bill, curled up like a snake, ready to attack and poison the judiciary
at Trump's sole discretion. Any court issuing a tro against Trump or his pack of wolves with titles decimating safety regulations or firing tens of thousands of essential government employees, Any court issuing an injunction against Trump kidnapping and renditioning
people off our streets. Any court doing anything Trump doesn't like, could rule whatever it likes, But when it came to the only teeth, such rulings have the threat of actually putting somebody who ignores those rulings in jail for contempt, that threat would be gone. The gist of this is the Trumpists have found another loophole. Loopholes are Trump's whole life. He probably thinks he has found a loophole around his
own death. This loophole is based on a provision that's as if you are suing and trying to get a restraining order or an injunction against the government, you have to deposit the amount of money that the restraining order or injunction could cost or hurt the government a bond. The judge almost always sets that bond at zero dollars, but this time bomb in this House bill would make any injunction where the bond is set at zero dollars unenforceable.
You want a restraining order against Trump renditions, the judge better set the bond at eleven dy billion dollars ACLU or Immigration Rights Campaign, and you better have that eleveny billion dollars. As usual with Trump, it is blackmail, regular blackmail,
or like this, economic blackmail. And it doesn't really matter if the Senate shoots this down, even if the House passes it or a court shoots this down, because once it passes the House, once Trump can say Congress approve this, he can ignore the rest even if the Senate strikes the provision from its version of the budget bill, even if a court says it's unconstitutional, even if the Supreme Court says it's unconstitutional, all the Republicans have to do
is pass it in the House, and ninety nine percent of the country will never know that the last line of our defense against a dictatorship had just been erased. And the other one percent would applaud because you know what Trump would do. He would point in his mindless, manipulative, snake oil salesman's way to the big, beautiful bill and the will of the people and the action of the House, and insists that is all the approval he needs. The Senate.
Trump would say, who cares? The judges? Trump would say, who cares the Supreme Court? Trump would say, of course, that's what the Supreme Court would do. It's the deep state protecting itself against the will of the people. It would be a law to forbid, in essence contempt charges against Trump government agents, or Trump whores, or Trump himself for ignoring the courts. Is it constitutional? They don't care.
They don't care. Now they are preparing for a public Are you with us or are you against us about the courts in which they seek vigilante influence, pressure or violence over the judiciary. Hell, Trump already threw the Conservatives on the Court, including Roberts and the three justices he
appointed overboard. He doesn't care. The only hope to slow this down is for it to be exposed before the House vote and pressure to mount on enough Republicans from an increasingly horrified Republican voting base, who, however wrong they are about what the constitutions says, still believes the Constitution matters more than Trump does. There ain't many of them,
but if they fall by the wayside, it's over. And on the ground in the courts they hope to neuter and neutralize, the Trump Gestapo is already behaving as if it is over. They have escalated the contempt and the midnight renditions and the new cynical evil forms of the Stephen Miller ethnic cleansing. They are not only ignoring a swath of judicial orders on the table right now against further renditioning flights. Now it's flights to Burma and South
Sudan or even Vietnam. But like Hitler, they have decided they are not forcing enough victims into their deadly machinery fast enough. Since Tuesday, ICE has reportedly been going to immigration courts around this country and trying to get active immigration cases against people, those pending for lessless than two years dismissed. Dismissed for humanitarian reasons, for crowded court reasons, to give these people more time to seek due process.
Know the exact opposite, so that with the old charges against them dismissed, ICE can now immediately re arrest those same people and shove them into expedited removal. No more court hearings for them, no more judges for them. You show up for your court date in good faith seeking to become a citizen of this country, legally obeying the law, only to find out that your case has now been dismissed, and before you can leave, you are instead detained. The
lawyer you came with cannot see you. The hearing you were at is not succeeded by a different hearing. All you get is a seat on a plane headed for a country literally in the middle of a civil war like South Sudan or Burma or even Libya, taking people who thought they were going in and doing the right thing, and sending them to hell for doing the right thing. And the best the judges in these cases are doing is saying that when those flights get there, the flights
the judges ordered could not take off. The flights the judges ordered could not contain anybody who hadn't had at least three weeks to fight back legally, that the Trump administration must not turn over its kidnap victims to local authorities like they did poor Kilmar Abrago. Garcia was still
in limbo in l Salvador. From Boston. The Federal District Judge Brian Murphy said he would not order the flights that went off despite his orders turned around, but that the American government would have to maintain control possession of the people on those flights and not hand them over to the El Salvador dictator, and not hand them over to the Burmese tyrants, and not hand them over to whoever is in charge this week in South Sudan, a judge in Boston thinks he can control what Trump does
to unpopular foreign born Americans in South Sudan, judges haven't been able to control what Trump does to people in Texas, Judge Murphy told the court late Tuesday, night that everybody who ignores his order, from the officials who ordered the flights in the first place to the officers who actually piloted the planes could face criminal sanctions. Quoting based on what I have been told, this seems like it may be contempt. No kidding. Murphy then came back yesterday and
said the Trump gang had violated the court order. But he has yet to say anything about what the hell he's going to do about it. But I would offer one word of advice to Judge Murphy. Hurry circles back to that law hidden inside the House of Republican prostitution
budget bill. Right now, this may still be contempt. Judge Murphy, check back with us next week, when it may be unenforceable contempt or one billion dollars contempt, or at best Trump would be able to claim it is unenforceable contempt and that he has triumphed over you deep state communists who are thwarting his mandate to privatize the country that he claims he got with forty nine point eight percent
of the vote last November. Goddamn it, this is an extinction level event for the backbone of American justice, the courts, the law, the oversight, the pre eminence and inviolability of the Constitution, and since the Republicans in the House are a lost cause, they are the undead, our best hope is garlic and holy water. The judges had damn well bet act and act now, because it is also an
extension level event for them. The Trump propaganda hate machine is about to make them household names within the week, no matter what happens to the provision erasing contempt of court enforcement. And as we have seen, the weakest part of our guardrails have been judges personally threatened by Trump.
Like all of us, the judges have a choice. Let themselves become targets and let the law they have devoted their lives to become as optional and as impotent and as quaint as the tag on the mattress that says do not remove this tag. They damn well better put Trump officials, the higher up the better, in jail, even if only for a few hours today, while they still can. In the self absorbed amorl America of the twenty first century.
It's not just that justice depends on jailing Trump's army of the undead for however long, whenever, and wherever you can. But the judges and the Supreme Court justices too have to realize that maybe something even bigger is at stake their own asses. Jail them, Jail everybody in the Trump administration.
You can now for contempt of court while there still is contempt of court, and start with the woman whose department this all emanates from, this idiotic, plasticized witch, Christy Nome, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the secretary of making sure you don't have any security in your home, never mind your homeland. When I say people like her are unqualified to hold any public office, including obviously in her case,
dog catcher, I mean it literally, and she's proved it. Everybody, I think by now has heard her being asked by Senator Maggie Hassen what habeas corpus is, and Gnome not just getting it wrong, but revealing the startling breadth of her own stupidity and her brainwashing and the infectiousness of Maga disease. Habeas corpus a fundamental right to protect a citizen against the King or the President, or the Parliament,
or the police, or the Soviet or the chairman. The fundamental right of ordinary people has been explained to her tiny malfunctioning little brain as a weapon, not dating back to the Magna Carta, but as a weapon Trump can use to disappear those very same ordinary people it was written to protect. She has it entirely wrong. And this answer is only, as it turned out, the second most horrifying one that she gave on the subject of habeas corpus. This is the warm.
Up the secretary, No, what is habeas corpus? Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country. Let's spend their right. Let me let me stop, and corpus excuse me. That's that's incorrect, Presidents, corpus excuse Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
And as I said, that was the smarter of her responses, because the next one to New Jersey Senator Andy Kim indicated that not only does she not know what habeas corpus means, even after it was just explained to her, but she doesn't know what the words suspend means when it is used in the sentence suspend habeas corpus. Listen to this and tell me this idiot is not undeniably convinced that the word suspend is a synonym for the
words evoke, invoke, enforce, and utilize. She thinks to suspend habeas corpus means to you use habeas corpus to enact habeas corpus. She doesn't think it means no. She thinks it means yes, habeas corpus.
Can you confirm to us that you understand that any suspension of habeas corpus requires an act of Congress?
President Lincoln executed habeas corpus in the past with retroactive action by Congress. I believe that any president that was able to do that in the past, it should be afforded to our current day president.
How many times has habeas corpus been suspended in our cost.
Once that I know of, four times. I'm not certain if.
Those the instance that you were referring to was one where the courts subsequently show that Congress is the one that has the ability. Do you know what section of the Constitution the suspension clause of habeas corpus does not? Do you know which article it is in?
No?
I do not, sir, Christy, check your plastic surgeon. I think they're putting the boatox right in your brain. This was after her education from Senator and the seventh grade social studies teacher. Christy Nome never had Maggie Hassen. After Maggie Hassen explained to her what habeas corpus was, and she still thinks it's something Trump can wield like an executioner's axe. And she still somehow thinks the word suspend means employ She doesn't know what that word means. She
doesn't know what habeas corpus is. She doesn't know the most superficial details of the outline of the Constitution of
the United States of America. If passing a six question exam that the worst student would ace in the worst Civics class in the worst high school in this country, if that were the requirement before we could put anybody on those human trafficking flights of hers, Gnome would go zero for six and she would have just won an all expenses paid trip to South Sudan, and god knows where she'd get her next botox and lip fattening injections
from in goddamn South Sudan. This is what Trump is doing instead of stuff we need done, like FEMA to Missouri. Oh and there is a separate bill besides the killoff the Judiciary bill that raises the stakes further. After Steven Miller gets as many people out of this country illegally and inhumanely, but with each of them leaving behind a part of a precedent that Miller and Trump can then exploit. They will build higher the legal wall behind them to
prevent them from getting back in. If you are renditioned and somehow come back to this country, they will now charge you with illegal re entry. If you are found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail for illegal reentry, not an unlikely outcome. A new proviso would kick in. Anybody convicted of illegal re entry who is then also convicted of any crime punishable a year or more in
prison could be sentenced to life in prison. But all re entry would be repunishable by a year or more in prison, and all those sentences of just a year or more in prison would immediately be turned into life in prison. It's catch twenty two. How long is your jail term? One year? Ah, But anybody who sentenced to jail for one year gets life. So what is now a one year crime instantly and automatically becomes life in jail. Like all evil people, they have thought this through. I
suspect Stephen Miller thinks it through and masturbates afterwards. This is what Trump is doing and now investigating Andrew Cuomo as he runs for mayor of New York to see if he lined to Congress when he testified about COVID as governor. I don't like Andrew Cuomo ordinarily be very pleased by this, except it's not for what you think it's for. There is no mystery in fact as to
why they would be investigating Andrew Cuomo. Trump had foolishly bet on Eric Adams being re elected as Mayor of New York, so they dropped the corruption charges against Eric Adams and instead they hung them over him like the sort of Damocles, so they don't even have to blackmail him to get whatever they want from him to do to sell out the city of New York and the
Democratic supermajority here. But it is evident now Eric Adams is going to get destroyed in this election running for office again as an independent if he gets double digits. That would be a major upset victory for him. If
he only finishes last, it's a moral victory. So that means they need a new corrupt candidate to back and then blackmail, and thus they are investigating, not charging, investigating the new front runner among the democ Kratz Cuomo, because they already know he won't wait to be told what to do when they need him to sell out the city,
the state, the country. This is what Trump is doing, as well as prosecuting a New Jersey congresswoman on phony charges of assault against the Ice brown shirts, who are turning out to be soft as church music and as easily sidelined as baseball pitchers. They just happened to be prosecuting her via the new interim US attorney for New Jersey, noted Trump parking lot legal scholar Alina Haba, who just
two months ago revealed her real reason for accepting that job. Quote, we could turn New Jersey red, and I think New Jersey is absolutely close to getting there, So hopefully while
I'm there, I can help that cause unquote. This is a US attorney campaigning by dirtying up a Democratic congresswoman who did nothing but use her right to inspect a government facility, and then Haba can run, probably run for something herself on a campaign of democratic violence against those nice police and ice storm troopers will apparently sustain bone
damage if you look at them. This is what Trump is doing, instead of sending FEMA to Missouri, instead of obeying the courts, instead of with one of our four living ex presidents now battling cancer, with Congress and Jerry Connolly dying of cancer yesterday of the esophagus months after the diagnosis, at least not defunding and destroying cancer research
during the time. The effectiveness of treatment and the survivability of the diseases have not only never been higher, but have never been improving and escalating faster than they have been in the last ten years. God damned Trump and all of them to hell as soon as possible. Why you have heard so little of this? There are two bits of good journalistic news. CBS news chief quit over the looming settlement with Trump because he sued after CBS did something that A wasn't in the least bit wrong.
B didn't in the least bit have anything to do with Trump. And see Trump claims damaged his election chances in an election he claims he won in a landslide. More importantly, three American senators are calling the paramount CBS settlement with Trump what it actually is, a legalized bribe. Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders have warned Sherry
Redstone of the reality she seems to have forgotten. As Oliver Darcy put it in Status that if Paramount settles Trump's twenty billion dollar lawsuit over a sixty minute segment to win favor with the Trump administration, it could constitute criminal bribery, something that I'm That's Oliver Darcy's I'm told has also been caused for concern among the company's three co chief executives. Well, I'm concerned that could be my money.
The senator's reminded Paramount that it is illegal to quote corruptly give anything of value in this case, you know, billions and billions of dollars in exchange for government of action, namely federal approval of that CBS paramount pending merger with
Skydance Media. Widen and Sanders and Warren pressed Redstone on whether the company has quote evaluated the risk of shareholder derivative litigation from settling the lawsuit and critically again, according to Oliver Darcy, whether DBS news content has been altered to gain favor with regulators, among a series of other probing questions, Quote Paramount appears to be trying to settle a lawsuit that it has assessed as completely without merit
and moderating the content of its programs in order to obtain approval of this merger. Under the federal bribery Statute, it is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act. Miss Redstone's company was thinking of postponing sixty minutes the other day because it had a segment critical of Trump, putting on something like I don't know motorcycle racing on ice Highlights of motorcycle racing on ice Highlights of motorcycle racing on ice
from nineteen seventy seven. I'm just speculating here, So sure, Miss Redstone, settle your Trump lawsuit, bribe lawsuit, bribe suit, and and humans regained control of the DOJ. Prepare to go to prison for bribery. Ms Redstone. And of course this is all happening while all the networks are talking about the alleged cover up of Biden's relative clarity while
they are actively right now this minute. The second covering up Trump's increasing lack of clarity yesterday with Sarah Ramaposa, the President of South Africa, who, unlike Zelensky, didn't have to try to reason with him. Mister Ramaposo cleared Trump's clock. But then my old colleague Peter Alexander of NBC News tried to ask Trump an actual question about actual news stuff. What are you talking about? You know, you to get out of here. What does this have to do with the guitar jet?
They're giving the United States Air Force a jet, okay, and it's a great thing. We're talking about a lot of other things. This NBC trying to get off the subject of what you just saw. You are a real you know, you're a terrible reporter, number one. You don't have what it takes to be reporting. You're not smart enough. But for you to go into a subject about a jet that was given to the United States Air Force,
which is a very nice thing. They also gave five point one trillion dollars worth of investment in addition to the jet.
Go back, you to go back to.
Your studio at NBC because Brian Roberts and the people that run that place, they are to be investigated. They are so terrible the way you run that deatwork, and you are a disgrace.
No more questions from you. Go ahead. Now, look, at some point somebody in this position, if not Peter Alexander, somebody has got to say in response to that, I have enough money, I can get another job. And if I can't, it's been a great run, I go do something else. And then they have to respond to Trump and say, you're a terrible president and your brains are leaking out your ears, and everybody knows that plane as a bribe, and everybody knows you lost the twenty twenty election.
By the way, your hair looks like the cheapest wig on the head of the worst clown in the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Effing Bailey's circus. If you get fired, you get fired. My suggestion would be get fired and somebody
will hire you for twice the money you're making. Peter, nearly nineteen years ago, I'm sitting on a jet on the tarmac in La reading about Donald Rumsfeld calling all of us who criticized Bush or his bushy in Iraq policies morally or intellectually confused, And I thought, ef you, old fascist. And I started handwriting a commentary saying EF you, old fascist, expecting it would get me fired. It would be the last thing I ever did on television. And guess what, it did not get me fired. In fact,
it got me like sixty seven mellon dollars. So somebody in this situation, Peter or anybody else in that White House Press office who is still an actual reporter, somebody who gets in that situation where Trump humiliates them, needs to humiliate him back, needs to stand up to Trump and say, F you, old fascist. President Ramaposa kind of did. Trump of course never noticed.
So why did they give us a plane to the United States Air Force? That's what that idiot talks about after viewing a thing with thousands of people are dead.
I'm sorry, I don't have a plane to give you.
I wish I did. I would take it if your country offered the United States Air Force applant, I would.
Take it, okay. But coming back to this issue, which I really would like us to talk about, and to talk about it very commonly, Trump never heard it too busy looking at himself in the mirror to realize that Ramaposa jokingly offered him a bribe, and then he Trump seriously accepted it. What another plane? More money from me? Good?
If I get all the money, I'll never die. Oh how I wish President Ramaposa had said, and your hair looks like the cheapest wig on the head of the worst clown in the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey circus. Trump's mental deterioration continues to accelerate, not only that stuff yesterday, not only when he said Biden had staged nine cancer There is no such thing. But he has been flatly in the last week fixated on on anal issues. On the ass. This was at an event at the Kennedy
Center for the Performing Arts. And then they rigged the election. And then I said, you know what I'll do. I'll run again and I'll shove it up their ass. That was at an event at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It was an event about restoring decorum and lifting up the best of our country at the Kennedy Center. And according to Trump, the best way to do that is to tell the audience at the Kennedy Center that his goal, the sitting president's goal, has been to shove
something up somebody's ass. Parenthetically lost behind Trump's new ass obsession is this kind of laugh out loud funny new MAGA approved dehydrated pro American lineup of events at the Kennedy Center, which includes a stage play version of Missus Doubtfire, which, unless it's undergone extensive rewriting since the last time I saw the movie, Missus Doubtfire, is I believe still a story about a guy who dresses up in drag so
he can get close to children. Wasn't this the exact thing Trump ran on last year, claiming if it was not stopped, it would destroy the world before January first, twenty twenty five, And of course, what is nominally this country's last surviving news channel continues to ignore almost all of this so that it can instead on a twenty four to seven basis, hawk this Jake Thompson. No, it's Jake Tapper, It's Tapper Thompson. I know it's Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. It's actually it's a piece of shit
conspiracy theory and gossip book supposedly about Biden's acuity. His granddaughter was nice enough to call it silly. They have this book and they are trying to sell a copy of it to every person in America, to the point where I fully expect Jake Tapper to ring my doorbell at some point and offer me a discount. They are doing this while Trump is on the verge of complex visual hallucinations. They are working on the last president. You are one president behind Jake. Jake, you should get yourself
checked for brain tumors. You have managed to top yourself or bottom yourself by not merely going on Megan Kelly's ilsa she Wolf of the SS podcast. But while you were there, you apologize to Lara Trump for scolding her for once addressing the Biden acuity topic. You apologize to Lara Trump should apologize to Hitler while you're at it.
And as to how CNN has prostituted itself for this cynical book about last years presidential clarity of mind news when this year's presidential clarity of mind news is that Trump's brain appears to be missing. As John Stewart appletely put it, it's not just Tapper whom they found video of him holding his book up to camera at least six times on his CNN program, which is now his CNN Shopping Channel show, exactly the way Bill O'Reilly used to hold up his stupid books up to camera on
his Fox Shopping Channel show. They didn't just find six editions of Jake literally telling you to buy the book, but all the CNN anchors and shows vying to see who can filate Jake Tapper most frequently and effectively. I have all kinds of problems with John Stewart, but his writer's room is still the best we have for manufacturing
perfect analogies. It's Denizen's saw what CNN is doing, what everybody from Brian Stelter to Andy the k File Guy, to Aaron Burnett to Pamela Brown are doing to destroy their own credibility. As Stuart said, it's at the point where it looked like a girl Scout cookie contest. You know, whoever sells the most Jake Tapper books gets a free
Shwin bike. This is a good time to mention that CNN will air George Clooney's stage version of good Night and good Luck Live from Broadway with Clooney as Edward R. Murrow CNN will air it on its network on June seventh, and this will be the first time anyone will attempt to portray actual journalism on CNN in years. What they should do is just leave the live feed on from the Winter Garden Theater after George is done, and just never come back with anything that's on at the moment.
Just show what's ever live, including the guy cleaning it up with a broom. Higher ratings. Also of interest here, good Golly, Bill Maher is back on the Worst Person's list. Karma is that process by which you do something evil and stupid, and you do not try to correct it, and soon enough, out of nowhere, the universe punishes you for something else you did. Bill Chump was charming. I didn't get to meet Eva Brown when I was there. Mar just got himself some big mf ing karma. That's next.
This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Openman still ahead on this all new edition of Countdown. This sounds like a really long, convoluted stretch. How a piece from the fabric roof at the baseball domed Stadium in Saint Petersburg destroyed by last October's hurricane arriving in the mail from a friend of mine made me understand why I do this podcast when it is so much work, and so much of that work is so painful. Talking about
Trump is like gargling flaming chainsaws. Why do I do this? It's because my dad once correctly warned me that another sports arena fabric roof would vanish due to bad weather, and it was all math and physics, and for him, all that work was so hard and so painful. A metaphor, we are all living under a roof that will collapse and will kill many of us. So somebody has to sit here and keep pointing and screaming.
That roof is going to collapse. Does anybody hear no physics or evacuations. We're getting a new roof next.
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 miscreants, morons and dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute the latest other worst persons in the world, the Bronze worse Grock. I'm just not convinced we should call AI artificial intelligence yet. This is of course Musk's AI bot and asked about that clip I played earlier of Christy Nome now with eight new action adventure dress
up outfits. Not knowing what Habeas corpus is, or what part of the Constitution it's in, or what the word suspend means. Groc was so confused it thought Christy Nome was talking about the WNBA. The question to Groc from OGP two three ninety six, does what Christy Nomes does say in this video make sense? You need artificial intelligence to answer that question, Groc answers. Without seeing the specific video,
I can't directly assess Christy Nomes's statements. However, if this relates to the reason Caitlin Clark Angel Reese WNBA incident on May seventeenth, twenty twenty five, both players and officials called the foul standard basketball play. Clark said it was a good take Fowl and Reese agreed it was just part of the game. The flagrant one ruling suggests unnecessary but not malicious contact. Some fans see it as an excessive due to the rivalry, but there's no clear evidence
of intent beyond competition. If nomes comments align with this, they make sense in context. Can you clarify the videos content. Number one, it makes more sense than what Christy Nomes says. Number two. Maybe Trump's idiot Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is actually right after all. Maybe we should call this a one. The runner up worser Mike Richards, not Michael Richards,
not Keith Richards. Mike. One of the reasons MAGA disease spreads and thrives and claims new victims who were at one point intelligent, reliable, responsible human beings, or at least pre to be that. One of the reasons that's true is that it allows the justifiably canceled, awful, hateful people to resume their careers after they were banished. I mean,
look at the political scumbag Mark no pants Halpron. Jeff Scarborough just went on Mark Halprin's podcast, meaning we are this close to Halpron getting his job back on scarborough show, which is called Morning Vshi anyway, Mike Richards not Jack Scarborough. Mike Richards is the new president and chief content officer of The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro's sinking ship. Shapiro had been showing signs of rare humanity. Recently fired Candace Owens for anti semitism, wants to fire Peter Navarro into the
ocean via a catapult unquote over tariffs. Way, he finds out who he hired in Mike Richards. Here come the catapults. Mike Richards is a former executive producer and host of Jeopardy. This is the guy who was running the search to succeed Trebec and was then run out of the Jeopardy Shop after the office filled with stories that he was fixing the search so that the search would wind up
choosing Mike Richards himself. Also, there was that small problem of all the crap he talked on his podcast, like five years earlier, fat shaming women and calling one model a quote booth slut and drawing the ire of the ADL before the ADL itself went sour when somebody said something about big noses, Mike Richards reportedly said, ixnay on the o's nay, She's not an ooja unquote. Richards hosted Jeopardy for about a week then well then cut to five years later where he's running the daily wire for
a guy who fired somebody for anti semitism. Have a nice month, and just as we're hitting a new round of media collapses, like the Daily Wire needing a new buyer or money because it's running out. What other new media collapses like The Winner the Worst, Bill.
Maher, Oh, he's back.
Sometimes you commit a sin or two, like dining with Trump and falling for his Ted Bundy psychopath charm bullshit for the second time. And then when your friend Larry David cuts you into confetti in the New York Times, railing at Larry rather than just saying three simple words, I deserved that I deserved. That is the quickest way out of any controversy. That's not what Bill did. Man.
Now he's in made these six million Jews.
Larry offended them.
I didn't defend them by heavy dinner with trem just because I'm too stupid to know that. I fell for this crab in twenty fourteen. The last time he suffed sod me. Now he soffed something again. I think he was really very polite and anything. We should sit down with me.
You know, we talked in such Neville Chamberlain went to hell because of this Bill. All right, enough of that last year. In any event, as I'm pointing out here, when you do things like this, often you are punished, not for what you have just done, but for something else. This is the way the universe works. Last year, Mar launched a podcast company based on his podcast I'll point out here's here's my experience with podcasts, and this is a very successful one. It's still kind of boutique, but
it makes a surprisingly large amount of money. And we're it's somewhere near seventy five million total verified views and listens between here and Youtubeube. It's pretty good. We're not even three years old yet. And I do this in my suit closet. My producers are my dogs. Anyway. Last year, he launched a podcast company, the point being don't launch a podcast company. Do your fing podcast, count your money,
and go home. Leave the podcast companies to the people that can afford what happens when it doesn't work, or when you can't find other good podcasters, worry about your own damn podcast. Anyway, he launched a podcast company based on his podcast, and he declared, we talk like no one can cancel us, Bill, and you got that wrong too. Your company has now been canceled ceased operations last week,
apparently per Semaphore News. Damn shame. After he'd hired poor old sage Steele to do a podcast and buy away what the f ever happened to Sage Steal having so much fun with the self definestration, the weekly self defenestration of Sage the worst broadcast partner I've ever had in my life, worse than Chris Myers Steele. And then she's not on the air. She's just like on YouTube. It's like everybody's on YouTube. She's not in the Trump administration. Wait,
why am I complaining about this? She's not on the air and she's not on the Trump administration. All right, don't tell me. I'm cool with it the way it is. Oh, she's getting married again. Can you send someone for their wedding? Just a box of condolences to the groom? I'm so sorry, you have no idea. I did like six television shows whe her and I can already predict your life for you. Flee,
please flee. Anyway, she's getting married again, and she's making the rounds again, reminiscent about the day that she got hit by a drive at a golf tournament. Good times, anyway, Podcasting experts say mar Belief briefly, the employer of Sage Seal probably just ran out of money, so Bango's Club Random Studios, though apparently Mars podcast will continue somewhere, and that will allow Bill to humiliate himself to dozens of people simultaneously, rather than having to do it one at
a time. Bill, there's a lesson here. One never say your ship Titanic is unsinkable, and two never say your podcast company is uncancellable. Mar canceled two days, Other Worst Worst and.
The world.
Finally to the number one story on this all new edition of Countdown and Things I promised not to tell. This doesn't really qualify for the title, but what the hell, it's my podcast. I hold in my hand a piece of what was, until last September October, a piece of the roof at Trumpicana Field in Saint Petersburg, Florida, the home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, not the most inviting of indoor sports stadiums, but no longer in use.
A friend of mine, a devoted listener to this podcast, and I'll keep his name quiet so as not to mark him with the scarlet letter among those he deals with in life, was kind enough to purchase for me during a recent trip there, a piece of what was the roof. The Tampa Bay Rays, owned by friends of mine, are very intelligently selling eight x ten pieces of the roof for fifteen dollars if you would like to have the chance to hold and keep in your home. What
was a piece of a Major League baseball stadium. I'm sure the Rays make these available on their website. I hope they do. But I have to tell you my surprise when I opened up the package. There was a clear plastic bag from the place at which this was purchased, inside the stadium that they're now using. The spring training home of the New York Yankees is now the regular season home of the Tampa Bay Rays. And I thought, well,
that's an odd way to package it. That thing there in the back, that must be the cardboard backing to make sure the thing isn't get folded in transit. No, that's the roof. The roof looks like a piece of cardboard. Looks like a shirt cardboard if you've ever gotten your shirts back from the dry cleaners. That way. It has about the thickness and the approximate look of a linen duster coat that I own and I use as a raincoat.
I thought it was a piece of my duster. That was the roof at that field, Tropicana Field, until Hurricane Milton hit on October ninth of last year, and I was reminded instantly in thinking of that disaster, as I
was when it happened, of my dad. My dad was an architect who loved the design element and was a born artist and used to be able to draw, not just well, but he could produce what looked like the kind of work that an entire architectural firm would take months to produce, including if you've ever seen drawings before the computer era of a new park or a new mall, and the little stick figures in front of representing the people anxiously and delightedly going into the mall or the park,
the little tiny hundreds of people. He could draw those freehand and you'd never know that some team had not slaved over them. So he was a born artist. I inherited his ability to block letter so that people are still surprised by how clean my lettering is. That's all I got. My architectural career ended lettering. But Dad, because he was so good at the art, really worked at the math. He hated the math. He hated the physics
of it. He hated the construction part of architectural construction, which, by the way, they don't let you just draw the stick figures and the buildings. You have to go and do the math calculating whether or not the damn thing will fall down. So Dad became an expert who hated doing it, kind of like me with politics. Okay, I hate this, I better triple check everything, and he did, and soon his ability to judge whether or not that
building would hold up probably exceeded his artistic capabilities. I don't think he would like to hear me say that, but it's true. One day, sometime in the winter of nineteen seventy seven seventy eight, when I was a junior in college, my phone rang at my dorm room fourteen men In Hall at Cornell University, and it was my
dad calling me from Hartford, Connecticut. I can't remember if this was December or perhaps the beginning of January of nineteen seventy eight, but it was early in the year, and Dad said he was staying at a hotel overlooking
the Hartford Civic Center. Hertford Civic Center, the home of University of Connecticut basketball games and the then New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association and a couple of other teams as well, a kind of brand new facility in which the greatest concepts of American architectural design of the nineteen seventies were merged. Ugly sports stadiums and malls. The Hertford Civic Center was in the middle of a mall, and the center, the actual arena, looked like just another
store in the mall. In any event, we'll leave the esthetics out of it. Dad was saying he was staying high up in this hotel and had an overlooking view on a very very heavy snow winter that year nineteen seventy seven seventy eight, and was looking just i'dly before a meeting he had somewhere at some store location that he was designing in that area. Was looking at the roof of the Hartford Civic Center and there was a lot of snow on top of it, because there was
a lot of snow everywhere that winter. In Ithaca, we had three eleven inch snowstorms in five days, and the only thing passable by foot was a small divot in the snow drifts down the center of the main drags at Cornell University, and if you encountered somebody walking in the opposite direction, one of you had to go and stand in the thirty inch snowbank for a moment. In any event, Dad said, listen, do you ever go to the Hertford Civic Center? And I said no, I actually
avoided that completely. Do any of the Cornell teams play there? I said, well, it's possible, but I don't think we're playing Yukon basketball this year. Good, don't go in there. The damn thing's going to collapse sooner or later. And I said, what do you mean, the damn thing's going to collapse sooner or later. I knew nothing of the nature of the roof, but the nature of the roof at the Hertford Civic Center was not unlike this thing there,
this piece of duster thickness. I mean, you couldn't use it as a as a computer pad, as a mouse pad. It's not that thick That is the essence of the roof, along with the superstructure, the metal, the grid work. But the essence of it, the thing that the wind could get under or the snow could get on top of, was one I don't know sixty fourth of an inch thick and kind of flexible. And Dad said, I don't think they desire this, right, I had a quick look.
They let me, let me look inside, and I went, boy, oh boy, I wouldn't come in here again for a million dollars. And the guy then threw me out of the building. That was my dad, that's me. Dad said, there was so much snow on the roof, and it was probably sufficiently designed to handle a great deal of snow. He said, thirty six inches forty eight inches of snow. It could withstand a couple of more serious snowstorms before it and every other roof in Hartford, Connecticut would collapse.
He said. The problem was they had not done enough with the grid work. This thing had been poorly designed, especially if it got really warm and there was rain, and then it got really cold and the whole thing turned into a block of ice, which would double or
treble the weight on top of this roof. Sure enough, I go into my college radio station on January eighteenth, nineteen seventy eight, and the news is on the wire that about five six hours after the University of Kinnetic basketball team beat the University of Massachusetts basketball team in front of counting staff and employees about forty eight hundred
people inside the Hertford Civic Center. About five hours afterwards, about four in the morning, the Hartford Civic Center cloth roof caved in under the weight of the ice that had built up atop it. And it wasn't just the ice. It was a design flaw. It was exactly as my dad had forecast, maybe a month earlier, certainly at least a week earlier. Whatever you do, don't let any of Cornell teams go into the Hartford Civic Center. Boy, he
got that right. That was the good one. Because, of course, the night watchman, the night manager of the Hartford Civic Center, had cleaned the place out, after the employees there had cleaned everything up, had locked the door, maybe at two
or three o'clock. And I don't know if I added this in the years of remembering my dad forecasting this disaster or not, or if it actually happened, but there was some story about the last guy out locking the place at three or four in the morning, driving a couple of blocks away, stopped at a stoplight, and he hears a roar, looks in his rear view mirror and there's the roof of the Hartford Civic Center that he has just left empty, caving in on itself. That may
be apocryphal, but it could have happened. That's how good dad's prediction was. If he'd put a time stamp on it, it was the only way he could have gotten it better. The other thing, of course, that reminded me of was the other time my dad made a prediction like that, which was a true tragedy, and I regret not doing more about it, and he regretted not doing more about it.
But there was a point at which you can't do more about it because the people are telling you you're insane and they're going to arrest you, and you should stop fear mongering, etc. My dad used to travel all the time. It was one of the great joys of his becoming an architect. And as I've told the story before,
he became an architect without going to college. He was offered a full ride as a high school valedictorian at the School of Industrial Arts in New York, a full ride to Cornell five years in the Architecture college, a full scholarship. Had to turn it down because his father said to him, well, yeah, you can go do your drawing crap, but then your younger brother is going to have to drop out of high school and support us because my grandfather couldn't support the family, and not because
he had the victimization of the Great Depression. And my grandfather just did not cooperate with anybody under any circumstances. I am Saint Francis of the CSI compared to my grandfather, I digress. My father's joy in architecture was he did not turn out to design nine hundred story buildings that were sweeping architectural monuments that would last like the pyramids did. And they'd say, who was the designer of this palace? Theodore Sea Olderman designed it. That's his statue over there.
It didn't happen that way, but at one point all the basking Robs, like four hundred Baskin Robbins in this country were all his design because he didn't know it when he went into architecture. But he had a natural ability to fit your stock architectural design for your chain store into this oddly shaped place you were able to rent in the mall in Nacadochis, Texas. So traveling around to places like Nacadoches, Texas, and to the beach communities of la which he loved, and to everywhere on earth,
and to Hartford, Connecticut, and to Kansas City, Missouri. Put him in places like Kansas City, Missouri. And sometime late in nineteen eighty he would always call. In those pre internet days and those pre cell phone days, he'd call to say he'd gotten to the hotel. He'd leave an itinerary in case we needed to get him. And he was calling me late in nineteen eighty or early in nineteen eighty one to tell me that he was changing hotels. Yeah, I checked into the Higatt Regency and here it's a
death trap. And I said, oh, what's wrong with it? Now? Does it have a fabric roof? Hahaha? Was I right about that? Yes? You were. I'm sorry. I don't mean to mock you. We could have done something more now. That worked out pretty well all things considered, given that they wouldn't listen to me, the idiots. Do you see where I come from? Do you see where my attitude comes from? Well? He was right, as I am right.
It gets frustrating sometimes to be the only one who's right in the room, especially when people's lives are endangered. And that's the whole point. My dad didn't give a damn whether or not he was right. It was a certain source of pride to him that a subject that he hated, he had mastered the arithmetic, the science, the weightload management in the real meaning of it, not the sports meaning of it. But he didn't get any joy over the fact that he was right that the roof
had collapsed. He just said, maybe that's more evidence that you should listen to me again. Where do you think that comes from in this podcast? In any event, back to the phone call from Kansas City. I've checked out. I'm in the such and such hotel. Now here's the number, and I wrote it down and I called my mother and I said, change this on the itinerary. And whether or not she did, who knows. In any event, he said, you won't believe what they've done here. They've hung a
walkway from another walkway on top of another walkway. And I was like, you can't be you can't be serious, and he went, no, I'm serious. I went, no, no, you can't be serious. In assuming I know what that means, he said, all right, let me explain it. To you simply, if you hang a walkway from a ceiling at like this highatt regency, If you hang it from the ceiling, let's say that requires a support for that hanging walkway
worth one point. If you hang another walkway from the walkway from the ceiling, so that you have walkway number one, and then below it hanging from walkway number one is walkway number two. How many points worth of support do you need? And I said two, No, you need three. You need one for the original walkway, one for the new walkway, and another point a third point for the additional stress that the lower walkway has put on the top one. You have doubled the stress. You need a three.
He said, they barely have one. It's a disaster waiting to happen, as God is my witness. And he was an atheist. It's an odd phrase, but he used it all the time, as God is my witness, that thing will collapse. And I went to the manager and I asked to see the structural engineer, and I told him this, and I gave him my credentials, and I mentioned the Hertford Civic Center, and nobody listened to me. In fact, they said, maybe you should leave, or maybe we're going
to have to call the authorities. You're beginning to make a scene and frighten the other guests here, and he said they should be frightened. The damn and he swore roof is going to come down someday. The damn walkway is going to drag the ceiling down. And if it could be worse, these two ceilings, these two walkways hanging from the sea. One is hanging from the other, and they're on top of another walkway, So there's another walkway that is not supported separately. He is supported separately, but
it's sitting below. So when walkway number two pulls down Walkway number one on the way down to the floor where they hold all sorts of events and have a couple of nice lobby bars, it will go through walkway number three. I don't know how many people are going
to get killed. They're going to get killed. So he sounded like everybody you've ever seen in every science fiction picture who then claims they came in from the future and they asked him to leave, and he said, don't worry, I'm not staying here, and don't send me the bill, because by the time you send me the bill. You guys won't be in business anymore. Once again, time elapses. I didn't make any phone calls. Who am I going to call? I'm a twenty two year old sportscaster in
New York City. I'm not exactly carrying any weight on subjects like this. My dad has correctly predicted the fabric roof collapse at the Hartford Civic Center. He now says that there's a walkway hanging from another walkway, and there should be a force of three and is only a force of one. And I don't know what I'm talking about, but maybe you should call him. Here's his phone number. What am I going to do about this? My great
regret that I didn't make those calls anyway. I walked into my office at the RKO Radio Network on Saturday, July eighteenth, nineteen eighty one, and the wires were full
of stories about the disaster in Kansas City. The baseball strike was in full flower in the middle of July nineteen eighty one, and most of the members of the Kansas City Royals, or a lot of them at least, including the pitcher Rich Gale, were serving as celebrity bartenders at a charity event in the lobby of a Hyatt Regency in Kansas City on the night of July seventeenth Friday, July seventeenth, nineteen eighty one, when one of the walkways
began to collapse. It began to pull down the walkway from which it was hung, and then part of the ceiling, and on the way down it knocked down parts of other pieces of the superstructure above the lobby. One one
hundred and four teen people were killed. And I remember to this day the agonized interview with rich Gail, the Kansas City Royals pitcher, a big guy for the time, about six', six who said that the first thing he did was try to move these, giant multi ton blocks of concrete off still living, victims and being an, athlete figuring that he and a few of his friends could do it and they could not even budge the. THING i think it changed his life. UTTERLY i think it
basically ended his career as a viable baseball. Pitcher it certainly caused him, struggles AND i know he succeeded in staying in the game and becoming a, coach but he was affected in a. Way you could hear instantaneously in the, interviews and we covered the story AND i left my father out of. It but my father had predicted it down to the fact that there would be people, killed that there would be such large pieces of debris coming from the ceiling because they had not hung the thing.
Successfully the, designer AS i found out of this, disaster then became a lecturer on disasters in bad, architecture of which he was responsible, for instead of going to. Prison so this all came back to mind that my father Was. Cassandra my father was the guy who arrived, saying the next person you hear from will be the angel of. Death maybe you want to get out of, here maybe you want to fix, this maybe you want to have
another look at your. MATH i, mean there were lots of disasters that my dad did not, predict like the time that The City Corps center In New york almost blew over in a wind because they realized at the last minute that the slanted ten story roof they'd put on the thing it hit directly by hurricane, forces would topple the entire top half of the building Onto Midtown, manhattan and they were just lucky that it hit. Differently he didn't see that. Coming but of course he wasn't
in the civic The. Hartford he was only in The hartford. Place he was only in The Kansas city. Place he was not in The City Corps. Center but that was WHAT i was reminded of AS i looked at this. Piece this was the roof under which for thirty four,
years thirty five, years people. Assembled many TIMES i went there myself and did ball games from and did coverage, from and my friends who owned The Tampa Bay, rays and all the players THAT i, knew and all the announcers THAT i knew who worked, there and all the visiting announcers all went in under this. Roof and thank god that when what my father would have, said do you have any GAMES i planned At Tropicana, field whatever you, do don't go. There that main a hurricane going to
take that effing roof right. Off and then you know, WHAT i bet it winds up as a souvenir somewhere in your. Collection that'll probably cut up the. Roof knowing your friends who owned the, team they'll be smart enough to take what's left of this fabric roof and sell. IT i would put the price at like ten. Dollars knowing your, friends they'll probably charge. Fifteen i've done all the DAMAGE i can do. Here nature and physics do the.
Rest thank you for. Listening and, yes there are, people particularly from my college, days who remember my dad's prediction because the one about The Hartford Civic CENTER i had to share BECAUSE i, asked AND i asked At Cornell Sports, information do we have any games In hartford this? Year? NO i, said, okay, good because my, dad the, architect just said the roof's going to come down one.
Night.
Unbelievable my dad was not, Psychic he was not the harbinger of the angel of. Death he just paid real attention to the things that he hated most and the work he hated doing the. Most as he used to say to, me you're good at this. Work hardist on the things you're not good, at and that's why we have this. Podcast do you Think i'm happy doing this every? Week?
Then do you Think i'm happy doing? This there are many glories to getting this, done and there are many, positive, warming life validating and affirming moments in knowing that you appreciate, This but do you think it's? Enjoyable which do you think is more enjoyable this podcast or writing up the histories of The Detroit tigers and The Saint Louis cardinals for their pregame. SHOW i think that question answers itself
enough do the. Math Brian ray And John Phillip, shanelle the musical, directors Have Countdown arrange produced and performed most of our. Music Mister chanelle handled orchestration and. Keyboards Mister ray was on the, guitars bass and. Drums it was
produced BY Tko. Brothers my dad did once say to, me at sort of the height of THE msnbc, experience WHEN i said that much of the stuff THAT i STUDIED i hated studying and really was dedicated to, it only because he told me this year before to pay special attention to the STUFF i, hated paying special attention to to do the hard work on the stuff that was really hard and. Work he teared up and he,
SAID i taught you. SOMETHING i, said, YEAH i also always check the hanging walkways WHENEVER i go into a. Hotel god help. Us our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organists. Ever Nancy faust now back doing cameos with The White, sox or as they are now, known saluting both The pope And chicago's crime. History The leo polls and. Lobes all, right that's a tasteless,
joke but a good. One the sports music is The ulberman theme FROM espn, two written By Mitch Warren davis courtesy OF, Espn. Inc other music arranged and performed By No Horns. Allowed my announcer today was my Friend Larry. David everything was as ever other than. That my fault not the roof collapse. HERE i, MEAN i swear you could roll this thing, up AND i don't. THINK i, mean of all the, things this looks. Like this piece of the, roof a piece of a, roof is not what it looks?
Like is?
That for a? Tautology that's countdown for, today day one to twenty three Of america sitting under the roof at The Higatt regency or The Hartford Civic. Center just forty days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brain, term Unless putin removes him, sooner or the actuarial tables, do or we. Do the next scheduled countdown Is, monday as always bulletins as the news. Warrants remember he is laying the groundwork now to not leave office. Later
he must be. Stopped we must get out from under this roof until next. Time I'm keith oulteran good, morning good, afternoon good, night 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