I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE IS DOING - 7.4.24

I screwed up. The president to a radio interviewer last night, all of us said, we pledged our support to him, said Kathy Hokel. After twenty governors met with mister Biden last night. Is he fit for office? Somebody asked him Wallas on the way out. Yes, we would stand with him. Wes Moore says he told the President Joe Biden's had our back. Now it is our turn to have his,

said Gavin Newsom. And I understand what the governor said and why, And I understand why the President said what he said, and I understand why the email reads as it does, and I understand he may fully or nearly fully believe all of that. And I do not understand what they are doing at the White House. I don't understand it. The New York Times led a succession of

reports yesterday. The gist of all of them was President Biden had told an ally quoting The Times, that he is weighing whether to continue in the race, Although, perhaps crucially, after the White House issued a flat denial, the Times altered the hook in that story and the story itself, to focus on the idea that, instead, quote, he may not be able to salvage his candidacy if he cannot convince voters that he is up to the job, which sounds like what you do for you wigh whether or

not to continue in the race, all of which I understand. I do not understand the litmus test the President and his advisors have apparently convinced themselves will be the magic wand I'll quote the Times again. Mister Biden's allies said that the President had privately acknowledged that his next few appearances heading into the duly fourth holiday weekend must go well, particularly an interview scheduled for Friday with George Stephanopoulos of

ABC News and campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The interview with George is not live, it is taped. The campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin seem to be the standard ones, presumably going to follow all the other campaign stops with teleprompters. If someone is telling the president the doing well in totally controlled, utterly contented hothouse environments is going to quell in the slightest the impact that continues to resonate from a week ago in Atlanta. They are crazy.

And if the President thinks doing what amounts to canned events will quaill the impact, he is doomed. And between them.

If he gets through a pre recorded sit down interview that gets cut up into parts for the various ABC News shows, which is what ABC says it is doing with mister Biden, and he gets through two speeches and there are not questions from reporters or at minimum questions from the crowd, and he and the campaign boast about all these events as some kind of triumph, then the outcome will be this President Biden will have forced himself off the ticket, not because of the debate, but because

of the week after the debate. The way to steer out of the skid, the way to find the magic wand the way to salvage his candidacy, as The Times put it, save his reelection bid, as CNN put it, stay in the race, as ABC put it, was and perhaps still is to hold a news conference, and I mean call a news conference for twenty minutes for now. I'll be there in twenty minutes. You get there if you can not a news conference next week at the NATO summit in DC, but now, and take whatever they

got for you. And then to do a town hall somewhere, or as Jim Clyburn says, a series of town halls, and if you want some comparatively comfortable exercise in the middle of that, that's Stephanopoulos interview has got to be live, and it would be best to do these things on consecutive days. I do not understand what they are doing at the White House. And let me say for the

one thousandth time, I love Joe Biden. When it hit me Tuesday afternoon, that between the Pelosi remarks about the test, about the legitimacy of the questions, and the harrowing leaked Swing state internals, the God Helped Me vibe had just changed, and the tipping point had been reached. When I realized that my heart broke. I want Joe Biden to find the magic wand I want him to be the nominee.

I want him to get up at his second inauguration and give all of us the finger and become the first American president to highlight his swearing in by swearing at everybody. And he can swear at me personally. And I don't think it's going to happen, because I don't understand what the hell they are doing at the White House. In response to a request for comment, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said that quote it is false to suggest

there is any openness to ending the campaign. End quote that to CNN, and it's finesse, just enough to give a little wiggle room, because if the president retires from the ticket, I am sure the word openness will not have applied to the process. The polls are awful the New York Times poll. They were asked, do you agree with this statement quote Joe Biden is just too old to be an effective president? Eighty four percent of registered voters under the age of forty five said they agreed

with that statement. Eighty three percent of Hispanic voters, sixty four percent of voters sixty five and over in the horse race. Three other new polls, and the time and the previous six taken since the debate have shown an average shift away from Biden of about one and a

half points in a week. But the polls are not fatal because almost none of that Democratic loss went to Trump, Despite his opponent having as calamitous a one night event as any presidential campaign has had since Bob Dole fell off the stage into the crowd at a campaign rally in nineteen ninety six, Trump has still only picked up three tenths of one point since the debate, So the Democrats could regain that. They could regain the whole point and a half if Joe Biden proves the debate was

an anomaly. And it's not as if proving that is impossible. If it is impossible for him, another Democrat could regain that. On that subject, I have to say, I think we can rule out the idea that if he leaves the ticket, he should also leave the White House. Though I watched the confirmation hearings for Nelson Rockefeller that went on through half of my senior year in high school, I had

bluntly forgotten and I apologize to you. And new vice president has to be approved separately by the Senate and the House. And why would I think the House Republican majority might stonewall any vice presidential nominee sent in by a new president Kamala Harris, just because if the post were to remain open, this weasel speaker Mike Johnson would then be first in line for the presidency. Anyway, I have two other things to mention on this fourth of

July that are either relevant or true. The first is the incident at the White House press room. My friend Kelly O'Donnell Tim Rosser used to call us well. She used to call her KO, and he used to call me KO number two. Kelly o'donald, now president of the Correspondence Association and still with NBC News, was asking for the President to himself come to the press room and tell reporters himself that he was still running, rather than

have the press secretary do it. She was saying this and doing it very politely and professionally, when she was interrupted by somebody neither polite nor professional.

reality this idiot is. I put him on the Worst Person's list years ago, something idiotic he said at Fox, and as I recall, we had two really good nominees on the list and we needed a third one, and I kind of stretched to put him in there, because who the hell is James Rosen? I swear to God. A couple of days later, I get at my office an angry, multi page letter from James Rosen explaining what a brilliant reporter he is and how many awards he has won and how dare I and Fox has better

ratings than I do? And attached to this multi page, virulent, venomous letter is his resume Lastly, back to the current issue and a disease I have discussed here before called anosagnosia as the legend. David Dunning of the Dunning Krueger syndrome wrote once, an anosagnosic patient who is paralyzed simply does not know that he is paralyzed. If you put a pencil in front of them and ask them to pick up the pencil in front of their left hand,

they won't do it. And you ask them why, and they'll say, well, I'm tired or I don't need a pencil. I don't think David Dunning made that pencil reference randomly. It mainlines back to the president who in his lifetime was actually credited with saving the pencil industry in this country,

President Woodrow Wilson. Now, the experts, more than a century later, are still studying the stroke that Woodrow Wilson suffered while on his cross country tour to try to sell the League of Nations to America over the heads of a disapproving Senate. The deduction has been widespread in the ensuing decades that whether or not he had the disease earlier, because evidently he had had strokes earlier. After the stroke in nineteen nineteen, Woodrow Wilson showed all the signs of anosagnosia.

In the nineteen seventies, the neuropsychiatrist Edwin Weinstein was granted access to the Woodrow Wilson papers, and he wrote, after reviewing them carefully quote following his stroke, the outstanding feature of the president's behavior was his denial of his incapacity. Denial of illness or anosagnosia literally lack of knowledge of disease is a Umman sequel of the type of brain

injury received by Wilson. In this condition, the patient denies or appears unaware of such deficits as paralysis or blindness. To casual observers, anosegnosiac patients may appear quite normal and even bright and witty when not on the subject of their disability. They are quite rational, and tests of their intelligence may show no deficit unquote, Unfortunately, when you turn to the subject of his disability, President Wilson was anything

but rational. His secretary of State was a man named Robert Lansing, and Lancing dutifully summoned the entire cabinet to a meeting to discuss the illness of Woodrow Wilson. After the stroke, President Wilson or his wife promptly forced the resignation of Secretary of State Lancing. Doctors who challenged Woodrow Wilson about his were dismissed. People who knew him before his stroke and knew there was a problem and knew there was a difference were eased out or denied access.

Woodrow Wilson insisted until his death that while yes, he'd had a stroke, it affected only his walking, and it affected his walking only a little bit. It's terrifying disease. One of the supposed allies, and it looks like there were two of them, and they became sources between them for the Times and ABC and CNN stories on Joe Biden. One of the supposed allies insisted the President was not oblivious to his situation. So I am not saying that

anosagnosia is part of this equation. Also, you do not have to have anosagnosia or anything else impairing your judgment to be unrealistic or to underplay your own health troubles or your own age troubles. I turned sixty five this year, and the last thing I want to deal with is the reality that I'm sixty five. I will see myself in the mirror and go, that can't be right. I'm

twenty two. But as you consider what is happening, as this unfolds to whatever conclusion it unfolds, two, keep this or something else like it in the back of your mind. It may also be in play. Denial is a colloquial term. Annosugnosia is a medical term. Reality as usual probably lies somewhere in between. Me as a rapidly aging sixty five year old, I just wanted a day off. Well, maybe next year in the Trump re education camp. In the interim, hey,

did you know it's July fourth? I have wanted to tell the story on a July fourth for a lot of July fourths. Now. The story is about how the media in real time mistreated someone famous associated with the holiday in a way that is now literally unbelievable to people who still respect the person in question. How newspaper columnists in nineteen thirty nine and nineteen forty insisted that the great and tragic Lou Garrick, the baseball player, was a faking his illness and b had infected all of

his teammates with it. That's next. This discountdown now to

July fourth, and some unexpected lessons, It's still topical. This is about what happens when you make the mistake of thinking that the media is not self serving, when you wrongly believe that it does not look for the negative, when you foolishly expect it to own up to its own disasters rather than try to bury them, and particularly relevant to this last week with President Biden and the media, whatever the outcome, whatever the truth here, there is a subtext.

If Joe Biden retires from the ticket because he's old, or he has an illness, or for whatever reason, that would validate what the writers wrote, especially the writers in the New York Times and the seemi underbelly to dogged reporting is reporters like nothing better than to first catch crap for their story and then have their story proved true after all, even if it weren't true when they

wrote it. So sometimes they write really really bad stories, unbelievable stories, stories that should be chiseled into their gravestones. This is not per se about Joe Biden, nor about politics, nor about twenty twenty four for that matter. It may, however,

be a metaphor for all of the above. The further we have gotten from Tuesday, July fourth, nineteen thirty nine, the further it has been evident that this was probably the most poignant day in the history of American sports, and one of the most poignant days in the history of America. That day was when sixty one, eight hundred and eight people crowded into Yankee Stadium in New York

to hear lou Gerrigg say goodbye. He had been stricken by als, and as much as everybody tried to pretend it was not a death sentence, or at least not likely to be a death sentence, it is in retrospect clear that nearly all the fans knew. It was in fact so clear at the time that the Yankees and even officials of the city of New York were insistent that during the ceremonies between games of that day's doubleheader,

that lou Geig should not make a speech. They literally believed that the amount of grief in the ballpark among the fans and the employees and the players would somehow be too much for at minimum, the mental health of everybody there. They did not know how that much sadness could be handled in public. Of course, lou Gereg spoke anyway. All he did was give one of the bravest and most moving speeches in human history, one that is repeated word for word in ballparks and elsewhere every year on

its anniversary, July fourth. So we view that July fourth, nineteen thirty nine as a day of grief and sorrow and love and of that rarest of emotions, of our shared awareness of the implacability of death, and that our victory is over death must be temporary and symbolic. We see through hindsight lou Garrig Day Yankee Stadium, the Bronx, New York, Tuesday, July fourth, nineteen thirty nine, as a unanimous gathering bathed in sympathy and empathy, representing the sympathy

and empathy of a nation. And we do that because the baseball world and the media have spent the intervening decades burying the work of those in its ranks in nineteen thirty nine who approached lou Garegg's illness as either prepare yourself as either a fraud or a conspiracy. I am going to read you in full two articles about lou Gereg that must be tied for the all time worst pieces written in American media history, and on the list of the worst things ever written for publication in

the English language. The second article is actually not from nineteen thirty nine. It's from August nineteen forty, and in it, the sports editor of the New York Daily News all but accuses lou Gereg of being what we would now call a super spreader and speculates that Gereg has infected all the other Yankee players with his disease. The first article actually ran in hundreds of American newspapers on the night of Monday, July third, nineteen thirty nine, but mostly

the morning of July fourth. It was in a column distributed by United Press, the precursors to United Press International, where I made my full time professional debut forty years later, almost to the day, in July of nineteen seventy nine. When I worked there, I had never heard about this article. Throughout the bulk of my career, I had never heard

about this article. I did not know of this article until the microfilm files of newspapers migrated onto the Internet in the late nineties, and to this day, I have never found any indication that the writer ever apologized or ever admitted his stupidity and coarseness and insensitivity and awfully timed glibness. The writer's name was Jack Cuddy Jack Cutty c Uddy. He began as a news reporter for the

Milwaukee Journal. After World War One, he worked for newspapers in Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, and then joined United Press in nineteen twenty six. He was a news reporter. He helped cover Lindbergh's solo flight over the Atlantic in nineteen twenty seven, and then in nineteen thirty two they made him their primary boxing reporter, and they also assigned him to write columns about all sports that would sent out on the up wire to all of the newspapers that subscribed.

We don't know how many of them ran this. Their sports editors probably found out just how many of their readers actually read it, because by the time Jack Cutty wrote this, he had been a national sports reporter for seven years and a journalist a hard news reporter for about fifteen before that. This still is what untold readers of papers that carried the work of United Press read.

Just hours four lou Geig gave his luckiest man on the face of the Earth speech in this corner Jack Cutty Rights on the retirement of lou Gereg by Jack Cutdy, New York. There's only one thing I see wrong about the celebration of the fourth of July, and that's the national shedding of tears about a husky named lou Gereg, which will be climaxed with a low Garreg Appreciation Day during the doubleheader between the Yanks and Washington at Yankee Stadium.

The play rights for this gareg business at the stadium are making the affair so touching. I understand that even the little boys and gals of our vast land will be unable to set off firecrackers and things because of the tears that trickle down upon their matches and punks. The whole businesiness seems goofy and uncalled for. To me, I see no reason for pulling a pall over a holiday when everyone should be having lots of fun and peanuts, popcorn,

cracker Jackson hot dogs. Particularly, I see no reason for pulling this Yankee publicity stunt about Gerreg, who was the last man in the world who would go for it. Unless the Yankee brass Hats and New York baseball riders snaffled him and forced him into it. Gerrek knows, and so should everyone else connected with baseball, that the thirty six year old first Basement of the Yanks was through with top flight play just as soon as he showed

up at the Yanks training camp at Saint Pete. But because lou was the iron Horse, the man who had written into the records that all time mark of two one hundred and thirty consecutive championship games, his fade out had to be different from that of the ordinary player. Accordingly, Greg was sent to a nationally known center of health

investigation to see what was wrong with him. I'll guarantee that if ninety percent of the men, women, and children in America were sent to that particular spot, we would learn that each and all had something wrong with them, even if it were only halatosis, athletes, foot warts, or

bo I've forgotten exactly what they said was wrong with Greg. Oh, yes, I do recall that the first hospital report indicated infantile paralysis of a very vague breed, But later the experts explained it wasn't infantile paralysis at all, it was something else. The ailment had one of those high falutin names that

only people with plenty of dough or prestige can have. Personally, I don't care what Garrek has got, but I'd like to exchange my body for his during the next forty or fifty years, let us say, And I'm pretty sure i'd do all right. Regardless of the expert's argument over the Latin or Greek declensions of what lariping Loo may or may not have, it seems to me that Greg was merely getting too old to play hell for leather baseball, and that the scientists of ailments or advertising gave him

a graceful exit. But what really brings water to my eyes on this particular fourth of July is the plight of Monty Stratton, a lad who was right in his prime, only twenty five years old, a lad who never had the chance to amass the fortune that must be Garrick's gerreg too old for Championship Baseball will be out there tomorrow with his mysterious ailment, able to get about as actively as any one of his piano leg build should

at thirty six. But poor Monty Stratton is hobbling about the coaches box of the Chicago White Sox with an artificial leg clinking about where his own right leg should be. There is no question about what happened to Stratton. He shot himself in the leg accidentally while hunting down Texas Way last November, and the right leg had to be amputated at the knee. At the time this accident happened, Stratton stood out as one of the best right handed

flingers in the American League. They gave him a Stratton Day in Chicago this season and he got about twenty grand out of it, about the same as his salary for a year. Gerrig has been named non playing captain for the All Star Interleague Game at Yankee Stadium a week from Tuesday, along with tomorrow's Garreg Day. But it seems to me that poor Monty Stratton could have been appointed batting practice pitcher at least for the All Star Game.

And if we've got to shed tears tomorrow for some afflicted ballplayer, let's give them off for poor Monty instead of for lucky lou Jack Cutty everybody. Twenty three months later, lou Gereg was dead. Monty Stratton the innocent bystander in this hindenburg of a sports column who had been on a possible Hall of Fame trajectory, actually made a comeback on one leg, and seven years later in the low minor leagues, he won eighteen games pitching for the Sherman

Twins of the East Texas League. He pitched sporadically thereafter until the age of forty one. By then a film version based on his life had been made. It starred Jimmy Stewart. Monty Stratton died in nineteen eighty two, seven years and one week after the writer, Jack Cutty died.

Jack Cutty had himself died thirty four years after Lou Garrig died, and thirty six years after he had offered to trade bodies with Lou gereg Not only did mister Cutty never apparently correct the Garret article, but United Press apparently did not punish him in any way for having written it. He continued to cover boxing for UP and UPI for another twenty five years, and his obituary appeared in The New York Times. It did not mention his column about Lou Garrick, but a man named Jimmy Powers

died in February of nineteen ninety five. He too got an oh bit in The Times, and it too did not mention his lou garret article, which is, believe it or not, probably much worse than Jack Cutties. Jimmy Powers article appeared on Sunday, August eighteenth, nineteen forty. It covered much of two pages in the New York Daily News. Powers was sports editor there from nineteen thirty six until his retirement in nineteen fifty nine. He would eventually grudgingly,

sparingly apologize for this uneducated drek that he wrote. But I worked with people at the start of my career who had worked with him. It was only about twenty

years between us. They said. It was clear that he continued to believe that it was likely that he was right, and that Greg had somehow infected his Yankee teammates with some kind of milder version of ALS that cost them the nineteen forty American League pennant No, I am not kidding The New York Daily News, August eighteenth, nineteen forty.

The headline read, has Polio hit the Yankees? The Yankees, who, for the past four years have been one of the greatest baseball machines in history and almost universally selected to win the Pennet again have collapsed. Why has the mysterious polio germ which felled lou Geig also struck his former teammates, turning a once great team into a floundering non contender. According to overwhelming opinion of the medical profession, poliomylitis, similar

to infantile paralysis, is communicable. The Yanks were exposed to it at its most acute stage. They played ball with the afflicted Garrig, dressed and undressed in the locker room with him, traveled, played cards and ate with him. Isn't it possible some of them also became infected. It's hard to believe mere coincidence can explain away the wholesale failure of the individuals. In Gerreg's case, one of the most prominent symptoms was loss of muscular power. The same symptom

can be found in many of the Yanks today. So far, no one has been able to advance a satisfactory reas it not without precedent. The possibility of wholesale team infection is not entirely without precedent. Last fall, the Loyola University football team was faced with the same menace from infantile paralysis, A greatly similar disease communicated in the same manner. A player collapsed in the dressing room was rushed to a hospital, where it was determined he had developed paralysis. The entire

squad was quarantined and examined. Two other players were discovered bearing the germ, caught from their unfortunate teammate. Luckily, the infection was detected at the earliest stage. Injections killed the germ and brought complete recovery. In the Textbook of Nervous Disorders by Robert Bing, professor of neurology at the University of Basel in Switzerland, are found the following pertinent facts. One, the disease appears in a majority of cases between the

ages of thirty and fifty five. Most of the players with the Yanks are in their thirties, with the exception of Gordon, the others are close to them. Two. Among causes found for the disease are over exposure to cold and exhausting disease or capital letters over exertion. Ballplayers certainly are called upon for more than normal exertion, as were the Yanks at a time when they were exposed to

the germ. Three, Regarding the effect on the legs, where it probably would be most noticeable in ballplayers for a comparatively long period of time, the lower extremities remain normal, except for marked exaggeration of their reflexes. Atrophy of the leg muscles may not occur until the late stages of the disease. Thus a player might be able to run and move as well as ever while the germ was sapping his strength less noticeable parts such as hands, arms,

and shoulders. Club players worried. Club officials and players have been worried that such a general infection existed. They took special precautionary measures to prevent it. Individual drinking cups were provided. Each player took care to use only his own towel. Special provisions were made for laundering uniforms and underclothing among the players. Bill Dickey last winter made a special trip to the Mayo Brothers Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for a

thorough physical checkup. This coming winter Atlee, Donald rad Ralph and several others are considering similar checkups. The fear of the disease had a psychological effect. It preyed on the minds of the athletes. Exaggerated minor aches, pains, and ailments, which ordinarily they would have ignored. Practically, the entire club had noticed Gareg's symptoms, became aware of and worried about nervous and muscular reactions they had never been conscious of previously.

Club officials believe they have finally defeated this psychological sword of damocles. These nervous and muscular reactions could always be traced to an injury, a slight bump or bruise. This apparently was the savior for in Greg's case, no injury could be traced down to explain his early symptoms. However, the shadow of doubt must still linger, for in the same volume by Professor Byng is this quote, I have described a case of traumatic median neuritis which later developed

into a typical lateral ammiothrophic sclerosis. The note the latter is the medical term for Garrig's ailment, and indicates that the particular form of paralysis which afflicted Gerrig might develop from neritis Alderman note no, not quite. Doctor Robert F. Walsh, Yank physician and surgeon, and Earl V. Painter, Yank trainer, each nationally famous in his profession, are the men closest to the physical well being of the players. They answer

emphatically that no such condition exists on the club. Here is doctor Walsh's opinion. Quote. Though at first there was a very definite possibility of the entire team becoming afflicted, there is now no indication of it. Had the disease stricken, there would have been a noticeable change in the physical appearance of those to whom the disease had been communicated. There would not be the slightest doubt remaining that the

stricken individual or individuals were infected. Unquote. Medics support Walsh. Doctor Walsh's statement is supported by the current medical belief that the infection will reveal itself within six weeks of the time of contact. However, with the medical profession admitting a meager knowledge of the disease, there is the possibility a lingering means of infection exists, that the disease may be communicated in a different form, and that it may

be chronic as well as acute, as in Garrig's case. Thus, the possibility that the Yanks are so infected still exists. Doc Painter, in an equally definite denial, takes a different slant. He says quote In view of the circumstances, I can understand how one might be led to a plausible hypothesis that the team has been stricken with this disease. However, I have absolutely no belief in it. There is no similarity between the symptoms of these individual cases and Garrigs

Lou suffered from deterioration of the nervous system. The trouble with these other boys is something entirely different. To point out one example, Ralph suffers from a blood rather than a nervous disorder. Are Yanks infected? Nevertheless, there is another point to be remembered. Gerg slipped perceptibly as a ballplayer about mid season in nineteen thirty eight. Almost a year later, when he reported for spring training, there was still no

suspicion he was afflicted by this disease. In fact, not until June, when he visited the Mayo clinic was his ailment definitely determined. All of which apparently leaves a complete and final answer still to be made. Something has happened to the Yanks If Greg passed through a stage in which the cause of his ineffectiveness was undetermined, isn't it possible? Such is also the case with many of the Yanks today.

Jimmy Powers article nineteen forty, accompanying that, by the way, which I have spared you, was a sidebar, a two or three line analysis of the underperformances of ten specific Yankee players, ending in bold faced print with this final word from Jimmy Powers. Can coincidence explain these simultaneous ailments? Couldn't the polio germ be the common cause? No, it couldn't, you idiot, that morning that that was published, lou Gegg who did not have polio, who did not have the

other disease described by doctor Bing. Lou Gereg had amiotropic lateral sclerosis, and he had two hundred and eighty nine more days to live. Jimmy Powers was not suspended by the New York Daily News, not demoted, not fired, not branded with a scarlet letter a for asshole or anything else. In fact, he became one of the first sports writers to move into television as a commentator on NBC's Friday

Night Fights in the fifties. I did not read you these to spoil your July fourth, nor any other of your days, nor to darken the commemorations and remembrances of lou Garrick. I read them just to provide a little perspective on media and opinion and the strongest, most unstoppable force in the world, a journalist who thinks he's right even though everybody else around him begs him to realize that he's wrong. Occasionally, that motivation gives us things like

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and Watergate reporting. Occasionally it gives us Bob Woodward sitting on tapes of Trump admitting as it began that COVID would be airborne and a disaster, sitting on those tapes until Woodward could get himself a

book deal. And occasionally it gives us Jack Cutty implying lou Gegg has a cold, and Jimmy Powers insisting lou Gegg had irresponsibly infected his teammates with the disease he didn't have, but Powers thought he did because part of the original diagnosis included a reference to another disease with the word polio in it. I've done all the damage I can do here, but not as much as Jack Cutty and Jimmy Powers. And how many Jack Cutties and Jimmy Powers do we read every day? On power? Politics?

In this country and enjoy July fourth. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums, and mister Shaneil handled the orchestration and the keyboards, and 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 Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy vespn inc our satirical and pithy musical comments are band Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. That's countdown for this the one hundred and twenty fifth

day until the twenty twenty four presidential election. The two hundred and seventy seventh day since convicted fellon Donald J. 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 all of it to stop him from doing it again. While we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday bulletins as the news warrants until the next one. I'm Keith Olderman. Happy July fourth,

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.