Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Who could have guessed that a press secretary whose previous public speaking high watermark was either when she called the worst person in human history hilter or when she insisted there was a word damining, as in damining evidence. Who could have possibly guessed that this press secretary could manage to tweet her new administration into a position where some of its lawyers might go to jail for contempt of court.
I mean, follow the components of this disaster in their chronological order. The first time Trump shot himself in the foot. Here, Trump issues this government shut down via the back door, pausing virtually all domestic spending and closing all the medicaid portals, utterly illegal, utterly unconscionable, utterly damaging to his own cult members. A judge then issues a temporary restraining order against the
spending pause, whereupon Trump shoots himself in the foot. A second time, Trump's lawyers back away from the pause and insist the pause has been rescinded. The third time Trump shoots himself in the foot. Even Trump supporters in the cowering media realize Trump has just made himself look like an idiot. The second dramatic dictatorial edict he has issued and then had to back off of or emend in
like twenty four hours. Trump is wounded, damaged, laughed. At the fourth time, Trump shoots himself in the foot, just this one time, just this one case. The fourth time, Press Secretary Caroline Levitt shoots him in the foot for him her tweet, this is not a recision of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a recision of themb memo. Why to end any confusion created by the court's injunction, the President's eos on federal funding remain in full force
and effect and will be rigorously implemented. So the Press secretary says, Trump withdrew the memo about the funding freeze, that the judge had unfrozen, but that the freeze is still in effect no matter what some judge rules, and that Trump deliberately rescinded just the memo in order to evade the judge's ruling, and that's contempt of court, and Trump's lawyers are going to have to explain to this judge why he should not or in this case, why
she should not put them in jail. Overnight or you know, forever, for deliberately ignoring her order and having this nitwit Levitt boast about ignoring her order. Oh and just to bury Trump. Still further on this, a second federal judge also ruled that the recision is meaningless and he's issued a court order that stays in effect, and Trump can call it whatever he wants in Levitt can call it whatever she wants. He can't freeze government spending just because he's president. Can't.
I have said countless times democracy is preserved less by our efforts to save it than by the stupidity of those who are trying to destroy it. And these people are remarkably stupid. Trump is remarkably stupid. Caroline Levitt is remarkably stupid. She really did think the name of the Nazi guy was Hilter and that there was a word damining. And if you saw her first news conference, she really does smile vapidly at all the wrong times, like a robot, only like a robot you bought used at Sam's Club.
Post warranty, I mentioned her public speaking high watermark. Her career watermark was getting a softball scholarship to Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, or maybe it was revealing this month that she had three hundred and twenty six thousand dollars in unpaid campaign debts, two hundred thousand of which
were improper donations, violating the contribution limit. This is from a congressional campaign from two years ago, when she got smoked by eight points, possibly because she's a Sam's Club robot who thinks it's damining about mister Hilter. Levitt makes Kaylee mcananney look like Madame Cure, she makes Sean Spicer look like honest Abe Lincoln. And she also factors into yet a separate case of just keep shooting your own foot off. The toes will be coming off any moment now,
The New York Times. I mean, if bad Dad Bob had had a daylight Caroline Levitt had yesterday, Sodom Hussein would have been trying to figure out a way to ease him out, because as it unraveled for her, you put who at risk of contempt of court. This headline was still up at The New York Times about her quote, white House Press Secretary makes steely and unflinching debut. Caroline Levitt used her first briefing in the role to warn
veteran reporters that they were increasingly irrelevant. Well, I'll say this much for her, She's not irrelevant. By the way. As an aside, META, which is short for Mark Zuckerberg, is Meta terrified of something Trump has on him. Meta just got into the who can collaborate more contest yesterday alongside the New York Times, Washington Post ABCCBS. Zuckerberg has settled a nuisance suit from Trump about canceling his account
for twenty five million dollars. Because what you're gonna go to the trouble of bribing Trump twenty five million dollars when there's a subtle legal way to accomplish the same thing, all right? With that? As an a side back to the spending freeze chaos, there is a contrarian viewpoint about it that you should know that this utter fiasco by Trump order a freeze have a court overrule. You tell the court you are trying to evade its order, and how you are trying to evade its order, that they
meant to do that. Charlie Savage, one of the great New York Times journalists, being buried by a couple of headline editors who have apparently begun the quixotic quest to drive the Gray Lady out of business. Charlie Savage wrote last night that quote Trump abruptly fired dozens of officials in the past few days, including inspectors general, a member of the National Labor Relations Board, and career prosecutors, in ways that apparently violated federal laws, setting up the possibility
of lawsuits. But the prospect of getting dragged into court may be exactly what mister Trump's lawyers are hoping for. There is a risk that judges may determine that some of the dismissals were illegal, but any rulings in the President's favor would establish precedents that would expand presidential power
to control the federal government. I mean his piece. Savage does not mention this fiasco over the spending freeze, or the other fiasco over the phony employee buyout program, or any of the other fiascos of the first nine days, but his point is clear. All of these freezes, included are could be to set up test cases so that, if there were any doubt, the Supreme Court could eventually hear them and begin to specify what exact rights Trump has as a dictator, freed from any checks and balances
and completely liberated from the possibility of criminal prosecution later. Still, it's something of a Rube Goldberg way of doing this, and once the Supreme Court made up presidential immunity, all this as a four D chess kind of thing seems unnecessary. But I suppose, I suppose it's possible, if they were smart, if they had public support, which by the way, they don't. For all the boasting, he cannot say it too often.
More people voted against Trump than for him last November, and our drunken Friend polling is back with this rather large outside the margin of error number. The Reuter's IPSOS poll taken a week ago Monday and Tuesday, showed Trump at his most popular only thirty nine percent disapproval. The new Reuter's IPSOS poll, taken over the weekend the weekend that followed Monday and Tuesday, shows his disapproval has ballooned back to forty six percent, up seven points after five
days in office. I mean, that's impressive. Pardoning the January sixth terrorist was a huge mistake, sixty two percent disapproval. Another reason the Democrats should file impeachment bills about the were he six pardons, trying to end birthright citizenship fifty nine percent disapproval. Ending federal programs to hire women and minorities if you don't say that's what DEI is fifty
nine percent disapproval. Pulling out of the Paris Climate Chords fifty six percent disapproval, and in the stupid realm calling it the Gulf of America seventy percent disapproval. Those geography classes are more popular than you thought. These are omens, auguries and four tents. Dire for Trump because this is all he's got. I just ran through the essences of his his worldview. He can't govern. He's still trying to
stop shooting himself in the foot. In this context, you're problem with overthrowing democracy and replacing it with a dictatorial kleptocracy dedicated to revenge, cruelty, threats, and the specter of violence.
Is that history teaches us when the components of this are so unpopular that they score polling numbers like that seventy percent against your nido idea and sixty percent over against your substantive ideas, History teaches us that in every country, in every century, such dictatorial kleptocracies are eventually met and eventually disempowered by a defiance, a defiance better skilled at revenge, better motivated to use cruelty, more gifted at targeting threats,
more exact with its violence or warnings of violence. Let me say, at the outset, whatever form this takes here, and I do not know what that form will be, I truly hope it will not be violent. I do not want this. I would rather limit protest defiance to Thomas Jefferson's approach to slavery, hold the wolf by the ears, because you can neither hold him nor safely let him go.
But in the last week it has seemed to me that to avoid it, there would have to be a major, nullifying intervention to remove Donald Trump and these moronic pirates who adhere to him. I actually, and I'm not sure why, have hopes such an intervention will take place, as unlikely as it seems at this moment. What kind of interventional
it could be? A dozen Republicans saying enough the correct dozen Republicans could topple this administration tomorrow afternoon, or just two conservative Supreme Court justices saying enough, or even Trump's supporters suddenly cut off from all those government grants and aid saying enough, or it could be a financial rebellion led by the key Blue states, or a tax strike,
general strike, or something worse. Any one of ten thousands somethings worse that I do not like to think about, and I think pretty much any one of them would work. Trump says, believes others will believe, may believe it himself keeps repeating that he turned on some sort of giant spigot in California and made it rain. The only thing that actually happened was just a reservoir undergoing maintenance coming
back online. Whoever wrote Secretary of Combover's Rubio's International Aid freeze had to retract it and add a waiver or two or seven life saving medicine, medical services, food shelter, and subsistence, as well as essential supplies and reasonable cost to deliver such assistance not covered by this. Whoever froze the domestic aid and grants never realized everything they did thing was illegal, That money authorized by Congress to be spent must be spent, that not doing so is prohibited
by the Impoundment Control Acted nineteen seventy four. And even if the Supreme Court were to again erase the law and erase the Constitution and sided with Trump, even if the Charlie Savage article is theoretically correct, all that Trump has done in the first week will be tied up
in a thousand lawsuits in the lower courts. And whoever in the administration at all, I mean, who offered this non buyout buyout to every government employee A must be too stoned to understand what would happen to the world economy if you suddenly paid two million government union employees
a buyout tomorrow. And B they forgot that The Supreme Court may have made the president immune from criminal prosecution for what he did in office, but he didn't make a goddamn one of Eli Musk and the Musk wannabes
immune from prosecution. And just as importantly, when you stop all domestic government financial assistants, which is what Trump's Caroline Levitt says they're still doing, guess who that affects Trump supporters, civilian Trump supporters, and maybe more relevantly, Trump congressmen who have to go and get the votes of those Trump supporters.
Just six hundred and forty four days from now and even they are beginning to say, you idiots put eighty undocumented immigrants on military planes that cost eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars per flight. You idiots trying to cont trillions from the government expenditures, reduce our tax burdens by trillions of dollars. You decided to deport a million people, so you're going to spend nine hundred and sixty seven billion, nine hundred million dollars of my money on that instead
of spending it on me at all. The undocumented immigrants say nothing of the documented immigrants stop showing up on the farms and at the construction sites. And now a tomato costs how far is it going to go? Forty seven dollars each? Because nearly all of them are rotting in the fields. Oh, and the building industry grinds to a halt. It is all well and good to crash the system until the system turns out to be a clown car. And when you crash it, it bursts into
flames and lights everything on fire. Because every immigrant food worker in this country is smarter and tougher than Trump, and every immigrant construction worker in this country will survive when tom Homan will not, and the Mark Millies, with or without a security detail, will always bury the Pete Keg breaths, if only because Mark Milly isn't an alcoholic, and every New Yorker, every single New Yorker, is more
resilient and smarter than Christy effing Nome. An old woman wearing too much makeup coast playing in an ice uniform that looks like the vest belonging to a suicide bomber, also known as what she wears when she leaves the house to go murder the family dog seems to me.
The one real risk to my scenario of some peaceful blowback is, of course, the cowardice of the Democratic Party, as Robert F. Kennedy Junior yesterday denied at his hearing everything except that his name was Robert F. Kennedy Junior, denying he ever compared COVID lockdowns and vaccines to Nazi death Camps said, I never said that. Raphael Warnock read him the transcript of him saying it. Then Kennedy said, well, I wasn't comparing then, I was just comparing their effect.
While Kennedy was doing that, they were still rumbling. Some Democrats like his law school roommate, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse might vote to confirm. Senator, I have always deeply respected and admired you. This, though, is existential. Kennedy is a madman. His irresponsibility will lead to Americans dying, especially children. If you vote to confirm him, Sheldon Whitehouse, you are dead in the Democratic Party dead. You are deader than Eric
Adams is. New York Times is reporting our beloved mayor has gotten the Trump Department of Enforcers to consider dropping the federal investigation of him. Senator, you would be deater than Kathy Hochel, the soon to be ex governor of New York, who, like Adams, has pledged cooperation with Ice on these Trump gestapo raids in New York. Senator, you would be better than Hakeem Jeffries, and I'm sorry right now, Hakeem Jeffrey should be removed as minority leader NBC News quote.
Less than forty eight hours after Trump was inaugurated, House Minority Leader A. Kim Jeffries held a closed door meeting with Democratic lawmakers to issue a warning and a clarion call. The new administration was going to flood the zone and Democrats couldn't afford to chase every single outrage or nothing was going to sink in for the American people, Jeffreys
told them. According to a person in the room who requested an anemity to discuss the private meeting, Jeffreys urged members to focus their message on the cost of living along with border security and community safety. Quote. The House Republican Contract against America is an extreme plan that will not lower costs for everyday Americans, Jeffreys told reporters the next day, referring to the GOP agenda and spending cuts it is weighing. It will make our country more expensive. Congressman,
the House Republican Contract against America. That's a line from the nineteen ninety four midterms. If you're going to make a mistake, at least make a new one. Bottom line, Congressman, you are expected to do both of these things. If you want to emphasize kitchen table issues along with Trump's attempt to, you know, convert our form of government into a monarchy. Cool. Cool, I guess it won't hurt if you do the economy instead of the end of civilization as we know it. You get the f out. I'll
support primarying you. Hell, I'll primary you myself, even if it means I have to move to Coney Island. At least they got a nice minor league ballpark in Coney Island. As their confirmation hearings now begin. Tulsa Gabbard and Cash Bettel were referred to by Russian TV propagandists as our Tulsi and our Cash. And you somehow think you have to campaign only on the price of eggs because you couldn't successfully figure out how to campaign last year on
an anti dictatorship message. Get the f out of here. You are all on the brink of collaborating with the Nazis for the worst reason, because you're incompetent. Minority leader Jeffries, the cliff is feet in front of you. My advice is swerve. So here we are Republican stupidity versus democratic cowardice. I feel like singing the national anthem, and yet I still have hope our cowards will prevail over their morons,
because boy are they morons. You heard, of course, that the wording in this government employee buyout program is almost identical to the wording in Elon Musk's employee buyout program for when he bought, crashed, and burned Twitter quote. Upon review of the below deferred resignation letter. If you wish to resign one select reply to this email. You must reply from your government account. A reply from an account
other than your government account will not be accepted. To type the word resign into the body of this reply email hit send. Last day to accept the defird resignation program is February sex, twenty twenty five. Firstly, you you would accept a Trump buyout, a promise of money from Trump with his track record of stiffing employees on contractors, and as to this Muskian demand to unsubscribe from your job,
click this link. In other words, to resign. Press one to accept as buyout compensation a previously owned Tesla instead of money. Press two to join a general stripe to unseat the fascists. Press three. Also of interest here in this all new edition of Countdown, they are this close to drinking kool aid for Trump. A congresswoman, and you can take the break here to guess which one. There's only like sixteen of them now. A congresswoman, A stupid congresswoman.
Haven't narrowed it down at all. Have a stupid congresswoman has moved to add Trump to Mount Rushmore a bill in Congress to add Trump to Mount Rushmore. Unfortunately for her, her press release reads as if her bill says it's to put Trump's actual head on Mount Rushmore, which, come to think of it would be something we could all get behind. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Openman still ahead on an all new edition
of Countdown. I flashed back yesterday to the day I met Jim Thorpe's roommate at the nineteen twelve Olympics at a museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and that made me flash back to the day I met someone who knew someone who'd shaken the hand of Hitler. A lot of strange things happen when you're coming out of anesthesia. Also, this question related to all that, will we be playing
that handshake game someday with a current dictator? I'm not shaking your hand ahead on things I promised not to tell. Can't believe I shook this guy's freaking hand. First, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effets specimens constitute two days. Other worst persons in the world, the Bronze Worse, The Washington Post, Penny Saber and Hot Sex News.
Here's the new low and they find a new one daily under the British idiot they brought in to destroy the place. He's doing a great job. Anybody left, I don't mean anybody left for another paper. I'm just asking is there anybody left at the Washington Post? I mean I spoke to a reporter last week. I think he's still there. But it's been a week. This is the latest farce from what the Washington Post has become. It's
an illustration. On one side is Bobby Kennedy, you know, the man without pants who likes to masturbate on the phone or on FaceTime. Bobby Kennedy, who would be in charge of health and human services, as in ending health and denying human services. He's on the left and he's in a pink reason they made his picture pink. And then over here on the other side is the is looking right, Bobby's looking left. On the right side, it's Michelle Obama and she's looking to the right and she's
mostly blue. And in between there's a carrot, and what looks to be a radish, and either a strawberry or heart is in Michelle Obama's hair. And this is what this is the illustration for. Did RFK Junior or Michelle Obama say it about food? Take our quiz? Did democracy end in twenty seventeen or twenty twenty five? Take our quiz? Are you still reading the Washington Post? Or are you not seeing this? Take our quiz? Have we become collaborators with an evil empire that may or may not be
willing to leave office when its term is over? Take our quiz. I have a suggestion. Take your quiz and shove it. Washington Post runner up Lauren Bobert, still congresswoman from Colorado, from the particularly dumb place in Colorado where they sent all the dumb people. She's complaining that that's right, the minimum wage is too high that many of our youth have lost the apportunity to mander the workforce. Do the high minimum wage requirements seven dollars and twenty five
cents an hour? High taxes, insurance, and paid leave requirements are a few of many issues. As well paid leave requirements. Small business owners are unable to invest in first time workers, or provide them with skills training for their future. This was in response to a Thomas Massey tweet about how you shouldn't charge kids who are working taxes. Not an unreasonable suggestion from a lunatic like Thomas Massey, and then Bobert takes it completely somewhere else, which is kids should
not have to work for minimum wage. They should work for less manual labor, less than seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour, stacking boxes, digging trenches, whatever it is you want, working in shoe factories, whatever it is she has in mind for manual labor, manual labor. Because of course seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour, that's still the minimum wage. That would be more than
Lauren Bobert charges for manual labor. Think about it, but the winner worst another congresswoman who makes Lauren Bobert look like Geraldine Ferraro, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna. Real name Anna Meyerhoffer. Right, your arm is Mayor Hoffer. I've officially introduced legislation to put President Trump's face on Mount Rushmore. I swear to God,
this is actual, This is a real thing. His remarkable accomplishments for our country and the success he will continue to deliver, deserve the highest recognition and honor on this iconic national monument. Let's get at carving. I do like the imagery though, but let's get carving. So she has a picture of Trump and a picture of her, and that stupid pictures of her smile, that fake smile with
the fake lips and the fake face. And there it is the revised Mount Rushmore, Washington on the left, Jefferson looking over to the side, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and in front of them all Trump. Of course, Trump when he was like twenty eight years old. Breaking Representative Luna introduces legislation to carve President Trump on Mount Rushmore. See there's a problem with your language choice there, Congresswoman. You
want to carve President Trump on Mount Rushmore. Let's get carving, she says, is that does the Secret Service know about this? To put President Trump's face on Mount rush Race. See I can go along with miss Luna here. Actually she wants to carve Trump's face and stick it on Mount Rushmore. Well, I believe reading this, Anna Paulina Luna means his face. Let's go Anna, Paulina Luna, write your arm Missus Meyerhoffer
tick two days other worst person in the world. She was the number one story on the countdown, and things I promised not to tell on my way back from the endoscopy. I'm fine. Just as importantly, I didn't wake up during the endoscopy. Happily we did this once in two thousand and five. That will last me the rest
of my life. I'm fine. Thank you for asking. It was waytown in Manhattan, and it occurred to me that although I've been there now twice in the last week or so, I had not been passed the fabulous Frank Lloyd WRIGHTE. Guggenheim Museum on Upper Fifth Avenue relative to Manhattan anyway since nineteen eighty two. I've been there twice in a week, and just because it's a downtown street and I don't spend a lot of time uptown, and
it's passed the real museum row on Fifth Avenue. I'd been as north as by eighty ninth Street, something like that, but i'd never been as far as the Guggenheim for forty two and a half years, and I've been passed it twice in the last week, and it means only one thing to me. Oh, great art itself is great art. Frank Lloyd write all those stories the Guggenheim Museum means
to me Abel Kiviat. I'll explain able Kiviat, but I also want to say that because my mind was emptying the remainder of the sedations slash anesthesia, which was strong enough so that I didn't wake up during it. This time, I also thought of, for some reason, the Midpoint game. You ever played the midpoint game? Like, this event happened this far in my past? And if I double that, what happened? You know, if it's ten years ago, what
happened ten years ago? Exactly before that happened? What was that? The midpoint of relative is today? I think that's a fun game, and it popped into my head too, because strange things pop into your head as it's clearing, relatively speaking, and that led me, of course to the famous handshake game.
We'll leave that for last. Let me tell you about Abel Kiviat In the old days here in New York, the New York Marathon, which now features like I don't know, seventy five million people running on a Sunday as I've described it many times, the New York Marathon, your worst neighbor. They block all the streets, no matter where you go, they're running there. They made the whole thing more and
more intricate over the years. This started back in the old days, when there was no television, no radio, no publicity. CNN once sent a live truck, the only live truck they had to cover the start of the race on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and they got this great idea, this unbelievable new idea, the first one perhaps ever in cable television. Cover it live, but keep the truck moving because the signal will work from all points of the Verizona Narrows Bridge. You'll get a live, moving shot of
the start of the race. And they did it, and they were so proud of themselves. And then they forgot there was a toll booth and a low overhanging bridge across the toll booth, and live on television. CNN, in its first year, snapped its live truck's arm its mast
in half. Nobody was injured. Mary Alice Williams, who ran the New York bureau for CNN, kept the destroyed sort of knuckle of the mast in a frame on her office wall, or as long as I knew her working at CNN in New York in those old days, Yeah, they got so little publicity for the New York Marathon that they were happy to have the CNN truck drive in front of the runners two thousand runners maybe in the first ones in the early eighties, so happy to have them there that they were willing to risk the
runners lives because the guy driving the CNN truck did not think to stop at the toll booth. And I believe it was Mary Alice Williams's brother, but that may not be correct. I don't want to insult him. In any event, it was true that in those days, nobody cared about the New York Marathon unless nobody knew about the New York Marathon, and so they called us up
one day. The head, the founder of the New York Marathon, a little man named Fred Leebow, who ran with a bicycle racer's cap from the eighties, a little tiny baseball cap only shrunk to the head with the brim pushed upwards. He walked around with that all the time, and he was I forget from where somewhere in Europe and he had a little European accent and he ran the marathon. He is the founder of the marathon. I think there
is a statue to him, and it is deserved. He built it out of nothing, and he built it out of nothing. This way, I come back from a shoot at CNN in nineteen eighty two and there is a message for me, call Fred Libo at the New York City Marathon. It's like, okay, fine, we need a story. Maybe we can do something on the New York City Marathon. I'm the sports reporter. Why not. I call up the offices New York Roadrunners Club or whatever it was called, and I get this, This is the switchboard New York
road Runners Club. Hi, Fred Libo's office, please, CNN returning her call, speaking even though I called him her, he was operating the switchboard. Well, it turned out that he said, we're going to have an event at the Guggenheim Museum for this man, Able Kiviat, and he's not actually going to run in the nineteen eighty two New York Marathon, but he's going to be like our starter and he's going to run a little bit. Becase, because Able's ninety four years old, and I said, I know exactly who
he is. Oh I doct you know who he is? I said, he held like ten middle distance running records in this country. Is the top middle distance runner sprints and you know a thousand yards or whatever it was how they measured them in those days. How do you know that? I said, I have his his tobacco card they made. They used to make cards of great athletes. It was a set that had bowlers and golfers and Abel Kiviat in it, and it was one of my
favorite sets of cards. So I knew who he was, and I went, he's still alive, yes, and he's a pis a pisser. And that's the first time I think I ever heard that in publicity language. So we arranged to go meet Abel Kiviat at this event. No other television cameras were there, as I remember, and they sat me next to Able Kiviat for lunch, and he was, in fact, as Fred Liebo described him, a pisser was
Fred was not exaggerating. Abel talked like both my grandfather's and he was from somewhere in Queens and he said things like Tarty third Street and he was just marvelous, and he had a full head of hair, and he was shop as attack and he explained to me his history as a runner, and I was enthralled by it. A professional athlete from nineteen ten talking to me about the Olympics, while he was not officially professional, but you know what it was like then. This was marvelous to me.
This man had been on a baseball card, essentially a track and field card. But it was like meeting I don't know cy young Christy Matthewson, abel kiveat all of an era. At some point we started talking about Abele's role in the nineteen twelve Olympics, and he said, yeah, I was Jim Thorpe's roommate, And I went, you what probably the greatest natural athlete of all time in the most different sports track and field basically invented professional football,
basically popularized college football. He could kick, he could pass, he could block, he could receive. He sometimes did all these things in the same game. He also played pro baseball. He was also an actor, and he also achieved a modicum of success anyway in a society that completely denigrated the fact that he was a Native American, and he survived the forcible translation of him from a native American to a quote unquote modern American in the early twentieth century,
one of the great people in our history. And this was his roommate. So he says, Abel does in his wonderful way, sounding like both my grandfather is from the Bronx. He says, Yeah, we went over to England to pick up the team in a boat. Went big boat, I said, like a cruise ship. Yeah, we're in a cruise ship. And we get over there and we meet them in Liverpool and they come on board, and then we go to the Olympics and we're out there in the a
Sai Zephery. Was it Denmark? Was it Copenhagen? Was it Oslow? I forgot what we were. He's mentioned like four countries so far. But he's in there with them, and he says, the night before all the lords and ladies of England are there and all of our team and all of their team, and we're they're we're all in tusas. I had to borrow one. They had them on board this ship and we're having this this party, and sooner or later there's enough drink that every one of these athletes
decides they're gonna run up and grab this. They had this huge chandelier and I went, my god, he could be my grandfather. That's how both my grandfathers pronounced the word chandelier. And in fact, one of my grandfathers was named Charbonier. He pronounced it chabanir like that. He should have been Charbonnier, and it should have been chandelier chandelier.
They had this big chandelier and I don't know how high up that thing was, but it was huge, and the bottom rung, the bottom sparkler on this chandelier, I don't know, fifteen feet in the air off the ground, twenty feet. Well, the more we drink, the more we all start arguing which one of us can get up there and touch the bottom of this damn thing. And sure enough we try, and we put a hat down, and everybody puts in a dollar or a pound or
five Bye, I forget what it was. There's a lot of money in there for nineteen twelve, and all of a sudden, we're doing this on nobody touches. And these are the greatest athletes in the world, probably forty percent of the greatest athletes in the world, and we're all there and none of us come close to this damn thing. And now the door opens to this banquet, and in walks Thorp, and we hadn't even noticed, really thought, wasn't
there was a kind of a quiet guy. He's been out on shore drinking and he wobbles in and he looks at this, and he's wobbling past us, and he stops. He goes, hebe what's this? And I explained it to him, and he goes, how many of you have touched it? And I had to tell him none of us that touched it. And he said, you're kidding. How much is in the how much is in the hat? And we went through it was probably one hundred and fifty dollars. He says, hold on, He takes off his hat, hold
my hat for me. We're j Abel, hold my jacket. I can leave the vest on, but I'm gonna unbutton it, and he says. Abel Kivat says. Jim Thorpe takes three steps backwards and three steps forward and propels himself up in the air towards this chandelier and not only touches it on the first try in a suit, but grabs it and we think, no, Jim, you're gonna bring down the whole chandelier. We're all gonna get killed. The night before the Olympics starts, Jim knew just when to let go.
He falls gracefully to the ground, like you were showing a film backwards, lands almost in a bow. The hand that was just holding the chandelier sweeps down to the hat, picks it up, empties all the bills. He stuffs it in the pockets of his vest and his pants, asks me for on the night jacket and my hat, puts the hat on, takes it off and dofts it to everybody, and says, gentlemen, will see you in the morning, and
walks off. Abel Kiviat explained that Jim Thorpe could do anything in athletics or anything else if you just showed him once how to do it. He said he'd never been a high jumper, certainly not a stationary high junker, a high jumper, while inebriated, greatest athlete of all time. He could take that microphone out of your hand, and with a little practice, he could do a better job than you could. And I said, well, this is my second year on the job, so I have no doubt
anybody could do that. Ha ha, I like you, kid. So now Abele agrees to go the mandatory shot of the little old man running up Fifth Avenue and our cameraman, who coincidentally his grandfather had played for the New York
Yankees briefly in nineteen twelve, Danny Danny Marra. Danny stands out side and is expecting little old man, who still jogs, to just sort of slowly waw, we're making fun of the little Danny rolls and he's looking for a long shot some b roll and Abel takes one step and shoots past Danny so fast that Danny does not have time to swing the camera around. The next thing I know, Abel is crossing whatever it was eighty seventh Street onto the other side. I have to go after him and
bring him back. So now we rearrange the shot and able Kiveat runs in such a way that my cameraman shoots him going past us. I said, Abel still runs, and you see him take off, and the cameraman pans and then stops where I'm standing as Abel disappears into the distance. I said, he will not be running in this year's New York City Marathon on whatever the date was, which is good news for all of you who are
Keith Alerman, CNN New York. That's what I was reminded of in the ten seconds we passed the Guggenheim Museum on my way back from my endosc But that also, chandelieh, that brought me to the midpoint game. You ever played the midpoint game? Like the day I met Abel Caveat and heard about Jim Thorpe and what truly a great athlete he was was roughly forty two years and seven months ago. So what happened forty two years and seven months before that? You're applying that same timeframe to the
day I met him? How long ago is it since I met him? How long ago was it to this other event on the day I met him? So forty two years and seven months is roughly eighty five years ago. Forty two times two is eighty four and then seven and say, okay, nineteen forty maybe late nineteen thirty nine. Got a lot of World War Two vibes in those dates. And this is the second time this week that happened. Because I was texting with my friend Sam Rosen, my first boss the Hall of Fame, voice of the New
York Rangers hockey team. And we figured out that in six weeks or so, it will be exactly forty six years since he and I met, and he listened to my tape and he decided we should hire this idiot kid from Cornell at twenty and forty six years March nineteen seventy nine, forty six years at the midpoint game forty six years before March nineteen seventy nine was March nineteen thirty three, and it was almost exactly the day FDR was sworn in for his first term as president.
That's how long ago it really is that Sam Rosen and I met. That's how long ago it was that Abel Kiviat and I met. And then, of course, now we have two references to the Second World War in Hitler and I had to go off in that direction. Do you remember the Hitler handshake game on Twitter twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three, where people were, you know, trying to figure out how many hands stood between themselves and Hitler, Like, okay, Queen Elizabeth obviously met her uncle
Edward the seventh, and Edward the seventh met Hitler. I mean Queen Elizabeth at some point shook her uncle's hand, and Edward the Seventh shook Hitler's hand. So Queen Elizabeth, on this scale of how many people between you and Hitler is a one, the one being her uncle Edward the Seventh. But if you met Queen Elizabeth, she's standing between you and her uncle, and her uncle met Hitler, so that would be two people between you and Hitler.
You are a two on this scale. It's not limited to meeting the Queen of England, though, because on March eighth, talk about anniversaries nineteen thirty eight, Herbert Hoover, former President of the United States, met Hitler forty minutes conversation and dinner. Can't imagine how much fun either of those things was.
On the eighth of August nineteen fifty nine, and Herbert Hoover went to the Yankees Cleveland then Indians game Yankee Stadium, and they were holding Old Timer's Day where he met Baseball Greats Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Joe DiMaggio, and where Hoover threw out the first pitch. So Bob Feller and Joe DiMaggio met Hoover, who met Hitler so
Feller and DiMaggio were each ones in this morbid game. However, if you met Bob Feller, and there was a point in this country where Bob Feller made so many personal appearances that the odds were like six to five in favor of you meeting Bob Feller and getting an autograph from him, the old joke was the scarcest Bob Feller item is an unautographed Bob Feller baseball. If you met Bob Feller, you would also be a two. It would be you, Bob Feller, Herbert Hoover Hitler two between you
and Hitler. Same thing for DiMaggio. Well I met, I met Feller, so I would be at two. Except it continues this way. Orson Wells met Hitler. Orson Wells knew Joseph Cotton very well, and he knew my friend Norman Lloyd very well. They worked together, and my friend Gil Stratton they met a couple of times. Gil Stratton interviewed him, so they shook hands with Wells, who shook hands with Hitler. So they were ones on this. And I knew Gil
and Norman and Joseph Cotton. I shook all their hands, so I would be a two, so try to top that. See what you are, and of course you want to be like a seventy four. You don't want to be a two, and you certainly don't want to be a one. And oddly enough, on a last note or next to
last note here, I'm a one with On Frank. Can you believe that I knew a man very well, Peter Lesally, the great late TV talk show producer, executive producer, inspiration for David Letterman, the man who got Johnny Carson to the extra heights that nobody ever thought he'd really achieve to immortality in that field, and then worked with Letterman, and then worked with Craig Ferguson, and then took me out to dinner once because he was a huge fan
of mine. Peter Lesali kind of casually just sort of threw out that he grew up going to school with Anne Frank. Yeah, we're in the same class. Knew I knew her brother. I think a little better, but yeah, Peter Lesali, I shook his hand one on the on Fronk scoreboard, which circles us back to the thought that, of course, if we're playing the Hitler handshake game on Twitter and other social media and other variations of that,
and other midpoints of that. Will we someday be playing the Trump handshake game, in which case, unfortunately, if you have met me, you are a one on the Trump handshake gap. And the codicilt to that is always remember to wash your goddamned hands. You never know where that hand you just shook has been. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening, especially to this last part. May all your handshakes be unaffected
by infamy. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors who Countdown, have had nothing to do with this last segment, but they arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboard words. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my friend, Larry David. Everything else was, as ever my fault, especially the part about the handshakes. That's countdown for today, just and fifty two days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term.
The next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always Bolton's, as the news warrants remember in peach trumpet will not work now it will win the Democrats the midterms. Until next time, I'm Keith Oldraman good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.