KAMALA WIPES OUT TRUMP LEADS IN SWING STATES - 7.31.24

In these polls by Morning Consult for Bloomberg News, Harris forty eight Trump forty seven, or as Bloomberg headlined it, quote Harris erases Trump's swing state lead, but Ma Nate sil Robert tells me Harris only has a thirty eight percent chance of winning. Well Son Nate Silver is full of shit. I'll get back to that. I'll get back

to him. I'll get back to why the majority of political news organizations are dismissing Harris and all the pro Harris polls, and since she replaced President Biden, they've basically all been pro Harris poles. And I'll get back to the theory of commentary and political election forecasting as it was explained to me forty years ago, and the other theory that political reporting must be like Shakespearean acting. Don't you dare try anything thought of newer than the year

eighteen twenty seven. But first, I'd like to point out that there are startling differences between some of these state polls and the ones. Say Fox News published just Sunday, Bloomberg Morning Consult has her ahead by eleven in miss Michigan, Fox had her tied. In Michigan, Fox had her tied. In Pennsylvania, Bloomberg Morning Consult has her behind by four. A Pennsylvania based polster, Susquehanna, came out yesterday with Harris

ahead in Pennsylvania by four. There were also two new national polls yesterday, IPSOS doing one for the Bipartisan Veterans Lobbying Group with Honor Action Harris thirty eight, Trump thirty eight, Kennedy four. And you have the famous Redfield pole, which was Trump head of Biden by one and is now Harris ahead of Trump by two. And I'm going to place no value on it because A it's based in London, and B it's Redfield, which sounds like Renfield. And if

it's the Renfield Pole. Then it's a pole of Dracula's henchman, so naturally it will lean Trump. Seriously, there are lots of labyrinthine explanations about the variability of the numbers from pole to pole, especially since these are done of registered voters, But the real explanation is a lot simpler than it would seem. Early this afternoon, Wednesday afternoon, the thirty first Kamala Harris's presidential campaign turns ten days old. Lots of people who have lost lots of elections by lots of

votes dismissed the polls by saying, well, it's early. But if ever it were literally true that it's early, it's right now. It's early. As I said the other day, there are millions of Americans who literally do not know that Kamala Harris and not Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Millions. The poll numbers are all over the place, and incidentally, the direction is not. Those Bloomberg swing state numbers had Trump favored

over Biden on the economy by fourteen points. Harris has cut this to eight points in the new Bloomberg numbers. Almost two thirds of black voters in these swing states said they were now more likely to vote in November than they had been. More than one third of all voters in the swing states said that. However, the first five hundred and fifty words of the axios Am newsletter yesterday were entirely about Trump's cabinet choices and such amazingly tone def do you guys read the room? Do you

guys even know there is a room? Sentences like this one. Sources said jd Vance would be very involved with planning Trump's transition the high stakes period between election day and the inauguration, as if jd Vance were not hanging on to his VP nomination by an eyelash, an eyelash with eyeliner on it. Meanwhile, the first one and twenty six words of the Politico Morning briefing yesterday, so it was

twice as wrong. They were entirely about Trump's attack ad onslaught, and they included sentences like this bit of well warring quote. Trump insiders aren't fretting, far from it, According to our conversations last night with senior GOP officials, who remained confident that the sheen surrounding Harris will soon fade and their attacks on her record will sink in with critical swing voters.

And of course there's that Nate Silver thing I mentioned before, in which he presents a reasonable assessment of the state of the poll of polls Trump forty four and a half, Harris forty four and a tenth, Kennedy down to five percent. But then he explains that his formula shows Trump still has a sixty one point three percent chance of winning the electoral College. And that's the essence of it. The word his, it's Axios's sources, it's Politico's insiders, it's Nate

Silver's formula. The essence of running a name brand political website, especially an electoral forecast website, is to make sure that they are your sources and your formulae and your forecast, and nobody else's. This stands out now in the news business, it looks stupid. It didn't used to stand up. This

is the way it used to be. When I first started at NBC News, I went on the brand new Internet to read what the hell the Washington Post had to say about this latest minuscule development in the Clinton Lewinsky investigations that we were about to do another hour about live and so I quoted them, and I then went over to the New York Times website and I waited for its twice daily update so I could print

out their story and quote them. And the next day I had three NBC News vice presidents on the phone with me tell me I could never do that again. I could only use NBC reporting on that story. And I said there wasn't any NBC reporting on that story. She was off that night, and they said, well, then you can't do the story. So I said, the executive producer chose it as the lead story and built the graphics, and boy were they stumped. But we can't trust their sources.

One of them said, I was appalled. You can't trust the Washington Posts and New York Times sources on this story. Our four people on this are better than their forty each. I should rely on Lisa Myers, who was wrong three times last week and was off yesterday. They actually deferred to me on that one, mostly because my show was making them money, which was a first for MSN. But the remnants of this idea, well, you can't quote CBS

on NBC. This still exists in political news and electoral forecasting because you never have to identify your own sources nor explain your own formula. But you can blame your own sources and your own formula. You can claim unseen events caused your source to be wrong, or uh your formula to inaccurately self tweak or twerk. Theoretically, though I don't think this is true. You don't even have to have sources or a formula. You could have just made it up. The goal isn't accurate news at Politico or

Axios or Nate Silver's website. Do you remember what Axios or Politico reported a month ago about Trump maybe active, the assassination attempt, about Biden and how he was going to stay in no matter what, do you really remember Nate Silver's numbers on the midterms. The goal is brand awareness without you actually remembering any of the ugly details.

And in the more mainstream organizations, there is something else that continues to be in play, the cubby hole system, a political coverage of which I've spoken a thousand times. Harris looks to maintain momentum as honeymoon phase winds down. New York Times headline from yesterday before the Bloomberg Swing state polling a few hours later before the selection of the vice presidential candidate, which is a honeymoon phase, and

before the Democratic Convention, which is another honeymoon phase. Oh no, no, no no. Harris looks to maintain momentum as honey moon phase lines down. It's almost August. It's on the calendar. It's called the Pooh Pooh method. History says X will happen now. Therefore, my prediction is X. The problem arises when nothing in history happens to match the current situation, in which case you try to jam the current situation into the history cubbyhole, whether it fits or not. The

entirety of the Trump presidency was viewed this way. Remember that Washington Post column, We'll be all right no matter who gets elected. The entirety of the Trump post presidency was viewed this way. That twenty twenty three Trump campaign was viewed this way. The assassination attempt, Man goddamn Jones is still expecting a pivot right now. It just has to happen. It just has to it, says it here in the history of predictions, we have always been at

war with East Asia. This brings me back to those two theories that I learned so very long ago. The Royal Shakespeare Company presents the brand new eighteen twenty seven

season of performances. This is a very simple one. It is a theory that suggests that other than the real attempts to go outside the narrative in which you're playing Julius Caesar but it happened in nineteen sixty six, or it's Hamlet in Brooklyn, if you're not going completely overboard in terms of setting, if you're actually trying to present the play in the original setting in Hamlet's Denmark, in King Lear's country, if you're supposed to do it the

way Shakespeare had it set up. If you try to do something that William Charles McCready wouldn't have done in eighteen thirty, goddamn you to hell. The theory is that all of the great Shakespearean actors, particularly of the twentieth century, were simply doing impression of the great Shakespearean actors of the nineteenth century. That anybody who tried anything really different got thrown out on his ass. And thus it is with political reporting. Oh, presidents have always mellowed in office.

There won't be any ban, there won't be any attempt to stay in office. We've always had a peaceful transition of power, which, by the way, was never true, but we've decided to pretend it year after year after year. And somebody in the back goes, what about eighteen sixty, How peaceful was that? Try it? And the next thing you know, somebody's thrown a bag over his head and

smuggled them out. The other part, of course, is the nineteen eighty five theory, and I'm the only one who calls it that, but it sounds pretty damn good, the

nineteen eighty five theory. I got to work in local television the year before that and changed jobs, and I'm going to not mention this, and not mention the guy who told me this, who I had immense respect for and is no longer alive and can't defend himself, and gave me a thousand good pieces of advice, and this one really crappy piece of advice he did not long after my arrival at his station. He did a heartfelt

commentary on terrorists. There was a terrorist act in which a group of terrorists took over a cruise ship and pushed a man, a passenger who was in a wheelchair off the cruise ship to show that they were serious. Obviously, if you're going to do a commentary about this, you're going to come out against that. Very few television commentators, even in an unusual market like Los Angeles, would come out in favor of pushing a man who was in

a wheelchair off the deck of a cruise ship. Nevertheless, his commentary that night was exactly about this and how horrible terrorism was and how wrong they were to do this to this man. I believe the ship was called the Achille laure but I may have that wrong. The Achille Laurel may have been the thing that sank in the fifties. I can never keep ships straight. It's not

Titanic in any event. Without my even asking him about it, I asked how often he did commentaries, and he said very rarely, because the goal of a commentary is to make sure that you never do a commentary that anybody disagrees with. I could feel lunch coming up my throat. Never do a commentary anybody disagrees with. No, if you do a commentary and it's controversial and fifty percent of the people listening don't agree with you, you've lost half

your audience. And I thought, well, all right, He didn't skip math class. He's right about that. Go on, you must make sure you don't get into this trap. It's very very enticing to go out there and say something bold and provocative. And I thought, what could you say bold and prorocative about or provocative in English? What could you say about the horrors of pushing a man in a wheelchair off the deck of a ship? What could you say that might be provocative and get people angry

about it? Like, you know, at least it was a good sounding splash. I mean, what could you what could you possibly No, don't answer it. I don't want to know what you're thinking. But he explained that if he lost half the audience on this commentary, I suppose by coming out in favor of terrorism, and then he did another commentary that half the people agreed with, he'd be down to one quarter of his audience, and then twelve and a half percent, and soon he would just be

talking to me. That man's name was Chuck Todd. No, it was not. Chuck Todd was just a boy at that point, and still is. I did not think very favorably about news commentary after that, and I swore to myself, swore to myself that I would never follow up on a kind of vague, unclear dream in the back of my head someday not only do the news, but do news commentary. I would never in my life do that, and thank god, I have never done news or news commentary.

Let me blow through a couple of other headlines here Olverman does news commentary. Reuters is reporting that the Vice president is going to announce her vice presidential pick as early as Monday, before she begins a multi state battleground tour with the running mate later in the week. Two sources quota Reuters the high stakes decision on who will run blah blah blah blah blah. Harris will announce your vice presidentill pick before next week's tour of states that

could swing to Republicans or Democrats in November. One of the sources said, I have no idea. I have no idea who it is. Does give you a sense of timing. There is, after all, the convention coming up, and the printing of ballots and various legal requirements for a vice president to be named a date which JD. Vance could tell you off the top of his head in every state of the Union. I like tim Walls, the governor

of Minnesota. I worry about giving back some of the youth thing, since you know, he looks like Rupert Murdoch. Now if you changed his glasses, he might not look like Rupert Murdoch anymore. I'm not kidding. Worlds have turned on things like what kind of frames a guy is wearing? Polling Among them, Democrats repeatedly favors Pete footage edge. There is the possibility that you are overfilling the let's break

all the boundaries at once bag. In doing that, A lot of people see Mark Kelly and say astronaut and say and I like this idea a lot. He has an identical twin brother. How would you know that you didn't have two vice presidents? And I say, have you ever heard either of them speak in public? We need a rousing campaigner here. Shapiro, who just dropped an s bomb out on the campaign trail yesterday, qualifies, absolutely, Waltz

certainly qualifies. But just keep thinking. If you're gonna go with tim Ah, could could could we get Dvance to loan? Could we get jd Vance to loan some of his just for men? Maybe just just don't give back all of the youth that Kamala had Harris represents. Speaking of Kamala Harris, boy oh boy, Trump sure has those great political instincts going. He's doubled down on the idea that Kamala Harris, married to a Jewish Man, hates the Jews. ABC.

Former President Trump, in an interview on Tuesday, claimed Harris, who is married to a Jewish man, quote, doesn't like Jewish people, and seem to agree. He agreed with a radio host who called Doug M Hoff quote a crappy Jew. I think, from an advertising point of view, that perhaps you want to have of, say several million dollars invested in billboards that simply read Trump quote a crappy Jew and offer no context, no explanation as to who he is calling a crappy Jew. Trump calls him a quote

crappy jew unquote. See how far Trump gets at that point. But he went on WABC rate in New York yesterday, formerly one of the great radio stations of all time. I have worked there, and now the place where they still hope Rush Limbaugh will come back from the dead and be better than some of their other hosts, like this idiot Sid Rosenberg. Trump said that Harris looked uncomfortable while she met with Benjamin and Yahoo last week. You can see the disdain. He said. He doesn't know what

the word disdain means. Number One, she doesn't like Israel. Number two, she didn't like Jewish people. You know it, I know it. Everybody knows it. Nobody wants to say it. Every time Trump refers to everybody knows it, it means he's had more conversations with the invisible people who exist only in his head. I'm right. Don't you all agree with me? See I told you they all agreed with me. Wooo,

weird is a compliment for Donald Trump. Trump continued of Harris, she disliked Jewish people and Israel even more than Biden did. This host Rosenberg used to be a sportscaster. I'm not holding that against him. Used to be a bad sportscaster. I am holding that against him. He said Venus and Serena Williams were animals. He said they should be posing in a magazine, not Playboy but National Geographic. That's who Sid Rosenberg is. Scum bag. On a good day, he's

a scumbag. So then they had this dialogue. He in Rosenberg Rosenberg says he's Jewish, like Bernie Sanders is Jewish. Are you kidding me? Trump says, yeh. Rosenberg says he's a crappy jew. Yeah, Trump said again. Rosenberg goes on saying of em Hoff, he's a horrible jew. Trump says, yeah, I don't know. I think you could get somewhere just

this and that. Testimony from nineteen ninety from the late missus near the first t Trump, who testified that he kept a copy of Hitler's speeches on a nightstand next to his bed, and there was a big argument. Trump wanted to make sure that you knew that it was not mind. COMF, No, I didn't have mine. COMF, did you have another Hitler book? No comment? Then he explained that he was given the book by somebody who was Jewish. I just think you might be able to do more

with this. Donald Trump is an anti Semite. Donald Trump is a racist. Why are we not doing more with this? Especially since this subject might be of some importance to the new nominee for president and her husband. Last headline, I'm beginning to think, as a veteran follower of the New York Mets baseball team that jd Vance, Trump's vice presidential nominee. Wait, let me check, yes, still a based

presidential nominee. Okay, jd Vance. Watching him implode is like watching the general manager of the New York Mets self destruct. And we've had a bunch of them turned out. This whole thing he's denying about. Oh, I was just having some fun by calling Democratic women who didn't have children cat ladies. He fundraised off that while running for Senate, and Media Matters found three more Fox interviews late in July and early in August of twenty twenty one in

which he went after Democrats were being childless. Let me just quote them. Vance claim during those appearances that the Left has effectively been taken over by a lot of childless, childless people, childish people, well, we're guilty of that obviously, but childless people ensuring that the Democratic Party is quote dominated by a bunch of sociopaths who don't care about America's children, and told Kamala Harris, AOC and so forth

to have your own kids and layoff of mine. The night after he attacked Democratic childless cat ladies on Tucker Carlson Show. Remember Tucker Carlson, Vance returned to Fox and told Tammy Bruce that he was quote sick of these bureaucrats experimenting on my children by requiring kids to be vaccinated against COVID nineteen and recommending masking in schools. There was one other observation I will leave you with on

the subject of JD. Vance before he disappears, and he has some sort of personal issue like Trump threatened to kill him or something. All those childless keep saying childish, childish, childless cat ladies, all of them that he has insulted. You know who's childless? Ginny Thomas is childless. What's her husband doing again? Let's the ohh on that's writer. Her husband is the corrupt Supreme Court justice. That's right, She's a childish, childish cat lady, according to JD Vance. Bye,

JD have a nice time. Hey. I understand the Mets will be looking for a general manager next year. Also of interest here, I do not mind the National Association of Black Journalists interviewing Trump on stage in Chicago, even though he's also a white supremacist who believes there are quote black jobs unquote. What I mind is them not

having a journalist interview Trump. What kind of journalism is there in having moderate the panel, a person who is paid to fluff for fascism on national television every day. A Trump student huge is going to interview Trump at the NABJ convention, a biased, unsalvageable apologist for Trump. This is a terribly ironic thing for me to say, I can abide Trump being there. I cannot accept Harris fing

Faulkner being there. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oboman still ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. It is hard to believe that on Friday, it will have been forty five years since the captain of the New York Yankees baseball team was killed piloting his own, our own private plane, taking lessons for it at an airport in Ohio. And in those days when there was not yet an Internet, there was not yet

an ESPN, there was not yet even a CNN. There were about eight prominent national radio networks covering the story in real time. The TV networks that would have were not on the air. The sportscaster on one of those radio networks was a rookie who had been in the business for about eight days and had to figure out how to cover this extraordinary story. The rookie was me. That's coming up in things I promised not to tell first,

there's still more idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. And we start with honorary mention me. If you listened early yesterday, say before eight am Eastern time, you heard the show begin with the theme and then me doing this and then starting the theme again. Now this happens, I cough. I will confess to having coughed throughout my lifetime. Yes

it's true. JD Vance, I'm a cougher. But what I normally do is stop the recording and start a new one. And for some reason I did not stop the recording. I simply kept recording. And so when it came time for me to edit the show together, I took the first take and played the whole thing, So you heard what I just recreated for you. This was indicative of the fact that I have something going on as usual chest wise, and it's just summer, and you know, climate

change and pollution and age mostly age. So I apologize. We'll try to have heard any of that in the future. I just talked like this much easier in my voice anyway. That's why this one has been a little more disjointed and less prepared. Of course, they're a little bit more fun when they're less prepared, because I don't pre edit.

For instance, the Bronze Matt Gates. Matt Gates has now written about the Venezuelan quote election unquote, and what he doesn't understand is that we're all pretty much in agreement here. Maduro lost and is trying to stay in power. And yet Matt Gates writes, Maduro lost the election in Venezuela badly, then simply declared victory anyway. He is an illegitimate dictator. Now, I don't mean to tell mister Gates his business. Who am I kidding? That's all I've done professionally since nineteen

seventy nine is to tell other people their business. Matt Gates, who supported Donald Trump losing the election in the United States badly not four years ago, then simply declared victory anyway and tried to be an illegitimate dictator. When he writes the same thing of Maduro, Matt are you four or against? You're against this, Matt Gates. I mean it's like Matt Gates suddenly declared himself being against botox or well, botox overdoses, Botox overdoses just before you're supposed to go

on stage and speak at the Republican National Convention. I owah oh, I'm uh gret uh Clara any day now talk about starting a show with a random cough. My god, runner up once again Florida would be Congresswoman Laura Lumer Trump's favorite crazy person from Florida, and god knows, there's only about a thousand in the competition for it. She put out on Twitter, scoop, I hear that a black trans doctor will be performing an abortion on a white woman live on stage at the DNC convention in Chicago

this August. Now. Lumer has in the past posted a series of conspiracy theories, mostly about mash shootings. She said that the school shooting at Parkland, Florida, in twenty eighteen, and the one a few months later in Texas at Santa Fe were staged. That the twenty seventeen Las Vegas shootings at the music concert was an ISIS guy, she claimed on Twitter, that there were crisis actors used at

the Santa Fe, Texas school shooting. She said that the man arrested in South Dakota with bomb making equipment was a Antifa terrorist. In fact, he was a conservative who despised Antifa and liberals. Laura luma are also reported there the nineteen or the twenty eighteen male bombing attempts, the magabomber Sezar Sayak was a false flag operation orchestrated by Democrats.

You remember, Saysar Sayak. He was the guy who had a van, every inch of which was covered with a Trump sticker of some kind, and he mailed pipe bombs to various Trump critics. And about a year later, when they opened up his computer and finished processing it and seeing if there were more things to send him to prison to life for, they found his second wave list of targets and I was on the second wave of targets.

So this is what she's done before. She also accused Casey DeSantis, when Ron Desantris was running against Trump for the Republican nomination, of exaggerating her breast cancer in hopes that that would somehow get her husband more votes somehow. So that's who Laura Lumer has been and she posted that the black trans doctor would have performed an abortion on a white woman live on stage at the DNC in Chicago scoop with the little red sirens attached to

it an hour and a half after that. It's very telling as well as scary, that a joke can be confused as an actual possibility for what the Democrats would do. No, that's not what happened. It's what's scary and telling here is that Laura Lumer could say something that she thought would be too ridiculous to be taken seriously, and everybody else said, well, that ranks about b B minus on her list of insane things and conspiracies that she's attempted

to foist on the American public. Either because she hates the truth, she hates reality, she's willing to sell out reality to try to gain cash or whatever it is she does this for, or she's so crazy that she believes all of this crap, particularly about places like Parkland and Las Vegas, that when she said this about an a live abortion, that the DNC people went, now, that's that Lumer, all right, that's what's wrong here. That's what's

telling and scary Laura Lumer go to hell, but our winners. NABJ, the National Association of Black Journalists, which as I record this, is still planning to host Trump in a live interview format event at its annual conference in Chicago today. I honor the NABJ and its history. It has done great work in a business and when I started in it.

Referring back to what I said earlier about what it was like forty five years ago this Friday, there were no black people at that radio network that I worked at, Not in New York anyway. I'm not sure about the other places. I used to point this out to people and they would say, what's the difference. It's a telling truth about the business at its most successful stages, that it was widely known that your employer was probably prejudiced

and happily for you you were a white guy. So I honor the nab and what it did then and what it does now. It has done great work. It should be supported. My old colleague Jamel Hill from ESPN is right. Being questioned by journalists is part of the job, at especially important in the company of black journalists. She notes other presidents and presidential candidates who have gone inside this very same form with NABJ panels at its conventions

during election years. But there is a detail that Jammel has left out. The NABJ is committing suicide. Because Karen Attia is also right. She is a columnist for the Washington Post. She was co chair of the convention until this happened. They only announced it Monday night. I have decided to step down as co chair from this year's NABJ twenty four convention in Chicago. To the journalists interviewing Trump,

I wish them the best of luck. While my decision was influenced by a variety of factors, she says, I was not involved or consulted with in any way with the decision to platform Trump in such a format. Well there's your problem right there. If you have to keep this a secret from the co chair of your annual convention, you may be doing something really, really stupid. Because Arion Nettles is also right. She's the author of We Are

the Culture Black Chicago's influence on everything. She wrote, Not a single black media organization is represented in the panel of the moderators for this event. There are going to be three reporters or three two reporters and somebody else on stage with Trump. The conversation is to be moderated by Rachel Scott, a very fine reporter for ABC News, Kadia Gooba of Semaphore, who I do not know, and Harris Faulkner of Fox News. I guess because they could

not get Judge Piro there. Judge Janine Piro could not make it to the nab BJ fast enough, so they took her back up Harris Faulkner, as ms Nettles writes, not even any black orgs on top of everything, So please don't claim to give opportunities to anyone but those who would already have them. And most importantly, the NABJ is on this list because Harris Faulkner is involved in this.

She is not a journalist. She appears on a Trump propaganda channel, a Rupert Murdoch run white supremacist propagandist channel. It is there only to support Trump and to acquiesce to whatever kind of world Trump chooses for everybody, but particularly for members of minority groups. And everything contained in the NABJ, black and journalists, especially the B and the J in its initials in its acronym, are things Trump

would like to see in prisoned. So do not tell me that Harris Faulkner, who is a sycophant an echo chamber for Donald Trump, is a journalist involved in interviewing Donald Trump, perhaps a stenographer, more likely, somebody to simply stare at him earnestly and nod carefully and energetically. She is a Trump apologist. She is a flunky. She is the personification of a propaganda channel. D nabj I think has two choices here. Cancel the event or do the

smart thing here. Don't get rid of Trump. Take Trump out there and cut him to little Trump pieces, journalistically, take him apart, Rachel Scott, take him apart, please, miss Goba of Semaphore. But get Faulkner out of this. I'm suspecting, and I know nothing of this, but I'm suspecting when I see the name Trump and Harris Faulkner together, that Harris Faulkner is the reason Trump is doing this. Get her off the stage, put a real journalist out there

instead of her from as ms Nettle's. Put it a black media organization, and I don't care if it's some high school student from Chicago. They'd be much more credible as a journalist than Harris goddamned Faulkner. It's like having Sean Hannity out there. You've got to do one of

these two things here. Cancel the event or cancel Harris Faulkner, because your third option is to destroy all of your own credibility for the sake of Donald Trump, a racist and Harris Faulkner, an apologist for a racist National Association of Black Journalists. It's not too late to steer out of this skid today's worst persons in the world. August second, nineteen seventy nine is now forty three years ago. And if I sound incredulous about that, it's because I'm incredulous

about that. A certain part of me is always living back there on August second, nineteen seventy nine, and the rest of that day is seared into my memory like my name and address. One month earlier to the day, July second, nineteen seventy nine, I had been in the stands in my family seats back of first base at Yankee Stadium in New York, a twenty year old Yankees fan, applauding Thurman Munson's RBI double and Lou Panelo's two for four day and Roy White's appearance. Since Roy White was

my mother's favorite Yankee player, but months in particularly. He had been playing for the Yankees since I was nine. I was now twenty, thus more than half my life now. On August second, nineteen seventy nine, I was finishing the first month of my professional broadcasting career. It was my seventh or eighth solo shift anywhere for money. I was the nighttime sportscaster of United Press Internationals Radio Network one

thousand stations worldwide known as UPI Audio. For my first sportscast of the night due to go at five forty five PM, I had long since finished my script. Tom Watson was leading Round one of the PGA golf in Michigan. The lawyer who owned Washington of the NFL, Edward Bennett Williams. He had just bought the Baltimore Orioles. There was an exposed Cubs matinee a baseball game in Montreal that prevailed

through three rain delays. It was just about five forty three pm Eastern time, and I was making the short walk from the little sports cubby hole to the little main on air studio in UPI world headquarters in the Daily News Building, or if you saw the movie the Superman building on forty second Street in Manhattan. I was just walking past the bank of thermal printers, each making their sluggish, muted honking sound as they slowly printed stories

out onto what wasn't really paper. There was the main UPI wire, the UPI Sportswire, the UPI Business Wire, the UPI International Wire, the UPI Radio wire, several internal message wires via which the UPI bureaus around the world could communicate with headquarters in New York, or as it was abbreviated NX. Those message wires were the nineteen seventy nine

equivalent of texting. As I got within a foot of these machines, one of them made a noise I had never heard before, a series of ten really loud bells. As I moved over to see what the hell they could mean, the news editor, Frank Rayfield, came over to check as well. We saw the words simultaneously. We gasped simultaneously. Cleveland Bureau to NX, Sturman Munson Catcher, Captain New York Game, He's dead piloting private plane Canton Akron Airport, thirty still

it stuns me to read those words aloud. As soon as they finished printing, Cleveland sent it again. The bells went off again. I could see I now had about a minute until I went on the air. The editor pointed this out to me, you'll have to add lib the sports cast. Then come out here and do a voicer just talk about his career, keep repeating that it's a bulletin, that he's dead, and that he was piloting a private plane. You know anything about him and planes?

And I remember saying, oh God, I do. And he said, we'll use whatever you think fits. If more details come in, I'll bring them into you. I'll try to get somebody at the airport for some sound. I don't remember anything of what I said on the air that night, nor in the special report the voicer the editor had had me record. As soon as I finished that live sportscast, it was all recorded. I never wanted to hear any of it. I never wanted to keep any of it.

I have basically the rest of my career on tape. But I knew my youth was over right then. Thurman Munson had joined the Yankees when I was nine years old. Literally more than half my life ago. He was the first good rookie I ever saw added to my team. My family was convinced he looked like my mother's cousin Billy. I met him a couple of times, had photographed him once, interviewed him once. He was gruff and forbidding, but I

had never had a problem with him. What I knew about him and his plane I spoke of as generically as possible. In my mind. I flashed back to lunch in the press room at Yankee Stadium four months earlier, when I was still in college with my friend Rick Sarone, the editor, not the catcher Munson, Rick said, almost surreptitiously, leaning in toward me over the little table. Munson is flying his own plane back home to Ohio on like

every day off. If the Yankees are terrified he's not as good a pilot as he thinks he is, honest to God, one of the executives is trying to get George, that would be George Steinbrenner, the owner, to trade him to Cleveland, just so he'll get out of the damn plane. They're all terrified he might wind up killing himself. I don't know how many special reports I did forty three years ago today, in addition to a new sports cast

every hour. Later, a friend of mine from college who didn't even know I'd gotten the job as a sportscaster. I was so new there, told me he was driving in Buffalo listening to the all news station on the radio. He heard them say Munson had been killed, and with more here's Keith Olderman in New York. And he said he almost drove off the road because of the double shock. And I do know my boss, Sam Rosen, who did the morning shift and would have only gotten home from

it around one or two pm. He came back into the office to supervise things and to put together a long memorial special to feed that the thousand stations that used our stuff would all use. I was so glad to see Sam that day. And then he handed me a piece of paper. Those are the home phone numbers for Loop and Ella and Roy White. Call them, try to do interviews. Be gentle record first, ask later like Munson they had played in that game a month before.

Really was my last as a fan. Roy White had been with the Yankees since I was six years old. Lou p Andella answered his phone and somehow I asked him if he would talk to me for two minutes, and he did, and almost immediately he burst into tears. There was such raw, immediate, brutal pain in his voice. I did the only thing I could think of. I said, listen, you shouldn't have to do this all night. I will make copies of this interview and give it to the

other radio networks so they will leave you alone. And only then did I think to ask my boss Sam, who by the way, still does the New York Rangers games on TV, if that was okay, and mercifully, Sam said, it was a great idea. When I called Roy White, and Roy White was literally on the Yankees the day I became a Yankee fan, he begged me to tell him that they had discovered some kind of a mistake that Thurman Munson was not dead. Both he and Panela

were blunt, but gentle and courteous. And I did make copies of the interviews, and I can see myself handing a cassette to a guy from NBC Radio named Mike Lebenthal, who ran a kind of cartel, almost a black market among New York radio sports reporters. Those interviews the parts with Panela and White, not me, were all over radio that day. I also remember discovering, after three or four hours of literally working non stop, that I had never

really known what that meant before. I remember I was supposed to be done at eleven PM, that was the end of the shift, but I stayed until one am, and I just rarely made the train, the last one of the night back to my house. I remember my boss Sam Rosen talking to our stringer in San Francisco, fellow named Rob Navius, and he said, they're killing my team. I should go to Mexico and smoke myself blind. The things you remember at a time of stress and tragedy.

In my youthful misunderstanding of how these things worked, I found myself coming back to the thought that I had somehow failed Thurman Monthson by not telling somebody about that Yankee fear from April that he was not as good a pilot as he thought he was, Although even then I asked myself, who were you going to tell? There are two postscripts to my story of the twenty year

old me covering the night Thurman months and died. Twenty years later, I was hosting Baseball's Game of the Week on Fox, and I asked by producer what we were doing for the monthson anniversary. He asked what anniversary. He was younger than I was. I had to explain it to him. Even then, you want to write something we can pre produce, like a minute and a half. Minute and a half. I did it, didn't think much of it.

A couple of years later, I was one of the public address announcers at Old Timers Day at Yankee Stadium, invited by the PR director Rick Sarone Sam Rick Seron, who in April nineteen seventy nine told me about Munson and the private planes and the Yankees fears. It is a small world. The twenty fifth anniversary of Thurman Munson's death was just days away. His widow, Diane was there. We had never met. Then she saw me on the

field and raced up to me and hugged me. That piece you did on him on the Game of the Week, when was it five years ago? That was the best memorial I've ever seen to Thurman. We both cheered up. I couldn't believe she said that. I told her about that night in nineteen seventy nine, what had been like for me, I said, I knew it was almost insulting to tell her, but I thought it was important somehow

to share. She hugged me again. It was deeply moving, and it is still The other PostScript I only learned of last year. For forever, and the coincidence here with my friend and former boss Sam Rosen being the Hall of Fame announcer of the New York Rangers hockey team is extraordinary. But for forever, the reporter covering that hockey team, the Rangers, for the newspaper of the New York Post,

has been Larry Brooks. I had forgotten until last year that the year that Thurman Munson was killed, Larry was a very very young beat reporter covering not Rangers hockey, but Yankees baseball. And somebody sent me a clipping from the New York Post from Saturday, July twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine, five days before Munson's fatal plane crash. It is almost beyond belief. Larry Brooks's story began quote reports of Thurman Munson's death are exaggerated, at least slightly unquote.

Of course, he was using a metaphor, Munson's knees had been giving him trouble, and the manager of the Yankees, Billy Martin, was giving him more time off between catching assignments than usual. But Larry's story also included an even more jaw dropping quote. Asked about the rumors he might not catch again this year, Munson said, I don't know who started them. It was Martin. Asked after the game

how his knees felt, he said, quote sore, real sore. Hey, you might be seeing my last hurrah forty five years ago Friday. I'll never get over it. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schhanelle arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass end the drums, and mister Schanale handled orchestration and keyboards, and it was produced by TK Overros.

Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music the Alderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. My announcer today was my friend Jonathan Banks. Everything else was pretty much my fault. And no, once again, I do not have any of the tapes of the Thurman

Monthson coverage from the year nineteen seventy nine. It is I believe the only I'm in my life that I did not preserve or at least listen to my work on a particular story, at least for a moment. I just couldn't. And I'm not sure if the tapes were suddenly presented from somebody's archives to me today, I'm not sure I could listen to them. Now that's countdown for this then ninety eighth day until the twenty twenty four

presidential election. They three hundred first day since convicted felon Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use the mental health system. You've got it, President Biden, US presidential immunity to stop Trump from doing it again while we still can, While you still can, mister president and anti Semitic, anti immigration Republicans, please stop shooting weapons

at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news requires. Until the next one, I'm Keith Alderman. 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.