MINNESOTA MURDERS PROVE IT. WITHOUT VIOLENCE, TRUMP IS NOTHING - 6.16.25

Without that, Trump is nothing, no threat that if you do not obey him, no matter how immoral it is, or illogical or illegal his orders are, you will be injured or wounded, or kill or at least metaphorically. So. Without that, Trump is nothing. No parades, no mindlessly cheering military grunts, no sadists cheering for blood. Without them, Trump is nothing. Hell, there was a parade and it drew less than a minor league hockey game. This was no Kings versus no crowds. There was a parade, and Trump

still was nothing. But most importantly, most tragically, most ominously for us and for our future, no religious fanatic, no tertiary maga disease infected fascist humanoids driving into a No King's protest in Salt Lake City, ending with one dead. None of them, dressed as cops to assassinate elected Minnesota Democrats in the homes with eleven more on his Wisconsin list, doing so on Trump's behalf because they think that will

serve him, or aid him, or just please him. A pro life murderer, Without pro life murderers, Trump is nothing. The problem, of course, is there are weapons. There are guns, there are tanks, there are bombs, there are threats, there are pro life murderers. It is so ingrained in our system that it almost sounds stupid to say it aloud and question it. For more than two centuries, our government had operated, at least in part, at least for long stretches on some sense of shared effort, of good faith,

of right makes might. That is as dead now as it was during the Civil War, as bad as anywhere else. The fundamental baseline by which the governing related to the governed is now entirely in effect. Here, you do what we say, or we hurt you. That's what this weekend

was about. That's what happens when you spend a decade introducing into the national consciousness the idea that violence will be supported by one political party, or at least one political party will have a blind eye turned towards violence.

That's what happens when you spend five decades telling half the people in this country that all the laws and all the rules and all the precedents are unfair to them and prejudiced against them and will ultimately destroy them, and that they, the vast majority, with all of the wealth and the power, are actually near death's door because

that two percent could come and get them. That's what happens when one Friday you send in troops and marines because your terrorists attacks on southern California aren't leading to enough Brown people being disappeared and renditioned or just left where they are in mortal dread of it happening to them.

And then the next Thursday you tackle the brown senator from that state because your administration cannot actually handle a question and your play actors pretending to fill positions like Secretary of Homeland Security have no idea what to do other than to shoot or threaten or promise to overthrow the elected mayor or governor, or wear a funny hat or have a senator from the opposite party thrown to the floor. And if your idiot Secretary of Homeland Security

doesn't know what Habeas Corpus is. Of course she can claim nobody knew who the senator was, and she can dismiss his existence by simply calling him that man. And that's what what happens when two days later, a maga religious nut tries to kill all the liberals. He can to thwart or shut down the no Kings protests because he wants kings, and he can always overrule reality, he can always overrule the law, he can always overrule what

he is right because he has a gun. And then an idiot senator from Utah who thinks his combover works can call the murderer a Marxist based on nothing and get applauded by a strung out, money crazed foreigner who happens to own the social media site on which the crazy senator from Utah has made his completely slanderous and

incorrect claim. And then, of course, after it ends, even when it ends in humiliation for Trump, whose parade drew fewer people than the Fourth of July parade used to draw in Hastings on Hudson, New York when I was a kid, after it ends, you look at the tear in Los Angeles and the blood in Minnesota, and the inescapable dread of more to come in every corner of

this nation. And you say violence has no place in our democratic system, as if that has ever been true, As if nearly a quarter of our presidents haven't been shot and killed or just shot or just nearly shot, As if Representative Melissa Hortman and Senator John Hoffman and their spouses hadn't been shot two days ago in Minnesota, As if Trump himself shot at least shot at not a year ago, did not even express sympathy for them, just to promise for vengeance against the shooter, As if

the only legitimacy to the still growing Trump dictatorship wasn't the still growing threat behind every move it makes that if you do not obey, they will go and get one of the weapons without which Donald Trump is nothing. There is some small respite this morning, and it has

nothing to do with weapons. They got the twenty eleven Georgia crops report apparently and printed it out or something similar to it, and paste it in some pictures of Trump or something, and they made it brief, and they showed it to him, and maybe they used flash cards or finger puppets, and all of a sudden he tacoed

on the ice. Gestapo roundups of immigrants, at least the immigrants in agriculture and hotels and restaurants, because you know, mass starvation, while mass starvation later first, mass lower corporate profits in agriculture, hotels, and restaurants. The Secretary of Agriculture, who is not Julius sugar Baker from Designing Women. She just looks like her stunt double rights that, oh no,

there's been no change in policy about deporting people. She and Trump quote have consistently advanced a farmer's first approach, recognizing that American households depend upon a stable and legal agricultural workforce. Severe disruptions to our food supply would harm Americans. It took us decades to get into this mess, and we are prioritizing deportations in a way that will get us out. All of you people were going to rendition. Please harvest those fields first and then get into the

back of the truck. In other words, the Secretary of Agriculture, she saw the twenty eleven Georgia crops report and somebody extrapolated it for her. I don't know how many times I have cited the twenty eleven Georgia Crops Report. I think the first time I saw it was August twenty eleven.

That state at that point, you're not even over with announced eight had announced the year before a strict crackdown on undocumented farm workers, back when this was a reasonable thing to try or examine, and everybody said, you may regret this, and they went, no, we don't think so.

We're smart. We're Republicans in Georgia. And shockingly enough, after they announced that there would be raids and that they would deport and arrest all of the migrant farm workers, particularly the ones who did not have citizenship or other papers. Almost none of the nation's itinerant farm workers went to Georgia in twenty eleven. Who the hell could have seen that coming. If you go here, we'll arrest you. Nobody

went so. In the middle of the summer, the state Commissioner of Agriculture explained that all the Georgia onions and the Georgia watermelons, and the Georgia blueberries and the other Georgia produce was rotting in the Georgia fields, and the farms were going bankrupt, and all the bribes to get all the Georgia residents to go and harvest the crops were not working because Georgia residents were too slow, or

they quit within minutes because the work was too hard. Georgia, said the head of agriculture there, a Republican, was at least eleven thousand, far more short. They were forty percent of what they needed. They were asking for volunteers. They were bringing in convicts and promising to let them go

sooner if they picked the walnuts. The state's agricultural industry had already lost seventy five million dollars by the middle of twenty eleven just in the spring and summer harvests, so that times fifty states and now all of a sudden, we are not prioritizing those in agriculture, those in hotels, those in restaurants, those without whom the rest of us will starve. And the message was you can keep doing this, Stephen Miller, but you personally will have to harvest all

the rude begas west of Denver. This does not mean they are suddenly going to pivot back towards humanity. In southern California or in the case of kilmar Abrego, Garcia or anything else that's already in progress. In point of fact, if anything, it looks like they are moving towards something that might be supporting of perjury in the Abrego Garcia case,

something like it. At least Adam Klassfeld reporting that one of the new witnesses in the attempt to turn the didn't even give him a ticket traffic stop of twenty twenty two into life on Devil's Island or something. One of the new witnesses is suddenly getting leniency on his thirty year prison term. He has been moved to a halfway house, and shock of shocks, ICE is suddenly reassessing

its immigration case against him. The judge in the newest case against our Dreyfus Abrego Garcia is also reportedly hesitating to grant Abrego Garcia bail, not because he doesn't deserve it, but because of ICE's continuing rage and they are acting like just to pick something out of a hat. Ketamine addicts who just ran out. She's worried about ICE's continuing rage and its continuing threats to redisappear this man. The moment he has let out of detention, the judge could

issue a bail ruling as early as today. Here is what Trump should have done. He should have offered a Brego Garcia a pardon if he said nice things about Christy nomes, bangs and dress up outfits, or if a Brego Garcia had been willing to stand on a street corner in Washington on Saturday night and watch Trump play with his tanks and his toy soldiers. At one point, presumably before they burned the tape, destroyed any digital machines that recorded it, fired everybody who was involved in it.

At one point, Newsmax reported that there were ten thousand people there. The estimates on the No Kings protests nationwide

organizers claim five million. Elliot Morris of Strength in numbers formerly five thirty eight has taken reported individual cities and extrapolated, and he had raised his calculation to a total all of the protests combined, all of the marches somewhere between four million, two hundred thousand and seven million people, about two percent of the population back at the event that had what would have been a disappointing turnout at the

nineteen sixty four July Fourth Parade down Farragut Parkway in Hastings, on Hudson, New York. Even Stephen Chung's laugh out loud lie was only two hundred and fifty thousand, which is by itself pathetic. When the Washington Capitals held their parade after winning hockey Stanley Cup in twenty eighteen, the DC Subway reported that ridership was above average for that day

by two hundred and twenty eight thousand. So there is no doubt that a hockey parade featuring exactly one large not too dangerous bowl unless you drop it on your foot drew fifty percent, fifty percent more, seventy five percent more, ten times what Trump's dog and Pony show did. And by the way, a dog and pony show would have been way better by any measure. That was a terrible parade, just terrible. When he fires Pete, Hegseth, and we all wonder was it signal Gate? Was it the drinking? Was

it general's quitting? Was it Hegseith forgetting to wear pants to a cabinet meeting? No, the answer will be he was fired because Trump blamed him for the parade. No troops marching in step, crowds so quiet you could hear the tracks on the World War two tanks creaking and making a noise so nails on a blackboard noisy that

it kept waking Trump up. Since it happened last Thursday, I have been thinking almost continuously about the event involving Senator Alex Padilla of California at the Christinoum Propaganda Conference in southern California. I think it means much more than we are even recognizing now. It is obviously a watershed moment in the history of the aggressiveness, the aggression, the violence inherent in the MAGA disease and its system, but

it may be even bigger than that. In the last few days, it has dawned on me that in the interpretation of what happened in that room and in that hallway is the last four twenty to fifty years of the brainwashing of the American right and the stupider people in this country, and the underinformed people in this country, and the racist people in this country. And it all

comes together. And this is not the first example, but this may be the best example, and it is the most current example of why the far right MAGA, the Trumpists, the Tea Party before them, the Republicans before them, why they are so quick to be able to pass judgment on a situation like this and never let it bother their consciences, nor never let facts interrupt their conclusions. There have been all sorts of studies that suggest that there is actually a difference in the modeling of the brain

of the conservative versus the liberal of all people. The actor Colin Firth once spent money with the BBC to conduct actual psychological and I believe some physiological studies on whether or not there was processing issues that involved. Some people saw this thing this way as a conservative, and some people saw the same thing that way as a liberal.

John Dene's book Conservatives Without Conscience quotes survey and after survey, and study after study, and autopsy after autopsy on the idea that the brain of the conservative, the authoritarian is actually different than that of the more liberal, the more egalitarian, the more community based individual. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about learned, perhaps experience learned from forty to fifty years of listening to shit like Rush Limbaugh. And

here is what this amounts to. If you look at the entirety of the event, and you have the entirety of the background that Senator Padilla provided in the hours after the event involving Secretary Nome, Secretary Garden Nome, the dog murderer, nonme, the I would not vouch that she could pass a sanity or a drug test. Gnome. And you analyzed the whole timeline, it's pretty clear what happened.

And there is one flaw in the Padia story, and we would recognize it as liberals and let me go through it quickly to make my point in terms of how the other groups of people in this country don't

torture themselves over these details. We know he was in that building to get a briefing from Homeland Security because he had not been able to get anybody from Homeland Security on the phone or by email in the preceding week since Trump started his terrorist attacks on southern California, since Trump started a civil war or attempted to in which he would use the military against civilians on this s streets of Los Angeles, he had not Padia, that is,

been able to get in touch with anybody. He'd tried to get Secretary nom and he happened to be in a building where he was going to get a briefing from a military commander about what the hell they were doing there, and hopefully what the hell they were not going to be doing there. Somehow, either he knew in advance or he found out as he was there that NOME was conducting this as I called it, propaganda conference in a room in that building that they would be passing.

Now Padilla does not wander in off the street for this. He is being escorted by I believe military people, by the official greeters in this situation, whoever they are. And he says, we have some time before this meeting. Can I pop in and listen to what Noame says. I can't get any other answers from her. Maybe she's going to address my questions. He goes in, and course, if you heard any of the NOME press conference, she's out

of her mind. She is either in full Trump servicing in terms of selling each one of these hallucinatory talking of points about saving Los Angeles from the people elected to run it who are running it into the ground, essentially offering a coup by the Department of Homeland Security against the Governor of California, the Mayor of Los Angeles, and anybody who gets in their way, and at some point Padilla says, I have a question. Now. He knows that the people who have just escorted him into that

room know that he is Senator Alex Padia. But he's not wearing a big shirt that says I'm a senator. He's not wearing a giant gold chain that says senator guy. He's not wearing some sort of big id And he has not spent ninety percent of his time on Fox News. He's not Pam Bondi, who for a long time I thought was actually hosting the nine o'clock hour on Fox

News rather than simply appearing on it every night. He's not wearing something that instantly identifies him to the people who, in this equation actually matter as much as Christinome, Corey Lewandowski, her advisor, advisor, whoever else was there on behalf of the Gestapo. They are not as important as the people who are right there, standing next to Alex Padilla as he comes into that room. Who are the militarized members of the FBI who have been pre chosen to be

on board with the political message. They are political policemen. In effect, they are not just law enforcements. They are maga enforcement. They are what we have feared. And at this point in June of a presidency, of a new presidency, they are already in place. They don't know who the hell that is. That's the one flaw in this equation. Everything that happens after they decid that this man must be thrown to the floor is the fault of the FBI.

There should be mass firings, suspensions, prosecutions. Padia should sue. There should be people who spend the rest of their lives answering for this in court. The men who took him out of that room, who dragged him, the men who threw him to the ground, the men who said that the FBI has the rights here and you cannot film this, All of them in jail. If we could get them there, it probably won't happen. Bankrupt them, wait to make Trump pardon them. But there is one flaw

in that equation. Padia assumed people knew he was Padia. That's the only part of this that is even remotely his fault. And I would say, on the scale of apportioning responsibility for the entire event, on a scale of one to one hundred and ninety eight, is Christy Nome not responding to calls the entirety of the Trump administration attacking southern California. The obviously the security goons and the Gestapo members and the FBI MAGA, and it's just one

group now, it's b IIMGA. Ninety eight percent is them and maybe two percent, maybe one and a half percent is Padilla, simply because he assumed, having identify himself to the people with him, that when push came to shove, literally one of them would say no, that Senator Alex Padilla, leave him alone, and they didn't, leading to a, if you want, conspiracy theory that they set him up for this in some occasional though it doesn't seem to me

like something this intricate could be worked out by these MAGA idiots. It might have been a conspiracy of opportunity where they realized he was getting heated and there might be a good photo op for the right wing here in which, oh, guess what, the Hispanic senator from California is thrown to the floor while defending his fellow foreigners.

In any event, we can now then analyze what happens in the hallways and the conflicting instructions from these goons and his Padia's attempt to respond to them, and then as Padia added the idea that suddenly Corey Lewandowski appears and goes let him go, let him go right now, Of all people, Corey Lewandowski, possibly because he has seen the consequences of what happens when you man handle somebody in a hallway and how that can follow you for a few years, at least he had the presence of

mind to say, we don't need this, or he may have said we've already got all we needed on video. So my point in going to such length to go into ten minutes worth of just detail on a line by line basis of what happened and where Alex Padilla might not have done exactly what he would have done had he planned this out, had this been perhaps a stunt, like many politicians do often to great effect of stunts

that have been for the benefit of mankind. If you would like to stretch the definition just slightly, the emancipation proclamation was a stunt. The timing of it certainly was a stunt. In any event, this is the liberal interpretation of what Padilla did, and you can see the knots I can turn myself into while stating that Alex Padilla is ninety eight and a half percent right, I am still sitting there looking at that other one and a half percent saying, well, see here's here's the window that

you left open for them. And now I'll give you the mag of viewpoint on this. What happened? What happened? Senator goes in, yells at our secretary, beautiful Christynome, and then gets thrown to the floor. It was a terrorist attack. He tried to kill her? Or more simply, what happened? What happened? A senator went in and attacked our beautiful Christy Noome. Okay, whose fault is it? Is it Biden's fault? Is it? Is it George Soros's fault? Let's decide quickly

and then we'll work backwards. It's obviously his fault. He obviously tried to attack her. He may have tried to kill her. Now let's fill in the facts. What's on the tape? Oh, okay, we're going to ignore that fact. We don't have to sow what he says. He's Alex Padia. Who the hell knows who Alex Padia is? How many alex Padias are there in southern California. They have defeated

the scientific method. What is it five hundred, six hundred years since Francis Bacon said no, the way to solve most problems is to figure out what the f just happened and then try to figure out why. No, they have erase that go to the conclusion, what do you want the reply to this to be? What do you want the public perception of an event like that to be? Senator attacks Christy Nome, Senator barges in, senator confronts Christine No,

senator violates law, Senator terror. Whatever answer you want, you reach it first and then work backwards. And there is no one and a half percent acknowledgment that perhaps perhaps there was an overreaction on the part of the Gestapo. Perhaps there would be a reaction that you're the senator from California and you were one of the people who voted on Christy Nomes's nomination. And even if she doesn't

remember that many she is stupid. One hundred senators. That's a lot of senators to ask her to remember, but she should have remembered the fact that there are two California senators and she's in California try to overthrow the government of California. She's a terrorist in California trying to overthrow the government, holding a news conference, a propaganda conference at which she is explaining she's going to overthrow the

goverm of California. She could have had two pictures printed out for her of who the two senators from California are, so if you see one of them, you can confront him or whatever, or you can stop, you can step in and show how you actually are a good secretary of Homeland Security. She didn't know. There's nobody on the right of the equation. There is no one left. There

is no brain cell functioning. There is no part of the hive mind of the fascists and the Nazis and the Magas and the other scumbags who would say, wait, we have to acknowledge that Christy f this up a little bit one and a half percent. They won't do it. You and I would say at Alex Padi would probably say, I wish I had been wearing my giant senatorial lanyard or my giant sweatshirt with my picture on it that says Senator the picture Padilla on it. I wish I

had been doing that. I wish I had been there with I don't know Bono, who could have said that's Senator Padilla, or I don't know Lee Atwood, who the singer. But this is where we are, and that's what's been bothering me about the event since it happened on Thursday. You and I would look at it and analyze where there might be a flaw, And on the other side of the equation, there are no flaws. There is no detail to analyze. There is simply a decision made. What

are we going to tell everybody happened here? And then we will fill in and make up the facts as necessary, and fixing that will take a lot longer and will be a lot more painful and may do a lot more towards tearing this country apart than the problem of

what they are trying to do. The terrorist attack on southern California that the Trump administration is still intending to conduct before they move on to the terrorist attack on Illinois and the terrorist attack on New York, those problems will be transcendent because I think ultimately Americans will defeat Trump. But what do we do about a world in which half the people in this country already know the answer and are now just filling in the facts and making

up the facts to fit that answer. Also of interest here, it is amazing you can know everything about politics and when it counts, you can still make a fool out of yourself. Or you can know nothing about politics and when it counts, you can still make a fool out of your On the same topic, the sagas of CNN's political director David Shalian and the increasingly laugh out loud funny stephen A. Smith. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith old Woman still ahead on this

editiontive Countdown. You know we haven't done in weeks and weeks and weeks. Fridays with Thurber. I know it's not Friday. How much did they charge you to listen to this podcast? If we want to make it Friday for ten, but it's going to be Friday, you want to refund, refund some Thurber and his great story about I'm just gonna surprise you now that you put up a fight over it first, believe it or not, There's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the new miscreants,

morons and dunn in gruger effects specimens. Who constitutes the latest other worst persons in the world, the bronze worse. There's always a tweet. I'll just read the tweet and then I'll tell you who it's from. The hint is it's not Trump. It's connected to Trump. Ready. We do not seek regime change, Trump declares as he escalates his regime change war against Iran. Neocons like Graham Bolton are cheering to all who voted for Trump because of his

anti war rhetoric. It's time to reel he lied to you. Stand with me against Trump's Iran war hashtag Trump's War. Three forty one PM January three, twenty twenty, written by Tulsey Gabber, the director of National Hypocrisy No Information Information about hypocrisy. What an absolute bubblehead runner up, Speaking of which worser Stephen A. Smith. I thought, because he'd been quiet lately, that he'd got in a hint that covering a burgeoning dictatorship is not just doing whatever your pal

Sean Hannity says is a good idea. It's not the same as trying to turn a rumor you made up about an NBA free agent changing teams maybe in three years into eleven hours of programming today and then going wall to wall with it tomorrow. It's not like that, Steve. This is Stephen A. Smith on the beating up of Senator Alex Padilla. Here you have this Senator Alex Padilla. Can Christy Nomes speak? Could you have waited till she finished to ask your questions? To shout your questions? You

are a senator, right, you couldn't wait? So that was just you out of control because you were just losing it. Huh, You a United States senator, couldn't compose yourself and let the head of Homeland Security finish her thoughts before you ask the question. Couldn't do that? Huh? Couldn't do it?

Alex Padia. Here you have this, Stephen A Smith. Can somebody else speak? Could you have waited till they finished to ask your questions? To shout your questions? You're a Stephen A Smith, right, You couldn't wait? So that was just you out of control because you were just losing it. Huh, You, Stephen A Smith, couldn't compose yourself and let the other person finish their thoughts before you ask the question. Couldn't do that? Huh? Couldn't do it?

Stay in your goddamn lane. You're making a fool out of yourself, and eventually sooner rather than later with this level of lack of sophistication and the facts, by the way, that the right wingers will never believe you for very many reasons that should also be obvious to you. Eventually you will begin to destroy your sports brand. Stop stop. Let me rephrase that, no, wait, stop, come back, but the winner. Just emphasizing what I mentioned before that you

don't have to be an amateur to act amateurish. On the subject of Senator Padilla, David Shalien CNN Political direct and I sometimes think that there is no such role or such person, and this is a brilliant comedic performance. Maybe it could be Patton Oswalt done up in like extra jowls, extra prosthetic jowls put on to him to make him look look like a thumb with eyes and glasses drawn on it. I think that may be the explanation.

But until we are able to confirm that David Shalian is just Paton Oswalt dressed up to look ridiculous, we're going to have to assume that he really is the political director of CNN. He really is the idiot who insisted that not fact checking either candidate in a presidential debate when one of them was lying and apparently strung out on something and the other was making a huge number of mistakes because of some sort of perceptual problems.

Not fact checking either of them was the only fair thing. This is the man who portrays himself as a neutral in the field, and yet he dined with Trump horrors, Jason Miller, Stephen Chung, and Chris Lassivit, all of them the night before a Republican debate. Oh but he's a neutral. This is what he said about the Padilla assault. I mean she was holding a press conference and delivering a statement to the press. He's not a member of the press.

The astonishment, I cannot recreate it, the astonishment in Shalian's voice. You're not a member of the press. You know. Senators often ask questions too, sir, you're not a member of the press. You work for CNN. You're no longer a member of the press either. It's a whorehouse. Anyway, back to the quote, this wasn't a hearing or an open form for senators to ask questions. Well, no, of course not, because no one would have lied to them at that

if she'd even to answer any of those questions. He clearly showed up at a public event just to create a moment and do exactly what you're describing, to show his constituents, not just Democrats, that he's fighting from his perspective. David Shealey and CNN political director, bullshit. You have no

earthly clue what you're talking about. If I had ever said anything quite that stupid, even if I was misinformed by reliable sources who got it completely wrong and it was their fault, if I had ever said anything approaching that, I would have resigned. I would have resigned somewhere between the he's fighting and then the from his perspective, and then I would have gone, oh no, I'm I've misspent my entire life. I resign. Gnome had been avoiding his

questions and the questions of all Democrats. She had just finished explaining how she and Trump were going to overthrow the socialist mayor and governor in Los Angeles and California. He's in not a public place, an open forum, but he showed up at a public event. This is in the federal building. He is a senator, He's a member

of the federal government. Did you not know that political director of CNN he was on his way to a briefing about the incursion, the terrorist attack by Trump using the National Guard and the fing Marines on the streets of southern California. He's on his way to a briefing. He entered that room with the cooperation and consent of his escorts, one an FBI agent and the other a National Guard officer. He clearly showed up at a public event just to create a moment. Unbelievable, create a moment.

And by the way, David Chillyan, you and CNN are opposed to the creation of moments. Is this the CNN that last weekend, not this past one, but the week before, postponed the news for three hours to show a Broadway show. I'm all with that, except for the fact that while that was happening, there was mayhem on the streets of Los Angeles caused by the government of the United States. And you, instead, instead of showing news, you showed a play about the news. In nineteen fifty four, This just

in nineteen fifty four. Create a moment. That's all CNN does, That's all the modern media is doing. That's the Washington that the Washington posts new phrase, create a moment, or it's vivid storytelling for all America, which is consultants, speaker, create a moment. He clearly showed up at a public event. He was being escorted by the FBI and a National Guard officer to a briefing on the attempt to overthrow

the democracy, just to create a moment. Listen, pal, if you were any good at creating moments, if you were, if you knew how to create a moment, if you knew what a moment was, you wouldn't be at Effing's CNN watching the place melt around you, like the opening animation from the TV series mad Men. David I actually would fire him before I fired Jake Tappert. Worse than that,

I would make him do a primetime CNN show every night. Shalien, CNN's political director and today's other worst person in the movement. Some years ago, I did an audiobook of Theber stories, with the proceeds going to the Literary Estate, on the idea that the more people heard Thurber, the better. And one of the great compliments, one of the greatest compliments I have ever received, was that when the thing was published, it did not say Thurber Audios collection or whatever read

by me. It said performed by me. I guess that's because they did a lot of different voices, or because we included in it one particular story that really does kind of need a cast of a few different people for one sub scene in the middle of it. I think you will recognize it when we get there. The story is from his epic Tale of his youth, somewhat exaggerated my life in hard times. The Car we had

to Push by James Thurber. Many autobiographers, among them Lincoln Stephens and Gertrude Atherton, describe earthqua their families have been in. I am unable to do this because my family was never in an earthquake, but we went through a number of things in Columbus that were a great deal like earthquakes. I remember, in particular some of the repercussions of an old Rio we had that would not go unless you pushed it for quite a way and suddenly let your

clutch out. The brand does not sound familiar. A Rio was an early automobile. Once we had been able to start the engine easily by cranking it, but we had had the car for so many years that finally it wouldn't go unless you pushed it and let your clutch out.

Of course, it took more than one person to do this, took sometimes as many as five or six, depending on the grade of the roadway and conditions underfoot the car was unusual, and that the clutch and brake were on the same pedal, making it quite easy to stall the engine after it got started, so that the car would have to be pushed again. My father used to get sick at his stomach pushing the car, and very often was unable to go to work. He had never liked

the machine, even when it was good. Sharing my ignorance and suspicion of all automobiles of that time and longer ago, the boys I went to school, we used to be able to identify every car as it passed by Thomas Flyer, Firestone, Columbus, Stevens, Dryer, Rambler, Winton, White, Steamer, etc. I never could. The only car I was really interested in was one that the get Ready Man, as we called him, rode around town in a big red devil

with a door in the back. The get Ready Man was a lank, unkept, elderly gentleman with wild eyes and a deep voice who used to go about shouting at people through a megaphone to prepare for the end of the world.

somewhere in the balcony to join in. The theater was in absolute darkness, and there were rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightning off stage. Neither Father nor I, who were there, ever completely got over the scene, which went something like this, Edgar, Tom's a cold? Oh did o do de do de? Bless thee from whirlwinds star blasting and talking. The foul fiendbexes thunder off stage. What have his daughters brought him to this pass? Get Ready? Get ready?

Edgar Pillocock sat on Pillocock Hill. Hello, Hello, Lou Lou. Lightning flashes. The world is coming to an end. This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen. Take here, the foul fiend, obey thy, get ready, Tom's a cold. The well is coming to an end. They found him finally, and dejected him, still shouting. The theater

in our time has known few such moments. But to get back to the automobile, One of my happiest memories of it was when in its eighth year, my brother Roy got together a great many articles from the kitchen, placed them in a square of canvas, and swung this under the car with a string attached to it, so that at a twitch, the canvas would give way and the steel and tin things would clatter to the street. This was a little scheme of Roy's to frighten father,

who had always expected the car might explode. It worked perfectly. That was twenty five years ago, but it is one of the few things in my life I would like to live over again if I could. I don't suppose that I can now. Roy twitched the string in the middle of a lovely afternoon on Bridon Road near Eighteenth Street. Father had closed his eyes and with his hat off, was enjoying a cool breeze. The clatter on the asphalt

was tremendously effective. Forks, can openers, pie pans, pot lids, biscuit cutters, ladles, egg beaters fell beautifully together in a lingering clement crash stop the car, shouted Father. I can't, Roy said, the engine fell out. God Almighty, said Father, who knew what that meant, or knew what it sounded as if it might mean. It ended unhappily, of course, because we finally had to drive back and pick up

the stuff. And even Father knew the difference between the works of an automobile and the equipment of a pantry. My mother wouldn't have known, however, nor her mother. My mother, for instance, thought, or rather knew, that it was dangerous to drive an automobile without gasoline. It it fried the valves or something. Now, don't you dare drive all over town with that gasoline, she would say to us when we started it off. Gasoline, oil, and water were much the same to her, a fact that made her life

both confusing and perilous. Her greatest dread, however, was the Victrola. We had a very early one back in the Come Josephine in my flying machine days. She had an idea that the Victrola might blow up. It alarmed her, rather than reassured her to explain that the phonograph was run

neither by gasoline nor by electricity. She could only suppose that it was propelled by some new fangled and untested apparatus which was likely to let go at any minute, making us all the victims and martyrs of the wild eyed Edison's dangerous experiments. The telephone she was comparatively at peace with, except of course, during storms, when for some reason or other she always took the receiver off the hook and let it hang. She came naturally by her

confused and groundless fears for her own. Mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house. It leaked.

She contended out of empty sockets. If the wall switch had been left on, she would go around screwing in bulbs, and if they lighted up, she would hastily and fearfully turn off the wall switch and go back to her Piersons or Everybody's magazine, happy and the satisfaction that she had stopped not only a costly but a dangerous leakage. Nothing could ever clear this up for her. Our poor old rio came to a horrible end. Finally, we had parked it too far from the curb on a street

with a trolley car line. It was late at night and the street was dark. The first street car that came along couldn't get by. It picked up the tired old automobile as a terrier might seize a rabbit, and drubbed it unmercifully, losing its hold now and then, but catching a new grip a second later. Tires booped and whoosh, the fenders coeled and graped. The steering wheel rose up like a specter and disappeared in the direction of Franklin

Avenue with a melancholy whistling sound. Bolts and gadgets flew like sparks from a Catherine wheel. It was a splendid spectacle, but of course saddening to everybody except the motorman of the street car, who was sore. I think some of us broke down and wept. It must have been the weeping that caused grandfather to take on so terribly. Time was all mixed up in his mind. Automobiles and the

like he never remembered having seen. He apparently gathered from the talk and the excitement and the weeping that somebody had died. Nor did he let go of this delusion. He insisted. In fact, after almost a week in which we strove mightily to divert him that it was a sin and a shame and a disgrace to the family to put the funeral off any longer. Nobody is dead. The automobile is smashed, shouted my father, trying for the thirtieth time to explain the situation to the old man.

Why was he drunk, demanded grandfather. Sternly was who drunk? Asked father? Zenus said grandfather, he had a name for the corpse. Now it was his brother's Zenus, who, as it happened, was dead, but not from driving an automobile while intoxicated. Zenus had died in eighteen sixty six, the sensitive, rather poetical boy of twenty one. When the Civil War broke out, Zenis had gone to South America, just as

he wrote, back until it blows over. Returning after the war had blown over, he caught the same disease that was going off the chestnut trees in those years, and passed away. It was the only case in history where a tree doctor had to be called in to spray a person, and our family had felt it very keenly. Nobody else in the United States caught the blight. Some of us had looked upon Zenus's fate as a kind

of poetic justice. Now that Grandfather knew, so to speak, who was dead, it became increasingly awkward to go on living in the same house with him, as if nothing had happened. He would go into towering rages in which he threatened to write to the Board of Health unless the funeral were held. At once we realized that something

had to be done. Eventually, we persuaded a friend of father's named George Martin to dress up in the manner and costume of the eighteen sixties and pretend to be Uncle Zenus in order to set Grandfather's mind at rest. The impostor looked fine and impressive, inside burns and a high beaver hat, and not unlike the dagera types of

Zenis in our album I Shall Never Forget. The night just after dinner, when this Zenis walked into the living room, Grandfather was stomping up and down, tall hawk nosed round oathed. The newcomer held out both hands. Clem, he cried to Grandfather. Grandfather turned slowly, looked at the intruder and snorted, hurry you, he demanded in his deep, resonant voice. I'm Zenis, cried Martin. Your brother Zenus, fit is a fiddle and sound is a dollar. Zenus my foot said. Grandfather. Zenus died in

a chestnut light in sixty six. Grandfather was given to these sudden, unexpected, and extremely lucid moments. They were generally more embarrassing than his other moments. He comprehended before he went to bed that night that the old automobile had been destroyed, and that its destruction had caused all the turmoil in the house. It flew all the pieces. Pa, my mother told him, in graphically describing the accident, I

new toward growled, Grandfather. I always told you to get a poop Toledo the car we had to push by James Thurber.

Nancy Faust. The Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of ESPN, Inc. Is the sports music. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my friend Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad,

and everything else was as always my fault. That's countdown for today, day one hundred and forty eight of America held hostage just one three hundred and sixteen days until the scheduled end of his lame duck, lame brained term unless Putin or Musk remove him sooner, or Millenia does, or the actuarial tables do, or we do. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday, and until that next one, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.