Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Timing is everything. Steve Bannon has been ordered to go to prison, ordered on June sixth, ordered on D Day, D Day when we destroyed everything Steve Bannon's predecessors stood for. He
doesn't get it yet. We will destroy him and what he stands for, and all who stand with him and Trump we will, We will, we will because timing is everything, and the timing will come and after the ruling sending him to prison by the first of next month for contempt of Congress. As Bannon was boasting to the vapid press that know he will destroy us and his fascism
will subsume America. As he boasted, as he bleeded, as he sweated, as he reveled in his perfidy, He learned personally, one to always look behind you, because Satchel Page was right, something maybe gaining on you. And two that timing is everything. There is nothing that can shove me up and nothing that will shove me up.
You're for you fail.
You're going to jail.
Is not a person, Bill or jail Bill Delaware will show me up.
Pluck him what damn time.
You're a cutter.
No one will ever shut you up, Steve Mannon, except that ubiquitous protesting conscience of the nation, Bill Christensen and the United States of America. Bannon will make emergency appeals. So this is not a one hundred percent lead pipe cinch,
not yet. But the reason we can say it's a ninety nine point nine percent lead pipe cinch is that an appeals would have to find fault with the judge Judge Carl Nichols, formerly Clerk Carl Nichols at the Supreme Court, to a justice Justice Thomas nominated to the DC District Court six years ago today by a president. To well, cheer up inmate Bannon. At least your prison garb will
be an upgrade from your usual street attire. So Bannon will be in the big House at the same time Peter Navarro is and at the same time is still no movement towards postponing. Sentencing still scheduled for four weeks from yesterday, and the polls continue to drip drip, indicators that as much as they threaten, as much as they lie, as much as they fabricate, the conviction bump the Trumpsts still insist is imminent is not only not happening, but it will turn out to be another hole in Trump's
titanic hull. The only question is how big and how much of a seemingly self contradicting mc escher like drawing the results, and the hole will turn out to be. The Washington Post analyzing Reuter's IPSOS polling from January and this week and April and its confusing but encouraging. In April, the respondence to that Reuter's poll predicted their responses. If Trump were to be convicted, nine percent of Trump voters said they would abandon him, and there'd be a two
point swing to Biden. The early polling in the wake of the actual conviction suggests that is low. It's closer to a four point swing, and it may grow and then presumably inevitably weane with time. But the April Ruter's polling also suggested that the numbers for convicted and then imprisoned that was an entirely different ballgame. All voters were opposed sending him to jail by fifty one to forty six, but if he goes, twenty percent of his voters said
they would abandon Trump. Now the conviction is real and the jail time is a tangible possibility probability we don't know, and a new Reuter's IPSOS poll shows it's worse for Trump. His voter hemorrhage is fourteen percent for the conviction. It
would be twenty three percent if he gets actual jail time. Again, the numbers are fluid, and polls in April and polls in June are not votes in November, and people asked vaguely about jail time probably are thinking the worst jail time ten to twenty breaking rocks, gonna send you to sing sing, Getty, sing sing, And they're not thinking the likelier outcome of six weeks, and most of that for
the repeated violations of the gag order. But if Trump loses twenty three percent of his support, he could literally wind up with less than one hundred electoral votes. If Trump loses less than half of that, if he loses eleven percent of his support, he still loses in a landslide. If Trump loses a quarter of this number, if he loses only six percent, that's four million, three hundred and
twelve thousand votes. And if space correctly even, that is a comparative landslide for half a century now I have never read numbers aloud without remembering my mentor in college, the general manager of the Cornell owned radio station, one of the great underrated broadcasters of all time, who lived his life happily in a small market because he loved the place. Don Martin was his name. He never told,
he always asked. I was his teaching assistant. We were killing time before class, sitting out on the steps of the nineteenth century university building, and he said, close your eyes a second. I heard you on the air the other day. I'm going to read you a piece of radio copy. Raise your hand when you feel like you've forgotten what the point was. Whatever he read to me was full of numbers and percentages and divisions and subtractions, and I think my hand went up at about the
fourth percentage. He then asked, you get my point. The point is the numbers read aloud turn the brain to fog. The numbers are themselves vague and eminently changeable. The reason I have subjected you to so many of them since they started coming out a week ago tonight in the polls is that they are not as so many have predicted, favorable to Trump. They are not Trump martyrdom points. They
have not had no effect. They have not as news outlet after news outlet has stupidly parroted, barely moved the needle. Reporters see one percent or two percent, and they say two is a really small number. Take this number with you. The Reuter's poll says, if Trump actually goes to jail, he loses somewhere between four million votes and seventeen million votes. Either of those numbers cannot be described as barely moving
the needle. Even reporters would recognize that four million is not a small number, and the lower of the two numbers between four million and seventeen million, as we saw four years ago and Biden won Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by a total of forty three thousand votes, The smaller number does what we used to call on radio, pinning the needle. The higher number breaks the needle breaks, the glass,
breaks the VU meter, and it breaks. Convicted fellon Donald Trump speaking of broken temperatures at the Live Trump Words Salad Festival in Phoenix yesterday. One hundred and ten at least a dozen in line for the fascist rally had to be transported to hospitals because of heat exhaustion. It may have been dozens heat exhaustion, or maybe because the Democratic National Committee put up a billboard across for the street there reading in two different languages, convicted felon Donald
Trump not fit to serve. And these billboards are not to be confused with other groups of billboards reading I am a former Trump voter, I won't vote for a convicted felon, which have been put up there in Phoenix and in three other states so far by a group
called Republican Voters Against Trump. To Trump's fans who did not die outside in Phoenix because of the climate change he is demanding, he reminded them that whether or not he fulfills his threat to invoke the Insurrection Act on inauguration day, he will break the Posse Comitatis Act and he will send thousands of active troops to serve illegally domestically at the border and god knows where else. Oh and even though he was indoors, Yeah, he glitched again.
When I'm president, I will use Title forty two to end the trial.
And we have to do this, Sure we do, goober, And before we leave convicted FDT for the moment. This is not new, but I had not heard this before, and maybe you have not either. And this is from that sit down from the weekend Fox Show, and right now, if I had to submit one piece of evidence to conclusively prove he's nuts, it would be this question and
this answer. The host reads him an inquiry from a viewer in Alabama who is asking about how he prays, prays, and how his relationship with God is and what it's like. And he cannot stop himself long enough to even give a good phony answer. He cannot stop himself long enough to be fake, reverential, not for a second. His answer is immediate and it's insane, and it's about his relationship with God, as proven by poll numbers.
What's your relationship with God like? And how do you pray? That's Sharon from Alabama. Okay, so I think it's good. I do very well with the evangelicals. I love the evangelicals. And I have more people saying they pray for me. I can't even believe it.
And they are so.
Committed and they're so believing. They say, sir, you're going to be okay. I pray for you every night. I mean everybody almost. I can't say everybody, but almost everybody that sees me, they say it. It's such a beautiful thing. You know. What's a beautiful thing too, when you look at all of this bad stuff going on. They have nothing to look up to. They have no God, they have no anything. They kill people, they beat people, push people into subways.
Asked about his relationship with God, and your or my belief or non belief is irrelevant for the moment here. Asked about his relationship with God, Trump explains, there is no God and he doesn't have a relationship with one. I'd like to see Reuter's hipsos to a new poll, asking his voters if they'll still vote for him if he goes to jail. And oh, by the way, if he goes to jail and he only talks about God
to impact his own polling numbers. And here's another clip that slipped through the cracks, but only for a moment. This was Newsmax. This was the interview where Trump just kept talking and talking and talking, and even poor dumb Greg Kelly glazed over as he listened. And Trump said his big takeaway from the New York trial was that none of the jurors smiled at him. The light bulb went off over my head. This is far more important than it could possibly seem at first Blush.
I never saw a glimmer of a from the jury. No, this was a venue that was very unfair. It's a tiny fraction of the people are Republicans, and it's very unfair.
Oh my god, did I have a flashback there. I have had the misfortune to meet Trump in person four times, the first late in nineteen eighty three, and each time I saw the exact moment that his face went from an emotionless, almost lifeless, certainly non human mask to a beaming, phony smile. That's who he is, That's what he thinks
is his asset, an irresistible smile. You and I look at him and see a face of evil and debauchery, and mostly a guy who claims to be rich and yet clearly buys his makeup at the cheap end of the notions department at Filin's basement. But he really thinks he can sell anybody anything, and somewhere early in life he decided his means of doing that was to mimic a human smile and really make it as big and
as preposterous as possible. And he's done this now for at least seventy years, from his childhood dementia to this dementia. And the way he registers a sail with people, His receipt for convincing them to do his bidding is their smile in return. So the jury didn't smile at him, so the jury was biased against him. So the jury was corrupt, so the trial was rigged. So when he says these crazy things, there is a part of him that truly believes it is rigged because they are, as
the kids say, not buying what he's selling. He believes life is a transaction, and when he gives you his smile, you have to give him yours, and then he owns you. I met him in the lobby of the apartment building I used to live at here, the no longer Trump Palace US. I saw him first, then he saw me. Then he whispered to one of his flunkies. I'm guessing he was double checking it was me. Then he stared
at me for a moment. Then when he thought I was first looking at him, his dead face turned immediately into that fake smile. Remember the Cinco de Mayo Taco Bowl tweet from twenty sixteen where he says, I love Hispanics, like there were actual Hispanics in the Taco Bowl and he was eating them that fake smile. But his eyesight is not as good as he lets on, so he
doesn't know that you have seen him first. He had done the same thing twice in the lobbies of thirty Rock at NBC, once stopping just to shake hands, once actually stopping to tell me how good countdown was, and how pissed off his buddy Bill O'Reilly would get whenever he told him how good countdown was, and then striding off. And I watched to see if I could see that fake smile that had appeared so suddenly Van Justice suddenly,
but his back was turned to me. However, December fifteenth, nineteen eighty three, CNN sends me to cover a New York Post sports forum where owner George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees, owner Fred Wilpond of the New York Mets, Sonny Werblin of the New York Rangers, and Nixon, this real estate hump Trump who owned the sort of pro
football team in New Jersey. They would speak and do interviews and meet fans and whatever, and I interviewed them all briefly, and when it came time to interview this Trump guy, he stood there and looked at me like he was trying to guess my weight. Then we put the camera light on and there it was this big fake smile out of nowhere, and I asked some questions about the new Jersey generals, and he boasted he was hiring a new name coach who used to coach the Jets.
Only turned out he hadn't hired him yet, and he spent a week cleaning up that mess. And when I said thank you, when we turned the light off, he turned off the big fake smile zap. It was gone, and the blank look repeat it in his eyes. A couple of years ago, on a cold night, I turned a corner here and a familiar but older face shouted Keith, And suddenly I realized it's a CNN cameraman I haven't
seen in thirty years. Remember when we covered Trump with that sports thing, he says, And I realized he was the cameraman that day at the post thing. Remember what you said about him? And I didn't, And he laughs and he says, we were walking back to the truck and you didn't say anything, and that worried us, because when have you ever shut up for five minutes? And
so finally I say, what's bothering you? And you stopped, and you turning, You looked at me and Jimmy, and you said that last guy we interviewed Trump, what the f is wrong with that guy? All right, let's go back to the Supreme Court again, and that old boss of that judge who just sent Steve Bannon too the slammer. A couple more numbers too. But the mind reels at these numbers. And I do not think you will go blanket the sound of them. In fact, you may just
hit that little rewind thirty seconds thing. There is a watchdog group called Fix the Court, and it has now hung a price tag off the corruption that has befouled the Supreme Course. And guess which fish stinks the most expensively. Total number of verified gifts to Supreme Court justices, confirmed hard evidence reported gifts in cash or in items of value since January first, two thousand and four is just under three million dollars. Three million dollars in gifts to
Supreme Court justices. And who got eighty percent of all of them? Who got two million, four hundred and two thousand, three hundred and ten dollars worth of gifts. Well, you already knew the answer in your heart, didn't you, Clarence, Man of the people. Thomas two million, four hundred and two thousand dollars worth of gifts. And those are just the confirmed ones. Fix the Court said there are ninety more likely gifts Thomas Scott worth another million, eight and
one more number. The number of subpoenas by the Democratic controlled Senate Judiciary Committee relating to the Supreme Court. Why that's still stuck at zero. And just to infuriate you a little bit more, I'd like to pass along a suggestion somebody made. Not only should Dick Durban be subpoenaing Samuel Alito right now, he should also be subpoenaing Martha and Alito. Apparently, Dick and the Senate Judiciary Democrats met
again Monday night. That's punch Bowl News reporting that, and basically they gave up and they said they would do nothing, but they would do it with stern looks on their face, quoting the report. For now, Democrats strategy is to continue to raise public awareness while at the same time tempering expectations. Quote, there are precedents as to what we can and cannot do. But I think I think the American people have a clear understanding of some of the unethical conduct of several justices.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said, sure, it's front of mind, clear understanding nationwide of unethical conduct. This is a country that elected Trump. Good work, Dick. Meanwhile, here's somebody else they should subpoena, but won't. Brett Kavanaugh, who yesterday had somebody leaked to Axios that he is writing his memoirs. His memoirs are they about assaulting women?
Asking for a democracy? Also of interest here, there are hints contained in legal documents that there is video or audio tape of Fox News hosts sounds like the fired Tucker Carlson, probably maybe Hannity as well, maybe Ingram, maybe others, absolutely vivisecting Trump and the entirety of Trump's claim that the twenty twenty election was rigged tapes. Imagine the impact of actual video of Sean Hannity saying, of course Trump lost in twenty twenty. Wow. And what is the Biden
Department of Justice trying to do with this video. It's trying to return it to Fox because at least when we're all Trump's slave labor, we can take heart that Merrick Garland followed all the effing rules. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on this initiative countdown. Hey, did you notice I've been talking about fake news and bad news reporting today? Just like every other day. Well it's not like every other day.
It's Friday, so it's time for Fridays with Thurber and naturally, one of his greatest stories is about how fast things can go to hell in a handbasket when you believe news that isn't true and could not be true, and comes from a source you know is never true. Next, but first, as ever, there are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miss grants, morons, dunning Kruger Effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world the runner up worse. We may have finally
hit the basement on sports team names. After nearly three decades of abject failure in Phoenix, the National Hockey League yanked its franchise out of there gave the owner an expansion team to be named later if he can ever build an arena and move the extant Arizona team to Salta Laca City, where they have been running a Name that Team contest. And they have now reached the final stage with six final choices, and they are terrible. They are the Utah Mammoth just the one, just the one,
mammoth mammoth something mammoth elephant. The Utah Outlaws ooh, original first sports team in history called the Outlaws, except for the other thirty eight. The Utah Venom. Hey, the Utah Venom. They suck Get somebody to suck out the venom. The Utah Yetti in Seattle, the Seattle Kraken are very annoyed by this idea, The Utah Blizzard in Denver, the Colorado Avalanche must be considering legal action, and the Carolina Hurricanes are going what come on what? And worst of all,
Utah HC. The HC is supposed to stand for hockey club. And if that construction sounds vaguely familiar to you, it's because that's what the cheesier pro soccer teams in this country call themselves. Here FC Kansas City the FC being for football club, so they can pretend there the famous Spanish team FC Barcelona or FC. I don't know, FC, FCU, I don't know, except hey, guess what Utah HC. You
aren't a football club and you aren't in Barcelona. And HC for hockey club means the Montreal Canadians hockey club, the Canadian What about the Utah marbles tall marbles? Anybody? No, Well, look, it's not as dumb as Utah YETI or Utah HC, I mean the prospects for subbing in what Utah HC stands for? What's HC stand for? House of Commons? Hi colonic? Don't do any of those names. Don't call them, call them the Arizona Coyotes again. The runner up worser Senators
Marco Rubio, Tim Scott and JD. Vance and Governor Doug Bergham. They and maybe Ben Carson, Byron Donald's and Elise Stefanic have reportedly received vetting forms to fill out to be considered as Trump's running mate. Why them, because Charles Manson is dead. I mean, I've known a lot of politicians in the last twenty six, twenty seven years, and I
get it. They have a few extra weird split chromosome homes that control their bodies whenever the prospect of being one heart beat away from the presidency is pitched to them. But honest to God, they almost hanged the last guy with Trump's encouragement. I mean, if I'm Marco Rubio, I'm thinking I'm so small and I weigh so little that i don't even have the off chance of surviving because the makeshift gallows breaks. Holy cow, but the winner the
worst your United States Department of Justice. I'll just read this as is from Puck News the Fox News files. As strange as it may be for the Biden administration to protect Fox News, that's exactly what's happening in the case of Tim Burke, a freelance journalist who faces charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Burke surreptitiously accessed a live Fox stream and leaked Tucker Carlson's unedited anti
Semitic rant leaden interview with Kanye West. The government is currently seeking Puck News reports to return materials it took from Burke when the FBI raided his house last year, including presumably more unaired Fox footage, but prosecutors want a protective order to ensure Burke doesn't release them the other items, quoting again, Burke has objected that such restrictions would hinder his ability to publish stories of significant public interest, including
the possibility of quote candid on air but unbroadcast conversations regarding Fox News commentator's opinions about the twenty twenty allegations of election fraud. A hearing is slated for June twenty sixth in Tampa, Florida, and puck News quote, Okay, he used to work for dead Spin. I've corresponded with Tim Burke. I think I helped him on a story or two.
And this is prosecution of a journalist for disseminating news that benefited the public and the nation and revealed Kanye West to be the anti semi schmuck that he is.
And more importantly that last part, Burke is coyly hinting that he might just have candid on air but unbroadcast conversations regarding Fox News commentator's opinions about the twenty twenty allegations of election fraud what they knew was true and wouldn't say on the air, presumably Ingram and Moore, Tucker, Carlson and Hannity and all of them, and the Biden doj is prosecuting him and hoping to suppress that news.
Are we at least giving him on June twenty sixth in Tampa, Florida, the Eileen Canon treatment so that it takes like eight to ten lifetimes before he actually winds up in court. I mean, I appreciate the fact that the bureaucracy always self protects, but this, President Biden, this is insane. The stuff on that tape could win you the election. Just pretend for once that this is a war as serious as the Second World War. Only the Nazis are here in the country, use the weapons at hand.
Nobody's gonna get killed as a result of this. It's a freaking piece of videotape. And Tim Burke has it, Grandam a pardon the Department of Justice. Okay, now there are two seventeen reasons we need to fire Merrick Garland today the Department of Justice. Today's worst persons in.
The world release the type.
Not every James Thurber's story still holds up, but for a surprisingly large percentage of them, the point of the story is as topical now as it was when he wrote it, or when it happened. When it happened, which
in this case is the year nineteen thirteen. The Day the Dam Broke is from his essential masterpiece, My Life in Hard Times, And if it is about anything, it is about people believing and acting upon nonsense in the face of science, in the face of common sense, in the face of you could just ask somebody, they will almost always avoid those solutions and choose instead to believe whatever the hell they want to believe, which results in things like The Day the Dam Broke by James Thurber.
My memories of what my family and I went through during the nineteen thirteen flood in Ohio I would gladly forget. And yet neither the hardships we endured, nor the turmoil and confusion we experienced, can alter my feeling toward my native state and city. I am having a fine time
now and wish Columbus were here. But if anyone ever wished a city was in hell, it was during that frightful and peril afternoon in nineteen thirteen when the dam broke, or to be more exact, when everybody in town thought the dam broke. We were both ennobled and demoralized by
the experience. Grandfather especially rose two magnificent heights which can never lose their splendor for me, even though his reactions to the flood were based upon a profound misconception, namely that Nathan Bedford Forest's cavalry was the menace we were called upon to face. The only possible means of escape for us was to flee the house, a step which Grandfather sternly forbade, brandishing his old army saber in his hand.
Let the sungevil ver come, he roared. Meanwhile, hundreds of people were streaming by our house in wild panics, screaming, go east, Go east. We had to stun Grandfather with the ironing board, impeded as we were by the inert form of the old gentleman. He was taller than six feet and weighed almost one hundred and seventy pounds. Were passed in the first half mile by practically everybody else
in the city. Had Grandfather not come too at the corner of Parsons Avenue in Town Street, we would unquestionably have been overtaken and engulfed by the roaring waters. That is,
if there had been any roaring waters. Later, when the panic had died down and people had gone rather sheepishly back to their homes and their offices, minimizing the distances they had run, and offering various reasons for running, City engineers pointed out that even if the dam had broken, the water level would not have risen more than two additional inches in the west side. The west side was at the time of the dam scare under thirty feet of water, as indeed were all Ohio River towns during
the Great Spring floods of twenty years ago. The east side, where we lived and where all the running occurred, had never been in any danger at all. Only a rise of some ninety five feet could have caused the floodwaters to flow over High Street, the thoroughfare that divided the east side of town from the west and engulfed the
east side. The fact that we were all as safe as kittens under a cookstove did not, however, assuage in the least the fine despair and the grotesque desperation which seized upon the residents of the east Side when the cry spread like a grass fire that the dam had given way. Some of the most dignified staid cynical and clear thinking men in town abandoned their wives, stenographers, homes, and offices, and ran east. There are few alarms in
the world more terrifying than the dam has broken. There are few persons capable of stopping to reason when that clarion cry strikes upon their ears, even persons who live in towns no nearer than five hundred miles to a dam. The Columbus, Ohio Broken Dam room began, as I recalled,
about noon of March twelfth, nineteen thirteen. High Street, the main canyon of trade was loud, with the placid hum of business and the buzzing of placid businessmen arguing, computing, wheedling, offering, refusing, compromising. Darius Cunningway, one of the foremost corporation lawyers in the Middle West, was telling the Public Utilities Commission in the language of Julius Caesar, that they might as well try
to move the northern star as to move him. Other men were making their little boasts and their little gestures. Suddenly somebody began to run. It may be that he had simply remembered, all of a moment, an engagement to meet his wife, for which he was now frightfully late. Whatever it was, he ran east on Broad Street, probably toward the Marramoor Restaurant, a favorite place for a man to meet his wife. Somebody else began to run, perhaps a newsboy in high spirits, another man, a portly gentleman
of affairs broken. Inside of ten minutes, everybody on High Street, from the Union Depot to the courthouse was running a loud mumble, gradually crystallized into the dread word dam. The dam has broke. The fear was put into words by a little old lady in an electric or by a traffic cop, or by a small boy. Nobody knows who, nor does it now really matter. Two thousand people were abruptly in full flight. Go east, was the cry that arosed east, away from the river, east to safety. Go east,
Go east, Go east. Black streams of people flowed eastward down all the streets leading in that direction. These streams, whose headwaters were in the dry goods stores, office buildings, harnessed shops, movie theaters, were fed by trickles of housewives, children's cripples, servants, dogs and cats slipping out of the houses past which the main streams flowed, shouting and screaming. People ran out of homes, leaving fire burning and food cooking,
and doors wide open. I remember, however, that my mother turned out all the fires, and that she took with her a dozen eggs and two loaves of bread. It was her plan to make Memorial Haul just two blocks away and take refuge somewhere in the top of it, in one of the dusty rooms where war veterans met, and where old battle flags and stage scenery were stored. But the seething throngs shouting go east, drew her along,
and the rest of us with her. When Grandfather regained full consciousness at Parsons Avenue, he turned upon the retreating mob like a vengeful prophet, and exhorted the men to
form ranks and stand off the rebel dogs. But at length he too got the idea that the dam had broken, and roaring go east in his powerful voice, he caught up in one arm a small child and in the other a slight clerkish man of perhaps forty two, and we slowly began to gain on those ahead of us, a scattering of ironmen, policemen, and army officers in dress uniforms. There had been a review at Fort Hayes in the northern part of town added color to the surging billows
of people. Go east, cried a little child in a piping voice as she ran past a porch on which drowsed A lieutenant colonel of infantry. Used to quick decisions, trained to immediate obedience, the officer bounded off the porch, and, running at full tilt, soon past the child, bawling, Go east. The two of them emptied rapidly the houses of the little street they were on. What is it, What is it?
Demanded a fat waddling man, who intercepted the colonel. The officer dropped behind and asked the little child what it was. The damn has broke, gasped the girl. The damn has broke, roared the colonel. Go east, Go east, Go east. He was soon leading, with the exhausted child in his arms, a fleeing company of three hundred persons who had gathered around him from living rooms, shops, garages, backyards and basements.
Nobody has ever been able to compute with any exactness how many people took part in the Great Route of nineteen thirteen for the panic, which extended from the Winslow bottling works in the south end to Clintonville, six miles north. Ended as abruptly as it began, and the bobtail and ragtag and velvet gowned groups of refugees melted away and slunk home, leaving the streets peaceful and deserted. The shouting, weeping, tangled evacuation of the city lasted not more than two hours.
In all. Some few people got as far east as Reynoldsburg twelve miles away. Fifty or more reached the Country Club eight miles away. Most of the others gave up, exhausted or climbed trees in Franklin Park, four miles out. Order was restored and fear dispelled finally by means of militia men riding about in motor lorries bawling through megaphones. The dam has not broken. At first, this tended only to add to the confusion and increase the panic from
many stampeders thought the soldiers were bellowing. The dam has now broken, thus setting an official seal of authentication on the calamity. All the time, the sun shone quietly, and there was nowhere any sign of oncoming waters. A visitor in an airplane looking down on the straggling, agitated masses of people below would have been hard put to it.
To divine a reason for the phenomenon, it must have inspired in such an observer a peculiar kind of terror, like the sight of the Marie Celeste abandoned at sea, its galley fires peacefully burning, its tranquil decks bright in the sunlight. An aunt of mine, Aunt Edith Taylor, was in a movie theater on High Street. Went over and above the sound of the piano in the pit, a william S Hart Cowboy picture was being shown. There arose
the steadily increasing tramp of running feet. Persistent shaft rose above the trumping. An elderly man sitting near my aunt mumbled something, got out of his seat and went up the aisle to a dog trot. This started everybody. In an instant. The audience was jamming the aisles. Fire shouted a woman who always expected to be burned up in a theater, but now the shouts outside were louder and coherent. The damn has broke, pried somebody, go east, screamed a
small woman in front of my aunt. And east they went, pushing and shoving and clawing, knocking women and children, down, emerging finally into the street, torn and sprawling. Inside the theater, Bill Hart was calmly calling some desperadoes bluff, and the brave girl at the piano played Row Row row loudly, and then in my harem. Outside, men were streaming across
the State House yard. Others were climbing trees. A woman managed to get up onto These are My Jewels statue, whose bronze figures of Sherman Stanton Grant Sheridan watched with cold unconcern the going to pieces of the capital city. I ran south to State Street, east on State to Third, south on Third to Town, and out east on Town. My aunt Edith has written me. A tall, spare woman with grim eyes and a determined chin ran past me down the middle of the street. I was still uncertain
as to what was the matter. In spite of all the shouting. I drew up alongside the woman with some effort, for although she was in her late fifties, she had a beautiful easy running for him and seemed to be an excellent condition. What is it? I puffed. She gave me a quick glance and then looked ahead again, stepping up her pace a trifle don't ask me, ask God, she said. When I reached Grant Avenue, I was so spent. The doctor h R. Mallory. You remember doctor Mallory, the
man with the white beard. It looks like Robert Browning. Well, Doctor Mallory, whom I had drawn away from at the corner of Fifth in Town passed me. It's got us, he shouted, and I felt sure that whatever it was, it did have us for you know what conviction, doctor Mallory statements always carried. I didn't know at the time what he meant, but I found out later. There was a boy behind him on roller skates, and doctor Mallory mistook the swishing of the skates for the sound of
rushing water. He eventually reached the Columbus School for Girls at the corner of Parsons Avenue in Town Street, where he collapsed, expecting the cold, frothing waters of the Sciota to sweep him into oblivion. The boy on skates swirled past him, and doctor Mallory realized for the first time
what he had been running from. Looking back up the street, he could see no signs of water, but nevertheless, after resting a few minutes, he jogged on east again, he caught up with me at Ohio Avenue, where we rested together. I should say that about seven hundred people past us. A funny thing was that all of them were on foot. Nobody seemed to have had the courage to stop and start his car. But as I remember it, all cars had to be cranked in those days, which is probably
the reason. The next day the city went about its business as if nothing had happened. But there was no joking. It was two years or more before you dare to treat the breaking of the dam lightly, and even now twenty years after, there are a few persons like doctor Mallory who will shut up like a clam if you mentioned the afternoon of the Great Run, the day the dam broke by James Thurber. When QAnon is your source for damn break news, or when Fox is your source,
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening again. Please send your link or a copy of this or a copy of the video or something to somebody who does not listen to this podcast. They might need it. Countown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer was my friend Dennis Leary, and
everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the one hundred and fifty third day until the twenty twenty four presidential election and the two hundred and forty eighth day since convicted fellon Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the July eleventh sentencing hearing, use mental health system, use presidential immunity, use the Tim Burke tapes to stop him from doing it again while we still can. The
next scheduled countdown is Tuesday. Bulletins as the news warrants till then 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.