SO WE'RE GOING TO DO IRAQ AGAIN, ONLY WITH AN "N" - 6.19.25

mob actually fear of missing out on bombing. When I said that in Monday's podcast, I was serious. Fomo fomo is what animates Trump, the dreadful existential fear he has that something somewhere in the world is not being credited to him. But I didn't think it was going to be decisive. This is where the narrator says it was decisive. We are gearing up for a strike. I think on the Fardeaux facility. What I can see is the military maneuvers are getting in place. That was Bret McGirk yesterday.

Brett McGirk was Obama's point man against ISIS, and then he was Trump's point man against ISIS. So I don't think he's grinding an axe here, Owen mix in some of this phony, Mike Huckabee, religious ecstasy. We have to save Israel because we have to make sure the Jews get raptured. Fundamentalist anti Semitic bullshit, and we're here again.

New York Times quote. When he woke on Friday morning, his favorite TV channel, Fox News, was broadcasting wall to wall imagery of what it was portraying as Israel's military genius, and mister Trump could not resist claiming some credit for himself. Fomo. That's when the I was more involved than I said. Psychosis from Trump started to seep in to his out

loud voice. By Sunday it was beginning to flower. We'd never attack Iran, but when we do quote the US had nothing to do with the attack on Iran tonight. If we are attacked in any way, shape or formed by Iran, the full strength and might of the US armed forces will come down on you at levels never seen before. However, we can easily get a deal done between Iran and Israel and end this bloody conflict. That's

all the possibilities In one sentence. We could blow you up, you could blow us up, all but we could, we could negotiate our way out of this, and by the day before yesterday we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran. We Iran had good skytrackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn't compare to American made, conceived and manufactured stuff. Nobody does it better than the good old USA. We blowed

him up good. We blowed him up real good. This is big Jim mc Trump and Billy Saal Hirak Hukabe saying, may the Good Lord take a liking to you and blow you up real soon. Ah, Billy saw hira Kukabe. When Bush did this with Iraq, and yeah, this is where I came in, I seem to recall saying, if we didn't stop Bush about Iraq, the next Republican president would do this in Iran. And sure enough, here we are.

When Bush did this with Iraq, he went through this long, sometimes subtle, intricate, labyrinthine, sometimes deeply sourced series of lies and manufactured evidence and blackmail and the ex boyation of nine to eleven and the dragging in of Sadam Hussein. He went to all that trouble when he could have just done a Trump and just blowed it up, bloated up real good. After first publishing the religious delusions of a fundamentalist confidence trickster and TV pitchman for red Grape

Circulation superfood named Mike Huckabee. Bush could have just said it was to defend Israel. Who knew, even though the reason the Huckabees and the others who in previous generations would have been back home at the Church of God handling snakes. The technical term for which we students of religion use is self correcting problem for the handling of snakes.

The entirety of the mainstream defense of Israel is not predicated on preserving Israel, but about fulfilling this madness that all the world's Jews will be gathered in Israel and then con and then we will have the rapture and all the good souls will go to Heaven, and everybody else will stay here and enjoy hell on earth, which

is pretty much where we are right now. Anyway. Please note that if you read all of the fundamentalist stuff about the conversion of the Jews, if you read it, it's very carefully written, and all it really says is that there will only be Jews in Israel, and those that won't go there and convert will perish or vanish in the rapture. Well, there's lots of ways you can

achieve that, and most of them involve murder. This means that my kakabi is involved in a religious movement that literally wants to save Israel from Iran or anybody else, because the only people allowed to destroy Israel are American evangelicals. Trump not only listens to this drivel and thinks, there's my excuse I can go drop some bombs and get some credit for something. He then ratchets it up and publishes it, so he reinforces the idea that this is

something religious. Ambassador Huckabee's text, President Trump, I'd forgotten he was the ambassador. At least he's out of the country, mister President. God spared you and Butler pa to be the most consequential president in a century. Maybe Ever, what was God thinking about that poor guy got shot in the head too, was sitting there just listening to this shit? God said, you are spared that guy over there. I don't like that guy. Some God, you got here the

decisions on your shoulders. I would not want to be made by anyone else. You have many voices speaking to you, sir, oh boy, is that true? Trump has many voices in his head. You're right about that, Huck, but there is only one voice that matters his voice. And Trump is reading this, going, Hannity, I am your appointed servant in this land and am available for you. But I do not try to get in your presence office often because

I trust your instincts. No president in my lifetime has been a position like yours, not since Truman in nineteen forty five. I don't reach out to persuade you, only to encourage you. I believe you will hear from heaven and that voice is far more important than mine or anyone else's. And Trump is thinking, Janine Piro, you sent me to Israel to be your eyes, ears, and voice and to make sure our flag flies above our embss. My job is to be the last one to leave. Yeah, bomb,

stop draw, start dropping. Mike's going to be the last one to leave. I will not abandon this post. Our flag will not come down. You did not seek this moment. This moment sought you. Who in the hell thinks that the American flag is going to come down in Israel. It is my honor to serve you. Just remember to serve man. Mike Huckabee. They printed this out. First, they printed out the actual text, or what is supposedly the text.

Then they made a pretty looking picture of Huckabee and Trump, not quite looking at each other, with the words America's future right over each of their heads. America's future Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump, or our past. And by the way, if you read that again and change a couple of words in this this thing from Huckaby, this text. This is also the script for Mike Huckaby's TV commercial for another snake oil called Relaxium. God put relaxium on this

earth to relax you. Two other points about the religious ecstasy bullshit. The next level delusion after this, and millions in this country believe this as well, is that if Israel is at war, this means Jesus will be coming back like late Sunday, maybe in time for Britain. So where are your crosses? Because, as the late great comic genius Bill Hicks noted, sure, that's the first thing Jesus

wants to see when he comes back. You wearing a cross One thing that is never explained is like of Israel is at war, that means Jesus is coming back. What about the last sixteen wars? He didn't come back for any of those. Does he not get the news? Does he not get Fox News? Wherever he is? We know Jesse Waters thinks he speaks with divine influence. Now back on this earth, there are some practical consequences here. Politico's Foreign affairs correspondent mentions the one thing that Trump

hasn't counted on the Iranian response quote. A former Western intelligence official told me the spy community suspects the Islamist regime in Tehran has sleeper cells in various countries to carry out attacks if it feels an existential threat. The regime could also round up Americans in Iran and effectively hold them hostage, as it is done in the past. So we're not only going to reenact Iraq and remember how well and how quickly that went. We go in and blow it up, and forty two days later, Bush

declares mission accomplished. And I'm co anchoring with Chris Matthews, and I say to him, wait, if it's mission accomplished, why is there still fighting there? And why is the cross eyed president wearing a flight suit if he doesn't want us to remember the questions about his Air National Guard service? Shut up. Matthews explained tenderly, We're not only

going to reenact Iraq with a different final letter. We are going to reenact something like the Iran hostage crisis of nineteen seventy nine and nineteen eighty, which was also exploited by a Republican president. Rule one of war. No wars are ever quick, and all wars are sold as being quick. The other consequences will be largely political and domestic. Tucker Carlson attacked Trump. Ted Cruz attacked Carlson. Steve Bannon attacked Fox News as not being real. Maga Josh Hawley said,

I don't want us fighting a war. I don't want another Mid East war. It's so obviously a bad idea that even Tulsey Gabbard knows it's a bad idea. And she told Trump this in March and put out that psycho video last month about nuclear war and leaked that if Trump gets US involved, she'll have to quit. And when they asked Trump about her testimony that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, he said, I don't care what she said, and the odds are six to five.

He doesn't really know who she is, or at least he doesn't really know who she is anymore. So whatever the end game here is, it will damage Trump and MAGA and the entire voting block in this country that believes in brownies and elves and guys who come back from the dead, but not until you wait twenty twenty five years for them. And whatever the Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns are will then alter the entire political landscape a second time.

And oh yes, somebody will eventually notice that this will be three consecutive Republican presidents who've attacked Iraq or Iran, and the one before them, Reagan wanted to attack Iran. The bottom line is, of course, as simple now as it was in two thousand and two and two thousand and three. The purpose of war with Iran is the same as was the purpose of war with Iraq. It's to have a war, because if you don't have a war, you can't use all those expensive bombs and tanks and

have to replace them, and especially those bombers. And I mean, honestly, when was the last time we sent a couple of two billion dollars be too stealth bombers anywhere and had one of them shot down or broken or the door fell off and oops, we have to buy a new one. So the Department of Defense needs another two billion dollars. The point of a Republican war, neo cons Maga Bush trumpet doesn't matter. The point of a Republican war is

to transfer taxpayer money to the military industrial complex. Ike was right, end of story. The only way Jesus Christ comes into this is in our reaction to all this. Jesus Christ again. We blowed them up good. We blowed them up real good. If you don't know, we blowed

them up real good. By the way. That is from sc TV, the Late Great John Candy and the late Great Joe O'Flaherty and the Farm Movie Review, in which these two guys in overalls talk about tremendous fastbunder fan films and eventually get around to the fact that the only films they like are the ones in which people get blown up. And that's the end. We blow them up real good. Billy sal Hurrock and Big Jim mcbobb. It's it's worth looking for it elsewhere Okay, so that's

now for serving elected democratic government officials. Harris Beaten, arrested and lied about by Christy Nomes Ice Gestapo. She had to go to the hospital the other day for an allergic reaction. What an allergic reaction to reality? The latest arrest, the arrest and then unarrest of the New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, seems to have been, and you haven't heard this probably a setup. Firstly, this was not some

sort of stunt for Brad landers campaign from mayor. He has been going to Immigration court for weeks trying to literally throw his body between Ice and its cruelest of its many cruel tortures, getting immigration cases dismissed against defendants, thus denying them protection against immediate seizure and rendition without trial. This was the third or fourth time he'd done it. This is just the first time somebody stopped him. The best local news here, the City reports the details that

give away the fact that this was a setup. Quote in the chaotic scene at around noon, Lander asked the agents repeatedly to show a judicial warrant. You do not have the authority to arrest US citizens. Lander repeated, as the officers tightened handcuffs to his wrists. The federal agents escorted him into an elevator with one member of his NYPD security detail alongside him. Note in this Ice arrested

a New York City Police officer. A reporter from the city had overheard one agent say to another minutes before Lander's arrest, do you want to arrest the comptroller? It was a setup. They planned this and then they stone cold lied about Brad Lander, even though there was video. Homeland Security protecting America, Christy Nomes tweets New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and

impeding a federal officer. Our heroic ice. Law enforcement officers face a four hundred and thirteen percent increase in assaults against them. Four hundred and thirteen percent, that's all we have. It is wrong that politicians seeking higher office undermine law enforcement safety to get a viral moment. No one is above the law except Christy Nome and Ice and Trump, and we're going to change that. If you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences.

If we lay a hand on you illegally, we will not face consequences. I added that last part signed Homeland Security spokesperson Billy sol Hurok. Cool. Cool. The video shows the exact opposite of what you wrote here. But your ice, you're supposed to lie. You're the scum of the earth. It's the old Monty Python joke come to life. We charged him with a legal possession of whatever we happen to have at the police station, which in this case

was a desk. The good news here is that for the first time I can speak with pride about the current governor of this state. It appears that the rage in Gavin Newsom in California and get back in the rage business, Governor. The glow is beginning to fade a little bit around the edges, but that glow remains inspirational to other governors in the normally meh blue states. Speaking of Blue Governor, Kathy Hokeel goes blue.

this is what happens to him. What the hell is happening to this country?

up voluntarily. We are not going to have beautifully crafted Maddow Seniors thesis arguments lead us out of this. We are going to have to kick them in the balls our way out of this, because they have also now reversed course and reprioritized cruelty over food. Trump retacos on deportations.

He's not show moderate anymore. I'll quote the Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security told staff that was reversing guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, hotels, and restaurants, a decision that stood at odds with Trump's calls for mass deportations of

anyone without legal status. Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations Division just call them the Gestapo, told agency leaders in a call that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels, and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call, once again a

reminder from Georgia. In twenty eleven, they only had sixty percent of the farm workers they needed because of a crackdown on migrant farm workers, and at least seventy five million dollars worth of food rotted in the fields, just in Georgia. If they do this well enough, if they pursue this sufficiently, there will be food shortages. Not oh, I couldn't get my favorite brand of crup de tay. Not that. No, just like no food. Also, oops, Ice

is already out of money. Don't worry. We'll just cut social security or prosecuting criminals, or maybe we'll fire some more air traffic controllers. This is from Axios Trump's immigration crackdown is burning through cash so quickly the agency charged with arresting, detaining, and removing unauthorized immigrants could run out

of money next month. Whoa Immigration and Customs Enforcement parentheses GESTAPO is already one billion dollars over budget by one estimate, with more than three months left in the fiscal year. It's detention facility, about forty one thousand beds, are far past capacity as DHS continues to seek more detention space in the US and abroad. Honest to God, you went to all this trouble to create this fictional disaster and invasion bullshit, and you did not build the facilities beforehand

to make your money off of it. What kind of corrupt businessmen are you? Ice? And the private jail business? What kind of corrupt idiot are you? No? Oh, I've had an allergic reaction to the law. I saw the Constitution and I went late headed save over. I remember when I was a little girl. That's also worth looking up if you've never seen it. That's Dan Ackroyd as the magic chef, cutting her wrists accidentally Julia Child and beginning to lose consciousness. Find that and Big Jim MCBOB.

If Trump's big bill Axios continued isn't passed soon, he could use his authority to declare a national emergency. How many effing national emergencies does this guy have up his ass to redirect money to ice from elsewhere in the government. Why don't you take it from the money wasted on big flag poles and paving over the beautiful lawns of the White House. Who is the controller? Who is the handler for Donald Trump? This time it's Steven Miller? A

couple other things. The Senate has to censor Mike Lee. Mike Lee, who once was an actual kind of nerdy wonk policy guy, is now just an out of control Internet addict and showing all of the signs of deep, deep emotional damage because of it. He has now deleted his stochastic threat against Governor Walls, misspelling his name Nightmare on Waltz Street. He put a t in it which showed the Minnesota Maga murderer next to a picture of the governor of Minnesota. That's a stochastic terrorist threat. In

a real country, Mike Lee would have been arrested. The far right has dropped this story like not just a hot brick, but a ton of hot bricks. Turns out the guy is indeed ultra maga from NPR. Authorities in Minnesota say the man arrested in the Saturday attack that killed one state lawmaker and left another wounded, had a

hit list of forty five elected officials, all Democrats. But sure he was on an appointee to some nine hundred and thirty second most important commission in Minnesota by Governor Walls, who is a bipartisan guy in a bipartisan state, which means he couldn't possibly be mega because he worked for root for Walls, just because he wanted to cool Democrats blowed them up. Real good, Jesus is coming back for brunch. Here are the problems. Mike Lee deleted these things, won't

acknowledge that he ever sent them, will not apologize. Trump would not call the governor saying he didn't like the governor. The jokes that Mike Lee made were more befitting a mental patient than a senator, even a Republican senator. And what this underscores here is the fascists have now dropped even the lame pretense of thoughts and prayers. As always, the next question becomes is any of this making any impact or are we stuck permanently between the immovable object

and the irresistible farce? Well, looky here. Strength in numbers is in. Democrats have an eight point edge for the generic House ballot for the twenty twenty six midterms. Forty five percent of adults say they would back the Democratic candidate in their local congression disc thirty seven percent for the Republican. Americans also say they are worried about corruption in the White House. Sixty two percent say Trump's promotion

of his crypto represents a conflict of interest. Twenty nine percent of adults say it's appropriate for the president to accept a luxury jet from Katar as a gift. Fifty four percent say in its inappropriate. So the Trump administration is not getting away with this. In the zeitgeist, that's the Trump administration and shopping channel. Because don't forget those new Trump American smartphones introduced after he hit Apple with fifty percent tariffs on iPhones, he put out his own iPhone,

Trump Phones, Trump Phones. Hello, can you hear me now? Hello? There's no speaker? What? It doesn't dial what when? Trump, by the way, says made in America it turns out he actually means made in China. Also of interest here, if an American news organization put out a photo of what appeared to be Trump wearing a Dunce cap, first off, it would be the most journalism in American news this year.

But second, Trump and the Maga martyrdom machine would come down on that news organization so hard that Bob Iiger would send Trump twenty five million dollars even before Trump sued him. So why did the government of the United States put out a photo of what appears to be Trump wearing a dunce cap? That's next, This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on this edition to countdown. Last week would have been my mother's

ninety sixth birthday. She didn't quite make it to her eightieth birthday. When she was alive, Mom used to lament that to the degree she was known, she was known as my dad's wife, or is my mother? Where's my sister's mother? And then came that day in the year two thousand when all that changed. We have just passed the quarter century anniversary of that day, June seventeenth, two thousand. My mother is in her usual seat in the ninth

row behind the dugout at Yankee Stadium. I am in my usual seat in the baseball studio at the Fox Television Network on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, doing the pregame show for Major League Baseball and all the game highlights during the broadcasts. It is not an unusual Saturday for either my mother or myself. And then enter Chuck Knoblock, second Basement of the New York Yankees, but not for much longer, and thereupon my mother ascends to baseball immortality.

Next in things I promised not to tell first, believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the Miss Green's morons, Undonning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worse persons in the world, the Bronze Worse CNNMSNBC, Fox, Fox Business, those other useless places collectively known as cable news. Philip Bump of the

Washington Post the last living cell in a dying body. There, the great traffics visualizer of the rotting hulk of the Post put this out in really great color bar graphs. What happened two saturdays ago? Trump had a pathetic toy tank parade in which it in retrospect clearly looks like the soldiers deliberately mailed it in to make him look bad. Meanwhile, five million or more protesters attended the No Kings marches and rallies. And what a couple hundred people protested in

Los Angeles? Maybe a thousand. There were anti ice protests in many cities, maybe a couple thousand alls old. So what was coverage of all these events like on the cable networks? Well, sir, it's not just that the cable network's got the proportions all wrong. It's that the least well proportioned, the least fair coverage was by CNN and MSNBC. By contrast, Fox was only terrible the mentions, per the bump data, CNN mentioned No Kings between June eighth and

June fourteenth seventy three times. That's a seven day span. Seventy three mentions of the No Kings protests. Other protests mentioned six hundred and thirty nine times, so like nine times as many on CNN MSNBC. Oh, they did much better. Instead of seventy three mentions of No Kings, they mentioned it seventy seven times, mentions of other protests six hundred

and twenty five times. So the two supposed real news cable networks did a crap job, and almost identically, they're now being programmed almost identically in terms of what they mentioned. In terms of the news, there is a decreasing difference between the crap that drove away CNN's audience and the crap that is now driving away MSNBC's audience Fox News. Fox News mentioned no kings, probably not favorably sixty times times, and mentioned all the other protests, including the LA protests,

only three hundred and one times. So, in other words, the coverage of the protests, the anti ice protests and everything else only got half the bad press on Fox that it did on CNN or MSNBC. MSNBC and CNN could not resist the pictures of smoke from LA, even if it was smoked from a two square block area. Bumps graphs show in that same span two hundred and nine mentions of clashes, riots, rioting, vandalism, looting on MSNBC two hundred and ninety one mentions of clashes, riots, rioting, bandalism,

looting on CNN. This is even though as the Post's own polling indicated American opinion about the LA protests was split down the middle. Thirty seven percent said it was mostly violent, thirty five percent said it was mostly peaceful. Independence went thirty five thirty three peaceful. So we don't have any cable news left in this country. Just turn your sets off there, as a New York sportscaster used to say, runner up Katie Miller. Ever, wonder what kind

of messed up person would marry Steven Miller. I'll just read this verbatim from the New York Times backgrounder. Wasn't there a movie called The Millers where they were actually giant cockroaches from another planet who just pretended to be humans. Elon Musk stood before a giant American flag at a Wisconsin political rally in March and rolled out an eye popping allegation of rampant fraud at the Social Security Administration.

As an aside, remember Elon Musk, Scammers, he said, were making forty percent of all calls to the agency's customer service line. Social Security employees knew the billionaires claim had no basis. In fact, after journalists followed up, staff members

began drafting a response correcting the record. That's when Leland Dudek, plucked from a mid level job only six weeks earlier to run Social Security because of his willingness to co operate with mister Musk's Department of Government Efficiency or Douche, got an angry call from the White House. According to several people familiar with the exchange, the number is forty percent. Insisted Katie Miller, a top administration aideh was working closely

with mister Musk. According to one of the people familiar with the April one call, President Trump believed mister Musk. She said, quote, do not contradict the President. So if you're wondering why it is that Stephen Miller every day talks and acts like he didn't sleep at all last night and instead had spent the evening frog tied in his own basement while somebody beat him repeatedly with oddly shaped pieces of rubber. Well, I'm just saying, but the

winner the worst. Fresh Secretary Caroline Levitt l Ie in her first name, l Ie in her last name, and Sigmund Freud in her soul. As Trump tried to show off his trade deal with the British at the g seven, and he said it was a deal with the EU because he doesn't know that's not the same thing EU, UK. I see you, you see me, me talk now, President sleepy time. Trump opened the folder with the deal with the British and not the EU, and the loose pages

fell to the ground. Immediately British Prime Minister Keir Starmer bent down to pick them up. Why did he do that? Why is the premiere of the UK reduced to picking up the stuff Trump just dropped you? And I might assume it's because Starmer realizes that Trump can't bend down, But no, sir, it was because he was afraid that, you know, Trump's security FAILANX would then open fire or

start tackling people. The day after this happened, Starmer said, quote, I mean, look, there weren't many choices with the documents in picking it up, because, as you probably know, there were quite strict rules about who can get close to the president. I mean, seriously, I think if any of you, meaning the media, had stepped forward other than me, I was just deeply conscious that in a situation like that, it would not have been good for anybody else to

have stepped forward. Not that any of you rushed to There's a very tightly guarded security zone around the president, as you would expect. So just that's the end of the quote. Translate what he's saying here. If anybody else but him had reached down to try to pick the papers up that Trump dropped and may or may not have realized he dropped, the entirety of the American security force would have descended upon them, and knowing the quality of the people that Trump hires, they probably would have

shot first. So Keir Starmer prevented a massacre in Canada, you know, like with Huey Long. Look it up, Huey Long. Now to the Levitt part of this, kind of fittingly, Caroline Levitt then tweeted out a photo of Trump at a news conference at the G seven. It was chosen, presumably because alone, of the dozens of people in the crowded photograph, Trump is the only one clearly visible. You can see him from the head to the torso, from the bottom of his eight foot long tie to the

bottom of his seventy third chin. The problem is in this photo that Caroline Levitt put out, Trump is perfectly placed in front of a Canadian flag with only the left hand red bar of that flag visible, and it's right above Trump's head. So there's Trump, and right above him is this furled red thing in a conical shape. So as you look closer and closer, it is perfectly shaped. It is perfectly proportioned, it is perfectly positioned, and it

looks exactly like Trump is wearing a red dunce cap. Caroline, this is a call for help, blinked. Oh no, no, make it more obvious than that. If this is a call for help, tell the truth twice Levitt two Day's other worst twy saidden in the world to the number one story on the Countdown and a story that begins a little bit in the past nineteen thirty four. I was

not there for that part of it. But in nineteen thirty four, my mother, who was five years old, was sent over to her uncle's house or apartment for the day. My grandparents needed the day off from her for some reason, and I'm not sure what it was, but her uncle, Willy, my great uncle Willy, took her to Yankee Stadium along with a kid that he knew who he used to push to Yankee Stadium because the young man was in

a wheelchair. And often before the games. In nineteen thirty four, the last season that the legendary Babe Ruth played for the New York Yankees, Babe Ruth would see this kid in a wheelchair and, consistent with the times, would come over and rub his back for good luck, which seems to us to be very crass, and also, if you're just looking at it from a superstition point of view, how in the world would that be good luck in

any event. So one day, for the first time, when she was five years old and just turned five years old, her birthday was in June, she goes with her uncle Willy and the boy in the wheelchair to Yankee Stadium. They don't have the money to go to the games. It's the middle of the depress, but they live in the Bronx. They are a few blocks away from the stadium, and they go to say hi to the players on the way in, and sure enough, Babe Ruth says hello to them and asks my mother at the age of five,

what her name is now. Her name was Marie, but because her mother's name was also Marie, the family often referred to her as Babe. I heard my grandmother referred to my mother as Babe when my mother was forty five years old. It was rather extraordinary in any events. She says, my name is Babe, and Babe Ruth was so delighted by this that she went back inside and got her a brand new baseball, which he gave to

my mother. The first day she went to Yankee Stadium, she met Babe Ruth, She talked to Babe Ruth, and Babe Ruth gave her a baseball. Needless to say, in the ensuing sixty six years that my mother was a Yankee fan, nothing of interest ever happened to her at Yankee Stadium. She would eventually see the Yankees win a couple of World Series, and eventually she saw her own son reporting from the field after the World Series games

on the World Series broadcast. But nothing like getting a baseball from Babe Ruth on your first day as a fan and meeting Babe Ruth occurred to her. There was a brawl once between Red Sox and Yankees fans. I recall when I was ten or eleven years old. Beer was thrown and she may have gotten a few drops of beer on the shoulder of her dress. I seem

to recall that happening. That was it. Nothing else of interest, Certainly, nothing difficult or untoward happened to my mother at Yankee Stadium until the middle of June in the year two thousand. The Yankees on that Saturday afternoon had a second baseman named Chuck Knobloch, who had been a great star for them in an extraordinary addition to their team and set off the process by which they won preconsecutive World Series and four in a span of five years, and almost

five in a span of six years. In any event, Knoblock unfortunately had an issue throwing the ball to first base. Many second basemen, many baseball players have developed this. It's somewhat consistent with the idea of the yips in golf, where you can't sink the putt even though it's two feet away. Four baseball players, it turns out to generally be an expression of emotional distress. Your mind is sabotaging the most fundamental thing in the game. It's stopping you

from throwing the ball. And the easier the play is, the more familiar you are with it, the more difficult it suddenly becomes. It happened to Chuck Knoblock. It happened to another second baseman named Steve Sachs, and they've all turned out. And it was a pitcher minor league pitcher who became a writer named Pat Jordan, and they all

turned out. And another one named Rick ang Keel, a pitcher for the Saint Louis Cardinals, all of whom suddenly lost the ability to throw the ball in the easiest way possible, in the way in which they had the most control, couldn't throw the ball over the baseman's head,

over the catcher's head into the stands. Well, that's where we joined Chuck naw Block, as it later turned out, Chuck naw Block's father, who had seen every one of his games from little league, who had gone to all his high school games, who had traveled the country when Chuck naw Block played in the minor leagues, who'd gone to all the road games of the Minnesota Twins and

the Yankees. Chuck naw Block's father had Alzheimer's disease and was in the final stages of it, and sometime early in the two thousand season lost the ability to recognize the Yankee second basement Chuck naw Block. Well, that accelerated a problem that would later or shortly thereafter make Chuck naw Block an x second basement. And on this day, in June of two thousand, I was completing the second year of a two year, not particularly happy stint as the host of Fox Baseball Game of the Week on

the Fox Television network. I was based in Los Angeles, and every Saturday, I spent the whole day from six o'clock in the morning till six o'clock at night in a studio in Los Angeles that was kept down about thirty six degrees. Not my choice. I had to wear a winter coat. Sometimes, when we weren't on the air, we would do a pregame show, which, because of the timing difference, started at ten am, and they liked to

rehearse their pregame shows madness. All the good lions had been used and made stupid and not funny by the time we got on the air. They would rehearse this show two times, three times. An awful experience of my co host was one of the worst persons in the world, a man named Steve Lyons, who made me look like somebody who never complained once in his life. That's the only good aspect of working with Steve Lyons. He complained

an average of three times a minute. All right, So Lyons and I are there doing the game of the week, and that day the broadcast was from Los Angeles, and it was a four pm Eastern start one pm Pacific time, So the game and the show started a little bit late, and we get them started, the Dodgers and whoever. It was at Dodgers Stadium with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver as the announcers and me in the studio, and Lions goes away and he won't be back to the postgame show,

so everybody's happier. Somewhere in the middle of the game, I'm watching the bank of televisions that's showing all the other games in progress. And the Chicago White Sox are playing at Yankee Stadium in New York. This is the remodeled Yankee Stadium that operated between the years nineteen seventy

six and two thousand and eight. I essentially grew up in Yankee Stadium, the original original Yankee Stadium and then this modified, reconstructed one that reopened in nineteen seventy six, and I knew not only every nook and cranny of the ballpark, but I knew every camera angle, and we had had since nineteen seventy two. My family Yankee season tickets, which I had been paying for since about nineteen ninety two,

even though I did not live in New York. They were for my mother, who went forty fifty times a year. So by this point, my mother has been to since that first game when she was greeted by Babe Ruth at the front door of Yankee Stadium. Here, welcome to your future. Here's a baseball for me, Babe Ruth, she has been to at least a thousand games. She went to more games in her life than I have, actually

literally true. And she is seated in the seats in our seats, which have been the same one box forty seven E since the stadium reopened in nineteen seventy six, and this is the year two thousand, so she is in essence celebrating her twenty fifth anniversary in those seats. The Chicago White Sox are playing the New York Yankees. They would rout the Yankees that day, and the Yankees were in the middle of a funk in the middle

of the season. Do not, in small part to Chuck Knoblock's sudden inability to throw the ball successfully from second base to first base. He would throw it past the first basement, over the first basement, he would drop the ball as he threw it, it would fly out of his hand. And of course later it proved this was a psychological protest from deep within in his mind against playing baseball anymore. It was too painful because his father was so sick, and his father was so intimately connected

to the game. So now Greg Norton of the Chicago White Sox hits a fairly tough play towards Chuck Nablock grounds the ball to the right of the mound. Chuck naw Block has to charge in, pick the ball up bare handed, and while slightly off balance, throw it backwards towards the Yankee first basement, Tino Martinez. Not an impossible play, and not an impossible play for a good second basement, as Chuck naw Block had been. But under the circumstances a disaster in the making which we then saw unfold,

Chuck naw Block throws the ball. It leaves his hand not straight, but an angle to the right of about I don't know, fifty sixty degrees the ball shoots out of his hand and goes nowhere near first base. It goes into the stands behind first base, and in fact, it goes to box forty seven E, where my mother is seated with my high school friend and his two kids. And my mother is sitting where the incoming throw has just been launched. I am seeing this unfold on a monitor,

one of like nine with different games going on. But I know Yankee Stadium, and as I said, the camera angles intimately, so I know immediately where the ball based on where it left now Block's hand, where it has likely gone, and I say that may have hit my mother.

They then cut to a shot of a woman being attended to and I say that hit my mother, and everybody in the room laughs because they assume I'm joking, Because what are the odds that while I am in the studio hosting the game of the week and doing the highlights of the games in progress. You know, when they say now let's go back to the studio for a Fox game break, I'm the guy doing the game breaks.

That was my job for two years. And sure enough, I say, that's my mother, and everybody laughs, and then they cut to a tight shot of a woman holding her head with a little blood and her glasses have been broken, and she looks kind of dazed and confused and they are leading her away, and I went, that's Mom. And now I call her on my cell phone and you see her while she is on camera on the local broadcast of the Yankee White Sox game. You see

her answering the phone. That's when they stopped laughing in the studio. That's when they realized it was really my mother. So I talked to her and she said, I'm okay, it broke my glasses. They think maybe I should go home. And Georgia and George's kids they want to go home after that, and I said, did you get the ball showing where my level of concern was? No, I'm sorry. I was like, oh, for Christ's sake, Mom, So she's fine, And otherwise I wouldn't have asked that question. Probably anyway,

now we're predicting this sort of situation. What do we do with it? And is it going to be a controversy? And I said, we have to put the highlight on and I have to mention that it's my mother. It's not like we're not going to show if it was some other woman, we'd show it, wouldn't we It would be the biggest story in baseball today. We have to do it, and I just happen to know who it is. So we throw to We are thrown to buy Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, ti'me for a Fox game break.

Here's Keith Olderman in the studio, White Sox and Yankees. Joe and Chuck now blocks throwing problem is now getting personally picks up the Greg Norton bounder from the White Sox Yankees in the Bronx and throws it into the stands where right on the edit it hits my mother. Mom's Okay, I called her. She's a gamer. She'll be back tomorrow. She just got her lenses broken. Joe, Tim

back to you. Silence from Dodger Stadium. In the broadcast, you just hear like birds in the background from Dodger Stadium. For the first time in their lives, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver have between them, nothing to say. I don't know what to say, says Joe Buck. Is Keith kidding? Is that one of Keith jokes? Says Tim, who is an old friend of mine. Keith, are you still there? I'm still here, Timmy, Are you kidding? Why would I kid about something like that? Was that really your mother?

What are the odds against that? And I said, well, she's been going a game since nineteen thirty four, that first game she ever went to Babe Ruth gave her a baseball. Nothing bad has happened in the ensuing years, So I'd say the odds were probably about six to five in favor. And he goes, I guess you're right. I can't believe that was Keith's mother that got hit by the throw by Chuck no Block. Well, give us an update later on how she is. We'll do, Tim.

So now the story is out. It's my mother who got hit by the ball June seventeenth, eighteenth, one of the two days, the Saturday of that weekend two thousand. Only the kind of thing that could happen to my mother. But again, truly, the odds were not that impossible. The ball's thrown behind first base. Here's a woman who's gone to an average of forty to fifty games a year in that stadium for twenty five years. The odds are

pretty good it's going to hit her. And if you're getting meta and like, what are the union versal odds? What are the metaphysical odds that she gets hit? As I said, nothing of interest has happened to her since nineteen thirty four. She's due in any event. Just to add to this, two of my best friends in the world worked for the Yankees. One was the manager, Joe Tory. The other was the head of publicity, Rick Sarone. Not the catcher, Rick Serone, but the head of publicity, Rick Serone.

So I call Rick Serone in the office at Yankee Stadium in the press box, because I figure he's already figured this out and I want to give him a heads up that I had no choice but to mention that it was my mother, since it was my broadcast. I call him up. I said, did you see the now block throw? Now? I heard about it. I've been here in the back. I didn't see who it hit. I said, do you have any idea who it was? He said no, Why would I have any idea who it was? I said, why would I be calling you?

I don't know, Keith. Why would you be calling me? I said, how many times have you sat behind first base with me and somebody else, and he goes, wait a minute, what are you saying? I said, how many times did you and I go as teenage friends in the seventies and sat behind first bit And he goes, oh god no, I said, yep. He said that hit your mother. I said yep. And he said, first off, he said, did she get the ball? And I went, no, she didn't. Oh for crying out loud, Well what you

didn't say anything about it, did you? I went, of course, I said something they showed her on your broadcast. And he goes, oh god no. I said, what other choice did I have? He goes, no, you're right, You're right, all right. I better get out there. We're going to start getting phone calls about this, if we haven't already.

Thanks for the heads up. So now. The next day the newspapers of New York front and back page of the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and the Long Island Paper News Day front and back page some reference to my mother. Photographs in the Daily News of her being led away. Chuck Nablock hits sportscaster's mother.

And the day after that they're still telling the story, and there are wire stories, and it is everywhere, and of course we mentioned it maybe once or twice an hour on Fox Sports and on cable and on broadcast. So now Mom is a celebrity, and I must confess to you. Mom really liked being a celebrity. Mom was appreciative of my success in my career. But Mom had wanted to be a ballerina. Apparently. She told me that I don't really buy it, but that was her story.

And she was a little jealous, resentful, just in a manageable way most of the time. But I don't want to bore you with my developmental problems. Emotionally, Mom was a little jealous of not being in the spotlight, and she gloried in this, among other things. Mom wound up being interviewed on the pregame show for the next Saturday's Game of the Week, and for various reasons, we could

not do a live remote interview with her. So we sat down and I were courted the questions in Los Angeles and on the phone asked her the questions while she was in our ancestral home in the suburbs of New York City, and Mom didn't really have any good answers, so I said, why don't you just repeat the answers that I give you. I'll give you good snarky answers, real quick ones, and we can do this and you

can make fun of me. Okay. She had a little trouble delivering the lines, and we actually did several takes. So if anybody wants to call the FCC and say that interview was not what it seemed in two thousand, go right ahead. I don't know what you're going to

do to us about it, but go right ahead. There were some elements of fakery to this, like I wrote her answers for her, but there was one answer to one of my six or seven questions that she gave completely authentically and we did not need a second take. And this may tell you the nature of the complicated relationship between me and my mother and baseball and Chuck Knoblock. I said, are you surprised that everybody's so interested in this? And I wrote for her as an answer, No, but

I'm surprised they keep mentioning you. She had no trouble giving that line whatsoever. She really bought into that answer. You could see from the tape when I eventually saw the tape that she was smiling during that one. So in any event, Mom becomes a celebrity for several months. This is June of two thousand, come October, when the Yankees and Mets played in the World Series and she

was in the stands number one. My employers had given her a Fox Sports cap to wear, and they repeatedly showed her during the games of the World Series at Yankee Stadium. So Mom became a celebrity and became very well known for getting hit in the head with Chuck Knoblock's throw. Joe Tory, who I mentioned, was an old friend of mine, the first person I ever interviewed in television, and a colleague in local sports in television in LA

when I worked there in the eighties and nineties. Joe Tory called me up right afterwards and asked how she was, and I said, she's fine. How's your second basement? Hey acts like he got hit in the head with a throw too. He's very worried. You think he did it deliberately, And I said, Joe, you have to tell him that I'm confident he did not do it deliberately. If he was aiming at my mother, it would have missed. Joe Tory laughs and later he tells me he told Noblock

that and was Noblock's first laugh of the year. All right, So moving ahead on this story, it continued for many years, for at least ten years, Once or twice a month, somebody in baseball would say, was it your mother who

got hit by Chuck Knoblock's throw? Memorably, in the year two thousand and five, the year that the Hall of Famer Randy Johnson, the big left hander of the mostly of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Seattle Mariners in the Montreal Expos, he pitched one season for the Yankees, and the Yankees got blown out in the playoffs that year. And before the last game of the season, and this is one of my favorite moments in the history of baseball.

Before that last game, I walk out into the Yankee dugout and there is al Lighter, who was a friend of mine then and now he is telling the story of my mother and Chuck Knoblock to two other Yankee pitchers, Scott Proctor and Randy Johnson. And I walk in and he goes, and then Alderman's mother gets hit in the head and he says on he's doing the highlights on TV on the game of the week, and he said, and I walk out, and he goes, did you hear that I was telling the story about you? And I said, well,

only the last couple of steps. This is a coincidence. Finish the story yourself. So now I've got the three of them, and they're all in hysterics. Yankees lose that last game of the playoffs. I don't know, it seemed like it was one hundred and fifty to nothing. And I go into the clubhouse after the game to say goodbye for the offseason to the few players that I knew on the team, including Al Lighter, and to Randy Johnson, and Randy Johnson in his own deep voiced way, thank

good to see you have a good winter. And he leaves with his little carrying case with his little wheels on it and looks like a toy. He's six foot ten and he has a roller case designed for maybe his daughter. It looks like a toy. And he leaves, and about five minutes later, I see the door to the Yankee clubhouse open up, and in walk Randy Johnson and he comes over to me and he said, I

forgot to say something. I was already out to my car, and I thought I better come back in and say goodbye to Keith and tell him, I mean, this was a really bad week this last week, as we've been losing and the season ended, and I just wanted to say that telling that story about your mother really was the highlight of the whole thing and made me smile for the only time this month. So thank you. Have

a great winter. So that's my mother and Randy Johnson, five years after she got hit in the head with a throw by Chuck Knoblock the second basement of the Yankees, one of the more remarkable moments in the history of Major League Baseball, at least as it pertains to the

Olderman family, and a kind of bookend. Mom stopped going to the games about two thousand and five, ysaically could not do it, but she had a good run as a Yankee fan of about seventy seasons that essentially booke ended by getting hit in the head with a throw that made her famous within baseball circles and began with her being handed to baseball at her first game ever by Babe Ruth, who was charmed by the fact that my mother's nickname was Babe punchline to this, to me

is one of the most avid collectors of sports memorabilia and particularly game used baseballs. I didn't get either of those baseballs from my mom, my god, twenty five years ago, and the best part remains Chuck naw Block for years thought I thought he had done it deliberately, as if he to hit her. If he had done it deliberately, I've done all the damage I can do here. And yes I'm not exaggerating in any of that. Mom loved that. Mom was disappointed when that faded out. Mom thought there

would be a ceremony on the first anniversary. Thanks for listening. Most of the Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, who are our musical directors of Countdown, and the music was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums, Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments here by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.

The Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of the ESPN Inc. Is the sports music other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today, fittingly with the sports theme, was my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else was, as always, my fault.

So that's countdown for today, Day one hundred and fifty one of America held hostage, just one three hundred and thirteen days until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck lame brained term, unless Putin or Musk remove him sooner, or he decides to ride the bomb into Iran, or the actuarial tables remove him, or we do. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Until that next one, I'm Keith Olderman. Good afternoon, good morning, good night, and good luck. Countdown

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