THE BID TO BOUNCE BIDEN IS OVER (UNTIL TOMORROW) - 7.10.24

You never say it's over, especially not with Biden headed for a news conference tomorrow as the NATO summit in Washington concludes, in which literally two bad answers are one really bad answer could end his candidacy on the spot, or at worst before noon on Friday. But for now, and skipping for a moment, the obviously larger question over whether this signals the start of demock receives going out

of business sale, it is over. Final score. Number of Democrats in the House who called for him to step down on the record seven, including long after it was over yesterday afternoon Mikey Sheryl of New Jersey. Number of Democrats in the Senate who called for him to step down on the record none. Number of ex presidents who called for him to step down none. Number of historians

he loves who called for him to step down. None number of former Speakers of the House who reportedly told friends in private, she's deeply uneasy with his continued candidacy, and of whom a Biden confidante said he would listen reluctantly, but he'd listened to her who called for him to step down. None House Democrats met yesterday, and it was over when the current Speaker, mister Jeffries, talked about unity at the beginning and staying together and listening to each other,

and by then it was over. Before again, the step down caucus members said they were preempted by Biden's letter to House members on Monday, which is nonsense and which shows you just how untough the Democrats on Capitol Hill really are. The debate was two weeks ago tomorrow, and the first thing Biden did nothing to fix it for a week, and then almost no House Democrats said anything for the next week. And they think somehow they got out flanked. If they got outflanked, they got outflanked by

an army of slow moving ants. Juan Vargas of California a stick with Joe Stalwart, quoted by Politico, it's the stupidest thing I've ever seen a circular firing squad. Semaphore News asked an attendee to the congressional meeting off the record if the mood was comparable to that of a funeral. The answer that is an insult to funerals. Now, there's just one problem and all this success from Team Biden, and I think you may already know what that one

problem is. The one problem that remains is the only problem that's been solved, is the one Joe Biden had or has out here on the going out of business sale floor. The Cook Political Report just moved Arizona and Georgia and Nevada from toss up to lean Republican, and just moved Minnesota, Nebraska second, and New Hampshire from likely Democrat to lean Democrat. And if you want some disastrous metaphors,

there is new polling from Wisconsin. And while the incumbent Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin leads her Republican challenger, who is the guy who is on the old brawny paper tow package rappers, While she leads him by five points, Biden is six behind Trump. And the disastrous of that metaphor, besides the number six, the polling was sponsored by AAARP, and even the unanimity of the on the record support for keeping the president on the ticket is really just

paved over discontent. Jerry Nadler went on the House conference call and was quoted as saying Biden should drop out. Now he says, whether or not I have concerns is besides the point. He is going to be our nominee and we all have to support him. And as to the Senate, even as John Fetterman suggested that to hypo his polling quote, maybe we can convince President Biden to bang a porn star unquote, it is now widely reported that at least three Democratic senators told their conclave that

Biden is in big trouble and unlikely to win. Senator Brown of Ohio, Senator Tester whose races are so tight that they could use somebody else's top the ticket anyway, and then their Senator Bennett of Colorado, who said Joe Biden is in big trouble, not be because of his stumbles, but because he has gotten no traction whatsoever in the messaging war over the economy. And you know what, he hasn't.

So let's just say all of this stuff about his mental health and his acuity vanished tomorrow and nobody ever remembered it. Oh yeah, that's right, didn't get anywhere in the messaging war on the economy. In short, we have and again this could one eighty again as soon as tomorrow at that news conference. And by the way, that is its own problem, which I've addressed here previously. At exactly what point do we stop thinking that at any time the president appears in front of a camera, something

terrible might happen. This nightmarish situation in which there has been public handwringing over the president's reelection one hundred and twenty days before that election from his own side, from some of his party leaders, and it has been paved over, and there is not one indication that the campaign or the White House has accurately assessed this as a problem that deals with winning the election. They see this problem as an insurrection within the party to stamp out that

entire question seems to be looked at as well. The voters will figure it out. They'll realize, oh PS Project twenty twenty five. And the fact is, just in this century, the voters, they expect, will realize and figure it out. Put George W. Bush in the White House. Returned George W. Bush into the White House on an anti terrorism campaign after the worst terrorism disaster in American history occurred on

his watch. Elected Trump and a third to half of them think Rush Limbaugh and Andrew Breitbart were not drug addled psychotics bent on avenging themselves against a world that didn't let them be what they really wanted to be. And yes, only occasionally do I stop and think that what Rush Limbaugh really wanted to be was the anchor

of SportsCenter. Those are the people the Biden campaign thinks will be an easier sell than the uncertain Democrats that they may have silenced for good or what is relatively for good in this environment through at least Thursday afternoon. I mean, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg comparison must have already sprung into your mind. She's the greatest. You don't think she should retire. Damn you for saying that. But I'm thinking instead of a Charles Adams cartoon I saw when

I was a kid, and it's never left me. It's in between rounds of a boxing match, and the guy in the far corner has barely broken a sweat and has a big smirk on his face. And in the front of the drawing, on your side of the drawing is the other boxer, and he is bloodied and blank eyed, and his trainer is standing in front of him, spraying him with an aerosol can, and the can is labeled courage. When I was a kid, it made me laugh in the way that the perfection of the imaginary world that

only Adams saw always made me laugh. And then it made me laugh again because the trainer is not spraying his losing fighter with strength, just courage. I think that analogy is app too. I'm glad Joe Biden can keep the Democratic Party in line. And the line I see is potentially a line of lemmings. And I know lemmings don't really do that, but that's the imagery. And also, besides lemmings, Icebergs. I keep thinking Icebergs. Damn, the Iceberg's

full speed ahead. Now. I don't know if you hear it in my voice, but I'm sick at least my throat is. It could be a bug. I don't know. It's probably the fact that the real field temperatures here in New York have been near triple digits for two weeks, and sure the election will be the last chance to put somebody in the White House who is not insane while we enter that five year window that is our

last chance just to mitigate the coming climate disaster. So it's only a few million climate refugees at our door and only a few more million dead around the world, rather than you know, varying degrees of everybody dead. Yeah,

one hundred and nineteen days. I'm that happy. Note. Let me review some other headlines and forgive me if the rest of this is kind of ragged, as I am ad libbing to save energy and to some degree, to save voice some good news Project twenty twenty five, and I know it's like everything else in the Democratic campaign, this will solve it. We can go home now, like Thomas Dewey in nineteen forty eight against Truman, there's no more need to do any polling. It's September. We're so

far ahead they couldn't possibly catch up. And I know it was the roper Pole that gave up, not the Dewey campaign, but the Dewey campaign gave up to in any event, Back to Project twenty twenty five. I told you this would be a little ragged, the Bidens social media team says on the Google Search Term Index, which gives a value of one to one hundred for search terms.

Current scores include National Football League at about forty five on the scale of one to one hundred, Taylor Swift at around fifty two, and Project twenty twenty five is above ninety. All right, so we got that going for us. That'll take care of it. Just don't have the president speak at all. Just have them hold up signs like

in the Bob Dylan video. This from The Guardian Kevin Roberts, who said in an interview with Steve Bannon's War Room podcast last week that conservative driven second American Revolution will be bloodless quote if the left allows it to be, which was viewed by many Democrats as an implied threat of political violence. Well also, anybody with an IQ of above fourteen viewed that as a implied threat of political violence. He used the term bloodless, which implies the likelihood was bloody.

He's not running for president, Marco Rubio said, our candidate's Donald Trump. I didn't see Donald Trump say that. Marco Rubio has for you. Star Trek fans been fully assimilated into the borg what a weasel. I mean, even for the Department of Weasels in the Party of Weasels, He's a weasel. The denials, to go back to the Guardian story, appear to be undermined by close studies of the personnel

involved in the formulation of Project twenty twenty five. The point of this is Kevin Roberts, president of the Federalist Society, was one of the authors of Project twenty twenty five, and Trumps now stated he knows nothing about it disagrees completely with it. Which is an interesting contrast there, since if he knows nothing about it, how could he disagree

with it? And he has nothing to do with it except that it has been mapped out specifically for him to implement when he gets into office, And as the Guardian notes from its research, the denials appear to be undermined by close studies of the personnel involved in the document's formulation. Any last guesses, of the thirty eight people involved in the writing and editing of Project twenty twenty five, how many of them were nominated to positions in Trump's

administration or his transition team back in twenty sixteen. How many out of thirty eight editors and writers of Project twenty twenty five. The correct answer is thirty one out of thirty eight eighty one percent. As the Guardian writes, of the document's creators held formal roles in Trump's presidency, he knows nothing about it. The terrifying fact about the true relative mental capacities of Trump and Biden are that Trump may still not really know anything about it because

it doesn't say Trump twenty twenty five. It says Project twenty twenty five. So why would be it be of any interest to him? As a fatal narcissist. This is good news and really surprising. Somewhere, Dick Durbin is rolling over in his grave even though he's not dead. Two Democratic US senators now say they are seeking a criminal investigation of Clarence Thomas over the gifts of travel, the loan for his RV, other benefits he received from wealthy benefactors.

Washington Post making sure it doesn't get sued by saying bribes. The senators are Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden, always been two of my favorite senators. They have written, however, to Attorney General Merrick Garland, trying to get a special council appointed to investigate Justice Thomas to violate ethics, false statement, and tax laws, and possibly prosecute him on all of

the above. Notice again, Dick Durbin, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I'm sure disapproves of this and is simply going to stare daggers at a picture of Clarence Thomas and send John Roberts another hallmark greeting card saying here in ethics Land, wish you were here. Please adopt a

voluntary code of ethics, moron. But again to my point yesterday about to Joe Biden, if you in fact are going to beat back those who want you off the ticket, and you are assuring us that you can beat Trump and that you are well enough to do this, and all of our concerns are inappropriate and unfair to you, and you are the man who beat Trump before, and you're going to have to escalate your campaign even if you had not had a bad day the debate. The point of the debate was this was the time to

stick him with the stilettos. Metaphorically speaking, I guess it wasn't that, Oh, Biden just has to get through this debate. It was here's where Biden can show to a large audience tuning into the election for the first time in late June, what a disaster and what a psychotic and what a danger to them at home Donald Trump is. And of course he failed to do that because nobody

could understand almost anything that he said. But now to my point, if there is one justification for keeping Biden on the ticket right now, it is that when angry, he will do outrageous things. It's time for that. Here it is set up for him like a hockey goal. Senators White House and Ron Wyden asked Merrick Garland for a special counsel to investigate Clarence Thomas. If Garland won't

do it, fire Garland, you fire Merrick Garland. You're going to get additional You'll get a point in the national polls from the Democrats and appoint somebody who then immediately appoints a special prosecutor, a special counsel to investigate Clarence Thomas. And while you're at at Alito and his flags, the Supreme Court is at record low levels of popularity. Something like two thirds of America thinks it has been corrupted politically and decides only political issues, not legal ones anymore.

Run against the Supreme Court. Call them Trump's Supreme Court. Run against them, drive them into the ground. This is Armageddon. Battle for the Lord. As Teddy Roosevelt said, you can't be milk toast here and here it is set up for you. Gol Biden assists Widen and white House. Get a special prosecutor in on the bastard. God knows there's enough there to sort through. All you have to do is get the article from Pro Publica. No warrants are necessary.

A new feature on the Countdown podcast, What crime did Donald Trump commit today? Republicans must pass the save actor. Go home and cry yourself to sleep. Non citizen illegal migrants are getting the right to vote. Bullshit being pushed by crooked Democrat politicians who are not being stopped. Bullshit by an equally dishonest Justice Department. Bullshit. Our whole voting system is under siege. Bullshit. Harm Meat and David, go to court and get this stopped. Now. If you're relying

on harm meat, Dylan, you've already lost the election. By the way, there is still our hope that I will always turn to. That democracy is preserved less by our efforts to preserve it than it is by the stupidity of those who had destroyed it. But at the end, the Justice Department is corrupt, Trump writes, and won't do a thing to help. They have no shame. All I can say is, if I'm elected by blah blah election frauds series, we already know who you are. Don't do it.

They will be sent to prison for long periods of time. We already know who you are. Don't do it. Zuckerbucks, be careful. The last sentence is a direct threat against a man who is trying to register your voters. That is a federal crime. People have been sent to prison for years, particularly in the South in the sixties and seventies, for doing exactly that. And to add to it, the weight of threatening prosecution by the government of the United States.

Indict him right now. Where's Jack Smith on this? Nothing in the Supreme Court ruling says Jack Smith can't indict him again. We know that the whole process of dragging Trump through the courts is not something that has boosted him. It has enabled him to raise more money. Everything today enables you to raise more money. Since Joe Biden had a terrible debate, he raised more money. It doesn't matter. It's just a good excuse to goose the crowd that

was already gonna give you the money. But here we know from polling that even though nothing has happened in the federal cases, and Trump's owned judge in Florida managed to stall that and his own judges on the Supreme Court managed to stall that prosecution, that the damage done by the indictments is it's not ten points, it's not decisive for the election, but it is part of the cumulative announce tomorrow that Jack Smith is indicting Trump for

violating federal law that makes it illegal to threaten those trying to register voters voting rights acts. Let's talk weasels. Nicki Haley freed her delegates yesterday and encouraged them to vote for Trump. This nation teeters on the brink of disaster because Republicans have no morals. But because they have no morals, Nicky Haley can say what she said about Trump and then in the same lifetime free her delegates

to go vote for him. Meanwhile, the Democrats can't get more than seven Capitol Hill Democrats to look at Joe Biden and say I love him, dump him on the other hand, once again, second time, I fall back to it. Democracy survives less by our efforts to preserve it than it does through the stupidity of those who would destroy it. Please listen now to the Republican Congressman Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy, Climate and

Grid Security. And Jeff has a creed core. He is he is in pain. Listen to this and visualize a man tilting his head to the side and looking like he's about to cry as he says much of this.

one on one interview. And if he goes now because he had some sort of episode during the debate, that will prove their reporting was right. They wouldn't be that petty or small. Wait do you hear the X timesman Brian Stelter insists that his old employer, and you can tell he wants it to be his next employer again. Did an editorial calling for Trump to drop out too? Oh no, they're not biased against Biden. No, no, no,

of course they did, Brian. It started in paragraph nine ten, in the paragraph twenty of their other editorial calling for Biden to drop out. Worse persons guess who won? That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman, my crazy friend. Oh yeah, like Cornheiser should talk. I have like six days worth of Cornheizer crazy stories and I only worked with him for like six days. He's just lucky.

My throat hurts coming up the worst hotel in the World, fittingly because next is the worst Persons in the World, Where it was the worst hotel stay in the world, and I'm really not sure what brought it to mind. I think I watched a game involving the Atlanta Braves and that flashed me back to the nineteen ninety nine World Series, and that automatically flashed me back to staying at this hotel next to all night choir practice. I still can't believe it, coming up on a quarter of

a century ahead on countdown. But first, there are still more new idiots to talk about, the all night choirs of a new century. The daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days worse persons in the world. That's me with a bad voice to inquire for some reason. The bronze worse a

man named Mark House. Mark House is an estate lawyer, and I don't suppose, by any stretch of the imagination that this is entirely his fault, but his is the name in the story that I read about this, so he gets the blame even if he doesn't deserve it. That's the way worse persons has always worked. Mark House is one of many estate lawyers trying to unfreeze the assets of the frozen, Bloomberg News reports, and remember, seven eighths of Bloomberg is still for people who think every

moment of the day about dollars and coins. I'll just read you some of the It's easier that way. Nobody wants to come back from the dead poor. I'll say that again. Quote nobody wants to come back from the dead, poor, reports Bloomberg News. It's a hell of a lead. Luckily for the rich, making wealth immortal is more solvable than

reversing death, no kidding. The state attorneys are creating trusts aimed at extending wealth until people who get cryonically preserved can be revived, even if it's hundreds of years later. These revival trusts are an emerging area of law, taken seriously enough to attract true believers and merit discussion at industry conferences. The idea of cryo preservation has gone from crackpot to merely eccentric, said Mark house And, a state lawyer who works with the Scottsdale, Arizona based al Core

Life Extension Foundation. Does that name ring a bell to you? Al Corps in Scottsdale in Arizona as the Bloomberg story notes it's the world's largest cryonics facility, with fourteen hundred members, about two hundred and thirty of them not appearing in your picture because they're over there in the tank. Where's mister Marshall. Oh, he's over there in the tank. Is he near you know who? Because I know about Alcore from that guy? Oh? Is his name again, Ted Williams?

Remember Alcore is where they stored Ted Williams. Have you seen the condition of his head? No? No, I haven't. Well, look around the room. It's got to be here somewhere. Two hundred and thirty people already frozen there and by one estimate, according to Bloomberg, fifty five hundred people are planning for cryogenic preservation, and this guy House says he's worked with about one hundred of them for Steve LaBelle.

The story continues a retired hospital executive in Michigan. The chance to join the approximately five hundred people already frozen sounds like a dream come true. He's always finding new ways to spend his time, most recently as a writer of young adult fantasy novels. He loves living and doesn't want money to stand in the way of a second chance.

He searched for a year, according to Bloomberg, for a trust model most likely to hold up through centuries, and he plans to put one hundred thousand dollars in his revival trust. Here's the quote from mister Lebel. I really want to figure out a solution, otherwise I'll be in there with my fingers crossed, hoping there's money left over two hundred years from now to pay for the resurrection process.

Mister LaBelle is seventy six, and though Bloomberg does not know this or note this, he is mad as a hatter. There is one interesting aspect to this, the idea that when you go into the tub and get frozen, that there's some real estate guy or financial planner out there trying to make sure you can reclaim your cash in the year twenty five twenty five, if that man is still alive. Here's the fact that I found the most fascinating of all. In many states, your living trust or

your will expires after ninety nine years. In Florida, your estate can exist for a thousand years, presumably because some of the people there can exist for a thousand years. But my favorite part of this remains I'll be in there with my fingers crossed. Honest to goodness, based on Alcore's experience with Ted Williams, I don't want you to suggest to them that they should cross your fingers or do anything else unusual with your body. A runner up

worser speaking of frozen heads. Brian Stelter, formerly of The New York Times, formerly of CNN, Brian Stelter was one of the best TV writing bloggers of all time. With The Times, he was also an excellent blogger, and with CNN he was an even better blogger. He has written on threads in what is a continuing and desperate attempt to get The Times to rehire him. Quote for everyone who said, why hasn't the New York Times editorial board called for Trump to step aside? Here it is in

Tonight's editorial. This is from Monday Night Trump. Of course, he quotes it, should also withdraw from this race, not least because of his own cognitive deficiencies and incessant line on threads. Stelter put together a thread of various quotes from this article, this opinion piece in The New York Times that seemed to support the thesis that oh sure, they're not just calling up for Biden to withdraw. They've

also called for Trump to withdraw. Look, it's in the editorial, and Brian was the good guy who pointed it out. We should rehire him. Wasn't he a lot of fun around here? He broke a lot of stories that were fed to him by Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, who played him like a two dollars banjo. Oh, I said the quiet part out loud again. I'm so sorry, Brian.

Here's the thing. I'll read you again what he wrote, just not the quote, but what he said for everyone who said, why hasn't the New York Times editorial board called for Trump to step aside? Here it is in tonight's editorial. Trump of course, also with Trump and blah blah blah. That was in the twentieth paragraph of the piece. Twenty paragraphs in they say, Oh, by the way, Trump is also crazy and has cognitive deficiencies and lies incessantly.

Paragraph twenty. The first nineteen paragraphs are just about Joe Biden. Twenty four references to Joe Biden by name and a photo of him at the top that has been distorted so that it looks like he's what's the guy Russell Crowe in a beautiful mind with all the numbers and letters swirling around his head. That's what they made the president look like. But this is also about Trump. Down there, down there in paragraph twenty. Down there, if you're still

reading it, paragraph twenty, The Times is completely fair. Oh no, no, they're not. They haven't decided this is their Watergate. They're still trying to make up for the fact that they finished second in Watergate in nineteen seventy three and seventy four. And by the way, the title of the article, the opinion piece, the op ed. The editorial from The New York Times that Stelter cites here is proving that they asked Trump to step aside. The Democratic Party must speak

the plain truth to the president. Brian miss New York Times is not going to date you, but our winner and speaking of people who will someday be formerly of CNN, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash or as Trump called them on Sean Hannity's show, Jake and Dana. Jake and Dana were pretty good. I thought they were fair. You know, if you do anything involving Donald j pedophilia, what pedophilia Trump. If you do anything involving Donald King Kong Trump, Donald

convicted fellon Trump. If you do any anything with him in a media setting and he comes back and says you were fair, that means he perceived you had your thumbs and your hands and arms and your ass on the scales in his benefit, because nothing else is fair. The world exists to make Donald Trump feel like he's in charge of it. And if he says Jake and Dana were pretty good, I thought they were fair, that

means you suck. That means you failed. That means I will continue to assert what I said live immediately after the debate. There were three stories in the debate. The number three story was Joe Biden's cognitive performance, which was not good and no one will defend it. Number two, the second most important story was Trump lied every thirty five seconds. And number one was that CNN, led by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, never fact checked him once, never pushed back one on any of his lies, never

corrected him in the least. Still, the big story, Jake and Dana, well, they were pretty good according to Trump. Proves my point. Jake Tapper and Dana and or Dana Bash praised by Trump. Good evening and welcome to the end of your careers. Two days worst persons in the world that kind of hurt to the number one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things

I promised not to tell. And I do not exactly remember what caused me to think of this story, except for the fact that it has lurked always just beneath the front of my mind since it first happened. In October nineteen ninety nine, I was finishing my first year as the principal anchor and senior correspondent for Fox Sports News, Fox's first attempt to challenge ESPN. I was the host of the Game of the Week on the Fox broadcast network, Baseball,

and things had gone pretty well. The guy who hired me recognized it would be five years before we had enough credibility to maybe say we were getting forty percent of ESPN's audience. He had quit and moved back to England, and he had been replaced by another guy who said he would raise the ratings in five weeks or everybody

would get fired. My direct boss had hired a clown named Chris Myers to be the top anchor for Fox Sports News and spent something like two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to lure him away from ESPN, not knowing that ESPN was actually trying to get Myers to leave without having to fire him. None of my direct boss's bosses had told my direct boss that they were hiring me for three million dollars to be the top anchor

for Fox Sports News. Myers was bitterly resentful about this, I mean more so than usual, and his boss, who had chained himself to Myers, was even more bitterly resentful. Myers began to demand anything they gave me. They built me a small wardrobe cabinet so when I moved to LA I could keep some clothes and some valuables in my office until I got my own home. Well, the next thing I knew they had built one for Myers, I poked my head in his office one day when

he was not there. It was an exact duplicate of mine. The only thing he had in his wardrobe cabinet was one lone bent hangar. Myers co anchored with Steve Lyons,

who was proudly doing homophobic jokes on our air. Lions worked the Baseball Show with me every Saturday on Big Fox, and I always thought I was the biggest complainer in the world until I met Lyons and like the second morning he left the makeup room and the hairstylist said she was preparing to kill him, but before she did and the police came, she wanted to thank me for never complaining. Despite all this, we were somehow getting enormous

amounts of publicity. Every time anybody wrote an article about ESPN or Sports Center or Dan Patrick, they devoted at least a third, sometimes a half of the article to me and Fox Sports News and my former partnership with Dan and our publicity department did nothing with any of this free publicity. Millions of dollars worth of free publicity, No commercials boasting about all the good press, no advertising

about all the good press. Nothing. Plus, just to round it out, I had a stalker who advised me that she was not surprised I had not responded to her in her five years of phone calls and letters. I just needed time and anyway. She knew I was talking to her during the show in Code and she would be coming out to La to marry me or kill me. She had decided which and all I could think was, she's going to kill me, and the makeup artist is going to kill Lions, and you know what that means.

That means Myers will wind up getting to do the Baseball Show by himself. So things are going great. Nineteen ninety nine was the last World Series that Fox did not televise, but we sent a full crew anyway to cover it wall to wall for our fledgling cable network and Fox Sports News, and I was the anchor. I don't think they sent Lions or Myers. And with me there were two of our cable only analysts, the former Red Sox and Rangers manager Kevin Kennedy and the former

Dodgers second baseman Steve Sachs. I liked them both. We worked well together. They had utterly different styles. After our live shots from the field at Turner Field in Atlanta, following Game one of that World Series, our producer Eric Weinberger gathered us in the Fox luxury suite down the first base line and he asked us what our news were to improve what had been kind of a sloppy Game one effort. And I said, well, the monitor off which I have to narrate the highlights that needs to

be adjusted. And mind you, we're going on there two minutes after the game. I have not seen the highlights, nor could I, nor do I know which highlights have been chosen. I am ad libbing on top of ad libbing, and the only monitor, which is black and white and about four inches in diameter, this had been placed on the dirt next to the braves Dugout. I had literally had to drop to my hands and knees the second

the highlights started to play. To have any chance at all, I said, just put the monitor on a stool or a chair, or the wall, or have somebody hold it

up near my face. Weinberger said, okay. Kevin Kennedy said that the Fox scopes the pre produced in depth analyzes of pitch sequences or defensive positionings the inside base inside baseball, he kind of needed to see at least some of them before going on the air with them, maybe during the commercial breaks, or he would have no idea what to tell the audience, as was evidenced after game one.

Weinberger said, okay, absolutely, and then he said to Sax and what do you need Steve, and Sax said utterly, sincerely and with as much concern as I had had for the Monitor and Kennedy had had for the Fox scopes. Sax said, you got any more of these cookies? These are great. What I had not told Weinberger was something he already knew. I had to get more sleep. Fox had put us in a hotel in suburban Buckhead, Georgia, the Swiss Hotel, which I guess has been a Weston

for twenty years. Nice enough place, big rooms, and the one they put me in the first night was next to a party or a meeting of some kind. I mean there were it sounded like like twenty or thirty people in there, ordinary sized room, same as mine. I called the desk, Sorry, no other rooms available. They would call my neighbors and make sure they would quiet down

before bedtime, and they did. And then at two am I discovered what kind of party or meeting it was and why twenty people were in the room in an ordinary size room. In what started it as a dream and then turned into literally unbelievable reality, I heard a loud Southern voice say, if we are going to win this competition, we're gonna have to be the best chorus that ever left North Carolina. And they began to sing gospel mostly, which is fine, except not at two am.

Make that now three am, the night before Game one of the World Series, which I have to cover on live TV. Oh, and they'd get thirty or forty seconds into one of the hymns, and the director, who had a voice like the PA system at Turner Field, only way clearer, would stop them and yell at them and make them start from the beginning. They were competing in the morning, and he had decided they were going to

spend the night, the whole night that night practicing. I called the desk and I made a few sharp edged remarks about being on national television and how many opportunities I would have to bankrupt the Buckhead Swiss Hotel and the Swiss Hotel chain generally. And suddenly they found me another room to move to, and I gathered my stuff and trudged a few floors and scattered my stuff in the new room, and I fell onto the bed and I went right to sleep, and I got a solid

two or three minutes. And that's when the bathroom phone began to ring, not the main phone in the room, just the one in the bathroom. Picked it up and there was a dial tone, and it kept ringing, one hundred rings, two hundred rings. I disconnected the phone line from the wall. It kept ringing. I thought, I have to be on one of two TV shows. Either I'm on Candid Camera or The Twilight Zone. The phone is alive. I've disconnected it from the wall and it's still ringing.

It is now five am. I still have a chance to get a full night's sleep, in full day's sleep before the game, but the rest of the day will be erased. I called the desk. My god, we still have one of those phones in one of the rooms. I thought we'd removed all of them. I'll send the electrician. He got there surprisingly fast. He did not bother with any niceties, and he simply did what I would have done. He yanked the whole thing out of the wall and

took it with him. I closed the door behind him, and I could hear it as he moved back down the hall towards the elevator. The phone was still ringing. It was a possessed phone. As the sun began to rise and I crawled back into bed, I remembered something. Vital I called my new friend at the front desk again and I pleaded with him. Upon my arrival. The night before, which seemed like three or four decades earlier,

I had sent over a suit to be pressed. Please, could you make sure they do not deliver it until I call? I have to sleep, guaranteed, sir, you get some sleep now. The knock came at eight thirty am, Ballet Service. I shout, go away. A moment later the phone rings Ballet Service. Minutes after that the phone rings again. Hi, this is the Ballet manager. We want to make sure did you get your suit? I emitted a string of

popular Anglo saxon expletives. I had now been violently awakened so many times by so many different means that my vision had blurred. I called the desk. I asked for the fat number of the general manager's office, and, in those days before the universality of email, I wrote the general manager a crisp and enraged letter, summarizing to her my night in her hell with elevators, and explaining I would be checking out and going anywhere a cab could take me, a Motel six, a YMCA, a safe looking

bus stop. When I finally woke to my own alarm around two in the afternoon, I found a note slipped under my door. It was as apologetic as anything I have ever read, and it had this sentence in it. I know we cannot undo the harm we have done to you, but I would offer you this by way of apology. At eight pm this evening, the presidential suite will become available. Please try it just tonight with our compliments.

We will pack and move your belongings in your absence, and my assistant will stay tonight until you return from the game and will personally escort you to the suite. Okay, well, I had to give that a shot, didn't I. The Presidential suite at the Swiss Hotel and Buckhead, Georgia was not what I expected. The front doors, there were two of them, opened onto a dining table which seated twenty eight. A few feet away from this twenty eight seater, well twenty or thirty or forty feet was the baby grand

piano in the next room. To the left, just a few minutes walk away was the kitchen and the conference room, which had the big table. Each of the bedrooms had a fireplace, so did the living room. There were four bedrooms. There was a sauna, There was a hot tub. There was a second hot tub out on the balcony. There was a walk in closet larger than the first room they had given me. There was a door in the back of the walk in closet that led to a

second walk in closet. I thought immediately of two things. I called all the women I had dated in the preceding year to see if any of them wanted to fly to Atlanta at my expense, even if it was just to see the presidential suite. I called women I had known from when I occasionally worked in Atlanta sixteen

years earlier. I then thought, we all right, practically here, we can hold the pre production meeting for Game two of the World Series in well, either in the living room with the twenty eight seat dining table or in the conference room with the thirty six seat table. Hell, the whole Game two of the World Series in this suite. My only concern with that, in a suite so big it should have had its own ZIP code, was that there was an excellent chance Steve Sachs would get lost

in it and we would never find him. And then I thought, no, they'll probably charge me extra for such a wonderful bonus the Buckhead, Georgia, Swiss Hotel and its general manager, whose name is lost in the folds of history, had cemented a place in my travel hall of fame, and we were discussing that during the pre production with our Fox Sports news crew at noon on Sunday before Game two, munching on the six plates of free food they had sent up, when the doorbell rang, I say, doorbell.

It sounded like the bells at Notre Dame in Paris. There, to my surprise, outside the double doors were three hotel staffers with luggage carts. For a moment, I thought they had come to give us free rides to the lobby. I expressed my surprise at their presence. Well, said the staffer, who turned out to be the other assistant to the hotels general manager. You're checking out today, I smiled, No, no, no, Tomorrow. Game two is tonight. We're checking out tomorrow, tomorrow morning.

Suddenly the bell station manager looked sad, even remorseful. Oh, for God's sakes, we got that wrong too. I'm afraid we need the presidential suite for an actual president tonight. I can move you to the governor's suite, he said. Hopefully, they packed my stuff as I instructed the Fox staff to eat all of the food on the platters and to stuff anything they could not eat into their pockets. I tried to sneak in a quick sauna, but the

staff said there was a certain element of hurry up involved. Finally, we all paraded down the hall to the Governor's suite.

And why Burger and I were speculating that this would only have one conference table and only one hot tub, and it would all be indoors, and there would be no balcony, and we'd all be like Cinderella when the clock struck midnight, and we get there and the assistant to the General Manager opens the door to the Governor's suite with great ceremony, and they're five feet in from

the vestibule. Perfectly placed on the ratty and bright blue nineteen eighty one nylon rug that might once have been the artificial turf at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, was the biggest carpet stain I have ever seen in my life, easily ten feet in diameter, causable only by the spilling

of nuclear waste or by a murder. So I said to the chagrined assistant to the general manager who was putting down a fresh towel to cover the stain, and to whom it was apparently news that his Governor's suite feature to stain the size of the chalk outline of where the body had fallen. So I asked him, when does the chorus arrive for practice? I swear to goodness there are pictures of me at the Baby Grand piano pretending to play. I've done all the damage I can

do here, mostly to my own respiratory system. Thanks for listening and bearing with me. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanelle arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, and it was

produced by Tko Brothers. And I have to have a conversation with the producers of this show because I have never recorded a generic last segment that I can just plug in when I'm not feeling well, So I have to do a new one for every show because I put all these dates and times in it, because I'm a genius. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions

arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Oberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, appearing courtesy of ESPN inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Tony Kornheiser. Everything else was pretty much my fault

except the rest. I'd like to blame on society. That's countdown for this, the one hundred and nineteenth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the two hundred and eightieth day since convicted felon Donald J. Insanity, Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. And that's right. I couldn't even get through the entire closing segment in one take. Use the September eighteen sentencing hearing.

Use the mental health system. You've got it, mister president. Use presidential immunity. You don't just give up. You don't say, well, Hitler won the election, So here are the keys. If you don't do it, he will use presidential immunity to stop Trump from doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow bulletins as the news warrants, although as mentioned earlier, maybe not. I'll check in with my respiratory system in the afternoon. I suspect it's in

one other room in the house somewhere. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck to me. 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.