THE CONTEMPT OF COURT TARGET HAS TO BE STEPHEN MILLER - 5.5.25

the focus is sharpening painstakingly. But it seems evident now that contempt cases being built by District Judges Jeb Bosberg and Paula Zennis, the effort to get depositions about and charge so but he with contempt of court in the abduction of mister Abrago Garcia and the renditioning of dozens of others to L Salvador after Judge Bosberg ordered the plane to not take off. The slow, methodical attempt to finally, at long last, about damn time, holds somebody in the

Trump crime administration responsible for something. This whole move to put somebody behind bars is in both courts targeting Stephen Miller. The finding by Judge Bosberg of probable cause for contempt citations against the Trump gang, and these depositions scheduled by Judge Zennis are apparently designed to confirm what Miller and the other Trumpian monsters are boasting about in private. Miller is the architect of the deportation scheme, and Miller is

the architect of its essential baseline component of cruelty. The man who has allegedly hated Hispanics since a girl he asked out in high school turned him down is also the architect of the scheme to disobey the district court orders to bring Abrego Garcia home, and to disobey the

Supreme Court in the process. That is what these courts are moving towards, proving the man who greets every warning from a court or an attorney or a human with a conscience to stop now before it is too late for him by getting louder and getting angrier and getting more monstrous. The man behind whatever step towards ethnic cleansing is next is clearly Stephen Miller. It sure looks like Judges Bosberg and Zennis want to put this ass behind bars.

NBC News quote one figure seems to have more responsibility than anyone else for this mess. Trump advisor Stephen Miller, former Judge John E. Jones, the third now president of Dickinson College on a legal website quote, it's one big show of contempt for the court, rife with dishonest behavior, and I think Bosberg is entirely right to vindicate the authority of the court and commence these contempt proceedings. In

the case of Judge Zennis, she's not there yet. What she's doing in stages is attempting to test the government's compliance. From one of my favorite analysts, Brian Foutler of Off Message, quote, most shrewd observers suspect that the contemner, the person who faces imprisonment for orchestrating defiance of a court order, is Stephen Miller, the monstrous TWRP fascist who conceived of Trump's

lawless immigrant expulsion regime. Trump would likely and corruptly order DOJ not to try a contempt case against Miller or anyone else in his administration. A judge might then invoke his or her prerogative to a point outside council to stand in for the prosecution. DOJ might challenge the constitutionality of this judicial power. It was Miller who called Judge Zennis quote a Marxist judge who now thinks she's president

of El Salvador. Why the back part of that would be a Trumpian insult since Trump owns the president of El Salvador. I do not know. But it turns out Miller has done more than just insult judges and defy their orders. The website TPM notes quote, a think tank founded by Stephen Miller, sued Chief Justice John Roberts and the office that administers the Judiciary, claiming that the White

House should run the federal courts. The America First Legal Foundation sued, and the case ostensibly proceeds as a freedom of information lawsuit, with the Trump aligned group seeking access to judiciary records, but in doing so, it asks the

courts to sed massive power to the White House. The bodies that make court policy and manage the judicial day to day operations should be considered independent agencies of the executive branch, the suit argues, giving the president, under the conservative legal movement theories, the power to appoint and dismiss

people in key roles. So this isn't just Miller and Trump trying to ignore and defy the courts, it's them setting up conflict with the courts and defying them, and perhaps having Miller martyr himself by going to jail or fighting going to jail, and trying to build up maga rage against all judges, even the ones on the Trump owned Supreme Court. While TPM reports legal scholars are expressing both dismay and laughter at all, this we should express neither.

Last week, after Ice arrested Judge Dugan in Wisconsin, Fox's NEPO baby Peter Doocey asked the White House official liar Caroline le quote, would you ever arrest a federal judge or even a Supreme Court justice? Instead of saying, of course not, Levitt's reply ended fascistically. Anyone who is breaking the law or obstructing federal law enforcement officials is putting themselves at risk of being prosecuted. Absolutely, does it make

sense to behave like this? Does it make sense, even for Trump in his delusional state, to move so far towards active dictatorship that you start making John Roberts believe he could be arrested for refusing to enable Trump, even after Roberts issued a statement about the existential need to keep the judiciary intact and independent. No, of course, it does not make sense. It does not have to make sense.

It's Stephen Miller, and of course it's Trump. Trump veering between preening that he is the mastermind of this anti American, anti humanity purge and insisting he knows nothing about it. Don't you need to follow the Constitution about their rights? He was asked yesterday. I don't know, he answers gullible deniability and the refusal to endorse the Constitution. Either way, Stephen Miller is the tumor inside the Maga brain. I want both these judges to charge Stephen Miller with contempt

and send bailiffs to detain him. Whatever happens after that, I do not think it will be what Miller expects it to be. Plus, to take a page from the appeal to Heaven, folks, maybe we'll get really lucky and Miller will resist rest and it's no longer just judges. The next target of this regime, whose ability to restrain itself, even when restraining itself means furthering its own evil aims,

seems to be disintegrating governors. Gestapo chief Tom Homan was asked about the guidance to state workers from Governor Tony Evers of Wisconsin to not stop ICE from carrying out actual deportation orders, but to seek guidance from legal counsel if they are confronted by ICE, or if ICE tries to get into state facilities, and to refuse demands for documents or other items demands from ICE without an Evers

administration state attorney being there. Responding to Evers two orders, both of them about as pro Ice as anybody could actually be. The Homan squealed, quote, I meant what I said. You cannot support what we're doing, and you can support sanctuary cities if that's what you want to do. But if you cross that line to impediment or knowingly harboring and concealing an illegal alien, that's a felony, and we're

treating it as such. Unquote. And of course, as we have seen, the trumpest human trafficking gang will not let judges or others not under its control decide where that line is or who has crossed it. They make up the laws as they go along. Homan has threatened the governor of Wisconsin and the governor of every Democratic state and going as they say in Hockey, from high to low.

Last week, ICE conducted a raid in Irvine, California that they thought was so important that they did it in armored vehicles rolling past the overwatered lawns of the upscale part of that town. Deployed drones to record overhead video of the tanks, and sent the acting chief ICE thug todd Lyons to be there in person for this the crime.

They have accused an unidentified suspect of committing, printing and posting flyers showing the photos, names and what may or may not be the phone numbers and locations of ICE agents in the Irvine area. The flyers are in Spanish. There are no home addresses. There's not even a suggestion that there should be retribution or threat against the Ice mobsters, just a warning to the community using publicly available information.

And they wanted to record the purp walk from overhead with drones to make it prettier for Fox News and Charlie Kirk and all the other propaganda outlets. And they brought the ICE director, though not Christy Noman eate new action dress up outfits to crow about it, brought him in in a tank. They are depraved monsters, happily like most praved monsters. They did not allow for the possibility

that they are stupid, depraved monsters. The suspect wasn't home, and what he does doesn't even vaguely fit the law under which they were hoping to prosecute him. Persecute him, the ice slug lions claimed the flyers put targets on the agent's back. Nice work, mister Lyons, you just confirmed the info is accurate. As immigration attorney Aaron Reichland Melnick noted,

the law in question that they want to use. Eighteen US Code one nineteen demands intent to quote, threaten, intimidate, or incite the commission of a crime of violence against the government representatives. A flyer that reads in Spanish watch out for them is not a threat. It is a response to a threat. It is fully protected under the First Amendment until Trump suspends the First Amendment. There two

other next steps here. Trump and his minions have been examining if they can label foreign or foreign born cartel and gang member suspects who are inside this country as enemy combatants and thus deny them legal roots out if they are detained, or maybe even deny them access to legal counsel if they get away with this, it is then just a short leap to be able to do

that to native born Americans. And if they can get away with that, combine it with Gestapo Tom Holman's threat to arrest governors, and the next judge or governor, or commentator or ordinary civilian who crosses Trump could not only then be arrested, but could be seized and declared an enemy combatant. And they could be in Gitmo or El Salvador before anybody else knows about it, or at least they could be in a GEO Group brand private prison. GEO is one of the leaders in this burgeoning field

of privatize jails, especially the dangerous fetid ones. As the Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee noted back in January, GEO Group quote has faced criticism for safety violations, providing

inadequate healthcare, and poor management practices. These actions have negatively impacted the welfare and rights of incarcerated individuals and the immigration detainees, and the GEO Group stands to earn hundreds of millions of dollars during the Trump administration, as ICE is its largest source of revenue unquote, and guess who has been lobbying for this company. Guess who has been lobbying for GEO Group, a heavy duty special interest firm

called Ballard Partners. And guess who one of Ballard Partners in house registered lobbyists is somebody who could have a direct connection to the direction of money to the Geo private prison cartel, but certainly has an indirect connection to that. None other than Pam Bondi. Attorney General Senator Dick Durbin has now awakened and asked her to recuse from all prosecutions and DOJ business relating to immigration and other kinds

of cases that would ultimately line GEO Group's pockets. My guess is that Bondi's answer, at least the one inside her otherwise empty head, would be something like recuse. Why would I recuse? Why would I stop helping getting more immigration prisoners into GEO prisons? Why the hell do you think he made me? Attorney General? So is John Fetterman in distress. We have two leaked stories and one leaked

video implying just that. The video, which was from February, is of him refusing to wear his airplane seat belt outside his sweatshirt while a flight attendant patiently explains to him that he will be taken off the plane, and the plane will not take off if he doesn't. The stories, both from his former chief of staff, Adam Gentilsen, portray a senator so gone that last year he was quoting New York Magazine, avoiding the regular checkups advised by his doctors.

He was preoccupied with the social media platform x, which he'd previously admitted had been a major accelerant of his depression. He drove his car so quote recklessly. Gentlesen said that staff refused to ride with him. He had also bought a gun unquote. The magazine quoted other staffers, former and current, who insists many of these mental health red flags are

resuming right now. Just as Fetterman was denying the New York Magazine story and his wife was asking why is this a story, the old old video appeared, and then so did a second story in The New York Times, reporting that the same ex chief of staff wrote a letter to Fetterman's doctor a year ago this month about Fetterman's mental health. Quoting from the letter, I'm worried that if John stays on his current trajectory, he won't be

with us for much longer. The Times added, quoting its reporter. Now, other former members of his staff, speaking on the condition of anonymity, report that their colleagues sometimes were frightened to be in the Senator's presence if he was in an amped up mood. Being in distress is no longer a disqualification for national office, of course, ask Trump, Ask a majority of Republicans in the House, and many of them

in the Senate in a rare bit of bipartisanship. The only time being in distress comes into play anymore is when the sufferer votes against his own party's principles or a lack thereof, or against its interests. Fetterman, of course, was showing that in January, vowing to work with Trump and then joining Schumer in caving to the Republicans on a bill that, among other things, blocked any investigation of what the hell Elon Musk is doing to us speaking

of being in distress. So sadly, the answer is, I don't care if Fetterman is sick or not. He's acting like a Trumpist. Get him out of the Senate and speaking of Trump and cognitive health as in Trump's cognitive living death, More and more and more evidence of more and more and longer and longer delusions meet the press yesterday about the coming explosive diarrhea form of inflation and

the coming shortage of everything. Quote. I don't think a beautiful baby girl that's eleven years old needs to have thirty dollars. I think they can have three dollars or four dollars. Now you have to admit a party platform heading into the midterms of I'm taking your child's dolls away from them is novel. It's insane, but it's novel, at least for this country. Lenin and Stalin tried something like it. I mean, it's basically a modified version of

taking candy from a baby. Oh, and pencils. In Trump's world, those eleven year old girls who just got a rock for Christmas also quote don't need to have two hundred and fifty pencils. They can have five, because on top of everything else, after dolls, Trump believes and eleven year

old's next favorite thing is pencils. A reminder that the eleven year olds who were introduced to politics and to Trump's insanity by just this quote, or who will be in the months and years to come, Those eleven year olds will be voting in the year twenty thirty two, so in case all the MAGA aren't in prison by then and they run a candidate, bookmark these quotes for

those now eleven year olds. One also assumes Trump lost more veterans many of their groups are furious about his dictat that November eleventh Veterans Day is no longer Veterans Day. It is now Victory Day for World War One, and May eighth it will be this Thursday is now Victory Day for World War II, which, on top of being just nuts, also faces the minor difficulty that World War Two only ended when the Japanese surrendered on August fifteenth,

nineteen forty five. Trump doesn't know that. Forgot it. Was consulting his Russian calendar and noticed they celebrate May ninth as victory Day. Well, now that's a coincidence. I guess we should just be happy he didn't rename Veterans Day Gulf of America Day, or Gulf between Trump's Ears Day. Also, Trump again claimed yesterday that gas is below two dollars

in many states, like the state of advanced Dementia. One online commentator offered one thousand dollars to the first person to show him where in America gasoline is one dollar and ninety eight cents a gallon. Commentator still has his one thousand dollars because it is only one dollar ninety eight cents a gallon in the gas pumps of Trump's brain like the circles that you find in the windmills of Trump's mind. Of course, asked if it's quote okay

in the short term to have a recession. Trump's answer in the same interview as a shrug and quote, look, yeah, it's everything's okay. This is a transition period. I think we're going to do fantastically. The White House tried to cover this quote up. Trump endorsed having a recession in that quote. They tried to cover this up by claiming that the yeah and the okay in the answer look yeah, it's everything's okay, we're filler words, and he never endorsed

having a recession. He did. They also blamed all this on Biden's economy. But that imaginary dollar ninety eight cent to gallon gas, that's the Trump economy. Rationing dolls. Not

sure whose economy that is sounds like stalins. Check your calendar to see if today it's Biden's economy day, or if it's Trump's economy day, or if it's possibly Obama's economy day, or if it's victory in World War three day, and Trump again Julius caesared his own lot to break the Constitution and run for a third term or just never leave office. So many people want me to do. I have never had requests so strong as that, But it's something that, to the best of my knowledge, you're

not allowed to do. But there are many people selling the twenty twenty eight hat, because that's what this is all about, selling a hat. Making a decision like that based on the hat. The Constitution he don't know, Constitution hats he knows. Hats. Speaking of hats, there is still the Trump Pope photo. It is, I believe, blasphemy. Worse, it's mocking a religious leader who just died and those of his faith who are still mourning him. It has

infuriated Catholics around the world. Some of them are just seeing it today and Pope hats off to Charlie Sykes who responded to it by calling Trump and quote absurd, juvenile, el chowed. I understand not everybody knows that last word c hode chowed, I'd advise you to google it, and hey, President Ted Bundy Trump, if you're thinking of resigning the presidency to become pope, you have my full one hundred

percent endorsement. If not, you know what would make your cult just as amused as that that Pope Trump picture. Put another one of these out, only only to pict yourself as the prophet Muhammad. The reaction to that would be huge. By the way, a House Democrat has now moved to impeach Trump and it got zero attention. Shri Thanadar of Michigan did it seven articles. Al Green still has plans for his own set, though he may combine

now with Thanadar. The reaction from the Democratic leadership to this, The chair of the Democratic House Caucus gave, naturally the wrong answer, quote. Impeachment is at times a tool that can be used. This president is no stranger to that. He's been impeached twice. This is pete agiar speaking. But we don't have any confidence that House and Senate Republicans would do their jobs, and so this is not an

exercise that we're willing to undertake. So what you don't file to impeach because you're guaranteed to remove him from office. You don't file to impeach because you're guaranteed to pass the articles. You don't even file to impeach because you're guaranteed to vote on your motion. You file to impeach

because the bastard should be impeached. And because, as I've shown before, serious impeachment attempts, even the ones that go nowhere, are always except for the second Trump impeachment and the twenty twenty two midterms, they are always followed by a victory by the impeaching party in the next election, House, Senate, presidency, sometimes all three, even in twenty twenty two, and it didn't work. The Democratic loss in the mid terms was

far smaller than predicted. The only hesitation should be about this growing attempt to repurpose impeachment by MAGA. There is apparently a viewpoint from the more realistic members of that cult that by this time next year, Trump will have wiped out any chance they have of retaining the House and maybe even the Senate, and that a serious impeachment attempt and their response to it to protect Trump could be the only Republican campaign platform, their only rallying cry.

You must put us back even after we caused the new depression, because otherwise the Democrats will impeach Trump and throw him out of office the day after they take over the House in the Senate. In that case, if this really does develop as not just a Republican running slogan, but the only one, let's pause, let's research a little bit. We don't have to do this today. Let's pause the final decision on impeachment to see how much the fascists run with it and run on it. Or maybe, you know,

we could see some polling on it. Maybe, I mean, I understand the pollsters have lost all self confidence, and with good reason, which brings me to this final whopper. CNN's Harry Enton does a good job, albeit an often frantic, unintelligible one, which appears to be what is required now to be a cable news pollster, But he screwed up big His survey who would be doing a better job as president? Registered voters who said they voted in the

twenty twenty four election. He says these numbers should be a major wake up call for Democrats who would be doing a better job as president? Results forty five percent, Harris forty three percent same twelve percent. Firstly, Harris, no offense to Vice President Harris. But the Democrat you put into this polling is the one who just lost, who reeks of the last loss fairly or unfairly. Why didn't you put Hillary in there, or Michael Ducacas or General

George McClellan. And how about just asking Trump versus anybody else? Another version of the poll? I want to see, how about I want to change my vote? How does I want to change my vote? Due in polling? Also these results Harry Trump better job forty five percent, Harris better job forty three percent, and twelve percent who answered same. Doesn't that mean, let's see, forty three plus twelve is

fifty five. Doesn't that mean that fifty five percent of voters now think Harris would have done better or at least as well as Trump. Or you could read it a third way, that fifty seven percent of voters now think Trump is doing better or at least as well as Harris would have. Doesn't that mean the poll has three conflicting results? Exactly? What use is a goddamn poll

with three goddamned conflicting goddamned results? Oh, silly me, This is the use right right to kill a few hours on CNN, and more importantly, to give CNN something new with which to suck up to Trump. Also of interest, here there's a worse person in the world and a

best person in the world. In the same story, a pretend reporter from Tucker Carlson's Daily Cancer tries to troll Congresswoman Elan Omar over Trump's constitutional renditions, and she gives him a six word answer, and the last two words rhyme with kluck cough, and here we go again. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day Roger Banister became the first human being to run a mile in less than

four minutes. Except for the one small detail that he wasn't the first human being to run a mile in less than four minutes, not by at least two hundred years, maybe by at least a thousand years. I got to explain this every year while half the news outlets in the world get it wrong. Again. Roger Banister was not the first human being to run a mile in less than four minutes. He wasn't even the first guy in

England to do it. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on this edition to countdown it is that time again. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day in nineteen fifty four on which Roger Banister became the first human to run a mile in less than four minutes. Except for one thing, He clearly wasn't the first human to run a mile in less than four minutes, and we've celebrated him for no good reason now for seventy one years the day Roger

Banister did not break the four minute carrier. Next in Sportsball Center First, Believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute the latest other worse persons in the world the Bronze worse. It's a tie to Trump robots, White House Press secretary. You can't spell Caroline without le and you can't spell Levitt without lie. Get her quote here. DEI seeks to divide

and pit Americans. They gainst each other based on immutable characteristics. President Trump put an end to it. In President Trump's America. Individual dignity, hard work, and excellence are the only things that will determine if you get ahead. Or if you lie on behalf of a psychopath, that'll get you ahead, Caroline. Or if you get a full scholarship to play a

softball at Saint Anselm's. Or if you're an idiot but you have a television smile and you look like the beer waitress on the bottle of Saint Paul Girl Beer, in which case, you, Caroline Levitt, are a different kind of dei hire, aren't you. She's tied with somebody who could challenge Levitt for dumbest by their own definition dei hire.

In the Trump junta, Laurie Chavez de Rimmer, the Secretary of Labor, or more correctly, the Secretary of ripping off labor the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, issued a statement correctly excoriating Trump for the tariff hallucination and the unnecessary trade wars that will essentially shut down America's ports in the next few months and get a lot of longshoremen and warehouse people fired because, as the statement ended of

quote a president's whims unquote. Secretary Chafez de Rimmer was brought on to CNN to respond, and she correctly repeated a memorized statement about how the Longshoreman's Union was essentially in agreement with Trump because they all wanted great trade. It's technically true. It's true in the same sense that I am in agreement with Trump because both of us want air so we don't stop breathing and die. I

prefer to make efforts to have clean air. Trump prefers to have efforts to have poisonous air because he makes money off of it. But we degree we want air. But when anchor Pamela Brown kept hitting that one phrase, a president's whims, it was clear Secretary of Chavez Duremer

didn't know what the word whims means. Brown said, whims, and it's nice to see a newsperson, especially on CNN, who is still astonished by the twenty four to seven hot and cold running bullshit coming out of this dictatorship. Raymer replied that quote sounded exactly in line with the president, to which CNN's Brown replied, in frustrated astonishment, they're criticizing him. Good for you, as to the secretary, never admit, never apologize,

never fail to use your stupidity against them. As in aside, Secretary of Chavez, d Rahmer's great uncle has a star on Hollywood Walk of Fame, in part because in a Disney film once he played a tree squirrel. The runner your runner up, you could speak better than I could, That's for sure, the runner up. Speaking of tree squirrels.

Jesse Waters, the Fox guy with the skeletons in his closet who hosts the eight PM show, Not the one with the skeletons in his closet who hosts the five PM show or the midnight show, nor any of the ones who have skeletons in their closet who hosts the other shows. Jesse, the one at eight o'clock, is so dumb that it is remarkable that he's not in the

Trump cabinet. The Trump Government of the Undead is so secretive about Doge or Douche or whatever it's called, that they wanted to prosecute people who revealed the names of some of Musk's degenerates who were illegally wiping out entire government departments. But they brought waters At a Fox video crew into the Doge Douche Dungeon, and Musk gave the Fox propaganda addict some fresh crack. He gave them and Jesse Waters a tour of the place. And guess who

blew the thing. Waters clipped the video of him and Musk and posted it with this caption exclusive an inside like at the Caves of Bureaucracy with Doge. For several minutes, I had no idea what he meant, an inside like at the Oh that's look, meathead, an inside look, Jesse, an inside look at the caves of bureaucracy. Just read these things aloud before you hit send. It takes a second and it saves you all sorts of typos. Also, don't ever go in a cave with Elon Musk. Just don't.

But our winner, Miles Morrell, how much morell do we have? We got Miles Morrell. Miles says he'll be a congressman someday. Right now, though he is a quote reporter unquote with the Daily Cancer Foundation, which for obvious reason in public calls itself the Daily Caller Foundation, but it was launched by Tucker Carlson. It's the Daily Cancer Foundation anyway. Miles doesn't even try. He claims to be a reporter, and yet his homepage photo is him doing two thumbs up

in front of a Trump plane. That's two thumbs up, presumably to match the fact that his two eyes are on the two opposite eyes of a sides of his own head. Miles tried to interview Congresswoman Ilhan Omar the other day. I have my problems with the congresswoman, but every time I think they amount to something important, she wins me back over. Listen carefully to Miles trying to do an interview with the congresswoman. Or if you don't like cuss words, A, why are you listening to this podcast?

And B, don't listen carefully to this SoundBite congress want Omar. I'm Miles Morale with a Daily Caller News Foundation. Do you think more of your Democratic college should be traveling.

and they reply, oh how shall we f off? Oh lord morel of the daily Cancer, Today's other worst person in the world.

four minute mile. Except for one small detail, he wasn't. We cannot now comprehend what a big deal this really was. Neil Armstrong, Times, Charles Lindbergh plus George Washington Maybe. The next day, The New York Times published ten different stories about Roger Banister breaking the four minute mile barrier, plus an editorial. An editorial on the editorial page that asked if anybody in world history would ever do it again?

Roger Gilbert Banister began the Times on the front page ran a mile in three minutes fifty nine point four seconds tonight to reach one of man's hitherto unattainable goals. There's just one problem. Not only was Roger Banister probably not the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes, but there is also a lot of evidence that that record was broken in May of seventeen seventy by a guy who sold fruits and vegetables from a push cart on the streets of London, a guy

named Parrot. Sixty nine years later, and this is still the most famous run in the history of the world. May sixth, nineteen fifty four, on an ordinary spring evening at the if Lee Road Track at Oxford University in England, even as an unfavorable wind worked against him, Roger Banister ran through the tape in three point fifty nine to four and ran directly into not just sports history, but human history, the four minute mile, the first human ever to run that far that fast, like the first man

on the moon. No matter how much farther we go, but glory is his, indefinitely, forever, always eternal, immortal. Neil Armstrong, but in shorts or there had already been a four minute mile run in seventeen seventy, And Banister has no more claim to immortality than do you or I. And this is really a story about bureaucracy supporting bureaucracy, and what the experts call recency bias, and a lot of racism.

And the story should be about a guy who used to sell fruits and vegetables on the streets of London, and who ran his spare time for money in the decade before the American Revolution. And his name was Parrot, as in look, maby, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now. We begin in the pages of a British book dated from seventeen ninety four, which seems to be for you back to the future fans, a kind of Gray's Sports Almanac.

The seventeen ninety four tome bears an amazingly modern title The Sports Magazine, and its chronology of top sports events of recent years past includes for the year seventeen seventy this quote seventeen seventy May ninth, James Parrot a costermonger. A costermonger sold fruits and vegetables from a pushcart on street. James Parrott, a costumonger, ran the length of Old Street viz. From the charterhouse wall in Goswell Street to Shoreditch Church Gates,

which is a measured mile, in four minutes. Fifteen guineas to five were betted he did not run the ground in four minutes and a half. So that's it. I am besmirching the immortality of Saint Roger Banister and everything you will see in the newspapers about him over the weekend because of fifty one words about some guy racing against an eighteenth century watch in the year seventeen seventy, and the story wasn't even published until twenty four years later. Seriously, seriously,

there is nothing else to say about James Parrott. That snippet from that book is all that researchers have ever found or found out about James Parrott. No obituary, no nothing, no four minute mile, no confirmation he ever existed. Besides which, as every modern sports fan will tell you, the athletes of today are the great, greater, greatest of all time. Goats. If the record book says nobody ran a four minute mile until nineteen fifty four. Of course, the record books

are right. Since seventeen seventy, humans have evolved, health has evolved, training has evolved. Why in seventeen seventy you couldn't even accurately measure a mile, let alone measure exactly four minutes. Actually, agricultural chains, designed to resolve who owned what property and where international borders were had been introduced in sixteen twenty and have proved to be at worst only off by

around two fifths of an inch over a mile. And if you're saying agracultural chains, you don't use agricultural chains in sports, let me ask you this. What do they use in National Football League games to check whether or not it's a first down? Okay, we're giving them the accuracy of the agricultural chains we still use today in

our pro sports. You could measure several blocks of London in seventeen seventy and say from way back there to right over here in front of the church, that is exactly a mile, Governor, But how would you time it four minutes exactly? What? Did they use? A really good sundial No, that had a thing called a chronometer. The chronometer was perfected by seventeen sixty one. You may know the chronometer as a Swiss watch, or as you might

also know it a rolex. So this Parrot runs a mile, or maybe he runs a mile plus two fifths of an inch, and he is timed by several guys with rolllexes, and they all have the same score. He did it

in exactly four minutes. If you're still not convinced, if you're still googling Roger Banister's descendants so they can sue this idiot Olderman in his podcast, let me emphasize the part that convinced me that a man named Parrot did run a four minute mile two months and four days after the Boston massacre unleashed the events that would culminate in the American Revolution. Permit me to reread that last sentence about James Parrot's run from Gray's Sports almana I'm sorry,

from the Sporting magazine of seventeen ninety four. Quote, fifteen guineas to five were betted he did not run the ground in four minutes and a half. This guy Parrot bet on himself and got three to one odds, and the five guineas wagered. Here that would be worth about fifty five hundred dollars in today's money, meaning this was no eighteenth century Roger Banister hoping to break a record

for Queen and Country. This was a guy who did this for money, for the equivalent in winnings of about seventeen thousand dollars, at least as much as his annual income might have been selling fruits and vegetables from a cart, and the way it's phrased in that magazine, we don't know. If more than one bet of fifteen guineas to five was placed, he might have won thirty four thousand dollars or fifty one thousand dollars or five hundred and ten

thousand dollars. Because this was for money, the loser or losers who bet he could not finish the race in four and a half minutes had to be satisfied that he had done it in less than four and a half, in this case, in four As we know from our own times, losers now like to claim they didn't lose, and will go to any length to convince others they did not lose. But James Parrott got his money, which means that the loser or losers believed James Parrott really

raised a mile and did it in four minutes. I'm sold antiquated books and four minute miles round one hundred and eighty three years before the first four minute mile, and costermongers and agricultural change. They may come and go and may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, but money is money, and James Parrott was given the equivalent of his annual salary at least once because somebody who thought he could not do it agreed, Yeah, I was wrong. He really, really,

really really did just run the mile in four minutes. Now, of course, the whole account in the book could be wrong. I'm old enough that I was actually on the air doing sportscast on the radio network of United Press International on April twenty first, nineteen eighty when Rosie Ruiz quote one unquote the Boston Marathon. Then it turned out two people had seen Rosy Ruiz burst out of the crowd of spectators on Commonwealth Avenue and start running alongside the

men runners. And then it turned out that while she was supposedly completing the nineteen seventy nine New York Marathon, she had struck up a conversation with a freelance photographer on the subway, and the two of them went to the finish line together, and Rosie Ruiz then told officials she had just finished the race. And Rosie Ruiz was a total fraud in two different marathons. Maybe the seventeen seventy four minute mile of James Parrott was just inaccurate.

Maybe it was just an inside joke or a misheard rumor or a typo, or he took the subway with Rosie Ruiz, or it was a joke by whoever wrote the book. I've told you the story before about the nineteen twelve Saint Louis Brown's second baseman named Proctor, and

nobody could find anything about him. And then it turned out Procter was the Western Union operator who used to make up all the official scorecards after each game, and one day he decided he always wanted to be a Major League ballplayer, so he put himself in the scorecard. Maybe James Parrott was the author of this the sports magazine or his four minute miles and Monty Python jokes go. Now,

that's what I call a dead parrot. So if it's a mistake, if it's a typo, if it's a hype job, if it's Rosie Ruiz, if it's Leu Proctor, Roger Banister is safe. Now he's not because there was also a runner named Powell, and Powell in seventeen eighty seven said he could run a mile in four minutes, and he wasn't messing around. He bet a thousand guineas that he could do it, one point one million dollars in today's money.

And not only that, but he ran on a famous English running track near Hampton Court, and five days before Christmas of seventeen eighty seven, he ran a time trial so that the gamblers could all come over and see what shape he was in and whether they should bet for him or bet against him. And he did it in the time trial in four minutes and three seconds. And when Powell said the betters could see what shape he was in, he really meant it. He was dedicated

to his cause. Five days before Christmas and this guy ran a mile naked. All that was in the papers. What happened to the actual race, Yes, we don't know that. Nobody has ever found that newspaper. Nobody's ever found an account of the race. Only the time trial so we have to go under the assumption that Powell never did better than four to oh three. But once again, Roger Banister's four minute mile has withstood the test of time. Kinda bah, No, Actually it hasn't. There's also another guy

named Weller. Weller was famous enough as a professional runner of the time that when he said he could run a mile on the Banbury Road in Oxford, the newspapers of the day all showed up to preview it, to talk about his two brothers, who were also professional runners, and to cover his attempt on October tenth, seventeen ninety six.

And there it is in the papers. Weller of Oxford runs a mile in three minutes fifty eight seconds, not only one hundred and fifty eight years before Roger Banister, but a second and a half faster than Roger Banister.

So here's the thing. If somebody really ran a mile in three fifty nine or three fifty eight at the time of the American Revolution, wouldn't that stand out as such an impossible performance, then, such an anomaly so startling that it would be viewed in the same way we would view news coming up on Monday, that somebody now had just run the mile in three minutes flat. I mean, if somebody ran the mile in three minutes flat, we would check to see if the guy was a space

alien or a time traveler. Wouldn't They have been amazed on October tenth, seventeen ninety six, disbelieving what they had heard, not at all. And that's the second half of the story of the day. Roger Banister did not break the four minute barrier. Research and computers and simulations show that people in the seventeen eighties were consistently running the mile in four minutes and eighteen seconds, four minutes and twenty seconds, four minutes and fifteen seconds, if the info about is right,

three minutes and fifty eight seconds. All the time, these numbers were being put up by all kinds of runners. So a four minute mile would have been great, but not out of context, not in seventeen ninety six. And then you have to ask, if it happened, where are all those records. Who were all those four minute eighteen guys and four minute three second guys and three fifty eight guys. What happened to the records? Well, see that's

another scandal. Those eighteenth century records were erased in the nineteenth century. Because richer, slower people in the nineteenth century wanted to say they held the records, they erased the record book. That part of the story, and the additional sad truth that much of the claims about Roger Banister are really really racist. Next, we know Roger Banister really did run a three minute and fifty nine second mile

on May sixth, nineteen fifty four in England. It was timed and announced to a waiting crowd by no less a figure than Norris mcwherder, who was later the founder or co founder of the Guinness Book of World Records. And everybody who was there saw history and was part of an impossible dream coming true. And as I mentioned earlier, the next day the New York Times actually had an editorial asking whether or not anybody would ever do it again.

There is considerable evidence, as I've laid out here, that it was done before, like two hundred years before. But if you were still not convinced that, no, no matter what else it was, Roger Banister's three minute fifty nine point four second mile on May sixth, nineteen fifty four was not first four minute mile. If James Parrott and the naked runner Powell of Hampton Court and Weller seventeen

ninety six. Don't convince you there is also this. There is a sports historian named Peter Radford, himself the bronze medalist in two sprints at the nineteen sixty Olympics in Rome, and he brought the story of Parrot and Powell and Weller to the forefront in the British press nearly twenty years ago. This man found them because he was looking for and finding the records of more than six hundred

running races in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Running against the clock, against each other, usually for money, was not only the most popular professional sport in Britain at that time, it was also probably the first. And with so many races and especially winning and losing times recorded, Peter Radford had data to work with. When guys didn't run a

four minute mile, how fast did they run it? How fast were these professionals going the average over other distances in say seventeen eighty nine, what was the range of times? And his computer looked at all of these races, six hundred or so, and all of the times and all of the speeds, and it spit out this conclusion. Factoring in the margin of error, Radford wrote, the best possible one mile time would be anywhere between four minutes, thirteen

seconds and exactly four minutes. So no, you cannot say James Parrott ran the first four minute mile in seventeen seventy and Weller ran the first sub four minute mile in seventeen ninety six, not with certainty, but I think you can say with certainty that somebody did it before the year eighteen hundred, and that when Roger Banister crashed through the tape at Oxford at six oh four Greenwich meantime on the evening of Thursday May sixth, nineteen fifty four,

and the track announcer Norris McWhorter announced that Roger Banister's time in the mile was and he gave it a desperately long pause, by all accounts for a minute fifty nine unfall ten seconds. The moment that happened, Roger Banister became at best the second man to run a mile in four minutes or less, but more likely he was like the twenty second or the two hundred and twenty second.

So why why didn't anybody know this? Why did Roger Banister live a life of unceasing, undiminished and sorry, undeserved fame. And that guy Weller who may have run the race a second faster and one hundred and fifty eight years earlier, why don't we even know Weller's first name? All sports are based on history. Records are made to be broken. The older the record, the louder the break. Who screwed this up? How did we lose Weller in the nooks and cranny of history. We didn't lose them. It wasn't

an error. It was deliberate. And that's where this gets to be a crime. Our historian and ex Olympic runner mister Radford quoted another ancient book, British Rural Sports by J. H. Walsh, which was published in eighteen eighty eight, and in it all the dozens of speed and distant events had two sets of records. One for professionals like Parrot and Powell and Weller, the ones who ran for money, the ones on whom people bet, the ones who bet on themselves.

There was that set of records, and then another set of records which was given far more weight and far more importance for the amateurs. By the early twentieth century, Radford wrote, the professional records had been erased from these books, expunged, not forgotten, removed. Why because the professionals were far better than the amateurs. No amateur held the record in the mile. It was all professionals, but the amateurs were in charge.

They were the British upper class. They raced not for money, but for sport. So the amateurs simply did what the upper class always does in this situation. They erased the records of all the professionals. And oh, by the way, they also erased all records set by women. The British obsession with the superiority of the amateur over the professional. If you've ever seen the movie Chariots of Fire, you already know exactly what I mean. It spread throughout the

world through the Olympics. That's why Jim Thorpe lost all his gold medals from the nineteen twelve Games. Why the greatest all around athlete ever died in poverty because he had once played minor league baseball to make some money in the summer, and everybody knew about it, and nobody thought they'd hold it against it, But then they held

it against him. He was a professional, so his records did not count like James Parrot or fill in the blank here Powell or I don't remember his first name Weller. So the world record in the mile as of the year eighteen sixty one was credited to a man, an amateur named Matthew Green. Matthew Green was the fastest man in human history four minutes and forty six seconds. Four minutes and forty six seconds. In my twenties, I might

have come close to that number. By nineteen thirteen, the International Amateur Athletics Federation had taken over, and it recognized a runner from Cornell, not me, a different runner from Cornell, as the all time outdoor record holder in the mile four minutes and thirteen seconds, John Paul Jones, one hundred and forty three years after James Parrott. The indoor record in the mile was then held by a man named Abel Kiviat four eighteen and two. I met Abel Kiviat.

I interviewed him when he was ninety. I wish I had known about James Parrot. Then I didn't. Abel and I talked about his roommate at the nineteen twelve Olympics, Jim Thorpe got to tell you that story sometime too, But boy, Abel Kiviat and I could have had a conversation about amateurs versus professionals and whether or not his record was actually a record. Anyway, you can see where this is all going, and we are almost at our

proverbial finish line. Not only did history forget the great athletes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries like Parrot and Powell and Weller, who if they did not break the four minute mile, they came damn close and did a lot better than my friend Abel Kiviat did, or my Cornell guy John Paul Jones, to say another, of Matthew Green four minutes and forty six seconds, What did you

do stop for lunch? Not only were the remarkable athletes like Parrot and Powell and Weller forgotten, they were buried deliberately. It makes the subject of the Roger Banister four minute mile that everybody celebrates with almost undiminished astonishment every year at this time. It makes all this a little less trivial and a little bit more nefarious and wrong and ugly. Speaking of Ugly and Banister, there is one other component

to this story. In the nineteen nineties, having been the god of the four minute mile for four decades, having been celebrated every day for breaking a record that was

probably broken one hundred and eighty three years before. Roger Banister was asked about the new generation of runners, those of African descent on September twelfth, nineteen ninety five, Sir Roger Banister explained, quote, it's certainly obvious when you see an all black sprint final that there must be something rather special about their anatomy or physiology which produces these outstanding successes. And indeed there may be, but we don't

know what it is. Some countries have the good fortune to have a high proportion of black sprinters and hurdlers end quote. Nineteen years later, Banister was still driving right into the Eugenics lane, sounding just enough like Jimmy the Greek Snyder to make you squirm. I love watching people like Usain Bolt, Banister said. The West Africans, of course, have an inbuilt advantage, having been transported as slaves to the West Indies. Only the toughest endured. They have astonishing

muscle composition, with those fast fibers and superior genes. I will leave it to you and to his maker. An assessment of how much of Roger Banister was patronizing, how much was him trying to rationalize how his time had been bettered by nearly ten percent, and how much of it was just sheer racism. But I will note that in what Banister said is another reason to believe that the idea that he was the first human to run

a four minute mile is laugh out loud ridiculous. What about all of the runners of color over the centuries, over the millennia, in Africa and South America and elsewhere on this globe. By Banister's own disturbing logic, certainly some of them must have beaten him to breaking the four minute tape. No, let me close with this, I don't know for certain who ran the first four minute mile

or when. For all we know, it was broken two thousand years ago, and for that matter, so was the present world record of three point forty three point thirteen. Might have been James Parrott or Powell or Weller whose first names we don't know, or someone so lost to history that we don't know their first name or their last name, or their country. We don't know who who it was. But no matter what you hear, or see

or read, in this Weekend Ahead. It's sure as hell was not Roger Banister, which brings us lastly to missus Roger Banister, Moira Elva Jacobson Banister, daughter of a Swedish economist. According to Roger Banister, his wife didn't know a lick about sports, let alone about running, let alone about him running for a time. Roger Banister once said, my wife thought I had run four miles in one minute. You know, as I've been thinking about this and researching that story,

you might as well go with that. Four miles in one minute no more ridiculous than thinking that Roger Banister was the first man to run one mile in four minutes. I've done all the damage I can do here for one day. Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on guitars, the bass and

the drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. And no, Roger Bannister did not become the first human being to run the four minute mile. Not in the whole of that Millennium christ Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My

announcer today was my friend, Nancy Faust. Everything else was, as ever, my fault. So let's countdown for today, Day one hundred and six of America held hostage, just three and fifty seven days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term. Unless the Deep State removes him sooner, What where the actuarial tables do? The next scheduled countdown is Thursday, as always bulletins, as the news warrants, remember in peach Trump, it won't work now.

It will, however, win the Democrats the mid terms. And I want some polling on a presidential recall vote. How difficult is this? Stop with the focus groups? Chuck until next time. I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.