Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. So which do you like worst, suspending habeas corpus breaking the law by threatening to arrest members of Congress for obeying the law, or Trump accepting a half billion dollar impeachable illegal bribe from the government of Kutthar that the Attorney General has ruled isn't illegal. And by the way, the Attorney General used to be a lobbyist for the government of Kutthar. Coincidence, No doubt, they are all nation destroying events.
But bluntly, there is no way back from a suspension of habeas corpus. It becomes a one man dictatorship then, Because if you think suspending habeas corpus just for undocumented immigrants is somehow acceptable on its face, remember two things.
One is that there would be no hearings and no legal recourse for anyone seized in this way, so that all they would have to do is claim that you are an undocumented immigrant to rationalize disappearing you, and you would not have a hearing at which you could prove you were a citizen, and you would not have a lawyer to appeal the decision not to give you a hearing. Alexandria Accassio Cortes born in the Bronx High School in
Yorktown Heights, not according to Christy Nomes records. In her file, we have her down as being born elsewhere, and she's illegal. And if you ask any other questions, we'll just get your file, which also has you being born elsewhere and your illegal. And if you somehow get in to see a judge somewhere on her behalf or on your own behalf, we'll just get the judge file, which also has the
judge being born elsewhere, and they're illegal. And maybe eighteen days ago you would have laughed at the idea that they could ever arrest a judge. And if you're still laughing, let me reintroduce you to Judge Hannah Dugan of Milwaukee. That's the first and most obvious problem. There is no limit. Once habeas corpus is suspended for whatever reason about whatever group of people, habeas corpus is the limit. Suspend that,
and there are no limits. It is then one quick final jump to making this place the Trump States of America. But there is a second thing to remember. The one man dictatorship to which I refer is not Trump. He is the ever more feeble front man here, and they lie to him to make him think it's him. The one man dictatorship, on the ethnic cleansing, on the elimination of the judiciary, the erasure of your baseline rights to not be kidnapped by the proud boys gang dressed up
as government agents. The one man dictatorship is actually run by Stephen fing Miller. And where in this happy announcement does Stephen Miller say anything about suspending habeas corpus only four immigrants.
Well, the Constitution is clear, and that, of course is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So would say that's an option we're actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.
I heard invasion there the only invasion is by the disease that he is Maga, just as the invasion of Germany was by the disease that was Nazism. I also heard it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not, because sure they'd use habeas corpus to continue to round up undocumented immigrants and citizens and anybody else who doesn't look white enough. But the reference to
the courts by Miller is not inadvertent. That is a warning to the judges, and the warning is your next I presented the nightmares of habeas corpus and arresting members of Congress and the Katari airplane bribe as three separate issues, but they're really not separate. Certainly, the first two are
not separate. Michael McCall is one of the Trump gangsters from Texas, and he is absolutely fine with Homeland Security threatening to arrest Representatives Rob Menendez and Lamonica Machiver and Bonnie Watson Coleman on a charge of, I guess a charge of being beaten up by Homeland Security as they exercise their Congressional right to inspect the ICE concentration camp in Delaney Hall in Newark. The congresswoman hit an officer's
fist with her face. The Homeland Gestapo spent the weekend dropping hints that the three congress people are going to the Big House, just as they arrested Newark's mayor ros Baraka, who knew it was coming because he's not a member of Congress, and bus does not have legal privilege to inspect a concentration camp with one hundred cells in it being reopened in the city he's supposed to be in
charge of and was elected to do so. But what this thug McCall said yesterday ties this all together and ominously, so he went on face the nation and postulated a conspiracy between the Jersey Democrats and the imaginary invaders from the nation of MS thirteen Land asked specifically about arresting members of Congress, and remember he's a member of Congress, this fascist McCall answered, quote and peacefully protest in this country, but you cannot be complicit with gang violence against our
law enforcement. And I think perhaps that's what it comes down to. Well, if we live in a dictatorship, that's exactly what it comes down to. Steven Miller decides who should be disappeared if you defend them, and the Ice Death Squad chief Tom Homan has already said this, like I already said in twenty sixteen that someday somebody would say this, if you defend them, Steven Miller can decide that you should also be disappeared. And if you are a judge who tries to merely enforce the law giving
either of you due process. The judge can be disappeared. And if you're a member of Congress who protests, you are, according to the guy at the next desk, complicit with gang violence against our law enforcement, and you can be disappeared. Even the leading Trump gangsters are morons. So in this equation, of course, McCall has forgotten this most elemental bit of logic. One members of the House of Representatives can be seized for exercising their legal rights as members of the House
of Representatives. Thus two, Michael McCall is a member of the House of Representatives. Thus three. That means Michael McCall can well. Even if he hasn't figured it out, you already have Trump his mind rapidly going is not uninvolved here. After reich Schleiter Miller glibly referred to habeas corpus to stop the invasion, which is going on only inside his
diseased mind. The White House was quick to leak to CNN that while Trump himself has not mentioned habeas corpus, that's what he meant last month when he insisted there were steps he could take against the courts, against the judges against the laws, against the Constitution, and against America. Quoting him, then there are ways to mitigate it, and there's some very strong ways. There's one way that's been
used by three very highly respected presidents. He then elaborated on this in the same way he usually does, by simply repeating himself with the words in a different order. There is one way used successfully by three presidents, all highly respected. I am waiting for him to further clarify this by adding quote three to one, all is successfully
respected way there is highly used presidents. There's one more snake in this bag, and it is the response to this by the Senate, and for once it is bipartisan naivete Amy Klobashar said they would never approve the suspension of Habeas Corpus. Tom Barrasso said he doesn't believe Habeas Corpus's suspension will ever come to Congress. And of course they're both right, though neither of them understands the implications
of why they're right. It'll never come to Congress because while there's some chance Trump would ask for a formal suspension, he really can't take that chance. He'll just do it. Like everything else. He'll just do it. I really need to find out what the Latin translation of the Trump
motto is. You know, try and stop me. He will just do it, especially now that McCall has conveniently reminded not just the Democrats at the Newark concentration camp, but any Republicans who might waiver that those who don't voluntarily vote for the furer's legislation will be accused of being complicit with gang violence against our law enforcement and will be arrested. And no, you can't have a lawyer, silly,
We just suspended Habeas corpus. By the way, that Pollyanna answer from that authoritarian stooge Senator Barack as Hoole had to be pulled out of him. He was on Meet the Press and he was asked about whether he'd support suspending Habeas Corpus. He was asked three times. The first two times he simply went into the same speech defending Trump like an Elmo doll whose string has been pulled.
The third time he said he didn't think it would ever come to Congress, whereupon the feckless Kristen Welker beamed at him and thanked him so effusively you would have thought he'd just given a million to her favorite charity. And by the way, Barasso still never answered your question. Welker,
good work. Welker did not bother the fill in guy on CBS did not bother nobody, as near as I can tell, bothered to ask the question posed the other day by Harvey Wilkinson, now in his forty first year as a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, appointed by Reagan, who twenty years ago was on w Bush's short list for the Supreme Court. But Bush chose Harriet Myers, who was basically a paralegal,
and when she washed out, he picked Alito instead. Because w Bush remains eternally an asshole anyway, Judge Wilkinson, who he skipped, perhaps because of thoughts like this, asks this question, if today the executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home. Our baseline American crisis is in the answer to that question. None,
none at all, Judge. No assurance of any kind. Judge. In fact, the executive is doing this now. If forced to place a bet, I would say, they won't arrest members of Congress or judges and rendition them or just keep them in communicado in Newark. They will, however, threaten them endlessly. That's the value here. And that started Friday
with Stephen Miller. It extended to the leak to Caitlin Collins Friday night and the attempt to entrap the members of the House and Newark's mayor, and then McCall's helpful drawing of a line between defending constitutional rights and complicity with gang violence against law enforcement, a line that does not exist. The threat is far more valuable than the act because video of congress people being dragged off by brown shirts wearing masks might actually wake some part of
the public up. But I thought that about the first videos Friday, and I thought that about the arrest of Judge dougan iiO, and sadly, wakefulness in this case may have to wait until those members of the public and the media are already in one of those thousand cells at the Newark Delaney Hall concentration camp. Don't worry, I didn't forget the four hundred billion dollar bribe of Trump by the Royal Family of Qatar a seven forty seven,
probably five hundred billion. With the accouterments they're going to add to it. It'll be the new Air Force one after they check to see if there are any listening devices, or after they install some. When Trump leaves office, it will simply be donated to the Trump Presidential Library, which as you know, is wallet sized. The bad news is
it is a brazenly illegal, absolutely impeachable offense. Tomorrow. If this had been Obama or any other president, the president would have been impeached and by Wednesday it would have been out of office. There is that little quote in the Constitution thingy what reads, no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, except of any President, imlia to office or title of any kind whatever, from any King, prince
or foreign state. Hey, you hit the trifecta. That's a king of prince and a foreign state. Well done, Trump, be I mean, my god, the Founding Fathers couldn't have hit the nail on the head anymore cleanly. If that sentence ended. This means you Trump. It's so bad. Even Laura Lumer literally says this is a quote stain on the administration, and she's disappointed in Trump. Laura Lumer rapidly becoming the Senator Susan Collins of the Reich. So that's
the bad news. The good news is, thanks to Trump's Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, by the time Trump accepts this bribe, the plane will not be able to take
off or land at any airport in America. The punch line is that ABC reports the Department of Justice has already helped to draft an analysis concluding sure it's legal for the Department of Defense to accept the airplane as a gift from kut R and then just later give it to the Trump Library, which, as you know, is now available in a new easy to carry flight bag with spinner wheels. And who runs this Department of Justice?
What wrote all that? Why? It's DEI hire Pam Blondie, former registered foreign agent of the Embassy of the State of Kutr. So no conflict there. Pam Bondi learned her law at Stetson, not the school, just the hat kind of amazingly, ham Bondi might be his best personnel story
right now. The campus newspaper of the Princetonian found out that the Secretary of Scotch Pete Hegseth clearly borrowed the writing of others in his senior thesis at Princeton, where I assume he only took weekend classes eight cut and pastes. It appears here is one. See if you see any similarity here. I know it's borderline, but just listen. September twelfth, two thousand and one, Washington Post quote after Cards, whisper Bush looked distracted and somber, but continued to listen to
the second grader's read, and soon was smiling again. He joked that they read so well they must be sixth graders. Heg Seth's thesis two thousand and three, quoting Hegseth After Cards, whisper Bush looked distracted and somber, but continued to listen to the second graders, joking that they read like sixth graders. I don't know. It might be close. It's not in quotes, there's no footnote, there's no The Washington Post reported nothing. I think he took out two words, so well isn't
in there. The Princetonian quoted three experts who said you cannot define this as serious plagiarism. I mean, it's hegseeth. How could it be serious? But all eight lifted passages quote violate Princeton's Rights Rules Responsibilities a set of policies and procedures that govern academic integrity eg. SETH integrity Low. Trump has fired the Librarian of Congress. A reporter asked the impossibly stupid Secretary of Lying, Caroline Levitt, the President
fired the Librarian of Congress. Why this is Levitt's answer, There were concuning things she had done at the Library of Congreth in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate book in the library for a children miss. There are no children in the Library of Congress. It's the record of every book published in America. It's the other kind of library. It's a research library and a records library. There is no DEI. Caroline Levitt is a fricking moron.
On the other hand, it can and probably is worse. Trump probably thinks a library is a part of the female anatomy. And then there's Janine Piro, the new interim US Attorney for the District to column to be appointed after a Republican senator said that the last Trump interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia was two fascist, stupid, and sloppy. Even for him, he didn't use those words.
I'm speaking for him. The question now is does the president get two interim appointments free of Senate approval for the same job or only one? Because if you can get two, you never have to go to the Senate at all for any approvals. You just change your interim guy every one hundred and twenty days. This has never
been adjudicated before. On the other hand, when Reagan tried to appoint a second interim US Marshal in nineteen eighty six, his own Office of Legal Counsel said no, and that opinion no was written by a lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel named Samuel Alito. On top of all this, Pierro is an idiot. That's not just my opinion here for change, it's her opinion. Simon Malloy read her book,
and well she she calls herself an idiot. Malloy writes, quote, you only get about one page into Janine Piro's new book, Liars, Leakers and Liberals, The Case against the Anti Trump Conspiracy before she calls herself an idiot. It's not entirely clear whether she meant to do it or if she just got lost in the rapture of the pros, but she definitely calls yourself an idiot. Quote. We know what the liberal media think of Trump voters. They're deplorables, idiots, rednecks,
and people who cling to God, guns and religion. Piro writes, to those charges, I plead guilty, guilty, and proud unquote. Among the charges Janine pre laid out is being an idiot, and a sentence later, she says she's proud of being guilty of all those charges, including being an idiot, and she is an idiot. Holy cow. She was investigated by federal prosecutors after she was caught on tape discussing with the soon to be jailed ex New York City Police
chief Bernie Carrick Rudy Giuliani stooge. She was caught on tape discussing how to bug her husband's boat in hopes of capturing evidence that he was being unfaithful to her. And of course, you know the story of page ten. You don't Page ten from Piro's two thousand and five announcement that she was running for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. She gets up in a big ballroom in Manhattan and Wooden Lee reads her beach well the first nine pages of her speech, and then she couldn't find page ten.
Hillary clintons to a page ten. She's got Yeah, like so many New Yorkers, I am tired of the bickering that has tied our nation's political system in knots.
And there, of course you see Janine Piro's qualifications to be the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. They telescope that, by the way, in that clip. I remember this going on for eight to ten days, all right, It was like a minute or two. But she didn't she didn't add lib or continue her speech from memory, or make a joke out of it, and just cut to page eleven with cameras rolling in front of her in a big ballroom announcing that she should be the senator.
She just stopped and stood there and waited until somebody from her own staff gave her their copy of page ten. I'll just wait still. None of them, heg Seth Piro Levitt, none of them can ever top Trump's own personal stupidity. First off, he hired all of these moochs. Secondly, he proclaimed last Thursday, you may recall as victory in World War two day, and happily nobody noticed, except they noticed
another gaff about this. They put out a meme to celebrate May eighth, which of course was the actual anniversary of V Day victory in Europe, ending the European part of Worldorld War two. And the meme celebrating the end of the European part of World War two was the statue of the Marines raising the flag at Ewo Jima in the Pacific Theater on Mount Suribachi, which isn't in Europe,
which happened on February twenty third, which isn't in May. Look, I may be the most religious person on this planet who does not adhere to a single, actual recognized religion. I don't think any of them has it right. I don't like how any of them are run. And I think the human being has yet to be born who has correctly divined the purpose of life, if any. But
I am now thinking of becoming a Catholic. Did they really select an American pope with African American heritage who did his missions in South America and is from Chicago, and is a Chicago White Sox fan, and has been located not just in newspaper photos taken during the White Sox appearance in the two thousand and five World Series, but appears on the video of the Fox broadcast of the first game of the two thousand and five World Series. I'll get back to the White Sox part in full
in a moment. And yes, I am trying to figure out if this means when he was just father Bob, the new Pope used to watch me on sportseedter or on the World Series telecast that I anchored in ninety seven and two thousand, in which the White Sox did not play. But for now, let me just quote our own Nancy Faust, stadium organist at the White Sox games all those years when the Pope was in the building, who noted dryly that little did she know, but all
that time she literally had a papal audience. Thank you, Nancy Faust and your holiness the Maglio or Doniez fan Robbie Jenks. But first, more importantly, did they really select an anti Trump pope? I mean, I know the papal conclave is supposedly about discerning a divine message as to who you should say the next Pope is, and then the vote Diisol got at the annual guild meeting at our college radio station. We used to pretend that's what drove us to select the new general manager and the
vice presidents and stuff. I got elected twice in those conclaves, So I tend to doubt divine intervention in any election. I just think it's obvious. The Cardinals saw a great candidate under any circumstances, with an amazingly varied resume, and they said, hey, you know what, if we make him pope, he will not only replace Trump as the most famous American in the world, but he will be a counterweight
to his evil. If this pope criticizes Trump and advance and this entire culture of brutality and vengeance, and we believe he already has online, what's Trump going to do to him? Slap him with tariffs? He's American, American pope's first. I cannot help but think that they saw a need, an actual need in the world for something or somebody to push back against Trump, and good grief, they actually accepted what almost no organization in this whole world has
the responsibility to try to push back. He is the resistance Pope, whether that was the plan or not, he is the resistance Pope. And given the papacies abysmal track record in the decades between the last Pope Leo's opposition to slavery and John Paul the Second's involvement in the fall of the Russian occupying force in Poland, it's about
goddamn time, your holiness. I can only imagine what the new Pope is imagining he might be able to do to Trump, and with impunity, because on the right, there isn't the slightest doubt that the conclave chose Robert Privos deliberately as the anti Trump. I mean, they have gone nuts and there's nothing they can do about it. This time. They can't fire him, they can't get Doge to defund him.
Elon Musk's cyber truck means nothing to him. If the fundamentalist, ecstatic vision snake handlers who support Trump didn't already hate the Catholics, they are ready for war now, and they can't have one because they could not win one. The Trump whisperer of the moment, the astoundingly clownish. Laura Lumer replied to the election with just three words, all in caps,
woke Marxist Pope. That in turn led to one of the all time great Blue Sky posts from the Irish American polysci professor at Michigan Don moynihan, using a screenshot of Lumer's post as the punchline and reading in full quote, Cassicks are read Conclaves are dope. Wake up, babe, we got a woke Marxist pope. Oh my god, is that funny? If I can find a tune, I may have to
sing that on Thursday's podcast. Anyway, If Pope Leo can counterbalance and undermine Trump, if he can hit him up side his head with some metaphorical woke Marxist pope whip action, I'll convert. And before I drop this subject, back to the White Sox and the Pope for a moment. It occurred to me after the election that the number of White Sox fans I have known has been few because there are few, but they are all vivid, exceptional individuals.
As a caveat. The team owner is Jerry Reinsdorf, who is two hundred and six years old and who tried to get me fired by ESPN in nineteen ninety five. So there's that. Not saying every White Sox fan or person is good. I'm just saying they're vivid. The others. I mentioned Nancy Faust, who returned to the White Sox Park Sunday to play the organ again, total coincidence of timing after too many years away, and as I said
last week, immediately became the current team's best player. She's generous, proactive, a dear friend, a gifted musician, and she manages to balance a sweet, diminutive, affable personality with the acerbic knife wielding viewpoint of a Chicago Steve Adore. There's the late ed Farmer Farmio, whom the new Pope had to have listened to. He was a radio voice of the White Sox for decades after having pitched for them, after having grown up in Chicago and been a prep baseball pitcher there.
A star. He was intellectual, he was athletic. He was one of a kind. He played and then broadcast for years with continuing kidney problems. He knew pain, and not just of seeing the White Sox every day. He saw them finally win the World Series and broadcast the games, and he never stopped talking. I believe though he had passed several years ago, he's still talking. An exceptional person would do anything for you, was constantly involved in charities
and giving people lifts. And the day I met him, I was at their ballpark and he said, how are you getting home? And I said, you mean the hotel? Yeah, where you're staying? I told him the Drake Hotel. Hey, I drive right past there. Well, that's half an hour out of my way. I'll give you a lift. There's my friend. Jason Bennetti, lifelong Socks fan, overcame many diseases and things in his own life, and most importantly, people's
stupid reactions to the things. He overcame to become the voice of the Chicago White Sox, to grow up and become the play by play announcer of your childhood team, and then, when the working circumstances were not what they should have been, to have the steel to say, yes, this was my childhood dream. I am no longer a child. I am going to go to Detroit instead. I knew Bill Veck, the owner of the Chicago White Sox, who bought the team rather than let them moved to Seattle
in nineteen seventy six. He'd already owned them once. He was the one who put them in the World Series the previous time before two thousand and five, when the Pope attended. He got them in in nineteen fifty nine and then sold the team. And he did all kinds of crazy things in his various capacities in the teams he owned in Saint Louis and Cleveland, and then the
White Sox. The story of Bill Beck is probably summarized by this, Among other things, he was the guy who said, you know what that outfield wall at Wrigley Park where the Cubs play, Wrigley Field, rather what that needs. I'm confusing it with its original name, Cubbs Park. That outfield fence here at Wrigleyfield that needs ivy. I'll go and plant some ivy every time you see the ivy at Wrigley Field. Bill Veck, his father was president of the Cubs.
He wound up owning the White Sox. He lost part of a leg in Second World War service, and I saw him do this the last time I saw him, in nineteen eighty or eighty one. He used to smoke a lot. He used to stub out his cigarettes on his wooden leg. President Obama was a White Sox fan throughout a first pitch at one of the games of the American League Championship Series that they ran roughshod through on the way to the World Series in two thousand
and five. There are lots of pictures. Google him in a white Sox jacket, a white Sox uniform, and think of this for a moment. How popular the Chicago Cubs are. It's an easy thing to be a Cubs fan in some senses. Yes, you had to suffer between the years nineteen oh eight and twenty sixteen without winning the World Series. Oh boohoo, everybody felt sorry for you. You automatically got
a free beer. The games were played during the day, so you could drink all afternoon and then go out on the town on public transportation and get drunk again at night. Terrible, terrible existence. In any event, Obama, No, he did not take advantage of that. He did not say I'm a Cubs fan. He just reveled in being a white Sox fan, an Illinois senator running for president, identifying not with the easy Cubs but with the White Sox. In fact, that was the first thing I admired about
Barack Obama. And lastly, of these exceptional White Sox fans, there was the late Gene Shepherd, humorist radio rack on tour the O tour of the movie A Christmas Story. He wrote it, he narrated the movie itself, He played the angry old man in the hat in the line for Santa at the department store, and most importantly, he lived it. He was, in fact little Ralphie. Geene Shepherd
was also a lifetime White Sox fan. And if you don't know baseball, the White Sox were the team that the long suffering Cubs fans and the long suffering Red Sox fans and the long suffering everybody else fans looked down on. The Cubs had a cathedral for a stadium with Bill Veck's ivy on the walls. The Socks had an even older ballpark that looked even older the day it had opened in nineteen oh nine. People think of it fondly now. It was a dump. The Cubs had
not won the World Series since nineteen oh eight. The White Sox won it in nineteen seventeen and had a dynasty with the second or third greatest hitter of all time at its center Shoeles Joe Jackson, and they should have won the World Series again in nineteen nineteen and probably nineteen twenty by eight of their players, including Jackson, at least agreed to accept bribes small bribes to deliberately lose the nineteen nineteen World Series. They would not win
a World Series again until two thousand and five. With as it proves, their guy the pulpe in the stands. And no no martyrdom jokes here please, except for the Martin joke from White Sox fan Geene Shepherd. I have never read anything like this by any fan of any team. It summarizes the White Sox and their fans and thus
the new pope completely. To quote Geene Shepherd, if I were going to storm a pillbox, going to sheer utter certain death, and the colonel said, Shepherd picked six guys, I'd pick six White Sox fans because they have known death every day of their lives and it holds no terror for them. Wow, cassocks are read. Conclaves are dope. Wake up, babe, we got a woke Marxist also of
interest here. Actually, let me do this SNL dead Pope joke now, because who knows when I'll get to quote this again for anyone who didn't see it when it happened. On August sixth, nineteen seventy eight, Pope Paul the sixth, the two hundred and sixty third Pope in a series of two hundred and sixty seven collect them mall died. He was succeeded by Pope John Paul, who took the names of his two predecessors, John and Paul, leading to the joke that his successor would take the name John Paul.
George Ringo then, in a genuine shock that I can still remember from the time as vividly as it was that day, on the twenty eighth of September nineteen seventy eight, not two months later, Pope John Paul died. He was succeeded by John Paul the Second on October sixteenth. And on Saturday, September thirtieth, of the Year of the Three Popes nineteen seventy eight, Bill Murray was anchoring the weekend
Update mock newscast on Saturday Night Live. He approached it if you never saw him as he did, Nick the Lounge singer kind of mixed with the groundskeeper from Caddy Shack that he also played. He started to read the news of Pope John Paul's passing and then stopped and shouted and looked around the stage as he did, Wait a minute, who's running this news department? A dead pope?
We already did this story? Come on anyway? Also of interest here worst Persons is not just three reprobates, but three reprobates I know and once respected, including Claire Shipman. And Claire Shipman needs to resign as co chair and acting president at Columbia University after her school suspended four student reporters for reporting. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Alberman still ahead on this all new editiative. Countdown. What do you name a dog who
smiles all the time and loves every human she meets? Well, her pet little boy named her smiles her story Next first, believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about, the roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute the latest other worst persons in the world. As preface, most of these times, these people annoy me. They often enrage me, but rarely do
they disappoint me personally. They are on this list because they're maga and maga is a disease, or because they're conservative and conservativism is at its heart. I've got mine, now you go get yours. But even if my ancestors have rigged the system to make sure I can never lose mine and you can never gain yours, it's always
at least that. Rarely is it personal. Rarely is it personal disappointment, and even betrayal from people I know even more rare and the first worst Person's list appeared on MSNBC on like June thirtieth, I think, two thousand and five, and the first one was in defense of Tucker Carlson's MSNBC show. More specifically, it was in defense after a New York Times critic called for it to be canceled, like a week after it debuted, when all the TV critics ever did in those days was slam MSNBC for
canceling new shows too quickly. So nearly twenty years of worse persons, and even more rare than a personal worse person is when all three are people I know and at one point respected and even worked with, who have failed utterly, irredeemably, irretrievably failed. In fact, in twenty years, I can't think of three of them appearing on one list, and yet here we are the bronze worse and it's
personal Governor Gavin Newsom of California. I don't know if he thinks he's moving inexorably towards some position where he's the only Democratic choice for the nomination in twenty eight because the Trump dictatorship will choose the Democratic nominee in twenty eight, or if he's just this stupid but here he goes again. Trump and John Voight, who between them
are now one hundred and sixty five years old. And Voight turns out to be from the town next to my hometown, and he went to the Catholic school called Steppinac that was close enough to my school that occasionally Steppinac and Hackley shared the same bus home to our towns in the afternoons. Trump and vod devised this truly stupid one hundred percent tariff on films produced in foreign lands, and I don't know what does that even mean. Bollywood, anything with a scene in it shot at Octoberfest All
Movies with Gary Oldman. The next day, Newsom responded to this by springing into action, and instead of defending America's film capital, the state he is governor of, he issued a statement reading, We're eager to partner with the Trump administration. Stop just at that point, go to the end of the Santa Monica peer, get a good running start, and leap into the ocean. There's more to his statement, We're eager to partner with the Trump administration to further strengthen
domestic production and make America film again. MafA one letter short of Mafia. Good call. Gav Newsom thinks he's going to get seven and a half billion in movie making incentives out of Trump by capitulating to him and riffing on his MAGA fascist catchphrase, Gavin, you are a jackass. The only way you get seven and a half billion out of Trump is to give him fifteen billion and
then maybe you'll get half of it back. Just a moron, quite literally, Gavin Newsom could have been president, but instead he's decided to join the vshy opposition. Him and Joe Scarborough. Boys, your hair ain't gonna get you elected, Not in the hair era of Trump and Javier Milay and Boris Johnson. Your hair disqualifies you. Also Joe Scaraberer and Gavin Newsom,
Your stupidity disqualifies you, and your scumbagginess disqualifies you. The runner up worser also personal Bob Eiger, chairman of Disney, who is on his what fifth sellout to Trump? The deal to settle Trump's nonsense lawsuit against George Stephanopolis and ABC News and thus in the process kind of legally bribed Trump, then giving Trump his choice of interviewers and leaving George and David Muir off the list five sellouts
to Trump? What is it? Bob six? This is six or seven according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Disney has now added a new channel to its Hulu and Live TV streaming services, the channel, news Max. News Max has for thirty years been the thing you read or watch when you think Fox News is just too damn liberal. I hate that liberal, Harris Faulkner. It is not only propaganda Newsmax, that is, but it's poorly done,
self contradictory, stupid propaganda. It's literally for the people who aren't smart enough to understand Fox News and the fascists think it's lack of distribution and decreasing carriage on cable and satellite is a conspiracy against them, a conspiracy against fascism.
You bet you're ass Newsmax. Except for Disney and Bob Iiger, who, as I have mentioned, I have known since March nineteen seventy nine, who I have worked for three times, who I got a call from the day I first left ESPN in ninety seven, in which he asked me to call him personally if I ever wanted to return to ESPN. And who then did the corporate j Leno chose a successor as the head of Disney, then Bob missed having the job. He may have helped spread the stories that
his successor didn't have it. Presto, the successor gets fired. Who gets the job back? Why?
Bob?
Bob j Leno Iger, Bob j Leno Ron McLean Iger and what has he done with it? Wore himself out to Trump again? But our winner the worst. And I'm gonna sound really happy about this, because really I am crying inside. Claire Shipman, who I praised here and waxed nostalgic about not two months ago, perhaps my favorite, or at least my second favorite, of my original six White House correspondence on the MSNBC White House in Crisis show during Clinton Lewinsky and I ran in to her at
the Animal Medical Center in March. She's still lovely and a delight, and I knew I could always count on her ethics and toughness, especially now that she was co chair of the board of Trustees at Columbia University. And if she continues on her current path, my friend Claire should resign. The president of Columbia. The one that was there when I saw Claire. That president of Columbia has since gone into the volcano to try to appease Trump.
Claire has succeeded that one as acting president, and she has been appalling. Now I guess I can defer to her on the decision to call the New York City cops in to address a campus building takeover. As I noted here previously, five years before I got to Cornell, justifiably angry African American students took over a campus building there and they were carrying long guns. This was in
response to cross burning on campus. This was as a minor complaint they were literally burning crosses in front of black sororities at Cornell in nineteen sixty nine and seventy. I think I understand where you're coming from, So I have a pretty high threshold about calling the cops on student protesters. But I can see there are circumstances where you might be justified in doing that if the protesters tried to, say, burn the building down, rather than set
a nearby dumpster on fire. By the way, I assumed that dumpster was set on fire, and that wasn't just Claire's career as an educator spontaneously combusting. Anyway, Claire did something that on the ethical scale, was far worse than calling the cops in to arrest some of her own students. She has sat idly by and without comment as Columbia and the still differently named College for Women there, Barnard suspended four student journalists for the crime of covering the
other students' protests. Sawyer Huckabee of w KCR Radio at Columbia first was prevented by campus cops from leaving the library as the siege ended Wednesday, and then he was suspended Thursday afternoon for his quote involvement unquote. In the protest, dozens of Columbia students were issued interim suspensions. Huckaby included five hours later Huckabee suspension, which his ID was inoperative. He was ordered to leave campus blutly. His college life
and life life were jeopardized. Somebody wised up and canceled his suspension. But also on Thursday, Barnard's Dean Leslie Greenwage Grenage Grinage, Grinage. It's a mean sounding name, isn't it, suspended two female reporters from the radio station and a third from the Columbia campus newspaper. Same restrictions, get out your IDs, no longer work, you can't go to class, you can't take exams. What time of year is it, Oh,
it's exam time. You may be done here in fact, and they let those suspensions sit overnight and did not lift them until the next morning after news got out. The Columbia Columbia as in the Columbia Journalism School Columbia had suspended four reporters for reporting Were you ever suspended in school or in college? I was suspended in college for not finishing a swimming test. I swear I got the letter as I was leaving home for the start of the spring semester, about a five hour trip, the
longest five hours of my life to that point. What would I do if they did not reinstate me? Where would I go? I was going to a school that technically I was not allowed to go to. Could I go on the campus to protest? To just ask what about the tuition for the just starting semester? What about my entire future at the school? And then, as somebody who had been thrown out of Cornell or suspended at Cornell,
what do I do now? I was eighteen? Now it was great that when I got to Ithaca and went to the registrar's office and basically asked the question help, the administrator looked at the letter and laughed and said, well, this is stupid. And she wrote on the letter reinstated effective immediately, and said she'd send me a formal letter in the mail immediately. And then she looked on a calendar and she handed me a slip reading swimming test appointment, and she told me to write down a day and
a time on it. And it was all resolved that fast. That was great, And still those five hours are burned into my brain. Forty eight years later. Imagine being one of these reporters at Columbia, at a university known uniquely in the Ivy League, perhaps in American academia for its journalism programs undergraduate and graduate, and with a true journalist, a reporter from CNN, NBC and ABC as both its
acting president and co chair of the board. Imagine the sense of dread and betrayal, and even after the lifting of the suspension, the sense of your university, the people you are buying a product from deciding to let you get away with this this time, but reminding you they could screw you into the ground whenever they want to talk about chilling dissent and chilling reporting. You're supposed to be when it says journalism school, Claire, You're supposed to
be for journalism. These weren't radical protesters. These weren't even columnists or loudmouthed on air commentators. These were four students who were doing what Claire Shipman used to do, what she used to do when she earned her reputation and her livelihood and eventually wound up in the position to become the person running the university. And she let them twist slowly in the wind, and she let freedom of the press at Columbia University twists slowly in the wind.
It's already bad enough that Claire was at the center as Columbia cut a deal with Trump, a deal in which Trump wants a handpicked judge to appoint a handpicked enforcer for Trump's fascist demands for how the university should run from now on. That was bad enough, maybe it was necessary for survival. But this suspending student reporters Claire. This makes one question whether anybody should give a damn
whether Columbia University survives or not. The shame I feel about Claire Ship may only be matched by what seems to be her incapacity to feel any shame for what she's done, or any awareness that her job right now is to walk up to Trump and spit in his face on behalf of Columbia, on behalf of those briefly suspended journalists, on behalf of Academia, on behalf of America, the Cardinals chosen anti Trump, Pope, you folded, go spit
metaphorically in Trump's face. Claire, do it. It's your last chance. Cancel the deal with Trump. Harvard did, and if you won't do that, get out, resign and take the Barnard Dean with you, and for that matter, take Columbia with you, because right now your university is headed towards becoming just another Trump whorehouse shipman. I am so ashamed, Claire truly today's worst person in the world. For the first time in a while, time for another dog in need. You
can help. Every dog has its day today. It's personal, a lot of personal. In this show. In February of last year, I introduced you to a big, lovely Bernese Mountain dog called Smiles. Called Smiles because she does NonStop. Her default position is to smile, and she loves every human she's ever met, especially her pet little boy. She is the size of a large bicycle. She was just about to turn three years old last year when she suddenly became sick. It was cancer. In fact, it was lymphoma.
Everybody chipped in and thank you for helping. She got chemo. She tolerated it well, she barely noticed it. In fact, she got better fast, and she and her little boy have had a great year. And now the cancer is back. And so for my friend Andrew Bloonner. Is the cost of the treatment for smiles. The good news is we know she can handle it, and even with the recurrence, the vets are predicting eighty to eighty five percent likelihood
of success of getting her back into remission. You might ask why spend thousands of dollars on the health of just one dog. My primary answer is this because you can. And my secondary answer is I'm thinking of her pet, little boy. Andrew's gofund me for smiles is is at GoFundMe dot com and in the search engine type in three words smiles, mountain dog, smiles, mountain dog. Anything you can give will be gratefully welcomed. And just publicizing smiles
and this GoFundMe will help. I'll put the link out on Twitter again and retweeting it can make all the difference and smiles. Thank you and her little Boy. Thanks you, and I thank you. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Ryan Ray and John Phillip Schaneil, the musical directors have Countdown Ra produced
and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers Now are satirical and pithy. Musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, now back doing cameos with the White Sox, or as they are now known, the Vatican's
Team or the Vaticans South Sides Team. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else was, as ever, my fault. And if you happen to know whether or not the Pope used to watch me or Kenny or anybody else on Sports Center in the nineties, just get a hold
of me. I'd just like to know. That's countdown for today, Day one, one hundred and thirteen of America held hostage, just one three hundred and fifty days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term unless Musk removes him sooner. Where the actuarial tables do or we do, or the next scheduled countdown is Thursday is always bulletins as the news warrants remember Trump is laying the groundwork now to not leave office later. He must
be stopped till next time. I'm Keith Oldremman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck Trump, peach Ten Who's got Yeah? Like so many New Yorkers, I am Countdown with Keith Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.