TRUMP IS "F'ING THE MONKEY" IN HIS LUST FOR GAZA - 2.13.25

to stop lying. The rest of us. Every politician who steps in front of a microphone, every news producer who begins a newscast with some other story made trivial in contrast by this reality, every columnist who writes about alarm or some quarters or this Ohio diner, every commentator tempted to say this was the moment Trump truly became president. Donald Trump is manifestly insane, and this week is especially on Tuesday, he entered that stage of whatever it is

that is specifically wrong with him that is characterized by mania. Mania, the conviction that something that is impossible will happen simply because he says it is going to happen. His mania happens to be about Gaza. The next mania that could be about the sun rising in the West, or how Americans would survive a nuclear war he could start because he's leading them and he is immortal. Mania does not have to be manic. It does not require hyperbolic words,

nor unsuppressed rage, nor vivid hallucinations. He is, however, calm, as he might seem out of his mind. He believes in things that are not true and can't be true, and he has a rationalization ready for whenever somebody tells him why they can't be true. There is nothing of the cliched crazy man in his voice as he talks about Gaza. Nevertheless, as we heard from the Oval office, this guy is metaphorically about one inch away from having conversations with invisible gophers.

Sure they live there in Gaza. Sure they will just move because he says so. But the land, the land is beautiful and we will cherish it. He's talking like he's having sex with the land, like he's forgive me. What Billy Wilder allegedly told Nancy Reagan when she quizzed him about why Glorious Watson had a pet chimp in their movie Sunset Boulevard, Wilder told the first lady she was effings a monkey. Trump talks about Gaza like he's effing the monkey. Now, you can skip that imagery, but

you cannot skip the reality. Everybody who doesn't tell the truth about Trump's now uncontrolled madness. Every time he shows that madness, every time he looks at the rest of the world as if everybody else, the other eight billion of us, we're wrong and we're stupid. And we're crazy and we can't see what is so plainly obvious to him. Everybody who doesn't say Donald Trump is failing not just their profession, nor their country or NATO, but failing the world.

Because somebody who thinks that something that would at best require a war with thousands of Americans dead and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians dead, and who knows how many Israeli's dead on the ground, or it would require trillions of dollars, or it would require all of that. Somebody who thinks no, he can just say it and it will magically happen, miraculously and instantly. Just remember that somebody

has nukes. And every Republican and every MAGA and every Republican pretending to be a MAGA has their own reality to face now. If not, Trump's next defeat at the hands of reality could very well destroy them, or turn him against their state, or be so astonishingly obvious to everybody that it derails the entirety of their program to turn this country into fascist land. I understand, boys, He's your entire platform. He is the cult, he is the

sun and the moon and the stars. But you were gonna have to face the arithmetics someday, whether it was the two term limit in the twenty second Amendment or the other kind of limit in the actuarial tables, or the limit staring you in the face right now, the list you have to give to the President pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House about how many cabinet members realize it is time to invoke Section four of the twenty fifth Amendment. The time is nigh.

Stop lying about it, Republicans, stop lying about it. Stop lying about it. Fox News, stop lying about it. New York Times headline writers stop because Trump is effing the monkey. Of course, at least half of America is lying about the president as usual. I don't mean as usual about him, I mean as usual in our history. We don't like to admit this kind of meta view of things, but we lie all the time in this country. But we especially have always lied about our presidents at our presidency's

and we lie about not lying about them. I guess I started thinking about this on January twentieth, when I don't know how many news reports in this country and outside of it that I heard and read included the

phrase the traditional peaceful transfer of power. It's like one of those versions of the Oldest Dark cartoon in the book, the sign that reads now one day since a workplace accident, and the employee is walking to it holding a replacement panel that reads no days, and the employee carrying the panel has an axe stuck in the top of his head. That's us. Technically, we've always had peaceful transfers of power.

If by that you define that there was literally no attempt to stop a new president from being sworn in and exactly at noon on the twentieth of January or the other dates that preceded that. But if you broaden the defination out a little bit, well, get the guy in the cartoon with the panel that says no days,

because it's no days. We still had bomb threats at critical democratic leaning polling places last November, and for the two years before that, we had some fascist telegraphing or hinting or stochastically calling for violence every day if Trump lost, If that counts as the peaceful transfer of power, then the oldest Simpsons jokes apply attempted murder. Now, honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry?

Was it a peaceful transfer of power? After the election of eighteen sixty You know in the Southern States responded to the election and seceded and started the Civil War to protest Lincoln's election? Was that peaceful? Does that count? What about nineteen sixty four? Nineteen sixty five? Brilliant fact about the Kennedy assassination? More on that from the distinguished Representative Anna Paulina Lunatic coming up. She wants to interview

the War and Commission. But there's one salient fact about the Kennedy assassination that always seems to get glossed over. Is that when he went to Dallas in November nineteen sixty three, it was to informally start his re election campaign for nineteen sixty four. The incumbent president and Democratic candidate gets murdered three hundred and forty eight days before the vote. How peaceful was that transfer of power? How

many other of our peaceful transfers are only peaceful? If you claim an assassination here or there doesn't count because it was outside some sort of historical window. It was nineteen thirty three peaceful when the Republican president running in the election three months later had first Washington troops and then the Army under Douglas MacArthur open fire on the protesting World War One veterans in DC, known as the

Bonus Army. How about April fourth, eighteen forty one, when the new president, William Henry Harrison died, and that had never happened before in this country, and Vice President John Tyler insisted he was the new president, and others said, no, no, you're not the new president. You're vice president and acting president, and we have to have a new election or something because it's not spelled out in the Constitution. And Tyler responded by having himself sworn in as fast as possible

so nobody could stop him. And I'm not defending Trump, not the slightest, but we lie to ourselves constantly, especially about presidents and presidencies. Lincoln repeatedly ignored the courts, especially the Supreme Court. We lie about the sanctity of the elections. Whoever really won in eighteen seventy six, that didn't decide who became president in eighteen seventy seven, a special commission did so because nobody really wanted to have another Civil

war again quite so soon. I mean, we lie all the time about the presidency. Woodrow Wilson about whether he was healthy enough to remain president in nineteen nineteen, although he may have been so sick, he wasn't aware he was sick. He was thinking running again for a third term. Harding was sick. He never fully recovered from influenza, sick for seven months before he died suddenly. FDR obviously lied

about his health. Eisenhower had two heart attacks, and there are months in his presidency about which historians are no longer sure he was President. JFK lied about his Addison's disease, even though the shape and color of his face changed from month to month. Reagan was clearly lying about his acuity, although like Wilson, he might have been unaware. But that's six presidents in a stretch of thirteen of them. That's a lot of lying about health, and it's reached its

high point or low point. Half the country is lying about Trump's health and his mental health, specifically because they need him to keep the whole criminal enterprise rolling. And how many of us who want him gone tomorrow are also to some degree lying about his health because the reality is too terrifying to confront. How many reporters are lying to themselves because of that factor, and because they still don't know how to cover this perversion of everything

we thought was true about this country. Only it turned out we were lying to ourselves. Someone was addressing the issue of this history of deceit by and about presidents as it relates to this pathetic farce who now has that title. They hoped for the best, and they invoked Lincoln's timeless phrase from his inauguration speech about how untimely, ultimately events would be decided by the better angels of our nature. You don't really want to laugh out loud

when you hear a quote from mister Lincoln. But I laughed out loud because if there is one ultimate lie about the American presidency about America, that's it. The words are beautiful and immortal, and the part we lie about is that in reality, those beautiful words, those immortal words, were ignored. Lincoln spoke of the better angels of our nature in his first inaugural address, not his second one, not at the end of the Civil War, but before

it even started. He invoked the better angels of our nature. And thirty nine days later, the rebels fired on Fort Sumter Lincoln invoked the Better Angels of Our Nature from a Shakespearean sonnet number one forty four. In fact, that's where it originates. I invoked she was Effing's a monkey from Billy Wilder trying to shock Nancy Reagan into unconsciousness.

My mother would be very proud. I do think it's fitting to note here, though, that as crazy as Trump is, to go back to this subject directly, it would still be tempting if you had first pick in the annual crazy draft to select Musk or maybe even Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna. Musk is really stupid online, but he's not

half as stupid as he is in person. As you doubtless saw, he was good enough on Tuesday to reenact yet another movie scene Marty Sheen as the presidential candidate prophesied to begin a nuclear war and Marty Sheen is using a baby as a human shield from an assassin in the film The Dead Zone. Only this time it was in the Oval office, and Musk used his own baby, we assume, unless it was a rental, and Trump almost drifted off to sleep because the attention wasn't on him.

And if you had to pick the sharpest one in the room among Trump, Musk and the baby. The baby would have gotten one hundred percent of the votes.

Congresswoman Luna has somewhow wound up in Congress without being able to kind of guess within a tolerance of a decade or two, how many years it's been since the JFK assassination.

be the youngest witness available. I was watching it on Channel two, listening to her utter self confidence bordering on solemnity. There it dawned on me. I think I know where Representative Luna's cheese whiz slipped off her cracker, exactly when it happened, and why she thinks JFK who died in nineteen sixty three and JFK Junior, who died in nineteen ninety nine. She thinks they're the same person, doesn't she. I will note that, for whatever his word is worth,

Trump says he will not defy the courts. He'll just appeal the verdicts because he always respects the courts. Yeah, if his history holds, he will shortly get enraged, however, and begin to threaten the judges again, while his fascist minions set the judges up for abuse and direct threats

against their lives. The difference this time was that by the beginning of the week, there will be literally dozens of restraining orders dozens more against his administration, and some are likely to last months before they even fully play out in court. And I don't know how enraged that will actually leave him. He is, after all, Fang the monkey.

The irony of the equation at the moment is that the primary public pushback against all this is coming not from the Democrats, not even from the Republicans, but from the moneyed class. Chuck Schumer had his ambiguous statement, and no, he did not say he would be helping Republicans pass the legislation that would keep the government from shutting down.

He did maintain the position of the Democrats as the voice of reason, which, as much as I'd like to see AOC metaphorically kneecapping people on Capitol Hill, that holds your fire for the moment, that's not a bad position to hold temporarily, especially if this is what is coming out from those people like Trump and Musk who do not recognize the value or the existence of people, just the value and existence of money. This is all from the Wall Street Journal. The first is about the tariffs quote.

Nobody knows what's up. Nick Pinchuck, chief executive of tool makers Snap on Set, on a conference call. It's like being on Space Mountain at Disney World. You get on Space Mountain, you get in a car, and you're in the dark, and the cars go left and right, left and right and abrupt turns. You don't know where you're going, but you know you're pretty confident that you're going to get to the right place at the bottom. This is from the WORL Wall Street Journal. The mood of the

American consumer is souring. Tariff threats, market turbulence causing jitters early in Trump's second term. This is from the Wall Street Journal. For CEOs and bankers, the Trump euphoria is fading fast. Deals market gets curtailed by uncertainty delivered in presidents first weeks. This is from The Bulwark. It reports Republican congressmen are writing to constituents praising Musk and Trump and Maga and then adding little caveats that are not

praising them at all. From Congressman Rob Whitman of Virginia, whose district has about twenty thousand federal employees in it. Or It did quote elon Musk's impressive track record of innovation provides valuable insights into how we can streamline government operations and leverage technology to better serve our citizens. That said, I share your concerns regarding potential conflicts of interest and overreach. Protecting the personal information of Americans is a fundamental responsibility

and any breach of privacy is alarming. The prospect of private individuals or companies having unfettered access to sensitive data raises critical questions about accountability, oversight, and the safeguarding of our citizens' rights. Headline from June first, The search for the missing Elon Musk continues today. Republicans say no, they

don't know where he is. And almost unbelievably, Glenn Greenwald has proven you can be a charlatan NonStop for twenty five years and then suddenly not only except reality, but then say something smart about it. This is a creed tocur from somebody who has never previously given any indication he has occur, Glenn Greenwald. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is one of the very few tools ordinary Americans have to fight against the onslaught of abuses from massive corporate power.

How is it consistent with the stated MAGA agenda to empower ordinary Americans to cripple it or shut it down. Well, it's not consistent, Glenn. Maga is a scam, you moron. But you had a good twelve seconds there, Glenn. All of that, even Glenn's twelve seconds, would be encouraging, maybe

even suggestive. That the easiest way out of this burgeoning crisis, Trump, realizing he's going to tank the economy, cost the Republicans the House, set himself up for the bug House, get overruled in the courts left and right, and commit political suicide. Him realizing that that is all in the cards that

might actually happen, he might reverse course. It would be encouraging, except, of course, that it would also require Trump reversing course, and reversing course requires him to admit, at least to himself, that he was mistaken and he has been defeated. And Trump doesn't know the meaning of the word defeat. I didn't know the meaning of a lot of words, but this is the only one that matters at the moment.

By the way, I just I can't ignore this. If you want everything that's wrong with American news summarized in a four sentence confession, I give you Chris Solissa honest opinion, CNN should give Scott Jennings his own show. People who love him would watch, people who hate him would watch. The point is people would watch. First off, Melissa, they already did give Scott Jennings his own show. It's called The Abby Phillips Show. Also, Chris has no idea of

right or wrong here, or journalism or not journalism. I guess we shouldn't be surprised by that. It doesn't factor into his consideration here. The point is people were to watch. No, the point is democracy is on fire. The United States of America could be a dictatorship before the end of the year. But you'll be fine. You're Chris, Solissa, you don't recognize things. You're the guy in the room with the hat on saying it's fine while it's on fire. But again, he has no idea of right or wrong.

He doesn't know the difference between journalism and non journalism. But he knows what people will watch. That's why CNN and NBC fired him. You know what else? They would watch? A show in which the old Carnival dunk tank game is established, in which people like Chris Saliza and Scott Jennings are suspended over dunk tanks and dropped into the water every night by angry Americans throwing softballs at targets.

And you could call it the CNN Evening News with Chris Silizza, but see that would be wrong and unjournalistic. And by this point of course, Chris Salizza has literally no idea what any of these words I am saying even mean. Also of interest here, the fascists are celebrating that American military base is not being re renamed after a Confederate general. Wait, they're celebrating because they didn't put a Confederate general's name on Fort Bragg what used to

be Fort Bragg. They're celebrating for some reason. Oh, I see what it is. It's Denesh Desuza celebrating. And remember you can't spell DEI without Denesh Desuza. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on countdown, on the premise that if I don't force you to take a break from this, you won't and you'll go crazy, and then I won't take a break from this, and I'll go crazy er. You know who Bill Baker was, but Bill the Baker, he was an

infamous character from the press box at Yankee Stadium. This is an American Olympic hockey player named Bill Baker, a defenseman, and this is the anniversary of the least famous, most important goal in Olympic hockey history. This is also the window in which hockey itself should be shining, because after tonight there isn't another National Basketball Association regular season game

scheduled until next Wednesday. There's no more football. Baseball is still just doing stretches, and hockey it shut down its season to play an artificial international tournament. Nobody in this country cares about way to market your sport, something I haven't done in a while. Hey, you sports kids, get off my lawn next first. Believe it or not, there

are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily round up of the miscreants, morons and Donning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worse parsons in the world. Let me dedicate this episode of wpiitw to the Associated Press, my natural enemies from my days long ago at the United Press International, But the AP has earned my respect.

ANEW executive editor Julie Pace revealed that the White House threatened to revoke the AP's access to the Oval office if it did not call in all of its reporting the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. When it refused to do that, an AP reporter was in fact, within hours barred from attending a White House bill signing men this so our good friends at the Washington Post and CBS and CNN and ABC and NBC know exactly what is next. Whether you try to appease Trump or not,

he will be back later for more. For now, your money will shut him up, But soon he'll be back insisting that you call it the Gulf of Mexico. And then he'll be back again, insisting you report in all of your reporting that the twenty twenty election was stolen from him. Because that's the way this works, Bezos. That's the way this works, Iiger, that's the way this works. Whoever's running CNN this week, they are blackmailers. You are being blackmailed. It doesn't stop when you give in. They

will be writing your newscasts for you. AnyWho. On that bright note to the nominees, one of the real housewives of Propaganda County former Oakland. No wonder they don't exist anymore. Raiders cheerleader Emily Compagno, who is now at Fox News, So I guess she's the next Secretary of Lumber or Trump will insist they make her pope or something. She

is the worst. The bronze winner Emily Compagne on the role of the media under her trumph and reichmarket von Musk Trump's quote Office of Communications is putting out every day, all day exactly what they are doing. So all you have to do legacy media is simply repeat, retweet, repost, and that is the news and that is the facts. First off, Fox News is legacy media. Secondly, miss Companio that process, just repeat what the Republican says, retweet it,

and repost it. That was copyrighted by Fox News in nineteen ninety six. The rest of us can't do that. You are the worldwide distributors of stenography for fascists. Another one of our mistakes in twenty twenty one twenty twenty two is not politicizing the DOJ and not prosecuting Rupert Murdoch and NewsCorp and Fox News for something into the effing ground. Of course, that was also one of our

mistakes in nineteen ninety six. Next time, the runner up worser Denesh Desuza, now celebrating his sixty third year of disproving the theory that one needs to have an actual brain to be able to say things out loud. Denesh Desuza writes, it would be fun to rename all the forts after Confederate generals, not because we like Confederate generals, but just to piss off the left. Well, trader's gonna trader,

of course. But what makes this even dumber than usual for Denesh Desuza is the fort they already re renamed Fort Bragg. The White supremacists actually folded on this. They have renamed Fort Liberty Fort Bragg, all right, but Secretary of Defense Pete Cagbreath insists it's not for the worst general of the Civil War, Braxton Brag. It is instead to honor Private Roland Brag, one of the heroes of the Battle of the Bulge in World War Two. I'm

fine with that. I mean, I don't know if Roland Bragg is really at the top of the list of those who should have forts named after them, but if the place doesn't honor Braxton Bragg or anybody else who is a trader for the Confederacy, cool. We in the left one. If you want to rename Robert E. Lee Street at Fairchild Air Base in Spokane and keep it Lee straight, but rename it after Bruce Lee. Cool.

name is emmel something. Call them all Renfield. He has ordered DOJ to indefinitely postpone the prosecution of Mayor Adams, not just for corruption, but for really really cheap corruption, on the transparently nonsensical premise that the case started too close to any election. It was begun nine months before a primary for re election, which Adam stands no chance of or of being renominated by his party. Adams, of course, is genuinely one of the most stupid men ever to

appear in American politics. He openly repeatedly met with Trump. Then last week he ordered New York City staff to open city buildings to the Iice Gestapo so they can go hunting for immigration violators, and he ordered city staff to not criticize Trump, and two business days later, the charges against him were postponed until at least after the next election, and Adams apparently thinks somehow New York voters won't notice any of this because he's stupid. Of course,

it's even worse than it seems. Adams clearly not only hoard himself out to President Pimp, but he also did it in such a way that he's actively on the hook to him. Trump could have dropped the prosecution outright, but that's not what they did. They postponed it so Trump could restart the prosecution anytime he thinks Adams isn't

cow towing sufficiently or licking Trump's ass fast enough. What neither of them have figured out, though, is the rather simple reality that all the career people in the government of the City of New York and an increasing number of other electeds here, and many of those appointed by Adams, who have not yet gotten into trouble because of him, have turned on him. They want to see him suffer, They want to see him out of office, they want

to see him in jail. As suggested by his total lack of subtlety in meeting with the Furor, Adams is not smart enough to even symbolically cover his tracks here, and so presumably somebody somewhere can confirm exactly what Adams promised Trump or promised anybody else, and how much of a quid pro quote there is here. Plus all those federal charges that are now in abeyance, he can still be indicted for them, and indicted for whatever he did with Trump by the City of New York and by

the State of New York. Just not a bright guy. Plus, it isn't clear what the Adams endgame is here. He's only got one route that lets him stay in politics, and that's to change parties. Now, it isn't clear if he's going to do that before the election and run as a Republican or if he would hold out and wait until after he thinks somehow he has been reelected as a Democrat. Eric adams approval rate was twelve percent even he beat the Republican last time, the old guy

in the red beret. He beat him sixty seven percent to twenty seven percent. The polling for the Democratic primary right now, as the city comptroller and two state senators I've never heard of, and I was born here in nineteen fifty nine tied at six percent each. Adams is now at ten percent. So he was at twelve percent approval, but now he's at ten percent. Just among Democrats in

terms of getting the nomination. Running away with the nomination at this point at thirty three percent, is disgraced ex Governor Andrew Cuomo because as bad as he was, he wasn't as bad as Adams. So Adams is safe for now from jail. I guess unless the state or city does indict him like I suggested, because a Trump pardon wouldn't impact that. I'm left with this question. Do we think Adams knows that Trump can't pardon him for city or state prosecutions? Mayor Eric sh don't tell him. I'd

like it to be a surprise. Adams two days worst person. Hello, this is Sports Senate. Wait check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman from the sports Ball central centered news desk tonight hene Boston, Massachusetts and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. So what happens to football fans the week after the Super Bowl? They either immediately start looking ahead to the twenty twenty five draft and the twenty twenty five season, or they consider for the first time all winter the

possibility of concentrating on a different sport. Pitchers and catchers will have reported to all the baseball spring training camps by today. There are five NBA games tonight, than two days off in the All Star Games Sunday, then two more days off, so Tomorrow and Saturday, and then next Monday and next Tuesday. There are no NFL games, no NBA games, no baseball games, and the National Hockey League

the only one in that group standing. It continues to provide evidence that it's actually run by people sent over by basketball to screw hockey into the ground. The next National Hockey League game in this absence of anything else is twelve thirty Eastern Time, Saturday, February twenty second, at the time when fans of other sports might be open to looking at your game. Maybe for the first time,

you have shut the league down for two weeks. So you can hold a bullshit tournament nobody cares about that features almost no games. The Four Nations face Off, which sounds like a sequel to the Travolta Nick Cage movie, pits teams of NHL players, but not with their teams that you know, but with their countries. Because if you think the distinction of most fans about which of their players are Swedish and which are finish is negligible, you should check how much they don't care about which are

Americans and which are Canadians. I literally just found out that a guy I always thought was a Swede named Patrick lyone of the Montreal Cans, is actually a Finn. And my response to this was who cares Canada and Sweden played the first game last night. Tomorrow it's America and Finland. There are only five other games in the next week after that, including the championship. One assumes this

matters in Finland and Sweden they are rivals. One knows it matters in Canada, where many broadcasters like to recite the entire resume of where the referees and linesmen for each game where they played before they gave up playing when they were seventeen after that accident with the asphalt truck, and the names of the trainers and the goal judges who were on hand at the point where the asphalt truck ran into the rink, and how they all met

Sidney Crosby's cousin's neighbors, skate sharpener, well his backup skate sharpener. It's an obsession. Last Saturday night, the host of Hockey Night in Canada pointed out that there were only four Americans in the Super Bowl, but the NHL has nearly sixty percent non Canadians. His implication was that this somehow makes the NHL better because the diversity between Canada and America is really big, isn't it. Luck Finns and Swedes.

You ever see the Star Trek episode where the planet was divided into people who were white on the left side and black on the right side, and people who were black on the left side and white on the right side, and they hated each other and were racist towards each other or other. I always remembered that episode it starred Frank Gorshen, Because like race, nationality is primarily stupid and irrelevant, but somehow in Canada this is a big deal. The NHL is better because nearly sixty percent

of the players don't play in Canada. What is it, seventy percent of the players the teams don't play in

Canada and the players aren't from Canada. Okay, that makes sense anyway, The NHL is somehow better because of all this, and somehow better by not playing for the two weeks after football goes dark and as the battle to make the playoffs heats up, and as Alexander Ovechkin battles to break the all time goal scoring record of Wayne Gretzky's, with many hoping he does break Wayne Gretzky's records, while others like me, hope that instead he just breaks his

putin loving ass, I love hockey. I will usually defer to Canadians on almost anything, especially now when they're angry enough at us that in Vancouver last week, the home crowd not only briefly booed the American anthem, they booed it while it was being sung by a woman of color who was in a wheel chair. That's how mad they were. To their credit, they cheered her when she sang the Canadian anthem, but it still was a choice.

But if baseball seems committed to making all the wrong decisions about its sport, Hockey, it seems committed year after year, decade after decade, incarnation after incarnation, committed to keeping its sport the secret. By the way, that grueling load of seven games over twelve days that is supposed to captivate two nations and one continent and the Gulf of America. The games will be played in Boston and Montreal, and the ticket sales were reported to be weak in Montreal

but worse in Boston. Dateline, Lake Placid, New York. Forty five years ago, yesterday, the US hockey team looked to be on its way to another noble but irrelevant, non metal finish at the Olympics. They trailed the powerful Swedes

two to one. In the final minute, they pulled the goalie for an extra skater, and with twenty seven seconds left, defenseman Bill Baker put the puck passed superstar Swedish goalie Pelly Lindbergh to get America an unlikely two two tie, and all of a sudden, the Americans were still eligible for a medal. And if you do the math, you

know how that turned out. We're talking about the nineteen eighty Olympics a place where countries matter, where the Swedes versus the Americans decide which team wins, and ultimately the versus the Americans was followed by the Americans versus the Russians to determine who was going to get the gold medal, and it was the Americans, you know, back when we

all used to hate Russia. The NHL will come back, as I mentioned, on Saturday the twenty second, with twenty four games that day and on Sunday, the twenty third, But it's just going to have two two weeks from now on Monday the twenty fourth. So what Well, Monday the twenty fourth is forty five years to the day of the miracle on ice, when the US Olympic hockey team, having beaten Russia two days earlier, completed its impossible gold medal victory at the nineteen eighty Olympics in Lake Placid,

New York. The NHL will celebate February twenty fourth with a game in Calgary and another one in Salt Lake City. Because marketing, we've done all of our marketing, we got all the groceries. That Olympic victory gave hockey a brief hold on what was at worst a tie with basketball for the most popular winter sport in this country. Nobody believes this now, but in February nineteen eighty. In fact, through almost all of the nineteen eighties, NBA Finals games

on weeknights were not shown live on American television. They were tape delayed until eleven thirty pm on the local CBS station because who is gonna watch basketball rather than Dallas? Or let's make a Beverly Hills Bills Lays or whatever the shows were. Of course, the Olympic hockey game, the one in which we beat the Russians on the twenty second of February, was also shown on delay. They played it late in the afternoon, but they knew everybody was going to watch. They played it on tape on ABC

on the night that it happened. Only those of us who were there at the Lake Placid Olympic Center saw it live. Because my boss at UPI Radio was Sam Rosen, already the backup play by play by on of the New York Rangers, now a Hockey Hall of Famer in his last of two hundred seasons doing the Rangers games, he's retiring. Appropriately, he big footed me and took over covering the US Olympic team, and he gave me a

hell of a second prize. He had me cover the crowd for the remaining games, which meant I got to sit there at center ice with a ticket and watch like a fan and then spend I don't know ninety seconds to two minutes working and ask happy American fans how happy they were. So since this is the end of it and I'm trying to give you a break from all of our real world nonsense, I'll play you one of my reports from the day of the wind

over Russia. I am just shy here or just after I should say, my twenty first birthday, and this report aired on about a thousand radio stations in the United States, and it aired before people knew from television that we had beaten the Russians. Because tough. I will play you this report, and then I will tell you my real memory of those Olympics when Sam Rosen, my friend to this day, and his boss took me out and got me drunk and then sent me to cover the skiing

when the wind chill outside was fifty below. And I'll just add before I play you this old tape. I'm still cold whenever I sit down with that share.

an audio processing machine that weighed like fourteen pounds. The nine volt batteries it took, I think it was a dozen of them, a telephone, a backup telephone, twelve assorted patch cords, two loose leaf notebooks, about eight pens, two microphones, two extra pair of socks, and I got dressed, two full sets of thermal underwear, shirts, sweaters, snow pants, snow shoes.

Because it was eleven degrees below zero that morning, I got something quick to eat at the commissary, and I made it out somehow to the line for the bus from the Lake Placid Olympics Center to the Lake Placid Transportation Center to Lake Placid's own White Face Mountain, then onto the snow track, the open penned mountain tractor that went up the side of Whiteface Mountain and took me to the finish line of the nineteen eighty Olympic Men's down hill ski final. Still drunk. That is how a

reporter covered the Olympics nearly forty three years ago. You drank, you woke up, you went, you stood near the finish line, and when the skiers completed their runs, you hiked or wobbled over to them and you took out your microphone or your pen and you interviewed them, like two minutes after they had finished hurtling towards you down the hill. You could see almost nothing of the race from there.

There were no TV monitors. Basically, your only clue was the sound of the crowd that would give you about thirty seconds worth of warning that the skier was coming over the near horizon, and you should be prepared to

flee just in case he or she wiped out. Also, you were on top of a mountain at the dead point of winter, and whereas it might have been a balmy eleven degrees below zero in the comfort of the Swiss Acres motel with the wind chill, at the base of the mountain, it was forty eight below zero and there had already been four inches of new snow since the sun came up, which is where the still drunk

part came in. Handy, my boss is at my first job, the thousand station radio network called United pres International Audio, had decided the night before to teach me how to

drink while on assignment. My bosses were the bureau manager for that part of you PI, the late Stan Sabik, who had hired me, and Sam Rosen, the sports director of the network, who not only somehow survived being my first boss, but today, just forty three years later, is still working as the television voice of the New York Rangers hockey team and is in the Hockey Hall of Fame. So I guess my reputation is a tough employee is

wildly overrated, or at least Sam thinks. So Sam and Stan kept me drinking at the motel until two am, knowing full well that I had to get on the six am bus to go cover the men's downhill, because it was the two of them who had assigned me to go cover the men's downhill, and bluntly, I was surprisingly pleased with myself that freezing morning because I had

indeed learned how to drink while on assignment. I had somehow found the phone jack for the UPI phone buried under all the new snow, which of course was buried under all the old snow, attached the phone to it, got in a dial tone, called the office, checked the alligator clips with which I would feed the tape, and all was well until I went to put a cassette tape into the cassette recorder. I didn't have one fat lot of good two cassette tape machines, gonna do you

without a cassette to stick in one of them. I looked forlornly around the base of Whiteface Mountain, twelve hundred feet above sea level. As we were. There was a surprisingly nice chalet and a decent restaurant, but there were no radio shacks or other electronics stores. There was, however, one other radio guy, Jack Briggs, from the Associated Press Radio Network, the nominal arch rival to our own UPI Audio. I knew Jack a little. He was a nice guy.

I went and explained my plight, making sure to blame my bosses for my predicament. Oh man, he said, his breath turning into first steam and then ice cubes. I'm so sorry, but I can't give you a cassette. I'm sorry, you're UPI, and I'm ap Oh how I laughed. That was a great line to say to a rookie reporter still drunk thanks to the initiation rituals of his own bosses. The possessor of one great buzz, but zero audio cassettes. Jack Briggs could tell I thought he was kidding. That's

when he said, I'm not kidding. Look, if my boss, Shelby Whitfield, ever found out, he'd fire me. I suddenly wasn't drunk anymore, not at all. My boss will will will fire me. Briggs was adamant. I can't run the risk of shellby finding out. I have to confess. I shouted, how the hell is he gonna find out?

I told him I would give him the cassette back after I fed my boss the interviews over the phone, so there'd be no evidence and he wouldn't even have to do any interviews. No good. I'm sorry. I know you're going to tell this story about me for a while. As he walked away from me, I shouted after him forever. Turned out there was no radio shack and no camaraderie, but there was a West Coast newspaper reporter atop the mountain who heard some of this conversation. I guess I

yelled a little loudly at mister Briggs. Some guy standing next to a Saint Bernard told me to quiet down and mentioned something else about the avalanches. Or maybe I dreamed that part. I don't know. Anyway, the West Coast newspaper guy said he had a micro cassette machine and he would loan it to me and I could give it back to him at the media center that day

or the next one. But I had to do him a favor because there was this really cute reporter in our UPI bureau and he really wanted to be introduced to her. And I said, I can promise you nothing but a handshake, and he understood, and that's how I did not get fired. But of course, a story like this has punchlines, and this one has two of them. The first is two years and a couple of months later,

Shelby Whitfield asked me to lunch. He had left the Associated Press to run the sports department at the ABC Radio network, back when that was not only a thing, but a big thing. We went to a terrific New York City Chinese restaurant near ABC called shun Lee, and Shelby Whitfield interviewed me for a job when that kind of job paid eighty thousand a year and my very nice studio apartment in a very nice part of town

costs less than five hundred dollars. A month later, in an interesting twist, I found out that jobs didn't exist. I was mentioning the interview in a press box somewhere I think Madison Square Garden, and there was another kid reporter named Howie Rose, and how he is still working, he does the New York Mets games on the radio. And how he said, wait, they interviewed me for that job last year. Just an excuse for that damn Whitfield

to go drink his lunch on ABC's tab. Anyway, before we started the interview for the job I did not know did not exist at ABC. I told Shelby Whitfield the white Face Mountain can I borrow a cassette Jack Briggs story? And Shelby's exact reply was, I don't know was I going to find out? There was you and there was him, and you were on top of a goddamn mountain and I was in Washington. Only he didn't say goddamn that Briggs. He added, always trying to suck up to me, I got to tell you something I

actually once promised I wouldn't tell you if we ever met. This. When the Olympics were over and came back to the office, he told me what happened. He expected me to be happy or give him a bonus or something. And I called him a little snitch. Only Shelby didn't say snitch, just a word that rhymed with it. The other punch line is from nineteen ninety two, and remember this happened at the nineteen eighty Olympics. I go to work at ESPN and come in a little early to launch their

radio network, a story I've told here before. And there I find a friend of mine since my radio days, who I have not seen in a year or so, and he says, hey, last month, I was at an NBA game in Washington. I ran to Jack Briggs. He

heard you were going to ESPN. He asked me if you were still telling that story about the time you got stuck on Whiteface Mountain without a cassette, And he was the only other reporter there, and he wouldn't give you a spare And I told him you were and I smiled, and I replied, I hope you remembered to use the word forever. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced

and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray, in between his other gigs, was on the guitars, bass and drums. He was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organists ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of e ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My

announcer today is my friend Larry David. Everything else was as ever my fault So that's countdown for today, just and thirty eight days until the scheduled end of his lane duck lame brained term, unless Musk removes him sooner or the actuarial tables due. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always, bulletins as the news warrants. Remember impeach Trump now, it won't work. Now it will win the Democrats the midterms.

Until the next time. I'm Keith o'roman. Good morning, let me try that again, old b good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. He set your name Rock Lauren. 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.