WHILE THEY'RE DEBATING, ABE LINCOLN'S WAX STATUE IS MELTING - 6.27.24

destroy democracy and Biden tries to destroy Trump. The climate disaster that has already begun and on which Trump would apply the finishing touches, has so imperiled the six foot tall wax statue of Lincoln outside of water Washington Elementary School that the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities has removed Lincoln's head quote to prevent it from falling and breaking. They are not saying this, but the other

problem was. The other dire portent here was as climate change brought peak summer temperatures to Washington while it was still spring, the figure of mister Lincoln did not merely begin to melt. It began to slump. The torso began to slide outwards from the replica of the chair and his head to fall backwards onto its edge. Frankly, it had begun to look more like Ford's Theater than the

Lincoln Memorial. At the debate, somebody asked Trump about this, ask him if he's in favor of beheading Lincoln before Lincoln's head falls off. Trump is always claiming he's been treated worse than Lincoln. This is dementia. Jay's chain chants to get even with him. Where we are practically, of course, on the day of this debate, is that the UGOV poll for the Economists that closed Tuesday continues to peg the national race at Biden forty two, Trump forty two,

with or without Kennedy. But the same group of respondents predicts a Trump election by forty two thirty one, with twenty seven percent unsure. The same group has fifty four percent of all Americans saying they definitely or probably will watch the debate eleven percent more. There may be the numbers actually higher among partisans. Sixty four percent of Republicans polled say they are watching, fifty eight percent of Democrats.

You Gov and the Economist also asked eleven specific questions about the debate, like who will be better at staying calm under pressure, which Biden wins handily forty eight to thirty one. Who will be more likely to lie in which it's Trump forty six to thirty four, and three

questions are Trump landslides. Who is more likely to make personal attacks Trump by thirty nine points, who is likelier to go over their allotted time Trump by forty five points, and who is likelier to interrupt Trump by fifty two points. Morning Consult also did debate polling results based the percentage of voters who think it's very likely they will change who they plan to vote for based on the debate

eleven percent. They dismiss this as a small number. Eleven percent of Trump and Biden voters are soft enough to be changed by the outcome of the debate, and Morning Consults says there are three demographic breakdowns of that eleven percent that could be big news for Joe Biden. The groups where Trump has made the biggest inroad since twenty twenty well. One in five voters under the age of thirty five is one of those groups, and they say they expect to change their vote based on the debate.

One in five voters under the age of thirty five one in five Black voters, more than a quarter of all Hispanic voters expect say it's very likely they'll change who they plan to vote for based on this debate if Trump gives back those gains, especially because off this debate tonight he's cooked. But enough about melting Lincoln's and who's the biggest asshole at the debate? There is one pole number going into this thing that bluntly terrifies me.

Several polls have already shown that as an issue questions phrased as the preservation of democracy or the health of democracy or threats against democracy, they have shown up repeatedly among the top handful of factors determining who is voting for whom. The Biden campaign point has gotten through the reality point of January sixth, and the rest of the realities of Trump's varied coup attempts. They have also gotten through.

The problem is the voters in the six swing states President Biden won in twenty twenty, polled by The Washington Post and George Mason University, are asked who would do a better job handling threats to democracy in the US, and in those six states, they say Trump by forty four to thirty three Trump in Arizona, in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, they somehow think Trump will handle threats to democracy better.

Along the new pets of the pollsters this year, the so called decider voters, the catch all for young voters, voters who are newly registered in the last two years, voters who are definitely not definitely attached to either candidate, voters who voted for different parties in the last two elections. They are a little closer on this thirty eight to twenty nine, but by a margin of nine points. They

still think Trump would be better at handling threats to democracy. Now, of course, as we have learned every since twenty fifteen, what you and I might think is meant by the phrase handling threats to democracy may not entirely overlap with what fascists in Georgia think it means. Some of them may be saying Trump will be better at it because he'll do a better job making sure that the threats

to democracy succeed. But as much as we might hope that's what it means, it's not likely to be true for more than a handful of them, because in those six Swing States. Trump's message has gotten through as well, that the fact that he is being prosecuted for crimes because he was indicted for crimes, because he committed crimes, that that's actually an attack on democracy. Six out of ten voters in the Swing States say threats to democracy

are extremely important to them. Seven out of ten Trump supporters say it, nearly eight out of ten Biden supporters say it, And yet in the Swing States they think Trump would be better to solve it. So if there is one overriding message to President Biden as they are

micing him up tonight, it should be this. Those voters out there are ready to accept the idea that the nation is hanging by a thread, or to choose a metaphor more apt to the moment, that it is at risk of melting in the hot sun and having its head cut off so it doesn't fall off and break. But those voters out there do not fully grasp that Trump is the problem, that Trump is Hitler nineteen thirty

one or Hitler nineteen thirty two. They do not fully grasp that prosecuting him is not a violation of democracy but a necessity if democracy is to be preserved. They are maybe as much as half of them still living in a world defined in the year eighteen thirty seven by the Danish author Hans Christian Anderson. The world of the Emperor's new Clothes is sitting there his gun pointed at Democracy's head, and somewhere around half of us see

the exact opposite of that reality. I don't know how you fix that, mister President, even if you are on stage with this monster in front of one hundred and twenty million Americans tonight. I can only say that the how part really is your choice and really is your job. And the only good news is you don't have to

convince all of them, just a lot of them. You know, at the moment you are listening to this way more than I know at the moment I'm saying this about the Supreme Court ruling on this farcical anti democratic then why did we do that whole revolution against the British king concept of presidential immunity. The decision has been made.

It was not revealed yesterday, though in a footnote, the Supremely Corrupt Religious Court says it would keep referring to x as Twitter and yeah, the government sure can ask social media sites to take down disinformation during a coup or a literal public health emergency. The Court will either announce its decision on presidential immunity today Thursday or on Friday. Logic would suggest that John Roberts at least would have wanted neither to upstage the debate tonight nor become a

part of it by issuing this ruling beforehand. And you must remember that if Trump's supporters live in an emperor's new clothes world, Supreme Court justices live in a world in which they are the emperors, and the rest of us are just supposed to shut up and salute delaying the announcement of a decision, especially if there is any shred of actual law left at the Supreme Court and the decision on the question of is there presidential immunity

is are you out of your effing mind? That would save them announcing it Friday, That would save them Trump's wrath in front of one hundred and twenty million television viewers. On the other hand, if it were left up to Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, and especially Martha and Alito, they would damn well be certain to announce the presidential

immunity decision on debate day. In fact, they'd prefer to announce it just before the debate so that Martha Ann could get her promised on the secret recordings revenge against the media and specifically against CNN for its coverage of her and her flags. There is also one other practical consideration. If the Court has actually found that there is immunity for president actions as long as they are taken while

in office and in an official capacity. Immediately thereafter, Joe Biden can literally arrest all of the justices during the debate if he wants, and he can arrest Trump too during the debate. And there's no hyperbole meant here, because, as I have suggested before this, the Court would be deciding that this is a monarchy or a dictatorship or any kind of strong man state you can think of.

And therefore the president who invokes the Insurrection Act and declare Sam Alito or Donald Trump or Sean Hannity a terrorist and a threat to the country could never face accountability for it, outside of possible impeachment and removal from office. And of course that liability could be removed by simply also arresting any congressman or senator who was willing to

vote for that. Somewhere, even in the adult, vengeful, destructive minds of Alito and Thomas, there must be awareness that if there is presidential immunity, they will be giving Joe Biden immediately a very stark choice. The court would be saying,

the president is a king. You Biden, our president. You Biden can now act like a king, act for goodness and for America if you want, or you can refuse the crown like you're a modern day Richard the Third and not become king and instead sit around and wait until January when maybe you hand the literal power to be the first American king to this psychopath Trump your call. I mean, it is madness to think that in any vision of America that any of us have ever had,

that such things must be considered. But that is where we are. It may be we have a choice of a good king or a bad king, and that the choice has to be made by the guy who would become the good king. That's the only choice we have. Thank you, Sam Alito. Now get in the van. You're under arrest, so you can see where they wouldn't want to announce that today. If that's what they're going to announce because the government knows where all the justices are

right now. But if they wait, well, after all, tomorrow is Friday, and Roberts and Alito and Thomas and Corsich and Kavanaugh and Barrett would stand a better chance of just leaving the decision on somebody's desk and all of them fleeing arrest before it gets announced. Man, I wish I were joking, but hell, it all fits. I mean circling back to Garrison Elementary School on S Street in Washington after all, Yeah, this all makes sense. Abraham Lincoln

is melting. Oh, there's Supreme Court to Quinnipiac. Term limits for Supreme Court justices approve seventy percent, and what motivates the Supreme Court? Politics are law? Law thirty two percent, politics sixty three percent. Once again, that includes a lot of people who are saying politics, Yeah, that's what we want them to do. Besides which, what the hell do

they care? And circling back to the debate, Apparently Trump was supposed to do a thing yesterday with Byron Donald's at an Atlanta barber shop, but instead of showing up, he phoned it in to a group of black leaders there, and he repeated this, try my tacos because I love Hispanic people. Level racism claim that claim that he has African American support because he too has been arrested, and he had a mugshot taken, and the mugshot is more popular than Elvis Presley's mugshot.

getting your photo taken while you're in the army. Now, the last time I have to annoy you with a reminder, I'll be live with special edition of Countdown on YouTube at the end of the debate roughly ten thirty Eastern tonight, and much of that will be included in tomorrow's edition

of the podcast Wherever You podcast and on YouTube. And by the way, if you heard that story that NBC is going to use artificial intelligence to generate Olympic highlight clips to send to email subscribers with customized greetings and narrations from Al Michaels, I just wanted to point out that A. I am not using AI at all. I have enough trouble with real intelligence. And B many people are now assuming that because NBC is using AIL, that

real Al is dead, which he is not. And C of all the people in the world to make into an AI figure first, Al Michaels also of interest here vote for Trump endorsed nutjob hung cow we're senator from Virginia, because he not only knows USA today is conspiring with the campaign of the incumbent Tim Kaine, but he knows this because the questions the newspaper sent him are in a different font That's next, This is Countdown. Lincoln's isn't

the only head that's melting in Washington. I see this is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. The most talented person I have ever worked with should have been one of broadcasting's all greats. But if anybody ever had a more faithful and more fatal combination of bad luck and bad survival skills than this newscaster, I don't know who it would have been.

The most challenged person I have ever worked with coming up in things I promised not to tell, But first there are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger fec specimens who constitute two days worst persons in the world

the Bronze. Anybody saying that George Latimer successfully primary ing Jamal Bowman Tuesday Night in the New York sixteenth is an indicator of divisions in the Democratic Party, or the end of the squad, or a defeat for the Progressives. Just because a record amount of money was spent on trying to oust Bowmen and successfully so, it does not mean it was the money that beat him. I am to the left of Bowmen politically. I have no use for Apak Latimer simply gives me the freaking creeps. But

Bowman had flaws. And in saying that, I will point out that the Nevada GOP Committee member Seagal Chatta twice called mister Bowman a quote hood rat unquote and said he had to leave Congress because there was quote no Section eight housing there. And this woman Chatta is a stone cold racist representing a stone cold racist party, and

I hope she burns in hell. But as to mister Bowman, he threatened Apack just before the election that he would show it, quote the power of the mfing South Bronx, And I guess that's all right, being from the Bronx. But of course his district, the New York sixteenth, does not include the South Bronx mfing or otherwise. Then there was the whole alarm jazz at the Cannon House Office building last October when he pulled the fire alarm just before the House vote on the stopgap funding bill designed

to avert a government shutdown. Insisted it was an accident. He thought pulling the thing would open a door. And guess what if that's true, he's not very bright if it's not true. He pulled a fire alarm to try to stop a vote. Those are not good choices. And if you think of the squad and the Progressives lost on Tuesday because Bowman did a that's the district that includes my childhood home, and it may not be the most liberal district, but it's pretty damn liberal. And b

how come down the street. In the fourteenth AOC beat her centrist challenger eighty two percent to eighteen. The problem was Bowman the runner up. Bally Sports, the regional sports networks that went under last year, may really have burst

the balloon for baseball, basketball, and hockey. We have talked before about their bankruptcy and how it particularly affected baseball and forced several teams to literally give away their TV rights this season, including the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers, whose games are apparently being done by Tom Broclaw. All the way, I'm pronouncing words like a little same for

the San Diego Padres. Remember last year when the Bally checks stopped coming and the Padres had to take out a fifty million dollar loan to meet payroll and they had to trade their superstar Jan Soto to the Yankees. That's because there was no TV money. Well, now we have reached the next level of future shock for baseball

and for the other sports. The Miami Marlins TV situation, still being carried by Bally in Florida, is now in such disarray, not that it's a great product to begin with, but it's now in such disarray that between now and the end of July, the ball club is in essence offering to pay its own fans to watch the telecasts of the games. The Marlins are offering two free months of streaming their games on Bally. You then get stuck

for twenty dollars a month. But if you sign up on like July thirty first, your two months carry you through the rest of the season. Doesn't get more fundamental nor more ominous than this. Last year you pay the Marlins to watch their games on TV. This year, the

Marlins pay you to watch their games on TV. In Russia, Martlin's pay you but our winner the worst Republican Senate candidate Hung cow I used to play a little trick where the gossip site would call you and ask questions and was obvious it was either a lie they were going to publish, or something negative or just something controversial and they were going to publish usually the next day,

whether I answered their questions or not. So what I would do would be to not answer their questions and then say on MSNBC that the New York Post was probably going to report this or Jossip was going to post that. But when I did it, I was not running for the Senate from Virginia? Was I? Yesterday afternoon? Not long after Representative Troy Nells finally stopped wearing the combat metal pin he had no right to wear because

he never served in combat. Hung Cow tweeted, I want to give all of you a window into what it's like being a combat veteran who had the goal to run for public office against a career politician. Any veteran will read this with the same disgust. Imagine being asked to provide documentation of the dates and times al Qaeda shot at you. Imagine being asked, if you're a disabled veteran,

why you don't have a purple heart. And by the way, maybe somebody can explain who wrote the questions in the other font that was copied and pasted into your email. Couldn't be the Caine campaign, could it? Dad? Mister Cow tweeted, screenshots of an email from the newspaper. This is Tom Vandenbrookett, reads Pentagon, correspondent for USA Today. I am working with my colleague Elizabeth Bayer. We are reporting on Hung Cow's recent statements about being shot at, blown up, and being scarred.

We have the following questions, Where and when was he blown up? Was it the result of enemy action? Please provide documentation? Where and when was he shot at? Was it the result of enemy action? Please provide documentation. Please detail with day times and places that Cow spent outside the wire versus inside during his deployments. Why is a combat action ribbon not listed on his service record? Why is a purple heart not listed on his service record?

Cow says that he is a one hundred percent disabled veteran. What is the nature of his disability and is it related to combat wounds? Why is a combat action ribbon not listed on his service record? Thank you, and we would appreciate your responses by the close of business. June twenty sixth, tweeted all that, so what have we learned here? Those of us who didn't know USA Today was working on a story about Hong Cow and what he claims

is his service record. We now know that maybe he's padded it, or at least they have some sort of evidence that let them ask those questions. And those of us who didn't know that each campaign now know that each campaign only has its own personal type font and it can never use a different font, and if anybody else uses that font, it must have cut and repasted it from the Tim Kaine campaign. You heard the man.

Also one other small detail, check this on Twitter X if you don't believe me, But if you look at the screenshot, you will notice that the smoking gun this guy Cow sees the different font. There's no different font, it's the same font. There seems to be two different sizes of the same font on the screenshot, but that may just be from the way he cropped the screenshots.

In any event, Hung, when you are down to denying you padded your military record by trying to stir up a controversy over the font size on the email, you've probably already lost the argument. Cow. Two days worst person Hellwerd Howser will have more to say, and we'll answer the question how hot was it at Yankee Stadium yesterday? On the Sports Report at about a thirty.

did it again, and they fired him. His name was will Spence, and by the time he was eighteen years old, he was the news director of a radio station in Connecticut, and he was a substitute anchor at the age of eighteen on the top all news radio station in the COUNTRYCBS in New York eighteen. Not long after that, he went to NBC and was the original newsman on Don

Imus's radio show. He jumped right from that to being a TV reporter on the NBC station in New York age twenty four twenty five, and the sky was the limit and he was simply a genius and fitting the best definition of that word, someone who could do something

with ease that nobody else would even attempt. Will Spence was reporting for the NBC station Channel four in New York on New York's fiscal crisis of the late seventies, and he had scooped the competition and gotten details of a complicated rescue plan with debt transference and algorithms and adjusted interest rates, and not one moment of his important scoop was on camera. The people who gave him that story would not permit themselves to be recorded or even quoted.

So Will simply had his cameraman set up at the foot of the steps of New York City Hall and said to him, follow me, stop at Park Row and then three to two one, and then Will began to walk.

The cameraman was next to him, and he began to walk, and for two and a half minutes, with impeccable sentence, structure and diction and complete accuracy, Will Spence took this extraordinarily complicated rescue plan for New York's hemorrhaging finances with algorithms and explained it calmly, succinctly, expertly, simply a little

touch of snark in his voice. And he kept walking and kept walking, and kept walking, and kept looking to the cameraman by his side, and then away into the ground and then back to the cameraman, and then he stopped on the sidewalk of Park Row, where he was perfectly framed by the Brooklyn Bridge Will Spence News Center for at City Hall. I couldn't do that in a million years, and I'm okay with doing stuff like that,

to be fair. That was take two. On take one, Will had misstimed what he wanted to say and where he wanted to walk, and instead of he and the cameraman stopping on the sidewalk of the street Park Row, the cameraman stopped, but Will had not yet finished, so Will kept walking into the street itself, and the video then showed him diving out of the way as a garbage truck barreled toward him on Park Row at about forty five miles an hour. And that was the other

side of Will Spence. For every act of genius, there was a garbage truck heading towards him with his name on it. I don't know what happened at Channel four, but I do know he got fired. I know that. When I met him in nineteen eighty, when I was twenty one and he was thirty, I was convinced he was closer to forty and on the morning shift of the New York radio station where we both worked. Will

had a little trouble with his own schedule. He was supposed to be there at three point fifteen am and on the air for his first newscast at five am. The station was WNW, and it's decades old news sound

was the bongabongas that sound, bogabanga, bogabonga, repeating endlessly. I saw Will Spence walk in one morning, paie as a sheet in his raincoat, gesticulating wildly with his left hand for a news desk assistant to hand him a script, any script, at exactly five am, No, actually a few seconds after five am, so late that the dish jockey

was already playing the WNW news sound. And we were at about the eighth or ninth bonga bonga, And I saw him a small stack of copy jammed into his left hand by the desk assistant, a stack of copy he had not even looked at, with his raincoat still on, Sit down, throw his microphone toggle open and say, falllessly, you run at W News. It's eighty three degrees in

reigning at five o'clock. I'm Will Spence, mayor Cutch, we'll meet this morning with representatives of the United Editions to discuss like he had been there for hours and written the copy himself and practiced it aloud for three or four times. From the standpoint of the viewer or the listener, Will could sound perfect when he had crafted a thing of genius, like the walking stand up on the fiscal crisis.

But he could also sound perfect when he had just staggered into the booth having successfully found the location of the radio station on the eighth or ninth Bonga. And unfortunately that skill was his undoing. On the night of Wednesday, July sixteenth, nineteen eighty, Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan was in deep discussions with former president former Vice President Gerald Ford about Ford running with him as Reagan's vice president.

It was unprecedented in American history. It led all the newscasts that night. It was the featured story on all the wire services. Books have been written about this evening and those discussions, and they all fell apart about eleven PM because Ford made it clear to Reagan that whoever was president, whoever was vice president, Ford expected them to be more or less co presidents. Before the calendar had turned to Thursday July seventeenth, nineteen eighty, the deal was dead.

Reagan had selected George H. W. Bush as his running mate, and our timeline was irrevocably altered. How dare you sir? At about five hours later, and about twelve bongas into the five o'clock newscast on Thursday July seventeenth, in walked Will Spence, this time simply grabbing the first stack of copy he saw, falling into the announced booth, opening up his mic, and starting to read. Unfortunately, what he had grabbed was the previous night's nine pm newscast script news

It's eighty three degrees in reigning at five o'clock. I'm Will Spence. It seems certain that American history being made. A man will run for president Deni Hiss running mate will be a former president the Republican nineteen eighty ticket, Reagan and Ford. Those who were there in the newsroom told me they were startled by how many people were at actually listening to the five am news and were willing to call in and complain and call Will Spence

an idiot. Upper management wanted to call him something else fired, but He had a guardian angel at WNAW in the news director Sam Hall, who had also been his boss in the IMUS days, and Sam gave him another chance, but said do it again and you're gone. I really don't know what was wrong with Will. He told me he smoked a lot of weed. He said he was hypoglycemic. Somebody at WNBC said he used to sit at his desk, pressing his hands to his skull and mumbling tumors. I

can feel them growing tumors. He was sometimes charming. He gave extraordinarily good career advice, sometimes constructively, and sometimes advice that was designed to leave you bleeding. During a commercial break preceding one of my short sportscasts, I sat down in the booth with him, and as an aggressively cheerful ad for a bank played in the background, Will let loose on me. So I heard him and this commercial

for the bank mixed together juxtapose like this. You have potential, overman, but you have to change your entire delivery.

He would take me aside sometimes and tell me that his first wife and her divorce lawyer were up in the blimp following him around the city. Sometimes he claimed they were working in cahoots with the news director Sam Hall to destroy him, when in fact Hall was the only thing standing between him and unemployment. Somebody once made a mild joke about him and his age in the newsroom, and he threw a stapler at them. He complained one

of the women there was stalking him. In fact, he was stalking her, and inevitably, on October third, nineteen eighty, he either made an impossibly unlucky grab for an old script during the seventeenth Bonga or something, or more like somebody in the newsroom set him up. Nobody need news. It's fifty five degrees in raining. At five o'clock. I'm

Will Spence, the Whoope. John Paul the Second made history arriving in our city yesterday and today it took her tape parade, and then he will address the faithful at Madison Square Garden. Coverage the Pope all day and news that had happened on October third, nineteen seventy nine. This was now October third, nineteen eighty. Will Spence was reading literally year old news. As I recall, they fired him before his shift ended, maybe before the next newscast.

throwing dagger. I have a collection. At RKO. On the night of the Grammys, Will interweaved a clip of every winning song into his script live on the air, throwing cartridges left and right. As he did it. The next hour he updated it with the latest winner. The next hour he updated it with the latest winter. After that it was utter unqualified genius. And he also told me at RKO there was a woman stalking him, who in fact he was stalking, And he addressed everybody by their

job title, tape editor. Come here. And once they postponed a nine am staff meeting until three pm and didn't tell him before he drove in from his house in Connecticut. So he simply went to his Manhattan studio apartment and, as he told me, smoked pot for six hours. And then he came back and insulted literally every member of the forty person staff, went from one to the other to the other, saying as nasty a thing as he

could think of about them. When our nicest, sweetest news editor stood up on her desk and screamed, Spence, get the f out of here before I kill you, before we all kill you. He was genuinely shocked ashen. He came over to me, A lot of the bravada was gone, Olderman, for God's sakes, help me, help me, Keith Well, I heard his life story. It took two hours. We went into Steiner's office. We stole two of Charlie's cigars and

smoked them. It was the living embodiment of the phrase just because you're paranoid, it does not mean they are not out to get you. I was trying to think how to help him when days later news came that he had been hired as a TV reporter by another New York TV station, WABC. I witnessed news and then over there. On his first he was bitten by a dog and he wanted to go to the hospital to get checked out. They made him go out on another story instead. Dogs, garbage trucks. They all had Will's name

on them. A decade later, Will wound up in LA where I had made my mark by then as a local TV sportscaster. He had been hired by a rival station and still did those incredible intricate walking stand ups now live every night, usually from a crime scene on the eleven o'clock news. One night, his own crew managed to not just sabotage him, but knock him down with a slow moving car, live on the air while he

was declaiming into the camera. His last job at yet another LA station, he got because the aging woman anchor there fifteen years his senior, had taken a fancy to him. She got fired, He got fired, And one day the phone rang at MSNBC maybe two thousand and six. It was Will Spence. The Pope had sent a hit squad to kill him. He said the whole Catholic church was involved. Did I have the number of the woman who used to stalk him? It was far more awful than it sounds.

I think somebody sent me an email. Early in April two thousand and eight, I'm pretty sure that's how I found out Will Spence had driven his car at high speed into a bridge abutment in Ventura County, outside LA. There was a story that he had had heart problems and had just seen his doctor and gotten bad news, but we'll never know for sure. I went to put together a little tribute to him that night on Countdown, and online I could not find a single photo of him,

nor any form of biography. Even now, there is one photo accompanying a sad tribute to him, published a couple weeks later in one of the newspapers in Ventura County. It was a tribute not unlike this one. What a wasted life, how much you wanted to hate him and couldn't. And on YouTube there is a tape of one Will Spence TV report from November eighteenth, nineteen eighty one Channel

seven in New York. This talent who could decipher the plan to save New York City from bankruptcy and recite it as he walked, exists forever for two minutes and forty six seconds of his report on the marriage of Luke and Laura from ABC's General Hospital. And by the way, even it is brilliant. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Chaneil arranged, produced and performed

most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass, and drums, Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and fithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best

baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Kenny Maine, and everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the one hundred and thirty second day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the twelve hundred and seventieth day since convicted fellon Donald Trump's first attempt at coup against the democratically elected government of

the United States. Use the July eleventh sentencing hearing, use the mental health system, use presidential immunity if it happens, to stop him from doing it again while we still can. A reminder we will be live again on YouTube after the tonight Join me should be about ten thirty Eastern and do send your link to this podcast to somebody who does not already listen, and if you don't like them, send it to a trumpist. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.

Bulletins is the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.