Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Sure, he violated Judge mer Schawan's expanded gag order on day one, and yes, he once again threatened that if he is not elected, the country will cease to exist. And yes, he called immigrants animals. Yet incredibly, Trump has done something worse.
He has threatened to federalize state and local police. His persecution of minorities, starting with Latinos, moving on to Blacks and Middle Easterners, and when he runs out of all them Jews, that will be conducted at least in part by cops, local cops, cops, you know. To make that possible, Trump will have to take over the police everywhere. Promising death and destruction and making a stochastic assassination threat against President Biden is one kind of thing. This, This is
pure and immediate American dictatorship. Trump Grand Rapids, Michigan, surrounded by cops at a fascist rally.
Somebody said, how will you get these criminals out? I say, the sheriffs, the police, the police officers, the police, law enforcement.
In their local communities.
They know every bad kid, They know every bad person. They know their first name, their middle name, they know their phone numbers, they have their cell phones, they have everything about them. They know exactly what to do and how to do it. These guys know exactly what I'm talking about. But we have to let them do their job.
And we're going to work out a federal immunity for police so they're allowed to do their job without losing their house and their pension everything else when when the liberal governors and mayors don't back them.
The indemnify them thing is not new. He promised that last December, and I'll circle back to its implications in a moment. But one of those implications that by indemnifying cops against prosecution for strong actions, he would be making them personally loyal to him. That was only an implication, and an unofficial implication at that. He has now said, federal immunity the cops, the cops in your town, the cops on your street, the cops in your family, would
be federalized and they would work for Trump. In putting it into these terms, Trump has shown you as clearly as ever before the America he intends to sentence the rest of us to next January twentieth. There are no laws, there are no governors. There are no mayors, there are no local governments, there is no appeal. There is only him. He has the military. He will use it on the streets against protesters. He may declare a state of insurrection
during his inaugural address. Thus the protesters could be anybody you me, a Democratic Speaker of the House, Joe Biden, a news reporter. He doesn't like voters, he doesn't like judges who try to stop him. He will usurp the federal government and replace it with those personally loyal to him. And the first show of force will be the purge of minorities. And if you belong to any minority group, and spoiler alert, we all belong to some minority group.
You may think you are here legally. But if your local cop, your local Trump cop, federalized by Trump, indemnified by Trump, beholden to Trump. If your local cop says no, he thinks he heard somewhere that you are here illegally, Guess where you are going. You are going to Trump Camp. A judge is going to stop it. A judge Trump appointed. A judge in a red state, a judge Trump didn't appoint in a blue state. Who knows that if he crosses Trump, he will be the next to go to
Trump camp and die there fast or slow. And this nightmare all starts with the cops, because Trump's recitation of their omniscience is a wild exaggeration, but not a total one. And this nation, especially its Republicans and its magas, and its fascists and its racists and its lunatics, is a nation riddled with snitches and sadists and grudge holders and
people who do not value human life. And a lot of them just happened to be not all of them, not exclusively, it's not one hundred percent, but a lot of them just happened to be cops right now. And then there are also lots of non cop people who you would now bet your life on being there to defend you if they dragged you away and said, oh, new rule, your grandmother can't prove her immigration here was documented.
That means you are no longer a citizen. Well surprised those people you would bet your life on will first worry about whether their grandmother can prove the same thing, or if that cop there knows the unfortunate fact about them, or their friend or their cousin, or or it all arts with the cops. And Trump just said he would
federalize the cops. And again, this is only the second time he has said, and said it obliquely enough that nearly every reporter, every news outlet missed it that he would be indemnifying all the police everywhere in the country. They shoot somebody, they cannot be arrested, they cannot be sued, they cannot be stopped. And for this they personally have only one man to think Trump last December eighteenth, Durhma Hampshire, I.
Am also going to indemnify all police offices.
This is a big thing, and it's a brand new.
Thing, and I think it's so important. I'm going to indemnify, through the federal government, all police officers and law enforcement officials throughout.
The United States from being destroyed by the radical left for taking.
Strong actions against crime.
Of all of Trump's threats, even the idea of imposing the Insurrection Act on January twentieth and bringing the military out to arrest Fannie Willis and Jack Smith and Gretchen Whitmer and Joe Biden and Juan Merschan's daughter and whoever else he really doesn't like that day, of all of his threats. His many mortal dangers to representative government in this country, the one about the cops is the most dangerous because it is the one that is the most
immediately actionable. Give Trump the cops, and he will turn every American cop into a lawless storm trooper, and every domestic police force into a miniature SS. And he can do it virtually overnight. He can co opt every law officer in this country, seven hundred thousand of them, by
the way. They are all armed, and in the last year nearly all of them have been equipped, if they were not already, with military style weapons and vehicles and surveillance equipment, and make each and every one of them, in essence untouchable by law, beholden to no one responsibly, ultimately only to the person who liberated them from all
of these annoying restraints. Trump and federalized so they can raid homes in their own communities and drag out our neighbors and our friends and our relatives off to the camps. And when they are all in the camps, who's next. The election of Donald Trump would not be a disaster
for democracy in this country. It would be a door locking all of us except a chosen few chosen by Trump locking us into a prison cell from which there is not only no appeal and from which there is not only no escape, but from which, the moment we are inside, the doors are removed. Federalizing and indemnifying local police. I'm going to indemnify, through the federal government, all police officers. That was what he said in December. What do you
think that means? Indemnified, relieved of legal liability for their actions. That means that the next Derek Chauvin who tortures George Floyd to death on a Minneapolis city street with witnesses, that cop cannot be arrested, cannot be prosecuted, cannot be sued, cannot be stopped to try to would probably be breaking
a new Trump law. And if there are no longer any means of stopping the cops from ha people or beating people or killing people, cops will no longer have any need to even pretend that the people they are harassing or beating or killing are actually guilty of anything. They are. Then the SS to use the fascists term illegals trying to escape shot while trying to escape the police. Where are you going next? After that? Happens to your local police review board, the one the cops just abolished.
But what about people who are not quote illegal, but just happen to be named, just to pick a few names at random, say Nicholas Fuentes or Anna Paulina Luna or Raphael Cruz or mark O Rubio or Michelle Tafoya or Rachel Campos, Duffy or Ben Dominich. Somebody with a name like that born here. We're near here, after whom Trump sends his local cops and those people Fuente's Luna, Cruz, Rubio, Tafoya, Campo s Duffy, Dominic any of them. Those people run out of fear, out of panic, they run and they
get shot. Who investigates that. Let's mix in one more degree of horror. What if they aren't quote illegal and they did not run, but the cops Trump's cops say they tried to run. Oh, we'll look at the body cameras. Now, it's unfortunate. We shot mister Olderman, but we mistook him for a suspect from Honduras who was wanted for being
here illegally. We already know wide swaths of the nation's seven hundred thousand cops in eighteen thousand, state and local police forces range from wild conservatism to full on fascism and white supremacism and QAnon and election denialism and trump Ism. We already know that since nine to eleven, the nation's police forces have equipped themselves as if all of the world's terrorists are going to descend on them personally late
this afternoon. I have previously cited the example of Franklin, Indiana, population twenty five thousand, where the cops there bought themselves an m RAP, a mine resistant armored vehicle for Franklin, Indiana, an m RAP, just like a dozen other small county police forces bought in the last decade, a dozen small county police forces, just in Indiana. Trump's plan here is not to get a little loose, a little lax on
reading suspects their miranda rights. It's detaining them without charge, then detaining the judge who points out that they've been detained without charge, then detaining the protesters who protest the detention of the cop and the suspect and the judge and anybody else who complained, and then if that doesn't work, having the cops shoot them shoot us. This remember would be in addition to using the National Guard to quell
peaceful political protests. This would be in addition to what Trump staffers would not deny or at least considerations of invoking the Insurrection Act on January twentieth, twenty twenty five. This would be in addition to Trump's jovial promise to be a dictator, but only on day one. Haha, I'm only kidding. No, I'm not, Yes, i am No, I'm not. And by the way, as if we needed one more twist of this nightmare, remember who all this is being
done for. Trump doesn't give a rats ass if there are people here without documentation and whether they are expelled or not. Hell, he's employed hundreds building his buildings. He has no interest in law or order except how to evade both of them himself. This is all to keep up a steady supply of minority people to victimize. This
is his Roman colosseum, his slaves fighting lions. This is all because he long ago recognized his support is from Satan lists and the mentally ill, and those who believe in racial purity and the poisoning of the national blood
and all the other things. Trump read in that book of Hitler's speeches that he used to keep in a table by his bedside thirty five years ago, the book Ivanna told us about because if you want to know why Hitler's plan worked in a place like Germany and why it can work here today next year, it's because, as a memorable edition of the Twilight Zone show was titled, sixty years ago, people are alike all over, federalized local police indemnified federalized local Trump police stand by for the
Trump waff. Compared to that. Trump's legal stuff pales in comparison, of course, but it merits mentioned. As noted yesterday, Judge Marshan identify her he's the judge in the Stormy Daniel's
hush money election interference Trump trial. Judge Marschan did expand the gag order in his case to include his own daughter, who Trump kept attacking, and before the business day had even begun yesterday, Trump posted pinned to the top of his feed a six and a half minute video attack on her by fire News by the impeccably stupid Brian Killmead, repeating the lie that she was behind a Twitter feed
showing a picture of Trump behind bars. Kill Mead starting with what he called some dispute about the photo, jumping to if I'm Trump, I'm concerned about that, and finally erasing any margin for error by stating by lying, by jumping to the conclusion in about two seconds flat quote the judge has a daughter who feels this way. We know Trump was forbidden from personally commenting on the families of court officials, like the judge's daughter and other members
of the family of the judge. Does repeating the comments of others, the lies of others, the stochastic invitations to attack the members of the judges family. Does just repeating others doing that? Does that count as violating the gag order? On the social media site, Trump bones Judge. Here's an idea. Let's find out, cancel his bail, prepare for an onslaught of legal actions to prevent what you're going to do.
But let's see. Let somebody stand up and see. Let's find out what the law actually means in this country. Let's see if we can drag Trump's useless, murderous, mass murder fascist ass off to Rikers Island until further notice and until he indemnifies the guards there. Once again, I am compelled to offer comic relief, even if it's only for myself. This this is from Trump's second stop yesterday, the one after the one in which he promised to
federalize all the cops. This is from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the guy speaking before him the warm up act is Glenn Grothman, Republican Congressman from the Wisconsin eighth Glenn is only sixty eight years old, and Glenn has only been a lawyer and a state and congressional legislator, So he's never had a real job in his life, and judging by what happens to him at the end of this clip here, he's never going to have a real
job in his life. Who is the only person who can continue to allow us to buy gas powered cars? In twenty thirty two, Donald John Trump, for some reason, one of the most powerful pieces of television art I have ever seen in my life life immediately popped into my head after that. It was an anti smoking public service announcement that aired in nineteen eighty six. It begins with the letters white on black in an otherwise blank screen.
You'll Wrinner nineteen twenty to nineteen eighty five. Ladies and gentlemen, the late Yu'll Brinner, I really.
Wanted to make a commercial when I discovered that I was that sick and my time was so limited. Wanted to make that commercial that says simply not a time gone. I tell you, don't smoke. Whatever you do, just don't.
Smoke Donald John Trump, As the late comic genius Bill Hicks said about that You'll Brenner spot. But it can also apply, I guess to Glenn Grothman coughing his way through the atmosphere. He wants to make sure Trump keeps poisoning anyone. Remember when you Brenner died and came out with that commercial after he was dead. You remember that, I'm Yil Brenner and I'm dead now? This guy Shalon?
What the F's this guy Sellen? Also of interest here this ban on religious messages on the eggs at the White House Easter egg roll, the one imposed by Gerald Ford and the American egg Board of nineteen seventy six. Even the Daily Caller has now acknowledged it got the story wrong. President Biden had nothing to do with it, retracted the story, apologized for the story. You know who did not acknowledge he got it wrong, who did not retract?
Which Republican leader has a head that most looks like an egg, only with less intelligence inside his head than in the average egg. Think of an egg wearing horn rimmed glasses and a perpetual look of condescension and the habit of getting something this wrong, like every week you got his identity, yet I'll confirm it for you. That's next. This is countdown. That's a tease. This is countdown with Keith Oberman still ahead of us on this editionive countdown.
How much would they have to pay you to fall off a cliff? I mean a small cliff. Let me ratchet up the proposition just a little bit. What if it's a small cliff and you don't get seriously hurt, although you will be sore for a month and twenty years later, the whole left side of your body will start having painful but not exactly crippling problems. Oh and you won't know that you're going to fall off the small cliff until like ten seconds before you fall off
the small cliff. For me, the answer turned out to be like two hundred and fifty thousand dollars up front, and an addition one hundred and fifty grand later, the saga of cliff diving, unintentional cliff diving in things I promised not to tell. Next first, still more idiots to talk about in this case besides me, the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute two days worst persons in the I Fell.
Off a cliff worsesplat.
We start with the bronze worse speaker, Mike Johnson. It's not that creepy look on his face that stop me. Lord, I fear I'm going to do it again. And Lord, I have also mangleth the anti porn app that look. It's not that, it's not the fake piousness. It's not the farm he owns where he seemingly grows rakes and raises them from seedlings to full glorious heights and then steps on every single last one of them. It's the fact that he never wears a rhetorical seat belt. There
is no front windshield. He has not gone through as Speaker of the House eleven thirty six yesterday morning, and he subtweets Sean Hannity. This guy follows Sean Hannity, even though all the Speakers of the House since Newt Gingrich who have followed Sean Hannity have gone down in flames. Literally every one of them except Bayner has been fired
from the job. In any event, he's following Hannity about this fabricated story about Biden's trans Day proclamation and the phony Easter egg no religious symbols crisis, the only thing the Republicans are worried about. Mike Johnson writes, Biden is either more than happy to offend millions of Christians, or he has no idea what he is signing, which is
more alarming. One hour later, the Daily Caller, the Tucker Carlson invention, which started this invention, this crap by literally published a lie that Biden had ordered that there be no religious symbols on the eggs at the White House Easter event, like eggs have the slightest thing to do
with the story of the Resurrection of Christ. As the Great Bill Hicks once said, could you have not come up with something a little bit more creative, at least something wondrous, like a worm carrying Lincoln logs across my sock drawer? In any event, the Daily Caller was it made up? This story that Biden had ordered that there be no religious symbols on the eggs at the White
House Easter egg roll. We're on day four of this imbecility, which continues The Daily Caller an hour after Mike Johnson wrote that the Daily Caller retracted its story and apologized for it. The Daily Caller, to my knowledge, has never retracted nor apologized for or anything in its existence, including that time that Tucker Carlson stole my identity and pretended to be me in an interview in what was probably an actual lawbreaking event. The Daily Caller retracted this story.
It said it had no idea that the no symbols rule for the eggs in the National egg roll was established in nineteen seventy six during Gerald Ford's Easter egg roll at the behest of the National egg Board. The Daily Caller bright bart news for dumb people, not well dumber people, retracted and apologized. Speaker Johnson he has not, and that was his third post about this non existent story.
The President has called Mike Johnson thoroughly uninformed. And it is the most succinct destriction of this nerd yet and I say nerd as a nerd. This nerd embarrasses other nerds. He's an eleven year old trying to rule over a bunch of fifteen year olds. The silver worser Fox quote
News unquote, which also hasn't retracted the story yet. Per the website The Intercept, Fox has just issued a job posting seeking to hire a corporate trust and safety behavioral analyst responsible for identifying misinformation and disinformation throughout the entire Fox company misinformation and disinformation wait for or against against? A Fox employee is going to be in charge of rooting out stuff that's wrong at Fox. Stuff that's incorrect, disinformation, misinformation, murdoc,
information that's unpossible. Does Maria Bartiromo know about this? Does Ingram know? My god?
What about Jesse Waters? Won't anybody think about the children? Won't anybody think about the children like Jesse Waters. Fox does not identify a salary for its miss in misinformation data analyst, but it does note one extraordinary job benefit of the new job. You do not actually have to work in any Fox office. But our winner the Worst the Worst Person's Hall of Famer class of twenty twenty two, Tall Sea Gabbard. It's been a tough week for Robert F.
Kennedy Junior. He picked a running mate who turned out last year to have suggested at a medical conference that you could maybe replace in vitro fertilization, which she called a lie with two hours a day of exposure to sunshine, and because she got like a million dollars in her divorce settlement from the co founder of Google. None of the medical professionals then hooted her off the stage, nor did they throw rocks at the stage or anything anyway.
That was the new vice president. Then RFK Junior posed with Mike Flynn. Yet the fascist propaganda media all turned on him and they said nobody should vote for him. This is the first bipartisan agreement on politics in this country in seven.
Hundred and forty eight years. And now Talca Gabbard says, Robert F. Kennedy Junior asked her to be his vice president. I met with Kennedy several times and we have become good friends. He asked if I would be his rendingmate. After your careful consideration, I respectfully declined. Now there's a reason to suspect this might not be true. The reason well, Tlsey Gabbard issued a statement about it, as if anybody
had asked her. So while we are here, not only did Tulci Gabbard turn down RFK Junior's offer to be his running mate, but so did I. And when I say I turned down is offered to be his vice president. There was no offer from Kennedy and I didn't turn it down. On the other hand, Robert F. Kennedy Junior would not have been coherent long enough to have any idea what did or didn't happen on this topic? Would he? Tulsey? He offered to make me vice president and to make
me missus Junior as well. Gabbard two days worst person and to the number one story on the countdown and my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell. And it was this time of year in nineteen ninety six when my agent called me at ESPN. There's an ad agency in Santa Monica. They just called me, would
you like to do two commercials for Boston Market? I answered, with profound indifference, Okay, would you like to do two commercials for Boston Market for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? I believe my next words were, well, I can't do them today, but sure they faxed me the scripts. They're actually pretty funny, very well done. I think you like them, I believe. My next next words were, if I don't have to kill anybody in them, call them back and
say yes and get the money. Since the idea was these ads would run on sports telecasts, most of them on ESPN. My yes got back to management at ESPN pretty quickly. You can't do these, one of the executives explained, dismissively. We don't let anybody do commercials. I laughed. Every one of us has done the this is Sports Center commercials. Some of us have written that this is Sports Center commercials. You don't even give us days off for making them,
let alone give us money. This is money I don't have to ask you for. The executive shook his head. Those aren't commercials. Those are promotional announcements. They're in your contract. Nobody here does commercials, I said. Chris Berman has done a beer commercial in three out of the last five Super Bowls. My commercial is just for food. Well, he's Berman, I pointed out. I went to high school with him, and I was the star of their most popular program,
a little thing called Sports Center TV. Guiy had just named us one of the top ten shows on TV shows, not sports shows. Austin Seinfeld. Sorry, well, now I got a little angry, which never happened to me at ESPN, and I went to my ace in the hole. My contract expires in like ten months, and you know I intend to leave, and during those ten months, you're going to pay me about two hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
So Boston Market is going to pay me two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for two days work instead of ten month's work. Plus they're going to take me out first class to LA for a couple of days, and they're probably going to do some radio spots and I'll make another twenty five grant. So you're giving me a choice, make say, two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars in like five days for them, or make two hundred and sixty thousand dollars here between now and next September when
I'm planning and leaving. Anyway, if you make me choose between those two, which do you expect me to choose? The executive coughed. We'll get back to an hour later. He got back to me by phone. Okay, we see your point, But there's still two problems. We can't just let everybody do commercials. I said, well, you know, why don't you just let anybody who went to the high school that Berman and I went to do commercials. He did not laugh at that. Well, how about only your
regular weekday sports center anchors get to do commercials. There was a grunt and a maybe. Then we got to the gist of the real problem. Here's the real problem. People on your show, they'll be resentful. And I said, why will they be resentful? Because the production assistants are expecting that they're going to get their own commercials too.
And I said, how about this, the day I'm out there actually shooting the commercial, I will get Boston Market to like cater dinner for the show staff, even if I have to pay for it myself. There was a long silence. Would management be included in that? And can we get all the side dishes too? I swear to God so off. I flew at the beginning of December, during a winter that had gone frigid in October in Bristol, Connecticut, and the next thing I knew, I was on the
beach in Malibu at Leo Corrio State Park. The crew is complaining because it is raining lightly and only about fifty five degrees. To me, fresh from the hinterlands and having not been back to la since I had moved out in nineteen ninety too, it's like I'm in Tahiti and my agent was right. The scripts were funny and original. They were as send up of the old Calvin Kleine obsession perfume commercials. There are two extremely thin models and they are filmed writhing in frustration on the beach on
the big rock outcroppings at Leo Correo State Park. She is supposed to say, emptiness, How can I fill this empty void of emptiness? They are in black and white, but I emerge from behind a rock or wherever I'm in color. They are in black and white, and I say when they say, don't know what to do about this emptiness, I say eat something. I then sell the sandwich.
Then it cuts to a shot of me walking them down the beach with my arm over each of their shoulders, telling them eating is a good thing, and who's wearing cologne or who likes sports or other stupid things like that. For a quarter of a million dollars, well we start at this at eight am, and the producer and the director John say to me and the two models and the crew, look, this rain is just going to get heavier as the day goes on. So what we want
to do is not take a break for lunch. We'll just shoot until like two pm, and then you can have lunch, or you can take your lunch with you, and you'll all get paid for a full day. And everybody agrees. The actress agrees, and she swears as she agrees. The actress is named Una. Una is from Chicago, and it will soon prove Una swears more than a long shortman.
This blanking cold can blank my blanking blank. To be fair, Una and the guy are dressed in Calvin Klein rags and they are there and they are from there, and they are freezing while I am wearing a production company brand new suit and shoes, and to me it feels like it's Tahiti. We take a couple of hours where we do all the shots where I emerge from behind the rocks, or go around the rocks, or over the rocks, or I look over the rocks, and the director finally says, okay,
we got five good options. Let's set up for the walk down the beach with your arms around each other's shoulders. By now it's noon or twelve thirty. And as they move the cameras and the rain starts to move from a mist to like a light rain, two prop guys bring out rakes and I'm sitting with the crew and I've been asking them questions all morning, in between takes about how this is all being arranged and made and lit. And I say, rakes, what do you need rakes for
on a commercial? And they say you'll see. And then each time me and Una and the guy walk down the beach and the director says cut, we go back to the starting point. Now out come two stage hands with rakes and they rake the sand on the beach smooth, and I say, oh, footprints. So each time I walk down this damp beach with the range just a little harder than it was the take before, in my brand new dress shoes, what I'm basically doing is polling the
soles of these brand new shoes on damp sand. I mean, by the time the director John says we are done, these soles of these shoes are so shiny I could go ice skating in these shoes. And John comes over and he says, listen, we got another half an hour. Can we go back and try a new way for you to appear on the rocks? I mean, can you Can you climb rocks at all? And I say, yeah, actually, I'm surprisingly good at it. You wouldn't think so, but I can climb rocks. And he points to one rock
out cropping on the beach. Maybe it's eighteen twenty feet high, and he says, try to climb up that and go as high as you can. If there's nothing that will support you, we'll forget it. And I try, and sure enough, I get up near the top and there is a perfect little shelf in the rock that I can comfortably stand on. And the director points the camera up and he says, oh, damn, the angle's too tough. I can't swing the camera down fast enough for when you say
eat something, so I refocus on the models. It won't work. Is there anything lower on the rock where you could stand? Can you come down? And I said, I think so. I think I can come down a little bit. Well, little did I know. Sure enough, maybe nine ten feet from the beach, up in the sky, there is another little foothold on this rock outcropping. It is not big enough for me to put both my feet on it. But I say, if you don't mind me holding onto the rock as I say, eat something, I can do
it from here. And the director says, okay, let's try it. And I climb down the rock and he's moving the camera and I put my left foot on this flat part, which is nine or ten feet up from the beach, and for a couple of seconds everything is fine. I'm good.
And that's when I feel that my left shoe, my brand new left shoe, straight from the floor, shiine catalog, bright and shiny and now having been polished by four hours of walking up and down on a wet beach, complete with two guys there to rake the beach and make sure it is as shy as it possibly can be. My left shoe, slipperier than a diamond, is now moving of its own accord. I'm holding. I'm doing a good
rock climbing job, but the shoe, the shoe is not holding. Hey, I say, with some alarm, I'm about to fall off. I hit the sand no more than five seconds later, so that's about a sixteen foot drop. From my head to the beach, and for weeks, for years still to this day, it has amazed me more than anything else that happened. It has amazed me how much went through my mind before I crashed. In fact, before I actually fell. I know, I did a quick height calculation. Yeah, fifteen
sixteen feet. I recognized that the outcropping was so vertical that I was unlikely to hit any of the rock on the way down. But just the same, I remember that the rocks continue under the sand. See. I took two years of geology, and this was going to be a hard landing. More amazingly than all that, Though I had taken judo as a kid, I hated every minute
of judo. Nineteen sixty five, nineteen sixty six, so twenty six and twenty seven years before we shot this commercial, I was in the studio, the Judo studio in White Plains, New York, the day of the nineteen sixty five Northeast blackout, and the only happy memory of the entire judo experience I had was one hour instructor Bob Durocher locked us in the dojo that had been converted from a store that had a front door that was set in several feet from the street so they could put display cases up.
And now it's pitch black. So he went out and got his Volkswagen Carmen Gia drove it up over the sidewalk into that set in entryway of this converted storefront. He put his beams on. He flooded the dojo with enough light that we kids could change out of our judo stuff and back into our regular clothes and wait for our parents to come get us. He did a great job. I didn't like the judo so much, but
his blackout operations practice was superb. So now, with all of this having gone through my head in a second, I began to fall, and everything else from that year of once a week judo classes comes back to me. Relax, as you drop, the more of your body that hits, the less you'll get hurt. Hands protect the head. Drop like a sack of sand. I did not hit the sand, per se. I kind of splattered on my left side swap as I rolled over onto my back and took a breath and sat up. Of all people, Una was
the first to race over to me. You want some blank and tea, I said, no, thanks, Let me see if I'm dead. Tried to help me to my feet, but I felt some very sharp pain, which suggested we should slow down. The problem was, though, even if I needed an ambulance, there was no way to get one down to where we were shooting, As that rock out cropping that I had just fallen from suggested, I like
to call it a cliff every now and again. Leo Correo State Park had a real cliff in it and a flight of stairs, I mean one hundred steps, two hundred steps up to the Pacific Coast Highway and a park. Sure enough, I was able to stand, but I couldn't move easily. Everything hurt. So the two biggest members of the crew let me drape my arms over their shoulders, exactly the way I had draped my arms over their shoulders of the models during the beach shot. I stopped
for a second. Hey, Ona, you sure you don't want to Frankin carry me up the stairs, she said, with genuine sincerity. Now that's blank and funny. Seemed to me like it took about a month to get up those stairs. I assumed there would be an ambulance waiting by this point. Instead, there was a park ranger. This is a state park. I have to see you first, then I have to call the fire department. I said, well, this pain on my side here, this feels like fire, but I don't
think it's actually fire. He called the fire department. They showed up, They assessed me. They called the ambulance. At some point, probably when I was being half dragged up the steps, something happened on the impact side. If I now tried to lower my left arm from way above my head, I got severe shooting, burning pain from my left arm pit to about my left knee. Cleverly, I figured out not to do that. Keep your left arm above your head and it won't hurt. I use the
restroom in the ranger station. There was no blood, so no kidney damage. I'm okay. It does, however, hurt, and something could be broken. Now I go back outside, my arm above my head like I'm signaling for a cab on the streets of New York City. And the ambulance shows up and the AMTS tell me to get on there gurney, and I said, I can't. I can't lower my arm unless I want excruciating pain. I can't move my arm. I have to stay in this position. Looking
like a Flamenco dancer. But I said, listen, can you lock the wheels on this gurney? And they said, sure we can, of course we can. And I said, just lock the wheels and I'll just back up onto the end of it and I'll fall backwards. And it worked, and so with my left arm still extended over my head, they loaded me into the ambulance. Apparently, when I fell from that rock or cliff as I call it, it looked like I had been shot. Fifty sixty people on
a commercial crew. The shooting day is over. They have missed lunch. There is a very nice catered lunch sitting there. And they told me later that everybody was so disturbed by what happened to me that only three people even took something to go and know. The director was not filming as I fell. Sadly, so we hit every pothole on Pacific Coast Highway on the trip from the beach to the hospital. Oh ah, ooh, I call my agent from my cell phone, she laughed. I called ESPN actually
to check on the catered dinner. Oh what's new? Oh, I fell off a cliff shooting the commercial, They laughed, and I'm lying there in the emergency room waiting for X rays when my cell phone rings again and I reach into my left pocket and I had the phone halfway to my ear when I realized my left side does not hurt anymore at all. It does not hurt at all. Well, that was a quick recovery. I sat up. My left side felt fine. In fact, it felt great, and a nurse came over and suggested I should lie
back down again. I said, why, somehow I got better on the trip from all the potholes and just lying here. In fact, I feel great. Did you guys remove my left leg while I wasn't looking? Did you replace it with the left leg that I had when I was twelve? Because I could hop back to Connecticut on my left leg right now. Just cancel the flight, she laughed. She said, no, what I was feeling would be the morphine they gave me so they could twist me around and take the
X rays they needed. And I said, please never ever give me any more of that ever again. Thank you. My Judo flashback, as it turned out, had done the job. I had broken nothing. The er doctor complimented me on my fall, and he said I probably had six or eight different sprains on my left side. It would hurt, but it would keep getting better and I'd be able
to make my flight home the day after next. He was completely right, although I now I found twenty five years later that it's beginning to hurt like I just fell off the cliff. Anyway, I went back to the hotel. I ate well, I slept well, I managed to walk around with the help of a cane. I went back for day two of the commercial shoot. This one is in a mansion in Pasadena, a room teeming full of
UNA's lying on the floor. They're photographs through chandeliers. They're lazy, rich kids who also need to be told to eat something. I arrived and walked into applause from the crew, and I delivered a well rehearsed line. And now for my next trick, which is when the director John came over and apologized, and he said he thought this entry into shot for me would be way easier. What I had to do is lie on the floor, then sit up and deliver the line eat something. If you can sit up,
he said, that is. If you can't, we can do something else. Can you sit up? And I thought about it and I rubbed my lower back, and I said, based on the day so far, yeah, I could, but probably only six or seven times. And I said, while I can sit up, it's clear to me one of those bad sprains was in the muscles somewhere of my lower back. And if I try to lay back down, I lose control. I'll just crash back to the floor.
That actually happened getting out of bed this morning. So after each take, the same two guys who had walked me up the stairs after I fell at the beach gently held my arms and shoulders and lowered me back to lying on the floor. We got what we needed. I went back to the hotel. I had dinner with some friends. The next day. I was a little sore, but perfectly fine to get back on the plane east, and sure enough, only time ever I had a west to east tailwind. The flight from lax to Newark took
three hours and forty eight minutes. We traversed the country like a dart shot from a gun or an Olderman falling from a rock out cropping. Oh, by the way, the commercial was an immediate success, unlike any that Boston Market had ever done before. In those days, they were packed each night for dinner at every location, selling half chicken and full meals with potatoes and salads, and they were getting an average of twelve dollars out of every customer.
The rest of the day the place was empty. The idea behind my commercials. They were designed to bring in a lunch crowd a sandwich and a soda and a bag of chips for four dollars. Soon they were swamped at lunchtime. Boston Market ordered three more commercials, these to be shot in a studio in New York. They offered me fifty grand a day. An entire new career vista was opening in front of me. I was, for a week or two in early nineteen ninety seven the most
successful male commercial actor in the country. We shot those three spots. I interrupted a grunge concert to shout eat something at the band, and then I got carried off by the crowd in a mosh pit. And I interrupted a Romeo soap opera surgeon coming on to his nurse by rising from the operating table to shout eat something. And then we did something with ballplayers at stadium on Randall's Island. And I remember nothing of that because, unlike
the first two. They never edited the film because that's when it happened, their equivalent of falling off the cliff. I will confess it had not occurred to me. Then again, I did not own Boston Market. I did not work for their marketing department. I did not run the ad agency they employed. But none of them anticipated it either. After the first few weeks of giddy glee about the lunch crowds I had brought them, somebody noticed something unfortunate
and unexpected. Basically, for every four dollar lunch they were now selling, they were selling one fewer twelve dollars dinner. They had not gained any new customers. They had just managed to get their customers to each spend eight dollars less. These very well made, very memorable commercials worked very very well. And the problem with that was each time they did work, it costs by Boston Market eight dollars. By the end of nineteen ninety seven, Boston Market was something like nine
hundred million dollars in debt. It had filed for bankruptcy and had been taken over by McDonald's. On the other hand, I got my money, and in the twenty five years plus since Boston Market has not once used a celebrity endorser to try to sell their food. Oh and there was one other positive outcome from my header off that cliff that December, so many Decembers ago. The AD Agency actually received the award. I did not, so I can't
quote the title of it for you. I don't know which group gave it to us, but the Eat Something campaign it actually won an award because apparently my shouting eat something at Una and the others that somehow cuts through to some victims of some eating disorders. What I was told was we got an award from a national Bolimia association. As the years go by, my one regret about this, other than the slight resistance I get when I try to turn my head to the left, my
one real regret is it's not on film. I've done all the damage I can do here in this case. Literally, thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums. Mister Chanale handled orchestration and keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions were arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Howard Feineman. Everything else was pretty much my fault, including falling off that got
blank rock. So that's countdown for this the two hundred and seventeenth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the one and eighty fourth day since dementia Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the Fourteenth Amendment, use the not regularly given elector objection option. The Supreme Court hath given us, use the Insurrection Act to use the justice system, use the mental health system in order to stop him from
doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow, and again that might not happen. It might be abridged. That's the likelier outcome depending on a routine medical procedure. Bulletins as the news warrants. Hopefully none of them boughtins are about me. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck the fs. This guy shallon. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.