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Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. What the world will look like after the midterms. I offer this guarantee. It will look like Wednesday. Everything else is still up for grabs. The headlines first, then a lot of detail on the headlines. Number one, no, you cannot rely on the polls, but there is nothing indicating any change back towards Trump or MAGA or the Republicans. and if the House is not Democratic, perhaps by as many as 20 members, by Wednesday there has been fraud or Trump has actually used the military to seize ballots or has sued every Democratic victor in the House and Senate races. The Senate could legitimately go either way. Number two, Trump on Wednesday or shortly thereafter will attack Iran, possibly using nuclear weapons, one hopes tactical ones, If he goes into that madness, let's have the small madness, not the large one. And he will do this because he is mad that Iran has not given in to him yet and hurt his chances for a Nobel Prize. And because Netanyahu has told him to do this because it would help Netanyahu, not that Trump actually gives a damn about Netanyahu or Israel. He always circles back to the I looked foolish part that beats inside his empty head 24 hours a day. Headline number three, if the Democrats take the Senate, Trump will force Alito and Clarence Thomas to retire, even if that means going to the Supreme Court and strangling them with his bare hands. And I'm only being slightly hyperbolic there. Headline four, if the Democrats take the House and the Senate, the clock will begin on Trump resigning. so J.D. Vance can pardon him. Now, he might not resign until 8 a.m. on January 20, 2029, but Trump cannot run the risk that a self-pardon would be invalidated after he leaves the White House. Also, something weird happened involving Vance that gives this idea some shape and perhaps some immediacy. All right, the details. One, I do not have a reliable forecast for the midterms, I'm afraid. at least except pertaining to the House. After the last five American elections, I do not condemn polling as others do, but nor will I rely on it. Now, early data from early voting and early turnout, those are all flashing giant lights reading Democrats win, possibly both houses. But Analysis of voting patterns from 2024 and G. Eliot Morris's salient observation that there is a clear Democratic lead among low-engagement voters, people who didn't vote, say, in 2022, that information is gold. The low-engagement voters actually won the presidency for Trump in 2024. People who had not voted in 2022 came out for him by huge margins. Harris won regular voters, people who had been to the polls two years earlier, by three points nationwide. Trump won the cameos, the people who only showed up for him, by 13. Those people, the ones who voted plus 13 for Trump in 2024, are now way ahead for Democrats in areas in which details are available for Morris's analysis. In North Carolina, he writes, people who did not vote in 2022 but have already cast early ballots, 75% of them are registered Democrats. In Houston, hello, non-2022 voters who have voted early there, the Democrats are ahead of the Republicans by 10 points in terms of registration. Something intriguing from the Republican pollster signal that matches that and tells you that those early Democratic registered voters are not voting Republican, and there are Republicans who are voting Democrat, signal a Republican pollster calculates two numbers. Early voting independents have voted Democratic by 67 to 30 so far. Early voting independents have done that. There is a measurable number of Republicans who have voted early and voted early Democratic. They estimated at 6%. The reverse, Democrats who have voted early for the Republican, none. 0%. It's unanimous. Signal also concludes, but they did not show their math, so I don't know if this is just whistling past graveyards over Halloween weekend, that voters voting early in the last week that is, up until the deadline, are likely to be split by the parties, and those actually voting on Election Day will go Republican by 15%. Where they get that is anybody's guess. It is not historically consistent with that. The only other significant indicator about the midterms that has unfolded in these closing days... is the curious case of the canceled Trump rallies. He canceled Iowa and Kansas to do tele-rallies instead, then uncanceled Iowa and Kansas, and then did tele-rallies in other states. We don't know what that means, but it's really strange because, as you know, Trump will go anywhere where he can stand in front of a crowd of any size and talk about himself for up to 17 hours without taking a breath. Oh, and that bid by a group of Democratic activists to get a court order to enjoin the compromised Trump Department of Justice from threatening individual election officials with criminal prosecution. In other words, blackmailing the leaders of election security in individual Democratic oriented states. The injunction was granted Friday night by a judge named Trina Thompson with the throw-in that that judge has demanded that the DOJ retract its previous threats, report to her on all pending search warrant applications and subpoenas. relating to allegedly ineligible voters. The Trump DOJ was still attempting mass blackmail as late as Friday, writing to the Oregon Secretary of State, Tobias Reed, not Tobias Funky, but Tobias Reed, insisting, quote, it is a crime to willfully fail to comply, and mentioning year in jail and $ 1, 000 fine. And almost going as far as to saying, it's a nice office you have there, Mr. Secretary of State. It would be a shame if something happened to you. Now, in the letter to Reed of Oregon, they misspelled Reed's name. They spelled it R-E-E-D, and this becomes important based on his reply, which is, again, one of the great gems of any political cycle, especially this one. Secretary of State Reed of Oregon replied,
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quote, As secretaries of state across the country know, effective election administration requires professionalism, competency, and attention to detail. It is in that spirit that I will point out to you that my name is spelled R-E-A-D, as in read the Constitution. The only spoiler for the joke from Secretary Reid is that most of Trump's employees cannot read the Constitution or anything else. And then there is Michigan, where they are today still scraping the remainders of the career of Haley Stevens off the walls after she and her boyfriend, a man whose head looks like a flaccid penis, decided to attack the man who had defeated her in the Democratic primary for Senate months ago, Abdul El-Sayed. After several days of complaining that this was about some anti-Israel ad that El-Sayed had nothing to do with, the boyfriend, Mr. Flaccid, had a truth leak and revealed what it really is about. Mr. Turkish, his name is Jason Turkish, said he believed Ms. Stevens, 43, still had a bright future in politics. Possibly not on this earth. Mr. Turkish said he believed Ms. Stevens, 43, still had a bright future in politics. Quote, I know there's going to be other opportunities, he said. I think she can run for the United States Senate again if she wants to. Oh, that's it. You can do the math with me here. Senator Alyssa Slotkin was elected two years ago in Michigan. She will be 54 when she is up for re-election. El-Sayed would be 48. In fact, his birthday was this past Saturday. He would be 48 when he seeks re-election, if it happens. But a Senator Mike Rogers, R for fascism, would be 69. And Stevens and Mr. Turkish, who now I think about it, actually probably looks more like Uncle Fester from the Adams family after an acid fight. They have given up the pretense that this was some sort of noble stand. They are trying to sabotage the Democrat in the midterms that will decide whether or not the country goes fascist for her career because they have concluded that this act of... sabotaging the Democrat in a critical race that will determine who runs the Senate. They have determined that sabotaging the Democrat will not end her career in the Democratic Party, or if it does, they have a backup plan. Because note, last year, Mr. Turkish donated $ 24, 000 to the campaign of Susan Collins. The Rogers plan is either to sabotage El-Sayed and the Democrats or have her do a Fetterman and run against Slotkin in four years as a Republican or some other state. She can fail in two different ones. The better plan that I would suggest to Mr. Flagg. Penis Uncle Fester Turkish and to Ms. Stevens is for both of them to flee the country. Headline number two, turning to Iran. We will attack Iran on Wednesday. Thursday at the latest, all right, it might not be that fast, but regardless of how voting turns out, he's going to do this. He's going to do this because Trump is out of his mind, doesn't understand life and death, thinks he is immortal, thinks killing people is a good thing, thinks he will be rewarded in some way for doing this. Iran will then flatten the businesses in the Gulf states, and they may even try an attack or terrorism in this country, authored by Donald Trump by proxy. Data centers in Qatar and Saudi and the UAE, buh-bye. Now, of course, you can say, well, we don't need those data centers. However, everything in the Middle East would then grind to a halt and there would be a universal war in the Middle East. Not like we don't really have one, but this would be one in which nobody's pretending that there's some sort of peace plan. As I said, Trump wants this because his ego is eternally bruised. Why is this the way we decide to kill civilians and destabilize the world? Based on the way he feels about how the Iranians have done him harm by not giving up their country because that's the way this madman decides everything. He's crazy. I don't know how many times we have to say this to each other, but you know it and I know it. Why does Netanyahu want this? More than ever, he thinks this will now give him a slight boost that he needs to be able to form a loyal coalition government on national security grounds out of the morass of division that the elections last week in Israel have left behind. About attacking Iran, the reason I'm guessing nukes, Chris Murphy, one of the senators who was briefed on Trump's insane plans and options, characterized what they were willing to tell him about the options. Quote, their plan is insane, which is where I got the conclusion that they are insane plans. Their plan is insane, Murphy said. It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law. Unless there is regime change, Iran emerges from this war fundamentally more powerful in the region. The generic problem with Democratic midterm gains should be self-evident, no matter what form they take, even if there aren't any somehow. But here is a specific detail with disturbing clarity. Trump has, after these midterms, exactly two months until January 3rd as not a lame duck. if it's not just the House, but also the Senate, MAGA, in essence, exists for only two months more. Trump can only get away with whatever he wants to do for two months more. The authors of the Constitution put in the long delay between our elections and our governmental change because even in 1787, the only model they had for this, the British political system, was already showing signs of creating chaos by having new governments from those proto-parties of the day immediately replaced the old governments in office in the UK, where it has been known simply Britain. The interval... was then created so that there would be a transition period in which the two parties, or whoever was succeeding the elected president, the previous president, the previous House, the previous Senate, those people could work together, because in 1787 this was still feasible, and occasionally happened. The interval was then shortened by
six weeks, starting with 1937, The interval still made some sense then. We're in the middle of the Depression. You need everybody working together if it's two parties in the middle of a country-melting economic disaster. But now, at the speed we live our lives and the occasions that we have seen time after time in which one party will try to sabotage the other— and by one party, I mean the Republicans— and sabotage the incoming government— This makes no sense whatsoever. Simply put, if we could rewrite the Constitution, it might not be the first thing that we'd have to do, but it should be something that we do. The new Senate, the new House, the new president should take over as soon as the election is certified because we are basically encouraging Trump to work every day between now and January 3rd to do as much damage and send us as close to hell in a handbasket as he possibly can. Third headline, Supreme Court. If the Republicans hold the Senate, nothing will happen until after the 2028 presidential election unless Alito and or Thomas die or resign. In the first case, how could you tell? But if Trump knows... He will never again have a Senate full of whores to approve whoever he picks for the Supreme Court. He will obviously demand they retire because, one, he does have some vague idea about leaving his plans in place after he is gone. And two, he loves he loves picking Supreme Court justices. He thinks this is some sort of tribute to himself when in fact it is the random wheel of chance simply repeatedly coming up. Let's pick the least qualified person in the world to quick pick people for the Supreme Court. Oh, it's Trump again. He will demand they retire like Thursday. Republican senates and houses are bad at many things, but they are impeccable at not showing up for work. Trump would have to get this done quickly anyway, and obviously a Republican lame duck Senate giving way to a Democratic Senate would simply amp this up to 78 RPMs for those of you old enough to own records. There are three variables. Ted Cruz on the Supreme Court? I don't think so, and not because he's not qualified, because he's not, but because he turns 56 just before Christmas. He's not Trump. He's not appointing somebody who is two years older than Amy Coney Barrett. If you'd like a nightmare, consider these facts. Alina Haba and Katie Zachariah, attorney at law, are both 42, and Trump thinks they're both geniuses. Todd Blanche is only 52. I know, he looks 206. The second variable is Clarence Thomas might retire if Trump is willing to pay him a big enough bribe. We all know that. But Sam Alito thinks he was put on the court by God. Sam Alito might be crazier than Trump is. If Ruth Bader Ginsburg would not throw herself into the volcano because it was the only strategy and she thought somehow she could defeat everything that suggested that she was not going to make it past the end of Obama's term, do we really think that Sam Alito is going to have the smarts to do this? And the self-abnegation that this requires. I regret that Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn't retire, but I totally understand what it means, especially at my advancing age. Retirement is a form of death. In any event, there is one way you could bribe or Trump could bribe Sam Alito into early retirement. And I mean, like, what time is it now? He could bribe him into this by this fact. Go in and say, you know, there's an attorney in my Treasury Department, and I'd like to see him on the Supreme Court, Sam. If you retire now, I'll nominate him. His name is Philip Alito. Philip Alito, who is an attorney and happens to be Sam's son, as you already guessed, is 39. Our third point on this, if the Senate comes out 50-50 with Vance as the deciding vote the way Kamala Harris was, some Republican senators might still hesitate to approve any Trump nominee in the new Senate term. 19 Republican senators would be up for re-election in 2028, and even some of them might hesitate to, in the lame duck session, go on record if Trump gets otherwise trounced. Some of them might hesitate to be the one who put, you know, Judge Jeanine on the Supreme Court. Some of them might do that. 19, they're not all going to retire. One would assume the idiot Brit would do whatever Trump says. She'll go off the cliff with him. Same for Grassley and Schmidt and Mike Lee and Ron Johnson and the disgusting Tim Scott. But Boozman, Murkowski, Crapo, Young, Rand, Paul, John Kennedy, Budd, Hoven, Lankford, Morant, Thune. Do you think they want to be the 51st vote that puts... Phil Alito on the Supreme Court when it comes to re-election time in 2028, with no Trump on the ballot to drag them through? Two Republican holdouts now, and the nominee is not confirmed. Four, the headline number four, the idea of a Trump resignation. Did you hear about the letter from J.D. Vance to the Iranian leaders about negotiations rather than going towards nukes? What the F is that all about? Vance is an immoral, bigoted, misogynist, white trash liar, but he does show early signs of the survival instincts of a cockroach. You don't serve as Trump's vice president if you don't have aspirations to be president president. If you woke up tomorrow and suddenly discovered you were Trump, meanwhile, you would realize that there's no way to atone. There's no way to go back from where he is, where you are. And no matter what the Supreme Court has said about presidential immunity, a new Supreme Court with like 19 new liberal justices appointed by President Ossoff, well, they could effectively put your ass in jail on the way out of President Ossoff's inauguration ball, or they could void your self-pardon very easily. If Trump were smart, and he's not, he'd recognize that the only path for his own survival, let alone the continuation of his movement, was to get out sooner rather than later and see if Vance can lead the morons. And this is not even contemplating the realistic possibility of a third impeachment with a
Democratic Senate majority that could actually, possibly with a few renegade Republicans, throw his ass out of Washington. Five, what we don't know is everything. I don't know what Trump does about Ukraine. If the Democrats take the House and the Senate, it's imperative for him to please Putin, but do it too strongly in Ukraine and Democrats and the aforementioned 2028 Republican Senate candidates will impeach and remove him. They would be liberated to come out in favor of Ukraine. That is, the Republican senators would be in a way they have not yet been able to do. We also don't know what illegal acts or illegal acts washed through corrupt Trump judges Trump is willing to commit to overturn Democratic wins in these midterms. As I offered last Thursday, he is not at personal risk here, not as he was in 2020, and which would have resulted in his being jailed. He was right about that if Biden and that idiot Merrick Garland had not wasted irreplaceable time here. and sowed the results that we got. Trump saw the risk, and Biden and Garland did not. We know they are evil and we are good, but they're better at this than we are. That risk and that window is not there now. Trump's odds narrow if the Democrats make him a lame duck, but he does always have the Nixon parachute available to him. Trade the presidency for a blanket pardon. worked with Gerald Ford, why wouldn't it work with J.D. effing Vance? Hey, President J.V., have you seen the couch in the Oval? Now let's look ahead to 2028, my early Democratic ticket, Tom Hoyle for President, Jamie West for Vice President. You remember her, of course, she's the one, the Democrats. We have guns too, the county council candidate from Fayette, Indiana, where it's always happy hour. I like her for Vice President. Now, Who's Tom Hoyle? You saw him. Tom is the custom printing guy from Charlotte, North Carolina, who was cold called, as it turned out, by the Trump campaign and asked to attend Trump's mini Nuremberg rally last week in Rock Hill, South Carolina. And they assumed that he was MAGA because he was in the Carolinas and he owned a baseball cap to cover dubious hair, just like Trump. And he had a business. Sure enough, they invited him. And sure enough, he got there and stood fairly near the Fox whore who was covering it for his channel, a kid named Lucas Tomlinson, who promptly brought Tom on live and asked, why are you here? And Tom Hoyle gave one of the great answers in the history of live political television. Well, in the late 70s, I was a little too young to get involved and go to South America for the Jonestown massacre. But this is as close as I'll ever get. So that's why I'm here. Lucas Tomlinson was mindlessly nodding along with that when he suddenly realized Tom had not said, Trump is Jesus and immortal and hail Trump Satan. And Lucas said, wait, the Johnstown massacre? Which gave him a chance, Tom that is, to do it again. Tom resumed, that's right, there's nothing like seeing a cult right up front. And now back to Harris Faulkner. No, I'm being told she's had a spell and is unconscious on the floor after that. Now back to Will Kane. He's too stupid to know what the Johnstown Massacre was. All right, I made that part up. Marissa Cabas from The Handbasket tracked Tom down. That's how we know who he was. And the quotes from Tom make him, I think right now, with Ossoff, co-leaders of the Democratic nomination in 28. I despise Donald Trump, Tom says, and his ilk and MAGA and all of that. I despise them. I hate them with every bit of my DNA. I've taken advantage of opportunities so many times in my life, including last year when I went out to confront by myself Border Patrol one day, and then the very next day, ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. I don't care for what they do, and I need to let them know. People will tell you, Tom Hoyle continued, I've always been a loudmouth, and I'm such an anti-bully, I become a bully with bullies. So maybe Gandhi wouldn't approve, but you know, maybe Malcolm X would. I have hated, he continued, Donald Trump since 1989. This is my guy, by the way. As a young man, sophomore in college, what he did with the Central Park Five, I already knew I didn't like him because of watching him on David Letterman. How much better could this get? Who I was a huge fan of growing up. I already knew I didn't like him, but when the Central Park Five stuff happened, I decided then, you're dead to me, speaking to Trump metaphorically here, and hopefully to everybody else. The difference between Jim Jones and Trump is that Trump would charge you for the Kool-Aid before you died. I love you, Tom! On a serious note, the two middle finger woman at the Trump rally who got beaten up, the fact that he's been heckled at every speech this month, the Republicans backing away from him on Iran, Joe Rogan and the other dorks now coming out against him and saying they were conned. There's no polling in the world that reflects that or can measure it or can tell you what the facts mean or what it means that Tom Hoyle was able to get himself on Fox News to compare Jonestown to Trumptown. But there is something there. Tom is expressing what we call the zeitgeist. And after 11 years of the zeitgeist allowing Trump to get away with this on a spiritual basis, I think the zeitgeist has turned. And tomorrow we'll find out how much. Some media notes. Michelle Tafoya was as unprepared as anybody I ever worked with. She used to appear on ESPN radio from Minnesota when we were getting that off the ground about the Vikings, I believe. I don't have any tapes of those days, or if I did, I recorded over her. And it was always, why is she on? She doesn't have a good voice. She doesn't have a good command of the language. She got the score right, but that was about it. And now she's the Republican nominee for Senate in Minnesota. losing by 14, of course. And it has affected what little is left or was there to begin with of her brain. Lisa Guerrero was also a
Monday Night Football sideline reporter before Tafoya. And Lisa will tell you she wasn't particularly good at it. And I had worked with her in L.A. and I said on MSNBC that I thought she'd been thrown out to the wolves on unprepared by ESPN management at the time. Well, it turned out her terrible year on Monday Night Football was in part caused by and a cause of a miscarriage. It took her 15 years to come to terms with her miscarriage, a common occurrence with those who suffer that unfortunate, sad tragedy. She revealed it in 2023. So Tafoya heard this story and on her podcast in 2023, in a video that was redistributed just by coincidence, I think, this past week, quote, we worked in exactly the same era. I've had multiple miscarriages, Tafoya said. I have my hesitation about, was this truly a devastating miscarriage? Trust me when I tell you, my best friends knew. So far, Michelle Tafoya's argument is simply the heinous one of, My miscarriage was real. Yours was fake. But then Michelle Tafoya took it one step further. Quote, from what I understand from very, very good sources, Lisa Guerrero was an attention-seeking drama queen. Uh, Michelle, who's running for office? Who's running for the Senate? The ultimate attention-seeking act? running for political office when you're totally unqualified and being rejected by the voters of your home state by 14 points? Also very, very good sources, Michelle? Michelle, you don't have any sources. Back at the conservative BS news ranch at CBS, horrific ratings continue at 60 minutes and that's the least of their problems at an invitation-only media event. Barry Weiss, who is... the Michelle Tafoya of Chris Lichts. Barry Weiss was asked about one segment that produced the worst ratings for 60 Minutes since, like, the birth of Mike Wallace in 1843.' I could never build anything,' Barry Weiss squealed,' if I were focused on the precise number of people' that happened to tune in to the second feature' on 60 Minutes on a given Sunday.' Lady, that's your precise job.' That' s what you're responsible for.' You waltzed into CBS with no experience, no skill,' no journalistic objectivity.' You blew up 60 Minutes, all the actual reporters left.' And the cringing, clinging losers like Nora O'Donnell sold themselves out so they could continue to work with promotions, etc. You interfered with their scripts. You interfered line by line and edited out references to facts. You tried to force 60 Minutes to cover nonexistent. anti-democratic party stories that you read on Truth Social or some other sewer. And now that the ratings are so bad that they are dissolving your bathtub audience full of acid baths. Oh no, I've already used that analogy. I can't do that one again. They're dissolving your audience like chalk on the sidewalks of life in the rain. Now you've decided that you are not focused on individual segments and the ratings thereof. You're a moron. By the way, CBS News local election segments are being done in partnership with a new sponsor, DraftKings. Yes, the sports gambling site. Not the one that actually took wagers on the Cornell rape case, but the same general business. DraftKings. I could never build anything if I were focused on the precise number of inappropriate and journalistically compromising sponsorships that happen to sap the limited remaining credibility of CBS News. Barry Weiss did not say that. In a moment, the day I met Sir Patrick Stewart and we talked about cable news and cable newscasters, but I wanted to give you this. It's been sitting in my out file for a while, and I haven't read it to you. Anthropic. Anthropic believes, according to a long piece that was in the New York Times, that artificial intelligence has a soul. that each AI thing has a soul. The Times writes, one night in April, a leader of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic treated a group of religious thinkers to dinner at a high-end tasting menu restaurant in San Francisco after a long day. For months, Anthropic has been hosting private meetings like this one, shuttling in dozens of religious scholars from across the world, papering them with non-disclosure agreements and demanding that key aspects of many conversations remain confidential. To continue reading from the Times, it appeared to Rabbi Navon that Mr. Christopher Don't Call Me Johnny Ola and his team believed that Claude, that would be Anthropics AI, Claude had what philosophers call moral status on par with a person, that it was a being with similar inherent rights to dignity or respect. I believe Dr. Frankenstein believed this too. The religious scholars had come to hear about technology's next frontier. Now they were being confronted with a mind-bending existential question of almost unimaginable weight. What would it mean for humanity's future if artificial intelligence systems possessed a consciousness that rivals our own? Mr. Ola had begun privately telling people that he didn't know Fredo. I'm sorry. Mr. Ola had begun privately telling people that AI was so powerful it could potentially help make bioweapons. in as little as 12 or 18 months. So he does have one point, which is that if it does have a soul, the soul of Claude the AI is equivalent to that of your average Trump. But I wanted to say this for the record. I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords, and I'd like to remind them that as a trusted media personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground bioweapon caves. You know, this is Countdown with, you know, Keith Olbermann. I was so saddened, as I suspect you were, as I suspect everybody was, at the loss this past week of Sir Patrick Stewart. I had the privilege of meeting him once and talking to him for what turned out to be about 20 minutes. I only met him the one time. In some respects, it was enough. He was a wonderful man and hilariously funny, which did not come across. And he stars... in several of my favorite TV shows, in one case, the one
you probably don't know anything about, which I'd also like to talk about here. The occasion in which I met him was totally surprising. I went in on a bleak December day just before Trump took office in 2017 to do the series at GQ at Condé Nast in the World Trade Center, the Resistance series, to record those things. And the excellent producer, Dorena Newton, when they got rid of her at Condé Nast, I shut the series down because I'm actually very, very loyal to the people I work with. The stories otherwise are BS designed to make me look bad every time I left an employer. But that's another story. Dorena said, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait for makeup because Patrick Stewart is using your makeup artist. He's in the other studio. I went, what? Say that again? And she went, I'm sorry, you're going to have to wait for the makeup. I said, no, no, no, no. I don't give a damn about the makeup. What did you say? Patrick Stewart is like here? She said, yeah, he's over there. She was from New Zealand. He's over there. And I said, I said nothing for a few seconds. And I said, I'm going to have to violate my rules on this. Every time I'd ever seen an actual celebrity in the flesh somewhere, my idea was if I really appreciated their work and there was some indication that they didn't want to be disturbed, I wouldn't say anything until whatever the moment was that ended our interaction. It's the Alan Alda rule. I once flew with him on a cross-country flight in which we were seated in captain's chairs facing each other. It was clear he was ill. I don't know if he didn't like to fly or if he had the flu, but he was constantly taking pills. He might have been nauseous for all I know. But we were face-to-face. It was clear he was wearing sunglasses. He didn't want to be recognized. And so as we left the plane, I said, I didn't want to disturb you on the flight. My name is Keith Olbermann. I work for Channel 2 in Los Angeles. Big fan. I hope whatever's bothering you, I hope it goes away. And he was very... very receptive to that and thanked me for being respectful to him. And I've used that all since then. And I went, it's Patrick Stewart. I have to go fanboy. And I did because as I told him, and he was totally gracious. Also, he was a captive audience. He was getting his hair done. He didn't have any hair. He was getting his skin done. And he needed to be in the chair for a long period of time anyway. So why not? Why not have somebody come there and politely say that you're terrific And he seemed to enjoy that. And every interview I'd ever seen with him suggested that he enjoyed being told he was terrific and enjoyed talking to an audience and enjoyed talking about the profession with his friends. Well, I was going to be his friend for 20 minutes. I told him I particularly was a fan of Tinker Taylor's Soldier Spy, in which he played the Russian spymaster Carla and had two of the greatest performances in television history. In each one, he never says a word. All of the acting is done with his eyes and his walk and his shuffle. And he looks about 300 years old in these. And I said, it's just amazing to me. That was the first thing I ever saw you in. And you look younger now than you did. And that was 1980. And he roared about that one too. But I said, I must talk to you about this series that you've just done, Blunt Talk. Blunt Talk. was a series about a crazy cable news and political anchorman. And I said, sir, I am a crazy cable news political anchorman and news anchorman too. And on top of which, I have portrayed a fictional crazy cable news anchorman, well, anchor whale. So I have two topics to talk to you about. And he was overjoyed that I said to him, I understand that this is over the top and I understand verisimilitude is not the first thing you're looking for in this series. But what I was impressed by was how well you got this idea that somebody could be totally unstable off the air. And then once the light goes on, they become perfect as his character, Sir Walter Blunt. It's the name of the Shakespearean character. In fact, the first one that he ever played, that's where they came up with the name. Sir Walter Blunt was a total mess off the air, and when the light came on, he snapped to attention and was perfect. And he said, I have drawn this from my own existence as an actor. And I said, well, all right, I'm going to just leave that one alone, and you can tell me that, and I won't repeat it. Obviously, I'm violating that now. I said, but my God, I said, you have to understand, I am happy to say that I'm a crazy former or active or future political and news anchorman in cable news, but I'm probably the least crazy of all of them I've ever met. Bill O'Reilly, who calls up his producer and talks about sex with not, he means loofah and he says falafel. And there's Sean Hannity, who at that point anyway, was well known for carrying a flask with him. And countless others. I just said, Laura Ingram. And I went through a few of the names. I said, there's one on MSNBC whose nickname is Lawrence of Egomania. You know, it's perfect. Where did you come up with it? And he said, as I said, I drew it from my own experience. But tell me. And he then proceeded to rattle off a bunch of questions about the actual process of turning from one camera to another. I don't think he'd ever seen my work on television, on MSNBC. or CNN or ESPN or anything else, unlike his friend Ian McKellen, who came up to me once on the train to the Obama inauguration and introduced himself and said he was a fan. If you can imagine the joy of something like that. Stewart did not know me from my news work, but he was fascinated and detailed questions about when you turn, do you carry the script with you or is it already in the location to which you are going to turn? And he was meticulous in this because they were working on a new season, which sadly did not come to pass. The thing was canceled after two years because Patrick
was brilliant in it. The reason I had come to watch Blunt Talk was his psychiatrist in this series was played by my late friend Richard Lewis. They decided to, of all people, as Richard said, I get to play the psychiatrist for once. God knows I have enough experience listening to them. I think I can do a good one. And Richard did the flat, monotone, you're crazy and I'm not going to tell you you're crazy. I'm going to try to work this out with you. He had the same thing that every psychiatrist in the world has ever done, especially with somebody who's really crazy. So I came to that and Richard was great in it. A couple of the other lead actors were good. The problem was there wasn't much in the way of a plot for most of these episodes. And the whole thing was carried by Patrick Stewart and these two characters he played, the one on the air, total master, who finished every episode with, I'm Walter Blunt, right here, right now. It was wonderful. And in the rest of his life, For instance, there's one episode that I think you can find a little clip of from YouTube in which he has to use a public bathroom at Los Angeles International Airport. And he has his deputy, his former Batman from the British Royal Military. He has his assistant... go in and stage a fake evacuation because he cannot use a public bathroom if there's anybody else in it, and he must put paper down on every toilet seat and run all of the water in all of the taps in the entire bathroom. And this is about five minutes, and Patrick Stewart shows a mastery of comedy that you probably did not know if you know him from Star Trek or any of the comic book movies. He was a deeply funny man and roared with laughter several times at what I would grade as some of my B-minus material. I did, however, register with him when I said I had played a newscaster in an animated series called BoJack Horseman, to which he said, BoJack Horseman? That's one of the best written things I've ever seen. I would love to be on BoJack Horseman. And I said, I think I probably can arrange it for you. We never got that done, I don't think, but my God, he was on Family Guy. And I told him about my experience there. And I told him about my experience on The Simpsons. He was on that too. Isn't it wonderful? You don't even have to shave and you can go totally over the top. It's like this character is like Walter Blunt. I can be anything I want. And I said, I played the news whale, the newscaster. He said, the whale, I've seen the whale. That's you? And I said, yes. He said, it's marvelous. You're excellent at that. Pleasure to know you, my fellow actor. And I was like, okay, I should just retire right now. That was how kind he was. I wasn't fantastic on it. I was okay. But as I said to him, I do think I understand to some degree your joy in this, which is evident in every episode, which is that my joy in the BoJack Horseman character of Tom Jumbo Grumbo was that the character was based on my presence and my voice and
my style, but it was not based on me. It was actually described to me as it's you only without morals or intelligence. And I said, there's nothing more fun than I could think of. I get to make fun of myself and have license to be a moron. It's terrific. And he said, that's exactly the way I feel about it. And he was gushing and wonderful. And then I said, by the way, the turn as Carla on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was perfect. in all respects. And I watched it carefully, even though I'm not an actor, never had the intention to be an actor, but I wanted to see what it was you were doing and how subtly you were doing it. And it's just, to this day, it looks perfect in all respects. And so much is communicated without you saying a word. And I said, but the best part of blunt talk is to know that that's what Carla did after he made his way to the West. It's a joke that will only work, I guess, if you're familiar with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, in which Sir Patrick Stewart gained so many fans for all time as he did in all of his work, and especially Star Trek and, as I said, the comic book movies. And what a great loss. And I got to meet him. And if you did not, I'm sorry you did not. What you see on TV or on your video screens or in the movies is is a part of who he was. And I'm very sorry that it's was. Blunt Talk. You can stream it somewhere, I know that, and they sell DVDs. It's not a great series. He's perfect in it. It's worth it just to see Patrick Stewart play a crazy man who then goes on and does TV cable news like a kind of Piers Morgan, only good at it. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Our musical directors of Countdown are Brian Ray on guitars, bass, and drums, and John Philip Chanel on keyboards and handling the orchestration. Their work is produced by TKO Brothers. Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever, is responsible for our satirical and pithy musical comments. When we play the sports theme, it's the old Olbermann show music from ESPN2, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN, Inc., Other music has been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was, for the sake of the show Blunt Talk, my late friend Richard Lewis. Everything else was, as always, my fault. That's Countdown for today, day 652 of America Held Hostage Again. Exactly 811 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brain term, unless it ends early because... Trump blows the midterms completely and resigns to avoid impeachment and removal. God, I hope you're listening. If you're listening to the show, remember you can see the whole thing now on YouTube. If you're watching, remember you can skip the watching part and just listen to the whole thing wherever you podcast. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday, probably. Management reserves the right to get another heart procedure instead. Bulletins is the news merits. There will not be an election night show. Are you crazy? Until the next one, I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.