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Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. They're not asking him the difference between a giraffe and a snake because he's fine. They're asking him the difference between a giraffe and a snake because they suspect he cannot tell the difference between a giraffe and a snake. Food for everyone. Food for everyone. Trump has gone back to bringing up these effing dementia tests every few minutes, it seems, certainly once per rally on his tour. not understanding that they are effing dementia tests, bringing it up constantly, presumably because this crowd of doctors that he travels with, that he boasts about, who would let you die because they're not allowed to leave his side, they see signs in private that we do not see in public that he has dementia or something like it, or is perhaps more colloquially effing crazy. If they keep giving him these tests, and judging by how often Trump brings them up, my estimate is they must give him one of these tests after every meal. Can't they do something about him? Aren't they doctors with the power to do something about him? Can't they institutionalize him? Can't they put him on a temporary mental hold? He is crazy or failing that, and I understand the odds against doing that. failing that, can't one of them, one of them risk everything for the sake of the nation and, you know, the world? Just one. I mean, Trump is crazy. That's not breaking news. It has not been breaking news since 2016. Ed Rollins confirmed it for me on a news set in 2016, and he didn't mean in a colloquial or ha-ha way. He said, you're right, Trump is crazy crazy. But, quote, the first one is they show you a lion, a bear, a snake, and a giraffe, and they say, which one is the giraffe? I got a perfect score. Holy crap, he sounds like a toddler boasting about his first success on a potty chair. A perfect score. He can tell the difference between a giraffe and a snake. It's a Robert Klein joke from 1975. The kind of test Robert Klein said he liked was multiple choice. You got an elephant and a mouse. Which is bigger? A. He can tell the difference between a giraffe and a snake, but he can't tell the difference between a giraffe and a Putin. Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven't been doing much. He's crazy. He's now openly bribing not just voters to vote his way, violating federal law each time he does that. He's bribing voters in a specific state to vote one way, thus also violating state law every time he does that. He's also backing the Hitler of our time over the Poland of our time. He is boasting that his doctors keep testing his brain constantly. to be uncouth for signs that his brain doesn't work anymore. Doesn't work at all. That he is already at the stage or nearing it where he cannot tell the difference between a giraffe and a snake is the only reason they give him a test in which he's asked to tell the difference between a giraffe and a snake. They don't ask you this as some sort of random survey nor IQ test. Why can't they commit him? Why can't they institutionalize him? He is, after all, manifestly crazy and a danger to those around him and perhaps to himself. I mean, if he starts atomic war tomorrow, he presumably would be one of the casualties. That's a danger to yourself. You only need two doctors to put the guy on hold for 48 hours. He claims he's got more doctors than general hospitals. Certainly there are two who recognize what's actually going on here. They follow him around like his sycophants on the golf courses. There's got to be his hallucinations guy, his electroshock guy, his lobotomy guy, his team Rorschach test, the gal with the trepanning tools for him, his drool cup carrier. Damn, there's got to be two of them ready to call their straitjacket expert in. That'd be a triple XL straitjacket, thank you. I know, I know, I know, I know. The idea of getting one doctor from Team Trump is really crazy to just throw it all to the wind, to call a news conference, to tell the world the truth that is still a billion to one shot, but it's closer to happening than having two of those doctors committing him. I mean, yes, Doc, you'd be ending your career, but think of the rewards. Whichever of his doctors... will confirm his insanity publicly. I'm a patriot. I love this country. Well, I'm a patriot. I love this country. You will make millions. I'll toss in a million. A million into the pot right now for the first Trump doctor who tells the truth about these tests. What the hell? And this note for doctor who... Your monetization of your time with Donald Trump could wind up being worth more to you than Alina Haba's monetization of her time with Trump and the reported $ 50 million involved in selling a pardon for Trump. And by the way, I would bet that if this really actually happened, if the doctor held a news conference, this would be the most widely watched and rewatched news conference in the history of the universe. Dr. Vinny Boombatz would be an instant worldwide celebrity. I'd also bet he could close this press conference off, having changed world history in less than an hour, by saying, oh, by the way, the stuff about him correctly identifying the giraffe, the SOB is even lying about that. He got the giraffe wrong too, MFers. I wrote a book about this nine years ago Now, I don't hawk it. I'm just showing it up as evidence in case you didn't know. It is not much of a book. I wrote it for a reason, and I wrote it the way I wrote it for a reason. It underwrote the resistance videos, which I basically did for charity, and it put on the record... The fact that somebody had to say all that in 2017, that Trump is effing crazy and this is not some kind of joke. The book is essentially 350 pages of transcripts of those commentaries that I did in 2016 and 2017 because I knew someday it would happen, that the world would accept the reality that Trump was crazy. It would happen one way or the other, commitment or not. he'd start speaking in tongues live on TV, or a doctor would go forth and spread beauty and light and tell the truth. And I wanted it documented that we all knew it in 2016, and nobody but me was willing to put their name on it. I wanted it preserved for the record that he didn't go bad at some point, that he didn't deteriorate, that he wasn't better back in the old days, and perhaps it was age and that, no, we started where we ended with him. And I wanted to make sure people understood that it was not not obvious in 2016, that we all knew in 2016 that Trump is effing crazy. This is not a book as much as it is an artifact. an artifact that would cost you $ 6. 19 on Amazon. I don't think I'd get any money out of that. But as low as $ 3. 96 on eBay, free shipping, and I know I don't get any of that money. I would hold out, though, until this gets down to a dollar. As I said, it's not a great book, but it's 100% correct. And it's an artifact. It just genuinely surprised me then, as it genuinely surprises me still, that whoever these doctors are who gave him these cognitive tests every, let's see, what time is it now? I started about eight minutes ago. He's due for another one. That not one of them is willing to trade a life that must be a living hell of guilt and responsibility for the immediate and eternal gratitude of a world that would respond in this trade A world that has been standing in front of a psychopath holding a knife against its throat since 2016. A world that has been saying, doesn't anybody else see that Trump is a psychopath and he's holding a knife? The doctor who trades the life of traveling around with a psychopath who he can't tell anybody else, he's a psychopath. trades that life for a life in which he announces it to the world, becomes eternally, immortally famous and rich. I don't understand why somebody doesn't make that trade. What is your training for? What are your oaths about? Confidentiality? Making some more money later? You can make more money now! Even if that's your only motivation, other than, you know, saving the world. I would think saving the world would be high on a doctor's list of priorities, but what do I know? I only know my own doctors, and I think they would all do this. Doctor Who, I am not actually asking you to institutionalize him. I understand that would be difficult. I understand nobody's tried that since King George III in 1788. The paperwork alone would be a J.D. Vance. But just go public. Spill the beans. Tell the truth as the cliche goes. Let's talk about the elephant in the room. Or in this case... The giraffe. While we wait for the doctor to tell the truth about Trump, it's too early to get any reaction in terms of detrumpification from the suddenly shocked to discover there is gambling going on here, right-wing media. to the latest development, which would be Trump whore envoy Steve Witkoff calling Putin a humanitarian to Putin's face. And by the way, live on Russian state television, most of American media has left that small detail out of the equation. That was yesterday, so we have not seen, obviously, the Thursday papers yet, but the entire Ukraine picture continues to get slammed by the Wall Street Journal editorial board? To Russia with love, signed Donald. Trump waives sanctions and tariffs under the Lindsey Graham law. Trump's assistance to Vladimir Putin keeps growing by the day, and in the latest example, he stuck a shiv in the back of the legacy of the late Senator Lindsey Graham. Mr. Trump offered no explanation beyond a statement that the issuance of such a waiver at this time is in the national interests of the United States, the editorial board writes. The opposite is true, and Mr. Trump is now... Mr. Putin's best friend in the world after perhaps China. When the election is over, there needs to be a bipartisan reckoning for Mr. Trump's budding alliance with the Kremlin against Ukraine, Europe, and American interests. The Wall Street Journal editorial board. Not me. I would have written it a little bit less stridently. All right? Murdoch periodically needs to make himself look human. Maybe that explains this. I would suggest turning to the pages of the Washington Examiner that's never had any concern about looking human. Trump sold out Ukraine for a bad diesel deal. Every ally is watching. Quote, Ukraine has attacked a number of Russian refineries in an effort to put economic pressure on Putin. Trump apparently believes that these attacks have contributed to the diesel shortage and thus have played a part in raising prices. Trump, however, is wrong about this, writes the Washington Examiner. Diesel prices have risen mainly because of the dramatic reduction in the amount of oil that has been shipped from the Middle East since the war began. A chart prepared by the Institute for the Study of War shows that U.S. diesel prices rose dramatically when the war started, declined when it appeared Trump would make a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. and rose even more sharply after that effort collapsed. Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries, writes the Washington Bloody Examiner, had at most a marginal effect on those movements. In right-wing media, this is the equivalent of the doctor going public about how crazy Trump actually is. To resume, his betrayal of Ukraine then will have almost no effect on the midterm elections. Quote, it nonetheless has an important impact elsewhere. It reinforces the growing notion that America's word means nothing. The New York Times has not said this about Donald Trump. A GOP moderate... That's in quotes. Running in the Colorado Third, Jeff Heard, I disagree with the administration's decision to waive new sanctions Congress passed to increase economic pressure on Russia. He'll be beaten severely for daring to disagree with Trump. Putin started this war. Russia continues its brutal attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I hope the administration reconsiders. For a Republican member of Congress who is not retiring, this is a declaration of war on Trump. The German Friedrich Merz. My biggest concern is the underestimated Russian impact on our societies. Russia is on the way to destabilize the entire political order of our European continent. And this is obviously underestimated. You think? As to the Starlink slowdown and the betrayal of Ukraine and the other attempts to sabotage Ukraine's domestic air defense and to kill more Ukrainian infants. One set of sources says Trump did this directly. Another tells the Wall Street Journal it was Musk who did it directly. To quote Churchill, it really doesn't matter who was the organ grinder and who was the monkey. One explanation seems intuitively to me to make even more sense than either of those. Yes, Musk issued the order to bring down the military version of Starlink, but Trump ordered Musk to do that. And remember... If Musk or Trump can turn off missile defense information systems in Ukraine, Musk or Trump can turn them off here in the U.S. Another candidate, meanwhile, tried to de-Trumpify, tried a little bit too hard. Twitter Autumn noted this. Eric Pratt, Republican running for Angie Craig's open seat in the Minnesota Second, left the AI restating his prompt on his website. So the Pratt playbook here... reads pratt playbook affordability accountability safe community residents want everyday purchases to be affordable eric pratt writes or the ai did bad actors to be held accountable and their reps to lead with common sense the president is not popular so all messaging should be focused on local politics and needs try to remember when using ai to take ai's fingerprints off of it Of course, they are not all trying to de-Trumpify. Two years ago at this time, it was when Ohio went crazy with J.V. Vance, who is a Funko Pop in a suit, insisted that the Haitians in Columbus, Ohio, were eating the cats and dogs, and then Trump picked that up, eating the cats, as if J.D. Vance knew anything about eating cats. Think about it. Well, JV is back defending their Vivek Ramaswamy attack ad against Amy Acton, in which Vivek Ramaswamy came out on the side of stepfathers raping their 12-year-old stepdaughters and on the side of their mothers siding with the stepfather. That's the Amy Acton story that Vivek Ramaswamy has brought up by entering into this equation Amy Acton's deadbeat, reprehensible, going-to-hell mother. Vance is very concerned about this advertisement, about the fact that anybody has had the nerve to criticize it, that is. Quoting Vance, well, I'll be honest with you, whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern. My concern is who's going to govern. I have to admit I'm a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans who are whining more about that ad than they are about what the Democrats want to do. J.D. Vance is garbage. His reputation as a seducer of couches is the nicest thing anybody has ever said about him relative to who he really is. He is scum, vermin, slime, and I apologize to scum, vermin, and slime. Meanwhile, Ramaswamy is worse. Ramaswamy had almost slid off the screen. It's hard to remember he is running for office in Ohio. Then he said something like this. And when we face our founding fathers in the afterlife and they ask us, what sacrifice did you make for your country? We better have a damn good answer for them and we will. So you're going to meet the founding fathers in the afterlife and have to talk to them, Vivek? You expect the founding fathers like George Washington and Ben Franklin to be in hell with you, Vivek? Also of interest here, the midterms and the early forecast has now changed to a Democratic generic lead in the House of double digits. And if you can imagine the idea of dinner at the White House with Trump and Stephen A. Smith and Bill Maher, you will understand that Kid Rock was there to give it a slight intellectual improvement. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olbermann. For the big finish, let's look at what the actual impact on the ground, what the predictions about the midterms are, something curious about these midterms from Axios. This is not about Trump bribing farmers or Trump bribing Kansans or Trump bribing poisoned servicemen, all of which he has done in the last few days. This is from Axios. Quote, Trump threatened Wednesday to fire two of his top political consultants if he finds a conflict after reports that they had advised a Russia-aligned government ahead of local elections there. That's there is Bosnia Herzegovina. Why it matters, as Axios asks after every other paragraph, because it writes for political audiences and political people who really can't focus their attention for longer than two sentences. Why it matters, Chris LaCivita and James Blair are leading Republicans' midterm election strategy, putting their foreign consulting work in tension with their prominent roles in transphobic... Wait. The issue here is not the fact that there is a conflict of interest. The Trump administration is built on conflicts of interest. That's what it's there for. Or them making money on the side, using their reputations, using their status connected to the U.S. government. That's what it's there for. Or the fact that these guys are probably stealing money from taxpayers, like everybody else in this administration. That's what it's there for. The issue here about Blair and this eternal sleaze la savita is... Leading Republicans' midterm election strategy, but two weeks plus before the midterms, they are in Bosnia? And Trump leaking that he might fire them to make it look like he's upset somehow, or he didn't know that they were in Bosnia? Russian-aligned Bosnia? If only there were some way for Lasavita and Blair to be working in Bosnia on our midterms. Messing with the elections remotely? Really? Were the 2024 Russian-targeted attacks on voting places in the South, were those just practice? Is that why Blair and Lasavita are in Bosnia? Russian-aligned Bosnia? Aligned with Putin the humanitarian, Mr. Witkoff? Nothing would surprise me. However, if the elections are conducted fairly, or even 50% fairly, the Republicans are going to drown. Metaphorically speaking, Vivek Ramaswamy may meet the afterlife much sooner than he's anticipating. Elliott Morris at numbers, Verisite and 50 plus one and strengthen numbers. The Democratic margin for all House races in the polling alone is now 10.4. Democrats, the generic Democrats leads the generic Republicans. and there are no generic Republicans, they're all con men, by 10.4 points. It's in double digits. To quote, among registered voters, 52% said they would vote for the Democratic candidate for the House in their district, and 41% for the Republicans. That is a margin of 10.4. The edges, or that edge has passed our previous high of 10.1 in February. Among likely voters, Democrats lead 54 to 42, a 12-point margin, also a high for this series. I like this series. I'll stream this series. The Republican Party's 41% among registered voters is the lowest share it has ever received in our poll. What about the Senate and G. Eliot Morris? What types of election results are possible for both parties given just a small normal polling error favoring either party, he asks. In the 50plus1. com news forecast, a normal miss in Republicans' favor leaves Democrats stuck at 50 seats, and a miss in Democrats' favor puts 54 or more on the table. He's saying that if the margin of error falls entirely towards Democratic Senate votes... the Democrats will have 54 or more seats in the Senate. But if we use, he continues, just the polling average instead of the full prediction model, and consider that at 18 days when he did this, before the election, the polls could still shift in either direction, the map expands even more. A typical miss, 3.7 percentage points on average across the country, plus individual state-level noise in either direction takes Democrats anywhere from 47 to 56 seats. In averages at 50 plus one, he reassures you, Democrats lead in enough races to give them 54 seats in the Senate. If you shift it 3.7 towards the Republicans, it's 47 for the Democrats. If you go 3.7 towards the Democrats, it's 56, including South Carolina and Nebraska. So the predictions are still vague. It is still a blue wave only in... Are we sure that's a blue wave? but it's looking more likely every day, and that perhaps is why Chris LaCivita is in Bosnia. Now, a quick media roundup of the unwashed and the unloved. The latest from CBS, this will double as the worst persons in the world. Jan Crawford and Barry Weiss tying at number three. Jan Crawford's tweet that thanked the son of a paid Republican agitator says, this gotcha moment that failed to gotcha El-Sayed in Michigan. Zetio's Justin Barragona, quote, hearing from my sources that this over-the-top tweet is being discussed internally at CBS. At the same time as those same sources noted, Jan Crawford, the legal correspondent, still there for CBS, not fired yet, even though she must be. Jan is protected by Barry, also somebody who's going to get fired at the end of this, and has been a very vocal acolyte of Weiss. She just can't help herself, one network insider said. From semaphore about this disaster at CBS News, Weiss has been pushing her newsroom to pursue numerous stories related to the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. and his purported familial links to the Muslim Brotherhood. She has discussed the topic on editorial calls, tasked CBS News' investigative unit with combing through Al-Sayed's background for a potential link to the organization, and was directly involved in a controversial story about his previous posts comparing the COVID-19 death toll to 9-11. In short, Barry Weiss wants CBS News to make up a story linking Al-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood because Barry Weiss is a dishonest person running a national news organization and should be drummed out of that immediately. To again quote Semaphore, quote, Barry's ideas routinely come from social media influencers. It's a compliment to call them Barry's ideas. She's also an idiot. Barry's ideas routinely come from social media influencers or from opposition research that's been placed in conservative outlets. And these stories usually leave out important context and facts. one CBS News staffer in New York told Semaphore. She seems more suited to editing at publications like City Journal, The Free Press, or The Free Beacon, which take a clear side on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and match her views. Weiss, it goes on, has taken a particularly hands-on approach to the Michigan Senate race. which campaign rhetoric has revolved around al-Sayed's Muslim faith and whether he can win over Jewish voters in the state. The Hollywood Reporter reported last month that Weiss faced criticism internally for overseeing an article that critics say falsely insinuated Michigan's Democratic Senate candidate al-Sayed had ties to the September 11th attacks. Some CBS News staff have privately grumbled that Weiss is particularly focused on pursuing theories about high-profile progressive candidates that bubble up on X or in right-leaning news outlets. Weiss also tasked staff with pursuing the theory that Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Tallarico was in a mental health facility after he disappeared from the campaign trail for over a week in October. He was at home with the flu. Journalists from the New York Times confirmed... citing images from Tallarico's home security cameras. The head of CBS News. No matter what you think of the Allisons or their promises to leave CNN alone, they have destroyed CBS News, and essentially, your rule of thumb if you don't have time to analyze what you are seeing on CBS News is not to believe a word it puts out. Not one word. Emphasize the BS, and the C stands for conservative. Now, the winners of our Worst Persons in the World, and to wrap up the media segment, Bill Maher and Stephen A. Smith together again. Trump once again praised the two of them after he had dinner with them, suggesting that perhaps, in reality, Donald Trump is already in hell. Dinner with Bill Maher and Stephen A. Smith. I have broken bread with both these bastards. Imagine the two of them together. Keep your fingers away from both of their mouths. And by the way, your referee for that dinner was Kid Rock to up the intellectual level a little bit. And I mean that literally for once. It was a great dinner. It was a very informative dinner. Smart people. Stephen A is great. Bill Maher, I will tell you what. He likes me a lot more than people understand. And I actually like him. It was a good dinner. No mention of what they ate, just that Bill Maher actually, he likes me, he likes me. Sally Field at her worst with nuclear weapons is president of the United States. Trump told reporters at the dinner, we talked about everything. It lasted a long time. And even though they have to sort of put on a certain facade for their people, they like Trump and I actually like them. So not only did Trump convince himself that these people idiots, Marr and Smith like him, but he convinced them and convinced himself that every time they say something bad, it's just to please their people. He added that they took a tour of the ballroom, currently under construction. You know, jackhammers and holes everywhere, and they all got out untouched. What I do not understand about this dinner... as a longtime observer of Bill Maher, and we nearly had a fistfight in 1978, and of Stephen A. Smith, who I have known... I believe I went on the radio with him first in 2005 before ESPN fired him and brought him back. What I do not understand about this dinner is not why Marr went. He goes wherever people will flatter him. And since that has been restricted a lot in the last few years, he can't anymore find flattery from sane people or smart people. He has to go to the White House and talk to somebody who is neither sane nor smart. Or a group of them. Trump, Kid Rock, and Stephen A. Smith. Now, this is not about Smith's relative popularity, which remains largely unaffected. He goes wherever people don't think he's a useless blowhard who has not actually broken a sports story nor given any insight to a sports story or a news story for 20 years or more since he stopped being a reporter and simply figured out how to kill time for ESPN. And this isn't about Trump, what I don't understand. It's not about Maher. It's not about Smith. Their business there is logical. And it's not about Trump. He thinks Maher is some kind of liberal or Democrat, and he's got a trophy liberal there and has an audience, which Bill no longer has. Bill is about even with Dennis Miller on the liberal comedy scale. What I don't understand, with Bill Maher, Stephen A. Smith, and Donald Trump all in the same room. How in the hell was there enough oxygen left that they all didn't pass out? To the number one story on the countdown, and as always, it's a choice between things I promised not to tell and something from Thurber, and you lucked out. It's something from Thurber, reading from my trusty Library of America edition of almost all of the highlights in the Thurber canon, The Night the Bed Fell. The Night the Bed Fell is the first chapter of My Life and Hard Times. which is really the closest thing James Thurber ever wrote to a full-fledged novel. It is essentially a slight exaggeration or perhaps a gigantic betrayal of his own childhood and his family in Columbus, Ohio. They debated this point probably for 70% of the last century. There were no conclusions drawn. Many of the things that they said didn't happen were later proven by Thurber scholars to, in fact, have happened. I think the best case here is to enjoy it. I'm not sure, although many of the characters, the relatives that he describes, do come off as kind of, you know, nuts and There is such a respect for their craziness and such an admiration for their overall intelligence that I don't know that I would complain about it were I in one of these stories. First off, everybody that James Thurber wrote about will live forever, or certainly as long as his works do. And we are into our third Thurber century, after all. He was born in the 19th. I can only hope he's going to outlast us all. The Night the Bed Fell. I'll read by James Thurber. I suppose that the high watermark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio, was the night the bed fell on my father. It makes a better recitation, unless, as some friends of mine have said, one has heard it five or six times, than it does a piece of writing, for it is almost necessary to throw furniture around shake doors, and bark like a dog to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still, it did take place. It happened, then, that my father had decided to sleep in the attic one night, to be away where he could think. My mother opposed the notion strongly because she said the old wooden bed up there was unsafe. It was wobbly, and the heavy headboard would crash down on father's head in case the bed fell and kill him. There was no dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten, he closed the attic door behind him and went up the narrow, twisting stairs. We later heard ominous creakings as he crawled into bed. grandfather who usually slept in the attic bed when he was with us had disappeared some days before on these occasions he was usually gone six or eight days and returned growling and out of temper with the news that the federal union was run by a passel of blockheads and that the army of the potomac didn't have any more chance than a fiddler's bitch We had visiting us at this time a nervous first cousin of mine named Briggs Beale, who believed that he was likely to cease breathing when he was asleep. It was his feeling that if he were not awakened every hour during the night, he might die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to setting an alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning, but I persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in my room, and I told him that I was such a light sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the same room with me, I would wake instantly. He tested me the first night, which I suspected he would. By holding his breath after my regular breathing had convinced him I was asleep, I was not asleep. However, and I called to him, this seemed to allay his fears a little. But he took the precaution of putting a glass of spirits of camphor on a little table at the head of his bed. In case I didn't arouse him until he was almost gone, he said he would sniff the camphor, a powerful reviver. Briggs was not the only member of his family who had his crotchets. Old Aunt Melissa Beale, who could whistle like a man with two fingers in her mouth. suffered under the premonition that she was destined to die on South High Street because she had been born on South High Street and married on South High Street. Then there was Aunt Sarah Schoaf, who never went to bed at night without the fear that a burglar was going to get in and blow chloroform under her door through a tube. To avert this calamity, for she was in greater dread of anesthetics than of losing her household goods, she always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in a neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note reading, This is all I have. Please take it and do not use your chloroform, as this is all I have. Aunt Gracie Shoaf also had a burglar phobia, but she met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars had been getting into her home every night for 40 years. The fact that she never missed anything was to her no proof to the contrary. She always claimed that she scared them off before they could take anything by throwing shoes down the hallway. When she went to bed, she piled where she could get at them handily. All the shoes there were about her house. Five minutes after she'd turned off the light, she would sit up in bed and say, Hark! Her husband, who had learned to ignore the whole situation as long ago as 1903, would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep. In either case, he would not respond to her tugging and pulling, so that presently she would rise, tiptoe to the door, open it slightly, and heave a shoe down the hall in one direction, and its mate down the hall in the other direction. Some nights she threw them all, some nights only a couple of pair. If you're watching, here is the aunt throwing the shoes. Hark! But I am straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the night the bed fell on Father. By midnight, we were all in bed. The layout of the rooms and the disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding of what later occurred in the front room upstairs, just under Father's attic bedroom. were my mother and my brother Herman, who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia or onward Christian soldiers. Brigsbill and myself were in a room adjoining this one. My brother Roy was in a room across the hall from ours. Our bull terrier Rex slept in the hall. My bed was an army cot, one of those affairs which are made wide enough to sleep on comfortably only by putting up, flat with the middle section, the two sides which ordinarily hang down like the sideboards of a drop-leaf table. When those sides are up, it is perilous to roll too far towards the edge, for when the cot is then likely to tip completely over, bringing the whole bed down on top of one with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact, is precisely what happened about two o'clock in the morning. It was my mother who, in recalling the scene later, first referred to it as the night the bed fell on your father. Always a deep sleeper, slow to arouse, I had lied to Briggs. I was at first unconscious of what had happened when the iron cot rolled me onto the floor and toppled over on me. It left me still warmly bundled up and unhurt, for the bed rested above me like a canopy. Hence, I did not wake up, only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however, instantly awakened my mother in the next room, who came to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized. The big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She therefore screamed,' Let' s go to your poor father!' It was this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling, that awakened Herman in the same room with her. He thought that Mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical.' You' re all right, Mama!' he shouted, trying to calm her. They exchanged shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds.' Let' s go to your poor father, and you're all right!' That woke up Briggs. By this time, I was conscious of what was going on in a vague way, but did not yet realize that I was under my bed instead of on it. Briggs, awakening in the middle of loud shouts of fear and apprehension, came to the quick conclusion that he was suffocating, and that we were all trying to bring him out with a low moan. He grasped the glass of camphor at the head of his bed, and instead of sniffing it, poured it over himself. And here, again, if you're watching, is Briggs coming out of his stupor. The room reeked of camphor. Choked Briggs like a drowning man, for he had almost succeeded in stopping his breath under the deluge of pungent spirits. He leaped out of bed and groped toward the open window, but he came up against one that was closed. With his hand, he beat out the glass, and I could hear it crash and tinkle on the alleyway below. It was at this juncture that I, in trying to get up, had the uncanny sensation of feeling my bed above me. Foggy with sleep, I now suspected in my turn that the whole uproar was being made in a frantic endeavor to extricate me from what must be an unheard-of and perilous situation. Get me out of this, I bawled. Get me out! I think I had the nightmarish belief that I was entombed in a mine. Gah! gasped Briggs, floundering in his camphor. And by this time, my mother, still shouting, pursued by Herman, still shouting, was trying to open up the door to the attic in order to go up and get my father's body out of the wreckage. The door was stuck, however, and wouldn't yield. Her frantic pulls on it only added to the general banging and confusion. Roy and the dog were now up, the one shouting questions, the other barking. Father? farthest away and soundest sleeper of all, had by this time been awakened by the battering on the attic door, he decided the house was on fire. I'm coming, I'm coming, he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice. It took him many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother, still believing he was caught under the bed, detected in his, quote, I'm coming voice, the mournful, resigned note of one who is preparing to meet his maker. He's dying, she shouted. I'm all right, Briggs yelled to reassure her. I'm all right. He still believed that it was his own closeness to death that was worrying Mother. I found, at last, the light switch in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs and I joined the others at the attic door. The dog... who never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that he was the culprit in whatever was going on, and Roy had to throw Rex and hold him. There he is, throwing Rex and holding him. We could hear Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled the attic door open with a mighty jerk and father came down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound. My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex began to howl. What in the name of God is going on here? Asked father. The situation was finally put together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were no other bad results. I'm glad, said mother, who always looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Our musical directors of Countdown are John Philip Chanel, keyboards and orchestration, Brian Ray, guitars, bass and drums. Their work is produced by TKO Brothers, who are John Philip Chanel, Brian Ray and me. Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever, is responsible for the satirical and pithy musical comments. The sports music is the old Olbermann Show theme from ESPN2, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed, and my announcer today was my friend Kenny Mayne. Everything else was, as always, my fault. It's countdown for today, day 627 of America held hostage again. Exactly 822 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term, unless it ends early because one of Trump's doctors listens to my plea and goes public about the IQ tests that are actually sanity tests and becomes 21st century psychology Jesus. If you're listening, remember you can see the whole thing now on YouTube. If you're watching, remember you can skip the video part and just listen wherever you podcast. Like and subscribe. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Probably management reserves the right to get another heart procedure instead. Bulletin says the news merits. 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.
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. They're not asking him the difference between a giraffe and a snake because he's fine. They're asking him the difference between a giraffe and a snake because they suspect he cannot tell the difference between a giraffe and a snake. Food for everyone. Food for everyone. Trump has gone back to bringing up these effing dementia tests every few minutes, it seems, certainly once per rally on his tour. not understanding that they are effing dementia tests, bringing it up constantly, presumably because this crowd of doctors that he travels with, that he boasts about, who would let you die because they're not allowed to leave his side, they see signs in private that we do not see in public that he has dementia or something like it, or is perhaps more colloquially effing crazy. If they keep giving him these tests, and judging by how often Trump brings them up, my estimate is they must give him one of these tests after every meal. Can't they do something about him? Aren't they doctors with the power to do something about him? Can't they institutionalize him? Can't they put him on a temporary mental hold? He is crazy or failing that, and I understand the odds against doing that. failing that, can't one of them, one of them risk everything for the sake of the nation and, you know, the world? Just one. I mean, Trump is crazy. That's not breaking news. It has not been breaking news since 2016. Ed Rollins confirmed it for me on a news set in 2016, and he didn't mean in a colloquial or ha-ha way. He said, you're right, Trump is crazy crazy. But, quote, the first one is they show you a lion, a bear, a snake, and a giraffe, and they say, which one is the giraffe? I got a perfect score. Holy crap, he sounds like a toddler boasting about his first success on a potty chair. A perfect score. He can tell the difference between a giraffe and a snake. It's a Robert Klein joke from 1975. The kind of test Robert Klein said he liked was multiple choice. You got an elephant and a mouse. Which is bigger? A. He can tell the difference between a giraffe and a snake, but he can't tell the difference between a giraffe and a Putin. Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven't been doing much. He's crazy. He's now openly bribing not just voters to vote his way, violating federal law each time he does that. He's bribing voters in a specific state to vote one way, thus also violating state law every time he does that. He's also backing the Hitler of our time over the Poland of our time. He is boasting that his doctors keep testing his brain constantly. to be uncouth for signs that his brain doesn't work anymore. Doesn't work at all. That he is already at the stage or nearing it where he cannot tell the difference between a giraffe and a snake is the only reason they give him a test in which he's asked to tell the difference between a giraffe and a snake. They don't ask you this as some sort of random survey nor IQ test. Why can't they commit him? Why can't they institutionalize him? He is, after all, manifestly crazy and a danger to those around him and perhaps to himself. I mean, if he starts atomic war tomorrow, he presumably would be one of the casualties. That's a danger to yourself. You only need two doctors to put the guy on hold for 48 hours. He claims he's got more doctors than general hospitals. Certainly there are two who recognize what's actually going on here. They follow him around like his sycophants on the golf courses. There's got to be his hallucinations guy, his electroshock guy, his lobotomy guy, his team Rorschach test, the gal with the trepanning tools for him, his drool cup carrier. Damn, there's got to be two of them ready to call their straitjacket expert in. That'd be a triple XL straitjacket, thank you. I know, I know, I know, I know. The idea of getting one doctor from Team Trump is really crazy to just throw it all to the wind, to call a news conference, to tell the world the truth that is still a billion to one shot, but it's closer to happening than having two of those doctors committing him. I mean, yes, Doc, you'd be ending your career, but think of the rewards. Whichever of his doctors... will confirm his insanity publicly. I'm a patriot. I love this country. Well, I'm a patriot. I love this country. You will make millions. I'll toss in a million. A million into the pot right now for the first Trump doctor who tells the truth about these tests. What the hell? And this note for doctor who... Your monetization of your time with Donald Trump could wind up being worth more to you than Alina Haba's monetization of her time with Trump and the reported $ 50 million involved in selling a pardon for Trump. And by the way, I would bet that if this really actually happened, if the doctor held a news conference, this would be the most widely watched and rewatched news conference in the history of the universe. Dr. Vinny Boombatz would be an instant worldwide celebrity. I'd also bet he could close this press conference off, having changed world history in less than an hour, by saying, oh, by the way, the stuff about him correctly identifying the giraffe, the SOB is even lying about that. He got the giraffe wrong too, MFers. I wrote a book about this nine years ago Now, I don't hawk it. I'm just showing it up as evidence in case you didn't know. It is not much of a book. I wrote it for a reason, and I wrote it the way I wrote it for a reason. It underwrote the resistance videos, which I basically did for charity, and it put on the record... The fact that somebody had to say all that in 2017, that Trump is effing crazy and this is not some kind of joke. The book is essentially 350 pages of transcripts of those commentaries that I did in 2016 and 2017 because I knew someday it would happen, that the world would accept the reality that Trump was crazy. It would happen one way or the other, commitment or not. he'd start speaking in tongues live on TV, or a doctor would go forth and spread beauty and light and tell the truth. And I wanted it documented that we all knew it in 2016, and nobody but me was willing to put their name on it. I wanted it preserved for the record that he didn't go bad at some point, that he didn't deteriorate, that he wasn't better back in the old days, and perhaps it was age and that, no, we started where we ended with him. And I wanted to make sure people understood that it was not not obvious in 2016, that we all knew in 2016 that Trump is effing crazy. This is not a book as much as it is an artifact. an artifact that would cost you $ 6. 19 on Amazon. I don't think I'd get any money out of that. But as low as $ 3. 96 on eBay, free shipping, and I know I don't get any of that money. I would hold out, though, until this gets down to a dollar. As I said, it's not a great book, but it's 100% correct. And it's an artifact. It just genuinely surprised me then, as it genuinely surprises me still, that whoever these doctors are who gave him these cognitive tests every, let's see, what time is it now? I started about eight minutes ago. He's due for another one. That not one of them is willing to trade a life that must be a living hell of guilt and responsibility for the immediate and eternal gratitude of a world that would respond in this trade A world that has been standing in front of a psychopath holding a knife against its throat since 2016. A world that has been saying, doesn't anybody else see that Trump is a psychopath and he's holding a knife? The doctor who trades the life of traveling around with a psychopath who he can't tell anybody else, he's a psychopath. trades that life for a life in which he announces it to the world, becomes eternally, immortally famous and rich. I don't understand why somebody doesn't make that trade. What is your training for? What are your oaths about? Confidentiality? Making some more money later? You can make more money now! Even if that's your only motivation, other than, you know, saving the world. I would think saving the world would be high on a doctor's list of priorities, but what do I know? I only know my own doctors, and I think they would all do this. Doctor Who, I am not actually asking you to institutionalize him. I understand that would be difficult. I understand nobody's tried that since King George III in 1788. The paperwork alone would be a J.D. Vance. But just go public. Spill the beans. Tell the truth as the cliche goes. Let's talk about the elephant in the room. Or in this case... The giraffe. While we wait for the doctor to tell the truth about Trump, it's too early to get any reaction in terms of detrumpification from the suddenly shocked to discover there is gambling going on here, right-wing media. to the latest development, which would be Trump whore envoy Steve Witkoff calling Putin a humanitarian to Putin's face. And by the way, live on Russian state television, most of American media has left that small detail out of the equation. That was yesterday, so we have not seen, obviously, the Thursday papers yet, but the entire Ukraine picture continues to get slammed by the Wall Street Journal editorial board? To Russia with love, signed Donald. Trump waives sanctions and tariffs under the Lindsey Graham law. Trump's assistance to Vladimir Putin keeps growing by the day, and in the latest example, he stuck a shiv in the back of the legacy of the late Senator Lindsey Graham. Mr. Trump offered no explanation beyond a statement that the issuance of such a waiver at this time is in the national interests of the United States, the editorial board writes. The opposite is true, and Mr. Trump is now... Mr. Putin's best friend in the world after perhaps China. When the election is over, there needs to be a bipartisan reckoning for Mr. Trump's budding alliance with the Kremlin against Ukraine, Europe, and American interests. The Wall Street Journal editorial board. Not me. I would have written it a little bit less stridently. All right? Murdoch periodically needs to make himself look human. Maybe that explains this. I would suggest turning to the pages of the Washington Examiner that's never had any concern about looking human. Trump sold out Ukraine for a bad diesel deal. Every ally is watching. Quote, Ukraine has attacked a number of Russian refineries in an effort to put economic pressure on Putin. Trump apparently believes that these attacks have contributed to the diesel shortage and thus have played a part in raising prices. Trump, however, is wrong about this, writes the Washington Examiner. Diesel prices have risen mainly because of the dramatic reduction in the amount of oil that has been shipped from the Middle East since the war began. A chart prepared by the Institute for the Study of War shows that U.S. diesel prices rose dramatically when the war started, declined when it appeared Trump would make a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. and rose even more sharply after that effort collapsed. Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries, writes the Washington Bloody Examiner, had at most a marginal effect on those movements. In right-wing media, this is the equivalent of the doctor going public about how crazy Trump actually is. To resume, his betrayal of Ukraine then will have almost no effect on the midterm elections. Quote, it nonetheless has an important impact elsewhere. It reinforces the growing notion that America's word means nothing. The New York Times has not said this about Donald Trump. A GOP moderate... That's in quotes. Running in the Colorado Third, Jeff Heard, I disagree with the administration's decision to waive new sanctions Congress passed to increase economic pressure on Russia. He'll be beaten severely for daring to disagree with Trump. Putin started this war. Russia continues its brutal attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I hope the administration reconsiders. For a Republican member of Congress who is not retiring, this is a declaration of war on Trump. The German Friedrich Merz. My biggest concern is the underestimated Russian impact on our societies. Russia is on the way to destabilize the entire political order of our European continent. And this is obviously underestimated. You think? As to the Starlink slowdown and the betrayal of Ukraine and the other attempts to sabotage Ukraine's domestic air defense and to kill more Ukrainian infants. One set of sources says Trump did this directly. Another tells the Wall Street Journal it was Musk who did it directly. To quote Churchill, it really doesn't matter who was the organ grinder and who was the monkey. One explanation seems intuitively to me to make even more sense than either of those. Yes, Musk issued the order to bring down the military version of Starlink, but Trump ordered Musk to do that. And remember... If Musk or Trump can turn off missile defense information systems in Ukraine, Musk or Trump can turn them off here in the U.S. Another candidate, meanwhile, tried to de-Trumpify, tried a little bit too hard. Twitter Autumn noted this. Eric Pratt, Republican running for Angie Craig's open seat in the Minnesota Second, left the AI restating his prompt on his website. So the Pratt playbook here... reads pratt playbook affordability accountability safe community residents want everyday purchases to be affordable eric pratt writes or the ai did bad actors to be held accountable and their reps to lead with common sense the president is not popular so all messaging should be focused on local politics and needs try to remember when using ai to take ai's fingerprints off of it Of course, they are not all trying to de-Trumpify. Two years ago at this time, it was when Ohio went crazy with J.V. Vance, who is a Funko Pop in a suit, insisted that the Haitians in Columbus, Ohio, were eating the cats and dogs, and then Trump picked that up, eating the cats, as if J.D. Vance knew anything about eating cats. Think about it. Well, JV is back defending their Vivek Ramaswamy attack ad against Amy Acton, in which Vivek Ramaswamy came out on the side of stepfathers raping their 12-year-old stepdaughters and on the side of their mothers siding with the stepfather. That's the Amy Acton story that Vivek Ramaswamy has brought up by entering into this equation Amy Acton's deadbeat, reprehensible, going-to-hell mother. Vance is very concerned about this advertisement, about the fact that anybody has had the nerve to criticize it, that is. Quoting Vance, well, I'll be honest with you, whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern. My concern is who's going to govern. I have to admit I'm a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans who are whining more about that ad than they are about what the Democrats want to do. J.D. Vance is garbage. His reputation as a seducer of couches is the nicest thing anybody has ever said about him relative to who he really is. He is scum, vermin, slime, and I apologize to scum, vermin, and slime. Meanwhile, Ramaswamy is worse. Ramaswamy had almost slid off the screen. It's hard to remember he is running for office in Ohio. Then he said something like this. And when we face our founding fathers in the afterlife and they ask us, what sacrifice did you make for your country? We better have a damn good answer for them and we will. So you're going to meet the founding fathers in the afterlife and have to talk to them, Vivek? You expect the founding fathers like George Washington and Ben Franklin to be in hell with you, Vivek? Also of interest here, the midterms and the early forecast has now changed to a Democratic generic lead in the House of double digits. And if you can imagine the idea of dinner at the White House with Trump and Stephen A. Smith and Bill Maher, you will understand that Kid Rock was there to give it a slight intellectual improvement. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olbermann. For the big finish, let's look at what the actual impact on the ground, what the predictions about the midterms are, something curious about these midterms from Axios. This is not about Trump bribing farmers or Trump bribing Kansans or Trump bribing poisoned servicemen, all of which he has done in the last few days. This is from Axios. Quote, Trump threatened Wednesday to fire two of his top political consultants if he finds a conflict after reports that they had advised a Russia-aligned government ahead of local elections there. That's there is Bosnia Herzegovina. Why it matters, as Axios asks after every other paragraph, because it writes for political audiences and political people who really can't focus their attention for longer than two sentences. Why it matters, Chris LaCivita and James Blair are leading Republicans' midterm election strategy, putting their foreign consulting work in tension with their prominent roles in transphobic... Wait. The issue here is not the fact that there is a conflict of interest. The Trump administration is built on conflicts of interest. That's what it's there for. Or them making money on the side, using their reputations, using their status connected to the U.S. government. That's what it's there for. Or the fact that these guys are probably stealing money from taxpayers, like everybody else in this administration. That's what it's there for. The issue here about Blair and this eternal sleaze la savita is... Leading Republicans' midterm election strategy, but two weeks plus before the midterms, they are in Bosnia? And Trump leaking that he might fire them to make it look like he's upset somehow, or he didn't know that they were in Bosnia? Russian-aligned Bosnia? If only there were some way for Lasavita and Blair to be working in Bosnia on our midterms. Messing with the elections remotely? Really? Were the 2024 Russian-targeted attacks on voting places in the South, were those just practice? Is that why Blair and Lasavita are in Bosnia? Russian-aligned Bosnia? Aligned with Putin the humanitarian, Mr. Witkoff? Nothing would surprise me. However, if the elections are conducted fairly, or even 50% fairly, the Republicans are going to drown. Metaphorically speaking, Vivek Ramaswamy may meet the afterlife much sooner than he's anticipating. Elliott Morris at numbers, Verisite and 50 plus one and strengthen numbers. The Democratic margin for all House races in the polling alone is now 10.4. Democrats, the generic Democrats leads the generic Republicans. and there are no generic Republicans, they're all con men, by 10.4 points. It's in double digits. To quote, among registered voters, 52% said they would vote for the Democratic candidate for the House in their district, and 41% for the Republicans. That is a margin of 10.4. The edges, or that edge has passed our previous high of 10.1 in February. Among likely voters, Democrats lead 54 to 42, a 12-point margin, also a high for this series. I like this series. I'll stream this series. The Republican Party's 41% among registered voters is the lowest share it has ever received in our poll. What about the Senate and G. Eliot Morris? What types of election results are possible for both parties given just a small normal polling error favoring either party, he asks. In the 50plus1. com news forecast, a normal miss in Republicans' favor leaves Democrats stuck at 50 seats, and a miss in Democrats' favor puts 54 or more on the table. He's saying that if the margin of error falls entirely towards Democratic Senate votes... the Democrats will have 54 or more seats in the Senate. But if we use, he continues, just the polling average instead of the full prediction model, and consider that at 18 days when he did this, before the election, the polls could still shift in either direction, the map expands even more. A typical miss, 3.7 percentage points on average across the country, plus individual state-level noise in either direction takes Democrats anywhere from 47 to 56 seats. In averages at 50 plus one, he reassures you, Democrats lead in enough races to give them 54 seats in the Senate. If you shift it 3.7 towards the Republicans, it's 47 for the Democrats. If you go 3.7 towards the Democrats, it's 56, including South Carolina and Nebraska. So the predictions are still vague. It is still a blue wave only in... Are we sure that's a blue wave? but it's looking more likely every day, and that perhaps is why Chris LaCivita is in Bosnia. Now, a quick media roundup of the unwashed and the unloved. The latest from CBS, this will double as the worst persons in the world. Jan Crawford and Barry Weiss tying at number three. Jan Crawford's tweet that thanked the son of a paid Republican agitator says, this gotcha moment that failed to gotcha El-Sayed in Michigan. Zetio's Justin Barragona, quote, hearing from my sources that this over-the-top tweet is being discussed internally at CBS. At the same time as those same sources noted, Jan Crawford, the legal correspondent, still there for CBS, not fired yet, even though she must be. Jan is protected by Barry, also somebody who's going to get fired at the end of this, and has been a very vocal acolyte of Weiss. She just can't help herself, one network insider said. From semaphore about this disaster at CBS News, Weiss has been pushing her newsroom to pursue numerous stories related to the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. and his purported familial links to the Muslim Brotherhood. She has discussed the topic on editorial calls, tasked CBS News' investigative unit with combing through Al-Sayed's background for a potential link to the organization, and was directly involved in a controversial story about his previous posts comparing the COVID-19 death toll to 9-11. In short, Barry Weiss wants CBS News to make up a story linking Al-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood because Barry Weiss is a dishonest person running a national news organization and should be drummed out of that immediately. To again quote Semaphore, quote, Barry's ideas routinely come from social media influencers. It's a compliment to call them Barry's ideas. She's also an idiot. Barry's ideas routinely come from social media influencers or from opposition research that's been placed in conservative outlets. And these stories usually leave out important context and facts. one CBS News staffer in New York told Semaphore. She seems more suited to editing at publications like City Journal, The Free Press, or The Free Beacon, which take a clear side on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and match her views. Weiss, it goes on, has taken a particularly hands-on approach to the Michigan Senate race. which campaign rhetoric has revolved around al-Sayed's Muslim faith and whether he can win over Jewish voters in the state. The Hollywood Reporter reported last month that Weiss faced criticism internally for overseeing an article that critics say falsely insinuated Michigan's Democratic Senate candidate al-Sayed had ties to the September 11th attacks. Some CBS News staff have privately grumbled that Weiss is particularly focused on pursuing theories about high-profile progressive candidates that bubble up on X or in right-leaning news outlets. Weiss also tasked staff with pursuing the theory that Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Tallarico was in a mental health facility after he disappeared from the campaign trail for over a week in October. He was at home with the flu. Journalists from the New York Times confirmed... citing images from Tallarico's home security cameras. The head of CBS News. No matter what you think of the Allisons or their promises to leave CNN alone, they have destroyed CBS News, and essentially, your rule of thumb if you don't have time to analyze what you are seeing on CBS News is not to believe a word it puts out. Not one word. Emphasize the BS, and the C stands for conservative. Now, the winners of our Worst Persons in the World, and to wrap up the media segment, Bill Maher and Stephen A. Smith together again. Trump once again praised the two of them after he had dinner with them, suggesting that perhaps, in reality, Donald Trump is already in hell. Dinner with Bill Maher and Stephen A. Smith. I have broken bread with both these bastards. Imagine the two of them together. Keep your fingers away from both of their mouths. And by the way, your referee for that dinner was Kid Rock to up the intellectual level a little bit. And I mean that literally for once. It was a great dinner. It was a very informative dinner. Smart people. Stephen A is great. Bill Maher, I will tell you what. He likes me a lot more than people understand. And I actually like him. It was a good dinner. No mention of what they ate, just that Bill Maher actually, he likes me, he likes me. Sally Field at her worst with nuclear weapons is president of the United States. Trump told reporters at the dinner, we talked about everything. It lasted a long time. And even though they have to sort of put on a certain facade for their people, they like Trump and I actually like them. So not only did Trump convince himself that these people idiots, Marr and Smith like him, but he convinced them and convinced himself that every time they say something bad, it's just to please their people. He added that they took a tour of the ballroom, currently under construction. You know, jackhammers and holes everywhere, and they all got out untouched. What I do not understand about this dinner... as a longtime observer of Bill Maher, and we nearly had a fistfight in 1978, and of Stephen A. Smith, who I have known... I believe I went on the radio with him first in 2005 before ESPN fired him and brought him back. What I do not understand about this dinner is not why Marr went. He goes wherever people will flatter him. And since that has been restricted a lot in the last few years, he can't anymore find flattery from sane people or smart people. He has to go to the White House and talk to somebody who is neither sane nor smart. Or a group of them. Trump, Kid Rock, and Stephen A. Smith. Now, this is not about Smith's relative popularity, which remains largely unaffected. He goes wherever people don't think he's a useless blowhard who has not actually broken a sports story nor given any insight to a sports story or a news story for 20 years or more since he stopped being a reporter and simply figured out how to kill time for ESPN. And this isn't about Trump, what I don't understand. It's not about Maher. It's not about Smith. Their business there is logical. And it's not about Trump. He thinks Maher is some kind of liberal or Democrat, and he's got a trophy liberal there and has an audience, which Bill no longer has. Bill is about even with Dennis Miller on the liberal comedy scale. What I don't understand, with Bill Maher, Stephen A. Smith, and Donald Trump all in the same room. How in the hell was there enough oxygen left that they all didn't pass out? To the number one story on the countdown, and as always, it's a choice between things I promised not to tell and something from Thurber, and you lucked out. It's something from Thurber, reading from my trusty Library of America edition of almost all of the highlights in the Thurber canon, The Night the Bed Fell. The Night the Bed Fell is the first chapter of My Life and Hard Times. which is really the closest thing James Thurber ever wrote to a full-fledged novel. It is essentially a slight exaggeration or perhaps a gigantic betrayal of his own childhood and his family in Columbus, Ohio. They debated this point probably for 70% of the last century. There were no conclusions drawn. Many of the things that they said didn't happen were later proven by Thurber scholars to, in fact, have happened. I think the best case here is to enjoy it. I'm not sure, although many of the characters, the relatives that he describes, do come off as kind of, you know, nuts and There is such a respect for their craziness and such an admiration for their overall intelligence that I don't know that I would complain about it were I in one of these stories. First off, everybody that James Thurber wrote about will live forever, or certainly as long as his works do. And we are into our third Thurber century, after all. He was born in the 19th. I can only hope he's going to outlast us all. The Night the Bed Fell. I'll read by James Thurber. I suppose that the high watermark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio, was the night the bed fell on my father. It makes a better recitation, unless, as some friends of mine have said, one has heard it five or six times, than it does a piece of writing, for it is almost necessary to throw furniture around shake doors, and bark like a dog to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still, it did take place. It happened, then, that my father had decided to sleep in the attic one night, to be away where he could think. My mother opposed the notion strongly because she said the old wooden bed up there was unsafe. It was wobbly, and the heavy headboard would crash down on father's head in case the bed fell and kill him. There was no dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten, he closed the attic door behind him and went up the narrow, twisting stairs. We later heard ominous creakings as he crawled into bed. grandfather who usually slept in the attic bed when he was with us had disappeared some days before on these occasions he was usually gone six or eight days and returned growling and out of temper with the news that the federal union was run by a passel of blockheads and that the army of the potomac didn't have any more chance than a fiddler's bitch We had visiting us at this time a nervous first cousin of mine named Briggs Beale, who believed that he was likely to cease breathing when he was asleep. It was his feeling that if he were not awakened every hour during the night, he might die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to setting an alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning, but I persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in my room, and I told him that I was such a light sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the same room with me, I would wake instantly. He tested me the first night, which I suspected he would. By holding his breath after my regular breathing had convinced him I was asleep, I was not asleep. However, and I called to him, this seemed to allay his fears a little. But he took the precaution of putting a glass of spirits of camphor on a little table at the head of his bed. In case I didn't arouse him until he was almost gone, he said he would sniff the camphor, a powerful reviver. Briggs was not the only member of his family who had his crotchets. Old Aunt Melissa Beale, who could whistle like a man with two fingers in her mouth. suffered under the premonition that she was destined to die on South High Street because she had been born on South High Street and married on South High Street. Then there was Aunt Sarah Schoaf, who never went to bed at night without the fear that a burglar was going to get in and blow chloroform under her door through a tube. To avert this calamity, for she was in greater dread of anesthetics than of losing her household goods, she always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in a neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note reading, This is all I have. Please take it and do not use your chloroform, as this is all I have. Aunt Gracie Shoaf also had a burglar phobia, but she met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars had been getting into her home every night for 40 years. The fact that she never missed anything was to her no proof to the contrary. She always claimed that she scared them off before they could take anything by throwing shoes down the hallway. When she went to bed, she piled where she could get at them handily. All the shoes there were about her house. Five minutes after she'd turned off the light, she would sit up in bed and say, Hark! Her husband, who had learned to ignore the whole situation as long ago as 1903, would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep. In either case, he would not respond to her tugging and pulling, so that presently she would rise, tiptoe to the door, open it slightly, and heave a shoe down the hall in one direction, and its mate down the hall in the other direction. Some nights she threw them all, some nights only a couple of pair. If you're watching, here is the aunt throwing the shoes. Hark! But I am straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the night the bed fell on Father. By midnight, we were all in bed. The layout of the rooms and the disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding of what later occurred in the front room upstairs, just under Father's attic bedroom. were my mother and my brother Herman, who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia or onward Christian soldiers. Brigsbill and myself were in a room adjoining this one. My brother Roy was in a room across the hall from ours. Our bull terrier Rex slept in the hall. My bed was an army cot, one of those affairs which are made wide enough to sleep on comfortably only by putting up, flat with the middle section, the two sides which ordinarily hang down like the sideboards of a drop-leaf table. When those sides are up, it is perilous to roll too far towards the edge, for when the cot is then likely to tip completely over, bringing the whole bed down on top of one with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact, is precisely what happened about two o'clock in the morning. It was my mother who, in recalling the scene later, first referred to it as the night the bed fell on your father. Always a deep sleeper, slow to arouse, I had lied to Briggs. I was at first unconscious of what had happened when the iron cot rolled me onto the floor and toppled over on me. It left me still warmly bundled up and unhurt, for the bed rested above me like a canopy. Hence, I did not wake up, only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however, instantly awakened my mother in the next room, who came to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized. The big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She therefore screamed,' Let' s go to your poor father!' It was this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling, that awakened Herman in the same room with her. He thought that Mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical.' You' re all right, Mama!' he shouted, trying to calm her. They exchanged shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds.' Let' s go to your poor father, and you're all right!' That woke up Briggs. By this time, I was conscious of what was going on in a vague way, but did not yet realize that I was under my bed instead of on it. Briggs, awakening in the middle of loud shouts of fear and apprehension, came to the quick conclusion that he was suffocating, and that we were all trying to bring him out with a low moan. He grasped the glass of camphor at the head of his bed, and instead of sniffing it, poured it over himself. And here, again, if you're watching, is Briggs coming out of his stupor. The room reeked of camphor. Choked Briggs like a drowning man, for he had almost succeeded in stopping his breath under the deluge of pungent spirits. He leaped out of bed and groped toward the open window, but he came up against one that was closed. With his hand, he beat out the glass, and I could hear it crash and tinkle on the alleyway below. It was at this juncture that I, in trying to get up, had the uncanny sensation of feeling my bed above me. Foggy with sleep, I now suspected in my turn that the whole uproar was being made in a frantic endeavor to extricate me from what must be an unheard-of and perilous situation. Get me out of this, I bawled. Get me out! I think I had the nightmarish belief that I was entombed in a mine. Gah! gasped Briggs, floundering in his camphor. And by this time, my mother, still shouting, pursued by Herman, still shouting, was trying to open up the door to the attic in order to go up and get my father's body out of the wreckage. The door was stuck, however, and wouldn't yield. Her frantic pulls on it only added to the general banging and confusion. Roy and the dog were now up, the one shouting questions, the other barking. Father? farthest away and soundest sleeper of all, had by this time been awakened by the battering on the attic door, he decided the house was on fire. I'm coming, I'm coming, he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice. It took him many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother, still believing he was caught under the bed, detected in his, quote, I'm coming voice, the mournful, resigned note of one who is preparing to meet his maker. He's dying, she shouted. I'm all right, Briggs yelled to reassure her. I'm all right. He still believed that it was his own closeness to death that was worrying Mother. I found, at last, the light switch in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs and I joined the others at the attic door. The dog... who never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that he was the culprit in whatever was going on, and Roy had to throw Rex and hold him. There he is, throwing Rex and holding him. We could hear Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled the attic door open with a mighty jerk and father came down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound. My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex began to howl. What in the name of God is going on here? Asked father. The situation was finally put together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were no other bad results. I'm glad, said mother, who always looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Our musical directors of Countdown are John Philip Chanel, keyboards and orchestration, Brian Ray, guitars, bass and drums. Their work is produced by TKO Brothers, who are John Philip Chanel, Brian Ray and me. Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever, is responsible for the satirical and pithy musical comments. The sports music is the old Olbermann Show theme from ESPN2, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed, and my announcer today was my friend Kenny Mayne. Everything else was, as always, my fault. It's countdown for today, day 627 of America held hostage again. Exactly 822 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term, unless it ends early because one of Trump's doctors listens to my plea and goes public about the IQ tests that are actually sanity tests and becomes 21st century psychology Jesus. If you're listening, remember you can see the whole thing now on YouTube. If you're watching, remember you can skip the video part and just listen wherever you podcast. Like and subscribe. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Probably management reserves the right to get another heart procedure instead. Bulletin says the news merits. 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.
