Full Transcript for TRUMP ISSUES NEW TERROR THREAT - 2.20.24

resting its hopes on merely answering the age plot, it will not work. This has to be a multi pronged offense. Yes, show what they called half seriously during the Kennedy presidency Viga, but at the same time we have to see the most pointed, searing, annihilating, ubiquitous advertising campaign against Trump. The only complexity in this is which campaign themes Trump has handed them to choose from. Obviously all the dictatorship ones, the insanity ones, Trump's cognition crisis, the insurrection ones, and the new one that it looks to me like Democrats are not seeing for the easy campaign kills shot. It really is. Since the New York Times story late last week about Trump privately saying he likes the idea of a sixteen week national abortion ban, with some exceptions. Much of the talk has been about the length, about the sixteen weeks and how he's trying to look moderate by saying sixteen weeks, and his terrifying imbecility that he likes sixteen weeks because it's a nice even number, and his quote in the Times article, you know what I like about sixteen it's even, it's four months, and as stupid and as terrifying as that is, we're missing the point. The Republican presidential candidate favors a national abortion ban. No more tap dancing, like every Republican dating back to Gerald Ford, no more of the states should make the call. V Wade the same stuff Trump himself boasted about national abortion ban Alabama, Texas, Missouri, New York, California. I take a thirty second TV spot. It's a black screen. There's a tiny picture of Trump in the middle, growing ever larger by the second. Silence, no voiceover, no music, nothing for ten seconds. Then an announcer says Donald Trump says he will institute a national abortion ban. Silence for ten more seconds. Then as the picture of Trump hits the full screen. I'm Joe Biden, and I approved this message because I won't back briefly to the Axios story on the reset, I'll just quote this. Mark Zandi and his fellow Moody's analytics experts said in a paper last month that although a bi Trump rematch would be a nail bier, they feel confident in their state by state model's prediction of a Biden win. In fact, they say economic swings could alter the model considerably, and if Republican turnout in the swing States grows even modestly, Trump might win two seventy one to two sixty seven. But with average turnout Biden three hundred and eight, Trump two thirty. I'll take it. Also. I don't know how the hell you could have missed this in the Washington Post. But hero of the day is Abraham Lincoln. Historian and history instructor David J. Gerlman of George Mason University in Virginia, And all he did was thumb through a twenty two page report on the trial of a union civilian employee during the Civil War to discover the astonishing fact that in eighteen sixty four, Abraham Lincoln pardoned Joe Biden's great great grandfather, Moses J. Robinette, a civilian hired as a veterinary surgeon to take care of Union horses in Virginia. He got into a knife fight with another civilian working with the Federal Army, a man named John Jay. Alexander Robinette made some sort of wise crack about the much bigger Alexander to the female cook at the army camp. I like this guy already, and feel as if I met him. Alexander threatened him, and in his own defense, he claimed Robinette drew his pocket knife and cut him, not seriously, but because that was considered a weapon, Army Reggs required that attempt to kill be included in the charges, and he got two years at hard labor on the Dry Tortugas off Florida, which is where President Lincoln comes in. Apparently everybody loved Moses J. Robinette, described as full of fun, always lively and joking. Again, I feel like I met him. Three military figures petitioned to have President Lincoln pardon Moses J. Robinette, and a month after arriving at the Dry Tortugas, Lincoln wrote on the appeal pardon for unexecuted part of punishment A. Lincoln September one, eighteen sixty four. 00:12:35 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:12:37 Speaker 1: Moses Robinette, who lived until nineteen o three, had a granddaughter named Mary Elizabeth Robinette. She married Joseph Harry Biden. Their son was Joseph Robinette Biden, Senior, and his son is the President. But the best part of this remains one quote dug up in Professor Gerlman's research. In imploring Lincoln to pardon him, the friends of Moses J. Robinett described him as quote ardent and influential in opposing traitors and their schemes to destroy the government. Wow. By the way, Congressman James Comer and Trump thug Robert Hurr have just found out about Lincoln pardoning Biden's great great grandfather, so that'll be starting the impeachment hearing on it on Friday. I made that up. I probably shouldn't have. I don't want to give them any ideas. I wish I were making this up. There is another potential campaign issue here, and it is isolationism, and we are seeing it play out with deadly seriousness. The cowardice of Senator JD. Vance. This is the clown who was running forth in the Ohio senatorial primary when he sold his ass to Trump. For an endorsement, and he is now not just senator, but the ranking member on the Senate Checks Notes, Beard Trimming and Facial Grooming Committee. The useless, vile, vacuous performance artist think ted Cruz without the podcast. For the same reasons a YouTuber would go there. JD. Vance went to the Munich Security Conference. Julia naval Naya went there as well. She went there as the wife of the imprisoned Alexe Navalni and while she was there she found out she had become his widow. Not an hour or two later, she addressed the conference with dignity, with bravery, and with heartbreak. From this country we sent this isolationist putts Vance. He stood around giving snarky comments to American political reporters gullible enough to platform him. He insisted, the US does not have the resources to fight multifront wars, so we need to tell Ukraine to seed territory to Putin. How

many more Ukrainians get killed before we get there, he asked, of course, if we get there, if we get to that point, we will have no choice but to soon summon the resources to actually fight a multifront war in Europe, because Putin will take our willingness to negotiate away part of Ukraine as exactly what Hitler understood the European Democracy's willingness to negotiate away Czechoslovakia and Poland to be in nineteen thirty eight nineteen thirty nine. Appeasement. Jd Vance is an appeaser. Jd Vance would have appeased Hitler. The West doesn't make enough munitions to support an indefinite war. Vance belched, Ukraine doesn't have enough manpower to support an indefinite war. We have to be realistic. Unquote, we are being realistic, Beard, Oh, very realistic. Ukraine is fighting Russia in Russia, so we don't have to because if we have to fight a madman dictator like Putin, we wouldn't know if we could control it, and the risk of genuine conflict, even nuclear conflict with Russia begins to escalate with just one mentally unbalanced authoritarian holding his finger on the button, let alone returning a second one into this equation in Trump, jd Vance will never understand, or he is prostituting himself to pretend to not understand, that we are not helping Ukraine. Ukraine is helping us, so we don't have to summon the munitions to support an indefinite war against Putin or to summon the troops. Then, of course there is Vance's personal cowardice. He's not just an appeaser. Well, I was going to say something else, but I'll skip it. He's not just an appeaser. He was invited to attend a meeting with President Zelenski of Ukraine. He said that while his position was underrepresented in Munich, you know, give the world to Putin and betray our allies. He didn't want to go to meet Zelenski because he didn't think he would learn anything new. Of course, in this he is correct. There is no evidence that Jay d Vantz has learned anything new since he got out of diapers, if he did, and of course there is no evidence that at its core his Republican Party has learned anything new since the original America firsters and Charles Lindberg and William Borra tried to take over this country and demonize Jewish Americans in order to appease Hitler in nineteen forty. They were a cancer on our land then, and Trump is a cancer on our land now. And I do not think it is entirely a coincidence that when Nebl Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, attempted and in fact gave away Czechoslovakia to Hitler in nineteen thirty eight, the deal was made in Munich and JD. Vance is willing to give away Ukraine to Putin and made this statement in Munich, rhyming with Unich also of interest here. I know her nearly eighteen years now, and no, I don't know what happened to Katie Turr on MSNBC last week, or how she went from being somebody I cared deeply about who used to help me with the special comments about George Bush on MSNBC, somebody in twenty sixteen who Donald Trump tried to get killed. How she went from that to becoming somebody calling him a New York and asking on her program on her newscast if it was fair to prosecute him, and doing it on a television network I built. I don't know what has happened to Katie Terr, but I do have a theory that's next. This is an all new edition of Countdown. 00:19:27 Speaker 3: This is Countdown with Keith Olbermant. 00:19:36 Speaker 1: Postscripts to the news some headlines, some updates, some snark, some prediction, stateline thirty Rock Manhattan. Okay, I'm confused, as everybody else is. For a year and a half after he came down that escalator, Donald Trump tried to get Katie Turr killed, called her out repeatedly at his campaign speeches, pointed her out to his mobs sooner rather than later. They had to get her Secret Service protection. Last Friday on MSNBC, Katie carried so much water so quickly for Trump that she was still trending for it on Saturday, and she was the headline story on nearly every right wing propaganda website. Not good. She insisted he was a legend in New York City. Trump is synonymous with New York. She then posited that there were no true victims in the business fraud case, for which Trump must now pay three hundred and fifty five million dollars in fines. She asked a panel of startled guests, is this fair to go after Donald Trump like this in this environment? 00:20:50 Speaker 3: Ah? 00:20:52 Speaker 1: Don't know where to begin here. I am beginning to suspect sort of late flossoming Stockholm syndrome or blackmail maybe, or something else unknown in this equation when they asked Katie to go cover Trump's announcement that he was running. She was working out of NBC's London bureau and was only back here in the city for a few days to meet her new boss and stop by and visit her old friends and me. She told me she did not want anything to do with American politics. She had gotten an interview with him when she eventually went to cover his announcement. He knew that she and I had lived together in one of his buildings. The interview was good, It was contentious in many respects. It was the last solid interview anybody ever did with Trump, and NBC immediately saw that and asked her to cover his campaign full time, figuring it would sput her out at some point, but that she had access to him. She told me she didn't want anything to do with that either, and I suggested that was probably the wrong answer and that I'd help her get through it, that it could make her career so off she went. She would send me her NBC Dotory scripts to edit or rewrite for her, and as the threats continued against her, I just tried to be supportive and reassuring I had broken up with her seven years earlier, but we had parted it as friends. I had never had any reason to doubt that that would continue. And then one day I attacked Kelly and Conway on Twitter. I know, not a very high bar, but still I did it. The next thing I know, I'm getting a text from Katie Turr and

then a phone call, and she's really angry at me, saying Conway called her up about what I had tweeted, and that I needed to remember that there were decent people on both sides and bad ones, and everybody got threats, and it was really inappropriate for me to contribute to the quote dangers Kelly and Conway faced, I said something about, well, yeah, I'm sure there are decent people on both sides, but she's not one of them. I said to her, Kelly and Conway, you're worried about about Kelly and Conway. She's part of a gang that has spent the last year trying to get you killed, killed, not inconvenience, not fired, killed enough that the Secret Service stepped in. Are you nuts? Well? It turned out Kelly n. Conway was one of Katie's sources. In fact, she might have been the main source for the networks and the big newspapers during the twenty sixteen campaign and beyond. Apparently she cannot stop talking. But even so, Katie's attitude towards her and against me was out of the blue and really offensive. Anyway, it passed, and maybe two months later I got a text from her at nine to fourteen PM on December eleven, and twenty sixteen. This is called having the receipts. Trump had won. Our nightmare had begun, and Katie had gotten a book deal about her experience. I'd been keeping a document in my laptop with hundreds of pages of Trump stories and links and commentaries that I used for the Resistance video series for GQ. It was my Trump doc, and given that Katie was writing that book, I'd offered to give her a copy of it so she had something chronological to use as research as she wrote her book, because she hadn't really been keeping notes, she'd just been trying not to get killed. I still have her text. It reads, do you still want to share your Trump dock with me? I joked back, sure, how much? And she joked back ten twenty dollars, And while we were texting, I emailed her the doc and I said, no charge, but don't forget my one demand. Do not leave me out of your acknowledgments in your book. More than a month later, at two thirty five pm on Sunday, January twenty second, twenty seventeen, I was just back from la and I had just done Bill Maher's show for the last time, and Katie ter texted me about why they had never invited her to be on Bill Maher's show, and then she switched topics. Quote, want to write this book, I wrote back at five point thirty two. What You're not serious? How would that work? That's when she phoned. She was about to give the advanced money back to the publisher. I can't write a book. I'm like fifty thousand words short and it's terrible. I'll give you half the money. I'll give you more than half the money. I pointed out to her that I had written or rewritten dozens of her stories for NBC News and MSNBC, and it was not the question of the money. It was a question of what we could get away with no viewer, and maybe only one producer in a million would ever notice that one sentence or one paragraph of one script in her two minute report was actually written by me or even sounded like me. First of all, she was the one saying it each time I wrote or re wrote in her name for NBC. It was a fireable offense for her, but one that nobody would ever think to look for, even though there is necessarily an email trail ten miles long. But a book, a book about Trump in my writing style, not hers in print. I have a fairly distinct writing style, and I'm not good at hide it. Somebody would notice. Her publisher might cancel it or even sue, or if it got published, NBC might notice it and fire her. This was not just a bad idea, I pointed out to her, and very dubious ethically, but it stood an excellent chance of destroying her career and maybe damaging mine. She said okay, And she told me she was going to talk it over with her boyfriend Tony from CBS that night, and her thought was to give back the advance and cancel the book. And I said, did you think about a ghostwriter? And she said, like who? And I said, I had no idea. I tried to joke her out of these grim prospects by reminding her that at least for a several thousand dollars worth of research I gave her, I had cut the price to no dollars and no sense, and all I wanted was to not be left out of the acknowledgments. The next thing I knew the book had been published. She didn't give the money back. There was not a paragraph of it that reads like the rest of her writing, and the three years we lived together is reduced to about four paragraphs in which she tells the story of the day Kelly an Kahn Job called her to complain about me. The book dismissed me as somebody she dated briefly in her twenties. I mean I paid off her student loans. I rented an apartment for her after we broke up for a year so she could continue to work in this city and punchline of all punchlines. Remember my one request to her, don't leave me out of the acknowledgments. She left me out of the acknowledgments. There were later problems. She talked me out of doing an interview with the Washington Post that wanted to interview me about her, saying she wasn't going to participate in the story and it was sexist to call her ex boyfriend, and she hoped I wouldn't do it either, and I agreed it was sexist. Then the article came out and she had done the interview for it, and the article reads, her former boyfriend Keith Overman, refused to comment for this article, and I look like a schmuck. Then a month or two later, there's a New York Times article about her and the book, and it says I had refused the writer's request to comment to the Times. And not only did nobody from the Times ever request to comment, but I didn't even recognize the writer's name. So I find it call her up and I say, have we ever spoken before? And she says no. But I asked Katie to ask you for a comment. And she called me back and she said she'd spoken to you and asked you to do the interview with me, and you said no, And I said, bad news. She never called me, the writer gasped, But the problems at the

Times this is a subject of an entirely different commentary. So that was the last time I had any contact with Katie. Chair I told her that that was it for the friendship. She said she was sorry, she was a terrible person. Well, at least for all of us, Katie, me, for guests, the viewers who saw her go over the Trump side last week, we can agree on that she sure is a terrible person. Still ahead of us on this all new edition of Countdown Things I promised not to tell, and for reasons I'll explain, I spent part of the weekend reliving the weirdest, briefest job I ever had. Six months is one of the top TV sportscasters in Boston, and it literally ended with one of those you can't quit me, I'm firing you moments with my boss, My boss who twenty five years later started sending me fan mail. Coming up first, Yes, the daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute two days worse parsons in the world. The Bronze the worse. An unidentified couple guys photographed on top of a moving subway train along an elevated part of the Seven Line over Queens Here in Fun City. This is called subway surfing, and it's been going on for seventy five years at least. My friend Kareem Abdul Jabbar says he did it when he was a kid, and he is amazed he lived to tell about it, especially when the train would go back into the tunnel. But these guys on the seven train, they've elevated the game. They appeared to be having sex on top of the moving train. Is this the local or the Express? Actually it can be worse. I once rode into work on an F train in the nineteen eighties and there was a guy sprawled across one whole row of seats with a copy of the New York Post covering his face. When I went home that night, sure enough, I happened to get on exactly the same train car, and exactly the same guy was still there, still sprawled over the same seats because he was dead. Anyway, I'm only really telling this story so I can get in the quote from the communications director of the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority quote. They's reckless clowns aren't thinking about the mess cleaners and other subway workers will have to deal with when their stupid stunt goes tragically wrong, said Tim Minton. Tim Minton was the sports director of WVBRFM at Cornell briefly before they got rid of him, and I succeeded him. We were freshmen there together. This was in nineteen seventy six. Happily, Tim and I have almost moved past this event. Maybe he has the bronze worse here. I've said it before and I'll say it again. There are a lot of dumb people at Fox. That's why they were hired. But I cannot think of anybody more dumb for more years in a row than Brian kill me. After the Trump New York fraud ruling, he tweeted, this three hundred and fifty four million dollar penalty only makes Trump stronger. Never had a chance with this comic book character Judge Engern. Bad news for Nicky Haley and Joe Biden. First of all, it's not. It's not bad news for Nicky Haley or Joe Biden. They don't have to sell property at a loss to pay all or most of the three hundred and fifty five million dollar fine into escrow within thirty days just to appeal to find Alena Hobbas says, they actually have to pay more than three hundred and fifty five million. It's not bad news for Haley, It's not bad for Biden. It's bad news for Trump. He's out three hundred and fifty five million dollars. Even Trump knows what that is. But that's not the point. Kill Mead's gonna kill Mead. It's his spelling. How could you have misspelled the first five words of that tweet? How can you misspell three hundred and fifty four million? He made it into one word, and then three hundred and fifty four million dollar penalty. He misspelled penally penalty pe n e lt y. But the winner the worst, that new shoe magnate Trump himself. I mean, look, if you could get one thousand pairs of cheap generic versions of Chuck Taylor's spray, paint them with rustolium number three four h six four seven, and sell them for four hundred bucks a pair to these psychos who think that they will get into heaven or something because they bought these crappy shoes, you'd do it right. You wouldn't bless you anyway. A lot of good obvious jokes like mine trump sneakers for the guy trying to run away from the draft. Paul mcgalla is about they're good if you have bone spurs. That meme in which Dorothy's House from the Wizard of Oz has just fallen on top of the wicked Witch of the East. Only the shoes sticking out from under the house are these crappy Trump gold ones. But the joke was by comedy writer Mark Age, who hit one hundred in a beautiful sixcinct dry creation quote. Tried hooping in these, but all I could do was draw charges. I mean, how could you ever top that? Trump and his shoe community. Try hooping in these, but all you can do is draw charges. Two days worst Persons. 00:34:37 Speaker 2: And finally to the proverbial top of the countdown and things I promised not to tell. 00:34:55 Speaker 1: And I actually spent part of the weekend trying to help a young guy get started in television news. And no I didn't. I didn't tell him, don't do it. He's a college senior in Boston and he wants to work there. So I found myself reviewing my very interesting but very brief career in Boston with him, and with the fellow I sent him to, who, by coincidence, now holds exactly the same job I held starting for six fabulous months starting forty years ago this April, Now. 00:35:38 Speaker 3: News Center five Tonight You're complete News Update with Natalie Jacobson, Chet Curtis, meteorologist Dick Albert, and Keith Oberman on sports recording live from New England's News Center. Natalie Jacobson and Chet Curtis. 00:35:55 Speaker 1: Good evening, we're interrupting our network. At Boston Red Sox spring training in nineteen eighty three, a fellow named Bob Clark introduced himself as the sports producer at this Boston State and said they were all fans of my CNN work and that there

would be a job opening that summer as sports anchor, and could he go to his bosses and say I was interested? And I said sure, And in fact, if he wanted me to go with him to tell his bosses that, or if he needed me to carry him to go tell his bosses that, I was ready. Things advanced so quickly that by Monday, July eighteenth, nineteen eighty three, I found myself flying up from New York with my agent, and as Boston appeared out the window of the plane, she said, you will own this town. Not so much maybe later I went out to the station's headquarters in a barren suburb called Needham and interviewed with everybody, sports producers, the news director, finally the general manager. Everybody beamed at me and all was going great, having laughed at several of my jokes and told me he loved my tape. The general manager a man named Coppersmith, who was about to usher me out of his office with a big hand on my shoulder when I made a terrible, terrible mistake. I told him we had met before, when I was a TV intern and he was the general manager of his parent company station in New York. I remember him looking at me quizically, and only later did I find out that all of his people had lied to him without telling me, and they had told him I was twenty eight years old. They did not tell me that since I was twenty four years old. Copper Smith's last year at Channel five in New York had been nineteen seventy eight, and even giving me the benefit of the aged out, he decided I was no longer anything older than twenty six, and ultimately he thought that was too young to be a sports anchor in a major television market, back when those used to be important jobs that paid important money. Their sportscasters. Since the station had gone on the air in the nineteen fifties had been an avuncular, pleasant, gifted man named Don Gillis, but he was cutting back where they had decided to cut him back to special feature Judy. The next day, back in New York City, I went out to find out if the Boston newspapers had found anything out about my surreptitious trip there. I went to a place so wonderful and now so impossible to explain to anybody, the out of town newspaper and magazine shop in the lobby of the pan Am building, adjacent to the Grand Central train station. This was one of the smaller of the out of town newsstands in New York. It carried about two hundred different American newspapers, dozens more from around the world, and every imaginable international magazine was always packed. Its entire glory has been wiped out by the Internet anyway. I bought the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald from the same day, and there it was on page thirty two of the Globe, a headline over a feature by the TV sports columnist Jack Craig. Gillis departing soon on Horizon Olderman's credentials, Good Young Keith Olberman of Cable News Network CNN reportedly was very favorably interviewed at Channel five yesterday, possibly signaling the end of the Don Gillis era more quickly than anticipated. I was young then, but look credentials good, it said in the headline. This was it the start of my TV career for real. No more having to explain to doubting athletes, doubting colleagues, doubting relatives, doubting team executives that there really was a TV place called Cable News Network parenthesis CNN, big money and big fame in one of the best sports cities in the nation. As even the Globes article noted, there is a hitch. Alderman's contract with CNN does not expire until next May, and whether he would be let out for Channel five is uncertain. Well, sure it was, but CNN would be nice guys about it, right. This was real TV, not some perpetual verge of bankruptcy cable thing. It was really just a big delusion by Ted Turner. And they needed eight cameras in New York, but that can only afford seven being used in the field for ten hours. One cameraman would have to lash his camera to a tripod for the wide shot shot for the nightly Sandy Freeman audio talk show. Even after the inevitable occurred one night and the overworked camera burst into flames on live TV, CNN would understand by the way, Sandy Freeman was replaced about a year later by Larry King. That's how long ago this actually was. Anyway, CNN's less than happy reaction to this was academic. I had unwitningly blown it when I revealed to that guy Coppersmith that I was not twenty eight years old. Sure enough. On August fifteenth, WCBB Channel five Boston announced the hiring of a Miami sportscaster named Lee Webb to succeed Don Gillis. Webb was a lot of things, and he wasn't a lot of other things, but hot damn. He was thirty years old, and that made him the man in the eyes of the general manager, mister Coppersmith. On the other hand, copper Smith thought his station should still hire me as a reporter. The news director, a man who went by the imposing name of Philip Scribner Balboni, offered me a spot as a feature news reporter a producer, and I would look for offbeat, on usual unique stories and go cover them. It was not the sports anchor's job, but it wasn't CNN either. WCBB would also wait until CNN finally accepted that it was over between the two of us. Whenever that was then, three more things happened in quick succession. Channel five hired a new sports director, a producer who would run the department and set its editorial tone. His name was Mike Frnandi's, and even after working with him for six months, the only thing I knew about him was that he had no sense of humor. He understood that I was making jokes, but he never got one of them. And his principal interest in sports was apparently determining which players were Don Jan's so he could refer to them endlessly in the office as quote swordsman. The second thing that happened was that the sports reporter at Channel five, Bob Ryan, already very famous at the Boston Globe later even more so nationally at ESPN, told management he just could not do both the TV and newspaper jobs anymore and he needed to quit. Mind you,

this was how important sports was on local TV in Boston in nineteen eighty three, they had an on air sportscast, you're a weekend sportscast, you're a sportscast, you're emeritus, and an on air sports reporter, plus all the producers and the off air sports director. Often the sportscast in the hour long six o'clock news, and there was only the one hour of news. The sportscast lasted ten minutes. So now, having already offered me the feature news reporting job, news director Philip Scribner Balboni offered me my choice of that job or Bob Ryan's sports reporting job. And while I was debating that, I managed to resist all efforts to turn me into a newsman for fifteen years. While I was debating that, another Boston station suddenly jumped into the fray. Channel seven was a perennial also ran compared to Channel five, whose newscasts were among the best, if not the best, in the country. Without as much as asking me to even come visit, Channel seven offered me the job as its sports director, anchored the sports at six and eleven, run the department, and get much more money than Channel five. It offered me, and I turned it down out of loyalty to Channel five, because they asked first, I turned it down. Moren Channel five was out in the as I said, barn suburbs. Channel seven was in downtown Boston. I would be making like one hundred thousand a year at age twenty five, with no responsibilities, living and working in downtown Boston in nineteen eighty four. Moren So anyway, I get to Boston at the end of April nineteen eighty four at Channel five, and on my first day out in the barren suburbs, I walk up a c were staircase to the sports department office and I hit my head on the staircase and bled so much they all thought I was going to need stitches. And I went back to the half a house I had moved to, one of exactly two rental properties in the entire town of Nita, Massachusetts, and I thought, what the hell have I done? No things improved. I was not just in the field. I did a lot of substitute anchoring, especially on weekends, and the first time I did that, Susan Warnick, one of our reporters and the wife of the big sportscaster in town, Bob Lobell from Channel four. Susan came up to me in the office on Monday and gave me a big wet kiss on the lips and said, you were terrific. Lo bell Is scared Crapless, I love you. The first time I did a live shot before Celtics game at Boston Garden, I wandered around the arena without being recognized. Once two weeks later, I went back to the Garden and I went to get a hot dog and turned to find a crowd of several dozen viewers, all shouting at me in the the angular language of the Boston sports fan. On Monday, June eleventh, nineteen eighty four, Balboni, the news director, called me in and said he wanted me to start anchoring every night on the eleven o'clock news. Lee Web would continue on the six. But the intimation was if it went the way he thought it was going to, I would get that show too. But the problem was,

and I don't know if you've noticed this, but occasionally I like to make jokes, Okay, I need to make jokes. And several of the executives at the station were real fans of the Red Sox and Celtics and Patriots and Bruins, and they did not like the jokes. Even if the viewers liked the jokes, they didn't. One day, I was supposed to go with a cameraman to shoot a piece in which I pretended to interview the Green Monster, the famed leftfield wall at Fenway Park. The punchline was it would turn out the Green Monster didn't like baseball. Not a bad idea for nineteen eighty four. Just as we're leaving the station, the sports director for now, and he said, change of plans. Needs to go to Smithfield. That was where the football team held its training camp. Patriots just put their back up middle lineback on waivers, go get some sound. He didn't need any sound. The executives who didn't like my jokes had gotten the executive who didn't get my jokes to stop giving me the chance to do my jokes. It was an hour and a half to Smithfield. I was done for the day. I went home for a little trip to New York. In early September, met with my agent, told her that after all the time and all the energy we had spent to get that job, this was the most impossible to imagine outcome. But it was the wrong station in the wrong suburb. In the right town, and I didn't know how we could ever fix it. She agreed. She said I should go in and tell the news director I wanted to quit, and then I'd stay as long as he needed me. But that if they weren't going to let me do the jokes, what was the point. I was an okay reporter, I was an okay sportscaster. But only with the jokes was I me So September tenth, teen eighty four, a Monday, the news director was not happy. He offered, in fact, to fire Lee Webb on the spot and give me the six o'clock show immediately, like that night. Like Lee, Lee web out of the building that minute. But I told him that would mean he would be keeping somebody who wanted to leave and firing somebody who wanted to stay. He angrily agreed, and I became a secret leam duck, and I stayed on getting fewer and fewer chances to be me, although they stuck to their end of it. They sent me to cover the World Series in San Diego and Detroit, where the guy next to me in the press box covering it for Channel seven. The place I should have gone to work was their new sports reporter, a just retired Red Sox Hall of Fame player named Carl Yastremsky. I hit a ball over here, I hit a ball over there. I hit three balls over that roof. Then, when I got back from the World Series, it happened on Friday October nineteenth, nineteen eighty four, that TV sports columnist from the Boston Globe, Jack Craig, called me up at home and told me Channel five was firing me because of bad ratings at eleven o'clock. I didn't have bad ratings at eleven o'clock. In fact, I had great ratings, and six weeks earlier they'd offered me the six o'clock show as well. I hung up with Craig to call my agent, and instead of a dial tone, I heard the voice of the TV sports columnist from the Boston Herald, Jim Baker. I had answered his call fort rang. He told me Channel five was firing me and Lee Webb so it could instead hire Ken the Hawk Harrelson, the former Red Sox star and TV announcer who had moved to Chicago. So now I call my agent. She says, your deal with Channel five is off. They want to make it look like you stink. They want to make it look like they just fired you. You called Jim Baker and Jack Craig right now and tell them the whole story. Wherever you go next, it has to be clear that you weren't fired, you quit and you stayed on because you're a pro, which you know was true. So I called. I told both writers everything, and two minutes after I got off the phone with Jack Craig from The Globe, the phone and it was Jim Baker from The Harold calling back, and he says, you'll never believe this. Their negotiations with Hawk Harrelson are dead. Apparently he wanted four hundred thousand dollars a year and to guarantee that he only had to come in five minutes before each show to get makeup and then read the script that somebody else wrote. So you are now our lead story. Sure enough. Backpage of the Boston Harald, Saturday, October twenty, nineteen eighty four, above the masthead Overman quits Channel five at the same hour I was supposed to go to Morgantown, West Virginia, the place that was designed simply to make that lovely town of Needham Massachusetts look like I don't know the Riviera. I was supposed to go to Morgantown to cover Doug Flute and Boston College against the University of West Virginia. Since I lived between the television station and the airport, the cameraman was going to swing by my house to pick me up. Do it like seven am I ever showed? By this point, I'm thinking I just had to call my lying boss's liars in both Boston newspapers that are on every newsstand in the city and the surrounding area. Why am I going to race the clock to get to the airport on my own when this idiot cameraman forgot to come get me. When we had made the arrangements the day before, the cameraman had gotten my name wrong and called me Dick. At least that's why I thought he'd called me Dick. Anyway, I was twenty five. I went back to bed, and while I was asleep, Channel five fired me from a job that I had not only quit, but I had quit twice, including on the front page of the newspapers that morning. The Channel five people were furious. I put up a brave front, but beneath the surface I was a little scared until two more things happened before I could move back to New York. The news director Phil Balboni told Craig of the Globe that it was all too bad because quote Keith was potentially such a major talent. Ooh ooh. And then the general manager, Coppersmith, was so angry that he sold my agent he will never again work in this business. I am not a big believer in motivational quotes, but those two those really worked. Number one and two on my all time list, and as always, beyond that, there's a punchline. In two thousand and seven, an email popped into my inbox at MSNBC. It was glowing and warm and lovely, and it indicated the writer was a huge fan. It was signed You're old Channel five news director Phil Balboni. His email did not mention that I was potentially such a major talent. Also, I am now now informed that they have taken down that spiral staircase, so if I ever have to go back there, I'm safe, probably, But they didn't even put up a monument or anything to my head wound. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Tell somebody about this award nominated show. Get somebody to subscribe. If you like the show, people say nice things about the show, get somebody else to subscribe. I'll make a little extra thanks for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip schaneil Arrange produced and performed most of our music. Mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums, Mister Shanelle handling, of course, orchestration and keyboards produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Ulberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was keeping with the Boston theme my friend Dennis Leary. Everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the two hundred and sixtieth day until the twenty twenty four United States presidential election, but thirty ninth days since Dementia J. Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States use the Fourteenth Amendment, the Insurrection Act, the Justice system, the mental health system, anti terrorism statutes to stop him from doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Boltons is the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a product of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.