0:04

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a

0:06

production of iHeartRadio.

0:21

The story of the reaction to Justice

0:24

meyr Sean's stark warning to Trump

0:26

that he may put him in jail the next time he violates

0:28

the gag order, and the story of

0:31

the defense of and acceptance

0:34

of Christy Nome inside the Trump

0:36

cult for having murdered her dog and

0:38

threatening President Biden's dog. Those

0:41

are actually the same

0:43

story. The story

0:46

is the point is killing.

0:50

They are about one thing at their

0:53

core. Gnome and Trump and

0:55

Maga and Trump's Supreme Court

0:57

justices and his slaves inside

0:59

the House and the Senate believe they

1:02

have a right to

1:05

kill. Today,

1:08

they have that right to kill their dogs.

1:11

Tomorrow it's your dog. Then

1:15

it's the judge, the day

1:17

after that, it's all the immigrants.

1:20

Finally, it will be anything

1:22

and anybody. Do

1:25

not mistake them, Do not mistake

1:27

what this is really about. Do

1:30

not forget that even as chilling

1:32

a phrase as political

1:34

violence is itself

1:36

just a euphemism. Political

1:38

violence is murder,

1:41

individual murder, mass murder, or

1:43

if the rest of us are lucky, just

1:45

attempted murder or threatened murder.

1:49

Every Trump attack, on every

1:51

witness, on every judge, on every

1:53

prosecutor, on every opponent,

1:56

on every institution, every stochastic

1:59

call to end this, every

2:02

reference to bedlam, every meme of

2:04

the President of the United States bound and gagged,

2:07

every Tim Scott refusing to honor

2:09

the outcome of an election, every reference

2:12

to patriots and deep states and rigged

2:14

elections, and I am your retribution. They

2:17

all have the unspoken second

2:19

half to them. Those who

2:21

try to stop us will

2:24

do what we say, or

2:27

we will kill

2:29

them. One

2:33

third of Trump supporters who had

2:35

heard about Gnome killing her dog

2:38

told a yuga of poll that

2:40

it was acceptable. Twenty

2:42

nine percent weren't sure,

2:46

so the total of Trump voters who would

2:48

not criticize Gnome murdering

2:51

a puppy was six

2:53

out of ten. Nationwide,

2:56

fifteen percent of Americans thought it was acceptable.

2:59

Four percent of Biden voters thought

3:01

it was acceptable. Six out of

3:03

ten Trump cultists support

3:06

Christy Nomes shooting her dog in the face

3:09

or are not sure they would criticize her for

3:11

it, and she has now tripled

3:13

down on doing this. Politico

3:15

reports that originally she included

3:18

her boast about killing her puppy in

3:20

her first book, which was published

3:22

two years ago. But the editors talked her

3:25

out of it. Yesterday she went

3:27

on CBS again. She lied

3:29

on CBS Sunday morning, so naturally

3:31

they put her back on CBS Monday morning.

3:35

Now she's claimed she was a dog trainer,

3:37

so she knew what she was doing, and

3:39

she intimated that she would kill Joe

3:42

Biden's dog commander. And

3:44

she lied about meeting Kim Jong un again,

3:47

and coyly lied that she was taking

3:49

the story out of the book because of some kind of

3:51

security concern, when

3:53

clearly it was just the fact that she could not tell

3:55

the difference between Kim Jong un and

3:57

Molly Jong Fast And

4:00

by the way, the Kim jong Un lie is three

4:02

dimensional. Lying Nome says, quote, I should

4:05

not have put that anecdote in the book unquote,

4:08

but also she says she didn't know it was in the book

4:10

quote when I became aware of that, we changed

4:12

the content, but also confirms

4:14

it is in the audio book, which she

4:17

herself narrated, meaning when she

4:20

became aware it was in the book,

4:22

even though she shouldn't have put it in the book, she

4:24

did not take it out of the book. And

4:28

I'll stop here because there are

4:30

a lot of gravel pits she could drag

4:32

me into. There

4:36

are no admissions of mistakes

4:38

or lies, or stupidity, or,

4:41

in Christy Noam's case, subhuman

4:43

sadism towards animals.

4:46

She wanted to tell this story. They

4:49

stopped her from telling the story two years ago.

4:51

She wanted to put this into Trump's mind

4:54

and to do the minds such as they are

4:56

of Trump's supporters. She wants

4:58

this thought. Christy

5:01

Nome is willing to kill. And

5:05

back to Trump and Justice Merschawn's warning

5:07

of jail time, which

5:11

is a little less strong than being

5:13

reported, Mershawn actually caveated

5:16

it. He wrote, this court cannot

5:18

find beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants

5:20

statements referenced in Exhibits E and G

5:22

were not protected speech

5:24

made in response to political attacks by Michael

5:27

Cohen. Quote. So when Trump

5:29

cannot stop himself next time, my

5:32

over under is tomorrow, by the way,

5:34

because it's the day off. Each

5:36

word of what he writes or posts

5:39

or says, each word will be parsed

5:41

and litigated literally, rather

5:43

than them simply sending a cop car over

5:45

to Trump Tower to drag him off. And

5:49

yes, that photo of him in court

5:51

where it looks like he's farting, and

5:53

there are two officers behind him, and the one

5:55

on the left is wearing a mask like she knew it

5:57

was coming. It's legit.

6:00

Also, Trump says he'll happily go to jail.

6:03

Then is even

6:05

more the gag order? Uh

6:07

huh? Where I can't. Basically

6:09

I have to watch every word. I tell you people

6:11

you're watching watching A simple question.

6:14

I'd like to give it, but I can't talk about. No,

6:16

you can't talk at all. You're not talking now a

6:18

gag order and say you'll go to

6:21

jail if you violate it.

6:23

You bet, And frankly, you know what. Our constitution

6:26

is much more important than jail and studying

6:28

it close. I'll

6:30

do that sacrifice. Ay day, boyo,

6:33

if you will go to jail, I will

6:35

carry you there on my back.

6:40

With Trump's silence for the moment, others

6:42

have taken up the stochastic terrorism. Trump

6:45

has had to set down Congressman

6:47

Clay Higgins, the slurring

6:49

ghost bus clown who

6:52

has staggered in shame in and

6:54

out of four different Louisiana police

6:56

departments. Hey, judge

6:58

ass hat, he posted over

7:00

a picture of justice Jan Marshawn, we

7:02

are in contempt of your court. We

7:05

find your court abhorrent. You

7:07

and your entire anti American

7:09

elitist ilk are repulsive

7:11

to patriot Americans.

7:14

Signed we the people,

7:18

anti American elitist ilk

7:20

Patriot Americans. These are more euphemisms.

7:23

Merschaan was born in the Nation of Columbia.

7:25

He grew up in New York. He is the

7:27

first member of his family to go to college

7:30

at Baruch and then at Hofstra Law.

7:32

He is an American success story. Higgins,

7:35

who washed out of Louisiana State,

7:37

is an American failure story. Therefore,

7:41

Higgins's response, like

7:43

Trump's, is a threat of

7:45

violence, violence coded in plausible

7:48

deniability. The

7:50

irony in this, of course, is that in the trial

7:53

so far, Trump has had absolutely no plausible

7:55

deniability. He has left

7:57

a trail a mile wide. His

7:59

former company comptroller, Jeffrey

8:02

mcconne now testifies that Trump directed

8:04

him to pay a Michael Cohen a bonus,

8:06

not just legal fees, as Trump claimed,

8:09

as has been central to his defense. There

8:12

was even a document instructing payments to Cohen's

8:14

shell company of one hundred and thirty thousand

8:16

and thirty five dollars exactly

8:19

how much Stormy Daniels ended up with

8:22

with Alan Weiselberg's handwritten

8:24

notation on it that that one

8:26

hundred and thirty thousand and thirty five dollars

8:28

was specifically four Stormy

8:31

Daniels. Trump

8:35

is incredibly guilty, so

8:37

guilty that any other defendant would

8:39

be trying to cut a deal. He won't.

8:42

You can't because this is life and death

8:44

for him. This is why

8:46

he is hallucinating that there are thousands of

8:48

Trump protesters out there being held

8:50

at bay by New York cops just blocks

8:53

away. You

8:55

will recall that on April twenty second, he wrote

8:57

that his imaginary hordes should be quote

9:00

allowed to protest at the front steps

9:02

of courthouses all over the country,

9:05

rally behind MAGA, save our country.

9:07

The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.

9:10

It is the rhetoric of January sixth all

9:12

over again. And if he escalates to actually

9:15

urging them to attack the courthouse, don't

9:17

be surprised. He's getting

9:20

desperate. And

9:22

that is after all, the subtext to what he is saying

9:24

anyway, and what Clay Higgins

9:26

is saying, and what Christine

9:28

Nome is saying and

9:31

has done. Do

9:33

not mistake what we are dealing with

9:36

do not mistake want in this equation

9:39

Christine Nome represents, and

9:42

more importantly, do not mistake what

9:45

you and I represent. And

9:56

then there is what the New York Times represents

9:59

right now that is nothing maybe

10:03

wordle complete dereliction

10:06

of duty by the New York Times. Quote.

10:09

When you are a Democrat, Trump

10:11

said at a fundraiser at Merrik

10:14

Crapshack last Saturday, you start

10:16

off essentially at forty percent of the

10:18

vote because you have civil service, you

10:20

have the unions, and you have welfare. They

10:23

get welfare to vote, and

10:25

then they cheat on top of that, they cheat, he

10:28

said of Biden and the Democrats, quoting

10:30

Trump again, these people are

10:32

running a gestapo administration. Unquote,

10:35

Mister Trump told donors who attended the event

10:37

at marri Lago, his private club in

10:39

Palm Beach, Florida, according to an audio

10:42

recording obtained by The New York Times unquote

10:46

an audio recording obtained

10:49

by the New York Times. Where

10:53

is this recording? Why

10:56

has this recording not been made public

10:58

by The New York Times. Mother

11:02

Jones magazine made public the

11:04

recording of min Romney saying of Democratic

11:06

voters in essence the same thing, only

11:08

pegging the percentage higher. There

11:11

are forty seven percent who are with Obama, who

11:13

are dependent upon government. They will vote for this president

11:15

no matter what. That tape from twenty

11:18

twelve that was made public and

11:20

in retrospect, the day it was made public September

11:23

seventeenth, twenty twelve, that was the last day

11:25

Mitt Romney had any chance of being

11:27

elected president. And

11:29

the Free Beacon did not hesitate

11:32

to publish a secret recording of Hillary

11:34

Clinton distancing herself from

11:36

the progressive left. In twenty sixteen,

11:40

the Obama Reverend Right recordings,

11:42

they were published, The Obama

11:44

Budget Negotiation's secret tape

11:47

put on the air by CBS News,

11:49

The cell phone video of Obama about

11:52

clinging to guns or religion published

11:54

by the Huffington Post. Where

11:56

is the audio recording of

11:59

Trump a recording you

12:01

clearly state, you boast that

12:04

you have up to New

12:06

York Times. Where is the audio

12:08

of Trump himself saying Democrats

12:12

use welfare to buy

12:14

forty percent of the vote. They get

12:16

welfare to vote, and

12:18

then they cheat on top of that, when

12:21

we all know what welfare is

12:23

a euphemism for among the

12:25

racist Republicans. Where is

12:28

that recording and why

12:30

have you chosen not to release

12:32

it? If

12:36

you are having any doubts about the doubts

12:39

about the New York Times. The paper is now

12:41

providing new evidence every third

12:43

day or so that its leaders have

12:46

lost all contact with reality,

12:49

and they think still that this

12:52

is just another election. And

12:56

worse yet,

12:59

their leaders think they are being attacked

13:01

for being even handed, when

13:03

in fact they are being attacked for leaning over

13:06

so far backwards to not appear

13:08

pro democratic that they

13:10

have fallen flat on their

13:13

faces. And the

13:15

newest face plant is from editor in chief

13:17

Joe Khan. Ben Smith

13:19

of Semaphore News interviewed him, and

13:21

as Cohn talked and as Smith published,

13:24

neither seemed to realize that between them they

13:26

were garrotting the times credibility.

13:30

Smith says he asked con quote Dan

13:32

Pfeiffer, who used to work for Barack Obama, recently

13:34

wrote to the Times, they do not see their

13:36

job as saving democracy or stopping

13:38

an authoritarian from taking power. Why

13:41

don't you see your job as we've got to stop

13:43

Trump? What about your job doesn't let you

13:46

think that way?

13:48

Joe Cohn then destroyed not only himself but

13:50

his own paper. Good Media is

13:53

the fourth Estate it's another

13:55

pillar of democracy. One

13:57

of the absolute necessities of democracy

13:59

is having a free and fair and open election

14:02

where people can compete for votes. And

14:04

the role of the news media in that environment

14:07

is not to skew your coverage towards

14:09

one candidate or the other, but just to

14:11

provide very good, hard hitting,

14:14

well rounded coverage of both

14:16

candidates. If

14:19

I'm right, that's

14:22

exactly what CON's predecessor

14:25

said during the Lincoln McClellan

14:27

election of eighteen sixty four. His

14:29

predecessor, you know, when the founder of The Times,

14:31

Henry Raymond, was also chairman of the Republican

14:34

Party, in one of Abraham Lincoln's mentors,

14:38

we've never taken any sides of oh yeah,

14:40

Lincoln. Wait, this

14:43

gets worse, Joe Con again, to say

14:45

that the threats of democracy are so great

14:47

that the media is going to abandon

14:49

its central role as a source

14:51

of impartial information to help

14:54

people vote. That's essentially saying that

14:56

the news media should become a propaganda

14:58

arm for a single candidate because we

15:01

prefer that candidate's agenda.

15:05

It's our job to cover the full range of issues

15:08

that people have at the moment. Democracy

15:10

is one of them, but it's not the top

15:12

one. Immigration happens to be the

15:14

top, and the economy and inflation

15:16

is the second. Should we stop covering those

15:19

things because they're favorable to Trump? Again?

15:23

The editor in chief of

15:26

The New York Times lives

15:28

in a world dictated

15:33

by Fox News and populated

15:36

entirely by straw men, who

15:38

said, don't cover any of that, who

15:41

said, become a propaganda army. We're asking

15:43

why you've tried to equate Biden's

15:46

age with you know, Trump's

15:48

insanity and indictments

15:50

and desire to become a dictator. Quote.

15:53

There are people out there in the world who may

15:55

decide, based on their democratic rights, to

15:58

elect Donald Trump as president. It is

16:00

not the job of the news media to

16:02

prevent that from happening. Unquote,

16:05

Okay, Sarah sirah

16:08

right, Joe con I

16:12

mean, why should you worry about

16:14

what happens if an increasingly unstable,

16:17

revenge driven psychopath assumes

16:20

the full power of the American state.

16:23

It's not like you guys live

16:25

in America

16:28

on Sunday, as

16:30

if they had sat around for a week trying to figure

16:32

out how to make this worse. CON's

16:34

paper published a piece by Peter

16:37

Baker headlined gallows

16:40

humor and talk of escape. Trump's

16:42

possible return Rattle's capital.

16:44

At Washington dinner parties, dark jokes

16:47

abound about where to go into exile

16:49

if the former president reclaims the White House.

16:54

It's not bad enough that The Times is joking

16:56

around about the country teetering on a

16:58

precipice like the one Germany found itself

17:01

in in nineteen thirty two. But

17:03

starting in paragraph twelve of this jovial

17:06

piece by that well known wit Peter Baker,

17:09

it switched the both sides machine

17:12

on full blast. There

17:14

are quotes in there from a trumpist who

17:16

explained that all of this was just Trump

17:19

derangement syndrome. And rejoice

17:21

that quote. The chattering class is

17:23

freaking out.

17:27

The Times is on quite a role as

17:29

it calmly ignores the fact that Trump would

17:31

try to shut it down or

17:34

take over the publishing of it, or

17:36

decide what goes in and

17:38

what can't go in anymore, or

17:41

jail Joe con or kill

17:43

the publisher. Ag Sealzberger. I

17:45

mean, what, evs least

17:48

we have our journalistic principles

17:51

here in the concentration camp. Not

17:56

enough. Just put these other two stories

17:58

together. Those evil protesting

18:00

students at Columbia. Did you know

18:03

they refused to talk to conservative

18:05

shill Peggy Noonan when

18:07

she went up there to write a column. So

18:10

a key writer from the New York Times defended

18:14

Peggy Noonan. And the

18:16

publisher of the Times is still trying to rationalize

18:19

his vendetta against President Biden by insisting

18:21

there is no vendetta. It's just punishing

18:24

Biden because he won't

18:26

do an interview with the Times. But the Times

18:28

is only punishing him on behalf of humanity,

18:31

not something personal and selfish

18:33

like on behalf of the Times the

18:39

publisher first, and then we'll get to Peggy Noonon. You

18:41

will remember that Politico reported that it was

18:43

ag Selzberger, who, honked off

18:45

by Biden's refusal to sit down with The Times,

18:48

demanded that his paper begin to do stories

18:50

about Biden's age. The

18:53

Times denied there was any linkage here

18:55

publishing a statement dripping

18:59

with umbrage and offense

19:01

publishing a statement on its website. The

19:04

statement was anonymous yay

19:08

journalism, yay principles.

19:11

Then last Tuesday, Salzburger gave an interview

19:14

to The Washington Post, part of which The Washington

19:16

Post published Friday along

19:18

with data showing that at comparable stages

19:20

of their first terms, Biden has done

19:22

fewer sit down interviews than his six predecessors.

19:25

He's twenty six behind George

19:28

W. Bush.

19:30

On the other hand, by the time of the next inauguration,

19:33

Biden will have moved into first place

19:36

with the most informal question and

19:38

answer interviews with the media since

19:40

nineteen eighty one. Right now, he's done

19:43

four hundred and twenty two more of

19:45

them than Ronald Reagan did, and

19:47

four hundred and seventy two more than Barack

19:49

Obama did. But Biden

19:53

has not done one with The Times or

19:55

the Washington Post. And nothing

19:58

in this world is more self important

20:00

than the Washington Post except

20:03

for the New York Time. I

20:06

think this is a norm that matters, the

20:08

Times publisher told the Post, and

20:11

all our experience shows that when norms

20:13

like this erode, especially a norm

20:15

as uncomfortable as the discipline of answering

20:18

probing questions from independent

20:20

journalists, they rarely

20:23

return. Of

20:26

course, ag Sealzburger didn't mention

20:29

which norms like this had eroded

20:31

and then vanished forever, and the

20:33

postwriter Eric Wemple does not seem

20:35

to have asked him which

20:37

norms he meant. But look, if the Times

20:39

and the Posts say norms are eroding,

20:42

then god damn it, norms are

20:45

eroding. If

20:48

you don't like the New York Times coverage,

20:50

don't give us an interview, Salzburger continues.

20:52

But give an interview to the Washington Post, which

20:55

you have refused to sit down with, Give

20:57

an interview to the Wall Street Journal, which

20:59

you have refused to sit down with, give an interview

21:02

to Reuter's, which you have refused to sit down

21:04

with. And if you don't like the coverage of any of

21:06

those organizations, I think that

21:08

raises a broader question of whether you

21:10

just want to avoid press scrutiny unquote,

21:15

because as we all know, the press consists

21:17

of just those four organizations

21:22

Times, Post, Wall Street Journal, Reuters

21:25

the edge of the universe, nothing

21:27

over there except maybe some of the dragons

21:29

that live out there in the ether. Just

21:33

those four news organizations in the whole

21:36

entirety of the universe, The Times, The Post,

21:38

The Journal, and Reuters. This

21:41

is especially true for today's voters

21:44

and younger Americans in

21:46

a time when, for better or worse, the media

21:49

is getting more diverse and more diffuse

21:52

by the hour, and you can do

21:54

a podcast in your apartment entirely

21:56

by yourself and

21:59

get a daily audience about a third the size

22:01

of a primetime show on CNN. And

22:04

presidents and politicians and their press

22:07

people are wondering why they should use

22:09

their guys' time to

22:11

put them on platforms that already cover

22:14

his every move When

22:16

undecided or low info voters

22:18

are to be found on TikTok. We're

22:20

listening to satellite radio, or watching

22:22

late night talk shows, or just watching

22:25

viral clips as they continue

22:27

on a path to living their entire

22:29

lives without ever consuming

22:32

anything from The Times, the

22:34

Post, the Journal, and Reuters

22:36

combined, and Reuters

22:40

really Reuters was your fourth best

22:43

option, not

22:45

even the Boston Globe Reuters.

22:51

I think our industry should speak out about

22:53

this, Sealzburger Whind.

22:56

Whereupon mister Wimple of The Post asked

22:58

The Post, the Journal, Reuters and everybody

23:00

else to complain, and found

23:03

none of them were willing to. First,

23:06

he said their reticence had quote

23:08

many lame justifications

23:11

o'blakely. Then he complained for them,

23:13

quoting statistics that show that of

23:15

Biden's first fifty two television

23:17

interviews as president. Eighteen of them

23:19

were within the NBC

23:22

Universal family, though

23:24

only one of them was with NBC Nightly

23:27

News. The

23:31

day that the last newspaper is printed,

23:33

somebody working for it will insist that it's

23:35

just a phase and newspapers

23:38

will be back soon. Because

23:40

the only thing that has not been damaged

23:42

in the swarm of media earthquakes

23:45

of the last three decades and more is

23:47

the ego inside the boardrooms

23:49

of the big newspapers and inside

23:52

NBC Nightly News headquarters, by the

23:54

way, because what's unspoken here

23:56

is the Times is news, and

23:59

the Washington Post is news, and the

24:01

Wall Street Journal is news, and everybody else is

24:03

not news. Maybe

24:06

NBC Nightly News is news.

24:08

But they only got one of Biden's

24:11

eighteen NBC interviews. You

24:14

know what's not news That Today's show's not news.

24:16

They got six interviews. Why did they get

24:18

six interviews? They're not news. Newspapers

24:22

have never gotten over the idea that

24:25

anybody else was legit, at

24:27

least not half as legit

24:30

as they are. Newspapers

24:33

managed to keep news off radio

24:36

for the first decade or so of radio.

24:38

Then they managed to limit how much news the

24:40

networks in the stations could carry That

24:43

lasted till nearly World War Two. They

24:46

tried to monopolize physical space at

24:48

conventions, at inaugurations

24:50

and ballparks. Hell the

24:52

Baseball Writers Association of America, which

24:54

decides all the most valuable players and the other

24:57

awards, and most of the Hall of famers, they did

24:59

not even admit writers from websites

25:02

until two thousand and seven, and still

25:05

they have never had a radio or television

25:07

broadcaster in their ranks. Radio,

25:12

according to the newspapers, was just a phase.

25:14

All news radio that certainly

25:16

was just a phase. Television was just a phase.

25:18

Cable was just a phase. All news

25:21

cable was just a phase. The Internet

25:23

was just a phase. If

25:25

you haven't given The New York Times

25:27

a one on one, you're not really president,

25:30

are you. That's the norm that

25:32

matters at all. Experience

25:34

shows that when norms like that

25:36

he rode,

25:39

something bad will happen. The

25:42

publisher of the New York Times knows this because

25:45

he read it in The New York

25:47

Times. I'm guessing. Look,

25:51

if there is anything else the last

25:54

decade in this country has taught us,

25:56

it is that our news media has failed

25:58

utterly, and the failure

26:01

has been led by the New York Times, the Washington

26:03

Post, the Wall Street Journal, and

26:07

writers. Some

26:10

of that has been external, driven by market forces,

26:12

but much of it has been because a lot

26:14

of newspaper journalism, especially

26:17

but generally news media, a

26:19

lot of it just plain sucks, and

26:21

it's unimaginative, and

26:23

it has no ability to cover something that has never covered

26:26

before. And it is populated by people

26:28

who are so thin skinned that when

26:30

an effort is made by one group of politicians

26:33

to work the refs, they

26:35

the newspapers especially, they decide that everything

26:38

now has to be presented as both

26:40

sides is drivel to minimize

26:42

the real threat in this country, reporters

26:46

and editors getting nasty phone

26:48

calls and emails

26:52

and undamaged. Through all of

26:54

this is the newspaper's conviction, their

26:57

bone marrow deep confidence

26:59

that you must talk to them, maybe

27:03

OK, maybe not only

27:05

them, but them first,

27:09

and when there is a choice of them and nobody

27:11

else. And

27:14

by the way, failure to talk to them

27:16

is why journalism is in trouble. Not

27:19

corporate greed, nor

27:21

bad editors, nor runaway

27:23

entitlement and self martyrdom among publishers,

27:29

all news industry is the way it is today

27:31

because Joe Biden has not done a sit down interview

27:33

with Reuters. And

27:36

that's where those protests at Columbia

27:38

and Peggy Noonan fold into this.

27:41

Peggy Noonan, the former

27:44

Reagan speechwriter who has somehow been

27:46

mistaken for a journalist these last forty

27:48

years, wrote this

27:50

for The Wall Street Journal. Quote.

27:54

I was on a bench taking notes as

27:56

a group of young women, all in sunglasses

27:59

masks walked by

28:02

friends. Please come say hello and

28:04

tell me what you think. I called. They

28:07

marched past, not making

28:09

eye contact save one,

28:12

a beautiful girl of about twenty. I'm

28:15

not trained, she said,

28:18

which is what they're instructed to say

28:21

to corporate media representatives

28:23

who will twist your words.

28:26

I'm barely trained. You're safe,

28:29

I called, And she laughed

28:32

and half halted, but

28:34

her friends gave her a look and

28:37

she conformed

28:41

unquote.

28:44

I'll skip for the most part the fact

28:46

that right in that one paragraph, Peggy Noonan

28:48

revealed that she actually admitted to

28:50

lying to that twenty year old woman

28:53

by claiming her working as a writer for CBS

28:55

Radio w EEI in Boston,

28:57

three years at the White House, then thirty eight years

28:59

at ABCC, and an NBC in the Wall Street Journal.

29:02

The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, no less

29:05

that anybody with a resume that skinny

29:07

is quote barely trained. I'm

29:10

not trained. I've just been doing this for six

29:13

times your lifetime. My interest in

29:15

this quote is that it was then screenshotted

29:17

and tweeted out by Peter

29:21

Baker of the New York Times. When

29:24

we last saw mister Baker, he

29:28

was writing an end of the world apocalyptic

29:30

story about where everybody was gonna move

29:32

to if Trump became president, while

29:35

writing everything he possibly write

29:37

to make sure that Trump

29:40

becomes president. And before

29:42

that, mister Baker was quoted in a story

29:44

countering the idea that publisher

29:46

Sealzburger in The Times were really avenging

29:49

themselves against Biden because

29:51

he had had the nerve to not talk

29:53

to them. I've never

29:55

heard Ag say anything like that, and

29:58

can't imagine he ever would. So

30:01

Baker screenshots this noonan quote

30:03

which the Columbia protest are wrong because

30:05

they wouldn't give her a quote, and they

30:07

are conforming, and

30:10

they are obviously slandering those like

30:12

herself who are falsely being accused of being

30:14

corporate media word twisters. Just

30:17

because they happen to work for Rupert Murdoch

30:21

and as always, that's why Peggy didn't get the

30:23

story. And Baker,

30:25

who insists his boss would never

30:27

wield payback against a president

30:30

for not explaining his cause or

30:32

engaging Times journalists. Baker

30:34

adds his own tut tusk and his own quote,

30:37

when protests are not actually about

30:40

explaining your cause or

30:42

trying to engage journalists who are there

30:44

to listen un quote,

30:51

I will say something now that will never ever

30:53

ever sink into the skulls

30:56

of Peter Baker or Peggy

30:58

Noonan or the New York Times

31:01

or the Wall Street Journal were large

31:03

swaths of television news or lots

31:05

of podcasters wait

31:09

till you hear what David Pluff has

31:11

planned for a podcast.

31:14

But let me say this to all of them.

31:16

A protest is not

31:19

staged just so that

31:21

Peggy Noonan can get quotes

31:24

for a column. A

31:26

president does not

31:28

enact policy just

31:31

so that The Times can

31:33

ask him about it in a one on

31:35

one with him. A

31:37

White House media strategy does

31:40

not just exist so

31:42

the Post can grill him for two hours in a ritual

31:45

that has almost no value to the White House.

31:47

If ever, it did, and a presidential

31:49

election in which one guy

31:52

is going to try to get rid of elections is

31:56

not just about testing the Times

31:58

to see if it can be balanced.

32:04

And news papers that continued to behave

32:06

as if this is nineteen fifty three

32:09

and nothing happens until you read about

32:11

it in their pages. They are

32:14

the primary reason that when a nation turned

32:16

to them for analysis and reality

32:19

and truth in these unprecedented

32:22

times when all the other guard rails

32:24

failed. Instead

32:26

of giving them answers, the

32:29

papers ask things like is

32:31

Biden's age now a bigger problem

32:33

than Trump's indictments?

32:39

The Times

32:41

asks questions like that, rather

32:45

than answering questions like where's

32:48

that Trump forty percent recording that you've

32:51

been suppressing. Oh,

32:58

by the way, you will still hear otherwise,

33:00

but it's now official, even according to the dullest

33:02

Beltway insiders known to man the Hill.

33:05

You know who's ahead in the polls,

33:08

Biden, The Hill and Decision

33:11

Desk HQ poll

33:13

of polls at six hundred and eighty

33:15

five different polls, Biden forty

33:17

five, Trump forty four point nine.

33:20

Trump still up in Michigan, Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin,

33:22

but you sunk my narrative.

33:28

Also of interest here, good evening, and welcome

33:30

to the end of your career. Obama's

33:33

two thousand and eight campaign manager is

33:35

starting that podcast Everybody

33:37

Wants, the one

33:39

in which his co host is I

33:45

can't, I can't tease this. I have to tell you, Kelly

33:47

and Conway. I

33:50

wouldn't listen to Kelly and Conway with your

33:52

ears. And

33:55

this is the week of the seventieth anniversary

33:57

celebrations of Roger Banister becoming

34:00

the first man to break the

34:02

four minute mile barrier. Except

34:05

he wasn't. It's all

34:08

a lie.

34:11

That's next. This is Countdown.

34:15

This is Countdown, with Keith

34:18

Alberman still

34:40

ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. It is

34:42

one of the most famous events in sports

34:45

history, the unforgettable moment

34:47

when something impossible happened,

34:49

as impactful a positive

34:52

event as anything else that occurred

34:55

short of War ending in

34:57

the whole of the twentieth century. And

35:00

the story that you know about it

35:02

is pure bullshit. Roger

35:06

Banister was not the

35:08

first man to run a four minute mile

35:10

seventy years ago this week. There

35:13

is, in fact, every chance that the first man to run

35:15

a four minute mile did it a thousand

35:17

years ago I had in things

35:19

I promised not to tell mashed

35:22

up with the sports cast. But

35:24

first, as ever, there are still more new idiots

35:27

to talk about. The daily roundup of

35:29

the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects

35:31

specimens who constitute today's

35:34

worst persons in the world in less than four minutes,

35:37

the bronze Worser. Speaking

35:40

of sports, the Detroit Tigers baseball

35:42

team. It was their turn

35:44

to unveil those new City

35:47

Connect uniforms, and

35:50

I guess the shirts say

35:52

Motor City on them. Okay,

35:56

except in the font from the original

35:58

Star Trek MotorCity

36:01

Star Trek. Anyway,

36:03

the caps have Detroit on them,

36:06

like the whole word Detroit, like

36:09

a cap you would buy at the Detroit Airport

36:12

with a little plastic snap on the back.

36:15

But the reason that the Tigers make the list is

36:17

not the uniform. Somebody will buy it,

36:19

That's the whole point. The email

36:22

the team sent out to fans yesterday hyping

36:25

the new City Connect uniforms headlined

36:28

Tiger's City Connect is going

36:31

and then it's got a zero, a hyphen

36:33

and sixty. Now,

36:36

somebody thought that phrase would read

36:38

as if it meant zero to

36:40

sixty as in miles per hour zero

36:43

to sixty, somebody who has never

36:45

had anything to do with baseball before or

36:47

any other organized team sport, because

36:50

when a baseball fan sees zero

36:52

dash sixty, it just reads Tigers

36:55

Connect is going oh and sixty, as

36:57

in the sports way of describing the team's one lost

36:59

record, oh and sixty is zero

37:02

wins and sixty losses,

37:04

and putting it that way means that when

37:07

they wear the City Connect uniforms,

37:09

the Tigers will have zero wins and

37:11

sixty losses. Well,

37:13

at least they're honest about it. The

37:16

writer's up worser Congresswoman

37:18

Nancy Mace. You remember Nancy May.

37:20

She was Christy Nome before Christy

37:22

Nome. Mace went on Fox

37:25

quote news unquote with Neil Cavudo,

37:27

and as my grandma would have said, she

37:29

opened the umbrella or

37:31

just umbrella. What Grandma

37:34

meant was code for a polite

37:36

version of this expression, I

37:38

guess I don't mind that you shoved

37:40

the umbrella up my backside,

37:43

just don't open it,

37:45

shortened for propriety's

37:47

sake, to umbrella.

37:51

Grandma had class

37:54

Mace, not really Mace,

37:56

and the other anti semites in her Party

37:58

have spent decades blaming George

38:01

sorows for everything except

38:03

how quickly milk goes sour. It's

38:06

all anti Semitic, it's all grotesque,

38:08

it's all dangerous. But now Nancy

38:10

Mace has taken it an extra step.

38:13

She has umbrellaed. She's

38:16

accused Sorrows, the

38:18

guy the Republicans think is the evil Jewish

38:21

trope pulling the strings behind

38:23

everything. She's accused him of trying

38:26

to destroy Israel. Quote,

38:29

you've got Palestinian rights groups that

38:31

are funded by George Soros. Neil

38:34

Cavudo, who must think he's in purgatory

38:36

and being forced to pay off

38:38

his sins by doing this show on Fox

38:40

Forever, replied, there's no proof

38:43

that these are funded by George Soros. Mace

38:45

then smiles stupidly and says,

38:48

will agree to disagree. I guess

38:51

Nancy Mace has made a fool of herself so

38:53

many times that one wonders if

38:56

it's legit, if she's really that stupid,

38:59

And one wonders if she even knows that Israel.

39:03

Let me tell you, Israel

39:06

is run by the Jews. Umbrella

39:11

Nancy Mace, Yeah, George

39:14

Soros is funding pro Palestinian

39:16

groups, The Winner,

39:18

though the worst. David Pluff,

39:20

the campaign manager for Barack Obama

39:23

in two thousand and eight and apparently

39:25

still living in two thousand and eight, look

39:28

when it comes to throwing stones about

39:30

making oneself relevant again in

39:32

the political world via podcast

39:35

I Don't Even Have Gravel. However,

39:38

mister Pluff has decided that

39:41

he will be co hosting a new podcast

39:43

later this month called The Campaign Managers,

39:46

in which he and his other co host will

39:48

quote look at the race objectively

39:50

and hopefully provide some context and what

39:52

the other side may be thinking that for those

39:55

who want to know what is really happening

39:57

with the electorate, not just each side spin,

39:59

you'll find valuable and distinctive.

40:03

Now, who on the right could be

40:05

that co host who could fulfill such

40:07

a rare role providing

40:09

a glimpse of objectivity and

40:12

perspective while supporting

40:14

Trump well, naturally,

40:17

KellyAnn Conway. David

40:20

Pluff and Kelly Ann Conway to

40:22

co host podcast Kelly

40:24

and Conway. You know, the inventor of alternative

40:28

facts, the woman who lied

40:30

throughout the entirety of the Trump presidency,

40:33

the woman who made up the Bowling Green massacre

40:35

story. The woman whose daughter sued her

40:38

for emancipation. The woman whom

40:40

the Special Council set had violated

40:42

the hatch at so many times that she should

40:44

actually be fired. The woman who

40:46

punched a guy at a Trump inaugural ball.

40:49

The woman who on almost any liberals

40:51

list of the ten most hated people associated

40:54

with Trump, and more importantly, on almost

40:56

any liberals list of the ten people associated

40:58

with Trump who were seen as the most dishonest.

41:02

That's who Pluff is co hosting a

41:04

podcast. Asked with to give

41:06

you some sort of overview, I'd never

41:08

mind an overview to not lie

41:10

about Trump. That's

41:13

who you picked. That was the best option.

41:15

I go with Michael Flynn ahead of Kelly

41:17

and con Job, the

41:20

producers of this podcast

41:22

one and I believe they're still

41:24

in business, but I haven't checked yet today.

41:27

They must be delighted with the reaction to

41:29

this. As of late yesterday afternoon,

41:31

Pluff's tweet announcing the podcast

41:34

had gotten one hundred and sixty likes, three

41:36

hundred and seventy three reposts, and twenty

41:38

eight hundred comments. And I didn't

41:41

see one good one in there. Conway's

41:43

tweet got three hundred and fifty seven likes, one

41:46

hundred and ninety eight reposts, and eight

41:48

hundred and sixty comments. I believe I'm

41:50

not too familiar with this. I believe it's called being ratioed

41:53

or ratiode or pistachioed.

41:56

I'm not what is something like that? So

41:58

why on earth did Pluff do this? I

42:01

mean, this is throwing out your public credibility

42:04

in one swoop. No

42:06

Christy nome, multi day descent

42:09

into the abyss, no long

42:11

slow self immolation like Marjorie

42:14

Taylor Green. This is one minute

42:16

you're popular, You're the guy who got Obama across

42:19

the finish line, and the next minute you're Kelly

42:21

Ann con Jobs token liberal.

42:25

This is my understanding of the whole situation.

42:28

For the last decade, it has been clear

42:31

to me that the primary source of

42:33

background information, positive

42:36

negative otherwise about

42:38

the Trump presidency for journalists,

42:41

especially at TV Networks, was

42:44

Kelly Ann Conway. For

42:46

all her public abuse of liberals

42:48

and Democrats and journalists and America,

42:51

apparently she could not stop dishing

42:54

to journalists. Twice I was told,

42:56

and once by Katie Terr, you can't say

42:58

that about Kelly Ann. She's my go to source.

43:02

This is the kind of thing in an insulated,

43:05

disastrously incestuous world

43:07

like Washington, that can seem to

43:09

be not just important but

43:12

decisive. While sure, she's

43:14

still a primary advisor to a

43:16

madman our Hitler

43:19

bent on ending American democracy, but

43:21

she's got two great stories and

43:23

she keeps us in the know. And

43:26

imagine the pairing Obama's campaign

43:28

manager and the only one of Trump's

43:30

campaign managers who didn't go to trial. Yet

43:34

those morons out there will love this

43:36

podcast. They

43:39

really think this way. David

43:42

Pluff co host with a

43:44

woman That's Saturday Night Live presented as

43:46

Penny Wise, the evil

43:48

Stephen King clown from it, co

43:52

host of the campaign Managers.

43:54

Because I guess the other title so

43:56

much both sides is that blood

43:58

will spurt out of your ears must

44:01

have already been taken two days

44:05

person in the world,

44:16

Now, don't go away. Ordinarily we break

44:18

here, but no, not yet.

44:20

This is a special edition with a

44:22

special format.

44:29

It's mash Up Time, a special

44:31

edition of Things I Promised Not to

44:33

Tell and Sports

44:35

Central Center. Seventy

44:38

years ago today, the world was

44:40

still in disbelief because

44:43

the day before May sixth,

44:45

nineteen fifty four, saw

44:47

unfold one of the most famous

44:49

events in sports history, in fact,

44:52

in twentieth century world history,

44:55

and everything you may have ever

44:57

heard about it

44:59

is wrong. From

45:02

six zho four pm prevailing local

45:04

time in England on the early evening of

45:06

Thursday May sixth, nineteen fifty four, continuing

45:09

until the day the man died on March

45:11

third, twenty eighteen, not

45:14

a day went by, probably

45:16

not an hour went by without somebody

45:19

congratulating Roger

45:21

Banister on becoming or

45:24

having become, or being

45:27

or forever being, or

45:29

being immortalized by being the

45:31

first human to run

45:34

a mile in four minutes

45:36

or less, the man who

45:39

broke the four minute mile.

45:42

Except for one small detail,

45:45

he wasn't. We

45:49

cannot now comprehend what a

45:51

big deal this really was. Neil

45:54

Armstrong, Times, Charles Lindberg

45:56

plus George Washington Maybe. The

45:58

next day, The New York Times published

46:01

ten different stories

46:04

about Roger Banister breaking the four minute

46:06

mile barrier, plus an

46:09

editorial. An editorial on the editorial

46:11

page that asked if anybody

46:14

in world history would ever do it

46:16

again. Roger

46:18

Gilbert Banister began the Times

46:21

on the front page, ran a mile in

46:23

three minutes fifty nine point four seconds,

46:25

tonight to reach one of man's

46:28

hitherto unattainable

46:30

goals. There's

46:34

just one problem. Not only

46:36

was Roger Banister probably not the

46:39

first man to run a mile in less

46:41

than four minutes, but there is also a

46:43

lot of evidence that that record

46:45

was broken in May of seventeen

46:48

to seventy by a

46:50

guy who sold fruits and vegetables

46:53

from a pushcart on the streets

46:56

of London, a guy named

46:59

Parrot.

47:03

Sixty nine years

47:06

later, and this is

47:08

still the most famous run in the

47:10

history of the world. May

47:13

sixth, nineteen fifty four, on

47:16

an ordinary spring evening at the Ifley

47:18

Road Track at Oxford University in England.

47:21

Even as an unfavorable wind worked

47:23

against him, Roger Banister ran

47:26

through the tape in three point fifty nine to four

47:28

and ran directly into not just sports

47:31

history, but human history, the four

47:33

minute mile, the first human

47:35

ever to run that far that fast,

47:38

like the first man on the moon, no

47:40

matter how much farther we go. But

47:43

glory is his, indefinitely,

47:46

forever, always eternal, immortal

47:49

Neil Armstrong, But

47:51

in shorts or

47:55

there had already been a four minute mile run in

47:57

seventeen seventy, and Banister

47:59

has no more claim to immortality than do you

48:02

or I. And this is really a story

48:04

about bureaucracy supporting bureaucracy,

48:07

and what the experts call recency bias,

48:09

and a lot of racism. And the

48:11

story should be about a guy who used to sell fruits

48:14

and vegetables on the streets of London and who

48:16

ran in his spare time for money in

48:18

the decade before the American

48:20

Revolution. And his name was Parrot, as

48:23

in look, maby, I know a dead parrot

48:25

when I see one, and I'm looking at one

48:27

right now. We

48:30

begin in the pages of a British book

48:33

dated from seventeen ninety four,

48:35

which seems to be for you Back

48:37

to the future fans, a kind of Gray's

48:40

Sports Almanac. The seventeen

48:42

ninety four tome bears an amazingly

48:45

modern title the Sports Magazine,

48:48

and its chronology of top sports events

48:51

of recent years past includes

48:53

for the year seventeen seventy this

48:56

quote seventeen seventy May

48:58

ninth, James Parrot, a

49:00

costermonger. A costermonger

49:02

sold fruits and vegetables from a push on

49:05

street. James Parrott, a costuremonger,

49:07

ran the length of Old Street viz. From

49:09

the Charterhouse wall in Goswell Street

49:12

to Shoreditch Church Gates, which is

49:14

a measured mile in four minutes.

49:17

Fifteen guineas to five were betted

49:19

he did not run the ground in four minutes and

49:21

a half. So

49:24

that's it. I am besmirching

49:27

the immortality of Saint Roger Banister

49:30

and everything you will see in the newspapers

49:32

about him over the weekend because of

49:35

fifty one words about some guy

49:37

racing against an eighteenth century watch

49:41

in the year seventeen seventy, and the story wasn't

49:43

even published until twenty four years later.

49:45

Seriously, seriously,

49:49

there is nothing else to say about

49:51

James Parrott. That snippet from

49:53

that book is all that researchers

49:56

have ever found or found out about

49:58

James Parrott. No obituary,

50:00

no nothing, no four minute mile,

50:03

no confirmation he ever exist. Besides

50:06

which, as every modern sports fan will tell

50:08

you, the athletes of today are the great,

50:10

greater, greatest of all time goats. If

50:12

the record book says nobody ran a four minute

50:14

mile until nineteen fifty four, of course the

50:16

record books are right. Since seventeen

50:19

seventy, humans have evolved, health

50:21

has evolved, training has evolved. Why

50:24

in seventeen seventy you couldn't even accurately

50:26

measure a mile, let alone measure exactly

50:29

four minutes. Actually,

50:33

agricultural chains, designed

50:35

to resolve who owned what property and

50:37

where international borders were, had

50:39

been introduced in sixteen twenty and

50:42

have proved to be at worst only

50:44

off by around two fifths

50:47

of an inch over a mile. And

50:49

if you're saying agracultural

50:52

chains, you don't use agricultural

50:54

chains in sports, let me ask

50:56

you this. What do they use

50:59

in National Football League games to check

51:01

whether or not it's a first down? Okay,

51:05

we're giving them the accuracy of the agricultural

51:07

change we still use today in our pro

51:09

sports. You could measure

51:12

several blocks of London in seventeen seventy

51:14

and say from way back there to

51:17

right over here in front of the church, that is exactly

51:19

a mile Govnor, But

51:22

how would you time it four minutes?

51:24

Exactly? What did they use? A really good sundial?

51:28

No, that had a thing called a chronometer.

51:32

The chronometer was perfected by seventeen

51:34

sixty one. You may know the chronometer

51:37

as a Swiss watch, or

51:39

as you might also know it a rolllex

51:43

So this parrot runs a mile, or

51:45

maybe he runs a mile plus two

51:47

fifths of an inch, and he is timed by

51:50

several guys with rolllexes, and

51:53

they all have the same score. He

51:55

did it in exactly four minutes.

51:59

If you're still not convinced, if you're still googling

52:02

Roger Banister's descendants so

52:04

they can sue this idiot Ulderman in his podcast,

52:08

let me emphasize the part that convinced

52:10

me that a man named Parrot did

52:12

run a four minute mile two

52:14

months and four days after the

52:16

Boston massacre unleashed the events

52:19

that would culminate in the American Revolution.

52:22

Permit me to reread that last sentence

52:24

about James Parrott's run from

52:26

Gray's Sports almana I'm

52:28

sorry, from the Sporting magazine of seventeen

52:31

ninety four. Quote, fifteen

52:33

guineas to five were betted

52:36

he did not run the ground in four minutes

52:39

and a half. This

52:41

guy Parrot bet on himself

52:45

and got three to one odds, and

52:47

the five guineas wagered here that would

52:49

be worth about fifty five hundred dollars

52:52

in today's money, meaning this was

52:54

no eighteenth century Roger Banister hoping

52:56

to break a record for Queen and Country.

52:59

This was a guy who did this for

53:01

money, for the equivalent in

53:04

winning of about seventeen

53:06

thousand dollars at least as much

53:08

as his annual income might have been selling

53:11

fruits and vegetables from a cart, and the way

53:13

it's phrased in that magazine, we

53:15

don't know. If more than one bet of

53:17

fifteen guineas to five was placed,

53:20

he might have won thirty four thousand

53:22

dollars or fifty one thousand dollars

53:24

or five hundred and ten thousand dollars. Because

53:27

this was for money, the loser

53:31

or losers who bet he could

53:33

not finish the race in four and a half

53:35

minutes had to be satisfied that

53:37

he had done it in less than four and a

53:39

half, in this case, in four As

53:42

we know from our own times, losers

53:45

now like to claim they didn't lose and

53:47

will go to any length to convince others they

53:50

did not lose. But James Parrott got

53:52

his money, which means that

53:54

the loser or losers believed James

53:57

Parrott really raised a mile and did

53:59

it in four minutes. I'm

54:02

sold antiquated books

54:04

and four ment miles run one hundred and eighty three years

54:06

before the first four minute mile, and costermongers

54:09

and agricultural change. They may come and

54:11

go, and may be trustworthy or

54:13

untrustworthy, but money

54:16

is money. And

54:19

James Parrott was given the equivalent of his

54:21

annual salary at least once

54:24

because somebody who thought he could not do

54:26

it agreed, Yeah, I

54:28

was wrong. He really, really, really really

54:30

did just run the mile in four minutes.

54:34

Now, of course the whole account

54:37

in the book could be wrong. I'm

54:39

old enough that I was actually on the air doing sportscast

54:42

on the radio network of United Press International

54:44

on April twenty first, nineteen eighty when Rosie

54:47

Ruiz quote one unquote

54:49

the Boston Marathon. Then it

54:52

turned out two people had seen

54:54

Rosy Ruiz burst out of the crowd

54:56

of spectators on Commonwealth Avenue

54:58

and start running alongside the men runners.

55:01

And then it turned out that while she was supposedly

55:03

completing the nineteen seventy nine New York

55:05

Marathon, she had struck up a conversation

55:08

with a freelance photographer on

55:10

the subway, and the two of them

55:12

went to the finish line together, and Rosie Ruiz

55:15

then told officials she had just finished

55:17

the race, and Rosie Ruiz was a

55:19

total fraud in two different

55:21

marathons. Maybe

55:23

the seventeen seventy four minute mile of James

55:26

Parrott was just inaccurate.

55:29

Maybe it was just an inside joke or

55:31

a misheard rumor or a

55:33

typo, or he took the

55:35

subway with Rosie

55:38

Ruiz, or

55:40

it was a joke by whoever wrote the book.

55:42

I've told you this story before about the nineteen

55:44

twelve Saint Louis Brown's second baseman named

55:46

Proctor, and nobody could find anything about

55:49

him. And then it turned out Proctor was the Western

55:51

Union operator who used to make up

55:53

all the official scorecards after each

55:55

game, and one day he decided he always wanted to be a

55:57

Major League ballplayer, so he put himself in the scorecard.

56:00

Maybe James Parrott was the author of this the

56:02

sports magazine or

56:05

his four minute miles and Monty Python jokes

56:07

go. Now, that's what I call a dead

56:09

parrot. So

56:12

if it's a mistake, if it's a typo,

56:14

if it's his hype job, if it's Rosie

56:16

Ruiz, if it's Leu Proctor,

56:19

Roger Banister is safe

56:22

now he's not because there was also a

56:24

runner named Powell, and Powell

56:27

in seventeen eighty seven said he could run a mile

56:29

in four minutes, and he wasn't messing around. He bet

56:31

a thousand guineas that he could do it one

56:34

point one million dollars in today's

56:37

money. And not only that, but he

56:39

ran on a famous English running track near

56:41

Hampton Court, and five days before Christmas

56:43

of seventeen eighty seven he ran a time

56:46

trial so that the gamblers could all

56:48

come over and see what shape he was in and

56:50

whether they should bet for him or bet

56:52

against him. And he did it

56:55

in the time trial in four minutes and three

56:57

seconds. And when Powell

56:59

said the betters could see what shape he was in,

57:02

he really meant it. He was dedicated

57:04

to his cause five

57:06

days before Christmas and this guy ran

57:09

a mile naked.

57:12

All that was in the papers. What

57:15

happened to the actual race, we

57:17

don't know that nobody has ever found that newspaper.

57:20

Nobody's ever found an account of the race, only

57:23

the time trial, So we have to go

57:25

under the assumption that Powell never did better

57:27

than four to three. But

57:30

once again, Roger Banister's four minute mile

57:32

has withstood the test of time. Kinda

57:37

bah, No, actually it hasn't. There's also another

57:39

guy named Weller. Weller

57:42

was famous enough as a professional runner of the time

57:44

that when he said he could run a mile on the Banbury

57:47

Road in Oxford, the newspapers of the

57:49

day all showed up to preview it, to talk

57:51

about his two brothers, who were also professional

57:53

runners, and to cover his attempt on October

57:55

tenth, seventeen ninety six.

57:57

And there it is in the papers.

58:00

Weller of Oxford runs

58:02

a mile in three minutes

58:05

fifty eight seconds, not

58:08

only one hundred and fifty eight years before

58:11

Roger Banister, but a second and

58:13

a half faster than Roger

58:15

Banister. So

58:19

here's the thing. If somebody really ran

58:21

a mile in three fifty nine or three

58:23

fifty eight at the time of the American

58:25

Revolution, wouldn't that stand out

58:28

as such an impossible performance

58:30

then, such an anomaly, so startling

58:32

that it would be viewed in the same way we would

58:35

view news coming up on Monday that somebody

58:37

now had just run the mile in three

58:39

minutes flat. I mean, if somebody ran

58:42

the mile in three minutes flat, we would check to

58:44

see if the guy was a space alien or

58:46

a time traveler. Wouldn't they

58:48

have been amazed on October tenth, seventeen

58:50

ninety six, disbelieving

58:53

what they had heard, not

58:55

at all. And that's the second half

58:58

of the story of the day. Roger Banister did

59:00

not break the four minute barrier. Research

59:03

and computers and simulation show

59:05

that people in the seventeen eighties were consistently

59:08

running the mile in four minutes and eighteen

59:11

seconds, four minutes and twenty seconds,

59:13

four minutes and fifteen seconds, if the

59:15

info about Weller is right, three

59:17

minutes and fifty eight seconds. All

59:20

the time, these numbers were being put up by all

59:22

kinds of runners. So a four

59:24

minute mile would have been great, but

59:27

not out of context, not in seventeen

59:29

ninety six. And

59:32

then you have to ask, if it happened,

59:35

where are all those records. Who

59:37

were all those four minute eighteen guys

59:40

and four minute three second guys and

59:42

three fifty eight guys. What happened

59:45

to the records? Well,

59:47

see, that's another scandal. Those

59:49

eighteenth century records were erased

59:53

in the nineteenth century because richer,

59:56

slower people in the nineteenth

59:58

century wanted to say they

1:00:00

held the records. They erased

1:00:04

the record book that

1:00:06

part of the story, and the additional

1:00:08

sad truth that much of the claims about Roger

1:00:10

Banister are really really

1:00:12

racist. Next,

1:00:24

we know Roger Banister really did

1:00:27

run a three minute and fifty nine second

1:00:29

mile on May sixth,

1:00:31

nineteen fifty four in England. It

1:00:34

was timed and announced to a waiting

1:00:36

crowd by no less a figure than

1:00:38

Norris mcwerder, who was later

1:00:41

the founder or co founder of the Guinness

1:00:43

Book of World Records. And everybody

1:00:45

who was there saw history and

1:00:47

was part of an impossible dream coming true.

1:00:50

And as I mentioned earlier, the next day the

1:00:52

New York Times actually had an editorial asking

1:00:54

whether or not anybody would ever do it again.

1:00:58

There is considerable evidence, as I've laid

1:01:00

out here, that it was done before,

1:01:03

like two hundred years before. But

1:01:07

if you were still not convinced that, no,

1:01:09

no matter what else it was, Roger Bannister's

1:01:11

three minute fifty nine point four second mile

1:01:14

on May sixth, nineteen fifty four was not

1:01:16

the first four minute mile. If James

1:01:18

Parrott and the naked runner

1:01:20

Powell of Hampton Court and Weller

1:01:23

seventeen ninety six don't convince you, there

1:01:25

is also this there

1:01:27

is a sports historian named Peter Radford,

1:01:30

himself the bronze medalist in two sprints

1:01:32

at the nineteen sixty Olympics in Rome, and

1:01:35

he brought the story of Parrot and Powell

1:01:37

and Weller to the forefront in

1:01:39

the British press nearly twenty years ago.

1:01:42

This man found them because he was

1:01:44

looking for and finding the records of more

1:01:46

than six hundred running races

1:01:48

in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Running

1:01:51

against the clock, against each other, usually

1:01:54

for money, was not only the most

1:01:56

popular professional sport in Britain

1:01:58

at that time, it was also probably the

1:02:01

first. And with so many

1:02:03

races and especially winning and losing times

1:02:05

recorded, Peter Radford had data

1:02:08

to work with. When guys

1:02:10

didn't run a four minute mile, how fast

1:02:12

did they run it? How fast were these professionals

1:02:15

going the average ones over other

1:02:17

distances in say seventeen

1:02:20

eighty nine, What was the range of times?

1:02:23

And his computer looked at all of these

1:02:25

races six hundred or so, and

1:02:27

all of the times and all of the speeds,

1:02:29

and it spit out this conclusion. Factoring

1:02:32

in the margin of error, Radford wrote

1:02:34

the best possible one mile time

1:02:37

would be anywhere between four

1:02:39

minutes, thirteen seconds and

1:02:42

exactly four minutes. So

1:02:44

no, you cannot say James Parrott ran

1:02:47

the first four minute mile in seventeen seventy

1:02:49

and Weller ran the first sub

1:02:51

four minute mile in seventeen ninety six, not

1:02:53

with certainty, but I think you can say

1:02:56

with certainty that somebody

1:02:59

did it before the year eighteen hundred,

1:03:01

and that when Roger Banister crashed through

1:03:03

the tape at Oxford at

1:03:05

six oh four Greenwich meantime on the

1:03:07

evening of Thursday May sixth, nineteen fifty

1:03:10

four, and the track announcer Norris

1:03:12

McWhorter announced

1:03:14

that Roger Banister's time in the mile was

1:03:17

and he gave it a desperately long pause,

1:03:19

by all accounts, three

1:03:21

minutes fifty I an unfall ten seconds

1:03:25

the moment that happened, Roger Banister

1:03:27

became at best the second

1:03:30

man to run a mile in four minutes

1:03:32

or less, but more

1:03:34

likely he was like the twenty

1:03:37

second or the two hundred

1:03:39

and twenty second. So

1:03:42

why why didn't anybody know

1:03:44

this? Why did Roger Banister

1:03:46

live a life of unceasing, undiminished

1:03:51

and sorry, undeserved fame. And

1:03:53

that guy Weller, who may

1:03:55

have run the race a second faster and one hundred

1:03:58

and fifty eight years earlier. Why don't we even

1:04:00

know Weller's first name? All

1:04:05

sports are based on history. Records

1:04:07

are made to be broken. The older the record,

1:04:10

the louder the break. Who screwed this up?

1:04:13

How did we lose Weller in the nooks

1:04:16

and crannies of history. We

1:04:18

didn't lose them. It wasn't

1:04:20

an error. It was deliberate.

1:04:25

And that's where this gets to be a crime. Our

1:04:28

historian and ex Olympic runner

1:04:30

mister Radford quoted another ancient book,

1:04:32

British Rural Sports

1:04:34

by J. H. Walsh, which was

1:04:36

published in eighteen eighty eight, and in

1:04:39

it all the dozens of

1:04:41

speed and distant events had

1:04:43

two sets of records, one for professionals

1:04:46

like Parrot and Powell and Weller,

1:04:49

the ones who ran for money, the

1:04:51

ones on whom people bet, the ones who bet

1:04:53

on themselves. There was that set of records,

1:04:55

and then another set of records which was given

1:04:57

far more weight and far more importance for

1:05:00

the amateurs. By

1:05:03

the early twentieth century, Adford wrote, the

1:05:05

professional records had been erased

1:05:07

from these books, expunged, not

1:05:09

forgotten, removed.

1:05:12

Why because the professionals

1:05:15

were far better than the amateurs. No

1:05:18

amateur held the record in the mile. It was all

1:05:20

professionals, but

1:05:22

the amateurs were in charge. They

1:05:25

were the British upper class. They raced

1:05:27

not for money, but for sport. So the

1:05:29

amateurs simply did what the upper

1:05:31

class always does in this situation. They erased

1:05:34

the records of all the professionals. And

1:05:36

oh, by the way, they also erased all records

1:05:39

set by women. The

1:05:41

British obsession with the

1:05:44

superiority of the amateur over the

1:05:46

professional. If you've ever seen

1:05:48

the movie Chariots of Fire, you already know exactly

1:05:50

what I mean. It spread throughout the

1:05:53

world through the Olympics. That's why

1:05:55

Jim Thorpe lost all his gold medals

1:05:57

from the nineteen twelve Games. Why the greatest

1:05:59

all around athlete ever died

1:06:01

in poverty because he had once played minor

1:06:04

league baseball well to make some money in

1:06:06

the summer, and everybody knew about it, and nobody

1:06:08

thought they'd hold it against it, But then

1:06:10

they held it against him. He

1:06:12

was a professional, so his records did

1:06:14

not count like James Parrott

1:06:17

or fill in the blank here, Powell

1:06:20

or I don't remember his first name

1:06:23

Weller. So

1:06:25

the world record in the

1:06:27

mile as of the year

1:06:29

eighteen sixty one was credited

1:06:32

to a man, an amateur named

1:06:34

Matthew Green. Matthew Green

1:06:36

was the fastest man in human history

1:06:40

four minutes and forty six seconds,

1:06:43

four minutes and forty six seconds. In

1:06:47

my twenties, I might have come close to that number.

1:06:50

By nineteen thirteen, the International Amateur

1:06:52

Athletics Federation had taken over, and it

1:06:55

recognized a runner from Cornell, not

1:06:57

me, a different runner from Cornell, as

1:06:59

the all time outdoor record holder in the mile

1:07:02

four minutes and thirteen seconds, Paul

1:07:05

Jones, one hundred and forty

1:07:07

three years after James Parrot. The

1:07:10

indoor record in the mile was then

1:07:12

held by a man named Abel Kiviat four

1:07:15

eighteen and two. I

1:07:17

met Abel Kiviat. I interviewed him

1:07:20

when he was ninety. I

1:07:22

wish I had known about James Parrot. Then

1:07:24

I didn't. Abel and I talked about his

1:07:26

roommate at the nineteen twelve Olympics. Jim Thorpe

1:07:28

got to tell you that story sometime too, But

1:07:31

boy Able Kiviat and I could have had a conversation

1:07:33

about amateurs versus professionals. And whether or

1:07:35

not his record was actually a record. Anyway,

1:07:39

you can see where this is all going, and we are almost

1:07:42

at our proverbial finish line. Not

1:07:45

only did history forget the great athletes of

1:07:47

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries like Parrot and

1:07:49

Powell and Weller, who if they did not break

1:07:51

the four minute mile, they came damn close and

1:07:53

did a lot better than my friend

1:07:55

Abel Kiviat did, or my Cornell guy John

1:07:57

Paul Jones, to say another, of Matthew Green

1:07:59

four minutes and forty six seconds, What did you

1:08:01

do stop for lunch? Not

1:08:05

only were the remarkable

1:08:07

athletes like Parrot and Powell and

1:08:09

Weller forgotten, they

1:08:11

were buried deliberately.

1:08:15

It makes the subject of the Roger Banister

1:08:17

four minute mile that everybody

1:08:20

celebrates with almost

1:08:22

undiminished astonishment every

1:08:25

year at this time. It makes all

1:08:27

this a little less trivial and a

1:08:29

little bit more nefarious and

1:08:31

wrong and ugly. Speaking

1:08:36

of Ugly and Banister, there is one

1:08:38

other component to this story. In the

1:08:40

nineteen nineties, having been the god of

1:08:42

the four minute mile for four decades,

1:08:45

having been celebrated every day for breaking

1:08:47

a record that was probably broken one hundred and eighty

1:08:49

three years before Roger Banister

1:08:52

was asked about the new generation of

1:08:54

runners, those of African

1:08:56

descent. On September

1:08:58

twelfth, nineteen ninety five, Sir

1:09:00

Roger Banister explained, quote,

1:09:04

it's certainly obvious when you see an all black

1:09:07

sprint final that there must be something rather special

1:09:09

about their anatomy or physiology

1:09:12

which produces these outstanding successes.

1:09:14

And indeed there may be, but we don't

1:09:16

know quite what it is. Some

1:09:18

countries have the good fortune to have a high

1:09:20

proportion of black sprinters and hurdlers.

1:09:23

End quote.

1:09:27

Nineteen years later, Banister was still

1:09:29

driving right into the Eugenics lane,

1:09:31

sounding just enough like Jimmy the Greek Snyder

1:09:34

to make you squirm. I

1:09:36

love watching people like Usain Bolt,

1:09:38

Banister said. The West Africans,

1:09:40

of course, have an inbuilt advantage, having

1:09:43

been transported as slaves to

1:09:45

the West Indies, only the toughest

1:09:47

endured. They have astonishing muscle

1:09:50

composition, with those fast fibers

1:09:52

and superior genes. I

1:09:56

will leave it to you and to his maker.

1:10:00

An assessment of how much of Roger Banister

1:10:02

was patronizing, how much was him trying

1:10:04

to rationalize how his time had been bettered

1:10:07

by nearly ten percent, and

1:10:10

how much of it was just sheer racism.

1:10:12

But I will note that in what Banister said

1:10:15

is another reason to believe that the idea

1:10:17

that he was the first human to

1:10:19

run a four minute mile is

1:10:22

laugh out loud ridiculous.

1:10:25

What about all of

1:10:27

the runners of color over

1:10:30

the centuries, over the

1:10:32

millennia, in Africa and

1:10:35

South America and elsewhere on this

1:10:37

globe. By Banister's own

1:10:39

disturbing logic, certainly some

1:10:42

of them must have beaten him

1:10:45

to breaking the four minute tape.

1:10:48

No, let

1:10:51

me close with this. I don't know for

1:10:53

certain who ran the first

1:10:55

four minute mile or when. For

1:10:58

all we know, it was broken two

1:11:00

thousand years ago, and for that matter, so was

1:11:02

the present world record of three forty three

1:11:04

point thirteen. Might have been James Parrott or

1:11:07

Powell or Weller whose first names we don't

1:11:09

know, or someone so lost to history

1:11:11

that we don't know their first name or their last

1:11:13

name or their country. We

1:11:15

don't know who it was. But

1:11:18

no matter what you hear, or see or

1:11:20

read in this Weekend

1:11:22

Ahead, it's sure as hell was not Roger

1:11:25

Banister, which

1:11:28

brings us lastly to missus

1:11:30

Roger Banister Moira Elva

1:11:33

Jacobson Banister, daughter of a

1:11:35

Swedish economist. According

1:11:37

to Roger Banister, his wife didn't

1:11:39

know a lick about sports, let alone about running,

1:11:42

let alone about him running for

1:11:46

a time. Roger Banister

1:11:48

once said, my wife thought I had

1:11:51

run four miles

1:11:54

in one minute. You

1:11:59

know, as I've been thinking about this and researching

1:12:01

that story, you might as well go with that four

1:12:05

miles in one minute. It's

1:12:07

no more ridiculous than thinking that Roger

1:12:09

Banister was the first man to run one

1:12:11

mile in four minutes. I've

1:12:26

done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.

1:12:29

Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John

1:12:31

Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and performed

1:12:33

most of our music. Mister Ray was

1:12:36

on the guitars, bass and drums, and mister

1:12:38

Chanale handled orchestration and

1:12:40

keyboards. It was produced by

1:12:42

Tko Brothers. Other music, including

1:12:44

some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and

1:12:47

performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The

1:12:49

sports music is the Olderman theme

1:12:51

from ESPN two, written by

1:12:53

Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN

1:12:55

Inc. Our satirical and pithy

1:12:58

musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the

1:13:00

best baseball stadium organist ever.

1:13:02

Our announcer was my friend Nancy

1:13:05

Faust. Now that's a coincidence.

1:13:08

Everything else was pretty much my fault, except

1:13:10

all the stories about Roger Banister. Those

1:13:13

were not my fault. That's countdown

1:13:15

for this the one hundred and eighty third day until

1:13:17

the twenty twenty four presidential election

1:13:20

and the one two hundred and eighteenth

1:13:23

day since Dictator Jay Trump's

1:13:25

first attempted coup against the democratically

1:13:27

elected government of the United States. Use

1:13:30

the justice system, use the mental

1:13:32

health system, use the not regularly

1:13:35

given elector objection option, Use

1:13:38

the Donald the Walrus Nos

1:13:40

Sleepies bit to stop

1:13:42

him from doing it again while

1:13:45

we still can. The

1:13:48

next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins

1:13:50

as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith

1:13:53

Olribbon, Good morning, good afternoon,

1:13:55

good night, and good

1:13:57

luck. Countdown

1:14:12

with Keith Olderman is a production of

1:14:14

iHeartRadio. For more podcasts

1:14:16

from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio

1:14:19

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

1:14:21

you get your podcasts.