0:04

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a

0:06

production of iHeartRadio.

0:21

Trump is now demanding that his mobs

0:23

be able to block the entrances to

0:26

all courthouses, all

0:28

courthouses, including the one he

0:30

is in. His thug should be

0:32

quoting his online post, allowed

0:34

to protest at the front steps of courthouses

0:38

all over the country, rather

0:40

than be quote rudely and systematically

0:42

shut down and ushered off the far away

0:44

holding areas, essentially denying

0:47

them their constitutional rights. He

0:49

tells them rally behind

0:52

MAGA, save our country.

0:54

The only thing you have to fear is

0:57

fear itself. When that

0:59

stochastic call to lay siege

1:02

to federal buildings did not work,

1:04

this sounds so familiar.

1:07

Trump again did what

1:09

he thinks is smooth and subtle.

1:12

Quote the Palestinian protests at

1:14

Columbia University have closed the college

1:17

down, but the area surrounding

1:19

the courthouse in downtown Manhattan is

1:21

closed up like a drum with

1:24

New York City's finest parentheses

1:27

police all

1:29

over the place. Why not send some to

1:32

Columbia. Republicans want

1:34

the right to protest in front of the courthouse

1:36

like everyone else. Again,

1:39

this seems oddly

1:42

January sixth is familiar

1:45

reduce law enforcement around an

1:47

area Trump wants to see sacked

1:49

by his gangs and his militias and

1:51

his morons ready to spring

1:53

him, or to hang a vice president,

1:55

or who knows, kill a judge

1:59

he only forgot to note, will be wild

2:03

to turn the temperature down a little bit

2:05

on this. To be fair, there is much in

2:07

that of Trump needing to delude himself

2:10

that New York City is rising in his

2:12

defense, coming to his aid, defending

2:15

his freedom to break all the laws. He

2:17

just can't see them because the

2:19

police have cordoned them off and

2:22

put them in far away holding

2:24

areas, perhaps a little

2:27

farm upstate. And

2:29

in his pathetic version of the Nathan Fielder

2:31

gag, he is out on the town

2:33

having the time of his life with a bunch of friends. They're

2:35

all just out of frame protesting too.

2:39

There is little for Justice Juan

2:42

Merchon to do about this latest

2:44

threat, and whether or not

2:46

it's realistic, it's another threat.

2:48

It's a threat to besiege the courthouse.

2:52

There's little for Merchon to do about it other

2:54

than to encourage the city and the state of New York

2:56

to have tanks ready, because,

2:58

frankly, if Trump terrorist gangs again

3:00

rise up against this government as he

3:03

had them do on January sixth. The only

3:05

way the point is going to be made clear

3:07

this time is if it ends with the New York

3:09

Department of Sanitation having to clean

3:11

them up with brooms and hoses

3:14

and garbage trucks. But

3:17

Mayor Seawan can do something about

3:19

the part of this fish that stinks literally

3:23

if the flatulence reports from last week

3:25

are correct. Few experts

3:27

expect the judge to do this, and I know

3:30

that the judge did not shut down

3:32

the first day of defendant Jay Trump's Stormy

3:34

Daniel's election interference trial with just

3:36

a little David Pecker merely

3:39

to give Trump more time to violate the gag

3:41

order ahead of today's gag

3:43

order hearing into how many times

3:45

Trump could violate the gag order

3:48

what with his busy schedule of farting

3:50

and napping and fart napping. But

3:54

guess what, it has worked out

3:56

that way, hasn't it. What are they

3:58

going to a did

4:03

in the last trial so he

4:05

got caught line pure line,

4:08

and what are they going to look at that ordered that

4:11

defendant is directed to refrain from

4:13

the following making or directing others

4:15

to make public statements about

4:17

known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses

4:19

concerning their potential participation in

4:22

the investigation or in this criminal

4:24

proceeding. So that clip

4:27

in which he does that against Michael

4:29

Cohen is proof of one Trump

4:31

violation of the Mershan gag order at

4:33

twelve forty eight Eastern Dementia Time

4:35

yesterday. Then there was the second

4:38

Trump violation yesterday, three minutes earlier,

4:40

twelve forty five Eastern Defended Time

4:42

yesterday, in which Trump said Michael

4:44

Cohen was guilty of these charges,

4:47

not him. The things he got in trouble for

4:50

were things that had nothing

4:52

to do with me. Got in trouble, he went to jail.

4:54

This had nothing to do with me. So that's

4:57

two plus in a list

4:59

of supposed trial facts, a

5:02

bunch more on his campaign website,

5:04

including comments about witnesses, quote testimony

5:07

of some of the most disreputable and fame

5:09

thirsty characters on the planet, that's

5:12

three violations. There's a Trump

5:14

quote posted attributed to The New York

5:16

Post. I have a Trump hating judge with a

5:18

Trump hating wife and family whose daughter

5:21

worked for Kamala Harrison now receives money

5:23

from the Biden Harris campaign. That

5:25

quote links to a photo of the judge's daughter.

5:27

That's four violations of the gag order,

5:30

plus the seven that prosecutors

5:32

submitted last week, and two

5:35

more after they submitted it last week that

5:37

occurred on Friday. At

5:39

least thirteen violations

5:42

of Justice Mershon's gag order just

5:45

since jury selection began in

5:48

this trial. And yet lawyers think the worst

5:50

that Mershan will do is admonish

5:53

Trump. Now we can all

5:55

agree on ranges here and

5:57

that the extremes are wrong. Death

6:00

penalty, no too much,

6:03

admonishments, no too

6:05

little. Trump is not just

6:07

violating the gag order. He is doing so compulsively,

6:11

and he is doing so because, as I suggested

6:13

last Friday, he is viewing this trial

6:16

as he views every other trial, as

6:18

he views every other confrontation in his world,

6:20

life or death, him or

6:23

me, them or me, the

6:25

government or me, America or

6:27

me. He said as much last

6:29

Friday. The criticisms of

6:31

Justice Merschan that you will hear

6:34

next are not technical. They're not about

6:36

resolving things. They're not even about the judge

6:38

recusing from the case. He says,

6:41

the conflict has to end with

6:43

the judge. It has to end

6:46

with the judge. These

6:49

are deliberately chosen phrases

6:52

end the judge,

6:55

and the conflict has to end

6:57

with the judge. The judge has a conflict

7:00

the worst I've ever seen, and it

7:02

has to end with the judge, the conflict

7:04

with the judges, because that's something that he

7:07

can I know anything about. It's wrong,

7:10

it's wrong. Judge Merschan can

7:12

do nothing himself about Trump having

7:14

now escalated this to ending him

7:17

and to coupling that with demanding that

7:19

police be moved away from the courthouse at one hundred

7:21

Center Street so that his mobs can

7:23

end him. But he

7:26

could right now order Trump

7:28

to jail for violating the gag

7:30

order. It's not like he just started doing it.

7:32

It's not like he hasn't been warned we

7:36

will reach this point. Trump

7:38

to jail sooner rather

7:41

than later. And the reluctance

7:43

of any authority figure in this country

7:45

to cut to the chase and to do it

7:48

mystifies me, except

7:50

when I again quote Jean Renlar in Rules

7:53

of the Game, as he foretells French

7:55

society collapsing in self interest even

7:57

before the Nazis attacked in nineteen forty.

7:59

You see in this world. There

8:02

is one awful thing, and that is

8:04

that everyone has his reasons.

8:09

But Mershan can

8:12

regain control of this trial, and

8:14

in fact, regain control of the entire

8:16

legal system's effort to put Trump behind

8:19

bars, where he should be and where he should live out

8:21

his appalling life, without sending

8:23

Trump to jail. Now he

8:25

can say, you have sworn

8:28

that you understood that this gag order

8:31

meant what it means, and yet you have violated

8:33

it thirteen dimes in the last

8:36

nine days, and if you violated a fourteenth

8:38

time at any point in the future, I

8:40

will revoke your bail, and

8:43

I will put you in Riker's Island,

8:46

and I will keep you there one

8:49

full week for every violation.

8:52

You may now return

8:55

to your seat.

8:59

We're going to have to grasp this nettle,

9:01

or grasp this bull by the horns,

9:04

or maybe most perfectly, grasped this bullshit

9:07

by the diaper. Trump

9:09

will have to go to jail at some point.

9:12

He has to be stopped. If

9:14

you want to try to slow

9:16

him first by

9:19

all means. I

9:21

don't know what we've been doing the last

9:24

three and a half years. Seems to me we've

9:26

been trying to slow him down, But

9:30

jan mere Sean and the other judges and the other

9:32

prosecutors are the ones entitled to

9:34

and they are the ones charged with the responsibility

9:37

to act in defense of

9:40

the nation. Trump

9:42

has accelerated this to where

9:44

we were in the weeks and months before

9:46

January sixth. He has wanted

9:49

two judges attacked. He

9:51

has wanted three prosecutors

9:54

attacked. He has made these wants

9:56

public, and now he wants and

9:59

again I am quoting him, courthouses

10:01

all over the country unquote attacked.

10:07

Trump is already attacking, metaphorically,

10:11

attacking our courthouses, and

10:13

he has been attacking us for a decade.

10:16

It is time to

10:18

stop him now.

10:29

Parenthetically, the opening day at that trial

10:31

itself ended early due to religious holidays

10:34

and due to a juror's dental emergency.

10:36

And he thinks his teeth dirt. Now just wait.

10:40

What little transpired, including

10:42

just perfunctory initial questioning of

10:45

the perfectly named David Pecker,

10:48

did have one tangible effect. It made Trump

10:50

squirm. It has been years,

10:53

it has been decades since he

10:55

has not been surrounded by yes men,

10:58

since he's had any idea how much he has hated

11:01

and more importantly, how much he is in danger.

11:04

Breaking his carefully built bubble may

11:07

in fact be all we get out of this, because

11:09

if you didn't notice, there is a member of the jury who

11:11

somehow slipped in past prosecution objections

11:14

and strikes, who says he reads everything

11:16

and he's on Twitter x, but he couldn't cite

11:18

one news source except for

11:21

truth Social. So

11:25

ultimately this trial could

11:27

wind up being

11:29

hung, and

11:32

it could wind up being just about making sure

11:34

Trump spends week upon week hearing this two

11:36

word message from America quote

11:39

you suck. For

11:44

the truncated day one, it was limited

11:46

to opening statements in which the defense called Trump

11:48

a person just like you and just like

11:50

me, and a family man,

11:54

even though no member of his many families

11:56

has been at the trial at all, and

11:59

the original event that precipitated all this was

12:01

him banging a porn star right

12:05

while wife three was still nursing

12:07

child five. He's a family

12:10

man. He hates his family, just like you

12:12

and I do. The

12:14

prosecution emphasized Trump is on trial

12:16

for election interference, not hush

12:19

money, and the American

12:21

media largely continues to be unable

12:23

to comprehend the distinction. CNN still

12:27

yesterday last night. I presume

12:30

this morning running banners in

12:32

which they title this hush money trial.

12:35

Then again, that is a network that on Friday showed

12:37

a live suicide outside

12:39

the Trump courtroom and boasted about

12:42

it and boasted about its own superior coverage,

12:45

even though you are not supposed to show live

12:47

suicides on the air because that might encourage

12:50

suicide, and also because the viewers

12:52

at home might be horrified

12:54

by it. But they

12:57

did it really well, even though their anchor on

12:59

the scene first called it an active shooter situation,

13:02

and then, during her breathless and gore or

13:04

play by play

13:06

faster than somebody calling a horse race,

13:09

she twice insisted the man who went there to

13:11

get exactly the kind of coverage CNN gleefully

13:14

provided for his death had quote

13:17

emblazoned himself. He's

13:20

emblazoned himself, she said,

13:23

even though the word emblazoned means

13:25

to put a logo or insignia

13:27

on something. So I don't

13:29

know why I'm expecting CNN to understand

13:31

what's actually going on at the Trump trial. I

13:33

guess I'm just grateful that CNN did not make

13:35

a your fired joke incredibly

13:40

long term anyway, the actual Trump legal

13:42

headline from yesterday may have not come from New York,

13:44

but rather Florida, where witness exhibits

13:47

in the Trump espionage case reveal

13:49

that the FEDS have a small coterie of witnesses

13:51

close to Trump, including an unidentified

13:54

Person sixteen, clearly

13:57

a senior Trump aide but not necessarily

13:59

in the innermost circle, who revealed

14:02

nothing less than the fact that Trump's people

14:04

told his valet and now co defendant

14:07

Walt Naude, not to worry about the

14:09

stolen documents case, that it was not going anywhere

14:12

yet, just in case, even

14:14

if he were to say, get charged with lying

14:17

to the FBI, Trump will pardon

14:19

him after he regains power. Person

14:23

sixteen, the guy who identified

14:25

this information, was so spooked by what he

14:27

knows and the prospect of retribution,

14:30

and the sheer number of non disclosure

14:32

agreements he had signed, that while he

14:34

fulsomely revealed what he knows, he

14:36

would not let the FBI record

14:39

the interview. He also

14:41

revealed that Trump routinely took documents

14:43

from the Oval office to his White House residence, and

14:46

yes, he had heard Trump declassify

14:48

one set of them, the ones pertaining

14:50

to the FBI investigation of Trump's

14:52

links to Russia as to

14:54

the universal standing order

14:57

to declassify anything Trump

14:59

ever touched or just looked at or

15:01

blinked about twice. Nope, says

15:03

Person sixteen. Never

15:07

happened. But

15:10

Nowada stuff is critical. If Trump ever goes

15:12

to trial in Florida, he's meat

15:14

because on top of everything else, they can

15:16

easily break this nauda and

15:19

then they can get Trump for

15:21

a little bit of witness tampering. Let's

15:27

run some of the other headlines. I got

15:29

Biden's next campaign ad for him

15:32

courtesy of this Jesse Waters

15:34

ass from Fox. At least I think

15:36

he's still with Fox. He might not be now. He

15:39

used to be Bill O'Reilly's henchman. Not

15:43

as smart as O'Reilly, not nearly, but

15:46

he may be unemployed once the furor here's

15:49

that little Jesse Waters said

15:51

this about Trump. The guy needs exercise.

15:53

He's usually golfing, and so you're

15:55

gonna put a man who's almost steady sitting in

15:57

a room like this on his butt for all that time.

16:00

It's not healthy. You know how big of a health

16:02

nut I am. He needs sunlight, and he needs

16:04

activity, he needs to be walking around, he needs

16:06

action. It's really cruel and unusual

16:09

punishment to make a man do that. I'm

16:11

Joe Biden and I approved this message. Also

16:13

coming in the future. Good evening.

16:16

I'm Tucker Carlson. This is Tucker Carlson Tonight.

16:18

Jesse Waters. Jesse Waters who one

16:22

point again to emphasize among

16:25

people who think they are both too

16:27

old, it is Biden

16:30

sixty one, Trump thirteen in

16:32

the polling. All you have

16:34

to do is drag up the Trump

16:36

is too old number. Apparently

16:39

it's already worked with Jesse Waters. He

16:43

may be as dumb as the average Trump

16:45

Republican. Also,

16:48

Politico lost without video

16:51

to steal and show, has resorted

16:53

to demonstrating key events of the Trump

16:55

trial in New York by using bobblehead

16:58

dolls. I have

17:00

bad news for Politico on this. I

17:04

used bobblehead dolls

17:07

to demonstrate because we could not get video,

17:09

We could not put our cameras in the meetings to

17:12

demonstrate the activities of the National

17:14

Football League Players Association and its

17:16

ownership its management council during

17:18

the NFL player strike of nineteen eighty

17:21

two. I don't want to say

17:23

using bobbleheads when you can't

17:26

get video is an old bit,

17:28

but I did it when I

17:30

was twenty three years old, and more

17:32

importantly, when CNN

17:36

was two years old, back

17:39

when we didn't show live suicides

17:42

and say, oh, this will win us an emmy,

17:45

bring his ashes with us. Bennie

17:48

Thompson has offered legislation, introduced

17:50

it in the House. Anybody convicted

17:52

of a felony with a

17:55

term of at least one year, guess

17:57

what happens to their secret Service protection all

17:59

they forfeited. Oh, Benny, it's

18:03

not going to pass. Obviously, although

18:05

we said that about Ukraine, didn't we It's

18:08

not going to pass. And anyway, even

18:10

if it did pass, somehow, I'm sure

18:12

Trump's secret Service

18:15

agents would volunteer to

18:18

go to prison with him anyway.

18:22

Late polling from NBC Trump

18:24

forty six, Biden forty four, but Biden

18:28

thirty nine, Trump thirty seven, Kennedy

18:30

thirteen, Stein three, West

18:33

two. In other words, some kind of

18:35

shift has taken place, and the third

18:37

parties, or in this case, the third, fourth,

18:39

and fifth parties are now

18:42

taking votes away more from

18:44

Trump than from Biden, which

18:47

we saw coming, if you will remember, long

18:49

before it was evidenced, than any of the polling. Trump

18:52

attacked Kennedy

18:55

so expect much more of that, and

18:59

somebody needs to get ahold of Cornell West

19:01

and explain to him how

19:03

badly history will judge him for this,

19:07

and call Jill Stein in Moscow. The

19:10

other thing from the NBC News poll that is

19:12

fascinating. It turns

19:14

out that only

19:17

NBC has asked this question in a

19:19

two form fashion, what's

19:22

most important? What's the most

19:24

important issue? And the same answers keep

19:26

coming back. Inflation twenty three

19:28

percent, cost of living and

19:32

then immigration slash the border at

19:34

twenty two percent, So it's what's

19:37

the most important issue? Inflation and

19:39

the cost of living twenty three percent, then

19:41

immigration and the border twenty two percent. And then

19:43

they asked the question in a different way, what's

19:46

the most important issue in determining

19:48

your vote?

19:52

Twenty eight percent said high

19:54

number. Twenty eight percent said protecting

19:56

democracy or constitutional

19:59

rights, Immigration

20:02

and the border second at twenty f percent,

20:06

abortion third at nineteen percent.

20:08

So, in other words, not asking

20:10

what do you think generically is the most important issue

20:12

of the day, but what are you going to base your vote on? Forty

20:18

seven percent said protecting

20:20

democracy or constitutional rights or

20:22

abortion rights. That's

20:25

the key, not who's leading in the polls. Here

20:28

is, though, a story that

20:31

would lead the news in any other timeline,

20:33

in any other moment in American history. The

20:36

Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez

20:38

quote Matt Gates, he paid miners

20:40

to have sex with them at drunk

20:42

parties. There's a second version

20:44

of this quote, he paid miners

20:47

to have sex with him at drug parties.

20:49

Oh well, that's much better. Speaker

20:52

of the House, Mike Johnson will

20:55

campaign today alongside

20:59

Congressman Tony Gonzalez. I

21:03

am beginning to I think

21:05

Mike Johnson sometime last

21:07

week was hit by lightning,

21:10

but in a good way.

21:19

Keep them in office, hell make him a Democrat.

21:22

Also of interest here, once upon a time

21:24

you could be on one network and talk politics

21:26

and advocate even for one party on that

21:29

one network, while on

21:31

your sixth day of work you were also on

21:33

another network talking sports

21:36

utterly a politically. And

21:38

let me tell you from personal experience, that

21:41

time when you could do that. That ended

21:43

in the year twenty ten, and

21:45

it especially ended at a place called

21:48

ESPN. And I know because I

21:50

helped write the rules saying

21:52

you could not do politics

21:54

in one place while you were on ESPN

21:58

in the other place. So

22:00

why is ESPN now letting

22:02

its most prominent on air personality

22:05

openly campaign for Trump?

22:08

This will end in tears

22:11

for everybody. Why ESPN

22:13

has two choices? Silence

22:16

Stephen a Smith or fire

22:19

Stephen a Smith. That's next.

22:22

This is countdown. This

22:24

is countdown with Keith Olberman

22:49

still ahead of us on this all new editiontive

22:51

countdown. So somebody asked me the other day if I

22:53

knew a sportscasting agent named

22:55

Lou Oppenheim, And it was

22:58

like the old joke about the guy saying Niagara

23:00

falls and the second guy turns

23:02

around and loses his mind. Niagro

23:06

falls slowly. I

23:08

turned, step by step,

23:10

not that Lou Oppenheim was

23:12

the worst party of the story in

23:15

which his business partner was supposedly negotiating

23:17

a new deal for me at my employers at CBS

23:20

in nineteen ninety one, while he was also

23:22

sending CBS tapes

23:24

of other clients in hopes of getting

23:26

them my job that he was still

23:28

negotiating for. But Lou

23:31

was part of it. You gotta hear

23:33

this story. It involves me also

23:35

getting served with court papers the night

23:37

of my first ever sports center. Next

23:40

on things, I promised not to tell first.

23:43

Still more new idiots to talk about the

23:45

daily roundup of the miscrants, morons, and Donning

23:47

Kruger effects specimens, including

23:49

two sports guys who have not succeeded

23:52

in transforming into news guys who

23:55

constitute two days worst

23:57

persons in the world Crinklitus

24:00

Days the bronze worse Nate

24:02

Silver, who started in sports

24:04

metrics and moved into political

24:06

metrics in large part because I put him on TV

24:09

talking about political metrics oops

24:12

to say oops and get out. I

24:14

really thought he would be satisfied as the master

24:17

of the numbers. But I guess no one is satisfied

24:19

as the master of the numbers. On

24:21

January third, twenty twenty two, Nate

24:23

Silver tweeted, quote, It's probably

24:25

foolish to think a New York City mayor will

24:27

successfully translate into being

24:29

a national political figure. But I still think

24:32

Eric Adams would be in my top five

24:35

for who will be the next Democratic presidential

24:37

nominee after Joe Biden. My

24:40

man, you left off a couple of zeros

24:43

after that five, your

24:45

top five hundred, your top five thousand, new

24:47

polling from the Manhattan Institute, Who you vote

24:50

for in the next New York City mayor's

24:52

election, Mayor Eric Adams sixteen

24:54

percent. Sixteen sixteen

24:58

percent said yes to Merk Adams.

25:00

Somebody else sixty five percent.

25:03

AHw I heard that phrase,

25:05

ie watering numbers. Well here they are. I can't

25:07

see the page. Sixty five somebody

25:10

else, anybody else, for God's sakes, one of the horses

25:12

in Central Park. I don't care, a manhole

25:14

cover whatever, Maybe

25:16

a Republican Not

25:19

sure, so it still could be somebody

25:22

other than Adams nineteen

25:24

more percent. So right now it's Adams

25:26

sixteen not Adams

25:29

eighty four. Wait, it

25:31

gets worse. How far underwater

25:34

are his favorable unfavorable impression

25:36

numbers? His favorable minus

25:38

his unfavorable with Democrats. With

25:40

Democrats, he's at minus thirty five,

25:43

and that is his best party demographic.

25:46

Among New Yorkers in their thirties, he's minus

25:49

seventy four eighteen

25:51

to twenty nine year olds minus sixty eight,

25:53

forty to forty nine year olds minus

25:56

sixty eight, among black voters

25:58

minus eleven, people more than two hundred

26:00

and six years old, minus twenty two. How's

26:03

that possible? I made that one up,

26:06

and it all may be worse than that because those are

26:08

just disapprove or approved. The percentage

26:10

that strongly disapproves of Eric Adams

26:12

is forty six percent. The

26:15

percentage that strongly approves of

26:17

Eric Adams, great job, mayor great

26:19

job four percent? Fool

26:25

good call Nate Silver the

26:27

runner up worse Kevin McCarthy, especially

26:29

in the context of Mike Johnson, likely

26:32

to be X speaker at least ex Republican

26:34

because he actually stood up for something on principle

26:37

at last, we can fully

26:39

see what a human jellyfish Kevin McCarthy

26:42

is. Goes on Fox, calls the

26:44

Democrats the dangers to American democracy,

26:46

and his evidence quote, I mean

26:49

Hillary Clinton ever said she lost the twenty sixteen

26:51

election. The surprised host

26:53

says, yeah, she called Trump

26:56

and conceded. McCarthy

26:58

makes a dismissive sound like and

27:01

says, but she never said it to the press.

27:04

She called the night of his election. She made

27:06

the public concession speech the

27:08

next day, November ninth, twenty sixteen.

27:10

It was in all of the papers. Kevin McCarthy,

27:13

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. You don't know how to freaking read.

27:16

But our winners the

27:19

worst Stephen A. Smith

27:21

and ESPN We

27:24

had a hard and fast rule. There

27:27

you're on ESPN, no party

27:29

politics, no endorsements of candidates,

27:32

no electioneering. You know who wrote

27:34

that rule. I wrote that rule. You

27:36

know why, because I actually believe

27:38

in the separation of politics and sportscasting,

27:41

not politics and sports. If

27:43

athletes are going to go political, you can cover

27:46

them doing it. You kind of have to sometimes,

27:48

but don't you do it. Aaron

27:50

Rodgers gets strung out on something and starts

27:53

spewing conspiracy theories on ESPN.

27:55

No, you probably should not have given him that platform

27:57

to do it, but regardless, you then have to

27:59

cover it. You have to explain he's gone nuts.

28:03

But sportscasters campaigning,

28:06

not reporting on Colin Kaepernick,

28:09

not recording and reporting on transgender

28:13

athletes, but reporting and making

28:15

a choice of Biden or Trump. Nobody

28:18

wants that mix, least

28:20

of all the ESPN talent

28:22

who would do it. They don't really want

28:24

it. The ESPN management who would permit it,

28:27

they don't want it. And yet

28:29

they are letting Steven A. Smith, who makes

28:31

millions of dollars as the man in television

28:33

most gifted in saying the least amount

28:35

of stuff taking up the most amount

28:38

of time, who kills off hours

28:40

a day between ESPN

28:43

gambling advice without ever

28:45

advancing the story or explaining

28:47

a team dynamic or improving

28:49

anybody's knowledge about anything in sports.

28:52

Who thus deserves every penny

28:54

he makes. They are letting him

28:57

go on Fox News and campaign

28:59

for Donald Trump campaign

29:02

on Sean Hannity's show On with

29:04

Sean Hannity. One of the people who

29:06

has most damaged the United States

29:08

of America could not have done more

29:11

damage if he were Vladimir Putin.

29:14

Stephen A. Smith goes on with Hannity and tells

29:16

him about Trump. Quote. Black folks

29:18

find him relatable because of when he

29:21

said, what he is going through is similar to what

29:23

black Americans have gone through. He wasn't

29:25

lying. Spoiler

29:28

alert, Stephen A. Trump is

29:30

lying. He's always lying. Quote.

29:33

He was telling the truth. When you see the

29:35

law, law enforcement, the court system, and everything

29:37

else being exercised against

29:40

him, it is something that black folks throughout this

29:42

nation can relate to. With some of our historic

29:44

iconic figures. Steven,

29:47

you just insulted all of your historic iconic

29:49

figures and all of mine

29:51

and all of Americas and you're a

29:53

useful idiot. The law is

29:56

being exercised against

29:58

Trump, whatever the f that means, it's

30:00

being exercised against him because he

30:02

keeps breaking the law. He

30:05

has broken the law to try and stall in the

30:07

dictatorship in this country. One

30:09

I might add that if he succeeds in the

30:11

fall, we'll repress minority

30:14

groups and the media way

30:16

more than everybody else. You and

30:18

me are going to the camps under Dictator

30:20

Trump, Stephen, and

30:22

it got worse. Quote. We've seen

30:24

that happen throughout society. So no matter

30:26

what race, what ethnicity you may emanate

30:28

from, we relate to

30:31

you when you're suffering like that because we know

30:33

we have ESPN

30:37

in the last decade has reprimanded,

30:39

suspended, demoted, and dismissed on air

30:41

people who said far less propagandistic

30:44

things, who didn't do one

30:46

percent of the damage Stephen A. Smith just did to ESPN,

30:49

who hit far fewer political party

30:52

talking points and who didn't come anywhere

30:54

as close to what Steven A. Smith just did there, go

30:56

on national television on a propaganda

30:59

network from hell like Fox and come

31:01

up with excuses for a criminal

31:03

like Donald Trump and his crime times and figuratively

31:06

hug Donald Trump and Sean haddity

31:08

f you, Steven A. Smith. Bluntly,

31:12

I have been associated with ESPN longer

31:14

than anybody now running it or Smith.

31:17

I also think my credentials on trying to balance

31:19

sports and politics are better than

31:21

anybody in the business, including management

31:24

and Stephen A. Smith. This is not two

31:26

thousand and eight. I just barely got away

31:28

with it in two thousand and eight. By twenty

31:31

ten, the National Football League said I couldn't

31:33

do it anymore. They forced me off NBC's

31:35

Football Night at America.

31:37

To the executives at ESPN letting Smith

31:39

do this, you are going to inherit

31:42

the wind, Bob

31:44

Iger. I have known you since nineteen seventy

31:46

nine. They will fire you over

31:49

this someday. Just because

31:51

many of you agree with him and want

31:53

to suck up to Trump. Just in case, does

31:56

not mean your predecessors were wrong.

31:59

Embrace party politics as

32:01

opposed to cultural issues or

32:03

sports issues with political impact.

32:05

Embrace Trump versus Biden,

32:08

and I'd say this if you were embracing Biden

32:10

and ESPN will die

32:14

and Stephen you and I have always

32:16

gotten along well personally, so I am saying

32:18

this and hopes you will take it this way. Drop

32:20

the politics. Do it now.

32:23

You cannot be on ESPN and

32:25

do Trump commercials simultaneously.

32:27

Do it or kiss your sports career

32:30

goodbye? And more importantly, all

32:32

that money you have to go to the bank to count every

32:34

once in a while, you can kiss that goodbye too.

32:37

It doesn't work anymore. If

32:39

it worked anymore, I'd still be at ESPN

32:42

doing it. Stephen A. Smith

32:44

campaigning for Trump and ESPN

32:47

letting him campaign for Trump two

32:49

days. Worse persons

32:52

in the world to

33:07

the number one story on the Countdown and my favorite

33:09

topic, me and things I promised not to tell.

33:11

And somebody invoked his name

33:13

the other day asked me about

33:16

a television agent named Lou

33:18

Oppenheim. I only

33:21

met I think Lou Oppenheim

33:23

once. It was not a particularly

33:26

memorable meeting. But Lou Oppenheim

33:28

is in the middle of one of the great stories

33:31

of my career, at least

33:33

in terms of agents who

33:35

have represented me. I had one

33:37

agent for pretty much all of the

33:40

nineteen eighty three to two

33:42

thousand and ten era of

33:44

my broadcasting career, and

33:47

I've had several of them since then. But

33:50

in the middle of nineteen ninety

33:52

one, my then colleague

33:54

Jim Lampley at KCBS in Los Angeles

33:57

said I don't think your agent is

33:59

big time enough to advance you further

34:01

in your career. Well, Lampley had worked

34:03

for years at ABE Television, he

34:06

was at the network, and I at the age

34:08

of thirty two and doing pretty

34:10

well at KCBS in Los Angeles, certainly

34:13

financially and in the ratings compared to

34:15

the ratings that the rest of the station had, but

34:17

not doing well in terms of establishing any

34:19

kind of national presence in sportscasting.

34:21

I wanted to do as well nationally

34:24

as Lampley had, so Lampley

34:26

said, I should fire my agent and hire

34:28

this guy, Arthur Kaminsky.

34:31

He was the head of a company called Athletes

34:34

and Artists, or as I later

34:37

referred to them, Athletes and

34:39

con Artists. I'll explain

34:41

to you right now that it turned out. I

34:44

found out the following year that Art Kaminsky

34:46

had sought me as a client, not because he

34:48

wanted to represent me, not because Lampley

34:50

had suggested it, but because Art

34:53

Kominsky was like me, a sports memorabilia

34:55

collector, and he assumed I could get

34:58

him a good price on

35:00

a set of nineteen fifty five Tops

35:02

Football cards. The

35:05

high end of this set of nineteen fifty five

35:07

Tops Football cards in the year nineteen

35:10

ninety one was maybe two

35:12

thousand dollars. He thought I could

35:14

get it for him for about fifteen hundred. That's

35:16

why he wanted to represent me, and that was

35:18

apparently the only reason he wanted to represent

35:21

me. Needless to say, this

35:23

did not go well, and this is

35:25

how not well it went. Although

35:28

they were paying me half a million dollars

35:30

when I was thirty two years old, and

35:33

particularly in nineteen ninety one, that went a

35:35

long way. I

35:37

was not particularly happy at KCBS

35:39

Channel two in Los Angeles because the station was

35:42

a graveyard. It had been in last

35:44

place in the ratings since about nineteen

35:47

oh seventy five or so, and would

35:49

be well into the late nineties

35:51

if I remember correctly. They had

35:53

hundreds, perhaps of broadcasters,

35:56

all of whom succeeded elsewhere, who

35:58

did not succeed there. If

36:01

you remember the morning newsreader

36:03

on the Today Show and Curry, she was

36:06

with me at KCBS, all kinds

36:08

of anchors. Jim Forbes behind

36:10

the music. Jim Forbes was a reporter

36:12

for US, the guy from whichever

36:15

one of those tabloid shows. Harvey

36:17

Levin, he was one of our reporters. It was a great

36:20

staff and lousy management. I

36:22

wanted to get out of there anyway, but there didn't seem

36:24

to be the right job anywhere. I wanted to work

36:26

in my hometown of New York, and I thought

36:29

Kaminsky could help me there, or at

36:31

least I wanted Kaminsky to talk

36:33

the management of Channel two in LA into

36:36

picking up my option for the

36:38

rest of my contract. I'd been there for three

36:40

years in about three months, and I had

36:43

two years to go, and it was their option,

36:45

and it was another half a million dollars

36:47

a year. And even then I realized that being

36:49

paid half a million dollars a year to do

36:52

like three sports casts a day and maybe

36:54

an hour over the weekend was pretty

36:56

damn good money for not a lot

36:58

of work. So Kaminsky's

37:01

job became to try to get me a job in New

37:03

York, or to get me my job

37:05

in LA, to get them to pick up the

37:07

option. I'll spare you what he

37:10

did and did not do in terms

37:12

of getting me the job in New York. Ultimately,

37:14

I suggested something to him, and he said,

37:17

I would never do that. It would reflect badly

37:19

on me, and I was like, what are you

37:21

talking about. I had volunteered to work

37:24

at union scale in

37:26

a new job in New York for a period of time, and if

37:28

the station didn't like me, they could get

37:30

rid of me, or they could pay me competitively.

37:33

That would be just beneath

37:35

my dignity. So

37:38

as the months went on, it became evident

37:40

that there really were only three possibilities

37:43

for my employment for the year nineteen ninety two.

37:45

The possibility of a job in San Diego, which

37:48

would have cost almost as much

37:50

as Los Angeles in terms of cost of living

37:52

and paid about one third something like

37:54

that, or staying

37:57

at Channel two in Los Angeles, or

37:59

going to ESPN, which

38:01

I didn't really want to do because I was living

38:04

in Beverly Hills and there was no

38:06

humidity and no winter. And

38:09

guess what. ESPN was

38:12

not anywhere near Beverly

38:14

Hills, and it didn't pay that well.

38:16

It only paid about thirty five or forty

38:18

percent of what the job in Los Angeles paid

38:21

in any event, So now Kaminski worked on

38:23

getting me to retain my job

38:26

somehow, some redirection

38:28

or promise or to make the shows more

38:31

appealing to eighty year old women

38:34

who watched Channel two in Los Angeles at

38:36

four o'clock in the afternoon and then our newscast

38:38

at five, or whatever it is they had in mind.

38:42

One day he told me that his partner

38:44

at Athletes and con Artists, a man

38:46

named Lou Oppenheim, was going

38:49

to be in Los Angeles when he normally

38:51

was in New York, and was going to meet with

38:53

the general manager and the news director of

38:55

KCBS to find out and

38:58

to convince them about my option.

39:00

That he would come out of that meeting and be able to tell

39:02

me whether or not I was going to

39:04

stay there and not have to sell

39:06

my condo and take a significant salary

39:09

loss and possibly not have to move

39:12

to Bristol, Connecticut. The

39:14

day came, I saw Oppenheim on

39:16

the way in. I greeted him at the door. I

39:18

walked him down the hallway and I said, make

39:20

sure you stop by before you leave. And

39:24

as the hours went on, I saw

39:26

the general manager of the television station

39:28

in the hallway somewhere, meaning the meaning had

39:30

been concluded. And then as

39:33

I was walking to my office there I saw in

39:35

the distance coming down the hallway. Who

39:37

else but Lou Oppenheim, And

39:39

I said, Lou, what happened? And

39:40

he began to run

39:43

towards me and passed me. I

39:45

can't talk right now. I'm late for the airport.

39:47

I said, what do you mean? I just need to know. Am

39:49

I give me a head start on putting my house

39:52

up on the market. Am I staying or going? I

39:54

can't go. I can't talk to you now. I have to go back

39:56

to and he was gone. He

39:58

had the answer. He had been

40:00

told by the general manager whether my

40:02

contract option was going to be picked up or

40:05

not, and he wouldn't

40:07

tell me now. I later found

40:09

out that he wouldn't tell me because this was on the instructions

40:12

of his partner, Kominski. Kaminsky is

40:14

now dead, so he can't really defend himself

40:16

in this story. But when he was alive, he

40:18

couldn't defend himself either, because he was

40:20

a schmuck. What Art

40:23

Kaminsky was doing was keeping this information

40:25

to himself, namely that my option

40:27

was not being picked up at KCBS in Los

40:29

Angeles, and thus there was a number one

40:32

sportscasting job open in Los

40:34

Angeles. And he saw

40:36

this now as one thing and

40:38

one thing only, not representing

40:40

me and my next job or letting

40:42

me know about what was now going to be

40:45

my soon to be ex job. He

40:48

saw this as an opportunity for him Art

40:50

Kaminsky, to put another one

40:52

of his clients in my job

40:54

while I still had it, and he

40:56

was still arguing theoretically

40:58

for me to stay there, and we're talking

41:01

about, I believe maybe September

41:03

or October of nineteen ninety

41:05

one, and I still had a contract through January

41:08

first of nineteen ninety two. I was

41:10

going to be a lame duck and did

41:12

not even know it. One

41:14

day, during the Baseball Playoffs,

41:17

which were on CBS at the time, I

41:19

was in the news director's office, it

41:22

was given to us as the viewing room

41:24

for the pre and postgame shows that

41:26

we were producing four Channel two in Los

41:28

Angeles for the Baseball playoffs in the World Series.

41:31

Unlike most sporting events in

41:34

Los Angeles, the problem with TV

41:36

broadcasts of the NFL or

41:39

Major League Baseball, NBA, NHL anything

41:41

at all. The games don't end too

41:44

late. In Los Angeles and the rest of

41:46

the West Coast. They end too early. A

41:48

World Series game that does not shut down

41:51

till eleven thirty or midnight. Eastern

41:53

time is over at nine o'clock. That's

41:56

two hours to kill until you can go to the eleven

41:58

o'clock news. So we would fill it

42:00

with a postgame show, a locally produced

42:02

postgame show with me and

42:05

a then active baseball player. We had

42:08

Wally Joyner from the California Angels, my

42:10

longtime friend. He did it one year. Danny

42:12

Tartable who had been with the Kansas

42:14

City Royals and the Seattle Mariners. We

42:17

had Rick Dempsey who was then with the

42:19

Los Angeles Dodgers. We had all kinds

42:21

of people, and we did this for all sports. We did

42:23

this for the NFL and the NBA and Major League

42:25

Baseball. And one day, as we're sitting

42:28

there watching the baseball

42:30

playoff games in the news director's

42:33

office with the biggest TV we could find

42:35

to watch this, my partner,

42:38

my analyst for the postgame shows, was

42:40

a guy who was pitching for the Saint Louis Cardinals

42:43

and had aspirations to become a broadcaster

42:45

and became one named Joe McGrain.

42:48

And Joe McGrain suddenly began to

42:50

look around the news director's office

42:52

and I saw his head tilt over at

42:55

about ninety degrees, which

42:57

is a very unusual position to see another

42:59

human being keep his head in. And

43:01

Joe and I had gotten along pretty well

43:03

at that point. I didn't know each other that well, but

43:06

we were friends for a very long time thereafter.

43:08

And Joe was now looking at a series of

43:10

tapes. This is during the commercials

43:13

between innings of the World Series game, and

43:15

he's looking at the tapes, the

43:18

boxes of tapes on the news director's

43:20

desk, and he's looking at them sideways

43:22

because they're labeled vertically

43:25

rather than horizontally. And he says,

43:28

huh, Hanna a Storm.

43:33

And I said, Hannah Storm. There's a tape

43:35

of Hannah Storm on my news

43:37

director's desk. He said, yeah,

43:39

what do you know about her? And I said, she's

43:41

one of Art Komensky's other clients. And

43:44

he said, well, over here, there's that's this Jimmy

43:47

Cephalo And I said,

43:49

Jimmy Cephalo is another one of Art Kaminsky's

43:51

clients. Well, this went on for quite a while.

43:54

It turned out there were about a dozen tapes

43:56

on the news director's desk of other

43:59

Art Kaminsky clients. For my

44:01

job while I was represented

44:03

by Art Comment and

44:07

his partner Lou Oppenheim, had literally

44:10

pushed me aside, so he did not

44:12

have to tell me that my contract was not being

44:14

renewed. Needless to say,

44:17

even though mister Kominsky had been negotiating

44:19

my job with ESPN my

44:21

next job with ESPN, I shortly thereafter

44:24

fired him, but not before I called him up

44:26

and screamed at him, which was the least

44:28

he deserved from me. Other

44:30

people have had exceptional experiences with Art

44:32

Kominsky and made a lot of money thanks to his involvement.

44:35

I was not one of those people. In

44:38

any event, At some point

44:41

Kaminsky said he didn't

44:43

want to talk to me anymore, and the discussion

44:46

of what was going to happen to me at KCBS

44:49

should be handled by the third

44:52

sports agent in his stable of

44:54

agents, Alan Sanders.

44:56

This is nineteen ninety one. In

44:59

nineteen eighty three, eight

45:01

years previously, Alan Sanders had been

45:04

my int at CNN Sports

45:06

in New York. He had just gone into

45:08

the agentine game, and he had,

45:10

in fact, a few weeks previously, actually

45:13

driven me up from my folks house outside

45:15

of New York City up to ESPN

45:18

and Bristol, Connecticut, the first time I'd ever been

45:20

there to have an interview and look around,

45:22

and he drove me back and he was a great

45:25

guy. And I always got along well with Alan, and

45:27

we have crossed paths several times

45:29

since then. I had nothing at

45:32

all bad to say about Alan Sanders.

45:34

On the other hand, I did point

45:36

out that this was really kind

45:38

of rubbing it in that Kaminsky

45:41

here not only did not permit

45:43

his partner lou Oppenheim to tell me the

45:45

truth in real time and actually

45:48

avoid me and push me out of wait,

45:50

don't push me out of the way, just

45:52

say yes or no or

45:55

thumbs up or thumbs down. I gotta go.

45:58

But then on top of that, Kaminsky

46:00

would not talk to me about this subject. He

46:03

said Alan would, And I said, I don't think that's

46:05

appropriate, Arthur, I think you should

46:07

do it, whereupon Arthur Kaminsky

46:09

turned around and holding the phone

46:11

away from his own mouth, shouted, Hey,

46:14

Alan Alderman doesn't

46:16

think you're important enough to

46:19

tell him he's been fired by CBS.

46:23

So when I then finalized

46:26

my deal to go to ESPN,

46:28

and you know what happened there for the year

46:31

nineteen ninety two. I called

46:33

up several people there who were the

46:35

ones who hired me, and I said, listen,

46:37

I'm no longer represented by Art Kaminsky.

46:39

I'm represented again by Gene Sage,

46:41

who was the woman who had represented me before

46:43

I made the mistake of dismissing her and

46:46

hiring Arthur Kaminsky. And

46:49

these people said, oh, thank

46:51

god. Here. I know

46:53

we told you we couldn't pay him more than whatever

46:55

it was, one hundred and ninety thousand dollars.

46:58

I know we told you that, but here's another twenty thousand

47:00

dollars, just because we're all so grateful

47:03

that we don't have to deal with that dick

47:05

Kaminski. And I actually

47:07

said, no, his name is Arthur. So

47:12

I was a little honked off about Komensky.

47:15

And I figured that if anybody ever heard this story,

47:17

his stature as a business

47:19

agent in hockey, which was his other thing,

47:22

or broadcasting, would be diminished

47:24

somewhat. And so I figured we'd

47:26

just let this go and Gene

47:29

Sage would be my agent at ESPN. And

47:31

I, by the way, was not going to pay Arthur

47:33

Kaminsky a dime of my ESPN

47:36

contract. Sure enough, I

47:39

go to work at SportsCenter and in

47:41

fact start earlier than planned. I was supposed

47:43

to take three months off and go to Hawaii. In fact,

47:45

they needed me to go back there and launch the radio

47:47

network early at ESPN, and

47:49

so I did not get my time off,

47:52

and I moved there earlier than planned, and I started

47:54

on Sports Center maybe a week earlier than

47:56

originally planned, which was about the opening day

47:58

of the two thousand, or rather the nineteen

48:00

hundred and ninety two. It's a long

48:03

time ago base all season,

48:05

so I started a little early. And as

48:08

I'm sitting there writing my first script

48:10

and going, well, it's

48:12

not the first place I'd choose to live. But as

48:15

Lampley himself once said, look at it this way,

48:18

you will be married to your audience.

48:20

There's very little you can do to screw it up.

48:23

I thought it was an interesting analogy, but anyway,

48:25

we'll let that one pass. As

48:28

I was doing that, there was a call

48:30

from the front desk saying that there

48:32

was somebody downstairs to see

48:34

me. Well, I was

48:37

naive enough to go downstairs to see who it

48:39

was, and a man I'd never met

48:42

stood there at the main desk

48:44

at ESPN and

48:46

said, are you Keith Olderman, and I said

48:48

yes, and he said you've

48:50

been served, and he handed me a

48:53

lawsuit from Arthur Kaminski seeking

48:56

the something like ten

48:59

thousand dollars that I would have owed him

49:01

if he had actually been my agent at ESPN.

49:05

That was Lou

49:08

Oppenheim's partner. I

49:10

am led to believe Lou was forced

49:13

to do everything he did. Nevertheless,

49:16

I did just want to put this one on the record

49:19

because as I told the story to the person

49:21

who asked about Lou Oppenheim, they

49:23

went into hysterics at every

49:26

little stage of this story. So

49:29

there it is. The Lou Oppenheim.

49:31

I can't tell you the truth because my boss,

49:34

Arthur Kaminsky told me not to story.

49:38

If you're looking for an agent in

49:40

the field of sports broadcasting, I

49:43

can only give you this advice. I

49:45

have no advice whatsoever.

50:02

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

50:04

listening. Countdown musical directors Brian

50:06

Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced

50:08

and performed most of our music. Mister

50:10

Ray was on guitars, bass and drums. Mister

50:13

Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. It

50:15

was produced by TKO Brothers. Other music,

50:17

including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged

50:20

and performed by the group Noah Horns Elude.

50:23

Suddenly I became Scandinavian perfumed.

50:26

The sports music is the Olberman theme from

50:28

ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren

50:30

Davis curtisyvespn inc. Our

50:33

satirical and fifty musical comments are by

50:35

Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium

50:37

organist ever. Our announcer today

50:39

was my friend Larry David, and everything else was pretty

50:42

much my fault. So that's countdown for

50:44

this the one hundred and ninety seventh

50:46

day until the twenty twenty four

50:48

presidential election, and the two

50:51

hundred and fourth day since Diaper

50:53

j Trump's first attempted coup against

50:55

the democratically elected government of the United States.

50:58

Use the fourteenth Amendment and the not regularly

51:00

given elector objection option. Use

51:03

the Insurrection Act, You use the justice

51:05

system, use the mental health system,

51:08

use the recyclable diaper system

51:10

to stop him from doing it again

51:12

while we still can.

51:16

The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins

51:18

as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Oulreman.

51:20

Good morning, Good Afternoon, good Night, and

51:24

good Luck. Countdown

51:38

with Keith Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio.

51:41

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

51:43

visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

51:46

or wherever you get your podcasts.