Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.

They have inadvertently confessed why Alex Pretty was murdered by Ice and Border Patrol in Minneapolis Saturday.

They the Trump dictatorship and its terrorists, the paramilitary organization the Proud Ice Boys death Squad.

They murdered Alex Pretty as a warning that this is what they will continue to do if local leaders like Minnesota's governor do not stop thwarting the Trump dictatorship.

They hadn't even cleaned up the murder site yet, and yet Trump's concierge, Attorney General Pambody, was already on Fox confessing.

What she said could someday send her to finish her life in jail.

But that's someday right now.

What matters is what her confession means to us, Her confession about the letter she sent.

It is an extortion letter, a blackmail letter, a kidnapping letter.

It is a letter promising to end Trump's invasion of Minnesota, to withdraw Ice if Trump's ransom demands are met.

Quote, we sent Governor Walls a very strong letter today, BONDI said to whichever Fox meat puppet was on the air that hour, We got it out, saying that he better support President Trump, he better support the men and women in law enforcement, because if he doesn't, we are, and that's what we're doing right now.

He better support President Trump.

It's simple.

They want voter rolls and Medicare data and other showy things with which to suppress minorities and fix the midterms.

But the big picture, the big message BONDI was too stupid to finesse or dress up.

It's right there.

What we did Saturday morning is she implied a message to Governor Walls and every other governor and every other mayor and every other American quote, saying that he better support President Trump because if he doesn't, we are, and that's what we're doing right now.

Support Trump or we will well, we will keep shooting your residence.

Comply or your people will die, or you will die.

The United States of America is at this moment without a functioning government.

In place of a government, the United States of America now has a Trump terrorist organization in forced by a paramilitary death squad, proud ice boys, masked gunmen, street gangs in Nazi leathered trench coats.

The United States of America is at this moment without a functioning government, and the United States of America is at this moment without a functioning constitution, and the United States of America is at this moment without a functioning president.

We are destabilized from within by state sponsored terrorism, our own state, with our own terrorist, the worst terrorist this nation has ever faced.

Donald John Trump, he serves no one but himself, at his co conspirators, and his gangs and militias and Gestapo, and for all we know mercenaries which he calls homeland security and border patrol and Ice, and they are rioters and provocateurs and enforcers, and they are death squads.

Trump serves no one but himself.

He protects no one but himself, and he protects those who will break the laws on his behalf, his criminals, his executioners.

You saw what happened.

The world saw what happened.

The video is conclusive, and what it depicts is unmistakable.

Alex Pretty, a nurse, a nurse at a VA hospital, goes to where Ice was threatening to riot again.

He brought with him his gun, for which he had a permit, which every right winger for half a century has claimed is the most important part of the Constitution, sometimes the only part of the Constitution they can even see.

When he got there, he saw Ice sadists pepper sprang and knocking a woman to the snowy street.

He filmed it.

He tried to help her up.

They swarmed him.

They forced him to the ground, They beat him, They found and removed the gun he was not holding.

And then as he fell to the ground and lay there defenseless, they shot him in the head and ten times in total the end.

And then this subhuman witch, Christie Nome, got up and before his body was cold, accused him of being a domestic terrorist and of brandishing a gun.

And amid the obvious slanders and untruths that brand her either a compulsive liar or someone impaired by brain injury or vision deprivation or impairment, she told the real story here, that Alex Pretty was shot because he interfered with what ICE was doing in Minneapolis, with its duties, with its purpose.

And if you take that as the only true thing she said, true monstrousness of what happens Saturday becomes even worse because Christy Nome's inference, the sadistic admission she is too stupid and delusional to understand she made is that ICE's duties under the Trump a dvanced dictatorship are menacing Americans citizens and non citizens alike and throwing them to the ground and beating them and then killing them.

This wasn't some kind of mistake.

Noome hasn't said it.

None of them have said it.

None of them have said it still that the death of Alex Pretty was even a mistake, just as she and the others scums still haven't said the death of Renee Good was even a mistake.

They continue to glory in what they did.

Christin Noman, Tom Holman and todd Lyons and this pile of vomit in an SS trench coat.

Bovino are celebrating the murders of Pretty and Good and the others who have been injured, and the others who have been seized, and the five year olds used as bait, and the doctors who have been not eyed access to the men dying of murders stochastically ordered by Trump.

They have been glorying in this because that is what ICE's purpose is.

That is what Bovino's purpose is, that is what nomes purpose is.

That is what this dressed up street gang called Ice, barely dressed up street gang is.

That is what Homan is, That is what Lions is, that is what the Department of Justice is.

This wasn't some nightmare of hatred mixed with sadism, mixed with improper training.

They meant for it to be like this, and they mean for it to be worse than this.

Christy Nomes job is to get Americans killed.

The proud Ice boys jobs are to throw Americans to the streets and beat them and killed them.

Their duties are to menace and throw women and the elderly to the ground.

And all that Nomes said is an acknowledgment of every one of our enraged criticisms about who they are and what they are doing.

It is their confirmation that not only are we correct, but that we have understood their goal.

They are not only terrorists, they intend to be terrorists, and not just some small subset of undocumented immigrants, some small number of easily slandered, easily targeted other scapegoats.

This is intended to terrorize all Americans, and that includes those massachists who form half the base of Trump's support and to whom Ice is also a reminder a much more subtle reminder you want to be on our side, because here is what we do to people who are not on our side.

And guess what, mister and missus maga in your heart, you may think you are one of us, and that we are what you voted for, and that you are safe.

But what we really want you to take away from Minneapolis is that you can be a white guy who works for the government, and you can have a gun permit and you can carry the gun in accordance with the Second Amendment.

We whip you into a frenzy over and we will still kill you.

We will still kill you.

Ice DHS these paramilitary gangs who then tried to destroy the evidence of their murder, and the local cops had to threaten them, and the city had to go to court to get a restraining order to keep them from destroying the evidence.

Although they probably have These are terrorist organizations.

The Trump vance government is a terrorist organization.

I have been saying this since twenty sixteen, when I had to phrase it as a theoretical because we were still in the middle of that first goddamned election, when I had to say that if Trump meant what he said in his campaign, there would be concentration camps Trump concentration camps full of minorities and immigrants, and there would be American born citizens in there with them, or American born citizens injured or in jail, because not everybody was going to go along with the purging of their own neighbors.

Not this time.

Trump is a terrorist, Gnome is a terrorist.

The murderers of Alex Prettier terrorist and they should all be in Gitmo today.

The only difference between two thousand and twenty six and two thousand and sixteen is it's no longer theoretical they won't become terrorists.

They are terrorists now.

Well, there is one other difference.

They are making almost no effort to hide it anymore, because to hide it, to deny it, is to deprive themselves of the other purpose of state sponsored terrorism against America and Americans, the opportunity to course and blackmail and neutralize the remaining local and state governments that might still defend citizens and stand between them and the murdering menace that is Trump and his thugs.

As much as Alex Pretti tried to stand between the women on the street in Minneapolis Saturday and the oncoming proud Ice boys to deny that this is the plan is to hamstring Pam Bondy Gnomes response, and the best theoretical explanation for her, for all of them, is that they are strung out.

Nome's response was appalling and infuriating, and yet it was surprisingly missionary position.

She's a liar, she's a sadist, She's covered for Corey Lewandowski.

She will do whatever is required for money and power.

She is utterly fungible, and they could replace her tomorrow, and with the perversions she has had done to her appearance, they could literally replace her with somebody who looked sort of like her.

And if the replacement had a deviated septum, you might never know the difference.

Christinom is male order, Christinome is basic.

But Pam Bondi is in a way, far, far more dangerous.

Despite I have met her, despite her belligerent stupidity, her response to the murder of Alex pretty seemed too fast, too on the nose, too rehearsed.

If you told me before she started to talk on Saturday afternoon, if you told me somebody instructed the ice invasion force in Minnesota on Thursday or Friday, Hey kill some guy tomorrow or Saturday, so BONDI can threaten to have you do it again.

I would argue back against your conspiracy theory, but the only real heft to my argument would be that these people are too incompetent to pull off a conspiracy that they would want to do this.

I have no doubt of that.

But then BONDI responded to the murder by confirming the conspiracy theory.

To send, she says, Governor walls that extortion letter, a series of threats, a series of demands, a series of orders, with the not too thinly veiled threat that if they are not complied with, well, there are a lot more Renee Goods and Alex Preddi's out there in Minnesota.

And it's not like we're short of homicidal maniacs with endless AMMO and no Morality's not like we're short of people who will get up and lie while the video plays, proving they are lying as they are lying.

And it's not like we're short of masochistic and sadistic maga out there who want to see people murdered, because that's what masochists and sadists and trumpists are Bondy, as you know, made an offer, an offer that Tim Walls is not supposed to.

What was that phrase again, refuse it's a threat, of course, but she called it an offer.

We will withdraw our Ice death squads from Minnesota after you give us all your medicaid and food assistant records, after you repudiate your sanctuary cities, after you swear to have your cops cooperate with and subordinate themselves to our power military gang, and then give us your voter rolls so we can prosecute you for discriminating against white people.

You know, white people like the ones we've shot on your streets this month.

The real victims here, Oh no, not when we shoot them, then they're not victims.

Then the Ice and Border Patrol officers are the real victims here because they had a camera thrust towards them.

And oh, by the way, with the voter rolls, we can purge all the Democrats and minority voters we can get away with from your voter rolls, because that's the only way we will not lose the midterms, and that's the only way all of us in Trump terrorist organizations and such won't wind up living out our worthless lives in prison, standard organized crime, standard terrorist organization, standard putinesque hitlerresque dictatorship procedure, damage wound, destroy kill first, then issue demands, then blame the victim, then agree to stop your crimes.

If your victims essentially confess to enough fictition crimes to allow you to then say, we have defeated the Minnesota enemy.

And not only have we defeated them, their evidence that they gave us now justifies us taking our proud Ice boys and invading New York because in New York they're doing the thing we told you they were doing in Minnesota, and Minnesota just confessed standard blackmail and extortion and frankly standard paramilitary dictatorship.

And yet somehow it is still even worse.

BONDI sent the letter to Walls.

We assume this is true.

We can't be sure.

Can't be sure she actually sent Walls the letter.

Hell Alex Pretti's family said Saturday night, nobody from ICE or DHS or the Trump mafia or anybody in the government.

The federal government notified them that he was dead.

Twelve hours later, they still hadn't heard from them.

They had found out he was dead when an Associated Press reporter told them, Pam Bondi may have sent the letter to Walls, but she certainly sent the letter to Fox News, and as they are ordered to do, they put her on the air almost immediately, where this somehow even worse part happened.

It's not just that Bondi and her future co defendants want Minnesota to turn over its voter roles and assistant records and become a subsidiary of ICE.

It's that she let the cat out of a bag, because, as I said, I've met her, she's remarkably stupid and gullible and moreover desperate for approval.

And there is nobody actually there behind those eyes.

It is all a performance, and a bad one, and it all sounds truly rehearsed and unqualified and artificial.

And when I say artificial, I don't mean an artificial intelligence.

And so Bondi then went on Fox and that's when she let the cat out of the bag about why Alex Pretty was really murdered.

And I'll read it again.

We sent Governor Walls a very strong letter today, we got it out, saying that he better support President Trump, he better support the men and women in law enforcement.

Because if he doesn't, we are, and that's what we're doing right now.

That's what we're doing right now.

We shot two of your citizens because you're not supporting President Trump.

Pretty straightforward, actually, maybe the most honest thing said in the year and six days of this dictatorship from hell, this nightmare of Trump and his moron sidekick JV there it is you better support President Trump because if you don't, we are.

That's what we did two weeks ago when we shot that woman in the face.

That's what we did Saturday when we killed that Second Amendment guy from the VA hospital.

You quote, better support President Trump.

That's what we're doing right now.

Yep, that is what they're doing right now.

So how do we throw this dictatorship out?

And how do we make sure the terrorists have not won?

And how do we put Christy Noman, Pam Bondi and Bovino and Gitmo.

I am encouraged that the murder and the threat of more murders was so obvious that even Chuck Schumer noticed, But I'd like to point out that his statement and those of Cortes Masto and Jackie Rosen and the other senators who had wavered about voting against appropriations bills that would finance DHS and ICE past Friday of this week.

Their statements were soft enough around the edges that they may still fold as usual.

Schumer wrote a quote not providing the votes to proceed to the appropriation's bill if the DHS funding bill is included.

That does not necessarily mean not funding the rest of the government by somehow stripping the ICE and DHS budgets out to be voted on separately and then approving them with some token nonsense like better training or body cams, because boy oh boy, the threat of their being video of ice murdering nurses sure stopped them from murdering a nurse on Saturday morning.

Even if what Schumer said is not the liberately designed to allow the weasels among our elected representatives to eventually fund some form of, you know, Trump run government sponsored ice terrorism, it's still insufficient.

What Democrats in the Senate, now that the seven traders inside the House Democratic Caucus close that escape route off looking at you, Marie Gluesen, camp Perez and Tom Swazi, what Democrats in the Senate need to do is deny all funding to this government.

I mean, take a page from Pambondy literally a page her letter.

If you are terrified, Chuck Schumer at the phrase abolish Ice, just cut off all funding to the government.

Cut off all funding to Trump until they completely correct immigration control.

Come back to us when you're ready.

Trump, as Adam Schiff rightly said, not another dime.

Shut the Trump dictatorship down.

It's not like it's any good in anything anyway besides killing us.

Shut it down for a month or six months, or until January twenty twenty nine.

Shut it the f down, because surprise, the voters will back you up.

You GOV polled Saturday after the execution in Minneapolis, would you support abolishing Ice?

Yes?

Forty six percent, No, forty one percent.

That's a net plus five four abolishment.

Among independents, it's a net plus twelve.

Deep inside the demographics, they asked one group, would you support abolishing Ice?

Nineteen percent said yes.

That group is Republicans nineteen percent abolish Ice.

A less weighted version of a similar question, do you approve or disapprove of the job Ice is doing?

New York Times SIENA poll, all voters, all demographics, sixty three percent disapprove of the job Ice is doing.

Seventy percent of independence disapproved, fifty seven percent of white voters disapproved.

Nineteen percent of Trump voters disapprove.

It's twenty seven points underwater.

Put Ice underwater.

Politico had polled over the last week, is it worth risking the lives of anti ICE protesters to conduct immigration enforcement?

Fifty one percent said no.

Thirty one percent of Trump voters said no.

Schumer can stop having nightmares about suburban moms and focus groups.

The polls are not, in any doubt like the video of the murder.

The poles are in fact easier to understand first time you look at them.

Abolish Ice plus five approval of ICE minus twenty seven percentage of Trump voters who say ICE is too aggressive twenty percent.

And then there's everything else going on with this terrorist gang.

We haven't even gotten around to this psycho impaired Secretary of Defense.

Hegseth, writing Ice then a greater than sign than the abbreviation of Minnesota.

You know what they have in Minnesota, Hegseth, You Neanderthal.

They have Americans meet some someday.

You haven't gotten to the Deputy Attorney General of the United States who went straight to that job after being Trump's personal horror attorney going on a Sunday show yesterday and saying Alex Preddie quote was not protesting peacefully.

He was screaming in the face of Ice.

He had a phone right up in ICE's face.

Is that protesting peacefully?

What do you expect you wanted something from the Vietnam War where he pours gasoline on himself and lights himself on fire.

That your idea of the peaceful protest?

Todd Todd Blanche's message to you is you can be summarily executed by the government on the streets of an American city for carrying a gun, or you can be summarily executed by the government of the United States on the streets of an American city for not carrying a gun.

We haven't gotten to the right wingers denying the Second Amendment.

We haven't gotten to the toy store owners who gave out free whistles to Minnesotan's to warn each other of an incoming Ice assault.

ABC did a story on them, and within a day, Ice was at their door demanding their employee records and addresses.

We haven't gotten to Trump's psychotic reaction to all this, to ignore it to ignore the murder done in his name, to ignore the murder done stochastically by him, and instead to write not just one of his asinine, self obsessed posts about his effing Trump Memorial ballroom, but to make it a double wide post, as if anybody gives a shit about him and his shit gold ballroom.

Your white trash, Donald, your buildings are white trash, but the gold matches my hair.

We haven't gotten to whether there is meaning or just grand standing.

To the Republican chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security demanding that the head of Ice Lions shows up for a hearing and actual hearing into Minnesota before the eighteenth of March, we haven't gotten to the implications of Oklahoma's Republican Governor Kevin Stitt, ordinarily one of the biggest dufuses around, chairman of the Governor's Association, who said Americans don't like what they're seeing right now.

Trump is getting bad advice right now.

We have to enforce federal laws, but we need to know what is the endgame, and I don't think it's to duport every single non US citizen.

Governor, my advice to you is, if you run into any ice agents.

Keep your phone down.

We haven't gotten to Ice doctoring the photos of the women arrested and immediately released for going to a pro ICE church service run by a guy from ICE.

Christy Nome even used the real photo of the one victim.

The White House took the photo, darkened the woman's skin, and turned her face from stoic and placid to crying.

Caroline Levitt retweeted it, because Caroline Levitt isn't just a liar, she's racist swine.

We haven't talked about the attempt to arrest Don Lemon for filming the fascist rally disguised as a Christian service.

We haven't even discussed my pal Will Bunch's article for the Philly Inquirer about the three ICE detainees dead at the Fort Bliss, Texas concentration Camp three in thirty three days, or Will's observation that quote deaths are occurring in ICE detention facilities at nearly ten times the rate of the Biden years, or the inevitable conclusion that we have to now say of America in twenty twenty six, that we are now regularly hearing reports of deaths in our concentration camps, all new edition today comic relief at the end about a job I was ready to take and then the job the company went out of business.

But Worst Persons is next.

It is about all those people who defended Ice after Renee Goods murder or after the early information came out about Alex Pretty's murder.

It's about them and why after the Pretty murder they still think somehow they still have public careers.

So you're on deck, Tony Diakoppel, John Fetterman, The New York Post, Scott Jennings, and Steven Asmith.

That's next.

This is kind Down.

This is Countdown with Keith Oberman still ahead.

On this all new edition of Countdown.

I recorded something new about a job I was about to accept, and half an hour before I was going to take it, the station went out of business.

Instead.

I recorded this literally half an hour before the news came in from Minneapolis on Saturday.

I'm going to include it at the end anyway, because I sure as hell needed to break from this, and I'm guessing you might.

If you don't I get it, don't listen.

It's a okay, and it's next in things I promised not to tell.

But first let's do the Worst Person's segment, and we'll devote it entirely to people who supported ICE even before the murder of Alex pretty or after it.

And I just wanted to flash back to an anchor I worked with in Los Angeles when I was still doing only sports, and he came on and did an editorial and I was at the station for only a couple of weeks, I think, and it was about the terrorist attack on the ocean going vessel the Achille Loro, in which they took one of the passengers, a man in a wheelchair, and pushed him off into the ocean, killing him.

Terrorist attack.

And he did an editorial condemning terrorism.

And he explained that he didn't like to do it atorials or commentaries because every time you did a commentary, if it was actually controversial, fifty percent of your audience would disagree with you.

And that meant that if you did four editorials, you'd be down to single digits among support from your viewers.

And I shuddered and took the job anyway.

Still, there are some topics that really do sort of scream out to you.

If you get this right, you're going to have nearly one hundred percent support If you get this wrong, you're done.

I believe Minnesota and ICE had the earmarks of this from the beginning, from the death of poor Renee Good.

So they're the medalists.

They are also the runners up Jeff Earl and Elisia field Stat at the New York Post.

They are apparently writers there or whatever they have there.

The early headline for their standard Murdochian warring about Saturday's murder man waving gun at fed's attempting to arrest illegal criminal migrant in Minneapolis shot dead by agent DHS, says by Jeff Earl and Alicia Fieldstat New York Post.

He wasn't waving a gun.

The FEDS turned out to be trying to attempt to arrest somebody who was cleared and had been picked up and released by Ice several years ago.

Other than that great story Jeff and Alicia another runner up, Scott Jennings, who was apparently leaving CNN to become I don't know, Deputy Rex Commissar.

I don't know.

The anti ICE propaganda war being waged by Democrats right now is out of control, he said the other day.

If I were Trump, I'd be frustrated too.

But he has to uphold federal laws in all fifty states, no matter what some secessionist angry mob in Minneapolis says Scott Jennings is a moron.

Then there's Clay Travis, nominally a sports guy.

Outkicked the coverage.

I believe it was called or Clay Travis's White Supremacist Review.

I don't know what the name of the site is.

The outkicked the White Supremacists.

That clown doesn't know politics, doesn't know America, doesn't know sports.

The NBA canceled its game in Minneapolis today because the league felt it wasn't safe to play.

The NHL is currently playing in Minneapolis and had zero issues with playing its game.

The NBA's decision was one hundred percent political.

Good for the NHL on playing.

Ye, how.

The uh?

The NBA game, mister Travis, was in Minneapolis, where the shoe where the murder took place.

The hockey game you referred to was in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

It's a different city.

It's ten miles and one world away.

So the actual question of safety, do you play in the Target Center in Minneapolis, literally a couple of minutes from the murder scene.

Do you play there in frigid temperatures, with protesters out on the street and ice shooting up the neighborhood.

Do you play that game as a Paul was to a hockey game in Saint Paul.

No wonder he veered over into politics.

No shit about sports.

Now are medallists the bronze worst Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, for whom I feel great sorrow, but enough go check in somewhere and resign.

Quote ICE agents are just doing their job, and I fully support that.

Again, he said this before the murder of Preddy.

This was after the murder Renee good people in my party might treat them as criminals.

That's inappropriate and outrageous.

You know, the fact that you're still running around without supervision is inappropriate and outrageous.

And the fact that you pose as a Democrat is inappropriate and outrageous.

Get thee to a Nunnery the runners up wor Sir, CBS News and the greatest network news disaster of the last half century or more Tony da koppol Thursday again, if you really are going to try to take the wrong side in a what is to be a historically important societal turning point, if you're going to take the side of the cops in Rodney King, or if you're going to take, say, the side of the assassins in any political assassination, maybe maybe you should make other career plans.

Thursday, Tony da Koppel signed off the CBS evening Barrywise Pick Me Trump, Pick Me News by elevating quote those who want to see our immigration laws enforced legally and peacefully and with safety for all, And he ended with It's not my job to tell you what to think about what happened here.

No, no, of course, not, Tony Tacoppel.

Government murders two people, shoots some other in the face, and blows a nurse's brains out with a point blank shot to his head after they disarmed him.

But don't you dare offer any insight or opinion or even guidance as to what the viewers might think.

Let them believe that it is not assassination and government inspired terrorism.

I mean, honest to God, I hope they have a new one life end up to take over that show.

Maybe they could do an AI thing.

Years ago, when MSNBC went on one of the more creative shows they ever did, featured a co host who was actually an animated character who did half the news and reacted to the real people.

May they can have that guy come back.

He's in a box somewhere in Secaucus, New Jersey.

By the way, the reporter about TV, Joe Adalion, he noted that Saturday night and Dacoppol was not there, so that's not his fault.

And he doesn't make any of the decisions either.

He just reads what they give him.

Joe Adalion notes that on Saturday night, the CBS Evening Weekend News devoted nearly its entire show to weather, and it devoted two and a half minutes to the murder of Alex Preddi and BC mister Adallion notes, did about eight minutes.

Given the content of a newscast is now down to sixteen eighteen minutes, two and a half minutes.

But first, oh my god, it's snow.

What are we going to do?

Can we still breathe this air of its twelve degrees?

And yet there's worst the winner.

And it's not like I didn't try to warn him.

I mean, I know what passed for a working acquaintanceship, friendly acquaintanceship.

I know that's long gone, but I have tried to warn him from the beginning when he went down this path that he was going to destroy the successful career he had in pursuit of a career in which he was insufficiently prepared.

That the idea of going in just doing what I used to do when I did Sports with Dan Patrick in two thousand and five and six and seven.

I would come in for one hour of his show at their request at ESPN, to just have fun with Dan.

And I would come in at about one point fifty eight for the two o'clock hour, and we'd be coming back on at two four or two oh five, and I'd say, what are we talking about?

And he'd give me three or four topics that they had guests lined up on, or he wanted to talk about Barry Bonds this and a basketball that and this thing from the other night.

Did you see that?

Yes?

I did?

Okay, good, we can talk about it.

And I would then call up stories on the computer so I had a little factual representation of what we were talking about, and that was my entire prep and we would kill off an hour and have a great hour with real real time insights, because you can do that with sports that's the point of sports.

The point of sports is not necessarily researching everything and then sitting down and contemplating it deeply, even though occasionally I've tried that in the past.

The point of sports is you get off the bus, you go into the bar, you sit down, friends one, seven, and fifteen are there, and you start talking and you say things, and if you want to be impressive, you stick to facts.

Now you can't do that with politics, because you're going to say stupid things and are totally untrue, especially if it's on the air, if you're on a podcast, if you're live somewhere, if you're Stephen A freaking Smith.

It's not like I didn't warn you.

This was Stephen A.

Smith after Renee Goods murder.

This was him on January eighth.

Let me just read it to you quote.

I saw the video on numerous occasions, and seeing what transpired from a lawful perspective as it pertains to a law enforcement official, don't expect him to be prosecuted.

He was completely justified.

She wrongfully tried to drive off and wrongfully disregarded a law enforcement official, which is exactly what ice is, and as a result lost her life.

Because of it.

Some people don't understand news, some people don't understand humanity, and some people don't understand politics, and some people don't understand when to stay in an area that they are successful in despite much evidence that they don't really have any talent at it.

And then there is that rarest of persons who doesn't understand any of that, and that would be Stephen A.

Smith, Today's worst person in the world.

Back with the humorous relief next, I suppose the only thing I like about January is that it's the start of the new year.

And because of a coincidence I have nothing to do with, my birthday is in January, so it's doubly the start of the new year.

And I get very nostalgic, and milestones get hit, and it is now the twentieth anniversary of this, and the fiftieth anniversary of that, and the thirtieth anniversary of this.

The fiftieth anniversary is this is the fiftieth anniversary of the year I became sports director of my college radio station, which to that point was an unbelievable accomplishment, and it's now half a century ago.

It was the equivalent in terms of a time span of say, when I was eight years old and decided to become a sportscaster and thought, well, I'll have to become the college radio station sports director on along the way, won't I.

If you go fifty years backwards, it's the American arrival in the middle of the First World War.

That's how long ago fifty years is.

But I wanted to talk about something that happened thirty years ago now now that it has a nice round number to it, and we Americans are obsessed by this three thousand hits rather than two nine hundred and ninety nine or three thousand and one, thirty years instead of twenty nine or thirty one, even though there's really not much damn difference, And like the calendar, if anybody ever made a counting mistake, the number is also wrong.

Anyway to the number one story and the day I they nearly quit ESPN Sports Center at the maximum point of its fame and success, to go work in local radio in Chicago in nineteen ninety six, I got a call I think through my agent, but I know I talked to the man directly, from a man named Doug Stern, who was the general manager of a radio station in Chicago, Illinois, and this station, which was WMVP, was anything, but it was thirty first in the ratings in a thirty one station market.

It was an all sports station, but it was the number two all sports station in Chicago.

And I couldn't understand why he was calling me.

He made it rather plain, rather quickly that they were desperate to do something big to get on the scoreboard in Chicago.

And the thing they wanted to do that was big was hire me away from SportsCenter.

Understand my relationship with ESPN, which I've begun to understand a little bit better in the injury of decades from the time of its height and then later the time of my return to ESPN and Sports Center in the teens, and so I've got a better perspective on it.

But it still boils down to this.

I didn't like the lifestyle and was wrong.

It was the wrong time for me.

Nothing at all wrong with the place.

I had a wonderful house.

I had a giant, seven thousand square foot house with a heated swimming pool and like three acres and two hundred original growth trees, and it was fantastic, and it had a solarium, and it had a seated swimming pool and everything you could want.

The problem was there were no sidewalks.

The nearest place to go to was a general store, I mean by foot, about thirty five forty minutes away, which makes for a long walk back if you're shopping.

Anyway, it was a fine place.

If I wanted to raise a family, that would have been it.

Or if I'd brought a family with me, that would have been it.

Or if I'd even brought a girlfriend with me, that would have been it.

But it was very tough to add those once you were out there in a place where you spent most of the time looking out the window at the far horizon where the highway to New York went up the hill, and then everybody had to break at the top of the hill to go down the hill towards New York.

And there was this little red glowing light where all those people were just far enough away that they were going to New York and you weren't, and there was really nothing to do.

I kind of liked the job.

I had a lot of problems with management at ESPN.

I think those may have been noted somewhere, and we largely paved those over in the ensuing years, and I'm kind of proud of them and of me, And I'm a Disney retiree.

I just got another Disney retiree check the other day.

That's the last possible outcome I would have believed, other than them selling me the place.

But I just didn't fit in in the environment.

I liked doing the show.

I liked working with Dan Patrick.

The success was something I knew I would never recreate.

It was a pretty easy thing, considering how difficult it was.

As ludicrous and Yogi Barrow like as that sounds, he looked out for me, I looked out for him.

We had a great producer and series of them, including Norby Williamson who then ran the company, and Mike McQuaid who now runs the company.

We had a lot of great people who worked there, person after person who advanced to the top of that place.

It was really high quality.

Took me four years to convince them, since I didn't drive, that maybe they should send a car for me and then I would never be late to anything again, rather than relying on the two cabs in town.

I mean, if there'd been a cab that showed up on time, I would have been happy to pay for it myself, but there weren't any In any event, I was looking to move on and my contract expired at the end of nineteen ninety seven, so I was beginning to think of what else I might do.

And here comes this call from this man in Chicago, Dougster, and what he wants to do is pay me twice as much money as ESPN was paying me to come and do a radio show on him his station from say four to seven in the afternoon for six hundred thousand dollars a year.

I was the highest paid sports center anchor and I think the third highest non game announcer on ESPN at the time.

And I was making about three hundred thousand dollars you heard me right, And these guys were willing to pay me six hundred thousand dollars.

And oh, by the way, if I could get a TV job on the side, where I worked for one of the local Chicago stations and did the sportscasts on the six o'clock and eleven o'clock news, and they put a camera in my studio and we did the sportscast live on the radio station and on the television station.

That would be fine with them, and I could make a deal for that on my own.

And the yeah, the leading guy in Chicago's TV sports was making a little under a million of years, so this had all kinds of lucrative future to it.

Plus on top of everything else, I was pretty exhausted by then.

It was a lot of work at esp and they didn't make it particularly easy.

And here was a show that would start at four conck in the afternoon that was nominally about sports, but their model was the Imus Show.

They wanted it to be don Imus only with sports instead of politics as the through line.

But it could be about anything as long as it was about Chicago.

And I thought, well, how about we do the plot to improve Chicago and just always have something going on where we'd be agitating for some improvement in the lower upper Whacker Drives.

I had never been to Chicago, so I didn't know it.

So that was the first thing.

Doug Stern says, can you take a couple of days off and come out here and will wind you and dine you and show you the place and convince you why this hair brain idea of mine is actually a really good one.

Do you think ESPN would let you go, I know you're under contract, and I said, I think they probably would.

I think they're as tired of this from their perspective about me as I am tired of my perspective about them, and not enmity at this point, but just like, can we just resolve this, which is what happened the next year when I left about three or four months earlier than my contract expired, to go work for NBC and alternatively then go into the news business, which was something totally unexpected, although it was kind of foreshadowed by this idea in nineteen ninety six.

In any event, I go to Chicago after a false start where I'm on my way to the airport and Doug s Turn calls me, and this is at the crack of dawn, and says, don't come out here, don't come out here.

We can't have the meeting this week.

Is there any way we can postpone it to two days from now or whatever it was?

And I went I think so.

And I turned around and went back to my house and went back to sleep.

So I don't know why I was so interested in this, having never been there, but I did like one thing he mentioned.

The station carried the White Sox games, and when the White Sox would be on at I guess seven o'clock at night local time, sometimes six o'clock.

My show would end early, so that something like eighty or ninety times a year.

It wouldn't be a three hour show that I'd be doing.

It would be a two hour show for six hundred thousand dollars a year.

So I was very interested in seeing what happened.

Well, I get out to Chicago finally, and as I come off the plane, a man walks up to me and introduces himself, and it's Doug Stern, the general manager of this radio station, has come out to see me and greet me personally and pick me up personally, and he takes my bags and they are They go into full wine and dine and impress Keith.

From the moment I land.

They put me up in the Drake Hotel, which is fabulous mid century that's twentieth century Chicago, US, updated, but with this still kind of you know, the door is in the hotel, or you hang up your dry cleaning and they can come and pick it up without bothering you because there's another door on the other side of your door.

You know the palms in the gigantic lobby that's like three blocks long.

It just it just spoke to and still modernized.

We're not talking about it.

Looks like they haven't dusted it in fifty years.

That was where they put me up.

And then they take me into the radio station and I walk in the front door and everybody who's not on the air is standing at this station, and they're all plodding because they understood that being at thirty first in the ratings in the thirty one station market is not tenable long term.

Please, So now they begin to whine and dine me, and they take me to lunch and they introduce me to the guys who are the stars of the network of the station as such as it was two very funny, very upbeat guys named Harry and Spike, and Harry Tynowitz who just died, I believe fairly recently courageous battle with a liver transplant.

And they were just great guys.

And Spike was this kind of low key guy.

Oh where you're staying?

I said it.

They put me up at the Drake.

Oh nice, my sister's getting married at the Drake on Saturday.

Night.

I said, that's the congratulations.

You want to go?

And I was like what, he said, yeah, you want to go to I mean you're in the hotel anyway, it's not like you have to take a long trip.

I said, tuxedo.

No, no, no, you just go.

I said, well, I'm gonna go stack.

Oh, I can get you a date.

In fact, I know a nice, nice Irish girl works in the Drake and she's I mean she's there already too, and I think she's got Saturdays off.

She was talking about going and she didn't have a date.

E you'd like her.

I'm in the place an hour and I've got a Saturday night wedding to go to with a date who works in the place where the wedding is.

That was the start.

Hour after hour, they pulled these things off.

I went, and I went into restaurants with people, and people turned around and from the chairs and the tables and turned around and recognized me.

And we were trying to keep this quiet because I didn't know how ESPN was going to react to my doing something that had said the contract I couldn't do.

They took me to a day White Sox game.

Everybody stopped in the press room.

They took me to a Chicago Bulls practice.

It was during the playoffs.

This was in the spring, and nobody said anything until I saw Dennis Rodman at the other end of the court run down from underneath the far basket to where I was standing with the radio guys, and he said, way, how you doing.

How's Dan?

I said, good, Dennis, how you doing great?

Watch you every night?

So what the hell you doing here?

You already have a job, I went, Dennis, you don't get enough credit for your intelligence.

You really don't.

And he really didn't.

And I said, do you think you could do me a favor and not tell anybody that you saw me here?

Because you just figured it out?

What are you talking with?

These these clowns here from the radio.

I like these guys, but nobody listens to them.

They listen to them.

If you're here, Welcome to Chicago.

Man.

Everybody I saw figured it out and we're trying to keep this.

And every one of them said, please come here.

We'd love to listen to you.

What are you gonna do afternoons?

I'm not doing anything at four o'clock.

I'll listen and on and on and on, and I didn't pull my wallet out of my pocket once during this time.

I didn't pay for anything.

I didn't pay for a meal, I didn't pay for a beer.

And the reaction to the people who did not know me was the following.

And I'd never really seen this before in my travels.

All the places that I worked, even when it was Boston versus New York or Los Angeles versus Boston.

Ultimately the people were largely the same, but there was something different about the Midwest.

And I think it's still true largely, but it was certainly true in nineteen ninety six.

And this was the reaction to people who didn't know me.

Who's your friend, Harry, Oh, hi, Keith, nice to meet you.

You're from out of town.

Well, welcome to Chicago.

Have a beer.

I don't know how many beers I had.

I know I didn't couldn't have possibly had finished all of them, or even started most of them.

Some of them were probably still sitting on a table somewhere in a bar in Chicago that I left in the spring of nineteen ninety six because people kept handing me beers.

So on and on and on this went, and we went and talked about what the show might be, and who the sidekick might be, and how we would work the camera if there was another station, and preliminary discussions with two of the other Chicago TV stations, and would ESPN really let me go when I was the centerpiece of Sports Center, I went, you'd be surprised, and on and on and on, and the longer I went through this, and the real reason I realized while I was there one morning having breakfast with somebody else they introduced me to.

While I'm there, I realized I just needed some validation because it was a conflict at all times.

I had one vision of what ESPN should be and what Sports Center should be, and more importantly, what my role should be in it, and they had a different one, and that conflict was constant, and I just needed somebody to say, no, we like your ideas, we think you should be the one making most of the decisions.

Well, I mean, it's our station, it's our candy store.

We get the ultimate say, but let's work out a whole sort of constitution for the show.

And I'm like, I love these people, and they want to pay me twice that I'm making now, and there are other people here.

I have met more people here in Chicago in my four days here than I have met in my four years in Bristol, Connecticut.

Nothing against Bristol, Connecticut, but they don't have any sidewalks there.

And then we went looking for apartments and the price for apartments penthouses overlooking the lake was still, you know, maybe double what I was paying for my house.

But my house was was in Southington, Connecticut.

Again a great place to raise a family, very economical, but sort of like the most remote suburbs of Hartford as opposed to I'm in downtown Chicago.

I can walk to work now.

Admittedly it was I think the end of May, and one morning it was forty one degrees and I thought, is this the kind of life I want to?

You know, Kathy went to Cornell University.

It was kind of cold up there, and you know, you did go to the Lake Plaster the Olympics and kind of go, but it's windy, and that's why I walked around.

It's like, yeah, that's going to be a problem.

How much did you say it was?

Again?

So on Friday after being there, I guess five days.

I think I got there Monday.

It may have been Tuesdays.

It was at least four and they whined me and dined me and took me everywhere.

Here was the schedule.

On Friday, I was doing something with the boys.

Maybe maybe another White Sox game, maybe Wrigley Field, a private tour, I don't remember what it was, one of the museums, a view of the lake, a view of the surrounding neighborhoods outside of Chicago downtown.

Just trips on the on the l trains, something fun.

And then like dinner with thug Stern to tell him whether or not we would proceed, Like was I convinced?

Had they successfully want and dined me?

And should we try it?

Not that I was going to accept it and sign a contract, but just could we proceed?

Was I interested?

And I was interested.

I woke up that morning going, I think this could be a great deal of fun.

This could be my home.

It'll look crazy, but this could be my home.

Radio is not necessarily easier than television.

But bottom line is you don't have to shave.

It's like podcasts.

What do you like about the podcast, Keith, I don't have to shave.

Okay, So we're going to go to dinner.

Doug Stern is going to come by about five o'clock.

He's got something going on on the weekend.

He wants to see if he can at least get the ball rolling on, maybe getting this done if I'm interested, And we're going to have an early dinner and then everybody at the radio station knows that this is live or die for them, So we're all going to meet at a place near Wrigley Field and celebrate because they're convinced.

They've convinced me.

I mean, I haven't even gotten to the date yet at the Drake Hotel for the wedding the next day, and I'm decided.

It's like yeah, okay, and I'm getting dressed.

Doug Stearn's going to pick me up about five point thirty six o'clock something outside the Drake, and the real wine and dine is going to go on.

And I'm not going to tell him that I've already decided.

I want him to spend the rest of the money on me.

The phone rings five.

If he's picking me up at five thirty, it's five to twenty, Keith, it's Doug's turn.

Listen.

Uh, let me just come out and say this.

The owners of the radio station.

Just got back from the corporate meetings in New Jersey, and they've decided that the best thing to do is not to spend six hundred thousand dollars a year on you and keep the station going, but rather simply take the station off the air and rebroadcast what we do on FM.

And I said, excuse me, he said, yeah.

I said, well, I was going to tell you that I like the idea.

I thought you were too.

I'm sorry, I literally I just hung up with them.

They no more spending and everybody's going to get fired.

And what I said, I said, all the everybody.

Yeah, don't tell them you're going.

I know you're going out to celebrate it.

Can you just pretend for me?

And I said, I don't know if I've got that in me, Doug, He said, well, in any event, I'm so sorry.

Let's talk again next week.

I have to get home and pack quickly because I've just taken a job in San Francisco and i have to be out there tomorrow morning, so I'm leaving on a red eye tonight.

Thanks.

I hope you had a good time at least, and please spend all the money you can on the station's dime before you leave for Bristol on Sunday morning.

Bye click.

So I didn't go to Chicago to become a sportscaster slash talk show hosts slash maybe earlier version of my political self, and certainly not the guy who went to MSNBC the next year, and certainly not the guy who went back to Bristol, Connecticut angrier, which always worked really well for Sports Center, by the way.

But the punchline to this, of course, is I now still have to go out and celebrate with Harry and Spike and everybody else from the radio station.

End.

Oh goodness, gracious, I knew I would be drinking in a way.

I had not had the volume of drink.

I've discussed this before.

I once had I think forty beers in one day and realize you could be a functional alcoholic.

Avoid this whenever possible.

So I probably hadn't had a drink in a couple of months or so, and I never had a drinking problem, except I knew the potential was there, and that night, the potential was going to be there because I was going to have to get completely drunk.

It was so bad that I took several business cards from the Drake Hotel, wrote my name on them and a crude map of where the Drake Hotel was, because I was not convinced that when I got into the cab after this trauma was over going to celebrate with a bunch of people, all whom are going to get fired next Monday.

And it's Friday night, and you're the only one who knows that they're all going to get fired.

I didn't know that I was going to be able to speak, And sure enough I went and went out with Harry and Spike, and I couldn't keep the secret, and I told them, and apparently they were the only two who were retained to do what resembled what was left of the radio station that wasn't a rebroadcast of FM.

The irony I think of it was that I believe the station was then sold to ESPN.

It's all jumbled, and now that I think of it, I may even have the call letters wrong.

They were two stations there, the SCORE and MVP, and I can't remember the one that wasn't doing well was the one that was I was going to go work for.

And my prophecy came true when it came time to go back to the drake and go.

These people are all going to get fired, and I think they know that.

On the other hand, let's see how this date goes at the drake tomorrow.

I entered the cab and I said to the cab driver when he said where to buddy, are you saying where too, Bunny?

And I said, and he went, oh, I can't understand you.

And I just hold up one finger and it pulled out the drink.

I went and we went to the drink.

It's a very nice wedding.

On the other hand, I've done all the damage I can do here.

Thank you for listening.

Dennis Rodman figured it out.

Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray On the guitars, bass, drums, and John Phillip Schaneil handling, orchestration and keyboards.

They are, of course, our musical directors have Countdown.

It was produced by Tko Brothers.

Our satirical epithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organists ever, Nancy Faust.

And I should mention that while I was at that White Sox game where they were whining and dining me, I said hello, to my old friend Nancy Faust.

Nancy, I think that's the last time we actually saw each other in person, just nineteen ninety six.

The sports music is the Alderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.

Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.

My announcer today was fittingly with the ESPN and radio motifs my friend Tony Kornheiser.

This program was produced and he has perched in the production position the producer's booth, sitting on my lap by Ted.

His assistant today was Kit.

Everything else was as always my That's countdown for today, Day three hundred and sixty nine of America held hostage again just one thy ninety four days, though until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term, unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and Epstein or affordability or Venezuela or the Ice, Gestapo or Greenland or the EU and NATO.

The next scheduled countdown is Thursday.

Bubbothan's is the news warrants until the next one.

I'm Keith Alderman.

Good morning, good afternoon, Good Night and good Luck.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.