Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.

Did Trump really just threaten to arrest Joe Biden in his war against the United States of America?

As Trump ready's fifteen hundred members of the eleventh Air Born in Alaska to parachute into Minnesota, as Trump threatens conflict with natal while being unable to remember that America is in NATO.

Is the man who put the dick in Dictator's next step an attempt to arrest his predecessor, or to indict Kamala Harris, or to convene grand juries, to pursue the former First Lady, or Jensaki or Karine Jean Pierre.

God knows who else lost understandably understandable, lost in the mindless chaos now being driven by the mindless tyrant in the White House, Lost in the mindless chaos in Minnesota at Joint Base Elmendorf near Anchorage in Greenland.

In television where he has decided he gets to decide which football game is on your goddamned television, and when there was a warning shot that if it registered with you, it may have only registered fifth or sixth or later.

Another one of his few remaining brain cells, and I always envisioned them like the cows at a dairy farm with those big number tags on their ears.

Another one of Trump's few remaining brain cells, number seventy one, I think it was, got to the front and moved something about auto pens again, and out came a pronouncement from the Emperor who has no clothes.

That begins everyone is asking about the auto pen question because the son of a bitch is nearly eighty and he still doesn't know how to use punctuation marks.

This starts with the usual Trumpion stupidity and then turns very dark, very fast.

Quote.

It was an absolutely illegal act perpetrated by the radical left insurrectionists who illegally ran the Biden administration.

Every one of them should be arrested for what they have done.

The whole thing was rigged.

There must be a price to pay, and it has got to be a big one end quote before you dismiss this, Yes, it is more evidence that no matter what evil he accomplishes or how much money he steals while in office each day, for this worthless sack of shit is ruined by the fact that he lost the twenty twenty election and all of the oxygen he has wasted trying to deny, erase and eliminate that reality has failed, and that he lost, and that Biden won, and that he lost, and that no what he is talking about the auto pen I'm ron Burgundy, and the fact that he lost.

It would be nice to dismiss it as all that.

But as soon as Trump insisted the woman he murdered by proxy, Renee Good, was a paid agitator, the Department of Justice opened investigation into not the murderer, Jonathan Ross, nor his enablers Tom Holman, Todd Lyons, Christy Nome wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door, Greg Bovino in the Nazi trench coat he found in the boys department at J.

C.

Penny, or Trump himself, not into any of them.

The investigation is into Renee Good's widow to see if she was a paid agitator.

Mayor Jacob Fry told Ice to get the f out of Minneapolis, and Governor Tim Wall said he would protect his state from Ice, and Trump slandered both of them, and Trump's scrot him in a suit.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche lied about them and said they were quote encouraging violence against lawforcement, and some anonymous coward leaked to the newest state media CBS that subpoenas were likely to be issued against both for some fabricated conspiracy case.

As Trump mooing about Jack Smith brought that failed attempt to indict him, as the attempt to destroy Mark Kelly out of the illegal Orders video gradually degraded from indict him, to arrest him, to demote him in rank, to stare daggers at him, as Trump's bleeding about James Comy blew up in his face and that of an entire roster full of beauty pageant runners up turned Trump lawyers.

It's stupid, it fails, but it happens, and every time it happens, another arch gets knocked out from under the ancient facade that has held the country together for six months shy of two hundred and fifty years, and the odds are not one hundred to none that we will make it to year two fifty one.

The point of this, of course, being not the failures that Trump continues to have, but the threats he continues to make.

When Trump writes they quote illegally ran the Biden administration.

Every one of them should be arrested.

This is no longer one of those mental illness signs that he used to have in the middle of the first administration.

This is something one of his whores at the Department of Justice will act upon because a they are whores and b because they are soft and frankly, getting an indictment against Joe Biden for something that amounts to being president without mister Trump's permission is just easier.

It's just easier than confronting the whining pants soiling job of the Hut with Bronzer currently occupying the White House until the White House floor beneath him collapses, possibly given Trump's weight.

Literally.

So we are waiting to see if Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act to enforce his racism and sadism in Minnesota, and if he will deploy the fifteen hundred paratroops at Elmendorff that Pentagon sources happily reassure us with the phrase, this doesn't mean they will deploy.

We're preparing options while we wait to see if he can really insist we need Greenland to defend the Arctic from China.

When the paratroopers at Elmendorf are the principal force dedicated to defend the Arctic from China.

What's next could be a literal attempt to arrest Biden and Kamala and I don't know who else.

Did Trump particularly dislike it?

Please please please, please, please please please.

If we're going to continue to, let Trump do a reboot of the movie Idiocracy, please please please please please let his primary target in this be Merrick Garland, because he'll actually get bipartisans support for arresting Merrick Garland.

I'm just saying that Trump would try to put Biden and the others in jail for simply having had the nerve to defeat him.

He is probably this is just me speculating, but he has probably come within one or two conversations of issuing an executive order declaring that the presidency of Joe Biden never happened and it was totally illegal and null and voided of no further force or effect.

And thank you for your inattention to my madness.

The autopen bullshit is the closest he's ever come to actually doing something about this with Biden, and we know that fact enrages him because his brain never worked right in the first place, and it's getting worse.

And he is surrounded by a few true believers, but mostly he's surrounded by people for whom doing the right thing is just too damn much trouble, especially if it means they'll no longer get free car service.

And so his next move may in fact be to arrest Biden and boa Winston Smith on the entire Biden administration and claim there was no presidency between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty five, that his presidency was gone, but the melody lingered on and that's what was in charge.

And he'll do that.

Actor he finishes invading Minnesota and Greenland, but not before blackmailing everyone he can find into acquiescing, because the current president of the United States is a blackmailer.

Let's see, he's blackmailing Denmark, the UK, the EU, six other individual EU countries with tariffs until they make a deal for the complete and total purchase of Greenland.

And by the way, what the f is a complete and total purchase?

Besides what a diseased infant's mind tells itself sounds like legalleese.

All right, He's also blackmailing half Republican politicians who becomes co conspirators.

He's blackmailing candidates, he's blackmailing voters, he's blackmailing prosecutors.

He's blackmailing business people.

He's blackmailing television companies.

He's blackmailing the poor, he's blackmailing the rich.

And he blackmailed the rightful elected president of Venezuela into giving him her Nobel Peace Prize in exchange for his support for her to assume office.

And of course, like most blackmailers, he got the prize so he can say he is a Nobel Prize recipient.

And then he did not give her his support for her to assume office, because like most blackmailers, he lies compulsively.

There are solutions as to Greenland.

I don't have much use for the site the argument, but Jacob Weisman of the argument hit the nail on the head quote Democrats should just say that they'll immediately return Greenland even if Trump somehow buys it.

Simple in enraging and effective.

And I'm sure this idea well, the Democrats should say what we should say something.

I'm sure Keem Jeffreys and Chuck Schumer will be launching the Study Committee on this early in the third quarter of this year or the fourth quarter, no doubt the threat to the nation that is Trump's gestapo, street gang, militia, and terrorist organization, the one he calls ICE.

That's even more simple.

The House stripped out funding of it from its roll over on the continuing resolution that we'll fund the government past the thirtieth.

The Senate hasn't even approached a vote on that part of the latest not a shutdown bill.

Patty Murray of Washington says she and other Democratic negotiators have been quote very clear in our negotiations that we will not allow an increase unquote in ICE funding.

As if that were somehow enough, they should start by cutting it completely.

No money for ICE, even if that means shutting the government down indefinitely.

Not funding, but only with body cameras or de escalation training.

That's another democratic idea, body cameras that these thugs have to turn on first d escalation.

Enrique Tario, chief Proud Boy Emeritus, says he has become an ICE agent.

What would de escalating that scumbag mean exactly?

You'd teach him to shoot innocent bystanders, not in the face, but only in the chest Tario may not be the only January sixth figure working for Trump's brown shirts.

A House committee is trying to get human resources info out of the DOJ.

How many would you say?

What percentage?

Fifty percent?

Forty?

No, no, of course not thirty no comment.

The Texas Observer already found that an assistant Chief Council named Jim Rodden no with d's not he's, who had worked as an ice prosecutor in an immigration court in Dallas, was chased out of the organization nearly a year ago after they found that he also ran a white supremacist Twitter account.

Last week, the Texas Observer got a tip, went to Immigration Court in Dallas again, and sure enough, at the prosecution table there was Jim Rodden again wearing his staff badge.

This account that it ascribes to him posted quote America is a white nation, end quote, all migrants are criminals, and quote all blacks are foreign to my people and per the Texas Observer quote in addition to posts to the parent praise about Alf Hitler, where as Caroline Levitt calls him Adolf Hilter.

So mister Rowden is back prosecuting ice cases because I guess Susan Collins thinks he's learned his lesson, or maybe because he earned his time out not because he had one white supremat count, but because he only had one white supremacist count.

Polling on ICE is still way too close.

A new poll from CBS yesterday, ICE is making communities less safe fifty two percent.

ICE is making communities more safe thirty one percent.

Still way too close.

But the individual methods used by ICE, when they are polled, they show no doubt that more than sixty percent of this country wants ICE neutralized immediately.

Polling against detaining US citizens, against having agents masked, against ZIP tying kids, against gassing six month olds, and against you know, shooting bystanders in the face.

That is all in the sixty to seventy percent range.

America is sick to death of this sadism and this chaos and this scumbag Trump, and for once, Democrats should look at that reality.

And other things like party ID shifting back to Democrats by plus eight with Republicans now about to drop below forty percent identification.

Things like that and the Cook Political Report moving on just one day last week, eighteen house races taking eighteen house races and moving them towards the Democrats.

The Democrats should just once take all of this and put it together and effing take yes for an answer.

So remember the episode of The Simpsons where Homer falls down the side of the Grand Canyon, and every time he seems to have stopped by a ledge, the ledge gives way beneath him and he resumes falling, and then finally, finally, finally, at the end of it, they rescue him from the canyon floor and they bring him to the top by metavac helicopter, and they put his gurney in the ambulance and the driver hits the gas and the ambulance crashes into a tree and the doors fly open in the back and the gurney slides out the back and Homer falls down the side of the Grand Canyon again.

Remember ever, wonder what could be worse than that?

Well, the answer is now finally here.

This is the CBS Evening News.

Oh my god, the Homer Simpsons of propaganda, Barry Weiss and Tony Dakoppel are on approximately their sixteenth trips down the canyon walls, and there is no indication that they even know it.

The comic relief.

First that per the newspaper The Independent, on Halloween, Weiss was at Nora O'Donnell's last ditch audition to get her old job back at CBS by doing a softball interview with Trump.

Trump said something about her Weiss, that is, and Weiss suddenly appeared out of nowhere like beetlejuice, and according to a source quote, he was so happy to see her, and she was so excited to meet him.

They both leaned in and exchanged kisses on the cheek.

So the report is not clear Weiss kissed Trump's cheek which cheek was?

That got to the next CBS useless propagandist interview a president pedophile protector by Tony Stop Stop He's already dead dacoppol last Tuesday.

When it was over.

Per a recording obtained by The New York Times, Caroline Levitt, the witch bunt who lies for Trump most of the time but is intensely stupid all of the time, goes over to Jacopyl and his crew and this exchange ensues.

Levitt says Trump has a message for him and for CBS.

She said it was quote he said, make sure you guys don't cut the tape, make sure on the interview was out in fall, to which Dacoppel kissed the cheek metaphorically.

Anyway quote, yeah, we're doing it, yeah, to which Levitt answers.

He said, if it's not out in fall, we'll sue your ass off.

It.

Makes sure you guys don't.

Cut the tape.

Make sure that you're selling.

Yeah, we're doing it.

I'm setting it's not up to see your assay.

He always does that.

You go one second, how long do we go?

It's area.

The Times posted that tape, and the funny part is the lightheartedness from Dacoppel, who, as I suggested earlier, does not understand, or at least does not seem to understand, that he is doing the Homer visits the Grand Canyon bit again and again and again, a kind of reverse Sissyphus, where Sisyphus is not the guy, Sisyphus is the giant rock and it keeps rolling down.

The funnier part is that Levitt is seriously too stupid to know that a CBS crew with several dozen recording devices on scene, plus the live feed of the interview going back to the studio in New York, that they might still be recording moments after the interview had ended.

Again, I'm not complaining they are amateurs.

If the Trump administration was not made up of amateurs, we'd all be slave labor by now.

Levitt obviously didn't deny the story.

There's a tape.

She boasted that CBS did run the interview in full.

She insisted Trump's comments should only be run in full.

Or I don't know.

She didn't say, maybe Trump will have somebody shoot you in the face.

The more serious issue.

It sure looks like CBS either fabricated the nonsensical story about Renee Goods, murderer from ice and his quote internal bleeding to the torso, or more likely, CBS merely ran a story fabricated by somebody else in the Trump dictatorship.

Internal bleeding to the torso is not only not a thing medically, it is a thing you would say if you were trying to make up a fake injury.

Since the shooter walked away from the moment, he wasn't hit by her car, he didn't have internal bleeding to the torso.

Either way, it looked like the Maga, editor in chief of CBS News, the disgraced former New York Times columnist Barry Weiss pushed this story from the Guardian quote the network's top editor.

Weiss expressed a high level of interest in the story on an editorial call on Wednesday morning.

According to staffers who listened, there was a big internal dissension about the internal bleeding report here last night.

The CBS News staffer who was not authorized to speak publicly, said it was viewed as a thinly veiled, anonymous leak by the Trump administration to someone who'd cares Marriott online.

Felt too many here, like we were carrying water for the admins justifying of the shooting to keep our access to our sources, said a network staffer who was also not authorized to comment.

In other words, the C in CBS now stands for corrupted.

As to the fourth and fifth Homer Simpsons, down the cliff Anchorman to Coppel, who I will circle back to and actually defend sorta in the Worst Person's segment coming up.

Dakoppel scored ten out of ten on the cringe Meter twice last week.

First, he offered to trade jobs with Pittsburgh Areas steel workers, and he insisted to them his job is not as easy as it looks now that could only be true if he still had a soul, and obviously the soul went out the window.

First.

If you don't have a soul, being a propagandist who simply repeats what people tell you to is really easy job.

And then that was one broadcast.

In another edition, he agreed that Trump's insane threats to steal or buy Greenland were not quote an absurd idea, unless you follow that up by saying it's the most absurd idea he's ever had.

Well, Tony, you're full of shit.

Also, it depends on your definition of that original word absurd.

Truly absurd?

Is Tony Deakoppel thinking he'll still have a job in news after this one?

The CBS scenario is actually summed up not by any of that stuff or anything I've said, but by what appears to be the thread's account of the actor Eric Stoltz.

The account Eric Stolt's official could be official, replied to someone identifying themselves as Molly Carlson.

Molly Carlson had written, can someone recommend a show that will destroy me emotionally?

And the answer was CBS News While.

We are bidding goodbye to journalism Let's also check in briefly on stalking horse.

A Smith still out there humiliating himself on radio every day, possibly in hopes that when CBS fires to Kopple, we will hear this is the CBS Evening News with Stephen A.

Shitt.

He still he still thinks he's going to be the subject of a draft Stephen A.

Smith for President campaign, or he doesn't understand yet that he's just Jill Stein in a tie.

I'm going to quote some of the insight that has given Stephen this serious misunderstanding about where he stands in the political firmament.

Where he stands is last place.

It has made him America's leading authority on one thing, though, there is an area in which Stephen A.

Smith is first killing time in any medium.

Listen to this.

This is his political his political raisondetra.

This is his political credo, his code, his summary of what he and he alone understands about where we are right now?

Are you ready?

And I will not, as tempting as it is, try to do an impression of this.

Just remember it's designed to fill and kill time.

Quote to all the Republicans out there, to all the Conservatives out there, you're about to lose the midterms.

You're going to lose, and you might lose the presidency in twenty twenty eight, and it's going to be at the fault of your President, Donald Trump.

He's blowing it for himself.

He's going to blow it for the GOP.

He's going to blow it for Congress, he's going to blow it for the Senate, and he's likely going to blow it for the White House.

All because of what I said from day one, the man don't know how to act.

What we're hearing about is chaos, chaos, chaos, and oh my lord, we don't need to see this again.

We don't need to see this again.

Well, as the cliche goes, we don't need to see this again.

We don't need to see this again.

Every stephen A.

Smith accusation is a confession.

Also of interest here, Yes, it has finally happened.

The Worst Persons in the World segment is about three people who are either my exes or are connected to my exes.

And if you say that's statistically impossible, no, no, it's not.

In fact, by now it's probably a betting favorite by like six to five.

That's next.

This is countdown.

This is Countdown with Keith old Woman.

Still ahead on this all new edition of Countdowns.

So we just passed the thirty fourth anniversary of the beginning of one of the great but all two brief friendships of my life.

I have told my Elizabeth Montgomery story before, and I'm going to tell it again, because all these years later, I remain bewitched the day I met Lizzie Montgomery and we nearly drank ourselves into oblivion.

Next in things I promised not to tell first, Believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about, the roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world.

And I have all always known this would happen, that someday the bad decisions I have made, the lack of judgment I have perfected, would all align and create something like this.

I knew it was inevitable, and yet I went on for year after year to quote Churchill in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful, to be impotent.

Well, Le'll just skip impotent for the moment.

But here it is.

It's finally happened.

All three stories in this edition of the Worst Persons are about my exes yep, and I'm defending one of them.

Sort of Number three is worse Laura Ingram sort of standard crap from her.

These quotes are from consecutive nights on her program on the Faku News Network.

This was Wednesday.

Quote.

Always remember the best propagandists pick and choose data points and disregard others, and they do that to whip up public sentiment in their preferred direction.

Unquote.

So that's Wednesday.

Then on Thursday, Laura picked and chose data points and disregarded others to whip up public sentiment in their preferred direction.

Quoting her again, mouse Man of soud ends by an Alay.

I want to say this tonight because folks have reached out to me support ICE.

The most recent population data for the state of Minnesota is five million, eight hundred and forty two thousand, three hundred and eighty eight residents, So most Minnesotans would have to be two million, nine hundred and twenty one thousand, one hundred and ninety five Minnesotans or more.

Laura Ingram is claiming that two million, nine and twenty one and ninety five Minnesotans have reached out to her to tell her that most Minnesotans prefer and support Ice.

I always remember the best propagandist pick and tuesdata points in disregard to there.

Well, she's she's one of the best propagandists.

But she would have been one of the all time greats if she'd only had the surgery for the deviated septum.

Now the runner up, Interestingly, someone else of whom that could be said Kirsten Cinema.

And now there are one who talked my aunt hemmy an X.

Not for long, but she counts.

We went the Book of Mormon twice.

Iowa was the book and she was the Mormon.

This was before she started to make real money, and it consumed all of her values.

I swear she had values.

She made me look kind of conservative.

Anyway, this could have happened even if money had not destroyed her, because she never made any secret of the fact that she did not believe in monogamy.

There were no relationships in her mind, certainly nothing permanent.

She never hid being bisexual.

Either those are choices or maybe their combination of choices and DNA.

I don't know.

They certainly let anybody who got near her make their own choices about her.

There were no surprises.

I mean, I never sat there thinking I can change her, she'll be the mother of my children, and I never thought we'd get married or anything.

But hey, she was great company, and she was brilliant.

She was still.

That does not mean this train wreck wasn't inevitable.

This one.

This lawsuit in North Carolina stars Girston Cinema from the site Law three point sixty.

Cinema is accused of having quote destroyed a fourteen year marriage by sustaining an affair with a former member of her secre Curity detail and US Senate staff, according to a lawsuit that hit North Carolina federal court wednesday.

Apparently this is just one person.

That's the only surprise in an alienation of affection complaint.

And honestly, did you know there were still alienation of affection lawsuits in such as reported by Law three sixty.

Heather Ammel is seeking damages for Cinema's lengthy sexual conversations with her ex husband, Matthew mL and coordination of trysts around the globe, all of which led to the couple's divorce, according to the complaint.

Now, I'm gonna spare you the texts that are included in the filing because I like to reserve terms that are used in these texts, for you know, swearing about Trump.

But I will say, you know, none of those texts would have made the top ten of Cinema's All time.

You sure you wanted to write that where people could screenshot it, Keith asked, texts.

There's a reference in this suit to her having had multiple affairs with multiple members of her security detail, some men, some women.

One of the women may have been related to a member of the Trump cabinet, and that would also be par for the course.

The first time I ever talked to her, she explained her office was a little tense at the moment because two of her ex friends had just found out about each other and they were both still on her staff.

This is my ex, and this is your assistant, my other ex.

My complaints about Cinema are not about her lifestyle choices, or or her desires in life, or or or her hypercharged engine.

Let's call it that they are about how she wasted her talents.

But if your lifestyle choices, or if your sexual orientation, which is not a choice but an orientation, if these things wind up breaking up other people's marriages and you get written up in a lawsuit because you just couldn't control yourself within any boundaries whatsoever, maybe you ought to see a doctor or or at least a mechanic for your hyper engine.

Maybe.

But the winner, the worst, Megan Kelly.

No, not one of my exes, thank god, thank god.

I've made bad choices.

But I wouldn't make that bad choice.

Not with your choice, buddy.

But she went beyond all barriers, even on this topic, and even for her, even since she lost all control of her tiny little mind, even since her rage consumed her.

She attacked Tony da Koppel, the new anchor of the formerly CBS formerly Evening formerly News.

All right, he's the soon to be new ex anchor of the formerly CBS formerly Evening, formerly News.

Because it is one thing to be a fascist and to be hated and ignored.

But as Barry, I kissed a T and I liked it.

Wewis and Tony Jacoppel, and more importantly those Ellison scumbags are discovering it is something else altogether to be a fascist and to be hated and to be ignored and to be laughed at, and to lose money hand over fist, which is what the new CBS formerly CBS formerly Evening formerly News with formerly Tony Jacoppel is doing.

And all that is true.

He deserves almost everything he gets for this, and so does Barry weiss and so do the Ellisons.

But that's still Megan Kelly does not mean you can say what you said about this guy.

I'm quoting Megan Kelly.

CBS Evening News is officially launched with its new anchor Topra ducoppol.

That's what I call him.

She's nothing if not clever.

That's right, She's nothing.

That's what I call him.

Because he's crying and constantly trying to therapize us through the news.

I should do it in a Megan Kelly voice.

I figured it out so like Barry weiss Is, and I can't do that voice.

It hurts my voice.

So like Barry weiss Is, Megan Kelly said she's an out lesbian and she's in a marriage to another woman.

I'm saying, this is a lesbian's idea of what women want, Like he's sweet, he's soft, Like this is what this is going to sell?

No no, no, no, no no no.

We want someone with balls, with a spine, someone who will protect us, Somebody who like, when the burglar comes, will be the first out the door.

It's an interesting phrase.

Hey, there's a burglar here.

See ya, Hun, I'm the first out the door, first at the door.

Maybe.

Okay, Anyway, as I may have mentioned, I'm not sure did I mention Tony Decoppo as the husband of my ex Katie tur I mentioned that?

Did I mention about ingram and and uh cinema?

Okay?

The first time Katie mentioned him to me, she said it was funny.

He hated me, this new boyfriend of hers hated me because he was jealous that she and I had lived together.

That's a bad start.

I think he's shallow.

I think he's inexplicably embittered given his level of success without all that much skill or talent.

He kind of gives to me a vibe of what would have happened if Ferris Bueller had grown up and his boyish charm had run out and people were just tired of his act, and you can criticize like a thousand things about his work on the CBS Evening News and the Morning Show before it, and maybe more about him as a person, But to insist he's a lesbian's idea of what women want is not only sexist and you know, definitely anti LGBTQ.

It's offensive to every group.

But more importantly, maybe it's irrelevant.

I mean, turn that around and say when NBC burned fifty million to hire Megan Kellen Kelly away from Fox, it was because she was some gay man idea of what men want.

You couldn't say that in a million years and get away with it.

And what in the hell would it mean or would you say it about her husband that Megan Kelly is some gay man's idea of what men want in a wife.

What does it mean?

And how dare you say it?

Criticized him into the ground for his work, for his smugness, for his inability to recognize he's being used by tech bros And politicians, and he's now in the process of being set up by them so they can blame him and bury him when they finally have to blow up the newscast again.

But Jesus, the six time winner in the Worldwide Shrill Competition is going to insult Tony D.

Koppel's appeal to women seriously.

So there's Katie's entry, and there's Kirsten's entry in more Ingram's entry Anyway, Megan who could have been the model for Edvard Monk's pictures of the Scream Kelly two Day's worst X or sex related person.

In the world.

Elizabeth Montgomery, one of the most famous actresses of the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, star of the TV series Bewitched, daughter of a famous actor, Robert Montgomery, and my friend from early on the morning of January fourteenth, nineteen ninety two, until she died in the spring of nineteen ninety five.

Our friendship happened only because of one thing.

My sister had given me a book about one of our favorite topics, never to be solved, mystery of Lizzie Borden and the Borden family axe murders of eighteen ninety two in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Yes, We're weird.

And also the fact that Elizabeth Montgomery had played Lizzie Borden in a TV movie.

So on January fourteenth, nineteen ninety two, as I sat waiting for our flight to leave ICJFK Airport in New York from my then home in Los Angeles.

Then I began to read from my airplane seat my sister's gift from the aisle from the last one to board, I hear the voice of Elizabeth Montgomery saying to me, Oh, Keith, you're reading about me.

She was a gas my brief but eternal friendship with Lizzie Montgomery and the eternal lesson she taught me in one moment.

Please while I first explained what I was doing on that flight.

A month or two earlier, I had agreed to join ESPN to co host Sports Center with Dan Patrick starting in late March nineteen ninety two.

I had just finished up three financially rewarded but souls sucking years at Channel two in Los Angeles, and I was going to go to Hawaii for three months and just live there until I felt better.

On Monday, December thirtieth, nineteen ninety one, I had literally just opened my address book to find the number of a travel agent I knew to make the Hawaii arrangements.

I was reaching for the phone when the phone rang It was my business agent who had just gotten off the phone with my new ESPN boss, John Walsh.

He and they were launching a new radio network in five days.

I found this interesting but not particularly relevant.

ESPN was one thing.

Then it was one TV network, no magazine, no radio, no ESPN, the OHO.

So this was their first big move outwards.

The radio network would start with only two seven hour shows on Saturday and Sunday nights.

And Walsh explained to my agent that everything was going great and they were right on target, and they had great guests lined up for the first weekend, like Ronald Reagan, and they only had one tiny problem.

They needed three hosts, and they had two terrific hostsrific hosts, one Keith worked with named Tony Bruno, and another terrific, just terrific host from Providence named Chuck Wilson.

And they tried this guy as the third host, and that guy, and this guy and that guy, and all told, forty different people had tried out to be hosts.

They had nobody, nobody to be the third host, who was any good cook.

Keith just come here just for the first weekend, just to get it off the ground.

Then he can go back to LA and come back here in March takeover Sports Center.

Please please please get Keith help us, please, because if he Canada, what on earth they're going to do him?

Please?

Please please?

As I said to my agent, well all right, I suppose at least way, at least a ESPN will always think of me as a team player.

So instead of going to Hawaii in January, I go to Bristol, Connecticut in January, and I go stay at my folks house outside New York City, and a friend I had recommended to help ESPN launch their radio network offers me a ride up to ESPN for the weekend, and it's like twenty degrees and we get out of his car and his parking lot.

Three spots over getting out of his car in the parking lot is Chris Berman, who I went to high school with, and already in January nineteen ninety two, when I'm not quite thirty three years old, I already know Chris for twenty years.

And before I can say hey, he screams, listen, we have a good thing going here, don't f it up.

And I say good to see you too, Chris, and I remind myself it's only till Monday, and I meet the gang, and then I go to the hotel and the hotel is beige.

The walls are beige, the carpets are beige, the guests are beige, the food is beige.

The only thing that isn't beige is the six inches of snow that falls overnight, and remind myself it's only till Monday.

The launch of the network on Saturday goes well.

They have me interview Ronald Reagan about something in football.

The Sunday Night Show is going well too, and we're trying to figure out where the big baseball free agent of that winner, Danny Tartable is going to sign.

And we're interviewing Bobby Valentine, who was the manager of the Texas Rangers, and they were one of the teams rumored to be a likely landing for Tartable.

And I asked Valentine, he says, no, not anymore.

They just canceled their trip.

I was supposed to go meet them at the airport tonight.

I think he signed with somebody else.

And the alarm bells go off in my head and I tell the producer, let's call everybody we know in baseball and put them on and figure out where Danny Tartabule is going.

I have a source who knows his agent.

Let me call him.

We'll go story chasing.

So we spend four hours following the story in real time, and it's great radio, and we're coming up on the last hour and our guests have helped us eliminate like thirty teams out of twenty eight.

But we're not sure where Tartable is going still, and the producer says, if only we had his home phone number.

And I look at the producer and go, oh crap, sorry, and I grabbed my address book and I explain he was my co host.

Tartabule was on some of our baseball postgame shows in La Lash.

I'm sorry, I forgot I had his number all this time.

Hang on.

So I called Danny Tartabule and just as our last hour on Sunday Night is starting back, and I say to him, look, we know you've decided it's all over baseball.

It's got to be the Phillies, the Mets are the Yankees.

And he's saying, correctly, I can't tell you.

And I said, give me one guess and just tell me if I'm wrong, and I will call you a source close to the negotiations, that's all.

And he says okay, And I say, is it a team that wears pin stripes?

And of course the Phillies, the Mets, and the Yankees all wear pinstripes, so he laughs and he says yes.

And I say, is it the team I grew up a fan of?

And he says, what team did you grow up a fan of?

And by the way, the phone call is taking place with me on the floor of the studio in which the other two hosts are live on the new radio network.

So I whispered, its Artable.

If I say it to the Yankees?

Am I wrong?

And he says, I can't tell you and starts whispering.

But off the record, the press conference is Wednesday at Yankee Stadium.

Is that enough for you, you bastard?

And of course I said no, come on the show and tell us come on and he laughs and says I'll see you Wednesday and hangs up.

And I get up and I sit in the vacant chair and I can say breaking news.

ESPN report now that the free agent alfielder Danny Tartable has agreed to a multi year deal with the New York Yankees.

Sources close to the negotiations say there will be a press conference Wednesday at Yankee Stadium, and the other hosts are trying not to crack up because they know I've just been talking too Tartable from the phone in the same room with them.

Well, this story explodes way more than it deserved.

It's a dull Sunday night.

It's still early enough in the evening that the story makes all the Monday newspapers and it's attributed not to ESPN or to Sports Center, but to the brand new ESPN Radio Network on its second day in business.

And it's on the front page of USA Today and the New York Times.

New ESPN Radio network makes splash with tartabules scoop the next morning.

And I can't tell you how big a deal that was back then in nineteen ninety two.

So now, instead of going back to LA on Monday and maybe to Hawaii on Tuesday, as I had planned, I have to go to the press conference at Yankee Stadium to say hi to Tartable on Wednesday and sort of thank him for this coop.

And on Tuesday, this guy John Walls from ESPN calls me, and my agent says, look, we have to take advantage of this.

It's the best possible start we could have hoped for for the radio network.

Keith has to stay with us for the next three months.

Why doesn't he stay in and do this weekend and then go back to LA and pack up his apartment and then come back here the weekend after that.

And and I say again to my agent, well, at least ESPN will always think of me as a team player if I do this a so I am not in Hawaii and instead I am on board this flight.

When Elizabeth Montgomery walks down the aisle and sees my Lizzie Borden book given to me by my sister and says, ooh, Keith, you're reading about me.

Hi, I'm Lizzie Montgomery.

I'm a big fan of yours.

Is that seat taken?

And I say, the hell if I care, sit down.

And the only time we're not talking for the next six hours is when we are drinking leave.

If I remember this correctly, they had to send up a champagne refueling flight halfway to LA And she's a huge sports fan.

Her father was a founder of one of the southern California horse racing tracks, and she loves the Lakers, and she thinks she was related to Lizzie Borden.

Did I ever see the European version of her Lizzie bordon film where they show the wide shots where they make it look like she's nude, And I say, I'm absolutely certain I have not.

And her son and her driver and her rolls Royce meet us at Lax and she wants me to see her house, and then her driver and her rolls Royce will give me a lyft home.

And oh, by the way, she's flying back to New York in a week, should we become flying buddies.

On that trip, our flight gets canceled and we have to find a new one.

I'm hand carrying a lot of more more valuable baseball cards, including like five hundred different from the year nineteen oh nine, and she wants to see them, and she wants me to tell her something about each player while we drink again.

And we land and she says, how you getting to your folks house?

And I say, well, I'm going to get a car here or something, and she said, no, you're not.

I'll give you a lift in my limo going right past your house, and sure enough we get there, and as Lizzie Montgomery's limo is taking me to my folks house at ten o'clock at night, she says, will they still be up?

Your folks want to play a practical joke on them.

So two minutes later, I knock on the door of my childhood home and my father opens it instead of seeing me, it's her in the doorway, and she says, Hi, mister oldman, I'm Lizzie.

I'm a friend of Keith's.

Can he come out and play?

And my dad goes silent for the only time I in my life, And now my mother appears, so Lizzie can pull the same routine on her.

Hi, missus olverman, I'm Lizzie.

I'm a friend of Keiths.

Can he come out and play?

And now my mother is silent for the only time in my life, I might add.

I thought Lizzie looked fabulous, and I looked her up in Hallowell's Film Guide and I saw she was forty eight, and I thought, boy, she looks fabulous for forty eight, And then I realized my math is wrong.

She was fifty eight, and she was a joy We talked I phone every couple of weeks after that, and she died three years later of colon cancer.

But she is with me always, and not just as the proverbial force of nature.

Within minutes of that day we met January fourteenth, nineteen ninety two, she bestowed upon me a lesson, an eternal lesson.

We were a little late taking off, and since she had just loudly introduced herself to me like I didn't know who she was, anybody on the plane who wasn't sure it was her was now sure.

As we waited to taxi, every man on that plane came over and did the same thing.

Oh hi, miss Montgomery, excuse me, And they give me some sort of nodding acknowledgment, like hey, how you doing, as they lean in past me.

I was a big fan of Bewitch.

I know you must get asked this a million times a day, but is there anything I'm so sorry to ask?

Could you do that little nose twitch she used to do in the show, And she would say, of course, and then she'd do it.

And these men age twenty two one hundred all then giggle like schoolboys.

After the thirtieth or thirty first time this happened, I say to her, Lizzie, I don't know you, but I like you a lot already, and your attitude towards your fans and the nose twitch is wonderful.

And I have to tell you, I certainly hope that was the last of them, because the next one who comes over, I'm going to have to strangle him with my bare hands because I can't take it anymore.

And for the only minutes of all the time I knew her, Elizabeth Montgomery got very serious and said, oh, no, Keith, that is not the attitude you must have about this.

Remind me what year did Bewitched go off the air.

I had to guess, nineteen seventy two, and she said, exactly, good, correct, twenty years ago.

And these people have remembered that nose twitch for twenty years at least Bewitched.

Keith is not Hamlet, it is not Arthur Miller, it is not the Godfather, but they remembered it.

This is why you and I both do what we do a living.

We have transcended time with what we do for a living, something artistic, something creative, no matter how small, that we have done.

They have remembered it.

People do it with you, I'm sure, and I'm sure they'll continue to.

And what you do then is you say thank you for remembering, as if they were the only one who ever remembered, because that's why we do this, because they remembered me from twenty years ago for a stupid little nose twitch, duly chastised, I apologized, and the huge, welcoming, conspiratorial, permanent friendship sexy smile of Elizabeth Montgomery broke across her face like the sunrise, and she whispered either that Keith or they saw Bewitched on cable last week, which means Lizzie gets another check next week, and she twitched her nose at me and I will always love her.

I've done all the damage I can do here.

Thank you for listening.

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

It was produced by Tko Brothers.

Was the music.

Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever Nancy Faust.

The sports music is the Olderman 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 is my friend Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and Airplane.

This program was produced by Ted.

Everything else was as always my fault.

That's countdown for today, Day three hundred and sixty five of America held hostage again, just one thousand and ninety eight days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and Jeffrey Epstein or affordability or marble armrests or Venezuela or his ice Gestapo murdering American mothers or Greenland.

The next scheduled countdown is Thursday.

Bulletin says the news merits until the next one.

I'm Keith Oldraman Good Morning, good afternoon, good night, and three two one good luck.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.

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