ONE-LEGGED TRUMP CHALLENGES BIDEN TO MENTAL ASS-KICKING CONTEST - 9.11.23

Your career is your most valuable asset. Imagine powering it with the unvarnished advice of the most successful chief executives in the world. I'm Mike Stybe, a three-time CEO, Fortune 500 board leader, and author of the top-selling career guide, The Career Manifesto. On my new show, Office Hours, I sit down with the leaders shaping our world to help you be the CEO of your own career. Listen to Office Hours with Mike Stybe, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're supposed to learn from our own mistakes that other people's errors can be instructive, too, from efforts to control the weather that went disastrously awry, to the untimely death of the Segway boss. History is a treasure trove, mishaps and meltdowns that can teach us all. I'm Tim Halford, host of cautionary tales, the podcast that mines the greatest fiascoes of the past, for their most valuable lessons. Listen to cautionary tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The last archive is a show about the history of truth in America. Each episode, we tell a story about people coming up with some new way of understanding the world. Histories of science, technology, democracy. This season, we've got stories on everything from mid-century songwriting machines to social network theory, and plenty of mad inventors. Of course, I go, oh my god. Well, it's Dr. Frankenstein's Monsters, isn't it? Listen to the last archive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Music Breaking news, one legged Trump challenges Biden and others to ask kicking contest. Quote, I hear by Challenge Rupert Murdock and Sons, Biden, Wall Street Journal Heads, two acuity tests. Today, impossibly, infuriatingly, embarrassingly, we have now circled back to what, with the benefit of hindsight, appears to be the saddest possible thing, the highlight of the Trump presidency in the mixed mind of Donald Trump, July 2020, or perhaps earlier, when he was told to memorize an endless string of complicated, unconnected ill-defined words, possibly from other languages, and then not just to remember them, but to remember them in the exact order, person, woman, man, camera, tv. I proved I was all there! Trump said proudly, horrifyingly, again, and again, and again, to every interviewer, at every campaign speech, to everybody who would hold still long enough to listen, beaming like a toddler who had managed to poop in the potty chair, mostly anyway. I aced it, I aced the test. We thought those were the most humiliating things he could ever say about himself, and that test, which on the mental or intellectual soundness scale, is slightly above, let me put a mirror under his nose to see if he's still breathing. We were wrong. For last night, somebody evidently told Trump about the Wall Street Journal poll showing 73% of registered voters believe Joe Biden is too old to run for president, a not unexpected number given that the Wall Street Journal poll was run by a former Trump pollster, but in that context, the second number was actually shocking. 47% of registered voters in the pro-Trump poll run by a pro-Trump ex-Trump pollster, 47% think Trump is too old to run. And after a typo in his first sentence of his rage post last night, he got right to it. Quote, a few years ago, I was the only one to agree to a mental acuity test and aced it, aced is of course in caps. Well, I hear by challenge Rupert Murdoch and sons, Biden, WSJ heads to acuity tests. I will name the place and the test, and it will be a tough one. Nobody will come even close to me." He trashed the journal. He called it globalist, damaged goods, phony and rigged. He is enraged again over this one issue over which he cannot possibly control himself, the reality that he is not a sane or intelligent man. And that was just the start of it. It devolved from there. It devolved into his claim that the true test of non-mental strength is... Go! Quote, we can also throw some physical activity into it. I just won the senior club championship at a big golf club. As an aside, he means his own golf club. He said so. Earlier, he cheats at all golf courses. There are hundreds of witnesses. He cheats at his golf courses with impunity. He cheats literally in New Jersey over his wife's dead body. Quoting again, I just won the senior club championship at a big golf club with many very good players to do so. You need strength, accuracy, touch, and above all, mental toughness. Ask Brett Baer, Fox, a very good golfer. Yeah, that's who I'm going to to decide mental and physical competence in a 77-year-old insane megalomaniac. Brett freaking Baer. The Wall Street Journal and Fox are damaged goods and their failed desanctimonious push and stupid $780 million settlement. Where's the rest of that sentence? There isn't one. And the final thrust of this intellectual argument proving he is the smartest man in the world. An intellectual argument that would make Einstein weep and run away all in caps. Morons exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point. I met Donald Trump on Thursday, December 15, 1983 at breakfast symposium here in New York City featuring the owners of four New York area sports franchises. The CNN cameraman and the deck operator and I left the hotel having interviewed each of them in silence. As we got to the van, I finally broke that silence. Well, I said to the cameraman, what the f is wrong with that guy? The other two burst into laughter. Little did we know. That was his mental high point. That was nearly 40 years of Trumpian mental deterioration ago. And every time I think we have hit rock bottom, Trump finds a new high in low. And yet even at this possible bottom of the bottomless pit, he still seems slightly aware that he is in danger. It's not enough to challenge the Murdoch's and Biden and the journal editors to acuity tests. They must be acuity tests that Trump selects and locates. Person, woman, man, camera, TV, and cheeseburgers. There. I run rings around gelatically, Joe. You old poopy pants. If I'm Joe Biden or Rupert Murdoch or anybody else named Murdoch or the journal honchos, I take Trump up on this offer immediately. And I see how quickly he forgets that offer. And then I start bringing it up daily. And I start bringing it up hourly. Bring it up. Keep bringing it up. President Biden, this is your magic wand. Where is Trump's acuity test? Where is our acuity showdown? And maybe somebody will say to Trump, make Biden and the Murdoch's remembered this phrase, ECF number 47-3. Because ECF number 47-3, that could be the most important phrase this week in Trump land. Because something will happen today involving ECF number 47-3, which could lead to a gag order being imposed on Trump by the end of the week of the beginning of next week. Or maybe its sanctions, or maybe it is a speeded up Washington trial start date. Unfortunately, barring the most unlikely of circumstances, we will not know what it is today, nor which outcome it will produce. But today is when the Trump legal team has to tell Judge Tanya Chutkin why it does not want made public whatever is the background to this filing by Jack Smith last week. I'll quote it again. Such a requirement would grind litigation in this case to a halt, which is particularly infeasible given the pressing matters before the court, including the defendants, daily extra judicial statements that threaten to prejudice the jury pool in this case, as described in the government's motion. C-E-C-F number 47-3. Person woman, man, camera, DB, cheeseburgers. And if you have a copy of ECF number 47-3, give me a ring because I don't. Nobody outside the court is supposed to. It's under seal, but it is clearly about Trump statements and or revelations. And it could be about his threats to the judge and the prosecutors and the world. And it could be about some piece of evidence he alluded to that didn't really register with you or me or anybody following this stuff even more closely than we are, but which caused a couple of garbage cans inside the special counsel's office to spontaneously burst into flames last week. Trump's ambulance chasers were to respond to Judge Chutkin unless they were able to find a way to delay it or that nice Miss Habba misplaced her brain again. Smith is to respond on Wednesday, although one thing we already know about Smith is that he will be ready to respond exactly 11 minutes and 47 seconds after he reads whatever the Trump lawyers write today because that's who he is and that's why he's in this job and that's why he could actually play beat the clock and win and save democracy could the defendant's daily extra judicial statements that threaten to prejudice the jury pool in this case as described in the government's motion CECF number 47-3, what I would give to know the rest of that now. What we do know today that is new is that Trump or those operating on his behalf appear to have broken more laws regarding presidential records and their storage and their pill forage. There is a second Trump document stash in greater West Palm Beach, Florida besides the Marilago crap shack with the boxes of top secret documents kept securely next to the commode as we slowly see developing what will happen to Trump if he doesn't seize power again and he doesn't go to jail and instead he becomes one of those hoarders who cannot really make it from his bed to the front door because his way is blocked by 116,000 stacked fake copies of Time Magazine proclaiming him golfer of the year for 1987. NBC News reports that 10 minutes away from Marilago on North Flagler Drive, the quintessential Florida address North Flagler Drive, one floor before the headquarters for the Trump Secret Service Detail in Florida. There is an unmarked post presidential office paid for by the United States government. No, the real one, not Trump's pretend one and that while the presumption is there are no secret documents there now that does not mean there were at lots before or might not be some now. NBC reports that Trump's lawyers ordered a private firm to search the office for just such secret materials and at least one box of classified stuff was reportedly moved from Marilago to North Flagler and then apparently back to Marilago. Boxes everywhere says an NBC source the state of that office is generally cluttered like going inside Trump's brain don't wear your good shoes boxes piled against walls boxes piled not against walls. Current and recent ex-employees of Trump political action committees like Bo Harrison, Molly Michael and Desiree Thompson and Thompson still works for Save America Pack have had access and while that is not a crime you can do both if those Trump political employees are doing political stuff in the government paid for office on North Flagler they are violating five US code seven three two four political activities on duty. This will not send any of them to jail but it should send Department of Justice investigators to North Flagler immediately. The maddening part of this of course is that as Trump never managed to establish any kind of line dividing politics and corruption and what passed for his actual job in the White House he also never managed to establish any kind of line dividing politics and corruption and sheer incompetence and confusion. NBC went to the menacing lumpy Trump spokesman Stephen Chung for comment about the North Flagler office and Chung's response quote I've never heard of a North Flagler office unquote leaving the astonishing possibility that somebody in the Trump camp for the first time might accidentally be telling the truth. The next story is simple. Jenny Thomas and Leonard Leo must be indicted on corruption charges and Clarence Thomas must be indicted for influence peddling and the leaking of Supreme Court decisions in advance and were probably profiteering off insider knowledge of what those decisions were to be and he must be removed from the court immediately by any legal means including arrest and until all this happens the Supreme Court of the United States is illegitimate and its jurisdiction over the laws and people of this nation is no more valid than person woman man camera TV. If you missed Politico's breakthrough report yesterday find it and read it months before the infamous citizens United decision in which supposed First Amendment defender and hero Floyd Abrams helped a bunch of goons led by David Bossy sell out democracy in this country. Clarence Thomas's wife and Leonard Leo and the Thomas is oh I'm just a friend who likes to give the Thomas's money friend Harlan Crowe organized exactly the kind of limitless boundless political slush fund in which corporations could funnel any amount of money they chose to to buy limitless political advertising and influence on behalf of an issue or candidate provided the money did not go directly to the candidate Leo and Ginny Thomas had it ready to go before Ginny Thomas's husband helped make it happen Politico offered a damning timeline of events in addition to the great article in brief September 9 2009 the oral arguments concluded in Citizens United two months later Clea Mitchell now where do we know that name from filed an application with the IRS to create an organization called Liberty Central Inc on behalf of Ginny Thomas December 31st 2009 Ginny Thomas signs the incorporation paperwork Leonard Leo is listed as a director and in the following weeks half a million in seed money is donated by Harlan Crowe January 14th 2010 Virginia approves the request by Ginny Thomas to incorporate Liberty Central Inc one week later Citizens United is handed down by the Supreme Court February Ginny Thomas tells CPAC she's been called to the front lines out of the cult and into the front lines and on and on and on at the time I called Citizens United a worse decision by the court than even Dred Scott and the fascists mocked me this damning Politico timeline goes on for more than a dozen more dates but one more stands out symbolically October 9th 2010 Ginny Thomas leaves a voicemail demanding an apology from Anita Hill they are scum Ginny Thomas is scum Clarence Thomas is scum Leonard Leo is scum Harlan Crowe is scum Clita Mitchell is scum Finally I guess this is comic relief it used to ring in the furthest reaches of my mind and now I hear it weekly daily hourly and always it's a little louder than it was last time the theory that this country is just a contiguous group of regional tribes that once we're sort of held together by nothing more solid than the fact that there are only three television networks so that the odds were great that despite the fundamental and unsolvable differences statistically at least we all shared some basic cultural element oh yeah I saw Petty Coat Junction the other night too and that new Bobby Joe is a dish or Arty Johnson is funny or hey look ABC just changed news casters again that's 16 times this year now those long gone Gossamer bonds are a distant memory and we have people born and raised in this country the children of countless generations here and they are speaking a language which they think is English and which the other native born speakers around them think is English but it's it's not English we take you to Rapid City south to Cota this woman is a grandmother presumably someone whom the thin veneer of civilization and education has at least brushed over once or twice across the decades she owns clothes she's wearing them in the correct position she has jewelry she was wearing a pleasant surhat fetching almost she's nearly in tears as she talks about Trump I too would be in tears if I was feeling and saying what she was feeling and saying because she's not actually speaking English but she does not know this she is yearning for what she believes Trump brings and what Trump brings in her word is stability I'm very excited and helpful it gives me hope and security and just stability I like what you said I mean it's a very authentic answer the last we're lost we cannot possibly educate these people in time they do not know they need help they would never accept that they need help they would never admit that they are stupid they would never accept the idea that the word stability came to them in a dream they would shoot you rather than accept your correction besides madam I believe that the word you actually meant there in terms of Trump was stab ability also of interest here voice okay a little scratchy not too much stamina bear with me stability or instability some slight marble size chunk of it has returned to the universe the great day has come behold the ages closed this is January 1st in the year one AC after Chuck we are free from one of the countless destructive factors in our land Chuck Todd is gone as the host of meet the press on the other hand his final words were in essence I did a great job and I made America smarter and no he didn't seem to be stoned that's next this is an all new edition of countdown Charlemagne the god imagine that windy was windy right and she had this young crota j name Charlemagne from South Carolina that she put her arm around and then that person became who he is yeah y'all there's nothing flying in that and that's the most like like like like forget what you can grow a tree but the other thing is to have mad fruit from that tree from lifestyle insights to bridging that knowledge to money gap where your weekly dose of high value entertainment laugh cry soaking game with every episode join us on Monday listen to us up their podcast on the black-of-fake podcast network our hard radio help apple podcast or whatever you get your podcast get your tickets now at a excess dot com for our 2023 I heard radio music festival coming back to Las Vegas tonight September 22nd and 23rd one stay at T. Polarina streaming live only on who do this is the I heart radio music festival a weekend full of superstar performances never seen before collaboration and once in a lifetime moments you'll have to see to believe don't miss your chance to see food fighters fallout boy Kelly Clarkson King Brown Little Wayne Little Turks Lenny Kravitz Miguel Public Enemy Cheryl Crow Travis Scott Tim McGraw TLC 30 seconds to Mars 10 more by your tickets for our 2023 I heard radio music festival now before they sell out at a excess dot com that's a excess dot com hey guys it's Kevin Bacon my podcast six degrees with Kevin Bacon is out now join me as I kick back with the likes of Mark Ruffalo Matthew McConaughey jewel and many more as we talk about their favorite nonprofits doing amazing good in the world highlighting some of the most pressing social issues of our time you know I found myself moving up state in the middle of this fracking fight you know and it's happening all around me so I'm the longer like a guy in the sidelines I'm like in the middle of it and I'm trying to raise kids there and you know my neighbors like willing to poison my water what an equal opportunist misery is it doesn't care if you're black or white or rich or poor or famous or homeless if you were raised in misery systems it's perpetual this is the time to get the young men and women they get thrown the wrong track help get on the right track if you get thrown the right track let's help them double down on that and see the opportunity to stay on the right track for success in the future the time is now listen to six degrees with Kevin Bacon on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this is countdown with Keith Alberman Post scripts to the news some headlines some updates some snark some predictions date line Washington and now he belongs to the ages Chuck Todd signed off as the host of NBC's meet the press and he left as he started with his head completely up his ass quote on my first day on the job of meet the press I was handed an audience survey of sunday show viewers and the number one reason folks said they tuned in was not because the person was behind the chair or the guests it was simply to get educated so for nearly a decade I've had the honor of helping to explain America to Washington and Washington to America can you imagine at any point in your life being that divorced from reality to think that you explained anything to anybody other than how not to do television how not to report the news how not to interview people how not to represent truth and most importantly how not to represent the urgent needs of the nation in which you live I have always said that someday the American Psychiatric Association would officially declare that the compulsive need to be on television is a full-fledged mental illness requiring treatment I am genuinely surprised that that day was not yesterday after Chuck Todd said that and added quote it's that education piece that I'm hanging my hat on for the rest of my professional life unquote I have known Chuck Todd since the year 2005 he does not own a hat he does not have a professional life Chuck do not let the door hit you in the ass on the way out or to be more precise Chuck do not let both sides of the door hit you in the ass on the way out oh and if you think it's going to get better under his replacement Kristen Welker it's not let me remind you of this from my podcast of August 24th three Trump hoodlums led by Jason Miller were according to Politico whining and dining a dozen of the top national political reporters at a steakhouse called rare in Milwaukee the point was to let Trump be there yet remain personally in absentia and to continue taking his shots at Ron DeSantis by remote control Jason Miller and Chris Lasavita and Stephen Chung handed these dozen reporters packs of putting snacks that would be a shot at DeSantis and they handed them DeSantis debate bingo cards which called DeSantis the sanctimonious and invoked his varying pronunciations of his names how many times he would say woke and Ron DeSantis can melt in the hot sun for all I care because the issue is not which fascist politicians thugs were doing the insulting and which fascist politicians thugs were on the receiving end it's who was there Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post was there Dana Bash of CNN was there I wish I was surprised by that name an NBC reporter named Dasha Burns the chief election correspondent of CBS news Robert Costa a producer there named Finn Gomez Rachel Scott senior congressional correspondent ABC Shane Goldmacher New York Times Rob Crilley UK's Daily Mail he was the one who started the whole Biden no comment on Hawaii right wing feeding frenzy he was the pool reporter he never heard Biden say no comment but he and some other people thought they could read his lips at a great distance so they attributed that quote to him and it's still attributed to him and also at the agreement with Jason Miller and Stephen Chung before the first Republican debate eating their food and participating in their slamming of another candidate and laughing along with them Kristen Welker the new pre corrupted host of NBC's Meet the Press and as a post script if you want to feel even worse about the media and the coverage of politics in this country the lead item in the politico daily newsletter yesterday the jenny Thomas scotus scandal no chak tod's farewell speech after his firing then jenny Thomas because politico also could not tell the difference between the relative whereabouts of the ass and the elbow uh this is sports center wait check that not anymore this is countdown with Keith alberman in sports the imbattle president of the Spanish football association Luis Rubiales who forced to kiss on the mouth of star player jenny hermoso after spain's world cup title win has told interviewer pierce morgan he will finally resign possibly just to get pierce morgan to shot up for two seconds michigan state football has suspended its head coach mel tucker possibly as a precursor to firing him this came hours after us a today reported that after months of working with survivor Brenda Tracy to raise awareness with his athletes about sexual abuse and rape and harassment she alleges coach tucker got on the phone with her last year and made sexual comments and began to masturbate mel tucker mel mother tucker now suspended without pay indefinitely i wonder how he's gonna spend all that spare time thank you Nancy Faust and it may be time to start rescheduling the major tennis tournaments one fan collapsed during the us open here in new york last week men's third seed deniel medvedev said into a court side camera quote one player is going to die and they're going to see and climate protesters interrupted a match last week one of them gluing his own feet to the stadium floor the associated press reports that in the last 45 years temperatures at the grand slam tennis events are up at average of five degrees and that by 2050 the Australian open according to one calculation will have an average real feel at mid court of 147 this underscores the unlikely is truth of the coming climate catastrophe and maybe our best hope there are two areas in which the average human and the average denier will get the message first and they are not scientific and they are not political they are insurance the big insurers are already dropping out of markets like florida and sports outdoor sports schedules especially tournaments especially tennis tournaments will be destroyed as summers like this one become the norm someday soon you will not have to be a protester to get glued in place at the us tennis open that will not be glue that will be your outer layer of skin which has melted and stuck you to your seat still ahead on countdown 9 11 22 years later the story of tomas reyes and the story of what is now the bright straight clear line from the nightmare of that day to the nightmare of trump and american fascism first the daily roundup of the misgrants morons and done in crewgraf x specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world the bronze shan spicer speaking of trump and fascism there somebody from ground zero former trump press liar and now host of the shan spicer show whose twitter account has 152 followers 152 possibly because he does stuff like this a poll quote yes or no do you think every single gop presidential candidate could be joe biden in 2024 it remained on his feet like that b i think he meant beat but who knows could every single gop presidential candidate could be joe biden in 2024 it remained on his feet uncorrected like that for the following three days throwing our appeal on musk how many shovels can one man own because all he does is keep digging somebody posted that 15 of the 23 monkeys in whom musk's mad scientists implanted neural links have reportedly died well musk had to answer that of course he is compulsive quote no monkey has died as a result of a neural link implant first our early implants to minimize risk to healthy monkeys we chose terminal monies close to death already unquote let's skip the Freudian slip where he wrote monies instead of monkeys and just concentrate on the fact that Elon Musk took a bunch of dying monkeys and turned their last days on this earth into torturous surgery and the implanting of musk brand machines that promptly killed them Elon who's getting the first human neural link are you volunteering the winner for a sheer unawareness of his own world though is Greg gutter's snipe of fox news complaining about a protest blocking a pregnant woman's access to health care now just think about that for a second i mean that's chucked Todd level of self-unawareness we can't block a pregnant woman's access to health care it's way too complicated an irony for Greg to comprehend so let it pass let it pass but his response after that was amazing we deserve that right as well and i think that we should be posting their exact names and addresses online on social on websites so if you desire to make their lives extra difficult you have the right to they do a group protest what's wrong with a personal protest connect the cost to the actions docs the people who are destroying other people's experiences gut felt is an extraordinarily stupid man convinced he is an extraordinarily brilliant man in ten thousand lifetimes it will never occur to him that what the deranged man who live streamed himself approaching the home of Barack Obama looking for access tunnels so he could go hunt Obama but he was doing that using information supplied in a social media post made by Donald Trump a doxing by Donald Trump he'll never understand that to be gut felt to be on Fox to be a fascist to be a republican is to believe you can never do wrong and no rules apply to you and no one else can ever be right i will not suggest doxing Greg gut felt i mean who would want to see where he lives also more importantly i have been the victim of doxing done by a viewer of the Fox news channel i would not even wish it on hosts of Fox news after all if there is a hell they already have a studio set up there that will suffice Greg await trump dox somebody i'm going to help gut felt today's worst person in hell hi i'm Jerry logon store manager of bioil number 3842 and i want to invite you behind the scenes to a section of our store that is strictly employees only victor you didn't bring your co-brother work did you okay a number one it's a Burmese python this is where we unwind have a chat about the news of the day looks like Chris Christie might be running honey if you finish one thing Chris Christie ain't doing it's running employees only that means no normies keep out buddy it's just for us by well employees he did an insurrection honey it didn't work you can't hold somebody accountable if it didn't work i love that so much we should apply that to my criminal record this is where we talk freely about all the stuff happening in the world it's employees only courtesy of wrong Howard the new podcast from imagine audio pretty fast in i heart media i will listen on the i heart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts hey guys it's kevin bacon my podcast six degrees with kevin bacon is out now join me as i kick back with the likes of mark ruffle oak mathy mccanae jewel and many more as we talk about their favorite nonprofits doing amazing good in the world highlighting some of the most pressing social issues of our time you know i found myself moving up state in the middle of this fracking fight you know and and it's happening all around me so i'm the longer like a guy on the sidelines i'm like in the middle of it and i'm trying to raise kids there and and you know my my neighbors like willing to poison my water what an equal opportunist misery is it doesn't care if you're black or white or rich or poor or famous or homeless if you were raised in misery systems it's perpetual this is the time to get young men and women they throw in the wrong track help get on the right track if wrong the right track let's help them double down on that and see the opportunities stay on the right track for success in the future the time is now listen to six degrees with kevin bacon on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts get your tickets now at aaccess.com for our 2023 i heart radio music festival coming back to Las Vegas tonight September 22nd and 23rd one state at T-Mobile Arena streaming live only on hulu dance is the i heart radio music festival a weekend full of superstar performances never seen before collaboration and once in a lifetime moments you'll have to see to believe don't miss your chance to see food fighters fallout boy acali Clarkson king brown blueway milterge lini kravitz michelle public enemy chirochro travis god temagrah tlc 30 seconds to mars ten more by your ticket for our 2023 i heart radio music festival now before they sell out at aaccess.com that's aaccess.com finally to the number one story on the countdown and it's happened in preparing this script for this edition and to be fair still a little hazy from my illness i had to carefully calculate the dates on each page based on the last show which was September 8 last week and i typed out today's date and it did not immediately shock me or strike me as anything significant i just typed nine eleven twenty twenty three well it's understandable it's 22 years i mentioned it to young people and i get the looks i must have given to my folks 22 years after pearl harbor or 22 years after the end of world war two 22 nothing of importance happened to me on september 11th 2001 i mean against statistical probability i had friends acquaintances in each of the two towers and three out of the four planes and i only learned of the death of one of them from the missing posters i rather unexpectedly became a street news reporter for old friends one who ran an l.a. tv station and one who ran an l.a. all news radio station i felt more keenly that day than any other in my life that i was the descendant of countless new york cops and firefighters my grandfather my mother's father drove a hook and ladder in the Bronx i have his badge i was taken by cops for a series of harrowing behind the police line walks behind ground zero i can still hear in my head the matter of factness of a dispatcher's voice coming across one of the radios saying body parts found on 14th floor of the world financial center at another equally weary and broken voice repeating it body parts found on 14th floor of world financial center i didn't see the attacks my apartment then only faced uptown when i woke up that morning all i saw was as beautiful a sky as i had ever seen before and to this day have ever seen since by the time i got down to the street there were already people with glazed eyes and dust covered shoes and pants who were just reaching my neighborhood from their walk from the trade center the trade center was 75 blocks south of where i lived i was the witness who didn't see anything however i had already been on the radio in l.a. three times and i was on my way to time square for a television shot when i realized it was now hours later and i had eaten and i was just passing one of my places a restaurant called red eye grill and unbelievably it was open half a dozen waiters familiar faces hugs tears they made me my regular meal they didn't charge me for it then i went to the restroom to wash up and there was an attendant in there and i recognized him too and after i was finished being even more embarrassed than usual at the whole process of somebody handing me a washcloth in a bathroom i reached to give him a tip and i found exactly three quarters in my pocket and a fifty dollar bill in my wallet and the attendant said i'll take those quarters i can't use the payphone with a fifty then i didn't understand what he meant so i asked him what he mean he introduced himself his name was tomas reyes he explained two weeks earlier tomas reyes said he had been laid off by an investment firm that he had worked for downtown they liked him he liked them but jobs like his came and went and he was out fired on august 24th 2001 but he said they told him that if he wanted to he could keep his desk for a couple of weeks maybe even a month he could come in and use their computer and call around looking for work maybe even pick up a shift at the firm here in their freelance but to that point in large part because labor day had been the previous monday and in new york you leave for labor day a week before and you come back a week after there were no openings yet for him in the investment business or anything else that he could find but years before he had worked odd jobs at that place the red eye grill including as the attendant in the men's room and this was the only place where they had offered him a paycheck to do anything he was still going to his old job and his old desk every day except when red eye called and said they needed him in the men's room he had been on wall street he was now not just the men's room attendant he was the backup men's room attendant at a restaurant in midtown and that morning 7am 730 he was going out the door to his desk in the investment firm to work the phones again when his cell phone rang the guy doing the midday shift in the men's room at red eye grill on 7th avenue had called in sick he had if he wanted it eight hours of work coming to him 60 bucks 75 with tips if he wanted it and so that was how Thomas Reyes was in the men's room at the red eye grill at 57th street and 6th avenue handing out very few towels to very few customers on September 11th 2001 rather than sitting at his desk in the world trade center and that is also why he wanted my quarters and not my $50 bill because he was trying to use the restaurant pay phone to call his friends who still worked at the investment firms office which was on floors 101 102 103 104 and 105 of world trade center building number one because his old firm was Cantor Fitzgerald and he was not there that day only because the full time men's room attendant at the restaurant had called in sick and I wished him luck with his phone calls and I got out of there as quickly as I could because I had seen the video and he clearly had not seen the video they were all dead at Cantor Fitzgerald including two classmates of mine from college Aiman McEnany Mike Tanner they were dead in the pyre of the building in which I had started my television career 20 years and a month before the brother of another friend of mine was in the other tower I had a friend one of my cameraman on my show at Fox Sports who I'd worked with literally three months before Tom Peckerelli he was on one plane the former MSNBC guest Barbara Olsen was on another a hockey acquaintance of mine garnet ace Bailey was on a third plane I went to the bar at the red eye grill and I asked the bartender to change the 50 for me and to give me all the coins he could spare probably five dollars worth and I kept two tens for myself just in case and I went back in the men's room and I gave the rest and all the coins to Thomas Reyes for his phone calls apparently the battery was gone on his cell and I hope I did a good job not letting him know that none of his friends would be answering I mentioned Mike Tanner I did not know he was dead until much later September 24th about Aiman McEnany I knew right away that morning he had been one of the heroes of the 1993 attack on the trade center on that day he had guided a human chain of survivors down 100 flights of smoky stairwells he worked on one of the uppermost floors but this time in 2001 there were no chains for him to lead though no one who knew him has ever had a seconds doubt that he tried Mike Tanner was the starting quarterback and Aiman McEnany the starting wide receiver in the first sporting event I ever covered for money 15 dollars from United Press International to cover a Cornell football game in 1976 and wouldn't you know the only thing that happened all day was Aiman dropping a punt setting up the other guys feel goal Cornell loses three to nothing and I'm supposed to write 200 words about it and telling this story as methodically as possible I only sum it up about 110 words and the UPI man in Albany taking in my story says no that's okay you don't have to pad it out with 90 words on the early fall weather we'll still send you the 15 bucks kid and I found out about Mike Tanner the way too many people found out about loved ones or friends or fellow alumni or just anonymous to them smiling faces who suddenly counted every bit as much as those we knew in that horrible month Mike's face and name were on a missing poster on Canal Street in Manhattan I stopped and stared at it for five minutes I missed a report I was supposed file for KFWV radio in Los Angeles somehow the circumstances of finding out that way foretold accurately how much shock and pain there was yet to come but the point is I had a 9-11 story and you did too probably even at remote distances even friend of a friend of a friend some lucky ones don't some went through their entire lives and go through their entire life still unaffected by 9-11 and now with time more and more people think of it like Pearl Harbor like World War II like the assassination of Lincoln and it has to be that way or we would never survive but for those of us who still have the stories democrats have them and republicans have them and those who fought the Iraq war made sense have them and those who knew it for what it was have them we were all in that sad thing together and we will always will be but unfortunately as the anniversaries of 9-11 began president bush and the republicans were making it clear that somehow their part of this enforced tragic togetherness was more important than the part of their critics the only positive of 9-11 and the days and weeks and years that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity here in New York and throughout the country the government the president in particular was given every possible measure of support those who did not belong to the president's party tabled that reality those who doubted the mechanics of his election the year before ignored that those who wondered about his qualifications forgot that nearly unanimous support of his government was granted and that is something that cannot be taken away from that government by its critics it can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds but to take political advantage of them terrorists did not come and steal our newly regained sense of being american first and political 50th nor did the democrats nor did the media nor did the people the president and those around him and those who followed him in his party they did that they promised bipartisanship and then showed that to them bipartisanship meant that their party would rule and the rest of us would follow or be branded with ever escalating hysteria as morally or intellectually confused as appeasers as those who in vice president Chinese words validate the strategy of the terrorists these men promised protection and then showed that to them protection meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken who did not have wmd who did not have a damn thing to do with 9-11 against whom plans have been laid many years before 9-11 the polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war or at least acquiescing to it on the false premise that it had something to do with 9-11 is lying by inference the impolite phrase is war crime the america we live in now in which one party believes its hatred is love its fascism is freedom its depravity is purity that began as the 9-11 anniversaries began to follow one upon the other after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and the love and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of election after election we arrived in a world in which when trump enacted the worst imaginable cliche wrapping himself in a flag wrapping himself in an american flag the morons thought that proved he loved america so to have they succeeded in this and are still succeeding and still although they don't call it that this government the government of trump the government in waiting of trump uses 9-11 uses the hatreds of 9-11 as a wedge to pit americans against americans this is an odd point at which decide to television program especially one from march 1960 but long ago a series called the twilight zone broadcast a riveting episode called the monsters are due on maple street in brief a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra terrestrials disguised as humans the electricity goes out in a neighborhood one neighbor pleads for calm suddenly his lights and only the lights in his house go back on someone therefore suggests he must be the alien then another man's car starts suddenly as charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street guns are inevitably produced an alien is shot he turns out to be just another neighbor who was returning from going for help the camera then pulls back to a nearby hill where two extra terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity the veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack you just turn off a few of the human machines and then quote they picked the most dangerous enemy they can find and it's themselves and then in perhaps his finest piece of writing rod serling sums it up with words of remarkable pressience given where we have found ourselves in ever increasing measures since september 11th 2001 the tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout there are weapons that are simply thoughts attitudes prejudices to be found only in the minds of men for the record prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children and the children yet unborn I've done all the damage I can do here thank you for listening countdown has come to you from our studios in new york here the credits most of the music arranged produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanel who are the countdown musical directors all orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanel guitars bass and drums by Brian Ray produced by TKO brothers other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the group no horns allowed the sports music is the overman theme from ESPN 2 it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc musical comments by Nancy Faust the best baseball stadium organist ever our announcer today was my friend Richard Lewis everything else was pretty much my fault so that's countdown for this the 979th day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States can vict him now while we still can the next schedule countdown is tomorrow Boltons as the news warrants and is this continuing throat infection permits till then I'm Keith Olderman good morning good afternoon good night and good luck gives me hope a security and just stability countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeart Radio for more podcasts from iHeart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts your career is your most valuable asset imagine powering it with the unvarnished advice of the most successful chief executives in the world i'm mike stib a three time CEO fortune 500 boy leader and author of the top selling career guide the career manifesto on my new show office hours i sit down with the leaders shaping our world to help you be the CEO of your own career listen to office hours with mike stib on the iHeart Radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts we're supposed to learn from our own mistakes but other people's errors can be instructive too from efforts to control the weather that went disastrously awry to the untimely death of the Segway boss history is a treasure trove mishaps and meltdowns to teach us all i'm Tim Halford host of cautionary tales the podcast that minds the greatest fiascoes of the past for their most valuable lessons listen to cautionary iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts the last archive is a show about the history of truth in america each episode we tell a story about people coming up with some new way of understanding the world histories of science technology democracy this season we've got stories on everything from mid-century songwriting machines to social network theory and plenty of mad inventors of course i go oh my god well it's dr franken steins monster isn't it listen to the last archive on the iHeart Radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts