TRUMP MAY HAVE SOLD CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS IN BUSINESS DEALS - 5.23.23

Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions, like, can we create new senses for humans? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman. On the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Last season, millions tuned into the betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all-new story of betrayal. Ashley Litten was helping her husband set up a business Venmo account when she discovered a terrible secret. I saw a hidden folder, and I opened it. What the hell did I just see? Listen to season two of Betrayal on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Queen Charlotte, the official podcast, we're stepping behind the scenes and the drawing boards of this team to experience the life breathed into the Bridgerton prequel. Listen to the leaps executive producer and series director Tom Barrica took to capture the feeling that puts that lump in your throat, and you've got to catch creator Shonda Rhimes. She's dropping gems, diamonds, and mics. You can listen to Queen Charlotte, the official podcast, every Thursday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Countdown with Keith Olermann is a production of iHeart Radio. Special Counsel Jack Smith is clearly pursuing a theory of Donald Trump's stolen documents conspiracy in which Trump ignored a subpoena to return every classified document, committed obstruction of justice, and violated the espionage act by hiding the documents from his own attorney search in order to retain them, and then somehow utilize them in post presidential business deals with one of seven countries, including China and Saudi Arabia. And as evidence, Jack Smith now has in his hands nothing less than the real time handwritten notes of Trump's own lawyer. For the first time we have a hint at how far Trump was willing to go to keep those documents and what the special counsel prosecutors think Trump's motive was, and it is breathtaking, and it broke in two separate source stories, first in England's The Guardian, and then in the New York Times. A startling discovery of his attorney's notes one analyst describes it as special counsel Smith strikes gold could be enough to put Trump in prison for 10 years per count. We're not just willfully retaining classified documents, but deliberately hiding them to keep his own lawyer from finding them and giving them back to the authorities, a brazen violation of a key part of the NSP and Aj act. And from that separate source story in the times and even more astonishingly, it's clear the special counsel is also pursuing evidence that Trump may have given or traded or sold classified documents and or information to China, to France, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and or the United Arab Emirates. Whether the evidence can be obtained, in fact, whether it even exists is not clear. On the other hand, I'm willing to stake a lot on this theory. Jack Smith did not pick the names of seven countries out of a hat. The biggest developments in the Marilago documents case in months came within hours of each other via two leaks that route back directly to the testimony that a court forced from the Trump attorney Evan Corcoran, because Corcoran did not just talk. He brought receipts 50 pages, five zero of handwritten notes in which Corcoran warned Trump he could not keep classified documents after the subpoena arrived that demanded their return and which Corcoran writes that after he warned that to Trump, Trump still wanted to know how to fight it and keep the documents. Corcoran's notes show he told Trump, no, you can't do that. We already know Trump decided to fight it by keeping some classified documents anyway. And at that disastrous town hall last week, which may yet wind up being more disastrous for Trump than it was for CNN, Trump publicly admitted he deliberately took and kept classified documents and claimed he had the right to do so. The special counsel clearly believes he has evidence that Trump hid classified documents deliberately willfully and after his own attorney had warned him it was a criminal act. He has the lawyer's notes. He has security video from the infamous Marilago storage room and surrounding environs and the previous testimony of Trump ballet Walt Naota that after Corcoran told Trump that his only course of action was to return everything Trump and Corcoran agreed Corcoran should search for classified documents. But instead, Trump ordered Naota to move specific boxes so Trump could hide those boxes during Corcoran's search or so Trump could go through those boxes and pull individual classified documents he insisted on keeping from Corcoran. As Hugo Lowell writes in the Guardian, now to told the Justice Department that Trump told him to move boxes out of the storage room before and after the subpoena. The activity was captured on subpoenaed surveillance footage. That all adds up to not just forgetting some classified documents or misplacing them or misunderstanding what was required or even defying the regulations that you had to return them. That is a written record of dates and times of warnings from an officer of the court not to commit a crime then committing the crime anyway then covering up the committing of the crime and then having the crime discovered and then trying to blame the crime on an inefficient search by the attorney Corcoran. That is an almost textbook definition of not one but two crimes. First, obstruction of justice in all big bright red capital letters and also violation of 18 US code 793E inside the Espionage Act quote willfully retaining documents relating to the national defense and failing to deliver them to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive them a fine or 10 years or both per document. The notes writer Lowell added revealed how Trump and Naota had unusually detailed knowledge of the botched subpoena response including where Corcoran intended to search and not search for classified documents at Marilago as well as when Corcoran was actually doing his search. Then then just for color Hugo Lowell added that in his notes quote Corcoran described Trump's facial expressions and reactions whenever they discussed the subpoena. Albedi did. That document version of a game of deadly hide and seek had already reignited the story of the special counsel's attempt to put Trump away when the second more vague but potentially more dangerous story broke in the New York Times. The part of Smith's office handling the Marilago stolen documents has now quoting the paper issued a subpoena for information about Mr. Trump's business dealings in foreign countries since he took office according to two people familiar with the matter. This is the first indication that there could be tangible evidence or even that there's reason to suspect there may be such evidence connecting the stealing and retaining of the classified documents and the possibility that the documents or information could have been sold or bartered or given away by Trump to a foreign nation or nationals and that is far more ominous even than willful retention or obstruction of justice. The Times says the subpoena seeks details on any Trump organization quote real estate licensing and development dealings in seven countries China France Turkey Saudi Arabia Kuwait the United Arab Emirates and Oman anything since 2017 anything the crime does not have to have been committed while Trump was in office only while he was in office or afterwards. We know Trump made a deal to license his name to promoters of a hotel housing and golf complex in Oman last fall and on a bigger scale he made a deal with the Saudi back leave golf league the year before which is holding some of its tournaments at Trump golf facilities in this country among the government documents discovered in Mr. Trump's possession rights the Times were some related to Middle Eastern countries and when the FBI executed a search warrant in August 2022 at Marilago among the items recovered was material related to President Emmanuel Macron of France according to court records on quote. It is important here to remember that the motive that the possibility that the impossibly narrow-minded money grubbing Trump traded our classified documents to get a better deal on a golf tournament could elevate this case to genuine international espionage and something far more dangerous for Trump than 10 years in jail but none of the motive is necessary to prove the first half of the crime that he not only kept and hid the classified documents but had been told by his own attorney that to do so was to break the law. So now that there is at least the outlines of a theory of the case he took records he refused to return records when the records were subpoenaed he made sure his own attorney would not find certain records he may have used or plan to use records in international business deals let me just fold these stories into the whole Marilago document timeline as we think we know it about May 6th of 2021 more than two years ago now the national archives realized some classified documents from Trump's reign of error were missing from their files and they asked him to give them back throughout the summer Trump stalled as the archives kept asking politely and relatively informally by the way late spring or early summer 2021 Trump concluded a deal with the new live golf enterprise reportedly 93 percent owned by the government of Saudi Arabia late December 2021 a Trump rep told the archives that about a dozen boxes of records that should have not been removed from the White House were at Marilago and they could be retrieved January 18th 2022 the archives wound up picking up 15 boxes all but one of which contained some classified documents 184 classified documents in all including some which had details about sensitive human sources or electronic signals or stuff from the FISA courts February 9th 2022 the archives inspector general told the Justice Department hey you guys have better have a look into this he had classified stuff down there he may have more May 10th 2022 after a series of delays the archives informed Trump's lawyers that they were now going to provide the FBI access to the boxes that Trump had already returned May 11th 2022 the Justice Department subpoenaed additional records also May 11th 2022 Evan Corcoran's handwritten notes of his conversations with his client Trump about the stolen documents begin sometime in the ensuing month there is closed circuit video of this guy Walt Nauta moving documents or at least moving boxes in and out of the storage room and Evan Corcoran searching for classified documents or the boxes they were supposedly in June 3rd 2022 three FBI agents and a DOJ attorney go to Marilago to collect more materials Trump had quote found unquote 38 classified documents 17 of them top secret saying that they'd all been in one area and one area only the storage room at Marilago and the agents and the attorney were permitted to look at the storage room and the storage area but nowhere else in the entire club and Trump attorneys wrote and gave them a document verifying that to the best of their knowledge everything classified that Trump had ever had was now back in the government's hands sometime in the ensuing two months more CCTV video shows more boxes move plus perhaps unknown events that led to August 5th 2022 the DOJ application for a subpoena to search and seize any classified records at Marilago and August 8th 2022 the search executed and nearly 100 more classified documents found around the club including in Trump's pretend presidential office around November 13th 2022 the Trump organization signed a deal with a Saudi real estate company to put the Trump brand on a hotel and golf course in a four billion dollar development that it is building in and with financial support by the nation of Oman and May 4th 2023 Trump's security hancho's Matt Calamari and Matt Calamari Jr. two servings of Calamari testify in front of the Jack Smith grand jury about problems with the security video system at Marilago and reportedly about problems with Naohua's testimony I should add this caveat that timeline is what has been publicly revealed in court records or by reporting from reliable news organizations I am now left wondering about these questions exactly what is on the security video at Marilago and what's missing from it how do prosecutors know there has been any erasure or an accidental deletion and what do they think was deleted we know why Jack Smith wants records about Saudi Arabia live golf and Oman the Trump building there and France he stole documents about Macron and China the documents that included details of our intel work there but what about Kuwait and the UAE could be more golf could be Trump has sold them documents about Iran's missile program to one of them or again back to the Saudis but then there's the seventh nation Turkey why does Jack Smith want records of any Trump licensing or real estate deals in Turkey what does Turkey have to do with all of this there does not seem to be a hint about this anywhere yet and then there is the juiciest question of them all to ponder they produced these two bombshells in one day they produced evidence that Trump lied to his own attorney to hide documents from his own attorney they produced the first tangible possible overall motive the handwritten notes by Trump attorney Evan Corcoran what else do they include I mean 50 pages have you ever handwritten 50 pages they are not all about boxes of documents what else is in there and how many years in prison could Donald Trump serve because of it also of note there's a new contender in the republican presidential field the problem is in the official depiction of him in the first merch produced by his campaign you can clearly see his suit you can clearly see his hand adjusting his tie you can clearly see his outline how come you can't see his face one of our presidential candidates faces is missing that's next this is an all new edition of countdown hi i'm david eagelman i have a new podcast called inner cosmos on iHeart i'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford university and i've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads on my new podcast i'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities like does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident or can we create new senses for humans or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet so join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior your perception and your reality listen to inner cosmos with david eagelman on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts last season millions tuned into the betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception i'm andrea gunning and now we're sharing an all new story of betrayal ashley litton was helping her husband set up a business venn mow account when she discovered a terrible secret i scrolled down and that's when i saw a hidden folder and i opened it what the hell did i just see i was scared that he was coming home what ashley discovered that day was a secret so dark she feared for her life she was like oh my god i got to get out of the house he's gonna find out that i've seen this he's gonna come kill me listen to season two of betrayal on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Most scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions, date line, Hudson Yards, New York. I would like to congratulate CNN and Anderson Cooper on their ratings triumph from last Friday night. The 8 p.m. edition of Anderson Cooper 360, defeated Newsmax show, Eric Boling. You didn't really pay for that plastic surgery, did you? Our 484,000 viewers to 48,000. Of course, by 10 p.m. Newsmax's Greg Kelly was out rating Chris Wallace on CNN, and at 11 p.m. CNN tonight lost 240,000 to 22,000 to Newsmax's Rob Schmitt tonight. The rerun of Rob Schmitt tonight. Well, we're over here in ratings obscurity, the guy I told you about yesterday, Dan Abrams, the worst TV manager I've ever known personally. His 9 p.m. show on the Nick at Night of TV News Operations News Nation did not do too well Friday in the coveted 25 to 54 advertising demo. 5,000 viewers, 5,000. Thank you, Nancy Faus. Dateline, New York. The good news for CNN, E. Jean Carroll, left them out of her new lawsuit against Trump. No, not the one she already won with an award of $5 million for rape and defamation. This is the one for how he defamed her on the CNN Town Hall two weeks ago tomorrow. I'm glad to see that Town Hall worked out so well for everybody. I understand David Zazlav is still trying to finish his commencement speech at BU. Dateline, the Pentagon and the White House, neither of which was hurt yesterday or damaged, despite what you might have seen yesterday in a series of AI images spread by store-bought $8 blue checks on Twitter and then amplified by Russian state media. One of the blue check accounts was called Bloomberg Feed and was designed to look like it was part of Bloomberg News and it had a blue check mark. Twitter immediately suspended the account. Eight hours later, after the stock market had dipped and while the images were still bouncing around the internet, and as one AI expert warned, the most important part of this story is those crappy Pentagon and White House fake images, all subsequent AI fakes will be far, far better than those were. ♪♪ Coming up, I still get asked about this. The anniversary is more or less now, so let's walk through it. Why and how? I quit hosting SportsCenter in 1997. First, the Daily Roundup of the miscreants Morons and Dunning Grover effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The bronze got old Matt Gates of Florida. It is a sign of the madness of our times that a kid crosses state lines to shoot two Black Lives Matter protesters and then makes a career out of boasting about it. And a guy shoots a teenager who had knocked on his front door by accident, and another guy shoots a teenager who pulled into the wrong driveway by accident, and another guy shoots a teenager who got into the wrong car by accident. Matt Gates has now introduced a response to all this in Congress, HR 3142. Quote, to amend Title 18 US Code to provide an affirmative defense for certain criminal violations and for other purposes. Yes, the innocent are murdered for mistakes by madmen, armed to the teeth by politicians, completely bought and sold by the death industry, and the Matt Gates' response is, a national, stand-your-ground law in order to make murdering those innocents perfectly legal. Runner-up Brian Glenn, Director of Programming for the RSB Network that's right-side broadcasting a Trump and fascist propaganda channel. Glenn has tweeted, quote, good morning to all the men this morning except to Brittany Greiner. Parentheses he, him, it shouldn't surprise anyone that a man is now the face of a women's professional basketball league, unquote, nor should it be a surprise that somebody who trades in homophobic and transphobic and racist hate should tweet something like that. Or that an irresponsible brain-damaged racist like Elon Musk should do nothing about the tweet. The surprise is that Glenn is going there about Brittany Greiner, a biological woman, given that he is now dating Marjorie, Taylor, Barney, Rubble, white supremacist Karen Green. I'd like to observe one thing about Green and Greiner and this Brian Glenn. Clearly, none of them are men. But our winner, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who actually is going through with this, has actually announced he's running for president. Nobody knows why. You don't know who I'm talking about. He looks exactly like and sounds particularly exactly like everybody, whoever auditioned to host every game show in American TV history, but just missed getting the job. What's amazing is, whatever the point of his candidacy really is, then the speculation has been he's a stalking horse for Trump, his marketing people decided to give hand-held fans to the crowd at the obviously warm hall in which they held the announcement. The fans showed an image of a sort of Tim Scott. It shows him straightening his tie, it shows his bald head, and he has absolutely no face whatsoever. It's just a head with no face. Just the outline of his head. Clearly his head looks like his hand, looks like his tie in a suit, looks like his suit. Like this will protect him if Trump gets mad at him later for running or something. Senator Tim, I may go directly from the presidential campaign to the witness relocation program, Scott, today's worst person in the world. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or, can we create new senses for humans? Or, what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all-new story of Betrayal. Ashley Litten was helping her husband set up a business Venmo account when she discovered a terrible secret. I scrolled down, and that's when I saw a hidden folder, and I opened it. What the hell did I just see? I was scared that he was coming home. What Ashley discovered that day was a secret so dark, she feared for her life. She was like, oh my God, I gotta get out of the house. He's gonna find out that I've seen this, he's gonna come kill me. Listen to season two of Betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're looking for someone to help you unpack Queen Charlotte at Bridgerton Story, you're in the right place. It's me, Gabby Collins. Come with me, because on Queen Charlotte the official podcast, we're stepping behind the scenes and the drawing boards of this team. To experience the life breathed into the Bridgerton prequel, listen to the leaps executive producer and series director Tom Barrica took to capture the feeling that's put that lump in your throat. And you've got to catch creator Shonda Rhimes. She's dropping gems, diamonds, and mics. On this podcast, we're going beyond the basic line of questioning and getting to the heart of the show, all while appreciating the contributions of the show's creative teams and remarkable cast. Go inside each episode of Queen Charlotte of Bridgerton Story with the creatives, the cast, and creator Shonda Rhimes leading the way. Listen to Queen Charlotte the official podcast Thursdays on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. The number one story on the countdown and my favorite topic, Me and Things I Promise Not to Tell, and I tripped over this over the weekend, and there it was filed under late May 1997 and the light bulb went off and I thought, wait, this is also late May, a few years later. And it's all about the micro details of how I quit ESPN. Now, this math can't be right, can it? Now, 26 years ago, and how I left there to go to NBC to do the World Series and the Super Bowl and anchoring the elections and the inaugurations and the special comments and stuff. There is a huge oral history of ESPN from 2011 by Jim Miller, and most of it is pretty good, but there's one line in it that triggered this recollection. The executive vice president of the company in 1997 was named Howard Katz, and in this ESPN book he was quoted as saying, I didn't fire Keith, I just chose not to renew his contract. And then there's a couple of quotes from guys I never heard of who said, no, we fired him, none of it's true. Howard and I got along surprisingly well at ESPN and even better since, so I'm just going to assume he misremembered all this. And he's right, I mean, legally, he chose not to renew my contract early in 1997 and a couple of weeks later instead, he offered me a new four-year contract, which would have basically doubled my salary. And even after I had said, no thanks, and I signed with NBC, the then president of ABC, Bob Iger, whatever happened to him, tried to get me to back out of the NBC deal, to renege on it, and then sign a new deal at ESPN. So they offered me two new deals after they didn't renew my old contract. See how this works? In 96 and 97, it was no secret that my first choice was to leave ESPN. I had come within hours of asking to be let out of my deal in the summer of 1996. A radio station in Chicago, WMVP, had wanted me to go do the afternoon drive show there, a mix of news and sports, and they were offering me twice the money I was getting to host SportsCenter. And I was ready to go. Loved it, had a great week there, they wind me, they dined me, and everybody offered me a free beer. Welcome to Chicago. You're from out of town? And then ownership of the radio station simply pulled the plug on the station. It was in 31st place and said they could save a lot more money by simply rebroadcasting what was on FM radio. And eventually, and this would have been interesting had I gone to Chicago, eventually the owners sold WMVP to ESPN. Anyway, my ESPN deal was set to expire on December 31st, 1997, but they had the option to extend it for, I can't remember either for a year after that or two years, but they had to notify me really early in 97 and instead, on February 18th, 1997, Howard Katz proposed to my then agent that we tear up the contract and do a new four year deal that started at $700,000 a year, and covered a radio show with Dan Patrick and the Sunday edition of SportsCenter and the SB awards ceremonies and the internet and everything else. This was a lot of money for ESPN in 1997, $700,000 a year. So we played around with that for a while, but I didn't really want to go into radio full time, not then, when I still had dark hair. So on April 4th, 1997, Howard Katz came back with another offer three sports centers a week plus some radio starting at $550,000 a year. I noticed this was less than the first offer. So two weeks later, at the first ever Jackie Robinson night at Shea Stadium in New York, Howard came up to me and asked me in front of everybody in our booth, ranging from Chris Berman to Robin Roberts to all the producers and briefly to President Bill Clinton. He asked me if we were close on this new deal that he'd offered me. I got angry at him. He got angry at me forgetting angry at him, and I said, you know, forget it. And what's more, it makes no sense for me to hang around here as a lame duck, Howard. Wait, Howard, the duck? And he calmed down, he said I could look at other jobs and we'd let things cool off and talk again about a new deal in a few weeks after I looked around to see if it was something I'd rather do than be at ESPN. And if it still wasn't going anywhere, we would agree on a date early in the summer and I could leave six months before the contract officially ended. And then three huge things happened about this that most people still don't know to this day. Even after all that, when I called Phil Mushnick of the New York Post and Richard Sandemir of the New York Times and I told them I would be leaving ESPN and it appeared I would be going to go to court TV to be the host and executive producer of my own sports show four nights a week, I almost stayed at ESPN. Once it got out that I was leaving, I got a letter from a viewer who told me that his son who had autism had been at his other son's Little League game. And when his brother banged out a base hit, this kid who had rarely ever spoken in his life suddenly shouted out one of my catchphrases. This guy said he hit the ball real hard. Then there was a fly ball and the boy said it's deep and I don't think it's playable. Then they went home and this virtually non-communicative child began to draw illustrations of my catchphrases. For whatever reason I had triggered some kind of blossoming by this child and his brother and his father sent me a book of the child's illustrations of my catchphrases. I am not trying to suggest I really had anything to do with this. It was good fortune and circumstance and probably something to do with the tone of my voice, nothing more. But I was very moved by this and I remained so. And by other things people wrote to me or wrote in the press about how much the show Dan and I did meant to them. And I went back to Howard Katz and I said look, I know I've been impossible. You have to understand that from my perspective the company has also been impossible. But Dan and I created too good a show to let it die. When I go here to court TV I'm only going to work Monday through Thursday on this new thing. If you will send a car to take me to and from Bristol every Sunday and give me some token sale. Give me $50,000 or something. I'll just do the Sunday night show for you every week. You'll never see me. I'll never see you. It's the show that has the highest factor of management control. It's basically coloring in by numbers. And it reruns all morning on Monday so 40% of the people who see Dan and I during the week they see this one show. That's it. If you want some other stuff for me to do like radio commentaries, great we can negotiate that. But we should not let this die. At least let's have it on once a week. And Howard Katz said, okay let me think about this. It sounds really good. And he got back to me the next day and he said it was the most difficult decision he had ever made in this business. But he just couldn't do it. It established too much of a precedent. Especially the idea that somebody could work at ESPN and also at some other TV operation. He put it very bluntly. If ESPN was not the sole employer of its people it could not control them by threatening to fire them. And he looked at me and he said, especially you. And in the same sentence he said, look we'd love to continue the relationship. Though we see lots of ways you could fit into ESPN classic like once a week or once a month or whatever. And we'd like to get in on the bidding for these radio commentaries that you're going to do on the side. Well it all ended surprisingly amicably. I decided to go to MSNBC and NBC Sports instead of court TV. And as I signed the contract I called the ESPN president Steve Bornstein and the head of Sports Center John Walsh. I called them from the office of the head of NBC Sports Dick Ebersol. And in my diary I can't tell if that was June 19th 1997 or June 20th 1997 but I made the calls and it was Ebersol's idea. Call them now. Call them right now. It'll matter later. The funniest thing was the following Monday June 23rd I was packing up my stuff in my house in Connecticut. I am all set and I am officially beginning my first week not working for ESPN and instead working for NBC and the phone rings. And it's John Walsh in Los Angeles for something. And he has to talk to my agent immediately. Do you know where she is right now? Howard Katz and I have just spoken with Bob Iger and he wants to present a prime time proposal to you for ABC and you can continue it ESPN. And I laughed and I said John I signed with NBC last week. The World Series and the news show and Super Bowl stuff. Remember I called you from Dick Ebersol's office. Do you remember it was Friday or Thursday whatever it was. We're having the news conference today. And he is dead serious and he says to me oh oh oh and there's a long pause. Well I still need to talk to your agent. Well I had known Bob Iger who had apparently precipitated this phone call since I was in college. In 1979 he had given me an hour of his time just for career advice because I had interned at the TV station for which his first wife had been a news producer. Channel 5 in New York. I told that story I think two weeks ago. And Bob was wonderful to me. So I called Bob and I explained what had happened and he said Steve Bornstein only told me that you were leaving this morning. I'm very very sorry. I knew there were contentious negotiations about a new deal for you but I had no clue it was at the point where you might actually leave. I should have known that's my fault. That's why I told John to make the call he did. Trust me if I had known it would have been totally different. I would have made it right by you. You would have wanted to stay. And if it doesn't work at NBC you call me directly and I'll bring you back here myself. I mean the ending was so unexpectedly and surprisingly pleasant that even when my new bosses at MSNBC suddenly announced I think it was in Newsweek that they were going to call my program The Big Show. Which was our nickname for Sports Center at ESPN The Big Show but they hadn't told anybody at ESPN that we were going to call our MSNBC show The Big Show. It was me who got on the phone with Howard Katz and a couple of other people at ESPN to apologize and to make sure they were okay with it. So even after my ESPN career was officially over and all chance of my returning was dead we tried to revive it. Both of us. Howard Katz and me in good faith. And I don't think Bob Iger was blowing smoke at me. He had no reason to. And even after all that the parting was non-nuclear. I think they sent me a fruit basket for my first night at MSNBC on October 1st. And then it all blew up. John Walsh called the TV sports columnist at USA Today Rudy Martzky and gave him my first set of ratings from MSNBC just to try to make me look like I couldn't succeed without ESPN. Martzky told me that. Direct quote. They want to punish you publicly. Walsh has been pressuring me to run the very poor ratings and he said I'm going to finally do it. I just wanted to give you a little warning and maybe you have a comment. Well that set the tone for the next five years of warfare. And it was nuclear pretty quickly. But this impression that ESPN chose to dismiss me or not renew me or not bring me back. It's nonsense. Howard did not not renew me instead he offered to double my salary if I stayed. If I had signed with NBC. Iger was still trying to get me to back out after I had signed with NBC and stay at ESPN and ABC. The irony of this minor detail from about 1997 printed in 2011 I think is that I had already returned to ESPN by the time it was printed. I took an hour out of my day at MSNBC to go on with Dan Patrick on his ESPN radio show from 2005 through 2007. A year after that book came out with that quote in it 2012 I was talking to the executives at ESPN about going back full time. And a year later I did to launch a nightly show on ESPN too. And that ended when they laid off like a hundred million dollars worth of talent salaries in 2015. But then I went back again in 2018 and I did Sports Center and I did baseball games on radio and on TV and I did reports and I did commentaries. I did the not top 10 plays of the week and on and on and on. And finally we parted happily in the late summer of 2020 so I could return to political coverage. And I knew they wouldn't want that and I didn't want to put it on ESPN. And the unlikely result of that my parting happily in 2020 on the books at Disney. I am listed as a Disney and ESPN retiree. I get benefits. I retired from ESPN. I mean they didn't give me a gold watch or anything but I'm technically a retiree. And if you predicted that in 1997 or 2011 well you know the cliche. I bring all this up again because I don't know how often I have thought of that father and his two boys and the one who started speaking but only in my catchphrases. I would guess it's at least once a month. Those boys would have to be in their 30s by now or nearly. And I wonder often of what has become of them. And I sure hope they are well. I've done all the damage I can do here. Here are the credits. Most of the music arranged produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel, the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Chanel, guitars bass and drums by Brian Ray and produced by TKO brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Obermann theme from ESPN 2 written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. From which I am a retiree. Musical comments from Nancy Fouse, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer was, fittingly, Tony Cornhiser from ESPN. Not a retiree. Everything else is pretty much my fault. So that's Countdown for this the 868th day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him while we still can. The next scheduled Countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olerman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olerman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions. Like, can we create new senses for humans? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last season, millions tuned into the betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all-new story of betrayal. Ashley Litten was helping her husband set up a business fan mail account when she discovered a terrible secret. I saw a hidden folder, and I opened it. What the hell did I just see? Listen to season two of Betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Queen Charlotte, the official podcast, we're stepping behind the scenes and the drawing boards of this team to experience the life breathed into the Bridgerton prequel. Listen to the leaps executive producer and series director Tom Baraka took to capture the feeling that puts that lump in your throat. And you've got to catch creator Shonda Rhimes. She's dropping gems, diamonds, and mics. You can listen to Queen Charlotte, the official podcast, every Thursday, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.