Behind the Scenes of Challenge 40 and Reflections on Pete Rose

SERIES 3 EPISODE 40: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:46) SPECIAL COMMENT: JD Vance blew an otherwise substantial debate with one remark that will echo through the history of presidential campaigns the way the spoofing of Gerald Ford in 1976 by Chevy Chase did ("It was my understanding there would be no math.")

Fact-checked once and only once by moderators Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan about the fact that the immigrants of Springfield, Ohio, are there legally, Vance seemingly summarized the entire premise of Trumpism - deceit and using it to hamstring a cowering media. He was terrified of fact-checking, enraged by fact-checking, and finally had his mike cut because he was angry and tried to dress down the moderators by saying: "The rules were you guys weren't gonna fact check."

Vance did a surprisingly smooth if not always effective job of sane-washing Trump but he could have won a debate in which Tim Walz was so nervous at the beginning that I had a brief spell of 1st Debate PTSD. But Vance ultimately had only one product to sell - Trump - and only so much lipstick to put on it, or eyeliner to put on himself.

As Walz regained himself, he was practical, eloquent, and managed to pull quotes out of the Bible and the Hardware Store ("my pro-tip for today is...") He warned Trump talking about crowd sizes was not what the country would need right now in the Middle East crisis (Vance barely answered; he chose instead to introduce himself; it was a tactical disaster). And he gave the top two answers of the night, insisting that Mike Pence's decision to be a "firewall" against Trump on January 6th was why Pence "isn't on this stage tonight" and then a moving, personal story about gun violence and its myriad causes that ended with "Sometimes, it's just the guns. It's just the guns."

IS IT BAD THAT KELLYANNE CONWAY THINKS HER VP CANDIDATE IS NAMED “JD WALTZ?” Is she mistaking Vance for Walz? Vance for actor J.D. Walsh? The late actor J.T. Walsh? Maybe for The Last Waltz?

MEANWHILE, TRUMP SEEMS TO ACCUSE KAMALA OF MURDER EXCEPT HE SCREWS UP THE PRONOUNS: He says she might as well have held a gun in a murder case. Except he says Harris let HER in and murdered HIM. He’s also continuing to take credit for “being first” on the scene in the post-Helene chaos even though nobody wanted him there and all he did was start a GoFundMe, take credit for money that other people gave – and he didn’t.

AND IN NUZZI NUDES NEWS: NUZZI DOOZY – COURT GETS UP IN LIZZA’S BIZZA – OVER RFK RIZZ(a). CNN reports that the latest in the RFK Junior/Olivia Nuzzi story is: she has sued, and in the filing, says that the source of the leaks that got her suspended by New York Magazine for an undisclosed personal relationship with the perviest of the Kennedys was her former fiancee Ryan Lizza of Politico. When Olivia and I lived together and she still worked for The Daily Beast she frequently traveled to DCC on stories and whenever come back she’d give me a big hug and say she was sorry she took me for granted because there was the creepy guy who stalked her every time she went to Washington. ‘Do you know him,’ she’d ask? ‘His name is Lizza.’

Gotta run. Gotta check I have enough popcorn

B-Block (25:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The WNBA players association and executive director Terry Carmichael Jackson has attacked one of the reporters who might be on the Mount Rushmore of Women’s Sports in this country, Christine Brennan. And over nothing. They’ve slandered her and tried to get her fired. We need to boycott the WNBA until there is an apology and the executive director is fired. There’s Elon Musk, who has decided that a barely intelligible video by somebody who’s never heard of Roe-V-Wade “proves” Trump cares more about women. And then there’s Rob Schneider, who decided to turn the heartbreaking loss of 58-year old hoops immortal Dikembe Mutumbo to brain cancer into an anti-vax point. Maybe he meant it like a joke, since none of his jokes have ever been funny.

C-Block (36:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I spent years arguing against Pete Rose being admitted to baseball’s Hall of Fame. Then I campaigned IN FAVOR of putting him in baseball’s Hall of Fame. And then in 2017 the OTHER thing happened and that’s when I started campaigning again for NEVER putting him in baseball’s Hall of Fame. And all Monday night and all day yesterday, otherwise intelligent people explained that Pete Rose will go into the Hall of Fame because it was a lifetime ban and no – they put him on the “permanently ineligible list.” His life is over; his place on the list is not. And everybody has FORGOTTEN what the other thing was in 2017 - in the middle of his comeback, when he had gotten far along enough in his comeback that he was a regular on the Fox Baseball pre-game show I used to anchor – Pete Rose sued the investigator whose work led to his banishment from baseball in 1989 and in the discovery up popped a sworn deposition from a woman who, to quote The Hollywood Reporter, “alleges that Rose had a relationship with her for several years, beginning before she turned 16… Rose acknowledged in court documents that he had sex with the woman but thought she was 16 at the time.” When you admit to sex with a child and your defense was I thought she was 16, you’re done. THAT’S why he’s not in the Hall of Fame – and won’t be.

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