April 11, 2024 • 58 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 156: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: For a time it looked like Trump had actually played three-dimensional chess with abortion; that absolutism in Arizona and elsewhere and the push for a federal ban would allow him to move the Overton Window and look like the moderate who would save the day.
Then the Arizona Republicans told Trump to go eff himself - that they want to KEEP the 1864 law that the Supreme Court dug up and revivified. Now Trump, and Kari Lake, and all the other national Arizona Republicans are absolutely screwed. The mine has caved in on Trumpy.
In the interim he can always turn to losing more attempts to stall his New York trial (and he has) and to antisemitism (now it's Jews who don't support him "should have their head examined"). And he could turn to his new spokesmodel, Karoline Leavitt, who thinks one word is pronounced "Hench MAN" and another "dammaning" and I swear she is the reincarnation of that Miss Teen contestant from 2007 ("I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the US...")
B-Block (21:42) IN SPORTS: New York Times reports Ohtani's interpreter altered the settings on his account so he could embezzle at least $4,500,000 from the baseball star to pay off gambling debts; interpreter now negotiating guilty plea with feds. (24:52) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Joe Scarborough and MSNBC executives re-platform disgraced, banned, Mark Halperin; Maria Bartiromo promises to call the governor to get the Trump prosecutor fired; Biden's former Chief of Staff Ron Klain f-bombs Biden's campaign strategy and doesn't stop to think somebody might be recording it. He should leave the country until after the election, the idiot.
C-Block (35:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: First it was Lawrence O'Donnell seated on a curbside table in the restaurant in front of my home. Now, it's the impossible Harris Faulkner of Fox News. Can I get the city Board of Health to close this place down already?
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
like an hour and a half yesterday, I thought, oh,
I know what he's doing. I know what Trump is
(00:26):
doing with this abortion cataclysm. I mean, I know, it
looks like a cave in at the policy mine, and
it looks like he's trapped beneath the rubble. But what
he's doing, it's actually kind of clever. He's going to
let everybody keep talking about a national ban and draconian
state bands like in Arizona, and then he's going to
swing back towards that fifteen week national ban idea or
(00:52):
something that will make him look moderate because all of
the Republicans have literally gone back to what the law
has read in eighteen freaking sixty four. This, this is
just clumsy ad hoc shifting of the Overton window. This
is not the mind caving in on Trump. This is
(01:13):
actually that once a year thing where he does something
kind of clever. Nope, no, nope, he's not being clever.
It's a mind cave in. The abortion policy mine has
caved in on Trump, and he is buried in the rubble.
(01:34):
There is no plan, there is no tacking to the middle.
There is no looking moderate and there is no Overton window.
It is down there in the debris with him. Because
Trump matter of factly announced that the eighteen sixty four
absolute ban reinstated by the Arizona Supreme Court was too much,
(01:56):
and confidently he was sure it would get fixed promptly.
And the Republicans and the Arizona State Senate and the
Arizona State Legislature then told Trump to go shove his
Overton window up his ass. First, this is him on
the tarmac in Atlanta saying no way he'd ever sign
a national band and shrugging no, and then saying the
(02:19):
part about Arizona tempering the ban there just before Arizona
Republicans told Trump to go f himself, Arizona, gojamar.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah they did, and that'll be stripped down. And as
you know, it's all a mistakes sights and'll be sitting
down and I'm sure that the governor and everybody else
is going to bring it back.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Int the reason and that'll be taking care by the
curt Quare. So Arizona Republicans listened to their man dispassionate
jade Trump, and as a Republican made a motion to
repeal the ban. All the other Republicans promptly put the
House into recess, and the Arizona Speaker said he was
opposed to a repeal and he would never permit a
(02:59):
vote on a repeal. And in the Arizona Senate, the
Republicans simply removed the repeal bill from the day's agenda.
And Trump is screwed, and Carrie Lake is screwed, and
the Republican Arizona Congressman Juan Sisco Menni is screwed, and
(03:21):
Republican Congressan David Schweikert is screwed. And the best part
is that even if they all figure a way out
of this mess, the damage has been done. And anybody
who forgot that it was Trump's Supreme Court that made
all of this possible, and anybody who forgot that it
was Trump who said the states could take care of this, well,
(03:43):
he would stay above the fray and protect states' rights.
And instead Arizona activated a law that they passed the
year before Mark Twain published his first short story. And
then Trump's response was to immediately tell that state to
change what it had decided. How exactly is the letting
(04:05):
the states handle it and oh, by the way his
own Republicans then ignored him. Anybody who forgot any of
that now remembers it. It is time for me to
repeat my mantra. Democracy is preserved less by the efforts
of those of us fighting to protect it, and more
(04:25):
by the stupidity of those seeking to destroy it. And boy,
oh boy, oh boy, has Trump never looked more stupid
than right now? And if you think that's going badly
(04:59):
for him, he's on some kind of legal streak. Here
in New York City. For the the hed consecutive day,
a different judge has denied Trump's bid to stall the
start of the Stormy Daniel's hush money election interference trial
next Monday. The week began with an appeals judge laughing
him out of court over a demand for a change
(05:22):
in venue because he can't get a fair trial in
what was his home till a few years ago. Tuesday,
a different appeals judge refused to delay the trial or
remove the gag order after he tried to get the
judge's daughter killed. Now it is an appeals judge, Appeals
Judge number three, who in the same day a accepted Trump's
(05:46):
request for a hearing on delaying the trial because Judge
mer Schan wrongfully failed to recuse himself. B conducted an
emergency hearing same day, and C gave Trump an emergency
kick in the ass denied. On the other hand, defendant
(06:06):
Jay Trump did walk into an Atlanta Chick fil A
yesterday and asked can I have thirty milkshakes and also
some chicken? And in a surprise bigger than the chaos
in Arizona, and managing to lose the same appeal three
times in three days in New York, he did not
drink all thirty milkshakes and eat all the chicken himself.
(06:30):
He gave them out to customers and to staff. You
forgot the paper towels pal Trump's next bid to help
somebody out at a Chick fil A maybe to get
speaker Mike Johnson a job at one of them. As
Marjorie Taylor Dolores Umbridge Green continues to torture Johnson to
political death over Ukraine and Faiza and the Mayorkis impeachment stunt,
(06:55):
we get a glimpse of whatever is going on behind
the curtain in Magaland when CNN reported that Johnson is
headed tomorrow to Mari Lago to hold a joint news
conference with Trump about quote election integrity. In other words,
(07:16):
Trump has blackmailed Mike Johnson into doing something Mike Johnson
did not want to do. And it is about somehow
the Trump manufactured fantasy world in which he was the
victim of election fraud, or he is the victim of
elector for he will be, or he's selling sneakers with
election fraud written on the tongue of the shoe, or
(07:37):
god knows what. Whatever it is, it will not be pretty,
and the not prettier it is, the more likely Trump
will let Johnson metaphorically live. I mean, who knows. Trump
may want Johnson to declare that Trump was the rightful
winner of the twenty twenty election and the twenty twelve
(07:57):
election and two thousand and eight and eighteen seventy six,
and this does not need much set up. Trump has
gone back to the anti semitism. Well if you missed
(08:17):
him late Monday night, explaining to one of the endless
right wing propagandist streaming hosts whom they seemingly manufacture by
the gross carlowed lot at a secret plant somewhere. As
he explained to this guy that anybody who is Jewish
who votes for Joe Biden doesn't love Israel and needs
to be spoken to. And the spoken to part was
(08:38):
that sinister and threatening. Trump clearly thought that went well
because he repeated it to the national media too in Atlanta.
He is not supporting Israel, he is abandoned Israel, and any.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Jewish person that votes for a Democrat who votes for
fighting to.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Have their head examin I am preaching to the choir
with the choir's own hymnals here. But this is the
essence of anti Semitism what he just said. Jewish people
to Trump are loyal first to another country, not to
the United States. Second time he has implied this in
the thirty six hour span. Set it to a group
(09:18):
at the White House at a Hanukkah event one year,
talks to American Jews, refers to their country means Israel.
He's an anti Semite, anti Semite, and most importantly, the
Biden campaign needs to call him that. There is a
catalog of thirty five years of anti Semitism going back
(09:42):
to when he kept that book of Hitler's speeches in
that little table next to his bed. According to the
first wife, the wife near the first t the president
does not have to call him an anti semite. Surrogate's
doing so will suffice. But this is going to be,
one way or the other, the dirtiest campaign an American street,
(10:05):
even if Joe Biden never says a word, and Trump's
vulgarity gives Biden license. When they go low, we go
high unless Trump leaves his middle open to a swift
kick right and his Chick fil A. And by the way,
(10:27):
if you're wondering where all this stuff, the abortion issue
not only threatening to consume Trump's campaign but now showing
Trump to have lost control of the issue and to
him somehow not being dogmatic enough about it, and the
amazing legal losing streak, and oh, by the way, the
hot and cold running anti semitism. If you wonder how
(10:48):
this fits into political television news, it don't, and it
don't because the TV network news operations are focused on
the real issue here, why Trump and Biden have failed
to do their duty as patriotic Americans and president, why
they have yet to commit to made for television pie fights,
(11:10):
whereas the networks call them quote debates. We the undersigned
national news organizations urged the presumptive presidential nominees to publicly
commit to participating in general election debates before November's election.
Reads a draft of a letter composed by abccbscn N,
(11:32):
Fox News, and NBC to be sent to the Biden
and Trump campaigns participating in general election debates before November's election.
You think that maybe they could have presidential debates after
the election. Yes, it's idiotic. No, I'm not surprised Biden
(11:55):
has refused to commit to debates because he and his
people rightly think the Commission on Debates is self protective, toothless,
and easily bullied by Trump and Republican it is. Trump
is obviously trying to position Biden into looking like he
has backed out of debates so he Trump, who knows
he's in trouble mentally does not have to go to them.
(12:17):
And this letter, which translates to why are you denying
us the income that five debates would bring us? Shows
you how detachrum reality network management is. I moderated one
debate officially an afl CIO forum during the Democratic primaries
in two thousand and seven, and we had about a
week of meetings beforehand designed to make sure that no
(12:39):
actual illumination was provided by my questions, and no candidate
so seriously challenged that if they were the one who
won the nomination, they would be pissed at us. General
election debates have a rich tradition in our American democracy.
In each of those elections, tens of millions have tuned
(13:00):
in to watch the candidates debating side by side in
a competent of ideas. Yeah, name one debate in which
the candidates hell the competition of ideas, Name me one stretch.
In two campaigns full of debates, name me one stretch
(13:23):
in which Trump was debating ideas for say a solid minute. Also,
we the undersigned national news organizations. Fox is not a
national news organization an NBC may have used to be
(13:45):
a national news organization. Right now, it's just a badly
run whorehouse, which brings us back to the Trump campaign
and media. And if you have not noticed, Trump has
a new press spokesperson, a set of teeth named Caroline
Levitt Caroline with a K no less, whose primary skill
(14:06):
is that she can literally keep smiling while saying almost anything.
Ms Levitt claims to be twenty five, which is interesting
because she also claimed to be twenty five. In the
year twenty twenty two, when she ran for Congress in
her native New Hampshire. She beat nine others in the
Republican primary there, including a guy actually named Gilead Gilead Town,
(14:31):
Gilead Town. Caroline Levitt then lost the election to the
Democrat by nine points. On her resume, she's been a
gopher for Fox News, a producer for Hurst, an assistant
press secretary in the Trump White House, the spokesperson for
Elise Stephanic, the center fielder for the Saint Anselm College
(14:53):
softball team, and then she went back to work for
Trump last summer and at some point became his official spokesmodel,
the spokesperson. Sorry, oh, and she's an idiot on Newsmax,
She's an idiot. Just just listen, Just wait, just wait
for this, just just listen.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Well, that's because America Garland has completely weaponized our justice department.
He is a henchman for Joe Biden. He is protecting him.
The transcript in her report was incredibly damining to Joe Biden.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Not only did it prove damining, Well, everybody has one
of those documents. You probably said something like that before
damoning it was just a one shot deal, right, No,
and it.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Also was extremely damoning to him politically as it showed.
But the American people see with their own eyes every
single day, and that is Joe Biden can hardly speak,
and so they gave us the transcript. But that's why they.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Don't want to get dam it's damining. While she's claiming
Biden can't speak entirely damining. Now, if that sounded as
uncannily familiar to you as it did to me, I
think I know why.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate
the US on a world map.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Why do you think this is?
Speaker 4 (16:20):
I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do
so because some people out there in our nation don't
have mouths. And I believe that our education, like such
as in South Africa and Iraq everywhere like such as,
and I believe that they should. Our education over here
(16:45):
in the US should help the US, or should help
South Africa, it should help dirac in the Asian countries,
so we will be able to build up our future
for our Thank you very much, South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Thank you indeed, South Carolina. Just to finish it up
and tie it all together. That unfortunate woman Miss teen
two thousand and seven competition, Caitlin Upton used that moment
as a springboard two working for Trump, signing with his
(17:19):
modeling agency. Literally, she was a Trump spokesmodel as to
her successor her philosophical daughter, this Trump spokesmodel, Miss Demoning.
While that is going to be Caroline Levitt's identity going forward,
I mean she might as well get t shirts made
(17:41):
and tattoos applied. Don't sleep on the other dilly in there,
hench Man. He's the hench Man. Henchman, worst superhero ever.
(18:07):
We have to fix American education. Also of interest, here
a man who has been a Joe Biden advisor off
and on for thirty five years, who was his chief
of staff until one year ago, was stupid enough to
get up at a public event and start f bombing
Joe Biden's campaign strategy, complaining that he goes to too
many events involving effing bridges. The tape was in the
(18:33):
media's hands within an hour, and it is now a
gift to the Trump camp. Ron Klaine did this, Ron Klaine, moron.
That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
This is countdown with Keith Oberman, this is Sports Senate.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith
Aulberman in Sports Stateline, Los Angeles. The interpreter did it.
The New York Times reported last night that, as implausible
as it sounds, Shohei Otani of the Los Angeles Dodgers
(19:28):
really did somehow leave one of his bank accounts vulnerable
to his interpreter and friend, Ipe Mizuhara. Misuhara did steal
probably more than four and a half million dollars from
him and wire it from Otani's bank account to the
bank account of an illegal bookmaker, and that Misuhara is
(19:49):
now in negotiations to plead guilty to a slew of
federal crimes. Time says Mizuhara has been under investigation by
the IRS, Homeland Security, and the US Attorney for the
Central District of California. If like me, you have a
money person, or you have ever had an accountant mine
(20:12):
demands receipts from me. If I spend like two hundred
and twenty dollars on baseball cards off eBay, If like me,
you're still thinking, what this from my old friend? Michael
Schmidt of The New York Times may explain it a
little better. Quote. Authorities think they have evidence that Misuhara
(20:32):
was able to change the settings on Otani's bank account,
so Otani would not receive alerts and confirmations about transactions.
According to sources with skills like that, why was he
gambling still ahead of us on this all new edition
(21:13):
of Countdown. I have got to get that one restaurant
in the lobby of my building to close, or at
least remove the tables it puts out on the street.
Years ago, I bounded out of my building and there
was Laurence O'Donnell literally darkening my door. And it's happened again. No,
(21:34):
this time, not the man we called Load, but rather
another cable news fraud, this one from Fox. A certified nitwit,
a frequent star of Worst Persons, a six time Worst
Person's Award winner, including one memorable day when she won
the bronze, the silver, and the gold, and I had
to get past her to get back into my frickin' home.
(21:54):
Next in Things I Promised not to tell First, still
more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of
the miscreants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute
two days worst persons in the world. We start with
the bronze worse, Joe Scarborough. Just when the Rona McDaniel
crisis was beginning to simmer down and you could turn
(22:16):
on MSNBC and only worry about injuring yourself while rolling
your eyes, what does Joey scars do? He puts on
video of a focus group of supposedly undecided voters, and
the group is led by Mark Halprin. Mark Halprin is
Scarborough's old, pale and old mourning Joe contributor and the
(22:38):
old political director of ABC News who kind of lost
his TV career when six different women came forward to
accuse him of what was then called merely sexual harassment,
which in retrospect would now in a couple of cases
at least be considered sexual assault. Rubbing his zippenis on
one woman's shoulder in his office, rubbing it against another woman,
(22:59):
grabbing another woman's breasts and kissing her in his office,
and repeatedly prop positioning, pressuring fellow employees for sex. He
was fired. He was finished. And Joe Scarborough and MSNBC
and NBC News and Rashida Jones, the president of MSNBC
and Sezar Conde, the chairman of NBC News, they all
put him back on their network yesterday. I am so
(23:23):
ashamed of what that place which I built has become.
And I am so ashamed that you will hear nothing
about this about Mark Halprin from any of its three
primetime hosts whose careers there I launched and whose shows
were spun off from mine. I am not ashamed of
Scarborough because he's always been an opportunistic scumbag, and trying
(23:46):
to resuscitate Mark Halprin's career is so his brand. The
runner up Burria Bartiromo, Fox News, who show is called
Morning Screech. Yesterday she was hosting an idiot congresswoman from
upstate New York. By the way, if you google idiot
congresswoman upstate New York, the first result is at least Staffanic,
(24:08):
but the second result is Claudia Tenny. And it was
Claudia Tenny who was the one who said that when
Ben Carson got caught buying the thirty one thousand dollars
dining set for his government office on the taxpayer's dime,
Claudia Tenny, Congresswoman of New York, said Ben Carson had
been the victim of a conspiracy by the deep state. Yesterday,
(24:31):
Tenny insisted that New York Governor Kathy Huckle needs to
fire the district Attorney Alvin Bragg before Trump's trial starts Monday,
because because that's all they have left now. So Bartiromo said,
Gabby Tenny is right, and the governor should fire Bragg
because recidivism, and she added, we would like an answer.
(24:54):
I'll call your office today, Kathy Huckle. I'd love an answer.
Tune in tomorrow to morning screech, when we'll hear Maria
her ear pressed to the phone say, I'm still unhulled,
but our winner, Ron Klaine, he won. Until February first
of last year, was still President Biden's White House chief
(25:15):
of staff, but has apparently since then forgotten. Ron Klain
went to an event Tuesday night in New York held
by the publication Democracy, a journal of ideas, and he
spoke and he praised the President, he praised the State
of the Union address, he praised his presidency as a whole,
and then he trashed the Biden campaign and Biden's political strategy,
(25:39):
and he swore as he did so, and it was
all captured on audio tape. Audio tape which before everybody
was in their uber was already in the hands of
the website Politico, and Politico already had a story up
by eleven nine pm Eastern because ron Klain was apparently
born yesterday, And now there is tape tape which the
(26:03):
magas can presumably or even if they can't, they can
just quote it in which Biden's longtime advisor says Biden
is quote out there too much talking about bridges and quote,
he does two or three events a week where he's
cutting a ribbon on a bridge, and quote, if you
go to the grocery store and eggs and milk are expensive,
the fact that there's a expletive deleted bridge is inaudible.
(26:28):
And quote he's not a congressman, he's not running for congress,
and it quote doesn't get covered that much because, look,
it's a expletive deleted bridge, Like it's a bridge, and
how interesting is a bridge? Look, these may all be
valid criticisms. Is the president doing enough to address the
checkout line economy, the housing economy? No, I don't think
(26:51):
he is. But ron Klain goes back with Biden to
his presidential bid in nineteen eighty eight. He was chief
of staff when Biden was vice president, he was Gores
chief of staff. He helped Obama and Hillary with debate prep.
He was chairman of Gore's recount committee. So, to be
honest with you, if I were him, I would get
(27:11):
a burner account and go in and edit that out
of my Wikipedia page every goddamned morning. Ron Klain was
not born yesterday, and yet he just blew it. It
didn't cost Biden the election. Maybe the Trump people don't
run with this stuff or quote it or play it,
or even if they do, maybe it doesn't pop. But me,
(27:32):
I have only one rule about democratic candidates and democratic
campaign operatives, and it was the thing that turned me
away from Hillary Clinton and towards Obama in two thousand
and seven two thousand and eight. Criticize anyone anytime about anything,
but do not leave weapons on the field for Republicans
(27:54):
to use later against the Democratic nominee. I don't care
how much you think it needs to be said. If,
like the Clintons, you hand John McCain a plate full
of weapons to use against Obama, screw you. You want
to fight for the nomination, do it, But it is
not a fight to the death. The election is the
(28:15):
fight to the death. In two hundred and nine days,
we have an election that is almost literally that it
will decide whether or not we still have a democracy.
And ron Klain, a veteran of thirty six years with
Joe Biden, is out in public where anybody can record
him f bombing Joe Biden, our last hope against a
(28:35):
Trump dictatorship. And ron Klain is potentially providing Trump campaign
ads because he thinks the president is going to too
many bridge openings. What would the Democrats do with comments
like that or worse from Trump's past chiefs of staff?
I don't know. Has this come up ever? Do we
(28:57):
have comments like that from Mark Meadows or Mick mulvaney
or John Kelly? All right, we do have those comments.
What are we doing with them? We're using them to
try to put Trump in jail for the rest of
his life. And here's ron Klain talking about it's an
effing bridge and how Biden isn't a congressman. And here's
(29:17):
an idea for you, ron Klain. It's a two part idea.
Part one is shut the f up until after the election.
I don't want to know you exist. Do not try
to correct the record now, do not campaign for Joe
Biden and pretend this didn't happen. And the second part is,
I don't trust you to do that, ron Klain. So
here's a firmer suggestion. Leave the goddamn country. You can
(29:39):
come back in November. Until then, go to political purgatory
somewhere and think about the damage you did. And again,
if you want to say that crap to Joe Biden,
I get the feeling you can still get an appointment
to see him, or at least you could until yesterday
and anybody else wants to say that to the president,
go ahead, but don't do it in public, and don't
(30:01):
do it where somebody can record you, you moron, And
don't act like you just fell off the turnip truck
and had no clue that somebody might record you being
glib and petty and picky and above it all when
goddamn democracy is on the line, think before you open
your mouth. Ron Better still, don't don't open your mouth.
(30:25):
You're not enough of an adult to be trusted talking
in public. Ron Klain, who just helped Trump two day's
worst person in the world to the number one story
(30:49):
on the countdown, and things I promised not to tell,
And here we go again. There's two restaurants in the
building in which I live. One is great, I eat
there constantly. The other one I ordered dinner to go
from right after I moved in years ago, like the
week I moved in. I did it my phone directly,
no app and they volunteered to deliver it to me
(31:11):
in the building, and they screwed it up. I mean,
cook the food, put the food in the bag, take
the food out your front door, take a couple of steps,
then go through the front door into the lobby, head
it to the guy at the desk and they'll send
it upstairs to me. And it was an hour late,
and it was the wrong food. And they were profusely
(31:33):
apologetic because they'd screwed up a delivery to a guy
who might you know, buy food from them there every
week or every day, or twice on Sunday. So they
did the whole order again, and again they sent the
wrong food. And finally, this is now two and a
half hours after I first called them, the general manager
(31:54):
of the restaurant calls me and apologizes and says, this
one is on me. I'll be up with your tuna
in a moment. And he literally shows up at my
front door and proudly hands me the bag, and I laugh,
and I say, well, while you're here, why don't I
just check? And I open it up and it's a
container full of franks and beans. And that's not the
(32:18):
worst part about the place. It's a tourist trap, which
is fine, but it doesn't just draw visitors to the city.
It draws the other kind of tourists, those people who
live here but are not from here, and who have
never really managed to differentiate the good restaurants from the
tourist traps. As I have told you before and will
(32:40):
tell you again shortly, I came out one day and
they're sitting at a table on the avenue was Lawrence O'Donnell,
who defines what I'm talking about tourists who live here.
I will spare some of the other gastronomic posers, the
other not quite New Yorkers I have seen there. I
will keep them anonymous, but I must tell you, and
I think it will suffice that when we lived together,
(33:03):
this place was the favorite restaurant of Katie Terror and
apparently of Harris Faulkner from Fox News. You know her,
She's the anchor who made worse persons. Two days ago,
Biden spokesman slammed those attending a Trump fundraiser as billionaires, scammers, extremists,
(33:24):
and racists, and Kaylee Mcananey reacted with outrage. Who was
the racist that was there? Tim Scott was there? Vivik Ramaswamy,
Woody Johnson, Wilbur Ross, Steve Winn, and Harris Faukner jumped
in by saying, quote, I want to say this, so
they bring out the black surrogate to talk about racism,
because apparently the people you just listed on it list,
they're all black, but they're not Democrats unquote, which was
(33:48):
apparently a bit of a surprise to vivik Ramaswami and
Wilburg Ross, Steve Winn, and especially the New York Jets
fascist owner Woody Johnson. Harris Faulkner may be the champion
of Fox's self unawareness. I mean greater even than Greg Guttfeld,
who has yet to understand that he's not at all funny,
(34:08):
or even Jesse Waters, who has never been told that
he has an IQ of a plateful of Franks and Beans.
Ten years ago, Harris Faulkner discovered that a character in
the awfully cute Hasbro Littlest Pet Shop Toy, one of
the characters was a hamster named Harris the Hamster, Harris
(34:30):
Faulkner the Hamster. So she sued Hasbro for five million dollars.
Rather than making some sort of deal for the use
of her name and some of the publicity and all
of the goodwill, she sued them, and she settled only
when Hasbro discontinued Harris Faulkner the Hamster, and when she
(34:52):
had managed to make millions of children cry. And there
she was visible from half a block away at this
restaurant because there was a lot of makeup involved, and
she was talking so loudly she was drowning out Manhattan
street traffic. And my dogs and I we were just
(35:13):
trying to get home, so I made sure to avoid
eye contact. But as I passed her, I loudly addressed
the dogs in my most announcersh voice, Okay, guys, here
we are home in the same day, and I nodded
to our door man, and he followed me into the
(35:34):
lobby and before I could ask him if Harris Faulkner,
the Fox propaganda is not the Hamster. If Harris Faulkner
had heard me, he said, what was wrong with that woman?
She stopped and pointed at you. Another fan? Huh? I
reassured him She's not a fan. I don't know if
she knows about this podcast or that Tuesday had been
the sixth time she had made the Worst Person's Medal list.
(35:58):
Last September, she was on it after insisting that the
Biden's dog commander might have been biting people because maybe
they were giving him the cocaine that had been found
at the White House months earlier. Two weeks before that,
she had complained that here it was twenty two years
after nine to eleven, and our government still hadn't killed
the surviving terrorists, and that proved President Biden hated half
of America and all the military families like hers. And
(36:22):
never once did she seem aware that if she was
angry at this president for not ordering the deaths of
these guys who've been at GITMO for two decades, why
wasn't she mad at her guide Trump for not having
ordered their deaths. And before I get to the time
that Lawrence O'Donnell was at that same restaurant, I think,
(36:43):
at the same table. In fact, I want to note
that Harris Faukner once won the most exclusive honor I
can bestow. She wasn't just a worst person, she was
all the worst persons. Wait, take you back to June seventh,
twenty twenty three. Where were you and what were you
(37:07):
doing when you first heard this the bronze. Harris Faulkner
of Fox News one of the most inexplicably self righteous,
shallow people in American media. She is a propagandist of
Fox quote news unquote, and she is as just to
pick an apt current analogy, as dim as a sunset
(37:30):
during Canadian wildfire haze Armie Bratt. Her Twitter handle and
her Twitter name are both in all caps, and she
is ceaselessly holier than thou. And Fox Now has given
her a shot in Tucker Carlson's old primetime because the
only two people left were her and me. By the way,
(37:52):
remember Tucker Carlson. Anyway, Faulkner did not disappoint. She disappointed.
She was complaining about this war on religion, which is
really funny because the world gives religion more tolerance than
anything else. I mean, it's not facts, it's beliefs, which
you're fine, but it can't and hasn't been proven. And
(38:12):
almost all of the religions are based on books written
by anonymous authors or rewritten by other anonymous authors. And
yet we tolerate constant references to religion in our lives,
from songs to interruptions for prayers to tax exemptions for churches. Anyway,
that's not how she sees it. Harris Faulkner says you
(38:33):
should say grace or whatever for meals at restaurants in public,
and that once when she tried, they threw her out. Quote,
I've been asked to leave a restaurant for openly bowing
my head in prayer hands in America. Sadly, she would
not give a more specific address or a day when
(38:55):
it happened, or a witness, or would she answer any
questions about it that followed from members of the media,
or didn't your religious figures over there say something about
bearing false witness? The runner up, Why it's Harris Faulkner
Fox News Again, while she wasn't done chastising the wicked
ways of twenty first century America, land this is about
(39:16):
the whole gender thing. Quote. The Lord has determined I
am a woman, my pronouns are USA. Once again, the
jury is in. The Lord has also determined that conservatives
will never understand what the hell pronouns actually are. Harris,
you should ask the Lord for an education. But our winner, Wow,
(39:40):
it's Harris Faulkner of Fox News, the trifecta. While she
was instructing us when to pray and how to eat
and what her pronouns are, I think she said dumb
all that time the big banner graphic placed right across
her Holy blessed condescension read quote American can and will
(40:04):
be put back together again? American? Not America can and
will we put back together again? American can and will
we put back together? American? Harris? What kind of American
doesn't check the graphics and lets her network misspell America?
Why didn't you walk out of that place too? Faulkner
(40:26):
two days worst person?
Speaker 4 (40:30):
Hey, not.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Early on the afternoon of Monday May twenty third, twenty sixteen,
I bounced out of my New York City apartment building,
began to walk past the tourist trap brunch spot in
the lobby and froze there at one of the cramped
outdoor tables. Staring up at me in blank surprise. That
must have matched my own staring down at him in
(40:56):
blank surprise. Was Laurence O'Donnell. I decided to go silly, Hey,
get out of my house. He laughed. I laughed. It
didn't seem forced. He introduced me to his companion, his daughter. This,
my dear is Keith Ulderman. Keith started us all at
MSNBC and then he left. And here Lawrence gave one
(41:18):
of his long pauses, and we crashed it. I wanted
to be generous, I started to politely contradict him, and
I just couldn't do it. Yeah, pretty much anyway, About
thirty seconds of courteous nothingness followed, and I wish the
O'Donnell's well, and then I left. It was the most
(41:41):
pleasant experience I ever had with Lawrence O'Donnell. In fact,
it might have been the only pleasant experience I ever
had with Lawrence O'Donnell. After I finally convinced and bullied
and blackmailed MSNBC management into letting Rachel Meadow become the
regular guest host for my show, and she aced it
and then rightly got her own show, and she aced
(42:02):
that and became a star. I went looking for a
new guest host. My first idea was a frequent guest
we had named Chris Hayes. I didn't get far. Management
had its own idea and my input was not required.
They wanted former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean.
And Howard is a really smart guy and great on TV.
(42:24):
But Howard had a bit of a teleprompter problem. One
of my producers swears that Howard once read good Evening.
I'm Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, this is countdown.
I do know. Whatever he did on the air, it
was bad enough that one week when I was off
and at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York,
(42:45):
and a baseball news story broke and he was filling
in for me. My producers called me there and asked
me to come on from the streets of Cooperstown and
be a guest on my own show, just to help
Howard Dean out. Anyway, Their next idea was a guy
who had been kicking around MSNBC since its founding in
(43:05):
nineteen ninety six. Lawrence O'Donnell was one of the original
MSNBC Friends, The MSNBC friends, political pundits who sat on
clearstools at a clear table or in a set designed
to look like a booth at a coffee shop. No,
I'm not making this up. Among the friends were and
(43:28):
Colter and Laura Ingram, if you can believe it, once
or twice an hour, the rather CNN like all news
coverage on MSNBC in its first couple of years, would
pause and three or more of these friends would appear,
chew over the MSNBC headlines and then disappear. Lawrence O'Donnell
(43:51):
was one of the friends. It was as bad as
it sounds. Then Lawrence o'donald pretty much disappeared. You would
see him on MSNBC as a guest every once in
a while, but mostly he pursued his action and producing career.
He played President Bartlett's father on the West Wing, the
one who beat him throughout college. Lawrence was very convincing,
(44:13):
and then around two thousand and eight we started getting
pressure to bring him in as a guest on Countdown,
like once a week or twice a week. I was
not sure what that was all about, but he had
been a Senate staffer, and he knew the healthcare debate
and other wonky stuff pretty well. So I gave my
assent for whatever that was worth. Not long after that,
Lawrence came into my office. He really needed my support,
(44:36):
he said, to get him more involved in MSNBC. He
knew I had gone to bat for Rachel and before her,
I'd gone to bat for Tom Brokaw, and for people
like Chuck Todd and Chris Hayes and others who are
now getting steady incomes from NBC. I don't remember his
argument on his own behalf. I do remember I didn't
have much of a reason to say no, and he
(44:57):
wasn't asking me to do a lot, so I said yes.
The next thing I knew, I was reading a memo
announcing that Lawrence O'Donnell had been appointed as the new
full time guest host of Countdown. This was in the
winter of two thousand and nine twenty ten, when my
late dad was fighting so valiantly to stay alive after
colon cancer and more importantly, a series of infections. Dad
(45:20):
had the immune system of an alien. The average white
cell count in a healthy adult is between four thousand
and eleven thousand. One night, Dad's was at thirty three thousand,
and the doctors told me to prepare to make the
call to let him go. They had one antibiotic left
to try on him. The next morning, Dad's white cell count,
(45:40):
which had been thirty three thousand, was eight thousand. Onward,
he fought. Unfortunately, he was eighty years old and he
had not exercised since Harry Truman was president, and eventually
he ran out of Houdini tricks. I had been visiting
him twice a day for six months while still doing
(46:00):
Countdown and the NBC Sunday Night Football Show. But now,
as it hit late February of twenty ten, his bright
days became fewer and farther in between, and the hope
that was propelling me to keep being his full time
caregiver and Countdown's full time host both began to fade.
In the last two weeks of my dad's life, as
the doctors tried all the long shot things, I asked
(46:22):
MSNBC for a leave of absence. Finally the inevitability became
inarguable and we let Dad go. On Saturday, March thirteenth,
twenty ten. My sister held his hand and I read
him his favorite Thurber story, and as soon as I
finished it, he exhaled deeply and peacefully, and he died.
I think I took another week off, maybe two, and
(46:47):
I vaguely recall emails from friends at Countdown that I
may have paid passing attention to, but I really didn't.
Most of the staff, including people who came up from Washington,
like Howard Feynman or Gene Robinson of the Washington Post,
always friends to me. They attended my as memorial service.
I believe Lawrence o'donald, who was of course filling in
(47:09):
for me on Countdown, was there too, but maybe not,
I do not remember. And then came the day when
I went back to the office full time, and my
assistant grabbed me both hands on my wrist. You did
not answer my emails, she said, with a fervency she
rarely exhibited. For God's sake, do not ever leave me
alone with Laurence O'Donnell Again, I snapped back to attention.
(47:33):
Had he, you know, bothered her? Not that way, she said,
But he's a son of a bitch. He treats me
and everybody who was in a producer here like dirt
and since you didn't read my emails, I just have
to tell you this. He's trying to get you fired
so he can take over Countdown. And if you think
he's nuts, one of your senior producers is in on
it too with him. I have to admit, even now,
(47:58):
of all the things I went through at that very
very strange place MSNBC, even now, this story still shocks me.
The senior producers of Countdown consisted of a guy who'd
been a producer who booked satellite transmissions for MSNBC until
I asked that he'd be promoted, and one was a
(48:19):
guest booker for the daytime shows until I asked that
she be promoted. Another was a line producer who was
well regarded only for his ability to time a show
until I asked for him to be promoted. And then
there was the old friend of mine who had been
blown out of ESPN in a sexual harassment porn link
email scandal and was headed back to college to start
his career all over again, until I asked that he'd
(48:41):
be hired and then promoted. I did some digging, and
I was going to confront O'Donnell about it when somebody
told me he had tweeted something negative about me and
about countdown. So I got a hold of him and
I said, this did not seem to be in keeping
with MSNBC traditions and rules, you know, the ones about
not peeing inside the tent. And he said, what do
you know about MSNBC traditions. I've been here since nineteen
(49:05):
ninety six. I never left and came back. So I
went to my boss, the president of the network, Phil Griffin,
the one who would not hire Rachel Maddow. And before
I could say they'd have to get rid of him,
Griffin said it was all academic. They were preparing the
press release as we spoke for Lawrence's new show at
ten o'clock called the Last Word, and oh, by the way, Keith,
(49:26):
two of your senior producers are going with him to
run his show. If this sounds vaguely familiar to you,
it is the plot of the pilot for the old
Aaron Sorkin HBO series Newsroom. I was still friendly with
Aaron then, so he actually asked, as I related this
to him in real time in emails and phone calls,
(49:48):
he asked if he could use it in the plot
rather than just what he often did, which was to
use it without asking. The problem was none of this
made any sense in the real world. Although it made
a pretty good pilot for Aaron Sorkin in going into
the ten PMS slot, Lawrence O'Donnell would be replacing a
rerun of Countdown, and even if O'Donnell did much better
(50:11):
in the ratings, much much better, there was no way
it could ever make enough money to make the move
make sense. O'Donnell's new show would necessarily cost MSNBC between
ten and fifteen million dollars to produce every year. Didn't
have anything to do with him. That was the cost.
The Countdown rerun cost not ten fifteen million dollars a year.
(50:34):
It count. However much they paid the guy who pushed
the play button that fired up the videotape of the
Countdown replay amortized. Later that day, a sympathetic NBC executive
called me up and explained the move to me. First,
Griffin was convinced O'Donnell was about to leave us and
(50:55):
sign with CNN. I said, well, that's a good idea
for everybody involved except CNN. Turned out CNN had not
even to him, But Griffin did not know that. More importantly,
Comcast had already finalized its agreement to buy NBC effective
the following January, and as part of the deal, they
were entitled to review what all the executives in the
(51:17):
company had done, and they had already looked at MSNBC
president Phil Griffin and discovered he had never done anything.
In panic, Griffin told colleagues he had to launch a
new show of his own immediately. This is the series
Aaron Sorkin should have made. As to the producers who
(51:38):
left my show to go with O'Donnell while my father
was dying, one of them told me a couple of
years after she left MSNBC for the last time, every
day when I went into that last word office, I
realized you were getting your revenge on me without even
having to lift a finger. Lots of people I've worked with,
probably a majority of people i've helped, have behaved like
(52:02):
Lawrence O'Donnell, because remember, it's television, and it is a
mental illness. The comparatively healthy people are the ones who
acknowledge it's a mental illness. But Lawrence O'Donnell was something special.
A year before my dad died, almost to the day,
in fact, I was in Los Angeles appearing on Bill
Maher's show, and one of the other guests that night
(52:23):
was the actress Kerrie Washington. She was very nice to me,
very sweet, a very big fan, and she asked to
stay in touch. Sure enough, after my father died after
the memorial, after I was back at work, I had
to go to his house for the first time since
he had passed away. It was about as much fun
as it sounds. In the car on the way back
(52:43):
into New York City. The solemnity of it. Both my
parents died within eleven months of each other. It really
hit me for some reason for the first time, full force,
and I was about to lose it when the car
approached a billboard overlooking the West Side Highway in New
York City. And whose big smiling face was on the
ad on that billboard, Carrie Washington. And it flashed me
(53:08):
right back to her kindness in LA and it helped
me overcome this bump in my morning. So I wanted
to drop her a note, nothing big, nothing suggestive. I
wasn't hinting and asking her out. Just you never know
how you might help somebody in a time of crisis.
Thanks for letting me smile. That was the whole message.
(53:30):
I asked my assistant to figure out how to get
it to her, and that was the end of it,
except a week later, the fact that I wrote her
a note wound up in a column written by an colter.
I was astonished, how why? And Colter it was her
(53:52):
usual the brain doesn't quite work right kind of stuff.
She implied. I was hitting on Carrie Washington and said
how stupid I had to be to not realize she
was involved with somebody, and on and on and on,
no mention of my father's passing, or the mar show
or the billboard or her smiling face. I went back
to my assistant and I said, hey, what on earth
(54:12):
did you do with that note to Carrie Washington? And
she said, oh, I gave it to this Lawrence O'Donnell guy.
And I said, good God, why did you do that?
And she said, well, he's dating Carriye Washington. I thought
you knew that. I thought that's why you asked me
to get it to her. So it wasn't hard to
(54:34):
figure out from there Lawrence had called his old friend
from the old MSNBC Friends of nineteen ninety six and
Colter and told her about the note, inventing whatever motive
his jealous little mind could dream up, it should have
gotten him fired from NBC, but unfortunately his boss was
just as much of a fourteen year old emotionally as
he was. And meanwhile, I had decided to get out
(54:56):
of MSNBC anyway when the time was ripe. As it
turned out, it ripened in January twenty eleven. I've told
that story in other episodisodes, like sixty of them. It's
kind of complicated. And since nobody ever actually asked me
why count Down the TV show ended, I've probably got
another sixty episodes worth of information about that anyway in
(55:17):
twenty fifteen, since repeatedly over the following ten years, there
were overtures by both sides to bring Countdown and Me
back to MSNBC. In twenty fifteen, during the World Series,
in fact, the then president of NBC News, Andy Lack,
asked me to come back and do a new show
at MSNBC and move to Los Angeles and have a
(55:38):
co host, a conservative, and not do any commentaries. And
actually this new show is somehow less appealing than it sounds.
But the punchline of all punchlines is contained in what
Lack wanted to call my new twenty fifteen MSNBC show
that never was. It tells you all you really need
to know about the Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and
(56:00):
MSNBC and O'Donnell's place in TV history at its demise
and the end of MSNBC. NBC new President Lack was
brimming with enthusiasm about this name that he had come
up with for my new show, a good the perfect title.
Lac told me, we're gonna call it The Last Word
with Keith Olberman, and I didn't laugh for guffaw. I
(56:25):
just said, Andy, you have a show called the Last
Word The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. Andy Lack now laughed, huh,
hopefully not for much longer. I don't. I've done all
(56:52):
the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown.
Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneale arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars,
bass and drums. Mister Chaneale handled orchestration and keyboards. It
was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of
the Beethoven compositions were arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme
(57:15):
from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of
b ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was my friend Howard Feineman. Everything else was
pretty much by fault. So that's countdown for this the
two hundred and ninth day until the twenty twenty four
(57:35):
presidential election and the one hundred and ninety second day
since dementia j Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Use the fourteenth Amendment
and the not regularly given elector objection option. Use the
Insurrection Act, us the justice system, use the mental health
system to stop him from doing it again while we
(57:58):
still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as
the news warrants till then. I'm Key Auldryman, Good Morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good Luck. Countdown with Keith
(58:27):
Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
like an hour and a half yesterday, I thought, oh,
I know what he's doing. I know what Trump is
(00:26):
doing with this abortion cataclysm. I mean, I know, it
looks like a cave in at the policy mine, and
it looks like he's trapped beneath the rubble. But what
he's doing, it's actually kind of clever. He's going to
let everybody keep talking about a national ban and draconian
state bands like in Arizona, and then he's going to
swing back towards that fifteen week national ban idea or
(00:52):
something that will make him look moderate because all of
the Republicans have literally gone back to what the law
has read in eighteen freaking sixty four. This, this is
just clumsy ad hoc shifting of the Overton window. This
is not the mind caving in on Trump. This is
(01:13):
actually that once a year thing where he does something
kind of clever. Nope, no, nope, he's not being clever.
It's a mind cave in. The abortion policy mine has
caved in on Trump, and he is buried in the rubble.
(01:34):
There is no plan, there is no tacking to the middle.
There is no looking moderate and there is no Overton window.
It is down there in the debris with him. Because
Trump matter of factly announced that the eighteen sixty four
absolute ban reinstated by the Arizona Supreme Court was too much,
(01:56):
and confidently he was sure it would get fixed promptly.
And the Republicans and the Arizona State Senate and the
Arizona State Legislature then told Trump to go shove his
Overton window up his ass. First, this is him on
the tarmac in Atlanta saying no way he'd ever sign
a national band and shrugging no, and then saying the
(02:19):
part about Arizona tempering the ban there just before Arizona
Republicans told Trump to go f himself, Arizona, gojamar.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah they did, and that'll be stripped down. And as
you know, it's all a mistakes sights and'll be sitting
down and I'm sure that the governor and everybody else
is going to bring it back.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Int the reason and that'll be taking care by the
curt Quare. So Arizona Republicans listened to their man dispassionate
jade Trump, and as a Republican made a motion to
repeal the ban. All the other Republicans promptly put the
House into recess, and the Arizona Speaker said he was
opposed to a repeal and he would never permit a
(02:59):
vote on a repeal. And in the Arizona Senate, the
Republicans simply removed the repeal bill from the day's agenda.
And Trump is screwed, and Carrie Lake is screwed, and
the Republican Arizona Congressman Juan Sisco Menni is screwed, and
(03:21):
Republican Congressan David Schweikert is screwed. And the best part
is that even if they all figure a way out
of this mess, the damage has been done. And anybody
who forgot that it was Trump's Supreme Court that made
all of this possible, and anybody who forgot that it
was Trump who said the states could take care of this, well,
(03:43):
he would stay above the fray and protect states' rights.
And instead Arizona activated a law that they passed the
year before Mark Twain published his first short story. And
then Trump's response was to immediately tell that state to
change what it had decided. How exactly is the letting
(04:05):
the states handle it and oh, by the way his
own Republicans then ignored him. Anybody who forgot any of
that now remembers it. It is time for me to
repeat my mantra. Democracy is preserved less by the efforts
of those of us fighting to protect it, and more
(04:25):
by the stupidity of those seeking to destroy it. And boy,
oh boy, oh boy, has Trump never looked more stupid
than right now? And if you think that's going badly
(04:59):
for him, he's on some kind of legal streak. Here
in New York City. For the the hed consecutive day,
a different judge has denied Trump's bid to stall the
start of the Stormy Daniel's hush money election interference trial
next Monday. The week began with an appeals judge laughing
him out of court over a demand for a change
(05:22):
in venue because he can't get a fair trial in
what was his home till a few years ago. Tuesday,
a different appeals judge refused to delay the trial or
remove the gag order after he tried to get the
judge's daughter killed. Now it is an appeals judge, Appeals
Judge number three, who in the same day a accepted Trump's
(05:46):
request for a hearing on delaying the trial because Judge
mer Schan wrongfully failed to recuse himself. B conducted an
emergency hearing same day, and C gave Trump an emergency
kick in the ass denied. On the other hand, defendant
(06:06):
Jay Trump did walk into an Atlanta Chick fil A
yesterday and asked can I have thirty milkshakes and also
some chicken? And in a surprise bigger than the chaos
in Arizona, and managing to lose the same appeal three
times in three days in New York, he did not
drink all thirty milkshakes and eat all the chicken himself.
(06:30):
He gave them out to customers and to staff. You
forgot the paper towels pal Trump's next bid to help
somebody out at a Chick fil A maybe to get
speaker Mike Johnson a job at one of them. As
Marjorie Taylor Dolores Umbridge Green continues to torture Johnson to
political death over Ukraine and Faiza and the Mayorkis impeachment stunt,
(06:55):
we get a glimpse of whatever is going on behind
the curtain in Magaland when CNN reported that Johnson is
headed tomorrow to Mari Lago to hold a joint news
conference with Trump about quote election integrity. In other words,
(07:16):
Trump has blackmailed Mike Johnson into doing something Mike Johnson
did not want to do. And it is about somehow
the Trump manufactured fantasy world in which he was the
victim of election fraud, or he is the victim of
elector for he will be, or he's selling sneakers with
election fraud written on the tongue of the shoe, or
(07:37):
god knows what. Whatever it is, it will not be pretty,
and the not prettier it is, the more likely Trump
will let Johnson metaphorically live. I mean, who knows. Trump
may want Johnson to declare that Trump was the rightful
winner of the twenty twenty election and the twenty twelve
(07:57):
election and two thousand and eight and eighteen seventy six,
and this does not need much set up. Trump has
gone back to the anti semitism. Well if you missed
(08:17):
him late Monday night, explaining to one of the endless
right wing propagandist streaming hosts whom they seemingly manufacture by
the gross carlowed lot at a secret plant somewhere. As
he explained to this guy that anybody who is Jewish
who votes for Joe Biden doesn't love Israel and needs
to be spoken to. And the spoken to part was
(08:38):
that sinister and threatening. Trump clearly thought that went well
because he repeated it to the national media too in Atlanta.
He is not supporting Israel, he is abandoned Israel, and any.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Jewish person that votes for a Democrat who votes for
fighting to.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Have their head examin I am preaching to the choir
with the choir's own hymnals here. But this is the
essence of anti Semitism what he just said. Jewish people
to Trump are loyal first to another country, not to
the United States. Second time he has implied this in
the thirty six hour span. Set it to a group
(09:18):
at the White House at a Hanukkah event one year,
talks to American Jews, refers to their country means Israel.
He's an anti Semite, anti Semite, and most importantly, the
Biden campaign needs to call him that. There is a
catalog of thirty five years of anti Semitism going back
(09:42):
to when he kept that book of Hitler's speeches in
that little table next to his bed. According to the
first wife, the wife near the first t the president
does not have to call him an anti semite. Surrogate's
doing so will suffice. But this is going to be,
one way or the other, the dirtiest campaign an American street,
(10:05):
even if Joe Biden never says a word, and Trump's
vulgarity gives Biden license. When they go low, we go
high unless Trump leaves his middle open to a swift
kick right and his Chick fil A. And by the way,
(10:27):
if you're wondering where all this stuff, the abortion issue
not only threatening to consume Trump's campaign but now showing
Trump to have lost control of the issue and to
him somehow not being dogmatic enough about it, and the
amazing legal losing streak, and oh, by the way, the
hot and cold running anti semitism. If you wonder how
(10:48):
this fits into political television news, it don't, and it
don't because the TV network news operations are focused on
the real issue here, why Trump and Biden have failed
to do their duty as patriotic Americans and president, why
they have yet to commit to made for television pie fights,
(11:10):
whereas the networks call them quote debates. We the undersigned
national news organizations urged the presumptive presidential nominees to publicly
commit to participating in general election debates before November's election.
Reads a draft of a letter composed by abccbscn N,
(11:32):
Fox News, and NBC to be sent to the Biden
and Trump campaigns participating in general election debates before November's election.
You think that maybe they could have presidential debates after
the election. Yes, it's idiotic. No, I'm not surprised Biden
(11:55):
has refused to commit to debates because he and his
people rightly think the Commission on Debates is self protective, toothless,
and easily bullied by Trump and Republican it is. Trump
is obviously trying to position Biden into looking like he
has backed out of debates so he Trump, who knows
he's in trouble mentally does not have to go to them.
(12:17):
And this letter, which translates to why are you denying
us the income that five debates would bring us? Shows
you how detachrum reality network management is. I moderated one
debate officially an afl CIO forum during the Democratic primaries
in two thousand and seven, and we had about a
week of meetings beforehand designed to make sure that no
(12:39):
actual illumination was provided by my questions, and no candidate
so seriously challenged that if they were the one who
won the nomination, they would be pissed at us. General
election debates have a rich tradition in our American democracy.
In each of those elections, tens of millions have tuned
(13:00):
in to watch the candidates debating side by side in
a competent of ideas. Yeah, name one debate in which
the candidates hell the competition of ideas, Name me one stretch.
In two campaigns full of debates, name me one stretch
(13:23):
in which Trump was debating ideas for say a solid minute. Also,
we the undersigned national news organizations. Fox is not a
national news organization an NBC may have used to be
(13:45):
a national news organization. Right now, it's just a badly
run whorehouse, which brings us back to the Trump campaign
and media. And if you have not noticed, Trump has
a new press spokesperson, a set of teeth named Caroline
Levitt Caroline with a K no less, whose primary skill
(14:06):
is that she can literally keep smiling while saying almost anything.
Ms Levitt claims to be twenty five, which is interesting
because she also claimed to be twenty five. In the
year twenty twenty two, when she ran for Congress in
her native New Hampshire. She beat nine others in the
Republican primary there, including a guy actually named Gilead Gilead Town,
(14:31):
Gilead Town. Caroline Levitt then lost the election to the
Democrat by nine points. On her resume, she's been a
gopher for Fox News, a producer for Hurst, an assistant
press secretary in the Trump White House, the spokesperson for
Elise Stephanic, the center fielder for the Saint Anselm College
(14:53):
softball team, and then she went back to work for
Trump last summer and at some point became his official spokesmodel,
the spokesperson. Sorry, oh, and she's an idiot on Newsmax,
She's an idiot. Just just listen, Just wait, just wait
for this, just just listen.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Well, that's because America Garland has completely weaponized our justice department.
He is a henchman for Joe Biden. He is protecting him.
The transcript in her report was incredibly damining to Joe Biden.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Not only did it prove damining, Well, everybody has one
of those documents. You probably said something like that before
damoning it was just a one shot deal, right, No,
and it.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Also was extremely damoning to him politically as it showed.
But the American people see with their own eyes every
single day, and that is Joe Biden can hardly speak,
and so they gave us the transcript. But that's why they.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Don't want to get dam it's damining. While she's claiming
Biden can't speak entirely damining. Now, if that sounded as
uncannily familiar to you as it did to me, I
think I know why.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate
the US on a world map.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Why do you think this is?
Speaker 4 (16:20):
I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do
so because some people out there in our nation don't
have mouths. And I believe that our education, like such
as in South Africa and Iraq everywhere like such as,
and I believe that they should. Our education over here
(16:45):
in the US should help the US, or should help
South Africa, it should help dirac in the Asian countries,
so we will be able to build up our future
for our Thank you very much, South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Thank you indeed, South Carolina. Just to finish it up
and tie it all together. That unfortunate woman Miss teen
two thousand and seven competition, Caitlin Upton used that moment
as a springboard two working for Trump, signing with his
(17:19):
modeling agency. Literally, she was a Trump spokesmodel as to
her successor her philosophical daughter, this Trump spokesmodel, Miss Demoning.
While that is going to be Caroline Levitt's identity going forward,
I mean she might as well get t shirts made
(17:41):
and tattoos applied. Don't sleep on the other dilly in there,
hench Man. He's the hench Man. Henchman, worst superhero ever.
(18:07):
We have to fix American education. Also of interest, here
a man who has been a Joe Biden advisor off
and on for thirty five years, who was his chief
of staff until one year ago, was stupid enough to
get up at a public event and start f bombing
Joe Biden's campaign strategy, complaining that he goes to too
many events involving effing bridges. The tape was in the
(18:33):
media's hands within an hour, and it is now a
gift to the Trump camp. Ron Klaine did this, Ron Klaine, moron.
That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
This is countdown with Keith Oberman, this is Sports Senate.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith
Aulberman in Sports Stateline, Los Angeles. The interpreter did it.
The New York Times reported last night that, as implausible
as it sounds, Shohei Otani of the Los Angeles Dodgers
(19:28):
really did somehow leave one of his bank accounts vulnerable
to his interpreter and friend, Ipe Mizuhara. Misuhara did steal
probably more than four and a half million dollars from
him and wire it from Otani's bank account to the
bank account of an illegal bookmaker, and that Misuhara is
(19:49):
now in negotiations to plead guilty to a slew of
federal crimes. Time says Mizuhara has been under investigation by
the IRS, Homeland Security, and the US Attorney for the
Central District of California. If like me, you have a
money person, or you have ever had an accountant mine
(20:12):
demands receipts from me. If I spend like two hundred
and twenty dollars on baseball cards off eBay, If like me,
you're still thinking, what this from my old friend? Michael
Schmidt of The New York Times may explain it a
little better. Quote. Authorities think they have evidence that Misuhara
(20:32):
was able to change the settings on Otani's bank account,
so Otani would not receive alerts and confirmations about transactions.
According to sources with skills like that, why was he
gambling still ahead of us on this all new edition
(21:13):
of Countdown. I have got to get that one restaurant
in the lobby of my building to close, or at
least remove the tables it puts out on the street.
Years ago, I bounded out of my building and there
was Laurence O'Donnell literally darkening my door. And it's happened again. No,
(21:34):
this time, not the man we called Load, but rather
another cable news fraud, this one from Fox. A certified nitwit,
a frequent star of Worst Persons, a six time Worst
Person's Award winner, including one memorable day when she won
the bronze, the silver, and the gold, and I had
to get past her to get back into my frickin' home.
(21:54):
Next in Things I Promised not to tell First, still
more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of
the miscreants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute
two days worst persons in the world. We start with
the bronze worse, Joe Scarborough. Just when the Rona McDaniel
crisis was beginning to simmer down and you could turn
(22:16):
on MSNBC and only worry about injuring yourself while rolling
your eyes, what does Joey scars do? He puts on
video of a focus group of supposedly undecided voters, and
the group is led by Mark Halprin. Mark Halprin is
Scarborough's old, pale and old mourning Joe contributor and the
(22:38):
old political director of ABC News who kind of lost
his TV career when six different women came forward to
accuse him of what was then called merely sexual harassment,
which in retrospect would now in a couple of cases
at least be considered sexual assault. Rubbing his zippenis on
one woman's shoulder in his office, rubbing it against another woman,
(22:59):
grabbing another woman's breasts and kissing her in his office,
and repeatedly prop positioning, pressuring fellow employees for sex. He
was fired. He was finished. And Joe Scarborough and MSNBC
and NBC News and Rashida Jones, the president of MSNBC
and Sezar Conde, the chairman of NBC News, they all
put him back on their network yesterday. I am so
(23:23):
ashamed of what that place which I built has become.
And I am so ashamed that you will hear nothing
about this about Mark Halprin from any of its three
primetime hosts whose careers there I launched and whose shows
were spun off from mine. I am not ashamed of
Scarborough because he's always been an opportunistic scumbag, and trying
(23:46):
to resuscitate Mark Halprin's career is so his brand. The
runner up Burria Bartiromo, Fox News, who show is called
Morning Screech. Yesterday she was hosting an idiot congresswoman from
upstate New York. By the way, if you google idiot
congresswoman upstate New York, the first result is at least Staffanic,
(24:08):
but the second result is Claudia Tenny. And it was
Claudia Tenny who was the one who said that when
Ben Carson got caught buying the thirty one thousand dollars
dining set for his government office on the taxpayer's dime,
Claudia Tenny, Congresswoman of New York, said Ben Carson had
been the victim of a conspiracy by the deep state. Yesterday,
(24:31):
Tenny insisted that New York Governor Kathy Huckle needs to
fire the district Attorney Alvin Bragg before Trump's trial starts Monday,
because because that's all they have left now. So Bartiromo said,
Gabby Tenny is right, and the governor should fire Bragg
because recidivism, and she added, we would like an answer.
(24:54):
I'll call your office today, Kathy Huckle. I'd love an answer.
Tune in tomorrow to morning screech, when we'll hear Maria
her ear pressed to the phone say, I'm still unhulled,
but our winner, Ron Klaine, he won. Until February first
of last year, was still President Biden's White House chief
(25:15):
of staff, but has apparently since then forgotten. Ron Klain
went to an event Tuesday night in New York held
by the publication Democracy, a journal of ideas, and he
spoke and he praised the President, he praised the State
of the Union address, he praised his presidency as a whole,
and then he trashed the Biden campaign and Biden's political strategy,
(25:39):
and he swore as he did so, and it was
all captured on audio tape. Audio tape which before everybody
was in their uber was already in the hands of
the website Politico, and Politico already had a story up
by eleven nine pm Eastern because ron Klain was apparently
born yesterday, And now there is tape tape which the
(26:03):
magas can presumably or even if they can't, they can
just quote it in which Biden's longtime advisor says Biden
is quote out there too much talking about bridges and quote,
he does two or three events a week where he's
cutting a ribbon on a bridge, and quote, if you
go to the grocery store and eggs and milk are expensive,
the fact that there's a expletive deleted bridge is inaudible.
(26:28):
And quote he's not a congressman, he's not running for congress,
and it quote doesn't get covered that much because, look,
it's a expletive deleted bridge, Like it's a bridge, and
how interesting is a bridge? Look, these may all be
valid criticisms. Is the president doing enough to address the
checkout line economy, the housing economy? No, I don't think
(26:51):
he is. But ron Klain goes back with Biden to
his presidential bid in nineteen eighty eight. He was chief
of staff when Biden was vice president, he was Gores
chief of staff. He helped Obama and Hillary with debate prep.
He was chairman of Gore's recount committee. So, to be
honest with you, if I were him, I would get
(27:11):
a burner account and go in and edit that out
of my Wikipedia page every goddamned morning. Ron Klain was
not born yesterday, and yet he just blew it. It
didn't cost Biden the election. Maybe the Trump people don't
run with this stuff or quote it or play it,
or even if they do, maybe it doesn't pop. But me,
(27:32):
I have only one rule about democratic candidates and democratic
campaign operatives, and it was the thing that turned me
away from Hillary Clinton and towards Obama in two thousand
and seven two thousand and eight. Criticize anyone anytime about anything,
but do not leave weapons on the field for Republicans
(27:54):
to use later against the Democratic nominee. I don't care
how much you think it needs to be said. If,
like the Clintons, you hand John McCain a plate full
of weapons to use against Obama, screw you. You want
to fight for the nomination, do it, But it is
not a fight to the death. The election is the
(28:15):
fight to the death. In two hundred and nine days,
we have an election that is almost literally that it
will decide whether or not we still have a democracy.
And ron Klain, a veteran of thirty six years with
Joe Biden, is out in public where anybody can record
him f bombing Joe Biden, our last hope against a
(28:35):
Trump dictatorship. And ron Klain is potentially providing Trump campaign
ads because he thinks the president is going to too
many bridge openings. What would the Democrats do with comments
like that or worse from Trump's past chiefs of staff?
I don't know. Has this come up ever? Do we
(28:57):
have comments like that from Mark Meadows or Mick mulvaney
or John Kelly? All right, we do have those comments.
What are we doing with them? We're using them to
try to put Trump in jail for the rest of
his life. And here's ron Klain talking about it's an
effing bridge and how Biden isn't a congressman. And here's
(29:17):
an idea for you, ron Klain. It's a two part idea.
Part one is shut the f up until after the election.
I don't want to know you exist. Do not try
to correct the record now, do not campaign for Joe
Biden and pretend this didn't happen. And the second part is,
I don't trust you to do that, ron Klain. So
here's a firmer suggestion. Leave the goddamn country. You can
(29:39):
come back in November. Until then, go to political purgatory
somewhere and think about the damage you did. And again,
if you want to say that crap to Joe Biden,
I get the feeling you can still get an appointment
to see him, or at least you could until yesterday
and anybody else wants to say that to the president,
go ahead, but don't do it in public, and don't
(30:01):
do it where somebody can record you, you moron, And
don't act like you just fell off the turnip truck
and had no clue that somebody might record you being
glib and petty and picky and above it all when
goddamn democracy is on the line, think before you open
your mouth. Ron Better still, don't don't open your mouth.
(30:25):
You're not enough of an adult to be trusted talking
in public. Ron Klain, who just helped Trump two day's
worst person in the world to the number one story
(30:49):
on the countdown, and things I promised not to tell,
And here we go again. There's two restaurants in the
building in which I live. One is great, I eat
there constantly. The other one I ordered dinner to go
from right after I moved in years ago, like the
week I moved in. I did it my phone directly,
no app and they volunteered to deliver it to me
(31:11):
in the building, and they screwed it up. I mean,
cook the food, put the food in the bag, take
the food out your front door, take a couple of steps,
then go through the front door into the lobby, head
it to the guy at the desk and they'll send
it upstairs to me. And it was an hour late,
and it was the wrong food. And they were profusely
(31:33):
apologetic because they'd screwed up a delivery to a guy
who might you know, buy food from them there every
week or every day, or twice on Sunday. So they
did the whole order again, and again they sent the
wrong food. And finally, this is now two and a
half hours after I first called them, the general manager
(31:54):
of the restaurant calls me and apologizes and says, this
one is on me. I'll be up with your tuna
in a moment. And he literally shows up at my
front door and proudly hands me the bag, and I laugh,
and I say, well, while you're here, why don't I
just check? And I open it up and it's a
container full of franks and beans. And that's not the
(32:18):
worst part about the place. It's a tourist trap, which
is fine, but it doesn't just draw visitors to the city.
It draws the other kind of tourists, those people who
live here but are not from here, and who have
never really managed to differentiate the good restaurants from the
tourist traps. As I have told you before and will
(32:40):
tell you again shortly, I came out one day and
they're sitting at a table on the avenue was Lawrence O'Donnell,
who defines what I'm talking about tourists who live here.
I will spare some of the other gastronomic posers, the
other not quite New Yorkers I have seen there. I
will keep them anonymous, but I must tell you, and
I think it will suffice that when we lived together,
(33:03):
this place was the favorite restaurant of Katie Terror and
apparently of Harris Faulkner from Fox News. You know her,
She's the anchor who made worse persons. Two days ago,
Biden spokesman slammed those attending a Trump fundraiser as billionaires, scammers, extremists,
(33:24):
and racists, and Kaylee Mcananey reacted with outrage. Who was
the racist that was there? Tim Scott was there? Vivik Ramaswamy,
Woody Johnson, Wilbur Ross, Steve Winn, and Harris Faukner jumped
in by saying, quote, I want to say this, so
they bring out the black surrogate to talk about racism,
because apparently the people you just listed on it list,
they're all black, but they're not Democrats unquote, which was
(33:48):
apparently a bit of a surprise to vivik Ramaswami and
Wilburg Ross, Steve Winn, and especially the New York Jets
fascist owner Woody Johnson. Harris Faulkner may be the champion
of Fox's self unawareness. I mean greater even than Greg Guttfeld,
who has yet to understand that he's not at all funny,
(34:08):
or even Jesse Waters, who has never been told that
he has an IQ of a plateful of Franks and Beans.
Ten years ago, Harris Faulkner discovered that a character in
the awfully cute Hasbro Littlest Pet Shop Toy, one of
the characters was a hamster named Harris the Hamster, Harris
(34:30):
Faulkner the Hamster. So she sued Hasbro for five million dollars.
Rather than making some sort of deal for the use
of her name and some of the publicity and all
of the goodwill, she sued them, and she settled only
when Hasbro discontinued Harris Faulkner the Hamster, and when she
(34:52):
had managed to make millions of children cry. And there
she was visible from half a block away at this
restaurant because there was a lot of makeup involved, and
she was talking so loudly she was drowning out Manhattan
street traffic. And my dogs and I we were just
(35:13):
trying to get home, so I made sure to avoid
eye contact. But as I passed her, I loudly addressed
the dogs in my most announcersh voice, Okay, guys, here
we are home in the same day, and I nodded
to our door man, and he followed me into the
(35:34):
lobby and before I could ask him if Harris Faulkner,
the Fox propaganda is not the Hamster. If Harris Faulkner
had heard me, he said, what was wrong with that woman?
She stopped and pointed at you. Another fan? Huh? I
reassured him She's not a fan. I don't know if
she knows about this podcast or that Tuesday had been
the sixth time she had made the Worst Person's Medal list.
(35:58):
Last September, she was on it after insisting that the
Biden's dog commander might have been biting people because maybe
they were giving him the cocaine that had been found
at the White House months earlier. Two weeks before that,
she had complained that here it was twenty two years
after nine to eleven, and our government still hadn't killed
the surviving terrorists, and that proved President Biden hated half
of America and all the military families like hers. And
(36:22):
never once did she seem aware that if she was
angry at this president for not ordering the deaths of
these guys who've been at GITMO for two decades, why
wasn't she mad at her guide Trump for not having
ordered their deaths. And before I get to the time
that Lawrence O'Donnell was at that same restaurant, I think,
(36:43):
at the same table. In fact, I want to note
that Harris Faukner once won the most exclusive honor I
can bestow. She wasn't just a worst person, she was
all the worst persons. Wait, take you back to June seventh,
twenty twenty three. Where were you and what were you
(37:07):
doing when you first heard this the bronze. Harris Faulkner
of Fox News one of the most inexplicably self righteous,
shallow people in American media. She is a propagandist of
Fox quote news unquote, and she is as just to
pick an apt current analogy, as dim as a sunset
(37:30):
during Canadian wildfire haze Armie Bratt. Her Twitter handle and
her Twitter name are both in all caps, and she
is ceaselessly holier than thou. And Fox Now has given
her a shot in Tucker Carlson's old primetime because the
only two people left were her and me. By the way,
(37:52):
remember Tucker Carlson. Anyway, Faulkner did not disappoint. She disappointed.
She was complaining about this war on religion, which is
really funny because the world gives religion more tolerance than
anything else. I mean, it's not facts, it's beliefs, which
you're fine, but it can't and hasn't been proven. And
(38:12):
almost all of the religions are based on books written
by anonymous authors or rewritten by other anonymous authors. And
yet we tolerate constant references to religion in our lives,
from songs to interruptions for prayers to tax exemptions for churches. Anyway,
that's not how she sees it. Harris Faulkner says you
(38:33):
should say grace or whatever for meals at restaurants in public,
and that once when she tried, they threw her out. Quote,
I've been asked to leave a restaurant for openly bowing
my head in prayer hands in America. Sadly, she would
not give a more specific address or a day when
(38:55):
it happened, or a witness, or would she answer any
questions about it that followed from members of the media,
or didn't your religious figures over there say something about
bearing false witness? The runner up, Why it's Harris Faulkner
Fox News Again, while she wasn't done chastising the wicked
ways of twenty first century America, land this is about
(39:16):
the whole gender thing. Quote. The Lord has determined I
am a woman, my pronouns are USA. Once again, the
jury is in. The Lord has also determined that conservatives
will never understand what the hell pronouns actually are. Harris,
you should ask the Lord for an education. But our winner, Wow,
(39:40):
it's Harris Faulkner of Fox News, the trifecta. While she
was instructing us when to pray and how to eat
and what her pronouns are, I think she said dumb
all that time the big banner graphic placed right across
her Holy blessed condescension read quote American can and will
(40:04):
be put back together again? American? Not America can and
will we put back together again? American can and will
we put back together? American? Harris? What kind of American
doesn't check the graphics and lets her network misspell America?
Why didn't you walk out of that place too? Faulkner
(40:26):
two days worst person?
Speaker 4 (40:30):
Hey, not.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Early on the afternoon of Monday May twenty third, twenty sixteen,
I bounced out of my New York City apartment building,
began to walk past the tourist trap brunch spot in
the lobby and froze there at one of the cramped
outdoor tables. Staring up at me in blank surprise. That
must have matched my own staring down at him in
(40:56):
blank surprise. Was Laurence O'Donnell. I decided to go silly, Hey,
get out of my house. He laughed. I laughed. It
didn't seem forced. He introduced me to his companion, his daughter. This,
my dear is Keith Ulderman. Keith started us all at
MSNBC and then he left. And here Lawrence gave one
(41:18):
of his long pauses, and we crashed it. I wanted
to be generous, I started to politely contradict him, and
I just couldn't do it. Yeah, pretty much anyway, About
thirty seconds of courteous nothingness followed, and I wish the
O'Donnell's well, and then I left. It was the most
(41:41):
pleasant experience I ever had with Lawrence O'Donnell. In fact,
it might have been the only pleasant experience I ever
had with Lawrence O'Donnell. After I finally convinced and bullied
and blackmailed MSNBC management into letting Rachel Meadow become the
regular guest host for my show, and she aced it
and then rightly got her own show, and she aced
(42:02):
that and became a star. I went looking for a
new guest host. My first idea was a frequent guest
we had named Chris Hayes. I didn't get far. Management
had its own idea and my input was not required.
They wanted former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean.
And Howard is a really smart guy and great on TV.
(42:24):
But Howard had a bit of a teleprompter problem. One
of my producers swears that Howard once read good Evening.
I'm Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, this is countdown.
I do know. Whatever he did on the air, it
was bad enough that one week when I was off
and at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York,
(42:45):
and a baseball news story broke and he was filling
in for me. My producers called me there and asked
me to come on from the streets of Cooperstown and
be a guest on my own show, just to help
Howard Dean out. Anyway, Their next idea was a guy
who had been kicking around MSNBC since its founding in
(43:05):
nineteen ninety six. Lawrence O'Donnell was one of the original
MSNBC Friends, The MSNBC friends, political pundits who sat on
clearstools at a clear table or in a set designed
to look like a booth at a coffee shop. No,
I'm not making this up. Among the friends were and
(43:28):
Colter and Laura Ingram, if you can believe it, once
or twice an hour, the rather CNN like all news
coverage on MSNBC in its first couple of years, would
pause and three or more of these friends would appear,
chew over the MSNBC headlines and then disappear. Lawrence O'Donnell
(43:51):
was one of the friends. It was as bad as
it sounds. Then Lawrence o'donald pretty much disappeared. You would
see him on MSNBC as a guest every once in
a while, but mostly he pursued his action and producing career.
He played President Bartlett's father on the West Wing, the
one who beat him throughout college. Lawrence was very convincing,
(44:13):
and then around two thousand and eight we started getting
pressure to bring him in as a guest on Countdown,
like once a week or twice a week. I was
not sure what that was all about, but he had
been a Senate staffer, and he knew the healthcare debate
and other wonky stuff pretty well. So I gave my
assent for whatever that was worth. Not long after that,
Lawrence came into my office. He really needed my support,
(44:36):
he said, to get him more involved in MSNBC. He
knew I had gone to bat for Rachel and before her,
I'd gone to bat for Tom Brokaw, and for people
like Chuck Todd and Chris Hayes and others who are
now getting steady incomes from NBC. I don't remember his
argument on his own behalf. I do remember I didn't
have much of a reason to say no, and he
(44:57):
wasn't asking me to do a lot, so I said yes.
The next thing I knew, I was reading a memo
announcing that Lawrence O'Donnell had been appointed as the new
full time guest host of Countdown. This was in the
winter of two thousand and nine twenty ten, when my
late dad was fighting so valiantly to stay alive after
colon cancer and more importantly, a series of infections. Dad
(45:20):
had the immune system of an alien. The average white
cell count in a healthy adult is between four thousand
and eleven thousand. One night, Dad's was at thirty three thousand,
and the doctors told me to prepare to make the
call to let him go. They had one antibiotic left
to try on him. The next morning, Dad's white cell count,
(45:40):
which had been thirty three thousand, was eight thousand. Onward,
he fought. Unfortunately, he was eighty years old and he
had not exercised since Harry Truman was president, and eventually
he ran out of Houdini tricks. I had been visiting
him twice a day for six months while still doing
(46:00):
Countdown and the NBC Sunday Night Football Show. But now,
as it hit late February of twenty ten, his bright
days became fewer and farther in between, and the hope
that was propelling me to keep being his full time
caregiver and Countdown's full time host both began to fade.
In the last two weeks of my dad's life, as
the doctors tried all the long shot things, I asked
(46:22):
MSNBC for a leave of absence. Finally the inevitability became
inarguable and we let Dad go. On Saturday, March thirteenth,
twenty ten. My sister held his hand and I read
him his favorite Thurber story, and as soon as I
finished it, he exhaled deeply and peacefully, and he died.
I think I took another week off, maybe two, and
(46:47):
I vaguely recall emails from friends at Countdown that I
may have paid passing attention to, but I really didn't.
Most of the staff, including people who came up from Washington,
like Howard Feynman or Gene Robinson of the Washington Post,
always friends to me. They attended my as memorial service.
I believe Lawrence o'donald, who was of course filling in
(47:09):
for me on Countdown, was there too, but maybe not,
I do not remember. And then came the day when
I went back to the office full time, and my
assistant grabbed me both hands on my wrist. You did
not answer my emails, she said, with a fervency she
rarely exhibited. For God's sake, do not ever leave me
alone with Laurence O'Donnell Again, I snapped back to attention.
(47:33):
Had he, you know, bothered her? Not that way, she said,
But he's a son of a bitch. He treats me
and everybody who was in a producer here like dirt
and since you didn't read my emails, I just have
to tell you this. He's trying to get you fired
so he can take over Countdown. And if you think
he's nuts, one of your senior producers is in on
it too with him. I have to admit, even now,
(47:58):
of all the things I went through at that very
very strange place MSNBC, even now, this story still shocks me.
The senior producers of Countdown consisted of a guy who'd
been a producer who booked satellite transmissions for MSNBC until
I asked that he'd be promoted, and one was a
(48:19):
guest booker for the daytime shows until I asked that
she be promoted. Another was a line producer who was
well regarded only for his ability to time a show
until I asked for him to be promoted. And then
there was the old friend of mine who had been
blown out of ESPN in a sexual harassment porn link
email scandal and was headed back to college to start
his career all over again, until I asked that he'd
(48:41):
be hired and then promoted. I did some digging, and
I was going to confront O'Donnell about it when somebody
told me he had tweeted something negative about me and
about countdown. So I got a hold of him and
I said, this did not seem to be in keeping
with MSNBC traditions and rules, you know, the ones about
not peeing inside the tent. And he said, what do
you know about MSNBC traditions. I've been here since nineteen
(49:05):
ninety six. I never left and came back. So I
went to my boss, the president of the network, Phil Griffin,
the one who would not hire Rachel Maddow. And before
I could say they'd have to get rid of him,
Griffin said it was all academic. They were preparing the
press release as we spoke for Lawrence's new show at
ten o'clock called the Last Word, and oh, by the way, Keith,
(49:26):
two of your senior producers are going with him to
run his show. If this sounds vaguely familiar to you,
it is the plot of the pilot for the old
Aaron Sorkin HBO series Newsroom. I was still friendly with
Aaron then, so he actually asked, as I related this
to him in real time in emails and phone calls,
(49:48):
he asked if he could use it in the plot
rather than just what he often did, which was to
use it without asking. The problem was none of this
made any sense in the real world. Although it made
a pretty good pilot for Aaron Sorkin in going into
the ten PMS slot, Lawrence O'Donnell would be replacing a
rerun of Countdown, and even if O'Donnell did much better
(50:11):
in the ratings, much much better, there was no way
it could ever make enough money to make the move
make sense. O'Donnell's new show would necessarily cost MSNBC between
ten and fifteen million dollars to produce every year. Didn't
have anything to do with him. That was the cost.
The Countdown rerun cost not ten fifteen million dollars a year.
(50:34):
It count. However much they paid the guy who pushed
the play button that fired up the videotape of the
Countdown replay amortized. Later that day, a sympathetic NBC executive
called me up and explained the move to me. First,
Griffin was convinced O'Donnell was about to leave us and
(50:55):
sign with CNN. I said, well, that's a good idea
for everybody involved except CNN. Turned out CNN had not
even to him, But Griffin did not know that. More importantly,
Comcast had already finalized its agreement to buy NBC effective
the following January, and as part of the deal, they
were entitled to review what all the executives in the
(51:17):
company had done, and they had already looked at MSNBC
president Phil Griffin and discovered he had never done anything.
In panic, Griffin told colleagues he had to launch a
new show of his own immediately. This is the series
Aaron Sorkin should have made. As to the producers who
(51:38):
left my show to go with O'Donnell while my father
was dying, one of them told me a couple of
years after she left MSNBC for the last time, every
day when I went into that last word office, I
realized you were getting your revenge on me without even
having to lift a finger. Lots of people I've worked with,
probably a majority of people i've helped, have behaved like
(52:02):
Lawrence O'Donnell, because remember, it's television, and it is a
mental illness. The comparatively healthy people are the ones who
acknowledge it's a mental illness. But Lawrence O'Donnell was something special.
A year before my dad died, almost to the day,
in fact, I was in Los Angeles appearing on Bill
Maher's show, and one of the other guests that night
(52:23):
was the actress Kerrie Washington. She was very nice to me,
very sweet, a very big fan, and she asked to
stay in touch. Sure enough, after my father died after
the memorial, after I was back at work, I had
to go to his house for the first time since
he had passed away. It was about as much fun
as it sounds. In the car on the way back
(52:43):
into New York City. The solemnity of it. Both my
parents died within eleven months of each other. It really
hit me for some reason for the first time, full force,
and I was about to lose it when the car
approached a billboard overlooking the West Side Highway in New
York City. And whose big smiling face was on the
ad on that billboard, Carrie Washington. And it flashed me
(53:08):
right back to her kindness in LA and it helped
me overcome this bump in my morning. So I wanted
to drop her a note, nothing big, nothing suggestive. I
wasn't hinting and asking her out. Just you never know
how you might help somebody in a time of crisis.
Thanks for letting me smile. That was the whole message.
(53:30):
I asked my assistant to figure out how to get
it to her, and that was the end of it,
except a week later, the fact that I wrote her
a note wound up in a column written by an colter.
I was astonished, how why? And Colter it was her
(53:52):
usual the brain doesn't quite work right kind of stuff.
She implied. I was hitting on Carrie Washington and said
how stupid I had to be to not realize she
was involved with somebody, and on and on and on,
no mention of my father's passing, or the mar show
or the billboard or her smiling face. I went back
to my assistant and I said, hey, what on earth
(54:12):
did you do with that note to Carrie Washington? And
she said, oh, I gave it to this Lawrence O'Donnell guy.
And I said, good God, why did you do that?
And she said, well, he's dating Carriye Washington. I thought
you knew that. I thought that's why you asked me
to get it to her. So it wasn't hard to
(54:34):
figure out from there Lawrence had called his old friend
from the old MSNBC Friends of nineteen ninety six and
Colter and told her about the note, inventing whatever motive
his jealous little mind could dream up, it should have
gotten him fired from NBC, but unfortunately his boss was
just as much of a fourteen year old emotionally as
he was. And meanwhile, I had decided to get out
(54:56):
of MSNBC anyway when the time was ripe. As it
turned out, it ripened in January twenty eleven. I've told
that story in other episodisodes, like sixty of them. It's
kind of complicated. And since nobody ever actually asked me
why count Down the TV show ended, I've probably got
another sixty episodes worth of information about that anyway in
(55:17):
twenty fifteen, since repeatedly over the following ten years, there
were overtures by both sides to bring Countdown and Me
back to MSNBC. In twenty fifteen, during the World Series,
in fact, the then president of NBC News, Andy Lack,
asked me to come back and do a new show
at MSNBC and move to Los Angeles and have a
(55:38):
co host, a conservative, and not do any commentaries. And
actually this new show is somehow less appealing than it sounds.
But the punchline of all punchlines is contained in what
Lack wanted to call my new twenty fifteen MSNBC show
that never was. It tells you all you really need
to know about the Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and
(56:00):
MSNBC and O'Donnell's place in TV history at its demise
and the end of MSNBC. NBC new President Lack was
brimming with enthusiasm about this name that he had come
up with for my new show, a good the perfect title.
Lac told me, we're gonna call it The Last Word
with Keith Olberman, and I didn't laugh for guffaw. I
(56:25):
just said, Andy, you have a show called the Last
Word The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. Andy Lack now laughed, huh,
hopefully not for much longer. I don't. I've done all
(56:52):
the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown.
Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneale arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars,
bass and drums. Mister Chaneale handled orchestration and keyboards. It
was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of
the Beethoven compositions were arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme
(57:15):
from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of
b ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was my friend Howard Feineman. Everything else was
pretty much by fault. So that's countdown for this the
two hundred and ninth day until the twenty twenty four
(57:35):
presidential election and the one hundred and ninety second day
since dementia j Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Use the fourteenth Amendment
and the not regularly given elector objection option. Use the
Insurrection Act, us the justice system, use the mental health
system to stop him from doing it again while we
(57:58):
still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as
the news warrants till then. I'm Key Auldryman, Good Morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good Luck. Countdown with Keith
(58:27):
Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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