AS 'THREADS' PASSES 100 MILL; MUSK HAS TO ASK FOR A BAILOUT, RIGHT? 7.10.23

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. This
ends with Elon Musk demanding that the government bail out Twitter. Right,

(00:28):
I will get to this unexpected observation by one leader
about another from the Michigan State Republican Conference quote he
kicked me in my balls as soon as I opened
the door, and also Trump's apparent use of the IRS
to punish his opponents. But first with Threads, a pale
and mostly flaccid knockoff of Twitter run by the man

(00:49):
who preceded Musk as the most unpopular tech pro in
the world, crossing the one hundred million users threshold overnight,
Musk expecting that someday, someday, soon he will be shaved
by Uncle Sam. That has to be his end game,
doesn't it. I mean, it barely makes sense as it is,

(01:11):
but it would be the only thing that would even
barely make sense after the bottomless pit of debacles since
he took over the nation's prominent clearinghouse for news and
political exchange and turned it into the world's largest, overflowing
fascist toilet. Mark Zuckerberg's new site, Oh this is nice.

(01:32):
Does it do anything now? Maybe it'll do something later?
Sign me Up. It exceeded seventy five million users by Friday,
ninety million on Saturday night, and based on the account
serial numbers appearing on Instagram, shows no sign of slowing
down as it barrels past one hundred million all since

(01:53):
coming online last Wednesday night. It ain't the product. It
is the seething hatred of Elon Musk, a hatred he
cannot possibly understand, a hatred that merely burst out of
control when, as Jonathan v Last put it, he turned
Twitter into the cable company exactly, and all Musk has

(02:19):
been able to do since all of this happened is
tweet quote Zuck is a cook and personally service the
account of the dangerous Libs of TikTok, which maybe makes
sense after all, because at this rate, within a week
or two, Libs of TikTok will be the last account
still using Twitter. But back to my point, Musk has

(02:44):
to have some vague way out in his mind. He
must have some fantasy that he will eventually turn to
the government to save Twitter. He paid forty four billion
dollars for this thing in March, he placed its value
at twenty billion by May. Fidelity Investments PEG did at
fifteen billion. If he is losing two and a half

(03:06):
billion dollars a month, Twitter goes broke around Thanksgiving. Musk
belongs to that group of quote businessmen on quote who
succeed based on three things and three things alone, government handouts,
suing when he does not get his way, and then
loudly and publicly pretending he does neither of those things.

(03:27):
It is the Trump formula. It would have been the
Elizabeth Holmes formula except somebody realized she was speaking in
a phony. Boys. The only thing Musk has actually done
since Threads went live was step one threatened to sue
Zuckerberg UH for hiring all the people Musk fired, and

(03:49):
he actually has sued somebody else. Musk's ex corp. Has
sued what had been Twitter's law firm to get the
money back that the previous Twitter owners paid them when
they successfully kept Musk from walking away from his deal
to buy the Dump. The lawsuit seeks to recover most
of the ninety million dollars Twitter paid Woktel, Lipped and

(04:11):
Rosen and Cats in the days before the closing of
the Musk deal last October twenty seven. It says Waktel
at all quote exploited Twitter by accepting the money that
Twitter agreed to pay it because Musk agreed to pay Twitter.
Come on, judge stuff, These mean people from making me
do what I agreed to and what the company I

(04:32):
bought agreed to in writing. The only other play Musk
has is to ask for a bailout. It seems improbable
he would do it unless a Republican regains the White House,
but God forbid that happens. That would only be about
eighteen months and eighteen days from now, and by the way,
that would be Musk asking for another bailout, not just

(04:55):
a bailout. The Ally Times investigated him years ago and
his various companies and found they had gotten nearly five
billion dollars in government support by two tho fifteen. Since then,
SpaceX beat out Jeff Bezos for a six hundred and
fifty three million dollar NASA contract to go to Mars.
New York State gave Musk three quarters of a billion

(05:16):
for a solar panel plant. I mean, you can just
see it coming. You can hear it coming, Musk's self
driving Twitter mobile screeching to a sudden stop, and just
before he goes through the windshield his tone changes to
pleading a noble and marketplace of ideas this and freedom

(05:36):
of expression that and save Twitter, Save Twitter, Save Twitter.
And to paraphrase the line from the classic movie Airplane,
he bought his ticket. He knew what he was getting into.
I say, let him crash. Meanwhile, this is not the

(05:56):
biggest political story of twenty twenty three, but I would
argue it is thus far the greatest political story of
twenty twenty three. Quote. We're so divided, Claire County Michigan
Republican chairman Mark DeYoung told the Detroit News. I just
wish we could come together. Quote. Mister de Young gave
his account to the outlet over the phone from an

(06:17):
emergency room, where he said he was being treated for
a broken rib. It seems Mark Deong of the Claire
County Michigan Republicans had had a little disagreement with James
Chapman of the Wayne County Michigan Republicans. Quote. He kicked
me in my balls as soon as I opened the door,
mister de Young said, adding that mister Chapman ran at

(06:39):
him and slammed him into a chair. Maga make America
groin again. Now I understand if you're not as excited
about this story as I am, based on the last
eight years, you may have a kind of baseline assumption
that this is how all Republicans behave all the time. No, sir,

(07:00):
only the ones in Michigan. Only at the annual State
Committee meeting at the Darty Hotel in Claire, which is
why if you were in the neighborhood there over the
weekend you saw all the cops there. Republicans had traveled
from across the state to that gathering by plane, by
car and I believe, in the case of the new
state Chairwoman, Christina Carramo by Broom, Karamo is the wackadoodle

(07:24):
who insists demonic possession is sexually transmitted. And as an
assigned I would just like to ask a question I
have not heard raised before about this. How does she know? That?
Turned out the weekend riot was only supposed to be
open to State Committee members, so everybody else, all the
other Republicans were locked out. So this Chapman of Wayne County,

(07:49):
the Kicker, led them in the pledge of allegiance out
in the lobby, and that's what led this de Young
of Claire County, the kick e to peek out to
a small window in the door, whereupon he saw somebody
flipping him off. And when DeJong went to see what
was happening, I'll just repeat the quote, he kicked me
in my balls as soon as I opened the door. Now,

(08:11):
Chapman says he only did this because de Young had
swung at him and said, I'll kick your ass. Michigan
Republicans apparently unanimously agree that Chapman ran at DeJong and
slammed him into a chair, and, after first removing his
own glasses because a gentleman does not kick another gentleman
in the balls while wearing glasses, Chapman grabbed de Young

(08:32):
by the legs and knocked him down. This is at
least the second physical brawl among Michigan Republican leaders since April.
There are at least two lawsuits pending, to say nothing
of the criminal charges pressed over the weekend. And ice packs,
plenty of ice packs. And the cause of this discontent

(08:54):
Joe Biden Trump versus DeSantis. Ha ha ha, No, it's that
Chairwoman Caramo. She has removed veteran committee members, and one
of them, the ex budget chair. Fairman, told the Detroit
News that spending under Caramo is quote so far out
of proportion with income as to put us on the
path to bankruptcy. And all I can say about this nauseating, unprofessional, degrading,

(09:21):
fiscally imprudent descent into financial chaos and ball and ass
kicking by Michigan Republicans is keep it up, fellas, in fact,
take it national. Speaking of which, even in twenty twenty three, Coulch,
you have imagined this headline. Ron DeSantis has accused someone

(09:45):
of conspiring with big tech to supposedly bury the Hunter
Biden so called scandal in twenty twenty before the election.
Who does the small man in the high heels in
search of a balcony think colluded in the effort to
protect Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. Trump No that Trump.

(10:10):
DeSantis went on Fox, and I'm thinking he may be
a little desperate at this point. DeSantis went on Fox
and said, quote, I look at the Hunter Biden censorship,
and yet those were Donald Trump's own agencies that were
colluding with big Tech. I would never allow that to happen.
I would fire those people immediately. I don't know if

(10:32):
you've noticed that here. I am often critical of Donald Trump,
But I must say that I'm not exactly sure if
Ron Desatus's charged that Trump worked with big tech to
protect the bidens before the twenty twenty election really stands

(10:54):
up to scrutiny. This may be a calumny up with
which mister Trump should not put no other than that
bit of farce. It was all quiet on the Trump
in front over the weekend, though a few burps were
omitted here and there, and one of them struck home
no pun intended. In the Peters Struck Lisa Page suits

(11:15):
against the Department of Justice, no less a figure than
ex Trump chief of staff John Kelly quoted his own
real time notes from twenty eighteen to state under oath
for the lawsuit that quote, President Trump questioned whether investigations
by the Internal Revenue Service or other federal agencies should
be undertaken into mister Struck and or Miss Page. I

(11:38):
do not know of President Trump ordering such an investigation.
It appeared, however, that he wanted to see mister Struck
and miss Page investigated. You may recall that previously Trump's
fired FBI director James Comy and Deputy Andrew McCabe were
each subjected to the most exhaustive kind of IRS audit,

(11:59):
which about five thousand taxpayers out of one hundred and
fifty three million taxpayers are put through annual. Everybody involved
has sworn up down in sideways that the McCabe and
Komy audits were not Trump political revenge, although now Kelly's
statement about struck end page may change that. Thinking the

(12:21):
personal note, I received notice that I was being audited
in twenty seventeen, in January twenty seventeen, on January twenty fourth,
January twenty fourth, twenty seventeen. Honest to god, I do
not think it had anything to do with Trump having
been inaugurated four days previously. Four days previously, among other things,

(12:46):
would have meant he'd have to have worked and worked quickly.
And then there is the revenge of my distant cousin,
Voladimir Zelenski. Martha raddits on this week on ABC. By
the way, again everything revolves around me. I worked with

(13:07):
her in nineteen eighty four. Martha raddits quote, Trump says
he would end the war in twenty four hours if
he was elected president. Cousin Zelensky quote, Well, it looks
as if Trump already had these twenty four hours once
in his time we were at war, and as I
assume he had that time at his disposal, he must
have had some other priorities. Obviously, in an ideal world,

(13:32):
we should admit Ukraine to NATO immediately, just because Zelensky
would class the joint up. But the arguments against doing
it now are inarguable. And whatever you make of the
president's stutter, stumbles, and he's often whispery asides and sometimes
slowness to do things like, you know, expand the Supreme
Court or even entertain it, Joe Biden's logic continues to

(13:55):
be both succinct and inarguable. He noted two things about
Ukraine and NATO yesterday on CNN. First, russia'srategic goal is
to divide NATO, break it up. A vote to admit
Ukraine to NATO now would not be unanimous, It might
not even pass. To vote now about Ukraine is ironically

(14:21):
to give Russia what Russia wants. More importantly, what happens
to the Ukraine war with Russia if it stops being
Ukraine and allies versus Russia, or all right, more cynically,
if it stops being Ukraine as proxy versus Russia. What
if Ukraine is in NATO, the war instantly becomes NATO

(14:44):
versus Russia, quoting the president. If the war is going on,
then we're all in a war. We're at war with Russia.
Also of interest here they or may not care about sports.

(15:06):
But what were once the two largest American metropolitan newspaper
sports departments have basically gone out of business on the
same day, with the one in New York having the
added attraction of ending up with a full fledged revolt
by the twenty eight remaining sports staffers at the New
York Times. And how did they express that? Well, what else?

(15:30):
They wrote a letter to the editor. But for absolute
media collapse, Neither of those stories comes close to a
media meteor who in thirty five days has gone from
a claimed audience of one hundred and twenty million viewers
to a claimed audience of nine million viewers one hundred

(15:55):
and twenty million to nine That is a drop of
ninety two and a half percent. That's a lot of percent.
And who who has fallen on so far so fast?
His name is? That's next? This is countdown. This is
countdown with Keith Oberman, my crazy friend. Postscripts to the news,

(16:26):
some headlines, some updates, some snart, some predictions. Dateline, Woodstock, Maine.
Remember Tucker Carlson. The eighth episode of his Twitter video series,
recorded in his studios in the main Woods, dropped eleven
days ago, and the metrics provided by his new home
suggested has been viewed by nine million people on Twitter,

(16:48):
or at least seen by them in passing nine million
people on Twitter is slightly down from the first episode
of Tucker's Twitter Hour one hundred and twenty million, slightly
down ninety two and a half percent down. The collapse
has been terrifying, even if, like me, you hate Tucker Carlson,

(17:10):
as Media Matters for America noted, first episode one hundred
and twenty million, fourth thirty three million, fifth, seventeen and
a half million, eighth, nine million, and Twitter views even
if they really meant you had nine million people watching
all five minutes of a Tucker Carlson twitterview, which they don't.

(17:31):
They just are not comparable to TV ratings. TV viewers
are the average number watching in any given minute in
a quarter hour, So one and a half million people
watched Fox at eight pm last Thursday. That's the last
set of ratings we have so far, that's basically one
and a half million people per minute. So Tucker Carlson's

(17:53):
old venue is outrating him in his new venue by
at least ten to one. If a Tucker Carlson episode
drops in the woods and nobody hears it, does it
make a sound of rage, thwarted, fascist, scheming, scumbag agony?
I sure hope, so dyline the White House happily. I

(18:15):
have next to no practical experience with this, but it's
probably a good idea not to giggle uncontrollably if you
are actually asking a question at the White House press
briefing about cocaine.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Secondly, sorry, cocaine again, but that was questioning history during
press gaggle with Andres. That was I guess he said
that he had. He didn't keep his avoiding it because
of the halftime. I'm just asking you again, who just
said once for all whether or not the cocaine belongs
to the Wine family.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
So the reporter, if you're wondering, and I was, is
named Caitlin Dornboss. She is new to the New York Post. Naturally,
don't giggle. Having known White House reporters and Washington reporters
who frequent the White House, having known them off and

(19:12):
on for about thirty years, even dated one, lived with
one basically for three years. I just assumed it belonged
to one of them, or one hundred and thirteen of them.
Dateline Council Bluffs, Iowa. Juxtaposition is everything. First that cocaine question,
then Donald Trump again with the free food, but at

(19:34):
a dairy queen.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Everybody wants a blizzard, Okay, I will do the blizzard things.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
See, you don't know what a blizzard might be, ask Junior. Now,
this has nothing to do with blizzards or Trump or Iowa,
but it does have something to do with dairy queen,
So why not tell it here? My dad delighted in
telling this story in the late seventies early eighties. Maybe
he was the architect on two shoe stores in the

(20:08):
Southwest that he and the team from the shoe company had,
for whatever reason, decided to drive to while they were
building one in one location something like Luaco, Texas, to
drive to the other location in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Why
they drove nobody knew then or now, And after hours
of driving on the highways of Texas and seeing literally nothing,

(20:30):
my dad said. There suddenly appeared an exit sign on
the highway, and the name of the town on the
exit sign read Capital Nacogdches nac Ogdches, and the four

(20:52):
men simultaneously burst into laughter. After arguing for a few
minutes how in the world to pronounce the name of
that place, they decided, well, let's get off at the
exit and we'll go to a coffee shop or something.
We'll find out. What they found at the end of
the dust covered exit was a dairy queen. The street
was covered in dust, the parking lot was covered in dust.

(21:13):
The floor of the dairy queen was covered in dust.
It fell to my dad to ask the teenaged kid
behind the counter four vanilla cones and four black coffees,
and say, son, how do you pronounce the name of
this place? My dad said. The boy looked at them
like they were aliens, slowly and making sure he moved

(21:37):
his gaze from the one to the other. As he
did it, he said.

Speaker 4 (21:44):
Day, queen, this is sports Senate. Wait, check that not anymore.

(22:07):
This is countdown with Keith Ulberman in sports.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Of course, it's Nacadochis. Everybody knows that Nacadochus, home of
Darryl Brandon of the nineteen sixty seven American League champion
Boston Red Sox daye queen in sports. It's been heading
this way since the first radio station signed on just
over a century ago. But if you need an official
date when the American newspaper sports section died market down

(22:38):
is July nine, twenty twenty three. Yesterday, separately, the Los
Angeles Times and The New York Times revealed that's about
it here in fun City. It's full mutiny. Everything but
the staff barricading itself inside the New York Times Sports office,
which used to produce a daily sports section thick enough
to kill rodents. With all twenty eight remaining writers and

(23:00):
editors in the Time Sports department, wrote a letter. The
Washington Post got a copy of the letter, and they
sent it to executive New York Times editor Joe con
and company chairman A. G. Sulzberger. And it is a
declaration of war. Quote. For eighteen months, the New York
Times has left its sports staffed twisting in the wind.

(23:22):
We have watched the company by a competitor with hundreds
of sports writers and way decisions about the future of
sports coverage at the Times without in many instances so
much as a courtesy call, let alone any solicitation of
our expertise. What the New York writers are particularly worried
about is the company's acquisition of the website The Athletic,

(23:42):
and indications it will be merged into their department in
some way, which would be a saving grace at least
for readers, Except The Athletic itself just wiped out about
twenty sports beat writers across the country. The writing has
been on the wall at the Times for years. They
are basically down to one full sports section a week.

(24:04):
They put a smiley face meanwhile, on the disaster at
the Los Angeles Times, but even as the sports editor
there jauntily wrote, today we are introducing a new era.
She went on to reveal that the new era means, quote,
you no longer will see box scores, standings and traditional
game stories, but those will be replaced by more innovative reporting,
in depth profiles, unique examinations of the way teams operate, investigations,

(24:29):
our distinct columnist voices, elite photography, and more. In other words,
you're all fired. God forbid. They train artificial intelligence to
write sports columns. Actually, I lived in LA twice for
a total of about ten years, and in retrospect, it's
clear that for at least three decades their TV sports

(24:50):
column was generated by artificial intelligence, and not a lot
of it. The cutbacks are just a shame. Sports newspaper
columns and articles and sections especially, and the smell of
them where the way most of us came into sports
as fans, and they are not going to be re
established somewhere else, not at ESPN, not online, even with

(25:15):
a perfume that smells like newsprint, nowhere, thank you, Nancy Faust.

(25:49):
There are cutbacks everywhere, even in the sports themselves. Major
League Baseball held its draft last night. Baseball is desperately
trying to make its amateur draft into something like the
NBA or the NFL, without recognizing that the only way
to do that is to make high school and college
baseball as important as high school and college football and
basketball are. And it's not sorry. Good news is I

(26:15):
did recognize the name of the first pick this year,
for the first pick of.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
The twenty twenty three MLV Draft. It's Hurt Hirts pick
Paul Teams R.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Ironically, it was the New York Times on its demise
day yesterday, which did a story on one of the
flailing draft innovations that has actually hurt baseball, limiting the
draft to just twenty rounds roughly six hundred and thirty
players or so, when the draft used to go on
forever infinity now to be fair. In twenty twenty, Baseball

(26:49):
cut the draft to just five rounds because of the pandemic.
So twenty rounds is a lot better than five. But
as Tyler Kepner noted in The Times yesterday, he was
one of the signatories to the Times Letter to the Editor.
Hall of famer John Smoltz was chosen in the twenty
second Kevin Kiermeyer, the star outfielder of Toronto thirty first round,
Zach McKinstry, lead off man in Detroit thirty third round.

(27:13):
Those rounds don't exist anymore. As I noted in a
piece I did for ESPN three years ago, first Baseball
had purged the minor leagues, cut from the official Major
league affiliated minor league's forty teams one thousand roster spots,
eliminating the Williamsport Crosscutters who play where the Little League
World Series is, eliminating the Auburn Double Days who played

(27:35):
two hours drive from the Hall of Fame. Just awful optics,
though Williamsport has come back in a new prospects league,
a kind of desperate circuit for everybody who was not drafted,
and there are more of them than ever. You may
already know about Mike Piazza, who's in that Hall of
Fame near where the Double Days used to play, sixty
second round in nineteen eighty eight, pick one, three hundred

(27:59):
and ninety overall, forty third from last, none of which
is mentioned on his plaque in Cooperstown. His draft round
long gone, his pick number eliminated along with the seven
hundred and eighty nine picks before it. The stars, the
immortals do not always go early in the baseball draft.
It's not like the football draft. It's not like the

(28:21):
basketball draft, and the people running baseball, led by this
idiot Rob Manfred, don't understand that and believe they can
change it. The last nine picks of the twelfth round
in nineteen sixty five were in order, Carl Ergenzinger, C. A. McGowan,
Don Alley, Manny Washington, Gary Wormol Duff, Craig Scoggins, Ron Mattney,

(28:49):
who made it to spring training with the Cubs a
couple of times, Rich Coslick, and then in round twelve
of nineteen sixty five, after the immortals like worml Duff
and Ergenzinger, then the Matt's drafted a guy named Nolan.
Baseball needs the men who went in the twenty first

(29:09):
round or later two and not just as players. In
nineteen seventy five, that was Ron Rennicke, an outfielder future
manager of the Brewers in the Red Sox. In nineteen
ninety four, pick number seven eighty one was Boston immortal
and longtime Major leaguer and current LA Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
In nineteen eighty two, pick number five five four was

(29:30):
the now general manager of the Washington Nationals, Mike Rizzo.
In nineteen sixty seven, pick number eleven of round number
twenty six was Dusty Baker, and in nineteen sixty six,
number eight thirty three in the sixty third round, the
last player chosen was a five foot six inch tall

(29:52):
second baseman from Saint John's University named Matt Galante. Matt
Galanty never played in the Majors, went to one spring
training with the Yankees, but he coached with the Astros
for sixteen years, managed them for f month. He taught
Craig Bigio how to be a second baseman, he taught
Jeff Bagwell how to be a first baseman. And in
their Hall of Fame induction speeches, each of them thanked

(30:14):
Matt Gallante by name, the ultimate baseball lifer. Then how
does the next ultimate baseball lifer, the next Matt Gallante,
even begin his baseball life if the draft has ended
forty three rounds before he would have been chosen still ahead.

(30:50):
The twentieth anniversary was last Thursday, the day former Ambassador
Joe Wilson wrote his famous op ed in The New
York Times that destroyed the Bush Administration, destroyed its lie
that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So
the Bush Administration decided to destroy him, to destroy Joe
Wilson and his wife, the secret CIA operative and craziest

(31:12):
of all, they thought I would help them do all that.
Next in things I promised not to tell first time
For the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and
Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
the world. The Bronze. Jene Piro, America's leading authority on
boxed wine. For once, it's less what she said than

(31:33):
where she said it. She's gone on the podcast of
Michael Schuyer, a man so overwhelmed by fantasies of genocide
and slaughter that he was even fired by Fox. During
the podcast, Schuer told Piro that the Second Amendment was
needed quote to take care of these vermin who quote
rigged elections that echoed Shoyer's previous online arguments that we

(31:56):
need to quote liquidate quote Fauci, Kate Sperks, the Bidens, Harris,
the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bushes, and most media because
they quote are all direct descendants of Mount Setungue. Joseph Stalin,
Paul Pott, Margaret Sanger, Adolf Hitler. Schoier is nuts? What's Nutsier?
Janeine Piro did not hang up on him, even for

(32:19):
her the runner up, Nicki Haley. Each of the one
hundred and seventy three different Republican presidential candidates has a
core issue. Nicki Haley's is she knows who will live
and who will die and when. For at least the
third time fourth time, she has stated or implied that
if Joe Biden is re elected, he will die in office.
Anyone is better than President Kamala Harris. She told the

(32:42):
Fox Good Morning Fascism show. Brian Kilmead, who is not
in on the Haley wishes death on people thing, replied,
you mean President Biden, to which Haley responded, well, I
think it's President Harris. A vote for President Baden is
a vote for President Harris. Of late, Haley has seemed
to try to swerve away from her explicit April twenty

(33:03):
seventh announcement that quote, the idea that Biden would make
it until eighty six years old is not something that
I think is likely. But of course, now there is
a second aspect here. As I just mentioned, a Fox
News character appeared on a podcast hosted by a man
who insists President Biden should be liquidated by the Second Amendment.
So when Nicki Haley says this about him dying in

(33:26):
office included in her morbid fantasies, is of course that
one that he wouldn't die of natural causes, And Nicki
Haley should be ashamed of herself even being Nicki Haley.
Somebody of course needs to explain to her why if
you're going to try it, give yourself a few hours.
But our winner, Andrew Mitchell of NBC News and MSNBC,

(33:48):
it is an awful thing to have to tell somebody
from your own home county, who has been in this
business since nineteen sixty seven, who has done spectacular work,
who help you at critical times in your own career,
who is a role model to as many women in
her field as Barbara Walters was, and men too. But
you have to tell her this. She's now just cannibalizing

(34:10):
her own reputation. I mean, the daily grind of doing
a television news show was enough that when I saw
the opportunity to take a lot of money and get
out more than a decade ago, I grabbed it. Then
it was offered to me again the next year, and
I grabbed it again twice. I was fifty two and
fifty three years old. It's like a kid. But Andrew
Mitchell is going to turn seventy seven in a little
over three months, and it's time to go. This is

(34:32):
not agism, this is self protection. You can argue this
should not have been a big story, maybe not a
story at all on her show, but that's not her fault.
MSNBC is now just another say what we tell you
to say, or you're out shop. But in asking NBC
News reporter Mike Momoli about the cocaine in the White House,
Andrew Mitchell said, quote Mike two questions. Everybody goes through magnetometers,

(34:57):
so this would not have been picked up by the magnetometers.
I mean, I don't know if it's in somebody's pocket
or bag. Magnetometers magnetometers to detect cocaine. Reporter Momoli gently
tried to explain to m mis Mitchell that magnetometers quote are mainly,
of course, looking for metallic objects. Unquote, Andrew Mitchell is

(35:20):
probably thinking one of those catch evil stuffometers, which can
detect if people are carrying drugs or carrying weapons, or
carrying anthrax or you know, communicable diseases, or they have
evil spells cast on them, or they're carrying those little
wrapped bath soaps that they stole from the Willard Hotel.
You know those scanners, the ones that don't really exist,

(35:42):
but she may have dreamt about them. There's one of
these a month now on Andrew Mitchell reports. It is
just sad cut back to special projects. It'll give you
your life back less is more. I know this and
I'm only sixty four. It'll give you your reputation back.

(36:06):
Do it, or you'll wind up like Tom Brokaw Andrew
Mitchell Magnetometers catch powder, Today's worst person in the World.

(36:35):
Finally to the number one story on the Countdown and
my favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
And on Monday, May third, two thousand and four, my
executive producer phoned me at home and said, we got
Ambassador Joe Wilson. He'll be on the show tomorrow. Within hours,
the communications office of the White House of George W.

(36:56):
Bush began a desperate, ceaseless, tireless effort to send me
one email with talking points about Ambassador Joe Wilson, which
repeatedly hilariously failed to get through to me because none
of them could spell my name correctly. By late in
the evening of May third, and throughout the morning of

(37:17):
May the fourth, I got calls and forwarded emails from
people throughout NBC who had received emails of their own
from the Bush White House Communications Office, all of them
with attachments addressed to Keith Oberman without the L Keith Olberman,
with only one n Kaieth Olberman, Keith spelled wrong, and
even Keith overman with a V. This was actually truly

(37:43):
the first day I believed I was having an impact
on the Bush White House, and also the first day
I realized they were incredibly stupid. There democracy still had
a slim chance. The Internet had been operating at more
or less its present speed since about nineteen ninety seven
or nineteen ninety eight. My name was all over the

(38:03):
Internet in article about my news career, about my sports career,
about my previous news career. There were articles I had written,
there were books I had written, and these people who
were trying to reshape the United States of America into
a reactionary, conservative, cruel, xenophobic, semi authoritarian state, we're not

(38:24):
smart enough to figure out how to spell my name,
just so we know who we are talking about. By
this point, Scott McClellan had succeeded the infamous Aary Fleischer
as Press secretary. His deputies were Dana Perino, who went
from being the stupidest person ever to be White House
Press secretary to being one of the stupidest persons ever

(38:46):
to have a show on Fox News. Pamelas Stevens, who
later wound up as a producer at CNN, because political
press people are exactly like unemployed football coaches or baseball
managers who get TV jobs and then leave the TV
jobs to go back onto the field. The communications director
was named and Bartlett, and there was another communications person

(39:07):
there named Nicole Wallace, who has somehow shaken off the
stink of working for both George and Jeb Bush and
is now considered a darling of MSNBC, even though her
only true non fascist credential is she doesn't like Trump either.
The crack White House media team representing the most powerful
man in the world in the anxious and foreshadowing years

(39:28):
after nine to eleven, and on one of them could
even find anybody else who could spell my name, let
alone spell it themselves. More on them in a moment,
But I need to explain who Joe Wilson was if
you don't know, and why he was so important. Long

(39:48):
before Colin Powell confessed to Tim Russert that he had
been lied to by the White House and thus he
himself had lied to the United Nations about Sadam Hussein's
imaginary weapons of mass destruction. Those were the excuses from
Bush Cheney for dragging this country into an unneces siri
and national soul destroying war in Iraq with lies and

(40:09):
torture and scapegoating and suppression and brutality. Before that, there
was Ambassador Joseph Charles Wilson the fourth and in two
thousand and two, after pressure from the White House, the
CIA sent him back to the scene of his first
diplomatic posting, the African nation of Niger to get proof
for Bush that Saddam was trying to buy yellow cake

(40:31):
uranium there to make nuclear bombses out of and Wilson
quickly found out it was nonsense, and he reported back
and the Bush White House promptly buried his findings and instead,
in the two thousand and three State of the Union address,
just before he started bombing Iraq, George W. Bush said,
the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought

(40:51):
significant quantities of uranium from Africa. It was and remains
a complete lie, and war occurred because of it. And
Joe Wilson called it a complete lie in an op
ed in The New York Times on July sixth, two
thousand and three. The Iraq war was still at this
stage defined by rah Rah, we're winning, but Sadam's WND

(41:14):
and his biological weapons and his chemical weapons might be
over the next hill. And you'd better not criticize what
we're doing, or maybe you're a terrorist. Joe Wilson said,
the Emperor had no clothes. In two thousand and three,
he was an American hero of the highest order. A
week later, a Dick Cheney flunky named Scooter Libby and

(41:35):
a Deputy Secretary of State named Armitage began a campaign
to punish Joe Wilson and discredit him. They leaked to
a dyspeptic and hate filled columnist named Robert Novak, who
is now working in the Bureau in Hell, that Wilson's
wife was an undercover agent for the CIA, and that
her name was Valerie Plame, and that the pair of

(41:56):
them were dirty Democrats. And moreover, it was Plame who
had urged that her own husband be sent to Niger
to deliberately not find and the uranium or the Sadam
Hussein signed receipts or whatever Bush expected to find there.
The Bush White House destroyed the career of risked the

(42:16):
life of and ruined several assignments and contacts of one
of this country's own secret CIA agents just to make
her husband look bad. So in May two thousand and four,
when Joe Wilson wrote a book about all this crap,
and he inexplicably wanted to go on MSNBC, which was
still at that point trying to be more conservative than

(42:37):
Fox Nudes, and wanted to go on My little Watched show,
which was considered the neutral outlier on a network full
of Joe Scarbroughse and Michael Savage's. This was a happy
surprise for us, which was followed by this wonderful, flailing
effort by the Bush White House to send me talking
points about Joe Wilson before I interviewed him. They not

(42:58):
only could not spell my name, but they were utterly
convinced that my interview was designed to discredit Joe Wilson.
The talking points, which eventually got to me from Assistant
Press Secretary Pamela Stevens, consisted of six items over two pages.
The headings were as follows. One political motivation This was
about Wilson calling Dick Cheney a lying sob about a

(43:22):
year after the knee jair trip. I couldn't figure this
one out. Dick Cheney was a lying SOB. That's how
I got to be Vice president. Two. Gingridge spokesman calls
allegations about alleged March two thousand and three meeting completely falls.
This cited Newt Gingrich and his people as if they
were good sources, as opposed to the punchlines they already

(43:45):
were back then in two thousand and four, talking point
number three, McClellan points out political objective, and four McClellan
addresses accusations. These were quotes from the press secretary. This
man suddenly quit that job two years later two thousand
and six, and confessed he had repeatedly lied for George W.
Bush and the others, and now he just couldn't take

(44:06):
it anymore. And he would come on my show and
give one of the best atonement interviews I've ever heard.
It went on for forty five minutes. Five Fleischer says
VP office did not request trip a quote from McClellan's predecessor,
who unless he is talking about baseball, you should assume
he's lying. Plus he might be lying about baseball. And finally,

(44:30):
six statement by George J. Tennant July eleven, two thousand
and three. This was a quote from the CIA director
which they thought was their home run, and it basically
consisted of this. Bush never saw that report that was it.
There are three punchlines to this story. Number one. I
don't know why the Bush Communications office assumed I was

(44:53):
there to take down Joe Wilson, But the moment I
saw these talking points, any lingering doubt I had that
they were not all lying bastards down there was erased.
I used the talking pl points in my interview, all right.
I read them out loud to Joe Wilson, and he
rebutted each of them with impeccable charm and elegance. He
and Valerie Plain became regular guests on My show and

(45:15):
would beat the crap out of George Bush with the
plum right through the morning of January twenty, two thousand
and nine. Second punch line. A year earlier, a supply
clerk with a maintenance company on the ground in Iraq
was captured Private Jessica Lynch. The military and the Bush
administration immediately put out the story that she was being
tortured by them evil Iraqi Sadam Hussein doctors. There was

(45:40):
the glorious rescue of Jessica Lynch which followed, and the
parades and the you better not question this story period
which lasted about six weeks until a Toronto newspaper printed
a substantially different account that Lynch was rescued from an
Iraqi hospital and a US military team in good faith

(46:02):
went in to extract her, but that this was all arranged,
not by some sort of part of intelligence or US
operations or the Allies, but by the Iraqi doctors. Some
of them sneaked over to American lines at great danger
and said, one of your soldiers is hurt and we
don't have the right equipment to help her. Could you

(46:22):
swing by and pick her up? I reported that version
on MSNBC, and the next day, as I was still
taking my coat off, my boss, Phil Griffin called me
in and said that the head of NBC News and
the president of NBC, Bob Wright, had been on the
phone all morning to him, insisting I should be fired

(46:44):
for implying that the Bush administration had lied. Griffin proudly
said he had talked him into letting me get away
with just apologizing to the troops. I can't even read
this with a straight face now twenty years later, apologizing
to the troops who rescued her. I must credit myself

(47:04):
when my brain was fulled in that I did some
quick thinking. The demand was comical nonsense journalistically. On the
other hand, if I agreed to apologize to okay, the
troops who rescued her, whoever you want, I would get
the chance to tell the whole real story of Jessica
Lynch again. So I did. The apology was fifteen seconds,

(47:29):
and while unnecessary, was sincere. I didn't want to make
the troops look bad. They didn't know anything about this crap.
I made sure, however, that the retelling of the true
Lynch rescue story took about two and a half minutes.
That was in June of two thousand and three. So
why as of May of two thousand and four, the
Bush White House thought I was sympathetic to them, I'll

(47:50):
never know, Or why they bothered with me, I'll never know,
which brings me to the last point. The unintended side
effect with the long term impact of all those failed
White House emails with my name misspelled was that this
Pamelas Stevens person promptly forwarded them to people around NBC

(48:10):
whom she considered friendly to George W. Bush. One of
them was Tom Brokaw's assistant, another was in the office
of future NBC News president Steve Cappus, and the final
one was to some guy named George Ribey. And so
I found out all the people in the Bush administrations
we like them, list at NBC News who I should

(48:32):
avoid under all circumstances. Let's see Brokaw's assistance. So no Brokaw,
somebody in Cappus's office, and no Cappus, and this guy
George Ribey. And George Reba turned out to be a
guy hired by MSNBC from Fox News to go work
for Scarborough. He fell out of favor with Joe Scarborough,

(48:55):
and I guess he didn't henchman enough for Joe's taste,
and his influence fell to a guy. I don't think
I've mentioned him to you yet, Chris, I've done all

(49:18):
the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Here are the credits. Most of the music arranged, produced
and performed by Brian ray and John Phillip Schanel, who
are the Countdown musical directors. Guitars based and drums by
Brian ray All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Schaneil,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music

(49:41):
is the Olberman theme from ESPN two and it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical
comments by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever
and star of Saber fifty one. Our announcer today was
my friend Tony Kornheiser, escaped sportswriter. Everything else was pretty
much my fault. Don't forget. Countdown now also available on YouTube.

(50:04):
Subscribe there as well give yourself options. That's countdown for
this to nine hundred and sixteenth day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Arrest him again while we still can. The
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants
till then, I'm Keith Alderman. Good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight,

(50:26):
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio
app Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts

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