June 20, 2023 • 60 mins
EPISODE 231: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Obviously President Biden must fire Attorney General Garland and Deputy Attorney General Monaco and not merely because neither of them can possibly continue after yesterday’s revelations in The Washington Post just as none of US can possibly continue holding our breaths wondering WHAT about the Trump and January 6th prosecutions they will screw up NEXT. Two years and nearly six months after the first attempted coup and Garland and Monaco still do not understand that this is about SELF-DEFENSE: of Justice, of Democracy, of America. If that ISN’T your attitude about the response to Trump and the coup attempt that was and the coup attempt that WILL be get out. But especially if you are in the Justice Department and you don’t understand that the point WAS and WILL BE to eliminate YOU; if you don’t understand that the ultimate goal of Trump and the creatures around him is to take the limitless finances they have been given, and the limitless TIME they have been given - BY YOU - and walk into the Department of Justice or whatever white shoe law firm you have escaped to, and hand you a piece of paper bearing a fascist order signed by a fascist judge convicting you of being an official Trump-brand enemy of the people and authorizing the Trump Police to HANG you - get out. Because, then, you will have rendered this nation – at its time of greatest peril - defenseless just as the coalition of Hate gears up for another attack. Because, then, you will have nowhere to hide from them because the rest of us, whom you have left without defense, will be fending for ourselves.
And Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco have to go, first. Because I don’t know what’s LEFT for them to screw up here but I’m sure Garland will find something in his style book for the Department of Justice that says that unless you deliver the subpoenas by Pony Express, you can’t move against a criminally insane ex-president unless you make sure you wait just long enough that there’s no way any of the verdicts can be rendered until after the election that might put him back in office, upon which he will have the charges withdrawn or will pardon himself or will simply ignore ALL the laws ALL at once and tell you to take you to take him to the Supreme Court.
B-Block (22:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: If you're the president of MSNBC and you are asked 'If Trump were interested, would you put him on MSNBC in a live town hall format' and your answer is not "HELL NO" you must be fired. And if her answer was not "HELL NO" and you're one of the MSNBC hosts whose primetime show was spun off from mine all those years ago (Maddow, O'Donnell, Hayes) and you do not use your power to push back against the network's president and her journalistic perfidy, you have forfeited your credibility and reduced yourself to the status of Check-Cashing Talking Head.
C-Block (48:00) SPECIAL COMMENT REDUX (Note: this is repeated from Monday's Episode 230) Special Counsel Jack Smith may be readying an indictment against Trump for illegally attempting to coerce Mike Pence to defy his legal duties in the Electoral College count? Ryan Goodman from “Just Security,” whom I cite here frequently though I don’t know him and only because he knows this stuff, told Bill Kristol’s podcast that he thinks Jack Smith quote “going to indict Trump for the False Slate of Electors scheme” – and with Goodman saying the odds Fonny Willis indicts on False Electors and election interference in Georgia are 90 percent, Trump could face twin federal and state cases on overlapping topics. And then Goodman adds something that took my breath away. Indicting Trump for False Electors, “AND quite probably/possibly the pressure campaign against Mike Pence.” Wait – what?
Goodman sets the odds on Jack Smith indicting Trump ABOUT PENCE… at 60 to 70 percent. Pressuring the Vice President, Goodman says, quoting him again “is independent of whether or not he thought he won the election. He can think he won the election, doesn’t matter. But you can’t try to coerce a public official to defy their legal duties – which is just to count the votes.” Goodman doesn’t mention that, but you will remember that Stewart Rhodes and other Oathkeepers were prosecuted for – and convicted of – interfering with Congress’s ability to complete its legal duties. Ponder for a moment the prospect of Smith indicting Trump, running for the Republican nomination, for attempting to coerce PENCE, running for the Republican nomination. Oh and necessarily having Pence TESTIFY AGAINST TRUMP either before Trump is nominated or before the election.
I’m beginning to think we may have WILDLY under-estimated how many MORE things Jack Smith is about to indict Trump for. There is reason today to believe that the number of separate indictments OF Trump BY Smith could be as many as FOUR. Maybe even FIVE
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. Obviously,
President Biden must fire Attorney General Garland and Deputy Attorney
(00:26):
General Monaco, and not merely because neither of them can
possibly continue after yesterday's revelations in the Washington Post, just
as none of us can possibly continue holding our breaths
wondering what about the Trump and January sixth prosecutions they
will screw up next. They also have to go because
the damnable record in that newspaper of their languid responses
(00:49):
proves one thing above all else two years and nearly
six months after the first attempted coup, and Merrick, Garland
and Monaco still do not understand that this is about
self defense, self defense of justice, self defense of democracy,
(01:09):
self defense of America. If that is not your attitude
about the response to Trump and the coup attempt that
was and the coup attempt that will be, get out.
Get out. If you are in the White House and
you do not understand that the point was and will
be to eliminate elections and if possible, to eliminate you,
(01:31):
get out. If you are in the news media and
you do not understand that the point was and will
be to eliminate the news media, and if possible, to
eliminate you. Get out, But especially if you are in
the Justice Department and you don't understand that the point
was and will be to eliminate you, If you don't
(01:52):
understand that the ultimate goal of Trump and the creatures
around him is to take the limitless finances they have
been given and the limitless time they have been given
by you, and walk someday into the Justice Department or
whatever white shoe law firm you have escaped to and
hand you a piece of paper bearing a fascist order
(02:12):
signed by a fascist judge, convicting you of being an
official Trump brand enemy the people, and authorizing the Trump
Police to hang you on the spot. If you don't
realize that is the plan, if you don't realize that,
you had better approach this as self defense, because in
your case, and in my case, and in the case
(02:33):
of god knows how many politically active Americans, it quite
literally is self defense. If you don't understand that, get out,
because you will have rendered this nation, at its time
of greatest peril, defenseless, just as the Coalition of h
(02:59):
gears up for another attack. Because then you will have
nowhere to hide from them, because the rest of us,
whom you have left without defense, will be fending for
our selves. And Merrick Garland and Lisa Monico have to
go first, because I don't know what's left for them
(03:20):
to screw up here. But I'm sure Garland will find
something in his style book for the Department of Justice
that says, unless you deliver that subpoena by pony express,
you can't move against a criminally insane ex president unless
you make sure you wait just long enough that there's
no way any of the verdicts can be rendered until
(03:41):
after the election that might put him back in office,
upon which he will have the charges with John, or
he will pardon himself, or he will simply ignore all
the laws all at once and tell you to take
him to the Supreme Court. No, the new Supreme Court,
the one for which he has appointed all fifteen justices.
(04:05):
I've gotten ahead of myself slightly. If you have not
read the piece in the Washington Post, I urge you
to do so. It will confirm your worst fears and
guarantee you your worst nightmares. But in addition to a
maddening week by week timeline, of the inaction at the
FBI and the DOJ in twenty twenty one, and most
of twenty twenty two, in action that reads like the
(04:26):
captain's log of the Titanic or the investigations of flight
schools pre nine eleven. The story underscores that the Department
of Justice is not some temple of truth where men
of insight and imagination respond to threats and attacks, but
it's just a home for people who know the law
(04:48):
the way Kindergartner is no painting. Wing number twelve is aquamarine,
and butterfly number thirty seven is burnt umber. And congratulations,
you got one hundred even though you're colorblind. You put
color number twelve on wing number twelve. You want to
be Solicitor General. The Post article also underscores three things
(05:10):
about the Justice Department under Merrick Garland, and about so
much of twenty first century America that maybe you had
hoped were not true or would not take priority when
the entire structure of our nation and representative government itself
came under unprecedented express One of these things is that
the DOJ assumed that either our system of government was
(05:32):
inviolable and impregnable, or that no American would actually try
to destroy it. Both assumptions are asinine, of course, and
were disproven by the afternoon of January twentieth, twenty seventeen.
The afternoon of January sixth, twenty twenty one was just confirmation.
(05:53):
The second sad confirmation is that men like Merrick Garland,
who really believed that whatever else he was, Donald Trump
was bound by some words he had said that he'd
never think thought of before while he put his hand
on some book he'd never seen before. People like Merrick
Garland also believed that once Trump was gone, the nation
(06:14):
would just snap back into its own regular shape and
we'd never be threatened again. And Garland believed both of
those things because of the third confirmation in the Post story.
Merrick Garland knew he would prevail because he had the
magic rule book, the magic Department of Justice rule book.
(06:39):
Just follow what it says in the Magic Department of
Justice rule Book, and all will be well. On March
twenty first, twenty twenty one, CBS televised an interview with
the then acting DC United States Attorney Michael Sherwin, who,
based on the Post's account, was one of the few
DOJ figures at the time with a pulse. Sherwin believed
(07:01):
he had had DOJ's support to do that interview. Sherwin
and the head of the Public Corruption Division, J. P. Cooney,
who pushed prosecute the rioters, prosecute the leaders of the rioters,
prosecute those who weren't there, but leading from afar use
Seditious Conspiracy Act Act. Now the clock is ticking, and
(07:23):
in the interview with CBS, Sherwin said that investigators had
obtained enough evidence to prove that at least some of
the rioters at the Capitol had engaged in sedition and
Merrit Garland went nuts, not about the sedition, about the interview.
Quoting the Post, Garland's top deputies were livid, and the
(07:46):
Attorney General himself was visibly upset. Several people familiar with
his reaction said the Attorney General, who was painstaking and
preparing his own public remarks, was especially angry at Sherwin
for speaking off the cuff. The Post says an underling
announced quote it appeared that that rules and procedures were
not complied with regarding the television interview, and that Sherwin
(08:09):
had been referred to the department's internal Affairs Office Foreign
Ethics probe. So Merrick Garland investigated dc US attorney Sherwin.
He did not investigate Donald Trump. He did not investigate
Rudy Giuliani. He did not investigate Mark Meadows. He investigated
(08:31):
Michael Sherwin. Meanwhile, the aforementioned JP Cooney wanted to investigate
the connection between Rogers Stone and the Oathkeepers. Cooney wanted
the Oathkeeper's membership lists. The new investigation's chief, Thomas Wyndham,
noticed the intersections between the fake elector's plan and the
(08:52):
Trump war room at the Willard Hotel on January sixth,
and Wyndham wanted to subpoena the billing information from that hotel.
The response from the DOJ Assistant Director, Stephen Dantono told Wyndham,
I'm not serving subpoenas on the friggin Willard. One of
Biden's first appointees at DOJ, Matt Axelrod, was even more
(09:13):
self righteously and more what a boutistically outraged quote. Imagine
if we had requested membership lists for Black Lives Matter.
There it is there. It is at the highest levels
of the Justice Department. There is the same desire to
make sure if you've got a Democrat on CNN, you
know have to have a Republican the same willingness to
(09:37):
say that Black Lives Matter protests are the same thing,
or are vaguely reminiscent of, or are in the same
universe as an attempt to overthrow the government of the
United States by illegal electoral college subterfuge and by violence,
and by coercion of federal and state employees, and by
fraud and by judicial malfeasance, five pronged coup attempt, maybe
(10:02):
with the military behind it. Over here, surprisingly peaceful protests
of police murders with occasional tangential connected looting. They're the
same thing. Robert E. Lee, Martin, Luther King, same guy.
So we can't subpoena the one if we don't subpoena
(10:22):
the other. And the magic rule Book says we can't
subpoena the other. The rule Book is our sanctified version
of making sure every New York Times story has a
rebuttal from that Ohio diner. It is the same kind
of life and death struggle to protect what really matters
in this nation, our institutional image at the Department of Justice,
(10:46):
and the rule book, ladies and gentlemen of the Department,
is all that stands between us here inside the Department
of Justice and the greatest nightmare that could befall our nation,
damage to the reputation of the Department of Justice. Without
our institutional reputation, we might as well be living in
the jungle. And and I didn't hear anything else that
(11:07):
bureaucrat said, because that's when one of the Trump guys
burst into the conference room and hit him in the
head with a flagpole. It was not the eighteenth century
Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke who said the only
thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good
men to do nothing. And it doesn't really matter if
(11:28):
he said it or whoever else might have, because whoever
said it, he was talking about Merrick Garland inside the
Justice Department, The Post wrote yesterday, in a passage that
would have been laugh out loud funny if it had
not been so earnestly, thoroughly and tragically true. Some have
complained that the Attorney General's determination to steer clear of
(11:50):
any claims of political motive has chilled efforts to investigate
the former president. Quote you couldn't use the TEA word,
said one former Justice official briefed on prosecutors discuss essions.
You couldn't use the T word, Can I use the
(12:15):
F word? Fire Merrick Garland, because whether he planned it
this way or he did not, we now do not
have enough time to put Donald Trump in prison before
the twenty twenty four election. We don't caught red handed
twenty seven different times in two hundred and twenty seven
different plots, confessed again last night, and we're still going
(12:40):
to have to beat this son of a bitch in
a political battle that a whole group of fascists understands
is life or death for them, their paradise of authoritarian
rule of America for life, or their death figurative or literal,
at the hands of the Justice Department after Merrick Garland
(13:01):
finishes dusting the magic rule book. By the way, the
Post article does have heroes, any one of whom could
be the next Attorney General, and I'd be fine with it.
It is clear that early last year, when US District
Judge David O. Carter set off a big enough fire
(13:22):
in Garland's office to get him to actually move on
the elector's coup, that was because he was reviewing John
Eastman's emails, and Judge Carter said Trump had quote more
likely than not unquote committed federal crimes in trying to
obstruct or alter the count of the electoral College. Even
Garland noticed, this is fine if we somehow do still
(13:47):
save the democracy despite this catalog of dj forrest blindness.
The Post article reminds us Benny Thompson and Liz Cheney
and Jamie Raskin and Cassidy Hutchinson and Eric Hirshman and
the rest of them should have statues built for them
right now today. Well, that slim chance remains that something
(14:11):
more can go wrong. Fire Merrick Garland now, because at
the heart of it, he is what has gone wrong,
and thanks to the Post, we now know exactly what
he screwed up, and I for one do not want
(14:31):
to find out what he can screw up next. Either way,
there seems to be much handwringing because they're rather useful
but on inspiring. Charlie Savage New York Times piece on
the complications of prosecuting Trump or anybody else and using
classified information to do it, mentions in its eighth paragraph
(14:54):
the term plea deal. A defense lawyer with security clearance
underscores how complicated classified document cases are by saying, quote,
it's routine, if not invariable, that you'll get a plea
offer in a case in which the government says, if
we have to provide classified discovery to you, this offer
is no longer on the table, and those can be
(15:14):
very attractive plea offers unquote. This does not mean they
are offering Trump a plea deal, which, given the fact
that Merrick Garland has run our clock out for us,
might be a wonderful thing if it forever kept Trump
out of office. Again. More importantly, it does not mean
he would ever accept one. Trump is still at that
(15:35):
stage he was the day after the Miami indictments, in
which he insisted he might consider a plea deal in
which they gave him a lot of money. That's how
crazy he was. That's how crazy he is. Trump is insane.
You need to remind yourself that every day, Good morning world.
Trump is insane. He did an interview with Brett bar
(15:55):
for Fox last night and said, quote, the only way
the Archives could ever get this stuff back would be, please, please, please,
could we have it back? Unquote. Apart from the fact
that he confessed again, and that they did ask him please, please,
please for months. The necessity of cruelty to his existence
(16:17):
is on display in that sentence. Oh, he might do
it if you plead and grubble enough. This is whom
Merrick Garland did not want to be seen being unfair to.
Although Trump was smart enough to lie to Fox and
deny he ever had actual, physical, secret plans for a
war on Iran and to deny that he ever admitted
(16:40):
he had those plans, even though it's on tape, Trump
confessed a couple more times, just for good measure, or
maybe just to remind us what an idiot Merrit Garland is.
Bear asked him, why didn't you just give it all back? Quote,
because I had boxes. I want to go through the
boxes and get all my personal things out. I don't
(17:01):
want to hand that over to Nara yet. And I
was very busy, as you've sort of before I send
boxes over, I have to take all my things out.
These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things. He
has a psychopathic attachment to artifacts and documents and records
and filings. One psychologist I know explained to me that
(17:24):
people like that are obsessed with the personal possession of
physical records in that way, because it doesn't just validate
their existence, but because their own connection to reality and
the other people in the world is so tenuous that
it is sometimes the only way they can assure themselves
that they are actually alive, that they actually exist at
(17:47):
the moment. See, I have this document. It proves I
was president. It proves I am alive. One tweeter buttoned
this up last night twenty twenty four, Laney complaining to
Brett Baar that his interview with Trump was invalid because quote,
(18:11):
you are wok, Woka, you are wok. This is who
we are up against, mister attorney general. But yeah, whatever
we do, Mark, don't use that t word. Also of
(18:34):
interest here today, I want to circle back to the
prospect of Jack Smith filing more sets of charges against Trump,
maybe for interfering with Pence counting the electoral ballots. Also,
I want to call for the firing of the president
of MSNBC. Sorry I forgot to mention that. Also for
people to take a long hard look at why none
of those backup hosts I spun off from my show
(18:57):
at MSNBC have spoken out against what the president of
MSNBC has just said when she was asked if she
would put Donald Trump on MSNBC in a live town
hall format, because after what she said, I would have
walked off the set. There are two things she did
(19:18):
not say. One was no, no way, never, are you nuts?
And the other was that's next. This is countdown. This
is countdown with Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines,
(19:42):
some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline thirty Rockefeller Center,
New York, New York, just the one PostScript today. Once again,
let me apologize for what MSNBC has become, especially how
the primetime lineup they made up out of my former
fill in host has completely abrogated its responsibility to stand
(20:03):
up against the cookie cutter, unabashed both sides ism in
its own management. The president of MSNBC has been asked
at a media forum, a thumbsucking convention, if Trump somehow
came to her and asked to do a town hall
on MSNBC, would she say yes and put him on
(20:25):
in a town hall live? And she did not say,
my god, no. We believe in democracy and we respect
our audience, by the way, and we are grateful for
their trust and their money. She did not say that
because she is a fast talking corporate shill with no
more sense of news than has a fire hydrant. In fact,
(20:46):
she said quote it would be a conversation, and she
talked about her newsgroup, and she talked about parameters, and
she talked about controlling the environment and other corporate gobbledegook.
When if you actually want people who watch MSNBC to
keep watching MSNBC, you have to answer God no, or
at least mock the question, or do something to just
(21:09):
signal but yes, you're in it for the money. But
every day you do check back in on reality just
to make sure it's still there. Now, when you hear
the tape of what I heard, you will wonder where
is Rachel Maddow's criticism of this idiocy? Where is Lawrence o'donald's,
(21:30):
Where's Chris Hayes, Where is Jen Saki's? And the answer is,
I'm sorry, they're all out busy cashing their checks. And
don't dismiss the idea that you can't stand up to
your boss and live. I did it. I did it
at MSNBC. I did it with Matdow threatened to walk
(21:53):
out to the face of the president of NBC, the
whole network, not just MSNBC. And I will recount that
story in a moment, because it happened this time of
year in two thousand and nine, and all of television
is like this, always has been, but particularly so in
TV news. Management wants the money. In Bill Paley's famous
(22:14):
or infamous expression, it does not want the stomach ache.
And if you were on the air, you either eventually
have a showdown with management or you succumb to management
and you just keep cashing those checks silently. My second
time through MSNBC, I lasted there for eight years without succumbing,
and I could have stayed there the twelve years since,
(22:35):
and they asked me to go back formally once at
informally three other times. And if I had, I would
have heard this from MSNBC president Rashida Jones, and I
would have madowed or o'donald or hazed or Sakid, and
you had never heard this story, which took place from
(22:58):
an Axio's media event with Jones. More likely I would
have done something like that for a while and then
had the showdown in twenty and fourteen instead of twenty eleven. Anyway,
here's the quote. One of our big focuses is to
find ways to hear from voters. How do we get
to the people in the middle of the country who
(23:19):
are not necessarily where our offices are, and how do
we really immerse ourselves into those communities and tell their stories?
Unquote yes, yes, yes, it's more of that in this
Ohio diner stuff. It's more. Don't take a point of view,
especially the point of view of your viewers. Even though
(23:41):
from its second year on the air, MSNBC has always
had a point of view. Now it has never been
the same point of view for very long. First it
was anti Bill Clinton. Then I sort of forced it
to become to hell with all the politicians. Then it
was the two thousand and two attempt to go further
(24:03):
to the right than Fox was. And then just before
they were literally going to turn the network into all
prison documentaries starting at nine o'clock every night, I started
pointing out the hypocrisies of Bush and the Iraq War,
and suddenly MSNBC had purpose and profit. And that is
(24:23):
why MSNBC did not go out of business in two
thousand and five or off the air anyway, and why
it did not go off the air in two thousand
and nine, which is the story I will tell you
in a moment, But first, here is the actual clip
of Rashida Jones, who is actually the president of MSNBC,
in conversation with Sarah Fisher of Axios and absolutely, steadfastly
(24:47):
refusing to give you anywhere to stand on if you
want to actually believe that MSNBC would turn down a
live Trump town hall or that Meadow would walk off
in protest, because no, and no. The question from ms
Fisher was simply, would you put Trump on in a
(25:09):
town hall format? So I have a couple thoughts there. One.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
We're having conversations with all of the candidates across our
entire newsgroup about how to bring their point of view
to the audience. There are lots of ways to do that,
whether it's a live interview, whether it's a tape interview,
whether it's a town hall, whether it's a debate. We
still have five hundred and five days left until election.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Day, counting down not the down counting, and I.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Think there are many ways that you can approach that.
I don't know that a town hall tomorrow is something
that our audience is looking for any audience. But as
you look at the next five hundred and five days,
I think you'll see a lot of that across the portfolio.
If Trump came to you specifically and says I want
to be on your air to do it, would you
say yes?
Speaker 1 (25:50):
What I say? Yes? Today?
Speaker 2 (25:51):
It would be a conversation. I think you have to
put parameters about how to control the environment.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yeah, it would be a conversation. I think you have
to put parameters about how to control the environment. Shameful,
wrong answer. I would say she should be fired immediately.
But she does not run MSNBC. It's her boss who
(26:16):
runs MSNBC. She is a figurehead. But shouldn't she be
fired just so people who still watch MSNBC have some
belief that no, they would not platform Trump, especially not live,
some belief that they're not just playing the MSNBC audience
(26:39):
and pretending to believe all this stuff just to get
you to watch, that they actually have a point of view,
that it actually matters to them, that the American democracy
means more to them than the ratings do. Because if
your answer to whether or not you're going to put
Trump on live for a town hall, even in the
wildest theoretical impossibility. If your answer is not no, fu,
(27:02):
you should be fired, and if not fired, the people
there who make the money that pays Rashida Jones's salary
should now threaten to walk out unless she at minimum
states clearly and without those Weasley corporate prevarications, that no
way MSNBC would never platform Trump live, not even for
that amount of money. And so I apologize to you
(27:26):
again for what MSNBC has become. As I heard that clip,
I flashed back to this time of year, June fourteen
years ago. We spent all that month, most of July
and a lot of August doing this. First management was
going to take MSNBC off the air, then Mattow and
I threatened to take MSNBC off the air. Then finally
I had to spend what little political capital I had
(27:48):
left to keep MSNBC on the air, and frankly, as
of today, I regret I kept MSNBC from going out
of business because of this. If Trump came to.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
You specifically and says I want to be on your
air to do it, would you say yes? When I
say yes today, it would be a conversation. I think
you have to put parameters about how to control the environment.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah, often it happens in television that there are events
so traumatic that the cliche about your life flashing before
your eyes does not apply, but an equally hackneyed one
about your career flashing before your eyes might. The executive
producer of our MSNBC newscast Countdown, Isy Povich, and I
were on the grown up elevator to the office of
(28:32):
NBC President Jeff Zooker on the fifty second floor of
thirty Rock in New York, Summoned there by some garbled
message from MSNBC President Phil Griffin about MSNBC being taken
off the air, I was mumbling to Izzy, Sundry imprecations
and reminiscences, eight freaking months is we spent twelve freaking
(28:53):
months forcing them to create Meadows show? At last eight
months all the crap prompter practice getting her over her
fears rockets past CNN only eight months of showing. Now
it's all gone. Izzy reminded me it was not just
Rachel's show that was threatened, which was why poor Court
Harson from Hardball was already upstairs along with poor Ed
(29:15):
Schultz and Phil Griffin. At Rachel's executive producer Bill Wolf,
and some clown from Morning Joe and a couple of
other MSNBC executives and us. I know, I know, I
did the line from the drunken Irishman from Hitchcock's The Birds,
complete with the bad accent. It's the end of the world,
I said, Jeff Immelt is going to take MSNBC off
(29:37):
the air. I didn't need any of my overwrought visions
from two years earlier of the future of liberal news
commentary falling out the NBC window to its death on
the rink. This was the real thing. The chairman of
General Electric was threatening to open the window himself, throw
us out the window himself, and then race down to
(29:57):
the pavement to stomp on our dying remains himself. Poor
Ed Schultz heard Jeff's Zucker say those words, and he
had screwed up his face and tilted his head like
a puppy hearing a car crash. He had not believed
it the first time. He had not believed at the
second time. Zucker said it a third time. Immelt is
(30:18):
going to take MSNBC off the effing air at, Schultz groaned.
After weeks of Griffin's coaxing he had finally just moved
from Nebraska to New York the preceding weekend, Yet he
was still, somehow only the second most strung out person
in the room. You, Zucker shouted at me, You're the
smartest one in the room. What the f do we
(30:40):
do now? I'll confess I was shaken by this because
it appeared for once that Zucker was not being sarcastic.
I had never before seen him flush nor flustered. This
was a guy who wore fleece in July. Now he
was beat red and sweating. Sometimes he knew what he
was doing, and, as his opposition to hiring Matdow had proved,
(31:01):
sometimes he didn't know what he was doing, but he
always acted as the most confident man in the galaxy.
But now he literally had no clue what to do next.
And he not only could not ignore my advice, he
desperately needed it. This situation and that color on his
face were almost worth watching the corporate fascists nuke my network.
(31:23):
I asked Zucker to explain what happened? You got Dan, well,
know what happened. Zucker moved towards me, and I stood
up and I told him I would see myself out.
He stopped, remembering that he did indeed actually need my help.
I'm sorry, I apologize. This isn't rational, this is immelt.
Last week sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped. He told Murdoch he
(31:44):
wasn't gonna take any more of what you were saying
about him on the air. So he did a piece
last night accusing GE of manufacturing the components that been
used in roadside bombs that were built in a rand
to kill Americans in Iraq, which is true legally, that's
legally true. They found roadside bombs that had like thirty
year old GE transistors or or TV tubes from nineteen
(32:06):
fifty four, or is something in them? Legally, GE did
manufacture components that were used in roadside bombs that were
built in around to kill Americans in Iraq. So o'reiley
puts this on his effing show as a lead story,
and then Fox sent two camera crews in this little
crap producer from O'Riley show, Jesse Waters something to steak
(32:27):
emmelt out and chase him around the GE shareholders meeting
in Charlotte. Zucker finally came up for air and I
jumped in, why didn't emmelt have six camera crews to
stake out the two Fox crews and chase them around
in Charlotte. I mean, isn't that one of our news
hubs Charlotte doesn't emmelt own like twenty camera crews. There,
(32:47):
he bring a camera crew, You'll bring two camera crews.
Zoocker started to not like me again. Now you suggest
that where were you in? All right, never mind, it
doesn't matter. Emmel says, if there's one more story on
Bill O'Reilly about ge manufacturing components for roadside bombs in Iraq,
he's takening MSNBC off the air immediately. It'll just be
(33:08):
twenty four hours of lock up and I'm fired and
you're fired. And then he pointed at Chris Matthews, producer
and Matthews is fired. And he pointed at poor Ed
Schultz and you're fired, and Ed whimpered, So smart asked,
what the f do we do? I feigned all the
nonchalants I could feign. If I could have lit a
shroot by striking a match on the sole of my boot,
(33:31):
I would have. It's manageable. But Jeff, why is emmelt
so worked up about what O'Reilly said about him. Only
O'Reilly's nut job viewers actually believe any of that crap.
Nobody at GE, nobody investing in GE, could possibly believe
we're building components for roadside bombs. Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's
(33:55):
mother believes it. All the heads in the room turned
toward the president of NBC. Missus. Emmelt back in Cincinnati
is a devote did Bill O'Reilly viewer watches him every night,
sees this, calls him, says, Sonny, why are you manufacturing
components that were used in roadside bombs built in Iran
to kill Americans in Iraq? I had not expected that,
(34:21):
I said to Zucker. So so he'll really burn what
two hundred million a year in profits just between Rachel
and me? Because his mom watches Bill O'Reilly, Zucker got
angry again. You bet your effing ass he will now
you said it was manageable. How how the hef do
we manage it? Ulberman? Just a minute? How old is she?
(34:43):
Zucker summoned all his annoyance. How old is who Eml's mother?
How old is she? Jeff Zucker was really annoyed. How
the F should I know? You're missing the point. I
had him really worked up, nearly to the boiling point.
It was great, guess, Zucker spluttered, I don't know. He's
(35:05):
in his mid fifties. She's got to be eighty ninety something.
I stifled a fake yawn. Yeah, you're right, probably closer
to ninety now that I think of it. So the
problem is she watches O'Reilly. She tells him what's on Fox?
What O'Reilly's saying about Ge. Well, I think you have
a simple solution. I'd say the first thing you do
(35:26):
is you send over a couple of big guys to
her house and you pull the freaking cable out of
the wall. Zuker actually gasped, My producer, is Hepovich unsuccessfully
stifled a laugh, and I saw Rachel crack a smile.
Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Olderman. I crossed my legs. Oh,
it's a little funny. And anyway, it's not essential. If
(35:48):
the problem is emailed is threatening to take the network
off the air because O'Reilly is avenging himself against me
by attacking him and attacking Ge. The short term solution
is easy, and in fact it is manageable. The long
term solution that's not easy and that's not manageable. But
the short term one that's simple. Rest of this week,
next week, maybe the week after that. Even we just
(36:10):
don't mention Fox News on MSNBC something resembling a smile
across Zucker's face. It made him look a little less
like a lizard person and more like a monkey with glasses.
You do that forever? No, not forever. I would not
do that, I said to Bias time. Yes, but remember
(36:34):
who was it who was in my office last winter
telling me that I should go on the air and
just to f with Fox? I should ask why Rupert
Murdoch was still running a huge international media company like
News Corp, despite all the reports that he's suffering from dementia,
even though there haven't been any reports that he's suffering
from dementia. For everybody's sake, here, who was that again
(36:54):
who told me to do that? Zucker's goodwill was gone again?
Obviously that was me. What's your point? My point is,
we built this new brand of ours organically, and a
couple of themes, a couple of statements of principle, and
one of them is to use your words just to
f with Fox? If we don't f with Fox for
(37:16):
a couple of weeks at the start of the summer,
who's gonna care, Who's gonna notice? But like after two weeks,
three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice, and the TV
writers are gonna notice, and then the crap we'll hit
from every direction you can think of. Temporary freeze on
mentioning Fox and mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdoc fine, permanent freeze.
(37:37):
Might as well let Immelt turn us off in the morning.
After all, I don't think Zooker actually heard the last
part about em Milt turning us off. After all, the
lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe,
he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He
looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Izzy and
(37:58):
at Phil Griffin and me, You and you and you
and I will we will talk tomorrow, maybe tonight, and
we'll all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox, anybody,
are we clear? Nothing on the air about Fox. Silence
in the room, then the assorted noises of people rising,
mixed with attempts to resuscitate poor Ed Schultz, somebody Matthew's
(38:19):
guy Harson, I think, was almost at the door out
of Zucker's office, an office so big that it was
to steal the Ring Lardner line, the size of the
Yale Bowl, but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up,
quietly but firmly. Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me.
I will not have the content of my show dictated
(38:42):
by any corporations, including the one I work for. Remember
this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt
that way then, and especially one I don't work for.
I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience
wondering what else I have not told them. I don't
do a lot about Fox on my show, but if
there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
this freeze. I will report that story. And if I'm
(39:03):
prevented from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,
Zucker barked Phil Olberman, is he stay? When the rest
of the room had cleared, Zucker blew air out of
his mouth as if it were smoke. He gestured violently
at me with his right arm. I told you she
was a mistake. You didn't listen to me. I told
(39:23):
you now, she's your problem. All of this is your problem.
Get her back on the reservation or else. Now I
had run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh, I'll get
her back on the reservation, Jeff. But if you think
this is my problem, just think about what happens if
he really does take us off the air, or if
it just gets out that he threatened to take us
(39:44):
off the air because his mother didn't like what Fox
said about him. That's my problem. Uh uh, that's your problem.
And it's the problem of the CEO of the frickin'
sixth largest corporation in the world, who makes his business
(40:04):
decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars of profits based
on what his mother says. At this point, Phil Griffin
managed to pull Zucker away and Izzy and I made
for the door, saying nothing until we were in the elevator. Finally,
she asked, what are you going to do about Rachel?
(40:25):
I looked straight ahead. I have depth perception issues while
traveling forward, backwards, up or down. Yeah, if I know
what I'm gonna do about her. But I got an idea.
I mean, the only person she was really talking to
in there was herself. This isn't a brand new surprise
success for her anymore. This is successful. This is what
nine ten months she's successful. She said she was once
(40:47):
a dancing cell phone outside of cell phone store outside
of Boston. She ain't going back to that. I went
to talk to Rachel about an hour later and reassured her.
I mentioned that powerful as Fox was, they were not
going to be able to re invade Iraq by themselves,
and unless she moved, moved it way closer than it
had been, nobody would cross her censorship line. And I said,
(41:09):
just give me as much time as the French government
took before fleeing during the Nazi advance in nineteen forty.
I said, give me, what was it, thirty three days?
Give me thirty three days. If we aren't back where
we were this morning, we can both quit on the air.
I mean that'd be fun, right. Three nights later, well
after midnight on a Friday, my NBC issued BlackBerry buzzed
(41:31):
with a quick email from Rachel maddow. Hey. She wrote,
don't necessarily quote me because I'm really drunk, but just
make the best deal you can for us. I trust you.
We don't need to do Fox all the time. I
never do Fox stories anyway. I just had to say that,
and this is the best platform we will ever have.
Well she was right, at least for the time being.
(41:53):
A couple of weeks later, I had to sneak in
a script that blasted Fox, and at ten thirty at
home that night, I got a call from a drunken
Phil Griffin shouting into the phone, I have a family.
Zucker had to go meet with Roger Ayles secretly inside
thirty Rock and I hope they remember to clean the
room afterwards. And mmelt even had to meet with Murdoch.
(42:16):
And then, happily, some idiot Ge executive decided to boast
to The New York Times about getting us little talent
children under control and a big deal with the executives
over at Fox and how they'd settled everything, which blew
up the whole deal instantly, because the moment the deal
went public, NBC looked so stupid, and even NBC News
(42:37):
was now risked. The only point of the whole thing
was to keep the Immelts and the Zuckers and the
Griffins and the ales Is from throwing us and our
little island of liberal commentary out of that window at
thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow and I would be
constantly reminded in the ensuing years, thirty Rock has a
(42:57):
lot of freaking windows. Just quickly, because I did one
of these podcasts yesterday on the holiday, A pretty good,
if I must say so myself, and I'm the only
one talking here, pretty good state of the state address
on the prospects of Jack Smith filing additional sets of charges,
maybe four or even five more sets of charges against
(43:19):
Trump was heard, and a good time was had by all. Now,
if you've heard it already from Monday, hit stop now,
because I'm going to replay it because not everybody heard it.
(43:41):
I am beginning to believe that we may have wildly
underestimated how many more things Jack Smith is about to
indict Trump. Four could the Special Counsel in fact be
preparing now to indict Trump for illegally pressuring Mike Pence.
(44:02):
There is reason today to believe that the number of
new separate indictments of Trump by Smith could be as
many as four, maybe even five. Based on both reporting
and analysis by the people who have been right so far,
the general consensus seemed to have been there would be
two new ones. First, the fake elector's schemes, since there
were fake electors seen entering the court building housing the
(44:24):
Special Council's Washington Grand Jury that almost exactly the same
moment that Smith was announcing the document's case in Miami
ten days ago. There has also been consistent dribbing and
drabbing coming out of what appears to be a very
serious Smith investigation of what at first seems like an
almost sidebar to that part of the Trump massive coup plan,
the gradual assembling of evidence that when Trump made his
(44:46):
desperate pleas to the yokels in November and December twenty
twenty to raise funds to fight the stolen election, he
knew damn well and acknowledged, damn well, it was not
a stolen election, and thus all that fundraising was fraud.
That January sixth fraud stuff was puzzling in a way
because while it's like tax evasion, fraud is easier to
(45:09):
prove than say, an intricate plot to overthrow the government
using stochastic terrorism and deniable incitements of mobs and milities,
it did seem a little off the point. Do not
get me wrong here. If they can jail Trump forever
based on stealing box cars full of gold rustolium that
he's sprayed on his head, fine, Still there is a
(45:33):
sadness about this. He tried to overthrow the democracy. We
need to put him on trial for trying to overthrow
the democracy. Well, we may yet do so. Ryan Goodman
from Just Security why cite here frequently even though I
don't know him, and only because he knows his stuff,
told the Bill Crystal podcast that he thinks Jack Smith
(45:55):
is quote going to indict Trump for the false slate
of elector's scheme, and with Goodman adding that the odds
Fannie Willis indicts on false electors and election interference in
Argia are at ninety percent. Trump could then face twin
federal and state cases on overlapping topics. And then Goodman
added something that took my breath away, indicting Trump for
(46:16):
false electors quote and quite probably possibly the pressure campaign
against Mike Pence. Wait what Goodman sends? The odds on
Jack Smith indicting Trump about Pence at sixty to seventy
percent pressuring the Vice president. Goodman says, quoting him again
(46:37):
is independent of whether or not he Trump thought he
won the election. He can think he won the election,
doesn't matter. But you can't try to coerce a public
official to defy their legal duties, which is just to
count the votes. Goodman does not mention this, but you
will remember that Stuart Rhodes and some of the other
oathkeepers were prosecuted for and convicted of interfering with Congress's
(47:02):
ability to complete its legal duties. Ponder for just a
moment the prospect the eternal carnival of Smith indicting Trump,
who is running for the Republican nomination, for attempting to
chorus Pence, who is running for the Republican nomination. Oh
and necessarily having Pence testify against Trump, either before Trump
(47:23):
is nominated or before the election. So instead of two,
that would be three separate prongs to Smith's pursuit of Trump,
four if you count the thirty seven documents indictments already
brought documents stole an election, fundraising fraud, January sixth, false
electors January sixth, pressure campaign against Mike Pence. Goodman also
(47:46):
does not see the January sixth stuff waiting out in
the hall. According again, I think it's very likely that
the Special Council indicts him about January sixth, in the summer.
He wants to do it by the summer to avoid
doing it much later. And if that is not enough
to chew on, Goodman thinks the odds are fifty to
fifty that Smith will fe other expand the case against
(48:06):
Trump on the stolen documents and add further charges to it,
but not in Florida. As I've noted before, Goodman notes
that the charging document released to the public concurrent with
the indictments in Miami was very specific about the crimes
Trump had committed and the individual events. The Florida charging
document references the dissemination of defense information to people not
(48:27):
authorized to see it, and refers explicitly to both the
classified map Trump showed people and that Mark Millie military
plan for war on Iran, the stuff Trump is caught
on tape going over with the Mark Meadows ghostwriters. All
of that stuff is in the Florida charging document that
has now been in circulation for ten days, but there
(48:48):
have been no charges about it. Goodman's explanation for this
anomaly is simple. Trump's crimes of stealing and keeping the
documents happened in Florida telling people what was in the
documents happened in New Jersey. So if Goodman is right
about Jersey and more documents and more charges, that's four
or five separate prosecutions, depending on your definitions. Documents could
(49:11):
theoretically just be considered parts A and B of the
same case. And if you're tired of one guy speculating
about one other guy speculating, good news everyone. There is
hard and firm information from Jack Smith in court paperwork
he filed last Friday in which he said that a
protective order needed to be placed on anything produced by
(49:34):
the legal discovery conducted by the Trump team because the
stuff found in discovery would contain information about quote ongoing
investigations that could quote identify uncharged individuals Mark Meadows. So
there is no question Smith is still seeking new charges,
(49:55):
and obviously they are against Trump, and obviously he has
unrevealed witnesses. And we know from one of the flood
of New York Times reports, this one from about six
weeks ago, that Smith is still active on the subject
of Trump and things that happened in New Jersey. The
Times report from the beginning of May was that there
had been quote previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization,
(50:18):
which sought records pertaining to Trump's dealings with a Saudi
backed professional golf venture known as Live Golf, which Trump
has so far dealt with not at Mari Lago or
his other golf courses, but at his Bedminster club in
New Jersey. Goodman didn't mention this. The Times didn't mention this.
Nobody's mentioned this. It is officially still inside the realm
(50:39):
of political science fiction. But if you want to ratchet
up the whole golf thing one more notch, you could,
as I previously have envisioned Trump trading information to the
Saudis so that they would make the big Trump signs
on the golf course one square foot larger than originally
agreed to. You know he would, you know he would?
You know he would. There is also the gathering prospect
(51:04):
of Trump being hoist with his own petard. The Times
also noted that five separate statements inside the charging document
are quotations from Trump during the lockeher upstage of the
twenty sixteen presidential campaign. There is a belief among experts
in the field that these statements could all be introduced
(51:25):
as evidence at trial to show not that Hillary Clinton
was right, although that would be a pleasing side effect,
but that Trump knew exactly what the penalties were for
stealing boxes of defense information and classified documents on the
subject of experts in the field, one of them has
now chewed up Trump and spit him out for the
(51:45):
second consecutive week. I have explained previously that my having
no use for William Barr is second generation. His father
arrived as the new headmaster of my prep school as
I graduated, and the bastard nearly bankrupted the place. But
like Ryan Goodman, Bill Barr is, at least at the moment.
(52:06):
He was asked on Face the Nation yesterday if he
thinks Trump is a target, specifically in January sixth prosecutions. Quote.
I'm actually starting to think they will pull the trigger
on that, Barr replied, and I would expect it to
be this summer unquote. Barr was also asked if he
had gotten any inside insight from the Justice Department. He
once ran and he refused to comment, which is a
(52:29):
strange thing to do if you have not gotten inside insight.
Barr also took some satisfying shots at Trump. Quote, he
will always put his own interests and gratifying his own
ego ahead of everything else, including the country's interests. No crap, Bill,
that's Trump's physical or emotional illness. He's like a nine
year old, a defiant nine year old kid who's always
(52:50):
pushing the glass toward the edge of the table, defying
his parents to stop him from doing it. It's a
means of self assertion and exerting his dominance over other people. Well, yes, Bill,
but six a defiant six year old child. For the
first time in years. There were two different Sunday News
(53:11):
interviews that may have contained actual news breadcrumbs because Pence's
former chief of staff, Mark Short also went on one
of them, the one on Fox, and he brought up
another topic that had slipped through the cracks after it
had suddenly reappeared in the middle of a sexual abuse
suit against Rudy Giuliani. Short said, quote, one of the
(53:31):
most unseemly parts of the end of our administration was
the pardons Donald Trump gave to cocaine traffickers, to family members,
to people guilty of violent crimes. It was indefensible. Short
then added the money quote, literally, people giving seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars to lobbyists trying to get pardons. Unquote, Okay,
(53:54):
what's with that. Giuliani's alleged victim says his price to
take a pardon to Trump was two million to be
split with Trump certainly like the prospective indictments on defraud
his own cultists to raise money to solve a stolen
election that was not stolen. There's got a money trail
a mile long for Jack Smith on these million dollar
pardons for crying out loud. There are three other new
(54:19):
morsels here to savor. Chris Christie suggested that based on
his days as a prosecutor, the likelihood is two thirds
of Jack Smith's case. Well, case says well, panoply of
cases is still below the surface. Witnesses evidence, god knows what.
Ryan Goodman jumped on that in the Crystal podcast and
(54:40):
asked a rhetorical question that is absolutely fascinating. That tape
of Trump talking to Mark Meadow's ghostwriters describing the secret
Iran war plans. He cannot give them because they're classified,
but he will describe to them because he's a compulsive talker.
Goodman says, that's a tape in essence of Trump narrating
(55:02):
his own crimes as he committed. It's them a confession
in real time. More intriguingly, Goodman asks what happens if
anyone of the dozens of top news organizations pursuing this
the political story, the foremost political story in American history.
What if one of those news organizations were to get
a copy of that tape and post it or put
(55:25):
it on television or on TikTok, not a transcript, but
Trump's actual crime, in Trump's actual voice, as Trump actually
commits it. Party down. One thing we do know is
if that happens, Trump's lawyers are not exactly poised to
(55:47):
stop the tape from being made public. She is hardly
the lead on the document's case, but they are still
letting Alina Haba make public appearances on Trump's behalf. I
guess on the theory that Christina Bob is even dumber.
Habba spoke to the throng outside the Miami courthouse. She
also went on a Breitbart show and said that before
(56:08):
there was a trial, quote, we need a fair opportunity
to depose people and see what their answers are to
some of the things we have questions about. Haba said
she wanted people under oath explaining the raid, in other words,
the FBI search at Mary A Lago. It is quite
clear from that demand and that part just there about
(56:30):
a fair opportunity to depose people, that this Habba is
under the impression that in a criminal case, the defendant
gets to take depositions from the prosecutors from the FBI.
I mean, I took one communications law class as a
(56:50):
junior in college forty six years ago this fall, and
even I know that criminal defendants don't get to cross
examine the special Council. You could never tell Alina Habba
made her name in parking lot real estate law, could
you so? Before the punchline to all this the additional
(57:12):
comic relief, let's recap. Smith has charged Trump for mishandling
government documents in Florida. That's case one. He seems to
be on the verge of indictments on the phony fundraising scheme.
That would be case two. Ryan Goodman is confident Smith
will also indict Trump on the fake elector slates. That
would be number three. He has added in the prospect
of a Smith indictment against Trump for trying to coerce
(57:33):
Mike Pence that's four, and Goodman also thinks it's half
half that Smith will expand the document's case to include
illegal dissemination of defense information in New Jersey. And now, lastly,
the promised punchline quick peek into the parallel universe in
which Trump is completely innocent and he's being framed and
(57:55):
Joe Biden is going to resign by the end of
the week and then be jailed. Now, Rudy Giuliani says
one of the key players in the Reducts of the
Ukraine can abpiracy that exists only in his viagra addled
mind Barisma II Electric Boogaloo, that witness has died at
(58:15):
the same exact time Congressman Jamie Comber, who I think
is now beginning to regret fronting this story in which
they don't know if there's a source and the source
doesn't know, if there's a whistleblower, and the whistleblower doesn't know,
if there's a foreign oligarch, and the foreign oligarch doesn't know,
if there's seventeen audio tapes and some of them are dead.
(58:36):
I think Jamie Comer's beginning to regret this, and if
he wasn't before, now he is now because his newest
Congressional office disbursement filing has been made for the first quarter,
and it includes such thrillers as two hundred and forty
four dollars for janitorial services and fourteen dollars to mailchimp.
And then there is the four hundred and forty five
(58:57):
bucks Comber's office paid to the Wooden Casket Company LLLC
of Tompkville, Kentucky. The purpose listed on the file is
habituation expense. So Jamie Comer's witnesses are dead and Jamie
(59:18):
Comber's office has just bought a four hundred and forty
five dollars casket for somebody or something to live in
what Comber's hopes of reelection. I've done all the damage
(59:44):
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced and
performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneal, who are
the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John
Phillip Shanel, guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced
by TKO Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and
performed by no horns allowed. The sports music is the
(01:00:05):
Ulderman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by
Mitch Warren Davis curtviously of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was Stevie van Zandt, and everything else was pretty
much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight
hundred and ninety sixth day since Donald Trump's first attempted
coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
(01:00:27):
Arrest him again while we still can, mister Attorney General.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman.
Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
(01:00:48):
Keith Olderman 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. Obviously,
President Biden must fire Attorney General Garland and Deputy Attorney
(00:26):
General Monaco, and not merely because neither of them can
possibly continue after yesterday's revelations in the Washington Post, just
as none of us can possibly continue holding our breaths
wondering what about the Trump and January sixth prosecutions they
will screw up next. They also have to go because
the damnable record in that newspaper of their languid responses
(00:49):
proves one thing above all else two years and nearly
six months after the first attempted coup, and Merrick, Garland
and Monaco still do not understand that this is about
self defense, self defense of justice, self defense of democracy,
(01:09):
self defense of America. If that is not your attitude
about the response to Trump and the coup attempt that
was and the coup attempt that will be, get out.
Get out. If you are in the White House and
you do not understand that the point was and will
be to eliminate elections and if possible, to eliminate you,
(01:31):
get out. If you are in the news media and
you do not understand that the point was and will
be to eliminate the news media, and if possible, to
eliminate you. Get out, But especially if you are in
the Justice Department and you don't understand that the point
was and will be to eliminate you, If you don't
(01:52):
understand that the ultimate goal of Trump and the creatures
around him is to take the limitless finances they have
been given and the limitless time they have been given
by you, and walk someday into the Justice Department or
whatever white shoe law firm you have escaped to and
hand you a piece of paper bearing a fascist order
(02:12):
signed by a fascist judge, convicting you of being an
official Trump brand enemy the people, and authorizing the Trump
Police to hang you on the spot. If you don't
realize that is the plan, if you don't realize that,
you had better approach this as self defense, because in
your case, and in my case, and in the case
(02:33):
of god knows how many politically active Americans, it quite
literally is self defense. If you don't understand that, get out,
because you will have rendered this nation, at its time
of greatest peril, defenseless, just as the Coalition of h
(02:59):
gears up for another attack. Because then you will have
nowhere to hide from them, because the rest of us,
whom you have left without defense, will be fending for
our selves. And Merrick Garland and Lisa Monico have to
go first, because I don't know what's left for them
(03:20):
to screw up here. But I'm sure Garland will find
something in his style book for the Department of Justice
that says, unless you deliver that subpoena by pony express,
you can't move against a criminally insane ex president unless
you make sure you wait just long enough that there's
no way any of the verdicts can be rendered until
(03:41):
after the election that might put him back in office,
upon which he will have the charges with John, or
he will pardon himself, or he will simply ignore all
the laws all at once and tell you to take
him to the Supreme Court. No, the new Supreme Court,
the one for which he has appointed all fifteen justices.
(04:05):
I've gotten ahead of myself slightly. If you have not
read the piece in the Washington Post, I urge you
to do so. It will confirm your worst fears and
guarantee you your worst nightmares. But in addition to a
maddening week by week timeline, of the inaction at the
FBI and the DOJ in twenty twenty one, and most
of twenty twenty two, in action that reads like the
(04:26):
captain's log of the Titanic or the investigations of flight
schools pre nine eleven. The story underscores that the Department
of Justice is not some temple of truth where men
of insight and imagination respond to threats and attacks, but
it's just a home for people who know the law
(04:48):
the way Kindergartner is no painting. Wing number twelve is aquamarine,
and butterfly number thirty seven is burnt umber. And congratulations,
you got one hundred even though you're colorblind. You put
color number twelve on wing number twelve. You want to
be Solicitor General. The Post article also underscores three things
(05:10):
about the Justice Department under Merrick Garland, and about so
much of twenty first century America that maybe you had
hoped were not true or would not take priority when
the entire structure of our nation and representative government itself
came under unprecedented express One of these things is that
the DOJ assumed that either our system of government was
(05:32):
inviolable and impregnable, or that no American would actually try
to destroy it. Both assumptions are asinine, of course, and
were disproven by the afternoon of January twentieth, twenty seventeen.
The afternoon of January sixth, twenty twenty one was just confirmation.
(05:53):
The second sad confirmation is that men like Merrick Garland,
who really believed that whatever else he was, Donald Trump
was bound by some words he had said that he'd
never think thought of before while he put his hand
on some book he'd never seen before. People like Merrick
Garland also believed that once Trump was gone, the nation
(06:14):
would just snap back into its own regular shape and
we'd never be threatened again. And Garland believed both of
those things because of the third confirmation in the Post story.
Merrick Garland knew he would prevail because he had the
magic rule book, the magic Department of Justice rule book.
(06:39):
Just follow what it says in the Magic Department of
Justice rule Book, and all will be well. On March
twenty first, twenty twenty one, CBS televised an interview with
the then acting DC United States Attorney Michael Sherwin, who,
based on the Post's account, was one of the few
DOJ figures at the time with a pulse. Sherwin believed
(07:01):
he had had DOJ's support to do that interview. Sherwin
and the head of the Public Corruption Division, J. P. Cooney,
who pushed prosecute the rioters, prosecute the leaders of the rioters,
prosecute those who weren't there, but leading from afar use
Seditious Conspiracy Act Act. Now the clock is ticking, and
(07:23):
in the interview with CBS, Sherwin said that investigators had
obtained enough evidence to prove that at least some of
the rioters at the Capitol had engaged in sedition and
Merrit Garland went nuts, not about the sedition, about the interview.
Quoting the Post, Garland's top deputies were livid, and the
(07:46):
Attorney General himself was visibly upset. Several people familiar with
his reaction said the Attorney General, who was painstaking and
preparing his own public remarks, was especially angry at Sherwin
for speaking off the cuff. The Post says an underling
announced quote it appeared that that rules and procedures were
not complied with regarding the television interview, and that Sherwin
(08:09):
had been referred to the department's internal Affairs Office Foreign
Ethics probe. So Merrick Garland investigated dc US attorney Sherwin.
He did not investigate Donald Trump. He did not investigate
Rudy Giuliani. He did not investigate Mark Meadows. He investigated
(08:31):
Michael Sherwin. Meanwhile, the aforementioned JP Cooney wanted to investigate
the connection between Rogers Stone and the Oathkeepers. Cooney wanted
the Oathkeeper's membership lists. The new investigation's chief, Thomas Wyndham,
noticed the intersections between the fake elector's plan and the
(08:52):
Trump war room at the Willard Hotel on January sixth,
and Wyndham wanted to subpoena the billing information from that hotel.
The response from the DOJ Assistant Director, Stephen Dantono told Wyndham,
I'm not serving subpoenas on the friggin Willard. One of
Biden's first appointees at DOJ, Matt Axelrod, was even more
(09:13):
self righteously and more what a boutistically outraged quote. Imagine
if we had requested membership lists for Black Lives Matter.
There it is there. It is at the highest levels
of the Justice Department. There is the same desire to
make sure if you've got a Democrat on CNN, you
know have to have a Republican the same willingness to
(09:37):
say that Black Lives Matter protests are the same thing,
or are vaguely reminiscent of, or are in the same
universe as an attempt to overthrow the government of the
United States by illegal electoral college subterfuge and by violence,
and by coercion of federal and state employees, and by
fraud and by judicial malfeasance, five pronged coup attempt, maybe
(10:02):
with the military behind it. Over here, surprisingly peaceful protests
of police murders with occasional tangential connected looting. They're the
same thing. Robert E. Lee, Martin, Luther King, same guy.
So we can't subpoena the one if we don't subpoena
(10:22):
the other. And the magic rule Book says we can't
subpoena the other. The rule Book is our sanctified version
of making sure every New York Times story has a
rebuttal from that Ohio diner. It is the same kind
of life and death struggle to protect what really matters
in this nation, our institutional image at the Department of Justice,
(10:46):
and the rule book, ladies and gentlemen of the Department,
is all that stands between us here inside the Department
of Justice and the greatest nightmare that could befall our nation,
damage to the reputation of the Department of Justice. Without
our institutional reputation, we might as well be living in
the jungle. And and I didn't hear anything else that
(11:07):
bureaucrat said, because that's when one of the Trump guys
burst into the conference room and hit him in the
head with a flagpole. It was not the eighteenth century
Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke who said the only
thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good
men to do nothing. And it doesn't really matter if
(11:28):
he said it or whoever else might have, because whoever
said it, he was talking about Merrick Garland inside the
Justice Department, The Post wrote yesterday, in a passage that
would have been laugh out loud funny if it had
not been so earnestly, thoroughly and tragically true. Some have
complained that the Attorney General's determination to steer clear of
(11:50):
any claims of political motive has chilled efforts to investigate
the former president. Quote you couldn't use the TEA word,
said one former Justice official briefed on prosecutors discuss essions.
You couldn't use the T word, Can I use the
(12:15):
F word? Fire Merrick Garland, because whether he planned it
this way or he did not, we now do not
have enough time to put Donald Trump in prison before
the twenty twenty four election. We don't caught red handed
twenty seven different times in two hundred and twenty seven
different plots, confessed again last night, and we're still going
(12:40):
to have to beat this son of a bitch in
a political battle that a whole group of fascists understands
is life or death for them, their paradise of authoritarian
rule of America for life, or their death figurative or literal,
at the hands of the Justice Department after Merrick Garland
(13:01):
finishes dusting the magic rule book. By the way, the
Post article does have heroes, any one of whom could
be the next Attorney General, and I'd be fine with it.
It is clear that early last year, when US District
Judge David O. Carter set off a big enough fire
(13:22):
in Garland's office to get him to actually move on
the elector's coup, that was because he was reviewing John
Eastman's emails, and Judge Carter said Trump had quote more
likely than not unquote committed federal crimes in trying to
obstruct or alter the count of the electoral College. Even
Garland noticed, this is fine if we somehow do still
(13:47):
save the democracy despite this catalog of dj forrest blindness.
The Post article reminds us Benny Thompson and Liz Cheney
and Jamie Raskin and Cassidy Hutchinson and Eric Hirshman and
the rest of them should have statues built for them
right now today. Well, that slim chance remains that something
(14:11):
more can go wrong. Fire Merrick Garland now, because at
the heart of it, he is what has gone wrong,
and thanks to the Post, we now know exactly what
he screwed up, and I for one do not want
(14:31):
to find out what he can screw up next. Either way,
there seems to be much handwringing because they're rather useful
but on inspiring. Charlie Savage New York Times piece on
the complications of prosecuting Trump or anybody else and using
classified information to do it, mentions in its eighth paragraph
(14:54):
the term plea deal. A defense lawyer with security clearance
underscores how complicated classified document cases are by saying, quote,
it's routine, if not invariable, that you'll get a plea
offer in a case in which the government says, if
we have to provide classified discovery to you, this offer
is no longer on the table, and those can be
(15:14):
very attractive plea offers unquote. This does not mean they
are offering Trump a plea deal, which, given the fact
that Merrick Garland has run our clock out for us,
might be a wonderful thing if it forever kept Trump
out of office. Again. More importantly, it does not mean
he would ever accept one. Trump is still at that
(15:35):
stage he was the day after the Miami indictments, in
which he insisted he might consider a plea deal in
which they gave him a lot of money. That's how
crazy he was. That's how crazy he is. Trump is insane.
You need to remind yourself that every day, Good morning world.
Trump is insane. He did an interview with Brett bar
(15:55):
for Fox last night and said, quote, the only way
the Archives could ever get this stuff back would be, please, please, please,
could we have it back? Unquote. Apart from the fact
that he confessed again, and that they did ask him please, please,
please for months. The necessity of cruelty to his existence
(16:17):
is on display in that sentence. Oh, he might do
it if you plead and grubble enough. This is whom
Merrick Garland did not want to be seen being unfair to.
Although Trump was smart enough to lie to Fox and
deny he ever had actual, physical, secret plans for a
war on Iran and to deny that he ever admitted
(16:40):
he had those plans, even though it's on tape, Trump
confessed a couple more times, just for good measure, or
maybe just to remind us what an idiot Merrit Garland is.
Bear asked him, why didn't you just give it all back? Quote,
because I had boxes. I want to go through the
boxes and get all my personal things out. I don't
(17:01):
want to hand that over to Nara yet. And I
was very busy, as you've sort of before I send
boxes over, I have to take all my things out.
These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things. He
has a psychopathic attachment to artifacts and documents and records
and filings. One psychologist I know explained to me that
(17:24):
people like that are obsessed with the personal possession of
physical records in that way, because it doesn't just validate
their existence, but because their own connection to reality and
the other people in the world is so tenuous that
it is sometimes the only way they can assure themselves
that they are actually alive, that they actually exist at
(17:47):
the moment. See, I have this document. It proves I
was president. It proves I am alive. One tweeter buttoned
this up last night twenty twenty four, Laney complaining to
Brett Baar that his interview with Trump was invalid because quote,
(18:11):
you are wok, Woka, you are wok. This is who
we are up against, mister attorney general. But yeah, whatever
we do, Mark, don't use that t word. Also of
(18:34):
interest here today, I want to circle back to the
prospect of Jack Smith filing more sets of charges against Trump,
maybe for interfering with Pence counting the electoral ballots. Also,
I want to call for the firing of the president
of MSNBC. Sorry I forgot to mention that. Also for
people to take a long hard look at why none
of those backup hosts I spun off from my show
(18:57):
at MSNBC have spoken out against what the president of
MSNBC has just said when she was asked if she
would put Donald Trump on MSNBC in a live town
hall format, because after what she said, I would have
walked off the set. There are two things she did
(19:18):
not say. One was no, no way, never, are you nuts?
And the other was that's next. This is countdown. This
is countdown with Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines,
(19:42):
some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline thirty Rockefeller Center,
New York, New York, just the one PostScript today. Once again,
let me apologize for what MSNBC has become, especially how
the primetime lineup they made up out of my former
fill in host has completely abrogated its responsibility to stand
(20:03):
up against the cookie cutter, unabashed both sides ism in
its own management. The president of MSNBC has been asked
at a media forum, a thumbsucking convention, if Trump somehow
came to her and asked to do a town hall
on MSNBC, would she say yes and put him on
(20:25):
in a town hall live? And she did not say,
my god, no. We believe in democracy and we respect
our audience, by the way, and we are grateful for
their trust and their money. She did not say that
because she is a fast talking corporate shill with no
more sense of news than has a fire hydrant. In fact,
(20:46):
she said quote it would be a conversation, and she
talked about her newsgroup, and she talked about parameters, and
she talked about controlling the environment and other corporate gobbledegook.
When if you actually want people who watch MSNBC to
keep watching MSNBC, you have to answer God no, or
at least mock the question, or do something to just
(21:09):
signal but yes, you're in it for the money. But
every day you do check back in on reality just
to make sure it's still there. Now, when you hear
the tape of what I heard, you will wonder where
is Rachel Maddow's criticism of this idiocy? Where is Lawrence o'donald's,
(21:30):
Where's Chris Hayes, Where is Jen Saki's? And the answer is,
I'm sorry, they're all out busy cashing their checks. And
don't dismiss the idea that you can't stand up to
your boss and live. I did it. I did it
at MSNBC. I did it with Matdow threatened to walk
(21:53):
out to the face of the president of NBC, the
whole network, not just MSNBC. And I will recount that
story in a moment, because it happened this time of
year in two thousand and nine, and all of television
is like this, always has been, but particularly so in
TV news. Management wants the money. In Bill Paley's famous
(22:14):
or infamous expression, it does not want the stomach ache.
And if you were on the air, you either eventually
have a showdown with management or you succumb to management
and you just keep cashing those checks silently. My second
time through MSNBC, I lasted there for eight years without succumbing,
and I could have stayed there the twelve years since,
(22:35):
and they asked me to go back formally once at
informally three other times. And if I had, I would
have heard this from MSNBC president Rashida Jones, and I
would have madowed or o'donald or hazed or Sakid, and
you had never heard this story, which took place from
(22:58):
an Axio's media event with Jones. More likely I would
have done something like that for a while and then
had the showdown in twenty and fourteen instead of twenty eleven. Anyway,
here's the quote. One of our big focuses is to
find ways to hear from voters. How do we get
to the people in the middle of the country who
(23:19):
are not necessarily where our offices are, and how do
we really immerse ourselves into those communities and tell their stories?
Unquote yes, yes, yes, it's more of that in this
Ohio diner stuff. It's more. Don't take a point of view,
especially the point of view of your viewers. Even though
(23:41):
from its second year on the air, MSNBC has always
had a point of view. Now it has never been
the same point of view for very long. First it
was anti Bill Clinton. Then I sort of forced it
to become to hell with all the politicians. Then it
was the two thousand and two attempt to go further
(24:03):
to the right than Fox was. And then just before
they were literally going to turn the network into all
prison documentaries starting at nine o'clock every night, I started
pointing out the hypocrisies of Bush and the Iraq War,
and suddenly MSNBC had purpose and profit. And that is
(24:23):
why MSNBC did not go out of business in two
thousand and five or off the air anyway, and why
it did not go off the air in two thousand
and nine, which is the story I will tell you
in a moment, But first, here is the actual clip
of Rashida Jones, who is actually the president of MSNBC,
in conversation with Sarah Fisher of Axios and absolutely, steadfastly
(24:47):
refusing to give you anywhere to stand on if you
want to actually believe that MSNBC would turn down a
live Trump town hall or that Meadow would walk off
in protest, because no, and no. The question from ms
Fisher was simply, would you put Trump on in a
(25:09):
town hall format? So I have a couple thoughts there. One.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
We're having conversations with all of the candidates across our
entire newsgroup about how to bring their point of view
to the audience. There are lots of ways to do that,
whether it's a live interview, whether it's a tape interview,
whether it's a town hall, whether it's a debate. We
still have five hundred and five days left until election.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Day, counting down not the down counting, and I.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Think there are many ways that you can approach that.
I don't know that a town hall tomorrow is something
that our audience is looking for any audience. But as
you look at the next five hundred and five days,
I think you'll see a lot of that across the portfolio.
If Trump came to you specifically and says I want
to be on your air to do it, would you
say yes?
Speaker 1 (25:50):
What I say? Yes? Today?
Speaker 2 (25:51):
It would be a conversation. I think you have to
put parameters about how to control the environment.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yeah, it would be a conversation. I think you have
to put parameters about how to control the environment. Shameful,
wrong answer. I would say she should be fired immediately.
But she does not run MSNBC. It's her boss who
(26:16):
runs MSNBC. She is a figurehead. But shouldn't she be
fired just so people who still watch MSNBC have some
belief that no, they would not platform Trump, especially not live,
some belief that they're not just playing the MSNBC audience
(26:39):
and pretending to believe all this stuff just to get
you to watch, that they actually have a point of view,
that it actually matters to them, that the American democracy
means more to them than the ratings do. Because if
your answer to whether or not you're going to put
Trump on live for a town hall, even in the
wildest theoretical impossibility. If your answer is not no, fu,
(27:02):
you should be fired, and if not fired, the people
there who make the money that pays Rashida Jones's salary
should now threaten to walk out unless she at minimum
states clearly and without those Weasley corporate prevarications, that no
way MSNBC would never platform Trump live, not even for
that amount of money. And so I apologize to you
(27:26):
again for what MSNBC has become. As I heard that clip,
I flashed back to this time of year, June fourteen
years ago. We spent all that month, most of July
and a lot of August doing this. First management was
going to take MSNBC off the air, then Mattow and
I threatened to take MSNBC off the air. Then finally
I had to spend what little political capital I had
(27:48):
left to keep MSNBC on the air, and frankly, as
of today, I regret I kept MSNBC from going out
of business because of this. If Trump came to.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
You specifically and says I want to be on your
air to do it, would you say yes? When I
say yes today, it would be a conversation. I think
you have to put parameters about how to control the environment.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah, often it happens in television that there are events
so traumatic that the cliche about your life flashing before
your eyes does not apply, but an equally hackneyed one
about your career flashing before your eyes might. The executive
producer of our MSNBC newscast Countdown, Isy Povich, and I
were on the grown up elevator to the office of
(28:32):
NBC President Jeff Zooker on the fifty second floor of
thirty Rock in New York, Summoned there by some garbled
message from MSNBC President Phil Griffin about MSNBC being taken
off the air, I was mumbling to Izzy, Sundry imprecations
and reminiscences, eight freaking months is we spent twelve freaking
(28:53):
months forcing them to create Meadows show? At last eight
months all the crap prompter practice getting her over her
fears rockets past CNN only eight months of showing. Now
it's all gone. Izzy reminded me it was not just
Rachel's show that was threatened, which was why poor Court
Harson from Hardball was already upstairs along with poor Ed
(29:15):
Schultz and Phil Griffin. At Rachel's executive producer Bill Wolf,
and some clown from Morning Joe and a couple of
other MSNBC executives and us. I know, I know, I
did the line from the drunken Irishman from Hitchcock's The Birds,
complete with the bad accent. It's the end of the world,
I said, Jeff Immelt is going to take MSNBC off
(29:37):
the air. I didn't need any of my overwrought visions
from two years earlier of the future of liberal news
commentary falling out the NBC window to its death on
the rink. This was the real thing. The chairman of
General Electric was threatening to open the window himself, throw
us out the window himself, and then race down to
(29:57):
the pavement to stomp on our dying remains himself. Poor
Ed Schultz heard Jeff's Zucker say those words, and he
had screwed up his face and tilted his head like
a puppy hearing a car crash. He had not believed
it the first time. He had not believed at the
second time. Zucker said it a third time. Immelt is
(30:18):
going to take MSNBC off the effing air at, Schultz groaned.
After weeks of Griffin's coaxing he had finally just moved
from Nebraska to New York the preceding weekend, Yet he
was still, somehow only the second most strung out person
in the room. You, Zucker shouted at me, You're the
smartest one in the room. What the f do we
(30:40):
do now? I'll confess I was shaken by this because
it appeared for once that Zucker was not being sarcastic.
I had never before seen him flush nor flustered. This
was a guy who wore fleece in July. Now he
was beat red and sweating. Sometimes he knew what he
was doing, and, as his opposition to hiring Matdow had proved,
(31:01):
sometimes he didn't know what he was doing, but he
always acted as the most confident man in the galaxy.
But now he literally had no clue what to do next.
And he not only could not ignore my advice, he
desperately needed it. This situation and that color on his
face were almost worth watching the corporate fascists nuke my network.
(31:23):
I asked Zucker to explain what happened? You got Dan, well,
know what happened. Zucker moved towards me, and I stood
up and I told him I would see myself out.
He stopped, remembering that he did indeed actually need my help.
I'm sorry, I apologize. This isn't rational, this is immelt.
Last week sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped. He told Murdoch he
(31:44):
wasn't gonna take any more of what you were saying
about him on the air. So he did a piece
last night accusing GE of manufacturing the components that been
used in roadside bombs that were built in a rand
to kill Americans in Iraq, which is true legally, that's
legally true. They found roadside bombs that had like thirty
year old GE transistors or or TV tubes from nineteen
(32:06):
fifty four, or is something in them? Legally, GE did
manufacture components that were used in roadside bombs that were
built in around to kill Americans in Iraq. So o'reiley
puts this on his effing show as a lead story,
and then Fox sent two camera crews in this little
crap producer from O'Riley show, Jesse Waters something to steak
(32:27):
emmelt out and chase him around the GE shareholders meeting
in Charlotte. Zucker finally came up for air and I
jumped in, why didn't emmelt have six camera crews to
stake out the two Fox crews and chase them around
in Charlotte. I mean, isn't that one of our news
hubs Charlotte doesn't emmelt own like twenty camera crews. There,
(32:47):
he bring a camera crew, You'll bring two camera crews.
Zoocker started to not like me again. Now you suggest
that where were you in? All right, never mind, it
doesn't matter. Emmel says, if there's one more story on
Bill O'Reilly about ge manufacturing components for roadside bombs in Iraq,
he's takening MSNBC off the air immediately. It'll just be
(33:08):
twenty four hours of lock up and I'm fired and
you're fired. And then he pointed at Chris Matthews, producer
and Matthews is fired. And he pointed at poor Ed
Schultz and you're fired, and Ed whimpered, So smart asked,
what the f do we do? I feigned all the
nonchalants I could feign. If I could have lit a
shroot by striking a match on the sole of my boot,
(33:31):
I would have. It's manageable. But Jeff, why is emmelt
so worked up about what O'Reilly said about him. Only
O'Reilly's nut job viewers actually believe any of that crap.
Nobody at GE, nobody investing in GE, could possibly believe
we're building components for roadside bombs. Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's
(33:55):
mother believes it. All the heads in the room turned
toward the president of NBC. Missus. Emmelt back in Cincinnati
is a devote did Bill O'Reilly viewer watches him every night,
sees this, calls him, says, Sonny, why are you manufacturing
components that were used in roadside bombs built in Iran
to kill Americans in Iraq? I had not expected that,
(34:21):
I said to Zucker. So so he'll really burn what
two hundred million a year in profits just between Rachel
and me? Because his mom watches Bill O'Reilly, Zucker got
angry again. You bet your effing ass he will now
you said it was manageable. How how the hef do
we manage it? Ulberman? Just a minute? How old is she?
(34:43):
Zucker summoned all his annoyance. How old is who Eml's mother?
How old is she? Jeff Zucker was really annoyed. How
the F should I know? You're missing the point. I
had him really worked up, nearly to the boiling point.
It was great, guess, Zucker spluttered, I don't know. He's
(35:05):
in his mid fifties. She's got to be eighty ninety something.
I stifled a fake yawn. Yeah, you're right, probably closer
to ninety now that I think of it. So the
problem is she watches O'Reilly. She tells him what's on Fox?
What O'Reilly's saying about Ge. Well, I think you have
a simple solution. I'd say the first thing you do
(35:26):
is you send over a couple of big guys to
her house and you pull the freaking cable out of
the wall. Zuker actually gasped, My producer, is Hepovich unsuccessfully
stifled a laugh, and I saw Rachel crack a smile.
Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Olderman. I crossed my legs. Oh,
it's a little funny. And anyway, it's not essential. If
(35:48):
the problem is emailed is threatening to take the network
off the air because O'Reilly is avenging himself against me
by attacking him and attacking Ge. The short term solution
is easy, and in fact it is manageable. The long
term solution that's not easy and that's not manageable. But
the short term one that's simple. Rest of this week,
next week, maybe the week after that. Even we just
(36:10):
don't mention Fox News on MSNBC something resembling a smile
across Zucker's face. It made him look a little less
like a lizard person and more like a monkey with glasses.
You do that forever? No, not forever. I would not
do that, I said to Bias time. Yes, but remember
(36:34):
who was it who was in my office last winter
telling me that I should go on the air and
just to f with Fox? I should ask why Rupert
Murdoch was still running a huge international media company like
News Corp, despite all the reports that he's suffering from dementia,
even though there haven't been any reports that he's suffering
from dementia. For everybody's sake, here, who was that again
(36:54):
who told me to do that? Zucker's goodwill was gone again?
Obviously that was me. What's your point? My point is,
we built this new brand of ours organically, and a
couple of themes, a couple of statements of principle, and
one of them is to use your words just to
f with Fox? If we don't f with Fox for
(37:16):
a couple of weeks at the start of the summer,
who's gonna care, Who's gonna notice? But like after two weeks,
three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice, and the TV
writers are gonna notice, and then the crap we'll hit
from every direction you can think of. Temporary freeze on
mentioning Fox and mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdoc fine, permanent freeze.
(37:37):
Might as well let Immelt turn us off in the morning.
After all, I don't think Zooker actually heard the last
part about em Milt turning us off. After all, the
lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe,
he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He
looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Izzy and
(37:58):
at Phil Griffin and me, You and you and you
and I will we will talk tomorrow, maybe tonight, and
we'll all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox, anybody,
are we clear? Nothing on the air about Fox. Silence
in the room, then the assorted noises of people rising,
mixed with attempts to resuscitate poor Ed Schultz, somebody Matthew's
(38:19):
guy Harson, I think, was almost at the door out
of Zucker's office, an office so big that it was
to steal the Ring Lardner line, the size of the
Yale Bowl, but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up,
quietly but firmly. Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me.
I will not have the content of my show dictated
(38:42):
by any corporations, including the one I work for. Remember
this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt
that way then, and especially one I don't work for.
I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience
wondering what else I have not told them. I don't
do a lot about Fox on my show, but if
there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
this freeze. I will report that story. And if I'm
(39:03):
prevented from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,
Zucker barked Phil Olberman, is he stay? When the rest
of the room had cleared, Zucker blew air out of
his mouth as if it were smoke. He gestured violently
at me with his right arm. I told you she
was a mistake. You didn't listen to me. I told
(39:23):
you now, she's your problem. All of this is your problem.
Get her back on the reservation or else. Now I
had run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh, I'll get
her back on the reservation, Jeff. But if you think
this is my problem, just think about what happens if
he really does take us off the air, or if
it just gets out that he threatened to take us
(39:44):
off the air because his mother didn't like what Fox
said about him. That's my problem. Uh uh, that's your problem.
And it's the problem of the CEO of the frickin'
sixth largest corporation in the world, who makes his business
(40:04):
decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars of profits based
on what his mother says. At this point, Phil Griffin
managed to pull Zucker away and Izzy and I made
for the door, saying nothing until we were in the elevator. Finally,
she asked, what are you going to do about Rachel?
(40:25):
I looked straight ahead. I have depth perception issues while
traveling forward, backwards, up or down. Yeah, if I know
what I'm gonna do about her. But I got an idea.
I mean, the only person she was really talking to
in there was herself. This isn't a brand new surprise
success for her anymore. This is successful. This is what
nine ten months she's successful. She said she was once
(40:47):
a dancing cell phone outside of cell phone store outside
of Boston. She ain't going back to that. I went
to talk to Rachel about an hour later and reassured her.
I mentioned that powerful as Fox was, they were not
going to be able to re invade Iraq by themselves,
and unless she moved, moved it way closer than it
had been, nobody would cross her censorship line. And I said,
(41:09):
just give me as much time as the French government
took before fleeing during the Nazi advance in nineteen forty.
I said, give me, what was it, thirty three days?
Give me thirty three days. If we aren't back where
we were this morning, we can both quit on the air.
I mean that'd be fun, right. Three nights later, well
after midnight on a Friday, my NBC issued BlackBerry buzzed
(41:31):
with a quick email from Rachel maddow. Hey. She wrote,
don't necessarily quote me because I'm really drunk, but just
make the best deal you can for us. I trust you.
We don't need to do Fox all the time. I
never do Fox stories anyway. I just had to say that,
and this is the best platform we will ever have.
Well she was right, at least for the time being.
(41:53):
A couple of weeks later, I had to sneak in
a script that blasted Fox, and at ten thirty at
home that night, I got a call from a drunken
Phil Griffin shouting into the phone, I have a family.
Zucker had to go meet with Roger Ayles secretly inside
thirty Rock and I hope they remember to clean the
room afterwards. And mmelt even had to meet with Murdoch.
(42:16):
And then, happily, some idiot Ge executive decided to boast
to The New York Times about getting us little talent
children under control and a big deal with the executives
over at Fox and how they'd settled everything, which blew
up the whole deal instantly, because the moment the deal
went public, NBC looked so stupid, and even NBC News
(42:37):
was now risked. The only point of the whole thing
was to keep the Immelts and the Zuckers and the
Griffins and the ales Is from throwing us and our
little island of liberal commentary out of that window at
thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow and I would be
constantly reminded in the ensuing years, thirty Rock has a
(42:57):
lot of freaking windows. Just quickly, because I did one
of these podcasts yesterday on the holiday, A pretty good,
if I must say so myself, and I'm the only
one talking here, pretty good state of the state address
on the prospects of Jack Smith filing additional sets of charges,
maybe four or even five more sets of charges against
(43:19):
Trump was heard, and a good time was had by all. Now,
if you've heard it already from Monday, hit stop now,
because I'm going to replay it because not everybody heard it.
(43:41):
I am beginning to believe that we may have wildly
underestimated how many more things Jack Smith is about to
indict Trump. Four could the Special Counsel in fact be
preparing now to indict Trump for illegally pressuring Mike Pence.
(44:02):
There is reason today to believe that the number of
new separate indictments of Trump by Smith could be as
many as four, maybe even five. Based on both reporting
and analysis by the people who have been right so far,
the general consensus seemed to have been there would be
two new ones. First, the fake elector's schemes, since there
were fake electors seen entering the court building housing the
(44:24):
Special Council's Washington Grand Jury that almost exactly the same
moment that Smith was announcing the document's case in Miami
ten days ago. There has also been consistent dribbing and
drabbing coming out of what appears to be a very
serious Smith investigation of what at first seems like an
almost sidebar to that part of the Trump massive coup plan,
the gradual assembling of evidence that when Trump made his
(44:46):
desperate pleas to the yokels in November and December twenty
twenty to raise funds to fight the stolen election, he
knew damn well and acknowledged, damn well, it was not
a stolen election, and thus all that fundraising was fraud.
That January sixth fraud stuff was puzzling in a way
because while it's like tax evasion, fraud is easier to
(45:09):
prove than say, an intricate plot to overthrow the government
using stochastic terrorism and deniable incitements of mobs and milities,
it did seem a little off the point. Do not
get me wrong here. If they can jail Trump forever
based on stealing box cars full of gold rustolium that
he's sprayed on his head, fine, Still there is a
(45:33):
sadness about this. He tried to overthrow the democracy. We
need to put him on trial for trying to overthrow
the democracy. Well, we may yet do so. Ryan Goodman
from Just Security why cite here frequently even though I
don't know him, and only because he knows his stuff,
told the Bill Crystal podcast that he thinks Jack Smith
(45:55):
is quote going to indict Trump for the false slate
of elector's scheme, and with Goodman adding that the odds
Fannie Willis indicts on false electors and election interference in
Argia are at ninety percent. Trump could then face twin
federal and state cases on overlapping topics. And then Goodman
added something that took my breath away, indicting Trump for
(46:16):
false electors quote and quite probably possibly the pressure campaign
against Mike Pence. Wait what Goodman sends? The odds on
Jack Smith indicting Trump about Pence at sixty to seventy
percent pressuring the Vice president. Goodman says, quoting him again
(46:37):
is independent of whether or not he Trump thought he
won the election. He can think he won the election,
doesn't matter. But you can't try to coerce a public
official to defy their legal duties, which is just to
count the votes. Goodman does not mention this, but you
will remember that Stuart Rhodes and some of the other
oathkeepers were prosecuted for and convicted of interfering with Congress's
(47:02):
ability to complete its legal duties. Ponder for just a
moment the prospect the eternal carnival of Smith indicting Trump,
who is running for the Republican nomination, for attempting to
chorus Pence, who is running for the Republican nomination. Oh
and necessarily having Pence testify against Trump, either before Trump
(47:23):
is nominated or before the election. So instead of two,
that would be three separate prongs to Smith's pursuit of Trump,
four if you count the thirty seven documents indictments already
brought documents stole an election, fundraising fraud, January sixth, false
electors January sixth, pressure campaign against Mike Pence. Goodman also
(47:46):
does not see the January sixth stuff waiting out in
the hall. According again, I think it's very likely that
the Special Council indicts him about January sixth, in the summer.
He wants to do it by the summer to avoid
doing it much later. And if that is not enough
to chew on, Goodman thinks the odds are fifty to
fifty that Smith will fe other expand the case against
(48:06):
Trump on the stolen documents and add further charges to it,
but not in Florida. As I've noted before, Goodman notes
that the charging document released to the public concurrent with
the indictments in Miami was very specific about the crimes
Trump had committed and the individual events. The Florida charging
document references the dissemination of defense information to people not
(48:27):
authorized to see it, and refers explicitly to both the
classified map Trump showed people and that Mark Millie military
plan for war on Iran, the stuff Trump is caught
on tape going over with the Mark Meadows ghostwriters. All
of that stuff is in the Florida charging document that
has now been in circulation for ten days, but there
(48:48):
have been no charges about it. Goodman's explanation for this
anomaly is simple. Trump's crimes of stealing and keeping the
documents happened in Florida telling people what was in the
documents happened in New Jersey. So if Goodman is right
about Jersey and more documents and more charges, that's four
or five separate prosecutions, depending on your definitions. Documents could
(49:11):
theoretically just be considered parts A and B of the
same case. And if you're tired of one guy speculating
about one other guy speculating, good news everyone. There is
hard and firm information from Jack Smith in court paperwork
he filed last Friday in which he said that a
protective order needed to be placed on anything produced by
(49:34):
the legal discovery conducted by the Trump team because the
stuff found in discovery would contain information about quote ongoing
investigations that could quote identify uncharged individuals Mark Meadows. So
there is no question Smith is still seeking new charges,
(49:55):
and obviously they are against Trump, and obviously he has
unrevealed witnesses. And we know from one of the flood
of New York Times reports, this one from about six
weeks ago, that Smith is still active on the subject
of Trump and things that happened in New Jersey. The
Times report from the beginning of May was that there
had been quote previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization,
(50:18):
which sought records pertaining to Trump's dealings with a Saudi
backed professional golf venture known as Live Golf, which Trump
has so far dealt with not at Mari Lago or
his other golf courses, but at his Bedminster club in
New Jersey. Goodman didn't mention this. The Times didn't mention this.
Nobody's mentioned this. It is officially still inside the realm
(50:39):
of political science fiction. But if you want to ratchet
up the whole golf thing one more notch, you could,
as I previously have envisioned Trump trading information to the
Saudis so that they would make the big Trump signs
on the golf course one square foot larger than originally
agreed to. You know he would, you know he would?
You know he would. There is also the gathering prospect
(51:04):
of Trump being hoist with his own petard. The Times
also noted that five separate statements inside the charging document
are quotations from Trump during the lockeher upstage of the
twenty sixteen presidential campaign. There is a belief among experts
in the field that these statements could all be introduced
(51:25):
as evidence at trial to show not that Hillary Clinton
was right, although that would be a pleasing side effect,
but that Trump knew exactly what the penalties were for
stealing boxes of defense information and classified documents on the
subject of experts in the field, one of them has
now chewed up Trump and spit him out for the
(51:45):
second consecutive week. I have explained previously that my having
no use for William Barr is second generation. His father
arrived as the new headmaster of my prep school as
I graduated, and the bastard nearly bankrupted the place. But
like Ryan Goodman, Bill Barr is, at least at the moment.
(52:06):
He was asked on Face the Nation yesterday if he
thinks Trump is a target, specifically in January sixth prosecutions. Quote.
I'm actually starting to think they will pull the trigger
on that, Barr replied, and I would expect it to
be this summer unquote. Barr was also asked if he
had gotten any inside insight from the Justice Department. He
once ran and he refused to comment, which is a
(52:29):
strange thing to do if you have not gotten inside insight.
Barr also took some satisfying shots at Trump. Quote, he
will always put his own interests and gratifying his own
ego ahead of everything else, including the country's interests. No crap, Bill,
that's Trump's physical or emotional illness. He's like a nine
year old, a defiant nine year old kid who's always
(52:50):
pushing the glass toward the edge of the table, defying
his parents to stop him from doing it. It's a
means of self assertion and exerting his dominance over other people. Well, yes, Bill,
but six a defiant six year old child. For the
first time in years. There were two different Sunday News
(53:11):
interviews that may have contained actual news breadcrumbs because Pence's
former chief of staff, Mark Short also went on one
of them, the one on Fox, and he brought up
another topic that had slipped through the cracks after it
had suddenly reappeared in the middle of a sexual abuse
suit against Rudy Giuliani. Short said, quote, one of the
(53:31):
most unseemly parts of the end of our administration was
the pardons Donald Trump gave to cocaine traffickers, to family members,
to people guilty of violent crimes. It was indefensible. Short
then added the money quote, literally, people giving seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars to lobbyists trying to get pardons. Unquote, Okay,
(53:54):
what's with that. Giuliani's alleged victim says his price to
take a pardon to Trump was two million to be
split with Trump certainly like the prospective indictments on defraud
his own cultists to raise money to solve a stolen
election that was not stolen. There's got a money trail
a mile long for Jack Smith on these million dollar
pardons for crying out loud. There are three other new
(54:19):
morsels here to savor. Chris Christie suggested that based on
his days as a prosecutor, the likelihood is two thirds
of Jack Smith's case. Well, case says well, panoply of
cases is still below the surface. Witnesses evidence, god knows what.
Ryan Goodman jumped on that in the Crystal podcast and
(54:40):
asked a rhetorical question that is absolutely fascinating. That tape
of Trump talking to Mark Meadow's ghostwriters describing the secret
Iran war plans. He cannot give them because they're classified,
but he will describe to them because he's a compulsive talker.
Goodman says, that's a tape in essence of Trump narrating
(55:02):
his own crimes as he committed. It's them a confession
in real time. More intriguingly, Goodman asks what happens if
anyone of the dozens of top news organizations pursuing this
the political story, the foremost political story in American history.
What if one of those news organizations were to get
a copy of that tape and post it or put
(55:25):
it on television or on TikTok, not a transcript, but
Trump's actual crime, in Trump's actual voice, as Trump actually
commits it. Party down. One thing we do know is
if that happens, Trump's lawyers are not exactly poised to
(55:47):
stop the tape from being made public. She is hardly
the lead on the document's case, but they are still
letting Alina Haba make public appearances on Trump's behalf. I
guess on the theory that Christina Bob is even dumber.
Habba spoke to the throng outside the Miami courthouse. She
also went on a Breitbart show and said that before
(56:08):
there was a trial, quote, we need a fair opportunity
to depose people and see what their answers are to
some of the things we have questions about. Haba said
she wanted people under oath explaining the raid, in other words,
the FBI search at Mary A Lago. It is quite
clear from that demand and that part just there about
(56:30):
a fair opportunity to depose people, that this Habba is
under the impression that in a criminal case, the defendant
gets to take depositions from the prosecutors from the FBI.
I mean, I took one communications law class as a
(56:50):
junior in college forty six years ago this fall, and
even I know that criminal defendants don't get to cross
examine the special Council. You could never tell Alina Habba
made her name in parking lot real estate law, could
you so? Before the punchline to all this the additional
(57:12):
comic relief, let's recap. Smith has charged Trump for mishandling
government documents in Florida. That's case one. He seems to
be on the verge of indictments on the phony fundraising scheme.
That would be case two. Ryan Goodman is confident Smith
will also indict Trump on the fake elector slates. That
would be number three. He has added in the prospect
of a Smith indictment against Trump for trying to coerce
(57:33):
Mike Pence that's four, and Goodman also thinks it's half
half that Smith will expand the document's case to include
illegal dissemination of defense information in New Jersey. And now, lastly,
the promised punchline quick peek into the parallel universe in
which Trump is completely innocent and he's being framed and
(57:55):
Joe Biden is going to resign by the end of
the week and then be jailed. Now, Rudy Giuliani says
one of the key players in the Reducts of the
Ukraine can abpiracy that exists only in his viagra addled
mind Barisma II Electric Boogaloo, that witness has died at
(58:15):
the same exact time Congressman Jamie Comber, who I think
is now beginning to regret fronting this story in which
they don't know if there's a source and the source
doesn't know, if there's a whistleblower, and the whistleblower doesn't know,
if there's a foreign oligarch, and the foreign oligarch doesn't know,
if there's seventeen audio tapes and some of them are dead.
(58:36):
I think Jamie Comer's beginning to regret this, and if
he wasn't before, now he is now because his newest
Congressional office disbursement filing has been made for the first quarter,
and it includes such thrillers as two hundred and forty
four dollars for janitorial services and fourteen dollars to mailchimp.
And then there is the four hundred and forty five
(58:57):
bucks Comber's office paid to the Wooden Casket Company LLLC
of Tompkville, Kentucky. The purpose listed on the file is
habituation expense. So Jamie Comer's witnesses are dead and Jamie
(59:18):
Comber's office has just bought a four hundred and forty
five dollars casket for somebody or something to live in
what Comber's hopes of reelection. I've done all the damage
(59:44):
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced and
performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneal, who are
the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John
Phillip Shanel, guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced
by TKO Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and
performed by no horns allowed. The sports music is the
(01:00:05):
Ulderman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by
Mitch Warren Davis curtviously of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was Stevie van Zandt, and everything else was pretty
much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight
hundred and ninety sixth day since Donald Trump's first attempted
coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
(01:00:27):
Arrest him again while we still can, mister Attorney General.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman.
Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
(01:00:48):
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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