May 22, 2023 • 42 mins
EPISODE 207: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: If we do not harden our stances and fight now and convince our less adamantine cohorts to do the same, we are going to lose this democracy. “Should the Democrats hold fast (on the debt ceiling) and not negotiate, or should they negotiate spending constraints with the Republicans,” reads the question in the new Harvard Harris Poll. 82 percent of Republicans say the Democrats should negotiate with Republicans. AND 41 PERCENT OF DEMOCRATS SAY DEMOCRATS SHOULD NEGOTIATE WITH THE REPUBLICANS. Are you KIDDING? Are you INSANE? Are you SUICIDAL? NEGOTIATE.
You do not negotiate with terrorists. You metaphorically shoot terrorists in the head. “I’m looking at the 14th Amendment. I think we have the authority. The question is, could it be done in time,” said the President from Hiroshima. “We have not come up with unilateral action that could succeed in a matter of two weeks or three weeks. That’s the issue. So it’s up to lawmakers.” With respect, Mr. President, it is NOT. Stop caving in to these fascists. They are NOT negotiating. They are NOT operating from any position of good faith or coherent philosophy except to try to destroy the economy and blame you and run against you on it and you have stated as much and you are still standing there with another metaphorical gun pointed against YOUR head hoping that you will find some middle road with the people who have spent the last 30 years dynamiting and jack-hammering all the middle roads.
I mean this is so obvious even POLITICO noticed it. POLITICO. Official stenographers of the 17th Century. Its LEAD story summarized where the quote “negotiations” unquote are, how Democrats have already caved and Republicans have gotten more intransigent. And even AXIOS noticed how determined Trump is to be elected Dictator, and how he is openly campaigning on eliminating democracy.
We need no more negotiations with Republicans. We need leaders who will fight and defeat them.
COMIC RELIEF: The boss of CNN's Chris Licht got one of the great thrills of life: the opportunity to give the commencement address at his alma mater. And he was booed and interrupted throughout by Boston University students angry over his Hollywood Studio's stance in the Writers' Strike. Or maybe they weren't booing and were just chanting "Zaz." Back at the ranch, a Trump social post over the weekend confirms my reporting from last week: that CNN is at minimum discussing a 2nd Trump Town Hall. And Anderson Cooper's viewers have left the silo and his show has now settled into 4th Place behind NewsMax - because obviously CNN is tanking to get the first draft choice.
B-Block (20:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: It is the greatest bad political soundbite of all time: greater than Herschel Walker's "erection," greater than Adlai Stevenson, greater than Sarah Palin's 117 entries. Also: never endorse somebody you can't be certain won't vote to overturn Roe v Wade later. And the Mississippi school forcing a trans girl to dress as a boy for graduation. (25:46) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Texas book banning affects Texas's poet laureate, Marge Greene denies she's a white supremacist so that must be somebody else's Confederate Flag. And George W. Bush makes a comeback.
C-Block (31:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: One By One Animal Advocates, a group which has saved about 30,000 animals in West Virginia in a decade, itself needs our rescue help (32:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: As we move towards the two-week mark of the CNN crisis, a look back at the worst management decision in TV history, so bad that after a week they told the poor guy he still had the title but he wasn't permitted to actually DO anything.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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. I'm
only going to say this once, as Democrats, as liberals,
(00:25):
as whatever you identify yourself. If we do not harden
our stances and fight now and convince our less adamantine
cohorts to do the same, we are going to lose
this democracy. Quote. Should the Democrats hold fast on the
debt ceiling and not negotiate or should they negotiate spending
constraints with the Republicans? Reads the question in the new
(00:47):
Harvard Harris poll. Eighty two percent of Republicans say the
Democrats should negotiate with Republicans, and christ a mighty forty
one percent of Democrats say Democrats should negotiate with the Republicans.
Are you kidding? Are you insane? Are you suicidal? Negotiate?
(01:09):
You do not negotiate with terrorists. You metaphorically shoot terrorists
in the head. The Democrats already negotiated on the debt ceiling.
In fact, the Democrats already caved on the debt ceiling.
And everybody seems to know this except Democrats in the Senate,
(01:30):
in the House, in the White House. I'm looking at
the fourteenth Amendment. I think we have the authority. The
question is could it be done in time? Said the
president from Hiroshima. We have not come up with unilateral
action that could succeed in a matter of two weeks
or three weeks. That's the issue. So it's up to lawmakers.
(01:51):
With respect, mister President, know the hell it is not
stop caving in to these bastard fascists. They are not negotiating,
They are not operating from any position of good faith
nor of coherent philosophy, except to try to destroy the
economy and to blame you for it and to run
(02:12):
against you on it. And you have stated you know
as much, and you are still standing there with another
metaphorical gun pointed against your head, hoping that you will
find some middle road with the people who've spent the
last thirty years dynamiting and jackhammering all the middle roads.
And you know exactly what the Republicans would do if
(02:34):
the details of this scenario were reversed. They would invoke
the fourteenth Amendment now and dare the opposition to take
them to court. And while the courts were ruling, they
would have ignored the court rulings and paid the debt anyway,
because that's the way it's done now, and some fanciful
good old days memory of Tip O'Neil and Ronald Reagan
(02:56):
having drinks about it and negotiating it was an imaginary
sugarcoating of Republican treachery then. And even the most recent example, well,
if anything just that evil happened no more recently than
thirty four years and three months ago. The time is dead,
mister President. This is metaphorical war against Republican fascists. Stop negotiating,
(03:19):
start remembering who the bullies are and who has the
goddamned hammer at the moment, and use it. I mean,
this is so obvious that even Politico noticed it. Politico
official stenographers of the seventeenth century. Its lead story summarized,
(03:41):
where the quote negotiations unquote are even Politico noticed. And
these are their numbered bullet points that Democrats have one
all but publicly acknowledged there will be no clean debt
sealing increase, and they'll have to give the Republicans something.
Two signaled a willingness to claw back unspent COVID funding
(04:03):
and overhauling permitting reform three already conceded ninety billion dollars
in spending cuts next year and a trillion over the
next decade, and four indicated the President is willing to
consider work requirements for some safety net programs. On the
other hand, the Republican's idea of meeting somewhere in the middle.
(04:26):
Even Poltico notices this is one tripling the length of
the spending caps. Two hinting that they're extremists, still want
the Inflation Reduction Act and student debt relief eliminated. Three
want all these spending cuts, but still want more money
to go to the Pentagon and for the border. Four
(04:49):
have refused the Democrats timid ask for just enforcing some
tax laws on the rich. Five doubled down on work requirements,
so another seven hundred thousand Americans would lose food assistance.
Six want restricted in immigration put into this deal. Seven
will not accept a reduction in spending through prescription drug reforms,
(05:12):
which they will not accept. Even Politico noticed this. I
mean the Progressives letter to the President said the damage
to caving to the Republicans here would be seven hundred
and eighty thousand more unemployed, a million two more without
(05:35):
food assistance, and up to twenty one million Americans stripped
of medicaid. You're going to run against that mister Biden
who says it's up to the lawmakers. The hell it is.
You know what's easy? Tell McCarthy today, here is your
(05:56):
climb down. You have until morning to agree to these
token cuts over here, so your party of terrorists does
not make you out as speaker tonight. But as of
nine am Tuesday, if you have not agreed to this,
these token cuts go away. And I invoke the fourteenth Amendment,
and I announced you have refused to negotiate, and I
(06:17):
refuse to negotiate with terrorists. And I make sure I
have the US Marine Corps band behind me as I
say this, playing God Bless America in the background. And
then when I'm done, I will repeat, mister McCarthy that
the United States does not submit to blackmail from terrorists,
foreign or domestic. And then we'll play the anthem and
we'll all sing. Forty one percent of Democrats think Democrats
(06:42):
should cave here. Holy crap, now it is possible. I
pray that this poll number is ridiculously high. I mean,
the guy in charge of the Harris Pole is the
man of this moment of capitulation. Mark Penn, Mark Penn
may be the least trustworthy, least honest, worst titian of
(07:05):
last half century. He's in charge of the Harris Paul. Now, guys,
guess Frank Lunz was busy. But even if it is
a wrong number and it's only twenty percent in favor
of Democrats caving to Republicans, what are you thinking? Has
life taught you nothing? You give in to bullies over
some far fetched pipe dream of comedy and unity, and
(07:29):
you expect that they'll stop, And like you more, you
expect that they will ever stop. Give the Republicans anything here,
give them everything here, and they still will find something
to blame Democrats for. That is what they are good at,
(07:51):
and of all times, of all times to do it. Now,
even Politico noticed, I read it and said, I'm not alone.
Someone else sees this. And what's more, he even Axios noticed.
You know the odds against Axios and Politico getting something
(08:12):
right on the same day. You know what Axios's leads
story was that Trump is basing his presidential campaign on
a promise that if he's elected, he'll turn the presidency
into a dictatorship. That if you ignore all the psychosis
and the bluster, and you striate all the policy promises.
(08:33):
Trump's twenty twenty five vision revealed. Even Axios noticed this.
Trump's twenty twenty five vision revealed is virtual totalitarianism. As
Axios my god. Even Axios sees this peril Axios as
Axios listed them. He'll pardon all the insurrectionists and militias.
(08:55):
He'll pull the rug out from under Ukraine and hand
it to Putin. He will demand the right to hire
and fire federal workers at will based on who is
personally loyal to him. He will demand the right to
hire and fire the officials who accredit our universities. He
will order diversity eliminated there, equity and inclusion programs eliminated
(09:16):
in universities and high schools where he can, and tenure
for teachers. He wants to defund, or maybe, if he's
in a better mood, just reshape the Department of Justice
and the intelligence agencies. He wants political monitors to decide
if the intelligence agencies are behaving in some sort of
Marxist fashion. He wants to deny Medicaid and Medicare to
(09:36):
hospitals and providers who offer gender affirming care, and go
after those who have already provided that care. He wants
to use the army against drug cartels and street crime
in America. He wants to build his own new cities
somewhere and pay white people to have children in them.
(09:56):
He wants to strip out residential segregation laws and stop
addressing poverty issues. He wants national concealed care reciprocity, so
somebody from Texas can carry a gun into your state
no matter what your laws are. This is all in Axios.
(10:20):
Trump is not only openly promising the end of virtually
every aspect of democracy and promising to use the military
and vigilante gangs and militias to enforce minority, white male
rule over everybody else, but he's doing it so boldly
that even Axios noticed it. And his party is bullying
(10:41):
the current president of the United States so openly that
even Politico noticed it. And what are Democrats doing to
out of five of us want to negotiate with these
Republican scumbags? And lord knows how many of our leaders
are trying to organize a nice two year long farewell
tour for Diane Feinstein because they see no good reason
we can't multi party like it's nineteen fifty nine. Are
(11:04):
you going to negotiate with Trump? What are you going
to negotiate with the man who owns his speakership to Trump?
Miss McCarthy, Mister President, When you see Kevin McCarthy, like
I said, you give him a climb down offer, and
you tell him he has until sunrise, and he leaves,
And just before he leaves, you call him back and
(11:25):
you put your hands on his shoulders in that way
of yours, and you whisper in his ear. Kevin, my
fellow irishman, take this with you from another son of
the old Sod, and you knee him in the groin
or and I am the last person on earth ever
to be considered a Star Wars fan, or be prepared
(11:49):
to hear this as soon as nineteen months from now.
I hope, after you've lost, and the Empire reigns over
the galaxy unopposed, you will find some comfort in the
knowledge that you fought according to the rules I can
(12:09):
offer you, and obviously myself, since I need it, only
this comic relief. Today. Yesterday, Chris Licht's boss gave the
commencement address at Boston University and was repeatedly booed and
interrupted by the graduating students. David Zaslav, the CEO of
(12:36):
Warner Bros. Discovery, who last week told that media conference
that Republicans now saw CNN as a place to get
more votes because it's not an advocacy network for Democrats anymore,
without ever once realizing he was in the same breath
declaring that CNN now is an advocacy network for Republicans.
David Zaslab is in the public eye not just because
(12:57):
of the CNN fiasco, but because of the Hollywood writer's strike,
and he gave the commencement to dress in the middle
of a writer's strike at Boston University, with one of
the largest schools of public communications in the nation. Also,
from what I heard of it, his speech was so
full of cliches that if there had not been a strike,
(13:20):
it still should have been interrupted.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It'll make a huge difference. The fourth, the fourth thing
I learned along my journey is that it's really painful
to get out worked.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Wait, Biff Tannan's day, I'm sorry, David Zaslov's day got
even worse.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
You want to be successful, you're going to have to
figure out how to get along with everyone, and that
includes difficult people.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Some people.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Some people will be looking for a fight.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I know from experience that one of the proudest moments
you can have in life is to give the commencement
or convocation or the equivalent address at your old school.
I did it at Cornell in nineteen ninety eight, and
I got laughs. I did it at my high school
(14:36):
in nineteen ninety four. I got to pay tribute to
nineteen of my teachers who were still there nineteen years
after I graduated. Great lasting experiences. I can still smell
the smells of the day. Unfortunately, that was not what
David Zaslav, Boston you Law class of nineteen eighty five
experience yesterday, as you heard, But hey, for me, it
was just great. Mister Zaslav later issued a statement to
(15:01):
The Hollywood Reporter, quote, I'm immensely supportive of the writers
and hope the strike is resolved soon and in a
way that they feel recognized as their value on quote,
he apparently left out the additional observation, if only I,
as the chairman of the company that owns HBO, CNNTNT, TBSDC, Comics,
Warner Bros. Much of the CW Network, and the Food Network,
had some influence of some kind over just how Hollywood
(15:26):
producers pay their writers, but clearly I don't. As the CEO.
In passing, I will note here that if you scoffed
at my reporting last week that CNN and Chris Licht
are still discussing, may even be already negotiating the terms
of a second town hall with Trump. On Saturday, amidst
(15:48):
his weekend of fear and insanity, Trump made a social
media post about CNN and the quote, absolutely lovely town hall.
They just put on one of their biggest rating nights
in years, CNN, Let's do another one. And as a
final note on this topic, Friday's ratings will hit a
waiting world around four or five pm Eastern Monday. But
(16:10):
we have Thursdays already, and Anderson Cooper has now settled
into fourth place in the ratings for three straight nights,
behind Newsmax. Anderson Cooper's viewers have left the silo, and
the only possible conclusion is Cooper and CNN are tanking
(16:33):
and playing for the number one draft pick. Also of
note here, it's the greatest political SoundBite of all time.
And I know my political soundbites, and this one is
from Friday afternoon, and it is glittering in just how
panoramically stupid it is in so many different wonderful ways.
(16:58):
Another note, Remember when a million downloads for us here
on Countdown was a huge milestone for a month. We
are crossing for the month of May. Today, on the
sixteenth weekday of the month of May. Thank you. That's
my way of saying thanks. Do you remember George W. Bush?
Do you? He's made the finals of Today's Worst Persons
(17:19):
in the World. That's next. This is countdown. This is
Countdown with Keith Olbooman. Postscripts to news, some headlines, some updates,
some snarks, some predictions. Dateline, Washington. This is the greatest
political SoundBite of all time, the greatest, and I have
(17:41):
heard them all from UN Ambassador and former presidential candidate
Adlai Stevenson intending to say circumscribed and instead saying circumcised
to everything Sarah Palin ever did on camera to herschel
Walker talking about his erection, but for pure laugh out
(18:02):
loud stupidity and forgetting a score of one hundred on
the Freudian slip scale, and for the third key component,
a truth leak. What Congressman George, if that is your
real name, Santos said Friday about how no matter how
he got there, he's been doing his job as congressman.
Someday this might be matched, but it will never be exceeded.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
I have not not done my job since I've gotten here.
I can chew and walk gum at the same time.
I can chew gum and walk at.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
The same The thing is, not only can't George Santos
walk and chew gum at the same time, and in fact,
that very SoundBite is evidence that he can't walk and
chew gum at the same time. But given his record,
we also have to assume that Representative Santos is lying
when he says he can walk gum. Dayline, Hartford, Connecticut,
(18:55):
Sandra Sack Glover has withdrawn as the nominee of the
Democratic Governor ned Lamont to the state Supreme Court. There.
Members of the General Assembly say they just could not
be sure she really supports the state's strong reproductive freedom
rights because of something she did in twenty seventeen. Glover
participated in the marches against Trump the day after his inauguration,
(19:16):
and she made all kinds of protestations about her supporting
the abortion laws of the state. But she had signed
a letter supporting the twenty seventeen nomination by Trump of
a judge to the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court, and that
judge's name was Amy Cony Barrett. Quote. Professor Barrett is
a woman of remarkable intellect and character, wrote all of
(19:38):
the Supreme Court clerks from the nineteen ninety eight ninety
nine court term, including Miss Glover. Spoiler alert, Justice Barrett
is neither a woman of remarkable intellect nor of character.
The term for what Miss Glover did is log rolling,
and Miss Glover just lost a spot on the Connecticut
Supreme Court because of it, and we need more of
(19:59):
that dateline Harrison County, Mississippi. Why does the Cony Barrett
endorsement case 's become a career ender for her entire
high school life? A trans girl at Central High School
there in Harrison LB has warned dresses and skirts and
high heels to class, and nobody gave a damn, and
(20:20):
she ordered the formal white dress required of girls who
were going to the graduation ceremony. And two weeks before graduation,
the principal called LB in and said she could not
attend her own high school graduation ceremony unless she dressed
as a boy, shirt, tye and jacket. The ACLU took
the school to court, and the night before the ceremony, Saturday,
(20:42):
a Trump appointee US District Court Judge Taylor McNeil ruled
in favor of the school. Judge McNeil bio notes, since
twenty twenty, member of the Federalist Society. And here's the point.
If you can make a trans kid dressed, not as
she has spent the last four years dressed, not as
her friends are used to her dressing, not as the
(21:04):
school is used to her dressing, not as she is
entitled to dress, and you can literally order her into boys'
clothes for her high school graduation, then soon you will
be able to say what names people can call themselves,
so that there aren't any androgynist names or ones that
you could keep wild transitioning. And you could say that
some names can only go to boys and some names
(21:25):
can only go to girls, in which case, Judge Taylor
McNeil will be a victim of the same federalist terrorist
society Trump fascism that Judge McNeil is currently dishing out.
Because Judge Taylor McNeil, could be a woman, could be
a man. I don't really care, but clearly the federalists
(21:48):
will and soon judge McNeil soon and Dayline. Texas Senator
Ted Cruz went on Fox yesterday and announced he's launching
an investigation into bud Light and its association with social
media influencer Dylan mulvaney now seriously using American tax dollars
(22:11):
and helped buy Marcia Blackburn. I mean, it is utter
nonsense and it is our money wasted. But on the
other hand, we might be able to relax about this
because neither Budweiser nor mulvaney has a damn thing to
worry about. I wouldn't trust Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn
to investigate a toilet overflowing. Coming up, the TV managerial
(22:47):
appointment so amazingly bad that within a week the network
said to the guy, Yeah, you still have the job,
but you're not in charge of anything anymore. First, the
daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning KRUEGERFEC specimens
who constitute today's worst persons in the world. Remember last
week when Marjorie Taylor, Barney rubble White supremacist. Karen Green
(23:11):
claimed that being called white supremacist by Congressman Jamal Bowman
was threatening to her, and it was like calling somebody
the N word, And she dog whistled that maybe one
of her fellow Trump Clan members should, you know, attack
the congressman. She put out a video of herself lifting
weights in her garage and explaining her impeachment plan, which
she has not actually introduced so there can't be a
(23:32):
vote on it, so she can't lose by four hundred votes.
And the folks at Patriot takes notice something unusual in
the video, something sitting on the floor next to where
she works. Off her roid rage. It was a cooler,
a cooler with a flag on it, a Confederate flag.
So March for Marjorie Taylor Green's denials of white supremacism.
(23:55):
The runner up the State of Texas. I mean, it
could be on here every day. We could just have
a worse person in the State of Texas feature too,
but this is special. A few weeks ago, the incumbent
State Poet Laureate of Texas gave his farewell reading. He's
LuFe Mendez, an educator from Houston who often switches back
and forth in his poetry from English to Spanish, and
(24:15):
one of his most popular books of poetry is called
Why I Am Like Tequila? And he was named to
the Post in twenty twenty one and will continue in
it until next month. And last week of school in
North Texas banned the book Why I Am Like Tequila.
The name of the school has not been disclosed because
the teacher at the school who told the Washington Post
(24:38):
was too scared to reveal even that a school in
Texas has banned a book from the state Poet Laureate
of Texas. Let's stop giving Texas any federal money while
it is using it to introduce fascism. But our winner, well,
speaking of the same region, and from the dust bin
(24:59):
of history, he's back the winner. President George W. Bush,
remember him right, the worst president p T. Pre Trump.
Alumni of his administration had an event at Southern Methodist
University in Dallas over the weekend. Obviously, it was attended
only by the ones who are not in hell already
(25:19):
always ready with the bon mow, or as he might
have called it, the bone moot. Bush joked to the crowd,
quote nine hundred people more than my margin of victory
in Florida. Oh, very droll, President Bush, very very matter
of fact. If there been one person there, that too
(25:39):
would have been more than your margin of quote victory
unquote in Florida, George W. Was Pooty Tune invited? Is
pooty Tune here? Bush? Two days worst person in the
world still ahead on Countdown. One of my favorite pieces
(26:07):
of advice, especially to younger people, is there are no adults.
You have to be your own adult. Nowhere is this
more true than in television the story of the worst
manager I have ever personally experienced. I mean, the CNN
crowd is catching up here, but this would be the
(26:28):
worst one I've ever worked for. Next. First, in each
edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need you
can help. Every dog has its day. This time it's
the people who help all the dogs and the cats
in need one by one. Animal Advocates of Huntington, West
Virginia has helped and found homes for more than thirty
thousand animals in the last decade. It can happen to
(26:50):
any group trying to save the injured or the ailing.
OBAA is itself in need of rescue fifteen thousand dollars
in debt and new heartrending cases coming in still every day.
A fundraiser on Cudley has gotten them about half what
they need. If you can help grow that percentage, donate
at cudley dot com for one by one Animal Advocates
(27:11):
or look for the reminder on my Twitter feeds. I
thank you and one by one Animal Advocates Thanks you.
I was a witness to the greatest management fiasco in
(27:32):
television history, and it began on Monday, June twelfth, two
thousand and six. My girlfriend at the time, Katie Tururr,
was coming in from la for a week, and my
vacation had started the previous Friday at exactly nine oh
one pm. At nine oh two pm on that Friday night,
the acting chief of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, called me, insisting
(27:53):
that even though I was on vacation, we had to
meet for breakfast at nine thirty am Monday. I said
that made it a not vacation and he said, we
will give you two additional days off later. Something is
happening you need to know about first, I sighed. The
previous Wednesday, they had fired the president of MSNBC, the
(28:14):
one who had once chased me around our offices in Secaucus,
New Jersey, threatening to kill me because he was squeamish
about blood. See if that makes any logical sense to you.
He threatened to kill me because he was squeamish about blood.
Jeff Zucker, then the president of NBC, had called my
agent and asked how my relationship with the aforementioned acting
(28:36):
chief Phil Griffin was. It was obvious they were going
to put Griffin in charge, and as the marquee anchor
on the network, they needed me to find it out
from them rather than from a gossip site or something.
I could not begrudge them the courtesy. So on the
first weekday of my vacation, Griffin and I met for breakfast,
and as soon as coffee arrived, he said, so listen, buddy,
(28:57):
I'm going to be an executive in charge of MSNBC,
but I'm going to be staying here in the city
to oversee the Today Show. So MSNBC he will also
have a general manager, and the general manager will be
in charge in secaucas and the new general manager will
be Dan Abrams. Well, I paused for a second and
then burst into laughter. I mean thirty seconds of a
(29:19):
riotous belly laugh loud enough that other people at the
restaurant at Norma's in the Parker Meridian in New York
City turned around to look at me to find out
what was so funny. Then I composed myself. Then I
laughed again, then a third laughed, then a fourth laugh.
(29:39):
Oh my god, Phil, that is the best. You get
me to get up early on the first day of
my vacation and you hit me with that, Dan Abrams
running something we've known each other, what Phil twenty five
years next month? That is the best joke you have
ever told me, Dan Abrams and I laughed again for
another thirty seconds, and one of my friends, who was
(30:01):
a waiter there, came over and said, everything okay. Because
Phil could never interrupt anybody who was praising him, he
smiled back at me, and when I finally stopped laughing,
he said, well, thanks, I guess, but I'm serious. We've
been talking to Dan for several months about this, and
he just has the kind of analytical mind that it
(30:22):
had taken me more than a minute to realize Griffin
was serious. That he and the president of NBC News
Steve Cappus, and that president of NBC Jeff Zucker had
actually decided to take the host of our nine PM show,
which had been devoted for years to excruciating, lowest common
denominator tabloid crap coverage of the missing white woman of
(30:45):
the week, to take a man who had the respect
of absolutely no one on air or off at MSNBC,
A man who made me, in that regard, look like
Saint Francis of a Cci, A man who had only
been in television for twelve years, a man who had
never run anything in his life, A man within describably
(31:05):
bad hair that none of us could identify. Was it
a two pay? Was it a weave? Was he hit
by lightning? And that was the most sincere thing about him?
His hair? They had actually decided to appoint this gossip
monger with no experience, to run a network that was
just now finally establishing itself as a factor in American
(31:28):
political media. Christ Phil, what are you thinking? I said
to him, He's a buffoon. I'd rather work for Joe Scarborough.
He's condescending, he insults his producers, he insults our producers.
He leaks constantly to the reporters and the gossip blogs.
Half of his exclusive sources turned out to be wrong,
(31:51):
and I might be the best friend he has there.
Phil Griffin chugged his coffee. Well, I'm sorry about that.
I mean, I mean it's not gonna make any practical
difference for you. You would countdown, will report directly to me.
Dan is a good have any responsibilities unning the primetime shows.
He's only going to be hands on with the daytime shows.
But he'll be the general manager of the network. And
(32:11):
we think he has a lot of exciting ideas. And
I said exciting ideas about what exciting ideas about Sean
Beney Ramsey. Phil, we have just stopped being the running joke,
the bottomless punchline of cable news. And once this gets out,
we will be less respected than we were a year ago.
(32:33):
I paused, and the news bounced off the walls of
the restaurant and hit me afresh again. Dan Abrams, general
manager of MSNBC. He will get you fired, Phil, I
don't know if he will get you fired because he's
trying to get you fired, or he'll get you fired
(32:53):
because he'll be so bad at this that everybody will quit.
But you've just committed professional suicide. You and Cappus and Zooker,
dead Men Walking. Phil Griffin was now read. I had
only previously seen him read when he was very, very
drunk and we were in our twenties. I was hoping
you'd give him a chance, and I said some very
pleasant things about giving him a chance to destroy what
(33:16):
we had been building up for the last year. And
did Phil remember that my contract was up in six
months and CNN was already publicly courting me to go there.
I said, I'm gone. You might as well release me
from the contract right now. I'm out. And then something
else popped into my mind. Oh, and listen, did you
think there might be a problem because he and I
dated the same woman nine years ago, and he told
(33:38):
her she'd be making a mistake to get involved with me.
Phil's eyes widened. He had forgotten, Like I said, he'll
have nothing to do with Countdown. An hour later, my
home phone rang and it was Dan Abrams. I just
wanted to say how much I'm looking forward to working
with you on Countdown. As time goes by, Phil will
(34:00):
be more and more overwhelmed at the Today Show, and
I'll be making the day to day decisions. I'll be
your guy. After a few minutes, of this, which I
swear I could hear his phone scratching against his two
pay and during which I said nothing but uh uh.
My home phone rang again and it was the NBC president,
Jeff Zucker. So you guys report to Dan, and if
(34:23):
you need to go further, you can go to Phil.
And I said, Phil had just told me Abrams would
have nothing to do with countdown, and I intended to
make sure that was true. Zucker, showing the loyalty and
consistency that was so publicly displayed in the original Chris
Cuomo CNN fiasco, immediately said, well, if this doesn't work,
f Dan Abrams, hell, F Phil Griffin, you come to me.
(34:45):
The first thing I had done when I had gotten
home was to call my executive producer, Izzy Povich. She
had been as fascinated as I had been as to
why I had to have a business breakfast on day
one of a vacation. Well, I sighed, you'll never believe
who the new general manager of MSNBC is. She guessed
(35:05):
Phil Griffin than me, and then the manager of the
New York Yankees, Joe Torrey. I said, all would have
been better choices. I said, it's Dan Abrams. She laughed
so hard I had to pull the phone away from
my ear. After she finally calmed down, Isy said, you
had me going, Oh my god, what a disaster that
(35:28):
would be. I'm sorry I fell into the bit. Yeah,
just kidding, she laughed again. No, actually, I'm not kidding.
She laughed again and said come on, and so I said, yeah, yeah,
I'm kidding. She laughed again. No actually I'm not kidding.
Dan Abrams is the new general manager, she laughed again.
We must have done this for two or three minutes.
(35:48):
It was an old Eddie Izzard bit. I stole it
from him about the death of Engelbert Humperdink. I finally
stopped when she said, wait, I saw Dan Abrams getting
out of his car in the President's parking space this morning.
You're you're You're not quit kidding. Oh my god. I
have to call my husband and tell him I'm quitting. Well,
(36:12):
it all worked out about as well as I had predicted.
At his first meeting with the producers, dan Abrams revealed
his first exciting idea. He had apparently been given enough
lead time about his appointment to have made up giant
banners containing the new MSNBC network slogan, which he had
dreamed up. The banners he told the producers were going
to be hung around the studios, and in fact, we're
(36:33):
being hung around the studios. As they spoke, and behind
him there was one covered in a drape cloth and
he pulled the string. The cloth fell off, revealing his
first exciting idea, the new network slogan MSNBC keeping it real,
keeping k EEIPI n apostrophe, no g keeping. That was
(36:57):
the highlight of his tenure as the general manager. The
blowback against his appointment was so universal, well nobody trying
to hide it. Abram's first move was to cancel a
show hosted by an Xbox News walking maliprop artist named
Rita Cosby. She almost took hostages. Abrams delayed the meeting
(37:18):
to tell her staff from noon until six pm. Abrams
then gave an interview about his vision for MSNBC and
told the reporter quote, documentaries are our most important programs,
and the staffs of the uncanceled primetime shows mine included
nearly walked out because in fact we were our most
(37:38):
important programs. While Griffin prevented that mass resignation by swearing
Abrams had been misquoted. Abrams then launched a series of
radio commercials for MSNBC documentaries. Abrams tried to get a
producer named Bill Wolf, who had been told he was
going to be the new general manager, to instead host
his own show. He told me he had figured out
(38:01):
the perfect guest host for Countdown and was already in
negotiations with him. Dan Rather, my girlfriend Katie's father, then
chimed in with a new nickname for Abrams that spread
across the television industry, Miles Miles, as in Miles the
boy producer from the sitcom Murphy Brown. I even felt
sorry for him, it was that bad, and of course
(38:24):
I was promptly repaid for this mistake. A week after
Abrams was hired, the cable news blogger named Brian Stelter,
who inexplicably wound up first at The New York Times
and then at CNN, and you heard about him getting
fired over the summer. Brian Stelter called to say he
had been told by a source at NBC that I
had just been fired at a meeting an hour before
by Abrams and an NBC executive named Randy Falco. In fact,
(38:49):
Abrams was at a meeting with Zucker and the NBC
News president Cappus, as they desperately tried to steer out
of the fatal skid they had all swerved into. Phil
Griffin was furious. Griffin told me he suspected Abrams had
been somehow connected to this leak about this fake story
about me getting fired, and he began an investigation of
(39:09):
him and never trusted him again one week appointed Monday,
and a lame duck the following Monday, keeping it real keeping.
On August ninth, three days shy of the two months mark,
Phil Griffin called my office an hour and a half
(39:31):
before my show. Okay, you want to say I told
you so. We've made it clear to Dan that he
won't be involved in any major decisions going forward. He
will remain general manager, but I'm running everything. In a
year or so, buddy, we'll say he found out he
just had to go back on the air, and he'll
resign and will give him the nine PM show. Probably,
you have to keep this confidential. I did. I'm surprisingly
(39:55):
good at that, at least till I started this podcast.
Fourteen months later, they offed him, by which time I
had already started to lobby them to make the nine
PM host, not Abrams, but Rachel Maddow. They finally gave
into that in September two thousand and eight, and Dan
did not have a show or a title, and he
finally got the message and he left NBC in twenty eleven.
(40:16):
The last I had heard of Dan Abrams before the
News Nation retirement home. He had launched a new website.
It's called Whiskey Raiders because it rates various brands of whiskey.
You get it, Raiders, ray Ters, you get it. It's
(40:39):
a pun. Presumably he chose that pun because somebody else
had already taken keeping it real, I've done all the
(41:00):
damage I can do. Here. Here are the credits. Most
of the music arrange produced and performed by Brian Ray
and John Phillip Shaneil, who are on the Countdown Musical Directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanelle, 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 Olberman theme from ESPN two,
(41:23):
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis. Courtesy of
ESPN inc musical comments from Nancy Fauss. The best baseball
stadium organist ever. Our announcer was John Banks from Breaking
Bad and everything else is pretty much my fault. So
that's countdown for this the eight hundred and sixty seventh
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Do not forget. Keep
(41:45):
arresting him while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
I have not not done my job since I've gotten here.
I can chew and walk on at the same time.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
only going to say this once, as Democrats, as liberals,
(00:25):
as whatever you identify yourself. If we do not harden
our stances and fight now and convince our less adamantine
cohorts to do the same, we are going to lose
this democracy. Quote. Should the Democrats hold fast on the
debt ceiling and not negotiate or should they negotiate spending
constraints with the Republicans? Reads the question in the new
(00:47):
Harvard Harris poll. Eighty two percent of Republicans say the
Democrats should negotiate with Republicans, and christ a mighty forty
one percent of Democrats say Democrats should negotiate with the Republicans.
Are you kidding? Are you insane? Are you suicidal? Negotiate?
(01:09):
You do not negotiate with terrorists. You metaphorically shoot terrorists
in the head. The Democrats already negotiated on the debt ceiling.
In fact, the Democrats already caved on the debt ceiling.
And everybody seems to know this except Democrats in the Senate,
(01:30):
in the House, in the White House. I'm looking at
the fourteenth Amendment. I think we have the authority. The
question is could it be done in time? Said the
president from Hiroshima. We have not come up with unilateral
action that could succeed in a matter of two weeks
or three weeks. That's the issue. So it's up to lawmakers.
(01:51):
With respect, mister President, know the hell it is not
stop caving in to these bastard fascists. They are not negotiating,
They are not operating from any position of good faith
nor of coherent philosophy, except to try to destroy the
economy and to blame you for it and to run
(02:12):
against you on it. And you have stated you know
as much, and you are still standing there with another
metaphorical gun pointed against your head, hoping that you will
find some middle road with the people who've spent the
last thirty years dynamiting and jackhammering all the middle roads.
And you know exactly what the Republicans would do if
(02:34):
the details of this scenario were reversed. They would invoke
the fourteenth Amendment now and dare the opposition to take
them to court. And while the courts were ruling, they
would have ignored the court rulings and paid the debt anyway,
because that's the way it's done now, and some fanciful
good old days memory of Tip O'Neil and Ronald Reagan
(02:56):
having drinks about it and negotiating it was an imaginary
sugarcoating of Republican treachery then. And even the most recent example, well,
if anything just that evil happened no more recently than
thirty four years and three months ago. The time is dead,
mister President. This is metaphorical war against Republican fascists. Stop negotiating,
(03:19):
start remembering who the bullies are and who has the
goddamned hammer at the moment, and use it. I mean,
this is so obvious that even Politico noticed it. Politico
official stenographers of the seventeenth century. Its lead story summarized,
(03:41):
where the quote negotiations unquote are even Politico noticed. And
these are their numbered bullet points that Democrats have one
all but publicly acknowledged there will be no clean debt
sealing increase, and they'll have to give the Republicans something.
Two signaled a willingness to claw back unspent COVID funding
(04:03):
and overhauling permitting reform three already conceded ninety billion dollars
in spending cuts next year and a trillion over the
next decade, and four indicated the President is willing to
consider work requirements for some safety net programs. On the
other hand, the Republican's idea of meeting somewhere in the middle.
(04:26):
Even Poltico notices this is one tripling the length of
the spending caps. Two hinting that they're extremists, still want
the Inflation Reduction Act and student debt relief eliminated. Three
want all these spending cuts, but still want more money
to go to the Pentagon and for the border. Four
(04:49):
have refused the Democrats timid ask for just enforcing some
tax laws on the rich. Five doubled down on work requirements,
so another seven hundred thousand Americans would lose food assistance.
Six want restricted in immigration put into this deal. Seven
will not accept a reduction in spending through prescription drug reforms,
(05:12):
which they will not accept. Even Politico noticed this. I
mean the Progressives letter to the President said the damage
to caving to the Republicans here would be seven hundred
and eighty thousand more unemployed, a million two more without
(05:35):
food assistance, and up to twenty one million Americans stripped
of medicaid. You're going to run against that mister Biden
who says it's up to the lawmakers. The hell it is.
You know what's easy? Tell McCarthy today, here is your
(05:56):
climb down. You have until morning to agree to these
token cuts over here, so your party of terrorists does
not make you out as speaker tonight. But as of
nine am Tuesday, if you have not agreed to this,
these token cuts go away. And I invoke the fourteenth Amendment,
and I announced you have refused to negotiate, and I
(06:17):
refuse to negotiate with terrorists. And I make sure I
have the US Marine Corps band behind me as I
say this, playing God Bless America in the background. And
then when I'm done, I will repeat, mister McCarthy that
the United States does not submit to blackmail from terrorists,
foreign or domestic. And then we'll play the anthem and
we'll all sing. Forty one percent of Democrats think Democrats
(06:42):
should cave here. Holy crap, now it is possible. I
pray that this poll number is ridiculously high. I mean,
the guy in charge of the Harris Pole is the
man of this moment of capitulation. Mark Penn, Mark Penn
may be the least trustworthy, least honest, worst titian of
(07:05):
last half century. He's in charge of the Harris Paul. Now, guys,
guess Frank Lunz was busy. But even if it is
a wrong number and it's only twenty percent in favor
of Democrats caving to Republicans, what are you thinking? Has
life taught you nothing? You give in to bullies over
some far fetched pipe dream of comedy and unity, and
(07:29):
you expect that they'll stop, And like you more, you
expect that they will ever stop. Give the Republicans anything here,
give them everything here, and they still will find something
to blame Democrats for. That is what they are good at,
(07:51):
and of all times, of all times to do it. Now,
even Politico noticed, I read it and said, I'm not alone.
Someone else sees this. And what's more, he even Axios noticed.
You know the odds against Axios and Politico getting something
(08:12):
right on the same day. You know what Axios's leads
story was that Trump is basing his presidential campaign on
a promise that if he's elected, he'll turn the presidency
into a dictatorship. That if you ignore all the psychosis
and the bluster, and you striate all the policy promises.
(08:33):
Trump's twenty twenty five vision revealed. Even Axios noticed this.
Trump's twenty twenty five vision revealed is virtual totalitarianism. As
Axios my god. Even Axios sees this peril Axios as
Axios listed them. He'll pardon all the insurrectionists and militias.
(08:55):
He'll pull the rug out from under Ukraine and hand
it to Putin. He will demand the right to hire
and fire federal workers at will based on who is
personally loyal to him. He will demand the right to
hire and fire the officials who accredit our universities. He
will order diversity eliminated there, equity and inclusion programs eliminated
(09:16):
in universities and high schools where he can, and tenure
for teachers. He wants to defund, or maybe, if he's
in a better mood, just reshape the Department of Justice
and the intelligence agencies. He wants political monitors to decide
if the intelligence agencies are behaving in some sort of
Marxist fashion. He wants to deny Medicaid and Medicare to
(09:36):
hospitals and providers who offer gender affirming care, and go
after those who have already provided that care. He wants
to use the army against drug cartels and street crime
in America. He wants to build his own new cities
somewhere and pay white people to have children in them.
(09:56):
He wants to strip out residential segregation laws and stop
addressing poverty issues. He wants national concealed care reciprocity, so
somebody from Texas can carry a gun into your state
no matter what your laws are. This is all in Axios.
(10:20):
Trump is not only openly promising the end of virtually
every aspect of democracy and promising to use the military
and vigilante gangs and militias to enforce minority, white male
rule over everybody else, but he's doing it so boldly
that even Axios noticed it. And his party is bullying
(10:41):
the current president of the United States so openly that
even Politico noticed it. And what are Democrats doing to
out of five of us want to negotiate with these
Republican scumbags? And lord knows how many of our leaders
are trying to organize a nice two year long farewell
tour for Diane Feinstein because they see no good reason
we can't multi party like it's nineteen fifty nine. Are
(11:04):
you going to negotiate with Trump? What are you going
to negotiate with the man who owns his speakership to Trump?
Miss McCarthy, Mister President, When you see Kevin McCarthy, like
I said, you give him a climb down offer, and
you tell him he has until sunrise, and he leaves,
And just before he leaves, you call him back and
(11:25):
you put your hands on his shoulders in that way
of yours, and you whisper in his ear. Kevin, my
fellow irishman, take this with you from another son of
the old Sod, and you knee him in the groin
or and I am the last person on earth ever
to be considered a Star Wars fan, or be prepared
(11:49):
to hear this as soon as nineteen months from now.
I hope, after you've lost, and the Empire reigns over
the galaxy unopposed, you will find some comfort in the
knowledge that you fought according to the rules I can
(12:09):
offer you, and obviously myself, since I need it, only
this comic relief. Today. Yesterday, Chris Licht's boss gave the
commencement address at Boston University and was repeatedly booed and
interrupted by the graduating students. David Zaslav, the CEO of
(12:36):
Warner Bros. Discovery, who last week told that media conference
that Republicans now saw CNN as a place to get
more votes because it's not an advocacy network for Democrats anymore,
without ever once realizing he was in the same breath
declaring that CNN now is an advocacy network for Republicans.
David Zaslab is in the public eye not just because
(12:57):
of the CNN fiasco, but because of the Hollywood writer's strike,
and he gave the commencement to dress in the middle
of a writer's strike at Boston University, with one of
the largest schools of public communications in the nation. Also,
from what I heard of it, his speech was so
full of cliches that if there had not been a strike,
(13:20):
it still should have been interrupted.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It'll make a huge difference. The fourth, the fourth thing
I learned along my journey is that it's really painful
to get out worked.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Wait, Biff Tannan's day, I'm sorry, David Zaslov's day got
even worse.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
You want to be successful, you're going to have to
figure out how to get along with everyone, and that
includes difficult people.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Some people.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Some people will be looking for a fight.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I know from experience that one of the proudest moments
you can have in life is to give the commencement
or convocation or the equivalent address at your old school.
I did it at Cornell in nineteen ninety eight, and
I got laughs. I did it at my high school
(14:36):
in nineteen ninety four. I got to pay tribute to
nineteen of my teachers who were still there nineteen years
after I graduated. Great lasting experiences. I can still smell
the smells of the day. Unfortunately, that was not what
David Zaslav, Boston you Law class of nineteen eighty five
experience yesterday, as you heard, But hey, for me, it
was just great. Mister Zaslav later issued a statement to
(15:01):
The Hollywood Reporter, quote, I'm immensely supportive of the writers
and hope the strike is resolved soon and in a
way that they feel recognized as their value on quote,
he apparently left out the additional observation, if only I,
as the chairman of the company that owns HBO, CNNTNT, TBSDC, Comics,
Warner Bros. Much of the CW Network, and the Food Network,
had some influence of some kind over just how Hollywood
(15:26):
producers pay their writers, but clearly I don't. As the CEO.
In passing, I will note here that if you scoffed
at my reporting last week that CNN and Chris Licht
are still discussing, may even be already negotiating the terms
of a second town hall with Trump. On Saturday, amidst
(15:48):
his weekend of fear and insanity, Trump made a social
media post about CNN and the quote, absolutely lovely town hall.
They just put on one of their biggest rating nights
in years, CNN, Let's do another one. And as a
final note on this topic, Friday's ratings will hit a
waiting world around four or five pm Eastern Monday. But
(16:10):
we have Thursdays already, and Anderson Cooper has now settled
into fourth place in the ratings for three straight nights,
behind Newsmax. Anderson Cooper's viewers have left the silo, and
the only possible conclusion is Cooper and CNN are tanking
(16:33):
and playing for the number one draft pick. Also of
note here, it's the greatest political SoundBite of all time.
And I know my political soundbites, and this one is
from Friday afternoon, and it is glittering in just how
panoramically stupid it is in so many different wonderful ways.
(16:58):
Another note, Remember when a million downloads for us here
on Countdown was a huge milestone for a month. We
are crossing for the month of May. Today, on the
sixteenth weekday of the month of May. Thank you. That's
my way of saying thanks. Do you remember George W. Bush?
Do you? He's made the finals of Today's Worst Persons
(17:19):
in the World. That's next. This is countdown. This is
Countdown with Keith Olbooman. Postscripts to news, some headlines, some updates,
some snarks, some predictions. Dateline, Washington. This is the greatest
political SoundBite of all time, the greatest, and I have
(17:41):
heard them all from UN Ambassador and former presidential candidate
Adlai Stevenson intending to say circumscribed and instead saying circumcised
to everything Sarah Palin ever did on camera to herschel
Walker talking about his erection, but for pure laugh out
(18:02):
loud stupidity and forgetting a score of one hundred on
the Freudian slip scale, and for the third key component,
a truth leak. What Congressman George, if that is your
real name, Santos said Friday about how no matter how
he got there, he's been doing his job as congressman.
Someday this might be matched, but it will never be exceeded.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
I have not not done my job since I've gotten here.
I can chew and walk gum at the same time.
I can chew gum and walk at.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
The same The thing is, not only can't George Santos
walk and chew gum at the same time, and in fact,
that very SoundBite is evidence that he can't walk and
chew gum at the same time. But given his record,
we also have to assume that Representative Santos is lying
when he says he can walk gum. Dayline, Hartford, Connecticut,
(18:55):
Sandra Sack Glover has withdrawn as the nominee of the
Democratic Governor ned Lamont to the state Supreme Court. There.
Members of the General Assembly say they just could not
be sure she really supports the state's strong reproductive freedom
rights because of something she did in twenty seventeen. Glover
participated in the marches against Trump the day after his inauguration,
(19:16):
and she made all kinds of protestations about her supporting
the abortion laws of the state. But she had signed
a letter supporting the twenty seventeen nomination by Trump of
a judge to the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court, and that
judge's name was Amy Cony Barrett. Quote. Professor Barrett is
a woman of remarkable intellect and character, wrote all of
(19:38):
the Supreme Court clerks from the nineteen ninety eight ninety
nine court term, including Miss Glover. Spoiler alert, Justice Barrett
is neither a woman of remarkable intellect nor of character.
The term for what Miss Glover did is log rolling,
and Miss Glover just lost a spot on the Connecticut
Supreme Court because of it, and we need more of
(19:59):
that dateline Harrison County, Mississippi. Why does the Cony Barrett
endorsement case 's become a career ender for her entire
high school life? A trans girl at Central High School
there in Harrison LB has warned dresses and skirts and
high heels to class, and nobody gave a damn, and
(20:20):
she ordered the formal white dress required of girls who
were going to the graduation ceremony. And two weeks before graduation,
the principal called LB in and said she could not
attend her own high school graduation ceremony unless she dressed
as a boy, shirt, tye and jacket. The ACLU took
the school to court, and the night before the ceremony, Saturday,
(20:42):
a Trump appointee US District Court Judge Taylor McNeil ruled
in favor of the school. Judge McNeil bio notes, since
twenty twenty, member of the Federalist Society. And here's the point.
If you can make a trans kid dressed, not as
she has spent the last four years dressed, not as
her friends are used to her dressing, not as the
(21:04):
school is used to her dressing, not as she is
entitled to dress, and you can literally order her into boys'
clothes for her high school graduation, then soon you will
be able to say what names people can call themselves,
so that there aren't any androgynist names or ones that
you could keep wild transitioning. And you could say that
some names can only go to boys and some names
(21:25):
can only go to girls, in which case, Judge Taylor
McNeil will be a victim of the same federalist terrorist
society Trump fascism that Judge McNeil is currently dishing out.
Because Judge Taylor McNeil, could be a woman, could be
a man. I don't really care, but clearly the federalists
(21:48):
will and soon judge McNeil soon and Dayline. Texas Senator
Ted Cruz went on Fox yesterday and announced he's launching
an investigation into bud Light and its association with social
media influencer Dylan mulvaney now seriously using American tax dollars
(22:11):
and helped buy Marcia Blackburn. I mean, it is utter
nonsense and it is our money wasted. But on the
other hand, we might be able to relax about this
because neither Budweiser nor mulvaney has a damn thing to
worry about. I wouldn't trust Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn
to investigate a toilet overflowing. Coming up, the TV managerial
(22:47):
appointment so amazingly bad that within a week the network
said to the guy, Yeah, you still have the job,
but you're not in charge of anything anymore. First, the
daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning KRUEGERFEC specimens
who constitute today's worst persons in the world. Remember last
week when Marjorie Taylor, Barney rubble White supremacist. Karen Green
(23:11):
claimed that being called white supremacist by Congressman Jamal Bowman
was threatening to her, and it was like calling somebody
the N word, And she dog whistled that maybe one
of her fellow Trump Clan members should, you know, attack
the congressman. She put out a video of herself lifting
weights in her garage and explaining her impeachment plan, which
she has not actually introduced so there can't be a
(23:32):
vote on it, so she can't lose by four hundred votes.
And the folks at Patriot takes notice something unusual in
the video, something sitting on the floor next to where
she works. Off her roid rage. It was a cooler,
a cooler with a flag on it, a Confederate flag.
So March for Marjorie Taylor Green's denials of white supremacism.
(23:55):
The runner up the State of Texas. I mean, it
could be on here every day. We could just have
a worse person in the State of Texas feature too,
but this is special. A few weeks ago, the incumbent
State Poet Laureate of Texas gave his farewell reading. He's
LuFe Mendez, an educator from Houston who often switches back
and forth in his poetry from English to Spanish, and
(24:15):
one of his most popular books of poetry is called
Why I Am Like Tequila? And he was named to
the Post in twenty twenty one and will continue in
it until next month. And last week of school in
North Texas banned the book Why I Am Like Tequila.
The name of the school has not been disclosed because
the teacher at the school who told the Washington Post
(24:38):
was too scared to reveal even that a school in
Texas has banned a book from the state Poet Laureate
of Texas. Let's stop giving Texas any federal money while
it is using it to introduce fascism. But our winner, well,
speaking of the same region, and from the dust bin
(24:59):
of history, he's back the winner. President George W. Bush,
remember him right, the worst president p T. Pre Trump.
Alumni of his administration had an event at Southern Methodist
University in Dallas over the weekend. Obviously, it was attended
only by the ones who are not in hell already
(25:19):
always ready with the bon mow, or as he might
have called it, the bone moot. Bush joked to the crowd,
quote nine hundred people more than my margin of victory
in Florida. Oh, very droll, President Bush, very very matter
of fact. If there been one person there, that too
(25:39):
would have been more than your margin of quote victory
unquote in Florida, George W. Was Pooty Tune invited? Is
pooty Tune here? Bush? Two days worst person in the
world still ahead on Countdown. One of my favorite pieces
(26:07):
of advice, especially to younger people, is there are no adults.
You have to be your own adult. Nowhere is this
more true than in television the story of the worst
manager I have ever personally experienced. I mean, the CNN
crowd is catching up here, but this would be the
(26:28):
worst one I've ever worked for. Next. First, in each
edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need you
can help. Every dog has its day. This time it's
the people who help all the dogs and the cats
in need one by one. Animal Advocates of Huntington, West
Virginia has helped and found homes for more than thirty
thousand animals in the last decade. It can happen to
(26:50):
any group trying to save the injured or the ailing.
OBAA is itself in need of rescue fifteen thousand dollars
in debt and new heartrending cases coming in still every day.
A fundraiser on Cudley has gotten them about half what
they need. If you can help grow that percentage, donate
at cudley dot com for one by one Animal Advocates
(27:11):
or look for the reminder on my Twitter feeds. I
thank you and one by one Animal Advocates Thanks you.
I was a witness to the greatest management fiasco in
(27:32):
television history, and it began on Monday, June twelfth, two
thousand and six. My girlfriend at the time, Katie Tururr,
was coming in from la for a week, and my
vacation had started the previous Friday at exactly nine oh
one pm. At nine oh two pm on that Friday night,
the acting chief of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, called me, insisting
(27:53):
that even though I was on vacation, we had to
meet for breakfast at nine thirty am Monday. I said
that made it a not vacation and he said, we
will give you two additional days off later. Something is
happening you need to know about first, I sighed. The
previous Wednesday, they had fired the president of MSNBC, the
(28:14):
one who had once chased me around our offices in Secaucus,
New Jersey, threatening to kill me because he was squeamish
about blood. See if that makes any logical sense to you.
He threatened to kill me because he was squeamish about blood.
Jeff Zucker, then the president of NBC, had called my
agent and asked how my relationship with the aforementioned acting
(28:36):
chief Phil Griffin was. It was obvious they were going
to put Griffin in charge, and as the marquee anchor
on the network, they needed me to find it out
from them rather than from a gossip site or something.
I could not begrudge them the courtesy. So on the
first weekday of my vacation, Griffin and I met for breakfast,
and as soon as coffee arrived, he said, so listen, buddy,
(28:57):
I'm going to be an executive in charge of MSNBC,
but I'm going to be staying here in the city
to oversee the Today Show. So MSNBC he will also
have a general manager, and the general manager will be
in charge in secaucas and the new general manager will
be Dan Abrams. Well, I paused for a second and
then burst into laughter. I mean thirty seconds of a
(29:19):
riotous belly laugh loud enough that other people at the
restaurant at Norma's in the Parker Meridian in New York
City turned around to look at me to find out
what was so funny. Then I composed myself. Then I
laughed again, then a third laughed, then a fourth laugh.
(29:39):
Oh my god, Phil, that is the best. You get
me to get up early on the first day of
my vacation and you hit me with that, Dan Abrams
running something we've known each other, what Phil twenty five
years next month? That is the best joke you have
ever told me, Dan Abrams and I laughed again for
another thirty seconds, and one of my friends, who was
(30:01):
a waiter there, came over and said, everything okay. Because
Phil could never interrupt anybody who was praising him, he
smiled back at me, and when I finally stopped laughing,
he said, well, thanks, I guess, but I'm serious. We've
been talking to Dan for several months about this, and
he just has the kind of analytical mind that it
(30:22):
had taken me more than a minute to realize Griffin
was serious. That he and the president of NBC News
Steve Cappus, and that president of NBC Jeff Zucker had
actually decided to take the host of our nine PM show,
which had been devoted for years to excruciating, lowest common
denominator tabloid crap coverage of the missing white woman of
(30:45):
the week, to take a man who had the respect
of absolutely no one on air or off at MSNBC,
A man who made me, in that regard, look like
Saint Francis of a Cci, A man who had only
been in television for twelve years, a man who had
never run anything in his life, A man within describably
(31:05):
bad hair that none of us could identify. Was it
a two pay? Was it a weave? Was he hit
by lightning? And that was the most sincere thing about him?
His hair? They had actually decided to appoint this gossip
monger with no experience, to run a network that was
just now finally establishing itself as a factor in American
(31:28):
political media. Christ Phil, what are you thinking? I said
to him, He's a buffoon. I'd rather work for Joe Scarborough.
He's condescending, he insults his producers, he insults our producers.
He leaks constantly to the reporters and the gossip blogs.
Half of his exclusive sources turned out to be wrong,
(31:51):
and I might be the best friend he has there.
Phil Griffin chugged his coffee. Well, I'm sorry about that.
I mean, I mean it's not gonna make any practical
difference for you. You would countdown, will report directly to me.
Dan is a good have any responsibilities unning the primetime shows.
He's only going to be hands on with the daytime shows.
But he'll be the general manager of the network. And
(32:11):
we think he has a lot of exciting ideas. And
I said exciting ideas about what exciting ideas about Sean
Beney Ramsey. Phil, we have just stopped being the running joke,
the bottomless punchline of cable news. And once this gets out,
we will be less respected than we were a year ago.
(32:33):
I paused, and the news bounced off the walls of
the restaurant and hit me afresh again. Dan Abrams, general
manager of MSNBC. He will get you fired, Phil, I
don't know if he will get you fired because he's
trying to get you fired, or he'll get you fired
(32:53):
because he'll be so bad at this that everybody will quit.
But you've just committed professional suicide. You and Cappus and Zooker,
dead Men Walking. Phil Griffin was now read. I had
only previously seen him read when he was very, very
drunk and we were in our twenties. I was hoping
you'd give him a chance, and I said some very
pleasant things about giving him a chance to destroy what
(33:16):
we had been building up for the last year. And
did Phil remember that my contract was up in six
months and CNN was already publicly courting me to go there.
I said, I'm gone. You might as well release me
from the contract right now. I'm out. And then something
else popped into my mind. Oh, and listen, did you
think there might be a problem because he and I
dated the same woman nine years ago, and he told
(33:38):
her she'd be making a mistake to get involved with me.
Phil's eyes widened. He had forgotten, Like I said, he'll
have nothing to do with Countdown. An hour later, my
home phone rang and it was Dan Abrams. I just
wanted to say how much I'm looking forward to working
with you on Countdown. As time goes by, Phil will
(34:00):
be more and more overwhelmed at the Today Show, and
I'll be making the day to day decisions. I'll be
your guy. After a few minutes, of this, which I
swear I could hear his phone scratching against his two
pay and during which I said nothing but uh uh.
My home phone rang again and it was the NBC president,
Jeff Zucker. So you guys report to Dan, and if
(34:23):
you need to go further, you can go to Phil.
And I said, Phil had just told me Abrams would
have nothing to do with countdown, and I intended to
make sure that was true. Zucker, showing the loyalty and
consistency that was so publicly displayed in the original Chris
Cuomo CNN fiasco, immediately said, well, if this doesn't work,
f Dan Abrams, hell, F Phil Griffin, you come to me.
(34:45):
The first thing I had done when I had gotten
home was to call my executive producer, Izzy Povich. She
had been as fascinated as I had been as to
why I had to have a business breakfast on day
one of a vacation. Well, I sighed, you'll never believe
who the new general manager of MSNBC is. She guessed
(35:05):
Phil Griffin than me, and then the manager of the
New York Yankees, Joe Torrey. I said, all would have
been better choices. I said, it's Dan Abrams. She laughed
so hard I had to pull the phone away from
my ear. After she finally calmed down, Isy said, you
had me going, Oh my god, what a disaster that
(35:28):
would be. I'm sorry I fell into the bit. Yeah,
just kidding, she laughed again. No, actually, I'm not kidding.
She laughed again and said come on, and so I said, yeah, yeah,
I'm kidding. She laughed again. No actually I'm not kidding.
Dan Abrams is the new general manager, she laughed again.
We must have done this for two or three minutes.
(35:48):
It was an old Eddie Izzard bit. I stole it
from him about the death of Engelbert Humperdink. I finally
stopped when she said, wait, I saw Dan Abrams getting
out of his car in the President's parking space this morning.
You're you're You're not quit kidding. Oh my god. I
have to call my husband and tell him I'm quitting. Well,
(36:12):
it all worked out about as well as I had predicted.
At his first meeting with the producers, dan Abrams revealed
his first exciting idea. He had apparently been given enough
lead time about his appointment to have made up giant
banners containing the new MSNBC network slogan, which he had
dreamed up. The banners he told the producers were going
to be hung around the studios, and in fact, we're
(36:33):
being hung around the studios. As they spoke, and behind
him there was one covered in a drape cloth and
he pulled the string. The cloth fell off, revealing his
first exciting idea, the new network slogan MSNBC keeping it real,
keeping k EEIPI n apostrophe, no g keeping. That was
(36:57):
the highlight of his tenure as the general manager. The
blowback against his appointment was so universal, well nobody trying
to hide it. Abram's first move was to cancel a
show hosted by an Xbox News walking maliprop artist named
Rita Cosby. She almost took hostages. Abrams delayed the meeting
(37:18):
to tell her staff from noon until six pm. Abrams
then gave an interview about his vision for MSNBC and
told the reporter quote, documentaries are our most important programs,
and the staffs of the uncanceled primetime shows mine included
nearly walked out because in fact we were our most
(37:38):
important programs. While Griffin prevented that mass resignation by swearing
Abrams had been misquoted. Abrams then launched a series of
radio commercials for MSNBC documentaries. Abrams tried to get a
producer named Bill Wolf, who had been told he was
going to be the new general manager, to instead host
his own show. He told me he had figured out
(38:01):
the perfect guest host for Countdown and was already in
negotiations with him. Dan Rather, my girlfriend Katie's father, then
chimed in with a new nickname for Abrams that spread
across the television industry, Miles Miles, as in Miles the
boy producer from the sitcom Murphy Brown. I even felt
sorry for him, it was that bad, and of course
(38:24):
I was promptly repaid for this mistake. A week after
Abrams was hired, the cable news blogger named Brian Stelter,
who inexplicably wound up first at The New York Times
and then at CNN, and you heard about him getting
fired over the summer. Brian Stelter called to say he
had been told by a source at NBC that I
had just been fired at a meeting an hour before
by Abrams and an NBC executive named Randy Falco. In fact,
(38:49):
Abrams was at a meeting with Zucker and the NBC
News president Cappus, as they desperately tried to steer out
of the fatal skid they had all swerved into. Phil
Griffin was furious. Griffin told me he suspected Abrams had
been somehow connected to this leak about this fake story
about me getting fired, and he began an investigation of
(39:09):
him and never trusted him again one week appointed Monday,
and a lame duck the following Monday, keeping it real keeping.
On August ninth, three days shy of the two months mark,
Phil Griffin called my office an hour and a half
(39:31):
before my show. Okay, you want to say I told
you so. We've made it clear to Dan that he
won't be involved in any major decisions going forward. He
will remain general manager, but I'm running everything. In a
year or so, buddy, we'll say he found out he
just had to go back on the air, and he'll
resign and will give him the nine PM show. Probably,
you have to keep this confidential. I did. I'm surprisingly
(39:55):
good at that, at least till I started this podcast.
Fourteen months later, they offed him, by which time I
had already started to lobby them to make the nine
PM host, not Abrams, but Rachel Maddow. They finally gave
into that in September two thousand and eight, and Dan
did not have a show or a title, and he
finally got the message and he left NBC in twenty eleven.
(40:16):
The last I had heard of Dan Abrams before the
News Nation retirement home. He had launched a new website.
It's called Whiskey Raiders because it rates various brands of whiskey.
You get it, Raiders, ray Ters, you get it. It's
(40:39):
a pun. Presumably he chose that pun because somebody else
had already taken keeping it real, I've done all the
(41:00):
damage I can do. Here. Here are the credits. Most
of the music arrange produced and performed by Brian Ray
and John Phillip Shaneil, who are on the Countdown Musical Directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanelle, 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 Olberman theme from ESPN two,
(41:23):
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis. Courtesy of
ESPN inc musical comments from Nancy Fauss. The best baseball
stadium organist ever. Our announcer was John Banks from Breaking
Bad and everything else is pretty much my fault. So
that's countdown for this the eight hundred and sixty seventh
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Do not forget. Keep
(41:45):
arresting him while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
I have not not done my job since I've gotten here.
I can chew and walk on at the same time.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.