CNN TANKS FOR TRUMP, REFUSES TO FACT-CHECK HIS LIES

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio Good Evening,
Live from New York. No audience, no moderators, no journalism.

(00:31):
What you have just witnessed if you watch the first
Biden Trump debate on CNN, which it marketed as the
CNN Presidential Debate, what you have seen is a debate
with three participants, Joe Biden versus the tag team of
Donald Trump and CNN. The decision to not fact check

(00:52):
the fire hose of lies that is Donald Trump, that
is the entirety of his existence and the entirety of
his campaign. The decision to not fact check any one
of those lies by CNN was one of the most
immoral decisions in the history of the free press in
this country. Literally, I am suggesting that at some point

(01:15):
tonight CNN should it will not go off the air
in shame, fire everybody, seal off the buildings, make sure
everybody's out, and burn the goddamn place to the ground.
There was nothing in that entire coverage of that debate
that suggested for a moment that the truth mattered. To CNN.

(01:37):
They answered none of Trump's lies, even the one promise
that was made that if Trump talked about the twenty
twenty election and questioned the outcome. There would be pushback
from Dana Bash and Jake Tapper did not come to pass.
CNN had set the bar for itself about here. It
didn't even make to the top of the table. As

(02:00):
I warned in Wednesday's Countdown podcast, it was impairve that
there be some fashion of fact checking. You could not
simply allow what happened to Caitlin Collins at the town
hall last year in twenty twenty three to happen again
in a presidential debate. And yet that is exactly what

(02:20):
CNN and its new boss, Mark Thompson allowed to happen tonight,
and he and the political director David Shalian, and Jake
Tapper and Dana Bash should at minimum be suspended or
fired for journalistic malpractice at the highest level of failure
in American media and journalistic history. It was an extraordinary event.

(02:42):
CNN not just let Trump lie, They let him slander
the president of the United States repeatedly. They let him
lie about every aspect of his own presidency. They let
him lie about his coup, they let him lie about
January sixth, They let him lie about his goddamn golf scores.
The list of lies exceeded, I think by Trump just

(03:06):
in the approximately forty five minutes he would have been
on camera in this first debate, exceeded the lies that
he told against the Caitlyn Collins push back in twenty
twenty three in the town Hall, CNN broadcast live to
great criticism. That broadcast looks like it deserves a Pulletzer,
an Emmy, two Oscars, and a Grammy Award Compared to

(03:28):
this in terms of the journalistic quality that was done
by Kitlyn Collins, who simply tried to say the truth
and tried to push back. Jake Tapper and Dana Bash
sat there and read their questions off cards and did
not do follow ups, and did not question Trump in
the slightest and they let him lie. If Trump is

(03:48):
reelected and this country goes fascist as Trump intends it
to do, part of the responsibility is as of this
night on the heads of CNN Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.
It was an appalling performance. And as I speaking to here,
I'm someone who was not only once the moderator, in

(04:08):
effect the host or facilitator. To use the CNN term,
tonight of a Democratic presidential primary debate in Chicago in
two thousand and seven, So I have some idea of
the preparation for these events. This wasn't some sort of
accident that they didn't push back. This wasn't some sort
of random occurrence in the heat of the on air broadcast,

(04:29):
as I will stumble over a word, or as Joe
Biden would stumble over a word tonight, or as Donald
Trump stumble over about five hundred words tonight. These were
not accidents. We prepared for this primary debate in two
thousand and seven in Chicago, where I believe seven Democratic candidates,
including President Obama, future President Biden, the Secretary of State

(04:52):
at the time, Hillary Clinton, and five other candidates. I
believe the total was eight. We had them all, and
we began to prepare the questions, writing them out, memorizing them,
deciding who should get which question. We started to do
that a week beforehand. There were twenty five people involved
in selecting what would be asked of the candidates in
that format. In this format, an actual presidential debate, the

(05:15):
first of only two scheduled in the entirety of this campaign,
the earliest in the history of this country. In the
most important election we have faced, certainly since the eighteen
sixty four election in the middle of the Civil War.
They planned this out. The decision was made by CNN,
no fact checks, and if there are no facts, Donald

(05:35):
Trump will win every time because he is a goddamned liar.
I took notes as we went through of the Trump lies,
and I don't think this is one third of what
was said. He lied about COVID and the entire history
of COVID under his misleadership, and CNN said nothing. He
lied about everybody wanting Roe v. Wade overturned and the

(05:57):
decisions about abortion sent back to the States, and CNN
said nothing. He lied that the founding fathers somehow would
have posed Roe v. Wade or would have demanded that
it be decided by the States or by the Supreme
Court the way the Supreme Court overturned it at his direction.
He lied about that, and CNN said nothing. He lied
about post birth abortion. Let's again remind everybody what post

(06:20):
perth abortion actually means. Trump suggested that people in this country,
doctors and mothers of newborn children due to incomplete abortions,
that the mothers of the children and the doctors and
other officials there murdered living infants who had just been born.
There was no fact check. According to CNN, that's true.

(06:42):
Jobs to illegal immigrants. Trump lied about that and CNN
said nothing. Biden to destroy social security. Trump lied about that,
and CNN said nothing. Trump at one point said he
would not say something about the Border Guard's endorsement, and
then he said it by saying he wouldn't say it.
He lied about that. He lied about terrorists coming across
the border and CNN said nothing. He ted lied about

(07:04):
many American citizens being left in Afghanistan and CNN said nothing.
He lied about how he was congratulated by Europe and
NATO by demanding more money, and CNN said nothing about that.
He lied about the ocean protecting us against a European war,
which was last postulated, I believe, by Woodrow Wilson in
nineteen sixteen, and CNN said nothing about that lie. He

(07:27):
lied about getting NATO to pay and CNN said nothing.
He lied about offering troops to Nancy Pelosi and CNN
said nothing. He lied about how some unknown, unidentified they
asked him to speak on January sixth, when the entirety
of the January sixth public event was his idea and
his scheme and his attempted coup. CNN could have, at

(07:48):
that point simply said one of those idiot anchors Jake
Tapper or Dana Bash should have said at that point,
at minimum, to possibly save this debacle from going any further,
could have just said, mister Trump, who's the they who
asked you to speak? Just to follow him up once
with a follow up question, to ask what it was

(08:10):
he was saying, because these were a series of lies
that went unquestioned. And Trump's villainy and Trump's role is
the greatest criminal in American history is one thing. But
tonight he has an accomplice. It's called CNN. Pelosi. He said,
acknowledged that she asked for the troops. Trump lied about that.

(08:30):
CNN said nothing about it. The January sixth evidence being destroyed,
trumpled about that. CNN said nothing about that. He lied
about Charlottesville. CNN said nothing about that. He lied about
Biden somehow making up the Charlottesville story about good people
on both sides. CNN didn't say anything about that. He
lied that he didn't call the dead soldiers losers and suckers.

(08:50):
He made up a number of people who said it
was not true, and CNN didn't call him on that.
He lied that Biden caused the inflation after COVID, and
CNN didn't say anything about that. He lied that Biden
had called Black's super predators, and despite an understandable dropped
jaw from the President of the United States when that happened,
CNN didn't say anything about that Trump lie. He lied

(09:12):
about his environmental numbers, how he had the best environmental numbers. Ever,
presumably he's talking about environmental numbers based on what the
polluters liked. I'm sure he got those right, but in
terms of environmental numbers, that was another lie CNN said
nothing about. He lied about migrants taking jobs of minorities,
Blacks and Hispanics in this country. CNN said nothing about that.

(09:35):
He lied about Biden getting money from China and called
him a Manchurian candidate, and CNN said nothing about that.
He lied about Biden paying for hostages, and CNN said
nothing about that. In point of fact, off the top
of my head, I know what that was. That was
the United States of America unfreezing frozen Iranian assets as
part of a deal to get people back from that country.

(09:57):
He lied about the country failing. He lied about acing
a cognitive test. That's probably the thousandth time he's lied
about that. The cognitive test, by the way, is the
screening one to determine whether or not they need to
put you in a straight jacket when you come in,
and of course Trump needs to be in a straight jacket,
and CNN said nothing about that lie. He lied about
winning at golf, He lied about the golf tournaments. He

(10:19):
lied about not being a supporter an inducer of political violence.
Someone there should have said, had anybody thought about stochastic terrorism?
Did anybody at CNN suggest that perhaps that should be said? No?
Trump lied, and CNN said nothing in response. He lied
about the police ushering in the coup members his stochastic terrorists.

(10:41):
On January sixth, He lied about accepting the election results,
and then later came back and explained how he was
lying about accepting the election results this November, and CNN
said nothing about that. He lied about why he had
been indicted and who was responsible for being indicted. The answer,
of course to that was he who was responsible for
him being indicted by committing crimes? Andn said nothing about that.

(11:05):
He lied about again the United States being a failing nation.
He lied about fraud in the twenty twenty election. As
I mentioned earlier, CNN had promised that of all the
lies Trump could say, that would be the one they
would not let him get away with, and Dana Bash
and Jake Tapper let him get away with it. He
lied about somehow going to Europe in his closing statement.

(11:27):
Apparently the vets are supposed to go to Europe for treatment.
It wasn't clear, and he lied, and CNN said nothing
about it. And as I suggest, I believe the actual
list is probably about three times as long as the
one I've just read you. Those were the low lights
in an extraordinary performance, and extraordinary meant in the worst
possible way in that word could meet. The lies are

(11:51):
on the record now, and the lies have been resonating
through this country through social media for the last two
hours because CNN did not do its job. I'm telling
you this from personal ex experience. It's not an easy
thing to sit there and try to run a television
show while you are asking two presidential candidates or eight

(12:12):
presidential candidates questions that are vital to the future and
the security and the safety of this nation. It's not
an easy task. It is not as difficult as those
two idiots made it look tonight. And you can, in
fact make a few moral judgments and judgments that are
responsible to the American people, and judgments that are responsible
to your oaths that you take internally in your own

(12:35):
soul about what you're going to do if you get
the big anchor job, Dana Bash, or if you get
the big anchor job Jake Tapper, if you go Jake
Tapper from being a guy who once went out with
Monica Lewinsky, is the greatest and most famous thing in
your resume to being the anchor or co anchor of
a presidential debate. If you get that dream come true,
where you go from running joke to the role of

(12:57):
anchor of the first co anchor of the first presidential
debate in the most important election in this country in
at least the time since eighteen sixty four, probably in
the whole of our history. If you go from that
one laughingstock to this position of importance, you should take
it goddamn seriously and not let a bastard intent on
putting your network out of business putting you behind bars,

(13:20):
putting in the rest of us who depose him and
in some way have fought against him these last ten years.
Donald Trump wants Jake Tapper in jail or at least unemployed,
or at least in his employ servicing him as he
turns the media of this nation into a bunch of
nodding head dolls agreeing with him as fascism comes to
the United States of America. And Jake Tapper and Dana

(13:42):
Bash and the new CNN chief Robinson were too stupid
to know, are too stupid to know that they were
out there slitting their own throats and building their own gallows. Tonight,
I want to give one piece of news that ordinarily
would have been the lead story, and it may be
the lead story going from this first debate. If debate

(14:05):
is the right term. This is closer to another live
town hall than anything else. It might have been described
as Joe Biden according to several sources. It was first
reported by NBC, who's quoting two unnamed sources, and then
by the Associated Press. Joe Biden went through this debate
despite the fact that he was diagnosed. If diagnosed is
not too strong a term with it with a cold

(14:27):
before this event, so that when he came out sounding
as hoarse as he did, and sounding rehearsed and looking
kind of blank at the beginning, and he did not
really get started. Nobody will question that he did not
get started for the first twenty or thirty minutes of this.
He did leave a bad impression, there's no getting around that.
But there is a mitigating factor that he had a cold.
And as silly as that sounds, oh, he's going to

(14:49):
blame it on having a cold. Let us remember that
in nineteen sixty it was absolutely the case that John F. Kennedy,
who was a little known senator from Massachusetts, was elevated
to basically equality with the sitting Vice President of the
United States Nixon in the debates, the first debate when Nixon,
who had had I believe it was it was not pneumonia,

(15:11):
it was a staff infection. He'd been hospitalized. He looked
gray as anything. They didn't make him up very well,
and he came on television and he looked like death
warmed over without the without the warmed over part, and
he faced Kennedy robust, glowing, tanned, apparently on several medications,
as it later turned out for his various diseases we
did not know about if you talk about jacked up,

(15:34):
but Kennedy came out of nowhere and was given at
the end of that debate essentially equal status thereafter with
Richard Nixon in the nineteen sixty campaign, because Richard Nixon
had been hospitalized and looked bad on camera. So the
idea that Joe Biden had a cold as a bad excuse,
it rings kind of hollow. It can be the sort

(15:54):
of thing that changes American history, especially if you combine
that with the network doing the debate, violating every principle
of journalism. And I'd add, if you want to go
a little bit further than this, one of the great
metaphors for failure, for decisive, career ending failure in the
history of this country, in the history of the world
for the last two hundred odd years is Napoleon losing

(16:17):
at Waterloo. It's been in everything from long movies to
two long movies to Abba songs. Waterloo. Napoleon apparently had
a gastro intestinal attack on the morning of Waterloo. We
can't discount this. The idea that Joe Biden had a
cold tested negative for COVID by the way he had

(16:38):
the test, and like the debate in twenty twenty, when
Trump went on stage with an active COVID infection, told
no one and exposed Biden to it. The COVID test
was taken by President Biden and he tested negative and
proceeded with the debate. History will judge whether or not
that was a good decision or a bad one, but

(16:58):
it was an honest one and it had consequences that
Joe Biden will have to deal with, as the rest
of us will for the rest of this campaign. I
did want to start to review some of the things

(17:21):
that were said and use some of the clips that
we have gotten for you that I think exemplify what
we saw both from the CNN failures and the unstopping,
ceaseless sophistry and sophistry, or the highlights, the legitimate parts,
the relatively honest parts of Donald Trump's performance, and then
talk about what they mean and what the reaction would be.

(17:42):
And remember that you and I, who have been living
and breathing this for a year, two years, ten years,
we have one viewpoint of this. Consider how many of
the one hundred and ten, perhaps million people who watch
this just now in some form, we're seeing these two
men for the first time in the context of even
beginning to think about who they're going to vote for,

(18:02):
and what the impact would be not just of Joe
Biden halting at the start and coughing at the start
and being rehearsed at the start and having a cold,
but what the effect would be of seeing Donald Trump
for the first time doing what he did tonight. And
one of the things that perhaps will resonate for those
who were still watching by that point was Trump threatening

(18:23):
Joe Biden, calling him a potential convicted felon, and saying
that he was the innocent one and that if he
became president again, yes, all of our worst fears are
in fact accurate. He will try to prosecute Biden.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Telling the Ukrainian people that we're going to want a
billion dollars or you change the prosecutor. Otherwise you're not
getting a billion dollars. If I ever said that, that's
quid pro quo, that we're not going to do anything.
We're not going to give you a billion dollars unless
you change you prosecutor. Having to do with the son,
this man is a criminal.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
This man you're lucky. You're lucky.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
I did nothing wrong.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
We'd have a system that was rigged and disgusting. I
did nothing wrong.

Speaker 4 (19:01):
Thank you, President Trump, President Biden, you have said right.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
To you, sir.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
You well you want to respond, go ahead, I'll give
you a minute to respond.

Speaker 5 (19:08):
The idea that I did anything wrong relative what you're
talking about is outrageous.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
It's simply a lie. Number one.

Speaker 5 (19:16):
Number two, The idea that you have a right to
seek retribution against any American just because your president is
wrong is simply wrong.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
No president's ever spoken like that before.

Speaker 5 (19:27):
The idea that I did anything wrong relative what you're
talking about is outrageous.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
It's simply a lie. Number one.

Speaker 5 (19:35):
Number two, The idea that you have a right to
seek retribution against any American just because your president is.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Wrong is simply wrong. No president's ever spoken like that before.
No president in our history is spoken like that before.

Speaker 5 (19:48):
Number three, the crimes that you are still charged with,
and think of all the civil pedaltis you have. How
many billions of dollars do you own in civil penalties
for molesting a woman in public, for doing a whole
range of things, of having sex with a porn star,
on the night while your wife was pregnant.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
What are you talking about? You have the morals of
an alley cat. Give a minute, Sir, I didn't have
sex with the porn star.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Former president of the United States says, I didn't have
sex with a porn star. Maybe they can make that
into his epitaph. Donald Trump succeeded in what Donald Trump
does best, bullshit people into their doom. He succeeded throughout
the night. There is no getting around that. As bad

(20:36):
an impact as Joe Biden and his cold and the
initial halting nature of his performance tonight will have on
his campaign, whether it measures as one to one millionth
of a percent or it measures as five percent, it
was matched by the fact that because again this format
not only allowed Trump to concentrate on his lies and

(20:56):
his performance, but there was no pushback. There was not
going to be any pushback. The pushback could only come
from Biden. He had to devote about half of what
he was saying. Half of his time had to be
devoted to doing the fact checking job that CNN should
have done, as and again that CNN did even in
its failure in the town hall with Caitlin Collins last year.

(21:17):
But that look Trump throughout was sweating and sneering. Not
only if that line of the night from Trump was
not I didn't have sex with a porn star. He
also had an infamous quote about how we had great
H two oh at some point that environmentally we were
better off under him, when he's just demanded a billion
dollars from the nation's oil producers in exchange for rolling

(21:39):
back all possible restrictions on them polluting the planet and
taking this next five year period which we'll decide whether
or not life survives on this planet, and selling it
for one billion dollars so he can go to the
White House instead of the Big House. There was a
succession of these events. There was a succession of these comments.
There was a succession of Trump failures and Trump revelations

(22:03):
about who he is and what he intends to do.
But I think we do need to look at what
where we started, which was the President of the United
States essentially getting lost within the first ten minutes of
this having sounded rehearsed, having been coughing, and trying to
explain the issue of improvements. It did not go well.

(22:24):
You will see this clip again. There will be a
need to explain this, and we will need to do
or the president will need to do damage control about
how this sounded.

Speaker 4 (22:34):
President Biden, I want to give you an opportunity to
respond to this question about the national debt.

Speaker 5 (22:39):
He had the largest national debt of any president four
year period. Number one, Number two, he got two trillion
dollar tasks benefited the very wealthy. What I'm going to
do is fix the taxes. And for example, we have
one thousand trillionaires in America, I mean billionaires in America,
and what's happening. They're in a situation where they in
fact paid eight point two percent in taxes. If they

(23:01):
just paid twenty four twenty five percent numbers, they'd raised
five hundred million dollars billion dollars. I should say in
a ten year period, we'd be able to write wipe
out his debt. We'd be able to help make sure
that all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care,
making sure that we continue to suppreent it stand in
our healthcare system, making sure that we're able to make

(23:22):
every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able
to do with the with the COVID, I was could
be with dealing with everything we have to do with.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
Look if we finally beat.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Medicare, and that's where that ended. And it ended in
part because, as they said they would, they turned the
microphones off. It's bad if you have to go out
and do that kind of thing, a debate with a
cold and with an hostile environment such as CNN created
for its own purposes, and whatever the reasons were, it's

(24:02):
a little worse when the microphone shuts off as you
are beginning to explain. As I see that clip again,
I think that the initial impact of where we thought
we would be compared to say, the night of the
State of the Union address, I think the initial impact
was far worse than the clip looked like. The clip
is a lack of success. The clip is a little

(24:26):
bit lost in the number of details, all the good
and good for the country that he's trying to get
out over his own sense of I may have to
cough again, as we saw him repeatedly bring his closed
hand to his face to clear his throat and to cough.
So I think again there will be an impact on this.
But I believe the ship which was rocking on happily

(24:50):
in the first twenty minutes of this debate steadied itself.
As time went by for the President of the United States,
and in fact, as people began to hear more of
what Trump was saying and what he was planning, I
think things got worse and worse. If this had been
a twenty minute debate, there would have been no question
that Trump would have come away with a complete triumph.
It was not a twenty minute debate. It was an

(25:11):
hour and a half, and I actually think that Biden
managed to pull off at least a tie against Trump
and his partner CNN. We have a further update. And
it's ironic because one of the best people working in
media today, who was in a Toronto newspaper. I don't
think I got him a better job, but in twenty
sixteen I repeatedly pumped his work. His name is Daniel Dale,

(25:35):
and he's an excellent fact checker, and he is now
with CNN and he has posted, along with his colleague
Holmes Librand, a commentary essentially a full detailed analysis of
the one fact check. Here it is. It should have
been on CNN during the debate. In fact, it's just here.
I'm holding it in my hand like I'm Lauren Bobert,

(25:59):
CNN fact Check. Trump falsely claims Biden has used the
term super predators. What he's done to the black population
is horrible, Trump said, including the fact that for ten
years he called them super predators in the nineteen nineties.
We can't forget that. Facts first Trump claim is false.
Biden never publicly deployed the phrase super predators or endorsed
the criminological theory behind it, which held that there was

(26:22):
a new breed of highly and remorseless, violent young offenders. Biden, however,
did refer to predators on our streets who were beyond
the pale while promoting the nineteen ninety four crime Bill.
There is an extraordinary difference between that, because there are
at any point in American history, there have been predators
on our streets. I'm going to do the commentary here.

(26:43):
That's why you're tuned in. I presume unless something has
gone wrong with your YouTube experience and you're looking for
well Lauren Bobert video. But if you would mind for
a moment while I bring in somebody else's comment from Twitter.
Ex Megan McCain, who has periodic bouts of common sense
amid most of what she does, which is complaining about

(27:06):
how the world has mistreated Meghan McCain. Meghan McCain said,
this is the most stressful debate I've ever watched, and
my parent was a nominee against Obama. I think we
can for once hold hands with Megan McCain and say, yes,
it was pretty damn stressful the failure of the CNN

(27:27):
approach to this. And again, I don't want to claim
that I am some sort of savant, because I suggested
in the podcast on Wednesday that this was absolutely imperative
that they not do what they announced just in passing
that there would be no fact check. That's not some
sort of extraordinary insight. That's not some sort of I'm

(27:48):
the only person in the world who could have thought that.
We saw just now for an hour and a half
the consequences of not living up to journalistic responsibilities. For
whatever reason, I've speculated before that CNN's new right wing
ownership is preparing for a Trump presidency and it's trying
to mitigate the damage he will do to them. As
all the networks and all the news organizations have had

(28:10):
the meeting, what do we do in the worst case
scenario where Trump is president again and comes for us.
What can we point to to save ourselves? It is
presumably similar to what those who criticized Hitler in the
German press in the twenties and thirties began to wonder
in nineteen thirty thirty one, in nineteen thirty two, and
so perhaps and I don't know that this was behind

(28:31):
the decisions by David Shalien and the new heads of
CNN to do it tonight, but I do know that
they've had these conversations. What can we do to at
least show that we are not opposed to Trump, that
this environment was behind the worst part of their abrogation,

(28:52):
their failure to fact check when they pumped Trump or
should have pumped Trump about January sixth, when they finally
got around thirty nine minutes into this fiasco about some
question about Trump's culpability, Trump's attempt to overthrow the government,
Trump's attempt to bribe people into testifying that he won

(29:13):
in twenty twenty, and Joe Biden did not his continuing lies,
his continuing fostering of conspiracies, his continuing attempt to undermine
the very concept of truth itself. They asked him about
January sixth, and he simply did not answer about January sixth.
He took it and changed it into a date that

(29:35):
might have been something randomly picked out of a calendar.
January sixth became to him December the seventeenth.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
I was recently in.

Speaker 5 (29:45):
France for in D Day, and I spoke all about
those heroes that died. I went to the World War
II cemetery, World War One cemetery, refused to go to.
He was standing with his four star in general and
he told me said, I don't want to go in
there because they're a much a loser and suckers. My
son was not a loser, was not a sucker.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
You're the sucker. You're the loser.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
President Trump.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
First of all, that was a made up quote. Suckers
and losers. They made it up. It was in the
third rate.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Magazine that's failing, like many of these magazines.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
He made that up.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
He put it in commercials.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
We've notified him.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
We had nineteen people that said I didn't say it,
And think of this, who would say, I'm at a
cemetery or I'm talking about our veterans because nobody's taken
better camp. So glad this came up, and he brought
it up. There's nobody that's taken better care of our
soldiers than I have to think that I would in
front of generals and others say suckers and losers. We

(30:38):
have nineteen people that said it was never said by me.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
It was made up by him, just like Russia. Russia.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Russia was made up, just like the fifty one intelligence
agents are made up.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Just like the new thing with the.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Sixteen economists are talking.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
It's the same thing.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Fifty one intelligence agents said that the laptop was Russia disinformation.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
It wasn't.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
That came from his son Hunter. It wasn't Russia disinformation.
He made up the suckers and losers. So he should
apologize to me right now.

Speaker 5 (31:09):
Four star general standards side was on your staff who
said you said it period?

Speaker 3 (31:14):
That's number one and number.

Speaker 5 (31:16):
Two the idea, the idea that I have to apologize
to you for anything along the life. We've done more
for veterans and any president has in American history.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
That was not the clip I intended to show you there,
and that was entirely my fault. I arranged these eclipse
and I got me out of order. They were in
the correct order. However, this did emphasize a point that
I made earlier that Trump brought to the table and
was allowed to continue to use it throughout the ninety
minutes by CNN, perhaps the maximum of his sophistry with

(31:47):
the minimum insanity, until he started to get cooking and
began to accuse, as I said, Joe Biden of being
a criminal and promising or threatening to promise to prosecute him.
And again the term was coined. The terms were coined
by Brian Boitworth, great writer, political writer who's called it

(32:07):
trump Nesia, in which the events of twenty twenty and
twenty nineteen, eighteen, and seventeen are turned into some sort
of rosy glow because that's what Trump is selling. He
also used several other terms which perhaps will skip here.
But asked about January sixth, Trump simply applied sophistry. There

(32:29):
was no January sixth, It was just a random date.
It didn't happen. I wasn't home, the suit didn't come
back from the cleaners. There was no answer to question,
and CNN never followed up.

Speaker 4 (32:42):
Let's turn to the issue of democracy. Former President Trump,
I want to ask you about January sixth, twenty twenty one.
After you rallied your supporters that day, some of them
stormed the capital to stop the constitutionally mandated counting of
electoral votes. As president, you swore an oath to quote, preserve, protect,
and defend unquote the Constitution. What do you say to

(33:02):
voters who believe that you violated that oath through your
actions and inaction on January sixth and worry that you'll
do it again.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Well, I don't think too many believe that. And let
me tell you about January sixth.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
On January sixth, we had a great border, nobody coming through,
very few. On January sixth, we were energy independent. On
January sixth, we had the lowest taxes ever. We had
the lowest regulations ever. On January sixth, we were respected
all over the world. All over the world were respected.
And then he comes in and we're now left at

(33:33):
we're like a bunch of stupid people that what happened
to the United States' reputation under this man's leadership is horrible,
including weaponization, which I'm sure at some point you'll be
talking about, where he goes after his political opponent because
he can't beat him fair and square and.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
CNN never went back to it. You can put that
on as the epitaph for American journalism and particularly about CNN.
And that was thirty nine minutes into this. A man
is trying to overthrow, overtake, and subsume the government of
the United States to take office, because if he does

(34:11):
not take office, he will miightly be put in a
federal prison for the rest of his life. The man
will do anything to make this happen so that he
can avoid jail. The man will say anything. The man
lives in a kind of fugue state in which none
of you out there are actually real, and nothing he
does has any consequences attached to it whatsoever. And CNN said, sure,

(34:36):
we'll play by your rules. We won't follow it up.
We ask about January sixth, and the next thing you
start talking about the borders. January sixth was the equivalent
of Donald Trump committing nine to eleven all over again
on this country, or at least attempting to. And CNN
waited until the debate was nearly half over to even

(34:58):
approach it, and once having approached it, got away from
it as quickly as possible without demanding an any kind
of answer from Donald Trump. I keep going back to
this because even now, an hour and forty five minutes
after the debate, or excuse me, two hours and fifteen
minutes after the debate started, I cannot believe that CNN

(35:20):
actually went through with the idea that there would be
no fact checking. In contrast to other debates, there were
commercial breaks in which somebody should have run onto that
stage with as the saying goes their hair on fire,
saying my god, my god, what have we done. You
need to start fact checking him. You need to stop

(35:42):
promulgating his lies. We need to stop helping Donald Trump
take over the government of the United States and turn
it into another failed Trump property, and the rest of
us become his contractors or his slaves, one who don't
get paid and two who meet the fate of all slaves.

(36:03):
There is another SEGM here that was repeated without any
pushback from CNN. Another thing that I would bring up
when we look about the impact or look into the
impact this would have with people, the low information voters,
the polsters, darlings this year, the deciders, the ones who
voted differently in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, the ones

(36:25):
who were under the age of thirty five, other not
necessarily undecided voters, but voters who were not attached already
to one of the two parties or one of the
two candidates. In looking at that, what did they see.
This is what they saw from Donald Trump talking about
Joe Biden in apocalyptic terms. And obviously we wish that

(36:46):
this had been phrased in as strong language, with as
strong a voice by the president. It was not to
any great degree. He did hit it on a couple
of occasions. But Trump said this, and again, no one
in a position of responsibility pushed back.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
If he when's this election, our country doesn't have a chance,
not even a chance of coming out of this rut.
We probably won't have a country left anymore. That's how
bad it is. He is the worst in history by far.

Speaker 4 (37:17):
Thank you, President TRYMP, President Biden.

Speaker 5 (37:18):
We're the most admired country in the world with the
United States of America. There's nothing beyond our capacity. We
are the finest military in the history of the world,
the finest in the history of the world. No one
thinks we're weak. No one wants to screw around with us.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
Nobody Two competing visions and CNN again did not ask
any further questions about the vision in which the world
is ending and only Trump can save it. And Trump
has no other motive than wanting to help all of us.
He's Joseph Stalin if he's not hit where he's Joseph Stalin.
Only he has to get elected and then he'll be

(37:54):
Joseph Stalin. And Jake Tapper, you helped Dana Bash, an
unfortunate and extraordinarily ungifted individual. You helped. Honest to god,
it would have been better if Katie Turr had been
the moderator of this debate. And you can read into
that anything you want if they tell you the debate

(38:16):
does not change a single mind or a single vote.
And this may be viewed entirely as a negative. I'm
not sure it's entirely as a negative. It may be
a wash. Ultimately, Morning Consult did research on this which
I quoted yesterday, but the actual numbers are actually pretty
relevant right now. They read this as few voters believe
debates will change what they think about candidates or their

(38:38):
vote choice. Shares of voters who said it was very
likely they'll change whom they plan to vote for based
on the debates all eleven percent eleven percent of one
hundred and twenty million viewers say, which could have been
how many were expecting to watch, whether or not. That's
the ultimate number between television and streaming and listening in
some audio way online or actually in radio or in

(39:00):
a live podcast, perhaps one hundred and twenty million. Ten
percent of that is twelve million, So we are talking
about thirteen million people willing to change their vote based
on what they saw tonight. That's not a small few voters.
That's eleven or twelve million people. That's enough to create
a landslide if they all moved in one direction. The

(39:22):
most important part of this was that twenty one percent
of voters under the age of thirty five said they
were in that group that would be willing to change
or expected or thought it was very likely that they
could change their vote after what happened tonight. Seventeen percent
were in the group of voters between the ages of
thirty five and forty four, so thirty eight percent of
everybody in there between under the age of forty five

(39:44):
is a potential switch after this. Among black voters, twenty
one percent said they considered it very likely they'd changed
their vote after this debate, again before the debate happened,
and twenty seven percent of hispanic It's an extraordinary impact.
And again I'll go back to where we started with
the reference to nineteen sixty and Richard Nixon's hospitalization in

(40:04):
the fact that he came out poorly made up and
gaunt looking, and where the whole story of the five
o'clock shadow, the Richard Nixon perpetual beard originated. He went
on and did a debate in which he, because of
his health, managed to elevate his opponent, the unknown junior
senator from Massachusetts, to essentially the equivalency of a man

(40:24):
who'd been, for good or ill, the vice president of
the United States under one of its most popular presidents
ever for a period of eight years. And he gave
that away, that advantage away because of essentially bad makeup.

(40:49):
A couple of questions before we get to one lighter
bit of video from the debate itself. This is from
Garrett NYC. Would be incredible to see you moderate other
than you, who would be your ideal moderators, anybody but
Annabash and Jake Tapper, literally anybody else in that studio.

(41:10):
And I might add we could resume that debate with
anybody who's ever worked in that studio previously having done
a better job. That's Studio D on Techwood Drive in Atlanta,
the ancestral home of Ted Turner's broadcasting station, Channel seventeen
in Atlanta, which BEGAT Turner Broadcasting, which BEGAT CNN, which

(41:30):
BEGAT TVs or TBS was originally Channel seventeen, but which
BEGAT TNT and all the other properties under the Turner name.
I used that studio in nineteen eighty two when I
was with CNN Sports in my first job, and in
twenty thirteen I anchored the baseball coverage for the postseason
in that very studio. It's the size of three airplane hangars,

(41:52):
and anybody who's ever worked there, including myself, Gary Sheffield
and Pedro Martinez, would have been better moderators. The other thing.
In the nineteen seventies and eighties, those studios were used
for professional wrestling, not just professional wrestling, but the Georgia
Wrestling Federation or whatever it was called local professional wrestling.

(42:12):
They put bleachers in that thing and they had the
wrestlers come in and sometimes you could hear them being
slammed against the walls through the walls that adjoined the
CNN newsroom, and any one of those wrestlers would have
been better as moderators for this debate. Corneill waters, Why
didn't he bring up Project twenty twenty five an important
question and one I was going to raise later. One

(42:34):
of the leaked for warnings about which topics were going
to be addressed by President Biden and by Trump. One
of the leaked hits, as I phrased them, was Biden
pushing Project twenty twenty five. They saw how the John
Oliver segment on Project twenty twenty five, which I've been
harping on for several months, went viral five million views.

(42:54):
They had their own website Biden does about Project twenty
twenty five. They had QR codes. And then you're not
expecting the President of the United States to suddenly pull
a barcode out of his pocket and flash it at
the camera, although why not there were no rules. CNN
should have let him get away with that. They let
Trump say that January sixth was about the border, and

(43:15):
that Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that she wouldn't have troops that
Trump didn't send. I don't know why this didn't come up.
I imagine we're perhaps looking at a question of Joe
Biden's advisors and the President himself deciding that in the
hours before this debate, presumably as his cold and his
hoarseness increased, that there would have been some need to

(43:38):
drop a few of the packages along the way. Don't
burden him with additional details like hitting Project twenty twenty five.
There are, however, a lot of things that can I believe,
be done between now and November fifth. I mentioned this before,
and I saw it and was astonished by it because
I was in ESPN at the time. I was politically aware,

(44:00):
I knew what was going on in the world, and
I had no memory of this whatsoever. To give you
an idea of where we stand in terms of the
polls relative to the actual election, there are two elections
that were cited by the great journalists the Hall of
Famer from The Atlantic and other publication, Jim Fallows who
put these out I think earlier today, in nineteen ninety two,

(44:20):
and I'll read what he put out the New York
Times version of this. In a three way general election matchup,
ross Perot has moved to a clear lead over both
President Bush and Governor Bill Clinton in the latest Gallop poll,
in a telephone poll of eight hundred and fifteen registered
voters nationwide, conducted June fourth to June eighth. This is

(44:40):
nineteen ninety two. This is not fiction, This actually happened.
This is actually in the New York Times. There's a screenshot.
Mister Perrot was supported by thirty nine percent, Bush by
thirty one, Clinton by twenty five. The margin of error
was four percentage points. The man who was elected President
of the United States in November of nineteen ninety two

(45:01):
and went on to two popular and largely successful terms
with controversy, controversy that produced greater affection for him than
he had beforehand and circles back to Jake Tapper Biomonica Lewinsky,
but will leave that alone this point. At this point
in the election in nineteen ninety two, Bill Clinton, soon
to be President of the United States, was in third

(45:23):
place behind George H. W. Bush and Ross Fing Perrot,
and also from Fallows. He reminded us that at this
point in twenty twelve, all of the polls were essentially
tied between President Barack Obama and who ran against him.
In twenty twelve anybody remember anybody remember his vice president?

(45:49):
Anybody Republicans who had met Romney? The Economist you gov
poll of early July Obama forty three, Romney forty four.
Reuter's ipsos Obama forty nine, Romney forty three. Also July
June twenty eighth to July ninths Pew Research Obama fifty,
Romney forty three looked pretty good. Washington Times, jay Z

(46:11):
Analytics Romney forty two point eight, Obama forty two. ABC News,
Washington Post had it forty seven forty seven. Funny there's
no CNN poll here. Did they do them? A couple
of other questions? Was there a question for either candidate
that you thought was either unfair or a layup? I
do think that in assessing the questions and how the

(46:34):
candidates were expected to answer them, there was a slight
imbalance here because it was believed by the moderators and
by CNN going into this, that President Biden would have
to give substantive answers that included truth. On the other hand,
Donald Trump was able to say whatever came out of
his ass and Bash and Tapper let him. I feel

(46:55):
like they both missed the mark. New Newish rights to
us appealing to younger and diverse voters. How should the
candidates rethink their strategies. This is an extraordinarily important point.
I hit it before slightly on the issue of what
happens when people who are not exposed to this see

(47:16):
a debate for the first time, and we saw the
large numbers where a fifth or more of those minority
group voters are willing to change their votes. At this point,
they are very soft, and that is much more of
a danger for Trump and the Trump campaign than it
is for the president because so much support had shifted
in the last few months towards Trump out of an

(47:38):
understandable sense of frustration. I don't know how this will
play in those communities. I am not of those communities,
and I think it would be pretentious of me to
say this is what they will say in the black
community or the Hispanic community. I'm not Donald Trump. I'm
not going to lie to you about what other groups
that I am not a part of will respond to.
But at some point, when the President was asked about

(48:01):
the disappointment in those communities over inflation, over jobs, records,
over other issues of American life, Joe Biden said they
should be disappointed, and here's what we're going to try
to do to fix it. There is at least, I
would think, in ordinary circumstances, in some sort of generic
group that has just been felt itself wronged and has

(48:22):
been cited, recognized, seen on national television, I would think
that a president of the United States saying you're right,
we haven't done enough is such an extraordinary answer, especially
in our times, especially with that monster standing across from him,
a man who does nothing but lie. Here is someone
who is assuming responsibility and saying we should do better.

(48:43):
I think more of that from Joe Biden perhaps will
provide a greater outcome for him and for the people
that are in question here, the people who need that help,
in those Hispanic and Black communities. Who is hosting the
second debate, Marchandreff asks, if it happens, of course, Trump
may just choose to stop while he's ahead. That is,

(49:05):
presuming he is still ahead, because that's September tenth, which
is as I suggested before, based on Bill Clinton's poll
numbers from nineteen ninety two and Barack Obama's poll numbers
from twenty twelve September tenth on ABC is several lifetimes
from now. All right, We had one more clip that
I wanted to make sure we got in, and I
have a few other thoughts before we close this off.
Towards the bottom of the out it is an extraordinary

(49:31):
thing to contemplate how Donald Trump must see the rest
of us and the world. I often think of those
very popular in the eighties and nineties RoboCop style movies
in which some sort of robot armed with artificial intelligence.
If you'd like to worry about something else tonight, one
of those robots is seen reading what he's looking at,

(49:55):
and he gets a huge computer print out on the
side that identifies that as a dog, and that as
the president of the United States, and you see it
in an on camera display inside the robot's mind. I
tend to think of Trump in those terms. I've suggested
it recently. I think this is finally the correct description
of what's going on where he is. He's in a

(50:15):
fugue state. I had the misfortune to have somebody very
close to me actually go into a fugue state in
which that person did not know and did not care
that they had decided to take off all their clothes
and go from one side of Manhattan to another in
a uber at two o'clock in the morning with no
fear and no worry whatsoever. That was a fugue state.

(50:36):
That is that period of time in which you don't
worry about what's going to happen because you have made
this potentially fatal mistake, as this person did happily by accident.
There was no harm to the person or to me.
But I wonder about what is going on other than
the mouse in the wheel getting stuck there. At some
point when Trump is asked a question and comes back

(51:01):
by boasting about how he did on again cognitive test
given to you to determine whether or not you need
a straight jacket, and then segues into how well he
plays freaking golf.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
But I took two cognitive tests.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
I took physical exams every year, and you know we
knock on wood wherever we may have wood that I'm
in very good health. I just won two club championships,
not even senior, two regular club championships. To do that,
you have to be quite smart, and you have to
be able to hit the ball a long way.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
And I do it. He doesn't do it. He can't
hit a ball fifty yards. He challenged me to a
golf match. He can't hit a ball fifty yards. I
think I'm in very good shape.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
I feel that I'm as in good as shape as
I was twenty five thirty years Actually I'm probably a
little bit lighter, but I'm as good as shape as
I was years ago.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
I feel very good.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
I feel the same.

Speaker 5 (51:54):
You can see he is six foot five and only
two hundred and twenty thirty pounds.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
Thirty five pounds.

Speaker 5 (52:00):
Well you said six four two hundred, Well anyway, anyway,
just take a look at what he says he is,
and take a look at what he is.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
He got him at the end. He did get him
at the end. A couple of more questions, and this
is a great one via YouTube from a don't know
the name of who sent this based on the way
it's formatted, But can you get Keith to comment on
some of the first headlines that have come out already
post debate Sky News? Sky News which was I don't

(52:29):
believe it still is a Murdoch property, but it is
still a slanting right British based news organization. Biden's performance
was quote really disappointing. Former aid Biden campaign admits he
started off slow Trump versus Biden debate. Latest pauses and
stuttering from Biden in first TV debate with Trump as
team claims he has a cold. Obviously, if Trump claimed

(52:52):
he had a cold, if Trump made up that he
had a cold, most of the news organizations would simply
state that it had been appeared that statement had appeared
that Trump had a cold, that that was one of
the eleventh or twelfth commandments on the Ten Commandments that
broke as mel Brooks brought them down the side of
the mountain. If you know the movie reference, if you don't,

(53:13):
If Biden says it, it's a claim. If Trump says it,
and it's preposterous and a lie, CNN says, who We're
going to commercial break right now, we'll be back to
do something, as Dana Bash said. Dana Bash said on
the way out, one more question and then we'll wrap
it up. Eight of Wand's asked, Keith, is it too

(53:34):
late to replace Biden? The word replaced, The verb replace
implies some kind of action in which he has no
choice in the matter. It is too late to replace
Joe Biden if he were to voluntarily step aside that's
another series of questions and another series of complications that
you did not ask. It has not happened in American history.

(53:57):
But if Biden did not want to go, there is
literally no way to take him off the ticket. And
as to whether or not it would be wise, and
again the sky News headlines the clips that you saw.
The reality of what you saw at the beginning of
this debate can't simply be erased from the world's memory.
It was not a good start. I think the Biden
campaign is smart to go in that direction, to say

(54:20):
he did not start well, but did in fact finish
up fairly strong and came to a tie given what
was weighing against him. The fact that seeing and let
Trump lie early, often and repeatedly, whether or not it
would be wise is something else altogether, And what the
impact of this debate will have on these numbers is
something else all together. But as I examined back in,

(54:41):
I believe it was late March when my friend Bob
Costas made a couple of appearances suggesting that there was
an urgent need to remove Joe Biden. This was before
the State of the Union address, I pointed out, and
it was pointed out by others. I don't claim exclusive
knowledge on this either, that there is no process by
which you can take the president of the United States
and force him off the ticket. If he doesn't want

(55:03):
to go, then you enable it to happen. And that's
an entirely different set of circumstances. But also is it
the right move to make, even under the most dire
of circumstances, Even if you concluded from watching that debate
that you had to get another candidate in there, who
is that candidate going to be? All the polling of
all the other Democrats against Donald Trump shows Trump winning

(55:26):
by ten or more points. And you then have the
entire question if somehow managed to force the president off
the ticket, he would immediately become a lame duck. And
what do you do about the vice president? If the
vice president, if Kamala Harris is not your choice to
replace Biden on some sort of force them off or

(55:46):
even voluntarily leave, what do you do with the vice
president of the United States, whose numbers against Biden against
Trump rather would in fact be worse than Joe Biden's
are And again they have been. Joe Biden's numbers have
been growing to the point where it is a statistical
tie going into this debate, the question again, is it
too late to replace Biden? Legally, Yes, if he doesn't

(56:09):
want to go, if he wanted to go, if he retired, certainly,
But even this question needs to be raised in your mind,
in my mind, and in the President's mind, and in
everyone connected with democratic leadership tonight. Is it even under
the most dire of circumstances and a droit move because
of all of the other components, all the polling, which

(56:30):
can be as I suggested before, based on where Bill
Clinton was in nineteen ninety two, The polling is not
only fungible and flexible, but it can completely mislead you
as to what's going to happen. If Bill Clinton and
the Democrats had looked at those polls and said, we've
got to get somebody else in here, let's hurriedly nominate
Tom Dashel, do you think he would have beaten Bush

(56:52):
in the fall. The advantage that Bush would have had
would have been double what he seemed to have had
going against Clinton in nineteen ninety two. And there is
the final part of that conundrum. If you take Joe
Biden off the ballot or Joe Biden takes himself off
the ballot. The man who is on the ballot, who
has been president of the United States and gets the

(57:12):
default support of anyone looking for someone with experience, he
gets one hundred percent of that support would be Trump.
Do you want that or would you rather have this man,
Joe Biden, who, as we saw at the State of
the Union, as we've seen in countless other speeches, and
we've seen in countless other venues, can bring it better
than Trump can, and is also an honest man and

(57:36):
a good president, perhaps at points hinting as he would
be judged historically a great president. Do you want him?
Or do you want somebody who concedes the territory of
who is seen as the incumbent? Do you want that
to be seeded to Donald Trump? So it's not just
a practical question, legal question or a political question. Is

(57:57):
a question of strategy, and I think it would be
bad strategy and failing strategy. In any event, the picture
will change how much. It's hard to say. The numbers
that were presumed after the Trump convictions, the numbers that
were assumed that Biden would not gain anything, the initial

(58:18):
polling numbers that suggested Biden had not gained anything from
the Trump convictions, that Trump was the one who had
gotten a slight bump. Those poll numbers turned out to
be inaccurate. The surge by which Joe Biden has tied
or pulled ahead and come close to swing in the
swing states in which he moved ahead in two and

(58:40):
got fifty percent closer in the other four key six
swing states. That all happened as a result of the
convictions of Donald Trump. It took a while, it went well.
We'll see what happens at the end of this. We'll
see what happens tomorrow. We'll see how the media takes it.
But I would walk away with this. It is a

(59:03):
terrifying thing to count the number of guardrails that have
broken since Trump came down the escalator in twenty fifteen.
So many things that we thought were permanent and inviolable
in the United States of America turned out to be
paper mache, turned out to be fake sets. The most

(59:26):
disappointing to me on a personal level, and perhaps the
most impactful other than the idea that an entire party
would become literal whores to Donald Trump simply to stay
in power. The one next to that was illustrated again tonight.
Somewhere along the line it was prophesied, and many of

(59:47):
us heard it forty years ago, fifty years ago. That eventually,
as television and other video and electronic communications completely surpassed
the newspaper organizations with their rigid standards and their extraordinarily
competitive relationships with one another. As that happened, as deadlines

(01:00:09):
got tighter, as the news cycle dropped, from well, we're
going to publish this story at eleven o'clock six hours
from now two, We're going to publish this story as
soon as you finished typing it. The predictions were made
that so much of the journalism would drop out of journalism.
I think we have seen the low point of that.

(01:00:32):
I began to worry about this and to talk about
it on my first MSNBC show in nineteen ninety eight, when,
because the ratings were good, the networks, the news organizations
of this country, we're willing to let a special prosecutor
named Kenneth Starr do something as illegal as making public

(01:00:52):
the secret videotaped grand jury testimony of the sitting president
of the United States. That was what sent me fleeing
back into sports because I didn't want to have anything
more to do with it. Every time I brought it up,
and every time I brought up the principal role of
organizations like Fox News and Breitbart and the others of
that time, every time I brought them up, every time

(01:01:15):
I criticized the people who appeared on those networks are
on those websites. I was accused of trying to be
the left wing version of fill in the blank. I
was accused of doing this for the ratings. This is
why I did it tonight. Is why I did it
in hopes of staving off the fiasco that we saw tonight.
You cannot put a man whose profession is lying on

(01:01:38):
national television in a debate for the most important job
in the world, at the most important moment in the
history of the world for at least the last eighty years.
You cannot put a professional liar on television and never
say you are not telling the truth. Fact Checking is

(01:02:01):
the essential element of journalism. It's where you begin. Is
it raining or is it not raining? All you have
to do, Jake Tapper, all you have to do, Dana
Bash is walk over to the window and get us
an answer or if you can't get us the answer,
if your IFV coord is not long enough, if you're
not wearing a mobile mic, if you can't get over there,

(01:02:25):
at least ask the guy who just said, not only
is it raining, but it's raining up from the ground.
You have to ask him why he has said this,
what is his evidence? You have to fact check him.
CNN failed, They should go out of business tomorrow. We'll
be back with a new edition of a podcast on Tuesday.
Thank you for being with us. I'm sorry the results

(01:02:46):
are not better. I think I am repeating myself at
this point, But damn you to hell, Jake Tapper, Damn
you to hell, Dana Bash, Damn you to hell. CNN.
You blew your job tonight, and may you never get
the opportunity to do it again. Keith Oldruyman, thanks for
being with us. Night Countdown with Keith Olderman is a

(01:03:17):
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Host

Keith Olbermann

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}CNN TANKS FOR TRUMP, REFUSES TO FACT-CHECK HIS LIES