May 15, 2023 • 49 mins
EPISODE 202: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Evidence mounts that CNN really did pack the audience at the Trump Town Hall, really did seed the crowd with almost nothing but Trump supporters. And it mounts that CNN let Trump choose the moderator (or at least veto other options to BE the moderator). And it mounts that CNN let Trump pick which pro-Trump talking heads appeared on CNN after the fixed Trump Rally ended. And it also mounts that CNN Chairman Chris Licht has intensified his criticism of the ONLY CNN front-facing talent to dare to even LIGHTLY criticize the decision to prostitute the network, Oliver Darcy, and that Darcy is deciding whether or not to quit before he gets fired.
Chris Christie has now joined New Hampshire governor John Sununu in asserting that the 400 "Republican and independent primary voters" were not just random people with a variety of favored candidates. Christie: "CNN went in the tank to get Trump on there. They allowed him to negotiate who was going to be in that audience. And those were all Trump supporters. That was a negotiation deal that Trump did with CNN" Governor Sununu: "I knew pretty much everybody in that audience. They're all Trump supporters."
CNN is already in "Quiz Show" territory. 60 years ago corruption like this led to Congressional hearings and Grand Juries. It should lead that way again.
Semafor News ids now reported new details of the Licht "fear of God" meeting with his lone on-the-record in-house critic, Oliver Darcy - and potentially a far more dire outcome. Quoting Max Tani’s piece “In the aftermath of the meeting and coverage, Darcy has wondered to colleagues whether he should resign, or if he will be fired by the network...A particularly bitter pill for some CNN employees, was an anonymous comment from a Licht ally to Fox News,”unquote. That comment? Quoting the Fox report, a “source said Licht received a quote ‘ton’ of messages from CNN staffers appalled by Darcy’s newsletter… the messages, according to the source, were like quote ‘what the eff…’” So now instead of bullying and threatening Darcy, Licht instead had a quote “ally” leak to Fox, of all places, that CNN employees were all on Licht’s said and not Darcy’s.
B-Block (20:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Troy Nehls complains about the open border. And the guy on the terrorist watch list they arrested at the open border. Which ain't open. It turns out Elon Musk's "free speech absolutism" means he's absolutely NOT going to pay for a lawyer to protect free speech in Turkey. And the Jamie Comer investigation of the Bidens is going great. Except they don't have any charges or evidence just an informant and a whistleblower and apparently they've LOST THE INFORMANT. (24:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Kevin Ettinger (1933-2023)
C-Block (36:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: There's nothing new about a major television news operation making illicit, inappropriate deals with Republican presidential campaigns. Not only is it looking more and more like Trump did this with Licht's CNN, but I know from experience that in 2008, John McCain's campaign and the RNC demanded my head as the price of McCain showing up for the presidential debate Tom Brokaw was to moderate. Brokaw was more than happy to help them blackmail NBC. And he would later boast about it.
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. Evidence
is mounting that CNN really did pack the audience at
(00:26):
the Trump town hall, really did see the crowd with
almost nothing but Trump supporters. Evidence is also mounting that
CNN let Trump choose the moderator, or at least veto
other options to be the moderator. Evidence is also mounting
that CNN let Trump pick which pro Trump talking heads
would appear on CNN after the fixed Trump rally ended.
(00:51):
And evidence is also mounting that CNN chairman Chrislick has
intensified his criticism of the only CNN front facing talent
to dare to even lightly criticize the decision to prostitute
the network for Trump, Oliver Darcy, and that Oliver Darcy
is deciding whether or not to quit before he gets fired.
(01:12):
It is the CNN Trump Scandal day six, and it
is not only not going away, it is getting worse,
and people need to be fired over it. And it
is now bordering on the kind of television corruption that
in the nineteen fifties brought congressional investigations and grand juries,
because it is looking more and more like Chris Lick
and CNN really did make Trump the deal Trump boasted
(01:36):
he could not refuse, really did violate every tenet of
journalism to make sure anybody watching at home would not
only hear nothing but support for Trump at the rally,
but also support for Trump after the rally. Now it
is the former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie adding to
claims that the audience at Saint Anselm College in New
(01:59):
Hampshire Wednesday night was not just four hundred Republicans and
independents planning to vote in the state's GOP primary, but
in fact consisted solely of hand picked Trump's supporters. Christy
was on ABC's This Week yesterday, Tim this is not
even in doubt quote as to the audience reaction. Let's
face it, CNN went in the tank to get Trump
(02:21):
on there, They allowed him to negotiate who was going
to be in that audience, and those were all Trump supporters. Again,
Chris Christy is absolutely certain that CNN's claimed that they
seated four hundred Republicans with various favorites is wildly untrue.
According him, again, I know a lot of those people
(02:42):
in that audience. I spent a lot of time in
New Hampshire eight years ago, and a lot of those
are the same faces I saw eight years ago. Neither
you nor I would go into court over anything that
Chris Christie says, especially not me. I've been in New Jersey.
But Christy is merely echoing what Chris said. The nuknew
(03:05):
who is merely the governor of New Hampshire. The Republican
governor of New Hampshire had said in an interview recorded
earlier in the week for use on MSNBC yesterday, I
knew pretty much everybody in that audience. Sununu also said
they're all Trump supporters. Again, absolutely no doubt in his
(03:25):
mind either. The audience was absolutely filled with Trump supporter
so I wasn't surprised to hear the support. Asked if
he would say there was a large percentage of Trump
supporters there, he underscored this again quote, I would say
almost all of them. Consider this for a moment. Putting
(03:46):
on Trump in that format live, where his filibusters could
not be stopped and his lies happened too fast to
be pushed back against by anybody, was indefensible enough, but
it was not conclusive evidence of a plan to take
seventy minutes of CNN primetime and devote it to making
Trump look good and make it sound like everybody in
(04:07):
New Hampshire loved him. It could still have just been
Chris Licht's pervasive stupidity, but stacking the audience filling it.
I would say almost all of them with Trump cheerleaders, people,
the Republican governor of the state, new by Site, people,
the former Republican governor New Jersey new by Site. When
Trump's latest polling numbers in that state were only at
(04:30):
about sixty percent, that is rank corruption. And if it
was a prerequisite for Trump doing the appearance on CNN,
Chris Christie says that was a negotiation deal. But Trump
did with CNN that is pure crookedness on Chris Licht's part.
We were already in quiz show territory. The former Trump
(04:52):
State Department appoint ee Matthew Bartlett told Puck News last
week that if there was anybody in there who was
not a Trump plant, they were warned not to let
anybody know it. He said, quote on CNN, it sure
looked like Trump won over the crowd, but the reality
was different in the room. The floor manager came out
ahead of time, and said, please do not boo, please
(05:15):
be respectful. You were allowed to applaud. The question about
trump veto power over the moderator bubbled up the day
after the CNN telecast, quoting pairing Caitlin Collins with Republicans
who mostly voted for Trump in twenty twenty, wrote Hugo
Lowell in The Guardian. Was as close to home turf
(05:37):
as the campaign could get. The team said it would
have rejected Jake Tapper. This would not be the first
time something like that happened in the world of political
television theater, but it makes it no less untoward. And
the Guardian had something else that slipped right past me
when I read it last week. You may remember that
(05:57):
when this deal with the Devil was first announced, it
was reported from Trump side sources that part of what
he got was the assurance that there would be more
Trump surrogates in the future on CNN. I thought that
meant in the future future, The Guardian again quote. The
campaign also made sure the pre and post town hall
(06:18):
coverage featured Trump surrogates on air. Former Trump White House
press ad Hogan Gidley, pro Trump Congressman Brian mast and
Byron Donald's as well as pro Trump Senator j d Vance.
To sum it up, Trump rejected the obvious qualified choice
for moderator. Trump chose the ultimate selection for moderator. Trump
(06:40):
handpicked or had hand picked for him almost all of
the four hundred people in the audience. Trump or Chris
licked silenced any possibility that descending voices or reactions could
be heard from the audience, and Trump pre arranged to
have some of his most loyal sick evans on the
CNN set in the minutes after this disaster wrapped up.
(07:01):
It is increasingly obvious that, never mind it's journalistic impropriety
and the grotesque on air spectacle, it produced nothing about
last Wednesdays CNN Chris Lickt Donald Trump town Hall was legitimate, ethical,
or honest. And of course, what did all this pandering
(07:24):
to and prostituting for Trump get Chris Lickt and CNN.
It got them a flood of stories from ex Trump
White House staffers Elisafara Griffin and Stephanie Grisham of quote
countless cases of sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct by Trump
while president, all of them hanging off the conversation that
(07:45):
Trump had with Caitlin Collins on this subject. During that
town hall, it got Chris Lickton CNN an op ed
in The New York Times by the former Fox executive
propagandist Bill Salmon, who was forced out of there by
Tucker Carlson praising CNN. That's not quite a letter endorsing
Chris Lickt written by Bill Cosby, but it is in
(08:08):
the same vein. Oh, and then Trump, with the final
thank you note, posted a doctored clip of the town
hall with words being placed I guess by AI into
Anderson Cooper's mouth, asserting that Trump had just quote been
ripping us a new blank here at CNN. Of course,
(08:28):
given what else Anderson Cooper said last week in selling
his own audience, who knows what he really thinks? Congratulations
Chris Lickt, who got what you paid for? Which brings
us back to Oliver Darcy. He is the CNN media
reporter who's nightly email newsletter included external criticism of the
town hall just hours after the fiasco ended, and also
(08:51):
included only one carefully phrased pulled punch. It was so
pulled I thought he was critiquing Trump. You will recall
he wrote, It's hard to see how America was served
by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,
which so enraged man Baby Licked that Lickt closed his
(09:13):
internal conference call the next morning, praising himself by insisting
that CNN had served America very well. Later that day,
Licht called Darcy onto the carpet and per witnesses put
the fear of God into him and left Darcy quote
visibly shaken. But last night Semaphore News reported new details
of that meeting and a far more dire possible outcome,
(09:36):
quoting Max Taney's piece. In the aftermath of the meeting
and coverage, Darcy has wandered to colleagues whether he should
resign or if he will be fired by the network. Paradoxically,
the new reporting also indicates that the Darcy Licked meeting
may have been less confrontational than first thought. Again quoting Semaphore,
it ended relatively cordially, with Lickt telling Darcy that he
(09:59):
supported him. Then why on earth would Darcy be considering
quitting or anticipating termination again Semaphore. A particularly bitter pill
for some CNN employees was an anonymous comment from a
Licked ally to Fox News unquote well that comment. Quoting
the Fox report, a source said Licked received a quote
(10:22):
ton of messages from CNN staffers appalled by Darcy's newsletter.
The messages, according to the source, were like, quote, what
the f so now? Instead of bullying and threatening Oliver Darcy,
we have Licked instead having a quote ally of his leak.
(10:44):
Two of all places Fox that CNN employees were no, no,
all on Lickt's side, not Darcy's side. There is the
Chris Licked at MSNBC. I knew and loathed. It was Licked,
of course, who, when plucked from his failures at Late
Night with Even Colbert, which had followed his failures at
(11:07):
CBS Mornings, which themselves followed his failures on Morning Joe
and Scarborough Country, it was Licked who vowed to make
sure all voices were heard at the new CNN except
the voice of Oliver Darcy, who also, again I note,
still has not been publicly and non anonymously supported by
anybody else at CNN, who may or may not have
(11:32):
had the fear of God put into him by Chris Licks,
but who has clearly received the fear of unemployment much
as it would seem to follow that it should be licked.
Living under that particular fear it will not be. He
has given his bosses exactly what they hired him for,
which raises an even bigger scandal and an even bigger crisis.
(11:52):
Where does it say in this society that irresponsible anti
democracy partisans can buy one of the nation's largest news
organizations and pervert it into Fox News without the STADH.
Why should there not be a Senate hearing as to
what they gave Trump to be on their channel. All
(12:14):
signs suggest Chris Lickt cooked the books to make Trump
look more accepted, more inevitable. At minimum, last Wednesday night,
lickt tampered with whatever the balance is in the Republican primary,
and there is no reason to suppose that Licht and
Trump will not conspire again next year during the actual
campaign to tip the scales and put a thumb on
(12:35):
them on Trump's behalf. Ultimately, though, there was one detail
in one largely overlooked story from over the weekend that
confirmed that this mess, this deforestation of the CNN news
brand in this disastrous Trump infomercial, is really less about
(12:55):
journalism or ethics and much more about the immeasurable ego
of Chris Lickt, The former Secretary of Life Labor. Robert
Reisch wrote a fairly pedestrian piece about CNN's manifold failures
here for the website raw story and deep into it,
mister Reisch included something amazing. Quote. After I first criticized
(13:20):
Lickt for the direction he was pushing CNN, he phoned me.
He was angry that I doubted his motives and said
he took the top job at CNN because he quote
believes in journalism. Robert Reich is an intelligent and accomplished man,
a generous guest on TV shows, including those of mine,
(13:44):
a professor at Berkeley, a prolific writer and commentator. Yet
I think he would agree he does not carry enormous
heft within journalism nor within the broadcasting business. Still, shortly
after his appointment to run what is certainly the most
pervasive American based journalistic operation in the world, where they're
a lot tronic digital print with a thousand things to
(14:07):
learn and a thousand things to correct in the next
thousand minutes, Chris licked is calling up Robert Reisch and
angrily yelling at him because Reisch doubted his motives. It
is petty and stupid and wasting of time and small,
which is Chris Licked in a nutshell. It is also
(14:29):
amazing that Chris Lick could actually think anybody would doubt
his motives. We all know his motives, as Trump realized
when he set out to get licked, to change moderators,
to pack the crowd with screaming Trump cultists, and to
fill the postgame panel with his todius of supporters. We
all know what Chris Licked and his motives are. All
(14:54):
we are doing now is haggling over the price still
ahead on this initiative countdown. This whole construction news network
(15:16):
feels it must have a Republican on. Republican makes illegitimate,
surreptitious demands. Network says, sure, anything else you need. It's
really bad, but it is not really new. The GOP
came in and did it at NBC in two thousand
and eight, and that time the demand was get that
Alderman guy off MSNBC during the debates, or John McCain
(15:37):
won't show up to your debate. I'll tell you that
sad story and the even sadder story of the cooperation
of the network's supposed news icon who sold his soul
during that time and helped the Republicans blackmail NBC in
Things I Promised Not to Tell. Also ahead, you probably
did not know the name Kevin Ettinger unless you lived
(15:59):
in the town of Hastings on Hudson, New York, at
any point since about the year nineteen six. And the
fascists really think they've got something going with this quote
Biden scandal unquote, Well what's the scandal. Hell, they don't
know exactly what the informant told the whistleblower, So where's
this informant. Well, we don't know that either. We kinda
(16:21):
well that's a funny story, but we kind of lost
the informant. That's next. This is countdown, Yeah, lost the informant.
This is countdown with Keith Alberman format chef again coming up,
(16:50):
CNN making an illicit deal to give a Republican exactly
the kind of coverage he wants. Man, it's really bad,
but it's not really new. They did it to me
fifteen years ago, and they did it with the help
of Tom Brokaw collaborator. Things I Promise not to Tell
coming up. Plus Kevin Ettinger nineteen thirty three, twenty twenty three.
(17:12):
First the daily round up of the misgrants, morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
the world Lebrons. The Texas Congressman Troy Nells, the disgraced
x cop so corrupt he was even fired by the
Police Department of Richmond, Texas for destroying evidence. Congressman Nells
meets the minimum standard for membership in the Freedom Caucus.
(17:35):
He's a dope, a terrorist from Afghanistan. Nells has tweeted,
was just caught illegally crossing our southern border. How many
other bad ombres made it through undetected Nells, They caught
the guy at the border you and your fellow travelers
claim is open and out of control. He was, you know, nailed.
(18:00):
This tweet is of the standard Republican kind that talks
about how catching drug runners or wanted criminals at the
border proves you can't catch drug runners or wanted criminals
at the border. I'm not really sure anymore if Knells
is this stupid or he just thinks his cultists are
so it's safer for us to assume that the answer
is both. The Bronze. Elon Musk, another super genius, the
(18:24):
free speech absolutist, has now explained that free speech absolutism
means doing whatever the quasi dictator of Turkey wants when
he's on the verge of losing reelection. In response to
legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the
people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access
to some content in Turkey today. In other words, Twitter
(18:46):
censored accounts that have been critical of the Turkish strongman Erewan.
When some of his sick ephants pointed this hypocrisy out
to Musk, Musk angry, did your brain fall out of
your head? He wrote to one the choices have Twitter
throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets, which,
gew one do you want? As the head of Wikipedia replied,
(19:09):
the choice is, of course neither. You sue in Turkey
to prevent the government from throttling you, and the courts
would then protect Twitter the same way it did Wikipedia,
only that would cost Elon Musk free speech. My Musk,
but the winner, Chairman James Comer of the House Committee
on e Republicans really aren't that smart. This is the
(19:34):
guy who has spent every day of the new Congress
promising he is about to blow the lid off the
giant Biden scandal. And the giant Biden scandal turns out
to be a rumor that there is a document that
allegedly quotes a reported whistleblower supposedly claiming a Biden did
something bad. Only nobody knows what it is or even
if the document exists. And even Steve Doocy on Fox
(19:57):
rip the Republicans because they don't have even an allegation,
let alone any proof. And now it turns out has
lost the whistleblower. You have spoken with whistle blowers, the
incredibly gullible, Maria Bartiromo said from behind her plastic sneeze
guard in an interview with Comber yesterday and Fox. You
also spoke with an informant who gave you all this information.
(20:20):
Where's that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers? Bad, bad question, Maria, Well,
Comber replied, we can't track down the informant. We're hopeful
that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant.
The whistleblower is very credible. Even Maria Bartiromo noticed that
this is now Comber rumor document whistleblower informant allegation. This
(20:47):
is now sixth hand, and the start of the sixth
hand chain is you lost him. Bartiomo replied, Hold on
a second, Congressman, did you just say that the whistleblower
or the informant is now missing. Comber replied, well, we're
hopeful that you can find the informant, but he's in
the quote spy business un quote, so shrug emoji, Congressman, Jamie,
(21:14):
my dog ate my informant comer two days Worst Parson
and the World. Quote scripts to the news, some headlines,
(21:41):
some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Actually just won. In
this edition, Dateline Hastings on Hudson, New York, fitting this
is I guess on what would have been my parents'
seventy fourth wedding anniversary. I had a lot of great
teachers growing up. I have mentioned some of them before
in chronological order. Marcelene Weiner, Marjorie Plant. Marjorie Plant was
(22:02):
the one who had me right to Royal Dahl Ellen
Rice Arthur Nathan I interviewed the Moments on TV about Shakespeare.
Walter Schneller Randy McNaughton, Peter and Carol Gibbon, Frederick Nelson,
Chuck Atwater, and one I skipped and his name was
Kevin Ettinger. And Kevin Ettinger died last week at the
age of ninety. Kevin Ettinger was my fifth grade homeroom
(22:25):
and English teacher. And if you can imagine having to
deal with me now for most of your workday, try
to picture what that must have been like when I
was eight and nine years old in the fifth grade.
My range of emotions with Kevin was so vast that
when my bosses at MSNBC wanted me to do a
story on my own childhood back home in Hastings on Hudson,
(22:46):
Kevin was the teacher I selected to interview, to roam
those school hallways that I had not been in even
then for more than twenty five years. That's one end
of that spectrum with him. The other end of the
spectrum is the class picture from the fifth grade with
all of us standing there and our best attire, and
Kevin in the back row in the middle well. At
(23:07):
some point during fifth grade, I got a pen or
maybe even a letter opener, and I stuck it through
mister Ettinger's head in the picture. When I interviewed him
in nineteen ninety seven for MSNBC, I brought the picture
with me and I asked him about it. Yeah, what's
going on here? He asked? Could have been a lot
of things. You and I, Hm, we clashed a lot.
(23:31):
Do you remember the thing about the balk rule? By
any chance? Suddenly I was in a classroom at the
Farragut School in Hastings On Hudson, New York, in the
early spring of our Year of the Lord nineteen sixty eight,
and Kevin Ettinger and I were in a knockdown, drag
out verbal war in front of the rest of the
fifth grade class about the baseball balk rule. You're the expert,
(23:56):
he said to me. What happens when there's a balk?
And I said, well, the runner or runners advance one
base and the batter goes to first base. The batter
does not go to first base, Keith. It escalated from there.
Mister Ettinger finally said, go home tonight, get that baseball
encyclopedia you always bring in here, look up the rule.
Then bring in the encyclopedia tomorrow tomorrow morning. If I'm wrong,
(24:20):
I'll stand up in front of the class and read
the rule out loud and apologize to you. But if
you're wrong, you'll stand up in front of the class
and read the rule out loud and apologize to me.
Deal that day. I ran home. The next morning, I
did not run back to school. Six to zero two
(24:44):
pitcher illegal action. Yeah, I was the one standing up
reading the Balk rule to our fifth grade class, because no,
the batter does not get awarded first base on a ball,
not even in nineteen sixty eight. He didn't to be fair.
A year before, I barely knew the difference between a
baseball and a bass drum, so some of the subtleties
of the game were still new to me. So I said,
(25:06):
mister Ettinger was right and I was wrong, and I apologize.
I paused. He looked at me and said, I accept
your apology. You can sit down now, Keith. I continued
to stand and I continued to talk. So mister Ettinger
was right this time, but I still know more about
baseball than he does, and next time I'll get it
(25:26):
right and he'll get it wrong. Thank you. I'm thinking
this was a Thursday, maybe even a Friday, because in
my mind the turnaround to what happened next. The inevitable
PostScript to this story was almost immediate. My mother was
the secretary to the minister at our Unitarian church, which
(25:46):
was of itself hilarious because my father was a world
class atheist. I mean, he was nationally ranked. He could
use the Bible to disprove all aspects of all religions
to ministers. Meanwhile, I was the only kid I know
who stopped going to Sunday school because there just was
(26:07):
not enough fire and brimstone in it, and I was bored. Anyway,
Apparently one of the regular Sunday school teachers was sick
or had to leave town or something, and my mom
had to pick the fill in and Sunday, she and
I and for some reason, my father get in the
car to go to church. I guess Dad needed to laugh.
(26:27):
And I'm in the back and suddenly we're not going
the normal route to the church, and I say, what's up?
And Mom says, oh, I told you we have to
have a substitute Sunday school teacher and we have to
give him a lift. You'll like this. The substitute Sunday
school teacher is mister Ettinger. Next thing. I know. Mister
Ettinger is in the back seat of our car with me,
and he is needling me over the balk rule. And
(26:49):
I am now saying, you know, we are not in
school right now. You are not in charge. This is
my dad's car, and I don't have to take this
crap from you now, mind you. As he's saying what
he said and I'm saying what I said, we are
also laughing. It is one of those kinds of friendships.
Only I'm eight years old. I guess that's why I
(27:11):
both enjoyed being in Kevin Ettinger's class so much and
also stabbed out his head with a pencil or a
pen or a letter opener. With certain limitations, he always
treated me as an adult. And even though I left
that school and went to another one two years later,
I continued to see him in town off and on,
sometimes on purpose, usually by accident, for the next forty
(27:33):
three years. And he was a great friend of my dad,
and he was a great friend of my mom. And
sometimes I'd run out of my dad with Kevin at
the train station, at the Hastings Diner wherever. Also, among
other things, you couldn't avoid him. Kevin lived across the
street from the school. From the time I met him
until the last time I checked in on him. He
(27:54):
lived across the street from the gym, right next to
the school. If you drew a line between two of
the three great municipal edifices of the small town of
Hastings On Hudson, New York, Farragut School and the Chemka
Town swimming Pool, if you drew a line, the midpoint
would have been just about Kevin Ettinger's front door. Over
the years, he helped me with a book I was writing.
(28:15):
He came with me to at least one Yankees game.
He did that interview I mentioned, And we waited from
the school year of nineteen sixty seven sixty eight, when
I had him in the fifth grade, until the school
year of nineteen seventy eight seventy nine, by which time
I was a college senior, and in his fifth grade
class that year was my sister Jenna. Two Aldermens in
(28:36):
one lifetime. He said, what did I do to deserve that?
I did not hesitate in answering him the back rule thing.
I said, it is hard to imagine that Farragut School,
which I always thought was on Farragut Parkway, not Farragut Avenue,
but at some point they switched the names. I swear
Parkway became Avenue and Avenue became Parkway. Anyway, Faragut School
(28:59):
was built in nineteen oh three, and it was named
for Admiral David Damn the torpedoes Full speed Ahead Farragut,
who actually lived in Hastings in the nineteenth century. Anyway,
it's hard to imagine that Farragut School can possibly stay
open with Kevin Ettinger gone. Hell, it's hard for me
to imagine hastings On Hudson will stay open. The great
sculptor Jacques Lipschitz lived in Hastings. He created a giant
(29:22):
piece for the library that's still there. Billy Burke, the
good Witch from The Wizard of Oz lived there. The
Wizard himself, Frank Morgan lived there, I don't think. At
the same time, original publisher of The New York Times, EDOLFH. Oakes,
lived there. Ricky Lake was from there. She went to
school with my sister, the late John Saunders, my old
ESPN colleague. But to me, Kevin Ettinger was Hastings On Hudson,
(29:45):
New York. In nineteen ninety one in Los Angeles, where
I was working in living I opened up a letter
from my dad, and inside the envelope was a clipping
from the New York Times about Kevin Ettinger playing stickball
every Sunday morning on the giant blacktop playground behind Farragut School,
the one I played tag on and punchball on, the
one I first traded baseball cards on, and best of all,
(30:09):
the one eye first muttered oaths about Kevin Ettinger on
He had started a thing called the Ethical Softball League
there on that giant giant playground. I mean, I think
it was in two different time zones. He'd started this
ethical softball league there in nineteen seventy, and the neighbors
were a little upset at the noise on Sunday mornings.
(30:32):
On the other hand, he lived across from the street.
He was one of the neighbors. Sixteen years later, I
buy a copy of the New York Times to go
do the crossword puzzle over breakfast, and there's another article
about Kevin Ettinger and the Ethical Softball League of Hastings
On Hudson, New York, and about how everybody else refers
to him as the commissioner. And in part they called
(30:53):
him the commissioner because the age of seventy four, he
could still throw fastballs and strike out those whipper snapper
fifty year olds. And in part they also called him
the commissioner because he was the one to whom they
always deferred when there was a question about the rules. Well,
I could have told them that goodbye, mister Ettinger, and
(31:14):
thank you, and no, next time there is a baseball dispute,
you will not be wrong and I will not be right.
You win. The demand for spots in the Shaye Stadium
press box that night was so great that there was
(31:35):
a signed seating. I had no real reason to be there,
but as usual, the New York Mets took care of me,
and so on Friday, the fifth of September two thousand
and eight, I was shouldered to shoulder with reporter friends
watching the Mets begin to blow their three game Pennant
Race lead against the Philadelphia Phillyes. Sorry Mets fans for
bringing this up again. Brett Myers had just struck out
(31:55):
New York's David Wright looking when my phone rang. It
was my agent, Gene Sage. They just called. She said, flatly,
you and Matthews and fired from anchoring the presidential debates
because of what you said. What I had said had
been said. Three nights previously, Chris Matthews and I were
co anchoring the Republican Convention on MSNBC. He was there
(32:18):
in Minneapolis. I was in the studios in New York,
ostensibly so I could also anchor hurricane coverage, although it
was pretty clear that at least half the reason I
was not in Minneapolis was because the Republicans had threatened
NBC or said they couldn't guarantee my safety or something
like that, and NBC folded. So I was the one
(32:38):
during MSNBC's coverage of the two thousand and eight Republican
Convention who had to throw it to a video they
were introducing that we had been told by the Republicans
was a quote tribute to the dead of nine to eleven.
It was, in fact a snuff film. All of the
images that all of the networks had stopped showing within
(32:59):
weeks or even days of the attacks, all of those
images were in this video, jumping and falling to their
deaths from the World Trade Center on nine to eleven.
Endless replays of the planes hitting the towers, dismembered bodies
in the plaza, the building collapses, the equally terrifying scenes
at the Pentagon, and all with a grotesque Robert Dove
(33:22):
voiceover emphasizing that this was all the Democrats fault. The
message was simple, Elect Obama and you will die like this.
I was angry, just on that base level. For the
five and a half years I had been back at MSNBC,
we had been rigorous about not showing any of that video.
(33:42):
There were rules that if we had to for some reason,
we should show only the skill images, and even then
only with extensive warnings to the viewers. But I knew
from my conversations with the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin,
who I'd only known for twenty eight years at that point,
that he would insist that on the scene in Minneapolis,
Matthews and Tom Brokaw, whose career at NBC I had
(34:03):
resurrected after Brian Williams had buried him alive two years earlier,
that one or both of them would rebuke the GOP
for showing not a nine to eleven tribute, but, as
I just said, a nine to eleven snuff film. The
video ended and we came out to Brokaw with Matthews,
and Brokaw kind of coughed, and Matthews said wow. And
(34:25):
he turned to Brokaw and said, in that loose fire
hose delivery of his tom that kind of hunderscorns terrorism.
Big thing Republicans says, they tri stop Obama. Brokaw droned
on approvingly, the Republicans sneaking a snuff film, a banned
video onto MSNBC and by the way, also onto CNN,
(34:46):
onto NBC, onto CBS, onto ABC without any warning. That
was not mentioned by Brokaw or Matthews. Back to New
York and Keith. I was supposed to add liberates about
what we were expecting from the Republican convention for the
rest of the night and then throw to a commercial. Instead,
I said, and this is a paraphrase, the original tape
disappeared that night that before we moved on, I felt
(35:09):
I needed to apologize that we at MSNBC and for
that matter, NBC News, had extremely strict rules about not
showing that video. The Republicans had just shown you without
any warning, without any context, and we certainly would not
have shown the horror and death and blamed it on
the Democrats, or for that matter, blamed it on the Republicans.
I said, if we had done such a thing ourselves,
(35:31):
there would have been people fired at NBC News. The
public program the GOP provided said that was going to
be a nine to eleven tribute film. I said, and
so did the private conversations with the network, which included
the reminder from NBC and MSNBC that we had rules
against showing the scenes of the horrible death and mutilation
and destruction. So I apologized on behalf of whoever trusted
(35:53):
the Republicans to live up to their word that MSNBC
viewers were forced to see the video our network had
long before vowed never to show again. So three nights,
without as much as an email, this Griffin guy had
called my agent and told her I was fired. Matthews
two from our further coverage of the upcoming McGain Obama debates.
(36:18):
She related these details to me as I walked down
the many ramps in the back of Shay Stadium towards
the subway. I told her to call Griffin back and
tell him I had quit on the spot right then
and he could work his way out of the ensuing disaster.
Liberal network MSNBC fires liberal host Elberman for criticizing conservatives
for sneaking nine to eleven snuff film onto MSNBC. He
(36:39):
could figure that out any way he wanted, and he
could hear my response on I don't know, Good Morning America, CBS,
This Morning, the PBS News Hour, and any other news
program that bothered to ask me to stop by and talk.
I phoned my live in girlfriend, Katie Turr and told
her I was on my way home, and I made
a few phone calls to friendly voices within the NBC
(37:00):
management structure and got from them a clear picture of
what had happened. And despite the spotty cell service along
the elevated line heading back to Manhattan, I got a
message from a newspaper reporter friend who neatly tied together
all that I was hearing elsewhere. Tom Brokaw is going
around NBC saying he got you fired from the debates
because the Republicans told him to. Nine maybe ten months earlier,
(37:25):
Phil Griffin had come to me and asked me if
I would be okay with this guy who had been
kind of disappeared by the network. Tom Brokaw was his name.
Appearing during our weekly coverage of the Democratic and Republican primaries.
Just a couple of minutes, like from a prospective desk.
That's all he wants to do. He's really Tom's really
unhappy Brian has frozen him out of everything. Brian Williams.
(37:50):
Of course, I was appalled, but not surprised. The power
had gone to Brian's head, and of course there it
had not met much resistance. Plus, as I said to Griffin,
you're asking me if i'd like to add Tom Brokaw's experience,
and Tom Broke caused gravitas to stuff I'm anchoring when
I'm not sure I know as much as I really
(38:10):
need to know to do this right. You're asking me this.
Tom fit in beautifully, and twice after those long Tuesday
evenings in the primary season, he sent me brief emails
awarding me what he called the game ball, because he
was so impressed by my ability to balance the roles
of political anchor and political commentator, having tried this myself.
(38:31):
One of them read, I know what a perilous, tight
ruthless is game ball to Ko, I'm mocking him now,
but these meant so much to me. I printed the
emails out and carried them in my wallet. And now
he was claiming he had gotten me fired because, as
my newspaper friend said, the Republicans told him to That
(38:54):
was not hard to unpack either. Tim Russard had died
on June third of that year. I anchored that night
until two in the morning. It was still an open wound,
there were still tears. We didn't know it then, but
the structure of NBC News and the perilous tie group
balancing NBC and MSNBC had died with Tim Russard. So
(39:14):
did the role of moderator of the second debate between
John McCain and Barack Obama, scheduled for about a month
after my subway ride on October seventh in Nashville. Tim
had not even been buried yet when Brokaw began to
angle to get that assignment, along with brushing away the
dirt of his Penny Anti role on the MSNBC Perspective desk.
We never saw him again in order that he could
(39:36):
take Tim's spot as Brian Williams sidekick on Big NBC.
The month before August, there was a story coming out
of the east end of the third floor at thirty
Rock where NBC News management sat around not doing much
of anything, that a Republican goon named Ed Gillespie had
been in there with Griffin and the NBC News president,
Steve Cappus, trying to get me silenced or fired or
(39:59):
off the convention coverage or something. And that's somebody prominent
within nbc U News was in there with Gillespie or
was invoked by Gillespie. The rumor mill wasn't certain. As
I switched from the elevated seven train to the underground
f train. The whole thing came together before my comments
about the GOP Convention nine to eleven snuff film. Ed
(40:21):
Gillespie had come in and had somehow vaguely threatened Cappus
and Griffin about me using as leverage the debate which
Tom Brocaw was now supposed to moderate, And when I
apologized for their video on our air, Gillespie must have
turned it into an either or get rid of me,
or McCain would refuse to participate in any debate moderated
(40:45):
by Brokaw or anybody from NBC News, and Brokaw had
already come back from the dead once in two thousand
and eight, and he would be damned if he would
be forced to do it a second time. But as
the train took me home to an apartment I was
now going to have to sell since I had just
quit MSNBC on the spot for full link to such
(41:05):
obvious Republican blackmail. Something else now occurred to me. Why
would MSNBC or NBC or our parent corporation at the time,
ge actually think that they could remove me from the
debate coverage on MSNBC where the Rachel Meadow Show had
yet to be born, and the three times a night
my show ran accounted for something like sixty percent of
(41:27):
the entire day's network audience and do that without getting
a really bad reaction from our audience. Plus, if a
newspaper man already knew the Brokaw part, how could this
story be avoided? MSNBC announced it had removed its liberal
star Keith Alderman from coverage of the McCain Obama presidential debates.
(41:49):
Sources confirmed former NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw, now an
MSNBC commentator on Olderman's coverage, had helped the Republican Party
to blackmail NBC into the decision. Olderman immediately resigned saying
quote in succumbing to this core version on behalf of
John McCain, NBC has now forfeited any right to further
be called a news organization, and I'm sad to say MSNBC,
(42:12):
which I built, is now dead. My god, MSNBC and
NBC News for that matter, would have committed corporate suicide
before the weekend was over. At that point, it dawned
on me that the only thing that could save the
credibility of the whole news division and the careers of
Griffin and Cappus and NBC Network President Jeff Zucker, and
(42:34):
especially the career of Tom Brokaw was for me to
publicly state that I had asked to be removed from
anchoring the debates because the whatever was just too much
blah blah blah for me, and I felt I should
stick to the post debate analysis and commentary. NBC would
now have a choice. They could fire me from the
(42:55):
debates and destroy everything, including the one hundred million dollars
a year or so in profit that NBC made off MSNBC,
or I could you know why and claim it was
my idea and save everybody's ass, including my own. I
got out of the subway and raced home. Katie met
me at the door with a big hug. She had
(43:17):
been crying. Relax, I said, I'm not quitting. In fact,
I'm going to get a huge raise. Now, listen carefully.
I called my agent and I explained the idea that
had lit over my head on the subway like a
light bulb to both of them. I said, you call
Phil Griffin back and explain to him that I will
personally save his job and Steve Campus's and Jeff Zoker's
(43:39):
and Tom Brokaw's and everybody else's. I'll take the fall
instead of letting them all get fired by the MSNBC audience.
I'll say this was my idea, and all it will
cost Phil is twelve million dollars. And he has to
leak the term so everybody knows it cost him twelve
million dollars. And she paused for a second and said,
(44:01):
it's genius. It might not quite be twelve million, but
I bet I bet they'll pay you at least nine.
On Sunday, several news organizations reported I had asked to
be taken off the anchor desk. Two months and one
week later, The New York Times wrote quote. Keith Olberman,
the anchor of Countdown on MSNBC, has extended his contract
(44:23):
through the next presidential election season. The network announced mister
Alderman and MSNBC essentially tore up the four year, four
million dollar year contract they signed last year and replaced
it with one worth about seven and a half million
a year. Oh, that was a three and a half
million dollar raise for four years. We're a total of
(44:47):
fourteen million dollars, except the new contract added two years
to my old deal, so the raise was actually twenty
two million dollars. All stories have a punchline. This punchline
is about Tom Brokaw. We would have gotten away with
this cleanly. NBC would have gotten its money's worth for
the twenty two million in hush money, which is what
(45:08):
it was that it had to pay me because I
had agreed with them rolling over for the Republican Party blackmail.
Except Brokaw could not keep his mouth shut. So proud
was he of preserving his role as the moderator of
the October seventh NBC debate that he had to explain
in explicit detail in public how he went to his
(45:30):
bosses at NBC News and threatened them on behalf of
the GOP. On September twenty ninth, two thousand and eight,
a lengthy and glowing Brocaw profile appeared in The New
York Times. Quote mister Brokaw said that over the summer
he had quote advocated within the executive suite of NBC
News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts
(45:52):
Keith Alderman and Chris Matthews on election night and on
nights when there were presidential debates. Mister brocas said he
had also conducted some shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between
NBC and the McCain campaign. His mission, he said, was
to assure the candidate's aids that despite some negative on
air commentary by mister Olberman in particular, mister McCain could
(46:14):
still get a fair shake from NBC News. Unquote, Oh,
that was his mission. The hell it was. Happily, Brocaw
just could not resist boasting even further. The next sentence
actually reads quote. Mister Brocaw said he had been told
by a senior McCain aide whom he did not name,
(46:37):
that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC
representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential
debates until his name was invoked. Quote. One of the
things I was told by this person was that they
were so irritated. They said, if it's an NBC moderator
for any of these debates, we won't go, mister Brocaw said,
(47:02):
quoting him again. My name came up up and they said, oh, hell,
we have to do it, because it's going to be Brokaw.
There is a second punchline after all this, when the
new format came out and I was sitting there counting
my money, MSNBC had David Gregory quote anchor unquote the
(47:23):
debate coverage. David was terrific during this. Practically all this meant, anyway,
was that I was on the air until literally ninety
seconds before each debate began, which is when I said,
now here's David Gregory. And he was then on for
four or five minutes after the debate ended, which is
when he said, now here's Keith Olberman. And on Election
Night itself with David again formally anchoring per the Republican
(47:47):
Blackmail at ten fifty nine PM. To his great credit
and to my eternal gratitude, David Gregory said, with the
last voting booth closing at eleven PM, NBC News can
now project the winner of the two thousand and eight
presidential election, Keith Bless him. Plus, I still have all
the money moral whether it's CNN in twenty twenty three
(48:22):
or MSNBC in two thousand and eight, the Republicans not
only work the media refs, they will bribe the media refs.
We do not have liberal bias in American media. We
have conservative bias. I've done all the damage I can do. Here.
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel,
who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards
(48:45):
by John Phillip Schhaneel, Guitars bassed on drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of the ESPN Inc.
Musical comments from Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever,
(49:05):
Our announcer was my friend Richard Lewis, and everything else
was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the eight hundred and sixtieth day since Donald Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Don't forget to keep arresting him while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Ulremman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(49:44):
with Keith Ulreman 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. Evidence
is mounting that CNN really did pack the audience at
(00:26):
the Trump town hall, really did see the crowd with
almost nothing but Trump supporters. Evidence is also mounting that
CNN let Trump choose the moderator, or at least veto
other options to be the moderator. Evidence is also mounting
that CNN let Trump pick which pro Trump talking heads
would appear on CNN after the fixed Trump rally ended.
(00:51):
And evidence is also mounting that CNN chairman Chrislick has
intensified his criticism of the only CNN front facing talent
to dare to even lightly criticize the decision to prostitute
the network for Trump, Oliver Darcy, and that Oliver Darcy
is deciding whether or not to quit before he gets fired.
(01:12):
It is the CNN Trump Scandal day six, and it
is not only not going away, it is getting worse,
and people need to be fired over it. And it
is now bordering on the kind of television corruption that
in the nineteen fifties brought congressional investigations and grand juries,
because it is looking more and more like Chris Lick
and CNN really did make Trump the deal Trump boasted
(01:36):
he could not refuse, really did violate every tenet of
journalism to make sure anybody watching at home would not
only hear nothing but support for Trump at the rally,
but also support for Trump after the rally. Now it
is the former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie adding to
claims that the audience at Saint Anselm College in New
(01:59):
Hampshire Wednesday night was not just four hundred Republicans and
independents planning to vote in the state's GOP primary, but
in fact consisted solely of hand picked Trump's supporters. Christy
was on ABC's This Week yesterday, Tim this is not
even in doubt quote as to the audience reaction. Let's
face it, CNN went in the tank to get Trump
(02:21):
on there, They allowed him to negotiate who was going
to be in that audience, and those were all Trump supporters. Again,
Chris Christy is absolutely certain that CNN's claimed that they
seated four hundred Republicans with various favorites is wildly untrue.
According him, again, I know a lot of those people
(02:42):
in that audience. I spent a lot of time in
New Hampshire eight years ago, and a lot of those
are the same faces I saw eight years ago. Neither
you nor I would go into court over anything that
Chris Christie says, especially not me. I've been in New Jersey.
But Christy is merely echoing what Chris said. The nuknew
(03:05):
who is merely the governor of New Hampshire. The Republican
governor of New Hampshire had said in an interview recorded
earlier in the week for use on MSNBC yesterday, I
knew pretty much everybody in that audience. Sununu also said
they're all Trump supporters. Again, absolutely no doubt in his
(03:25):
mind either. The audience was absolutely filled with Trump supporter
so I wasn't surprised to hear the support. Asked if
he would say there was a large percentage of Trump
supporters there, he underscored this again quote, I would say
almost all of them. Consider this for a moment. Putting
(03:46):
on Trump in that format live, where his filibusters could
not be stopped and his lies happened too fast to
be pushed back against by anybody, was indefensible enough, but
it was not conclusive evidence of a plan to take
seventy minutes of CNN primetime and devote it to making
Trump look good and make it sound like everybody in
(04:07):
New Hampshire loved him. It could still have just been
Chris Licht's pervasive stupidity, but stacking the audience filling it.
I would say almost all of them with Trump cheerleaders, people,
the Republican governor of the state, new by Site, people,
the former Republican governor New Jersey new by Site. When
Trump's latest polling numbers in that state were only at
(04:30):
about sixty percent, that is rank corruption. And if it
was a prerequisite for Trump doing the appearance on CNN,
Chris Christie says that was a negotiation deal. But Trump
did with CNN that is pure crookedness on Chris Licht's part.
We were already in quiz show territory. The former Trump
(04:52):
State Department appoint ee Matthew Bartlett told Puck News last
week that if there was anybody in there who was
not a Trump plant, they were warned not to let
anybody know it. He said, quote on CNN, it sure
looked like Trump won over the crowd, but the reality
was different in the room. The floor manager came out
ahead of time, and said, please do not boo, please
(05:15):
be respectful. You were allowed to applaud. The question about
trump veto power over the moderator bubbled up the day
after the CNN telecast, quoting pairing Caitlin Collins with Republicans
who mostly voted for Trump in twenty twenty, wrote Hugo
Lowell in The Guardian. Was as close to home turf
(05:37):
as the campaign could get. The team said it would
have rejected Jake Tapper. This would not be the first
time something like that happened in the world of political
television theater, but it makes it no less untoward. And
the Guardian had something else that slipped right past me
when I read it last week. You may remember that
(05:57):
when this deal with the Devil was first announced, it
was reported from Trump side sources that part of what
he got was the assurance that there would be more
Trump surrogates in the future on CNN. I thought that
meant in the future future, The Guardian again quote. The
campaign also made sure the pre and post town hall
(06:18):
coverage featured Trump surrogates on air. Former Trump White House
press ad Hogan Gidley, pro Trump Congressman Brian mast and
Byron Donald's as well as pro Trump Senator j d Vance.
To sum it up, Trump rejected the obvious qualified choice
for moderator. Trump chose the ultimate selection for moderator. Trump
(06:40):
handpicked or had hand picked for him almost all of
the four hundred people in the audience. Trump or Chris
licked silenced any possibility that descending voices or reactions could
be heard from the audience, and Trump pre arranged to
have some of his most loyal sick evans on the
CNN set in the minutes after this disaster wrapped up.
(07:01):
It is increasingly obvious that, never mind it's journalistic impropriety
and the grotesque on air spectacle, it produced nothing about
last Wednesdays CNN Chris Lickt Donald Trump town Hall was legitimate, ethical,
or honest. And of course, what did all this pandering
(07:24):
to and prostituting for Trump get Chris Lickt and CNN.
It got them a flood of stories from ex Trump
White House staffers Elisafara Griffin and Stephanie Grisham of quote
countless cases of sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct by Trump
while president, all of them hanging off the conversation that
(07:45):
Trump had with Caitlin Collins on this subject. During that
town hall, it got Chris Lickton CNN an op ed
in The New York Times by the former Fox executive
propagandist Bill Salmon, who was forced out of there by
Tucker Carlson praising CNN. That's not quite a letter endorsing
Chris Lickt written by Bill Cosby, but it is in
(08:08):
the same vein. Oh, and then Trump, with the final
thank you note, posted a doctored clip of the town
hall with words being placed I guess by AI into
Anderson Cooper's mouth, asserting that Trump had just quote been
ripping us a new blank here at CNN. Of course,
(08:28):
given what else Anderson Cooper said last week in selling
his own audience, who knows what he really thinks? Congratulations
Chris Lickt, who got what you paid for? Which brings
us back to Oliver Darcy. He is the CNN media
reporter who's nightly email newsletter included external criticism of the
town hall just hours after the fiasco ended, and also
(08:51):
included only one carefully phrased pulled punch. It was so
pulled I thought he was critiquing Trump. You will recall
he wrote, It's hard to see how America was served
by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,
which so enraged man Baby Licked that Lickt closed his
(09:13):
internal conference call the next morning, praising himself by insisting
that CNN had served America very well. Later that day,
Licht called Darcy onto the carpet and per witnesses put
the fear of God into him and left Darcy quote
visibly shaken. But last night Semaphore News reported new details
of that meeting and a far more dire possible outcome,
(09:36):
quoting Max Taney's piece. In the aftermath of the meeting
and coverage, Darcy has wandered to colleagues whether he should
resign or if he will be fired by the network. Paradoxically,
the new reporting also indicates that the Darcy Licked meeting
may have been less confrontational than first thought. Again quoting Semaphore,
it ended relatively cordially, with Lickt telling Darcy that he
(09:59):
supported him. Then why on earth would Darcy be considering
quitting or anticipating termination again Semaphore. A particularly bitter pill
for some CNN employees was an anonymous comment from a
Licked ally to Fox News unquote well that comment. Quoting
the Fox report, a source said Licked received a quote
(10:22):
ton of messages from CNN staffers appalled by Darcy's newsletter.
The messages, according to the source, were like, quote, what
the f so now? Instead of bullying and threatening Oliver Darcy,
we have Licked instead having a quote ally of his leak.
(10:44):
Two of all places Fox that CNN employees were no, no,
all on Lickt's side, not Darcy's side. There is the
Chris Licked at MSNBC. I knew and loathed. It was Licked,
of course, who, when plucked from his failures at Late
Night with Even Colbert, which had followed his failures at
(11:07):
CBS Mornings, which themselves followed his failures on Morning Joe
and Scarborough Country, it was Licked who vowed to make
sure all voices were heard at the new CNN except
the voice of Oliver Darcy, who also, again I note,
still has not been publicly and non anonymously supported by
anybody else at CNN, who may or may not have
(11:32):
had the fear of God put into him by Chris Licks,
but who has clearly received the fear of unemployment much
as it would seem to follow that it should be licked.
Living under that particular fear it will not be. He
has given his bosses exactly what they hired him for,
which raises an even bigger scandal and an even bigger crisis.
(11:52):
Where does it say in this society that irresponsible anti
democracy partisans can buy one of the nation's largest news
organizations and pervert it into Fox News without the STADH.
Why should there not be a Senate hearing as to
what they gave Trump to be on their channel. All
(12:14):
signs suggest Chris Lickt cooked the books to make Trump
look more accepted, more inevitable. At minimum, last Wednesday night,
lickt tampered with whatever the balance is in the Republican primary,
and there is no reason to suppose that Licht and
Trump will not conspire again next year during the actual
campaign to tip the scales and put a thumb on
(12:35):
them on Trump's behalf. Ultimately, though, there was one detail
in one largely overlooked story from over the weekend that
confirmed that this mess, this deforestation of the CNN news
brand in this disastrous Trump infomercial, is really less about
(12:55):
journalism or ethics and much more about the immeasurable ego
of Chris Lickt, The former Secretary of Life Labor. Robert
Reisch wrote a fairly pedestrian piece about CNN's manifold failures
here for the website raw story and deep into it,
mister Reisch included something amazing. Quote. After I first criticized
(13:20):
Lickt for the direction he was pushing CNN, he phoned me.
He was angry that I doubted his motives and said
he took the top job at CNN because he quote
believes in journalism. Robert Reich is an intelligent and accomplished man,
a generous guest on TV shows, including those of mine,
(13:44):
a professor at Berkeley, a prolific writer and commentator. Yet
I think he would agree he does not carry enormous
heft within journalism nor within the broadcasting business. Still, shortly
after his appointment to run what is certainly the most
pervasive American based journalistic operation in the world, where they're
a lot tronic digital print with a thousand things to
(14:07):
learn and a thousand things to correct in the next
thousand minutes, Chris licked is calling up Robert Reisch and
angrily yelling at him because Reisch doubted his motives. It
is petty and stupid and wasting of time and small,
which is Chris Licked in a nutshell. It is also
(14:29):
amazing that Chris Lick could actually think anybody would doubt
his motives. We all know his motives, as Trump realized
when he set out to get licked, to change moderators,
to pack the crowd with screaming Trump cultists, and to
fill the postgame panel with his todius of supporters. We
all know what Chris Licked and his motives are. All
(14:54):
we are doing now is haggling over the price still
ahead on this initiative countdown. This whole construction news network
(15:16):
feels it must have a Republican on. Republican makes illegitimate,
surreptitious demands. Network says, sure, anything else you need. It's
really bad, but it is not really new. The GOP
came in and did it at NBC in two thousand
and eight, and that time the demand was get that
Alderman guy off MSNBC during the debates, or John McCain
(15:37):
won't show up to your debate. I'll tell you that
sad story and the even sadder story of the cooperation
of the network's supposed news icon who sold his soul
during that time and helped the Republicans blackmail NBC in
Things I Promised Not to Tell. Also ahead, you probably
did not know the name Kevin Ettinger unless you lived
(15:59):
in the town of Hastings on Hudson, New York, at
any point since about the year nineteen six. And the
fascists really think they've got something going with this quote
Biden scandal unquote, Well what's the scandal. Hell, they don't
know exactly what the informant told the whistleblower, So where's
this informant. Well, we don't know that either. We kinda
(16:21):
well that's a funny story, but we kind of lost
the informant. That's next. This is countdown, Yeah, lost the informant.
This is countdown with Keith Alberman format chef again coming up,
(16:50):
CNN making an illicit deal to give a Republican exactly
the kind of coverage he wants. Man, it's really bad,
but it's not really new. They did it to me
fifteen years ago, and they did it with the help
of Tom Brokaw collaborator. Things I Promise not to Tell
coming up. Plus Kevin Ettinger nineteen thirty three, twenty twenty three.
(17:12):
First the daily round up of the misgrants, morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
the world Lebrons. The Texas Congressman Troy Nells, the disgraced
x cop so corrupt he was even fired by the
Police Department of Richmond, Texas for destroying evidence. Congressman Nells
meets the minimum standard for membership in the Freedom Caucus.
(17:35):
He's a dope, a terrorist from Afghanistan. Nells has tweeted,
was just caught illegally crossing our southern border. How many
other bad ombres made it through undetected Nells, They caught
the guy at the border you and your fellow travelers
claim is open and out of control. He was, you know, nailed.
(18:00):
This tweet is of the standard Republican kind that talks
about how catching drug runners or wanted criminals at the
border proves you can't catch drug runners or wanted criminals
at the border. I'm not really sure anymore if Knells
is this stupid or he just thinks his cultists are
so it's safer for us to assume that the answer
is both. The Bronze. Elon Musk, another super genius, the
(18:24):
free speech absolutist, has now explained that free speech absolutism
means doing whatever the quasi dictator of Turkey wants when
he's on the verge of losing reelection. In response to
legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the
people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access
to some content in Turkey today. In other words, Twitter
(18:46):
censored accounts that have been critical of the Turkish strongman Erewan.
When some of his sick ephants pointed this hypocrisy out
to Musk, Musk angry, did your brain fall out of
your head? He wrote to one the choices have Twitter
throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets, which,
gew one do you want? As the head of Wikipedia replied,
(19:09):
the choice is, of course neither. You sue in Turkey
to prevent the government from throttling you, and the courts
would then protect Twitter the same way it did Wikipedia,
only that would cost Elon Musk free speech. My Musk,
but the winner, Chairman James Comer of the House Committee
on e Republicans really aren't that smart. This is the
(19:34):
guy who has spent every day of the new Congress
promising he is about to blow the lid off the
giant Biden scandal. And the giant Biden scandal turns out
to be a rumor that there is a document that
allegedly quotes a reported whistleblower supposedly claiming a Biden did
something bad. Only nobody knows what it is or even
if the document exists. And even Steve Doocy on Fox
(19:57):
rip the Republicans because they don't have even an allegation,
let alone any proof. And now it turns out has
lost the whistleblower. You have spoken with whistle blowers, the
incredibly gullible, Maria Bartiromo said from behind her plastic sneeze
guard in an interview with Comber yesterday and Fox. You
also spoke with an informant who gave you all this information.
(20:20):
Where's that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers? Bad, bad question, Maria, Well,
Comber replied, we can't track down the informant. We're hopeful
that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant.
The whistleblower is very credible. Even Maria Bartiromo noticed that
this is now Comber rumor document whistleblower informant allegation. This
(20:47):
is now sixth hand, and the start of the sixth
hand chain is you lost him. Bartiomo replied, Hold on
a second, Congressman, did you just say that the whistleblower
or the informant is now missing. Comber replied, well, we're
hopeful that you can find the informant, but he's in
the quote spy business un quote, so shrug emoji, Congressman, Jamie,
(21:14):
my dog ate my informant comer two days Worst Parson
and the World. Quote scripts to the news, some headlines,
(21:41):
some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Actually just won. In
this edition, Dateline Hastings on Hudson, New York, fitting this
is I guess on what would have been my parents'
seventy fourth wedding anniversary. I had a lot of great
teachers growing up. I have mentioned some of them before
in chronological order. Marcelene Weiner, Marjorie Plant. Marjorie Plant was
(22:02):
the one who had me right to Royal Dahl Ellen
Rice Arthur Nathan I interviewed the Moments on TV about Shakespeare.
Walter Schneller Randy McNaughton, Peter and Carol Gibbon, Frederick Nelson,
Chuck Atwater, and one I skipped and his name was
Kevin Ettinger. And Kevin Ettinger died last week at the
age of ninety. Kevin Ettinger was my fifth grade homeroom
(22:25):
and English teacher. And if you can imagine having to
deal with me now for most of your workday, try
to picture what that must have been like when I
was eight and nine years old in the fifth grade.
My range of emotions with Kevin was so vast that
when my bosses at MSNBC wanted me to do a
story on my own childhood back home in Hastings on Hudson,
(22:46):
Kevin was the teacher I selected to interview, to roam
those school hallways that I had not been in even
then for more than twenty five years. That's one end
of that spectrum with him. The other end of the
spectrum is the class picture from the fifth grade with
all of us standing there and our best attire, and
Kevin in the back row in the middle well. At
(23:07):
some point during fifth grade, I got a pen or
maybe even a letter opener, and I stuck it through
mister Ettinger's head in the picture. When I interviewed him
in nineteen ninety seven for MSNBC, I brought the picture
with me and I asked him about it. Yeah, what's
going on here? He asked? Could have been a lot
of things. You and I, Hm, we clashed a lot.
(23:31):
Do you remember the thing about the balk rule? By
any chance? Suddenly I was in a classroom at the
Farragut School in Hastings On Hudson, New York, in the
early spring of our Year of the Lord nineteen sixty eight,
and Kevin Ettinger and I were in a knockdown, drag
out verbal war in front of the rest of the
fifth grade class about the baseball balk rule. You're the expert,
(23:56):
he said to me. What happens when there's a balk?
And I said, well, the runner or runners advance one
base and the batter goes to first base. The batter
does not go to first base, Keith. It escalated from there.
Mister Ettinger finally said, go home tonight, get that baseball
encyclopedia you always bring in here, look up the rule.
Then bring in the encyclopedia tomorrow tomorrow morning. If I'm wrong,
(24:20):
I'll stand up in front of the class and read
the rule out loud and apologize to you. But if
you're wrong, you'll stand up in front of the class
and read the rule out loud and apologize to me.
Deal that day. I ran home. The next morning, I
did not run back to school. Six to zero two
(24:44):
pitcher illegal action. Yeah, I was the one standing up
reading the Balk rule to our fifth grade class, because no,
the batter does not get awarded first base on a ball,
not even in nineteen sixty eight. He didn't to be fair.
A year before, I barely knew the difference between a
baseball and a bass drum, so some of the subtleties
of the game were still new to me. So I said,
(25:06):
mister Ettinger was right and I was wrong, and I apologize.
I paused. He looked at me and said, I accept
your apology. You can sit down now, Keith. I continued
to stand and I continued to talk. So mister Ettinger
was right this time, but I still know more about
baseball than he does, and next time I'll get it
(25:26):
right and he'll get it wrong. Thank you. I'm thinking
this was a Thursday, maybe even a Friday, because in
my mind the turnaround to what happened next. The inevitable
PostScript to this story was almost immediate. My mother was
the secretary to the minister at our Unitarian church, which
(25:46):
was of itself hilarious because my father was a world
class atheist. I mean, he was nationally ranked. He could
use the Bible to disprove all aspects of all religions
to ministers. Meanwhile, I was the only kid I know
who stopped going to Sunday school because there just was
(26:07):
not enough fire and brimstone in it, and I was bored. Anyway,
Apparently one of the regular Sunday school teachers was sick
or had to leave town or something, and my mom
had to pick the fill in and Sunday, she and
I and for some reason, my father get in the
car to go to church. I guess Dad needed to laugh.
(26:27):
And I'm in the back and suddenly we're not going
the normal route to the church, and I say, what's up?
And Mom says, oh, I told you we have to
have a substitute Sunday school teacher and we have to
give him a lift. You'll like this. The substitute Sunday
school teacher is mister Ettinger. Next thing. I know. Mister
Ettinger is in the back seat of our car with me,
and he is needling me over the balk rule. And
(26:49):
I am now saying, you know, we are not in
school right now. You are not in charge. This is
my dad's car, and I don't have to take this
crap from you now, mind you. As he's saying what
he said and I'm saying what I said, we are
also laughing. It is one of those kinds of friendships.
Only I'm eight years old. I guess that's why I
(27:11):
both enjoyed being in Kevin Ettinger's class so much and
also stabbed out his head with a pencil or a
pen or a letter opener. With certain limitations, he always
treated me as an adult. And even though I left
that school and went to another one two years later,
I continued to see him in town off and on,
sometimes on purpose, usually by accident, for the next forty
(27:33):
three years. And he was a great friend of my dad,
and he was a great friend of my mom. And
sometimes I'd run out of my dad with Kevin at
the train station, at the Hastings Diner wherever. Also, among
other things, you couldn't avoid him. Kevin lived across the
street from the school. From the time I met him
until the last time I checked in on him. He
(27:54):
lived across the street from the gym, right next to
the school. If you drew a line between two of
the three great municipal edifices of the small town of
Hastings On Hudson, New York, Farragut School and the Chemka
Town swimming Pool, if you drew a line, the midpoint
would have been just about Kevin Ettinger's front door. Over
the years, he helped me with a book I was writing.
(28:15):
He came with me to at least one Yankees game.
He did that interview I mentioned, And we waited from
the school year of nineteen sixty seven sixty eight, when
I had him in the fifth grade, until the school
year of nineteen seventy eight seventy nine, by which time
I was a college senior, and in his fifth grade
class that year was my sister Jenna. Two Aldermens in
(28:36):
one lifetime. He said, what did I do to deserve that?
I did not hesitate in answering him the back rule thing.
I said, it is hard to imagine that Farragut School,
which I always thought was on Farragut Parkway, not Farragut Avenue,
but at some point they switched the names. I swear
Parkway became Avenue and Avenue became Parkway. Anyway, Faragut School
(28:59):
was built in nineteen oh three, and it was named
for Admiral David Damn the torpedoes Full speed Ahead Farragut,
who actually lived in Hastings in the nineteenth century. Anyway,
it's hard to imagine that Farragut School can possibly stay
open with Kevin Ettinger gone. Hell, it's hard for me
to imagine hastings On Hudson will stay open. The great
sculptor Jacques Lipschitz lived in Hastings. He created a giant
(29:22):
piece for the library that's still there. Billy Burke, the
good Witch from The Wizard of Oz lived there. The
Wizard himself, Frank Morgan lived there, I don't think. At
the same time, original publisher of The New York Times, EDOLFH. Oakes,
lived there. Ricky Lake was from there. She went to
school with my sister, the late John Saunders, my old
ESPN colleague. But to me, Kevin Ettinger was Hastings On Hudson,
(29:45):
New York. In nineteen ninety one in Los Angeles, where
I was working in living I opened up a letter
from my dad, and inside the envelope was a clipping
from the New York Times about Kevin Ettinger playing stickball
every Sunday morning on the giant blacktop playground behind Farragut School,
the one I played tag on and punchball on, the
one I first traded baseball cards on, and best of all,
(30:09):
the one eye first muttered oaths about Kevin Ettinger on
He had started a thing called the Ethical Softball League
there on that giant giant playground. I mean, I think
it was in two different time zones. He'd started this
ethical softball league there in nineteen seventy, and the neighbors
were a little upset at the noise on Sunday mornings.
(30:32):
On the other hand, he lived across from the street.
He was one of the neighbors. Sixteen years later, I
buy a copy of the New York Times to go
do the crossword puzzle over breakfast, and there's another article
about Kevin Ettinger and the Ethical Softball League of Hastings
On Hudson, New York, and about how everybody else refers
to him as the commissioner. And in part they called
(30:53):
him the commissioner because the age of seventy four, he
could still throw fastballs and strike out those whipper snapper
fifty year olds. And in part they also called him
the commissioner because he was the one to whom they
always deferred when there was a question about the rules. Well,
I could have told them that goodbye, mister Ettinger, and
(31:14):
thank you, and no, next time there is a baseball dispute,
you will not be wrong and I will not be right.
You win. The demand for spots in the Shaye Stadium
press box that night was so great that there was
(31:35):
a signed seating. I had no real reason to be there,
but as usual, the New York Mets took care of me,
and so on Friday, the fifth of September two thousand
and eight, I was shouldered to shoulder with reporter friends
watching the Mets begin to blow their three game Pennant
Race lead against the Philadelphia Phillyes. Sorry Mets fans for
bringing this up again. Brett Myers had just struck out
(31:55):
New York's David Wright looking when my phone rang. It
was my agent, Gene Sage. They just called. She said, flatly,
you and Matthews and fired from anchoring the presidential debates
because of what you said. What I had said had
been said. Three nights previously, Chris Matthews and I were
co anchoring the Republican Convention on MSNBC. He was there
(32:18):
in Minneapolis. I was in the studios in New York,
ostensibly so I could also anchor hurricane coverage, although it
was pretty clear that at least half the reason I
was not in Minneapolis was because the Republicans had threatened
NBC or said they couldn't guarantee my safety or something
like that, and NBC folded. So I was the one
(32:38):
during MSNBC's coverage of the two thousand and eight Republican
Convention who had to throw it to a video they
were introducing that we had been told by the Republicans
was a quote tribute to the dead of nine to eleven.
It was, in fact a snuff film. All of the
images that all of the networks had stopped showing within
(32:59):
weeks or even days of the attacks, all of those
images were in this video, jumping and falling to their
deaths from the World Trade Center on nine to eleven.
Endless replays of the planes hitting the towers, dismembered bodies
in the plaza, the building collapses, the equally terrifying scenes
at the Pentagon, and all with a grotesque Robert Dove
(33:22):
voiceover emphasizing that this was all the Democrats fault. The
message was simple, Elect Obama and you will die like this.
I was angry, just on that base level. For the
five and a half years I had been back at MSNBC,
we had been rigorous about not showing any of that video.
(33:42):
There were rules that if we had to for some reason,
we should show only the skill images, and even then
only with extensive warnings to the viewers. But I knew
from my conversations with the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin,
who I'd only known for twenty eight years at that point,
that he would insist that on the scene in Minneapolis,
Matthews and Tom Brokaw, whose career at NBC I had
(34:03):
resurrected after Brian Williams had buried him alive two years earlier,
that one or both of them would rebuke the GOP
for showing not a nine to eleven tribute, but, as
I just said, a nine to eleven snuff film. The
video ended and we came out to Brokaw with Matthews,
and Brokaw kind of coughed, and Matthews said wow. And
(34:25):
he turned to Brokaw and said, in that loose fire
hose delivery of his tom that kind of hunderscorns terrorism.
Big thing Republicans says, they tri stop Obama. Brokaw droned
on approvingly, the Republicans sneaking a snuff film, a banned
video onto MSNBC and by the way, also onto CNN,
(34:46):
onto NBC, onto CBS, onto ABC without any warning. That
was not mentioned by Brokaw or Matthews. Back to New
York and Keith. I was supposed to add liberates about
what we were expecting from the Republican convention for the
rest of the night and then throw to a commercial. Instead,
I said, and this is a paraphrase, the original tape
disappeared that night that before we moved on, I felt
(35:09):
I needed to apologize that we at MSNBC and for
that matter, NBC News, had extremely strict rules about not
showing that video. The Republicans had just shown you without
any warning, without any context, and we certainly would not
have shown the horror and death and blamed it on
the Democrats, or for that matter, blamed it on the Republicans.
I said, if we had done such a thing ourselves,
(35:31):
there would have been people fired at NBC News. The
public program the GOP provided said that was going to
be a nine to eleven tribute film. I said, and
so did the private conversations with the network, which included
the reminder from NBC and MSNBC that we had rules
against showing the scenes of the horrible death and mutilation
and destruction. So I apologized on behalf of whoever trusted
(35:53):
the Republicans to live up to their word that MSNBC
viewers were forced to see the video our network had
long before vowed never to show again. So three nights,
without as much as an email, this Griffin guy had
called my agent and told her I was fired. Matthews
two from our further coverage of the upcoming McGain Obama debates.
(36:18):
She related these details to me as I walked down
the many ramps in the back of Shay Stadium towards
the subway. I told her to call Griffin back and
tell him I had quit on the spot right then
and he could work his way out of the ensuing disaster.
Liberal network MSNBC fires liberal host Elberman for criticizing conservatives
for sneaking nine to eleven snuff film onto MSNBC. He
(36:39):
could figure that out any way he wanted, and he
could hear my response on I don't know, Good Morning America, CBS,
This Morning, the PBS News Hour, and any other news
program that bothered to ask me to stop by and talk.
I phoned my live in girlfriend, Katie Turr and told
her I was on my way home, and I made
a few phone calls to friendly voices within the NBC
(37:00):
management structure and got from them a clear picture of
what had happened. And despite the spotty cell service along
the elevated line heading back to Manhattan, I got a
message from a newspaper reporter friend who neatly tied together
all that I was hearing elsewhere. Tom Brokaw is going
around NBC saying he got you fired from the debates
because the Republicans told him to. Nine maybe ten months earlier,
(37:25):
Phil Griffin had come to me and asked me if
I would be okay with this guy who had been
kind of disappeared by the network. Tom Brokaw was his name.
Appearing during our weekly coverage of the Democratic and Republican primaries.
Just a couple of minutes, like from a prospective desk.
That's all he wants to do. He's really Tom's really
unhappy Brian has frozen him out of everything. Brian Williams.
(37:50):
Of course, I was appalled, but not surprised. The power
had gone to Brian's head, and of course there it
had not met much resistance. Plus, as I said to Griffin,
you're asking me if i'd like to add Tom Brokaw's experience,
and Tom Broke caused gravitas to stuff I'm anchoring when
I'm not sure I know as much as I really
(38:10):
need to know to do this right. You're asking me this.
Tom fit in beautifully, and twice after those long Tuesday
evenings in the primary season, he sent me brief emails
awarding me what he called the game ball, because he
was so impressed by my ability to balance the roles
of political anchor and political commentator, having tried this myself.
(38:31):
One of them read, I know what a perilous, tight
ruthless is game ball to Ko, I'm mocking him now,
but these meant so much to me. I printed the
emails out and carried them in my wallet. And now
he was claiming he had gotten me fired because, as
my newspaper friend said, the Republicans told him to That
(38:54):
was not hard to unpack either. Tim Russard had died
on June third of that year. I anchored that night
until two in the morning. It was still an open wound,
there were still tears. We didn't know it then, but
the structure of NBC News and the perilous tie group
balancing NBC and MSNBC had died with Tim Russard. So
(39:14):
did the role of moderator of the second debate between
John McCain and Barack Obama, scheduled for about a month
after my subway ride on October seventh in Nashville. Tim
had not even been buried yet when Brokaw began to
angle to get that assignment, along with brushing away the
dirt of his Penny Anti role on the MSNBC Perspective desk.
We never saw him again in order that he could
(39:36):
take Tim's spot as Brian Williams sidekick on Big NBC.
The month before August, there was a story coming out
of the east end of the third floor at thirty
Rock where NBC News management sat around not doing much
of anything, that a Republican goon named Ed Gillespie had
been in there with Griffin and the NBC News president,
Steve Cappus, trying to get me silenced or fired or
(39:59):
off the convention coverage or something. And that's somebody prominent
within nbc U News was in there with Gillespie or
was invoked by Gillespie. The rumor mill wasn't certain. As
I switched from the elevated seven train to the underground
f train. The whole thing came together before my comments
about the GOP Convention nine to eleven snuff film. Ed
(40:21):
Gillespie had come in and had somehow vaguely threatened Cappus
and Griffin about me using as leverage the debate which
Tom Brocaw was now supposed to moderate, And when I
apologized for their video on our air, Gillespie must have
turned it into an either or get rid of me,
or McCain would refuse to participate in any debate moderated
(40:45):
by Brokaw or anybody from NBC News, and Brokaw had
already come back from the dead once in two thousand
and eight, and he would be damned if he would
be forced to do it a second time. But as
the train took me home to an apartment I was
now going to have to sell since I had just
quit MSNBC on the spot for full link to such
(41:05):
obvious Republican blackmail. Something else now occurred to me. Why
would MSNBC or NBC or our parent corporation at the time,
ge actually think that they could remove me from the
debate coverage on MSNBC where the Rachel Meadow Show had
yet to be born, and the three times a night
my show ran accounted for something like sixty percent of
(41:27):
the entire day's network audience and do that without getting
a really bad reaction from our audience. Plus, if a
newspaper man already knew the Brokaw part, how could this
story be avoided? MSNBC announced it had removed its liberal
star Keith Alderman from coverage of the McCain Obama presidential debates.
(41:49):
Sources confirmed former NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw, now an
MSNBC commentator on Olderman's coverage, had helped the Republican Party
to blackmail NBC into the decision. Olderman immediately resigned saying
quote in succumbing to this core version on behalf of
John McCain, NBC has now forfeited any right to further
be called a news organization, and I'm sad to say MSNBC,
(42:12):
which I built, is now dead. My god, MSNBC and
NBC News for that matter, would have committed corporate suicide
before the weekend was over. At that point, it dawned
on me that the only thing that could save the
credibility of the whole news division and the careers of
Griffin and Cappus and NBC Network President Jeff Zucker, and
(42:34):
especially the career of Tom Brokaw was for me to
publicly state that I had asked to be removed from
anchoring the debates because the whatever was just too much
blah blah blah for me, and I felt I should
stick to the post debate analysis and commentary. NBC would
now have a choice. They could fire me from the
(42:55):
debates and destroy everything, including the one hundred million dollars
a year or so in profit that NBC made off MSNBC,
or I could you know why and claim it was
my idea and save everybody's ass, including my own. I
got out of the subway and raced home. Katie met
me at the door with a big hug. She had
(43:17):
been crying. Relax, I said, I'm not quitting. In fact,
I'm going to get a huge raise. Now, listen carefully.
I called my agent and I explained the idea that
had lit over my head on the subway like a
light bulb to both of them. I said, you call
Phil Griffin back and explain to him that I will
personally save his job and Steve Campus's and Jeff Zoker's
(43:39):
and Tom Brokaw's and everybody else's. I'll take the fall
instead of letting them all get fired by the MSNBC audience.
I'll say this was my idea, and all it will
cost Phil is twelve million dollars. And he has to
leak the term so everybody knows it cost him twelve
million dollars. And she paused for a second and said,
(44:01):
it's genius. It might not quite be twelve million, but
I bet I bet they'll pay you at least nine.
On Sunday, several news organizations reported I had asked to
be taken off the anchor desk. Two months and one
week later, The New York Times wrote quote. Keith Olberman,
the anchor of Countdown on MSNBC, has extended his contract
(44:23):
through the next presidential election season. The network announced mister
Alderman and MSNBC essentially tore up the four year, four
million dollar year contract they signed last year and replaced
it with one worth about seven and a half million
a year. Oh, that was a three and a half
million dollar raise for four years. We're a total of
(44:47):
fourteen million dollars, except the new contract added two years
to my old deal, so the raise was actually twenty
two million dollars. All stories have a punchline. This punchline
is about Tom Brokaw. We would have gotten away with
this cleanly. NBC would have gotten its money's worth for
the twenty two million in hush money, which is what
(45:08):
it was that it had to pay me because I
had agreed with them rolling over for the Republican Party blackmail.
Except Brokaw could not keep his mouth shut. So proud
was he of preserving his role as the moderator of
the October seventh NBC debate that he had to explain
in explicit detail in public how he went to his
(45:30):
bosses at NBC News and threatened them on behalf of
the GOP. On September twenty ninth, two thousand and eight,
a lengthy and glowing Brocaw profile appeared in The New
York Times. Quote mister Brokaw said that over the summer
he had quote advocated within the executive suite of NBC
News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts
(45:52):
Keith Alderman and Chris Matthews on election night and on
nights when there were presidential debates. Mister brocas said he
had also conducted some shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between
NBC and the McCain campaign. His mission, he said, was
to assure the candidate's aids that despite some negative on
air commentary by mister Olberman in particular, mister McCain could
(46:14):
still get a fair shake from NBC News. Unquote, Oh,
that was his mission. The hell it was. Happily, Brocaw
just could not resist boasting even further. The next sentence
actually reads quote. Mister Brocaw said he had been told
by a senior McCain aide whom he did not name,
(46:37):
that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC
representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential
debates until his name was invoked. Quote. One of the
things I was told by this person was that they
were so irritated. They said, if it's an NBC moderator
for any of these debates, we won't go, mister Brocaw said,
(47:02):
quoting him again. My name came up up and they said, oh, hell,
we have to do it, because it's going to be Brokaw.
There is a second punchline after all this, when the
new format came out and I was sitting there counting
my money, MSNBC had David Gregory quote anchor unquote the
(47:23):
debate coverage. David was terrific during this. Practically all this meant, anyway,
was that I was on the air until literally ninety
seconds before each debate began, which is when I said,
now here's David Gregory. And he was then on for
four or five minutes after the debate ended, which is
when he said, now here's Keith Olberman. And on Election
Night itself with David again formally anchoring per the Republican
(47:47):
Blackmail at ten fifty nine PM. To his great credit
and to my eternal gratitude, David Gregory said, with the
last voting booth closing at eleven PM, NBC News can
now project the winner of the two thousand and eight
presidential election, Keith Bless him. Plus, I still have all
the money moral whether it's CNN in twenty twenty three
(48:22):
or MSNBC in two thousand and eight, the Republicans not
only work the media refs, they will bribe the media refs.
We do not have liberal bias in American media. We
have conservative bias. I've done all the damage I can do. Here.
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel,
who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards
(48:45):
by John Phillip Schhaneel, Guitars bassed on drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of the ESPN Inc.
Musical comments from Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever,
(49:05):
Our announcer was my friend Richard Lewis, and everything else
was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the eight hundred and sixtieth day since Donald Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Don't forget to keep arresting him while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Ulremman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(49:44):
with Keith Ulreman 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.
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.
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.