March 15, 2023 • 37 mins
EPISODE 154: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: DeSantis dismissed Ukraine as not being one of our "vital national interests" and exactly six hours later a Russian fighter jet was knocking one of our intelligence drones out of international air space 75 miles off the Ukrainian coach. DeFascist looks like an idiot today, especially since Republican grown-ups pounded the crap out of him all day, and even more so because as a Congressman, the Rube-In-High-Heels demanded offensive and defensive weapons be sent TO Ukraine.
It's not just the standard story of a local yokel stepping onto the Republican national stage and promptly plummeting into the orchestra bit. DeSantis's flip-flop underscores the Republicans' century-long inability to make up its mind about any of the various incarnations of Russia. The America First DeSantii of 1939 wanted to ignore Russia even after its pact with Hitler. The post-war Republicans turned the actual Soviet threat into spies inside every home fallout shelter. Then Nixon went for detente. Then Reagan joked about beginning the bombing of Russia in five minutes. Then Reagan both destroyed the Soviet Union and 'brought peace.' Then Trump sold the GOP to Putin. Now DeSantis doesn't know which side of which is the Wokey-Fenokee Swamp.
Meanwhile after a day of utter silence, Russia's second-favorite American Tucker Carlson actually mentioned Jacob Chansley, the Q Shaman. One mention. Literally. No explanation what happened to his wall-to-wall-coverage of the worst attack on American freedom unwoke non-CRT conspiracy. And coincidence or maybe more: heard anything from ANY Republican besides Gosar about it? Or about this "visit" to the January 6 defendants inside the DC Jail? They've gone silent too. But a DC judge hasn't: he says not only aren't the J6'ers NOT being mistreated, all their complaints have been addressed by the jailers AND they all have access to tablets to review...guess what...January 6th video for their defense. Something's up and it isn't Fox's ratings.
B-Block (16:19) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Biden again notes that caving to Freedom Caucus demands to freeze spending at 2022 levels as their price to vote for a debt ceiling hike means...De-funding the police. Ohhhhhh are the Republicans pissed. Trump's indictment is days away and always will be. And he championed Veterinary Ivermectin for 11 years. Right up to the day it killed him. (20:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Brian Kilmeade calls Trump "the most disciplined I've ever seen him" because he hasn't dined with any white supremacists lately. The NHL televises a New York Rangers game live in cartoon without calling them the New York POWER Rangers. And a Minnesota state senator says there's no need for free school breakfasts or lunches because HE'S never met a hungry person.
C-Block (26:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Hopper, in Missouri (27:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Dan Abrams of "News Nation" humiliated himself on his show on the Nick-At-Nite of TV News networks. Which reminded me of the day in 2006 the geniuses at NBC decided to make him General Manager of MSNBC. He was so bad so fast that ONE WEEK LATER they took all the power away from him. It's a long laugh.
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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 Boy
does Florida Man? The Republican Rube in high heels ran
(00:26):
the Fascist looked like a moron today after he dismissed
Ukraine as not being one of our vital national interests,
and literally six hours later, a Russian SU twenty seven
fighter jet was playing bumper cars high in international airspace
with one of our drones over the Black Sea, seventy
five miles off the Ukrainian coasts, Ran DeSantis, putting the
(00:50):
ass in Russian asset. One can only imagine them trying
to explain all this to this yokel for whom anything
more complicated than pulling books out of school library is
an alligator alley, or bullying state legislators from Defuniac's springs,
(01:11):
or issuing press releases about combating the woke Finoki swamp,
anything more complicated than that creates that same blank, dead
eyed look that has sunk Republican after Republican as they've
tried to step out onto the national stage and instead
plummeted into the orchestra pit. The US has many vital
(01:31):
national interests, De Santis said, but quote becoming further entangled
in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not
one of them, and the words were still echoing as
the American intelligence drone and DeSantis' credibility were both shot
and crashed into murky waters. The irony here is that,
(01:53):
as a freshman congressman, back when the Republican Party official
platform was pro Ukraine but anti Russia, as it had
been since the day they shot Czar Nicholas Descantis urged
sending defensive and offensive weapons to Ukraine, and he held
up his vote on a missile defense treaty with Russia
(02:14):
until and unless Russia withdrew from Ukraine. But of course
that was before Trump sold the Republican Party to Putin's
ambassador Sir Gey kiss Leak at the twenty sixteen GOP
convention in Cleveland. Now, to Trump and Dessentis and most
of the other bubble heads running for the nomination, they
are at the territorial dispute stage of aiding at a
(02:37):
betting Russian aggression because we don't care, you know, if
it ain't woke, don't fix it. The other irony, of course,
on a larger sense, is that the Republicans lived off
their fierce, usually paranoid, QAnon level conspiracy fears and convulsions
about a hatred of Russia for decades and decades. Bluntly,
(03:00):
the Republican Party had no credibility about America's role in
the world. On Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon converted the
real Soviet era threat into something that could scare Joe
and Joan Moron in their own home fallout shelter in
the forties, fifties, and sixties. The various ron Desanti of
nineteen thirty nine glibly dismissed Hitler in Czechoslovakia and Poland
(03:24):
and France and you know, the free world as ooh,
what should we call them? Territorial disputes that were not
part of our vital national interests. Then the Republicans swerved
to ferocious anti Russian rhetoric after the Democrats beat first
Republican isolationists and then the Nazis. Barry Goldwater wanted to
(03:46):
use nukes to stop the Russia and China back communism
in Southeast Asia. And then Nixon forged detant with the
Kremlin and screwed up the Republican Party. Something huge and
then after he was gone, that Republican pendulum again swung
all the way back in Saint Ronald of Reagan made
his infamous nineteen eighty four Mike sound check joke. We
(04:07):
think it was a joke. I'm pleased to tell you
today that I have signed legislation that will outlaw Russia
through every we begin bombing in five minutes. A lot
of Republicans were very disappointed in Reagan, disappointed that it
never began bombing. The thing is, all Republicans, Trump and
(04:29):
DeSantis included right now still try to dine out on
the fairy tale that Reagan dismantled the Soviet Union. They
have managed this spectacular tightrope walk for decades in which
Reagan was both death the destroyer of communist worlds, and
the peacemaker who led garbageoff down the path to the escalation.
(04:51):
Now this is not an argument for me for the
candidacy of Trump. He, after all, is the guy who
took the money or the interference, or the collusion, or
the conspiracy or the hookers and cut that Republican tight rope.
And we all know when you see that R Florida
after his name or DeSantis' is the R stands for Russia.
(05:13):
You'll notice I almost never mentioned trump foreign policy here
because A he is a Russian asset, and this is
why the Marilago nuclear kleptomania was somehow even worse than
it first seemed. And B I think it's time to
start conserving energy here for twenty twenty four, by no
longer bothering to ask why Trump's supporters go along with
his treason. They don't understand it, they don't care about it.
(05:36):
If Trump changed every foreign position he has ever held
and went with the exact opposite point on the spectrum today,
they would not only applaud, but few would know the difference,
and fewer still would even wonder why Trump supporters are
lost to us and to reality. We can't convince them.
(05:56):
We just have to stop them anyway. DeSantis already got
his ppe whacked by the senior Republican on the Senate
Arm Services Committee, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, quoting Putin wants
nothing more than to push the United States away from
our support of Ukraine and prevent us from rolling back
his destructive policies. We must choose to project strength against
(06:18):
our adversary, not appease this dictator with words are so
called de escalation. He's talking to you, Randa the drone
incident over the Black Sea. Senator Wicker said, quote should
serve as a wake up call to isolationists. It's yourn
he's talking about you again in the United States, that
(06:38):
it is in our national interest to treat Putin as
the threat he really is. Lindsey Graham went in after
Dessatis even harder, and he named him though he continues
to carry water for Trump and against Putin at the
same time, quote, he's going to go beyond Ukraine Putin.
If you don't get that, you're not listening to what
he's saying. The statement by the governor is taking it
(07:00):
off the table, and that will just incentivize Putin to
stay in again, aim to fight harder. And if you
know anything about China, they see weakness in Ukraine. By
the west. There goes Taiwan, to which De Santis presumably
looked at the word China. Saw that first big letters
C and grunted CRT, CRT, CRT, and speaking of Putent
(07:24):
watching for American weakness about Ukraine, we naturally fall back
to Tucker Carlson, who we could also describe as a
Russian asset, except sorry, he's not an asset to anybody.
In case you and I foolishly thought he had really
bailed out on last week's End of the World January sixth,
Jacob Chanslee q Shamon video gas lighting story just because
(07:45):
he didn't run a second of it during his Indoctrination
Hour on Monday night. Well, no, he did refer to
Jacob Chansy last night once, literally just his name once,
just Jacob Chansy in passing, and there has not been
any explanation why, nor anything the other Fox shows, nor
(08:06):
anything online. I mean last night. He even did a
feature on this Douglas Macky trial proclaiming it another conspiracy
that's going to send a man to prison for memes
like that innocent one in twenty sixteen that told people
they could vote for Hillary Clinton by text, which was
obviously a joke and everyone who knew it was a joke,
and Carlson declared that was the worst crime ever against
(08:28):
American freedom, or the worst since last week or whatever.
I've lost track Tucker, by the way, the other thing
Tucker Carlson would have said, besides, this was my choice
to drop Jacob Chansley like he was milkshakeed duck if
it really were his choice, which is that he no
longer had to cover more of January sixth or Jacob
(08:50):
Chansley because he'd won, and as he said perhaps a
hundred times last week alone, the tape proves this half
of Tucker Carlson's life has been Tucker Carlson telling you
how great Tucker Carlson is. No somebody has stopped him.
In fact, it never happened. Tucker Carlson never showed Cherry
(09:11):
Pick video of the mob for four consecutive nights and
insisted January sixth was just sightseers with a couple of hooligans.
It's never happened, you imagined it and funny Dog one thing.
Another January sixth story has also disappeared at Last Word,
Marjorie Taylor Green and James it's amazing nobody asks me
about my college girlfriends, saying I hit her and I
(09:34):
threatened her life. Comber, We're still planning to visit the
January sixth quote political prisoners at the District of Columbia Jail,
but it appears that the last new story about this
or quotes from either of them are from Monday, except
from one little report from Channel nine in Washington, which
(09:54):
just briefly touches on this. And I swear the more
I read about all of this, the more I daydreamed
that there was a zoom call midday Monday with Carlson,
the Murdochs and Taylor Green and Kevin McCarthy and all
the other vermin and there was one message about January
sixth and Jacob Chansley and publicity and going to the jail,
and the message was shut up, please shut up. Over
(10:16):
God's sake, shut up about it. We're all getting sued.
WUSA Television reported that a federal judge has now denied
yet a third motion from a January sixth defendant to
be released from pre trial custody at the DC Jail.
Christopher Quaglin alleged proud boy felony charges of inflicting bodily
(10:38):
injury on officers and assaulting police with a dangerous weapon
a stolen riot shield and pepper spray. The Quaglin motions
reference standing sewage and shut off water in the jail,
and the judge, Trevor McFadden, replied that the US marshals
attended to both within days of the report. Early in
twenty twenty one, Quaglin also introduced the letter from the
(11:01):
MAGA Republican Congressman about disparate treatment of the January six prisoners,
and Judge McFadden answered that in this way, the January
sixth defendants are the first ones he's ever seen who
have been given tablets on which to view video and
other discovery materials. And in fact, he thinks the January
sixth collection at the DC Jail may be the best
(11:23):
treated prisoners anywhere. And there is a punchline, because there
is always a punchline. The judge who said all that
and said that, no, the January sixth defendants are being
anything but mistreated. Judge Trevor McFadden is Federalist Society and
(11:44):
was appointed on June seventh, twenty seventeen by Yeah, by Trump.
(12:08):
Still ahead of us in this edition of Countdown, Yes,
Biden has completely pissed off the Republicans by again correctly
noting that the MAGA demand to freeze spending or they
will not vote to increase the debt limit will cut
into the two billion dollars a year in federal funding
for local police. So, like Joe said, the Republicans want
(12:29):
to defund the police. Oh are they pissed? Oh? A
Minnesota state senator calmly explains that there is no need
for free breakfasts or lunches in schools there because he
has never personally met anybody who's actually suffering food insecurity.
Whereas he called it hunger, Well, that's great. If we
simply introduced this idiot to everybody in the country, they'll
(12:50):
never be hunger here ever again, worse persons ahead, And
somebody mentioned Dan Abrams to me, and I was reminded
of the day MSNBC transferred him from hosting the Missing
White Woman of the Week show to running the entire network,
and he dreamed up the slogan that would make us
number one quote keeping it real things I promised not
(13:14):
to tell. Coming up, that's next, Let's discountdown. This is
Countdown with Keith Olberman. Boscripts to the news, some headlines,
some updates, some snarks, some predictions, dateline Pennsylvania's Finishing Trades
(13:34):
Institute in Philadelphia. Oh are the Republicans pest? I mean,
the last time they were this fist they attempted a
coup for the second time in five days. The President
has pointed out that the ironically named Freedom Caucus says
it will not vote to increase the debt ceiling unless,
among other things, the Inflation Reduction Act is skewered and
(13:56):
discretionary spending is capped at twenty twenty two levels for
the next ten years. Well, guess what's included in those
two things. FBI budgets and two billion dollars a year
in federal funding for local police. Cut that and you
are defunding the police. Yes, mister President. Last week I
(14:20):
laid out of my budget that we invest more in
safer communities and expand access to mental health services for
those affected by gun violence. Congressive Republicans should pass my
budget instead of calling for cuts to these services or
defunding the police or abolishing the FBI. As we hear
from our magor Republican Oh, are the Republicans pissed, but
(14:43):
the messaging is perfect. In fact, Joe Biden needs to
give us speech, a full speech two three hours explaining
what this means, step by step about federal funding for
local police and how the Republicans are defunding the police.
So the Republicans get even more pissed all over again.
Do it dateline Knew Year or ever heard of Zeno's paradox.
(15:06):
Before you can ever reach your destination, you must travel
halfway to it, meaning when you get to that point,
you still have halfway to go, go half of that way,
and you still have half to go, and on and
on a gone. A Greek philosopher produced this about two
millennia ago, and it's been resolved by physics. Yet here
is Zeno's paradox. Back in twenty twenty three. In the
(15:29):
prosecution of Trump, former fixer Michael Cohen is to testify
to the Stormy Daniel's grand jury today at about one
thirty pm because we're still about halfway to the indictment
of Trump and day Lione Foster rode out sad note today,
Danny Lemoi had a telegram channel devoted to taking ivermectin.
(15:50):
Now there was no vagueness here. Lemoi was old school ivermectin.
He specifically said, you should take the stuff that is
prescribed to kill worms in horses and cows, give it
to kids to veterinary ivermectin. This Lemoy started taking it
in two twelve and he said it had cured his
lime disease and it had regenerated That was his word,
(16:13):
regenerated his heart and it would do the same for
you and your COVID. Just before seven am on third
of this month, mister Lemoy posted an update quote happy Friday,
all you poisonous horse paste eating survivors, and that afternoon
per vice News. He died suddenly when his heart exploded,
and the followers of his channel are insisting he did
(16:35):
not die from taking ivermectin. He died from taking too
little of it. And no, it does not look like
anybody posted on his Telegram channel hashtag died suddenly. Thank
(17:14):
you Nancy Faust. I had a friend mentioned him recently
and I was reminded of the day MSNBC appointed this joker,
(17:35):
the host of the Missing White Woman of the Week show,
to run the network, and then a week after that
they had to take all his power away from him
because guess what, he didn't know how to run the
network and it wasn't his own hair. First time for
the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and dunning Krugriffac
specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world, Le
(17:58):
bronze Brian kill me to Fox and Friends, who is there?
So Steve Doocey looks smart. I don't want to say
this nation is dying under the yoke of diminished expectations.
But honestly, Killmead says of Trump quote, since he went
to East Palestine stopped having lunch with white supremacists, this
is the most disciplined I've ever seen him. Yeah, he
(18:21):
wore pants all the time too. Actually I cleaned that
quote up for poor kill Mead. Kill Mead actually did
not say white supremacists. He said white supremists. The runners
up the marketing folks at the National Hockey League, and
what did somehow thinks was at technological advance back to
nineteen sixty two. It showed something last night called the
(18:42):
NHL Big City Greens Classic, in which three D cartoon
characters were supposed to exactly mimic the actions of the
Washington Capitals and the New York Rangers in real time, because,
of course, if you want to watch hockey, you want
to see cartoons rather than the actual players and game
and reality. By the way, if you're making them into cartoons,
(19:07):
how do you not call the teams the New York
Power Rangers and have them not play Washington but play
the Winnipeg Jetsuns Power Rangers. Jetsons, but our winner, states
Senator Steve Draskowski of Minnesota, possibly the stupid mess man
of the week. He rose to speak against a bill
(19:28):
providing free breakfasts and lunches in school in Minnesota. But
there's no need, he says, because there is no hunger
in Minnesota, no food insecurity among kids. And this jackass
Draskowski knows this because he has personally never met anybody
who is hungry. Mister President, I have yet to meet
(19:50):
a person in Minnesota that is hungry yet today, I
have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that says
they don't have access to enough footie. Now I should
say that hunger is a relative term, mister President. You
know I had a cereal bar for breakfast. I guess
(20:11):
I'm hungry. Now that to some might be that maybe
that's the definition of the bill. I don't know. I didn't.
I didn't see a definition of hunger in the bill,
mister President. Senator burning hell, would you Apart from the
fact that the Second Harvest, Heartland Hunger Relief Network and
(20:31):
Food Bank in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, calculates that one in
six Minnesotas has experienced food insecurity, one in eleven kids.
It gets worse. This Senator Draskowski's degree from the University
of River Falls is in agriculture. Of course, he's also
NRA and anti immigration and anti education. Minnesota State Senator
(20:56):
Steve If I haven't met one, they don't exist like
you know, say, people who might like me or a
naked woman. Draskowski two days worst person and this time
I made it, and the still a head on Countdown.
(21:27):
So this guy interviewed a friend of mine on TV,
made a fool of himself, calling her cerebral palsy a
disease like it was infectious. She then wiped the floor
with him, and I thought I should mention that this
was hardly the biggest humiliation of his career, not by
a long shot. The day they actually thought this idiot
could run MSNBC lasted a week next In Things I
(21:48):
promised not to tell first, in each edition of Countdown,
we feature a dog. Indeed you can help. Every dog
has its day to Poplar Bluff, Missouri and Hopper. Hopper
is a big black mutt puppy left to die on
the rural streets. Saving Saint Louis Pets found him, got
him hospitalized. He's got parbo He crashed Monday night, but
they got him back up to critical but stable. This rescue,
(22:10):
like all rescues, has been stretched to the breaking point financially.
It needs our help. Look for Hopper on Cuddley or
you can find the details on Hopper on my Twitter feeds.
We have to help. Where all the dogs have I
thank you and Hopper thanks you to the number one
(22:48):
story on accountdown and my favorite topic, Me and Things
I Promised not to tell. I was a witness to
the greatest management fiasco in television history, and it began
on Monday, June twelfth, two thousand and six. My girlfriend
at the time, Katie Turr, was coming in from la
for a week, and my vacation had started the previous
(23:10):
Friday at exactly nine O one pm. At nine O
two pm on that Friday night, the acting chief of MSNBC,
Phil Griffin, called me, insisting that even though I was
on vacation, we had to meet for breakfast at nine
thirty am Monday. I said that made it a not
vacation and he said, we will give you two additional
days off later. Something is happening you need to know
(23:33):
about first, I sighed. The previous Wednesday, they had fired
the president of MSNBC, the one who had once chased
me around our offices in Secaucus, New Jersey, threatening to
kill me because he was squeamish about blood. See if
that makes any logical sense to you. He threatened to
kill me because he was squeamish about blood. Jeff Zucker,
(23:55):
then the president of NBC, had called my agent and
asked how my relationship with the aforementioned acting chief Phil
Griffin was. It was obvious they were going to put
Griffin in charge, and as the marquee anchor on the network,
they needed me to find it out from them rather
than from a gossip side or something. I could not
begrudge them the courtesy. So on the first weekday of
(24:17):
my vacation, Griffin and I met for breakfast, and as
soon as coffee arrived, he said, so listen, buddy, I'm
gonna be the executive in charge of MSNBC, but I'm
gonna be staying here in the city to oversee the
Today Show. So MSNBC will also have a general manager,
and the general manager will being charging Secaucus, and the
new general manager will be Dan Abrams. Well, I paused
(24:40):
for a second and then burst into laughter. I mean
thirty seconds of a riotous belly laugh, loud enough that
other people at the restaurant at Norma's in the Parker
Meridian in New York City turned around to look at
me to find out what was so funny. Then I
composed myself. Then I laughed again, then a third laugh,
(25:04):
a fourth laugh. Oh my god, Phil, that is the best.
You get me to get up early on the first
day of my vacation and you hit me with that
Dan Abrams running something We've known each other, what Phil
twenty five years next month? That is the best joke
you have ever told me. Dan Abrams and I laughed
(25:24):
again for another thirty seconds, and one of my friends,
who was a waiter there, came over and said, everything okay.
Because Phil could never interrupt anybody who was praising him.
He smiled back at me, and when I finally stopped laughing,
he said, well, well, thanks, I guess, but I'm serious.
We've been talking to Dan for several months about this,
and he just has the kind of analytical mind that
(25:47):
it had taken me more than a minute to realize
Griffin was serious. That he and the President of NBC News,
Steve Kappus, and that President of NBC Jeff Zucker, had
actually decided to take the host of our nine PM show,
which had been devoted for years to excruciating lowest common
denominator tabloid crap coverage of the missing white woman of
(26:11):
the week, to take a man who had the respect
of absolutely no one on air or off at MSNBC,
A man who made me, in that regard, look like
Saint Francis of ASSISI. A man who had only been
in television for twelve years, a man who had never
run anything in his life, A man with indescribably bad
(26:32):
hair that none of us could identify. Was it a
two pay? Was it a weave? Was he hit by lightning?
And that was the most sincere thing about him? His hair?
They had actually decided to appoint this gossip monger with
no experience to run a network that was just now
finally establishing itself as a factor in American political media.
(26:57):
Christ Phil, what are you thinking? I said to him,
He's a buffoon. I'd rather work for Joe Scarborough. He's descending.
He insults his producers, he insults our producers. He leaks
constantly to the reporters and the gossip blogs. Half of
his exclusive sources turn out to be wrong. And I
might be the best friend he has there. Phil Griffin
(27:21):
chugged his coffee. Well, I'm sorry about that. I mean,
I mean it's not gonna make any practical difference for you.
You would countdown will report directly to me. Dan is
gonna have any responsibilities for any of the primetime shows.
He's only going to be hands on with the daytime shows.
But he'll be the general manager of the network. And
we think he has a lot of exciting ideas. And
I said exciting ideas about what exciting ideas about Sean
(27:44):
Bennet Ramsey. Phil, we have just stopped being the running joke,
the bottomless punchline of cable news. And once this gets out,
we will be less respected than we were a year ago.
I paused, and the news bounced off the walls of
the restaurant and hit me afresh again. Dan Abraham's general
(28:08):
manager of MSNBC. He will get you fired, Phil. I
don't know if he will get you fired because he's
trying to get you fired, or he'll get you fired
because he'll be so bad at this that everybody will quit.
But you've just committed professional suicide. Un Campus and Zooker,
dead Men Walking. Phil Griffin was now read. I had
(28:31):
only previously seen him read when he was very, very
drunk and we were in our twenties. I was hoping
you'd give him a chance, and I said some very
pleasant things about giving him a chance to destroy what
we had been building up for the last year. And
did Phil remember that my contract was up in six
months and CNN was already publicly courting me to go there.
I said, I'm gone. You might as well release me
(28:53):
from the contract right now. I'm out. And then something
else popped into my mind. Oh, and listen, did you
think there might be a problem because he and I
dated the same woman nine years ago, and he told
she'd be making a mistake to get involved with me.
Phil's eyes widened. He had forgotten, Like I said, he'll
(29:15):
have nothing to do with countdown. An hour later, my
home phone rang and it was Dan Abrams. I just
wanted to say how much I'm looking forward to working
with you on Countdown. As time goes by, Phil will
be more and more overwhelmed at the Today's show, and
I'll be making the day to day decisions. I'll be
your guy. After a few minutes of this, which I
(29:35):
swear I could hear his phone scratching against his two
pay and during which I said nothing, but uh, my
home phone rang again and it was the NBC president,
Jeff Zucker. So you guys report to Dan, and if
you need to go further, you can go to Phil.
And I said, Phil had just told me Abrams would
have nothing to do with Countdown, and I intended to
make sure that was true. Zooker, showing the loyalty and
(29:58):
consistency that was so publicly displayed in the original Chris
Cuomo C and N Fiasco, immediately said, well, if this
doesn't work, F Dan Abrams, hell, F Phil Griffin, you
come to me. The first thing I had done when
I had gotten home was to call my executive producer,
Izzy Povich. She had been as fascinated as I had
(30:18):
been as to why I had to have a business
breakfast on day one of a vacation. Well, I sighed,
you'll never believe who the new general manager of MSNBC
is she guessed Phil Griffin, then me, and then the
manager of the New York Yankees, Joe Tory. I said,
all would have been better choices. I said, it's Dan Abrams.
(30:42):
She laughed so hard I had to pull the phone
away from my ear. After she finally calmed down, Izzie said,
you had me going, Oh my god, what a disaster
that would be. I'm sorry I fell into the bit. Yeah,
just kidding, she laughed again. No, actually, I'm not kidding.
She laughed again and said come on, and so I said, yeah, yeah,
(31:05):
I'm kidding. She laughed again. No, actually I'm not kidding.
Dan Abrams is the new general manager. She laughed again.
We must have done this for two or three minutes.
There was an old Eddie Izzard bit I stole it
from him about the death of Engelbert Humperdink. I finally
stopped when she said, wait, I saw Dan Abrams getting
(31:26):
out of his car in the President's parking space this morning.
You're you're You're not kidding. Oh my god. I have
to call my husband and tell him I'm quitting. Well,
it all worked out about as well as I had
predicted at his first meeting with the producers, Dan Abrams
revealed his first exciting idea. He had apparently been given
enough lead time about his appointment to have made up
(31:48):
giant banners containing the new MSNBC network slogan, which he
had dreamed up the banners, he told the producers, we're
going to be hung around the studios, and in fact,
we're being hung around the studios. As they spoke, and
behind him there was one cupboard in a drape cloth
and he pulled the string. The cloth fell off, revealing
his first exciting idea of the new network slogan, MSNBC
(32:13):
keeping it real, keeping KIPI n apostrophe, no g keeping.
That was the highlight of his tenure as the general manager.
The blowback against disappointment was so universal nobody trying to
hide it. Abrams first move was to cancel a show
(32:35):
hosted by an Xbox News walking malaprop artist named Rita Cosby.
She almost took hostages. Abrams delayed the meeting to tell
her staff from noon until six pm. Abrams then gave
an interview about his vision for MSNBC and told the
reporter quote, documentaries are our most important programs, and the
(32:57):
staffs of the uncanceled primetime shows, mine included nearly walked
out because in fact we were our most important programs.
While Griffin prevented that mass resignation by swearing Abrams had
been misquoted. Abrams then launched a series of radio commercials
for MSNBC documentaries. Abrams tried to get a producer named
(33:19):
Bill Wolfe, who had been told he was going to
be the new general manager, to instead host his own show.
He told me he had figured out the perfect guest
host for Countdown and was already in negotiations with him.
Dan Rather, my girlfriend Katie's father, then chimed in with
a new nickname for Abrams that spread across the television industry,
Miles Miles, as in Miles the boy producer from the
(33:43):
sitcom Murphy Brown. I even felt sorry for him, it
was that bad, and of course I was promptly repaid
for this mistake. A week after Abrams was hired, the
cable news blogger named Brian Stelter, who inexplicably wound up
first at The New York Times and then at CNN,
and you heard about him getting fired over the summer.
Brian Stelter called to say he had and told by
(34:05):
a source at NBC that I had just been fired
at a meeting an hour before by Abrams and an
NBC executive named Randy Falco. In fact, Abrams was at
a meeting with Zucker and the NBC News president campus
as they desperately tried to steer out of the fatal
skid they had all swerved into. Phil Griffin was furious.
(34:27):
Griffin told me he suspected Abrams had been somehow connected
to this league about this fake story about me getting fired,
and he began an investigation of him and never trusted
him again one week, appointed Monday, and a lame duck
the following Monday, keeping it real keeping. On August ninth,
(34:53):
three days shy of the two months mark, Phil Griffin
called my office an hour and a half before my show. Okay,
you want to say I told you so. We've made
it clear to Dan that he won't be involved in
any major decisions going forward. He remain general manager, but
I'm running everything. In a year or so, buddy, we'll
say he found out, he he just had to go
back on the air, and he'll resign and we'll give
(35:14):
him the nine PM show. Probably, you have to keep
this confidential I did. I'm surprisingly good at that, at
least till I started this podcast. Fourteen months later, they
offed him, by which time I had already started to
lobby them to make the nine PM host not Dan
Abrams but Rachel Maddow. They finally gave into that in
September two thousand and eight, and Dan did not have
(35:36):
a show or a title, and he finally got the
message and he left NBC in twenty eleven. The last
I had heard of Dan Abrams before the News Nation
retirement home. He had launched a new website. It's called
Whiskey Raiders because it rates various brands of whiskey. You
(35:58):
get it, Raiders, Ray Turs, you get it. It's a pun.
Presumably he chose that pun because somebody else had already
taken keeping it real. I've done all the damage I
(36:27):
can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdowns come to
you from the studios of the Olderman Broadcasting Empire, High
a top headquarters in the Sports Capsule Building here in
New York. Here the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle,
who are the Countdown musical directors produced by t Ko Brothers.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel guitars based
(36:51):
and drums by Brian Ray. Other Beethoven selections have been
arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Comments
by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was Tony Kornheiser. Everything else is pretty much
(37:12):
my fault. So let's countdown for this, the seven hundred
and ninety ninth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
him now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow, the Big eight hundredth day. Till then, I'm
Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
(37:40):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio Boy
does Florida Man? The Republican Rube in high heels ran
(00:26):
the Fascist looked like a moron today after he dismissed
Ukraine as not being one of our vital national interests,
and literally six hours later, a Russian SU twenty seven
fighter jet was playing bumper cars high in international airspace
with one of our drones over the Black Sea, seventy
five miles off the Ukrainian coasts, Ran DeSantis, putting the
(00:50):
ass in Russian asset. One can only imagine them trying
to explain all this to this yokel for whom anything
more complicated than pulling books out of school library is
an alligator alley, or bullying state legislators from Defuniac's springs,
(01:11):
or issuing press releases about combating the woke Finoki swamp,
anything more complicated than that creates that same blank, dead
eyed look that has sunk Republican after Republican as they've
tried to step out onto the national stage and instead
plummeted into the orchestra pit. The US has many vital
(01:31):
national interests, De Santis said, but quote becoming further entangled
in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not
one of them, and the words were still echoing as
the American intelligence drone and DeSantis' credibility were both shot
and crashed into murky waters. The irony here is that,
(01:53):
as a freshman congressman, back when the Republican Party official
platform was pro Ukraine but anti Russia, as it had
been since the day they shot Czar Nicholas Descantis urged
sending defensive and offensive weapons to Ukraine, and he held
up his vote on a missile defense treaty with Russia
(02:14):
until and unless Russia withdrew from Ukraine. But of course
that was before Trump sold the Republican Party to Putin's
ambassador Sir Gey kiss Leak at the twenty sixteen GOP
convention in Cleveland. Now, to Trump and Dessentis and most
of the other bubble heads running for the nomination, they
are at the territorial dispute stage of aiding at a
(02:37):
betting Russian aggression because we don't care, you know, if
it ain't woke, don't fix it. The other irony, of course,
on a larger sense, is that the Republicans lived off
their fierce, usually paranoid, QAnon level conspiracy fears and convulsions
about a hatred of Russia for decades and decades. Bluntly,
(03:00):
the Republican Party had no credibility about America's role in
the world. On Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon converted the
real Soviet era threat into something that could scare Joe
and Joan Moron in their own home fallout shelter in
the forties, fifties, and sixties. The various ron Desanti of
nineteen thirty nine glibly dismissed Hitler in Czechoslovakia and Poland
(03:24):
and France and you know, the free world as ooh,
what should we call them? Territorial disputes that were not
part of our vital national interests. Then the Republicans swerved
to ferocious anti Russian rhetoric after the Democrats beat first
Republican isolationists and then the Nazis. Barry Goldwater wanted to
(03:46):
use nukes to stop the Russia and China back communism
in Southeast Asia. And then Nixon forged detant with the
Kremlin and screwed up the Republican Party. Something huge and
then after he was gone, that Republican pendulum again swung
all the way back in Saint Ronald of Reagan made
his infamous nineteen eighty four Mike sound check joke. We
(04:07):
think it was a joke. I'm pleased to tell you
today that I have signed legislation that will outlaw Russia
through every we begin bombing in five minutes. A lot
of Republicans were very disappointed in Reagan, disappointed that it
never began bombing. The thing is, all Republicans, Trump and
(04:29):
DeSantis included right now still try to dine out on
the fairy tale that Reagan dismantled the Soviet Union. They
have managed this spectacular tightrope walk for decades in which
Reagan was both death the destroyer of communist worlds, and
the peacemaker who led garbageoff down the path to the escalation.
(04:51):
Now this is not an argument for me for the
candidacy of Trump. He, after all, is the guy who
took the money or the interference, or the collusion, or
the conspiracy or the hookers and cut that Republican tight rope.
And we all know when you see that R Florida
after his name or DeSantis' is the R stands for Russia.
(05:13):
You'll notice I almost never mentioned trump foreign policy here
because A he is a Russian asset, and this is
why the Marilago nuclear kleptomania was somehow even worse than
it first seemed. And B I think it's time to
start conserving energy here for twenty twenty four, by no
longer bothering to ask why Trump's supporters go along with
his treason. They don't understand it, they don't care about it.
(05:36):
If Trump changed every foreign position he has ever held
and went with the exact opposite point on the spectrum today,
they would not only applaud, but few would know the difference,
and fewer still would even wonder why Trump supporters are
lost to us and to reality. We can't convince them.
(05:56):
We just have to stop them anyway. DeSantis already got
his ppe whacked by the senior Republican on the Senate
Arm Services Committee, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, quoting Putin wants
nothing more than to push the United States away from
our support of Ukraine and prevent us from rolling back
his destructive policies. We must choose to project strength against
(06:18):
our adversary, not appease this dictator with words are so
called de escalation. He's talking to you, Randa the drone
incident over the Black Sea. Senator Wicker said, quote should
serve as a wake up call to isolationists. It's yourn
he's talking about you again in the United States, that
(06:38):
it is in our national interest to treat Putin as
the threat he really is. Lindsey Graham went in after
Dessatis even harder, and he named him though he continues
to carry water for Trump and against Putin at the
same time, quote, he's going to go beyond Ukraine Putin.
If you don't get that, you're not listening to what
he's saying. The statement by the governor is taking it
(07:00):
off the table, and that will just incentivize Putin to
stay in again, aim to fight harder. And if you
know anything about China, they see weakness in Ukraine. By
the west. There goes Taiwan, to which De Santis presumably
looked at the word China. Saw that first big letters
C and grunted CRT, CRT, CRT, and speaking of Putent
(07:24):
watching for American weakness about Ukraine, we naturally fall back
to Tucker Carlson, who we could also describe as a
Russian asset, except sorry, he's not an asset to anybody.
In case you and I foolishly thought he had really
bailed out on last week's End of the World January sixth,
Jacob Chanslee q Shamon video gas lighting story just because
(07:45):
he didn't run a second of it during his Indoctrination
Hour on Monday night. Well, no, he did refer to
Jacob Chansy last night once, literally just his name once,
just Jacob Chansy in passing, and there has not been
any explanation why, nor anything the other Fox shows, nor
(08:06):
anything online. I mean last night. He even did a
feature on this Douglas Macky trial proclaiming it another conspiracy
that's going to send a man to prison for memes
like that innocent one in twenty sixteen that told people
they could vote for Hillary Clinton by text, which was
obviously a joke and everyone who knew it was a joke,
and Carlson declared that was the worst crime ever against
(08:28):
American freedom, or the worst since last week or whatever.
I've lost track Tucker, by the way, the other thing
Tucker Carlson would have said, besides, this was my choice
to drop Jacob Chansley like he was milkshakeed duck if
it really were his choice, which is that he no
longer had to cover more of January sixth or Jacob
(08:50):
Chansley because he'd won, and as he said perhaps a
hundred times last week alone, the tape proves this half
of Tucker Carlson's life has been Tucker Carlson telling you
how great Tucker Carlson is. No somebody has stopped him.
In fact, it never happened. Tucker Carlson never showed Cherry
(09:11):
Pick video of the mob for four consecutive nights and
insisted January sixth was just sightseers with a couple of hooligans.
It's never happened, you imagined it and funny Dog one thing.
Another January sixth story has also disappeared at Last Word,
Marjorie Taylor Green and James it's amazing nobody asks me
about my college girlfriends, saying I hit her and I
(09:34):
threatened her life. Comber, We're still planning to visit the
January sixth quote political prisoners at the District of Columbia Jail,
but it appears that the last new story about this
or quotes from either of them are from Monday, except
from one little report from Channel nine in Washington, which
(09:54):
just briefly touches on this. And I swear the more
I read about all of this, the more I daydreamed
that there was a zoom call midday Monday with Carlson,
the Murdochs and Taylor Green and Kevin McCarthy and all
the other vermin and there was one message about January
sixth and Jacob Chansley and publicity and going to the jail,
and the message was shut up, please shut up. Over
(10:16):
God's sake, shut up about it. We're all getting sued.
WUSA Television reported that a federal judge has now denied
yet a third motion from a January sixth defendant to
be released from pre trial custody at the DC Jail.
Christopher Quaglin alleged proud boy felony charges of inflicting bodily
(10:38):
injury on officers and assaulting police with a dangerous weapon
a stolen riot shield and pepper spray. The Quaglin motions
reference standing sewage and shut off water in the jail,
and the judge, Trevor McFadden, replied that the US marshals
attended to both within days of the report. Early in
twenty twenty one, Quaglin also introduced the letter from the
(11:01):
MAGA Republican Congressman about disparate treatment of the January six prisoners,
and Judge McFadden answered that in this way, the January
sixth defendants are the first ones he's ever seen who
have been given tablets on which to view video and
other discovery materials. And in fact, he thinks the January
sixth collection at the DC Jail may be the best
(11:23):
treated prisoners anywhere. And there is a punchline, because there
is always a punchline. The judge who said all that
and said that, no, the January sixth defendants are being
anything but mistreated. Judge Trevor McFadden is Federalist Society and
(11:44):
was appointed on June seventh, twenty seventeen by Yeah, by Trump.
(12:08):
Still ahead of us in this edition of Countdown, Yes,
Biden has completely pissed off the Republicans by again correctly
noting that the MAGA demand to freeze spending or they
will not vote to increase the debt limit will cut
into the two billion dollars a year in federal funding
for local police. So, like Joe said, the Republicans want
(12:29):
to defund the police. Oh are they pissed? Oh? A
Minnesota state senator calmly explains that there is no need
for free breakfasts or lunches in schools there because he
has never personally met anybody who's actually suffering food insecurity.
Whereas he called it hunger, Well, that's great. If we
simply introduced this idiot to everybody in the country, they'll
(12:50):
never be hunger here ever again, worse persons ahead, And
somebody mentioned Dan Abrams to me, and I was reminded
of the day MSNBC transferred him from hosting the Missing
White Woman of the Week show to running the entire network,
and he dreamed up the slogan that would make us
number one quote keeping it real things I promised not
(13:14):
to tell. Coming up, that's next, Let's discountdown. This is
Countdown with Keith Olberman. Boscripts to the news, some headlines,
some updates, some snarks, some predictions, dateline Pennsylvania's Finishing Trades
(13:34):
Institute in Philadelphia. Oh are the Republicans pest? I mean,
the last time they were this fist they attempted a
coup for the second time in five days. The President
has pointed out that the ironically named Freedom Caucus says
it will not vote to increase the debt ceiling unless,
among other things, the Inflation Reduction Act is skewered and
(13:56):
discretionary spending is capped at twenty twenty two levels for
the next ten years. Well, guess what's included in those
two things. FBI budgets and two billion dollars a year
in federal funding for local police. Cut that and you
are defunding the police. Yes, mister President. Last week I
(14:20):
laid out of my budget that we invest more in
safer communities and expand access to mental health services for
those affected by gun violence. Congressive Republicans should pass my
budget instead of calling for cuts to these services or
defunding the police or abolishing the FBI. As we hear
from our magor Republican Oh, are the Republicans pissed, but
(14:43):
the messaging is perfect. In fact, Joe Biden needs to
give us speech, a full speech two three hours explaining
what this means, step by step about federal funding for
local police and how the Republicans are defunding the police.
So the Republicans get even more pissed all over again.
Do it dateline Knew Year or ever heard of Zeno's paradox.
(15:06):
Before you can ever reach your destination, you must travel
halfway to it, meaning when you get to that point,
you still have halfway to go, go half of that way,
and you still have half to go, and on and
on a gone. A Greek philosopher produced this about two
millennia ago, and it's been resolved by physics. Yet here
is Zeno's paradox. Back in twenty twenty three. In the
(15:29):
prosecution of Trump, former fixer Michael Cohen is to testify
to the Stormy Daniel's grand jury today at about one
thirty pm because we're still about halfway to the indictment
of Trump and day Lione Foster rode out sad note today,
Danny Lemoi had a telegram channel devoted to taking ivermectin.
(15:50):
Now there was no vagueness here. Lemoi was old school ivermectin.
He specifically said, you should take the stuff that is
prescribed to kill worms in horses and cows, give it
to kids to veterinary ivermectin. This Lemoy started taking it
in two twelve and he said it had cured his
lime disease and it had regenerated That was his word,
(16:13):
regenerated his heart and it would do the same for
you and your COVID. Just before seven am on third
of this month, mister Lemoy posted an update quote happy Friday,
all you poisonous horse paste eating survivors, and that afternoon
per vice News. He died suddenly when his heart exploded,
and the followers of his channel are insisting he did
(16:35):
not die from taking ivermectin. He died from taking too
little of it. And no, it does not look like
anybody posted on his Telegram channel hashtag died suddenly. Thank
(17:14):
you Nancy Faust. I had a friend mentioned him recently
and I was reminded of the day MSNBC appointed this joker,
(17:35):
the host of the Missing White Woman of the Week show,
to run the network, and then a week after that
they had to take all his power away from him
because guess what, he didn't know how to run the
network and it wasn't his own hair. First time for
the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and dunning Krugriffac
specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world, Le
(17:58):
bronze Brian kill me to Fox and Friends, who is there?
So Steve Doocey looks smart. I don't want to say
this nation is dying under the yoke of diminished expectations.
But honestly, Killmead says of Trump quote, since he went
to East Palestine stopped having lunch with white supremacists, this
is the most disciplined I've ever seen him. Yeah, he
(18:21):
wore pants all the time too. Actually I cleaned that
quote up for poor kill Mead. Kill Mead actually did
not say white supremacists. He said white supremists. The runners
up the marketing folks at the National Hockey League, and
what did somehow thinks was at technological advance back to
nineteen sixty two. It showed something last night called the
(18:42):
NHL Big City Greens Classic, in which three D cartoon
characters were supposed to exactly mimic the actions of the
Washington Capitals and the New York Rangers in real time, because,
of course, if you want to watch hockey, you want
to see cartoons rather than the actual players and game
and reality. By the way, if you're making them into cartoons,
(19:07):
how do you not call the teams the New York
Power Rangers and have them not play Washington but play
the Winnipeg Jetsuns Power Rangers. Jetsons, but our winner, states
Senator Steve Draskowski of Minnesota, possibly the stupid mess man
of the week. He rose to speak against a bill
(19:28):
providing free breakfasts and lunches in school in Minnesota. But
there's no need, he says, because there is no hunger
in Minnesota, no food insecurity among kids. And this jackass
Draskowski knows this because he has personally never met anybody
who is hungry. Mister President, I have yet to meet
(19:50):
a person in Minnesota that is hungry yet today, I
have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that says
they don't have access to enough footie. Now I should
say that hunger is a relative term, mister President. You
know I had a cereal bar for breakfast. I guess
(20:11):
I'm hungry. Now that to some might be that maybe
that's the definition of the bill. I don't know. I didn't.
I didn't see a definition of hunger in the bill,
mister President. Senator burning hell, would you Apart from the
fact that the Second Harvest, Heartland Hunger Relief Network and
(20:31):
Food Bank in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, calculates that one in
six Minnesotas has experienced food insecurity, one in eleven kids.
It gets worse. This Senator Draskowski's degree from the University
of River Falls is in agriculture. Of course, he's also
NRA and anti immigration and anti education. Minnesota State Senator
(20:56):
Steve If I haven't met one, they don't exist like
you know, say, people who might like me or a
naked woman. Draskowski two days worst person and this time
I made it, and the still a head on Countdown.
(21:27):
So this guy interviewed a friend of mine on TV,
made a fool of himself, calling her cerebral palsy a
disease like it was infectious. She then wiped the floor
with him, and I thought I should mention that this
was hardly the biggest humiliation of his career, not by
a long shot. The day they actually thought this idiot
could run MSNBC lasted a week next In Things I
(21:48):
promised not to tell first, in each edition of Countdown,
we feature a dog. Indeed you can help. Every dog
has its day to Poplar Bluff, Missouri and Hopper. Hopper
is a big black mutt puppy left to die on
the rural streets. Saving Saint Louis Pets found him, got
him hospitalized. He's got parbo He crashed Monday night, but
they got him back up to critical but stable. This rescue,
(22:10):
like all rescues, has been stretched to the breaking point financially.
It needs our help. Look for Hopper on Cuddley or
you can find the details on Hopper on my Twitter feeds.
We have to help. Where all the dogs have I
thank you and Hopper thanks you to the number one
(22:48):
story on accountdown and my favorite topic, Me and Things
I Promised not to tell. I was a witness to
the greatest management fiasco in television history, and it began
on Monday, June twelfth, two thousand and six. My girlfriend
at the time, Katie Turr, was coming in from la
for a week, and my vacation had started the previous
(23:10):
Friday at exactly nine O one pm. At nine O
two pm on that Friday night, the acting chief of MSNBC,
Phil Griffin, called me, insisting that even though I was
on vacation, we had to meet for breakfast at nine
thirty am Monday. I said that made it a not
vacation and he said, we will give you two additional
days off later. Something is happening you need to know
(23:33):
about first, I sighed. The previous Wednesday, they had fired
the president of MSNBC, the one who had once chased
me around our offices in Secaucus, New Jersey, threatening to
kill me because he was squeamish about blood. See if
that makes any logical sense to you. He threatened to
kill me because he was squeamish about blood. Jeff Zucker,
(23:55):
then the president of NBC, had called my agent and
asked how my relationship with the aforementioned acting chief Phil
Griffin was. It was obvious they were going to put
Griffin in charge, and as the marquee anchor on the network,
they needed me to find it out from them rather
than from a gossip side or something. I could not
begrudge them the courtesy. So on the first weekday of
(24:17):
my vacation, Griffin and I met for breakfast, and as
soon as coffee arrived, he said, so listen, buddy, I'm
gonna be the executive in charge of MSNBC, but I'm
gonna be staying here in the city to oversee the
Today Show. So MSNBC will also have a general manager,
and the general manager will being charging Secaucus, and the
new general manager will be Dan Abrams. Well, I paused
(24:40):
for a second and then burst into laughter. I mean
thirty seconds of a riotous belly laugh, loud enough that
other people at the restaurant at Norma's in the Parker
Meridian in New York City turned around to look at
me to find out what was so funny. Then I
composed myself. Then I laughed again, then a third laugh,
(25:04):
a fourth laugh. Oh my god, Phil, that is the best.
You get me to get up early on the first
day of my vacation and you hit me with that
Dan Abrams running something We've known each other, what Phil
twenty five years next month? That is the best joke
you have ever told me. Dan Abrams and I laughed
(25:24):
again for another thirty seconds, and one of my friends,
who was a waiter there, came over and said, everything okay.
Because Phil could never interrupt anybody who was praising him.
He smiled back at me, and when I finally stopped laughing,
he said, well, well, thanks, I guess, but I'm serious.
We've been talking to Dan for several months about this,
and he just has the kind of analytical mind that
(25:47):
it had taken me more than a minute to realize
Griffin was serious. That he and the President of NBC News,
Steve Kappus, and that President of NBC Jeff Zucker, had
actually decided to take the host of our nine PM show,
which had been devoted for years to excruciating lowest common
denominator tabloid crap coverage of the missing white woman of
(26:11):
the week, to take a man who had the respect
of absolutely no one on air or off at MSNBC,
A man who made me, in that regard, look like
Saint Francis of ASSISI. A man who had only been
in television for twelve years, a man who had never
run anything in his life, A man with indescribably bad
(26:32):
hair that none of us could identify. Was it a
two pay? Was it a weave? Was he hit by lightning?
And that was the most sincere thing about him? His hair?
They had actually decided to appoint this gossip monger with
no experience to run a network that was just now
finally establishing itself as a factor in American political media.
(26:57):
Christ Phil, what are you thinking? I said to him,
He's a buffoon. I'd rather work for Joe Scarborough. He's descending.
He insults his producers, he insults our producers. He leaks
constantly to the reporters and the gossip blogs. Half of
his exclusive sources turn out to be wrong. And I
might be the best friend he has there. Phil Griffin
(27:21):
chugged his coffee. Well, I'm sorry about that. I mean,
I mean it's not gonna make any practical difference for you.
You would countdown will report directly to me. Dan is
gonna have any responsibilities for any of the primetime shows.
He's only going to be hands on with the daytime shows.
But he'll be the general manager of the network. And
we think he has a lot of exciting ideas. And
I said exciting ideas about what exciting ideas about Sean
(27:44):
Bennet Ramsey. Phil, we have just stopped being the running joke,
the bottomless punchline of cable news. And once this gets out,
we will be less respected than we were a year ago.
I paused, and the news bounced off the walls of
the restaurant and hit me afresh again. Dan Abraham's general
(28:08):
manager of MSNBC. He will get you fired, Phil. I
don't know if he will get you fired because he's
trying to get you fired, or he'll get you fired
because he'll be so bad at this that everybody will quit.
But you've just committed professional suicide. Un Campus and Zooker,
dead Men Walking. Phil Griffin was now read. I had
(28:31):
only previously seen him read when he was very, very
drunk and we were in our twenties. I was hoping
you'd give him a chance, and I said some very
pleasant things about giving him a chance to destroy what
we had been building up for the last year. And
did Phil remember that my contract was up in six
months and CNN was already publicly courting me to go there.
I said, I'm gone. You might as well release me
(28:53):
from the contract right now. I'm out. And then something
else popped into my mind. Oh, and listen, did you
think there might be a problem because he and I
dated the same woman nine years ago, and he told
she'd be making a mistake to get involved with me.
Phil's eyes widened. He had forgotten, Like I said, he'll
(29:15):
have nothing to do with countdown. An hour later, my
home phone rang and it was Dan Abrams. I just
wanted to say how much I'm looking forward to working
with you on Countdown. As time goes by, Phil will
be more and more overwhelmed at the Today's show, and
I'll be making the day to day decisions. I'll be
your guy. After a few minutes of this, which I
(29:35):
swear I could hear his phone scratching against his two
pay and during which I said nothing, but uh, my
home phone rang again and it was the NBC president,
Jeff Zucker. So you guys report to Dan, and if
you need to go further, you can go to Phil.
And I said, Phil had just told me Abrams would
have nothing to do with Countdown, and I intended to
make sure that was true. Zooker, showing the loyalty and
(29:58):
consistency that was so publicly displayed in the original Chris
Cuomo C and N Fiasco, immediately said, well, if this
doesn't work, F Dan Abrams, hell, F Phil Griffin, you
come to me. The first thing I had done when
I had gotten home was to call my executive producer,
Izzy Povich. She had been as fascinated as I had
(30:18):
been as to why I had to have a business
breakfast on day one of a vacation. Well, I sighed,
you'll never believe who the new general manager of MSNBC
is she guessed Phil Griffin, then me, and then the
manager of the New York Yankees, Joe Tory. I said,
all would have been better choices. I said, it's Dan Abrams.
(30:42):
She laughed so hard I had to pull the phone
away from my ear. After she finally calmed down, Izzie said,
you had me going, Oh my god, what a disaster
that would be. I'm sorry I fell into the bit. Yeah,
just kidding, she laughed again. No, actually, I'm not kidding.
She laughed again and said come on, and so I said, yeah, yeah,
(31:05):
I'm kidding. She laughed again. No, actually I'm not kidding.
Dan Abrams is the new general manager. She laughed again.
We must have done this for two or three minutes.
There was an old Eddie Izzard bit I stole it
from him about the death of Engelbert Humperdink. I finally
stopped when she said, wait, I saw Dan Abrams getting
(31:26):
out of his car in the President's parking space this morning.
You're you're You're not kidding. Oh my god. I have
to call my husband and tell him I'm quitting. Well,
it all worked out about as well as I had
predicted at his first meeting with the producers, Dan Abrams
revealed his first exciting idea. He had apparently been given
enough lead time about his appointment to have made up
(31:48):
giant banners containing the new MSNBC network slogan, which he
had dreamed up the banners, he told the producers, we're
going to be hung around the studios, and in fact,
we're being hung around the studios. As they spoke, and
behind him there was one cupboard in a drape cloth
and he pulled the string. The cloth fell off, revealing
his first exciting idea of the new network slogan, MSNBC
(32:13):
keeping it real, keeping KIPI n apostrophe, no g keeping.
That was the highlight of his tenure as the general manager.
The blowback against disappointment was so universal nobody trying to
hide it. Abrams first move was to cancel a show
(32:35):
hosted by an Xbox News walking malaprop artist named Rita Cosby.
She almost took hostages. Abrams delayed the meeting to tell
her staff from noon until six pm. Abrams then gave
an interview about his vision for MSNBC and told the
reporter quote, documentaries are our most important programs, and the
(32:57):
staffs of the uncanceled primetime shows, mine included nearly walked
out because in fact we were our most important programs.
While Griffin prevented that mass resignation by swearing Abrams had
been misquoted. Abrams then launched a series of radio commercials
for MSNBC documentaries. Abrams tried to get a producer named
(33:19):
Bill Wolfe, who had been told he was going to
be the new general manager, to instead host his own show.
He told me he had figured out the perfect guest
host for Countdown and was already in negotiations with him.
Dan Rather, my girlfriend Katie's father, then chimed in with
a new nickname for Abrams that spread across the television industry,
Miles Miles, as in Miles the boy producer from the
(33:43):
sitcom Murphy Brown. I even felt sorry for him, it
was that bad, and of course I was promptly repaid
for this mistake. A week after Abrams was hired, the
cable news blogger named Brian Stelter, who inexplicably wound up
first at The New York Times and then at CNN,
and you heard about him getting fired over the summer.
Brian Stelter called to say he had and told by
(34:05):
a source at NBC that I had just been fired
at a meeting an hour before by Abrams and an
NBC executive named Randy Falco. In fact, Abrams was at
a meeting with Zucker and the NBC News president campus
as they desperately tried to steer out of the fatal
skid they had all swerved into. Phil Griffin was furious.
(34:27):
Griffin told me he suspected Abrams had been somehow connected
to this league about this fake story about me getting fired,
and he began an investigation of him and never trusted
him again one week, appointed Monday, and a lame duck
the following Monday, keeping it real keeping. On August ninth,
(34:53):
three days shy of the two months mark, Phil Griffin
called my office an hour and a half before my show. Okay,
you want to say I told you so. We've made
it clear to Dan that he won't be involved in
any major decisions going forward. He remain general manager, but
I'm running everything. In a year or so, buddy, we'll
say he found out, he he just had to go
back on the air, and he'll resign and we'll give
(35:14):
him the nine PM show. Probably, you have to keep
this confidential I did. I'm surprisingly good at that, at
least till I started this podcast. Fourteen months later, they
offed him, by which time I had already started to
lobby them to make the nine PM host not Dan
Abrams but Rachel Maddow. They finally gave into that in
September two thousand and eight, and Dan did not have
(35:36):
a show or a title, and he finally got the
message and he left NBC in twenty eleven. The last
I had heard of Dan Abrams before the News Nation
retirement home. He had launched a new website. It's called
Whiskey Raiders because it rates various brands of whiskey. You
(35:58):
get it, Raiders, Ray Turs, you get it. It's a pun.
Presumably he chose that pun because somebody else had already
taken keeping it real. I've done all the damage I
(36:27):
can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdowns come to
you from the studios of the Olderman Broadcasting Empire, High
a top headquarters in the Sports Capsule Building here in
New York. Here the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle,
who are the Countdown musical directors produced by t Ko Brothers.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel guitars based
(36:51):
and drums by Brian Ray. Other Beethoven selections have been
arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it was
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Comments
by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was Tony Kornheiser. Everything else is pretty much
(37:12):
my fault. So let's countdown for this, the seven hundred
and ninety ninth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
him now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow, the Big eight hundredth day. Till then, I'm
Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
(37:40):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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