March 7, 2023 • 40 mins
EPISODE 148: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: As he set out to gaslight his Gullibles into believing the January 6th video "proves" there was false flag, with "sight-seers" led astray by a few "hooligans," what was the ONE thing Tucker Carlson could NOT do? What, as the prospect of a $1,600,000,000 damage judgment against Fox loomed in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case, did he need to avoid at all costs? Say something like "The 2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy, given the facts that have since emerged about that election. No honest person can deny it." He RE-ENACTED FOX'S LIES FROM 2020 as documented in the Dominion depositions and texts. If that weren't good (bad) enough he also defamed Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. I guess they'll have to co-own the channel with Dominion.
Now what?
Does Rupert Murdoch throw Carlson overboard? Fire him to try to tamp down the Dominion Crisis AND the Cheney/Kinzinger crisis? How did Fox let him put this on? How did Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and the others not strangle Carlson into unconsciousness rather than let him do what he did? Carlson's shtick was unsurprisingly thin. But at least he added a catchphrase to the lexicon of lying and manipulation: "The Video Proves This." (NARRATOR: The video didn't prove this).
B-Block (22:03) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Transgenderism eradicator Michael Knowles doubles down, Senator Mike Lee defends him, Adidas may burn Yeezy Shoes (26:44) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Never TWEET a QR code, Mr. Prime Minister. Speaking of, Boris Johnson nominates Dad for a knighthood. And Elon Musk needs two guards to escort him to the bathroom, fulfilling the old joke about the guy too stupid to relieve himself without the help of a committee.
C-Block (32:55) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: August, in California (33:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since we're talking Fox and Dominion and whether Rupert Murdoch is now going to scapegoat Tucker Carlson, how about the other guy he DID scapegoat, Lou Dobbs? 42 years ago Lou Dobbs' rumored messy personal life led directly to the start of my TV career at CNN.
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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. I
would like to congratulate Tucker Carlson on winning Dominion Voting
(00:26):
Systems lawsuit against Fox Quote News unquote and News Corp
Four Dominion Voting Systems last night. And I'd like to
thank Tucker Carlson for slitting his professional throat from ear
to ear by doing the absolute last thing that Rupert
Murdoch could have wanted him to do last night. And
(00:47):
I'd also like to applaud Tucker Carlson for introducing a
new catchphrase that will, for me define media dishonesty forever.
The video proves this in the midst of a legal
crisis so severe that Rupert Murdoch has reported we considered
firing the CEO of Fox quote news unquote because of it,
(01:10):
and firing at least one out of the pile of
Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram Maria Bardaromo, and Janine
Pierrot because of it, and having we now know already
fired Lou Dobbs because of it, in the midst of
the release of paper trails a mile long and a
mile wide with Carlson and the others refuting and repudiating
(01:31):
Trump's claims of twenty twenty electoral fraud in private while
selling that lie in public, and a time when the
one thing a Rupert Murdoch entity could not do was
newly claimed that the twenty twenty election was stolen from Trump?
How did Tucker Carlson open his first hour of trying
to gaslight the January sixth insurrection with video improperly given
(01:55):
to him by the Speaker of the House quote the
twenty twenty election was a grave betrayal of American democracy.
Given the facts that have since emerged about that election,
no honest person can deny it ute the point of
the dominion defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch and his minions,
(02:20):
and Tucker Carlson began his hour of propaganda by doing
the same thing all over again. I'd also like to
take the opportunity to congratulate the next co owners of
Fox quote news unquote and maybe News Corps as well,
after they sue Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson for repeatedly
(02:42):
calling them liars. That would be former Republican congress people
Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney. Although they presumably will have
to share ownership with you know, Dominion Voting Systems. Nothing
of the much hyped video Carlson showed proved anything, least
of all his basic premise that the January sixth assault
(03:03):
on the Capitol was staged by federal agents. Since there
are people shown on the forty four thousand hours of
video who have not yet been arrested, therefore they must
be federal agents. Instead of saying unicorns, Carlson's argument is
that peaceful sightseers he used the word sightseers were goaded
(03:28):
somehow by a few hooligans. He also used the word
hooligans into non violent chaos. And the whole premise of
January sixth as an insurrection was a fabrication by Nancy
Pelosi to cover up the real crimes in the twenty
twenty election. Popcorn consumption at Dominion Voting Systems breaks all records.
(03:58):
It was not just, though, that the video proved none
of that. It was that nothing that the video even
seen connected to any of the claims Carlson was making.
That's not surprising. Nothing of that video had to prove
anything to the Fox audience. Nothing of the video or
the claims had to be connected. Tucker Carlson assumes his
(04:18):
viewers are stupid enough to believe anything he tells them,
and of course he is exactly right. They are stupid
enough to believe anything he tells them. They're Fox viewers,
show video ads, sophistry, factually lie, misdirect, decontextualize. But Jess
keeps saying, the video proves this, the video proves this,
(04:40):
And you have done all you need to do with
people whose entire lives require only that they're fed enough
nonsense to continuously support their own stupid rationalizations about their
own lives, about the victimization of white people, about how
much better it is to be a minority right now,
about quan On, about Trump, about twenty twenty, about Tucker
(05:01):
Carlson being good on TV, and about January sixth, God
help me. I watched the show. Basically, if Tucker Carlson
were to do a show like that one but about
Pearl Harbor, he would play the film backwards and insist
Pearl Harbor was a false flag and the American Navy
(05:24):
had blown up its own ships in the water, hoping
that the debris would fly into the sky and knock
down Japanese pilots who were just sightseeing in order to
frame a couple of hooligans named Tojoe and Emperor Heater Herahito.
It was that nonsensical, and again, given the audience, that's
all it needed to be. But as somebody who once
(05:47):
worked with Tucker Carlson, who was once pleaded with by
our bosses to co anchor a program with Tucker Carlson,
I am genuinely stunned that even he was arrogant and
stupid enough to repeat this on air gas lighting. Inexactly
this same matter that has put Fox Quote News on
(06:07):
quote at risk of one billion, six hundred million dollars
in defamation damages or more in the dominion case, if
that case needed for anybody's memory to be refreshed about
what Carlson and Hannity and Ingram and Murdoch all did.
Carlson did it for them last night. This of course
(06:27):
raises a further question how did Fox let him do
this to them on their own air? And it raises
one more question, how did Sean Hannity or Laura Ingram
or Murdoch not strangle Tucker Carlson into unconsciousness rather than
let him destroy them as he did last night. I
(06:49):
guess it would be helpful to summarize what Carlson showed
and said. He started with the big lie stuff about
the election, as I've already quoted. Then he said the
video proved that January six committee members lied. Then he
said the video proved the evidence was hidden. Then he
said Kevin McCarthy rectified the crime. Then he said, in
(07:10):
a moment that in any other context would have been
laugh out loud funny. We assumed those who weren't arrested
were federal agents of some kind. We still assume that
if anybody can bring that old joke to life, it's
Tucker Carlson. In assume he is both the ass and
the me. He said the video proved the January six
criminals were political prisoners because the video had not been
(07:33):
provided to them. Politico then promptly quoted Capitol police sources
who said all that video was made available to all
the defendants by March of twenty twenty one. Carlson said
the video proved that the people in the crowd must
have been federal agents. He said the video showed people
in civilian clothes holding doors open for the sightseers, but
(07:56):
he said that since he assumed they were federal agents,
he couldn't show that part of the video because it
would be unfair to point at a specific person and
say he was a federal agent. Later, of course, he
showed the video of Ray Epps and said that proved
he was a federal agent. Carlson said Ashley Babbitt was murdered,
but she's not on the forty four thousand hours of video,
(08:20):
not once, so he could only speculate. But other video
proved that if there were video, it would prove she
was murdered. Carlson said the protest of the release of
the video proves that the video demolishes the claim that
January sixth was an insurrection. He said the video proved
that people who protested its release because it might risk
lives or jeopardize safety procedures can't say that because they
(08:44):
all support open borders and defunding the police. And then
he had on the batcrap crazy Congressman Massey of Kentucky,
who said he didn't feel like his life was at
risk at the Capitol. Carlson said the video showed the
qan On shaman didn't murder anybody, and in fact, the
shaman later thanked the Capitol in a prayer. And because
(09:06):
the shaman wasn't guilty of that, nobody was guilty of anything.
He said, the video proofs that all the rioters were
doing we're taking quote cheerful selfies, my god, cheerful selfies.
And he said that the few minutes of footage that
he showed proved that the Capitol police did not try
(09:29):
to arrest anybody, so how could anybody be guilty? And
he showed only video of the Capitol police not getting
their brains beaten in, And oh look, there's video of
Officer Brian Sicknick walking around the Capitol after he said
the January sixth Committee said sick Nick had already been murdered,
and their liars, and the video proves that, and the
(09:49):
video proves this, and and if he'd shown the Zapruder film,
he would have shown it backwards instead of bullet lodged
in Kennedy's head had suddenly ejected itself in a bid
to kill Lee Harvey Oswald. Again, I'm not surprised that
the video that he showed was as nonsensical or non
impactful as it was, nor that Carlson's presentation was as
(10:14):
weak as it was, but I remain absolutely shocked that
Fox let this go out on their air this week
with this dominion lawsuit hanging over its head, centering on
the premise that Fox people Carlson named specifically will lie
about anything, whether they already knew in advance they were
(10:37):
lying and acknowledged afterwards that they were lying. I cannot
fathom Murdock's strategy unless he is planning to make Tucker
Carlson himself the scapegoat who will inevitably fall in the
wake of the dominion case and whatever more revelations dominion
lawyers have up their sleeves. There is one matter of
importance Carlson raised inadvertently. He said the Capitol Police had
(11:01):
looked at all of the tape Fox planned to show,
and the Capitol Police had only minor requests, including the
blurring of video of one door, and Fox made that
change given the just Sunday morning, King Jeffreys had said, quote,
I have no indication at this moment that the police
have vetted that footage. We have a problem here. This
(11:22):
may be the same problem underscored by image after image
that Carlson showed of Capitol police standing by placidly, even
seeming to guide or assist as insurrectionists, including that poor
fool that Q Shaman wandered the halls of the Capitol.
Not once was the prospect raised, as it had begun
to be raised while the insurrection was just beginning that day,
(11:45):
that there were Capital officers sympathetic to Trump, who were
by plan or by happenstance sympathetic to Trump and his
goon squads as they approached. Carlson even asked one of
his stooge guests, why if this was an insurrection, police
didn't arrest everybody? And since what else the video proved this?
(12:09):
Why weren't the police charged as accessories? Well? What the hell, Tucker,
you got one? Why? Indeed, who at the Capitol Police
secretly approved the video? Why wouldn't such information Capitol Police
approved Tucker Carlson video seemingly so beneficial to Fox and
Kevin McCarthy. Why wouldn't that be trumpeted by Fox and
(12:32):
Kevin McCarthy. Assuming that Tucker Carlson did not appreciate what
damage he was doing to his own employers, Networks and
Fox in particular, I guess he did this to shore
up Trump, obviously, especially in light of the none too
surprising calculations released by the Harvard Journal of Law and
Public Policy that if Trump were squeezed out of the
(12:55):
Republican nomination and into a third party role, Trump would
not be on the ballot in as many as twenty
eight states and his absolute maximum electoral lar vote count
would be two hundred and ninety more. Immediately, there is
the delightful implosion of Jim Jordan's House Weaponization Committee, which
after all, is predicated on the same sort of nonsense
(13:16):
as Tucker Carlson showing video of nothing much happening and
declaring this means January sixth was a government plot, and
the video proves this. Jim Jordan is getting savaged by
right wingers, assaulted on Fox by Jesse Waters, buried by
a former Chuck Grassley, aid on Twitter, insulted by Epic
(13:38):
Times TV, or, as the headline at AXEOS read, Jim
Jordan Scramble's amid claims weaponization probe is a dud in
the bigger picture. Of course, Tucker Carlson did this, possibly
sabotaging his own network's existence, because he is a megalomaniac
(14:03):
and while a surprisingly large number of people in television
news or commentary actually think that someday they will be
president of this country. Sure, Starborough, I think Tucker Carlson
is the only one who believes that someday he will
be this nation's fuer. I worked with him, as I mentioned,
(14:28):
at MSNBC, and as a favor to an old friend
who had been tasked they do mean tasked with trying
to formulate some format for Carlson's new show. I served
for two or three demo or pilot shows as Carlson's
liberal foil in a discussion of topical issues. At some point,
(14:49):
the former CNN president who was then running MSNBC, Rick Kaplan,
saw these demos and liked the interplay. Probably because I
was just saying whatever would get me off the stage
the fastest so I could go back to my office
and write count Down. Kaplan approached me with an offer.
He would tear up my contract and give me a
(15:09):
new one with a big rays if I would do
Countdown at eight and stick around until eleven every night
and co host carlson show. It would be perfect, he said,
because he could combine our initials and call the new
show t KO. Well, that was this Rick Kaplan in
(15:32):
a nutshell. The content of the show or its feasibility.
I was already working myself sick, trying to get countdown
above water. None of that mattered to him. What he
was in love with was the title t KO. It
would be perfect Kaplan, who, as I have described here earlier,
would later chase me around the studios threatening to kill
(15:53):
me because I had referred to blood in my mouth
after a cancer scare, and he believed I had done
so in order to sabotage the premiere of the next
of his genius hires are to Cosby. Kaplan never forgave
me for denying him his TKO. Honestly, after a lot
of years to think about it, I think it was
(16:14):
the best call, because honestly, if I had actually had
to work with Tucker Carlson for more than about an
hour in total in my life, I well I suspect
I would not yet be out on parole. But ultimately
Tucker Carlson did this, and we have to thank him
again for doing this, because in his little world of privilege,
(16:36):
where whatever his stick dujure, once a preppy boatie, then
being a pretend reasonable conservative looking for the middle now
a conspiracy freak, theorist with a head tilt reminiscent of
a dog being shown a card trick. Whatever he's tried,
it's always worked before. He's always triumphed, Even after John
(17:01):
Stewart shamed him and cut him up into little Tucker
Carlson and Pieces and CNN fired him, and even after
his mediocre ratings went down from there at MSNBC and
he got fired again, and even after Fox finally hired
and but relegated him for seven years to weekend fill ins,
he has ultimately prevailed. The problem here isn't the risk
(17:25):
that he didn't prevail with his audience. Duh? It's that
last night, in essence, he testified in the dominion Fox
billion points six dollar defamation trial. And he testified for dominion.
And I know Rupert Murdoch. I have been fired personally
by Rupert Murdoch. He's not going to like it, you
(17:47):
know how I know the video proved this stella ahead
of us. In this edition of Countdown, Michael Knowles doubles
(18:09):
down on the eradication of transgenderism thing and again threatens
people who had the nerve to quote him saying what
he said, the BBC reports Elon Musk needs two bodyguards
to escort him to the bathroom, fulfilling a joke about
a guy so stupid he couldn't relieve himself without help
(18:31):
from a committee. And since we're talking about Fox and
Dominion and how Tucker Carlson helped the Dominion case last night,
let's talk about the guy Murdoch already threw overboard in
this case, Loudobs, who is almost single handedly responsible for
the big break that started my TV career. Because talk
about single handedly. In nineteen eighty one, lou was all hands.
(18:56):
That's next is his countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions, dateline, the Michael Knols scandal, the Glenn Quagmire
(19:19):
look alike. Doubled down on his call to eradicate transgenderism entirely,
entirely meaning everything to do with it, and transgendered people
and the surgeons and the nurses and the counselors would
have something to do with it. All this great flaming
fraud on the daily wire Indoctrination Channel was concerned with
(19:39):
was threatening more people who accused him of saying what
he said, quoting the idea that I or anybody else
called for trans people to be eradicated, obviously a total lie.
There are some news outlets that have not yet changed
their headlines. I would recommend they do so. Another video
of this Knols turned up. It's less than a week old,
(20:01):
and in it he specifically says, you can't have a
genocide transgender people because quote, they are not a legitimate
category of being. Dayline Salt Lake City, Utah Senator Mike Lee.
You may remember him from the plot to overturn the
twenty twenty election and installed Trump as dictator. Mike Lee
has now struck out at two of the great issues
(20:21):
of our time, the real victim in the Michael Knols
story and the barring of tennis player Novak Djokovic from
this country. Lee says, the real victim in the Knowles
case is, of course Knowles, and he's using that as
a springboard to urge that the Supreme Court ruling from
nineteen sixty four, the one that protects news organizations from
(20:41):
being sued even if they are honestly mistaken. New York
Times v. Sullivan, should be overturned it's the one that
requires actual malice to establish defamation by a news outlet,
and it basically guarantees, you know, the first Amendment as
to Djokovic not admitted to this country because he's still
not vaccinated. Lee has drawn the perfect parallel, at least
(21:04):
in his mind, between Djokovic and drug cartels, quoting the
senator to Djokovic, you're unvaxed, so stay out to people
trafficked by drug cartels. You're unvaxed and undocumented, So come
on in, Secretary mayorchis you have this exactly backwards. Reverse
imagine the reasoning of DHS. Djokovic is far less likely
(21:27):
to bring fentanyl into the US. This is a US
senator who thinks like this, thinks maybe an exaggeration, Senator,
stick to what you're an expert in insurrection. Oh listen
to me again, mister Glass half full calling Mike Lee
an expert in something. Thank you, Nancy Faust and Dateline Germany.
(22:15):
The Adidas group thinks it may have found a solution
to its little problem of about five hundred million dollars
in unsold and it thinks pretty much unsellable sneakers that
it co produced with Kanye West, remember Kanye West. Adidas
has been trying to sell it since he's self destructed,
(22:35):
even going so far as to prose ripping off the
labels and selling the shoes at TJ Max's as so
called zombie easies. But a new idea has hit Adidas headquarters.
Burn them, burn them all, ten twenty million pairs of shoes.
Burned them, burned them. It has not apparently occurred to
anybody there give them to people in poorer countries or
(23:00):
even you know, sell them to people in poorer countries
forty cents for a pair. We can't do that, that
would be helpful, just to had. Lou Dobbs is in
(23:26):
the news again with this latest Fox big lie crap
and the evidence that he was one of the Lamb's
Rupert Burnoch sacrificed, which makes me laugh because after a
career I wout of screwing others, it was Lou Dobbs's turn,
speaking of screwing. How his personal messy life literally started
my TV career. Something good should have come at that
(23:49):
next first time For the daily round up of the
miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger Effect specimens, who constitute
two days worst persons in the world Lebrons, the Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunac. He's that chi
whiz smiley guy who was the third premier of that
country and like the time it takes for a head
of lettuce to go bad, Sunac is a gung ho innovation,
(24:13):
business growth kind of annoying guy. And to prove that point,
yesterday he tweeted a QR code which led you to
a press release with a bunch of enhanced reality words
flying out of it in the three D. The problem
was he tweeted it and nearly everybody reads tweeter at
Twitter on their phones. So to scan the QR code
the PM just sent to your iOS, you'd need two phones,
(24:38):
one to display the code and the other to scan
it with. Well, that will increase phone sales at least
there'll always be in England maybe runner up. Now this
is a coincidence Boris Johnson, who was two prime ministers
before Sunac, so that's like three weeks, and whose instability
and inability to just follow the rules for two minutes
(24:59):
forced him out of that office. Each Prime Minister, no
matter how badly they end up, gets to nominate people
for the so called year end honors list. Who's going
to be a lord and who's going to be a
time lord, and who's getting an Order of the Garter
and who's getting an Order of the Garter's Snake? I
don't know. All the other British titles I know are
(25:20):
from Monty Python or the Goon Show, and they turned
out to be jokes. Who is the new Viscount of
the third disgusting fusel is Gridpipe? Anyway, Boris Johnson has
reportedly nominated one hundred people for honors, the average is
like forty, and one of the people he wants the
king to make into a sir or knight or something sir.
(25:42):
One of the people is named Stanley Johnson. Well, that's
a coincidence. Stanley Johnson. Stanley Johnson is Boris Johnson's father,
The disgraced ex Prime minister wants them to night his
own father. But our winner is Elon Musk. This is
not about his latest upgrade to Twitter, which caused it
to crash yesterday, because he apparently only has the engineer
(26:05):
now working for Twitter, and it's rumored that that's the
guy's side hustle. The guy is actually a motor man
on a San Francisco cable car line. This isn't about
his tweet new Twitter as the sourcial truth, which leads
to the question, so when is new Twitter? Elon? Now?
This is a report from the BBC about how abused
(26:26):
particularly of women, including rape threats and death threats, has
shot through the roof on Twitter under Musk. Musk dismiss
that as quote trolls. But the aside at the end
of the BBC piece is it's I'll just read it.
It's quoting a Twitter engineer who spoke anonymously to the
BBC for fear of retribution. Quote. The level of disarray,
(26:50):
in his Musk's view is because mister Musk doesn't trust
Twitter employees. He believes this lack of trust is betrayed
by the level of security mister Musk surrounds himself with. Quote.
Wherever Musk goes in the office, there are at least
two bodyguards, very bulky tall, Hollywood movie style bodyguards. Even
(27:11):
when Musk goes to the restroom elon, Musk needs bodyguards
to escort him to and from the toilet. God nubble one,
you hold it, God number two, you shake it. The
paper towels, I meant elon No Wonder. He brought his
own sync with him to Twitter headquarters. Musk Today's worst
(27:36):
Parson and still ahead on Countdown. Everybody has a different
kind of career origin story, and mine is I got
(27:56):
my start in TV because Lou Dabbs was rumored to
be stepping out on his wife. That Lou Dabbs crazy old.
You know how old he is. He's two hundred and six.
Lou Dabbs, who was then in nineteen eighty one, the
centerpiece of CNN's business department. Next. First, in each edition
(28:17):
of Countdown, we feature a dog in need you can help.
Every dog has its day. First, the really good news
the Kane Corso brothers on the deathwatch in New York yesterday,
Brooklyn and Butter, they have been saved. Thank you for
your help. Now to the slaughter pen in Riverside, California,
where August, who is a Shepherd Beagle mix with haunting eyes,
has been in the pound for a month. He's three
(28:39):
years old. He's about thirty five pounds. He has kennel's stress.
He needs a foster or adopter or our pledges to
help a rescue pull him out. If you can pledge,
please reply to my tweets about August. You can see
a video of him there, and if you can retweet August,
please do so. I thank you, and August thanks you.
(29:12):
I went to work at Cable News Network CNN, then
just starting its second year on the air on the
morning of Monday, August third, nineteen eighty one, because Lou
Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out on his wife.
On my first day, my first interview was with Joe Tory,
who was still a friend. On my first day, I
(29:35):
learned you have to take the Lavalier microphone off your
lapel before you walk away from the camera. And on
my first day, I learned that if you are videotaping
near airport radar, the cameraman has to take steps to
protect the camera, often with tinfoil. Otherwise almost everything you
(29:56):
record will have radar blips embedded into it and be unusable.
And I learned all this all because Lou Dobbs was
rumored to be stepping out on his wife. So I
was a radio sportscaster in nineteen eighty one, twenty two
years old and having already moved from the United Press
International Network, which I've mentioned before where my boss was,
(30:19):
As I've also mentioned before Sam Rosen, who has been
the play by play man of the New York Rangers
for most of the forty one years since, and I
moved from working for him to the much better paying
RKO Radio network, where my boss was Charlie Steiner, who
still does play by play of the Los Angeles Dodgers games.
But two years into my radio career, I had almost
(30:42):
topped out salary wise, and my ambitions had always been
to do TV anyway, I just wasn't sure how to
do it. Turned out my career was not a question
of my doing it. It was a question of lou
Dobbs doing it. My alma mater, Cornell University, had one
of the best student radio stations in the world but
(31:03):
the entire universe. He offered one television course and to
take it you had to rent the camera for fifty
dollars an hour, and it was black and white and
you needed three guys to lift it. So as well
as I had done starting in network radio in New
York straight out of college, I was somewhat stymied. RETV
one local news director offered me the chance to have
(31:25):
a kind of audition at his station, but that never
worked out. The lou Dobbs thing worked out. I actually
interviewed with Cable News Network twice, once in April nineteen
eighty when they were not on the air yet, and
I saw no reason they ever would be, because the
New York bureau consisted of one coffee table, one coffee machine,
(31:46):
one stairwell, one unisex bathroom, and one staffer, the bureau chief,
Mary Alice Williams. Plus the day I went there, CNN
Sports president Bill McPhail, up from Atlanta, was visiting, so
it was technically two staffers. After a long year. My
phone rang one day and McPhail asked me to fill
(32:07):
in for two weeks. In two weeks for their New
York sports reporter. She was going on vacation August third,
sooner McPhail added if the baseball strike ended before then.
Her name was Debbie Sigura, and all I knew was vacation.
Turned out it was part vacation, part get out of
town quickly, very very quickly. See when CNN started, it
(32:30):
wasn't just news, news and commentary and opinion shows. There
was a half hour business show every night and a
half hour sportscast at seven thirty and another one at eleven,
and a fashion program, an hourly stock reports and meteorologists,
and short sportscasts. And the business anchor based in the
(32:51):
New York Bureau in the World Trade Center was Lou Dobbs,
and as the producer they had sent up to work
with me. Phil Griffin later, the president of MSNBC, explained
to me when we got in the car to go
out to Chase Stadium to interview those Mets guys. Forty
two years ago, Lou Dobbs was rumored to be stepping
(33:11):
out on his wife with the CNN New York sports
reporter Debbie and Missus Dobbs had found out, and there
was even another rumor there was somebody else who also
worked in the CNN New York Bureau, And thus Bill
mcvail's hurried call asking me to fill in for her
for two weeks. In two weeks because she was going
on quote vacation unquote, Dobbs and the first Missus Dobbs
(33:38):
eventually split, but apparently the ill will persisted. Everybody decided
it would be better off for all concerned if Dobbs
and Debbie Cigura or as she was then called behind
her back, Debbie does dobbs if all of them and
most of the New York Bureau business staff moved to
CNN headquarters in Atlanta. This left New York without a
(34:00):
sports reporter, and they tried another one of the Atlanta
anchors for a while, but they kept him extra vacation time,
so they would have to bring me in freelance every month.
And finally the following March, they offered me the job
full time. And I have not earned an honest paycheck since.
And I mean that in two ways. They were paying
me five hundred dollars a week, which was about forty
(34:21):
percent less than what I made for like three days
a week in radio. I pointed this out acceptingly. I
was learning how to do TV while on TV and
getting paid for it. And that's when they told me
that five hundred dollars a week was already more than
they were paying Debbie Sigura or the guy who was
(34:42):
their reporter in Los Angeles. And then Bill McPhail, the president,
called and offered me a contract for twenty five grand
and I said, wait, that's less. Why would it take less?
Is there health insurance or something? And he said, no,
there's just security, and I said, I'd rather have the
(35:02):
thousand dollars. You're just cut out of my salary, and
they found it somewhere. But they always reminded me how
generous they'd been and how many meetings they'd had to
have just to get me the thousand dollars back. I
didn't have to do much with Dobbs in New York,
but there is something about TV. Either it's a really
small world or the people in it will do anything
(35:23):
to stay in it. I might be an example of
the ladder. When Dobbs moved to Atlanta, the guy who
stepped up to become CNN's number one business reporter in
New York was named Stuart Varney, and he was great
to me. One night, our sports producer in Atlanta call
up around five and said, congratulations, you get to do
(35:44):
a commentary on the seven tonight and I croaked what
and she said, yeah, you'll do it live. And I said,
I have no idea how to read a teleprompter, and
she said, better learn fast click and I told Stu
and he taught me how to use a teleprompter in
like ten minutes. And I was always grateful, and then
he had some sort of religious conversion or hit his
(36:07):
head on something or both, and he's still one of
the most virulent fascists on Fox Nudes. Anyway, Dobbs and
Debbie got married and Lou settled in and as part
of the deal, Debbie Sigura Dobbs became a CNN sports
anchor in Atlanta. Except while she could get through those
short three or in four minutes sports updates she used
(36:28):
to do in New York, which I inherited during the
longer half hour and hour long shows, she could not
read the prompter to save her life. About two months
into her time in Atlanta came the night she got
so lost in the teleprompter that about twenty minutes in,
she got up and left the studio. Her boss. By
(36:52):
this point, my boss, Bill McPhail, had to take her
off the longer shows and return her to doing those
three minute updates in the middle of the afternoon. She
was secretly relieved her husband, Lou Dobbs, who arted My
TV career because he was rumored to be stepping out
on his first wife. He was not relieved. He promptly
went into Bill McPhail's office and challenged him to a
(37:14):
fist fight. I have looked this up on the Internet.
The day this happened, Lou Dobbs was thirty six years
old and Bill McPhail was sixty one. Debbie's TV career
ended not long after, as my began. She went into
horses equestrian stuff. Ultimately, she and Dobbs made it back
(37:35):
to the New York Bureau. I worked with him again
in two thousand and one. Two He deteriorated into a
running joke spewing anti immigrant and anti Latino bile while
she raised their family in New Jersey, and the rest
of us marveled that Lou and his Latino family made
millions off his anti Latino bile. Jersey was where Debbie
(37:58):
Cigura Dobbs was on Tuesday, January twenty second, two thousand
and three, when she tried to board a flight for
Florida at Newark Airport and a TSA agent found a
loaded gun in her handbag. She was arrested, released on bail.
I never did hear what happened to that charge. It
carried the possibility of prison that clearly did not happen.
(38:18):
Can't find anything in the newspaper archives or anywhere online,
But Dobbs later explained the whole thing it was all
a misunderstanding. He said that loaded gun had been in
his wife's handbag since the previous autumn and she'd just
forgotten about it. Although exactly what that explained I still
(38:39):
haven't figured out. I swear it's true. Thanks for listening.
Countdown has come to you from the studios of the
Olderman Broadcasting Empire, High Top headquarters in the Sports Capsule
(39:02):
Building here in New York. Here are the credits. Most
of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Channel, who are the Countdown musical directors.
Produced by t Ko Brothers. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Philip Chanelle, guitarist, bass and drums by Brian Ray.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman
(39:25):
theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis courtesy of the ESPN Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Faus. The best baseball stadium organist ever Our announcer
today was Kenny Maine, and everything else is pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this, the seven hundred
ninety first day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against
the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him
(39:48):
now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow,
and until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production
(40:09):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
would like to congratulate Tucker Carlson on winning Dominion Voting
(00:26):
Systems lawsuit against Fox Quote News unquote and News Corp
Four Dominion Voting Systems last night. And I'd like to
thank Tucker Carlson for slitting his professional throat from ear
to ear by doing the absolute last thing that Rupert
Murdoch could have wanted him to do last night. And
(00:47):
I'd also like to applaud Tucker Carlson for introducing a
new catchphrase that will, for me define media dishonesty forever.
The video proves this in the midst of a legal
crisis so severe that Rupert Murdoch has reported we considered
firing the CEO of Fox quote news unquote because of it,
(01:10):
and firing at least one out of the pile of
Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram Maria Bardaromo, and Janine
Pierrot because of it, and having we now know already
fired Lou Dobbs because of it, in the midst of
the release of paper trails a mile long and a
mile wide with Carlson and the others refuting and repudiating
(01:31):
Trump's claims of twenty twenty electoral fraud in private while
selling that lie in public, and a time when the
one thing a Rupert Murdoch entity could not do was
newly claimed that the twenty twenty election was stolen from Trump?
How did Tucker Carlson open his first hour of trying
to gaslight the January sixth insurrection with video improperly given
(01:55):
to him by the Speaker of the House quote the
twenty twenty election was a grave betrayal of American democracy.
Given the facts that have since emerged about that election,
no honest person can deny it ute the point of
the dominion defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch and his minions,
(02:20):
and Tucker Carlson began his hour of propaganda by doing
the same thing all over again. I'd also like to
take the opportunity to congratulate the next co owners of
Fox quote news unquote and maybe News Corps as well,
after they sue Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson for repeatedly
(02:42):
calling them liars. That would be former Republican congress people
Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney. Although they presumably will have
to share ownership with you know, Dominion Voting Systems. Nothing
of the much hyped video Carlson showed proved anything, least
of all his basic premise that the January sixth assault
(03:03):
on the Capitol was staged by federal agents. Since there
are people shown on the forty four thousand hours of
video who have not yet been arrested, therefore they must
be federal agents. Instead of saying unicorns, Carlson's argument is
that peaceful sightseers he used the word sightseers were goaded
(03:28):
somehow by a few hooligans. He also used the word
hooligans into non violent chaos. And the whole premise of
January sixth as an insurrection was a fabrication by Nancy
Pelosi to cover up the real crimes in the twenty
twenty election. Popcorn consumption at Dominion Voting Systems breaks all records.
(03:58):
It was not just, though, that the video proved none
of that. It was that nothing that the video even
seen connected to any of the claims Carlson was making.
That's not surprising. Nothing of that video had to prove
anything to the Fox audience. Nothing of the video or
the claims had to be connected. Tucker Carlson assumes his
(04:18):
viewers are stupid enough to believe anything he tells them,
and of course he is exactly right. They are stupid
enough to believe anything he tells them. They're Fox viewers,
show video ads, sophistry, factually lie, misdirect, decontextualize. But Jess
keeps saying, the video proves this, the video proves this,
(04:40):
And you have done all you need to do with
people whose entire lives require only that they're fed enough
nonsense to continuously support their own stupid rationalizations about their
own lives, about the victimization of white people, about how
much better it is to be a minority right now,
about quan On, about Trump, about twenty twenty, about Tucker
(05:01):
Carlson being good on TV, and about January sixth, God
help me. I watched the show. Basically, if Tucker Carlson
were to do a show like that one but about
Pearl Harbor, he would play the film backwards and insist
Pearl Harbor was a false flag and the American Navy
(05:24):
had blown up its own ships in the water, hoping
that the debris would fly into the sky and knock
down Japanese pilots who were just sightseeing in order to
frame a couple of hooligans named Tojoe and Emperor Heater Herahito.
It was that nonsensical, and again, given the audience, that's
all it needed to be. But as somebody who once
(05:47):
worked with Tucker Carlson, who was once pleaded with by
our bosses to co anchor a program with Tucker Carlson,
I am genuinely stunned that even he was arrogant and
stupid enough to repeat this on air gas lighting. Inexactly
this same matter that has put Fox Quote News on
(06:07):
quote at risk of one billion, six hundred million dollars
in defamation damages or more in the dominion case, if
that case needed for anybody's memory to be refreshed about
what Carlson and Hannity and Ingram and Murdoch all did.
Carlson did it for them last night. This of course
(06:27):
raises a further question how did Fox let him do
this to them on their own air? And it raises
one more question, how did Sean Hannity or Laura Ingram
or Murdoch not strangle Tucker Carlson into unconsciousness rather than
let him destroy them as he did last night. I
(06:49):
guess it would be helpful to summarize what Carlson showed
and said. He started with the big lie stuff about
the election, as I've already quoted. Then he said the
video proved that January six committee members lied. Then he
said the video proved the evidence was hidden. Then he
said Kevin McCarthy rectified the crime. Then he said, in
(07:10):
a moment that in any other context would have been
laugh out loud funny. We assumed those who weren't arrested
were federal agents of some kind. We still assume that
if anybody can bring that old joke to life, it's
Tucker Carlson. In assume he is both the ass and
the me. He said the video proved the January six
criminals were political prisoners because the video had not been
(07:33):
provided to them. Politico then promptly quoted Capitol police sources
who said all that video was made available to all
the defendants by March of twenty twenty one. Carlson said
the video proved that the people in the crowd must
have been federal agents. He said the video showed people
in civilian clothes holding doors open for the sightseers, but
(07:56):
he said that since he assumed they were federal agents,
he couldn't show that part of the video because it
would be unfair to point at a specific person and
say he was a federal agent. Later, of course, he
showed the video of Ray Epps and said that proved
he was a federal agent. Carlson said Ashley Babbitt was murdered,
but she's not on the forty four thousand hours of video,
(08:20):
not once, so he could only speculate. But other video
proved that if there were video, it would prove she
was murdered. Carlson said the protest of the release of
the video proves that the video demolishes the claim that
January sixth was an insurrection. He said the video proved
that people who protested its release because it might risk
lives or jeopardize safety procedures can't say that because they
(08:44):
all support open borders and defunding the police. And then
he had on the batcrap crazy Congressman Massey of Kentucky,
who said he didn't feel like his life was at
risk at the Capitol. Carlson said the video showed the
qan On shaman didn't murder anybody, and in fact, the
shaman later thanked the Capitol in a prayer. And because
(09:06):
the shaman wasn't guilty of that, nobody was guilty of anything.
He said, the video proofs that all the rioters were
doing we're taking quote cheerful selfies, my god, cheerful selfies.
And he said that the few minutes of footage that
he showed proved that the Capitol police did not try
(09:29):
to arrest anybody, so how could anybody be guilty? And
he showed only video of the Capitol police not getting
their brains beaten in, And oh look, there's video of
Officer Brian Sicknick walking around the Capitol after he said
the January sixth Committee said sick Nick had already been murdered,
and their liars, and the video proves that, and the
(09:49):
video proves this, and and if he'd shown the Zapruder film,
he would have shown it backwards instead of bullet lodged
in Kennedy's head had suddenly ejected itself in a bid
to kill Lee Harvey Oswald. Again, I'm not surprised that
the video that he showed was as nonsensical or non
impactful as it was, nor that Carlson's presentation was as
(10:14):
weak as it was, but I remain absolutely shocked that
Fox let this go out on their air this week
with this dominion lawsuit hanging over its head, centering on
the premise that Fox people Carlson named specifically will lie
about anything, whether they already knew in advance they were
(10:37):
lying and acknowledged afterwards that they were lying. I cannot
fathom Murdock's strategy unless he is planning to make Tucker
Carlson himself the scapegoat who will inevitably fall in the
wake of the dominion case and whatever more revelations dominion
lawyers have up their sleeves. There is one matter of
importance Carlson raised inadvertently. He said the Capitol Police had
(11:01):
looked at all of the tape Fox planned to show,
and the Capitol Police had only minor requests, including the
blurring of video of one door, and Fox made that
change given the just Sunday morning, King Jeffreys had said, quote,
I have no indication at this moment that the police
have vetted that footage. We have a problem here. This
(11:22):
may be the same problem underscored by image after image
that Carlson showed of Capitol police standing by placidly, even
seeming to guide or assist as insurrectionists, including that poor
fool that Q Shaman wandered the halls of the Capitol.
Not once was the prospect raised, as it had begun
to be raised while the insurrection was just beginning that day,
(11:45):
that there were Capital officers sympathetic to Trump, who were
by plan or by happenstance sympathetic to Trump and his
goon squads as they approached. Carlson even asked one of
his stooge guests, why if this was an insurrection, police
didn't arrest everybody? And since what else the video proved this?
(12:09):
Why weren't the police charged as accessories? Well? What the hell, Tucker,
you got one? Why? Indeed, who at the Capitol Police
secretly approved the video? Why wouldn't such information Capitol Police
approved Tucker Carlson video seemingly so beneficial to Fox and
Kevin McCarthy. Why wouldn't that be trumpeted by Fox and
(12:32):
Kevin McCarthy. Assuming that Tucker Carlson did not appreciate what
damage he was doing to his own employers, Networks and
Fox in particular, I guess he did this to shore
up Trump, obviously, especially in light of the none too
surprising calculations released by the Harvard Journal of Law and
Public Policy that if Trump were squeezed out of the
(12:55):
Republican nomination and into a third party role, Trump would
not be on the ballot in as many as twenty
eight states and his absolute maximum electoral lar vote count
would be two hundred and ninety more. Immediately, there is
the delightful implosion of Jim Jordan's House Weaponization Committee, which
after all, is predicated on the same sort of nonsense
(13:16):
as Tucker Carlson showing video of nothing much happening and
declaring this means January sixth was a government plot, and
the video proves this. Jim Jordan is getting savaged by
right wingers, assaulted on Fox by Jesse Waters, buried by
a former Chuck Grassley, aid on Twitter, insulted by Epic
(13:38):
Times TV, or, as the headline at AXEOS read, Jim
Jordan Scramble's amid claims weaponization probe is a dud in
the bigger picture. Of course, Tucker Carlson did this, possibly
sabotaging his own network's existence, because he is a megalomaniac
(14:03):
and while a surprisingly large number of people in television
news or commentary actually think that someday they will be
president of this country. Sure, Starborough, I think Tucker Carlson
is the only one who believes that someday he will
be this nation's fuer. I worked with him, as I mentioned,
(14:28):
at MSNBC, and as a favor to an old friend
who had been tasked they do mean tasked with trying
to formulate some format for Carlson's new show. I served
for two or three demo or pilot shows as Carlson's
liberal foil in a discussion of topical issues. At some point,
(14:49):
the former CNN president who was then running MSNBC, Rick Kaplan,
saw these demos and liked the interplay. Probably because I
was just saying whatever would get me off the stage
the fastest so I could go back to my office
and write count Down. Kaplan approached me with an offer.
He would tear up my contract and give me a
(15:09):
new one with a big rays if I would do
Countdown at eight and stick around until eleven every night
and co host carlson show. It would be perfect, he said,
because he could combine our initials and call the new
show t KO. Well, that was this Rick Kaplan in
(15:32):
a nutshell. The content of the show or its feasibility.
I was already working myself sick, trying to get countdown
above water. None of that mattered to him. What he
was in love with was the title t KO. It
would be perfect Kaplan, who, as I have described here earlier,
would later chase me around the studios threatening to kill
(15:53):
me because I had referred to blood in my mouth
after a cancer scare, and he believed I had done
so in order to sabotage the premiere of the next
of his genius hires are to Cosby. Kaplan never forgave
me for denying him his TKO. Honestly, after a lot
of years to think about it, I think it was
(16:14):
the best call, because honestly, if I had actually had
to work with Tucker Carlson for more than about an
hour in total in my life, I well I suspect
I would not yet be out on parole. But ultimately
Tucker Carlson did this, and we have to thank him
again for doing this, because in his little world of privilege,
(16:36):
where whatever his stick dujure, once a preppy boatie, then
being a pretend reasonable conservative looking for the middle now
a conspiracy freak, theorist with a head tilt reminiscent of
a dog being shown a card trick. Whatever he's tried,
it's always worked before. He's always triumphed, Even after John
(17:01):
Stewart shamed him and cut him up into little Tucker
Carlson and Pieces and CNN fired him, and even after
his mediocre ratings went down from there at MSNBC and
he got fired again, and even after Fox finally hired
and but relegated him for seven years to weekend fill ins,
he has ultimately prevailed. The problem here isn't the risk
(17:25):
that he didn't prevail with his audience. Duh? It's that
last night, in essence, he testified in the dominion Fox
billion points six dollar defamation trial. And he testified for dominion.
And I know Rupert Murdoch. I have been fired personally
by Rupert Murdoch. He's not going to like it, you
(17:47):
know how I know the video proved this stella ahead
of us. In this edition of Countdown, Michael Knowles doubles
(18:09):
down on the eradication of transgenderism thing and again threatens
people who had the nerve to quote him saying what
he said, the BBC reports Elon Musk needs two bodyguards
to escort him to the bathroom, fulfilling a joke about
a guy so stupid he couldn't relieve himself without help
(18:31):
from a committee. And since we're talking about Fox and
Dominion and how Tucker Carlson helped the Dominion case last night,
let's talk about the guy Murdoch already threw overboard in
this case, Loudobs, who is almost single handedly responsible for
the big break that started my TV career. Because talk
about single handedly. In nineteen eighty one, lou was all hands.
(18:56):
That's next is his countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions, dateline, the Michael Knols scandal, the Glenn Quagmire
(19:19):
look alike. Doubled down on his call to eradicate transgenderism entirely,
entirely meaning everything to do with it, and transgendered people
and the surgeons and the nurses and the counselors would
have something to do with it. All this great flaming
fraud on the daily wire Indoctrination Channel was concerned with
(19:39):
was threatening more people who accused him of saying what
he said, quoting the idea that I or anybody else
called for trans people to be eradicated, obviously a total lie.
There are some news outlets that have not yet changed
their headlines. I would recommend they do so. Another video
of this Knols turned up. It's less than a week old,
(20:01):
and in it he specifically says, you can't have a
genocide transgender people because quote, they are not a legitimate
category of being. Dayline Salt Lake City, Utah Senator Mike Lee.
You may remember him from the plot to overturn the
twenty twenty election and installed Trump as dictator. Mike Lee
has now struck out at two of the great issues
(20:21):
of our time, the real victim in the Michael Knols
story and the barring of tennis player Novak Djokovic from
this country. Lee says, the real victim in the Knowles
case is, of course Knowles, and he's using that as
a springboard to urge that the Supreme Court ruling from
nineteen sixty four, the one that protects news organizations from
(20:41):
being sued even if they are honestly mistaken. New York
Times v. Sullivan, should be overturned it's the one that
requires actual malice to establish defamation by a news outlet,
and it basically guarantees, you know, the first Amendment as
to Djokovic not admitted to this country because he's still
not vaccinated. Lee has drawn the perfect parallel, at least
(21:04):
in his mind, between Djokovic and drug cartels, quoting the
senator to Djokovic, you're unvaxed, so stay out to people
trafficked by drug cartels. You're unvaxed and undocumented, So come
on in, Secretary mayorchis you have this exactly backwards. Reverse
imagine the reasoning of DHS. Djokovic is far less likely
(21:27):
to bring fentanyl into the US. This is a US
senator who thinks like this, thinks maybe an exaggeration, Senator,
stick to what you're an expert in insurrection. Oh listen
to me again, mister Glass half full calling Mike Lee
an expert in something. Thank you, Nancy Faust and Dateline Germany.
(22:15):
The Adidas group thinks it may have found a solution
to its little problem of about five hundred million dollars
in unsold and it thinks pretty much unsellable sneakers that
it co produced with Kanye West, remember Kanye West. Adidas
has been trying to sell it since he's self destructed,
(22:35):
even going so far as to prose ripping off the
labels and selling the shoes at TJ Max's as so
called zombie easies. But a new idea has hit Adidas headquarters.
Burn them, burn them all, ten twenty million pairs of shoes.
Burned them, burned them. It has not apparently occurred to
anybody there give them to people in poorer countries or
(23:00):
even you know, sell them to people in poorer countries
forty cents for a pair. We can't do that, that
would be helpful, just to had. Lou Dobbs is in
(23:26):
the news again with this latest Fox big lie crap
and the evidence that he was one of the Lamb's
Rupert Burnoch sacrificed, which makes me laugh because after a
career I wout of screwing others, it was Lou Dobbs's turn,
speaking of screwing. How his personal messy life literally started
my TV career. Something good should have come at that
(23:49):
next first time For the daily round up of the
miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger Effect specimens, who constitute
two days worst persons in the world Lebrons, the Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunac. He's that chi
whiz smiley guy who was the third premier of that
country and like the time it takes for a head
of lettuce to go bad, Sunac is a gung ho innovation,
(24:13):
business growth kind of annoying guy. And to prove that point,
yesterday he tweeted a QR code which led you to
a press release with a bunch of enhanced reality words
flying out of it in the three D. The problem
was he tweeted it and nearly everybody reads tweeter at
Twitter on their phones. So to scan the QR code
the PM just sent to your iOS, you'd need two phones,
(24:38):
one to display the code and the other to scan
it with. Well, that will increase phone sales at least
there'll always be in England maybe runner up. Now this
is a coincidence Boris Johnson, who was two prime ministers
before Sunac, so that's like three weeks, and whose instability
and inability to just follow the rules for two minutes
(24:59):
forced him out of that office. Each Prime Minister, no
matter how badly they end up, gets to nominate people
for the so called year end honors list. Who's going
to be a lord and who's going to be a
time lord, and who's getting an Order of the Garter
and who's getting an Order of the Garter's Snake? I
don't know. All the other British titles I know are
(25:20):
from Monty Python or the Goon Show, and they turned
out to be jokes. Who is the new Viscount of
the third disgusting fusel is Gridpipe? Anyway, Boris Johnson has
reportedly nominated one hundred people for honors, the average is
like forty, and one of the people he wants the
king to make into a sir or knight or something sir.
(25:42):
One of the people is named Stanley Johnson. Well, that's
a coincidence. Stanley Johnson. Stanley Johnson is Boris Johnson's father,
The disgraced ex Prime minister wants them to night his
own father. But our winner is Elon Musk. This is
not about his latest upgrade to Twitter, which caused it
to crash yesterday, because he apparently only has the engineer
(26:05):
now working for Twitter, and it's rumored that that's the
guy's side hustle. The guy is actually a motor man
on a San Francisco cable car line. This isn't about
his tweet new Twitter as the sourcial truth, which leads
to the question, so when is new Twitter? Elon? Now?
This is a report from the BBC about how abused
(26:26):
particularly of women, including rape threats and death threats, has
shot through the roof on Twitter under Musk. Musk dismiss
that as quote trolls. But the aside at the end
of the BBC piece is it's I'll just read it.
It's quoting a Twitter engineer who spoke anonymously to the
BBC for fear of retribution. Quote. The level of disarray,
(26:50):
in his Musk's view is because mister Musk doesn't trust
Twitter employees. He believes this lack of trust is betrayed
by the level of security mister Musk surrounds himself with. Quote.
Wherever Musk goes in the office, there are at least
two bodyguards, very bulky tall, Hollywood movie style bodyguards. Even
(27:11):
when Musk goes to the restroom elon, Musk needs bodyguards
to escort him to and from the toilet. God nubble one,
you hold it, God number two, you shake it. The
paper towels, I meant elon No Wonder. He brought his
own sync with him to Twitter headquarters. Musk Today's worst
(27:36):
Parson and still ahead on Countdown. Everybody has a different
kind of career origin story, and mine is I got
(27:56):
my start in TV because Lou Dabbs was rumored to
be stepping out on his wife. That Lou Dabbs crazy old.
You know how old he is. He's two hundred and six.
Lou Dabbs, who was then in nineteen eighty one, the
centerpiece of CNN's business department. Next. First, in each edition
(28:17):
of Countdown, we feature a dog in need you can help.
Every dog has its day. First, the really good news
the Kane Corso brothers on the deathwatch in New York yesterday,
Brooklyn and Butter, they have been saved. Thank you for
your help. Now to the slaughter pen in Riverside, California,
where August, who is a Shepherd Beagle mix with haunting eyes,
has been in the pound for a month. He's three
(28:39):
years old. He's about thirty five pounds. He has kennel's stress.
He needs a foster or adopter or our pledges to
help a rescue pull him out. If you can pledge,
please reply to my tweets about August. You can see
a video of him there, and if you can retweet August,
please do so. I thank you, and August thanks you.
(29:12):
I went to work at Cable News Network CNN, then
just starting its second year on the air on the
morning of Monday, August third, nineteen eighty one, because Lou
Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out on his wife.
On my first day, my first interview was with Joe Tory,
who was still a friend. On my first day, I
(29:35):
learned you have to take the Lavalier microphone off your
lapel before you walk away from the camera. And on
my first day, I learned that if you are videotaping
near airport radar, the cameraman has to take steps to
protect the camera, often with tinfoil. Otherwise almost everything you
(29:56):
record will have radar blips embedded into it and be unusable.
And I learned all this all because Lou Dobbs was
rumored to be stepping out on his wife. So I
was a radio sportscaster in nineteen eighty one, twenty two
years old and having already moved from the United Press
International Network, which I've mentioned before where my boss was,
(30:19):
As I've also mentioned before Sam Rosen, who has been
the play by play man of the New York Rangers
for most of the forty one years since, and I
moved from working for him to the much better paying
RKO Radio network, where my boss was Charlie Steiner, who
still does play by play of the Los Angeles Dodgers games.
But two years into my radio career, I had almost
(30:42):
topped out salary wise, and my ambitions had always been
to do TV anyway, I just wasn't sure how to
do it. Turned out my career was not a question
of my doing it. It was a question of lou
Dobbs doing it. My alma mater, Cornell University, had one
of the best student radio stations in the world but
(31:03):
the entire universe. He offered one television course and to
take it you had to rent the camera for fifty
dollars an hour, and it was black and white and
you needed three guys to lift it. So as well
as I had done starting in network radio in New
York straight out of college, I was somewhat stymied. RETV
one local news director offered me the chance to have
(31:25):
a kind of audition at his station, but that never
worked out. The lou Dobbs thing worked out. I actually
interviewed with Cable News Network twice, once in April nineteen
eighty when they were not on the air yet, and
I saw no reason they ever would be, because the
New York bureau consisted of one coffee table, one coffee machine,
(31:46):
one stairwell, one unisex bathroom, and one staffer, the bureau chief,
Mary Alice Williams. Plus the day I went there, CNN
Sports president Bill McPhail, up from Atlanta, was visiting, so
it was technically two staffers. After a long year. My
phone rang one day and McPhail asked me to fill
(32:07):
in for two weeks. In two weeks for their New
York sports reporter. She was going on vacation August third,
sooner McPhail added if the baseball strike ended before then.
Her name was Debbie Sigura, and all I knew was vacation.
Turned out it was part vacation, part get out of
town quickly, very very quickly. See when CNN started, it
(32:30):
wasn't just news, news and commentary and opinion shows. There
was a half hour business show every night and a
half hour sportscast at seven thirty and another one at eleven,
and a fashion program, an hourly stock reports and meteorologists,
and short sportscasts. And the business anchor based in the
(32:51):
New York Bureau in the World Trade Center was Lou Dobbs,
and as the producer they had sent up to work
with me. Phil Griffin later, the president of MSNBC, explained
to me when we got in the car to go
out to Chase Stadium to interview those Mets guys. Forty
two years ago, Lou Dobbs was rumored to be stepping
(33:11):
out on his wife with the CNN New York sports
reporter Debbie and Missus Dobbs had found out, and there
was even another rumor there was somebody else who also
worked in the CNN New York Bureau, And thus Bill
mcvail's hurried call asking me to fill in for her
for two weeks. In two weeks because she was going
on quote vacation unquote, Dobbs and the first Missus Dobbs
(33:38):
eventually split, but apparently the ill will persisted. Everybody decided
it would be better off for all concerned if Dobbs
and Debbie Cigura or as she was then called behind
her back, Debbie does dobbs if all of them and
most of the New York Bureau business staff moved to
CNN headquarters in Atlanta. This left New York without a
(34:00):
sports reporter, and they tried another one of the Atlanta
anchors for a while, but they kept him extra vacation time,
so they would have to bring me in freelance every month.
And finally the following March, they offered me the job
full time. And I have not earned an honest paycheck since.
And I mean that in two ways. They were paying
me five hundred dollars a week, which was about forty
(34:21):
percent less than what I made for like three days
a week in radio. I pointed this out acceptingly. I
was learning how to do TV while on TV and
getting paid for it. And that's when they told me
that five hundred dollars a week was already more than
they were paying Debbie Sigura or the guy who was
(34:42):
their reporter in Los Angeles. And then Bill McPhail, the president,
called and offered me a contract for twenty five grand
and I said, wait, that's less. Why would it take less?
Is there health insurance or something? And he said, no,
there's just security, and I said, I'd rather have the
(35:02):
thousand dollars. You're just cut out of my salary, and
they found it somewhere. But they always reminded me how
generous they'd been and how many meetings they'd had to
have just to get me the thousand dollars back. I
didn't have to do much with Dobbs in New York,
but there is something about TV. Either it's a really
small world or the people in it will do anything
(35:23):
to stay in it. I might be an example of
the ladder. When Dobbs moved to Atlanta, the guy who
stepped up to become CNN's number one business reporter in
New York was named Stuart Varney, and he was great
to me. One night, our sports producer in Atlanta call
up around five and said, congratulations, you get to do
(35:44):
a commentary on the seven tonight and I croaked what
and she said, yeah, you'll do it live. And I said,
I have no idea how to read a teleprompter, and
she said, better learn fast click and I told Stu
and he taught me how to use a teleprompter in
like ten minutes. And I was always grateful, and then
he had some sort of religious conversion or hit his
(36:07):
head on something or both, and he's still one of
the most virulent fascists on Fox Nudes. Anyway, Dobbs and
Debbie got married and Lou settled in and as part
of the deal, Debbie Sigura Dobbs became a CNN sports
anchor in Atlanta. Except while she could get through those
short three or in four minutes sports updates she used
(36:28):
to do in New York, which I inherited during the
longer half hour and hour long shows, she could not
read the prompter to save her life. About two months
into her time in Atlanta came the night she got
so lost in the teleprompter that about twenty minutes in,
she got up and left the studio. Her boss. By
(36:52):
this point, my boss, Bill McPhail, had to take her
off the longer shows and return her to doing those
three minute updates in the middle of the afternoon. She
was secretly relieved her husband, Lou Dobbs, who arted My
TV career because he was rumored to be stepping out
on his first wife. He was not relieved. He promptly
went into Bill McPhail's office and challenged him to a
(37:14):
fist fight. I have looked this up on the Internet.
The day this happened, Lou Dobbs was thirty six years
old and Bill McPhail was sixty one. Debbie's TV career
ended not long after, as my began. She went into
horses equestrian stuff. Ultimately, she and Dobbs made it back
(37:35):
to the New York Bureau. I worked with him again
in two thousand and one. Two He deteriorated into a
running joke spewing anti immigrant and anti Latino bile while
she raised their family in New Jersey, and the rest
of us marveled that Lou and his Latino family made
millions off his anti Latino bile. Jersey was where Debbie
(37:58):
Cigura Dobbs was on Tuesday, January twenty second, two thousand
and three, when she tried to board a flight for
Florida at Newark Airport and a TSA agent found a
loaded gun in her handbag. She was arrested, released on bail.
I never did hear what happened to that charge. It
carried the possibility of prison that clearly did not happen.
(38:18):
Can't find anything in the newspaper archives or anywhere online,
But Dobbs later explained the whole thing it was all
a misunderstanding. He said that loaded gun had been in
his wife's handbag since the previous autumn and she'd just
forgotten about it. Although exactly what that explained I still
(38:39):
haven't figured out. I swear it's true. Thanks for listening.
Countdown has come to you from the studios of the
Olderman Broadcasting Empire, High Top headquarters in the Sports Capsule
(39:02):
Building here in New York. Here are the credits. Most
of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian
Ray and John Phillip Channel, who are the Countdown musical directors.
Produced by t Ko Brothers. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Philip Chanelle, guitarist, bass and drums by Brian Ray.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman
(39:25):
theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis courtesy of the ESPN Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Faus. The best baseball stadium organist ever Our announcer
today was Kenny Maine, and everything else is pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this, the seven hundred
ninety first day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against
the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him
(39:48):
now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow,
and until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production
(40:09):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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