September 18, 2023 • 43 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 37: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) BREAKING: Have Meet The Press staffers including Kristen Welker violated NBC News’s own WRITTEN JOURNALISTIC guidelines – what it called “The NBC News Employee Handbook” – in failing to correct or fact-check Trump or in some significant way warn Meet The Press viewers yesterday that he was spreading provable falsehoods on their network in a pre-taped interview that provided NBC News three full days to document those falsehoods? Did NBC News make a deal with Trump’s campaign to make sure that didn’t happen – to NOT materially fact-check him on-the-air during the disastrous Kristen Welker interview? I do NOT yet know with complete assurance the answer to these questions.
I DO know they are among many questions being asked INSIDE NBC right now, in part because of ONE tweet, and in part because of the awful realization that some sort of illicit pre-arrangement is an almost BETTER explanation than that Welker, and Meet The Press, and NBC News, abrogated virtually every one of its journalistic responsibilities in a Chris Licht-level dumpster fire that has left the long time viability of Welker, and her Executive Producer, and the nearly 76 year old program itself, up in the air.
I do NOT know for certain that there is an internal investigation. I DO know veterans within NBC News are pushing for one based on the following timeline: Welker and NBC News reporter Dasha Burns were among a dozen Washington insiders who were quote “wining and dining” with Trump thugs Jason Miller, Steven Cheung and Chris LaCivita at a steakhouse called “Rare” the night before the Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee. The dinner was August 22nd, Welker had been named the host-in-waiting for Meet The Press on June 5th, the interview was suddenly announced late in the day last Wednesday, the 13th, conducted on Thursday the 14th. Contacts or discussions between Meet The Press and the Trump campaign about editorial restrictions - at that dinner or elsewhere - would be a major issue.
The more PRESSING problem is: at exactly 10 A-M Eastern yesterday, NBC News posted on its website, a fact check of Welker’s interview. At 10:13 A-M its “Meet The Press” account tweeted this, verbatim: Quote “Former President Trump made a spate of false and misleading comments about immigration, foreign policy, abortion and more in a wide-ranging interview with Meet The Press moderator Kristen Welker,” unquote.
The problem is that the NBC News Employee handbook requires – or required – I was never given one, though I was given access to one, and I haven’t personally seen a revised copy and am relying on others quoting it to me – that if they knowingly broadcast or publish lies false or misleading comments or information by anyone in any non-live format without a disclaimer or caveat or… a fact-check – they have violated the NBC News Employee codes and are potentially subject to punishment up to and including suspension and termination.
On the one hand, NBC News is posting a fact-check of what, at 11:30 AM, it tweeted were “at least 11 times during President Trump’s interview" when Trump was not truthful. "Here’s our fact check." While on the other hand, someone in a position of authority at NBC News decided – made certain – that there was no SIMILAR fact check ON the television broadcast itself, other than a passing mention directing viewers to the website.
But in confirming Trump quote “made a spate of false and misleading comments” in a piece posted ON THE NBC NEWS WEBSITE, they are underscoring that they failed to clearly flag and disclaim and caveat – and WARN – that Trump was MAKING those “false and misleading comments” on their television network, and in all the clips shown on MSNBC, CNBC, and the NBC owned and affiliated statements. The Meet The Press telecast, of course, SKIPPED anything resembling the online fact-check.
B-Block (25:16) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: ABC's John Parkinson boasts about shouting at President Biden asking if he'll pardon his son - as he visits the churchyard where his son is buried. News organizations ignore a Trumpist Terrorist near the Biden home (if it had been Kavanaugh's house they'd be talking martial law) and Drew Barrymore sees the light but Bill Maher is still a Scumbag SCAB.
C-Block (31:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A fitting time to bring up 2009 and the day Jeff Zucker called us in to his NBC President's office and announced that our corporate boss Jeff Immelt was ready to take MSNBC off the air because his mommy was a fan of Bill O'Reilly and was mad that I was criticizing Bill. Seriously.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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. Have
Meet the Press staffers, including Kristen Welker, violated NBC News's
(00:28):
own written journalistic guidelines, what it called the NBC News
Employee Handbook, in failing to correct or fact check Trump
or in some significant way Warren Meet the Press viewers
yesterday that Trump was spreading provable falsehoods on the NBC
television network in a pre taped interview that provided NBC
(00:51):
News three full days to have documented those falsehoods. Did
NBC News make some sort of deal with Trump's campaign
to make sure that did not happen to not materially
fact check him on the air during the disastrous Welker
quote interview unquote, I do not know the answer to
(01:15):
those questions. I do know those questions are among many
being asked inside NBC today, in part because of one
NBC tweet and in part because of the awful realization
that some sort of illicit pre arrangement would almost be
a better explanation than that Welker and Meet the Press
(01:37):
and NBC News abrogated virtually every one of its journalistic
responsibilities in a Chris Licked level dumpster fire that has
left the longtime viability of Welker at her executive producer,
and the nearly seventy six year old program itself up
in the air. I do not know for certain that
(01:59):
there is an internal investigation. I do know veterans within
NBC News are pushing for one. Based on the following timeline,
Welker and NBC News reporter dash of Burns were among
a dozen Washington insiders who were quote whining and dining
with Trump thugs Jason Miller, Stephen Chung, and Chris Lasavida
(02:23):
at a steakhouse called Rare the night before the Republican
presidential debate in Milwaukee. The dinner was August twenty second.
Welker had been named the host in waiting to meet
the press on June fifth. The interview was suddenly announced
late in the day last Wednesday, the thirteenth, and it
was conducted on Thursday the fourteenth. I do know that
the Milwaukee dinner itself would not be considered a breach
(02:47):
of the NBC News Employee Handbook, the code on which
suspensions and terminations and other punishments are based if you
are an NBC News employee. I know the NBC News
Employee Handbook and the subject of it. Intimately, when NBC
attempted to suspend me in twenty ten for making a
(03:10):
series of mop up political donations after my coverage of
various campaigns had ended that year, it was prevented from
suspending me by the fact that it had insisted on
making me a contractor, not staff, not an NBC News employee,
so it did not have to pay me dental. Seriously,
(03:36):
the NBC News Employee Handbook would have discouraged the Welker
Burns Trump staff dinner, But if the reporting on it
by Politico is correct that the News employees who attended
paid their own meal charges, they would not have been
guilty of anything, not have been guilty of violating the
code precluding accepting meals or other gifts or other items
(03:57):
of value from a political campaign. A politician or office
holder contacts or discussions between meet the press or its
representatives and the Trump campaign about editorial restrictions on an
interview at that dinner or elsewhere, that would be a
major issue, that would be a red line issue. The
(04:22):
more pressing problem, probably the more relevant problem, is at
exactly ten am Eastern yesterday, NBC News posted on its
website a fact check of Welker's interview. At ten thirteen am,
it's Meet the Press account tweeted this, verbatim quote, Former
President Trump made a spate of false and misleading comments
(04:44):
about immigration, foreign policy, abortion, and more in a wide
ranging interview with Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker unquote.
The problem is that the NBC News Employee Handbook requires
or required. I was never actually given one, obviously, though
I was given brief access to one, I have not
(05:07):
personally seen a revised copy. I am relying on others
to quote it to me. The handbook would have said
if they knowingly broadcasted or published lies, false or misleading
comments or information by anyone in any non live format
without a significant disclaimer or caveat or a fact check,
(05:29):
they would have violated the NBC News employee codes and
would be potentially subject to punishment up to and including
suspension and termination. On the one hand, NBC News is
posting a fact check of what a little later. At
eleven thirty am yesterday, it tweeted, We're quote at least
(05:49):
eleven times during President Trump's interview, in which he used falsehoods.
They did not use the word lie, but they added
here's our fact check, while on the other hand, someone
in a position of authority at NBC News made certain
that there was no similar lengthy fact check on the
television broadcast itself, other than a passing mention directing viewers
(06:15):
to the website fact check, but in confirming Trump quote
made a spate of false and misleading comments. In a
piece posted on the NBC News website, NBC News underscored
that they failed to clearly flag and disclaim and Caveat
and Warren that Trump was making those false and misleading
(06:35):
comments on their television network, and in all the clips
shown on MSNBC and CNBC and the NBC owned and
affiliated television stations. The Meet the Press telecast, of course,
skipped anything resembling the online fact check, and instead, Kristen
Welker had Peter Baker of The New York Times on
(06:55):
for a self rationalization exercise and interview about why NBC
News wasn't committing journalistic suicide by platform forming a skilled, practiced,
professional psychopathic liar. In what amounted to several minutes of
the shrug emoji, only Baker was wearing a suit. Again,
(07:16):
I cannot confirm now that NBC News is investigating Kristin
Welker or Meet the Press executive producer David Gellis I
believe it's pronounced or anybody else within that unit or
the News division as a whole, for violating the written
NBC News journalistic guidelines in the NBC News Employee Handbook.
(07:36):
I do know there is reason to believe those internal
NBC News guidelines have in fact been violated, and amazingly
that is the good news for NBC and Meet the
Press and Kristin Welker, because the substance of the Trump
telecast was at or near the level of the CNN
(08:00):
Live Trump town hall. In fact, it might be worse
because while the judgment to do CNN's broadcast live was disastrous,
the calamities as a result all happened live. The NBC
disasters sat there for nearly seventy two hours after the
interview was recorded, and they were still put on the air.
That is an extinction level event for NBC News. Reviewing
(08:25):
the interview is like reaching for a book on the
top shelf and then two dozen books fall on your
head one by one, followed by the shelf itself. Trump
lies and says Biden quote told the Justice Department to
indict me, And instead of pushing back in any way
(08:46):
in real time, and without NBC putting up any graphics
warning they were transmitting provably false statements, and without NBC
coming back to the studio for a live fact check,
Welker instead then says on videotape, quote, let me ask
you this, mister President. I just want to hear from
you on this. I want to know what's in your
head when you go to bed at night. Do you
(09:08):
worry about going to jail? That was the answer to
his lie that Biden had ordered him to be indicted.
There was an on air fact check of Trump's lie
on NBC that the president ordered his indictments, and with
it his lie on NBC that Biden had profited from
(09:29):
his son's business dealings. Those two fact checks took a
combined twenty eight seconds. As in aside, Welker called him
mister President at least twice, and that appellation is journalistically
reserved for the sitting president. President Trump is maddening, but
(09:50):
unfortunately it's acceptable. She did not call him that. There
was one other in progress fact check and NBC screwed
that one up too. Trump tells Welker, quote, they don't
want to kill a baby in the seventh month or
the ninth month or after birth, and they're allowed to
do that, and you can't do that. Instead of responding
that abortions do not occur after birth, that Trump has
(10:13):
just lied about that and non specifically accused countless medical
professionals of the murder of breathing children, Welker comes back
on camera and says, one important fact check, we do
want to highlight abortions later in pregnancy are extremely rare.
When we come back, Trump lies again about Biden and
(10:35):
says everything he says is like a lie. It's terrible.
And instead of pushing back against that in any way
and again without see caveats of any kind, Welker inanely says,
I want to stay focused on you because it's important
to hear from you. Mister president. Tell me what you
see when you look at your mugshot. Trump lied about
(10:57):
immigrants flooding this country. There was no fact check on
Meet the Press. Trump lied about a record number of
terrorists among them. There was no fact check about that
on Meet the Press. Trumpled about the US giving the
Taliban eighty five billion dollars worth of equipment. There was
no fact check about that. On Meet the Press, Trump
lied about January sixth insurrectionists getting record sentences. There was
no fact check about that. On Meet the Press, Trump
(11:17):
lied about his tax cuts producing revenue. There was no
fact check about that. On Meet the Press, Trump lied
that the media is no longer covering Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
There was no fact check about that. On Meet the Press.
Trump lied that COVID and not he drove up the deficit.
There was no fact check about that. On Meet the Press,
Trump lied more than a dozen times that the twenty
(11:37):
twenty election was quote rigged. There was no fact check
about that. On Meet the Press. Trump lied about his
ability to decide whether or not to, if elected next year,
seek a third term when he is constitutionally ineligible to
do so. There was no fact check about that on
Meet the Press. And from the infuriating to the sublimely stupid,
(12:01):
Trump lied that the price of bacon I'll say that again,
the price of bacon has quintupled. There is no fact
check on Meet the Press about that. And for the record,
the price is up not five hundred percent, but twelve percent,
and in any event, Trump ought to lay off the
effing bacon. All of those lies, however, were fact checked
(12:27):
by NBC News on its website, underscoring again that it
did not fact check them on its broadcast, which again
may have been a significant violation of its own printed
published NBC News employee handbook, My own caveat a lot
(12:51):
of coverage of the Welker Trump disaster. Yesterday, insisted that
she got Trump to admit he had lost the twenty
twenty election. In fact, he said he needed more votes
because the election was rigged. She then replied, are you
an you didn't win. He then replies, they rigged the election.
I'm not acknowledging. No, I say we won the election.
(13:12):
That is not him admitting he lost. Also, the vice
president of NBC News Digital boasted on social media that
Welker got Trump to say he ignored legal advice from
his attorneys who told him he lost, and thus he
continued with the lie that he won in twenty twenty.
Quote it was my decision, unquote, he said. This has
(13:33):
been presented in some quarters as excellent evidence for Special
Counsel Jack Smith and while it can't hurt, it merely
echoes the evidence. A grand jury has been hearing quotes
from Trump testimony from others about the lawyers, about what
they told him, about what Trump did in response, evidence
they've been hearing for months. In short, NBC News, Meet
(13:57):
the Press and Kristen Welker will never live down their
premeditated decision to forfeit seventy five years of journalistic credibility
built up by their predecessors for whatever ratings hit they
got in her debut on Meet the Press. The best
she can hope for is to be viewed forever now
(14:19):
as damaged goods or as a punchline, much as Caitlin
Collins has been viewed since the town hall fiasco at CNN.
What becomes of Meet the Press itself now is anybody's guests.
These uncertainties would only be amplified if there is an
internal investigation and it does find violations of extant NBC
(14:40):
News rules. But all of this still misses a monstrously
bigger picture of all the news organizations that Republicans and
magas and fascists view inside their fantasy world as the
quote liberal media or the quote fake news They view
National Public Radio's net untrustworthiness at about a minus twenty one.
(15:06):
The New York Times they vet at about a net
minus thirty. According to a u gov poll conducted last spring,
they view CNN and MSNBC at minus thirty seven, the
lowest number. As a separate entity, NBC News is a
(15:27):
minus seventeen. So I don't know if that makes the
combination of MSNBC and NBC News. They both televised Meet
the Press a minus fifty four or a minus twenty seven,
but from the delusional lunatic right, NBC and CNN are
the worst, And yet in the last one hundred and
thirty two days, both organizations have engaged their networks in
(15:52):
shocking and disgraceful episodes in which they prostituted their platforms
to give Donald Trump, a candidate vowing political revenge, candidate
vowing the destruction of democratic institutions and the wholesale pardoning
of violent and even murderous insurrectionists, unfettered access to poison
(16:18):
literally millions of viewers with what was truly nothing resembling
effective fact checking or pushback, or even just a large
flashing read letter l in the corner when he was lying.
And moreover, CNN and NBC have put their stamp of
(16:39):
approval on him. They have validated him, they have authenticated him,
and they have done the same for the process of
letting him lie and falsely calling the result of those
lies a quote interview, and on the very idea that
any American can stand by and operate now as if
it is business as usual in this case, the news business,
(17:03):
when there is a dangerous force loose among us in
the land, which previously tried to overthrow the government of
the United States in a form of violent revolution and
nearly succeeded, and which is seeking to completely hijack the
very institutions still designed to protect freedom in this nation
and use those institutions to destroy themselves. That is what
(17:29):
CNN did in May. That is what NBC News did yesterday.
They are collaborating with authoritarians. And the question becomes why
CNN's new masters made no secret of their intent to
curry favor with Trump and the Republicans and to afford
(17:50):
him an avenue to spread the corporate fascism they have
openly endorsed. NBC's motives may be more obscure and opaque,
but they are nonetheless evil and equally so is either
like CNN positioning itself to survive in a world in
which the Trumpists prevail and this nation goes fully fascist
(18:13):
in the years to come, or perhaps even more disgustingly,
NBC is too greedy and too blind to see that
Trump exploited them and managed to manipulate them into pimping
for him and for evil. There are only those two choices.
(18:35):
There are no other explanations. It would be entirely appropriate
for Kristen Welker and the executive producer David Gellis and
NBC News chairman says Our Conde and the new NBC
News editorial president Rebecca Blumenstein to be fired and for
their careers in journalism to be ended in the shame
(18:56):
they have drenched themselves in appropriate but insufficient, just as
the firing of Chris Lick by CNN was insufficient. The
issue is what can be done now to destroy the
corporations which own NBC and CNN after they have taken
(19:18):
these actions against representative government in this country, against freedom,
against the United States of America, actions that actually hit
differently and perhaps worse than the actions of the Murdochs
of this world, whose intent and amorality is well known
even to many of those addicted to their swill. CNN
(19:40):
and now NBC have defiled their own previously more or
less reliably neutral, more or less reliably truthful platforms, and
the forces of those platforms, the faces Anderson Cooper, wolf Blitzer,
Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie and scheduled to broadcast tonight and
(20:07):
facing the choice of standing up for her principles or
standing up for her thirty million dollar salary, Rachel Maddow.
These people have not spoken up in defense of this country.
I'm very sorry to say this about someone I long
ago hired for MSNBC out of my own pocket, and
(20:30):
I will be happy to the point of tears and
will spend an entire podcast apologizing to her if she
proves me wrong tonight. But when it comes to Rachel
Maddow saying something about how bad the Welker Trump Show was,
(20:53):
I regret to say I am not hopeful. Also of
interest here Jack's Smith's gag order request in DC you
know about. I covered it at length in a bulletin
issued last Friday Night. Also, Drew Barrymore has given up,
(21:15):
but Bill Maher has not, and I guess that means
Bill Maher is still a scab scumbag. That's next. This
is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead
(21:42):
on countdown. I don't know. For some reason, this seems
like exactly the right time to bring up corporate interference, indeed,
corporate censorship at MSNBC, different corporation in name. Anyway, I'm
beginning to suspect they're actually all the same. But coming
up the day they nearly canceled, MSNBC nearly took it
(22:04):
off the air because the mother of the chairman of
ge General Electric was a Fox News fan, and she
called up her son and she yelled at him because
I was criticizing Bill O'Reilly. The further I get away
from this story, the less I believe it actually happened.
It happened first time for the daily round up of
(22:25):
the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute two day's worst persons in the world. And let's
just start with the idea that the Russell Brand story
speaks for itself for now. Wasn't funny, wasn't coherent, and
allegedly wasn't legal the bronze. John Parkinson, producer reporter at
ABC News, This is a man who owes Kristin Welker
(22:47):
an FTD floral bouquet. At least in fact, he may
owe her a new car for obscuring what he did.
On Saturday afternoon, Parkinson tweeted proudly, complete with a photo quote,
as President Biden left church, I shouted quite loudly across
the cemetery, President, will you pardon your son? But Biden
(23:08):
did not visibly react or acknowledge the question. Parkinson either
did not know that's hard to believe or did not
care that Sandy is standard that he was literally shouting
at Biden across the graves of the president's first wife
and daughter, who died in nineteen seventy two and who
are buried there, as is his son, bo Will you
(23:30):
pardon your son? May mister Parkinson never forget for a
day that he did on a human to human basis
an unforgivable act of cruelty. May he be spared cosmic
retribution for it? Also ABC fire his worthless ass the
runners up in New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News
again looks like almost all of them, except the Daily
(23:51):
Beast and in probably the British tabloids, who all ignored this.
The Pool reporter covering the Bidens in Delaware reported yesterday
that there was a solo protester near their home yesterday
wearing a neon on safety best quote, walking down the
road toward the Biden home. He appeared to have a
gun in his holster unquote. He carried a sign that
(24:15):
appeared to consist of nothing but stuff they put on
the on screen graphics at Fox and Newsmax. Where's the
laptop ten percent for the big guy Joe has aliases?
In other words, a trumpest terrorist was moving towards the
residence of the President of the United States, and we
got Kristin effing Welker letting Donald Trump lie to everybody.
(24:38):
If this had happened at Brett Kavanaugh's house, the right
wing media would have called for martial law, and the
Times and NBC and others would have reported on them
calling for martial law. Controversy over marshal law proposal racks Democrats,
But our winner Bill Maher I may have mentioned this Friday.
(25:01):
In fact, I will mention it every day until he
recants or h cancels his crap shack show or both.
Bill maher bringing his show back on the air even
though there is a strike by the Writer's Guild of
America and he is a member of the Writer's Guild
of America, and even though the show is so bad.
For as long as I know him, now forty five years,
(25:23):
Bill has not only been a scumbag scab. He has
been since the spring of nineteen seventy eight, when we
met in college. He's been in training to become a
scumbag scab. And I apologize to you for having previously
exploited him for publicity and free air travel to the coast.
On the other hand, Drew Barrymore has called off returning
(25:45):
her talk show to the air, possibly because she came
at least within about an hour or so of ending
her career. Quote. I have listened to everyone, and I
am making the decision to pause the show's premiere until
the strike is over. I have no words to express
my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt. Okay, I'll
(26:06):
try to lighten the mood a little bit here and
get philosophical. Drew, as Lauren, we really enjoyed Beetlejuice. Oh
and the musical was good too. I guess Bobert would say,
at least it has a happy ending. Bill Scumbag, scab
mar two days worst Person and to the number one
(26:51):
story on the Countdown on my favorite topic me And
this is not the anniversary of this event, but I
was reminded of it over the weekend. So here goes.
Often it happens in television that there are events so
traumatic that the cliche about your life flashing before your
eyes does not apply, but an equally hackneyed one about
your career flashing before your eyes might. The executive producer
(27:15):
of our MSNBC newscast Countdown, Izzy Povich, and I were
on the grown up elevator to the office of NBC
President Jeff Zuocker on the fifty second floor of thirty
Rock in New York. Summoned there by some garbled message
from MSNBC president Phil Griffin about MSNBC being taken off
the air, I was mumbling to Izzy, sundry imprecations and reminiscences,
(27:40):
eight freaking months is we spent twelve freaking months forcing
them to create Meadows Show? At last eight months all
the crap prompter practice getting her over her fears, rockets
past CNN only eight months of show, and now it's
all gone. Izzy reminded me it was not just Rachel's
show that was threatened, which was why poor Court Harson
(28:01):
from Hardball was already upstairs along with poor Edge Shawl
and Phil Griffin at Rachel's executive producer Bill Wolf and
some clown from Morning Joe and a couple of other
MSNBC executives and us. I know, I know, I did
the line from the drunken irishman from Hitchcock's The Birds,
complete with the bad accent. It's the end of the world,
(28:23):
I said, Jeff immilt is going to take MSNBC off
the air. I didn't need any of my overwrought visions
from two years earlier of the future of liberal news
commentary falling out the NBC window to its death on
the rink. This was the real thing. The chairman of
General Electric was threatening to open the window himself, throw
(28:44):
us out the window himself, and then race down to
the pavement to stomp on our dying remains himself. Poor
Ed Schultz heard Jeff Zucker say those words, and he
had screwed up his face and tilted his head like
a puppy hearing a car crash. He had not believed
it the first time. He had not believed it the
second time. Zucker said it a third time. Immelt is
(29:07):
going to take MSNBC off the effing air at, Schultz groaned.
After weeks of Griffin's coaxing. He had finally just moved
from Nebraska to New York the preceding weekend, yet he
was still, somehow only the second most strung out person
in the room. You, Zucker shouted at me, You're the
smartest one in the room. What the f do we
(29:30):
do now? I'll confess I was shaken by this because
it appeared for once that Zucker was not being sarcastic.
I had never before seen him flush nor flustered. This
was a guy who wore fleece in July, yet now
he was beat red and sweating. Sometimes he knew what
he was doing, and, as his opposition to hiring Matdow
(29:50):
had proved, sometimes he didn't know what he was doing.
But he always acted as the most confident man in
the galaxy. But now he literally had no clue what
to do next, and he not only could not ignore
my advice, he desperately needed it. This situation and that
color on his face were almost worth watching the corporate
fascists nuke my network. I asked Zucker to explain what happened.
(30:15):
You got Dan, Well know what happened. Zucker moved towards me,
and I stood up and I told him I would
see myself out. He stopped, remembering that he did indeed
actually need my help. I'm sorry. I apologize. This isn't rational,
this is immelt. Last week sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped. He
told Murdoch he wasn't gonna take any more of what
you were saying about him on the air. So he
(30:37):
did a piece last night accusing GE of manufacturing the
components that been used in roadside bombs that were built
in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq, which is true legally,
that's legally true. They found roadside bombs that had like
thirty year old GE transistors or TV tubes from nineteen
fifty four or something in them. Legally, GE did manufacture
(31:00):
components that were used in roadside bombs that were built
in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq. So O'Reilly puts
this on his effing show as a lead story, and
then Fox sent two camera crews in this little crap
producer from O'Riley show, Jesse Waters something to steak Emmelt
out and chase him around the GE shareholders meeting in Charlotte.
(31:22):
Zucker finally came up for air, and I jumped in,
why didn't emmelt have six camera crews to stake out
the two Fox crews and chase them around in Charlotte?
I mean, isn't that one of our news hubs Charlotte.
Doesn't emmelt own like twenty camera crews? There? He bring
a camera crew, you'll bring two camera crews. Zoocker started
to not like me again. Now you suggest that where
(31:44):
were you when? All right, never mind, it doesn't matter.
Emmel says, if there's one more story on Bill O'Reilly
about GE manufacturing components for roadside bombs in Iraq, he's
taking MSNBC off the air immediately. It'll just be twenty
four hours of lock up and I'm fired and you're fired.
And then he pointed at Chris Matthews, producer, Matthews is fired,
(32:05):
and he pointed at poor Ed Schultz and you're fired,
and Ed whimpered, so smart asked, what the f do
we do? I feigned all the nonchalants I could feign.
If I could have lit a shroot by striking a
match on the soul of my boot, I would have.
It's manageable. But Jeff, why is Emmelt so worked up
(32:27):
about what O'Reilly said about him? Only O'Reilly's nutjob viewers
actually believe any of that crap. Nobody at GE, nobody
investing in GE, could possibly believe we're building components for
roadside bombs. Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's mother believes it. All
the heads in the room turned toward the president of NBC. Missus.
(32:51):
Emmelt back in Cincinnati is a devoted Bill O'Reilly viewer
watches him every night, sees this, calls him, says, Sonny,
why are you manufacturing components that were used in roadside
bombs built in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq? I
had not expected that, I said to Zucker. So so
(33:12):
he'll really burn what two hundred million a year in
profits just between Rachel and me? Because his mom watches
Bill O'Reilly, Zucker got angry again. You bet your effing
ass he will. Now you said it was manageable, How
how the hef do we manage it? Ulberman, just a minute?
How old is she? Zucker summoned all his annoyance. How
(33:35):
old is who Emmel's mother? How old is she? Jeff
Zucker was really annoyed. How the f should I know?
You're missing the point? I had him really worked up,
nearly to the boiling point. It was great, guess, Zucker spluttered,
I don't know. He's in his mid fifties. She's got
(33:55):
to be eighty ninety something. I stifled a fake yawn. Yeah,
you're right, probably closer to ninety now that I think
of it. So the problem is she watches O'Reilly. She
tells him what's on Fox? What O'Reilly's saying about ge. Well,
I think you have a simple solution. I'd say the
first thing you do is you send over a couple
(34:16):
of big guys to her house and you pull the
freaking cable out of the wall. Zuker actually gasped, My producer,
is Hepovich unsuccessfully stifled a laugh, and I saw Rachel
crack a smile. Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Olderman,
I crossed my legs. Oh, it's a little funny. And anyway,
it's not essential if the problem is emailed is threatening
(34:39):
to take the network off the air because O'Reilly is
avenging himself against me by attacking him and attacking ge.
The short term solution is easy, and in fact it
is manageable. The long term solution that's not easy, and
that's not manageable. But the short term one that's simple.
Rest of this week, next week, maybe the week after that.
Even we just don't mention Fox News on MSNBC. Something
(35:04):
resembling a smile across Zucker's face. It made him look
a little less like a lizard person and more like
a monkey with glasses. You do that forever? No, not forever.
I would not do that, I said to Bias time. Yes,
but remember who was it who was in my office
(35:24):
last winter telling me that I should go on the
air and just to f with Fox. I should ask
why Rupert Murdoch was still running a huge international media
company like News Corp, despite all the reports that he's
suffering from dementia, Even though there haven't been any reports
that he's suffering from dementia for everybody's sake here, Who
was that again who told me to do that? Zucker's
(35:47):
goodwill was gone again? Obviously that was me. What's your point?
My point is, we built this new brand of ours
organically on a couple of themes, a couple of statements
of principle, and one of them is to use your
words just to f with Fox. If we don't f
with Fox for a couple of weeks at the start
of the summer, who's gonna care. Who's gonna notice? But
(36:10):
like after two weeks, three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice,
and the TV writers are gonna notice, and then the
crap will hit from every direction. You can think of
temporary freeze on mentioning Fox and mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdock. Fine,
permanent freeze. Might as well let Immelt turn us off
in the morning. After all, I don't think Zooker actually
(36:32):
heard the last part about em Milt turning us off.
After all, the lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe,
he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He
looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Izzy and
at Phil Griffin and me, you and you and you
and I will we will talk tomorrow, maybe tonight, and
(36:53):
we'll all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox, anybody,
are we clear? Nothing on the air about Fox. Silence
in the room. Then the assorted noises of people rising,
mixed with attempts to resuscitate poor Ed Schultz. Somebody Matthew's
guy Harson I think, was almost at the door out
of Zucker's office, an office so big that it was
(37:14):
to steal the Ring Lardner line, the size of the
Yale Bowl, but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up,
quietly but firmly, Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me.
I will not have the content of my show dictated
by any corporations, including the one I work for. Remember
(37:36):
this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt
that way then, and especially one I don't work for.
I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience
wondering what else I have not told them. I don't
do a lot about Fox on my show, but if
there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
this freeze. I will report that story and if I'm
prevented from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,
(37:58):
Zucker barked Phil Alderman, is he stay? When the rest
of the room had cleared, he took her blue air
out of his mouth as if it were smoke. He
gestured violently at me with his right arm. I told
you she was a mistake. You didn't listen to me.
I told you. Now she's your problem. All of this
is your problem. Get her back on the reservation or else.
(38:18):
Now I had run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh,
I'll get her back on the reservation, Jeff. But if
you think this is my problem, just think about what
happens if he really does take us off the air,
or if it just gets out that he threatened to
take us off the air because his mother didn't like
(38:39):
what Fox said about him. That's my problem. Uh uh,
that's your problem. And it's the problem of the CEO
of the frickin' sixth largest corporation in the world, who
makes his business decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars
of profits based on what his mother says. At this point,
(39:03):
Phil Griffin managed to pull Zucker away and Izzy and
I made for the door, saying nothing until we were
in the elevator. Finally, she asked, what are you going
to do about Rachel? I look straight ahead. I have
depth perception issues while traveling forward, backwards, up or down. Yeah,
if I know what I'm gonna do about her? But
I got an idea. I mean, the only person she
(39:24):
was really talking to in there was herself. This isn't
a brand new surprise success for her anymore. This is successful.
This is what nine ten months she's successful. She said
she was once a dancing cell phone outside a cell
phone store outside of Boston. She ain't going back to that.
I went to talk to Rachel about an hour later
(39:45):
and reassured her. I mentioned that powerful as Fox was,
they were not going to be able to reinvade Iraq
by themselves, and unless she moved it way closer than
it had been, nobody would cross her censorship line. And
I said, just give me as much time as the
French government took before fleeing during the Nazi advance. And
I eighteen forty. I said, give me, what was it,
(40:06):
thirty three days? Give me thirty three days. If we
aren't back where we were this morning, we can both
quit on the air. I mean, that'd be fun. Right.
Three nights later, well after midnight on a Friday, my
NBC issued BlackBerry buzzed with a quick email from Rachel
matdow Hey. She wrote, don't necessarily quote me because I'm
(40:27):
really drunk, but just make the best deal you can
for us. I trust you. We don't need to do
Fox all the time. I never do Fox stories anyway.
I just had to say that, and this is the
best platform we will ever have. Well she was right,
at least for the time being. A couple of weeks later,
I had to sneak in a script that blasted Fox,
and at ten thirty at home that night, I got
(40:48):
a call from a drunken Phil Griffin shouting into the phone,
I have a family. Zucker had to go meet with
Roger Ayles secretly inside thirty Rock, and I hope they
remember to clean the room afterwards. And mlt even had
to meet with Murdoch and then, happily, some idiot Ge
executive decided to boast to The New York Times about
(41:10):
getting us little talent children under control and a big
deal with the executives over at Fox and how they'd
settled everything, which blew up the whole deal instantly, because
the moment the deal went public, NBC looked so stupid,
and even NBC News was now risked. The only point
of the whole thing was to keep the Immels and
(41:31):
the Zookers and the Griffins and the ales is from
throwing us and our little island of liberal commentary out
of that window at thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow
and I would be constantly reminded in the ensuing years,
thirty Rock has a lot of freaking windows. I've done
(42:03):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you, Thank
you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the
music arrange produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Shanelle The Countdown musical directors. Guitarist, bass and drums
by Brian Ray. Orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shaneale,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. The Olderman theme from
(42:24):
ESPN two is the sports music written by Mitch Warren Davis.
Courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Fauss. The
best baseball stadium organist. Ever, a lot of ESPN references
in there, including our announcer today is my friend Kenny Maine.
Everything else is pretty much by fault. That's countdown for this,
the nine hundred and eighty sixth day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
(42:46):
United States. Convict him now while we still can. The
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. If my throat permits till then,
I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(43:10):
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. Have
Meet the Press staffers, including Kristen Welker, violated NBC News's
(00:28):
own written journalistic guidelines, what it called the NBC News
Employee Handbook, in failing to correct or fact check Trump
or in some significant way Warren Meet the Press viewers
yesterday that Trump was spreading provable falsehoods on the NBC
television network in a pre taped interview that provided NBC
(00:51):
News three full days to have documented those falsehoods. Did
NBC News make some sort of deal with Trump's campaign
to make sure that did not happen to not materially
fact check him on the air during the disastrous Welker
quote interview unquote, I do not know the answer to
(01:15):
those questions. I do know those questions are among many
being asked inside NBC today, in part because of one
NBC tweet and in part because of the awful realization
that some sort of illicit pre arrangement would almost be
a better explanation than that Welker and Meet the Press
(01:37):
and NBC News abrogated virtually every one of its journalistic
responsibilities in a Chris Licked level dumpster fire that has
left the longtime viability of Welker at her executive producer,
and the nearly seventy six year old program itself up
in the air. I do not know for certain that
(01:59):
there is an internal investigation. I do know veterans within
NBC News are pushing for one. Based on the following timeline,
Welker and NBC News reporter dash of Burns were among
a dozen Washington insiders who were quote whining and dining
with Trump thugs Jason Miller, Stephen Chung, and Chris Lasavida
(02:23):
at a steakhouse called Rare the night before the Republican
presidential debate in Milwaukee. The dinner was August twenty second.
Welker had been named the host in waiting to meet
the press on June fifth. The interview was suddenly announced
late in the day last Wednesday, the thirteenth, and it
was conducted on Thursday the fourteenth. I do know that
the Milwaukee dinner itself would not be considered a breach
(02:47):
of the NBC News Employee Handbook, the code on which
suspensions and terminations and other punishments are based if you
are an NBC News employee. I know the NBC News
Employee Handbook and the subject of it. Intimately, when NBC
attempted to suspend me in twenty ten for making a
(03:10):
series of mop up political donations after my coverage of
various campaigns had ended that year, it was prevented from
suspending me by the fact that it had insisted on
making me a contractor, not staff, not an NBC News employee,
so it did not have to pay me dental. Seriously,
(03:36):
the NBC News Employee Handbook would have discouraged the Welker
Burns Trump staff dinner, But if the reporting on it
by Politico is correct that the News employees who attended
paid their own meal charges, they would not have been
guilty of anything, not have been guilty of violating the
code precluding accepting meals or other gifts or other items
(03:57):
of value from a political campaign. A politician or office
holder contacts or discussions between meet the press or its
representatives and the Trump campaign about editorial restrictions on an
interview at that dinner or elsewhere, that would be a
major issue, that would be a red line issue. The
(04:22):
more pressing problem, probably the more relevant problem, is at
exactly ten am Eastern yesterday, NBC News posted on its
website a fact check of Welker's interview. At ten thirteen am,
it's Meet the Press account tweeted this, verbatim quote, Former
President Trump made a spate of false and misleading comments
(04:44):
about immigration, foreign policy, abortion, and more in a wide
ranging interview with Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker unquote.
The problem is that the NBC News Employee Handbook requires
or required. I was never actually given one, obviously, though
I was given brief access to one, I have not
(05:07):
personally seen a revised copy. I am relying on others
to quote it to me. The handbook would have said
if they knowingly broadcasted or published lies, false or misleading
comments or information by anyone in any non live format
without a significant disclaimer or caveat or a fact check,
(05:29):
they would have violated the NBC News employee codes and
would be potentially subject to punishment up to and including
suspension and termination. On the one hand, NBC News is
posting a fact check of what a little later. At
eleven thirty am yesterday, it tweeted, We're quote at least
(05:49):
eleven times during President Trump's interview, in which he used falsehoods.
They did not use the word lie, but they added
here's our fact check, while on the other hand, someone
in a position of authority at NBC News made certain
that there was no similar lengthy fact check on the
television broadcast itself, other than a passing mention directing viewers
(06:15):
to the website fact check, but in confirming Trump quote
made a spate of false and misleading comments. In a
piece posted on the NBC News website, NBC News underscored
that they failed to clearly flag and disclaim and Caveat
and Warren that Trump was making those false and misleading
(06:35):
comments on their television network, and in all the clips
shown on MSNBC and CNBC and the NBC owned and
affiliated television stations. The Meet the Press telecast, of course,
skipped anything resembling the online fact check, and instead, Kristen
Welker had Peter Baker of The New York Times on
(06:55):
for a self rationalization exercise and interview about why NBC
News wasn't committing journalistic suicide by platform forming a skilled, practiced,
professional psychopathic liar. In what amounted to several minutes of
the shrug emoji, only Baker was wearing a suit. Again,
(07:16):
I cannot confirm now that NBC News is investigating Kristin
Welker or Meet the Press executive producer David Gellis I
believe it's pronounced or anybody else within that unit or
the News division as a whole, for violating the written
NBC News journalistic guidelines in the NBC News Employee Handbook.
(07:36):
I do know there is reason to believe those internal
NBC News guidelines have in fact been violated, and amazingly
that is the good news for NBC and Meet the
Press and Kristin Welker, because the substance of the Trump
telecast was at or near the level of the CNN
(08:00):
Live Trump town hall. In fact, it might be worse
because while the judgment to do CNN's broadcast live was disastrous,
the calamities as a result all happened live. The NBC
disasters sat there for nearly seventy two hours after the
interview was recorded, and they were still put on the air.
That is an extinction level event for NBC News. Reviewing
(08:25):
the interview is like reaching for a book on the
top shelf and then two dozen books fall on your
head one by one, followed by the shelf itself. Trump
lies and says Biden quote told the Justice Department to
indict me, And instead of pushing back in any way
(08:46):
in real time, and without NBC putting up any graphics
warning they were transmitting provably false statements, and without NBC
coming back to the studio for a live fact check,
Welker instead then says on videotape, quote, let me ask
you this, mister President. I just want to hear from
you on this. I want to know what's in your
head when you go to bed at night. Do you
(09:08):
worry about going to jail? That was the answer to
his lie that Biden had ordered him to be indicted.
There was an on air fact check of Trump's lie
on NBC that the president ordered his indictments, and with
it his lie on NBC that Biden had profited from
(09:29):
his son's business dealings. Those two fact checks took a
combined twenty eight seconds. As in aside, Welker called him
mister President at least twice, and that appellation is journalistically
reserved for the sitting president. President Trump is maddening, but
(09:50):
unfortunately it's acceptable. She did not call him that. There
was one other in progress fact check and NBC screwed
that one up too. Trump tells Welker, quote, they don't
want to kill a baby in the seventh month or
the ninth month or after birth, and they're allowed to
do that, and you can't do that. Instead of responding
that abortions do not occur after birth, that Trump has
(10:13):
just lied about that and non specifically accused countless medical
professionals of the murder of breathing children, Welker comes back
on camera and says, one important fact check, we do
want to highlight abortions later in pregnancy are extremely rare.
When we come back, Trump lies again about Biden and
(10:35):
says everything he says is like a lie. It's terrible.
And instead of pushing back against that in any way
and again without see caveats of any kind, Welker inanely says,
I want to stay focused on you because it's important
to hear from you. Mister president. Tell me what you
see when you look at your mugshot. Trump lied about
(10:57):
immigrants flooding this country. There was no fact check on
Meet the Press. Trump lied about a record number of
terrorists among them. There was no fact check about that
on Meet the Press. Trumpled about the US giving the
Taliban eighty five billion dollars worth of equipment. There was
no fact check about that. On Meet the Press, Trump
lied about January sixth insurrectionists getting record sentences. There was
no fact check about that. On Meet the Press, Trump
(11:17):
lied about his tax cuts producing revenue. There was no
fact check about that. On Meet the Press, Trump lied
that the media is no longer covering Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
There was no fact check about that. On Meet the Press.
Trump lied that COVID and not he drove up the deficit.
There was no fact check about that. On Meet the Press,
Trump lied more than a dozen times that the twenty
(11:37):
twenty election was quote rigged. There was no fact check
about that. On Meet the Press. Trump lied about his
ability to decide whether or not to, if elected next year,
seek a third term when he is constitutionally ineligible to
do so. There was no fact check about that on
Meet the Press. And from the infuriating to the sublimely stupid,
(12:01):
Trump lied that the price of bacon I'll say that again,
the price of bacon has quintupled. There is no fact
check on Meet the Press about that. And for the record,
the price is up not five hundred percent, but twelve percent,
and in any event, Trump ought to lay off the
effing bacon. All of those lies, however, were fact checked
(12:27):
by NBC News on its website, underscoring again that it
did not fact check them on its broadcast, which again
may have been a significant violation of its own printed
published NBC News employee handbook, My own caveat a lot
(12:51):
of coverage of the Welker Trump disaster. Yesterday, insisted that
she got Trump to admit he had lost the twenty
twenty election. In fact, he said he needed more votes
because the election was rigged. She then replied, are you
an you didn't win. He then replies, they rigged the election.
I'm not acknowledging. No, I say we won the election.
(13:12):
That is not him admitting he lost. Also, the vice
president of NBC News Digital boasted on social media that
Welker got Trump to say he ignored legal advice from
his attorneys who told him he lost, and thus he
continued with the lie that he won in twenty twenty.
Quote it was my decision, unquote, he said. This has
(13:33):
been presented in some quarters as excellent evidence for Special
Counsel Jack Smith and while it can't hurt, it merely
echoes the evidence. A grand jury has been hearing quotes
from Trump testimony from others about the lawyers, about what
they told him, about what Trump did in response, evidence
they've been hearing for months. In short, NBC News, Meet
(13:57):
the Press and Kristen Welker will never live down their
premeditated decision to forfeit seventy five years of journalistic credibility
built up by their predecessors for whatever ratings hit they
got in her debut on Meet the Press. The best
she can hope for is to be viewed forever now
(14:19):
as damaged goods or as a punchline, much as Caitlin
Collins has been viewed since the town hall fiasco at CNN.
What becomes of Meet the Press itself now is anybody's guests.
These uncertainties would only be amplified if there is an
internal investigation and it does find violations of extant NBC
(14:40):
News rules. But all of this still misses a monstrously
bigger picture of all the news organizations that Republicans and
magas and fascists view inside their fantasy world as the
quote liberal media or the quote fake news They view
National Public Radio's net untrustworthiness at about a minus twenty one.
(15:06):
The New York Times they vet at about a net
minus thirty. According to a u gov poll conducted last spring,
they view CNN and MSNBC at minus thirty seven, the
lowest number. As a separate entity, NBC News is a
(15:27):
minus seventeen. So I don't know if that makes the
combination of MSNBC and NBC News. They both televised Meet
the Press a minus fifty four or a minus twenty seven,
but from the delusional lunatic right, NBC and CNN are
the worst, And yet in the last one hundred and
thirty two days, both organizations have engaged their networks in
(15:52):
shocking and disgraceful episodes in which they prostituted their platforms
to give Donald Trump, a candidate vowing political revenge, candidate
vowing the destruction of democratic institutions and the wholesale pardoning
of violent and even murderous insurrectionists, unfettered access to poison
(16:18):
literally millions of viewers with what was truly nothing resembling
effective fact checking or pushback, or even just a large
flashing read letter l in the corner when he was lying.
And moreover, CNN and NBC have put their stamp of
(16:39):
approval on him. They have validated him, they have authenticated him,
and they have done the same for the process of
letting him lie and falsely calling the result of those
lies a quote interview, and on the very idea that
any American can stand by and operate now as if
it is business as usual in this case, the news business,
(17:03):
when there is a dangerous force loose among us in
the land, which previously tried to overthrow the government of
the United States in a form of violent revolution and
nearly succeeded, and which is seeking to completely hijack the
very institutions still designed to protect freedom in this nation
and use those institutions to destroy themselves. That is what
(17:29):
CNN did in May. That is what NBC News did yesterday.
They are collaborating with authoritarians. And the question becomes why
CNN's new masters made no secret of their intent to
curry favor with Trump and the Republicans and to afford
(17:50):
him an avenue to spread the corporate fascism they have
openly endorsed. NBC's motives may be more obscure and opaque,
but they are nonetheless evil and equally so is either
like CNN positioning itself to survive in a world in
which the Trumpists prevail and this nation goes fully fascist
(18:13):
in the years to come, or perhaps even more disgustingly,
NBC is too greedy and too blind to see that
Trump exploited them and managed to manipulate them into pimping
for him and for evil. There are only those two choices.
(18:35):
There are no other explanations. It would be entirely appropriate
for Kristen Welker and the executive producer David Gellis and
NBC News chairman says Our Conde and the new NBC
News editorial president Rebecca Blumenstein to be fired and for
their careers in journalism to be ended in the shame
(18:56):
they have drenched themselves in appropriate but insufficient, just as
the firing of Chris Lick by CNN was insufficient. The
issue is what can be done now to destroy the
corporations which own NBC and CNN after they have taken
(19:18):
these actions against representative government in this country, against freedom,
against the United States of America, actions that actually hit
differently and perhaps worse than the actions of the Murdochs
of this world, whose intent and amorality is well known
even to many of those addicted to their swill. CNN
(19:40):
and now NBC have defiled their own previously more or
less reliably neutral, more or less reliably truthful platforms, and
the forces of those platforms, the faces Anderson Cooper, wolf Blitzer,
Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie and scheduled to broadcast tonight and
(20:07):
facing the choice of standing up for her principles or
standing up for her thirty million dollar salary, Rachel Maddow.
These people have not spoken up in defense of this country.
I'm very sorry to say this about someone I long
ago hired for MSNBC out of my own pocket, and
(20:30):
I will be happy to the point of tears and
will spend an entire podcast apologizing to her if she
proves me wrong tonight. But when it comes to Rachel
Maddow saying something about how bad the Welker Trump Show was,
(20:53):
I regret to say I am not hopeful. Also of
interest here Jack's Smith's gag order request in DC you
know about. I covered it at length in a bulletin
issued last Friday Night. Also, Drew Barrymore has given up,
(21:15):
but Bill Maher has not, and I guess that means
Bill Maher is still a scab scumbag. That's next. This
is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead
(21:42):
on countdown. I don't know. For some reason, this seems
like exactly the right time to bring up corporate interference, indeed,
corporate censorship at MSNBC, different corporation in name. Anyway, I'm
beginning to suspect they're actually all the same. But coming
up the day they nearly canceled, MSNBC nearly took it
(22:04):
off the air because the mother of the chairman of
ge General Electric was a Fox News fan, and she
called up her son and she yelled at him because
I was criticizing Bill O'Reilly. The further I get away
from this story, the less I believe it actually happened.
It happened first time for the daily round up of
(22:25):
the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute two day's worst persons in the world. And let's
just start with the idea that the Russell Brand story
speaks for itself for now. Wasn't funny, wasn't coherent, and
allegedly wasn't legal the bronze. John Parkinson, producer reporter at
ABC News, This is a man who owes Kristin Welker
(22:47):
an FTD floral bouquet. At least in fact, he may
owe her a new car for obscuring what he did.
On Saturday afternoon, Parkinson tweeted proudly, complete with a photo quote,
as President Biden left church, I shouted quite loudly across
the cemetery, President, will you pardon your son? But Biden
(23:08):
did not visibly react or acknowledge the question. Parkinson either
did not know that's hard to believe or did not
care that Sandy is standard that he was literally shouting
at Biden across the graves of the president's first wife
and daughter, who died in nineteen seventy two and who
are buried there, as is his son, bo Will you
(23:30):
pardon your son? May mister Parkinson never forget for a
day that he did on a human to human basis
an unforgivable act of cruelty. May he be spared cosmic
retribution for it? Also ABC fire his worthless ass the
runners up in New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News
again looks like almost all of them, except the Daily
(23:51):
Beast and in probably the British tabloids, who all ignored this.
The Pool reporter covering the Bidens in Delaware reported yesterday
that there was a solo protester near their home yesterday
wearing a neon on safety best quote, walking down the
road toward the Biden home. He appeared to have a
gun in his holster unquote. He carried a sign that
(24:15):
appeared to consist of nothing but stuff they put on
the on screen graphics at Fox and Newsmax. Where's the
laptop ten percent for the big guy Joe has aliases?
In other words, a trumpest terrorist was moving towards the
residence of the President of the United States, and we
got Kristin effing Welker letting Donald Trump lie to everybody.
(24:38):
If this had happened at Brett Kavanaugh's house, the right
wing media would have called for martial law, and the
Times and NBC and others would have reported on them
calling for martial law. Controversy over marshal law proposal racks Democrats,
But our winner Bill Maher I may have mentioned this Friday.
(25:01):
In fact, I will mention it every day until he
recants or h cancels his crap shack show or both.
Bill maher bringing his show back on the air even
though there is a strike by the Writer's Guild of
America and he is a member of the Writer's Guild
of America, and even though the show is so bad.
For as long as I know him, now forty five years,
(25:23):
Bill has not only been a scumbag scab. He has
been since the spring of nineteen seventy eight, when we
met in college. He's been in training to become a
scumbag scab. And I apologize to you for having previously
exploited him for publicity and free air travel to the coast.
On the other hand, Drew Barrymore has called off returning
(25:45):
her talk show to the air, possibly because she came
at least within about an hour or so of ending
her career. Quote. I have listened to everyone, and I
am making the decision to pause the show's premiere until
the strike is over. I have no words to express
my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt. Okay, I'll
(26:06):
try to lighten the mood a little bit here and
get philosophical. Drew, as Lauren, we really enjoyed Beetlejuice. Oh
and the musical was good too. I guess Bobert would say,
at least it has a happy ending. Bill Scumbag, scab
mar two days worst Person and to the number one
(26:51):
story on the Countdown on my favorite topic me And
this is not the anniversary of this event, but I
was reminded of it over the weekend. So here goes.
Often it happens in television that there are events so
traumatic that the cliche about your life flashing before your
eyes does not apply, but an equally hackneyed one about
your career flashing before your eyes might. The executive producer
(27:15):
of our MSNBC newscast Countdown, Izzy Povich, and I were
on the grown up elevator to the office of NBC
President Jeff Zuocker on the fifty second floor of thirty
Rock in New York. Summoned there by some garbled message
from MSNBC president Phil Griffin about MSNBC being taken off
the air, I was mumbling to Izzy, sundry imprecations and reminiscences,
(27:40):
eight freaking months is we spent twelve freaking months forcing
them to create Meadows Show? At last eight months all
the crap prompter practice getting her over her fears, rockets
past CNN only eight months of show, and now it's
all gone. Izzy reminded me it was not just Rachel's
show that was threatened, which was why poor Court Harson
(28:01):
from Hardball was already upstairs along with poor Edge Shawl
and Phil Griffin at Rachel's executive producer Bill Wolf and
some clown from Morning Joe and a couple of other
MSNBC executives and us. I know, I know, I did
the line from the drunken irishman from Hitchcock's The Birds,
complete with the bad accent. It's the end of the world,
(28:23):
I said, Jeff immilt is going to take MSNBC off
the air. I didn't need any of my overwrought visions
from two years earlier of the future of liberal news
commentary falling out the NBC window to its death on
the rink. This was the real thing. The chairman of
General Electric was threatening to open the window himself, throw
(28:44):
us out the window himself, and then race down to
the pavement to stomp on our dying remains himself. Poor
Ed Schultz heard Jeff Zucker say those words, and he
had screwed up his face and tilted his head like
a puppy hearing a car crash. He had not believed
it the first time. He had not believed it the
second time. Zucker said it a third time. Immelt is
(29:07):
going to take MSNBC off the effing air at, Schultz groaned.
After weeks of Griffin's coaxing. He had finally just moved
from Nebraska to New York the preceding weekend, yet he
was still, somehow only the second most strung out person
in the room. You, Zucker shouted at me, You're the
smartest one in the room. What the f do we
(29:30):
do now? I'll confess I was shaken by this because
it appeared for once that Zucker was not being sarcastic.
I had never before seen him flush nor flustered. This
was a guy who wore fleece in July, yet now
he was beat red and sweating. Sometimes he knew what
he was doing, and, as his opposition to hiring Matdow
(29:50):
had proved, sometimes he didn't know what he was doing.
But he always acted as the most confident man in
the galaxy. But now he literally had no clue what
to do next, and he not only could not ignore
my advice, he desperately needed it. This situation and that
color on his face were almost worth watching the corporate
fascists nuke my network. I asked Zucker to explain what happened.
(30:15):
You got Dan, Well know what happened. Zucker moved towards me,
and I stood up and I told him I would
see myself out. He stopped, remembering that he did indeed
actually need my help. I'm sorry. I apologize. This isn't rational,
this is immelt. Last week sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped. He
told Murdoch he wasn't gonna take any more of what
you were saying about him on the air. So he
(30:37):
did a piece last night accusing GE of manufacturing the
components that been used in roadside bombs that were built
in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq, which is true legally,
that's legally true. They found roadside bombs that had like
thirty year old GE transistors or TV tubes from nineteen
fifty four or something in them. Legally, GE did manufacture
(31:00):
components that were used in roadside bombs that were built
in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq. So O'Reilly puts
this on his effing show as a lead story, and
then Fox sent two camera crews in this little crap
producer from O'Riley show, Jesse Waters something to steak Emmelt
out and chase him around the GE shareholders meeting in Charlotte.
(31:22):
Zucker finally came up for air, and I jumped in,
why didn't emmelt have six camera crews to stake out
the two Fox crews and chase them around in Charlotte?
I mean, isn't that one of our news hubs Charlotte.
Doesn't emmelt own like twenty camera crews? There? He bring
a camera crew, you'll bring two camera crews. Zoocker started
to not like me again. Now you suggest that where
(31:44):
were you when? All right, never mind, it doesn't matter.
Emmel says, if there's one more story on Bill O'Reilly
about GE manufacturing components for roadside bombs in Iraq, he's
taking MSNBC off the air immediately. It'll just be twenty
four hours of lock up and I'm fired and you're fired.
And then he pointed at Chris Matthews, producer, Matthews is fired,
(32:05):
and he pointed at poor Ed Schultz and you're fired,
and Ed whimpered, so smart asked, what the f do
we do? I feigned all the nonchalants I could feign.
If I could have lit a shroot by striking a
match on the soul of my boot, I would have.
It's manageable. But Jeff, why is Emmelt so worked up
(32:27):
about what O'Reilly said about him? Only O'Reilly's nutjob viewers
actually believe any of that crap. Nobody at GE, nobody
investing in GE, could possibly believe we're building components for
roadside bombs. Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's mother believes it. All
the heads in the room turned toward the president of NBC. Missus.
(32:51):
Emmelt back in Cincinnati is a devoted Bill O'Reilly viewer
watches him every night, sees this, calls him, says, Sonny,
why are you manufacturing components that were used in roadside
bombs built in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq? I
had not expected that, I said to Zucker. So so
(33:12):
he'll really burn what two hundred million a year in
profits just between Rachel and me? Because his mom watches
Bill O'Reilly, Zucker got angry again. You bet your effing
ass he will. Now you said it was manageable, How
how the hef do we manage it? Ulberman, just a minute?
How old is she? Zucker summoned all his annoyance. How
(33:35):
old is who Emmel's mother? How old is she? Jeff
Zucker was really annoyed. How the f should I know?
You're missing the point? I had him really worked up,
nearly to the boiling point. It was great, guess, Zucker spluttered,
I don't know. He's in his mid fifties. She's got
(33:55):
to be eighty ninety something. I stifled a fake yawn. Yeah,
you're right, probably closer to ninety now that I think
of it. So the problem is she watches O'Reilly. She
tells him what's on Fox? What O'Reilly's saying about ge. Well,
I think you have a simple solution. I'd say the
first thing you do is you send over a couple
(34:16):
of big guys to her house and you pull the
freaking cable out of the wall. Zuker actually gasped, My producer,
is Hepovich unsuccessfully stifled a laugh, and I saw Rachel
crack a smile. Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Olderman,
I crossed my legs. Oh, it's a little funny. And anyway,
it's not essential if the problem is emailed is threatening
(34:39):
to take the network off the air because O'Reilly is
avenging himself against me by attacking him and attacking ge.
The short term solution is easy, and in fact it
is manageable. The long term solution that's not easy, and
that's not manageable. But the short term one that's simple.
Rest of this week, next week, maybe the week after that.
Even we just don't mention Fox News on MSNBC. Something
(35:04):
resembling a smile across Zucker's face. It made him look
a little less like a lizard person and more like
a monkey with glasses. You do that forever? No, not forever.
I would not do that, I said to Bias time. Yes,
but remember who was it who was in my office
(35:24):
last winter telling me that I should go on the
air and just to f with Fox. I should ask
why Rupert Murdoch was still running a huge international media
company like News Corp, despite all the reports that he's
suffering from dementia, Even though there haven't been any reports
that he's suffering from dementia for everybody's sake here, Who
was that again who told me to do that? Zucker's
(35:47):
goodwill was gone again? Obviously that was me. What's your point?
My point is, we built this new brand of ours
organically on a couple of themes, a couple of statements
of principle, and one of them is to use your
words just to f with Fox. If we don't f
with Fox for a couple of weeks at the start
of the summer, who's gonna care. Who's gonna notice? But
(36:10):
like after two weeks, three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice,
and the TV writers are gonna notice, and then the
crap will hit from every direction. You can think of
temporary freeze on mentioning Fox and mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdock. Fine,
permanent freeze. Might as well let Immelt turn us off
in the morning. After all, I don't think Zooker actually
(36:32):
heard the last part about em Milt turning us off.
After all, the lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe,
he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He
looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Izzy and
at Phil Griffin and me, you and you and you
and I will we will talk tomorrow, maybe tonight, and
(36:53):
we'll all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox, anybody,
are we clear? Nothing on the air about Fox. Silence
in the room. Then the assorted noises of people rising,
mixed with attempts to resuscitate poor Ed Schultz. Somebody Matthew's
guy Harson I think, was almost at the door out
of Zucker's office, an office so big that it was
(37:14):
to steal the Ring Lardner line, the size of the
Yale Bowl, but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up,
quietly but firmly, Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me.
I will not have the content of my show dictated
by any corporations, including the one I work for. Remember
(37:36):
this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt
that way then, and especially one I don't work for.
I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience
wondering what else I have not told them. I don't
do a lot about Fox on my show, but if
there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
this freeze. I will report that story and if I'm
prevented from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,
(37:58):
Zucker barked Phil Alderman, is he stay? When the rest
of the room had cleared, he took her blue air
out of his mouth as if it were smoke. He
gestured violently at me with his right arm. I told
you she was a mistake. You didn't listen to me.
I told you. Now she's your problem. All of this
is your problem. Get her back on the reservation or else.
(38:18):
Now I had run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh,
I'll get her back on the reservation, Jeff. But if
you think this is my problem, just think about what
happens if he really does take us off the air,
or if it just gets out that he threatened to
take us off the air because his mother didn't like
(38:39):
what Fox said about him. That's my problem. Uh uh,
that's your problem. And it's the problem of the CEO
of the frickin' sixth largest corporation in the world, who
makes his business decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars
of profits based on what his mother says. At this point,
(39:03):
Phil Griffin managed to pull Zucker away and Izzy and
I made for the door, saying nothing until we were
in the elevator. Finally, she asked, what are you going
to do about Rachel? I look straight ahead. I have
depth perception issues while traveling forward, backwards, up or down. Yeah,
if I know what I'm gonna do about her? But
I got an idea. I mean, the only person she
(39:24):
was really talking to in there was herself. This isn't
a brand new surprise success for her anymore. This is successful.
This is what nine ten months she's successful. She said
she was once a dancing cell phone outside a cell
phone store outside of Boston. She ain't going back to that.
I went to talk to Rachel about an hour later
(39:45):
and reassured her. I mentioned that powerful as Fox was,
they were not going to be able to reinvade Iraq
by themselves, and unless she moved it way closer than
it had been, nobody would cross her censorship line. And
I said, just give me as much time as the
French government took before fleeing during the Nazi advance. And
I eighteen forty. I said, give me, what was it,
(40:06):
thirty three days? Give me thirty three days. If we
aren't back where we were this morning, we can both
quit on the air. I mean, that'd be fun. Right.
Three nights later, well after midnight on a Friday, my
NBC issued BlackBerry buzzed with a quick email from Rachel
matdow Hey. She wrote, don't necessarily quote me because I'm
(40:27):
really drunk, but just make the best deal you can
for us. I trust you. We don't need to do
Fox all the time. I never do Fox stories anyway.
I just had to say that, and this is the
best platform we will ever have. Well she was right,
at least for the time being. A couple of weeks later,
I had to sneak in a script that blasted Fox,
and at ten thirty at home that night, I got
(40:48):
a call from a drunken Phil Griffin shouting into the phone,
I have a family. Zucker had to go meet with
Roger Ayles secretly inside thirty Rock, and I hope they
remember to clean the room afterwards. And mlt even had
to meet with Murdoch and then, happily, some idiot Ge
executive decided to boast to The New York Times about
(41:10):
getting us little talent children under control and a big
deal with the executives over at Fox and how they'd
settled everything, which blew up the whole deal instantly, because
the moment the deal went public, NBC looked so stupid,
and even NBC News was now risked. The only point
of the whole thing was to keep the Immels and
(41:31):
the Zookers and the Griffins and the ales is from
throwing us and our little island of liberal commentary out
of that window at thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow
and I would be constantly reminded in the ensuing years,
thirty Rock has a lot of freaking windows. I've done
(42:03):
all the damage I can do here. Thank you, Thank
you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the
music arrange produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Shanelle The Countdown musical directors. Guitarist, bass and drums
by Brian Ray. Orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shaneale,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. The Olderman theme from
(42:24):
ESPN two is the sports music written by Mitch Warren Davis.
Courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Fauss. The
best baseball stadium organist. Ever, a lot of ESPN references
in there, including our announcer today is my friend Kenny Maine.
Everything else is pretty much by fault. That's countdown for this,
the nine hundred and eighty sixth day since Donald Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
(42:46):
United States. Convict him now while we still can. The
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. If my throat permits till then,
I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(43:10):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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