April 18, 2023 • 40 mins
EPISODE 180: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Why did Fox wait until the last minute to offer to settle the Dominion defamation suit? I was once in a media lawsuit involving tens of millions and I have a guess: Fox must have known there was SOMETHING WORSE. There must've been a text or an email or something discovered late in the game, worse than Carlson saying he hated Trump passionately, and they were willing to buy their way out of it.
(10:44) THE CLARENCE THOMAS SCANDAL: So Mom is living rent-free, for LIFE, in the house the billionaire Republican activist bought from Clarence Thomas? And Harlan Crow's next mistake? He gave a sit-down interview to a Dallas newspaper and a completely bald and unconvincing account of his friendship with Justice Thomas. Asked if he'd still be Thomas's friend if he wasn't on the Supreme Court, Crow answered that it was a great question and HE DIDN'T KNOW. Ask what they talk about and he mentioned... his dog Otis.
(17:13) YOU ENDORSED WHO? Florida Congressman Greg Steube with a teeny weeny little Freudian slip. For the presidential nomination he has endorsed Donald J. Chump.
B-Block (21:50) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: As was joked on twitter: is Ron DeSantis trying to destroy DisneyWorld because he's not tall enough to go on the rides? And George Santos is running for re-election and has already lied in the press release! (25:43) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: I got a Republican insurrectionist who calls others "pedos" asking a 15-year old boy for nude videos; I got a Republican Congressman sending a link to a Holocaust-denying website in his official congressional newsletter; I got Republican County administrators dreaming of lynching African-Americans.
C-Block (32:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Elsa, in New York (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Speaking of the perversion of news that is Fox, I was there at the moment cable news went to hell in a handbasket. It was the night three of us (the others were the president of NBC News and the future president of MSNBC) found out that Princess Diana was dead.
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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. Why
on earth would Fox quote news unquote try to settle
(00:27):
the dominion lawsuit? Now? Why on earth would Fox quote
news unquote wait until the scheduled eve of jury selections
so late, even against that deadline, that the trial itself
had to be postponed a day until two day? Why
on earth after everything that has already come out, after
(00:47):
we found out Tucker Carlson called Trump a demonic force
and admitted I hate him passionately, And after we found
out Rupert Murdoch called Trump's lies bs and damaging, And
after Laura Ingram said Rudy Giuliani was acting like an
insane person. And after every ten and every email and
every other quotation made it clear that whenever there was
(01:09):
actually any truth or journalism about the twenty twenty election
on its channel, Fox punished whoever said that truth or
did that journalism. And after we learned that every time
somebody on Fox defamed dominion voting system, somebody else at
Fox already knew it wasn't true. Why, after all that,
(01:32):
and not before all that, did Fox make the offer
that delayed the trial until today? Because obviously there is
something else that will come out at trial that is
even worse. There has to be something else that dominion
found in discovery, some other quote from somebody at Fox
(01:56):
so self damning that it is worse than Carlson's hatred
and Murdoch's confession and Ingram's insults put together and added
to the cash value of one hundreds of millions of dollars.
Fox offered to make the thing go away. At this
late date, it must be remembered that the best lawyers
(02:17):
in the world, and having myself been involved in a
pretty big media lawsuit in which tens of millions were
thrown around, not hundreds, I'm not sure these are the
best lawyers in the world on either side. Even the
best lawyers in the world, though, miss things to say
nothing of the best clients in the world, especially as
(02:39):
the volume of material multiplies. It has been ten years
now since mediation resolved my little contretemp with al Gore
and Current TV, and I think I can mention this now.
In my deposition, the current lawyers asked about an email
I had written and had at its subject line litigation strategy,
(03:01):
and their lawyer wanted me to estimate how many other
emails I might have written to my lawyers, or my
agents or anybody else that used that top line? Kind
of a throwaway question, I said, I had no idea,
and I was being completely honest. I had no idea. Okay,
we won't make you guess a number, but try to
answer this as best you can. If you can't, just
(03:21):
say so. Do you think it was at least twenty
five emails? And I said, yes, that sounded right. Could
it have been fifty emails? I paused, and I thought, yeah,
it could have been. Yes, Do you think it was
one hundred emails with the subject matter litigation strategy? This
time I did not hesitate. I can't be certain in
ruling it out, but I truly doubt it was one
(03:43):
hundred such emails. As I said that, out of the
corner of my eye, I thought I saw my attorney,
who was sitting right next to me on my right,
and my agent, who was sitting on her right, move involuntarily,
like they each flinched or had a change in their
facial expressions. An hour or so later, we broke the
deposition for lunch. My attorney and agent said nothing until
(04:06):
we were out of the building about the litigation strategy
emails question, my attorney said, smiling as my agent burst
into laughter, that he had clearly been holding in which
you said there were less than one hundred of The
correct answer is six hundred and sixty five. You wrote
six hundred and sixty five emails with the subject line
(04:29):
litigation strategy. I guess we should have told you that.
I shrugged. I said that, all things considered, I thought
my guest was surprisingly close. Because you don't remember what
you email. At the deposition, I had to read much
more serious emails aloud that I had no earthly memory
of composing, let alone even thinking about. Some of them
(04:51):
very short, some of them very long, some of them
filled with spectacular swear words, some of them exculpatory, some
of them damning. But I would say ten out of
eleven of them emails that I I did not remember.
So I keep thinking from experience about the Fox and
Dominion lawyers, pouring through similar endless stacks of emails from
(05:14):
virtually everybody of importance in the Fox Company, one hundred
two hundred five hundred people, thousands of emails, tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of emails, and texts. I am guessing here,
but I firmly believe that as Dominion began to release
(05:35):
these tranches of damning Fox texts and emails, one or
two or thirty Fox lawyers were assigned to go over
every single document given to Dominion, and they found something else,
something worse, something like the email equivalent of the atomic
bomb only landing on Fox. And they all held their breath.
(05:59):
And when the day before yesterday came around and the
window in which Dominion could find a way to make
that something, and Dominion did not make it public, that's
when Fox offered to settle. I mean, when my lawyer
said that I had written six hundred and sixty five
emails with the topic line a litigation strategy, I actually
stopped and stared at her, and I said, wait, I
(06:20):
wrote six hundred and sixty five emails. And she laughed again,
and she said, dummy, we turned over ten thousand of
your emails. There were no doubt other reasons, and other
more substantiated reasons for Fox's last minute pushed to buy
this out. In a filing, Dominion had lowered its own
(06:41):
estimate of its own company's value, and Fox told the
judge that meant Dominion had to also lower its own
estimate of how much it could have been damaged. Although
Dominion is saying that is not true. It still wants
one point six and of course the jury could award
it more. But I'm sure somebody on the Fox legal
team thought, ah see, they're getting cold feet. What that
is is that's a signal they're ready to deal offer
(07:04):
the one hundred million. Dominion does not want just the money.
Of course, if Fox loses, Fox would have to issue
an apology or an acknowledgment of some sort acceptable to Dominion,
and for all we know, Rupert just signed off on
more expansive language. There are also external business factors that
(07:24):
are relevant to the trial. In the next few months,
Fox has to renegotiate or begin to renegotiate, three of
its biggest carriage deals with Charter Cable, Cox Cable, and Exfinity.
As you may remember, there are still ninety million cable
subscribers in this country, but only three million of them
or so watch Fox. The other eighty seven million of
us are charged so that those three million troglodytes can
(07:48):
grunt at the screen when they see Greg Guttfeld. Since
nearly all mainstream advertisers abandoned Fox years ago. Fox is
almost entirely dependent on the money it gets from the
carriers to make any kind of profit, and it makes
quite a profit. And Rupert Murdoch had been telling his
investors and his board that he would be demanding and
(08:09):
getting increases in the years twenty twenty three and twenty
twenty four in the amount these cable carriers pay him
to run Fox. Increases, he said, of about one third.
Nobody is paying Rupert Murdoch a thirty three percent premium
for a network on the ropes. It is very possible
(08:31):
that how much of a premium they might pay, or
even if they'll still pay just what they're already paying now,
may depend on Fox not being on trial in a
story carried NonStop by every other channel on their cable box.
So there could be an array of reasons Rupert Murdoch
was willing to buy his way out of this mess
(08:52):
at the last minute, might still be willing to buy
his way out of it. Who knows, But to me,
there has got to be a wild card. And the
most damaging wild card imaginable is some kind of quote,
some insult, some admission, something that would make Tucker Carlson's
dismissal of Trump look like a Lindsey Graham love letter
(09:16):
to the defendant. I mean, maybe there's something in there
about Clarence Thomas, like, I don't know the billionaire Hitler
Stan he sold his mother's house to nine years ago.
Is I don't know, let Clarence's mom live there rent
free all this time? Oh wait, that's not in the
(09:38):
Fox Docks. That's in the CNN story in which a
source close to Thomas told them overnight Sunday that Thomas
was going to amend his financial disclosure forms to correct
his lie. I mean omission, I mean honest mistake. I
mean I was told there would be no math, quoting CNN.
(09:59):
As a part of the negotiated sale price, Williams, who
was eighty five at the time of the day deal,
was given an occupancy agreement to be able to live
in the home for the rest of her life. The
source said, she lives rent free, but is responsible for
paying the property taxes and insurance. So Leola, Clarence Thomas's
(10:22):
mom rent free forever. That's something else Clarence Thomas should
have included in his financial disclosure forms.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
But did not.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
You may recall that when Pro Publica broke the original
story two weeks ago this Thursday, Clarence's lifelong friend ever
since they met a little while after Clarence went on
to the Supreme Court, and he so loves Clarence that
he gives him free vacations that would cost you half
a million dollars. After the article came out, this friend
denied nothing, confirmed the whole thing, and insisted it was
(10:51):
all above board. But now the Dallas Morning News got
Harlan Crowe to sit down for two hours and all
of a sudden quote, I think it's a political hit
job the media and this Pro Publica group in particular,
funded by leftists as an agenda to destabilize the court.
What they've done is not truthful, It lacks integrity, factually incorrect,
(11:15):
in being written with a strong political agenda. I have
to set the record straight, said Harlan Crowe. Of course,
Pro Publica told crow everything that was going to report
long before it reported any of it. It gave both
Crowe and Thomas written questions. It printed Crowe's response in full.
He said none of these things two weeks ago. In short,
(11:36):
he was lying. Then or he's lying now more relevantly,
mister Crowe, for a man who's had nearly two weeks
to come up with something good, spun a pretty far
fetched sounding tale of his friendship with Clarence Thomas. They
met twenty seven years ago. Quoting the paper's account, Crowe
was in Washington, d c. And talking with executives of
(11:58):
the National Center for Policy Analysis. They told him that
Thomas was doing a speaking engagement for them in Dallas,
and Crow offered to fly Thomas to Texas since he
and his private jet were headed home. I had never
met him, Crow said. During that flight, we found out
we were kind of simpatico. We're the same age, we
grew up in the same era. We come from absolutely
(12:21):
polar opposite life stories, but we had a lot in common.
Oh yeah, Like, what, Harlin, what do you and Justice
Thomas talk about? You know, I can't talk to Clarence
without him asking all about the kids. What are they doing?
Crow told the Dallas Boarding News that Thomas supported the
wrestling team that Crow's son was on in Texas. Friends
(12:45):
do stuff like that, he said. Then came the real censure,
the true bond of their friendship. Quote, we have a
dog named Otis that Clarence particularly likes. We talk about
dogs a lot. Otis, Otis my man, Otis. You've talked
(13:05):
about Otis for twenty seven years. I mean, I love dogs.
The question from the Dallas reporter Cheryl Hall, would Crow
be friends with Thomas if he weren't a Supreme Court justice? Now,
obviously you and I both know that the answer to
(13:25):
this has to be well, of course, I admire him.
He's fantastic. Look what he's done with his life. Look
at his accomplishments. His record is the second African American
Supreme Court justice. Look at all the great things he's done.
He's funny, he likes the same cigar as I do.
We're from the same part of the are something like that.
Crow's answer, It's an interesting, good question. I don't know
(13:49):
how to answer that. Maybe not, maybe yes. I don't know.
You're not helping him, Harlan. Is their friendship a quid
pro quo answer? Everyship, A baby's relationship to his mom
has some kind of reciprocity, Harlan, how about Otis? Does
(14:15):
Clarence's relationship with Otis the dog have reciprocity to it?
Crow complained to the paper about being called a Republican
mega donor. Quote, I don't know what megadonor means. I
have been a donor to moderate Republican individuals running for office,
as well as groups that are involved in that kind
of world to support more moderate Republican stuff. I'm seventy three,
(14:39):
so for probably fifty years I've been doing that. There
are so many people in the country that I think
are mega donors. Of course, he just said he didn't
know what megadnor meant. I've given a fair amount of
money away, but the amount of money I can give
away to causes and individuals that are seeking office, by
comparison to what I think of as a mega donor,
is pretty small. I just don't know. But I would
(15:00):
say it is in the low number of millions in
the past five years. I'll just read that again. I
would say it is in the low number of millions
in the past five years. Harlan, is it fifty emails?
One hundred? Did you know? The correct answer was six
(15:21):
hundred and sixty five. Owned all the Nazi stuff at
his house. It's just his own kind of Holocaust museum.
He says. The Nazis attacked to ship. His mom was
on Once he's got some Lee Harvey Oswald memorabilia. That
doesn't mean he likes Lee Harvey Oswald. Wait, why he's
got some Lee Harvey Oswald memorabilia? Two? Does Otis know
(15:44):
about this? Lastly, not a story of substance, just a neat,
little Freudian slip. This is the Florida Congressman Greg Stuby
on Newsmax last night, revealing his presidential endorsement. Now, before
we laugh too hard, you and I in January, Congressman
(16:07):
stube fell twenty five feet while trimming trees when the
chainsaw cut through the branch and the branch fell and
hit the ladder and well down going Stuvie.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Nevertheless, Yeah, and Rob, I want to thank you for
giving me the opportunity to talk about this on your show.
And I'm happy and honored to endorse Donald J. Chump
for president.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah we both heard that, right.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
I'm happy and honored to endorse Donald J. Chump for president.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah we both heard that again. Ladder branch, ladder. Ah,
I've kind of done this. I dropped off a rock
doing the commercial, twenty feet or so. It was onto
sand on top of Rocks. So yeah, still yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
And Rob, I want to thank you for giving me
the opportunity to talk about this on your show, and
I'm happy and honored to endorse Donald J. Chump for president.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Don't tell Donald J. Chump about this. Chump don't want
no help, Chump, don't get no help. What it is,
(17:38):
big Mama, My mama didn't raise no dummy. I dug
her rap. Still ahead on this edition of Countdown. That's
from the movie Airplane. In case you missed it, go
and watch it right now. Still ahead on this edition
of Countdown. What would you do if you were running
against Donald J. Chump for the presidential nomination and you
wanted people to like you, well, shut down Disney World,
(17:59):
of course. Good work, Ron DeSantis. Worst person's Republican politicians
a solicit crotch picks from a fifteen year old b
send out links to an anti Semitic site on a
government issued congressional newsletter, and see yearn for the days
when they could lynch black people. I wish I were kidding.
(18:19):
Those are the nominees for worse persons. And since we
are talking about the Fox dominion suit, I was there
literally at the exact minute that the cable news world
in this country went from cheesy but well intentioned to
all soap operas all the time, otherwise and political. What
it was like amid the executives when they found out
(18:40):
that Princess Diana had died.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman,
my crazy friend.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Postscripts to the news. Some updates, some insights, some snarks,
some predictions, some stuff we couldn't get in the first section.
Dateline Lake, Buenavista, Florida. Hello, the short man in the
high heels accidentally found himself back in his home state
and took another huge l there. Yesterday, Ron DeSantis attacking
Disney again because Disney responded to his previous attack about
(19:22):
being pro LGBTQ by using the legal processes the state
gave Disney years ago. DeSantis has now threatened to send
in inspectors to inspect everything at Disney World, which of
course implies that if Disney caves to him, Florida will
never inspect anything at Disney World. Have fun on those rides, kids.
(19:43):
DeSantis also threatened to build a state prison next to
the amusement park because nobody looks out for the children
the way Republicans do. Disney's response this time, it promptly
trolled the mini governor by announcing its first Disney World
Pride Night during Pride Month in June. The public's response
(20:04):
pretty much after two especially good lines, one from comedy
writer Ben Rosen quote, thinking of ways people will like
me enough to vote for me for president, I'm going
to shut down Disney World. And from Robert j Ellingsworth,
does this delusional hatred of Disney World have anything to
do with Disantis not being tall enough to go on
(20:24):
the rides? Ohronda, thank good? Nancy Fowls. Dateline, Makeup City,
(20:55):
Arizona Carrie Lake interviewed by Kimberly Gilfoyle a visit by
two TV characters who came to life somehow. Presumably they
drew lots for who got the best TV filters. Also,
Lake said, I just saw some polling today that shows
that the only person who could beat me in the
US Senate seat in Arizona is Trump. Yeah, she just
(21:16):
saw some polling like the Saints saw apparitions of the
Virgin Mary in the tree bark or whatever. And Dateline,
Long Island Congressman George if that is your real name.
Santos has declared he is running for reelection. His announcement
extols his claim that he has introduced and co sponsored
(21:37):
more bills than any other New York freshman member of Congress,
that he's been a fearless champion of conservative values, and
that he is a mortal and he can fly. Okay,
I made those last two ones up, but I got
you to think, huh. In the announcement of this self
deluded nutjob who thinks he's gotten away with it, there
is one genuine laugh line and I did not make
this up. The next last sentence, George Santos is a
(22:01):
lifelong New Yorker except the four years in Brazil and
the one he spent in Orlando, No Florida. Still ahead
(22:27):
on countdown. Since we're talking Fox and cable news and
how we should metaphorically hit cable news with a stick
and then set it on fire, let me take you
back to the day it all went bad at Fox,
at MSNBC, at CNN. Unfortunately, that day was exactly one
month before I began my first show at MSNBC, the
(22:48):
day Princess Diana died. Coming up first time for the
day we ran up the mis grants, morons and Dunning
Krueger effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
The Bronze Arie Alexander the January sixth stopped the steal
dude who has made himself look as much like Sammy
Davis Junior as possible. The Daily Beast reports Arion Alexander
(23:11):
has been credibly accused of asking for photos of the
genitalia of a then fifteen year old boy. Alexander real
name Ali Akbar issued an apology in an interview with
the website, which quotes a screenshot of a text Arie
Alexander sent to a now twenty one year old guy
named Aidan Duncan, to whom in twenty seventeen, Alexander was
(23:32):
offering an internship quote, you don't even send me videos anymore,
no good jack Off material. Wait, Arie Alexander wanted videos
of jack Off's like Junior and Eric Trump giving speeches.
Oh oh, I get what he means. More seriously, it
(23:53):
was this Alexander clown who referred to the quote Lincoln
Pedo Project a couple of years after he was trying
to seduce a fifteen year old The Bronze Doctor Paul Gozar,
the insurrectionist congressman from Arizona who's been having some kind
of really excruciatingly slow neurological or psychological breakdown or both
(24:14):
in public for years. It's not just that this, whatever
it is, makes him hate everybody, but it makes him
think that he represents a kind of unanimous desire by
Americans to murder everybody. Ghosar sends his constituents a newsletter
transmitted by the official web server of the House of Representatives,
and in the most recent April sixteenth edition, he included
(24:36):
a link to an article from a site called Veterans Today.
Veterans Today is actually an anti Semitic site so vile
that it manages to claim at the same time that
it denies the Holocaust ever happened, and then blames the
Holocaust on quote the Jewish Zionists. Well. Currently at the
(24:56):
site is this article Paul Gosar has linked to, which
shows a big picture of Paul Gosar, and then on
top of it this headline Congressman semi colon Jewish warmongers,
Newland and Blincoln quote are dangerous fools who can get
us all killed. End quote. That's what Congressman Paul Gosar
wants you to read about himself. This man needs a lobotomy.
(25:22):
But our winner is the soon to be former administrators
of McCurtain County, Oklahoma. McCurtain County. That's broken bow and Batiste,
which is spelled battists by the way, you know, just
west of Texarkana. Any who say goodbye to Sheriff Kevin Clardy,
District Commissioner Mark Jennings, investigator Alisha Manning, and jail administrator
(25:43):
Larry Hendrix. Clardy joked about barbecuing a woman who had
died in a fire. Jennings lamented that you could no
longer take black people quote down to mud creek and
hang them up with a damn rope. They got more
rights than we got un quote. Ms Manning talked about
murdering reporters from the newspaper McCurtain Gazette News. Unfortunately for
(26:04):
that this was all recorded and obtained by the McCurtain
Gazette News. It's so bad that the Republican governor of Oklahoma,
the Republican Governor of Oklahoma Stitt, has called for their resignations.
McCurtain County's Sheriff Clardy, Commissioner Jennings, investigator Manning, and jail
administrator Larry Hendrix. Do you see what happens? Larry? Do
(26:26):
you see what happens? Larry? And don't forget The official
tourism site for the county is visit McCurtain County dot com.
Today's Worst Parsons and the World still ahead on Countdown.
(26:54):
I was with the president of NBC News and the
future president of MSNBC the moment that we all found
out that Princess Diana had died in nineteen ninety seven.
What happened that evening with those men is at the
root of the Fox News dominion lawsuit and the evil
(27:14):
that cable news has become. Things I promise not to tell.
Next First, in each tradition of Countdown, we feature a
dog in need you can help. Every dog has its day.
Elsa is a Chihuahua mix who is now on Staten Island,
New York, rescued by Near and Far Animal Foundation. There
they took her in when a cyclone threatened her home
(27:35):
and the humans left without her. She has lost her hair.
She got a terrible skin infection while living on the
streets after this nonsense happened. She'll need antibiotics and medicinal
shampoos for a while, but they're trying to raise only
about five hundred dollars more for her. That's it, no surgery,
just TLC. If you can donate, you can find Elsa
on cuddly dot com or on my Twitter feeds. I
(27:58):
thank you, and Elsa thanks you. Finally to our number
one story on the countdown and my favorite topic, me
and things I promised not to tell. The date on
(28:20):
the death certificate was Sunday, August thirty first, nineteen ninety seven,
but because of the time difference, the news was known
here very late. On the night of Saturday, August thirtieth,
nineteen ninety seven. It was the death of Diana, Princess
of Wales. And please do not misunderstand me. I'm not
equating anything that happened to me around that time with
(28:41):
what happened to her, or what happened to those who
loved her, or what happened to those who simply admired
her from afar. But in retrospect, I can see that
Saturday night as a demarcation point in the history of
news in this country. Three nights earlier, I had watched
them pack the last of my stuff into the van
at my home in Southington, Connecticut, where I had lived
(29:04):
for five and a half years while I did ESPN's
Sports Center, great show, much of it, great fun, a
great partner, great house, four bedrooms, three thousand square feet.
He did swimming pool house, fact system, three hundred and
fifty one thousand dollars. All that was great, not really
a great life. I was on my way to a
(29:24):
new life at MSNBC. Thursday was a photo shoot for Esquire.
They dressed me up like Austin Powers. I didn't get
it then, I don't get it now. Then an interview
with TV Guide, and then suddenly an invitation for my
old friend and new boss, Phil Griffin to come join
him and his family for a long weekend in the Hamptons.
(29:44):
I had never been there. It was not the kind
of thing I did. It was Long Island. I was
from Westchester. But they were willing to pay, and it
was spectacular. Even though my accommodations consisted of a converted garage,
the bed and breakfast part of the home of a
woman who had had her own show on Channel two
in New York forty three years previously, and whose walls
(30:07):
were filled with mementos from it. I thought, briefly, and
with a shutterer, that's what my walls are going to
look like in twenty forty if I live that long. Well,
it's not twenty forty yet, and I haven't lived that long.
But I'm happy to tell you there are dozens of
photos in art covering my walls, and only one of
them is a memento of an old TV show I did.
But the point was and is taken anyway. A nice
(30:30):
meal with the Griffins at their Hampton's full house rental
on Friday, A warm day spent at a pristine beach
on Saturday, pronounced good with kids by Phil's wife, And
then we went across the bay to the Hampton's home
of Jeff Zucker, then the head of the Today Show
and the de facto operational head of all of NBC News.
(30:52):
We dined on his balcony overlooking the water. We watched
the fireworks overlooking the water, and we were just having
a nightcap on this vast lawn of his overlooking the water.
My memory tells me the lawn was approximately the size
of the field at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and
there were huge lights hanging off the house, which seemed
(31:15):
nearly as strong as the lights at Dodger Stadium. And
then suddenly everybody's phone rang. Summer ended in three seconds.
There were still pagers in those days. Those went off too.
You could even hear phones ringing in the distance, creating
something akin to a strange buzzing concert. My God, Zucker shouted,
(31:37):
Princess Die is dead. Now. He and Phil Griffin began
to pace across that giant lawn. Another phone rang, and
Zucker now had one pinned to each ear Standing some
distance away with Phil Griffin's wife, I noticed how quickly
Griffin and Zucker sinked up. They were walking towards each other,
crossing each other's paths, then walking side by side, and
(31:59):
then veering off in opposite directions, as if there had
been a choreographer somewhere. Phil's wife and I were equally disgusted,
not so much at her husband and Zuker, but at
the circumstances of Diana's death. Forty eight hours earlier, the
interviewer from TV Guide had actually asked me what my
first questions would be for my hypothetical guests Nelson Mandela
(32:23):
and Sean Penn. My abstract concepts of the news my
new career were about news I watched or listened to,
like PBS or NPR, the all news radio stations in
New York or Washington when the atmospheric conditions were right
in Bristol, Connecticut, and my favorite news related show, British
(32:45):
Prime Minister's Question Time. This was not what I heard
Phil Griffin and Jeff Zucker arranging in the wake of
Diana's death, throwing out large offers to self announced royal
experts and accident analysts and people who knew Doty Fayed
and even some of the photographers in the cars chase
seeing Dianas into the tunnel when it crashed, offering them
(33:08):
large sums of money to make themselves available exclusively to
MSNBC for the duration, and booking whole planes full of
reservations to send everybody from the Today Show to the funeral. Now, look,
I was thirty seven years old then I already understood
these were the necessary logistical moves of smart executives. Sad
(33:30):
and terrible things happened, and people still had to go
on and cover them. But there was something exceptionally callous
and cold about the choreographed dance I was watching. As
I said to Phil's wife, the tabloid media has been
chasing celebrities for years, and tonight they finally got one.
She nodded, but punched me in the shoulder and corrected me,
(33:52):
we finally got one. You are part of we now well.
That in turn made me think about quitting on the spot.
My agent was on the West Coast. It was not
that late there, and I joined Griffin and Zucker. Zucker
was on his third different phone by then, pacing on
that lovely lawn. While telling my agent that maybe we
should take the ABC boss Bob Iiger up on his offer.
(34:15):
He said, if I ever wanted to go back to ESPN,
I should just call. What do you think? I asked
my agent too soon. The next week was all Diana
leading up to the funeral overnight Friday, anchored on NBC
and MSNBC I think by Katie Kuric, who actually told
the audience that some random British woman was in fact
the model Cindy Crawford. She wasn't Cindy Crawford. This passing
(34:41):
forgotten trivial mistake seemed to me to be emblematic of
what Diana's death had done in an instant to the
business I was just getting into. Suddenly the last few years,
if television news had clarified themselves and a timeline had
emerged in my mind. I had gone to work for
CNN at the start of its second year nineteen eighty one. Yes,
(35:02):
we were already in color. Used to have a weather report,
a sports cast, a business update, and a science and
medicine story every hour. But by nineteen ninety five, CNN
and everybody else had learned just find one story and
pound it into the ground twenty four to seven if
you can, and dress it up so that the viewer
(35:23):
does not feel dirty for having watched it. That first
story in nineteen ninety five was the OJ Simpson trial,
And while it was nominally a genuinely important story about
a huge public figure, people forget that a huge public figure,
a sportscaster and actor murdering his wife. That's not what
they covered at the OJ Simpson trial. They were covering
(35:47):
every salacious detail. They were covering literally every blood stain.
They were covering, interracial marriage. They were pitting whites against blacks.
They were sometimes I saw it happen, making up bombshell stories.
And all the people now running MSNBC, which I was
joining in its second year, were those who had covered
(36:09):
themselves in glory or covered themselves in something at the
OJ trial. It is not coincidental that one media organization
was discussed by the judge Lance Edo for doing a
fair job of covering the OJ Simpson trial. That organization
was ESPN SportsCenter. Anyway, television news has never been the same.
(36:34):
There was some argument for twenty four to seven coverage
of the Simpson trial because it was a daily thing.
Diana was dead, and for a month it was treated
as if it had happened an hour earlier. Cable news
by this point CNN, CNN Headline, Fox and MSNBC now
began to look for twenty four to seven stories, or
(36:54):
in their absence to create them. The death of the
Colorado little Girl, John Benet Ramsey, every missing white woman
in America, even the Clinton Lewinsky story. I often did
two live shows a night about the Clinton Lewinsky story,
even when there hadn't been any actual news in a
week or ten days. If something happened, if some tidbit
(37:17):
was reported by the Washington Post when all the news
sites updated for the only time all day at eleven
pm Eastern. Yes, that's how computers worked back then. We
might stay on for two or three extra hours to
discuss this one sentence in the revised Washington Post story,
again and again and again. We retrained TV audiences to
(37:39):
fixate on one story at a time, especially if that
story involved somebody famous that in turn magnified the celebrity
element of all of American life. It explains, in part,
everything that has happened since Diana died, from the Clinton
story to the lionization of the generals after nine to eleven,
through the rise of Barack Obama, and of course the
election of Trump. I did not ultimately quit my new
(38:03):
MSNBC show a month before it was to premiere. The
next morning, I took a bus back to New York
and vowed, too, as I put it in my diary,
do a show that would expose tabloidism and be upright
at whatever cost, to a tone that I should be involved,
however distantly, in a business that could in essence kill
three people, including the most beloved woman in the world.
(38:24):
Nice thought didn't happen. We did the first show a
month later, October one, nineteen ninety seven. Phil Griffin was
the producer. Half the time was consumed by a roundtable
of four celebrity journalists and gossips. When I tried to
draw them out on the media's responsibility to the people
in these stories, a voice talked to me through my earpiece.
(38:45):
It was Phil Griffin and he was shouting forget that.
Ask them who killed John Day Ramsey. I've done and
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
(39:06):
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel.
Brian and John are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Phillip Schanelle, guitarist, bass and drums
by Brian Ray. Produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections
have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
(39:27):
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two.
It appears Curtis of ESPN, Inc. And was written by
Mitch Warren Davis. Our musical comments come from Nancy Faust.
The best Baseball stadium organist ever, and our announcer today
was Tony Korneiser, my crazy friend. Everything else was pretty
much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight
hundred and thirty third day since Donald Trump's first attempted
(39:49):
coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Please don't forget. Keep arresting him while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow, So until then, I'm
Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(40:13):
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. Why
on earth would Fox quote news unquote try to settle
(00:27):
the dominion lawsuit? Now? Why on earth would Fox quote
news unquote wait until the scheduled eve of jury selections
so late, even against that deadline, that the trial itself
had to be postponed a day until two day? Why
on earth after everything that has already come out, after
(00:47):
we found out Tucker Carlson called Trump a demonic force
and admitted I hate him passionately, And after we found
out Rupert Murdoch called Trump's lies bs and damaging, And
after Laura Ingram said Rudy Giuliani was acting like an
insane person. And after every ten and every email and
every other quotation made it clear that whenever there was
(01:09):
actually any truth or journalism about the twenty twenty election
on its channel, Fox punished whoever said that truth or
did that journalism. And after we learned that every time
somebody on Fox defamed dominion voting system, somebody else at
Fox already knew it wasn't true. Why, after all that,
(01:32):
and not before all that, did Fox make the offer
that delayed the trial until today? Because obviously there is
something else that will come out at trial that is
even worse. There has to be something else that dominion
found in discovery, some other quote from somebody at Fox
(01:56):
so self damning that it is worse than Carlson's hatred
and Murdoch's confession and Ingram's insults put together and added
to the cash value of one hundreds of millions of dollars.
Fox offered to make the thing go away. At this
late date, it must be remembered that the best lawyers
(02:17):
in the world, and having myself been involved in a
pretty big media lawsuit in which tens of millions were
thrown around, not hundreds, I'm not sure these are the
best lawyers in the world on either side. Even the
best lawyers in the world, though, miss things to say
nothing of the best clients in the world, especially as
(02:39):
the volume of material multiplies. It has been ten years
now since mediation resolved my little contretemp with al Gore
and Current TV, and I think I can mention this now.
In my deposition, the current lawyers asked about an email
I had written and had at its subject line litigation strategy,
(03:01):
and their lawyer wanted me to estimate how many other
emails I might have written to my lawyers, or my
agents or anybody else that used that top line? Kind
of a throwaway question, I said, I had no idea,
and I was being completely honest. I had no idea. Okay,
we won't make you guess a number, but try to
answer this as best you can. If you can't, just
(03:21):
say so. Do you think it was at least twenty
five emails? And I said, yes, that sounded right. Could
it have been fifty emails? I paused, and I thought, yeah,
it could have been. Yes, Do you think it was
one hundred emails with the subject matter litigation strategy? This
time I did not hesitate. I can't be certain in
ruling it out, but I truly doubt it was one
(03:43):
hundred such emails. As I said that, out of the
corner of my eye, I thought I saw my attorney,
who was sitting right next to me on my right,
and my agent, who was sitting on her right, move involuntarily,
like they each flinched or had a change in their
facial expressions. An hour or so later, we broke the
deposition for lunch. My attorney and agent said nothing until
(04:06):
we were out of the building about the litigation strategy
emails question, my attorney said, smiling as my agent burst
into laughter, that he had clearly been holding in which
you said there were less than one hundred of The
correct answer is six hundred and sixty five. You wrote
six hundred and sixty five emails with the subject line
(04:29):
litigation strategy. I guess we should have told you that.
I shrugged. I said that, all things considered, I thought
my guest was surprisingly close. Because you don't remember what
you email. At the deposition, I had to read much
more serious emails aloud that I had no earthly memory
of composing, let alone even thinking about. Some of them
(04:51):
very short, some of them very long, some of them
filled with spectacular swear words, some of them exculpatory, some
of them damning. But I would say ten out of
eleven of them emails that I I did not remember.
So I keep thinking from experience about the Fox and
Dominion lawyers, pouring through similar endless stacks of emails from
(05:14):
virtually everybody of importance in the Fox Company, one hundred
two hundred five hundred people, thousands of emails, tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of emails, and texts. I am guessing here,
but I firmly believe that as Dominion began to release
(05:35):
these tranches of damning Fox texts and emails, one or
two or thirty Fox lawyers were assigned to go over
every single document given to Dominion, and they found something else,
something worse, something like the email equivalent of the atomic
bomb only landing on Fox. And they all held their breath.
(05:59):
And when the day before yesterday came around and the
window in which Dominion could find a way to make
that something, and Dominion did not make it public, that's
when Fox offered to settle. I mean, when my lawyer
said that I had written six hundred and sixty five
emails with the topic line a litigation strategy, I actually
stopped and stared at her, and I said, wait, I
(06:20):
wrote six hundred and sixty five emails. And she laughed again,
and she said, dummy, we turned over ten thousand of
your emails. There were no doubt other reasons, and other
more substantiated reasons for Fox's last minute pushed to buy
this out. In a filing, Dominion had lowered its own
(06:41):
estimate of its own company's value, and Fox told the
judge that meant Dominion had to also lower its own
estimate of how much it could have been damaged. Although
Dominion is saying that is not true. It still wants
one point six and of course the jury could award
it more. But I'm sure somebody on the Fox legal
team thought, ah see, they're getting cold feet. What that
is is that's a signal they're ready to deal offer
(07:04):
the one hundred million. Dominion does not want just the money.
Of course, if Fox loses, Fox would have to issue
an apology or an acknowledgment of some sort acceptable to Dominion,
and for all we know, Rupert just signed off on
more expansive language. There are also external business factors that
(07:24):
are relevant to the trial. In the next few months,
Fox has to renegotiate or begin to renegotiate, three of
its biggest carriage deals with Charter Cable, Cox Cable, and Exfinity.
As you may remember, there are still ninety million cable
subscribers in this country, but only three million of them
or so watch Fox. The other eighty seven million of
us are charged so that those three million troglodytes can
(07:48):
grunt at the screen when they see Greg Guttfeld. Since
nearly all mainstream advertisers abandoned Fox years ago. Fox is
almost entirely dependent on the money it gets from the
carriers to make any kind of profit, and it makes
quite a profit. And Rupert Murdoch had been telling his
investors and his board that he would be demanding and
(08:09):
getting increases in the years twenty twenty three and twenty
twenty four in the amount these cable carriers pay him
to run Fox. Increases, he said, of about one third.
Nobody is paying Rupert Murdoch a thirty three percent premium
for a network on the ropes. It is very possible
(08:31):
that how much of a premium they might pay, or
even if they'll still pay just what they're already paying now,
may depend on Fox not being on trial in a
story carried NonStop by every other channel on their cable box.
So there could be an array of reasons Rupert Murdoch
was willing to buy his way out of this mess
(08:52):
at the last minute, might still be willing to buy
his way out of it. Who knows, But to me,
there has got to be a wild card. And the
most damaging wild card imaginable is some kind of quote,
some insult, some admission, something that would make Tucker Carlson's
dismissal of Trump look like a Lindsey Graham love letter
(09:16):
to the defendant. I mean, maybe there's something in there
about Clarence Thomas, like, I don't know the billionaire Hitler
Stan he sold his mother's house to nine years ago.
Is I don't know, let Clarence's mom live there rent
free all this time? Oh wait, that's not in the
(09:38):
Fox Docks. That's in the CNN story in which a
source close to Thomas told them overnight Sunday that Thomas
was going to amend his financial disclosure forms to correct
his lie. I mean omission, I mean honest mistake. I
mean I was told there would be no math, quoting CNN.
(09:59):
As a part of the negotiated sale price, Williams, who
was eighty five at the time of the day deal,
was given an occupancy agreement to be able to live
in the home for the rest of her life. The
source said, she lives rent free, but is responsible for
paying the property taxes and insurance. So Leola, Clarence Thomas's
(10:22):
mom rent free forever. That's something else Clarence Thomas should
have included in his financial disclosure forms.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
But did not.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
You may recall that when Pro Publica broke the original
story two weeks ago this Thursday, Clarence's lifelong friend ever
since they met a little while after Clarence went on
to the Supreme Court, and he so loves Clarence that
he gives him free vacations that would cost you half
a million dollars. After the article came out, this friend
denied nothing, confirmed the whole thing, and insisted it was
(10:51):
all above board. But now the Dallas Morning News got
Harlan Crowe to sit down for two hours and all
of a sudden quote, I think it's a political hit
job the media and this Pro Publica group in particular,
funded by leftists as an agenda to destabilize the court.
What they've done is not truthful, It lacks integrity, factually incorrect,
(11:15):
in being written with a strong political agenda. I have
to set the record straight, said Harlan Crowe. Of course,
Pro Publica told crow everything that was going to report
long before it reported any of it. It gave both
Crowe and Thomas written questions. It printed Crowe's response in full.
He said none of these things two weeks ago. In short,
(11:36):
he was lying. Then or he's lying now more relevantly,
mister Crowe, for a man who's had nearly two weeks
to come up with something good, spun a pretty far
fetched sounding tale of his friendship with Clarence Thomas. They
met twenty seven years ago. Quoting the paper's account, Crowe
was in Washington, d c. And talking with executives of
(11:58):
the National Center for Policy Analysis. They told him that
Thomas was doing a speaking engagement for them in Dallas,
and Crow offered to fly Thomas to Texas since he
and his private jet were headed home. I had never
met him, Crow said. During that flight, we found out
we were kind of simpatico. We're the same age, we
grew up in the same era. We come from absolutely
(12:21):
polar opposite life stories, but we had a lot in common.
Oh yeah, Like, what, Harlin, what do you and Justice
Thomas talk about? You know, I can't talk to Clarence
without him asking all about the kids. What are they doing?
Crow told the Dallas Boarding News that Thomas supported the
wrestling team that Crow's son was on in Texas. Friends
(12:45):
do stuff like that, he said. Then came the real censure,
the true bond of their friendship. Quote, we have a
dog named Otis that Clarence particularly likes. We talk about
dogs a lot. Otis, Otis my man, Otis. You've talked
(13:05):
about Otis for twenty seven years. I mean, I love dogs.
The question from the Dallas reporter Cheryl Hall, would Crow
be friends with Thomas if he weren't a Supreme Court justice? Now,
obviously you and I both know that the answer to
(13:25):
this has to be well, of course, I admire him.
He's fantastic. Look what he's done with his life. Look
at his accomplishments. His record is the second African American
Supreme Court justice. Look at all the great things he's done.
He's funny, he likes the same cigar as I do.
We're from the same part of the are something like that.
Crow's answer, It's an interesting, good question. I don't know
(13:49):
how to answer that. Maybe not, maybe yes. I don't know.
You're not helping him, Harlan. Is their friendship a quid
pro quo answer? Everyship, A baby's relationship to his mom
has some kind of reciprocity, Harlan, how about Otis? Does
(14:15):
Clarence's relationship with Otis the dog have reciprocity to it?
Crow complained to the paper about being called a Republican
mega donor. Quote, I don't know what megadonor means. I
have been a donor to moderate Republican individuals running for office,
as well as groups that are involved in that kind
of world to support more moderate Republican stuff. I'm seventy three,
(14:39):
so for probably fifty years I've been doing that. There
are so many people in the country that I think
are mega donors. Of course, he just said he didn't
know what megadnor meant. I've given a fair amount of
money away, but the amount of money I can give
away to causes and individuals that are seeking office, by
comparison to what I think of as a mega donor,
is pretty small. I just don't know. But I would
(15:00):
say it is in the low number of millions in
the past five years. I'll just read that again. I
would say it is in the low number of millions
in the past five years. Harlan, is it fifty emails?
One hundred? Did you know? The correct answer was six
(15:21):
hundred and sixty five. Owned all the Nazi stuff at
his house. It's just his own kind of Holocaust museum.
He says. The Nazis attacked to ship. His mom was
on Once he's got some Lee Harvey Oswald memorabilia. That
doesn't mean he likes Lee Harvey Oswald. Wait, why he's
got some Lee Harvey Oswald memorabilia? Two? Does Otis know
(15:44):
about this? Lastly, not a story of substance, just a neat,
little Freudian slip. This is the Florida Congressman Greg Stuby
on Newsmax last night, revealing his presidential endorsement. Now, before
we laugh too hard, you and I in January, Congressman
(16:07):
stube fell twenty five feet while trimming trees when the
chainsaw cut through the branch and the branch fell and
hit the ladder and well down going Stuvie.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Nevertheless, Yeah, and Rob, I want to thank you for
giving me the opportunity to talk about this on your show.
And I'm happy and honored to endorse Donald J. Chump
for president.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah we both heard that, right.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
I'm happy and honored to endorse Donald J. Chump for president.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah we both heard that again. Ladder branch, ladder. Ah,
I've kind of done this. I dropped off a rock
doing the commercial, twenty feet or so. It was onto
sand on top of Rocks. So yeah, still yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
And Rob, I want to thank you for giving me
the opportunity to talk about this on your show, and
I'm happy and honored to endorse Donald J. Chump for president.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Don't tell Donald J. Chump about this. Chump don't want
no help, Chump, don't get no help. What it is,
(17:38):
big Mama, My mama didn't raise no dummy. I dug
her rap. Still ahead on this edition of Countdown. That's
from the movie Airplane. In case you missed it, go
and watch it right now. Still ahead on this edition
of Countdown. What would you do if you were running
against Donald J. Chump for the presidential nomination and you
wanted people to like you, well, shut down Disney World,
(17:59):
of course. Good work, Ron DeSantis. Worst person's Republican politicians
a solicit crotch picks from a fifteen year old b
send out links to an anti Semitic site on a
government issued congressional newsletter, and see yearn for the days
when they could lynch black people. I wish I were kidding.
(18:19):
Those are the nominees for worse persons. And since we
are talking about the Fox dominion suit, I was there
literally at the exact minute that the cable news world
in this country went from cheesy but well intentioned to
all soap operas all the time, otherwise and political. What
it was like amid the executives when they found out
(18:40):
that Princess Diana had died.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman,
my crazy friend.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Postscripts to the news. Some updates, some insights, some snarks,
some predictions, some stuff we couldn't get in the first section.
Dateline Lake, Buenavista, Florida. Hello, the short man in the
high heels accidentally found himself back in his home state
and took another huge l there. Yesterday, Ron DeSantis attacking
Disney again because Disney responded to his previous attack about
(19:22):
being pro LGBTQ by using the legal processes the state
gave Disney years ago. DeSantis has now threatened to send
in inspectors to inspect everything at Disney World, which of
course implies that if Disney caves to him, Florida will
never inspect anything at Disney World. Have fun on those rides, kids.
(19:43):
DeSantis also threatened to build a state prison next to
the amusement park because nobody looks out for the children
the way Republicans do. Disney's response this time, it promptly
trolled the mini governor by announcing its first Disney World
Pride Night during Pride Month in June. The public's response
(20:04):
pretty much after two especially good lines, one from comedy
writer Ben Rosen quote, thinking of ways people will like
me enough to vote for me for president, I'm going
to shut down Disney World. And from Robert j Ellingsworth,
does this delusional hatred of Disney World have anything to
do with Disantis not being tall enough to go on
(20:24):
the rides? Ohronda, thank good? Nancy Fowls. Dateline, Makeup City,
(20:55):
Arizona Carrie Lake interviewed by Kimberly Gilfoyle a visit by
two TV characters who came to life somehow. Presumably they
drew lots for who got the best TV filters. Also,
Lake said, I just saw some polling today that shows
that the only person who could beat me in the
US Senate seat in Arizona is Trump. Yeah, she just
(21:16):
saw some polling like the Saints saw apparitions of the
Virgin Mary in the tree bark or whatever. And Dateline,
Long Island Congressman George if that is your real name.
Santos has declared he is running for reelection. His announcement
extols his claim that he has introduced and co sponsored
(21:37):
more bills than any other New York freshman member of Congress,
that he's been a fearless champion of conservative values, and
that he is a mortal and he can fly. Okay,
I made those last two ones up, but I got
you to think, huh. In the announcement of this self
deluded nutjob who thinks he's gotten away with it, there
is one genuine laugh line and I did not make
this up. The next last sentence, George Santos is a
(22:01):
lifelong New Yorker except the four years in Brazil and
the one he spent in Orlando, No Florida. Still ahead
(22:27):
on countdown. Since we're talking Fox and cable news and
how we should metaphorically hit cable news with a stick
and then set it on fire, let me take you
back to the day it all went bad at Fox,
at MSNBC, at CNN. Unfortunately, that day was exactly one
month before I began my first show at MSNBC, the
(22:48):
day Princess Diana died. Coming up first time for the
day we ran up the mis grants, morons and Dunning
Krueger effect specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
The Bronze Arie Alexander the January sixth stopped the steal
dude who has made himself look as much like Sammy
Davis Junior as possible. The Daily Beast reports Arion Alexander
(23:11):
has been credibly accused of asking for photos of the
genitalia of a then fifteen year old boy. Alexander real
name Ali Akbar issued an apology in an interview with
the website, which quotes a screenshot of a text Arie
Alexander sent to a now twenty one year old guy
named Aidan Duncan, to whom in twenty seventeen, Alexander was
(23:32):
offering an internship quote, you don't even send me videos anymore,
no good jack Off material. Wait, Arie Alexander wanted videos
of jack Off's like Junior and Eric Trump giving speeches.
Oh oh, I get what he means. More seriously, it
(23:53):
was this Alexander clown who referred to the quote Lincoln
Pedo Project a couple of years after he was trying
to seduce a fifteen year old The Bronze Doctor Paul Gozar,
the insurrectionist congressman from Arizona who's been having some kind
of really excruciatingly slow neurological or psychological breakdown or both
(24:14):
in public for years. It's not just that this, whatever
it is, makes him hate everybody, but it makes him
think that he represents a kind of unanimous desire by
Americans to murder everybody. Ghosar sends his constituents a newsletter
transmitted by the official web server of the House of Representatives,
and in the most recent April sixteenth edition, he included
(24:36):
a link to an article from a site called Veterans Today.
Veterans Today is actually an anti Semitic site so vile
that it manages to claim at the same time that
it denies the Holocaust ever happened, and then blames the
Holocaust on quote the Jewish Zionists. Well. Currently at the
(24:56):
site is this article Paul Gosar has linked to, which
shows a big picture of Paul Gosar, and then on
top of it this headline Congressman semi colon Jewish warmongers,
Newland and Blincoln quote are dangerous fools who can get
us all killed. End quote. That's what Congressman Paul Gosar
wants you to read about himself. This man needs a lobotomy.
(25:22):
But our winner is the soon to be former administrators
of McCurtain County, Oklahoma. McCurtain County. That's broken bow and Batiste,
which is spelled battists by the way, you know, just
west of Texarkana. Any who say goodbye to Sheriff Kevin Clardy,
District Commissioner Mark Jennings, investigator Alisha Manning, and jail administrator
(25:43):
Larry Hendrix. Clardy joked about barbecuing a woman who had
died in a fire. Jennings lamented that you could no
longer take black people quote down to mud creek and
hang them up with a damn rope. They got more
rights than we got un quote. Ms Manning talked about
murdering reporters from the newspaper McCurtain Gazette News. Unfortunately for
(26:04):
that this was all recorded and obtained by the McCurtain
Gazette News. It's so bad that the Republican governor of Oklahoma,
the Republican Governor of Oklahoma Stitt, has called for their resignations.
McCurtain County's Sheriff Clardy, Commissioner Jennings, investigator Manning, and jail
administrator Larry Hendrix. Do you see what happens? Larry? Do
(26:26):
you see what happens? Larry? And don't forget The official
tourism site for the county is visit McCurtain County dot com.
Today's Worst Parsons and the World still ahead on Countdown.
(26:54):
I was with the president of NBC News and the
future president of MSNBC the moment that we all found
out that Princess Diana had died in nineteen ninety seven.
What happened that evening with those men is at the
root of the Fox News dominion lawsuit and the evil
(27:14):
that cable news has become. Things I promise not to tell.
Next First, in each tradition of Countdown, we feature a
dog in need you can help. Every dog has its day.
Elsa is a Chihuahua mix who is now on Staten Island,
New York, rescued by Near and Far Animal Foundation. There
they took her in when a cyclone threatened her home
(27:35):
and the humans left without her. She has lost her hair.
She got a terrible skin infection while living on the
streets after this nonsense happened. She'll need antibiotics and medicinal
shampoos for a while, but they're trying to raise only
about five hundred dollars more for her. That's it, no surgery,
just TLC. If you can donate, you can find Elsa
on cuddly dot com or on my Twitter feeds. I
(27:58):
thank you, and Elsa thanks you. Finally to our number
one story on the countdown and my favorite topic, me
and things I promised not to tell. The date on
(28:20):
the death certificate was Sunday, August thirty first, nineteen ninety seven,
but because of the time difference, the news was known
here very late. On the night of Saturday, August thirtieth,
nineteen ninety seven. It was the death of Diana, Princess
of Wales. And please do not misunderstand me. I'm not
equating anything that happened to me around that time with
(28:41):
what happened to her, or what happened to those who
loved her, or what happened to those who simply admired
her from afar. But in retrospect, I can see that
Saturday night as a demarcation point in the history of
news in this country. Three nights earlier, I had watched
them pack the last of my stuff into the van
at my home in Southington, Connecticut, where I had lived
(29:04):
for five and a half years while I did ESPN's
Sports Center, great show, much of it, great fun, a
great partner, great house, four bedrooms, three thousand square feet.
He did swimming pool house, fact system, three hundred and
fifty one thousand dollars. All that was great, not really
a great life. I was on my way to a
(29:24):
new life at MSNBC. Thursday was a photo shoot for Esquire.
They dressed me up like Austin Powers. I didn't get
it then, I don't get it now. Then an interview
with TV Guide, and then suddenly an invitation for my
old friend and new boss, Phil Griffin to come join
him and his family for a long weekend in the Hamptons.
(29:44):
I had never been there. It was not the kind
of thing I did. It was Long Island. I was
from Westchester. But they were willing to pay, and it
was spectacular. Even though my accommodations consisted of a converted garage,
the bed and breakfast part of the home of a
woman who had had her own show on Channel two
in New York forty three years previously, and whose walls
(30:07):
were filled with mementos from it. I thought, briefly, and
with a shutterer, that's what my walls are going to
look like in twenty forty if I live that long. Well,
it's not twenty forty yet, and I haven't lived that long.
But I'm happy to tell you there are dozens of
photos in art covering my walls, and only one of
them is a memento of an old TV show I did.
But the point was and is taken anyway. A nice
(30:30):
meal with the Griffins at their Hampton's full house rental
on Friday, A warm day spent at a pristine beach
on Saturday, pronounced good with kids by Phil's wife, And
then we went across the bay to the Hampton's home
of Jeff Zucker, then the head of the Today Show
and the de facto operational head of all of NBC News.
(30:52):
We dined on his balcony overlooking the water. We watched
the fireworks overlooking the water, and we were just having
a nightcap on this vast lawn of his overlooking the water.
My memory tells me the lawn was approximately the size
of the field at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and
there were huge lights hanging off the house, which seemed
(31:15):
nearly as strong as the lights at Dodger Stadium. And
then suddenly everybody's phone rang. Summer ended in three seconds.
There were still pagers in those days. Those went off too.
You could even hear phones ringing in the distance, creating
something akin to a strange buzzing concert. My God, Zucker shouted,
(31:37):
Princess Die is dead. Now. He and Phil Griffin began
to pace across that giant lawn. Another phone rang, and
Zucker now had one pinned to each ear Standing some
distance away with Phil Griffin's wife, I noticed how quickly
Griffin and Zucker sinked up. They were walking towards each other,
crossing each other's paths, then walking side by side, and
(31:59):
then veering off in opposite directions, as if there had
been a choreographer somewhere. Phil's wife and I were equally disgusted,
not so much at her husband and Zuker, but at
the circumstances of Diana's death. Forty eight hours earlier, the
interviewer from TV Guide had actually asked me what my
first questions would be for my hypothetical guests Nelson Mandela
(32:23):
and Sean Penn. My abstract concepts of the news my
new career were about news I watched or listened to,
like PBS or NPR, the all news radio stations in
New York or Washington when the atmospheric conditions were right
in Bristol, Connecticut, and my favorite news related show, British
(32:45):
Prime Minister's Question Time. This was not what I heard
Phil Griffin and Jeff Zucker arranging in the wake of
Diana's death, throwing out large offers to self announced royal
experts and accident analysts and people who knew Doty Fayed
and even some of the photographers in the cars chase
seeing Dianas into the tunnel when it crashed, offering them
(33:08):
large sums of money to make themselves available exclusively to
MSNBC for the duration, and booking whole planes full of
reservations to send everybody from the Today Show to the funeral. Now, look,
I was thirty seven years old then I already understood
these were the necessary logistical moves of smart executives. Sad
(33:30):
and terrible things happened, and people still had to go
on and cover them. But there was something exceptionally callous
and cold about the choreographed dance I was watching. As
I said to Phil's wife, the tabloid media has been
chasing celebrities for years, and tonight they finally got one.
She nodded, but punched me in the shoulder and corrected me,
(33:52):
we finally got one. You are part of we now well.
That in turn made me think about quitting on the spot.
My agent was on the West Coast. It was not
that late there, and I joined Griffin and Zucker. Zucker
was on his third different phone by then, pacing on
that lovely lawn. While telling my agent that maybe we
should take the ABC boss Bob Iiger up on his offer.
(34:15):
He said, if I ever wanted to go back to ESPN,
I should just call. What do you think? I asked
my agent too soon. The next week was all Diana
leading up to the funeral overnight Friday, anchored on NBC
and MSNBC I think by Katie Kuric, who actually told
the audience that some random British woman was in fact
the model Cindy Crawford. She wasn't Cindy Crawford. This passing
(34:41):
forgotten trivial mistake seemed to me to be emblematic of
what Diana's death had done in an instant to the
business I was just getting into. Suddenly the last few years,
if television news had clarified themselves and a timeline had
emerged in my mind. I had gone to work for
CNN at the start of its second year nineteen eighty one. Yes,
(35:02):
we were already in color. Used to have a weather report,
a sports cast, a business update, and a science and
medicine story every hour. But by nineteen ninety five, CNN
and everybody else had learned just find one story and
pound it into the ground twenty four to seven if
you can, and dress it up so that the viewer
(35:23):
does not feel dirty for having watched it. That first
story in nineteen ninety five was the OJ Simpson trial,
And while it was nominally a genuinely important story about
a huge public figure, people forget that a huge public figure,
a sportscaster and actor murdering his wife. That's not what
they covered at the OJ Simpson trial. They were covering
(35:47):
every salacious detail. They were covering literally every blood stain.
They were covering, interracial marriage. They were pitting whites against blacks.
They were sometimes I saw it happen, making up bombshell stories.
And all the people now running MSNBC, which I was
joining in its second year, were those who had covered
(36:09):
themselves in glory or covered themselves in something at the
OJ trial. It is not coincidental that one media organization
was discussed by the judge Lance Edo for doing a
fair job of covering the OJ Simpson trial. That organization
was ESPN SportsCenter. Anyway, television news has never been the same.
(36:34):
There was some argument for twenty four to seven coverage
of the Simpson trial because it was a daily thing.
Diana was dead, and for a month it was treated
as if it had happened an hour earlier. Cable news
by this point CNN, CNN Headline, Fox and MSNBC now
began to look for twenty four to seven stories, or
(36:54):
in their absence to create them. The death of the
Colorado little Girl, John Benet Ramsey, every missing white woman
in America, even the Clinton Lewinsky story. I often did
two live shows a night about the Clinton Lewinsky story,
even when there hadn't been any actual news in a
week or ten days. If something happened, if some tidbit
(37:17):
was reported by the Washington Post when all the news
sites updated for the only time all day at eleven
pm Eastern. Yes, that's how computers worked back then. We
might stay on for two or three extra hours to
discuss this one sentence in the revised Washington Post story,
again and again and again. We retrained TV audiences to
(37:39):
fixate on one story at a time, especially if that
story involved somebody famous that in turn magnified the celebrity
element of all of American life. It explains, in part,
everything that has happened since Diana died, from the Clinton
story to the lionization of the generals after nine to eleven,
through the rise of Barack Obama, and of course the
election of Trump. I did not ultimately quit my new
(38:03):
MSNBC show a month before it was to premiere. The
next morning, I took a bus back to New York
and vowed, too, as I put it in my diary,
do a show that would expose tabloidism and be upright
at whatever cost, to a tone that I should be involved,
however distantly, in a business that could in essence kill
three people, including the most beloved woman in the world.
(38:24):
Nice thought didn't happen. We did the first show a
month later, October one, nineteen ninety seven. Phil Griffin was
the producer. Half the time was consumed by a roundtable
of four celebrity journalists and gossips. When I tried to
draw them out on the media's responsibility to the people
in these stories, a voice talked to me through my earpiece.
(38:45):
It was Phil Griffin and he was shouting forget that.
Ask them who killed John Day Ramsey. I've done and
all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
(39:06):
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel.
Brian and John are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Phillip Schanelle, guitarist, bass and drums
by Brian Ray. Produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections
have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
(39:27):
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two.
It appears Curtis of ESPN, Inc. And was written by
Mitch Warren Davis. Our musical comments come from Nancy Faust.
The best Baseball stadium organist ever, and our announcer today
was Tony Korneiser, my crazy friend. Everything else was pretty
much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight
hundred and thirty third day since Donald Trump's first attempted
(39:49):
coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Please don't forget. Keep arresting him while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow, So until then, I'm
Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(40:13):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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