August 24, 2023 • 47 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 20: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I watched the Republican Debate so you didn't have to and there was actually a surprise. Trump isn't leading by such a huge margin solely because of his cult and their craziness. He is leading by such a huge margin because DeSantis is a pull-string toy. He is rehearsed, wooden, confused, inflexible. At one point a moderator said "that isn't the question, Governor," and he replied "I know," like he was proud of it. Also: everybody hates Ramaswamy and there is a perfect word to describe him and that word was supplied by my Pittsburgh-bred friend Howard Fineman: "Jagoff."
Meanwhile Trump was with Tucker Carlson on Twitter and they were both pleasuring themselves to fantasies of somebody trying to assassinate Trump so then they could have a Civil War.
There are Atlanta developments that could see the Fani Willis trial begin as early as November 3.
And maybe bigger than all, there is a scandal involving ABC News, CBS, CNN, NBC, The Washington Post, the New York Times, and other news outlets and I doubt anybody will notice but it drove me to distraction. Why, the night before the debate, did a dozen of the leading political reporters and editors think it was cool to have a meal with Jason Miller and two other thugs from the Trump Campaign and let them get schmoozed by them and let Miller try out his latest attacks on DeSantis? The Trump people want to dismember the press and maybe individual reporters. With the BEST of politicians you must keep yourself at arm's length - and these are the worst of them. They (and they include Dana Bash, Robert Costa, and Kristen Welker) should all be fired.
B-Block (31:11) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The Secret Service's 2020 links to The Oath Keepers; Prighozin dead after his plane falls out a window (35:03) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Nice troll by the Biden campaign to advertise on Fox News. Except it helps Fox News. CNN may have found an old Chris Licht to replace young Chris Licht. And with these bothsidesist Climate Change headlines, The Washington Post may kill us all.
C-Block (35:55) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: No, Rudy Giuliani did not fall from grace. He's ALWAYS been like that. You just didn't know him in 1996 - I did. He was nuts then, too.
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. I
watched the Republican debate last night, brought to you by
(00:26):
magic dental implants. No, I'm not kidding. Well, so the
doctor says, my ears will stop bleeding within an hour
or two. I have one overarching surprised conclusion. I will
never minimize Trump. But he is not so far ahead
in the polls just because of his cult, maybe not
(00:48):
even mostly because of his cult. He is so far
ahead in the polls in large part because Ron DeSantis
is a pull string doll. Remember the Simpsons bit where
they have the al Gore doll and they pull the
string and it can say only one thing, and that
one thing is you are hearing me talk. I will
(01:09):
have Europe to pull their weight, but right now they're
not doing it. We want to motivate. I think our
support should be contingent on them doing it, and I
would have support in China to be able to take
to be able to take China and do what we
need to do with China. If you told me Ron
DeSantis was not actually on that debate stage in Milwaukee
(01:31):
last night, but it was just a hologram of him
being beamed in, I would believe you. DeSantis not only
repeated all of his one liners from the campaign, he
repeated his one liner from the first hour of the
debate about focusing on the mission. In the second hour
of the debate. He also had this exchange with one
of the moderators, Martha McCallum. She said, quote, that's not
(01:53):
the question, governor, and DeSantis answered, I know. DeSantis also
reportedly left the stage by himself without any of the
other candidates even saying goodbye to him. I will compliment
Fox and McCallum and Brett Baar and the producers and
give them credit for something They did not go all Trump.
(02:14):
There were no Trump's sound bites. There was even an
ad in the last commercial break telling Republicans they needed
to move on from Trump. The flip side to that,
of course, is we had to find out who these
people really are and be afraid. Tim Scott gave eight answers.
In four or more of them, he mentioned that he
grew up in a single family household. In another, Scott said,
(02:38):
you can't leave abortion laws to the states. Quote. We
can't leave it to Illinois, We can't leave it to Minnesota.
We can't leave it to Illinois. Doug Bergham debated, even
after ripping up his achilles tendon playing basketball, did you
know he grew up in a town of three hundred people?
I know because he included that fact in every one
(02:58):
of his answers. Mike Pence showed off his extraordinary talent.
He is the only politic I have ever seen who
can add lib but make it look like he is
reading a teleprompter. Asa Hutchinson mentioned the problem of fentanyl,
which I guess is fentanyl mixed with ethanol. Vivek Ramaswami
(03:21):
made the interesting choice to wear eyeliner. He also supplied
the helpful information that he is not running to be
president of MSNBC. Well, let me tell you that job
is not all it's cracked up to be. And at
one point Ramaswami seemed to Plagiariyes, Barack Obama. Finally, in
his last answer, he deployed every known English platitude except
(03:42):
prepare to meet Thy God and employees must wash hands.
All of them promised to do exactly whatever it was
you wanted them to do about abortions, except Nikki Hayley,
who noted that no matter what you may want in
a national band, there are not sixty senators to pass it.
And the most terrifying thing was that, with the exception
(04:04):
of Ramaswami, every one of them has a ten times
better grasp on reality than does Trump. My friend Howard Feinman,
raised in Pittsburgh, had the mose used on Ramaswami, and
that word was quote jag off unquote. All of them
desperately hate teachers unions, they told us. Repeatedly. Asked to
(04:27):
raise their hands if they believe there is man made
climate change, not one of them would do so. Asked
if they would support Trump as the nominee anyway, they
all waited to see what the other ones would do first,
and called on it. Christy said he didn't really raise
his hand, he was just making a gesture of some kind.
And as the former moderator of one of these megastage
(04:49):
party debates, I am chagrined to learn there is yet
another network that does not realize that the solution to
the candidates refusing to shut the hell up when their
time is over is to give them like five seconds
grace and then turn them Mike off. Overall, I don't
know if Trump's absence actually impacts his chances. But I
(05:13):
do know that it is never a good idea to
unnecessarily give your customer free samples of the eight other
leading products so they can figure out in advance which
one they will buy if they have to. Don't mistake
this as an endorsement of anybody else. But the in
house crowd in the Milwaukee arena did not boo any
(05:36):
of them off the stage, not even Pence. And while
those two billion brain cells were disappearing from my aging head,
Trump and Tucker Carlson were pleasuring themselves on Twitter, fantasizing
about oooh, somebody trying to assassinate Trump and then woohoo
a civil war. He worried that they're gonna try and
(05:57):
kill you. Why wouldn't they try and kill you? Honestly,
they're savage animals. They are people that are sick. Do
you think it's possible that there's open conflict? I can
say this, there's a level of passion that I've never seen.
There's a level of hatred that I've never seen. In
is probably a bad combination. Now back here on Earth one,
if Trump is in prison before the twenty twenty four election,
(06:21):
or maybe even before the twenty twenty four Republican Convention.
We may have to thank Kenneth Cheesebro, one of the
attorneys behind the fake elector's scheme. He invoked the provision
in Georgia law which affords all defendants a speedy trial.
And this is a real thing, and the calculation is
Cheesebro's motion could result in the trial beginning no later
(06:41):
than seventy two days from now Friday, November third, twenty
twenty three. I'm so far out over my skis that
when I turn around, I see them way back there
at the horizon. But the prospect that the democracy could
in part be saved because one of the henchmen of
the Eastman Trump plan wanted to get the whole crowd
(07:03):
of defendants into court in Recado time. That is one
of the first possibly delightful plot twists in this whole
dark stretch of American history, as is the continuing humiliation
of Rudy Giuliani. And no, he didn't go bad. He
was always an asshole. I'll tell you a story from
(07:24):
nineteen ninety six at the end of this podcast, but
for now, let's just enjoy the idea that he is
so scrapped for cash that he had to go to
a second chance bail bonds in Atlanta yesterday. And he
went there because there is no four seasons bail bonds.
I know, I looked. There is Larry Rusk Bail Bonds
(07:47):
of Jefferson City, Missouri, which claims to serve the four
seasons area, a little remote for Rudy's purposes. Jeff Clark
and Mark Meadows both lost their attempts to stave off
their arrests and processing in Atlanta while they try to
get their trials moved to federal court. And of course
Trump goes there tonight. And then there are the mugshots.
(08:09):
Giuliani clearly took the word mug too seriously. Ray Smith,
the Trump attorney in Atlanta, looks like he escaped from somewhere.
Jenna Ellis finally got that high school yearbook photo she's
always really wanted. Eastman Khrushcheff on acid. But clearly what
(08:31):
we need here is a go fund me to buy
the Atlanta jail booking photographer some real lighting equipment. Meanwhile,
something happened at that debate the night before the debate.
In fact that as recently as fifteen years ago would
have meant the ends of the careers of every reporter involved,
(08:55):
or at least significant punishments and emotions. But the degradation
of ethical standards in the DC media political industrial complex
has been so steady and so stealthy that almost nobody noticed.
In fact, I wanted to lead with this today, but
I just couldn't talk myself into it. On Tuesday night,
(09:18):
three Trump hoodlums, led by the disgusting Jason Miller, were
per Politico whining and dining a dozen top national political
reporters at a Milwaukee steakhouse called Rare. The point was
to let Trump be there and yet also remain in absentia,
(09:38):
and to continue taking his shots at Ron DeSantis through
his vessels Jason Miller, Chris la Sevita, and Stephen Chung.
They handed the reporters packs of putting snacks, a shot
at DeSantis and the eating pudding with his fingers story,
and they gave them debate DeSantis bingo cards, mocking DeSantis
(10:00):
as dysanctimonious and invoking his varying pronunciations of his own
name and how many times he says woke and Ron
Dessentis can melt in the hot sun for all I care,
Because the issue is not which fascist politicians thugs were
doing the insulting and which fascist politician was on the
receiving end of the insulting. The point is this, what
(10:23):
in the ever loving Christ were a dozen top American
political reporters doing having any kind of meal with any
three campaign hacks the night before they covered a debate.
These weren't a dozen frauds from Fox News and Newsmax
and The Daily Caller, twelve adults, twelve veteran reporters from
(10:49):
CNN and CBS and NBC and ABC and The New
York Times in the Washington Post. They thought it was
somehow appropriate to share a table with not just political operatives,
but political operatives who regularly encouraged the public to view
news reporters as criminals, as enemies of the people who
(11:09):
should be targeted, attacked, assaulted, and killed. Donald Trump, and
for that matter, DeSantis as well, believes in censorship and
punishment and lawsuits and revenge and violence, both symbolically against
freedom of the press and literally against reporters. And as
we heard last night, Trump is willing to employ the
(11:30):
prospect of civil war as a campaign plank of some sort.
And these reporters, not commentators, not TV hosts, reporters in
the field, reporters had no problem sitting down with Trump's
employees because I don't know, I can't even make up
(11:55):
whatever implausible rationalizations they employed for not quitting their jobs
in horror an hour after the check came and they
realized what they had done. I've seen the news media
in this country, and particularly the political news media, firsthand
for a quarter of a century, and I've seen it
start bad and narrow minded and subservient in nineteen ninety
(12:18):
seven and nineteen ninety eight, and then get worse and
worse and more and more amorl approaching the now perfect
balance in which access to the people you're covering and
TV hits and bylines are a one hundred and your
journalistic ethics are a zero. And if you're wondering how
(12:41):
their bosses reacted to these reporters letting themselves become compromised
in this way, and just to make sure it could
not possibly be more wrong or more obvious, compromised by
Trump people, well three of them at the dinner were
their bosses at the table. Rick Klein, the political director
of ABC News, and Mario Parker, the politics editor of
(13:03):
Bloomberg News. And David Shalien, the infamous political director of CNN,
the one who defended the Chris Licked Trump Live town
hall by saying, we obviously can't control what Donald Trump says,
That's up to him, and who insisted that Trump's whole,
you know, attempted coup thing quote does not make our
(13:24):
approach any different to him. Three bosses, three guys in charge,
so disconnected from the audience they served, from the nation
they supposedly serve. Do you remember that part of it?
Boys so not dedicated to anything but themselves that they
would break bread with these people. And by the way,
(13:47):
it would be just as structurally inappropriate if they'd done
this with Biden people. The only difference would have been
that the chance of catching some sort of food born
illness from Jason Miller and Chung and las Avita would
have been more than with Biden people. And the president
of the other nine at the table is, in its
(14:07):
own way, just as appalling. Danna Bash of CNN was
at the table. I wish I was surprised by that name,
but I was surprised by this name. If you're hoping
for improvement. When Chuck Todd leaves meet the press, forget it.
Kristin Welker was at this meal, along with another NBC
reporter named Dasha Burns, the chief election correspondent of CBS News,
(14:32):
Robert Costa, a CBS politics producer named Finn Gomez, Rachel Scott,
Senior congressional correspondent of ABC, Shane Goldmacher, national political correspondent
New York Times, Rob Crilly, White House correspondent of the
UK's Daily Mail, And if that name sounds familiar from
a previous episode, Rob Crilly is the guy who started
(14:54):
the whole Biden no comment on Hawaii right wing feeding
frenzy because he was the pool reporter who never heard
President Biden say that, but he and some other people
thought they could read Biden's lips at distance, and so
they attributed the quote to him. Rob Curley's the only
one of the twelve at the table here who did not,
to my mind, forfeit his journalistic reputation, because there wasn't
(15:18):
anything to forfeit. If you have been keeping count, and
no I'm not expecting that you have, you would have
noticed that's only eleven names because The last of the
dozen is to me genuinely shocking. Josh Dawsey Political Investigation's
Washington Post. He has been part of virtually every major
(15:41):
Washington Post Trump story for years, all the document stuff,
all the Special Council stuff. Do you know what the
Trump people think of him? Do you know what they
say about him? Do you know what they say about
what they intend to do to the Washington Post? Does he?
And he breaks bread with them, he allows himself to
(16:03):
be seen with them. And please don't try to defend
this by saying that this is a way to cultivate sources,
because guess what, the Trump guys are also simultaneously cultivating you.
And frankly, the last six seven years of source reporting
on Trump shows that the Trump people are better at
(16:26):
it than the American political reporters are. But look at
all those scoops Woodward and Costa and Haberman and the
others got and didn't put in their newspapers, but just
sort of held onto, sat on buried for years. Woodward
about COVID and the danger it presented to the country
(16:49):
in real time, sat on them until they could cash
that book advance. And the politicians all smiled quietly to
themselves and said they didn't even notice that we got
them to not report something bad about it for like
twenty eight months. Jesus are they stupid? And please also
(17:11):
don't reply or defend this by saying that maybe manipulation
of reporters is a serious risk, okay, but a dinner
like that that can still just safely show professionalism and
courtesy on Dossy's part and the part of the other eleven.
It is quite the opposite. You are not supposed to
have personal relationships with key figures in a presidential campaign
(17:34):
or an administration. Some contact is going to be inevitable.
And no, it doesn't necessarily have to be adversarial, even
with the worst of them, but it has to be
minimal and only when necessary. And going to dinner with
a bunch of them as they roll out their attacks
on another candidate their gimmicks, there's nothing minimal or necessary
(17:57):
about that. And then again, it's who these people are.
Those three Trump people include one of the more morally
bankrupt members of the Trump administration in Miller, and the
goonish former fight promoter Chung and Lasavita, who rose to
prominence as one of the people behind the infamous swift
(18:20):
boat smear campaign against John Kerry. These are not just
sleezebag characters. These are anti journalists. And even if they
really weren't, let me tell you a story from the
not so distant past. When I finally dived into the
(18:40):
deep end of political commentary in August two thousand and six,
I got a lot of support from a lot of
prominent people in politics, and many formerly in government. And
there's nothing like getting a phone call and the guy
on the other end says, Keith, Hi, this is George McGovern.
I'm a fan. And there wasn't a damn thing wrong
(19:01):
with their phone calls or their notes of support. But
far and away the most support, and the most valuable
support came from former President Bill Clinton. Within three weeks
of my first special comment I got an invitation and
they said it was at President Clinton's personal direction, to
attend the Clinton Global Initiative here in New York and
(19:25):
then to join a private meet up with him. He
wanted to say hello. I went to my bosses at
NBC News to ask about the ethics. They were good
with it, provided that if anything I heard or did
was impacted by going that I make some sort of
disclaimer on the air that I had been there and
it had been gratis, when price usually was like fifteen
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grand to get in. President Clinton came down a set
of steps and came over to me and stared at
my face and said, hey, you look pretty good. I
don't see any scars. His support meant the world to me.
I shouldn't have accepted it. VI was it. Clinton continued
to invite me to events throughout two thousand and six.
(20:09):
I went to his sixtieth birthday party me and you
know eight thousand others, including the Rolling Stones concert at
the Beacon Theater. Katie Turr and I went as a
couple to the Clinton Holiday cocktail party at the Russian
Tea Room. Each time before I did anything like this,
I went to management so they knew, and later I
(20:30):
realized that each time I did that, part of me
was hoping that management would say, no, no, that's enough,
because I was absolutely certain that it did not impact
what I put on the air, and that not once
did anybody at any of these events give me any
stories on the record or off or try to influence
what I was saying about them. Nothing happened that I
(20:51):
even thought of reporting. And then it happened late in
two thousand and seven or early in two thousand and eight,
as Barack Obama began to challenge Hillary Clinton for the
Democratic nomination, her advertising took a dramatic turn to the
right as the primaries approached, and so did Obama. Suddenly
there was this commercial. It's three am and your children
(21:14):
are safe in a sleep, But there's a phone in
the White House and it's ringing. Something's happening in the world.
Your vote will decide who answers that call, whether it's
someone who already knows the world's leaders, knows the military,
someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.
It's three am, and your children are safe in asleep.
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Who do you want answering the phone? I'm Hillary Clinton
and I approved this message. First time I saw that ad,
I was stunned. I thought until the last line it
was a John McCain ad, or maybe a Giuliani. It's
sure as hell wasn't a Democratic ad. And as I
contemplated as a commentator, again not as a reporter, what
(22:00):
to say about that ad and the implications of it,
I hesitated. I knew Hillary Clinton. I knew Bill Clinton.
I was now imagining mitigating factors in this. They couldn't
know about it, or they didn't see the final version,
or they did it reluctantly, or they wouldn't do it again.
(22:22):
Certainly after the blowback, all my instincts said, Nah, she's
decided she needs a Republican ad to attack Obama's supposed inexperience.
She's willing to put that out and in the event
Obama wins the nomination, she's willing to leave that weapon
on the field for the Republican to use against Obama too.
(22:44):
And still I hesitated. I stalled. Days passed, maybe a week,
and then it hit me. I was pulling my punches
because the Clintons had slowly transformed from people I covered
and analyzed and commented on, maybe had met and respected
(23:06):
or didn't respect. They went from that to being people
I knew and liked, and the access to them was
something I valued. And that's after two parties in a concert.
I was already compromised. And these idiots in Milwaukee Tuesday
spent hours with the dregs of human civilization as they
(23:30):
played Trump's destructive, soul sucking, manipulative game of insult and attack,
And I bet not one of them, not the three
political directors, not the future hosts of Meet the Press,
not the CBS news chief political reporter, not the guy
from the Times, and not the guy from the Post.
Not one of them. Thought that someday, maybe, someday, real soon,
(23:51):
it could be those three guys again, sitting around with
a dozen different reporters, only the equivalent of the dysantis
pudding packets and the desantists debate bingo cards, whatever that was,
It would be about them. Let's sit around and have
a nice meal while Jason Miller tries out his attack
lines against Kristen Welker as we all try to get
(24:16):
Kristin Welker fired because she dared to criticize Trump or
Costa or Dawsy. When the crowd is twelve yahoos from
Breitbart and the Daily Caller and Newsmax, what are you
going to do about that? Then, Josh, we are where
we are in this country because since at least twenty fifteen,
(24:40):
our political reporters could not and would not process the reality.
The democracy itself is at mortal risk because of people
like Jason Miller, Stephen Chung and Chris Lsovita, and even
if they really, somehow are just good guys doing a
tough job, the guy they work for is the greatest
(25:02):
villain in this nation's history and an active, mortal danger
to every one of them and every one of us.
Eight years into this and there is still no fundamental
appreciation in the media that these are not just guys
who are more right wing than the other right wingers are.
They're not just some political ops guys. I've been covering
(25:25):
this type my whole life. They are people who will
put and have put Americans in danger in America. These
are creatures who have peddled hatred and racism and homophobia
and xenophobia, and have manipulated the American media to help
them do it. Another Trump presidency could easily see prosecutions
(25:49):
of journalists and roundups and imprisonments, and these reporters' willingness
to ignore that chance, whether it's fifty percent or oh
point five percent, to sit there laughing with people who
are metaphorically willing to kill them and maybe you can
(26:11):
forget the word metaphorically. That's nearly as dangerous to our
society right now as being one of the people willing
to do the prosecuting of journalists. You can see them
all in the line, can't you, In some funhouse mirror
twisted version of what just unfolded with the bookings and
(26:31):
mugshots in Atlanta these last few days. Climaxing tonight with
Trump turning himself in, Dana Bash and Kristen Welker and
Costa and Rachel Scott and Goldmacher and Dawsy and even
that slug crily because the Trump friendly journalists will wind
up in the same pit as the rest of them,
all of them standing around in this line, with the
(26:54):
guards on either side, still convincing themselves that they're not
really going to prison prison, They're just going in for
a few hours. And their pal Jason Miller and Chris
Lasovita and Stephen Chrungk, they'll be coming down to get
them out any moment now, because we don't jail journalists
in this country. And you know, even if we do,
(27:17):
remember that great State dinner we had the day before
the Milwaukee debate in twenty three, it's personal relationships that
count in this game. Jason and Chris and Big Steve
and putting packets, they'll be right over to get us out.
Of here, won't they also of interest here? Back to
(27:43):
Rudy and I knew Rudy was a crazy sleeze bag.
When knowing Rudy was a crazy sleeze bag wasn't cool?
Also the death of the leader of the Russian Wagner
group of Geny Pregosi, two months to the day after
his almost coup plane accident. True, first time I ever
heard of a plane falling out of window. That's next,
(28:07):
This isscountdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman postscripts to
the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline,
Secret Service Headquarters any other day of the goddamn month,
(28:29):
and this is your leads story right here. There are
Secret Service internal emails, and they show that special agents
were in close contact with Stuart Rhodes of the oath
Keepers in twenty twenty and treated him like some sort
of helpful amateur colleague rather than the dangerous white supremacist,
anti democracy convict in waiting that he is. CREWE. Citizens
(28:53):
for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington got those emails, just
a few, but enough to confirm that when a former
Oathkeeper testified, he heard Roads boasting that he had a
contact inside the secret and that he thought he heard
Rhads talking on the phone with a member of the
Secret Service. He won wrong. The emails are from September
twenty twenty and they pertain to a Trump visit to Fayetteville,
(29:16):
North Carolina. The Secret Service agent is telling others in
the Secret Service that he is quote the unofficial liaison
to the oath Keepers. Inching towards official, he reassures them
that they are quote primarily retired law enforcement former military
members who are a very pro law enforcement officer and
pro Trump. Their stated purpose is to provide protection and
(29:39):
medical attention to Trump supporters if they come under attacked
by leftist groups. The Secret Service agent included a cell
phone number for everybody else in the group, Stuart Rhoades's
cell phone number. The unnamed Secret Service agent was either
amazingly naive or he thought his colleagues were and he
could sell them on the Oath Keepers as some kind
(30:00):
of older boy scout troupe. He never once mentioned the
other stuff, the stuff they got. Rhodes and other members
of the group convicted of seditious conspiracy and Rhodes sentenced
to eighteen years in prison months ago. I suggested to
President Biden that perhaps perhaps the Secret Service was not,
you know, entirely loyal, and maybe he should you know,
(30:23):
replace them, all of them immediately. Dateline one hundred miles
north of Moscow. Well, nobody saw this coming. Guy starts
to lead his vast mercenary army towards the Kremlin to
straighten out that Vladimir Putin guy. Instead he stops, cuts
a deal. Putin welcomes him back with open's arms in Moscow.
(30:45):
Everything's great, and then he's in his private jet and
two months later to the day, the plane falls out
of the sky and this Evgeny pregaussion is meet all
aboard dead and there's video, lots of different videos. And
the plane you know, didn't descend her anything like in
(31:05):
a crash or a deep pressurization. It just dropped out
of the sky like they do in bad cartoons. And
the immortal words of Boris Badanov from Rocky and Bullwinkle.
I send Lady Spy with bomb into room where are
Moose and Squirrel? Who gets blown up? Me is Dante
Atkins writes on Twitter. The real shock and the pregosion
(31:26):
crash is that Russian air Defense hit a target still
ahead on this all new edition of Countdown Rudy Rudy,
(31:48):
Rudy from America's Mayor to a second chance bail Bonds Atlanta. Yeah,
there's something wrong with that narrative. You know what it is?
He was never America's mayor. He had two good weeks
maybe in two thousand and one. He was a psycho
in the nineties. And have I got a story for
you about how I found that out personally, coming up
(32:11):
first time for the daily round up of the miss Grants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst
persons of the world. The Bronze the Biden campaign. I
don't mind trolling the Republicans with billboards in Milwaukee before
their first debate. I mean, they really do serve to
get the political media attention, and as we've discussed previously,
(32:34):
that's quite a feat. But to roll out your first
national TV ad on Fox News before the Republican debate,
an ad which will now convert like eight or nine
voters if you're lucky, and give the salesman at Fox
the chance to go to other advertisers and say, see,
we are a legit place to spend your dollars. Joe
(32:56):
Biden buys airtime from us. Please, kids, ask one of
us old timers before you try too much snark like this.
Runners up CNN and Warner Bros. Discovery chairman David zaslab
back in the saddle after taking the summer off after
the self destruction of his boy Chris Lickt and the
entire entertainment industry. Semaphore News reporting that the leading candidate
(33:20):
he has to succeed Licked to run CNN is former
BBC chief Sir Mark Thompson, because clearly what American TV
news re needs right now is a sixty six year
old britt, especially one who, when he got involved in
BBC News, agreed it was a good idea to put
the leader of the avowedly fascist British National Party on
(33:43):
one of the network's regular news programs like he was
just another politician. Hey, you know, look, if you're looking
for somebody to both side CNN to death, you know
who I understand is available, this guy Chris Licked. But
our winner is the Washington Post. Once again, we are
all going to die Because Josh Dawsy sat there grinning
(34:05):
at Jason Miller at a Milwaukee steakhouse. And because the
Post will keep running headlines like this one until the
very moment the temperature in DC hits one hundred and
forty four degrees fahrenheit and the city spontaneously combusts. Quote.
Democrats and Republicans divided on causes of extreme weather post
(34:26):
UMD poll finds. Look, if your poll told us something unexpected,
like Republicans suddenly realize planet is on fire, maybe you
could use the dainty language then. Otherwise, just once, just once, somebody, somebody,
take a stand for truth. Not milk toast truth, just
(34:49):
real truth. Say it. Democrats understand it's climate change, and
Republicans are morons who are in denial because they make
money off being in denial. Just say it once. The
Washington pro democracy and pro authoritarian forces divided on appropriateness
of new American Civil War posts. Two days worst, Farstendens,
(35:15):
and the world still ahead on countdown. The only person
who may end up in legal trouble after two and
a half years of the Hunter Biden laptop could very
well be Rudy Giuliani. It continues his epic descent, which
(35:36):
began not in twenty sixteen, not in two thousand and seven,
not even after nine to eleven. I first met the
real clueless, useless Rudy nearly thirty years ago, coming up
next first. In each tradition of Countdown, we feature a dog.
Indeed you can help. Every dog has its day to
Miami and Snaggle. He is fifteen pounds. He's a handsome
(35:57):
Shechitsu mix, gray and white and black and curly, and
he lived in the woods by himself for four of
his five years. They found him in December. He had
to be at the vet for weeks before he was
healthy enough to go to a foster home. Teeth pulled,
infections cured. He's now fine. Paul Patrol Animal Rescue and
Sanctuary could use some help with his bills, but right
(36:17):
now their focus is finding him a home. Because he
lived as a feral dog, there are all kinds of
restrictions on fences and other dogs, but if you're near Miami,
you might be right for him. You can find Snaggle
on the Cugly website or on my Twitter feed. Donate, retweet,
or apply to adopt. I Thank you and Snaggles, thanks you,
(36:46):
and through the number one story on the Countdown and
my favorite topic me and things I promised not to tell.
I hear this question about Rudy Giuliani a lot. When
did his life go so horribly horribly wrong? Here was
America's mayor the rock in the hours of crisis, after
(37:06):
nine to eleven. What is he now? After literally years
of trying to sell the Hunter Biden laptop story. Who
does the Hunter Biden laptop story bite him? Four seasons gardening,
the mascara running down his face, gashes emissions at phony
election hearings, the Sasha Baron Cohen film. I mean, even
(37:31):
back then, I thought it was nuts that people actually
thought Rudy Giuliani was the front runner for the two
thousand and eight Republican presidential nomination. What he was widely
held to be just that in two thousand and six,
in two thousand and seven, and by the time it happened,
he was already on his way to spending millions of
dollars to finish last. But it was the final nail
(37:55):
in the coffin in which he still lives. At a
Democratic debate in two thousand and seven October thirtieth, before
the field shook out everybody but Obama and Hillary, one
of the other candidates was excoriating the Republicans and their
exploitation of terrorism and the al Qaeda attacks, and that
other candidates said of Giuliani, quote, there's only three things
(38:16):
he mentions in a sentence, A noun, a verb, and
nine to eleven. The candidate was Joe Biden. The phrase
a noun, a verb and nine to eleven ended Rudy
Giuliani's career, and Giuliani's dislike of Joe Biden, many decades old,
turned to hatred at that exact moment, which is why
(38:37):
we got to where we got to in two thy
and twenty. That was also the exact moment at which
any hopes Julianni had being elected anything anywhere ever again vanished.
But it was clear to me as far back as
September two thousand and one. That's sadly, what we saw
at that time was a bad man having a few
(38:57):
good days before that month was out. Juliani's response to
the attack on democracy was to himsel self attack democracy,
to propose that the November election to choose his successor
to be Mayor of New York should be postponed, or
that at least he should stay on for a few
months as co mayor because he was irreplaceable. There had
(39:21):
always been more subtle hints that Giuliani was never a
good man, just a slightly smarter one, a more devious one.
The venomous Rudy, the scheming Rudy, the a moral Rudy,
the Rudy with a bad song in his heart, leaked
out from time to time, and often inside the world
of sports, which is where I met him. You will remember,
(39:43):
Rudy Giuliani was a professional New York Yankees fan. He
always went to the games for free, mind you, dugout
seats for himself, his wife, his other wife, his next wife,
the kids, the friends. When I still had friends at
Yankee Stadium, they estimated Rudy used to cost them thousands
of dollars every time he showed up. He always left
(40:07):
via the clubhouse. He always wore a Yankees cap. He
billed himself as quote the number one Yankee fan. And
then when the Boston Red Sox were playing in the
two thousand and seven World Series, when he was campaigning
for president in New Hampshire, Rudy Giuliani suddenly announced he
was rooting for the Red Sox. This is like being
a Trump fan and announcing you are rooting for democracy.
(40:31):
But I went back with Rudy Giuliani even longer than that.
In nineteen ninety five or nineteen ninety six, I was
asked by the Deputy Mayor of New York City, Fran Writer,
and the staff of the Baseball Hall of Fame to
travel from ESPN in Connecticut, literally to the steps of
New York City Hall to MC an event for what
(40:53):
must have been thirty five members of the Baseball Hall
of Fame, maybe the largest group of them ever assembled
in one place in one moment in time. The Deputy
Mayor approached me and the Mayor a few steps behind
her on that gorgeous spring day. As she began to
introduce us, she realized he had begun to wander off. Ruddy, Ruddy,
(41:16):
she bellowed, He wandered back, Rudy, this is Keith Olberman
from ESPN. He's going to be the MC. You will
have to introduce him after you speak. The mayor seemed
to be having trouble focusing on me or anything else.
I thought of the old joke, just keep your eyes
on the Olberman in the middle. He extended a hand
(41:37):
missed mine, then recalibrated. As we shook hands, he grunted.
The Deputy mayor now roared at him, Rody, you have
to introduce him. His name is Keith Olberman from ESPN.
He's the MC. Juliani turned and looked at her like
he'd never seen her before. He grunted again. Deputy Mayor
(41:59):
Writer now screamed at Rudy Giuliani, repeat it to me.
He looked at me, then he looked back at her,
and he said, his name is Keith Alderman from ESPN.
He's the MC. With annoyance. Writer said thank you, and
Juliani smiled and wandered off again. And I half seriously thought,
(42:23):
did I just meet a body double? Is he a replicant?
Is he a well built robot? This can't be the
actual mayor? Well it was. I took my seat in
the front row of the stage that had been built
atop the City Hall steps. As the crowd gathered, and
it was a good one, maybe three or four hundred people.
The President of the Hall of Fame spoke first. The
(42:46):
Mayor sat next to me. Juliani leaned in at one
point and whispered to me, your name is Keith Alderman
from ESPN. You're the MC, I talk, I introduce you.
I said something encouraging, and he smiled broadly, like a
who was about to get some candy. The President of
(43:09):
the Baseball Hall of Fame wrapped up introduced Juliani, who
bounced up to the stage and thanked him and got
his name wrong. He then launched into a speech taking
credit for the great weather and the terrific early season
performance of the New York Yankees and the New York
Mets and the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants
who had moved out of New York in nineteen fifty seven.
But if he had been mayor, then they wouldn't have
(43:30):
moved out in New York, would have the four teams
it deserves. And look at all these great players. Let
me now turn it over to a good friend of
mine and a great baseball man. And he looked at
me and he forgot everything. Silence, titters of laughter from
the crowd. And finally he looked the other way behind him,
(43:50):
where the Deputy Mayor had her head in her hands.
Rudy Giuliani into a microphone that picked up everything he said,
said loudly what's his name? Who is he? And now
the titters of laughter in the crowd turned to a
little bit louder laughter, and some of the Hall of
Fame players seated behind me gave me pats of consolation
(44:12):
on my shoulder. Fran Ryder screamed, Keith Olverman from me, ESPN, DMC,
you repeated it to me. Juliani turned back to the
crowd as if there had been no way they could
have heard or seen any of this, and he said,
so let me turn it over to a good friend
of mine and a great baseball man, Keith Obolman our
(44:36):
NC from ESPM. I just sat there, more laughs, more
consolations from the players behind me. I can still hear
the laugh of the late Detroit Tigers great Al Kayline
rising above the others. Al later came over to commiserate.
As I thought, should I get there and say thank
(44:59):
you Mayor Dinkins, or better yet, thank you Mayor LaGuardia.
I then concluded, no, I can't do that. I'm representing ESPN,
I'm representing the Baseball Hall of Fame. As I thought that,
he said it again. So now I got up and
I told the crowd, sorry, I wasn't sure he meant me.
(45:22):
So if you are saying to yourself, what on earth
happened to Rudy Giuliani with that brown schitz pouring down
his face? I am saying to you he has been
this crazy for at least thirty years. You were just
lucky enough to have not previously noticed. It is all true.
Or my name ain't Keith Obelman our NC from ESPM.
(46:00):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from our
studio is high ontop the Sports Capsule building here in
New York. Here the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel.
They are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards
by John Phillip Schanelle, Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
(46:21):
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the
Olberman theme from ESPN two and it was written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Fauss. The Best Baseball stadium organist. Ever, our announcer
today was my friend Stevie van zandt everything else is
(46:42):
pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this, the nine
hundred and sixtieth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
him again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow. Bulletin says the news warrant till then, I'm
Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
(47:13):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
watched the Republican debate last night, brought to you by
(00:26):
magic dental implants. No, I'm not kidding. Well, so the
doctor says, my ears will stop bleeding within an hour
or two. I have one overarching surprised conclusion. I will
never minimize Trump. But he is not so far ahead
in the polls just because of his cult, maybe not
(00:48):
even mostly because of his cult. He is so far
ahead in the polls in large part because Ron DeSantis
is a pull string doll. Remember the Simpsons bit where
they have the al Gore doll and they pull the
string and it can say only one thing, and that
one thing is you are hearing me talk. I will
(01:09):
have Europe to pull their weight, but right now they're
not doing it. We want to motivate. I think our
support should be contingent on them doing it, and I
would have support in China to be able to take
to be able to take China and do what we
need to do with China. If you told me Ron
DeSantis was not actually on that debate stage in Milwaukee
(01:31):
last night, but it was just a hologram of him
being beamed in, I would believe you. DeSantis not only
repeated all of his one liners from the campaign, he
repeated his one liner from the first hour of the
debate about focusing on the mission. In the second hour
of the debate. He also had this exchange with one
of the moderators, Martha McCallum. She said, quote, that's not
(01:53):
the question, governor, and DeSantis answered, I know. DeSantis also
reportedly left the stage by himself without any of the
other candidates even saying goodbye to him. I will compliment
Fox and McCallum and Brett Baar and the producers and
give them credit for something They did not go all Trump.
(02:14):
There were no Trump's sound bites. There was even an
ad in the last commercial break telling Republicans they needed
to move on from Trump. The flip side to that,
of course, is we had to find out who these
people really are and be afraid. Tim Scott gave eight answers.
In four or more of them, he mentioned that he
grew up in a single family household. In another, Scott said,
(02:38):
you can't leave abortion laws to the states. Quote. We
can't leave it to Illinois, We can't leave it to Minnesota.
We can't leave it to Illinois. Doug Bergham debated, even
after ripping up his achilles tendon playing basketball, did you
know he grew up in a town of three hundred people?
I know because he included that fact in every one
(02:58):
of his answers. Mike Pence showed off his extraordinary talent.
He is the only politic I have ever seen who
can add lib but make it look like he is
reading a teleprompter. Asa Hutchinson mentioned the problem of fentanyl,
which I guess is fentanyl mixed with ethanol. Vivek Ramaswami
(03:21):
made the interesting choice to wear eyeliner. He also supplied
the helpful information that he is not running to be
president of MSNBC. Well, let me tell you that job
is not all it's cracked up to be. And at
one point Ramaswami seemed to Plagiariyes, Barack Obama. Finally, in
his last answer, he deployed every known English platitude except
(03:42):
prepare to meet Thy God and employees must wash hands.
All of them promised to do exactly whatever it was
you wanted them to do about abortions, except Nikki Hayley,
who noted that no matter what you may want in
a national band, there are not sixty senators to pass it.
And the most terrifying thing was that, with the exception
(04:04):
of Ramaswami, every one of them has a ten times
better grasp on reality than does Trump. My friend Howard Feinman,
raised in Pittsburgh, had the mose used on Ramaswami, and
that word was quote jag off unquote. All of them
desperately hate teachers unions, they told us. Repeatedly. Asked to
(04:27):
raise their hands if they believe there is man made
climate change, not one of them would do so. Asked
if they would support Trump as the nominee anyway, they
all waited to see what the other ones would do first,
and called on it. Christy said he didn't really raise
his hand, he was just making a gesture of some kind.
And as the former moderator of one of these megastage
(04:49):
party debates, I am chagrined to learn there is yet
another network that does not realize that the solution to
the candidates refusing to shut the hell up when their
time is over is to give them like five seconds
grace and then turn them Mike off. Overall, I don't
know if Trump's absence actually impacts his chances. But I
(05:13):
do know that it is never a good idea to
unnecessarily give your customer free samples of the eight other
leading products so they can figure out in advance which
one they will buy if they have to. Don't mistake
this as an endorsement of anybody else. But the in
house crowd in the Milwaukee arena did not boo any
(05:36):
of them off the stage, not even Pence. And while
those two billion brain cells were disappearing from my aging head,
Trump and Tucker Carlson were pleasuring themselves on Twitter, fantasizing
about oooh, somebody trying to assassinate Trump and then woohoo
a civil war. He worried that they're gonna try and
(05:57):
kill you. Why wouldn't they try and kill you? Honestly,
they're savage animals. They are people that are sick. Do
you think it's possible that there's open conflict? I can
say this, there's a level of passion that I've never seen.
There's a level of hatred that I've never seen. In
is probably a bad combination. Now back here on Earth one,
if Trump is in prison before the twenty twenty four election,
(06:21):
or maybe even before the twenty twenty four Republican Convention.
We may have to thank Kenneth Cheesebro, one of the
attorneys behind the fake elector's scheme. He invoked the provision
in Georgia law which affords all defendants a speedy trial.
And this is a real thing, and the calculation is
Cheesebro's motion could result in the trial beginning no later
(06:41):
than seventy two days from now Friday, November third, twenty
twenty three. I'm so far out over my skis that
when I turn around, I see them way back there
at the horizon. But the prospect that the democracy could
in part be saved because one of the henchmen of
the Eastman Trump plan wanted to get the whole crowd
(07:03):
of defendants into court in Recado time. That is one
of the first possibly delightful plot twists in this whole
dark stretch of American history, as is the continuing humiliation
of Rudy Giuliani. And no, he didn't go bad. He
was always an asshole. I'll tell you a story from
(07:24):
nineteen ninety six at the end of this podcast, but
for now, let's just enjoy the idea that he is
so scrapped for cash that he had to go to
a second chance bail bonds in Atlanta yesterday. And he
went there because there is no four seasons bail bonds.
I know, I looked. There is Larry Rusk Bail Bonds
(07:47):
of Jefferson City, Missouri, which claims to serve the four
seasons area, a little remote for Rudy's purposes. Jeff Clark
and Mark Meadows both lost their attempts to stave off
their arrests and processing in Atlanta while they try to
get their trials moved to federal court. And of course
Trump goes there tonight. And then there are the mugshots.
(08:09):
Giuliani clearly took the word mug too seriously. Ray Smith,
the Trump attorney in Atlanta, looks like he escaped from somewhere.
Jenna Ellis finally got that high school yearbook photo she's
always really wanted. Eastman Khrushcheff on acid. But clearly what
(08:31):
we need here is a go fund me to buy
the Atlanta jail booking photographer some real lighting equipment. Meanwhile,
something happened at that debate the night before the debate.
In fact that as recently as fifteen years ago would
have meant the ends of the careers of every reporter involved,
(08:55):
or at least significant punishments and emotions. But the degradation
of ethical standards in the DC media political industrial complex
has been so steady and so stealthy that almost nobody noticed.
In fact, I wanted to lead with this today, but
I just couldn't talk myself into it. On Tuesday night,
(09:18):
three Trump hoodlums, led by the disgusting Jason Miller, were
per Politico whining and dining a dozen top national political
reporters at a Milwaukee steakhouse called Rare. The point was
to let Trump be there and yet also remain in absentia,
(09:38):
and to continue taking his shots at Ron DeSantis through
his vessels Jason Miller, Chris la Sevita, and Stephen Chung.
They handed the reporters packs of putting snacks, a shot
at DeSantis and the eating pudding with his fingers story,
and they gave them debate DeSantis bingo cards, mocking DeSantis
(10:00):
as dysanctimonious and invoking his varying pronunciations of his own
name and how many times he says woke and Ron
Dessentis can melt in the hot sun for all I care,
Because the issue is not which fascist politicians thugs were
doing the insulting and which fascist politician was on the
receiving end of the insulting. The point is this, what
(10:23):
in the ever loving Christ were a dozen top American
political reporters doing having any kind of meal with any
three campaign hacks the night before they covered a debate.
These weren't a dozen frauds from Fox News and Newsmax
and The Daily Caller, twelve adults, twelve veteran reporters from
(10:49):
CNN and CBS and NBC and ABC and The New
York Times in the Washington Post. They thought it was
somehow appropriate to share a table with not just political operatives,
but political operatives who regularly encouraged the public to view
news reporters as criminals, as enemies of the people who
(11:09):
should be targeted, attacked, assaulted, and killed. Donald Trump, and
for that matter, DeSantis as well, believes in censorship and
punishment and lawsuits and revenge and violence, both symbolically against
freedom of the press and literally against reporters. And as
we heard last night, Trump is willing to employ the
(11:30):
prospect of civil war as a campaign plank of some sort.
And these reporters, not commentators, not TV hosts, reporters in
the field, reporters had no problem sitting down with Trump's
employees because I don't know, I can't even make up
(11:55):
whatever implausible rationalizations they employed for not quitting their jobs
in horror an hour after the check came and they
realized what they had done. I've seen the news media
in this country, and particularly the political news media, firsthand
for a quarter of a century, and I've seen it
start bad and narrow minded and subservient in nineteen ninety
(12:18):
seven and nineteen ninety eight, and then get worse and
worse and more and more amorl approaching the now perfect
balance in which access to the people you're covering and
TV hits and bylines are a one hundred and your
journalistic ethics are a zero. And if you're wondering how
(12:41):
their bosses reacted to these reporters letting themselves become compromised
in this way, and just to make sure it could
not possibly be more wrong or more obvious, compromised by
Trump people, well three of them at the dinner were
their bosses at the table. Rick Klein, the political director
of ABC News, and Mario Parker, the politics editor of
(13:03):
Bloomberg News. And David Shalien, the infamous political director of CNN,
the one who defended the Chris Licked Trump Live town
hall by saying, we obviously can't control what Donald Trump says,
That's up to him, and who insisted that Trump's whole,
you know, attempted coup thing quote does not make our
(13:24):
approach any different to him. Three bosses, three guys in charge,
so disconnected from the audience they served, from the nation
they supposedly serve. Do you remember that part of it?
Boys so not dedicated to anything but themselves that they
would break bread with these people. And by the way,
(13:47):
it would be just as structurally inappropriate if they'd done
this with Biden people. The only difference would have been
that the chance of catching some sort of food born
illness from Jason Miller and Chung and las Avita would
have been more than with Biden people. And the president
of the other nine at the table is, in its
(14:07):
own way, just as appalling. Danna Bash of CNN was
at the table. I wish I was surprised by that name,
but I was surprised by this name. If you're hoping
for improvement. When Chuck Todd leaves meet the press, forget it.
Kristin Welker was at this meal, along with another NBC
reporter named Dasha Burns, the chief election correspondent of CBS News,
(14:32):
Robert Costa, a CBS politics producer named Finn Gomez, Rachel Scott,
Senior congressional correspondent of ABC, Shane Goldmacher, national political correspondent
New York Times, Rob Crilly, White House correspondent of the
UK's Daily Mail, And if that name sounds familiar from
a previous episode, Rob Crilly is the guy who started
(14:54):
the whole Biden no comment on Hawaii right wing feeding
frenzy because he was the pool reporter who never heard
President Biden say that, but he and some other people
thought they could read Biden's lips at distance, and so
they attributed the quote to him. Rob Curley's the only
one of the twelve at the table here who did not,
to my mind, forfeit his journalistic reputation, because there wasn't
(15:18):
anything to forfeit. If you have been keeping count, and
no I'm not expecting that you have, you would have
noticed that's only eleven names because The last of the
dozen is to me genuinely shocking. Josh Dawsey Political Investigation's
Washington Post. He has been part of virtually every major
(15:41):
Washington Post Trump story for years, all the document stuff,
all the Special Council stuff. Do you know what the
Trump people think of him? Do you know what they
say about him? Do you know what they say about
what they intend to do to the Washington Post? Does he?
And he breaks bread with them, he allows himself to
(16:03):
be seen with them. And please don't try to defend
this by saying that this is a way to cultivate sources,
because guess what, the Trump guys are also simultaneously cultivating you.
And frankly, the last six seven years of source reporting
on Trump shows that the Trump people are better at
(16:26):
it than the American political reporters are. But look at
all those scoops Woodward and Costa and Haberman and the
others got and didn't put in their newspapers, but just
sort of held onto, sat on buried for years. Woodward
about COVID and the danger it presented to the country
(16:49):
in real time, sat on them until they could cash
that book advance. And the politicians all smiled quietly to
themselves and said they didn't even notice that we got
them to not report something bad about it for like
twenty eight months. Jesus are they stupid? And please also
(17:11):
don't reply or defend this by saying that maybe manipulation
of reporters is a serious risk, okay, but a dinner
like that that can still just safely show professionalism and
courtesy on Dossy's part and the part of the other eleven.
It is quite the opposite. You are not supposed to
have personal relationships with key figures in a presidential campaign
(17:34):
or an administration. Some contact is going to be inevitable.
And no, it doesn't necessarily have to be adversarial, even
with the worst of them, but it has to be
minimal and only when necessary. And going to dinner with
a bunch of them as they roll out their attacks
on another candidate their gimmicks, there's nothing minimal or necessary
(17:57):
about that. And then again, it's who these people are.
Those three Trump people include one of the more morally
bankrupt members of the Trump administration in Miller, and the
goonish former fight promoter Chung and Lasavita, who rose to
prominence as one of the people behind the infamous swift
(18:20):
boat smear campaign against John Kerry. These are not just
sleezebag characters. These are anti journalists. And even if they
really weren't, let me tell you a story from the
not so distant past. When I finally dived into the
(18:40):
deep end of political commentary in August two thousand and six,
I got a lot of support from a lot of
prominent people in politics, and many formerly in government. And
there's nothing like getting a phone call and the guy
on the other end says, Keith, Hi, this is George McGovern.
I'm a fan. And there wasn't a damn thing wrong
(19:01):
with their phone calls or their notes of support. But
far and away the most support, and the most valuable
support came from former President Bill Clinton. Within three weeks
of my first special comment I got an invitation and
they said it was at President Clinton's personal direction, to
attend the Clinton Global Initiative here in New York and
(19:25):
then to join a private meet up with him. He
wanted to say hello. I went to my bosses at
NBC News to ask about the ethics. They were good
with it, provided that if anything I heard or did
was impacted by going that I make some sort of
disclaimer on the air that I had been there and
it had been gratis, when price usually was like fifteen
(19:46):
grand to get in. President Clinton came down a set
of steps and came over to me and stared at
my face and said, hey, you look pretty good. I
don't see any scars. His support meant the world to me.
I shouldn't have accepted it. VI was it. Clinton continued
to invite me to events throughout two thousand and six.
(20:09):
I went to his sixtieth birthday party me and you
know eight thousand others, including the Rolling Stones concert at
the Beacon Theater. Katie Turr and I went as a
couple to the Clinton Holiday cocktail party at the Russian
Tea Room. Each time before I did anything like this,
I went to management so they knew, and later I
(20:30):
realized that each time I did that, part of me
was hoping that management would say, no, no, that's enough,
because I was absolutely certain that it did not impact
what I put on the air, and that not once
did anybody at any of these events give me any
stories on the record or off or try to influence
what I was saying about them. Nothing happened that I
(20:51):
even thought of reporting. And then it happened late in
two thousand and seven or early in two thousand and eight,
as Barack Obama began to challenge Hillary Clinton for the
Democratic nomination, her advertising took a dramatic turn to the
right as the primaries approached, and so did Obama. Suddenly
there was this commercial. It's three am and your children
(21:14):
are safe in a sleep, But there's a phone in
the White House and it's ringing. Something's happening in the world.
Your vote will decide who answers that call, whether it's
someone who already knows the world's leaders, knows the military,
someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.
It's three am, and your children are safe in asleep.
(21:37):
Who do you want answering the phone? I'm Hillary Clinton
and I approved this message. First time I saw that ad,
I was stunned. I thought until the last line it
was a John McCain ad, or maybe a Giuliani. It's
sure as hell wasn't a Democratic ad. And as I
contemplated as a commentator, again not as a reporter, what
(22:00):
to say about that ad and the implications of it,
I hesitated. I knew Hillary Clinton. I knew Bill Clinton.
I was now imagining mitigating factors in this. They couldn't
know about it, or they didn't see the final version,
or they did it reluctantly, or they wouldn't do it again.
(22:22):
Certainly after the blowback, all my instincts said, Nah, she's
decided she needs a Republican ad to attack Obama's supposed inexperience.
She's willing to put that out and in the event
Obama wins the nomination, she's willing to leave that weapon
on the field for the Republican to use against Obama too.
(22:44):
And still I hesitated. I stalled. Days passed, maybe a week,
and then it hit me. I was pulling my punches
because the Clintons had slowly transformed from people I covered
and analyzed and commented on, maybe had met and respected
(23:06):
or didn't respect. They went from that to being people
I knew and liked, and the access to them was
something I valued. And that's after two parties in a concert.
I was already compromised. And these idiots in Milwaukee Tuesday
spent hours with the dregs of human civilization as they
(23:30):
played Trump's destructive, soul sucking, manipulative game of insult and attack,
And I bet not one of them, not the three
political directors, not the future hosts of Meet the Press,
not the CBS news chief political reporter, not the guy
from the Times, and not the guy from the Post.
Not one of them. Thought that someday, maybe, someday, real soon,
(23:51):
it could be those three guys again, sitting around with
a dozen different reporters, only the equivalent of the dysantis
pudding packets and the desantists debate bingo cards, whatever that was,
It would be about them. Let's sit around and have
a nice meal while Jason Miller tries out his attack
lines against Kristen Welker as we all try to get
(24:16):
Kristin Welker fired because she dared to criticize Trump or
Costa or Dawsy. When the crowd is twelve yahoos from
Breitbart and the Daily Caller and Newsmax, what are you
going to do about that? Then, Josh, we are where
we are in this country because since at least twenty fifteen,
(24:40):
our political reporters could not and would not process the reality.
The democracy itself is at mortal risk because of people
like Jason Miller, Stephen Chung and Chris Lsovita, and even
if they really, somehow are just good guys doing a
tough job, the guy they work for is the greatest
(25:02):
villain in this nation's history and an active, mortal danger
to every one of them and every one of us.
Eight years into this and there is still no fundamental
appreciation in the media that these are not just guys
who are more right wing than the other right wingers are.
They're not just some political ops guys. I've been covering
(25:25):
this type my whole life. They are people who will
put and have put Americans in danger in America. These
are creatures who have peddled hatred and racism and homophobia
and xenophobia, and have manipulated the American media to help
them do it. Another Trump presidency could easily see prosecutions
(25:49):
of journalists and roundups and imprisonments, and these reporters' willingness
to ignore that chance, whether it's fifty percent or oh
point five percent, to sit there laughing with people who
are metaphorically willing to kill them and maybe you can
(26:11):
forget the word metaphorically. That's nearly as dangerous to our
society right now as being one of the people willing
to do the prosecuting of journalists. You can see them
all in the line, can't you, In some funhouse mirror
twisted version of what just unfolded with the bookings and
(26:31):
mugshots in Atlanta these last few days. Climaxing tonight with
Trump turning himself in, Dana Bash and Kristen Welker and
Costa and Rachel Scott and Goldmacher and Dawsy and even
that slug crily because the Trump friendly journalists will wind
up in the same pit as the rest of them,
all of them standing around in this line, with the
(26:54):
guards on either side, still convincing themselves that they're not
really going to prison prison, They're just going in for
a few hours. And their pal Jason Miller and Chris
Lasovita and Stephen Chrungk, they'll be coming down to get
them out any moment now, because we don't jail journalists
in this country. And you know, even if we do,
(27:17):
remember that great State dinner we had the day before
the Milwaukee debate in twenty three, it's personal relationships that
count in this game. Jason and Chris and Big Steve
and putting packets, they'll be right over to get us out.
Of here, won't they also of interest here? Back to
(27:43):
Rudy and I knew Rudy was a crazy sleeze bag.
When knowing Rudy was a crazy sleeze bag wasn't cool?
Also the death of the leader of the Russian Wagner
group of Geny Pregosi, two months to the day after
his almost coup plane accident. True, first time I ever
heard of a plane falling out of window. That's next,
(28:07):
This isscountdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman postscripts to
the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline,
Secret Service Headquarters any other day of the goddamn month,
(28:29):
and this is your leads story right here. There are
Secret Service internal emails, and they show that special agents
were in close contact with Stuart Rhodes of the oath
Keepers in twenty twenty and treated him like some sort
of helpful amateur colleague rather than the dangerous white supremacist,
anti democracy convict in waiting that he is. CREWE. Citizens
(28:53):
for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington got those emails, just
a few, but enough to confirm that when a former
Oathkeeper testified, he heard Roads boasting that he had a
contact inside the secret and that he thought he heard
Rhads talking on the phone with a member of the
Secret Service. He won wrong. The emails are from September
twenty twenty and they pertain to a Trump visit to Fayetteville,
(29:16):
North Carolina. The Secret Service agent is telling others in
the Secret Service that he is quote the unofficial liaison
to the oath Keepers. Inching towards official, he reassures them
that they are quote primarily retired law enforcement former military
members who are a very pro law enforcement officer and
pro Trump. Their stated purpose is to provide protection and
(29:39):
medical attention to Trump supporters if they come under attacked
by leftist groups. The Secret Service agent included a cell
phone number for everybody else in the group, Stuart Rhoades's
cell phone number. The unnamed Secret Service agent was either
amazingly naive or he thought his colleagues were and he
could sell them on the Oath Keepers as some kind
(30:00):
of older boy scout troupe. He never once mentioned the
other stuff, the stuff they got. Rhodes and other members
of the group convicted of seditious conspiracy and Rhodes sentenced
to eighteen years in prison months ago. I suggested to
President Biden that perhaps perhaps the Secret Service was not,
you know, entirely loyal, and maybe he should you know,
(30:23):
replace them, all of them immediately. Dateline one hundred miles
north of Moscow. Well, nobody saw this coming. Guy starts
to lead his vast mercenary army towards the Kremlin to
straighten out that Vladimir Putin guy. Instead he stops, cuts
a deal. Putin welcomes him back with open's arms in Moscow.
(30:45):
Everything's great, and then he's in his private jet and
two months later to the day, the plane falls out
of the sky and this Evgeny pregaussion is meet all
aboard dead and there's video, lots of different videos. And
the plane you know, didn't descend her anything like in
(31:05):
a crash or a deep pressurization. It just dropped out
of the sky like they do in bad cartoons. And
the immortal words of Boris Badanov from Rocky and Bullwinkle.
I send Lady Spy with bomb into room where are
Moose and Squirrel? Who gets blown up? Me is Dante
Atkins writes on Twitter. The real shock and the pregosion
(31:26):
crash is that Russian air Defense hit a target still
ahead on this all new edition of Countdown Rudy Rudy,
(31:48):
Rudy from America's Mayor to a second chance bail Bonds Atlanta. Yeah,
there's something wrong with that narrative. You know what it is?
He was never America's mayor. He had two good weeks
maybe in two thousand and one. He was a psycho
in the nineties. And have I got a story for
you about how I found that out personally, coming up
(32:11):
first time for the daily round up of the miss Grants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst
persons of the world. The Bronze the Biden campaign. I
don't mind trolling the Republicans with billboards in Milwaukee before
their first debate. I mean, they really do serve to
get the political media attention, and as we've discussed previously,
(32:34):
that's quite a feat. But to roll out your first
national TV ad on Fox News before the Republican debate,
an ad which will now convert like eight or nine
voters if you're lucky, and give the salesman at Fox
the chance to go to other advertisers and say, see,
we are a legit place to spend your dollars. Joe
(32:56):
Biden buys airtime from us. Please, kids, ask one of
us old timers before you try too much snark like this.
Runners up CNN and Warner Bros. Discovery chairman David zaslab
back in the saddle after taking the summer off after
the self destruction of his boy Chris Lickt and the
entire entertainment industry. Semaphore News reporting that the leading candidate
(33:20):
he has to succeed Licked to run CNN is former
BBC chief Sir Mark Thompson, because clearly what American TV
news re needs right now is a sixty six year
old britt, especially one who, when he got involved in
BBC News, agreed it was a good idea to put
the leader of the avowedly fascist British National Party on
(33:43):
one of the network's regular news programs like he was
just another politician. Hey, you know, look, if you're looking
for somebody to both side CNN to death, you know
who I understand is available, this guy Chris Licked. But
our winner is the Washington Post. Once again, we are
all going to die Because Josh Dawsy sat there grinning
(34:05):
at Jason Miller at a Milwaukee steakhouse. And because the
Post will keep running headlines like this one until the
very moment the temperature in DC hits one hundred and
forty four degrees fahrenheit and the city spontaneously combusts. Quote.
Democrats and Republicans divided on causes of extreme weather post
(34:26):
UMD poll finds. Look, if your poll told us something unexpected,
like Republicans suddenly realize planet is on fire, maybe you
could use the dainty language then. Otherwise, just once, just once, somebody, somebody,
take a stand for truth. Not milk toast truth, just
(34:49):
real truth. Say it. Democrats understand it's climate change, and
Republicans are morons who are in denial because they make
money off being in denial. Just say it once. The
Washington pro democracy and pro authoritarian forces divided on appropriateness
of new American Civil War posts. Two days worst, Farstendens,
(35:15):
and the world still ahead on countdown. The only person
who may end up in legal trouble after two and
a half years of the Hunter Biden laptop could very
well be Rudy Giuliani. It continues his epic descent, which
(35:36):
began not in twenty sixteen, not in two thousand and seven,
not even after nine to eleven. I first met the
real clueless, useless Rudy nearly thirty years ago, coming up
next first. In each tradition of Countdown, we feature a dog.
Indeed you can help. Every dog has its day to
Miami and Snaggle. He is fifteen pounds. He's a handsome
(35:57):
Shechitsu mix, gray and white and black and curly, and
he lived in the woods by himself for four of
his five years. They found him in December. He had
to be at the vet for weeks before he was
healthy enough to go to a foster home. Teeth pulled,
infections cured. He's now fine. Paul Patrol Animal Rescue and
Sanctuary could use some help with his bills, but right
(36:17):
now their focus is finding him a home. Because he
lived as a feral dog, there are all kinds of
restrictions on fences and other dogs, but if you're near Miami,
you might be right for him. You can find Snaggle
on the Cugly website or on my Twitter feed. Donate, retweet,
or apply to adopt. I Thank you and Snaggles, thanks you,
(36:46):
and through the number one story on the Countdown and
my favorite topic me and things I promised not to tell.
I hear this question about Rudy Giuliani a lot. When
did his life go so horribly horribly wrong? Here was
America's mayor the rock in the hours of crisis, after
(37:06):
nine to eleven. What is he now? After literally years
of trying to sell the Hunter Biden laptop story. Who
does the Hunter Biden laptop story bite him? Four seasons gardening,
the mascara running down his face, gashes emissions at phony
election hearings, the Sasha Baron Cohen film. I mean, even
(37:31):
back then, I thought it was nuts that people actually
thought Rudy Giuliani was the front runner for the two
thousand and eight Republican presidential nomination. What he was widely
held to be just that in two thousand and six,
in two thousand and seven, and by the time it happened,
he was already on his way to spending millions of
dollars to finish last. But it was the final nail
(37:55):
in the coffin in which he still lives. At a
Democratic debate in two thousand and seven October thirtieth, before
the field shook out everybody but Obama and Hillary, one
of the other candidates was excoriating the Republicans and their
exploitation of terrorism and the al Qaeda attacks, and that
other candidates said of Giuliani, quote, there's only three things
(38:16):
he mentions in a sentence, A noun, a verb, and
nine to eleven. The candidate was Joe Biden. The phrase
a noun, a verb and nine to eleven ended Rudy
Giuliani's career, and Giuliani's dislike of Joe Biden, many decades old,
turned to hatred at that exact moment, which is why
(38:37):
we got to where we got to in two thy
and twenty. That was also the exact moment at which
any hopes Julianni had being elected anything anywhere ever again vanished.
But it was clear to me as far back as
September two thousand and one. That's sadly, what we saw
at that time was a bad man having a few
(38:57):
good days before that month was out. Juliani's response to
the attack on democracy was to himsel self attack democracy,
to propose that the November election to choose his successor
to be Mayor of New York should be postponed, or
that at least he should stay on for a few
months as co mayor because he was irreplaceable. There had
(39:21):
always been more subtle hints that Giuliani was never a
good man, just a slightly smarter one, a more devious one.
The venomous Rudy, the scheming Rudy, the a moral Rudy,
the Rudy with a bad song in his heart, leaked
out from time to time, and often inside the world
of sports, which is where I met him. You will remember,
(39:43):
Rudy Giuliani was a professional New York Yankees fan. He
always went to the games for free, mind you, dugout
seats for himself, his wife, his other wife, his next wife,
the kids, the friends. When I still had friends at
Yankee Stadium, they estimated Rudy used to cost them thousands
of dollars every time he showed up. He always left
(40:07):
via the clubhouse. He always wore a Yankees cap. He
billed himself as quote the number one Yankee fan. And
then when the Boston Red Sox were playing in the
two thousand and seven World Series, when he was campaigning
for president in New Hampshire, Rudy Giuliani suddenly announced he
was rooting for the Red Sox. This is like being
a Trump fan and announcing you are rooting for democracy.
(40:31):
But I went back with Rudy Giuliani even longer than that.
In nineteen ninety five or nineteen ninety six, I was
asked by the Deputy Mayor of New York City, Fran Writer,
and the staff of the Baseball Hall of Fame to
travel from ESPN in Connecticut, literally to the steps of
New York City Hall to MC an event for what
(40:53):
must have been thirty five members of the Baseball Hall
of Fame, maybe the largest group of them ever assembled
in one place in one moment in time. The Deputy
Mayor approached me and the Mayor a few steps behind
her on that gorgeous spring day. As she began to
introduce us, she realized he had begun to wander off. Ruddy, Ruddy,
(41:16):
she bellowed, He wandered back, Rudy, this is Keith Olberman
from ESPN. He's going to be the MC. You will
have to introduce him after you speak. The mayor seemed
to be having trouble focusing on me or anything else.
I thought of the old joke, just keep your eyes
on the Olberman in the middle. He extended a hand
(41:37):
missed mine, then recalibrated. As we shook hands, he grunted.
The Deputy mayor now roared at him, Rody, you have
to introduce him. His name is Keith Olberman from ESPN.
He's the MC. Juliani turned and looked at her like
he'd never seen her before. He grunted again. Deputy Mayor
(41:59):
Writer now screamed at Rudy Giuliani, repeat it to me.
He looked at me, then he looked back at her,
and he said, his name is Keith Alderman from ESPN.
He's the MC. With annoyance. Writer said thank you, and
Juliani smiled and wandered off again. And I half seriously thought,
(42:23):
did I just meet a body double? Is he a replicant?
Is he a well built robot? This can't be the
actual mayor? Well it was. I took my seat in
the front row of the stage that had been built
atop the City Hall steps. As the crowd gathered, and
it was a good one, maybe three or four hundred people.
The President of the Hall of Fame spoke first. The
(42:46):
Mayor sat next to me. Juliani leaned in at one
point and whispered to me, your name is Keith Alderman
from ESPN. You're the MC, I talk, I introduce you.
I said something encouraging, and he smiled broadly, like a
who was about to get some candy. The President of
(43:09):
the Baseball Hall of Fame wrapped up introduced Juliani, who
bounced up to the stage and thanked him and got
his name wrong. He then launched into a speech taking
credit for the great weather and the terrific early season
performance of the New York Yankees and the New York
Mets and the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants
who had moved out of New York in nineteen fifty seven.
But if he had been mayor, then they wouldn't have
(43:30):
moved out in New York, would have the four teams
it deserves. And look at all these great players. Let
me now turn it over to a good friend of
mine and a great baseball man. And he looked at
me and he forgot everything. Silence, titters of laughter from
the crowd. And finally he looked the other way behind him,
(43:50):
where the Deputy Mayor had her head in her hands.
Rudy Giuliani into a microphone that picked up everything he said,
said loudly what's his name? Who is he? And now
the titters of laughter in the crowd turned to a
little bit louder laughter, and some of the Hall of
Fame players seated behind me gave me pats of consolation
(44:12):
on my shoulder. Fran Ryder screamed, Keith Olverman from me, ESPN, DMC,
you repeated it to me. Juliani turned back to the
crowd as if there had been no way they could
have heard or seen any of this, and he said,
so let me turn it over to a good friend
of mine and a great baseball man, Keith Obolman our
(44:36):
NC from ESPM. I just sat there, more laughs, more
consolations from the players behind me. I can still hear
the laugh of the late Detroit Tigers great Al Kayline
rising above the others. Al later came over to commiserate.
As I thought, should I get there and say thank
(44:59):
you Mayor Dinkins, or better yet, thank you Mayor LaGuardia.
I then concluded, no, I can't do that. I'm representing ESPN,
I'm representing the Baseball Hall of Fame. As I thought that,
he said it again. So now I got up and
I told the crowd, sorry, I wasn't sure he meant me.
(45:22):
So if you are saying to yourself, what on earth
happened to Rudy Giuliani with that brown schitz pouring down
his face? I am saying to you he has been
this crazy for at least thirty years. You were just
lucky enough to have not previously noticed. It is all true.
Or my name ain't Keith Obelman our NC from ESPM.
(46:00):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from our
studio is high ontop the Sports Capsule building here in
New York. Here the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel.
They are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards
by John Phillip Schanelle, Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
(46:21):
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the
Olberman theme from ESPN two and it was written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Fauss. The Best Baseball stadium organist. Ever, our announcer
today was my friend Stevie van zandt everything else is
(46:42):
pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this, the nine
hundred and sixtieth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
him again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow. Bulletin says the news warrant till then, I'm
Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
(47:13):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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Keith Olbermann
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