June 8, 2023 • 43 mins
EPISODE 222: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: The White House correspondent for the UK newspaper “The Independent” Andrew Feinberg reports that Special Counsel Jack Smith will ask his Washington grand jury to indict Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act and for obstructing justice – no later than a week FROM today and as early as today. The Independent also reports that Smith has been RATHER clever. The anticipated indictment of Trump about the stolen documents will be for violating 18 US Code 793, Gathering, Transmitting or Losing Defense Information, a part of that does NOT require that any actual documents in question to be CLASSIFIED, but merely that there is defense information involved and the accused stole it or told others about it or lost it. That in turn means that the cornerstone of Trump’s defense: a president can declassify whatever he wants, he doesn’t have to tell anybody he’s done it, he just does it by thinking about it with his superior mind – is irrelevant. Classified, shmassified. Those guilty of doing it “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years or both”
The timing caveat, quoting The Independent:” It is understood that prosecutors intend to ask grand jurors to vote on the indictment on Thursday but that vote could be delayed as much as a week until the next meeting of the grand jury to allow for a complete presentation of evidence, or to allow investigators to gather more evidence for presentation if necessary” unquote. The caveat from a news consumer’s P-O-V should be: as of recording time, there is no separate reporting confirming what The Independent published. However, The Guardian says Trump’s lawyers were told LAST WEEK by Smith’s office that he is a prosecutorial target on the stolen documents and obstruction of justice. The New York Times says Trump’s legal team was notified he is the target on the HANDLING of the documents, but no idea when. ABC, CNN and Politico report the lawyers were sent a target letter.
The Times adds “Aides and advisers to Mr. Trump spent the day in a state of high tension.” I BET THEY DID. The Trump response to all of this, on social media: “No one has told ME I’m being indicted.” The felon is always the last to know!
B-Block (13:37) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: CNN fired Chris Licht - at dawn - in Central Park - explains what caused all the damn SMOKE here. He was fired for being a schmuck. He should've been fired for not understanding that the cable news "middle" he pursued doesn't exist, will never exist, hasn't existed for 25 years. Journalism and "advocacy" and profits can all be made. You just have to be what he wasn't: Good At It.
C-Block (29:40) UPDATE: Fox is telling Tucker Carlson he can't DO a "series" on Twitter. They have a contract with him, he can't create video content for any rivals, and they're right. Besides, Episode 1 revealed his awful secret: Tucker Carlson sucks at just staring at a camera and yammering. Take the cash, Tuckson (30:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I've been talking about Chris Licht since August 19 of last year - the 15th episode in this series. I want you to listen what I said then, the day after he cancelled the network's only show that recognized the threat to democracy that was Fox News and its imitators.
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. Maybe
not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the
(00:24):
rest of your life. The White House correspondent for the
UK newspaper The Independent, Andrew Feinberg, reports that Special Counsel
Jack Smith will ask his Washington Grand jury to indict
Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act and for obstruction
of justice no later than a week from today and
as early as today. And not just that, but The
(00:48):
Independent also reports that Smith has been rather clever. The
anticipated indictment of Trump about the stolen documents would be
for violating eighteen US Code seven nine to three gathering, transmitting,
or losing defense information, which does not require the let
any actual documents in question be classified. It merely requires
(01:10):
that there is defense information involved, and that the accused
stole it, or told others about it, or lost it.
That in turn means that the cornerstone of Trump's specious
defense that a president can declassify whatever he wants whenever
he wants to, doesn't have to tell anybody he's done it,
just does it by thinking about it with his superior mind.
That entire defense is irrelevant classified sh maassified if it's
(01:36):
national defense information, you can't gather it, transmit it, or
lose it. And if you do, you quote shall be
fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years,
or both. The timing caveat. Quoting the Independent, it is
understood that prosecutors intend to ask Grand jurors to vote
on the indictment on Thursday today, but that vote could
(01:58):
be delayed as much as a week until the next
meeting of the Grand Jury, to allow for a complete
presentation of evadence, or to allow investigators to gather more
evidence for presentation if necessary. On quote, the caveat from
a news consumer's POV should be this. As of recording time,
there is no separate reporting yet confirming what the Independent
(02:20):
published that the indictment vote could come as early as today,
nor that it might be delayed until next Thursday, nor
that Smith's first shot at Trump will have eighteen USC
seven nine three written on it. However, Feinberg's rival Hugo
Lowell of The Guardian says Trump's lawyers were told last
week by Smith's office that he is a prosecutorial target
(02:41):
on the stolen documents and the obstruction of justice. The
new York Times says Trump's legal team was notified he
is the target on the handling of the documents, but
no idea when that happened. CNN says the lawyers were
sent a target letter. Politico reports the target letter as well.
ABC News reports the target letter. The Times adds quote,
(03:01):
aids and advisors to mister Trump spent the day in
a state of high tension. I bet they did. The
Trump response to all this on social media, No one
has told me I'm being indicted. Ah. The felon is
always the last to know. It had been Trump lapdog
John Solomon, ironically, one of Trump's official representatives to the
(03:23):
National Archives where all this began, who published a piece
yesterday claiming that federal prosecutors had just notified Trump's team
that he was a target of their investigation and had
told them an indictment in the document's case was imminent.
Trump then posted to social media quote, no one has
told me I'm being indicted, and I shouldn't be. I've
(03:44):
done nothing wrong. But I have assumed for years that
I'm a target of the blah blah blah blah. And
how could that statement also be true? Maga Haberman got
hold of Trump, and she says he would not answer
when he was asked if he was told he was
a target, and he insisted he had not been told
he was being indicted, and then he reminded her that
he was not in direct touch with pro secutors, so
(04:06):
it could be legally true but not factually true. We
know for a fact that Trump spokesman and apologist Taylor
Budowitch testified to the Miami grand jury yesterday because he
immediately self martyred on Twitter about it and then claimed
Trump was being persecuted and had to be reelected, and
(04:26):
all the usual stuff you have to say to keep
getting a Trump paycheck. The Times seemed to explain why
such a low wrung, low life as boodo Witch would
have been called. He may have been asked about a
statement that Trump allegedly ordered his staff to put together
in January of last year, twenty twenty two. This would
have been after he returned fifteen boxes of material to
(04:47):
the National Archives. In the original draft of the statement,
Trump said he had returned all the presidential material he
had that was in the draft. The actual Trump statement
of January twenty twenty two did not claim he had
returned all the presidential material he had. The Times reports
prosecutors are fascinated by the email chain within Trump world
(05:08):
about the draft statement. And I'm just guessing here, but
there could be some extraordinary admissions in that email chain,
like what the hell we didn't return everything or something
similar that would go directly to obstruction of justice. If
like me, you are trying to digest all this and
you are now saying, wait, that's it. One charge for
(05:29):
fine or a maximum term in the pen for ten years,
I want Trump breaking rock set sings saying same, saying
until the year twenty five, twenty five. Wait back to
the Independent. Its report emphasizes that an indictment on one
charge from eighteen US Code seven to nine three by
Jack Smith's Washington grand jury, plus whatever they're doing on
obstruction of justice, is far from all of it. That
(05:52):
Trump may also be indicted on other counts within the
espionage umbrella and potentially for obstruction of justice, and that
Jack Smith's mysterious Florida grand jury is still operating separately,
and further the indictments could emanate from there. The Washington Post,
in fact, reports that the bulk of indictments could come
from the Miami Grand jury, which could give us a
(06:14):
scenario in which there is one indictment in Washington today
or next week, and many more in Florida in the
weeks to come. Obstruction of justice, by the way, could
get you almost anything. Federal cases have ranged from probation
to a twenty year sentence to they don't even prosecute.
The Guardian had one more relevant nugget to report at
(06:36):
the Miami Grand jury. An unexpected face popped up. That
newspaper spotted Jay Bratt, the chief of Counterintelligence for the
Justice Department, arriving in Miami day before yesterday. It reported
that Bratt was expected to be leading the questioning of
witnesses in Miami like this pr Phlak Budowitch. Bratt's presence
is fascinating on many levels, not the least of which
(06:58):
is the fact that he was the first one at
the Justice Department to see Trump's foot dragging on returning
documents more than a year ago as worthy of prosecution.
More importantly, to the point of what's to come, I
will repeat his title, Jay Bratt, Chief of the Counterintelligence
and Export Control Section of the National Security Division of
(07:20):
the Justice Department, unless they've got it wrong. And he
was there as a witness to tell the grand jurors
his experiences dealing with Trump and his crowd. He is
not there unless this is an espionage act case, or
even worse, an espionage case in the more familiar sense
of the phrase, as in the defendants sold our secrets
to another country. There is one other detail reported here,
(07:43):
and I'll give myself a one second pat on my
own back, because the way I saw it, the question
was which of these animals is bigger? Your choice is
this mouse or this elephant? Back to the Independent quote,
Mark Meadows has already given evidence before the grand jury
and is said to be cooperating with the investigations into
his former boss. It is understood that the former North
(08:05):
Carolina congressman testified as part of a deal for which
he has already received limited immunity in exchange for his testimony.
A source who was briefed on the agreement claimed that
the alleged agreement will involve the ex chief of staff
entering please of guilty to unspecified federal crimes. The Independent
then says the Meadows attorney, George Terwilliger, said the guilty
(08:27):
please story is quote complete bullshit, un quote, but that
Terwilliger would not then answer any questions about meadows and
immunity or meadows and testimony. Oddly, Chwilliger was not asked
if he is related to baseball infielder and coach Wayne
Terwiliger or to Robert under Dunk Terwilliger Junior, which is
(08:48):
the real name of Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons. It's
been a long week. And on that note, I have
no sympathy for Mike Pence none, but maybe maybe I
have a sliver of empathy for him. He finally announces
his candidacy for the Republican nomination. He finally blasts Trump
(09:08):
by name. He says, on January sixth, Trump demanded that
I choose between him and the Constitution. I chose the Constitution.
I always will. And then he goes on CNN for
a presidential town hall and they asked him about Trump
and he says, no one is above the law. And
then he says they shouldn't prosecute Trump, and the story
breaks that Trump might be indicted in the morning, might
(09:32):
be indicted in the wait. I feel another song coming
on mine be indicted in the morning. Dan Lockser gonna charm,
pinch me and jail me, mak me and bail me,
(09:52):
but get me to the trial on time. Thank you,
Nancy Faust. Also event here, Tucker Carlson may be sued
by Fox, and Chris Lickt got fired by CNN, and
he got fired like five hundred feet from my house. Yes,
(10:13):
I share sang a few songs about that too, but
the real issue isn't. Chris Lickt was a guy who
at MSNBC we used to think eight paste. It said.
He was a guy who at MSNBC we used to
think eight paste, and who wasted thirteen months of the
collective life of CNN at a time when democracy is imperiled.
Wasted it by searching for a great white whale of
(10:35):
utterly neutral cable news that does not exist, and will
never exist, and has never existed in more than a
quarter of a century. That's next. This is countdown. This
is countdown with Keith Olbe. Postscripts to the news, some headlines,
(10:56):
some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline, CNN headquarters, Hudson Yards,
New York. Last Lickts cans Chris. If you hear anywhere
that Chris licked left CNN don't believe it he was fired.
Even The New York Times says he was fired seven
am Wednesday morning oft by Warner Bros. Discovery boss David
(11:19):
Zaslav in the middle of a walk through Central Park
near my house, which explains all the smoke we got
here during the day. Times also says two CNN anchors
recently gave Licked votes of no confidence, Anderson Cooper and
Jake Tapper. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it here,
(11:42):
but bluntly, I never thought Chris Licked was a good
choice to run CNN. Just between you and me, Okay,
enough with the self abnegating disingenuousness. I first mentioned Chris
Lickt here on August nineteenth of last year, the fifteenth episode,
and this is episode two hundred and twenty two, because,
(12:03):
as I suggested, if they had inducted a nationwide search
for the worst person to run CNN and they found
him or her and they were about to introduce that
person to the world and then said, oh wait, we
forgot Chris Lickt, they would have switched to Lickt at
the last minute because he would have been worse, and
he was, so it was assumed that my reaction to
(12:23):
this would be glee or at least relief, And as
a CNN alum who had his first job interview there
before they signed it on in nineteen eighty and who
worked there from years two through five in sports and
years twenty two and twenty three in news, I guess
I am relieved because the first of my points from
the beginning was, yes, Licked was at MSNBC when I was,
(12:46):
and I also dealt with him briefly on Colbert and
he was an absolutely irredeemable bastard. And worst yet, I've
worked with a lot of those, he was an absolutely irredeemable,
unqualified bastard. And I'm going to rerun my comment from
August nineteenth of last year just to give you a
real time flavor of my experiences and predictions. I'll run
(13:08):
that later. But my second and more important point was
that Chris Lick should never have been hired in the
first place by CNN because he was not only pursuing
a white whale, he was pursuing a white whale that
clearly does not exist, and everybody else in his industry
knows it does not exist. Chris Lick was fired at
(13:30):
least he was fired yesterday because of that magazine piece
in the Atlantic, and to a lesser degree because of
the Titanic like bad publicity of the Trump town hall.
He was fired because he made the company look bad
and got it bad publicity. If you have any doubt
of that, please note that two of the other three
people off by CNN were CNN's communications chief and its
(13:53):
publicist who infamously directed a screeching Twitter screed against Jennifer
Ruben of The Washington Post in defense of the town hall.
They were fired, and lickt was fired, and they were
all fired only because of bad publicity that reflected badly
on bosses. The point is that Chris lick believed two
(14:13):
plus two equals five. His bosses may still believe that
it turned out it does not equal five. I am
confident that Licked will spend the rest of his life
believing then it does equal five, and that he just
somehow failed to convince everybody else of that, or didn't
use the right graphics. It may still exist somewhere in
(14:35):
other media. It may be like those periodic reports over
the last century, that there really still is a passenger
pigeon somewhere out there, and the species has not been
extinct since the year nineteen fourteen. But there is no
middle in American cable news, and the pursuit of that
middle was doomed from the beginning, and it could not
(14:58):
have been successful under some other kind of Chris licked
from a different dimension who wasn't a schmuck and didn't
know what he was doing. One can argue that the
premise of going to the middle by people who think
Brett Baar of Fox was the middle, was a cover
story for throwing CNN hard right, And I think that's true,
but it's not really central to the key point. There
(15:20):
is no middle. There's no real middle in cable television news,
and there is no pretend middle. Nobody wants to watch that.
Ask the folks at News Nation formerly WGN America, which
claims quote, unbiased US news is its pretext, and which
has been on the air for more than two years
(15:41):
now with a lineup I have previously described as the
nick at night of cable news, Chris Cuomo, Ashley Banfield,
Dan Abrams, Elizabeth Vargas, and occasionally Bill O'Reilly. The audience
for a given half hour or hour on News Nation
is smaller than the audience for the podcast you are
listening to right now. And thank you for your confidence
(16:03):
in me. And don't get me wrong, but if a
TV news network cannot outdraw me on a podcast, there's
something wrong with the premise. You may lament the passing
of utter political neutrality in cable news, and given my history,
I think you would be surprised at how much I
am in sympathy with your viewpoint. But it is the reality,
and it has been the reality since the day in
(16:24):
nineteen ninety six when first MSNBC and then Fox signed on,
and it is not going to change. You can have
all the town halls you want and all the new graphics,
and it's not going to change. There is one neutral
news outlet on cable, and unfortunately it is a monopoly,
and it is a monopoly in large part because it's
(16:46):
nonprofit and it never really could succeed as for profit,
and it's called c Span, and other than one phone
in show, it just runs live coverage of hearings and
press conferences, and sometimes I watch just that and I
think that's biased. And yet there continues this quick sotic
pursuit of the illusion that some numerical formula of balance,
(17:08):
some calibrated both sides ism will eventually vanquish networks that
have a point of view. It won't happen. You could
take over Fox or MSNBC or CNN tomorrow and apply
that kind of rigor and calculation to the vetting process
(17:29):
to make sure that every statement of opinion is written first,
is based on fact, and is beholden to accuracy and
checking and rechecking. And you could clean up the propagandizing
that has consumed Fox and infected MSNBC and is the
founding principle of Newsmax and the like. And I think
(17:49):
that would make an unexpectedly enormous improvement in quality in
cable news, and maybe maybe an enormous improvement in audience,
or even just stop the hemorrhaging quality that are concept
that is so often overlooked in assessments of any form
of news or television or both. Quality. Mike Goose a
(18:14):
given network's ratings a little, but the cult of imaginary
objectivity is deeply seated in the management of television news
even to this day. They all want to go back
to Cronkite and Huntley Brinkley because they were young then
they want to go back to Cronkite and Huntley Brinkley,
without remembering that Cronkite and Huntley Brinkley and the various
(18:35):
ABC anchors of their eras were on the only national
television channels in the country, and if you wanted not
to watch any of them, your choice was usually either
cartoons or reruns of McHale's Navy. For the younger group
running TV news, it's a dream of returning to, say's
CNN nineteen ninety one and the Gulf War. And that's great,
(18:56):
and it's not a bad aspiration to keep in your heart.
It might help you rigorously check your sources and the
information on which you base your opinions. But in nineteen
ninety one, not only was CNN the only cable news
network in America, but it had been for eleven years,
and it would be for another five years. And it
had in fact destroyed rivals launched and then quickly killed
(19:17):
off by ABC and CBS. Yet seven and a half
years ago, on the off day of the twenty fifteen
World Series here in New York, I went to the
Essex House hotel and had a secret meeting with the
then chairman of NBC News Andy Lack, and the then
president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, and they offered me a
(19:38):
new show on MSNBC. I think the idea was ten
pm weeknights for half an hour with a co host,
on one important premise that I would never do another
political commentary on MSNBC in my life. You know those
(20:00):
what did you call them? Special comments? Those are the
worst things that ever happened to MSNBC. Andy Lack said,
you know that, right. I mean, what America wants is
the cable news version of The New York Times. I
mean I saw you once on there, and you were
so loud and angry about Bush that I thought you'd
lost your mind. I literally thought you'd lost your mind.
And I said to my wife, Betsy, I think he's
lost his mind. And I called all my friends. I said,
(20:20):
you have to watch MSNBC right now. Turn it on
right now. I think Alderman has lost his mind. And
everybody tuned in, and then we all tuned in again
the next night to see if they'd fired you. Yet.
We watched every night after that. Just in case I
did not explain to Andy Lack, I stopped myself. I
did not explain to him that although I disagreed with
(20:41):
his out of your mind terminology, he had not only
just described what success in cable news television now looked like,
but he had just proven my point that I was
right about it and he was wrong. He will never
believe otherwise. But the point he made was people watched.
(21:01):
That's the first stop on the process. So yes, Chris
Licht was a venomous worm who deserved everything that's happened
to him in the last year. And the bottle of
champagne opened at CNN headquarters yesterday was matched by an
imaginary one here at Olderman HQ. But he could have
been a prince. And the ultimate point is the idea
(21:25):
didn't work, couldn't work, and won't work. And there is
a larger issue that actually dwarfs all this comparative minutia.
Of course, exactly what are the two sides you are
presenting in the political news of this country? What are
you being objective about in the cultural news, in the
scientific news. One side is flawed, bumbling, self obsessed aging.
(21:51):
The other side it's trying to end democracy and replace
it with any flavor of authoritarianism it can get away with,
and Oh, by the way, one of the side effects
of that authoritarianism will be the elimination of places like
CNN by violence, whether it is run by this Chris
Lickt or some perfected Chris Lickt or me. When people
(22:13):
have asked me about balance and not taking sides and
advocacy networks and opinion, I asked them, how would you
have wanted me to cover Joe McCarthy, How would you
have wanted me to cover World War Two? The Civil War?
The American Revolution? Hey, yes, that may be true. On
the other hand, General corn Wallace insists. Lickt insisted to
(22:38):
The Atlantic that when his words, we are not an
advocacy network, we are providing something different. And when the
shit hits the fan in this world, you're not gonna
have time for that advocacy anymore. Well, the shit has
hit the fan. Its name is Trump, and to oppose
Trump shit, you must be an advocacy network. I guess whatever.
(23:01):
I'm just doing a job here. You can call what
you want. But practically speaking, just as newspapers lost their
monopoly on breaking news, and radio lost its monopoly on
breaking news, and broadcast television lost its monopoly on breaking news,
so cable news has lost its Cable news can be
(23:22):
a factor, maybe even a decisive factor, in coverage of
live events, but that is no longer enough. And if
you are internally rigorous about exactly what your commentators say
and how much they have to back up their opinions,
you can be both. You can be a pure news organization,
you can advocate for, you know, a non totalitarian America,
(23:47):
and you can also make money doing both these things
at the same time. Back when I was at MSNBC
doing those special comments, the ones that made Andy Lack
think I'd lost my mind, but he and his friend
started watching every night just to check that role that
special comments, Guy Roll was kind of balanced by another
(24:09):
guy at MSNBC who handled all the MSNBC breaking news,
the Pope dying, the bridge collapsing in Minnesota, the elections,
the blackouts, the inaugurations, the death of Michael Jackson. He
even had a side hustle doing football on Sunday nights.
He was the painfully objective face of that painfully objective
breaking news side of MSNBC and all that stuff, the
(24:31):
breaking news stuff that used to make money too, And
his name was Check's Notes Me there is no middle,
and more importantly, for cable news to be a success
financially and journalistically, there does not have to be a middle. So,
(25:12):
as I've mentioned, I have been talking about Chris Licked
and CNN since the fifteenth episode of this podcast last August,
I want to play again what I said then first,
So as if there weren't enough fun stuff for just
one day, Fox has notified Tucker Carlson that he has
breached their contract. They may sue him. This is about
(25:34):
the thing he uploaded to Twitter on Tuesday night, which
he identified as episode one of his new series. It
was sad anyway. I don't often take the employer's side
in stuff like this. In fact, I can't remember if
I've done so in this century or a previous one.
But Carlson says a Fox executive has told him they
want to sideline him until twenty twenty five, and bluntly,
(25:55):
they can do that with rare exceptions. And I know
what those exceptions are. I had one in my contract
at NBC. Television contracts basically require the network to do
only one thing. Pay you, not play you, just pay you.
That's all. So if Tucker Carlson's contract reads that he
can't appear elsewhere, even on Twitter videos. Fox can enforce
(26:19):
that as long as they send him the check. They
could negotiate a deal in which Carlson forfeits some or
all of the money and then is free to do
whatever he wants, but Fox does not have to do that.
They have total control of this situation. Carlson's lawyer has
responded to Axios that Fox is violating his client's First
Amendment rights, which is nonsense. I mean, if they stopped
(26:40):
him or tried to stop him from tweeting, that would
be probably violating his First Amendment rights. But doing videos
for profit or planned profit for another company that is
technically a rival to Fox, No, sorry, Tucky, you lose
plus as somebody who uploaded my GQ Resistance series to Twitter,
and then my Olderman versus Trump series to Twitter, and
(27:02):
then the promos for this podcast series to Twitter. Boy,
was that Tucker Carlson Twitter video underwhelming? He just isn't
good enough to stare into a camera and carry a
static shot for two minutes, let alone ten. He needs
to be doing those interviews with the reaction shots to
(27:22):
the guest comments where he looks like a dog who
was just shown a card trick, Tucker. I know you
don't care about my advice, and I don't care if
you take it or not. But if this is what
the Twitter series is going to look like, take Fox's
money and go on around the world, cruise through next
year at their expense. Yesterday, CNN canceled its weekly show
(27:50):
reviewing the media, Reliable Sources, the only such program in
mainstream television. CNN also fired its host Brian Stelter after
nine years at the network. I've had problems with some
of Brian's work since he founded the TV newser blog
while he was in college and two two thousand and
four later at The New York Times, but I've never
had any problem with his intent nor his work ethic,
(28:11):
and his stuff on CNN made him such a target
from the far right that you would have thought he
was me, or that he was on the air seventeen
hours a day on CNN rather than once a week.
The reason was simple. After MSNBC cut a deal to
stop calling out Fox News, pretty much nobody in television
(28:31):
called out Fox News and the rest of the lunatic
right propaganda machine except Stelter. His firing was no surprise.
You may not know it, but CNN was recently taken
over by a company owned by billionaire Trump donor John Malone,
and Malone intends to very gradually reduce CNN to at
best twenty four hours a day. Of both sides ism
(28:53):
think Michael Smerconish on a loop, Stelter did the most
damage to the right. Therefore, Stelter was the first to go.
He will not be the last. CNN's new president. Chris
licked is there to dismantle the liberal parts of CNN.
I know this because I worked with him at MSNBC,
where he decided that part of his job was to
(29:15):
try to dismantle the liberal parts of MSNBC. When Stelter
was fired, the Daily Beast's impeccable media guy Lachland Cartwright
reported that quote everything about this rollout points to Discovery
board member John Malone and Discovery CEO David Zaslov. A
source familiar with the situation told The Daily Beast, Chris
lickt did not want to do this. I'm sure the
(29:38):
quote is accurate, and I'm sure whoever told Kartwright that
believes the quote to be true, but it misses the point.
What Chris Lick wants to do is whatever John Malone
and David Zaslov tell him to do. He is a
corporate lackey. Worse, he's a corporate henchman. So here's the
story I promise not to tell. Perhaps the most amazing
(30:02):
thing about my ten years at MSNBC was the fact
that Joe Scarborough and his producers, especially his chief henchmen,
ever got their own show on the air. Because nobody
I have ever worked with in radio or television, in
sports or news in the twentieth century or the twenty
first ever spent more time trying to screw with other
(30:26):
programs on the same network than did Joe Scarborough. And
until just about the time I left in twenty eleven,
the guy he sent in to do most of the
sabotage for him was this henchman guy. The reason this
should matter to you now is Scarborough's henchman was Chris Licked,
the new president of CNN. And if they scoured the
(30:49):
nation to find the worst person to run CNN in
a time when democracy is threatened by one political party
and tepidly defended by another, it's Chris Licked. I know,
I know, you turn on the TV and you see
Joe's Barborough and you see exactly what I see, a blank, dazed, darting, paranoid,
(31:09):
no soul, stupid check engine light. Look. But if you
don't trust me, trust my Scars. My Joey Scars behind
that vapid face is a master saboteur. Early in two
thousand and eight, the late Tim Russert called me and
warned me that the GOP had upped its pressure on me.
(31:31):
He said he had heard from somebody in New York
that somebody in New York was going into the office
of the president of NBC News saying that Joe Scarborough
couldn't get his friend John McCain to come on to
his new morning show because I was so critical of
McCain on Countdown. Tim was not sure it was Scarborough,
but if it wasn't, who else could have gotten in
(31:53):
to see the president of NBC News other than Scarborough
or his executive producer. The evidence for the new CNN president,
mister Lickt, being directly involved in interfering with programming to
benefit somebody else's friends or political cronies, was vague in
two thousand and eight, but not at all vague. Two
years later, early in January twenty ten, the Republican candidate
(32:16):
to fill the Senate seat of a late Ted Kennedy,
Scott Brown, the former semi nude model, was at a
rally when one of his supporters talked about quote shoving
a curling iron up the backside of the Democratic Senate
candidate Martha Cokeley. Scott Brown clearly heard the remark from
the crowd and responded, quote, we could do that. On
(32:39):
January eighteenth, on Countdown, I did a brief commentary about
how unsuitable Brown was for public office. I said he
was quote and irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex nude model,
t bagging, supporter of violence against women and against politicians
with whom he disagrees unquote. I had quotes from Brown.
I had videotape of him disparaging his minority opponent in
(33:02):
a local election to her face. Had a debate to
back up what I said. An hour later, Joe Scarborough
commenced a tweet storm against me. Quote Olberman calls Brown
a homophobic, racist reactionary who supports violence against women. How
reckless and how sad It's no longer enough to simply
(33:23):
disagree with someone. I'm sorry, I just fell into my
Scarborough impression. Just as when Beck called a president racist,
this sort of rhetorical extremism must be discouraged. It chapened
the debate. End quote and impression. Now there was a
standing rule at MSNBC. You want to criticize another MSNBC personality,
(33:44):
go ahead, have a blast, but it must be on
the air on MSNBC, and the other person must have
an opportunity to reply in real time, in the same
show or in some kind of face to face way.
No hit and run. No Joe Scarborough tweetstorms. If you
(34:04):
go to signs them by name or by inference in
any other medium newspaper, interview, radio, social media, you were
to receive an automatic suspension. The next day, January nineteenth,
I called the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, and I
asked how long Joe Scarborough's automatic suspension was going to be.
Griffin asked me to come into the office a little
(34:25):
earlier than usual and to go see him. He said
he had already had a meeting about the tweets that
morning with Scarborough's executive producer, Chris Licht. Griffin explained that Scarborough,
according to Licht, considered Scott Brown a friend. More importantly,
Chris lickt warned Griffin that if Griffin followed through and
(34:45):
enforced the suspension rule, Scarborough would have no other option
than to go to the press and tell reporters, especially
reporters at right wing websites like Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller,
that he Scarborough had been suspended because he Scarborough was
a conservative. But I I was a liberal and that
(35:06):
I and not Phil Griffin ran MSNBC. What can I do?
Griffin was scared. I told him he could fire Scarborough
and Licked because they had just tried to blackmail him,
and eventually he was going to have to fire them
both anyway, but that I knew he would not do this,
and that I knew now that he would not suspend
(35:27):
Scarborough either, And Griffin did not suspend him. Partial score
Scarborough's friends two MSNBC's rules of behavior nothing, but Phil
Griffin did send out a memo to the entire company
insisting that anybody who criticized another MSNBC show or host
in another medium would be suspended, except Scarborough, who had
(35:50):
just done exactly that, and then threatened his own employers.
On January twenty fifth, Brian Stelter's old blog TV newser
got a copy of Griffin's memo. They wondered why Scarborough
had not been suspended, so they called the MSNBC president.
Then they printed quote Griffin responds to TV news or
quote an important rule was broken. I spoke to Keith
(36:13):
and he said, in the spirit of teamwork and the
free flow of ideas, he didn't think it warranted punishment
or suspension. I also talked to Joe and he apologized
to me. That's why I made the decision that this
didn't rise to the level of punishment. But I felt
it was necessary to reiterate my long standing policy one
hundred percent bull crap. Reiterate my long standing policy which
(36:36):
I just did not enforce against Joe Scarborough. The whole
thing was totally fabricated. Lickt and Scarborough had threatened to
smear their own bosses in the right wing echo chamber.
Should have been both fired on the spot. In May
twenty ten, Scarborough said something on the air about a
Democrat getting away with not being investigated for something. I
(36:57):
forget the details. I didn't bother to look it up.
You can if you want. Then Marcos Malitsus, the editor
of the Daily coastwebs and not just a regular contributor
to Countdown, but somebody who had been promoting the show
and the MSNBC brand on that website every day for
five years. Marcos sent a snarky but legitimate tweet questioning
(37:18):
Scarborough's credentials to criticize others who had not been investigated
for stuff, Marcos invoked the staffer who died in an
accident in Joe Scarborough's congressional office. Scarborough then attacked Melitsus
on Twitter, inaccurately claiming Malitsus had accused Scarborough of murder.
A few days after that, I got a phone call
(37:39):
from the MSNBC president, Phil Griffin. And if he got
a phone call rather than a call to come into
his office, you know he was really scared. Griffin told me,
Chris lickt has been in to see me. Joe won't
put up with having Marcus Mlitzus on his network anymore.
Not only that, but Lick says many of Joe's friends
who also appear in Dayside and Primetime won't come on
(38:00):
if Marcos Malitsus is permitted to continue. Here, Chris is
insisting that Marcos be banned from MSNBC immediately. Chris says
he's afraid that if we don't do that, Joe won't
come into work tomorrow. Upon hearing that, I laughed and
I congratulated Phil Griffin on the clear win win he'd
just been given. But Phil was very bad at enforcing
(38:24):
MSNBC's rules, but very good at creating new ones on
the spot to protect Joe Scarborough and Chris Lickt and
their friends, I'm banning Thelitzes from any further appearances on MSNBC,
I said, Phil. He's a contributor to my show. You
are suspending my contributor who has driven hundreds of thousands
(38:45):
of viewers to count Down at MSNBC, and I don't
have any say in it. You are owned by Joe
Scarborough and Chris Lickt. What you now have to worry
about is whether I tell this story on the air
tonight or I just wait and tell it later. Phil
now got conciliatory because he was scared again and said
it could be just a suspension if I cooperated, So
(39:08):
I called Marcos. He said he enjoyed his contributions to Countdown.
He also did occasional appearances on the old Ed Schultz
MSNBC show, and he said if there were chants at
resuming them, he'd preferred to at least try that. So
Marcus and I went along with Griffin suspending Marcus Malitzus,
and to my knowledge, Marcus Malitzus has not been seen
(39:28):
on MSNBC since. I wish I had better notes on
some of my conversations from the two thousand and eight, nine,
ten eleven era about those conversations with the hosts and
the producers of the other shows like Schultz and Rachel
Maddow's Show, and even Chris Matthews and Hardball. I must
have heard a variation of this statement a dozen times
(39:49):
from these people. Guess who was in Griffin's office explaining
that such and such as Joe's friend and Phil really
needs to make sure we lay off him. Chris licked
It was usually an expletive in the middle between Chris
and Lickt. I remember one of my producers at the
MSNBC version of count Down telling me that one of
the other producers told him that Lickt had gone to
NBC News President Steve Cappus with an actual list of
(40:13):
Republicans that Mattow and Oberman needed to stop criticizing because
they were Joe's here's the word again friends, and we
were hurting morning Joe. What's amazing is that, setting aside
the issues of unrevealed torrid love affairs, when CNN fired
its nine PM host Chris Cuomo, president Jeff Zooker, and
(40:36):
senior vice president Alison Gollist, they fired them in essence
because they interfered with CNN content and practices in order
to do favors for people who were their friends or,
in Cuomo's case, they're relatives at MSNBC. Interfering with MSNBC
content and practices to do favors for friends was seemingly
(40:59):
the only reason Chris Lickt had a job. So CNN
got rid of left wingers for a terrible violation of
journalistic ethics and then hired as president a right wing
henchman who had committed exactly the same journalistic ethical problems
and who, for his act the first one of his
career at CNN, killed off the only national television show
(41:22):
that regularly held up Fox News, Newsmax and all the
rest to the world to show that they were the
threats to democracy that they are. This is CNN, and
(41:50):
now he belongs to the ages. I've done all the
damage I can do here. Countdown has come to you
from the Vin Scully Studio at the world Headquarters of
the Alderman Broadcasting Empire in New York. Here are the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by
Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanel, who are the Countdown
musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, Guitars,
(42:12):
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman
theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis Curtis CBESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust,
the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
my friend Larry David, And everything else is pretty much
(42:34):
my fault. So that's countdown for this the eight hundred
and eighty fourth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Don't
forget to keep arresting him while we still can, like
today and every day for the rest of his life.
The next schedule Countdown is tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman.
(42:54):
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. 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. Maybe
not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the
(00:24):
rest of your life. The White House correspondent for the
UK newspaper The Independent, Andrew Feinberg, reports that Special Counsel
Jack Smith will ask his Washington Grand jury to indict
Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act and for obstruction
of justice no later than a week from today and
as early as today. And not just that, but The
(00:48):
Independent also reports that Smith has been rather clever. The
anticipated indictment of Trump about the stolen documents would be
for violating eighteen US Code seven nine to three gathering, transmitting,
or losing defense information, which does not require the let
any actual documents in question be classified. It merely requires
(01:10):
that there is defense information involved, and that the accused
stole it, or told others about it, or lost it.
That in turn means that the cornerstone of Trump's specious
defense that a president can declassify whatever he wants whenever
he wants to, doesn't have to tell anybody he's done it,
just does it by thinking about it with his superior mind.
That entire defense is irrelevant classified sh maassified if it's
(01:36):
national defense information, you can't gather it, transmit it, or
lose it. And if you do, you quote shall be
fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years,
or both. The timing caveat. Quoting the Independent, it is
understood that prosecutors intend to ask Grand jurors to vote
on the indictment on Thursday today, but that vote could
(01:58):
be delayed as much as a week until the next
meeting of the Grand Jury, to allow for a complete
presentation of evadence, or to allow investigators to gather more
evidence for presentation if necessary. On quote, the caveat from
a news consumer's POV should be this. As of recording time,
there is no separate reporting yet confirming what the Independent
(02:20):
published that the indictment vote could come as early as today,
nor that it might be delayed until next Thursday, nor
that Smith's first shot at Trump will have eighteen USC
seven nine three written on it. However, Feinberg's rival Hugo
Lowell of The Guardian says Trump's lawyers were told last
week by Smith's office that he is a prosecutorial target
(02:41):
on the stolen documents and the obstruction of justice. The
new York Times says Trump's legal team was notified he
is the target on the handling of the documents, but
no idea when that happened. CNN says the lawyers were
sent a target letter. Politico reports the target letter as well.
ABC News reports the target letter. The Times adds quote,
(03:01):
aids and advisors to mister Trump spent the day in
a state of high tension. I bet they did. The
Trump response to all this on social media, No one
has told me I'm being indicted. Ah. The felon is
always the last to know. It had been Trump lapdog
John Solomon, ironically, one of Trump's official representatives to the
(03:23):
National Archives where all this began, who published a piece
yesterday claiming that federal prosecutors had just notified Trump's team
that he was a target of their investigation and had
told them an indictment in the document's case was imminent.
Trump then posted to social media quote, no one has
told me I'm being indicted, and I shouldn't be. I've
(03:44):
done nothing wrong. But I have assumed for years that
I'm a target of the blah blah blah blah. And
how could that statement also be true? Maga Haberman got
hold of Trump, and she says he would not answer
when he was asked if he was told he was
a target, and he insisted he had not been told
he was being indicted, and then he reminded her that
he was not in direct touch with pro secutors, so
(04:06):
it could be legally true but not factually true. We
know for a fact that Trump spokesman and apologist Taylor
Budowitch testified to the Miami grand jury yesterday because he
immediately self martyred on Twitter about it and then claimed
Trump was being persecuted and had to be reelected, and
(04:26):
all the usual stuff you have to say to keep
getting a Trump paycheck. The Times seemed to explain why
such a low wrung, low life as boodo Witch would
have been called. He may have been asked about a
statement that Trump allegedly ordered his staff to put together
in January of last year, twenty twenty two. This would
have been after he returned fifteen boxes of material to
(04:47):
the National Archives. In the original draft of the statement,
Trump said he had returned all the presidential material he
had that was in the draft. The actual Trump statement
of January twenty twenty two did not claim he had
returned all the presidential material he had. The Times reports
prosecutors are fascinated by the email chain within Trump world
(05:08):
about the draft statement. And I'm just guessing here, but
there could be some extraordinary admissions in that email chain,
like what the hell we didn't return everything or something
similar that would go directly to obstruction of justice. If
like me, you are trying to digest all this and
you are now saying, wait, that's it. One charge for
(05:29):
fine or a maximum term in the pen for ten years,
I want Trump breaking rock set sings saying same, saying
until the year twenty five, twenty five. Wait back to
the Independent. Its report emphasizes that an indictment on one
charge from eighteen US Code seven to nine three by
Jack Smith's Washington grand jury, plus whatever they're doing on
obstruction of justice, is far from all of it. That
(05:52):
Trump may also be indicted on other counts within the
espionage umbrella and potentially for obstruction of justice, and that
Jack Smith's mysterious Florida grand jury is still operating separately,
and further the indictments could emanate from there. The Washington Post,
in fact, reports that the bulk of indictments could come
from the Miami Grand jury, which could give us a
(06:14):
scenario in which there is one indictment in Washington today
or next week, and many more in Florida in the
weeks to come. Obstruction of justice, by the way, could
get you almost anything. Federal cases have ranged from probation
to a twenty year sentence to they don't even prosecute.
The Guardian had one more relevant nugget to report at
(06:36):
the Miami Grand jury. An unexpected face popped up. That
newspaper spotted Jay Bratt, the chief of Counterintelligence for the
Justice Department, arriving in Miami day before yesterday. It reported
that Bratt was expected to be leading the questioning of
witnesses in Miami like this pr Phlak Budowitch. Bratt's presence
is fascinating on many levels, not the least of which
(06:58):
is the fact that he was the first one at
the Justice Department to see Trump's foot dragging on returning
documents more than a year ago as worthy of prosecution.
More importantly, to the point of what's to come, I
will repeat his title, Jay Bratt, Chief of the Counterintelligence
and Export Control Section of the National Security Division of
(07:20):
the Justice Department, unless they've got it wrong. And he
was there as a witness to tell the grand jurors
his experiences dealing with Trump and his crowd. He is
not there unless this is an espionage act case, or
even worse, an espionage case in the more familiar sense
of the phrase, as in the defendants sold our secrets
to another country. There is one other detail reported here,
(07:43):
and I'll give myself a one second pat on my
own back, because the way I saw it, the question
was which of these animals is bigger? Your choice is
this mouse or this elephant? Back to the Independent quote,
Mark Meadows has already given evidence before the grand jury
and is said to be cooperating with the investigations into
his former boss. It is understood that the former North
(08:05):
Carolina congressman testified as part of a deal for which
he has already received limited immunity in exchange for his testimony.
A source who was briefed on the agreement claimed that
the alleged agreement will involve the ex chief of staff
entering please of guilty to unspecified federal crimes. The Independent
then says the Meadows attorney, George Terwilliger, said the guilty
(08:27):
please story is quote complete bullshit, un quote, but that
Terwilliger would not then answer any questions about meadows and
immunity or meadows and testimony. Oddly, Chwilliger was not asked
if he is related to baseball infielder and coach Wayne
Terwiliger or to Robert under Dunk Terwilliger Junior, which is
(08:48):
the real name of Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons. It's
been a long week. And on that note, I have
no sympathy for Mike Pence none, but maybe maybe I
have a sliver of empathy for him. He finally announces
his candidacy for the Republican nomination. He finally blasts Trump
(09:08):
by name. He says, on January sixth, Trump demanded that
I choose between him and the Constitution. I chose the Constitution.
I always will. And then he goes on CNN for
a presidential town hall and they asked him about Trump
and he says, no one is above the law. And
then he says they shouldn't prosecute Trump, and the story
breaks that Trump might be indicted in the morning, might
(09:32):
be indicted in the wait. I feel another song coming
on mine be indicted in the morning. Dan Lockser gonna charm,
pinch me and jail me, mak me and bail me,
(09:52):
but get me to the trial on time. Thank you,
Nancy Faust. Also event here, Tucker Carlson may be sued
by Fox, and Chris Lickt got fired by CNN, and
he got fired like five hundred feet from my house. Yes,
(10:13):
I share sang a few songs about that too, but
the real issue isn't. Chris Lickt was a guy who
at MSNBC we used to think eight paste. It said.
He was a guy who at MSNBC we used to
think eight paste, and who wasted thirteen months of the
collective life of CNN at a time when democracy is imperiled.
Wasted it by searching for a great white whale of
(10:35):
utterly neutral cable news that does not exist, and will
never exist, and has never existed in more than a
quarter of a century. That's next. This is countdown. This
is countdown with Keith Olbe. Postscripts to the news, some headlines,
(10:56):
some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline, CNN headquarters, Hudson Yards,
New York. Last Lickts cans Chris. If you hear anywhere
that Chris licked left CNN don't believe it he was fired.
Even The New York Times says he was fired seven
am Wednesday morning oft by Warner Bros. Discovery boss David
(11:19):
Zaslav in the middle of a walk through Central Park
near my house, which explains all the smoke we got
here during the day. Times also says two CNN anchors
recently gave Licked votes of no confidence, Anderson Cooper and
Jake Tapper. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it here,
(11:42):
but bluntly, I never thought Chris Licked was a good
choice to run CNN. Just between you and me, Okay,
enough with the self abnegating disingenuousness. I first mentioned Chris
Lickt here on August nineteenth of last year, the fifteenth episode,
and this is episode two hundred and twenty two, because,
(12:03):
as I suggested, if they had inducted a nationwide search
for the worst person to run CNN and they found
him or her and they were about to introduce that
person to the world and then said, oh wait, we
forgot Chris Lickt, they would have switched to Lickt at
the last minute because he would have been worse, and
he was, so it was assumed that my reaction to
(12:23):
this would be glee or at least relief, And as
a CNN alum who had his first job interview there
before they signed it on in nineteen eighty and who
worked there from years two through five in sports and
years twenty two and twenty three in news, I guess
I am relieved because the first of my points from
the beginning was, yes, Licked was at MSNBC when I was,
(12:46):
and I also dealt with him briefly on Colbert and
he was an absolutely irredeemable bastard. And worst yet, I've
worked with a lot of those, he was an absolutely irredeemable,
unqualified bastard. And I'm going to rerun my comment from
August nineteenth of last year just to give you a
real time flavor of my experiences and predictions. I'll run
(13:08):
that later. But my second and more important point was
that Chris Lick should never have been hired in the
first place by CNN because he was not only pursuing
a white whale, he was pursuing a white whale that
clearly does not exist, and everybody else in his industry
knows it does not exist. Chris Lick was fired at
(13:30):
least he was fired yesterday because of that magazine piece
in the Atlantic, and to a lesser degree because of
the Titanic like bad publicity of the Trump town hall.
He was fired because he made the company look bad
and got it bad publicity. If you have any doubt
of that, please note that two of the other three
people off by CNN were CNN's communications chief and its
(13:53):
publicist who infamously directed a screeching Twitter screed against Jennifer
Ruben of The Washington Post in defense of the town hall.
They were fired, and lickt was fired, and they were
all fired only because of bad publicity that reflected badly
on bosses. The point is that Chris lick believed two
(14:13):
plus two equals five. His bosses may still believe that
it turned out it does not equal five. I am
confident that Licked will spend the rest of his life
believing then it does equal five, and that he just
somehow failed to convince everybody else of that, or didn't
use the right graphics. It may still exist somewhere in
(14:35):
other media. It may be like those periodic reports over
the last century, that there really still is a passenger
pigeon somewhere out there, and the species has not been
extinct since the year nineteen fourteen. But there is no
middle in American cable news, and the pursuit of that
middle was doomed from the beginning, and it could not
(14:58):
have been successful under some other kind of Chris licked
from a different dimension who wasn't a schmuck and didn't
know what he was doing. One can argue that the
premise of going to the middle by people who think
Brett Baar of Fox was the middle, was a cover
story for throwing CNN hard right, And I think that's true,
but it's not really central to the key point. There
(15:20):
is no middle. There's no real middle in cable television news,
and there is no pretend middle. Nobody wants to watch that.
Ask the folks at News Nation formerly WGN America, which
claims quote, unbiased US news is its pretext, and which
has been on the air for more than two years
(15:41):
now with a lineup I have previously described as the
nick at night of cable news, Chris Cuomo, Ashley Banfield,
Dan Abrams, Elizabeth Vargas, and occasionally Bill O'Reilly. The audience
for a given half hour or hour on News Nation
is smaller than the audience for the podcast you are
listening to right now. And thank you for your confidence
(16:03):
in me. And don't get me wrong, but if a
TV news network cannot outdraw me on a podcast, there's
something wrong with the premise. You may lament the passing
of utter political neutrality in cable news, and given my history,
I think you would be surprised at how much I
am in sympathy with your viewpoint. But it is the reality,
and it has been the reality since the day in
(16:24):
nineteen ninety six when first MSNBC and then Fox signed on,
and it is not going to change. You can have
all the town halls you want and all the new graphics,
and it's not going to change. There is one neutral
news outlet on cable, and unfortunately it is a monopoly,
and it is a monopoly in large part because it's
(16:46):
nonprofit and it never really could succeed as for profit,
and it's called c Span, and other than one phone
in show, it just runs live coverage of hearings and
press conferences, and sometimes I watch just that and I
think that's biased. And yet there continues this quick sotic
pursuit of the illusion that some numerical formula of balance,
(17:08):
some calibrated both sides ism will eventually vanquish networks that
have a point of view. It won't happen. You could
take over Fox or MSNBC or CNN tomorrow and apply
that kind of rigor and calculation to the vetting process
(17:29):
to make sure that every statement of opinion is written first,
is based on fact, and is beholden to accuracy and
checking and rechecking. And you could clean up the propagandizing
that has consumed Fox and infected MSNBC and is the
founding principle of Newsmax and the like. And I think
(17:49):
that would make an unexpectedly enormous improvement in quality in
cable news, and maybe maybe an enormous improvement in audience,
or even just stop the hemorrhaging quality that are concept
that is so often overlooked in assessments of any form
of news or television or both. Quality. Mike Goose a
(18:14):
given network's ratings a little, but the cult of imaginary
objectivity is deeply seated in the management of television news
even to this day. They all want to go back
to Cronkite and Huntley Brinkley because they were young then
they want to go back to Cronkite and Huntley Brinkley,
without remembering that Cronkite and Huntley Brinkley and the various
(18:35):
ABC anchors of their eras were on the only national
television channels in the country, and if you wanted not
to watch any of them, your choice was usually either
cartoons or reruns of McHale's Navy. For the younger group
running TV news, it's a dream of returning to, say's
CNN nineteen ninety one and the Gulf War. And that's great,
(18:56):
and it's not a bad aspiration to keep in your heart.
It might help you rigorously check your sources and the
information on which you base your opinions. But in nineteen
ninety one, not only was CNN the only cable news
network in America, but it had been for eleven years,
and it would be for another five years. And it
had in fact destroyed rivals launched and then quickly killed
(19:17):
off by ABC and CBS. Yet seven and a half
years ago, on the off day of the twenty fifteen
World Series here in New York, I went to the
Essex House hotel and had a secret meeting with the
then chairman of NBC News Andy Lack, and the then
president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, and they offered me a
(19:38):
new show on MSNBC. I think the idea was ten
pm weeknights for half an hour with a co host,
on one important premise that I would never do another
political commentary on MSNBC in my life. You know those
(20:00):
what did you call them? Special comments? Those are the
worst things that ever happened to MSNBC. Andy Lack said,
you know that, right. I mean, what America wants is
the cable news version of The New York Times. I
mean I saw you once on there, and you were
so loud and angry about Bush that I thought you'd
lost your mind. I literally thought you'd lost your mind.
And I said to my wife, Betsy, I think he's
lost his mind. And I called all my friends. I said,
(20:20):
you have to watch MSNBC right now. Turn it on
right now. I think Alderman has lost his mind. And
everybody tuned in, and then we all tuned in again
the next night to see if they'd fired you. Yet.
We watched every night after that. Just in case I
did not explain to Andy Lack, I stopped myself. I
did not explain to him that although I disagreed with
(20:41):
his out of your mind terminology, he had not only
just described what success in cable news television now looked like,
but he had just proven my point that I was
right about it and he was wrong. He will never
believe otherwise. But the point he made was people watched.
(21:01):
That's the first stop on the process. So yes, Chris
Licht was a venomous worm who deserved everything that's happened
to him in the last year. And the bottle of
champagne opened at CNN headquarters yesterday was matched by an
imaginary one here at Olderman HQ. But he could have
been a prince. And the ultimate point is the idea
(21:25):
didn't work, couldn't work, and won't work. And there is
a larger issue that actually dwarfs all this comparative minutia.
Of course, exactly what are the two sides you are
presenting in the political news of this country? What are
you being objective about in the cultural news, in the
scientific news. One side is flawed, bumbling, self obsessed aging.
(21:51):
The other side it's trying to end democracy and replace
it with any flavor of authoritarianism it can get away with,
and Oh, by the way, one of the side effects
of that authoritarianism will be the elimination of places like
CNN by violence, whether it is run by this Chris
Lickt or some perfected Chris Lickt or me. When people
(22:13):
have asked me about balance and not taking sides and
advocacy networks and opinion, I asked them, how would you
have wanted me to cover Joe McCarthy, How would you
have wanted me to cover World War Two? The Civil War?
The American Revolution? Hey, yes, that may be true. On
the other hand, General corn Wallace insists. Lickt insisted to
(22:38):
The Atlantic that when his words, we are not an
advocacy network, we are providing something different. And when the
shit hits the fan in this world, you're not gonna
have time for that advocacy anymore. Well, the shit has
hit the fan. Its name is Trump, and to oppose
Trump shit, you must be an advocacy network. I guess whatever.
(23:01):
I'm just doing a job here. You can call what
you want. But practically speaking, just as newspapers lost their
monopoly on breaking news, and radio lost its monopoly on
breaking news, and broadcast television lost its monopoly on breaking news,
so cable news has lost its Cable news can be
(23:22):
a factor, maybe even a decisive factor, in coverage of
live events, but that is no longer enough. And if
you are internally rigorous about exactly what your commentators say
and how much they have to back up their opinions,
you can be both. You can be a pure news organization,
you can advocate for, you know, a non totalitarian America,
(23:47):
and you can also make money doing both these things
at the same time. Back when I was at MSNBC
doing those special comments, the ones that made Andy Lack
think I'd lost my mind, but he and his friend
started watching every night just to check that role that
special comments, Guy Roll was kind of balanced by another
(24:09):
guy at MSNBC who handled all the MSNBC breaking news,
the Pope dying, the bridge collapsing in Minnesota, the elections,
the blackouts, the inaugurations, the death of Michael Jackson. He
even had a side hustle doing football on Sunday nights.
He was the painfully objective face of that painfully objective
breaking news side of MSNBC and all that stuff, the
(24:31):
breaking news stuff that used to make money too, And
his name was Check's Notes Me there is no middle,
and more importantly, for cable news to be a success
financially and journalistically, there does not have to be a middle. So,
(25:12):
as I've mentioned, I have been talking about Chris Licked
and CNN since the fifteenth episode of this podcast last August,
I want to play again what I said then first,
So as if there weren't enough fun stuff for just
one day, Fox has notified Tucker Carlson that he has
breached their contract. They may sue him. This is about
(25:34):
the thing he uploaded to Twitter on Tuesday night, which
he identified as episode one of his new series. It
was sad anyway. I don't often take the employer's side
in stuff like this. In fact, I can't remember if
I've done so in this century or a previous one.
But Carlson says a Fox executive has told him they
want to sideline him until twenty twenty five, and bluntly,
(25:55):
they can do that with rare exceptions. And I know
what those exceptions are. I had one in my contract
at NBC. Television contracts basically require the network to do
only one thing. Pay you, not play you, just pay you.
That's all. So if Tucker Carlson's contract reads that he
can't appear elsewhere, even on Twitter videos. Fox can enforce
(26:19):
that as long as they send him the check. They
could negotiate a deal in which Carlson forfeits some or
all of the money and then is free to do
whatever he wants, but Fox does not have to do that.
They have total control of this situation. Carlson's lawyer has
responded to Axios that Fox is violating his client's First
Amendment rights, which is nonsense. I mean, if they stopped
(26:40):
him or tried to stop him from tweeting, that would
be probably violating his First Amendment rights. But doing videos
for profit or planned profit for another company that is
technically a rival to Fox, No, sorry, Tucky, you lose
plus as somebody who uploaded my GQ Resistance series to Twitter,
and then my Olderman versus Trump series to Twitter, and
(27:02):
then the promos for this podcast series to Twitter. Boy,
was that Tucker Carlson Twitter video underwhelming? He just isn't
good enough to stare into a camera and carry a
static shot for two minutes, let alone ten. He needs
to be doing those interviews with the reaction shots to
(27:22):
the guest comments where he looks like a dog who
was just shown a card trick, Tucker. I know you
don't care about my advice, and I don't care if
you take it or not. But if this is what
the Twitter series is going to look like, take Fox's
money and go on around the world, cruise through next
year at their expense. Yesterday, CNN canceled its weekly show
(27:50):
reviewing the media, Reliable Sources, the only such program in
mainstream television. CNN also fired its host Brian Stelter after
nine years at the network. I've had problems with some
of Brian's work since he founded the TV newser blog
while he was in college and two two thousand and
four later at The New York Times, but I've never
had any problem with his intent nor his work ethic,
(28:11):
and his stuff on CNN made him such a target
from the far right that you would have thought he
was me, or that he was on the air seventeen
hours a day on CNN rather than once a week.
The reason was simple. After MSNBC cut a deal to
stop calling out Fox News, pretty much nobody in television
(28:31):
called out Fox News and the rest of the lunatic
right propaganda machine except Stelter. His firing was no surprise.
You may not know it, but CNN was recently taken
over by a company owned by billionaire Trump donor John Malone,
and Malone intends to very gradually reduce CNN to at
best twenty four hours a day. Of both sides ism
(28:53):
think Michael Smerconish on a loop, Stelter did the most
damage to the right. Therefore, Stelter was the first to go.
He will not be the last. CNN's new president. Chris
licked is there to dismantle the liberal parts of CNN.
I know this because I worked with him at MSNBC,
where he decided that part of his job was to
(29:15):
try to dismantle the liberal parts of MSNBC. When Stelter
was fired, the Daily Beast's impeccable media guy Lachland Cartwright
reported that quote everything about this rollout points to Discovery
board member John Malone and Discovery CEO David Zaslov. A
source familiar with the situation told The Daily Beast, Chris
lickt did not want to do this. I'm sure the
(29:38):
quote is accurate, and I'm sure whoever told Kartwright that
believes the quote to be true, but it misses the point.
What Chris Lick wants to do is whatever John Malone
and David Zaslov tell him to do. He is a
corporate lackey. Worse, he's a corporate henchman. So here's the
story I promise not to tell. Perhaps the most amazing
(30:02):
thing about my ten years at MSNBC was the fact
that Joe Scarborough and his producers, especially his chief henchmen,
ever got their own show on the air. Because nobody
I have ever worked with in radio or television, in
sports or news in the twentieth century or the twenty
first ever spent more time trying to screw with other
(30:26):
programs on the same network than did Joe Scarborough. And
until just about the time I left in twenty eleven,
the guy he sent in to do most of the
sabotage for him was this henchman guy. The reason this
should matter to you now is Scarborough's henchman was Chris Licked,
the new president of CNN. And if they scoured the
(30:49):
nation to find the worst person to run CNN in
a time when democracy is threatened by one political party
and tepidly defended by another, it's Chris Licked. I know,
I know, you turn on the TV and you see
Joe's Barborough and you see exactly what I see, a blank, dazed, darting, paranoid,
(31:09):
no soul, stupid check engine light. Look. But if you
don't trust me, trust my Scars. My Joey Scars behind
that vapid face is a master saboteur. Early in two
thousand and eight, the late Tim Russert called me and
warned me that the GOP had upped its pressure on me.
(31:31):
He said he had heard from somebody in New York
that somebody in New York was going into the office
of the president of NBC News saying that Joe Scarborough
couldn't get his friend John McCain to come on to
his new morning show because I was so critical of
McCain on Countdown. Tim was not sure it was Scarborough,
but if it wasn't, who else could have gotten in
(31:53):
to see the president of NBC News other than Scarborough
or his executive producer. The evidence for the new CNN president,
mister Lickt, being directly involved in interfering with programming to
benefit somebody else's friends or political cronies, was vague in
two thousand and eight, but not at all vague. Two
years later, early in January twenty ten, the Republican candidate
(32:16):
to fill the Senate seat of a late Ted Kennedy,
Scott Brown, the former semi nude model, was at a
rally when one of his supporters talked about quote shoving
a curling iron up the backside of the Democratic Senate
candidate Martha Cokeley. Scott Brown clearly heard the remark from
the crowd and responded, quote, we could do that. On
(32:39):
January eighteenth, on Countdown, I did a brief commentary about
how unsuitable Brown was for public office. I said he
was quote and irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex nude model,
t bagging, supporter of violence against women and against politicians
with whom he disagrees unquote. I had quotes from Brown.
I had videotape of him disparaging his minority opponent in
(33:02):
a local election to her face. Had a debate to
back up what I said. An hour later, Joe Scarborough
commenced a tweet storm against me. Quote Olberman calls Brown
a homophobic, racist reactionary who supports violence against women. How
reckless and how sad It's no longer enough to simply
(33:23):
disagree with someone. I'm sorry, I just fell into my
Scarborough impression. Just as when Beck called a president racist,
this sort of rhetorical extremism must be discouraged. It chapened
the debate. End quote and impression. Now there was a
standing rule at MSNBC. You want to criticize another MSNBC personality,
(33:44):
go ahead, have a blast, but it must be on
the air on MSNBC, and the other person must have
an opportunity to reply in real time, in the same
show or in some kind of face to face way.
No hit and run. No Joe Scarborough tweetstorms. If you
(34:04):
go to signs them by name or by inference in
any other medium newspaper, interview, radio, social media, you were
to receive an automatic suspension. The next day, January nineteenth,
I called the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, and I
asked how long Joe Scarborough's automatic suspension was going to be.
Griffin asked me to come into the office a little
(34:25):
earlier than usual and to go see him. He said
he had already had a meeting about the tweets that
morning with Scarborough's executive producer, Chris Licht. Griffin explained that Scarborough,
according to Licht, considered Scott Brown a friend. More importantly,
Chris lickt warned Griffin that if Griffin followed through and
(34:45):
enforced the suspension rule, Scarborough would have no other option
than to go to the press and tell reporters, especially
reporters at right wing websites like Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller,
that he Scarborough had been suspended because he Scarborough was
a conservative. But I I was a liberal and that
(35:06):
I and not Phil Griffin ran MSNBC. What can I do?
Griffin was scared. I told him he could fire Scarborough
and Licked because they had just tried to blackmail him,
and eventually he was going to have to fire them
both anyway, but that I knew he would not do this,
and that I knew now that he would not suspend
(35:27):
Scarborough either, And Griffin did not suspend him. Partial score
Scarborough's friends two MSNBC's rules of behavior nothing, but Phil
Griffin did send out a memo to the entire company
insisting that anybody who criticized another MSNBC show or host
in another medium would be suspended, except Scarborough, who had
(35:50):
just done exactly that, and then threatened his own employers.
On January twenty fifth, Brian Stelter's old blog TV newser
got a copy of Griffin's memo. They wondered why Scarborough
had not been suspended, so they called the MSNBC president.
Then they printed quote Griffin responds to TV news or
quote an important rule was broken. I spoke to Keith
(36:13):
and he said, in the spirit of teamwork and the
free flow of ideas, he didn't think it warranted punishment
or suspension. I also talked to Joe and he apologized
to me. That's why I made the decision that this
didn't rise to the level of punishment. But I felt
it was necessary to reiterate my long standing policy one
hundred percent bull crap. Reiterate my long standing policy which
(36:36):
I just did not enforce against Joe Scarborough. The whole
thing was totally fabricated. Lickt and Scarborough had threatened to
smear their own bosses in the right wing echo chamber.
Should have been both fired on the spot. In May
twenty ten, Scarborough said something on the air about a
Democrat getting away with not being investigated for something. I
(36:57):
forget the details. I didn't bother to look it up.
You can if you want. Then Marcos Malitsus, the editor
of the Daily coastwebs and not just a regular contributor
to Countdown, but somebody who had been promoting the show
and the MSNBC brand on that website every day for
five years. Marcos sent a snarky but legitimate tweet questioning
(37:18):
Scarborough's credentials to criticize others who had not been investigated
for stuff, Marcos invoked the staffer who died in an
accident in Joe Scarborough's congressional office. Scarborough then attacked Melitsus
on Twitter, inaccurately claiming Malitsus had accused Scarborough of murder.
A few days after that, I got a phone call
(37:39):
from the MSNBC president, Phil Griffin. And if he got
a phone call rather than a call to come into
his office, you know he was really scared. Griffin told me,
Chris lickt has been in to see me. Joe won't
put up with having Marcus Mlitzus on his network anymore.
Not only that, but Lick says many of Joe's friends
who also appear in Dayside and Primetime won't come on
(38:00):
if Marcos Malitsus is permitted to continue. Here, Chris is
insisting that Marcos be banned from MSNBC immediately. Chris says
he's afraid that if we don't do that, Joe won't
come into work tomorrow. Upon hearing that, I laughed and
I congratulated Phil Griffin on the clear win win he'd
just been given. But Phil was very bad at enforcing
(38:24):
MSNBC's rules, but very good at creating new ones on
the spot to protect Joe Scarborough and Chris Lickt and
their friends, I'm banning Thelitzes from any further appearances on MSNBC,
I said, Phil. He's a contributor to my show. You
are suspending my contributor who has driven hundreds of thousands
(38:45):
of viewers to count Down at MSNBC, and I don't
have any say in it. You are owned by Joe
Scarborough and Chris Lickt. What you now have to worry
about is whether I tell this story on the air
tonight or I just wait and tell it later. Phil
now got conciliatory because he was scared again and said
it could be just a suspension if I cooperated, So
(39:08):
I called Marcos. He said he enjoyed his contributions to Countdown.
He also did occasional appearances on the old Ed Schultz
MSNBC show, and he said if there were chants at
resuming them, he'd preferred to at least try that. So
Marcus and I went along with Griffin suspending Marcus Malitzus,
and to my knowledge, Marcus Malitzus has not been seen
(39:28):
on MSNBC since. I wish I had better notes on
some of my conversations from the two thousand and eight, nine,
ten eleven era about those conversations with the hosts and
the producers of the other shows like Schultz and Rachel
Maddow's Show, and even Chris Matthews and Hardball. I must
have heard a variation of this statement a dozen times
(39:49):
from these people. Guess who was in Griffin's office explaining
that such and such as Joe's friend and Phil really
needs to make sure we lay off him. Chris licked
It was usually an expletive in the middle between Chris
and Lickt. I remember one of my producers at the
MSNBC version of count Down telling me that one of
the other producers told him that Lickt had gone to
NBC News President Steve Cappus with an actual list of
(40:13):
Republicans that Mattow and Oberman needed to stop criticizing because
they were Joe's here's the word again friends, and we
were hurting morning Joe. What's amazing is that, setting aside
the issues of unrevealed torrid love affairs, when CNN fired
its nine PM host Chris Cuomo, president Jeff Zooker, and
(40:36):
senior vice president Alison Gollist, they fired them in essence
because they interfered with CNN content and practices in order
to do favors for people who were their friends or,
in Cuomo's case, they're relatives at MSNBC. Interfering with MSNBC
content and practices to do favors for friends was seemingly
(40:59):
the only reason Chris Lickt had a job. So CNN
got rid of left wingers for a terrible violation of
journalistic ethics and then hired as president a right wing
henchman who had committed exactly the same journalistic ethical problems
and who, for his act the first one of his
career at CNN, killed off the only national television show
(41:22):
that regularly held up Fox News, Newsmax and all the
rest to the world to show that they were the
threats to democracy that they are. This is CNN, and
(41:50):
now he belongs to the ages. I've done all the
damage I can do here. Countdown has come to you
from the Vin Scully Studio at the world Headquarters of
the Alderman Broadcasting Empire in New York. Here are the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by
Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanel, who are the Countdown
musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, Guitars,
(42:12):
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman
theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis Curtis CBESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust,
the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
my friend Larry David, And everything else is pretty much
(42:34):
my fault. So that's countdown for this the eight hundred
and eighty fourth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Don't
forget to keep arresting him while we still can, like
today and every day for the rest of his life.
The next schedule Countdown is tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman.
(42:54):
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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