April 3, 2023 • 57 mins
EPISODE 168: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: The source is a dubious British tabloid, but the idea has been deemed completely possible and entirely appropriate: Trump's lawyers are reportedly expecting that Judge Juan Marchan will issue a GAG ORDER against Trump today or tomorrow, precluding him from speaking about the case to reporters, or posting on social media about it, or giving a speech about it (as he plans to do, Tuesday night from Mar-a-Lago). The reported punishment: a fine of up to $1,000 and up to 30 days in jail. Trump meanwhile is reported to be ready to go back on the offensive and "eff up" Alvin Bragg, the judge, and the politicians his paranoia tell him are behind this.
At the same time, maybe tomorrow they should take a second set of Mugshots. Jack Smith reportedly edges closer to charges of Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice as The Washington Post reports he now has a paper trail because of the texts and emails of an obscure assistant named Molly Michael. During the January 6 Committee hearings we learned that at the White House, Trump used to dictate his emails and have HER send them out on HER account. And that may be devastating evidence against him in the nearing charge that not only did he steal Classified Documents but instructed others to lie about whether or not he'd returned them - a classic obstruction conspiracy. Plus he had some strange obsession with documents about the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.
Plus: all those cliches the Trump Apologists are using to deflect from the absolute appropriateness of the indictment? Let me help you refute them. Ex-Manhattan DA Cy Vance actually updated us on the first ("Bragg's predecessor wouldn't pursue the case") and hints at interference to stop his investigation by none other than William Barr. We'll track the exact nature of George Soros's donations - not to Bragg but to a group that donated to Bragg. And we'll remind you that the next time somebody says 'you can't prosecute a presidential candidate' that Trump himself promised to prosecute FOUR of them and actually tried to get a U.S. Attorney investigating the least likely of the bunch.
B-Block (24:11) IN SPORTS: NCAA Women's Hoops title game overshadowed by second classless gesture in last three rounds; Last November's Phillies Phold extends to 2023; MSG's Jim Dolan sued and a warning to him: You could end up taking tickets at the arena you now own (28:13) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Sure, Biden's insulting King Charles even though no American president has EVER attended a British coronation; Jim Jordan calls for defunding Law Enforcement, and the great Lesley Stahl and CBS News and 60 Minutes get the chance to end Marjorie Taylor Greene's career with ONE follow-up question, and completely fail. (31:48) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My old NBC Election boss Mark Lukasiewicz with the reminder that (if there's no gag order) Trump will give a speech full of lies after tomorrow's indictment and the networks DO NOT have to carry it live. And this reminded me that all of today's money-only logic in TV news was prophesied by the greatest media movie ever made: Network (1976).
C-Block (45:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL, PART TWO: We are now in the 47th year of prophecy after prophecy in "Network" coming true. I'll review the 30 or so things predicted in the Paddy Chayefsky classic that were literally unbelievable the day the movie premiered, but are now merely...unremarkable.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
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. A
gag order against Donald Trump. His lawyers reportedly expect one
(00:28):
a gag order to be imposed on him as soon
as today in the Stormy Daniels case, thirty days in
jail or a one thousand dollars fine or both if
he talks about the case in person or on television,
posts about it on social media. We do not know
if that would be thirty days and a grand for
each violation, or if it's a flat fee, or if
(00:50):
it's like Twitter blue check marks, and you have to guess.
The source for this story is a fairly dubious one,
England's Daily Mail tabloid. But they don't get everything wrong,
and they have a source, and it is speaking in
American English, not British English, and to quote it. The
Trump legal team now thinks that the Manhattan judge will
(01:11):
take the unprecedented step of silencing the presidential frontrunner with
an unconstitutional gag order, said a source. It's considering adding
a First Amendment lawyer to the effort to combat this
and will fight it all the way as inconceivably delicious
as Trump gagged would seem. I mean, who would have
(01:35):
to be the one to explain the concept to Trump
of shutting up? How could he process such a concept?
If he stops talking, he dies. Trump has already scheduled
his speech for after the indictment Tuesday night, which he
expects will be televised from Marilago, and a second British paper,
The Guardian, reports that after days of genuine shock that
(01:58):
he is to be indicted, Trump quote vowed to people
close to him that he wants to go on the offensive.
In a private moment over the weekend at his Marilago
resort in Florida that demonstrates his gathering resolve. Yeah, that's
what you call this resolve, remarked, using more colorful language,
that it was time to politically quote f them up.
(02:22):
Even more reason to take the Daily Mail's gag order
story seriously or somewhat seriously. There has been gurgling about
such a gag order since the death, end destruction and
baseball bat social media tweets now a week and a
half ago. The previous Manhattan Da Si Vants Junior now
says the judge Juan Marshan would be quote well within
(02:44):
his rights unquote to issue such a gag order, but
that Marshaan could not stop other people talking on Trump's behalf.
Yet no less an authority on breaking the law than
Roger Stones says no, he could that not only did
his judge impose a gag order on him Stone for
sixteen months, but it extended to his family. Quote. Can
(03:05):
you imagine a situation where Trump was gagged but then
Don Junior and Eric were also gagged? Actually I can.
It's happened, but it was when Eric tried to say
something coherent and Juniors snorted wrong. Apart from the gag order,
which would take effect no later than the moment the
indictment hearing ends at mid afternoon tomorrow, there is something
(03:27):
else breaking. When the photographers at the courthouse at one
hundred Center Street take Trump's mugshot, they should probably take
a second set of photos, because it sure looks like
the Special Council is at least nearing being ready to
indict Trump on conspiracy to obstruct justice. I went to
Hollywood made two pictures on don't like this for New
York and We're like this for the Fence. Back to
(03:49):
tomorrow's circus in a moment, but on the subject of
this next indictment, the one by Jack Smith, Molly Michael
has entered the chat. And Molly Michael maybe the Stormy
Daniel's equivalent of the Special Council's Documents case. If her
name not Daniels, but Molly Michael rings a faint and
distant bell, it's because she was Trump's last White House
(04:12):
executive assistant, and she used to have to dial his
calls for him, and she used to have to try
to tell him when he was supposed to be at
a meeting, and she had to jot down notes about
his constant deviations from his schedules and his unplanned conversations,
and by what appeared to be chance, she was off
on the morning of January sixth, twenty twenty one, and
(04:32):
the House January sixth Commission put her on the record
in a deposition, and the big news out of that
was she testified that if Trump wanted to send an
email to almost anybody, he would dictate it to her
and tell her to send it out from her email account.
(04:53):
Remember this, So when he leaves Washington, this Molly Michael
goes with him to Marilago. And now the Washington Post
is reporting that FBI and DOJ quote have a mask
fresh evidence pointing to a possible obstruction by Trump in
the investigation into top secret documents found at his Marilago home.
(05:14):
And guess what the evidence turns out to be down there?
In paragraph sixteen, quote YEP emails and texts of Molly Michael.
Michael's written communications have provided investigators with the detailed understanding
of the day to day activity at Marilago at critical
moments unquote. All right, to try to simplify this, and
(05:38):
it's two or more crimes now, not just the one
about stealing the documents. The timeline of the classified documents
Trump stole seems to be this one. He stole them.
Two the National Archives asked for them back. Three he
gave some of them back and said they had all
been in his storage room at Marilago, and that was it.
(06:00):
Four last May, the Archives got the DOJ to issue
a subpoena to at all of them back. Five. Trump
then had boxes of these documents moved from the Marilago
storage space where he said they all were. And there
is security video of this happening and the guy carrying
it for him, Walt Nauta was his name. Six Trump
(06:21):
went through the contents of the boxes himself and pulled
out stuff he decided he wanted to keep. Seven Molly
Michael's emails and texts. The Post does not explain this,
but there's only one explanation. Molly Michael's emails and texts
must document Trump's instructions about the illegal moving and illegal
(06:42):
keeping of the documents he was holding illegally, And maybe
they document eight his instructions to his attorney, Evan Corker,
in to write up a legal document and have Christina
Bob sign it, in which they all lied that Trump
was giving back everything he had. That's called conspiracy to
obstruct justice. And there's also a ninth item on this timeline,
(07:05):
courtesy the Post story, and it's this whole separate kind
of dilly. Let me just read it. Investigators have also
asked witnesses if Trump showed a particular interest in material
relating to General Mark A. Millie, the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. People familiar with those interviews said
(07:26):
Millie was appointed by Trump, but drew scorn and criticism
from Trump and his supporters after a series of revelations
in books about Millie's efforts to reign in Trump toward
the end of his term in twenty twenty one, Trump
repeatedly complained publicly about Millie, calling him quote an idiot.
Wait what Jack Smith's team was already clearly putting together
(07:48):
obstruction of justice charges against Trump and conspiracy to obstruct justice,
let alone whatever they have on him for the handling
of the documents, the stealing of the documents. But he
was clearly telling the lawyers how to lie and then
yet claim he was giving all the documents back to
the government. Now they have this whole new tranch of
(08:09):
real time texts and emails from this assistant, this Molly
Michael via whose email account we know from her testimony
Trump used to communicate when they were in the White
House together, And just for spits and giggles, they're also
asking about material relating to the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. The conclusion has to be not only
(08:32):
did Trump steel classified documents, at least one of which
detailed a foreign nation's nuclear capabilities, and not only did
he lie about having and keeping them, and lie about
returning them and launch a conspiracy to get his lawyers
and god knows who else to lie about having returned them.
But there is also a paper trail of Trump trying
to get his grubby little fingers on documents that would
(08:55):
what smear the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that he
could use against the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that
he could give to other countries, to you against the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, with which he could blackmail
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The mind reels at
the possibilities. So take an extra set of mugshots Tuesday
(09:17):
in New York, and back to Tuesday in New York
and the spit with which Trump apologists are flooding the zone.
But this case was dropped, but George Soros, But you
can't indict a presidential candidate. This crap has been enough
to fool the likes of even the supposedly rational Jeb Bush,
who tweeted quote Bragg's predecessor didn't take up the case.
(09:39):
The Justice Department didn't take up the case. Bragg first
said he would not take up the case. This is
very political, not a matter of justice. Please clap unquote.
And all this time we've been thinking George was the
dumber Bush brother. I added the please clap. He didn't
tweet that. If you need truth though, with which to
(09:59):
respond to this Trump stuff, first, just keep thinking gag order.
We may have gotten a little clarification on the part
about Bragg's predecessor didn't take up the case nonsense when
that former Manhattan DA Sivance Junior, spoke out confirming that
as they investigated Trump over the Stormy Daniel's payoff, federal
(10:20):
prosecutors said to his Manhattan DA's office, we'll take this one.
Vance was polite, even respectful, kind of affectionate as he
said this quote. We learned from the Southern District of
New York that they asked us to stand down. They
wished that we would put our efforts on hold. At
(10:41):
no point in the interview did Vance mention the guy
who was the boss of the Southern District of New
York prosecutors at that time, the then Attorney General William
cover Up Bar. Unfortunately, the interviewer, the inexperienced and rather
stiff TV rookie Jensaki, did not follow up, did not
ask about Barr, did not ask about are and if
(11:06):
Vance heard from Bar or if Vance new Bar was
talking to him. Soto voce. She did push Vance on
whether or not he was ready to indict Trump on
Stormy Daniels. Vance waffled. Vance didn't deny it. Vance said
if he had been, it would have been knowing that
the final decision would be passed along to Alvin Bragg.
(11:27):
He would not answer whether a prosecution memo was promulgated
under his watch at the Manhattan Day's Office. The apparent
inference of the entire interview, though, was that Vance was
ready to indict Trump was held off by bar Or
his New York office, and by that little detail that
the Trump cult has refused to acknowledge that it has
(11:48):
been Department of Justice tradition to not indict a sitting president.
So there's only been twenty six months and two weeks
in which Trump could have been indicted, and Vance was
only in office for a limited period of that time.
There's also the little question of the Federal Election Commission.
In May of twenty twenty one, it's two Republican members
(12:09):
blocked a move to continue its investigation of the Stormy
Daniel's payoff. Now to the George Soros part, well, let's
not kid anybody. This is fascist shorthand. For it's the Jews,
what done it? When Trump calls Alvin Bragg quote handpicked
and funded by George Soros, it's one of his anti
Semitic dog whistles, which reminds me to ask if that
(12:30):
gag order would cover dog whistles. But as to the facts,
soros spokesman says, the men have never met, never spoken,
never communicated. That's a lot of nevers. Also, Soros never
directly contributed to Bragg's campaign, in which he upset a
Democrat in the primary who had a lot more to spend,
and then got eighty three percent of the vote in
(12:51):
the general election. Soros's only connection to Bragg is a
little remote, and it goes like this. In May twenty
twenty one, Soros gave a million dollars to the Van
Jones pack dedicated to criminal justice reformat other racial justice causes.
It's called Color of Change. Among its many donations to
progressive candidates for district attorney posts around the country, Color
(13:13):
of Change donated slightly more than half a million to
Bragg's campaign. It was going to be more than that,
but there was an uncorroborated allegation about Bragg during the campaign,
so Color of Change cut him off. Owen Sarrows's son
and daughter in law each donated four hundred and fifty
bucks to Bragg early in twenty twenty one, and then
(13:34):
ten thousand each during the primary campaign. Now, as to
the you can't indict a presidential candidate part, that we
also keep hearing time and time again, in just the
last seven years, one man has demanded not just the
investigation of and indictment of four different presidential candidates, but
he has also accused each of them of treason. The
(13:57):
candidates were Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Kerry.
And the guy doing the thing about presidential candidates that
Trump apologists now say as forbidden was, of course Trump.
Former Trump US attorney Jeffrey Burman wrote in his book
that two days after Trump accused John Kerry of shadow diplomacy,
(14:17):
his US attorney's office was instructed to look for something
to charge John Kerry with. So on this particular pearl
clutching topic, Trump should probably well dag so back to tomorrow.
Could Trump be under a gag order other than canceling
(14:37):
his live address from the elbow of the Palm Beaches, Marilago,
Would it really impact his martyrdom in and out of
the court hearing tomorrow. Kenny, just do the silent movie
version of Norma Desmond's Descent down the Sunset Boulevard stairs.
Is there a chance he still might not show and
do an oj? Will Marjorie Taylor Green draw the capacity
(14:58):
crowd of three hundred people to her New York protest
or will all the tickets have been reserved by other
who did what they did to Trump at his infamous
no show rally in Tulsa. So many questions, so many clues?
(15:41):
What is dewey decimal system? Thank you Nancy Faust and
as we wait, let us enjoy the comic relief. Jim
Jordan has now talked about issuing subpoenas to get Alvin
Bragg to testify to one of the House committees on
making TV clips for Fox. Again, if you cannot enforce
contempt of Congress citations, you cannot force Alvin Bragg to
(16:03):
show up or send you anything other than a high
Hello postcard. Also, Jim needs to be a little bit
better prepared when he is exposed to actual journalists and
not just news Max or Fox sycophants. Listen to this
on his way into a GOP gathering in Florida. It's
not new. It's just I hadn't heard this before. And
(16:26):
it's so wonderfully bad that Jordan wound up resorting to
every excuse except denying that he speaks English. You don't
know what the charges up against. No, it was on
the way you guys have tall us. I mean, that's
all a jumping to conclusions. I mean, you might have
broken the law because that concerned you. We don't think.
We don't think broke the law at all. About. What
(16:46):
concerned me is what they're going to do based on
what's been reported. You have any evidence that federal friends
were used here we're asking about. That's not something that's
what we're requiring any local investigations. No, this is a
little different. I think help the guys he's running for president.
(17:08):
What the president's calls for protests? That is that something
that you do you think is support? And that's uh,
that's a that's a that's when Jim vanished. Vanish van vanished,
no doubt, in search of his jacket missing now for
these last sixteen years since he succeeded the late Ohio
Congressman Mike Oxley. Wait, what Mike, and let's circle back
(17:33):
to where we began. Let's say the Daily Mail is
on the money and Judge Juan Marshawn is prepared to
issue a gag order sometime today or tomorrow against Trump.
What about his family? No, no gag order against this family.
Keep them talking. A social media thread of Trump supporters
next to video of Trump Junior has realized the awful truth.
(17:55):
Junior has been replaced by a body double. Quote looked
like a mask. He must be in a safe location. Also,
his teeth are wrong, then sup with his neck? Then
something crazy up with his eyes. His pupils don't look right,
and they look very long and not round. Yes, he's
(18:16):
been replaced by a body double. That's what's wrong with
his pupils. Nothing simpler, and he's still not the most hilarious.
Trump brother Eric Trump, Saturday Fox and Friends quote, Guys,
I have to tell you I was on a plane.
I was on a commercial flight when this whole indictment broke.
(18:36):
People were coming up to me giving me hugs. Well,
of course they were, Eric, given how your father hates you.
They just assumed that you'd be as happy that he
got indicted as they were. Same interview, Eric Trump actually
topped that. He says, the Democrats quote weaponized the legal system.
They've literally weaponized every institution that we have in this country,
(18:59):
whether it be the military, whether it be the DOJ,
whether it be the FBA. Wait wait wait wait wait
wait wait. They've literally weaponized every institution that we have
in this country, whether it be the military. Eric Trump
has accused Democrats of weaponizing the military. For God's sake,
(19:21):
no gag order for Fredo, please keep him talking. Still
ahead of us in this edition a countdown. What will
(19:43):
you remember from the women's college basketball championship game? How
about a classless gesture made by the MVP towards her
star opponent, who had herself made a classless gesture two
games previously. Yea sportsmanship in worse persons. Marjorie Taylor Green
is given a platform by CBS News and six minutes
(20:05):
to twice repeat the libel that quote Democrats are pedophiles unquote.
What does Leslie Stall do when this big, slow moving
softball floats up before her eyes and she has only
to connect with it to end Barney Rubble's congressional career.
She whiffs And then what will happen if there is
(20:25):
no gag order and Trump gives his speech tomorrow night,
Will Fox cover it live? How about CNN, NBC, ABC,
CBS with Marjorie Taylor Green anchoring the nightmares prophesigned by
a movie from nineteen seventy six continue to unfold now
for a forty seventh year. That's next. This discountdown. This
(20:53):
is Countdown with Keith Olberman. This is Sports Center. Wait,
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman
(21:20):
in Sports Angel. Reese and Caitlin Clark are star women's
college basketball players. In an Elite eight playoff game, Clark
of Iowa scored forty points and had triple double and
made a wrestling gesture towards her opponents, meaning you can't
see me. Last night, Reese and LSU beat Clark and
Iowa for the national title one hundred and two to
(21:42):
eighty five, and Reese made the same gesture two Clark
and added another one indicating she was getting the championship ring.
Reese was named MVP of the tournament. And I'm not
sure anybody will remember that, nor the fact that LSU
won the title, just the fact that women's hoops has
now achieved parody with the Men It's Stars can also
beat classless winners who are willing to overshadow their own
(22:05):
team's ultimate victories. On the morning of Wednesday, November twenty
twenty two, the Philadelphia Phillies were still celebrating their seven
nothing win over the Houston Astros to take a two
games to one lead in the World Series. Two more
wins and two more games at home and they would
have the title. That night, they got no hit by
(22:25):
four Houston pitchers, series was tied. Then they lost Game five,
three to two, then Game six four to one to
lose the World Series they had led. The twenty twenty
three baseball season opened last Thursday, and the Phillies scored
five runs off the new Texas ace Jacob deGrom, formerly
of the New York Mets, and lost the game eleven
(22:45):
to seven. Then they lost their second game to Texas
sixteen to three. Then last night they lost to Texas
two to one. As I suggested last November, sometimes teams
go to sleep on top of the world, but wake
up ready for Old Timer's Day. It may have happened
to the Phillies. Then time for the monthly Nightmare story
about James Dolan, owner of the New York Knicks, New
(23:07):
York Rangers, Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, and,
despite stiff competition over the course of three different centuries,
the worst owner in the history of New York sports. Latest,
as New York investigates canceling Dolan's annual forty two million
dollar tax break on Madison Square Garden or whatever the
number is, the New York Post is reporting Dolan has
(23:29):
been sued over allegations that he short changed investors and
spied on employees. The Post says securities filings indicate Dolan
made a settlement of eighty five million dollars with shareholders
of MSG Entertainment when he had that company by MSG
Television Networks. Now he's still being sued by shareholders of
(23:51):
the network he allegedly short changed both sides of the
same deal. Post also says that when employees of the
arena that Dolan is building in Las Vegas warned that
costs there were running very high and or over budget
by at least half a billion dollars, Dolan had other
employees spy on their emails and secretly record their conversations.
(24:13):
A reminder for Jim Dolan. New York's first great sports
owner was named John B. Day, a tobacco millionaire. He
not only owned the original New York Mets, but founded
the New York now San Francisco Giants in eighteen eighty
three and built the famous Polo Grounds for them. By
eighteen ninety three, a decade later, he was virtually bankrupt
(24:35):
had to sell the Giants at In nineteen ten, John B.
Day returned to the Polo Grounds as a ticket taker
for five dollars a game. Hi, I'm Jim Dolan. Welcome
Madison Square Garden. You want mustard on your hotdog? Relish
(25:08):
still ahead. So the movie network came back into my
head over the weekend because of what happens if there
is no Trump dag order and he gives that speech
after being indicted tomorrow. Coming up next on things I
promised not to tell first time For the daily roundup
of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who
constitute today's worst persons in the world Lebronze, we have
(25:32):
Fox quote News unquote. Britain's version of it is gb News,
and it's nine PM host is named Dan Ruten Wooten
and he tweeted. Biden planning to snub the coronation of
King Charles tells you everything you need to know about
how one of the worst presidents in modern history feels
about the United Kingdom. Shame on him. No American president
(25:57):
has ever attended a British coronation, and there have been
seven of them since we repudiated the down that they're
gonna put on Charles's head. This was pointed out to
this routing fella, and he doubled down, and he retweeted
somebody else saying it didn't matter, because what it is
is Biden hates England and traveling is so much easier,
(26:17):
which is about as dumb as if somebody on Fox said, well, look,
if King Charles is offended and he really wants Biden
to be there, he should just hold his coronation in Wilmington, Delaware.
Runners up Jim Jordan and Maria bartar Romo. Bartar Romo
turns out has learned nothing from the dominion defamation suit,
which is not surprising because she's an adult and Jordan
still has not found his jacket. Actual conversation between them yesterday,
(26:41):
We're gonna have to look at the appropriations process and
limit funds going to the some of the these agencies,
to which bartar Romo says, the DOJ and the FBI,
and Jordan answers, yeah, and everybody watching the clip says,
my god, Jim Jordan just called for a defunding law
enforcement alert the media. But the winners, unfortunately, the great
(27:07):
Leslie Stall and sixty Minutes and CBS News, not only
did they give a platform to the dangerous and demented
Marjorie Barney Rubble, but boy did they treat her as
if she were just colorful. I mean this pains me
because Leslie has always been nice to me in sixty
Minutes once did a very nice profile on me Susan Spencer,
if I remember correctly, But this was bad. In the
(27:30):
studio open Stall called Green quote famous and referred to
Green's quote celebrity some say notoriety, and called her smart
and fearless. I don't know about the smart. In the interview,
she never once asked Green about the pipe bombs, and
she didn't ask her about giving away Pelosi's location during
the coup attempt, and she didn't ask her about the
(27:53):
request for a pardon. She didn't ask her at all
about January sixth, and she let Green twice reiterate that
quote Democrats are pedophiles unquote. Leslie simply made an absurd
fate an iroll asking if she could really mean that,
rather than saying by definition pedophiles or people who have
sex with children, either you say now that you believe
(28:13):
all Democrats have sex with children or retract it. She
didn't do that, and because she didn't do that, the
far right is now celebrating the fact that Leslie Stall
let Marjorie Taylor Green say that quote Democrats have sex
with children on CBS CBS News and Leslie Stall an
I roll is not enough to stop a lying psychopath
(28:35):
like Marjorie Taylor Green. Shame on all of you today's
worst persons in the world. To the number one story
(28:56):
on the Countdown, and this one is long enough that
it's going to take up one and a half blocks
of the show. But it pertains to Trump and what
we may see Tuesday night if there is no gag
order against him. And it is sobering. When I did
elections on MSNBC, and I was the primary anchor from
two thousand and six or two ten, which between the presidential,
midterm and primaries. I must have done thirty knights of elections.
(29:19):
Mark lakasowich was the executive producer, had the right feel
for it, though I could never talk him out of
the big flowery exit bumps that we ran before the commercials.
I would ask, why are you giving them more time
to change channels? Luke? Anyway, he's now the dean of
the communications school at Hofstra University and they have a
good one and boy, could NBC use him now? And
(29:39):
yesterday Luke tweeted this Tuesday's Trump post indictment address is
a test for TV news orgs organizations. He will lie.
There is no justification for platforming liars and their lies
on live television. There are many reasons not to your
organization's credibility. For one, watch, analyze, then report, unquote exactly. Sadly,
(30:05):
if the speech happens, I am confident that at least
Fox and CNN will run it, maybe the broadcast networks too.
And their argument now, their excuse will be that it's history,
that it's an ex president getting his sorry ass indicted.
As Mark Lacasowitz points out, not good enough. But this
is where we are in television news and this was
forecast long ago by the greatest movie ever made, Network,
(30:30):
the Patty Chayevsky film about the network anchorman who announces
he has been fired for low ratings and thus he
has decided to kill himself, whereupon his ratings go up,
and then he begins to give voice to what are
either extra worldly prophecies and warnings or the pure ravings
of unadulterated insanity. The movie stars Peter Finch as the newscaster,
(30:54):
William Holden as his best friend, the network news boss,
Fade Dunaway as the network programmer who sees in the
newscast a goldmine, and Robert Duval as the ambitious new
network workhead who sees in the newscast his ticket to
the corporate boardroom. When I first saw Network as a
seventeen year old aspiring TV broadcaster, my jaw dropped and
(31:15):
it stayed that way, and in the last forty six
plus years, my jaw has barely moved from that position
high hills anymore. The world of TV news that Network
predicted was not unthinkable in nineteen seventy six, but it
was a nightmare today. Virtually everything Chayavsky saw in the
(31:38):
future has come true and is accepted as conservative broadcasting.
The movie was so prophetic, but younger viewers sometimes see
the quality of the film and its artistry and its genius,
but they can't imagine what the big deal was about
its content. It's just showing TV news the way it's
always been. So a while ago, I sat down and
(31:59):
watched Network, and I took notes. I counted twenty three
major things about TV news that we're not true when
Network came out, but are true now, and they cover
basically everything in the business. First of these the on
air breakdown of a newscaster, Peter Finch's Howard Beale announces
he's going to shoot himself on the air in one week.
(32:22):
There was a local news anchor named Christine Chubbuck who
had already shot herself during a newscast in Sarasota in
nineteen seventy four, but she did not give advance warning
nor show any indication of emotional distress. Sadly, tragically, she
just did it. But after Network, things began to come
apart at the seams in local news and network news.
(32:44):
In nineteen eighty eight, after reporter Bree Walker of New
York's Channel two news had concluded a story on birth defects,
Veteran anchor Jim Jensen questioned her at length about a
hand and foot deformity which she herself suffered from, and
whether or not her parents would have aborted her had
they known in advance she had the condition. Shortly afterwards, Jensen,
(33:06):
who had been on the air in New York forever,
entered a rehab center for treatment of alcohol, prescription drug
and cocaine abuse and depression. Later in two thousand and four,
Dan Harris had a live panic attack on ABC's Good
Morning America, losing his breath then cutting his newscast short.
Second of the Prophecies Network posited that such a breakdown
(33:28):
would lead not to treatment nor removal from a broadcast,
but to greater success. Fifteen years ago, Glenn Beck began
to regularly weep on the air. If that was not
an indication of emotional trouble, it might have been the
attempt to convey that feeling legitimate or contrived. Beck was
rewarded and the ABC newscaster I just mentioned, Dan Harris
(33:52):
would go on to do a World News Tonight feature
on his own on air breakdown. Third prophecy, when Howard
Beale first tells his boss, Max Schumacher played by William Holden,
that he will kill himself on the air. Schumacher goes
off on a drunken flight of fancy about a new
Sunday night news show he called in his mind the
Death Hour, Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, mafia hitman, automobile smashups,
(34:17):
he says, and a terrorist of the Week. Schumacher's utterly
dystopian forecast has not made air yet, but the terrorism
of nine to eleven did play out live on all networks,
and parts of that terrorism are repeated minimally annually. Much
of a network like True TV consisted of programs that
(34:39):
were merely edited highlights of disasters, centering, in fact, largely on,
as Max Schumacher phrased it, automobile smashups. The fourth network
Prophecy Beal swears repeatedly during his newscasts. In the last
few years, CNN in particular, has made the decision to
quote words that would have been bleeped less than a
(35:00):
decade ago, and at least one broadcast television program, The
Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on CBS, produced its
show live to tape with an audience and in real
time let the hosts swear copiously and then would bleep
him just as copiously for the broadcast itself. Maybe the
scripted swear in the newscast is not far away. Fifth
(35:23):
of the network prophecies. Newscasts did not do stories about
other newscasts before network premiered. When Beale announces his intention
to kill himself, all of New York's local ten and
eleven PM newscasts made it their lead story at this point,
and in ensuing years, even monumental retirements such as Chet
(35:45):
Huntley's retirement in NBC in nineteen seventy or Walter Cronkite's
retirement from CBS in nineteen eighty one, had only merited
the briefest of footnotes on rival network programs. But by
the time of Peter Jennings lung cancer announcement in two
thousand and five, a newscast or newscaster could become the
lead story on another newscast. Indeed, when I left MSNBC
(36:08):
in January twenty eleven, announcing it mid show, CNN's Anderson
Cooper three sixty not only led its live broadcast at
ten pm ET with it it devoted a dumbfounding twenty
two minutes to something that would have been ignored even
a decade before. Understand how long twenty two minutes is
(36:29):
on CNN. I retired from the broadcast countdown on MSNBC
and was able to get home before he was done
covering the story of my retiring from the broadcast sixth
and this was the key to everything in network And
since network, Penny Chayevsky and his script forecast a moment
(36:53):
in which newscasts would be required to make money. It
had not been that way before news divisions were considered
public service. The price the networks paid to make billions
of entertainment shows. Robert Duval as Frank Hackett, the executive,
attacks UBS's quote credit news division and its annual thirty
three million dollar deficit. As Hackett later tells UBS stockholders,
(37:18):
in effect, the news division would be reduced from an
independent division to a department accountable to network. After CBS
was sold in nineteen eighty seven, the news budget was
cut in half, and the moment arrived newscast from there
on in had to be profitable. In two twelve, NBC
took it to a new level by appointing a programming
(37:38):
executive with no news experience to oversee all news on
all of its networks, stations, and even local cable systems.
The reason Padaychavsky could see this when others could not
was that he had worked in live television drama in
the nineteen fifties, particularly on one show called You Are There,
(37:58):
in which CBS news reporters and actors re enacted great
moments from history. The newscasters could make extra cash on
the side, and the network made huge profits. The host
of You Are There, half news, half entertainment was Walter Cronkite.
The seventh network prophecy criminals videotaping their own crimes. A
(38:21):
series in network is created after a terrorist group called
the Ecumenical Liberation Army shoots film of its own members
robbing a bank. This was inconceivable in nineteen seventy six,
yet is today a facet of every act, from the
simplest self taped vandalism uploaded to YouTube, to actual terrorist attacks,
(38:42):
recordings of which are made by and then disseminated to
news organizations by the perpetrators. The eighth prophecy of network
television news as rage quote the American people want somebody
to articulate their rage for them, says Faye Dunaway's character
Diana Christiansen, relative to cable news in particular, does this
(39:03):
even require me to elaborate at all? Ninth Christensen, not
a news executive, is then given control over and permission
to program Beal's newscast, the UBS Evening News. Although there
was a history of news personnel being involved in entertainment programming,
Edward R. Murrow also did an interview show called Person
(39:24):
to Person Evening newscast were sacrosancd Today the fiction may
be maintained that they're still sacro sancd, But since the
advent of the consultant on the local news level in
the late nineteen seventies and early eighties, more and more
decisions about not just who does the news, but what
goes on the news have been made by non news executives.
(39:45):
The tenth prophecy, Diana Christensen also foretells the various genres
of five nights a week network programming that didn't happen
before network. She sees a profit center in a chiefly produced,
low budget program that can run Monday through Friday, and
which happens to be about the news. The other networks
try to find their own outlandish newscasts and run them
(40:07):
five nights a week. Pandachevsky is now anticipating every genre
of craze that followed in news, from nightline to Dateline,
to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? To American Idol
to the NBC two thousand and nine experiment in which
they put Jay Leno on for a comedy show every
night at ten pm. The eleventh Prophecy network anticipates government
(40:31):
deregulation and what it would do to TV. When the
UVS president objects to a pornographic network news show and
warrens the FCC had kill us Robert duval as Hackett
dismisses him and the FCC and foretells the declawing of
the commission. The FCC can't do anything except wrap our
knuckles again, does anything the FCC has not done in
(40:55):
post network television? Need any detail from me? Twelfth news
commentary devolving into rants and takes? Wait? What did I
write here? News commentary devolves into rants and takes. I've
never heard any news commentator ranting what the hell is this?
(41:16):
The rest of this rant about the relevance of the
Movie Network. Right after this, before the break, I was
about halfway through my look at the remarkably prescient nineteen
seventy six Film Network, which foresaw things we thought impossible then,
ranging from TV news covering TV news as news, to
(41:38):
terrorists videotaping their own terror and giving it two newscasts,
to the twelfth thing that network foretold, the evolution or
devolution of news commentary into takes and rants. What in
substance are we proposing, new network chief Hackett asks his
horrified colleagues. Then he answers his own question, merely to
(42:00):
add editorial comment to our news show. Brinkley SEVERI reasoner
all have their comments now, Howard Beale will have his.
Hackett's erasure of a line between nuanced, thoughtful scripts of
commentary agonized over by commentators, producers, and executives and ad
libbed madness foresaw the similar real life change. Not merely
(42:23):
were comments added to newscasts, but the standards for what
constituted useful public commentary dropped from an age's old tradition
of newspaper editorials and columnists to verbal graffiti spontaneously letting
out his anger. The thirteenth Network prophecy, newscasters and commentators
never used to claim that God told them what to say.
(42:46):
Though Beale specifically quotes the voice who tells him to
tell the people the truth as also saying that that
voice is not God. Beale still says he feels quote
imbued and connected to all living things. The leap for
a commentator from hearing your inner voice to hearing somebody
(43:07):
else's inner voice was preposterous enough as it was, but
reality took it further. While Glenn Beck may not have
claimed God was writing his commentaries for him, in April
twenty twelve, according to the ut San Diego News, he
told an audience in Rancho, San Diego that God did
tell him to quit his job at Fox News Channel.
(43:30):
On the day he decided to leave, they wrote, Beck
said he walked up to a floor to ceiling window
in his New York apartment and asked his wife, how
could this possibly be God's plan? As I stood there,
the Lord whispered to me. If you do not leave now,
you will lose your soul. Beck said it was the
easiest decision I've ever made. Beck also later announced that
(43:53):
God not only wantedmit Romney to be president, but had
put him behind in the polls so that when Romney won,
everyone would see a modern miracle. Had that one turn
out for you, Glenn, the fourteenth Network prophecy, Network accurately
predicted that journalists would stop throwing themselves in front of
professional train wrecks. The same year that network was released,
(44:14):
a House committee wanted correspond at Daniel Shore of CBS
News to testify about where he got a copy of
a secret report. He refused. CBS pressured him to testify,
so he quit. He quit his job, but Network foretold
that Shore would be among the last to do something
like that. William Holden's Max Schumacher tries to derail the
(44:38):
Howard Beal Prophecy and Rage newscast by telling Robert Duval's
Frank Hackett, you want me out of here, You're gonna
have to drag me out of here, kicking and screaming
in the whole news division, kicking and screaming with me.
Hackett dismisses him. You think they're going to quit their
jobs for you. Not in this recession, buddy. The premise
of the integrity of news people was as widely held
(44:59):
as the integrity and inviolability of a news division, and
yet in each downsizing, redesigning, and bulbliterization of the old
standard concept of news. Again, Patty Chayevski foresaw correctly the
number of public protests, let alone public exits, has been
negligible in the last thirty years. Dan rather railed against
(45:23):
the gutting of CBS in nineteen eighty seven. That's been
about it, And for all the other good things Dan
has done, he didn't quit his job. Fifteenth Network foresaw
reality television and the staging of news. When Christiansen meets
with the activist Lorraine Hobbs and her attorneys to program
their terrorism show, The Moutsay Tongue Hour, she's not merely
(45:45):
reflecting the coming amorality of reality television, nor just amplifying
the already extant if it bleeds it leads mantra of
local news. Through her, Patty Chayevski is also foretelling a
time when television would begin not to cover the news,
but to orchestrate it. If the networks have yet to
actually be guilty of misprision of a penalty regarding terrorists,
(46:08):
we hope, surely on a lesser scale than nineteen ninety
two NBC scandal over faked video of Chevy trucks exploding
after collisions confirms the basic premise of adding programming helper
to the actual news. Somewhat more remotely. Event recreations were
once absolutely impermissible in news, they are now one of
(46:29):
its staples. There are eight more prophecies, and they all
fall into one category. Howard Beal's revised newscast, The Network
News Hour, has components in it, eight of them that
would have been thought absurd in any newscast anywhere the
day that the Film Network premiered in nineteen seventy six.
Number one, it has a studio audience. Countless newscasts, particularly
(46:55):
on cable, have now used studio audiences. MSNBC's Donahue did
it nightly in two thousand and two two thousand and three.
Others like Anders Cooper and Chris Matthews and Chris Hayes
have experimented with it. Number two, predicting the news on
the Beal Show, Sybil the Soothsayer actually predicts the news. Well,
(47:18):
nobody has done that yet, not literally. But what does
every specialty newscast, especially political ones, do in its last
broadcast before Monday Almost invariably there is some kind of
prediction or forecast for the week ahead what to look for,
and if it is not institutionalized in that distinct manner,
(47:38):
the show still contains pundits who do nothing but forecast
tomorrow's news. As long ago as nineteen ninety eight, we
would try on Thursday Night to guests where the Clinton
Lewinsky story was going and what we could give them
to put in the prerecorded promos that would run on Monday,
(47:59):
three days later. Number three Trial Obsessed TV News. There
is a Howard Beal segment called Jim Webbing and His
It's the Emis Truth Department. The script is a little vague.
We don't know. Is the Emis Truth a series of
hard to believe news stories. Does the giant logo behind
Jim Webbing of Justice carrying her scales suggests it's a
(48:22):
regular report on trials and the law. Or is the
emphasis on Emis as in, you've been lied to. Here's
the real truth, not the cover up? Which is it? Well?
Does it matter? Which? Do we not have all of them?
Concurrently every hour fourth public sexual Scandal coverage. Another Beal
(48:44):
segment stars Miss Matta Harry and her skeletons in the
closet and she stands in front of a giant keyhole.
This is something beyond just gossip, and it has become
the sustaining joy of all newscasts, from the cheesiest local
station to PBS the public sex scandal, Asked Bill Clinton,
(49:04):
ask Madison Cawthorne. Fifth opinion polls, as news Beale has
a regular segment called vox populi, the calculation and reporting
a public opinion. This one is the hardest to explain
to younger viewers of the film network, But the idea
of running polls, especially polls conducted by the news organization
(49:26):
that would then televise the results of those polls, was
laughable when Chayavsky saw it coming. Now, TV news organizations
like MSNBC will not only employ somewhat reliable polling morning, noon,
and night, but they'll also employ text polls in which
viewers are asked if a particular Republican is a evil
(49:47):
or be just stupid. Moreover, every newscast believes in relies
on and most of them commission their own polling for
everything and treats the results as breaking news. Guilty is
charged here, I did it, then I do it In
this podcast. At six the corporate influence. Beal opens the
(50:09):
first edition of The Network News Hour with the death
of network president Ed Ruddy and the ascent of Frank
Hackett and the full control of UBS by the company.
Cca Bal asks, when the twelfth largest company in the
world controls the most awesome, goddamn propaganda fos in the
whole godless world, who knows what blank will be pedaled
(50:30):
for truth on this network? The cross promotion between GE
and NBC and its various networks and channels, or Universal
Studios when the former owned the ladder, or between Disney
Networks and Disney products, ABC, ESPN, the cross quotation of
one news corp print entity by a news corp broadcast
(50:54):
entity or Fox News and the like. That was only
the start. But what is Fox News? What is oa N?
What is Newsmax? What is a serious coverage of the
entire big lie about the twenty twenty presidential election? You
think those are the newscasters thinking all that up? It
is exactly what Chayevsky had Beale warn of. What if
(51:18):
the corporations own all the television networks and tell you
what they the corporations want you to hear seven direct
involvement of corporate CEOs in news content. Well, I know
of no meeting in which a real life equivalent to
the Ned Baity character, one of the great characters in
motion picture history, Arthur Jensen, preaches fire and brimstone to
(51:42):
Howard Beale to get him to do what he Jensen wants.
But I can tell you, without fear of contradiction, as
a witness to this, that corporate CEOs will tell individual
newscasters what they want personally, directly and with the threat
of retribution spoken or otherwise. Just yesterday here I mentioned
(52:06):
Jeff Immelt, the head of GE in the summer of
two thousand and nine, during the well publicized GE swoon
over MSNBC's criticism of Immelt's friends at Fox News. Eventually
it was all resolved when Immelt had me come up
to the private GE NBC dining room a top thirty
(52:26):
Rock in New York City along with NBC President Jeff
Zucker to hash it all out. This thing lasted two hours.
When I finally asked Immelt, is this a question of
never criticizing Fox again? Or how much we criticize Fox?
He said how much? And I said, well, I can
do less, and he said, well great, really, then it's resolved.
(52:50):
Let's eat. And that's when Immelt confirmed that he had
met on this topic with Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of
News Corp, and that Jeff Zucker had met with Roger Ales,
who ran Fox News, to discuss what the Fox Corporation
and the NBC Corporation would and would not allow their
television networks to report about each other. Eight Lastly, assassination
(53:17):
spoiler alert about the movie network. I don't think anybody
has actually been killed by his own bosses for having
lousy ratings, but the moral equivalent character assassination of a
network's own newscasters. That is a regular technique to undermine them,
to discipline them, to make them more malleable, to get
(53:37):
away with firing them. In Aaron Sorkin's newsroom, his employers
were themselves leaking gossip about their newscaster, played by Jeff Daniels,
to the tabloid newspaper they also owned. But I know
for a fact that past bosses of mine at NBC
leaked to The New York Post in hopes of making
me fear from my job when Current TV tried to
(54:01):
fire me to get out of having to pay me
roughly fifteen million dollars. It still owed me. It actually
hired a former White House spin doctor to make up
and spread stories with his contacts about me in hopes
of getting themselves off the financial hook. If you have
never seen the movie, Network, all that I've been through
(54:22):
in the last twenty minutes probably makes it sound like
some sort of drab, almost academic treatise on declining journalistic
values and personal moral decay. While it's anything but that.
It is exciting, hilarious, surprising, terrifying, and it's virtually perfect,
with brilliant acting and a subtle but perceptible sense that
everybody in the film and everybody watching the film is
(54:46):
detaching slowly and slowly and more slowly, detaching from reality
and the reliable world they thought they knew with every
passing minute of the film. But mostly it's just a
great flick. If you have not seen it, see it now.
To paraphries for Finch as be so, turn off this
(55:07):
podcast and go watch Network. Turn it off now, turn
it off right now, turn it off and leave it off.
Turn it off right in the middle of a sentence,
I'm speaking to you now all right, mus madness, I've
(55:31):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening, Thank you a lot. Friday's Countdown set a
record with fifty nine thousand, nine hundred and twenty one downloads.
We're just under three hundred and seventeen thousand, four hundred
for the week, and relative to the million a month benchmark,
March saw this thing downloaded one million, two hundred forty
(55:51):
six thousand, four hundred and sixty times. And forgive my
amazement at the numbers. It's nice to have precise, reliable
numbers rather than the guesswork that is TV ratings. I
thank you, and my producer me thanks you as well.
A little more navel gazing. I suspect there will be
two different editions of this podcast tomorrow, one before and
(56:11):
one after the indictments. So if you're not subscribed with notifications,
do that now so you can hear firsthand how badly
my predictions go. And yes, I will not update the
whole thing tomorrow, only the first block, but check your
emails for the update tomorrow. Anyway. Here the credits. Most
of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian
Ray and John Philip Channel, who are the countdown musical directors.
(56:34):
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitars, bass
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Another
Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy, ESPN Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist
(56:57):
ever our announcer today was Larry David and everything else
is pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this,
the eight hundred and eighteenth day since Donald Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Arrest him now while we still all right. They are
arrest him again while we still can. The next scheduled
(57:19):
countdown is tomorrow, Trump miss day. Till then, I'm Keith Olverman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(57:40):
with Keith Olverman 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. A
gag order against Donald Trump. His lawyers reportedly expect one
(00:28):
a gag order to be imposed on him as soon
as today in the Stormy Daniels case, thirty days in
jail or a one thousand dollars fine or both if
he talks about the case in person or on television,
posts about it on social media. We do not know
if that would be thirty days and a grand for
each violation, or if it's a flat fee, or if
(00:50):
it's like Twitter blue check marks, and you have to guess.
The source for this story is a fairly dubious one,
England's Daily Mail tabloid. But they don't get everything wrong,
and they have a source, and it is speaking in
American English, not British English, and to quote it. The
Trump legal team now thinks that the Manhattan judge will
(01:11):
take the unprecedented step of silencing the presidential frontrunner with
an unconstitutional gag order, said a source. It's considering adding
a First Amendment lawyer to the effort to combat this
and will fight it all the way as inconceivably delicious
as Trump gagged would seem. I mean, who would have
(01:35):
to be the one to explain the concept to Trump
of shutting up? How could he process such a concept?
If he stops talking, he dies. Trump has already scheduled
his speech for after the indictment Tuesday night, which he
expects will be televised from Marilago, and a second British paper,
The Guardian, reports that after days of genuine shock that
(01:58):
he is to be indicted, Trump quote vowed to people
close to him that he wants to go on the offensive.
In a private moment over the weekend at his Marilago
resort in Florida that demonstrates his gathering resolve. Yeah, that's
what you call this resolve, remarked, using more colorful language,
that it was time to politically quote f them up.
(02:22):
Even more reason to take the Daily Mail's gag order
story seriously or somewhat seriously. There has been gurgling about
such a gag order since the death, end destruction and
baseball bat social media tweets now a week and a
half ago. The previous Manhattan Da Si Vants Junior now
says the judge Juan Marshan would be quote well within
(02:44):
his rights unquote to issue such a gag order, but
that Marshaan could not stop other people talking on Trump's behalf.
Yet no less an authority on breaking the law than
Roger Stones says no, he could that not only did
his judge impose a gag order on him Stone for
sixteen months, but it extended to his family. Quote. Can
(03:05):
you imagine a situation where Trump was gagged but then
Don Junior and Eric were also gagged? Actually I can.
It's happened, but it was when Eric tried to say
something coherent and Juniors snorted wrong. Apart from the gag order,
which would take effect no later than the moment the
indictment hearing ends at mid afternoon tomorrow, there is something
(03:27):
else breaking. When the photographers at the courthouse at one
hundred Center Street take Trump's mugshot, they should probably take
a second set of photos, because it sure looks like
the Special Council is at least nearing being ready to
indict Trump on conspiracy to obstruct justice. I went to
Hollywood made two pictures on don't like this for New
York and We're like this for the Fence. Back to
(03:49):
tomorrow's circus in a moment, but on the subject of
this next indictment, the one by Jack Smith, Molly Michael
has entered the chat. And Molly Michael maybe the Stormy
Daniel's equivalent of the Special Council's Documents case. If her
name not Daniels, but Molly Michael rings a faint and
distant bell, it's because she was Trump's last White House
(04:12):
executive assistant, and she used to have to dial his
calls for him, and she used to have to try
to tell him when he was supposed to be at
a meeting, and she had to jot down notes about
his constant deviations from his schedules and his unplanned conversations,
and by what appeared to be chance, she was off
on the morning of January sixth, twenty twenty one, and
(04:32):
the House January sixth Commission put her on the record
in a deposition, and the big news out of that
was she testified that if Trump wanted to send an
email to almost anybody, he would dictate it to her
and tell her to send it out from her email account.
(04:53):
Remember this, So when he leaves Washington, this Molly Michael
goes with him to Marilago. And now the Washington Post
is reporting that FBI and DOJ quote have a mask
fresh evidence pointing to a possible obstruction by Trump in
the investigation into top secret documents found at his Marilago home.
(05:14):
And guess what the evidence turns out to be down there?
In paragraph sixteen, quote YEP emails and texts of Molly Michael.
Michael's written communications have provided investigators with the detailed understanding
of the day to day activity at Marilago at critical
moments unquote. All right, to try to simplify this, and
(05:38):
it's two or more crimes now, not just the one
about stealing the documents. The timeline of the classified documents
Trump stole seems to be this one. He stole them.
Two the National Archives asked for them back. Three he
gave some of them back and said they had all
been in his storage room at Marilago, and that was it.
(06:00):
Four last May, the Archives got the DOJ to issue
a subpoena to at all of them back. Five. Trump
then had boxes of these documents moved from the Marilago
storage space where he said they all were. And there
is security video of this happening and the guy carrying
it for him, Walt Nauta was his name. Six Trump
(06:21):
went through the contents of the boxes himself and pulled
out stuff he decided he wanted to keep. Seven Molly
Michael's emails and texts. The Post does not explain this,
but there's only one explanation. Molly Michael's emails and texts
must document Trump's instructions about the illegal moving and illegal
(06:42):
keeping of the documents he was holding illegally, And maybe
they document eight his instructions to his attorney, Evan Corker,
in to write up a legal document and have Christina
Bob sign it, in which they all lied that Trump
was giving back everything he had. That's called conspiracy to
obstruct justice. And there's also a ninth item on this timeline,
(07:05):
courtesy the Post story, and it's this whole separate kind
of dilly. Let me just read it. Investigators have also
asked witnesses if Trump showed a particular interest in material
relating to General Mark A. Millie, the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. People familiar with those interviews said
(07:26):
Millie was appointed by Trump, but drew scorn and criticism
from Trump and his supporters after a series of revelations
in books about Millie's efforts to reign in Trump toward
the end of his term in twenty twenty one, Trump
repeatedly complained publicly about Millie, calling him quote an idiot.
Wait what Jack Smith's team was already clearly putting together
(07:48):
obstruction of justice charges against Trump and conspiracy to obstruct justice,
let alone whatever they have on him for the handling
of the documents, the stealing of the documents. But he
was clearly telling the lawyers how to lie and then
yet claim he was giving all the documents back to
the government. Now they have this whole new tranch of
(08:09):
real time texts and emails from this assistant, this Molly
Michael via whose email account we know from her testimony
Trump used to communicate when they were in the White
House together, And just for spits and giggles, they're also
asking about material relating to the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. The conclusion has to be not only
(08:32):
did Trump steel classified documents, at least one of which
detailed a foreign nation's nuclear capabilities, and not only did
he lie about having and keeping them, and lie about
returning them and launch a conspiracy to get his lawyers
and god knows who else to lie about having returned them.
But there is also a paper trail of Trump trying
to get his grubby little fingers on documents that would
(08:55):
what smear the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that he
could use against the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that
he could give to other countries, to you against the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, with which he could blackmail
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The mind reels at
the possibilities. So take an extra set of mugshots Tuesday
(09:17):
in New York, and back to Tuesday in New York
and the spit with which Trump apologists are flooding the zone.
But this case was dropped, but George Soros, But you
can't indict a presidential candidate. This crap has been enough
to fool the likes of even the supposedly rational Jeb Bush,
who tweeted quote Bragg's predecessor didn't take up the case.
(09:39):
The Justice Department didn't take up the case. Bragg first
said he would not take up the case. This is
very political, not a matter of justice. Please clap unquote.
And all this time we've been thinking George was the
dumber Bush brother. I added the please clap. He didn't
tweet that. If you need truth though, with which to
(09:59):
respond to this Trump stuff, first, just keep thinking gag order.
We may have gotten a little clarification on the part
about Bragg's predecessor didn't take up the case nonsense when
that former Manhattan DA Sivance Junior, spoke out confirming that
as they investigated Trump over the Stormy Daniel's payoff, federal
(10:20):
prosecutors said to his Manhattan DA's office, we'll take this one.
Vance was polite, even respectful, kind of affectionate as he
said this quote. We learned from the Southern District of
New York that they asked us to stand down. They
wished that we would put our efforts on hold. At
(10:41):
no point in the interview did Vance mention the guy
who was the boss of the Southern District of New
York prosecutors at that time, the then Attorney General William
cover Up Bar. Unfortunately, the interviewer, the inexperienced and rather
stiff TV rookie Jensaki, did not follow up, did not
ask about Barr, did not ask about are and if
(11:06):
Vance heard from Bar or if Vance new Bar was
talking to him. Soto voce. She did push Vance on
whether or not he was ready to indict Trump on
Stormy Daniels. Vance waffled. Vance didn't deny it. Vance said
if he had been, it would have been knowing that
the final decision would be passed along to Alvin Bragg.
(11:27):
He would not answer whether a prosecution memo was promulgated
under his watch at the Manhattan Day's Office. The apparent
inference of the entire interview, though, was that Vance was
ready to indict Trump was held off by bar Or
his New York office, and by that little detail that
the Trump cult has refused to acknowledge that it has
(11:48):
been Department of Justice tradition to not indict a sitting president.
So there's only been twenty six months and two weeks
in which Trump could have been indicted, and Vance was
only in office for a limited period of that time.
There's also the little question of the Federal Election Commission.
In May of twenty twenty one, it's two Republican members
(12:09):
blocked a move to continue its investigation of the Stormy
Daniel's payoff. Now to the George Soros part, well, let's
not kid anybody. This is fascist shorthand. For it's the Jews,
what done it? When Trump calls Alvin Bragg quote handpicked
and funded by George Soros, it's one of his anti
Semitic dog whistles, which reminds me to ask if that
(12:30):
gag order would cover dog whistles. But as to the facts,
soros spokesman says, the men have never met, never spoken,
never communicated. That's a lot of nevers. Also, Soros never
directly contributed to Bragg's campaign, in which he upset a
Democrat in the primary who had a lot more to spend,
and then got eighty three percent of the vote in
(12:51):
the general election. Soros's only connection to Bragg is a
little remote, and it goes like this. In May twenty
twenty one, Soros gave a million dollars to the Van
Jones pack dedicated to criminal justice reformat other racial justice causes.
It's called Color of Change. Among its many donations to
progressive candidates for district attorney posts around the country, Color
(13:13):
of Change donated slightly more than half a million to
Bragg's campaign. It was going to be more than that,
but there was an uncorroborated allegation about Bragg during the campaign,
so Color of Change cut him off. Owen Sarrows's son
and daughter in law each donated four hundred and fifty
bucks to Bragg early in twenty twenty one, and then
(13:34):
ten thousand each during the primary campaign. Now, as to
the you can't indict a presidential candidate part, that we
also keep hearing time and time again, in just the
last seven years, one man has demanded not just the
investigation of and indictment of four different presidential candidates, but
he has also accused each of them of treason. The
(13:57):
candidates were Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Kerry.
And the guy doing the thing about presidential candidates that
Trump apologists now say as forbidden was, of course Trump.
Former Trump US attorney Jeffrey Burman wrote in his book
that two days after Trump accused John Kerry of shadow diplomacy,
(14:17):
his US attorney's office was instructed to look for something
to charge John Kerry with. So on this particular pearl
clutching topic, Trump should probably well dag so back to tomorrow.
Could Trump be under a gag order other than canceling
(14:37):
his live address from the elbow of the Palm Beaches, Marilago,
Would it really impact his martyrdom in and out of
the court hearing tomorrow. Kenny, just do the silent movie
version of Norma Desmond's Descent down the Sunset Boulevard stairs.
Is there a chance he still might not show and
do an oj? Will Marjorie Taylor Green draw the capacity
(14:58):
crowd of three hundred people to her New York protest
or will all the tickets have been reserved by other
who did what they did to Trump at his infamous
no show rally in Tulsa. So many questions, so many clues?
(15:41):
What is dewey decimal system? Thank you Nancy Faust and
as we wait, let us enjoy the comic relief. Jim
Jordan has now talked about issuing subpoenas to get Alvin
Bragg to testify to one of the House committees on
making TV clips for Fox. Again, if you cannot enforce
contempt of Congress citations, you cannot force Alvin Bragg to
(16:03):
show up or send you anything other than a high
Hello postcard. Also, Jim needs to be a little bit
better prepared when he is exposed to actual journalists and
not just news Max or Fox sycophants. Listen to this
on his way into a GOP gathering in Florida. It's
not new. It's just I hadn't heard this before. And
(16:26):
it's so wonderfully bad that Jordan wound up resorting to
every excuse except denying that he speaks English. You don't
know what the charges up against. No, it was on
the way you guys have tall us. I mean, that's
all a jumping to conclusions. I mean, you might have
broken the law because that concerned you. We don't think.
We don't think broke the law at all. About. What
(16:46):
concerned me is what they're going to do based on
what's been reported. You have any evidence that federal friends
were used here we're asking about. That's not something that's
what we're requiring any local investigations. No, this is a
little different. I think help the guys he's running for president.
(17:08):
What the president's calls for protests? That is that something
that you do you think is support? And that's uh,
that's a that's a that's when Jim vanished. Vanish van vanished,
no doubt, in search of his jacket missing now for
these last sixteen years since he succeeded the late Ohio
Congressman Mike Oxley. Wait, what Mike, and let's circle back
(17:33):
to where we began. Let's say the Daily Mail is
on the money and Judge Juan Marshawn is prepared to
issue a gag order sometime today or tomorrow against Trump.
What about his family? No, no gag order against this family.
Keep them talking. A social media thread of Trump supporters
next to video of Trump Junior has realized the awful truth.
(17:55):
Junior has been replaced by a body double. Quote looked
like a mask. He must be in a safe location. Also,
his teeth are wrong, then sup with his neck? Then
something crazy up with his eyes. His pupils don't look right,
and they look very long and not round. Yes, he's
(18:16):
been replaced by a body double. That's what's wrong with
his pupils. Nothing simpler, and he's still not the most hilarious.
Trump brother Eric Trump, Saturday Fox and Friends quote, Guys,
I have to tell you I was on a plane.
I was on a commercial flight when this whole indictment broke.
(18:36):
People were coming up to me giving me hugs. Well,
of course they were, Eric, given how your father hates you.
They just assumed that you'd be as happy that he
got indicted as they were. Same interview, Eric Trump actually
topped that. He says, the Democrats quote weaponized the legal system.
They've literally weaponized every institution that we have in this country,
(18:59):
whether it be the military, whether it be the DOJ,
whether it be the FBA. Wait wait wait wait wait
wait wait. They've literally weaponized every institution that we have
in this country, whether it be the military. Eric Trump
has accused Democrats of weaponizing the military. For God's sake,
(19:21):
no gag order for Fredo, please keep him talking. Still
ahead of us in this edition a countdown. What will
(19:43):
you remember from the women's college basketball championship game? How
about a classless gesture made by the MVP towards her
star opponent, who had herself made a classless gesture two
games previously. Yea sportsmanship in worse persons. Marjorie Taylor Green
is given a platform by CBS News and six minutes
(20:05):
to twice repeat the libel that quote Democrats are pedophiles unquote.
What does Leslie Stall do when this big, slow moving
softball floats up before her eyes and she has only
to connect with it to end Barney Rubble's congressional career.
She whiffs And then what will happen if there is
(20:25):
no gag order and Trump gives his speech tomorrow night,
Will Fox cover it live? How about CNN, NBC, ABC,
CBS with Marjorie Taylor Green anchoring the nightmares prophesigned by
a movie from nineteen seventy six continue to unfold now
for a forty seventh year. That's next. This discountdown. This
(20:53):
is Countdown with Keith Olberman. This is Sports Center. Wait,
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman
(21:20):
in Sports Angel. Reese and Caitlin Clark are star women's
college basketball players. In an Elite eight playoff game, Clark
of Iowa scored forty points and had triple double and
made a wrestling gesture towards her opponents, meaning you can't
see me. Last night, Reese and LSU beat Clark and
Iowa for the national title one hundred and two to
(21:42):
eighty five, and Reese made the same gesture two Clark
and added another one indicating she was getting the championship ring.
Reese was named MVP of the tournament. And I'm not
sure anybody will remember that, nor the fact that LSU
won the title, just the fact that women's hoops has
now achieved parody with the Men It's Stars can also
beat classless winners who are willing to overshadow their own
(22:05):
team's ultimate victories. On the morning of Wednesday, November twenty
twenty two, the Philadelphia Phillies were still celebrating their seven
nothing win over the Houston Astros to take a two
games to one lead in the World Series. Two more
wins and two more games at home and they would
have the title. That night, they got no hit by
(22:25):
four Houston pitchers, series was tied. Then they lost Game five,
three to two, then Game six four to one to
lose the World Series they had led. The twenty twenty
three baseball season opened last Thursday, and the Phillies scored
five runs off the new Texas ace Jacob deGrom, formerly
of the New York Mets, and lost the game eleven
(22:45):
to seven. Then they lost their second game to Texas
sixteen to three. Then last night they lost to Texas
two to one. As I suggested last November, sometimes teams
go to sleep on top of the world, but wake
up ready for Old Timer's Day. It may have happened
to the Phillies. Then time for the monthly Nightmare story
about James Dolan, owner of the New York Knicks, New
(23:07):
York Rangers, Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, and,
despite stiff competition over the course of three different centuries,
the worst owner in the history of New York sports. Latest,
as New York investigates canceling Dolan's annual forty two million
dollar tax break on Madison Square Garden or whatever the
number is, the New York Post is reporting Dolan has
(23:29):
been sued over allegations that he short changed investors and
spied on employees. The Post says securities filings indicate Dolan
made a settlement of eighty five million dollars with shareholders
of MSG Entertainment when he had that company by MSG
Television Networks. Now he's still being sued by shareholders of
(23:51):
the network he allegedly short changed both sides of the
same deal. Post also says that when employees of the
arena that Dolan is building in Las Vegas warned that
costs there were running very high and or over budget
by at least half a billion dollars, Dolan had other
employees spy on their emails and secretly record their conversations.
(24:13):
A reminder for Jim Dolan. New York's first great sports
owner was named John B. Day, a tobacco millionaire. He
not only owned the original New York Mets, but founded
the New York now San Francisco Giants in eighteen eighty
three and built the famous Polo Grounds for them. By
eighteen ninety three, a decade later, he was virtually bankrupt
(24:35):
had to sell the Giants at In nineteen ten, John B.
Day returned to the Polo Grounds as a ticket taker
for five dollars a game. Hi, I'm Jim Dolan. Welcome
Madison Square Garden. You want mustard on your hotdog? Relish
(25:08):
still ahead. So the movie network came back into my
head over the weekend because of what happens if there
is no Trump dag order and he gives that speech
after being indicted tomorrow. Coming up next on things I
promised not to tell first time For the daily roundup
of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who
constitute today's worst persons in the world Lebronze, we have
(25:32):
Fox quote News unquote. Britain's version of it is gb News,
and it's nine PM host is named Dan Ruten Wooten
and he tweeted. Biden planning to snub the coronation of
King Charles tells you everything you need to know about
how one of the worst presidents in modern history feels
about the United Kingdom. Shame on him. No American president
(25:57):
has ever attended a British coronation, and there have been
seven of them since we repudiated the down that they're
gonna put on Charles's head. This was pointed out to
this routing fella, and he doubled down, and he retweeted
somebody else saying it didn't matter, because what it is
is Biden hates England and traveling is so much easier,
(26:17):
which is about as dumb as if somebody on Fox said, well, look,
if King Charles is offended and he really wants Biden
to be there, he should just hold his coronation in Wilmington, Delaware.
Runners up Jim Jordan and Maria bartar Romo. Bartar Romo
turns out has learned nothing from the dominion defamation suit,
which is not surprising because she's an adult and Jordan
still has not found his jacket. Actual conversation between them yesterday,
(26:41):
We're gonna have to look at the appropriations process and
limit funds going to the some of the these agencies,
to which bartar Romo says, the DOJ and the FBI,
and Jordan answers, yeah, and everybody watching the clip says,
my god, Jim Jordan just called for a defunding law
enforcement alert the media. But the winners, unfortunately, the great
(27:07):
Leslie Stall and sixty Minutes and CBS News, not only
did they give a platform to the dangerous and demented
Marjorie Barney Rubble, but boy did they treat her as
if she were just colorful. I mean this pains me
because Leslie has always been nice to me in sixty
Minutes once did a very nice profile on me Susan Spencer,
if I remember correctly, But this was bad. In the
(27:30):
studio open Stall called Green quote famous and referred to
Green's quote celebrity some say notoriety, and called her smart
and fearless. I don't know about the smart. In the interview,
she never once asked Green about the pipe bombs, and
she didn't ask her about giving away Pelosi's location during
the coup attempt, and she didn't ask her about the
(27:53):
request for a pardon. She didn't ask her at all
about January sixth, and she let Green twice reiterate that
quote Democrats are pedophiles unquote. Leslie simply made an absurd
fate an iroll asking if she could really mean that,
rather than saying by definition pedophiles or people who have
sex with children, either you say now that you believe
(28:13):
all Democrats have sex with children or retract it. She
didn't do that, and because she didn't do that, the
far right is now celebrating the fact that Leslie Stall
let Marjorie Taylor Green say that quote Democrats have sex
with children on CBS CBS News and Leslie Stall an
I roll is not enough to stop a lying psychopath
(28:35):
like Marjorie Taylor Green. Shame on all of you today's
worst persons in the world. To the number one story
(28:56):
on the Countdown, and this one is long enough that
it's going to take up one and a half blocks
of the show. But it pertains to Trump and what
we may see Tuesday night if there is no gag
order against him. And it is sobering. When I did
elections on MSNBC, and I was the primary anchor from
two thousand and six or two ten, which between the presidential,
midterm and primaries. I must have done thirty knights of elections.
(29:19):
Mark lakasowich was the executive producer, had the right feel
for it, though I could never talk him out of
the big flowery exit bumps that we ran before the commercials.
I would ask, why are you giving them more time
to change channels? Luke? Anyway, he's now the dean of
the communications school at Hofstra University and they have a
good one and boy, could NBC use him now? And
(29:39):
yesterday Luke tweeted this Tuesday's Trump post indictment address is
a test for TV news orgs organizations. He will lie.
There is no justification for platforming liars and their lies
on live television. There are many reasons not to your
organization's credibility. For one, watch, analyze, then report, unquote exactly. Sadly,
(30:05):
if the speech happens, I am confident that at least
Fox and CNN will run it, maybe the broadcast networks too.
And their argument now, their excuse will be that it's history,
that it's an ex president getting his sorry ass indicted.
As Mark Lacasowitz points out, not good enough. But this
is where we are in television news and this was
forecast long ago by the greatest movie ever made, Network,
(30:30):
the Patty Chayevsky film about the network anchorman who announces
he has been fired for low ratings and thus he
has decided to kill himself, whereupon his ratings go up,
and then he begins to give voice to what are
either extra worldly prophecies and warnings or the pure ravings
of unadulterated insanity. The movie stars Peter Finch as the newscaster,
(30:54):
William Holden as his best friend, the network news boss,
Fade Dunaway as the network programmer who sees in the
newscast a goldmine, and Robert Duval as the ambitious new
network workhead who sees in the newscast his ticket to
the corporate boardroom. When I first saw Network as a
seventeen year old aspiring TV broadcaster, my jaw dropped and
(31:15):
it stayed that way, and in the last forty six
plus years, my jaw has barely moved from that position
high hills anymore. The world of TV news that Network
predicted was not unthinkable in nineteen seventy six, but it
was a nightmare today. Virtually everything Chayavsky saw in the
(31:38):
future has come true and is accepted as conservative broadcasting.
The movie was so prophetic, but younger viewers sometimes see
the quality of the film and its artistry and its genius,
but they can't imagine what the big deal was about
its content. It's just showing TV news the way it's
always been. So a while ago, I sat down and
(31:59):
watched Network, and I took notes. I counted twenty three
major things about TV news that we're not true when
Network came out, but are true now, and they cover
basically everything in the business. First of these the on
air breakdown of a newscaster, Peter Finch's Howard Beale announces
he's going to shoot himself on the air in one week.
(32:22):
There was a local news anchor named Christine Chubbuck who
had already shot herself during a newscast in Sarasota in
nineteen seventy four, but she did not give advance warning
nor show any indication of emotional distress. Sadly, tragically, she
just did it. But after Network, things began to come
apart at the seams in local news and network news.
(32:44):
In nineteen eighty eight, after reporter Bree Walker of New
York's Channel two news had concluded a story on birth defects,
Veteran anchor Jim Jensen questioned her at length about a
hand and foot deformity which she herself suffered from, and
whether or not her parents would have aborted her had
they known in advance she had the condition. Shortly afterwards, Jensen,
(33:06):
who had been on the air in New York forever,
entered a rehab center for treatment of alcohol, prescription drug
and cocaine abuse and depression. Later in two thousand and four,
Dan Harris had a live panic attack on ABC's Good
Morning America, losing his breath then cutting his newscast short.
Second of the Prophecies Network posited that such a breakdown
(33:28):
would lead not to treatment nor removal from a broadcast,
but to greater success. Fifteen years ago, Glenn Beck began
to regularly weep on the air. If that was not
an indication of emotional trouble, it might have been the
attempt to convey that feeling legitimate or contrived. Beck was
rewarded and the ABC newscaster I just mentioned, Dan Harris
(33:52):
would go on to do a World News Tonight feature
on his own on air breakdown. Third prophecy, when Howard
Beale first tells his boss, Max Schumacher played by William Holden,
that he will kill himself on the air. Schumacher goes
off on a drunken flight of fancy about a new
Sunday night news show he called in his mind the
Death Hour, Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, mafia hitman, automobile smashups,
(34:17):
he says, and a terrorist of the Week. Schumacher's utterly
dystopian forecast has not made air yet, but the terrorism
of nine to eleven did play out live on all networks,
and parts of that terrorism are repeated minimally annually. Much
of a network like True TV consisted of programs that
(34:39):
were merely edited highlights of disasters, centering, in fact, largely on,
as Max Schumacher phrased it, automobile smashups. The fourth network
Prophecy Beal swears repeatedly during his newscasts. In the last
few years, CNN in particular, has made the decision to
quote words that would have been bleeped less than a
(35:00):
decade ago, and at least one broadcast television program, The
Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on CBS, produced its
show live to tape with an audience and in real
time let the hosts swear copiously and then would bleep
him just as copiously for the broadcast itself. Maybe the
scripted swear in the newscast is not far away. Fifth
(35:23):
of the network prophecies. Newscasts did not do stories about
other newscasts before network premiered. When Beale announces his intention
to kill himself, all of New York's local ten and
eleven PM newscasts made it their lead story at this point,
and in ensuing years, even monumental retirements such as Chet
(35:45):
Huntley's retirement in NBC in nineteen seventy or Walter Cronkite's
retirement from CBS in nineteen eighty one, had only merited
the briefest of footnotes on rival network programs. But by
the time of Peter Jennings lung cancer announcement in two
thousand and five, a newscast or newscaster could become the
lead story on another newscast. Indeed, when I left MSNBC
(36:08):
in January twenty eleven, announcing it mid show, CNN's Anderson
Cooper three sixty not only led its live broadcast at
ten pm ET with it it devoted a dumbfounding twenty
two minutes to something that would have been ignored even
a decade before. Understand how long twenty two minutes is
(36:29):
on CNN. I retired from the broadcast countdown on MSNBC
and was able to get home before he was done
covering the story of my retiring from the broadcast sixth
and this was the key to everything in network And
since network, Penny Chayevsky and his script forecast a moment
(36:53):
in which newscasts would be required to make money. It
had not been that way before news divisions were considered
public service. The price the networks paid to make billions
of entertainment shows. Robert Duval as Frank Hackett, the executive,
attacks UBS's quote credit news division and its annual thirty
three million dollar deficit. As Hackett later tells UBS stockholders,
(37:18):
in effect, the news division would be reduced from an
independent division to a department accountable to network. After CBS
was sold in nineteen eighty seven, the news budget was
cut in half, and the moment arrived newscast from there
on in had to be profitable. In two twelve, NBC
took it to a new level by appointing a programming
(37:38):
executive with no news experience to oversee all news on
all of its networks, stations, and even local cable systems.
The reason Padaychavsky could see this when others could not
was that he had worked in live television drama in
the nineteen fifties, particularly on one show called You Are There,
(37:58):
in which CBS news reporters and actors re enacted great
moments from history. The newscasters could make extra cash on
the side, and the network made huge profits. The host
of You Are There, half news, half entertainment was Walter Cronkite.
The seventh network prophecy criminals videotaping their own crimes. A
(38:21):
series in network is created after a terrorist group called
the Ecumenical Liberation Army shoots film of its own members
robbing a bank. This was inconceivable in nineteen seventy six,
yet is today a facet of every act, from the
simplest self taped vandalism uploaded to YouTube, to actual terrorist attacks,
(38:42):
recordings of which are made by and then disseminated to
news organizations by the perpetrators. The eighth prophecy of network
television news as rage quote the American people want somebody
to articulate their rage for them, says Faye Dunaway's character
Diana Christiansen, relative to cable news in particular, does this
(39:03):
even require me to elaborate at all? Ninth Christensen, not
a news executive, is then given control over and permission
to program Beal's newscast, the UBS Evening News. Although there
was a history of news personnel being involved in entertainment programming,
Edward R. Murrow also did an interview show called Person
(39:24):
to Person Evening newscast were sacrosancd Today the fiction may
be maintained that they're still sacro sancd, But since the
advent of the consultant on the local news level in
the late nineteen seventies and early eighties, more and more
decisions about not just who does the news, but what
goes on the news have been made by non news executives.
(39:45):
The tenth prophecy, Diana Christensen also foretells the various genres
of five nights a week network programming that didn't happen
before network. She sees a profit center in a chiefly produced,
low budget program that can run Monday through Friday, and
which happens to be about the news. The other networks
try to find their own outlandish newscasts and run them
(40:07):
five nights a week. Pandachevsky is now anticipating every genre
of craze that followed in news, from nightline to Dateline,
to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? To American Idol
to the NBC two thousand and nine experiment in which
they put Jay Leno on for a comedy show every
night at ten pm. The eleventh Prophecy network anticipates government
(40:31):
deregulation and what it would do to TV. When the
UVS president objects to a pornographic network news show and
warrens the FCC had kill us Robert duval as Hackett
dismisses him and the FCC and foretells the declawing of
the commission. The FCC can't do anything except wrap our
knuckles again, does anything the FCC has not done in
(40:55):
post network television? Need any detail from me? Twelfth news
commentary devolving into rants and takes? Wait? What did I
write here? News commentary devolves into rants and takes. I've
never heard any news commentator ranting what the hell is this?
(41:16):
The rest of this rant about the relevance of the
Movie Network. Right after this, before the break, I was
about halfway through my look at the remarkably prescient nineteen
seventy six Film Network, which foresaw things we thought impossible then,
ranging from TV news covering TV news as news, to
(41:38):
terrorists videotaping their own terror and giving it two newscasts,
to the twelfth thing that network foretold, the evolution or
devolution of news commentary into takes and rants. What in
substance are we proposing, new network chief Hackett asks his
horrified colleagues. Then he answers his own question, merely to
(42:00):
add editorial comment to our news show. Brinkley SEVERI reasoner
all have their comments now, Howard Beale will have his.
Hackett's erasure of a line between nuanced, thoughtful scripts of
commentary agonized over by commentators, producers, and executives and ad
libbed madness foresaw the similar real life change. Not merely
(42:23):
were comments added to newscasts, but the standards for what
constituted useful public commentary dropped from an age's old tradition
of newspaper editorials and columnists to verbal graffiti spontaneously letting
out his anger. The thirteenth Network prophecy, newscasters and commentators
never used to claim that God told them what to say.
(42:46):
Though Beale specifically quotes the voice who tells him to
tell the people the truth as also saying that that
voice is not God. Beale still says he feels quote
imbued and connected to all living things. The leap for
a commentator from hearing your inner voice to hearing somebody
(43:07):
else's inner voice was preposterous enough as it was, but
reality took it further. While Glenn Beck may not have
claimed God was writing his commentaries for him, in April
twenty twelve, according to the ut San Diego News, he
told an audience in Rancho, San Diego that God did
tell him to quit his job at Fox News Channel.
(43:30):
On the day he decided to leave, they wrote, Beck
said he walked up to a floor to ceiling window
in his New York apartment and asked his wife, how
could this possibly be God's plan? As I stood there,
the Lord whispered to me. If you do not leave now,
you will lose your soul. Beck said it was the
easiest decision I've ever made. Beck also later announced that
(43:53):
God not only wantedmit Romney to be president, but had
put him behind in the polls so that when Romney won,
everyone would see a modern miracle. Had that one turn
out for you, Glenn, the fourteenth Network prophecy, Network accurately
predicted that journalists would stop throwing themselves in front of
professional train wrecks. The same year that network was released,
(44:14):
a House committee wanted correspond at Daniel Shore of CBS
News to testify about where he got a copy of
a secret report. He refused. CBS pressured him to testify,
so he quit. He quit his job, but Network foretold
that Shore would be among the last to do something
like that. William Holden's Max Schumacher tries to derail the
(44:38):
Howard Beal Prophecy and Rage newscast by telling Robert Duval's
Frank Hackett, you want me out of here, You're gonna
have to drag me out of here, kicking and screaming
in the whole news division, kicking and screaming with me.
Hackett dismisses him. You think they're going to quit their
jobs for you. Not in this recession, buddy. The premise
of the integrity of news people was as widely held
(44:59):
as the integrity and inviolability of a news division, and
yet in each downsizing, redesigning, and bulbliterization of the old
standard concept of news. Again, Patty Chayevski foresaw correctly the
number of public protests, let alone public exits, has been
negligible in the last thirty years. Dan rather railed against
(45:23):
the gutting of CBS in nineteen eighty seven. That's been
about it, And for all the other good things Dan
has done, he didn't quit his job. Fifteenth Network foresaw
reality television and the staging of news. When Christiansen meets
with the activist Lorraine Hobbs and her attorneys to program
their terrorism show, The Moutsay Tongue Hour, she's not merely
(45:45):
reflecting the coming amorality of reality television, nor just amplifying
the already extant if it bleeds it leads mantra of
local news. Through her, Patty Chayevski is also foretelling a
time when television would begin not to cover the news,
but to orchestrate it. If the networks have yet to
actually be guilty of misprision of a penalty regarding terrorists,
(46:08):
we hope, surely on a lesser scale than nineteen ninety
two NBC scandal over faked video of Chevy trucks exploding
after collisions confirms the basic premise of adding programming helper
to the actual news. Somewhat more remotely. Event recreations were
once absolutely impermissible in news, they are now one of
(46:29):
its staples. There are eight more prophecies, and they all
fall into one category. Howard Beal's revised newscast, The Network
News Hour, has components in it, eight of them that
would have been thought absurd in any newscast anywhere the
day that the Film Network premiered in nineteen seventy six.
Number one, it has a studio audience. Countless newscasts, particularly
(46:55):
on cable, have now used studio audiences. MSNBC's Donahue did
it nightly in two thousand and two two thousand and three.
Others like Anders Cooper and Chris Matthews and Chris Hayes
have experimented with it. Number two, predicting the news on
the Beal Show, Sybil the Soothsayer actually predicts the news. Well,
(47:18):
nobody has done that yet, not literally. But what does
every specialty newscast, especially political ones, do in its last
broadcast before Monday Almost invariably there is some kind of
prediction or forecast for the week ahead what to look for,
and if it is not institutionalized in that distinct manner,
(47:38):
the show still contains pundits who do nothing but forecast
tomorrow's news. As long ago as nineteen ninety eight, we
would try on Thursday Night to guests where the Clinton
Lewinsky story was going and what we could give them
to put in the prerecorded promos that would run on Monday,
(47:59):
three days later. Number three Trial Obsessed TV News. There
is a Howard Beal segment called Jim Webbing and His
It's the Emis Truth Department. The script is a little vague.
We don't know. Is the Emis Truth a series of
hard to believe news stories. Does the giant logo behind
Jim Webbing of Justice carrying her scales suggests it's a
(48:22):
regular report on trials and the law. Or is the
emphasis on Emis as in, you've been lied to. Here's
the real truth, not the cover up? Which is it? Well?
Does it matter? Which? Do we not have all of them?
Concurrently every hour fourth public sexual Scandal coverage. Another Beal
(48:44):
segment stars Miss Matta Harry and her skeletons in the
closet and she stands in front of a giant keyhole.
This is something beyond just gossip, and it has become
the sustaining joy of all newscasts, from the cheesiest local
station to PBS the public sex scandal, Asked Bill Clinton,
(49:04):
ask Madison Cawthorne. Fifth opinion polls, as news Beale has
a regular segment called vox populi, the calculation and reporting
a public opinion. This one is the hardest to explain
to younger viewers of the film network, But the idea
of running polls, especially polls conducted by the news organization
(49:26):
that would then televise the results of those polls, was
laughable when Chayavsky saw it coming. Now, TV news organizations
like MSNBC will not only employ somewhat reliable polling morning, noon,
and night, but they'll also employ text polls in which
viewers are asked if a particular Republican is a evil
(49:47):
or be just stupid. Moreover, every newscast believes in relies
on and most of them commission their own polling for
everything and treats the results as breaking news. Guilty is
charged here, I did it, then I do it In
this podcast. At six the corporate influence. Beal opens the
(50:09):
first edition of The Network News Hour with the death
of network president Ed Ruddy and the ascent of Frank
Hackett and the full control of UBS by the company.
Cca Bal asks, when the twelfth largest company in the
world controls the most awesome, goddamn propaganda fos in the
whole godless world, who knows what blank will be pedaled
(50:30):
for truth on this network? The cross promotion between GE
and NBC and its various networks and channels, or Universal
Studios when the former owned the ladder, or between Disney
Networks and Disney products, ABC, ESPN, the cross quotation of
one news corp print entity by a news corp broadcast
(50:54):
entity or Fox News and the like. That was only
the start. But what is Fox News? What is oa N?
What is Newsmax? What is a serious coverage of the
entire big lie about the twenty twenty presidential election? You
think those are the newscasters thinking all that up? It
is exactly what Chayevsky had Beale warn of. What if
(51:18):
the corporations own all the television networks and tell you
what they the corporations want you to hear seven direct
involvement of corporate CEOs in news content. Well, I know
of no meeting in which a real life equivalent to
the Ned Baity character, one of the great characters in
motion picture history, Arthur Jensen, preaches fire and brimstone to
(51:42):
Howard Beale to get him to do what he Jensen wants.
But I can tell you, without fear of contradiction, as
a witness to this, that corporate CEOs will tell individual
newscasters what they want personally, directly and with the threat
of retribution spoken or otherwise. Just yesterday here I mentioned
(52:06):
Jeff Immelt, the head of GE in the summer of
two thousand and nine, during the well publicized GE swoon
over MSNBC's criticism of Immelt's friends at Fox News. Eventually
it was all resolved when Immelt had me come up
to the private GE NBC dining room a top thirty
(52:26):
Rock in New York City along with NBC President Jeff
Zucker to hash it all out. This thing lasted two hours.
When I finally asked Immelt, is this a question of
never criticizing Fox again? Or how much we criticize Fox?
He said how much? And I said, well, I can
do less, and he said, well great, really, then it's resolved.
(52:50):
Let's eat. And that's when Immelt confirmed that he had
met on this topic with Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of
News Corp, and that Jeff Zucker had met with Roger Ales,
who ran Fox News, to discuss what the Fox Corporation
and the NBC Corporation would and would not allow their
television networks to report about each other. Eight Lastly, assassination
(53:17):
spoiler alert about the movie network. I don't think anybody
has actually been killed by his own bosses for having
lousy ratings, but the moral equivalent character assassination of a
network's own newscasters. That is a regular technique to undermine them,
to discipline them, to make them more malleable, to get
(53:37):
away with firing them. In Aaron Sorkin's newsroom, his employers
were themselves leaking gossip about their newscaster, played by Jeff Daniels,
to the tabloid newspaper they also owned. But I know
for a fact that past bosses of mine at NBC
leaked to The New York Post in hopes of making
me fear from my job when Current TV tried to
(54:01):
fire me to get out of having to pay me
roughly fifteen million dollars. It still owed me. It actually
hired a former White House spin doctor to make up
and spread stories with his contacts about me in hopes
of getting themselves off the financial hook. If you have
never seen the movie, Network, all that I've been through
(54:22):
in the last twenty minutes probably makes it sound like
some sort of drab, almost academic treatise on declining journalistic
values and personal moral decay. While it's anything but that.
It is exciting, hilarious, surprising, terrifying, and it's virtually perfect,
with brilliant acting and a subtle but perceptible sense that
everybody in the film and everybody watching the film is
(54:46):
detaching slowly and slowly and more slowly, detaching from reality
and the reliable world they thought they knew with every
passing minute of the film. But mostly it's just a
great flick. If you have not seen it, see it now.
To paraphries for Finch as be so, turn off this
(55:07):
podcast and go watch Network. Turn it off now, turn
it off right now, turn it off and leave it off.
Turn it off right in the middle of a sentence,
I'm speaking to you now all right, mus madness, I've
(55:31):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening, Thank you a lot. Friday's Countdown set a
record with fifty nine thousand, nine hundred and twenty one downloads.
We're just under three hundred and seventeen thousand, four hundred
for the week, and relative to the million a month benchmark,
March saw this thing downloaded one million, two hundred forty
(55:51):
six thousand, four hundred and sixty times. And forgive my
amazement at the numbers. It's nice to have precise, reliable
numbers rather than the guesswork that is TV ratings. I
thank you, and my producer me thanks you as well.
A little more navel gazing. I suspect there will be
two different editions of this podcast tomorrow, one before and
(56:11):
one after the indictments. So if you're not subscribed with notifications,
do that now so you can hear firsthand how badly
my predictions go. And yes, I will not update the
whole thing tomorrow, only the first block, but check your
emails for the update tomorrow. Anyway. Here the credits. Most
of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian
Ray and John Philip Channel, who are the countdown musical directors.
(56:34):
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitars, bass
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Another
Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy, ESPN Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist
(56:57):
ever our announcer today was Larry David and everything else
is pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this,
the eight hundred and eighteenth day since Donald Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Arrest him now while we still all right. They are
arrest him again while we still can. The next scheduled
(57:19):
countdown is tomorrow, Trump miss day. Till then, I'm Keith Olverman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(57:40):
with Keith Olverman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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