January 23, 2023 • 39 mins
EPISODE 117: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: I do not believe Joe Biden and/or his team mishandled any classified documents. Unfortunately, it’s clear Joe Biden and/or his team mishandled the messaging, the process, and the narrative. If you have to tell seven different stories in two weeks, it begins to matter less and less that you were totally cooperative and proactive and invited the feds to search, and it begins to look more and more like that oldest of presidential story templates: It no longer looks like what the president said it was.
Happily there are several things the president can still did to regain the narrative and smash the undeserved gift his team handed the inquisition-happy Republicans and the pudding-brained American political-media complex so desperate for a Democratic scandal that Peter Baker actually wrote a piece comparing Biden's papers to Clinton-Lewinsky! And he better do them TODAY.
B-Block (16:25) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Sebastian; (17:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The Brett Kavanaugh Sexual Assault documentary, Revised Edition, plus George Santos, and the SCOTUS Investigation that wasn't really an investigation. (20:14) IN SPORTS: Trump praises Trump, The Golfer Of Strength And Stamina. Hockey's Vancouver Canucks screw up again. A month until Spring Training games and the chaos of the new rules. And my secret method to make sure all batting averages actually go up (24:36) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Nikki Haley doesn't know what the "P" in VP stands for, the lights are on but no one's home, and Greg Abbott's epic twitter self-own.
C-Block (29:13) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Talk about White Houses trying to control the narrative: in 2004 George W. Bush's people were a) convinced I was on their side b) knew I was only interviewing Iraq War critic Ambassador Joe Wilson in order to savage him c) decided to help me by emailing all their talking points but d) couldn't figure out how to spell my name. Hilarity ensued (and all they wound up doing was revealing to me all of "their" people at NBC News.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
I do not believe Joe Biden and or his team
mishandled any classified documents. Unfortunately, I believe it's clear Joe
(00:29):
Biden and or his team mishandled the messaging, the process,
and the narrative of this story. It is a story
that was leaked two weeks ago, two weeks ago today,
probably by somebody in Chicago, probably by the Trump appointee
there who Merritt Garland first put in charge of assessing it,
this man Lausch. And it was done with malice aforethought.
(00:54):
It was designed to hang there in the air and
rough Joe Biden up for a couple of days and
then fuzz up Trump's documents. Theft maybe linger long enough
to if Jim Jordan and Jim Comber and other worms
enough fodder to keep their phony house investigations of all
things Biden going for another week or two, and then
to collapse forgotten into the dustbin of history. And that's
(01:18):
all it could do, unless the fascists goot lucky and
could put it into the phony pile of the phony
things that they were trying to cobble into a phony
impeachment because Biden's ostensible defenders were somehow to make it
into a story. Biden's ostensible defenders were the only ones
who could make it into a story, and they have.
(01:43):
They handed a lazy, putting brained twenty first century American
political media complex so desperate for a democratic scandal that
captain both sides is um himself. Peter Baker actually wrote
a peace Saturday in The New York Times comparing Biden's
papers with the Clinton Lewinsky story. They handed these idiots
(02:06):
this thing that fits into the worst possible and most
easily digestible of all presidential story templates, the event that
looks with every new drip drip drip less and less
like what the president originally said it was. It is
still even if worse literally comes to worst, nothing like
(02:29):
the Trump stolen nuclear secrets and probable espionage scandal story. Unfortunately,
the way they have handled that this wine House has
now justified every media outlet that has said all that
and will say all that and then add, well, yeah,
but unfortunately this wine house is absolutely right. Documents innocently
(02:56):
found and never missed by the archives in six years
and immediately returned and then a search was invited at
all bears no resemblance at all to Trump's deliberate thievery
and legal manipulations to never return any of the documents
he stole, the three hundred of them. And even though
(03:17):
political whores like Oversight Chairman James Comer are comparing a
mouse to an elephant, the White House has made it
look like it tried to hide the mouse. And worst
of all, the White House has given Trump's apologists and
cultists and propagandists something to now trot out every time
(03:38):
Trump's espionage is broached. And yes, that's something is as
phony as a three dollar bill. But unfortunately, once again
it's Biden's people who have made it look like they
were trying to hide the three dollar bill. And first
this White House had to confirm a story leaked to
(04:00):
CBS News. Then two days later it had to change
its story to add a newfound document. Then the day
after that it had to change its story again to
address a higher page count. Than the day after that,
it had to change their story again to address the
appointment of a special counsel. Then last Wednesday, it had
to change its story again to include another document. Then Thursday,
(04:21):
it had to change its story again to include another
five documents, and then Saturday, it had to completely change
its story to cover its invitation to the Department of
Justice to search the President's home and the d j's
removal of six unidentified items at the invitation of the President.
I believed Joe Biden when he said there was no
(04:44):
there there, because there wasn't and there isn't. And in
the non their their space, there have now been seven
different stories. And if there were seven different stories about
how much the president is cooperating, that's the same thing
as seven different stories about exactly how much the president
(05:05):
donated to charity last year. And if those numbers changed
seven times, they would get people scratching their heads. And
I don't know who thought this was a good idea,
and I'm hoping it wasn't President Biden, because if it wasn't,
he can fire everybody who did. And he should do
that today. And the President should do something more, something proactive,
(05:27):
because whether he likes it or not, or his press
secretary likes it or not, or his advisers like it
or not, or you and I like it or not,
he has lost control of the narrative. A narrative as
bad and as terminally afflicted by what about is um
and both sides is him as the American political media
is so that when they keep saying, you watch, there
(05:50):
will be something here, we know where the omniscient political media,
and you give them something like this, at some point
it actually kind of stops being their fault and their
desperate need for clicks and ratings and self worth are
not entitled to, and it stops being about their inability
to process anything except templates and formula stories, and the
(06:13):
problem becomes your own, and the proactive thing President Biden
might do pertains less to the investigation of his mice
than it pertains to the investigation of Trump's elephants. The
most important relevance of the materials in Delaware and at
the Biden think tank is their impact on the Trump investigation,
(06:35):
because the argument that formed on day one of this
in the gelatinous mass that is the hive mind that
protects and self immolates for Trump, was that since you
can't prosecute a sitting president, well you shouldn't prosecute Trump either,
because two laws and that's not fair and deep state
and Biden ran on unifying and those other dimwitted, irrelevant
(06:58):
catchphrases and brand names the Republicans and the fascists use.
I think what President Biden should do, and if he
has a better idea, go ahead. This is mine. What
I think Biden should do is turn the argument on
its head and the narrative on its ear. There is
(07:19):
no law that prevents the Department of Justice from prosecuting
or considering prosecuting the sitting president, or deciding not to
prosecute the sitting president, and leaving all that to Congress.
There is only precedent and departmental policy. President Biden should
tell his Attorney General to waive that precedent, to suspend
(07:40):
that departmental policy. He should say his certitude and confidence
that his documents SAGA is inadvertent and innocent and inconsequential
is not only intact today, but it is stronger than ever,
and that to reassure the country on this he is
volunteering to be subject to the same legal consequences that
(08:00):
would face any other citizen. I'm not guilty, and moreover,
this is how much I'm not guilty. Not only would
it completely reverse the momentum of this story and utterly
shift the spotlight back to the prosecution of Trump, probably
for espionage, but it also wouldn't change damn thing practically,
(08:22):
because the only thing you could charge Biden for anyway
would be the terrible mismanagement of this story. And since
the Attorney General does nothing anyway, and it's a slow
nothing at that, he's not going to accept a recommendation
from anybody to change something. He's not going to accept
a recommendation from anybody, even the President, to change departmental
(08:44):
policy about prosecuting a sitting president. He doesn't want to
do anything past the year eight. So Biden proposes this,
and Garland rejects it, and Biden has done his part,
and then he can eat his cake and keep it too,
and re established that indeed there is no there there.
(09:05):
Because the question I have not yet heard addressed, let
alone answered, is this, Since a sitting president can't be charged,
how can a sitting president be cleared? What is the
endgame of this special council, This special council, who, by
the way, owes his job to Trump if charges are impossible,
what is he doing here? The endgame is he turns
(09:29):
over anything he finds too exculpatory. We're convicting, he turns
anything he finds over to the House Judiciary Committee Jim
Jordan's while at the same time this buttonhead, James Comer,
goes after the president's family. Firstly, the White House or
its friends needs to bury Jim Jordan and Jim Comber,
(09:52):
and that means a heavy lean on the atrocity of
Jordan's negligence in the sexual abuse scandal at Ohio State
and on the on record charges by Comber's college girlfriend
that he hit her and threatened her life. Her name
is Marilyn Thomas. Look her up. Dirty these two bastards
up but fast, and most importantly, get control of this
(10:16):
out of control fire hose of a document story, because
if it continues to proceed like this, it ends with
Comber and Jordan's and all the other worms using it
to impeach the president. I mean, they'll try to impeach
him anyway, but right now they have something with what
(10:37):
artists call very similitude to it. It doesn't have to
be real, it only has to look real. And Biden
has to take that back, and after the seven different stories,
he has to break it into a million pieces, and
he damned well better do that. Not just for himself,
but for the prosecution of Trump, which is the most
(10:57):
important part, and for all the rest of us who
have defended him since this story broke on, who in
a time without nuance, have had to rethread a new
needle seven different times in two weeks, and who are
now getting drip drip dripped on, not by scandal or
theft or espionage, but by amateurish story management by a
(11:18):
guy or the guy's employees, but by a guy who's
been doing this since they swore him in as a
senator fifty years and thirteen days ago, and who bluntly
ought to have known God damned better than this. I mean,
(11:51):
the goddamn piece of nothing story is not just gonna
go away of its own accord. Stopped thinking like that
still ahead. So when they investigated the Supreme Court league,
none of the justices were under oath, so it was
just opinion poll. How many times have we all said this,
(12:12):
I was not a drag queen. Guys, I was young
and I had fun at the festivals. Sue me for
having a life. By the way, is that quote George
Santos or Brett Kavanaugh sports? So a month from now
they'll be playing exhibition games at spring training, and chaos
unlike anything we have seen in baseball will unfold as
(12:33):
three titanic rules changes that no player is ready for
are introduced, all at the same time, plus Olberman's full
proof method for raising batting averages and utterly fitting given
the lead commentary about the White House and the media,
let me tell you about the day George W. Bush's
geniuses thought I was on their side, so they tried
(12:54):
to send me talking points with which to discredit and
Iraq war critic, and instead they wind up revealing all
the people within NBC News they knew they could rely
on things I promised out to tell. That's next. This
is countdown. This is countdown. With Keith Olberman still ahead.
(13:19):
Say seen that new Brett Kavanaugh sexual assault film premiered Friday,
They're already adding new info into it and continuing on
the subject of White houses trying to control the narrative.
There's the story of the day. George Bush's people just
knew I was gonna slam Iraq war critic Joe Wilson
for them, and they wanted to help me with talking points,
(13:40):
but they could not remember how to spell my name. First.
In each addition of Countdown, we feature a dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day to Submashian.
He's a handsome little docks and mix in Brooklyn and
angels for mistreated animals, a m a rescue, just trying
to get him into see an oncologist. There is an
(14:00):
angry looking melanoma on his jaw and tongue. The good
news his dogs do very well with cancer treatments, but
you have to know exactly what you're dealing with, so
he needs aspirates of his lymph nodes and maybe some
organs and chest X rays, psychology. If you've had a
dog with cancer as I have, you know the drill.
It's possible. They can't do anything for Sebastian, but if
they can, let's You can find Sebastian on his go
(14:23):
fund Me page or on my Twitter feeds. Donate if
you can, retweet if you can't, I thank you and
Sebastian thanks you. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some snarks,
(14:43):
some predictions, dateline, Park City, Utah. They kept its secret
until the day before it's premiere at the Sun Dance Festival.
Justice the new Doug Liman documentary on the sexual assault
allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Now they are re editing
it because as soon as the movie was revealed, new
information and tips started to come in. Unlike the FBI,
(15:05):
the producers are following up on them. As it is.
Justice contains new witness testimony from a classmate about Kavanaugh's
assault on Deborah ramire As at Yale, and new testimony
from the same man, Max Styre, president of the Partnership
for Public Service at Yale with Ramirez and Kavanaugh, who
says he personally witnessed Kavanaugh assault another woman in exactly
(15:25):
the same way. Dateline, Washington, the investigation of the Roe v.
Wade leak by Supreme Court Martial GAYL. Curly, the one
that produced nothing except absolute certainty that no leads direct
towards any justices nor their spouses. Turns out it was
not exactly an investigation, Marshall Curly confirming the justices were
(15:48):
all spoken to, but none were under oath, so it
was not so much an investigation as it was an
opinion poll. And Dateline New York Congressman George Santos denied
he'd ever performed as a drag queen then his Wikipedia
editing profile turned out to have mentioned yeah he was.
(16:08):
Then uh, he denied it all again while caught in
a fairly standard walking scrum at LaGuardia Airport, got a
dragon and had fun at a festival. Assue me for
having a life. This is how No, it's not how
(16:31):
you conduct an interview, but it's the only thing you
have when you won't do a real interview, Katara. They
also caught him in what is believed to be his
third different lie about his mother and nine eleven. First
he said she escaped the towers that day from her office.
Then he said she got sick there with what eventually
became the cancer that killed her. Now her immigration record
(16:53):
has turned up, but it shows santos Is mother was
not even in the country on nine eleven. This is
(17:13):
Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown
with Keith Alberman in sports. A great honor to have
won the Senior Club Championship at Trump International Golf Club,
one of the best courses in the country in Palm
Beach County, Florida. Competed against many fine golfers and was
(17:34):
hitting the ball long and straight in a very real way.
It serves as a physical exam, only much tougher. You
need strength and stamina to win, and I have strength
and stamina and most others don't. You also need strength
and stamina to govern. End quote Trump last night a
yen not really, it's freaking golf. Be competed against many
(17:57):
fine golfers, all of whom are just standing there off
camera smiling like he is. See it's freaking golf. As
to Trump's golf scandal is tie into the Saudi Arabian
Blood Money Tour. Live talk about log rolling. One time
golfer Greg Norman, now CEO of Live, was asked about
the murder of journalist Jamal Kashagi at the behest of
(18:20):
Saudi Prince Ben Salman. His answer quote, I think everybody
learns from their mistakes. The interview speaking of mistakes was
by Dan Abrams of News Nation, which is owned by
the Next Star Company. It was promoted by The Hill,
which is owned by the Next Star Company, and Live
TV or Live has just done a TV deal with
(18:42):
the CW Network, which is owned by oddly enough, the
Next Star Company. Hockey took them like three weeks to
do it, during which they lent popular incumbent coach Bruce Boudreau,
who saved the team a year ago, twists slowly, slowly
in the wind. But the Vancouver Cadux have finally fired
Boudreaux and replaced him with Rick Tockett, who takes the
(19:05):
demotion from intermission analyst for the TNT National Hockey League coverage.
The Canucks, who were vivisected by everybody in the National
Hockey League were making Boudreaux suffer like that, then made
a pathetic attempt to save their reputation yesterday by tweeting
a graphic reading Bruce Boudreau thank you, which is ironic
because the team's real message to Boudreau clearly was a
(19:28):
different two word phrase, but it also ended in you,
thank you, Nancy Faust. And lastly, a month from now,
just a month from now, baseball will just be starting
(19:50):
at spring training schedule in Florida and Arizona. And as
warm as that makes you feel, this means we will
now see the implementation of three new rules. First, a
ban on infield shifts so that two fielders have to
be on either side of second base as each pitch
is thrown. Greetings, baseball's new illegal defense rule. Second, with
(20:12):
nobody on base, pitchers will have just fifteen seconds to
throw a pitch. Twenty seconds with somebody on base or
it's a ball. Third, batters have to be in the
batter's box no later than eight seconds left on that clock. Well,
this will be a breeze fifteen seconds. Ken Ley Jansen,
the reliever now of Boston, averaged twenty six seconds per
(20:33):
pitch last year, and a hundred other major league pitchers
average twenty seconds or more. The infield shift, meanwhile, is
designed to create more non home run offense, but nobody's
explained how it's gonna make hitters trying for singles instead
of home runs. Here's a tip. If you want batting
averages to go up, do what they did in seven.
(20:55):
This led to the all time record for highest batting
average in a season, not only being shattered, but being
shattered by sixty three points by Tip O'Neill of the St.
Louis Browns. This is what you do. You change the
scoring rules so that every walk counts as a hit.
It makes as much sense as trying to change where
(21:17):
the fielders stand, how long the picture has to throw,
how soon the hitter has to be in the box
all at the same time, Baseball It's survived the people
who have run it and owned it since the late
nineteenth century. Time now for the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons,
(21:47):
and done in Kruger effect specimens. Who constitute today's worst
persons in the world? Lebron's former UN ambassador Nicky Haley? Wait,
did that really happen? She was un ambassador? Any who?
Former Secretary of State Mike POMPEII Oh, wait, did that
really happen? Secretary of State Mike Pompeio any who? Pompeo
(22:11):
says Haley once essentially went around him. Wait, did that
really happen to anyway? To meet with Ivanka and Kushner
about becoming vice president. Hailey denies this, saying she quote
never had a conversation with Jared, Ivanka or the President
about the vice president ship. Vice president ship, you say,
(22:34):
have you ever heard that before? Vice president ship? Search
the internet. You'll find that it appears that since the
year eighteen sixty seven the term has been used once
in interview with somebody reminiscing about Lyndon Johnson, and the
eight sixty seven reference was from a British writer Surely,
Miss Haley did not mean vice president ship. She meant
(22:59):
vice president to tud. The runners up those who installed
the computer controlled eating system in the new high School
at Wilbraham, Massachusetts, which is outside Springfield. On August one,
the software failed and since that day all the lights
at the high school have been on all the time.
(23:20):
They can't figure out how to turn them off. Staffords
sometimes go around and unscrewed light bulbs from the seven
thousand light fixtures in the school in the desperate attempt
to not waste energy and money. What's the problem now?
The company that installed the lights has been sold and
merged several times, and the new new, new, new company
(23:41):
has had a supply chain issue. Why don't we getting
that off switch in from Brazil? So there it is.
You've always wondered what the literal definition of this cliche was.
Here it is the lights are on, but no one's home.
Speaking of which, our winner, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, as
(24:01):
his Dallas Cowboys were losing an NFL playoff game last
night to San Francisco nineteen to twelve, after the Niners
had messed with his head in his pregame warmups. Cowboys kicker.
Breton Marr missed the point after during that snooze fest,
and Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, thought he had shown
a great sense of humor about himself and his team
(24:23):
when he tweeted, I swear I can kick as good
as the Dallas Cowboys kicker. We all laughed and we
all had a good time, and then about a thousand
people replied yeah, and I swear he can govern a
state as good as you can governor Greg bluntly he
put it on a t for us. Abbott two days
(24:47):
worst partson in the world. Finally to the number one
story on the countown and my favorite topic, me and
things I promised not to tell. And on Monday May third,
(25:11):
two thousand four, my executive producer phoned me at home
and said, we got Ambassador Joe Wilson. He'll be on
the show tomorrow. Within hours, the communications office of the
White House of George W. Bush began a desperate, ceaseless,
tireless effort to send me one email with talking points
(25:31):
about Ambassador Joe Wilson, which repeatedly, hilariously failed to get
through to me because none of them could spell my
name correctly. By late in the evening of May the third,
and throughout the morning of May the fourth, I got
calls and forwarded emails from people throughout NBC who had
received emails of their own from the Bush White House
(25:52):
Communications Office, all of them with attachments addressed to Keith
Oberman without the L, Keith Olberman with only one N,
kayath Alderman Keith spelled wrong, and even Keith Overman with
a V. This was actually truly the first day I
believed I was having an impact on the Bush White House,
(26:13):
and also the first day I realized they were incredibly stupid.
There democracy still had a slim chance. The Internet had
been operating at more or less its present speed since
about or My name was all over the Internet in
articles about my news career, about my sports career, about
(26:35):
my previous news career. There were articles I had written,
there were books I had written, and these people who
were trying to reshape the United States of America into
a reactionary, conservative, cruel, xenophobic, semi authoritarian state, we're not
smart enough to figure out how to spell my name
(26:57):
just so we know who we are talking about. By
this point, Scott McClellan had succeeded the infamous Ry Fleischer
as press secret Terry. His deputies were Dana Perino, who
went from being the stupidest person ever to be White
House Press secretary to being one of the stupidest persons
ever to have a show on Fox News, Pamelas Stevens,
who later wound up as a producer at CNN. Because
(27:19):
political press people are exactly like unemployed football coaches or
baseball managers who get TV jobs and then leave the
TV jobs to go back onto the field. The communications
director was named Dan Bartlett, and there was another communications
person there named Nicole Wallace, who has somehow shaken off
the stink of working for both George and Jeb Bush
(27:41):
and is now considered a darling of MSNBC, even though
her only true non fascist credential is she doesn't like
Trump either. The crack White House media team representing the
most powerful man in the world in the anxious and
foreshadowing years after nine eleven, and not one of them
could even find anybody else who could spell my name,
(28:02):
let alone spell it themselves. More on them in a moment,
But I need to explain who Joe Wilson was if
you don't know, and why he was so important. Long
before Colin Powell confessed to Tim Russer that he had
been lied to by the White House and thus he
himself had lied to the United Nations about Saddam Hussein's
(28:24):
imaginary weapons of mass destruction. Those were the excuses from
Bush Cheney for dragging this country into an unnecessary and
national soul destroying war in Iraq with lies and torture
and scapegoating and suppression and brutality. Before that, there was
Ambassador Joseph Charles Wilson the fourth and in two thousand two,
(28:45):
after pressure from the White House, the CIA sent him
back to the scene of his first diplomatic posting, the
African nation of Niger to get proof for Bush that
Saddam was trying to buy yellow cake uranium there to
make nuclear bombs. Is out of and Wilson quickly found
out it was nonsense, and he reported back and the
(29:05):
Bush White House promptly buried his findings and instead, in
the two thousand three State of the Union address just
before he started bombing Iraq, George W. Bush said, the
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa. It was and remains a
complete lie, and war occurred because of it, and Joe
(29:28):
Wilson called it a complete lie in an op ed
in the New York Times on July six, two thousand three.
The Iraq War was still at this stage defined by
rah Rah, we're winning, but Sadam's w M D and
his biological weapons and his chemical weapons might be over
the next hill, and you'd better not criticize what we're doing,
or maybe your terrorist Joe Wilson said, the emperor had
(29:51):
no clothes. In two thousand three, he was an American
hero of the highest order. A week later, a Dick
Cheney flunkey named Scooter Libby and a Deputy Secretary of
State named Army began a campaign to punish Joe Wilson
and discredit him. They leaked to a dyspeptic and hate
(30:11):
filled columnist named Robert Novak, who is now working in
the Bureau in Hell, that Wilson's wife was an undercover
agent for the CIA, and that her name was Valerie Plame,
and that the pair of them were dirty Democrats. And moreover,
it was Plaie who had urged that her own husband
be sent to Niger to deliberately not find the uranium
(30:33):
or the Sadam Hussein signed receipts, or whatever Bush expected
to find there. The Bush white House destroyed the career
of risk, the life of and ruined several assignments and
contacts of one of this country's own secret CIA agents,
just to make her husband look bad. So in May
(30:55):
two thousand four, when Joe Wilson wrote a book about
all this crap, and he inexplicably wanted to go on MSNBC,
which was still at that point trying to be more
conservative than Fox Nudes, and wanted to go on My
little Watched show, which was considered the neutral outlier on
a network full of Joe Scarbrowse and Michael Savages. This
was a happy surprise for us, which was followed by
(31:18):
this wonderful, flailing effort by the Bush White House to
send me talking points about Joe Wilson before I interviewed him.
They not only could not spell my name, but they
were utterly convinced that my interview was designed to discredit
Joe Wilson. The talking points, which eventually got to me
from Assistant Press Secretary Pamela Stevens, consisted of six items
(31:40):
over two pages. The headings were as follows. One political motivation.
This was about Wilson calling Dick Cheney a lying s
o B about a year after the knee Jaire trip.
I couldn't figure this one out. Dick Cheney was a
lying s ob. That's how I got to be vice president. Two.
Gingbridge spokesman calls allegations about alleged March two thousand three
(32:01):
meeting completely false. This sided Newt Ingrish and his people
as if they were good sources, as opposed to the
punch lines they already were back then. In two thousand four,
talking point number three, McClellan points out political objective, and
four McClellan addresses accusations. These were quotes from the press secretary.
(32:24):
This man suddenly quit that job two years later two
thousand six, and confessed he had repeatedly lied for George W.
Bush and the others, and now he just couldn't take
it anymore. And he would come on my show and
give one of the best Atonement interviews I've ever heard.
It went on for forty five minutes. Five Fleischer says
(32:44):
VP office did not request trip. A quote from McClellan's predecessor,
who unless he is talking about baseball, you should assume
he's lying. Plus he might be lying about baseball. And finally,
six statement by George J. Tennant July eleven, two thousand three.
This was a quote from the CIA director which they
thought was their home run, and it basically consisted of this.
(33:08):
Bush never saw that report. That was it. There are
three punch lines to this story. Number one. I don't
know why the Bush Communications office assumed I was there
to take down Joe Wilson, But the moment I saw
these talking points, any lingering doubt I had that they
were not all lying bastards down there was erased. I
(33:30):
used the talking points in my interview, all right. I
read them out loud to Joe Wilson, and he rebutted
each of them with impeccable charm and elegance. He and
Valerie Plaine became regular guests on My show and would
beat the crap out of George Bush with the plum
right through the morning of January nine. Second punch line.
A year earlier, a supply clerk with a maintenance company
(33:54):
on the ground in Iraq was captured Private Jessica Lynch.
The military and the Bush administration immediately put out the
story that she was being tortured by them evil Iraq
he Sadam Hussein doctors. There was the glorious rescue of
Jessica Lynch which followed, and the parades and the you
better not question this story period, which lasted about six
(34:16):
weeks until a Toronto newspaper printed a substantially different account
that Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital and a
US military team in good faith went into extractor, but
that this was all arranged not by some sort of
part of intelligence or US operations or the Allies, but
(34:39):
by the Iraqi doctors, some of whom sneaked over to
American lines at great danger and said, one of your
soldiers is hurt and we don't have the right equipment
to help her. Could you swing by and pick her up?
I reported that version on MSNBC, and the next day,
as I was still taking my coat off, my boss,
(35:00):
Phil Griffin called me in and said that the head
of NBC News and the President into NBC, Bob Wright,
had been on the phone all morning to him, insisting
I should be fired for implying that the Bush administration
had lied. Griffin proudly said he had talked him into
letting me get away with just apologizing to the troops.
(35:22):
I can't even read this with a straight face now,
twenty years later, apologizing to the troops who rescued her,
I must credit myself when my brain was fulled in
that I did some quick thinking. The demand was comical
nonsense journalistically. On the other hand, if I agreed to
apologize to okay, the troops who rescued her, whoever you want,
(35:47):
I would get the chance to tell the whole real
story of Jessica Lynch again. So I did. The apology
was fifteen seconds, and while unnecessary, was sincere. I didn't
want to make the troops look bad. They didn't know
anything about this crap. I made sure, however, that the
retail of the true Lynch rescue story took about two
and a half minutes. That was in June of two
(36:10):
thousand three. So why as of May of two thousand four,
the Bush White House thought I was sympathetic to them,
I'll never know, or why they bothered with me, I'll
never know, which brings me to the last point, the
unintended side effect with the long term impact of all
those failed White House emails with my name misspelled. Was
(36:31):
that this Pamelas Stevens person promptly forwarded them to people
around NBC whom she considered friendly to George W. Bush.
One of them was Tom broke Aw's assistant, another was
in the office of future NBC News president Steve Cappus,
and the final one was to some guy named George Rebay.
(36:52):
And so I found out all the people in the
Bush administrations we like them, list at NBC News who
I should avoid under all circumstances. Let's see broke Aus assistance.
So no broke cause somebody in Campus's office and no
Campus and this guy George Rebay. And George Rebay turned
out to be a guy hired by MSNBC from Fox
(37:16):
News to go work for George Scarborough. He fell out
of favor with Joe Scarborough, and I guess he didn't
henchman enough for Joe's taste, and his influence fell to
a guy. I don't think I've mentioned him to you yet.
Chris flicked Countdown has come to you from the studios
(37:49):
of Alderman Broadcasting Empire World headquarters in the Sports Capsule
Building in New York. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music, including our theme from
Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray
and John Philip Channel. There the countdown musical to Rectors,
all orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitars, bass
(38:09):
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by T k O Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Old Woman theme
from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
(38:30):
Tony Kornheiser. Everything else is pretty much my fault. So
let's countdown for this, the day since Donald Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Arrest him now while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is tomorrow. Till then. I'm Keith Olberman. Good Morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman
(39:07):
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
I do not believe Joe Biden and or his team
mishandled any classified documents. Unfortunately, I believe it's clear Joe
(00:29):
Biden and or his team mishandled the messaging, the process,
and the narrative of this story. It is a story
that was leaked two weeks ago, two weeks ago today,
probably by somebody in Chicago, probably by the Trump appointee
there who Merritt Garland first put in charge of assessing it,
this man Lausch. And it was done with malice aforethought.
(00:54):
It was designed to hang there in the air and
rough Joe Biden up for a couple of days and
then fuzz up Trump's documents. Theft maybe linger long enough
to if Jim Jordan and Jim Comber and other worms
enough fodder to keep their phony house investigations of all
things Biden going for another week or two, and then
to collapse forgotten into the dustbin of history. And that's
(01:18):
all it could do, unless the fascists goot lucky and
could put it into the phony pile of the phony
things that they were trying to cobble into a phony
impeachment because Biden's ostensible defenders were somehow to make it
into a story. Biden's ostensible defenders were the only ones
who could make it into a story, and they have.
(01:43):
They handed a lazy, putting brained twenty first century American
political media complex so desperate for a democratic scandal that
captain both sides is um himself. Peter Baker actually wrote
a peace Saturday in The New York Times comparing Biden's
papers with the Clinton Lewinsky story. They handed these idiots
(02:06):
this thing that fits into the worst possible and most
easily digestible of all presidential story templates, the event that
looks with every new drip drip drip less and less
like what the president originally said it was. It is
still even if worse literally comes to worst, nothing like
(02:29):
the Trump stolen nuclear secrets and probable espionage scandal story. Unfortunately,
the way they have handled that this wine House has
now justified every media outlet that has said all that
and will say all that and then add, well, yeah,
but unfortunately this wine house is absolutely right. Documents innocently
(02:56):
found and never missed by the archives in six years
and immediately returned and then a search was invited at
all bears no resemblance at all to Trump's deliberate thievery
and legal manipulations to never return any of the documents
he stole, the three hundred of them. And even though
(03:17):
political whores like Oversight Chairman James Comer are comparing a
mouse to an elephant, the White House has made it
look like it tried to hide the mouse. And worst
of all, the White House has given Trump's apologists and
cultists and propagandists something to now trot out every time
(03:38):
Trump's espionage is broached. And yes, that's something is as
phony as a three dollar bill. But unfortunately, once again
it's Biden's people who have made it look like they
were trying to hide the three dollar bill. And first
this White House had to confirm a story leaked to
(04:00):
CBS News. Then two days later it had to change
its story to add a newfound document. Then the day
after that it had to change its story again to
address a higher page count. Than the day after that,
it had to change their story again to address the
appointment of a special counsel. Then last Wednesday, it had
to change its story again to include another document. Then Thursday,
(04:21):
it had to change its story again to include another
five documents, and then Saturday, it had to completely change
its story to cover its invitation to the Department of
Justice to search the President's home and the d j's
removal of six unidentified items at the invitation of the President.
I believed Joe Biden when he said there was no
(04:44):
there there, because there wasn't and there isn't. And in
the non their their space, there have now been seven
different stories. And if there were seven different stories about
how much the president is cooperating, that's the same thing
as seven different stories about exactly how much the president
(05:05):
donated to charity last year. And if those numbers changed
seven times, they would get people scratching their heads. And
I don't know who thought this was a good idea,
and I'm hoping it wasn't President Biden, because if it wasn't,
he can fire everybody who did. And he should do
that today. And the President should do something more, something proactive,
(05:27):
because whether he likes it or not, or his press
secretary likes it or not, or his advisers like it
or not, or you and I like it or not,
he has lost control of the narrative. A narrative as
bad and as terminally afflicted by what about is um
and both sides is him as the American political media
is so that when they keep saying, you watch, there
(05:50):
will be something here, we know where the omniscient political media,
and you give them something like this, at some point
it actually kind of stops being their fault and their
desperate need for clicks and ratings and self worth are
not entitled to, and it stops being about their inability
to process anything except templates and formula stories, and the
(06:13):
problem becomes your own, and the proactive thing President Biden
might do pertains less to the investigation of his mice
than it pertains to the investigation of Trump's elephants. The
most important relevance of the materials in Delaware and at
the Biden think tank is their impact on the Trump investigation,
(06:35):
because the argument that formed on day one of this
in the gelatinous mass that is the hive mind that
protects and self immolates for Trump, was that since you
can't prosecute a sitting president, well you shouldn't prosecute Trump either,
because two laws and that's not fair and deep state
and Biden ran on unifying and those other dimwitted, irrelevant
(06:58):
catchphrases and brand names the Republicans and the fascists use.
I think what President Biden should do, and if he
has a better idea, go ahead. This is mine. What
I think Biden should do is turn the argument on
its head and the narrative on its ear. There is
(07:19):
no law that prevents the Department of Justice from prosecuting
or considering prosecuting the sitting president, or deciding not to
prosecute the sitting president, and leaving all that to Congress.
There is only precedent and departmental policy. President Biden should
tell his Attorney General to waive that precedent, to suspend
(07:40):
that departmental policy. He should say his certitude and confidence
that his documents SAGA is inadvertent and innocent and inconsequential
is not only intact today, but it is stronger than ever,
and that to reassure the country on this he is
volunteering to be subject to the same legal consequences that
(08:00):
would face any other citizen. I'm not guilty, and moreover,
this is how much I'm not guilty. Not only would
it completely reverse the momentum of this story and utterly
shift the spotlight back to the prosecution of Trump, probably
for espionage, but it also wouldn't change damn thing practically,
(08:22):
because the only thing you could charge Biden for anyway
would be the terrible mismanagement of this story. And since
the Attorney General does nothing anyway, and it's a slow
nothing at that, he's not going to accept a recommendation
from anybody to change something. He's not going to accept
a recommendation from anybody, even the President, to change departmental
(08:44):
policy about prosecuting a sitting president. He doesn't want to
do anything past the year eight. So Biden proposes this,
and Garland rejects it, and Biden has done his part,
and then he can eat his cake and keep it too,
and re established that indeed there is no there there.
(09:05):
Because the question I have not yet heard addressed, let
alone answered, is this, Since a sitting president can't be charged,
how can a sitting president be cleared? What is the
endgame of this special council, This special council, who, by
the way, owes his job to Trump if charges are impossible,
what is he doing here? The endgame is he turns
(09:29):
over anything he finds too exculpatory. We're convicting, he turns
anything he finds over to the House Judiciary Committee Jim
Jordan's while at the same time this buttonhead, James Comer,
goes after the president's family. Firstly, the White House or
its friends needs to bury Jim Jordan and Jim Comber,
(09:52):
and that means a heavy lean on the atrocity of
Jordan's negligence in the sexual abuse scandal at Ohio State
and on the on record charges by Comber's college girlfriend
that he hit her and threatened her life. Her name
is Marilyn Thomas. Look her up. Dirty these two bastards
up but fast, and most importantly, get control of this
(10:16):
out of control fire hose of a document story, because
if it continues to proceed like this, it ends with
Comber and Jordan's and all the other worms using it
to impeach the president. I mean, they'll try to impeach
him anyway, but right now they have something with what
(10:37):
artists call very similitude to it. It doesn't have to
be real, it only has to look real. And Biden
has to take that back, and after the seven different stories,
he has to break it into a million pieces, and
he damned well better do that. Not just for himself,
but for the prosecution of Trump, which is the most
(10:57):
important part, and for all the rest of us who
have defended him since this story broke on, who in
a time without nuance, have had to rethread a new
needle seven different times in two weeks, and who are
now getting drip drip dripped on, not by scandal or
theft or espionage, but by amateurish story management by a
(11:18):
guy or the guy's employees, but by a guy who's
been doing this since they swore him in as a
senator fifty years and thirteen days ago, and who bluntly
ought to have known God damned better than this. I mean,
(11:51):
the goddamn piece of nothing story is not just gonna
go away of its own accord. Stopped thinking like that
still ahead. So when they investigated the Supreme Court league,
none of the justices were under oath, so it was
just opinion poll. How many times have we all said this,
(12:12):
I was not a drag queen. Guys, I was young
and I had fun at the festivals. Sue me for
having a life. By the way, is that quote George
Santos or Brett Kavanaugh sports? So a month from now
they'll be playing exhibition games at spring training, and chaos
unlike anything we have seen in baseball will unfold as
(12:33):
three titanic rules changes that no player is ready for
are introduced, all at the same time, plus Olberman's full
proof method for raising batting averages and utterly fitting given
the lead commentary about the White House and the media,
let me tell you about the day George W. Bush's
geniuses thought I was on their side, so they tried
(12:54):
to send me talking points with which to discredit and
Iraq war critic, and instead they wind up revealing all
the people within NBC News they knew they could rely
on things I promised out to tell. That's next. This
is countdown. This is countdown. With Keith Olberman still ahead.
(13:19):
Say seen that new Brett Kavanaugh sexual assault film premiered Friday,
They're already adding new info into it and continuing on
the subject of White houses trying to control the narrative.
There's the story of the day. George Bush's people just
knew I was gonna slam Iraq war critic Joe Wilson
for them, and they wanted to help me with talking points,
(13:40):
but they could not remember how to spell my name. First.
In each addition of Countdown, we feature a dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day to Submashian.
He's a handsome little docks and mix in Brooklyn and
angels for mistreated animals, a m a rescue, just trying
to get him into see an oncologist. There is an
(14:00):
angry looking melanoma on his jaw and tongue. The good
news his dogs do very well with cancer treatments, but
you have to know exactly what you're dealing with, so
he needs aspirates of his lymph nodes and maybe some
organs and chest X rays, psychology. If you've had a
dog with cancer as I have, you know the drill.
It's possible. They can't do anything for Sebastian, but if
they can, let's You can find Sebastian on his go
(14:23):
fund Me page or on my Twitter feeds. Donate if
you can, retweet if you can't, I thank you and
Sebastian thanks you. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some snarks,
(14:43):
some predictions, dateline, Park City, Utah. They kept its secret
until the day before it's premiere at the Sun Dance Festival.
Justice the new Doug Liman documentary on the sexual assault
allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Now they are re editing
it because as soon as the movie was revealed, new
information and tips started to come in. Unlike the FBI,
(15:05):
the producers are following up on them. As it is.
Justice contains new witness testimony from a classmate about Kavanaugh's
assault on Deborah ramire As at Yale, and new testimony
from the same man, Max Styre, president of the Partnership
for Public Service at Yale with Ramirez and Kavanaugh, who
says he personally witnessed Kavanaugh assault another woman in exactly
(15:25):
the same way. Dateline, Washington, the investigation of the Roe v.
Wade leak by Supreme Court Martial GAYL. Curly, the one
that produced nothing except absolute certainty that no leads direct
towards any justices nor their spouses. Turns out it was
not exactly an investigation, Marshall Curly confirming the justices were
(15:48):
all spoken to, but none were under oath, so it
was not so much an investigation as it was an
opinion poll. And Dateline New York Congressman George Santos denied
he'd ever performed as a drag queen then his Wikipedia
editing profile turned out to have mentioned yeah he was.
(16:08):
Then uh, he denied it all again while caught in
a fairly standard walking scrum at LaGuardia Airport, got a
dragon and had fun at a festival. Assue me for
having a life. This is how No, it's not how
(16:31):
you conduct an interview, but it's the only thing you
have when you won't do a real interview, Katara. They
also caught him in what is believed to be his
third different lie about his mother and nine eleven. First
he said she escaped the towers that day from her office.
Then he said she got sick there with what eventually
became the cancer that killed her. Now her immigration record
(16:53):
has turned up, but it shows santos Is mother was
not even in the country on nine eleven. This is
(17:13):
Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown
with Keith Alberman in sports. A great honor to have
won the Senior Club Championship at Trump International Golf Club,
one of the best courses in the country in Palm
Beach County, Florida. Competed against many fine golfers and was
(17:34):
hitting the ball long and straight in a very real way.
It serves as a physical exam, only much tougher. You
need strength and stamina to win, and I have strength
and stamina and most others don't. You also need strength
and stamina to govern. End quote Trump last night a
yen not really, it's freaking golf. Be competed against many
(17:57):
fine golfers, all of whom are just standing there off
camera smiling like he is. See it's freaking golf. As
to Trump's golf scandal is tie into the Saudi Arabian
Blood Money Tour. Live talk about log rolling. One time
golfer Greg Norman, now CEO of Live, was asked about
the murder of journalist Jamal Kashagi at the behest of
(18:20):
Saudi Prince Ben Salman. His answer quote, I think everybody
learns from their mistakes. The interview speaking of mistakes was
by Dan Abrams of News Nation, which is owned by
the Next Star Company. It was promoted by The Hill,
which is owned by the Next Star Company, and Live
TV or Live has just done a TV deal with
(18:42):
the CW Network, which is owned by oddly enough, the
Next Star Company. Hockey took them like three weeks to
do it, during which they lent popular incumbent coach Bruce Boudreau,
who saved the team a year ago, twists slowly, slowly
in the wind. But the Vancouver Cadux have finally fired
Boudreaux and replaced him with Rick Tockett, who takes the
(19:05):
demotion from intermission analyst for the TNT National Hockey League coverage.
The Canucks, who were vivisected by everybody in the National
Hockey League were making Boudreaux suffer like that, then made
a pathetic attempt to save their reputation yesterday by tweeting
a graphic reading Bruce Boudreau thank you, which is ironic
because the team's real message to Boudreau clearly was a
(19:28):
different two word phrase, but it also ended in you,
thank you, Nancy Faust. And lastly, a month from now,
just a month from now, baseball will just be starting
(19:50):
at spring training schedule in Florida and Arizona. And as
warm as that makes you feel, this means we will
now see the implementation of three new rules. First, a
ban on infield shifts so that two fielders have to
be on either side of second base as each pitch
is thrown. Greetings, baseball's new illegal defense rule. Second, with
(20:12):
nobody on base, pitchers will have just fifteen seconds to
throw a pitch. Twenty seconds with somebody on base or
it's a ball. Third, batters have to be in the
batter's box no later than eight seconds left on that clock. Well,
this will be a breeze fifteen seconds. Ken Ley Jansen,
the reliever now of Boston, averaged twenty six seconds per
(20:33):
pitch last year, and a hundred other major league pitchers
average twenty seconds or more. The infield shift, meanwhile, is
designed to create more non home run offense, but nobody's
explained how it's gonna make hitters trying for singles instead
of home runs. Here's a tip. If you want batting
averages to go up, do what they did in seven.
(20:55):
This led to the all time record for highest batting
average in a season, not only being shattered, but being
shattered by sixty three points by Tip O'Neill of the St.
Louis Browns. This is what you do. You change the
scoring rules so that every walk counts as a hit.
It makes as much sense as trying to change where
(21:17):
the fielders stand, how long the picture has to throw,
how soon the hitter has to be in the box
all at the same time, Baseball It's survived the people
who have run it and owned it since the late
nineteenth century. Time now for the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons,
(21:47):
and done in Kruger effect specimens. Who constitute today's worst
persons in the world? Lebron's former UN ambassador Nicky Haley? Wait,
did that really happen? She was un ambassador? Any who?
Former Secretary of State Mike POMPEII Oh, wait, did that
really happen? Secretary of State Mike Pompeio any who? Pompeo
(22:11):
says Haley once essentially went around him. Wait, did that
really happen to anyway? To meet with Ivanka and Kushner
about becoming vice president. Hailey denies this, saying she quote
never had a conversation with Jared, Ivanka or the President
about the vice president ship. Vice president ship, you say,
(22:34):
have you ever heard that before? Vice president ship? Search
the internet. You'll find that it appears that since the
year eighteen sixty seven the term has been used once
in interview with somebody reminiscing about Lyndon Johnson, and the
eight sixty seven reference was from a British writer Surely,
Miss Haley did not mean vice president ship. She meant
(22:59):
vice president to tud. The runners up those who installed
the computer controlled eating system in the new high School
at Wilbraham, Massachusetts, which is outside Springfield. On August one,
the software failed and since that day all the lights
at the high school have been on all the time.
(23:20):
They can't figure out how to turn them off. Staffords
sometimes go around and unscrewed light bulbs from the seven
thousand light fixtures in the school in the desperate attempt
to not waste energy and money. What's the problem now?
The company that installed the lights has been sold and
merged several times, and the new new, new, new company
(23:41):
has had a supply chain issue. Why don't we getting
that off switch in from Brazil? So there it is.
You've always wondered what the literal definition of this cliche was.
Here it is the lights are on, but no one's home.
Speaking of which, our winner, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, as
(24:01):
his Dallas Cowboys were losing an NFL playoff game last
night to San Francisco nineteen to twelve, after the Niners
had messed with his head in his pregame warmups. Cowboys kicker.
Breton Marr missed the point after during that snooze fest,
and Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, thought he had shown
a great sense of humor about himself and his team
(24:23):
when he tweeted, I swear I can kick as good
as the Dallas Cowboys kicker. We all laughed and we
all had a good time, and then about a thousand
people replied yeah, and I swear he can govern a
state as good as you can governor Greg bluntly he
put it on a t for us. Abbott two days
(24:47):
worst partson in the world. Finally to the number one
story on the countown and my favorite topic, me and
things I promised not to tell. And on Monday May third,
(25:11):
two thousand four, my executive producer phoned me at home
and said, we got Ambassador Joe Wilson. He'll be on
the show tomorrow. Within hours, the communications office of the
White House of George W. Bush began a desperate, ceaseless,
tireless effort to send me one email with talking points
(25:31):
about Ambassador Joe Wilson, which repeatedly, hilariously failed to get
through to me because none of them could spell my
name correctly. By late in the evening of May the third,
and throughout the morning of May the fourth, I got
calls and forwarded emails from people throughout NBC who had
received emails of their own from the Bush White House
(25:52):
Communications Office, all of them with attachments addressed to Keith
Oberman without the L, Keith Olberman with only one N,
kayath Alderman Keith spelled wrong, and even Keith Overman with
a V. This was actually truly the first day I
believed I was having an impact on the Bush White House,
(26:13):
and also the first day I realized they were incredibly stupid.
There democracy still had a slim chance. The Internet had
been operating at more or less its present speed since
about or My name was all over the Internet in
articles about my news career, about my sports career, about
(26:35):
my previous news career. There were articles I had written,
there were books I had written, and these people who
were trying to reshape the United States of America into
a reactionary, conservative, cruel, xenophobic, semi authoritarian state, we're not
smart enough to figure out how to spell my name
(26:57):
just so we know who we are talking about. By
this point, Scott McClellan had succeeded the infamous Ry Fleischer
as press secret Terry. His deputies were Dana Perino, who
went from being the stupidest person ever to be White
House Press secretary to being one of the stupidest persons
ever to have a show on Fox News, Pamelas Stevens,
who later wound up as a producer at CNN. Because
(27:19):
political press people are exactly like unemployed football coaches or
baseball managers who get TV jobs and then leave the
TV jobs to go back onto the field. The communications
director was named Dan Bartlett, and there was another communications
person there named Nicole Wallace, who has somehow shaken off
the stink of working for both George and Jeb Bush
(27:41):
and is now considered a darling of MSNBC, even though
her only true non fascist credential is she doesn't like
Trump either. The crack White House media team representing the
most powerful man in the world in the anxious and
foreshadowing years after nine eleven, and not one of them
could even find anybody else who could spell my name,
(28:02):
let alone spell it themselves. More on them in a moment,
But I need to explain who Joe Wilson was if
you don't know, and why he was so important. Long
before Colin Powell confessed to Tim Russer that he had
been lied to by the White House and thus he
himself had lied to the United Nations about Saddam Hussein's
(28:24):
imaginary weapons of mass destruction. Those were the excuses from
Bush Cheney for dragging this country into an unnecessary and
national soul destroying war in Iraq with lies and torture
and scapegoating and suppression and brutality. Before that, there was
Ambassador Joseph Charles Wilson the fourth and in two thousand two,
(28:45):
after pressure from the White House, the CIA sent him
back to the scene of his first diplomatic posting, the
African nation of Niger to get proof for Bush that
Saddam was trying to buy yellow cake uranium there to
make nuclear bombs. Is out of and Wilson quickly found
out it was nonsense, and he reported back and the
(29:05):
Bush White House promptly buried his findings and instead, in
the two thousand three State of the Union address just
before he started bombing Iraq, George W. Bush said, the
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa. It was and remains a
complete lie, and war occurred because of it, and Joe
(29:28):
Wilson called it a complete lie in an op ed
in the New York Times on July six, two thousand three.
The Iraq War was still at this stage defined by
rah Rah, we're winning, but Sadam's w M D and
his biological weapons and his chemical weapons might be over
the next hill, and you'd better not criticize what we're doing,
or maybe your terrorist Joe Wilson said, the emperor had
(29:51):
no clothes. In two thousand three, he was an American
hero of the highest order. A week later, a Dick
Cheney flunkey named Scooter Libby and a Deputy Secretary of
State named Army began a campaign to punish Joe Wilson
and discredit him. They leaked to a dyspeptic and hate
(30:11):
filled columnist named Robert Novak, who is now working in
the Bureau in Hell, that Wilson's wife was an undercover
agent for the CIA, and that her name was Valerie Plame,
and that the pair of them were dirty Democrats. And moreover,
it was Plaie who had urged that her own husband
be sent to Niger to deliberately not find the uranium
(30:33):
or the Sadam Hussein signed receipts, or whatever Bush expected
to find there. The Bush white House destroyed the career
of risk, the life of and ruined several assignments and
contacts of one of this country's own secret CIA agents,
just to make her husband look bad. So in May
(30:55):
two thousand four, when Joe Wilson wrote a book about
all this crap, and he inexplicably wanted to go on MSNBC,
which was still at that point trying to be more
conservative than Fox Nudes, and wanted to go on My
little Watched show, which was considered the neutral outlier on
a network full of Joe Scarbrowse and Michael Savages. This
was a happy surprise for us, which was followed by
(31:18):
this wonderful, flailing effort by the Bush White House to
send me talking points about Joe Wilson before I interviewed him.
They not only could not spell my name, but they
were utterly convinced that my interview was designed to discredit
Joe Wilson. The talking points, which eventually got to me
from Assistant Press Secretary Pamela Stevens, consisted of six items
(31:40):
over two pages. The headings were as follows. One political motivation.
This was about Wilson calling Dick Cheney a lying s
o B about a year after the knee Jaire trip.
I couldn't figure this one out. Dick Cheney was a
lying s ob. That's how I got to be vice president. Two.
Gingbridge spokesman calls allegations about alleged March two thousand three
(32:01):
meeting completely false. This sided Newt Ingrish and his people
as if they were good sources, as opposed to the
punch lines they already were back then. In two thousand four,
talking point number three, McClellan points out political objective, and
four McClellan addresses accusations. These were quotes from the press secretary.
(32:24):
This man suddenly quit that job two years later two
thousand six, and confessed he had repeatedly lied for George W.
Bush and the others, and now he just couldn't take
it anymore. And he would come on my show and
give one of the best Atonement interviews I've ever heard.
It went on for forty five minutes. Five Fleischer says
(32:44):
VP office did not request trip. A quote from McClellan's predecessor,
who unless he is talking about baseball, you should assume
he's lying. Plus he might be lying about baseball. And finally,
six statement by George J. Tennant July eleven, two thousand three.
This was a quote from the CIA director which they
thought was their home run, and it basically consisted of this.
(33:08):
Bush never saw that report. That was it. There are
three punch lines to this story. Number one. I don't
know why the Bush Communications office assumed I was there
to take down Joe Wilson, But the moment I saw
these talking points, any lingering doubt I had that they
were not all lying bastards down there was erased. I
(33:30):
used the talking points in my interview, all right. I
read them out loud to Joe Wilson, and he rebutted
each of them with impeccable charm and elegance. He and
Valerie Plaine became regular guests on My show and would
beat the crap out of George Bush with the plum
right through the morning of January nine. Second punch line.
A year earlier, a supply clerk with a maintenance company
(33:54):
on the ground in Iraq was captured Private Jessica Lynch.
The military and the Bush administration immediately put out the
story that she was being tortured by them evil Iraq
he Sadam Hussein doctors. There was the glorious rescue of
Jessica Lynch which followed, and the parades and the you
better not question this story period, which lasted about six
(34:16):
weeks until a Toronto newspaper printed a substantially different account
that Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital and a
US military team in good faith went into extractor, but
that this was all arranged not by some sort of
part of intelligence or US operations or the Allies, but
(34:39):
by the Iraqi doctors, some of whom sneaked over to
American lines at great danger and said, one of your
soldiers is hurt and we don't have the right equipment
to help her. Could you swing by and pick her up?
I reported that version on MSNBC, and the next day,
as I was still taking my coat off, my boss,
(35:00):
Phil Griffin called me in and said that the head
of NBC News and the President into NBC, Bob Wright,
had been on the phone all morning to him, insisting
I should be fired for implying that the Bush administration
had lied. Griffin proudly said he had talked him into
letting me get away with just apologizing to the troops.
(35:22):
I can't even read this with a straight face now,
twenty years later, apologizing to the troops who rescued her,
I must credit myself when my brain was fulled in
that I did some quick thinking. The demand was comical
nonsense journalistically. On the other hand, if I agreed to
apologize to okay, the troops who rescued her, whoever you want,
(35:47):
I would get the chance to tell the whole real
story of Jessica Lynch again. So I did. The apology
was fifteen seconds, and while unnecessary, was sincere. I didn't
want to make the troops look bad. They didn't know
anything about this crap. I made sure, however, that the
retail of the true Lynch rescue story took about two
and a half minutes. That was in June of two
(36:10):
thousand three. So why as of May of two thousand four,
the Bush White House thought I was sympathetic to them,
I'll never know, or why they bothered with me, I'll
never know, which brings me to the last point, the
unintended side effect with the long term impact of all
those failed White House emails with my name misspelled. Was
(36:31):
that this Pamelas Stevens person promptly forwarded them to people
around NBC whom she considered friendly to George W. Bush.
One of them was Tom broke Aw's assistant, another was
in the office of future NBC News president Steve Cappus,
and the final one was to some guy named George Rebay.
(36:52):
And so I found out all the people in the
Bush administrations we like them, list at NBC News who
I should avoid under all circumstances. Let's see broke Aus assistance.
So no broke cause somebody in Campus's office and no
Campus and this guy George Rebay. And George Rebay turned
out to be a guy hired by MSNBC from Fox
(37:16):
News to go work for George Scarborough. He fell out
of favor with Joe Scarborough, and I guess he didn't
henchman enough for Joe's taste, and his influence fell to
a guy. I don't think I've mentioned him to you yet.
Chris flicked Countdown has come to you from the studios
(37:49):
of Alderman Broadcasting Empire World headquarters in the Sports Capsule
Building in New York. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music, including our theme from
Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray
and John Philip Channel. There the countdown musical to Rectors,
all orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitars, bass
(38:09):
and drums by Brian Ray, produced by T k O Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Old Woman theme
from ESPN two, and it was written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
(38:30):
Tony Kornheiser. Everything else is pretty much my fault. So
let's countdown for this, the day since Donald Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Arrest him now while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is tomorrow. Till then. I'm Keith Olberman. Good Morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman
(39:07):
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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