May 29, 2025 • 56 mins
SEASON 3 EPISODE 130: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) BREAKING NEWS: A Reagan judge, an Obama judge, and a Trump judge walk into a courtroom and rule Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs - which not only crashed our economy but that of the entire world's - are not a legal use of the 1977 laws empowering him to take actions in the event of an economic emergency.
This is not just any court. It's the United States Court of International Trade. Trump already appealed. Stephen Miller already called it a "judicial coup." The fact that America's corporations simply went along with Trump's crap when it knew - as the court knew - this was executive overreach - is its own problem.
The halt on the tariffs will itself probably be halted by the appeals. So the re-shaping of the market will be re-re-shaped by the judges, and re-re-re-shaped by the further litigation. That, of course, is not Trump's problem. His only job is to break stuff.
SPECIAL COMMENT: Now it's Governor Gretchen Whitmer has learned the lesson - twice. Never appease Trump, never negotiate with Trump, never cooperate with Trump, never support anything Trump wants, never do anything Trump wants. All that registers with him is: you are easier for him to destroy.
She sucked up to him. She worked with him. He tricked her into appearing at his photo-op. She hid her face behind a folder like it was a perp walk. Now, he says he's looking into PARDONING THE TERRORISTS CONVICTED OF TRYING TO KIDNAP HER.
There is only one way Gretchen Whitmer is going to SURVIVE Trump, Governor. Apple is going to SURVIVE Trump, Tim Cook. There is only one way Columbia is going to SURVIVE Trump, Claire Shipman. There is only one way the White House Correspondents are going to SURVIVE Trump, Eugene Daniels. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ll spell it out. Doing what he wants only tells him you will DO WHAT HE WANTS. So he comes back and gives you ANOTHER list of what he wants. He’s a blackmailer. He’s a crooked businessman. He’s a bully. There is only one way to SURVIVE Trump and that is to DESTROY Trump.
In a world of White House Correspondents, be the PENTAGON Correspondents. In a world of Apples, be Wal-Mart. In a world of Columbias, be a Harvard. Put your hands on Trump’s shoulders and knee him in the groin. Stand up to him and you can then own HIM, like the Harvard newspaper op-ed writer who has proposed settling the disputes between her school and Trump by challenging Secretary of "Education" Linda McMahon, the wife of the wrestling slime bag, to a Steel Cage Match.
ALSO: TRUMP CONFESSES to operating on Russia's behalf and to protecting Putin. HE LEARNS for the first time of the Wall Street analysts mocking him with the tariff acronym "TACO" ("Trump Always Chickens Out") and he chickens out. Turns out Tom Homan also worked for the top Private Prison company. A woman who contributed a million to Trump gets a pardon for her jailbird son. Anybody remember Rudy Giuliani's alleged boast he could sell you a pardon for two million, to be split between him and Trump. And a past president's grandson has died. The president he was the grandson of, left office in... 1845.
B-Block (33:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Kristi Noem and the camel she rode in on. Jesse Watters and Rep. Tim Burchett try to make fun of men using straws not remembering there's a photo of Trump at Yankee Stadium using a straw. And boy did THIS sound familiar: Rupert Murdoch just buried a New York Post reporter who followed all the rules and instructions Murdoch's minions had laid out for him, because somebody didn't like the story...
Just like in 2001 Rupert personally fired ME for doing exactly the same thing (C-Block 43:00 THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL). The punchline is the reporter's name is Josh Kosman and last September he was the guy at The Post who called and told me they were about to update the RFK
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. Trump's
tariffs are not legal. In a late decision by the
US Court of International Trade on Wednesday evening, an Obama judge,
(00:26):
a Reagan judge, and a Trump judge walk into a
courtroom and overturn all of the tariffs. That's all, as
in one hundred percent or one hundred and forty five percent,
if that seems like a more fitting number for this story.
Trump had used the nineteen seventy seven federal Economic Emergency
laws to impose these tariffs, and this three judge panel
(00:50):
the US Court of International Trade said, sorry, tariffs were
not among the weapons allocated to the president even in
the event of a federal economic emergency, which they did
not prove, and no one bothered to prove any indication
anywhere in any law in the Constitution, anywhere else, any
(01:11):
statute anywhere, that the president had the right single handedly
to impose tariffs without the approval of Congress. They have
given the Trump administration ten days to halt all tariffs.
The Trump administration has already appealed. What is interesting as
(01:32):
a sideline to this is the corporations that were affected
by these tariffs, including the ones that were pushed to
the brink of true economic peril, did nothing about them.
They knew these tariffs were illegal, or at minimum illegally
applied and did not have anything behind it legally, and
they did nothing. They rolled over rather than challenged Trump
(01:55):
in court. This is a series of states and other
groups that sued and got these tariffs at least halted,
at least halted pending an appeal. In retrospect, perhaps it
was a mistake by the Department of Justice, under Trump's guidance,
to tell this US Court of International Trade that it
had no right to review the president's actions. It said
(02:18):
this to this court repeatedly throughout this process. He got elected.
That's the only law now round here. Premise it did
not go well for Trump in the slightest. No matter
what happens in terms of the appeal, presumably the halting
will be itself halted, and the ten days to stop
the tariffs will not go into effect until the appeal
(02:42):
is heard. But who knows. Like everything else about this
misbegotten presidency and this misbegotten man, the details remain left
to be sorted out by others. He is in charge
of one thing, and one thing only breaking shit. In
a totally unrelated bit of timing, Elon Musk has now
(03:02):
officially bailed out, saying, well, it was scheduled for this
to be the time for him to bail out of
douche or whatever that was called again, but he is
now no longer associated with the government. They had been
gradually fading him out anyway, to the point where, like
the cheshire cat in the story, all that was left
was his stoned grin. And we can now ask the question,
(03:26):
remember Elon Musk. One final note here, pending obviously days
of further litigation and bombbast to come, how dare the
judges never elected make a decision instead of our god Trump,
who was elected in a minority vote by a minority
(03:48):
of voters. One last note here Stephen Miller, who is
nominally has nothing to do with this particular aspect of
the Trump would be dictatorship. Stephen Miller announced this to
his waiting world of human scorpions by retweeting the right
(04:08):
wing nebish Bennie Johnson, and I don't know if I
can think of anything that says more authoritatively, I am
a serious and powerful government figure that you should be
afraid of nothing, says that more resonantly than our team,
a guy named Benny, and adding to Benny's reporting, the
(04:33):
judicial coup is out of control. Do you see what happens?
Gretchen Whitmer? Do you see what happens? Tim Cook? Do
(04:57):
you see what happens? Jake Tapper, Claire Shipman, Eugene Daniels,
CBS News, Bob Iger, do you see what happens when
you let Trump? Well, if you know the movie The
Big Lebowski, you know the twist on the rest of
that speech. It's not pretty. It is, however, completely accurate.
(05:18):
Stop capitulating to Trump, stop negotiating with Trump, stop appeasing Trump,
stop letting Trump, etc. There is only one way Apple
is going to survive Trump. Tim Cook, There is only
one way Columbia is going to survive Trump. Claire, there
(05:39):
is only one way the White House correspondents are going
to survive Trump. Eugene Daniels. If you haven't figured it
out yet, I'll spell it out. Doing what he wants
only tells him you will do what he wants, so
he will come back and give you another list of
what he wants. Now he's a blackmailer. He's a crooked businessman,
He's a bully. There is only one way to survive Trump,
(06:01):
and that is to destroy Trump's presidency. In a world
of Columbia's, be a Harvard, in a world of White
House correspondents, be the Pentagon correspondence, in a world of apples,
be Walmart. Put your hands on Trump's shoulders and reassure
him and knee him in the groin. Instead, Gretchen Whitner
(06:28):
praises Trump. He tricks her into going to a White
House photo op. She has to cover her face with
her notebook like a damn purp walk and yesterday, Trump says, yes,
he is looking into pardoning the men who were convicted
of trying to kidnap her. Instead, Tim Cook sucks up
(06:50):
to Trump, and Trump responds by tariffing iPhones twenty five percent. Instead,
Claire Shipman and Columbia suck up to Trump, and Trump
responds by trying to put a judge, a Trump judge,
in charge of Columbia's entire curriculum and hiring and admissions.
The White House correspondents don't defend the associated present. Trump
comes back and takes all their repertorial choices away from them.
(07:14):
Decides who's going to be on the pool. Eiger gives
Trump a bribe disguised as a settlement, and Trump threatens
to take away Iiger's station licenses. Instead, CBS so hoard
itself out that it's sixty minutes. Chief quit, that it's news.
Chief quit. Now it is being mocked by The New
York Post. The New York Post mocking Sherry Redstone and
(07:40):
reporting that her board is flinching at her bribe settlement
of Trump because paramount's insurance doesn't cover bribe settlements and
there may be a congressional investigation of their bribe settlements
and civil or criminal charges against her. Instead of doing something,
Jake Tapper tries to throw the Trump Biden debate to
(08:01):
Trump by refusing to fact check him, destroys his own reputation,
destroys CNN's reputation, has no space remaining in journalism, so
he has to put his name on a Biden acuity
book now bombing so badly that to drum up publicity
for it, he had to apologize to Lara Effing Trump
that he had to go on Piers effing Morgan and
(08:24):
insists and actually say as an adult, as an American
as a supposed TV newscaster actually say that the Biden
story was in many ways a scandal worse than Watergate.
Jake Tapper's colleagues at CNN are now refusing to work
with him. His career is melting before his eyes. It
(08:45):
is so bad. Somebody on Twitter wrote that Jake's quote
book tour is turning into spinal tap, where they started
out in stadiums and end as openers for a puppet show.
Is standing up to Trump pain free? Hell no. Harvard
tells Trump to f off, sues him. He comes back
(09:08):
and tries to expel all of their sixty five hundred,
sixty six hundred foreign students, thinking this not only screws
the foreigners, but it will also bankrupt Harvard or something,
because of course there aren't sixty five hundred or sixty
six hundred other students turned down by Harvard who wouldn't
say yes if they got a new callback. Harvard turned
(09:30):
me down in April nineteen seventy five, and I might
still say yes if I got a new callback, and
I mean a callback today. So Trump then cuts off
one hundred million in grants to Harvard and threatens to
vet the social media of all foreign students in this country,
and he's out of weapons. The classic case of the bully.
(09:52):
He'll threaten you, he'll hit you, and then he runs
out because he has no backup plan. Now Harvard can
keep suing him, and people at Harvard can sleep at night.
Because the point is Trump would have tried to expel
foreign students anyway, and would have cut off the one
hundred million dollars anyway soon or late, because that's what
he does. That's all he does, that's all he's ever done.
(10:15):
He just does it faster to you. If it's obvious
to him, you are going to make it easier for him.
If you were as crazy and as malicious and as
non human as Trump is, wouldn't you do it that way?
If you were Ted Bundy Trump, would you murder the
companies that put up a fight or murder the ones
that just sit there? What can Harvard now get away with?
(10:39):
One of the op ed people on the student newspaper
writes a column saying she knows how to settle this
with Trump and his administration. She has challenged Secretary of
I didn't get any education. Linda McMahon, the ex wife
of the wrestling jackass. She has challenged Linda McMahon to
settle this in a wrestling cage match, Rah Voe. One
(11:06):
can argue that Harvard's moral victory here, and it's actually
two or three dozen moral victories are the proverbial p
in the dark suit, a warm feeling nobody notices. But
there are also material victories. To contrast the filled with
inertia White House Correspondence Association, there are the fighting Pentagon correspondents.
(11:26):
The impeccable Oliver Darcy of The Status Newsletter reports that
Pete Hegseeth tried to strong ar I'm a CNN producer
who had been chosen by her peers to be part
of the small pool traveling with the Secretary of Greasy Kids,
stuff and Scotch to Singapore. They didn't want Haley Britsky
to go. They didn't like her tweets. Seriously, these are
(11:50):
alleged grown ups. They didn't make her tweets, so they
banned her. They said, no, you can't go as part
of the pool, and her Pentagon media colleagues, unlike the
White House Correspondence Association, promptly told the Pentagon Press office
to f off Britsky doesn't go. Nobody goes. Nobody goes.
Heg Seth doesn't get to be on TV and in articles,
(12:12):
and to thus gaze longingly at himself. He'd have to
go back to carrying a dozen mirrors with him at
all times. The Pentagon folded like one of heg Seth's
cheap suits. Britsky went a small victory, and presumably if
Trump understood what it meant, he'd reproach heg Seth. But this,
(12:34):
of course is way down on the list of things
Trump will eventually fire Hegseth for, certainly when it looks
like heg Seth had the Pentagon got the NSA to
wiretap people in the Pentagon without the slightest authorization, without
the slightest concern for the laws, because efet, what do
you expect when you hire the weekend fill in fox
guy and not some first string fox guy. But it
(12:58):
underscores the point. The bully is going to hit you.
Appease him. He will hit you, hit him, he will
hit you. But guess which way causes him to stop
hitting you fastest. Guess which way causes him the most pain.
Tim Cook's response to Trump's threat of a twenty five
percent tariff on iPhone should be something equally as crazy,
(13:22):
something like saying, starting September first, Apple will no longer
sell iPhones in this country, and if you want one,
you're gonna have to go to the secondary market or
into Canada. Fight insanity with more insanity. What do you
think you're obligated to actually stop selling iPhones here just
because you say you're gonna stop selling iPhones here? This
(13:46):
is Trump's America. You can lie all you want, You
can deny you ever said it. They can play the
tape and you can say, oh, it's Ai. The value
of all this, of course, is that even if you
have made the terrible mistake of appeasing Trump, you can renege.
Even at the late hour. Claire pull the plug on
(14:08):
the deal Columbia made with him. Iiger tell him you've
changed your mind and you're now suing him. CBS Paramount
Board tell Sherry if she wants to settle with Trump,
it's going to come out of her paycheck. Do something.
(14:31):
This entire dynamic now becomes meaningful, not just a test
of moral clarity. And whether you remember the lesson the
bully in the schoolyard should have taught you namely the
moment he touches you stab him. Trump is now trying
the same bullshit with Putin. Something has happened to him. Putin,
he's gone absolutely crazy. It will lead to the downfall
of Russia. When that didn't make Putin cry or run
(14:55):
home to mommy, Trump escalated. What Vladimir Putin doesn't realize
is that if it weren't for me, lots of really
bad things would have already happened to Russia. And I
mean really bad. He's playing with fire. Firstly, congratulations Trump,
you just confess that you have been protecting Russia, an
enemy of this country, a foreign power in opposition to
(15:16):
the United States of America. You just confessed Russia, Russia, Russia, true, true, true,
trees and trees and treason. Nobody asked, you just confessed.
You just confessed you've been covering up for Putin. Good work,
stable genius as in horse stables. Secondly, this will stop
(15:37):
Putin in Ukraine. Trump should have just quoted the self
own that Shakespeare put into the mouth of King Lear,
the definition of imfidence, the summit of empty threats. I
will have such revenges on you both that all the
world shall I will do such things. What they are
yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors
(15:59):
of the earth. I shall have such revenge on you Putin.
I will do such things bad thing, I mean, really bad.
We have a vested interest in Putin not responding to
this the way he ordinarily would think Russia's inexhaustible supply
of open windows. But Putin will probably have a surgical
(16:20):
response that humiliates and damages Trump alone, because Trump's tantrum
may cause Putin to think that Trump's usefulness to him
is about to run out, and he was going to
switch to somebody else in a few years. Anyway, JB.
Vance might as well do that. Now, what's the point
of owning the president of the United States if you
(16:41):
can't fire the president of the United States. Stop appeasing Trump,
(17:13):
and among other reasons, to stop appeasing Trump. When you
thwart him, when you stand up to him, he dissolves
into a self fitting, soft, stupid child and looks it
and sounds it. Apparently he did not know about Taco Taco,
the New Wall Street acronym about tariffs, the acronym for
(17:36):
Trump always chickens out taco. When CNBC's Megan Cassella asked
him about taco yesterday, and I've telescoped this so you
don't have to listen to the whole meltdown. Trump found
out about taco for the first time. Trump don't like taco,
(17:56):
and Walster analysts have pointed a new term called the
taco trade.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
They're saying Trump always chickens out.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
On tear fres and that's why markets are hired his
what's your results to that?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I check out? Check it out?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Oh checking out.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China
from one hundred and forty five percent that I said
down to one hundred and then because of the tariff,
because it was so high. But I knew that. But
don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Loser taco, loser appo taco. It's a baseball joke. Incidentally,
as impressive as that CNBC question was, remember you can
always rely on the legacy media here. They will always
let you down. Jack Blanchard, the guy who nearly finished
destroying Politico Playbook after Ryan Lizi started destroying Political Playbook
(18:50):
before they moved him off, is now a lame duck
at Politico playbook, and he wrote glowingly yesterday of Trump's
cooperation with the media. Quote, Aside from the lamentable attempt
to ban AP, He's basically taken questions from old comas.
It's impressive stuff. Yeah, impressive, Governor. Aside from that attempt
(19:12):
to ban the world's most widely distributed wire service. Oh,
other than that, he's been impressive taking questions from all comers.
Trying to ban a news organization, second time in a week.
Just there, he threatened a reporter over a question he
didn't like. That's impressive, Jack Blanchard of Politico, That's impressive.
(19:34):
Do you know what happens if he starts getting away
with banning the Associated Press or running the White House
Correspondence Association. You know what happens. Politico disappears. Jack Blanchard
has to go back to London and busk. Meanwhile, on
the Fascism for Money Front, Axios reports Stephen Miller and
(19:56):
Garden Nome are angry that their administration of the undead
deported just seventeen two hundred people last month. That's actually
below past presidential administration averages. Miller and Noam want three
thousand a day, not that I'd ever question the motives
of such upstanding white trash as Christy Nome and Steven Miller.
(20:20):
But financial disclosures made public last week revealed that besides
Attorney General Blondie, you know who else did work for
the GEO Group, the people to call when you need
a privately owned, privately operated, vermin filled concentration camp for
immigrants in your neighborhood. You know who else worked for
Geo ice scum Tom Holman consulted for them for at
(20:44):
least two years before Trump put him in charge of
finding people to put in GEO Group brand concentration camps.
What a coincidence? And if you miss this, former nursing
home scumbag Paul Waalsack Walsack as in Ballsack, pleads guilty
(21:07):
to tax crimes. The judge gives him eighteen months, says
their quote is not a get out of jail free
card for the rich. Then Ballsack's mom a Trump donor
named Elizabeth Fago Fago, I'm praying it's Fago. Elizabeth Fago
gets an invitation to a Trump event at Mary Lago
(21:29):
see if it would never mind. The invite comes either
just before or just after her son is sentenced. No
got out of jail free card for the rich. The
price for admission to the Trump event is one million
dollars to Trump. Three weeks after the dinner, Ballsack, her
son gets a pardon because there is a get out
(21:51):
of jail free card. Of course, it is not free.
This story got wildly and widely covered, but I don't
remember seeing it connected to a story from two years ago.
This month, anybody else remember Rudy Giuliani's reported boasts that
presidential pardons were available for purchase at popular prices without
(22:11):
a prescription, two million dollars each, half to him, half
to uh Trump. That is what a woman named Noel Dunfie,
who sued Juliani for sexual abuse, says Guliani told her
in twenty nineteen. And she says she has countless recordings
of their encounters. And I don't know if she recorded
on any of the part about the pardons, and I
(22:34):
don't know if she's telling the truth. And I have
even less of an idea of whether or not he
Giuliani was telling the truth about being able to do this.
But Dunfee's attorney claimed Giuliani quote asked miss Dunfie if
she knew anyone in need of a pardon, telling her
that he was selling pardons for two million dollars, which
he and President Trump would split. He told Miss Dunfie
(22:56):
that she could refer individuals seeking pardons to him, so
long as they did not go through the normal channels
of the Office of the Pardon Attorney, because correspondence going
to that office would be subject to disclosure under the
Freedom of Information Act twenty nineteen. Pardons for Sale, Pardons
for sale, Get your pardons here, hot roasted pardons two
(23:17):
millions apiece funny dog gun thing, though huh Giuliani allegedly
boasts of selling pardons for two million, a million for
him and a million for Trump, and six years later,
Trump pardons ball Sack after Mommy Ballsack attends a fundraiser
(23:38):
and buys a ticket to it, which costs a million
for Trump. Two of Trump's most ridiculous delusions have now merged. Oops.
Turns out he threatened Canada before he realized he would
(24:02):
need Canada to participate in this science fiction Golden Dome
bullshit that Musk must have convinced him to buy from Musk.
I told Canada you got everybody in Canada just sort
of sit still while you talk to them. I told Canada,
(24:22):
I told Mars, I told God, I told Jesus. I
told my invisible friend Stanley. I told Canada, which very
much wants to be part of our fabulous Golden Dome system,
that it will cost sixty one billion dollars if they
remain a separate but unequal nation, but will cost zero
(24:45):
dollars if they become our cherished fifty first state. They
are considering the offer. Couple notes. One, If you don't
have Canadian outposts in your Golden Dome, your Golden Dome
would never be aware of missions or flights or missiles
(25:06):
coming in from the north, the northeast, or the northwest
until about five ten seconds before they hit. Canada does
not need the Golden Dome. You trump need Canada. Two.
Golden Dome is not going to work. The dome idea
(25:28):
Ronald Reagan star wars under a different name. It barely
works in Israel. Israel measures eight five hundred and twenty
two square miles. The United States measures three million, eight
hundred and nine five hundred and twenty five square miles. Three.
The Golden Dome is at Notre Dame. Four, The only
(25:51):
Golden Dome Trump is actually associated with is his hair,
and five Canada is not, in fact, considering the offer.
Also off the wire, Wired magazine quotes staffers of Nancy Mace,
(26:12):
the house whack job who isn't Marjorie Stupid Green or
Lauren Bobert staffers who say she set up burners on
social media to boost her rep quoting Wired. Quoting a
former Mace staffer, we had to make multiple accounts, burner accounts,
and go and reply to comments saying things that weren't true,
even on Reddit forums. We were congressional staff and there
(26:35):
were actual things we could be doing to help the constituents. Wait,
you're telling me Nancy Mace has burner accounts working to
help her and her online persona is still that bad man.
And then there's this, The last surviving grandson of one
(27:00):
of our former presidents has died at the age of
ninety six. Sad news, of course, But is it really
news I mean a grandson, Well, sir, it's news because
the former president, he was the last surviving grandson of
that former president, left office on March fourth, eighteen forty five.
(27:25):
I'll say that again. His grandfather, a US president, left
office on March fourth, eighteen forty five. His grandson died
last weekend, one hundred and eighty years and just under
three months later. He was the tenth US president. He
was President John Tyler, famous because it was he who
(27:47):
ascended from the vice presidency went our ninth president. That's
nine single digits. William Henry Harrison died just thirty one
days after his inauguration in eighteen forty one. His vice
president was Tyler. Tyler's grandson just died this past weekend.
President Tyler fathered a child, not even his last child.
(28:10):
He wasn't even in the White House yet. His third
to last child, Lion Gardner Tyler, fathered when the ex
president was sixty three years old. That was in eighteen
fifty three. Lion Gardner Tyler fathered a son at seventy five,
(28:33):
That would have been on November ninth, nineteen twenty eight.
The son was born, and that son was Harrison Ruffin Tyler,
and he was the guy who died over the holiday weekend.
Three generations and you are back to the year President
Tyler was born. The year President Tyler was born was
seventeen ninety three generations. The last of them just shuffled off.
(29:02):
It takes you back to March March twenty ninth, seventeen
night March twenty ninth, seventeen ninety, or as we called
it around the house, Grandpa's birthday. Also of interest here,
By the way, I'm sixty six. It was not a
top ten priority on my list, but I have in
(29:24):
the last I don't know, three decades, regretted not having children.
Harrison Ruffman. Tyler's father was seventy five. His father was
sixty three, So send tapes and resumes to okay, never mind.
Also of interest here, in two thousand and one, Rupert
Murdoch fired me personally for reporting the story he didn't like,
after I had called my bosses and Rupert's office to
(29:47):
get the approval to report the story. Now Rupert Murdoch's
chief minions are firing another reporter from their company for
reporting another story Trump didn't like. Punchline, the new guy
getting the Olderman treatment, did a story last year on me.
That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith
(30:13):
Oberman still ahead on this edition of Countdown. I've never
(30:36):
done this before, but the thing I promised not to
tell is going to be exactly the same thing I
promised not to tell in the episode of Monday of
this week, the same recording, because impossibly, between the first
running and now it has become relevant to another media
story involving the same company, which you'll hear about in
(30:58):
a moment that's next in Things I promise not to tell.
So if you heard Monday's, feel free to skip today.
In fact, feel free to skip today's anyway, even if
you didn't hear mondays, what am I your boss? First?
Believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to
talk about. The roundup of the miss Grants, Morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute the latest other worst
(31:19):
persons in the world the Brons. Homeland Security Secretary Christie
Nome with eight new action adventure dress up outfits. Ooh,
there's a new one. Nine new action adventure dress up
outfits from the associated press photos. US Homeland Security Secretary
Nome visits Middle East. Homeland Security Secretary Christi Nome rides
(31:43):
a camel after a tour of cal At al Bahrain fort.
First of all, I can report she did not shoot
this animal. So we have slight improvement in the life
of CHRISTI Nome. Secondly, there she is little Turkey, arms bared,
wearing the headgear and sunglasses traditional in the Middle East.
(32:08):
And she's on a camel, simply put, and the camel
you rode in on. Runner up Jesse Waters of Fox
Congressman Tim I'm not all here, am I? Burchette Waters
sent his idiot henchman. That was the role Waters used
to perform for Bill O'Reilly to ask senators and congressmen
(32:31):
what they think of waters rules for men. Rule one,
we're really weird looking hair Burchett responding to the key
Waters rule, which is men don't drink from straws or
through straws. And I don't use straws, Burchett, I don't
drink out of a straw. Brother, That's what the women
(32:52):
in my house do. Cool Cool, Burchette, Cool Waters. Once again,
I will point you to idiots to the photo of
Waters's old boss at Yankee Stadium from about twelve thirteen
years ago, drinking a milkshake, threw a straw during a
baseball game while sitting next to another guy drinking a
milkshake through a straw. A guy named Donald Trump. Congratulations
(33:16):
Congressman Burchant on calling Donald Trump a woman because he
used the straw on a milkshake. But the winners the
scumbag New York Post owned by scumbag Rupert Murdoch and
its scumbag editor in chief Keith Pool. Once again, Rupert
Murdoch's real name is Keith. He hired an editor in
(33:38):
chief for the Post named Keith the doing me dirty.
And this also, this story hits so close to home.
Lachland Cartwright's site Breaker, that's Lachland Cartwright, who is not
named Keith, reports the Post is burying a story that
would have embarrassed Trump and revealed that his pick to
run the DEEA had reportedly led two operations that led
(34:01):
to unnecessary deaths. And then Pool Murdoch on the Post,
essentially firing the reporter who broke the story after they
buried his story that they buried that they told him
to proceed on. A sixteen year veteran of the Post
no less, let me quote Cartwright's report at some length here.
It was a pretty amazing scoop, Josh Cosmon explained to
(34:23):
the Breaker. Cosmon briefed multiple editors at the Post, including
the business, features and political editors, who all encouraged him
to pursue the story, but there were early signs of
external pressure. I was told by a White House press
person that Caroline Levitt was looking at this real carefully.
Cosman told Breaker about conversations he was having with the
White House about Cole that's the DEI guy. After clearing
(34:47):
several hurdles, including getting two on record sources and speaking
to more than a dozen former top officials, the story
was written, edited, and slated to run on Sunday, March
twenty second, but it continued to be pushed off till
later in the week. Eventually, Cosmon emailed the post's political
editor to ask for an update. There's no good way
to say this, so I'll just say it. Keith Poole
(35:09):
spiked the story. The Post's political editor emailed Cosmon March
twenty seven in an email obtained and reviewed by Breaker.
The bombshell email went on to say I sent him
the most recent copy. In his response was nope, not
running this. In a way that made clear there was
no changing his mind. The editor wrote, I'm very sorry.
I thought we had the story, but sometimes decisions are
(35:32):
made above my pay grade. Yeah, that sounds familiar to
Two weeks later, on April eleventh, Cosmon met with the
post's business editor and was told that he would either
have to submit to a performance improvement plan or take
some time to seek another job. He acknowledged that Keith
Poole had issues with some recent stories, Cosmon told Breaker.
(35:55):
On April twenty ninth, CNN published a story about Cole
under the headline ex agent's question, role of Trump's dea
pick and violent overseas incidents, detailing many the allegations that
were in Cosmon's story. For what it's worth, we clearly
were ahead on the story, Cosmon emailed the political editor.
In fact, we still have more info in our spiked
story than CNN's, though the takes are pretty similar. Yeah,
(36:18):
I know, Josh, the political editor responded nineteen minutes later.
I always believed in the story, but sometimes decisions are
made above my head. Unfortunately, when Keith takes actions like this,
you are catching and killing the story, Cosmon told Breaker.
Then two weeks later, you're telling me to get out.
I certainly interpreted it as retaliation. The timing struck me
(36:39):
as not coincidental. On Tuesday, afternoon, just hours after Breaker
approached Pool for comments, Cosman was suspended from the New
York Post with full pay. So let's recap the reporter.
Cosman asked what the rules were, told his bosses told
the story, followed their rules, and then the paper buried
(37:01):
his story and buried him anyway, as I will late
after this break. Murdoch himself did this to me in
two thousand and one, although because he was on vacation
when I broke the story, he wasn't around to bury it.
So the story ran and I followed all their rules
and they fired me anyway. And the punchline to this
(37:23):
when a New York Post reporter called me last September
to say they were about to update the RFK Junior
sexting with a New York Magazine reporter story. They're going
to update this by claiming that I had lived with
that reporter, Olivia Newsey. The Post reporter was same guy, Cosmin,
and I did what you have to do in that situation.
(37:44):
I put the story on Twitter immediately saying yes, this
is true. I did not do what the Post did.
When Cosmin came up with the truth and another great story,
kill it and off him, so the New York Post
editor Keith Poole and Rupert Scumbag Murdoch two Days, Worst
Parsones and the wal Fight to the number one story
(38:28):
on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. Over the weekend watching hockey,
I had occasion to invoke my days hosting the Baseball
Game of the Week and the World Series for Fox,
and it reminded me of the delightful way that ended
with me being paid one hundred thousand dollars a month
not to do anything. I have changed jobs a lot,
(38:49):
and seldom have the departures included gold watches and going
away parties, at least not going away parties to which
I was invited. But in forty three years in radio
and television, I have only actually been fired in the
traditional sense of go clean out your desk and get
out twice. Once the order was from a drunken radio
(39:11):
executive who did not like the fact that I was
twenty one years old, and he was overruled, and he
was sent home with a warning by his bosses hours later,
and I was back on the job forty eight hours
after that. The other time, when it actually happened, You're fired,
clean out your desk. That was, unsurprisingly at the hands
(39:32):
of Rupert Murdoch and Fox, and I mean Rupert Murdoch personally,
or so he claims. When I finally convinced NBC News
that I was serious about no longer hosting its Monica
Lewinsky Athon in nineteen ninety eight, the head of NBC Sports,
Dick Eversoll, had an ingenious solution. He knew his friends
(39:52):
at Fox Sports longed to have me front their version
of SportsCenter, and so he proposed the following NBC would
give my agent ten days in which to negotiate two deals.
A deal for me to go to LA and host
Fox Sports News and Major League Baseball on Fox, and
(40:12):
another deal in which Fox would pay NBC one million
dollars for my contract, like I was a mediocre baseball pitcher. Amazingly,
it worked. I got what was then a record breaking
salary for any cable sportscaster. Ever, NBC got its million,
and maybe most startlingly, NBC then asked me to stay
(40:35):
on the air as a lane duck at MSNBC for
like six weeks. Curiously throughout my career, no matter how
abrasive the exit. My Lane Duck employers have always, for
some reason trusted me to stay on their air, even
though I was leaving in local news in Los Angeles once.
(40:57):
I did this for three months. Anyway. At first, going
to work at Fox Sports was a delight. Their news guys,
the evil Roger Ales and his henchman John Moody, pitched
me on doing stuff for them, maybe co anchoring with
Bill O'Reilly. I'm serious. I passed sports. We spent money.
(41:18):
I worked with friends. I didn't have to talk about politics.
I could narrate highlights. I could do funny voices. Way
downtown Bang I lived on the beach. I mean, my
next door neighbor was Hawaii. Every time there was a
newspaper story about ESPN, even though our ratings were terrible,
there was also my picture in it with a caption
(41:40):
like challenging ESPN. It was great. But then two things happened.
The Fox guy, who knew we needed five years at
minimum just to tie ESPN in the ratings, took me
to lunch one day and said, sorry, mate, mo missus
is moving back to England tomorrow without me, so I'm
going good luck. He was replaced by guys who replaced
(42:05):
the five year plan with a five week plan to
raise the ratings by literally one fifth of one point.
I left that meeting, in which they explained their suicidal
plan and revealed that my salary represented an unsustainable twenty
percent of their entire budget, and I called my real
estate agent and put my house on the beach up
(42:28):
for sale. Not long after, my doctor gave me a
physical and a warning, cut back on work and stress
and everything else, or you can have a heart attack
ten years from now. I told my bosses this, and
their response was to blackmail me. We have a clause
in your contract which allows us to send you on
the road once a week while you are still working
(42:50):
five days in the studio. We're going to enforce that
unless you kick back two thirds of your salary. They
put this in a document. There are, as the kids, say, receipts.
So I folded to blackmail because two thirds of three
million dollars a year is still pretty good. But I
(43:11):
kept doing the job. In nineteen ninety nine, I broke
a story that everybody laughed at that Michael Jordan was
unhappy in retirement and he wanted to come back to
play in the NBA, but instead of getting a salary,
he wanted an ownership stake in a team. Two years later,
he did exactly that. In two thousand, I got to
host the first Mets Yankees World Series, and hosting baseball
(43:31):
every Saturday on Fox was a pretty good gig, and
we were just gearing up for the two thousand and
one baseball season when I got a tip on April
twentieth that the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers had
unofficially put their team up for sale, and in fact,
they were talking to the old owners, the O'Malley family,
about taking the Dodgers off their hands, selling the Dodgers
(43:54):
back to the son of Walter O'Malley. This was a
great scoop, but it had great danger because the owners
of the Dodgers were Fox, my own employers. The next day,
after getting this scoop, I made about one hundred phone calls,
and sure enough I got the friend of a friend
of a friend of my agent to confirm that he
(44:15):
and his family were in preliminary discussions joining the O'Malleys
to buy the Dodgers from Fox. Two sources great scoop,
and that night I reached out to my bosses and said,
what the hell do we do here? The story is solid,
The Dodgers are for sale. But look, this is your
candy store, and I do work for you, and if
(44:36):
you don't want me to report this, I'm obviously not
going to report it, and I'm not going to pouch
and I'm not going to give the story to somebody else.
My boss has replied, good for you. Why don't we
all get on the phone with the top rupert. Murdoch
has his own Personal News Corp Public relations department. Let's
see what he says. So on Sunday, April twenty second,
(44:58):
two thousand and one, we got Murdoch's own PR guy
on the blower and I explained it to him. Now,
mister Murdoch has a policy about this. He never interferes
in editorial decisions, not even in sourced business stories, not
even if they involve him. So long as you make
it clear your sources are not from within the company,
and so long as you're confident in your sources, and
(45:20):
so long as you include our denial, you should proceed
with this Dodger story. That is what we are paying
you for. For a brief moment, I thought maybe I
have misjudged Rupert Murdoch. Well, it turned out to be
a very brief moment and a very wrong moment. I
(45:40):
reported the story that night, howls of denials. Five days later, though,
the Long Beach Press Telegram newspaper had its own story said,
despite denials, Dodgers are for sale, with far more details
than I had, And that really was the end of it.
The team was unofficially for sale. Dodger fans, who hated
(46:01):
what Fox had done to the team seemed happy, and
the bast stinking pile of burning excrement that was Fox
and NewsCorp and Murdoch sailed on unperturbed. But twelve days
after that, just before I was getting in my car
to go to the first Fox Baseball meeting for our
two thousand and one season coverage, the president of Fox Sports,
(46:23):
yet another Aussie called David Hill, called my agent and
told her case, not doing any baseball for us this year.
Business decision click, end of conversation. Nothing else, no firing,
no get out, no clean out your desk, no announcement.
But then two days later they turned off my access
(46:44):
to the Fox computer system, And four days after that
they called and canceled my cable show, and then that
night I got two weird calls from Rich Sandomir, who
was the TV sports critic and TV sports business reporter
for the New York Times. And Rich asks me, so,
did you know you got fired by Rupert Murdoch personally?
And I said, with genuine astonishment that I not only
(47:07):
didn't know that, but even given my thoughts about Rupert Murdoch,
I didn't believe that. Well, that's what my sources at
Fox tell me. Apparently your Dodger story really pissed him off,
but really, and I said, I had cleared it through
his personal PR guy. I don't know, Rich Sandomir said,
apparently he was on vacation and he got back like
(47:27):
the ninth of this month, and he read all these
stories about the Dodgers being for sale and how Fox
Sports was the first to report it, and he called
up David Hill and he told Hill to fire you immediately.
So I told Rich, this is the first I have
heard of this, and I still don't believe it, even
though the day he mentioned May ninth was the day
David Hill had called my agent and told her I
(47:48):
would not be doing baseball for Fox that year. An
hour later, the phone rings again and it's Rich Sandomir again,
and he sounds shaken. I got it wrong. I don't
have any sources at Fox who told me Rupert fired
you personally. My source said that you were telling people
Rupert had fired you personally over the Dodger story. And
(48:08):
I gave Rich a sequence of well, kind of friendly
uh huhz And I said, no, I didn't, and know
you've never been dumb enough in your life to make
the mistake you're saying you just made. And he said, well,
I never said somebody at Fox said Murdock fired Joe. Ok. Thanks.
By the next day, they had me come into the
Fox building on Pico Boulevard and clean out my office
(48:32):
while a guard watched. And she was a really nice guard.
In fact, she brought donuts but a lovely way to
go out. As I packed, I thought more and more
of what had happened in the month since I had
gotten that tip about the Dodgers being for sale. As
I left the Fox lot for the last time as
an employee, I went back a couple of times to
attend table reads for the Simpsons. Table reads for the
(48:54):
Simpsons were much more fun than being an employee at Fox.
I called a couple of reporters I knew, and my
agent and some people in the business, and we tried
to put together a timeline that made some sort of sense,
because the slow motion firing thing. May ninth, you're not
doing baseball. May eleventh, your computer won't work. May fifteenth,
your cable show is canceled. May sixteenth, clean out your office.
(49:16):
A week long firing made no sense until one reporter
friend said, you know, Fox called me and said, call
Keith up and provoke him, get him to call us names,
tell him about this story and that paper, calling him
washed up, get him going, And then it all clicked.
My contract ran through the end of the year two
(49:38):
thousand and one because Fox was firing me without any
cause or even claiming there was a cause, without any
violation of my contract or their rules. Because I had
left a trail of good behavior on the Dodger story.
They were trying to enrage me and get me to
say something nasty that itself would be a violation of
my contract so they could outright fire me and keep
(50:01):
the money. And the money still on the contract was
about eight hundred thousand dollars. Now, after decades of contemplating this,
I am confident that I am no crazier than the
next guy, at least not the next guy in television.
But on my worst, craziest, least rational day, if you
(50:21):
said you have two choices, Alderman, you can blow up
these people who are firing you, and you can make
them look bad in a newspaper for a day and
then they'll fire you and keep all the money they
owe you. Or you can keep your big bazoo shut
for just seven months. You can keep the eight hundred
thousand dollars, and you can spend the summer doing whatever
(50:44):
the hell you want, and you can then spend the
rest of your natural life blowing these people up. If
that's the choice, I will always take the scenario that
gives me the eight hundred thousand dollars for doing nothing.
Always so. On January first, two thousand to after the
(51:05):
last Fox check cleared, I began making a professional avocation
out of attacking Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Business, Fox Murdoch,
Fox O'Reilly, Fox, Tucker Carlson, whatever. And I got the
eight hundred thousand dollars, But they're lingered for years. This
kind of academic question of whether Rupert Murdoch had actually
(51:26):
fired me for having followed the rules set out by
his own personal pr guy. As usual, these things resolve
themselves when you least expect them to. Murdoch was speaking
at a Dow Jones conference in Carlsbad, California, on May
twenty eighth, two thousand and eight, seven years to the
(51:47):
month they got rid of me and a story came
across the wire with my name on it. The guy
interviewing him at this conference talked about whether there should
be dissenting voices on Fox quote news unquote, like that
guy who was killing it on MSNBC Keith Olderman. Now
Murdoch barked if fired him five years ago. He was crizy,
(52:11):
timing was off. But there was Rupert Murdoch confessing in
front of a crowd that he fired me personally, the
red badge of courage in quotes. I wondered if it
still pissed him off that he had to pay me
the eight hundred thousand dollars when I didn't take the
grievance bait. Three years after that, Murdoch said it again,
(52:32):
like I hadn't heard it. The first time. On February first,
twenty eleven, Rupert Murdoch was interviewed by his business talking
had Neil Cavudo, who for some reason asked him if
he would consider hiring me to put me on Fox News.
Now we fired him once. We don't believe in firing people.
Twice Kavodo replied, you called him a nut, lady was
(52:56):
a nut?
Speaker 2 (52:56):
On?
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Well, we had him on late night Fox Sports. There
was never any such show called late night Fox Sports.
But never mind went on. It was impossible. I fired him.
He was crazy, fired me for following his rules, and
I was the one who was crazy. Finally, speaking of crazy,
(53:19):
I have had for sixty three nearly sixty four years
now a love hate relationship with the name Keith. But
did you know that Rupert Murdoch's real first name is
also Keith, but that rather than call himself Keith, he
voluntarily chooses to call himself Rupert. I mean, sure, my
(53:43):
name is Keith, but at least my name ain't freaking Rupert.
(54:04):
All the damage I can do here but not as
much as Rupert Murdoch has. Welcome to the club, mister Cosman,
Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle
musical directors have countdown, have arranged, produced, and performed most
of the music. Mister Chanelle on orchestration, keyboards, Mister Ray
on guitars, bass drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
(54:27):
Our satirical and pithy musical comments sometimes known as pithy
and satirical, are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust, now back with the Chicago White Sox in
the Chicago White Sox Nancy Faust Lounge for a limited
engagement only. The sports music is the Olberman theme from
ESPN two, which was written by Mitch Warren Davis and
(54:48):
appears courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Aloud. And speaking of music,
my announcer today was my friend Stevie van Zant. Everything
else was as ever my fault. Let's countdown for today,
Day one hundred and thirty of America held hostage just
one three thirty three days until the scheduled end of
(55:10):
his lame duck and lame brain term unless Putin removes
him sooner, or the actuarial tables do, or we do
stop compromising with Trump. The next scheduled countdown is Monday.
As always, bulletins as the news warrants. Remember he's laying
the groundwork now to not leave office later. He must
(55:34):
stop him until next time. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(55:59):
Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump's
tariffs are not legal. In a late decision by the
US Court of International Trade on Wednesday evening, an Obama judge,
(00:26):
a Reagan judge, and a Trump judge walk into a
courtroom and overturn all of the tariffs. That's all, as
in one hundred percent or one hundred and forty five percent,
if that seems like a more fitting number for this story.
Trump had used the nineteen seventy seven federal Economic Emergency
laws to impose these tariffs, and this three judge panel
(00:50):
the US Court of International Trade said, sorry, tariffs were
not among the weapons allocated to the president even in
the event of a federal economic emergency, which they did
not prove, and no one bothered to prove any indication
anywhere in any law in the Constitution, anywhere else, any
(01:11):
statute anywhere, that the president had the right single handedly
to impose tariffs without the approval of Congress. They have
given the Trump administration ten days to halt all tariffs.
The Trump administration has already appealed. What is interesting as
(01:32):
a sideline to this is the corporations that were affected
by these tariffs, including the ones that were pushed to
the brink of true economic peril, did nothing about them.
They knew these tariffs were illegal, or at minimum illegally
applied and did not have anything behind it legally, and
they did nothing. They rolled over rather than challenged Trump
(01:55):
in court. This is a series of states and other
groups that sued and got these tariffs at least halted,
at least halted pending an appeal. In retrospect, perhaps it
was a mistake by the Department of Justice, under Trump's guidance,
to tell this US Court of International Trade that it
had no right to review the president's actions. It said
(02:18):
this to this court repeatedly throughout this process. He got elected.
That's the only law now round here. Premise it did
not go well for Trump in the slightest. No matter
what happens in terms of the appeal, presumably the halting
will be itself halted, and the ten days to stop
the tariffs will not go into effect until the appeal
(02:42):
is heard. But who knows. Like everything else about this
misbegotten presidency and this misbegotten man, the details remain left
to be sorted out by others. He is in charge
of one thing, and one thing only breaking shit. In
a totally unrelated bit of timing, Elon Musk has now
(03:02):
officially bailed out, saying, well, it was scheduled for this
to be the time for him to bail out of
douche or whatever that was called again, but he is
now no longer associated with the government. They had been
gradually fading him out anyway, to the point where, like
the cheshire cat in the story, all that was left
was his stoned grin. And we can now ask the question,
(03:26):
remember Elon Musk. One final note here, pending obviously days
of further litigation and bombbast to come, how dare the
judges never elected make a decision instead of our god Trump,
who was elected in a minority vote by a minority
(03:48):
of voters. One last note here Stephen Miller, who is
nominally has nothing to do with this particular aspect of
the Trump would be dictatorship. Stephen Miller announced this to
his waiting world of human scorpions by retweeting the right
(04:08):
wing nebish Bennie Johnson, and I don't know if I
can think of anything that says more authoritatively, I am
a serious and powerful government figure that you should be
afraid of nothing, says that more resonantly than our team,
a guy named Benny, and adding to Benny's reporting, the
(04:33):
judicial coup is out of control. Do you see what happens?
Gretchen Whitmer? Do you see what happens? Tim Cook? Do
(04:57):
you see what happens? Jake Tapper, Claire Shipman, Eugene Daniels,
CBS News, Bob Iger, do you see what happens when
you let Trump? Well, if you know the movie The
Big Lebowski, you know the twist on the rest of
that speech. It's not pretty. It is, however, completely accurate.
(05:18):
Stop capitulating to Trump, stop negotiating with Trump, stop appeasing Trump,
stop letting Trump, etc. There is only one way Apple
is going to survive Trump. Tim Cook, There is only
one way Columbia is going to survive Trump. Claire, there
(05:39):
is only one way the White House correspondents are going
to survive Trump. Eugene Daniels. If you haven't figured it
out yet, I'll spell it out. Doing what he wants
only tells him you will do what he wants, so
he will come back and give you another list of
what he wants. Now he's a blackmailer. He's a crooked businessman,
He's a bully. There is only one way to survive Trump,
(06:01):
and that is to destroy Trump's presidency. In a world
of Columbia's, be a Harvard, in a world of White
House correspondents, be the Pentagon correspondence, in a world of apples,
be Walmart. Put your hands on Trump's shoulders and reassure
him and knee him in the groin. Instead, Gretchen Whitner
(06:28):
praises Trump. He tricks her into going to a White
House photo op. She has to cover her face with
her notebook like a damn purp walk and yesterday, Trump says, yes,
he is looking into pardoning the men who were convicted
of trying to kidnap her. Instead, Tim Cook sucks up
(06:50):
to Trump, and Trump responds by tariffing iPhones twenty five percent. Instead,
Claire Shipman and Columbia suck up to Trump, and Trump
responds by trying to put a judge, a Trump judge,
in charge of Columbia's entire curriculum and hiring and admissions.
The White House correspondents don't defend the associated present. Trump
comes back and takes all their repertorial choices away from them.
(07:14):
Decides who's going to be on the pool. Eiger gives
Trump a bribe disguised as a settlement, and Trump threatens
to take away Iiger's station licenses. Instead, CBS so hoard
itself out that it's sixty minutes. Chief quit, that it's news.
Chief quit. Now it is being mocked by The New
York Post. The New York Post mocking Sherry Redstone and
(07:40):
reporting that her board is flinching at her bribe settlement
of Trump because paramount's insurance doesn't cover bribe settlements and
there may be a congressional investigation of their bribe settlements
and civil or criminal charges against her. Instead of doing something,
Jake Tapper tries to throw the Trump Biden debate to
(08:01):
Trump by refusing to fact check him, destroys his own reputation,
destroys CNN's reputation, has no space remaining in journalism, so
he has to put his name on a Biden acuity
book now bombing so badly that to drum up publicity
for it, he had to apologize to Lara Effing Trump
that he had to go on Piers effing Morgan and
(08:24):
insists and actually say as an adult, as an American
as a supposed TV newscaster actually say that the Biden
story was in many ways a scandal worse than Watergate.
Jake Tapper's colleagues at CNN are now refusing to work
with him. His career is melting before his eyes. It
(08:45):
is so bad. Somebody on Twitter wrote that Jake's quote
book tour is turning into spinal tap, where they started
out in stadiums and end as openers for a puppet show.
Is standing up to Trump pain free? Hell no. Harvard
tells Trump to f off, sues him. He comes back
(09:08):
and tries to expel all of their sixty five hundred,
sixty six hundred foreign students, thinking this not only screws
the foreigners, but it will also bankrupt Harvard or something,
because of course there aren't sixty five hundred or sixty
six hundred other students turned down by Harvard who wouldn't
say yes if they got a new callback. Harvard turned
(09:30):
me down in April nineteen seventy five, and I might
still say yes if I got a new callback, and
I mean a callback today. So Trump then cuts off
one hundred million in grants to Harvard and threatens to
vet the social media of all foreign students in this country,
and he's out of weapons. The classic case of the bully.
(09:52):
He'll threaten you, he'll hit you, and then he runs
out because he has no backup plan. Now Harvard can
keep suing him, and people at Harvard can sleep at night.
Because the point is Trump would have tried to expel
foreign students anyway, and would have cut off the one
hundred million dollars anyway soon or late, because that's what
he does. That's all he does, that's all he's ever done.
(10:15):
He just does it faster to you. If it's obvious
to him, you are going to make it easier for him.
If you were as crazy and as malicious and as
non human as Trump is, wouldn't you do it that way?
If you were Ted Bundy Trump, would you murder the
companies that put up a fight or murder the ones
that just sit there? What can Harvard now get away with?
(10:39):
One of the op ed people on the student newspaper
writes a column saying she knows how to settle this
with Trump and his administration. She has challenged Secretary of
I didn't get any education. Linda McMahon, the ex wife
of the wrestling jackass. She has challenged Linda McMahon to
settle this in a wrestling cage match, Rah Voe. One
(11:06):
can argue that Harvard's moral victory here, and it's actually
two or three dozen moral victories are the proverbial p
in the dark suit, a warm feeling nobody notices. But
there are also material victories. To contrast the filled with
inertia White House Correspondence Association, there are the fighting Pentagon correspondents.
(11:26):
The impeccable Oliver Darcy of The Status Newsletter reports that
Pete Hegseeth tried to strong ar I'm a CNN producer
who had been chosen by her peers to be part
of the small pool traveling with the Secretary of Greasy Kids,
stuff and Scotch to Singapore. They didn't want Haley Britsky
to go. They didn't like her tweets. Seriously, these are
(11:50):
alleged grown ups. They didn't make her tweets, so they
banned her. They said, no, you can't go as part
of the pool, and her Pentagon media colleagues, unlike the
White House Correspondence Association, promptly told the Pentagon Press office
to f off Britsky doesn't go. Nobody goes. Nobody goes.
Heg Seth doesn't get to be on TV and in articles,
(12:12):
and to thus gaze longingly at himself. He'd have to
go back to carrying a dozen mirrors with him at
all times. The Pentagon folded like one of heg Seth's
cheap suits. Britsky went a small victory, and presumably if
Trump understood what it meant, he'd reproach heg Seth. But this,
(12:34):
of course is way down on the list of things
Trump will eventually fire Hegseth for, certainly when it looks
like heg Seth had the Pentagon got the NSA to
wiretap people in the Pentagon without the slightest authorization, without
the slightest concern for the laws, because efet, what do
you expect when you hire the weekend fill in fox
guy and not some first string fox guy. But it
(12:58):
underscores the point. The bully is going to hit you.
Appease him. He will hit you, hit him, he will
hit you. But guess which way causes him to stop
hitting you fastest. Guess which way causes him the most pain.
Tim Cook's response to Trump's threat of a twenty five
percent tariff on iPhone should be something equally as crazy,
(13:22):
something like saying, starting September first, Apple will no longer
sell iPhones in this country, and if you want one,
you're gonna have to go to the secondary market or
into Canada. Fight insanity with more insanity. What do you
think you're obligated to actually stop selling iPhones here just
because you say you're gonna stop selling iPhones here? This
(13:46):
is Trump's America. You can lie all you want, You
can deny you ever said it. They can play the
tape and you can say, oh, it's Ai. The value
of all this, of course, is that even if you
have made the terrible mistake of appeasing Trump, you can renege.
Even at the late hour. Claire pull the plug on
(14:08):
the deal Columbia made with him. Iiger tell him you've
changed your mind and you're now suing him. CBS Paramount
Board tell Sherry if she wants to settle with Trump,
it's going to come out of her paycheck. Do something.
(14:31):
This entire dynamic now becomes meaningful, not just a test
of moral clarity. And whether you remember the lesson the
bully in the schoolyard should have taught you namely the
moment he touches you stab him. Trump is now trying
the same bullshit with Putin. Something has happened to him. Putin,
he's gone absolutely crazy. It will lead to the downfall
of Russia. When that didn't make Putin cry or run
(14:55):
home to mommy, Trump escalated. What Vladimir Putin doesn't realize
is that if it weren't for me, lots of really
bad things would have already happened to Russia. And I
mean really bad. He's playing with fire. Firstly, congratulations Trump,
you just confess that you have been protecting Russia, an
enemy of this country, a foreign power in opposition to
(15:16):
the United States of America. You just confessed Russia, Russia, Russia, true, true, true,
trees and trees and treason. Nobody asked, you just confessed.
You just confessed you've been covering up for Putin. Good work,
stable genius as in horse stables. Secondly, this will stop
(15:37):
Putin in Ukraine. Trump should have just quoted the self
own that Shakespeare put into the mouth of King Lear,
the definition of imfidence, the summit of empty threats. I
will have such revenges on you both that all the
world shall I will do such things. What they are
yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors
(15:59):
of the earth. I shall have such revenge on you Putin.
I will do such things bad thing, I mean, really bad.
We have a vested interest in Putin not responding to
this the way he ordinarily would think Russia's inexhaustible supply
of open windows. But Putin will probably have a surgical
(16:20):
response that humiliates and damages Trump alone, because Trump's tantrum
may cause Putin to think that Trump's usefulness to him
is about to run out, and he was going to
switch to somebody else in a few years. Anyway, JB.
Vance might as well do that. Now, what's the point
of owning the president of the United States if you
(16:41):
can't fire the president of the United States. Stop appeasing Trump,
(17:13):
and among other reasons, to stop appeasing Trump. When you
thwart him, when you stand up to him, he dissolves
into a self fitting, soft, stupid child and looks it
and sounds it. Apparently he did not know about Taco Taco,
the New Wall Street acronym about tariffs, the acronym for
(17:36):
Trump always chickens out taco. When CNBC's Megan Cassella asked
him about taco yesterday, and I've telescoped this so you
don't have to listen to the whole meltdown. Trump found
out about taco for the first time. Trump don't like taco,
(17:56):
and Walster analysts have pointed a new term called the
taco trade.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
They're saying Trump always chickens out.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
On tear fres and that's why markets are hired his
what's your results to that?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I check out? Check it out?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Oh checking out.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China
from one hundred and forty five percent that I said
down to one hundred and then because of the tariff,
because it was so high. But I knew that. But
don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Loser taco, loser appo taco. It's a baseball joke. Incidentally,
as impressive as that CNBC question was, remember you can
always rely on the legacy media here. They will always
let you down. Jack Blanchard, the guy who nearly finished
destroying Politico Playbook after Ryan Lizi started destroying Political Playbook
(18:50):
before they moved him off, is now a lame duck
at Politico playbook, and he wrote glowingly yesterday of Trump's
cooperation with the media. Quote, Aside from the lamentable attempt
to ban AP, He's basically taken questions from old comas.
It's impressive stuff. Yeah, impressive, Governor. Aside from that attempt
(19:12):
to ban the world's most widely distributed wire service. Oh,
other than that, he's been impressive taking questions from all comers.
Trying to ban a news organization, second time in a week.
Just there, he threatened a reporter over a question he
didn't like. That's impressive, Jack Blanchard of Politico, That's impressive.
(19:34):
Do you know what happens if he starts getting away
with banning the Associated Press or running the White House
Correspondence Association. You know what happens. Politico disappears. Jack Blanchard
has to go back to London and busk. Meanwhile, on
the Fascism for Money Front, Axios reports Stephen Miller and
(19:56):
Garden Nome are angry that their administration of the undead
deported just seventeen two hundred people last month. That's actually
below past presidential administration averages. Miller and Noam want three
thousand a day, not that I'd ever question the motives
of such upstanding white trash as Christy Nome and Steven Miller.
(20:20):
But financial disclosures made public last week revealed that besides
Attorney General Blondie, you know who else did work for
the GEO Group, the people to call when you need
a privately owned, privately operated, vermin filled concentration camp for
immigrants in your neighborhood. You know who else worked for
Geo ice scum Tom Holman consulted for them for at
(20:44):
least two years before Trump put him in charge of
finding people to put in GEO Group brand concentration camps.
What a coincidence? And if you miss this, former nursing
home scumbag Paul Waalsack Walsack as in Ballsack, pleads guilty
(21:07):
to tax crimes. The judge gives him eighteen months, says
their quote is not a get out of jail free
card for the rich. Then Ballsack's mom a Trump donor
named Elizabeth Fago Fago, I'm praying it's Fago. Elizabeth Fago
gets an invitation to a Trump event at Mary Lago
(21:29):
see if it would never mind. The invite comes either
just before or just after her son is sentenced. No
got out of jail free card for the rich. The
price for admission to the Trump event is one million
dollars to Trump. Three weeks after the dinner, Ballsack, her
son gets a pardon because there is a get out
(21:51):
of jail free card. Of course, it is not free.
This story got wildly and widely covered, but I don't
remember seeing it connected to a story from two years ago.
This month, anybody else remember Rudy Giuliani's reported boasts that
presidential pardons were available for purchase at popular prices without
(22:11):
a prescription, two million dollars each, half to him, half
to uh Trump. That is what a woman named Noel Dunfie,
who sued Juliani for sexual abuse, says Guliani told her
in twenty nineteen. And she says she has countless recordings
of their encounters. And I don't know if she recorded
on any of the part about the pardons, and I
(22:34):
don't know if she's telling the truth. And I have
even less of an idea of whether or not he
Giuliani was telling the truth about being able to do this.
But Dunfee's attorney claimed Giuliani quote asked miss Dunfie if
she knew anyone in need of a pardon, telling her
that he was selling pardons for two million dollars, which
he and President Trump would split. He told Miss Dunfie
(22:56):
that she could refer individuals seeking pardons to him, so
long as they did not go through the normal channels
of the Office of the Pardon Attorney, because correspondence going
to that office would be subject to disclosure under the
Freedom of Information Act twenty nineteen. Pardons for Sale, Pardons
for sale, Get your pardons here, hot roasted pardons two
(23:17):
millions apiece funny dog gun thing, though huh Giuliani allegedly
boasts of selling pardons for two million, a million for
him and a million for Trump, and six years later,
Trump pardons ball Sack after Mommy Ballsack attends a fundraiser
(23:38):
and buys a ticket to it, which costs a million
for Trump. Two of Trump's most ridiculous delusions have now merged. Oops.
Turns out he threatened Canada before he realized he would
(24:02):
need Canada to participate in this science fiction Golden Dome
bullshit that Musk must have convinced him to buy from Musk.
I told Canada you got everybody in Canada just sort
of sit still while you talk to them. I told Canada,
(24:22):
I told Mars, I told God, I told Jesus. I
told my invisible friend Stanley. I told Canada, which very
much wants to be part of our fabulous Golden Dome system,
that it will cost sixty one billion dollars if they
remain a separate but unequal nation, but will cost zero
(24:45):
dollars if they become our cherished fifty first state. They
are considering the offer. Couple notes. One, If you don't
have Canadian outposts in your Golden Dome, your Golden Dome
would never be aware of missions or flights or missiles
(25:06):
coming in from the north, the northeast, or the northwest
until about five ten seconds before they hit. Canada does
not need the Golden Dome. You trump need Canada. Two.
Golden Dome is not going to work. The dome idea
(25:28):
Ronald Reagan star wars under a different name. It barely
works in Israel. Israel measures eight five hundred and twenty
two square miles. The United States measures three million, eight
hundred and nine five hundred and twenty five square miles. Three.
The Golden Dome is at Notre Dame. Four, The only
(25:51):
Golden Dome Trump is actually associated with is his hair,
and five Canada is not, in fact, considering the offer.
Also off the wire, Wired magazine quotes staffers of Nancy Mace,
(26:12):
the house whack job who isn't Marjorie Stupid Green or
Lauren Bobert staffers who say she set up burners on
social media to boost her rep quoting Wired. Quoting a
former Mace staffer, we had to make multiple accounts, burner accounts,
and go and reply to comments saying things that weren't true,
even on Reddit forums. We were congressional staff and there
(26:35):
were actual things we could be doing to help the constituents. Wait,
you're telling me Nancy Mace has burner accounts working to
help her and her online persona is still that bad man.
And then there's this, The last surviving grandson of one
(27:00):
of our former presidents has died at the age of
ninety six. Sad news, of course, But is it really
news I mean a grandson, Well, sir, it's news because
the former president, he was the last surviving grandson of
that former president, left office on March fourth, eighteen forty five.
(27:25):
I'll say that again. His grandfather, a US president, left
office on March fourth, eighteen forty five. His grandson died
last weekend, one hundred and eighty years and just under
three months later. He was the tenth US president. He
was President John Tyler, famous because it was he who
(27:47):
ascended from the vice presidency went our ninth president. That's
nine single digits. William Henry Harrison died just thirty one
days after his inauguration in eighteen forty one. His vice
president was Tyler. Tyler's grandson just died this past weekend.
President Tyler fathered a child, not even his last child.
(28:10):
He wasn't even in the White House yet. His third
to last child, Lion Gardner Tyler, fathered when the ex
president was sixty three years old. That was in eighteen
fifty three. Lion Gardner Tyler fathered a son at seventy five,
(28:33):
That would have been on November ninth, nineteen twenty eight.
The son was born, and that son was Harrison Ruffin Tyler,
and he was the guy who died over the holiday weekend.
Three generations and you are back to the year President
Tyler was born. The year President Tyler was born was
seventeen ninety three generations. The last of them just shuffled off.
(29:02):
It takes you back to March March twenty ninth, seventeen
night March twenty ninth, seventeen ninety, or as we called
it around the house, Grandpa's birthday. Also of interest here,
By the way, I'm sixty six. It was not a
top ten priority on my list, but I have in
(29:24):
the last I don't know, three decades, regretted not having children.
Harrison Ruffman. Tyler's father was seventy five. His father was
sixty three, So send tapes and resumes to okay, never mind.
Also of interest here, in two thousand and one, Rupert
Murdoch fired me personally for reporting the story he didn't like,
after I had called my bosses and Rupert's office to
(29:47):
get the approval to report the story. Now Rupert Murdoch's
chief minions are firing another reporter from their company for
reporting another story Trump didn't like. Punchline, the new guy
getting the Olderman treatment, did a story last year on me.
That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith
(30:13):
Oberman still ahead on this edition of Countdown. I've never
(30:36):
done this before, but the thing I promised not to
tell is going to be exactly the same thing I
promised not to tell in the episode of Monday of
this week, the same recording, because impossibly, between the first
running and now it has become relevant to another media
story involving the same company, which you'll hear about in
(30:58):
a moment that's next in Things I promise not to tell.
So if you heard Monday's, feel free to skip today.
In fact, feel free to skip today's anyway, even if
you didn't hear mondays, what am I your boss? First?
Believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to
talk about. The roundup of the miss Grants, Morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute the latest other worst
(31:19):
persons in the world the Brons. Homeland Security Secretary Christie
Nome with eight new action adventure dress up outfits. Ooh,
there's a new one. Nine new action adventure dress up
outfits from the associated press photos. US Homeland Security Secretary
Nome visits Middle East. Homeland Security Secretary Christi Nome rides
(31:43):
a camel after a tour of cal At al Bahrain fort.
First of all, I can report she did not shoot
this animal. So we have slight improvement in the life
of CHRISTI Nome. Secondly, there she is little Turkey, arms bared,
wearing the headgear and sunglasses traditional in the Middle East.
(32:08):
And she's on a camel, simply put, and the camel
you rode in on. Runner up Jesse Waters of Fox
Congressman Tim I'm not all here, am I? Burchette Waters
sent his idiot henchman. That was the role Waters used
to perform for Bill O'Reilly to ask senators and congressmen
(32:31):
what they think of waters rules for men. Rule one,
we're really weird looking hair Burchett responding to the key
Waters rule, which is men don't drink from straws or
through straws. And I don't use straws, Burchett, I don't
drink out of a straw. Brother, That's what the women
(32:52):
in my house do. Cool Cool, Burchette, Cool Waters. Once again,
I will point you to idiots to the photo of
Waters's old boss at Yankee Stadium from about twelve thirteen
years ago, drinking a milkshake, threw a straw during a
baseball game while sitting next to another guy drinking a
milkshake through a straw. A guy named Donald Trump. Congratulations
(33:16):
Congressman Burchant on calling Donald Trump a woman because he
used the straw on a milkshake. But the winners the
scumbag New York Post owned by scumbag Rupert Murdoch and
its scumbag editor in chief Keith Pool. Once again, Rupert
Murdoch's real name is Keith. He hired an editor in
(33:38):
chief for the Post named Keith the doing me dirty.
And this also, this story hits so close to home.
Lachland Cartwright's site Breaker, that's Lachland Cartwright, who is not
named Keith, reports the Post is burying a story that
would have embarrassed Trump and revealed that his pick to
run the DEEA had reportedly led two operations that led
(34:01):
to unnecessary deaths. And then Pool Murdoch on the Post,
essentially firing the reporter who broke the story after they
buried his story that they buried that they told him
to proceed on. A sixteen year veteran of the Post
no less, let me quote Cartwright's report at some length here.
It was a pretty amazing scoop, Josh Cosmon explained to
(34:23):
the Breaker. Cosmon briefed multiple editors at the Post, including
the business, features and political editors, who all encouraged him
to pursue the story, but there were early signs of
external pressure. I was told by a White House press
person that Caroline Levitt was looking at this real carefully.
Cosman told Breaker about conversations he was having with the
White House about Cole that's the DEI guy. After clearing
(34:47):
several hurdles, including getting two on record sources and speaking
to more than a dozen former top officials, the story
was written, edited, and slated to run on Sunday, March
twenty second, but it continued to be pushed off till
later in the week. Eventually, Cosmon emailed the post's political
editor to ask for an update. There's no good way
to say this, so I'll just say it. Keith Poole
(35:09):
spiked the story. The Post's political editor emailed Cosmon March
twenty seven in an email obtained and reviewed by Breaker.
The bombshell email went on to say I sent him
the most recent copy. In his response was nope, not
running this. In a way that made clear there was
no changing his mind. The editor wrote, I'm very sorry.
I thought we had the story, but sometimes decisions are
(35:32):
made above my pay grade. Yeah, that sounds familiar to
Two weeks later, on April eleventh, Cosmon met with the
post's business editor and was told that he would either
have to submit to a performance improvement plan or take
some time to seek another job. He acknowledged that Keith
Poole had issues with some recent stories, Cosmon told Breaker.
(35:55):
On April twenty ninth, CNN published a story about Cole
under the headline ex agent's question, role of Trump's dea
pick and violent overseas incidents, detailing many the allegations that
were in Cosmon's story. For what it's worth, we clearly
were ahead on the story, Cosmon emailed the political editor.
In fact, we still have more info in our spiked
story than CNN's, though the takes are pretty similar. Yeah,
(36:18):
I know, Josh, the political editor responded nineteen minutes later.
I always believed in the story, but sometimes decisions are
made above my head. Unfortunately, when Keith takes actions like this,
you are catching and killing the story, Cosmon told Breaker.
Then two weeks later, you're telling me to get out.
I certainly interpreted it as retaliation. The timing struck me
(36:39):
as not coincidental. On Tuesday, afternoon, just hours after Breaker
approached Pool for comments, Cosman was suspended from the New
York Post with full pay. So let's recap the reporter.
Cosman asked what the rules were, told his bosses told
the story, followed their rules, and then the paper buried
(37:01):
his story and buried him anyway, as I will late
after this break. Murdoch himself did this to me in
two thousand and one, although because he was on vacation
when I broke the story, he wasn't around to bury it.
So the story ran and I followed all their rules
and they fired me anyway. And the punchline to this
(37:23):
when a New York Post reporter called me last September
to say they were about to update the RFK Junior
sexting with a New York Magazine reporter story. They're going
to update this by claiming that I had lived with
that reporter, Olivia Newsey. The Post reporter was same guy, Cosmin,
and I did what you have to do in that situation.
(37:44):
I put the story on Twitter immediately saying yes, this
is true. I did not do what the Post did.
When Cosmin came up with the truth and another great story,
kill it and off him, so the New York Post
editor Keith Poole and Rupert Scumbag Murdoch two Days, Worst
Parsones and the wal Fight to the number one story
(38:28):
on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. Over the weekend watching hockey,
I had occasion to invoke my days hosting the Baseball
Game of the Week and the World Series for Fox,
and it reminded me of the delightful way that ended
with me being paid one hundred thousand dollars a month
not to do anything. I have changed jobs a lot,
(38:49):
and seldom have the departures included gold watches and going
away parties, at least not going away parties to which
I was invited. But in forty three years in radio
and television, I have only actually been fired in the
traditional sense of go clean out your desk and get
out twice. Once the order was from a drunken radio
(39:11):
executive who did not like the fact that I was
twenty one years old, and he was overruled, and he
was sent home with a warning by his bosses hours later,
and I was back on the job forty eight hours
after that. The other time, when it actually happened, You're fired,
clean out your desk. That was, unsurprisingly at the hands
(39:32):
of Rupert Murdoch and Fox, and I mean Rupert Murdoch personally,
or so he claims. When I finally convinced NBC News
that I was serious about no longer hosting its Monica
Lewinsky Athon in nineteen ninety eight, the head of NBC Sports,
Dick Eversoll, had an ingenious solution. He knew his friends
(39:52):
at Fox Sports longed to have me front their version
of SportsCenter, and so he proposed the following NBC would
give my agent ten days in which to negotiate two deals.
A deal for me to go to LA and host
Fox Sports News and Major League Baseball on Fox, and
(40:12):
another deal in which Fox would pay NBC one million
dollars for my contract, like I was a mediocre baseball pitcher. Amazingly,
it worked. I got what was then a record breaking
salary for any cable sportscaster. Ever, NBC got its million,
and maybe most startlingly, NBC then asked me to stay
(40:35):
on the air as a lane duck at MSNBC for
like six weeks. Curiously throughout my career, no matter how
abrasive the exit. My Lane Duck employers have always, for
some reason trusted me to stay on their air, even
though I was leaving in local news in Los Angeles once.
(40:57):
I did this for three months. Anyway. At first, going
to work at Fox Sports was a delight. Their news guys,
the evil Roger Ales and his henchman John Moody, pitched
me on doing stuff for them, maybe co anchoring with
Bill O'Reilly. I'm serious. I passed sports. We spent money.
(41:18):
I worked with friends. I didn't have to talk about politics.
I could narrate highlights. I could do funny voices. Way
downtown Bang I lived on the beach. I mean, my
next door neighbor was Hawaii. Every time there was a
newspaper story about ESPN, even though our ratings were terrible,
there was also my picture in it with a caption
(41:40):
like challenging ESPN. It was great. But then two things happened.
The Fox guy, who knew we needed five years at
minimum just to tie ESPN in the ratings, took me
to lunch one day and said, sorry, mate, mo missus
is moving back to England tomorrow without me, so I'm
going good luck. He was replaced by guys who replaced
(42:05):
the five year plan with a five week plan to
raise the ratings by literally one fifth of one point.
I left that meeting, in which they explained their suicidal
plan and revealed that my salary represented an unsustainable twenty
percent of their entire budget, and I called my real
estate agent and put my house on the beach up
(42:28):
for sale. Not long after, my doctor gave me a
physical and a warning, cut back on work and stress
and everything else, or you can have a heart attack
ten years from now. I told my bosses this, and
their response was to blackmail me. We have a clause
in your contract which allows us to send you on
the road once a week while you are still working
(42:50):
five days in the studio. We're going to enforce that
unless you kick back two thirds of your salary. They
put this in a document. There are, as the kids, say, receipts.
So I folded to blackmail because two thirds of three
million dollars a year is still pretty good. But I
(43:11):
kept doing the job. In nineteen ninety nine, I broke
a story that everybody laughed at that Michael Jordan was
unhappy in retirement and he wanted to come back to
play in the NBA, but instead of getting a salary,
he wanted an ownership stake in a team. Two years later,
he did exactly that. In two thousand, I got to
host the first Mets Yankees World Series, and hosting baseball
(43:31):
every Saturday on Fox was a pretty good gig, and
we were just gearing up for the two thousand and
one baseball season when I got a tip on April
twentieth that the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers had
unofficially put their team up for sale, and in fact,
they were talking to the old owners, the O'Malley family,
about taking the Dodgers off their hands, selling the Dodgers
(43:54):
back to the son of Walter O'Malley. This was a
great scoop, but it had great danger because the owners
of the Dodgers were Fox, my own employers. The next day,
after getting this scoop, I made about one hundred phone calls,
and sure enough I got the friend of a friend
of a friend of my agent to confirm that he
(44:15):
and his family were in preliminary discussions joining the O'Malleys
to buy the Dodgers from Fox. Two sources great scoop,
and that night I reached out to my bosses and said,
what the hell do we do here? The story is solid,
The Dodgers are for sale. But look, this is your
candy store, and I do work for you, and if
(44:36):
you don't want me to report this, I'm obviously not
going to report it, and I'm not going to pouch
and I'm not going to give the story to somebody else.
My boss has replied, good for you. Why don't we
all get on the phone with the top rupert. Murdoch
has his own Personal News Corp Public relations department. Let's
see what he says. So on Sunday, April twenty second,
(44:58):
two thousand and one, we got Murdoch's own PR guy
on the blower and I explained it to him. Now,
mister Murdoch has a policy about this. He never interferes
in editorial decisions, not even in sourced business stories, not
even if they involve him. So long as you make
it clear your sources are not from within the company,
and so long as you're confident in your sources, and
(45:20):
so long as you include our denial, you should proceed
with this Dodger story. That is what we are paying
you for. For a brief moment, I thought maybe I
have misjudged Rupert Murdoch. Well, it turned out to be
a very brief moment and a very wrong moment. I
(45:40):
reported the story that night, howls of denials. Five days later, though,
the Long Beach Press Telegram newspaper had its own story said,
despite denials, Dodgers are for sale, with far more details
than I had, And that really was the end of it.
The team was unofficially for sale. Dodger fans, who hated
(46:01):
what Fox had done to the team seemed happy, and
the bast stinking pile of burning excrement that was Fox
and NewsCorp and Murdoch sailed on unperturbed. But twelve days
after that, just before I was getting in my car
to go to the first Fox Baseball meeting for our
two thousand and one season coverage, the president of Fox Sports,
(46:23):
yet another Aussie called David Hill, called my agent and
told her case, not doing any baseball for us this year.
Business decision click, end of conversation. Nothing else, no firing,
no get out, no clean out your desk, no announcement.
But then two days later they turned off my access
(46:44):
to the Fox computer system, And four days after that
they called and canceled my cable show, and then that
night I got two weird calls from Rich Sandomir, who
was the TV sports critic and TV sports business reporter
for the New York Times. And Rich asks me, so,
did you know you got fired by Rupert Murdoch personally?
And I said, with genuine astonishment that I not only
(47:07):
didn't know that, but even given my thoughts about Rupert Murdoch,
I didn't believe that. Well, that's what my sources at
Fox tell me. Apparently your Dodger story really pissed him off,
but really, and I said, I had cleared it through
his personal PR guy. I don't know, Rich Sandomir said,
apparently he was on vacation and he got back like
(47:27):
the ninth of this month, and he read all these
stories about the Dodgers being for sale and how Fox
Sports was the first to report it, and he called
up David Hill and he told Hill to fire you immediately.
So I told Rich, this is the first I have
heard of this, and I still don't believe it, even
though the day he mentioned May ninth was the day
David Hill had called my agent and told her I
(47:48):
would not be doing baseball for Fox that year. An
hour later, the phone rings again and it's Rich Sandomir again,
and he sounds shaken. I got it wrong. I don't
have any sources at Fox who told me Rupert fired
you personally. My source said that you were telling people
Rupert had fired you personally over the Dodger story. And
(48:08):
I gave Rich a sequence of well, kind of friendly
uh huhz And I said, no, I didn't, and know
you've never been dumb enough in your life to make
the mistake you're saying you just made. And he said, well,
I never said somebody at Fox said Murdock fired Joe. Ok. Thanks.
By the next day, they had me come into the
Fox building on Pico Boulevard and clean out my office
(48:32):
while a guard watched. And she was a really nice guard.
In fact, she brought donuts but a lovely way to
go out. As I packed, I thought more and more
of what had happened in the month since I had
gotten that tip about the Dodgers being for sale. As
I left the Fox lot for the last time as
an employee, I went back a couple of times to
attend table reads for the Simpsons. Table reads for the
(48:54):
Simpsons were much more fun than being an employee at Fox.
I called a couple of reporters I knew, and my
agent and some people in the business, and we tried
to put together a timeline that made some sort of sense,
because the slow motion firing thing. May ninth, you're not
doing baseball. May eleventh, your computer won't work. May fifteenth,
your cable show is canceled. May sixteenth, clean out your office.
(49:16):
A week long firing made no sense until one reporter
friend said, you know, Fox called me and said, call
Keith up and provoke him, get him to call us names,
tell him about this story and that paper, calling him
washed up, get him going, And then it all clicked.
My contract ran through the end of the year two
(49:38):
thousand and one because Fox was firing me without any
cause or even claiming there was a cause, without any
violation of my contract or their rules. Because I had
left a trail of good behavior on the Dodger story.
They were trying to enrage me and get me to
say something nasty that itself would be a violation of
my contract so they could outright fire me and keep
(50:01):
the money. And the money still on the contract was
about eight hundred thousand dollars. Now, after decades of contemplating this,
I am confident that I am no crazier than the
next guy, at least not the next guy in television.
But on my worst, craziest, least rational day, if you
(50:21):
said you have two choices, Alderman, you can blow up
these people who are firing you, and you can make
them look bad in a newspaper for a day and
then they'll fire you and keep all the money they
owe you. Or you can keep your big bazoo shut
for just seven months. You can keep the eight hundred
thousand dollars, and you can spend the summer doing whatever
(50:44):
the hell you want, and you can then spend the
rest of your natural life blowing these people up. If
that's the choice, I will always take the scenario that
gives me the eight hundred thousand dollars for doing nothing.
Always so. On January first, two thousand to after the
(51:05):
last Fox check cleared, I began making a professional avocation
out of attacking Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Business, Fox Murdoch,
Fox O'Reilly, Fox, Tucker Carlson, whatever. And I got the
eight hundred thousand dollars, But they're lingered for years. This
kind of academic question of whether Rupert Murdoch had actually
(51:26):
fired me for having followed the rules set out by
his own personal pr guy. As usual, these things resolve
themselves when you least expect them to. Murdoch was speaking
at a Dow Jones conference in Carlsbad, California, on May
twenty eighth, two thousand and eight, seven years to the
(51:47):
month they got rid of me and a story came
across the wire with my name on it. The guy
interviewing him at this conference talked about whether there should
be dissenting voices on Fox quote news unquote, like that
guy who was killing it on MSNBC Keith Olderman. Now
Murdoch barked if fired him five years ago. He was crizy,
(52:11):
timing was off. But there was Rupert Murdoch confessing in
front of a crowd that he fired me personally, the
red badge of courage in quotes. I wondered if it
still pissed him off that he had to pay me
the eight hundred thousand dollars when I didn't take the
grievance bait. Three years after that, Murdoch said it again,
(52:32):
like I hadn't heard it. The first time. On February first,
twenty eleven, Rupert Murdoch was interviewed by his business talking
had Neil Cavudo, who for some reason asked him if
he would consider hiring me to put me on Fox News.
Now we fired him once. We don't believe in firing people.
Twice Kavodo replied, you called him a nut, lady was
(52:56):
a nut?
Speaker 2 (52:56):
On?
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Well, we had him on late night Fox Sports. There
was never any such show called late night Fox Sports.
But never mind went on. It was impossible. I fired him.
He was crazy, fired me for following his rules, and
I was the one who was crazy. Finally, speaking of crazy,
(53:19):
I have had for sixty three nearly sixty four years
now a love hate relationship with the name Keith. But
did you know that Rupert Murdoch's real first name is
also Keith, but that rather than call himself Keith, he
voluntarily chooses to call himself Rupert. I mean, sure, my
(53:43):
name is Keith, but at least my name ain't freaking Rupert.
(54:04):
All the damage I can do here but not as
much as Rupert Murdoch has. Welcome to the club, mister Cosman,
Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle
musical directors have countdown, have arranged, produced, and performed most
of the music. Mister Chanelle on orchestration, keyboards, Mister Ray
on guitars, bass drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
(54:27):
Our satirical and pithy musical comments sometimes known as pithy
and satirical, are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust, now back with the Chicago White Sox in
the Chicago White Sox Nancy Faust Lounge for a limited
engagement only. The sports music is the Olberman theme from
ESPN two, which was written by Mitch Warren Davis and
(54:48):
appears courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Aloud. And speaking of music,
my announcer today was my friend Stevie van Zant. Everything
else was as ever my fault. Let's countdown for today,
Day one hundred and thirty of America held hostage just
one three thirty three days until the scheduled end of
(55:10):
his lame duck and lame brain term unless Putin removes
him sooner, or the actuarial tables do, or we do
stop compromising with Trump. The next scheduled countdown is Monday.
As always, bulletins as the news warrants. Remember he's laying
the groundwork now to not leave office later. He must
(55:34):
stop him until next time. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(55:59):
Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
Popular Podcasts
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com