December 13, 2022 • 43 mins
EPISODE 94: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) Trump and Musk (and it would've been Marjorie Taylor Greene, too, but she screwed it up) are working simultaneously and perhaps in some coordinated form to portray Trump's 1/6 Coup as a "false flag" operation run by Democrats. (4:05) Trump pitched this in an interview yesterday, because it's obvious public opinion will change significantly once the 1/6 Committee issues its report and probably criminal referrals (6:05) As to Greene, she was supposed to make the same claim, but instead inadvertently disproved the whole thing by invoking Guns and the 2nd Amendment in her speech Saturday (9:26) Musk's "Twitter Files" failure has clearly been leading up to the latest claim: that Twitter violated its rules by "illegally de-platformed" Trump (when obviously Federal Laws against sedition and the violent overthrow of the government make your little Twitter rules unnecessary). This all taps into Musk's urgent need to be worshiped on a site that has so far cost him his status as the richest man in the world and forced him to fabricate excuses for why he got booed during a walk-on at Dave Chappelle's show Sunday. Until there's a more complicated explanation, Musk's need of Trump's approval is pretty simple: he's just another rich guy, terrified it will all go away as fast as it arrived, and Trump represents the type of government that will always protect Money.
B-Block (18:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Hershey, in Oregon (19:02) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: No SPF for SBF; TPM buries Rep. Scott Perry and Rep. Andy Biggs; No press conference for Putin. (22:09) IN SPORTS: Grant Wahl comes home, baseball continues to shuffle stars, and why would you pay $63 million for a pitcher whose whole thing is delaying and waiting and pausing, if they're instituting a 20-second pitch clock next year? (25:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A Rush Limbaugh cosplayer says supporting vaccine mandates makes you the equivalent of a Slave owner; A Michigan GOP official threatens to shut down a library "by force" and Senator-Elect Vance moves to ban porn. This presumably puts him up against Ted Cruz in a head-to-head battle, as it were.
C-Block (30:31) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: No, I haven't been fired as many times as you've been told. But yes, after years of rumors, it turns out to be true: I WAS fired - personally - by Rupert Murdoch!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
Implausible as it sounds, since they are as imbecilic as
(00:26):
they look, they have to have coordinated this. The fascists
have put on another push to sell January six as
some kind of false flag operation for reasons that are
pretty easy to suss out. The news here I think
is that the coordination, the collusion, if you will, is
principally between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and the explanation
(00:50):
for that unholy and unhinged alliance is a little bit
more impenetrable. Musk is doing it with his holier than
now analysis of Twitter's d platforming of Trump. Trump has
picked it up with interviews in advance of the House
Committee report it and its criminal referrals and his likely indictments.
And even Marjorie Trailer Park Green was doing it with her.
(01:13):
If I had planned it, we would have won dribble,
But of course she screwed up what she was supposed
to say. Consider bluntly, after the January six Committee reports
its findings and makes its referrals, a sizeable percentage of
this country will no longer describe itself as uncertain or
ambivalent or even forgetful about Trump's coup on January six.
(01:37):
That newly informed or reinformed demographic could be two or two.
But whatever it is, it will be enough to put
Trump right back behind the public and criminal eight balls
as clearly as he was one year and one days ago.
And it will also put the Republican Party and Kevin
McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Green right back behind those same
(02:00):
eight balls. Thus it is imperative that Trump put she
was the nonsensical narrative that the protesters he said he
would take to the Capitol were then somehow replaced literally
minutes later by Antifa replicants, or they were only inspired
to violence because Nancy Pelosi and thus Trump picked up
(02:24):
the dead carcass of this alternate timeline in an interview
with Christina Bob for One American News. And yes, I
know Christina Bob is one of his lawyers, and that
would be a fatal conflict, but for the fact that
she's about as much of a journalist as the latest
aging actress on the latest TV infomercial. They don't want
(02:45):
to know about Nancy Pelosi turning down ten thousand soldiers
because she didn't look like the look, have you had
ten thousand soldiers for you know, hundreds of people, they
wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the place. It wouldn't have been.
There would have been no no January six, that wouldn't
have been advanted. January or six might be the problem.
(03:07):
Oh no, Well, there are a lot of people that
think they wanted it. But but if you had soldiers
circling and I recommended it strongly, But it's her decisions.
She's the one that has to make the decision. And
just for the record, and I feel like I'm reading
the may cause death warning on the side of a
package of cigarettes. Just for the record, Trump never signed
any order to send ten thousand troops or one troop
(03:30):
to the capital. And the Speaker of the House has
no control over any branch of the military. And since
there is no governor there, the National Guard in the
District of Columbia can be activated only by the President
of the United States, and nobody can turn him down.
But of course, if we've learned nothing else these seven years,
(03:50):
it doesn't have to be true in trump Land. The
fascist don't even have to believe what Trump says. They
just have to be able to say of course it
is a fact. We believe in facts. It is a
fact that Trump said the sly, so it's a Republican fact.
So Trump is pushing the January six false flag nonsense.
(04:13):
Of course it's a fact. It's a fact that Trump
said that lie. So it's a republican fact. And so
did Marjorie Trailer Park Green in the now infamous speech
in New York Saturday night, which should have resulted in
the lame Duck House calling an immediate expulsion vote, but
it won't because even Democrats frequently see only the opportunity
for political umbrage and not the danger, and many of
(04:37):
them would rather say she's pointing a gun at me,
how dare she? Rather than you know, disarm her. Her
speech served a triple purpose. I think it allowed her
to endorse the violence of January six and political violence
in general. It allowed her to embellish her own brand
as a violent fascist who will win the next coup
(04:58):
because she owns more guns. And most importantly, it was
supposed to underscore that Republicans send conservatives and fascists and
Trumps could not have carried out the coup because they
loved this country, and thus it had to have been
Pelosi and the Democrats. But being an idiot as she is,
(05:19):
Marjorie Trader Green blew it. She was supposed to insist
that the Democrats did it, or Antifa or an army
of Nancy Pelosi clones with Jewish space lasers, well anything,
it doesn't matter who did it. Remember, if you lie
about it, it's still a fact that you said it.
Therefore it's a Republican fact. But Green couldn't remember all that.
(05:44):
Her area of expertise is not membrane stuff. It is,
in her own words, quote, a butt plug and a
dildo unquote. So she used the lie about there being
no guns in the coup and thus wound up proving
the obvious. If, as she says, it's the Second Amendment
conservatives who would have brought guns to a coup, and
(06:05):
there were guns at the coup, then the guns at
the coup were you with me? The guns at the
coup were brought by Second Amendment conservatives. It is worth
listening to the tape of Marge again just so you
can hear carefully as Marge screws up the narrative yet again.
(06:27):
Then where six happens? And next thing you know I
organized the whole thing along with Stevin in here, and
I don't tell you something I Step and I had
organized that we would have won, not a minus have
been hard joke, isn't they always playing? And I'm like,
(06:54):
are you kidding me? A bunch conservative set and the
Horst went at the Capital without guns and they think
that we organized that. I don't think so she blew it.
Then she spent much of yesterday morning insisting all that
was quote sarcasm, that she was making fun of Joe Biden,
(07:15):
even the part in which she endorsed violent coups and
promised to win the next one and never mentioned Joe Biden.
So Trump is again selling a Democratic false flag scenario,
and Taylor Green was supposed to sell a Democratic false
flag scenario but wound up disproving it. Where and why
does Elon Musk come into this doing Trump's bidding for him? Well,
(07:38):
the obvious part. First, Musk is a fascist, and not
a particularly intelligent fascist. He is an easily led fascist.
He's also strung out on something. It may be nothing
more than buying Twitter and suddenly being the gigantic gulliver
in the land of the tiny Liliputians who haven't had
anybody to worship since Trump was banned. But whatever, Musk
(08:01):
is high as a kite on the power if nothing else.
Under pressure from hundreds of Octivist employees, Musk tweeted yesterday
Twitter deep platforms Trump, a sitting US president, even though
they themselves acknowledged that he didn't violate the rules. Then
he retweets Barry White's who is the female Matt Taiebee
(08:23):
but with even more lack of credibility and lack of intelligence,
and he omits the small details that if it is against, say,
federal law, to call for or begin the violent overthrow
of the government of the United States of America, you
don't also need some boutique social media company to have
its own rules saying it's against their rules, their Twitter
(08:47):
rules to call for or begin the violent overthrow the
government of United States of America. That the federal laws
are sufficient and take precedent over your little rules. And
by the way, it might make the executives or your
little company accessories before the fact to the tempt to overthrow,
and theoretically they might be arrested. So they really do
(09:08):
sort of have to act whether or not that says
so in their rules. This is not something Elon Musk understands,
nor is it something Elon Musk can permit. In his world,
Twitter rules must take precedence over federal code because he
owns Twitter, just as Twitter files are more important than
(09:31):
historical fact, just as Elon Musk is above all laws,
just as what you heard on the tape is only
ten percent of the crowd at the Dave Chappelle show
booing him. And then he changed his story to a
major fight broke out in the audience just as I
was about to talk, so didn't get to say much
because he's Elon Musk, super genius. And guess what. Of
(09:55):
course it's a fact. It's a fact because I Elon
Musk said this lie. So it's an Elon Musk act narrator.
When Chappelle brought him on stage, Elon Musk was booed.
Man in the world. They're not booing, they're chairing el
(10:30):
Lan boom. And when Musk started to talk, guess why
he was booed again, don't say that they're only spoiler.
That's sounds still unrisk. And this was before the news
(10:55):
that Musk has done such a spectacular job at Twitter
and at Tesla, which sank to a hundred and sixty
seven yesterday. It had been four hundred to one year
ago this month that spectacular news that Forbes says that
as of yesterday, Elon Musk is no longer the richest
man in the world, that it's now Bernard r. No
who owns Louis Vutan and Moa Shandon and Hennessy konjac
(11:18):
and Mark Jacobs and other overpriced stuff. Nice work, Elmo. Anyway,
The remaining part of this puzzle is why Musk is
so desperately and obviously participating in Trump's latest bid to
call January six somebody Else's fault, anybody else's fault. Musk's
pandering to the Q and On or q Elon crowd,
(11:42):
his embrace of kN men like Glenn Greenwald and Robbie
Starbuck and the COVID deniers has clearly been leading up
to this remarkable conclusion that Trump was somehow illegally deep
platformed by Twitter. Why now, barring further evidence, honest reporting
requires me to conclude the answers are the obvious ones.
(12:04):
Musk is desperate for Trump's approval and to lure him
back to Twitter, and Musk is just another moron who
fell into money and wants whatever form of government that
will give him more money. Most businessmen are not more
complicated than that, especially the ones who like Musk don't
do a very good job of hiding their fundamental awareness
(12:25):
that at heart they do not really understand how they
became successful, nor at hiding their terrible transcendent fear that
it will all go away as fast as it had arrived.
Musk has decided he needs Trump, and he will do
whatever Trump needs to service Trump. And lastly, and I
(12:50):
intended this as an entirely unrelated topic. You may think
otherwise I could not possibly comment. The actual tape of
Marjorie trailer Park trash Green talking Saturday Night about her
re expertise has finally surfaced. Still ahead, Sam Bankman freed arrested.
(13:30):
I did not see that coming. You think the World
Cup and Qutar has been a disaster. The vice president
of the European Union has reportedly been arrested as part
of a massive scandal in which that parliament was bribed
by guitar. The Toronto Blue Jays may have just thrown
sixty three million dollars down a rat hole. For what
(13:51):
does it profit a team to sign a picture whose
entire success is based on holding the baseball indefinitely until
the batter gets disoriented. If they're installing a pitch clock
that will prevent him from doing that. Next and J
d Vance wants a national porn band, why that's bad
news for Ted Cruz. And for seven years it was
(14:12):
just a rumor, And then what glorious day he boasted
about it? The day Rupert Murdoch fired me personally and
then had to pay me a hundred thousand dollars a
month for eight months. That's next. I still have the money.
This discountdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman, my crazy friend.
(14:45):
Thanks still ahead. If the picture depends on stalling until
the batter is disoriented, why would you sign that picture
for next year? If there's gonna be a new rule
giving him just fifteen seconds to throw a pitch. Plus No,
I have not been fired a lot, but yes, I
have been fired personally by Rupert Murdoch. First, in each
edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need you
(15:06):
can help. Every dog has its day, and we go
to Bend, Oregon and Hershey so named because a beautiful coat,
the color of various kinds of chocolate, handsome Chihuahua mix.
I think beautiful clear eyes. A senior found abandoned in
a backyard with other dogs who literally survived on the
kindness of a stranger who stopped by daily to feed them.
(15:28):
But Hershey's teeth were in terrible shape. He's had thirty
one of them fall out or be removed. Other than that,
he's in surprising good health. Loves people, loves cats, loves dogs.
Still has a long road back. Soft Paws Rescue has
started a fundraiser for him. Uncutly, I have a warm
spot for Hershey, my senior rescue me Nay, had teeth
so bad they all had to come out. When they did,
(15:50):
it was as if he'd been reborn. He gets younger
every day. His appetite tripled, and one day I caught
him dipping the harder treats in the water bowl to
soften them up so her she could use and will
not waste. Your donations. You can find Hershey on my
Twitter feeds. Please retweet him and fledge if you can.
I thank you and Hershey, thanks you. Pos Scripts to
(16:16):
the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some prediction,
state Line, Washington. The website TPM has obtained the two thousand,
three nineteen text messages that former Trump Chief of Staff
Mark Meadows turned over to the January sixth Committee. They
are parceling them out author by agonizing author and today
(16:36):
you do not want to be either Pennsylvania Congressman Scott
Perry or Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs. Not that either of
them was not already suspected in one or more of
the various Trump coup attempts, but in black and white
it is damning. A week after the election, Scott Perry
was trying to convince Meadows and thus convinced Trump to
(16:56):
seize all the voting machines in all the swing states,
and soon he was introducing Jeffrey Clark to both of
them in hopes of getting him named at Ernie General
so he could seize all the voting machines the texts. Meanwhile,
Thai Congressman Biggs completely into the fake Electors scheme. I
could not do justice to TPMs reporting or Josh Marshall's
(17:17):
analysis in a million episodes. So go and read what
they posted at TPM site dateline Nassaw prosecutors for the
Southern District of New York on the government of the Bahamas,
confirming earlier reports, Sam Bankman Freed has been arrested there
on criminal fraud charges after his FTX cryptocurrency exchange exchanged
(17:38):
eight billion dollars for a bag of magic beans. This
s BF protection was zero. Thank you, Nancy Faust. Dateline Moscow.
(18:11):
Yesterday should have been the day that Kremlin would announce
Vladimir Putin's annual marathon press conference, the one in which
journalists dress up like audience members from the old game
show Let's make a Deal to toss the Russian dictator
pre screen softball questions while he drones on for four
hours like well, bluntly, like Trump in a better suit.
(18:32):
A spokesman said he might hold it next month. Or
you know, why are you asking? Why don't you go
over there and stand here by this open window and
thank you again, Nancy Faust. This is Sports Center. Wait,
(19:08):
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman
in Sports. Grant Wall's body was returned to this country
yesterday morning by JFK Airport in New York. The State
Department spokesman Ned Price had two relevant statements. First, there
(19:28):
will be a full autopsy conducted, obviously in this country.
And quoting Price, what I can also say is that
we have seen no indication of foul play or anything
nefarious at this point. We did receive excellent cooperation from
our Qatari partners. On the other hand, members of the
European Parliament, including reportedly the Vice President Eva Kyley, have
(19:51):
been arrested in Brussels as part of a massive investigation
and raids at sixteen properties in which six hundred thousand
euros in cash plus lots of other stuff were seized.
The allegation is bribery and the alleged bri Brewers are
the government of Qatar. Baseball's fleet market continues. Catcher Sean
Murphy goes from Oakland, which used to have a major
(20:13):
League team, to Atlanta in a three club swap that
also includes the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers get the d
h William Contreras, Oakland gets a handful of prospects that
they can trade away three or four years from now.
Free agent catcher Christian Vasquez leaves the Astros to sign
with Minnesota and the Toronto Blue Jays have reportedly signed
(20:33):
pitcher Chris Bassett away from the New York Mets three years,
sixty three million dollars. Considering metrics show Bassett was the
second most valuable pitcher on the Mets last season. That
sounds like a bargain, except Bassett has control and a
good fastball and some set up pitches. But the essential
key to his success is to throw off the timing
(20:55):
of hitters. By a very simple stratagem. He shakes off
the pitch signal from his catcher again and again and again,
whether it is sent to him by the new electronic
pitch com system or the old Luddite method of finger waggling.
Bassett says no at least twice per at bat, and
(21:15):
some estimates are that he averages four headshakes and thus
four long delays per at bat. Again, so what next
season baseball is going to introduce a pitch clock. With
nobody on base, a picture will have only fifteen seconds
to begin his delivery of the next pitch, or it
(21:36):
is an automatic ball. When somebody is on base, he
gets twenty seconds. If it's between batters, he gets thirty seconds.
You know how long Bassett is going to survive under
that kind of pressure, Well neither do I. But starting
next year, at least there'll be a guy at every
ball game with an official clock with which we can
all time him. I had. Many are fired, few are chosen.
(22:12):
For years, after Fox Sports got rid of me, the
rumors sworld that Rupert Murdoch had personally fired me because
I had had the nerve to completely follow his rules.
The real story. Next First, the daily round up of
the misgrants, morons, and Donning Krueger effect specimens who constitute
today's worse persons in the world. The bronze to Walter Hudson,
(22:36):
an African American man recently elected to the Minnesota House,
A survivor of the Tea Party Remember the Tea Party.
At a hearing of anti Max nut jobs, Mr Hudson
explained that health professionals or mere civilians who support vaccine
mandates are well slave owners. The plantation owner who said
(23:00):
I need cotton and you're gonna pick it is morally
equivalent to the person today who says, I don't want
to get six, so you have to take the jab.
I am placing it is it is, and I want
to be clear that I mean exactly what I just said. Okay,
it's not a gaff. I mean it. You are equivalent
(23:21):
to a plantation owner who enslaved black people and forced
them to work for you. If you, today, as a
medical professional or just a member of the populace, demand
that your neighbor take a vaccination to keep you safe,
let's see malnutrition, rape, torture, murder, physical labor until you died. Well,
(23:43):
that sounds the same as routine public health standards that
have saved mankind from scourges like polio and tetanus in smallpox. Yeah,
absolutely the same. Walter Hudson. By the way, if that
phony tone and the condescending cadence sounds familiar, Walter Hudson
has boasted that he listened to Rush limb Ba every day.
(24:05):
He is a Rush Limbaugh Coast player. I'm sure that
makes Russell Limba happy in hell. And this reminder, however,
they couch it and whosever voiced these Walter Hudson and
the other baxtoniers are hiding the real truth that they're
simply afraid of the needles. The runner up, Shane Trejo,
(24:26):
the chairman of the Michigan eleventh Congressional District Republicans who
posts on social media under the really deceptive alias Sean Trujillo.
Oh God. Sheriffs are investigating what is believed to be
a threat by Shane Sean Treho Trujillo made on Facebook
towards the community supported Patmos Library and Jamestown Township, Michigan,
(24:49):
also in Michigan, but a hundred miles away from Shane
Shawn's home. The threat quote time to shut down the
library by force and then perhaps charts the people writing
these checks as accessories for child abuse. Mr Treo is
also previously supported white supremacist. He's already over social media
with that. He now claims that when he said shut
(25:12):
down the library by force, he meant force of law.
Unclear what he might be charged with, but they should
throw in a charge of a really bad elios but
our winner. Senator elect j D. Vance of Ohio. Vance
has reiterated his call for a national ban on pornography,
which I find hard to believe since it would send
(25:34):
everybody who makes a commercial for any Republican to jail. Plus,
this is gonna make for an interesting senatorial first meeting
with Ted Cruz of Texas, whose Twitter account was not
only caught liking a porn video on nine eleven, but
whose anti Marco Rubio ad during the two thousand sixteen
Republican primary season starred one Amy Lindsay. You may remember
(25:57):
her from such movies as Sex Sent Me to the
R Deviant Wars and I don't know what these initials mean.
M I LF educational films, no doubt j D. It
does not stand for just DVDs vance two days, Worst
(26:21):
person in the worlds to the number one story on
the countdown on my favorite topic, me and things I
promised not to tell. Over the weekend watching hockey, I
(26:44):
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 a hundred thousand dollars a month not
to do anything. I have changed jobs a lot, and
seldom have the departures included gold watches and going away parties,
at least not going away parties to which I was invited.
(27:07):
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 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
(27:30):
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 of Rupert
Murdoch and Fox, and I mean Rupert Murdoch personally, or
so he claims. When I finally convinced NBC News that
(27:51):
I was serious about no longer hosting its Monica Lewinsky
athon in the head of NBC Sports, Dick Ebersol had
an ingenious solution. He knew his friends at Fox Sports
longed to have me front their version of Sports Center,
and so he proposed the following NBC would give my
agent ten days in which to negotiate two deals. A
(28:14):
deal for me to go to l A and host
Fox Sports News and Major League Baseball on Fox, and
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
(28:37):
salary for any cable sportscaster ever, NBC got its million,
and maybe most startlingly, NBC then asked me to stay
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
(28:57):
some reason trusted me to stay on their air, even
though I was leaving in local news in Los Angeles
once 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,
(29:18):
pitched me on doing stuff for them, maybe co anchoring
with Bill O'Reilly. I'm serious. I passed sports. We spent money,
I worked with friends. I didn't have to talk about politics.
I could narrate highlights. I could do funny voices. White
downtown Bang I lived on the beach. I mean, my
(29:39):
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
like challenging ESPN. It was great. But then two things happened.
The Fox guy, who knew we needed five years at
(29:59):
minimum just to tie ESPN in the ratings, took me
to lunch one day and said, sorry, mate, Moll Mrs
is moving back to England tomorrow with without me, so
I'm going good luck. He was replaced by guys who
replaced the five year plan with a five week plan
to raise the ratings by literally one fifth of one point.
(30:23):
I left that meeting in which they explained their suicidal
plan and revealed that my salary represented an unsustainable of
their entire budget, and I called my real estate agent
and put my house on the beach up for sale.
Not long after, my doctor gave me a physical and
a warning cut back on work and stress and everything else,
(30:45):
or you can have a heart attack ten years from now.
I told my boss is 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 five days in
the studio. We're going to enforce that unless you kick
back two thirds of your gallery. They put this in
(31:06):
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 kept
doing the job. 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
(31:28):
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 every Saturday on Fox
was a pretty good gig. And we were just gearing
up for the two thousand one baseball season when I
got a tip on April that the owners of the
(31:50):
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 back to the sun 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.
(32:16):
The next day, after getting this scoop, I made about
a hundred phone calls, and sure enough I got the
friend of a friend of a friend of my agent
to confirm that he and his family were in preliminary
discussions joining the O'Malley's 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.
(32:40):
But look, this is your candy store, and I do
work for you, and if you don't want me to
report this, I'm obviously not going to report it, and
I'm not gonna pouch and I'm not going to give
the story to somebody else. My boss is replied, good
for you. Why don't we all get on the phone
with the top Rupert Murdoch has his own personal news
(33:00):
Corps public relations department. Let's see what he says. So
on Sunday, April one, we got Murdoch's own PR guy
on the blower and I explained it to him. My
Mr 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
(33:22):
it clear your sources are not from within the company,
and so long as you're confident in your sources, and
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
(33:45):
a very brief moment and a very wrong moment. I
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.
(34:07):
The team was unofficially for sale. Dodger fans who hated
what Fox had done to the team seemed happy, and
the vast, stinking pile of burning excrement that was Fox
and News Corp. 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
(34:28):
our two thousand one season coverage, the president of Fox Sports,
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.
(34:50):
But then two days later they turned off my access
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 Sandymere, 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?
(35:13):
And I said, with genuine astonishment that I not only
didn't know that, but even given my thoughts about Rupert Murdoch,
I didn't believe that. Now that's what my sources at
Fox tell me. Apparently your Dodger story really pissed him off.
But but really, and I said, I had cleared it
through his personal PR guy I don't know. Rich sandom
(35:33):
Here said apparently he was on vacation and he got
back like 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 and he told Hill
to fire you immediately. So I told Rich, this is
the first I ever heard of this, and I still
don't believe it, even though the day he mentioned May
nine was the day David Hill had called my agent
(35:56):
and told her I would not be doing baseball for
Fox that year. An hour later, the phone rings again
and it's Rich Sandom here 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,
uh said that you were telling people Rupert had fired
you personally over the Dodger story. And I gave Rich
(36:18):
a sequence of well, kind of friendly uh huhs, 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 Murdoch fired you. Okay, thanks.
By the next day, they had me come into the
Fox building on Pico Boulevard and clean out my office
(36:40):
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 the table reads for the Simpsons. Table reads for
(37:03):
the Simpsons were much more fund 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, it won't work.
May fift your cable show is canceled. May sixteenth, clean
(37:24):
out your office. 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 in
that paper, calling him washed up, get him going. And
then it all clicked. My contract ran through the end
(37:46):
of the year two thousand 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
(38:09):
and keep 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,
(38:30):
if you said you have two choices, aldermen, 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
(38:52):
doing whatever 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 one, two thousand two, after the
(39:14):
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 fired me for having
(39:37):
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 Carl's Bad, California, on May two thousand eight, seven
years to the month they got rid of me, and
(39:58):
a story came across the wire with my name on it.
The guy interviewing him at this conference talk about whether
there should be dissenting voices on Fox quote news unquote,
like that guy who was killing it on MSNBC Keith Alderman.
Now Murdoch barked, ah fired and five years ago he
was craggy, timing was off. But there it was Rupert
(40:22):
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 like I hadn't heard it the first time.
(40:43):
On February one, two thousand eleven, Rupert Murdoch was interviewed
by his business talking head Neil Cavuto, 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 fign people. Twice, Cabudo replied, you
called him a nut lad. He was a nut on
(41:06):
we had him on late night Fox Sports. There was
never any such show called Late night Fox Sports. But
never mind, Rupe 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,
(41:28):
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 name is Keith,
(41:53):
but at least my name ain't freaking Rupert. I mean,
(42:14):
who calls themselves Rupert? Who deliberately chooses to call themselves
are Rupert. My name's Rupert. I've done all the damage
I can do here to the name Rupert. Thank you
for listening. Please subscribe if you're not doing so already,
and tell somebody else to do so. Here are our credits.
Most of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's Ninth,
(42:36):
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Philip Chanelle. They are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitarist, bass and drums
by Brian Ray, produced by t Ko Brothers. Other Beethoven
selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two
(42:57):
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis and appears
courtesy of my friends at ESPN, Inc. Musical means from
Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was my ESPN friend Tony Kornheiser. Everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this. The
seven and seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
(43:20):
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
him now while we still can a new edition tomorrow.
Until then, I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
(43:42):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
Implausible as it sounds, since they are as imbecilic as
(00:26):
they look, they have to have coordinated this. The fascists
have put on another push to sell January six as
some kind of false flag operation for reasons that are
pretty easy to suss out. The news here I think
is that the coordination, the collusion, if you will, is
principally between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and the explanation
(00:50):
for that unholy and unhinged alliance is a little bit
more impenetrable. Musk is doing it with his holier than
now analysis of Twitter's d platforming of Trump. Trump has
picked it up with interviews in advance of the House
Committee report it and its criminal referrals and his likely indictments.
And even Marjorie Trailer Park Green was doing it with her.
(01:13):
If I had planned it, we would have won dribble,
But of course she screwed up what she was supposed
to say. Consider bluntly, after the January six Committee reports
its findings and makes its referrals, a sizeable percentage of
this country will no longer describe itself as uncertain or
ambivalent or even forgetful about Trump's coup on January six.
(01:37):
That newly informed or reinformed demographic could be two or two.
But whatever it is, it will be enough to put
Trump right back behind the public and criminal eight balls
as clearly as he was one year and one days ago.
And it will also put the Republican Party and Kevin
McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Green right back behind those same
(02:00):
eight balls. Thus it is imperative that Trump put she
was the nonsensical narrative that the protesters he said he
would take to the Capitol were then somehow replaced literally
minutes later by Antifa replicants, or they were only inspired
to violence because Nancy Pelosi and thus Trump picked up
(02:24):
the dead carcass of this alternate timeline in an interview
with Christina Bob for One American News. And yes, I
know Christina Bob is one of his lawyers, and that
would be a fatal conflict, but for the fact that
she's about as much of a journalist as the latest
aging actress on the latest TV infomercial. They don't want
(02:45):
to know about Nancy Pelosi turning down ten thousand soldiers
because she didn't look like the look, have you had
ten thousand soldiers for you know, hundreds of people, they
wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the place. It wouldn't have been.
There would have been no no January six, that wouldn't
have been advanted. January or six might be the problem.
(03:07):
Oh no, Well, there are a lot of people that
think they wanted it. But but if you had soldiers
circling and I recommended it strongly, But it's her decisions.
She's the one that has to make the decision. And
just for the record, and I feel like I'm reading
the may cause death warning on the side of a
package of cigarettes. Just for the record, Trump never signed
any order to send ten thousand troops or one troop
(03:30):
to the capital. And the Speaker of the House has
no control over any branch of the military. And since
there is no governor there, the National Guard in the
District of Columbia can be activated only by the President
of the United States, and nobody can turn him down.
But of course, if we've learned nothing else these seven years,
(03:50):
it doesn't have to be true in trump Land. The
fascist don't even have to believe what Trump says. They
just have to be able to say of course it
is a fact. We believe in facts. It is a
fact that Trump said the sly, so it's a Republican fact.
So Trump is pushing the January six false flag nonsense.
(04:13):
Of course it's a fact. It's a fact that Trump
said that lie. So it's a republican fact. And so
did Marjorie Trailer Park Green in the now infamous speech
in New York Saturday night, which should have resulted in
the lame Duck House calling an immediate expulsion vote, but
it won't because even Democrats frequently see only the opportunity
for political umbrage and not the danger, and many of
(04:37):
them would rather say she's pointing a gun at me,
how dare she? Rather than you know, disarm her. Her
speech served a triple purpose. I think it allowed her
to endorse the violence of January six and political violence
in general. It allowed her to embellish her own brand
as a violent fascist who will win the next coup
(04:58):
because she owns more guns. And most importantly, it was
supposed to underscore that Republicans send conservatives and fascists and
Trumps could not have carried out the coup because they
loved this country, and thus it had to have been
Pelosi and the Democrats. But being an idiot as she is,
(05:19):
Marjorie Trader Green blew it. She was supposed to insist
that the Democrats did it, or Antifa or an army
of Nancy Pelosi clones with Jewish space lasers, well anything,
it doesn't matter who did it. Remember, if you lie
about it, it's still a fact that you said it.
Therefore it's a Republican fact. But Green couldn't remember all that.
(05:44):
Her area of expertise is not membrane stuff. It is,
in her own words, quote, a butt plug and a
dildo unquote. So she used the lie about there being
no guns in the coup and thus wound up proving
the obvious. If, as she says, it's the Second Amendment
conservatives who would have brought guns to a coup, and
(06:05):
there were guns at the coup, then the guns at
the coup were you with me? The guns at the
coup were brought by Second Amendment conservatives. It is worth
listening to the tape of Marge again just so you
can hear carefully as Marge screws up the narrative yet again.
(06:27):
Then where six happens? And next thing you know I
organized the whole thing along with Stevin in here, and
I don't tell you something I Step and I had
organized that we would have won, not a minus have
been hard joke, isn't they always playing? And I'm like,
(06:54):
are you kidding me? A bunch conservative set and the
Horst went at the Capital without guns and they think
that we organized that. I don't think so she blew it.
Then she spent much of yesterday morning insisting all that
was quote sarcasm, that she was making fun of Joe Biden,
(07:15):
even the part in which she endorsed violent coups and
promised to win the next one and never mentioned Joe Biden.
So Trump is again selling a Democratic false flag scenario,
and Taylor Green was supposed to sell a Democratic false
flag scenario but wound up disproving it. Where and why
does Elon Musk come into this doing Trump's bidding for him? Well,
(07:38):
the obvious part. First, Musk is a fascist, and not
a particularly intelligent fascist. He is an easily led fascist.
He's also strung out on something. It may be nothing
more than buying Twitter and suddenly being the gigantic gulliver
in the land of the tiny Liliputians who haven't had
anybody to worship since Trump was banned. But whatever, Musk
(08:01):
is high as a kite on the power if nothing else.
Under pressure from hundreds of Octivist employees, Musk tweeted yesterday
Twitter deep platforms Trump, a sitting US president, even though
they themselves acknowledged that he didn't violate the rules. Then
he retweets Barry White's who is the female Matt Taiebee
(08:23):
but with even more lack of credibility and lack of intelligence,
and he omits the small details that if it is against, say,
federal law, to call for or begin the violent overthrow
of the government of the United States of America, you
don't also need some boutique social media company to have
its own rules saying it's against their rules, their Twitter
(08:47):
rules to call for or begin the violent overthrow the
government of United States of America. That the federal laws
are sufficient and take precedent over your little rules. And
by the way, it might make the executives or your
little company accessories before the fact to the tempt to overthrow,
and theoretically they might be arrested. So they really do
(09:08):
sort of have to act whether or not that says
so in their rules. This is not something Elon Musk understands,
nor is it something Elon Musk can permit. In his world,
Twitter rules must take precedence over federal code because he
owns Twitter, just as Twitter files are more important than
(09:31):
historical fact, just as Elon Musk is above all laws,
just as what you heard on the tape is only
ten percent of the crowd at the Dave Chappelle show
booing him. And then he changed his story to a
major fight broke out in the audience just as I
was about to talk, so didn't get to say much
because he's Elon Musk, super genius. And guess what. Of
(09:55):
course it's a fact. It's a fact because I Elon
Musk said this lie. So it's an Elon Musk act narrator.
When Chappelle brought him on stage, Elon Musk was booed.
Man in the world. They're not booing, they're chairing el
(10:30):
Lan boom. And when Musk started to talk, guess why
he was booed again, don't say that they're only spoiler.
That's sounds still unrisk. And this was before the news
(10:55):
that Musk has done such a spectacular job at Twitter
and at Tesla, which sank to a hundred and sixty
seven yesterday. It had been four hundred to one year
ago this month that spectacular news that Forbes says that
as of yesterday, Elon Musk is no longer the richest
man in the world, that it's now Bernard r. No
who owns Louis Vutan and Moa Shandon and Hennessy konjac
(11:18):
and Mark Jacobs and other overpriced stuff. Nice work, Elmo. Anyway,
The remaining part of this puzzle is why Musk is
so desperately and obviously participating in Trump's latest bid to
call January six somebody Else's fault, anybody else's fault. Musk's
pandering to the Q and On or q Elon crowd,
(11:42):
his embrace of kN men like Glenn Greenwald and Robbie
Starbuck and the COVID deniers has clearly been leading up
to this remarkable conclusion that Trump was somehow illegally deep
platformed by Twitter. Why now, barring further evidence, honest reporting
requires me to conclude the answers are the obvious ones.
(12:04):
Musk is desperate for Trump's approval and to lure him
back to Twitter, and Musk is just another moron who
fell into money and wants whatever form of government that
will give him more money. Most businessmen are not more
complicated than that, especially the ones who like Musk don't
do a very good job of hiding their fundamental awareness
(12:25):
that at heart they do not really understand how they
became successful, nor at hiding their terrible transcendent fear that
it will all go away as fast as it had arrived.
Musk has decided he needs Trump, and he will do
whatever Trump needs to service Trump. And lastly, and I
(12:50):
intended this as an entirely unrelated topic. You may think
otherwise I could not possibly comment. The actual tape of
Marjorie trailer Park trash Green talking Saturday Night about her
re expertise has finally surfaced. Still ahead, Sam Bankman freed arrested.
(13:30):
I did not see that coming. You think the World
Cup and Qutar has been a disaster. The vice president
of the European Union has reportedly been arrested as part
of a massive scandal in which that parliament was bribed
by guitar. The Toronto Blue Jays may have just thrown
sixty three million dollars down a rat hole. For what
(13:51):
does it profit a team to sign a picture whose
entire success is based on holding the baseball indefinitely until
the batter gets disoriented. If they're installing a pitch clock
that will prevent him from doing that. Next and J
d Vance wants a national porn band, why that's bad
news for Ted Cruz. And for seven years it was
(14:12):
just a rumor, And then what glorious day he boasted
about it? The day Rupert Murdoch fired me personally and
then had to pay me a hundred thousand dollars a
month for eight months. That's next. I still have the money.
This discountdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman, my crazy friend.
(14:45):
Thanks still ahead. If the picture depends on stalling until
the batter is disoriented, why would you sign that picture
for next year? If there's gonna be a new rule
giving him just fifteen seconds to throw a pitch. Plus No,
I have not been fired a lot, but yes, I
have been fired personally by Rupert Murdoch. First, in each
edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need you
(15:06):
can help. Every dog has its day, and we go
to Bend, Oregon and Hershey so named because a beautiful coat,
the color of various kinds of chocolate, handsome Chihuahua mix.
I think beautiful clear eyes. A senior found abandoned in
a backyard with other dogs who literally survived on the
kindness of a stranger who stopped by daily to feed them.
(15:28):
But Hershey's teeth were in terrible shape. He's had thirty
one of them fall out or be removed. Other than that,
he's in surprising good health. Loves people, loves cats, loves dogs.
Still has a long road back. Soft Paws Rescue has
started a fundraiser for him. Uncutly, I have a warm
spot for Hershey, my senior rescue me Nay, had teeth
so bad they all had to come out. When they did,
(15:50):
it was as if he'd been reborn. He gets younger
every day. His appetite tripled, and one day I caught
him dipping the harder treats in the water bowl to
soften them up so her she could use and will
not waste. Your donations. You can find Hershey on my
Twitter feeds. Please retweet him and fledge if you can.
I thank you and Hershey, thanks you. Pos Scripts to
(16:16):
the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some prediction,
state Line, Washington. The website TPM has obtained the two thousand,
three nineteen text messages that former Trump Chief of Staff
Mark Meadows turned over to the January sixth Committee. They
are parceling them out author by agonizing author and today
(16:36):
you do not want to be either Pennsylvania Congressman Scott
Perry or Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs. Not that either of
them was not already suspected in one or more of
the various Trump coup attempts, but in black and white
it is damning. A week after the election, Scott Perry
was trying to convince Meadows and thus convinced Trump to
(16:56):
seize all the voting machines in all the swing states,
and soon he was introducing Jeffrey Clark to both of
them in hopes of getting him named at Ernie General
so he could seize all the voting machines the texts. Meanwhile,
Thai Congressman Biggs completely into the fake Electors scheme. I
could not do justice to TPMs reporting or Josh Marshall's
(17:17):
analysis in a million episodes. So go and read what
they posted at TPM site dateline Nassaw prosecutors for the
Southern District of New York on the government of the Bahamas,
confirming earlier reports, Sam Bankman Freed has been arrested there
on criminal fraud charges after his FTX cryptocurrency exchange exchanged
(17:38):
eight billion dollars for a bag of magic beans. This
s BF protection was zero. Thank you, Nancy Faust. Dateline Moscow.
(18:11):
Yesterday should have been the day that Kremlin would announce
Vladimir Putin's annual marathon press conference, the one in which
journalists dress up like audience members from the old game
show Let's make a Deal to toss the Russian dictator
pre screen softball questions while he drones on for four
hours like well, bluntly, like Trump in a better suit.
(18:32):
A spokesman said he might hold it next month. Or
you know, why are you asking? Why don't you go
over there and stand here by this open window and
thank you again, Nancy Faust. This is Sports Center. Wait,
(19:08):
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman
in Sports. Grant Wall's body was returned to this country
yesterday morning by JFK Airport in New York. The State
Department spokesman Ned Price had two relevant statements. First, there
(19:28):
will be a full autopsy conducted, obviously in this country.
And quoting Price, what I can also say is that
we have seen no indication of foul play or anything
nefarious at this point. We did receive excellent cooperation from
our Qatari partners. On the other hand, members of the
European Parliament, including reportedly the Vice President Eva Kyley, have
(19:51):
been arrested in Brussels as part of a massive investigation
and raids at sixteen properties in which six hundred thousand
euros in cash plus lots of other stuff were seized.
The allegation is bribery and the alleged bri Brewers are
the government of Qatar. Baseball's fleet market continues. Catcher Sean
Murphy goes from Oakland, which used to have a major
(20:13):
League team, to Atlanta in a three club swap that
also includes the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers get the d
h William Contreras, Oakland gets a handful of prospects that
they can trade away three or four years from now.
Free agent catcher Christian Vasquez leaves the Astros to sign
with Minnesota and the Toronto Blue Jays have reportedly signed
(20:33):
pitcher Chris Bassett away from the New York Mets three years,
sixty three million dollars. Considering metrics show Bassett was the
second most valuable pitcher on the Mets last season. That
sounds like a bargain, except Bassett has control and a
good fastball and some set up pitches. But the essential
key to his success is to throw off the timing
(20:55):
of hitters. By a very simple stratagem. He shakes off
the pitch signal from his catcher again and again and again,
whether it is sent to him by the new electronic
pitch com system or the old Luddite method of finger waggling.
Bassett says no at least twice per at bat, and
(21:15):
some estimates are that he averages four headshakes and thus
four long delays per at bat. Again, so what next
season baseball is going to introduce a pitch clock. With
nobody on base, a picture will have only fifteen seconds
to begin his delivery of the next pitch, or it
(21:36):
is an automatic ball. When somebody is on base, he
gets twenty seconds. If it's between batters, he gets thirty seconds.
You know how long Bassett is going to survive under
that kind of pressure, Well neither do I. But starting
next year, at least there'll be a guy at every
ball game with an official clock with which we can
all time him. I had. Many are fired, few are chosen.
(22:12):
For years, after Fox Sports got rid of me, the
rumors sworld that Rupert Murdoch had personally fired me because
I had had the nerve to completely follow his rules.
The real story. Next First, the daily round up of
the misgrants, morons, and Donning Krueger effect specimens who constitute
today's worse persons in the world. The bronze to Walter Hudson,
(22:36):
an African American man recently elected to the Minnesota House,
A survivor of the Tea Party Remember the Tea Party.
At a hearing of anti Max nut jobs, Mr Hudson
explained that health professionals or mere civilians who support vaccine
mandates are well slave owners. The plantation owner who said
(23:00):
I need cotton and you're gonna pick it is morally
equivalent to the person today who says, I don't want
to get six, so you have to take the jab.
I am placing it is it is, and I want
to be clear that I mean exactly what I just said. Okay,
it's not a gaff. I mean it. You are equivalent
(23:21):
to a plantation owner who enslaved black people and forced
them to work for you. If you, today, as a
medical professional or just a member of the populace, demand
that your neighbor take a vaccination to keep you safe,
let's see malnutrition, rape, torture, murder, physical labor until you died. Well,
(23:43):
that sounds the same as routine public health standards that
have saved mankind from scourges like polio and tetanus in smallpox. Yeah,
absolutely the same. Walter Hudson. By the way, if that
phony tone and the condescending cadence sounds familiar, Walter Hudson
has boasted that he listened to Rush limb Ba every day.
(24:05):
He is a Rush Limbaugh Coast player. I'm sure that
makes Russell Limba happy in hell. And this reminder, however,
they couch it and whosever voiced these Walter Hudson and
the other baxtoniers are hiding the real truth that they're
simply afraid of the needles. The runner up, Shane Trejo,
(24:26):
the chairman of the Michigan eleventh Congressional District Republicans who
posts on social media under the really deceptive alias Sean Trujillo.
Oh God. Sheriffs are investigating what is believed to be
a threat by Shane Sean Treho Trujillo made on Facebook
towards the community supported Patmos Library and Jamestown Township, Michigan,
(24:49):
also in Michigan, but a hundred miles away from Shane
Shawn's home. The threat quote time to shut down the
library by force and then perhaps charts the people writing
these checks as accessories for child abuse. Mr Treo is
also previously supported white supremacist. He's already over social media
with that. He now claims that when he said shut
(25:12):
down the library by force, he meant force of law.
Unclear what he might be charged with, but they should
throw in a charge of a really bad elios but
our winner. Senator elect j D. Vance of Ohio. Vance
has reiterated his call for a national ban on pornography,
which I find hard to believe since it would send
(25:34):
everybody who makes a commercial for any Republican to jail. Plus,
this is gonna make for an interesting senatorial first meeting
with Ted Cruz of Texas, whose Twitter account was not
only caught liking a porn video on nine eleven, but
whose anti Marco Rubio ad during the two thousand sixteen
Republican primary season starred one Amy Lindsay. You may remember
(25:57):
her from such movies as Sex Sent Me to the
R Deviant Wars and I don't know what these initials mean.
M I LF educational films, no doubt j D. It
does not stand for just DVDs vance two days, Worst
(26:21):
person in the worlds to the number one story on
the countdown on my favorite topic, me and things I
promised not to tell. Over the weekend watching hockey, I
(26:44):
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 a hundred thousand dollars a month not
to do anything. I have changed jobs a lot, and
seldom have the departures included gold watches and going away parties,
at least not going away parties to which I was invited.
(27:07):
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 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
(27:30):
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 of Rupert
Murdoch and Fox, and I mean Rupert Murdoch personally, or
so he claims. When I finally convinced NBC News that
(27:51):
I was serious about no longer hosting its Monica Lewinsky
athon in the head of NBC Sports, Dick Ebersol had
an ingenious solution. He knew his friends at Fox Sports
longed to have me front their version of Sports Center,
and so he proposed the following NBC would give my
agent ten days in which to negotiate two deals. A
(28:14):
deal for me to go to l A and host
Fox Sports News and Major League Baseball on Fox, and
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
(28:37):
salary for any cable sportscaster ever, NBC got its million,
and maybe most startlingly, NBC then asked me to stay
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
(28:57):
some reason trusted me to stay on their air, even
though I was leaving in local news in Los Angeles
once 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,
(29:18):
pitched me on doing stuff for them, maybe co anchoring
with Bill O'Reilly. I'm serious. I passed sports. We spent money,
I worked with friends. I didn't have to talk about politics.
I could narrate highlights. I could do funny voices. White
downtown Bang I lived on the beach. I mean, my
(29:39):
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
like challenging ESPN. It was great. But then two things happened.
The Fox guy, who knew we needed five years at
(29:59):
minimum just to tie ESPN in the ratings, took me
to lunch one day and said, sorry, mate, Moll Mrs
is moving back to England tomorrow with without me, so
I'm going good luck. He was replaced by guys who
replaced the five year plan with a five week plan
to raise the ratings by literally one fifth of one point.
(30:23):
I left that meeting in which they explained their suicidal
plan and revealed that my salary represented an unsustainable of
their entire budget, and I called my real estate agent
and put my house on the beach up for sale.
Not long after, my doctor gave me a physical and
a warning cut back on work and stress and everything else,
(30:45):
or you can have a heart attack ten years from now.
I told my boss is 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 five days in
the studio. We're going to enforce that unless you kick
back two thirds of your gallery. They put this in
(31:06):
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 kept
doing the job. 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
(31:28):
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 every Saturday on Fox
was a pretty good gig. And we were just gearing
up for the two thousand one baseball season when I
got a tip on April that the owners of the
(31:50):
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 back to the sun 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.
(32:16):
The next day, after getting this scoop, I made about
a hundred phone calls, and sure enough I got the
friend of a friend of a friend of my agent
to confirm that he and his family were in preliminary
discussions joining the O'Malley's 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.
(32:40):
But look, this is your candy store, and I do
work for you, and if you don't want me to
report this, I'm obviously not going to report it, and
I'm not gonna pouch and I'm not going to give
the story to somebody else. My boss is replied, good
for you. Why don't we all get on the phone
with the top Rupert Murdoch has his own personal news
(33:00):
Corps public relations department. Let's see what he says. So
on Sunday, April one, we got Murdoch's own PR guy
on the blower and I explained it to him. My
Mr 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
(33:22):
it clear your sources are not from within the company,
and so long as you're confident in your sources, and
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
(33:45):
a very brief moment and a very wrong moment. I
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.
(34:07):
The team was unofficially for sale. Dodger fans who hated
what Fox had done to the team seemed happy, and
the vast, stinking pile of burning excrement that was Fox
and News Corp. 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
(34:28):
our two thousand one season coverage, the president of Fox Sports,
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.
(34:50):
But then two days later they turned off my access
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 Sandymere, 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?
(35:13):
And I said, with genuine astonishment that I not only
didn't know that, but even given my thoughts about Rupert Murdoch,
I didn't believe that. Now that's what my sources at
Fox tell me. Apparently your Dodger story really pissed him off.
But but really, and I said, I had cleared it
through his personal PR guy I don't know. Rich sandom
(35:33):
Here said apparently he was on vacation and he got
back like 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 and he told Hill
to fire you immediately. So I told Rich, this is
the first I ever heard of this, and I still
don't believe it, even though the day he mentioned May
nine was the day David Hill had called my agent
(35:56):
and told her I would not be doing baseball for
Fox that year. An hour later, the phone rings again
and it's Rich Sandom here 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,
uh said that you were telling people Rupert had fired
you personally over the Dodger story. And I gave Rich
(36:18):
a sequence of well, kind of friendly uh huhs, 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 Murdoch fired you. Okay, thanks.
By the next day, they had me come into the
Fox building on Pico Boulevard and clean out my office
(36:40):
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 the table reads for the Simpsons. Table reads for
(37:03):
the Simpsons were much more fund 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, it won't work.
May fift your cable show is canceled. May sixteenth, clean
(37:24):
out your office. 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 in
that paper, calling him washed up, get him going. And
then it all clicked. My contract ran through the end
(37:46):
of the year two thousand 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
(38:09):
and keep 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,
(38:30):
if you said you have two choices, aldermen, 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
(38:52):
doing whatever 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 one, two thousand two, after the
(39:14):
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 fired me for having
(39:37):
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 Carl's Bad, California, on May two thousand eight, seven
years to the month they got rid of me, and
(39:58):
a story came across the wire with my name on it.
The guy interviewing him at this conference talk about whether
there should be dissenting voices on Fox quote news unquote,
like that guy who was killing it on MSNBC Keith Alderman.
Now Murdoch barked, ah fired and five years ago he
was craggy, timing was off. But there it was Rupert
(40:22):
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 like I hadn't heard it the first time.
(40:43):
On February one, two thousand eleven, Rupert Murdoch was interviewed
by his business talking head Neil Cavuto, 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 fign people. Twice, Cabudo replied, you
called him a nut lad. He was a nut on
(41:06):
we had him on late night Fox Sports. There was
never any such show called Late night Fox Sports. But
never mind, Rupe 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,
(41:28):
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 name is Keith,
(41:53):
but at least my name ain't freaking Rupert. I mean,
(42:14):
who calls themselves Rupert? Who deliberately chooses to call themselves
are Rupert. My name's Rupert. I've done all the damage
I can do here to the name Rupert. Thank you
for listening. Please subscribe if you're not doing so already,
and tell somebody else to do so. Here are our credits.
Most of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's Ninth,
(42:36):
was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Philip Chanelle. They are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration
and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitarist, bass and drums
by Brian Ray, produced by t Ko Brothers. Other Beethoven
selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two
(42:57):
and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis and appears
courtesy of my friends at ESPN, Inc. Musical means from
Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was my ESPN friend Tony Kornheiser. Everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this. The
seven and seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
(43:20):
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
him now while we still can a new edition tomorrow.
Until then, I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
(43:42):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.