MY BROTHER RICHARD LEWIS IS GONE - 2.29.24

SERIES 2 EPISODE 132: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:30) RICHARD, IN MEMORIAM: The day I met Richard Lewis, at a Los Angeles Lakers game in 1989 or 1990, we parted calling each other 'Brother.' It has been like that ever since. I want to tell you about my adopted brother, who despite his on-camera persona of dysfunction and self-absorption was in fact the most loving human being I have ever known. His support, his empathy, his caring, was endless. The total number of brothers and sisters he "adopted" was nearly so. I cannot imagine a world without him.

B-Block (26:48) SPECIAL COMMENT: Of course the Supreme Court stepped in to delay Trump's trial for trying to overthrow the government and erase a valid election. It is comprised by five of Trump's judicial whores. It is yet another reason we must defeat Trump everywhere, including at the polls, so that a re-elected Joe Biden can appoint enough additional justices to the court to make Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett into living waxworks wailing impotently until they die.

The good news about Trump is, simply, that he had to confess in writing that he is not the billionaire he claims to be but for all intents and purposes insolvent and incapable of paying the $465 million fine (with interest) he owes the state of New York. He offered 22% of his debt; the judge rejected it; the full appeals court almost certainly will, and if it actually leads to practical bankruptcy, that will kill Trump.

And there was a hidden germ of good news inside Trump's underperformance in Michigan on Tuesday night. The former executive director of the state GOP there says ONE county result convinces him Trump - no matter what happens to Biden and protests and anything else - CANNOT win Michigan in November.

Of course you didn't read that in The New York Times or the WaPo or see it on CNN or anywhere else because if there were any remaining doubts, they're gone now. There is a difference between "facts" and "truth." Telling the truth means blowback and controversy and having to stay late in the office. So our legacy media, as we saw again in Michigan, will hide behind meaningless "facts" and perfect its cowardice.

C-BLOCK (49:30) With Richard Lewis at The 92nd Street Y in New York in April 2008, and on Countdown on MSNBC a few days later.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio CISUS
Countdown with Keith Alberman. My brother, Richard Lewis is dead.
He had a heart attack on Tuesday night and was
seventy six years old. He had been suffering from Parkinson's
disease for the last year. At least it was a

(00:27):
year since the diagnosis. And I call him my brother
and will because from the time we met in nineteen
eighty nine or nineteen ninety in Los Angeles, he said
I was his brother, and I felt the same way
about him. We did not spend extraordinary amounts of time together,

(00:51):
and we did not pal around together, but we were
in constant contact for thirty four or thirty five years,
and every moment of it was a privilege. I was
transported by the news to two phone calls, hilarious, terrifying, moving,

(01:22):
encapsulations of Richard Lewis as a friend, as a person.
The phone rang, and I can smell the fresh cut
grass on the lawn. It's how well I remember this
phone call. The phone rang, I guess in the early
summer of nineteen ninety six, I was at my house

(01:46):
near ESPN, on my way to go do SportsCenter. I
had known Richard for seven years perhaps, and the voice
I heard on the other end of the phone was
unlike any other I had ever heard from him, and
I never heard it again. He was in something of
a panic. He was speaking rapidly. He was alarmed and confused,

(02:11):
and he said, my god, I can't believe what happened.
Just happened. And I thought there had been a car accident.
I thought somebody was gone. I thought somebody is dead.
And he said, I just spent twenty minutes talking to
your mother. And this concentrated my attention very much, so
I said, why did you talk to my mother? What

(02:34):
in God's reason which you have to talk to my mother? Well,
you know, you know me and my phone books. This
was one of the more extraordinary things about this extraordinary man.
He was not only constantly losing phone and address books
back when we kept these things manually, but he would
lose the new one and find the old one. So

(02:55):
when he went to make a call to talk to me,
he had a phone number that was in fact my mother's.
The phone at my mother and father's house in suburban
New York, where I had been staying for about a
week the year before, and he had written that number
in this phone book, lost his current phone book, found
the old one, called my mother and for some reason

(03:16):
had talked to her and was now in a state
of panic. And I said, well wait wait, okay, so
you talked to her, never mind, why what's wrong? Well,
I just called up, I said, missus Olverman, Hya, it's
Richard Lewis. And your mother said, oh, Hi, nice to
talk to you. And I said, is Keith there, Oh no,
he's up at his house. Oh I guess I have
the wrong number, I said, And your mother started talking

(03:39):
and I went, uh, oh, what did she talk to
you about? Richard? And he said. She said, if if
the world had been changed and she had had two sons,
I mean, she just barely had managed to survive having

(03:59):
you as a son. But if if I had been
her other son, if if we had actually been brothers
and and she had been my mother, she would have
killed herself by now. And I said, missus overman, I'm
just trying to get Keith's phone number, and she went
on and on, and I'm just calling because I just realized,

(04:19):
after this conversation, I don't understand how you've been able
to become so normal after all this. And I've spent
my entire life making money off the fact that my
mom and dad were not quite normal, and I've kind
of exaggerated it, But but you you really had that
kind of experience that I've just sort of joked about

(04:39):
and I never understood, and I feel so protective of you,
and and well, by this point I was crying and
I said, uh, yeah, it was an interesting child. He
would no, no, don't minimize it. Don't don't minimize it.
I've been through therapy for twenty years trying to get

(05:00):
through my mother, and your mother's twice as crazy as
my mother was. I love you, brother, I'll take care
of you all the time like that. I joked with

(05:22):
him once that if it ever got out how caring
and loving an individual he really was, it would ruin him.
People had this vision of him as this acerbic, self absorbed, neurotic, troubled, incomplete,

(05:43):
dysfunctional guy. And I'm not saying he wasn't all of
those things, and God knows, he never said he wasn't
all those things. But at the core of him, the
essence of all of his problems was this extraordinary caring,
obsessively caring person and not obsessively in a bad way.

(06:03):
I know he had countless bad relationships with women who
would have happily treated him like Carrie Fisher wanted to
treat John Belushi. At the end of Blues Brothers, he
admitted to that he had drug abuse problems at times,
he had alcohol abuse problems at times, he had life
abuse problems at times, but at the core of him

(06:24):
was this guy who just cared. And that was the
other phone call. The reason he had my parents' phone
number was that the year before, I was supposed to
go do a bit part in a movie by a
guy named Adam Sandler, and I guess this was the

(06:44):
part that Dan Patrick then played because I didn't go
because I was at my folks house to cut the
commute rather than trying to fly from Bristol, Connecticut to
somewhere else to Chicago to Vancouver where they were filming
this film. Instead, I went to see my folks, took

(07:05):
a week off from ESPN, went to my folks. Nice
easy commute to JFK Airport in New York and then
out directly to Vancouver. And it would have been so
much easier and then the night before the flight, I
began to have chest pains, quite serious chest pains, and
I didn't sleep, and I was not a good flyer then,

(07:27):
for various reasons that don't have anything to do with
Richard Lewis's passing, but he was one of the people
I was going to see. I was going to go
to Vancouver shoot this thing with the Adam Sandler film,
and then come down to Los Angeles and visit with
my friends there, first of them being Richard Lewis. We're
going to have lunch, and I was calling to tell
him that I didn't think I was going to get
on the plane. Well, it wasn't a heart attack. I

(07:52):
had a doctor who thought it might have been a
heart attack. In fact, it was some kind of bone
bruise in my ribs. And the doctor actually got me
and I've told this story in this podcast, actually got
me into the emergency room secretively without my knowing that
he thought I had a heart attack and they were
shaving my chest and I thought, you actually think I've
had a heart attack. He said, I don't know, maybe
it is. In any event, it was not. It was

(08:14):
it was a bruise that felt that bad. I had
hurt my ribs somehow, upper ribs, somehow. I was advised
to just hang out at my folks for the week
and just you know, go to the municipal puel pool
in their town and just just sit there and do
nothing for a week and let this stop hurting. Richard
Lewis called me twice every day, every day while I

(08:38):
was there, with stories, with advice, with amusement, with just
something to pass the time, just because he knew that
I'd had a scare, just because he knew that sometimes
even if you're not really that sick, and it seemed
like you're that sick, you don't feel that much better afterwards.
And he had advice, don't tell anybody that they thought

(09:00):
it was your heart. Whatever you do, it'll be in
the front page of the La Times tomorrow. You know that.
I'm just telling you from experience. Don't tell anybody it
was serious. Don't tell anybody what was wrong. Rather they
think you bailed out on the project, than the thing
to think something's wrong with your heart, because then they
can't get insurance and won't be able to do the
next series. I never asked him what had happened to him.
That met him an expert on this, but he believed

(09:22):
he was. He called every day, and he called every
day and said, how do you feeling? Are you okay?
And he was like that, and that's why he had
my mother's phone number. And that's why my mother, in
an extraordinary revelation, told him that. And what I finally
said to Richard was you are my brother now because

(09:44):
she said that, and also because you're the first person
she's ever revealed that side of her personality too. And
now I know I'm not alone. What is a brother
if not that we met, As I said, in nineteen
eighty nine or nineteen ninety, I was a local sportscaster
in Los Angeles and I was at a Lakers game

(10:06):
and he was at the Lakers game, and he came
up to me and he said, you are the funniest
person on television. And I went, no, you have me
mistaken for somebody else. You are the funniest person on television.
And before the end of that conversation, he said, when
we had to exchanged life stories and where he grew
up in New Jersey and I grew up in New York,
and how when and well of the rest and the

(10:26):
nature of the family and the rough outlines of our childhood.
He goes, we are brothers, and we were supportive, protective, caring. Professionally,
he was your publicist. I don't know how many people

(10:48):
I have met who were in the entertainment business who said,
I had no idea who you were until Richard Lewis
told me to watch you on Channel two on Sports
Center on MSNBC, on Fox Baseball on MSNBC. The second
time they told me where to find you when you
went to Current TV, they Richard told me that you

(11:08):
were back on ESPN. He was my publicist, and I
was one of hundreds of people in the entertainment business
and the media business and outside of it who he
treated that way, both in terms of publicizing and emphasizing

(11:31):
and promoting and saying this guy watch this. He's watched
this guy and comedians and singers and musicians and newspeople
and others. I mean, on and on and on. And
then there were the special people in his life, his
heroes who had advanced into retirement or post career periods.

(11:54):
And I think constantly of his filial affection for the
great comedian Jonathan Winters, which we shared although my affection
for Jonathan Winters was a bunch of records that I
had that he had made in the sixties, and Richard's
connection to Jonathan Winters was going to his house every

(12:15):
day to make sure he was okay until Jonathan Winters died.
And I believe, outside of his wife, who saved his
life at some point in the nineteen nineties, joice I
believe Richard's most prized possession was a picture of himself
with Jonathan Winters as Jonathan Winters planted a kiss on

(12:36):
his cheek. For a long time, Richard Lewis lived to
help Jonathan Winters. Lately since the Parkinson's diagnosis. He had
lived to be on the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

(12:56):
If you don't know this, and I think they had
mentioned this on that show, Richard and Larry David, And
he told me this story before Larry David, before Larry
David was known for anything besides writing, before Seinfeld, before
almost anything that now my friend Larry David became famous for.

(13:21):
Richard told me about Larry David and their childhood at
a basketball camp where they were at I guess the
age of twelve. Mortal enemies mortal enemies, fistfights, basketballs thrown
in each other's faces, hated each other's guts. In the
performances you saw on Curb Your Enthusiasm resonated a fight

(13:46):
from somewhere in the mid to late nineteen fifties or
early nineteen sixties. They brought themselves into those roles, and
he loved to tell about how years later they were

(14:06):
sitting around backstage, didn't know who each other was. They
were going on stage at some club, some open mic night,
or early career performance in Hollywood, and it dawned on them,
wait a minute, I know you from Camp Run Amuck,

(14:26):
whatever it was, and they started to have the same
fistfight Richard told me that they had had in nineteen
sixty four or whenever it was. And then something made
one of them laugh, and they became brothers. The insistence

(14:48):
in his voice and in his texts and in his
emails in the last year that he was going to
be in the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and
he was going to watch the last season of Curb
Your Enthusiasm, and he was going to enjoy the hell
out of being in the last season of Curb Your

(15:10):
enthusiasm had given me the sense for the last year
that he would never worry us with anything about this,
but that what I feared the most was the case
that he did not think he was going to be
here much longer. So the news yesterday was not a shock,

(15:33):
just an end to the world that I have known
for thirty five years with.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
My brother.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
He once staged an intervention with me over a woman.
I know you're dating her, he said, problem is, I
don't think she's really dating you worked like a charm boy,
oh boy. For all the things Richard said in these

(16:13):
incredibly complicated, note filled performances, he had sometimes on stage
in his stand up and go and please watch one
of his stand up specials. There second, I think only
to Carlin's his his notes would fold out, and I

(16:34):
told him this once, like a roadmap of the United States.
You know, fulld this thing completely over and we can
we can put it over the top of Yankee Stadium
and they can play in the rain. Everything was prepared
and researched and regurgitated and planned and if he if

(16:55):
he wanted to go this way, because he sensed this
with the audience, and then he would move down to
the next square, but maybe he go up to the
top square because that guy in the back was laughing
at the other thing. It was mechanically precise, it was.
It was a craft for him, and yet the things
he would come out with that were not planned, like

(17:15):
I know you're dating her, but I don't think she's
really dating you. The mojuiced rather than the bond MO.
And we texted and emailed and phoned. I don't know
a thousand times, two thousand times. I went back on
the phone. There'd been one hundred and eleven of them
this year, and the parallels, well, we were brothers. I

(17:41):
make no bones about the fact that honorary brotherhood was
absolutely deserved and not an exaggeration. Neither of us had
ever had a dog. One day I told him I
just got my first dog at the age of fifty three,
said I was meaning to tell you this, and he
sent me a picture. He'd gotten a dog the week before,

(18:01):
a Maltese. I'd gotten a Maltese Luna. He lost Luna.
She had Cushing's disease. He loved Luna and was crushed
when she was gone, and went and got another dog,
but not another Maltese. But he demanded photos of my
malteses on a daily basis, So what again, If you've
ever thought of Richard Lewis as this hard edged, dysfunctional,

(18:25):
self absorbed guy, the last time I sent him new
photos of my malteses was last Monday. In two thousand
and eight. The ninety second Street y here which does
these things, had a night with Richard Lewis and he

(18:46):
called me one day and said, they want me to
pick somebody. And I said, well, I'm not going to
do it unless it's Keith, so you have to do it.
And I said, yeah, I said, but I have a proviso.
He said, okay, okay, what do you want money? I said,
I said, I want to go out on stage first

(19:07):
and I will introduce you, and then you come on stage.
I do not want to go on stage with you simultaneously.
And he had been on countdown with me on MSNBC.
I don't know every time he was in New York.
He would make sure he came over and it was
always something to sell. But he'd probably been on by
that point ten times in five years. And I said

(19:27):
to him, okay, two thousand, okay, fine, I'll do it.
But I have to get out there first so I
can introduce you, and also so that the next to
last sentence that I say before I say here is
the Prince of praying Richard Lewis. The last sentence before
that I'm going to say is And the other thing
I wanted to say was this will be the last
sentence I get to complete by myself tonight. And I

(19:51):
think we were out there for two hours and it
was and it was one of the most memorable, enjoyable
things I have ever had in my life.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
And I've.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
I have a copy of it on my phone and
I'm going to play some of it at the end
of this podcast. And I have not asked for permission,
and they consume me if they want. And I'm also
going to at the end play one of our MSNBC
segments together and I didn't ask them, And if they
want to assume me, fine, go ahead. Before that, though,
Richard also cared passionately for this country and as I

(20:26):
suppose his true view and as you know is true
of me, feared for its future, and this support he
gave me in the political part of my career, and
he was, as I said, Nightly Sports viewer too but
the support he gave me for my political commentary rested

(20:47):
upon something he told me once that he knew that
I knew that I was speaking for a lot of people,
but he wanted me to remember that there were constraints
on what he could and could not say publicly, and
thus I was speaking always for him. So after the

(21:08):
break there is news of the day, most of which
I'll confess I wrote before this news came in about
Richard's passing, because I could not write it now. It's
news that would have continued to scare my brother, the
Prince of Pain, and news that would have made him laugh,
particularly the news that Trump basically confessed yesterday that he

(21:31):
is in effect insolvent, and Richard would have said and
probably incontinent. A close with two more things about Richard Lewis.
The official statement of his death from his publicist, put

(21:53):
out at four pm Eastern yesterday, mentions the heart attack,
mentions his Parkinson's diagnosis from nearly a year ago. But
I'll just read the fourth sentence verbadim, because this is
Richard Lewis quote. Richard can currently be seen co starring
in the final season of HBO's Curb Your enthusiasm, and

(22:17):
of course his obituary emphasizes his next appearance. And the
last thing is this. I don't know how long this
was true. It was true the length of the time

(22:37):
that I knew him. It may have only been pertinent
to me. It may have only been pertinent on the phone.
I don't know. But in conversation with me, Richard Lewis
could not say the word goodbye a phone call WI
just and end with all right or okay tomorrow or

(23:02):
love you. It was a weird thing. At first. I
don't know of anybody else at whom it was true.
I just wrote it off as part of his personality,
like I'm going to judge somebody else's personality quirks. Then
I got used to it and didn't think much about it,
And now right now I cherish.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
It because he could not say goodbye.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
He did not ever say goodbye to me, And therefore
my brother Richard Lewis will always be with me. The

(24:27):
Supreme Court will actually listen to arguments in Trump's made
up presidential immunity farce the week of April twenty second,
thus delaying the start of his election subversion trial. And
if they can drag out the delay long enough, jeopardizing
getting him convicted before the election. And I do not
consider this bad news for democracy, because the conservatives on

(24:50):
the Supreme Court are Trump's whoes, and we all knew that,
and there should be no surprise in this chief. Justice
Roberts is a Trump whore and he can burn in hell.
And Justice Alito is a Trump whore, and he can
burn in hell. And Justice Gorsich is a self contradicting
Trump poor, and he can burn in hell. And Justice

(25:10):
Kavanaugh is a drunken abuser Trump poor, and he can
burn in hell. And Justice Barrett is a handmade Trump poor,
and she can burn in hell. They are corrupt, They
have corrupted the Supreme Court. We will have to remove
them from the Supreme Court or create a replacement for
the Supreme Court. And if Joe Biden is re elected

(25:33):
and the democracy is not destroyed, his first effort should
be to add enough additional justices to the Court to
make the five of them living irrelevancies. Send them to
Madame Tussaud's and let them lie and corrupt the nation
from there. The good news is that something far more

(25:57):
important to the psychopath Trump has broken against him. In
spectacular fashion and at his own hand. Trump is, for
all intents and purposes, insolvent. He has now confessed in
writing that he does not have the four hundred and
sixty five million dollars he fines an interests he owes

(26:19):
the state of New York, which he has to pay
into escrow by March twenty fifth, or forfeit his right
to appeal the verdict. In a Trump ploy as old
as Trump's corrupt business itself, Trump has offered a bond
of one hundred million dollars. Trump is offering to pay
twenty two percent of what he owes. Usually his scam

(26:41):
is to offer to pay closer to sixty to seventy
percent of what he owes and fu sue me for
the rest. But if he doesn't have four hundred and
sixty five million, he also does not have sixty to
seventy percent of four hundred and sixty five million, he
can get his hands on a bond for one hundred
million dollars. The appeals judged to whom he made this

(27:04):
lootar Chris extra legal offer, immediately ruled against him. Trump
can now take it to the full appeals court in
a month, but he has already lost this part of it.
There is a lot else in his filing about poor me.
I have to sell stuff and you can't stop me
from getting loans from New York banks. And the judge
stayed that punishment. And who cares. He is seventy eight

(27:26):
percent short. The billionaire doesn't have any money. He is,
for all intents and judicial purposes, insolvent, and he may
shortly become, for all intents and purposes, bankrupt and bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy would kill Donald Trump, kill him in the interim

(28:04):
of the the worst human beings to have ever served
in American government is stepping down, and the nation is
so hanging by its fingertips from a precipice that his
departure is actually bad news for the chances that we
will still have representative democracy one year from now, if
there is a hell, I have no doubt that they
have been building a special new wing just for Mitch McConnell.

(28:27):
But bluntly, this year he has been the closest thing
to a Republican bulwark against the authoritarian insanity of Trump.
And his decision to step down as Senate Minority Leader
in November, combined with two other GOP developments this week
means that Trump has now accomplished within the Republican Party
what he intends to do in the country, full and

(28:49):
complete dictatorship. This doesn't even include what happened at the
Supreme Court yesterday. Four days ago. Mitch McConnell's number two,
the Senate Minority whip, John Thune, endorsed Trump. Tuesday, Anthony Desposito,
the congressman in probably the most vulnerable Republican held seat

(29:12):
in the nation, the New York Fourth, endorsed Trump. The
other two Republicans in the other two possibilities for most
vulnerable Republican held seats in the nation, Desposito's neighbor Nick
Lalatta of the New York First and Brandon Williams of
the New York twenty second, which is basically upstate Syracuse.
All the liberal colleges in and around Syracuse they had

(29:34):
already endorsed Trump. Endorsing Trump probably means all three of
them will lose and the Republicans will lose the House
no matter what else happens in November. But these three
idiots did it anyway. It is almost certain political suicide
for Desposito. For Lalatta for Williams. They did it anyway

(29:59):
because it's almost certain political suicide, but their donors and
Trump and the rest the cult told them to do
it anyway, because to defy Trump now is certain political
suicide within the Trump Party. And if they are not
willing to jump to their deaths, some even dumber political
prostitute will be happy to primary them and then jump

(30:21):
to their own deaths instead. Because the Trump Party is
a suicide cult. No more half kidding about that term,
no more detached bitterness or sad sympathetic head shaking. The
Republican Party exists now only to do Trump's bidding and
Vladimir Putin's bidding. And frankly, if the suicide cult is

(30:45):
not just a tragically apt analogy but a reality, hey Republicans,
the sooner the better, because this is what Trump has
planned for the country. This is where the madness ultimately
leads to his or die. If we are lucky, the

(31:09):
death would only be metaphorical. We know about schedule f
federal employees not loyal to Trump will be fired. We
know about Project twenty twenty five. All new federal appointees judges,
law enforcement, maybe cops, certainly military will be ultra conservatives

(31:29):
loyal to Trump. We know about the Center for Renewing
America plan, where white fundamentalist Christian quote values will be
imposed on every aspect of government and every aspect of
American life, from abortion to whether or not you go
to church on Sundays and which church you must go
to that's next. It's a purge. It's a purge designed

(31:56):
to outlive Trump. He is, in fact just the weapon.
He will eventually become just another victim of the per urge.
Whenever he gets too crazy or too personally vengeful, or
inconvenient for the guys actually running the thing, they will
kill his character off too, or he will die in
the interim and with McConnell Gon and in the other

(32:20):
apt analogy, if those of us fighting Nazis and fighting
fascism and fighting racism are now in our own version
of World War Two, McConnell was our ally stalin in
this equation. With McConnell Gon, the purge is almost complete
now within the Republican Party. So make no mistake about
our task in the next two hundred and fifty days,

(32:41):
and it is that till the election, we must stop
Trump and his cult by any means necessary, any means.
There is one glimmering, shining bit of good news about that,
and I don't think you've heard it. And it's the
actual headline from the Michigan primary Tuesday, and it is

(33:04):
from a man named Jeff Timmer, the former executive director
of the Michigan Republican Party, one of their trop drawers
of jerrymandered regional maps before Trump came along, and mister
Timmer realized early it was a death cult. He basically
got out of it in twenty sixteen, and he posted

(33:24):
yesterday to little fanfare, the flashing red light in the
Michigan Republican primary results that I didn't see and I
wouldn't have known, and I don't know how many of
us civilians saw or would have understood, but he understands it. Quote.
One cannot typically look at primary election results and draw
conclusions about the general. However, I can say that Trump's

(33:48):
fifty nine percent in the Grand Rapids area makes it
nearly impossible for him to win Michigan in November. Michigan
will remain close my crystal ball, says Biden. Wins. I'll
repeat the key part Trump's fifty nine percent in the

(34:10):
Grand Rapids area makes it nearly impossible for him to
win Michigan in November from the former chairman executive director
of the Michigan Republican Party, from his lips to the
Electoral College's years. Of course, you did not see that

(34:36):
in the New York Times or CNN or anywhere else
in the I hate the phrase, but it's accurate legacy
news media, because if there were any remaining doubt that
the entire legacy news industry has lost the plot, it
has come in the last forty eight hours. It used

(34:57):
to be as if they were a Shakespearean performance company,
and now they still produce Shakespearean plays and dramas and comedies.
And their only concern is not the lines, or the
meeting or the quality of the acting. Their only concern
is is anybody going to be offended by the curtains
on the stage. There is a difference between facts and truth.

(35:21):
If I say my body is made entirely out of
green cheese, it is a fact that I just said that.
It is not. However, the truth and the legacy news
media in this country doesn't understand that anymore. It has
abandoned truth because truth is complicated and nuanced, and it

(35:43):
produces angry blowback and maybe personal threats, and maybe worst
of all, reduced traffic on your site. And it is
getting worse because maybe the real story of the primaries
in Michigan Tuesday is how astonishingly completely the New York Times,
The Washington Post, CNN, and countless others hid behind facts

(36:08):
and buried truth. The refs have been worked for sixty
years in this country by the far right, and it
has succeeded. And the problem is the refs are the
businessmen at news organizations, the ones who used to have
no role in news coverage. Network television news used to

(36:28):
be not for profit. It used to be presumed to
lose forty fifty sixty million dollars a year, the price
you paid to be able to make all that other
money by airing the Beverly Hillbillies. The refs, the businessmen
at the news organizations used to have no role in

(36:50):
news coverage at all, but who now look for ways
to do the following. If Donald Trump's campaign problem indictments, rape, racism, dictatorship,
underperformance in the primaries, if he has campaign problems, their
outlet is not allowed to cover it without counterbalancing it
often in the same story with some problem in the

(37:11):
Biden campaign, And so you cannot report that in the
Michigan primary Tuesday that the reality was the facts were.
The simple math was Trump lost four out of ten
votes in Grand Rapids, and without one hundred percent Republican support,
he cannot win Grand Rapids in November, and without Grand
Rapids he cannot win Michigan in November. And the reality
was the facts were. The simple math was throughout Michigan,

(37:34):
Trump underperformed expectations and Biden over performed expectations. And the
protest vote against Biden's Middle East policy slightly overperformed expectations,
but it only did about the average when compared to
previous Michigan Democratic primaries. And throw in the default position

(37:56):
at the times, campaign problems mean clicks, and you have
a recipe in which you and me and everybody who
works at the time times, we will all lined up
together in the buzz wind trip media re education camp
in twenty twenty six. You can only report the problems

(38:16):
in the times Biden faced discontent, Donald Trump won again,
and both may face challenges from within their parties. That
was the headline about Michigan in The Times. That headline
is legally true. It is not, however, actual truth. The

(38:38):
average of polling in Michigan had Trump winning Michigan by
fifty nine points. He won by forty two. The average
of polling in Michigan had Biden winning only seventy seven
percent of the vote. He won eighty one percent. Uncommitted
got thirteen percent of the vote. In twenty twelve, uncommitted
got eleven percent of the vote. The protest did very well,

(39:02):
and the protest drove Biden voters to come out in
record waves. That's not in this headline. That's not what
it says. He faced discontent. Ooh, breaking news. Olderman faced discontent. Yesterday,
your mom faced discontent. That was the headline in The Times.

(39:32):
That headline legally true, but not truth. Of the two
candidates and the one protest movement, Joe Biden had the
best night, the most unexpectedly best night, the biggest gain
relative to the polls, the most success, the most encouraging signs,

(39:52):
the least amount of discontent, the smallest challenge. Again, the
Times headline, Biden faced discontent. Donald Trump won again, and
both may face challenges for more than their parties. It's
like saying both may owe the city of New York
in the state of New York four hundred and sixty
four million dollars. Well, that's true, they both may only
Trump does. This was everywhere. CNN's top polling guy's kind

(40:19):
of an odd ball named Harry Enton wrote, Uncommitted is
getting about the same share of the vote as it
did in twenty twelve. I get the raw vot is higher,
but turnout is also up. I feel like I'm missing
something here. Yes, what Harry Anton was missing was the
memo from his bosses. CNN's front page at the same

(40:41):
time read protest vote against Biden exceeds expectations by two points.
The Washington Post, though, produced my favorite quote. Biden meanwhile,
won the Democratic primary by an even more overwhelming margin,
but thirteen percent of voters mark their ballots uncommitted, following

(41:02):
a campaign to persuade voters to not support Biden in
protest of his support for Israel and his refusal to
call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Unquote. The sentence might
have been written a month ago or a millennium ago,
and it might have been written like this Biden meanwhile,
won the Democratic primary by a fill in the blank margin,
but blank percent of voters marked their ballots blank. Following

(41:25):
a campaign to persuade voters do not support Biden. Bad news, Biden, Biden,
bad news. Read all about it, Biden, Biden, Biden, bad
bad bed. At around nine pm Tuesday night, The New
York Times had pushed out a bulletin to its digital
audience quote President Biden won the state's Democratic primary election,
but faced opposition over his gazip policy, and Donald Trump

(41:50):
easily beat Nikki Haley. Ultimately, Biden won by sixty eight
points and Trump by only forty two. The journalistic failures,
the boiler plate struck. You're designed to make sure you
show them that we are being as tough on Biden
and Democrats as we are on Trump and Republicans. They

(42:12):
cascade down upon your head, like the dust falling off
the top tier of the bookshelf when you reach up there.
The Times had another headline, reading, Biden's Israel policy prompts
democratic protest votes in Michigan primary. Well, what the hell
does that mean? Prompts democratic protest votes? How many? Four

(42:35):
four million? Something in between? It's like saying Keith Olriman
is many years old, how many twenty two hundred and
six something in between. It is this fear of telling
the truth because you will have to stay late in
the office, or that your subscriber base won't keep growing

(42:58):
at its current rate. You should be able to put
people in prison for fear like that, because fear like
that could end our democracy. It is crushing, depressing, terrifying

(43:21):
that news coverage by the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN,
countless others has actually systemically and probably permanently failed. It
is worse than just disastrous. It could easily help to
cost us representative government in this country. For it was

(43:41):
not Edmund Burke who said all that is required for
evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
But it is the people who own and operate the
New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and the others
who are proving that statement to be truth. Because as

(44:03):
evil gathers and consolidates in our country, in our cities,
in our time, Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN,
and the others, they are doing nothing. Back next with

(44:27):
two final segments with my brother from another mother, Richard
Lewis and I at the ninety second Street y in
April two thousand and eight, and a couple of days
later in a memorable appearance on Countdown on MSNBC in
which he let it all hang out politically and I
contributed what I always contributed best to his appearances. I

(44:47):
laughed my ass off as promised to close with two
of my favorite memories audio memories of my late friend
and honorary brother, Retur Lewis. Our appearance together at the

(45:07):
ninety second Street Why in New York was April twenty
seventh of two thousand and eight, and I think we
were there for two hours. This clip, which they put
together and put up on YouTube, is nearly one hundred
percent him, and as I watched it, I was reminded
that so was the two hours, and that was because

(45:29):
he was NonStop funny. And I said, what once? I
said to him, do I contribute anything to this? He said,
you're the best audience in the world. I said, you
mean because I don't interrupt you.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
You interrupt me.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
You interrupt me, Fine, you got me going in different directions. No,
you're essential to this. Richard Lewis at the ninety second
Street why April two thousand and eight, my pleasure and
honor to introduce to you my friend, the Prince of
Paine himself, Richard Lewis.

Speaker 4 (46:02):
Well, here I am.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
I've been here before. This is a very historic place.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
You know that, don't Yeah, I'm from the city.

Speaker 5 (46:07):
I did not.

Speaker 4 (46:09):
I thought you were what you were.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
I came from announcer school, so huh No. This by
the way, if you've ever have you ever anybody out
there ever had a conversation with a friend in which
there were two microphones interviewed, it's like, please speak clearly.

Speaker 4 (46:25):
Into me, like the first space shuttle, is it?

Speaker 5 (46:27):
It's like Houston, Yeah, you know, I have some friends
with scientologists. I had no idea it was religion. I
thought it was a food group, to be honest with you.
But I know people that have gotten help from it, okay,
and I know some people who are into them for
now over three hundred million dollars. But the thing is,

(46:49):
when I saw Tom Cruise say, don't you know most
of my friends take a little while future in a
little paxel. They put a little provolo and they put
it in and if it wasn't for that, they wouldn't
have They would lie in bed like this, they wouldn't
raise their children, they couldn't live, They couldn't live. That's
got that religion, el Ron whatever that the space ship,
whatever that shit is. I don't care good. And then

(47:10):
they say that therapists are Satanic. I have never seen
my shrink. Well you're a little early and stuffing his
tail and his underwear, so you know, and this is
the thing, and I'm a Jew. I pop out a Jew,
and I say this on stage a lot. And when
I open up, Bob Dylan, you know, has a line
I was born here and I'll die here against my will.

(47:30):
And I'm not quite sure when I heard it, and
I didn't understand what because it was but I'm just
heartbroken that this young country has gotten into a position
where we allowed ourselves to let a man who, you know,
who literally should just be coloring.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Run our country. So it's really bad.

Speaker 5 (48:02):
I'm off the politics, and I you know, by the way,
you know, when I started doing this shit on stage,
you know, he had like a ninety nine percent approval rating.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
Now he's you know, we discussed he's like two thank you,
thank you, and even I think his daughter come out.
You know, I can look at some democrats, you know,
so it's easy for me. I come.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
You know, even cowboys doing a poker.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Go, yeah, he sucks. Whoa.

Speaker 4 (48:26):
It's the punchline is the least of it. It's the premise.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
It's the premise.

Speaker 5 (48:31):
If you have a great premise, then the punchline just
sort of flies.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Out, you know.

Speaker 5 (48:36):
I mean, here's like an old joke. It's thirty five
years old. I you know, because the premise was and
I would write down, there's no way even though my
father was a Kosha caterer, that we were religious, as
we had pork chops on you know, Passover, you know.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
What I mean. So I wrote a j So the
joke just you know, it happens.

Speaker 5 (48:57):
You know, I have I have about thirteen hundred pages
in my computer from the last four years.

Speaker 4 (49:02):
There's millions of premises and I'll never get to them.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
But so I wrote a joke could just hit me
on a.

Speaker 5 (49:07):
Toilet or in a shower, and I wrote, yeah, we
weren't very religious. I don't know how I said. I
said something like, yeah, we have a menora on a dimmer.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
That that was the line.

Speaker 5 (49:17):
So the punchline's easy, but thinking about you know, but
it came or like my mother was so negative. I said,
you know, I bought my mother for Haneka a self
complaining of it.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
You know those kind of jokes.

Speaker 4 (49:29):
You know Larry.

Speaker 5 (49:30):
David on Curb, who has really bookended my career in
an astonishing way.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
I know him since I'm twelve. He's he's a genius.

Speaker 5 (49:38):
He's maybe the arguably the best writer of this generation.
You know, he won a Writer's Guild award two years
ago if you don't know, out West.

Speaker 4 (49:47):
For Best Sitcom Writer for Curb.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
But he only doesn't write any scripts. It's just some idea.
How mystical this guy is.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
He submitted blank pages.

Speaker 5 (49:56):
No, it's an outline, and the writers know that if
that outline isn't air tight, it's like it would be
like a souffle that would just, you know, go down.
It would be over all. The producers are watching the
monitors in some room and you have, you know, with
their headphones on. And Larry and I once had this
really big fight outside and then action and we walked

(50:17):
into the scene but talking because I'm playing myself and
he's playing himself. I'm going you know you're full of shit. Man.
You know I'm sick of pied and that cut print Goodbye.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
It was unbelievable.

Speaker 4 (50:32):
So my wife, when Joyce says, how did it go?

Speaker 1 (50:34):
I hate it?

Speaker 2 (50:35):
I mean I was still angry at the argument, and
then I see it. I don't know if it's going
to make the cut.

Speaker 4 (50:40):
But then when I watched the show, I go fantastic.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
You know, it's just like he fouled you back at
camp when you were twelve years old.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
He is so smart. He could push my buttons.

Speaker 5 (50:49):
Man.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
I mean it's like you hear those stories about you know.

Speaker 5 (50:51):
Elia Kazan making little four year old actresses cry your
dady felt.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
You know, it fell off the Chrysler building.

Speaker 5 (51:00):
Just kidding, just kidding, print, you know, but Larry pushes
my buttons. He gets what he wants and he's impeccable.
He's he's a genius, he really is, and I love him.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
I would do anything for the guy.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
I think we've gone past where we were supposed to apologize.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
No, no, no, it's me.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
I'm the one who did all.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
We're talking.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
That's true. You're you're going to sign books now.

Speaker 4 (51:26):
I don't even feel any remote obligat you know.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
I mean, I like the book. I think it's a
good read. And uh, but I didn't I came here.
I love this guy.

Speaker 4 (51:38):
I think we're very lucky to have him on the air.

Speaker 5 (51:41):
He's uh, there's I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
I'm sorry, Keith.

Speaker 5 (51:50):
You know, I you you know you you have transformed
it again. And uh, you know, and you know when
you always mentioned why you meant why you do the
Hountley Brinkley theme in the beginning and why you do
the the homage to tomorrow is because those those are
your Jonathan Winners and your mel.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Brooks and and those are your guys, you know.

Speaker 5 (52:09):
And uh, it's it's just really beautiful and and and
and it's and it's stunning to watch your your bravado
every night. And it's like no one else has comes
close if he has. If take don't take this the
wrong way. Between Shaquille's penis and your balls, we have
the perfect team to run for the on the Democratic

(52:32):
take us.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
Let's just.

Speaker 5 (52:40):
H and uh.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
On that note, I think I got to make my
exit or our exit. And I don't know the logistics
of where the signing is, but yeah, I'm just gonna
stand here.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Don't me really? Thank you for coming, and it's an
I'm gonna be with mister Alderman.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
A few days later, Richard came on Countdown on MSNBC
and it happened to be the fifth anniversary of George W.
Bush and the mission accomplished speech. We played the video
and Richard rebelled before I even got a chance to
introduce him. It's her mission accomplished, which we covered yesterday

(53:24):
in this news hour. We now arrive at day one of.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
Years six anymore.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
All right, we'll cut it off and show you instead
me now, I was promised. Richard lewis star of Curb
Your Enthusiasm.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
On Larry, I love you and good luck with Woody
and I hope you come back.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
His memoir of his triumph over addiction, The Other Great Depression,
is out in paperback with a new afterward, and he
also has a new DVD, Richard Lewis Naked. Yeah it's metaphoric.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
He survived a night.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
At New York's ninety second Street.

Speaker 5 (53:52):
Why this is a great night. Thank you my pleasure
to be there, and then thanks for that. I'm gonna
have nightmaes. Now, just getting over about of infantancy, and
now I had to hear that intro first of all.
Every time I see that thing, I'm just no, I
gotta tell you what happened, you know, because I do.
I've been doing your show forever, right, Yeah, I'm walking
up and you look. I guess I've been doing this
for thirty eight forty year, so people know me, and

(54:14):
people come on, hey, mister lewis a big fan, and
they give you a card like they I have a
new CD, or I'm a puppeteer, whatever the hell it's
I'm a mom, so the guy.

Speaker 4 (54:23):
I swear to god, this happened a half hour ago,
and I'm freaked.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
I don't care.

Speaker 5 (54:26):
Yeah, I don't care, because you knows I do countdown,
doing countdown again.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
That's right here, here's my card. If you ever need
a flak jacket, cooll me a flatjack you bring on.

Speaker 5 (54:40):
I'm a recovered alcohol that was fourteen. You bring on
those right wing that can be. I don't care, come on,
let's go, come on. Really, I'm not afraid of Anyon.
Why do they send him to all our troops, our
heroes exactly?

Speaker 1 (54:51):
Really, I just try to say, if you get some
extras we've got some people we know, confuse them.

Speaker 4 (54:55):
You can imagine a flat jacket and a triple mirror, like.

Speaker 5 (54:57):
No, no, no, yeah, yeah, they should have said, listen
when I see that thing. I am so nauseated by
this whole mission. You know, by the way, I love
a Stone's doing.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
A movie right on.

Speaker 4 (55:06):
Yes, w I pray to God and I know I
don't know.

Speaker 5 (55:09):
Well. I flew with him once when he was riding Scarface,
and I was, boy, it was quite a trip. Let
me just say that it was I'll never forget, but
I'm off the subjects and it's going to be great.

Speaker 4 (55:18):
He doesn't have to use any surreal conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
No, it's not gonna be like mixing or JF.

Speaker 5 (55:24):
No.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
No, he doesn't have to say. You know, it's like
Sharry Lewis and Lamb Chop got us to a rick.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Just show the story follow her stones w was starring
Schry Lewis and right, the Muppets.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Had nothing to do with it. It was the Neo Khan.

Speaker 5 (55:36):
It was it was seven people and now and then
McCain And mister McCain said to the mcgin, you know,
and not my friend when he does this, my friend,
Like in the very half a pope.

Speaker 4 (55:45):
I don't know what he's doing, but he's not my friend.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Half a pope.

Speaker 4 (55:48):
Well he does this exact a friend, he's not my friend.
And this whole thing with oil. Every time I follow her,
you know her, she she's so brilliant. I feel like
I feel like a jerk, you know. And look at this.

Speaker 5 (55:58):
You know I was throwing off the enterprise. I was
doing Bible studies and Captain Krook threw me off. That's
why I but he said, he said, well, we're going.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
Again for oil.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
I know we're gonna blew the secret.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
Right, he wasn't supposed to give that away. Now he would.

Speaker 4 (56:12):
It's so idiotic, and that was not that's gonna, that's gonna.
I hope that follows him forever. How he's gonna, what's
gonna say next time?

Speaker 1 (56:18):
You know?

Speaker 4 (56:18):
Now we're gonna we're gonna go to a rat now
and we can't go there.

Speaker 5 (56:21):
We can't get hershey bars, we can't get off our
tires filled.

Speaker 4 (56:25):
It's so stupid.

Speaker 5 (56:27):
If they, if they, if we elect, Look, I know
what's going on Tuesday, and I feel badly for all
you brilliant scholars and fundans. After Tuesday, because nothing's gonna change.
He said, I need, Well, it's not it's gonna be
a night you need Jackie Mason.

Speaker 4 (56:40):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (56:41):
If they don't his it's not gonna happen. And then
I got the super delegates and that it's behind them.
I mean, you should almost have him on the show
because it's gonna be that confused.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
He's the only one is not there.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Nybody else is on. It's gonna be unbelive.

Speaker 4 (56:52):
But this mission a cop. Let me tell you what happened.

Speaker 5 (56:54):
It almost ruined my marriage because my wife and I had,
you know, diehard Democrats. When he when that happens, first
of all, we were sick to our stomach. And again
I will say this again, our soldiers we mentioned it
because I had I cannot stand it when they can,
when they when they sort of convolute the fact that
this whole line and all these bush I mean, these
billions of lines, and I'm going to be long dead

(57:15):
when it all comes out, you know, and they're going
to be dead without being tried for war crimes and
all of this stuff. Okay, I'm going to be long gone,
and I wish I could come back as a ghost.
And see what really happened and read the books thirty
forty years from now.

Speaker 4 (57:27):
But when I was wh when this happened.

Speaker 5 (57:29):
But when they but the soldiers, they go because that's
what we're proud to be Americans and they and they
keep this country here.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
But they but you know, it's not their fault. They
just go. It's like Super Bowl Sunday.

Speaker 5 (57:39):
For these cats go to you know, they didn't go
to They should have gone to a forgot.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
To be all.

Speaker 4 (57:43):
It's all old news.

Speaker 5 (57:44):
But when this happened, when they when he's when he
was on that on that carrier mission accomplished. I made
you know, I mean I make love on occasion, okay,
and I have a fear of intimacy. And Bush when
he did that, and I think, I, you know, we
made love and I screamed out after I had my orgasmic.

Speaker 4 (58:01):
They should have accomplished. I screamed. Then my wife screamed,
then left the house and for a weekend.

Speaker 5 (58:07):
But because I was so aggrivate, I couldn't get it
off my mind.

Speaker 4 (58:11):
It's look, let me tell you something. I am not
paying one dime.

Speaker 5 (58:14):
I was going to tell you this last week when
when when Bush I don't know how many a couple
hundred days left, goodbye and good luck? All right, Really,
I am not you know, I don't know how much
taxes we're going to have to pay, and we're already
not you know, helping the middle class are getting screwed
by this war and the poor. I have always been disenfranchised.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
You know, you know the deal.

Speaker 5 (58:33):
But you know I am not paying a dime for
this President Bush's library, because you know it's every child
has been left behind.

Speaker 4 (58:39):
As far as I a scept rich children if they're.

Speaker 5 (58:41):
Lucky to be rich and go to private schools and
all the rest.

Speaker 2 (58:44):
But here's the deal. He doesn't read.

Speaker 5 (58:46):
You know, what could he possibly have if you like,
like a wet dream for college kids and walk in, well,
look at all these cliffs notes, unbelievable, No book, just
a lapt in, just one woman there.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
We have no books.

Speaker 5 (59:00):
You can there's an air condition room there, and there's
a comic book there, and there's a toilet said and
which it's one hundred million dollars.

Speaker 4 (59:06):
I'm not No one should give.

Speaker 5 (59:08):
Even Republicans independence, don't give a dime to that much library,
because look what he's done for these past eight years.

Speaker 4 (59:14):
I'm telling you this guy, I am so I am
so glad he's going, and I pray to.

Speaker 5 (59:18):
God the Democrats get behind whoever it is, because if
this macainue goes in and extensis for another one hundred
million years, my friends, half the pope, we're through.

Speaker 4 (59:28):
We are Listen.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
You know I heard this.

Speaker 4 (59:30):
You don't know this. I know stuff.

Speaker 5 (59:32):
When the first couple of days when Bush was president,
he thought the presidential seal was a seal, all right.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
He was waiting, he thought see was going to come in.

Speaker 4 (59:40):
He actually had a bowl of sardines.

Speaker 5 (59:43):
He did ever seen him sign a bill with crayolas
like this, when his tongue out like a kindergarten gid stopping.

Speaker 4 (59:50):
I can't stand the guy.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
He's rulling.

Speaker 4 (59:52):
He's made armor againting like one hundred years too early and.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Looking like a good option. All right.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
That's Richard Lewis dis countdown for early twenty eighth days.
It's the declaration of bentiallycomplish right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
I'm Keith Alderman.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Good Night and good luck friends. Countdown with Keith Olberman
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