May 9, 2024 • 45 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 172: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Robert F. Kennedy Junior who may turn out to be the spoiler who throws the election to Trump says under oath that his cognitive problems and short term and longer term memory loss from a worm that ate his brain and then died.
On the other OTHER hand, too early to tell if it’s an outlier or the start of the new wave, but swing state poll: Wisconsin, Quinnipiac, Registered voters: Biden 50 Trump 44. Three-way: Biden 40 Trump 39 Kennedy and his Worm, 12.
Nevertheless. I’m not confident we can stave off fascism in this country because: worms in Kennedy’s brain. AND Trump’s trial in Florida has been delayed until the twelfth of never by an unqualified judge HE appointed and his trial in Georgia has been delayed indefinitely – probably into next year - because the appeals court says it WILL listen to Trump’s appeal of the ruling that the district attorney didn’t have a financial conflict of interest just because she hired her boyfriend to work on the case (because guess what: there IS a deep state and among its constituent parts are the legal system and partisan judges and the Supreme Court and an Attorney General who will go to his grave believing the people exist to serve laws rather than laws existing to serve the people. Also, because OBAMA’s most public adviser criticized all the sex talk in the Stormy Daniels testimony and, oh by the way, WORMS IN KENNEDY’S BRAIN.
Memory loss, quote: “caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died. I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”RFK Junior, in a deposition during his divorce in 2012.
When Kennedy said I was his HERO - I KNEW something was wrong.
MEANWHILE the man who called out The New York Times for its vengeful coverage of Biden answers the Editor-in-Chief's strawman response that the paper won't become part of the Biden campaign. "In general, and this is a complaint I have had about the New York Times that is two decades old – I wish they would take good faith criticism from the left with as much seriousness as they take BAD faith criticism from the right," says Dan Pfeiffer.
B-Block (24:51) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Lobbyist Jim Courtovich (if you're going to make a threat by quoting 'The Godfather' you better make sure you get the quote right), Speaker Mike Johnson (you know "intuitively" that non-citizens are voting? Is that like I know "intuitively" that there must have been fraud in your election? No facts, just a Spidey Sense?), and Congressman Mike Collins (You think last week's racism-at-Ole-Miss tweet was disqualifying? Wait'll you see this week's joke about the JFK and RFK assassinations).
C-Block (32:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Trump mocked Lawrence O'Donnell after Tuesday's court session, so it's probably time for me to mock him. The day they finally incarcerate Joe Scarborough, O'Donnell will become the least sincere person on MSNBC. Ever seen the pilot of the old HBO show "The Newsroom"? Where the back-up tries to steal the show from the guy he's filling in for? Guess who that's actually about?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio, Good
News Everyone. Trump has ended another social media post by proclaiming,
(00:28):
give me liberty or give me death.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Deal.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
On the other hand, Robert F. Kennedy Junior, who may
turn out to be the spoiler who throws the election
to Trump, says under oath that his cognitive problems and
short term and longer term memory loss come from a
worm that ate his brain and then died. On the
other other hand, too early to tell if it's an
(00:58):
outlier or the start of the new wave, but swing
state poll Wisconsin Quinnipiac registered voters Biden fifty, Trump forty four,
the three way Biden forty, Trump thirty nine, Kennedy and
his worm twelve. Nevertheless, I am not confident we can
stave off fascism in this country because worms in Kennedy's brain,
(01:22):
and also Trump's trial in Florida has been delayed until
the twelfth of never by an unqualified judge that he appointed,
and now his trial in Georgia has been delayed indefinitely,
probably into next year, because the appeals court there says
it will listen to Trump's appeal of the ruling that
the district attorney did not have a financial conflict of
(01:42):
interest just because she hired her boyfriend to work on
the case. Because guess what. There is a deep state,
and among its constituent parts are the entirety of the
legal system and partisan judges and the Supreme Court and
a serving Attorney General who will go to his grave
believing that the people exist to serve the laws, rather
(02:03):
than the laws exist to serve the people. Also because
Obama's most public advisor criticized all the naughty talk in
the Stormy Daniel's testimony and oh, by the way, worms
in RFK Junior's brain memory loss quote caused by a
(02:25):
worm that got into my brain and ate a portion
of it and then died. I have cognitive problems. Clearly.
I have short term memory loss and I have longer
term memory loss that affects me. RFK Junior in a
deposition during his divorce in twenty twelve, in a bid
to pay less alimony, when Robert F. Kennedy Junior told
(02:50):
me I was his hero, I knew something was wrong.
Kennedy told The New York Times that he has recovered
from brain fog and memory loss, and there were no
further problems from the worm that ate his brain. Of course,
if you're like me, you may be wondering if he
(03:11):
said he had short term memory loss because of the
worm and longer term memory loss because of the worm.
You wonder if the odds aren't really good that he
just forgot about those problems caused by the worm that
ate his brain and then died. Actually, says an expert
on parasites interviewed by The Times, Once that worm moves in,
(03:33):
it's staying. You're going to basically have almost like a
tumor that's there forever, says Scott Gardner from the University
of Nebraska at Lincoln. It's not going to go anywhere.
The cells calcify around the dead worm. So Robert F.
Kennedy Junior's brain has been partially eaten by a parasite
(03:59):
which died, and then his brain created a little crypt
for it like ants tomb hey who's buried in RFK
Junior's brains tomb or or or RFK Junior's clear mental
instability and his amazing adherence to conspiracy theories is not
(04:20):
caused by his little friend WORMI who's always with him.
When the time spoke to Kennedy. Kennedy said he had
trouble retrieving words and he had quote severe brain frog
from for a long time, having eaten almost nothing but
mercury laden fish like perch and tuna. Quote I love tuna,
(04:41):
fish sandwiches. I hate them all the time. Kennedy said
he had his blood tested and the mercury was ten
times the levels the EPA considers safe. Another expert says
that another brain problem Kennedy has is far more likely
to make him act like he acts. He's been hospitalized
(05:01):
at least four times for atrial fibrillation. He said as
recently as twenty twelve, doctors used a defibrillator to reset
his heart rhythm because when it gets bad, quoting RFK
Junior again, it feels like there's a bag of worms
in my chest. This seems to be a theme. Bag
(05:21):
of worms in his chest, dead worm in his brain,
and he's positioned himself as the young, healthy candidate. Life's
a lot like that. I hope the worms like tuna.
The good news here is Kennedy's running mate, Nicole is
(05:42):
somebody who married money. She has nothing to worry about here.
No pain, no gain, but no brain, no worms. So
like the dog in the hat in the room that's
on fire, says this is fine. The Trump trial resumes
(06:03):
and you no longer have to explain which one, because
the hush money election interference won in New York is
the only one now. Trump begins the day under another
threat of contempt of court for something we didn't hear
about until long after court adjourned Tuesday, that he was
audibly cursing during the Daniels testimony. Justice Jan Mershawn handled
it during a signbar so as to not embarrass Trump.
(06:26):
And I have really bad news for the Justice and
anybody else who tries Trump now or next year or
in the distant future. You're gonna have to embarrass him
at some point. You cannot expect him to keep doing
it all by himself. Judge, call him out on this.
This is the trial. You are the judge. You are
(06:48):
the last guardrail. If he does this again, tell him
one more word out of you, and I'm finding you
in contempt and sending you to Rikers. And No, by
the way, although they'll probably give it to him, he
does not automatically get Secret Service protection in jail. The
statute revised in twenty thirteen merely says an ex president
(07:10):
can be given lifetime Secret Service protection. There isn't even
that much clarity about an active presidential candidate who goes
to jail. Still, he probably will get it, because even
I would say, if Trump gets sent to jail for
contempt of court in this case and somebody shives him,
(07:31):
it's gonna look bad. I mean, the whole question of
feeding Trump in a New York City detention facility is
gonna be trouble enough. Trump does not have a Kennedy
dead bug in his brain, but with that diet of
his I would not bet against him having a bunch
of tapeworms. Justice Meyrshawn may also have yet another gag
(07:52):
order violation. To contend with the order is explicit. Trump
can't trash the witnesses and he can't instruct anybody else
to trash them on his behalf. But Parking Lot law
genie Alina Haba went on Fox late Tuesday night and
insisted some of the testimony Tuesday quote was frankly false,
(08:12):
and that would be accusing the witnesses of perjury, and
Mershaun could easily jail Trump for that, though again he
probably won't because the area is murky, and he might
have to prove Trump ordered Habba to say something stupid,
which would be really tough considering that Habba says something
stupid pretty much all the time of her own volition.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Anyway, I can.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Fake being smart. Two more Trump trial notes to come,
but I want to circle back to two entities that
think they understand that the nation is imperiled, but a
pere to assume that the worst possible outcome is some
sort of downturn in market futures. These entities are The
New York Times and David Axelrod. David Axelrod, first, I'll
(09:08):
just read his post. I'm not a lawyer, but where
all those cringe worthy, stormy details necessary or even advisable.
I'm assuming Axelrod means the sex, the details of which
were in fact minimal. A condom, not a condom, not
(09:28):
a condom. Oh look out, David Axelrod just fainted. Nearly
all of her testimony resuming today was about the payoffs
and the non disclosure agreements and the threats and her
fears and her interviews, and for all we know, maybe
that's what Axelrod meant, because he posted his tut tutting
a mere sixteen hours after Stormy Daniels ended her first
(09:49):
day of testimony. And I didn't go through his whole feed,
but it does not look like David Axelrod reads or
responds to any replies. So his cryptic, useless, unhelpful sentence
there will remain indecipherable as Trump's trial and the Daniels
cross examination resume. However, David Axelrod is not indecipherable. He is,
(10:12):
to quote a sage, a prick. The last we heard
from him was in February, when he was still helping
the Republican age plot against Biden, still helping Trump against democracy,
telling reporters that while Trump was a gaff machine quote
because he is energetic, these questions are not as profound
(10:33):
for him, but that when Biden snapped at a CNN
question about his age, it showed he was old. And
addressing him, Axelrod said, it's the opinion of a lot
of Americans who only see you in front of a camera.
They don't see you in the situation room. They don't
see you in these closed door meetings.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
That's probably because the doors are closed. I'm just guessing.
Axelrod started this shit. Last fall. He was one of
the people who began to help the Trump campaign and
the Republicans build up the now almost forgotten acted the
State of the Union age plot, which went away, at
least according to polling, among everybody but Trump diehards. Axelrod
(11:15):
complained Biden was not doing enough interviews. Then, as the
February quote I just read suggested, he complained Biden was
doing too many interviews. In November, one year before the election,
Axelrod said Biden needed to get out or get going,
whatever the hell that means, like stormy details or stormy
(11:35):
petrels or whatever he wrote yesterday. He didn't explain that
line either, And then Biden called him a prick, and
Jonathan Martin, a politico, wrote a series of stories about this,
ending with his campaign advice that quote, if Biden thinks
the country is on the line, he should act like
it and calling David Axelrod a prick is not a
strategy to win two hundred and seventy electoral votes. And
(11:58):
you read that bit of wisdom, and you think, has
Jonathan Martin been hanging around with RFK Junior's brainworm? No,
RFK Junior's brainworm is going to be hired by CNN. Okay,
I amend my earlier comments. David Axelrod is not necessarily
a prick, but it is clear now he is a
(12:22):
one hit wonder As a political consultant. His list of
clients included Obama, Hillary, John Edwards, Chris Dodd. And that
was just for the two thousand and eight campaign. He
finally settled on Obama. He had one good, no great idea,
turn Obama's comparative inexperience from a bug into a feature
(12:43):
and call it change and make it a catch phrase
with nice pretty posters. And he's been coasting on it
ever since our CNN panel tonight, RFK Junior's brainworm and
David Axelrod back to the New York Time, and I'm
(13:05):
not going to rehash the entire self immolation by the
Paper of Record, which should amend its antidiluvian motto to
all the news that's fit to print, provided you give
us an exclusive. Just to remind you that first, a
Times reporter I actually know named Talman Smith tweeted on
February seventh, quote liberals only primarily blaming the media. When
(13:28):
was the last time Biden did an open presser or
did an on record Q and A with us, right,
thank you, We're not his pr people. It was a
shocking revelation inside the Times mindset that this is not
about preserving democracy. We're just being a newspaper. It's about
(13:48):
whether or not the president does a Q and a
with the New York Times. Then last month, the former
Obama stafford Dan Pfeiffer criticized The Times on the whole
save democracy thing, and then Sunday Times Editor in chief
Joe Kahn answered Pfeiffer at Semaphore News, who turned his
flea on behalf of you know, not having a dictatorship
(14:09):
and dismissed it as some kind of demand by the
Biden side that the Times become quote an instrument of
the Biden campaign. Cohn made the rather terrifying assertion that quote,
it's our job to cover the full range of issues
that people have at the moment. Democracy is one of them,
but it's not the top one. Immigration happens to be
(14:30):
the top, and the economy and inflation is the second.
Should we stop covering those things because they're favorable to
Trump and minimize them. The more I have thought about
that part of the Marie antoinetteesh answer from the Times
editor in chief, the more I have thought they should
have fired Jocon on the spot, and not even primarily
(14:52):
because jo Con seems to be unaware that his paper
and all papers, and all the freedom of the press,
and all of American democracy and his personal freedom are
at sta in this election, and instead he's being a
snotty schoolboy about it. But rather he should be fired
because that one answer he gave happens to reek of
(15:15):
a really really bad reporter or editor or copyboy. Nobody said,
don't cover all issues. Nobody said become an instrument of
the Biden campaign. All you were critiqued about was your
utter inability to get over yourself. The President of the
United States does not have to give you an interview,
or give one to the Post or the Wall Street Journal.
(15:38):
It's not a test of his fitness. And you should
not be permitted to revenge yourself against him because he
didn't do the interview. Your belief that you count in
that way, like the goddamn Times is its own supreme court.
God help us. That's a test of your fitness, not his,
(16:02):
and you failed that test. Mister Pfeiffer, whose comments escalated.
This has now written in a similar vein to what
I just said. He reminds mister Kahn that he did
not ask the Times to become propaganda just to worry
more about the stakes than the horse race, and to
quote specifically call out the threat that is a second
(16:22):
Trump presidency in general, he writes, and this is a
complaint I have had about the New York Times that
is two decades old. I wish they would take good
faith criticism from the left with as much seriousness as
they take bad faith criticism from the right. Unquote exactly
the Times response not yet upper left hand corner of
(16:44):
the website yesterday. Green moves to oust Johnson and House
Republicans clash with public school leaders over anti semitism, claims
upper right hand corner.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Of the Times website yesterday.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Why are we obsessed with breasts? Hey? Now there's a
segue back to Trump. Two postscripts in this segue about
social media posts, Trump complained that Tuesday's testimony did not
include any kind of smoking gun, only he spelled it
(17:17):
smocking smockig smocking gun. Are we sure about him? In worms?
And then the first post in I don't know how
long about which I am conflicted. At ten fifty seven
pm Tuesday night, quote, I spotted Ratings challenged Lawrence O'Donnell
(17:43):
of MSDNC in the courthouse today. I haven't seen him
in years. He looks like shit, a real loser. Firstly,
O'Donnell looks like shit. Look, this is urgent rumors of
a Trump financial crisis must be true. Therefore we must
buy Donald Trump a mirror. Then the other side of
(18:06):
the story. This next part was submitted by a friend who,
like me, once worked with and got worked over by
Lawrence O'Donnell, who, when Joe Scarborough is finally incarcerated, will
be the least sincere person on that network. The author
is anonymous, but he has written it as Lawrence O'Donnell, who,
(18:27):
I can assure you has only ever been anonymous when
he's called conservatives to leak stuff to them, to undercut
his colleagues at MSNBC. The impression of his voice is,
I would say, mediocre, but unavoidable under the circumstances. E
ah not every former chief of staff for Senator Daniel
(18:49):
Patrick moynihan, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, the most
powerful legislative committee in history, turned Emmy nominated writer performer
on Aaron Sorkin's landmark series The West Wing, turned cable
news guest in the medium's nascent stages, turned commander of
the ten PM Eastern time slot. Is immediately recognizable by
(19:12):
former presidents of the United States, but I happened to be,
which reminds me of the time I found myself playing
miniature golf on Martha's Vineyard with former R and C
chairman Haley Barber, former Ronald Reagan's speechwriter Peggy Noonan, longtime
Kennedy confidant Pierre Salinger, and the fifth of Charlie's Angels,
(19:35):
Shelley Hack. Went up to the first tea at this
particular Martha's Vineyard mini golf course, stepped Senator Orn Hatch
of Utah and his companion Loretta Switt hot Lips Hulahan
from the CBS television version of Mash m Star Astar
(19:56):
s Star h Thank you, my anonymous friend. You left
out that before he played mini golf, Lawrence was, no doubt,
just back from dinner with an actress who was half
of half his age. Also of interest here not yet
(20:18):
finished with Lawrence O'Donnell. Plus you can make jokes about
Robert F. Kennedy Junior's brain where I'm I mean, he
brought it up under oath as an excuse for why
I didn't have to fay so much alimony, So it
is fair game. But you know what, you congressman over there,
you probably shouldn't make a joke in which you link
(20:40):
it to his father's assassination or his uncle the President's assassination.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
That's next. This is Countdown.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
This is Countdown, with Keith Olberman still ahead of us
(21:17):
on this editiontive Countdown. Well, Trump brought him up, and
then I brought him up, and then my anonymous friend
brought him up. So why not let me tell you
about the day Lawrence O'Donnell was eating lunch on the
sidewalk right outside my apartment building and he suddenly admitted
that he and the others crashed MSNBC, and I almost
(21:37):
forgave him were trying to steal Countdown from me while
I was on leave taking care of my dying father,
but I didn't things I promised not to tell ahead
and it includes another Aaron Sorkins story, But first, as ever,
there are still more new idiots to talk about. The
daily roundup of the miscrants, morons, and dunning Krugriffet specimens
(21:58):
who constitute two days worst persons in the world worser
some guy named Jim Kortovich. Jim Kortovich is identified by
The New York Times as the high flying lobbyist spin
doctor for the Saudi's Kataris, et cetera. And he is
(22:19):
apparently mentioned in a new book called The Wolves of
k Street, which is about lobbyists, especially Republicans, like this
guy at korta blitch or whatever his name is. The
authors reported that a client was suing this man, and
they excerpted that part of their book in Politico and
they added this quote. Before our book went to press,
(22:39):
we reached out to Kordovich for comment. He responded by
text and email with the swagger he's become known for quote,
I'm coming after you full guns, and that's why I
live where I do and why you live where you do.
We are going to the mattress, and like everything in
my life, I will win. Uh. It's it's mattresses. We
(23:07):
are going to the mattresses, not we are going to
the mattress. Famous line from the Godfather about the mafia
families going through all out war is we go to
the mattresses, as in, we'll have to have so many
people fighting, we have to get a secret location to
house them all, and we all have to find dozens
of new mattresses for them. Saying we are going to
(23:28):
the mattress sounds like wow, it sounds like you only
have the one mattress, and like you didn't really watch
The Godfather, which means you'll soon be sleeping with the fishes.
The runner up worser speaker Mike Johnson, Just when you
thought he might not be a total Trump whore, he
(23:50):
stood on the side of January sixth, in front of
scumbags like Cleta Mitchell and Steven Miller, and I think
there was one person in the pink pants suit. In
the back there was beetlejuice. And Johnson explained why the
House wants to make it illegal for non citizens to
vote in federal elections, given that you know it already
is illegal for non citizens to vote in federal elections.
(24:12):
Ugly little Johnson said, with an actual smirk and laugh,
we all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are
voting in federal elections, but it's not been something that's
easily provable. We don't have that number, unquote. Actually we
do have that number, and we all know intuitively that
Republicans foster this distrust in reality and law so they
(24:33):
can blame their losses on imaginary threats like massive illegal voting,
when time and time again, the only people even accused
of illegally voting turn out to be Republicans. And by
the way, Mike, about your election to the House, you
won by less than forty one thousand votes. We all
know intuitively that even the people of Louisiana aren't that
stupid to have elected a slick, slimy homophobe who we
(24:57):
all know intuitively seems to protest a little too much.
So we all know intuitively that election must have featured
some e What was that number, Mike, We don't have
that intuitively number? Intuitively do we? On? Congratulations on surviving
the latest attempt by your own party to fire you,
(25:17):
to vacate the chair yesterday? Why when the Republicans do
this do I always think of vacate in its gastro
intestinal sense, But our winner the worst Why it's Mike
Johnson's fellow Republican Congressman Mike Mike Collins of Georgia. Last week,
(25:38):
he tweeted out a video of the racist student at
the University of Mississippi making monkey gestures at a protester
who happened to be an African American woman. He put
our tee on it that read something like ole miss
doing the job, getting the job done. Well. That's when
some of his donors, like a little company called Coca Cola,
(25:58):
began to take heat and give heat about Collins's endorsement
of you Know Over nineteen fifty eight style racism on tape. Well,
Mike Collins of this week saw Mike Collins of last
week and said, hold my racist beer. Yesterday afternoon, long
(26:19):
after the RFK junior brainworm story had spread nationally, Mike
Collins returned to Twitter x and wroach quote, you either
die a Kennedy with a hole in the brain or
live long enough to become a Kennedy with a hole
in the brain. As I said earlier, RFK Junior's worm
(26:42):
is fair game. He brought it up, and he brought
it up so he didn't have to pay a lot
of alimony, but to turn it into a joke about
the assassination of President Kennedy and Senator Kennedy, both shot
through the brain, and not just two of the most
traumatic events in American history, but two of its gloriousts.
This shows that this scumbag Mike Collins has somehow managed
(27:04):
to dishonor both the House Freedom Caucus and his family
ancestral home of Butts County, Georgia, Congressman Mike Collins. Hey, Mike,
you've lucked out here. You don't even have a brain.
We can make jokes about two days, worst person and
the world. Now to the number one story on the
(27:43):
countdown in my favorite topic, me and Things I promised
not to tell. Early on the afternoon of Monday, May
twenty third, twenty sixteen, I bounced out of my New
York City apartment building, began to walk past the tourist
trap brunch spot in the lobby, and froze there at
one of the cramped outdoor tables stare up at me
(28:05):
in blank surprise. That must have matched my own staring
down at him in blank surprise. Was Lawrence O'Donnell. I
decided to go silly. Hey, get out of my house,
he laughed, I laughed. It didn't seem forced. He introduced
me to his companion, his daughter. This my dear is
Keith Ulderman. Keith started us all at MSNBC, and then
(28:29):
he left, and and here Lawrence gave one of his
long pauses, and we crashed it. I wanted to be generous,
I started to politely contradict him, and I just couldn't
do it. M yeah, pretty much anyway, About thirty seconds
of courteous nothingness followed, and I wish the O'Donnell's well,
(28:51):
and then I left. It was the most pleasant experience
I ever had with Lawrence O'Donnell. In fact, it might
have been the only pleasant experience I ever had with
Lawrence O'Donnell. After I finally convinced and bullied and blackmailed
MSNBC management into letting Rachel Meadow become the regular guest
host for my show, and she aced it and then
(29:12):
rightly got her own show, and she aced that and
became a star. I went looking for a new guest host.
My first idea was a frequent guest we had named
Chris Hayes. I didn't get far. Management had its own
idea and my input was not required. They wanted former
Vermont governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean. And Howard
(29:34):
is a really smart guy and great on TV. But
Howard had a bit of a teleprompter problem. One of
my producers swears that Howard once read Good Evening, I'm
Howard Dean for her, governor of Vermont. This is countdown.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I do know.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Whatever he did on the air, it was bad enough
that one week when I was off and at the
Baseball Hall of Fame in Coopertown, New York, and a
baseball news story broke and he was filling in for me.
My producers called me there and asked me to come
on from the streets of Cooperstown and be a guest
on my own show, just to help Howard Dean out. Anyway.
(30:14):
Their next idea was a guy who had been kicking
around MSNBC since its founding in nineteen ninety six. Lawrence
O'Donnell was one of the original MSNBC Friends, The MSNBC Friends,
political pundits who sat on clearstools at a clear table
or in a set designed to look like a booth
(30:34):
at a coffee shop. No, I'm not making this up.
Among the friends were An Colter and Laura Ingram, if
you can believe it, once or twice an hour, the
rather CNN, like all news coverage on MSNBC in its
first couple of years, would pause and three or more
of these friends would appear, chew over the MSNBC headlines,
(31:00):
and then disappear. Lawrence O'Donnell was one of the friends.
It was as bad as it sounds. Then Lawrence O'Donnell
pretty much disappeared. You would see him on MSNBC as
a guest every once in a while, but mostly he
pursued his acting and producing career. He played President Bartlett's
(31:20):
father on the West Wing, the one who beat him
throughout college. Lawrence was very convincing, and then around two
thousand and eight, we started getting pressure to bring him
in as a guest on Countdown, like once a week
or twice a week. I was not sure what that
was all about, but he had been a Senate staffer
and he knew the healthcare debate and other wonky stuff
(31:41):
pretty well, so I gave my assent for whatever that
was worth. Not long after that, Lawrence came into my office.
He really needed my support, he said, to get him
more involved in MSNBC. He knew I had gone to
bat for Rachel, and before her, I'd gone to bat
for Tom Brokaw, and for people like Chuck Todd and
Chris Hayes and others who are now getting steady incomes
(32:02):
from NBC. I don't remember his argument on his own behalf.
I do remember I didn't have much of a reason
to say no, and he wasn't asking me to do
a lot, so I said yes. The next thing I knew,
I was reading a memo announcing that Lawrence O'Donnell had
been appointed as the new full time guest host of Countdown.
This was in the winter of two thousand and nine
(32:25):
twenty ten, when my late dad was fighting so valiantly
to stay alive after colon cancer and more importantly, a
series of infections. Dad had the immune system of an alien.
The average white cell count in a healthy adult is
between four thousand and eleven thousand. One night, Dad's was
at thirty three thousand, and the doctors told me to
(32:45):
prepare to make the call to let him go. They
had one antibiotic left to try on him. The next morning,
Dad's white cell count, which had been thirty three thousand,
was eight thousand, onward he fought. Unfortunately, he was eighty
years old and he had not exerc since Harry Truman
(33:06):
was president, and eventually he ran out of Houdini tricks.
I had been visiting him twice a day for six
months while still doing Countdown and the NBC Sunday Night
Football Show. But now, as it hit late February of
twenty ten, his bright days became fewer and farther in between,
and the hope that was propelling me to keep being
his full time caregiver and Countdown's full time host both
(33:29):
began to fade. In the last two weeks of my
dad's life, as the doctors tried all the long shot things,
I asked MSNBC for a leave of absence. Finally the
inevitability became inarguable, and we let Dad go. On Saturday,
March thirteenth, twenty ten. My sister held his hand and
I read him his favorite Thurber story, and as soon
(33:50):
as I finished it, he exhaled deeply and peacefully, and
he died. I think I took another week off, maybe two,
and I vaguely recall emails from friends at Countdown that
I may have paid passing the time attention to, but
I really didn't. Most of the staff, including people who
came up from Washington, like Howard Feynman or Gene Robinson
(34:13):
of the Washington Post, always friends to me. They attended
my dad's memorial service. I believe Lawrence o'donald, who was
of course filling in for me on Countdown, was there too,
but maybe not, I do not remember. And then came
the day when I went back to the office full
time and my assistant grabbed me both hands on my wrist.
(34:35):
You did not answer my emails, she said, with a
fervency she rarely exhibited. For God's sake, do not ever
leave me alone with Laurence O'Donnell again, I snapped back
to attention. Had he, you know, bothered her? Not that way,
she said, But he's a son of a bitch. He
treats me and everybody who was in a producer here
(34:55):
like dirt. And since you didn't read my emails, I
just have to tell you this. He's trying to get
you fired so he can take over Countdown. And if
you think he's nuts, one of your scene producers is
in on it too with him. I have to admit,
even now, of all the things I went through at
that very very strange place MSNBC. Even now, this story
(35:19):
still shocks me. The senior producers of Countdown consisted of
a guy who'd been a producer who booked satellite transmissions
for MSNBC until I asked that he'd be promoted, and
one was a guest booker for the daytime shows until
I asked that she be promoted. Another was a line
producer who was well regarded only for his ability to
(35:40):
time a show until I asked for him to be promoted.
And then there was the old friend of mine who
had been blown out of ESPN in a sexual harassment
porn link email scandal and was headed back to college
to start his career all over again until I asked
that he'd be hired and then promoted. I did some
digging and I was going to confront O'Donnell about it
(36:00):
when somebody told me he had tweeted something negative about
me and about count So I got a hold of
him and I said, this did not seem to be
in keeping with MSNBC traditions and rules, you know, the
ones about not peeing inside the tent. And he said,
what do you know about MSNBC? Traditions. I've been here
since nineteen ninety six. I never left and came back.
(36:22):
So I went to my boss, the president of the network,
Phil Griffin, the one who would not hire Rachel Meadow,
and before I could say they'd have to get rid
of him, Griffin said it was all academic. They were
preparing the press release as we spoke for Lawrence's new
show at ten o'clock called The Last Word, and oh,
by the way, Keith, two of your senior producers are
going with him to run his show. If this sounds
(36:45):
vaguely familiar to you, it is the plot of the
pilot for the old Aaron Sorkin HBO series Newsroom. I
was still friendly with Aaron then, so he actually asked.
As I related this to him in real time in
emails and phone calls, he asked if he could use
it in the plot, rather than just what he often did,
(37:06):
which was to use it without asking. The problem was
none of this made any sense in the real world,
although it made a pretty good pilot for Aaron Sorkin.
In going into the ten PM slot, Lawrence O'Donnell would
be replacing a rerun of Countdown, and even if O'Donnell
did much better in the ratings, much much better. There
was no way it could ever make enough money to
(37:29):
make the move make sense. O'Donnell's new show would necessarily
cost MSNBC between ten and fifteen million dollars to produce
every year. Didn't have anything to do with him. That
was the cost. The Countdown rerun cost, not ten fifteen
million dollars a year. It count however much they paid
the guy who pushed the play button that fired up
(37:52):
the videotape of the Countdown replay amortized. Later that day,
a sympathetic NBC executive called me up and explained the
move to me. First, Griffin was convinced O'Donnell was about
to leave us and sign with CNN. I said, well,
that's a good idea for everybody involved except CNN. Turned
(38:16):
out CNN had not even talked to him, but Griffin
did not know that. More importantly, Comcast had already finalized
its agreement to buy NBC effective the following January, and
as part of the deal, they were entitled to review
what all the executives in the company had done, and
they had already looked at MSNBC President Phil Griffin and
discovered he had never done anything in panic. Griffin told
(38:39):
colleagues he had to launch a new show of his
own immediately. This is the series Aaron Sorkin should have made.
As to the producers who left my show to go
with O'Donnell while my father was dying, one of them
told me a couple of years after she left MSNBC
for the last time, every day when I went into
(39:01):
that Last Word office, I realized you were getting your
revenge on me without even having to lift a finger.
Lots of people I've worked with, probably a majority of
people i've helped, have behaved like Lawrence O'Donnell, because, remember
it's television. It is a mental illness. The comparatively healthy
people are the ones who acknowledge it's a mental illness.
(39:24):
But Lawrence O'Donnell was something special. A year before my
dad died, almost to the day, in fact, I was
in Los Angeles appearing on Bill Maher's show, and one
of the other guests that night was the actress Carrie Washington.
She was very nice to me, very sweet, a very
big fan, and she asked to stay in touch. Sure enough,
(39:44):
after my father died, after the memorial. After I was
back at work, I had to go to his house
for the first time since he had passed away. It
was about as much fun as it sounds. In the
car on the way back into New York City. The
solemnity of it. Both my parents died within eleven months
of each other. It really hit me for some reason
(40:05):
for the first time, full force, and I was about
to lose it when the car approached a billboard overlooking
the West Sidne Highway in New York City. And whose
big smiling face was on the ad on that billboard,
Carrie Washington. And it flashed me right back to her
kindness in la and it helped me overcome this bump
(40:25):
in my mourning. So I wanted to drop her a note,
nothing big, nothing suggestive. I wasn't hinting at asking her out.
Just you never know how you might help somebody in
a time of crisis. Thanks for letting me smile. That
was the whole message. I asked my assistant to figure
out how to get it to her, and that was
(40:46):
the end of it, except a week later, the fact
that I wrote her a note wound up in a
column written by an colter. I was astonished how why,
and Colter it was her usual the brain doesn't quite
(41:07):
work right kind of stuff. She implied, I was hitting
on Kerry Washington and said how stupid I had to
be to not realize she was involved with somebody, and
on and on and on, no mention of my father's passing,
or the mar show or the billboard or her smiling face.
I went back to my assistant and I said, hey,
what on earth did you do with that note to
(41:28):
Carrie Washington? And she said, oh, I gave it to
this Lawrence O'Donnell guy. And I said, good God, why
did you do that? And she said, well, he's dating
Carrie Washington. I thought you knew that. I thought that's
why you asked me to get.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
It to her.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
So it wasn't hard to figure out from there. Lawrence
had called his old friend from the old MSNBC Friends
of nineteen ninety six and Colter and told her about
the note, inventing whatever motive his jealous little mind could
dream up. It should have gotten him fired from NBC,
but unfortunately his boss was just as much of a
fourteen year old emotionally as he was. And meanwhile, I
(42:08):
had decided to get out of MSNBC anyway when the
time was ripe. As it turned out, it ripened in
January twenty eleven. I've told that story in other episodes,
like sixty of them. It's kind of complicated, and since
nobody ever actually asked me why Countdown the TV show ended,
I've probably got another sixty episodes worth of information about
that anyway in twenty fifteen, since repeatedly over the following
(42:34):
ten years, there were overtures by both sides to bring
Countdown and Me back to MSNBC. In twenty fifteen during
the World Series, in fact, the then president of NBC News,
Andy Lack, asked me to come back and do a
new show at MSNBC and move to Los Angeles and
have a co host, a conservative, and not do any commentaries.
(42:56):
And actually this new show is somehow less appealing than
it sounds. But the punchline of all punchlines is contained
in what Lack wanted to all my new twenty fifteen
MSNBC show that never was. It tells you all you
really need to know about the last word with Lawrence
O'Donnell and MSNBC and O'Donnell's place in TV history at
(43:17):
its demise and the end of MSNBC. NBC new president
Lack was brimming with enthusiasm about this name that he
had come up with for my new show, how Good
the perfect title. Lack told me, we're gonna call it
The Last Word with Keith Olberman, and I didn't laugh
(43:37):
for guffaw. I just said, Andy, you have a show
called the Last Word The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.
Andy Lack now laughed, huh, hopefully not for much longer.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown Musical directors Brian Ray and John
Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and
mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, and it was produced
by Tko Brothers and not by Aaron Sorkin. Other music,
including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by
(44:26):
the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the
Ulbriman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis
courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else
was pretty much my fault, and later it will be
(44:47):
Aaron Sorkins. That's countdown for this the one hundred and
eighty first day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
and the two hundred and twentieth day since Dictator Jay
Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of
the United States. Use the justice system, use the mental
health system, use the not regularly given elector objection option,
(45:10):
use if it happens, presidential immunity to stop him from
doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news warrants until then,
I'm Keith Ouldreman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(45:48):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio, Good
News Everyone. Trump has ended another social media post by proclaiming,
(00:28):
give me liberty or give me death.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Deal.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
On the other hand, Robert F. Kennedy Junior, who may
turn out to be the spoiler who throws the election
to Trump, says under oath that his cognitive problems and
short term and longer term memory loss come from a
worm that ate his brain and then died. On the
other other hand, too early to tell if it's an
(00:58):
outlier or the start of the new wave, but swing
state poll Wisconsin Quinnipiac registered voters Biden fifty, Trump forty four,
the three way Biden forty, Trump thirty nine, Kennedy and
his worm twelve. Nevertheless, I am not confident we can
stave off fascism in this country because worms in Kennedy's brain,
(01:22):
and also Trump's trial in Florida has been delayed until
the twelfth of never by an unqualified judge that he appointed,
and now his trial in Georgia has been delayed indefinitely,
probably into next year, because the appeals court there says
it will listen to Trump's appeal of the ruling that
the district attorney did not have a financial conflict of
(01:42):
interest just because she hired her boyfriend to work on
the case. Because guess what. There is a deep state,
and among its constituent parts are the entirety of the
legal system and partisan judges and the Supreme Court and
a serving Attorney General who will go to his grave
believing that the people exist to serve the laws, rather
(02:03):
than the laws exist to serve the people. Also because
Obama's most public advisor criticized all the naughty talk in
the Stormy Daniel's testimony and oh, by the way, worms
in RFK Junior's brain memory loss quote caused by a
(02:25):
worm that got into my brain and ate a portion
of it and then died. I have cognitive problems. Clearly.
I have short term memory loss and I have longer
term memory loss that affects me. RFK Junior in a
deposition during his divorce in twenty twelve, in a bid
to pay less alimony, when Robert F. Kennedy Junior told
(02:50):
me I was his hero, I knew something was wrong.
Kennedy told The New York Times that he has recovered
from brain fog and memory loss, and there were no
further problems from the worm that ate his brain. Of course,
if you're like me, you may be wondering if he
(03:11):
said he had short term memory loss because of the
worm and longer term memory loss because of the worm.
You wonder if the odds aren't really good that he
just forgot about those problems caused by the worm that
ate his brain and then died. Actually, says an expert
on parasites interviewed by The Times, Once that worm moves in,
(03:33):
it's staying. You're going to basically have almost like a
tumor that's there forever, says Scott Gardner from the University
of Nebraska at Lincoln. It's not going to go anywhere.
The cells calcify around the dead worm. So Robert F.
Kennedy Junior's brain has been partially eaten by a parasite
(03:59):
which died, and then his brain created a little crypt
for it like ants tomb hey who's buried in RFK
Junior's brains tomb or or or RFK Junior's clear mental
instability and his amazing adherence to conspiracy theories is not
(04:20):
caused by his little friend WORMI who's always with him.
When the time spoke to Kennedy. Kennedy said he had
trouble retrieving words and he had quote severe brain frog
from for a long time, having eaten almost nothing but
mercury laden fish like perch and tuna. Quote I love tuna,
(04:41):
fish sandwiches. I hate them all the time. Kennedy said
he had his blood tested and the mercury was ten
times the levels the EPA considers safe. Another expert says
that another brain problem Kennedy has is far more likely
to make him act like he acts. He's been hospitalized
(05:01):
at least four times for atrial fibrillation. He said as
recently as twenty twelve, doctors used a defibrillator to reset
his heart rhythm because when it gets bad, quoting RFK
Junior again, it feels like there's a bag of worms
in my chest. This seems to be a theme. Bag
(05:21):
of worms in his chest, dead worm in his brain,
and he's positioned himself as the young, healthy candidate. Life's
a lot like that. I hope the worms like tuna.
The good news here is Kennedy's running mate, Nicole is
(05:42):
somebody who married money. She has nothing to worry about here.
No pain, no gain, but no brain, no worms. So
like the dog in the hat in the room that's
on fire, says this is fine. The Trump trial resumes
(06:03):
and you no longer have to explain which one, because
the hush money election interference won in New York is
the only one now. Trump begins the day under another
threat of contempt of court for something we didn't hear
about until long after court adjourned Tuesday, that he was
audibly cursing during the Daniels testimony. Justice Jan Mershawn handled
it during a signbar so as to not embarrass Trump.
(06:26):
And I have really bad news for the Justice and
anybody else who tries Trump now or next year or
in the distant future. You're gonna have to embarrass him
at some point. You cannot expect him to keep doing
it all by himself. Judge, call him out on this.
This is the trial. You are the judge. You are
(06:48):
the last guardrail. If he does this again, tell him
one more word out of you, and I'm finding you
in contempt and sending you to Rikers. And No, by
the way, although they'll probably give it to him, he
does not automatically get Secret Service protection in jail. The
statute revised in twenty thirteen merely says an ex president
(07:10):
can be given lifetime Secret Service protection. There isn't even
that much clarity about an active presidential candidate who goes
to jail. Still, he probably will get it, because even
I would say, if Trump gets sent to jail for
contempt of court in this case and somebody shives him,
(07:31):
it's gonna look bad. I mean, the whole question of
feeding Trump in a New York City detention facility is
gonna be trouble enough. Trump does not have a Kennedy
dead bug in his brain, but with that diet of
his I would not bet against him having a bunch
of tapeworms. Justice Meyrshawn may also have yet another gag
(07:52):
order violation. To contend with the order is explicit. Trump
can't trash the witnesses and he can't instruct anybody else
to trash them on his behalf. But Parking Lot law
genie Alina Haba went on Fox late Tuesday night and
insisted some of the testimony Tuesday quote was frankly false,
(08:12):
and that would be accusing the witnesses of perjury, and
Mershaun could easily jail Trump for that, though again he
probably won't because the area is murky, and he might
have to prove Trump ordered Habba to say something stupid,
which would be really tough considering that Habba says something
stupid pretty much all the time of her own volition.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Anyway, I can.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Fake being smart. Two more Trump trial notes to come,
but I want to circle back to two entities that
think they understand that the nation is imperiled, but a
pere to assume that the worst possible outcome is some
sort of downturn in market futures. These entities are The
New York Times and David Axelrod. David Axelrod, first, I'll
(09:08):
just read his post. I'm not a lawyer, but where
all those cringe worthy, stormy details necessary or even advisable.
I'm assuming Axelrod means the sex, the details of which
were in fact minimal. A condom, not a condom, not
(09:28):
a condom. Oh look out, David Axelrod just fainted. Nearly
all of her testimony resuming today was about the payoffs
and the non disclosure agreements and the threats and her
fears and her interviews, and for all we know, maybe
that's what Axelrod meant, because he posted his tut tutting
a mere sixteen hours after Stormy Daniels ended her first
(09:49):
day of testimony. And I didn't go through his whole feed,
but it does not look like David Axelrod reads or
responds to any replies. So his cryptic, useless, unhelpful sentence
there will remain indecipherable as Trump's trial and the Daniels
cross examination resume. However, David Axelrod is not indecipherable. He is,
(10:12):
to quote a sage, a prick. The last we heard
from him was in February, when he was still helping
the Republican age plot against Biden, still helping Trump against democracy,
telling reporters that while Trump was a gaff machine quote
because he is energetic, these questions are not as profound
(10:33):
for him, but that when Biden snapped at a CNN
question about his age, it showed he was old. And
addressing him, Axelrod said, it's the opinion of a lot
of Americans who only see you in front of a camera.
They don't see you in the situation room. They don't
see you in these closed door meetings.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Dave.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
That's probably because the doors are closed. I'm just guessing.
Axelrod started this shit. Last fall. He was one of
the people who began to help the Trump campaign and
the Republicans build up the now almost forgotten acted the
State of the Union age plot, which went away, at
least according to polling, among everybody but Trump diehards. Axelrod
(11:15):
complained Biden was not doing enough interviews. Then, as the
February quote I just read suggested, he complained Biden was
doing too many interviews. In November, one year before the election,
Axelrod said Biden needed to get out or get going,
whatever the hell that means, like stormy details or stormy
(11:35):
petrels or whatever he wrote yesterday. He didn't explain that
line either, And then Biden called him a prick, and
Jonathan Martin, a politico, wrote a series of stories about this,
ending with his campaign advice that quote, if Biden thinks
the country is on the line, he should act like
it and calling David Axelrod a prick is not a
strategy to win two hundred and seventy electoral votes. And
(11:58):
you read that bit of wisdom, and you think, has
Jonathan Martin been hanging around with RFK Junior's brainworm? No,
RFK Junior's brainworm is going to be hired by CNN. Okay,
I amend my earlier comments. David Axelrod is not necessarily
a prick, but it is clear now he is a
(12:22):
one hit wonder As a political consultant. His list of
clients included Obama, Hillary, John Edwards, Chris Dodd. And that
was just for the two thousand and eight campaign. He
finally settled on Obama. He had one good, no great idea,
turn Obama's comparative inexperience from a bug into a feature
(12:43):
and call it change and make it a catch phrase
with nice pretty posters. And he's been coasting on it
ever since our CNN panel tonight, RFK Junior's brainworm and
David Axelrod back to the New York Time, and I'm
(13:05):
not going to rehash the entire self immolation by the
Paper of Record, which should amend its antidiluvian motto to
all the news that's fit to print, provided you give
us an exclusive. Just to remind you that first, a
Times reporter I actually know named Talman Smith tweeted on
February seventh, quote liberals only primarily blaming the media. When
(13:28):
was the last time Biden did an open presser or
did an on record Q and A with us, right,
thank you, We're not his pr people. It was a
shocking revelation inside the Times mindset that this is not
about preserving democracy. We're just being a newspaper. It's about
(13:48):
whether or not the president does a Q and a
with the New York Times. Then last month, the former
Obama stafford Dan Pfeiffer criticized The Times on the whole
save democracy thing, and then Sunday Times Editor in chief
Joe Kahn answered Pfeiffer at Semaphore News, who turned his
flea on behalf of you know, not having a dictatorship
(14:09):
and dismissed it as some kind of demand by the
Biden side that the Times become quote an instrument of
the Biden campaign. Cohn made the rather terrifying assertion that quote,
it's our job to cover the full range of issues
that people have at the moment. Democracy is one of them,
but it's not the top one. Immigration happens to be
(14:30):
the top, and the economy and inflation is the second.
Should we stop covering those things because they're favorable to
Trump and minimize them. The more I have thought about
that part of the Marie antoinetteesh answer from the Times
editor in chief, the more I have thought they should
have fired Jocon on the spot, and not even primarily
(14:52):
because jo Con seems to be unaware that his paper
and all papers, and all the freedom of the press,
and all of American democracy and his personal freedom are
at sta in this election, and instead he's being a
snotty schoolboy about it. But rather he should be fired
because that one answer he gave happens to reek of
(15:15):
a really really bad reporter or editor or copyboy. Nobody said,
don't cover all issues. Nobody said become an instrument of
the Biden campaign. All you were critiqued about was your
utter inability to get over yourself. The President of the
United States does not have to give you an interview,
or give one to the Post or the Wall Street Journal.
(15:38):
It's not a test of his fitness. And you should
not be permitted to revenge yourself against him because he
didn't do the interview. Your belief that you count in
that way, like the goddamn Times is its own supreme court.
God help us. That's a test of your fitness, not his,
(16:02):
and you failed that test. Mister Pfeiffer, whose comments escalated.
This has now written in a similar vein to what
I just said. He reminds mister Kahn that he did
not ask the Times to become propaganda just to worry
more about the stakes than the horse race, and to
quote specifically call out the threat that is a second
(16:22):
Trump presidency in general, he writes, and this is a
complaint I have had about the New York Times that
is two decades old. I wish they would take good
faith criticism from the left with as much seriousness as
they take bad faith criticism from the right. Unquote exactly
the Times response not yet upper left hand corner of
(16:44):
the website yesterday. Green moves to oust Johnson and House
Republicans clash with public school leaders over anti semitism, claims
upper right hand corner.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Of the Times website yesterday.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Why are we obsessed with breasts? Hey? Now there's a
segue back to Trump. Two postscripts in this segue about
social media posts, Trump complained that Tuesday's testimony did not
include any kind of smoking gun, only he spelled it
(17:17):
smocking smockig smocking gun. Are we sure about him? In worms?
And then the first post in I don't know how
long about which I am conflicted. At ten fifty seven
pm Tuesday night, quote, I spotted Ratings challenged Lawrence O'Donnell
(17:43):
of MSDNC in the courthouse today. I haven't seen him
in years. He looks like shit, a real loser. Firstly,
O'Donnell looks like shit. Look, this is urgent rumors of
a Trump financial crisis must be true. Therefore we must
buy Donald Trump a mirror. Then the other side of
(18:06):
the story. This next part was submitted by a friend who,
like me, once worked with and got worked over by
Lawrence O'Donnell, who, when Joe Scarborough is finally incarcerated, will
be the least sincere person on that network. The author
is anonymous, but he has written it as Lawrence O'Donnell, who,
(18:27):
I can assure you has only ever been anonymous when
he's called conservatives to leak stuff to them, to undercut
his colleagues at MSNBC. The impression of his voice is,
I would say, mediocre, but unavoidable under the circumstances. E
ah not every former chief of staff for Senator Daniel
(18:49):
Patrick moynihan, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, the most
powerful legislative committee in history, turned Emmy nominated writer performer
on Aaron Sorkin's landmark series The West Wing, turned cable
news guest in the medium's nascent stages, turned commander of
the ten PM Eastern time slot. Is immediately recognizable by
(19:12):
former presidents of the United States, but I happened to be,
which reminds me of the time I found myself playing
miniature golf on Martha's Vineyard with former R and C
chairman Haley Barber, former Ronald Reagan's speechwriter Peggy Noonan, longtime
Kennedy confidant Pierre Salinger, and the fifth of Charlie's Angels,
(19:35):
Shelley Hack. Went up to the first tea at this
particular Martha's Vineyard mini golf course, stepped Senator Orn Hatch
of Utah and his companion Loretta Switt hot Lips Hulahan
from the CBS television version of Mash m Star Astar
(19:56):
s Star h Thank you, my anonymous friend. You left
out that before he played mini golf, Lawrence was, no doubt,
just back from dinner with an actress who was half
of half his age. Also of interest here not yet
(20:18):
finished with Lawrence O'Donnell. Plus you can make jokes about
Robert F. Kennedy Junior's brain where I'm I mean, he
brought it up under oath as an excuse for why
I didn't have to fay so much alimony, So it
is fair game. But you know what, you congressman over there,
you probably shouldn't make a joke in which you link
(20:40):
it to his father's assassination or his uncle the President's assassination.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
That's next. This is Countdown.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
This is Countdown, with Keith Olberman still ahead of us
(21:17):
on this editiontive Countdown. Well, Trump brought him up, and
then I brought him up, and then my anonymous friend
brought him up. So why not let me tell you
about the day Lawrence O'Donnell was eating lunch on the
sidewalk right outside my apartment building and he suddenly admitted
that he and the others crashed MSNBC, and I almost
(21:37):
forgave him were trying to steal Countdown from me while
I was on leave taking care of my dying father,
but I didn't things I promised not to tell ahead
and it includes another Aaron Sorkins story, But first, as ever,
there are still more new idiots to talk about. The
daily roundup of the miscrants, morons, and dunning Krugriffet specimens
(21:58):
who constitute two days worst persons in the world worser
some guy named Jim Kortovich. Jim Kortovich is identified by
The New York Times as the high flying lobbyist spin
doctor for the Saudi's Kataris, et cetera. And he is
(22:19):
apparently mentioned in a new book called The Wolves of
k Street, which is about lobbyists, especially Republicans, like this
guy at korta blitch or whatever his name is. The
authors reported that a client was suing this man, and
they excerpted that part of their book in Politico and
they added this quote. Before our book went to press,
(22:39):
we reached out to Kordovich for comment. He responded by
text and email with the swagger he's become known for quote,
I'm coming after you full guns, and that's why I
live where I do and why you live where you do.
We are going to the mattress, and like everything in
my life, I will win. Uh. It's it's mattresses. We
(23:07):
are going to the mattresses, not we are going to
the mattress. Famous line from the Godfather about the mafia
families going through all out war is we go to
the mattresses, as in, we'll have to have so many
people fighting, we have to get a secret location to
house them all, and we all have to find dozens
of new mattresses for them. Saying we are going to
(23:28):
the mattress sounds like wow, it sounds like you only
have the one mattress, and like you didn't really watch
The Godfather, which means you'll soon be sleeping with the fishes.
The runner up worser speaker Mike Johnson, Just when you
thought he might not be a total Trump whore, he
(23:50):
stood on the side of January sixth, in front of
scumbags like Cleta Mitchell and Steven Miller, and I think
there was one person in the pink pants suit. In
the back there was beetlejuice. And Johnson explained why the
House wants to make it illegal for non citizens to
vote in federal elections, given that you know it already
is illegal for non citizens to vote in federal elections.
(24:12):
Ugly little Johnson said, with an actual smirk and laugh,
we all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are
voting in federal elections, but it's not been something that's
easily provable. We don't have that number, unquote. Actually we
do have that number, and we all know intuitively that
Republicans foster this distrust in reality and law so they
(24:33):
can blame their losses on imaginary threats like massive illegal voting,
when time and time again, the only people even accused
of illegally voting turn out to be Republicans. And by
the way, Mike, about your election to the House, you
won by less than forty one thousand votes. We all
know intuitively that even the people of Louisiana aren't that
stupid to have elected a slick, slimy homophobe who we
(24:57):
all know intuitively seems to protest a little too much.
So we all know intuitively that election must have featured
some e What was that number, Mike, We don't have
that intuitively number? Intuitively do we? On? Congratulations on surviving
the latest attempt by your own party to fire you,
(25:17):
to vacate the chair yesterday? Why when the Republicans do
this do I always think of vacate in its gastro
intestinal sense, But our winner the worst Why it's Mike
Johnson's fellow Republican Congressman Mike Mike Collins of Georgia. Last week,
(25:38):
he tweeted out a video of the racist student at
the University of Mississippi making monkey gestures at a protester
who happened to be an African American woman. He put
our tee on it that read something like ole miss
doing the job, getting the job done. Well. That's when
some of his donors, like a little company called Coca Cola,
(25:58):
began to take heat and give heat about Collins's endorsement
of you Know Over nineteen fifty eight style racism on tape. Well,
Mike Collins of this week saw Mike Collins of last
week and said, hold my racist beer. Yesterday afternoon, long
(26:19):
after the RFK junior brainworm story had spread nationally, Mike
Collins returned to Twitter x and wroach quote, you either
die a Kennedy with a hole in the brain or
live long enough to become a Kennedy with a hole
in the brain. As I said earlier, RFK Junior's worm
(26:42):
is fair game. He brought it up, and he brought
it up so he didn't have to pay a lot
of alimony, but to turn it into a joke about
the assassination of President Kennedy and Senator Kennedy, both shot
through the brain, and not just two of the most
traumatic events in American history, but two of its gloriousts.
This shows that this scumbag Mike Collins has somehow managed
(27:04):
to dishonor both the House Freedom Caucus and his family
ancestral home of Butts County, Georgia, Congressman Mike Collins. Hey, Mike,
you've lucked out here. You don't even have a brain.
We can make jokes about two days, worst person and
the world. Now to the number one story on the
(27:43):
countdown in my favorite topic, me and Things I promised
not to tell. Early on the afternoon of Monday, May
twenty third, twenty sixteen, I bounced out of my New
York City apartment building, began to walk past the tourist
trap brunch spot in the lobby, and froze there at
one of the cramped outdoor tables stare up at me
(28:05):
in blank surprise. That must have matched my own staring
down at him in blank surprise. Was Lawrence O'Donnell. I
decided to go silly. Hey, get out of my house,
he laughed, I laughed. It didn't seem forced. He introduced
me to his companion, his daughter. This my dear is
Keith Ulderman. Keith started us all at MSNBC, and then
(28:29):
he left, and and here Lawrence gave one of his
long pauses, and we crashed it. I wanted to be generous,
I started to politely contradict him, and I just couldn't
do it. M yeah, pretty much anyway, About thirty seconds
of courteous nothingness followed, and I wish the O'Donnell's well,
(28:51):
and then I left. It was the most pleasant experience
I ever had with Lawrence O'Donnell. In fact, it might
have been the only pleasant experience I ever had with
Lawrence O'Donnell. After I finally convinced and bullied and blackmailed
MSNBC management into letting Rachel Meadow become the regular guest
host for my show, and she aced it and then
(29:12):
rightly got her own show, and she aced that and
became a star. I went looking for a new guest host.
My first idea was a frequent guest we had named
Chris Hayes. I didn't get far. Management had its own
idea and my input was not required. They wanted former
Vermont governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean. And Howard
(29:34):
is a really smart guy and great on TV. But
Howard had a bit of a teleprompter problem. One of
my producers swears that Howard once read Good Evening, I'm
Howard Dean for her, governor of Vermont. This is countdown.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I do know.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Whatever he did on the air, it was bad enough
that one week when I was off and at the
Baseball Hall of Fame in Coopertown, New York, and a
baseball news story broke and he was filling in for me.
My producers called me there and asked me to come
on from the streets of Cooperstown and be a guest
on my own show, just to help Howard Dean out. Anyway.
(30:14):
Their next idea was a guy who had been kicking
around MSNBC since its founding in nineteen ninety six. Lawrence
O'Donnell was one of the original MSNBC Friends, The MSNBC Friends,
political pundits who sat on clearstools at a clear table
or in a set designed to look like a booth
(30:34):
at a coffee shop. No, I'm not making this up.
Among the friends were An Colter and Laura Ingram, if
you can believe it, once or twice an hour, the
rather CNN, like all news coverage on MSNBC in its
first couple of years, would pause and three or more
of these friends would appear, chew over the MSNBC headlines,
(31:00):
and then disappear. Lawrence O'Donnell was one of the friends.
It was as bad as it sounds. Then Lawrence O'Donnell
pretty much disappeared. You would see him on MSNBC as
a guest every once in a while, but mostly he
pursued his acting and producing career. He played President Bartlett's
(31:20):
father on the West Wing, the one who beat him
throughout college. Lawrence was very convincing, and then around two
thousand and eight, we started getting pressure to bring him
in as a guest on Countdown, like once a week
or twice a week. I was not sure what that
was all about, but he had been a Senate staffer
and he knew the healthcare debate and other wonky stuff
(31:41):
pretty well, so I gave my assent for whatever that
was worth. Not long after that, Lawrence came into my office.
He really needed my support, he said, to get him
more involved in MSNBC. He knew I had gone to
bat for Rachel, and before her, I'd gone to bat
for Tom Brokaw, and for people like Chuck Todd and
Chris Hayes and others who are now getting steady incomes
(32:02):
from NBC. I don't remember his argument on his own behalf.
I do remember I didn't have much of a reason
to say no, and he wasn't asking me to do
a lot, so I said yes. The next thing I knew,
I was reading a memo announcing that Lawrence O'Donnell had
been appointed as the new full time guest host of Countdown.
This was in the winter of two thousand and nine
(32:25):
twenty ten, when my late dad was fighting so valiantly
to stay alive after colon cancer and more importantly, a
series of infections. Dad had the immune system of an alien.
The average white cell count in a healthy adult is
between four thousand and eleven thousand. One night, Dad's was
at thirty three thousand, and the doctors told me to
(32:45):
prepare to make the call to let him go. They
had one antibiotic left to try on him. The next morning,
Dad's white cell count, which had been thirty three thousand,
was eight thousand, onward he fought. Unfortunately, he was eighty
years old and he had not exerc since Harry Truman
(33:06):
was president, and eventually he ran out of Houdini tricks.
I had been visiting him twice a day for six
months while still doing Countdown and the NBC Sunday Night
Football Show. But now, as it hit late February of
twenty ten, his bright days became fewer and farther in between,
and the hope that was propelling me to keep being
his full time caregiver and Countdown's full time host both
(33:29):
began to fade. In the last two weeks of my
dad's life, as the doctors tried all the long shot things,
I asked MSNBC for a leave of absence. Finally the
inevitability became inarguable, and we let Dad go. On Saturday,
March thirteenth, twenty ten. My sister held his hand and
I read him his favorite Thurber story, and as soon
(33:50):
as I finished it, he exhaled deeply and peacefully, and
he died. I think I took another week off, maybe two,
and I vaguely recall emails from friends at Countdown that
I may have paid passing the time attention to, but
I really didn't. Most of the staff, including people who
came up from Washington, like Howard Feynman or Gene Robinson
(34:13):
of the Washington Post, always friends to me. They attended
my dad's memorial service. I believe Lawrence o'donald, who was
of course filling in for me on Countdown, was there too,
but maybe not, I do not remember. And then came
the day when I went back to the office full
time and my assistant grabbed me both hands on my wrist.
(34:35):
You did not answer my emails, she said, with a
fervency she rarely exhibited. For God's sake, do not ever
leave me alone with Laurence O'Donnell again, I snapped back
to attention. Had he, you know, bothered her? Not that way,
she said, But he's a son of a bitch. He
treats me and everybody who was in a producer here
(34:55):
like dirt. And since you didn't read my emails, I
just have to tell you this. He's trying to get
you fired so he can take over Countdown. And if
you think he's nuts, one of your scene producers is
in on it too with him. I have to admit,
even now, of all the things I went through at
that very very strange place MSNBC. Even now, this story
(35:19):
still shocks me. The senior producers of Countdown consisted of
a guy who'd been a producer who booked satellite transmissions
for MSNBC until I asked that he'd be promoted, and
one was a guest booker for the daytime shows until
I asked that she be promoted. Another was a line
producer who was well regarded only for his ability to
(35:40):
time a show until I asked for him to be promoted.
And then there was the old friend of mine who
had been blown out of ESPN in a sexual harassment
porn link email scandal and was headed back to college
to start his career all over again until I asked
that he'd be hired and then promoted. I did some
digging and I was going to confront O'Donnell about it
(36:00):
when somebody told me he had tweeted something negative about
me and about count So I got a hold of
him and I said, this did not seem to be
in keeping with MSNBC traditions and rules, you know, the
ones about not peeing inside the tent. And he said,
what do you know about MSNBC? Traditions. I've been here
since nineteen ninety six. I never left and came back.
(36:22):
So I went to my boss, the president of the network,
Phil Griffin, the one who would not hire Rachel Meadow,
and before I could say they'd have to get rid
of him, Griffin said it was all academic. They were
preparing the press release as we spoke for Lawrence's new
show at ten o'clock called The Last Word, and oh,
by the way, Keith, two of your senior producers are
going with him to run his show. If this sounds
(36:45):
vaguely familiar to you, it is the plot of the
pilot for the old Aaron Sorkin HBO series Newsroom. I
was still friendly with Aaron then, so he actually asked.
As I related this to him in real time in
emails and phone calls, he asked if he could use
it in the plot, rather than just what he often did,
(37:06):
which was to use it without asking. The problem was
none of this made any sense in the real world,
although it made a pretty good pilot for Aaron Sorkin.
In going into the ten PM slot, Lawrence O'Donnell would
be replacing a rerun of Countdown, and even if O'Donnell
did much better in the ratings, much much better. There
was no way it could ever make enough money to
(37:29):
make the move make sense. O'Donnell's new show would necessarily
cost MSNBC between ten and fifteen million dollars to produce
every year. Didn't have anything to do with him. That
was the cost. The Countdown rerun cost, not ten fifteen
million dollars a year. It count however much they paid
the guy who pushed the play button that fired up
(37:52):
the videotape of the Countdown replay amortized. Later that day,
a sympathetic NBC executive called me up and explained the
move to me. First, Griffin was convinced O'Donnell was about
to leave us and sign with CNN. I said, well,
that's a good idea for everybody involved except CNN. Turned
(38:16):
out CNN had not even talked to him, but Griffin
did not know that. More importantly, Comcast had already finalized
its agreement to buy NBC effective the following January, and
as part of the deal, they were entitled to review
what all the executives in the company had done, and
they had already looked at MSNBC President Phil Griffin and
discovered he had never done anything in panic. Griffin told
(38:39):
colleagues he had to launch a new show of his
own immediately. This is the series Aaron Sorkin should have made.
As to the producers who left my show to go
with O'Donnell while my father was dying, one of them
told me a couple of years after she left MSNBC
for the last time, every day when I went into
(39:01):
that Last Word office, I realized you were getting your
revenge on me without even having to lift a finger.
Lots of people I've worked with, probably a majority of
people i've helped, have behaved like Lawrence O'Donnell, because, remember
it's television. It is a mental illness. The comparatively healthy
people are the ones who acknowledge it's a mental illness.
(39:24):
But Lawrence O'Donnell was something special. A year before my
dad died, almost to the day, in fact, I was
in Los Angeles appearing on Bill Maher's show, and one
of the other guests that night was the actress Carrie Washington.
She was very nice to me, very sweet, a very
big fan, and she asked to stay in touch. Sure enough,
(39:44):
after my father died, after the memorial. After I was
back at work, I had to go to his house
for the first time since he had passed away. It
was about as much fun as it sounds. In the
car on the way back into New York City. The
solemnity of it. Both my parents died within eleven months
of each other. It really hit me for some reason
(40:05):
for the first time, full force, and I was about
to lose it when the car approached a billboard overlooking
the West Sidne Highway in New York City. And whose
big smiling face was on the ad on that billboard,
Carrie Washington. And it flashed me right back to her
kindness in la and it helped me overcome this bump
(40:25):
in my mourning. So I wanted to drop her a note,
nothing big, nothing suggestive. I wasn't hinting at asking her out.
Just you never know how you might help somebody in
a time of crisis. Thanks for letting me smile. That
was the whole message. I asked my assistant to figure
out how to get it to her, and that was
(40:46):
the end of it, except a week later, the fact
that I wrote her a note wound up in a
column written by an colter. I was astonished how why,
and Colter it was her usual the brain doesn't quite
(41:07):
work right kind of stuff. She implied, I was hitting
on Kerry Washington and said how stupid I had to
be to not realize she was involved with somebody, and
on and on and on, no mention of my father's passing,
or the mar show or the billboard or her smiling face.
I went back to my assistant and I said, hey,
what on earth did you do with that note to
(41:28):
Carrie Washington? And she said, oh, I gave it to
this Lawrence O'Donnell guy. And I said, good God, why
did you do that? And she said, well, he's dating
Carrie Washington. I thought you knew that. I thought that's
why you asked me to get.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
It to her.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
So it wasn't hard to figure out from there. Lawrence
had called his old friend from the old MSNBC Friends
of nineteen ninety six and Colter and told her about
the note, inventing whatever motive his jealous little mind could
dream up. It should have gotten him fired from NBC,
but unfortunately his boss was just as much of a
fourteen year old emotionally as he was. And meanwhile, I
(42:08):
had decided to get out of MSNBC anyway when the
time was ripe. As it turned out, it ripened in
January twenty eleven. I've told that story in other episodes,
like sixty of them. It's kind of complicated, and since
nobody ever actually asked me why Countdown the TV show ended,
I've probably got another sixty episodes worth of information about
that anyway in twenty fifteen, since repeatedly over the following
(42:34):
ten years, there were overtures by both sides to bring
Countdown and Me back to MSNBC. In twenty fifteen during
the World Series, in fact, the then president of NBC News,
Andy Lack, asked me to come back and do a
new show at MSNBC and move to Los Angeles and
have a co host, a conservative, and not do any commentaries.
(42:56):
And actually this new show is somehow less appealing than
it sounds. But the punchline of all punchlines is contained
in what Lack wanted to all my new twenty fifteen
MSNBC show that never was. It tells you all you
really need to know about the last word with Lawrence
O'Donnell and MSNBC and O'Donnell's place in TV history at
(43:17):
its demise and the end of MSNBC. NBC new president
Lack was brimming with enthusiasm about this name that he
had come up with for my new show, how Good
the perfect title. Lack told me, we're gonna call it
The Last Word with Keith Olberman, and I didn't laugh
(43:37):
for guffaw. I just said, Andy, you have a show
called the Last Word The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.
Andy Lack now laughed, huh, hopefully not for much longer.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown Musical directors Brian Ray and John
Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and
mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, and it was produced
by Tko Brothers and not by Aaron Sorkin. Other music,
including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by
(44:26):
the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the
Ulbriman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis
courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else
was pretty much my fault, and later it will be
(44:47):
Aaron Sorkins. That's countdown for this the one hundred and
eighty first day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
and the two hundred and twentieth day since Dictator Jay
Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of
the United States. Use the justice system, use the mental
health system, use the not regularly given elector objection option,
(45:10):
use if it happens, presidential immunity to stop him from
doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news warrants until then,
I'm Keith Ouldreman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(45:48):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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