June 29, 2023 • 44 mins
EPISODE 238: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) Rudy Giuilani has offered to flip. It is almost certainly NOT against Trump and it may even be a finesse play to distract Jack Smith FROM Trump (and from himself). But that "voluntary meeting" with prosecutors we heard about early in the week turns out to have been a "Proffer Offer" in which he essentially auditioned as a witness.
The New York Times also has what – under the proffer protection that whatever he told them IN that interview will not be used against him unless it turns out he was lying – prosecutors asked him about: 1) About a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors. 2)“They focused specifically on the role played in that effort by John Eastman." 3) Quote: “Giuliani also discussed Sidney Powell” 4) “Ms. Powell… also took part in a meeting in the Oval Office in December 2020 during which Trump was presented with a brazen plan, opposed by Giuliani, to use the military to seize control of voting machines and re-run the election.” 5) “Prosecutors further asked Mr. Giuliani about the scene at the Willard Hotel days before the attack on the Capitol” and the group of conspirators gathered there – the Times names Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, and Steve Bannon. CBS News, which does NOT use that tell-tale term “proffer,” also says he was asked about Jeffrey “Can I Put My Pants On” Clark? And 6) CBS had one other detail which reads quote: “The special counsel did not indicate that Giuliani is a SUBJECT of the investigation and his team does not believe he is” which then raises the question why the hell would he be trading information to the Special Prosecutor as a potential immunity deal? I’m Rudy and I’m a good citizen, so don’t prosecute me?
Moreover: time and time again throughout American criminal history – especially American POLITICAL criminal history – key witnesses have changed sides while telling themselves they were not giving up THEIR guy and then once they see how much MORE protection they will gain FROM giving up their guy… they GIVE UP their guy. When it was time to get immunity for his role in Watergate, my friend John Dean’s starting point was, according to the giggling reminiscence of his attorney Charlie Shaffer, “We can’t talk about The P” – “The P” -- Dean’s shorthand for President Nixon.
B-Block (19:48) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: She's trying to play to the right of Boebert and Greene by raging against abortions and human stem cells - even saying using some of the latter for research "makes us no better than Nazis." Now her family financial disclosures are out and Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna's husband owns stock in a medical company that uses human stem cells. And a MAGA "prophet" says he saw an image of Trump in the sky over "Rush Mountmore." (25:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Meltdown in RFK Jr Merch-land. Just when you thought he couldn't possibly be connected to foreign interference turns out the image in his merchandise ad is just a photoshopped stock shot of a Russian woman on a Russian street. Nancy Mace and Tommy Tuberville try to take credit for local Biden projects they voted against. And the Jersey Munitions Dealer and OAN guest didn't like those 32 old growth trees that blocked his view of New York City. So he had them cut down. Two problems: they weren't on HIS property and the law there says he now has to replace them and that could cost him nearly $2 Million.
C-Block (32:10) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Duke the beautifully-behaved Doberman on death row in Baldwin Park, California. (32:52) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Somebody asked me why TV executives seem like idiots. I said "SEEM?!?" and then instead of trying to explain it to her I just told her the saga of Rick Kaplan, who was president of CNN and then MSNBC and once credited himself for a format change from a year earlier that we did only once and abandoned but he didn't know because he DIDN'T HAVE CABLE IN HIS HOUSE.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Rudy
Giuliani has offered to flip, maybe a half flip, maybe
(00:28):
a pre flip, almost certainly not to flip against Trump,
maybe even to flip in a way to protect Trump
and of course himself, by giving up everybody else and
steering prosecutors in different directions. But apply all the caveats
you want to, it is still a flip. The New
York Times writing that the previously vaguely reported quote voluntary
(00:51):
interview of Giuliani by federal prosecutors was last week and
it was a profer essentially a legal audition in which
a key figure in a case tries to talk prosecutors
out of charge against them by showing what they could
testify about about others. And the Times did not use
(01:11):
the word flip, and none of the other reporters analyzing
the Time story used the word flip. So nobody is
recognizing it for what it is. Exactly what could Rudy
Giuliani Trump's lead overthrow the election? Lawyer Rudy Giuliani Exactly
what could he be showing prosecutors that he could testify
about I mean, he didn't go up to them and say,
(01:32):
tell Smith, I can give you Jenna Ellis. And even
if he did not say tell Smith, I can give
you Trump, we can easily forget that. Four decades and
many more ethical collapses ago. Rudy Giuliani was a federal prosecutor.
He knows which way the wind is blowing and which
way the mescara is running, and he's looking out for
(01:53):
his mascara and his wind. It is certainly possible. He
did not say tell Smith, I can give you Trump.
Almost certainly, certainly, But it's not like he said, tell
Smith I can give him Joe Biden. And it's clearly
tell Smith I can give him what he needs on
(02:13):
almost anybody except me. The Times is explicit. The proffer
meeting last week was with quote federal prosecutors investigating mister
Trump's efforts to overturn the twenty twenty election. People familiar
with the matter said, and then in the fourth paragraph,
Haberman Foyer and protests right. The appearance was entirely voluntary
(02:35):
and conducted in a professional manner, said Ted Goodman, a
political advisor to mister Giuliani. Unquote, Gosh, I wonder who
those people familiar with the matter, are this is a
Juliani leak of a Giuliani flip. The Times also has
what under the profit protection that whatever he told them
(02:56):
in that interview will not be used against him unless
it turns out he is lying. Prosecutors asked him about
one about the plan to create slates of pro Trump
electors two quote. They focused specifically on the role played
in that effort by John Eastman unquote three quote. Giuliani
also discussed Sidney Powell for quote. Miss Powell also took
(03:18):
part in a meeting in the Oval Office in December
twenty twenty, during which Trump was presented with a brazen
plan opposed by Giuliani, to use the military to seize
control of voting machines and rerun the election five quote.
Prosecutors further asked Giuliani about the scene at the Willard
Hotel days before the attack on the Capitol and the
(03:39):
group of conspirators gathered there. The Times named Eastman, Boris Epstein,
and Steve Bannon CBS News, which does not use that
telltale term. Proffer also says he was asked about Jeffrey
can I put my pants on Clark and six CBS
had one other detail, which reads quote, the Special Council
(04:02):
did not indicate that Giuliani is a sub object of
the investigation and his team does not believe he is,
which may or may not be true, but it also
raises the question why in the hell would he be
trading information to the Special Prosecutor for something to be
named later as a potential immunity deal. Hi, nice to
(04:22):
meet you. I'm Rudy. I'm a good citizen. Don't prosecute me?
So probably Rudy didn't offer to flip on Trump yet,
just absolutely everybody else around Trump during each part of
the coup, the elector's scam, the recount and fundraising scam,
(04:44):
the sees, the voting machines, planned the Willard Hotel war room,
the preparations for the attack on the House and the Senate.
Rudy in New Hampshire last night for a live Twitter
video and still pumping Trump's lead over DeSantis. May be
able to convince himself that offering to testify for the
prosecution about Bannon, Clark, Eastman, Epstein, Sidney Powell, and god
(05:06):
knows who else will not be seen by Trump as betrayal.
But Trump is simply not subtle nor nuanced about stuff
like this. To Trump, Yeah, okay, the others are fungible.
Boris Epstein is not fungible to Donald Trump. If Juliani
went into prosecutors and talked about the Willard Hotel meeting
(05:27):
and Epstein and did not somehow manage to clear Epstein,
how does Trump accept the idea that Rudy Giuliani is
a little bit pregnant as a witness for the prosecution.
The goal here is Trump, You are helping them to
the goal. Moreover, time and time again, throughout American criminal history,
(05:51):
especially American political criminal history, key witnesses have changed sides
while telling themselves they were not giving up their guy,
and then once they saw how much trouble there was
and how much more protection they would gain from giving
up their guy, guess what they gave up their guy
(06:11):
when it was time to get immunity for his role
in Watergate. My friend John Deane's starting point was, according
to the almost giggling reminiscence of his attorney, Charlie Shaffer,
we can't talk about the P. The P John Dene's
shorthand for President Nixon. Rudy has offered to flip and
(06:35):
we now also have a name and a face to
put on the other person. The Special Council contends Trump
shared classified stuff with it's Susie Wiles. Wil Ees and
sources told ABC News that the reference to a Pack
representative identified in the indictment to whom Trump allegedly showed
a classified map weeks after he showed two or three
(06:57):
of his aides and the two Mark Meadows publishers the
Milli Iran battle plants. That's her, Susie Wiles. Not much
more to their story beyond that, except for the possibility
that Susie Wiles, ex chief of Trump's twenty sixteen Florida
Operation later CEO of Trump's Save America Pack, could be
a witness in this case. While she is Trump's twenty
(07:20):
twenty four campaign manager, as ABC notes, he has not
named a campaign manager yet, she is one of three
people in de facto charge of the campaign now, and
she could get the solo job. You may recall that
in the indictment, Trump is talking to the unidentified Pack
representative about a military operation that he said, quote was
(07:42):
not going well, and warned her that he quote should
not be showing the map, so she had to make
sure to quote not to get too close to the map,
which is Trump through and through. If you have good eyesight,
you can see the map from there. And while the
(08:04):
swelling continues to go down. Nearly seventy two hours after
the release of the Trump confession tape, an important observation
by Philip Bump of The Washington Post that, just like
the actual tape, had more to it, Trump saying, isn't
this cool than the Jack Smith transcript of the tape
had included. It is also clear now that whoever transcribed
(08:25):
it for the prosecution has made a significant mistake in transcription.
The transcript has Trump saying, we could probably write and
the staffer says, I don't know. We'll have to see. Yeah,
we'll have to try to figure out. Trump says, declassify.
See as President, I could have declassified it. Now I
(08:47):
can't you know, but this is still a secret. Except,
as Bump notes, clearly Trump does not say this is
still a secret. Listen to that part of it very carefully. Now, President,
(09:08):
I could now I can't you know, but this is
That is not Trump saying this is still a secret.
That is Trump saying, but this is classified. There is
a huge difference between those two things. A secret is
seventh grade and Becky Nelson classified is up to ten
(09:28):
years in jail. But this is classified. That makes me
wonder how such a big mistake could have been made
by prosecutors, especially when it's a mistake that hurts their case.
The only thing I can figure is we know there
are two different recordings of that confession, and the recording
(09:48):
that was leaked on Monday must not be the one
prosecutors have, or at least not the one they transcribed
from Two iPhones on a desk will produce different clarity
depending on where everybody speaking is positioned at any given moment.
It may have been clear on one recording and not
on the other. And somehow the one on which it
(10:12):
was clear got released to the public and the one
that it wasn't clear on got released to Jack Smith.
And that leads into another true bit of speculation that
I offered here Tuesday. Remember when I said it could
be worse for Trump only in one way if there
were a video, and I noted that assumes there isn't video.
A friend noted last night that in his first interview
(10:34):
Tuesday with Fox about what he was heard saying on
the tape. Trump's comment was, quote, what did I say
wrong on those recordings? I didn't even see the recording. Wait,
he didn't even see it. It's an audio tape. It's
a recording, an audio recording. It's not video. What is
there to see? It's not video, isn't it. I still think, yes,
(11:00):
it's only audio, two microphones. You know, maybe we could
simulate stare and put it out as an LP. Trump
does say weird stuff like this all the time where
he conflates human senses. I didn't even see the recording.
Could easily mean I didn't even consume or process the recording,
(11:21):
or or there's also a video here and we haven't
seen that yet. A couple of other Trump confession tape
related notes. The Times had another story about the Special
Council subpoena in Trump surveillance footage from Bedminster, where, of course,
(11:45):
the confession tape drama played out. They quote fought a
pitched battle with mister Trump's lawyers late last year over
how best to search the New Jersey property and the
ex Trump mouthpiece Tim PARLATORI told CNN that Boris Epstein,
you know, one of the guys Giuliani is singing about
(12:06):
Boris Epstein quote attempted to interfere with the Bedminster search.
According to Parlatory, this goes back to the theory from
Ryan Goodman of Just Security that there will be another
round of Trump indictments stemming from the brandishing of the
Milli Iran document in Bedminster. It also refutes the Trump
apologists nonsense that the confession tape is irrelevant because Trump
(12:28):
has not been specifically indicted for the Milli document. Firstly,
that audio goes to prove Trump revealed stuff like this
all the time. Secondly, he hasn't been charged for revealing
the Milli plan. Give Jack Smith a little time on that,
won't you. And there is another ancillary story here, and
(12:49):
I missed it as it happened in real time Tuesday,
and it is from the judge Michael Luttig, the conservative
who has been more personally pained by the last eight
years even than Liz Cheney. Luddig brought us back to
the likelihood of Trump being indicted for the fake elector's
scheme via a very unexpected path, via the Supreme Court
ruling on Moore v. Harper. We know Judge Lutig told
(13:13):
CNN the independent state legislature theory was the centerpiece of
that effort to overturn the twenty twenty presidential election. If
I were Jack Smith or the Attorney General of the
United States, the judge said, I believe I would have
needed that decision from the Supreme Court of the United
States in order to proceed with charges against the former
(13:36):
president and his allies and compatriots in connection with the
January sixth events. In other words, Luddig thinks Smith was
delaying a decision on indicting on the fake electors scheme
until the Supreme Court deciding on a case that might
have lent validity to the premise that states could overrule
(13:57):
their own voters any damn way they pleased and sent
in their own electors as they so desired. Happily, the
Court ruled against independent state legislature theory, and thus Luddog
didn't say this, but one has to infer that Luddock
thinks that Smith will now yeah proceed. Two other Trump
(14:24):
notes dementia. Jay Trump sued e Gene Carroll back yesterday,
claiming she defamed him after the Manhattan jury ruled he
was liable to the amount of five million dollars for
sexually abusing her. Carol went on CNN the day of
that verdict and was asked about the jury's decision that
Trump was not liable for raping her. She said quote,
(14:45):
oh yes he did. Oh yes he did. And Trump
now claims that is her defaming him. This leads me
to repeat something I have heard from every lawyer I
have ever talked to about approximately anything. How in the
hell does Donald Trump prove that anything that anybody has
(15:05):
said about him could possibly damage his reputation? What reputation
would that be? And the last punchline to the whole day,
Trump had yet another online meltdown about something new. Quote
three people in New Hampshire asked me why Fox News
(15:27):
uses such horrible pictures of me when doing or promoting
a story. The coloring, distortions, everything are just so bad, Donald, Sorry,
but that's your face. Also of interest to us here,
(15:56):
Trump's trojan horse RFK Junior crashes and burns. If you
are trying to avoid being found out as a trojan horse,
as a chaos agent so out of control, there is
concerned you might be part of this year's Russian surprise,
Do not do not try to sell merch from the
campaign by putting out a tweet with a photo of
(16:18):
a woman onto whom you have photoshopped to Kennedy twenty
twenty four hoodie without also photoshopping all the building signs
and street signs seen behind her, so they don't show
all the names and words on the streets and the
signs in Russian. Hell, the damn hoodie might as well
(16:39):
say that's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with
Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates,
(17:00):
some snarks, some predictions. Dateline Clearwater, Florida and the performance
artist and former strip club cocktail waitress who calls herself
Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, the esteemed representative of the Florida
thirteenth Congressional district. She was born Anna Paulina Meyerhoffer and
her mother's maiden name was Todd, and at various times
(17:21):
she's claimed she was raised as a Messianic Jew or
that all of her family is from Mexico and that
her grandmother was a heroin addict who died from AIDS.
But she was raised in the welfare system and she
had nannies and her uncle questioned her biography, so she
tried to get an injunction against him for stalking. She's
George Santos in address. Well, George Santos is George Santos
(17:44):
in address I'm speaking metaphorically AnyWho. Luna is setting herself
up far to the right of the Boberts and the Greens,
and one of her first targets is any right to abortion,
and another is strong opposition to the use of human
stem cells in medical research. She gave an interview with
One America News two years ago in which she said,
(18:06):
of some stem cell use, quote, it's not okay, it's
morally wrong. It's not done in the name of science.
And frankly, if you're going to do human testing, that
makes us no better than Nazis unquote, well be Congressional
financial disclosures of and Paulina Todd Meyerhoffer, Gamborski Luna are out,
(18:26):
and the website raw Story has reviewed them, and it
reports that Luna's husband has a stock investment between one
thousand and fifteen thousand dollars in Lineage Sell Therapeutics. And
what do they do over there at Lineage Sell Therapeutics
Why the company says it is pioneering a new branch
(18:49):
of medicine based on transplanting specific cell types to patients
with serious medical conditions. And where does it get said
sell types? You suppose find them on the street. Do
they know they get them from human embryos? The congresswoman
is avoiding comments. Thank you, Nancy Faus Dateline, Los Angeles.
(19:24):
Let's meet Manuel Johnson. Now, your big time screwball Bible
streaming shows and newscasts, you're Laura Ingram's and your one
American newses and your seven hundred clubs. They can get
your top shelf profits as guests on their shows. The
ones who actually talk to God, the Julie Greens and
the pastor Mark Burns's and Pat Robertson before he croaked.
(19:46):
Those types they gone those shows. The lesser shows like
those of Kelsey O'Malley, who is on Facebook and has
twenty five hundred followers. She's stuck with prophet Manuel Johnson.
I don't know what he claims, but I'm telling you
he does not talk to God. Maybe maybe he he
gets c seed on God's emails. Who knows, But he
(20:08):
winds up on Kelsey O'Malley's show talking about how a
bunch of the B grade evangelicals went out to Mount
Rushmore because they just knew that Trump's face, while not
carved there in the stone, is carved there in the spirits.
They have a photo not at all doctored, of Trump's
face drawn on a cloud. You can tell it's Trump
(20:28):
because he's also holding up our plans to bomb Tehran. Anyway,
we think Manuel Johnson and his crew went to Mount
Rushmore because Mount Rushmore is not what he said to
Kelsey O'Malley, we.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Had to go to Rush Mountain and I they'll show
a picture there because it has something to do.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Did you hear it?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
We had to go to Rush.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Mountain, Rush Mountmore. They saw Trump's head above the carvings
that Rush Mountmore as preserved for by the good folks,
that people for the American ways right wing. Watch Rush Mountmore.
You remember that was one of Rush Limbaugh's nicknames. And
(21:16):
what did your genial host, Kelsey O'Malley think of all this?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
His face may not be carved there in stone, but
it is carved there in the spirit. Mmmm.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Wow, well said Kelsey O'Malley. Wow. Indeed, praise the Lord
and say wow to Rush Mountmore still ahead. He had
(21:55):
demanded we change something in the format of countdown. We
did it once, it wasted about and I don't know
about a thousand man hours in one afternoon, and it
was impossible to do it again, and the staff threatened
to work walk away, so we just dropped it. Not
only did he never notice that we dropped it, but
a year later he still believed that that format change,
(22:16):
the one he demanded, was the reason the show had
become successful. It's a story I still don't believe about
a guy I still don't believe was actually the president
of MSNBC and CNN. Coming up first, the daily roundup
of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens
who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The Bronze
Robert F. Kennedy Junior, the unstable man being manipulated by
(22:39):
right wingers to run a trojan horse, vaxer and conspiracy
theory campaign challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination. If you
have any questions about what this is all about or
who might be behind it, they were answered yesterday afternoon
when the campaign tweeted out a promotion for kennedy campaign merchandise,
complete with a photo of a young woman walking down
(23:00):
a street in a Kennedy twenty twenty four hoodie. But
there was something off about the images behind the young
woman a coffee shop with strange lettering on the sign,
street signs with equally strange lettering, And then in the replies,
the same photo was shown, only that same woman in
that same photo was wearing a hoodie with a word
(23:22):
on it in cyrillic letters. It's a stock photo, a
Russian stock photo with a Kennedy logo superimposed over the
Russian logo on the hoodie. The campaign deleted the tweet
without explanation. They should delete the goddamn campaign without explanation.
The runners up wacko Congressman Nancy Mace of South Carolina
(23:45):
congratulating a local bus system on getting twenty five million
dollars in federal funding, which she fails to mention she
voted against when it appeared in the Biden twenty twenty
one infrastructure bill that provided all the money. Alabama sentator
Tommy I'm all ears Tubberville did the same thing, tweeting
broadband is vital for this excess of our rural communities.
(24:06):
Great to see Alabama receive crucial funds. He too voted
against it in the Senate, but unlike Mace, President Biden
did not let him waltz away from this. Biden sub
tweeted him twelve thousand retweets seventy five thousand likes Biden's
message to Tubberville, see you at the groundbreaking of all ears.
(24:26):
But our winner Grant Haber of Kenelon, New Jersey Town.
Officials there say Haber thought that that grove of thirty
two large trees just ruined his clear view of how
the sunrise would light up the distant New York City
skyline like so much gold. So he had the thirty
two tall trees, some of them one hundred and fifty
(24:48):
years old, cut down, which is a pretty damned obnoxious
thing to do. Then again, mister Haber founded his own
munitions company, American Innovations, and he has been a guest
on one American News. But wait, it's worse than this.
Those were not his trees on his seven eighth mountaintop
property in Jersey. Those were his neighbor's trees. Fully one
(25:09):
quarter of the trees on the property of his neighbor,
Sami Shinwei who says he is heartbroken, of course naturally,
mister Shinwei also says he volunteers with the New Jersey
State Woodland Management program. The town contends this Haber guy
hired somebody to cut the trees down and just left
them there. So far the city has charged him with
(25:30):
nine counts of illegal tree removal, and the online hearing
Tuesday was so packed there was a lengthy delay to
sign on, and the prosecutor couldn't even sign on. The
hearing's been delayed till July eighteenth while they work on
more bandwidth. Senator Tuberville. Anyway, Haber could be fined one
thousand dollars per felled tree, plus charged with replacing them
(25:53):
with transplanted trees of similar heights because the trees were
far in from the street and neighbor believes that a
temporary road will have to be built on Hayes's property
just to get the thirty two partially grown replacement trees
to the location of the arboricide. And between the costs
of that new road and the new trees, and the
(26:15):
two years of maintenance also required by the law there,
mister Haber may wind up paying as much as one
eight hundred thousand dollars Grant. Guess that's what they mean
when they say the view is priceless. Haber two days
worst person in the world. Just ahead, somebody asked me,
(27:04):
Yesked today, why so many TV executives seem to be idiots?
I answered seem I tried to explain. The best I
could do is explain that none of them seemed to
understand that you couldn't always make people or things successful
on TV, so instead all the executives try to project
this image of infallible, inscrutable genius. And then I said,
(27:25):
never mind that. Let me just tell you about one
of the many stories I know about the former CNN
and MSNBC president Rick Kaplan. I'll tell you that story next.
First time to feature another dog in need that you
can help. Every dog has its day. Duke is a
handsome black and tan, newtered four year old Doberman pincher.
He is immaculately behaved and very obedient, and he will
(27:47):
do anything for praise and affection. Better if he lives
with calm, large dogs or no other dogs, but most importantly,
better if he lives he is on the kill list
right now at yet another overcrowded shelter, ready to end
his life because for some reason he is unhappy in
well death row of prison. He's at the Baldwin Park
(28:07):
Animal Care Center in California. You can be adopted from there,
or your pledges can help defray the costs for a
rescue to pull him out and save him. Look for
Duke on my Twitter feeds and your retweet will really
help too. I thank you, and Duke thanks you. Finally
to the number one story on the Countdown and my
(28:28):
favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
And tomorrow is seventeen years since this former MSNBC president,
Rick Kaplan, the guy who once chased me around the
studios threatening to kill me because he was squeamish and
I had mentioned blood on the air, blew any remaining
credibility he had with us because he didn't know what
(28:49):
was live and what was on delay. However, this story
starts in the men's room at MSNBC. It is February seventeenth,
two thousand and four, at one of those moronic corporate
speak town halls. The bosses have just introduced Rick Kaplan
as the new president of the network. Kaplan speaks for
an hour without interruption or breath. He does not mention
(29:13):
that he was the president of CNN when it's nineteen
year streak at number one in the cable news ratings
came to a crashing end. He does, however, mention that
he is six feet seven inches tall, but he does
not seem to be six feet seven inches tall. As
this nonsense ends, I rush into the men's room and find,
to my amusement, Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, Jesse Ventura, Lester Holt,
(29:40):
and one unoccupied urinol. As I moved to occupy it,
it dawns on me that Ventura, the former professional wrestler,
is the shortest man in the bathroom, at six feet two.
All five of us are silent. Finally, Matthews says it,
Helen Hell, can he say six foot seven? He's barely
(30:01):
taller than I am and I'm six four? Ohroon, are
you slightly taller than You're slightly shorter than me? How
is he six seven? Everybody keeps looking forward, of course,
into the wall in front of us. I'm six three
and a half. Lester, he's your height. I saw you
standing with him, you tour even what are you six ' five.
Lester says, uh huh and flushes. Scarborough chimes in, I'm
(30:26):
just over sixty four. We're almost dyed. Aye, he's not
six seven. Finally, Ventura speaks, I've been thrown around a
ring by guys who were six to seven. This guy's
not six seven. From the sink, Lester Holt now says,
have any of you known anybody our height who lies
and says they're taller? Matthews again, who lies about their height?
(30:49):
I flush this guy does. Gentlemen, we are in trouble
here for the presidency of Rick Kaplan at MSNBC. That
might have been sorry, I can't resist it the high
water mark. Later, on Friday, March fifth, two thousand and four, Kaplan,
who had been there three weeks, assembled the hosts and
(31:10):
producers of the primetime shows on the network that would
have been me, Scarborough, Dan Abrams, our staffs, the new
Jersey staff of Chris Matthews Show, and he told us
that the next day was going to be Monday. Somebody
from Scarborough's staff helpfully corrected him and mister Kaplan, I'm sorry,
tomorrow is Saturday. Kaplan sternly explained he was now president
(31:32):
of this network, and we all sucked. And if he
said today was Friday and tomorrow was Monday, then today
was Friday and tomorrow was Monday. He wanted to see
us react to sudden changes in our plans. We were
being told we were being called into work a sixth
day tomorrow for no reason. Kaplin then started yelling at us,
(31:52):
You guys don't get it. You're all working tomorrow. Anybody
who doesn't come in is fired. We are going to
do the whole pro primetime lineup. Your breaking news is
today's breaking news, the guilty verdict in the Martha Stone
word case. Start booking your guests, because tomorrow is Monday,
not Saturday. Just on my staff, Saturday was supposed to
(32:13):
be my reporter's engagement party, a surprise party thrown by
one of my producers for his wife's birthday, and the
day another producer was closing on buying a house. I
have a vague memory of what we put on the air.
I have a stronger memory of the new president of
MSNBC losing the staffs of all four of his primetime
(32:34):
shows on his fifth day on the job and never
ever getting them back. Kaplan then went to a corkboard
on our office wall, on which our show Rundown was displayed.
He ordered producers to move segments around, and he berated
me for not having anticipated his whims and at one
point he screamed, stop, what the hell are you doing?
(32:55):
And he got up and he grabbed the pushpin, which
held up an index card bearing the name of a guest.
You don't use green pins with yellow index cards. You
use yellow pins with yellow index cards. What kind of
a newsman are you. I can't imagine how this guy
choked away CNN's monopoly on cable news ratings. I was
(33:18):
reminded recently that later on December eighth, two thousand and five,
seventeen years ago tomorrow, he did one of the most
unintentionally funniest things I have ever witnessed. A plane slid
off the runway at Midway Airport in Chicago. Nothing funny
about that, obviously, but Kaplan called into our control room
demanding we changed something about our live coverage that he
(33:42):
didn't like. We promptly made the change. He was right.
Five minutes later he called in and started swearing at
one of our producers. I told you to change that.
If you you're fired and the producer said, we changed
it five minutes ago. When you called in silence, Rick,
are you watching the network on some sort of delay?
Are you watching on TVO or something? Silence again. Finally
(34:06):
he said okay, good work, see you tomorrow and hung up.
He didn't know he was watching it on a delay.
Kaplan was also one of these forget the mean thing
I said yesterday. God knows I have kind of guys.
By Monday, he had heard people laughing at some of
my on air jokes and his front runner instincts took over.
(34:28):
He called me and the producer in for a meeting.
I have only one criticism of your show. Which of
these stories will you be talking about? Thing is genius?
The fifth story, the fourth story, then the third story.
It's original and fresh. I hesitated. I almost said to him, yeah,
this ale counting thing. We just invented that. The music
(34:48):
is genius, the graphics are genius. You're a genius, but
you're missing something obvious, something genius. After each one of
these stories, after you thank your guest, you should do
a list of the things you didn't tell us about
those stories. So like after the fifth story, you should say,
now here are the other five things we didn't tell
you about the fifth story, get it a full screen
graphic and you telling people, and then four things for
(35:09):
the fourth story, and three for the third. I thought
for a moment, and I said, Okay, well what happens
if we make those graphics up? And then a minute beforehand,
the guest brings up one of those things we claim
we didn't tell you. When he just told you, we
had lost Rick Caplin's attention by that point. Hmmm, he grunted.
(35:30):
For a second. I thought his eyes were pointing outwards
in different directions, but he snapped himself back into this reality.
Huh could happen? You'll figure it out anyway, too late
to do it today, figure it out and do it tomorrow.
Thanks the producer. And I had to then explain to
the staff of Countdown that from now on, for every
story they had to deliberately leave out one or two
(35:52):
or three or four or five facts or details, something
interesting enough to be made into a full screen graphic,
but not interesting enough to be included in their scripts
or the interviews with the guests. Suddenly I thought a
lot of people's eyes were pointing outwards in different directions.
The line producer Greg Kordick, who was in charge not
(36:12):
of content but of timing things and making sure things
like graphics got made, said, matter of factly, this will
add five hours to everybody's workday. And so it did.
After the next day's show when we listed the top
five things we didn't tell you about today's fifth story
and the top four things we didn't tell you about
today's fourth story, etc. And we had to shorten all
(36:32):
the scripts and shorten each interview just to make room
for all of this extraneous crap. Greg the producer said,
people here will be quitting by Thursday and dying by Monday.
And I said, you're right. Plus it ruins the interviews
and it weakens the show. Don't do it tomorrow with
Kaplan yells, I'll take the eat. So now it's Wednesday.
And not only don't I hear anything from Kaplin about
(36:54):
the Tuesday show and his the top five things we
didn't tell you about today's fifth story, Jazz, but after
the Wednesday show when we don't do it, I'm sitting
there waiting for an enraged phone call because we didn't
Thursday morning at home, I'm waiting for an enraged email
Thursday afternoon, I'm waiting for an enraged Kaplan in person. Nothing.
(37:15):
He never said a word. The week passes nothing, a month,
two months, it's summer. Nothing. The rest of two thousand
and four flies by nothing. We did it once, we
never did it again, and then he never said anything.
(37:35):
It is now January two thousand and five, and he
still hasn't said anything. And I'm told by Phil Griffin,
my first producer in television sports and sixteen years later,
my first producer in television news, who has since become
the vice president of MSNBC, that Kaplan wants to see
us in his office. It's not a big deal, Phil says,
he's in a good mood. He just wants to make
us feel like we have input into his decisions. This
(37:57):
is a what do you think meeting? Now I have
to ask you to carefully picture the layout of Rick
Kaplan's office at m MSNBC in the year two thousand
and five. Envision a long, narrow room. Baseball's MLB network
now operates there, and they have cleverly turned Kaplan's office
into a wardrobe room, perfect since it was really just
(38:19):
a long closet. Anyways, Rick Kamplan who was six foot
five but lied and said he was six foot seven,
sat at the very back of this room. So you
come in the front door, you turn to your right,
and maybe thirty thirty five forty feet away from you,
in the farthest corner, facing his computer on his desk,
flush against the left hand wall, is the president of MSNBC.
(38:42):
A few feet into the room is where you sit.
Halfway between these two points, against the right hand wall
is where another executive can sit. So Phil Griffin sits there.
I'm just inside the door. He is fifteen feet ahead
of me to the right. Rick Kamplan is thirty feet
or forty feet ahead of me to the left. Picture
(39:03):
this carefully. These chairs and desks are arranged. If you're
me and Phil Griffin is looking at you, Rick Kaplan
can only see the back of Phil Griffin's head and
not his face. If they are both looking at you,
they cannot see each other. Weird, seemingly trivial turned out
(39:24):
to be essential. We begin this meaningless meeting and talk
about guests and graphics, fonts, and Kaplan talks about how
much the ratings have gone up in his year as president.
And finally, I say, I do have one suggestion. I
think the show is going to be very successful, and
I think if we want to make any changes, we
should make them now before it becomes successful. And I say,
(39:45):
I have never heard anybody say they like the fifth story,
fourth story, third story stuff. If you want to continue
the name countdown because people know it by now, that's great,
I guess. But the five four three two one numbering
is a conceit and it's a lot of extra work
for everybody, and I think we should kill it now.
(40:05):
Kaplan is aghast, he is pale, He is not angry,
he is just stunned. But you can't do that five
four three two one is part of the reasons. And
the ratings went up. The ratings went up when I
came up with the idea of the top five things
(40:25):
we didn't tell you about today's top five stories and
the top four things we didn't tell you about today's
number four story, et cetera. We can't stop that. That's
why people watch. My idea took me a split second
to even remember what the hell it was he was
talking about. I had forgotten the whole five things we
(40:46):
didn't tell you Albatross. Weeks after the one show. We
did it, and then the staff rebelled, and I said,
screw it, and I'll take the heat. And I was
about to say this out loud when I suddenly realized
that Phil Griffin, fifteen feet away on the right, his
face turned to me and thus invisible to Kaplan thirty
feet away on the left, was making his eyes as
wide as possible, and Phil was looking right at me
(41:07):
and silently mouthing the word no, no, no, no, no,
all the while keeping his head completely still, so Kaplan
didn't know he was talking to me. Silently. I got
Phil's message. I dropped the subject. I didn't say it.
The meeting ended maybe two minutes later with Kaplan saying
(41:28):
keep up the good work, and ushering us out by saying,
and keep up with the top five things we didn't
tell you about today's five fifth story. Oh that's what's
making it really cook. When we were out of earshot
of Rick Kaplan, Griffin thanked me for being able to
read his panicked lips. I used an oath to liven
up my question what the blank was that all about?
(41:51):
And Griffin said, now you know what every day of
my life has become. It's not worth it to try
to correct him. He believes what he believes, and he
won't be checked or contradicted. And I said, we only
did the five things. We didn't tell you a thing once,
only once. It's like a year later. How in the
hell could he possibly think we're still doing it? Griffin laughed,
(42:16):
like a soldier on a World War One battlefield who
has just run out of bullets. See that's the problem, buddy.
He only watches MSNBC here in the office, the place
he's renting it doesn't have cable. President of MSNBC doesn't
have cable at home. On June sixth, two thousand and six,
(42:39):
they fired Rick Caplan as the president of MSNBC. They
let him resign. They also let him keep his secret,
the darkest of secrets for him and for MSNBC, that,
for his two years on the throne, the president of
an all news cable channel did not have cable. I've
(43:11):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music
arrange produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneale,
who are the Countdown musical directors. Guitars based on drums
by Brian ray All, orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Schhanel,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other selections, including the Beethoven music
we use for the Dog Stories, has been arranged and
(43:32):
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the ould Woman theme from ESPN two. It was
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, incorporated musical
comments from Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Larry David. Everything else
is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the nine hundred and fifth day since Donald Trump's first
(43:54):
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Arrest him again while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Olman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
We had to go to Rush Mountain.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production of iHeartRadio. 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. Rudy
Giuliani has offered to flip, maybe a half flip, maybe
(00:28):
a pre flip, almost certainly not to flip against Trump,
maybe even to flip in a way to protect Trump
and of course himself, by giving up everybody else and
steering prosecutors in different directions. But apply all the caveats
you want to, it is still a flip. The New
York Times writing that the previously vaguely reported quote voluntary
(00:51):
interview of Giuliani by federal prosecutors was last week and
it was a profer essentially a legal audition in which
a key figure in a case tries to talk prosecutors
out of charge against them by showing what they could
testify about about others. And the Times did not use
(01:11):
the word flip, and none of the other reporters analyzing
the Time story used the word flip. So nobody is
recognizing it for what it is. Exactly what could Rudy
Giuliani Trump's lead overthrow the election? Lawyer Rudy Giuliani Exactly
what could he be showing prosecutors that he could testify
about I mean, he didn't go up to them and say,
(01:32):
tell Smith, I can give you Jenna Ellis. And even
if he did not say tell Smith, I can give
you Trump, we can easily forget that. Four decades and
many more ethical collapses ago. Rudy Giuliani was a federal prosecutor.
He knows which way the wind is blowing and which
way the mescara is running, and he's looking out for
(01:53):
his mascara and his wind. It is certainly possible. He
did not say tell Smith, I can give you Trump.
Almost certainly, certainly, But it's not like he said, tell
Smith I can give him Joe Biden. And it's clearly
tell Smith I can give him what he needs on
(02:13):
almost anybody except me. The Times is explicit. The proffer
meeting last week was with quote federal prosecutors investigating mister
Trump's efforts to overturn the twenty twenty election. People familiar
with the matter said, and then in the fourth paragraph,
Haberman Foyer and protests right. The appearance was entirely voluntary
(02:35):
and conducted in a professional manner, said Ted Goodman, a
political advisor to mister Giuliani. Unquote, Gosh, I wonder who
those people familiar with the matter, are this is a
Juliani leak of a Giuliani flip. The Times also has
what under the profit protection that whatever he told them
(02:56):
in that interview will not be used against him unless
it turns out he is lying. Prosecutors asked him about
one about the plan to create slates of pro Trump
electors two quote. They focused specifically on the role played
in that effort by John Eastman unquote three quote. Giuliani
also discussed Sidney Powell for quote. Miss Powell also took
(03:18):
part in a meeting in the Oval Office in December
twenty twenty, during which Trump was presented with a brazen
plan opposed by Giuliani, to use the military to seize
control of voting machines and rerun the election five quote.
Prosecutors further asked Giuliani about the scene at the Willard
Hotel days before the attack on the Capitol and the
(03:39):
group of conspirators gathered there. The Times named Eastman, Boris Epstein,
and Steve Bannon CBS News, which does not use that
telltale term. Proffer also says he was asked about Jeffrey
can I put my pants on Clark and six CBS
had one other detail, which reads quote, the Special Council
(04:02):
did not indicate that Giuliani is a sub object of
the investigation and his team does not believe he is,
which may or may not be true, but it also
raises the question why in the hell would he be
trading information to the Special Prosecutor for something to be
named later as a potential immunity deal. Hi, nice to
(04:22):
meet you. I'm Rudy. I'm a good citizen. Don't prosecute me?
So probably Rudy didn't offer to flip on Trump yet,
just absolutely everybody else around Trump during each part of
the coup, the elector's scam, the recount and fundraising scam,
(04:44):
the sees, the voting machines, planned the Willard Hotel war room,
the preparations for the attack on the House and the Senate.
Rudy in New Hampshire last night for a live Twitter
video and still pumping Trump's lead over DeSantis. May be
able to convince himself that offering to testify for the
prosecution about Bannon, Clark, Eastman, Epstein, Sidney Powell, and god
(05:06):
knows who else will not be seen by Trump as betrayal.
But Trump is simply not subtle nor nuanced about stuff
like this. To Trump, Yeah, okay, the others are fungible.
Boris Epstein is not fungible to Donald Trump. If Juliani
went into prosecutors and talked about the Willard Hotel meeting
(05:27):
and Epstein and did not somehow manage to clear Epstein,
how does Trump accept the idea that Rudy Giuliani is
a little bit pregnant as a witness for the prosecution.
The goal here is Trump, You are helping them to
the goal. Moreover, time and time again, throughout American criminal history,
(05:51):
especially American political criminal history, key witnesses have changed sides
while telling themselves they were not giving up their guy,
and then once they saw how much trouble there was
and how much more protection they would gain from giving
up their guy, guess what they gave up their guy
(06:11):
when it was time to get immunity for his role
in Watergate. My friend John Deane's starting point was, according
to the almost giggling reminiscence of his attorney, Charlie Shaffer,
we can't talk about the P. The P John Dene's
shorthand for President Nixon. Rudy has offered to flip and
(06:35):
we now also have a name and a face to
put on the other person. The Special Council contends Trump
shared classified stuff with it's Susie Wiles. Wil Ees and
sources told ABC News that the reference to a Pack
representative identified in the indictment to whom Trump allegedly showed
a classified map weeks after he showed two or three
(06:57):
of his aides and the two Mark Meadows publishers the
Milli Iran battle plants. That's her, Susie Wiles. Not much
more to their story beyond that, except for the possibility
that Susie Wiles, ex chief of Trump's twenty sixteen Florida
Operation later CEO of Trump's Save America Pack, could be
a witness in this case. While she is Trump's twenty
(07:20):
twenty four campaign manager, as ABC notes, he has not
named a campaign manager yet, she is one of three
people in de facto charge of the campaign now, and
she could get the solo job. You may recall that
in the indictment, Trump is talking to the unidentified Pack
representative about a military operation that he said, quote was
(07:42):
not going well, and warned her that he quote should
not be showing the map, so she had to make
sure to quote not to get too close to the map,
which is Trump through and through. If you have good eyesight,
you can see the map from there. And while the
(08:04):
swelling continues to go down. Nearly seventy two hours after
the release of the Trump confession tape, an important observation
by Philip Bump of The Washington Post that, just like
the actual tape, had more to it, Trump saying, isn't
this cool than the Jack Smith transcript of the tape
had included. It is also clear now that whoever transcribed
(08:25):
it for the prosecution has made a significant mistake in transcription.
The transcript has Trump saying, we could probably write and
the staffer says, I don't know. We'll have to see. Yeah,
we'll have to try to figure out. Trump says, declassify.
See as President, I could have declassified it. Now I
(08:47):
can't you know, but this is still a secret. Except,
as Bump notes, clearly Trump does not say this is
still a secret. Listen to that part of it very carefully. Now, President,
(09:08):
I could now I can't you know, but this is
That is not Trump saying this is still a secret.
That is Trump saying, but this is classified. There is
a huge difference between those two things. A secret is
seventh grade and Becky Nelson classified is up to ten
(09:28):
years in jail. But this is classified. That makes me
wonder how such a big mistake could have been made
by prosecutors, especially when it's a mistake that hurts their case.
The only thing I can figure is we know there
are two different recordings of that confession, and the recording
(09:48):
that was leaked on Monday must not be the one
prosecutors have, or at least not the one they transcribed
from Two iPhones on a desk will produce different clarity
depending on where everybody speaking is positioned at any given moment.
It may have been clear on one recording and not
on the other. And somehow the one on which it
(10:12):
was clear got released to the public and the one
that it wasn't clear on got released to Jack Smith.
And that leads into another true bit of speculation that
I offered here Tuesday. Remember when I said it could
be worse for Trump only in one way if there
were a video, and I noted that assumes there isn't video.
A friend noted last night that in his first interview
(10:34):
Tuesday with Fox about what he was heard saying on
the tape. Trump's comment was, quote, what did I say
wrong on those recordings? I didn't even see the recording. Wait,
he didn't even see it. It's an audio tape. It's
a recording, an audio recording. It's not video. What is
there to see? It's not video, isn't it. I still think, yes,
(11:00):
it's only audio, two microphones. You know, maybe we could
simulate stare and put it out as an LP. Trump
does say weird stuff like this all the time where
he conflates human senses. I didn't even see the recording.
Could easily mean I didn't even consume or process the recording,
(11:21):
or or there's also a video here and we haven't
seen that yet. A couple of other Trump confession tape
related notes. The Times had another story about the Special
Council subpoena in Trump surveillance footage from Bedminster, where, of course,
(11:45):
the confession tape drama played out. They quote fought a
pitched battle with mister Trump's lawyers late last year over
how best to search the New Jersey property and the
ex Trump mouthpiece Tim PARLATORI told CNN that Boris Epstein,
you know, one of the guys Giuliani is singing about
(12:06):
Boris Epstein quote attempted to interfere with the Bedminster search.
According to Parlatory, this goes back to the theory from
Ryan Goodman of Just Security that there will be another
round of Trump indictments stemming from the brandishing of the
Milli Iran document in Bedminster. It also refutes the Trump
apologists nonsense that the confession tape is irrelevant because Trump
(12:28):
has not been specifically indicted for the Milli document. Firstly,
that audio goes to prove Trump revealed stuff like this
all the time. Secondly, he hasn't been charged for revealing
the Milli plan. Give Jack Smith a little time on that,
won't you. And there is another ancillary story here, and
(12:49):
I missed it as it happened in real time Tuesday,
and it is from the judge Michael Luttig, the conservative
who has been more personally pained by the last eight
years even than Liz Cheney. Luddig brought us back to
the likelihood of Trump being indicted for the fake elector's
scheme via a very unexpected path, via the Supreme Court
ruling on Moore v. Harper. We know Judge Lutig told
(13:13):
CNN the independent state legislature theory was the centerpiece of
that effort to overturn the twenty twenty presidential election. If
I were Jack Smith or the Attorney General of the
United States, the judge said, I believe I would have
needed that decision from the Supreme Court of the United
States in order to proceed with charges against the former
(13:36):
president and his allies and compatriots in connection with the
January sixth events. In other words, Luddig thinks Smith was
delaying a decision on indicting on the fake electors scheme
until the Supreme Court deciding on a case that might
have lent validity to the premise that states could overrule
(13:57):
their own voters any damn way they pleased and sent
in their own electors as they so desired. Happily, the
Court ruled against independent state legislature theory, and thus Luddog
didn't say this, but one has to infer that Luddock
thinks that Smith will now yeah proceed. Two other Trump
(14:24):
notes dementia. Jay Trump sued e Gene Carroll back yesterday,
claiming she defamed him after the Manhattan jury ruled he
was liable to the amount of five million dollars for
sexually abusing her. Carol went on CNN the day of
that verdict and was asked about the jury's decision that
Trump was not liable for raping her. She said quote,
(14:45):
oh yes he did. Oh yes he did. And Trump
now claims that is her defaming him. This leads me
to repeat something I have heard from every lawyer I
have ever talked to about approximately anything. How in the
hell does Donald Trump prove that anything that anybody has
(15:05):
said about him could possibly damage his reputation? What reputation
would that be? And the last punchline to the whole day,
Trump had yet another online meltdown about something new. Quote
three people in New Hampshire asked me why Fox News
(15:27):
uses such horrible pictures of me when doing or promoting
a story. The coloring, distortions, everything are just so bad, Donald, Sorry,
but that's your face. Also of interest to us here,
(15:56):
Trump's trojan horse RFK Junior crashes and burns. If you
are trying to avoid being found out as a trojan horse,
as a chaos agent so out of control, there is
concerned you might be part of this year's Russian surprise,
Do not do not try to sell merch from the
campaign by putting out a tweet with a photo of
(16:18):
a woman onto whom you have photoshopped to Kennedy twenty
twenty four hoodie without also photoshopping all the building signs
and street signs seen behind her, so they don't show
all the names and words on the streets and the
signs in Russian. Hell, the damn hoodie might as well
(16:39):
say that's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with
Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates,
(17:00):
some snarks, some predictions. Dateline Clearwater, Florida and the performance
artist and former strip club cocktail waitress who calls herself
Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, the esteemed representative of the Florida
thirteenth Congressional district. She was born Anna Paulina Meyerhoffer and
her mother's maiden name was Todd, and at various times
(17:21):
she's claimed she was raised as a Messianic Jew or
that all of her family is from Mexico and that
her grandmother was a heroin addict who died from AIDS.
But she was raised in the welfare system and she
had nannies and her uncle questioned her biography, so she
tried to get an injunction against him for stalking. She's
George Santos in address. Well, George Santos is George Santos
(17:44):
in address I'm speaking metaphorically AnyWho. Luna is setting herself
up far to the right of the Boberts and the Greens,
and one of her first targets is any right to abortion,
and another is strong opposition to the use of human
stem cells in medical research. She gave an interview with
One America News two years ago in which she said,
(18:06):
of some stem cell use, quote, it's not okay, it's
morally wrong. It's not done in the name of science.
And frankly, if you're going to do human testing, that
makes us no better than Nazis unquote, well be Congressional
financial disclosures of and Paulina Todd Meyerhoffer, Gamborski Luna are out,
(18:26):
and the website raw Story has reviewed them, and it
reports that Luna's husband has a stock investment between one
thousand and fifteen thousand dollars in Lineage Sell Therapeutics. And
what do they do over there at Lineage Sell Therapeutics
Why the company says it is pioneering a new branch
(18:49):
of medicine based on transplanting specific cell types to patients
with serious medical conditions. And where does it get said
sell types? You suppose find them on the street. Do
they know they get them from human embryos? The congresswoman
is avoiding comments. Thank you, Nancy Faus Dateline, Los Angeles.
(19:24):
Let's meet Manuel Johnson. Now, your big time screwball Bible
streaming shows and newscasts, you're Laura Ingram's and your one
American newses and your seven hundred clubs. They can get
your top shelf profits as guests on their shows. The
ones who actually talk to God, the Julie Greens and
the pastor Mark Burns's and Pat Robertson before he croaked.
(19:46):
Those types they gone those shows. The lesser shows like
those of Kelsey O'Malley, who is on Facebook and has
twenty five hundred followers. She's stuck with prophet Manuel Johnson.
I don't know what he claims, but I'm telling you
he does not talk to God. Maybe maybe he he
gets c seed on God's emails. Who knows, But he
(20:08):
winds up on Kelsey O'Malley's show talking about how a
bunch of the B grade evangelicals went out to Mount
Rushmore because they just knew that Trump's face, while not
carved there in the stone, is carved there in the spirits.
They have a photo not at all doctored, of Trump's
face drawn on a cloud. You can tell it's Trump
(20:28):
because he's also holding up our plans to bomb Tehran. Anyway,
we think Manuel Johnson and his crew went to Mount
Rushmore because Mount Rushmore is not what he said to
Kelsey O'Malley, we.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Had to go to Rush Mountain and I they'll show
a picture there because it has something to do.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Did you hear it?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
We had to go to Rush.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Mountain, Rush Mountmore. They saw Trump's head above the carvings
that Rush Mountmore as preserved for by the good folks,
that people for the American ways right wing. Watch Rush Mountmore.
You remember that was one of Rush Limbaugh's nicknames. And
(21:16):
what did your genial host, Kelsey O'Malley think of all this?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
His face may not be carved there in stone, but
it is carved there in the spirit. Mmmm.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Wow, well said Kelsey O'Malley. Wow. Indeed, praise the Lord
and say wow to Rush Mountmore still ahead. He had
(21:55):
demanded we change something in the format of countdown. We
did it once, it wasted about and I don't know
about a thousand man hours in one afternoon, and it
was impossible to do it again, and the staff threatened
to work walk away, so we just dropped it. Not
only did he never notice that we dropped it, but
a year later he still believed that that format change,
(22:16):
the one he demanded, was the reason the show had
become successful. It's a story I still don't believe about
a guy I still don't believe was actually the president
of MSNBC and CNN. Coming up first, the daily roundup
of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens
who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The Bronze
Robert F. Kennedy Junior, the unstable man being manipulated by
(22:39):
right wingers to run a trojan horse, vaxer and conspiracy
theory campaign challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination. If you
have any questions about what this is all about or
who might be behind it, they were answered yesterday afternoon
when the campaign tweeted out a promotion for kennedy campaign merchandise,
complete with a photo of a young woman walking down
(23:00):
a street in a Kennedy twenty twenty four hoodie. But
there was something off about the images behind the young
woman a coffee shop with strange lettering on the sign,
street signs with equally strange lettering, And then in the replies,
the same photo was shown, only that same woman in
that same photo was wearing a hoodie with a word
(23:22):
on it in cyrillic letters. It's a stock photo, a
Russian stock photo with a Kennedy logo superimposed over the
Russian logo on the hoodie. The campaign deleted the tweet
without explanation. They should delete the goddamn campaign without explanation.
The runners up wacko Congressman Nancy Mace of South Carolina
(23:45):
congratulating a local bus system on getting twenty five million
dollars in federal funding, which she fails to mention she
voted against when it appeared in the Biden twenty twenty
one infrastructure bill that provided all the money. Alabama sentator
Tommy I'm all ears Tubberville did the same thing, tweeting
broadband is vital for this excess of our rural communities.
(24:06):
Great to see Alabama receive crucial funds. He too voted
against it in the Senate, but unlike Mace, President Biden
did not let him waltz away from this. Biden sub
tweeted him twelve thousand retweets seventy five thousand likes Biden's
message to Tubberville, see you at the groundbreaking of all ears.
(24:26):
But our winner Grant Haber of Kenelon, New Jersey Town.
Officials there say Haber thought that that grove of thirty
two large trees just ruined his clear view of how
the sunrise would light up the distant New York City
skyline like so much gold. So he had the thirty
two tall trees, some of them one hundred and fifty
(24:48):
years old, cut down, which is a pretty damned obnoxious
thing to do. Then again, mister Haber founded his own
munitions company, American Innovations, and he has been a guest
on one American News. But wait, it's worse than this.
Those were not his trees on his seven eighth mountaintop
property in Jersey. Those were his neighbor's trees. Fully one
(25:09):
quarter of the trees on the property of his neighbor,
Sami Shinwei who says he is heartbroken, of course naturally,
mister Shinwei also says he volunteers with the New Jersey
State Woodland Management program. The town contends this Haber guy
hired somebody to cut the trees down and just left
them there. So far the city has charged him with
(25:30):
nine counts of illegal tree removal, and the online hearing
Tuesday was so packed there was a lengthy delay to
sign on, and the prosecutor couldn't even sign on. The
hearing's been delayed till July eighteenth while they work on
more bandwidth. Senator Tuberville. Anyway, Haber could be fined one
thousand dollars per felled tree, plus charged with replacing them
(25:53):
with transplanted trees of similar heights because the trees were
far in from the street and neighbor believes that a
temporary road will have to be built on Hayes's property
just to get the thirty two partially grown replacement trees
to the location of the arboricide. And between the costs
of that new road and the new trees, and the
(26:15):
two years of maintenance also required by the law there,
mister Haber may wind up paying as much as one
eight hundred thousand dollars Grant. Guess that's what they mean
when they say the view is priceless. Haber two days
worst person in the world. Just ahead, somebody asked me,
(27:04):
Yesked today, why so many TV executives seem to be idiots?
I answered seem I tried to explain. The best I
could do is explain that none of them seemed to
understand that you couldn't always make people or things successful
on TV, so instead all the executives try to project
this image of infallible, inscrutable genius. And then I said,
(27:25):
never mind that. Let me just tell you about one
of the many stories I know about the former CNN
and MSNBC president Rick Kaplan. I'll tell you that story next.
First time to feature another dog in need that you
can help. Every dog has its day. Duke is a
handsome black and tan, newtered four year old Doberman pincher.
He is immaculately behaved and very obedient, and he will
(27:47):
do anything for praise and affection. Better if he lives
with calm, large dogs or no other dogs, but most importantly,
better if he lives he is on the kill list
right now at yet another overcrowded shelter, ready to end
his life because for some reason he is unhappy in
well death row of prison. He's at the Baldwin Park
(28:07):
Animal Care Center in California. You can be adopted from there,
or your pledges can help defray the costs for a
rescue to pull him out and save him. Look for
Duke on my Twitter feeds and your retweet will really
help too. I thank you, and Duke thanks you. Finally
to the number one story on the Countdown and my
(28:28):
favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
And tomorrow is seventeen years since this former MSNBC president,
Rick Kaplan, the guy who once chased me around the
studios threatening to kill me because he was squeamish and
I had mentioned blood on the air, blew any remaining
credibility he had with us because he didn't know what
(28:49):
was live and what was on delay. However, this story
starts in the men's room at MSNBC. It is February seventeenth,
two thousand and four, at one of those moronic corporate
speak town halls. The bosses have just introduced Rick Kaplan
as the new president of the network. Kaplan speaks for
an hour without interruption or breath. He does not mention
(29:13):
that he was the president of CNN when it's nineteen
year streak at number one in the cable news ratings
came to a crashing end. He does, however, mention that
he is six feet seven inches tall, but he does
not seem to be six feet seven inches tall. As
this nonsense ends, I rush into the men's room and find,
to my amusement, Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, Jesse Ventura, Lester Holt,
(29:40):
and one unoccupied urinol. As I moved to occupy it,
it dawns on me that Ventura, the former professional wrestler,
is the shortest man in the bathroom, at six feet two.
All five of us are silent. Finally, Matthews says it,
Helen Hell, can he say six foot seven? He's barely
(30:01):
taller than I am and I'm six four? Ohroon, are
you slightly taller than You're slightly shorter than me? How
is he six seven? Everybody keeps looking forward, of course,
into the wall in front of us. I'm six three
and a half. Lester, he's your height. I saw you
standing with him, you tour even what are you six ' five.
Lester says, uh huh and flushes. Scarborough chimes in, I'm
(30:26):
just over sixty four. We're almost dyed. Aye, he's not
six seven. Finally, Ventura speaks, I've been thrown around a
ring by guys who were six to seven. This guy's
not six seven. From the sink, Lester Holt now says,
have any of you known anybody our height who lies
and says they're taller? Matthews again, who lies about their height?
(30:49):
I flush this guy does. Gentlemen, we are in trouble
here for the presidency of Rick Kaplan at MSNBC. That
might have been sorry, I can't resist it the high
water mark. Later, on Friday, March fifth, two thousand and four, Kaplan,
who had been there three weeks, assembled the hosts and
(31:10):
producers of the primetime shows on the network that would
have been me, Scarborough, Dan Abrams, our staffs, the new
Jersey staff of Chris Matthews Show, and he told us
that the next day was going to be Monday. Somebody
from Scarborough's staff helpfully corrected him and mister Kaplan, I'm sorry,
tomorrow is Saturday. Kaplan sternly explained he was now president
(31:32):
of this network, and we all sucked. And if he
said today was Friday and tomorrow was Monday, then today
was Friday and tomorrow was Monday. He wanted to see
us react to sudden changes in our plans. We were
being told we were being called into work a sixth
day tomorrow for no reason. Kaplin then started yelling at us,
(31:52):
You guys don't get it. You're all working tomorrow. Anybody
who doesn't come in is fired. We are going to
do the whole pro primetime lineup. Your breaking news is
today's breaking news, the guilty verdict in the Martha Stone
word case. Start booking your guests, because tomorrow is Monday,
not Saturday. Just on my staff, Saturday was supposed to
(32:13):
be my reporter's engagement party, a surprise party thrown by
one of my producers for his wife's birthday, and the
day another producer was closing on buying a house. I
have a vague memory of what we put on the air.
I have a stronger memory of the new president of
MSNBC losing the staffs of all four of his primetime
(32:34):
shows on his fifth day on the job and never
ever getting them back. Kaplan then went to a corkboard
on our office wall, on which our show Rundown was displayed.
He ordered producers to move segments around, and he berated
me for not having anticipated his whims and at one
point he screamed, stop, what the hell are you doing?
(32:55):
And he got up and he grabbed the pushpin, which
held up an index card bearing the name of a guest.
You don't use green pins with yellow index cards. You
use yellow pins with yellow index cards. What kind of
a newsman are you. I can't imagine how this guy
choked away CNN's monopoly on cable news ratings. I was
(33:18):
reminded recently that later on December eighth, two thousand and five,
seventeen years ago tomorrow, he did one of the most
unintentionally funniest things I have ever witnessed. A plane slid
off the runway at Midway Airport in Chicago. Nothing funny
about that, obviously, but Kaplan called into our control room
demanding we changed something about our live coverage that he
(33:42):
didn't like. We promptly made the change. He was right.
Five minutes later he called in and started swearing at
one of our producers. I told you to change that.
If you you're fired and the producer said, we changed
it five minutes ago. When you called in silence, Rick,
are you watching the network on some sort of delay?
Are you watching on TVO or something? Silence again. Finally
(34:06):
he said okay, good work, see you tomorrow and hung up.
He didn't know he was watching it on a delay.
Kaplan was also one of these forget the mean thing
I said yesterday. God knows I have kind of guys.
By Monday, he had heard people laughing at some of
my on air jokes and his front runner instincts took over.
(34:28):
He called me and the producer in for a meeting.
I have only one criticism of your show. Which of
these stories will you be talking about? Thing is genius?
The fifth story, the fourth story, then the third story.
It's original and fresh. I hesitated. I almost said to him, yeah,
this ale counting thing. We just invented that. The music
(34:48):
is genius, the graphics are genius. You're a genius, but
you're missing something obvious, something genius. After each one of
these stories, after you thank your guest, you should do
a list of the things you didn't tell us about
those stories. So like after the fifth story, you should say,
now here are the other five things we didn't tell
you about the fifth story, get it a full screen
graphic and you telling people, and then four things for
(35:09):
the fourth story, and three for the third. I thought
for a moment, and I said, Okay, well what happens
if we make those graphics up? And then a minute beforehand,
the guest brings up one of those things we claim
we didn't tell you. When he just told you, we
had lost Rick Caplin's attention by that point. Hmmm, he grunted.
(35:30):
For a second. I thought his eyes were pointing outwards
in different directions, but he snapped himself back into this reality.
Huh could happen? You'll figure it out anyway, too late
to do it today, figure it out and do it tomorrow.
Thanks the producer. And I had to then explain to
the staff of Countdown that from now on, for every
story they had to deliberately leave out one or two
(35:52):
or three or four or five facts or details, something
interesting enough to be made into a full screen graphic,
but not interesting enough to be included in their scripts
or the interviews with the guests. Suddenly I thought a
lot of people's eyes were pointing outwards in different directions.
The line producer Greg Kordick, who was in charge not
(36:12):
of content but of timing things and making sure things
like graphics got made, said, matter of factly, this will
add five hours to everybody's workday. And so it did.
After the next day's show when we listed the top
five things we didn't tell you about today's fifth story
and the top four things we didn't tell you about
today's fourth story, etc. And we had to shorten all
(36:32):
the scripts and shorten each interview just to make room
for all of this extraneous crap. Greg the producer said,
people here will be quitting by Thursday and dying by Monday.
And I said, you're right. Plus it ruins the interviews
and it weakens the show. Don't do it tomorrow with
Kaplan yells, I'll take the eat. So now it's Wednesday.
And not only don't I hear anything from Kaplin about
(36:54):
the Tuesday show and his the top five things we
didn't tell you about today's fifth story, Jazz, but after
the Wednesday show when we don't do it, I'm sitting
there waiting for an enraged phone call because we didn't
Thursday morning at home, I'm waiting for an enraged email
Thursday afternoon, I'm waiting for an enraged Kaplan in person. Nothing.
(37:15):
He never said a word. The week passes nothing, a month,
two months, it's summer. Nothing. The rest of two thousand
and four flies by nothing. We did it once, we
never did it again, and then he never said anything.
(37:35):
It is now January two thousand and five, and he
still hasn't said anything. And I'm told by Phil Griffin,
my first producer in television sports and sixteen years later,
my first producer in television news, who has since become
the vice president of MSNBC, that Kaplan wants to see
us in his office. It's not a big deal, Phil says,
he's in a good mood. He just wants to make
us feel like we have input into his decisions. This
(37:57):
is a what do you think meeting? Now I have
to ask you to carefully picture the layout of Rick
Kaplan's office at m MSNBC in the year two thousand
and five. Envision a long, narrow room. Baseball's MLB network
now operates there, and they have cleverly turned Kaplan's office
into a wardrobe room, perfect since it was really just
(38:19):
a long closet. Anyways, Rick Kamplan who was six foot
five but lied and said he was six foot seven,
sat at the very back of this room. So you
come in the front door, you turn to your right,
and maybe thirty thirty five forty feet away from you,
in the farthest corner, facing his computer on his desk,
flush against the left hand wall, is the president of MSNBC.
(38:42):
A few feet into the room is where you sit.
Halfway between these two points, against the right hand wall
is where another executive can sit. So Phil Griffin sits there.
I'm just inside the door. He is fifteen feet ahead
of me to the right. Rick Kamplan is thirty feet
or forty feet ahead of me to the left. Picture
(39:03):
this carefully. These chairs and desks are arranged. If you're
me and Phil Griffin is looking at you, Rick Kaplan
can only see the back of Phil Griffin's head and
not his face. If they are both looking at you,
they cannot see each other. Weird, seemingly trivial turned out
(39:24):
to be essential. We begin this meaningless meeting and talk
about guests and graphics, fonts, and Kaplan talks about how
much the ratings have gone up in his year as president.
And finally, I say, I do have one suggestion. I
think the show is going to be very successful, and
I think if we want to make any changes, we
should make them now before it becomes successful. And I say,
(39:45):
I have never heard anybody say they like the fifth story,
fourth story, third story stuff. If you want to continue
the name countdown because people know it by now, that's great,
I guess. But the five four three two one numbering
is a conceit and it's a lot of extra work
for everybody, and I think we should kill it now.
(40:05):
Kaplan is aghast, he is pale, He is not angry,
he is just stunned. But you can't do that five
four three two one is part of the reasons. And
the ratings went up. The ratings went up when I
came up with the idea of the top five things
(40:25):
we didn't tell you about today's top five stories and
the top four things we didn't tell you about today's
number four story, et cetera. We can't stop that. That's
why people watch. My idea took me a split second
to even remember what the hell it was he was
talking about. I had forgotten the whole five things we
(40:46):
didn't tell you Albatross. Weeks after the one show. We
did it, and then the staff rebelled, and I said,
screw it, and I'll take the heat. And I was
about to say this out loud when I suddenly realized
that Phil Griffin, fifteen feet away on the right, his
face turned to me and thus invisible to Kaplan thirty
feet away on the left, was making his eyes as
wide as possible, and Phil was looking right at me
(41:07):
and silently mouthing the word no, no, no, no, no,
all the while keeping his head completely still, so Kaplan
didn't know he was talking to me. Silently. I got
Phil's message. I dropped the subject. I didn't say it.
The meeting ended maybe two minutes later with Kaplan saying
(41:28):
keep up the good work, and ushering us out by saying,
and keep up with the top five things we didn't
tell you about today's five fifth story. Oh that's what's
making it really cook. When we were out of earshot
of Rick Kaplan, Griffin thanked me for being able to
read his panicked lips. I used an oath to liven
up my question what the blank was that all about?
(41:51):
And Griffin said, now you know what every day of
my life has become. It's not worth it to try
to correct him. He believes what he believes, and he
won't be checked or contradicted. And I said, we only
did the five things. We didn't tell you a thing once,
only once. It's like a year later. How in the
hell could he possibly think we're still doing it? Griffin laughed,
(42:16):
like a soldier on a World War One battlefield who
has just run out of bullets. See that's the problem, buddy.
He only watches MSNBC here in the office, the place
he's renting it doesn't have cable. President of MSNBC doesn't
have cable at home. On June sixth, two thousand and six,
(42:39):
they fired Rick Caplan as the president of MSNBC. They
let him resign. They also let him keep his secret,
the darkest of secrets for him and for MSNBC, that,
for his two years on the throne, the president of
an all news cable channel did not have cable. I've
(43:11):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music
arrange produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneale,
who are the Countdown musical directors. Guitars based on drums
by Brian ray All, orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Schhanel,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other selections, including the Beethoven music
we use for the Dog Stories, has been arranged and
(43:32):
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music
is the ould Woman theme from ESPN two. It was
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, incorporated musical
comments from Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Larry David. Everything else
is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this,
the nine hundred and fifth day since Donald Trump's first
(43:54):
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Arrest him again while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is tomorrow. Till then, I'm Keith Olman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
We had to go to Rush Mountain.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you get your podcasts.
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