September 24, 2024 • 60 mins
SERIES 3 EPISODE 34: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) Yeah, the Nuzzi Nudes News Network stuff is included.
But the ACTUAL lead story is: There are heroes among us and even in politics and even in the Republican Party and no, their motives do not have to be absolutely pure, they don’t even have to be a little bit pure and such a man is Republican State Senator Mike McDonnell of Nebraska, and what he has now done, quoting a proponent “kind of closes the casket… kind of closes the lid” on the Trump bid to reshape the Electoral College just six weeks before the election by changing how Nebraska CASTS its five electoral votes from a split-them-by-district method that will probably give Kamala Harris ONE electoral vote and Trump FOUR, to winner take all which would give him all FIVE. He has killed it. He won't vote for it. "It is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change.”
And in things I promised not to tell and boy is THAT true this time. When the RFK Junior/Olivia Nuzzi relationship story broke, I thought, oh here we go. Eventually and inevitably this story will get around to me because long ago she and I lived together. We had dogs and tattoos and rings. And when this story broke I decided: if nobody asks, I’m not volunteering this. It’s difficult to be even the most marginal public figure and keep any part of your life private. And nobody knows that better now, than does Olivia.
On the other hand, if I’m asked about this by the media, if somebody is going to write it, I’m not lying. I’m also not giving THEM the story. Especially not The New York Post, which called yesterday. I confirmed we dated and said I thought it was pretty general knowledge that we had dated but that nobody cared and that if they didn’t know this, well, to paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle writing Sherlock Holmes’ lines for him: “I am not retained by the gossip columnists to supply their deficiencies.” In other words, I am not the Nuzzi Nudes News Network over here, giving away free stories! So I've put a few details in this podcast. And they are stunningly normal.
Did she do anything right here journalistically? No. But the bottom line: Olivia is responsible for me being born again in dogs. She will always have my support if she needs it.
B-Block (26:32) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: His career died seven years ago, but when a reporter asked him about the cause of death last week, Bill O'Reilly stormed out of the interview and threatened to sue her for, I dunno, telling the truth. The New York Times' newest bothsideist nonsense has taken a natural disaster bent, in which fascism sought by Trump has "erupted" along "fault lines." And the leading bothsidesist of the paper, Maggie Haberman, has helpfully revealed that there is a Left Wing Industry devoted to trying to tear her and her colleagues down. Which raises a vital question: WHERE IS MY MONEY, VAST LEFT WING INDUSTRY?
C-Block (38:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since O'Reilly's name has come up in this All-New edition, I actually answer the FAQ about Billo (and Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh). Do they believe the poison they sell or are they just pimps? I have some evidence suggesting the answer is they started one way and ended drinking their own poison.
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. Yeah,
get to the I Lived with Olivia Newsy part of
your day presently. But first, here's the actual news. There
(00:28):
are heroes among us, and even in politics, and even
in the Republican Party, there are heroes among us, and
know their motives do not have to be absolutely pure,
they don't even have to be a little bit pure.
And such a man is State Senator Mike McDonald of Nebraska.
And what he has now done quoting a proponent kind
(00:49):
of closes the casket, kind of closes the lid on
the Trump bid to reshape the electoral college just six
weeks before the election by changing how Nebraska casts its
five electoral votes from a split them by disc method
that will probably give Kamala Harris one electoral vote and
Trump four, changing it from that to winner take all,
(01:12):
which would give Trump all five. There are many two
seventy to two sixty eight Harris victories. They all pretty
much include that one loan vote from Nebraska. McDonell a Republican,
albeit a new Republican. He was a Democrat until they
threw him out last spring. Now says in a statement
(01:32):
quote election should be an opportunity for all voters to
be heard, no matter who they are, where they live,
or what party they support. I have taken the time
to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both
sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear
to me that right now, forty three days from election
(01:53):
day is not the moment to make this change. Holy crap,
I mean seriously, so why the big spiel about impure motives.
Senator McDonald is not only from the district that will
likely go Harris, the proverbial blue dot of Big City Omaha, Nebraska,
(02:14):
but he has long been discussing, toying, tinkering with running
for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, and as a conservative Democrat
or a moderate Republican or whatever. Guess what is not
going to happen ever in twenty seven lifetimes if you
are the decisive vote, essentially taking away the electoral vote
(02:35):
from the citizens of Omaha no matter who they vote for,
especially when his likely opponent, the incumbent Republican, is pledged
to take away the electoral vote from Omaha. The last
minute switcheroo would require thirty three yes votes from forty
nine senators, There are fifteen Democrats. They're obviously voting against this.
(02:56):
There is one independent assumed to also be a no,
and a couple of Republicans who were supposedly waiting for
McDonald to support the switch and then use him as
cover for doing so himself. And they thought they might
get that independent or a couple of the Democrats to
go over to the side of one vote for Nebraska
(03:19):
Senator Lauren Lippencott, the guy who said McDonald's statement closes
the casket, closes the lid, and probably other upbeat life
affirming phrases like that. He says McDonald is quote an
absolute no. We're going to have to reintroduce this bill
in the next session. McDonald doesn't even want that. He
is suggesting instead a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment.
(03:43):
Now back to motive. McDonald is a Republican because last
year he came out as a Democrat and supportive draconian
abortion restrictions and a ban on transgender care for youths.
It looked like he was going to fold on this
one too. A week ago tomorrow, he had two dozen
Nebraska Republican senators met with Governor Jim Republican tool Pillin
(04:04):
and Lindsey please help me. They'll do something terrible to
me if Trump loses. Graham and McDonald was quoted by
people in that room is saying he was looking for
a way to get to Yes. Yeah, Well he didn't
find that way. And from such lack of a GPS
of courage and ethics comes heroes, profiles, encourage, or maybe,
(04:33):
as Shakespeare wrote in the unsung single best line in Hamlet,
assume a virtue if you have it, not assume take on.
Don you want to be a principled hero, even if
you're an unprincipled, cowardly politician, do something principled and heroic,
(04:54):
like you know, Mike McDonald just did. I guess now,
all Harris has to do is win the Nebraska second.
As I mentioned yesterday, CBS News estimates that the Hoole
average there is Harris by four. The last actual polls
I can find are from the second half of August,
and they are Harris by five or with the third
party sock Puppets included Harris by eight. Not many polls. Yesterday,
(05:18):
mass Ink Polling did Wisconsin has her up by seven.
The Real Clear Politics average of polls, and that is
a Republican slanted I don't know, dog and Pony show.
It would produce a Harris Electoral College victory of two
hundred and seventy five to two hundred and sixty two.
(05:39):
And we can say this with certainty. Either there has
been a sea change that nobody has told any of
the other posters about, or the New York Times is
going to need.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
A whole new pole.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
They have Trump forty nine forty five in Georgia, they
have Trump fifty forty five in Arizona. Redfield Wilton, British
Posters has Arizona as a tie, and The Times has
Trump forty nine forty seven in North Carolina. Now that
is before Mark Robinson's porn Mountain. Its history turned out
(06:10):
to be engraved on like ten Commandment style stones. More
on that in a moment. But Times, why do you
even print that poll? All but three members of the
Republican candidate's campaign staff have quit since your North Carolina
poll closed. It's useless. You needed to fill space in
(06:34):
the paper or something. And the Arizona Times number is
a ten point swing to Trump in a month a month.
I wouldn't buy that if it was a ten point
swing to Harris, and the poll was signed by every
person who was polled, and they notarized the signatures. So
(07:19):
as the Republicans are shackled to a corpse in Donald Trump,
Trump is shackled to a corpse in North Carolina. Mark
Robinson not only is not apologizing, is not quitting. He
now says he's suing CNN, or he seemed to say that.
He was asked, are you suing CNN? And he said,
we're going after them? Well, hell, when I was at
(07:42):
Current TV, we quote went after CNN two and look
how that turned out.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
You've talked about the reporting being salacious, live not true.
Have you taken steps then.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
To it's you?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
We absolutely are, We absolutely are. We We're in talks
right now. Everything up to legal counsel to take CNN
to task for what have done to us. We are
going after him. Okay, we are going to go after
him for what they've done, but we have five weeks
left to this rights folks, and make no mistake about it,
we are not gonna let CNN throw us off of
(08:16):
our mission.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
This rocket scientist also announced CNN is going after him
like CNN did while Reagan was in office, and like
CNN went after Abraham Lincoln when Abraham Lincoln was in office. Look,
I got hired by CNN when I was twenty two
years old and CNN was fourteen months old. And if
(08:40):
CNN was on when Abraham Lincoln was president, that makes
me at least one hundred and eighty one years old.
I mean, I'm old, ask Olivia, but I ain't that old.
You think I'm making this.
Speaker 5 (08:56):
Up sea rain today and contrasting with their lives for today.
But every what you said about when he was at all,
you decided him just as much as you decided all wrong.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
You decided him just as much as you despise they
were having. Wait, there's more and more. He gave a
speech at a Canvas Owen's event in twenty twenty uncovered
by the website The Bulwark, in which he praised Jim Crow.
Quote during Jim Crow, you can go back and you
can look at it, and the record will show you.
That's when black folks weren't their highest in this country,
(09:34):
when the times were the toughest, that's when they were highest.
And why because they knew they had to rely on themselves.
My god. Oh and he praised slavery again, at least
how the smart slaves accepted whipping, thinking ahead from twenty twenty,
going for that pro Jim Crow pro slavery, pro whipping
(09:57):
crowd quote. I can even imagine some of them with
their slave chains on the rags they had on. They
made sure those rags were as clean as could be,
and they stood up and stiffened up their backs. They
saw what was coming down in the pike, and they
only knew that it would come if they took those
stripes and took those beats beats beats by dre beats stripes,
(10:24):
uh whip marks. He means, are there any references to
transgender whipping in any of his resume? The Trump response
to his guy being sent to a living hell radio
silence about him, but a desperate attempt to get every
(10:45):
racist and psycho in North Carolina to emerge from every warehouse, farmhouse,
hen house, outhouse, and dog house and vote for Trump anyway.
Because Trump now says he's going to send in federal
law enforcement. An inference here is ice and troops to
destroy all the sanctuary cities in North care Carolina and
(11:05):
every other state. Trump will invade your town to get
the immigrants out, including the ones that are legal. Yes,
I know there are no sanctuary cities in North Carolina,
but as the Carolina Journal notes quote, in North Carolina, Wake, Durham, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, Orange,
and Chatham counties do not currently honor ICE detainers, according
(11:30):
to a June report from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On Friday, Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoed HB ten, which
would require sheriffs across the state to cooperate with ICE.
So this is Trump's guy, Mark tire fire Robinson and no.
(11:53):
By the way, the Republican Governors Association has now said
it does not plan any additional ads in North Carolina
for Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. Rightly, So what with
all this great free pub I'm beginning to think Trump
(12:20):
picked J. D. Mantz because he's capable of saying dumber
things even than Trump does. In North Carolina last night.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
A person who's more worried about missing a birdie pud
than he isn't about an assassin's attempt on his own life.
Because that is the definition of courage under fire, and
Donald Trump has.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
It in space. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,
you have a golf club. He has a gun. Get
out of the way. This is what he just described.
This is actually the definition of an effing idiot. Okay,
this I like, especially if there is any softening of
(12:58):
the Harris momentum in the battleground polls. And I think
she's going to pull sufficiently away in North Carolina going
out on him there, and there are damn few ways
Trump can win without North Carolina. Remembering that the Trump
plan all along was to find a way to back
out of debates and blame first Biden, then Harris. The
Harris campaign is going to make damn sure that if
(13:19):
there is no second debate a month from yesterday, Trump
is going to hear about him chickening out of that
debate every day for the next month. From NBC quote.
The Democratic National Committee will launch static billboards and mobile billboards.
There were supposedly ones at Trump rallies, like the one
in Pennsylvania last night. The chicken billboards include a digitally
(13:42):
altered image of Trump in a chicken suit, alongside the
words there's no debate, Donald Trump's a chicken unquote. Well,
I don't get one part of this. Why digitally altered.
He looks enough like a chicken as it is the
hair quote. The DNC originally said that they would be
(14:03):
sending staffers dressed in chicken suits to Trump rallies as
part of this messaging campaign, but after publication on Monday,
a spokesperson for the group said that this would no
longer occur. Instead a pro Harris student group at the
Indiana University of Pennsylvania College. Don't even try to figure
that out where Trump is speaking. This was written before
(14:26):
he spoke would send inflatable chickens to his rally there
instead again inflatable chickens. I mean that's Trump. Speaking of appearances,
CNN reports Milania Trump, who has not been on the
campaign trail in well wait, how long is forever? Quote,
(14:48):
spoke at two political fundraisers for the Log Cabin Republicans
this year, and she was paid two hundred and thirty
seven five hundred dollars for an April event. According to
former Trump for latest financial disclosure for him, the payment
was listed as a speaking engagement. The problem is, although
It's on Trump's financial disclosure form, nobody knows who wrote
(15:10):
the checks to her. It's not listed anywhere the log cabin.
Republicans say they did not pay this, so they'll have
to search for other payments of two hundred and thirty seven,
five hundred dollars to Milagna. Well, what's her contract with Donald?
Got in it? Any two hundred and thirty seven five
(15:30):
hundreds in there? And now things I promised not to
tell him? Boy? Is that true in this one? Literally,
when the RFK Junior Olivia Newsy relationship story broke, I thought, uh,
(15:52):
here we go. Eventually and inevitably, this story will get
around to me because long ago she and I lived together.
We had dogs and tattoos and rings, and like all relationships,
it was very nice at the start. Then things happened
and we worked on it and it ended. One day
I said, I think we've exhausted this, and I changed
(16:14):
my mind. Then like the next day, she left, So
I guess that makes it a tie. It's a while ago.
She had a clothes closet in my apartment, and I
meant what I said here about things I promised not
to tell. Because when this story broke, I decided, if
nobody asks, I'm not volunteering this. It's difficult to be
even the most marginal public figure and keep any part
(16:37):
of your life private, and nobody knows that better now
than does Alivia. On the other hand, if I'm asked
about this by the media, if somebody is going to
write it, I'm not lying to them. I'm not denying it.
I'm also not giving them the story, especially not the
freaking New York Post which reached out yesterday. I confirmed
(16:58):
we dated. That's what he asked, Did you date her?
And I said yes, And I said I thought it
was pretty general knowledge that we had dated, but that
nobody cared, and that if they didn't know this well
the paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle writing Sherlock Holmes's lines for him,
I am not retained by the gossip columnists to supply
(17:19):
their deficiencies. In other words, I am not the newsy
nudes news network over here giving away free stories. Plus Seriously,
nearly all of the relationship was surprisingly mundane, and it
doesn't have anything to do with the RFK story except
(17:42):
in the broadest possible sense. I mean, I'm sure she's
not a completely different person than she was when we dated,
but maybe I am left with a couple of overarching thoughts.
She did some weird things during the three three and
a half years this lasted. I'm sure I did two.
(18:03):
She played around at one point, but how to pronounce
her last name? What sounded best professionally NEWSYUSYNOTSI and her
parents were not the best role models, And on the
other hand, after the immediate and understandable astonishment on their part,
they did a one eighty about me. I went to
their house for Christmas every year, her mom used to
(18:24):
dog sit for us, her dad and I went to
a Stanley Cup final game and had coffee a lot.
Though sometimes she so missed the mark on the consequences
of her actions that nobody around her would have said
anything except how could you not know that? Like the
time long after we broke up, that she went to
(18:46):
Corey Lewandowski's house and he didn't answer, so she just
turned the handle on the front door and it was unlocked,
and so she just walked in and didn't know that
was unethical and probably illegal, and then made that story public.
But nothing I know about her then or now suggests
Olivia would have kept sending a guy nude photos unless
(19:07):
he wanted them. I haven't talked with her since we
broke up because nowadays you're supposed to ghost each other,
I guess. But for whatever it's worth, I can't defend
any of her journalistic choices here and I will not.
But in the metaview of who's right who's wrong here,
she's not the one who's wrong here. And of course,
(19:30):
if you are a faithful listener, it will have dawned
on you that all the times I have talked about
my beloved dog Stevie, my other dogs, the ex girlfriend
with whom I walked into the pet shop because her
family dog was dying and she needed a puppy fix,
that was Olivia. She took care of me that fateful
(19:51):
day when we got Stevie, and she and I devoted
our lives to Stevie. And Olivia largely taught me how
to successfully be adopted by a dog and all dogs,
and the anniversary of that is next Monday. And all
my other dogs, and my late rescues Mishu and Mi Nay,
(20:12):
and all my work with dogs and animal groups, that
all comes from her. So that's the bottom line. Whatever
else this is, Olivier is responsible for me being born
again in dogs. She will always have my support if
she needs it, though not the journalistic choices part. Maybe
(20:33):
that is all I will ever say again about her.
Maybe developments will warrant more details for now I don't think.
I don't think they will. But from the department of
Keith cannot possibly leave well enough alone. That does not
mean I'm not going to make a couple of jokes
about this, and maybe not just in this episode. Joke
number one about the ethics of me dating her at
(20:56):
my age. I don't want to go out on a
limb here, but I am beginning to suspect she likes
all old guys. I mean, she was going to marry
one who was twenty years older than her. Also, I'm old.
On the other hand, I'm not as old as Bobby Kennedy.
(21:21):
I win, son of a Bitch is five years older
than I am. Clears up a lot of my conscience.
Also of interest here, well, if there's a Keith story
about Keith, there also has to be a Keith story
(21:42):
about Bill O'Reilly that used to be a federal law
He has stormed out of an interview, threatening to sue
the interviewer, which leads me in this all new edition
of Countdown to the story of How I met O'Reilly
and Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and the faq to O'Reilly
and the others believe their own poison? Or are they
(22:02):
just whores coming up? And did you know there is
an entire left wing industry that exists just to criticize
Maggie Haberman and her colleagues, she says, So it must
be true. The most important question here is why aren't
they paying me? That's next, This is countdown. This is
(22:26):
Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead of us on this
(22:50):
all new edition of Countdown. So Bill O'Reilly is in
the news again, a decade after he was last actually
in the news. He has threatened to sue a PBS
reporter or do something to her because she had the
nerve to ask him about the rear and he stopped
being in news. This led me, naturally to think about
my many encounters with Bill, and especially one question I
(23:13):
have been asked more often about him, and about Sean Hannity,
and about Rush Limbaugh and about others of their ilk
than I have about anything else about them. Do or
did they actually believe the things they said and still
say that have actually poisoned this nation's politics and enabled
a creature like Trump, or if they just did it
(23:35):
for the money. Some answers ahead next in Things I
promised not to tell. First, there are still more new
idiots to talk about, the daily roundup of the miss grants,
morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worse
persons than the world, Well, the bronze worse. Let's start
(23:55):
with Bill mister Meyerhoffer. He did an interview with Margaret
Hoover for the PBS show firing Line. This is what
I was just referring to. Hoover says, I want to
go back to twenty seventeen, your top rated talent at
Fox News. You've just signed a four year deal to
renew your contract, and The Times publishes a report on
(24:16):
settlements that you had reached with several women over harassment
misconduct claims, totaling thirteen million dollars. You're forced out of
the network. The Times later reveals an additional settlement worth
thirty two million dollars. I don't expect that you can
comment on this, you think? She then read from a
Times op ed that she herself, Margaret Hoover, had written,
(24:40):
O'Reilly blamed others? She said, quoting herself, embracing the victimization.
He's so ridiculed of the American left. He claimed his
departure was no fault of his own, but the cost
of doing business as a high profile media personality. This
is an outlandish claim. William F. Buckley and Anderson Cooper
are high profile media personalities, and yet they have never
(25:01):
been dogged with repeated sexual harassment entangled. How do you respond,
Billo replied, I don't. Then, he said Hoover was conducting
an ambush interview. There's no ambush interview that has lasted
as long in the history of the world as the
question I just read you that she asked him. It's
no longer an ambush. He would have had time to
(25:23):
get to JFK Airport and fly to Brazil before she
finished talking. That's no longer an ambush you're involved with
that's almost your living with her. Oh why did I
bring that up anyway? As the website Mediaite phrased, what
happened next? O'Reilly repeatedly then told Hoover that she did
not know the facts of the allegations against him, and
(25:43):
claimed he had made no settlements himself, and then he
was unaware of any actions taken by Fox News. Hoover
countered that this claim could not possibly be true. O'Reilly
finally threatened her, quoting O'Reilly, you're gonna use that stuff.
You're in for a problem. So I'm telling you right
now because that's just bull. I'm not going to record
(26:03):
any phony like that. You're going to edit this thing,
and you know my attorney is going to be watching.
I thought Bill liked to do the watching himself. Do
I have this story? Am I misremembering the story? Wasn't
that the whole thing? AnyWho? Then Bill got up and
left the interview. He actually turned down camera time. That's
(26:27):
the story here. I should have led with that. It
was thirty two million dollars. It cost him his Fox show,
cost him his career, cost him his only friend in
the world, Donald Trump, who now who wouldn't and now
won't touch him. But he's gonna sue or demand they
not play parts of the interview. I don't know, Hoover
says his lawyer sent them a legal demand no details.
(26:49):
Like I've told you before when I used to discuss
his settlement with Andrew Macris and the other settlements with
the other women. He decided his best strategy was to
send his pa, his predessian assistant, Jesse Waters, to stalk
the chairman of GE. That'd be General Electric. If I'm
going to explain acronyms here which owned NBC, the National
Broadcasting Company, which in turned own MSNBC, Microsoft NBC. That
(27:14):
didn't work either. And this isn't going to work. The
runner up, Why it's theme nights. We switch from Billow
to The New York Times. All the both sides is
that's fit to print. It is amazing. There's no sense
whatsoever there that they violated every principle they claim and
claim loudly and incessantly and condescendingly to represent headline number one.
(27:38):
Controversies erupt as Trump and GOP make critical push to voters,
and it's push, not push. It's the American English word
push like sales job as opposed to the push word.
A Republican who reportedly called himself a block Nazi, a
(27:59):
false story about migrants eating cats and dogs, and a
feud with Taylor Swift bring back as chaos. Yes, things
like this erupt like volcanoes. Controversies erupt force of nature. Clearly,
not because Trump made them happen, or made them up,
or employs people like jd. Vance who makes them up,
(28:22):
or he recruited people like Mark Robinson. And not because
one political party is rather stumblingly traditionally inept, and it's
on one set of American politics and the other political party.
Trump's political party is filled with corrupt, morally bankrupt, fascist
liars who are in fact not that good at getting
away with their lies. No, no, no, nobody did that.
(28:42):
Trump didn't cause this to happen. Trump wasn't the one
who posted I hate Taylor Swift. Oh yeah he was. No, No,
none of that, None of that was Trump's fault, of
the Republican's fault. It just erupted, like Krakatoa east of Java.
The other Times headline of note over a picture of
Trump smiling at the vacant Sarah huh could be the
(29:05):
politics of motherhood become a campaign trail cudgel. The presidential
race has exposed a fault line in American political culture
over the deeply personal decision to have children. Yes, this
problem was always always there. It's a fault line like
(29:28):
the San Andreas. Once again, things erupt, according to the
New York Times, like volcanoes, and there are fault lines
like San Andreas. This was not one party deciding to
choose as the guy running for vice president a clown
who insists that the vice president of the United States
doesn't have any skin in the game because she's a
(29:49):
step mother, not a birth mother, or that the person
in the picture under that last headline I read, your
Governor Huckabee of Arkansas is not a reprehensible, lying fraud
because she somehow managed to find somebody to procreate with her.
Oh no, said the New York Times headline editor, polishing
his top hat as he did so.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
A political fault line and it's just erupted. Maybe this
is due to climate change. Here, you assistant put our
best fifty four. Both sidesists on this story. Oh I'm
going to faint now. A political fault line has just erupted.
Ooh fuck, but the winner the worst? Why more New
(30:36):
York Times Maggie Haberman. If you've wondered if she's noticed that,
we've noticed that she's just a Trumpian stenographer who occasionally
reveals more than Trump would like her to. Oh, yes
she has, and well, sir, she knows the real victim
of her bad journalism. The real victim here is Maggie
(30:57):
Haberman quote quote to NPR. I think the media does
a very good job covering Trump. There are always going
to be specific stories that could have been better, should
have been better, that are written on deadline, and people
are not being as precise as they should be.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I think there is an industry, bluntly dave. My name's Keith, Maggie.
I think there is an industry, bluntly dave that is
dedicated toward attacking the media, especially as it relates to
covering Donald Trump in all coverage of Trump, and I
think that Trump is a really difficult figure to cover
because he challenges news media process every day, has for years.
(31:35):
The systems are just fundamentally they were not built to
deal with somebody who says things that are not true
as often as he does, or speaks as incoherently as
he often does. I think the media has actually done
a very good job showing people who he is, what
he says, what he does. I think most of the
information that the public has about Trump is because of
reporting by the media, And I guess I don't really
(31:56):
understand how this industry that literally exists to attack the
press broadly, and the media is not a monolith, it's
not a league. But this industry that exists to do that,
I don't see how they think they are a solution
by undermining faith in what we do. That's been very
confusing to me. As an aside, I would suggest to
(32:18):
this thing that is confusing her, it needs to take
a number and get behind the line. At the end
of the line of things that easily confuse Maggie Haberman,
it's criticism of the media that's undermined faith in the media.
The interviewer says, yeah, well, I mean part of the
attacks are clearly partisan. I mean Republicans and Trump supporters
(32:38):
are going to attack, and Maggie Haberman corrects him, I'm
not talking about that. I'm talking about now. The interviewer says, well, yeah, well,
who is the industry you're talking about, and she goes,
I'm talking about criticism on the left. Uh wait, there's
an industry on the left that exists to attack the
(33:01):
press broadly, and Maggie Hay in particular, an entire industry.
I mean, was somebody gonna tell me at some point
I've been throwing this stuff out for free on this
podcast no offense to you. Thanks for listening, But I
mean I could have been making thirty nine cents a
shot or something. Here there's an industry. I need to
(33:23):
talk to the people running this industry. I need to
talk to the people cutting the checks in this industry.
I have a quality product over here, and by the way,
an infinite supply of Maggie Haberman's stuff. They need to
be recompensing me for it. Maggie. She makes me begin
to suspect I Keith Overman, am underpaid Haberman two days
(33:44):
worst person in the world show, the number one story
on the Countdown, and things I promised not to tell
and I often asked. I was asked this weekend past
(34:08):
about this exact question about the relative sincerity of the
Wall of Fame of the Mount Rushmore of conservative fascist commentators.
I don't mean the little nebeshy guys who are on now,
who turns out have been getting money from the Kremlin
wash through intermediaries, and not even the more recent group
(34:30):
like Glenn Beck, but the founding fathers of this rush Limbaugh,
Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity dead, career dead, brain dead. I
have met them all, and I think the answer about
whether or not they are being sincere or this is
just a shtick that they do for money, is different
(34:52):
in each of them, and yet eventually all becomes the
same thing. Many of them do not start out believing
a word they are saying, and then they discover success,
and suddenly they want to say more of what they
have been saying because it pays them so well. And
the next thing, you know, after you say something long enough,
it's not just the audience that begins to believe it,
(35:14):
it's you who begins to believe it. One day, and
I've tried to get the exact date of this, I
know it was a Sunday, that's all ninety five, ninety six.
Perhaps based on the memory of what the ESPN SportsCenter
newsroom looked like before it's remodeling in nineteen ninety six,
I'm thinking it's nineteen ninety five. I walked in to
(35:34):
do the Sunday eleven PM Sports Center and in an
otherwise empty newsroom, a very small room with a bunch
of cubicles around it, one of which was mine, so
small that two anchors would share one computer. Standing next
to my desk, not saying a word, but just looking
into the newsroom as if he were Charlie visiting Willie
(35:58):
Wankas chocolate factory. Was Russe Limbaugh, and given his size,
perhaps that's a good analogy. Rush Limbaugh saw me walk
in and he almost asked for an autograph. Oh, Keith, Hi,
I'm Rush Limbaugh. Nothing like the person you heard or saw, restrained, whispering,
(36:21):
behaving as if he were as he said in church,
I'm such a fan. Oh my goodness, Oh, I remember
you from the CNN days. I had to explain to
him that we had met once. No, it was a
nineteen eighty World Series when you worked for the Kansas
City Royals. It's important to remember that rush Limbaugh's career
path was he thought sports. He was going to be
(36:43):
a broadcaster, a baseball broadcaster, or a baseball executive, and
he got no further down that line then, as he
put it, the assistant Media and Community Affairs director of
the Kansas City Royals in charge of escorting the first
pitch thrower and the national anthem singer onto the field.
(37:03):
That was his job. But when the head of the
PR department for the Kansas City Royals, whose name was
Dean Vogelar and how could you forget that name? Introduces
you to one of his assistants, and the guy's name
is Rush Limbaugh. You remember that name. I don't remember
the conversation. I don't know what it was about. I
think he was just standing there and Dean Volgor was
being nice to both of us. But we had met,
and he was when I told him this story, he
(37:25):
was like, oh my god, I wish we had a
picture of that. It was almost to the point of embarrassing.
I'll take praise from anybody, especially in nineteen ninety five,
before I fully understood what Rush Limbaugh was doing to
this country. But I will take praise from anybody. But
Rush Limbaugh went from sports into what he did to
this country because he failed at sports. His original radio
(37:47):
work was as a sportscaster and call in show host
in sports when that was not a very popular thing.
And simply being good at killing four hours by repeating
the same argument over who's the greatest player of all
time this week was not enough to get you a
thirty one millillion dollar a year contract. He got fired
from that. He was a disc jockey for a while,
(38:09):
and then they said we got some time to kill
Why don't you just go on Limbaugh and do a
news talk show. Well, he was of conservative leaning, and
he found out as he began to criticize the liberals
of California in the various small markets in which he
worked there around to believe the Sacramento area. The more
he did that, and the more vituperative he became, the
(38:30):
more people listened. Soon he had a contract. Soon he
wasn't about to get fired from another industry, having failed
in baseball and then failed in sportscasting and failed as
a disc jockey. Suddenly he had a contract. And then
somebody said, we should syndicate your show. Other markets would
love to hear this, and you know where it went
from there. But in nineteen ninety five, and that's twelve
(38:55):
thirteen years into the Limbaugh dynasty, Rush Limbaugh was speaking
in hushed tones, having appeared like a ghost like the
devil in Bristol, Connecticut. And by the way, I yes,
I explained, what the hell what are you doing here?
I asked him that question, and he explained he had
been invited after years of pestering Chris Berman to sit
(39:17):
with the football crew from ESPN that did the Sunday
Night I believe it was called Countdown at that point.
Ironically enough, football Highlight Show. After the NFL games on Sundays,
they watched the games in a room upstairs that US
civilians were never permitted to attend, and they watched in
low definition all whatever ten twelve NFL games. There were
(39:39):
a simultaneously and there were options for bringing in your friend.
They once brought in a back specialist who brought his
table and was doing acupuncture and was doing everything that
you could do to try to improve people's If you
could do something for the crew, you could come in.
(40:01):
I don't know what Rushlanbaud did for the crew, but
they finally le him in and he was there early,
and he was about to go upstairs and join Chris
Berman in that room. And I asked Berman later, what
was that like? He went, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (40:13):
The guy didn't say a thing. I mean, he was
just there. He was just there. He didn't maybe we
didn't even do any chiropracty. What so, what lim Blas
said to me that echoes through the years, and it's
nearly thirty years ago, was that he would at that
point trade everything he had and he was already successful.
(40:36):
I mean he was already making I don't know ten
times what I was making, twenty times what I was making.
He was successful. He said he'd give it all up
if he got to be my co host on Sports
Center instead with the pay cut, or Dan Patrick's co host.
He was ready to knock off either one of us
because that was his goal. And much of the fuel
(40:58):
for these raging, hateful men and women is that they
have not succeeded in their first My first dream was
to be play by play announcer for the New York Yankees.
I never got close to it. Did I become bitter
or written? Oh?
Speaker 1 (41:13):
I took my second dream and got that one, and
my third, my fourth, and fifth, and my sixth, and
myself not for the conservatives. Rush Limbaugh was going to
be the great sportscaster, and he never got close to it.
And when he finally got the opportunity to do it
in two thousand and two, I believe when ESPN finally
put him on the NFL show, and he did know
something about football. When they finally put him on, like
(41:34):
three weeks into it, he existed that Donovan McNabb was
highly rated by NFL experts simply because he was African
American and they needed an African American to be a
top quarterback. Bye, Rush, See, you got another chance after
all those years, and you blew it in just three weeks.
So that's where rush Limbaugh came from. And of course,
(41:55):
if every time you say Bill Clinton is a rapist,
or you say Nancy Pelosi is a fascist, or you
say Kamala Harris is a communist, if every time you
say that, somebody sends you ten thousand dollars, guess what
you're going to say, and sooner rather than later, because
it's impossible to go on at that volume of work
(42:19):
saying things extemporaneously that you don't believe the truth will
come out. At some point. You have to believe it.
You have to begin to believe it. You get, as
the cliche, goes high on your own supply, and each
time you get a little higher, they send you a
little bit more money. It is thus not a coincidence
that rush Limbaugh nearly went to prison because he had
(42:40):
a housekeeper who used to get him vicoden and other painkillers,
prescription painkillers by the hundreds. He took high two digits
in painkillers every day because ultimately he could not believe
deep in his soul that what he was saying was true,
(43:01):
even remotely true, but to sell fascism. It is a
verified and thoroughly documented fact that the entirety of the
Nazi brass in Germany in the thirties and into the
war regularly got methamphetamines and other uppers and other prescription
(43:23):
painkillers of the time. There's an entire book on it
that is just revealing, and that was Rush Windbaugh. Sean
Hannity would seemingly have been the exact opposite. In two
thousand and six, two thousand and five, perhaps I went
back to ESPN after years of nuclear war at the
(43:43):
request of the head of ESPN Radio to do an
hour every day on Dan Patrick's radio show. And we
had a gas and they paid me an extraordinary amount
of money, and it was such a nice break. The
MSNBC show was just coming into prominence and it was
a lot of work, and an hour with Dan Patrick
was not a lot of work. I would get there,
we did the three o'clock to four o'clock hour, remember, correctly,
(44:05):
I would get there at three o'clock and he'd be
in his break. They'd have a news update from Dan Davis,
and I'd say to him on the line, what are
we talking about ago, Barry? Are you going to talk
about Barry Bonds? We're gonna talk about this, We're gonna
tell Okay, great, let me call up a couple of
stories on the computer and we'd go and then at
the end of the hour, I'd say, I'll talk to
you tomorrow. And there's Keith Ollerman, my friend. He has
(44:27):
to go save the democracy now. But the studio that
we used often, and I had one in my house,
so I didn't have to do this, but it was
nice to get into a big studio a top Madison
Square Garden was at the ABC Radio network, and it
helped because every once in a while I had to
do things for ABC Radio and WABC in New York
as part of the deal. So I was very happy
(44:49):
to be there. And one day, as I was leaving,
I see sitting in a studio, a different studio, a
couple of studios away from the one i'd just used
for an hour. To my surprise, there is Sean Hannity
and he pounds on the inside of the window like
that and waves me in. And I had already I
don't know how many times I put Sean Hannity in
(45:10):
on the Worst Person's List, but there he was in
the flesh, and we had never met before. So again,
this is two thousand and five, six, somewhere like that,
and it's I don't know, three point fifty seven or seven.
He's going on the air at four and he says, listen,
I don't understand this. Why do people think I hate you?
People are assume my wait, we have a fistfight the
moment we ever met. Every time you put me on
(45:32):
that worst Person's list, we get another ten thousand viewers.
Every time I make a reference to MSNBC. I'm sure
you get another ten thousand viewers. It's just television. And
I thought, oh my god, I hate this guy more
than I hate Wimbaugh. He didn't believe a word of it,
or if he believed it, he didn't think there was
anything wrong with it or controversial about it. He didn't
think it was worth standing up for or for somebody
(45:53):
else to be standing against. He assumed I didn't believe
what I was saying, that this was just a television act.
In fact, he said, just stay there, and he signed
a show on he goes. You know, people think I
hate all liberals. Well, I don't hate all liberals at all.
Some of them are really nice guys. There's one standing
here now. I'm not gonna mention him because you know,
(46:14):
I get him in trouble if we find out he
finds we're friendly, and we haven't had a fist fight yet.
But he's a great guy. He just said something really
funny about sports, and I'm just gonna quote him, and so,
you know what, you hate all those liberals, but leave
a little room for the good ones. And I was
like crying out loud. I'd rather deal with Rush Limbaugh well.
And then there was the other, of course, future if
(46:36):
Sean Hannity was to become a true believer, because once
again he started that show for Fox in nineteen ninety
six when they went on the air. The story I
told Drews from ten years later. Thirteen years later, he
was seated a couple of boxes behind me at Yankee
Stadium when the Yankees won the two thousand and nine
World Series, and we waved and took photos of each
(46:57):
other and tweeted the photos. We were still kind of friendly,
and by you know, twenty sixteen, he was advocating for
a man wants to be the dictator of America, and
you can't do that if you don't believe it, if
it's pure opportunism, you can't do what Sean Hannity did.
So he, again, like Limbaugh, started selling a product and
ended taking the product. O'Reilly, I believe, at some point
(47:23):
must have been more moderate than he turned out to be.
His story is largely different. He was what the exaggerations
of my own career say I was, but he was
it for real. He worked in three different local television
markets in one year. He had to move three times
in one year. I never did anything like that. I
(47:45):
never worked in two local markets in one year. In fact,
I only worked in two local markets in my life
in television. I haven't had half the jobs that Bill
O'Reilly did. And he was never successful. But his goal
was to be I believe he wanted to be Walter Cronkite.
I'm not kidding Walter kronk And he got to work
(48:07):
for NBC News and ABC News. He got to be
an anchor at the same station in Boston that I
worked at. For a while, we missed each other by
like three months, and he wanted to be. He wanted
to be Walter Cronkite. He wanted to be the voice
of America. He wanted to be the most trusted man
in America, absolutely devoid of political bias, trusted by everybody. Well,
that didn't work out because they kept firing him, and
(48:31):
so he was working on Inside Edition, owned by the
Fox people when Fox launched the Fox News channel in
nineteen ninety six, and they said, well, we're going to
have to kill some time here. What have we got.
We got this guy O'Reilly under contract for another eight
ten months here, and he's doing terribly with Inside Edition
and everybody hates him there. Let's move him into the
three pm slot or something on his Fox News and
(48:53):
then when he's contract is up, I mean, you know,
if he makes some sort of impression, we can offer
him half what he's making now, and if not, he's
out the door. Well, Fox's primetime lineup and nobody remembers.
This began with at eight clock Catherine Cryer, formerly of
ABC and CNN and a former judge in Texas and
really pretty much a straight down the middle, slightly leaning
(49:14):
to the left news anchor and pretty good one. And
she didn't draw flies at eight o'clock. Instead O'Reilly, who
I believe was on at two o'clock in the afternoon,
had an extraordinary spike because he went on expressing his frustration.
People thought he was talking about the country and right
(49:34):
wing versus left wing. He was talking about how everybody
had dumped on Bill O'Reilly. The point of every episode
of every show Bill O'Reilly ever did. Ultimately you could
put his name in there when he talked about America
or values, or this happened to a friend of his,
or why I was so surprised I went to this
restaurant in Harlem and they didn't say I want some
more iced T MF. Or every one of those stories
(49:59):
is about him and how he did not get to
be Walter Cronkite and all the people he was now
going to screw back and they loved it, and he
became a template and hanned. He looked at that and went,
I'm going to do that too. Bill O'Reilly, by the
time I met him, really really believed this. And again,
(50:20):
if you're expressing your own rage and just dressing it
up and making it in somehow some fashion generic for everybody.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Of course you're going to believe it. You are angry.
Bill O'Reilly will die without ever becoming Walter Cronkite. I
will die without becoming the play by playman of the
New York Yankees, and I'll go well. Travel would have
been terrible crying out loud click in any event. O'Reilly,
as I've outlined many times in many places, did not
(50:50):
take well to the criticism that I began to unleash
on him. Literally the day I returned to MSNBC in
two thousand and three, when I got a phone call
from one of my old friends at NBC in Washington,
Nora O'Donnell, who said, you should do a segment on
Bill O'Reilly. It's so great to have you back. He
lies every night. You should do something about O'Reilly, called
O'Reilly factor fiction, and I went, thank you, Nora, thank
(51:13):
you for resuscitating my career at MSNBC. And as soon
as the war began to die down in Iraq, we
began to go after Bill O'Reilly, And god knows he
provided all the ammunition I could ever want. The rule
is never punched down, and all he did was punched down.
He wanted somebody to stop me. He tried to blackmail
(51:34):
Jeff mL the GE chairman. I've told that story a
dozen times. He threatened Jeff Zooker, he threatened to expose
this and say that he threatened, And finally we ran
into each other at Yankee Stadium. I went to a
Yankee Mets game and had a credential because I was
on the Dan Patrick Show every day. I was actually
(51:55):
also a sports reporter. Two thousand and five, two thousand
and six, Yankee Stadium, and there's O'Reilly and I walk
out onto the field and to my surprise, there's Bill
O'Reilly and he's got a not a press pass, but
a pass given to him by the manager of the
Yankees at the time, Joe Tory. So it was an
FOJ Friend of Joe pass allows you to get on
the field you're not allowed in certain areas. And he
(52:16):
was at one end of the Yankee dugout as I
came out of the Yankee dugout on the home plate side,
and the moment he saw me, he moved ten feet
further away, and every time I would look out onto
the field, I could feel his eyes burning a hole
in the side of my head, and I would turn
my head quickly and he would look away. I would
edge suddenly one inch closer to him, and I could
(52:36):
see out of the corner of my eye him edging
one inch further away from me. This went on for
ten minutes while I talked to my friends among the
sports reporters. Later, he tried to get into the met
clubhouse and his friend of Joe Tory credential did not
allow him near the clubhouse, and they asked him to leave.
(52:57):
Two or three days later, I got a call from
the Yankees. There was an international incident, was the way
described to me about the fact that I had credentials
and Bill O'Reilly did not Fox to the point of
having the president of Fox's operations saying he was calling
on behalf of Roger Ayle's demanding to know why I
(53:19):
was given access to the Mets clubhouse, but Bill O'Reilly
was not, And the head of pr for the Yankees,
sounding like he was reading from a script, went through
thirty minutes explaining that the Yankees didn't give credentials to
celebrities and that these sort of situations won't be tolerated
and only the working press gets credentials, and you could
(53:39):
hear that there were other people on the phone call
who were not talking. You could hear it because every
once in a while the guy would stop suddenly and
then you'd hear in the background. I assumed that was O'Reilly.
The next day, I went to Yankee Stadium with my
credential and I went to the PR director of the Yankees,
(53:59):
and I said, what was that? He goes, what do
you mean? I said, how come I have a credential today?
Wasn't that about taking away my credit dentials? He goes,
what did I say at the beginning of that conversation?
I said, you said you were going to make this
phone call and talk to me about the fact that
we did not issue credentials to celebrities. Did we have
that conversation? Did I do that? Yes? Do we issue
(54:20):
you a credential because you're on the Dan Patrick shower,
because you're a celebrity? And I went, I presume the
former correct have a nice game. And that was It
never came up again. O'Reilly believed he had somehow sabotaged
my access to Yankee Stadium, and he tried it many
other times, and I saw him once at a Joe
Tory event, a charity event, and he did the same
(54:43):
thing where he stared at me and then moved an
inch away if I got too close to him. An
extraordinarily crazy man and remained such to this day. But
as I always say, I probably owe him ten percent
of all of my earnings from MSNBC because he just
couldn't ignore me. I mean, his ratings were initially at
(55:05):
least five times mine. Even at the end, when we'd
grown that thing into making one hundred two hundred million
dollars a year profit for NBC, his ratings were still
twice three times mine. He should never have once mentioned me. Instead,
he put up a petition one day, had them do
it on the Fox News website too, without mentioning my name,
(55:27):
because he refused to ever mention my name. He wanted
Phil Donahue reinstated as the eight pm anchor on MSNBC,
and he did a whole thing about how Phil Donna,
who had been treated so badly, so sign up here
on foxnews dot com the get Phil Donahue the eight
pm slot that he so richly deserves. And I was like,
thank you, Bill. So the next thing I did was
(55:49):
I got my camera, one of my camera crews from
NBC in Secaucus to record everybody on the MSNBC Countdown
staff lined up to get to the computer and all
of them signing up to get me fired and get
Phil Donahue and stated, because one thing about fascists and
people who get high on their own supply, but people
(56:11):
like Bill O'Reilly never understand people like that who believe
all this, that people are at home taking notes, writing
down how will I live my life? This is what
Bill O'Reilly says, This is what Hannity says, this is
what Limbo says. One thing is they really believe that
they don't recognize that the job is just too largely
inform But in many cases, simply reassure people who've already
(56:31):
reached the opinion you have that they're not crazy, that
there are other people who've reached that same opinion, and
to add to their understanding and correct them sometimes or
to have them correct you. It's illumination with maybe a
few jokes and an entertaining broadcast of some kind. It
is not I am writing the New Bible, and you
will live your life this way. So we got that
(56:53):
count of how many people wanted to have Phil Donahue
reinstated like we managed to get it over five thousand.
That was one of my favorite accomplishments, Right you are,
(57:15):
mister Mayerhoffer. One of the great great practical jokes ever
completed in the history of the world, certainly in the
history of television. Billow used to read emails and texts,
and somebody asked him a question and signed it mister
(57:37):
Jack m E H F F E R Jack me Hoffer,
and he read it. He later said, I knew what
that meant, but I thought it was a good question.
Swear to God, I swear to God. I've done all
the damage I can do here, that not as much
(57:57):
as Bill Thank you for listening. We're now back to
five episodes a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern
And as you have heard, you never know what you're
going to hear here, do you? Once again, there is
a Monday countdown at least through the election. Please forward
this to a non listener who should fix being a
non listener, because this is high quality material right here.
(58:19):
Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanelle. Speaking of high quality material,
are the musical directors of countdown, and they have arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
(58:41):
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
My announcer today was my friend John Dee. Everything else
was pretty much my fault. There's always Solan's countdown for today,
one month and twelve days until the twenty twenty four
presidential election, the one hundred No A million, No three
(59:07):
and fifty eighth day since convicted felon dementia j Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Use the election, use the mental health system,
use presidential immunity if we have to to keep him
from trying to overthrow the government again while we still can.
(59:28):
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news
requires till then on Keith Olderman, good Morning, good afternoon,
good night, and I'm trying to hit the mark here
the post good Luck, Yes Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(01:00:00):
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. Yeah,
get to the I Lived with Olivia Newsy part of
your day presently. But first, here's the actual news. There
(00:28):
are heroes among us, and even in politics, and even
in the Republican Party, there are heroes among us, and
know their motives do not have to be absolutely pure,
they don't even have to be a little bit pure.
And such a man is State Senator Mike McDonald of Nebraska.
And what he has now done quoting a proponent kind
(00:49):
of closes the casket, kind of closes the lid on
the Trump bid to reshape the electoral college just six
weeks before the election by changing how Nebraska casts its
five electoral votes from a split them by disc method
that will probably give Kamala Harris one electoral vote and
Trump four, changing it from that to winner take all,
(01:12):
which would give Trump all five. There are many two
seventy to two sixty eight Harris victories. They all pretty
much include that one loan vote from Nebraska. McDonell a Republican,
albeit a new Republican. He was a Democrat until they
threw him out last spring. Now says in a statement
(01:32):
quote election should be an opportunity for all voters to
be heard, no matter who they are, where they live,
or what party they support. I have taken the time
to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both
sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear
to me that right now, forty three days from election
(01:53):
day is not the moment to make this change. Holy crap,
I mean seriously, so why the big spiel about impure motives.
Senator McDonald is not only from the district that will
likely go Harris, the proverbial blue dot of Big City Omaha, Nebraska,
(02:14):
but he has long been discussing, toying, tinkering with running
for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, and as a conservative Democrat
or a moderate Republican or whatever. Guess what is not
going to happen ever in twenty seven lifetimes if you
are the decisive vote, essentially taking away the electoral vote
(02:35):
from the citizens of Omaha no matter who they vote for,
especially when his likely opponent, the incumbent Republican, is pledged
to take away the electoral vote from Omaha. The last
minute switcheroo would require thirty three yes votes from forty
nine senators, There are fifteen Democrats. They're obviously voting against this.
(02:56):
There is one independent assumed to also be a no,
and a couple of Republicans who were supposedly waiting for
McDonald to support the switch and then use him as
cover for doing so himself. And they thought they might
get that independent or a couple of the Democrats to
go over to the side of one vote for Nebraska
(03:19):
Senator Lauren Lippencott, the guy who said McDonald's statement closes
the casket, closes the lid, and probably other upbeat life
affirming phrases like that. He says McDonald is quote an
absolute no. We're going to have to reintroduce this bill
in the next session. McDonald doesn't even want that. He
is suggesting instead a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment.
(03:43):
Now back to motive. McDonald is a Republican because last
year he came out as a Democrat and supportive draconian
abortion restrictions and a ban on transgender care for youths.
It looked like he was going to fold on this
one too. A week ago tomorrow, he had two dozen
Nebraska Republican senators met with Governor Jim Republican tool Pillin
(04:04):
and Lindsey please help me. They'll do something terrible to
me if Trump loses. Graham and McDonald was quoted by
people in that room is saying he was looking for
a way to get to Yes. Yeah, Well he didn't
find that way. And from such lack of a GPS
of courage and ethics comes heroes, profiles, encourage, or maybe,
(04:33):
as Shakespeare wrote in the unsung single best line in Hamlet,
assume a virtue if you have it, not assume take on.
Don you want to be a principled hero, even if
you're an unprincipled, cowardly politician, do something principled and heroic,
(04:54):
like you know, Mike McDonald just did. I guess now,
all Harris has to do is win the Nebraska second.
As I mentioned yesterday, CBS News estimates that the Hoole
average there is Harris by four. The last actual polls
I can find are from the second half of August,
and they are Harris by five or with the third
party sock Puppets included Harris by eight. Not many polls. Yesterday,
(05:18):
mass Ink Polling did Wisconsin has her up by seven.
The Real Clear Politics average of polls, and that is
a Republican slanted I don't know, dog and Pony show.
It would produce a Harris Electoral College victory of two
hundred and seventy five to two hundred and sixty two.
(05:39):
And we can say this with certainty. Either there has
been a sea change that nobody has told any of
the other posters about, or the New York Times is
going to need.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
A whole new pole.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
They have Trump forty nine forty five in Georgia, they
have Trump fifty forty five in Arizona. Redfield Wilton, British
Posters has Arizona as a tie, and The Times has
Trump forty nine forty seven in North Carolina. Now that
is before Mark Robinson's porn Mountain. Its history turned out
(06:10):
to be engraved on like ten Commandment style stones. More
on that in a moment. But Times, why do you
even print that poll? All but three members of the
Republican candidate's campaign staff have quit since your North Carolina
poll closed. It's useless. You needed to fill space in
(06:34):
the paper or something. And the Arizona Times number is
a ten point swing to Trump in a month a month.
I wouldn't buy that if it was a ten point
swing to Harris, and the poll was signed by every
person who was polled, and they notarized the signatures. So
(07:19):
as the Republicans are shackled to a corpse in Donald Trump,
Trump is shackled to a corpse in North Carolina. Mark
Robinson not only is not apologizing, is not quitting. He
now says he's suing CNN, or he seemed to say that.
He was asked, are you suing CNN? And he said,
we're going after them? Well, hell, when I was at
(07:42):
Current TV, we quote went after CNN two and look
how that turned out.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
You've talked about the reporting being salacious, live not true.
Have you taken steps then.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
To it's you?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
We absolutely are, We absolutely are. We We're in talks
right now. Everything up to legal counsel to take CNN
to task for what have done to us. We are
going after him. Okay, we are going to go after
him for what they've done, but we have five weeks
left to this rights folks, and make no mistake about it,
we are not gonna let CNN throw us off of
(08:16):
our mission.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
This rocket scientist also announced CNN is going after him
like CNN did while Reagan was in office, and like
CNN went after Abraham Lincoln when Abraham Lincoln was in office. Look,
I got hired by CNN when I was twenty two
years old and CNN was fourteen months old. And if
(08:40):
CNN was on when Abraham Lincoln was president, that makes
me at least one hundred and eighty one years old.
I mean, I'm old, ask Olivia, but I ain't that old.
You think I'm making this.
Speaker 5 (08:56):
Up sea rain today and contrasting with their lives for today.
But every what you said about when he was at all,
you decided him just as much as you decided all wrong.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
You decided him just as much as you despise they
were having. Wait, there's more and more. He gave a
speech at a Canvas Owen's event in twenty twenty uncovered
by the website The Bulwark, in which he praised Jim Crow.
Quote during Jim Crow, you can go back and you
can look at it, and the record will show you.
That's when black folks weren't their highest in this country,
(09:34):
when the times were the toughest, that's when they were highest.
And why because they knew they had to rely on themselves.
My god. Oh and he praised slavery again, at least
how the smart slaves accepted whipping, thinking ahead from twenty twenty,
going for that pro Jim Crow pro slavery, pro whipping
(09:57):
crowd quote. I can even imagine some of them with
their slave chains on the rags they had on. They
made sure those rags were as clean as could be,
and they stood up and stiffened up their backs. They
saw what was coming down in the pike, and they
only knew that it would come if they took those
stripes and took those beats beats beats by dre beats stripes,
(10:24):
uh whip marks. He means, are there any references to
transgender whipping in any of his resume? The Trump response
to his guy being sent to a living hell radio
silence about him, but a desperate attempt to get every
(10:45):
racist and psycho in North Carolina to emerge from every warehouse, farmhouse,
hen house, outhouse, and dog house and vote for Trump anyway.
Because Trump now says he's going to send in federal
law enforcement. An inference here is ice and troops to
destroy all the sanctuary cities in North care Carolina and
(11:05):
every other state. Trump will invade your town to get
the immigrants out, including the ones that are legal. Yes,
I know there are no sanctuary cities in North Carolina,
but as the Carolina Journal notes quote, in North Carolina, Wake, Durham, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, Orange,
and Chatham counties do not currently honor ICE detainers, according
(11:30):
to a June report from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On Friday, Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoed HB ten, which
would require sheriffs across the state to cooperate with ICE.
So this is Trump's guy, Mark tire fire Robinson and no.
(11:53):
By the way, the Republican Governors Association has now said
it does not plan any additional ads in North Carolina
for Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. Rightly, So what with
all this great free pub I'm beginning to think Trump
(12:20):
picked J. D. Mantz because he's capable of saying dumber
things even than Trump does. In North Carolina last night.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
A person who's more worried about missing a birdie pud
than he isn't about an assassin's attempt on his own life.
Because that is the definition of courage under fire, and
Donald Trump has.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
It in space. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,
you have a golf club. He has a gun. Get
out of the way. This is what he just described.
This is actually the definition of an effing idiot. Okay,
this I like, especially if there is any softening of
(12:58):
the Harris momentum in the battleground polls. And I think
she's going to pull sufficiently away in North Carolina going
out on him there, and there are damn few ways
Trump can win without North Carolina. Remembering that the Trump
plan all along was to find a way to back
out of debates and blame first Biden, then Harris. The
Harris campaign is going to make damn sure that if
(13:19):
there is no second debate a month from yesterday, Trump
is going to hear about him chickening out of that
debate every day for the next month. From NBC quote.
The Democratic National Committee will launch static billboards and mobile billboards.
There were supposedly ones at Trump rallies, like the one
in Pennsylvania last night. The chicken billboards include a digitally
(13:42):
altered image of Trump in a chicken suit, alongside the
words there's no debate, Donald Trump's a chicken unquote. Well,
I don't get one part of this. Why digitally altered.
He looks enough like a chicken as it is the
hair quote. The DNC originally said that they would be
(14:03):
sending staffers dressed in chicken suits to Trump rallies as
part of this messaging campaign, but after publication on Monday,
a spokesperson for the group said that this would no
longer occur. Instead a pro Harris student group at the
Indiana University of Pennsylvania College. Don't even try to figure
that out where Trump is speaking. This was written before
(14:26):
he spoke would send inflatable chickens to his rally there
instead again inflatable chickens. I mean that's Trump. Speaking of appearances,
CNN reports Milania Trump, who has not been on the
campaign trail in well wait, how long is forever? Quote,
(14:48):
spoke at two political fundraisers for the Log Cabin Republicans
this year, and she was paid two hundred and thirty
seven five hundred dollars for an April event. According to
former Trump for latest financial disclosure for him, the payment
was listed as a speaking engagement. The problem is, although
It's on Trump's financial disclosure form, nobody knows who wrote
(15:10):
the checks to her. It's not listed anywhere the log cabin.
Republicans say they did not pay this, so they'll have
to search for other payments of two hundred and thirty seven,
five hundred dollars to Milagna. Well, what's her contract with Donald?
Got in it? Any two hundred and thirty seven five
(15:30):
hundreds in there? And now things I promised not to
tell him? Boy? Is that true in this one? Literally,
when the RFK Junior Olivia Newsy relationship story broke, I thought, uh,
(15:52):
here we go. Eventually and inevitably, this story will get
around to me because long ago she and I lived together.
We had dogs and tattoos and rings, and like all relationships,
it was very nice at the start. Then things happened
and we worked on it and it ended. One day
I said, I think we've exhausted this, and I changed
(16:14):
my mind. Then like the next day, she left, So
I guess that makes it a tie. It's a while ago.
She had a clothes closet in my apartment, and I
meant what I said here about things I promised not
to tell. Because when this story broke, I decided, if
nobody asks, I'm not volunteering this. It's difficult to be
even the most marginal public figure and keep any part
(16:37):
of your life private, and nobody knows that better now
than does Alivia. On the other hand, if I'm asked
about this by the media, if somebody is going to
write it, I'm not lying to them. I'm not denying it.
I'm also not giving them the story, especially not the
freaking New York Post which reached out yesterday. I confirmed
(16:58):
we dated. That's what he asked, Did you date her?
And I said yes, And I said I thought it
was pretty general knowledge that we had dated, but that
nobody cared, and that if they didn't know this well
the paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle writing Sherlock Holmes's lines for him,
I am not retained by the gossip columnists to supply
(17:19):
their deficiencies. In other words, I am not the newsy
nudes news network over here giving away free stories. Plus Seriously,
nearly all of the relationship was surprisingly mundane, and it
doesn't have anything to do with the RFK story except
(17:42):
in the broadest possible sense. I mean, I'm sure she's
not a completely different person than she was when we dated,
but maybe I am left with a couple of overarching thoughts.
She did some weird things during the three three and
a half years this lasted. I'm sure I did two.
(18:03):
She played around at one point, but how to pronounce
her last name? What sounded best professionally NEWSYUSYNOTSI and her
parents were not the best role models, And on the
other hand, after the immediate and understandable astonishment on their part,
they did a one eighty about me. I went to
their house for Christmas every year, her mom used to
(18:24):
dog sit for us, her dad and I went to
a Stanley Cup final game and had coffee a lot.
Though sometimes she so missed the mark on the consequences
of her actions that nobody around her would have said
anything except how could you not know that? Like the
time long after we broke up, that she went to
(18:46):
Corey Lewandowski's house and he didn't answer, so she just
turned the handle on the front door and it was unlocked,
and so she just walked in and didn't know that
was unethical and probably illegal, and then made that story public.
But nothing I know about her then or now suggests
Olivia would have kept sending a guy nude photos unless
(19:07):
he wanted them. I haven't talked with her since we
broke up because nowadays you're supposed to ghost each other,
I guess. But for whatever it's worth, I can't defend
any of her journalistic choices here and I will not.
But in the metaview of who's right who's wrong here,
she's not the one who's wrong here. And of course,
(19:30):
if you are a faithful listener, it will have dawned
on you that all the times I have talked about
my beloved dog Stevie, my other dogs, the ex girlfriend
with whom I walked into the pet shop because her
family dog was dying and she needed a puppy fix,
that was Olivia. She took care of me that fateful
(19:51):
day when we got Stevie, and she and I devoted
our lives to Stevie. And Olivia largely taught me how
to successfully be adopted by a dog and all dogs,
and the anniversary of that is next Monday. And all
my other dogs, and my late rescues Mishu and Mi Nay,
(20:12):
and all my work with dogs and animal groups, that
all comes from her. So that's the bottom line. Whatever
else this is, Olivier is responsible for me being born
again in dogs. She will always have my support if
she needs it, though not the journalistic choices part. Maybe
(20:33):
that is all I will ever say again about her.
Maybe developments will warrant more details for now I don't think.
I don't think they will. But from the department of
Keith cannot possibly leave well enough alone. That does not
mean I'm not going to make a couple of jokes
about this, and maybe not just in this episode. Joke
number one about the ethics of me dating her at
(20:56):
my age. I don't want to go out on a
limb here, but I am beginning to suspect she likes
all old guys. I mean, she was going to marry
one who was twenty years older than her. Also, I'm old.
On the other hand, I'm not as old as Bobby Kennedy.
(21:21):
I win, son of a Bitch is five years older
than I am. Clears up a lot of my conscience.
Also of interest here, well, if there's a Keith story
about Keith, there also has to be a Keith story
(21:42):
about Bill O'Reilly that used to be a federal law
He has stormed out of an interview, threatening to sue
the interviewer, which leads me in this all new edition
of Countdown to the story of How I met O'Reilly
and Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and the faq to O'Reilly
and the others believe their own poison? Or are they
(22:02):
just whores coming up? And did you know there is
an entire left wing industry that exists just to criticize
Maggie Haberman and her colleagues, she says, So it must
be true. The most important question here is why aren't
they paying me? That's next, This is countdown. This is
(22:26):
Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead of us on this
(22:50):
all new edition of Countdown. So Bill O'Reilly is in
the news again, a decade after he was last actually
in the news. He has threatened to sue a PBS
reporter or do something to her because she had the
nerve to ask him about the rear and he stopped
being in news. This led me, naturally to think about
my many encounters with Bill, and especially one question I
(23:13):
have been asked more often about him, and about Sean Hannity,
and about Rush Limbaugh and about others of their ilk
than I have about anything else about them. Do or
did they actually believe the things they said and still
say that have actually poisoned this nation's politics and enabled
a creature like Trump, or if they just did it
(23:35):
for the money. Some answers ahead next in Things I
promised not to tell. First, there are still more new
idiots to talk about, the daily roundup of the miss grants,
morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worse
persons than the world, Well, the bronze worse. Let's start
(23:55):
with Bill mister Meyerhoffer. He did an interview with Margaret
Hoover for the PBS show firing Line. This is what
I was just referring to. Hoover says, I want to
go back to twenty seventeen, your top rated talent at
Fox News. You've just signed a four year deal to
renew your contract, and The Times publishes a report on
(24:16):
settlements that you had reached with several women over harassment
misconduct claims, totaling thirteen million dollars. You're forced out of
the network. The Times later reveals an additional settlement worth
thirty two million dollars. I don't expect that you can
comment on this, you think? She then read from a
Times op ed that she herself, Margaret Hoover, had written,
(24:40):
O'Reilly blamed others? She said, quoting herself, embracing the victimization.
He's so ridiculed of the American left. He claimed his
departure was no fault of his own, but the cost
of doing business as a high profile media personality. This
is an outlandish claim. William F. Buckley and Anderson Cooper
are high profile media personalities, and yet they have never
(25:01):
been dogged with repeated sexual harassment entangled. How do you respond,
Billo replied, I don't. Then, he said Hoover was conducting
an ambush interview. There's no ambush interview that has lasted
as long in the history of the world as the
question I just read you that she asked him. It's
no longer an ambush. He would have had time to
(25:23):
get to JFK Airport and fly to Brazil before she
finished talking. That's no longer an ambush you're involved with
that's almost your living with her. Oh why did I
bring that up anyway? As the website Mediaite phrased, what
happened next? O'Reilly repeatedly then told Hoover that she did
not know the facts of the allegations against him, and
(25:43):
claimed he had made no settlements himself, and then he
was unaware of any actions taken by Fox News. Hoover
countered that this claim could not possibly be true. O'Reilly
finally threatened her, quoting O'Reilly, you're gonna use that stuff.
You're in for a problem. So I'm telling you right
now because that's just bull. I'm not going to record
(26:03):
any phony like that. You're going to edit this thing,
and you know my attorney is going to be watching.
I thought Bill liked to do the watching himself. Do
I have this story? Am I misremembering the story? Wasn't
that the whole thing? AnyWho? Then Bill got up and
left the interview. He actually turned down camera time. That's
(26:27):
the story here. I should have led with that. It
was thirty two million dollars. It cost him his Fox show,
cost him his career, cost him his only friend in
the world, Donald Trump, who now who wouldn't and now
won't touch him. But he's gonna sue or demand they
not play parts of the interview. I don't know, Hoover
says his lawyer sent them a legal demand no details.
(26:49):
Like I've told you before when I used to discuss
his settlement with Andrew Macris and the other settlements with
the other women. He decided his best strategy was to
send his pa, his predessian assistant, Jesse Waters, to stalk
the chairman of GE. That'd be General Electric. If I'm
going to explain acronyms here which owned NBC, the National
Broadcasting Company, which in turned own MSNBC, Microsoft NBC. That
(27:14):
didn't work either. And this isn't going to work. The
runner up, Why it's theme nights. We switch from Billow
to The New York Times. All the both sides is
that's fit to print. It is amazing. There's no sense
whatsoever there that they violated every principle they claim and
claim loudly and incessantly and condescendingly to represent headline number one.
(27:38):
Controversies erupt as Trump and GOP make critical push to voters,
and it's push, not push. It's the American English word
push like sales job as opposed to the push word.
A Republican who reportedly called himself a block Nazi, a
(27:59):
false story about migrants eating cats and dogs, and a
feud with Taylor Swift bring back as chaos. Yes, things
like this erupt like volcanoes. Controversies erupt force of nature. Clearly,
not because Trump made them happen, or made them up,
or employs people like jd. Vance who makes them up,
(28:22):
or he recruited people like Mark Robinson. And not because
one political party is rather stumblingly traditionally inept, and it's
on one set of American politics and the other political party.
Trump's political party is filled with corrupt, morally bankrupt, fascist
liars who are in fact not that good at getting
away with their lies. No, no, no, nobody did that.
(28:42):
Trump didn't cause this to happen. Trump wasn't the one
who posted I hate Taylor Swift. Oh yeah he was. No, No,
none of that, None of that was Trump's fault, of
the Republican's fault. It just erupted, like Krakatoa east of Java.
The other Times headline of note over a picture of
Trump smiling at the vacant Sarah huh could be the
(29:05):
politics of motherhood become a campaign trail cudgel. The presidential
race has exposed a fault line in American political culture
over the deeply personal decision to have children. Yes, this
problem was always always there. It's a fault line like
(29:28):
the San Andreas. Once again, things erupt, according to the
New York Times, like volcanoes, and there are fault lines
like San Andreas. This was not one party deciding to
choose as the guy running for vice president a clown
who insists that the vice president of the United States
doesn't have any skin in the game because she's a
(29:49):
step mother, not a birth mother, or that the person
in the picture under that last headline I read, your
Governor Huckabee of Arkansas is not a reprehensible, lying fraud
because she somehow managed to find somebody to procreate with her.
Oh no, said the New York Times headline editor, polishing
his top hat as he did so.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
A political fault line and it's just erupted. Maybe this
is due to climate change. Here, you assistant put our
best fifty four. Both sidesists on this story. Oh I'm
going to faint now. A political fault line has just erupted.
Ooh fuck, but the winner the worst? Why more New
(30:36):
York Times Maggie Haberman. If you've wondered if she's noticed that,
we've noticed that she's just a Trumpian stenographer who occasionally
reveals more than Trump would like her to. Oh, yes
she has, and well, sir, she knows the real victim
of her bad journalism. The real victim here is Maggie
(30:57):
Haberman quote quote to NPR. I think the media does
a very good job covering Trump. There are always going
to be specific stories that could have been better, should
have been better, that are written on deadline, and people
are not being as precise as they should be.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I think there is an industry, bluntly dave. My name's Keith, Maggie.
I think there is an industry, bluntly dave that is
dedicated toward attacking the media, especially as it relates to
covering Donald Trump in all coverage of Trump, and I
think that Trump is a really difficult figure to cover
because he challenges news media process every day, has for years.
(31:35):
The systems are just fundamentally they were not built to
deal with somebody who says things that are not true
as often as he does, or speaks as incoherently as
he often does. I think the media has actually done
a very good job showing people who he is, what
he says, what he does. I think most of the
information that the public has about Trump is because of
reporting by the media, And I guess I don't really
(31:56):
understand how this industry that literally exists to attack the
press broadly, and the media is not a monolith, it's
not a league. But this industry that exists to do that,
I don't see how they think they are a solution
by undermining faith in what we do. That's been very
confusing to me. As an aside, I would suggest to
(32:18):
this thing that is confusing her, it needs to take
a number and get behind the line. At the end
of the line of things that easily confuse Maggie Haberman,
it's criticism of the media that's undermined faith in the media.
The interviewer says, yeah, well, I mean part of the
attacks are clearly partisan. I mean Republicans and Trump supporters
(32:38):
are going to attack, and Maggie Haberman corrects him, I'm
not talking about that. I'm talking about now. The interviewer says, well, yeah, well,
who is the industry you're talking about, and she goes,
I'm talking about criticism on the left. Uh wait, there's
an industry on the left that exists to attack the
(33:01):
press broadly, and Maggie Hay in particular, an entire industry.
I mean, was somebody gonna tell me at some point
I've been throwing this stuff out for free on this
podcast no offense to you. Thanks for listening, But I
mean I could have been making thirty nine cents a
shot or something. Here there's an industry. I need to
(33:23):
talk to the people running this industry. I need to
talk to the people cutting the checks in this industry.
I have a quality product over here, and by the way,
an infinite supply of Maggie Haberman's stuff. They need to
be recompensing me for it. Maggie. She makes me begin
to suspect I Keith Overman, am underpaid Haberman two days
(33:44):
worst person in the world show, the number one story
on the Countdown, and things I promised not to tell
and I often asked. I was asked this weekend past
(34:08):
about this exact question about the relative sincerity of the
Wall of Fame of the Mount Rushmore of conservative fascist commentators.
I don't mean the little nebeshy guys who are on now,
who turns out have been getting money from the Kremlin
wash through intermediaries, and not even the more recent group
(34:30):
like Glenn Beck, but the founding fathers of this rush Limbaugh,
Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity dead, career dead, brain dead. I
have met them all, and I think the answer about
whether or not they are being sincere or this is
just a shtick that they do for money, is different
(34:52):
in each of them, and yet eventually all becomes the
same thing. Many of them do not start out believing
a word they are saying, and then they discover success,
and suddenly they want to say more of what they
have been saying because it pays them so well. And
the next thing, you know, after you say something long enough,
it's not just the audience that begins to believe it,
(35:14):
it's you who begins to believe it. One day, and
I've tried to get the exact date of this, I
know it was a Sunday, that's all ninety five, ninety six.
Perhaps based on the memory of what the ESPN SportsCenter
newsroom looked like before it's remodeling in nineteen ninety six,
I'm thinking it's nineteen ninety five. I walked in to
(35:34):
do the Sunday eleven PM Sports Center and in an
otherwise empty newsroom, a very small room with a bunch
of cubicles around it, one of which was mine, so
small that two anchors would share one computer. Standing next
to my desk, not saying a word, but just looking
into the newsroom as if he were Charlie visiting Willie
(35:58):
Wankas chocolate factory. Was Russe Limbaugh, and given his size,
perhaps that's a good analogy. Rush Limbaugh saw me walk
in and he almost asked for an autograph. Oh, Keith, Hi,
I'm Rush Limbaugh. Nothing like the person you heard or saw, restrained, whispering,
(36:21):
behaving as if he were as he said in church,
I'm such a fan. Oh my goodness, Oh, I remember
you from the CNN days. I had to explain to
him that we had met once. No, it was a
nineteen eighty World Series when you worked for the Kansas
City Royals. It's important to remember that rush Limbaugh's career
path was he thought sports. He was going to be
(36:43):
a broadcaster, a baseball broadcaster, or a baseball executive, and
he got no further down that line then, as he
put it, the assistant Media and Community Affairs director of
the Kansas City Royals in charge of escorting the first
pitch thrower and the national anthem singer onto the field.
(37:03):
That was his job. But when the head of the
PR department for the Kansas City Royals, whose name was
Dean Vogelar and how could you forget that name? Introduces
you to one of his assistants, and the guy's name
is Rush Limbaugh. You remember that name. I don't remember
the conversation. I don't know what it was about. I
think he was just standing there and Dean Volgor was
being nice to both of us. But we had met,
and he was when I told him this story, he
(37:25):
was like, oh my god, I wish we had a
picture of that. It was almost to the point of embarrassing.
I'll take praise from anybody, especially in nineteen ninety five,
before I fully understood what Rush Limbaugh was doing to
this country. But I will take praise from anybody. But
Rush Limbaugh went from sports into what he did to
this country because he failed at sports. His original radio
(37:47):
work was as a sportscaster and call in show host
in sports when that was not a very popular thing.
And simply being good at killing four hours by repeating
the same argument over who's the greatest player of all
time this week was not enough to get you a
thirty one millillion dollar a year contract. He got fired
from that. He was a disc jockey for a while,
(38:09):
and then they said we got some time to kill
Why don't you just go on Limbaugh and do a
news talk show. Well, he was of conservative leaning, and
he found out as he began to criticize the liberals
of California in the various small markets in which he
worked there around to believe the Sacramento area. The more
he did that, and the more vituperative he became, the
(38:30):
more people listened. Soon he had a contract. Soon he
wasn't about to get fired from another industry, having failed
in baseball and then failed in sportscasting and failed as
a disc jockey. Suddenly he had a contract. And then
somebody said, we should syndicate your show. Other markets would
love to hear this, and you know where it went
from there. But in nineteen ninety five, and that's twelve
(38:55):
thirteen years into the Limbaugh dynasty, Rush Limbaugh was speaking
in hushed tones, having appeared like a ghost like the
devil in Bristol, Connecticut. And by the way, I yes,
I explained, what the hell what are you doing here?
I asked him that question, and he explained he had
been invited after years of pestering Chris Berman to sit
(39:17):
with the football crew from ESPN that did the Sunday
Night I believe it was called Countdown at that point.
Ironically enough, football Highlight Show. After the NFL games on Sundays,
they watched the games in a room upstairs that US
civilians were never permitted to attend, and they watched in
low definition all whatever ten twelve NFL games. There were
(39:39):
a simultaneously and there were options for bringing in your friend.
They once brought in a back specialist who brought his
table and was doing acupuncture and was doing everything that
you could do to try to improve people's If you
could do something for the crew, you could come in.
(40:01):
I don't know what Rushlanbaud did for the crew, but
they finally le him in and he was there early,
and he was about to go upstairs and join Chris
Berman in that room. And I asked Berman later, what
was that like? He went, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (40:13):
The guy didn't say a thing. I mean, he was
just there. He was just there. He didn't maybe we
didn't even do any chiropracty. What so, what lim Blas
said to me that echoes through the years, and it's
nearly thirty years ago, was that he would at that
point trade everything he had and he was already successful.
(40:36):
I mean he was already making I don't know ten
times what I was making, twenty times what I was making.
He was successful. He said he'd give it all up
if he got to be my co host on Sports
Center instead with the pay cut, or Dan Patrick's co host.
He was ready to knock off either one of us
because that was his goal. And much of the fuel
(40:58):
for these raging, hateful men and women is that they
have not succeeded in their first My first dream was
to be play by play announcer for the New York Yankees.
I never got close to it. Did I become bitter
or written? Oh?
Speaker 1 (41:13):
I took my second dream and got that one, and
my third, my fourth, and fifth, and my sixth, and
myself not for the conservatives. Rush Limbaugh was going to
be the great sportscaster, and he never got close to it.
And when he finally got the opportunity to do it
in two thousand and two, I believe when ESPN finally
put him on the NFL show, and he did know
something about football. When they finally put him on, like
(41:34):
three weeks into it, he existed that Donovan McNabb was
highly rated by NFL experts simply because he was African
American and they needed an African American to be a
top quarterback. Bye, Rush, See, you got another chance after
all those years, and you blew it in just three weeks.
So that's where rush Limbaugh came from. And of course,
(41:55):
if every time you say Bill Clinton is a rapist,
or you say Nancy Pelosi is a fascist, or you
say Kamala Harris is a communist, if every time you
say that, somebody sends you ten thousand dollars, guess what
you're going to say, and sooner rather than later, because
it's impossible to go on at that volume of work
(42:19):
saying things extemporaneously that you don't believe the truth will
come out. At some point. You have to believe it.
You have to begin to believe it. You get, as
the cliche, goes high on your own supply, and each
time you get a little higher, they send you a
little bit more money. It is thus not a coincidence
that rush Limbaugh nearly went to prison because he had
(42:40):
a housekeeper who used to get him vicoden and other painkillers,
prescription painkillers by the hundreds. He took high two digits
in painkillers every day because ultimately he could not believe
deep in his soul that what he was saying was true,
(43:01):
even remotely true, but to sell fascism. It is a
verified and thoroughly documented fact that the entirety of the
Nazi brass in Germany in the thirties and into the
war regularly got methamphetamines and other uppers and other prescription
(43:23):
painkillers of the time. There's an entire book on it
that is just revealing, and that was Rush Windbaugh. Sean
Hannity would seemingly have been the exact opposite. In two
thousand and six, two thousand and five, perhaps I went
back to ESPN after years of nuclear war at the
(43:43):
request of the head of ESPN Radio to do an
hour every day on Dan Patrick's radio show. And we
had a gas and they paid me an extraordinary amount
of money, and it was such a nice break. The
MSNBC show was just coming into prominence and it was
a lot of work, and an hour with Dan Patrick
was not a lot of work. I would get there,
we did the three o'clock to four o'clock hour, remember, correctly,
(44:05):
I would get there at three o'clock and he'd be
in his break. They'd have a news update from Dan Davis,
and I'd say to him on the line, what are
we talking about ago, Barry? Are you going to talk
about Barry Bonds? We're gonna talk about this, We're gonna
tell Okay, great, let me call up a couple of
stories on the computer and we'd go and then at
the end of the hour, I'd say, I'll talk to
you tomorrow. And there's Keith Ollerman, my friend. He has
(44:27):
to go save the democracy now. But the studio that
we used often, and I had one in my house,
so I didn't have to do this, but it was
nice to get into a big studio a top Madison
Square Garden was at the ABC Radio network, and it
helped because every once in a while I had to
do things for ABC Radio and WABC in New York
as part of the deal. So I was very happy
(44:49):
to be there. And one day, as I was leaving,
I see sitting in a studio, a different studio, a
couple of studios away from the one i'd just used
for an hour. To my surprise, there is Sean Hannity
and he pounds on the inside of the window like
that and waves me in. And I had already I
don't know how many times I put Sean Hannity in
(45:10):
on the Worst Person's List, but there he was in
the flesh, and we had never met before. So again,
this is two thousand and five, six, somewhere like that,
and it's I don't know, three point fifty seven or seven.
He's going on the air at four and he says, listen,
I don't understand this. Why do people think I hate you?
People are assume my wait, we have a fistfight the
moment we ever met. Every time you put me on
(45:32):
that worst Person's list, we get another ten thousand viewers.
Every time I make a reference to MSNBC. I'm sure
you get another ten thousand viewers. It's just television. And
I thought, oh my god, I hate this guy more
than I hate Wimbaugh. He didn't believe a word of it,
or if he believed it, he didn't think there was
anything wrong with it or controversial about it. He didn't
think it was worth standing up for or for somebody
(45:53):
else to be standing against. He assumed I didn't believe
what I was saying, that this was just a television act.
In fact, he said, just stay there, and he signed
a show on he goes. You know, people think I
hate all liberals. Well, I don't hate all liberals at all.
Some of them are really nice guys. There's one standing
here now. I'm not gonna mention him because you know,
(46:14):
I get him in trouble if we find out he
finds we're friendly, and we haven't had a fist fight yet.
But he's a great guy. He just said something really
funny about sports, and I'm just gonna quote him, and so,
you know what, you hate all those liberals, but leave
a little room for the good ones. And I was
like crying out loud. I'd rather deal with Rush Limbaugh well.
And then there was the other, of course, future if
(46:36):
Sean Hannity was to become a true believer, because once
again he started that show for Fox in nineteen ninety
six when they went on the air. The story I
told Drews from ten years later. Thirteen years later, he
was seated a couple of boxes behind me at Yankee
Stadium when the Yankees won the two thousand and nine
World Series, and we waved and took photos of each
(46:57):
other and tweeted the photos. We were still kind of friendly,
and by you know, twenty sixteen, he was advocating for
a man wants to be the dictator of America, and
you can't do that if you don't believe it, if
it's pure opportunism, you can't do what Sean Hannity did.
So he, again, like Limbaugh, started selling a product and
ended taking the product. O'Reilly, I believe, at some point
(47:23):
must have been more moderate than he turned out to be.
His story is largely different. He was what the exaggerations
of my own career say I was, but he was
it for real. He worked in three different local television
markets in one year. He had to move three times
in one year. I never did anything like that. I
(47:45):
never worked in two local markets in one year. In fact,
I only worked in two local markets in my life
in television. I haven't had half the jobs that Bill
O'Reilly did. And he was never successful. But his goal
was to be I believe he wanted to be Walter Cronkite.
I'm not kidding Walter kronk And he got to work
(48:07):
for NBC News and ABC News. He got to be
an anchor at the same station in Boston that I
worked at. For a while, we missed each other by
like three months, and he wanted to be. He wanted
to be Walter Cronkite. He wanted to be the voice
of America. He wanted to be the most trusted man
in America, absolutely devoid of political bias, trusted by everybody. Well,
that didn't work out because they kept firing him, and
(48:31):
so he was working on Inside Edition, owned by the
Fox people when Fox launched the Fox News channel in
nineteen ninety six, and they said, well, we're going to
have to kill some time here. What have we got.
We got this guy O'Reilly under contract for another eight
ten months here, and he's doing terribly with Inside Edition
and everybody hates him there. Let's move him into the
three pm slot or something on his Fox News and
(48:53):
then when he's contract is up, I mean, you know,
if he makes some sort of impression, we can offer
him half what he's making now, and if not, he's
out the door. Well, Fox's primetime lineup and nobody remembers.
This began with at eight clock Catherine Cryer, formerly of
ABC and CNN and a former judge in Texas and
really pretty much a straight down the middle, slightly leaning
(49:14):
to the left news anchor and pretty good one. And
she didn't draw flies at eight o'clock. Instead O'Reilly, who
I believe was on at two o'clock in the afternoon,
had an extraordinary spike because he went on expressing his frustration.
People thought he was talking about the country and right
(49:34):
wing versus left wing. He was talking about how everybody
had dumped on Bill O'Reilly. The point of every episode
of every show Bill O'Reilly ever did. Ultimately you could
put his name in there when he talked about America
or values, or this happened to a friend of his,
or why I was so surprised I went to this
restaurant in Harlem and they didn't say I want some
more iced T MF. Or every one of those stories
(49:59):
is about him and how he did not get to
be Walter Cronkite and all the people he was now
going to screw back and they loved it, and he
became a template and hanned. He looked at that and went,
I'm going to do that too. Bill O'Reilly, by the
time I met him, really really believed this. And again,
(50:20):
if you're expressing your own rage and just dressing it
up and making it in somehow some fashion generic for everybody.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Of course you're going to believe it. You are angry.
Bill O'Reilly will die without ever becoming Walter Cronkite. I
will die without becoming the play by playman of the
New York Yankees, and I'll go well. Travel would have
been terrible crying out loud click in any event. O'Reilly,
as I've outlined many times in many places, did not
(50:50):
take well to the criticism that I began to unleash
on him. Literally the day I returned to MSNBC in
two thousand and three, when I got a phone call
from one of my old friends at NBC in Washington,
Nora O'Donnell, who said, you should do a segment on
Bill O'Reilly. It's so great to have you back. He
lies every night. You should do something about O'Reilly, called
O'Reilly factor fiction, and I went, thank you, Nora, thank
(51:13):
you for resuscitating my career at MSNBC. And as soon
as the war began to die down in Iraq, we
began to go after Bill O'Reilly, And god knows he
provided all the ammunition I could ever want. The rule
is never punched down, and all he did was punched down.
He wanted somebody to stop me. He tried to blackmail
(51:34):
Jeff mL the GE chairman. I've told that story a
dozen times. He threatened Jeff Zooker, he threatened to expose
this and say that he threatened, And finally we ran
into each other at Yankee Stadium. I went to a
Yankee Mets game and had a credential because I was
on the Dan Patrick Show every day. I was actually
(51:55):
also a sports reporter. Two thousand and five, two thousand
and six, Yankee Stadium, and there's O'Reilly and I walk
out onto the field and to my surprise, there's Bill
O'Reilly and he's got a not a press pass, but
a pass given to him by the manager of the
Yankees at the time, Joe Tory. So it was an
FOJ Friend of Joe pass allows you to get on
the field you're not allowed in certain areas. And he
(52:16):
was at one end of the Yankee dugout as I
came out of the Yankee dugout on the home plate side,
and the moment he saw me, he moved ten feet
further away, and every time I would look out onto
the field, I could feel his eyes burning a hole
in the side of my head, and I would turn
my head quickly and he would look away. I would
edge suddenly one inch closer to him, and I could
(52:36):
see out of the corner of my eye him edging
one inch further away from me. This went on for
ten minutes while I talked to my friends among the
sports reporters. Later, he tried to get into the met
clubhouse and his friend of Joe Tory credential did not
allow him near the clubhouse, and they asked him to leave.
(52:57):
Two or three days later, I got a call from
the Yankees. There was an international incident, was the way
described to me about the fact that I had credentials
and Bill O'Reilly did not Fox to the point of
having the president of Fox's operations saying he was calling
on behalf of Roger Ayle's demanding to know why I
(53:19):
was given access to the Mets clubhouse, but Bill O'Reilly
was not, And the head of pr for the Yankees,
sounding like he was reading from a script, went through
thirty minutes explaining that the Yankees didn't give credentials to
celebrities and that these sort of situations won't be tolerated
and only the working press gets credentials, and you could
(53:39):
hear that there were other people on the phone call
who were not talking. You could hear it because every
once in a while the guy would stop suddenly and
then you'd hear in the background. I assumed that was O'Reilly.
The next day, I went to Yankee Stadium with my
credential and I went to the PR director of the Yankees,
(53:59):
and I said, what was that? He goes, what do
you mean? I said, how come I have a credential today?
Wasn't that about taking away my credit dentials? He goes,
what did I say at the beginning of that conversation?
I said, you said you were going to make this
phone call and talk to me about the fact that
we did not issue credentials to celebrities. Did we have
that conversation? Did I do that? Yes? Do we issue
(54:20):
you a credential because you're on the Dan Patrick shower,
because you're a celebrity? And I went, I presume the
former correct have a nice game. And that was It
never came up again. O'Reilly believed he had somehow sabotaged
my access to Yankee Stadium, and he tried it many
other times, and I saw him once at a Joe
Tory event, a charity event, and he did the same
(54:43):
thing where he stared at me and then moved an
inch away if I got too close to him. An
extraordinarily crazy man and remained such to this day. But
as I always say, I probably owe him ten percent
of all of my earnings from MSNBC because he just
couldn't ignore me. I mean, his ratings were initially at
(55:05):
least five times mine. Even at the end, when we'd
grown that thing into making one hundred two hundred million
dollars a year profit for NBC, his ratings were still
twice three times mine. He should never have once mentioned me. Instead,
he put up a petition one day, had them do
it on the Fox News website too, without mentioning my name,
(55:27):
because he refused to ever mention my name. He wanted
Phil Donahue reinstated as the eight pm anchor on MSNBC,
and he did a whole thing about how Phil Donna,
who had been treated so badly, so sign up here
on foxnews dot com the get Phil Donahue the eight
pm slot that he so richly deserves. And I was like,
thank you, Bill. So the next thing I did was
(55:49):
I got my camera, one of my camera crews from
NBC in Secaucus to record everybody on the MSNBC Countdown
staff lined up to get to the computer and all
of them signing up to get me fired and get
Phil Donahue and stated, because one thing about fascists and
people who get high on their own supply, but people
(56:11):
like Bill O'Reilly never understand people like that who believe
all this, that people are at home taking notes, writing
down how will I live my life? This is what
Bill O'Reilly says, This is what Hannity says, this is
what Limbo says. One thing is they really believe that
they don't recognize that the job is just too largely
inform But in many cases, simply reassure people who've already
(56:31):
reached the opinion you have that they're not crazy, that
there are other people who've reached that same opinion, and
to add to their understanding and correct them sometimes or
to have them correct you. It's illumination with maybe a
few jokes and an entertaining broadcast of some kind. It
is not I am writing the New Bible, and you
will live your life this way. So we got that
(56:53):
count of how many people wanted to have Phil Donahue
reinstated like we managed to get it over five thousand.
That was one of my favorite accomplishments, Right you are,
(57:15):
mister Mayerhoffer. One of the great great practical jokes ever
completed in the history of the world, certainly in the
history of television. Billow used to read emails and texts,
and somebody asked him a question and signed it mister
(57:37):
Jack m E H F F E R Jack me Hoffer,
and he read it. He later said, I knew what
that meant, but I thought it was a good question.
Swear to God, I swear to God. I've done all
the damage I can do here, that not as much
(57:57):
as Bill Thank you for listening. We're now back to
five episodes a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern
And as you have heard, you never know what you're
going to hear here, do you? Once again, there is
a Monday countdown at least through the election. Please forward
this to a non listener who should fix being a
non listener, because this is high quality material right here.
(58:19):
Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanelle. Speaking of high quality material,
are the musical directors of countdown, and they have arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
(58:41):
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
My announcer today was my friend John Dee. Everything else
was pretty much my fault. There's always Solan's countdown for today,
one month and twelve days until the twenty twenty four
presidential election, the one hundred No A million, No three
(59:07):
and fifty eighth day since convicted felon dementia j Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Use the election, use the mental health system,
use presidential immunity if we have to to keep him
from trying to overthrow the government again while we still can.
(59:28):
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news
requires till then on Keith Olderman, good Morning, good afternoon,
good night, and I'm trying to hit the mark here
the post good Luck, Yes Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(01:00:00):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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