July 20, 2023 • 42 mins
EPISODE 251: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: The same-day reporting on what was in Jack Smith's 2nd Target Letter to Trump was incomplete (possibly because Trump was the direct or indirect source and he only skimmed the letter and saw only the Statute Heading not the statute itself). If the Letter is any guide, The Special Counsel's centerpiece to the January 6th prosecution of Donald Trump is US Code 18 Section 241 - originally a Reconstruction-era law designed to prosecute Ku Klux Klan members for terrorizing freed slaves and keeping them from voting. It later morphed into the preferred tool for voting fraud and was affirmed in a Supreme Court ruling written by Thurgood Marshall in 1974, per The New York Times. It would fit all the "Fake Electors" schemes, but it would match what Trump tried to do ("I just want to find 11,780 votes") perfectly. It is the denial of the most fundamental constitutional right.
Bottom line: Smith wants to prosecute Trump for trying to have a RIGGED THE ELECTION. For ELECTION INTERFERENCE. For FIXING THE VOTE.
It would be an irony that would ring through the ages. I'll assess its meaning and how and why we missed it (John Barron? John Miller?) on Tuesday night, plus Trump's disastrous legal day.
PLUS: Trump may not have had the WORST day. Ask Marjorie Groomer Greene, who spent the day showing America her porn collection: giant blown-up photos of Hunter Biden having sex. It was so bad, and the Republicans so beclowned themselves, that Congressman Jared Moskowitz quipped "Maybe now we need to call HUNTER Biden 'The Big Guy.'"
B-BLOCK (21:43) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Stanford's student-run campus newspaper wins all the awards: its investigation of the University president's academic research work just led to him quitting. This flashed me back to how MY university president's academic qualifications (Dean of Engineering; co-discoverer of Element Number 85) saved the two of us from getting on a damaged Allegheny Airlines plane they were trying to repair with paper towels (29:12) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: If they're gonna make up Biden Million-Dollar Bribes, go big. And who better to believe anything than Maria Bartiromo. There's also the Maryland Congressional candidate who didn't know he was one, and the self-martyring saga of Twitter clown Catturd.
C-BLOCK (35:20) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The sad tale of Fizz in the NYC pound (36:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My producer had to explain to me that no, Rachel Maddow wasn't going to be on our MSNBC primary night coverage because my boss actually had LIED when he said he'd signed her to a contract, and we were about to lose her to CNN because Larry King offered her $250 to work there that night.
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. In
an irony that would ring through the ages. Jack Smith
(00:25):
is poised to charge Donald Trump with trying to rig
the election, with voting fraud, with attempting to fix the balloting.
In twenty twenty, nearly all of the original reporting on
what is in Target Letter number two was wrong or
at best incomplete. And I have a theory as to why.
(00:48):
At who the source was, and that the source was
screwed up was Trump himself. But the headline is Smith's
letter warns Trump the grand jury was considering charges against
him for potentially violating USC. Eighteen, section two, four to one.
And if you just read the heading, you would see USC. Eighteen,
(01:08):
section two, four to one, conspiracy against rights. So somebody
too important to bother to read the whole thing would say,
he's charging me with conspiracy. But the New York Times
is reporting that the statute is actually a law enacted
after the Civil War that gave federal agents of the
time something with which to prosecute Southern whites who engaged
(01:30):
in terrorism to keep the newly freed slaves from voting,
and which over the ensuing century and a half has
been adapted for use against conspiracies to commit voting fraud.
In nineteen seventy four, the Supreme Court upheld the use
of this exact statute, which Smith put in the New
Target Letter Usc. Eighteen, Section two, four to one to
(01:53):
prosecute people in West Virginia who had cast fraudulent ballots
on a voting machine. And no less a figure than
Justice Thurgood Marshall himself wrote that each voter quote as
a rite under the Constitution to have his vote fairly
counted without its being distorted by fraudulently cast votes. And
(02:15):
you don't have to be Thurgood Marshall to recognize that
a scheme to erase the actual votes of the actual voters,
especially in Georgia, where the infamous I just want to
find eleven seven hundred and eighty votes phone call is
already being memorized by American history students, but also in Arizona,
(02:35):
and in Michigan and everywhere else Trump and John Eastman
and Rudy Giuliani and the rest of them try to
pull off the phony electoral slates scam. A scheme to
erase hundreds of thousands of votes would violate the Constitution
in exactly the way Justice Marshall phrased it, and exactly
(02:56):
the way USC. Eighteen section two, four to one prohibits. Hell,
maybe they planned to charge Trump on one count for
every ballot he corruptly tried to fix. Maybe he will
go down in history as the man convicted of rigging
the twenty twenty election. The Times confirmed that Jack Smith
(03:18):
mentioned only three laws. Trump may have broken, with the
caveat again that a prosecutor does not have to list
all the laws a target might be indicted for violating,
and he does not have to charge under every statute
he lists. This nineteenth century election fraud measure USC eighteen
section two, four to one, also Usc. Eighteen section three,
seven to one, under which it is a crime to
(03:40):
conspire to defraud the United States of America, which could
be just the fake elector's scheme itself, or the fake
electors combined with the insurrection itself, or any of a
dozen other Trump efforts to fake his way to a
second term. The third statute in the letter is, as
widely reported, US eighteen section one five one two, which
(04:03):
has a clause which makes it illegal to corruptly obstruct
an official proceeding, which Trump did twice on January sixth,
once by the elector's scheme inside the capitol and won
by the insurrection that went from outside two inside the capitol.
The Guardian also reported the use of USC. Eighteen, section two,
(04:24):
four to one, and noted additionally that if it and
three seven to one and one five one two really
are the entirety of Smith's second case against Trump, these
second charges could actually go to trial before the stolen
documents case does, because there are no issues of classified
documents and clearances to deal with. First, here and again,
(04:48):
whoever told Rolling Stone and then ABC that the third
statute in the Smith target letter was primarily used to
prosecute racial or ethnic discrimination in renting, And whoever said
there was a witness tampering charge had clearly just skimmed
the letter. And gosh, who in Trump world is known
(05:09):
for just skimming things. If you do not think Trump
personally leaks to the media, let me introduce you to
his past spokesman, John barn and the other one, John Miller,
and of course Carolyn Diego, his quote secretary unquote who
wrote a letter to the editor of New York Magazine
(05:30):
forty years ago about how well Trump treated women and
how all the women wanted to go to bed with him.
Although there are not any confirmed instances of Trump personally
leaking anonymously or using a pseudonym while president, he regularly
brought in reporters, sometimes reporters he barely knew, into the
White House to tell them almost anything. Hell, in February
(05:54):
twenty twenty, he told Bob Woodward more about COVID nineteen
than he told the other three hundred and thirty million
of us combined. The man is a compulsive leaker and talker.
If Trump was using fake spokesman, and if Jack Smith
charges him with election rigging for using fake electors, I
will give mister Smith one thousand dollars if he also
(06:16):
finds a way to charge him with using fake spokesman.
If Trump was doing that yesterday with the fake spokesman,
they sure were busy, and they sure we're busy shoveling
over an unprecedented string of bad legal developments. A federal
judge in New York denied Trump's bid yesterday for a
new trial in E. Gene Carroll's first sexual abuse and
(06:36):
defamation suit against him, which resulted in him being ordered
to pay her two million, seven hundred thousand dollars, and
then he defamed her again and she sued him again.
The case did not get thrown out. Trump remains fixated
on the idea that he can get out of the
Stormy Daniel's hush money case by getting it transferred out
of local court in Manhattan to federal court, because that
(06:57):
increases his chance of it being dismissed because his bribing
her was somehow part of his official duty as president.
In this I see the uneducated hand of his legal advisor,
let's just call him a non attorney spokesperson, Tom Fitten.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein says Hella, no sorry, And late Tuesday,
(07:24):
the Georgia State Supreme Court voted unanimously to dismiss Trump's
petition to block Fannie Willis from any further investigation into
the Georgia election interference case, and to throw out all
the evidence gathered by the Special Purpose Grand jury in
Fulton County. So the Georgia case against Trump for Georgia continues.
And that brings us back to the news about the
(07:45):
Special Council's target letter and USC eighteen Section two four
to one. Trump's platoon of lawyers and enthusiastic amateurs have
at least seen the profound danger in what he did
to try to get state officials to commit fraud on
his behalf and either throw out legitimate ballots and disenfranchise
(08:07):
legitimate voters or fabricate nearly twelve thousand new ballots and voters.
He can get charged twice on that one, at the
state level and at the federal level. But it is
presumed that if Georgia really is central to Jack Smith
II Electric Boogaloo, the Georgia case, the state case that is,
(08:28):
will wait for the very important reason that if any details, testimony, witness, recollections, evidence,
whether something happened at three pm or three point fifteen pm,
if anything between the state and the federal cases does
not match exactly, a good lawyer, or even a Trump lawyer,
could make that work to Trump's advantage and imperil the
(08:50):
entire federal case. So to recap, before we move on
to Marjorie Tantric Taylor Green's pornographic happy hour, what do
we know? Well, we know Trump moved on to that
topic and largely dropped the prosecution from his compulsive social
media posting though he did write yesterday, I keep on winning.
(09:13):
Any attorney that represents me is either a fool or
a great American patriot that history will love and cherish. Unquote.
You wouldn't want to put that to a vote, would you,
Sonny Jack Smith did not tell Trump to show up
to be formally indicted in Washington today, and probably didn't
give him enough notice for him to show up and
(09:34):
be formally indicted in Washington on Friday. His grand jury
has supposedly been meeting on Thursdays, so we might get
some action today. Smith does seem poised to indict him deliciously.
I'm charges of trying to rig the election, crooked Donald,
and there is at least some Trump indictment fatigue breaking
(09:58):
out among his nominal defenders. Quote. I don't even know
who he's getting indicted by, I said Republican West Virginia
Senator Shelley Moore Carpedo to the website The Messenger. She
also said, quote, it's a never ending story. Yeah, maybe
right about that. Senator. On the other hand, you know
(10:20):
there's always more target letters where that one came from.
So House Republicans meanwhile, we're conducting this quote hunter Biden
hearing yesterday, which turned out to happen simply so Marjorie
Taylor Green could show off her porn collection.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
To pay prostitutes for sex, to pay prostitutes.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yes, that was not a golf club membership. That was
for a sex club payment.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
That was for sex club payment. This is evidence, Miss
of Hunter Biden making sex. Excuse me, this is my
time making pornography.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Should we be displaying this? Mister Chairman, get to commit
hit a ladies times expired.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Today's hearing is like most of the Majority's investigations and hearings,
a lot of allegations, zero proof, no receipts.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
But apparently some dig pics the mo juice at the
end there Congressman Robert Garcia of California. And don't forget
the G in rep MTG can also stand for groomer.
The gist of this this time, the secret Republican whistleblower
informant secret squirrel witnesses were not fugitives from justice indicted
(11:40):
for bribing Trump officials on behalf of foreign governments. However,
somebody thought we ought to check.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
I'd like to get right into some basic vetting questions
as unfortunately our colleagues across the aisle failed to do
so with some of the previous witnesses that they called.
And so, mister Ziegler and mister Shapley, I'm hoping that
these are very simple, very straightforward questions. So I'd like
to ask that you answer them with a yes or
no answer. Mister Shapley, are you now or have you
(12:10):
ever acted as an unregistered foreign agent for the Chinese
government or for any other government?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
No?
Speaker 4 (12:18):
And mister Ziegler, are you now or have you ever
acted as an unregistered or registered for an agent?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
No?
Speaker 4 (12:26):
And mister Shapley, have you ever participated in illegal arms trafficking?
Speaker 3 (12:30):
No?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
I have not.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
And mister Ziegler, how about yourself?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
I have not.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
And finally, mister Shapley, have you ever been indicted of
a crime, lied to investigators while under oath, or run
from the law.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
No?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I have not.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
And mister Ziegler, same.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Question to you.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Have you ever been indicted, lied to investigators, or run
from the law.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I have not.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Thank you for answering those questions. Obviously it would seem
strange to have to ask these clarifying questions, but given
the majority's track record in calling witnesses on this matter
not to mention their own presidential candidate. It seemed necessary
to clarify for our American folks who are listening today.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico saying hi to all the Republicans'
friends in China and Russia. Her point was largely satirical,
but it does underscore an important reality. Some Republicans throughout
history have done the whole Joe McCarthy thing pretty well.
Jamie Comer is not one of them. They just aren't prepared.
(13:35):
The upshot of the quote Hunter Biden hearings. Besides the upshots,
Marge Green was gripping so tightly in her hands. I mean.
Congressman Jared Moscow has put it perfectly when he tweeted
based on this, perhaps we should call Hunter Biden the
big Guy. The upshot of the whole day was an
IRS investigator named Mark Shapley, who was upset because his
(13:58):
bosses ignored his demands that Hunter Biden should be prosecuted
more than he was already being prosecuted. It turned out
that Mark Shapley always wants everybody prosecuted more than they
are already being prosecuted, and his bosses always ignore his demands.
Congressman Mokeanna, is it not true that the tax Council
(14:21):
in the criminal Department has disagreed often with your decisions
in the past? Oh, criminal tax attorneys? Yes? And you know,
as I stated them.
Speaker 5 (14:30):
How often have they disagreed, in your opinion, with your
recommendation decisions?
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Very often? Criminal tax attorneys.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (14:39):
Can you give us a percentage of how often you've
said we ought to charge someone and they said, now
that may not be a good idea.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah, I would say, I mean just ballparking a vast
majority of what we do.
Speaker 5 (14:51):
I just think because you have a history of wanting
to charge people and then people pushing back. By your
own testimony under oath, you said about ninety percent of
the time people are pushing back on what you want
to do.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well to give this farce the seriesurious attention. It does
not really seem to deserve until you remember that this
is the United States House of Representatives, and this really
is all Margie Barney, Rubbell Green and Jamie Comer and
Byron Donald's and Jim Jordan actually can do. It's all
they can accomplish in life. Here is the whole thing.
(15:25):
Explained and dismissed by in about two minutes. Who else
bought Jamie Raskin? So what happened?
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Well, the son of the sitting president of the United
States lost his brother and then lost his way badly
back in twenty fifteen, As too many families around the
country know, drug addiction is a dark and powerful affliction,
and like other addicts, Hunter Biden made foolish and criminal choices,
including failing to pay his taxes and owning a firearm
(15:54):
in violation of federal law, and he's now being held
criminally accountable for it. His investigation began under the Trump administration.
It was conducted by a US attorney for Della where
David Weiss, who Donald Trump appointed to his office, and
who Attorney General Barr chose for this assignment to conduct
this investigation. In his final press conference in December of
(16:16):
twenty twenty, Attorney General Barr expressed full confidence in Weiss's work,
saying it was quote being handled responsibly and professionally within
the department, And to this point, I have seen no
reason to appoint a special counsel, and I have no
plan to do so before I leave. Furthermore, Joe Biden
never publicly questioned or challenged this prosecution when it began.
(16:39):
He did not decry it as a witch hunt by
Donald Trump. He placed his trust in the fairness of
the American justice system when he became president.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Not only did he not.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Use his power to halt the investigation, he kept in
place Trump's hand picked US Attorney, mister Weiss, overseeing it,
even though incoming presidents usually replace US attorneys with their
own appointees. And his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, made sure
that mister Weiss, appointed by Donald Trump, had full authority
and resources to pursue this probe and charge it however
(17:12):
and whenever he saw fit in any district in the country.
And in the past few weeks, as Hunter Biden accepted
a guilty plea, the President and his Attorney General have
done nothing to interfere with the case, which is overseen
by a federal judge appointed by Yes, Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Nik you, Congressman, Let's give the last word back to Marge.
She wraps this up by unexpectedly endorsing the many arrests
of dementia. J Trump, Are you sure?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
I would also like to say that when evidence and
proof of a crime is presented. No prosecution should be
denied no matter who the person is.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Thank you, Nancy Faust. Also of interest here, the president
of Stanford University resigns because of investigative journalism conducted by
the Stanford University student run campus newspaper. The guy fudged
a series of scientific papers. He's out, and suddenly I
was flashed back to the day. The president of Cornell University,
(18:24):
who was also a scientist, only this one co discovered
an element, Thank you very much. An element on the
table of elements. Thank you number eighty five on your
element program. He and I got the airline to ground
the plane they were going to put us on a
plane they were trying to repair with paper towels. I
(18:47):
swear that's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with
Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the new use some headlines, some updates,
some snarks, some predictions. Dateline, Palo Alto, California. The president
(19:11):
of Stanford University will leave that post at the end
of next month because of the student newspaper, The Stanford Daily,
the student run campus newspaper, began an investigative series last
fall into the research papers into brain receptors that had
been written by university president doctor Mark Tessier Levine. Short explanation,
(19:34):
the doctor fudged stuff in them, and when this was
pointed out to him at least four separate times over
the last twenty odd years, he failed to correct said
fudges or the papers or withdraw them all together. Easiest
fudging to explain images used in the research were altered.
The soon to be ex president will also retract or
(19:55):
issue lengthy corrections for five separate academic papers. What you
want in a scientist who becomes your university president is
a practical guy. And I had just thought of this
man last week. He came not from Stanford, but from Berkeley.
Before the Stanford scam story came up. I was thinking
about Dale Corson, president of Cornell University when I got there.
(20:18):
He served from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen seventy seven.
He had been in the physics department for twenty three years,
which came in handy in this story. Among other things,
he helped design the school's synchrotron, and I don't know
what that is. He chaired the physics department and was
dean of the College of Engineering, and he was co
discoverer of astetne. What is astetne? Astetene is an element.
(20:43):
Astetene is element number eighty five. And what have you
done with your life? Dale corson Co discovered an element
with the word ass in it. I met him once accidentally,
and that's the story. It was in the waning months
of his tenure. The spring term in nineteen seventy seven
was beginning, and I was flying back from New York
(21:04):
City to Ithaca from LaGuardia Airport. In the days when
you waited for the plane in a room that a
big window in it, and about fifty feet on the
other side of the window was the plane. And on
this frigid morning, we were already late to board that plane,
but nobody seemed to be paying much attention except me,
because I'm staring at the plane and these two guys
(21:25):
in suits who are standing under it and pointing up
towards the belly of this not very new, certainly not
jet from Allegheny Airlines, or as we fatalistically called it,
Agony Airlines. And finally I see one of the two
guys slap the other one on the arm, and he
runs towards the stairs and runs up the stairs and
(21:46):
into the plane. And then within a minute he's running
back down the stairs and he's got as many paper
towels as you could carry, squeezed between your hands without
dropping any I don't know how many of that was
five hundred one thousand. And the guy runs over to
where the other guy is still standing under the plane,
and he hands the other guy one paper towel off
(22:09):
the top of the stack. And if that's not crazy enough,
the other guy wads the one paper towel up and
thrusts it up into the underside of the aircraft. And
I say, quietly but out loud, no sir, no thanks.
And one by one the first guy hands the second
guy paper towel after paper towel, and the second guy
(22:32):
stuffs them into the plane with increasing fervor. The plane,
the plane we were supposed to all fly to Ithacon
that's being repaired with paper towels. I look around. Nobody
else is looking out the window, just me. I'm William
Shatner in the twilight zone with the monster on the
(22:54):
wing who's trying to destroy the plane. I'm the only
one who sees this. And that's when I see the
second shocking thing sitting across from me in this waiting room,
fifty feet from the plane, smoking his pipe, his nineteen
fifty seven era hat firmly perched on his head, plowing
through his copy of The New York Times. It's the
(23:17):
president of my school, Cornell, President Dale Corson, the code
discoverer of the element. Ask the team, President Corson, excuse me,
you wouldn't know me. My name isn't important. I'm class
of seventy nine. There's something about this plane I think
you ought to see. And to his credit, the president
(23:38):
of Cornell University begins to tell me that all the
students matter. And I'm just pointing out the window and
shaking my head where the second guy is now stuffing
his thirtieth paper towel into the undercarriage of our plane.
And I say, President Corson, you were engineering, weren't you?
Does this look safe to you? And he stops talking
and he looks at me, and he looks back where
(23:59):
now it's paper towel number thirty five going up, and
he says, what's your name? And I tell him and
he says, good work, mister Olderman. I don't know what
they think they're doing. Out there. But I can assure
you of this, that plane will not be flying us
to Cornell. Have a seat. I'll take care of this.
President Corson began to walk towards the check in desk,
(24:21):
and then he stopped, turned around and handed me his paper. Here.
We may be here a while. Read whatever you like,
just don't do the crossword. At a distance, I heard
him threatening the airline and the executive they sent down
to discuss it with him, and he said something about
air rights over Cornell and the airport Commission. And the
(24:41):
next thing I knew, we were all on a jet
headed to Elmira, New York, with the promise of a
bus to take us the other hour to Ithaca. I
was already on board the jet when President Corson got on,
and he stopped and he took his times back from me,
and he shook my hand. They think it was a
problem with the toilet train. I told him, it's exactly
what you want near the wiring of a passenger airliner,
(25:02):
leaking fluid everywhere, blockheads. Then he asked me what my
school was and what my major was, and I told him, communications, really,
have you ever considered engineering? And I told him my
dad was an architect in the actual math and the
physics and the hard work part were the bane of
(25:22):
his existence. Well, I can understand that. Oh, clearly you
have the eye of a reporter. Anyway, I guess that's
some consolation. Paper towels, I swear, thank you, President Corson,
(25:52):
still ahead on countdown. Just last weekend, I talked to
my old producer, the one who had to tell me
one night that our MSNBC bosses had decided that we
should let this Rachel Meadow walk to CNN. We didn't
need her. That would have been the night I wound
up threatening to quit mid show if we didn't stop that,
and also the night I wound up personally hiring her
(26:13):
out of my own pockets for four hundred and thirty
seven dollars in cash. Things I promised not to tell.
Coming up first time for the daily round up of
the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute today's worst persons in the world with paper towels,
the bronze, the endlessly gullible Maria Bartiromo of Fox before
(26:36):
yesterday's House Show, and tell of Marge greens collection of
giant blow up porn. Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona. I
think that's a coincidence, Andy Biggs, blow up porn. Anyway,
Biggs went on her show and decided, Hell, if we're
making up out of whole cloth this claim that the
Bidens took millions from other countries, let's do this thing big, Mario.
(26:59):
We're talking literally, it's not ten million dollars. It's well
over twenty thirty million some estimates is as one hundred
million flowing through these accounts, to which Maria Bartiromo could
only reply, hoey, moey. The sad part is, even if
somehow that were true, one hundred million dollars to the Bidens,
that would be one twentieth the money that Jared Kushner
(27:21):
just got from Saudi Arabia alone. Just him. The runner up,
Dan Cox, the Republican nominee for governor of Maryland last year,
who was trying to succeed a retiring Republican governor, and
he lost sixty four to thirty two. Well, a congressional
campaign committee with Dan Cox's name opened up. He said
he had no idea who had done it. It wasn't him,
(27:42):
The Daily Beast reports it was him. Dan Cox had
hired a treasurer to launch the campaign and then changed
his mind forgot about it, remembered that he'd lost for
governor by two to one. Who knows but the winner,
Philip L. Buchanan of Florida. This is, by all accounts
(28:02):
the Twitter account turned the right wing nutjob who wars
himself out for Trump and the fascists and does on
scientific reader polls, which he then positions as actual political
opinion surveys, and it was unswervingly convinced that his IQ,
which is about seventy five, is the highest in the world.
Turns out that in the hour before he revealed he
(28:23):
had gotten another target letter, Trump reposted four of cat
Turd's witticisms, and the spotlight was apparently too much for
the old turd. Why me, by cat Turd, He wrote,
I'm exhausted mentally and physically. This cat Tird thing has
been a five year roller coaster ride. I basically work
seven days a week, no days off, no vacations. I
(28:45):
don't even know how I got here. I often asked myself,
why me? This goes on for five hundred and seventy
one words. Dude, you tweet, you are not Christ fresh
off the cross, you tweet? We all tweet sounded like
(29:06):
cat Turd was quitting, but not to worry. A cheer
me up bouquet of tweets from General Michael Flynn and
Senator Mike Lee, and Buchanan was ready to get back
out there and meet them at the barricades. Flynn and
Senator Lee and cat turn do you remember at least
hearing about those paranoid fantasies from the nineteen sixties that
(29:27):
the Russians were behind putting fluoride in all the water
systems because fluoride would make the next generation of Americans stupid.
And I'm beginning to wonder about that cat Turd. Remember
the old joke about self martyrdom, No matter how hard
you try, you can never hammer in that last nail
(29:49):
yourself without some help. Today's worse Arson.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And La.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Just ahead. I talked to the executive in question literally
over last weekend about something unrelated, but the sound of
her voice brought the whole thing back to me. Anew.
It was the day MSNBC would have lost Rachel Maddow
to CNN, but literally I hired her with all the
cash I had on me so she wouldn't go to CNN.
(30:31):
I did keep five dollars to tip my driver that night,
because our bosses thought there was no way she'd ever
succeed as an anchor. I swear things I promised not
to tell. Next first time to feature another dog in need.
You can help. Every dog has its day. Over the
fourth of July holiday, they found Fizz tied to a
(30:51):
fence on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, fifty three
weeks old, terrified but then loving, but now becoming more
and more aware that they mean to kill her soon
at the New York City Pound. She's forty five tan,
an ordinary street mutt with one brown eye and one
ice blue eye, and she could be adopted today by
(31:12):
any home where the kids are thirteen or older, or
our pledges can help the rescue save her. The New
York Pound continues to be a nightmare of overcrowding, and
if Fizz is going to get out alive, it's going
to have to be very soon. You can find Fizz
on my Twitter feeds. Pledge if you can, your retweets
will also help Fizz. Thanks you, and of course I
(31:33):
thank you. Late in November two thousand and seven, after
several months of pressuring my MSNBC bosses to hire Rachel
(31:54):
Maddow to try out as My guest host with a
goal of then showcasing her and spinning her off into
her own show, the Vice president in charge of network,
Phil Griffin, agreed to give Meadow a deal for forty
or fifty grand as an MSNBC contributor. It would do
nothing more than lock her in place so that CNN
(32:15):
would not steal her from us. I mean, I knew
that that conversation and that concession still would not get
her her own show. But what I did not know
was the concession I was told about the contributors contract.
It was a lie. And by January two thousand and eight,
as the Clinton Obama primary race turned into a tong war,
we were imposing upon Rachel Meadow to join the desk
(32:38):
each Tuesday for Primary Night. She was not anchoring, she
was not even the lead analyst. And my uncontrollable fire
hose co host Matthews, who was consistently pretending that she
did not actually exist, but she existed. She was there,
and I quizzed her about every topic every chance I got. Soon,
I began to include her appearances in the pre recorded
(32:59):
open that I would write two minutes of hyperbole that
was really designed merely to give her everybody enough time
to get my fat ass into the anchor chair and
everybody else's mics on with Tim Russard in the NBC
News Washington Bureau, David Gregory at Clinton Headquarters, Howard Feinman,
and Eugene Robinson in New York, Chuck Todd at the
(33:20):
exit poll desk, Tom broke off the perspective desk, MC
Esher at the lack of perspective Desk. Then came Super Tuesday,
February fifth, two thousand and eight. I was writing this
orgasmic dribble, as I always did on Tuesday, crossing the
names of who was where off the list as I went,
(33:40):
the list handed to me by the executive producer, Izzy Povich.
When I noticed the list did not include either Rachel
or the Rachel Desk, I knocked on the wall that
separated our little offices at thirty Rock, and she shuffled
in complete with a sincere smile friendship, but always also
with what seemed to be a little space kept in
reserve where she could wonder if I was mad enough
(34:02):
to try to take somebody hostage. Yes, my third child.
Where's Rachel tonight? I asked, as I waved the paper
at her, assuming oversight, but leaving my own little space
in reserve where my earlier nightmare had come true. Not
on paper. Please to put name Rachel on paper? Isipovich
(34:25):
said it, matter of factly. Oh yeah, well, oh, I
was in trouble. That elongated consonant always meant trouble. She's
on Larry King tonight. Momentarily, I went very stupid. How
in the hell does that work when she has a
contract with us? I'll tell you, but you have to
promise not to hate me. The Izipovich fake cringe and
(34:49):
crouch ensued. Phil made me promise not to tell you.
Rachel doesn't have a contract with us. He told me
he told you he'd get her one, then his boss
refused to give him the money. I'm sorry, you promised
not to hate me. Momentarily, I was calm. Momentarily, but
why didn't you tell me that before? Approximately? Oh right now,
(35:11):
why didn't you tell me this before? She agreed to
go on Larry King's show, while she only decided this morning.
Apparently she really needs the cash, I told Phil, and
he said, those are the breaks, buddy. The last thing
I actually remember doing, the last part that I did
not need to recreate from the memories of others and
an occasional flashback in therapy, was asking how much my
(35:35):
old friend Larry King was going to give Rachel is
He pursed her lips two hundred and fifty dollars. I
remember screaming that figure several times, along with all the
swear words I knew. I remember vocalizing, we are going
to lose Rachel Meadow, the next great talent of cable news,
(35:56):
to e fing CNN, for two hundred and fifty fing dollars.
Everything else after that statement is darkness. I know I
phoned Phil Griffin and threatened him is He recently confirmed
for me that I asked her to leave before I
called him and threatened him. I believe I warned him
(36:17):
that if he did not sign her to a contributors
contract within twenty four hours, I would walk off the
set during that night's primary coverage, or maybe the next
week's or maybe during countdown tomorrow night. It would be
a surprise. I'm also confident that I warned him that
of all of a talent on television, Larry King had
the best knowledge of what and who else would succeed
(36:41):
more than the rest of us combined. He was a savant,
and when he saw her in real time on his
primary night panel, we would never see her again, and
she would have a CNN contract before midnight. I told
Phil that when that happened, I would then kill him
with my bare hands, or Jeff Zucker would kill him
(37:04):
when she wound up beating the hell out of us
in the ratings. This statement all took longer than this
paragraph would imply, because I know, without fear of contradiction,
every other word out of my mouth was either what
we used to call an oath or the phrase Jesus
h ka Christ. Mind you, these people the president of NBC,
(37:26):
Jeff Zucker, and it's a year since they got rid
of him at CNN, the president of NBC News Steve Cappus,
and the soon to be president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin.
These had been the same people who, about a year earlier,
had decided that their ten PM host Tucker Carlson Yep,
Tucker Carlson was on MSNBC. That Tucker Carlson did not
(37:48):
need two people to play the role of liberal foil
on his show at like fifty grand a year, so
they kept one of them, his name was Max Kellerman,
and they fired the other one. Her name was Rachel Meadow.
They fired Meadow at MSNBC to save fifty thousand dollars.
(38:12):
She was back now at MSNBC only because my producer
is He had suggested making her a regular guest, and
within a couple of months I realized she would be
the next great hosting cable news. And after months of pleading,
including pleading with her because she didn't want to do it,
I had just convinced them to put her back under contract.
Except they had lied to me, and they had not
put her back under contract. I may have mentioned this
(38:35):
to Phil Griffin during our phone call one hundred and
eleven different times. I may have mentioned it to him.
I also telephoned Rachel. I did not swear at her here.
Every other word out of my mouth was not an
oath but an apology. I said. I had genuinely believed
she was already being paid, and I was not only
(38:56):
humiliated on behalf of my network, but that I was
far more humiliated that I had not double checked with
her that they'd actually given her the contract they told
me they had given her. I begged her to please, please, please,
don't go and see an end tonight. I did not
ask her to skip out on them and return to
us unless she thought she could pull that off gracefully
and with a clean conscience, but just not to go
(39:19):
on with Larry. And that's where I added the little
four hundred and thirty seven dollars stunt. I'm sorry about
the money situation, I said. I didn't know. Now I
know I can only do this. I think they will
give you forty or fifty thousand for a contributors deal,
just to start. But what I will do is, and
while making as many sound effects of exertion as I
(39:41):
could dream up, I stretched around it, pulled my wallet
out of my back pocket, and I emptied it onto
my desk. I need to keep five bucks to tip
my driver tonight. You can have the rest of whatever
cash I have on me. I'm counting it now. There's
one hundred twenty twenty twenty my play by place skipped
(40:03):
no bills, four hundred and forty two bucks American five
for the driver, the rest for you four hundred and
thirty seven dollars. Rachel deal, She laughed, I'll see you tonight.
I'll just tell Larry I couldn't be disloyaled to you. Oh,
and I will take the money, And she took the money.
In point of fact, when I like to say anything
(40:25):
that Rachel Mattow did with her career after we got
her show on the air in August of two thousand
and eight, that's all her doing. I have nothing to
do with that except being the lead in for the
first two years. That's true. But I also like to
say that I got that show on the air. And
I also like to say I hired Rachel Mattow at MSNBC.
And this is my point, it was not figuratively, it
(40:48):
was not metaphorically. I hired her out of my own pocket.
I literally hired Medow at MSNBC for four hundred and
thirty seven dollars. And I will point this out again,
I never even got the four hundred and thirty seven
dollars back. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(41:23):
Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of
the music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray
and John Phillip Shanelle, who are the countdown musical directors. Guitars,
bass and drums by Brian ray All, Orchestration and keyboards
by John Phillip Shanelle, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven
selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two.
(41:45):
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtis EBESPN Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Stevie van Zant. Everything
else was pretty much my fault. Don't forget. Countdown is
now also available on YouTube with and without asteteene countdown
for this the nine and twenty sixth day since Donald
(42:07):
Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of
the United States. Hell arrass him again while we still can.
Our next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news
warrants till then, I'm Keith Olraman. Good Morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olraman is
(42:37):
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. In
an irony that would ring through the ages. Jack Smith
(00:25):
is poised to charge Donald Trump with trying to rig
the election, with voting fraud, with attempting to fix the balloting.
In twenty twenty, nearly all of the original reporting on
what is in Target Letter number two was wrong or
at best incomplete. And I have a theory as to why.
(00:48):
At who the source was, and that the source was
screwed up was Trump himself. But the headline is Smith's
letter warns Trump the grand jury was considering charges against
him for potentially violating USC. Eighteen, section two, four to one.
And if you just read the heading, you would see USC. Eighteen,
(01:08):
section two, four to one, conspiracy against rights. So somebody
too important to bother to read the whole thing would say,
he's charging me with conspiracy. But the New York Times
is reporting that the statute is actually a law enacted
after the Civil War that gave federal agents of the
time something with which to prosecute Southern whites who engaged
(01:30):
in terrorism to keep the newly freed slaves from voting,
and which over the ensuing century and a half has
been adapted for use against conspiracies to commit voting fraud.
In nineteen seventy four, the Supreme Court upheld the use
of this exact statute, which Smith put in the New
Target Letter Usc. Eighteen, Section two, four to one to
(01:53):
prosecute people in West Virginia who had cast fraudulent ballots
on a voting machine. And no less a figure than
Justice Thurgood Marshall himself wrote that each voter quote as
a rite under the Constitution to have his vote fairly
counted without its being distorted by fraudulently cast votes. And
(02:15):
you don't have to be Thurgood Marshall to recognize that
a scheme to erase the actual votes of the actual voters,
especially in Georgia, where the infamous I just want to
find eleven seven hundred and eighty votes phone call is
already being memorized by American history students, but also in Arizona,
(02:35):
and in Michigan and everywhere else Trump and John Eastman
and Rudy Giuliani and the rest of them try to
pull off the phony electoral slates scam. A scheme to
erase hundreds of thousands of votes would violate the Constitution
in exactly the way Justice Marshall phrased it, and exactly
(02:56):
the way USC. Eighteen section two, four to one prohibits. Hell,
maybe they planned to charge Trump on one count for
every ballot he corruptly tried to fix. Maybe he will
go down in history as the man convicted of rigging
the twenty twenty election. The Times confirmed that Jack Smith
(03:18):
mentioned only three laws. Trump may have broken, with the
caveat again that a prosecutor does not have to list
all the laws a target might be indicted for violating,
and he does not have to charge under every statute
he lists. This nineteenth century election fraud measure USC eighteen
section two, four to one, also Usc. Eighteen section three,
seven to one, under which it is a crime to
(03:40):
conspire to defraud the United States of America, which could
be just the fake elector's scheme itself, or the fake
electors combined with the insurrection itself, or any of a
dozen other Trump efforts to fake his way to a
second term. The third statute in the letter is, as
widely reported, US eighteen section one five one two, which
(04:03):
has a clause which makes it illegal to corruptly obstruct
an official proceeding, which Trump did twice on January sixth,
once by the elector's scheme inside the capitol and won
by the insurrection that went from outside two inside the capitol.
The Guardian also reported the use of USC. Eighteen, section two,
(04:24):
four to one, and noted additionally that if it and
three seven to one and one five one two really
are the entirety of Smith's second case against Trump, these
second charges could actually go to trial before the stolen
documents case does, because there are no issues of classified
documents and clearances to deal with. First, here and again,
(04:48):
whoever told Rolling Stone and then ABC that the third
statute in the Smith target letter was primarily used to
prosecute racial or ethnic discrimination in renting, And whoever said
there was a witness tampering charge had clearly just skimmed
the letter. And gosh, who in Trump world is known
(05:09):
for just skimming things. If you do not think Trump
personally leaks to the media, let me introduce you to
his past spokesman, John barn and the other one, John Miller,
and of course Carolyn Diego, his quote secretary unquote who
wrote a letter to the editor of New York Magazine
(05:30):
forty years ago about how well Trump treated women and
how all the women wanted to go to bed with him.
Although there are not any confirmed instances of Trump personally
leaking anonymously or using a pseudonym while president, he regularly
brought in reporters, sometimes reporters he barely knew, into the
White House to tell them almost anything. Hell, in February
(05:54):
twenty twenty, he told Bob Woodward more about COVID nineteen
than he told the other three hundred and thirty million
of us combined. The man is a compulsive leaker and talker.
If Trump was using fake spokesman, and if Jack Smith
charges him with election rigging for using fake electors, I
will give mister Smith one thousand dollars if he also
(06:16):
finds a way to charge him with using fake spokesman.
If Trump was doing that yesterday with the fake spokesman,
they sure were busy, and they sure we're busy shoveling
over an unprecedented string of bad legal developments. A federal
judge in New York denied Trump's bid yesterday for a
new trial in E. Gene Carroll's first sexual abuse and
(06:36):
defamation suit against him, which resulted in him being ordered
to pay her two million, seven hundred thousand dollars, and
then he defamed her again and she sued him again.
The case did not get thrown out. Trump remains fixated
on the idea that he can get out of the
Stormy Daniel's hush money case by getting it transferred out
of local court in Manhattan to federal court, because that
(06:57):
increases his chance of it being dismissed because his bribing
her was somehow part of his official duty as president.
In this I see the uneducated hand of his legal advisor,
let's just call him a non attorney spokesperson, Tom Fitten.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein says Hella, no sorry, And late Tuesday,
(07:24):
the Georgia State Supreme Court voted unanimously to dismiss Trump's
petition to block Fannie Willis from any further investigation into
the Georgia election interference case, and to throw out all
the evidence gathered by the Special Purpose Grand jury in
Fulton County. So the Georgia case against Trump for Georgia continues.
And that brings us back to the news about the
(07:45):
Special Council's target letter and USC eighteen Section two four
to one. Trump's platoon of lawyers and enthusiastic amateurs have
at least seen the profound danger in what he did
to try to get state officials to commit fraud on
his behalf and either throw out legitimate ballots and disenfranchise
(08:07):
legitimate voters or fabricate nearly twelve thousand new ballots and voters.
He can get charged twice on that one, at the
state level and at the federal level. But it is
presumed that if Georgia really is central to Jack Smith
II Electric Boogaloo, the Georgia case, the state case that is,
(08:28):
will wait for the very important reason that if any details, testimony, witness, recollections, evidence,
whether something happened at three pm or three point fifteen pm,
if anything between the state and the federal cases does
not match exactly, a good lawyer, or even a Trump lawyer,
could make that work to Trump's advantage and imperil the
(08:50):
entire federal case. So to recap, before we move on
to Marjorie Tantric Taylor Green's pornographic happy hour, what do
we know? Well, we know Trump moved on to that
topic and largely dropped the prosecution from his compulsive social
media posting though he did write yesterday, I keep on winning.
(09:13):
Any attorney that represents me is either a fool or
a great American patriot that history will love and cherish. Unquote.
You wouldn't want to put that to a vote, would you,
Sonny Jack Smith did not tell Trump to show up
to be formally indicted in Washington today, and probably didn't
give him enough notice for him to show up and
(09:34):
be formally indicted in Washington on Friday. His grand jury
has supposedly been meeting on Thursdays, so we might get
some action today. Smith does seem poised to indict him deliciously.
I'm charges of trying to rig the election, crooked Donald,
and there is at least some Trump indictment fatigue breaking
(09:58):
out among his nominal defenders. Quote. I don't even know
who he's getting indicted by, I said Republican West Virginia
Senator Shelley Moore Carpedo to the website The Messenger. She
also said, quote, it's a never ending story. Yeah, maybe
right about that. Senator. On the other hand, you know
(10:20):
there's always more target letters where that one came from.
So House Republicans meanwhile, we're conducting this quote hunter Biden
hearing yesterday, which turned out to happen simply so Marjorie
Taylor Green could show off her porn collection.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
To pay prostitutes for sex, to pay prostitutes.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yes, that was not a golf club membership. That was
for a sex club payment.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
That was for sex club payment. This is evidence, Miss
of Hunter Biden making sex. Excuse me, this is my
time making pornography.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Should we be displaying this? Mister Chairman, get to commit
hit a ladies times expired.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Today's hearing is like most of the Majority's investigations and hearings,
a lot of allegations, zero proof, no receipts.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
But apparently some dig pics the mo juice at the
end there Congressman Robert Garcia of California. And don't forget
the G in rep MTG can also stand for groomer.
The gist of this this time, the secret Republican whistleblower
informant secret squirrel witnesses were not fugitives from justice indicted
(11:40):
for bribing Trump officials on behalf of foreign governments. However,
somebody thought we ought to check.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
I'd like to get right into some basic vetting questions
as unfortunately our colleagues across the aisle failed to do
so with some of the previous witnesses that they called.
And so, mister Ziegler and mister Shapley, I'm hoping that
these are very simple, very straightforward questions. So I'd like
to ask that you answer them with a yes or
no answer. Mister Shapley, are you now or have you
(12:10):
ever acted as an unregistered foreign agent for the Chinese
government or for any other government?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
No?
Speaker 4 (12:18):
And mister Ziegler, are you now or have you ever
acted as an unregistered or registered for an agent?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
No?
Speaker 4 (12:26):
And mister Shapley, have you ever participated in illegal arms trafficking?
Speaker 3 (12:30):
No?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
I have not.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
And mister Ziegler, how about yourself?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
I have not.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
And finally, mister Shapley, have you ever been indicted of
a crime, lied to investigators while under oath, or run
from the law.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
No?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I have not.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
And mister Ziegler, same.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Question to you.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Have you ever been indicted, lied to investigators, or run
from the law.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I have not.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Thank you for answering those questions. Obviously it would seem
strange to have to ask these clarifying questions, but given
the majority's track record in calling witnesses on this matter
not to mention their own presidential candidate. It seemed necessary
to clarify for our American folks who are listening today.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico saying hi to all the Republicans'
friends in China and Russia. Her point was largely satirical,
but it does underscore an important reality. Some Republicans throughout
history have done the whole Joe McCarthy thing pretty well.
Jamie Comer is not one of them. They just aren't prepared.
(13:35):
The upshot of the quote Hunter Biden hearings. Besides the upshots,
Marge Green was gripping so tightly in her hands. I mean.
Congressman Jared Moscow has put it perfectly when he tweeted
based on this, perhaps we should call Hunter Biden the
big Guy. The upshot of the whole day was an
IRS investigator named Mark Shapley, who was upset because his
(13:58):
bosses ignored his demands that Hunter Biden should be prosecuted
more than he was already being prosecuted. It turned out
that Mark Shapley always wants everybody prosecuted more than they
are already being prosecuted, and his bosses always ignore his demands.
Congressman Mokeanna, is it not true that the tax Council
(14:21):
in the criminal Department has disagreed often with your decisions
in the past? Oh, criminal tax attorneys? Yes? And you know,
as I stated them.
Speaker 5 (14:30):
How often have they disagreed, in your opinion, with your
recommendation decisions?
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Very often? Criminal tax attorneys.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (14:39):
Can you give us a percentage of how often you've
said we ought to charge someone and they said, now
that may not be a good idea.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah, I would say, I mean just ballparking a vast
majority of what we do.
Speaker 5 (14:51):
I just think because you have a history of wanting
to charge people and then people pushing back. By your
own testimony under oath, you said about ninety percent of
the time people are pushing back on what you want
to do.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well to give this farce the seriesurious attention. It does
not really seem to deserve until you remember that this
is the United States House of Representatives, and this really
is all Margie Barney, Rubbell Green and Jamie Comer and
Byron Donald's and Jim Jordan actually can do. It's all
they can accomplish in life. Here is the whole thing.
(15:25):
Explained and dismissed by in about two minutes. Who else
bought Jamie Raskin? So what happened?
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Well, the son of the sitting president of the United
States lost his brother and then lost his way badly
back in twenty fifteen, As too many families around the
country know, drug addiction is a dark and powerful affliction,
and like other addicts, Hunter Biden made foolish and criminal choices,
including failing to pay his taxes and owning a firearm
(15:54):
in violation of federal law, and he's now being held
criminally accountable for it. His investigation began under the Trump administration.
It was conducted by a US attorney for Della where
David Weiss, who Donald Trump appointed to his office, and
who Attorney General Barr chose for this assignment to conduct
this investigation. In his final press conference in December of
(16:16):
twenty twenty, Attorney General Barr expressed full confidence in Weiss's work,
saying it was quote being handled responsibly and professionally within
the department, And to this point, I have seen no
reason to appoint a special counsel, and I have no
plan to do so before I leave. Furthermore, Joe Biden
never publicly questioned or challenged this prosecution when it began.
(16:39):
He did not decry it as a witch hunt by
Donald Trump. He placed his trust in the fairness of
the American justice system when he became president.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Not only did he not.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Use his power to halt the investigation, he kept in
place Trump's hand picked US Attorney, mister Weiss, overseeing it,
even though incoming presidents usually replace US attorneys with their
own appointees. And his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, made sure
that mister Weiss, appointed by Donald Trump, had full authority
and resources to pursue this probe and charge it however
(17:12):
and whenever he saw fit in any district in the country.
And in the past few weeks, as Hunter Biden accepted
a guilty plea, the President and his Attorney General have
done nothing to interfere with the case, which is overseen
by a federal judge appointed by Yes, Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Nik you, Congressman, Let's give the last word back to Marge.
She wraps this up by unexpectedly endorsing the many arrests
of dementia. J Trump, Are you sure?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
I would also like to say that when evidence and
proof of a crime is presented. No prosecution should be
denied no matter who the person is.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Thank you, Nancy Faust. Also of interest here, the president
of Stanford University resigns because of investigative journalism conducted by
the Stanford University student run campus newspaper. The guy fudged
a series of scientific papers. He's out, and suddenly I
was flashed back to the day. The president of Cornell University,
(18:24):
who was also a scientist, only this one co discovered
an element, Thank you very much. An element on the
table of elements. Thank you number eighty five on your
element program. He and I got the airline to ground
the plane they were going to put us on a
plane they were trying to repair with paper towels. I
(18:47):
swear that's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with
Keith Olberman. Postscripts to the new use some headlines, some updates,
some snarks, some predictions. Dateline, Palo Alto, California. The president
(19:11):
of Stanford University will leave that post at the end
of next month because of the student newspaper, The Stanford Daily,
the student run campus newspaper, began an investigative series last
fall into the research papers into brain receptors that had
been written by university president doctor Mark Tessier Levine. Short explanation,
(19:34):
the doctor fudged stuff in them, and when this was
pointed out to him at least four separate times over
the last twenty odd years, he failed to correct said
fudges or the papers or withdraw them all together. Easiest
fudging to explain images used in the research were altered.
The soon to be ex president will also retract or
(19:55):
issue lengthy corrections for five separate academic papers. What you
want in a scientist who becomes your university president is
a practical guy. And I had just thought of this
man last week. He came not from Stanford, but from Berkeley.
Before the Stanford scam story came up. I was thinking
about Dale Corson, president of Cornell University when I got there.
(20:18):
He served from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen seventy seven.
He had been in the physics department for twenty three years,
which came in handy in this story. Among other things,
he helped design the school's synchrotron, and I don't know
what that is. He chaired the physics department and was
dean of the College of Engineering, and he was co
discoverer of astetne. What is astetne? Astetene is an element.
(20:43):
Astetene is element number eighty five. And what have you
done with your life? Dale corson Co discovered an element
with the word ass in it. I met him once accidentally,
and that's the story. It was in the waning months
of his tenure. The spring term in nineteen seventy seven
was beginning, and I was flying back from New York
(21:04):
City to Ithaca from LaGuardia Airport. In the days when
you waited for the plane in a room that a
big window in it, and about fifty feet on the
other side of the window was the plane. And on
this frigid morning, we were already late to board that plane,
but nobody seemed to be paying much attention except me,
because I'm staring at the plane and these two guys
(21:25):
in suits who are standing under it and pointing up
towards the belly of this not very new, certainly not
jet from Allegheny Airlines, or as we fatalistically called it,
Agony Airlines. And finally I see one of the two
guys slap the other one on the arm, and he
runs towards the stairs and runs up the stairs and
(21:46):
into the plane. And then within a minute he's running
back down the stairs and he's got as many paper
towels as you could carry, squeezed between your hands without
dropping any I don't know how many of that was
five hundred one thousand. And the guy runs over to
where the other guy is still standing under the plane,
and he hands the other guy one paper towel off
(22:09):
the top of the stack. And if that's not crazy enough,
the other guy wads the one paper towel up and
thrusts it up into the underside of the aircraft. And
I say, quietly but out loud, no sir, no thanks.
And one by one the first guy hands the second
guy paper towel after paper towel, and the second guy
(22:32):
stuffs them into the plane with increasing fervor. The plane,
the plane we were supposed to all fly to Ithacon
that's being repaired with paper towels. I look around. Nobody
else is looking out the window, just me. I'm William
Shatner in the twilight zone with the monster on the
(22:54):
wing who's trying to destroy the plane. I'm the only
one who sees this. And that's when I see the
second shocking thing sitting across from me in this waiting room,
fifty feet from the plane, smoking his pipe, his nineteen
fifty seven era hat firmly perched on his head, plowing
through his copy of The New York Times. It's the
(23:17):
president of my school, Cornell, President Dale Corson, the code
discoverer of the element. Ask the team, President Corson, excuse me,
you wouldn't know me. My name isn't important. I'm class
of seventy nine. There's something about this plane I think
you ought to see. And to his credit, the president
(23:38):
of Cornell University begins to tell me that all the
students matter. And I'm just pointing out the window and
shaking my head where the second guy is now stuffing
his thirtieth paper towel into the undercarriage of our plane.
And I say, President Corson, you were engineering, weren't you?
Does this look safe to you? And he stops talking
and he looks at me, and he looks back where
(23:59):
now it's paper towel number thirty five going up, and
he says, what's your name? And I tell him and
he says, good work, mister Olderman. I don't know what
they think they're doing. Out there. But I can assure
you of this, that plane will not be flying us
to Cornell. Have a seat. I'll take care of this.
President Corson began to walk towards the check in desk,
(24:21):
and then he stopped, turned around and handed me his paper. Here.
We may be here a while. Read whatever you like,
just don't do the crossword. At a distance, I heard
him threatening the airline and the executive they sent down
to discuss it with him, and he said something about
air rights over Cornell and the airport Commission. And the
(24:41):
next thing I knew, we were all on a jet
headed to Elmira, New York, with the promise of a
bus to take us the other hour to Ithaca. I
was already on board the jet when President Corson got on,
and he stopped and he took his times back from me,
and he shook my hand. They think it was a
problem with the toilet train. I told him, it's exactly
what you want near the wiring of a passenger airliner,
(25:02):
leaking fluid everywhere, blockheads. Then he asked me what my
school was and what my major was, and I told him, communications, really,
have you ever considered engineering? And I told him my
dad was an architect in the actual math and the
physics and the hard work part were the bane of
(25:22):
his existence. Well, I can understand that. Oh, clearly you
have the eye of a reporter. Anyway, I guess that's
some consolation. Paper towels, I swear, thank you, President Corson,
(25:52):
still ahead on countdown. Just last weekend, I talked to
my old producer, the one who had to tell me
one night that our MSNBC bosses had decided that we
should let this Rachel Meadow walk to CNN. We didn't
need her. That would have been the night I wound
up threatening to quit mid show if we didn't stop that,
and also the night I wound up personally hiring her
(26:13):
out of my own pockets for four hundred and thirty
seven dollars in cash. Things I promised not to tell.
Coming up first time for the daily round up of
the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute today's worst persons in the world with paper towels,
the bronze, the endlessly gullible Maria Bartiromo of Fox before
(26:36):
yesterday's House Show, and tell of Marge greens collection of
giant blow up porn. Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona. I
think that's a coincidence, Andy Biggs, blow up porn. Anyway,
Biggs went on her show and decided, Hell, if we're
making up out of whole cloth this claim that the
Bidens took millions from other countries, let's do this thing big, Mario.
(26:59):
We're talking literally, it's not ten million dollars. It's well
over twenty thirty million some estimates is as one hundred
million flowing through these accounts, to which Maria Bartiromo could
only reply, hoey, moey. The sad part is, even if
somehow that were true, one hundred million dollars to the Bidens,
that would be one twentieth the money that Jared Kushner
(27:21):
just got from Saudi Arabia alone. Just him. The runner up,
Dan Cox, the Republican nominee for governor of Maryland last year,
who was trying to succeed a retiring Republican governor, and
he lost sixty four to thirty two. Well, a congressional
campaign committee with Dan Cox's name opened up. He said
he had no idea who had done it. It wasn't him,
(27:42):
The Daily Beast reports it was him. Dan Cox had
hired a treasurer to launch the campaign and then changed
his mind forgot about it, remembered that he'd lost for
governor by two to one. Who knows but the winner,
Philip L. Buchanan of Florida. This is, by all accounts
(28:02):
the Twitter account turned the right wing nutjob who wars
himself out for Trump and the fascists and does on
scientific reader polls, which he then positions as actual political
opinion surveys, and it was unswervingly convinced that his IQ,
which is about seventy five, is the highest in the world.
Turns out that in the hour before he revealed he
(28:23):
had gotten another target letter, Trump reposted four of cat
Turd's witticisms, and the spotlight was apparently too much for
the old turd. Why me, by cat Turd, He wrote,
I'm exhausted mentally and physically. This cat Tird thing has
been a five year roller coaster ride. I basically work
seven days a week, no days off, no vacations. I
(28:45):
don't even know how I got here. I often asked myself,
why me? This goes on for five hundred and seventy
one words. Dude, you tweet, you are not Christ fresh
off the cross, you tweet? We all tweet sounded like
(29:06):
cat Turd was quitting, but not to worry. A cheer
me up bouquet of tweets from General Michael Flynn and
Senator Mike Lee, and Buchanan was ready to get back
out there and meet them at the barricades. Flynn and
Senator Lee and cat turn do you remember at least
hearing about those paranoid fantasies from the nineteen sixties that
(29:27):
the Russians were behind putting fluoride in all the water
systems because fluoride would make the next generation of Americans stupid.
And I'm beginning to wonder about that cat Turd. Remember
the old joke about self martyrdom, No matter how hard
you try, you can never hammer in that last nail
(29:49):
yourself without some help. Today's worse Arson.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And La.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Just ahead. I talked to the executive in question literally
over last weekend about something unrelated, but the sound of
her voice brought the whole thing back to me. Anew.
It was the day MSNBC would have lost Rachel Maddow
to CNN, but literally I hired her with all the
cash I had on me so she wouldn't go to CNN.
(30:31):
I did keep five dollars to tip my driver that night,
because our bosses thought there was no way she'd ever
succeed as an anchor. I swear things I promised not
to tell. Next first time to feature another dog in need.
You can help. Every dog has its day. Over the
fourth of July holiday, they found Fizz tied to a
(30:51):
fence on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, fifty three
weeks old, terrified but then loving, but now becoming more
and more aware that they mean to kill her soon
at the New York City Pound. She's forty five tan,
an ordinary street mutt with one brown eye and one
ice blue eye, and she could be adopted today by
(31:12):
any home where the kids are thirteen or older, or
our pledges can help the rescue save her. The New
York Pound continues to be a nightmare of overcrowding, and
if Fizz is going to get out alive, it's going
to have to be very soon. You can find Fizz
on my Twitter feeds. Pledge if you can, your retweets
will also help Fizz. Thanks you, and of course I
(31:33):
thank you. Late in November two thousand and seven, after
several months of pressuring my MSNBC bosses to hire Rachel
(31:54):
Maddow to try out as My guest host with a
goal of then showcasing her and spinning her off into
her own show, the Vice president in charge of network,
Phil Griffin, agreed to give Meadow a deal for forty
or fifty grand as an MSNBC contributor. It would do
nothing more than lock her in place so that CNN
(32:15):
would not steal her from us. I mean, I knew
that that conversation and that concession still would not get
her her own show. But what I did not know
was the concession I was told about the contributors contract.
It was a lie. And by January two thousand and eight,
as the Clinton Obama primary race turned into a tong war,
we were imposing upon Rachel Meadow to join the desk
(32:38):
each Tuesday for Primary Night. She was not anchoring, she
was not even the lead analyst. And my uncontrollable fire
hose co host Matthews, who was consistently pretending that she
did not actually exist, but she existed. She was there,
and I quizzed her about every topic every chance I got. Soon,
I began to include her appearances in the pre recorded
(32:59):
open that I would write two minutes of hyperbole that
was really designed merely to give her everybody enough time
to get my fat ass into the anchor chair and
everybody else's mics on with Tim Russard in the NBC
News Washington Bureau, David Gregory at Clinton Headquarters, Howard Feinman,
and Eugene Robinson in New York, Chuck Todd at the
(33:20):
exit poll desk, Tom broke off the perspective desk, MC
Esher at the lack of perspective Desk. Then came Super Tuesday,
February fifth, two thousand and eight. I was writing this
orgasmic dribble, as I always did on Tuesday, crossing the
names of who was where off the list as I went,
(33:40):
the list handed to me by the executive producer, Izzy Povich.
When I noticed the list did not include either Rachel
or the Rachel Desk, I knocked on the wall that
separated our little offices at thirty Rock, and she shuffled
in complete with a sincere smile friendship, but always also
with what seemed to be a little space kept in
reserve where she could wonder if I was mad enough
(34:02):
to try to take somebody hostage. Yes, my third child.
Where's Rachel tonight? I asked, as I waved the paper
at her, assuming oversight, but leaving my own little space
in reserve where my earlier nightmare had come true. Not
on paper. Please to put name Rachel on paper? Isipovich
(34:25):
said it, matter of factly. Oh yeah, well, oh, I
was in trouble. That elongated consonant always meant trouble. She's
on Larry King tonight. Momentarily, I went very stupid. How
in the hell does that work when she has a
contract with us? I'll tell you, but you have to
promise not to hate me. The Izipovich fake cringe and
(34:49):
crouch ensued. Phil made me promise not to tell you.
Rachel doesn't have a contract with us. He told me
he told you he'd get her one, then his boss
refused to give him the money. I'm sorry, you promised
not to hate me. Momentarily, I was calm. Momentarily, but
why didn't you tell me that before? Approximately? Oh right now,
(35:11):
why didn't you tell me this before? She agreed to
go on Larry King's show, while she only decided this morning.
Apparently she really needs the cash, I told Phil, and
he said, those are the breaks, buddy. The last thing
I actually remember doing, the last part that I did
not need to recreate from the memories of others and
an occasional flashback in therapy, was asking how much my
(35:35):
old friend Larry King was going to give Rachel is
He pursed her lips two hundred and fifty dollars. I
remember screaming that figure several times, along with all the
swear words I knew. I remember vocalizing, we are going
to lose Rachel Meadow, the next great talent of cable news,
(35:56):
to e fing CNN, for two hundred and fifty fing dollars.
Everything else after that statement is darkness. I know I
phoned Phil Griffin and threatened him is He recently confirmed
for me that I asked her to leave before I
called him and threatened him. I believe I warned him
(36:17):
that if he did not sign her to a contributors
contract within twenty four hours, I would walk off the
set during that night's primary coverage, or maybe the next
week's or maybe during countdown tomorrow night. It would be
a surprise. I'm also confident that I warned him that
of all of a talent on television, Larry King had
the best knowledge of what and who else would succeed
(36:41):
more than the rest of us combined. He was a savant,
and when he saw her in real time on his
primary night panel, we would never see her again, and
she would have a CNN contract before midnight. I told
Phil that when that happened, I would then kill him
with my bare hands, or Jeff Zucker would kill him
(37:04):
when she wound up beating the hell out of us
in the ratings. This statement all took longer than this
paragraph would imply, because I know, without fear of contradiction,
every other word out of my mouth was either what
we used to call an oath or the phrase Jesus
h ka Christ. Mind you, these people the president of NBC,
(37:26):
Jeff Zucker, and it's a year since they got rid
of him at CNN, the president of NBC News Steve Cappus,
and the soon to be president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin.
These had been the same people who, about a year earlier,
had decided that their ten PM host Tucker Carlson Yep,
Tucker Carlson was on MSNBC. That Tucker Carlson did not
(37:48):
need two people to play the role of liberal foil
on his show at like fifty grand a year, so
they kept one of them, his name was Max Kellerman,
and they fired the other one. Her name was Rachel Meadow.
They fired Meadow at MSNBC to save fifty thousand dollars.
(38:12):
She was back now at MSNBC only because my producer
is He had suggested making her a regular guest, and
within a couple of months I realized she would be
the next great hosting cable news. And after months of pleading,
including pleading with her because she didn't want to do it,
I had just convinced them to put her back under contract.
Except they had lied to me, and they had not
put her back under contract. I may have mentioned this
(38:35):
to Phil Griffin during our phone call one hundred and
eleven different times. I may have mentioned it to him.
I also telephoned Rachel. I did not swear at her here.
Every other word out of my mouth was not an
oath but an apology. I said. I had genuinely believed
she was already being paid, and I was not only
(38:56):
humiliated on behalf of my network, but that I was
far more humiliated that I had not double checked with
her that they'd actually given her the contract they told
me they had given her. I begged her to please, please, please,
don't go and see an end tonight. I did not
ask her to skip out on them and return to
us unless she thought she could pull that off gracefully
and with a clean conscience, but just not to go
(39:19):
on with Larry. And that's where I added the little
four hundred and thirty seven dollars stunt. I'm sorry about
the money situation, I said. I didn't know. Now I
know I can only do this. I think they will
give you forty or fifty thousand for a contributors deal,
just to start. But what I will do is, and
while making as many sound effects of exertion as I
(39:41):
could dream up, I stretched around it, pulled my wallet
out of my back pocket, and I emptied it onto
my desk. I need to keep five bucks to tip
my driver tonight. You can have the rest of whatever
cash I have on me. I'm counting it now. There's
one hundred twenty twenty twenty my play by place skipped
(40:03):
no bills, four hundred and forty two bucks American five
for the driver, the rest for you four hundred and
thirty seven dollars. Rachel deal, She laughed, I'll see you tonight.
I'll just tell Larry I couldn't be disloyaled to you. Oh,
and I will take the money, And she took the money.
In point of fact, when I like to say anything
(40:25):
that Rachel Mattow did with her career after we got
her show on the air in August of two thousand
and eight, that's all her doing. I have nothing to
do with that except being the lead in for the
first two years. That's true. But I also like to
say that I got that show on the air. And
I also like to say I hired Rachel Mattow at MSNBC.
And this is my point, it was not figuratively, it
(40:48):
was not metaphorically. I hired her out of my own pocket.
I literally hired Medow at MSNBC for four hundred and
thirty seven dollars. And I will point this out again,
I never even got the four hundred and thirty seven
dollars back. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(41:23):
Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of
the music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray
and John Phillip Shanelle, who are the countdown musical directors. Guitars,
bass and drums by Brian ray All, Orchestration and keyboards
by John Phillip Shanelle, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven
selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two.
(41:45):
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtis EBESPN Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Stevie van Zant. Everything
else was pretty much my fault. Don't forget. Countdown is
now also available on YouTube with and without asteteene countdown
for this the nine and twenty sixth day since Donald
(42:07):
Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of
the United States. Hell arrass him again while we still can.
Our next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news
warrants till then, I'm Keith Olraman. Good Morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olraman is
(42:37):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.