September 22, 2025 • 70 mins
SEASON 4 EPISODE 17: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: How about this for a plot twist? I'll believe it when I see it - it still depends on television executives doing the moral, right, professional thing AND tacitly admitting they are correcting a mistake, but multiple sources insist that at least at this moment the ABC people expect Jimmy Kimmel to not only not be fired but to return, on the air, in late night, probably before the end of the month. Maybe even this week.
Yep. The fascist FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr may have delivered Liberals the biggest gift of the year. The blowback towards ABC is untenable (even polling: the Carr threat was "unacceptable" is above water by 17%; the Kimmel monologue was acceptable, 43%-36%) and the desire to keep Kimmel and maybe now even extend his contract has only grown since last week.
And that's in large part because so many key right wingers from Ted Cruz and Rand Paul to Scott Dilbert Adams and Ben Shapiro are enraged by Carr's bullying and rightly recognize that if Trump can do this to ABC, what could a Democratic president do to Murdoch and NewsMax and... THEM. I mean, two out of three MAGAs have podcasts, right?
My sources pointed to seven landmarks. First: they HAVEN’T fired him. Second: they actually haven’t said ANYTHING about him since the one sentence announcement about taking him off. Third: HE hasn’t said ANYTHING about ABC, good bad or indifferent. Fourth: remember the Sinclair owned local stations that started all the trouble? The ones who were bribing Trump and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr by DEMANDING Kimmel be sidelined, so Trump and Carr would waive the rules and let Sinclair buy more than the legal limit OF local stations? Remember their plan to run a Charlie Kirk tribute last Friday night in Kimmel’s time slot? They didn’t run it. They put it on YouTube. No other explanation. Fifth: what happened to the Sinclair demand that Kimmel apologize and pay a bribe, uh, make a donation to Kirk’s scam Turning Point Company? Sixth: how much grief did ABC take for folding to Trump AND for not defending Kimmel as the entire right wing misquoted him? So much that no human can estimate it. And Seventh: how could you possibly put all the Kimmel and Kirk toothpaste back in the tube? As Eric Idle said: All You Need Is Cash.
ALSO: Grandpa posts a self-incriminating note to Pam Bondi that he must have thought was being printed or emailed or lord knows what. He is running out of prosecutors who'll prosecute innocent opponents about whom there's no evidence. The Tom Homan $50,000 scandal also involves Emil Bove (and how in the hell did we not see that coming? He literally has the word "HO" in his name). And a self-proclaimed prophetess says she saw Charlie Kirk get his reward in Heaven: a large ice cream cone.
B-Block (40:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Congressman Randy Fine sets a new high in low. Stephen A. Smith thinks the Kimmel-Kirk controversy is over a joke. And Vanity Fair's hiring of Olivia Nuzzi is not sitting well with journalists (as one put it, all of them who DON'T sext their sources).
C-Block (52:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Hard to understand anything she says or writes but I'm pretty sure Nancy Mace threatened to end my career over Charlie Kirk. Thus I need to review the efforts to end my career, which professionally date back only to 1984 but if you count my semi-pro days in college actually stretch back to late 1977. Virtually everybody who declared me done is out of the business, or deceased. Take a number, Nance.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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. The
(00:24):
man handling of Jimmy Kimmel and the blackmailing of ABC
may turn out to be the biggest gift this year
to the Democrats. And if that is not a big
enough plot twist, I am hearing from multiple sources that,
at least right now, ABC thinks Jimmy Kimmel will stay
(00:45):
on the air and will return on the air in
the same show as early as later this month, maybe
even this week. Kirk the Trump self impeaching memo to
BONDI he tweeted in a stupor a lot more momentarily.
But is Kimmel news first and a caveat. I'll believe
(01:07):
it when I see it. However, these are the landmarks
my sources pointed at, and a couple I thought of
my own self. First, they haven't fired him. Second, they
actually haven't said anything about him. ABC has not said
anything about Jimmy Kimmel since that one sentence announcement about
(01:29):
taking him off the air. Third, he hasn't said anything
about ABC good, bad, or indifferent. Can you imagine me
in this?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Fourth?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Remember the Sinclair owned local stations that started all the
trouble the next Star stations, the ones who were bribing
Trump and the FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr by demanding kimmelby
sidelined so Trump and Carr would waive the rules and
let Sinclair buy more than the legal limit of local
TV stations. Remember their plan after the Kimmel suspension to
(02:03):
run a Arly Kirk tribute last Friday Night in Kimmel's timeslot.
What happened to that? They didn't run it. They didn't
put it on the Sinclair stations. They put it on YouTube,
no other explanation, They just didn't run it. Why didn't
(02:24):
they run it? They won? Fifth, what happened to the
Sinclair demand that Kimmel apologizes and pays a bribe, I'm sorry,
make a donation to Kirk's scam Turning Point Company Incorporated? Sixth,
how much grief did ABC take and how much grief
did Disney take for folding to Trump and for not
(02:47):
defending Kimmel as the entire right wing misquoted him so
much that no human mind can estimate it. And Seventh,
how could you possibly put all the Kimmel and Kirk
toothpaste back into the tube? As Eric Idle once sang,
(03:08):
all you need is cash. The resurrection of Jimmy Kimmel.
It has been rumored almost since ABC yanked him. Variety
had a piece over the weekend about peace feelers. CNN
had a story saying the outreach began the same day
they took him off, led not by chairman Bob Iger,
who really did destroy himself over this, no matter how
(03:30):
it turns out, but by Disney Entertainment co chair Dana Walden,
whom they report called Kimmel that day quote, everyone deeply
values him and wants him to come back, but he
has to take down the temperature. That was when the
temperature was still warm, before the temperature turned ice cold
(03:52):
for Disney and Bob Eiger. And that was also before
anybody realized that any scenario in which Jimmy Kimmel returns
to the air on ABC is a win for Jimmy
Kimmel and for ABC and a defeat for Trump and
a defeat for fascism, and especially a defeat for Brendan Carr,
(04:12):
who could get fired over this. And one of the
reasons they realized this was you gov hold on this
whole story On Thursday, the margin of adults thinking Kimmel's
monologue on Monday was acceptable was forty three to thirty
six percent in favor, a lot of undecideds, but barely
(04:36):
more than one third who were opposed to it. Half
of adults disapproved of ABC taking Kimmel off the air,
and forty two percent said they strongly disapproved of it,
by our margin of forty three to twenty six. Responding
to the threat by FCC Commissioner car we can do
this the easy wayer, we can do it the hard
(04:57):
way quote, forty three to twenty six adults thought that
was unacceptable. Again, I believe it when I see Jimmy
Kimmel on my TV on Channel seven. Still, that's what
everybody is telling me. So why how well? Given that
(05:18):
last week Trump boasted he had avenged Charlie Kirk by
getting some guy's show canceled, even though the guy never
disparaged Kirk, and then he said no, I had nothing
to do with it, Given that there were still new
articles saying that Jimmy Kimmel has been canceled that were
published as late as Saturday night, the answer is the
(05:38):
fccs Goebbels, Brendan Carr, May in fact, go into history
as a hero of the left. Because it dawned on
the right all of a sudden, like a bunch of
flies deciding all of a sudden to move six feet
to the left in a box in the middle of summer.
It dawned on the right all of a sudden, late Thursday,
(05:59):
early Friday. Maybe that they have not only authorized the
left to the next time the left is in power,
shut down Fox and Murdoch and Sinclair, take away all
of Murdoch's waivers, take away all his stations, manage its
news channels, destroy Murdoch's newspapers. But the right has now
(06:19):
made this almost mandatory, and it has awakened in liberals
something we always and sorely lack imagination. Remember, not every
maga has a brain, but every other maga has a podcast.
And as they were recording them and celebrating the downfall
(06:41):
of Jimmy Kimmel, it hit them what government censorship could
mean for them. These are the only circumstances in which
anything will register with any of these people. It's not
right or wrong, it's not even what they can get
away with. It's just self interest. I mean, what would
the world look like if Elon Musk's x was actually
(07:03):
under true government supervision in a world where cut turn
posts something that has to wait twenty four hours before
it is approved or it isn't. At the same time,
it's awakened the right and the realization that they just
(07:24):
handed out rocks and said, please, please, everybody hit conservative
media in the groin with your rocks. The Trump FCC
blackmailing of ABC and the bullying of Jimmy Kimmel maybe
a worse cell phone even than Trump's cover up of
the Epstein fliles. Just the immediate blowback against Trump and
Carr and for Kimmel from the right has been, I'm sorry, shocking, refreshing. Yesterday,
(07:50):
Rand Paul went on this Week on ABC instead of
the Kimmel disaster quote absolutely inappropriate. Brendan Carr has got
no business weighing in on this. The FCC should have
nothing to do with it. Sinclair pulled out. They were
disgusted by the comment. That's their rights, but the government's
got no business in it, and the FCC was wrong
to weigh in. No, the same, Ran Paul, and I'll
(08:13):
fight any attempt by the government to get involved with speech.
And I played these clips from Ted Cruz on his podcast,
which he knows would be one of the first ones
we would censor. I played these clips from Ted Cruz
in the Friday Night bulletin I did on this. They're
worth hearing again, as tin ear as him suddenly breaking
(08:37):
into a bad dialect is my god. Otherwise Ted Cruz
could be reading one of my scripts here.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put
itself in the position of saying, we're going to decide
what speech we like and what we don't, and we're
going to threaten to take you off air if we
don't like what you're saying. And it might feel good
right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, Yeah, but when it
is you to silence every conservative in America, we will
(09:08):
regret it. And and and so again. I like Brendan Carr,
but we should not be in this business. We should
denounce it. It's fine to say what Jimmy Kimmel said
was deplorable, it was disgraceful, and he should be off air,
but we shouldn't be threatening government power to force him
off air. That's a real mistake. He threatens explicitly, we're
(09:30):
going to cancel ABC's license. We're gonna take him off
the air, so ABC cannot broadcast anymore. And I gotta
say he threatens it. He says, we can do this
the easy way, but we can do this the hard way.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
And I got to say, that's right out of goodfellows.
That that that that that that's right out of a
mafioso coming into a bar going nice by you have here,
it'd be a shame of something happened to it.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And that was Ted Cruz and not me. Scott Adams
Gilbert podcast quote I'm on Jimmy Kimmel's side. Unquote Ben Shpiro.
I do not want the FCC in the business of
telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if
they broadcast material that the FCC deems to be informationally false.
(10:19):
Why because one day the shoe will be on the
other foot. If Democrats win the presidency and you got
a Democrat in charge of the FCC, you got Adam
Schiff in charge of the FCC. Please God, Please God,
Please God. You know which affiliates are going to get threatened,
all of the Fox affiliates. You know what's gonna happen,
Ben Shapiro, you have unsuspected depth. With the perspective of
(10:43):
just a few days, this became such an obvious own
goal that not only is Trump denying Brendan Carr did this,
but Ewick Twump called into the mud Travis Bunk Sex
Bump Show to deny that Dadams had anything to do
with it. Quote, Listen, the guy has been a jerk. No,
he's talking about Kimmel, not his father. Listen, the guy
(11:05):
has been a jerk. He hasn't been funny. But honestly,
I think the network used this as a way to
get him out based on, you know, bad ratings. Eeriic
had to say that because Dadams promised the exact opposite
of what he and Carr just did to Jimmy Kimmel
and ABC, and he promised it during his inaugural address.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts
to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive
order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back
free speech to America.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Oops. Just say oops and get out now. Just roll
through the list of the great intellects of MAGA and
they are one hundred percent on this issue, and they're
not on Brendan Carr side. Quote. If the idea of
free speech enrages you, the cornerstone of democratic self government,
then I regret to inform you that you are a fascist.
(12:05):
Unquote Stephen Miller, April fifteenth, twenty twenty two. Congratulations, Brendan Carr.
Stephen Miller just called you a fascist. This is even
worse than that. The Attorney General of Missouri sued the
then surgeon general for alleged government suppression of the anti
vaccine bullshit online Murphy versus Missouri went to the Supreme
(12:31):
Court listened to this from an amicus brief challenging any
government censorship or pressure.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Perhaps most disconcerting of all is the pressure applied to
the platforms to enforce the government's new role as arbiter
of truth, imposing a new federal orthodoxy, and that's in
italics upon citizens speech. That plan clashes with the Court's
clear declaration that government may not quote prescribe what shall
(12:58):
be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.
Amicus brief was filed by H. Turning Point USA and
Charlie Kirk. The Claremont Institute filed a similar brief in
that case, and it has the name on it John Eastman.
(13:23):
In a separate Supreme Court case last year NRA versus
Vullo about pressuring groups to cut off the NRA, the
National Rifle Association, in business dealings and the like. The
Court ruled nine nothing against government infringement of opinion nothing
a shutout the forfeit score. The unanimous opinion was written
(13:44):
by Sonya Soda Mayor. Quote, Government officials cannot attempt to
coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views
that the government disfavors. You want more. What Brendan Carr
did was not only self harm, it may have been
illegal when the New Republic, quoting Ana Gomez, one of
(14:06):
the three FCC commissioners, the only one appointed by a
democratic president, quote, what the administration is doing violates the
First Amendment and the Communication Acts. This administration is increasingly
using the weight of government to suppress lawful expression. Gomez
also decried Trump's campaign of censorship and control to quote
(14:28):
silence dissent. Brendan Carr may want to relocate. We can
do this the hard way, Brendan, or we can do
it the easy way. So now, obviously ABC has to
get Kimmel back on the air. In the worst case scenario,
(14:49):
they don't and he sues. He sues the federal government
and Donald Trump and Brendan Carr personally. The Trump part
gets thrown out, but not until after the headlines. Jimmy
Kimmel right now has a lawsuit against Brendan Carr and
the FCC, to say nothing of enough lawsuits to potentially
(15:10):
own Disney. I don't know why you'd want to own Disney,
but there it is. To get him back on They
will not give him full ownership of Disney, but they
will have to throw some sop to the right to
give them a climb down. Though, why let them fall
off the cliff. They so carefully built this cliff. But
they certainly will have to assuage Jimmy Kimmel's fears of
(15:31):
going through this again. And that's always one of two things.
A new longer contract his runs out next spring, or
more money. They're both. I flashed back to my one
thing that touched on something like this when the Republicans
came in in two thousand and eight, after I said
(15:52):
something they didn't like. During the Republican convention when they
showed a snuff film and claimed it was a nine
to eleven tribute, and I said, if we had shown
you that video, I'd be here apologizing for showing you
the video of the people from the World Trade Center.
When the Republicans went in and blackmailed Tom Brokaw and said,
our guy won't show up to your debate, and Brokaw
went in and blackmailed NBC management into taking me and
(16:15):
Chris Matthews off the air. They called and told me.
My agent called and told me while I was at
a ballgame in the press box, and I told her,
you called them back and tell them I quit and
they can deal with the aftermath of this. I got
in the subway and went home, and by the time
I got out of the subway twenty five minutes later,
it had dawned on me that not only was I
not going to quit, but I was going to say
(16:36):
to them, I'll make you a deal if I quit,
or if this just goes out and I don't quit,
you guys will lose the entire MSNBC audience. They will
literally walk away. This is either just days before we
were to premiere Rachel Meadows Show, or days after we did.
There was no other presence on that network but me.
I was the network and they were silencing me. And
(16:59):
if they wanted to throw away what we just built,
they could do that, or I would say it was
my idea to stop doing the part that the GOP wanted,
which was me and Matthew's off the debates. I said,
I'll take myself off that and I'll claim it's my
idea and I'll sell it as best I can, and
you give me, let's see, twelve million dollars three million
(17:24):
dollars a year over four years. They gave me the
twelve million. So an end result of this might be
Jimmy Kimmel gets a raise and a contract when his
contract and presumably his show was supposed to end next spring.
But our purposes, we're not all Jimmy Kimmel. Our purposes.
(17:49):
Given how much Trump fouled this up with his own people,
with the right wing, how much they are opposed to this,
Democrats need to hit the gas while it is still
sitting there. Push on this. We need House and or
Senate resolutions condemning car that the Republicans have to vote
(18:09):
for or against. We need Rand Paul co signing something
with AOC. We need something House and or Senate resolutions,
something reaffirming the First Amendment. Just something like it is
the sense of this House that we reaffirm the First Amendment.
See how many Republicans are willing to sign off against
(18:30):
that something? I mean just Democrats who go on ABC
News or ABC shows. They need to hit ABC for
doing this to Kimmel on ABC until they put Kimmel
back on the air. The Democrats can do all the
public investigation they want of this man car and especially
(18:52):
what is clearly a quid pro quo about Sinclair Next
Star and approving those stations. They can tie up those
approval and in court for years. Mister Jeffries, mister Schumer,
this is something so obvious, so obvious, so easy, so
win win, win, win win. Even your strategists and consultants
(19:18):
have probably heard about it by now. Still, maybe the
(19:45):
best part of the Kimmel Kirk saga is that, of
course they wind up giving Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon and
Seth Myers, maybe even Colbert in a different venue, Extra Life.
Those franchises were are winding down. Myers was down to
three workdays week. Now, if Kimmel goes back on the air,
(20:09):
it'll have to be with something providing security for both parties,
and it will be with the wind at his back.
Suddenly people will want to see what Jimmy Kimmel has
to say, and Myers and Fallon and even FN Colbert.
The second best part of the Kimmel Kirk saga is
(20:30):
it took the Kirk shooting and it transformed it politically
into the Kimmel Kirk saga until the weekend began and
the canonization of Saint Charlie of Kirk in Phoenix yesterday loomed.
Google searches for Jimmy Kimmel were greater than or equal
to those of Google searches for Charlie Kirk. And of course,
(20:52):
as I suggested last week, it is increasingly evident the
right canon will continue to insist otherwise. But the killing
of Charlie Kirk was a personal act, maybe with political undertones,
and BC reported quote one person familiar with the federal
investigation said that quote. Thus far, there is no evidence
connecting the suspect with any left wing groups. Every indication
(21:14):
so far is that this was one guy who did
one really bad thing because he found Kirk's ideology personally offensive. Unquote.
I had suggested last week that he saw and again
I condemned shooting anybody, but I especially condemned shooting political
commentators because g guess what, I'm a political commentator. I
(21:36):
condemned shooting anybody, but I suggested the alleged shooter saw
Kirk's demonizing of transgendered people as a direct threat to
someone he loved who is transgendered. End of story, not
that it will end the story. If you heard our
bulletin Friday night, you know Trump declared criticism of himself
(21:56):
on television is illegal. He made up statistics that it's
ninety seven percent bad that coverage is, or maybe he
didn't make it up. Hell, his presidency is eighty seven
percent bad. Maybe the coverage is completely accurate. But clearly,
between that and the whole Kirk mess and everything else
he did over the weekend, the last remaining fraid damaged, diaphanous,
(22:20):
decaying line tethering the good blimp Trump to reality has snapped,
and it's snapped on this subject. Prosecute them anyway, I
don't care if there's no crime, and convict them anyway.
I don't care if there's no evidence and jail them anyway.
I don't care if the jury found them not guilty.
(22:43):
I'm paraphrasing, of course. That is the memo or text
or whatever that was he composed Saturday night that began
perm semi colon that he somehow wound up posting on
truth Social instead of sending it to somebody to send
a Pam Bondy or whatever he was trying to do,
(23:04):
text it to her, email it because Grandpa Shardy really
is losing it. It was full of stuff that had
nothing to do with Eric Sebret prosecutor resigning rather than
prosecuting Letitia James over mortgage paperwork. It was full of
the lies Trump tells himself He's always done this. There's
one way to never be wrong. When you are wrong,
(23:25):
just lie to yourself. Is it me or is it them? Oh?
It's them, Pam. I have reviewed over thirty statements in
posts saying that essentially same old story as last time.
All talked, no action, nothing is being done. What about Komy, Adam,
Shifty Shift, Letitia, They're all guilty as hell, but nothing
is going to be done. Then we almost put a
Democrat supported US attorney in Virginia with a really bad
(23:47):
Republican past, awoke Rhino is never going to do his job.
That's why two of the worst DEM senators pushed him
so hard, even lied to the media and said he quit.
We had no case, No I fired him. There's a
great case of many layers legal pundency. So Lindsay's a
really good lawyer, likes you a lot. We can't delay
any longer. It's killing a ripping and credibility. They impeach
me twice and knighted me five times exclamation point over nothing.
(24:10):
Justice must be served now, President dj TA. Oddly enough,
Trump deleted that rather than lying and pretending he did
not mean to do that, or lying and pretending he
did mean to do that. Lindsey, by the way, is
(24:31):
not Lindsey Graham as you might have thought. It's Lindsey Halligan,
an insurance attorney who Trump sicked on the Smithsonian, who
has never prosecuted a case, but has really great TV hair,
And we'll do whatever Trump wants in exchange for free perms. Next,
(24:54):
Trump is going after the US attorney in Maryland, Kelly Hayes.
Trump wants her to prosecute Adam Schiff for I don't know,
illegal possession of soup spoons. This is different than the
Siebert case with Letitia James. Trump can tell himself that
Sebert was a Democratic plant. Hayes is the same prosecutor
(25:17):
who approved the crack of Dawn's search of the home
of John Bolton, which turned up found a spoon. Sir,
she is a loyalist and Trump offing a Trump loyalist
is a different thin tight rope for the fat man
to try to walk across his man Poulty over to
(25:38):
finance the Renfield who dug up the mortgage info, most
of which appears to be wrong and totally legal, and
the same thing that Paulty's father did. He's still at it.
He still doesn't get it. Look up Brendan Carr online,
mister Poulty. He's still insisting the Fed governor Lisa Cook
must be prosecuted. He tweeted. Would a doc be allowed
(26:00):
to see patients if he was accused of a crime
punishable by jail? No, I don't know, mister pault Is
this a Trump doctor? Also, this is all incredibly impeachable.
Pressuring prosecutors to prosecute your political enemies, or not to
prosecute your friends while you our president. Well, Hillary Clinton
(26:24):
got it right yesterday writing of the posted memo to
Pam Bondy. Quote, imagine if Richard Nixon had just tweeted
out the Watergate scandal rather than putting it on secret tape.
This is not having the impact it should because he
did it in front of everybody. Another secret to Trump's success.
Why waste all that time trying to be secretive when
(26:48):
most people don't know what they're seeing anyway, And of
course he can now claim maybe he wasn't writing to
Pam Bondy, maybe he was writing to Pam Anderson. I
think you could make a really good attorney general. The
other thing is you don't do this as high profile,
(27:08):
front facing goons from your own dictatorship turn out to
be digging their own professional grapes. You've heard about Tom Homan,
the bully from Ice, and the recording of him taking
fifty thousand dollars from two FBI agents he thought were
businessmen who wanted to win Trump government contracts. Firstly, this
(27:30):
is the cheapest bastard, the cheapest corrupt politician since Spiro
Agnew took cash in a bag in the White House
Office when he was Vice president, Like nine hundred dollars
fifty thousand dollars, I could buy Tom Homan for fifty
thousand dollars. What do I get for one hundred thousand dollars? Okay?
(27:53):
So then after this Trump's DOJ shut the investigation down
even though there is a tape, and the person who
recommended shutting it down was Emil Beauve. Anybody in this missing, anybody?
We can't send a jail for this, shouldn't They have
brought in Alina Habba to f this up. Words come on,
as I noted online, how in the hell did we
(28:15):
not see this coming? Tom Holman literally has the word
ho in his name. Dave It's Cough of the New
York Times and the Great book about the Movie Network
pointed out that if you like cliches, the fifty thousand
dollars was literally inside a bag a bag, as in
(28:36):
it's in the bag, or he's left holding the bag,
or Tom Holman is Trump's bag man, but the winner
is From Saturday Night Live writer Brian Tucker quote, Look,
Tom Holman has not had a trial and has never
been proven guilty, So let's all take a step back
and do what he would do. Send him to a
(28:57):
secret prison in El Salvador until we can figure this out.
Cass please well, by the way, Russia violated Estonian airspace
now fighter jets not drones this time, and Poland had
(29:20):
to scramble its jets again after another incursion. Trump slept
through that MAGA is concerned only about one thing. When
is Charlie Kirk coming back from the dead? And don't
shout at me about that you think I made up
that idea. I have lost count of how many social
media posts there are right this minute asking if that's possible,
(29:44):
or saying, oh, wouldn't it be great if he came
back from the dead during the thing you didn't maybe tomorrow.
The canonization of Saint Charlie of Kirk is the only
thing they have left here. The Kirk memorial couldn't even
break the NFL's hold on Sunday afternoon trending topics on
social media, but they are in full Jesus mode here.
(30:08):
A spokesman for Kirk's turning point in Doctrination Group actually
put out a statement transforming the lack of an exit
wound into a miracle, not a metaphor not like a
miracle or kind of almost No, a miracle, and he
quoted a surgeon. Now the surgeon is anonymous, and he's
(30:32):
being quoted by a spokesman who needs turning point USA
to continue. Even without Charlie Kirk, Fox ran this as
a major story yesterday. Are you ready? Even in death,
Charlie Kirk may have saved lives. The surgeon explained that quote,
I've seen wounds from this caliber many times, and they
(30:53):
always just go through everything. This would have taken a
moose or two down, an elk, et cetera. It was
an absolute miracle that someone else didn't get killed. The
doctor described, kirk bone is quote so healthy and quote
so impressive that he's like the man of steel. All Right,
(31:14):
anybody recognized the problem with saying he's the man of
steel when he's not living anymore. Back to this fantasy
from Fox News, the spokesman concluded, quote, even in death,
Charlie managed to save the lives of those around him. Remarkable, miraculous. Ah.
(31:34):
Of course, they are helped by morons like Thomas Cardinal
Dolan of New York. First, the Cardinal said he'd never
heard of Charlie Kirk, and then he said on Fox
that he had looked at some videos, apparently in order
to get the guest shot on Fox. Guess which videos
he looked at? He looked at the Bible ones or
(31:55):
did he look at the we should stone transgendered people
and execute Biden and force twelve year olds to watch
public executions with guillotineans and the ones about the great
Replacement theory? Which ones do you think he watched? Cardinal
Gullible added, this guy is a modern day Saint Paul.
He was a missionary. He's an evangelist, he's a hero.
(32:15):
He's one I think that knows what Jesus meant when
he said the truth will set you free. Also, Stone
a transgendered person today, he said, Cardinal Dolan. Also, you
know that Charlie Kirk called Pope Francis a Marxist and
suggested Pope Francis was a heretic, right, and that Kirk's
(32:37):
first religious mentor was Jerry Folwell, Junior, Jerry, have I
introduced you to my wife? And if so? Can I
watch Fallwell Junior? They're not doing this well, the canonization
of Charlie Kirk. There's Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia blasting
(32:57):
the fifty eight Democrats who did not vote yes on
the motion condemning the Kirk murder. And that's when somebody
told Congressman Mike Collins that he also did not vote
yes on the motion condemning the Kirk murder. Congressman Collins
walked off the House floor without casting a vote. He said,
it was a mistake, Mike, You bet your ass it
(33:21):
was a mistake. But the winner the all time Lou
Lou kat Kerr, who is a troubled woman who says
she is a prophetess. She says she was brought to
heaven to watch Kirk's ascension. She does not stop to
explain why they went to such trouble to bring her there,
(33:42):
and yet still nobody in the afterlife will help her
at all with her purple red nightmare hair. But she
did explain that Charlie Kirk's reward in the afterlife was
a quiver with a thousand arrows of light and a
large ice cream cone. She says she saw him eating
(34:09):
an ice cream cone in heaven.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Oh man, there are so many many terrible, terrible jokes
available here. I don't even have to lean forward in
my chair to grab the worst of them. But I
won't make any of them because I won't make any
of them even.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
About Charlie Kirk. Now, I'll make them about Nancy Mace.
Also of interest here add me to the list. I
think Nancy Mace has announced she's going to end my
career or she's going to end her career. It was
a little unclear, Like everything else, she says. This would mean, though,
(34:53):
if it's me, it's now forty one years in a row,
that somebody has made a threat to end my career
and I'm still here eating ice cream and they are
all gone. In fact, some of them are dead. It's
a general manager in Boston audios. See you. That's next.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Oh there's ice cream in heaven large cones.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith old woman
(35:48):
still ahead on this edition of Countdown. Good old Nancy Mace,
half congresswoman, half plastic inflatable doll has retweeted me saying
Charlie Kirk and Sinclair Broadcasting are both going to hell
if thet nothing else this week. Attacking Charlie Kirk as
a guaranteed way to end your career, she wrote apart
(36:11):
from Nancy leaving a few words out there. I mean,
I get what she means, but technically she's saying the
left has has already learned this, and it's I'm not
sure what she wrote. Anyway. What are you gonna do, Nancy?
Get me fired from Current TV, get me fired from
my Disney pension. I'm independent. I literally work for nobody,
(36:37):
and I have all the money I need for the
rest of my life until I linger to like one
hundred and twenty two plus Nancy. People have been threatening
to end my career since literally nineteen eighty four. He
will never again work in this business. The Boston executive
said to my agent, guess what he's dead now. A
young writer who wrote My career was over in two
(36:59):
thousand and one in a national magazine just starting there.
He's already retired and I could die before this finishes posting.
But professionally, right now, I'm still here and all of
them are not. Goodbye, Nancy, Good evening, and welcome to
the end of my career. Well not yet anyway. Next
(37:20):
in things I promised not to tell first, believe it
or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about.
The roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning kruegerffect specimens
who constitute today's other worst persons in the world, The brons,
Congress and Randy Fine. Now, every time I think they
found the dumbest person in America and elected them to Congress,
(37:42):
we locate a dumber one. Now it's Randy Fine. Now,
I've slimmed down, but I've been overweight my whole life
since they took my tonsils out when I was six.
In retrospect, that was a mistake. Swallowing was difficult. Then
one day it was not difficult at all, and the
food began to flow night and day. So I genuinely
(38:06):
start here talking about Congressman Fine in a place of concern.
So I'm not going to pretend to you. I don't
end in a place of concern. But Congressman Fine is
like three hundred, three hundred and fifty pounds. He's a
big guy. I want to tell you I saw him
sitting on the George Washington Bridge dangling his feet in
(38:27):
the water. Hey, I'll tell you so. Fine goes on
CNN and bash is Kimmel quote. We live in a
world where a meaningful percentage of people now believe violence
is legitimate as in aside Randy, who did that? Yes, Randy,
it was Trump. I got to flash back to bo
(38:48):
Jack Horseman there, Randy, is this your fault? Dana Bash?
And this might as well have been the lead story today.
Dana Bash actually pushed back against Randy Fine, which, again,
if you've ever seen him, it's quite an accomplishment. Quote
kim didn't legitimize violence. Fine kept throwing his weight around
(39:09):
those comments, blaming MAGA for the death of Charlie Kirk. Well,
Bash interrupted him again, that's not what Kimmel said. Fine
still finished. I gasped when I read it. Randy is
one fat guy to another. That gasp that may have
been caused by something else. See Your Doctor Runner up
(39:31):
worser Stephen A. Smith. Steven A. Smith has decided he
is a political commentator. He does a show called an
XM radio show called straight Shooter. Now that's offensive in
light of Charlie kirk and in the background of the
video version of this, there's the capitol. So that makes
(39:51):
him a political commentator. Again, I don't have any objection
to anybody going sports to politics. That would be like
me saying, hey, Randy Fine is a big guy. Oh,
it's a bit like, No, I get it. I did that,
I know. But the call in line for people calling
into the Stephen A. Smith Straight Shooter Show, the number
(40:14):
ends in one of the letter equivalents P O t US,
so it's you dial whatever the number is potus. Problem
is Steve is not doing the work on this to
use the kids phrase, tell me you didn't actually see
the Jimmy Kimmel references to Kirk. Without telling me you
didn't actually see the Jimmy Kimmel references to Kirk, the.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Only thing that I would say, as it pertains to
Jimmy Kimmel was where was the joke?
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Because you're a late night host and obviously.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
That has a comedic attachment attachment to it.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Where was the joke? Obviously it wasn't anything funny about that. However, No,
it wasn't a joke. You're right about that. It wasn't
a joke on a late night show. Surprise, like when
Letterman did the first show after nine to eleven and
he didn't make any jokes. You just back tears and
the shows that were done after every assassination, and you know,
(41:12):
the night after Martin Luther King was killed, that Johnny
Carson didn't do jokes, and then you know they postponed
these show. When you know Charlie Kirk gets shot, you
don't go for the joke, even if you're Jimmy Kimmel.
That wasn't supposed to be a joke. Stephen does not
get this. Stephen thinks the controversy is that whatever was
said about Kimmel or by Kimmel about Kirk wasn't funny.
(41:34):
That's what he thinks was wrong. That's what he really thinks.
This is about. Where is the joke. Steve doesn't doesn't
doesn't get this. He went on at length to blame Kimmel.
I ha note Stephen is after all, paid by the
people who caved on Kimmel, people like Bob Iger. Steven
is a company man. Steven explained that Jimmy's failure was
(41:58):
he didn't understand quote the game that he is playing.
Steven is a very very simple view of the world,
as evidence by thinking that everything is a game, and
that every political show is like every sports show, where
the point is how much time can you kill without
saying anything? That's Stephen a Smith's specialty. I mean, honest
(42:19):
to god, he's one of the all time greats. You
have one idea and stretch it out the three hours
a day, that's pretty good. That's his specialty. Anyway, Steve's
naivete and his unwillingness to do the work, like read
the quotes, watch the videotape, just have somebody pull it
up on your gold plated machine for you. His unwillingness
(42:41):
to do the work is going to be terribly exposed
in the weeks and months to come, as will the
fact that all those rumors about people encouraging him to
run for president as a Democrat, they were all started
by by him. How do we know this because, as
I mentioned, the number for the telephone call in line
for listeners ends in botus. He chose that, Steve, you
(43:06):
need to be a little more subtle. Your political audience
is not as dumb as your sports audience is. Holy crap,
But our winner the worst. Speaking of naive Vanity Fair
magazine editor Mark Guiducci, We've already been through this with
Mark about the new editor there breaking in by trying
to put Milania Trump on the cover of Vanity Fair
(43:29):
and the Vanity Fair staff, which leans a little to
the left, threatening to walk out. It was thought their
response might lead this guy Mark to reel himself in
a little bit. It did not. Last week he named
a new West Coast editor for Vanity Fair, responsible for
some writing and for quote editing stories across platforms and
(43:51):
topic areas, with a focus on events, industries and culture
of the Pacific region. And the new editor is Alivia Newsy.
She's back now. Look, she's the mother of my dogs,
at least the two oldest dogs. So I'm not being
(44:12):
cynical or ironic or anything when I say I will
always value her for that and my introduction to the
world of dogs, and if she's ever in real trouble,
I'll help, no questions asked. I offered that last year,
reached out to her agent and said, I don't know
what help I could be, probably none. If she can
think of anything, it's hers. I do have to figure
(44:34):
out what to tell the dogs, because when we broke up,
I told Rose and Stevie that Olivia had gone to
live on a farm upstate. But she wants to make
a comeback after the whole RFK Junior disaster. I'm fine
with it. Maybe she learned something from a mistake everybody
(44:55):
does eventually after mistake number nine hundred, one hopes one
would learn from that mistake. Any who, she did what
I always recommend in that situation, she waited. She waited
nearly a year plus. Selfishly. This lets me remind people
that it turned out who knew that when we broke up?
I was too young for her. However, the reaction in
(45:19):
writing circles has not been as forgiving two writers on
Blue Sky. These guys made me gfaw Andrew Dignan or Dingion.
Maybe Vanity Fair bringing Newsy on to cover the all
important who's sending first traps southeast to members of Trump's cabinet?
(45:41):
Beat oh oh, oh, man, I can see this is
going away soon. And then Colin Dicky uh, obviously an
expert on this subject. I'm sorry, Vanity Fair. Hiring Newsy
is such a effing gut punch to all the great
(46:02):
underemployed journalists out there who don't sext with their sources, which,
to be fair, is pretty much everyone except Olivia Nowsy.
Oh oh, and you thought I had complaints about her?
My goodness, Oh Mark, what if I just cut out
the pretense and named her West Coast sexting editor Guiducci,
(46:25):
good luck with being Olivia's boss, Today's other worst person
in the world.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Call me anytime.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Oh so, here we go again. As I mentioned an
offhand comment or retweet by plastic Woman Congresswoman Nancy mace Of,
I forgot Stupidville has now joined the list of people
who have promised to end my career or how I
(47:17):
should know that if you criticize Charlie Kirk, sat Charlie
of Kirk, your career is over. All I can say
is madam, take a number. We'll call you when we
are ready. I'm still dealing with the other three or
four dozen people who have told me in the last
forty one years that my career is now over. To
(47:41):
our number one story on the countdown, and good evening,
and welcome to the end of our careers, or more
particularly the end of my career. No, I'm not retiring.
I'm just quoting myself from nineteen ninety three in the
launch of ESPN two and the subject of career ending announcements.
Career ending announcements. Recently, a colleague of mine told me
(48:04):
he was done, and I had to go through all
of the times I have been told I was done.
The first one was in nineteen eighty four. This would
be in a previous century that I know. To a
lot of younger listeners, seems like it might as well
be eighteen eighty four. I have told before the story
of my limited career in Boston, for which I waited
(48:26):
about a year to start and lasted about half as
long because I went to work at the wrong place,
in the wrong city, outside in the wrong suburb of Boston,
with the wrong boss, where they said, don't make any jokes,
and I said, what did you hire me for? And
I left very very quickly, and then they tried to
fire me while I was filling out the terms of
(48:48):
my contract and staying there until they could get a replacement.
And the whole thing went up in flames. And the
result of this was that the news director of the
station Channel five in Boston, a man who actually answered
to the name Philip Scribner Balboni, went to the Boston
Globe TV sportswriter when they had such things as TV sportswriters,
and said, oh, it was such a shame about Keith.
(49:10):
He was potentially such a major talent. I will not
deny that the use of that phrase did inspire me
to some degree to get cracking on my career. On
the other hand, I didn't work for nearly a year later,
as I was taking care of some family business back
home and sort of put everything about my own interest
on the shelf. Off the record, the general manager of
(49:32):
the station I had worked for, a man named James Coppersmith,
said to my agent something that made Balbony's statement look
like a compliment. Coppersmith said, he will never again work
in our business. That got me motivated. I believe I
read recently that Coppersmith died. In any event, I worked
again in his business. The punchline to this one, and
(49:55):
they all have punchlines, is that at some point around
two thousand and seven, I got an email at MSNBC
and the return of was Philip Scribner Balboni, and there
was a great email from my old brief news director
Boston Channel five in Boston, who explained that I had
been potentially such a major talent and was quoted on
(50:16):
the record as saying that. And now he was saying
how he watched Countdown every night and was so proud
to have been in there at the start of my career.
Not a word about the other part, about the oh,
potentially such a major talent. I guess he meant it
in the past future, perfect sense of the I don't know,
(50:36):
my grammar education is not what it should be. But
he managed to wriggle out of it. Never made any
reference to it. And the one thing about surviving repeated
announcements that your career is over is to never really
go back and criticize the people who were wrong about it,
because they know they were wrong, and your success is
(50:57):
the best answer. Nevertheless, this all came up, and I
thought i'd retell it to you because I had to
retell it to a friend who recently told me his
career was over. But as I said, that was just
the first time that had ever happened in a fully
professional setting. In two thousand and one, and I was
just reading this, I guess about a year ago. I
(51:17):
came across it somewhere online. I was reading it for
a punchline in and of itself. It was a piece
in Sports illustrated by a man named Chris Ballard, I believe,
and Chris Baward wrote an article about my being fired
by Fox Sports, which he wrote as I had resigned
from Fox Sports, and went on to explain that I
(51:38):
did not respond as Sports Illustrated's request by emails and
phones for comment. I never received any of them because
it never occurred to him that when they fired me
and told everybody I had resigned, they cut off my
access to my email and my phone, and they said
to him when he wanted to talk to me, oh,
just send him an email. He'll get back to you.
(51:59):
And I didn't, and thus he made me look like
a jerk. In any event, The article explained in two
thousand and one that having gone through ESPN and now
ESPN's sort of mini me rival, Fox Sports News, that
there was nothing left for me to do in the business.
I had tried news briefly in nineteen ninety seven and
nineteen ninety eight. Clearly my career in both fields was over.
(52:22):
I could not possibly work again in television, in news
or in sports. We're now coming up next year if
I get to it. Well, it's been twenty three, twenty
four year. Okay. I recently saw this article and was
inspired to look for it online because Chris Ballard was
retiring from Sports Illustrated and I'm still here one question
(52:48):
that came up as I was retelling the story of
my various career ending moments that did not in fact
end my career from my friend who's very worried about this,
was how I managed not to have my career. And
when Ballard's premise was not completely wrong, he was certainly
looking at what he thought happened in television. He was
(53:10):
not the TV sports writer for Sports Illustrated for very long.
It was not a natural subject for him. Most people
who did this job thought that it involved simply watching
sports on TV and then writing what they thought as
opposed to understanding an industry or its complexities, or its
parameters or its sort of weird voodoo customs. In any event,
(53:32):
I said, well, look, it's not very difficult to survive
these things. You just have to acknowledge that perhaps your
next job, after some sort of cataclysmic departure from an
ESPN or a Fox Sports or an MSNBC or wherever else,
perhaps it's not going to pay you quite as much
as the last one did. And so, when my agent
(53:53):
and I began to look around for more work in
two thousand and one, and I might add that after
Fox fired me, they had to pay me for another
eight months at one hundred thousand dollars a year. And
if you can't survive on a job requires you to
do nothing for eight months and pays you eight hundred
thousand dollars that you can salt away. If you can't
survive on that and enjoy your life while you're doing it,
(54:15):
you're doing things wrong. In any event, what I said
was just the next job. Just take a job that
allows you to do what you can do and do
it well, and you will succeed in it. You have
talent a lot of other people don't. You will be
low costs, so they're much more likely to overlook anything
that happened in the past, and most importantly, if it
(54:37):
is successful, you can then hold them up on the
second contract negotiation. So I went first to CNN after
the Fox Sports experience started to work for them for
not a lot of money, and although they did not
ultimately exercise this, they signed me to a contract to
do the eight PM show on CNN for a certain
large amount of money, and there were two finalists they
(54:58):
wanted us lined up in advance, and they made the
clever decision to choose Connie Chung instead of me, but
they had sort of reauthorized me. They had re established me.
By it was well known within the industry that I
was the runner up for the job at eight o'clock,
and within six months of them saying, nah, we think
Connie's the right person to lead us into the future here,
(55:19):
within six months of that, I was doing the eight
o'clock show on MSNBC for in fact, twice what the
agreement had been at CNN, And within three years they'd
signed me to a new deal that was worth three
times that more than I had ever made in my life.
So the key thing to it is to be flexible financially.
You sock them for the money while you're successful. And
then by the way, once again, if you can't succeed
(55:43):
in the business, if you can't succeed in life, when
you have received in one year anything north of three
million dollars in one year, four million dollars, maybe I
forget what the actual financial floor is. But if you've
made that much money in one year and can't live
basically off that and simply in interest from the bank
(56:06):
that that will provide you, if you can't do that,
you must have some sort of addiction to drugs, because
guess what, you can go a long way still. I mean, yeah,
it's true, four million dollars is what it used to be,
but guess what it is now. It's still really good.
I never failed to see one of these articles in
(56:27):
which somebody who's lost a job paying in you know,
the tens of millions of dollars, and I always finished.
Now It's like, yes, he's finished. Now he can sit
on a beach, he can hire somebody to do his
exercise for him. He can sit on a beach and
eat the money, and it won't make a difference. He
doesn't have to do it again in any event. So
(56:49):
the pattern here that I have described already has continued
in subsequent years, even after I came back from the
dead after my experience in Boston, where I was dubbed
the dark prints of TV Sports and was winning awards
in Los Angeles the next year. Although, to be fair,
after that quote in nineteen eighty four about how I
was potentially a great talent, I did get down to
(57:11):
about my last one hundred dollars in the bank, and
actually I actually had to borrow money from my dear
sister to get on the bus to take me to
the airport in New York so I could take the
flight to Los Angeles to start my job there. That's
how close I cut it. Another week and I would
have been borrowing money for food. That's where I was.
(57:34):
But you have to be willing to walk that tight
rope to pull this off in any event. So that
was Boston became the Los Angeles job, and the Los
Angeles job. When they eliminated that, it's like, well, his
career is over now. The next job was ESPN. ESPN
led to NBC. When that didn't work out and I
pushed to get out of there, they sold me to
Fox for a million dollars and they paid me a
(57:55):
lot of money and continued to pay me a lot
of money even after they stopped putting me on TV.
And that led to a doldrum period where I got
to read about the guy who's now retired from Sports
Illustrated explaining what network will sign him now, what team
will sign him now? Whither Keith? This is two thousand
and one. I was forty two years old. It's like
I get nostalgic reading that, going, yeah, you were forty
(58:18):
two years old. They fired you at that point people
thought your career was over. Yeah, but I was forty two.
My hair was dark most places in any event, So
that led into the MSNBC job, and the MSNBC job,
as sort of messy as that ended, the second one,
anyway led to the Current TV job, and as disastrous
(58:40):
as that was, since it was kind of a confidence trick,
there was a day where between the money I got
for leaving NBC and the money I got for joining
Current TV, I made sixty eight million dollars in one day.
I had to sew a lot of people afterwards to
get all of it, but I got just about all
of it. In any event, I'm now boasting back to
(59:00):
the point of this whole story. An old friend of
mine came in when I was doing the videos for
GQ The Closer and The Resistance in twenty sixteen. In
twenty seventeen, came in to watch me do this and
started to ask very very graciously and very gently about, well,
isn't this something of a come down for you from
the MSNBC experience where you had a staff, And I said, well,
(59:23):
first off, the MSNBC experience consisted of two cameramen and
a floor director and me and sometimes a guest in
a studio. The staff, whereas they were all certainly dedicated
to the project, consisted of basically a core of six
or seven people. It never really felt like a big deal.
(59:44):
I know it had more influence than I was ever
led to understand, but it wasn't like, oh, well, you
know those movies that you did with Richard Burton and
Elizabeth Taylor and Tom Cruise, and now you're just sitting
at home with a camera. It didn't have that feel
in the slightest. And I said to him, did you
see the thing from CBS News the other day? And
(01:00:05):
he went, what thing from CBS News? I said, don't
you have the Google at the New York Times? And
he said yes. I said, Google, Social Flow, Facebook, and
he did on his phone and he read this political
pundit Keith Alderman found a way to channel concerns about
mister Trump. This is July twenty seventeen, started hosting a
series of political commentary and special interviews titled The Resistance
(01:00:27):
with Keith Olderman, with the first episode featured on GQ
on November sixteenth, twenty sixteen, reaching fifty four million people
equivalent to one in six Americans, And I said, look,
I understand that if you measure things solely by the
idea that I'm on your TV every night, Well, yeah,
(01:00:47):
that the doing a video and coming into a studio
that isn't really designed for TV and there's an echo
in it might seem like the end of my career.
Fifty four million people saw that video and interacted with
it in some kind. They either forwarded it, or watched it,
or put a comment on it, or sometimes all three.
That was, in fact the number one political video or
(01:01:10):
story on Facebook in the period of time after Donald
Trump's election. I think that's something of a success. And
I said, by this point, I don't need the damn money.
The money I'm making from doing this is going to
dog charities. Okay, So we could go on at length
about other small versions of that. I once went back
and forth with this guy who now is one of
(01:01:31):
the people at Puck News who insisted that I had
not been negotiating with the then chairman of NBC Jeff Schell,
about returning to MSNBC in twenty nineteen twenty and twenty one,
because NBC News had insisted it wasn't true. And I said,
who told you that, and they said a spokesman. And
I said to this guy, his name was Dylan Byers,
(01:01:52):
I said, well, who was the spokesman. Well, it's just
supposed to be a spokesman, I said. So. They wouldn't
even put their own name on it, not even a
made up name Jim Jones, NBC News spokesman, which would
have been, by the way, appropriate name for a series
of NBC News spokespeople. They didn't even do that. And
he said no. They were insistent, there's never been any
contact between you and Jeff Shell. And I went hang on,
(01:02:15):
and I called up from my phone twenty three emails
and texts from Jeff Shell. I photo shot at them,
I screen shotted them and gave him to the guy.
And I don't think this guy Buyers has recovered since
his worldview was totally destroyed. He was writing a story
about how I had deteriorated to the point where I
was hallucinating about being in contact with Jeff Shell from
(01:02:39):
NBC News or from NBC about returning to NBC News
and MSNBC when we were deep into negotiations about it,
and we're delayed only by the pandemic. And as I
pointed out here before the vetos of certain people working
on the air at MSNBC, most of whose careers I started.
But that's another story which I've already discussed. His whole
(01:02:59):
worldview was shattered by this because should do be He
could not comprehend that an NBC News spokesperson would lie
to him, And he really said this. He said, I
don't understand why would they lie to me? And I said,
you don't have to understand that the idea that they
would not put their own name on this statement might
have suggested to you that they were lying to you. Oh,
(01:03:21):
I'll keep that in mind. Well, he didn't keep that
in mind. But that's again another story about Dylan Byers,
and we'll get to him somedayday too, somewhere soon. Somebody
asked towards the end of July twenty twenty four about
my recent comeback and how I'd just gotten back into
political commentary now with the new podcast, and I said,
(01:03:42):
it's two years old. On August first, it was approaching
five hundred episodes. We're doing like a million listens a week,
a million audience participants a week. I mean, it's challenging
certain hours on CNN for total audience. Good God, what
(01:04:02):
do you mean recent comeback? But this is, as I said,
if I had ten million dollars for every time somebody
told me my career was over, A career is sort
of over because I'm now of advanced years and now
I've done something that I really didn't understand until the
(01:04:23):
year twenty eleven, until I left MSNBC to go to
Current TV, and there was built into this transfer a
three month period of time where I could not work
anywhere in television. I had not had such a period
of time except for the aforementioned period when I was
taken care of family members who were in trouble in
(01:04:44):
nineteen eighty five after the Boston experience, I hadn't had
such a length of time without being on the air somewhere.
And in fact, during that period in nineteen eighty five,
I did a lot of freelance work just to get
the cash that I didn't have to borrow from my sister,
who was, by the way, seventeen years old at the time. Yeah, Jen,
have you got a twenty Yeah, I need to go
(01:05:06):
buy a cigar. In any event, the point of this
was until twenty eleven, i'd really not had a day
or at least a week without deadlines media deadlines. You
have to have this written by eight o'clock because the
show is starting with or without you. I hadn't had
a day or a week without those since I was
sixteen years old. I was to my shock. I found
(01:05:27):
I really enjoyed not having those deadlines. And when we
went back on the air in Current TV in June
of twenty eleven, I was kind of disappointed, not because
the studio was actually not a studio but more like
a you know, a portal to Hell and not that
part of it, which was disappointing, but not as much
as I really enjoyed, you know, not shaving every weekday
(01:05:49):
and not having to write, you know, ten thousand words
a day, and not having to read the twelve seconds
of script inside the twelve second window before the sound hit,
and just the number of deadlines I suddenly did and
a half. So since twenty eleven, I decided to cut
back to four days work a week generally speaking, that's
(01:06:11):
my concession to my mid sixties. And as I was
preparing this to tell you this story, in light of
the experience I had with my friend who thought his
career was over, and I was reciting this, I realized
that I had left out in telling him the story,
and I have deliberately left it out of the chronological
order of these tales of the actual first time I
(01:06:33):
was told my career was over, I had forgotten completely
about the day that the sports director what was then
a prominent radio station told me that not only would
he and the news director there not hire me, even
though I had been told I was a candidate for
a sports job there, but he told me that I
would never get a job in radio or television of
(01:06:55):
any prominence because of my attitude. No one will ever
hire you. His name was Ernie Jackson, and I believe
he left the town we were in to get a
job selling airtime on a radio station in Cincinnati, and
after that, I don't know what the hell happened to him.
The news director was a guy named Bob Lynch, and
(01:07:16):
he shortly thereafter moved to a job that I think
he spent his entire professional career at traffic reporter in
a plane above the beautiful city of Rochester, New York
the date that mister Jackson, on mister Lynch's behalf told
me that my career was over. The first time I
was told you will never again work in this business,
(01:07:38):
the first good evening and welcome to the end of
my career, was October nineteen seventy seven. I've done all
(01:08:01):
the damage I can do here, and yet thank you
for listening. Most of our countdown music was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel. Our
musical directors have countdown. Neither of their careers is over.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray on the guitars,
bass and drums, mister Chanelle handling, orchestration and keyboards. Our
(01:08:23):
satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball
stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, who's also heard that same
message and whose career is also not over. The Olberman
theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
of ESPN, Inc. Is the sports music I can't speak
to mister Davis. I don't know him personally, but ah,
(01:08:43):
how many times has ESPN been declared dead since nineteen
seventy nine and it's still here. Other music arranged and
performed by the group No Horns allowed. I don't think
they're still in business. Individually, They're all still in business,
but I don't think the group performs anymore, so maybe
their career is over. My announcer today was my friend
Johnny Banks from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. His
(01:09:06):
career ate over everything else was as always my fault.
So that's countdown for today. Day two hundred and forty
six of America held hostage again, just twenty seven days
until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck lame brained term,
unless he is removed sooner by MAGA than Jeffrey Epstein
(01:09:28):
or Tom I put the hoe in home Man, or
the pavement on Trump's hand or whatever. The next scheduled
countdown is Thursday. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(01:10:08):
Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
(00:24):
man handling of Jimmy Kimmel and the blackmailing of ABC
may turn out to be the biggest gift this year
to the Democrats. And if that is not a big
enough plot twist, I am hearing from multiple sources that,
at least right now, ABC thinks Jimmy Kimmel will stay
(00:45):
on the air and will return on the air in
the same show as early as later this month, maybe
even this week. Kirk the Trump self impeaching memo to
BONDI he tweeted in a stupor a lot more momentarily.
But is Kimmel news first and a caveat. I'll believe
(01:07):
it when I see it. However, these are the landmarks
my sources pointed at, and a couple I thought of
my own self. First, they haven't fired him. Second, they
actually haven't said anything about him. ABC has not said
anything about Jimmy Kimmel since that one sentence announcement about
(01:29):
taking him off the air. Third, he hasn't said anything
about ABC good, bad, or indifferent. Can you imagine me
in this?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Fourth?
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Remember the Sinclair owned local stations that started all the
trouble the next Star stations, the ones who were bribing
Trump and the FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr by demanding kimmelby
sidelined so Trump and Carr would waive the rules and
let Sinclair buy more than the legal limit of local
TV stations. Remember their plan after the Kimmel suspension to
(02:03):
run a Arly Kirk tribute last Friday Night in Kimmel's timeslot.
What happened to that? They didn't run it. They didn't
put it on the Sinclair stations. They put it on YouTube,
no other explanation, They just didn't run it. Why didn't
(02:24):
they run it? They won? Fifth, what happened to the
Sinclair demand that Kimmel apologizes and pays a bribe, I'm sorry,
make a donation to Kirk's scam Turning Point Company Incorporated? Sixth,
how much grief did ABC take and how much grief
did Disney take for folding to Trump and for not
(02:47):
defending Kimmel as the entire right wing misquoted him so
much that no human mind can estimate it. And Seventh,
how could you possibly put all the Kimmel and Kirk
toothpaste back into the tube? As Eric Idle once sang,
(03:08):
all you need is cash. The resurrection of Jimmy Kimmel.
It has been rumored almost since ABC yanked him. Variety
had a piece over the weekend about peace feelers. CNN
had a story saying the outreach began the same day
they took him off, led not by chairman Bob Iger,
who really did destroy himself over this, no matter how
(03:30):
it turns out, but by Disney Entertainment co chair Dana Walden,
whom they report called Kimmel that day quote, everyone deeply
values him and wants him to come back, but he
has to take down the temperature. That was when the
temperature was still warm, before the temperature turned ice cold
(03:52):
for Disney and Bob Eiger. And that was also before
anybody realized that any scenario in which Jimmy Kimmel returns
to the air on ABC is a win for Jimmy
Kimmel and for ABC and a defeat for Trump and
a defeat for fascism, and especially a defeat for Brendan Carr,
(04:12):
who could get fired over this. And one of the
reasons they realized this was you gov hold on this
whole story On Thursday, the margin of adults thinking Kimmel's
monologue on Monday was acceptable was forty three to thirty
six percent in favor, a lot of undecideds, but barely
(04:36):
more than one third who were opposed to it. Half
of adults disapproved of ABC taking Kimmel off the air,
and forty two percent said they strongly disapproved of it,
by our margin of forty three to twenty six. Responding
to the threat by FCC Commissioner car we can do
this the easy wayer, we can do it the hard
(04:57):
way quote, forty three to twenty six adults thought that
was unacceptable. Again, I believe it when I see Jimmy
Kimmel on my TV on Channel seven. Still, that's what
everybody is telling me. So why how well? Given that
(05:18):
last week Trump boasted he had avenged Charlie Kirk by
getting some guy's show canceled, even though the guy never
disparaged Kirk, and then he said no, I had nothing
to do with it, Given that there were still new
articles saying that Jimmy Kimmel has been canceled that were
published as late as Saturday night, the answer is the
(05:38):
fccs Goebbels, Brendan Carr, May in fact, go into history
as a hero of the left. Because it dawned on
the right all of a sudden, like a bunch of
flies deciding all of a sudden to move six feet
to the left in a box in the middle of summer.
It dawned on the right all of a sudden, late Thursday,
(05:59):
early Friday. Maybe that they have not only authorized the
left to the next time the left is in power,
shut down Fox and Murdoch and Sinclair, take away all
of Murdoch's waivers, take away all his stations, manage its
news channels, destroy Murdoch's newspapers. But the right has now
(06:19):
made this almost mandatory, and it has awakened in liberals
something we always and sorely lack imagination. Remember, not every
maga has a brain, but every other maga has a podcast.
And as they were recording them and celebrating the downfall
(06:41):
of Jimmy Kimmel, it hit them what government censorship could
mean for them. These are the only circumstances in which
anything will register with any of these people. It's not
right or wrong, it's not even what they can get
away with. It's just self interest. I mean, what would
the world look like if Elon Musk's x was actually
(07:03):
under true government supervision in a world where cut turn
posts something that has to wait twenty four hours before
it is approved or it isn't. At the same time,
it's awakened the right and the realization that they just
(07:24):
handed out rocks and said, please, please, everybody hit conservative
media in the groin with your rocks. The Trump FCC
blackmailing of ABC and the bullying of Jimmy Kimmel maybe
a worse cell phone even than Trump's cover up of
the Epstein fliles. Just the immediate blowback against Trump and
Carr and for Kimmel from the right has been, I'm sorry, shocking, refreshing. Yesterday,
(07:50):
Rand Paul went on this Week on ABC instead of
the Kimmel disaster quote absolutely inappropriate. Brendan Carr has got
no business weighing in on this. The FCC should have
nothing to do with it. Sinclair pulled out. They were
disgusted by the comment. That's their rights, but the government's
got no business in it, and the FCC was wrong
to weigh in. No, the same, Ran Paul, and I'll
(08:13):
fight any attempt by the government to get involved with speech.
And I played these clips from Ted Cruz on his podcast,
which he knows would be one of the first ones
we would censor. I played these clips from Ted Cruz
in the Friday Night bulletin I did on this. They're
worth hearing again, as tin ear as him suddenly breaking
(08:37):
into a bad dialect is my god. Otherwise Ted Cruz
could be reading one of my scripts here.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put
itself in the position of saying, we're going to decide
what speech we like and what we don't, and we're
going to threaten to take you off air if we
don't like what you're saying. And it might feel good
right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, Yeah, but when it
is you to silence every conservative in America, we will
(09:08):
regret it. And and and so again. I like Brendan Carr,
but we should not be in this business. We should
denounce it. It's fine to say what Jimmy Kimmel said
was deplorable, it was disgraceful, and he should be off air,
but we shouldn't be threatening government power to force him
off air. That's a real mistake. He threatens explicitly, we're
(09:30):
going to cancel ABC's license. We're gonna take him off
the air, so ABC cannot broadcast anymore. And I gotta
say he threatens it. He says, we can do this
the easy way, but we can do this the hard way.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
And I got to say, that's right out of goodfellows.
That that that that that that's right out of a
mafioso coming into a bar going nice by you have here,
it'd be a shame of something happened to it.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And that was Ted Cruz and not me. Scott Adams
Gilbert podcast quote I'm on Jimmy Kimmel's side. Unquote Ben Shpiro.
I do not want the FCC in the business of
telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if
they broadcast material that the FCC deems to be informationally false.
(10:19):
Why because one day the shoe will be on the
other foot. If Democrats win the presidency and you got
a Democrat in charge of the FCC, you got Adam
Schiff in charge of the FCC. Please God, Please God,
Please God. You know which affiliates are going to get threatened,
all of the Fox affiliates. You know what's gonna happen,
Ben Shapiro, you have unsuspected depth. With the perspective of
(10:43):
just a few days, this became such an obvious own
goal that not only is Trump denying Brendan Carr did this,
but Ewick Twump called into the mud Travis Bunk Sex
Bump Show to deny that Dadams had anything to do
with it. Quote, Listen, the guy has been a jerk. No,
he's talking about Kimmel, not his father. Listen, the guy
(11:05):
has been a jerk. He hasn't been funny. But honestly,
I think the network used this as a way to
get him out based on, you know, bad ratings. Eeriic
had to say that because Dadams promised the exact opposite
of what he and Carr just did to Jimmy Kimmel
and ABC, and he promised it during his inaugural address.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts
to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive
order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back
free speech to America.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Oops. Just say oops and get out now. Just roll
through the list of the great intellects of MAGA and
they are one hundred percent on this issue, and they're
not on Brendan Carr side. Quote. If the idea of
free speech enrages you, the cornerstone of democratic self government,
then I regret to inform you that you are a fascist.
(12:05):
Unquote Stephen Miller, April fifteenth, twenty twenty two. Congratulations, Brendan Carr.
Stephen Miller just called you a fascist. This is even
worse than that. The Attorney General of Missouri sued the
then surgeon general for alleged government suppression of the anti
vaccine bullshit online Murphy versus Missouri went to the Supreme
(12:31):
Court listened to this from an amicus brief challenging any
government censorship or pressure.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Perhaps most disconcerting of all is the pressure applied to
the platforms to enforce the government's new role as arbiter
of truth, imposing a new federal orthodoxy, and that's in
italics upon citizens speech. That plan clashes with the Court's
clear declaration that government may not quote prescribe what shall
(12:58):
be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.
Amicus brief was filed by H. Turning Point USA and
Charlie Kirk. The Claremont Institute filed a similar brief in
that case, and it has the name on it John Eastman.
(13:23):
In a separate Supreme Court case last year NRA versus
Vullo about pressuring groups to cut off the NRA, the
National Rifle Association, in business dealings and the like. The
Court ruled nine nothing against government infringement of opinion nothing
a shutout the forfeit score. The unanimous opinion was written
(13:44):
by Sonya Soda Mayor. Quote, Government officials cannot attempt to
coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views
that the government disfavors. You want more. What Brendan Carr
did was not only self harm, it may have been
illegal when the New Republic, quoting Ana Gomez, one of
(14:06):
the three FCC commissioners, the only one appointed by a
democratic president, quote, what the administration is doing violates the
First Amendment and the Communication Acts. This administration is increasingly
using the weight of government to suppress lawful expression. Gomez
also decried Trump's campaign of censorship and control to quote
(14:28):
silence dissent. Brendan Carr may want to relocate. We can
do this the hard way, Brendan, or we can do
it the easy way. So now, obviously ABC has to
get Kimmel back on the air. In the worst case scenario,
(14:49):
they don't and he sues. He sues the federal government
and Donald Trump and Brendan Carr personally. The Trump part
gets thrown out, but not until after the headlines. Jimmy
Kimmel right now has a lawsuit against Brendan Carr and
the FCC, to say nothing of enough lawsuits to potentially
(15:10):
own Disney. I don't know why you'd want to own Disney,
but there it is. To get him back on They
will not give him full ownership of Disney, but they
will have to throw some sop to the right to
give them a climb down. Though, why let them fall
off the cliff. They so carefully built this cliff. But
they certainly will have to assuage Jimmy Kimmel's fears of
(15:31):
going through this again. And that's always one of two things.
A new longer contract his runs out next spring, or
more money. They're both. I flashed back to my one
thing that touched on something like this when the Republicans
came in in two thousand and eight, after I said
(15:52):
something they didn't like. During the Republican convention when they
showed a snuff film and claimed it was a nine
to eleven tribute, and I said, if we had shown
you that video, I'd be here apologizing for showing you
the video of the people from the World Trade Center.
When the Republicans went in and blackmailed Tom Brokaw and said,
our guy won't show up to your debate, and Brokaw
went in and blackmailed NBC management into taking me and
(16:15):
Chris Matthews off the air. They called and told me.
My agent called and told me while I was at
a ballgame in the press box, and I told her,
you called them back and tell them I quit and
they can deal with the aftermath of this. I got
in the subway and went home, and by the time
I got out of the subway twenty five minutes later,
it had dawned on me that not only was I
not going to quit, but I was going to say
(16:36):
to them, I'll make you a deal if I quit,
or if this just goes out and I don't quit,
you guys will lose the entire MSNBC audience. They will
literally walk away. This is either just days before we
were to premiere Rachel Meadows Show, or days after we did.
There was no other presence on that network but me.
I was the network and they were silencing me. And
(16:59):
if they wanted to throw away what we just built,
they could do that, or I would say it was
my idea to stop doing the part that the GOP wanted,
which was me and Matthew's off the debates. I said,
I'll take myself off that and I'll claim it's my
idea and I'll sell it as best I can, and
you give me, let's see, twelve million dollars three million
(17:24):
dollars a year over four years. They gave me the
twelve million. So an end result of this might be
Jimmy Kimmel gets a raise and a contract when his
contract and presumably his show was supposed to end next spring.
But our purposes, we're not all Jimmy Kimmel. Our purposes.
(17:49):
Given how much Trump fouled this up with his own people,
with the right wing, how much they are opposed to this,
Democrats need to hit the gas while it is still
sitting there. Push on this. We need House and or
Senate resolutions condemning car that the Republicans have to vote
(18:09):
for or against. We need Rand Paul co signing something
with AOC. We need something House and or Senate resolutions,
something reaffirming the First Amendment. Just something like it is
the sense of this House that we reaffirm the First Amendment.
See how many Republicans are willing to sign off against
(18:30):
that something? I mean just Democrats who go on ABC
News or ABC shows. They need to hit ABC for
doing this to Kimmel on ABC until they put Kimmel
back on the air. The Democrats can do all the
public investigation they want of this man car and especially
(18:52):
what is clearly a quid pro quo about Sinclair Next
Star and approving those stations. They can tie up those
approval and in court for years. Mister Jeffries, mister Schumer,
this is something so obvious, so obvious, so easy, so
win win, win, win win. Even your strategists and consultants
(19:18):
have probably heard about it by now. Still, maybe the
(19:45):
best part of the Kimmel Kirk saga is that, of
course they wind up giving Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon and
Seth Myers, maybe even Colbert in a different venue, Extra Life.
Those franchises were are winding down. Myers was down to
three workdays week. Now, if Kimmel goes back on the air,
(20:09):
it'll have to be with something providing security for both parties,
and it will be with the wind at his back.
Suddenly people will want to see what Jimmy Kimmel has
to say, and Myers and Fallon and even FN Colbert.
The second best part of the Kimmel Kirk saga is
(20:30):
it took the Kirk shooting and it transformed it politically
into the Kimmel Kirk saga until the weekend began and
the canonization of Saint Charlie of Kirk in Phoenix yesterday loomed.
Google searches for Jimmy Kimmel were greater than or equal
to those of Google searches for Charlie Kirk. And of course,
(20:52):
as I suggested last week, it is increasingly evident the
right canon will continue to insist otherwise. But the killing
of Charlie Kirk was a personal act, maybe with political undertones,
and BC reported quote one person familiar with the federal
investigation said that quote. Thus far, there is no evidence
connecting the suspect with any left wing groups. Every indication
(21:14):
so far is that this was one guy who did
one really bad thing because he found Kirk's ideology personally offensive. Unquote.
I had suggested last week that he saw and again
I condemned shooting anybody, but I especially condemned shooting political
commentators because g guess what, I'm a political commentator. I
(21:36):
condemned shooting anybody, but I suggested the alleged shooter saw
Kirk's demonizing of transgendered people as a direct threat to
someone he loved who is transgendered. End of story, not
that it will end the story. If you heard our
bulletin Friday night, you know Trump declared criticism of himself
(21:56):
on television is illegal. He made up statistics that it's
ninety seven percent bad that coverage is, or maybe he
didn't make it up. Hell, his presidency is eighty seven
percent bad. Maybe the coverage is completely accurate. But clearly,
between that and the whole Kirk mess and everything else
he did over the weekend, the last remaining fraid damaged, diaphanous,
(22:20):
decaying line tethering the good blimp Trump to reality has snapped,
and it's snapped on this subject. Prosecute them anyway, I
don't care if there's no crime, and convict them anyway.
I don't care if there's no evidence and jail them anyway.
I don't care if the jury found them not guilty.
(22:43):
I'm paraphrasing, of course. That is the memo or text
or whatever that was he composed Saturday night that began
perm semi colon that he somehow wound up posting on
truth Social instead of sending it to somebody to send
a Pam Bondy or whatever he was trying to do,
(23:04):
text it to her, email it because Grandpa Shardy really
is losing it. It was full of stuff that had
nothing to do with Eric Sebret prosecutor resigning rather than
prosecuting Letitia James over mortgage paperwork. It was full of
the lies Trump tells himself He's always done this. There's
one way to never be wrong. When you are wrong,
(23:25):
just lie to yourself. Is it me or is it them? Oh?
It's them, Pam. I have reviewed over thirty statements in
posts saying that essentially same old story as last time.
All talked, no action, nothing is being done. What about Komy, Adam,
Shifty Shift, Letitia, They're all guilty as hell, but nothing
is going to be done. Then we almost put a
Democrat supported US attorney in Virginia with a really bad
(23:47):
Republican past, awoke Rhino is never going to do his job.
That's why two of the worst DEM senators pushed him
so hard, even lied to the media and said he quit.
We had no case, No I fired him. There's a
great case of many layers legal pundency. So Lindsay's a
really good lawyer, likes you a lot. We can't delay
any longer. It's killing a ripping and credibility. They impeach
me twice and knighted me five times exclamation point over nothing.
(24:10):
Justice must be served now, President dj TA. Oddly enough,
Trump deleted that rather than lying and pretending he did
not mean to do that, or lying and pretending he
did mean to do that. Lindsey, by the way, is
(24:31):
not Lindsey Graham as you might have thought. It's Lindsey Halligan,
an insurance attorney who Trump sicked on the Smithsonian, who
has never prosecuted a case, but has really great TV hair,
And we'll do whatever Trump wants in exchange for free perms. Next,
(24:54):
Trump is going after the US attorney in Maryland, Kelly Hayes.
Trump wants her to prosecute Adam Schiff for I don't know,
illegal possession of soup spoons. This is different than the
Siebert case with Letitia James. Trump can tell himself that
Sebert was a Democratic plant. Hayes is the same prosecutor
(25:17):
who approved the crack of Dawn's search of the home
of John Bolton, which turned up found a spoon. Sir,
she is a loyalist and Trump offing a Trump loyalist
is a different thin tight rope for the fat man
to try to walk across his man Poulty over to
(25:38):
finance the Renfield who dug up the mortgage info, most
of which appears to be wrong and totally legal, and
the same thing that Paulty's father did. He's still at it.
He still doesn't get it. Look up Brendan Carr online,
mister Poulty. He's still insisting the Fed governor Lisa Cook
must be prosecuted. He tweeted. Would a doc be allowed
(26:00):
to see patients if he was accused of a crime
punishable by jail? No, I don't know, mister pault Is
this a Trump doctor? Also, this is all incredibly impeachable.
Pressuring prosecutors to prosecute your political enemies, or not to
prosecute your friends while you our president. Well, Hillary Clinton
(26:24):
got it right yesterday writing of the posted memo to
Pam Bondy. Quote, imagine if Richard Nixon had just tweeted
out the Watergate scandal rather than putting it on secret tape.
This is not having the impact it should because he
did it in front of everybody. Another secret to Trump's success.
Why waste all that time trying to be secretive when
(26:48):
most people don't know what they're seeing anyway, And of
course he can now claim maybe he wasn't writing to
Pam Bondy, maybe he was writing to Pam Anderson. I
think you could make a really good attorney general. The
other thing is you don't do this as high profile,
(27:08):
front facing goons from your own dictatorship turn out to
be digging their own professional grapes. You've heard about Tom Homan,
the bully from Ice, and the recording of him taking
fifty thousand dollars from two FBI agents he thought were
businessmen who wanted to win Trump government contracts. Firstly, this
(27:30):
is the cheapest bastard, the cheapest corrupt politician since Spiro
Agnew took cash in a bag in the White House
Office when he was Vice president, Like nine hundred dollars
fifty thousand dollars, I could buy Tom Homan for fifty
thousand dollars. What do I get for one hundred thousand dollars? Okay?
(27:53):
So then after this Trump's DOJ shut the investigation down
even though there is a tape, and the person who
recommended shutting it down was Emil Beauve. Anybody in this missing, anybody?
We can't send a jail for this, shouldn't They have
brought in Alina Habba to f this up. Words come on,
as I noted online, how in the hell did we
(28:15):
not see this coming? Tom Holman literally has the word
ho in his name. Dave It's Cough of the New
York Times and the Great book about the Movie Network
pointed out that if you like cliches, the fifty thousand
dollars was literally inside a bag a bag, as in
(28:36):
it's in the bag, or he's left holding the bag,
or Tom Holman is Trump's bag man, but the winner
is From Saturday Night Live writer Brian Tucker quote, Look,
Tom Holman has not had a trial and has never
been proven guilty, So let's all take a step back
and do what he would do. Send him to a
(28:57):
secret prison in El Salvador until we can figure this out.
Cass please well, by the way, Russia violated Estonian airspace
now fighter jets not drones this time, and Poland had
(29:20):
to scramble its jets again after another incursion. Trump slept
through that MAGA is concerned only about one thing. When
is Charlie Kirk coming back from the dead? And don't
shout at me about that you think I made up
that idea. I have lost count of how many social
media posts there are right this minute asking if that's possible,
(29:44):
or saying, oh, wouldn't it be great if he came
back from the dead during the thing you didn't maybe tomorrow.
The canonization of Saint Charlie of Kirk is the only
thing they have left here. The Kirk memorial couldn't even
break the NFL's hold on Sunday afternoon trending topics on
social media, but they are in full Jesus mode here.
(30:08):
A spokesman for Kirk's turning point in Doctrination Group actually
put out a statement transforming the lack of an exit
wound into a miracle, not a metaphor not like a
miracle or kind of almost No, a miracle, and he
quoted a surgeon. Now the surgeon is anonymous, and he's
(30:32):
being quoted by a spokesman who needs turning point USA
to continue. Even without Charlie Kirk, Fox ran this as
a major story yesterday. Are you ready? Even in death,
Charlie Kirk may have saved lives. The surgeon explained that quote,
I've seen wounds from this caliber many times, and they
(30:53):
always just go through everything. This would have taken a
moose or two down, an elk, et cetera. It was
an absolute miracle that someone else didn't get killed. The
doctor described, kirk bone is quote so healthy and quote
so impressive that he's like the man of steel. All Right,
(31:14):
anybody recognized the problem with saying he's the man of
steel when he's not living anymore. Back to this fantasy
from Fox News, the spokesman concluded, quote, even in death,
Charlie managed to save the lives of those around him. Remarkable, miraculous. Ah.
(31:34):
Of course, they are helped by morons like Thomas Cardinal
Dolan of New York. First, the Cardinal said he'd never
heard of Charlie Kirk, and then he said on Fox
that he had looked at some videos, apparently in order
to get the guest shot on Fox. Guess which videos
he looked at? He looked at the Bible ones or
(31:55):
did he look at the we should stone transgendered people
and execute Biden and force twelve year olds to watch
public executions with guillotineans and the ones about the great
Replacement theory? Which ones do you think he watched? Cardinal
Gullible added, this guy is a modern day Saint Paul.
He was a missionary. He's an evangelist, he's a hero.
(32:15):
He's one I think that knows what Jesus meant when
he said the truth will set you free. Also, Stone
a transgendered person today, he said, Cardinal Dolan. Also, you
know that Charlie Kirk called Pope Francis a Marxist and
suggested Pope Francis was a heretic, right, and that Kirk's
(32:37):
first religious mentor was Jerry Folwell, Junior, Jerry, have I
introduced you to my wife? And if so? Can I
watch Fallwell Junior? They're not doing this well, the canonization
of Charlie Kirk. There's Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia blasting
(32:57):
the fifty eight Democrats who did not vote yes on
the motion condemning the Kirk murder. And that's when somebody
told Congressman Mike Collins that he also did not vote
yes on the motion condemning the Kirk murder. Congressman Collins
walked off the House floor without casting a vote. He said,
it was a mistake, Mike, You bet your ass it
(33:21):
was a mistake. But the winner the all time Lou
Lou kat Kerr, who is a troubled woman who says
she is a prophetess. She says she was brought to
heaven to watch Kirk's ascension. She does not stop to
explain why they went to such trouble to bring her there,
(33:42):
and yet still nobody in the afterlife will help her
at all with her purple red nightmare hair. But she
did explain that Charlie Kirk's reward in the afterlife was
a quiver with a thousand arrows of light and a
large ice cream cone. She says she saw him eating
(34:09):
an ice cream cone in heaven.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Oh man, there are so many many terrible, terrible jokes
available here. I don't even have to lean forward in
my chair to grab the worst of them. But I
won't make any of them because I won't make any
of them even.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
About Charlie Kirk. Now, I'll make them about Nancy Mace.
Also of interest here add me to the list. I
think Nancy Mace has announced she's going to end my
career or she's going to end her career. It was
a little unclear, Like everything else, she says. This would mean, though,
(34:53):
if it's me, it's now forty one years in a row,
that somebody has made a threat to end my career
and I'm still here eating ice cream and they are
all gone. In fact, some of them are dead. It's
a general manager in Boston audios. See you. That's next.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Oh there's ice cream in heaven large cones.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith old woman
(35:48):
still ahead on this edition of Countdown. Good old Nancy Mace,
half congresswoman, half plastic inflatable doll has retweeted me saying
Charlie Kirk and Sinclair Broadcasting are both going to hell
if thet nothing else this week. Attacking Charlie Kirk as
a guaranteed way to end your career, she wrote apart
(36:11):
from Nancy leaving a few words out there. I mean,
I get what she means, but technically she's saying the
left has has already learned this, and it's I'm not
sure what she wrote. Anyway. What are you gonna do, Nancy?
Get me fired from Current TV, get me fired from
my Disney pension. I'm independent. I literally work for nobody,
(36:37):
and I have all the money I need for the
rest of my life until I linger to like one
hundred and twenty two plus Nancy. People have been threatening
to end my career since literally nineteen eighty four. He
will never again work in this business. The Boston executive
said to my agent, guess what he's dead now. A
young writer who wrote My career was over in two
(36:59):
thousand and one in a national magazine just starting there.
He's already retired and I could die before this finishes posting.
But professionally, right now, I'm still here and all of
them are not. Goodbye, Nancy, Good evening, and welcome to
the end of my career. Well not yet anyway. Next
(37:20):
in things I promised not to tell first, believe it
or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about.
The roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning kruegerffect specimens
who constitute today's other worst persons in the world, The brons,
Congress and Randy Fine. Now, every time I think they
found the dumbest person in America and elected them to Congress,
(37:42):
we locate a dumber one. Now it's Randy Fine. Now,
I've slimmed down, but I've been overweight my whole life
since they took my tonsils out when I was six.
In retrospect, that was a mistake. Swallowing was difficult. Then
one day it was not difficult at all, and the
food began to flow night and day. So I genuinely
(38:06):
start here talking about Congressman Fine in a place of concern.
So I'm not going to pretend to you. I don't
end in a place of concern. But Congressman Fine is
like three hundred, three hundred and fifty pounds. He's a
big guy. I want to tell you I saw him
sitting on the George Washington Bridge dangling his feet in
(38:27):
the water. Hey, I'll tell you so. Fine goes on
CNN and bash is Kimmel quote. We live in a
world where a meaningful percentage of people now believe violence
is legitimate as in aside Randy, who did that? Yes, Randy,
it was Trump. I got to flash back to bo
(38:48):
Jack Horseman there, Randy, is this your fault? Dana Bash?
And this might as well have been the lead story today.
Dana Bash actually pushed back against Randy Fine, which, again,
if you've ever seen him, it's quite an accomplishment. Quote
kim didn't legitimize violence. Fine kept throwing his weight around
(39:09):
those comments, blaming MAGA for the death of Charlie Kirk. Well,
Bash interrupted him again, that's not what Kimmel said. Fine
still finished. I gasped when I read it. Randy is
one fat guy to another. That gasp that may have
been caused by something else. See Your Doctor Runner up
(39:31):
worser Stephen A. Smith. Steven A. Smith has decided he
is a political commentator. He does a show called an
XM radio show called straight Shooter. Now that's offensive in
light of Charlie kirk and in the background of the
video version of this, there's the capitol. So that makes
(39:51):
him a political commentator. Again, I don't have any objection
to anybody going sports to politics. That would be like
me saying, hey, Randy Fine is a big guy. Oh,
it's a bit like, No, I get it. I did that,
I know. But the call in line for people calling
into the Stephen A. Smith Straight Shooter Show, the number
(40:14):
ends in one of the letter equivalents P O t US,
so it's you dial whatever the number is potus. Problem
is Steve is not doing the work on this to
use the kids phrase, tell me you didn't actually see
the Jimmy Kimmel references to Kirk. Without telling me you
didn't actually see the Jimmy Kimmel references to Kirk, the.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Only thing that I would say, as it pertains to
Jimmy Kimmel was where was the joke?
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Because you're a late night host and obviously.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
That has a comedic attachment attachment to it.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Where was the joke? Obviously it wasn't anything funny about that. However, No,
it wasn't a joke. You're right about that. It wasn't
a joke on a late night show. Surprise, like when
Letterman did the first show after nine to eleven and
he didn't make any jokes. You just back tears and
the shows that were done after every assassination, and you know,
(41:12):
the night after Martin Luther King was killed, that Johnny
Carson didn't do jokes, and then you know they postponed
these show. When you know Charlie Kirk gets shot, you
don't go for the joke, even if you're Jimmy Kimmel.
That wasn't supposed to be a joke. Stephen does not
get this. Stephen thinks the controversy is that whatever was
said about Kimmel or by Kimmel about Kirk wasn't funny.
(41:34):
That's what he thinks was wrong. That's what he really thinks.
This is about. Where is the joke. Steve doesn't doesn't
doesn't get this. He went on at length to blame Kimmel.
I ha note Stephen is after all, paid by the
people who caved on Kimmel, people like Bob Iger. Steven
is a company man. Steven explained that Jimmy's failure was
(41:58):
he didn't understand quote the game that he is playing.
Steven is a very very simple view of the world,
as evidence by thinking that everything is a game, and
that every political show is like every sports show, where
the point is how much time can you kill without
saying anything? That's Stephen a Smith's specialty. I mean, honest
(42:19):
to god, he's one of the all time greats. You
have one idea and stretch it out the three hours
a day, that's pretty good. That's his specialty. Anyway, Steve's
naivete and his unwillingness to do the work, like read
the quotes, watch the videotape, just have somebody pull it
up on your gold plated machine for you. His unwillingness
(42:41):
to do the work is going to be terribly exposed
in the weeks and months to come, as will the
fact that all those rumors about people encouraging him to
run for president as a Democrat, they were all started
by by him. How do we know this because, as
I mentioned, the number for the telephone call in line
for listeners ends in botus. He chose that, Steve, you
(43:06):
need to be a little more subtle. Your political audience
is not as dumb as your sports audience is. Holy crap,
But our winner the worst. Speaking of naive Vanity Fair
magazine editor Mark Guiducci, We've already been through this with
Mark about the new editor there breaking in by trying
to put Milania Trump on the cover of Vanity Fair
(43:29):
and the Vanity Fair staff, which leans a little to
the left, threatening to walk out. It was thought their
response might lead this guy Mark to reel himself in
a little bit. It did not. Last week he named
a new West Coast editor for Vanity Fair, responsible for
some writing and for quote editing stories across platforms and
(43:51):
topic areas, with a focus on events, industries and culture
of the Pacific region. And the new editor is Alivia Newsy.
She's back now. Look, she's the mother of my dogs,
at least the two oldest dogs. So I'm not being
(44:12):
cynical or ironic or anything when I say I will
always value her for that and my introduction to the
world of dogs, and if she's ever in real trouble,
I'll help, no questions asked. I offered that last year,
reached out to her agent and said, I don't know
what help I could be, probably none. If she can
think of anything, it's hers. I do have to figure
(44:34):
out what to tell the dogs, because when we broke up,
I told Rose and Stevie that Olivia had gone to
live on a farm upstate. But she wants to make
a comeback after the whole RFK Junior disaster. I'm fine
with it. Maybe she learned something from a mistake everybody
(44:55):
does eventually after mistake number nine hundred, one hopes one
would learn from that mistake. Any who, she did what
I always recommend in that situation, she waited. She waited
nearly a year plus. Selfishly. This lets me remind people
that it turned out who knew that when we broke up?
I was too young for her. However, the reaction in
(45:19):
writing circles has not been as forgiving two writers on
Blue Sky. These guys made me gfaw Andrew Dignan or Dingion.
Maybe Vanity Fair bringing Newsy on to cover the all
important who's sending first traps southeast to members of Trump's cabinet?
(45:41):
Beat oh oh, oh, man, I can see this is
going away soon. And then Colin Dicky uh, obviously an
expert on this subject. I'm sorry, Vanity Fair. Hiring Newsy
is such a effing gut punch to all the great
(46:02):
underemployed journalists out there who don't sext with their sources, which,
to be fair, is pretty much everyone except Olivia Nowsy.
Oh oh, and you thought I had complaints about her?
My goodness, Oh Mark, what if I just cut out
the pretense and named her West Coast sexting editor Guiducci,
(46:25):
good luck with being Olivia's boss, Today's other worst person
in the world.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Call me anytime.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Oh so, here we go again. As I mentioned an
offhand comment or retweet by plastic Woman Congresswoman Nancy mace Of,
I forgot Stupidville has now joined the list of people
who have promised to end my career or how I
(47:17):
should know that if you criticize Charlie Kirk, sat Charlie
of Kirk, your career is over. All I can say
is madam, take a number. We'll call you when we
are ready. I'm still dealing with the other three or
four dozen people who have told me in the last
forty one years that my career is now over. To
(47:41):
our number one story on the countdown, and good evening,
and welcome to the end of our careers, or more
particularly the end of my career. No, I'm not retiring.
I'm just quoting myself from nineteen ninety three in the
launch of ESPN two and the subject of career ending announcements.
Career ending announcements. Recently, a colleague of mine told me
(48:04):
he was done, and I had to go through all
of the times I have been told I was done.
The first one was in nineteen eighty four. This would
be in a previous century that I know. To a
lot of younger listeners, seems like it might as well
be eighteen eighty four. I have told before the story
of my limited career in Boston, for which I waited
(48:26):
about a year to start and lasted about half as
long because I went to work at the wrong place,
in the wrong city, outside in the wrong suburb of Boston,
with the wrong boss, where they said, don't make any jokes,
and I said, what did you hire me for? And
I left very very quickly, and then they tried to
fire me while I was filling out the terms of
(48:48):
my contract and staying there until they could get a replacement.
And the whole thing went up in flames. And the
result of this was that the news director of the
station Channel five in Boston, a man who actually answered
to the name Philip Scribner Balboni, went to the Boston
Globe TV sportswriter when they had such things as TV sportswriters,
and said, oh, it was such a shame about Keith.
(49:10):
He was potentially such a major talent. I will not
deny that the use of that phrase did inspire me
to some degree to get cracking on my career. On
the other hand, I didn't work for nearly a year later,
as I was taking care of some family business back
home and sort of put everything about my own interest
on the shelf. Off the record, the general manager of
(49:32):
the station I had worked for, a man named James Coppersmith,
said to my agent something that made Balbony's statement look
like a compliment. Coppersmith said, he will never again work
in our business. That got me motivated. I believe I
read recently that Coppersmith died. In any event, I worked
again in his business. The punchline to this one, and
(49:55):
they all have punchlines, is that at some point around
two thousand and seven, I got an email at MSNBC
and the return of was Philip Scribner Balboni, and there
was a great email from my old brief news director
Boston Channel five in Boston, who explained that I had
been potentially such a major talent and was quoted on
(50:16):
the record as saying that. And now he was saying
how he watched Countdown every night and was so proud
to have been in there at the start of my career.
Not a word about the other part, about the oh,
potentially such a major talent. I guess he meant it
in the past future, perfect sense of the I don't know,
(50:36):
my grammar education is not what it should be. But
he managed to wriggle out of it. Never made any
reference to it. And the one thing about surviving repeated
announcements that your career is over is to never really
go back and criticize the people who were wrong about it,
because they know they were wrong, and your success is
(50:57):
the best answer. Nevertheless, this all came up, and I
thought i'd retell it to you because I had to
retell it to a friend who recently told me his
career was over. But as I said, that was just
the first time that had ever happened in a fully
professional setting. In two thousand and one, and I was
just reading this, I guess about a year ago. I
(51:17):
came across it somewhere online. I was reading it for
a punchline in and of itself. It was a piece
in Sports illustrated by a man named Chris Ballard, I believe,
and Chris Baward wrote an article about my being fired
by Fox Sports, which he wrote as I had resigned
from Fox Sports, and went on to explain that I
(51:38):
did not respond as Sports Illustrated's request by emails and
phones for comment. I never received any of them because
it never occurred to him that when they fired me
and told everybody I had resigned, they cut off my
access to my email and my phone, and they said
to him when he wanted to talk to me, oh,
just send him an email. He'll get back to you.
(51:59):
And I didn't, and thus he made me look like
a jerk. In any event, The article explained in two
thousand and one that having gone through ESPN and now
ESPN's sort of mini me rival, Fox Sports News, that
there was nothing left for me to do in the business.
I had tried news briefly in nineteen ninety seven and
nineteen ninety eight. Clearly my career in both fields was over.
(52:22):
I could not possibly work again in television, in news
or in sports. We're now coming up next year if
I get to it. Well, it's been twenty three, twenty
four year. Okay. I recently saw this article and was
inspired to look for it online because Chris Ballard was
retiring from Sports Illustrated and I'm still here one question
(52:48):
that came up as I was retelling the story of
my various career ending moments that did not in fact
end my career from my friend who's very worried about this,
was how I managed not to have my career. And
when Ballard's premise was not completely wrong, he was certainly
looking at what he thought happened in television. He was
(53:10):
not the TV sports writer for Sports Illustrated for very long.
It was not a natural subject for him. Most people
who did this job thought that it involved simply watching
sports on TV and then writing what they thought as
opposed to understanding an industry or its complexities, or its
parameters or its sort of weird voodoo customs. In any event,
(53:32):
I said, well, look, it's not very difficult to survive
these things. You just have to acknowledge that perhaps your
next job, after some sort of cataclysmic departure from an
ESPN or a Fox Sports or an MSNBC or wherever else,
perhaps it's not going to pay you quite as much
as the last one did. And so, when my agent
(53:53):
and I began to look around for more work in
two thousand and one, and I might add that after
Fox fired me, they had to pay me for another
eight months at one hundred thousand dollars a year. And
if you can't survive on a job requires you to
do nothing for eight months and pays you eight hundred
thousand dollars that you can salt away. If you can't
survive on that and enjoy your life while you're doing it,
(54:15):
you're doing things wrong. In any event, what I said
was just the next job. Just take a job that
allows you to do what you can do and do
it well, and you will succeed in it. You have
talent a lot of other people don't. You will be
low costs, so they're much more likely to overlook anything
that happened in the past, and most importantly, if it
(54:37):
is successful, you can then hold them up on the
second contract negotiation. So I went first to CNN after
the Fox Sports experience started to work for them for
not a lot of money, and although they did not
ultimately exercise this, they signed me to a contract to
do the eight PM show on CNN for a certain
large amount of money, and there were two finalists they
(54:58):
wanted us lined up in advance, and they made the
clever decision to choose Connie Chung instead of me, but
they had sort of reauthorized me. They had re established me.
By it was well known within the industry that I
was the runner up for the job at eight o'clock,
and within six months of them saying, nah, we think
Connie's the right person to lead us into the future here,
(55:19):
within six months of that, I was doing the eight
o'clock show on MSNBC for in fact, twice what the
agreement had been at CNN, And within three years they'd
signed me to a new deal that was worth three
times that more than I had ever made in my life.
So the key thing to it is to be flexible financially.
You sock them for the money while you're successful. And
then by the way, once again, if you can't succeed
(55:43):
in the business, if you can't succeed in life, when
you have received in one year anything north of three
million dollars in one year, four million dollars, maybe I
forget what the actual financial floor is. But if you've
made that much money in one year and can't live
basically off that and simply in interest from the bank
(56:06):
that that will provide you, if you can't do that,
you must have some sort of addiction to drugs, because
guess what, you can go a long way still. I mean, yeah,
it's true, four million dollars is what it used to be,
but guess what it is now. It's still really good.
I never failed to see one of these articles in
(56:27):
which somebody who's lost a job paying in you know,
the tens of millions of dollars, and I always finished.
Now It's like, yes, he's finished. Now he can sit
on a beach, he can hire somebody to do his
exercise for him. He can sit on a beach and
eat the money, and it won't make a difference. He
doesn't have to do it again in any event. So
(56:49):
the pattern here that I have described already has continued
in subsequent years, even after I came back from the
dead after my experience in Boston, where I was dubbed
the dark prints of TV Sports and was winning awards
in Los Angeles the next year. Although, to be fair,
after that quote in nineteen eighty four about how I
was potentially a great talent, I did get down to
(57:11):
about my last one hundred dollars in the bank, and
actually I actually had to borrow money from my dear
sister to get on the bus to take me to
the airport in New York so I could take the
flight to Los Angeles to start my job there. That's
how close I cut it. Another week and I would
have been borrowing money for food. That's where I was.
(57:34):
But you have to be willing to walk that tight
rope to pull this off in any event. So that
was Boston became the Los Angeles job, and the Los
Angeles job. When they eliminated that, it's like, well, his
career is over now. The next job was ESPN. ESPN
led to NBC. When that didn't work out and I
pushed to get out of there, they sold me to
Fox for a million dollars and they paid me a
(57:55):
lot of money and continued to pay me a lot
of money even after they stopped putting me on TV.
And that led to a doldrum period where I got
to read about the guy who's now retired from Sports
Illustrated explaining what network will sign him now, what team
will sign him now? Whither Keith? This is two thousand
and one. I was forty two years old. It's like
I get nostalgic reading that, going, yeah, you were forty
(58:18):
two years old. They fired you at that point people
thought your career was over. Yeah, but I was forty two.
My hair was dark most places in any event, So
that led into the MSNBC job, and the MSNBC job,
as sort of messy as that ended, the second one,
anyway led to the Current TV job, and as disastrous
(58:40):
as that was, since it was kind of a confidence trick,
there was a day where between the money I got
for leaving NBC and the money I got for joining
Current TV, I made sixty eight million dollars in one day.
I had to sew a lot of people afterwards to
get all of it, but I got just about all
of it. In any event, I'm now boasting back to
(59:00):
the point of this whole story. An old friend of
mine came in when I was doing the videos for
GQ The Closer and The Resistance in twenty sixteen. In
twenty seventeen, came in to watch me do this and
started to ask very very graciously and very gently about, well,
isn't this something of a come down for you from
the MSNBC experience where you had a staff, And I said, well,
(59:23):
first off, the MSNBC experience consisted of two cameramen and
a floor director and me and sometimes a guest in
a studio. The staff, whereas they were all certainly dedicated
to the project, consisted of basically a core of six
or seven people. It never really felt like a big deal.
(59:44):
I know it had more influence than I was ever
led to understand, but it wasn't like, oh, well, you
know those movies that you did with Richard Burton and
Elizabeth Taylor and Tom Cruise, and now you're just sitting
at home with a camera. It didn't have that feel
in the slightest. And I said to him, did you
see the thing from CBS News the other day? And
(01:00:05):
he went, what thing from CBS News? I said, don't
you have the Google at the New York Times? And
he said yes. I said, Google, Social Flow, Facebook, and
he did on his phone and he read this political
pundit Keith Alderman found a way to channel concerns about
mister Trump. This is July twenty seventeen, started hosting a
series of political commentary and special interviews titled The Resistance
(01:00:27):
with Keith Olderman, with the first episode featured on GQ
on November sixteenth, twenty sixteen, reaching fifty four million people
equivalent to one in six Americans, And I said, look,
I understand that if you measure things solely by the
idea that I'm on your TV every night, Well, yeah,
(01:00:47):
that the doing a video and coming into a studio
that isn't really designed for TV and there's an echo
in it might seem like the end of my career.
Fifty four million people saw that video and interacted with
it in some kind. They either forwarded it, or watched it,
or put a comment on it, or sometimes all three.
That was, in fact the number one political video or
(01:01:10):
story on Facebook in the period of time after Donald
Trump's election. I think that's something of a success. And
I said, by this point, I don't need the damn money.
The money I'm making from doing this is going to
dog charities. Okay, So we could go on at length
about other small versions of that. I once went back
and forth with this guy who now is one of
(01:01:31):
the people at Puck News who insisted that I had
not been negotiating with the then chairman of NBC Jeff Schell,
about returning to MSNBC in twenty nineteen twenty and twenty one,
because NBC News had insisted it wasn't true. And I said,
who told you that, and they said a spokesman. And
I said to this guy, his name was Dylan Byers,
(01:01:52):
I said, well, who was the spokesman. Well, it's just
supposed to be a spokesman, I said. So. They wouldn't
even put their own name on it, not even a
made up name Jim Jones, NBC News spokesman, which would
have been, by the way, appropriate name for a series
of NBC News spokespeople. They didn't even do that. And
he said no. They were insistent, there's never been any
contact between you and Jeff Shell. And I went hang on,
(01:02:15):
and I called up from my phone twenty three emails
and texts from Jeff Shell. I photo shot at them,
I screen shotted them and gave him to the guy.
And I don't think this guy Buyers has recovered since
his worldview was totally destroyed. He was writing a story
about how I had deteriorated to the point where I
was hallucinating about being in contact with Jeff Shell from
(01:02:39):
NBC News or from NBC about returning to NBC News
and MSNBC when we were deep into negotiations about it,
and we're delayed only by the pandemic. And as I
pointed out here before the vetos of certain people working
on the air at MSNBC, most of whose careers I started.
But that's another story which I've already discussed. His whole
(01:02:59):
worldview was shattered by this because should do be He
could not comprehend that an NBC News spokesperson would lie
to him, And he really said this. He said, I
don't understand why would they lie to me? And I said,
you don't have to understand that the idea that they
would not put their own name on this statement might
have suggested to you that they were lying to you. Oh,
(01:03:21):
I'll keep that in mind. Well, he didn't keep that
in mind. But that's again another story about Dylan Byers,
and we'll get to him somedayday too, somewhere soon. Somebody
asked towards the end of July twenty twenty four about
my recent comeback and how I'd just gotten back into
political commentary now with the new podcast, and I said,
(01:03:42):
it's two years old. On August first, it was approaching
five hundred episodes. We're doing like a million listens a week,
a million audience participants a week. I mean, it's challenging
certain hours on CNN for total audience. Good God, what
(01:04:02):
do you mean recent comeback? But this is, as I said,
if I had ten million dollars for every time somebody
told me my career was over, A career is sort
of over because I'm now of advanced years and now
I've done something that I really didn't understand until the
(01:04:23):
year twenty eleven, until I left MSNBC to go to
Current TV, and there was built into this transfer a
three month period of time where I could not work
anywhere in television. I had not had such a period
of time except for the aforementioned period when I was
taken care of family members who were in trouble in
(01:04:44):
nineteen eighty five after the Boston experience, I hadn't had
such a length of time without being on the air somewhere.
And in fact, during that period in nineteen eighty five,
I did a lot of freelance work just to get
the cash that I didn't have to borrow from my sister,
who was, by the way, seventeen years old at the time. Yeah, Jen,
have you got a twenty Yeah, I need to go
(01:05:06):
buy a cigar. In any event, the point of this
was until twenty eleven, i'd really not had a day
or at least a week without deadlines media deadlines. You
have to have this written by eight o'clock because the
show is starting with or without you. I hadn't had
a day or a week without those since I was
sixteen years old. I was to my shock. I found
(01:05:27):
I really enjoyed not having those deadlines. And when we
went back on the air in Current TV in June
of twenty eleven, I was kind of disappointed, not because
the studio was actually not a studio but more like
a you know, a portal to Hell and not that
part of it, which was disappointing, but not as much
as I really enjoyed, you know, not shaving every weekday
(01:05:49):
and not having to write, you know, ten thousand words
a day, and not having to read the twelve seconds
of script inside the twelve second window before the sound hit,
and just the number of deadlines I suddenly did and
a half. So since twenty eleven, I decided to cut
back to four days work a week generally speaking, that's
(01:06:11):
my concession to my mid sixties. And as I was
preparing this to tell you this story, in light of
the experience I had with my friend who thought his
career was over, and I was reciting this, I realized
that I had left out in telling him the story,
and I have deliberately left it out of the chronological
order of these tales of the actual first time I
(01:06:33):
was told my career was over, I had forgotten completely
about the day that the sports director what was then
a prominent radio station told me that not only would
he and the news director there not hire me, even
though I had been told I was a candidate for
a sports job there, but he told me that I
would never get a job in radio or television of
(01:06:55):
any prominence because of my attitude. No one will ever
hire you. His name was Ernie Jackson, and I believe
he left the town we were in to get a
job selling airtime on a radio station in Cincinnati, and
after that, I don't know what the hell happened to him.
The news director was a guy named Bob Lynch, and
(01:07:16):
he shortly thereafter moved to a job that I think
he spent his entire professional career at traffic reporter in
a plane above the beautiful city of Rochester, New York
the date that mister Jackson, on mister Lynch's behalf told
me that my career was over. The first time I
was told you will never again work in this business,
(01:07:38):
the first good evening and welcome to the end of
my career, was October nineteen seventy seven. I've done all
(01:08:01):
the damage I can do here, and yet thank you
for listening. Most of our countdown music was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel. Our
musical directors have countdown. Neither of their careers is over.
It was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray on the guitars,
bass and drums, mister Chanelle handling, orchestration and keyboards. Our
(01:08:23):
satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball
stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, who's also heard that same
message and whose career is also not over. The Olberman
theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
of ESPN, Inc. Is the sports music I can't speak
to mister Davis. I don't know him personally, but ah,
(01:08:43):
how many times has ESPN been declared dead since nineteen
seventy nine and it's still here. Other music arranged and
performed by the group No Horns allowed. I don't think
they're still in business. Individually, They're all still in business,
but I don't think the group performs anymore, so maybe
their career is over. My announcer today was my friend
Johnny Banks from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. His
(01:09:06):
career ate over everything else was as always my fault.
So that's countdown for today. Day two hundred and forty
six of America held hostage again, just twenty seven days
until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck lame brained term,
unless he is removed sooner by MAGA than Jeffrey Epstein
(01:09:28):
or Tom I put the hoe in home Man, or
the pavement on Trump's hand or whatever. The next scheduled
countdown is Thursday. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
(01:10:08):
Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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Host
Keith Olbermann
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