September 20, 2023 • 37 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 39: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: NOW the Deep State has done it! NOW the Deep State has made its 27-Dimensional Chess move to cement the place of THE conspiracy in place and it will be left only to a few patriots and the Dilbert Guy to carry the torch of truth. Because WE knew it didn’t add up because Ray Epps had never been charged and now the evil genius bastards have CHARGED RAY EPPS. He could get up to 90 days and be fined maybe 500 dollars! American!
The conspiracy to frame Donald Trump is the greatest conspiracy in the history of the world and it was designed to make it look like Trump lost the 2020 election and destroy Jon Voight’s chances of winning a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Oscars and make Joe Rogan look stupid. Well, MORE stupid. And then when the LEAK happened – the provocateur – the FBI plant who started it all and whose fault it all is – Ray Epps talked all the Trump supporters into going into the Capitol even though the other part of the conspiracy says everybody who went INTO the Capitol was Antifa - when it was revealed by the investigative team of Maria Bartiromo and Cat Turd that the feds left one nearly invisible loose thread – that the Deep State claimed Ray Epps wasn’t a plant yet they never CHARGED Ray Epps, they suddenly DID charge Ray Epps yesterday and the masterminds behind this vast earth-shattering conspiracy decided to cover their tracks and silence all protest forever by…charging him with one misdemeanor count of disruptive conduct and he’s pleading guilty today.
And yet there it is, across Right Wing Looney Tunes land, the utter conviction, the absolute certainty from each of them that they alone have noticed that Epps was charged with one negligible offense and has seemingly already made a plea deal and that the rest of the world didn’t notice – everybody but Catturd, who valiantly stood up and braved assassination probably by typing “You’re not fooling anyone, Feds!"
Oh god are they stupid.
And The Stupid was all around the circuit yesterday: somebody used Matt Gaetz's printer to produce a copy of his resolution to oust McCarthy as Speaker, then left it in a Baby-Changing Station to be found by a reporter. Tim Scott was stupid enough to attack unions. Trump attacked Biden with the 25th Amendment and got everything ABOUT the 25th Amendment wrong. And 46 Republican Senators wrote a letter complaining about the relaxed attire rules in the Senate when the owner of their party wears bronzer, spray paints his hair, and lives inside a baseball cap.
B-Block (19:52) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Peter Baker thinks the job of the president of the United States has actually been made tougher by something written by a guy who is evidently a columnist for The Washington Post. Add it to the list: Trump either doesn't know how the 25th Amendment work or thinks his cultists don't. And a Texas school district fires a teacher for reading The Diary of Anne Frank to 8th Graders because it was too sexy.
C-Block (27:32) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My least favorite near-death experience? United Nations Week here in Fun City! My MOST favorite near-death experience? When the president of MSNBC chased me around the studios threatening to destroy me. God that was funny.
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. Oh
now the deep State has done it. Now the deep
(00:25):
State has made its twenty seven dimensional chess move to
cement the place of the conspiracy, and it will be
left only to a few patriots and the Dilbert guy
to carry the tarch of truth and bad comic strips
alone and at great risk to themselves and in the darkness,
which at least explains why Dilbert was such a bad
(00:46):
comic strip. We the where we go round the Mulberry Bush.
We all go round the Mulberry Bush crowd. We knew
it was the matrix, and we red pilled or we
blue pilled. I can never keep that straight, but we
knew it didn't add up because ray Epps had never
been charged. And now those evil genius deep State pastards
(01:09):
have charged ray Epps. You could get a suspended sentence
and a five hundred dollars fine. Do you know how
much money five hundred dollars is?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I'm asking do you because a lot of us here
in QAnon Land we have problems with simple math like
that is five hundred dollars like more than a million,
or as you know, January sixth was orchestrated by Nancy
Pelosi to increase the viewership of her daughter's HBO documentary
about Nancy Pelosi. And it was executed by George Soros,
(01:46):
Ray Epps, Liz Cheney, Jeffrey Epstein who you only think
is dead and you only think is pronounced Epstein, Jane Fonda,
Hunter Biden, Antifa and its head that actress Queen Antifa
and Brian Stelter and John Fetterman and John Fetterman's body
double replacement, not the original one, but the new one
(02:06):
with the better ears. It was a conspiracy so vast
that only when two superheroes from different Marvel universes joined forces,
Kevin McCarthy, the greatest speaker of the House of Representatives
in the last eight months, and Tucker Carlson, remember Tucker Carlson.
(02:29):
Only when they joined forces was this evil exposed. The
video proves this plus on Twitter the video it's been
seen well over eleventy billion times. The conspiracy to frame
Donald Trump. How could he hate America? He has a flag,
(02:50):
he hugs the flag, and he has a baseball cap
that not only says America but also says great. The
conspiracy to frame this God is the greatest conspiracy in
the history of the world, and it was designed to
make it look like Trump lost the twenty twenty election,
(03:10):
and to destroy John Voight's chances of winning a Lifetime
Achievement award at the Oscars, and to make Joe Rogan
look stupid, well more stupid. And then when the league happened,
the provocateur, the FBI plant who started it all, who
(03:32):
years ago joined the oathkeepers and rose through the ranks
for that one moment, the mole, the man who's faulted
all his ray Epps. He's the one who talked to
all the Trump supporters into going into the Capitol, even
though the other part of this conspiracy tells us that
everybody who went into the capital was Antifa. When it
(03:54):
was revealed by the investigative team of Maria Bartiromo and
Cat Turd that the Feds left one nearly invisible loose
thread that the deep State claimed ray Epps was not
a plant, yet they never charged ray Epps when they
(04:14):
saw they had left that one thread and it was
being pulled on. Suddenly, suddenly, yesterday, suddenly the FEDS charged
ray Apps and the masterminds behind this vast earth shattering
conspiracy decided to cover their tracks and silence all protest
(04:36):
forever by charging him with one misdemeanor count of disruptive conduct.
And he's pleading guilty today because yeah, yeah, it's all
a plot to make Trump look bad, like he isn't
the greatest asset we have in making himself look bad
(04:59):
and the vast left wing conspiracy. We thought we would
just shut all the talk about it being a conspiracy
down by charging Ray Epps with one count which could
see him find nearly five hundred dollars. Nothing to see here,
right wingers move on. And yet there it is across
(05:23):
right wing looney tunes Land, the utter conviction, the absolute
certainty from each of them that they and they alone
have noticed that Epps was only charged with one negligible offense,
and seemingly he already made a plea deal, and that
the rest of the world did not notice everybody but Cattard,
who valiantly stood up and braved probably assassination by typing,
(05:49):
you're not fooling anyone, FEDS. And of course also the
other one who noticed was Michael T forty seven, proud
Navy vet, who alone other than kat Turd deduced that
EPP's got a fine and a misdemeanor. Wake up. If
it was staged and you sit in you wonder, Okay,
(06:11):
I get how you could be so stupid is to
think Trump did not incite the insurrection on January sixth,
didn't depend upon it happening, didn't lead it from behind.
I get that. To go on believing in this utter fraud,
you have to have some kind of conspiracy theory. But
(06:33):
how could you go beyond that level of stupidity into
an utterly different universe of stupidity in which the grand
conspiracy that fooled hundreds of millions of people, not just
here but around the world, which is flat The Grand
(06:55):
Conspiracy included somebody who said, and then our endgame, George
is we fine? Ray Ebbs, five hundred fish and the
conspiracy is erased forever. Checkmate, cat Turd, Yeah yeah, Q
(07:18):
and honors and trumpists and people who think James Woods
was a great actor. You got us, We thought, if
we staged this thing where mister Epps and honestly, I'm
surprised you missed our little Easter egg clue in their
Epps Epstein, am I right. We thought, if we staged
(07:41):
this thing, where to call him by his correct name,
Commander Epps of the interstellar Sorosian Empire agreed to submit
himself briefly to earthly justice and to be charged with
misdemeanor disruptive conduct here on Earth five hundred dollars up
(08:02):
to ninety days in jail. Do the math. Oh sorry,
not ninety days is like three months, depending on which
months you pick. I know they don't all have the
same number of days. I get confused to not just you.
We thought if we did that, you all would never notice,
(08:23):
and finally this thing could be put to bed, and
then it would be all over, and we would have
made not just Trump look bad, but all Republicans look bad.
Because Republicans are not making themselves look bad at the
moment at all. We need a conspiracy right now to
make the Republicans look bad because they couldn't pass any
(08:43):
spending bills at all, even the one for the Pentagon.
And just because an independent and freelance journalist named Matt
Laslow had to use the bathroom at the Capitol yesterday
and the one he chose had a baby changing station,
and there on the right fold it over was one
sheet of paper, and when Laslow unfold it read one
(09:06):
and eighteenth Congress, first Session House Resolution, and then where
the number goes after House resolution, it was blank and
then declaring the Office of Speaker of the House of
Representatives to be vacant, followed by resolution declaring the Office
of Speaker of the House of Representatives to be vacant,
followed by resolved that the Office of Speaker of the
(09:28):
House of Representatives is hereby declared to be vacant. And oh,
by the way, upper left corner on this one page
found at the baby changing station is the printer code
and it reads g Colan backslash m backslash one eight,
backslash Gates, backslash Gates again underscore one nine four dot XML.
(09:52):
A reporter found a motion to vacate that had been
printed by Gates and left at a baby changing station
in the Capitol. A motion to o Kevin McCarthy as
Speaker printed by Gates. Which baby was being changed? Was
it Bobert or was it Marjorie Taylor Green? Hours after
(10:18):
punch Bowl News had scooped that you should expect a
motion to vacate sometime this week. Hours after Congress, and
ken Buck said there really would not be a move
to actually oust Kevin McCarthy unless he went to the
Democrats for help passing a continuing resolution, And then ken
Bud said they really did need to pass a continuing resolution.
He didn't see how it could happen unless McCarthy goes
(10:39):
to the Democrats for you, Matt, what happened to your
motion to vacate? I thought we were doing it this week.
I don't know. I must have left it somewhere. I mean,
I retraced my steps. I only made my usual stops yesterday,
gun polishing machine, hair wax dispenser on the third floor.
(11:00):
I stopped by the local high school cheerleaders practice baby station,
where I get all my ideas, and of course I
went to my secret daily meeting with Commander Epps of
the interstellar Serocian Empire. The Republicans are stupid, thank god.
(11:24):
Four out of ten Union households voted Republican in twenty
twenty in the presidential election. So they asked this bonehead
presidential wannabe, Senator Tim I'm not fooling anybody Scott about
the UAW strike, and he said he believed all strikers
should be fired, just like Reagan did to the federal
(11:45):
employees in nineteen eighty one. Golly, I didn't know the
auto workers were federal employees. Tim, did your girlfriend tell
you that Trump has attacked Biden again? But something has
newly occurred to him? And which one of them is
he is mentally unfit to be president or too old
(12:08):
for something like? I don't know. Remembering last week I
ask he wrote, why hasn't the Republican Party begun the
process of invoking the twenty fifth Amendment against Biden? And
I mean it's it's academic, I know, but just this once,
I feel like I really need to know if, after
(12:29):
all the talk that the twenty fifth Amendment might be
invoked against him when he was president, I mean, it
registered enough with him that he seems to have remembered
that it is a process and it is the twenty
fifth and in fact it is invoked. I really need
to know since he remembered all that, if he's too
(12:49):
dumb to realize that the presidential cabinet invokes the twenty
fifth Amendment, not Congress. Congress wouldn't get involved until later,
or he's just in his usual stance that his supporters
are too dumb to realize that the presidentsidential cabinet and
not the Congress, invokes the twenty fifth Amendment right that
(13:11):
Biden should be removed under the nineteenth Amendment. You can
hear Trump saying, and Walt Naude, double shifting as secretary
to cover his legal bills, says, but mister Almighty President,
your highness, the nineteenth Amendment was the one that gave
women the right to vote. And Trump says, what's the difference?
These morons are dumb enough to vote for me, How
they gonna know which amendment is which? In fact, don't
(13:33):
even write amendment right, agamemnon, call it the nineteenth agamemnon.
See if anybody notices, See if that idiot cat turd notices. Lastly,
on this topic, last night, all but three Republican senators
(13:54):
wrote to Majority Leader Schumer about the nation's grave crisis.
The casual attire in the Senate scandal following casual clothing
on the Senate floor disrespects the institution we serve and
the American families we represent, wrote Senator Rick Scott. Every
(14:14):
day goes on to the Senate floor dressed like Voldemort
from Harry Potter Rick Scott, whose campaign website is still
up and shows him wearing a light blue plaid work
shirt and a baseball cap, and whose party is run
by a guy who wears a different colored baseball cap
(14:37):
and bronzer and sprays his hair with gold rustolium number
two four five two two one. Let us give thanks.
Republicans are this dumb, because of course Democrats are largely
(14:57):
uninspired and incompetent. And if Republicans were not this dumb,
I would be recording this in the salt mine I
slaved in, and you would be listening to it in
the one you slave in. Also of interest here, and
(15:21):
I'm sorry if I'm a little wackier than usual, but
the United Nations is here around my house, and I
walked among them for like three hours yesterday, and it's
hard to believe that there could be a class of
people more shocked and frozen in place by tall buildings
and traffic and dogs on leashes, more shocked by that
(15:45):
than the regular tourists of this town. But the UN staffers,
they are that group, and we block all the streets
off for them, I guess, so they don't disappear into
the ether while trying to decipher our parking and no
parking signs and regulations. AnyWho, So they fired a teacher
(16:06):
for reading the diary of a franc to her eighth graders.
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Wait,
(16:28):
who was that? I know? Who is that? Still ahead
on countdown? I'll tell you later. Good day to tell again.
My favorite near death experience at the hands of an
ex president of CNN and MSNBC. My least favorite near
death experience is un week. Surprisingly enough, this man was
(16:52):
the only one of my former bosses to actually try
to kill me. So far, things I promise not to tell.
Coming up first time for the daily roundup of the miscreants, Morons,
Dunn and Kruger effect specimens who constant to today's worse
persons from the US, worst persons in the world, the Brons.
To Peter Baker of The New York Times, Pete is
(17:15):
having quite the week. On Sunday, it was he who
was chosen to appear on Meet the Press after Kristen
Welker ended her career by treating Trump like somebody. Dateline
was doing the feature on because he had invented a
new mascara for men and it had caused blindness. Yesterday,
Peter Baker was on MSNBC Day Side, Home of various
(17:37):
anchors whose contracts have not yet expired, explaining that one
of the things making President Biden's job more difficult at
the moment was quote a tough column by David Ignacious.
Now that name, David Ignacious, that might ring a distant
bell for you. I sort of knew who he was.
He's the guy who always wrote in the Post about
(17:58):
how wonderful the CIA is. And of course, as everybody
at home knows, he once won the Prestigio Gerald Lobe
Award for Distinguished Financial Journalism. Gerald Loeb was a founding
partner of EF Hutton, so you can guess that the
award usually goes to somebody who writes something on the
lines of money is good. Spend your life trying to
(18:19):
accumulate your share and that of as many of your
rivals as you can manage. EF Hutton says the idea
that President Biden's job is affected by a tough column
by David Ignacious is a hilarious and desperate piece of
self justification by Peter Baker. I mean, do you think
(18:43):
when I did the original special comments, I thought that
George Bush gave a damn about what I was saying.
Good God, and I was on TV. Biden's job is
not affected by any David Ignacious column, tough or otherwise.
Biden's job is not affected by whether or not there
is a David Ignacious. But a guy from the New
(19:05):
York Times thinks the column from the Washington Post is decisive.
I mean, I guess I should count my blessings here
that a Times guy thinks a column from the Washington
Post matters to the president. Usually Times guys only think
columns in the Times matter to the president the runner
up Trump. This is besides the usual serious crap. This
(19:28):
is just the stupid stuff he says, and not enough
people point and go. Isn't he too old and too
brain addled and too demented, and too stupid and too
bumbling and too given to malapropisms and too incapable of
spelling to be president? He was asked about Governor Christy
Nome of South Dakota, North Dakota. Christy Nome is a
(19:49):
governor from somewhere west of Cleveland. Christy Nome is still
being mentioned as a potential vice presidential pick, even after
it was revealed that she's been carrying on an affair
with Corey Lewandowski, the former Trump campaign manager and so
actual harasser and woman shover. Trump did not stop by
(20:09):
Our planet Earth before he offered his comment on get
Christy Nomes love. Quote, She's been a great governor. She
gave me a full throated endorsement. Thank god, Oh my god,
Oh my god, full throated endorsement. It's okay, but the winner.
Dwyane Augustine, I mean, I thought we were talking about
(20:31):
Boulbart here for a moment. Dwayne Augustine, superintendent of the
Hampshire Fennette Independent School District in Texas. Independent as a
brand name. Superintendent Augustine and his school district have fired
an unidentified teacher after parent complaints that the teacher read
a graphic novel to her eighth graders, We Could Go Today.
(20:54):
It contained references to sexuality, originally written by a teenaged
girl nearly eighty years ago. The school district is now
investigating whether the book was approved by the principle, so
she might be fired too. Quote. The reading of that
content will cease immediately. Your student's teacher will communicate her
apologies to you and your students soon as she has
(21:16):
expressed those apologies to us, wrote the head of communications
for the school district, who obviously dropped out in the
third grade. Your student's teacher will communicate her apologies as
she is what Actually the teacher is busy hiring a lawyer.
And if our nation could hire a lawyer and sue
the Hampshire Finnet Independent School District it's between Beaumont Houston,
(21:41):
that'd be good too, because the book the teacher was
fired for reading was the graphic novel version of the
Diary of On Frock because of the sexual content, the
sexual content that eighth graders don't know about. Did anybody
(22:01):
go to the eighth grade.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
In the Hampshire Finnet Independent School District. I mean, obviously
not the spokesman, but I mean, anybody remember the eighth grade.
Middle of the eighth grade, one of my classmates dropped
out because she was pregnant. Dwayne Augustine, superintendent of the
Hampshire Finnette Independent School District in Texas, who has no
idea what eighth graders know about sex already? And who
(22:27):
probably doesn't know who en franc was and has no
idea that he is now part of the persecution of
knowledge and should be banned from our educational system. I mean,
the one here on earth, today's worst person in the.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Finally a number one story in the Countdown Things. I
promised not to tell him. Back to my favorite topic, me,
How exactly was I supposed to tell the police that
the man threatened to kill me was the president of MSNBC.
He was chasing me through the studios. He was too
overweight to run. But even though he inexplicably lied and
(23:25):
said he was six foot seven, at six foot five,
this guy his name was Rick Kaplan, and he was
the soon to be ex president of MSNBC, just as
he was already the ex president of CNN. He still
had strides as long as my own. Plus On that
night of August eighth, two thousand and five, I was multitasking.
I was trying to mentally record everything he was shouting,
(23:48):
while also drawing him away from the live microphones of
the live studio in which he had started shouting, while
also phishing for my office key so I could lock
myself in there if need be, while also figuring out
how I would hit him if it came to that,
while also trying to register the superb double takes from
(24:08):
my colleagues past, whom he was stomping like an out
of shape Frankenstein, while also trying to suppress an overwhelming
and seemingly inappropriate desire to burst into laughter while still
game planning the soon to be inevitable called to the
cops a beautiful downtown Secaucus, New Jersey. Hi. Yeah, yeah,
(24:32):
he's trying to kill me my boss, the president of MSNBC. Yeah, yeah,
the cable television network. Yeah, exactly down the street from
the London Fog Outlet store. Yeah, one MSNBC Plaza. I
know it's a dumb address. He's about sixty to seventy
(24:53):
five two hundred and eighty pounds. By the way, he
says he's six foot seven, but he's only six foot five.
Why Why does he lie about his height or why
is he trying to kill right? Well, I did a
commentary urging the viewers to stop smoking, and he's afraid
of the mention of blood. Hello. Hello. As all of
this played out in my head, President Kaplan was huffing
(25:15):
and puffing his way through our giant studio, weaving through
the news assignment area, past the makeup room, down the hallways,
nearing the offices of my show countdown, and passed the
bank of a couple of one hundred television monitors with
a different face on every one of them, each seemingly
staring slack jawed at the executive, screaming threats at the
only guy on his own network who got any ratings.
(25:37):
I'll pay you back, I'll get you I'll finish your
I'll tell y'all. This had all begun roughly ten days earlier,
in late July two thousand and five, an oral surgeon
who had intended to examine a growth on the roof
of my mouth that instead, with one pale look, silently
(26:01):
betrayed his suspicion that it was cancerous. Then he cut
the whole thing out. I was on my way to
work anyway, It was too late to get a replacement,
and I was bleeding so much that our technical director
and I decided to pre record all of my on
camera segments for that night's show, thus reducing the chances
of viewers hearing me say President Bush today while blood
(26:24):
oozed out of my mouth over my teeth and lips
and onto the desk like I was dracul Anchor. When
the following Wednesday I got the unexpected all clear from
the surgeon's office, I decided to devote some of each
night's newscast to a campaign to help viewers and myself
quit smoking. My premise was a simple one that I
(26:46):
had never heard argued before and have rarely heard argued since,
that it would be a lot easier to quit if
you didn't have cancer then if you did have cancer.
I pitched my producers on the series. I went into
Rick Kaplan's office to get his seal of approval. He
was enthusiastic and supportive, and most rare of all, he
(27:07):
was paying attention. And then I said, I was also
going to point out that if you got the good
outcome like I had, they would merely stick a laser
in your mouth, and you'd smell your own flesh burning
for like forty eight hours, and you'd have to keep
spitting out your own blood. Don't say that. He suddenly
threw his meaty hands out towards me in a strangling gesture,
(27:27):
and then just as quickly clamped them over his own
ears and closed his eyes and began actually screaming no
no no no no no no no no no no
no no. I thought he had gone crazy, as it
proved he was just practicing for going crazy. Later, I'm sorry,
I'm squeamish. I got the point. I just can't findle
references to, you know, uh, the red stuff. Go ahead
(27:50):
with the series. Just tone down the uh the red stuff.
I toned down the red stuff. And my executive producer
is he Povich, sent him the scripts and he told
her to tone down the red stuff a little more.
And I went and I did that too. We all
decided to start the anti smoking series the following Monday,
(28:13):
August eighth, two thousand and five. By nauseating coincidence, that
was the day after the ABC anchorman Peter Jennings had
died of lung cancer. The MSNBC president had been a
producer on jennings newscast. I had long since written and
recorded jennings obituary, and now this somewhat cold, but still
journalistically valid segue would have to be made. We would
(28:35):
have to go directly from the twelve minute long Jennings
Oh bit to the start of our anti tobacco campaign
eight or nine minutes into that pre recorded Jennings obituary,
Rick Kaplan came out of his office and walked the
fifty feet or so through the vast open newsroom to
where my anchor desk was. His eyes were full of tears.
This is wonderful, he said quietly. Peter would have liked this.
(28:59):
He gave me a thumbs up. Then he walked to
a second desk another fifty feet away, where his first
big high, a woman named Rita Cosby, was about to
premiere his first big gamble, her new show immediately following mine.
I was actually moved by Rick Caplan's comment. I did
not once think of phoning the Secaucus police. But then
(29:21):
I began the anti smoking segment, and as I focused
on the camera and the teleprompter in front of me
and detailed the blood and the gore and the spitting
and how that was the good outcome, out of the
corner of my eye I saw this weird sight. The
President again left his office and waddled out along the
wall thirty feet ahead of me in the general direction
of the control rooms. Within moments, as I continued to
(29:43):
read my script, he was back in the studio and
standing right next to my camera, gesticulating wildly. I said,
they never say it, but wouldn't it be really easier
to quit smoking when you didn't have cancer than when
you did? And Caplan responded with the same two handed
choking gesture he had made briefly in his office much earlier.
(30:04):
Assumed there was some simple problem like that the building
was on fire, but I calculated that I could still
make it to the show's scheduled finished time eight fifty
nine fifty nine EDT and still survive even if others perished.
That's countdown for this the eight hundred and thirtieth day
since the declaration of mission accomplished in Iraq. I'm Keith Oulderman.
Goodnight and good luck your sliver. Rick Kaplan suddenly screamed
(30:29):
from the other anchor desk. I could hear, and this
is my impression of her. Good evening. I'm Rita Cosby.
This is Rita Cosby, Live and direct with Rita Cosby,
and I'm Rita Cosby. She was not a big woman,
but she had a voice on her like the horn
on the Staten Island ferry if it had a cold.
You are over the top. You aren't disgusting. My first
(30:51):
thought was that Kamplin had forgotten that microphones fifty feet
away were live during the premiere of his pet project,
sh Rina is On. I actually whispered to him, silly me,
I don't get a half the three days on, I
told by is He Povish that the piece was over
the top and you needed to cut it, and you didn't.
I still couldn't bring myself to yell back her in
(31:13):
a live studio. I did cut it, and eas He
read it and approved it, and she said you had too.
And Rita's premier is going on over there in that
sort of direction. Maybe you should yell at me closer
to the assignment desk. Maybe I don't give a crap.
If is He approved it, then she's an ass and
I can't trust you. I can't trust you. You're all idiots.
I can't believe you did this to me. I'm trying
(31:33):
to get Rita's show off the ground, and you start
talking about spitting blood into a garbage can. Well, now
I was getting angry. I couldn't resist. Yes, Rita is
in fact live and direct from that desk right over there.
And if you'll notice, she keeps looking over here at
us wondering why you are yelling during the first minutes
of her first show, So why don't we move over here? Rick?
(31:57):
I began to move away from him, and we're walking
away from the live Maa Mike's and we're walking and
we're walking, and Rick and walking because the noise isn't
really professional. Well we're not talking professionals, are we We're
talking idiots. We were walking and he was still screaming,
you're idiots. I will never trust you again. He had
(32:17):
begun to trot or stumble or whatever he was doing.
This is not over. I will pay you back self
serving garbage. I will get you and I'll get that
A hole is he for not staying here and reading
that script? How many times did you intend to say
spit blood into a garbage can before I stopped too.
I now realized what he thought had happened, as he
(32:38):
had gestured spasmodically at me while he stood next to
my camera. I briefly let my focus shift to amazement
at the fact that this guy, who had been in
TV news for twenty five years, knew almost nothing about
how TV worked. I explained to him that Izzy and
one of her assistants and I had gone over the
script several times and taken out half of the Gorrier references.
(33:01):
Then they suck at television. And since I can't trust
any here, since they won't stand up to you and
edit the script, since you obviously bullied them. He bawled
up his fist and stomped his foot on the floor
as he called me a bully. Now going to have
to approve every piece of your copy. By this point,
(33:22):
I was backing into the countdown work area with its
array of desks and all the producers Kaplin had just insulted,
and I knew one of them would dial the phone
when I said, call the cops and call this lunatics boss,
did you hear me? And if you don't like it
and you don't want to come into work tomorrow, that's
fine too. I never did get that part, but now
(33:42):
I had him. I crossed my arms in front of
my chest slowly, like you have seen every news anchor
do in every television news promo ever shown in the
history of the world. I flashed as evil a slow
mo smile as I could, Oh, I'll be here tomorrow,
and then I made a sweeping gesture back towards my staff,
(34:03):
who were both, of course literally and figuratively behind me,
and so will all of them. Suddenly, at that point,
for no apparent reason, Rick Caplan's hysterics were replaced by
mere confusion. He even stopped huffing at almost normal volume.
He asked me all of who. Only at this point
(34:24):
did I turn around to discover that my entire staff
had already left the building. There was nobody there behind me.
Of course, there was nobody there, As I Povich told
me later, he went into the control room and threatened
all of them first, So we got on the phone
back to the office to tell everybody to get the
hell out of the building. She paused and laughed. I mean,
(34:45):
we love you, but we're not crazy. Rick Caplan's exorcism
was a brief one. He began screaming again, I'm gonna
hand your career tomorrow. I'm going to completely f you up.
He turned and stumbled away from my office. Good luck
sleeping tonight. I slept like a stone, and not because
(35:05):
Kaplin had previously threatened to fire me for not leaving
my father's bedside after what they thought was a heart
attack to fly to La to appear on the tonight show,
and not because he'd once threatened to fire me because
he didn't like my tie, and not because he had
previously threatened to fire me for not doing something during
live coverage that I had already done but he thought
we hadn't done because he was watching us, not live
(35:28):
but on delay on his DVR president of a network.
And I slept beautifully, Not because I correctly guessed this
would be it for Rick Caplan and it was. The
next day, human resources forced him to apologize to me,
and ten months later his bosses fired him. Nor did
I snooze blessedly because of any bravery or stoicism or
(35:53):
fatalism on my part. But I slept well simply because
of the realization then, even after all of this, Rick
Kaplan was still only the second or third craziest MSNBC
executive I had ever worked for. I've done all the
(36:23):
damage I can do here. Thanks for listening. Countdown has
come to you from the studios of the Olderman Broadcasting
Empire and Throat Treatment Center. The music you heard was,
for the most part, arrange produced and performed by Countdown
musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel. Brian Ray
handled the guitars, bass and drums. John Phillip Shaneil did
(36:44):
the orchestration and keyboards, and it was produced by Tko Brothers.
Other music, including our Beethoven tunes, were arranged and performed
by No Horns Aloud. The sports music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
And it was written by Mitch Warren Davis, and we
call it the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical
and pithy musical comments are from Nancy House, the best
(37:05):
baseball stadium organists ever. Our announcer today making his debut
was Dennis Leary. Thank you Dennis. Everything else is pretty
much my fault. So that's countdown for this the nine
hundred and eighty eighth day since Donald Trump's first attempted
at coop against the democratically elected government of the United States. Convictim, Now,
why always still can? The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
(37:29):
If my throat permits till then, I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(37:53):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts,
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Oh
now the deep State has done it. Now the deep
(00:25):
State has made its twenty seven dimensional chess move to
cement the place of the conspiracy, and it will be
left only to a few patriots and the Dilbert guy
to carry the tarch of truth and bad comic strips
alone and at great risk to themselves and in the darkness,
which at least explains why Dilbert was such a bad
(00:46):
comic strip. We the where we go round the Mulberry Bush.
We all go round the Mulberry Bush crowd. We knew
it was the matrix, and we red pilled or we
blue pilled. I can never keep that straight, but we
knew it didn't add up because ray Epps had never
been charged. And now those evil genius deep State pastards
(01:09):
have charged ray Epps. You could get a suspended sentence
and a five hundred dollars fine. Do you know how
much money five hundred dollars is?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I'm asking do you because a lot of us here
in QAnon Land we have problems with simple math like
that is five hundred dollars like more than a million,
or as you know, January sixth was orchestrated by Nancy
Pelosi to increase the viewership of her daughter's HBO documentary
about Nancy Pelosi. And it was executed by George Soros,
(01:46):
Ray Epps, Liz Cheney, Jeffrey Epstein who you only think
is dead and you only think is pronounced Epstein, Jane Fonda,
Hunter Biden, Antifa and its head that actress Queen Antifa
and Brian Stelter and John Fetterman and John Fetterman's body
double replacement, not the original one, but the new one
(02:06):
with the better ears. It was a conspiracy so vast
that only when two superheroes from different Marvel universes joined forces,
Kevin McCarthy, the greatest speaker of the House of Representatives
in the last eight months, and Tucker Carlson, remember Tucker Carlson.
(02:29):
Only when they joined forces was this evil exposed. The
video proves this plus on Twitter the video it's been
seen well over eleventy billion times. The conspiracy to frame
Donald Trump. How could he hate America? He has a flag,
(02:50):
he hugs the flag, and he has a baseball cap
that not only says America but also says great. The
conspiracy to frame this God is the greatest conspiracy in
the history of the world, and it was designed to
make it look like Trump lost the twenty twenty election,
(03:10):
and to destroy John Voight's chances of winning a Lifetime
Achievement award at the Oscars, and to make Joe Rogan
look stupid, well more stupid. And then when the league happened,
the provocateur, the FBI plant who started it all, who
(03:32):
years ago joined the oathkeepers and rose through the ranks
for that one moment, the mole, the man who's faulted
all his ray Epps. He's the one who talked to
all the Trump supporters into going into the Capitol, even
though the other part of this conspiracy tells us that
everybody who went into the capital was Antifa. When it
(03:54):
was revealed by the investigative team of Maria Bartiromo and
Cat Turd that the Feds left one nearly invisible loose
thread that the deep State claimed ray Epps was not
a plant, yet they never charged ray Epps when they
(04:14):
saw they had left that one thread and it was
being pulled on. Suddenly, suddenly, yesterday, suddenly the FEDS charged
ray Apps and the masterminds behind this vast earth shattering
conspiracy decided to cover their tracks and silence all protest
(04:36):
forever by charging him with one misdemeanor count of disruptive conduct.
And he's pleading guilty today because yeah, yeah, it's all
a plot to make Trump look bad, like he isn't
the greatest asset we have in making himself look bad
(04:59):
and the vast left wing conspiracy. We thought we would
just shut all the talk about it being a conspiracy
down by charging Ray Epps with one count which could
see him find nearly five hundred dollars. Nothing to see here,
right wingers move on. And yet there it is across
(05:23):
right wing looney tunes Land, the utter conviction, the absolute
certainty from each of them that they and they alone
have noticed that Epps was only charged with one negligible offense,
and seemingly he already made a plea deal, and that
the rest of the world did not notice everybody but Cattard,
who valiantly stood up and braved probably assassination by typing,
(05:49):
you're not fooling anyone, FEDS. And of course also the
other one who noticed was Michael T forty seven, proud
Navy vet, who alone other than kat Turd deduced that
EPP's got a fine and a misdemeanor. Wake up. If
it was staged and you sit in you wonder, Okay,
(06:11):
I get how you could be so stupid is to
think Trump did not incite the insurrection on January sixth,
didn't depend upon it happening, didn't lead it from behind.
I get that. To go on believing in this utter fraud,
you have to have some kind of conspiracy theory. But
(06:33):
how could you go beyond that level of stupidity into
an utterly different universe of stupidity in which the grand
conspiracy that fooled hundreds of millions of people, not just
here but around the world, which is flat The Grand
(06:55):
Conspiracy included somebody who said, and then our endgame, George
is we fine? Ray Ebbs, five hundred fish and the
conspiracy is erased forever. Checkmate, cat Turd, Yeah yeah, Q
(07:18):
and honors and trumpists and people who think James Woods
was a great actor. You got us, We thought, if
we staged this thing where mister Epps and honestly, I'm
surprised you missed our little Easter egg clue in their
Epps Epstein, am I right. We thought, if we staged
(07:41):
this thing, where to call him by his correct name,
Commander Epps of the interstellar Sorosian Empire agreed to submit
himself briefly to earthly justice and to be charged with
misdemeanor disruptive conduct here on Earth five hundred dollars up
(08:02):
to ninety days in jail. Do the math. Oh sorry,
not ninety days is like three months, depending on which
months you pick. I know they don't all have the
same number of days. I get confused to not just you.
We thought if we did that, you all would never notice,
(08:23):
and finally this thing could be put to bed, and
then it would be all over, and we would have
made not just Trump look bad, but all Republicans look bad.
Because Republicans are not making themselves look bad at the
moment at all. We need a conspiracy right now to
make the Republicans look bad because they couldn't pass any
(08:43):
spending bills at all, even the one for the Pentagon.
And just because an independent and freelance journalist named Matt
Laslow had to use the bathroom at the Capitol yesterday
and the one he chose had a baby changing station,
and there on the right fold it over was one
sheet of paper, and when Laslow unfold it read one
(09:06):
and eighteenth Congress, first Session House Resolution, and then where
the number goes after House resolution, it was blank and
then declaring the Office of Speaker of the House of
Representatives to be vacant, followed by resolution declaring the Office
of Speaker of the House of Representatives to be vacant,
followed by resolved that the Office of Speaker of the
(09:28):
House of Representatives is hereby declared to be vacant. And oh,
by the way, upper left corner on this one page
found at the baby changing station is the printer code
and it reads g Colan backslash m backslash one eight,
backslash Gates, backslash Gates again underscore one nine four dot XML.
(09:52):
A reporter found a motion to vacate that had been
printed by Gates and left at a baby changing station
in the Capitol. A motion to o Kevin McCarthy as
Speaker printed by Gates. Which baby was being changed? Was
it Bobert or was it Marjorie Taylor Green? Hours after
(10:18):
punch Bowl News had scooped that you should expect a
motion to vacate sometime this week. Hours after Congress, and
ken Buck said there really would not be a move
to actually oust Kevin McCarthy unless he went to the
Democrats for help passing a continuing resolution, And then ken
Bud said they really did need to pass a continuing resolution.
He didn't see how it could happen unless McCarthy goes
(10:39):
to the Democrats for you, Matt, what happened to your
motion to vacate? I thought we were doing it this week.
I don't know. I must have left it somewhere. I mean,
I retraced my steps. I only made my usual stops yesterday,
gun polishing machine, hair wax dispenser on the third floor.
(11:00):
I stopped by the local high school cheerleaders practice baby station,
where I get all my ideas, and of course I
went to my secret daily meeting with Commander Epps of
the interstellar Serocian Empire. The Republicans are stupid, thank god.
(11:24):
Four out of ten Union households voted Republican in twenty
twenty in the presidential election. So they asked this bonehead
presidential wannabe, Senator Tim I'm not fooling anybody Scott about
the UAW strike, and he said he believed all strikers
should be fired, just like Reagan did to the federal
(11:45):
employees in nineteen eighty one. Golly, I didn't know the
auto workers were federal employees. Tim, did your girlfriend tell
you that Trump has attacked Biden again? But something has
newly occurred to him? And which one of them is
he is mentally unfit to be president or too old
(12:08):
for something like? I don't know. Remembering last week I
ask he wrote, why hasn't the Republican Party begun the
process of invoking the twenty fifth Amendment against Biden? And
I mean it's it's academic, I know, but just this once,
I feel like I really need to know if, after
(12:29):
all the talk that the twenty fifth Amendment might be
invoked against him when he was president, I mean, it
registered enough with him that he seems to have remembered
that it is a process and it is the twenty
fifth and in fact it is invoked. I really need
to know since he remembered all that, if he's too
(12:49):
dumb to realize that the presidential cabinet invokes the twenty
fifth Amendment, not Congress. Congress wouldn't get involved until later,
or he's just in his usual stance that his supporters
are too dumb to realize that the presidentsidential cabinet and
not the Congress, invokes the twenty fifth Amendment right that
(13:11):
Biden should be removed under the nineteenth Amendment. You can
hear Trump saying, and Walt Naude, double shifting as secretary
to cover his legal bills, says, but mister Almighty President,
your highness, the nineteenth Amendment was the one that gave
women the right to vote. And Trump says, what's the difference?
These morons are dumb enough to vote for me, How
they gonna know which amendment is which? In fact, don't
(13:33):
even write amendment right, agamemnon, call it the nineteenth agamemnon.
See if anybody notices, See if that idiot cat turd notices. Lastly,
on this topic, last night, all but three Republican senators
(13:54):
wrote to Majority Leader Schumer about the nation's grave crisis.
The casual attire in the Senate scandal following casual clothing
on the Senate floor disrespects the institution we serve and
the American families we represent, wrote Senator Rick Scott. Every
(14:14):
day goes on to the Senate floor dressed like Voldemort
from Harry Potter Rick Scott, whose campaign website is still
up and shows him wearing a light blue plaid work
shirt and a baseball cap, and whose party is run
by a guy who wears a different colored baseball cap
(14:37):
and bronzer and sprays his hair with gold rustolium number
two four five two two one. Let us give thanks.
Republicans are this dumb, because of course Democrats are largely
(14:57):
uninspired and incompetent. And if Republicans were not this dumb,
I would be recording this in the salt mine I
slaved in, and you would be listening to it in
the one you slave in. Also of interest here, and
(15:21):
I'm sorry if I'm a little wackier than usual, but
the United Nations is here around my house, and I
walked among them for like three hours yesterday, and it's
hard to believe that there could be a class of
people more shocked and frozen in place by tall buildings
and traffic and dogs on leashes, more shocked by that
(15:45):
than the regular tourists of this town. But the UN staffers,
they are that group, and we block all the streets
off for them, I guess, so they don't disappear into
the ether while trying to decipher our parking and no
parking signs and regulations. AnyWho, So they fired a teacher
(16:06):
for reading the diary of a franc to her eighth graders.
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Wait,
(16:28):
who was that? I know? Who is that? Still ahead
on countdown? I'll tell you later. Good day to tell again.
My favorite near death experience at the hands of an
ex president of CNN and MSNBC. My least favorite near
death experience is un week. Surprisingly enough, this man was
(16:52):
the only one of my former bosses to actually try
to kill me. So far, things I promise not to tell.
Coming up first time for the daily roundup of the miscreants, Morons,
Dunn and Kruger effect specimens who constant to today's worse
persons from the US, worst persons in the world, the Brons.
To Peter Baker of The New York Times, Pete is
(17:15):
having quite the week. On Sunday, it was he who
was chosen to appear on Meet the Press after Kristen
Welker ended her career by treating Trump like somebody. Dateline
was doing the feature on because he had invented a
new mascara for men and it had caused blindness. Yesterday,
Peter Baker was on MSNBC Day Side, Home of various
(17:37):
anchors whose contracts have not yet expired, explaining that one
of the things making President Biden's job more difficult at
the moment was quote a tough column by David Ignacious.
Now that name, David Ignacious, that might ring a distant
bell for you. I sort of knew who he was.
He's the guy who always wrote in the Post about
(17:58):
how wonderful the CIA is. And of course, as everybody
at home knows, he once won the Prestigio Gerald Lobe
Award for Distinguished Financial Journalism. Gerald Loeb was a founding
partner of EF Hutton, so you can guess that the
award usually goes to somebody who writes something on the
lines of money is good. Spend your life trying to
(18:19):
accumulate your share and that of as many of your
rivals as you can manage. EF Hutton says the idea
that President Biden's job is affected by a tough column
by David Ignacious is a hilarious and desperate piece of
self justification by Peter Baker. I mean, do you think
(18:43):
when I did the original special comments, I thought that
George Bush gave a damn about what I was saying.
Good God, and I was on TV. Biden's job is
not affected by any David Ignacious column, tough or otherwise.
Biden's job is not affected by whether or not there
is a David Ignacious. But a guy from the New
(19:05):
York Times thinks the column from the Washington Post is decisive.
I mean, I guess I should count my blessings here
that a Times guy thinks a column from the Washington
Post matters to the president. Usually Times guys only think
columns in the Times matter to the president the runner
up Trump. This is besides the usual serious crap. This
(19:28):
is just the stupid stuff he says, and not enough
people point and go. Isn't he too old and too
brain addled and too demented, and too stupid and too
bumbling and too given to malapropisms and too incapable of
spelling to be president? He was asked about Governor Christy
Nome of South Dakota, North Dakota. Christy Nome is a
(19:49):
governor from somewhere west of Cleveland. Christy Nome is still
being mentioned as a potential vice presidential pick, even after
it was revealed that she's been carrying on an affair
with Corey Lewandowski, the former Trump campaign manager and so
actual harasser and woman shover. Trump did not stop by
(20:09):
Our planet Earth before he offered his comment on get
Christy Nomes love. Quote, She's been a great governor. She
gave me a full throated endorsement. Thank god, Oh my god,
Oh my god, full throated endorsement. It's okay, but the winner.
Dwyane Augustine, I mean, I thought we were talking about
(20:31):
Boulbart here for a moment. Dwayne Augustine, superintendent of the
Hampshire Fennette Independent School District in Texas. Independent as a
brand name. Superintendent Augustine and his school district have fired
an unidentified teacher after parent complaints that the teacher read
a graphic novel to her eighth graders, We Could Go Today.
(20:54):
It contained references to sexuality, originally written by a teenaged
girl nearly eighty years ago. The school district is now
investigating whether the book was approved by the principle, so
she might be fired too. Quote. The reading of that
content will cease immediately. Your student's teacher will communicate her
apologies to you and your students soon as she has
(21:16):
expressed those apologies to us, wrote the head of communications
for the school district, who obviously dropped out in the
third grade. Your student's teacher will communicate her apologies as
she is what Actually the teacher is busy hiring a lawyer.
And if our nation could hire a lawyer and sue
the Hampshire Finnet Independent School District it's between Beaumont Houston,
(21:41):
that'd be good too, because the book the teacher was
fired for reading was the graphic novel version of the
Diary of On Frock because of the sexual content, the
sexual content that eighth graders don't know about. Did anybody
(22:01):
go to the eighth grade.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
In the Hampshire Finnet Independent School District. I mean, obviously
not the spokesman, but I mean, anybody remember the eighth grade.
Middle of the eighth grade, one of my classmates dropped
out because she was pregnant. Dwayne Augustine, superintendent of the
Hampshire Finnette Independent School District in Texas, who has no
idea what eighth graders know about sex already? And who
(22:27):
probably doesn't know who en franc was and has no
idea that he is now part of the persecution of
knowledge and should be banned from our educational system. I mean,
the one here on earth, today's worst person in the.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Finally a number one story in the Countdown Things. I
promised not to tell him. Back to my favorite topic, me,
How exactly was I supposed to tell the police that
the man threatened to kill me was the president of MSNBC.
He was chasing me through the studios. He was too
overweight to run. But even though he inexplicably lied and
(23:25):
said he was six foot seven, at six foot five,
this guy his name was Rick Kaplan, and he was
the soon to be ex president of MSNBC, just as
he was already the ex president of CNN. He still
had strides as long as my own. Plus On that
night of August eighth, two thousand and five, I was multitasking.
I was trying to mentally record everything he was shouting,
(23:48):
while also drawing him away from the live microphones of
the live studio in which he had started shouting, while
also phishing for my office key so I could lock
myself in there if need be, while also figuring out
how I would hit him if it came to that,
while also trying to register the superb double takes from
(24:08):
my colleagues past, whom he was stomping like an out
of shape Frankenstein, while also trying to suppress an overwhelming
and seemingly inappropriate desire to burst into laughter while still
game planning the soon to be inevitable called to the
cops a beautiful downtown Secaucus, New Jersey. Hi. Yeah, yeah,
(24:32):
he's trying to kill me my boss, the president of MSNBC. Yeah, yeah,
the cable television network. Yeah, exactly down the street from
the London Fog Outlet store. Yeah, one MSNBC Plaza. I
know it's a dumb address. He's about sixty to seventy
(24:53):
five two hundred and eighty pounds. By the way, he
says he's six foot seven, but he's only six foot five.
Why Why does he lie about his height or why
is he trying to kill right? Well, I did a
commentary urging the viewers to stop smoking, and he's afraid
of the mention of blood. Hello. Hello. As all of
this played out in my head, President Kaplan was huffing
(25:15):
and puffing his way through our giant studio, weaving through
the news assignment area, past the makeup room, down the hallways,
nearing the offices of my show countdown, and passed the
bank of a couple of one hundred television monitors with
a different face on every one of them, each seemingly
staring slack jawed at the executive, screaming threats at the
only guy on his own network who got any ratings.
(25:37):
I'll pay you back, I'll get you I'll finish your
I'll tell y'all. This had all begun roughly ten days earlier,
in late July two thousand and five, an oral surgeon
who had intended to examine a growth on the roof
of my mouth that instead, with one pale look, silently
(26:01):
betrayed his suspicion that it was cancerous. Then he cut
the whole thing out. I was on my way to
work anyway, It was too late to get a replacement,
and I was bleeding so much that our technical director
and I decided to pre record all of my on
camera segments for that night's show, thus reducing the chances
of viewers hearing me say President Bush today while blood
(26:24):
oozed out of my mouth over my teeth and lips
and onto the desk like I was dracul Anchor. When
the following Wednesday I got the unexpected all clear from
the surgeon's office, I decided to devote some of each
night's newscast to a campaign to help viewers and myself
quit smoking. My premise was a simple one that I
(26:46):
had never heard argued before and have rarely heard argued since,
that it would be a lot easier to quit if
you didn't have cancer then if you did have cancer.
I pitched my producers on the series. I went into
Rick Kaplan's office to get his seal of approval. He
was enthusiastic and supportive, and most rare of all, he
(27:07):
was paying attention. And then I said, I was also
going to point out that if you got the good
outcome like I had, they would merely stick a laser
in your mouth, and you'd smell your own flesh burning
for like forty eight hours, and you'd have to keep
spitting out your own blood. Don't say that. He suddenly
threw his meaty hands out towards me in a strangling gesture,
(27:27):
and then just as quickly clamped them over his own
ears and closed his eyes and began actually screaming no
no no no no no no no no no no
no no. I thought he had gone crazy, as it
proved he was just practicing for going crazy. Later, I'm sorry,
I'm squeamish. I got the point. I just can't findle
references to, you know, uh, the red stuff. Go ahead
(27:50):
with the series. Just tone down the uh the red stuff.
I toned down the red stuff. And my executive producer
is he Povich, sent him the scripts and he told
her to tone down the red stuff a little more.
And I went and I did that too. We all
decided to start the anti smoking series the following Monday,
(28:13):
August eighth, two thousand and five. By nauseating coincidence, that
was the day after the ABC anchorman Peter Jennings had
died of lung cancer. The MSNBC president had been a
producer on jennings newscast. I had long since written and
recorded jennings obituary, and now this somewhat cold, but still
journalistically valid segue would have to be made. We would
(28:35):
have to go directly from the twelve minute long Jennings
Oh bit to the start of our anti tobacco campaign
eight or nine minutes into that pre recorded Jennings obituary,
Rick Kaplan came out of his office and walked the
fifty feet or so through the vast open newsroom to
where my anchor desk was. His eyes were full of tears.
This is wonderful, he said quietly. Peter would have liked this.
(28:59):
He gave me a thumbs up. Then he walked to
a second desk another fifty feet away, where his first
big high, a woman named Rita Cosby, was about to
premiere his first big gamble, her new show immediately following mine.
I was actually moved by Rick Caplan's comment. I did
not once think of phoning the Secaucus police. But then
(29:21):
I began the anti smoking segment, and as I focused
on the camera and the teleprompter in front of me
and detailed the blood and the gore and the spitting
and how that was the good outcome, out of the
corner of my eye I saw this weird sight. The
President again left his office and waddled out along the
wall thirty feet ahead of me in the general direction
of the control rooms. Within moments, as I continued to
(29:43):
read my script, he was back in the studio and
standing right next to my camera, gesticulating wildly. I said,
they never say it, but wouldn't it be really easier
to quit smoking when you didn't have cancer than when
you did? And Caplan responded with the same two handed
choking gesture he had made briefly in his office much earlier.
(30:04):
Assumed there was some simple problem like that the building
was on fire, but I calculated that I could still
make it to the show's scheduled finished time eight fifty
nine fifty nine EDT and still survive even if others perished.
That's countdown for this the eight hundred and thirtieth day
since the declaration of mission accomplished in Iraq. I'm Keith Oulderman.
Goodnight and good luck your sliver. Rick Kaplan suddenly screamed
(30:29):
from the other anchor desk. I could hear, and this
is my impression of her. Good evening. I'm Rita Cosby.
This is Rita Cosby, Live and direct with Rita Cosby,
and I'm Rita Cosby. She was not a big woman,
but she had a voice on her like the horn
on the Staten Island ferry if it had a cold.
You are over the top. You aren't disgusting. My first
(30:51):
thought was that Kamplin had forgotten that microphones fifty feet
away were live during the premiere of his pet project,
sh Rina is On. I actually whispered to him, silly me,
I don't get a half the three days on, I
told by is He Povish that the piece was over
the top and you needed to cut it, and you didn't.
I still couldn't bring myself to yell back her in
(31:13):
a live studio. I did cut it, and eas He
read it and approved it, and she said you had too.
And Rita's premier is going on over there in that
sort of direction. Maybe you should yell at me closer
to the assignment desk. Maybe I don't give a crap.
If is He approved it, then she's an ass and
I can't trust you. I can't trust you. You're all idiots.
I can't believe you did this to me. I'm trying
(31:33):
to get Rita's show off the ground, and you start
talking about spitting blood into a garbage can. Well, now
I was getting angry. I couldn't resist. Yes, Rita is
in fact live and direct from that desk right over there.
And if you'll notice, she keeps looking over here at
us wondering why you are yelling during the first minutes
of her first show, So why don't we move over here? Rick?
(31:57):
I began to move away from him, and we're walking
away from the live Maa Mike's and we're walking and
we're walking, and Rick and walking because the noise isn't
really professional. Well we're not talking professionals, are we We're
talking idiots. We were walking and he was still screaming,
you're idiots. I will never trust you again. He had
(32:17):
begun to trot or stumble or whatever he was doing.
This is not over. I will pay you back self
serving garbage. I will get you and I'll get that
A hole is he for not staying here and reading
that script? How many times did you intend to say
spit blood into a garbage can before I stopped too.
I now realized what he thought had happened, as he
(32:38):
had gestured spasmodically at me while he stood next to
my camera. I briefly let my focus shift to amazement
at the fact that this guy, who had been in
TV news for twenty five years, knew almost nothing about
how TV worked. I explained to him that Izzy and
one of her assistants and I had gone over the
script several times and taken out half of the Gorrier references.
(33:01):
Then they suck at television. And since I can't trust
any here, since they won't stand up to you and
edit the script, since you obviously bullied them. He bawled
up his fist and stomped his foot on the floor
as he called me a bully. Now going to have
to approve every piece of your copy. By this point,
(33:22):
I was backing into the countdown work area with its
array of desks and all the producers Kaplin had just insulted,
and I knew one of them would dial the phone
when I said, call the cops and call this lunatics boss,
did you hear me? And if you don't like it
and you don't want to come into work tomorrow, that's
fine too. I never did get that part, but now
(33:42):
I had him. I crossed my arms in front of
my chest slowly, like you have seen every news anchor
do in every television news promo ever shown in the
history of the world. I flashed as evil a slow
mo smile as I could, Oh, I'll be here tomorrow,
and then I made a sweeping gesture back towards my staff,
(34:03):
who were both, of course literally and figuratively behind me,
and so will all of them. Suddenly, at that point,
for no apparent reason, Rick Caplan's hysterics were replaced by
mere confusion. He even stopped huffing at almost normal volume.
He asked me all of who. Only at this point
(34:24):
did I turn around to discover that my entire staff
had already left the building. There was nobody there behind me.
Of course, there was nobody there, As I Povich told
me later, he went into the control room and threatened
all of them first, So we got on the phone
back to the office to tell everybody to get the
hell out of the building. She paused and laughed. I mean,
(34:45):
we love you, but we're not crazy. Rick Caplan's exorcism
was a brief one. He began screaming again, I'm gonna
hand your career tomorrow. I'm going to completely f you up.
He turned and stumbled away from my office. Good luck
sleeping tonight. I slept like a stone, and not because
(35:05):
Kaplin had previously threatened to fire me for not leaving
my father's bedside after what they thought was a heart
attack to fly to La to appear on the tonight show,
and not because he'd once threatened to fire me because
he didn't like my tie, and not because he had
previously threatened to fire me for not doing something during
live coverage that I had already done but he thought
we hadn't done because he was watching us, not live
(35:28):
but on delay on his DVR president of a network.
And I slept beautifully, Not because I correctly guessed this
would be it for Rick Caplan and it was. The
next day, human resources forced him to apologize to me,
and ten months later his bosses fired him. Nor did
I snooze blessedly because of any bravery or stoicism or
(35:53):
fatalism on my part. But I slept well simply because
of the realization then, even after all of this, Rick
Kaplan was still only the second or third craziest MSNBC
executive I had ever worked for. I've done all the
(36:23):
damage I can do here. Thanks for listening. Countdown has
come to you from the studios of the Olderman Broadcasting
Empire and Throat Treatment Center. The music you heard was,
for the most part, arrange produced and performed by Countdown
musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel. Brian Ray
handled the guitars, bass and drums. John Phillip Shaneil did
(36:44):
the orchestration and keyboards, and it was produced by Tko Brothers.
Other music, including our Beethoven tunes, were arranged and performed
by No Horns Aloud. The sports music is courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
And it was written by Mitch Warren Davis, and we
call it the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical
and pithy musical comments are from Nancy House, the best
(37:05):
baseball stadium organists ever. Our announcer today making his debut
was Dennis Leary. Thank you Dennis. Everything else is pretty
much my fault. So that's countdown for this the nine
hundred and eighty eighth day since Donald Trump's first attempted
at coop against the democratically elected government of the United States. Convictim, Now,
why always still can? The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
(37:29):
If my throat permits till then, I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(37:53):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts,
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