August 28, 2024 • 43 mins
SERIES 3 EPISODE 17: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is now claiming that the White House rigged the presidential election in 2020.
HE was president in 2020.
HE was in the White House.
"Zuckerberg admits the White House pushed to suppress Hunter Biden laptop story, in other words the 2020 presidential election was rigged," Trump writes. I'm telling you: Mijni-strokes.
SPEAKING OF WHICH: There's way more to Trump exploiting Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to take smiling thumbs-up selfies while literally standing on the graves of American heroes. An Arlington official tried to stop the photography; a Trumpist allegedly shoved him; the Trump Campaign decided the correct response was to claim the Arlington official was "suffering from a mental health episode."
JACK SMITH OUTWITS THE SUPREME COURT: This one weird trick actually works. He filed his superseding indictment in the Insurrection case in Washington. It's a little more complicated than this, but basically he got around SCOTUS by changing every reference to "President Trump" to "Candidate Trump" and calling the 1/6 Call To Arms a "campaign speech."
RAGE IN THE MACHINE: Thousands of newspaper columns were deleted (hundreds at The New York Times alone) when Kamala Harris agreed to her first sit-down interview. It's with Dana Bash on CNN so she still hasn't scheduled one anybody will SEE. The Cook Political Report has moved two more states from "Lean Democrat" to "Likely" and moved North Carolina from "Lean Republican" to "Toss-up." Maybe that's why Trump has agreed to the September 10th debate - or seemed to. The actual words in his acceptance never says he'll actually be there. And we have the first polling on weirdness by party and while the GOP is accurately seen as more weird, the lead is hardly big enough.
B-Block (23:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: RW troll blasts Democrats for "not being interested" in the Trump assassination attempt. Turns out all the Democrats on the House committee went to the site survey Monday. Only three of the seven Republicans bothered to. Trump makes the list too after what HR McMaster revealed about the Taliban Trump ordered released. And somebody who made this list in 2007 for indiscretions as a tv reporter is back for mocking Gus Walz while not merely a right wing media nut but also the volleyball coach at a high school with a praised and cherished program for learning-challenged kids.
C-Block (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 43 years ago now, my television career starts because the late Lou Dobbs had issues keeping his pants on. It's still amazing.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
telling you Mini strokes Trump, Mini strokes Donald Trump on
(00:28):
quote truth unquote social It's a brand name. Zuckerberg admits
that the White House pushed to suppress Hunter Biden laptop
story and much more. In other words, the twenty twenty
presidential election was rigged. This is what everyone's been waiting for.
The twenty twenty presidential election was rigged. Let me just
(00:50):
read that operative part again, if I might, Trump writes,
Zuckerberg admits the White House pushed to suppress Hunter Biden
laptop story. In other words, the twenty twenty presidential election
was rigged. So the White House in twenty twenty rigged
(01:12):
the election, says Trump in twenty twenty. When the president
in twenty twenty, who pushed the suppression of the Biden
laptop story. The president in twenty twenty was Trump. Trump
is not only claiming he rigged the election against himself,
(01:36):
the White House, he says, the White House. He puts
the date on it, but the thing is still up
on his website. He is having a series of episodes
mini strokes. This is not to absolve him. You will
recall that on Monday, Trump was caught taking selfies smiling
(01:59):
with thumbs up at Arlington National Cemetery. NPR now reports
this was in the area where recent American casualties have
been buried. It has learned that two members of Trump's
campaign had a verbal and physical altercation with an official
at Arlington National Cemetery. A source with knowledge of the
(02:20):
event said the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump's staffers
from filming and photographing in a section where recent US
casualties are buried. The source said Arlington officials had made
clear that only a cemetery staff member could photograph in
the area known as Section sixty and by the way,
as an aside, this is for the privacy of the
(02:40):
families of the recently deceased, the ones Trump was standing
on giving a thumbs up and a big stupid shit
eating grin. To continue the NPR report, When the cemetery
official tried to prevent Trump campaign staff from entering Section sixty,
campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the official aside. The
(03:02):
source said. President Trump participate in a rethlaying ceremony at
the cemetery on Monday. The event marked the third anniversary
of a deadly attack on US troops in Afghanistan, as
US forces withdrew. Is it bad enough? It is never
bad enough for Donald J. Trump, This humanoid bully he
has hired to portray the role of spokes idiot, former
(03:24):
wrestler or something. Stephen Chung. He decided that what this
needed was an insult against the Arlington Cemetery staffer quote.
There was no physical altercation as described, and we are
prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made,
and PR notes and I would underscore they have not
(03:46):
released this footage. The fact is it's Trump. There are
no facts. A private photographer was permitted on the premises
and for whatever reason, an unnamed individual clearly suffering from
a mental health episode. I believe we're giving away a
little too much here, mister Chung. That would be trumping
the mental health episode, decided to physically block members of
(04:09):
Trump's team during a very solemn ceremony. Stephen Chung, very
solemn ceremony with Trump's stubby little thumb in the air,
smiling next to headstones of dead American heroes, it is
important to remember, no matter what's going on with him Neurologically,
(04:32):
Trump is insane, He is unpatriotic, and the next time
that he goes onto our nation's most hallowed ground, he
might try to urinate on the graves. We have no
idea what he could do next. He is that much
of a psychopath. Happily this reminder that if Trump in
(05:14):
fact loses in November to Kamala Harris, he will die
in prison. The superseding indictment that Jack Smith filed yesterday
in the January sixth insurrection case in Washington was enough
of a big deal that some of the television networks
broke into programming without really understanding what they were talking about.
In point of fact, with a couple of exceptions, it
(05:35):
is exactly the same set of charges phrased exactly the
same way, and the difference is the references to President
Trump have been for the most part changed to candidate
Trump in order to follow the lead of presidential immunity
as submitted by Trump's hand picked Supreme Court in its
(05:57):
attempt to circumvent the Constitution. The January sixth speech, in
which Trump not very so utly encouraged his gangs to
attack the Capitol and try to kill congressmen and try
to kill senators, and try to kill his own vice
president and interrupt the peaceful transfer of power that is
now described in the new superseding indictment as quote a
(06:19):
campaign speech. In short, Jack Smith outsmarted the Court good
because several members of the Supreme Court should die alongside
Trump in prison, having spent the rest of their lives there.
On the other hand, Trump has outsmarted the Governor of Georgia,
Brian Kemp. Kemp stood up for the members of his
(06:42):
own party when Trump tried to illegally overturn the twenty
twenty election results there, and then slandered the people who
obeyed the law. Trump attacked Kemp as recently as a
few weeks ago. Tomorrow, the headliner at a Trump fundraiser
in Atlanta will be Governor Brian Kemp. Is it blackmail?
(07:04):
Is fear? Is it a diet of forty years of
right wing propaganda? He is from the South. That could
very easily be the prospect of the choice being Trump
or a woman of color. Which is it? I don't
care anymore. These people, especially those who have lost all
moral compass after showing briefly that they might have had
(07:28):
some and then it turned out no, this was just
another political trick. Those who have lost all moral compass,
like Brian Kemp, like Nicki Haley, need to be removed
from public discourse permanently. In some way. We must legally
determine how the sound you heard late yesterday afternoons, columnist
(07:48):
after columnist from Chris solicit to everybody at the New
York Times opinion section hitting the delete key time after
time after time. Vice President Harris will do her first
sit down interview since Joe Biden Withdrew. It will be
with Dana Bash CNN to air tomorrow. It'll be a twofer.
Tim Walls will join them. This, of course, matters really
(08:12):
only to CNN and the belt Way. There is no none,
zero push among the public to force candidates to do interviews.
Most people, even though most journalists don't, Most people understand
that the policy issue is this. Who wants a democracy
or a similar form of representative government. That would be Harris.
(08:34):
Who does not? That would be Trump? And every other
policy is subtlety and nuance. To the credit of the
Harris campaign, they did pick the easiest one. Dana Bash
occasionally lives up to the term journalists, probably above the average.
At CNN, she would be a D plus, but usually not.
(08:56):
She is also lifeless enough that you wonder if they
have to slip a mirror under her nose periodically to
make sure she's still you know, of course, after this,
so as of sometime late Thursday night, what will follow
next is demands by every other reporter to interview Harris immediately,
and the replacement complaint to replace the one in which
(09:19):
they say she hasn't done any sit down interviews, which
is it has now been filled in the blank days
since Kamala Harris gave a one on one interview, and
don't forget there are no press conferences yet, and then
there will not have been any press conferences while she
was standing on her head in a bucket of piranha fish.
(09:41):
To quote the python joke. There is one legitimate criticism here,
which is, as follows CNN. They're doing this on CNN.
It's now been x days since Kamala Harris gave an
interview that anybody saw. This is not polling, per se,
its analysis, but it continues the thread I talk about
(10:02):
here every day. To my own disbelief, today some degree
cook political report has now moved three more states closer
to Kamala Harris. New Hampshire and Minnesota had been in
their estimation lean Democrat. They are now likely Democrat, a
minor distinction, but a meaningful one. More interestingly, North Carolina
goes from lean Republican to toss up. North Carolina is
(10:28):
officially from a very conservative, small sea conservative, very slow
moving political analysis organization. North Carolina is now a toss up.
This all might explain why Trump has agreed to the
September tenth debate, or seemed to agree. Listen carefully, I
(10:48):
have reached an agreement. I have reached an agreement with
the radical left Democrats for a debate with Comrade Kamala Harris.
That's not the way a normal human being would say it,
or without many strokes, you'd say, the debate is on.
(11:09):
I will debate September tenth debate DEBATEMI. It will be
broadcast live on ABC, fake news by far, the nastiest
and most unfair newscaster in the business. Well, a newscaster
is a person. ABC would be a news organization moron
on Tuesday, September tenth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The rules will
(11:31):
be the same as the last CNN debate, which seemed
to work out well for everyone except perhaps Biden. The
debate will be stand up and candidates cannot bring notes
or cheat sheets. We have also been given assurance by
ABC that this will be a fair and equitable that's
in quotes, fair and equitable debate. As an aside, you
will have noticed that recently he has been falling back
(11:53):
on terms that you usually find in agreements about property.
Fair and equitable is a rental or purchase agreement term.
To continue Trump's statement and that neither side will be
given the questions in advance. No Dona Brazil this time
he spelled Brazil's name correctly. Harris would not agree to
(12:16):
the Fox News debate on September fourth, but that date
will be held open in case she changes her mind
or flip flops, as she has done on every single
one of her long held and cherished policy beliefs. That's
too clever by half. Nobody who follows Trump will understand
he's being sarcastic. A possible third debate, which would go
to NBC Fake News, has not been agreed to by
(12:37):
the radical left. He goes through several of the rules
that will continue from the C and N debate. But
there was no mention of muted microphones. Why was that
no mention of muted microphones? And he did not say
that he will be debating. He said he had agreed
to it. You will recall that yesterday Senior Harris guru
(13:02):
Brian Fallon said, we suspect Trump's team has not even
told their boss about this dispute because it would be
too embarrassing to admit. They don't think he can handle
himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a
mute button. CNN now reports Trump's handlers are trying to
mute him on the debate stage. They want the mute
because they know he will not look presidential. Per their
(13:22):
reporter Elena Treen, they don't want him to come off
looking like a bully. They want him to tone down
his rhetoric. That is potentially even more important now. Before
he posted he'd reached an agreement. And again that's not
saying I'm doing the debate, just that he's reached an agreement.
And god knows how many agreements Trump has gotten out
(13:46):
of in his careers. Trump wrote something really bizarre, even
for him from one fourteen yesterday afternoon. You know, if
Biden didn't do the debate, he would be the Democrat
candidate for president right now. The fact is debater, no debate.
Democrats really did a number on him. The main confident
that Trump is still trying to find a way out
(14:07):
of doing this debate. I mean, other than he still
thinks somehow he can force Biden to be the nominee
or something. He still harbors that hope. What did that
statement mean? Is it an excuse for him to not
debate Harris out of some sort of fake empathy for Biden.
I can't abide by what you did to Biden. Only
(14:28):
I can abuse Biden. Is it something he thinks will
cause his supporters to say, oh, no way, you should
debate again, sir? Is it I already won that debate
and I want it so much Biden dropped out. I
don't need to debate again. I mean, what the hell?
That statement doesn't make any sense. Combine it with the
(14:50):
previous one, in which he does not say I'll be
at the debate, just says he's agreed to one. And
I don't think anything is more firm now than it
was before. And by the way, from morning Consult voters
are only slightly more likely to say weird better describes
the Republican Party than the Democratic Party thirty four to
twenty nine percent, suggesting that the rhetorical jab has yet
(15:11):
to catch fire beyond the confines of liberal corners of
social media. I feel seen Democrats' small advantage on the
question is driven by their own voters, who are slightly
more likely than GOP voters to say that word better
describes the other party Morning Consult continues. The branding effort
also appears to be resonating better with non white voters,
(15:32):
especially black voters, who are thirty five points more likely
to view the GOP as weird than the Democratic Party,
the largest gap along racial or ethnic lines. I once
asked Kevin Costner when I was working the Red carpet
one year in nineteen ninety nine at the Oscars. I
asked him a question for a feature I was doing
(15:53):
as a non writer, a non entertainment writer doing for
the La Times. I said, what do you think of
the idea of having like a six hour pregame show
for the Oscars the way they do for the Super Bowl?
And Kevin and said, I think we already know too
much about the things we already know about, which I
thought was a wonderful quote. He came back to me
about five minutes later and said, could you not run that?
(16:15):
I sound like Yogi bearra if we are now polling,
actually polling on which minority or racial or ethnic group,
or demographic or age group or majority group or group
of people whose last names begin with the letter G
over which one of them believes the Democrats are less
(16:35):
weird than the Republicans. We may know too much about
the things we already know about, but more importantly that number,
that it's only thirty four to twenty nine. I'm sorry
to become the coach yelling at the team that just
came from three touchdowns down to go ahead by five
or six points. But Madame Vice President, this is not
(16:56):
good enough. The Republicans are existentially weird, and a five
point lead over them in weird team needs to push
harder on this. To go back to doctor Strangelove and
George C. Scott as General Turgenson, we must not allow
(17:18):
a weirdness gap. Also, the headlines read Telsey Gabbard and
Robert F. Kennedy Junior added to Trump transition BOYD did
that surprised me. I thought, holy crap, Trump is transitioning.
(17:38):
Shouldn't this be a bigger story. Turned out they meant
transition team. I'd be surprised if either of them transitioned
into a human being or an American. Once again, to
alter the Rodney dangerfield quote, as Thornton mellon from Back
to School, Here's what this is all about. If you
want to look sane, you hang out with crazy people.
(18:02):
This applies equally to Gabbard, RFK and of course Trump
and maybe trump spokes liar Stephen Chung, who we visited
with earlier, who gets the self awareness Award for complaining
to the Washington Post about the Harris campaign and how
it is I swear it says this. The Harris campaign
(18:22):
is mocking Trump on social media, and Stephen Chung and
Donald Trump are butt hurt. Acting like whiney school children
is not a political strategy, Chung says, but it is
a coping mechanism for the Kamala campaign, who knows they
have a weak candidate incapable of being authentic. If anyone
thinks that using emojis is some cutting edge message technique,
(18:45):
they're severely out of touch. With reality and the seriousness
of the challenges Americans face. So you heard him, No emojis.
Emojis are for Whiney's school children. Racist and sexist and
anti semitic and violent memes and stupid ass nick names.
Those are what serious presidential candidates use. I got one question.
(19:13):
Is there an emoji or a meme for a mini
stroke asking for a friend? Also of interest here, it
is rare when a former worst Person comes back and
wins the award years later in an entirely new category.
But a TV reporter fired for showing up in a
(19:35):
bikini on tape at the house of a guy she
was doing an investigative report on after his wife disappeared.
She is now about to be fired for mocking Tim
Walls's son. And the twist, not only is she a
right wing media nut job now, but she's also the
volleyball coach at a public school with a special and
(19:57):
exemplary department dedicated to special needs high school kids. That's next.
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman stell
(20:31):
ahead of us on this ediative countdown. So lou Dobbs
has been dead for like six weeks now and just
yesterday I found myself explaining to an old friend who
didn't know that Lou Dobbs's inability to keep his pants
on while he was living directly led to the start
of my television career a scant forty three years ago.
This month, Hey baby, I work for Cable News Network.
(20:55):
If you get my drift, stocks are up ahead in things.
I promised not to tell what I'm supposed to respect
him because he's dead. First, there are still more new
idiots to talk about. The daily round up, the miss Grants, morons,
undunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
the world. Respect. I never respected him when he was alive.
(21:19):
The Bronze worst Bill Mitchell talk about lack of respect.
He is chairman of Your Voice America, and he's also
a human weather van. As near as I can figure,
this is the plot of his course in Republican party
circles since twenty fifteen. Hated Trump, liked Trump, hated Trump,
(21:41):
liked Trump, wanted Trump to drop out, wanted Trump to
stay in, supported Trump, rooted for Trump, demanded Trump, resign,
got rid of Trump, disavowed Trump, got rid of his
Twitter account, came back supported Trump, supported Trump some more
now demanding Trump be elected. I've lost track how many
(22:01):
times it is. It might be thirty five more times
that I've for got. Now he likes Trump again. Why
are the Democrats, he writes, completely uninterested in the investigation
of the Trump assassination attempt? Hold on before we go
into this bill. Got a surprise in a reply from
Congressional reporter Jamie Dupree, who wrote, all six Democrats on
(22:25):
the Trump Shooting Task Force showed up in Butler, Pennsylvania
for a site visit on Monday. Four of the seven
GOP lawmakers on that House panel missed the trip. Who
is it that are completely uninterested in the investigation of
the Trump assassination attempt? Phil wor Sir the Silver Donald himself.
(22:51):
There's lots to complain about h R. McMaster, who was
Trump's National security advisor, but McMaster did point out that
Trump negotiated with the Taliban, forced the Afghanistan government to
release five thousand of some of the most heinous people
on earth, as McMaster put it, and he added, and
(23:12):
stopped the active targeting of the Taliban in Afghanistan When
he said that. Even Anderson Cooper noticed he did something
that I thought was not allowed. On CNN, he asked
a follow up question, Cooper, the Trump administration forced the
Afghan government to release five thousand Taliban. The answer from
(23:35):
hr McMaster correct. So Trump forced the release of five
thousand Taliban terrorists, then caused Republicans to stop all the
border security in this country and the deal to increase it,
and then boasted the terrorists, including from the Middle East,
were coming into this country over that border. So Trump's
(23:58):
guilty of treason. Again, harasked him, he's at trade tour.
I don't care if he's having mini strokes put them
behind bars. But our winner, I have to say, I
love this woman's ingenuity. Do you remember her Amy Jacobson.
Amy Jacobson was the Chicago TV news reporter who got
(24:20):
fired in two thousand and seven after while she was
doing an investigative report on a guy whose wife had disappeared,
video turned up of her at the guy's house and
she's in the video and she's in a bathing suit.
She got fired and then her husband filed for divorce
against her. Remember her, Amy Jacobson? Well, Now, unsurprisingly, as
(24:47):
all of the tumbling tumbleweeds blow over to this role.
Everybody who got caught being a jackass winds up as
a right wing nut job radio host or a member
of the Trump transition team. She's on wid in Chicago, fittingly,
(25:08):
what have you got on that radio? I've got wind?
And guess who she mocked in the August twenty second show,
Gus Walls, governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walls's son,
the young man with the nonverbal learning disorder. She mimicked
Gus's emotional reaction to his dad's acceptance speech at the
(25:29):
Democratic National Convention. As you know, Gus is seventeen years old.
If that were Baron Trump, who had been mocked that
way by the liberals, I don't know, Trump would have
taken hostages by now. Jacobson's co host compared Gus Walls
to a Chris Farley character, and Jacobson laughed and laughed
and laughed. And this is bad enough. As we've seen,
(25:53):
even Ann Coulter felt a measure of remorse about doing
the same thing. But this gets much worse. Amy Jacobson
is the clubhouse leader in the insulting Gus Wall and
showing a total lack of humanity and showing your ass,
as they say, full the ass not unfamiliar to her
(26:15):
from from the two thousand and seven story. Come to
think of it, See, because Amy Jacobson is not just
a right wing nut job on Chicago radio. She's also
head coach of the varsity boys and girls volleyball teams
at Roiled Amundson High School in Chicago. And guess what
they have at Aminson High School in Chicago. Apart from
(26:36):
periodic Arctic expeditions. I suppose they have a large so
called cluster program designed for high school kids with learning disabilities.
It's such a good program they have at Alminson that
licensed therapists who treat these kids and help them out.
Many of them send their kids specifically to this school.
(27:01):
So the volleyball coach at the school helping special needs
kids mocked the special needs kid of the Democratic vice
presidential candidate, who himself used to be a football coach
at a high school in Minnesota. Well, guess what the
parents at Aminsen want. They want coach Amy fired, and hell,
(27:22):
they want the guy who's jokes she laughed at. A
guy named Dan Proft, fired two from his job. But oh,
according to the Chicago trib what do you know, looks
like he's already been removed as a board member of
Envision Unlimited, which is, what else a disability advocacy organization.
(27:43):
So anyway, Wind should fire this clown Jacobson, and obviously
the school has to fire her. But happily, Amy Jacobson,
you can always go back into TV reporting. Oh right,
Amy Jacobson unemployable? Two days? Whis Tyson now to the
(28:24):
number one story on this all new edition of Countdown?
And it's that time of year again. It's August when
the odometer turns over and my TV debut becomes forty
three years ago. This holy crap, and it all owes
to Ted Turner and Lou Dobbs. Part of this I've
(28:45):
told before. I actually interviewed with Cable News Network twice,
once in April nineteen eighty when they were not yet
on the air, and after that interview I saw no
reason they ever would be. I wrote in my diary
there's no chance they're ever going to get it on
the air in time. They were supposed to go on
in September. Because the New York Bureau of CNN consisted
(29:08):
of one coffee table, a couple of chairs, one coffee machine,
a stairwell, one unisex bathroom, and one staffer New York
Bureau chief Mary Alice Williams. Plus the day I went there,
CNN Sports president Bill McPhail made it two staffers. He
was up from Atlanta after a long year. My phone
(29:30):
rang one day and McPhail asked me to fill in
for two weeks. In two weeks for their New York
sports reporter. I had no television experience at all. Well,
I'd watched it. She was going on vacation on August third, sooner,
McPhail added if the baseball strike ended before then. Her
name was Debbie Segur, and all I knew was vacation
(29:50):
me okay. Turned out it was part vacation, part get
out of town quickly, very quickly. See CNN started as
not just news news or just news and politics and
interw views and guests. There was a half an hour
business show every night, and a half an hour show
(30:10):
business show every night, and a half an hour sports
cast at seven, and another half an hour sports cast
at eleven, and then one in the middle of the night.
There was a fashion program, and there were hourly stock reports,
and they had a staff of meteorologists, and they had
short sports casts almost every hour of the day. And
the business anchor based in that New York bureau, which
had expanded from the one unisex bathroom, was Lou Dobbs,
(30:33):
and as the producer they had sent up to work
with me when I filled in for this Debbie Sigura
Phil Griffin later the president of MSNBC. As he explained
to me, when we got in the car to go
out to Shaye Stadium to interview all those New York
Mets guys, Lou Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out
on his wife with the CNN New York sports reporter,
(30:54):
and missus Dobbs had found out, so there was even
a rumor there was somebody else who also worked in
the CNN New York bureau who found out. So Bill
McPhail's hurried call asking me to fill in for the
reporter for two weeks. In two weeks was because she
was going on quote vacation. Not long after all this,
(31:16):
Dobbs thought it would be smarter to leave New York
for a while, like a decade or so, and Debbie
went with him. They got married. This left New York
without a sports reporter, and CNN tried another one of
their Atlanta anchors for a while, but they kept giving
him extra vacation time, so they would have to bring
me in freelance every month, and finally the following March
they offered me the job full time. And I have
(31:38):
not earned an honest pay check since. And I mean
that in two ways. CNN was paying me five hundred
dollars a week, that's one hundred dollars a day to
go on national television. Even then, this seemed a little low,
and it was about forty percent less than what I
was making for like three days a week in network radio.
(31:58):
I pointed this out acceptingly because I was learning how
to do TV while on TV and getting paid for
it was a vocational school. And that's when they told
me that the five hundred dollars a week was already
more than they had been paying Debbie Sigura and more
than the guy they were paying as their reporter in
Los Angeles. And then Bill McPhail, the head of sports,
(32:20):
called and offered me a contract for twenty five thousand
dollars and I said, wait, twenty five thousands, five hundred
dollars a week is twenty six that wait a minute,
you're offering me less for the contract. Why would I
take less? Is there health insurance or something? And he
said no, there's just the security of having the contract.
And I said, well, I'd rather have the thousand dollars
that you're docking me for signing, and they found it somewhere,
(32:44):
but they always reminded me how generous they had been
with that extra thousand dollars, and I kept saying, that's
not extra. You are already paying me that. Anyway, None
of that would have happened, though, without Ted Turner, because
CNN was his idea, and in fact, most of what
you saw from me on ESPN later that was also
(33:06):
mostly his idea too, sort of anyway, the basic idea
of SportsCenter sports news on national television on more or
less a daily basis, Ted did that. Not ESPN and
the daily sports news studio show on at the same
time every day or night with the same anchors treated
(33:26):
as seriously as a half an hour of news. Ted
did that. And buying sports teams to have something to
put on your television station, Ted did that too. WTCG
Channel seventeen Atlanta was the fringiest of fringe ETV stations
when Ted Turner bought it in nineteen seventy. But then
six years later he bought first the Atlanta Braves and
(33:46):
then the basketball Atlanta Hawks, and he bought a couple
of satellite dishes, and the FCC made the fateful decision
to let him put Channel seventeen up on the satellite
so it could be shown on those fledgling cable systems
around the country. And the next thing you knew, the
Atlanta Braves were America's team, and Ted, who was shameless,
(34:07):
promptly signed the first baseball player ever to take advantage
of what we now know as free agency, Andy Messersmith.
Andy Messersmith got what looked like all the money in
the world, more money than any baseball player had ever
gotten or or we were certain would ever get, one
million dollars over three years with one catch. Andy Messersmith
(34:36):
had to wear uniform number seventeen WTCG Channel seventeen. You
see where this was going. He had to wear uniform
number seventeen, and instead of having Messersmith written on the
back of the shirt over the seventeen, he had to
have the word channel. So Andy Messersmith's uniform when he
(34:56):
broke in with the Atlanta Braves in nineteen seventy six
as the highest paid player in baseball history. The back
of the uniform read channel seventeen. Baseball stopped that right quick.
It stopped Ted the day he decided that he should
see what it was like to manage the Braves and
if it really was as difficult as his managers had
made it seem. His lifetime record was zero to one,
(35:18):
and he said, yes, this is very difficult. But the
cable sports genie, that one was out of the bottle
and nobody was stopping it, and he haspn ran with it.
But next came news. Even then, his crazy idea cable
news network rested squarely on the first regularly scheduled nightly
sports newscast in national television history, CNN Sports Tonight at
(35:39):
seven at eleven and two am Eastern. While Sports Center
was on in those days for fifteen minutes one night
at seven and then an hour the next night at
ten and sports Tonight, was there come news or high
water seven nights a week. Of course, Ted Turner was
not just shameless, he was also technically penniless, so he
(36:00):
hired a couple of real veterans to run and anchor
the thing. Bill mcphil who helped invent the NFL on
CBS and Monday Night Football, was also his idea. And
his former CBS colleague Bob Wessler, and he hired Nick Charles,
who was a star of sportscasting on the Washington and
Baltimore newscasts, but everybody else the cheapest hires they could find.
(36:21):
In nineteen eighty one, Turner sent McPhail to hire me.
That was our second interview. When I told Bill I
had made forty two thousand dollars the year before working
for Charlie Steiner in radio. Bill spit his drink halfway
across the room. We were planning on hiring six guys
to start with, for a total of ninety five thousand.
(36:41):
This is when they were staffing up what became CNN
Headline News. I answered that I hoped that the other
five guys he was going to hire were prepared to
make it on seven grand each, because there was no
way I was moving to Atlanta for less than sixty
thousand dollars. Well, they got me anyway, and for less
than sixty thousand dollars, but I did not move to Atlanta,
Thank you, Lou Dobbs. And they got Dan Patrick and
(37:04):
Tanna Storm and Fred Hickman and Dan Hicks and Gary
Miller and dozens of others and reporters and cameramen and
producers and executives and editors, and one sports production assistant
from the original crew of CNN Sports wound up becoming
the president of CNN Worldwide, and another wound up becoming
(37:25):
the president of MSNBC. ESPN reshaped television sports news anyway,
CNN created it, and early on CNN staffed ESPN and
much of the industry. And I'm skipping how Turner mainstreamed
World Cup Yachting at least for a while, and Ted
and TNT and Ted and the Goodwill Games and Ted
(37:47):
and World Championship Wrestling, whose matches were actually held right
above the CNN newsroom so that often you could hear
the wrestlers slamming each other on our ceiling. And by
the way, the Braves winning fourteen straight division titles, and
the repopulation of Bison in the country. It was also
Ted Turner, But my favorite Ted Turner story comes from
(38:07):
something he did not pull off, not that he did
not try. When the football owners forced the players out
on strike in nineteen eighty two. Ted sent me to
cover it every day for eight months, and one day
he showed up at the football strike talks to meet
with the players, and when he came out, he announced
that he would be bankrolling and televising two football games
(38:30):
in the middle of a football strike, one at RFK
Stadium in Washington and the other at the Rose Bowl
in southern California. And basically these two games would pit
pickup teams of striking players the American Conference versus the
National Conference. And he called his two games the All
Star Season. I've mentioned this elsewhere and before. When I
(38:52):
asked him about the acronym for the All Star Season,
he winked at me and shushed me, and then he
took me aside and he asked me what I thought.
I told him, nobody's going to watch and he's going
to lose money. And he looked at me and he said,
nobody watches you. I lose money on you, so what,
you'll make money eventually. He then explained that that was
(39:15):
really just designed to set up the owners if he
could put the games together and get them on TV
with no more than one month's lead time, the players'
union was willing to partner up with him. Ted's real
motive for the ass the All Star season was nothing
less than creating his own football league, twenty four teams,
(39:38):
which would begin play in nineteen eighty three or sooner
if necessary, and would be televised exclusively on TBS. All
he needed was the players going along with him, and
one little labor court ruling that the owners had forced
the players union to go out on strike and that
would allow the union to negotiate with other employers. Well, obviously,
(40:02):
you don't have to be a football expert to know
that he did not get that court ruling, but they
went for it. Ted Turner was shooting for nothing less
than killing off the National Football League and replacing it
with a new National Football League owned by Ted Turner,
and he was going to give the players fifty percent
of the whole league. And don't forget, nearly all of
(40:24):
this was done on a shoe string budget, with borrowed money,
with all of his employees convinced that he was crazy,
and it wouldn't last until next Tuesday, and when we
would get our paychecks at CNN in New York, we
would race each other to the bank to cash them
just in case there wasn't going to be enough for everybody.
So whenever something causes me to get nostalgic about my
(40:46):
start in TV, I inevitably find myself going back to
tales of Ted Turner, Owen Lou and Missus Dobbs and
the Other Missus Dobbs, Missus Dobbs one and Missus Dobbs two.
(41:17):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Please share this podcast with somebody who
does not listen. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, the
musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of
our music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums.
He's a first little guy. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
(41:39):
Our satirical and fithy musical comments are by the best
baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is
the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is
my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
(42:00):
Your assignment, if you choose to accept it. Write some
lyrics to the Beatles song Penny Lane about Kenny Maine.
Kenny Maine, the barber shaves another customer. That's countdown for
this the seventieth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
the three hundred and twenty ninth day since convicted felon
(42:22):
Donald J. Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing
hearing if it happens, Use the mental health system. After all,
he doesn't realize he was president in twenty twenty and
you've got this President Biden. I mean, if Jack Smith
can outsmart the Supreme Court, you and the White House
(42:45):
can use the presidential immunity these idiots on the Court
provided to stop him from doing it again while we
still can. And anti Semitic, anti immigration, gun nut Republicans,
please stop shooting at Trumph. More Democrats than Republicans showed
(43:07):
up at the investigation at the site christ The next
scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news requires until
the next one. I'm Keith Oldreman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is
(43:35):
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. I'm
telling you Mini strokes Trump, Mini strokes Donald Trump on
(00:28):
quote truth unquote social It's a brand name. Zuckerberg admits
that the White House pushed to suppress Hunter Biden laptop
story and much more. In other words, the twenty twenty
presidential election was rigged. This is what everyone's been waiting for.
The twenty twenty presidential election was rigged. Let me just
(00:50):
read that operative part again, if I might, Trump writes,
Zuckerberg admits the White House pushed to suppress Hunter Biden
laptop story. In other words, the twenty twenty presidential election
was rigged. So the White House in twenty twenty rigged
(01:12):
the election, says Trump in twenty twenty. When the president
in twenty twenty, who pushed the suppression of the Biden
laptop story. The president in twenty twenty was Trump. Trump
is not only claiming he rigged the election against himself,
(01:36):
the White House, he says, the White House. He puts
the date on it, but the thing is still up
on his website. He is having a series of episodes
mini strokes. This is not to absolve him. You will
recall that on Monday, Trump was caught taking selfies smiling
(01:59):
with thumbs up at Arlington National Cemetery. NPR now reports
this was in the area where recent American casualties have
been buried. It has learned that two members of Trump's
campaign had a verbal and physical altercation with an official
at Arlington National Cemetery. A source with knowledge of the
(02:20):
event said the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump's staffers
from filming and photographing in a section where recent US
casualties are buried. The source said Arlington officials had made
clear that only a cemetery staff member could photograph in
the area known as Section sixty and by the way,
as an aside, this is for the privacy of the
(02:40):
families of the recently deceased, the ones Trump was standing
on giving a thumbs up and a big stupid shit
eating grin. To continue the NPR report, When the cemetery
official tried to prevent Trump campaign staff from entering Section sixty,
campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the official aside. The
(03:02):
source said. President Trump participate in a rethlaying ceremony at
the cemetery on Monday. The event marked the third anniversary
of a deadly attack on US troops in Afghanistan, as
US forces withdrew. Is it bad enough? It is never
bad enough for Donald J. Trump, This humanoid bully he
has hired to portray the role of spokes idiot, former
(03:24):
wrestler or something. Stephen Chung. He decided that what this
needed was an insult against the Arlington Cemetery staffer quote.
There was no physical altercation as described, and we are
prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made,
and PR notes and I would underscore they have not
(03:46):
released this footage. The fact is it's Trump. There are
no facts. A private photographer was permitted on the premises
and for whatever reason, an unnamed individual clearly suffering from
a mental health episode. I believe we're giving away a
little too much here, mister Chung. That would be trumping
the mental health episode, decided to physically block members of
(04:09):
Trump's team during a very solemn ceremony. Stephen Chung, very
solemn ceremony with Trump's stubby little thumb in the air,
smiling next to headstones of dead American heroes, it is
important to remember, no matter what's going on with him Neurologically,
(04:32):
Trump is insane, He is unpatriotic, and the next time
that he goes onto our nation's most hallowed ground, he
might try to urinate on the graves. We have no
idea what he could do next. He is that much
of a psychopath. Happily this reminder that if Trump in
(05:14):
fact loses in November to Kamala Harris, he will die
in prison. The superseding indictment that Jack Smith filed yesterday
in the January sixth insurrection case in Washington was enough
of a big deal that some of the television networks
broke into programming without really understanding what they were talking about.
In point of fact, with a couple of exceptions, it
(05:35):
is exactly the same set of charges phrased exactly the
same way, and the difference is the references to President
Trump have been for the most part changed to candidate
Trump in order to follow the lead of presidential immunity
as submitted by Trump's hand picked Supreme Court in its
(05:57):
attempt to circumvent the Constitution. The January sixth speech, in
which Trump not very so utly encouraged his gangs to
attack the Capitol and try to kill congressmen and try
to kill senators, and try to kill his own vice
president and interrupt the peaceful transfer of power that is
now described in the new superseding indictment as quote a
(06:19):
campaign speech. In short, Jack Smith outsmarted the Court good
because several members of the Supreme Court should die alongside
Trump in prison, having spent the rest of their lives there.
On the other hand, Trump has outsmarted the Governor of Georgia,
Brian Kemp. Kemp stood up for the members of his
(06:42):
own party when Trump tried to illegally overturn the twenty
twenty election results there, and then slandered the people who
obeyed the law. Trump attacked Kemp as recently as a
few weeks ago. Tomorrow, the headliner at a Trump fundraiser
in Atlanta will be Governor Brian Kemp. Is it blackmail?
(07:04):
Is fear? Is it a diet of forty years of
right wing propaganda? He is from the South. That could
very easily be the prospect of the choice being Trump
or a woman of color. Which is it? I don't
care anymore. These people, especially those who have lost all
moral compass after showing briefly that they might have had
(07:28):
some and then it turned out no, this was just
another political trick. Those who have lost all moral compass,
like Brian Kemp, like Nicki Haley, need to be removed
from public discourse permanently. In some way. We must legally
determine how the sound you heard late yesterday afternoons, columnist
(07:48):
after columnist from Chris solicit to everybody at the New
York Times opinion section hitting the delete key time after
time after time. Vice President Harris will do her first
sit down interview since Joe Biden Withdrew. It will be
with Dana Bash CNN to air tomorrow. It'll be a twofer.
Tim Walls will join them. This, of course, matters really
(08:12):
only to CNN and the belt Way. There is no none,
zero push among the public to force candidates to do interviews.
Most people, even though most journalists don't, Most people understand
that the policy issue is this. Who wants a democracy
or a similar form of representative government. That would be Harris.
(08:34):
Who does not? That would be Trump? And every other
policy is subtlety and nuance. To the credit of the
Harris campaign, they did pick the easiest one. Dana Bash
occasionally lives up to the term journalists, probably above the average.
At CNN, she would be a D plus, but usually not.
(08:56):
She is also lifeless enough that you wonder if they
have to slip a mirror under her nose periodically to
make sure she's still you know, of course, after this,
so as of sometime late Thursday night, what will follow
next is demands by every other reporter to interview Harris immediately,
and the replacement complaint to replace the one in which
(09:19):
they say she hasn't done any sit down interviews, which
is it has now been filled in the blank days
since Kamala Harris gave a one on one interview, and
don't forget there are no press conferences yet, and then
there will not have been any press conferences while she
was standing on her head in a bucket of piranha fish.
(09:41):
To quote the python joke. There is one legitimate criticism here,
which is, as follows CNN. They're doing this on CNN.
It's now been x days since Kamala Harris gave an
interview that anybody saw. This is not polling, per se,
its analysis, but it continues the thread I talk about
(10:02):
here every day. To my own disbelief, today some degree
cook political report has now moved three more states closer
to Kamala Harris. New Hampshire and Minnesota had been in
their estimation lean Democrat. They are now likely Democrat, a
minor distinction, but a meaningful one. More interestingly, North Carolina
goes from lean Republican to toss up. North Carolina is
(10:28):
officially from a very conservative, small sea conservative, very slow
moving political analysis organization. North Carolina is now a toss up.
This all might explain why Trump has agreed to the
September tenth debate, or seemed to agree. Listen carefully, I
(10:48):
have reached an agreement. I have reached an agreement with
the radical left Democrats for a debate with Comrade Kamala Harris.
That's not the way a normal human being would say it,
or without many strokes, you'd say, the debate is on.
(11:09):
I will debate September tenth debate DEBATEMI. It will be
broadcast live on ABC, fake news by far, the nastiest
and most unfair newscaster in the business. Well, a newscaster
is a person. ABC would be a news organization moron
on Tuesday, September tenth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The rules will
(11:31):
be the same as the last CNN debate, which seemed
to work out well for everyone except perhaps Biden. The
debate will be stand up and candidates cannot bring notes
or cheat sheets. We have also been given assurance by
ABC that this will be a fair and equitable that's
in quotes, fair and equitable debate. As an aside, you
will have noticed that recently he has been falling back
(11:53):
on terms that you usually find in agreements about property.
Fair and equitable is a rental or purchase agreement term.
To continue Trump's statement and that neither side will be
given the questions in advance. No Dona Brazil this time
he spelled Brazil's name correctly. Harris would not agree to
(12:16):
the Fox News debate on September fourth, but that date
will be held open in case she changes her mind
or flip flops, as she has done on every single
one of her long held and cherished policy beliefs. That's
too clever by half. Nobody who follows Trump will understand
he's being sarcastic. A possible third debate, which would go
to NBC Fake News, has not been agreed to by
(12:37):
the radical left. He goes through several of the rules
that will continue from the C and N debate. But
there was no mention of muted microphones. Why was that
no mention of muted microphones? And he did not say
that he will be debating. He said he had agreed
to it. You will recall that yesterday Senior Harris guru
(13:02):
Brian Fallon said, we suspect Trump's team has not even
told their boss about this dispute because it would be
too embarrassing to admit. They don't think he can handle
himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a
mute button. CNN now reports Trump's handlers are trying to
mute him on the debate stage. They want the mute
because they know he will not look presidential. Per their
(13:22):
reporter Elena Treen, they don't want him to come off
looking like a bully. They want him to tone down
his rhetoric. That is potentially even more important now. Before
he posted he'd reached an agreement. And again that's not
saying I'm doing the debate, just that he's reached an agreement.
And god knows how many agreements Trump has gotten out
(13:46):
of in his careers. Trump wrote something really bizarre, even
for him from one fourteen yesterday afternoon. You know, if
Biden didn't do the debate, he would be the Democrat
candidate for president right now. The fact is debater, no debate.
Democrats really did a number on him. The main confident
that Trump is still trying to find a way out
(14:07):
of doing this debate. I mean, other than he still
thinks somehow he can force Biden to be the nominee
or something. He still harbors that hope. What did that
statement mean? Is it an excuse for him to not
debate Harris out of some sort of fake empathy for Biden.
I can't abide by what you did to Biden. Only
(14:28):
I can abuse Biden. Is it something he thinks will
cause his supporters to say, oh, no way, you should
debate again, sir? Is it I already won that debate
and I want it so much Biden dropped out. I
don't need to debate again. I mean, what the hell?
That statement doesn't make any sense. Combine it with the
(14:50):
previous one, in which he does not say I'll be
at the debate, just says he's agreed to one. And
I don't think anything is more firm now than it
was before. And by the way, from morning Consult voters
are only slightly more likely to say weird better describes
the Republican Party than the Democratic Party thirty four to
twenty nine percent, suggesting that the rhetorical jab has yet
(15:11):
to catch fire beyond the confines of liberal corners of
social media. I feel seen Democrats' small advantage on the
question is driven by their own voters, who are slightly
more likely than GOP voters to say that word better
describes the other party Morning Consult continues. The branding effort
also appears to be resonating better with non white voters,
(15:32):
especially black voters, who are thirty five points more likely
to view the GOP as weird than the Democratic Party,
the largest gap along racial or ethnic lines. I once
asked Kevin Costner when I was working the Red carpet
one year in nineteen ninety nine at the Oscars. I
asked him a question for a feature I was doing
(15:53):
as a non writer, a non entertainment writer doing for
the La Times. I said, what do you think of
the idea of having like a six hour pregame show
for the Oscars the way they do for the Super Bowl?
And Kevin and said, I think we already know too
much about the things we already know about, which I
thought was a wonderful quote. He came back to me
about five minutes later and said, could you not run that?
(16:15):
I sound like Yogi bearra if we are now polling,
actually polling on which minority or racial or ethnic group,
or demographic or age group or majority group or group
of people whose last names begin with the letter G
over which one of them believes the Democrats are less
(16:35):
weird than the Republicans. We may know too much about
the things we already know about, but more importantly that number,
that it's only thirty four to twenty nine. I'm sorry
to become the coach yelling at the team that just
came from three touchdowns down to go ahead by five
or six points. But Madame Vice President, this is not
(16:56):
good enough. The Republicans are existentially weird, and a five
point lead over them in weird team needs to push
harder on this. To go back to doctor Strangelove and
George C. Scott as General Turgenson, we must not allow
(17:18):
a weirdness gap. Also, the headlines read Telsey Gabbard and
Robert F. Kennedy Junior added to Trump transition BOYD did
that surprised me. I thought, holy crap, Trump is transitioning.
(17:38):
Shouldn't this be a bigger story. Turned out they meant
transition team. I'd be surprised if either of them transitioned
into a human being or an American. Once again, to
alter the Rodney dangerfield quote, as Thornton mellon from Back
to School, Here's what this is all about. If you
want to look sane, you hang out with crazy people.
(18:02):
This applies equally to Gabbard, RFK and of course Trump
and maybe trump spokes liar Stephen Chung, who we visited
with earlier, who gets the self awareness Award for complaining
to the Washington Post about the Harris campaign and how
it is I swear it says this. The Harris campaign
(18:22):
is mocking Trump on social media, and Stephen Chung and
Donald Trump are butt hurt. Acting like whiney school children
is not a political strategy, Chung says, but it is
a coping mechanism for the Kamala campaign, who knows they
have a weak candidate incapable of being authentic. If anyone
thinks that using emojis is some cutting edge message technique,
(18:45):
they're severely out of touch. With reality and the seriousness
of the challenges Americans face. So you heard him, No emojis.
Emojis are for Whiney's school children. Racist and sexist and
anti semitic and violent memes and stupid ass nick names.
Those are what serious presidential candidates use. I got one question.
(19:13):
Is there an emoji or a meme for a mini
stroke asking for a friend? Also of interest here, it
is rare when a former worst Person comes back and
wins the award years later in an entirely new category.
But a TV reporter fired for showing up in a
(19:35):
bikini on tape at the house of a guy she
was doing an investigative report on after his wife disappeared.
She is now about to be fired for mocking Tim
Walls's son. And the twist, not only is she a
right wing media nut job now, but she's also the
volleyball coach at a public school with a special and
(19:57):
exemplary department dedicated to special needs high school kids. That's next.
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman stell
(20:31):
ahead of us on this ediative countdown. So lou Dobbs
has been dead for like six weeks now and just
yesterday I found myself explaining to an old friend who
didn't know that Lou Dobbs's inability to keep his pants
on while he was living directly led to the start
of my television career a scant forty three years ago.
This month, Hey baby, I work for Cable News Network.
(20:55):
If you get my drift, stocks are up ahead in things.
I promised not to tell what I'm supposed to respect
him because he's dead. First, there are still more new
idiots to talk about. The daily round up, the miss Grants, morons,
undunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
the world. Respect. I never respected him when he was alive.
(21:19):
The Bronze worst Bill Mitchell talk about lack of respect.
He is chairman of Your Voice America, and he's also
a human weather van. As near as I can figure,
this is the plot of his course in Republican party
circles since twenty fifteen. Hated Trump, liked Trump, hated Trump,
(21:41):
liked Trump, wanted Trump to drop out, wanted Trump to
stay in, supported Trump, rooted for Trump, demanded Trump, resign,
got rid of Trump, disavowed Trump, got rid of his
Twitter account, came back supported Trump, supported Trump some more
now demanding Trump be elected. I've lost track how many
(22:01):
times it is. It might be thirty five more times
that I've for got. Now he likes Trump again. Why
are the Democrats, he writes, completely uninterested in the investigation
of the Trump assassination attempt? Hold on before we go
into this bill. Got a surprise in a reply from
Congressional reporter Jamie Dupree, who wrote, all six Democrats on
(22:25):
the Trump Shooting Task Force showed up in Butler, Pennsylvania
for a site visit on Monday. Four of the seven
GOP lawmakers on that House panel missed the trip. Who
is it that are completely uninterested in the investigation of
the Trump assassination attempt? Phil wor Sir the Silver Donald himself.
(22:51):
There's lots to complain about h R. McMaster, who was
Trump's National security advisor, but McMaster did point out that
Trump negotiated with the Taliban, forced the Afghanistan government to
release five thousand of some of the most heinous people
on earth, as McMaster put it, and he added, and
(23:12):
stopped the active targeting of the Taliban in Afghanistan When
he said that. Even Anderson Cooper noticed he did something
that I thought was not allowed. On CNN, he asked
a follow up question, Cooper, the Trump administration forced the
Afghan government to release five thousand Taliban. The answer from
(23:35):
hr McMaster correct. So Trump forced the release of five
thousand Taliban terrorists, then caused Republicans to stop all the
border security in this country and the deal to increase it,
and then boasted the terrorists, including from the Middle East,
were coming into this country over that border. So Trump's
(23:58):
guilty of treason. Again, harasked him, he's at trade tour.
I don't care if he's having mini strokes put them
behind bars. But our winner, I have to say, I
love this woman's ingenuity. Do you remember her Amy Jacobson.
Amy Jacobson was the Chicago TV news reporter who got
(24:20):
fired in two thousand and seven after while she was
doing an investigative report on a guy whose wife had disappeared,
video turned up of her at the guy's house and
she's in the video and she's in a bathing suit.
She got fired and then her husband filed for divorce
against her. Remember her, Amy Jacobson? Well, Now, unsurprisingly, as
(24:47):
all of the tumbling tumbleweeds blow over to this role.
Everybody who got caught being a jackass winds up as
a right wing nut job radio host or a member
of the Trump transition team. She's on wid in Chicago, fittingly,
(25:08):
what have you got on that radio? I've got wind?
And guess who she mocked in the August twenty second show,
Gus Walls, governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walls's son,
the young man with the nonverbal learning disorder. She mimicked
Gus's emotional reaction to his dad's acceptance speech at the
(25:29):
Democratic National Convention. As you know, Gus is seventeen years old.
If that were Baron Trump, who had been mocked that
way by the liberals, I don't know, Trump would have
taken hostages by now. Jacobson's co host compared Gus Walls
to a Chris Farley character, and Jacobson laughed and laughed
and laughed. And this is bad enough. As we've seen,
(25:53):
even Ann Coulter felt a measure of remorse about doing
the same thing. But this gets much worse. Amy Jacobson
is the clubhouse leader in the insulting Gus Wall and
showing a total lack of humanity and showing your ass,
as they say, full the ass not unfamiliar to her
(26:15):
from from the two thousand and seven story. Come to
think of it, See, because Amy Jacobson is not just
a right wing nut job on Chicago radio. She's also
head coach of the varsity boys and girls volleyball teams
at Roiled Amundson High School in Chicago. And guess what
they have at Aminson High School in Chicago. Apart from
(26:36):
periodic Arctic expeditions. I suppose they have a large so
called cluster program designed for high school kids with learning disabilities.
It's such a good program they have at Alminson that
licensed therapists who treat these kids and help them out.
Many of them send their kids specifically to this school.
(27:01):
So the volleyball coach at the school helping special needs
kids mocked the special needs kid of the Democratic vice
presidential candidate, who himself used to be a football coach
at a high school in Minnesota. Well, guess what the
parents at Aminsen want. They want coach Amy fired, and hell,
(27:22):
they want the guy who's jokes she laughed at. A
guy named Dan Proft, fired two from his job. But oh,
according to the Chicago trib what do you know, looks
like he's already been removed as a board member of
Envision Unlimited, which is, what else a disability advocacy organization.
(27:43):
So anyway, Wind should fire this clown Jacobson, and obviously
the school has to fire her. But happily, Amy Jacobson,
you can always go back into TV reporting. Oh right,
Amy Jacobson unemployable? Two days? Whis Tyson now to the
(28:24):
number one story on this all new edition of Countdown?
And it's that time of year again. It's August when
the odometer turns over and my TV debut becomes forty
three years ago. This holy crap, and it all owes
to Ted Turner and Lou Dobbs. Part of this I've
(28:45):
told before. I actually interviewed with Cable News Network twice,
once in April nineteen eighty when they were not yet
on the air, and after that interview I saw no
reason they ever would be. I wrote in my diary
there's no chance they're ever going to get it on
the air in time. They were supposed to go on
in September. Because the New York Bureau of CNN consisted
(29:08):
of one coffee table, a couple of chairs, one coffee machine,
a stairwell, one unisex bathroom, and one staffer New York
Bureau chief Mary Alice Williams. Plus the day I went there,
CNN Sports president Bill McPhail made it two staffers. He
was up from Atlanta after a long year. My phone
(29:30):
rang one day and McPhail asked me to fill in
for two weeks. In two weeks for their New York
sports reporter. I had no television experience at all. Well,
I'd watched it. She was going on vacation on August third, sooner,
McPhail added if the baseball strike ended before then. Her
name was Debbie Segur, and all I knew was vacation
(29:50):
me okay. Turned out it was part vacation, part get
out of town quickly, very quickly. See CNN started as
not just news news or just news and politics and
interw views and guests. There was a half an hour
business show every night, and a half an hour show
(30:10):
business show every night, and a half an hour sports
cast at seven, and another half an hour sports cast
at eleven, and then one in the middle of the night.
There was a fashion program, and there were hourly stock reports,
and they had a staff of meteorologists, and they had
short sports casts almost every hour of the day. And
the business anchor based in that New York bureau, which
had expanded from the one unisex bathroom, was Lou Dobbs,
(30:33):
and as the producer they had sent up to work
with me when I filled in for this Debbie Sigura
Phil Griffin later the president of MSNBC. As he explained
to me, when we got in the car to go
out to Shaye Stadium to interview all those New York
Mets guys, Lou Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out
on his wife with the CNN New York sports reporter,
(30:54):
and missus Dobbs had found out, so there was even
a rumor there was somebody else who also worked in
the CNN New York bureau who found out. So Bill
McPhail's hurried call asking me to fill in for the
reporter for two weeks. In two weeks was because she
was going on quote vacation. Not long after all this,
(31:16):
Dobbs thought it would be smarter to leave New York
for a while, like a decade or so, and Debbie
went with him. They got married. This left New York
without a sports reporter, and CNN tried another one of
their Atlanta anchors for a while, but they kept giving
him extra vacation time, so they would have to bring
me in freelance every month, and finally the following March
they offered me the job full time. And I have
(31:38):
not earned an honest pay check since. And I mean
that in two ways. CNN was paying me five hundred
dollars a week, that's one hundred dollars a day to
go on national television. Even then, this seemed a little low,
and it was about forty percent less than what I
was making for like three days a week in network radio.
(31:58):
I pointed this out acceptingly because I was learning how
to do TV while on TV and getting paid for
it was a vocational school. And that's when they told
me that the five hundred dollars a week was already
more than they had been paying Debbie Sigura and more
than the guy they were paying as their reporter in
Los Angeles. And then Bill McPhail, the head of sports,
(32:20):
called and offered me a contract for twenty five thousand
dollars and I said, wait, twenty five thousands, five hundred
dollars a week is twenty six that wait a minute,
you're offering me less for the contract. Why would I
take less? Is there health insurance or something? And he
said no, there's just the security of having the contract.
And I said, well, I'd rather have the thousand dollars
that you're docking me for signing, and they found it somewhere,
(32:44):
but they always reminded me how generous they had been
with that extra thousand dollars, and I kept saying, that's
not extra. You are already paying me that. Anyway, None
of that would have happened, though, without Ted Turner, because
CNN was his idea, and in fact, most of what
you saw from me on ESPN later that was also
(33:06):
mostly his idea too, sort of anyway, the basic idea
of SportsCenter sports news on national television on more or
less a daily basis, Ted did that. Not ESPN and
the daily sports news studio show on at the same
time every day or night with the same anchors treated
(33:26):
as seriously as a half an hour of news. Ted
did that. And buying sports teams to have something to
put on your television station, Ted did that too. WTCG
Channel seventeen Atlanta was the fringiest of fringe ETV stations
when Ted Turner bought it in nineteen seventy. But then
six years later he bought first the Atlanta Braves and
(33:46):
then the basketball Atlanta Hawks, and he bought a couple
of satellite dishes, and the FCC made the fateful decision
to let him put Channel seventeen up on the satellite
so it could be shown on those fledgling cable systems
around the country. And the next thing you knew, the
Atlanta Braves were America's team, and Ted, who was shameless,
(34:07):
promptly signed the first baseball player ever to take advantage
of what we now know as free agency, Andy Messersmith.
Andy Messersmith got what looked like all the money in
the world, more money than any baseball player had ever
gotten or or we were certain would ever get, one
million dollars over three years with one catch. Andy Messersmith
(34:36):
had to wear uniform number seventeen WTCG Channel seventeen. You
see where this was going. He had to wear uniform
number seventeen, and instead of having Messersmith written on the
back of the shirt over the seventeen, he had to
have the word channel. So Andy Messersmith's uniform when he
(34:56):
broke in with the Atlanta Braves in nineteen seventy six
as the highest paid player in baseball history. The back
of the uniform read channel seventeen. Baseball stopped that right quick.
It stopped Ted the day he decided that he should
see what it was like to manage the Braves and
if it really was as difficult as his managers had
made it seem. His lifetime record was zero to one,
(35:18):
and he said, yes, this is very difficult. But the
cable sports genie, that one was out of the bottle
and nobody was stopping it, and he haspn ran with it.
But next came news. Even then, his crazy idea cable
news network rested squarely on the first regularly scheduled nightly
sports newscast in national television history, CNN Sports Tonight at
(35:39):
seven at eleven and two am Eastern. While Sports Center
was on in those days for fifteen minutes one night
at seven and then an hour the next night at
ten and sports Tonight, was there come news or high
water seven nights a week. Of course, Ted Turner was
not just shameless, he was also technically penniless, so he
(36:00):
hired a couple of real veterans to run and anchor
the thing. Bill mcphil who helped invent the NFL on
CBS and Monday Night Football, was also his idea. And
his former CBS colleague Bob Wessler, and he hired Nick Charles,
who was a star of sportscasting on the Washington and
Baltimore newscasts, but everybody else the cheapest hires they could find.
(36:21):
In nineteen eighty one, Turner sent McPhail to hire me.
That was our second interview. When I told Bill I
had made forty two thousand dollars the year before working
for Charlie Steiner in radio. Bill spit his drink halfway
across the room. We were planning on hiring six guys
to start with, for a total of ninety five thousand.
(36:41):
This is when they were staffing up what became CNN
Headline News. I answered that I hoped that the other
five guys he was going to hire were prepared to
make it on seven grand each, because there was no
way I was moving to Atlanta for less than sixty
thousand dollars. Well, they got me anyway, and for less
than sixty thousand dollars, but I did not move to Atlanta,
Thank you, Lou Dobbs. And they got Dan Patrick and
(37:04):
Tanna Storm and Fred Hickman and Dan Hicks and Gary
Miller and dozens of others and reporters and cameramen and
producers and executives and editors, and one sports production assistant
from the original crew of CNN Sports wound up becoming
the president of CNN Worldwide, and another wound up becoming
(37:25):
the president of MSNBC. ESPN reshaped television sports news anyway,
CNN created it, and early on CNN staffed ESPN and
much of the industry. And I'm skipping how Turner mainstreamed
World Cup Yachting at least for a while, and Ted
and TNT and Ted and the Goodwill Games and Ted
(37:47):
and World Championship Wrestling, whose matches were actually held right
above the CNN newsroom so that often you could hear
the wrestlers slamming each other on our ceiling. And by
the way, the Braves winning fourteen straight division titles, and
the repopulation of Bison in the country. It was also
Ted Turner, But my favorite Ted Turner story comes from
(38:07):
something he did not pull off, not that he did
not try. When the football owners forced the players out
on strike in nineteen eighty two. Ted sent me to
cover it every day for eight months, and one day
he showed up at the football strike talks to meet
with the players, and when he came out, he announced
that he would be bankrolling and televising two football games
(38:30):
in the middle of a football strike, one at RFK
Stadium in Washington and the other at the Rose Bowl
in southern California. And basically these two games would pit
pickup teams of striking players the American Conference versus the
National Conference. And he called his two games the All
Star Season. I've mentioned this elsewhere and before. When I
(38:52):
asked him about the acronym for the All Star Season,
he winked at me and shushed me, and then he
took me aside and he asked me what I thought.
I told him, nobody's going to watch and he's going
to lose money. And he looked at me and he said,
nobody watches you. I lose money on you, so what,
you'll make money eventually. He then explained that that was
(39:15):
really just designed to set up the owners if he
could put the games together and get them on TV
with no more than one month's lead time, the players'
union was willing to partner up with him. Ted's real
motive for the ass the All Star season was nothing
less than creating his own football league, twenty four teams,
(39:38):
which would begin play in nineteen eighty three or sooner
if necessary, and would be televised exclusively on TBS. All
he needed was the players going along with him, and
one little labor court ruling that the owners had forced
the players union to go out on strike and that
would allow the union to negotiate with other employers. Well, obviously,
(40:02):
you don't have to be a football expert to know
that he did not get that court ruling, but they
went for it. Ted Turner was shooting for nothing less
than killing off the National Football League and replacing it
with a new National Football League owned by Ted Turner,
and he was going to give the players fifty percent
of the whole league. And don't forget, nearly all of
(40:24):
this was done on a shoe string budget, with borrowed money,
with all of his employees convinced that he was crazy,
and it wouldn't last until next Tuesday, and when we
would get our paychecks at CNN in New York, we
would race each other to the bank to cash them
just in case there wasn't going to be enough for everybody.
So whenever something causes me to get nostalgic about my
(40:46):
start in TV, I inevitably find myself going back to
tales of Ted Turner, Owen Lou and Missus Dobbs and
the Other Missus Dobbs, Missus Dobbs one and Missus Dobbs two.
(41:17):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Please share this podcast with somebody who
does not listen. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, the
musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of
our music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums.
He's a first little guy. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
(41:39):
Our satirical and fithy musical comments are by the best
baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is
the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is
my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
(42:00):
Your assignment, if you choose to accept it. Write some
lyrics to the Beatles song Penny Lane about Kenny Maine.
Kenny Maine, the barber shaves another customer. That's countdown for
this the seventieth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
the three hundred and twenty ninth day since convicted felon
(42:22):
Donald J. Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing
hearing if it happens, Use the mental health system. After all,
he doesn't realize he was president in twenty twenty and
you've got this President Biden. I mean, if Jack Smith
can outsmart the Supreme Court, you and the White House
(42:45):
can use the presidential immunity these idiots on the Court
provided to stop him from doing it again while we
still can. And anti Semitic, anti immigration, gun nut Republicans,
please stop shooting at Trumph. More Democrats than Republicans showed
(43:07):
up at the investigation at the site christ The next
scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news requires until
the next one. I'm Keith Oldreman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is
(43:35):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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