March 19, 2024 • 56 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 142: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: He said “it’s going to be a blood bath for the country” – and we’re arguing about it.
NOT “a blood bath for our auto industry.”
NOT “a blood bath for the imported car market.”
NOT “a blood bath for Toyota-Thon 2024."
“A blood bath for the country” – with no retraction or repudiation by Trump of, say, bloodbaths - and we – the people trying to STOP him – WE are ARGUING about it. Amongst ourselves.
AND Trump is broke; he tells the court THIRTY insurance underwriters wouldn’t cover his 464 million dollar bond in the New York Fraud case and we’re still supposed to believe he’s a billionaire. AND suddenly he’s a billionaire pleading poverty and, boom, who just reappeared out of nowhere? Paul Manafort, the international money spigot and Russian operative.
AND I’m still more concerned about THIS: Where is Jack Smith, demanding that Judge Tonya Chutkan revoke Trump’s bail and incarcerate him after he violated the gag order in the Election Subversion case and maligned, threatened, and encouraged OTHERS to malign and threaten Cassidy Hutchinson – and not just OTHERS, but federal officers – federal officers who carry guns: “Our great Secret Service has totally CRUSHED Cassidy Hutchinson’s (who I barely knew) made up (FAKE!) stories about me roughing up Secret Service Agents from the back seat of the Beast (Limo). Has she now changed her testimony? Will she be prosecuted for what she did and said?”
Trump didn’t just violate the gag order – pared down in appeal but still preventing Trump and his counsel quote “from making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding,” unquote – pared down but clearly barring Trump from even SPECULATING that a likely witness such as Hutchinson fabricated evidence or might be PROSECUTED, AND clearly barring Trump from congratulating the Secret Service for having quote “totally crushed” her, AND barring Trump from trying to coerce her with questions like “has she now changed her testimony?, AND FOR THAT MATTER barring Trump from making public statements about OTHER possible witnesses – like members of the Secret Service.
This isn’t legal nuance. This isn’t novel lawyerly theory. This isn’t Trump’s first violation, either.
I want his bail revoked TODAY.
I want his ass in jail TODAY.
I want his lawyers to have to try to find a Supreme Court judge willing to spring him TODAY.
B-Block (25:16) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: MAGA will now start snorting asbestos. The RNC chair says nobody was better off four years ago under Trump. So proud of our NYC Mayor. Tommy Tuberville holds the Constitution upside down. ANOTHER Republican calls her "Lincoln Riley." John Avlon misspells his own name. And a Lauren Boebert Bible Blooper. (32:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The SF Giants fire their beloved PA announcer legend Renel Brooks-Moon and claim it was a "mutual decision." Kristi Noem is THIS close to selling lingerie. And the Republican National Committee sees a guy walking next to President Biden and calls him Biden's "handler." Actually he's the Republican Speaker of the House.
C-Block (38:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The first rule of Fox and The New York Post and other Murdoch "news" outlets: When your baby Hitler is in trouble because he threatened a bloodbath, find a false equivalence somewhere. Take something somebody said – or that somebody didn’t say – and hold them up and call make them the equivalent of Trump and call it. Call it a “Blue Bloodbath” - and guess who they found? Guess who they are equating with Trump? ME. I’M the blue bloodbath. They claimed I hinted at his assassination when in fact I hinted at him dying in prison. They've been doing this since 1996 and intensely after I outsmarted Rupert Murdoch for $800,000 in 2001 and if you think $800,000 means nothing to Rupert Murdoch, you ain't met him.
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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. He
said it's going to be a blood bath for the country,
and we're arguing about it. Not a bloodbath for our
(00:27):
auto industry, not a blood bath for the imported car market,
not a blood bath for happy Honda days, a blood
bath for the country with no subsequent retraction or repudiation
by Trump of say blood baths. And we we the
people trying to stop him, we are arguing about the context,
(00:51):
arguing amongst ourselves. And Trump is clearly broke. He tells
the court thirty insurance underwriters would not cover his four
hundred and sixty four million dollar bond in the New
York fraud case. And we're still supposed to believe he's
a billionaire, and suddenly he's a billionaire pleading poverty and
boom the moment he does that, who just reappears out
(01:13):
of nowhere, But Paul Manifort the international money spigot and
Russian operative and I'm still more concerned about something else where?
Is Jack Smith demanding that Judge Tanya Chutkin revoked Trump's
bail and incarcerate him after he violated the gag order
(01:34):
in the Elections subversion case, and maligned and threatened and
encouraged others to malign and threaten Cassidy Hutchinson, and not
just any others, but federal officers, federal officers who carry guns. Quote.
Our great Secret Service has totally crushed Cassidy Hutchinson, who
(01:58):
I barely know made up fake stories about me roughing
up Secret Service agents from the back of the beast limo.
Has she now changed her testimony? Will she be prosecuted
for what she did and said? Trump has not just
violated the gag order in the DC subversion case. He
(02:21):
has not just violated a gag order that was already
pared down an appeal, but still prevents Trump and his
counsel from quote making or directing others to make public
statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential
participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding, unquote
pared down, but still clearly barring Trump from even speculating
(02:46):
got a likely witness such as Cassidy Hutchinson fabricated evidence
or testimony, or might be prosecuted, and clearly barring Trump
from congratulating the Secret Service for having quote totally crushed
her and barring Trump from trum trying to coerce her
with questions like has she now changed her testimony, and
(03:10):
for that matter, barring Trump from making public statements about
other possible witnesses, like all the members of the Secret Service.
And that was only the first part of the psycho's post.
What about the unselect j six committee. They destroyed almost everything,
including real evidence and findings. What's going to happen with them?
(03:31):
Serious crimes have been committed? Again, the gag order was
specifically rearranged to narrow it and yet leave it absolutely
clear that he could not threaten nor point at others
and hope that they then threatened people investigating him or
(03:53):
testifying against him. There's three violations of the gag order
by Trump just about Cassidy Hutchinson in one post. There
is at least one violation invoking me, members of the
Secret Service, probably way more than just one, and what
one each for the eight members of the House January
(04:14):
sixth committee. So there are a dozen violations of the
gag order? And where are Jack Smith and Tanya Chutkin.
This isn't legal nuance, This isn't novel lawyerly theory, this
isn't Trump's first violation of this gag order either. I
want to bail revoked today. I want his ass in
jail today. I want his lawyers to have to find
(04:37):
a Supreme Court judge willing to go out on that
dangerous limb and sprain him. Today he violated the gag
order twelve times in about three sentences.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Owen.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Meanwhile, in Florida, Trump's concierge judge, the former Flamenco correspondent
of the Miami Nuevo Times, Eileen Cannon, says she wants
both the defense and the prosecution to issue competing jury
instructions about the impact of the Presidential Records Act on
(05:17):
the charges against Trump of you know, espionage. The lawyers
who have seen it say they have never seen anything
like it. Moreover, their suggestion is it is so blatantly
stupid and unjudicial and prejudiced towards Trump, to say nothing
of the fact that the Presidential Records Act doesn't have
(05:38):
a damn thing to do with the classified documents and
the classified records, that it is alike allowing the defense
in a case to argue attempted murder. What the hell
is that it's so bad that it might lead the
appellate court, the eleventh Circuit that keeps overruling this nitwit
Trump appointee, to overrule her yet again and suggest that's enough.
(06:02):
You're over your head, lady, and you are off this case,
and then we start all over again, and Trump wins
by delay. Now about the money. Trump standing there like
rich uncle Pennybags from Monopoly, with the insides of his
empty suit pockets turned inside out and hanging there. It's
(06:25):
a delightful image. When you read into the story, you
find quickly that this is just another stall. He went
to thirty insurers and they all turned him down because
everybody knows for stuff like this you have to offer
cash to guarantee the bond a high percentage of the
final amount you want to borrow. And he didn't offer cash.
(06:45):
He offered property, property, which he's also going to lose
if he doesn't get a bond somewhere. So why would
you underwrite a bond on his behalf if he could
lose the assets in question? Well you wouldn't. It is,
as Trump's lawyers wrote, a practical impossibility. But you would
(07:06):
offer property instead of cash in the event you wanted
to get turned down, so you could go to the
judge and ask that the whole bond thing get postponed
until after the appeals court. Here's the whole case all
over again. It's another stall, yet it's a stall with
(07:29):
a curious sting in its tail. The day he tries
this stall, the Washington Post reports that Paul Manifort is
back in trump Land, like Banquo's ghost wandering on to
the stage in Macbeth. Trump is considering bringing Paul Manafort
(07:52):
back to run part of his campaign again, just like
in twenty sixteen Russia. Manifort Russian operative and already approven
Trump asset, so much so that Trump had to him
for felony convictions Russia because he's seemingly tied into every
(08:12):
illicit money source in the known world Russia. And what
does Trump want Paul Manafort to do on the campaign.
He wants him to run the twenty twenty four Republican
convention in Milwaukee, like the twenty sixteen Republican convention in Cleveland,
(08:33):
the one at which Trump met all those Russians backstage,
and before you knew it, the Republican Party had changed
one key. But seemingly obscure part of its campaign platform
when they went from vehemently supporting this small democracy somewhere
under threat to selling that small democracy out. You know
(08:56):
the convention when Manafort, who had worked for pro Russian
oligarchs in Ukraine as long ago as two thousand and four,
when Paul Manifort suddenly I got Trump suddenly to get
the GOP to sell out Ukraine. Trump says he has
no money, and all of a sudden, here is the
reanimated corpse of Paul Manifort. That'd be the Paul Manafort
(09:20):
who a bipartisan Senate Committee report in twenty twenty declared
a grave intelligence risk, and who is already his own, living,
breathing Russian pipeline. While Trump needs money, and while the
Biden administration is apparently still planning on giving Trump the
traditional intelligence briefings they give you all the opposition presidential candidates.
(09:42):
Because there's still a few documents Trump hasn't stolen yet
and Paul Manifort hasn't seen yet.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
You want to give him an intelligence briefing. Okay, here's
what you do. You tell Trump quote person woman marn
Camera TV. You tell him that's also an intelligence briefing.
Not only will we keep him from selling more secrets
(10:17):
or stealing more secrets, or having Manafort do whatever with
the secrets, but Trump will be delighted. He'll tell the
story every goddamn chance he gets and thinks it's gonna
show he's such an intelligent guy, and he can tell
all the other inmates about it when Judge Chutkin gets
off her butt and revokes his bail for having violated
(10:40):
the gag order in that case one dozen times.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Now.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Bloodbath and beyond sure, he didn't really mean it. He
merely sent out a fundraising email yesterday's subject line blood bath,
which ended with deliver the liars in the fake news
a message that they'll never forget. And he was only
(11:17):
talking about the blood bath within the confines of the
foreign car market and manufacturing in Mexico. But Speaker of
the House Mike Johnson told Republicans at a private event
in Texas, quote, I think it was obvious for anyone
who takes the time to watch his speech and to
realize what he was saying. Really he was one hundred
percent correct. Now, no, Trump didn't really mean it, but
(11:40):
he told Fox quote, if you don't use certain rhetoric.
If you don't use certain words that maybe aren't very
nice words, nothing will happen. Yes, yes, you know what
won't happen if you don't use certain words. A blood
bath won't happen. And you and I expect this. He's
been saying something obviously violent or vile or virulent or
(12:02):
racist or anti Semitic, or homophobic or sexist every week
for a decade, and we expect him to deny it.
And we expect his little ren fields like this worm
Johnson to echo the cover story. Well, he's living in
a little space between the meetings, and we expect them
(12:24):
to say, he didn't mean that kind of blood bath.
He meant this kind of blood bath. But honest to God,
we the pro democracy, anti Trump forces, we are still
in the middle of an argument with ourselves over whether
a psychopathic would be dictator and hitler wannabee who values
(12:47):
no human life except his own, and whose mental state
is rapidly deteriorating, and who has used the threat of
political violence for a decade and uses apocalyptically violent language
to enrage his cult and who tried to get his
thugs to overthrow our government and who is now obsessed
with personal We are in the middle of an argument
(13:07):
over whether Trump really meant to threaten an actual blood
bath if he is not restored to power, or if
he just meant it metaphorically and economically and only within
the limited context and foreign importance of the automobile industry.
We're actually arguing over this. We the people who will
(13:28):
save this democracy or go to Trump brand re education
concentration hotels because we didn't save the democracy. We are
wasting our time arguing over this. And the media, the
mainstream media, the legacy media, the lethargy media, call him
(13:48):
what you will. Awakened like rip van winkled to the
reality of Trump's years of the rhetoric of a mass murderer,
and every one of them down to god damned NBC
News headline the blood bath and hand wrung over the
blood bath and publicized the bloodbath and got the message
(14:12):
out about the bloodbath to at least a comparative handful
of independence or low info voters and usually reliable right
on the money people like Ian Bremer are looking at
the biggest, fattest, healthiest yield of anti Trump revulsion in years,
(14:32):
and anti Trump horror in years, and Ian Bremer's reaction
is it's disingenuous and embarrassing, and the mainstream media is
proving incapable of turning the needle down from eleven. And
I'm thinking the media is at eleven about Trump. Eleven
what out of a thousand, because hey, guess what giving
(14:58):
Trump the benefit of the doubt? And why are you
doing that? When he tweeted statistical impossible to have lost
the twenty twenty election. Big protest in DC on January sixth,
be there will be wild. He meant that the speeches
would be wild, and maybe maybe he really was going
(15:19):
out on a limb. Maybe he also meant the buffet
at the Willard Hotel would also be wild. He said
bloodbath in the country, and he said bloodbath at the
same time he was saying immigrants are not really people,
(15:41):
and as he was threatening to imprison the January sixth
Committee and to let the January sixth terrorists escape, and
he replaced the real national anthem with a new one
in which he speaks. And oh, by the way, he
repeated his call to terminate the constitution. But I'm sure
he meant bloodbath as in a nice hot bath that
(16:04):
will make your blood circulate, health fiere in the bath,
and you're not going to be able.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
To sell those guys if I get elected. Now, if
I don't get elected, it's going to be a blood
bath for the whole that's going to be the least
of it. It's going to be a blood bath for
the country that'll be the least of it.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly
treated January sixth hostages. I pledge allegiance to the flag
(17:00):
of the United and of course this threat of political
violence if he is not given power the presidency with
total immunity, by the way, total veto power over every
federal employee, Supreme Court on his side by a two
to one margin, with every comp in the nation immunized
from prosecution by him and thus personally beholden to him.
(17:22):
After he invokes the Insurrection Act and suspends all the
laws on day one as a dictator. He's never said
anything like that before. Not once has he even used
the blood imagery before either.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
It is a very sad thing for our country.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
It's poisoning the blood of our country.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease and.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
The radical left thugs that live like vermin within the
confines of our country.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
I don't think the people of the United States would
stand for it. If it happened, I think you'd have
problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we've
never seen before. I don't think the people of the
United States would stand for it.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
What kind of problems, mister President.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
I think they'd have big problems, big problems. I just
don't think that stand for it. They will not sit
still and stand for this ultimate of hoaxes.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
You can't sit home if you're sick, as in dog
isn't kind. Even if you vote and didn't pass.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Away it's worth it.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
It'll be bedlam in the country.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
It's a very bad thing.
Speaker 6 (18:29):
If there's a prosecution of Donald Trump for miss handling
classified information after the Clinton debacle, which you presided over
and did a hell of a good job, they'll be
riots in the streets.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And the riots he promised he promised, never mind Lindsay
Graham if he didn't get the nomination in twenty sixteen,
and the violence in the streets he promised in twenty twenty,
and the terrible things he promised in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, I don't see it. I don't see any.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Theme about blood or violence or if you don't elect me,
my mobs will kill you. The media is overreacting. This
knob is not supposed to go to eleven just because
this Sunday is the first anniversary of him saying that
if he was arrested over the Stormy Daniel's hush money,
the nation would be subjected to quote death and destruction.
(19:21):
I'm sure he only meant about foreign cars, the death
and destruction of foreign cars. Seriously, as everybody around Trump denied,
he meant blood bath. No, no, no, no, no, only
a blood bath in terms of you know, toyota than
(19:42):
a final set of questions. This is the creature who
has poisoned the blood of our nation, and he said
something grotesque enough to break through the standard media reaction
of it's just Trump, let's worry about Biden's new sneakers,
and our side is saying, uh, yeah, there are blood
baths and then there are blood baths. Did Trump respond
(20:06):
by renouncing violence. Did he deny that he meant to
use the word blood bath? Did he even renounce just
blood baths? Did he renounce blood baths. Just renounce the
bath part. Just renounce them as say, compared to lower
(20:30):
volume blood loss like spurts or sprays or splatters or
stains or blood scratches or whatever you call it. When
you put leeches on, did he renounce blood leeches? We're
(20:56):
arguing about this sell of interest here. First rule of
running for office, Spell your own name right on all
of your own press releases. First rule of martyring a
murder victim for your racist cause, get her name right.
And yet another Republican has just failed that bar. And
(21:16):
the first rule of Fox News. When your baby Hitler
is in trouble because he threatened a blood bath, find
a false equivalence somewhere. Take something somebody said, or if
you can't find that, take something somebody didn't say, and
you hold them up and make them the equivalent of
Trump and call it. Call it a blue blood bath.
(21:39):
And guess who they found. Guess who they are equating with.
A former president of the United States. Me, I'm the
blue blood bath. They claimed I hinted at Trump's assassination,
when in fact I hinted at as I have for
a decade, him dying in prison of course, Fox has
(22:04):
been doing like this with me since nineteen ninety six.
That's next in an all new edition of Countdown.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Ohe scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark,
some predictions. Dateline, Washington, d C. The Environmental Protection Agency
is finally officially and utterly banned asbestos, the carcinogen still
in use today even though it was supposed to have
(22:46):
been banned in nineteen eighty nine. University of Florida professor
Michael Johnson with the joke quote, time for MAGA to
start huffing as bestos because Biden says it's bad for you. Dateline, North, Carolina. Well,
Trump has a winner in his new RNC chairman, Michael Wattley,
(23:07):
the former Brooks Brothers rioter from two thousand and election
denier from twenty twenty, went on Fox News and was
unable to get through the new Trump campaign slogan once
without having the truth escape? Are you better off now
than you were four years ago? Under Trump? Trump's Republican
National Committee chair says, you bet, you're ass You're better
(23:29):
now than you were four years ago under Trump? Were
you better off four years ago?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Than you are today.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
The answer for this entire country is no. I mean
yet we are better off today, or we will. The
new Trump RNC Chairman's first task will be to find
the next new Trump RNC chairman. Dateline, New York City,
Our extraordinary Mayor Eric Adams has now been sued by
(23:56):
a former colleague from their days in the police department,
using the same survivor's law by which e Gen Carrol
sued Trump. Lorna Beach Matura has filed on Adams, saying
that when she went to him in nineteen ninety three
for help with an issue with the job, he demanded
help with an issue with a job. That's not just
(24:17):
snide writing on my part. Quoting the suit, Adams told
plaintiff that he thought he could help her, but that
he quote also needed some help unquote and began rubbing
his penis through his clothes with his hand unquote. At
least he didn't say God had told him to ask her.
Don't blame me. I voted for the garbage lady date
(24:43):
line Bluffdale, Nevada. At a campaign stopped there, Half Elephant.
Senator Tommy Tumberville revealed that America is quote lives in
our kids to satanic cult We've got to get back
to the Constitution. With that, Senator Tumberville held up a
pocket edition of the Constitution and waved it towards the crowd,
which is when a lot of the folks realized there
(25:05):
that Tuberville was holding the Constitution book upside down. Dateline, Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Here we go again. This poor woman allegedly murdered by
an undocumented immigrant Lake and Riley. Republicans thought that they
could exploit her death to push the Trump cause. All
(25:25):
they managed to do is exploit her death and repeatedly
get her name wrong. First, it was Marjorie Taylor Green,
who later quoted herself telling President Biden at the State
of the Union that her name was Lincoln Riley. Then
Green did a live interview in which she called her
Lincoln Riley. Then Trump signed a picture of her in
which he misspelled Lake and Riley. The next fail Wyoming
(25:48):
Senator John Barrasso as in, well you know what the
name sounds like.
Speaker 6 (25:52):
Joe Biden apologized for the murderer of Lincoln of Lake
and Riley for calling.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Him Dateline East Hampton, New York bad enough to get
somebody else's name wrong, How about your own name? John Avlon,
the former Daily Beast editor who famously wrote an entire
both sides of this book about the political extremes and
throughout it never once realized the term wing nut was
(26:20):
only used about and by right wingers, has hit a
real block the spelling of his own name. Avlon is
running for Congress, and sure enough, he has put out
a press release thanking the East Hampton Democratic Party for
its endorsement of quote John Avalon ava Ln. The candidate's
(26:42):
name is Avlon avln. If it makes him feel any better,
he also misspelled east Hampton and dateline Rifle, Colorado. Hello,
Lauren Bobert is back with a Bobert Bible babble. We
know nothing pleases God except faith, she said in a
(27:04):
rum podcast, or just fans thing or whatever the hell
they do on rumble. It's not our works that please him.
Unquote O contrera monfrere actually in James two fourteen to seventeen.
Quote if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and
lacking in daily food, and you say go in peace,
be warmed and filled, without giving him the things they
(27:26):
need for the body, what good is that asks the
Bible faith by itself. If it does not have works,
is dead. So Lauren Bobert has the Bible exactly backwards.
Well there's your problem right there. Please madam stick to
what you know. Thank you, Nancy Faust. Is that Bobert
(28:02):
reaching across the aisle again, stell ahead of us on
(28:26):
this all new edition of Countdown. This has been going
on since nineteen ninety six. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News made
up a story about me again, this one that I
quote hinted at a Trump assassination when I am on
record for eight years now insisting no, no, no, I
want him convicted so he can die in prison. This
(28:47):
goes up on the wall next to the Murdoch New
York Post story claiming I ripped the name plaque off
my door and threw it at one of my own producers. Yeah.
I did that, except the plaque was made out of
computer paper. It's a piece of paper I threw at
the guy. It was a joke. Things I promised not
to tell. Addition three and forty two of Murdoch makes
(29:11):
crap up next for still more idiots to talk about
the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning
Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days worse persons in
the world besides Murdoch. First, the Bronze worse baseball San
Francisco Giants. They announced that they and their public addressed
(29:31):
announcer for almost the quarter of the century, Renelle Brooks Moon,
had mutually agreed to part ways after being ununbiled to
reach an agreement on a new contract. In fact, it
is beginning to appear that the Giants fired her. As
she was described in one column, she's the team's most
visible non playing black employee. By hell, if you look
(29:52):
at the Giants roster, you can leave out non playing.
Another veteran Bay Area baseball reporter says, there is much
more to this story to come, and it's likely this
and I quote from Anne Killian's column in the San
Francisco Chronicle quote, it's a terrible move for a team
who's majority owner Charles Johnson funds right wing politicians that
were supportive of undermining a democratic election and who have
(30:13):
tried to disenfranchise black voters across America. Brooks Moon was
one of the few in the Giants organization to publicly
decry Johnson's political activity. She was also outspoken in twenty
twenty in support of Black Lives Matter. It doesn't take
a crazy Johnson backed conspiracy theorist to connect the dots unquote. Yeah,
(30:34):
the Giant's owner is one ugly tiny Johnson, and he's
a high octane trump nut who just fired the fans
favorite person with the franchise who isn't one of their
announcers or Willie Mays. Hopefully his customers beat the ever
loving financial crap out of this guy Johnson the runner
up worser Christy nom First, we saw the governor South
(30:58):
Dakota post a rambling five minute video about how she
got a great new smile at some dentist's office in Texas.
This video had everything in it except the quote, is.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
This real life?
Speaker 1 (31:11):
South Dakota Democrats demanded an investigation of whether or not
Nome used state funds to travel to Texas for the
caps or the straightening, or the implants or whatever they
did to her mouth. South Dakota Republicans demanded an investigation
of why she didn't get all the work done in
South Dakota. Then Governor Nome went back online and started
(31:31):
pitching coffee and then custom made in souls and a book,
everything except Nome Stakes and Nome University. Look, Governor nom
is this close to selling her own lingerie. But our
winner the worst. The Republican National Committee, Lara Trump proprietor.
(31:54):
Not only did the co chair Michael Wattley say no,
of course, we're not better off than we were four
years ago. That's crazy thinking, oh my god, what did
I just say? Thanks Mike, but also the R and
See Research Twitter account posted a video intended to mock
President Biden as they keep trying to reignite the Biden
age plot. Quote Biden slowly descends the Capitol steps ran
(32:17):
the caption to the video as his handlers keep a
watchful eye, points toward the motorcade, and shuffles back into
his limo vigor unquote about the handlers from the video.
Two guys, one on either side of the president, neither
of whom the Republican National Committee appears to have recognized.
Now the one on the left, Leo Varadkar, the Prime
(32:39):
Minister of Ireland. Well, okay, you're with the Republican National Committee.
Why would you recognize any foreigner besides Putin? But the
guy walking next to the President on the right. The
little guy with the horn, rim glasses and that creepy
look on his face. He doesn't look at all familiar
to you, boys. He haven't seen him lately anywhere. That's uh.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
I don't know how to tell you this.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
That Republican National Committee is the Republican Speaker of the House,
Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson, you didn't recognize Mike Johnson, your
own Speaker of the House standing next to President by
the Republican National Committee. We're the RNC. We agree you're
not better off than you were four years ago, and
we don't know who the hell the Republican Speaker of
(33:22):
the House is. The Republican National Committee helping America defeat
Trump and all the down ballot Republicans two days worst.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
What am I saying?
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Best persons in the world, you're the number.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
One story on the countdown and my favorite topic me
and things I promised not to tell. And here we
go again, Rupert Murdoch's quote news outlets unquote shooting themselves
in the groin yet again while they were aiming at me.
A little timeline is required on this one. April eighteen
sixty five, Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States, was
(34:13):
assassinated May twenty twenty, maybe earlier. May twenty twenty was
the earliest I remembered or found. Trump started claiming he
had been treated far worse than Abraham Lincoln had. March sixteenth,
twenty twenty four, Trump said it again. Then Biden Harris
Headquarters tweets the clip, adding Trump says he's been treated
(34:35):
worse than Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated also March sixteenth,
twenty twenty four. I retweeted that, adding there's always the hope.
March eighteenth, twenty twenty four, Fox News publishes a story
first headlined Keith Olderman appears to hope for Trump assassination,
but the headline was then changed to Keith Olderman sparks
(34:56):
outrage by hinting at Trump assassination with a blue stripe
over my face, reading blue blood bath. On some level,
I am the same as Trump. To the New York
Post and the Fox News and all the rest of
Murdoch's outlets. Well, I was tempted to answer this by
saying I was just referring to the auto industry. In reality,
(35:21):
obviously I was and am hoping that Trump will be right,
and that he will be treated worse than Abraham Lincoln,
something worse than assassination, which would be that Trump is
convicted and dies in prison. I don't know how many
times I have said this, maybe more than Trump's ludicrous
charge that he's been treated worse than Lincoln. I may
(35:43):
have actually said it more than he has said that.
I think I first said I hope he dies in prison.
I expect he dies in prison in twenty sixteen. This
is because I hope he dies in prison. But of
course the point of this is Murdoch and Fox, and
especially the New York Post have been doing this to me.
(36:04):
So it's about nineteen ninety six, always always getting it wrong,
ever since I caught the Post in a lie that
year about a couple of hockey players that it claimed
had been thrown out of a New York City bar
for knocking over tables to the horror of customers, when
in fact I was with them, and they left the
(36:26):
place in their own form of horror, because as one
of them, Eric Lindross, stood up, he almost knocked over
the chair he was sitting in. He said to the other,
John Leclair, I think I've had enough. We got to
go home, Johnny, and they politely left, but not before
asking if I needed a lift. In two thousand and one,
(36:46):
the Post slammed me because I attended a New York
Mets game while wearing cargo shorts. A few years later,
the Post showed a picture somebody had snapped of me
leaning against one of the gates of Central Park here
in New York and said I was alone and depressed. Actually,
I was alone and early to my dental appointment across
(37:08):
the street, and I was trying to talk myself into
actually going into my doctor's office. There was a brief
interruption in the year during the two and a half
years or so that I worked for Murdoch in sports,
a brief interruption in these constantly hilarious stories before Murdoch
personally fired me after I had reported, with his office's
(37:30):
full approval in advance that he was working behind the
scenes to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, which
he was. Murdoch later boasted about firing me, but he
didn't say that. He didn't boast about it until after
he had sold the LA Dodgers baseball team. The origin
of the Post's quarter century of badly aimed shots at
(37:52):
me stems from that firing. When Murdoch fired me, his
minions did it slowly in stages over the course of
a couple of days, in hopes that they could get
me angry and bait me into you attacking Fox and
News Corp. In the newspapers, so that then they could
fire me for cause that way they wouldn't owe me
(38:12):
the rest of the money on my contract. Instead, as
I've mentioned here before, given the choice between waiting eight
months to insult someone and getting a lot of money,
or getting no money and yelling at them right now,
I'll always wait the eight months. I remained quiet for
eight lovely months, and Rupert had to pay me one
(38:34):
hundred thousand dollars a month to do that best job
I ever had. So whenever this happens and somebody says,
why don't you sue Murdoch, go sue News Corp? Sue
the New York Post, I always say, what kind of
money could I get from them that could hurt them
more than that eight hundred thousand dollars back in two
(38:55):
thousand and one. Also, most of the stuff they do
is so hilariously wrong, like the worse than Lincoln story
that it's transfer apparently desperate. But twice they threatened me
with stories that I had to take some action about.
Once they completely made one up, and once they ran
(39:17):
a story even though the FBI and the Department of
Homeland Security specifically asked them not to run it. The
obligatory reminder before I tell you those two stories, you
should never believe any source story you read in The
New York Post, or indeed on any media outlet owned
by the Murdochs like Fox. They occasionally report real things,
(39:40):
but just as often they make stuff up, not exaggerate,
or get slightly wrong or twist, but utterly fabricate. On
April eleventh, two thousand and five, the New York Post
was to run exactly the kind of story I'm talking about,
only under threat of multiple lawsuits did they actually spike it.
(40:03):
I hadn't told this story before I was reminded of it.
I think going through the mechanics of it will illustrate
just how evil an organization NewsCorp actually is, and more importantly,
how unreliable it is as a source of news. As
a New York Post page six gossip story, This one, though,
had everything. It attacked MSNBC, It had quotes from informed sources,
(40:26):
and even at one points it had a witness. Now
the witness disappeared during the evolution of this story, but
at one point it had a witness. It had somebody
prominent insulting Peter Jennings, the newscaster, right after he had
revealed he had lung cancer. And it was constructed in
such a way that if I did not comment on it,
they could print the story, then come back the next day,
(40:48):
rehash it and add that I was still refusing to
comment on it. But there was one overriding problem. It
was a complete fabrication, and thus it was full of
events that didn't happen and people who did not exist.
New York Post page six contacted MSNBC's then media relations
(41:09):
guy Jeremy Gaines on Thursday, April seventh, two thousand and five,
with the following story. Keith Olderman, a quote frequent critic
of President Bush, had refused to anchor the coverage of
the death of Pope John Paul the Second pretended to
be ill and called in sick instead. There was, as
(41:30):
I suggested earlier, a major problem here. I had anchored
the coverage of the death of Pope John Paul the Second.
I had been anchoring the primetime coverage four hours each weeknight,
day after day leading up to the potiffs passing. There
were viewers who had seen me. There were studio staffers.
Carl Bernstein was there. He was the Inn studio papal expert.
(41:53):
He was on the air with me every night for
like six nights in a row. There were video tapes.
Joe Tory, then the manager of the New York Yankees,
called me to compliment me on my reverential coverage of
the Pope's illness. That did not stop The New York
Posts in the first version that page six told us
(42:15):
it was going to print. Their unnamed source had been
on board and Amtrak Asella train going from Washington, DC
to New York, sitting near my agent as my agent
talked to somebody on a cell phone. This is apparently
a very favorite construction when the New York Post wants
to make up a story about somebody their witness said.
(42:37):
My agent complained that I had had a quote meltdown
after quote calling in sick. Rather than anchoring the papal coverage,
which I anchored, but there was more quote. Alderman, a
frequent critic of the president's policies, said it was better
in sports. They quoted my agent quoting me into the phone.
I'll be dealing with this all day now. Apart from
(43:00):
the fact that I had anchored the coverage, they said
I had not anchored. There was another major flaw in
this story. My agent was not on a train from
Washington to New York on the day in question, or
the week in question, or the month, or in fact
the year in question. My agent told me she thought
she had once been on a train from Washington to
(43:22):
New York in the year nineteen sixty seven. My agent
at that time lived a top Mount Shasta in California,
and so seldom left there that when she once drove
to town to get the mail, I asked her for the
details of her trip because I jokingly suggested to her
we should lead the newscast with it. So the next day, Friday,
(43:47):
April eighth, two thousand and five, New York Post Page
six came back with a different version of this same story.
They had misheard their source. Of course, it wasn't my
agent on the train from DC to New York. It
was a woman who worked for my agent, A woman
named Susan. Woman named Susan, whom I had, they would report,
(44:07):
already phoned three times that morning, and I was to
meet her urgently at the boat House in Central Park,
presumably because meeting her in the middle of Penn Station
when she got off that train would have been a
little too public. MSNBC's Jeremy Gaines responded again with some
irrefutable refutations. Nobody named Susan worked for my agent. In fact,
(44:33):
nobody at all worked for my agent. She was independent.
She had a working relationship with a small agency in
Los Angeles, and basically they covered her phone calls when
she was on vacation, which she almost never was, because
she never left the top of Mount e Fin Shasta.
We called that agency and they confirmed that not only
(44:53):
did they not have anybody working for them named Susan,
but nobody from that agency was even on the East
Coast or had been so far that entire year. At
this point I called the television columnist of The New
York Post and off the record, explained to him that
I was kind of furious, and this time I was
actually going to sue, but that NBC was far angrier
(45:16):
than I was, and that they were going to sue
as well, and sue the editor of page six. Personally,
I calmly went through the facts of this. This guy,
the TV guy, had a conscience, he sighed. He said
he got those kind of calls more often than I
would believe. And I said, no, I believe it. And
he said he would go to the editor of page
six and explain somebody was lying to him, the editor,
(45:38):
and he was going to get himself sued into bankruptcy
over a really obviously untrue and completely disproved story. Okay,
So now, a couple hours later, New York Post Page
six calls again demanding a comment from me on the
third different version of their exhaustive papals scoop. No, the
(45:58):
woman their witness heard, who they first said was my agent,
then said she had gotten it wrong. It was a
woman named Susan worked for my agent. She had now
become a woman who worked for my agent, whose name
the witness never heard, but she was talking to somebody
else named Susan. And there was an additional quote now
thrown in, I'll be dealing this all day now, had
(46:21):
morphed into I'll be dealing with this all day now.
The same week Peter Jennings makes his announcement about having
lung cancer. This idiot, a frequent critic of President Bush,
is sitting around in his pajamas calling me about this.
I'll spare you how I know this was not true.
It has something to do with the fact that I
don't wear pajamas. Years later, a former gossip reporter in
(46:47):
Murdoch's employ explained to me that his celebrity and gossip
people are taught never to back down from a confrontation,
and that if the subject of one of their hit
jobs fires back or tries to refute, or especially threatens
legal action, to keep making the story worse and worse
for them. And in the first decade of this century, anyway,
(47:08):
you were supposed to try to work in a defense
of George W.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
Bush.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
But there's also what she said, they called an emergency exit.
If there is no question that the story is nonsensical,
if the basic spine of the story does not line
up with provable facts, just abandon it. Abandon it. Don't
tell the subject of your attack that you are abandoning it.
Just don't make any more phone calls, don't send any
(47:34):
more emails about it. Just vanish, Just disappear the story,
and then send the name of the subject of the
story that you've just punted. Send it around to all
the other Murdoch operations to see if they can come
up with any dirt on the subject, to punish them
for fighting back against Rupert Murdoch's lies. So they abandoned
(47:58):
the story, and it took the New York Post a
year and a half to get me back and to
get back the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.
On September twenty six, two thousand and six, I opened
an envelope bearing a California postmark at my home in
New York. I shouldn't have done it, but bluntly, I'll
(48:19):
confess to this. I thought it was some baseball cards
I had bought off eBay. Well it wasn't. The envelope
contained a sticky substance looked like draino mixed with talcum powder,
and it fell out, and accompanying notes said it was anthrax.
Now I and other liberals would get a taste of
(48:40):
our own medicine. Even reading those chilling words and having
covered the actual anthrax letters terrorist attacks of two thousand
and one. When I was with CNN, I knew it
was an anthrax. The guy who supposedly sent the actual
anthrax in two thousand and one was an expert in
the field, and even he masshandled the stuff so badly
(49:02):
that supposedly he gave himself anthrax. And on the other hand,
I know the odds were impossible, but what if I
was wrong. My apartment building was filled with little old
ladies who had lived there since Roosevelt was president. I
only assumed that meant Franklin, not Theodore. The odds were
(49:23):
I don't know one in a billion that it was anthrax.
But who was I to dismiss this one in a
billion chants that these little old ladies were going to
get anthrax? Who was I to make that call? So
instead I made a call. I called the FBI. Well,
it was quite an evening. The cops showed up, the
(49:44):
FBI showed up. They said, of course it's not anthrax,
but we have to act like it is. Welcome to
our new world. The hazmat squad came in. They set
up a command post in the building. They swept my
apartment and they said, okay, now you have to go
to the emergency room for tests. And I said, it's
not anthrax. You just said so, And they said, if
we have to do this, you have to do this too.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
I laughed.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
Plus, if you don't, we can arrest you as a
threat to public health, and we could make you go
to the hospital. So out I went into an ambulance
dressed in a hazmat suit one size too small that
really cut in the groin. I spent the night getting
checked out. The FBI then called and said, it's like
(50:29):
it's like draino with ivory soap flakes. But they also
said there had been other letters that had arrived that
night and the night before, sent to people like the
chairman of CBS and David Letterman's office and Nancy Pelosi
and some poor guy who happened to have the name
John Stuart who was not the John Stuart. And they
(50:50):
couldn't make me do this, but it would really help
if I did not report what happened on my TV
show that night, just for the one day do it tomorrow,
because they had a lead on the guy who had
sent all these letters, and I want to scare him off.
And I said, sure, I'm a patriot. The next day,
(51:12):
while we were still observing the embargo on the story
my story, planning to run it at eight o'clock at night.
New York Post page six led with a picture of
me with the headline powder Puff spooks Keith and making
sure to identify me as quote, a frequent critic of
President Bush's policies. The New York Post mocked me for
(51:36):
not just assuming it was fake antrax and ignoring it,
and claimed I insisted the cops should take me to
the hospital. Quote whether they gave him a lollipop on
the way out isn't known. By the way, one of
the actual anthrax letters in two thousand and one, one
of the letters with actual anthrax in it that got
(51:56):
some people sick and killed a little old lady, had
been mailed to the New York Post, and one of
their st had contracted anthrax. And still this was their
attitude towards anthrax threats. Anyway, as it turned out, there
was a guy in California sending out these threatening letters,
(52:17):
each with fake anthrax, to about a dozen people.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
He sent me four of them.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Ultimately, I soon knew the FBI guys by their first names.
I pointed out to FBI Doug that the last envelope
I received had a bar code on it. Maybe they
could track the guy that way. And he said, oh,
you're right, And the next thing I knew the FBI
had just videotaped the suspect mailing yet another letter to me,
the fifth from his home in Woodland Hills, California. And
(52:43):
I swear to god he actually lived in his mother's
basement at age thirty seven or something. And FBI Doug said,
do we have your permission to pull a letter out
of the mailbox and open it? I said sure, And
the next thing I knew the guy was sentenced to
prison for like eighteen months, but not before FBI does
(53:04):
Doug said, by the way, that barcode, you noticed it
connected to the post office here, and that's where we
found his address. And we also found the fact that
he purchased a postal money order for fifteen dollars made
out to the Catherine Harris for Florida Senate campaign, if
(53:25):
you remember her from Gore V. Bush and his online history.
We looked that all up. It's all about how she,
Catherine Harris and some woman named Laura something or another.
They are the most beautiful women in history. And I
said Laura, Laura Ingram, and FBI Doug said, yeah, that's it,
(53:49):
Laura Ingraham. And if that isn't ten years of my
life in one sentence, courtesy of The New York effing Post,
I don't know what is. I've done all the damage
(54:15):
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical
directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and
performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
bass and drums, and mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards.
Produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the
Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
(54:38):
written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was, and
this was a preview of my reference to Carl Bernstein.
Our announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else
is pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this two
(54:59):
hundred and thirty second day until the twenty twenty four
presidential election and the one hundre in sixty ninth day
since I hope Donald Trump dies in prison after being
convicted and his first attemption to coup against the democratically
re elected government of the United States. Use the fourteenth
Amendment and the not regularly given elector objection option, use
(55:20):
the Insurrection Act, use the justice system, use the mental
health system to stop him from doing it again while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Boltons
is the news warrants. Never believe anything you read in
the New York Post, Fox News or see on Fox
News till then. I'm Keith Aulderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(56:00):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. He
said it's going to be a blood bath for the country,
and we're arguing about it. Not a bloodbath for our
(00:27):
auto industry, not a blood bath for the imported car market,
not a blood bath for happy Honda days, a blood
bath for the country with no subsequent retraction or repudiation
by Trump of say blood baths. And we we the
people trying to stop him, we are arguing about the context,
(00:51):
arguing amongst ourselves. And Trump is clearly broke. He tells
the court thirty insurance underwriters would not cover his four
hundred and sixty four million dollar bond in the New
York fraud case. And we're still supposed to believe he's
a billionaire, and suddenly he's a billionaire pleading poverty and
boom the moment he does that, who just reappears out
(01:13):
of nowhere, But Paul Manifort the international money spigot and
Russian operative and I'm still more concerned about something else where?
Is Jack Smith demanding that Judge Tanya Chutkin revoked Trump's
bail and incarcerate him after he violated the gag order
(01:34):
in the Elections subversion case, and maligned and threatened and
encouraged others to malign and threaten Cassidy Hutchinson, and not
just any others, but federal officers, federal officers who carry guns. Quote.
Our great Secret Service has totally crushed Cassidy Hutchinson, who
(01:58):
I barely know made up fake stories about me roughing
up Secret Service agents from the back of the beast limo.
Has she now changed her testimony? Will she be prosecuted
for what she did and said? Trump has not just
violated the gag order in the DC subversion case. He
(02:21):
has not just violated a gag order that was already
pared down an appeal, but still prevents Trump and his
counsel from quote making or directing others to make public
statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential
participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding, unquote
pared down, but still clearly barring Trump from even speculating
(02:46):
got a likely witness such as Cassidy Hutchinson fabricated evidence
or testimony, or might be prosecuted, and clearly barring Trump
from congratulating the Secret Service for having quote totally crushed
her and barring Trump from trum trying to coerce her
with questions like has she now changed her testimony, and
(03:10):
for that matter, barring Trump from making public statements about
other possible witnesses, like all the members of the Secret Service.
And that was only the first part of the psycho's post.
What about the unselect j six committee. They destroyed almost everything,
including real evidence and findings. What's going to happen with them?
(03:31):
Serious crimes have been committed? Again, the gag order was
specifically rearranged to narrow it and yet leave it absolutely
clear that he could not threaten nor point at others
and hope that they then threatened people investigating him or
(03:53):
testifying against him. There's three violations of the gag order
by Trump just about Cassidy Hutchinson in one post. There
is at least one violation invoking me, members of the
Secret Service, probably way more than just one, and what
one each for the eight members of the House January
(04:14):
sixth committee. So there are a dozen violations of the
gag order? And where are Jack Smith and Tanya Chutkin.
This isn't legal nuance, This isn't novel lawyerly theory, this
isn't Trump's first violation of this gag order either. I
want to bail revoked today. I want his ass in
jail today. I want his lawyers to have to find
(04:37):
a Supreme Court judge willing to go out on that
dangerous limb and sprain him. Today he violated the gag
order twelve times in about three sentences.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Owen.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Meanwhile, in Florida, Trump's concierge judge, the former Flamenco correspondent
of the Miami Nuevo Times, Eileen Cannon, says she wants
both the defense and the prosecution to issue competing jury
instructions about the impact of the Presidential Records Act on
(05:17):
the charges against Trump of you know, espionage. The lawyers
who have seen it say they have never seen anything
like it. Moreover, their suggestion is it is so blatantly
stupid and unjudicial and prejudiced towards Trump, to say nothing
of the fact that the Presidential Records Act doesn't have
(05:38):
a damn thing to do with the classified documents and
the classified records, that it is alike allowing the defense
in a case to argue attempted murder. What the hell
is that it's so bad that it might lead the
appellate court, the eleventh Circuit that keeps overruling this nitwit
Trump appointee, to overrule her yet again and suggest that's enough.
(06:02):
You're over your head, lady, and you are off this case,
and then we start all over again, and Trump wins
by delay. Now about the money. Trump standing there like
rich uncle Pennybags from Monopoly, with the insides of his
empty suit pockets turned inside out and hanging there. It's
(06:25):
a delightful image. When you read into the story, you
find quickly that this is just another stall. He went
to thirty insurers and they all turned him down because
everybody knows for stuff like this you have to offer
cash to guarantee the bond a high percentage of the
final amount you want to borrow. And he didn't offer cash.
(06:45):
He offered property, property, which he's also going to lose
if he doesn't get a bond somewhere. So why would
you underwrite a bond on his behalf if he could
lose the assets in question? Well you wouldn't. It is,
as Trump's lawyers wrote, a practical impossibility. But you would
(07:06):
offer property instead of cash in the event you wanted
to get turned down, so you could go to the
judge and ask that the whole bond thing get postponed
until after the appeals court. Here's the whole case all
over again. It's another stall, yet it's a stall with
(07:29):
a curious sting in its tail. The day he tries
this stall, the Washington Post reports that Paul Manifort is
back in trump Land, like Banquo's ghost wandering on to
the stage in Macbeth. Trump is considering bringing Paul Manafort
(07:52):
back to run part of his campaign again, just like
in twenty sixteen Russia. Manifort Russian operative and already approven
Trump asset, so much so that Trump had to him
for felony convictions Russia because he's seemingly tied into every
(08:12):
illicit money source in the known world Russia. And what
does Trump want Paul Manafort to do on the campaign.
He wants him to run the twenty twenty four Republican
convention in Milwaukee, like the twenty sixteen Republican convention in Cleveland,
(08:33):
the one at which Trump met all those Russians backstage,
and before you knew it, the Republican Party had changed
one key. But seemingly obscure part of its campaign platform
when they went from vehemently supporting this small democracy somewhere
under threat to selling that small democracy out. You know
(08:56):
the convention when Manafort, who had worked for pro Russian
oligarchs in Ukraine as long ago as two thousand and four,
when Paul Manifort suddenly I got Trump suddenly to get
the GOP to sell out Ukraine. Trump says he has
no money, and all of a sudden, here is the
reanimated corpse of Paul Manifort. That'd be the Paul Manafort
(09:20):
who a bipartisan Senate Committee report in twenty twenty declared
a grave intelligence risk, and who is already his own, living,
breathing Russian pipeline. While Trump needs money, and while the
Biden administration is apparently still planning on giving Trump the
traditional intelligence briefings they give you all the opposition presidential candidates.
(09:42):
Because there's still a few documents Trump hasn't stolen yet
and Paul Manifort hasn't seen yet.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
You want to give him an intelligence briefing. Okay, here's
what you do. You tell Trump quote person woman marn
Camera TV. You tell him that's also an intelligence briefing.
Not only will we keep him from selling more secrets
(10:17):
or stealing more secrets, or having Manafort do whatever with
the secrets, but Trump will be delighted. He'll tell the
story every goddamn chance he gets and thinks it's gonna
show he's such an intelligent guy, and he can tell
all the other inmates about it when Judge Chutkin gets
off her butt and revokes his bail for having violated
(10:40):
the gag order in that case one dozen times.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Now.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Bloodbath and beyond sure, he didn't really mean it. He
merely sent out a fundraising email yesterday's subject line blood bath,
which ended with deliver the liars in the fake news
a message that they'll never forget. And he was only
(11:17):
talking about the blood bath within the confines of the
foreign car market and manufacturing in Mexico. But Speaker of
the House Mike Johnson told Republicans at a private event
in Texas, quote, I think it was obvious for anyone
who takes the time to watch his speech and to
realize what he was saying. Really he was one hundred
percent correct. Now, no, Trump didn't really mean it, but
(11:40):
he told Fox quote, if you don't use certain rhetoric.
If you don't use certain words that maybe aren't very
nice words, nothing will happen. Yes, yes, you know what
won't happen if you don't use certain words. A blood
bath won't happen. And you and I expect this. He's
been saying something obviously violent or vile or virulent or
(12:02):
racist or anti Semitic, or homophobic or sexist every week
for a decade, and we expect him to deny it.
And we expect his little ren fields like this worm
Johnson to echo the cover story. Well, he's living in
a little space between the meetings, and we expect them
(12:24):
to say, he didn't mean that kind of blood bath.
He meant this kind of blood bath. But honest to God,
we the pro democracy, anti Trump forces, we are still
in the middle of an argument with ourselves over whether
a psychopathic would be dictator and hitler wannabee who values
(12:47):
no human life except his own, and whose mental state
is rapidly deteriorating, and who has used the threat of
political violence for a decade and uses apocalyptically violent language
to enrage his cult and who tried to get his
thugs to overthrow our government and who is now obsessed
with personal We are in the middle of an argument
(13:07):
over whether Trump really meant to threaten an actual blood
bath if he is not restored to power, or if
he just meant it metaphorically and economically and only within
the limited context and foreign importance of the automobile industry.
We're actually arguing over this. We the people who will
(13:28):
save this democracy or go to Trump brand re education
concentration hotels because we didn't save the democracy. We are
wasting our time arguing over this. And the media, the
mainstream media, the legacy media, the lethargy media, call him
(13:48):
what you will. Awakened like rip van winkled to the
reality of Trump's years of the rhetoric of a mass murderer,
and every one of them down to god damned NBC
News headline the blood bath and hand wrung over the
blood bath and publicized the bloodbath and got the message
(14:12):
out about the bloodbath to at least a comparative handful
of independence or low info voters and usually reliable right
on the money people like Ian Bremer are looking at
the biggest, fattest, healthiest yield of anti Trump revulsion in years,
(14:32):
and anti Trump horror in years, and Ian Bremer's reaction
is it's disingenuous and embarrassing, and the mainstream media is
proving incapable of turning the needle down from eleven. And
I'm thinking the media is at eleven about Trump. Eleven
what out of a thousand, because hey, guess what giving
(14:58):
Trump the benefit of the doubt? And why are you
doing that? When he tweeted statistical impossible to have lost
the twenty twenty election. Big protest in DC on January sixth,
be there will be wild. He meant that the speeches
would be wild, and maybe maybe he really was going
(15:19):
out on a limb. Maybe he also meant the buffet
at the Willard Hotel would also be wild. He said
bloodbath in the country, and he said bloodbath at the
same time he was saying immigrants are not really people,
(15:41):
and as he was threatening to imprison the January sixth
Committee and to let the January sixth terrorists escape, and
he replaced the real national anthem with a new one
in which he speaks. And oh, by the way, he
repeated his call to terminate the constitution. But I'm sure
he meant bloodbath as in a nice hot bath that
(16:04):
will make your blood circulate, health fiere in the bath,
and you're not going to be able.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
To sell those guys if I get elected. Now, if
I don't get elected, it's going to be a blood
bath for the whole that's going to be the least
of it. It's going to be a blood bath for
the country that'll be the least of it.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly
treated January sixth hostages. I pledge allegiance to the flag
(17:00):
of the United and of course this threat of political
violence if he is not given power the presidency with
total immunity, by the way, total veto power over every
federal employee, Supreme Court on his side by a two
to one margin, with every comp in the nation immunized
from prosecution by him and thus personally beholden to him.
(17:22):
After he invokes the Insurrection Act and suspends all the
laws on day one as a dictator. He's never said
anything like that before. Not once has he even used
the blood imagery before either.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
It is a very sad thing for our country.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
It's poisoning the blood of our country.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease and.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
The radical left thugs that live like vermin within the
confines of our country.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
I don't think the people of the United States would
stand for it. If it happened, I think you'd have
problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we've
never seen before. I don't think the people of the
United States would stand for it.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
What kind of problems, mister President.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
I think they'd have big problems, big problems. I just
don't think that stand for it. They will not sit
still and stand for this ultimate of hoaxes.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
You can't sit home if you're sick, as in dog
isn't kind. Even if you vote and didn't pass.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Away it's worth it.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
It'll be bedlam in the country.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
It's a very bad thing.
Speaker 6 (18:29):
If there's a prosecution of Donald Trump for miss handling
classified information after the Clinton debacle, which you presided over
and did a hell of a good job, they'll be
riots in the streets.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And the riots he promised he promised, never mind Lindsay
Graham if he didn't get the nomination in twenty sixteen,
and the violence in the streets he promised in twenty twenty,
and the terrible things he promised in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, I don't see it. I don't see any.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Theme about blood or violence or if you don't elect me,
my mobs will kill you. The media is overreacting. This
knob is not supposed to go to eleven just because
this Sunday is the first anniversary of him saying that
if he was arrested over the Stormy Daniel's hush money,
the nation would be subjected to quote death and destruction.
(19:21):
I'm sure he only meant about foreign cars, the death
and destruction of foreign cars. Seriously, as everybody around Trump denied,
he meant blood bath. No, no, no, no, no, only
a blood bath in terms of you know, toyota than
(19:42):
a final set of questions. This is the creature who
has poisoned the blood of our nation, and he said
something grotesque enough to break through the standard media reaction
of it's just Trump, let's worry about Biden's new sneakers,
and our side is saying, uh, yeah, there are blood
baths and then there are blood baths. Did Trump respond
(20:06):
by renouncing violence. Did he deny that he meant to
use the word blood bath? Did he even renounce just
blood baths? Did he renounce blood baths. Just renounce the
bath part. Just renounce them as say, compared to lower
(20:30):
volume blood loss like spurts or sprays or splatters or
stains or blood scratches or whatever you call it. When
you put leeches on, did he renounce blood leeches? We're
(20:56):
arguing about this sell of interest here. First rule of
running for office, Spell your own name right on all
of your own press releases. First rule of martyring a
murder victim for your racist cause, get her name right.
And yet another Republican has just failed that bar. And
(21:16):
the first rule of Fox News. When your baby Hitler
is in trouble because he threatened a blood bath, find
a false equivalence somewhere. Take something somebody said, or if
you can't find that, take something somebody didn't say, and
you hold them up and make them the equivalent of
Trump and call it. Call it a blue blood bath.
(21:39):
And guess who they found. Guess who they are equating with.
A former president of the United States. Me, I'm the
blue blood bath. They claimed I hinted at Trump's assassination,
when in fact I hinted at as I have for
a decade, him dying in prison of course, Fox has
(22:04):
been doing like this with me since nineteen ninety six.
That's next in an all new edition of Countdown.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Ohe scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark,
some predictions. Dateline, Washington, d C. The Environmental Protection Agency
is finally officially and utterly banned asbestos, the carcinogen still
in use today even though it was supposed to have
(22:46):
been banned in nineteen eighty nine. University of Florida professor
Michael Johnson with the joke quote, time for MAGA to
start huffing as bestos because Biden says it's bad for you. Dateline, North, Carolina. Well,
Trump has a winner in his new RNC chairman, Michael Wattley,
(23:07):
the former Brooks Brothers rioter from two thousand and election
denier from twenty twenty, went on Fox News and was
unable to get through the new Trump campaign slogan once
without having the truth escape? Are you better off now
than you were four years ago? Under Trump? Trump's Republican
National Committee chair says, you bet, you're ass You're better
(23:29):
now than you were four years ago under Trump? Were
you better off four years ago?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Than you are today.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
The answer for this entire country is no. I mean
yet we are better off today, or we will. The
new Trump RNC Chairman's first task will be to find
the next new Trump RNC chairman. Dateline, New York City,
Our extraordinary Mayor Eric Adams has now been sued by
(23:56):
a former colleague from their days in the police department,
using the same survivor's law by which e Gen Carrol
sued Trump. Lorna Beach Matura has filed on Adams, saying
that when she went to him in nineteen ninety three
for help with an issue with the job, he demanded
help with an issue with a job. That's not just
(24:17):
snide writing on my part. Quoting the suit, Adams told
plaintiff that he thought he could help her, but that
he quote also needed some help unquote and began rubbing
his penis through his clothes with his hand unquote. At
least he didn't say God had told him to ask her.
Don't blame me. I voted for the garbage lady date
(24:43):
line Bluffdale, Nevada. At a campaign stopped there, Half Elephant.
Senator Tommy Tumberville revealed that America is quote lives in
our kids to satanic cult We've got to get back
to the Constitution. With that, Senator Tumberville held up a
pocket edition of the Constitution and waved it towards the crowd,
which is when a lot of the folks realized there
(25:05):
that Tuberville was holding the Constitution book upside down. Dateline, Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Here we go again. This poor woman allegedly murdered by
an undocumented immigrant Lake and Riley. Republicans thought that they
could exploit her death to push the Trump cause. All
(25:25):
they managed to do is exploit her death and repeatedly
get her name wrong. First, it was Marjorie Taylor Green,
who later quoted herself telling President Biden at the State
of the Union that her name was Lincoln Riley. Then
Green did a live interview in which she called her
Lincoln Riley. Then Trump signed a picture of her in
which he misspelled Lake and Riley. The next fail Wyoming
(25:48):
Senator John Barrasso as in, well you know what the
name sounds like.
Speaker 6 (25:52):
Joe Biden apologized for the murderer of Lincoln of Lake
and Riley for calling.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Him Dateline East Hampton, New York bad enough to get
somebody else's name wrong, How about your own name? John Avlon,
the former Daily Beast editor who famously wrote an entire
both sides of this book about the political extremes and
throughout it never once realized the term wing nut was
(26:20):
only used about and by right wingers, has hit a
real block the spelling of his own name. Avlon is
running for Congress, and sure enough, he has put out
a press release thanking the East Hampton Democratic Party for
its endorsement of quote John Avalon ava Ln. The candidate's
(26:42):
name is Avlon avln. If it makes him feel any better,
he also misspelled east Hampton and dateline Rifle, Colorado. Hello,
Lauren Bobert is back with a Bobert Bible babble. We
know nothing pleases God except faith, she said in a
(27:04):
rum podcast, or just fans thing or whatever the hell
they do on rumble. It's not our works that please him.
Unquote O contrera monfrere actually in James two fourteen to seventeen.
Quote if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and
lacking in daily food, and you say go in peace,
be warmed and filled, without giving him the things they
(27:26):
need for the body, what good is that asks the
Bible faith by itself. If it does not have works,
is dead. So Lauren Bobert has the Bible exactly backwards.
Well there's your problem right there. Please madam stick to
what you know. Thank you, Nancy Faust. Is that Bobert
(28:02):
reaching across the aisle again, stell ahead of us on
(28:26):
this all new edition of Countdown. This has been going
on since nineteen ninety six. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News made
up a story about me again, this one that I
quote hinted at a Trump assassination when I am on
record for eight years now insisting no, no, no, I
want him convicted so he can die in prison. This
(28:47):
goes up on the wall next to the Murdoch New
York Post story claiming I ripped the name plaque off
my door and threw it at one of my own producers. Yeah.
I did that, except the plaque was made out of
computer paper. It's a piece of paper I threw at
the guy. It was a joke. Things I promised not
to tell. Addition three and forty two of Murdoch makes
(29:11):
crap up next for still more idiots to talk about
the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning
Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days worse persons in
the world besides Murdoch. First, the Bronze worse baseball San
Francisco Giants. They announced that they and their public addressed
(29:31):
announcer for almost the quarter of the century, Renelle Brooks Moon,
had mutually agreed to part ways after being ununbiled to
reach an agreement on a new contract. In fact, it
is beginning to appear that the Giants fired her. As
she was described in one column, she's the team's most
visible non playing black employee. By hell, if you look
(29:52):
at the Giants roster, you can leave out non playing.
Another veteran Bay Area baseball reporter says, there is much
more to this story to come, and it's likely this
and I quote from Anne Killian's column in the San
Francisco Chronicle quote, it's a terrible move for a team
who's majority owner Charles Johnson funds right wing politicians that
were supportive of undermining a democratic election and who have
(30:13):
tried to disenfranchise black voters across America. Brooks Moon was
one of the few in the Giants organization to publicly
decry Johnson's political activity. She was also outspoken in twenty
twenty in support of Black Lives Matter. It doesn't take
a crazy Johnson backed conspiracy theorist to connect the dots unquote. Yeah,
(30:34):
the Giant's owner is one ugly tiny Johnson, and he's
a high octane trump nut who just fired the fans
favorite person with the franchise who isn't one of their
announcers or Willie Mays. Hopefully his customers beat the ever
loving financial crap out of this guy Johnson the runner
up worser Christy nom First, we saw the governor South
(30:58):
Dakota post a rambling five minute video about how she
got a great new smile at some dentist's office in Texas.
This video had everything in it except the quote, is.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
This real life?
Speaker 1 (31:11):
South Dakota Democrats demanded an investigation of whether or not
Nome used state funds to travel to Texas for the
caps or the straightening, or the implants or whatever they
did to her mouth. South Dakota Republicans demanded an investigation
of why she didn't get all the work done in
South Dakota. Then Governor Nome went back online and started
(31:31):
pitching coffee and then custom made in souls and a book,
everything except Nome Stakes and Nome University. Look, Governor nom
is this close to selling her own lingerie. But our
winner the worst. The Republican National Committee, Lara Trump proprietor.
(31:54):
Not only did the co chair Michael Wattley say no,
of course, we're not better off than we were four
years ago. That's crazy thinking, oh my god, what did
I just say? Thanks Mike, but also the R and
See Research Twitter account posted a video intended to mock
President Biden as they keep trying to reignite the Biden
age plot. Quote Biden slowly descends the Capitol steps ran
(32:17):
the caption to the video as his handlers keep a
watchful eye, points toward the motorcade, and shuffles back into
his limo vigor unquote about the handlers from the video.
Two guys, one on either side of the president, neither
of whom the Republican National Committee appears to have recognized.
Now the one on the left, Leo Varadkar, the Prime
(32:39):
Minister of Ireland. Well, okay, you're with the Republican National Committee.
Why would you recognize any foreigner besides Putin? But the
guy walking next to the President on the right. The
little guy with the horn, rim glasses and that creepy
look on his face. He doesn't look at all familiar
to you, boys. He haven't seen him lately anywhere. That's uh.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
I don't know how to tell you this.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
That Republican National Committee is the Republican Speaker of the House,
Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson, you didn't recognize Mike Johnson, your
own Speaker of the House standing next to President by
the Republican National Committee. We're the RNC. We agree you're
not better off than you were four years ago, and
we don't know who the hell the Republican Speaker of
(33:22):
the House is. The Republican National Committee helping America defeat
Trump and all the down ballot Republicans two days worst.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
What am I saying?
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Best persons in the world, you're the number.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
One story on the countdown and my favorite topic me
and things I promised not to tell. And here we
go again, Rupert Murdoch's quote news outlets unquote shooting themselves
in the groin yet again while they were aiming at me.
A little timeline is required on this one. April eighteen
sixty five, Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States, was
(34:13):
assassinated May twenty twenty, maybe earlier. May twenty twenty was
the earliest I remembered or found. Trump started claiming he
had been treated far worse than Abraham Lincoln had. March sixteenth,
twenty twenty four, Trump said it again. Then Biden Harris
Headquarters tweets the clip, adding Trump says he's been treated
(34:35):
worse than Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated also March sixteenth,
twenty twenty four. I retweeted that, adding there's always the hope.
March eighteenth, twenty twenty four, Fox News publishes a story
first headlined Keith Olderman appears to hope for Trump assassination,
but the headline was then changed to Keith Olderman sparks
(34:56):
outrage by hinting at Trump assassination with a blue stripe
over my face, reading blue blood bath. On some level,
I am the same as Trump. To the New York
Post and the Fox News and all the rest of
Murdoch's outlets. Well, I was tempted to answer this by
saying I was just referring to the auto industry. In reality,
(35:21):
obviously I was and am hoping that Trump will be right,
and that he will be treated worse than Abraham Lincoln,
something worse than assassination, which would be that Trump is
convicted and dies in prison. I don't know how many
times I have said this, maybe more than Trump's ludicrous
charge that he's been treated worse than Lincoln. I may
(35:43):
have actually said it more than he has said that.
I think I first said I hope he dies in prison.
I expect he dies in prison in twenty sixteen. This
is because I hope he dies in prison. But of
course the point of this is Murdoch and Fox, and
especially the New York Post have been doing this to me.
(36:04):
So it's about nineteen ninety six, always always getting it wrong,
ever since I caught the Post in a lie that
year about a couple of hockey players that it claimed
had been thrown out of a New York City bar
for knocking over tables to the horror of customers, when
in fact I was with them, and they left the
(36:26):
place in their own form of horror, because as one
of them, Eric Lindross, stood up, he almost knocked over
the chair he was sitting in. He said to the other,
John Leclair, I think I've had enough. We got to
go home, Johnny, and they politely left, but not before
asking if I needed a lift. In two thousand and one,
(36:46):
the Post slammed me because I attended a New York
Mets game while wearing cargo shorts. A few years later,
the Post showed a picture somebody had snapped of me
leaning against one of the gates of Central Park here
in New York and said I was alone and depressed. Actually,
I was alone and early to my dental appointment across
(37:08):
the street, and I was trying to talk myself into
actually going into my doctor's office. There was a brief
interruption in the year during the two and a half
years or so that I worked for Murdoch in sports,
a brief interruption in these constantly hilarious stories before Murdoch
personally fired me after I had reported, with his office's
(37:30):
full approval in advance that he was working behind the
scenes to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, which
he was. Murdoch later boasted about firing me, but he
didn't say that. He didn't boast about it until after
he had sold the LA Dodgers baseball team. The origin
of the Post's quarter century of badly aimed shots at
(37:52):
me stems from that firing. When Murdoch fired me, his
minions did it slowly in stages over the course of
a couple of days, in hopes that they could get
me angry and bait me into you attacking Fox and
News Corp. In the newspapers, so that then they could
fire me for cause that way they wouldn't owe me
(38:12):
the rest of the money on my contract. Instead, as
I've mentioned here before, given the choice between waiting eight
months to insult someone and getting a lot of money,
or getting no money and yelling at them right now,
I'll always wait the eight months. I remained quiet for
eight lovely months, and Rupert had to pay me one
(38:34):
hundred thousand dollars a month to do that best job
I ever had. So whenever this happens and somebody says,
why don't you sue Murdoch, go sue News Corp? Sue
the New York Post, I always say, what kind of
money could I get from them that could hurt them
more than that eight hundred thousand dollars back in two
(38:55):
thousand and one. Also, most of the stuff they do
is so hilariously wrong, like the worse than Lincoln story
that it's transfer apparently desperate. But twice they threatened me
with stories that I had to take some action about.
Once they completely made one up, and once they ran
(39:17):
a story even though the FBI and the Department of
Homeland Security specifically asked them not to run it. The
obligatory reminder before I tell you those two stories, you
should never believe any source story you read in The
New York Post, or indeed on any media outlet owned
by the Murdochs like Fox. They occasionally report real things,
(39:40):
but just as often they make stuff up, not exaggerate,
or get slightly wrong or twist, but utterly fabricate. On
April eleventh, two thousand and five, the New York Post
was to run exactly the kind of story I'm talking about,
only under threat of multiple lawsuits did they actually spike it.
(40:03):
I hadn't told this story before I was reminded of it.
I think going through the mechanics of it will illustrate
just how evil an organization NewsCorp actually is, and more importantly,
how unreliable it is as a source of news. As
a New York Post page six gossip story, This one, though,
had everything. It attacked MSNBC, It had quotes from informed sources,
(40:26):
and even at one points it had a witness. Now
the witness disappeared during the evolution of this story, but
at one point it had a witness. It had somebody
prominent insulting Peter Jennings, the newscaster, right after he had
revealed he had lung cancer. And it was constructed in
such a way that if I did not comment on it,
they could print the story, then come back the next day,
(40:48):
rehash it and add that I was still refusing to
comment on it. But there was one overriding problem. It
was a complete fabrication, and thus it was full of
events that didn't happen and people who did not exist.
New York Post page six contacted MSNBC's then media relations
(41:09):
guy Jeremy Gaines on Thursday, April seventh, two thousand and five,
with the following story. Keith Olderman, a quote frequent critic
of President Bush, had refused to anchor the coverage of
the death of Pope John Paul the Second pretended to
be ill and called in sick instead. There was, as
(41:30):
I suggested earlier, a major problem here. I had anchored
the coverage of the death of Pope John Paul the Second.
I had been anchoring the primetime coverage four hours each weeknight,
day after day leading up to the potiffs passing. There
were viewers who had seen me. There were studio staffers.
Carl Bernstein was there. He was the Inn studio papal expert.
(41:53):
He was on the air with me every night for
like six nights in a row. There were video tapes.
Joe Tory, then the manager of the New York Yankees,
called me to compliment me on my reverential coverage of
the Pope's illness. That did not stop The New York
Posts in the first version that page six told us
(42:15):
it was going to print. Their unnamed source had been
on board and Amtrak Asella train going from Washington, DC
to New York, sitting near my agent as my agent
talked to somebody on a cell phone. This is apparently
a very favorite construction when the New York Post wants
to make up a story about somebody their witness said.
(42:37):
My agent complained that I had had a quote meltdown
after quote calling in sick. Rather than anchoring the papal coverage,
which I anchored, but there was more quote. Alderman, a
frequent critic of the president's policies, said it was better
in sports. They quoted my agent quoting me into the phone.
I'll be dealing with this all day now. Apart from
(43:00):
the fact that I had anchored the coverage, they said
I had not anchored. There was another major flaw in
this story. My agent was not on a train from
Washington to New York on the day in question, or
the week in question, or the month, or in fact
the year in question. My agent told me she thought
she had once been on a train from Washington to
(43:22):
New York in the year nineteen sixty seven. My agent
at that time lived a top Mount Shasta in California,
and so seldom left there that when she once drove
to town to get the mail, I asked her for the
details of her trip because I jokingly suggested to her
we should lead the newscast with it. So the next day, Friday,
(43:47):
April eighth, two thousand and five, New York Post Page
six came back with a different version of this same story.
They had misheard their source. Of course, it wasn't my
agent on the train from DC to New York. It
was a woman who worked for my agent, A woman
named Susan. Woman named Susan, whom I had, they would report,
(44:07):
already phoned three times that morning, and I was to
meet her urgently at the boat House in Central Park,
presumably because meeting her in the middle of Penn Station
when she got off that train would have been a
little too public. MSNBC's Jeremy Gaines responded again with some
irrefutable refutations. Nobody named Susan worked for my agent. In fact,
(44:33):
nobody at all worked for my agent. She was independent.
She had a working relationship with a small agency in
Los Angeles, and basically they covered her phone calls when
she was on vacation, which she almost never was, because
she never left the top of Mount e Fin Shasta.
We called that agency and they confirmed that not only
(44:53):
did they not have anybody working for them named Susan,
but nobody from that agency was even on the East
Coast or had been so far that entire year. At
this point I called the television columnist of The New
York Post and off the record, explained to him that
I was kind of furious, and this time I was
actually going to sue, but that NBC was far angrier
(45:16):
than I was, and that they were going to sue
as well, and sue the editor of page six. Personally,
I calmly went through the facts of this. This guy,
the TV guy, had a conscience, he sighed. He said
he got those kind of calls more often than I
would believe. And I said, no, I believe it. And
he said he would go to the editor of page
six and explain somebody was lying to him, the editor,
(45:38):
and he was going to get himself sued into bankruptcy
over a really obviously untrue and completely disproved story. Okay,
So now, a couple hours later, New York Post Page
six calls again demanding a comment from me on the
third different version of their exhaustive papals scoop. No, the
(45:58):
woman their witness heard, who they first said was my agent,
then said she had gotten it wrong. It was a
woman named Susan worked for my agent. She had now
become a woman who worked for my agent, whose name
the witness never heard, but she was talking to somebody
else named Susan. And there was an additional quote now
thrown in, I'll be dealing this all day now, had
(46:21):
morphed into I'll be dealing with this all day now.
The same week Peter Jennings makes his announcement about having
lung cancer. This idiot, a frequent critic of President Bush,
is sitting around in his pajamas calling me about this.
I'll spare you how I know this was not true.
It has something to do with the fact that I
don't wear pajamas. Years later, a former gossip reporter in
(46:47):
Murdoch's employ explained to me that his celebrity and gossip
people are taught never to back down from a confrontation,
and that if the subject of one of their hit
jobs fires back or tries to refute, or especially threatens
legal action, to keep making the story worse and worse
for them. And in the first decade of this century, anyway,
(47:08):
you were supposed to try to work in a defense
of George W.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
Bush.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
But there's also what she said, they called an emergency exit.
If there is no question that the story is nonsensical,
if the basic spine of the story does not line
up with provable facts, just abandon it. Abandon it. Don't
tell the subject of your attack that you are abandoning it.
Just don't make any more phone calls, don't send any
(47:34):
more emails about it. Just vanish, Just disappear the story,
and then send the name of the subject of the
story that you've just punted. Send it around to all
the other Murdoch operations to see if they can come
up with any dirt on the subject, to punish them
for fighting back against Rupert Murdoch's lies. So they abandoned
(47:58):
the story, and it took the New York Post a
year and a half to get me back and to
get back the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.
On September twenty six, two thousand and six, I opened
an envelope bearing a California postmark at my home in
New York. I shouldn't have done it, but bluntly, I'll
(48:19):
confess to this. I thought it was some baseball cards
I had bought off eBay. Well it wasn't. The envelope
contained a sticky substance looked like draino mixed with talcum powder,
and it fell out, and accompanying notes said it was anthrax.
Now I and other liberals would get a taste of
(48:40):
our own medicine. Even reading those chilling words and having
covered the actual anthrax letters terrorist attacks of two thousand
and one. When I was with CNN, I knew it
was an anthrax. The guy who supposedly sent the actual
anthrax in two thousand and one was an expert in
the field, and even he masshandled the stuff so badly
(49:02):
that supposedly he gave himself anthrax. And on the other hand,
I know the odds were impossible, but what if I
was wrong. My apartment building was filled with little old
ladies who had lived there since Roosevelt was president. I
only assumed that meant Franklin, not Theodore. The odds were
(49:23):
I don't know one in a billion that it was anthrax.
But who was I to dismiss this one in a
billion chants that these little old ladies were going to
get anthrax? Who was I to make that call? So
instead I made a call. I called the FBI. Well,
it was quite an evening. The cops showed up, the
(49:44):
FBI showed up. They said, of course it's not anthrax,
but we have to act like it is. Welcome to
our new world. The hazmat squad came in. They set
up a command post in the building. They swept my
apartment and they said, okay, now you have to go
to the emergency room for tests. And I said, it's
not anthrax. You just said so, And they said, if
we have to do this, you have to do this too.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
I laughed.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
Plus, if you don't, we can arrest you as a
threat to public health, and we could make you go
to the hospital. So out I went into an ambulance
dressed in a hazmat suit one size too small that
really cut in the groin. I spent the night getting
checked out. The FBI then called and said, it's like
(50:29):
it's like draino with ivory soap flakes. But they also
said there had been other letters that had arrived that
night and the night before, sent to people like the
chairman of CBS and David Letterman's office and Nancy Pelosi
and some poor guy who happened to have the name
John Stuart who was not the John Stuart. And they
(50:50):
couldn't make me do this, but it would really help
if I did not report what happened on my TV
show that night, just for the one day do it tomorrow,
because they had a lead on the guy who had
sent all these letters, and I want to scare him off.
And I said, sure, I'm a patriot. The next day,
(51:12):
while we were still observing the embargo on the story
my story, planning to run it at eight o'clock at night.
New York Post page six led with a picture of
me with the headline powder Puff spooks Keith and making
sure to identify me as quote, a frequent critic of
President Bush's policies. The New York Post mocked me for
(51:36):
not just assuming it was fake antrax and ignoring it,
and claimed I insisted the cops should take me to
the hospital. Quote whether they gave him a lollipop on
the way out isn't known. By the way, one of
the actual anthrax letters in two thousand and one, one
of the letters with actual anthrax in it that got
(51:56):
some people sick and killed a little old lady, had
been mailed to the New York Post, and one of
their st had contracted anthrax. And still this was their
attitude towards anthrax threats. Anyway, as it turned out, there
was a guy in California sending out these threatening letters,
(52:17):
each with fake anthrax, to about a dozen people.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
He sent me four of them.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Ultimately, I soon knew the FBI guys by their first names.
I pointed out to FBI Doug that the last envelope
I received had a bar code on it. Maybe they
could track the guy that way. And he said, oh,
you're right, And the next thing I knew the FBI
had just videotaped the suspect mailing yet another letter to me,
the fifth from his home in Woodland Hills, California. And
(52:43):
I swear to god he actually lived in his mother's
basement at age thirty seven or something. And FBI Doug said,
do we have your permission to pull a letter out
of the mailbox and open it? I said sure, And
the next thing I knew the guy was sentenced to
prison for like eighteen months, but not before FBI does
(53:04):
Doug said, by the way, that barcode, you noticed it
connected to the post office here, and that's where we
found his address. And we also found the fact that
he purchased a postal money order for fifteen dollars made
out to the Catherine Harris for Florida Senate campaign, if
(53:25):
you remember her from Gore V. Bush and his online history.
We looked that all up. It's all about how she,
Catherine Harris and some woman named Laura something or another.
They are the most beautiful women in history. And I
said Laura, Laura Ingram, and FBI Doug said, yeah, that's it,
(53:49):
Laura Ingraham. And if that isn't ten years of my
life in one sentence, courtesy of The New York effing Post,
I don't know what is. I've done all the damage
(54:15):
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical
directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and
performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
bass and drums, and mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards.
Produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the
Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
(54:38):
written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was, and
this was a preview of my reference to Carl Bernstein.
Our announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else
is pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this two
(54:59):
hundred and thirty second day until the twenty twenty four
presidential election and the one hundre in sixty ninth day
since I hope Donald Trump dies in prison after being
convicted and his first attemption to coup against the democratically
re elected government of the United States. Use the fourteenth
Amendment and the not regularly given elector objection option, use
(55:20):
the Insurrection Act, use the justice system, use the mental
health system to stop him from doing it again while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Boltons
is the news warrants. Never believe anything you read in
the New York Post, Fox News or see on Fox
News till then. I'm Keith Aulderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(56:00):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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