June 27, 2023 • 52 mins
EPISODE 236: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Donald Trump will be convicted for criminal violations of The Espionage Act. Because there are smoking guns, and then there are the smoking guns so profound and so productive that they turn the Eastern Seaboard sky orange. And this one is the second kind. CNN GOT the clip of the actual recording of Trump showing off classified Joint Chiefs of Staff military plans for attacking Iran. AND then The Washington Post got it. And then The New York Times got it. I haven’t yet checked my high school paper, The Hackley Dial.
First: It fulfills the first rule of Trump: everything is worse than you could possibly imagine – he’s laughing as he commits crimes prohibited by The Espionage Act, his flunky is making Hillary Clinton jokes, he’s making Anthony Weiner jokes, he’s ordering Cokes. Second: It HAS to have come from Mark Meadows. It HAS to have. Third: It fulfills the prophesy of Ryan Goodman from Just Security: it IS NOT just Trump committing a crime, it is Trump narrating his own crime, as he crimes. Fourth: the tape has a postscript, something that was for whatever reason NOT included in the transcript of the tape that was included in the charging document filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Meanwhile there are also huge developments in Smith's pursuit of a Trump indictment in the Fake Electors, Wire Fraud, and January 6th Coup strands of his perfidy.
B-Block (21:50) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: In memoriam: the former President of Current TV, and also my boss at CNN in 2001-02, the legendary television news producer David Bohrman. If you've watched it, it was something Bohrman dreamt up.
C-Block (41:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Bill Maher is back in the news as an Anti-Vax sympathizer, fawning over the demented Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I nearly got into a fistfight with him in 1978, didn't remember it until 2009, when we nearly got into a fistfight again. I clearly should've followed my first instincts.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Donald
Trump is going to be convicted of violating the Espionage
(00:25):
Act because there are smoking guns, and then there are
the kinds of smoking guns so profound and so productive
that they turn the entire Eastern seaboard sky orange. And
this one is the second kind. CNN got the clip
(00:46):
of the actual recording of Trump showing off classified Joint
chiefs of Staff military plans for attacking Iran, and then
the Washington Post got the recording, and then the New
York Times got the recording. I have not yet checked
my high school paper, the Hackley Dial. First, this fulfills
the primary rule of Trump. Everything is worse than you
(01:10):
could have possibly imagined. He is laughing as he commits
crimes prohibited by the Espionage Act. His flunky is making
Hillary Clinton jokes. He's making Anthony Wiener jokes. He's ordering cokes. Second,
this has to have come from Mark Meadows. It has
(01:31):
to have. Third, this fulfills the prophecy of Ryan Goodman
from Just Security. It is not just Trump committing a crime,
It is Trump narrating his own crime as he commits it. Fourth,
the recording has a PostScript something that was, for whatever reason,
(01:52):
not included in the transcript of the tape that was
included in the charging document as filed by Special Counsel
Jack Smith. There's bonus content here. Just before the recording begins,
the name of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milly,
has been invoked Donald Trump, convicting himself of violating eighteen
(02:16):
US Code seventy nine to three transmitting defense information a
fine or up to ten years in prison. We joined
Donald Trump already in progress.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
He's a bad sick people.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
That was your cue, you know, against you What started
right at time when Millie's talking about, oh you were
going to try to do now that they were.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Trying to do that before you even were sworn in.
That's right, Maria, overthrow your life. Well with Milly, let
me see that. I'll go show you an example. He
said that I wanted to attack an.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Isn't it amazing to have a big pile of Diapersie
just came in a fluter.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
This was him. They presented me. This is off the record,
but they presented me this. This was him.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
This was the Defense Department in him.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
We looked at him. This was him. This wasn't done
by me. This was him, all sorts of stuff pages long,
and let's see yere I just found.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know,
except it is like highly cond this secretive for it.
Look look at this you attack.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
And Hillary would put that out all the time. You know,
she sent it to Anthony. By the way, isn't that incredible?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I was just because we're talking about it and either
he said he wanted to attack ran and what.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
This was done by the military given to me. I
think we can trouble linked I to see.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, also died lesser.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yes, his president. I could have did less now I
can't you know, but this is is that interesting? It's
so cool. So I'm look, we hear ivan and you
probably almost didn't believe me, but now you believe me.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
It's incredible, right, it brings some brings, some coats in place.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
That as CNN and later The Post and The Times
aired and posted it last night from the meeting Trump
held with two writers working on well ghostwriting Mark Meadows autobiography,
recorded at Trump's club at Bedminster, New Jersey in July
twenty twenty one. The most fawning references, and the loudest
(04:51):
sycophantic laughter appears to be from the Trump aide Margot Martin,
and the new part. At the end, Trump continues to
marvel that Millie's name has been invoked and went out
of his big pile of papers. Millie's secret plan to
attack Iran. Quote just came up. The new quote we
had not heard or read before. It's so cool. I mean,
(05:13):
it's so look her and I and you probably almost
didn't believe me, but now you believe me. Trump has
violated national security to boast how cool it is that
he has this document. It's like me and a baseball card,
except there are very few goddamn classified baseball cards. And
(05:36):
the recording not only disproves but defies his latest lie
about this meeting that he might have been talking about
Iran and General Milly, but there were no classified or
defense documents being shown to unauthorize people. Just quote newspaper stories,
magazine stories, and articles. On tape, Trump is heard saying, see,
(05:58):
as President, I could have declassified it. On tape, Trump
is heard saying these are the paper. On tape, Trump
is heard saying this was done by the military and
given to me. On tape, Trump is heard saying, let
me see that. I'll show you an example. On tape,
Trump is heard saying it's pages long. You hear him
(06:19):
flipping through the pages, showing it off. Let's see here.
On tape, Trump is heard saying, except its highly confidential
secret information. He not only breaks the law by showing
two aids and two people working for Mark Meadow's defense information,
maybe classified defense information, but he repeatedly confirms he is
(06:42):
holding the document as he does so, and he confirms
who wrote it and why, and how long it is,
and he's showing it off, presumably with that same idiotic
smirk on his face that he'd show when he signed
some nefarious act in the Oval office, and he would
hold it up for cameras so you could see his
gigantic madman's electro cardiogram signature. It could be worse for
(07:06):
him in one way, only if there was video. That
assumes there isn't video. Ten days ago, Ryan Goodman from
Just Security went on the Bill Crystal podcast. I quoted
him here, and he asked, rhetorically, what would happen if
the recording itself of the conversation about the milli Iran
(07:29):
document were to turn up, it would be something visceral,
something undeniable, Trump in essence, doing play by play of
his own crimes as he committed them. What would happen,
Goodman wondered, to the dynamic of this case, to the
public's understanding of it, to even the unblinking belief by
(07:50):
some in Trump's cult that he's not lying. If a
major news organization were to get a copy of the
recording and put it on television or on YouTube, as
I phrased it on the nineteenth, not a transcript, but
Trump's actual crime. I am in Trump's actual voice, as
Trump actually commits it, playing on CNN dot com, New
(08:13):
York Times dot com, Washingtonpost dot com. Let me go
check the hackleydial dot com now available without a subpoena
or a search warrant or a prescription. And I am
not kidding myself, and you should not kid yourself. It
will not sway a majority of his cultists. These are
the twenty first century versions of the people who literally
(08:35):
drank the kool aid at Jonestown. They will not be
converted to reality, but it will sway some of them. Hell,
I expect Donald Trump to die of old agent prisoner me.
But I think he's guiltier than I thought he was
before I heard that recording. That recording does raise a
(08:55):
procedural question, again brought up by the estimable mister Goodman.
Why has Trump not yet been charged with a crime
in New Jersey where that recording was made, and those
events took place, retaining the Milli document took place in Florida,
He's been charged for it there. Remember, they still don't
know where the Milli document is. But if Trump could
(09:17):
somehow convince a jury that he had declassified it, even
though he clearly implies on tape that he had not
declassified it and wistfully regrets that he had not declassified it.
If he does that, or he just fuzzes the issue
up sufficiently, the fallback would be to charge him under
the transmitting clause of the Espionage Act. That only has
(09:37):
to be defense information. It does not have to be classified,
and it's on a recording, that recording. Where did CNN
and the Post of the Times get that recording? Mark Meadows,
I don't literally mean from him, I don't know, but
(09:59):
from him and or his legal team. Who else has
a motive? There's no real debt damage to Jack Smith's
prosecution of Trump if the Millie Iran document is revealed,
I mean, if the plan is to introduce clips at
the trial of Trump during the twenty sixteen campaign talking
about Hillary Clinton mishandling secret information tapes that have been
(10:21):
out there now for seven years. Having this tape out
there is not going to spoil the jury pool. But
I do think the Special Council's Office releasing it themselves
would presumably violate at least some of the seventy five
thousand pages of Department of Justice boy scout rules. I
mean in Jack Smith. After all, we have a special
(10:43):
counsel who, until he confirmed the indictments, none of us
knew what his voice sounded like. In theory, this could
be the copy recorded by the Trump side. Presumably that
Margot Martin, the one who was at the Miami hearing
when Fox misidentified her as Milania. But she was at
(11:03):
the Miami hearing at Trump side. She has not abandoned
him yet unless she's wearing a wire. You think the
two unidentified writers working for Meadows released this tape. It's
always seemed unlikely to me that they were involved with
the tape getting first to Jack Smith and now to
Anderson Cooper, largely because if Meadows was paying them to
(11:26):
interview Trump for his quote autobiography, the recording legally belongs
to Meadows, not them. I mean, prosecutors could subpoena whoever
hit the record button on the phone, but this fits
in much much more correctly as a piece inside the
mark Meadows has flipped on Trump jigsaw puzzle, just amazing
(11:49):
and clear as a bell, fine recording. Whoever did that one?
There is, though one other gigantic surprise on that recording,
and in fact it's after the other surprise at the tail,
the one that I had already mentioned. Oh, Donald, bring
some bring some coachs in ples, just some cokes, no cheeseburgers,
(12:16):
Donald and forty four large fries, McNuggets, two forty piece sets,
two dozen shakes, a lot of ketchup on the side,
and get a Grimace's Birthday meal. No, no, no two
Grimace's Birthday meal.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Hell, let's have a party, make it four one for everybody. Also,
last night, Jack Smith's investigation of the fake Electors scam
moved forward a little bit further. The Washington Post reports
that the Special Council is trying to ascertain if that
(12:49):
same crowd of cheesy lawyers I mentioned yesterday, Kenneth Cheesebro,
Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, and Kurt Olson,
we're following specific instructions from Trump or from others about
the fake slates of electors, and if so, what those
instructions were. But the Post also reported a new missive
(13:13):
from Trump's all purpose schlub Jason Miller, written to an
executive and an ad agency producing campaign ads for Trump.
And this goes to fraud charges, probably wire fraud, against
Trump for raising money from the public to roll back
a stolen election that Trump definitively knew had not been stolen.
Quoting the Miller message, the campaign's own legal team and
(13:37):
data experts cannot verify the bullshit being beamed down from
the mother ship, unquote, wrote Miller. Miller goes on to
tell the ad exact that that was why Giuliani and
the lawyers were quote and thirty two and tying into
both of those sets of possible future indictments fake electors
(13:59):
and financial fraud, and mixing in yet a third possible
set for total four the Post also reports that Smith's
investigators will tomorrow interview the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger,
who was on the end of the I just want
to find eleven seven hundred and eighty votes phone call,
which could be its own electoral interference crime federally and
(14:21):
not just in Georgia, and which, bringing us back full circle,
is on tape. There is also a new development in
a fourth prong of the Smith investigation. NBC reported that
approximately half a dozen Secret Service agents have testified to
the Smith grand jury about Trump on January sixth, and
(14:43):
nobody knows which ones they are, or what they saw
or how close they were. But they are not testifying
about classified documents or fake electors or wirefraud. They are
talking about Trump and the violent coup attempt on January sixth.
And then there's a little chaser here for America's bum
Rudy Giuliani. Al Old pal Lev Parnas tweeted out of
(15:07):
the Blue yesterday, quoting sources are telling me that Rudy
Giuliani is having a meltdown and drinking heavily. Okay, your points, sir,
I mean that sounds like any Giuliani days since roughly
nineteen eighty five. Quoting Parnas again, after being sanctioned, he
fears that he is about to get indicted and doesn't
(15:30):
know who to turn to for help. It's time to
pay the piper. Rudy hashtag hashtag Lev remembers, hey, bring
some cokes in please, and a tanker truck full of
vodka for Rudy. And just to wrap this up, a
(15:53):
reminder of the story behind all of these other stories.
Fascinating as they are, ultimately they are not the point.
When I hear Trump's defenders and apologists say that the
rest of us will do anything to keep him from
being president, my instinctive reaction is always the same, and
(16:15):
a reminder of just what subhuman scum Trump and the
slime he brought into the White House, our White House
really are. Miles Taylor, once the anonymous staffer, has been
letting loose nuggets from his upcoming book Blowback. This appeared
last night in Rolling Stone. Taylor quotes a conversation between
(16:37):
the disgusting nosparatu of the Trump cult, Stephen Miller, and
the then commandant of the US Coast Guard, Admiral Paul Zakunft,
who is now retired. Miller, Admiral the military has aerial drones, correct,
Admiral Zakunft, Yes, Miller, and some of those drones are
(16:58):
equipped with missiles, correct, za Kunft, Sure, Miller. And when
a boat of migrants is in international waters, they aren't
protected by the US constitution, right, za Kundt. Technically no,
but I'm not sure what you're getting at Miller. Tell me,
why then, can't we use a predator drone to obliterate
(17:21):
that boat, zi Kunft, Because Stephen, it would be against
international law. Miller, the United States launches airstrikes on terrorists
in disputed areas all the time, unquote. Miller and the
(17:41):
admiral deny. That was their conversation. Taylor adds that Miller
quote wasn't interested in the moral conflict of drone bombing migrants.
He wanted to know whether anyone could stop America from
doing it.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Unquote.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
I am, for some reason on convinced by Stephen Miller's denial.
Also of interest here. Did you watch them play the
Trump recording on CNN last night or did you watch
anything on MSNBC, NBC, CBSABC News. If so, you watched
(18:25):
the work and the innovation of a man named David Borman,
also twice my boss and once in the middle of
a couple of my lawsuits involving a total of roughly
more or less one hundred million dollars. David Borman died Sunday.
I want to talk about him. He was a very
special man. That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Post strips to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline z Alto, California. Imagine being the president
of and key witness for a television channel in the
deposition stage as it is suing its star newsman, and
its star newsman is suing it with a total of
around one hundred million dollars on the table, and the
(19:22):
lawsuit ends, and the network does not win the lawsuit,
and you stay in friendly touch with that newsman for
the rest of your life. David Borman died Sunday complications
after hip surgery. His family reports he was sixty nine
years old. He and I had nearly identical personalities and
(19:44):
were essentially equally larger than life in an office setting,
and therefore it was almost inevitable that I do not
remember us agreeing on anything, and yet we never had
a fight. We did not have crosswords, not even when
we were on opposite sides of a lawsuit with one
hundred million dollars on the table. I had last heard
(20:07):
from him barely four months ago. It was about this podcast,
which he listened to every day. It was always friendly
on my end. It was always friendly and supportive on
his end, and frankly, when it came time for him
to be deposed in my lawsuit against Current TV and
it's against mine a decade ago, that friendliness probably guaranteed
(20:28):
that Current was not going to win the lawsuits. Without
getting too deep in the weeds. The bottom line was
this Current needed to prove I was not talking to management,
and they were sure the network president, David Borman would
back them up. And for eight hours or so in
a tape deposition, he kept saying that no, I was
actually above average cooperative, and he always looked forward to
(20:50):
talking to me, never had a problem finding me. And
I was the least anchory type person he'd ever worked with,
and he knew what that meant, since his father was
a news anchor. The more I have thought over the
years about what I know of what he said on
under Oath, the more I begin to wonder if he
didn't say all that deliberately so the case would swing
my way. Not that he wanted me to have the money,
(21:13):
or he had something against Current TV, But David Borman
was for all the innovations and the insight and the leadership.
David Borman was about the people who worked with him.
He was about the anchors and the reporters, and the writers,
and the producers and the associate producers, and the interns
and the guys who cleaned the studio. Ultimately, they were
(21:33):
what mattered to him. He showed that affection for them
in many different and sometimes indecipherable ways. But his business
was about people, Borman, and that's what everybody called him.
Borman had fifty ideas a day, fifty original ideas a day.
(21:54):
Fifty were original, ten were genius, thirty had promised, and
ten had the potential to destroy your show, your career,
and or his network. They brought him in as president
of Current TV during my fiasco there, and not long
after he came into my office and he said he
had an utterly new idea for how to cover the
(22:14):
upcoming twenty twelve presidential election. Now, mind you an utterly
new idea for how to cover a presidential election. Basically,
everything you see on television on election night to this
day is something David Borman thought up or improved. Big screens,
touch screens, disappearing screens, anchor standing reporters appearing by a hologram,
(22:38):
the data boards, the graphics, the graphics that move in,
the graphics that move out, everything, to say nothing of
the content. And now he had an utterly new idea.
We were current TV, we were no longer paying our bills. Okay,
they won't let me spend any money. I mean, maybe
I can get you a sidekick on debate night and
(22:58):
election night, but that's it. So here's my idea. Let's
carry the debates live. Anyway. I just looked at him,
thinking that this was the day he finally went round
the bend, and I started to smile. I'm serious. We
put you and whoever the hell else works here in
a room on couches, and you're all watching a big monitor,
(23:19):
and we have like four cameras positioned behind the monitor
at different depths, so we only see the back of
the monitor, or maybe we see blurry reflections of what's
on the monitor in other glass behind you, or something
like that. But the cameras are all trained on you. Guys.
Our coverage of the debates is you Olderman watching the debate.
(23:40):
We never show the debate. We never use clean sound
from their debate. It's just a TV that's on in
the studio that happens to be tuned to the debate
ambient sound. You hear what's going on, and you describe
it to our audience, and you react to it. I
just stared at him, and then I said, we'll get sued,
(24:03):
and he stroked his beard. I don't think so. They'd
have to be able to prove that's what the viewer
is hearing at home. And I think we can make
sure that all the viewer here is at home is
an indistinct mumble that sounds like the debate. I mean,
maybe we could even sweeten the audio with a loop
of generic sound or other sound bites from Obama and
Mitt Romney. I assume it's going to be Romney, so
(24:24):
they really couldn't hear the Fox audio or the NBC audio,
or whichever network's carrying the debate. I sighed, and I
said Borman, this is not one of your genius ideas,
and he laughed and he said maybe not, then why
don't you make it better? And I had to confess
(24:46):
I could not. He had a sased our resources, which
were nothing. My employers had recently decided to stop paying
their debts, which they would do with me shortly, which
was why I would sue them, which is why they
would sue me, which is why we had no reporters,
which is why he would testify inadvertently on my behalf.
(25:08):
We also had no feed from the debate sites because
they'd stop paying the bills for the satellite time and
the remote studio links. We might be able to get
a guest or two to come in and be on
our Debate night coverage for free, chosen from among his
friends or my friends, but they would have to pay
their own way in in a cab or subway because
(25:29):
Current had stopped paying the car service fees, and we
were now on our eighth or ninth car service company
in as many weeks. And this one was a guy
with a beat up Cadillac who liked to smoke as
he drove you around, And all that went through my head,
and finally I said, Boraman, and I take it back.
This is one of your genius ideas. We have no
(25:49):
chance at doing anything as good as this. I mean,
it could be the Mystery Science Theater three thousand of
debate coverage. And I still think we shouldn't do it.
And now he stared at me and shook his head,
and why is that? And I said, well, the very
reasons you had to figure out how we could do
live TV news from a presidential debate when it's just
me and some guys watching another network carrying the debate
(26:13):
with the sound up but not up full. I said,
those are the reasons that this network is not going
to still be on the air by election night. I mean,
we might get away with doing this. People might even
find it's better than watching the actual debate, depends on
whether or not I'm funny that night. But you know,
you and I are going to have to work in
this business again soon, somewhere else. And no matter how
(26:36):
clever this is, we are still pirrating the defeat Debate's feed.
We're pirrating it from NBC, ABCCBS, Fox. They will remember that.
And you know what, if it works and the viewers
do like it, the other networks will remember it even
more Forman paused and swore. If you are worried about
(26:56):
what this will do to your reputation or my reputation,
I need to rethink it. You're probably right, all right, Well,
if you come up with something that won't end our careers,
let me know. I kind of liked this. It's too bad.
He rose, and he rose like a very large bird
(27:17):
might rise, a lot of noise, a lot of wingspan,
often blotting out the sun. And he left my office.
I don't think I saw him again. Take a moment
and picture David Borman for me. There was an actor
named Severn Darden, founder of the Second City Improv Group
(27:37):
in Chicago. Huge man, astonishing presence. He was the evil
human doctor Culp Culp in a couple of the Planet
of the Apes movies. He was in a Walter Mathow
picture called Hopscotch, and he was in the Rodney Dangerfield
movie Back to School, And he was in a thousand
other films. Always very briefly and brilliantly. It could have
(27:58):
been Borman's brother, Huge ate up the whole screen same
as Borman. And then there was Borman's real life father.
You ever seen the Jane Fonda nuclear accident movie The
China Syndrome with Michael Douglas. David Borman's father, Stan was
the news anchor in that film, and he's in it
(28:18):
a lot, and primarily because Stan Borman was a news
anchor in LA Radio and TV and in Philly and
in San Francisco. He and his son did not look
exactly alike, but they had that same aura. Obviously. That's
how David Borman got into news. I mean, he had
a degree in French but his father was in the industry,
(28:39):
and he had this unique ability from the beginning to
look at the news and say, this looks boring, let's
fix that. Nineteen eighty eight, he was tired of anchors
reading details off index cards on election night, handed them
to guys who were sitting at their feet out of
camera range. So instead everything that might come up he
(28:59):
thought of beforehand, every possible factoid, and he put each
one of the them onto a full screen graphic. For
ABC that year, he had ten thousand full screen graphics
ready for election night and could call them up on
a computer at a moment's notice. Two thousand and four,
(29:21):
he's running the conventions for CNN, he eliminated the anchor booth.
They'd been having anchor booths since radio in the nineteen
thirties began to cover the conventions. He had the anchors
for CNN join the reporters for CNN on the convention floor.
No anchor booth, less boring, he said. Election Night two
thousand and four, he got rid of the studio altogether.
(29:42):
By two thousand and eight, he was tired of all
those graphics he had created in the computers. So instead
of having all the graphics on just one screen that
would change from graphic to graphic, he built a new
set with like a dozen screens standing up all through
the set. He had the anchors change screens and walk around,
rather than the screens changing graphics and all those big
(30:04):
screen it means that you associate with Wolf Blitzer or
John King or that Kornaky guy or whoever that's Borman
all Borman. By the time I got to MSNBC in
nineteen ninety seven, he had already left his first show
there was called The Site, And while everybody else at
MSNBC was just going through the motions about computers and
(30:25):
the Internet tying them together with TV. So that NBC
could get hold of some of Microsoft's money. Borman put
together a tech show, a daily tech show whose hosts
were Solidad O'Brien and dev Null. Dev Null was a
live action animated guy who looked vaguely like side show Bob,
(30:52):
a live action animated guy guy in the back with
a motion capture suit, talking ad libbing in real time
and appearing as dev Null nineteen ninety seven. Before that,
Borman had done more conventional things. He'd redesigned World News
(31:13):
Tonight in Nightline for ABC, and the CNN Financial shows
and most of the NBC News studio shows. And basically,
if you see it on TV today or tomorrow or
hell for the next twenty five years, it's Borman's idea
or something somebody took from one of Borman's ideas. I
don't want to leave the wrong impression here, because it
would be one thing, of course, if he was just
(31:34):
this fire hose of innovation production ideas. But Borman was
not just a pictures guy. He was a pictures guy because,
as he often said, you need to make a good
television show first so people will watch it so you
can tell them what happened, which is called journalism, and
you can make it a good television show and never
tamper for one second with the journalism. Borman also ran
(31:56):
the news. I met him first when I went back
to CNN after nine to eleven, the New York coverage,
of which he line produced. I was a utility anchorman
for CNN at that time. I filled in for everybody,
from the morning hosts to Greta Van Sustron to Jeff Greenfield.
But Borman asked me to be his essayist and long
form reporter for what his bosses tried like hell to
(32:19):
make the centerpiece of CNN Newsnight with Aaron Brown. But
though I was the filling anchor for basically everybody else,
I was not the filling anchor for Aaron Brown. How
long do you think it would be before they noticed
you're better than he is. We can't do that, That's
what Borman told me. Instead, Borman pushed them to put
me on every night at eight pm. Aaron Brown was
(32:40):
on at ten, Larry King at nine. He actually got
CNN to sign me to a contract to anchor their
eight PM show two thousand and two. If they decided
to have me anchor the show, we would have the
contract already, but they also signed somebody else to exactly
the same contract, Connie Chung. They chose Connie Chung. You'll
be on at eight pm somewhere Soon enough, he said,
(33:02):
like six months later, I returned to MSNBC at eight pm,
and they stuck him with Connie Chung, and they eventually
canceled Connie's eight pm show on CNN. If my recollections
here on the passing of David Borman are a little
all over the place, I guess it is a combination
of two things. First shock, I knew him twenty years,
(33:24):
and I never knew him in good health, but he
still seemed eternal. I mean, three years ago, with the
election coming up, CBS News looked at itself in the
mirror and said, crap, we don't have anybody who can
do this. Do you think Borman could come in for
six months and produce the elections? And he did four
years earlier, he done the same thing at MSNBC. In
(33:44):
the next year. He was so close to being brought
back to knock that whole network and NBC News into
shape that he not only went looking for an apartment
here in New York, he looked in my damned building.
Within the last year he had peppered me with ideas
for turning this podcast into a television news show or
a television network or something new. He hadn't figured out
what yet. I had no doubt that either I'd be
(34:07):
hearing from him about what, or I'd be reading of
somebody convincing him to try to staunch the viewer hemorrhage
and cable news or broadcast news. I thought he was eternal. Frankly,
I thought at some point somebody at CNN would go,
what do we do now after we've screwed this all up?
Borman too late. The other part of this scattershot version
(34:30):
of the life and death of David Borman is if
there was anybody in the last forty years of television
history who had more different things on his resume than
I do, it was him. CBS in LA, ABC News,
NBC News, MSNBC, his own company, CNN Financial News, than
CNN New York, then running CNN Washington, then running c
(34:52):
IN in elections, than the CNN Chief Innovation Officer, then the
presidency of Current TV, then his own company again, then
the MSNBC and CNN renewal gigs, and the CBS reducts,
eighteen National Emmy nominations and six wins, and two Peabodies,
and a Polk Award and a DuPont As. I said
(35:12):
to him, almost as many awards as jobs, and he
just shot me a sour look and said, at least
I have the awards. I want to close with what
somebody else said about David Borman. Solidad O'Brien, aforementioned former
co host of a animated character show. On that show
(35:36):
where her co anchor was a virtual reality guy with
purple dreadlocks, she wrote, when the site which was the
name of the show was about to debut on MSNBC
in ninety six, we were behind schedule and had no
control room forty eight hours before launch. At some point
David Borman just got on the floor and started connecting
(35:57):
all the gear. Literally, he built the show control room
with about three hours to spare. It was in solid Ad,
You think that was insane? Did I mention his idea
for how we could cover the presidential debates when they
weren't on our network and they wouldn't give us the
money to send anybody there. Yeah, I did. I'm waiting
(36:19):
for a good TV oh bit of David Borman, whatever
the network, whoever read it, whoever produced it, if it
were really good, it would have to acknowledge that all
the tech being used in his oh bit was dreamt
up by him, and that at least one person in
the control room as it aired was taught by him
(36:40):
or mentored by him. Or we'll miss him always. Finally
to the number one story on the Countdown and things
I promised not to tell, and I was just putting
the finishing touches on what I wanted to say about
the late David Borman when bang there was freaking Bill
(37:01):
Maher in the news again, sitting there with JFK. Junior,
whining about vaccines, absolutely putting bullet holes in whatever was
left of his own career by mistaking Kennedy's madness for courage.
Sometimes your first impression of someone is wildly mistaken, and
(37:25):
you go years or even decades thinking, you know, I
was wrong about them, They're not as bad as I
first thought, And then it turns out, and it can
turn out literally forty five years later, yeah they were
that bad, and your first impression was right, and your
revised impression was not right, and the guy was just
(37:45):
a reactionary clown in the twentieth century and again here
in the twenty first. Sometime in nineteen eighty five or
nineteen eighty six, I saw a movie on cable TV
called DC Cab. There was a character in it, and
clearly the actor portraying the character was talented and funny.
(38:05):
But for some reason I felt like I knew him
from somewhere, and I really really disliked him. I remember
the feeling was so strong that I stuck around to
watch the credits to find out who he was. I
tried to figure out why I didn't like him. His
name was Bill Mayher Mher. I had a high school
(38:27):
teacher named Bill Mayer, but his name didn't have a
y in it, so no, it wasn't him. But I
knew three things. He was talented, I didn't like him,
and I knew him from somewhere. This is pre Internet,
of course, it's no way to find out where I
knew him from. Hallowell's annual Film Guide would be my
(38:47):
best bet. Maybe he'd be in the new one coming out.
I checked my calendar just eight or nine months from now.
Eventually I found out Bill Maher was in the year
ahead of mine at Cornell University. He was not at
my radio station. I would have recognized him immediately. He
was not in my college in the university. Maybe I
knew him from a class somewhere. I could never nail
(39:10):
it down. And what's troublesome about that is I like
to say I have a photographic memory, but it's polaroids,
which I do not always bother to label. Almost everything
that has ever happened to me is stuck inside this
big empty head of mind. But often key details like who, what, when,
and where they're just missing. I'm sorry I forgot to
(39:33):
write the year down or the name on the polaroid,
and honestly, in this case, it was not worth the effort.
I knew, though that I was, what was the right word,
aware of this guy when we were both at Cornell. Occasionally,
especially after I went from ESPN to MSNBC in nineteen
ninety seven, a writer would note the coincidence of the
(39:54):
university and the years and ask me about it. I
would say just that, use that same word. I don't
remember if he was in a class with me or something,
but I knew him somehow. I was aware of him
at Cornell. On November twenty third, two thousand, I went
on his old show, Politically Incorrect, used to be the
late night show on ABC. This was an all sports episode.
(40:14):
Lennox Lewis, the boxer, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks,
Mark Cuban, Todd zeal who at that point was the
first basement of the New York Mets, and then from
Fox Sports Me. When I met Mar, I asked him
about Cornell. I didn't know anybody there. I didn't see anybody.
I didn't do comedy anywhere. I didn't talk to anybody.
I didn't meet you. Well, that settled it, except during
(40:38):
the recording of the show when Mar contradicted me on
some point. I got angry and there was no reason
to get angry, and I dismissed the anger, and I
dismissed the moment. Except on the way home, I kept thinking,
I know him from school somehow, no matter what he says,
and I know I didn't like him. In the course
(41:05):
of the next decade, Bill Maher got his weekly HBO
political show, and I went back and turned MSNBC into
a political network, and the Internet happened, so that Cornell
juxtaposition became easier for reporters to stumble over, so they
would ask a lot more often, and I would tell
them the same thing. I can't remember the details, but
for twenty years now I have been convinced I was
(41:26):
aware of Bill Maher at Cornell. Finally came the day
March twentieth, two thousand and nine, when they first asked
me to go on Real Time and Bill Maher Cornell
seventy eight asked me Cornell seventy nine, something about colleges,
and I said, well, as you know, we overlapped at Cornell,
and I don't know if we met or whatever it was,
but I was aware of you there. And he interrupted
(41:49):
me and said, no, you weren't, and I just went
back and answered his question. Now, after every episode of
his program, mar has or at least had a little
party backstage, I mean catered with booze and with more gas.
Then there are people in the studio audience, and usually
a bunch of models having done that show four times,
(42:11):
where they will fly you in first class and put
you up for the weekend in LA just to do
their show, and there's a party. I began to suspect that,
like many of the guests, Bill Maher does the show
just so he can have the party anyway. Not long
after it started, it overcomes mar and he's mad at me.
(42:31):
And mind you, even if his allegation that he is
five feet eight is correct, I'm just under six ' four,
So he's giving up a lot of height during an argument,
and he starts yapping about how I should stop saying
I was a way here of him at Cornell and
I'm just trying to get publicity off something that never happened.
And who could remember that kind of crap anyway? And
he never talked to anybody in four years in college
(42:52):
because quote except for the Ethica High school students I
sold drugs to unquote. And I notice he's getting heated,
and this is just triggering that core belief of mine
thought I was aware of him in college and I
didn't like him, And now it becomes clear to me
he didn't like me either. He's getting loud enough and
(43:16):
he's swinging his arms around now and it looks kind
of funny, but apparently it happens in the office sometimes.
And this is when Scott Carter, who was the executive producer,
whom I definitely did know since like nineteen ninety two
when he worked at Comedy Central with my friend Alan Havy.
Scott Carter comes over to defuse the situation. Scott was
(43:37):
a three piece suit kind of guy with a thumbs
tucking the vest, who would call a group of men fellows,
as in say fellows. So Scott comes over and says,
say fellows with your Carnell alumni reunion here, And of
course this makes Bill Maher even angrier. Let me ask
you something. I used to drive down from Hobart to
(43:58):
see concerts at Cornell to say, I think Cornell was
the leading concert school in the nation back in our day.
And now Scott starts the list who he saw in
concert at Cornell, Robert Palmer and the famous Grateful Dead
concert at Cornell at Barton Hall. He was there, and
I say I went to Springsteen, and mar mumbles something
about Loggins and Messina, and I know what Carter is
(44:20):
doing here. He's diffusing, and we do a couple of
rounds of who saw which Cornell concert? And finally I say,
I can top both of you, comic geniuses. I saw
Robert Kleine in concert at Cornell. Now it is criminal,
but there's an excellent chance You may not know who
Robert Kline is, suffice to say as prominent a comedian
(44:44):
in the sixties, seventies eighties as George Carlin or Richard
pryor HBO. Itself was built on annual George Carlin concerts
and annual Robert Klin concerts and everybody else. And Robert
Kline wasn't quite as deep or eternal as George Carlin,
but he was really on the money during Watergate and
during ra So I say, I saw Robert Klein in
(45:07):
concert at Cornell, and Mar looks at me, funny and
not angrily, and says quietly, I was at that too.
I saw Robert Klein too, And I don't really register
that Mar's mood has now utterly changed. He's not angry,
he's confused. Well, I say, I can still top you,
(45:27):
because after that concert I interviewed Robert Klein. Now Bill
Maher starts to squint, and he looks at me, and
he looks at Scott Carter, and he looks back at
me and he says, wait, I interviewed Kleine after that concert, too,
And I'm smiling through all this and smiling and smiling
(45:48):
and smiling. And then suddenly simultaneously, it hits Bill Maher
and me at the same moment, in the same fullness
of detail, and I stop smiling and I shout at
Bill Maher, you and he pulls his arms in towards
his stomach and kind of bends forward at the waist
and his face with his hands, and he says, oh God,
I'm so sorry, Jesus, it can't be. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
(46:11):
And while the anger wells up inside me so powerfully,
I can almost see it in my own eyeballs. Bill
Maher's concert going producer Scott Carter is really confused. Say Fellows,
did I miss something or did I have a brief
stroke or episode? And I say Bill, and I just
(46:31):
remembered how I happen to be aware of him in school,
and Mar still has got his hands over his face
and people are looking at us, and Bill is shouting apologies,
and I say you want to tell him or should I?
And Mar just shakes his body no and mumbles, oh God,
you do it. I can't, I can't, I can't, And
(46:53):
it all came back to me. For years, I would
tell people the story of the Robert Klein concert at
Cornell University in nineteen seventy eight, our radio station co
sponsored his appearance along with the Corneill Concert Commission, and
in the contract we specified that a couple of us
real comedy nerds at the radio station would get to
(47:14):
go backstage afterwards and tape a brief ten or fifteen
minute interview with Robert Klin. Basically, we paid him not much,
but we paid him to do an interview. And when
my pal Andy Grossman and I get backstage to talk
to Robert Klein, and we have our two microphones and
two mike stands and three tape recorders, there is this guy,
(47:34):
this short guy, and he's yelling at the chief of
the Cornail Concert Commission, and he's yelling at Robert Clein's manager,
and he's demanding that he should get to interview Robert
Clin because, like Klein, this kid says he is a
stand up comedian and he publishes the Corneill Humor magazine.
And he points at me and he says he should
get priority over these quote corporate sellouts from the Corneill
(47:57):
Radio station. I hated him on site. Oh wait, I
say to him in nineteen seventy eight, and he's small,
and he's got dirty, stringy hair and he's loud, and
I say, you are the publisher of the Cornell humor magazine,
the Cornell Widow. And he snorts and says I would
(48:17):
get caught dead publishing that corporate sellout, Cornell Widow. And
so I say, oh, so, then that means you're the
publisher of the Cornell Alternative humor magazine, the Not So
Big Red or whatever it is they call it. He says,
no way, they are corporate sellouts. I publish this and
he pulls out a stack of mimeographed pages stapled together
(48:39):
and there's like a drawing on the front of a
naked girl and handwritten it says it's his comedy magazine.
And I look at Robert Klein's manager and I say, so,
it's ten o'clock and if you leave now while while
this idiot is screwing this up, the limo can still
get mister Klein to Elaine's in the city before it closes, right,
(49:01):
And the manager is wildly impressed. You know of Lanes?
And I said yes, and I felt like an adult.
And I also said, if we give this guy five
minutes of our time right now while we're setting up
our tape recorders. Can we still have ten minutes with
mister Klein And the manager says, good plan. I like
the way you think, and he points to the kid
and gestures for him to come along. Now the kid shouts,
(49:24):
I want half an hour. These corporate sellouts deserve nothing.
And now I'm getting angry. I say, buddy, so far
all the corporations in the world have paid me about
one hundred bucks. So I threaten him. Now, mind you,
I believe this is literally true. Since nineteen sixty seven,
when I was eight years old, I have started two fistfights,
(49:46):
two in fifty five years. I am a man of peace.
I am loud, but I am a man of peace.
But I say to this guy, you now have two choices. Kid,
five minutes with Robert Klein or I hit you you
in the face. And he runs to where client's manager
(50:08):
is still gesturing towards him, and he screams, carpred sell out,
and he disappears to do his interview, and behind him
he leaves his little homemade mimeograph ten or twelve page
humor publication. And I pick it up, and I read
it and register it and dismiss it. Before I leave
the building. And if I had only remembered what it
(50:29):
said on the cover, all the years of mystery and
I was aware of him, and all that would never
have happened because the cover of the magazine read Bill
Mahr's Comedy Magazine by Bill MAHERR. And now back in
well technically this is correct, back in real time. At
the party in the Hollywood studio in two thousand and nine,
(50:52):
the producer Scott Carter says nothing, and Bill Maher is
still doubled over in shame, and I say, are you
satisfied that I was aware of you? And he mumbles yes.
And I say, will you ever question my memory again?
And he mumbles no. And he says if I need
him to do my show or a charity benefit or something,
(51:15):
just call. And he says he's ashamed, and he offers
me his hand to shake, and we shake, and finally
I say, and by the way, Bill Maher, if Bill
Maher's Comedy Magazine by Bill Maher are you a corporate sellout?
And he says kind And that's how I was aware
of Bill Maher in college. I've done all the damage
(51:49):
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music arranged, produced and performed
by Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, who are the
Countdown musical directors. Guitarist, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shaneale, produced by TKO.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman
(52:11):
theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
my friend Tony Kornheiser. Everything else is pretty much my fault.
So that's countdown for this the nine hundred and third
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Arrest him again while
(52:34):
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then,
I'm Keith Olberman. Good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(52:56):
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. Donald
Trump is going to be convicted of violating the Espionage
(00:25):
Act because there are smoking guns, and then there are
the kinds of smoking guns so profound and so productive
that they turn the entire Eastern seaboard sky orange. And
this one is the second kind. CNN got the clip
(00:46):
of the actual recording of Trump showing off classified Joint
chiefs of Staff military plans for attacking Iran, and then
the Washington Post got the recording, and then the New
York Times got the recording. I have not yet checked
my high school paper, the Hackley Dial. First, this fulfills
the primary rule of Trump. Everything is worse than you
(01:10):
could have possibly imagined. He is laughing as he commits
crimes prohibited by the Espionage Act. His flunky is making
Hillary Clinton jokes. He's making Anthony Wiener jokes. He's ordering cokes. Second,
this has to have come from Mark Meadows. It has
(01:31):
to have. Third, this fulfills the prophecy of Ryan Goodman
from Just Security. It is not just Trump committing a crime,
It is Trump narrating his own crime as he commits it. Fourth,
the recording has a PostScript something that was, for whatever reason,
(01:52):
not included in the transcript of the tape that was
included in the charging document as filed by Special Counsel
Jack Smith. There's bonus content here. Just before the recording begins,
the name of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milly,
has been invoked Donald Trump, convicting himself of violating eighteen
(02:16):
US Code seventy nine to three transmitting defense information a
fine or up to ten years in prison. We joined
Donald Trump already in progress.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
He's a bad sick people.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
That was your cue, you know, against you What started
right at time when Millie's talking about, oh you were
going to try to do now that they were.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Trying to do that before you even were sworn in.
That's right, Maria, overthrow your life. Well with Milly, let
me see that. I'll go show you an example. He
said that I wanted to attack an.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Isn't it amazing to have a big pile of Diapersie
just came in a fluter.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
This was him. They presented me. This is off the record,
but they presented me this. This was him.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
This was the Defense Department in him.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
We looked at him. This was him. This wasn't done
by me. This was him, all sorts of stuff pages long,
and let's see yere I just found.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know,
except it is like highly cond this secretive for it.
Look look at this you attack.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
And Hillary would put that out all the time. You know,
she sent it to Anthony. By the way, isn't that incredible?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I was just because we're talking about it and either
he said he wanted to attack ran and what.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
This was done by the military given to me. I
think we can trouble linked I to see.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, also died lesser.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yes, his president. I could have did less now I
can't you know, but this is is that interesting? It's
so cool. So I'm look, we hear ivan and you
probably almost didn't believe me, but now you believe me.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
It's incredible, right, it brings some brings, some coats in place.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
That as CNN and later The Post and The Times
aired and posted it last night from the meeting Trump
held with two writers working on well ghostwriting Mark Meadows autobiography,
recorded at Trump's club at Bedminster, New Jersey in July
twenty twenty one. The most fawning references, and the loudest
(04:51):
sycophantic laughter appears to be from the Trump aide Margot Martin,
and the new part. At the end, Trump continues to
marvel that Millie's name has been invoked and went out
of his big pile of papers. Millie's secret plan to
attack Iran. Quote just came up. The new quote we
had not heard or read before. It's so cool. I mean,
(05:13):
it's so look her and I and you probably almost
didn't believe me, but now you believe me. Trump has
violated national security to boast how cool it is that
he has this document. It's like me and a baseball card,
except there are very few goddamn classified baseball cards. And
(05:36):
the recording not only disproves but defies his latest lie
about this meeting that he might have been talking about
Iran and General Milly, but there were no classified or
defense documents being shown to unauthorize people. Just quote newspaper stories,
magazine stories, and articles. On tape, Trump is heard saying, see,
(05:58):
as President, I could have declassified it. On tape, Trump
is heard saying these are the paper. On tape, Trump
is heard saying this was done by the military and
given to me. On tape, Trump is heard saying, let
me see that. I'll show you an example. On tape,
Trump is heard saying it's pages long. You hear him
(06:19):
flipping through the pages, showing it off. Let's see here.
On tape, Trump is heard saying, except its highly confidential
secret information. He not only breaks the law by showing
two aids and two people working for Mark Meadow's defense information,
maybe classified defense information, but he repeatedly confirms he is
(06:42):
holding the document as he does so, and he confirms
who wrote it and why, and how long it is,
and he's showing it off, presumably with that same idiotic
smirk on his face that he'd show when he signed
some nefarious act in the Oval office, and he would
hold it up for cameras so you could see his
gigantic madman's electro cardiogram signature. It could be worse for
(07:06):
him in one way, only if there was video. That
assumes there isn't video. Ten days ago, Ryan Goodman from
Just Security went on the Bill Crystal podcast. I quoted
him here, and he asked, rhetorically, what would happen if
the recording itself of the conversation about the milli Iran
(07:29):
document were to turn up, it would be something visceral,
something undeniable, Trump in essence, doing play by play of
his own crimes as he committed them. What would happen,
Goodman wondered, to the dynamic of this case, to the
public's understanding of it, to even the unblinking belief by
(07:50):
some in Trump's cult that he's not lying. If a
major news organization were to get a copy of the
recording and put it on television or on YouTube, as
I phrased it on the nineteenth, not a transcript, but
Trump's actual crime. I am in Trump's actual voice, as
Trump actually commits it, playing on CNN dot com, New
(08:13):
York Times dot com, Washingtonpost dot com. Let me go
check the hackleydial dot com now available without a subpoena
or a search warrant or a prescription. And I am
not kidding myself, and you should not kid yourself. It
will not sway a majority of his cultists. These are
the twenty first century versions of the people who literally
(08:35):
drank the kool aid at Jonestown. They will not be
converted to reality, but it will sway some of them. Hell,
I expect Donald Trump to die of old agent prisoner me.
But I think he's guiltier than I thought he was
before I heard that recording. That recording does raise a
(08:55):
procedural question, again brought up by the estimable mister Goodman.
Why has Trump not yet been charged with a crime
in New Jersey where that recording was made, and those
events took place, retaining the Milli document took place in Florida,
He's been charged for it there. Remember, they still don't
know where the Milli document is. But if Trump could
(09:17):
somehow convince a jury that he had declassified it, even
though he clearly implies on tape that he had not
declassified it and wistfully regrets that he had not declassified it.
If he does that, or he just fuzzes the issue
up sufficiently, the fallback would be to charge him under
the transmitting clause of the Espionage Act. That only has
(09:37):
to be defense information. It does not have to be classified,
and it's on a recording, that recording. Where did CNN
and the Post of the Times get that recording? Mark Meadows,
I don't literally mean from him, I don't know, but
(09:59):
from him and or his legal team. Who else has
a motive? There's no real debt damage to Jack Smith's
prosecution of Trump if the Millie Iran document is revealed,
I mean, if the plan is to introduce clips at
the trial of Trump during the twenty sixteen campaign talking
about Hillary Clinton mishandling secret information tapes that have been
(10:21):
out there now for seven years. Having this tape out
there is not going to spoil the jury pool. But
I do think the Special Council's Office releasing it themselves
would presumably violate at least some of the seventy five
thousand pages of Department of Justice boy scout rules. I
mean in Jack Smith. After all, we have a special
(10:43):
counsel who, until he confirmed the indictments, none of us
knew what his voice sounded like. In theory, this could
be the copy recorded by the Trump side. Presumably that
Margot Martin, the one who was at the Miami hearing
when Fox misidentified her as Milania. But she was at
(11:03):
the Miami hearing at Trump side. She has not abandoned
him yet unless she's wearing a wire. You think the
two unidentified writers working for Meadows released this tape. It's
always seemed unlikely to me that they were involved with
the tape getting first to Jack Smith and now to
Anderson Cooper, largely because if Meadows was paying them to
(11:26):
interview Trump for his quote autobiography, the recording legally belongs
to Meadows, not them. I mean, prosecutors could subpoena whoever
hit the record button on the phone, but this fits
in much much more correctly as a piece inside the
mark Meadows has flipped on Trump jigsaw puzzle, just amazing
(11:49):
and clear as a bell, fine recording. Whoever did that one?
There is, though one other gigantic surprise on that recording,
and in fact it's after the other surprise at the tail,
the one that I had already mentioned. Oh, Donald, bring
some bring some coachs in ples, just some cokes, no cheeseburgers,
(12:16):
Donald and forty four large fries, McNuggets, two forty piece sets,
two dozen shakes, a lot of ketchup on the side,
and get a Grimace's Birthday meal. No, no, no two
Grimace's Birthday meal.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Hell, let's have a party, make it four one for everybody. Also,
last night, Jack Smith's investigation of the fake Electors scam
moved forward a little bit further. The Washington Post reports
that the Special Council is trying to ascertain if that
(12:49):
same crowd of cheesy lawyers I mentioned yesterday, Kenneth Cheesebro,
Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, and Kurt Olson,
we're following specific instructions from Trump or from others about
the fake slates of electors, and if so, what those
instructions were. But the Post also reported a new missive
(13:13):
from Trump's all purpose schlub Jason Miller, written to an
executive and an ad agency producing campaign ads for Trump.
And this goes to fraud charges, probably wire fraud, against
Trump for raising money from the public to roll back
a stolen election that Trump definitively knew had not been stolen.
Quoting the Miller message, the campaign's own legal team and
(13:37):
data experts cannot verify the bullshit being beamed down from
the mother ship, unquote, wrote Miller. Miller goes on to
tell the ad exact that that was why Giuliani and
the lawyers were quote and thirty two and tying into
both of those sets of possible future indictments fake electors
(13:59):
and financial fraud, and mixing in yet a third possible
set for total four the Post also reports that Smith's
investigators will tomorrow interview the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger,
who was on the end of the I just want
to find eleven seven hundred and eighty votes phone call,
which could be its own electoral interference crime federally and
(14:21):
not just in Georgia, and which, bringing us back full circle,
is on tape. There is also a new development in
a fourth prong of the Smith investigation. NBC reported that
approximately half a dozen Secret Service agents have testified to
the Smith grand jury about Trump on January sixth, and
(14:43):
nobody knows which ones they are, or what they saw
or how close they were. But they are not testifying
about classified documents or fake electors or wirefraud. They are
talking about Trump and the violent coup attempt on January sixth.
And then there's a little chaser here for America's bum
Rudy Giuliani. Al Old pal Lev Parnas tweeted out of
(15:07):
the Blue yesterday, quoting sources are telling me that Rudy
Giuliani is having a meltdown and drinking heavily. Okay, your points, sir,
I mean that sounds like any Giuliani days since roughly
nineteen eighty five. Quoting Parnas again, after being sanctioned, he
fears that he is about to get indicted and doesn't
(15:30):
know who to turn to for help. It's time to
pay the piper. Rudy hashtag hashtag Lev remembers, hey, bring
some cokes in please, and a tanker truck full of
vodka for Rudy. And just to wrap this up, a
(15:53):
reminder of the story behind all of these other stories.
Fascinating as they are, ultimately they are not the point.
When I hear Trump's defenders and apologists say that the
rest of us will do anything to keep him from
being president, my instinctive reaction is always the same, and
(16:15):
a reminder of just what subhuman scum Trump and the
slime he brought into the White House, our White House
really are. Miles Taylor, once the anonymous staffer, has been
letting loose nuggets from his upcoming book Blowback. This appeared
last night in Rolling Stone. Taylor quotes a conversation between
(16:37):
the disgusting nosparatu of the Trump cult, Stephen Miller, and
the then commandant of the US Coast Guard, Admiral Paul Zakunft,
who is now retired. Miller, Admiral the military has aerial drones, correct,
Admiral Zakunft, Yes, Miller, and some of those drones are
(16:58):
equipped with missiles, correct, za Kunft, Sure, Miller. And when
a boat of migrants is in international waters, they aren't
protected by the US constitution, right, za Kundt. Technically no,
but I'm not sure what you're getting at Miller. Tell me,
why then, can't we use a predator drone to obliterate
(17:21):
that boat, zi Kunft, Because Stephen, it would be against
international law. Miller, the United States launches airstrikes on terrorists
in disputed areas all the time, unquote. Miller and the
(17:41):
admiral deny. That was their conversation. Taylor adds that Miller
quote wasn't interested in the moral conflict of drone bombing migrants.
He wanted to know whether anyone could stop America from
doing it.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Unquote.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
I am, for some reason on convinced by Stephen Miller's denial.
Also of interest here. Did you watch them play the
Trump recording on CNN last night or did you watch
anything on MSNBC, NBC, CBSABC News. If so, you watched
(18:25):
the work and the innovation of a man named David Borman,
also twice my boss and once in the middle of
a couple of my lawsuits involving a total of roughly
more or less one hundred million dollars. David Borman died Sunday.
I want to talk about him. He was a very
special man. That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Post strips to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline z Alto, California. Imagine being the president
of and key witness for a television channel in the
deposition stage as it is suing its star newsman, and
its star newsman is suing it with a total of
around one hundred million dollars on the table, and the
(19:22):
lawsuit ends, and the network does not win the lawsuit,
and you stay in friendly touch with that newsman for
the rest of your life. David Borman died Sunday complications
after hip surgery. His family reports he was sixty nine
years old. He and I had nearly identical personalities and
(19:44):
were essentially equally larger than life in an office setting,
and therefore it was almost inevitable that I do not
remember us agreeing on anything, and yet we never had
a fight. We did not have crosswords, not even when
we were on opposite sides of a lawsuit with one
hundred million dollars on the table. I had last heard
(20:07):
from him barely four months ago. It was about this podcast,
which he listened to every day. It was always friendly
on my end. It was always friendly and supportive on
his end, and frankly, when it came time for him
to be deposed in my lawsuit against Current TV and
it's against mine a decade ago, that friendliness probably guaranteed
(20:28):
that Current was not going to win the lawsuits. Without
getting too deep in the weeds. The bottom line was
this Current needed to prove I was not talking to management,
and they were sure the network president, David Borman would
back them up. And for eight hours or so in
a tape deposition, he kept saying that no, I was
actually above average cooperative, and he always looked forward to
(20:50):
talking to me, never had a problem finding me. And
I was the least anchory type person he'd ever worked with,
and he knew what that meant, since his father was
a news anchor. The more I have thought over the
years about what I know of what he said on
under Oath, the more I begin to wonder if he
didn't say all that deliberately so the case would swing
my way. Not that he wanted me to have the money,
(21:13):
or he had something against Current TV, But David Borman
was for all the innovations and the insight and the leadership.
David Borman was about the people who worked with him.
He was about the anchors and the reporters, and the writers,
and the producers and the associate producers, and the interns
and the guys who cleaned the studio. Ultimately, they were
(21:33):
what mattered to him. He showed that affection for them
in many different and sometimes indecipherable ways. But his business
was about people, Borman, and that's what everybody called him.
Borman had fifty ideas a day, fifty original ideas a day.
(21:54):
Fifty were original, ten were genius, thirty had promised, and
ten had the potential to destroy your show, your career,
and or his network. They brought him in as president
of Current TV during my fiasco there, and not long
after he came into my office and he said he
had an utterly new idea for how to cover the
(22:14):
upcoming twenty twelve presidential election. Now, mind you an utterly
new idea for how to cover a presidential election. Basically,
everything you see on television on election night to this
day is something David Borman thought up or improved. Big screens,
touch screens, disappearing screens, anchor standing reporters appearing by a hologram,
(22:38):
the data boards, the graphics, the graphics that move in,
the graphics that move out, everything, to say nothing of
the content. And now he had an utterly new idea.
We were current TV, we were no longer paying our bills. Okay,
they won't let me spend any money. I mean, maybe
I can get you a sidekick on debate night and
(22:58):
election night, but that's it. So here's my idea. Let's
carry the debates live. Anyway. I just looked at him,
thinking that this was the day he finally went round
the bend, and I started to smile. I'm serious. We
put you and whoever the hell else works here in
a room on couches, and you're all watching a big monitor,
(23:19):
and we have like four cameras positioned behind the monitor
at different depths, so we only see the back of
the monitor, or maybe we see blurry reflections of what's
on the monitor in other glass behind you, or something
like that. But the cameras are all trained on you. Guys.
Our coverage of the debates is you Olderman watching the debate.
(23:40):
We never show the debate. We never use clean sound
from their debate. It's just a TV that's on in
the studio that happens to be tuned to the debate
ambient sound. You hear what's going on, and you describe
it to our audience, and you react to it. I
just stared at him, and then I said, we'll get sued,
(24:03):
and he stroked his beard. I don't think so. They'd
have to be able to prove that's what the viewer
is hearing at home. And I think we can make
sure that all the viewer here is at home is
an indistinct mumble that sounds like the debate. I mean,
maybe we could even sweeten the audio with a loop
of generic sound or other sound bites from Obama and
Mitt Romney. I assume it's going to be Romney, so
(24:24):
they really couldn't hear the Fox audio or the NBC audio,
or whichever network's carrying the debate. I sighed, and I
said Borman, this is not one of your genius ideas,
and he laughed and he said maybe not, then why
don't you make it better? And I had to confess
(24:46):
I could not. He had a sased our resources, which
were nothing. My employers had recently decided to stop paying
their debts, which they would do with me shortly, which
was why I would sue them, which is why they
would sue me, which is why we had no reporters,
which is why he would testify inadvertently on my behalf.
(25:08):
We also had no feed from the debate sites because
they'd stop paying the bills for the satellite time and
the remote studio links. We might be able to get
a guest or two to come in and be on
our Debate night coverage for free, chosen from among his
friends or my friends, but they would have to pay
their own way in in a cab or subway because
(25:29):
Current had stopped paying the car service fees, and we
were now on our eighth or ninth car service company
in as many weeks. And this one was a guy
with a beat up Cadillac who liked to smoke as
he drove you around, And all that went through my head,
and finally I said, Boraman, and I take it back.
This is one of your genius ideas. We have no
(25:49):
chance at doing anything as good as this. I mean,
it could be the Mystery Science Theater three thousand of
debate coverage. And I still think we shouldn't do it.
And now he stared at me and shook his head,
and why is that? And I said, well, the very
reasons you had to figure out how we could do
live TV news from a presidential debate when it's just
me and some guys watching another network carrying the debate
(26:13):
with the sound up but not up full. I said,
those are the reasons that this network is not going
to still be on the air by election night. I mean,
we might get away with doing this. People might even
find it's better than watching the actual debate, depends on
whether or not I'm funny that night. But you know,
you and I are going to have to work in
this business again soon, somewhere else. And no matter how
(26:36):
clever this is, we are still pirrating the defeat Debate's feed.
We're pirrating it from NBC, ABCCBS, Fox. They will remember that.
And you know what, if it works and the viewers
do like it, the other networks will remember it even
more Forman paused and swore. If you are worried about
(26:56):
what this will do to your reputation or my reputation,
I need to rethink it. You're probably right, all right, Well,
if you come up with something that won't end our careers,
let me know. I kind of liked this. It's too bad.
He rose, and he rose like a very large bird
(27:17):
might rise, a lot of noise, a lot of wingspan,
often blotting out the sun. And he left my office.
I don't think I saw him again. Take a moment
and picture David Borman for me. There was an actor
named Severn Darden, founder of the Second City Improv Group
(27:37):
in Chicago. Huge man, astonishing presence. He was the evil
human doctor Culp Culp in a couple of the Planet
of the Apes movies. He was in a Walter Mathow
picture called Hopscotch, and he was in the Rodney Dangerfield
movie Back to School, And he was in a thousand
other films. Always very briefly and brilliantly. It could have
(27:58):
been Borman's brother, Huge ate up the whole screen same
as Borman. And then there was Borman's real life father.
You ever seen the Jane Fonda nuclear accident movie The
China Syndrome with Michael Douglas. David Borman's father, Stan was
the news anchor in that film, and he's in it
(28:18):
a lot, and primarily because Stan Borman was a news
anchor in LA Radio and TV and in Philly and
in San Francisco. He and his son did not look
exactly alike, but they had that same aura. Obviously. That's
how David Borman got into news. I mean, he had
a degree in French but his father was in the industry,
(28:39):
and he had this unique ability from the beginning to
look at the news and say, this looks boring, let's
fix that. Nineteen eighty eight, he was tired of anchors
reading details off index cards on election night, handed them
to guys who were sitting at their feet out of
camera range. So instead everything that might come up he
(28:59):
thought of beforehand, every possible factoid, and he put each
one of the them onto a full screen graphic. For
ABC that year, he had ten thousand full screen graphics
ready for election night and could call them up on
a computer at a moment's notice. Two thousand and four,
(29:21):
he's running the conventions for CNN, he eliminated the anchor booth.
They'd been having anchor booths since radio in the nineteen
thirties began to cover the conventions. He had the anchors
for CNN join the reporters for CNN on the convention floor.
No anchor booth, less boring, he said. Election Night two
thousand and four, he got rid of the studio altogether.
(29:42):
By two thousand and eight, he was tired of all
those graphics he had created in the computers. So instead
of having all the graphics on just one screen that
would change from graphic to graphic, he built a new
set with like a dozen screens standing up all through
the set. He had the anchors change screens and walk around,
rather than the screens changing graphics and all those big
(30:04):
screen it means that you associate with Wolf Blitzer or
John King or that Kornaky guy or whoever that's Borman
all Borman. By the time I got to MSNBC in
nineteen ninety seven, he had already left his first show
there was called The Site, And while everybody else at
MSNBC was just going through the motions about computers and
(30:25):
the Internet tying them together with TV. So that NBC
could get hold of some of Microsoft's money. Borman put
together a tech show, a daily tech show whose hosts
were Solidad O'Brien and dev Null. Dev Null was a
live action animated guy who looked vaguely like side show Bob,
(30:52):
a live action animated guy guy in the back with
a motion capture suit, talking ad libbing in real time
and appearing as dev Null nineteen ninety seven. Before that,
Borman had done more conventional things. He'd redesigned World News
(31:13):
Tonight in Nightline for ABC, and the CNN Financial shows
and most of the NBC News studio shows. And basically,
if you see it on TV today or tomorrow or
hell for the next twenty five years, it's Borman's idea
or something somebody took from one of Borman's ideas. I
don't want to leave the wrong impression here, because it
would be one thing, of course, if he was just
(31:34):
this fire hose of innovation production ideas. But Borman was
not just a pictures guy. He was a pictures guy because,
as he often said, you need to make a good
television show first so people will watch it so you
can tell them what happened, which is called journalism, and
you can make it a good television show and never
tamper for one second with the journalism. Borman also ran
(31:56):
the news. I met him first when I went back
to CNN after nine to eleven, the New York coverage,
of which he line produced. I was a utility anchorman
for CNN at that time. I filled in for everybody,
from the morning hosts to Greta Van Sustron to Jeff Greenfield.
But Borman asked me to be his essayist and long
form reporter for what his bosses tried like hell to
(32:19):
make the centerpiece of CNN Newsnight with Aaron Brown. But
though I was the filling anchor for basically everybody else,
I was not the filling anchor for Aaron Brown. How
long do you think it would be before they noticed
you're better than he is. We can't do that, That's
what Borman told me. Instead, Borman pushed them to put
me on every night at eight pm. Aaron Brown was
(32:40):
on at ten, Larry King at nine. He actually got
CNN to sign me to a contract to anchor their
eight PM show two thousand and two. If they decided
to have me anchor the show, we would have the
contract already, but they also signed somebody else to exactly
the same contract, Connie Chung. They chose Connie Chung. You'll
be on at eight pm somewhere Soon enough, he said,
(33:02):
like six months later, I returned to MSNBC at eight pm,
and they stuck him with Connie Chung, and they eventually
canceled Connie's eight pm show on CNN. If my recollections
here on the passing of David Borman are a little
all over the place, I guess it is a combination
of two things. First shock, I knew him twenty years,
(33:24):
and I never knew him in good health, but he
still seemed eternal. I mean, three years ago, with the
election coming up, CBS News looked at itself in the
mirror and said, crap, we don't have anybody who can
do this. Do you think Borman could come in for
six months and produce the elections? And he did four
years earlier, he done the same thing at MSNBC. In
(33:44):
the next year. He was so close to being brought
back to knock that whole network and NBC News into
shape that he not only went looking for an apartment
here in New York, he looked in my damned building.
Within the last year he had peppered me with ideas
for turning this podcast into a television news show or
a television network or something new. He hadn't figured out
what yet. I had no doubt that either I'd be
(34:07):
hearing from him about what, or I'd be reading of
somebody convincing him to try to staunch the viewer hemorrhage
and cable news or broadcast news. I thought he was eternal. Frankly,
I thought at some point somebody at CNN would go,
what do we do now after we've screwed this all up?
Borman too late. The other part of this scattershot version
(34:30):
of the life and death of David Borman is if
there was anybody in the last forty years of television
history who had more different things on his resume than
I do, it was him. CBS in LA, ABC News,
NBC News, MSNBC, his own company, CNN Financial News, than
CNN New York, then running CNN Washington, then running c
(34:52):
IN in elections, than the CNN Chief Innovation Officer, then the
presidency of Current TV, then his own company again, then
the MSNBC and CNN renewal gigs, and the CBS reducts,
eighteen National Emmy nominations and six wins, and two Peabodies,
and a Polk Award and a DuPont As. I said
(35:12):
to him, almost as many awards as jobs, and he
just shot me a sour look and said, at least
I have the awards. I want to close with what
somebody else said about David Borman. Solidad O'Brien, aforementioned former
co host of a animated character show. On that show
(35:36):
where her co anchor was a virtual reality guy with
purple dreadlocks, she wrote, when the site which was the
name of the show was about to debut on MSNBC
in ninety six, we were behind schedule and had no
control room forty eight hours before launch. At some point
David Borman just got on the floor and started connecting
(35:57):
all the gear. Literally, he built the show control room
with about three hours to spare. It was in solid Ad,
You think that was insane? Did I mention his idea
for how we could cover the presidential debates when they
weren't on our network and they wouldn't give us the
money to send anybody there. Yeah, I did. I'm waiting
(36:19):
for a good TV oh bit of David Borman, whatever
the network, whoever read it, whoever produced it, if it
were really good, it would have to acknowledge that all
the tech being used in his oh bit was dreamt
up by him, and that at least one person in
the control room as it aired was taught by him
(36:40):
or mentored by him. Or we'll miss him always. Finally
to the number one story on the Countdown and things
I promised not to tell, and I was just putting
the finishing touches on what I wanted to say about
the late David Borman when bang there was freaking Bill
(37:01):
Maher in the news again, sitting there with JFK. Junior,
whining about vaccines, absolutely putting bullet holes in whatever was
left of his own career by mistaking Kennedy's madness for courage.
Sometimes your first impression of someone is wildly mistaken, and
(37:25):
you go years or even decades thinking, you know, I
was wrong about them, They're not as bad as I
first thought, And then it turns out, and it can
turn out literally forty five years later, yeah they were
that bad, and your first impression was right, and your
revised impression was not right, and the guy was just
(37:45):
a reactionary clown in the twentieth century and again here
in the twenty first. Sometime in nineteen eighty five or
nineteen eighty six, I saw a movie on cable TV
called DC Cab. There was a character in it, and
clearly the actor portraying the character was talented and funny.
(38:05):
But for some reason I felt like I knew him
from somewhere, and I really really disliked him. I remember
the feeling was so strong that I stuck around to
watch the credits to find out who he was. I
tried to figure out why I didn't like him. His
name was Bill Mayher Mher. I had a high school
(38:27):
teacher named Bill Mayer, but his name didn't have a
y in it, so no, it wasn't him. But I
knew three things. He was talented, I didn't like him,
and I knew him from somewhere. This is pre Internet,
of course, it's no way to find out where I
knew him from. Hallowell's annual Film Guide would be my
(38:47):
best bet. Maybe he'd be in the new one coming out.
I checked my calendar just eight or nine months from now.
Eventually I found out Bill Maher was in the year
ahead of mine at Cornell University. He was not at
my radio station. I would have recognized him immediately. He
was not in my college in the university. Maybe I
knew him from a class somewhere. I could never nail
(39:10):
it down. And what's troublesome about that is I like
to say I have a photographic memory, but it's polaroids,
which I do not always bother to label. Almost everything
that has ever happened to me is stuck inside this
big empty head of mind. But often key details like who, what, when,
and where they're just missing. I'm sorry I forgot to
(39:33):
write the year down or the name on the polaroid,
and honestly, in this case, it was not worth the effort.
I knew, though that I was, what was the right word,
aware of this guy when we were both at Cornell. Occasionally,
especially after I went from ESPN to MSNBC in nineteen
ninety seven, a writer would note the coincidence of the
(39:54):
university and the years and ask me about it. I
would say just that, use that same word. I don't
remember if he was in a class with me or something,
but I knew him somehow. I was aware of him
at Cornell. On November twenty third, two thousand, I went
on his old show, Politically Incorrect, used to be the
late night show on ABC. This was an all sports episode.
(40:14):
Lennox Lewis, the boxer, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks,
Mark Cuban, Todd zeal who at that point was the
first basement of the New York Mets, and then from
Fox Sports Me. When I met Mar, I asked him
about Cornell. I didn't know anybody there. I didn't see anybody.
I didn't do comedy anywhere. I didn't talk to anybody.
I didn't meet you. Well, that settled it, except during
(40:38):
the recording of the show when Mar contradicted me on
some point. I got angry and there was no reason
to get angry, and I dismissed the anger, and I
dismissed the moment. Except on the way home, I kept thinking,
I know him from school somehow, no matter what he says,
and I know I didn't like him. In the course
(41:05):
of the next decade, Bill Maher got his weekly HBO
political show, and I went back and turned MSNBC into
a political network, and the Internet happened, so that Cornell
juxtaposition became easier for reporters to stumble over, so they
would ask a lot more often, and I would tell
them the same thing. I can't remember the details, but
for twenty years now I have been convinced I was
(41:26):
aware of Bill Maher at Cornell. Finally came the day
March twentieth, two thousand and nine, when they first asked
me to go on Real Time and Bill Maher Cornell
seventy eight asked me Cornell seventy nine, something about colleges,
and I said, well, as you know, we overlapped at Cornell,
and I don't know if we met or whatever it was,
but I was aware of you there. And he interrupted
(41:49):
me and said, no, you weren't, and I just went
back and answered his question. Now, after every episode of
his program, mar has or at least had a little
party backstage, I mean catered with booze and with more gas.
Then there are people in the studio audience, and usually
a bunch of models having done that show four times,
(42:11):
where they will fly you in first class and put
you up for the weekend in LA just to do
their show, and there's a party. I began to suspect that,
like many of the guests, Bill Maher does the show
just so he can have the party anyway. Not long
after it started, it overcomes mar and he's mad at me.
(42:31):
And mind you, even if his allegation that he is
five feet eight is correct, I'm just under six ' four,
So he's giving up a lot of height during an argument,
and he starts yapping about how I should stop saying
I was a way here of him at Cornell and
I'm just trying to get publicity off something that never happened.
And who could remember that kind of crap anyway? And
he never talked to anybody in four years in college
(42:52):
because quote except for the Ethica High school students I
sold drugs to unquote. And I notice he's getting heated,
and this is just triggering that core belief of mine
thought I was aware of him in college and I
didn't like him, And now it becomes clear to me
he didn't like me either. He's getting loud enough and
(43:16):
he's swinging his arms around now and it looks kind
of funny, but apparently it happens in the office sometimes.
And this is when Scott Carter, who was the executive producer,
whom I definitely did know since like nineteen ninety two
when he worked at Comedy Central with my friend Alan Havy.
Scott Carter comes over to defuse the situation. Scott was
(43:37):
a three piece suit kind of guy with a thumbs
tucking the vest, who would call a group of men fellows,
as in say fellows. So Scott comes over and says,
say fellows with your Carnell alumni reunion here, And of
course this makes Bill Maher even angrier. Let me ask
you something. I used to drive down from Hobart to
(43:58):
see concerts at Cornell to say, I think Cornell was
the leading concert school in the nation back in our day.
And now Scott starts the list who he saw in
concert at Cornell, Robert Palmer and the famous Grateful Dead
concert at Cornell at Barton Hall. He was there, and
I say I went to Springsteen, and mar mumbles something
about Loggins and Messina, and I know what Carter is
(44:20):
doing here. He's diffusing, and we do a couple of
rounds of who saw which Cornell concert? And finally I say,
I can top both of you, comic geniuses. I saw
Robert Kleine in concert at Cornell. Now it is criminal,
but there's an excellent chance You may not know who
Robert Kline is, suffice to say as prominent a comedian
(44:44):
in the sixties, seventies eighties as George Carlin or Richard
pryor HBO. Itself was built on annual George Carlin concerts
and annual Robert Klin concerts and everybody else. And Robert
Kline wasn't quite as deep or eternal as George Carlin,
but he was really on the money during Watergate and
during ra So I say, I saw Robert Klein in
(45:07):
concert at Cornell, and Mar looks at me, funny and
not angrily, and says quietly, I was at that too.
I saw Robert Klein too, And I don't really register
that Mar's mood has now utterly changed. He's not angry,
he's confused. Well, I say, I can still top you,
(45:27):
because after that concert I interviewed Robert Klein. Now Bill
Maher starts to squint, and he looks at me, and
he looks at Scott Carter, and he looks back at
me and he says, wait, I interviewed Kleine after that concert, too,
And I'm smiling through all this and smiling and smiling
(45:48):
and smiling. And then suddenly simultaneously, it hits Bill Maher
and me at the same moment, in the same fullness
of detail, and I stop smiling and I shout at
Bill Maher, you and he pulls his arms in towards
his stomach and kind of bends forward at the waist
and his face with his hands, and he says, oh God,
I'm so sorry, Jesus, it can't be. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
(46:11):
And while the anger wells up inside me so powerfully,
I can almost see it in my own eyeballs. Bill
Maher's concert going producer Scott Carter is really confused. Say Fellows,
did I miss something or did I have a brief
stroke or episode? And I say Bill, and I just
(46:31):
remembered how I happen to be aware of him in school,
and Mar still has got his hands over his face
and people are looking at us, and Bill is shouting apologies,
and I say you want to tell him or should I?
And Mar just shakes his body no and mumbles, oh God,
you do it. I can't, I can't, I can't, And
(46:53):
it all came back to me. For years, I would
tell people the story of the Robert Klein concert at
Cornell University in nineteen seventy eight, our radio station co
sponsored his appearance along with the Corneill Concert Commission, and
in the contract we specified that a couple of us
real comedy nerds at the radio station would get to
(47:14):
go backstage afterwards and tape a brief ten or fifteen
minute interview with Robert Klin. Basically, we paid him not much,
but we paid him to do an interview. And when
my pal Andy Grossman and I get backstage to talk
to Robert Klein, and we have our two microphones and
two mike stands and three tape recorders, there is this guy,
(47:34):
this short guy, and he's yelling at the chief of
the Cornail Concert Commission, and he's yelling at Robert Clein's manager,
and he's demanding that he should get to interview Robert
Clin because, like Klein, this kid says he is a
stand up comedian and he publishes the Corneill Humor magazine.
And he points at me and he says he should
get priority over these quote corporate sellouts from the Corneill
(47:57):
Radio station. I hated him on site. Oh wait, I
say to him in nineteen seventy eight, and he's small,
and he's got dirty, stringy hair and he's loud, and
I say, you are the publisher of the Cornell humor magazine,
the Cornell Widow. And he snorts and says I would
(48:17):
get caught dead publishing that corporate sellout, Cornell Widow. And
so I say, oh, so, then that means you're the
publisher of the Cornell Alternative humor magazine, the Not So
Big Red or whatever it is they call it. He says,
no way, they are corporate sellouts. I publish this and
he pulls out a stack of mimeographed pages stapled together
(48:39):
and there's like a drawing on the front of a
naked girl and handwritten it says it's his comedy magazine.
And I look at Robert Klein's manager and I say, so,
it's ten o'clock and if you leave now while while
this idiot is screwing this up, the limo can still
get mister Klein to Elaine's in the city before it closes, right,
(49:01):
And the manager is wildly impressed. You know of Lanes?
And I said yes, and I felt like an adult.
And I also said, if we give this guy five
minutes of our time right now while we're setting up
our tape recorders. Can we still have ten minutes with
mister Klein And the manager says, good plan. I like
the way you think, and he points to the kid
and gestures for him to come along. Now the kid shouts,
(49:24):
I want half an hour. These corporate sellouts deserve nothing.
And now I'm getting angry. I say, buddy, so far
all the corporations in the world have paid me about
one hundred bucks. So I threaten him. Now, mind you,
I believe this is literally true. Since nineteen sixty seven,
when I was eight years old, I have started two fistfights,
(49:46):
two in fifty five years. I am a man of peace.
I am loud, but I am a man of peace.
But I say to this guy, you now have two choices. Kid,
five minutes with Robert Klein or I hit you you
in the face. And he runs to where client's manager
(50:08):
is still gesturing towards him, and he screams, carpred sell out,
and he disappears to do his interview, and behind him
he leaves his little homemade mimeograph ten or twelve page
humor publication. And I pick it up, and I read
it and register it and dismiss it. Before I leave
the building. And if I had only remembered what it
(50:29):
said on the cover, all the years of mystery and
I was aware of him, and all that would never
have happened because the cover of the magazine read Bill
Mahr's Comedy Magazine by Bill MAHERR. And now back in
well technically this is correct, back in real time. At
the party in the Hollywood studio in two thousand and nine,
(50:52):
the producer Scott Carter says nothing, and Bill Maher is
still doubled over in shame, and I say, are you
satisfied that I was aware of you? And he mumbles yes.
And I say, will you ever question my memory again?
And he mumbles no. And he says if I need
him to do my show or a charity benefit or something,
(51:15):
just call. And he says he's ashamed, and he offers
me his hand to shake, and we shake, and finally
I say, and by the way, Bill Maher, if Bill
Maher's Comedy Magazine by Bill Maher are you a corporate sellout?
And he says kind And that's how I was aware
of Bill Maher in college. I've done all the damage
(51:49):
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are
the credits. Most of the music arranged, produced and performed
by Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, who are the
Countdown musical directors. Guitarist, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shaneale, produced by TKO.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman
(52:11):
theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch
Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
my friend Tony Kornheiser. Everything else is pretty much my fault.
So that's countdown for this the nine hundred and third
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Arrest him again while
(52:34):
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then,
I'm Keith Olberman. Good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(52:56):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts
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