September 12, 2024 • 40 mins
SERIES 3 EPISODE 26: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: “In the world of boxing or UFC," writes Trump between his chicken clucks, "when a fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream ‘I demand a rematch, I demand a rematch!' Well it’s no different with a debate. She was beaen badly last night. Every poll has us winning – in one case 92-8 – so why would I do a Rematch?”
Actually in the world of boxing or UFC, Trump’s campaign would be in Intensive Care at this hour and the only demand would be to pull it off life support and end its suffering. And actually in the world of debates, it was TRUMP who had demanded additional debates with Joe Biden and then the Vice President so by his own rules Trump just proclaimed he LOST the CNN debate to the President.
It took Trump surrogate and pretend professor Hugh Hewitt more than 19 hours to come up with this second day excuse, quote: “Opinions are settling… Trump was not at his best BUT was usually ok and at some points good, especially on the border and his closing statement.” 19 hours to think up some means of pulling his life-line meal-ticket out of the Burning Trumpster Dumpster and Hugh Hewitt comes up with “he was usually ok.”
If you think that was bad, JD Vance then dismissed the Taylor Swift endorsement by encouraging voters to ignore billionaire celebrities who are out of touch with ordinary Americans.
And there was a cat eaten in Ohio. The woman - a native of the state (represented in the Senate by JD Vance) - the child of Ohio residents - was promptly arrested. She's not Haitian, but the right wing is trying to make her so.
It's going as well as Trump's debate night went.
B-Block (20:59) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Republican Virginia Senate hopeful Hung Cao decides to try a little play on words and has made medallions reading "I Want My Senator To Be Hung." A little moment behind the spin room curtain with the deplorable Tim Murtaugh and the despicable Byron York. And Russia Dave Rubin in a nice passive-aggressive threat against Taylor Swift because she had the nerve to disobey the right wing.
C-Block (27:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Maddow just celebrated her 16th anniversary. She almost didn't make it to her first. The day our corporate overlords threatened to fire her, fire me, and shut the damn network off!
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 Obsessed
by apocryphal stories of cats being eaten. Trump pussies out
(00:29):
of a second debate. You heard what I said. Quote.
In the world of boxing or UFC, when a fighter
gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream,
I demand to rematch. I demand to rematch. Well, it's
no different with a debate. She was beaten badly last night.
Every poll has us winning, in one case ninety two
(00:51):
to eight, So why would I do a rematch? Unquote. Actually,
in the world of boxing or UFC, Trump's campaign would
be in intensive care at this hour, and the only
demand would beat a pull it off life support and
end its suffering. And actually, in the world of debates,
it was Trump who had demanded additional debates with Joe
(01:13):
Biden and then with the Vice president. So by his
own rules, Trump just proclaimed he lost the CNN debate
to the President in June. Still, Donald Duck has the
moral force of intestinal parasite. Mentally, he cannot process defeat,
and in the only UFC he competes in, the acronym
stands for utter ef fing cowardice, So he is doing
(01:34):
the misquoted advice Senator George Aiken didn't actually give to
Lyndon Johnson about Vietnam. Declare victory and get out, and
we all know what happened to Lyndon Johnson. There are
no polls suggesting Trump won the debate. None. There are
(01:54):
some online votes, But as Trump could never quite understand
why people laughed when he would bring up Putin's eighty
eight percent approval rating in Russia, he cannot recognize, or
more likely, cannot understand, the not so subtle nuances that
separate elections, actual valid extrapolatory opinion polling or ratings, and
(02:18):
data produced by letting the same idiot push the same
Trump button on the same website read toua dot com
one thousand times an hour. He can see only two things,
his own name and a number attached to it. If
the number thwarts his desires, he declares that number to
(02:40):
be invalid. It is a perfectly rounded, symmetrical, closed universe.
Most people who try to live this way wind up
in prison or in an institution, or prematurely dead. Trump
is the one who slipped through. In other contexts, this
is terrifying to ponder here it is just pathetic and
(03:03):
hilarious all of our lives. You and I have heard
he doesn't know the meaning of the word defeat. Well,
here we are this idiot. Trump literally does not know
the meaning of the word defeat. The rest of the
far right it knows the meaning of the word defeat.
(03:28):
The Wall Street Journal editorial board declared Trump lost. She
clearly won the debate last night. RFK Junior sounded a
similar note. Vice President Harris clearly won. Polymarket polling odds
went from fifty two to forty six, Trump to forty
nine forty nine. Even wagering at poly Market went to
(03:50):
seventy three percent favoring Kamala Harris. Matt Walsh wrote, do
you need me to lie to you and tell you
this was a brilliant performance by Trump? Would that make
you feel better? Trump? Sir David Bossi was asked what
was Trump's best debate answer, and Bossy would only say,
that's a good question. You're putting me on the spot.
(04:13):
Trump campaign hoodlum Corey Lewandowski was asked what was Trump's
best debate answer, and he could only say he had
so many good answers. A Trump surrogate said she managed
to lure Trump into every trap she set up for him.
I wish I hadn't watched it. This surrogate was named
Alexey Naumov. He is a member of the Russian International
(04:35):
Affairs Council, and he said that on Russian state television. Meanwhile,
it took Trump's surrogate and pretend professor Hugh Hewitt more
than nineteen hours to come up with this second day
excuse quote. Opinions are settling. Trump was not at his best,
but was usually okay and at some point good, especially
(04:56):
on the border and his closing statement. Nineteen hours to
think up some means of pulling his lifeline meal ticket
out of the burning trumpster dumpster, and Hugh Hewitt comes
up with, he was usually okay. As we await the
(05:18):
first true post debate polls, it appears only one has
been completed since Trump's handlers came out and carried him
off with two shovels and a wheelbarrow. The poll in
question has Harris winning the debate by fifty three to
thirty four and increasing her lead in the election polling
from two points to three points. And nah, that doesn't
seem like very much, but the pollster is so col
(05:40):
Strategies polling for Red Eagle Politics. And this is literally
an online service whose website redirects you to its Twitter
accounts and Gmail address, and it is designed to fabricate
good poll numbers for conservatives. And oops, it couldn't even
do that. Here. A TV news Live focus group voted
(06:04):
twelve to five that Harris won the debate. The focus
group was on Fox News. One member said Trump was
so bad, He's just like an old suit from like
nineteen eighty seven, right now, accurate with a little perspective.
(06:24):
What is shocking today is not that Trump won't debate
her again. It might actually be the first kind of
smart thing he's ever done. How could he ever do
well enough to erase the impact of Tuesday Night, even
in the aggregate, even if there were ten more debates.
What is shocking is how unprepared he and the fascists
(06:45):
were for the need to find an excuse to make
up a scapegoat, to make up two scapegoats. Obviously, they
finally found them ABC News and Disney and well known
Marxist Taylor Swift. Trump proceeded to go from the debate
debacle to a nine eleven debacle in which cameras caught
(07:06):
him during a moment of silence. Biden Harris, Mike Bloomberg,
Rudy Giuliani, and even JD. Vance were all eyes closed,
head bowed Trump. Trump was caught looking up into the
sky like ooh, a balloon in the shape of a kiddy.
Trump also managed to somehow bring Laura Lumer to the
(07:29):
nine eleven memorial on nine to eleven. Laura Lumer, who
shared a video insisting quote nine to eleven was an
inside job. How could you go through that debate and
it not be the worst moment of your week? Trump? Happily,
Trump did not let Nancy Mace or Senator Loomis of
Wyoming or the other MAGA idiots come along, the ones
(07:52):
who paid tribute to the quote two nine hundred and
ninety six victims of nine to eleven. It was twenty
nine hundred and seventy seven victims. You only get to
their number nine hundred ninety six if you and include
the nineteen terrorists. Nancy Mace and other Republicans wrote, we
will never forget about them. A pre scheduled Trump fundraising
(08:18):
email went out early yesterday and back to the subject
of a scapegoat. The subject line read I love ABC
News and it was all about how well he did
and how fair the debate had been. And at the
same time, Trump was on TV insisting that some they
will now take away ABC's news license, their license to news.
(08:47):
There are no news licenses. Even most Trumpists know there
are no news licenses. But Trump now he has to
have news licenses. I think ABC took a big hit
last night. I mean to be honest that they're a
news organization.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
They have to be licensed to do it.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
They ought to take away their license for the way
they did that. It's a goddamn Monty Python sketch. Hello,
I would like to buy a fish license. A what
a license from my petfish? He is in halibut? You've
got a pet halibut? Yes? I chose him out of thousands.
I didn't like the others. They were all too flat.
You must be a looney. I'm not a looney. Why
(09:26):
should I be tired with the epithet looney? Merely because
I have a pet news license. And speaking of pet halibuts,
there's jv jd Vance, who was suddenly the popular successful
one on the ticket, promptly gave that distinction back by
addressing the Taylor's Swift endorsement and doing another one of
(09:49):
those Freudian slips in which he wound up humiliating Trump.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
We admired Taylor Swift's music, but I don't think most Americans,
whether they like her music or fans of hers or not,
are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who
I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and and
the problems of those Americans.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You go, girl, tell those Trumpsts to rebel against billionaire
celebrities who are disconnected from the interests of most Americans.
I have a glass of water for mister Vance, please,
I swear, I swear I am secretly more thankful for
(10:27):
that guy than I was for dear old Sarah Palin.
(10:51):
A couple of postscripts to the content of the debate
that flew by, Because no matter how fast you are,
you can never grab every thousand dollars bill while they
are flying around the money booth cash blowing me. I
guess I didn't hear Trump over maybe the sound of
my own laughter and his own petulant fury. I didn't
(11:13):
hear him on Tuesday admit that he has met with
Vladimir Putin since he was ejected from a White House.
I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other. I'll
get him together. That war would have never happened.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
And in fact, when I saw Putin after I left.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Unfortunately left because our country has gone to hell.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Oh, Department of Justice. Department of Justice added to the list.
Please met with Russian dictator about Ukraine invasion. Also, this
was special. I'm sorry for the image here, but this
was special.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
I have been a leader on IVF, which is fertilization,
the IVF.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I have been a leader. Okay, I got two here.
Trump fertilization as in fertilizer or as in he fertilized
three wives to a total of four children. Yeah, I
guess he is a leader in fertilization. Any Now, let's
(12:24):
get back to it must be real because Trump saw
it on TV. And if that admission doesn't summarize his
mental problem, I don't know what would the undocumented immigrants
in your jails and why Kamala Harris wants to spend
your taxpayer dollars to give transgender surgeries to them and
(12:48):
the pet cats and dogs and ducks they are eating
in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Field, the dogs.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
The sounds of a TikTok video from a focus group,
a watch party. It's not clear daylight out, so maybe
West Coast or a classroom where they're already studying the
debate for how bad Trump was, but the laughter no
matter where it came from, the laughter it was universal.
Ninety minutes though after the debate ended, as people were
(13:30):
still shocking and mocking over Trump's claim that Haitian immigrants
are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Trump posted the video
of a woman in a different Ohio city that is
three hours away from Springfield, who was arrested on August
twenty sixth for animal cruelty after she actually did kill
(13:51):
and eat a cat in public. As the independent journalist
and now pet detective Jacqueline's Sweet discovered, the woman's name
is Alexis Ferrell, possibly for and she was born in
Ohio to American parents, and there is no family connection
to Haiti at all. Alexis Ferrell's mother went to prison,
(14:14):
though Sweet reports for her role in a murder cover up,
and Pharrell, twenty seven, has been charged repeatedly for drugs
and theft. It was also the issue of the local
representative of the Nazi group Blood Tribe, who addressed the
Springfield City commissioners last month and told them, quote, I
was head of the anti Haitian immigration march earlier this month.
(14:36):
So the right wing's fairly successful attempt to transform a
nutjob who ate a cat in Ohio, the place of
her birth, where her folks are from, and who is
not named Robert F. Kennedy Junior, to turn her into
a Haitian immigrant that may or may not be connected
to the aforementioned Nazi movement. There, the right wing troll
(15:00):
and ron DeSantis thug Christopher Ruffo has now offered quote
a five thousand dollars bounty to anyone who can provide
my team with hard, verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are
eating cats in Springfield, Ohio. Now, I'd like to read
that line again, as Walter Cronkite, if you don't mind
(15:22):
five thousand dollars bounty to anyone who can provide my
team with hard beaver of hiable evidence Haitian migrants or
eating cats and Springfield, Ohio. That's the way it is. Wednesday,
September twelfth, twenty four wonkron Height CVS News five thousand
(15:42):
dollars bounty to anyone who can provide my team with hard,
verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are eating cats in Springfield, Ohio.
And mister rufoul I have a man online three says
he wants to claim the cat bounty. Yes, he says,
his name is mister d Trump, and they set it
on television. I'm one of the top policy analysts of
(16:10):
my generation. Did you know that couldn't tell it from
this show? Also of interest here though, how to tie
the tenant media Russian stooge Gate scandal, and Trump and
a Handmaid's Tail and Taylor's Swift together in one dangerous
remark made by one of the alleged right wing recipients
of funneled Kremlin cash. I'll just read the headline from
(16:33):
the website Mediaite. Quote Dave Ruben urges young pretty girl
Taylor Swift to reconsider Harris endorsement because Venezuelan gangs might
rape or kill her unquote. That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
This is Countdown, with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Still ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. Somebody
noted on Twitter X the other night that Laurence O'Donnell
whose show was spun off from Countdown, was congratulating Rachel Mattow,
whose show was Stop me if You've heard me tell
you this before, whose show was spun off from Countdown,
who I actually hired at MSNBC out of my own pocket.
(17:38):
He was congratulating her on her sixteenth anniversary, and as
the x er noted, it was yet another year Matdow
decided to wear her ingratitude like a badge, which made
me think again about how Rachel and I and all
the rest of us almost got canceled before her first anniversary,
(17:58):
the day NBC almost took MSNBC off the air. Next,
and things I promised not to tell first, there are
still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup
of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute two day's worst persons in the world, Lebrons worse.
(18:20):
Virginia Republican candidate Hung Cow, the guy who alerted the
world in June that the Washington Post was investigating whether
or not he'd padded his military resume. Hung kW is
back with a medallion that he is apparently handing out,
which reads, I want my senator to be hung. Now,
this is stupid and crass, but I might make that joke. Hell,
(18:45):
you heard how I started this episode. But I keep thinking,
you're talking to Republicans. Man. If they think of you
as being hung, they mean Mike Pence kind of hung,
don't they also hung? Kow has been down in the
polls to Tim Kaine for two months by from twelve
(19:05):
points to fourteen points. If he's anything, he's hung out
to dry cow? Am I right? Or more likely don't
have a cow? Man? The runner up the Silver Two
of my least favorite fascists, Trump operative Tim Murtaw and
Trump apologist Byron York. The former Republican Tim Miller, now
(19:25):
of The Bulwark, tells this story from the spin room
Tuesday Night. There's no job in politics, he writes, less
fun than being the spin room representative for a loser.
Trust me, I've been there. You stand underneath a placard
with your name, but you raise it only to half
mast in the hopes that the media jackals find some
(19:45):
other prey. First, just after Trump's lame spin room performance,
I encountered a former Trump spokesman, Tim Murtaw, a one
time establishment type. I knew a little bit he was
huddled closely with one of the Washington examiners MAGA content generators.
Byron York leaned over and observed that Murtaw had found
(20:07):
a friendly voice. Quote Byron will write you something good,
I said, as Murtaw grimaced at me, Yorke grunted out,
f you smartest observation by Byron Yorke in like twenty years,
but our winner the worst, Dave Rubin. This is actually
(20:29):
pretty disturbing, but pretty much par for the course. You
already know the name Dave Ruben. His name came up
last week, another propagandist with a lavish lifestyle, and suddenly
turns out there are indictments alleging that he is one
of the Echo Chambers stars who has been getting paid indirectly,
maybe unknowingly, being overpaid by a couple one hundred thousand
(20:53):
dollars a month and by the Kremlin. Dave has a
delivery that is, to put it mildly mild, which just
underscores the banal of his evil. I'll play the tape
of what he said, what he seemed to be saying
about Taylor's swift. I think it self explains.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris on Instagram after the debate
on ABC. Probably calls herself a child, a cat lady
Elon Musk who they hate. He saw that and he
wrote this, fine, Taylor, you win. I will give you
a child and guard your cats with my life. So
he's mocking. He's exposing the ridiculousness.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
It's like, Taylor Swift, you are a young pretty girl.
Do you know what the gang members from Venezuela do
to young pretty girls? It ain't pretty.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
As the media website Mediaite headlined that quote, Dave Rubin
urges young pretty girl Taylor Swift to reconsider harris endorsement
because Venezuelan gangs might rape or kill her unquote. Now, yeah,
pretty much how the right wing treats women who don't
(22:04):
do what they want and what they say they should do.
Dave threatens Taylor's Swift Ruben two days worst person, don't
know to the number one story on the countdown on
(22:40):
my favorite topic me And this is not the anniversary
of this event, but I was reminded of it over
the weekend. So here goes. Often it happens in television
that there are events so traumatic that the cliche about
your life flashing before your eyes does not apply, but
an equally hackneyed one about your career flashing before your
eyes might. The executive producer of our MSNBC news cast Countdown,
(23:05):
Izzy Povich, and I were on the grown up elevator
to the office of NBC President Jeff Zooker on the
fifty second floor of thirty Rock in New York, Summoned
there by some garbled message from MSNBC President Phil Griffin
about MSNBC being taken off the air, I was mumbling
to Izzy, sundry imprecations and reminiscences, eight freaking months is
(23:29):
we spent twelve freaking months forcing them to create Meadows
show at last eight months, all the crap prompter practice
getting her over her fears rockets past CNN only eight
months of show and now it's all gone. Izzy reminded
me it was not just Rachel's show that was threatened,
which was why poor Court Harson from Hardball was already upstairs,
(23:50):
along with poor Ed Schultz and Phil Griffin, and Rachel's
executive producer Bill Wolf and some clown from Morning Joe
and a couple of other MSNBC executives. And us. I know,
I know, I did the line from the drunken Irishman
from Hitchcock's The Birds, complete with the bad accent. It's
the end of the world, I said, Jeff, immilt is
(24:12):
going to take MSNBC off the air. I didn't need
any of my overwrought visions from two years earlier of
the future of liberal news commentary falling out the NBC
window to its death on the rink. This was the
real thing. The chairman of General Electric was threatening to
open the window himself, throw us out the window himself,
(24:33):
and then race down to the pavement to stomp on
our dying remains himself. Poor Ed Schultz heard Jeff Zucker
say those words, and he had screwed up his face
and tilted his head like a puppy hearing a car crash.
He had not believed it the first time. He had
not believed it the second time. Zucker said it a
(24:54):
third time. Immelt is going to take MSNBC off the
effing air at, Schultz groaned. After weeks of Griffin's coaxing,
he had finally just moved from the As to New
York the preceding weekend, Yet he was still somehow only
the second most strung out person in the room. You,
Zucker shouted at me, You're the smartest one in the room.
(25:16):
What the f do we do now? I'll confess I
was shaken by this because it appeared for once that
Zucker was not being sarcastic. I had never before seen
him flush nor flustered. This was a guy who wore
fleece in July, yet now he was beat red and sweating.
Sometimes he knew what he was doing, and, as his
(25:37):
opposition to hiring Maddow had proved, sometimes he didn't know
what he was doing. But he always acted as the
most confident man in the galaxy. But now he literally
had no clue what to do next. And he not
only could not ignore my advice, he desperately needed it.
This situation and that color on his face were almost
worth watching the corporate fascists nuke my network. I asked
(26:01):
Zucker to explain what happened? You, God, Dan, well know
what happen happened? Zucker moved towards me, and I stood
up and I told him I would see myself out.
He stopped, remembering that he did indeed actually need my help.
I'm sorry I apologize. This isn't rational, This is Immelt.
Last week sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped, He told Murdoch he
(26:21):
wasn't gonna take any more of what you were saying
about him on the air. So he did a piece
last night accusing GE of manufacturing the components that been
used in roadside bombs that were built in Iran to
kill Americans in Iraq, which is true legally, that's legally true.
They found roadside bombs that had like thirty year old
GE transistors or TV tubes from nineteen fifty four or
(26:44):
something in them. Legally, GE did manufacture components that were
used in roadside bombs that were built in Iran to
kill Americans in Iraq. So O'Reilly puts this on his
effing show as a lead story, and then Fox sent
two camera crews in this little crap producer from o'reiley show,
Jesse Waters something to steak Immelt out and chase him
(27:05):
around the GE shareholders meeting in Charlotte. Zucker finally came
up for air and I jumped in, why didn't Emmelt
have six camera crews to stake out the two Fox
crews and chase them around in Charlotte. I mean, isn't
that one of our news hubs. Charlotte doesn't emmelt own
like twenty camera crews?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
There?
Speaker 1 (27:24):
He bring a camera crew, you'll bring two camera crews.
Zucker started to not like me again. Now you suggest
that where were you when? All right, never mind, it
doesn't matter. Emmel says, if there's one more story on
Bill O'Reilly about GE manufacturing components for roadside bombs in Iraq,
he's taking MSNBC off the air immediately. It'll just be
(27:45):
twenty four hours of lock up. And I'm fired, and
you're fired. And then he pointed at Chris Matthews, producer,
and Matthews is fired. And he pointed at poor Ed
Schultz and you're fired, and Ed whimpered, So smart ass,
what the F do we do? I feigned all the
nonchalants I could feign. If I could have lit a
shroot by striking a match on the soul of my boot,
(28:08):
I would have. It's manageable. But Jeff, why is emmelt
so worked up about what O'Reilly said about him? Only
O'Reilly's nutjob viewers actually believe any of that crap. Nobody
at GE. Nobody investing in ge could possibly believe we're
building components for roadside bombs? Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's mother
(28:32):
believes it. All the heads in the room turned toward
the president of NBC. Missus. Emmelt back in Cincinnati is
a devoted Bill O'Reilly viewer watches him every night, sees this,
calls him, says, Sonny, why are you manufacturing components that
were used in roadside bombs built in Iran to kill
Americans in Iraq? I had not expected that, I said
(28:58):
to Zucker, So he'll really burn what two hundred million
a year in profits between Rachel and me? Because his
mom watches Bill O'Reilly. Zucker got angry again. You bet
your effing assi will Now you said it was manageable,
How how the hef do we manage it? Ulberman? Just
a minute? How old is she? Zucker summoned all his annoyance.
(29:23):
How old is who ML's mother? How old is she?
Jeff Zucker was really annoyed. How the f should I know?
You're missing the point? I had him really worked up
nearly to the boiling point. It was great, guess, Zucker spluttered,
I don't know he's in his mid fifties. She's got
(29:43):
to be eighty ninety something. I stifled a fake yawn. Yeah,
you're right, probably closer to ninety now that I think
of it. So the problem is she watches O'Reilly. She
tells him what's on Fox, what O'Reilly's saying about Ge. Well,
I think you have a simple solution. I'd say, the
first thing you do is you send over a couple
(30:04):
of big guys to her house and you pull the
freaking cable out of the wall. Zucker actually gasped. My
producer is Ipovich unsuccessfully stifled a laugh, and I saw
Rachel crack a smile. Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Alderman,
I crossed my legs. Oh, it's a little funny. And anyway,
it's not essential. If the problem is emailed is threatening
(30:27):
to take the network off the air because O'Reilly is
avenging himself against me by attacking him and attacking Ge.
The short term solution is easy, and in fact it
is manageable. The long term solution that's not easy, and
that's not manageable. But the short term one that's simple.
Rest of this week, next week, maybe the week after that,
even we just don't mention Fox News on MSNBC, something
(30:52):
resembling a smile crossed Zucker's face. It made him look
a little less like a lizard person and more like
a monkey with glasses. You do that forever? No, not forever.
I would not do that, I said to Bias time. Yes,
but remember who was it who was in my office
(31:12):
last winter telling me that I should go on the
air and just to f with Fox? I should ask
why Rupert Murdoch was still running a huge international media
company like News Corp. Despite all the reports that he's
suffering from dementia, even though there haven't been any reports
that he's suffering from dementia. For everybody's sake, here, who
was that again who told me to do that? Zucker's
(31:34):
goodwill was gone again? Obviously that was me. What's your point?
My point is, we built this new brand of ours
organically on a couple of themes, a couple of statements
of principle, and one of them is to use your
words just to f with Fox. If we don't f
with Fox for a couple of weeks at the start
of the summer, who's gonna care. Who's gonna notice, But
(31:58):
like after two weeks, three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice,
and the TV writers are gonna notice, and then the
crap will hit from every direction. You can think of
temporary freeze on mentioning Fox, then mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdock. Fine,
permanent freeze. Might as well let Immelt turn us off
in the morning. After all, I don't think Zooker actually
(32:20):
heard the last part about em Milt turning us off.
After all, the lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe,
he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He
looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Izzy and
at Phil Griffin and me, You and you and you
and I. We will talk tomorrow, maybe tonight, and we'll
(32:41):
all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox, anybody,
are we clear? Nothing on the air about Fox. Silence
in the room. Then the assorted noises of people rising,
mixed with attempts to resuscitate poor Ed Schultz. Somebody Matthew's
guy Harson I think, was almost at the door out
of Zucker's office, an office so big that it was
(33:02):
to steal the ring Lardner line the signs of the
Yale Bowl, but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up,
quietly but firmly, Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me.
I will not have the content of my show dictated
by any corporations, including the one I work for. Remember
(33:23):
this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt
that way then, and especially one I don't work for.
I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience
wondering what else I have not told them. I don't
do a lot about Fox on my show, but if
there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
this freeze. I will report that story. And if I'm
prevented from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,
(33:45):
Zucker barked Phil Alderman, is he stay? When the rest
of the room had cleared, Zucker blew air out of
his mouth as if it were smoke. He gestured violently
at me with his right arm. I told you she
was a mistake. You didn't listen to me. I told you.
Now she's your problem. All this is your problem. Get
her back on the Resida or else. Now I had
(34:07):
run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh, I'll get her
back on the reservation, Jeff. But if you think this
is my problem, just think about what happens if he
really does take us off the air, or if it
just gets out that he threatened to take us off
the air because his mother didn't like what Fox said
(34:29):
about him. That's my problem. Uh uh, that's your problem.
And it's the problem of the CEO of the freaking
sixth largest corporation in the world, who makes his business
decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars of profits based
on what his mother says. At this point, Phil Griffin
(34:51):
managed to pull Zucker away and Izzy and I made
for the door, saying nothing until we were in the elevator. Finally,
she asked, what are you going to do about Rachel?
I look straight ahead, I have depth perception ish she
was while traveling forward, backwards, up or down. Yeah, if
I know what I'm gonna do about her. But I
got an idea. I mean, the only person she was
(35:12):
really talking to in there was herself. This isn't a
brand new surprise success for her anymore. This is successful.
This is what nine ten months she's successful. She said
she was once a dancing cell phone outside of a
cell phone store outside of Boston. She ain't going back
to that. I went to talk to Rachel about an
(35:32):
hour later and reassured her. I mentioned that powerful as
Fox was, they were not going to be able to
re invade Iraq by themselves, and unless she moved it
way closer than it had been, nobody would cross her
censorship line. And I said, just give me as much
time as the French government took before fleeing during the
Nazi advance in nineteen forty. I said, give me, what
(35:54):
was it, thirty three days? Give me thirty three days.
If we aren't back where we were this morning, we
can both quit on the air. I mean that'd be fun,
right three nights. Well after midnight on a Friday, my
NBC issued BlackBerry buzzed with a quick email from Rachel
matdow Hey. She wrote, don't necessarily quote me because I'm
(36:15):
really drunk, but just make the best deal you can
for us. I trust you. We don't need to do
Fox all the time. I never do Fox stories anyway.
I just had to say that, and this is the
best platform we will ever have. Well, she was right
at least for the time being. A couple of weeks
later I had to sneak in a script that blasted Fox,
and at ten thirty at home that night, I got
(36:36):
a call from a drunken Phil Griffin shouting into the phone,
I have a family. Zucker had to go meet with
Roger Ayles secretly inside thirty Rock, and I hope they
remember to clean the room afterwards, and mlt even had
to meet with Murdoch. And then, happily, some idiot Ge
executive decided to boast to The New York Times about
(36:58):
getting us little talent children under control and a big
deal with the executives over at Fox and how they'd
settled everything, which blew up the whole deal instantly, because
the moment the deal went public, NBC looked so stupid,
and even NBC News was now risked. The only point
of the whole thing was to keep the Immelts and
(37:19):
the Zookers and the Griffins and the ales Is from
throwing us and our little island of liberal commentary out
of that window at thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow
and I would be constantly reminded in the ensuing years,
Thirty Rock has a lot of freaking windows. I have
(37:50):
no doubt that that man Emmelt would have taken the
network off the air. His ego was that fragile. Happily
he was replaced by people from Comcast whose egos are
even more fragile. I've done all the damage I can
do here, but they've not done all the damage they
(38:11):
can do yet there not yet anyway, thank you for listening.
We're now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly
just after midnight Eastern. Once again there is a Monday Countdown,
and thank you kindly for joining in on the live
thing after the debate on Tuesday, which cleared I don't
know one hundred and twenty five one hundred and fifty
thousand views plus the podcast numbers. Thank you. Brian Ray
(38:32):
and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music, Mister Chanelle handling the
orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray as ever on the guitars,
bass and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best
baseball stadium organist ever Nancy Faust. The sports music is
the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was written by
(38:55):
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged
and performed by No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was
my friend Stevie van Zandt, and everything else else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the
fifty fifth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
the three hundred and thirty ninth day since convicted feldon dementia.
(39:17):
J Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States normally and heretofore. I've mentioned using
presidential immunity, using the mental health system. Now I say,
let's just use the election or get him to do
another debate to keep him from doing it again while
(39:38):
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow Bolton's
as the news requires. Until the next one, I'm Keith Olberman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(40:06):
with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts,
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio Obsessed
by apocryphal stories of cats being eaten. Trump pussies out
(00:29):
of a second debate. You heard what I said. Quote.
In the world of boxing or UFC, when a fighter
gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream,
I demand to rematch. I demand to rematch. Well, it's
no different with a debate. She was beaten badly last night.
Every poll has us winning, in one case ninety two
(00:51):
to eight, So why would I do a rematch? Unquote. Actually,
in the world of boxing or UFC, Trump's campaign would
be in intensive care at this hour, and the only
demand would beat a pull it off life support and
end its suffering. And actually, in the world of debates,
it was Trump who had demanded additional debates with Joe
(01:13):
Biden and then with the Vice president. So by his
own rules, Trump just proclaimed he lost the CNN debate
to the President in June. Still, Donald Duck has the
moral force of intestinal parasite. Mentally, he cannot process defeat,
and in the only UFC he competes in, the acronym
stands for utter ef fing cowardice, So he is doing
(01:34):
the misquoted advice Senator George Aiken didn't actually give to
Lyndon Johnson about Vietnam. Declare victory and get out, and
we all know what happened to Lyndon Johnson. There are
no polls suggesting Trump won the debate. None. There are
(01:54):
some online votes, But as Trump could never quite understand
why people laughed when he would bring up Putin's eighty
eight percent approval rating in Russia, he cannot recognize, or
more likely, cannot understand, the not so subtle nuances that
separate elections, actual valid extrapolatory opinion polling or ratings, and
(02:18):
data produced by letting the same idiot push the same
Trump button on the same website read toua dot com
one thousand times an hour. He can see only two things,
his own name and a number attached to it. If
the number thwarts his desires, he declares that number to
(02:40):
be invalid. It is a perfectly rounded, symmetrical, closed universe.
Most people who try to live this way wind up
in prison or in an institution, or prematurely dead. Trump
is the one who slipped through. In other contexts, this
is terrifying to ponder here it is just pathetic and
(03:03):
hilarious all of our lives. You and I have heard
he doesn't know the meaning of the word defeat. Well,
here we are this idiot. Trump literally does not know
the meaning of the word defeat. The rest of the
far right it knows the meaning of the word defeat.
(03:28):
The Wall Street Journal editorial board declared Trump lost. She
clearly won the debate last night. RFK Junior sounded a
similar note. Vice President Harris clearly won. Polymarket polling odds
went from fifty two to forty six, Trump to forty
nine forty nine. Even wagering at poly Market went to
(03:50):
seventy three percent favoring Kamala Harris. Matt Walsh wrote, do
you need me to lie to you and tell you
this was a brilliant performance by Trump? Would that make
you feel better? Trump? Sir David Bossi was asked what
was Trump's best debate answer, and Bossy would only say,
that's a good question. You're putting me on the spot.
(04:13):
Trump campaign hoodlum Corey Lewandowski was asked what was Trump's
best debate answer, and he could only say he had
so many good answers. A Trump surrogate said she managed
to lure Trump into every trap she set up for him.
I wish I hadn't watched it. This surrogate was named
Alexey Naumov. He is a member of the Russian International
(04:35):
Affairs Council, and he said that on Russian state television. Meanwhile,
it took Trump's surrogate and pretend professor Hugh Hewitt more
than nineteen hours to come up with this second day
excuse quote. Opinions are settling. Trump was not at his best,
but was usually okay and at some point good, especially
(04:56):
on the border and his closing statement. Nineteen hours to
think up some means of pulling his lifeline meal ticket
out of the burning trumpster dumpster, and Hugh Hewitt comes
up with, he was usually okay. As we await the
(05:18):
first true post debate polls, it appears only one has
been completed since Trump's handlers came out and carried him
off with two shovels and a wheelbarrow. The poll in
question has Harris winning the debate by fifty three to
thirty four and increasing her lead in the election polling
from two points to three points. And nah, that doesn't
seem like very much, but the pollster is so col
(05:40):
Strategies polling for Red Eagle Politics. And this is literally
an online service whose website redirects you to its Twitter
accounts and Gmail address, and it is designed to fabricate
good poll numbers for conservatives. And oops, it couldn't even
do that. Here. A TV news Live focus group voted
(06:04):
twelve to five that Harris won the debate. The focus
group was on Fox News. One member said Trump was
so bad, He's just like an old suit from like
nineteen eighty seven, right now, accurate with a little perspective.
(06:24):
What is shocking today is not that Trump won't debate
her again. It might actually be the first kind of
smart thing he's ever done. How could he ever do
well enough to erase the impact of Tuesday Night, even
in the aggregate, even if there were ten more debates.
What is shocking is how unprepared he and the fascists
(06:45):
were for the need to find an excuse to make
up a scapegoat, to make up two scapegoats. Obviously, they
finally found them ABC News and Disney and well known
Marxist Taylor Swift. Trump proceeded to go from the debate
debacle to a nine eleven debacle in which cameras caught
(07:06):
him during a moment of silence. Biden Harris, Mike Bloomberg,
Rudy Giuliani, and even JD. Vance were all eyes closed,
head bowed Trump. Trump was caught looking up into the
sky like ooh, a balloon in the shape of a kiddy.
Trump also managed to somehow bring Laura Lumer to the
(07:29):
nine eleven memorial on nine to eleven. Laura Lumer, who
shared a video insisting quote nine to eleven was an
inside job. How could you go through that debate and
it not be the worst moment of your week? Trump? Happily,
Trump did not let Nancy Mace or Senator Loomis of
Wyoming or the other MAGA idiots come along, the ones
(07:52):
who paid tribute to the quote two nine hundred and
ninety six victims of nine to eleven. It was twenty
nine hundred and seventy seven victims. You only get to
their number nine hundred ninety six if you and include
the nineteen terrorists. Nancy Mace and other Republicans wrote, we
will never forget about them. A pre scheduled Trump fundraising
(08:18):
email went out early yesterday and back to the subject
of a scapegoat. The subject line read I love ABC
News and it was all about how well he did
and how fair the debate had been. And at the
same time, Trump was on TV insisting that some they
will now take away ABC's news license, their license to news.
(08:47):
There are no news licenses. Even most Trumpists know there
are no news licenses. But Trump now he has to
have news licenses. I think ABC took a big hit
last night. I mean to be honest that they're a
news organization.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
They have to be licensed to do it.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
They ought to take away their license for the way
they did that. It's a goddamn Monty Python sketch. Hello,
I would like to buy a fish license. A what
a license from my petfish? He is in halibut? You've
got a pet halibut? Yes? I chose him out of thousands.
I didn't like the others. They were all too flat.
You must be a looney. I'm not a looney. Why
(09:26):
should I be tired with the epithet looney? Merely because
I have a pet news license. And speaking of pet halibuts,
there's jv jd Vance, who was suddenly the popular successful
one on the ticket, promptly gave that distinction back by
addressing the Taylor's Swift endorsement and doing another one of
(09:49):
those Freudian slips in which he wound up humiliating Trump.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
We admired Taylor Swift's music, but I don't think most Americans,
whether they like her music or fans of hers or not,
are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who
I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and and
the problems of those Americans.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You go, girl, tell those Trumpsts to rebel against billionaire
celebrities who are disconnected from the interests of most Americans.
I have a glass of water for mister Vance, please,
I swear, I swear I am secretly more thankful for
(10:27):
that guy than I was for dear old Sarah Palin.
(10:51):
A couple of postscripts to the content of the debate
that flew by, Because no matter how fast you are,
you can never grab every thousand dollars bill while they
are flying around the money booth cash blowing me. I
guess I didn't hear Trump over maybe the sound of
my own laughter and his own petulant fury. I didn't
(11:13):
hear him on Tuesday admit that he has met with
Vladimir Putin since he was ejected from a White House.
I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other. I'll
get him together. That war would have never happened.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
And in fact, when I saw Putin after I left.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Unfortunately left because our country has gone to hell.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Oh, Department of Justice. Department of Justice added to the list.
Please met with Russian dictator about Ukraine invasion. Also, this
was special. I'm sorry for the image here, but this
was special.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
I have been a leader on IVF, which is fertilization,
the IVF.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I have been a leader. Okay, I got two here.
Trump fertilization as in fertilizer or as in he fertilized
three wives to a total of four children. Yeah, I
guess he is a leader in fertilization. Any Now, let's
(12:24):
get back to it must be real because Trump saw
it on TV. And if that admission doesn't summarize his
mental problem, I don't know what would the undocumented immigrants
in your jails and why Kamala Harris wants to spend
your taxpayer dollars to give transgender surgeries to them and
(12:48):
the pet cats and dogs and ducks they are eating
in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Field, the dogs.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
The sounds of a TikTok video from a focus group,
a watch party. It's not clear daylight out, so maybe
West Coast or a classroom where they're already studying the
debate for how bad Trump was, but the laughter no
matter where it came from, the laughter it was universal.
Ninety minutes though after the debate ended, as people were
(13:30):
still shocking and mocking over Trump's claim that Haitian immigrants
are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Trump posted the video
of a woman in a different Ohio city that is
three hours away from Springfield, who was arrested on August
twenty sixth for animal cruelty after she actually did kill
(13:51):
and eat a cat in public. As the independent journalist
and now pet detective Jacqueline's Sweet discovered, the woman's name
is Alexis Ferrell, possibly for and she was born in
Ohio to American parents, and there is no family connection
to Haiti at all. Alexis Ferrell's mother went to prison,
(14:14):
though Sweet reports for her role in a murder cover up,
and Pharrell, twenty seven, has been charged repeatedly for drugs
and theft. It was also the issue of the local
representative of the Nazi group Blood Tribe, who addressed the
Springfield City commissioners last month and told them, quote, I
was head of the anti Haitian immigration march earlier this month.
(14:36):
So the right wing's fairly successful attempt to transform a
nutjob who ate a cat in Ohio, the place of
her birth, where her folks are from, and who is
not named Robert F. Kennedy Junior, to turn her into
a Haitian immigrant that may or may not be connected
to the aforementioned Nazi movement. There, the right wing troll
(15:00):
and ron DeSantis thug Christopher Ruffo has now offered quote
a five thousand dollars bounty to anyone who can provide
my team with hard, verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are
eating cats in Springfield, Ohio. Now, I'd like to read
that line again, as Walter Cronkite, if you don't mind
(15:22):
five thousand dollars bounty to anyone who can provide my
team with hard beaver of hiable evidence Haitian migrants or
eating cats and Springfield, Ohio. That's the way it is. Wednesday,
September twelfth, twenty four wonkron Height CVS News five thousand
(15:42):
dollars bounty to anyone who can provide my team with hard,
verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are eating cats in Springfield, Ohio.
And mister rufoul I have a man online three says
he wants to claim the cat bounty. Yes, he says,
his name is mister d Trump, and they set it
on television. I'm one of the top policy analysts of
(16:10):
my generation. Did you know that couldn't tell it from
this show? Also of interest here though, how to tie
the tenant media Russian stooge Gate scandal, and Trump and
a Handmaid's Tail and Taylor's Swift together in one dangerous
remark made by one of the alleged right wing recipients
of funneled Kremlin cash. I'll just read the headline from
(16:33):
the website Mediaite. Quote Dave Ruben urges young pretty girl
Taylor Swift to reconsider Harris endorsement because Venezuelan gangs might
rape or kill her unquote. That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
This is Countdown, with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Still ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. Somebody
noted on Twitter X the other night that Laurence O'Donnell
whose show was spun off from Countdown, was congratulating Rachel Mattow,
whose show was Stop me if You've heard me tell
you this before, whose show was spun off from Countdown,
who I actually hired at MSNBC out of my own pocket.
(17:38):
He was congratulating her on her sixteenth anniversary, and as
the x er noted, it was yet another year Matdow
decided to wear her ingratitude like a badge, which made
me think again about how Rachel and I and all
the rest of us almost got canceled before her first anniversary,
(17:58):
the day NBC almost took MSNBC off the air. Next,
and things I promised not to tell first, there are
still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup
of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
constitute two day's worst persons in the world, Lebrons worse.
(18:20):
Virginia Republican candidate Hung Cow, the guy who alerted the
world in June that the Washington Post was investigating whether
or not he'd padded his military resume. Hung kW is
back with a medallion that he is apparently handing out,
which reads, I want my senator to be hung. Now,
this is stupid and crass, but I might make that joke. Hell,
(18:45):
you heard how I started this episode. But I keep thinking,
you're talking to Republicans. Man. If they think of you
as being hung, they mean Mike Pence kind of hung,
don't they also hung? Kow has been down in the
polls to Tim Kaine for two months by from twelve
(19:05):
points to fourteen points. If he's anything, he's hung out
to dry cow? Am I right? Or more likely don't
have a cow? Man? The runner up the Silver Two
of my least favorite fascists, Trump operative Tim Murtaw and
Trump apologist Byron York. The former Republican Tim Miller, now
(19:25):
of The Bulwark, tells this story from the spin room
Tuesday Night. There's no job in politics, he writes, less
fun than being the spin room representative for a loser.
Trust me, I've been there. You stand underneath a placard
with your name, but you raise it only to half
mast in the hopes that the media jackals find some
(19:45):
other prey. First, just after Trump's lame spin room performance,
I encountered a former Trump spokesman, Tim Murtaw, a one
time establishment type. I knew a little bit he was
huddled closely with one of the Washington examiners MAGA content generators.
Byron York leaned over and observed that Murtaw had found
(20:07):
a friendly voice. Quote Byron will write you something good,
I said, as Murtaw grimaced at me, Yorke grunted out,
f you smartest observation by Byron Yorke in like twenty years,
but our winner the worst, Dave Rubin. This is actually
(20:29):
pretty disturbing, but pretty much par for the course. You
already know the name Dave Ruben. His name came up
last week, another propagandist with a lavish lifestyle, and suddenly
turns out there are indictments alleging that he is one
of the Echo Chambers stars who has been getting paid indirectly,
maybe unknowingly, being overpaid by a couple one hundred thousand
(20:53):
dollars a month and by the Kremlin. Dave has a
delivery that is, to put it mildly mild, which just
underscores the banal of his evil. I'll play the tape
of what he said, what he seemed to be saying
about Taylor's swift. I think it self explains.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris on Instagram after the debate
on ABC. Probably calls herself a child, a cat lady
Elon Musk who they hate. He saw that and he
wrote this, fine, Taylor, you win. I will give you
a child and guard your cats with my life. So
he's mocking. He's exposing the ridiculousness.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
It's like, Taylor Swift, you are a young pretty girl.
Do you know what the gang members from Venezuela do
to young pretty girls? It ain't pretty.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
As the media website Mediaite headlined that quote, Dave Rubin
urges young pretty girl Taylor Swift to reconsider harris endorsement
because Venezuelan gangs might rape or kill her unquote. Now, yeah,
pretty much how the right wing treats women who don't
(22:04):
do what they want and what they say they should do.
Dave threatens Taylor's Swift Ruben two days worst person, don't
know to the number one story on the countdown on
(22:40):
my favorite topic me And this is not the anniversary
of this event, but I was reminded of it over
the weekend. So here goes. Often it happens in television
that there are events so traumatic that the cliche about
your life flashing before your eyes does not apply, but
an equally hackneyed one about your career flashing before your
eyes might. The executive producer of our MSNBC news cast Countdown,
(23:05):
Izzy Povich, and I were on the grown up elevator
to the office of NBC President Jeff Zooker on the
fifty second floor of thirty Rock in New York, Summoned
there by some garbled message from MSNBC President Phil Griffin
about MSNBC being taken off the air, I was mumbling
to Izzy, sundry imprecations and reminiscences, eight freaking months is
(23:29):
we spent twelve freaking months forcing them to create Meadows
show at last eight months, all the crap prompter practice
getting her over her fears rockets past CNN only eight
months of show and now it's all gone. Izzy reminded
me it was not just Rachel's show that was threatened,
which was why poor Court Harson from Hardball was already upstairs,
(23:50):
along with poor Ed Schultz and Phil Griffin, and Rachel's
executive producer Bill Wolf and some clown from Morning Joe
and a couple of other MSNBC executives. And us. I know,
I know, I did the line from the drunken Irishman
from Hitchcock's The Birds, complete with the bad accent. It's
the end of the world, I said, Jeff, immilt is
(24:12):
going to take MSNBC off the air. I didn't need
any of my overwrought visions from two years earlier of
the future of liberal news commentary falling out the NBC
window to its death on the rink. This was the
real thing. The chairman of General Electric was threatening to
open the window himself, throw us out the window himself,
(24:33):
and then race down to the pavement to stomp on
our dying remains himself. Poor Ed Schultz heard Jeff Zucker
say those words, and he had screwed up his face
and tilted his head like a puppy hearing a car crash.
He had not believed it the first time. He had
not believed it the second time. Zucker said it a
(24:54):
third time. Immelt is going to take MSNBC off the
effing air at, Schultz groaned. After weeks of Griffin's coaxing,
he had finally just moved from the As to New
York the preceding weekend, Yet he was still somehow only
the second most strung out person in the room. You,
Zucker shouted at me, You're the smartest one in the room.
(25:16):
What the f do we do now? I'll confess I
was shaken by this because it appeared for once that
Zucker was not being sarcastic. I had never before seen
him flush nor flustered. This was a guy who wore
fleece in July, yet now he was beat red and sweating.
Sometimes he knew what he was doing, and, as his
(25:37):
opposition to hiring Maddow had proved, sometimes he didn't know
what he was doing. But he always acted as the
most confident man in the galaxy. But now he literally
had no clue what to do next. And he not
only could not ignore my advice, he desperately needed it.
This situation and that color on his face were almost
worth watching the corporate fascists nuke my network. I asked
(26:01):
Zucker to explain what happened? You, God, Dan, well know
what happen happened? Zucker moved towards me, and I stood
up and I told him I would see myself out.
He stopped, remembering that he did indeed actually need my help.
I'm sorry I apologize. This isn't rational, This is Immelt.
Last week sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped, He told Murdoch he
(26:21):
wasn't gonna take any more of what you were saying
about him on the air. So he did a piece
last night accusing GE of manufacturing the components that been
used in roadside bombs that were built in Iran to
kill Americans in Iraq, which is true legally, that's legally true.
They found roadside bombs that had like thirty year old
GE transistors or TV tubes from nineteen fifty four or
(26:44):
something in them. Legally, GE did manufacture components that were
used in roadside bombs that were built in Iran to
kill Americans in Iraq. So O'Reilly puts this on his
effing show as a lead story, and then Fox sent
two camera crews in this little crap producer from o'reiley show,
Jesse Waters something to steak Immelt out and chase him
(27:05):
around the GE shareholders meeting in Charlotte. Zucker finally came
up for air and I jumped in, why didn't Emmelt
have six camera crews to stake out the two Fox
crews and chase them around in Charlotte. I mean, isn't
that one of our news hubs. Charlotte doesn't emmelt own
like twenty camera crews?
Speaker 3 (27:23):
There?
Speaker 1 (27:24):
He bring a camera crew, you'll bring two camera crews.
Zucker started to not like me again. Now you suggest
that where were you when? All right, never mind, it
doesn't matter. Emmel says, if there's one more story on
Bill O'Reilly about GE manufacturing components for roadside bombs in Iraq,
he's taking MSNBC off the air immediately. It'll just be
(27:45):
twenty four hours of lock up. And I'm fired, and
you're fired. And then he pointed at Chris Matthews, producer,
and Matthews is fired. And he pointed at poor Ed
Schultz and you're fired, and Ed whimpered, So smart ass,
what the F do we do? I feigned all the
nonchalants I could feign. If I could have lit a
shroot by striking a match on the soul of my boot,
(28:08):
I would have. It's manageable. But Jeff, why is emmelt
so worked up about what O'Reilly said about him? Only
O'Reilly's nutjob viewers actually believe any of that crap. Nobody
at GE. Nobody investing in ge could possibly believe we're
building components for roadside bombs? Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's mother
(28:32):
believes it. All the heads in the room turned toward
the president of NBC. Missus. Emmelt back in Cincinnati is
a devoted Bill O'Reilly viewer watches him every night, sees this,
calls him, says, Sonny, why are you manufacturing components that
were used in roadside bombs built in Iran to kill
Americans in Iraq? I had not expected that, I said
(28:58):
to Zucker, So he'll really burn what two hundred million
a year in profits between Rachel and me? Because his
mom watches Bill O'Reilly. Zucker got angry again. You bet
your effing assi will Now you said it was manageable,
How how the hef do we manage it? Ulberman? Just
a minute? How old is she? Zucker summoned all his annoyance.
(29:23):
How old is who ML's mother? How old is she?
Jeff Zucker was really annoyed. How the f should I know?
You're missing the point? I had him really worked up
nearly to the boiling point. It was great, guess, Zucker spluttered,
I don't know he's in his mid fifties. She's got
(29:43):
to be eighty ninety something. I stifled a fake yawn. Yeah,
you're right, probably closer to ninety now that I think
of it. So the problem is she watches O'Reilly. She
tells him what's on Fox, what O'Reilly's saying about Ge. Well,
I think you have a simple solution. I'd say, the
first thing you do is you send over a couple
(30:04):
of big guys to her house and you pull the
freaking cable out of the wall. Zucker actually gasped. My
producer is Ipovich unsuccessfully stifled a laugh, and I saw
Rachel crack a smile. Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Alderman,
I crossed my legs. Oh, it's a little funny. And anyway,
it's not essential. If the problem is emailed is threatening
(30:27):
to take the network off the air because O'Reilly is
avenging himself against me by attacking him and attacking Ge.
The short term solution is easy, and in fact it
is manageable. The long term solution that's not easy, and
that's not manageable. But the short term one that's simple.
Rest of this week, next week, maybe the week after that,
even we just don't mention Fox News on MSNBC, something
(30:52):
resembling a smile crossed Zucker's face. It made him look
a little less like a lizard person and more like
a monkey with glasses. You do that forever? No, not forever.
I would not do that, I said to Bias time. Yes,
but remember who was it who was in my office
(31:12):
last winter telling me that I should go on the
air and just to f with Fox? I should ask
why Rupert Murdoch was still running a huge international media
company like News Corp. Despite all the reports that he's
suffering from dementia, even though there haven't been any reports
that he's suffering from dementia. For everybody's sake, here, who
was that again who told me to do that? Zucker's
(31:34):
goodwill was gone again? Obviously that was me. What's your point?
My point is, we built this new brand of ours
organically on a couple of themes, a couple of statements
of principle, and one of them is to use your
words just to f with Fox. If we don't f
with Fox for a couple of weeks at the start
of the summer, who's gonna care. Who's gonna notice, But
(31:58):
like after two weeks, three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice,
and the TV writers are gonna notice, and then the
crap will hit from every direction. You can think of
temporary freeze on mentioning Fox, then mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdock. Fine,
permanent freeze. Might as well let Immelt turn us off
in the morning. After all, I don't think Zooker actually
(32:20):
heard the last part about em Milt turning us off.
After all, the lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe,
he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He
looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Izzy and
at Phil Griffin and me, You and you and you
and I. We will talk tomorrow, maybe tonight, and we'll
(32:41):
all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox, anybody,
are we clear? Nothing on the air about Fox. Silence
in the room. Then the assorted noises of people rising,
mixed with attempts to resuscitate poor Ed Schultz. Somebody Matthew's
guy Harson I think, was almost at the door out
of Zucker's office, an office so big that it was
(33:02):
to steal the ring Lardner line the signs of the
Yale Bowl, but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up,
quietly but firmly, Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me.
I will not have the content of my show dictated
by any corporations, including the one I work for. Remember
(33:23):
this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt
that way then, and especially one I don't work for.
I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience
wondering what else I have not told them. I don't
do a lot about Fox on my show, but if
there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
this freeze. I will report that story. And if I'm
prevented from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,
(33:45):
Zucker barked Phil Alderman, is he stay? When the rest
of the room had cleared, Zucker blew air out of
his mouth as if it were smoke. He gestured violently
at me with his right arm. I told you she
was a mistake. You didn't listen to me. I told you.
Now she's your problem. All this is your problem. Get
her back on the Resida or else. Now I had
(34:07):
run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh, I'll get her
back on the reservation, Jeff. But if you think this
is my problem, just think about what happens if he
really does take us off the air, or if it
just gets out that he threatened to take us off
the air because his mother didn't like what Fox said
(34:29):
about him. That's my problem. Uh uh, that's your problem.
And it's the problem of the CEO of the freaking
sixth largest corporation in the world, who makes his business
decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars of profits based
on what his mother says. At this point, Phil Griffin
(34:51):
managed to pull Zucker away and Izzy and I made
for the door, saying nothing until we were in the elevator. Finally,
she asked, what are you going to do about Rachel?
I look straight ahead, I have depth perception ish she
was while traveling forward, backwards, up or down. Yeah, if
I know what I'm gonna do about her. But I
got an idea. I mean, the only person she was
(35:12):
really talking to in there was herself. This isn't a
brand new surprise success for her anymore. This is successful.
This is what nine ten months she's successful. She said
she was once a dancing cell phone outside of a
cell phone store outside of Boston. She ain't going back
to that. I went to talk to Rachel about an
(35:32):
hour later and reassured her. I mentioned that powerful as
Fox was, they were not going to be able to
re invade Iraq by themselves, and unless she moved it
way closer than it had been, nobody would cross her
censorship line. And I said, just give me as much
time as the French government took before fleeing during the
Nazi advance in nineteen forty. I said, give me, what
(35:54):
was it, thirty three days? Give me thirty three days.
If we aren't back where we were this morning, we
can both quit on the air. I mean that'd be fun,
right three nights. Well after midnight on a Friday, my
NBC issued BlackBerry buzzed with a quick email from Rachel
matdow Hey. She wrote, don't necessarily quote me because I'm
(36:15):
really drunk, but just make the best deal you can
for us. I trust you. We don't need to do
Fox all the time. I never do Fox stories anyway.
I just had to say that, and this is the
best platform we will ever have. Well, she was right
at least for the time being. A couple of weeks
later I had to sneak in a script that blasted Fox,
and at ten thirty at home that night, I got
(36:36):
a call from a drunken Phil Griffin shouting into the phone,
I have a family. Zucker had to go meet with
Roger Ayles secretly inside thirty Rock, and I hope they
remember to clean the room afterwards, and mlt even had
to meet with Murdoch. And then, happily, some idiot Ge
executive decided to boast to The New York Times about
(36:58):
getting us little talent children under control and a big
deal with the executives over at Fox and how they'd
settled everything, which blew up the whole deal instantly, because
the moment the deal went public, NBC looked so stupid,
and even NBC News was now risked. The only point
of the whole thing was to keep the Immelts and
(37:19):
the Zookers and the Griffins and the ales Is from
throwing us and our little island of liberal commentary out
of that window at thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow
and I would be constantly reminded in the ensuing years,
Thirty Rock has a lot of freaking windows. I have
(37:50):
no doubt that that man Emmelt would have taken the
network off the air. His ego was that fragile. Happily
he was replaced by people from Comcast whose egos are
even more fragile. I've done all the damage I can
do here, but they've not done all the damage they
(38:11):
can do yet there not yet anyway, thank you for listening.
We're now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly
just after midnight Eastern. Once again there is a Monday Countdown,
and thank you kindly for joining in on the live
thing after the debate on Tuesday, which cleared I don't
know one hundred and twenty five one hundred and fifty
thousand views plus the podcast numbers. Thank you. Brian Ray
(38:32):
and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music, Mister Chanelle handling the
orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray as ever on the guitars,
bass and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best
baseball stadium organist ever Nancy Faust. The sports music is
the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was written by
(38:55):
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged
and performed by No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was
my friend Stevie van Zandt, and everything else else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the
fifty fifth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
the three hundred and thirty ninth day since convicted feldon dementia.
(39:17):
J Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States normally and heretofore. I've mentioned using
presidential immunity, using the mental health system. Now I say,
let's just use the election or get him to do
another debate to keep him from doing it again while
(39:38):
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow Bolton's
as the news requires. Until the next one, I'm Keith Olberman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(40:06):
with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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Host
Keith Olbermann
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