September 19, 2025 • 13 mins
BULLETIN: SEASON 4 EPISODE 16, COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
In an Oval Office news briefing crazy even by his standards, Trump answered a question about the FCC blackmailing of ABC over Charlie Kirk by changing the topic to himself, making up a statistic that "94, 95, 96, or 97 percent" of all network television stories about him are critical of him, and declaring of such criticism: "That's really illegal, in my opinion."
In Trump's damaged condition he could forget this by morning. But after this week's mafioso style shakedown of ABC by the FCC and the owners of Sinclair to force Jimmy Kimmel off the air by FCC Commissioner, Brendan Carr, the real question is - what if he doesn't? What if somebody like Carr in his administration decides to curry favor with Trump by trying to enforce an "it's illegal to criticize Trump" declaration"?
Taking the two stories together, and perhaps adding in Trump's threat to declare something that doesn't really exist (Antifa) a "terrorist organization" (which could just as easily lead to him declaring you a member of Antifa and thus a "terrorist") the FCC's action is so bad that it provoked serious, well-thought-out, sober yet angry condemnation Friday afternoon from the unlikeliest of sources: Senator Ted Cruz, who warned Republicans that the government needed to stay out of the bullying media business.
Whether that will register with Trump remains to be seen. For now the gist is: Trump says criticizing him (or in the best possible interpretation, criticizing him a LOT) is illegal. He cannot remain president under such circumstances.
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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. This
is a Countdown bulletin podcast. I'm Keith Olderman in an
insane news conference in the Oval Office, even for him,
a news conference nominally intended to announce raising the price
(00:28):
of business waivers the extortion Trump takes for foreign employees
coming into this country to work for American manufacturers. Trump
has declared that he believes criticism of himself is illegal.
I'll repeat that, criticism of Trump declared illegal by Trump.
(00:51):
Whether he will remember this tomorrow or not is always
an open question, but given the Kimmel events of the
past week, it remains a serious question. Whether he will
do anything about this is the true question. Yeah, follow
up that, Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
There's been a lot of talk about free speech this week.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Do you see a.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Difference between cancel culture and consequence culture? I mean your
questions a little trick question, like I'm a very strong
person for free speech. At the same time, when you
have networks that where I won an election, like in counties,
I guess it's two thousand, six hundred to five hundred
(01:33):
and twenty five. It's called land side landslide times too.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
When you have that kind of that level of popularity
or voter support, as I did in the last election.
And yet ninety seven and ninety four percent different numbers.
You see different numbers with different stats.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
But ninety seven, ninety four, ninety five, ninety six percent
of the people are against me in the sense of
the newscasts are against me. The stories they said ninety
seven percent bad, so they gave me ninety seven. They'll
take a great story and they'll make it bad. See.
(02:14):
I think that's really illegal.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Personally, Donald John Trump cannot remain president after that. He cannot.
You cannot declare that criticism of a president, any president,
is illegal. That has not held true during the Civil War.
It is not held true during the First or Second
(02:37):
World War or any other American conflict when there were
real dangers in the land. It is not true and
cannot be true. And any president who believes it is
true that criticism of him is illegal cannot remain president
after that. And note, please, the question was once again
(02:59):
about the fawn false idol of the far right, Charlie Kirk,
and Trump, without a moment's hesitation, changed the subject to him,
as he did when he was asked on a human
to human level how he was doing in the wake
of Kirk's death and kind of shrugged it off and
instead started talking about the outhouse or ballroom or whatever
(03:22):
that is he is building outside of the White House again.
And as he said this, Trump was again covering his wounded, damaged, sick,
discolored right hand with his left hand. But back to
the point at hand. Given what FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr
did this week to ABC and Disney, the threats he
(03:45):
made towards ABC and Disney as part of a deal
to allow the owners of the Sinclair stations to buy
more stations, more than they are currently legally allowed to buy.
He pressured Sinclair to pressure ABC, which of course is
trying to get FCC approval and other operatives approval of
(04:07):
a purchase deal by which the National Football League will
buy part of ESPN. It's all part of one giant
attempt to make more money by the Sinclair stations and
by ABC and Disney. What Carr said this week quote,
we can do this the easy way or the hard way.
These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel
(04:28):
or there is going to be additional work for the
FCC ahead. That's what Carr said, and within hours ABC
had taken Kimmel's show off the air. Even though one
hundred percent across the board, Kimmel's remarks about the late
Charlie Kirk have been mischaracterized. He said simply two truths,
(04:48):
one which was that since the death of Kirk, the
far right has been doing everything it could to prove
he was not far right, not MAGA. That is a fact.
No member of those groups would deny that. That is
a fact. The other thing he said was the far
right has been trying to score pull it up points
off Charlie Kirk's death since he fell. One hundred percent
(05:09):
true in both occasions. This has been twisted largely by
people who did not see what was said by Kimmel
or read it. Commentators of all stripes, everybody from the
hard right people at Fox News to Stephen A. Smith
making a fool of himself on this topic, and they
mischaracterized it into some sort of insult against Kirk. In fact,
(05:30):
Jimmy Kimmel started his segment about Charlie Kirk by expressing
sorrow and his remorse about the subject and his condolences
to the family it was a dignified presentation, not Brendan
Carr making a dignified presentation, and to such a degree
this is how serious an issue this is a president
(05:53):
claiming that you cannot criticize him, that that is illegal,
and the force of the government being used to blackmail
ABC Television into sidelining the show without any kind of
review process. It's so bad that the criticism coming Friday
afternoon of Brendan Carr and the FCC and the Trump
(06:17):
administration's extraordinary heavy hand in the Kimmel Kirk story comes
from the least likely place imaginable, from a podcast hosted
by Senator Ted Cruz. You heard me right. Ted Cruz
attacked car and the man handling of ABC, Disney and
(06:39):
Kimmel on his podcast Friday afternoon.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
So, the Federal Communication Commission is in charge of granting
broadcast licenses, So ABCNBCCBS, they have licenses from the FCC.
It is true that under statute they're required to be
in the public interest. What he is saying is Jimmy
Kimmel was lying. That's true. He was lying, and he
(07:03):
is lying to the American people. Is not in the
public interest, and so he threatens explicitly, we're going to
cancel ABC's license. We're gonna take him off the air,
so ABC cannot broadcast anymore. And I gotta say, he
threatens it. He says, we can do this the easy way,
or we can do this the hard way.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
And I got to say, that's right out of Goodfellows,
that that that that that that's right out.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Of a mafio.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
So coming into a bar going nice bye, you have here,
it'd be a shame of something happened to it. I
think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself
in the position of saying, we're going to decide what
speech we like and what we don't, and we're gonna
threaten to take you off air if we don't like
what you're saying. And it might feel good right now
(07:52):
to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, Yeah, but when it is used
to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.
And and and so again. I like Brendan Carr, but
we should not be in this business. We should denounce it.
It's fine to say what Jimmy Kimmel said was deplorable,
it was disgraceful, and he should be off air, but
(08:13):
we shouldn't be threatening government power to force him off air.
That's a real mistake, Senator Ted Cruz. We can make
all the jokes we want about him. He is ninety
percent correct. There are two errors in there. It's not
actually good Fellas. That line about it would be a
shame if something happened to it is actually a Monty
(08:34):
Python sketch from nineteen sixty nine. Also, Kimmel did not
lie about Charlie Kirk. His comments were about what those
who have survived Charlie Kirk have tried to do and
tried to exploit in the death in the wake of
the death of Charlie Kirk. Otherwise, Ted Crows is as
right as he ever has been in his life. And
(08:55):
I will have to go and lie down after saying that,
there has been some blowback finally from some quarters in media,
which largely has been silent and terrified. The hosts of
The View said nothing about this, no doubt warned that
if they did, they would be fired. That's the way
things stand at ABC and Disney now under Bob Eiger,
(09:17):
who folded like a cheap card table, but his predecessor
as chairman of Disney. One of his predecessors, Michael Eisner,
spoke out in a dignified rage on social media Friday afternoon,
quoting Eisner, where has all the leadership gone if not
for university presidents, law firm managing partners and corporate chief
(09:40):
executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up
for the first Amendment. As an aside, he's talking to you,
Bob Eiger, resuming Eisner. The suspending indefinitely of Jimmy Kimmel
immediately after the chairman of the FCC's aggressive yet hollow
threatening of the Disney Company is yet another example of
out of control intimidation. Again, as an aside, Eisner, who
(10:04):
had has been in this position before the one Eiger
is in, now recognized that these were paper threats. There
was nothing that could be done that would not involve
years or perhaps decades of litigation by the FCC against
ABC's licenses. The problem, of course, is that the ABC
(10:26):
and reaction also from Sinclair, constitute essentially bribes by ABC
and Sinclair of the FCC to get its approval in
the business deals previously mentioned. But to resume Eisner's righteous indignation,
maybe the Constitution should have said. He writes, Congress shall
make no law of bridging the freedom of speech or
(10:47):
of the press, except in one's political or financial self interest.
By the way, for the record, he closes this ex
CEO finds Jimmy Kimmel very talented and funny. There is
one other speaker who is worth listening to on this.
Even though his comments were not made recently, they are
a little out of date. They are from one hundred
(11:09):
and seven and a half years ago. To announce that
there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be
spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even
(11:30):
more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about
him than about anyone else. Those words were spoken in
Kansas City, Missouri, on the seventh of May nineteen eighteen,
by former President Theodore Roosevelt about the then President Woodrow Wilson,
in the middle of what was then the only World War.
(11:53):
If it was legal to criticize the president, then it
is legal to criticize the president now. And if Trump
truly believes that criticism of him as president is somehow illegal.
Someone in his crime family administration will attempt to please
him by acting upon this. We've already heard about his
(12:16):
attempt to designate Antifa, which is an organization that does
not actually exist in any form. It does not have
a meeting clubhouse. There is no way to designate it
a terrorist group. Yet he is going to try to
do that, And then, of course his next move would
be to declare that you, or me, or Ted Cruz
(12:38):
or Michael Eisner or Jimmy Kimmel is a member of Antifa.
That's all he has to do at this point, as
long as there are people beneath him in that administration
willing to enact it, and that there are people on
the outside, like Bob Iger, the chairman of Disney, or
the president of Columbia University, or any of the other
(12:59):
folding chairs who have not stood up and have not
defended American democ or the American public or America. The
criticism of the president is legal. Criticism of podcasters is legal.
Criticism of you, is legal. Criticism of me is legal.
(13:20):
If Donald Trump cannot take it, he should resign and
save the rest of us the trouble because Donald Trump
can no longer be president of the United States. This
has been a countdown bulletin podcast.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
I'm Keith Olverman. Countdown 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. This
is a Countdown bulletin podcast. I'm Keith Olderman in an
insane news conference in the Oval Office, even for him,
a news conference nominally intended to announce raising the price
(00:28):
of business waivers the extortion Trump takes for foreign employees
coming into this country to work for American manufacturers. Trump
has declared that he believes criticism of himself is illegal.
I'll repeat that, criticism of Trump declared illegal by Trump.
(00:51):
Whether he will remember this tomorrow or not is always
an open question, but given the Kimmel events of the
past week, it remains a serious question. Whether he will
do anything about this is the true question. Yeah, follow
up that, Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
There's been a lot of talk about free speech this week.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Do you see a.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Difference between cancel culture and consequence culture? I mean your
questions a little trick question, like I'm a very strong
person for free speech. At the same time, when you
have networks that where I won an election, like in counties,
I guess it's two thousand, six hundred to five hundred
(01:33):
and twenty five. It's called land side landslide times too.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
When you have that kind of that level of popularity
or voter support, as I did in the last election.
And yet ninety seven and ninety four percent different numbers.
You see different numbers with different stats.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
But ninety seven, ninety four, ninety five, ninety six percent
of the people are against me in the sense of
the newscasts are against me. The stories they said ninety
seven percent bad, so they gave me ninety seven. They'll
take a great story and they'll make it bad. See.
(02:14):
I think that's really illegal.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Personally, Donald John Trump cannot remain president after that. He cannot.
You cannot declare that criticism of a president, any president,
is illegal. That has not held true during the Civil War.
It is not held true during the First or Second
(02:37):
World War or any other American conflict when there were
real dangers in the land. It is not true and
cannot be true. And any president who believes it is
true that criticism of him is illegal cannot remain president
after that. And note, please, the question was once again
(02:59):
about the fawn false idol of the far right, Charlie Kirk,
and Trump, without a moment's hesitation, changed the subject to him,
as he did when he was asked on a human
to human level how he was doing in the wake
of Kirk's death and kind of shrugged it off and
instead started talking about the outhouse or ballroom or whatever
(03:22):
that is he is building outside of the White House again.
And as he said this, Trump was again covering his wounded, damaged, sick,
discolored right hand with his left hand. But back to
the point at hand. Given what FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr
did this week to ABC and Disney, the threats he
(03:45):
made towards ABC and Disney as part of a deal
to allow the owners of the Sinclair stations to buy
more stations, more than they are currently legally allowed to buy.
He pressured Sinclair to pressure ABC, which of course is
trying to get FCC approval and other operatives approval of
(04:07):
a purchase deal by which the National Football League will
buy part of ESPN. It's all part of one giant
attempt to make more money by the Sinclair stations and
by ABC and Disney. What Carr said this week quote,
we can do this the easy way or the hard way.
These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel
(04:28):
or there is going to be additional work for the
FCC ahead. That's what Carr said, and within hours ABC
had taken Kimmel's show off the air. Even though one
hundred percent across the board, Kimmel's remarks about the late
Charlie Kirk have been mischaracterized. He said simply two truths,
(04:48):
one which was that since the death of Kirk, the
far right has been doing everything it could to prove
he was not far right, not MAGA. That is a fact.
No member of those groups would deny that. That is
a fact. The other thing he said was the far
right has been trying to score pull it up points
off Charlie Kirk's death since he fell. One hundred percent
(05:09):
true in both occasions. This has been twisted largely by
people who did not see what was said by Kimmel
or read it. Commentators of all stripes, everybody from the
hard right people at Fox News to Stephen A. Smith
making a fool of himself on this topic, and they
mischaracterized it into some sort of insult against Kirk. In fact,
(05:30):
Jimmy Kimmel started his segment about Charlie Kirk by expressing
sorrow and his remorse about the subject and his condolences
to the family it was a dignified presentation, not Brendan
Carr making a dignified presentation, and to such a degree
this is how serious an issue this is a president
(05:53):
claiming that you cannot criticize him, that that is illegal,
and the force of the government being used to blackmail
ABC Television into sidelining the show without any kind of
review process. It's so bad that the criticism coming Friday
afternoon of Brendan Carr and the FCC and the Trump
(06:17):
administration's extraordinary heavy hand in the Kimmel Kirk story comes
from the least likely place imaginable, from a podcast hosted
by Senator Ted Cruz. You heard me right. Ted Cruz
attacked car and the man handling of ABC, Disney and
(06:39):
Kimmel on his podcast Friday afternoon.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
So, the Federal Communication Commission is in charge of granting
broadcast licenses, So ABCNBCCBS, they have licenses from the FCC.
It is true that under statute they're required to be
in the public interest. What he is saying is Jimmy
Kimmel was lying. That's true. He was lying, and he
(07:03):
is lying to the American people. Is not in the
public interest, and so he threatens explicitly, we're going to
cancel ABC's license. We're gonna take him off the air,
so ABC cannot broadcast anymore. And I gotta say, he
threatens it. He says, we can do this the easy way,
or we can do this the hard way.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
And I got to say, that's right out of Goodfellows,
that that that that that that's right out.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Of a mafio.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
So coming into a bar going nice bye, you have here,
it'd be a shame of something happened to it. I
think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself
in the position of saying, we're going to decide what
speech we like and what we don't, and we're gonna
threaten to take you off air if we don't like
what you're saying. And it might feel good right now
(07:52):
to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, Yeah, but when it is used
to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.
And and and so again. I like Brendan Carr, but
we should not be in this business. We should denounce it.
It's fine to say what Jimmy Kimmel said was deplorable,
it was disgraceful, and he should be off air, but
(08:13):
we shouldn't be threatening government power to force him off air.
That's a real mistake, Senator Ted Cruz. We can make
all the jokes we want about him. He is ninety
percent correct. There are two errors in there. It's not
actually good Fellas. That line about it would be a
shame if something happened to it is actually a Monty
(08:34):
Python sketch from nineteen sixty nine. Also, Kimmel did not
lie about Charlie Kirk. His comments were about what those
who have survived Charlie Kirk have tried to do and
tried to exploit in the death in the wake of
the death of Charlie Kirk. Otherwise, Ted Crows is as
right as he ever has been in his life. And
(08:55):
I will have to go and lie down after saying that,
there has been some blowback finally from some quarters in media,
which largely has been silent and terrified. The hosts of
The View said nothing about this, no doubt warned that
if they did, they would be fired. That's the way
things stand at ABC and Disney now under Bob Eiger,
(09:17):
who folded like a cheap card table, but his predecessor
as chairman of Disney. One of his predecessors, Michael Eisner,
spoke out in a dignified rage on social media Friday afternoon,
quoting Eisner, where has all the leadership gone if not
for university presidents, law firm managing partners and corporate chief
(09:40):
executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up
for the first Amendment. As an aside, he's talking to you,
Bob Eiger, resuming Eisner. The suspending indefinitely of Jimmy Kimmel
immediately after the chairman of the FCC's aggressive yet hollow
threatening of the Disney Company is yet another example of
out of control intimidation. Again, as an aside, Eisner, who
(10:04):
had has been in this position before the one Eiger
is in, now recognized that these were paper threats. There
was nothing that could be done that would not involve
years or perhaps decades of litigation by the FCC against
ABC's licenses. The problem, of course, is that the ABC
(10:26):
and reaction also from Sinclair, constitute essentially bribes by ABC
and Sinclair of the FCC to get its approval in
the business deals previously mentioned. But to resume Eisner's righteous indignation,
maybe the Constitution should have said. He writes, Congress shall
make no law of bridging the freedom of speech or
(10:47):
of the press, except in one's political or financial self interest.
By the way, for the record, he closes this ex
CEO finds Jimmy Kimmel very talented and funny. There is
one other speaker who is worth listening to on this.
Even though his comments were not made recently, they are
a little out of date. They are from one hundred
(11:09):
and seven and a half years ago. To announce that
there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be
spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even
(11:30):
more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about
him than about anyone else. Those words were spoken in
Kansas City, Missouri, on the seventh of May nineteen eighteen,
by former President Theodore Roosevelt about the then President Woodrow Wilson,
in the middle of what was then the only World War.
(11:53):
If it was legal to criticize the president, then it
is legal to criticize the president now. And if Trump
truly believes that criticism of him as president is somehow illegal.
Someone in his crime family administration will attempt to please
him by acting upon this. We've already heard about his
(12:16):
attempt to designate Antifa, which is an organization that does
not actually exist in any form. It does not have
a meeting clubhouse. There is no way to designate it
a terrorist group. Yet he is going to try to
do that, And then, of course his next move would
be to declare that you, or me, or Ted Cruz
(12:38):
or Michael Eisner or Jimmy Kimmel is a member of Antifa.
That's all he has to do at this point, as
long as there are people beneath him in that administration
willing to enact it, and that there are people on
the outside, like Bob Iger, the chairman of Disney, or
the president of Columbia University, or any of the other
(12:59):
folding chairs who have not stood up and have not
defended American democ or the American public or America. The
criticism of the president is legal. Criticism of podcasters is legal.
Criticism of you, is legal. Criticism of me is legal.
(13:20):
If Donald Trump cannot take it, he should resign and
save the rest of us the trouble because Donald Trump
can no longer be president of the United States. This
has been a countdown bulletin podcast.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
I'm Keith Olverman. Countdown 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.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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