TRUMP DOUBLES DOWN ON DEFILING ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY - 8.29.24 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

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. Trump
has doubled down on his defiling of Arlington National Cemetery

(00:25):
Title thirty two, Part five to five to three Subpart
ce Conduct of Memorial Services and Ceremonies. Memorial services and
ceremonies at Army National Military Ceremonies will not include partisan
political activities. Trump's team exploited a memorial event at Arlington

(00:45):
on Monday, broke the law by privately photographing and filming it,
physically assaulted Arlington National Cemetery staff who asked him to stop.
He gave a thumbs up and smiled idiotically while literally
standing on the graves of dead US military heroes. And
now his campaign is trying to turn it into an

(01:08):
online campaign advertisement. By definition partisan political activity. Trump people
need to be arrested for this because it could have
been trivial. It could have been there was a miscommunication,
not even an apology, like anybody in the Trump campaign

(01:30):
were human enough or honest enough or respectful of our
war dead enough to apologize just say it was a misunderstanding. No,
they blamed the cemetery staffer, They blamed the media, They
blamed Vice President Harris for not being there to commemorate
the sad anniversary of deaths in Afghanistan, the commemoration Trump

(01:54):
has illegally turned into a campaign ad, the commemoration Trump
skipped last year and skipped the year before. Because to
Trump and to this robot JV. Vance, those buried at
Arlington are just another product, just another sell, just another gimmick,
just another brand name to exploit. But Vance, and thank god,

(02:20):
Vance might be the least intuitive politician of this century.
He makes Jeb Bush look like George Bush. Vance escalated
this by swearing at the Vice President of the United
States and blaming her. Because Trump has been exposed as
a monster who smiled and gave a thumbs up while

(02:42):
literally standing on the graves of dead American soldiers. Kamala
Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won't
even do an investigation into what happened, and she wants
to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up. She
can go to hell that may be marrying lead shit
for brains there finally learned how to pronounce it's her name.

(03:07):
Just to twist this knife further, Trump's thug Chris Losovita
has now doubled down on the attempt by Trump's moron
Stephen Chung to blame the staff at the National Cemetery
for Trump breaking the law. Quote for a despicable individual
to physically prevent Trump's team from accompanying him to this

(03:29):
solemn event is a disgrace and does not deserve to
represent the hollowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery. You heard
me right, hollowed ho llowed as in hollowed out, as
in Trump's brain is hollowed out. You know, these manipulative

(03:50):
trump isst bastards who hate the troops, who hate this country,
can't even get the word right. It's hallowed ha llowd
to honor as holy? Oh, do you want to make
this worse? Still? Well, to their credit, the news organization's

(04:10):
Axios and Daily Beast added the notation parenthesis sick and
parenthesis after las Aveda's unforgivable stupidity. The former Obama staffer
and Army veteran a captain in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brandon Friedman,
noted that other news organizations like NBC simply cut and
pasted hollowed as if it were the right word, never

(04:35):
mentioning it was not, but CNN corrected las Avita before publishing.
They printed hallowed as if he had said that, giving
no indication that Trump's senior campaign advisor made an offensive mistake,
claiming he didn't. And worst of all, one news outlet

(04:56):
first cut and pasted hollowed, then corrected it to hallowed
without a sick or a note that la Savita made
the mistake, or even that they the news organization changed
it after publication. And you already know that the news
organization that managed to commit three separate journalistic felonies on

(05:17):
one infuriating quote to cover for Trump. The news organization
that again has covered for Trump's barbarism. You already know
it was The New York Times. And of course there
remains the context for this, the real reason the trumpists
did not just resolve this with a quick statement, not

(05:39):
even accepting responsibility, just confirming a miscommunication. America has caught
on to Trump's insanity and the fact that he doesn't
care if American soldiers die or are wounded or captured,
or are asked to shoot other Americans on the street.
Donald Trump is not loyal to the United States of America,

(06:01):
nor to the memory of anybody buried at Arlington National
Sene Cemetery, nor at flanders Field, nor in the Ardennes,
nor at Brookwood. And this issue, his fake patriotism, his
flag hugging bullshit, his suckers and losers essence, this is

(06:22):
about to break wide open, because hey, remember this. We're
only thirteen days removed from this.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
We gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That's the
highest award you can get as a civilian. It's the
equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version
it's actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal
of Honor. That soldiers they're either in very bad shape
because they've been hit so many times by bullets, or

(06:52):
they're dead.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Trump profaned the Medal of Honor. Then he has desecrated
and blasphemed Arlington and all who lie there now, the
opposing soldiers, the international despots and generals, the terrorists who killed,
the men on whose graves Trump might just as well

(07:14):
have literally danced Monday. They respected our war dead more
than does Donald Trump, scumbag. I would argue that Trump's
willingness to metaphorically die on this of all hills with
his trained monkey JD. Vance by his side, underscores that

(07:37):
he has never been more dangerous than he is today
because the reality has somehow pushed its way past the
nearly infinite amount of self reverence and the diseases and
the mini strokes and made its way to Trump's core.
What's made its way to Trump's core is that he

(07:58):
is now losing, that at the current trajectory, he is
going to lose, and lose badly, and that there will
be no immunity so thorough that it will keep him
from dying in prison. If he did not know that
before he found out about it last night. More polls,
more disasters for Trump. These are Fox News polls done

(08:20):
after the Democratic Convention, done after Trump was endorsed by
Bear cub Boy Arizona Harris fifty Trump forty nine. It
had been Trump by five, Georgia Harris fifty Trump forty eight.
It had been Trump by six. Nevada Harris fifty Trump

(08:43):
forty eight. That had been Trump by five. North Carolina
Trump fifty Harris forty nine. It had been Trump by five.
That is a total swing in four states to Harris
of twenty five points. Maintime the Republican Commissioner of Miami

(09:04):
Dade County in Florida commissioned to poll there. It's Harris
forty seven Trump forty seven. Florida a long shot still
to be sure is in play Harris forty seven, Trump
forty seven. They are tied in Miami Dade. The Harris
campaign just bought time for TV ads tying Trump to
Project twenty twenty five. They bought it in the Swing States,

(09:25):
and they bought it in the West Palm Beach market
wherein lies Mara crapshack and maybe worse than everything else,
Trump is beginning to kill off Republicans down ballot, especially
the ones closest to him psychopathically. The Fox poll in

(09:48):
Arizona scores the Senate race there as Reuben Diego fifty six,
Carrie Lake forty one, forty one forty one last week
of August. How in the hell is Carrie Lake going
to be able to afford to buy nine hundred more

(10:09):
camera filters this late in this race. The Fox powl
in North Carolina scores the governor's race there as Josh
Stein fifty four. Mark deserves killing, saying that of his
opponents Robinson forty three fifty four to forty three Stein.
The Fox pol in Nevada scores the Senate race there

(10:32):
as Jackie Rosen fifty five, Sam Brown forty one. The
Florida Politics website poll for the fourth District congressional race
there shows the brand new Democratic congressional nominee Whitney Fox
at forty eight compared to the incumbent Republican Anna Paulina.

(10:54):
If that is your real name, Luna forty four. I
am not saying this will happen. None of the people
around Trump are this smart. But Richard Nixon was driven
from office half a century ago, not by Democrats, but
by Republican senators and congressmen who went to the White

(11:14):
House and explained to him that not only would he
be impeached and convicted and remove from office, but more importantly,
all of them were going to lose in the midterms
because of him. Trump doesn't care. But Trump is not
just on a trajectory to lose and lose outside the

(11:35):
margin of insurrection, but on a trajectory to take down
his entire party on November fifth. Thus, however, he becomes
indescribably dangerous. He is seeing this for what it is
electoral victory or electoral theft through a contingent election, or

(11:57):
death in jail. It is tangible to him now with
definable features. This is a man so detachable reality that
he may think himself immortal for all we know, or
invincible or unbeatable. And yet the reality is clearly beginning
to get through, and he has thus become the cliche
of all cliches, the cornered and wounded animal, capable of

(12:22):
trying anything. Yesterday, Trump reposted four despicable memes, even by
Trump's standards of despicability, parenthetically, a day after his spokesman
mocked Kamala Harris's campaign for unseriousness because it was posting memes.
Spiritual Street Fighter seventeen retruthed by Donald J. Trump. All

(12:47):
Roads lead to Obama retruth if you want public military tribunals,
a picture of Trump with President Obama aka pro Boss
retruthed by Donald J. Trump. Indict the Unselect J Six Committee,
sedition retruth if you want to lock them up from

(13:10):
Beware of Penguin retruth by Donald J. Trump. Funny and
it's a picture of Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton. I'm
quoting this quote funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers
differently unquote and most importantly from Proud American seventeen seventy six,

(13:40):
retruth by Trump, how to actually fix the system and
pictures in orange jumpsuits not very well done of Joe
and Hunter Biden and Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Doctor Fauci,
Bill Gates, and Kamala Harris. That last count Proud American
seventeen seventy six is one of Trump's favorites. It recently

(14:04):
reported hosted an image calling for the murder of Vice
President Harris and Governor Walls. I guess we are fortunate
that Trump yesterday anyway, did not repost the work of
an account labeled the Rise of Rod, which has posted
five times on Trump's social in the last year, pro
Hitler video and statements like quote Adolf Hitler was right.

(14:25):
The Holocaust was the hollow hoax. Jews have been capitalizing
on n word for thousands of years. These are Trump's people,
these and JD. Van's. This is going to get far
worse before it gets any better, and it gets better
only when Trump is defeated beyond the margin at which

(14:45):
the corrupted Georgia electoral process can try to thwart the
certification of Kamala Harris's would be victory. It gets better
only when Trumps tried, found guilty, and imprisoned. In the interim,
it is essential to remember that, as hopeful as we
should be that we can defeat Trump's efforts to destroy
all right America from within for his own personal benefit,

(15:09):
we must remember he is desperate enough to try anything now, or,
more correctly, since at heart he is a weak and
pusillanimous coward, he is desperate enough to try to get
others to try anything now. Since it is Trump's people
who have dragged Hitler into this from as far back
as Charlottesville and even earlier, right from that point to

(15:33):
these creatures on Trump's social let us invoke Hitler for
a good reason. We need to treat Trump right now
as if he were Hitler Hitler with access to nukes. Okay,

(16:07):
this has to be lightened somewhat halfy. There are two
stories of some amusement quality. I cannot fully convey this.
This is a video. It's a visual thing posted by
a very talented guy named Dan Wilbur who my old
friend Lauren Michael should be calling about cameos. It is

(16:27):
a ninety second video of this Dan Wilber as jd Vance,
complete with mismatched haircut and too much eyeliner, trying to
order the doughnuts. Go and find it on social media.
In the interim, the audio is damned good on its own.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
Hey, I'm jd Vance and I'm running for vice president
with whom I'd rather not say. Well, I'll just get
whatever a normal human person would get you. And what
do you do for work? Right? Youna?

Speaker 1 (17:05):
What's that?

Speaker 3 (17:06):
It's a donut? Okay? And what about that it's also
a donut? Okay? How long you how long you've been here?

Speaker 1 (17:16):
How long you have you.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
Been a black at a job? And how long have
you been black? I'm sorry, hey, folks, she doesn't want
to be on camera, so just blur her face out,
and while you're at it, blur my face out too.
I don't want to do this anymore.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
I'm so sad.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
I'm so tired. Hey, you don't have any like lean
protein back there, right, like some soilent or tilapia or something. Now,
just donuts, donut. It's like a beignet or a croqune bouche.
I would love to eat those again. Have you ever
been to Paris? What if we tried this over again
and I went somewhere else?

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Oh my god, I just want to.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Do How long have you been here? How long have
I been in here? It feels like thirty years. It's
there a fridge back there, you can put me in
and lock it. I'm and I do not want to
do this anymore.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Extra points to Dan Wilbur for the soilent green shout
out in there it's people letting out Powell and more
substantially humor wise. Remember David McCormick. He was the hedge
fund loser who couldn't even beat doctor Oz for the

(18:32):
Trump nomination for the Senate in Pennsylvania two years ago.
This time they let McCormick have the nomination without opposition.
I guess because he brings his own opposition with him.
The polls have him down between five and ten to
Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania. And this is because Dave

(18:53):
McCormick is a dits end wokeness. Also a collection of
ditzes with a screen shot. New details released on Philadelphia shootings.
Police say suspect is gang member from Al Salvador breaking.
The man in Philadelphia who gunned down and tried to
kill eight innocent Americans is an illegal immigrant. He's a

(19:16):
MS thirteen member from l Salvador. Dave McCormick, Republican nominee
for the Senate from Pennsylvania, retweets all this, adding MS
thirteen gang members are terrorizing Philadelphians because of Harrison Casey's
radical open border policies. It's a bad thing. It's a
bad thing when people get shot. It's also irrelevant to

(19:38):
the Pennsylvania Senate race because, as the Casey communications team
helpfully noted, quote Dave, this story is from This story
is from Philadelphia, Mississippi. Say good night, Dave. Also of

(20:02):
interest here on this all new edition. If this is
where do you usually hit? Stop a couple of pieces
of business. First, Gonna take Tomorrow off. I hope have
to do a show Monday night for Tuesday. I need
the long weekend. I really need the long weekend. On
the other hand, next week we will cross the five
hundredth episode mark. And also I am considering going to

(20:25):
five shows a week again down the stretch. Something short
on Monday's Probably it's not a final call. It's still
back out of it, but it is the stretch of
more urgent interests. The CNN uncommitted voter who turned out
to be a committed Trump voter scandal that gets worse.

(20:47):
This is the guy who fooled CNN is now selling
t shirts celebrating the fact that he fooled CNN. And
the saga of the time NBC tried to blackmail me
by literally threatening to make my parents homeless because I
said I wanted to quit the show in which we
slandered President Clinton on behalf of the proto trumpists of

(21:12):
a quarter century ago. That saga in full. That's next.
This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith oldwoman stell

(21:45):
ahead of us on this all new edition of Countdown.
Somebody said to me the other day, boy Bill Clinton
looked old at the convention, and I stared into space,
and for a moment I was back in a tiny
dingy office at thirty Rock a quarter of a century ago,
and an alleged certified social worker for NBC News was
threatening to sue me, bankrupt me, and put my parents

(22:08):
out onto the street if I tried to quit doing
the MSNBC show that had accidentally formed around me, in
which each night we helped the primordial version of the
current fascist push in this country to try to run
a coup against Bill Clinton. Nah, good times, Great oldies.

(22:28):
The story of the threat to blacklist me because I
would not smear Bill Clinton ahead in things I promised
not to tell first. There are still more new idiots
to talk about. The daily roundup of the miss Grant's
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days
worse persons in the world. Lebron's Attorney General, Ken Paxton

(22:52):
of Texas, I'm looking at you, Ken, I'm over here. Well,
he's in Texas. He doesn't work for the people of Texas.
He's just a rogue lawyer using the power of the
state to crush political opposition. The other day, the League
of United Latin American Citizens LOULAC did something it has
never done before, and it has been in business since

(23:14):
nineteen twenty nine. It endorsed a presidential candidate. Guess which one,
and guess the response of private prosecutor's star Chamber Ken.
The Latino group lu LAC has written to the Justice
Department asking for an investigation by the FEDS. After Ken
Paxton sent agents of Texas to raid the homes of

(23:37):
the leaders of LULAC and other Latino Democrats in Texas.
Laptops and cell phones seized. The CEO of lu LAC
says that last week Lydia Martinez, an eighty seven year
old woman who lives in San Antonio and is a
thirty five year LULAC member who works to expand voter
registration among seniors and veterans in South Texas, got a

(23:59):
knock on her door. She opened it to find nine
officers in tactic gear with firearms who said they were
executing a search warrant. The eighty seven year old Ms
Martinez was questioned for more than three hours about her
voter registration efforts. Paxton's excuse, and Paxton needs to be

(24:20):
in prison, was that there has been vote harvesting in
Texas and illegal voting in Texas and he's going to
get to the bottom of it. Of course, there hasn't
been any. The record remains intact. Ninety nine percent of
all illegal voting in this country is done by Republicans.
This bastard Paxton. What he should get to the bottom

(24:40):
of is hell to borrow the vice presidential candidate's terminology
for today from the Republican Party. The runner up worser
CNN Gary Tuckman, whoever manages the place? And I'm assuming
here there's still somebody managing the place. There's no evidence
of that. Actually, their journalistic malpractice is now on a

(25:02):
thirty five dollars T shirt with their disaster printed on it,
available for you without a prescription. Remember the CNN Bryant
Rosato scandal. I mean it's from three days ago. Thirty
five year CNN veteran Tuckman conducted a panel after the
DNC acceptance speech by Vice President Harris. Eight avowedly undecided voters.

(25:26):
Having heard her speak, they met with him on the
air live from Allentown, Pennsylvania. One of the eight said
they remained undecided. Six of the eight said they were
now ready to vote for Harris. One of the eight
said he was also now ready to vote for Trump.
This is Bryant Risotto, and after some pressing, he revealed

(25:46):
that not only did he go into that focus group
intending to vote for Trump, but that he told CNN,
and in fact personally told Gary Tuckman, that he was
intending to vote for Trump. He says Tuckman approached him
and a friend at a restaurant and he asked They
asked him who they were voting for, and they told him.
Tuckman asked the two men, including Risotto, quoting Risotto, crazy

(26:10):
part is that CNN invited me knowing I was a
Trump supporter. Then they said it'll be voters that are undecided,
not Democrats. They told me to keep an open mind
and to give Kamala a chance after the speech, since
she's the new candidate after Biden, So I did hashtag Trump.
CNN's initial anonymous response to the Midas Network after this

(26:31):
disaster was quote, when building the panel of voters who
haven't decided on a candidate, all participants made it clear
that they indeed hadn't made a final determination. This particular individual,
who said he had supported Donald Trump in the past,
expressed to us that after President Biden dropped out of
the race, his mind became open and he hadn't make

(26:52):
a final decision on a candidate. Now, the folks at
the Midas Network report Risotto is using the notoriety provided
by his CNN appearance to sells for thirty four dollars
and ninety nine cents each. They show a screenshot of
his CNN appearance along with the caption she meaning Vice

(27:14):
President Harris is not ready. You know who's not ready CNN,
honest to God, is one of the people who was
there almost at the founding. They should just go dark
until after the election. Nobody would miss them. I mean,
run the Kamala Harris Tim Walls interview tonight. In fact,
have Kamala Harris interview, Tim Walls and vice versa. Send

(27:38):
Dana Bash home, just then do this interview and then
shut the network down, tone and bars until we assess
whether CNN management is suffering an utter loss of cognitive ability.
He is selling t shirts of how he screwed CNN,

(28:02):
and still there's somebody worse our winner, Jesse Wat of Fox.
You might ask yourself how anybody this stupid could be
a prominent figure at Fox for twenty years, and remember
he was O'Reilly's henchman, literally that long ago. O'Reilly used
to send him out to harass people. The answer, of course,
is Fox looks for people like this. They look for

(28:23):
stupid people. The dumber a TV guy is, the more
he is to likely to overhear news that he vaguely
understands and think, only, how are my bosses couching this?
If I couch it that way, or even go further,
they'll give me more money. That's Bill Hemmer, It's Harris Faulkner,

(28:44):
and it's the champ of them all, this idiot Jesse Waters.
The debate on the air was over a ban on
kids having cell phones in schools. There's a lot to
this debate on both sides. It's actually a legitimate cause
of concern, whether it's on Fox or PBS. But there's
one angle for which there can be no debate. Phones

(29:06):
for kids are vital lifelines in the event of emergency,
and that's where the topic had gone. But Waters on Fox,
with arrogance dripping from his voice, said what kind of
emergency would it be where you couldn't just call the school?
Even Janine Piro saw what was wrong there. She interrupted

(29:27):
with quote, oh my god, Waters, of course only he
knows anything, then interrupts her, why do you need to
call your child right then? In math class? That never
had you call? The token liberal on the program, Jessica Tarloff,
then interrupts him and says, simply school shooter. Now Waters

(29:48):
is really annoyed. Get them a beeper, he said that,
Get them a beeper. You and I hear somebody just
incredibly stupid, suddenly realizing he's made a disastrous mistake live
on television. He's backed into a corner and like a
little Trump with racer head hair, he's just decided he's
going to crash his way out because it's always worked before.

(30:09):
And what are they going to do? Fire him? He's stupid.
They want him to be stupid. That's the appeal. What
I hear is they're talking about kids and schools and emergencies,
and Jesse Waters, the father of four kids, claims to
be I'd need to see a paternity test. Honestly, the
father of four kids immediately thinks of himself, not the kids,

(30:32):
Not the kids in schools where things like school shootings
happen because of Republicans like him, not the needs of kids,
not the needs of his own kids, but his needs,
him calling them in math class, his emergency, not the
kids emergency. And this nonsensical fallback here, give your child

(30:54):
a beeper so that during a school shooting allowed twentieth century,
noise goes off from his book bag or his belt.
Waters regularly says something stupid. One critic noted, the trade
of the malicious snake Tucker Carlson even up for Jesse
Waters at eight o'clock every night is a win for

(31:15):
those trying to destroy Fox because it is the triumph
of sheer stupidity over subversion. But in this case this
is really bad. Jesse Waters doesn't give a crap about
your kids. Jesse Waters doesn't give a crap about his kids. Jesse,
his kids should be taken away from him by the authorities.

(31:36):
Waters two days worst person in the world, to the
number one story on the Countdown, and things I promised
not to tell. And the further I get away from
the day I left NBC, the more I realize that

(32:01):
almost everybody there and many who are still there, was
crazy remains crazy. It is a nest for aggressive ingratitude
and the rewriting of history to make sure that everybody
who is a success did it all on their own,
sprang fully grown from the ground, and nobody owes anybody anything.

(32:28):
And those are the good parts. Then there are the
really crazy people, the ones who are in charge of
covering the election, the ones who laid the groundwork years
ago for the bottomless pit that American news media has
fallen into, particularly the curse that will, if not corrected,
kill us all both sides ism Chuck Todd disease. Sadly,

(32:56):
Katie Turd disease outside of the NBC, Crystal is a disease,
Ryan Lizzid disease, These New York Times, at this Ohio
diner disease. It started with the scumbag Roger Ales at
Fox News, It migrated to ken Starr and the Bill

(33:19):
Clinton prosecution, and it then became, after the sufficient number
of refs were worked, the we can't dismiss these sleeze
balls on the right because even if they are sleeves balls,
they have public support. We need every viewer we can get.
It's a declining marketplace. Instead of saying what American News

(33:40):
once said to the sleeze balls of any party like
Joe McCarthy or Father Coughlin or any of the others,
which was, screw you, We're going to write or broadcast
about your perfidy every day until you die, they looked
at ken Starr's read thin persecution of Bill Clinton and said, well, no,
they've found nothing in two months, in six months, in

(34:01):
two years. But What if they find something later and
it turns out we opposed them and we were wrong.
We'll get killed by right wing media and our fascist
bosses like Bob Wright, ken Starr and his thugs who
went after Bill Clinton played the American news media, especially
TV news like the proverbial two dollar banjo. No news

(34:24):
in the Clinton Lewinsky scandal, no problem. A quick phone
call Alisa Meyers at NBC or any of several correspondents
at CNNABC or CBS, or anybody at Fox, and suddenly
there was breaking news and another alleged victim ready to
do a tiery on camera interview which had already aired
a dozen times with clips on every network before anybody

(34:46):
realized the alleged victim hadn't actually alleged anything. It was putrid,
but worse, it was profitable. And if you questioned it,
if you said, this isn't journalism, the other networks, the
other newspapers, the others invest in this story. A real
time twenty four to seven soap opera would go do

(35:09):
any length to attack you. And what would your own
network do? Hell sir, That's why I wanted to tell
this story in full. I haven't before almost by accident.
I had become the face of the star Clinton Lewinsky
story on cable news early in nineteen ninety eight, and
one day I had enough. I decided to get out,

(35:33):
and the reaction at NBC News was to try to
prevent me from leaving. It was going to be a
hostage situation, to literally threaten my career, my income, my future,
my family, to try to force me to keep working there,
to keep pushing whatever Ken Starr was cooking. Until you

(35:58):
were in the middle of that, you can never really
imagine what television executives will do for ratings or money.
I think sometimes they are worse than politicians. By that point,
I had been in TV for sixteen years. I was
already thirty nine years old, I had some gray hair,
I'd already been through the grinding machinery of local news

(36:19):
in Boston and Los Angeles. I had already made my
mark on SportsCenter and moved on. I thought I had
seen it all, ha ha, dumb me. I had not, however,
seen NBC News President Andrew Lack, nor had I imagined
that he would actually have ready to go at a

(36:39):
moment's notice, an employee who would be willing to try
to blackmail me, literally threatened to bankrupt me and my
parents and put them, as Lacks employee phrased it, quote
on the street. This was in the spring of nineteen
ninety eight. As I said, I had decided I didn't
want to do the nightly show anymore. That was devoted

(37:02):
to covering the Bill Clinton Monacolunsky story, whether there was
any news about it that day or not, and especially
since the network was devoted to portraying the Clinton Lewinski
story as the worst thing to happen to America since
the Civil War. The problem was the shows I did
for Andy Lack's MSNBC in nineteen ninety eight. They were

(37:24):
making millions of dollars a week in profit, and the
rest of the network was losing money. It had never
had ratings before. I wanted to do something else, something else,
anything else, fifty percent Lewinski, fifty percent, something else inside NBC.

(37:46):
Failing that outside NBC, stay in news, go back to sports,
do it in New York, go to Los Angeles, anything
except the show as it was constituted. So, through his personnel,
Vice president Elena Nachmanoff, an otherwise fairly pleasant person, there
came a message from Andy Lack in May of nineteen
ninety eight. If you go see our personnel consultant, a

(38:07):
woman named Deborah Byrne, and you talk to her frankly,
we will consider letting you leave NBC immediately. I went
first off. Elena Akhmanoff told me on Friday afternoon, June fifth,
nineteen ninety eight, some of us understand where you're coming from,

(38:28):
about the madness of covering this scandal every night like this.
So you're the good Sport Award winner for doing this today, Keith.
You'll like Deborah byrn She's a certified social worker, and
she's done great things for us. She saved a lot
of people who were in trouble. I don't mean ethical
crises like yours, Keith, I mean people who were passed
out drunk at their desks. I didn't stop to ask

(38:51):
her what she thought was worse. In any event, Elena
walked me through a labyrinth of hallways at thirty Rock
in New York to the office of this Deborah burn
She was a bespectacled, bent looking woman of about sixty,
with badly dyed hair and a fiercely aggressive handshake. She
was not big, but Frankly, I was not convinced I

(39:13):
could take her in a fight if it came to that,
and from the get go her manager suggested it might
come to that. I am not an employee of NBC
or MSNBC, and I'm not beholden to them. Deborah Burn
began loudly and too quickly. I work on a contractual basis,
meaning I don't get ten percent of anything, and I
don't get money for attracting more business. It was clear

(39:35):
whatever money they gave her, it did not go to
office decorps. There were a dozen filing cabinets, no windows,
two lamps, her high back chair, a metal desk, and
the plain wooden chair at its side on which I
was instructed to sit. I'm not here to be critical
of NBC or MSNBC or Andy Lack. I'm not here
to be critical of you. I'm an impartial observer and

(39:57):
I'm simply here to help Nachman off. The talent vice
president was still there, and Burn turned to her for
the record. Elena, I need you to describe the company's
position about Keith's employment. Keith, Elena said, understands that if
he chooses not to work for NBC, as NBC wants
him to work, he will have to face consequences. Now,

(40:22):
this was a slightly changed story from the one Elena
Knackmanoff had given me even minutes earlier. But once she
had given me in her own office, gone was the
Good Sport Award winner crap. Obviously, She said, We're not
going to release you from your contract, Keith. If you
want to be on the beach for the next two
years plus whatever remains after that, so be it. That's

(40:47):
his contract status, Deborah with a crisp thanks. Deborah burn
now dismissed the vice president of NBC News who left.
Burne produced and opened and probably large folder with my
name on it in improbably large letters, so I could
they had a folder on me ostentatiously shuffled quickly through

(41:09):
one hundred assorted documents, got to a blank form of
some kind, and asked me to describe the circumstances that
had brought me into her office. I explained I was
asked to come in. I also explained my conviction that
I had made a complete mistake going into news in
the first place, that I missed doing sports, and on
top of all that, there had now emerged this new

(41:29):
kind of news, which I felt was against my personal
ethics and beliefs about what I should be doing, or
in fact, what the media should be doing. I threw
in the word pollution a couple of times. Very grand
of me, I thought. She didn't look up at me.
Once all of media is becoming polluted in the way
you've described. She yanked off her glasses and staring at me,

(41:52):
not with anger, but with annoyance. You should learn how
to live with it. It'll be a lot easier for
everybody if you just do that. You're not a child.
Grow up. Maybe next time you'll learn to read the
contract before you sign it. I had to fight a smile.
This wasn't some sort of counselor. This was Andy LAX's enforcer.

(42:14):
She'd be threatening to break my legs before we were done.
They might bring in Brokaw to narrate it. I uh,
I did read the contract thoroughly, I said, suppressing my laughter.
This isn't about the contract. This is about my morals
and nobody else's morals, I said, not NBC's not, mister Lax,

(42:37):
just mine. I don't like the way the news industry
is handling this story. I have no delusion about being
able to change the news industry. I don't even feel
it's my responsibility to try to change the news industry.
This is about my ethics and my incorrect choices related
to TV news and TV sports. Now, she put her
glasses back on. She wrote some notes. She chuckled as

(43:00):
she wrote them. You may indeed miss sports as you
put it, and you may feel that sincerely, but it's
nonetheless an adolescent fantasy. And as to the pollution of
the media, that's also part of this fantasy world you
live in. You're grown up now, and you have to
live with the consequences of your actions. You heard what
Elena said. If you try to break this contract, NBC
will punish you severely. This is David and Goliath here, Keith,

(43:23):
and you're just not seeing it. I started to reply
something about how I had come down there as there's
a gesture of compromise at their request, and then she
shouted me down. You'll have to learn to compromise. She
emphasized the word as if I had not only not
just said it, but as if she had just invented it.

(43:44):
This is what the company wants, this is what the
audience wants, and you signed the contract. That's your responsibility.
I've been an NBC employee for twenty years, and they're
very big, and they're very successful, and they just won't
sit idly by. This will be David and Goliath, and
I'm very sorry to have to break it to you.
But you are not Goliath. I asked her why she

(44:06):
had just said she'd been an NBC employee for twenty years.
Two minutes after telling me that she was not an
NBC employee, she looked at me. She snickered. She wrote
that down too, Otherwise she just kept talking. Television viewers
are fickle, and if you're off the air for two years,
it'll be real difficult to get back on. People will
forget you. That's the real world now. Deborah Burn paused

(44:31):
and looked over at nothing over in the corner of
the room. I have a daughter who isn't realistic, she
suddenly whispered, just like you, lives in a world of
her own. She judges others and moralizes to them too.
She's tall like you too. It's difficult for parents to

(44:56):
have to look up at their children and discipline them.
Your height has always made it difficult for your parents
to discipline you. Thus you remain a headstrong child. The
defeat in her voice was total and as disturbing as that,

(45:17):
and this whole line was getting I really did think
somebody was gonna pop out from between those filing cabinets
to tell me I'd been punked, or that this was
a remake of candid Camera or something. I patiently explained
to Deborah Burn that I had not been born at
my current height of six three and a half inches, that,
in fact, my mother was taller than me until I

(45:41):
was probably twelve thirteen years old. That my father was
still taller than me until I got to college. But
your mother is short, she blurted, with great satisfaction. I
need descriptions of your parents, of their personalities, for my diagnosis,
and please stop giving me your obviously prepared answers. I
was still trying at this point. I started to describe

(46:02):
my parents. She cut me off. Father passive, of course,
this time I actually couldn't stop laughing. I said that
was not my father at all, that he usually did
what he damned well pleased. This annoyed Deborah Burn. No,
he's passive. I can tell I'm a professional, Keith. He
didn't stand up to your mother, did he? He never
told her to grow up or act her age? Did he?

(46:23):
That means he was passive. I could see her writing
the word passive in block letters on one of the
forms in which she'd been putting her notes. She then
detached this page theatrically. She stuck it into the large
pile of documents on the top of the thing, and
she grabbed a fresh page from a stack to her right.
What about your parents' finances, I explained, they were both retired,

(46:47):
so you take care of them. I began to answer
that they were both extremely independent, when she cut me
off again. I said, so you are responsible for them financially,
don't evade me. My amusement at this obviously deranged woman
now began to be overcome by anger. I swallowed both
the anger and the amusement, and I explained I handled

(47:10):
their finances, so your their sole financial support, just as
Elena Nachmanoff's report to me indicates. I thought, so, so
you're the superstar in the family, are you. I began
to try to bring us back to this planet, when

(47:30):
Deborah Byurn rose in her chair and leaned in toward
me and tell me, Keith, what exactly will your parents
do for money? What will keep them from being out
on the street when their precious superstar is blacklisted from television.

(47:51):
This purported social worker who worked for NBC or didn't
work for NBC, or maybe both, depending on which minute
it was, went into detail about the threat she was
now making on behalf half of NBC News MSNBC, Andy
lack Lanna nackman Off, and our corporate parent ge. Even

(48:13):
if I simply quit the Clinton Lewinsky Show, indeed quit television,
NBC would declare that my contract was still in force.
It would suspend me, It would not pay me. It
would then sue me for the salary it had already
paid me. Then it would sue me for the money
it had spent on promoting the show. Then it would
get a court order extending my contracts indefinitely until the

(48:36):
suspension ended, and then it would suspend me some more.
Let that sink in, she said, first time I ever
heard that phrase, Let that sink in. And then she
didn't even pause for a second to let me let
that sink in. Instead, she burst out with this the
greatest of all the non secutors on a day of
non sequiturs. You have what I would classify as a

(49:00):
Howard Stern kind of personality, And how I was back
to actually biting my tongue to keep from laughing at
the image of a bunch of therapists at a conference somewhere,
drily discussing the parameters of the Howard Stern kind of personality, Dogmatic, unbending,
presenting absolutely forceful opinions on the air that no one
is permitted to disagree with. Imagine going on a date

(49:21):
with Howard Stern. I tried not to. All he would
be doing would be talking about himself. It would be unbearable.
You're like him on the air, and I can see
that who you are on the airs, who you are
in life. Of course, I've never seen your show. I
don't have cable. Ever been married. I recovered from these
non sequitors quickly enough to explain that I had not

(49:42):
been married engaged again. No, I thought I might be
about to be ever had a long term relationship of
any kind? I told her I had, Oh, really, how
long term? I answered? Eleven years? And when did that end?
I calculated it had ended four years previously to the month,

(50:06):
in fact, And you haven't had an eleven year relationship,
since I explained to her as pleasantly as I could,
while I looked to see if there were any emergency exits,
or calculated if there might be a window somewhere outside
that I could throw myself through to get out of
the building as fast as possible. I explained to her
as pleasantly as possible, but I didn't know any way

(50:28):
of squeezing an eleven year long relationship into four calendar years,
so that my answer here would have to be no.
I told you to stop giving me prepared answers right
then again, she switched tones and topics. How much do
you drink? She demanded. I said, I almost never drank.

(50:51):
She dropped her pen and stared at me again. Well
what does that mean? I said? I believed I'd had
four glasses of wine during the current calendar year, and
it was June. She took the glasses off and leaned
as far as she could without again rising from her
chair or falling off it. Well, then, how much drug

(51:12):
do you do? Told her, I'd never use drug or
drugs stronger than alcohol, and before I could criticize her grammar,
she got red and angry. Then, what's that smell on
your breath. Look, you just don't get this. Do you
look at my telephone? Keith, and I did as instructed.
I looked at an ordinary black telephone, although given her

(51:35):
manifest insanity, for all I knew she would shortly reveal
it was a direct line to Elvis Presley. If I
didn't want a black telephone and I have a black telephone,
I'll just have to make the best of it, won't I,
I said. I thought she was holding up very well
under the strain of that disappointment. I instantly regretted the
snidness of that remark, because it was just going to
make things worse. And then, to my astonishment, she sat

(51:56):
back in her chair, ran her hand through her hair,
and almost whispered, thank you for saying that. I appreciate it.
The pause in the storm did not last long. You're
seeing a therapist, it says here you've been discussing these
so called ethical issues. I said, we've made a lot

(52:17):
of progress. Well, you can't resolve the work matters without
getting at the core problems, which are obviously personal and
family related, not to mention the alcohol and the drug.
So talking about work with your therapist is probably not
going to solve this to the satisfaction of NBC. So
I will need to talk to your therapist, and I
want you to sign a release here and now permitting
me to do so, unless that is this therapist of

(52:37):
yours is working towards making you adjust to the facts
that you signed this contract and this is your job,
and this is the real world, and this is David
and Goliath, and that's all there is to it. And
you're on the air tonight at eight o'clock, and that's
it now. She paused and stared off into space again,
like when she mentioned her daughter. When I was in
my early twenties, I was traveling from Smith College to

(53:00):
Montreal by train. She suddenly announced My meeting with her
went on for two hours. It featured threats against my parents.
It had her yelling at me, It had her accusing
me of using alcohol and drug and yet this was
the only point where I really considered trying to make

(53:21):
a break for the door. The Montreal Canadians hockey team
were on that train, very drunk, very happy, very boastful
of their conquests during their trips to the various cities
of their hockey league, and one of them, I suspect,
giving your fantasy world interest in sports, you may have
heard of him boom boom, Jeffreyon he came over and
tried to pick me up. I nodded robotically and began

(53:44):
to wonder if I suddenly leaped from the wooden chair
and did run out of her office, would she continued
to tell this story anyway after I left. We didn't
talk of such things then, not in the nineteen fifties.
A married man, an athlete, a tall athlete. Now, of course,
if I was a reporter and this happened, I'd have
to report it, I'd put it on the news. That's
just the way the world has changed, the real world,

(54:04):
that is. Keith. I suggested that at every news organization
for which I had worked, the code had been the
same that unless an incident involved the law, or it
diminished a player's ability or availability in a game, we
in fact didn't report it, like at ESPN. I related
a story similar to her own that had occurred in
Miami at the past World Series in nineteen ninety seven. Well,

(54:28):
she resumed, indignantly, you might have gotten away with that
under an old contract or in the sixties, where a
hippie like you might have fit in. But this isn't
the sixties. This is the real world of today, and
you won't get away with that kind of attitude under
this contract or any other contract in the future. You
could even go back to your precious sports and you'd
soon find out about the real world. Don't kid yourself,

(54:49):
it'll be David and Goliath. I said that the decision
not to report the story in Miami was made under
this contract by executives from NBC Sports. And now she
sat bolt upright and slammed her glasses back on her face.
I can't get this done, and just there's one session,
you know, deathly afraid that she was about to recite

(55:10):
another memory from the glorious days of rail travel, I
agreed to return the following Thursday, knowing full well, as
I said so, that I would never come back to
her office, even as a hostage or in a body bag. Well,
I don't know about you, she said, as she opened
her door. But I'm exhausted, I told her. Indeed so

(55:31):
was I, which was rather unfortunate because now I had
to go do two live hours of television. Yes, I
guess you do. She suddenly stared at my feet, then
quickly up at my head, as if she were estimating
what size I took in caskets. But you're so much
taller than I am, so you'll recover more quickly. MSNBC

(55:55):
had arranged a car service to take me out to
the studios in New Jersey from thirty Rock, and I
spent the entire trip writing all this down, page and
pages of notes and quotes and boom boom jeffreyon and
my own height at birth. And I called my therapist
on my phone, and I asked her if there was

(56:16):
a New York state number that I could call to
complain about a certified social worker who seemed to be
certifiable and who had just threatened me. She gave me
a number I called while still in the car, and
they said they had no record of any social worker
named Deborah Burn. When I got to the MSNBC studios

(56:37):
in Sicaugus, New Jersey, now the home of MLB Network
of all things, I went to my little office. I
picked up a small microcassette tape recorder that I kept
in the desk there, and I went in to see
my executive producer, Phil Griffin. I explained how this woman
Burn had threatened me, and I mentioned that I'd called
the state social worker hotline and appeared that Deborah Burn

(56:59):
was operating without a license. And as I did this,
I kept flipping that mini cassette machine from hand to
hand until I was sure Phil Griffin had gotten the implication.
Completely phony on my part, But like James Jones says
in Field of Dreams, there are rules here. No, there
are no rules here. My executive producer buried his head

(57:20):
in his hands. Needless to say, the Deborah Burn thing
had blown up in NBC's face. They went into a
full fledged panic at the news that she was not
registered as a certified social worker. And it turned out
that was a clerical mistake. It was her own clerical mistake.
She was registered, but she was registered only under her
maiden name. But for the next few weeks NBC was

(57:42):
completely on the defensive about me. Soon they were promising
to make me Tom Brokaw's air apparent if I would
only stay. I said, yeah, but it says in Brian Williams'
contract that he's Tom Brokaw's heir apparent. The executive in
question laughed and said, no, Brian only thinks it says
in Brian Williams contract that he's Tom Brokaw's heir apparent.

(58:03):
It can be you stick with the Lewinsky story, oh
and layoff ken Starr, and I have to think that
one through too long. If they could make poor Brian
think that he was the heir apparent when he wasn't,
they could make me think I was the heir apparent
when I wasn't as well, and that price laying off
ken Starr, that was a non starter. The stalemate continued

(58:27):
for a few weeks until, as I have related here previously,
a friend in the Sports division revealed that NBC had
lied to me to get me to sign my contract
with them, that I was not being paid as they
had told me, primarily by the News division, but by
the Sports division. I then met with Monica Lewinsky's first lawyer,
Bill Ginsburg, to discuss suing NBC over such illegal negotiation tactics.

(58:48):
Ginsburg thought just leaking the fact that we had met
would spring me. Sure enough, About six weeks later, Lanna
Akmanoff suddenly called my agent and told her they were
willing to sell my contract to Fox Sports in Los Angeles. Yippee,
so do not doubt what television executives are willing to
do to protect their ratings and their profits even in

(59:10):
the event of full fledged fascism. And do not doubt
what a zealot with even minimal skills at medium manipulation
like Ken Starr can do to the news you watch
or hear or read, even after he's dead. Also, most
relevantly now, as CNN's talent faced the prospect of conforming
to the right wing party line, or suddenly finding themselves

(59:32):
with a conservative co host, or finding themselves unemployed, there's
one more MSNBC story to tell that is relevant. I
went back there in two thousand and three and we
did pretty well, and then in twenty ten they began
to pressure me to change my tone and to add
in more diverse voices. And they did not mean women

(59:54):
or members of minority groups, or people like i'd hired,
like Rachel Maddow. They meant conservative, diverse voices. That's when
I began to pack my bags, Ti Lee, and a
few months later I left, And then four years later
they asked me to come back as long as I
agreed to have a conservative co host. I passed. But

(01:00:16):
here's the problem. I don't know anybody else pressured in
those ways who has also passed, not at CNN, not
at MSNBC, not anywhere else. Do not doubt what some
television talents are willing to do just to remain television talents.

(01:00:49):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Please share this podcast with somebody who
does not listen. Send it to Deborah Byrne, Brian Ray,
and John Phillip Shaneil. The musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled the
orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass
and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Our

(01:01:12):
satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball
stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the
Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis
courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged and performed by
the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my
friend Jonathan Banks. Everything else was pretty much my fault.

(01:01:32):
Let's count down for this the sixty ninth day until
the twenty twenty four presidential election. They three hundred and
thirtieth day since convicted fellon Donald J. Trump's first attempted
coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. If it happens, use
the mental health system. You have this available to you.
President Biden used presidential immunity to stop him from doing

(01:01:56):
it again while we still can and anti Semitic, anti immigration,
gun nut Republicans plea stop shooting at Trump. The next
scheduled countdown is Tuesday. I'm going to try to take
tomorrow off. I'm gonna try. There'll be a bulletin if

(01:02:16):
the news requires. Don't make me come out there till
the next one. I'm Keith Ouldreman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Ouldreman is

(01:02:44):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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TRUMP DOUBLES DOWN ON DEFILING ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY - 8.29.24

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