August 31, 2023 • 42 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 26: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: In an April deposition in the New York Civil Fraud case, Trump told the Attorney General's office that he wasn't running his company because he was too busy saving the world from nuclear holocaust and saving millions of lives because he was the only one to think of DEALING with North Korea. You’re WELCOME LOSERS.
This underscores a part of Trump’s insanity that it sometimes seems like we have gotten used to: he really DOES think he’s the first person to ever think of something, or to DO something, that everybody else in his position did as long ago as 1946. I never hear him say something like this – “Only I saved millions of lives because only I dealt with North Korea” without thinking of what the idiot director Roger DeBris in Mel Brooks’ movie “The Producers” says about the play itself – quote – “I never knew that the ‘THIRD REICH’ meant Germany! I mean it’s just DRENCHED with historical goodies like that.” That’s Trump.
Still, Trump didn’t save Peter Navarro, who goes to trial – but only after failing to grab a paper “TRUMP LOST” sign held an inch over his head. And he didn’t save Rudy Giuliani, who goes to trial for slandering Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman and hours later went on radio and slandered Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman AGAIN. And he didn’t save Kevin McCarthy who will now have to start an impeachment without holding a vote – which he once violently criticized – or hold the vote and LOSE IT.
The knives are out for Fani Willis. The Georgia State Senate Majority Leader now threatens her with reprimands, sanctions, hearings, defunding and removal. His name is Gooch and he’s from Lumpkin County. But the Georgia State HOUSE Speaker, Jon Burns, another Republican, says trying to defund Willis violates separation of powers.
With no hyperbole: I worry for Speaker Burns' safety.
And the podcast celebrates a big milestone with a big thank you to you: the August audience was 3,000,000!
B-Block (21:44) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: McConnell freezes again. Nice of his staffers to leave him out there and ask reporters to yell at him. And the brewing story about how if Mitch goes, the Democratic Kentucky governor may defy a new law and appoint a Democrat in his place. Plus the Proud Boys sentencings that weren't. (25:18) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Anti-pickleball millionaire Holly Peterson has an unexpected feature in her home: her own pickleball court. The guy who claimed he killed Bin Laden got arrested and replied by claiming he killed bin Laden. And why even in these days of loose ethics in cable news, MSNBC must fire primetime anchor Stephanie Ruhle.
C-Block (32:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Poor puppy Thomas: attacked, left to die on the train tracks, and still wagging as humans treat him. (33:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's the 26th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, which was also the day cable news jumped the shark and the shark was in the Rubicon.
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. Good News. Everyone.
Trump saved us from nuclear holocaust. He did so by
(00:28):
doing something no president had ever done before, and only
he could have thought of, and only he realized, and
only he accomplished. He dealt with North Korea. Were you
in charge of the Trump Organization? He was asked in
a deposition last April for the State of New York's
(00:49):
two hundred and fifty million dollars civil fraud lawsuit against
the company, a transcript of which has just been unsealed.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
No.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Trump explained he was not in charge. Quote. I was
very busy. I was I considered this the most important
job in the world, saving millions of lives. Unquote. Ah,
when was that quote? I think you would have nuclear
(01:19):
holocaust if I didn't deal with North Korea. I think
you would have a nuclear war if I weren't elected.
And I think you might have a nuclear war now,
if you want to know the truth unquote.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Thanks. This underscores a part of Trump's insanity that it
sometimes seems like we have gotten all too used to
He really does think he is the first person to
have ever thought of something, or to have ever done
something that, in fact, everybody else in his position did
(01:59):
as long ago as nineteen forty six. I never hear
him say something like this. Only I saved millions of lives,
because only I dealt with North Korea without thinking of
what the idiot director Roger Debris in mel Brooks's movie
The Producers says about the play itself, quote, I never
knew that the third reichmant Germany. I mean, it's just
(02:21):
drenched with historical goodies like that. That is Trump. If
that was not enough insanity for you in this deposition,
parts of which are included in the latest edition of
The New York Times. And remember, the deposition was supposed
to be about how the Trump organization defrauded everybody and how,
(02:43):
according to prosecutors, Trump frequently overstated his net worth, sometimes
by as much as two billion to ordred million dollars.
Trump also explains to Senior Attorney Kevin Wallace, quote, friends
of mine have said you are the most honest person
in the world. So we've done a good job. Don't
get credit for it. Well, we did say thanks for
(03:07):
stopping the big blowy uppy God, this guy is nuts.
Why Lord, have you blighted us with this nuts guy.
One last exchange from the transcript with Trump attorney Christopher
Kais talking to Attorney General's Office attorney Kevin Wallace Kiss.
We're gonna be here until midnight if you keep asking
(03:28):
questions that are all over the map. Wallace, Chris, We're
gonna be here until midnight if your client answers every
question with an eight minute speech. I can see it now.
The epitaph on Trump's headstone, You're welcome. Welcome, of course
in all caps. You know the headstone near the bunker
(03:50):
on twelve at Bedminster. Regardless of the chaff being thrown
at the prosecutors at every turn, there is progress around
the edges. Peter Navarro, the poc it sized financial charlatan
and Trump loyalists who defied a subpoena to testify to
the January sixth Committee, has now lost his bid to
(04:12):
avoid trial for that defiance, and the trial will begin Tuesday,
and in doing so, Navarro provided one of the most
joyful moments of the last eight years. Navarro insisted Trump
had asserted executive privilege to keep him from testifying, which
was a neat trick since a Trump was not president then,
and B the committee had not even been formed when
(04:33):
Trump was still president, and most relevantly, C Navarro could
not prove Trump even tried it after he was president.
But the satisfying moment came when, as he addressed the
media following the judge's ruling that the trial will go
on the five to six ish, Navarro realized that there
had been a woman standing behind him all that time,
(04:56):
holding a sign reading Trump lost and you know it.
Navarro then reached up to grab the sign from her hand,
and she nonchalantly and effortlessly reached it up about an
inch or so higher, and Navarro could not grab it.
He was s out of luck is in here? Anybody
(05:19):
want to own up to that? Here's the problem, bro,
you're already facing charges. Y, So this whole time situation, Yes, okay,
if you did not hear that woman clearly, she says, Bro,
you're already facing charges, go ahead and commit another crime.
(05:42):
I've been standing here the whole time situational awareness unquote.
And that woman's name was Fannie Willis. In a different
Washington courtroom, Judge Beryl Howell ruled against Rudy Giuliani in
the defamation case. Against him by the Georgia election workers,
(06:03):
Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. But if you've heard reporting
that Giuliani has lost that case, that is not exactly correct.
The judge simply ruled that the case can continue against
Giuliani because he clearly said what the two women claim
he said, and now they can take the case to
trial and see what, if any damages Giuliani owes them,
(06:23):
proving that Rudy has never, not even for a stretch
of eight or ten minutes, been half as smart as
he thinks he is. Rudy Giuliani then promptly went on
the air with Greg Kelly of Newsmax and smeared Freeman
and Moss again. Quote, I interpreted what I saw on
a tape. I still interpret it that way. I mean,
(06:44):
there's no doubt they were screwing around. What I said
about Ruby Freeman is that they violated the law of
Georgia in the way they counted those ballots. There's no
question they did. They threw the public out, you can
see that on the tape, and it's clear that they
were hiding the ballots. Unquote. I have two options here.
(07:05):
I'm wondering if these remarks will be added to the
current case against Giuliani, or they will be made into
a second and entirely new one. Either way, this prediction
someday years from now, when Rudy Giuliani is a footnote
to the coverage of nine to eleven. If the nation survives,
there will be statues erected to honor Ruby Freeman and
(07:29):
Shay Moss in not a Washington courtroom, but a well
known popular capitol building in that same city. The revenge
fantasies continue to inflate inside Trump's semi human brain, and
one of them looks like it's going to send Kevin
McCarthy right over a cliff. There is no question that
(07:50):
the Republicans are going to try to impeach President Biden,
almost solely doing so to get Trump off their backs,
and they may try to do it without first getting
a House vote approving and impeachment inquiry. The problem with
that is when the Democrats tried to start the first
Trump impeachment without a vote on an inquiry, the Republicans
(08:13):
wailed so loudly Congressman Doug Collins memorably screamed, it's not
impeachment unless there is a vote. That Nancy Pelosi held
the vote. So now McCarthy has two choices. It's not
impeachment without a vote, or hold the vote and watch
it fail because he doesn't have two hundred and eighteen
(08:34):
Republican votes, because of his congressmen who were elected in
districts won by Biden. More amazingly, there is more awareness
within the Republican caucus than there is in the American
news media that while yes, the Republicans don't have the votes,
they also don't have the evidence. Politico quotes a senior
gopaid who sees what might be a train wreck for
(08:57):
the ages coming as saying, we haven't proven the case
for impeachment yet, how can you start impeachment. We have
done what you need to do to start impeachment. There
is no way we'd get the votes, unquote, mister speaker.
Just Thelma and Louise. This thing hit the gas. The
(09:18):
canyon is that way down at the granular level. A
Georgia State politician prostituting himself to protect the criminal Trump
against prosecution by Fulton County District Attorney Willis has now
had the audacity to claim that the district attorney is
(09:40):
using quote her position in a political manner. She's politicizing this.
This guy has threatened Fannie Willis with reprimands, sanctions, hearings,
state Senate investigations, and removal under a new law to
oust wayward prosecutors. And she's the one politicizing this. This
(10:05):
cracker's name is Steve Gooch. No, I'm not making that up.
Gooch gch and he is the Majority leader. And if
he did not already sound like a complete cliche, Steve
Gooch grew up in Lumpkin County, Georgia. He's one of
(10:31):
the Lumpkin Gooches. And the real surprise about Steve Gooch's
remarks Wednesday was that they have been met with blowback
from within the Georgia Republican Party. Georgia House Speaker John
Burns has taken an extraordinary step of writing to the
rest of his caucus to dismiss what he calls quote
(10:53):
theatrics like this. Burns writes, a select few are calling
to defund a duly elected district attorney of this state
and her office in an attempt to end that's your
fear with the criminal justice system. Let me id this
guy again, he is the Republican Speaker of the Georgia
State House, quote targeting one specific da in this banner
(11:17):
certainly flaunts the idea of separation of powers, if not
outright violates it. Speaker Burns, a Republican, also points out
that the state government does not have a kind of
line item veto on the salaries of each prosecutor. You
want to defund Fannie Willis, you have to defund all
(11:39):
the district attorneys in the state of Georgia, quoting Speaker
Burns again, regardless of your views of this case, removing
this funding would also have the unintended consequence of causing
a delay or complete lack of prosecution of other serious offenses.
The Speaker of the Georgia House, John Burns from Newington
(12:05):
near Savannah, Frankly, I fear for his life because back
in the State Senate, where Majority Leader Gooch is saying
Willis is quote definitely tainted, Gooch is actually one of
the moderate Republican senators. While betraying his office by serving
Trump instead of America, Gooch found himself reprimanding Georgia freshman
(12:28):
State Senator Colton Moore, whom I have quoted here repeatedly
ever since he claimed that the defendants in the Trump
case are now facing death by lethal injection. More seems
to have backed off that and now says it's not
death by lethal injection, just life in prison and just
for fun, he mixed in the Civil War. Moore wants
a special session of the Georgia Senate called to impeach
(12:52):
Fannie Willis because she indicted Trump with absolutely no irony
in his voice nor any self awareness. Majority Leader Gooch
has responded to that with, quote, we want to make
sure we come down, we look at this stuff deliberately,
and we do it in a mature way. You see.
Gooch opposes this special session idea not because it's an
(13:14):
abuse of the separation of powers, but because it would
require support from some Democrats. And Gooch opposes the impeachment
idea not because it's obstruction of justice, but because it
would require a two thirds vote and quote, they're simply
no way we'd have the numbers to do that. What
(13:36):
we are seeing from the Republicans in the Georgia State
Senate is an utter breakdown of any awareness that they
are there to serve the state constitution and its laws,
and the nation or anything in fact except the whims
of their political cult and the Moloch at its head.
We will exercise Trump from this country. The courts will
(13:59):
get him, or those in his party who are worse
than he is will get him, or the actuarial t
will get him. But I do not know how we
will be able to relieve this nation of the stain
of this madness in the hearts and minds of the
Republicans that Trump has infected. When I say I worry
for the safety of Georgia House Speaker Burns, because he's
(14:23):
bringing up separation of powers and how you can't defund
one Georgia District attorney, you'd have to defund them all,
and if somehow you could, you'd also wind up ending
the prosecution of murder and rape in Fulton County. I'm
not exaggerating. Burns has brought common sense to a party
where Gooch is a moderate and more represents the we're
(14:43):
in the mood for a lynching wing of the state GOP.
So as always, we come back to my contention that
democracy is still breathing, not because of our efforts to
preserve it, but because of the stupidity of those who
would destroy it. Andy Clyde is the Georgia Congressman who
sits on the Appropriations Committee, and he thinks he can
(15:06):
save his Lord and Master Trump by defunding with US
and Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith, even though the first
two are not using federal funds and the third is
perpetually funded by the nineteen eighty seven Act which established
his office. Now Congressman Clyde is himself being investigated. Our
(15:28):
friends at CREWE Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
have just filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional
Ethics because Andy Clyde is self dealing what looked like traditional, amoral, murderous,
run of the mill Republican worship of the thrill of
killing people with guns turns out to be worse than that.
(15:48):
In January, the Department of Justice approved stricter regulations on
stabilizing braces that allow pistols to be fired off the
shoulder like rifles, because God knows, we don't have enough
rifles in this country. They call these things pistol bracestively,
and they have factored in many mass shootings already, including
the one that claimed ten in a Boulder, Colorado grocery
(16:11):
store in twenty twenty one. Congressman Clyde naturally supports mass shootings,
specifically those that use pistol braces. He has introduced a
bill to eliminate most of the new restrictions on pistol braces.
He's introduced a Congressional resolution that would nullify the Department
of Justice rule about pistol braces. He's introduced an amendment
(16:33):
that would prevent ATF from spending any money to enforce
the rule. So whose pocket is Andy Clyde in his own?
Turns out Congressman Andy Clyde busily accusing Fannie Willis and
Alvin Bragg and Jacksmith of corruption and deceit, And this
that owns Clyde Armory, Inc. A company that sells firearms
(16:58):
that are equipped with pistol braces. Introducing legislation to law
his own pockets with money made from the blood of
mass shooting victims is not just wildly unethical, it may
in fact be illegal. But go on, Congressman, tell me
about the threat to the nation represented by Fannie Willis
(17:28):
also of interest here. Even by the slovenly ethical standards
of cable news, this would seem to be a no brainer.
You cannot be a cable news anchor while serving as
a media advisor to a three billion dollar international corporation
and flying on the founder's private jet and doing damage
control for him with other media outlets. Why MSNBC is
(17:53):
going to have to fire one of its primetime hosts.
Plus Wednesday at about two forty five pm Eastern, we
here hit a threshold, and I wanted to thank you
for it now and not wait till later. On February first,
we celebrated the first milestone of podcasts, the You Don't
Suck download milestone of an audience of one million in
(18:17):
one month. Yesterday we reached for the month of August
twenty twenty three, between downloads and verified YouTube plays, the
milestone of a total audience of three million in one month.
I thank you. We will finish up what you downloaded
today in a moment. That's next. This is countdown. This
(18:41):
is countdown with Keith Elberman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines,
some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline Covington, Kentucky. The
good news is during the latest Mitch glitch, whatever it was,
(19:03):
that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was looking
at out on a horizon only he could see. It
seemed like it made him happy. The bad news is,
for the second time in about a month, McConnell has frozen.
And his handlers, who would all need new jobs if
he say, had to resign or retire or he went
(19:23):
into a permanent stupor or something. They just kept him
out there in front of the media and pretended everything
was fine and he was just having trouble hearing I
see some of my thoughts about what running for reelection
in twenty eight sex?
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Oh sure, did you hear the question senator running for
reelection in twenty twenty six?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
All right, I'm sorry you are wearing a new minute.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Anyway outside on.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Okay, Sadi also have a question, please speak up?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Most concerning that followed a twenty minute talk by McConnell
to the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce in which everything
seemed to be okay. Cincinnati TV station WLWT reports that
between the speech and the freeze, McConnell quote walked down
a few steps from the podium and caught himself as
if he were about to fall as he approached his chair.
(20:40):
If you are wondering about the subtext here. Kentucky's Republican
legislature passed a law taking from the governor there the
right to appoint a new senator of his own choosing
to an empty seat. Now it must be a senator
from the same party as the departed incumbent, who is
selected from a list supplied by that party. Politico reports
(21:01):
that asked about whether he would go along with that
new law or simply ignore it, appoint to Democrat and
take his chances in the courts, Kentucky's Democratic Governor, Andy
Basher twice refused to answer, and Dateline Washington prosecutors wanted
Judge Timothy Kelly to sentence Proud Boys leaders Enrique Tarrio
and Ethan Nordeen to thirty three and twenty seven years
(21:24):
in prison, respectively, yesterday after their convictions for seditious conspiracy.
As the time for sentencing came and went, Tario and
Nordeen were sentenced to nothing was postponed Judge Kelly had
a medical issue. Nordean will now be sentenced along with
other Proud Boys members on Friday. Tario will not be
(21:45):
sentenced until next Tuesday. And I know that sounds completely fishy,
but that's only because it is still ahead on countdown.
(22:08):
It may have been the day American television news jumped
the shark. Wow the first day and the shark was
in the Rubicon twenty six years ago. Now this weekend,
since we humiliated ourselves after the tragic death of Diana,
Princess of Wales. Coming up in Things I promise not
to tell first time for the daily roundup of the Misgrants,
(22:29):
Warns and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst
persons in the world lebrons. Holly Peterson of San Francisco.
She's an anti pickleball activist. I know that sounds ridiculous,
but this is serious stuff. The noise of that game,
puck puck, puck, puck, puck puck. The noise of that
(22:52):
game for hours on end is so maddening that some
anti pickleball activists in British Columbia started a hunger strike.
Here in New York, they turned the skating rink in
Central Park into like a twenty four court pickleball complex,
and that pock pock sound is annoying, though it's not
as bad as the roller disco they had here last
(23:14):
summer that played the same track every night. Oh it's
Donna summer must be seven fifty eight pm. But peterson
San Francisco eight bedroom home sits right on top of
the Presidio Wall playground there, and that's where they have
pickleball courts in San Francisco. And at that close distance
(23:34):
it is maddening, life altering, she says. Miss Peterson has
started a petition, and that's fine. I hear her almost literally.
But there's a twist here. The San Francisco Chronicle reports
that in that eight bedroom home that she is trying
to sell now for thirty six million dollars, Holly Peterson
has a built in pickleball court. Pickleball not lest g
(24:01):
be pickleball judged. The runner up Robert O'Neil, who his
living claiming to people that he killed Osama Bin Laden
and then going on Fox and then Newsmax and insulting
people as a commentator and tying everything that happens in
the world, from our stance against China to the use
of masks during the pandemic to how he killed Osama
bin Lada quote thank god it wasn't Delta flying us
(24:23):
when we killed Bin Laden unquote idiot so drunk he
fell asleep At a Texas hotel bar, a guard tried
to escort O'Neill to a room. He was arrested after
he allegedly punched the guard and twice called him the
N word. Asked for his statement by the New York Post,
O'Neil launched into a speech about how he fired the
shots that killed Osama bin Laden. But the winner Stephanie
(24:47):
Rule of MSNBC. Anybody remember when CNN fired Chris Cuomo
a year ago because he was secretly advising his brother,
the embattled governor of New York, and his boss was
also secretly advising the governor, and so was his boss's girlfriend,
and they were all soft pedaling CNN coverage of the
governor's scandals. Remember that MSNBC has a similar problem, and
(25:10):
the only reason it is not viewed as a bigger
problem is when Stephanie Rule did this, she was a
business reporter elsewhere at Bloomberg News. CNBC reports, and that's
kind of uncomfortable CNBC reporting about MSNBC. CNBC reports that
something unfortunate came up in a shareholder lawsuit against Kevin Plank,
(25:31):
the founder of under Armor, charging him with artificially inflating
the price of the stock and costing investors' money. When
Morgan Stanley had downgraded the company stock in twenty sixteen,
Stephanie Rule asked the founder, Plank, to send her company
private data that would contradict a report, and then she
(25:52):
advised that they should send that data to other media outlets.
And when the stock improved, Plank said he was saying
thank you to Stephanie Rule by arranging for her to
interview company spokesperson NBA star Steph Curry. Then she was
suddenly taking trips on Plank's private jet, and then he
established a private phone number so she could advise him
(26:14):
on media relations in private while she was supposedly covering
his company as a member of the media. Asked if
she was flying as a friend or as a reporter,
she answered, quote, I was flying on his plane as myself.
Stephanie Rule, I'm not really in a category one or
the other. Ethics here MSNBC and Stephanie Rule rightly covering
(26:36):
Clarence Thomas improperly taking free jet trips from people whose
cases he might adjudicate, and correctly pointing out the appearance
of a conflict of interest Meanwhile, Rule had taken her
own undisclosed free jet trips from people she covered and
might cover again, and serving as their media advisor. Is
it exactly the same thing, No, it is not. Is
(26:58):
it that serious? No it is not. Is it close
enough to merit firing her? Yeah, you can't do that, Stephanie.
I can be media and your media consultants simultaneously Rule
today's worst person in the world. Just ahead, there's the
(27:30):
old line about never going to see how sausages are made.
Then there's the only thing that's worse than that, the
day you realize that the place you work actually is
where the sausages are made. The coverage of the death
of Princess Diana twenty six years ago. This weekend Things
I promised not to tell next first time to feature
another dog in need. You can help. Every dog has
(27:52):
its day. Thomas is five months old, an ordinary white
and cream and black mutt. And they had to amputate
one leg in the back and two in the front
are broken, and the fourth one is mangled, and he
is lying. They're wagging his tail at the people taking
care of him. Bite wounds, possible violence at the hands
of humans found on train tracks and he's wagging his
(28:15):
tail at people who are taking care of him. Thomas
is on antibiotics and getting laser treatments for the pain,
and he was not supposed to make it. He's going
to make it. Our friends at Hounds and Pounds found him.
They're caring for him, and they are doing the fundraiser
at cudley dot com. And you can help by donating
or by finding him on my feed and retweeting him.
(28:36):
Look for Thomas at Cudley. Thomas. Thanks you, and I
thank you finally to our number one story on the
countdown and my favorite topic, me and things I promised
(28:56):
not to tell. The date on the death certificate was Sunday,
August thirty first, nineteen ninety seven, but because of the
time difference, the news was known here very late on
the night of Saturday, August thirtieth, nineteen ninety seven. It
was the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. And please
do not misunderstand me. I'm not equating anything that happened
(29:16):
to me around that time with what happened to her,
or what happened to those who loved her, or what
happened to those who simply admired her from Afar. But
in retrospect, I can see that Saturday night as a
demarcation point in the history of news in this country.
Three nights earlier, I had watched them pack the last
(29:37):
of my stuff into the van at my home in Southington, Connecticut,
where I had lived for five and a half years,
while I did ESPN's Sports Center. Great show, much of it,
great fun, a great partner, a great house, four bedrooms,
three thousand square feet. He did swimming pool house, fact system,
three hundred and fifty one thousand dollars. All that was great,
(29:58):
not really a great life. I was on my way
to a new life at MSNBC was a photo shoot
for Esquire. They dressed me up like Austin Powers. I
didn't get it then, I don't get it now. Then
an interview with TV Guide, and then suddenly an invitation
for my old friend and new boss, Phil Griffin to
come join him and his family for a long weekend
(30:20):
in the Hamptons. I had never been there. It was
not the kind of thing I did. It was long Island.
I was from Westchester. But they were willing to pay
and it was spectacular. Even though my accommodations consisted of
a converted garage, the bed and breakfast part of the
home of a woman who had had her own show
on Channel two in New York forty three years previously,
(30:44):
and whose walls were filled with momentos from it. I thought, briefly,
and with a shutter, that's what my walls are going
to look like in twenty forty if I live that long. Well,
that's not twenty forty yet, and I haven't lived that long.
But I'm happy to tell you there are dozens of
photos in art covering my walls, and only one of
them is a memento of an old TV show I did.
But the point was and is taken anyway. A nice
(31:08):
meal with the Griffins at their Hampton's full house rental
on Friday, A warm day spent at a pristine beach
on Saturday, pronounced good with kids by Phil's wife, and
then we went across the bay to the Hampton's home
of Jeff Zucker, then the head of the Today Show
and the de facto operational head of all of NBC News.
(31:30):
We dined on his balcony overlooking the water. We watched
the fireworks overlooking the water. And we were just having
a nightcap on this vast lawn of his, overlooking the water.
My memory tells me the lawn was approximately the size
of the field at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. And
there were huge lights hanging off the house, which seemed
(31:53):
nearly as strong as the lights at Dodger Stadium. And
then suddenly everybody's phone rang. Summer ended in three seconds.
There were still pagers in those days. Those went off too.
You could even hear phones ringing in the distance, creating
something akin to a strange buzzing concert. My God, Zucker shouted,
(32:15):
Princess Die is dead. Now. He and Phil Griffin began
to pace across that giant lawn. Another phone rang, and
Zucker now had one pinned to each ear. Standing some
distance away with Phil Griffin's wife, I noticed how quickly
Griffin and Zucker synced up. They were walking towards each other,
crossing each other's paths, then walking side by side, and
(32:37):
then veering off in opposite directions, as if there had
been a choreographer somewhere. Phil's wife and I were equally disgusted,
not so much at her husband and Zucker, but at
the circumstances of Diana's death. Forty eight hours earlier, the
interviewer from TV Guide had actually asked me what my
first questions would be for my hypothetical guests, Nelson Mandela
(33:01):
and Sean Penn. My abstract concepts of the news my
new career were about news I watched or listened to,
like PBS or NPR, the all news radio stations in
New York or Washington when the atmospheric conditions were right
in Bristol, Connecticut, and my favorite news related show, British
(33:22):
Prime Minister's Question Time. This was not what I heard
Phil Griffin and Jeff Zucker arranging in the wake of
Diana's death, throwing out large offers to self announced royal
experts and accident analysts and people who knew Doty Fayed
and even some of the photographers in the cars chasing
Diana's into the tunnel when it crashed, offering them large
(33:46):
sums of money to make themselves available exclusively to MSNBC
for the duration, and booking whole planes full of reservations
to send everybody from the Today Show to the funeral. Now, look,
I was thirty seven years old then, I already understood
these were the nestsary logistical moves of smart executives. Sad
(34:08):
and terrible things happened, and people still had to go
on and cover them. But there was something exceptionally callous
and cold about the choreograph dance. I was watching as
I said to Phil's wife, the tabloid media has been
chasing celebrities for years, and tonight they finally got one.
She nodded, but punched me in the shoulder and corrected me,
(34:30):
we finally got one. You are part of we now well.
That in turn made me think about quitting on the spot.
My agent was on the West coast. It was not
that late there, and soon I joined Griffin and Zucker.
Zucker was on his third different phone by then pacing
on that lovely lawn while telling my agent that maybe
we should take the ABC boss Bob Iger up on
(34:53):
his offer. He said, if I ever wanted to go
back to ESPN, I should just call. What do you think?
I asked my agent too soon. The next week was
all Diana leading up to the funeral Overnight Friday, anchored
on NBC and MSNBC I think by Katie Curic, who
actually told the audience that some random British woman was
in fact the model Cindy Crawford. She wasn't Cindy Crawford.
(35:18):
This passing, forgotten, trivial mistake seemed to me to be
emblematic of what Diana's death had done in an instant
to the business I was just getting into. Suddenly the
last few years, if television news had clarified themselves and
a timeline had emerged in my mind. I had gone
to work for CNN at the start of its second
year nineteen eighty one. Yes, we were already in color.
(35:41):
We used to have a weather report, a sportscast, a
business update, and a science and medicine story every hour.
But by nineteen ninety five, CNN and everybody else had
learned just find one story and pound it into the
ground twenty four to seven if you can, and dress
it up so that the viewer does not feel dirty
(36:02):
for having watched it. First story in nineteen ninety five
was the oj Simpson trial, and while it was nominally
a genuinely important story about a huge public figure, people
forget that a huge public figure sportscaster and actor murdering
his wife. That's not what they covered at the OJ
Simpson trial. They were covering every salacious detail. They were
(36:27):
covering literally every blood stain, they were covering interracial marriage,
they were pitting whites against blacks. They were sometimes I
saw it happen, making up bombshell stories. And all the
people now running MSNBC, which I was joining in its
second year, were those who had covered themselves in glory
(36:48):
or covered themselves in something at the OJ trial. It
is not coincidental that one media organization was discussed by
the judge Lance Edo for doing a fair job of
covering the OJ Simpson trial. Organization was ESPN SportsCenter. Anyway,
(37:10):
television news has never been the same. There was some
argument for twenty four to seven coverage of the Simpson
trial because it was a daily thing. Diana was dead,
and for a month it was treated as if it
had happened an hour earlier. Cable news by this point CNN,
CNN Headline, Fox and MSNBC now began to look for
(37:30):
twenty four to seven stories, or in their absence to
create them. The death of the Colorado little Girl, John
Benet Ramsey, every missing white woman in America, even the
Clinton Lewinsky story. I often did two live shows a
night about the Clinton Lewinsky story, even when there hadn't
been any actual news in a week or ten days.
(37:51):
If something happened, if some tidbit was reported by the
Washington Post, when all the news sites updated for the
only time all day at eleven pm Eastern, Yes, that's
how computers worked back then. We might stay on for
two or three extra hours to discuss this one sentence
in the revised Washington Post story, again and again and again.
(38:14):
We retrained TV audiences to fixate on one story at
a time, especially if that story involved somebody famous that
in turn magnified the celebrity element of all of American life.
It explains, in part, everything that has happened since Diana died,
from the Clinton story to the lionization of the generals
after nine to eleven, through the rise of Barack Obama,
(38:35):
and of course, the election of Trump. I did not
ultimately quit my new MSNBC show a month before it
was to premiere. The next morning, I took a bus
back to New York and vowed, too, as I've put
it in my diary, do a show that would expose
tabloidism and be upright at whatever cost to a tone
that I should be involved, however, distantly, in a business
(38:56):
that could, in essence kill three people, including the most
beloved woman in the world. Nice thought didn't happen. We
did the first show a month later, October one, nineteen
ninety seven. Phil Griffin was the producer. Half the time
was consumed by a roundtable of four celebrity journalists and gossips.
When I tried to draw them out on the media's
(39:16):
responsibility to the people in these stories, a voice talked
to me through my earpiece. It was Phil Griffin and
he was shouting forget that. Ask them who killed John
Vaney Ramsey. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(39:43):
Thank you for listening. Countdown has come to you from
our studios high atop the Sports Capsule Building in New York.
Here are the credits. Most of the music arrange produced
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, who
are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Phillip Shanel. Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections been arranged and
(40:05):
performed by No Horns allowed. The sports music is the
Olberman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was my friend John Dean, and everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the
nine hundred and sixty seventh day since Donald Trump's first
(40:27):
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Convict him now while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is Tuesday. I don't take a lot of time off.
This is like the two hundred and eighty third edition
in thirteen months and still this Labor Day weekend. It'll
be bulletins as the news warrants till the next one,
(40:51):
whenever it is. I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Luck ride the st food talk on our slim f
(41:32):
bat Trapton for your drunken le sa diner. Come dinso
been down, feed basting mood and take gott avant and
(41:53):
spell din Broyd Bold sometime.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Freely don't can sip 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. Good News. Everyone.
Trump saved us from nuclear holocaust. He did so by
(00:28):
doing something no president had ever done before, and only
he could have thought of, and only he realized, and
only he accomplished. He dealt with North Korea. Were you
in charge of the Trump Organization? He was asked in
a deposition last April for the State of New York's
(00:49):
two hundred and fifty million dollars civil fraud lawsuit against
the company, a transcript of which has just been unsealed.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
No.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Trump explained he was not in charge. Quote. I was
very busy. I was I considered this the most important
job in the world, saving millions of lives. Unquote. Ah,
when was that quote? I think you would have nuclear
(01:19):
holocaust if I didn't deal with North Korea. I think
you would have a nuclear war if I weren't elected.
And I think you might have a nuclear war now,
if you want to know the truth unquote.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Thanks. This underscores a part of Trump's insanity that it
sometimes seems like we have gotten all too used to
He really does think he is the first person to
have ever thought of something, or to have ever done
something that, in fact, everybody else in his position did
(01:59):
as long ago as nineteen forty six. I never hear
him say something like this. Only I saved millions of lives,
because only I dealt with North Korea without thinking of
what the idiot director Roger Debris in mel Brooks's movie
The Producers says about the play itself, quote, I never
knew that the third reichmant Germany. I mean, it's just
(02:21):
drenched with historical goodies like that. That is Trump. If
that was not enough insanity for you in this deposition,
parts of which are included in the latest edition of
The New York Times. And remember, the deposition was supposed
to be about how the Trump organization defrauded everybody and how,
(02:43):
according to prosecutors, Trump frequently overstated his net worth, sometimes
by as much as two billion to ordred million dollars.
Trump also explains to Senior Attorney Kevin Wallace, quote, friends
of mine have said you are the most honest person
in the world. So we've done a good job. Don't
get credit for it. Well, we did say thanks for
(03:07):
stopping the big blowy uppy God, this guy is nuts.
Why Lord, have you blighted us with this nuts guy.
One last exchange from the transcript with Trump attorney Christopher
Kais talking to Attorney General's Office attorney Kevin Wallace Kiss.
We're gonna be here until midnight if you keep asking
(03:28):
questions that are all over the map. Wallace, Chris, We're
gonna be here until midnight if your client answers every
question with an eight minute speech. I can see it now.
The epitaph on Trump's headstone, You're welcome. Welcome, of course
in all caps. You know the headstone near the bunker
(03:50):
on twelve at Bedminster. Regardless of the chaff being thrown
at the prosecutors at every turn, there is progress around
the edges. Peter Navarro, the poc it sized financial charlatan
and Trump loyalists who defied a subpoena to testify to
the January sixth Committee, has now lost his bid to
(04:12):
avoid trial for that defiance, and the trial will begin Tuesday,
and in doing so, Navarro provided one of the most
joyful moments of the last eight years. Navarro insisted Trump
had asserted executive privilege to keep him from testifying, which
was a neat trick since a Trump was not president then,
and B the committee had not even been formed when
(04:33):
Trump was still president, and most relevantly, C Navarro could
not prove Trump even tried it after he was president.
But the satisfying moment came when, as he addressed the
media following the judge's ruling that the trial will go
on the five to six ish, Navarro realized that there
had been a woman standing behind him all that time,
(04:56):
holding a sign reading Trump lost and you know it.
Navarro then reached up to grab the sign from her hand,
and she nonchalantly and effortlessly reached it up about an
inch or so higher, and Navarro could not grab it.
He was s out of luck is in here? Anybody
(05:19):
want to own up to that? Here's the problem, bro,
you're already facing charges. Y, So this whole time situation, Yes, okay,
if you did not hear that woman clearly, she says, Bro,
you're already facing charges, go ahead and commit another crime.
(05:42):
I've been standing here the whole time situational awareness unquote.
And that woman's name was Fannie Willis. In a different
Washington courtroom, Judge Beryl Howell ruled against Rudy Giuliani in
the defamation case. Against him by the Georgia election workers,
(06:03):
Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. But if you've heard reporting
that Giuliani has lost that case, that is not exactly correct.
The judge simply ruled that the case can continue against
Giuliani because he clearly said what the two women claim
he said, and now they can take the case to
trial and see what, if any damages Giuliani owes them,
(06:23):
proving that Rudy has never, not even for a stretch
of eight or ten minutes, been half as smart as
he thinks he is. Rudy Giuliani then promptly went on
the air with Greg Kelly of Newsmax and smeared Freeman
and Moss again. Quote, I interpreted what I saw on
a tape. I still interpret it that way. I mean,
(06:44):
there's no doubt they were screwing around. What I said
about Ruby Freeman is that they violated the law of
Georgia in the way they counted those ballots. There's no
question they did. They threw the public out, you can
see that on the tape, and it's clear that they
were hiding the ballots. Unquote. I have two options here.
(07:05):
I'm wondering if these remarks will be added to the
current case against Giuliani, or they will be made into
a second and entirely new one. Either way, this prediction
someday years from now, when Rudy Giuliani is a footnote
to the coverage of nine to eleven. If the nation survives,
there will be statues erected to honor Ruby Freeman and
(07:29):
Shay Moss in not a Washington courtroom, but a well
known popular capitol building in that same city. The revenge
fantasies continue to inflate inside Trump's semi human brain, and
one of them looks like it's going to send Kevin
McCarthy right over a cliff. There is no question that
(07:50):
the Republicans are going to try to impeach President Biden,
almost solely doing so to get Trump off their backs,
and they may try to do it without first getting
a House vote approving and impeachment inquiry. The problem with
that is when the Democrats tried to start the first
Trump impeachment without a vote on an inquiry, the Republicans
(08:13):
wailed so loudly Congressman Doug Collins memorably screamed, it's not
impeachment unless there is a vote. That Nancy Pelosi held
the vote. So now McCarthy has two choices. It's not
impeachment without a vote, or hold the vote and watch
it fail because he doesn't have two hundred and eighteen
(08:34):
Republican votes, because of his congressmen who were elected in
districts won by Biden. More amazingly, there is more awareness
within the Republican caucus than there is in the American
news media that while yes, the Republicans don't have the votes,
they also don't have the evidence. Politico quotes a senior
gopaid who sees what might be a train wreck for
(08:57):
the ages coming as saying, we haven't proven the case
for impeachment yet, how can you start impeachment. We have
done what you need to do to start impeachment. There
is no way we'd get the votes, unquote, mister speaker.
Just Thelma and Louise. This thing hit the gas. The
(09:18):
canyon is that way down at the granular level. A
Georgia State politician prostituting himself to protect the criminal Trump
against prosecution by Fulton County District Attorney Willis has now
had the audacity to claim that the district attorney is
(09:40):
using quote her position in a political manner. She's politicizing this.
This guy has threatened Fannie Willis with reprimands, sanctions, hearings,
state Senate investigations, and removal under a new law to
oust wayward prosecutors. And she's the one politicizing this. This
(10:05):
cracker's name is Steve Gooch. No, I'm not making that up.
Gooch gch and he is the Majority leader. And if
he did not already sound like a complete cliche, Steve
Gooch grew up in Lumpkin County, Georgia. He's one of
(10:31):
the Lumpkin Gooches. And the real surprise about Steve Gooch's
remarks Wednesday was that they have been met with blowback
from within the Georgia Republican Party. Georgia House Speaker John
Burns has taken an extraordinary step of writing to the
rest of his caucus to dismiss what he calls quote
(10:53):
theatrics like this. Burns writes, a select few are calling
to defund a duly elected district attorney of this state
and her office in an attempt to end that's your
fear with the criminal justice system. Let me id this
guy again, he is the Republican Speaker of the Georgia
State House, quote targeting one specific da in this banner
(11:17):
certainly flaunts the idea of separation of powers, if not
outright violates it. Speaker Burns, a Republican, also points out
that the state government does not have a kind of
line item veto on the salaries of each prosecutor. You
want to defund Fannie Willis, you have to defund all
(11:39):
the district attorneys in the state of Georgia, quoting Speaker
Burns again, regardless of your views of this case, removing
this funding would also have the unintended consequence of causing
a delay or complete lack of prosecution of other serious offenses.
The Speaker of the Georgia House, John Burns from Newington
(12:05):
near Savannah, Frankly, I fear for his life because back
in the State Senate, where Majority Leader Gooch is saying
Willis is quote definitely tainted, Gooch is actually one of
the moderate Republican senators. While betraying his office by serving
Trump instead of America, Gooch found himself reprimanding Georgia freshman
(12:28):
State Senator Colton Moore, whom I have quoted here repeatedly
ever since he claimed that the defendants in the Trump
case are now facing death by lethal injection. More seems
to have backed off that and now says it's not
death by lethal injection, just life in prison and just
for fun, he mixed in the Civil War. Moore wants
a special session of the Georgia Senate called to impeach
(12:52):
Fannie Willis because she indicted Trump with absolutely no irony
in his voice nor any self awareness. Majority Leader Gooch
has responded to that with, quote, we want to make
sure we come down, we look at this stuff deliberately,
and we do it in a mature way. You see.
Gooch opposes this special session idea not because it's an
(13:14):
abuse of the separation of powers, but because it would
require support from some Democrats. And Gooch opposes the impeachment
idea not because it's obstruction of justice, but because it
would require a two thirds vote and quote, they're simply
no way we'd have the numbers to do that. What
(13:36):
we are seeing from the Republicans in the Georgia State
Senate is an utter breakdown of any awareness that they
are there to serve the state constitution and its laws,
and the nation or anything in fact except the whims
of their political cult and the Moloch at its head.
We will exercise Trump from this country. The courts will
(13:59):
get him, or those in his party who are worse
than he is will get him, or the actuarial t
will get him. But I do not know how we
will be able to relieve this nation of the stain
of this madness in the hearts and minds of the
Republicans that Trump has infected. When I say I worry
for the safety of Georgia House Speaker Burns, because he's
(14:23):
bringing up separation of powers and how you can't defund
one Georgia District attorney, you'd have to defund them all,
and if somehow you could, you'd also wind up ending
the prosecution of murder and rape in Fulton County. I'm
not exaggerating. Burns has brought common sense to a party
where Gooch is a moderate and more represents the we're
(14:43):
in the mood for a lynching wing of the state GOP.
So as always, we come back to my contention that
democracy is still breathing, not because of our efforts to
preserve it, but because of the stupidity of those who
would destroy it. Andy Clyde is the Georgia Congressman who
sits on the Appropriations Committee, and he thinks he can
(15:06):
save his Lord and Master Trump by defunding with US
and Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith, even though the first
two are not using federal funds and the third is
perpetually funded by the nineteen eighty seven Act which established
his office. Now Congressman Clyde is himself being investigated. Our
(15:28):
friends at CREWE Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
have just filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional
Ethics because Andy Clyde is self dealing what looked like traditional, amoral, murderous,
run of the mill Republican worship of the thrill of
killing people with guns turns out to be worse than that.
(15:48):
In January, the Department of Justice approved stricter regulations on
stabilizing braces that allow pistols to be fired off the
shoulder like rifles, because God knows, we don't have enough
rifles in this country. They call these things pistol bracestively,
and they have factored in many mass shootings already, including
the one that claimed ten in a Boulder, Colorado grocery
(16:11):
store in twenty twenty one. Congressman Clyde naturally supports mass shootings,
specifically those that use pistol braces. He has introduced a
bill to eliminate most of the new restrictions on pistol braces.
He's introduced a Congressional resolution that would nullify the Department
of Justice rule about pistol braces. He's introduced an amendment
(16:33):
that would prevent ATF from spending any money to enforce
the rule. So whose pocket is Andy Clyde in his own?
Turns out Congressman Andy Clyde busily accusing Fannie Willis and
Alvin Bragg and Jacksmith of corruption and deceit, And this
that owns Clyde Armory, Inc. A company that sells firearms
(16:58):
that are equipped with pistol braces. Introducing legislation to law
his own pockets with money made from the blood of
mass shooting victims is not just wildly unethical, it may
in fact be illegal. But go on, Congressman, tell me
about the threat to the nation represented by Fannie Willis
(17:28):
also of interest here. Even by the slovenly ethical standards
of cable news, this would seem to be a no brainer.
You cannot be a cable news anchor while serving as
a media advisor to a three billion dollar international corporation
and flying on the founder's private jet and doing damage
control for him with other media outlets. Why MSNBC is
(17:53):
going to have to fire one of its primetime hosts.
Plus Wednesday at about two forty five pm Eastern, we
here hit a threshold, and I wanted to thank you
for it now and not wait till later. On February first,
we celebrated the first milestone of podcasts, the You Don't
Suck download milestone of an audience of one million in
(18:17):
one month. Yesterday we reached for the month of August
twenty twenty three, between downloads and verified YouTube plays, the
milestone of a total audience of three million in one month.
I thank you. We will finish up what you downloaded
today in a moment. That's next. This is countdown. This
(18:41):
is countdown with Keith Elberman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines,
some updates, some snarks, some predictions. Dateline Covington, Kentucky. The
good news is during the latest Mitch glitch, whatever it was,
(19:03):
that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was looking
at out on a horizon only he could see. It
seemed like it made him happy. The bad news is,
for the second time in about a month, McConnell has frozen.
And his handlers, who would all need new jobs if
he say, had to resign or retire or he went
(19:23):
into a permanent stupor or something. They just kept him
out there in front of the media and pretended everything
was fine and he was just having trouble hearing I
see some of my thoughts about what running for reelection
in twenty eight sex?
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Oh sure, did you hear the question senator running for
reelection in twenty twenty six?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
All right, I'm sorry you are wearing a new minute.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Anyway outside on.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Okay, Sadi also have a question, please speak up?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Most concerning that followed a twenty minute talk by McConnell
to the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce in which everything
seemed to be okay. Cincinnati TV station WLWT reports that
between the speech and the freeze, McConnell quote walked down
a few steps from the podium and caught himself as
if he were about to fall as he approached his chair.
(20:40):
If you are wondering about the subtext here. Kentucky's Republican
legislature passed a law taking from the governor there the
right to appoint a new senator of his own choosing
to an empty seat. Now it must be a senator
from the same party as the departed incumbent, who is
selected from a list supplied by that party. Politico reports
(21:01):
that asked about whether he would go along with that
new law or simply ignore it, appoint to Democrat and
take his chances in the courts, Kentucky's Democratic Governor, Andy
Basher twice refused to answer, and Dateline Washington prosecutors wanted
Judge Timothy Kelly to sentence Proud Boys leaders Enrique Tarrio
and Ethan Nordeen to thirty three and twenty seven years
(21:24):
in prison, respectively, yesterday after their convictions for seditious conspiracy.
As the time for sentencing came and went, Tario and
Nordeen were sentenced to nothing was postponed Judge Kelly had
a medical issue. Nordean will now be sentenced along with
other Proud Boys members on Friday. Tario will not be
(21:45):
sentenced until next Tuesday. And I know that sounds completely fishy,
but that's only because it is still ahead on countdown.
(22:08):
It may have been the day American television news jumped
the shark. Wow the first day and the shark was
in the Rubicon twenty six years ago. Now this weekend,
since we humiliated ourselves after the tragic death of Diana,
Princess of Wales. Coming up in Things I promise not
to tell first time for the daily roundup of the Misgrants,
(22:29):
Warns and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst
persons in the world lebrons. Holly Peterson of San Francisco.
She's an anti pickleball activist. I know that sounds ridiculous,
but this is serious stuff. The noise of that game,
puck puck, puck, puck, puck puck. The noise of that
(22:52):
game for hours on end is so maddening that some
anti pickleball activists in British Columbia started a hunger strike.
Here in New York, they turned the skating rink in
Central Park into like a twenty four court pickleball complex,
and that pock pock sound is annoying, though it's not
as bad as the roller disco they had here last
(23:14):
summer that played the same track every night. Oh it's
Donna summer must be seven fifty eight pm. But peterson
San Francisco eight bedroom home sits right on top of
the Presidio Wall playground there, and that's where they have
pickleball courts in San Francisco. And at that close distance
(23:34):
it is maddening, life altering, she says. Miss Peterson has
started a petition, and that's fine. I hear her almost literally.
But there's a twist here. The San Francisco Chronicle reports
that in that eight bedroom home that she is trying
to sell now for thirty six million dollars, Holly Peterson
has a built in pickleball court. Pickleball not lest g
(24:01):
be pickleball judged. The runner up Robert O'Neil, who his
living claiming to people that he killed Osama Bin Laden
and then going on Fox and then Newsmax and insulting
people as a commentator and tying everything that happens in
the world, from our stance against China to the use
of masks during the pandemic to how he killed Osama
bin Lada quote thank god it wasn't Delta flying us
(24:23):
when we killed Bin Laden unquote idiot so drunk he
fell asleep At a Texas hotel bar, a guard tried
to escort O'Neill to a room. He was arrested after
he allegedly punched the guard and twice called him the
N word. Asked for his statement by the New York Post,
O'Neil launched into a speech about how he fired the
shots that killed Osama bin Laden. But the winner Stephanie
(24:47):
Rule of MSNBC. Anybody remember when CNN fired Chris Cuomo
a year ago because he was secretly advising his brother,
the embattled governor of New York, and his boss was
also secretly advising the governor, and so was his boss's girlfriend,
and they were all soft pedaling CNN coverage of the
governor's scandals. Remember that MSNBC has a similar problem, and
(25:10):
the only reason it is not viewed as a bigger
problem is when Stephanie Rule did this, she was a
business reporter elsewhere at Bloomberg News. CNBC reports, and that's
kind of uncomfortable CNBC reporting about MSNBC. CNBC reports that
something unfortunate came up in a shareholder lawsuit against Kevin Plank,
(25:31):
the founder of under Armor, charging him with artificially inflating
the price of the stock and costing investors' money. When
Morgan Stanley had downgraded the company stock in twenty sixteen,
Stephanie Rule asked the founder, Plank, to send her company
private data that would contradict a report, and then she
(25:52):
advised that they should send that data to other media outlets.
And when the stock improved, Plank said he was saying
thank you to Stephanie Rule by arranging for her to
interview company spokesperson NBA star Steph Curry. Then she was
suddenly taking trips on Plank's private jet, and then he
established a private phone number so she could advise him
(26:14):
on media relations in private while she was supposedly covering
his company as a member of the media. Asked if
she was flying as a friend or as a reporter,
she answered, quote, I was flying on his plane as myself.
Stephanie Rule, I'm not really in a category one or
the other. Ethics here MSNBC and Stephanie Rule rightly covering
(26:36):
Clarence Thomas improperly taking free jet trips from people whose
cases he might adjudicate, and correctly pointing out the appearance
of a conflict of interest Meanwhile, Rule had taken her
own undisclosed free jet trips from people she covered and
might cover again, and serving as their media advisor. Is
it exactly the same thing, No, it is not. Is
(26:58):
it that serious? No it is not. Is it close
enough to merit firing her? Yeah, you can't do that, Stephanie.
I can be media and your media consultants simultaneously Rule
today's worst person in the world. Just ahead, there's the
(27:30):
old line about never going to see how sausages are made.
Then there's the only thing that's worse than that, the
day you realize that the place you work actually is
where the sausages are made. The coverage of the death
of Princess Diana twenty six years ago. This weekend Things
I promised not to tell next first time to feature
another dog in need. You can help. Every dog has
(27:52):
its day. Thomas is five months old, an ordinary white
and cream and black mutt. And they had to amputate
one leg in the back and two in the front
are broken, and the fourth one is mangled, and he
is lying. They're wagging his tail at the people taking
care of him. Bite wounds, possible violence at the hands
of humans found on train tracks and he's wagging his
(28:15):
tail at people who are taking care of him. Thomas
is on antibiotics and getting laser treatments for the pain,
and he was not supposed to make it. He's going
to make it. Our friends at Hounds and Pounds found him.
They're caring for him, and they are doing the fundraiser
at cudley dot com. And you can help by donating
or by finding him on my feed and retweeting him.
(28:36):
Look for Thomas at Cudley. Thomas. Thanks you, and I
thank you finally to our number one story on the
countdown and my favorite topic, me and things I promised
(28:56):
not to tell. The date on the death certificate was Sunday,
August thirty first, nineteen ninety seven, but because of the
time difference, the news was known here very late on
the night of Saturday, August thirtieth, nineteen ninety seven. It
was the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. And please
do not misunderstand me. I'm not equating anything that happened
(29:16):
to me around that time with what happened to her,
or what happened to those who loved her, or what
happened to those who simply admired her from Afar. But
in retrospect, I can see that Saturday night as a
demarcation point in the history of news in this country.
Three nights earlier, I had watched them pack the last
(29:37):
of my stuff into the van at my home in Southington, Connecticut,
where I had lived for five and a half years,
while I did ESPN's Sports Center. Great show, much of it,
great fun, a great partner, a great house, four bedrooms,
three thousand square feet. He did swimming pool house, fact system,
three hundred and fifty one thousand dollars. All that was great,
(29:58):
not really a great life. I was on my way
to a new life at MSNBC was a photo shoot
for Esquire. They dressed me up like Austin Powers. I
didn't get it then, I don't get it now. Then
an interview with TV Guide, and then suddenly an invitation
for my old friend and new boss, Phil Griffin to
come join him and his family for a long weekend
(30:20):
in the Hamptons. I had never been there. It was
not the kind of thing I did. It was long Island.
I was from Westchester. But they were willing to pay
and it was spectacular. Even though my accommodations consisted of
a converted garage, the bed and breakfast part of the
home of a woman who had had her own show
on Channel two in New York forty three years previously,
(30:44):
and whose walls were filled with momentos from it. I thought, briefly,
and with a shutter, that's what my walls are going
to look like in twenty forty if I live that long. Well,
that's not twenty forty yet, and I haven't lived that long.
But I'm happy to tell you there are dozens of
photos in art covering my walls, and only one of
them is a memento of an old TV show I did.
But the point was and is taken anyway. A nice
(31:08):
meal with the Griffins at their Hampton's full house rental
on Friday, A warm day spent at a pristine beach
on Saturday, pronounced good with kids by Phil's wife, and
then we went across the bay to the Hampton's home
of Jeff Zucker, then the head of the Today Show
and the de facto operational head of all of NBC News.
(31:30):
We dined on his balcony overlooking the water. We watched
the fireworks overlooking the water. And we were just having
a nightcap on this vast lawn of his, overlooking the water.
My memory tells me the lawn was approximately the size
of the field at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. And
there were huge lights hanging off the house, which seemed
(31:53):
nearly as strong as the lights at Dodger Stadium. And
then suddenly everybody's phone rang. Summer ended in three seconds.
There were still pagers in those days. Those went off too.
You could even hear phones ringing in the distance, creating
something akin to a strange buzzing concert. My God, Zucker shouted,
(32:15):
Princess Die is dead. Now. He and Phil Griffin began
to pace across that giant lawn. Another phone rang, and
Zucker now had one pinned to each ear. Standing some
distance away with Phil Griffin's wife, I noticed how quickly
Griffin and Zucker synced up. They were walking towards each other,
crossing each other's paths, then walking side by side, and
(32:37):
then veering off in opposite directions, as if there had
been a choreographer somewhere. Phil's wife and I were equally disgusted,
not so much at her husband and Zucker, but at
the circumstances of Diana's death. Forty eight hours earlier, the
interviewer from TV Guide had actually asked me what my
first questions would be for my hypothetical guests, Nelson Mandela
(33:01):
and Sean Penn. My abstract concepts of the news my
new career were about news I watched or listened to,
like PBS or NPR, the all news radio stations in
New York or Washington when the atmospheric conditions were right
in Bristol, Connecticut, and my favorite news related show, British
(33:22):
Prime Minister's Question Time. This was not what I heard
Phil Griffin and Jeff Zucker arranging in the wake of
Diana's death, throwing out large offers to self announced royal
experts and accident analysts and people who knew Doty Fayed
and even some of the photographers in the cars chasing
Diana's into the tunnel when it crashed, offering them large
(33:46):
sums of money to make themselves available exclusively to MSNBC
for the duration, and booking whole planes full of reservations
to send everybody from the Today Show to the funeral. Now, look,
I was thirty seven years old then, I already understood
these were the nestsary logistical moves of smart executives. Sad
(34:08):
and terrible things happened, and people still had to go
on and cover them. But there was something exceptionally callous
and cold about the choreograph dance. I was watching as
I said to Phil's wife, the tabloid media has been
chasing celebrities for years, and tonight they finally got one.
She nodded, but punched me in the shoulder and corrected me,
(34:30):
we finally got one. You are part of we now well.
That in turn made me think about quitting on the spot.
My agent was on the West coast. It was not
that late there, and soon I joined Griffin and Zucker.
Zucker was on his third different phone by then pacing
on that lovely lawn while telling my agent that maybe
we should take the ABC boss Bob Iger up on
(34:53):
his offer. He said, if I ever wanted to go
back to ESPN, I should just call. What do you think?
I asked my agent too soon. The next week was
all Diana leading up to the funeral Overnight Friday, anchored
on NBC and MSNBC I think by Katie Curic, who
actually told the audience that some random British woman was
in fact the model Cindy Crawford. She wasn't Cindy Crawford.
(35:18):
This passing, forgotten, trivial mistake seemed to me to be
emblematic of what Diana's death had done in an instant
to the business I was just getting into. Suddenly the
last few years, if television news had clarified themselves and
a timeline had emerged in my mind. I had gone
to work for CNN at the start of its second
year nineteen eighty one. Yes, we were already in color.
(35:41):
We used to have a weather report, a sportscast, a
business update, and a science and medicine story every hour.
But by nineteen ninety five, CNN and everybody else had
learned just find one story and pound it into the
ground twenty four to seven if you can, and dress
it up so that the viewer does not feel dirty
(36:02):
for having watched it. First story in nineteen ninety five
was the oj Simpson trial, and while it was nominally
a genuinely important story about a huge public figure, people
forget that a huge public figure sportscaster and actor murdering
his wife. That's not what they covered at the OJ
Simpson trial. They were covering every salacious detail. They were
(36:27):
covering literally every blood stain, they were covering interracial marriage,
they were pitting whites against blacks. They were sometimes I
saw it happen, making up bombshell stories. And all the
people now running MSNBC, which I was joining in its
second year, were those who had covered themselves in glory
(36:48):
or covered themselves in something at the OJ trial. It
is not coincidental that one media organization was discussed by
the judge Lance Edo for doing a fair job of
covering the OJ Simpson trial. Organization was ESPN SportsCenter. Anyway,
(37:10):
television news has never been the same. There was some
argument for twenty four to seven coverage of the Simpson
trial because it was a daily thing. Diana was dead,
and for a month it was treated as if it
had happened an hour earlier. Cable news by this point CNN,
CNN Headline, Fox and MSNBC now began to look for
(37:30):
twenty four to seven stories, or in their absence to
create them. The death of the Colorado little Girl, John
Benet Ramsey, every missing white woman in America, even the
Clinton Lewinsky story. I often did two live shows a
night about the Clinton Lewinsky story, even when there hadn't
been any actual news in a week or ten days.
(37:51):
If something happened, if some tidbit was reported by the
Washington Post, when all the news sites updated for the
only time all day at eleven pm Eastern, Yes, that's
how computers worked back then. We might stay on for
two or three extra hours to discuss this one sentence
in the revised Washington Post story, again and again and again.
(38:14):
We retrained TV audiences to fixate on one story at
a time, especially if that story involved somebody famous that
in turn magnified the celebrity element of all of American life.
It explains, in part, everything that has happened since Diana died,
from the Clinton story to the lionization of the generals
after nine to eleven, through the rise of Barack Obama,
(38:35):
and of course, the election of Trump. I did not
ultimately quit my new MSNBC show a month before it
was to premiere. The next morning, I took a bus
back to New York and vowed, too, as I've put
it in my diary, do a show that would expose
tabloidism and be upright at whatever cost to a tone
that I should be involved, however, distantly, in a business
(38:56):
that could, in essence kill three people, including the most
beloved woman in the world. Nice thought didn't happen. We
did the first show a month later, October one, nineteen
ninety seven. Phil Griffin was the producer. Half the time
was consumed by a roundtable of four celebrity journalists and gossips.
When I tried to draw them out on the media's
(39:16):
responsibility to the people in these stories, a voice talked
to me through my earpiece. It was Phil Griffin and
he was shouting forget that. Ask them who killed John
Vaney Ramsey. I've done all the damage I can do here.
(39:43):
Thank you for listening. Countdown has come to you from
our studios high atop the Sports Capsule Building in New York.
Here are the credits. Most of the music arrange produced
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, who
are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Phillip Shanel. Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections been arranged and
(40:05):
performed by No Horns allowed. The sports music is the
Olberman theme from ESPN two, and it was written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by
Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was my friend John Dean, and everything else was
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the
nine hundred and sixty seventh day since Donald Trump's first
(40:27):
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Convict him now while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is Tuesday. I don't take a lot of time off.
This is like the two hundred and eighty third edition
in thirteen months and still this Labor Day weekend. It'll
be bulletins as the news warrants till the next one,
(40:51):
whenever it is. I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Luck ride the st food talk on our slim f
(41:32):
bat Trapton for your drunken le sa diner. Come dinso
been down, feed basting mood and take gott avant and
(41:53):
spell din Broyd Bold sometime.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Freely don't can sip countdown with Keith Olderman is a
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