April 4, 2023 • 48 mins
EPISODE 169: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
I EXPECT TO BE UPDATING THIS EDITION IN LATE AFTERNOON
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump leaks details of the 34-count indictment and tries to blame D.A. Bragg for the leak, but inadvertently confesses by screwing up the number. Anyhow, ALL the counts are felonies, not just one. The judge also rules against video cameras during the arraignment, though still photographers can come in to do a "spray" before the action start, and ONE video camera will be permitted in the hallway. No holding cell, no handcuffs, no mugshot - unless there is a mugshot. The Trumpers were demanding one while the Trump Lawyers were demanding the opposite.
And again, the REAL threat to Trump comes out of Washington where the Jack Smith Grand Jury will now hear from a bunch of Secret Service agents about the classified documents Trump stole and stashed at Mar-a-Lago, maybe as early as Friday. And while Sean Hannity tries to shush him, Trump not only confesses he did what the latest reports accused him of (rifling through the boxes and keeping the secret documents he wanted to keep) he even simplifies the motive we've all been kept up at night worrying about. He notes with the gleam of avarice, "They ended up paying Nixon 18 million for what HE had!"
B-Block (16:26) It is 14 years to the day since my mother Marie passed away. She was not only the baseball fan in the family; she was one of the most prominent baseball fans in the country, all because of one bad throw by Chuck Knoblauch in 2000. Plus: advice learned from bitter experience about why the loss of a parent can hit you twice: you are remembering the very first fear you had as a child. Marie Olbermann, In Memoriam.
C-Block (34:35) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Cuda, in the South Los Angeles pound for TWO YEARS and finally cracking up. (35:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: CNN and MSNBC did not show Trump in a car, then Trump in a plane, then Trump in another car, for three hours yesterday just because it was a comparatively shiny object. They're both trying to cozy up to Trump viewers, just in case they have to go Hard Right to protect their owners. As crazy as it sounds, it's happened before: let me recount for you the saga of the time MSNBC tried to go further fascist than Fox and hired this psycho Michael Savage to host a TV show, at the direct orders of the president of NBC.
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. The
thirty four counts are reportedly all felonies. Each is for
(00:26):
falsifying business records. Each was elevated from a misdemeanor because
of an underlying or second crime. Almost certainly the second
crime is the payoff to Stormy Daniels. He will not
have a mugshot taken. We believe he will not have
to face video cameras inside the courtroom, but there will
be one allowed in the hallway outside the courtroom. Still
(00:47):
photographers will be allowed in briefly to the courtroom, and
if you have ever jockeyed for position with the still
photographers of New York, you know already they will have
to be brought in early for an intensive course of
instruction on what the word briefly means. He will not
speak until he returns to Florida, at least that is
the prayer of his attorneys. He will not be kept
(01:09):
in a cell at any point. He will not be handcuffed,
because the only reason they handcuffed defendants is if they
pose a flight risk. And as we know, he cannot
walk down a flight of stairs or steps, let alone run,
and all of these details, except Judge Marshan's rulings about cameras,
were in the Yahoo News story by Michael Isikoff, which
(01:30):
dropped weight last night, and in that story they came
from We can be certain Trump himself, because minutes after Issakoff,
who was the central reporter in the Monica Lewinsky story
just a quarter of a century ago, filed his piece,
Trump went on to social media and wrote, quote, Wow,
District Attorney Bragg just illegally leaked the various points and
(01:51):
complete information on the pathetic indictment against me. I know
the reporter, and so unfortunately does he This means he
must be immediately indicted unquote, which of course it does
not mean in the slightest. Trump went on to insist,
if he wants to really clean up his reputation, he
will do the honorable thing and as district attorney, indict himself,
(02:16):
which is as embarrassingly stupid an idea as one can suggest.
When that post didn't make it all go away, Trump
wrote again, and here is where he inadvertently confessed, quote
da Bragg just illegally leaked the thirty three points of indictment.
There are no changes or surprises from those he leaked
(02:37):
days ago. Unquote. The Issikov story says thirty four indictments.
The previous CNN story said thirty four. Trump is saying
thirty three, which identifies him as the source, because what
reporter would change the number from thirty four to thirty three.
And if the numbers somehow really were thirty three and
Bragg somehow really were the leaker, Trump has just said
(03:01):
Bragg got the number of his own indictments wrong. Trump
leaked it in a last desperate attempt to get Bragg
to indict himself, or more realistically, to make Trump himself
look as he has spent his entire life trying to
look like a martyr. Judge Marsham's ruling late last night
(03:23):
acceded to the demand from Trump's lawyers to bar video
cameras from the courtroom for the arrangement because they would
quote create a circus like atmosphere, which is curious since
that is a description of every minute of Trump's life
as well. His lawyers also moved to keep the mug
shot from the public, which seems to contradict every minute
(03:44):
of Trump's life as well. The still photographers present for
what is called a spray, you take your pictures, and
then you get out before you hear anything that actually happens.
Seems an odd compromise. Now, if anybody is certain on
the mug shot thing, that person is lying to you.
Yahoo reported there will not be one time magazine reported
(04:04):
there would, though one of his Toady's Hogan Gidley insisted
yes he would pose for one end quote, it will
be the most manly, most masculine, most handsome mug shot
of all time. I can say that definitely before having
even seen it. And then Gidley insisted he was joking.
And we all know there is one person who will
never believe he is joking. And Trump has been roundly
(04:27):
advised to take a mug shot and turn it into
a campaign ad and T shirts and other things he
can make lots of money off of. And in the
early winter for hyperbolic comment of the week, if not
the year, somebody said a Trump mugshot would become the
most famous photograph of the twenty first century. And there
is no reason to believe the court would make him
(04:48):
take off his umpa lumpa makeup, nor wear his hair
like a normal person. Yet now we will be denied
the pleasure of to quote the song the Rough Cut Tuesday,
(05:15):
Thank you, Nancy Faust. There is something of a schedule
for today. At two fifteen, Trump's arraignment is scheduled to
begin at one hundred Center Street in Manhattan. By two
forty five at the latest. If it starts on time,
even with thirty four counts to go through, it will
be over two forty six. Then Trump leaves flies to
Florida to give his I Am not a Crook speech
(05:38):
Tomorrow night. Sometime between two forty five and three thirty,
the full indictment will be released to the public per
the court order. At three thirty, District Attorney Bragg will
hold a news conference, and that'll be a doozy up
at the level of the mister Simpson failed to turn
himself in press conference from California in ninety four, unaddressed, undecided,
(05:59):
but clearly not off the table. The story out of
Sunday's Daily Mail in England that Trump's lawyers were expecting
Judge Marshawn to put some sort of gag order in place.
The far right spent much more time talking about this
than did the mainstream media. Yesterday, Trump lawyer Elina Habba
made the unanswerably stupid observation that if there is a
(06:19):
gag order quote, you have to remember, that's putting a
gag order on a candidate for presidency so that when
he is then in a debate, he is unable to
answer questions that he needs to answer, which of course
completely ignores the opportunity Trump would then be given to
make that cute little buttoning my lips gesture with his
thumb and four finger. Custom in New York State seems
(06:40):
to be to rarely impose gag orders, but they could
come from anywhere. The judge can issue one himself, or
either set of attorneys can request one, and then the
judge would rule. There seemed to be a consensus building
late Monday that far more likely than a gag order
would be Judge Marshawn putting Trump's threats about death and
destruction and the menacing photo of Trump swinging the baseball
(07:03):
bat to the record in some way admonishing Trump for them,
reminding him of the New York laws against obstruction of
governmental administration, and giving Trump the opportunity to control himself
for the first time in his life. Marshawn would then
release a set of ground rules that would put Trump,
all of his defense lawyers, and for that matter, Da
(07:24):
Bragg and his staff on notice as to what they
could and could not say in public. The sword of
damocles hanging over them would be obvious. If you violate
the guidelines, we move to the gag order, or maybe
directly to charges under the governmental obstruction laws. Present to
hear any such warnings will be yet another Trump attorney.
(07:46):
He's hired another new one. I'll repeat my demand, my
plea that they wear numbered ear tags like cows. This
one is a curious choice, to say the least. His
name is Todd Blanche. He is a white collar crime
expert and prosecutor, formerly with the Federal Secutor's Office in
New York, not the Manhattan Day's Office. He resigned as
(08:08):
a partner at his private firm to explore the wonderful
chance for quick promotion in the jet sitting world of
Team Trump. Blanche currently represents trump all purpose annoyance Boris Epstein.
But more curiously, Blanche was the lawyer for Trump's free
Russian connected campaign manager, Paul Manafort. He was the lawyer
(08:29):
when he and Manafort lost on charges of mortgage fraud
and other felonies in twenty nineteen, crimes for which Trump
ultimately pardoned Manafort. Blanche was also the attorney for Igor Freuman,
the Russian born buddy of Rudy Giuliani. Again, he was
the attorney for Freuman when Frewman pleaded guilty to soliciting
political contributions from a foreign donor, and he was sentenced
(08:52):
to a year and a day in prison. Quite a
track record. Quote Todd is an excellent lawyer, said one
of Trump's other lawyers. Nobody's really sure which one he
or she did not add, even though he seems to
lose all the time. And while all of this kabuki
theater unfolds in New York today, the recent trend continues,
(09:13):
the more important stuff, representing the far greater threat to Trump,
continues to unfold in Washington. There this Friday, as reported
by of all organizations Fox quote news unquote, the Office
of Special Counsel Jack Smith will bring several United States
Secret Service agents in front of Smith's grand jury investigating
(09:34):
Trump and quiz them about the stolen classified documents at Marilago.
Already yesterday came the story of the New Paper trail
Smith had cobbled together from the texts and emails of
Trump assistant Molly Michael and Walt caught on tape Nawada.
Fox left a little wiggle room on the timing, saying
the testimony was expected Friday. ABC News reported it would
(09:58):
come in the next few weeks, but the idea that
when Secret Service agents would finally be called to testify
against Trump, it'd be about the documents and not what
happened on January sixth, and that it could possibly occur.
This rapidly tells you all you need to know about
where Jack Smith is at and how quickly he is
(10:19):
approaching the finish line. And it continues. Smith's best witness,
though he is not yet on the record, is, of course,
Trump himself. You doubtless saw the clip of Trump with Hannity.
As Hannity scoffed at the Washington Post report that Trump
lied to the authorities and withheld boxes of classified documents,
had the boxes moved around, opened them, rifled through them himself,
(10:43):
and pulled out items he wanted to keep. Trump decided
to blow up Hannity's attempt at a cover up. I
would have the right to do that, Trump said indignantly.
But I know you, Hannity said, trying to steer Trump away.
I don't think you would do it. Trump would not
be steered. I would do that. Trump said, all right,
(11:03):
let me move on, said Hannity desperately. I have the
right to take stuff. You know. They ended up paying
Nixon I think it was eighteen million for what he had,
And suddenly the whole nightmarish question of Trump's complicated evil
motives for stealing the record of another nation's defensive strategy
and another nation's nuclear capabilities became clear and precise and
(11:28):
so trumpish that it has to be continued on to
the next Trump. They ended up paying Nixon eighteen million
for what he had. Cheesy, greedy, little bastard. Obviously, all
(11:57):
this stuff will be out of date by late afternoon,
So it is my intention to update this edition of
this podcast with the full details of what happens, and
especially what's in the indictment and what gag rules or
gags suggestions will be put into place, if any. I'll
do that presumably before sunset. Check your inboxes and notifications
and whatever else happens when we hit publish. Also, of note,
(12:19):
here the ratings for the sixty Minutes edition, in which
Leslie Stall might as well not have done any research
at all and certainly did not seem to really comprehend
who Marjorie Barney Rubble really was, earned comparatively lousy ratings.
The Live plus DBR rating of over eight million viewers,
down by about a third from what Sixty Minutes did
the previous week. The live only viewers those who actually
(12:41):
watched as it happened Sunday night six point six six million.
And on the subject of TV, it was more than
just the attempt to fill time with moving pictures of
ever exciting highway traffic. The wall to wall coverage of
Trump in a car, then in a plane, then another
car on the cable networks was more than just showing
(13:01):
shiny objects. CNN in particular, is trying to cozy up
to the Trump audience. I have seen this before firsthand,
when executives at MSNBC tried to move to the right
of Fox. They hired a psycho named Michael Savage to
be the host. They paid the price. Things I promised
not to tell coming up and next. A sad anniversary
(13:24):
here April fourth, the day my mother died. That's next.
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Alberman, a
little different format today because you look up one day
(13:45):
and it turns out it's the anniversary of your mother passing,
and you do the math and it's fourteen years. My
mother died right after my fiftieth birthday. Fifty years and
she's gone nearly a third as long as she and
I were both here together. It is startling. I find
(14:05):
I've been bringing my mom up a lot these last
few years, mostly because any of my friends, my contemporaries
who have not yet lost both parents are sadly doing
so now. And there's something I learned when my mom
died on April fourth, two thousand and nine, and then
my dad died on March thirteenth, two ten. And if
you've gone through this lately or even not lately, and
(14:28):
it still hurts, this might help. If you have yet
to go through it, write this down somewhere. First of all,
you are never too old to be an orphan. Do
not be shocked if it feels like you are an orphan. Secondly,
if you think you have come to terms with the
loss of a parent and things are getting better inside,
(14:48):
utilize my experience In my case, neither death was a surprise.
I was prepared for both, and I leveled off from
the immediate grief surprisingly quickly, and then a week or
so later. In each case, I collapsed weeping, not when
it happened, but like ten days later. And finally, with
(15:10):
a little introspection, I recalled something that I have since
told a hundred people, and they've all literally said, yeah,
that's it. When you are a kid, unless you have
suffered direct trauma, death, physical harm, abuse, the first day
you actually understand that this is not the garden of Eden.
(15:32):
That day is when you put two and two together
and you realize that your parents are going to die,
and that that could happen at any time. It is
your original fear. It is burned into a part of
your brain that had until that moment nothing else in it.
And when it finally happens in real life, whether you
(15:52):
are six or you are sixty, you suffer the pain
of the event as you interpret it in real time,
hopefully as an adult, and then you also suffer the
pain that you feared first when you were four or
five or six and you realize someday it would happen.
That fear has sat untouched and unrelieved, and it is
as bad as you thought it was going to be
(16:13):
that childhood day so many years ago. And if you
can recognize that, it should ease a little bit, as
it did for me. Of course, you're hurting again. You
have lost mom or dad, and separately, six year old
you has lost mom or dad. Realize that, and the
(16:34):
childhood pain will pass, or it will lessen, or it
will just merge with the pain of today, and you
can get about the business of healing. So back to
my mom. My childhood fear was oddly a little easier
because the night before I started the fourth grade. I
swear this is true, and this makes me seven and
a half years old. I was sitting on my mom's
(16:56):
bed at the Dobbs Ferry Hospital north of New York City.
She had phlebitis and one leg was swollen to what
seemed to me to be the size of Manitoba in Canada.
And she said, and you will immediately recognize where I
get my sense of drama from Keith. This could be
the last time you see me alive. And I went,
(17:21):
I don't think so. And then in the car on
the way home, my dad reassured me, I don't think
so it's serious. I'm not going to kid if people
do die from this, she's not going to. The swelling
is like half of what it was yesterday. The doctors
told me she'll be home tomorrow or the day after.
You know her, she kind of enjoys people worrying about her,
(17:42):
and why not, She's your mom. Worry about her. She'll
love it, and she loved it. The damnedest thing was
that was in nineteen sixty six. Mom outlived her warning
to me by nearly forty three years. But when she died,
she died in Dobb's Ferry Hospital, the same place where
(18:05):
she made her warning. Of course, it was a different century.
This remembrance is not going to be her medical history,
though lord knows Mom was the world's foremost authority on
her own health. Nor is it going to consist of
me telling you she was the proverbial saint, although I
can hear her saying, go ahead, I'm not going to
disagree with you. Who's going to contradict you. It is
not going to be a full biography, Suffice to say
(18:27):
she was a gifted preschool teacher and a legendary authority
on opera and somewhere. She remains genuinely disappointed that I
did not get Placido Domingo to sing at her memorial service.
Instead of the full medical history, I thought that it
was best to focus on something for which she became
and remained pretty famous, literally until the day she died.
(18:49):
My mother was one of the best known baseball fans
in this country. She attended Yankees games from nineteen thirty
four through two thousand and four, and she watched or
listened to everyone that she did not go to up
until the last year of her life. My guess is
(19:09):
she went to at least fifteen hundred Yankee games, most
of them in Box forty seven E in the Yankee
Stadium that preceded the current one, and this was the effect.
In March of twenty ten, the Mets manager Jerry Manuel
came over to me before his team's exhibition game against
the Detroit Tigers in Lakeland, Florida, and he asked me,
(19:32):
how's your mother? And he was the fifth or sixth
active baseball figure to do so in that month. While
I was at spring training. They averaged at least one
or two a month baseball figures asking about how my
mom was for about fourteen years. One day I popped
out into the Yankees dugout before a playoff game. I'm
(19:55):
guessing this is two thousand and five, and there was
a lighter of the Yankees talking to two other pitchers,
Scott Procter and the future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson
and Al Sudden. He stopped and looked at me and said,
what did you hear me telling them about your mother?
Sure enough, I had interrupted him as he told Randy
Johnson and Scott Proctor the Chuck Knoblock story, which I
(20:18):
will tell you in a moment. But after that game
ended and the Yankees were eliminated from the playoffs. In
that game, I went into the clubhouse to wish my
friends among the players a good offseason, and Randy Johnson
shook my head and he got his a little suitcase
on wheels and he left the clubhouse. It's guy's like
eight feet tall and a little tiny suitcase on wheels,
and it looked adorable. Anyway. About ninety seconds later that
(20:39):
Randy Johnson comes back into the clubhouse and comes over
to me. I'm glad you're still here. I forgot to
tell you a story about your mother is wonderful and
it's very warm. It made my day. Thanks for sharing it.
Have a good winter. It was the effect that my
mother had on people. And four years later, I guess,
not six hours before Mom died, a New York Yankees
(21:01):
executive made reference to that which had made Mom famous
in the ballpark the day she died. And trust me,
Mom loved being famous in the ballparks. And finally, the story,
which I have not told you, not in full, my
mother's fame was achieved in the way it was on
(21:22):
June seventeenth, two thousand, when the sudden and growing inability
of the ill fortuned Yankees second baseman Chuck Nablock to
make any kind of successful throw easy or hard to
first base culminated in him picking up a squib off
the bat of Greg Norton of the Chicago White Sots
and throwing it not back towards first base, but instead
(21:44):
off the roof of the Yankees dugout, where it somehow
picked up a little reverse English and then smacked my
mother right in the bridge of her glasses as she
sat a couple of rows back of the dugout. Chuck
Nablock was in the middle of losing his beloved father
at that time, and though I thought I got what
that meant to him, I didn't really understand it until
(22:06):
the days I began to write this, and I struggled
to find the right keys, let alone the right words.
In any event, for those three days in the year
two thousand, Mom was on one or both of the
covers of the New York Post and the New York
Daily News and New York Newsday. She was somewhere in
(22:26):
almost every newspaper in America. That is not hyperbole, it
is literal fact. And all this happened while I was
the host of the Baseball Game of the Week for Fox,
literally sitting in a studio in Los Angeles, watching a
bank of monitors with a different game on every monitor,
and recognizing instantly what must have happened, based on a
(22:47):
lifetime of knowing. The camera angles in Yankee Stadium, the
ballpark in which I grew up. I said, maybe two,
matter of factly, that probably hit my mother. The crew laughed,
and I repeat it, that probably hit my mother more laughs.
Then the next shot was of an older woman being
(23:08):
led up the aisle towards an AID station, and it
was my mother. End of laughter. So moments later, when
the announcers Joe Buck and Tim McCarver through to me
for a Fox game break, I narrated that exact highlight,
and I said that Chuck now blocks throwing problems had
now gotten personal, that he had now hit my mother.
Her glasses are broken, Joe and Tim, and she's going home.
(23:30):
But I've just spoken to her. She's okay, Joe, Tim.
There was silence from their booth at Dodger Stadium. Finally
Tim McCarver said, huh, is that I'm speechless? Is that
one of Keith's jokes? Keith, are you still there? Was
that really your mother? I'm here, Tim? My goodness? Is Shell?
What are the odds against Tim? She's been going to
(23:51):
Yankee games since nineteen thirty four and nothing bad's ever
happened to her. I'd say the odds are pretty good.
But is she She's fine, She'll be back in that
same seat tomorrow. She's a gamer. Also, she asked me
to tell you she likes you better now that you're
with the Yankees and the Mets. After that, I never
saw Tim McCarver again without him asking how my mother
was In fact, he called me after his game ended
(24:12):
to make sure she was okay that day. The next week,
Mom and I pre taped an interview for the pregame show.
I was in our LA studios and Mom was in
my childhood home. I concluded the interview by noting my
status as a memorabilia collector, and I asked Mom if
she would give me the baseball with which she was hit.
(24:34):
She said I could bid on it like anybody else.
For the rest of that season of two thousand, anytime
Fox broadcast a game from Yankee Stadium, Mom got on TV.
They gave her a Fox hat to make her easier
to spot in the crowd. We even talked about her
during the World Series broadcasts that fall, during which began
the ritual that continues even to this day, fourteen years
(24:57):
after her death. Twenty three years after this happened. The
ritual continues players players who were at the game, players
who only heard about the game, players of all kind,
players who were not born when it happened. They asked
me about my mom and the Chuck Knoblock throw. Since
(25:18):
the day had happened, Chuck Nablock himself has been mortified
by it. I was told not long after that he
was really worried that I thought he had done it deliberately.
As I pointed out to him some years later when
we finally got to talk about it, if there was
one thing we could know for sure was that if
he had been aiming for my mom, he would have
(25:39):
missed her. Chuck laughed. I said to him, you made
her famous. She loved it. She couldn't have been happier
if they had let her pinch. Hint for you. It
was my mother who was the fan in our family.
My dad liked the game enough, but the Yankees traded
his favorite player, and on his deathbed a year later,
(26:01):
he was still mad at them for doing that. This
happened late in nineteen forty eight. The player's name was
Steve Suchok. My dad's next favorite player was George Sternweis.
The Yankees traded him in nineteen fifty. This led my
father to say to me, yeah, you're a Yankee fan.
Now watch out, they're going to betray you eventually, like
(26:22):
they'd betrayed me. Then they did. So. Dad wasn't much
of a fan, and it was mom who introduced me
to baseball, and in my teenaged years when we went
nearly every day. It was she who trundled me and
my sister to the ballparks. It was on her TV
that I came to love the sport, and by her
side that I began to understand it. And sitting next
(26:43):
to her, that's when I began to understand that I
was not going to be any damn good playing baseball,
and if I wanted in, maybe i'd better try talking
about it. Thus was born a career. Obviously, at least
half of the ham in me comes from her. She
was an aspiring ballerina, and when I keep talking and
talking for good or for ill, that's pretty much all her.
(27:05):
What I do not have evidence of are the thousand
hours she spent driving me to and from school so
I could work on the newspaper, or announce the hockey game,
or get to Yankee Stadium early to take photographs of
the players, to meet a few of them, to interview
them when I was a teenager. In retrospect, it's obvious
she was, to adapt a phrase a media mom. She
(27:30):
was taken by the proverbial sudden illness in the best
of senses. She had no apparent symptoms until two weeks
before she died. She was not severely afflicted until ten
days before she died. The treatment she received lessened her pain,
and she never awakened and thus never had to hear
nor did any of us have to say to her, Mom,
(27:50):
you have terminal cancer. I'm not going to give you
the harangue about how you need to go see your doctor,
because not feeling so bad does not mean you are
not sick, though you might want to keep that in mind.
I do have one other story about and baseball that
I loved telling, and this is the way to finish
this reminiscence on this anniversary. It's about George Steinbrenner. In
(28:12):
two thousand, the year Mom got hit by the throw,
I had the privilege of being the reporter for Fox
as the Commissioner Baseball presented the Yankees with their third
straight World Championship trophy after they beat the Mets in
the World Series. George Steinbrenner, who I had known since
nineteen seventy three and who had inexplicably become the kind
of friend you greet with a double handshake or a hug,
(28:33):
was standing next to me as we waited for an
on field interview to end, and the presentation of the
award to begin, and Steinbrenner for that year, for some reason,
was incredibly emotional. Is your mother here to see this?
He said? And I said, George, where it's Shay Stadium.
She had to drive here for two seasons in nineteen
(28:54):
seventy four, in nineteen seventy five when you were refurbishing
Yankee Stadium. She hates this place more than you do.
She told me she wouldn't have come here even if
Letter play third base. George's mouth shook and tears welled
in his eyes, and finally he blurted out, I love
(29:15):
her even more now. Mom had that kind of effect
on people. I'll be back with things I promised not
to tell after this. Still ahead on countdown. Hey, I
don't know if you heard about this, but Trump came
(29:35):
back into town yesterday like flew in for this indictment
court hearing. Was that on TV or anything? Oh my god,
here we go again once again. MSNBC and CNN are
both tipping their hands about their readiness to go right
wing if necessary to protect their money. I know what
I'm seeing because I was there the last time they
(29:57):
tried this. But Michael savage story coming up in Things
I Promised Not to Tell first, in each of the Countdown,
we feature a dog in need you can help. Every
dog has its day to South La and Kuda, a big,
happy guy even though he spent two of his three
years on this earth in that shelter, one of the
loudest and most crowded in this country. Standard tongue, hanging out,
(30:21):
happy big boy. But Kudah seems finally to have given up.
He's suddenly become so stressed he's spinning around in his cage.
We need to get him out of there with a
home and adopter or foster or our pledges so a
rescue will pull him and save him. Look for Kuda
on my Twitter feeds. Your retweet can also help him.
I thank you, and Kuda thanks you. Finally to the
(30:53):
number one story on the Countdown on my favorite topic,
me and Things I Promised not to Tell, And I've
been warning you about CNN and Chris Lick to the
former Joe Scarborough hitman who when we work together at MSNBC,
I used to think eight pacede. He was hired to
run CNN by its new right wing owners in orders
to neutralize it a maga broke into Nancy Pelosi's home,
(31:16):
nearly killed her husband, planned to hold her husband hostage
until she told the truth. CNN put on the Kentucky
fascist Congressman James Comer, who explained people and both parties
should tone down the rhetoric. Yesterday, Trump flies from Florida
to New York, in fact, to go to his nightmarishly
decorated crap shack a block from my back door, and
(31:38):
the flight takeoff and the landing and the motorcade are
covered live on CNN and MSNBC like Trump was dead. Frankly,
and I use that analogy because I was flashed back
to June fifth, two thousand and four. The then new
president of MSNBC has us all in there on a
Saturday because it's the sixtieth anniversary of D Day, the
(32:00):
Norman d Invasion, and he is trying to make a
name for himself. This guy Rick Kaplan is gonna kill it.
He sent me to interview Yogi Barra about being on
one of the landing crafts at Normandy, and he's got
Tom Brokaw live on Omaha Beach with somebody, and all
of us anchors are in there covering the breaking news
of something that happened sixty years earlier. And we're in
(32:22):
the meeting, the last meeting before we go on the
air in the afternoon, and Kaplan is just starting to
warm up and to yell at us for no reason,
which was his one play, when somebody leans in through
the door to the meeting room and says, hey, Ronald
Reagan just died, and Kaplan tries to pretend that nothing
has changed, and he goes on to explaining who we're
(32:44):
going to go live to Brokaw. We go live to
Brokaw while there's still some light in Normandy, he said,
and I raised my hand and I say, Rick, we
kind of gotta all go all Reagan, you know, I mean,
he was the president. And Kaplan starts arguing the point
with me, and the room just stares at him. It's
a new network, a living ex president isn't living anymore.
(33:11):
And then he says, how about half an hour of
Reagan and then half an hour of d Day, and
then then a half an hour of Reagan. And the
room now goes silent, finally crestfallen. And this has taken
five or ten minutes. He says, okay, oh, Reagan and
the next thing I know, I'm anchoring chopper coverage of
(33:31):
Ronald Reagan's dead body being driven through southern California. And
that made sense. Yesterday Trump in a car, We're actually
Trump in a car, then trumping a plane, then Trump
in another car. No traffic accidents, no protests, no crowds,
no impact on New York City at all, no actual
(33:52):
news out of that clown until the next day, and
you are looking live at the FDR drive Christ I'll
repeat my point. This is no boating accident. The reason
Glickt is in charge of CNN is virtually every mainstream
media organization in this country has already had the meeting
(34:13):
they had at CNN. Let's discuss how if America goes
fully fascist in twenty twenty five or earlier, we can
still protect this company's profits. I say this not merely
because I know most of the people running the mainstream
media organizations, but because these conversations have already happened, and
they happened long ago, largely because the first not white
(34:37):
guy president was elected just seven years and two months
after nine eleven. We forget how seriously and terrifyingly we
already have teetered on the edge of full fledged fascism
here after the attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon nine to eleven happened between my two ten
years at MSNBC, but I returned a year and a
(34:57):
half after it happened, and by then the place I
went back to work had already hired a sort of
Alex Jones pro type radio host named Michael Savage, and
it was slowly trying to build him into the host
of a weeknight show. Savage was a homophobe plus an
equal opportunity bigot. His real name was Michael Weener, and
(35:18):
all you need to know about him is that he
was a Wiener who pretended he was a Savage. What
happened to him when they tried to stick him into
primetime and what he said that led to his firing
and the blowing up of the let's out Fox Fox
News plan of the then NBC chairman and CEO, Bob Wright,
is a great story I will relish telling you in
a moment, but first a little context to this. MSNBC
(35:42):
and Fox Nudes launched within weeks of each other in
nineteen ninety six, and for a while, in fact, until
I left MSNBC in December nineteen ninety eight. We were
ahead of Fox in many time periods, though CNN crushed
us both. Then Fox ascended, then came nine to eleven,
and then Bob Wright thought he saw his opportunity. All
(36:04):
you need to know about him is that after he
left the position of running NBC, he became a contributor
to Fox Business. At MSNBC, right gave Oliver North his
own show and Laura Ingram her own show. He had
given a program to Alan Keyes, a Republican who somehow
managed to lose Senate races in two different states and
(36:26):
washed out three different times in Republican presidential primaries. His
MSNBC show consisted of him giving speeches. Though he was
alone in a studio with no audience. Alan Keys could
not break himself up his habit of spraying the room
with his eyes. The viewer at home would see him
looking off camera to his left, then looking at the camera,
(36:48):
then looking off camera to the right. He went back
and forth like a sprinkler. I remember once looking at
him and yelling at the TV, Hey, all over here,
I'm the one in the middle. Bob Wright also brought
in Joe Scarborough long before Scarborough knew how to disguise
much of his fascism. Bob Wright fired Phil Donahue, although
to be fair, that was really more about money than
(37:09):
it was about politics. But he replaced Donna Hue's show
with what was supposed to be a high speed, slightly
right leaning newscast produced by a Fox News refugee. It
was called Countdown with Sam Donaldson, and needless to say,
the right leaning idea went horribly horribly wrong after they
changed it to Countdown with Keith Olberman. MSNBC's lineup was
(37:34):
remarkably unstable at that time. I had hosted its eight
pm show from October first, nineteen ninety seven, through the
beginning of December nineteen ninety eight, and then I left
to go back to sports and baseball at Fox. Then
the eight pm hour was hosted by John Hockenberry for
three months, then Ali North got his shot a month later.
(37:54):
They started having rotating liberals co host with Ali North.
In April nineteen ninety nine, it became North and Paul Begala.
That was five shows in five months. In May they
cut North and Begala to half an hour. In June
they canceled them and replaced them with a half hour
and Curry documentary. In early two thousand, Curry was expanded
to an hour, but then in May Curry was replaced
(38:17):
by Lorie Doo. In August two thousand, they started their
version of Dateline called MSNBC Investigates. In September, they cut
that show to four days a week and launched a
vanished white Woman of the Week show actually called Missing
Persons with Diane Diamond, which they canceled after one episode,
and then they put MSNBC Investigates back on. Then they
(38:39):
canceled that a month later to make room for a
newscast with Forrest Sawyer. Then after the uncertainty of the
two thousand election, they refocused that as Decision two thousand
Worth Forrest Sawyer. In January two thousand and one, they
canceled Forrest Sawyer and put MSNBC Investigates back on for
the third different time. Then in July they moved the
News with Brian Williams from nine pm to eight pm.
Then the next September they moved Brian to CNBC and
(39:02):
instead launched Phil Donahue show in the eight pm MSNBC slot.
Then in March two thousand and three day off Donahue.
They started Countdown originally with Lester Holt, Pat Buchanan and
Bill Press. Then after the war started and there wasn't
anything to count Down two anymore, they hired me to
host Operation Iraqi Freedom, and after one week of that show,
(39:23):
they launched Countdown with Keith ol Ryman. That's twenty different
shows or four matsy in four years and four months.
So Bob Wright's next primetime ideas, and you gotta give
him this much. He had a lot of primetime ideas
and virtually all of them made it onto TV. His
next set of ideas was a primetime lineup of me
(39:43):
doing the news at eight, then Scarborough at nine, then
Jesse Ventura at ten, and then this Michael Savage character.
They began this plot by giving Savage his own show
an hour every Saturday afternoon on March eighth, two thousand
and three. Everybody agreed it was crap. On radio, Savage
(40:05):
sounded kind of threatening, I guess, a kind of red
meat fascist. But on TV taking calls from viewers in
a tiny, little cramp looking studio somewhere in the Bay Area,
he looked small and whiny and cavetchy, and he was
wearing a bad toupee and a suit that was far
worse than that. When I was negotiating my return to
(40:28):
MSNBC in two thousand and three, I got the executive
in charge of Primetime to put it in my contract
that Michael Savage would never appear on my newscast in
any form unless it was an obituary, open and shut.
But then on Friday, April twenty fifth, two thousand and three,
I came into work. We were about a month into
the show, and there in the computer rundown of my
(40:48):
newscast was a prerecorded Michael Savage commentary. As soon as
he saw I was in the office, the executive protucer
they had hired from Fox, a cross eyed chainsmoker named
Dennis Murray, pushed his way into my office and said,
we have to run a Michael Savage commentary. There's also
an inditory Matt Drudge SoundBite. This is per Phil Griffins.
Who don't think you can call Phil to get it dropped.
(41:09):
He's not in New York, he's not reachable, and he left.
I called my agent, I told her the story, and
I matter of factively asked if they don't drop it.
I have to walk out, don't I mind you. She
had just exhausted herself negotiating my extremely unlikely return to MSNBC.
She didn't flinch. Of course, you have to walk out,
(41:29):
but first call Phillow Griffin's office and tell him you're leaving.
Give him a chance. It'll help when you sue them.
It was breach of contract. I find dramatic, life changing
and potentially costly stuff like that is usually way easier
if you have the high moral ground. So I called
Griffin's office. His assistant said he was in Washington and
meetings and could not be reached. I said, well, you
(41:50):
should reach somebody there. Tell them I just called a
car to take me home because my contract says you
can't put Michael effing Savage on my newscast. And somebody
just did nice working with you all. And tell Phil
to give me a call sometime sometime was three minutes later. Griffin,
who frequently panicked outdid himself on this call. You would
(42:11):
really walk out, buddy, I said, it was in the contract.
I was putting my pens and books in a box
as we spoke. I told him. He was repeating himself Finally,
he said, okay, okay, okay, buddy, can you just can
you look at the commentary and find me a reason,
a reason it isn't about politics, why it shouldn't run.
(42:32):
I said, you mean, like video quality or racist language
or something. Phil Griffin's voice brightened. Yeah, good racist language
or something that would be great. Call me back the
executive producer and I went to the video edit suite
where a guy named Brendan o'melia was cutting out the
time Savage had stumbled or flubbed while recording this nonsense.
(42:54):
First of all, I said to the X Fox guy
who was the producer, Michael Savage is wearing a brown
shirt and a brown tie on top of his brown shirt.
He is literally dressed like a Hitler brown shirt. The
editor o'melia played the whole video for me, and as
I dialed Phil Griffin, cell I started laughing. I said,
(43:16):
even for racist homopho bit crap. This thing makes no sense.
He just keeps saying George W. Bush is right, because
George W. Bush, because he's right. He looks small and
whiney in Covechian. He's got a bad tupe in a
worst suit. We wouldn't run this as a SoundBite in
his obituary, and the lighting is terrible and he's dressed
as a brown shirt. Apparently that was enough. Phil Griffin
(43:40):
ordered the piece dropped from My show. I think they
ran it on Scarborough Show at nine pm. In fact,
I think I might be wrong. They ran two or
three Savage commentaries on Scarborough shows. I know they intended
to God knows. I never watched Scarborough Show. Happily, this
was about the time Michael Savage ended his own TV career.
(44:01):
On Saturday July fifth, two thousand and three, show fifteen
out of a series of checks Notes fifteen, Michael Savage
was on the air live on MSNBC when a caller
baited him about gaze. Savage replied, quote, so you're one
of them sodomists. U a sodomite. The caller said, yes, oh,
(44:22):
you're one of them sodomites, continuing the quote. You should
only get aids and die, you pig. How's that? Why
don't you see if you consume, you pig, you've got
nothing better to put me down, you piece of garbage.
You have nothing better to do today. Go eat a
sausage and choke on it. Get tricking noteses end quote
end Michael Savage. And by the way, that quote that
(44:43):
I just read that was way better than the commentary
they had him record for Countdown. Two days later, on Monday,
Eric Sorenson the president of MSNBC, and he was president
of all the boring things Bob Wright didn't want to
be bothered with at MSNBC. Eric Sorenson fired Michael Savage. Sorenson,
for whom I worked in Los Angeles in local news
(45:04):
and who could sulted on my show on Current TV
as recently as twenty eleven, took me for a drink
because he needed to tell somebody what happened next after
he fired Michael Savage. As soon as the Savage firing
was announced, Sorenson said, the phone rang in his office
and it was Bob Wright, the chairman of NBC. Did
(45:24):
you have to fire Aimeric Right asked in his nasal
long Island accent, and Sorenson said he answered, yes, I
literally had to. I had to fire him. Remember the
cause in his contract there are forty phrases he's not
allowed to use on the show. It literally says, if
you say any of the following forty things, you will
be automatically fired for cause and get no money. Remember
(45:47):
remember what number four on that list is. Number four
is quote, I hope you get AIDS and die unquote,
and then he said, I hope you get AIDS and die. Bob,
I literally had to fire him. I had to fire him.
It's in the contract. Eric Sorenson told me. There was
a long pause on the other end of the phone,
(46:09):
and then Bob Wright said, in anticipation of all that
we have seen in television news since all the meetings
about what happens if the country goes fully fascist, and
NBC and CNN and CBS and ABC all want to
protect their profits and do the devil's work, Bob Wright said,
after a long pause to Eric Sorenson, who had just
(46:31):
fired Michael Savage because it was in the contract. Bob
Wright said, softly and sadly, but Eric, did you have
to fire him? I've done all the damage I can
(46:55):
do here. Thank you for listening. There are the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced, and performed by
Brian Ray and John Philip Channel. They are the Countdown
musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel. Guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections, such as in our segment about the
dog in Need Kuda, have been arranged and performed by
(47:18):
No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Old Woman theme
from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis
courtesy of the ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
Richard Lewis. He was chosen for a reason. He once
had a very memorable phone call with my mom. Ask
him about it. Everything else is pretty much my fault.
(47:41):
So that's countdown for this the eight hundred and nineteenth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Don't forget. Keep arresting
him while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow,
but it's a good bet that I will revise this
one sometime today after the court hearing, or whenever if
(48:03):
he tries to flee. Who knows. So subscribe if you
are not already subscribed, and check your notifications like late
in the afternoon, and fasten your seat belts. It's going
to be a bumpy night till then. I'm Keith Alderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
(48:34):
Keith Alderman 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. The
thirty four counts are reportedly all felonies. Each is for
(00:26):
falsifying business records. Each was elevated from a misdemeanor because
of an underlying or second crime. Almost certainly the second
crime is the payoff to Stormy Daniels. He will not
have a mugshot taken. We believe he will not have
to face video cameras inside the courtroom, but there will
be one allowed in the hallway outside the courtroom. Still
(00:47):
photographers will be allowed in briefly to the courtroom, and
if you have ever jockeyed for position with the still
photographers of New York, you know already they will have
to be brought in early for an intensive course of
instruction on what the word briefly means. He will not
speak until he returns to Florida, at least that is
the prayer of his attorneys. He will not be kept
(01:09):
in a cell at any point. He will not be handcuffed,
because the only reason they handcuffed defendants is if they
pose a flight risk. And as we know, he cannot
walk down a flight of stairs or steps, let alone run,
and all of these details, except Judge Marshan's rulings about cameras,
were in the Yahoo News story by Michael Isikoff, which
(01:30):
dropped weight last night, and in that story they came
from We can be certain Trump himself, because minutes after Issakoff,
who was the central reporter in the Monica Lewinsky story
just a quarter of a century ago, filed his piece,
Trump went on to social media and wrote, quote, Wow,
District Attorney Bragg just illegally leaked the various points and
(01:51):
complete information on the pathetic indictment against me. I know
the reporter, and so unfortunately does he This means he
must be immediately indicted unquote, which of course it does
not mean in the slightest. Trump went on to insist,
if he wants to really clean up his reputation, he
will do the honorable thing and as district attorney, indict himself,
(02:16):
which is as embarrassingly stupid an idea as one can suggest.
When that post didn't make it all go away, Trump
wrote again, and here is where he inadvertently confessed, quote
da Bragg just illegally leaked the thirty three points of indictment.
There are no changes or surprises from those he leaked
(02:37):
days ago. Unquote. The Issikov story says thirty four indictments.
The previous CNN story said thirty four. Trump is saying
thirty three, which identifies him as the source, because what
reporter would change the number from thirty four to thirty three.
And if the numbers somehow really were thirty three and
Bragg somehow really were the leaker, Trump has just said
(03:01):
Bragg got the number of his own indictments wrong. Trump
leaked it in a last desperate attempt to get Bragg
to indict himself, or more realistically, to make Trump himself
look as he has spent his entire life trying to
look like a martyr. Judge Marsham's ruling late last night
(03:23):
acceded to the demand from Trump's lawyers to bar video
cameras from the courtroom for the arrangement because they would
quote create a circus like atmosphere, which is curious since
that is a description of every minute of Trump's life
as well. His lawyers also moved to keep the mug
shot from the public, which seems to contradict every minute
(03:44):
of Trump's life as well. The still photographers present for
what is called a spray, you take your pictures, and
then you get out before you hear anything that actually happens.
Seems an odd compromise. Now, if anybody is certain on
the mug shot thing, that person is lying to you.
Yahoo reported there will not be one time magazine reported
(04:04):
there would, though one of his Toady's Hogan Gidley insisted
yes he would pose for one end quote, it will
be the most manly, most masculine, most handsome mug shot
of all time. I can say that definitely before having
even seen it. And then Gidley insisted he was joking.
And we all know there is one person who will
never believe he is joking. And Trump has been roundly
(04:27):
advised to take a mug shot and turn it into
a campaign ad and T shirts and other things he
can make lots of money off of. And in the
early winter for hyperbolic comment of the week, if not
the year, somebody said a Trump mugshot would become the
most famous photograph of the twenty first century. And there
is no reason to believe the court would make him
(04:48):
take off his umpa lumpa makeup, nor wear his hair
like a normal person. Yet now we will be denied
the pleasure of to quote the song the Rough Cut Tuesday,
(05:15):
Thank you, Nancy Faust. There is something of a schedule
for today. At two fifteen, Trump's arraignment is scheduled to
begin at one hundred Center Street in Manhattan. By two
forty five at the latest. If it starts on time,
even with thirty four counts to go through, it will
be over two forty six. Then Trump leaves flies to
Florida to give his I Am not a Crook speech
(05:38):
Tomorrow night. Sometime between two forty five and three thirty,
the full indictment will be released to the public per
the court order. At three thirty, District Attorney Bragg will
hold a news conference, and that'll be a doozy up
at the level of the mister Simpson failed to turn
himself in press conference from California in ninety four, unaddressed, undecided,
(05:59):
but clearly not off the table. The story out of
Sunday's Daily Mail in England that Trump's lawyers were expecting
Judge Marshawn to put some sort of gag order in place.
The far right spent much more time talking about this
than did the mainstream media. Yesterday, Trump lawyer Elina Habba
made the unanswerably stupid observation that if there is a
(06:19):
gag order quote, you have to remember, that's putting a
gag order on a candidate for presidency so that when
he is then in a debate, he is unable to
answer questions that he needs to answer, which of course
completely ignores the opportunity Trump would then be given to
make that cute little buttoning my lips gesture with his
thumb and four finger. Custom in New York State seems
(06:40):
to be to rarely impose gag orders, but they could
come from anywhere. The judge can issue one himself, or
either set of attorneys can request one, and then the
judge would rule. There seemed to be a consensus building
late Monday that far more likely than a gag order
would be Judge Marshawn putting Trump's threats about death and
destruction and the menacing photo of Trump swinging the baseball
(07:03):
bat to the record in some way admonishing Trump for them,
reminding him of the New York laws against obstruction of
governmental administration, and giving Trump the opportunity to control himself
for the first time in his life. Marshawn would then
release a set of ground rules that would put Trump,
all of his defense lawyers, and for that matter, Da
(07:24):
Bragg and his staff on notice as to what they
could and could not say in public. The sword of
damocles hanging over them would be obvious. If you violate
the guidelines, we move to the gag order, or maybe
directly to charges under the governmental obstruction laws. Present to
hear any such warnings will be yet another Trump attorney.
(07:46):
He's hired another new one. I'll repeat my demand, my
plea that they wear numbered ear tags like cows. This
one is a curious choice, to say the least. His
name is Todd Blanche. He is a white collar crime
expert and prosecutor, formerly with the Federal Secutor's Office in
New York, not the Manhattan Day's Office. He resigned as
(08:08):
a partner at his private firm to explore the wonderful
chance for quick promotion in the jet sitting world of
Team Trump. Blanche currently represents trump all purpose annoyance Boris Epstein.
But more curiously, Blanche was the lawyer for Trump's free
Russian connected campaign manager, Paul Manafort. He was the lawyer
(08:29):
when he and Manafort lost on charges of mortgage fraud
and other felonies in twenty nineteen, crimes for which Trump
ultimately pardoned Manafort. Blanche was also the attorney for Igor Freuman,
the Russian born buddy of Rudy Giuliani. Again, he was
the attorney for Freuman when Frewman pleaded guilty to soliciting
political contributions from a foreign donor, and he was sentenced
(08:52):
to a year and a day in prison. Quite a
track record. Quote Todd is an excellent lawyer, said one
of Trump's other lawyers. Nobody's really sure which one he
or she did not add, even though he seems to
lose all the time. And while all of this kabuki
theater unfolds in New York today, the recent trend continues,
(09:13):
the more important stuff, representing the far greater threat to Trump,
continues to unfold in Washington. There this Friday, as reported
by of all organizations Fox quote news unquote, the Office
of Special Counsel Jack Smith will bring several United States
Secret Service agents in front of Smith's grand jury investigating
(09:34):
Trump and quiz them about the stolen classified documents at Marilago.
Already yesterday came the story of the New Paper trail
Smith had cobbled together from the texts and emails of
Trump assistant Molly Michael and Walt caught on tape Nawada.
Fox left a little wiggle room on the timing, saying
the testimony was expected Friday. ABC News reported it would
(09:58):
come in the next few weeks, but the idea that
when Secret Service agents would finally be called to testify
against Trump, it'd be about the documents and not what
happened on January sixth, and that it could possibly occur.
This rapidly tells you all you need to know about
where Jack Smith is at and how quickly he is
(10:19):
approaching the finish line. And it continues. Smith's best witness,
though he is not yet on the record, is, of course,
Trump himself. You doubtless saw the clip of Trump with Hannity.
As Hannity scoffed at the Washington Post report that Trump
lied to the authorities and withheld boxes of classified documents,
had the boxes moved around, opened them, rifled through them himself,
(10:43):
and pulled out items he wanted to keep. Trump decided
to blow up Hannity's attempt at a cover up. I
would have the right to do that, Trump said indignantly.
But I know you, Hannity said, trying to steer Trump away.
I don't think you would do it. Trump would not
be steered. I would do that. Trump said, all right,
(11:03):
let me move on, said Hannity desperately. I have the
right to take stuff. You know. They ended up paying
Nixon I think it was eighteen million for what he had,
And suddenly the whole nightmarish question of Trump's complicated evil
motives for stealing the record of another nation's defensive strategy
and another nation's nuclear capabilities became clear and precise and
(11:28):
so trumpish that it has to be continued on to
the next Trump. They ended up paying Nixon eighteen million
for what he had. Cheesy, greedy, little bastard. Obviously, all
(11:57):
this stuff will be out of date by late afternoon,
So it is my intention to update this edition of
this podcast with the full details of what happens, and
especially what's in the indictment and what gag rules or
gags suggestions will be put into place, if any. I'll
do that presumably before sunset. Check your inboxes and notifications
and whatever else happens when we hit publish. Also, of note,
(12:19):
here the ratings for the sixty Minutes edition, in which
Leslie Stall might as well not have done any research
at all and certainly did not seem to really comprehend
who Marjorie Barney Rubble really was, earned comparatively lousy ratings.
The Live plus DBR rating of over eight million viewers,
down by about a third from what Sixty Minutes did
the previous week. The live only viewers those who actually
(12:41):
watched as it happened Sunday night six point six six million.
And on the subject of TV, it was more than
just the attempt to fill time with moving pictures of
ever exciting highway traffic. The wall to wall coverage of
Trump in a car, then in a plane, then another
car on the cable networks was more than just showing
(13:01):
shiny objects. CNN in particular, is trying to cozy up
to the Trump audience. I have seen this before firsthand,
when executives at MSNBC tried to move to the right
of Fox. They hired a psycho named Michael Savage to
be the host. They paid the price. Things I promised
not to tell coming up and next. A sad anniversary
(13:24):
here April fourth, the day my mother died. That's next.
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Alberman, a
little different format today because you look up one day
(13:45):
and it turns out it's the anniversary of your mother passing,
and you do the math and it's fourteen years. My
mother died right after my fiftieth birthday. Fifty years and
she's gone nearly a third as long as she and
I were both here together. It is startling. I find
(14:05):
I've been bringing my mom up a lot these last
few years, mostly because any of my friends, my contemporaries
who have not yet lost both parents are sadly doing
so now. And there's something I learned when my mom
died on April fourth, two thousand and nine, and then
my dad died on March thirteenth, two ten. And if
you've gone through this lately or even not lately, and
(14:28):
it still hurts, this might help. If you have yet
to go through it, write this down somewhere. First of all,
you are never too old to be an orphan. Do
not be shocked if it feels like you are an orphan. Secondly,
if you think you have come to terms with the
loss of a parent and things are getting better inside,
(14:48):
utilize my experience In my case, neither death was a surprise.
I was prepared for both, and I leveled off from
the immediate grief surprisingly quickly, and then a week or
so later. In each case, I collapsed weeping, not when
it happened, but like ten days later. And finally, with
(15:10):
a little introspection, I recalled something that I have since
told a hundred people, and they've all literally said, yeah,
that's it. When you are a kid, unless you have
suffered direct trauma, death, physical harm, abuse, the first day
you actually understand that this is not the garden of Eden.
(15:32):
That day is when you put two and two together
and you realize that your parents are going to die,
and that that could happen at any time. It is
your original fear. It is burned into a part of
your brain that had until that moment nothing else in it.
And when it finally happens in real life, whether you
(15:52):
are six or you are sixty, you suffer the pain
of the event as you interpret it in real time,
hopefully as an adult, and then you also suffer the
pain that you feared first when you were four or
five or six and you realize someday it would happen.
That fear has sat untouched and unrelieved, and it is
as bad as you thought it was going to be
(16:13):
that childhood day so many years ago. And if you
can recognize that, it should ease a little bit, as
it did for me. Of course, you're hurting again. You
have lost mom or dad, and separately, six year old
you has lost mom or dad. Realize that, and the
(16:34):
childhood pain will pass, or it will lessen, or it
will just merge with the pain of today, and you
can get about the business of healing. So back to
my mom. My childhood fear was oddly a little easier
because the night before I started the fourth grade. I
swear this is true, and this makes me seven and
a half years old. I was sitting on my mom's
(16:56):
bed at the Dobbs Ferry Hospital north of New York City.
She had phlebitis and one leg was swollen to what
seemed to me to be the size of Manitoba in Canada.
And she said, and you will immediately recognize where I
get my sense of drama from Keith. This could be
the last time you see me alive. And I went,
(17:21):
I don't think so. And then in the car on
the way home, my dad reassured me, I don't think
so it's serious. I'm not going to kid if people
do die from this, she's not going to. The swelling
is like half of what it was yesterday. The doctors
told me she'll be home tomorrow or the day after.
You know her, she kind of enjoys people worrying about her,
(17:42):
and why not, She's your mom. Worry about her. She'll
love it, and she loved it. The damnedest thing was
that was in nineteen sixty six. Mom outlived her warning
to me by nearly forty three years. But when she died,
she died in Dobb's Ferry Hospital, the same place where
(18:05):
she made her warning. Of course, it was a different century.
This remembrance is not going to be her medical history,
though lord knows Mom was the world's foremost authority on
her own health. Nor is it going to consist of
me telling you she was the proverbial saint, although I
can hear her saying, go ahead, I'm not going to
disagree with you. Who's going to contradict you. It is
not going to be a full biography, Suffice to say
(18:27):
she was a gifted preschool teacher and a legendary authority
on opera and somewhere. She remains genuinely disappointed that I
did not get Placido Domingo to sing at her memorial service.
Instead of the full medical history, I thought that it
was best to focus on something for which she became
and remained pretty famous, literally until the day she died.
(18:49):
My mother was one of the best known baseball fans
in this country. She attended Yankees games from nineteen thirty
four through two thousand and four, and she watched or
listened to everyone that she did not go to up
until the last year of her life. My guess is
(19:09):
she went to at least fifteen hundred Yankee games, most
of them in Box forty seven E in the Yankee
Stadium that preceded the current one, and this was the effect.
In March of twenty ten, the Mets manager Jerry Manuel
came over to me before his team's exhibition game against
the Detroit Tigers in Lakeland, Florida, and he asked me,
(19:32):
how's your mother? And he was the fifth or sixth
active baseball figure to do so in that month. While
I was at spring training. They averaged at least one
or two a month baseball figures asking about how my
mom was for about fourteen years. One day I popped
out into the Yankees dugout before a playoff game. I'm
(19:55):
guessing this is two thousand and five, and there was
a lighter of the Yankees talking to two other pitchers,
Scott Procter and the future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson
and Al Sudden. He stopped and looked at me and said,
what did you hear me telling them about your mother?
Sure enough, I had interrupted him as he told Randy
Johnson and Scott Proctor the Chuck Knoblock story, which I
(20:18):
will tell you in a moment. But after that game
ended and the Yankees were eliminated from the playoffs. In
that game, I went into the clubhouse to wish my
friends among the players a good offseason, and Randy Johnson
shook my head and he got his a little suitcase
on wheels and he left the clubhouse. It's guy's like
eight feet tall and a little tiny suitcase on wheels,
and it looked adorable. Anyway. About ninety seconds later that
(20:39):
Randy Johnson comes back into the clubhouse and comes over
to me. I'm glad you're still here. I forgot to
tell you a story about your mother is wonderful and
it's very warm. It made my day. Thanks for sharing it.
Have a good winter. It was the effect that my
mother had on people. And four years later, I guess,
not six hours before Mom died, a New York Yankees
(21:01):
executive made reference to that which had made Mom famous
in the ballpark the day she died. And trust me,
Mom loved being famous in the ballparks. And finally, the story,
which I have not told you, not in full, my
mother's fame was achieved in the way it was on
(21:22):
June seventeenth, two thousand, when the sudden and growing inability
of the ill fortuned Yankees second baseman Chuck Nablock to
make any kind of successful throw easy or hard to
first base culminated in him picking up a squib off
the bat of Greg Norton of the Chicago White Sots
and throwing it not back towards first base, but instead
(21:44):
off the roof of the Yankees dugout, where it somehow
picked up a little reverse English and then smacked my
mother right in the bridge of her glasses as she
sat a couple of rows back of the dugout. Chuck
Nablock was in the middle of losing his beloved father
at that time, and though I thought I got what
that meant to him, I didn't really understand it until
(22:06):
the days I began to write this, and I struggled
to find the right keys, let alone the right words.
In any event, for those three days in the year
two thousand, Mom was on one or both of the
covers of the New York Post and the New York
Daily News and New York Newsday. She was somewhere in
(22:26):
almost every newspaper in America. That is not hyperbole, it
is literal fact. And all this happened while I was
the host of the Baseball Game of the Week for Fox,
literally sitting in a studio in Los Angeles, watching a
bank of monitors with a different game on every monitor,
and recognizing instantly what must have happened, based on a
(22:47):
lifetime of knowing. The camera angles in Yankee Stadium, the
ballpark in which I grew up. I said, maybe two,
matter of factly, that probably hit my mother. The crew laughed,
and I repeat it, that probably hit my mother more laughs.
Then the next shot was of an older woman being
(23:08):
led up the aisle towards an AID station, and it
was my mother. End of laughter. So moments later, when
the announcers Joe Buck and Tim McCarver through to me
for a Fox game break, I narrated that exact highlight,
and I said that Chuck now blocks throwing problems had
now gotten personal, that he had now hit my mother.
Her glasses are broken, Joe and Tim, and she's going home.
(23:30):
But I've just spoken to her. She's okay, Joe, Tim.
There was silence from their booth at Dodger Stadium. Finally
Tim McCarver said, huh, is that I'm speechless? Is that
one of Keith's jokes? Keith, are you still there? Was
that really your mother? I'm here, Tim? My goodness? Is Shell?
What are the odds against Tim? She's been going to
(23:51):
Yankee games since nineteen thirty four and nothing bad's ever
happened to her. I'd say the odds are pretty good.
But is she She's fine, She'll be back in that
same seat tomorrow. She's a gamer. Also, she asked me
to tell you she likes you better now that you're
with the Yankees and the Mets. After that, I never
saw Tim McCarver again without him asking how my mother
was In fact, he called me after his game ended
(24:12):
to make sure she was okay that day. The next week,
Mom and I pre taped an interview for the pregame show.
I was in our LA studios and Mom was in
my childhood home. I concluded the interview by noting my
status as a memorabilia collector, and I asked Mom if
she would give me the baseball with which she was hit.
(24:34):
She said I could bid on it like anybody else.
For the rest of that season of two thousand, anytime
Fox broadcast a game from Yankee Stadium, Mom got on TV.
They gave her a Fox hat to make her easier
to spot in the crowd. We even talked about her
during the World Series broadcasts that fall, during which began
the ritual that continues even to this day, fourteen years
(24:57):
after her death. Twenty three years after this happened. The
ritual continues players players who were at the game, players
who only heard about the game, players of all kind,
players who were not born when it happened. They asked
me about my mom and the Chuck Knoblock throw. Since
(25:18):
the day had happened, Chuck Nablock himself has been mortified
by it. I was told not long after that he
was really worried that I thought he had done it deliberately.
As I pointed out to him some years later when
we finally got to talk about it, if there was
one thing we could know for sure was that if
he had been aiming for my mom, he would have
(25:39):
missed her. Chuck laughed. I said to him, you made
her famous. She loved it. She couldn't have been happier
if they had let her pinch. Hint for you. It
was my mother who was the fan in our family.
My dad liked the game enough, but the Yankees traded
his favorite player, and on his deathbed a year later,
(26:01):
he was still mad at them for doing that. This
happened late in nineteen forty eight. The player's name was
Steve Suchok. My dad's next favorite player was George Sternweis.
The Yankees traded him in nineteen fifty. This led my
father to say to me, yeah, you're a Yankee fan.
Now watch out, they're going to betray you eventually, like
(26:22):
they'd betrayed me. Then they did. So. Dad wasn't much
of a fan, and it was mom who introduced me
to baseball, and in my teenaged years when we went
nearly every day. It was she who trundled me and
my sister to the ballparks. It was on her TV
that I came to love the sport, and by her
side that I began to understand it. And sitting next
(26:43):
to her, that's when I began to understand that I
was not going to be any damn good playing baseball,
and if I wanted in, maybe i'd better try talking
about it. Thus was born a career. Obviously, at least
half of the ham in me comes from her. She
was an aspiring ballerina, and when I keep talking and
talking for good or for ill, that's pretty much all her.
(27:05):
What I do not have evidence of are the thousand
hours she spent driving me to and from school so
I could work on the newspaper, or announce the hockey game,
or get to Yankee Stadium early to take photographs of
the players, to meet a few of them, to interview
them when I was a teenager. In retrospect, it's obvious
she was, to adapt a phrase a media mom. She
(27:30):
was taken by the proverbial sudden illness in the best
of senses. She had no apparent symptoms until two weeks
before she died. She was not severely afflicted until ten
days before she died. The treatment she received lessened her pain,
and she never awakened and thus never had to hear
nor did any of us have to say to her, Mom,
(27:50):
you have terminal cancer. I'm not going to give you
the harangue about how you need to go see your doctor,
because not feeling so bad does not mean you are
not sick, though you might want to keep that in mind.
I do have one other story about and baseball that
I loved telling, and this is the way to finish
this reminiscence on this anniversary. It's about George Steinbrenner. In
(28:12):
two thousand, the year Mom got hit by the throw,
I had the privilege of being the reporter for Fox
as the Commissioner Baseball presented the Yankees with their third
straight World Championship trophy after they beat the Mets in
the World Series. George Steinbrenner, who I had known since
nineteen seventy three and who had inexplicably become the kind
of friend you greet with a double handshake or a hug,
(28:33):
was standing next to me as we waited for an
on field interview to end, and the presentation of the
award to begin, and Steinbrenner for that year, for some reason,
was incredibly emotional. Is your mother here to see this?
He said? And I said, George, where it's Shay Stadium.
She had to drive here for two seasons in nineteen
(28:54):
seventy four, in nineteen seventy five when you were refurbishing
Yankee Stadium. She hates this place more than you do.
She told me she wouldn't have come here even if
Letter play third base. George's mouth shook and tears welled
in his eyes, and finally he blurted out, I love
(29:15):
her even more now. Mom had that kind of effect
on people. I'll be back with things I promised not
to tell after this. Still ahead on countdown. Hey, I
don't know if you heard about this, but Trump came
(29:35):
back into town yesterday like flew in for this indictment
court hearing. Was that on TV or anything? Oh my god,
here we go again once again. MSNBC and CNN are
both tipping their hands about their readiness to go right
wing if necessary to protect their money. I know what
I'm seeing because I was there the last time they
(29:57):
tried this. But Michael savage story coming up in Things
I Promised Not to Tell first, in each of the Countdown,
we feature a dog in need you can help. Every
dog has its day to South La and Kuda, a big,
happy guy even though he spent two of his three
years on this earth in that shelter, one of the
loudest and most crowded in this country. Standard tongue, hanging out,
(30:21):
happy big boy. But Kudah seems finally to have given up.
He's suddenly become so stressed he's spinning around in his cage.
We need to get him out of there with a
home and adopter or foster or our pledges so a
rescue will pull him and save him. Look for Kuda
on my Twitter feeds. Your retweet can also help him.
I thank you, and Kuda thanks you. Finally to the
(30:53):
number one story on the Countdown on my favorite topic,
me and Things I Promised not to Tell, And I've
been warning you about CNN and Chris Lick to the
former Joe Scarborough hitman who when we work together at MSNBC,
I used to think eight pacede. He was hired to
run CNN by its new right wing owners in orders
to neutralize it a maga broke into Nancy Pelosi's home,
(31:16):
nearly killed her husband, planned to hold her husband hostage
until she told the truth. CNN put on the Kentucky
fascist Congressman James Comer, who explained people and both parties
should tone down the rhetoric. Yesterday, Trump flies from Florida
to New York, in fact, to go to his nightmarishly
decorated crap shack a block from my back door, and
(31:38):
the flight takeoff and the landing and the motorcade are
covered live on CNN and MSNBC like Trump was dead. Frankly,
and I use that analogy because I was flashed back
to June fifth, two thousand and four. The then new
president of MSNBC has us all in there on a
Saturday because it's the sixtieth anniversary of D Day, the
(32:00):
Norman d Invasion, and he is trying to make a
name for himself. This guy Rick Kaplan is gonna kill it.
He sent me to interview Yogi Barra about being on
one of the landing crafts at Normandy, and he's got
Tom Brokaw live on Omaha Beach with somebody, and all
of us anchors are in there covering the breaking news
of something that happened sixty years earlier. And we're in
(32:22):
the meeting, the last meeting before we go on the
air in the afternoon, and Kaplan is just starting to
warm up and to yell at us for no reason,
which was his one play, when somebody leans in through
the door to the meeting room and says, hey, Ronald
Reagan just died, and Kaplan tries to pretend that nothing
has changed, and he goes on to explaining who we're
(32:44):
going to go live to Brokaw. We go live to
Brokaw while there's still some light in Normandy, he said,
and I raised my hand and I say, Rick, we
kind of gotta all go all Reagan, you know, I mean,
he was the president. And Kaplan starts arguing the point
with me, and the room just stares at him. It's
a new network, a living ex president isn't living anymore.
(33:11):
And then he says, how about half an hour of
Reagan and then half an hour of d Day, and
then then a half an hour of Reagan. And the
room now goes silent, finally crestfallen. And this has taken
five or ten minutes. He says, okay, oh, Reagan and
the next thing I know, I'm anchoring chopper coverage of
(33:31):
Ronald Reagan's dead body being driven through southern California. And
that made sense. Yesterday Trump in a car, We're actually
Trump in a car, then trumping a plane, then Trump
in another car. No traffic accidents, no protests, no crowds,
no impact on New York City at all, no actual
(33:52):
news out of that clown until the next day, and
you are looking live at the FDR drive Christ I'll
repeat my point. This is no boating accident. The reason
Glickt is in charge of CNN is virtually every mainstream
media organization in this country has already had the meeting
(34:13):
they had at CNN. Let's discuss how if America goes
fully fascist in twenty twenty five or earlier, we can
still protect this company's profits. I say this not merely
because I know most of the people running the mainstream
media organizations, but because these conversations have already happened, and
they happened long ago, largely because the first not white
(34:37):
guy president was elected just seven years and two months
after nine eleven. We forget how seriously and terrifyingly we
already have teetered on the edge of full fledged fascism
here after the attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon nine to eleven happened between my two ten
years at MSNBC, but I returned a year and a
(34:57):
half after it happened, and by then the place I
went back to work had already hired a sort of
Alex Jones pro type radio host named Michael Savage, and
it was slowly trying to build him into the host
of a weeknight show. Savage was a homophobe plus an
equal opportunity bigot. His real name was Michael Weener, and
(35:18):
all you need to know about him is that he
was a Wiener who pretended he was a Savage. What
happened to him when they tried to stick him into
primetime and what he said that led to his firing
and the blowing up of the let's out Fox Fox
News plan of the then NBC chairman and CEO, Bob Wright,
is a great story I will relish telling you in
a moment, but first a little context to this. MSNBC
(35:42):
and Fox Nudes launched within weeks of each other in
nineteen ninety six, and for a while, in fact, until
I left MSNBC in December nineteen ninety eight. We were
ahead of Fox in many time periods, though CNN crushed
us both. Then Fox ascended, then came nine to eleven,
and then Bob Wright thought he saw his opportunity. All
(36:04):
you need to know about him is that after he
left the position of running NBC, he became a contributor
to Fox Business. At MSNBC, right gave Oliver North his
own show and Laura Ingram her own show. He had
given a program to Alan Keyes, a Republican who somehow
managed to lose Senate races in two different states and
(36:26):
washed out three different times in Republican presidential primaries. His
MSNBC show consisted of him giving speeches. Though he was
alone in a studio with no audience. Alan Keys could
not break himself up his habit of spraying the room
with his eyes. The viewer at home would see him
looking off camera to his left, then looking at the camera,
(36:48):
then looking off camera to the right. He went back
and forth like a sprinkler. I remember once looking at
him and yelling at the TV, Hey, all over here,
I'm the one in the middle. Bob Wright also brought
in Joe Scarborough long before Scarborough knew how to disguise
much of his fascism. Bob Wright fired Phil Donahue, although
to be fair, that was really more about money than
(37:09):
it was about politics. But he replaced Donna Hue's show
with what was supposed to be a high speed, slightly
right leaning newscast produced by a Fox News refugee. It
was called Countdown with Sam Donaldson, and needless to say,
the right leaning idea went horribly horribly wrong after they
changed it to Countdown with Keith Olberman. MSNBC's lineup was
(37:34):
remarkably unstable at that time. I had hosted its eight
pm show from October first, nineteen ninety seven, through the
beginning of December nineteen ninety eight, and then I left
to go back to sports and baseball at Fox. Then
the eight pm hour was hosted by John Hockenberry for
three months, then Ali North got his shot a month later.
(37:54):
They started having rotating liberals co host with Ali North.
In April nineteen ninety nine, it became North and Paul Begala.
That was five shows in five months. In May they
cut North and Begala to half an hour. In June
they canceled them and replaced them with a half hour
and Curry documentary. In early two thousand, Curry was expanded
to an hour, but then in May Curry was replaced
(38:17):
by Lorie Doo. In August two thousand, they started their
version of Dateline called MSNBC Investigates. In September, they cut
that show to four days a week and launched a
vanished white Woman of the Week show actually called Missing
Persons with Diane Diamond, which they canceled after one episode,
and then they put MSNBC Investigates back on. Then they
(38:39):
canceled that a month later to make room for a
newscast with Forrest Sawyer. Then after the uncertainty of the
two thousand election, they refocused that as Decision two thousand
Worth Forrest Sawyer. In January two thousand and one, they
canceled Forrest Sawyer and put MSNBC Investigates back on for
the third different time. Then in July they moved the
News with Brian Williams from nine pm to eight pm.
Then the next September they moved Brian to CNBC and
(39:02):
instead launched Phil Donahue show in the eight pm MSNBC slot.
Then in March two thousand and three day off Donahue.
They started Countdown originally with Lester Holt, Pat Buchanan and
Bill Press. Then after the war started and there wasn't
anything to count Down two anymore, they hired me to
host Operation Iraqi Freedom, and after one week of that show,
(39:23):
they launched Countdown with Keith ol Ryman. That's twenty different
shows or four matsy in four years and four months.
So Bob Wright's next primetime ideas, and you gotta give
him this much. He had a lot of primetime ideas
and virtually all of them made it onto TV. His
next set of ideas was a primetime lineup of me
(39:43):
doing the news at eight, then Scarborough at nine, then
Jesse Ventura at ten, and then this Michael Savage character.
They began this plot by giving Savage his own show
an hour every Saturday afternoon on March eighth, two thousand
and three. Everybody agreed it was crap. On radio, Savage
(40:05):
sounded kind of threatening, I guess, a kind of red
meat fascist. But on TV taking calls from viewers in
a tiny, little cramp looking studio somewhere in the Bay Area,
he looked small and whiny and cavetchy, and he was
wearing a bad toupee and a suit that was far
worse than that. When I was negotiating my return to
(40:28):
MSNBC in two thousand and three, I got the executive
in charge of Primetime to put it in my contract
that Michael Savage would never appear on my newscast in
any form unless it was an obituary, open and shut.
But then on Friday, April twenty fifth, two thousand and three,
I came into work. We were about a month into
the show, and there in the computer rundown of my
(40:48):
newscast was a prerecorded Michael Savage commentary. As soon as
he saw I was in the office, the executive protucer
they had hired from Fox, a cross eyed chainsmoker named
Dennis Murray, pushed his way into my office and said,
we have to run a Michael Savage commentary. There's also
an inditory Matt Drudge SoundBite. This is per Phil Griffins.
Who don't think you can call Phil to get it dropped.
(41:09):
He's not in New York, he's not reachable, and he left.
I called my agent, I told her the story, and
I matter of factively asked if they don't drop it.
I have to walk out, don't I mind you. She
had just exhausted herself negotiating my extremely unlikely return to MSNBC.
She didn't flinch. Of course, you have to walk out,
(41:29):
but first call Phillow Griffin's office and tell him you're leaving.
Give him a chance. It'll help when you sue them.
It was breach of contract. I find dramatic, life changing
and potentially costly stuff like that is usually way easier
if you have the high moral ground. So I called
Griffin's office. His assistant said he was in Washington and
meetings and could not be reached. I said, well, you
(41:50):
should reach somebody there. Tell them I just called a
car to take me home because my contract says you
can't put Michael effing Savage on my newscast. And somebody
just did nice working with you all. And tell Phil
to give me a call sometime sometime was three minutes later. Griffin,
who frequently panicked outdid himself on this call. You would
(42:11):
really walk out, buddy, I said, it was in the contract.
I was putting my pens and books in a box
as we spoke. I told him. He was repeating himself Finally,
he said, okay, okay, okay, buddy, can you just can
you look at the commentary and find me a reason,
a reason it isn't about politics, why it shouldn't run.
(42:32):
I said, you mean, like video quality or racist language
or something. Phil Griffin's voice brightened. Yeah, good racist language
or something that would be great. Call me back the
executive producer and I went to the video edit suite
where a guy named Brendan o'melia was cutting out the
time Savage had stumbled or flubbed while recording this nonsense.
(42:54):
First of all, I said to the X Fox guy
who was the producer, Michael Savage is wearing a brown
shirt and a brown tie on top of his brown shirt.
He is literally dressed like a Hitler brown shirt. The
editor o'melia played the whole video for me, and as
I dialed Phil Griffin, cell I started laughing. I said,
(43:16):
even for racist homopho bit crap. This thing makes no sense.
He just keeps saying George W. Bush is right, because
George W. Bush, because he's right. He looks small and
whiney in Covechian. He's got a bad tupe in a
worst suit. We wouldn't run this as a SoundBite in
his obituary, and the lighting is terrible and he's dressed
as a brown shirt. Apparently that was enough. Phil Griffin
(43:40):
ordered the piece dropped from My show. I think they
ran it on Scarborough Show at nine pm. In fact,
I think I might be wrong. They ran two or
three Savage commentaries on Scarborough shows. I know they intended
to God knows. I never watched Scarborough Show. Happily, this
was about the time Michael Savage ended his own TV career.
(44:01):
On Saturday July fifth, two thousand and three, show fifteen
out of a series of checks Notes fifteen, Michael Savage
was on the air live on MSNBC when a caller
baited him about gaze. Savage replied, quote, so you're one
of them sodomists. U a sodomite. The caller said, yes, oh,
(44:22):
you're one of them sodomites, continuing the quote. You should
only get aids and die, you pig. How's that? Why
don't you see if you consume, you pig, you've got
nothing better to put me down, you piece of garbage.
You have nothing better to do today. Go eat a
sausage and choke on it. Get tricking noteses end quote
end Michael Savage. And by the way, that quote that
(44:43):
I just read that was way better than the commentary
they had him record for Countdown. Two days later, on Monday,
Eric Sorenson the president of MSNBC, and he was president
of all the boring things Bob Wright didn't want to
be bothered with at MSNBC. Eric Sorenson fired Michael Savage. Sorenson,
for whom I worked in Los Angeles in local news
(45:04):
and who could sulted on my show on Current TV
as recently as twenty eleven, took me for a drink
because he needed to tell somebody what happened next after
he fired Michael Savage. As soon as the Savage firing
was announced, Sorenson said, the phone rang in his office
and it was Bob Wright, the chairman of NBC. Did
(45:24):
you have to fire Aimeric Right asked in his nasal
long Island accent, and Sorenson said he answered, yes, I
literally had to. I had to fire him. Remember the
cause in his contract there are forty phrases he's not
allowed to use on the show. It literally says, if
you say any of the following forty things, you will
be automatically fired for cause and get no money. Remember
(45:47):
remember what number four on that list is. Number four
is quote, I hope you get AIDS and die unquote,
and then he said, I hope you get AIDS and die. Bob,
I literally had to fire him. I had to fire him.
It's in the contract. Eric Sorenson told me. There was
a long pause on the other end of the phone,
(46:09):
and then Bob Wright said, in anticipation of all that
we have seen in television news since all the meetings
about what happens if the country goes fully fascist, and
NBC and CNN and CBS and ABC all want to
protect their profits and do the devil's work, Bob Wright said,
after a long pause to Eric Sorenson, who had just
(46:31):
fired Michael Savage because it was in the contract. Bob
Wright said, softly and sadly, but Eric, did you have
to fire him? I've done all the damage I can
(46:55):
do here. Thank you for listening. There are the credits.
Most of the music was arranged, produced, and performed by
Brian Ray and John Philip Channel. They are the Countdown
musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel. Guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections, such as in our segment about the
dog in Need Kuda, have been arranged and performed by
(47:18):
No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Old Woman theme
from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis
courtesy of the ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust.
The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was
Richard Lewis. He was chosen for a reason. He once
had a very memorable phone call with my mom. Ask
him about it. Everything else is pretty much my fault.
(47:41):
So that's countdown for this the eight hundred and nineteenth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Don't forget. Keep arresting
him while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow,
but it's a good bet that I will revise this
one sometime today after the court hearing, or whenever if
(48:03):
he tries to flee. Who knows. So subscribe if you
are not already subscribed, and check your notifications like late
in the afternoon, and fasten your seat belts. It's going
to be a bumpy night till then. I'm Keith Alderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
(48:34):
Keith Alderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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