May 23, 2023 • 39 mins
EPISODE 208: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Special Counsel Jack Smith is clearly pursuing a theory of Donald Trump’s stolen classified documents conspiracy in which Trump ignored a subpoena to return every classified document, committed Obstruction of Justice and violated the Espionage Act by hiding them from his own attorney’s search in order to retain them, and then somehow utilized them in post-presidency business deals with one of seven countries, including China and Saudi Arabia.
AND as evidence: Jack Smith has nothing less than the real time hand-written notes from Trump’s own attorney. The real-time record (one analyst describes it as “Special Counsel Smith strikes gold”) could be enough to put Trump in prison for ten years PER COUNT for not just willfully retaining classified documents, but deliberately HIDING THEM to keep his own lawyer from finding them and giving them back to the authorities – a brazen violation of a key part of the Espionage Act.
And from a separate sourced story and even more astonishingly, it’s clear the Special Counsel is ALSO pursuing evidence that Trump may have given, or traded, or SOLD classified documents to China, France, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and/or the United Arab Emitates. Whether the evidence can be obtained – whether it even exists – isn’t clear. On the other hand, Jack Smith didn’t pick the names of seven countries out of a hat.
B-Block (19:23) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Congratulations, Anderson Cooper, you've escaped 4th Place! Chris Wallace? Not so much. SOMETHING good came from that network-ending Trump Town Hall: E. Jean Carroll IS suing Trump again. And the real nightmare of the fake AI of the "explosions" that never happened at the Pentagon and White House? The AI will only get more convincing (22:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend claims Brittney Griner is a "man;" the GOP wants a NATIONAL stand-your-ground right to murder law; and what does it profit a man to run for president if he loses his face?
C-Block (27:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My God, it's 23 years since I quit SportsCenter to go try my hand at news at NBC. The story's been told a dozen times in a dozen ways, none of them accurately. Especially the part of how an unexpected development after I quit - the arrival of a letter from the father of an autistic boy - caused me to go back to my bosses and say I was willing to stay, at least for one show a week.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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. Special
Council Jack Smith is clearly pursuing a theory of Donald
(00:27):
Trump's stolen documents conspiracy, in which Trump ignored a subpoena
to return every classified document, committed obstruction of justice, and
violated the Espionage Act by hiding the documents from his
own attorney search in order to retain them, and then
somehow utilize them in post presidential business deals with one
(00:51):
of seven countries, including China and Saudi Arabia. And as evidence,
Jack Smith now has in his hands nothing less than
the real time handwritten notes of Trump's own lawyer. For
the first time, we have a hint at how far
Trump was willing to go to keep those documents and
(01:13):
what the Special Council prosecutors think Trump's motive was. And
it is breathtaking, and it broke in two separate source stories,
first in England's The Guardian and then in the New
York Times a startling discovery of his attorney's notes. One
analyst describes it as Special Counsel Smith strikes Gold could
(01:35):
be enough to put Trump in prison for ten years
per count for not just wilfully retaining classified documents but
deliberately hiding them to keep his own lawyer from finding
them and giving them back to the authorities, a brazen
violation of a key part of the Espionage Act. And
(01:56):
from that separate source story in The Times, and even
more astonishingly, it's clear that Special Counsel is also pursuing
evidence that Trump may have given or traded or sold
classified documents and or information to China, to France, Kuwait, Oman,
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and or the United Arab Emirates. Whether
(02:18):
the evidence can be obtained in fact, whether it even
exists is not clear. On the other hand, I am
willing to stake a lot on this theory. Jack Smith
did not pick the names of seven countries out of
a hat. The biggest developments in the Mari Lago documents
case in months came within hours of each other, via
(02:38):
two leaks that route back directly to the testimony that
a court forced from the Trump attorney, Evan Corcoran. Because
Corcoran did not just talk, he brought receipts fifty pages
five zero of handwritten notes in which Corcoran warned Trump
he could not keep classified documents after the subpoena arrived
(02:59):
that demanded their return, and which Corcoran writes that after
he warned that to Trump, Trump still wanted to know
how to fight it and keep the documents. Corkoran's notes
show he told Trump, no, you can't do that. We
already know. Trump decided to fight it by keeping some
classified documents anyway, and at that disastrous town hall last week,
(03:20):
which may yet wind up being more disastrous for Trump
than it was for CNN, Trump publicly admitted he deliberately
took and kept classified documents and claimed he had the
right to do so. The Special Council clearly believes he
has evidence that Trump hid classified documents deliberately, wilfully, and
after his own attorney had warned him it was a
(03:42):
criminal act. He has the lawyer's notes, He has security
video from the infamous Mari Lago storage room and surrounding environs,
and the previous testimony of Trump vallet Walt Nauta that
after Corcoran told Trump that his only course of action
was to return everything, Trump and Corcoran agreed Corcoran should
search for classified documents, but in dead Trump ordered now
(04:06):
to move specific boxes so Trump could hide those boxes
during Corcoran's search, or so Trump could go through those
boxes and pull individual classified documents he insisted on keeping
from Corcoran. As Hugo Loll writes in The Guardian, now
To told the Justice Department that Trump told him to
(04:26):
move boxes out of the storage room before and after
the subpoena. The activity was captured on subpoenaed surveillance footage.
That all adds up to not just forgetting some classified
documents or misplacing them, or misunderstanding what was required, or
(04:50):
even defying the regulations that you had to return them.
That is a written record of dates and times of
warnings from an officer of the court not to commit
a crime, then committing the crime anyway, then covering up
the committee of the crime, and then having the crime discovered,
and then trying to blame the crime on an inefficient
(05:10):
search by the attorney Corcoran. That is an almost textbook
definition of not one but two crimes. First obstruction of
justice in all big bright red capital letters, and also
violation of eighteen US Code seven ninety three E inside
(05:30):
the Espionage Act quote willfully retaining documents relating to the
National defense and failing to deliver them to the officer
or employee of the United States entitled to receive them
a fine or ten years, or both per document. The notes, writer,
Lowell added, revealed how Trump and Naouda had unusually detailed
(05:53):
knowledge of the botched subpoena response, including where Corcoran intended
to search and not search for classified documents at mary Lago,
as well as when core Kren was actually doing his search,
and then just for color Hugo. Lowell added that in
his notes quote Corcoran described Trump's facial expressions and reactions
(06:17):
whenever they discussed the subpoena, I'll bet he did. That
document version of a game of deadly Hide and Seek
had already reignited the story of the Special Council's attempt
to put Trump away when the second, more vague but
potentially more dangerous story broke in The New York Times,
(06:38):
the part of Smith's office handling the marri Lago stolen
documents has now quoting the paper issued a subpoena for
information about mister Trump's business dealings in foreign countries since
he took office. According to two people familiar with the matter,
this is the first indication that there could be tangible
evidence or even that there's reason to suspect there may
(07:01):
be such evidence connecting the stealing and retaining of the
classified documents and the possibility that the documents or information
could have been sold or bartered or given away by
Trump to a foreign nation or nationals. And that is
far more ominous even than wilful retention or obstruction of justice.
The Time says the subpoena seeks details on any Trump
(07:23):
organization quote, real estate, licensing and development dealings in seven
countries China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab
Emirates and Oman, anything since twenty seventeen. Anything. The crime
does not have to have been committed while Trump was
in office, only while he was in office or afterwards.
(07:48):
We know Trump made a deal to license his name
to promoters of a hotel, housing and golf complex in
Oman last fall, and on a bigger scale, he made
a deal with the Saudi Back Live Golf League the
year before, which is hold some of its tournaments at
Trump golf facilities in this country. Among the government documents
(08:10):
discovered in mister Trump's Possession Rights The Times were some
related to Middle Eastern countries, and when the FBI executed
a search warrant in August twenty twenty two at Mary Lago,
among the items recovered was material related to Resident Emmanuel
Macrone of France, according to court records. It is important
(08:31):
here to remember that the motive that the possibility that
the impossibly narrow minded money grubbing Trump traded our classified
documents to get a better deal on a golf tournament
could elevate this case to genuine international espionage and something
far more dangerous for Trump than ten years in jail.
(08:53):
But none of the motive is necessary to prove the
first half of the crime, that he not only kept
and hid the classified documents, but had been told by
his own attorney that to do so was to break
the law. So now that there is at least the
outlines of a theory of the case. He took records,
(09:15):
he refused to return records when the records were subpoened.
He made sure his own attorney would not find certain records.
He may have used or planned to use records in
international business deals. Let me just fold these stories into
the whole marri Lago document timeline as we think we
know it. About May sixth of twenty twenty one, more
(09:36):
than two years ago. Now, the National Archives realized some
classified documents from Trump's reign of Error were missing from
their files, and they asked him to give them back.
Throughout the summer, Trump stalled, as the Archives kept asking
politely and relatively informally. By the way late spring or
(09:57):
early summer twenty twenty one, Trump concluded a deal with
the new Live Golf enterprise, reportedly ninety three percent own
by the government of Saudi Arabia. Late December twenty twenty one,
a Trump repp told the Archives that about a dozen
boxes of records that should have not been removed from
the White House were at Mari Lago and they could
be retrieved. January eighteenth, twenty twenty two, the Archives wound
(10:21):
up picking up fifteen boxes, all but one of which
contained some classified documents, one hundred and eighty four classified
documents in all, including some which had details about sensitive
human sources or electronic signals or stuff from the FISA courts.
February ninth, twenty twenty two, the Archives Inspector General told
(10:43):
the Justice Department, Hey, you guys had better have a
look into this. He had classified stuff down there he
may have more. May tenth, twenty twenty two, after a
series of delays, the Archives informed Trump's lawyers that they
were now going to provide the FBI access to the
boxes that Trump had already returned. May eleventh, twenty twenty two,
(11:04):
the Justice Department subpoened additional records. Also May eleventh, twenty
twenty two, Evan Corkoran's handwritten notes of his conversations with
his client Trump about the stolen documents begin sometime in
the ensuing month. There is closed circuit video of this guy,
Walt Nauta moving documents, or at least moving boxes in
(11:27):
and out of the storage room, and Evan Corkoran searching
for classified documents or the boxes they were supposedly In
June third, twenty twenty two, three FBI agents and a
DOJ attorney go to Mari Lago to collect more materials.
Trump had quote found unquote thirty eight classified documents, seventeen
(11:49):
of them top secret, saying that they'd all been in
one area and one area only, the storage room at
Mari Lago, and the agents and the attorney were permitted
to look at the storage room and the storage area,
but nowhere else. In the entire club, and Trump attorneys
wrote and gave them a document verifying that, to the
best of their knowledge, everything classified that Trump had ever
(12:11):
had was now back in the government's hands. Sometime in
the ensuing two months, more CCTV video shows more boxes move,
plus perhaps unknown events that led to August fifth, twenty
twenty two, the DOJ application for a subpoena to search
and sees any classified records at mari Lago, and August eighth,
(12:34):
twenty twenty two, the search executed and nearly one hundred
more classified documents found around the club, including in Trump's
pretend presidential office. Around November thirteenth, twenty twenty two, the
Trump organization signed a deal with a Saudi real estate
company to put the Trump brand on a hotel and
golf course in a four billion dollar development that it
(12:56):
is building in and with financial support by the Nation
of Oman. And May fourth, twenty two, twenty three, Trump's
security hanchos Matt Kalamari and Matt Kalamari Junior, two servings
of Calamari, testify in front of the Jack Smith Grand
(13:17):
Jury about problems with the security video system at mari
A Lago and reportedly about problems with Nauta's testimony. I
should add this caveat that timeline is what has been
publicly revealed in court records or by reporting from reliable
news organizations. I am now left wondering about these questions.
(13:40):
Exactly what is on the security video at marri A
Lago and what's missing from it? How do prosecutors know
there has been an erasure or an accidental deletion, and
what do they think was deleted? We know why Jack
Smith wants records about Saudi Arabia, live golf and Oman,
(14:03):
the Trump bill there and France. He stole documents about
Macron and China, the documents that included details of our
intel work there. But what about Kuwait and the UAE?
Could be more golf, could be Trump has sold them
documents about Iran's missile program to one of them, or
(14:25):
again back to the Saudis. But then there's the seventh nation, Turkey.
Why does Jack Smith want records of any Trump licensing
or real estate deals in Turkey? What does Turkey have
to do with all of this? There does not seem
to be a hint about this anywhere yet. And then
(14:51):
there is the juiciest question of them all to ponder.
They produced these two bombshells in one day. They produced
evidence that Trump lied to his own attorney to hide
documents from his own attorney. They produced the first tangible
possible overall motive, the handwritten notes by Trump attorney Evan Corcoran.
(15:15):
What else do they include? I mean fifty pages? Have
you ever handwritten fifty pages? They are not all about
boxes of documents? What else is in there? And how
many years in prison could Donald Trump serve.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Because of it?
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Also of note, there's a new contender in the Republican
presidential field. The problem is in the official depiction of
him in the first merch produced by his campaign. You
can clearly see his suit. You can clearly see his
hand adjusting his tie, can clearly see his outline. How
come you can't see his face? One of our presidential
(16:15):
candidates faces is missing.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
That's next. This is an all new edition of Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman, PST.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions, dateline, Hudson Yards, New York. I would like
to congratulate CNN and Anderson Cooper on their ratings triumph
from last Friday Night, the eight PM edition of Anderson
Cooper three point sixty defeated newsmax show Eric Bowling. You
didn't really pay for that plastic surgery, did you? Hour
(16:54):
four hundred and eighty four thousand viewers to four hundred
and thirty eight thousand. Of course, by ten PM, Newsmax's
Greg Kelly was out rating Chris Wallace on CNN, and
at eleven pm, CNN Tonight lost two hundred and forty
thousand to two hundred and twenty two thousand to Newsmax's
Rob Schmidt Tonight. The rerun of Rob Schmidt Tonight, Well,
(17:22):
we're over here in ratings obscurity. The guy I told
you about yesterday, Dan Abrams, the worst TV manager I've
ever known personally. His nine PM show on the Nick
at Night of TV News Operations News Nation did not
do too well Friday in the coveted twenty five to
fifty four advertising demo five thousand viewers, five thousand, Thank you,
(18:09):
Nancy Faust Dateline New York. The good news for CNN
E Gene Carroll left them out of her new lawsuit
against Trump. No, not the one she already won with
an award of five million dollars for rape and defamation.
This is the one for how he defamed her on
the CNN town hall two weeks ago. Tomorrow. I'm glad
to see that town hall worked out so well for everybody.
(18:30):
I understand David Zaslav is still trying to finish his
commencement speech at BU dateline. The Pentagon and the White House,
neither of which was hurt yesterday or damaged, despite what
you might have seen yesterday in a series of AI
images spread by store bought eight dollars blue checks on
Twitter and then amplified by Russian state media. One of
(18:52):
the blue check accounts was called Bloomberg Feed and was
designed to look like it was part of Bloomberg News,
and it had a blue check mark. Twitter immediately suspended
the account eight hours later, after the stock market had
dipped and while the images were still bouncing around the internet,
and as one AI expert warned, the most important part
(19:13):
of this story is those crappy Pentagon and White House
fake images. All subsequent AI fakes will be far far
better than those were coming up. I still get asked
(19:39):
about this. The anniversary is more or less now, so
let's walk through it, why and how I quit hosting
Sports Center in nineteen ninety seven. First, the daily round
up of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's worst persons.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
The brons good Old Matt Gates of Florida. It is
a sign of the madness of our times that a
kid crosses state lines to shoot two Black Lives Matter
protesters and then makes a career out of boasting about it.
And a guy shoots a teenager who had knocked on
his front door by accident, and another guy shoots a
teenager who pulled into the wrong driveway by accident, and
(20:18):
another guy shoots a teenager who got into the wrong
car by accident. Matt Gates has now introduced a response
to all this in Congress HR three one four to
two quote to amend Title eighteen US Code to provide
an affirmative defense for certain criminal violations and for other purposes. Yes,
the innocent are murdered for mistakes by mad men armed
(20:41):
to the teeth by politicians completely bought and sold by
the death industry, and the Matt Gates response is a
national stand your ground law in order to make murdering
those innocents perfectly legal. Runner up Brian Glenn, director of
programming for the RSB Network that's right Side broadcasting, a
(21:01):
Trump and fascist propaganda channel. Glenn has tweeted, quote, good
morning to all the men this morning, except to Britney
Griner parentheses. He him, it shouldn't surprise anyone that a
man is now the face of a women's professional basketball
league unquote, Nor should it be a surprised that somebody
who trades in homophobic and transphobic and racist hate should
(21:23):
tweet something like that, or that an irresponsible, brain damaged
racist like Elon Musk should do nothing about the tweet.
The surprise is that Glenn is going there about Britney Griner,
a biological woman, given that he is now dating Marjorie
Taylor Barney rubble, white supremacist Karen Green. I'd like to
observe one thing about Green and Griner and this Brian Glenn.
(21:48):
Clearly none of them are men. But our winner, Senator
Tim Scott of South Carolina, who actually is going through
with this, has actually announced he's running for president. Nobody
knows why. You don't know who I'm talking about. He
looks exactly like and sounds partic, exactly like everybody whoever
auditioned to host every game show in American TV history
(22:11):
but just missed getting the job. What's amazing is whatever
the point of his candidacy really is, and the speculation
has been he's a stalking horse for Trump. His marketing
people decided to give handheld fans to the crowd at
the obviously warm hall in which they held the announcement.
The fans showed an image of a sort of Tim Scott.
(22:34):
It shows him straightening his tie. It shows his bald
head and he has absolutely no face whatsoever. It's just
a head with no face, just the outline of his head.
It's clearly his head looks like his hand looks like
his tie in a suit looks like his suit. Like
(22:55):
this will protect him if Trump gets mad at him
later for running or something. Senator Tim, I may go
directly from the presidential campaign to the wit this relocation program,
Scott Today's worst Parson, and to the number one story
(23:24):
on the countdown on my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. And I tripped over this
over the weekend, and there it was filed under late
May nineteen ninety seven, and the light bulb went off
and I thought, wait, this is also late May, a
few years later, and it's all about the micro details
of how I quit ESPN. Now this math can't be right,
(23:47):
can it now? Twenty six years ago? And how I
left there to go to NBC to do the World
Series in the Super Bowl and anchoring the elections and
the inaugurations and the special comments and stuff. There is
a huge oral history of ESPN from twenty eleven by
Jim Miller, and most of it is pretty good, but
there's one line in it that triggered this recollection. The
(24:09):
executive vice president of the company in nineteen ninety seven
was named Howard Katz, and in this ESPN book he
was quoted as saying, I didn't fire Keith. I just
chose not to renew his contract. And then there's a
couple of quotes from guys I never heard of who said, no,
we fired him. None of it's true. Howard and I
got along surprisingly well at ESPN and even better since.
(24:30):
So I'm just going to assume he misremembered all this,
and he's right, I mean, legally, he chose not to
renew my contract early in nineteen ninety seven, and a
couple of weeks later, instead, he offered me a new
four year contract which would have basically doubled my salary.
And even after I had said no thanks and I
signed with NBC, the then president of ABC, Bob Eiger
(24:51):
whatever happened to him, tried to get me to back
out of the NBC deal, to renege on it, and
then sign a new deal at ESPN. So they offered
me two new deals after they didn't renew my old contract.
See how this works. In ninety six and ninety seven,
it was no secret that my first choice was to
leave ESPN. I had come within hours of asking to
(25:14):
be let out of my deal. In the summer of
nineteen ninety six, a radio station in Chicago WMVP had
wanted me to go do the afternoon drive show there,
a mix of news and sports, and they were offering
me twice the money I was getting to host SportsCenter,
and I was ready to go. Loved it. Had a
great week there. They wined me, they dined me, and
(25:35):
everybody offered me a free beer. Welcome to Chicago, you're
from out of town. And then ownership of the radio
station simply pulled the plug on the station it was
in thirty first place, and said they could save a
lot more money by simply rebroadcasting what was on FM radio.
And eventually, and this would have been interesting had I
gone to Chicago. Eventually, the owners sold WMVP to ESPN. Anyway,
(26:02):
my ESPN deal was set to expire on decent Umber
thirty first, nineteen ninety seven, but they had the option
to extend it for I can't remember either either for
a year after that or two years, but they had
to notify me really early in ninety seven, and instead,
on February eighteenth, nineteen ninety seven, Howard Katz proposed to
(26:22):
my then agent that we tear up the contract and
do a new four year deal that started at seven
hundred thousand dollars a year and covered a radio show
with Dan Patrick and the Sunday edition of Sports Center
and the sp Awards ceremonies and the Internet and everything else.
This was a lot of money for ESPN in nineteen
(26:43):
ninety seven, seven hundred thousand dollars a year, so we
played around with that for a while, but I didn't
really want to go into radio full time, not then
when I still had dark hair, so On April fourth,
nineteen ninety seven, Howard Katz came back with another offer,
three sports centers a week plus some radio, starting at
(27:03):
five hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. I noticed
that this was less than the first offer, so two
weeks later, at the first ever Jackie Robinson Night at
Chase Stadium in New York, Howard came up to me
and asked me. In front of everybody in our booth,
ranging from Chris Berman to Robin Roberts, to all the producers,
and briefly to President Bill Clinton, he asked me if
(27:25):
we were close on this new deal that he'd offered me.
I got angry at him. He got angry at me
for getting angry at him, and I said, you know,
forget it. And what's more, it makes no sense for
me to hang around here as a lame duck. Howard wait,
Howard the duck, and he calmed down. He said I
could look at other jobs and we'd let things cool
off and talk again about a new deal in a
(27:45):
few weeks after. I looked around to see if it
was something I'd rather do than be at ESPN, and
if it still wasn't going anywhere. We would agree on
a date early in the summer and I could leave
six months before the contract officially ended. And then three
huge things happened about this that most people still don't
know to this day, even after all that. When I
called Phil Mushnick of the New York Post and Richard
(28:07):
Sandomir of the New York Times, and I told them
I would be leaving ESPN, and it appeared I would
be going to go to Court TV to be the
host and executive producer of my own sports show, four
nights a week. I almost stayed at ESPN once it
got out that I was leaving. I got a letter
from a viewer who told me that his son, who
(28:28):
had autism, had been at his other son's little league game,
and when his brother banged out a base hit, this kid,
who had rarely ever spoken in his life, suddenly shouted
out one of my catchphrases. This guy said, he hit
the ball real hard. Then there was a flyball, and
(28:49):
the boy said it's deep, and I don't think it's playable.
Then they went home, and this virtually noncommunicative child began
to draw illustrations of my catchphrases. For whatever reason, I
had triggered some kind of blossoming by this child and
his brother and his father sent me a book of
(29:12):
the child's illustrations of my catch phrases. I am not
trying to suggest I really had anything to do with this.
It was good fortune and circumstance and probably something to
do with the tone of my voice, nothing more. But
I was very moved by this, and I remain so
and by other things. People wrote to me or wrote
in the press about how much the show Dan and
(29:34):
I did meant to them. And I went back to
Howard Katz and I said, look, I know I've been impossible.
You have to understand that from my perspective, the company
has also been impossible. But Dan and I created too
good a show to let it die. When I go
here to Court TV, I'm only going to work Monday
through Thursday on this new thing. If you will send
a car to take me to and from Bristol every
(29:56):
Sunday and give me some token, soal give me fifty
thousand dollars or something. I'll just do the Sunday night
show for you every week. You'll never see me, I'll
never see you. It's the show that has the highest
factor of management control. It's basically coloring in by numbers,
and it reruns all morning on Monday. So forty percent
(30:17):
of the people who see Dan and I during the
week they see this one show. That's it. If you
want some other stuff for me to do, like radio commentaries, great,
we can negotiate that, but we should not let this die.
At least let's have it on once a week. And
Howard Katz said, Okay, let me think about this. It
sounds really good. And he got back to me the
(30:37):
next day and he said it was the most difficult
decision he had ever made in this business, but he
just couldn't do it. It established too much of a precedent,
especially the idea that somebody could work at ESPN and
also at some other TV operation. He put it very bluntly.
If ESPN was not the sole employer of its people,
(30:58):
it could not control them by threatening to fire them.
And he looked at me and he said, special you,
and in the same sentence he said, look, we'd love
to continue the relationship, though we see lots of ways
you could fit into ESPN Classic, like once a week
or once a month or whatever, and we'd like to
get in on the bidding for these radio commentaries that
you're going to do on the side. Well, it all
(31:22):
ended surprisingly amicably. I decided to go to MSNBC and
NBC Sports instead of Court TV, and as I signed
the contract, I called the ESPN president, Steve Bornstein and
the head of Sports Center, John Walsh. I called them
from the office of the head of NBC Sports, Dick Eversol,
And in my diary, I can't tell if that was
(31:42):
June nineteenth, nineteen ninety seven or June twentieth, nineteen ninety seven,
but I made the calls, and it was Eversall's idea,
call them now, call them right now, it'll matter later.
The funniest thing was the following Monday, June twenty third,
I was packing up my stuff in my house in Connecticut.
I am all set, and I am officially beginning my
(32:03):
first week not working for EAP and instead working for NBC,
and the phone rings and it's John Walsh in Los
Angeles for something, and he has to talk to my
agent immediately. Do you know where she is right now?
Howard Katz and I have just spoken with Bob Iger
and he wants to present a primetime proposal to you
(32:24):
for ABC and until you can continue at ESPN. And
I laughed, and I said, John, I signed with NBC
last week the World Series and the news show and
Super Bowl stuff. Remember I called you from Dick Ebersoll's office.
Do you remember it was Friday or Thursday, whatever it was.
We're having the news conference today. And he is dead serious.
(32:48):
And he says to me, oh, oh oh, and there's
a long pause. Well, well, I still need to talk
to your agent. Well. I had known Bob Iger, who
had apparently precipitated this phone call, since I was in
college in nineteen seventy nine. He had given me an
hour of his time just for career advice, because I
had interned at the TV station for which his first
(33:10):
wife had been a news producer, Channel five in New York.
I told that story, I think two weeks ago, and
Bob was wonderful to me. So I called Bob and
I explained what had happened, and he said, Steve Bornstein
only told me that you were leaving this morning. I'm
very very sorry. I knew there were contentious negotiations about
a new deal for you, but I had no clue
it was at the point where you might actually leave.
(33:31):
I should have known. That's my fault. That's why I
told John to make the call.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
He did.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Trust me. If I had known, would have been totally different.
I would have made it right by you. You would
have wanted to stay, and if it doesn't work at NBC,
you call me directly and I'll bring you back here myself.
I mean, the ending was so unexpectedly and surprisingly pleasant
that even when my new bosses at MSNBC suddenly announced
I think it was in newsweek that they were going
(33:56):
to call my program The Big Show, which was our
nickname for Sports Center at ESPN, the Big Show. But
they hadn't told anybody at ESPN that were going to
call our MSNBC show the Big Show. It was me
who got on the phone with Howard Katz and a
couple of other people at ESPN to apologize and to
make sure they were okay with it. So, even after
(34:17):
my ESPN career was officially over and all chance of
my returning was dead, we tried to revive it, both
of us, Howard Katz and me, in good faith. And
I don't think Bob Eiger was blowing smoke at me.
He had no reason to, and even after all that
the parting was non nuclear. I think they sent me
a fruit basket for my first night at MSNBC on
(34:40):
October first, and then it all blew up. John Walsh
called the TV sports columnist at USA Today, Rudy Martski,
and gave him my first set of ratings from MSNBC,
just to try to make me look like I couldn't
succeed without ESPN. Marski told me that direct quote, they
(35:02):
want to punish you publicly. Walsh has been pressuring me
to run the very poor ratings, and he said, I'm
going to finally do it. I just wanted to give
you a little warning and maybe you have a comment. Well,
that set the tone for the next five years of warfare,
and it was nuclear pretty quickly. But this impression that
ESPN chose to dismiss me or not renew me or
(35:23):
not bring me back, its nonsense. Howard did not not
renew me. Instead, he offered to double my salary if
I stayed. If I had signed with NBC. Iiger was
still trying to get me to back out after I
had signed with NBC and stay at ESPN and ABC.
The irony of this minor detail from about nineteen ninety seven,
(35:44):
printed in twenty eleven. I think is that I had
already returned to ESPN by the time it was printed.
I took an hour out of my day at MSNBC
to go on with Dan Patrick on his ESPN radio
show from two thousand and five through two thousand and seven.
A year after that book came out with that quote
in it, twenty twelve, I was talking to the executives
at esp IN about going back full time, and a
(36:07):
year later I did to launch a nightly show on
ESPN two, and that ended when they laid off like
one hundred million dollars worth of talent salaries in twenty fifteen.
But then I went back again in twenty eighteen, and
I did Sports Center, and I did baseball games on
radio and on TV, and I did reports, and I
did commentaries. I did the not top ten plays of
(36:27):
the week, and on and on and on, and finally
we parted happily in the late summer of twenty twenty
so I could return to political coverage. And I knew
they wouldn't want that, and I didn't want to put
it on ESPN, And the unlikely result of that my
parting happily in twenty twenty. On the books at Disney,
I am listed as a Disney and ESPN retiree. I
(36:54):
get benefits. I retired from ESPN. I mean, they didn't
give me a gold watch or anything, but I'm technically
a retiree. And if you had predicted that in nineteen
ninety seven or twenty eleven, well you know the cliche.
I bring all this up again because I don't know
how often I have thought of that father and his
(37:15):
two boys, and the one who started speaking, but only
in my catch phrases. I would guess it's at least
once a month. Those boys would have to be in
their thirties by now or nearly, and I wonder often
of what has become of them, and I sure hope
they are well. I've done all the damage I can do.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Here.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Here are the credits. Most of the music arranged, produced
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the
Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanelle, guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray and produced by Tko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
Horns allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
(38:11):
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
From which I am a retiree. Musical comments from Nancy Fauss,
the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer was, fittingly
Tony Kornheiser from ESPN. Not a retiree. Everything else is
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the
(38:32):
eight hundred and sixty eighth day since Donald Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Don't forget to keep arresting him while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
(39:03):
Keith Olderman is duction 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. Special
Council Jack Smith is clearly pursuing a theory of Donald
(00:27):
Trump's stolen documents conspiracy, in which Trump ignored a subpoena
to return every classified document, committed obstruction of justice, and
violated the Espionage Act by hiding the documents from his
own attorney search in order to retain them, and then
somehow utilize them in post presidential business deals with one
(00:51):
of seven countries, including China and Saudi Arabia. And as evidence,
Jack Smith now has in his hands nothing less than
the real time handwritten notes of Trump's own lawyer. For
the first time, we have a hint at how far
Trump was willing to go to keep those documents and
(01:13):
what the Special Council prosecutors think Trump's motive was. And
it is breathtaking, and it broke in two separate source stories,
first in England's The Guardian and then in the New
York Times a startling discovery of his attorney's notes. One
analyst describes it as Special Counsel Smith strikes Gold could
(01:35):
be enough to put Trump in prison for ten years
per count for not just wilfully retaining classified documents but
deliberately hiding them to keep his own lawyer from finding
them and giving them back to the authorities, a brazen
violation of a key part of the Espionage Act. And
(01:56):
from that separate source story in The Times, and even
more astonishingly, it's clear that Special Counsel is also pursuing
evidence that Trump may have given or traded or sold
classified documents and or information to China, to France, Kuwait, Oman,
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and or the United Arab Emirates. Whether
(02:18):
the evidence can be obtained in fact, whether it even
exists is not clear. On the other hand, I am
willing to stake a lot on this theory. Jack Smith
did not pick the names of seven countries out of
a hat. The biggest developments in the Mari Lago documents
case in months came within hours of each other, via
(02:38):
two leaks that route back directly to the testimony that
a court forced from the Trump attorney, Evan Corcoran. Because
Corcoran did not just talk, he brought receipts fifty pages
five zero of handwritten notes in which Corcoran warned Trump
he could not keep classified documents after the subpoena arrived
(02:59):
that demanded their return, and which Corcoran writes that after
he warned that to Trump, Trump still wanted to know
how to fight it and keep the documents. Corkoran's notes
show he told Trump, no, you can't do that. We
already know. Trump decided to fight it by keeping some
classified documents anyway, and at that disastrous town hall last week,
(03:20):
which may yet wind up being more disastrous for Trump
than it was for CNN, Trump publicly admitted he deliberately
took and kept classified documents and claimed he had the
right to do so. The Special Council clearly believes he
has evidence that Trump hid classified documents deliberately, wilfully, and
after his own attorney had warned him it was a
(03:42):
criminal act. He has the lawyer's notes, He has security
video from the infamous Mari Lago storage room and surrounding environs,
and the previous testimony of Trump vallet Walt Nauta that
after Corcoran told Trump that his only course of action
was to return everything, Trump and Corcoran agreed Corcoran should
search for classified documents, but in dead Trump ordered now
(04:06):
to move specific boxes so Trump could hide those boxes
during Corcoran's search, or so Trump could go through those
boxes and pull individual classified documents he insisted on keeping
from Corcoran. As Hugo Loll writes in The Guardian, now
To told the Justice Department that Trump told him to
(04:26):
move boxes out of the storage room before and after
the subpoena. The activity was captured on subpoenaed surveillance footage.
That all adds up to not just forgetting some classified
documents or misplacing them, or misunderstanding what was required, or
(04:50):
even defying the regulations that you had to return them.
That is a written record of dates and times of
warnings from an officer of the court not to commit
a crime, then committing the crime anyway, then covering up
the committee of the crime, and then having the crime discovered,
and then trying to blame the crime on an inefficient
(05:10):
search by the attorney Corcoran. That is an almost textbook
definition of not one but two crimes. First obstruction of
justice in all big bright red capital letters, and also
violation of eighteen US Code seven ninety three E inside
(05:30):
the Espionage Act quote willfully retaining documents relating to the
National defense and failing to deliver them to the officer
or employee of the United States entitled to receive them
a fine or ten years, or both per document. The notes, writer,
Lowell added, revealed how Trump and Naouda had unusually detailed
(05:53):
knowledge of the botched subpoena response, including where Corcoran intended
to search and not search for classified documents at mary Lago,
as well as when core Kren was actually doing his search,
and then just for color Hugo. Lowell added that in
his notes quote Corcoran described Trump's facial expressions and reactions
(06:17):
whenever they discussed the subpoena, I'll bet he did. That
document version of a game of deadly Hide and Seek
had already reignited the story of the Special Council's attempt
to put Trump away when the second, more vague but
potentially more dangerous story broke in The New York Times,
(06:38):
the part of Smith's office handling the marri Lago stolen
documents has now quoting the paper issued a subpoena for
information about mister Trump's business dealings in foreign countries since
he took office. According to two people familiar with the matter,
this is the first indication that there could be tangible
evidence or even that there's reason to suspect there may
(07:01):
be such evidence connecting the stealing and retaining of the
classified documents and the possibility that the documents or information
could have been sold or bartered or given away by
Trump to a foreign nation or nationals. And that is
far more ominous even than wilful retention or obstruction of justice.
The Time says the subpoena seeks details on any Trump
(07:23):
organization quote, real estate, licensing and development dealings in seven
countries China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab
Emirates and Oman, anything since twenty seventeen. Anything. The crime
does not have to have been committed while Trump was
in office, only while he was in office or afterwards.
(07:48):
We know Trump made a deal to license his name
to promoters of a hotel, housing and golf complex in
Oman last fall, and on a bigger scale, he made
a deal with the Saudi Back Live Golf League the
year before, which is hold some of its tournaments at
Trump golf facilities in this country. Among the government documents
(08:10):
discovered in mister Trump's Possession Rights The Times were some
related to Middle Eastern countries, and when the FBI executed
a search warrant in August twenty twenty two at Mary Lago,
among the items recovered was material related to Resident Emmanuel
Macrone of France, according to court records. It is important
(08:31):
here to remember that the motive that the possibility that
the impossibly narrow minded money grubbing Trump traded our classified
documents to get a better deal on a golf tournament
could elevate this case to genuine international espionage and something
far more dangerous for Trump than ten years in jail.
(08:53):
But none of the motive is necessary to prove the
first half of the crime, that he not only kept
and hid the classified documents, but had been told by
his own attorney that to do so was to break
the law. So now that there is at least the
outlines of a theory of the case. He took records,
(09:15):
he refused to return records when the records were subpoened.
He made sure his own attorney would not find certain records.
He may have used or planned to use records in
international business deals. Let me just fold these stories into
the whole marri Lago document timeline as we think we
know it. About May sixth of twenty twenty one, more
(09:36):
than two years ago. Now, the National Archives realized some
classified documents from Trump's reign of Error were missing from
their files, and they asked him to give them back.
Throughout the summer, Trump stalled, as the Archives kept asking
politely and relatively informally. By the way late spring or
(09:57):
early summer twenty twenty one, Trump concluded a deal with
the new Live Golf enterprise, reportedly ninety three percent own
by the government of Saudi Arabia. Late December twenty twenty one,
a Trump repp told the Archives that about a dozen
boxes of records that should have not been removed from
the White House were at Mari Lago and they could
be retrieved. January eighteenth, twenty twenty two, the Archives wound
(10:21):
up picking up fifteen boxes, all but one of which
contained some classified documents, one hundred and eighty four classified
documents in all, including some which had details about sensitive
human sources or electronic signals or stuff from the FISA courts.
February ninth, twenty twenty two, the Archives Inspector General told
(10:43):
the Justice Department, Hey, you guys had better have a
look into this. He had classified stuff down there he
may have more. May tenth, twenty twenty two, after a
series of delays, the Archives informed Trump's lawyers that they
were now going to provide the FBI access to the
boxes that Trump had already returned. May eleventh, twenty twenty two,
(11:04):
the Justice Department subpoened additional records. Also May eleventh, twenty
twenty two, Evan Corkoran's handwritten notes of his conversations with
his client Trump about the stolen documents begin sometime in
the ensuing month. There is closed circuit video of this guy,
Walt Nauta moving documents, or at least moving boxes in
(11:27):
and out of the storage room, and Evan Corkoran searching
for classified documents or the boxes they were supposedly In
June third, twenty twenty two, three FBI agents and a
DOJ attorney go to Mari Lago to collect more materials.
Trump had quote found unquote thirty eight classified documents, seventeen
(11:49):
of them top secret, saying that they'd all been in
one area and one area only, the storage room at
Mari Lago, and the agents and the attorney were permitted
to look at the storage room and the storage area,
but nowhere else. In the entire club, and Trump attorneys
wrote and gave them a document verifying that, to the
best of their knowledge, everything classified that Trump had ever
(12:11):
had was now back in the government's hands. Sometime in
the ensuing two months, more CCTV video shows more boxes move,
plus perhaps unknown events that led to August fifth, twenty
twenty two, the DOJ application for a subpoena to search
and sees any classified records at mari Lago, and August eighth,
(12:34):
twenty twenty two, the search executed and nearly one hundred
more classified documents found around the club, including in Trump's
pretend presidential office. Around November thirteenth, twenty twenty two, the
Trump organization signed a deal with a Saudi real estate
company to put the Trump brand on a hotel and
golf course in a four billion dollar development that it
(12:56):
is building in and with financial support by the Nation
of Oman. And May fourth, twenty two, twenty three, Trump's
security hanchos Matt Kalamari and Matt Kalamari Junior, two servings
of Calamari, testify in front of the Jack Smith Grand
(13:17):
Jury about problems with the security video system at mari
A Lago and reportedly about problems with Nauta's testimony. I
should add this caveat that timeline is what has been
publicly revealed in court records or by reporting from reliable
news organizations. I am now left wondering about these questions.
(13:40):
Exactly what is on the security video at marri A
Lago and what's missing from it? How do prosecutors know
there has been an erasure or an accidental deletion, and
what do they think was deleted? We know why Jack
Smith wants records about Saudi Arabia, live golf and Oman,
(14:03):
the Trump bill there and France. He stole documents about
Macron and China, the documents that included details of our
intel work there. But what about Kuwait and the UAE?
Could be more golf, could be Trump has sold them
documents about Iran's missile program to one of them, or
(14:25):
again back to the Saudis. But then there's the seventh nation, Turkey.
Why does Jack Smith want records of any Trump licensing
or real estate deals in Turkey? What does Turkey have
to do with all of this? There does not seem
to be a hint about this anywhere yet. And then
(14:51):
there is the juiciest question of them all to ponder.
They produced these two bombshells in one day. They produced
evidence that Trump lied to his own attorney to hide
documents from his own attorney. They produced the first tangible
possible overall motive, the handwritten notes by Trump attorney Evan Corcoran.
(15:15):
What else do they include? I mean fifty pages? Have
you ever handwritten fifty pages? They are not all about
boxes of documents? What else is in there? And how
many years in prison could Donald Trump serve.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Because of it?
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Also of note, there's a new contender in the Republican
presidential field. The problem is in the official depiction of
him in the first merch produced by his campaign. You
can clearly see his suit. You can clearly see his
hand adjusting his tie, can clearly see his outline. How
come you can't see his face? One of our presidential
(16:15):
candidates faces is missing.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
That's next. This is an all new edition of Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman, PST.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions, dateline, Hudson Yards, New York. I would like
to congratulate CNN and Anderson Cooper on their ratings triumph
from last Friday Night, the eight PM edition of Anderson
Cooper three point sixty defeated newsmax show Eric Bowling. You
didn't really pay for that plastic surgery, did you? Hour
(16:54):
four hundred and eighty four thousand viewers to four hundred
and thirty eight thousand. Of course, by ten PM, Newsmax's
Greg Kelly was out rating Chris Wallace on CNN, and
at eleven pm, CNN Tonight lost two hundred and forty
thousand to two hundred and twenty two thousand to Newsmax's
Rob Schmidt Tonight. The rerun of Rob Schmidt Tonight, Well,
(17:22):
we're over here in ratings obscurity. The guy I told
you about yesterday, Dan Abrams, the worst TV manager I've
ever known personally. His nine PM show on the Nick
at Night of TV News Operations News Nation did not
do too well Friday in the coveted twenty five to
fifty four advertising demo five thousand viewers, five thousand, Thank you,
(18:09):
Nancy Faust Dateline New York. The good news for CNN
E Gene Carroll left them out of her new lawsuit
against Trump. No, not the one she already won with
an award of five million dollars for rape and defamation.
This is the one for how he defamed her on
the CNN town hall two weeks ago. Tomorrow. I'm glad
to see that town hall worked out so well for everybody.
(18:30):
I understand David Zaslav is still trying to finish his
commencement speech at BU dateline. The Pentagon and the White House,
neither of which was hurt yesterday or damaged, despite what
you might have seen yesterday in a series of AI
images spread by store bought eight dollars blue checks on
Twitter and then amplified by Russian state media. One of
(18:52):
the blue check accounts was called Bloomberg Feed and was
designed to look like it was part of Bloomberg News,
and it had a blue check mark. Twitter immediately suspended
the account eight hours later, after the stock market had
dipped and while the images were still bouncing around the internet,
and as one AI expert warned, the most important part
(19:13):
of this story is those crappy Pentagon and White House
fake images. All subsequent AI fakes will be far far
better than those were coming up. I still get asked
(19:39):
about this. The anniversary is more or less now, so
let's walk through it, why and how I quit hosting
Sports Center in nineteen ninety seven. First, the daily round
up of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's worst persons.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
The brons good Old Matt Gates of Florida. It is
a sign of the madness of our times that a
kid crosses state lines to shoot two Black Lives Matter
protesters and then makes a career out of boasting about it.
And a guy shoots a teenager who had knocked on
his front door by accident, and another guy shoots a
teenager who pulled into the wrong driveway by accident, and
(20:18):
another guy shoots a teenager who got into the wrong
car by accident. Matt Gates has now introduced a response
to all this in Congress HR three one four to
two quote to amend Title eighteen US Code to provide
an affirmative defense for certain criminal violations and for other purposes. Yes,
the innocent are murdered for mistakes by mad men armed
(20:41):
to the teeth by politicians completely bought and sold by
the death industry, and the Matt Gates response is a
national stand your ground law in order to make murdering
those innocents perfectly legal. Runner up Brian Glenn, director of
programming for the RSB Network that's right Side broadcasting, a
(21:01):
Trump and fascist propaganda channel. Glenn has tweeted, quote, good
morning to all the men this morning, except to Britney
Griner parentheses. He him, it shouldn't surprise anyone that a
man is now the face of a women's professional basketball
league unquote, Nor should it be a surprised that somebody
who trades in homophobic and transphobic and racist hate should
(21:23):
tweet something like that, or that an irresponsible, brain damaged
racist like Elon Musk should do nothing about the tweet.
The surprise is that Glenn is going there about Britney Griner,
a biological woman, given that he is now dating Marjorie
Taylor Barney rubble, white supremacist Karen Green. I'd like to
observe one thing about Green and Griner and this Brian Glenn.
(21:48):
Clearly none of them are men. But our winner, Senator
Tim Scott of South Carolina, who actually is going through
with this, has actually announced he's running for president. Nobody
knows why. You don't know who I'm talking about. He
looks exactly like and sounds partic, exactly like everybody whoever
auditioned to host every game show in American TV history
(22:11):
but just missed getting the job. What's amazing is whatever
the point of his candidacy really is, and the speculation
has been he's a stalking horse for Trump. His marketing
people decided to give handheld fans to the crowd at
the obviously warm hall in which they held the announcement.
The fans showed an image of a sort of Tim Scott.
(22:34):
It shows him straightening his tie. It shows his bald
head and he has absolutely no face whatsoever. It's just
a head with no face, just the outline of his head.
It's clearly his head looks like his hand looks like
his tie in a suit looks like his suit. Like
(22:55):
this will protect him if Trump gets mad at him
later for running or something. Senator Tim, I may go
directly from the presidential campaign to the wit this relocation program,
Scott Today's worst Parson, and to the number one story
(23:24):
on the countdown on my favorite topic, me and things
I promised not to tell. And I tripped over this
over the weekend, and there it was filed under late
May nineteen ninety seven, and the light bulb went off
and I thought, wait, this is also late May, a
few years later, and it's all about the micro details
of how I quit ESPN. Now this math can't be right,
(23:47):
can it now? Twenty six years ago? And how I
left there to go to NBC to do the World
Series in the Super Bowl and anchoring the elections and
the inaugurations and the special comments and stuff. There is
a huge oral history of ESPN from twenty eleven by
Jim Miller, and most of it is pretty good, but
there's one line in it that triggered this recollection. The
(24:09):
executive vice president of the company in nineteen ninety seven
was named Howard Katz, and in this ESPN book he
was quoted as saying, I didn't fire Keith. I just
chose not to renew his contract. And then there's a
couple of quotes from guys I never heard of who said, no,
we fired him. None of it's true. Howard and I
got along surprisingly well at ESPN and even better since.
(24:30):
So I'm just going to assume he misremembered all this,
and he's right, I mean, legally, he chose not to
renew my contract early in nineteen ninety seven, and a
couple of weeks later, instead, he offered me a new
four year contract which would have basically doubled my salary.
And even after I had said no thanks and I
signed with NBC, the then president of ABC, Bob Eiger
(24:51):
whatever happened to him, tried to get me to back
out of the NBC deal, to renege on it, and
then sign a new deal at ESPN. So they offered
me two new deals after they didn't renew my old contract.
See how this works. In ninety six and ninety seven,
it was no secret that my first choice was to
leave ESPN. I had come within hours of asking to
(25:14):
be let out of my deal. In the summer of
nineteen ninety six, a radio station in Chicago WMVP had
wanted me to go do the afternoon drive show there,
a mix of news and sports, and they were offering
me twice the money I was getting to host SportsCenter,
and I was ready to go. Loved it. Had a
great week there. They wined me, they dined me, and
(25:35):
everybody offered me a free beer. Welcome to Chicago, you're
from out of town. And then ownership of the radio
station simply pulled the plug on the station it was
in thirty first place, and said they could save a
lot more money by simply rebroadcasting what was on FM radio.
And eventually, and this would have been interesting had I
gone to Chicago. Eventually, the owners sold WMVP to ESPN. Anyway,
(26:02):
my ESPN deal was set to expire on decent Umber
thirty first, nineteen ninety seven, but they had the option
to extend it for I can't remember either either for
a year after that or two years, but they had
to notify me really early in ninety seven, and instead,
on February eighteenth, nineteen ninety seven, Howard Katz proposed to
(26:22):
my then agent that we tear up the contract and
do a new four year deal that started at seven
hundred thousand dollars a year and covered a radio show
with Dan Patrick and the Sunday edition of Sports Center
and the sp Awards ceremonies and the Internet and everything else.
This was a lot of money for ESPN in nineteen
(26:43):
ninety seven, seven hundred thousand dollars a year, so we
played around with that for a while, but I didn't
really want to go into radio full time, not then
when I still had dark hair, so On April fourth,
nineteen ninety seven, Howard Katz came back with another offer,
three sports centers a week plus some radio, starting at
(27:03):
five hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. I noticed
that this was less than the first offer, so two
weeks later, at the first ever Jackie Robinson Night at
Chase Stadium in New York, Howard came up to me
and asked me. In front of everybody in our booth,
ranging from Chris Berman to Robin Roberts, to all the producers,
and briefly to President Bill Clinton, he asked me if
(27:25):
we were close on this new deal that he'd offered me.
I got angry at him. He got angry at me
for getting angry at him, and I said, you know,
forget it. And what's more, it makes no sense for
me to hang around here as a lame duck. Howard wait,
Howard the duck, and he calmed down. He said I
could look at other jobs and we'd let things cool
off and talk again about a new deal in a
(27:45):
few weeks after. I looked around to see if it
was something I'd rather do than be at ESPN, and
if it still wasn't going anywhere. We would agree on
a date early in the summer and I could leave
six months before the contract officially ended. And then three
huge things happened about this that most people still don't
know to this day, even after all that. When I
called Phil Mushnick of the New York Post and Richard
(28:07):
Sandomir of the New York Times, and I told them
I would be leaving ESPN, and it appeared I would
be going to go to Court TV to be the
host and executive producer of my own sports show, four
nights a week. I almost stayed at ESPN once it
got out that I was leaving. I got a letter
from a viewer who told me that his son, who
(28:28):
had autism, had been at his other son's little league game,
and when his brother banged out a base hit, this kid,
who had rarely ever spoken in his life, suddenly shouted
out one of my catchphrases. This guy said, he hit
the ball real hard. Then there was a flyball, and
(28:49):
the boy said it's deep, and I don't think it's playable.
Then they went home, and this virtually noncommunicative child began
to draw illustrations of my catchphrases. For whatever reason, I
had triggered some kind of blossoming by this child and
his brother and his father sent me a book of
(29:12):
the child's illustrations of my catch phrases. I am not
trying to suggest I really had anything to do with this.
It was good fortune and circumstance and probably something to
do with the tone of my voice, nothing more. But
I was very moved by this, and I remain so
and by other things. People wrote to me or wrote
in the press about how much the show Dan and
(29:34):
I did meant to them. And I went back to
Howard Katz and I said, look, I know I've been impossible.
You have to understand that from my perspective, the company
has also been impossible. But Dan and I created too
good a show to let it die. When I go
here to Court TV, I'm only going to work Monday
through Thursday on this new thing. If you will send
a car to take me to and from Bristol every
(29:56):
Sunday and give me some token, soal give me fifty
thousand dollars or something. I'll just do the Sunday night
show for you every week. You'll never see me, I'll
never see you. It's the show that has the highest
factor of management control. It's basically coloring in by numbers,
and it reruns all morning on Monday. So forty percent
(30:17):
of the people who see Dan and I during the
week they see this one show. That's it. If you
want some other stuff for me to do, like radio commentaries, great,
we can negotiate that, but we should not let this die.
At least let's have it on once a week. And
Howard Katz said, Okay, let me think about this. It
sounds really good. And he got back to me the
(30:37):
next day and he said it was the most difficult
decision he had ever made in this business, but he
just couldn't do it. It established too much of a precedent,
especially the idea that somebody could work at ESPN and
also at some other TV operation. He put it very bluntly.
If ESPN was not the sole employer of its people,
(30:58):
it could not control them by threatening to fire them.
And he looked at me and he said, special you,
and in the same sentence he said, look, we'd love
to continue the relationship, though we see lots of ways
you could fit into ESPN Classic, like once a week
or once a month or whatever, and we'd like to
get in on the bidding for these radio commentaries that
you're going to do on the side. Well, it all
(31:22):
ended surprisingly amicably. I decided to go to MSNBC and
NBC Sports instead of Court TV, and as I signed
the contract, I called the ESPN president, Steve Bornstein and
the head of Sports Center, John Walsh. I called them
from the office of the head of NBC Sports, Dick Eversol,
And in my diary, I can't tell if that was
(31:42):
June nineteenth, nineteen ninety seven or June twentieth, nineteen ninety seven,
but I made the calls, and it was Eversall's idea,
call them now, call them right now, it'll matter later.
The funniest thing was the following Monday, June twenty third,
I was packing up my stuff in my house in Connecticut.
I am all set, and I am officially beginning my
(32:03):
first week not working for EAP and instead working for NBC,
and the phone rings and it's John Walsh in Los
Angeles for something, and he has to talk to my
agent immediately. Do you know where she is right now?
Howard Katz and I have just spoken with Bob Iger
and he wants to present a primetime proposal to you
(32:24):
for ABC and until you can continue at ESPN. And
I laughed, and I said, John, I signed with NBC
last week the World Series and the news show and
Super Bowl stuff. Remember I called you from Dick Ebersoll's office.
Do you remember it was Friday or Thursday, whatever it was.
We're having the news conference today. And he is dead serious.
(32:48):
And he says to me, oh, oh oh, and there's
a long pause. Well, well, I still need to talk
to your agent. Well. I had known Bob Iger, who
had apparently precipitated this phone call, since I was in
college in nineteen seventy nine. He had given me an
hour of his time just for career advice, because I
had interned at the TV station for which his first
(33:10):
wife had been a news producer, Channel five in New York.
I told that story, I think two weeks ago, and
Bob was wonderful to me. So I called Bob and
I explained what had happened, and he said, Steve Bornstein
only told me that you were leaving this morning. I'm
very very sorry. I knew there were contentious negotiations about
a new deal for you, but I had no clue
it was at the point where you might actually leave.
(33:31):
I should have known. That's my fault. That's why I
told John to make the call.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
He did.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Trust me. If I had known, would have been totally different.
I would have made it right by you. You would
have wanted to stay, and if it doesn't work at NBC,
you call me directly and I'll bring you back here myself.
I mean, the ending was so unexpectedly and surprisingly pleasant
that even when my new bosses at MSNBC suddenly announced
I think it was in newsweek that they were going
(33:56):
to call my program The Big Show, which was our
nickname for Sports Center at ESPN, the Big Show. But
they hadn't told anybody at ESPN that were going to
call our MSNBC show the Big Show. It was me
who got on the phone with Howard Katz and a
couple of other people at ESPN to apologize and to
make sure they were okay with it. So, even after
(34:17):
my ESPN career was officially over and all chance of
my returning was dead, we tried to revive it, both
of us, Howard Katz and me, in good faith. And
I don't think Bob Eiger was blowing smoke at me.
He had no reason to, and even after all that
the parting was non nuclear. I think they sent me
a fruit basket for my first night at MSNBC on
(34:40):
October first, and then it all blew up. John Walsh
called the TV sports columnist at USA Today, Rudy Martski,
and gave him my first set of ratings from MSNBC,
just to try to make me look like I couldn't
succeed without ESPN. Marski told me that direct quote, they
(35:02):
want to punish you publicly. Walsh has been pressuring me
to run the very poor ratings, and he said, I'm
going to finally do it. I just wanted to give
you a little warning and maybe you have a comment. Well,
that set the tone for the next five years of warfare,
and it was nuclear pretty quickly. But this impression that
ESPN chose to dismiss me or not renew me or
(35:23):
not bring me back, its nonsense. Howard did not not
renew me. Instead, he offered to double my salary if
I stayed. If I had signed with NBC. Iiger was
still trying to get me to back out after I
had signed with NBC and stay at ESPN and ABC.
The irony of this minor detail from about nineteen ninety seven,
(35:44):
printed in twenty eleven. I think is that I had
already returned to ESPN by the time it was printed.
I took an hour out of my day at MSNBC
to go on with Dan Patrick on his ESPN radio
show from two thousand and five through two thousand and seven.
A year after that book came out with that quote
in it, twenty twelve, I was talking to the executives
at esp IN about going back full time, and a
(36:07):
year later I did to launch a nightly show on
ESPN two, and that ended when they laid off like
one hundred million dollars worth of talent salaries in twenty fifteen.
But then I went back again in twenty eighteen, and
I did Sports Center, and I did baseball games on
radio and on TV, and I did reports, and I
did commentaries. I did the not top ten plays of
(36:27):
the week, and on and on and on, and finally
we parted happily in the late summer of twenty twenty
so I could return to political coverage. And I knew
they wouldn't want that, and I didn't want to put
it on ESPN, And the unlikely result of that my
parting happily in twenty twenty. On the books at Disney,
I am listed as a Disney and ESPN retiree. I
(36:54):
get benefits. I retired from ESPN. I mean, they didn't
give me a gold watch or anything, but I'm technically
a retiree. And if you had predicted that in nineteen
ninety seven or twenty eleven, well you know the cliche.
I bring all this up again because I don't know
how often I have thought of that father and his
(37:15):
two boys, and the one who started speaking, but only
in my catch phrases. I would guess it's at least
once a month. Those boys would have to be in
their thirties by now or nearly, and I wonder often
of what has become of them, and I sure hope
they are well. I've done all the damage I can do.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Here.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Here are the credits. Most of the music arranged, produced
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the
Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanelle, guitars,
bass and drums by Brian Ray and produced by Tko Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
Horns allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
(38:11):
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
From which I am a retiree. Musical comments from Nancy Fauss,
the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer was, fittingly
Tony Kornheiser from ESPN. Not a retiree. Everything else is
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the
(38:32):
eight hundred and sixty eighth day since Donald Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Don't forget to keep arresting him while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman.
Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with
(39:03):
Keith Olderman is duction of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
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