TRUMP'S MILITARY PLOT TO TAKE OVER THE GOVERNMENT - 2.24.25

SEASON 3 EPISODE 101: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replaced him with a junior officer he brought back from retirement whom HE claims once wore a MAGA cap in his presence. Then he fired the Judge Advocate of the army, the Judge Advocate of the Navy, and the Judge Advocate of the Air Force.

What you have been told by news organizations – even ones that still have good reporters – that this is part of the Trump Racism Orgy. The fired Joint Chiefs Chairman Charles Q. Brown is black. The Chief of Naval Operations was a woman. Their identities are cover stories and red meat for the Trump cult. Trump looked at the top lawyers at the Army, Navy and Air Force, the ones who would tell him, no, you can’t have the Army shoot civilians, and you can’t have the Navy blockade Vancouver and Greenland and the Panama Canal, and you can’t bomb the next Democratic convention… and he fired them.

At least six different reporters and commentators on the military beat said the same thing. Firing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is bad and a red flag. Firing the T-JAGS, the Judge Advocates, the lawyers who tell you when something you are going to do with the military is illegal… can mean only one thing… you are planning to do something with the military that is illegal. You fire the people who would SAY it’s illegal and replace them with people who would say it ISN’T illegal.

There are degrees of nightmare ahead. They all amount to different versions of Trump's plot to permanently take over the government by using the military.

B-Block (26:20) THE FIRING OF JOY REID: Yes, firing her is racist and maybe worse yes it is designed to keep out people who might think differently and it is designed to reward professional political salespeople like party chairmen and press secretaries. But most of all, since they also fired Alex Wagner, it means that four women of color have solo hosted prominent shows ON MSNBC and all four of them have now been fired. 

C-Block (58:00) SPORTSBALL CENTRAL: I could not have been more wrong about hockey's Four Nations Faceoff. But at least I wasn't as wrong as Wayne Gretzky, now under deserved attack in Canada as a remorseless Trumpist, and rapidly becoming The Man Without A Country. (1:11:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Senator Thom Tillis begins to suck up to Trump. Jared Polis, "Democratic" governor of Colorado, should resign. So too should Phil Murphy, "Democratic" governor of New Jersey.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm suggesting,
mister President, says Kirk Douglas, is jaw straighter line even

(00:28):
than usual. There's a military plot to take over the government.
That is the fulcrum in a movie called Seven Days
in May. When it came out, was terrifying political science fiction.
And yet now as Trump brings the plot points of
that film to life, this life, in this America today,
it is clear that the military plot to take over

(00:51):
the government posited in that film undersold the idea because
it left out what is now evident. After Trump's purge
of the Pentagon over the weekend, and after what his
Secretary of Defense just said about removing eagle roadwalks to
what they intend to do, I'm suggesting there's a military
plot to take over the government orchestrated by the government.

(01:14):
Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and replaced him with a junior officer he brought back
from retirement, whom he claims once wore a Maga cap
in his presence, a retired lieutenant general named Dan Raisin Cain.
Trump likes the nickname the way he liked Mad dog

(01:36):
mattis because Trump as the brain of a not very
bright fourth grader. Trump fired the judge Advocate of the Army,
the judge advocate of the Navy, and the judge advocate
of the Air Force as well. Friday. Trump also fired
the chief of Naval Operations and the Vice chief of
the Air Force, and fifty four hundred civilian Pentagon employees.

(01:59):
To start, what you have been told by news organizations,
even ones that still have good reporters, is that this
is part of the Trump racism orgy. The fired Joint
Chief Chairman Charles Q. Brown is black. The Chief of
Naval Operations was a woman. Their identities are cover stories
and red meat for the Trump cult. And I'm sure

(02:21):
that pleases Musk and the rest of the apartheid gang,
but they are incidental to the real purpose here. Trump
fired the head of the military and replaced him with
somebody he believes, though General Caine denies it war the
I am a Trump slave cap. Trump looked at the

(02:42):
top lawyers at the Army, Navy, and Air Force, the
ones who would tell him, no, you cannot have the
Army shoot civilians, and know you cannot have the Navy
blockade Vancouver and Greenland and the Panama Canal, and you
can't bomb the next Democratic convention, and he fired those people.
At least six different reporters and commentators regularly on the

(03:04):
mid Terry Beets said the same thing. Firing the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs is bad. It is a red
flag firing the t jacks. The judge advocates the lawyers
who tell you when something you are going to do
with the military is illegal, that that can mean only
one thing. You are planning to do something with the
military that is illegal. You fire the people who would

(03:26):
say it's illegal and replace them in advance with the
people who would say it isn't illegal. Where am I
getting this from? There is one positive and one positive
only if you happened to have made a guy who
may have brain damage from alcoholism your secretary of Defense,
he would not know when to hide the secret parts.

(03:50):
Why did they fire the t jags? Pete Hegseth on
Fox yesterday, quote, we want lawyers who don't exist to
attempt to be roadblocks to anything that happens. Thing that happens,
Pistol Pete, anything in particular General Barry McCaffrey with whom

(04:12):
I briefly worked at MSNBC, and who I found unexpectedly
complete and very civilian ish. What even further quote, This
has nothing to do with confidence. This is creating an
oath of loyalty by the armed forces to the leader.
You will recall that more than two months ago a
story appeared, burst across our horizons and then vanished. Prospective

(04:34):
occupants of high posts inside the Pentagon were at the
New York Times were asked, quote which candidate the applicants
had supported in the three most recent elections, what they
thought about the events of January sixth, and whether they
believed the twenty twenty election was stolen. Then, with dry,
macabre wit not usually associated with the New York Times quote,

(04:56):
the sense they got was there was only one right
answer to each question. No one who answered any of
the questions with the the truth got the job. This
is not complicated. I'm suggesting there's a military plot to
take over the government, orchestrated by the government, and it

(05:18):
starts not with any military, but with a private military
loyal to Trump, beholden to Trump because it is nominally
run by incompetence and drunks and people who not only
have skeletons in their closets, but had to build additions
to their homes. Were extra closets spaced just for the skeletons.
If you put Pete Hegseth, who could never make the

(05:41):
giant career leap all the way from weekend propagandist on
Fox to weekday propagandist on Fox, if you put him
in charge of all this, he is going to thank
his lucky stars and you. And by thank you, I
mean he will kill people for you. Now, there are
different degrees of hell here. In the best case, sinner,

(06:04):
what Trump did Friday night, firing Joint Chiefs Chairman Brown
and the Advocates General and the others was a complete
and self contained act. Trump is still stinging from Mathis
and John Kelly and Mark Milly, and he wants his generals.
He's no specific use for them right now, no specific plan,

(06:25):
not yet anywhere, not near term anyway. He likes Russia.
He likes Putin's relationship with the military. Russia is great
if you're Putin. Russia is great if you're Trump and
the rest of you can go f yourselves. Trump wants
military parades with tanks. He wants a big hat like
Kim Jong un has. He wants a world in which

(06:47):
everybody not only calls him sir, but everybody has to
call him sir. Because of all the successful men in
the history of the world, Trump is easily the unhappiest.
Muscus second, but Trump is the unhappiest, and he needs
to be saluted because nothing convinces him he's not a
draft dodger more than having generals call him sir and

(07:10):
having his own army of suck ups would fill that
hole where his life should have been. Well, it will
fill that hole for a minute, the vanity army. And
that is if we are lucky. The next best case,
the Pentagon over to the dark side. Is there to
be a political weapon. The generals generally will not say, yes,

(07:31):
we could overtake Greenland in three four days, we could
defeat Canada in a month. No, not that we're going
to Maga generals. That would be my American generals again,
generals under Raisin Cain. They would say all that. The problems, though,

(07:53):
really arise if it's the next level, if this is
not about literal saber rattling, having your private Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs and not just the military equivalents of
Pam Bondy or cash Pattel. We telling you, yes, sir,
you sure can use the army that way, sir. Is
that when Trump sends them to shoot migrants and refugees

(08:14):
and babies at the southern border, or when he sends
them to Panama, or when he sends them into Mexico
or into Canada. Because all dictators in each country on
each page of history always eventually descended to territorial expansion.
When Trump says, go invade Canada, they would snap a

(08:36):
salute and give him another medal and another braid of gold,
and they'd go invade Canada. Still, it can get worse
from here. No, I am not defending or even theoretically
tolerating invading Canada or quote taking back the Panama Canal.
But if that's the limit of Trump's plan for his
private Pentagon, those things could be undone. The next scenarios cannot.

(09:02):
The next scenario is when Trump goes to the judge
advocates and says, I want you to legally approve Operation
Undetectable Combover, and they say Undetectable Combover is legally approved,
and he hands it to the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs and he says, I serve at the pleasure of
the President, and the Chairman of the Joint chief engages,

(09:25):
and that's when we all find out that Operation Undetectable
Combover is the revelation of a fabricated crisis, or a
fabricated insurrection plot, or a fabricated coup attempt against Trump.
And the military rolls onto the streets in the Blue
States and starts rounding up politicians and governmental leaders, and
it starts shooting Democrats, and of course the road Trump

(09:50):
took his first big steps down Friday night could go
one mile further, one nightmare worse. It's now Operation Perpetual
Stability we are talking about, and it's all the previous
fake plots and non eg existent threats, and it includes
every right wing paranoid conspiracy theory, and it reprises all

(10:11):
those good old fake Bush era terrorist threats with exploding
ATMs and the guy who thought he could snap the
Brooklyn Bridge using only a lug nut wrench, only this
time Trump's Army and Trump's Navy and Trump's Air Force
and Trump's new elite gold Bronzers storm troops probably are

(10:31):
not there to shoot their weapons. They're just there to
point them because Operation Perpetual Stability requires that Trump stays
in office indefinitely and that the elections be suspended. And
if you don't like it, tell it to the tank.
I'm suggesting there's a military plot to take over the

(10:54):
government orchestrated by the government. Where are the Democrats on this, Well,
it was the weekend, what wereptum? There's no overtime paid
defending democracy against the dictator. Besides which, all of our
visual aids and easel boards are still at ADIAMA for
the big news conference this week about egg prices. Because

(11:15):
I mean, weren't you here in November fifth. This whole
democracy thing just does not sell as a campaign issue.
And you may be suggesting there's a military plot to
take over the government, But I'm suggesting every one of
our forty three million democratic consultants agrees we can't do
more than one thing at a time, and we can't,
under any circumstances, prioritize anything over this graphic that shows

(11:40):
the cost of a gallon of gas. So in response,

(12:09):
we need democratic leg breakers out there. Metaphorically, the courts
can slow this down. The lawsuits can buy time until
the midterms, but the Democratic electeds have to rip up
the railroad tracks. I'm not going to start again about impeachment. However, finally, finally,
a sign from a Keem Jeffries yesterday that he may

(12:31):
get some of this. He went on the Sunday shows
and said, the Republicans have the White House, they have
the Senate, they have the Congress. They are the ones
who have to pass the budget and pass everything else,
and that his job as the leader of the two
hundred and fifteen Democrats in the House is to find
just three Republicans to sink the budget, or sink the
latest giveaways to the billionaires, or sink just about anything apartheid.

(12:55):
Clyde Musk tries finding three Republicans, quoting Jeffrees. That is
going to be an ongoing effort over these next few
days to identify those individuals whoo at minimum, Jeffreys and
other Democrats at all levels can piss Trump off because
nobody makes mistakes like Trump, and nobody makes worse mistakes

(13:16):
than a pissed off Trump. I give you as an
example of that. Democratic Governor Janet Mills of Maine telling
Trump she would see him in court over this imaginary
trans athlete crisis.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
The NCAA has complied immediately, by the way, that's good.
But I understand Maine is the main here, the governor
of Maine out here. Are you not going to comply
with it state federal laws? Well, I'm we are the
federal law. Well, you better do it. You better do
it because you're not going to get any federal funding

(13:47):
at all.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
If you don't.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
And by the way, your population, even though it's somewhat liberal,
although I did very well there, your population doesn't want
men playing in women's sports. So you better you better
comply because otherwise you're not going to any any federal funding.
See every state. Good, I'll see and I look forward
to that. That should be a really easy one. And

(14:08):
enjoy your life after governor, because I don't think you'll
be an elected.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
Politics few fats.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Usually when states go to court rights the civil rights
lawyer Matthew Siegel alleging federal coercion in violation of the
Tenth Amendment, there is not a literal video of the
president doing it. There's something else to impeach in four.
There's something more to impeach in four put.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
It on the list.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
And a reminder, by the way, Democrats, you do not
have to wait until he has violated every amendment and
each clause to impeach him. Tenth Amendment a real quickie quote.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to
the States, respectively or to the people. Thank you for

(15:01):
the on camera confession, Donald Krasnov. There are other Trump
owned goals to celebrate. Republicans are openly cheering the illegal
dismantling of the government by Musk and the in cells,
but Politico reported that privately, they are all using back
channels everyone they can find to make it stop, especially

(15:22):
when veterans are fired, where Department of Agriculture employees are fired,
as bird flu decimates the farms, or as more and
more polls show the public is not all on board
with any of this. CNN poll, sixty six percent say
Trump shouldn't freeze funding without congressional approval, sixty six two thirds,
fifty two percent say he's overstepped his powers, and fifty

(15:44):
seven percent say he's exceeded his authority. By the way,
talk about polling the new Nazis in Germany, the AfD party,
Musk's stormtroopers, the ones he campaigned for, they underperformed polling
in yesterday's elections. There, then there's Musk and this reply
to this email with the top five things you did

(16:05):
this week or you have resigned email, which it will
be clear very shortly was Trump's idea, but which Trump
intends to let Musk take the fall for. While the
emails were still fresh in the inboxes, leadership in the
State Department, at the VA, at the FBI, at other
government arms had instructed their employees to ignore the email.

(16:29):
For Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. Somebody at OPM
the government Office of Personnel Management saw all this coming
last month and put out a preliminary warning then last
month that the threats in any emails carried no weight,
and responding to Doge was entirely voluntary. Turns out Musk

(16:53):
is not a strung out and flawed genius. He's just
strung out and flawed. You got to protect the First Amendment.
It's not much more important than that.

Speaker 4 (17:03):
Yeah, I got a lot of Chris criticism, and Peel said, well,
that proves he is a huge idiot from a you know,
like like you know, voter four whatever forty four billion
dollars and US worth like eight cents and.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
Its sense. But you know that's.

Speaker 4 (17:20):
But the Yeah, it was essentially to you know, by
freedom of expression.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Sure whatever you say, chainsaw boy, Kat got your tongue.
Why is Musk so nuts? I don't travel in these
social media circles, so I am new to this info,
which I guess is more than a week old now.
But the rapper Azalea Banks, may have answered that question

(17:52):
while answering a Randos question about why it seems and
we are covered by the fog of war here, but
why it seems Musk fathered another baby with a right
wing influencer. But did it? By in vitro, the rando wrote,
I heard he has a botched penis implant. Azalea Banks

(18:19):
retweeted this and added five crucial words to I heard
he has a botched penis implant. Grimes told me this too.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Oh there we go.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
That friend would explain everything for most of us guys.
Just the phrase botched penis implant can cause sixty eight
weeks of clouded, irrational thinking. Imagine actually suffering one e

(19:03):
long musk am.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
I right am I right elong musk watched penis implant.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
You would try to destroy the world. Two two notes
before we get to the joy Reid firing. This is
also media news. They may still supply useful reporting from
time to time. I just quoted them in fact, but
you must now officially be suspicious of anything you hear
from Politico. Not only did the new European owners of
that company praise JV Vance's attack on European leaders, but

(19:48):
the new White House Bureau chief of Politico, Dasha Burns,
legitimized a discussion at the latest Seapack fascist rally Ms
Burns of Politico as Miss Burns of Politico did a
one on one interview with a crowd with all purpose

(20:09):
trumpest idiot Rick Grennell at Seapack. She's done, They're done.
It's journalistically disqualifying. I can never trust another word, she says,
what do you mean you did an event at Sea Pack?
At Sea Pack, I can only suggest that this would

(20:33):
be identical to Miss Burns sitting down at some gigantic
gathering of the Communist Party or maybe the American Association
of Cannibals and interviewing the head to Chief Cannibal if
her name Dasha Burns rings a bell, she was at
NBC when she and Kristen Welker and ten other top
political reporters violated every possible journalistic ethic by accepting a

(20:56):
free meal the night before the twenty twenty three Republican
presidential debate in Milwaukee from Trump thug, Stephen Chung, Slasovita,
and Jason Miller. Hope everybody watched their drinks. So anyway,
if you were thinking, what about dash of Burns, his
own personal standards don't got any. And then there's this

(21:21):
we know Trump looks at our form of government, points
at all the humans in it, and thinks it divides
evenly into two parts. Those parts he can grab for himself,
and those parts he can privatize and sell off. The
Post Office turns out to be one of the latter.
The first step to look for this week is for
him to dissolve the leadership of USPS and fold the

(21:44):
service into the Commerce Department. One online wag suggested the
first result would be a brand new postage stamp that
would honor Donald Trump. I would add that a Trump
stamp would be the first one ever designed that could.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
Lick its health Elong musk Am.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
I right, also of interest here on an all new
edition of Countdown, and I hope you have some time
for Segment B is about half an hour long. MSNBC
fired Joy Reid, and yes it is racist and maybe worse. Yes,

(22:32):
it is designed to keep out people who might think differently.
And it is designed to reward professional political salespeople like
ex party chairman and former press secretaries who will do
what they are told by their bosses. But most of all,
since they also fired Alex Wagner as they fired Joy Reid,

(22:53):
at least The New York Times says this, it means
that four women of color have solo hosted prominent shows
on MSNBC, and all four of them have now been fired.
And then there is the turmoil around Hockey's Wayne Gretzky,

(23:13):
or as he is now known, the Man without a Country.
That's next. This is his Countdown.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
I heard the new Saturday night Joy Reid out at
MSNBC and it turned out to be much bigger than that.
Joy Reid per The New York Times to be replaced
from her seven PM show by moving a weekend show
on MSNBC featuring Michael Steele, who is a politician and
brand salesman, although he has not been active recently in

(23:57):
the Republican Party. He's a salesman. Simone Sanders a politician
and brand saleswoman from the Democratic Party. She's a saleswoman.
Alicia Menendez, who is the daughter of the senator from
New Jersey. You may have heard about him, who's a
different kind of salesman, and she has largely been a

(24:17):
party salesperson. Nothing wrong with that show. It's been on
for several years on the weekends on MSNBC, and it's
kind of interesting. I suppose there's nothing wrong with it
unless you want insight or commentary or new people you
have not heard from before. It is textbook MSNBC. They

(24:39):
lost the idea I gave them and thought this is
what it was, salesmanship as opposed to commentary or insight.
They're also offering Alex Wagner in addition to Joy Read.
Alex Wagner will not return after what happens to Mattow
happens at the end of the one hundred days. They

(25:00):
may replace her with Jen Saki and if anybody body
on television, besides her counterparts who are all on Fox.
Anybody is a salesperson as opposed to an analyst or
a commentator. It's Jensaki. Jensaki who recently said that she
was wondering if maybe maybe she had oversold Merrick Garland,

(25:25):
and if perhaps she regretted She was beginning to wonder
if she regretted doing such a good job convincing people
Merrick Garland should be the Attorney General of the United States,
And one wonders if everything that we're going through now
ends up in the worst possible place, if as we
all get marched into the camps, Jensaki will be still

(25:45):
wondering if she made a mistake supporting Merrick Garland. These
people are salespersons. Salespersons doctrinaire, and often it's doctrinaire bullshit.
If you have been a salesperson, a press secretary for
a politician these days, you have sorry lied. Some people

(26:10):
managed to swerve back from this to become decent human beings,
believe it or not. One of Bush's secretaries, Scott McClellan,
actually one day woke up and said I'm better than
this and wrote a tell all book and promptly disappeared
from politics, and I'm sure he's had a happy life since.
Because if you're going to sell politics to people, if

(26:32):
you're actually going to sell things that you don't believe in,
that you haven't analyzed, that you can't find flaw in
that you feel like you shouldn't mention the flaws in,
you're irrelevant. Michael Steele was the chairman of the Republican Party,
and as much as he's come to be an anti
Trump voice and a useful one, every time I see him,

(26:52):
I think, what is this guy trying to sell me? Also,
that's a nighttime version three hosts of The Scarborough Show
in the morning. But I'm wandering off the main topics here.
I've had lots of problems with Alex Wagner. I've told
you the stories. I told you that she was not

(27:13):
when I tried to bring her in as the guest
host who would have succeeded Lawrence O'Donnell after Laurence o'donald
succeeded Rachel Maddow as the guest host on my show.
I told you that it was apparent from the beginning
she was not interested in doing the harder parts of
the job. Very smart, insightful, obviously very good on television,
but just not interested. I told the story about how

(27:34):
she did not want to learn how to use the
teleprompter and was confident she would pick it up, and
that's when we sort of bailed out on her, and
on her first show on MSNBC just twelve years later,
the prompter failed and she did not know what to
do and stood there for several moments waving at the
prompter as if she could get it to move by
waving at it, and nobody would notice. So I have

(27:56):
lots of problems with her. But Alex Wagner was not
a salesperson for some politician or political point of view.
That political points if you might have coincided with her opinions. Yes,
that was true of me too. I was not a
salesperson for the Democratic Party and all things Democrat. And
if you doubt that, ask Hillary Clinton how she feels
about me as a salesperson for all things Democrat. But

(28:20):
I am moving away from the main topic here. Joy
Reid was fired by MSNBC. There's lots of other ways
to phrase this, and I'm sure they will dress this
up to some degree and I'm sure she will get
some money out of the deal, but I don't think
we are really understanding the impact this is going to
have on the MSNBC brand inside, the new company that's

(28:44):
running NBC or MSNBC and the ex NBC cable networks
inside that this is a big day for them because
they've just removed a pain in the ass, just like
when I agreed to leave after they breached my contract,
even though they had to give me roughly twenty million
dollars over the course of several years because they've breached
my contract, they were so happy that I went. They

(29:06):
are still happy even though we spent the next ten
years dancing about possibly me coming back because things were
so bad over there. But where is the reaction here?
Where's the reaction from the MSNBC host who didn't get
fired in a Saturday night massacre? In all small letters.

(29:27):
The reaction from the MSNBC hosts is no surprise. It's
no surprise because there's been no reaction. Mattow, nothing, Al Sharpton.
Have we heard anything from Al Sharpton, Because there's something
about joy read that I haven't gotten to yet that's
kind of important here. In addition, to the fact that,
just practically speaking, the conduit to bring people to MSNBC,

(29:52):
and thus to what remains of mainstream television news. The
conduit the person who said, let's book this guest, and
let's bring in that guy, and let's bring in this
woman and let's talk about this topic, which would have
been different than every something else on the air on MSNBC.
That was Joy Reid. And I had lots of problems
with lots of stuff she said. And I thought lots
of stuff she said was absolutely crazy. And so what

(30:16):
going back and looking at my shows from two thousand
and seven, eight, nine, ten eleven, I don't agree with
everything I said then myself, let alone what other people said.
It's not supposed to be like that. It's supposed to
be inconsistent. It's supposed to be poking different areas to
see what holds up and what doesn't. It's supposed to
be saying, yeah, I like this Occupy Wall Street thing. No,

(30:37):
this is bullshit. It's supposed to be like that. It's
not supposed to be. Here is today's show. We could
record this and play it back to you two years
from now, and you wouldn't know the difference. That's not
what it's supposed to be. And unfortunately the entirety of
the MSNBC lineup has become that, except the Morning Show,
which is of course MSNVS. Because there's a problem here,

(31:04):
a larger problem, and nobody is going to say this.
Do you remember Melissa Harris Perry, she used to be
on My Show, later known as Melissa Harris Lacewell. They
gave her her own show in large part because she
did such a good job as an analyst on Mine
and a couple of other shows, and she got her
own show, and they fired her. You remember Tiffany Cross.

(31:27):
Now there was somebody who liked to poke at things
and see whether or not they were true, and again
lots of things she said, I went holy crap wrong.
But so what you have to have room for that,
And what they're saying in MSNBC is we're not going
to have room for that anymore. She got fired. So
Melissa Harris Lacewell Perry or Melissa Harris Perry Lacewell. I'm sorry, Melissa,

(31:52):
I could never keep it straight. She got fired. Tiffany
Cross got fired. Remember Tiffany Cross, among the other things,
Tucker Carlson attacked her. She was the one who go
back and say this was on Fox the way I
used to Tucker Carlson claimed that Tiffany Cross was inspiring
genocide like Rwanda. Seriously. MSNBC's response, rather than to come

(32:16):
at Tucker Carlson with five million metaphorical machine guns, was
to fire Tiffany Cross, because you can have controversy as
long as it's controversy trademark, and you can sell it trademark,
and you can put a smile on its face trademark,
and you can give it a little silly grin or
a kind of sad grin or a feel good grin,

(32:37):
and then you can say, now here's Lawrence O'Donnell. They
fired her, They fired Melissa Harris Lacewell. Now they fired
Joy Reid. Now they fired Alex Wagner. Humm, Melissa Harris, Perry,
Tiffany Cross, Joy Reid, Alex Wagner. For women, what did

(33:00):
they have in common? Well, let's see, they all had
had their own shows solo hosts on MSNBC, and they
were all women of color, and they've all been fired.
I believe I'm not certain of this. I didn't I
spent enough time wondering about MSNBC firings. I don't need

(33:21):
to go through the list again. Forgive me if I've
gotten this wrong, but I do know. They're the last four,
if not the only four women of color who have
hosted shows on MSNBC, and they've all been fired, and
they've all been replaced by well, but you're what's Michael
Steele is a man of color, and Simon Sanders is
a woman of color, and Alicia Menendez is a woman
of color. Yeah, they are official, they are safe. They

(33:46):
are not going to do crazy things or bring on
people you've never heard of before who turn out to
be better than the people you've heard of. And they
also may hire a professor from Columbia's a woman of color.
And they fired the only remaining women of color who
were solo anchoring political commentary shows on prominent national television networks.

(34:10):
Alex Wagner, I think probably is relieved by this. And
it doesn't mean that just because you're a woman of
color or a person of color, your show should be
held to a lower standard and you should get twenty
five years to improve it. No, at some point, guess what,
I don't care who it is. I don't care if
it's Jesus Christ fresh off the cross, a man of color,
that you would say, hey, you know, Jesus, I'm sorry.

(34:32):
It doesn't quite work. And the new Woodworking segments they
weren't any good either. That's not the point. The point
is not you must protect all people of color who
get television shows. But if the show is of value,
and the ratings for Joy Reid's show went up and down,
just as MSNBC's overall ratings went, and is it possible

(34:55):
that maybe she wasn't best for the seven o'clock slot,
Maybe maybe later in the evening, maybe there might have
been a greater audience, maybe at ten o'clock. Now what
they saw was people have been sharing clips of the
nightmare that is the Scott what's his name show Scott
Jennings on CNN, which is nominally Abby Phillips show, and

(35:15):
poor Abbi Phillips goes out there, Abby Phillip, excuse me,
Abby Phillip goes out there and gets tortured by this
racist Scott Jennings. It's his show, and it's a bunch
of people talking about how much of a racist he is,
and he leans back in the chair and rocks back
and forth and mugs to the camera and creates viral clips.
And somebody at MSNBC said, wouldn't we rather have that

(35:38):
than Joy Reid, who's now bald, appearing on television every
night at seven o'clock? Don't we want this? Won't this
make it easier to sell this company when we want to?
Won't it make it easier the next time Trump threatens
NBC and MSNBC for us to say, but we fired
Joy Reid. More practically, MSNBC's problems in terms of its

(36:00):
profitability and its ratings had nothing to do with Joy Reid.
As I said, her ratings went up and down, exactly
as Chris Hayes's ratings went up and down, and Maddow's
ratings went up and down, and Maddow's replacements like Wagner,
their ratings went up and down. Lawrence O'Donnell went up
and down. A weekends went up and down, including the
Simone Sanders, Michael Steele Alishamanendez show ratings went up and down,

(36:23):
all in the same sign curves. The problem at MSNBC
is Joe Scarborough, and until you fire Joe Scarborough and
get Rid of msn V. She and what that told
people who watch that network, which I'm talking about largely
because A. I did invent it. B. It is the
only liberal network. It is the only thing even close

(36:46):
to being a liberal network. And the better it is,
the better it is for our society as we attempt
to keep democracy or some shred of democracy alive. We
need a strong, vibrant, loud, fearless MSNBC and not the
view forgive Me at seven clock every night. We need

(37:07):
people like Joyreid. Even if you sit there and go,
I'm not watching that, it's important that she's there for
the people who want to identify with somebody who looks
like Joyreid and say that woman is out here trying
to argue my point and is talking to me and
is bringing people who look like me and look like
her onto television for the first time, and some of
them are going to become superstars. And if we ever

(37:29):
get out of this goddamned mess caused by lack of courage,
often on places like MSNBC, often in places in the
public discourse, we're ever going to get out of this
mess and restore this democracy. It's gonna be because of
people like Joyreid, even if you don't agree with a
goddamned word. She said, no, keep Joe Scarborough um now

(37:51):
supporting Chump again. You've heard me talk about Chump being
Hitler all this time. I guess I was wrong. Remember
when I was trying to be his vice pasident take
somebody off his show to put him on in primetime
Michael Steele. Not take somebody off his show, Joe Scarborough
and put anything on, including bugs Bunny cartoons would be

(38:15):
a better political statement at seven o'clock in the morning
on MSNBC, and much more consistent and eloquent, and Bugs
Bunny did not have a deviated septum either. One last
procedural thing about this about MSNBC and it is I

(38:36):
think of it the way I do ESPN, not like
an ex spouse, but really as and it's a little pretentious,
but as a child, as a child that sometimes I
have had good relationships with and sometimes I have not.
And to some degree it's the same thing in limited
doses with ESPN. I did not father ESPN. It was

(38:56):
well established before I got there. But there are aspects
to that relationship in which I go, oh boy, that's
not going to work out for you later on. Take
it from an old man, and I feel that way
about MSNBC. And the other part about this is okay,
you've had turmoil. Now at nine o'clock, Mattow retired. Mattow
went to once a week. They didn't know what to

(39:16):
do about Mattow. Matto's going to be replaced four days
week by Alex Wagner. Oh no, that's not working. We're
going to bring Matto back for five days week. She's
not going to do it long term. We'll bring Alex
Wagner back after this in April. Oh no, we're not
bringing her back. It's probably going to be Jensaki. You
know what. Jensaki is going to prove to not really
be a television person. There's going to be somebody else
needed at nine o'clock. Oh and let's now create chaos

(39:39):
at seven o'clock, because, honest to god, the first thing
I thought of when I was told on Saturday night
that they might get rid of joy read or that
it was done already. The first thing I thought of,
you now they're going to try to bring back Chris Matthews.
Because they've tried to bring back Chris Matthews in the
morning with Joe Scarborough, because we need Chris Matthews right
now because the shallow, random firings of the few electtions

(40:04):
Trodden's in his brain, something actually getting across those synapses,
knocking his references to himself out of the way for
a brief second. That's exactly what MSNBC and the political
dialogue needs right now, Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews. When
we go to the camps and the doors open, the

(40:25):
guys in the hats with the keys will be Joe
Scarborough and Chris Matthews. But back to the point about
Joy Reid, and I would love to see I would
love to come to you again on Thursday and say,
you know what, I apologize to this MSNBC anchor, and
I apologize to Al Sharpton, and I apologize to this
group that I said they were going to say nothing.

(40:47):
And look at this, there's a five thousand person encampment
outside thirty Rock protesting Joy Reid getting fired. I'd love
to say that to you. I do not expect to
have to do it. I'm not writing notes down for
Thursday's show about the big backlash within MSNBC about Joy Reid.
Because Joy Reid threatens all their money. Joy Reid says

(41:09):
something controversial. Rachel Maddow thinks I have twenty five million
dollars coming to me. I want my money. But the
chaos is the real legend, the real history of MSNBC.
I don't know that I've ever shared this with you.
It took a friend of mine named Rainy and I
several days' worth of going through old memos to compile

(41:33):
this list. I've told you many times that I worked,
and this is my story about Joy Reid getting fired.
It of course comes back to me. I worked at
MSNBC from its second year nineteen ninety seven through the
end of its third year nineteen ninety eight. I did
the eight o'clock show. It's the first show anybody paid
attention to on MSNBC. And eventually I couldn't stand doing

(41:56):
it anymore. It was all about Bill Clinton, and I
couldn't do it anymore, and they sold me to Fox
and I got out, and then that didn't work and
I went to see it in for a while and
they shows Connie Chung to host their eight o'clock show
instead of me, so that didn't work out, and NBC
was short an anchor at MSNBC and invited me to
come over for a couple of days, and the next
thing I knew, I signed a contract to do the
eight o'clock show again five years later. And my friend

(42:18):
Rany and I before it was a parent that I
was going to stay there when it looked like I
was just there for a couple of days filling in
because they were short of anchors. We compiled this list
of all the shows that had been on after I
left the network on December fourth, nineteen ninety eight. And
this is my fear of what is going to happen
MSNBC in the next couple of years. The Revolving Door,

(42:41):
the Game of Musical Chairs. Just listen to this. So
they had started the network with a show called Internight,
which had like sixteen different hosts. They'd try to get
somebody to sit down and do an hour long interview,
and they had everybody from Bob Costas to Bill Moyers.
They had sixteen different hosts and it was filmed. It
was on at eight o'clock at night, and nobody watched it.

(43:02):
So they needed a live television news show before the
Brian Williams newscast at nine o'clock and I was it
October first, nineteen ninety seven to December fourth, nineteen ninety eight,
and then I escaped and they replaced me with a
guy who they thought was exactly the same kind of show,
John Hockenberry. John lasted from December of ninety eight all

(43:22):
the way through to February of ninety nine, and then
eventually they moved him to the afternoon and when they
fired him in August of nineteen ninety nine, and his
last show, he asked rhetorically how much does cable suck?
And the answer is still being played out. John had
all kinds of problems dealing with women, as in he

(43:43):
was a sexual harriser. Okay anyway, so he gets fired.
The show that replaced me lasted three months. Then they
put on two half hour shows equal time with Oliver North,
premiering in February of nineteen ninety nine and The McLaughlin
Special Report John McLoughlin from the mclaffelin Report wrong that guy.

(44:03):
They did two half hours that lasted a month. They
decided Oliver North needed half an hour, but he needed
a rotating set of co hosts. Now, I want to
clear this up. None of the co hosts sat there
and rotated. They had different hosts, they were on a
rotational basis. I think in retrospect they regret this that
it should have been Oliver North with a co host

(44:25):
who rotated. The co hosts included Cynthia Axney, Peter Fenn
and Keky Moore. I can picture two of these three people.
And at eight thirty they replaced Special Report from McLaughlin
that was canceled and they brought in Time and Again,
which was reruns of old NBC news features in April

(44:48):
of nineteen ninety nine, so a month later it became
a permanent hour long show with Oliver North and Paul
Begala as co hosts. May thirtieth of nineteen ninety nine,
so six weeks later it became North and Begala shortened
to half an hour, and Time and Again came back,
so it was Time and Again. It's Time and Again.
Another month later, in June nineteen ninety nine, they replaced

(45:10):
the whole thing Oliver North out special edition with Ann
Curry in filmed recuts of Ann Curry pieces from Dateline
and other shows. Now. I love Ann Curry, I worked
with her in Los Angeles, A great person, a wonderful
human being to my mind, and again at eight thirty time,
and again. Then they expanded in about a month. In

(45:32):
July of nineteen ninety nine, the Special Edition with Ann
Curry went to an hour. Then Ann Curry left the
program in May of two thousand, and they made it
Special Edition with Louri Do. Then in August, so now
what three months later it became MSNBC Investigates, and the
joke was NBC Investigates, What happened to Lori Do? On

(45:53):
September twenty eighth, two thousand, they made MSNBC Investigates a
four day a week show, So Monday through Thursday it
was MSNBC Investigates. Again, this is all the eight o'clock
after I left, We're on show twelve so far year two,
Show twelve in the eight o'clock slot MSNBC Investigates. But

(46:15):
on Friday it wasn't MSNBC Investigates. It was a weekly
show called Missing Persons with Diane Diamond. Soon it was
Missing Missing Persons with Diane Diamond. It was canceled after
one month, so they go back to an hour of
MSNBC Investigates. A pre tape show every night in October
two thousand. Then as the election approached, it became News

(46:38):
Force with Forests Sawyer News Force. I don't want to
know who thought Force was a good name to put
in a newscast. So that evolved into Decision two thousand
in December because there was no decision in the election,
and it became Decision two thousand with Forest Sawyer. And

(46:59):
when they finally, to MSNBC's great resil regret, resolved the
Gore Bush election in January two thousand and one, it
became MSNBC Investigates again till July. And in July two
thousand and one they solved the crisis of what to
do at eight o'clock, only two and a half years
after I had left the news with Brian Williams at

(47:20):
eight o'clock for nearly fourteen months, and then he said
I don't want anything to do with MSNBC ever again.
In September two thousand and two, at eight o'clock they
premiered The Phil Donahue Show, which lasted until February two
thousand and three because the show cost more money than
they could possibly make in advertising, and they replaced it

(47:43):
with Countdown Iraq with Lester Holt and segments with Pat
Buchanan and Bill Press. In the middle of a show
Getting America Ready for War at eight o'clock, MSNBC had
Countdown Iraq with Lester Holt and Buchanan and Press. And
then they had to move less your Holt to the

(48:03):
network and so Operation Iraqi Freedom with Keith Olberman. Soon
that was not enough, the news from Iraq was no
longer interesting, and we made it Countdown with Keith Olderman
March thirty first, two thousand and three. So that was

(48:25):
twenty shows me twenty new shows in four years, and
then me again because you can't have this. And then
after I left in twenty eleven, it was the last
Word with Lawrence O'Donnell for a while, like nine months.

(48:45):
Then they put ed Schultz on instead. Then they put
in Chris Hayes in twenty thirteen. The idea here is
to return finally to the subject of joyread. You put
people on TV who you, the executives can control when

(49:06):
the chips are down, when the company is in trouble,
when the boss goes to the anchor and says, don't
say this, they say, don't say what and then they
don't say anything when the company is in trouble, when
a dollar might not be earned. You won't hear crap

(49:27):
out of Madow or O'Donnell or Hayes or Sanders or
Steel or Menendez or Jensaki. My version of this, and
it might have been stylistically philosophically, it might have been
the Only thing I shared with Joy Read was that
when the chips were down in this circumstance and a

(49:48):
dollar was at risk, I felt it was my job
to say what they did not want me to say.
Not always, there are sometimes management is right. But if
they don't want you to touch a controversial topic, grab
it with both hands. That's your job. If not, if
you're not willing to do that, you can be replaced.

(50:11):
You can be replaced by missing persons with Diane Diamond.
Nothing against Diana. Used to work with her in Radio
Lovely Woman. You could be replaced by news Force. News Force,
we break down your door and drag you away. It

(50:33):
is your job as a political commentator to get yourself
into trouble whenever possible, now, whenever necessary. I did that.
Joy Reid did that. I'm sure she looked at my
times in trouble and went, what are you doing that for?
And I know I've looked at her in some occasions
and gone, what are you doing that for? Doesn't matter.

(50:58):
The other thing you're supposed to do is you are
supposed to spend your political capital, your small p political capital,
your business capital inside your own operation, defending your colleagues
or becoming a pain in the ass to management, develop
a reputation with management, to get people they didn't want
hired hired, or to get people they didn't want on

(51:19):
the air on the air. Matdaw is a perfect example
of that. I'm not going to belabor that point, but
Joy Reid did that with a dozen people, and they
might as well have been all of them might as
well have been Hughey Newton from the eyes of MSNBC
management from the day they put her on the air
on the weekends to the day they put her on

(51:39):
at eight o'clock with the current executives who just sold
the thing off so they could distance themselves from anything
good in television news. Again, I will be delighted to
come out here and apologize profusely and for an hour,
and this has been half an hour. Here I will

(52:01):
profusely apologize to anybody at MSNBC who stands up in
defensive joy Reid and says this stinks. This makes us white.
This is contributing to the entirety of the Trump racism
enveloping this country. And it is part of a stampede
to see which formerly liberal company can get to the
head of the racism line, the approved racism line, as

(52:25):
fast as possible. And joy Read getting removed from the
primetime lineup of MSNBC is MSNBC's biggest contribution yet, although
Scarborough could top it at any moment. But honestly, what
do you expect to hear about joy Read from the
other people who count at MSNBC. You want to hear

(52:51):
it again? Worst persons next, and the sad self destruction
of a man named Wayne Gretzky formerly of Canada, now
the man without a country. That's next. This is Countdown.

Speaker 5 (53:24):
This is sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This
is Countdown with Keith.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Ulberman from the sports ball Central centered news desk tonight, Dateline, Boston, Massachusetts. Hello, Okay,
when I get him wrong, I get him wrong. That
irrelevant NHL four Nations face off exhibition series that I
complained about last week before it happened. Turned out to

(53:57):
be as big a hockey event as anything since probably
the nineteen eighty Miracle on Ice. Three hundred thousand viewers
on ABC last Thursday night for the final game between
the US and Canada, which was won by the good guys.
You heard me. These days, Canada is America if America
had not dropped out of school anyway. Now that the

(54:22):
tournament is over, and it isn't really over, the Canadians
are still talking about it. Oh my god, this is
the one downturn to this. The Canadians will be showing
the highlights of that overtime winning goal for the next
sixty seven years. As the planet burns to a cinder,
the last thing seen on Canadian television will be that goal.

(54:45):
But in the interim, there are two questions. Were the
circumstances for this unique could it be replicated and institutionalized
or was it a one off? Was this just about
Trump's fifty first state and tariff idiocy? And what is
perceived in Canada as a mortal threat to the nation.
Oh yeah, well we're thinking of invading Canada. That's not

(55:07):
the way they see it because the US Canada rivalry
has always been gigantic in Canada, but here it's more like,
all right, I guess we're rivals, all right. I guess
they would be offended if we're going to invade them,
I suppose. So, what's that newest movie being made out
of a comic book? Avenger Action Star Wars Galaxy comic book.

(55:37):
Canadian hockey figures often break her up the twenty ten
Olympic gold medal game, which was decided by Sidney Crosby's
golden goal Canada over the US, as if it would
hurt you as an American very badly. I don't think.
I don't know what percentage of Americans know about the
twenty ten Olympics. It's got to be something like one

(55:58):
tenth of one percent. In Canada, something like ninety nine
point nine percent. This registered. This tournament registered probably because
of the booing the American anthem stuff with a lot
of morons in this country. The morons who think it
just sort of happened, the booing of the American anthem
at National Hockey League games, and it was not instigated, provoked,

(56:19):
entirely created by Trump's insane threats or the smarter ones
know that this started with Trump's threats, but they still
reacted viscerably or viscerally in English, as if no provocation
could possibly justify booing our beloved national song that all
Americans know by heart. Well, no almost nobody can sing
it here. Ninety percent of American professional singers who go

(56:43):
out and sing it at ballgames get at least one
wrong word, usually instead of saying or the Land of
the Free, oh hyphen er, oh apostrophe er, it's an
abbreviation for over invariably that is sung as for the
Land of the Free, usually twice. Anyway, from a hockey viewpoint,

(57:07):
the whole thing was gold. But the problem is gold,
as in Olympic gold. The NHL is going to interrupt
its season next year for the Winter Olympics in Italy.
Then the NHL plans to resume the World Cup of
Hockey in twenty twenty eight. Now it's players want this
four nations faceoff to return. That would presumably be in
twenty twenty seven, but the Swedes and the Finns are

(57:29):
demanding that some games be played in Scandinavia. Oh, that's right.
The Swedes and the Finns had teams in the four
Nations faceoff too. You may not have noticed them. They were,
as we say in trade filler. Now, this is all
well and good for a hockey championship. Of course there
should be games in Europe. It's a Swedish team and

(57:49):
a Finnish team, and it's all good for Canadian hockey
fans who think the idea of going to Finland in
February for Canada Finland game is a reasonable vacation. But
the NHL has already forgotten the real lesson of the
success of the tournament last week. In the United States,
sports fans they don't really care about the Olympics. When
they do care about the Olympics, it's about the American

(58:11):
team about to win in the Olympics, nothing else. If
that had been America versus Finland in the final, that
would not have been nine million, three hundred thousand viewers.
It might have been nine hundred and thirty viewers, because
you know, we didn't threaten to invade Finland yet, Which
brings me to my second question. The NHL has this

(58:33):
history of not just failing to exploit marketing gifts, but
absolutely erasing them. The league did almost nothing after the
Americans won the nineteen eighty Olympics. It would have required
contractual and legal gymnastics, but the play would have been
to take that American Olympic team that beat the Russians
intact and give it its own franchise, put it in

(58:55):
the Stanley Cup playoffs, and see how it does against
the pros. Of course, nobody even contemplated doing something like that,
or some sliver of that. The players were instead scattered
among all the other teams and fell back into obscurity.
Nice movie, not nice playing careers. In nineteen ninety four, though,
the New York Rangers won their first Stanley Cup in

(59:16):
fifty four years, not that they really tried for most
of that time. I mean, their owners owned the arena,
and the owners would still refuse to give up valuable
money renting Madison Square Garden to the Wringling Brothers Barnum
and Bailey Circus every April. Their New York Rangers made
the Stanley Cup Final in nineteen fifty and they had
to play all seven games on the road because their
home arena, owned by the team, was busy is being

(59:42):
used for the circus, so the Elephants could take a
dump on Center Ice still in nineteen ninety four, the
Rangers winning was a story that, in the utterly New
York centric advertising world of thirty one years ago, completely
blotted out basketball and football and baseball at least for
a couple of weeks. Madison Avenue was prepared to go

(01:00:02):
to Madison Square Garden and spend all of its money
there the next season, and of course, the next season,
the NHL owners locked out the players. The next hockey
game after the Rangers hoisted the Stanley Cup was two
hundred and twenty one days later. They didn't play till
the following January, and by then the momentum was not
just dead, it was forgotten. If the NHL is really

(01:00:25):
interested in taking the unlikely success of the four Nations
Face Off and turning it into increased popularity and profits,
it would make it a an annual event b and
make it into the Two Nations Face Off, a best
four out of seven series scheduled over two weeks America
versus Canada period Finns, Swedes, Russians. Here here's a home

(01:00:49):
version of the two Nations Faceoff game you can play
in your basement if you insist that some of the
greatest players are not North American. Fine, you can have
the coaches and the captains of the American and the
Canadian teams draft two or three non North Americans as

(01:01:10):
honorary Americans or Canadians if you insist. If you have
to have Alex Ovechkin there, although I'd rather have them
on the Canadian team than the American team, I don't
want anything with that guy. They won't do this. The
Canadian teams would never accept this. They want this tournament.
They want this tournament. They want to beat the world,

(01:01:31):
especially US, but not just US. I mean America is
satisfied to beat the Canadian team. We don't need to
beat the Finns. Seven and eighths of our population doesn't
know what a Finland is. We're morons here. We dropped
out of school in the ninth grade. I'm not saying
the Canadians are wrong, the franchise is No, they're not wrong.

(01:01:55):
The commissioner and the Canadian influencers in the NHL, they're
not wrong. I'm just being bloodless and mercenary. I'm pretending
I'm a businessman. But there are thirty two franchises in
the National Hockey League and twenty five of them are
in the United States. That's seventy eight percent, or if
you prefer seventy eight percent or seventy eight percent Celsius Dateline,

(01:02:22):
Los Angeles or Brantford, Ontario or somewhere. There was one awful, terrible,
serious component to the Four Nations Cup, the public disintegration
of the man who is probably Canada's greatest living hero,
accelerated and may not be reversible. Now, Wayne Gretzky for

(01:02:45):
a nation still grieving from the day he was traded
away by Edmonton thirty six years ago last August. It
is almost impossible to believe, but Canada is now furious
at Wayne Gretzky. The Canadians had pretty much come to
terms with Gretzky's lurch to the right. His son in
law has been a Trumpist, his wife is in one. Okay,

(01:03:06):
he was still Wayne Gretzky. He wore a Maga hat,
but Wayne Gretzky, he was Wayne Gretzky. He took over
the role of Gordy Howe after Gordy Howe died, So
he's both Wayne Gretzky and Gordy How's ghost. So what
he went to Trump's election night, victory party and the inauguration.
It happens, white guys get old. But when Trump turned

(01:03:28):
on Canada and threatened it and threatened to invade, to
buy it, or turned it into the fifty first state
or pressure it, Gretzky said nothing. Then Trump said Gretzky
was his great friend, said Gretzky should run for Prime Minister.
Gretzky laughed. Then Trump said no, Let's make a governor
of Canada of our fifty first state, and Gretzky said nothing. Then,

(01:03:54):
when this tournament played out in the middle of Trump's threats,
Canada's standing up metaphorically symbolically for its national existence. Gretzky,
the honorary captain of Team Canada, not only did not
wear a Canadian jersey at any point, the honorary American
captain American jersey. But he didn't stick up for the

(01:04:15):
place that made him a hero, literally a companion of
the Order of Canada. He didn't even visit the Canadian
team before the game and before the game. Before the
title game against the US last Thursday, Gretzky was seen
recorded on camera giving a thumbs up to the American
team after the Canadians beat the American team. Gretzky stopped

(01:04:39):
by the locker room, as The Toronto Star wrote, after
the win, quote he handed the Canadian players' hats that
said be great. I hope somebody threw it at him
and said, we are great. You're the one who's no
longer great. Terry Jones, a sportswriter who covered Gretzky's entire

(01:05:02):
career with the Edmonton Oilers and covered the team for
fifty five years, has now written I authored books on
Wayne Gretzky. I covered him for a decade in Edmonton
in the WHA and NHL, and extensively after he departed.
I have viewed him as the greatest player in history
and as a great Canadian. He needs to face the
nation and explain his relationship with Donald Trump, and more

(01:05:29):
than that. Perhaps there is a freeway in Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada named for Wayne Gretzky, Named for Wayne Gretzky, and
there is a group of locals there now trying to
get his name removed from the freeway. Known Wayne Gretzky

(01:05:51):
since nineteen eighty eight, I broke the story of him
getting traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles. I always liked him.
Not a big effusive guy, but stood up when accounted.
Not anymore. Gotta make a choice here now, Gretz. It's
your time do or die. It's Trump or your soul.

(01:06:11):
You clearly cannot have both, and clearly you already do
not have both. Before I wrap this up, boy, this

(01:06:42):
has been a long edition. Believe it or not, there
are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily
roundup of the misigrants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's other worse persons in the world. As
if there's anybody left. Here are the nominees. They are
all elected officers, and two of them are Democrats. I
guess bronze worst runner up. Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina.

Speaker 3 (01:07:05):
Two tweets.

Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
From yesterday, President Trump has accomplished more in one month
than Joe Biden did in four years. Well, if you
knuke a country right, you can be said to have
accomplished more in one second than all the other presidents combined.
Also from Senator Tom Tillis, that's Tom with an H.

(01:07:30):
Donald J. Trump is our President, Pam Bondy is our
Attorney General. Cash Patel is our FBI director, It's a
great time to be an American. If that's a point
of view, it's a damn shame. Trump, Bondi and Patel
aren't Americans anyway. What's so special about this? I mean,
he's a Republican. Tom tell Us is not necessarily ever

(01:07:51):
a never Trumper, but as late as twenty twenty three,
he was censured by the North Carolina State Party, the
GOP in his home state for not being maga enough Jesus,
So what is this rancid toadying? It's a great time
to be an American. Pam Bondi is Pam Bondy put
Dwight Gooden in jail and as a good stylist. Those

(01:08:14):
are her life accomplishments. So what's all the rancid todying
about from Senator tell Us? With guess who's up for
election next year and maybe a primary? The technical term
for what Tillis is is gutlass scumback the runner up worser,
Governor Jared Poulis of Colorado, nominally a Democrat, He went
on Morning Collaborators MSNV. She alongside Kevin Skitt, the fascist

(01:08:40):
governor of Oklahoma, who looks even more fascist now that
he's grown a beard, because he's trying to look like Lincoln.
Trying to look like Lincoln. You know what he's accomplished
looking like Lincoln. He also looks like he was born
in eighteen oh seven. Governor Polis saying he agrees with
Trump about saving money and about how flawed FEMA is

(01:09:02):
not the wrecking ball part. But I want to commend
Trump and I want to command like f you. Governor.
First off, you're on Morning Joe. Grandpa Joe is off
that day. Grandma Joe was there though, And you're sitting
next to Kevin Stitt. First off, his name is Stitt.
He's the governor of Oklahoma, where they are trying to

(01:09:23):
put the Bible in the classroom in lou of all
the textbooks. And you're sitting next to this guy and
he's selling Musk talking points as if these were the
opinions of human beings. And he's the one Jared Polis
who saw great promise in Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior,

(01:09:47):
F you Pal, get the f out of my country,
you collaboratist Vshi, son of a bitch and stupid son
of a bitch. Resign. But the winner of the worst,
Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey. I want to thank
President Trump and Secretary Duffy. I mean, that's enough, right,

(01:10:09):
you don't need need to even hear the rest of this.
I want to thank President Trump and Secretary Don't you
do that and get the hell out of the Democratic Party, asshole.
I want to thank President Trump and Secretary Duffy rites
with Governor Murphy for their efforts to halt the current
congestion pricing program. While I have consistently expressed openness to

(01:10:29):
a form of congestion pricing, this is the tax that
is being charged, as it has been done in countless
cities around the world, on people who don't live in
a state and yet come in and commute into the
city that's already too congested and choking on its own
pollution and needs money for transportation, that is being threatened
by President Trump and Secretary Duffy. This is the New

(01:10:52):
York City means of coping with that. And Governor Murphy
is spitting all over and I don't mean spitting. While
I've consistently expressed openness to a form of congestion pricing,
the current program lines the end pockets at the expense
of New Jersey's You know who runs on the MTA.
You know what sort of trains, what people run or

(01:11:13):
ride on the MTA. People from New Jersey do, and
people from Connecticut and people from New York. It is
the greatest mass transportation system in the world. It is
the only thing that makes the City of New York functional.
And it's underfunded. And it also costs nothing. It costs
less than three dollars, and you can go in one

(01:11:33):
day and come out like six weeks later for three dollars.
Governor Murphy, get out out, Get the f out. I mean,
I suppose you think the City of New York should
pay for your Jersey residents train fares into the city too.
We have a lot of nerve charging you for congesting

(01:11:54):
our streets that you don't do anything to improve, or
giving you some place to go when otherwise you and
your people would have to spend your entire lives in
New Jersey. I used to commute to this city from
Westchester County. It was a privilege. I got to live
in a spacious, open area with trees, and for a

(01:12:16):
nominal cost, I used to get the train in here
or a car, pay the tolls come on in. I
used to commute from the city to New Jersey and
there was never any traffic going to New Jersey. Know why,
because who in the hell wanted to leave New York
City to go to freaking Jersey on purpose? Unless you've
been served at subpoena, why are you going to New Jersey? Seriously?

(01:12:40):
Congestion pricing has made New York City livable again. Traffic
now flows. You can go across town, you can go up,
you can go down, you can go east, you can
go west. There are fewer bridge and tunnels vomiting outside
clubs at two o'clock in the morning. We're funding improvements
and safety measures for the subway. And I'm sure business

(01:13:00):
has picked up in places like Secaucus, New Jersey, the
only city in America that is entirely devoted to factory
outlet stores, Burbury factory outlet store, London Fog factory outlet,
Major League Baseball factory outlet, etc. Governor, Phil governor, shut
up or resign.

Speaker 3 (01:13:20):
I don't care.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
There's one thing about governors of New Jersey we learned
from Chris Christy and all who preceded him. There's always
another governor of Jersey waiting to happen. Murphy two Day's
other worst person, and I've done all the damage I

(01:14:04):
can do here. Thank you for listening, and goodbye to
all of you who are from New Jersey. I'm sorry,
you know it's true. I understand. Just say you don't
want to pay the money. I'd have greater respect if
you just said, we don't want to pay this money.
It costs too much. A congressman named Gottheimer said, oh,

(01:14:25):
there's environmental concerns. Bullshit, you don't want to pay the money.
Just say it. Since why has anybody from Jersey been
reluctant to say I don't want to pay sixteen dollars?
I mean, you're from Jersey, you don't want to pay
sixteen cents?

Speaker 3 (01:14:38):
I get it. It's fine.

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
I wouldn't want to pay sixteen dollars to go to
Jersey either, although it be a hell of an excuse
not to go there. Okay, I've done enough damage here
to myself. Thank you for listening. Ryan Ray and John
Phillip Shanelle musical directors have Countdown Range, produced and performed
most of the music. Mister Chanelle on orchestration and keyboards,
mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums, and it was
all produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical

(01:15:02):
comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust,
who is not from New Jersey. The sports music is
the Olber theme from ESPN two, which has never been
located in New Jersey, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today, wash, Oh, here's

(01:15:22):
I'm in trouble now. My announcer today is my friend
Stevie van Zandt, who has portrayed someone from New Jersey.
What everything else was as ever my fault. That's countdown
for today, Just four and twenty seven days until the
scheduled end of the lame duck, lame brain term of
Donald t Rump, unless Musk removes him sooner or the

(01:15:47):
actuarial tables do. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. As always, bulletins,
as the news warrants, remember impeach trumpe It will not
work now, it will win the Democrats the midterms if
we have midterms, if we ever have an election again.

Speaker 3 (01:16:03):
Maybe in congestion. Pray saying is any it's.

Speaker 1 (01:16:06):
Lining the brockets. You don't want to spend the sixteen dollars,
Just say it. Until next time. I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good effing luck. Countdown with

(01:16:41):
Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.