TUBERVILLE CONFIRMS TRUMP'S PLOT TO EVADE GAG ORDER; TIMES MUST FIRE HABERMAN - 5.15.24 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
New York Times has to fire Maggie Haberman, and Justice

(00:26):
Juan mer Shaan of the New York State Supreme Court
has to jail Trump and order into his courtroom in
New York City to testify under oath the Speaker of
the House, Mike Johnson, Senators Tuberville and Vance, Congressman Byron
Donald's and Corey Mills, Governor Bergram of North Dakota, and
Vivek Ramaswami, who is some kind of I don't know,

(00:48):
TV infomercial guy. Because Tuberville has spilled the beans, all
of those Trump whorees who have shown up the first
two days of his trial in New York City did
so as part of some kind of plan to help
Trump subvert the gag order. Tuberville says this. Tuberville said

(01:11):
this on the Newsmax propaganda network. So we'll talk about
the gag order plot first, And I apologize if this
is a little ragged, but as I said, there is
a sinus infection in progress, and this is the most
I could let the doctors or get from the doctors
to let me do. We're sort of blowing through the headlines.
Once again. Let me turn to my cliche of cliches.

(01:35):
Democracy survives less because of our efforts to preserve it
than because of the stupidity of those trying to destroy it.
They were there yesterday, Mike Johnson at a trial showing
loyalty and fealty to Trump, just in time to see
what happened to Mike Cohen, who showed loyalty and fealty

(01:57):
to Trump, just as Johnson saw or should have seen,
or has now evidently forgotten what happened to Mike Vents
when he showed loyalty and fealty to Donald Trump. Loyalty
and fealty to Trump is weakness. He will use you,
exploit you, and then try to get a crowd to

(02:17):
hang you, Speaker Johnson. Johnson, who attended the trial yesterday,
stood behind Trump in the background, did not go into
the court, and simply held a news conference at which
he declared Trump was innocent. Is particularly dishonorable, even for
a Republican Speaker of the House, even for a Louisiana

(02:39):
congressman from the Republican Party, even for a tiny Johnson
responding flacidly about a porn star Johnson is interfering with
a defendant and with a prosecution, a defendant who has
been indicted by a grand jury, and he has declared
him innocent. It is borderline obstruction of justice legally, Ethically,

(03:05):
it is utter obstruction of justice. Mike Johnson should have
resigned already. A responsible Republican party, even a somewhat non
corrupt Republican party, would have thrown him out yesterday. Somewhere
there must be, in a parallel universe a kind of
ethical Marjorie Taylor Green who takes umbrage at the Speaker

(03:26):
of the House using taxpayer money to go to New
York and declare the biggest criminal in the history of
the United States innocent without hearing any of the evidence,
or of course caring about any of the evidence, because
all it is to them now is power. They don't
care how they get it, they don't care what it
costs them to maintain it, and frankly, once they are

(03:48):
in office, they will kill all of us to maintain it.
An hour longer. That is what Mike Johnson and the
other ones, particularly this Ignoramus Tubberville, who looks like he
escaped from a mausoleum, somewhere and is still somehow talking.
These guys are revealing to us how far they will

(04:09):
go to show that they are behind Trump because Trump
can win them power, and all that matters to them
in the world is power. The world itself can go
to hell, and obviously under Trump it will. When Charles
Manson was arrested and indicted and I believe about to

(04:30):
go on trial in the Sharon Tate murders of nineteen
sixty nine, and my exact memory of this and the
precise timeline is a little vague because I was ten
or eleven years old at the time. But as the
trial was about to begin, perhaps just before jury selection,
or maybe even after the jury had been selected, President

(04:52):
Richard Nixon intimated that he believed that Manson was guilty. Well,
they nearly declared a mistrial, They nearly sent Charles Manson
home for a because Nixon had said something publicly suggesting
that Manson probably was guilty. I don't think there is
a parallel legally the other way, in which because Mike Johnson,

(05:16):
a tiny idiot, a corrupt Speaker of the House, a Republican,
these things all mean the same thing. Just because he
said Trump is innocent. That does not mean a judge
somewhere can declare Trump guilty, although I wish it worked
that way. There's nothing I don't think that Judge Merschawn
can do to Johnson, or to Tuberville or that weasel jd.

(05:41):
Vance or Byron Donald's who is simply a prostitute, or
Corey Mills, or this god awful burghum from North Dakota
or Ramaswami. Ramaswami we let off because he did one
of the funniest Freudian slips of all time, which I'll
get to in a moment. I don't think they can
do anything legally to them except to bring them into

(06:03):
his courtroom and say, what did President Trump tell you
to say? What did don Trump tell you to say?
What did this asshole Trump tell you to say? And
he certainly can do something to Trump, even if he
has no hard and fast evidence in front of him
other than what Tubberville said, which I'm about to play
for you. He can say you are in contempt of

(06:26):
court and you are going to Rikers Island. Do not
pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Because if
Trump went further and literally asked them to say the
things he is forbidden from saying by the gag order.
This would be contempt of court by Trump. The gag
order says not only that he may not talk about

(06:47):
the jury, talk about the case, talk about the witnesses,
talk about their honesty, insult the judge's daughter, which several
of them did. Not only he can't do those things,
but he cannot instruct others to do so, because if
Trump asked them to say the thing he is forbidden
from saying by the gag order, its contemptive court. And

(07:10):
guess what, Senator Dumbo himself. Tubberville went on Newsmax and
basically said, oh yeah, Trump did ask us to say
the things he's forbidden from saying by the gag order.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Hopefully we have more and more senators and Congressmen go
up every day to represent him and be able to
go out and overcome this gag order. And that's one
of the reasons we went is to be able to
speak our peace of for President Trump.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
It is a sobering time to consider that we have
elected one of the stupidest college football coaches to ever
live into the Senate, that we have put him there,
and despite those ears, he never listens. The good news
is we have put into the Senate one of the

(07:55):
stupidest college football coaches who ever lived. And he gives
away the plot in this case that is meant literally
the plot for Trump to get around the gag order.
You heard what he just said. And Justice Merschaan, who
has not been aggressive about the penalty phase of contemptive court,

(08:15):
but has been aggressive about dealing with this issue and
telling people he wants them to act in a certain
way and holding hearings. He should hold a hearing, and
he should bring in Tommy Tupperville, and he should bring
in all the rest of them and Johnson. He should
bring them in and swear them in and have them testify,

(08:36):
and vivek Ramaswami and see if you can get vivek
Ramaswami to repeat this Freudian slip, the Freudian slip of
the trial, and perhaps so far the Freudian slip of
the year. May God bless our country.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
I pray for our future, and let's pray for our
country being stronger on the other side of this disgusting
sham politician prosecution.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
This once again proves that just because you talk fast
does not mean you are talking true. Ah, thank goodness
for vivike Ramaswami. A psychology friend of mine once explained
that the faster you talk, the more likely it is
that something true will sneak out before you even realize

(09:20):
you've said it. And particularly that's true, she said, if
you are lying at high speed, and if you are
lying at high speed and the truth comes out like
that about the scam politicians, it is comforting to know
that when I call vivike Ramaswami a Trump whore, Okay,

(09:40):
there's your evidence. He's a Trump whore. He is deliberately
telling things that are not true, saying them aloud, participating
in plots, and he doesn't even believe that there's anything
worthwhile in Trump. He is too. Vivike Ramaswami a scam.

(10:05):
This obscured to some degree the actual cross examination of
Michael Cohen. And again, I am just amazed by how
many stupid people there are attempting to overthrow this government,
Todd Blanche, Trump's lawyer being one of them. Todd Blanche's
first question to Michael Cohen, you went on TikTok and

(10:26):
called me a crying little shit just before this trial began,
and Cohen calmly said, sounds like something I would say.
And it went on and on and on and on
from there, just trying to get Cohen on the record
saying all the nasty things he said about Trump and
about others, and then all the other nice things he
had said about Trump, to indicate that he said one

(10:47):
thing once and something else the other time. But where
did they start. They started with the insult to Todd
Blanche and the question from Todd Blanche about Todd Blanche.
They thought this would impeach Michael Cohen as a witness,
because us here's the shocking thing. Trump's world consists of

(11:09):
people who, to some degree, unlike vivid Ramaswami, actually believe
the bullshit, their own bullshit. They believe the first piece
of Trump World, that apparently everybody who gets sucked into it,
actually believes that the world agrees with them, almost unanimously,
that they are the victims here, that they are being crucified,

(11:30):
that he is some sort of Christ with bad hair.
They believe this somewhere in the back of this moron
Blanche's mind when he said that, and God calling to
confirm that he had called Blanche a crying little shit
that the trial should have ended right there. That is

(11:51):
how these people now think, Wow, you got him to
admit he wants to see Trump in jail and that
he lied for Trump and then told the truth about Trump. Wow,
great lawyer. I hope it's a flat rate than rather
than per hour. There's one other thing about reading all

(12:11):
of these quotes, or confirming all of these quotes that
touched a nerve with me. I have never testified, but
I did undergo one of the worst ordeals of my life,
and compared to the ordeals of others in similar situations,
it wasn't that bad. But I did two days of
a deposition in twenty thirteen in my lawsuit against al

(12:34):
Gore and Company, and it turned out later that the
attorney was somewhat friendly to me and literally pulled punches
legally could have hit me a little bit harder, did not.
We had friendly conversations afterwards. In any event, one thing

(12:56):
my attorneys did, and my attorneys were the best, and
they prepared me with one thousand wonderful pieces of advice
to take into a deposition, and one of the best
of them was if they ask you to read your
own emails or your own words, and they're filled with
insults and obscenities about anybody in the organization. Don't say well,

(13:21):
what I meant was, don't equivocate, don't say well I
was a little angry at the time. Don't say embrace them,
sing them, especially the obscenities. And I was handed an
email about fifty of them they handed me at various
times through these two days, and I was asked to
read this, and I suddenly remembered it. The nicest thing

(13:44):
in this email, which was probably about one hundred words long,
was when I called one of the executives a jiminy
cricket passed bastard. That was the nicest, most polite thing.
The rest of it was just a string of adjectival
curse words. And I started to hedge and hesitate, and
then I rem I heard my lawyer's advice, and I

(14:07):
yelled it, do I have your permission to call this?
And they actually asked me if I would quiet down
a little bit. And it was the last time that
they actually thought they were going to threaten me by
getting me to read my own words aloud. And now
to the other topic. I asked yesterday for a Walter

(14:33):
Cronkite moment from The New York Times, some awareness that
everything we know in this country, every freedom, every piece
of history, every law rests on Donald Trump or any
other Republican not becoming president next January twentieth. It is

(14:56):
a black and white choice. It is binary. If Trump
gets elected, the democracy is over. We may never have
an election again. We may not get out from under
the yoke of Trump until he dies. He may try
to stay in office forever and turn it into a
kind of monarchy, or make the presidency of the United

(15:17):
States much like the presidency of Russia. It's a nice word,
but it really doesn't have anything to do in terms
of describing the job. You get that, I get that,
Trump gets that. The New York Times, the New York Times,
does not get that. What I want from them is
some sudden awareness, as in the examples I gave yesterday.

(15:42):
Walter Cronkite had in nineteen sixty eight, after a trip
to Vietnam, as Walter Cronkite had very early on in
the Watergate scandal in October of nineteen seventy two, to
come out and take a stance in defense of this
nation and in defense of this nation at an imperiled time,
as the New York Times did during the Civil War,

(16:06):
and not often since. I asked for a Walter Cronkite moment,
and I got a Judith Miller moment for the second
time in this trial, but apparently the first time anybody noticed.
There were texts introduced as part of the People's case

(16:27):
against Trump. People's exhibit to sixty texts from February thirteenth,
twenty eighteen from witness Michael Cohen to Maggie Haberman of
The New York Times. Quote, Big Boss, just to prove
my responding to complaint and statement, Please start writing and

(16:49):
I will call you soon. Big Boss just approved my
responding to complaint and statement. Well, what did Maggie Haberman
write on February thirteenth, twenty eighteen? What was she texting
off the record with Michael Cohen about on February thirteenth,
twenty eighteen. While there it is on the internet. February thirteenth,

(17:10):
twenty eighteen, New York Times by Maggie Haberman. Quote Michael D. Cohen,
President Trump's longtime personal lawyer, said on Tuesday that he
paid one hundred and thirty thousand dollars out of his
own pocket to a pornographic film actress who had once
claimed to have had an affair with mister Trump. In
the most detailed explanation of the twenty sixteen payment made

(17:30):
to the actress, mister Cohen, who worked as a counsel
to the Trump organization for more than a decade, said
he was not reimbursed for the payment. Neither the Trump
Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the
transaction with miss Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment,
either directly or indirectly. Mister Cohen said in a statement
to The New York Times, the payment to miss Clifford

(17:52):
was lawful and was not a campaign contribution or a
campaign expenditure by anyone. She printed it. There are no caveats,
There are no questions about the authenticity of the statement.
She printed it. She printed it as if the only
thing that were a fact in here that mattered was

(18:15):
that Cohen said this, not whether or not it was true.
February fourteenth, twenty eighteen, by Maggie Haberman. Oh, he got
two articles in which she lied for him and Trump
and The New York Times lied for Michael Cohen and
Trump February fourteenth, twenty eighteen by Maggie Haberman The New

(18:37):
York Times. The admission by President Trump's longtime personal lawyer
that he sent one hundred thirty thousand dollars to a
pornographic film actress blah blah, blah, blah blah, has raised
potential legal questions ranging from breach of contract to ethics violations.
That's the range. Breach of contract to ethics violations. Not

(18:58):
an attempt to subvert the twenty sixteen presidential election. Not
lies on behalf of the then president of the United States.
Not hush money being paid to a pornographic actress so
that her story would not come out and sink his campaign. No,
has raised potential legal questions. That's all she wrote. That's

(19:19):
where that phrase comes from. That's all she wrote. The
lawyer Michael D. Cohen told The New York Times, well,
therefore it must be true on Tuesday that he had
used his own funds to facilitate the payment, adding that
neither the Trump organization nor the Trump campaign had reimbursed
him for the payment. He insisted that the payment was legal,

(19:40):
So she lied for Cohen, and Cohen lied for Trump
and Trump lied to the American people to get elected.
And there it is still online, not even a correction
note at the bottom of it by the New York Times.
Nothing better than a New York Times correction note, We're sorry,
we destroyed the country. We got this one small detail wrong.

(20:05):
When this came out, that these texts to Maggie Haberman
from Michael Cohen indicated that she was an accessory after
the fact to the Michael Cohen bullshit story on behalf
of Donald Trump, for which he is now on trial,
for which Cohen went to jail. When this came out,
surprisingly enough, there was a lot of criticism of Maggie

(20:27):
Haberman and The New York Times, and in fact, in
some quarters, Maggie Haberman was defended. She was defended by,
for one, the editor in chief of Mother Jones, which
is not exactly a conservative organization. I read this defense
with great interest and took it quite seriously and said, well,
you got this one wrong. The editor in chief said, Look,

(20:49):
there are transactions in any relationship with any source, and
that's true. I've had them. I've had them in sports,
have had them in news. Often you will help a
source by quoting them. On a story that maybe you
wouldn't have otherwise, quoted them in, or paraphrasing something they said,
or emphasizing what they said as opposed to what somebody
else said, or in some other way making a story

(21:12):
easier for them. You can even ethically shade a story
towards them or their point of view in areas of dispute.
It's very flexible, the relationship between a source and a reporter.
I mean, to begin with, the source is giving you
information you probably should not be having, and you are

(21:34):
giving them anonymity that they probably should not be getting.
But all of this is always predicated. And I was
told this, I guess in high school. I certainly was
told it at my college radio station, where we apparently
had higher ethical standards of journalism than The New York
Times does now, and definitely at my first news organization,

(21:56):
United Press International. The premise of any transaction between a
reporter and a source is that whatever you wind up
printing or reporting or publishing must be the truth. It
is not enough merely to be a fact that somebody
has told you something. That fact of somebody telling you

(22:17):
something may itself contain a lie or a series of lies.
Or enough lies to influence the outcome of a presidential election.
It's not enough to have a series of facts. You
have to tell the god damned truth. And Maggie Habrenman
does not tell the goddamned truth. This is the difference.

(22:37):
There are facts. Donald Trump says he's actually Jesus Christ,
only with bad hair. Well, let's just print that without
any notation that it's crazy. You could factually say, well,
Trump said that, Therefore we can print it because it's factual.

(22:59):
If I said the democracy is hanging by a thread
from the top of the Washington Monument right now and
we need everyone to rally towards it, to have a
Walter Cronkite moment, well it's a fact that I've said. That,
is it the truth? You have to put some effort

(23:19):
into it. And there are circumstances under which no amount
of digging by the reporter can verify whether or not
the facts of the statement are in fact truth. There
are occasions in which there's no way to do that.
And conceivably, when Michael Cohen texts you, big boss, just

(23:40):
to prove my responding to complain and statement on February thirteenth,
and you're writing on February thirteenth, you may not be
able to disprove what he has told you. But if
you're writing it again on February fourteenth, to goddamn betterwell
have checked it out. And Maggie Haberman did not do it.
She did not do it. And what happens after that? Well,

(24:06):
who got the Pulitzer Prize for covering Trump? Maggie Haberman
of the New York Times, who was in court the
other day dismissing Michael Cohen's testimony about what Trump told
her would happen if the stormy Daniel's story got out,
what would happen to his marriage? She dismissed it as
legal hearsay. Trump says to Michael Cohen, well, I won't

(24:30):
be on the market for long. And she dismisses that
at hearsay in the New York Times, and no one
corrects her. And they will sit there and twist this
and turn themselves into pretzels with so many knots to
convince themselves at the New York Times that they have

(24:50):
done nothing wrong, that they are the paragons of journalism,
that they have never made a mistake, despite that fellow
Blair they fired years ago just made up every story
and every source he ever had, and despite Judith Miller,
who I am, and again I will congratulate you if
you don't know who Judith Miller was. Judith Miller was
the Maggie Haberman of two thousand and two and two

(25:12):
thousand and three. Judith Miller was the irreproachable New York
Times reporter who actually turned out to be merely serving
the role of the person who washed the Bush governments.
Lies about the non existence of weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq, the lynchpin to the phony made up George W.

(25:36):
Bush will burn in hell if any of the world's
religions are correct. Bullshit. The person who sold that more
than Colin Powell sold it at the United Nations was
Judith Miller of the New York Times in other worlds,
in other markets, Judith Miller's crimes against journalism were so

(25:58):
profound and so many that her organization would have gone
out of business. It didn't. In fact, she got a
best seller out of it, a best seller on the
New York Times bestseller list. Judith Miller wrote story after
story simply repeating what the White House under Bush and

(26:19):
Rumsfeld and Cheney and Colin Powell all said. And we
put Colin Powell last because he later went out there
and said, I got it all wrong. I didn't know
I was lying. I was lying. Set it on NBC.
Still he lied. They all lied, and Judith Miller was

(26:39):
the one who typed the lies up and put them
in the goddamned New York Times. And when she was caught,
when they forced her to resign after she had also
outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent on behalf of
Scooter Libby, who was another one of these Bushies. After

(27:02):
they destroyed Valerie Plame's intelligence career to try to discredit
her husband because her husband had written a piece in
The New York Times explaining that there were no weapons
of mass destruction because the uranium that Saddam Hussein supposedly
bought in Niger did not exist. After Judith Miller bent
the rules of the New York Times to discredit and

(27:22):
op ed printed in The New York Times that contained
more journalistic integrity in it than in the entirety of
her career. After they forced her out, she explained, quote,
my job isn't to assess the government's information and be
an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell
readers of the New York Times what the government thought

(27:43):
about Iraq's arsenal bullshit. Judith Miller wound up on Fox News,
which is where she should have been all along. People
who can contort themselves into pretzels explaining why their immorality
is morality wind up on Fox News. What is a

(28:05):
fact and what is the truth and what is the difference?
And the answer is Maggie Haberman could not tell you.
That is why the New York Times must fire her.
Getting less publicity from the New York Times. A grotesque

(28:30):
ass named a Steed Herndon, who is a New York
Times White House correspondent who has been in this podcast before.
Somebody writes on Twitter x about the unlikelihood that President
Biden can fix all the flaws in his presidency before
the election, and he subtweets the link to this article
and says, I've said this one hundred times, but it's

(28:51):
not the message. It's the messenger. That is not to
say he can't win. He can, but the msnbcfication of
National Democrats has blinded them to his problems. DEM's cleared
the field for an unpopular candidate. You do that, you
get a hard election. Astead Herndon emphasis in ass ass Also,

(29:22):
he continued in his thread, what I'm antagonizing the glibness
is part of the problem. While I'm antagonizing Biden's age
is overcovered from mental acuity angle and undercovered as the
filter to which voting public views this administration. Vibe killer.

(29:43):
If you are still saying something in public about vibes,
and it's not meant ironically like the summer hats that
were in vogue for men about fifteen years ago until
everybody went, no, they did look stupid. We're not being
ironically funny by wearing them. If you're not saying vibes
as an insult to everybody who's ever used the phrase vibes,

(30:06):
retire from public life. Have your brain washed. Stop using
vibe killer. Astaed Herndon contributes to sense of lack of progress.
He's still going on about Biden's age. Big reason legislative
economic wins haven't translated. Where did we hear this guy

(30:27):
Herndon before? Oh, in February it was Herndon of the
New York Times who posted Biden's age is very clearly
the most important non Trump issue in this elect poling
says so voters say so, it's just the White House
slash DC have had a sort of gentleman's agreement for

(30:48):
the last year to pretend like it's not. Maybe that
ends now. This guy Herndon was the guy who believed
that the subject of Joe Biden's age had been undercovered,
that the media was covering up for him, not unlike
it covered up for the fact that Franklin D. Roosevelt
was in a wheelchair. Now he didn't say that, I did.

(31:15):
Just the White House DC have had a sort of
gentleman's agreement for the last year to pretend like it's not.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Now.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Of course, the age thing while still sitting there in
the background, it's not selling as a campaign issue, not
in terms of Washington elites like this guy Herndon and
this idiot Maggie Haberman and the idiots that they work for.
But now that it's not there in public, you'll notice
that mister Herndon did not bring it up, He did

(31:44):
not lead with it. He mentioned it in his second
part of his thread because he's obsessed with it and
can't get over it. Biden's age is overcovered from mental
acuity angle, and undercovered is the filter to which voting
public views this administration. Vibe killer. He's looking for other
things to hit Biden with because the entire Times revenge
age porn thing against Piden for not doing the Q

(32:07):
and A with them is for real, and they've had
to find something new. Got a fire, Herndon, got a fire, Haberman,
the editor Joe Kahn after that interview. He has no
credibility whatsoever outside of his own office. And I wonder
how much he has inside his own office, because guess what,

(32:28):
I like Joe Biden, just mine. But if you told
me tomorrow that we'd have to force Joe Biden off
the ticket today in favor of Lawrence O'Donnell as the
next president of the United States to preserve the democracy,

(32:50):
I would say, President Biden, thank you for your service.
You will always be my friend. You're off the ticket.
This is about democracy or dictatorship. And this this mother
effort from the New York Times is talking about vibe killers.

(33:14):
That's where we are. Vibe killer. The Time still hasn't
figured this out yet. This is democracy or dictatorship in
the fall. The Times has not figured this out. Yet
I asked somebody there to overthrow the government of the

(33:37):
New York Times and get me a Walter Cronkite moment,
because as if we did not have enough going on
to suggest this is necessary. Yesterday Trump posted Fox News
should let Judge Janine cover the trial, not Eric Sean,
who has no clue what's going on, just another rhino.

(33:59):
I mentioned Eric Sean before I was surprised he continued
to work there. I've known him since I was in
television news at the beginning of my career at CNN, Honest, straightforward.
Somehow it worked for Fox all these years. Now Trump
is trying to get him fired. Last week, Trump tried
to give direction to Sean, told him he wanted him

(34:22):
to read more of Greg Jarrett's analysis of the trial
and his coverage. Understand that if Trump is elected next year,
he will not be bothering to put posts up on
truth Social or you must read this, or you go
to jail's social or whatever it would be called. Under
a Trump presidency dictatorship, he will simply have Eric Seawan

(34:44):
arrested if he doesn't like what Eric Seawan has reported,
and he'll have Maggie Habraman arrested too, and you'll have
Mike Johnson arrested too. If Mike Johnson displeases him. Joe Con,
Joe Con will already be inside in the camps with me.
On day one, New York Times has to fire Maggie Haberman,

(35:08):
Justice Wan Mshawn has to jail Trump, and he has
to bring in Mike Johnson and Tuberville and Vance and
Byron Donalds and Bergham and all the rest, and say,
tell me about the plot to get around my gag order.
And when you tell me the truth, that's when I
will let Trump out of rikers. I have talked far
longer than my doctors would permit. The rest of the

(35:32):
show will be a rehash of yesterday's Oddly enough, it
will be the one in which I asked the New
York Times to give me a Walter Cronkite moment. But
I will close with one humorous anecdote, just to leven
the moment, so that you don't jump off anything right
after this amortization of Brian Ray's theme and thus also

(36:15):
of interest here and the last new thing in this podcast,
and if you turn it off, I will have no
offense whatsoever. Is something Laura Ingram said last night, because
it is turned into one of those weeks in which
every time I go on social media, there is something
that Laura Ingram, who I went out with for a while,
has said that is insane, or something that Katie Turr,

(36:35):
who I lived with for three years has said that
is insane. Or there's another one whose name I don't
bring up because not many people know about their relationship.
Apparently got herself kicked out of the coverage of the
Trump trial for violating the rules from the judge. Oh
my god, I lived with her too. I make bad choices.

(36:56):
I've only been dating fifty years. Why would I get
it right? But Laura Ingram said something last night that
actually made me smile. Didn't intend to make me smile
when she said this, but she made me smile. Nonetheless,
when do you get to the point, she said, and
I'm paraphrasing here, when do you get to the point
where you would believe a Michael Cohen or a Stormy

(37:19):
Daniels instead of a Donald Trump? And I thought, well,
when I completed the second grade and they graduated me
up to the third grade, I suppose Laura, why The
New York Times owes us a Walter Cronkite moment. That's next,

(37:42):
this accountant. We need a Walter Cronkite moment from the
New York Times. The New York Times needs one day,

(38:03):
one day soon, one day now, to devote the entirety
of the front page to one headline and one editorial
signed by the publisher Sealzburger, and the editor Cohn, and
the key columnists, and the important correspondence headlined Trump Imperils
Democracy sub headlined your life at Stake and he is insane.

(38:32):
I'll get to the trial and Michael Cohen and how
they got what they needed from him, which was a
headline in the Washington Post with the word calmly in it.
But first we need a Walter Cronkite moment from the
New York Times. And instead we get the backup, backup, backup, backup,
election reporters, backup, trying to be witty as Trump crashes

(38:54):
and burns intellectually, morally and phonetically, and as his whorees
like Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott try to erase the
bright lines of democracy while they think we are not
watching them, and as his jihadists try to sabotage the
twenty twenty four election. The Times needs its Walter Cronkite

(39:16):
moment too, like Cronkite shocking the nation out of much
of its Vietnam delusion, Like Cronkite personally moving Watergate to
the front burner, the Times needs its Cronkite moment to
save itself. We need a Times Cronkite moment to just
add to our dwindling chances of saving this democracy. Saturday,

(39:39):
Trump went to a Philadelphia area seaside resort called Wildwood,
drew maybe ten thousand cultists, eleven thousand lied, and had
the Republican mayor there lie and say it was eighty thousand.
He talked, he complained, He complained that immigrant students don't
speak English, and immediately afterwards he said something like bordenin Riviv,

(40:04):
and he said something else like Carrie Daudite. By right,
he claimed the president between Ford and Reagan was named
Jimmy Conners. He said the Chinese were preparing to invade Beijing,
which is their own capital. He insisted the entire country
was grateful that he killed off Roe v. Wade. He

(40:24):
thanked by name the Supreme Court justices who gutted Roe V. Wade.
He suddenly invoked the fictional Cannibal character Hannibal Lecter, seemed
to praise Hannibal Lector, claimed the character Hannibal Lecter was
dead and got the name of the movie wrong, and
then insisted all immigrants are Hannibal Lecter. And all of

(40:47):
that was after he was introduced by some immigrant who
called him President Chump, and the New York Times story
by a sixth stringer named Michael Gold mentioned none of that.
This was what Joe Conn's writer told consumers of the
most influential news organization in America. Quote. After a long

(41:11):
and often tense week in his criminal trial in Manhattan,
Trump took part in a time honored ritual enjoyed by
countless New Yorkers. In need of a break, he went
to the shore. Oh oh, how clever, Michael Gold. The
New York Times could save a lot of money by
firing all of its political reporters and simply asking the

(41:33):
fictional Twitter writer Doug J. Balloon of New York Times
pitchpot fame to write all of its leads because they
are now sounding exclusively like the Times pitch bot clunky
attempts at wit that don't quite land. Trump has renounced
his New York residence. He is thus not a New Yorker,
Michael Gold. Wildwood is not a destination for New Yorkers anyway,

(41:57):
It's for Philadelphians. And he is the greatest criminal in
the nation's history. Michael Gold. He is not in need
of a break. He is in need of a lifetime
prison sentence. This occurred over a weekend in which three
of Trump's most fierce, most dishonest, most anti democracy supporters

(42:17):
in the Senate went on national television and said, sure,
they would accept the outcome of the election so long
as Trump won. The Times headline about that was Vance
says he would accept the election results with a caveat,
which sounds like he's wearing a tie with a caveat,

(42:38):
a lovely floral caveat. Yet it was also a weekend
in which a small newsroom called the Bucks County Beacon
wrote about how Trump's sewer rats are openly subverting the
election today, not twenty twenty, not twenty twenty two, but
one in November quote. The RNC and its allies have

(42:59):
already sued in five states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada
to challenge their voter roles, accuracy, and in turn, voter's credentials.
In Georgia, a Republican bill empowering mass challenges of voter
registrations was signed into law on May seventh. More importantly,

(43:20):
the Beacon also reveals the existence of something on the
right wing social media site Telegram called the Election Education Channel,
which is encouraging and setting the stage for legal and
extra judicial challenges to every single stage of every presidential
vote count in conceivably every single precinct in this country.

(43:45):
The kind of Sidney Powell Jenna ellis legal quicksand we
saw after the twenty twenty election, only while the votes
are still being counted, and immediately thereafter in every county
in this country, to create chaos and genuine danger. The Times.

(44:07):
The Times has reported none of that. It has instead
let Maggie Haberman dismiss as hearsay Michael Cohen's first hand
recounting of what Trump told him about not being on
the market for long. If Millennia dumped him, and if
Haberman doesn't know the legal definition of here, say get
rid of her. And The Times made room for an

(44:30):
op ed bashing Joe Biden written by Mark Penn, a
dishonest right wing polster who has been posing as a
Democrat for at least twenty years, and it made room
for a report on the upcoming attempts to sabotage the
election by the Republicans. No, a radio shock jock named
Charlemagne the God, a reactionary who does nothing but take sides,

(44:52):
and they pronounced he is someone The Times fell for
it quote who won't take sides? We need a Walter
Cronkite moment out of the New York Times. If the
the reference eludes you, First of all, congratulations on your youth.
Then to explain briefly for all of the almost biblical

(45:13):
invocations of his supposed impartiality and the use of the
name Walter Cronkite as a substitute for complete impartiality in reporting.
The three biggest moments in the career of the great
CBS newsman were when he barely stopped himself from crying
while reporting the assassination of President Kennedy. When he burst

(45:34):
through the constraints of his job as the anchor of
the CBS Evening News to present fully informed, but fully
opinionated commentaries, first on Vietnam, and then four years later
on Watergate. In February of nineteen sixty eight, Walter Cronkite
went to Vietnam, and he spent a week there talking

(45:54):
to people on the record and off, and he went
back to his desk, and on February twenty seventh, nineteen
sixty eight, he delivered an extraordinary closing editorial after a
long report on our status in Vietnam. His editorial began with,
we have been too often disappointed by the optimism of
the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington to have

(46:17):
faith any longer in the silver linings they find in
the darkest clouds. His commentary ended with it is increasingly
clear to this reporter that the only rational way out
then will be to negotiate not as victors, but as
an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to

(46:37):
defend democracy and did the best they could. President Lyndon
Johnson was not watching Walter Cronkite live that night, but
Bob Scheffer insists Johnson told him he did see clips,
and Schaefer and Bill Moyers insist the President did then
say something like if I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America,

(46:59):
and Johnson soon after then announced he was not going
to run for reelection in October nineteen seventy two. Cronkite
may have topped himself at a time when only the
Washington Post was giving Nixon's Watergate scandal daily coverage. Yes,
the New York Times was largely asleep at the switch
then too. At that point, Walter Cronkite devoted roughly half

(47:21):
of the editorial content time of two editions of the
CBS Evening News just to the one story to Watergate,
fourteen minutes out of what was basically a twenty two
minute newscast on Friday, October twenty seventh, and what was
cut down to eight minutes due to the threats of
the Nixon administration and the pleas of Walter Kronkite's terrified

(47:43):
bosses on Tuesday, October thirty first, Walter Cronkite did not
f around. We need that out of the New York Times,
and we need it now. And if the Times does
not have a Walter Cronkite moment in it, they need
to get everybody out of their building and then fload

(48:05):
that building because the Times is simply now mocking the
idea of responsible American journalism. And also, I know that
area I used to work a block away at sixth
and fortieth. The City of New York could really use
that lot for parking. And no, I'm not expecting a

(48:26):
Walter Cronkite moment from the New York Times. The New
York Times does not make mistakes, let alone correct them.
Don't you know that, by the way, if you missed
it as the Times did, what follows is a mashup
of Trump's now constant indecipherability and Trump on President Jimmy

(48:52):
Conners and Trump on the late great Hannibal Lecter, and
then Trump walking away from the microphones yesterday when an
astute reporter at the trial asked him, Hannibal Lector, we'll
play this and then we'll go to court.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
We're going to evict this man, the worst president by far.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Jimmy Connors is Jimmy. Jimmy Connors is good. He's also happy.
Jimmy is a very happy man, both of them. And
they don't speak English. They're sitting in chairs listening to a.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Teacher talking English, and they don't speak English, and.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
They won't mean Biden's burden silence of the lamb.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Has anyone ever seen the silence of the lymps?

Speaker 1 (49:40):
The late Great Hannibal Elector, He is a wonderful man.
He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the
last saying, excuse me, I'm about to have a friend
for dinner. Is this poor doctor walk by? I'm about
to have a friend for dinner.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
But Hannibal Elector, congratulations, the late Great Hannibal Lector.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
No reason to put any of that madness in the times.
What I'd have to leave out the Jersey Shore references.

(50:36):
Michael Cohen calmly describes Trump's hush money instructions, reads the
headline in the Washington Post today. The sub headline quotes, Trump,
just do it. That's what the prosecution needed out of Cohen,
and it needs it again out of him today and
especially whenever the cross examination begins. It needs him making

(50:58):
more self abnegating jokes about angry even for me. It
needs him testifying, as he did yesterday, that he was
there in Trump Tower days before Trump was sworn in
as President of the United States, with Alan Weiselberg reviewing
a handwritten document with Trump to repay Cohen for the

(51:20):
stormy Daniel's hush money and how they would hide it
amid legal fees, and testimony that Trump said smart individuals
had told him Trump to pay the one hundred and
thirty thousand dollars to Stormy Daniels, and that Trump told
him he knew if the Daniels story got out it
would be a disaster for the campaign that it needs
Michael Cohen producing one outstandingly sleazy quote from Trump per

(51:45):
day on the stand, like he did yesterday about the
time Cohen asked Trump about the impact on his wife,
Milania if the story got out, and Trump said, don't worry.
How long do you think I'll be on the market for?
Not long? That's the quote Haberman of The Times falsely
dismissed as hearsay, and the quote that underscores all of

(52:07):
us who have viewed the latest of the many Trump
quote marriages unquote as exactly what Trump clearly viewed it
as a contract negotiated with terms dictated by the market.
How long do you think I'll be on the market for?
And all of it that Cohen testified to and testifies

(52:28):
to today and in the cross examination accompanied by receipts,
metaphorical receipts and literal ones trial notes. In passing, Trump
wanted some distinguished Republicans to show up and show solidarity,

(52:52):
but he could only get Tommy Tuberville, JD. Vance, and
Nicole Mally attackus OH and Brenna Bird. Brenna Bird is
the Attorney General of Iowa who was there in court,
who should be disbarred, because whatever you think of this
case or this defendant, you cannot be the head of
criminal enforcement in any state and show up in court

(53:14):
to kiss the ass of a defendant in another state.
It is disqualifying. Senators Vance and Tubberville do not have
to worry about that. They have long since disqualified themselves.
They caught Trump sleeping again in court, and somebody finally
aptly compared this to his alertness during the Egene Carroll trial.

(53:38):
Vance stayed only for the morning session yesterday, and then
he and Tubberville blew town and Vance, violating court rules,
evidently was tweeting from his phone in the courtroom. I
saw a media report a few days ago. He wrote
that Trump looked like he was falling asleep or board
or something. The obvious narrative they're trying to sell is yeah,
Biden is mentally unfit, but this other guy's bad too.

(53:59):
It's an absurd narrative. I'm thirty nine years old and
I've been here for twenty six minutes and I'm about
to fall to sleep. Unquote. I'm sorry, Sonny, but how
does your failed mental health help Trump. It's like saying
I'm jd Vance and I have multiple chins that shows
that Trump is in the best possible health. This scumbag

(54:23):
Tubberville meanwhile went out to a propaganda conference with the
media and said that the people in the court were quote,
supposedly American citizens. Supposedly American citizens. He segued right from
that into an insult towards the district attorney, and of
course what he was saying was now that was code for, hey,

(54:44):
this Alvin Brad guy is black. Today, Vivek Ramaswami will
be there with Trump if Ramaswami can get his hair
done in time. And ABC News reports that Junior Trump
has gone to visit Peter Navarro in federal prison, and
I look at it this way, good practice for Junie

(55:05):
for once Dad goes there. Last point, the nice thing
about this nightmare is that Trump and his defense team
and his cultists and his Republican supporters have so little
to work with that they always telegraph their response because
generally speaking, they can only find one response per crisis.
And the response to Michael Cohen is He's a liar.

(55:27):
He lied, He's a convicted liar. The jury can't trust
a liar. America can't trust a liar. Leave aside that
liar might as well be Trump's actual middle name. But
say this long enough to Cohen and they expect him
to blow up in the witness box. Say this long
enough to the fascists and they'll forget that Cohen was

(55:47):
convicted of lying on Trump's behalf. Say this long enough,
and maybe we'll all forget that. If we disqualified everybody
who has ever lied for Donald Trump, we had to
wipe out about ninety nine percent of the Republican Party,
wouldn't we. I've done all the damage I can do here.

(56:23):
Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and
John Phillips Chanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums,
and mister Shanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards. It
was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of
the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,

(56:46):
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss. The
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my
friend Howard Fineman, and everything else was pretty much my fault.
Let's countdown for this the one hundred and seventy sixth
day until the two twenty four presidential election, but twenty

(57:08):
fifth day since Dictator Jay Trump's first attempted coup against
the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the
legal system such as it is, use the mental health system,
Use presidential immunity if it happens, use the not regularly
given elector objection option. Use the campaign to stop him

(57:29):
from doing it again while we still can. The next
scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Again. I'm going to label that
as probable game time decision till the next one. I'm
Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

(57:57):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.

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TUBERVILLE CONFIRMS TRUMP'S PLOT TO EVADE GAG ORDER; TIMES MUST FIRE HABERMAN - 5.15.24

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}TUBERVILLE CONFIRMS TRUMP'S PLOT TO EVADE GAG ORDER; TIMES MUST FIRE HABERMAN - 5.15.24