March 14, 2023 • 40 mins
EPISODE 153: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Wait - what?
After a lurid week of claiming the entire January 6 Insurrection was just "peaceful sight-seers" disturbed by "hooligans" and insisting that the greatest conspiracy in the history of the country had been effected to transform the country and weaponize this and lie about that, Tucker Carlson suddenly, abruptly, completely and without explanation DROPPED THE JANUARY 6TH VIDEO STORY LAST NIGHT. No Jacob Chansley. No withheld video. No punish Liz Cheney.
It's quiet. It's too quiet.
What happened? The Department of Justice released three videos implicating Chansley, putting him within feet of a Senator (probably Chuck Grassley) during mid-evacuation. A New York State Supreme Court judge let the OTHER voting machine company's defamation lawsuit against Fox proceed. For all we know, Rupert Murdoch called Carlson and said "shut your pie hole." But the sudden silence was almost universal. Seen a tweet from a Congressman lately? Even Elon Musk stopped trying to convince people - on Saturday.
B-Block (19:26) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Yes, you read right. South Carolina state representative introduces bill to institute death penalty for women who get abortions (be pro-life or we'll kill you). A (dubious) report CNN may fire Chris Licht before Labor Day (22:14) IN SPORTS: Garrapolo to Raiders; Bauer to Japan; Unknown Nicaraguan WBC star gets big league contract; in memory of Joe Pepitone. (25:43) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Wall Street Journal blames SVB failure on bank not having enough white guys; Trump talks about education, like he ever had one; and Ron DeSantis can do an interview AND throw a baseball while wearing high heels!
C-Block (34:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Sloane in California (35:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Sportscaster Gary Lineker beats the BBC. It ends his suspension, he keeps expressing his political opinions. Utter deja vu for me. In 2010 MSNBC suspended me for doing something I had the right to do, vowed to not pay me for months. That was Friday. By Tuesday I was back on the air and they owed me much, much more money than they had owed me on Friday.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio Today
in January sixth, Conspiracy Land, It's quiet, It's two quiet. No,
(00:31):
the DJ has not arrested Tucker Carlson for obstruction of justice,
nor is it likely to. But it is clear somebody
in there is out to contradict him, humiliate him, and
get him fired by Fox. And whatever the plan is,
it may be working. Something certainly has worked. Tucker Carlson
(00:51):
has completely punted on the January sixth story. Did not
mention it once last night. No Q Shaman, no conspiracy,
no withheld, no fire Liz Cheney, No, we demand immediate
action like it never happened. Tucker Carlson offered no explanation
as he ran away as to why he ran away.
(01:13):
The Department of Justice, it offered lots of explanations. Sunday
it was the release of memorandum six eighty nine confirming
that Carlson was lying on television, that the Q Shaman
had access to all the video Carlson showed and all
the video Carlson did not show because it would have
destroyed his lie while he was lying it. Yesterday the
(01:35):
release came of some of that video Carlson is hiding again.
This release was in answer to Dominic Pozzola's motion to
dismiss the January six charges against him quote due to
recent revelations on the Tucker Carlson Show. This is the
audio track from the body cam of one of dozens
(01:55):
of officers summoned to the Senate Chamber when Jacob Chancelly
was told to leave, and he refused, and he and
the other insurrectionist had to be boxed out by Capital police.
And the voice you will hear is that of Tucker
Carlson's mild mannered, railroaded sightseer Chansley, screaming as police adroitly
force him and the other terrorists out of the Capitol
(02:18):
without somehow shooting any of them. Let's go, Let's go,
Let's go, let's go. Another video, one of three the
(02:48):
Department of Justice released yesterday, is less audibly gaudy, to
use that word, but it is far more harrowing. This
is from the exact moment Jacob Chansley aka the real
victim here Shaman and the rest of the mob came
within perhaps thirty feet of a senator being evacuated. We
think it's Chuck Grassley nobody can be certain, and in
(03:11):
the video there is only one officer standing in an
open vestibule blocking them from attacking that senator. The Department
of Justice is going to prove that Jacob Chanceley, the
Q shaman, was as guilty as he said he was
(03:33):
in the plea bargain he signed and the sentence he
accepted fifty five days after his lawyer received the last
of all of the January sixth video. And while it
is not doing as good a job as say dominion
voting systems is at destroying Fox Quote News and destroying
Rupert Murdock and destroying Sean Hannity, and destroying Laura Ingram
(03:54):
and destroying Susanne Scott and destroying Tucker Carlson, the DOJ
certainly is doing the best that it can, considering it's
a government bureaucracy. So far it has proved Tucker Carlson
lied about Chansley, lied about Chansley's access to exculpatory video
that wasn't the least bit exculpatory lied about January sixth
(04:16):
in Toto, and committed with Speaker McCarthy obstruction of justice,
if not legally, then certainly ethically. And now with the
release of Bees videos, the DOJ is clearly bolstering that
latest question, why is Tucker Carlson hiding the January sixth
video that implicates Jacob Chansley and by extension, implicates Tucker
(04:38):
Carlson and speaker McCarthy. Carlson's silence on this subject last
night underscores the bizarre reality that Fox is getting hammered
on its January sixth video coverage by the right wing.
It was calculated that the Newsmax channel has covered Fox's
(04:58):
coverage at seven times the frequency Fox has. Newsmax has
accused Fox of a cover up. Twitter was full last
night with confused Tucker Carlson viewers who do not understand
they are Tuckers, suckers in the manipulation game that is
Fox quote news unquote, They wrote with almost pitiable confusion
(05:21):
to him, asking where the rest of the video is.
These are the people, after all, whom a former Tucker
Carlson producer named Alex Feiffer compared dealing with to quote
like negotiating with terrorists, but especially dumb ones, cousin effing
types unquote absent a reliable source inside an organization that
(05:43):
always fires, reliable sources to say what has happened inside
Fox is speculative at best. You and I would probably
look at the new videos released by the Department of
Justice and flinch and maybe hope, oh never mentioning any
of it ever again might make the DOJ also stop
mentioning how dishonest we were ever again. Tucker Carlson could
(06:08):
be showing self restraint, I suppose, but that would be
a first. This is a guy who, as late as
two ten opened a website using my name and personally
took my name as his email address at that website,
and when a not too bright columnist from the Philadelphia
Daily News sent an email full of questions to me
to that address, Carlson posed as me, answered the questions
(06:32):
in a way designed to get my boss to fire
me and insult my boss, whom he did not like,
and the Philadelphia guy printed the answers as if they
had been from me. Chucker Carlson congratulated himself on the
identity theft, never once stopping to think that to do so,
he had to admit that he went to the trouble
of setting up an entire website so he could pretend
(06:54):
for just a few fleeting minutes. But he was not
merely Tucker Carlson, but that he was me. I mean,
wouldn't even do that anyway. Other factors could have caused
Carlson to turntail and run about January sixth, That's clearly
he has the non Fox reaction to his video. Gas
(07:15):
Lighting is the last thing Rupert Murdoch needs. With the
Dominion lawsuits still in full flower, we do not know
if there is a fourth tranch of Fox texts and
emails and other self owns being sorted right now by
the best damned defamation attorneys in the world. But even
if there isn't, there is an ongoing legal fight over
(07:37):
the Fox redactions from the first three tranches. If Dominion
gets a judge to order all of those transcripts released
again without those black boxes, it'll be like having three
Christmases in two weeks and then surprise, you give back
all the gifts and Satah hands you upgrades on every
single one of them. The answer may actually be legal action,
(08:02):
but not directed against Carlson for obstruction of justice dammit,
nor Murdock for defaming Dominion. But late last week, to
little fanfare, the New York State Supreme Court refused to
throw out the second defamation suit against Fox by a
voting machine company, and believe it or not, the one
by dominion was considered the lesser of the two. It
(08:25):
merely asked for a billion six in damages. Smartmadock Sgo
Group is suing for two point seven, and it is
suing Fox and Maria Barterromo by name and lou Dobbs
by name and Rudy Giuliani by name, because not only
did they accuse Smartmadoc of altering votes in twenty twenty,
(08:45):
but Fox regularly said Smart Maddock was a Venezuelan company
in coots with various foreign governments, when in fact Smartmadock
was created in that far off exotic land, Boca Ratone, Florida.
As with any sudden dead stop like this, Carlson and
Hannity and Ingram and who knows, maybe the Department of
(09:07):
Justice may have seen it coming and buckled up, but
lots of other people didn't. And there is windshield trinkle
all over the country. There are still some people fully
invested in the Carlson McCarthy video scam, and the next
question needs to be what, if anything, can be done
about those outside of Fox who were or are still
(09:27):
promulgating and spreading Tucker Carlson's attempt to interfere with the
prosecution of insurrectionists and terrorists, those who informally or otherwise
joined Tucker Carlson's obstruction of justice brigade. After four days
of non stop bleeding about this, virtually every Republican congressman
(09:48):
who had picked up the Carlson videos and ran with
them punted on it faster than he did. Kevin McCarthy
said on Fox Sunday morning that the January sixth committee
was not truthful. That was it. He has said nothing since.
You may have seen that. After a series of Elon
Musk tweets reading free Jacob Chansley and insisting January sixth,
(10:09):
who was just a guided tour, I retweeted him and
asked readers to report one of those tweets as the
denial of a violent act. Musk escalated by replying to me,
have you considered a career in comedy? I escalated again
by answering, have you ever considered a career in business?
Saturday night came Musk's reply on Twitter. I do hope
(10:33):
to succeed in business with a fingers crossed emoji, which
was not only not about Jacob Chansley or January sixth
in the slightest, but was definitely a d escalation was
almost endearing and was kind of funny. And Musk hasn't
tweeted a thing about January sixth since only doctor Paul Gozar,
(10:59):
the Arizona congressman, vibrating with who knows what neurological disease
delirium amends too much? Meth who knows? Only doctor Paul
Gozar is still carrying this banner. He got up in
front of some kids microphone and said he expects the
House will make criminal referrals for the prosecution of Bizz Cheney,
other members of the January sixth committee, some members of
(11:21):
the military about the investigation. Doctor Gozar's gelatinous stance reminded
me again of my friend George Carlin's greatest simple joke
that mathematically, somebody on this planet is the world's worst doctor.
George would pause and then add, and somebody has an
appointment to see him tomorrow morning. Doctor Gozar will see
(11:44):
you soon. It could very well be that tonight at
eight o'clock, Tucker Carlson goes back to the January six
tapes and has all three of Jacob Chansley's lawyers on,
along with Jacob Zuma, Jacob deGrom, and the ghost of
Jacob Marley. But barring that, I had two more flashbacks. Yeah,
(12:05):
I have a lot of flashbacks. I've told you, add
nauseum here about the day the chairman of General Electric
threatened to shut down MSNBC if we mentioned Fox again,
and Fox mentioned him again. So we simply didn't mention
Fox again four weeks in hopes that nobody would notice,
(12:26):
and largely nobody noticed until I broke the truth. Sorry,
and even more relevantly, this popped into my head. I
happened to be at the nineteen eighty Winter Olympics in
Lake Placid, at the height of the Cold War with
the Soviet Union, at perhaps the hour where it seemed
the most like we were not winning the Cold War.
(12:49):
The world's media had been housed rather well, I thought.
In Lake Placid High School. My employers, United Press International
took over the chemistry lab, which was great because if
you opened the window of our little sub office for
the radio network, you were literally leading over the Olympic
skating oval on which Eric Hayden won his five gold
medals in nine days. The Soviet news agency Tasks had
(13:14):
perhaps a better location in the media center. Still, Tasks
was next to the school lunch room. The cafeteria turned
into the media dining room with some of the best
food I have had in my life. If you were hungry,
and we were all hungry because the food was that good,
(13:35):
you necessarily had to walk right past the Task Bureau,
a beehive of dozens of journalists. I guess. Then the
United States Olympic hockey team beat the Russians on Friday
February twenty second. When we all got back to the
media Center for the great dining room breakfast of Saturday
February twenty third, there was a crowd outside the now
(13:58):
locked door of the now unlit Task newsroom. Everybody was
reading this sign, handmade and taped on the door by
the handle. It read closed are we? Witnesses reported that
the Task team, every last one of them, and every
(14:20):
Soviet athlete not competing in the last two days of
the Olympics, had been trundled away in the middle of
the night back to Russia. Russia, where today they happen
to love Tucker Carlson, and where today it may be
the case that, as far as any more, January sixth
gas lighting or January sixth dire threats are just January
(14:40):
sixth box coverage that may all be summed up by
those same three words closed. Are we still ahead of us?
(15:03):
In this edition? Account down? You heard it correctly? A
South Carolina state legislator and twenty one co sponsors have
taken their madness to the final inevitable step for women
who get an abortion. They want the death penalty. That's right.
If you're not pro life, we will kill you. Credit
(15:24):
where credit is due. An obscure pitcher from an obscure
team does so well at the World Baseball Classic he
gets a contract from a big league club on his
way to the locker room. This is the World Baseball
Classic where one of the players from Great Britain saw
the first t fall off his uniform. Yesterday literally, speaking
(15:45):
of Great Britain, the BBC came down like a ton
of bricks on its star sportscaster Gary Lineker for having
had the nerve to call fascists in the British government fascists.
Three days later, they had to remove each of those
bricks one by one hit themselves in the head with
them and reinstate the sportscaster and once again, and I
(16:05):
have a lot of flashbacks. I flash back to the
weekend that MSNBC tried that stunt with me, wound up
having to unsuspend me, just like Linaker, things I promised
not to tell. Coming up. That's next. This is countdown,
(16:27):
you know, this is countdown with you know, Keith Olberman,
poet scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some prediction. Stateline, Columbia, South Carolina, Well this was inevitable,
but death penalty for women who have abortions. That is
in the bill proposed by South Carolina State Representative Rob Harris,
(16:49):
the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of twenty twenty three.
Representative Harris is a registered nurse, better check on his
patients and a member of the State Freedom Caucus, and
he's not alone on this bill has twenty one co sponsors.
The South Carolina National Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who says
(17:11):
she was raped at sixteen, has slammed this bill as
quote deeply disturbing and goes on to blame it on
a lack of bipartisan leadership from Washington. No, Congresswoman, this
is the fault of the Republican Party, your party, and
the corruption of the Supreme Court. Congratulations, Congresswoman Mace, You're
part of the group that has now made the ultimate
(17:34):
all lives matter, pro life statement. Kill women and date
line Hudson Yards, New York, taking anything you read in
the New York Post with a carload of salt, especially
anything in the page six gossip column. It reports there
is quote already chatter unquote that CNN chairman and former
(17:55):
Joe Scarborough henchman Chris Licht will be quote out by
labor Day. The paper, which again does make up quotes,
quotes an insider as saying he hates the job and
can't do it well. Last part's obviously true. It also
covers its ass by saying that Licked may not be
(18:17):
fired because it would make his boss, David zas Laugh
look bad for hiring him. But of course Zaslav looks
bad now anyway, How could he fire Licked? He fired Licked,
how would lickt be able to afford paste? And of
course we're leaving out one other option. Lit could turn
around his year of unparalleled failure and make CNN into
(18:39):
a success. Thank you, Nancy Faust. This is Sports Center.
(19:15):
Wait check that in not anymore. This is Countdown with
Keith Alberman in sports first big move of the NFL
free agent off season, ESPN is reporting that the Raiders
have signed away quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo from the forty nine Ers.
It's three years, sixty seven and a half million dollars. Now,
(19:37):
the way contracts work in the National Football League, the
actual guaranteed part of that sixty seven and a half
million could be as low as three dollars and ninety
eight cents. Trevor Bauer, cut loose by Baseball's LA Dodgers
after accusations of assault ranging up to fracturing a woman's
skull during violent sex as reportedly signed with the Yokohama
(19:57):
Bass Stars of Japan's Central League for three million dollars
for the twenty twenty three season. The Dodgers will I'll
have to pay him twenty two million dollars this season anyway. Bauer,
who apart from the grotesque accusations, is behaving here like
a profoundly unstable individual, was the National League Cy Young
Award winner in twenty twenty, but has not pitched since
(20:19):
he was suspended at the end of June twenty twenty one.
It is flatly hard to believe that the Japanese will
let him pitch there either. I'm still hoping for the
World Baseball Classic to go away, but this is a
nice story. Twenty one year old pitcher Duque Aber of
Nicaragua struck out Juan Soto, Julio Rodriguez, and Raphael Devers
(20:41):
of the Dominican Republic in one inning in the game
at Miami yesterday. Abear's never pitched in American professional baseball.
That's now going to change. Right after that game, a
Detroit Tiger's scout offered a Bear a contract, and he
signed it. And one of the first and only characters
ever to play for the New York Yankees first baseman
outfielder Joe peppettone, has died. A Brooklyn native, he took
(21:04):
over the Yankees first base job in nineteen sixty three
and hit one hundred and four homers over the next
four seasons, making three All Star teams and winning two
Gold Glove Awards at first base. But in nineteen sixty
eight he agreed to move to center field so that
the aging Yankee immortal Mickey Mantle could switch to first
base to save his knees. He promptly won a Gold
(21:26):
Glove in the outfield in nineteen sixty nine. But Pepperton's
immortality came from stories told about him in the book
written by his Yankee team mate Jim Boughton. Ball four
how terrified of losing the ball in the glare of
the October's sun at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles. He
actually once shook off a pickoff throw during the nineteen
sixty three World Series. Bouton also insisted Peppertone may have
(21:49):
been the first major league player to wear a two
pay during games, and moreover, Peppertone continued to pretend it
was his real hair, going to the extreme of using
a hair dryer on it in the Yankee Clubhouse. Bouton
wrote that his teammates had enough of that and pranked
Peppy once by filling the hair dryer with Talcolm powder.
(22:11):
And the next thing you knew, it was Christmas. Joe
Peppertone was eighty two piece. Joe pep I had Gary
(22:32):
Lennaker beats. The BBC gets himself unsuspended, and I flashed
back to the day. MSNBC suspended me indefinitely without pay,
and four days later I was back on the air
with pay, in fact, more money than they had originally
intended to pay me things I promised not to tell.
Coming up first time for the daily roundup of the
(22:53):
miss grints, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
today's worst persons in the world lebrons. Andy Kessler, who
writes for the deplorable Wall Street Journal, playing to his
readers why the Silicon Valley Bank went under. Quote in
its proxy statement, SVB notes that besides ninety one percent
of their board being independent and forty five percent women,
(23:15):
they also have quote one black, quote one LGBTQ plus
and quote two veterans. I'm not saying twelve white men
would have avoided this mess, but the company may have
been distracted by diversity demands unquote. Guess what, jerk wad.
In fact, you are saying twelve white men would have
(23:36):
avoided this mess. And you're an idiot for saying that.
Oink runner up Trump, who came out of his cave
last night to go give a speech in Iowa about education, education,
the guy who faked his way through Penn and Wharton,
who was expelled from public school at age thirteen and
(23:56):
forced to go to the New York Military Academy NIMA.
What would Trump know about education other than how to
avoid going to class? But our winners Brian kill Meade
of Fox Quote News on Quote and Florida Governor Ron
the Fascist. Kill Mead has now been pretending to be
a journalist for twenty five years. Yesterday he interviewed de Santis,
(24:21):
who cannot be an actual presidential candidate because to run
he would have to resign as governor of Florida. He
hasn't gotten around to repealing that law yet. The two
did their interview while playing catch, Brian kill me a
Fox and Ron. To be fair, it is impressive that
the Santists could do that while wearing his high heels.
(24:43):
De Santists two days worst Persons and still ahead on countdown.
Gary Linaker beat the BBC. He preserved his right to
(25:05):
tweet his political opinions while doing sports, and the BBC
climbed down was it's going to now review its social
media policies, and of course, the longer that takes the
less you will remember they suspended the guy and boy,
is this deja vu for me? This is exactly what
happened to me at MSNBC in two ten, except with
(25:26):
different accents, and they wound up having to apologize to
me things I promised not to tell. Coming up first
in each tradition of Countdown, we feature a dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day to
devour California and Sloan, a five year old Great Dane.
Sloan is a big dog who has a black coat,
and that is a death warrant. Even though she's docile,
she's not aggressive. In fact, she's terrified and curled up
(25:48):
into the fetal position. They'll kill her as fast as
they can, and she only got there five days ago.
Our pledges to help defray the costs of a rescue
to pull her out are her best and maybe her
only chance to live. If you can pledge, you can
find Sloan on my Twitter feeds, and your retweets alone
will also help. I thank you, and Sloan thanks you
(26:23):
to the number one story on the Countdown Now and
things I promised not to tell in my favorite topic,
me and there is no deja vu, like the deja
vu of seeing something that played out in your public
life playing out in the public life of a man
in a similar job, in a similar business, in a
different country. As I mentioned here yesterday a week ago, today,
(26:46):
the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, Suella Braverman, capped
a decade of increasing British insensitivity to desperate migrants dying
at their figurative doorstep. Braverman made the stark announcement about
people trying to cross the English Channel quote enough is enough.
We must stop the boats. Well actually was going to
(27:08):
blow them out of the water with torpedoes. Gary Lineker,
the former British Football World Cup star and now host
of the Lynchpin BBC Sports telecast Match of the Day,
retweeted Braverman, adding quote this is awful, and then in
a second tweet, quote this is just an immeasurably cruel
policy directed to the most vulnerable people, in language that
(27:30):
is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the thirties. Well,
of course he's right. The BBC, though has been lurching
to the right for several years or several decades. It
has a new right wing chairman who is accused of
helping to arrange a family loan for the former Prime
Minister Boris Johnson. It lives in mortal daily terror of
(27:52):
the Conservative Party, which itself desperately wants to eliminate the
license feed the taxpayers there are charged to keep the
BBC going. In fact, the Conservative Party wants to eliminate
the BBC itself or sell it because their conservatives and
therefore they are fascists. Management immediately responded to this bruhaha
(28:12):
by announcing Gary Lineker would be stepping back from his
duties as the host of the Match of the Day
this past Saturday. And that's TV management speak worldwide for
a suspended mate. Linaker is not only the highest paid
sports broadcaster at the BBC, he is its highest paid
broadcaster of any type. Yet the government somehow thought, despite
(28:36):
his obvious popularity and being in demand, and then the
BBC went along with the government, that they could attack Linaker.
They could claim Linaker made remarks insensitive to Jewish people
and how dare you call us Nazis even though he
never mentioned that word, and that Linaker would just fold.
There is no real comparison to Linaker in this country.
(28:58):
He's not just a popular commentator or color announcer. He's
the host. He's the host who used to be the
star player. I don't know, maybe if Tony Romo was
the studio host of the NFL on CBS and the
face of the network Sports division at CBS. When the
BBC suspended Linacer last Tuesday, it expected he would cave,
(29:21):
or at worst they would fire him and the government
would give them, I don't know, an extra ten pounds
in the budget next year. Instead, all of Gary Lineker's
on air colleagues, all the other sportscasters covering football for
the BBC, none of whom makes even a quarter of
what he does, refused to go on the air without him.
There were no commentators on Saturday's BBC Match of the
(29:44):
Day and Sunday's women's broadcasts, and radio broadcasters, no announcers. Moreover,
Linaker made it clear he was not going to apologize
or kill the tweet. Yesterday, the BBC unsuspended Linaker. The
Director General of the BBC, what is this the Pirates
of Penzance? I am the very model of the modern
(30:06):
director general. The Director General of the BBC said, quote,
everyone recognizes this has been a difficult period for staff, contributors, presenters,
and most importantly, our audiences. I apologize for this, Well
you should. It's your fault to continue the quote. The
potential confusion caused by the gray areas of the BBC
(30:28):
social media guidance that was introduced in twenty twenty is recognized.
I want to get matters resolved at our sport content
back on air. In other words, we're going to take
this social media rule which we screwed up, and we're
gonna blame that for all the things we screwed up
about Gary Lineker, which could have been fixed in about
(30:50):
an hour and which can now be fixed in about
an hour, and we're going to make the whole process
take six or eight weeks, or thirty weeks, or two
years or a decade, in hopes you'll forget all about this.
Needless to say, the BBC was promptly attacked by all
British political parties. Among the main ones, one of them
(31:11):
complained that they had suspended Linacer and the other one
complained that they had unsuspended Lineker suspended on Friday. Outrage
that day worldwide yelling and threats all weekend colleagues refusing
to go on without him back on the air next Saturday.
No punishment, no fine, no suspension, just a review. Exactly
(31:33):
the way it worked out for me and MSNBC more
than a dozen years ago, right down to NBC having
to do the climb down on a Monday. The only
difference is I went back on the air not on Saturday,
but on Tuesday. In November twenty ten, for the third
consecutive time I anchored the elections for MSNBC. We were
(31:53):
focused that year entirely on the Senate and the governor's races.
That made no sense to me, but I didn't make
that call, but it had been the plan also since
our first meeting about election night, which happened in August
or September. Don't discuss the House, or for that matter,
the Rand Paul blowout win for the Senate in Kentucky.
So I was at the anchor desk for the mid terms,
(32:14):
and in seven or eight hours on the year, I
did not mention one House race or candidate. Everything was fine.
MSNBC had its best election night ratings ever. And then
somebody called one of the political websites to say who
Alverman made campaign donations? To some Democrats in the House
races and did that Democratic senator race in Kentucky, and
(32:35):
they called NBC public Relations, and NBC public Relations called
the president of MSNBC, and he called me in my
car on the way home from the show, and I said, yeah,
it's true. Friend of mine asked me to donate to
those three campaigns because their candidates had received death threats
a lot of them, and each of them had gone
into debt buying extra security. One of them was the
(32:56):
campaign of Congresswoman Gabby Gifford's and the friend who convinced
me to donate to her campaign and to try to
buy off some of her security debts was Arizona State
Representative Kirsten Cinema. So the MSNBC president, who didn't know
those details, said, this looks bad. I know it's your
right to do it. It's not like we're going to
(33:16):
suspend you or anything stupid like that. And this is
sort of our fault too, but it just looks bad.
Can you say something, anything you can do? And I said, yeah,
it does look bad. You're right. I'll apologize on the
show tomorrow, and I know I don't have to. I'll
voluntarily stop any campaign contributions as long as I'm doing
(33:37):
the newscast or the show, or the anchoring of the
elections or whatever. Let me think about it. And he
said great, and I said great. And he asked me
about the Mets. And I went home and wrote the
apology that night and I sent it to him and
he said, that's great, and I said great. And I said, also,
it's great. I already have part of tomorrow show written.
And that was it. The next morning, without a hearing,
(33:59):
without a phone call, without an email, without any warning,
his boss, the president of NBC News, this hysterical teenager
disguised as an adult named Steve Cappus. Steve Cappus puts
out a press release in which he angrily suspends me
indefinitely without pay and specifies it is for violations of
(34:22):
the NBC News Employee rule Book. The NBC News employee
rule book says NBC News employees cannot make donations to
political campaigns. NBC had a huge problem that Steve Cappus
did not know or intentionally had forgotten number one. Within hours,
(34:42):
there was a petition on social media demanding my reinstatement.
Two hundred and fifty thousand signatures. Then NBC tried to
get Chris Hayes to fill in for me that night.
I have a lot of problems with Chris's work since then,
but to his eternal credit in my book, he refused
to sit in for me. He was not under contract then,
and he told the MSNBC management that suspended me was
(35:05):
stupid and unjustified. Even people at Fox News went on
the air that night and said this is absurd. I
believe one of the quotes was, are we supposed to
be surprised Keith Ulderman is a Democrat? And is he
not allowed to donate because he does a liberal commentary
show on a liberal network. Well what they didn't know, though,
(35:27):
was at NBC there was a lot of shushing and
worrying because everybody at NBC News made political donations. They
just hid them by donating in their wife's name or
the kid's name or whoever. I was the only one
who'd ever been honest about it. But this guy Cappus
dug in and demanded that I'd be suspended for a
(35:48):
month without pay at least. And all this was public
and well documented, and the next thing I knew that
petition was disseminated on of all places, Twitter, two hundred
and fifty thousand signatures before nightfall. What everybody did not
know was the part that occurred inside thirty Rock. That afternoon,
(36:08):
NBC lawyers called up this kid, Steve Cappus, and said,
as I was told you, idiot, have you ever read
his contract? You suspended him for violating the NBC News
employee rule book. Listen, Moron Alderman is not an NBC
News employee. We wrote the contract, so it specifically declares
(36:30):
several different times, on several different pages, that he is
not an employee, that he's an independent contractor. Remember, and
now Cappus screams at the lawyers and he says, why
did you do that? And the lawyers say, we did
that us, and you remember you told us that we
(36:51):
should do that so you could save money from your
news budget, because if Keith wasn't an NBC News employee,
you would not have to pay him health insurance and dental. Apparently.
There was then a very long silence, followed by the
repeated use of the phrase breached the contract, and the
(37:13):
lawyers saying there were now four options for Cappus, one reinstate,
the non employee immediately and hope we don't get sued
by him to reinstate the non employee, immediately, apologize and
write a new contract. Three end the show, pay the
non employee the fifteen or sixteen million dollars you owe
(37:34):
him for the remainder of the contract, and hope we
don't get sued for damages beyond that. Or four, throw
a lot of money in the air at him and
negotiate a settlement and end the show in the short term.
What happened was they told me on a Friday I
was suspended. On Tuesday, I was back on the air,
and just like at UPI, they couldn't even dock my
(37:57):
pay or charge me days off for Friday or Monday.
I got a four day weekend WRONS, making this even wilder.
Hours after I was non suspended, Al Gore called me.
Al owned a struggling TV network called Current and he said,
what NBC doing is illegal, and if you sue them,
(38:20):
you could own the place. But I think I have
a better idea that can be the start of something big.
Bring countdown to Current TV. We'll give you fifty million
dollars plus bonuses, plus a piece of the network you'll
be an owner. Well, that didn't work out from a
programming sense, kind of worked out from a money sense.
(38:56):
I don't know where campus is now. Wait a minute,
let me open the door here and see if I
can hear some shrill girl like screaming nothing. He's probably
a professor somewhere. I hope it's at a free school.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from the
studios of the Olderman Broadcasting Empire, high atop its headquarters
(39:18):
in the Sports Capsule Building here in New York. Here
are our credits. Most of the music you've heard was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel,
who are the Countdown musical directors. Produced by Tko Brothers.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitars, bass
and drums by Brian Ray. Other Beethoven selections have been
(39:41):
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The
sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Though I should call the BBC and ask them if
they'll let me use the match of the day theme,
musical comments from Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was Richard Lewis. Everything else is pretty
(40:03):
much my fault. So that's countdown for this the seven
ninety eighth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against
the democratically elected government at the United States. Arrest him
now while we still can. The next schedule countdown is tomorrow,
So until then, on Keith Alderman, good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is
(40:35):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio Today
in January sixth, Conspiracy Land, It's quiet, It's two quiet. No,
(00:31):
the DJ has not arrested Tucker Carlson for obstruction of justice,
nor is it likely to. But it is clear somebody
in there is out to contradict him, humiliate him, and
get him fired by Fox. And whatever the plan is,
it may be working. Something certainly has worked. Tucker Carlson
(00:51):
has completely punted on the January sixth story. Did not
mention it once last night. No Q Shaman, no conspiracy,
no withheld, no fire Liz Cheney, No, we demand immediate
action like it never happened. Tucker Carlson offered no explanation
as he ran away as to why he ran away.
(01:13):
The Department of Justice, it offered lots of explanations. Sunday
it was the release of memorandum six eighty nine confirming
that Carlson was lying on television, that the Q Shaman
had access to all the video Carlson showed and all
the video Carlson did not show because it would have
destroyed his lie while he was lying it. Yesterday the
(01:35):
release came of some of that video Carlson is hiding again.
This release was in answer to Dominic Pozzola's motion to
dismiss the January six charges against him quote due to
recent revelations on the Tucker Carlson Show. This is the
audio track from the body cam of one of dozens
(01:55):
of officers summoned to the Senate Chamber when Jacob Chancelly
was told to leave, and he refused, and he and
the other insurrectionist had to be boxed out by Capital police.
And the voice you will hear is that of Tucker
Carlson's mild mannered, railroaded sightseer Chansley, screaming as police adroitly
force him and the other terrorists out of the Capitol
(02:18):
without somehow shooting any of them. Let's go, Let's go,
Let's go, let's go. Another video, one of three the
(02:48):
Department of Justice released yesterday, is less audibly gaudy, to
use that word, but it is far more harrowing. This
is from the exact moment Jacob Chansley aka the real
victim here Shaman and the rest of the mob came
within perhaps thirty feet of a senator being evacuated. We
think it's Chuck Grassley nobody can be certain, and in
(03:11):
the video there is only one officer standing in an
open vestibule blocking them from attacking that senator. The Department
of Justice is going to prove that Jacob Chanceley, the
Q shaman, was as guilty as he said he was
(03:33):
in the plea bargain he signed and the sentence he
accepted fifty five days after his lawyer received the last
of all of the January sixth video. And while it
is not doing as good a job as say dominion
voting systems is at destroying Fox Quote News and destroying
Rupert Murdock and destroying Sean Hannity, and destroying Laura Ingram
(03:54):
and destroying Susanne Scott and destroying Tucker Carlson, the DOJ
certainly is doing the best that it can, considering it's
a government bureaucracy. So far it has proved Tucker Carlson
lied about Chansley, lied about Chansley's access to exculpatory video
that wasn't the least bit exculpatory lied about January sixth
(04:16):
in Toto, and committed with Speaker McCarthy obstruction of justice,
if not legally, then certainly ethically. And now with the
release of Bees videos, the DOJ is clearly bolstering that
latest question, why is Tucker Carlson hiding the January sixth
video that implicates Jacob Chansley and by extension, implicates Tucker
(04:38):
Carlson and speaker McCarthy. Carlson's silence on this subject last
night underscores the bizarre reality that Fox is getting hammered
on its January sixth video coverage by the right wing.
It was calculated that the Newsmax channel has covered Fox's
(04:58):
coverage at seven times the frequency Fox has. Newsmax has
accused Fox of a cover up. Twitter was full last
night with confused Tucker Carlson viewers who do not understand
they are Tuckers, suckers in the manipulation game that is
Fox quote news unquote, They wrote with almost pitiable confusion
(05:21):
to him, asking where the rest of the video is.
These are the people, after all, whom a former Tucker
Carlson producer named Alex Feiffer compared dealing with to quote
like negotiating with terrorists, but especially dumb ones, cousin effing
types unquote absent a reliable source inside an organization that
(05:43):
always fires, reliable sources to say what has happened inside
Fox is speculative at best. You and I would probably
look at the new videos released by the Department of
Justice and flinch and maybe hope, oh never mentioning any
of it ever again might make the DOJ also stop
mentioning how dishonest we were ever again. Tucker Carlson could
(06:08):
be showing self restraint, I suppose, but that would be
a first. This is a guy who, as late as
two ten opened a website using my name and personally
took my name as his email address at that website,
and when a not too bright columnist from the Philadelphia
Daily News sent an email full of questions to me
to that address, Carlson posed as me, answered the questions
(06:32):
in a way designed to get my boss to fire
me and insult my boss, whom he did not like,
and the Philadelphia guy printed the answers as if they
had been from me. Chucker Carlson congratulated himself on the
identity theft, never once stopping to think that to do so,
he had to admit that he went to the trouble
of setting up an entire website so he could pretend
(06:54):
for just a few fleeting minutes. But he was not
merely Tucker Carlson, but that he was me. I mean,
wouldn't even do that anyway. Other factors could have caused
Carlson to turntail and run about January sixth, That's clearly
he has the non Fox reaction to his video. Gas
(07:15):
Lighting is the last thing Rupert Murdoch needs. With the
Dominion lawsuits still in full flower, we do not know
if there is a fourth tranch of Fox texts and
emails and other self owns being sorted right now by
the best damned defamation attorneys in the world. But even
if there isn't, there is an ongoing legal fight over
(07:37):
the Fox redactions from the first three tranches. If Dominion
gets a judge to order all of those transcripts released
again without those black boxes, it'll be like having three
Christmases in two weeks and then surprise, you give back
all the gifts and Satah hands you upgrades on every
single one of them. The answer may actually be legal action,
(08:02):
but not directed against Carlson for obstruction of justice dammit,
nor Murdock for defaming Dominion. But late last week, to
little fanfare, the New York State Supreme Court refused to
throw out the second defamation suit against Fox by a
voting machine company, and believe it or not, the one
by dominion was considered the lesser of the two. It
(08:25):
merely asked for a billion six in damages. Smartmadock Sgo
Group is suing for two point seven, and it is
suing Fox and Maria Barterromo by name and lou Dobbs
by name and Rudy Giuliani by name, because not only
did they accuse Smartmadoc of altering votes in twenty twenty,
(08:45):
but Fox regularly said Smart Maddock was a Venezuelan company
in coots with various foreign governments, when in fact Smartmadock
was created in that far off exotic land, Boca Ratone, Florida.
As with any sudden dead stop like this, Carlson and
Hannity and Ingram and who knows, maybe the Department of
(09:07):
Justice may have seen it coming and buckled up, but
lots of other people didn't. And there is windshield trinkle
all over the country. There are still some people fully
invested in the Carlson McCarthy video scam, and the next
question needs to be what, if anything, can be done
about those outside of Fox who were or are still
(09:27):
promulgating and spreading Tucker Carlson's attempt to interfere with the
prosecution of insurrectionists and terrorists, those who informally or otherwise
joined Tucker Carlson's obstruction of justice brigade. After four days
of non stop bleeding about this, virtually every Republican congressman
(09:48):
who had picked up the Carlson videos and ran with
them punted on it faster than he did. Kevin McCarthy
said on Fox Sunday morning that the January sixth committee
was not truthful. That was it. He has said nothing since.
You may have seen that. After a series of Elon
Musk tweets reading free Jacob Chansley and insisting January sixth,
(10:09):
who was just a guided tour, I retweeted him and
asked readers to report one of those tweets as the
denial of a violent act. Musk escalated by replying to me,
have you considered a career in comedy? I escalated again
by answering, have you ever considered a career in business?
Saturday night came Musk's reply on Twitter. I do hope
(10:33):
to succeed in business with a fingers crossed emoji, which
was not only not about Jacob Chansley or January sixth
in the slightest, but was definitely a d escalation was
almost endearing and was kind of funny. And Musk hasn't
tweeted a thing about January sixth since only doctor Paul Gozar,
(10:59):
the Arizona congressman, vibrating with who knows what neurological disease
delirium amends too much? Meth who knows? Only doctor Paul
Gozar is still carrying this banner. He got up in
front of some kids microphone and said he expects the
House will make criminal referrals for the prosecution of Bizz Cheney,
other members of the January sixth committee, some members of
(11:21):
the military about the investigation. Doctor Gozar's gelatinous stance reminded
me again of my friend George Carlin's greatest simple joke
that mathematically, somebody on this planet is the world's worst doctor.
George would pause and then add, and somebody has an
appointment to see him tomorrow morning. Doctor Gozar will see
(11:44):
you soon. It could very well be that tonight at
eight o'clock, Tucker Carlson goes back to the January six
tapes and has all three of Jacob Chansley's lawyers on,
along with Jacob Zuma, Jacob deGrom, and the ghost of
Jacob Marley. But barring that, I had two more flashbacks. Yeah,
(12:05):
I have a lot of flashbacks. I've told you, add
nauseum here about the day the chairman of General Electric
threatened to shut down MSNBC if we mentioned Fox again,
and Fox mentioned him again. So we simply didn't mention
Fox again four weeks in hopes that nobody would notice,
(12:26):
and largely nobody noticed until I broke the truth. Sorry,
and even more relevantly, this popped into my head. I
happened to be at the nineteen eighty Winter Olympics in
Lake Placid, at the height of the Cold War with
the Soviet Union, at perhaps the hour where it seemed
the most like we were not winning the Cold War.
(12:49):
The world's media had been housed rather well, I thought.
In Lake Placid High School. My employers, United Press International
took over the chemistry lab, which was great because if
you opened the window of our little sub office for
the radio network, you were literally leading over the Olympic
skating oval on which Eric Hayden won his five gold
medals in nine days. The Soviet news agency Tasks had
(13:14):
perhaps a better location in the media center. Still, Tasks
was next to the school lunch room. The cafeteria turned
into the media dining room with some of the best
food I have had in my life. If you were hungry,
and we were all hungry because the food was that good,
(13:35):
you necessarily had to walk right past the Task Bureau,
a beehive of dozens of journalists. I guess. Then the
United States Olympic hockey team beat the Russians on Friday
February twenty second. When we all got back to the
media Center for the great dining room breakfast of Saturday
February twenty third, there was a crowd outside the now
(13:58):
locked door of the now unlit Task newsroom. Everybody was
reading this sign, handmade and taped on the door by
the handle. It read closed are we? Witnesses reported that
the Task team, every last one of them, and every
(14:20):
Soviet athlete not competing in the last two days of
the Olympics, had been trundled away in the middle of
the night back to Russia. Russia, where today they happen
to love Tucker Carlson, and where today it may be
the case that, as far as any more, January sixth
gas lighting or January sixth dire threats are just January
(14:40):
sixth box coverage that may all be summed up by
those same three words closed. Are we still ahead of us?
(15:03):
In this edition? Account down? You heard it correctly? A
South Carolina state legislator and twenty one co sponsors have
taken their madness to the final inevitable step for women
who get an abortion. They want the death penalty. That's right.
If you're not pro life, we will kill you. Credit
(15:24):
where credit is due. An obscure pitcher from an obscure
team does so well at the World Baseball Classic he
gets a contract from a big league club on his
way to the locker room. This is the World Baseball
Classic where one of the players from Great Britain saw
the first t fall off his uniform. Yesterday literally, speaking
(15:45):
of Great Britain, the BBC came down like a ton
of bricks on its star sportscaster Gary Lineker for having
had the nerve to call fascists in the British government fascists.
Three days later, they had to remove each of those
bricks one by one hit themselves in the head with
them and reinstate the sportscaster and once again, and I
(16:05):
have a lot of flashbacks. I flash back to the
weekend that MSNBC tried that stunt with me, wound up
having to unsuspend me, just like Linaker, things I promised
not to tell. Coming up. That's next. This is countdown,
(16:27):
you know, this is countdown with you know, Keith Olberman,
poet scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some prediction. Stateline, Columbia, South Carolina, Well this was inevitable,
but death penalty for women who have abortions. That is
in the bill proposed by South Carolina State Representative Rob Harris,
(16:49):
the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of twenty twenty three.
Representative Harris is a registered nurse, better check on his
patients and a member of the State Freedom Caucus, and
he's not alone on this bill has twenty one co sponsors.
The South Carolina National Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who says
(17:11):
she was raped at sixteen, has slammed this bill as
quote deeply disturbing and goes on to blame it on
a lack of bipartisan leadership from Washington. No, Congresswoman, this
is the fault of the Republican Party, your party, and
the corruption of the Supreme Court. Congratulations, Congresswoman Mace, You're
part of the group that has now made the ultimate
(17:34):
all lives matter, pro life statement. Kill women and date
line Hudson Yards, New York, taking anything you read in
the New York Post with a carload of salt, especially
anything in the page six gossip column. It reports there
is quote already chatter unquote that CNN chairman and former
(17:55):
Joe Scarborough henchman Chris Licht will be quote out by
labor Day. The paper, which again does make up quotes,
quotes an insider as saying he hates the job and
can't do it well. Last part's obviously true. It also
covers its ass by saying that Licked may not be
(18:17):
fired because it would make his boss, David zas Laugh
look bad for hiring him. But of course Zaslav looks
bad now anyway, How could he fire Licked? He fired Licked,
how would lickt be able to afford paste? And of
course we're leaving out one other option. Lit could turn
around his year of unparalleled failure and make CNN into
(18:39):
a success. Thank you, Nancy Faust. This is Sports Center.
(19:15):
Wait check that in not anymore. This is Countdown with
Keith Alberman in sports first big move of the NFL
free agent off season, ESPN is reporting that the Raiders
have signed away quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo from the forty nine Ers.
It's three years, sixty seven and a half million dollars. Now,
(19:37):
the way contracts work in the National Football League, the
actual guaranteed part of that sixty seven and a half
million could be as low as three dollars and ninety
eight cents. Trevor Bauer, cut loose by Baseball's LA Dodgers
after accusations of assault ranging up to fracturing a woman's
skull during violent sex as reportedly signed with the Yokohama
(19:57):
Bass Stars of Japan's Central League for three million dollars
for the twenty twenty three season. The Dodgers will I'll
have to pay him twenty two million dollars this season anyway. Bauer,
who apart from the grotesque accusations, is behaving here like
a profoundly unstable individual, was the National League Cy Young
Award winner in twenty twenty, but has not pitched since
(20:19):
he was suspended at the end of June twenty twenty one.
It is flatly hard to believe that the Japanese will
let him pitch there either. I'm still hoping for the
World Baseball Classic to go away, but this is a
nice story. Twenty one year old pitcher Duque Aber of
Nicaragua struck out Juan Soto, Julio Rodriguez, and Raphael Devers
(20:41):
of the Dominican Republic in one inning in the game
at Miami yesterday. Abear's never pitched in American professional baseball.
That's now going to change. Right after that game, a
Detroit Tiger's scout offered a Bear a contract, and he
signed it. And one of the first and only characters
ever to play for the New York Yankees first baseman
outfielder Joe peppettone, has died. A Brooklyn native, he took
(21:04):
over the Yankees first base job in nineteen sixty three
and hit one hundred and four homers over the next
four seasons, making three All Star teams and winning two
Gold Glove Awards at first base. But in nineteen sixty
eight he agreed to move to center field so that
the aging Yankee immortal Mickey Mantle could switch to first
base to save his knees. He promptly won a Gold
(21:26):
Glove in the outfield in nineteen sixty nine. But Pepperton's
immortality came from stories told about him in the book
written by his Yankee team mate Jim Boughton. Ball four
how terrified of losing the ball in the glare of
the October's sun at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles. He
actually once shook off a pickoff throw during the nineteen
sixty three World Series. Bouton also insisted Peppertone may have
(21:49):
been the first major league player to wear a two
pay during games, and moreover, Peppertone continued to pretend it
was his real hair, going to the extreme of using
a hair dryer on it in the Yankee Clubhouse. Bouton
wrote that his teammates had enough of that and pranked
Peppy once by filling the hair dryer with Talcolm powder.
(22:11):
And the next thing you knew, it was Christmas. Joe
Peppertone was eighty two piece. Joe pep I had Gary
(22:32):
Lennaker beats. The BBC gets himself unsuspended, and I flashed
back to the day. MSNBC suspended me indefinitely without pay,
and four days later I was back on the air
with pay, in fact, more money than they had originally
intended to pay me things I promised not to tell.
Coming up first time for the daily roundup of the
(22:53):
miss grints, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
today's worst persons in the world lebrons. Andy Kessler, who
writes for the deplorable Wall Street Journal, playing to his
readers why the Silicon Valley Bank went under. Quote in
its proxy statement, SVB notes that besides ninety one percent
of their board being independent and forty five percent women,
(23:15):
they also have quote one black, quote one LGBTQ plus
and quote two veterans. I'm not saying twelve white men
would have avoided this mess, but the company may have
been distracted by diversity demands unquote. Guess what, jerk wad.
In fact, you are saying twelve white men would have
(23:36):
avoided this mess. And you're an idiot for saying that.
Oink runner up Trump, who came out of his cave
last night to go give a speech in Iowa about education, education,
the guy who faked his way through Penn and Wharton,
who was expelled from public school at age thirteen and
(23:56):
forced to go to the New York Military Academy NIMA.
What would Trump know about education other than how to
avoid going to class? But our winners Brian kill Meade
of Fox Quote News on Quote and Florida Governor Ron
the Fascist. Kill Mead has now been pretending to be
a journalist for twenty five years. Yesterday he interviewed de Santis,
(24:21):
who cannot be an actual presidential candidate because to run
he would have to resign as governor of Florida. He
hasn't gotten around to repealing that law yet. The two
did their interview while playing catch, Brian kill me a
Fox and Ron. To be fair, it is impressive that
the Santists could do that while wearing his high heels.
(24:43):
De Santists two days worst Persons and still ahead on countdown.
Gary Linaker beat the BBC. He preserved his right to
(25:05):
tweet his political opinions while doing sports, and the BBC
climbed down was it's going to now review its social
media policies, and of course, the longer that takes the
less you will remember they suspended the guy and boy,
is this deja vu for me? This is exactly what
happened to me at MSNBC in two ten, except with
(25:26):
different accents, and they wound up having to apologize to
me things I promised not to tell. Coming up first
in each tradition of Countdown, we feature a dog in
need you can help. Every dog has its day to
devour California and Sloan, a five year old Great Dane.
Sloan is a big dog who has a black coat,
and that is a death warrant. Even though she's docile,
she's not aggressive. In fact, she's terrified and curled up
(25:48):
into the fetal position. They'll kill her as fast as
they can, and she only got there five days ago.
Our pledges to help defray the costs of a rescue
to pull her out are her best and maybe her
only chance to live. If you can pledge, you can
find Sloan on my Twitter feeds, and your retweets alone
will also help. I thank you, and Sloan thanks you
(26:23):
to the number one story on the Countdown Now and
things I promised not to tell in my favorite topic,
me and there is no deja vu, like the deja
vu of seeing something that played out in your public
life playing out in the public life of a man
in a similar job, in a similar business, in a
different country. As I mentioned here yesterday a week ago, today,
(26:46):
the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, Suella Braverman, capped
a decade of increasing British insensitivity to desperate migrants dying
at their figurative doorstep. Braverman made the stark announcement about
people trying to cross the English Channel quote enough is enough.
We must stop the boats. Well actually was going to
(27:08):
blow them out of the water with torpedoes. Gary Lineker,
the former British Football World Cup star and now host
of the Lynchpin BBC Sports telecast Match of the Day,
retweeted Braverman, adding quote this is awful, and then in
a second tweet, quote this is just an immeasurably cruel
policy directed to the most vulnerable people, in language that
(27:30):
is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the thirties. Well,
of course he's right. The BBC, though has been lurching
to the right for several years or several decades. It
has a new right wing chairman who is accused of
helping to arrange a family loan for the former Prime
Minister Boris Johnson. It lives in mortal daily terror of
(27:52):
the Conservative Party, which itself desperately wants to eliminate the
license feed the taxpayers there are charged to keep the
BBC going. In fact, the Conservative Party wants to eliminate
the BBC itself or sell it because their conservatives and
therefore they are fascists. Management immediately responded to this bruhaha
(28:12):
by announcing Gary Lineker would be stepping back from his
duties as the host of the Match of the Day
this past Saturday. And that's TV management speak worldwide for
a suspended mate. Linaker is not only the highest paid
sports broadcaster at the BBC, he is its highest paid
broadcaster of any type. Yet the government somehow thought, despite
(28:36):
his obvious popularity and being in demand, and then the
BBC went along with the government, that they could attack Linaker.
They could claim Linaker made remarks insensitive to Jewish people
and how dare you call us Nazis even though he
never mentioned that word, and that Linaker would just fold.
There is no real comparison to Linaker in this country.
(28:58):
He's not just a popular commentator or color announcer. He's
the host. He's the host who used to be the
star player. I don't know, maybe if Tony Romo was
the studio host of the NFL on CBS and the
face of the network Sports division at CBS. When the
BBC suspended Linacer last Tuesday, it expected he would cave,
(29:21):
or at worst they would fire him and the government
would give them, I don't know, an extra ten pounds
in the budget next year. Instead, all of Gary Lineker's
on air colleagues, all the other sportscasters covering football for
the BBC, none of whom makes even a quarter of
what he does, refused to go on the air without him.
There were no commentators on Saturday's BBC Match of the
(29:44):
Day and Sunday's women's broadcasts, and radio broadcasters, no announcers. Moreover,
Linaker made it clear he was not going to apologize
or kill the tweet. Yesterday, the BBC unsuspended Linaker. The
Director General of the BBC, what is this the Pirates
of Penzance? I am the very model of the modern
(30:06):
director general. The Director General of the BBC said, quote,
everyone recognizes this has been a difficult period for staff, contributors, presenters,
and most importantly, our audiences. I apologize for this, Well
you should. It's your fault to continue the quote. The
potential confusion caused by the gray areas of the BBC
(30:28):
social media guidance that was introduced in twenty twenty is recognized.
I want to get matters resolved at our sport content
back on air. In other words, we're going to take
this social media rule which we screwed up, and we're
gonna blame that for all the things we screwed up
about Gary Lineker, which could have been fixed in about
(30:50):
an hour and which can now be fixed in about
an hour, and we're going to make the whole process
take six or eight weeks, or thirty weeks, or two
years or a decade, in hopes you'll forget all about this.
Needless to say, the BBC was promptly attacked by all
British political parties. Among the main ones, one of them
(31:11):
complained that they had suspended Linacer and the other one
complained that they had unsuspended Lineker suspended on Friday. Outrage
that day worldwide yelling and threats all weekend colleagues refusing
to go on without him back on the air next Saturday.
No punishment, no fine, no suspension, just a review. Exactly
(31:33):
the way it worked out for me and MSNBC more
than a dozen years ago, right down to NBC having
to do the climb down on a Monday. The only
difference is I went back on the air not on Saturday,
but on Tuesday. In November twenty ten, for the third
consecutive time I anchored the elections for MSNBC. We were
(31:53):
focused that year entirely on the Senate and the governor's races.
That made no sense to me, but I didn't make
that call, but it had been the plan also since
our first meeting about election night, which happened in August
or September. Don't discuss the House, or for that matter,
the Rand Paul blowout win for the Senate in Kentucky.
So I was at the anchor desk for the mid terms,
(32:14):
and in seven or eight hours on the year, I
did not mention one House race or candidate. Everything was fine.
MSNBC had its best election night ratings ever. And then
somebody called one of the political websites to say who
Alverman made campaign donations? To some Democrats in the House
races and did that Democratic senator race in Kentucky, and
(32:35):
they called NBC public Relations, and NBC public Relations called
the president of MSNBC, and he called me in my
car on the way home from the show, and I said, yeah,
it's true. Friend of mine asked me to donate to
those three campaigns because their candidates had received death threats
a lot of them, and each of them had gone
into debt buying extra security. One of them was the
(32:56):
campaign of Congresswoman Gabby Gifford's and the friend who convinced
me to donate to her campaign and to try to
buy off some of her security debts was Arizona State
Representative Kirsten Cinema. So the MSNBC president, who didn't know
those details, said, this looks bad. I know it's your
right to do it. It's not like we're going to
(33:16):
suspend you or anything stupid like that. And this is
sort of our fault too, but it just looks bad.
Can you say something, anything you can do? And I said, yeah,
it does look bad. You're right. I'll apologize on the
show tomorrow, and I know I don't have to. I'll
voluntarily stop any campaign contributions as long as I'm doing
(33:37):
the newscast or the show, or the anchoring of the
elections or whatever. Let me think about it. And he
said great, and I said great. And he asked me
about the Mets. And I went home and wrote the
apology that night and I sent it to him and
he said, that's great, and I said great. And I said, also,
it's great. I already have part of tomorrow show written.
And that was it. The next morning, without a hearing,
(33:59):
without a phone call, without an email, without any warning,
his boss, the president of NBC News, this hysterical teenager
disguised as an adult named Steve Cappus. Steve Cappus puts
out a press release in which he angrily suspends me
indefinitely without pay and specifies it is for violations of
(34:22):
the NBC News Employee rule Book. The NBC News employee
rule book says NBC News employees cannot make donations to
political campaigns. NBC had a huge problem that Steve Cappus
did not know or intentionally had forgotten number one. Within hours,
(34:42):
there was a petition on social media demanding my reinstatement.
Two hundred and fifty thousand signatures. Then NBC tried to
get Chris Hayes to fill in for me that night.
I have a lot of problems with Chris's work since then,
but to his eternal credit in my book, he refused
to sit in for me. He was not under contract then,
and he told the MSNBC management that suspended me was
(35:05):
stupid and unjustified. Even people at Fox News went on
the air that night and said this is absurd. I
believe one of the quotes was, are we supposed to
be surprised Keith Ulderman is a Democrat? And is he
not allowed to donate because he does a liberal commentary
show on a liberal network. Well what they didn't know, though,
(35:27):
was at NBC there was a lot of shushing and
worrying because everybody at NBC News made political donations. They
just hid them by donating in their wife's name or
the kid's name or whoever. I was the only one
who'd ever been honest about it. But this guy Cappus
dug in and demanded that I'd be suspended for a
(35:48):
month without pay at least. And all this was public
and well documented, and the next thing I knew that
petition was disseminated on of all places, Twitter, two hundred
and fifty thousand signatures before nightfall. What everybody did not
know was the part that occurred inside thirty Rock. That afternoon,
(36:08):
NBC lawyers called up this kid, Steve Cappus, and said,
as I was told you, idiot, have you ever read
his contract? You suspended him for violating the NBC News
employee rule book. Listen, Moron Alderman is not an NBC
News employee. We wrote the contract, so it specifically declares
(36:30):
several different times, on several different pages, that he is
not an employee, that he's an independent contractor. Remember, and
now Cappus screams at the lawyers and he says, why
did you do that? And the lawyers say, we did
that us, and you remember you told us that we
(36:51):
should do that so you could save money from your
news budget, because if Keith wasn't an NBC News employee,
you would not have to pay him health insurance and dental. Apparently.
There was then a very long silence, followed by the
repeated use of the phrase breached the contract, and the
(37:13):
lawyers saying there were now four options for Cappus, one reinstate,
the non employee immediately and hope we don't get sued
by him to reinstate the non employee, immediately, apologize and
write a new contract. Three end the show, pay the
non employee the fifteen or sixteen million dollars you owe
(37:34):
him for the remainder of the contract, and hope we
don't get sued for damages beyond that. Or four, throw
a lot of money in the air at him and
negotiate a settlement and end the show in the short term.
What happened was they told me on a Friday I
was suspended. On Tuesday, I was back on the air,
and just like at UPI, they couldn't even dock my
(37:57):
pay or charge me days off for Friday or Monday.
I got a four day weekend WRONS, making this even wilder.
Hours after I was non suspended, Al Gore called me.
Al owned a struggling TV network called Current and he said,
what NBC doing is illegal, and if you sue them,
(38:20):
you could own the place. But I think I have
a better idea that can be the start of something big.
Bring countdown to Current TV. We'll give you fifty million
dollars plus bonuses, plus a piece of the network you'll
be an owner. Well, that didn't work out from a
programming sense, kind of worked out from a money sense.
(38:56):
I don't know where campus is now. Wait a minute,
let me open the door here and see if I
can hear some shrill girl like screaming nothing. He's probably
a professor somewhere. I hope it's at a free school.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown has come to you from the
studios of the Olderman Broadcasting Empire, high atop its headquarters
(39:18):
in the Sports Capsule Building here in New York. Here
are our credits. Most of the music you've heard was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel,
who are the Countdown musical directors. Produced by Tko Brothers.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Channel, guitars, bass
and drums by Brian Ray. Other Beethoven selections have been
(39:41):
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The
sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Though I should call the BBC and ask them if
they'll let me use the match of the day theme,
musical comments from Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was Richard Lewis. Everything else is pretty
(40:03):
much my fault. So that's countdown for this the seven
ninety eighth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against
the democratically elected government at the United States. Arrest him
now while we still can. The next schedule countdown is tomorrow,
So until then, on Keith Alderman, good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is
(40:35):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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