January 30, 2023 • 49 mins
EPISODE 122: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: Watch the video of the torture and murder of Tyre Nichols by the Memphis police, and read what they first claimed had happened to him, and the unmistakable truth is confirmed anew: We are all hostages to the police. More directly, more urgently, more fatally - for people of color. But all the rest of us, too. Police who kill other than as a last, unavoidable act to protect the community are no longer police for any of us, and if they can be trained to kill because of race, they can be trained to kill because of politics, or sexual orientation, or because of whoever those who trained them want them to kill.
B-Block (19:19) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Olive, the mini-pug, in New Jersey. (20:16) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: A motive for FBI election tamperer Charles McGonigal: he was leading a double life; Trump's domes and binoculars; the ratings of CNN and MSNBC crash and burn but thank god NBC didn't have to deal with the controversy of bringing me back! (26:00) IN SPORTS: White Sox retain Benetti, Super Bowl set on the dumbest penalty in years, Pride Night without the Pride or the explanation. (29:46) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: THE Associated Press insults THE French, General Ripper rides again, and the vapid CNN host who says the Memphis police didn't murder Tyre Nichols.
C-Block (35:26) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: On the subject of the cratering of cable news, did I ever tell you how Lawrence O'Donnell tried to take Countdown away from me while I was taking care of my dying father? Or how he stole two of my senior producers to run his new show? Or how he leaked a personal letter of mine to Ann Coulter? Or how his ratings are now down below where MSNBC's were in 2003?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
We are hostages to the police. All of us are
(00:25):
hostages to the police, more directly, more urgently, more lethally
people of color, but all the rest of us too,
hostages to the police. The Memphis Police Department, two weeks
ago yesterday issued this statement quote. On January seven, two three,
(00:49):
at approximately eight pm, officers in the area of Rains
Road and Ross Road attempted to make a traffic stop
for reckless driving. Hey why did you do anything? Hey?
I didn't hire you. I'm prateful. Quote. As officers approached
(01:12):
the driver of the vehicle, a confrontation occurred, and the
suspect fled the scene on foot. Officers pursued the suspect
and again attempted to take the suspect into custods. Alright, alright, alright,
don't do that. Okay, on the ground. Okay, I'm on
(01:40):
the Hello, the ground, on the ground, Hello, one time?
All right, okay, alright, break your seat, Okay, dude, I'm
frateful guy. You guys are really doing a lot right now.
(02:03):
Down Are you trying to hard? Man? If you don't
lay that, I am out on the Great while attempting
to take the suspect into custody. Another confrontation occurred. However,
the suspect was ultimately apprehended. Quote. Afterwards, the suspect complained
(02:31):
of having a shortness of breath, at which time an
ambulance was called to the scene. The suspect was transported
to St. Francis Hospital in critical condition. You can't the
(03:00):
women women, He's quote. The officers involved will be routinely
relieved of duty pending the outcome of this investigation. Whom
what five Memphis police officers did as they beat Tyree
(03:24):
Nichols to death on January seven, as opposed to what
they and their department said, they did what they thought
you would believe. Hours after they beat Tyree Nichols to death,
with body cams recording every moment, with a surveillance camera
top of pole, recording every moment, with irrefutable evidence of
(03:47):
their sadism recorded, a confrontation occurred. The officers who murdered him,
their superiors, the chief of Police, the entirety of the
Memphis Police Department, the collective totality of policing in this country,
thought that despite the video, despite the horror film, they
(04:09):
left in the wake of the torture and death of
Tyree Nichols, they could get away with lies like those,
and that they could get away with murdering him. We
are hostages to the police, all of us, more directly,
more urgently, more lethally, people of color, because police who
(04:34):
kill other than as a last unavoidable act to protect
the community are no longer police for any of us.
They are instead of murderous national gang with unlimited weaponry
and extraordinary impunity. And even if of them would never
kill a civilian, that would mean there are still seven
thousand of them who would. And right now they are
(04:57):
holstering their guns and putting on their body armor, and
they have been trained, even if they are people of color,
to especially suspect, to distrust, to escalate against African Americans.
And if that horrifies you but does not leave you
personally with a sense of dread and fear and rage
(05:19):
because you are not African American, think again, Because if
they can be trained to kill because of race, they
can be trained to kill because of politics, kill because
of sexual orientation, kill because of what whoever trains them
(05:40):
decides should be killed. Because for decades we have trained police,
that they are the US and everybody else is the them,
Because for decades, for every day since nine eleven, we
have fetishized the police in this country, and we have
conflated the police and the military, and we have equipped
(06:03):
the police with military ry, weapons and vehicles and impunity,
and we have let the venom of fascism and authoritarianism
and most of all, racism infect virtually every police force
in this nation. And if the police no longer have
even the thin veneer of peace officers wrapped around them,
(06:25):
and are instead paranoid, prejudiced, messianic, barbaric, sadistic, what are they?
Who do they protect? Who do they serve? Besides that
is themselves and the gutter trash white couple standing outside
(06:47):
their house in Portland Place in St. Louis In with guns,
and every other racist and every other fascist and every
other paranoid with hate and lynching in their hearts. I
am the descendant of policemen. My father told me the
(07:09):
number of uncles and cousins he knew he had in
the New York Force in his generation and the generation
of his own father. I think he said there were
eight of them. He knew most of their stories, spoke
of them fondly, as he did of his other uncle,
the wrestler, and the other one who worked for the
Bronx Home News. So I was raised, and continued even
(07:31):
after my early adult years, produced racist nightmare after racist
nightmare involving the cops to give the cops something of
a benefit of the doubt. And then when I was
thirty one years old, I moved to a place two
blocks west of the border between West Los Angeles and
(07:53):
Beverly Hills, California, itself just west of an all night
supermarket at the corner of Dohaney and Beverly. Often I
shopped in the earliest minutes of the morning and walked home.
And the first night at the new address, I had
taken ten or twelve steps past that border into Beverly Hills,
when out of nowhere, I was blinded by a searing
(08:13):
spotlight from across the street, and without a word said
to me or a noise made by anybody, I froze,
and then just as quickly the light went out, and
when I could see again, I could see of Beverly
Hills police cruiser hidden behind trees on the north side
of Beverly Boulevard. This happened a few more times in
(08:38):
the next week or two, and then one night, as
I walked away, I heard a voice from the cruiser.
Have a good night, it said. Not long after that,
they stopped shining the light on me, and instead I
would hear from time to time a slap on the
side of the cruiser door and once again, have a
good night. And in my naivete and from my upbringing,
(09:01):
I thought they had recognized me from television. And then
it happened. One night in the checkout line at the supermarket.
Behind me, I saw a familiar face. He was I
think a producer at one of the other stations that
did news in Los Angeles. We had met at an
awards show. I think he was a black man. I
said hello, he said hello. That was it. I paid,
(09:23):
I left. I took my dozen steps into Beverly Hills,
and then a few dozen more, when out of the
corner of my eye I saw that searchlight go on,
aimed behind me at the producer, who was also walking
home with his groceries, aimed at the black producer, and
the light stayed on, and the cruiser threw on its
(09:44):
lights and pulled across the empty street and onto the sidewalk,
where the producer froze and stood, and from the distance
I waited and watched. I heard a demand for I
D and proof of residence. I heard one officer get
on his radio while the others stood tensely next to
the producer. It didn't take long. It did end in tragedy,
(10:05):
and the officer still said to him have a good night.
And I was hyperventilating and unable to move as the
producer walked towards me. Are you okay? Not me asking
that question him? What the hell was that? I asked,
That's why I tried to shop when it's still daylight?
He said, but I've been filling in on the eleven.
(10:28):
It's okay, Thanks for being my witness. That was the
summer of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles. Was
the next march. I will note something that is never
noted about the Rodney King beating. The amateur videographer brought
the tape to my old station, kat l A, and
it was not the lead story on kt l a's
(10:50):
newscast that night. And I called my friend, their producer
to ask why not? And he said, because while it
was awful, and it was important. Only the fact that
it had all been captured on home video this time
really qualified as a lead story. If you've lived here
ten years, he said, you've already seen something like that live.
(11:15):
We have two and more years of racial brutality by police.
Now we have thirty two years of it or more
being captured on video, and yet we act each time
as if it is new, as if the protests against
it are dangerous or unjustified, were as bad as the
police murdering some guy who was trying to get home,
(11:38):
As if the firings and the protests and the outrage
and the funerals and the trials, and the horrible soundtracks
of the video tapes, we'll make it stop and we
watch half the nation were more. Try to minimize the
crime of the Memphis police, the crime they believe they
were entitled to commit, just as the Minneapolis police who
(12:01):
killed George Floyd believed they were entitled to commit that crime,
just as the New York police who killed Eric Garner
believed they were entitled, just as the l A cops
on the Rodney King Tate believed they were just as
the Beverly Hills cop with the searchlight believed they were.
And they believe this not just because of what every
minute inside what has become a bubble of police existence
(12:25):
tells them, but because the rest of us bluntly have also,
in whole or in part, been telling them the same thing.
What you heard were the sounds of a man's life
ending for no reason, and we have minimized it. The
(12:49):
minimizing is now so automatic, so ingrained, so institutionalized, that
it seeps everywhere and into everything. Quote the video reverberated
beyond the city, as the case has tapped into an
enduring frustration over black men having fatal encounters with police officers.
(13:15):
Fatal encounters with police officers as if the Memphis police
had been standing there gently talking to Tyree Nichols when
out of nowhere he was killed by an avalanche, having
fatal encounters as if they were inadvertent somehow, fatal encounters
(13:39):
with police officers. And this ultimate both sides is whitewashing
appeared under the byline of a Hispanic reporter in the
New York Times. They might as well have quoted the
Memphis police and called it a confrontation occurred. We are
(14:06):
hostages to the police, all of us still ahead. CNN
(14:28):
host Michael Smirkanish actually tweeted that the video proved to
him that Tyree Nichols had not been murdered by the police,
and CNN actually ran a pole in which Smirkana tried
to prove he was right about this. Cable television news
CNN and MSNBC is in crisis. It has cratered. MSNBC's
(14:50):
ratings are now what they were in two thousand three
when NBC was ready to shut the place down, and
unfortunately the ratings are much higher than the ethics. Several
stories on this, plus and things I promised not to tell.
The last time I saw laur It's O'Donnell and he
said to his own daughter that he and my successors
had crashed MSNBC. And at the arrest of x FBI
(15:13):
Trump investigator Charles McGonagall really does blow open into a
full fledged spy scandal. We now have a potential motive.
McGonagall had a double life, a wife in Maryland, a
girlfriend in New York. A friend of prutency was investigating
who would wind up paying him twenty five thousand dollars
a month, plus the comic relief in all this is
(15:34):
now supplied by Donald Trump. Even his cult is trying
to figure out how man so stupid that he believes
that Taliban never fought at night because they didn't have
any binoculars. Ever got elected president or could think he
could be elected again. That's next. This is countdown. This
(15:59):
is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead. You already know
one of the guys behind the FBI Hillary Clinton emails
announcement eleven days before the two thousand sixteen election has
been arrested for working for the Russian He was supposed
to investigate. Now it turns out he was living a
very expensive double life. Plus the crashes at MSNBC and
(16:25):
CNN and my Laurence O'Donnell's stories coming up first. In
each traditional countdown, we feature a dog in need you
can help. Every dog has its Day to Lebanon, New Jersey,
and a mini pug named Olive saved from a puppy mill.
She was in such bad shape they initially concluded she
was a puppy. They were still puppy teeth in her mouth. Well,
that was part of the problem. Neglected cage, poorly fed, untreated,
(16:48):
dental problems, not a puppy, but five years old and
the resilience of dogs has proven again. Olive, all ten
pounds of her, is at outcast rescue and playing with toys.
She still needs further treatment. That's where we come in
with our donations and retweets. You can find all of
it Cuddly or on my Twitter feed. I thank you
and Olive thanks you. Post Scripts to the news, some headlines,
(17:27):
some updates, some snarks, some prediction, state line, Chevy Chase, Maryland.
The story that could blow the Trump Russia conspiracy sky
high now has a new motive. Charles McGonagall, in charge
of the FBI New York office investigation of Trump Russia
at the exact time that office force then Director James
Comey to reopen the Hillary Clinton email crap eleven days
(17:48):
before the presidential election, was leading a double life business
insider reporting he had a girlfriend in New York and
a wife and two kids in Maryland while still at
the FBI, But he told the girlfriend that she was
an ex wife. Soon she saw bags of cash in
his apartment. They were from an Albanian intelligence officer. McGonagall
(18:11):
was arrested two Saturdays ago about the money and also
about the fact that he went from investigating Putin's pal
Oleg Deri Pasca to illicitly taking twenty dollars a month
from Oleg Derrik Posca. The guy was figuratively wearing a
big sign on his back reading blackmail me. More on
this burgeoning story tomorrow, Dateline, San Francisco. The political terrorists
(18:33):
who attack Paul Pelosi with a hammer cold called the
newsroom at TV station k t VU Friday and said
he wanted to make a statement and he wanted them
to record it, but he would not take questions. David
to Paper apologized not for his attempt to murder Paul Pelosi,
had his plan to torture and assassinate Nancy Pelosi, but
(18:53):
for having not attacked more Democrats. Quote, I messed up.
What I did was really bad. I'm so sorry I
didn't get more of them unquote dateline. The Supreme Court
yet another handle under the robes. You'll recall that after
the leak of the draft repeal of Roe v. Wade,
the Court promised an independent investigation into who done it.
(19:15):
The independent investigation found nobody, but it did conclude that
certainly no leads pointed to any justice or family member.
Then it turned out none of the conversations with the
justices themselves were under oath. Now it turns out the
independent investigation was not independent at all. The man who
(19:36):
publicly falsely confirmed it had been independent was one time
Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Churdoff. Turns out his idea
of independence was having been providing security to the court
for several years. He was a paid contractor. You may
also recall it was Churtoff who, after Hurricane Katrina, told
a rather surprised press conference that quote, Louisiana is a
(19:59):
city that is largely underwater. Well, there's your problem right there.
Eight line. Trump World the comic relief of the weekend.
Donald Trump used to be a harrowing mix of threats
and gaffs. He's now nearly all gaffs. Speaking at Salem,
New Hampshire, he showed what happens if somebody explained night
vision technology to him. While he was thinking of hamburg
(20:23):
lerers binoculars. They never fight. You know, they're very good fighters,
to tell aman, but they never fight at night because
they don't have binoculars. We have given them brand new
thousands of binoculars. Binoculars. It doesn't matter if it doesn't
make sense. It only matters if it makes sense to him,
especially when ad living. But earlier, Trump released the second
in a series of growling videos. This is scripted, and
(20:47):
it still doesn't make any sense. Plus it looked like
it had been edited by a drunken teenager using to
night Quasar VHS time machines to do the editing. On
to this end, when I am Commander in cheat to
build a state of the art, next generation miss still
defense shield. Just as Israel is now protected by the
(21:08):
Iron Doome, a dream once thought impossible, America must have
an impenetrable dump to protect our people. You know what
the impenetrable dome is, right, Trump's head is the impenetrable dome.
And Dateline Cable TV Variety reports that in the weekend
in January twenty two, CNN recorded its lowest ratings since
(21:31):
two thousand twelve. CNN is down to an average of
four seventeen thousand viewers and just eighty thousand inside the
advertising demo. Viewers aged five to fifty four. MSNBC at
six nine thousand total viewers but just sixty nine thousand
in the ad demo. For context, you're listening to a podcast.
(21:53):
It is a new podcast. MSNBC's average audience in the
demo is sixty nine thousand, CNNs is eighty thousand. Last
two days of last week, our audience here was thousand.
I have sent my old friend NBC Universal Chairman Jeff
Shell and NBC News Chairman Caesar Conde congratulations on having
(22:16):
avoided the controversy that would have ensued had they gone
through with plans to bring me back to MSNBC. Congratulations
on avoiding the controversy and the viewers. Thank you, Nancy Faust.
(22:58):
This is SportsCenter. Wait, check that not anymore. This is
Countdown with Keith in sports. The Chicago White Sox have
announced they have picked up the multi year option on
one of the best play by play man in sports,
Jason Bennetti. I just wanted to mention that here for
(23:20):
some reason, Super Bowl lv X w Z, can we
finally lose the Roman numerals? This isn't you know Rome,
It's the Andy Reid Bowl. His Kansas City Chiefs will
play the team he used to coach, the Philadelphia Eagles.
After KC beat Cincinnati when Harrison Butker connected on a
forty three yard field goal with three seconds left. This
(23:42):
happened because, since he's Joseph, Ossai was called for as
moronic a personal foul as you would have seen in
football in twenty years. As Patrick Mahomes, the k C quarterback,
was racing out of bounds over time seemingly inevitable, Osai
racked him in the back just eight seconds to go,
(24:02):
put the field goal kicker into field goal range, and
moved Kansas City into its third championship in four years. Earlier,
the Eagles beat up and then beat the thirty one
to seven. Backup quarterback turned star Brock Purdy got hope
for San Francisco back up well really, fourth stringer Josh
Johnson came in. He also got hurt, and it was
never a ball game. Inexplicably, the Empire State Building here
(24:25):
in New York City was promptly lit up in Eagles Green.
New York has hated the Eagles since the very first
Giants Eagles game on October three, when the Giants beat
the Eagles fifty six to nothing. And don't forget, the
NFL likes to let the playoffs breathe at this point.
The Super Bowl is scheduled for Sunday, April. The National
(24:48):
Hockey League is still trying to sort out what happened
Friday night at Madison Square Garden, a New York Rangers
stage their seventh annual Pride Night. Ticket sales and all
pre game publicity was the usual thing. The Rangers would
use special rainbow colored stick tape. They would don uniforms
with rainbow colored numbers just for warmups, and then came
warmups and no rainbow colored uniforms or tape and no explanation,
(25:13):
not to the players, the public, not to the organization
the teams worked with NYC Pride. Nothing just Pride Night
without the pride, but the team made sure to congratulate
itself afterwards on quote another great Pride Night. It was
at the Philadelphia Flyers Pride Night two weeks ago that
defenseman Ivan frob Off refused to wear a warm up
(25:34):
uniform with rainbow colored numbers, claiming it was against his religion.
The Flyers simply kept him off ice for warmups, and
every other player on the team wore the jerseys. That
prover Off, who is Russian Orthodox, was praised by his
coach for sticking up to his religious police led to
speculation The Rangers might have encountered the same issue because
three of their players, including their star goalie Iger Sasterkin,
(25:56):
are Russian, but Shasterkin and his teammate are Tammy Panarin
wore these shirts last year on Pride Night without apparent
issue you. However, that was before the Russians invaded Ukraine,
and now there is an additional level of speculation to
be had that maybe prover Off didn't participate, Maybe the
Rangers Russians didn't either, not because of religious observations, but
(26:19):
maybe because of some threat from their native country against
them or their families back home. Whatever the truth, the
Rangers have now managed to anger and or disappoint everybody.
They've said nothing of substance to explain this, thus insulting
the Pride community and throwing Shasterkin and the others under
the bus. So the Rangers did not have Pride Night,
(26:41):
and now they don't have any pride Alright. Time for
the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and done in
Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world,
(27:04):
the ones to the Associated Press. If somehow you miss this,
it is one of the great tweets of all time,
not intentionally. One of the wire services accounts is called
a P style book. A P style book sends out
writing and editing tips for news organizations. The actual APE
style Book used to be the bible for thousands of
(27:26):
newspaper men, and newspapers now not so much. Why well
see if you can spot the problem in the tweet
quote we recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing the labels
such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled,
(27:48):
the college educated unquote. So to the Associated Press, they
made it seem like the French are the same as
the mentally ill and the poor, and so are the
college educated. Associated Press took to its main accounter, apply
the use of the French in this tweet by AP
(28:09):
was inappropriate and has caused unintended offense. An updated tweet
his upcoming no comment yet from the French. The Silver
General Michael A. Minihan Head of Air Mobility Command, which
sounds like a really big job, but in fact it
means he's in charge of refueling all the aircraft. He
is General of gas stations. He also seems to have
(28:32):
gone a little jack d ripper from doctor Strange Love.
General Minahan emailed the troops under his command to make
a note on their calendars. Quote I hope I am wrong.
My gut tells me we will fight China. So he
said they should start practicing. Quote fire a clip into
a seven meter target with the full understanding that unrepentant
lethality matters most aim for the head. In September, General
(28:57):
Minahan had delivered a similar message to a confused aerospace conference.
His next email will be about communist in full traction,
Communist indoctrination, communists subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to
sap and impurify all our precious bodily fluids. But our winner.
(29:17):
Michael Smirkkonnish. For years, first in local radio and Philly,
then at MSNBC, now at CNN, he has provided a
low cost way to kill time on weekends or filling
in on holidays or when you couldn't get a real guest.
Murkanish has a kind of universal nothingness to him, an
automated quality. But Saturday, he finished off this week of
(29:40):
cable news death rattles by tweeting about the Tyree Nichols murder.
Quote gut reaction. Many won't want to hear, having watched
and before hearing anyone else's opinion, it was hard to watch. Tragic, sad, unnecessary, excessive, yes,
but deserving of second degree murder, knowing killing of another
based only on what I have just seen, no unquote
(30:02):
Murconnish then ran a pole. CNN actually ran this pole
on television for him, asking basically if people agreed with him,
and saying that the videotape did not show a murder.
He lost the people said, yeah, it showed a murder.
You're an idiot. Now look, we all get it. Chris licked.
(30:23):
When we worked together at MSNBC, we used to thought
he ate pacede. Chris Licht was hired to tank CNN
and he's doing a damn fine job of it. Bravo Chris.
But even for his new fascist bosses, isn't this a
firable offense? Didn't this inert cipher Smirkonnish jumped the shark
at long Last? Have you no sense of decency? Sir Michael,
(30:47):
He's hard to watch. Tragic, sad, unnecessary, excessive Smirkonnish two
days worst person and No One Now to the number
(31:11):
one story on the countdown on my favorite topic. Me
and things I promised not to tell. Early on the
afternoon of Monday, May thousand sixteen, I bounced out of
my New York City apartment building, began to walk past
the tourist trap brunch spot in the lobby, and froze
there at one of the cramped outdoor tables. Staring up
(31:34):
at me in blank surprise that must have matched my
own staring down at him in blank surprise was Lawrence O'Donnell.
I decided to go silly, hey, get out of my house.
He laughed. I laughed. It didn't seem forced. He introduced
me to his companion, his daughter. This, my dear is
(31:54):
Keith Alderman. Keith started us all at MSNBC, and then
he left, and and here Lawrence gave one of his
long pauses, and we crashed it. I wanted to be generous,
I started to politely contradict him, and I just couldn't
do it. M yeah, pretty much anyway, About thirty seconds
(32:17):
of courteous nothingness followed, and I wished the O'Donnell's well,
and then I left. It was the most pleasant experience
I ever had with Lawrence o'donald. In fact, it might
have been the only pleasant experience I ever had with
Laurence O'Donnell. After I finally convinced and bullied and blackmailed
MSNBC management into letting Rachel Meadow become the regular guest
(32:39):
host for my show, and she aced it, and then
rightly got her own show, and she aced that and
became a star. I went looking for a new guest host.
My first idea was a frequent guest we had named
Chris Hayes. I didn't get far. Management had its own
idea and my input was not required. They wanted former
Vermont governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean. And Howard
(33:03):
is a really smart guy and great on TV. But
Howard had a bit of a teleprompter problem. One of
my producers swears that Howard once read good Evening. I'm
Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, this is Countdown. I
do know. Whatever he did on the air, it was
bad enough that one week when I was off and
(33:25):
at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York,
and a baseball news story broke and he was filling
in for me. My producers called me there and asked
me to come on from the streets of Cooperstown and
be a guest on my own show, just to help
Howard Dean out. Anyway, Their next idea was a guy
who had been kicking around MSNBC since its founding in
(33:49):
Lawrence O'Donnell was one of the original MSNBC Friends, The
MSNBC Friends, political pundits who sat on clear stools at
a clear table or in a set designed to look
like a booth at a coffee shop. No, I'm not
making this up. Among the friends were and Coulter and
(34:11):
Laura Ingram, if you can believe it, once or twice
an hour, the rather CNN like all news coverage on
MSNBC in its first couple of years would pause and
three or more of these friends would appear, chew over
the MSNBC headlines, and then disappear. Laurence O'Donnell was one
(34:34):
of the friends. It was as bad as it sounds.
Then Laurence O'Donnell pretty much disappeared. You would see him
on MSNBC as a guest every once in a while,
but mostly he pursued his acting and producing career. He
played President Bartlett's father on The West Wing, the one
who beat him throughout college. Lawrence was very convincing, and
(34:56):
then around two thousand eight we started getting pressure to
bring him in as a guest on Countdown, like once
a week or twice a week. I was not sure
what it was all about, but he had been a
Senate staffer and he knew the healthcare debate and other
wonky stuff pretty well, so I gave my assent for
whatever that was worth. Not long after that, Lawrence came
(35:16):
into my office. He really needed my support, he said,
to get him more involved in MSNBC. He knew I
had gone to bat for Rachel and before her, I'd
gone to bat for Tom Brokaw and for people like
Chuck Todd and Chris Hayes and others who are now
getting steady incomes from NBC. I don't remember his argument
on his own behalf. I do remember I didn't have
(35:37):
much of a reason to say no, and he wasn't
asking me to do a lot, so I said yes.
The next thing I knew, I was reading a memo
announcing that Lawrence O'Donnell had been appointed as the new
full time guest host of Countdown. This was in the
winter of two thousand nine, when my late dad was
fighting so valiantly to stay alive after colon cancer and
(35:59):
more importantly, a series of infections. Dad had the immune
system of an alien. The average white cell count in
a healthy adultage between four thousand and eleven thousand. One night,
Dad's was at thirty three thousand, and the doctors told
me to prepare to make the call to let him go.
They had one antibiotic left to try on him. The
(36:20):
next morning, Dad's white cell count, which had been thirty
three thousand, was eight thousand. Onward, he fought. Unfortunately, he
was eighty years old and he had not exercised since
Harry Truman was president, and eventually he ran out of
Houdini tricks. I had been visiting him twice a day
(36:40):
for six months while still doing Countdown and the NBC
Sunday Night football Show. But now, as it hit late
February of two thousand ten, his bright days became fewer
and farther in between, and the hope that was propelling
me to keep being his full time caregiver and Countdowns
full time host both began to fade. In the last
two weeks of my dad's life, as the doctors tried
(37:02):
all the long shot things I asked MSNBC for a
leave of absence. Finally the inevitability became inarguable, and we
let Dad go. On Saturday, March thirteen, two thousand ten.
My sister held his hand and I read him his
favorite thurther story, and as soon as I finished it,
he exhaled deeply and peacefully, and he died. I think
(37:24):
I took another week off, maybe two, and I vaguely
recall emails from friends at Countdown that I may have
paid passing attention to, but I really didn't. Most of
the staff, including people who came up from Washington, like
Howard Feineman or Gene Robinson of the Washington Post, always
(37:44):
friends to me. They attended my dad's memorial service. I
believe Lawrence O'Donnell, who was of course filling in for
me on Countdown, was there, too, but maybe not, I
do not remember. And then came to day when I
went back to the office full time, and my assistant
grabbed me both hands on my wrist. You did not
answer my emails, she said, with a fervency she rarely exhibited.
(38:08):
For God's sake, do not ever leave me alone with
Laurence O'Donnell again. I snapped back to attention. Had he,
you know, bothered her? Not that way, she said, But
he's a son of a bitch. He treats me and
everybody he was in a producer here like dirt. And
since you didn't read my emails, I just have to
tell you this. He's trying to get you fired so
(38:30):
he can take over Countdown. And if you think he's nuts,
one of your senior producers is in on it too
with him. I have to admit, even now, of all
the things I went through at that very very strange
place MSNBC, even now, this story still shocks me. The
(38:50):
senior producers have Countdown consisted of a guy who had
been a producer who booked satellite transmissions for MSNBC until
I asked that he be promoted, And one was a
guest booker for the daytime shows until I asked that
she be promoted. Another was a line producer who was
well regarded only for his ability to time a show
until I asked for him to be promoted. And then
(39:13):
there was the old friend of mine who had been
blown out of ESPN and a sexual ha harassment porn
link email scandal and was headed back to college. To
start his career all over again, until I asked that
he'd be hired and then promoted. I did some digging
and I was going to confront O'Donnell about it when
somebody told me he had tweeted something negative about me
and about countdown. So I got ahold of him, and
(39:35):
I said, this did not seem to be in keeping
with MSNBC traditions and rules, you know, the ones about
not peeing inside the tent. And he said, what do
you know about MSNBC traditions. I've been here since I
never left and came back. So I went to my boss,
the president of the network, Phil Griffin, the one who
(39:55):
would not hire Rachel Maddow, And before I could say
they'd have to get rid of him, Griffin said it
was all academic. They were preparing the press release as
we spoke for Lawrence's new show at ten o'clock called
the Last Word, and oh, by the way, Keith, two
of your senior producers are going with him to run
his show. If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, it
(40:15):
is the plot of the pilot for the old Aaron
Sorkin HBO series Newsroom. I was still friendly with Aaron then,
so he actually asked, As I related this to him
in real time in emails and phone calls, he asked
if he could use it in the plot rather than
just what he often did, which was to use it
(40:36):
without asking. The problem was none of this made any
sense in the real world, Although it made a pretty
good pilot for Aaron Sorkin in going into the ten
PM slot, Lawrence O'Donnell would be replacing a rerun of Countdown,
and even if O'Donnell did much better in the ratings,
much much better, there was no way it could ever
(40:57):
make enough money to make the move makes sense. O'Donnell's
new show would necessarily cost miss NBC between ten and
fifteen million dollars to produce every year. Didn't have anything
to do with him. That was the cost. The Countdown
rerun cost, not ten fifteen million dollars a year. It count.
However much they paid the guy who pushed the play
(41:20):
button that fired up the video tape of the Countdown
replay amortized. Later that day, a sympathetic NBC executive called
me up and explained the move to me. First, Griffin
was convinced O'Donnell was about to leave US and sign
with CNN. I said, well, that's a good idea for
(41:42):
everybody involved except CNN. Turned out CNN had not even
talked to him, but Griffin did not know that. More importantly,
Comcast had already finalized its agreement to buy NBC effect
of the following January, and as part of the deal,
they were entitled to review what all the executives in
the company had done, and they had already looked at
MSNBC president Phil Griffin and discovered he had never done anything.
(42:07):
In panic, Griffin told colleagues he had to launch a
new show of his own immediately. This is the series
Aaron Sirkin should have made. As to the producers who
left my show to go with O'Donnell while my father
was dying, one of them told me a couple of
years after she left MSNBC for the last time, every
(42:30):
day when I went into that last word office, I
realized you were getting your revenge on me without even
having to lift a finger. Lots of people I've worked with,
probably a majority of people i've helped, have behaved like
Laurence O'Donnell, Because remember it's television. It is a mental illness.
The comparatively healthy people are the ones who acknowledge it's
(42:52):
a mental illness. But Lawrence O'Donnell was something special. A
year before my dad died, almost to the day, in fact,
I was in Los Angeles appearing on Bill Maher's show,
and one of the other us that night was the
actress Carrie Washington. She was very nice to me, very sweet,
a very big fan, and she asked to stay in touch.
(43:12):
Sure enough, after my father died. After the memorial, after
I was back at work, I had to go to
his house for the first time since he had passed away.
It was about as much fun as it sounds. In
the car on the way back into New York City.
The solemnity of it. Both my parents died within eleven
months of each other. It really hit me for some
(43:33):
reason for the first time, full force, and I was
about to lose it when the car approach to billboard
overlooking the West Side Highway in New York City, and
whose big smiling face was on the ad on that billboard,
Carrie Washington, And it flashed me right back to her
kindness in l a and it helped me overcome this
(43:54):
bump in my morning. So I wanted to drop her
a note. Nothing big, nothing suggestive. I wasn't hinting at
asking her out. Just you never know how you might
help somebody in a time of crisis. Thanks for letting
me smile. That was the whole message. I asked my
assistant to figure out how to get it to her,
(44:15):
and that was the end of it, except a week later,
the fact that I wrote her a note wound up
in a column written by a Coulter. I was astonished,
how why? And Coulter it was her usual the brain
doesn't quite work right kind of stuff. She implied. I
(44:38):
was hitting on Carrie Washington and said how stupid I
had to be to not realize she was involved with somebody,
and on and on and on, no mention of my
father's passing, or the Mars show or the billboard or
her smiling face. I went back to my assistant and
I said, what on earth did you do with that
note to carry Washington? And she said, oh, I gave
(45:01):
it to this Laurence O'Donnell guy. And I said, good God,
why did you do that? And she said, well, he's
dating Carrie Washington. I thought you knew that. I thought
that's why you asked me to get it to her,
so it wasn't hard to figure out from there. Lawrence
had called his old friend from the old MSNBC Friends
(45:21):
of Nine and Coulter and told her about the note,
inventing whatever motive his jealous little mind could dream up,
it should have gotten him fired from NBC, but unfortunately
his boss was just as much of a fourteen year
old emotionally as he was. And meanwhile, I had decided
to get out of MSNBC anyway when the time was ripe.
As it turned out, it ripened in January two thousand eleven.
(45:45):
I've told that story in other episodes, like sixty of them.
It's kind of complicated, and since nobody ever actually asked
me why Countdown the TV show ended, I've probably got
another sixty episodes worth of information about that anyway in
two thousand fifteen. Since repeatedly over the following ten years,
there were over years by both sides to bring Countdown
(46:06):
and Me back to MSNBC. In two thousand fifteen, during
the World Series, in fact, the then president of NBC News,
Andy Lack, asked me to come back and do a
new show at MSNBC and moved to Los Angeles and
have a co host a conservative, and not do any commentaries.
And and actually this new show was somehow less appealing
(46:28):
than it sounds. But the punch line of all punch
lines is contained in what Lack wanted to call my
new two thousand fifteen MSNBC show that never was. It
tells you all you really need to know about the
Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and MSNBC and O'Donnell's place
in TV history at its demise and the end of MSNBC.
(46:50):
NBC new President Lack was brimming with enthusiasm about this
name that he had come up with for my new show.
I've got the perfect title. Lack told me, we're gonna
call it The Last Word with Keith Olberman. And I
didn't laugh for guffaw. I just said, Andy, you have
a show called the Last Word The Last Word with
(47:13):
Lawrence O'Donnell. Andy Lack now laughed, huh, hopefully not for
much longer. I don't under five thousand viewers in the
(47:35):
advertising demo for Lawrence O'Donnell for the most recent day.
The ratings are in for last Thursday. That is the
size of the MSNBC audience in two thousand three. Countdown
has come to you from the studios of All Women
Broadcasting Empire World headquarters in the Sports Capsule Building in
New York, where we remember everything. Thanks for listening here
(47:57):
the credits. Most of the music, including our theme here
from Beethoven's Ninth was arranged, produced and performed by Brian
Ray and John Philip Chanelle. They are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitarist based
on drums by Brian Ray, produced by T K O Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
Horns allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from
(48:21):
ESPN Too, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis
and appears courtesy of ESPN Incorporated. Musical comments throughout by
Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was Tony Kornheiser, and that means everything else was
pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this the
sifty fifth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against
(48:41):
the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now,
while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Till then, I'm Keith, all remain good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production
(49:11):
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
We are hostages to the police. All of us are
(00:25):
hostages to the police, more directly, more urgently, more lethally
people of color, but all the rest of us too,
hostages to the police. The Memphis Police Department, two weeks
ago yesterday issued this statement quote. On January seven, two three,
(00:49):
at approximately eight pm, officers in the area of Rains
Road and Ross Road attempted to make a traffic stop
for reckless driving. Hey why did you do anything? Hey?
I didn't hire you. I'm prateful. Quote. As officers approached
(01:12):
the driver of the vehicle, a confrontation occurred, and the
suspect fled the scene on foot. Officers pursued the suspect
and again attempted to take the suspect into custods. Alright, alright, alright,
don't do that. Okay, on the ground. Okay, I'm on
(01:40):
the Hello, the ground, on the ground, Hello, one time?
All right, okay, alright, break your seat, Okay, dude, I'm
frateful guy. You guys are really doing a lot right now.
(02:03):
Down Are you trying to hard? Man? If you don't
lay that, I am out on the Great while attempting
to take the suspect into custody. Another confrontation occurred. However,
the suspect was ultimately apprehended. Quote. Afterwards, the suspect complained
(02:31):
of having a shortness of breath, at which time an
ambulance was called to the scene. The suspect was transported
to St. Francis Hospital in critical condition. You can't the
(03:00):
women women, He's quote. The officers involved will be routinely
relieved of duty pending the outcome of this investigation. Whom
what five Memphis police officers did as they beat Tyree
(03:24):
Nichols to death on January seven, as opposed to what
they and their department said, they did what they thought
you would believe. Hours after they beat Tyree Nichols to death,
with body cams recording every moment, with a surveillance camera
top of pole, recording every moment, with irrefutable evidence of
(03:47):
their sadism recorded, a confrontation occurred. The officers who murdered him,
their superiors, the chief of Police, the entirety of the
Memphis Police Department, the collective totality of policing in this country,
thought that despite the video, despite the horror film, they
(04:09):
left in the wake of the torture and death of
Tyree Nichols, they could get away with lies like those,
and that they could get away with murdering him. We
are hostages to the police, all of us, more directly,
more urgently, more lethally, people of color, because police who
(04:34):
kill other than as a last unavoidable act to protect
the community are no longer police for any of us.
They are instead of murderous national gang with unlimited weaponry
and extraordinary impunity. And even if of them would never
kill a civilian, that would mean there are still seven
thousand of them who would. And right now they are
(04:57):
holstering their guns and putting on their body armor, and
they have been trained, even if they are people of color,
to especially suspect, to distrust, to escalate against African Americans.
And if that horrifies you but does not leave you
personally with a sense of dread and fear and rage
(05:19):
because you are not African American, think again, Because if
they can be trained to kill because of race, they
can be trained to kill because of politics, kill because
of sexual orientation, kill because of what whoever trains them
(05:40):
decides should be killed. Because for decades we have trained police,
that they are the US and everybody else is the them,
Because for decades, for every day since nine eleven, we
have fetishized the police in this country, and we have
conflated the police and the military, and we have equipped
(06:03):
the police with military ry, weapons and vehicles and impunity,
and we have let the venom of fascism and authoritarianism
and most of all, racism infect virtually every police force
in this nation. And if the police no longer have
even the thin veneer of peace officers wrapped around them,
(06:25):
and are instead paranoid, prejudiced, messianic, barbaric, sadistic, what are they?
Who do they protect? Who do they serve? Besides that
is themselves and the gutter trash white couple standing outside
(06:47):
their house in Portland Place in St. Louis In with guns,
and every other racist and every other fascist and every
other paranoid with hate and lynching in their hearts. I
am the descendant of policemen. My father told me the
(07:09):
number of uncles and cousins he knew he had in
the New York Force in his generation and the generation
of his own father. I think he said there were
eight of them. He knew most of their stories, spoke
of them fondly, as he did of his other uncle,
the wrestler, and the other one who worked for the
Bronx Home News. So I was raised, and continued even
(07:31):
after my early adult years, produced racist nightmare after racist
nightmare involving the cops to give the cops something of
a benefit of the doubt. And then when I was
thirty one years old, I moved to a place two
blocks west of the border between West Los Angeles and
(07:53):
Beverly Hills, California, itself just west of an all night
supermarket at the corner of Dohaney and Beverly. Often I
shopped in the earliest minutes of the morning and walked home.
And the first night at the new address, I had
taken ten or twelve steps past that border into Beverly Hills,
when out of nowhere, I was blinded by a searing
(08:13):
spotlight from across the street, and without a word said
to me or a noise made by anybody, I froze,
and then just as quickly the light went out, and
when I could see again, I could see of Beverly
Hills police cruiser hidden behind trees on the north side
of Beverly Boulevard. This happened a few more times in
(08:38):
the next week or two, and then one night, as
I walked away, I heard a voice from the cruiser.
Have a good night, it said. Not long after that,
they stopped shining the light on me, and instead I
would hear from time to time a slap on the
side of the cruiser door and once again, have a
good night. And in my naivete and from my upbringing,
(09:01):
I thought they had recognized me from television. And then
it happened. One night in the checkout line at the supermarket.
Behind me, I saw a familiar face. He was I
think a producer at one of the other stations that
did news in Los Angeles. We had met at an
awards show. I think he was a black man. I
said hello, he said hello. That was it. I paid,
(09:23):
I left. I took my dozen steps into Beverly Hills,
and then a few dozen more, when out of the
corner of my eye I saw that searchlight go on,
aimed behind me at the producer, who was also walking
home with his groceries, aimed at the black producer, and
the light stayed on, and the cruiser threw on its
(09:44):
lights and pulled across the empty street and onto the sidewalk,
where the producer froze and stood, and from the distance
I waited and watched. I heard a demand for I
D and proof of residence. I heard one officer get
on his radio while the others stood tensely next to
the producer. It didn't take long. It did end in tragedy,
(10:05):
and the officer still said to him have a good night.
And I was hyperventilating and unable to move as the
producer walked towards me. Are you okay? Not me asking
that question him? What the hell was that? I asked,
That's why I tried to shop when it's still daylight?
He said, but I've been filling in on the eleven.
(10:28):
It's okay, Thanks for being my witness. That was the
summer of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles. Was
the next march. I will note something that is never
noted about the Rodney King beating. The amateur videographer brought
the tape to my old station, kat l A, and
it was not the lead story on kt l a's
(10:50):
newscast that night. And I called my friend, their producer
to ask why not? And he said, because while it
was awful, and it was important. Only the fact that
it had all been captured on home video this time
really qualified as a lead story. If you've lived here
ten years, he said, you've already seen something like that live.
(11:15):
We have two and more years of racial brutality by police.
Now we have thirty two years of it or more
being captured on video, and yet we act each time
as if it is new, as if the protests against
it are dangerous or unjustified, were as bad as the
police murdering some guy who was trying to get home,
(11:38):
As if the firings and the protests and the outrage
and the funerals and the trials, and the horrible soundtracks
of the video tapes, we'll make it stop and we
watch half the nation were more. Try to minimize the
crime of the Memphis police, the crime they believe they
were entitled to commit, just as the Minneapolis police who
(12:01):
killed George Floyd believed they were entitled to commit that crime,
just as the New York police who killed Eric Garner
believed they were entitled, just as the l A cops
on the Rodney King Tate believed they were just as
the Beverly Hills cop with the searchlight believed they were.
And they believe this not just because of what every
minute inside what has become a bubble of police existence
(12:25):
tells them, but because the rest of us bluntly have also,
in whole or in part, been telling them the same thing.
What you heard were the sounds of a man's life
ending for no reason, and we have minimized it. The
(12:49):
minimizing is now so automatic, so ingrained, so institutionalized, that
it seeps everywhere and into everything. Quote the video reverberated
beyond the city, as the case has tapped into an
enduring frustration over black men having fatal encounters with police officers.
(13:15):
Fatal encounters with police officers as if the Memphis police
had been standing there gently talking to Tyree Nichols when
out of nowhere he was killed by an avalanche, having
fatal encounters as if they were inadvertent somehow, fatal encounters
(13:39):
with police officers. And this ultimate both sides is whitewashing
appeared under the byline of a Hispanic reporter in the
New York Times. They might as well have quoted the
Memphis police and called it a confrontation occurred. We are
(14:06):
hostages to the police, all of us still ahead. CNN
(14:28):
host Michael Smirkanish actually tweeted that the video proved to
him that Tyree Nichols had not been murdered by the police,
and CNN actually ran a pole in which Smirkana tried
to prove he was right about this. Cable television news
CNN and MSNBC is in crisis. It has cratered. MSNBC's
(14:50):
ratings are now what they were in two thousand three
when NBC was ready to shut the place down, and
unfortunately the ratings are much higher than the ethics. Several
stories on this, plus and things I promised not to tell.
The last time I saw laur It's O'Donnell and he
said to his own daughter that he and my successors
had crashed MSNBC. And at the arrest of x FBI
(15:13):
Trump investigator Charles McGonagall really does blow open into a
full fledged spy scandal. We now have a potential motive.
McGonagall had a double life, a wife in Maryland, a
girlfriend in New York. A friend of prutency was investigating
who would wind up paying him twenty five thousand dollars
a month, plus the comic relief in all this is
(15:34):
now supplied by Donald Trump. Even his cult is trying
to figure out how man so stupid that he believes
that Taliban never fought at night because they didn't have
any binoculars. Ever got elected president or could think he
could be elected again. That's next. This is countdown. This
(15:59):
is countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead. You already know
one of the guys behind the FBI Hillary Clinton emails
announcement eleven days before the two thousand sixteen election has
been arrested for working for the Russian He was supposed
to investigate. Now it turns out he was living a
very expensive double life. Plus the crashes at MSNBC and
(16:25):
CNN and my Laurence O'Donnell's stories coming up first. In
each traditional countdown, we feature a dog in need you
can help. Every dog has its Day to Lebanon, New Jersey,
and a mini pug named Olive saved from a puppy mill.
She was in such bad shape they initially concluded she
was a puppy. They were still puppy teeth in her mouth. Well,
that was part of the problem. Neglected cage, poorly fed, untreated,
(16:48):
dental problems, not a puppy, but five years old and
the resilience of dogs has proven again. Olive, all ten
pounds of her, is at outcast rescue and playing with toys.
She still needs further treatment. That's where we come in
with our donations and retweets. You can find all of
it Cuddly or on my Twitter feed. I thank you
and Olive thanks you. Post Scripts to the news, some headlines,
(17:27):
some updates, some snarks, some prediction, state line, Chevy Chase, Maryland.
The story that could blow the Trump Russia conspiracy sky
high now has a new motive. Charles McGonagall, in charge
of the FBI New York office investigation of Trump Russia
at the exact time that office force then Director James
Comey to reopen the Hillary Clinton email crap eleven days
(17:48):
before the presidential election, was leading a double life business
insider reporting he had a girlfriend in New York and
a wife and two kids in Maryland while still at
the FBI, But he told the girlfriend that she was
an ex wife. Soon she saw bags of cash in
his apartment. They were from an Albanian intelligence officer. McGonagall
(18:11):
was arrested two Saturdays ago about the money and also
about the fact that he went from investigating Putin's pal
Oleg Deri Pasca to illicitly taking twenty dollars a month
from Oleg Derrik Posca. The guy was figuratively wearing a
big sign on his back reading blackmail me. More on
this burgeoning story tomorrow, Dateline, San Francisco. The political terrorists
(18:33):
who attack Paul Pelosi with a hammer cold called the
newsroom at TV station k t VU Friday and said
he wanted to make a statement and he wanted them
to record it, but he would not take questions. David
to Paper apologized not for his attempt to murder Paul Pelosi,
had his plan to torture and assassinate Nancy Pelosi, but
(18:53):
for having not attacked more Democrats. Quote, I messed up.
What I did was really bad. I'm so sorry I
didn't get more of them unquote dateline. The Supreme Court
yet another handle under the robes. You'll recall that after
the leak of the draft repeal of Roe v. Wade,
the Court promised an independent investigation into who done it.
(19:15):
The independent investigation found nobody, but it did conclude that
certainly no leads pointed to any justice or family member.
Then it turned out none of the conversations with the
justices themselves were under oath. Now it turns out the
independent investigation was not independent at all. The man who
(19:36):
publicly falsely confirmed it had been independent was one time
Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Churdoff. Turns out his idea
of independence was having been providing security to the court
for several years. He was a paid contractor. You may
also recall it was Churtoff who, after Hurricane Katrina, told
a rather surprised press conference that quote, Louisiana is a
(19:59):
city that is largely underwater. Well, there's your problem right there.
Eight line. Trump World the comic relief of the weekend.
Donald Trump used to be a harrowing mix of threats
and gaffs. He's now nearly all gaffs. Speaking at Salem,
New Hampshire, he showed what happens if somebody explained night
vision technology to him. While he was thinking of hamburg
(20:23):
lerers binoculars. They never fight. You know, they're very good fighters,
to tell aman, but they never fight at night because
they don't have binoculars. We have given them brand new
thousands of binoculars. Binoculars. It doesn't matter if it doesn't
make sense. It only matters if it makes sense to him,
especially when ad living. But earlier, Trump released the second
in a series of growling videos. This is scripted, and
(20:47):
it still doesn't make any sense. Plus it looked like
it had been edited by a drunken teenager using to
night Quasar VHS time machines to do the editing. On
to this end, when I am Commander in cheat to
build a state of the art, next generation miss still
defense shield. Just as Israel is now protected by the
(21:08):
Iron Doome, a dream once thought impossible, America must have
an impenetrable dump to protect our people. You know what
the impenetrable dome is, right, Trump's head is the impenetrable dome.
And Dateline Cable TV Variety reports that in the weekend
in January twenty two, CNN recorded its lowest ratings since
(21:31):
two thousand twelve. CNN is down to an average of
four seventeen thousand viewers and just eighty thousand inside the
advertising demo. Viewers aged five to fifty four. MSNBC at
six nine thousand total viewers but just sixty nine thousand
in the ad demo. For context, you're listening to a podcast.
(21:53):
It is a new podcast. MSNBC's average audience in the
demo is sixty nine thousand, CNNs is eighty thousand. Last
two days of last week, our audience here was thousand.
I have sent my old friend NBC Universal Chairman Jeff
Shell and NBC News Chairman Caesar Conde congratulations on having
(22:16):
avoided the controversy that would have ensued had they gone
through with plans to bring me back to MSNBC. Congratulations
on avoiding the controversy and the viewers. Thank you, Nancy Faust.
(22:58):
This is SportsCenter. Wait, check that not anymore. This is
Countdown with Keith in sports. The Chicago White Sox have
announced they have picked up the multi year option on
one of the best play by play man in sports,
Jason Bennetti. I just wanted to mention that here for
(23:20):
some reason, Super Bowl lv X w Z, can we
finally lose the Roman numerals? This isn't you know Rome,
It's the Andy Reid Bowl. His Kansas City Chiefs will
play the team he used to coach, the Philadelphia Eagles.
After KC beat Cincinnati when Harrison Butker connected on a
forty three yard field goal with three seconds left. This
(23:42):
happened because, since he's Joseph, Ossai was called for as
moronic a personal foul as you would have seen in
football in twenty years. As Patrick Mahomes, the k C quarterback,
was racing out of bounds over time seemingly inevitable, Osai
racked him in the back just eight seconds to go,
(24:02):
put the field goal kicker into field goal range, and
moved Kansas City into its third championship in four years. Earlier,
the Eagles beat up and then beat the thirty one
to seven. Backup quarterback turned star Brock Purdy got hope
for San Francisco back up well really, fourth stringer Josh
Johnson came in. He also got hurt, and it was
never a ball game. Inexplicably, the Empire State Building here
(24:25):
in New York City was promptly lit up in Eagles Green.
New York has hated the Eagles since the very first
Giants Eagles game on October three, when the Giants beat
the Eagles fifty six to nothing. And don't forget, the
NFL likes to let the playoffs breathe at this point.
The Super Bowl is scheduled for Sunday, April. The National
(24:48):
Hockey League is still trying to sort out what happened
Friday night at Madison Square Garden, a New York Rangers
stage their seventh annual Pride Night. Ticket sales and all
pre game publicity was the usual thing. The Rangers would
use special rainbow colored stick tape. They would don uniforms
with rainbow colored numbers just for warmups, and then came
warmups and no rainbow colored uniforms or tape and no explanation,
(25:13):
not to the players, the public, not to the organization
the teams worked with NYC Pride. Nothing just Pride Night
without the pride, but the team made sure to congratulate
itself afterwards on quote another great Pride Night. It was
at the Philadelphia Flyers Pride Night two weeks ago that
defenseman Ivan frob Off refused to wear a warm up
(25:34):
uniform with rainbow colored numbers, claiming it was against his religion.
The Flyers simply kept him off ice for warmups, and
every other player on the team wore the jerseys. That
prover Off, who is Russian Orthodox, was praised by his
coach for sticking up to his religious police led to
speculation The Rangers might have encountered the same issue because
three of their players, including their star goalie Iger Sasterkin,
(25:56):
are Russian, but Shasterkin and his teammate are Tammy Panarin
wore these shirts last year on Pride Night without apparent
issue you. However, that was before the Russians invaded Ukraine,
and now there is an additional level of speculation to
be had that maybe prover Off didn't participate, Maybe the
Rangers Russians didn't either, not because of religious observations, but
(26:19):
maybe because of some threat from their native country against
them or their families back home. Whatever the truth, the
Rangers have now managed to anger and or disappoint everybody.
They've said nothing of substance to explain this, thus insulting
the Pride community and throwing Shasterkin and the others under
the bus. So the Rangers did not have Pride Night,
(26:41):
and now they don't have any pride Alright. Time for
the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and done in
Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world,
(27:04):
the ones to the Associated Press. If somehow you miss this,
it is one of the great tweets of all time,
not intentionally. One of the wire services accounts is called
a P style book. A P style book sends out
writing and editing tips for news organizations. The actual APE
style Book used to be the bible for thousands of
(27:26):
newspaper men, and newspapers now not so much. Why well
see if you can spot the problem in the tweet
quote we recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing the labels
such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled,
(27:48):
the college educated unquote. So to the Associated Press, they
made it seem like the French are the same as
the mentally ill and the poor, and so are the
college educated. Associated Press took to its main accounter, apply
the use of the French in this tweet by AP
(28:09):
was inappropriate and has caused unintended offense. An updated tweet
his upcoming no comment yet from the French. The Silver
General Michael A. Minihan Head of Air Mobility Command, which
sounds like a really big job, but in fact it
means he's in charge of refueling all the aircraft. He
is General of gas stations. He also seems to have
(28:32):
gone a little jack d ripper from doctor Strange Love.
General Minahan emailed the troops under his command to make
a note on their calendars. Quote I hope I am wrong.
My gut tells me we will fight China. So he
said they should start practicing. Quote fire a clip into
a seven meter target with the full understanding that unrepentant
lethality matters most aim for the head. In September, General
(28:57):
Minahan had delivered a similar message to a confused aerospace conference.
His next email will be about communist in full traction,
Communist indoctrination, communists subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to
sap and impurify all our precious bodily fluids. But our winner.
(29:17):
Michael Smirkkonnish. For years, first in local radio and Philly,
then at MSNBC, now at CNN, he has provided a
low cost way to kill time on weekends or filling
in on holidays or when you couldn't get a real guest.
Murkanish has a kind of universal nothingness to him, an
automated quality. But Saturday, he finished off this week of
(29:40):
cable news death rattles by tweeting about the Tyree Nichols murder.
Quote gut reaction. Many won't want to hear, having watched
and before hearing anyone else's opinion, it was hard to watch. Tragic, sad, unnecessary, excessive, yes,
but deserving of second degree murder, knowing killing of another
based only on what I have just seen, no unquote
(30:02):
Murconnish then ran a pole. CNN actually ran this pole
on television for him, asking basically if people agreed with him,
and saying that the videotape did not show a murder.
He lost the people said, yeah, it showed a murder.
You're an idiot. Now look, we all get it. Chris licked.
(30:23):
When we worked together at MSNBC, we used to thought
he ate pacede. Chris Licht was hired to tank CNN
and he's doing a damn fine job of it. Bravo Chris.
But even for his new fascist bosses, isn't this a
firable offense? Didn't this inert cipher Smirkonnish jumped the shark
at long Last? Have you no sense of decency? Sir Michael,
(30:47):
He's hard to watch. Tragic, sad, unnecessary, excessive Smirkonnish two
days worst person and No One Now to the number
(31:11):
one story on the countdown on my favorite topic. Me
and things I promised not to tell. Early on the
afternoon of Monday, May thousand sixteen, I bounced out of
my New York City apartment building, began to walk past
the tourist trap brunch spot in the lobby, and froze
there at one of the cramped outdoor tables. Staring up
(31:34):
at me in blank surprise that must have matched my
own staring down at him in blank surprise was Lawrence O'Donnell.
I decided to go silly, hey, get out of my house.
He laughed. I laughed. It didn't seem forced. He introduced
me to his companion, his daughter. This, my dear is
(31:54):
Keith Alderman. Keith started us all at MSNBC, and then
he left, and and here Lawrence gave one of his
long pauses, and we crashed it. I wanted to be generous,
I started to politely contradict him, and I just couldn't
do it. M yeah, pretty much anyway, About thirty seconds
(32:17):
of courteous nothingness followed, and I wished the O'Donnell's well,
and then I left. It was the most pleasant experience
I ever had with Lawrence o'donald. In fact, it might
have been the only pleasant experience I ever had with
Laurence O'Donnell. After I finally convinced and bullied and blackmailed
MSNBC management into letting Rachel Meadow become the regular guest
(32:39):
host for my show, and she aced it, and then
rightly got her own show, and she aced that and
became a star. I went looking for a new guest host.
My first idea was a frequent guest we had named
Chris Hayes. I didn't get far. Management had its own
idea and my input was not required. They wanted former
Vermont governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean. And Howard
(33:03):
is a really smart guy and great on TV. But
Howard had a bit of a teleprompter problem. One of
my producers swears that Howard once read good Evening. I'm
Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, this is Countdown. I
do know. Whatever he did on the air, it was
bad enough that one week when I was off and
(33:25):
at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York,
and a baseball news story broke and he was filling
in for me. My producers called me there and asked
me to come on from the streets of Cooperstown and
be a guest on my own show, just to help
Howard Dean out. Anyway, Their next idea was a guy
who had been kicking around MSNBC since its founding in
(33:49):
Lawrence O'Donnell was one of the original MSNBC Friends, The
MSNBC Friends, political pundits who sat on clear stools at
a clear table or in a set designed to look
like a booth at a coffee shop. No, I'm not
making this up. Among the friends were and Coulter and
(34:11):
Laura Ingram, if you can believe it, once or twice
an hour, the rather CNN like all news coverage on
MSNBC in its first couple of years would pause and
three or more of these friends would appear, chew over
the MSNBC headlines, and then disappear. Laurence O'Donnell was one
(34:34):
of the friends. It was as bad as it sounds.
Then Laurence O'Donnell pretty much disappeared. You would see him
on MSNBC as a guest every once in a while,
but mostly he pursued his acting and producing career. He
played President Bartlett's father on The West Wing, the one
who beat him throughout college. Lawrence was very convincing, and
(34:56):
then around two thousand eight we started getting pressure to
bring him in as a guest on Countdown, like once
a week or twice a week. I was not sure
what it was all about, but he had been a
Senate staffer and he knew the healthcare debate and other
wonky stuff pretty well, so I gave my assent for
whatever that was worth. Not long after that, Lawrence came
(35:16):
into my office. He really needed my support, he said,
to get him more involved in MSNBC. He knew I
had gone to bat for Rachel and before her, I'd
gone to bat for Tom Brokaw and for people like
Chuck Todd and Chris Hayes and others who are now
getting steady incomes from NBC. I don't remember his argument
on his own behalf. I do remember I didn't have
(35:37):
much of a reason to say no, and he wasn't
asking me to do a lot, so I said yes.
The next thing I knew, I was reading a memo
announcing that Lawrence O'Donnell had been appointed as the new
full time guest host of Countdown. This was in the
winter of two thousand nine, when my late dad was
fighting so valiantly to stay alive after colon cancer and
(35:59):
more importantly, a series of infections. Dad had the immune
system of an alien. The average white cell count in
a healthy adultage between four thousand and eleven thousand. One night,
Dad's was at thirty three thousand, and the doctors told
me to prepare to make the call to let him go.
They had one antibiotic left to try on him. The
(36:20):
next morning, Dad's white cell count, which had been thirty
three thousand, was eight thousand. Onward, he fought. Unfortunately, he
was eighty years old and he had not exercised since
Harry Truman was president, and eventually he ran out of
Houdini tricks. I had been visiting him twice a day
(36:40):
for six months while still doing Countdown and the NBC
Sunday Night football Show. But now, as it hit late
February of two thousand ten, his bright days became fewer
and farther in between, and the hope that was propelling
me to keep being his full time caregiver and Countdowns
full time host both began to fade. In the last
two weeks of my dad's life, as the doctors tried
(37:02):
all the long shot things I asked MSNBC for a
leave of absence. Finally the inevitability became inarguable, and we
let Dad go. On Saturday, March thirteen, two thousand ten.
My sister held his hand and I read him his
favorite thurther story, and as soon as I finished it,
he exhaled deeply and peacefully, and he died. I think
(37:24):
I took another week off, maybe two, and I vaguely
recall emails from friends at Countdown that I may have
paid passing attention to, but I really didn't. Most of
the staff, including people who came up from Washington, like
Howard Feineman or Gene Robinson of the Washington Post, always
(37:44):
friends to me. They attended my dad's memorial service. I
believe Lawrence O'Donnell, who was of course filling in for
me on Countdown, was there, too, but maybe not, I
do not remember. And then came to day when I
went back to the office full time, and my assistant
grabbed me both hands on my wrist. You did not
answer my emails, she said, with a fervency she rarely exhibited.
(38:08):
For God's sake, do not ever leave me alone with
Laurence O'Donnell again. I snapped back to attention. Had he,
you know, bothered her? Not that way, she said, But
he's a son of a bitch. He treats me and
everybody he was in a producer here like dirt. And
since you didn't read my emails, I just have to
tell you this. He's trying to get you fired so
(38:30):
he can take over Countdown. And if you think he's nuts,
one of your senior producers is in on it too
with him. I have to admit, even now, of all
the things I went through at that very very strange
place MSNBC, even now, this story still shocks me. The
(38:50):
senior producers have Countdown consisted of a guy who had
been a producer who booked satellite transmissions for MSNBC until
I asked that he be promoted, And one was a
guest booker for the daytime shows until I asked that
she be promoted. Another was a line producer who was
well regarded only for his ability to time a show
until I asked for him to be promoted. And then
(39:13):
there was the old friend of mine who had been
blown out of ESPN and a sexual ha harassment porn
link email scandal and was headed back to college. To
start his career all over again, until I asked that
he'd be hired and then promoted. I did some digging
and I was going to confront O'Donnell about it when
somebody told me he had tweeted something negative about me
and about countdown. So I got ahold of him, and
(39:35):
I said, this did not seem to be in keeping
with MSNBC traditions and rules, you know, the ones about
not peeing inside the tent. And he said, what do
you know about MSNBC traditions. I've been here since I
never left and came back. So I went to my boss,
the president of the network, Phil Griffin, the one who
(39:55):
would not hire Rachel Maddow, And before I could say
they'd have to get rid of him, Griffin said it
was all academic. They were preparing the press release as
we spoke for Lawrence's new show at ten o'clock called
the Last Word, and oh, by the way, Keith, two
of your senior producers are going with him to run
his show. If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, it
(40:15):
is the plot of the pilot for the old Aaron
Sorkin HBO series Newsroom. I was still friendly with Aaron then,
so he actually asked, As I related this to him
in real time in emails and phone calls, he asked
if he could use it in the plot rather than
just what he often did, which was to use it
(40:36):
without asking. The problem was none of this made any
sense in the real world, Although it made a pretty
good pilot for Aaron Sorkin in going into the ten
PM slot, Lawrence O'Donnell would be replacing a rerun of Countdown,
and even if O'Donnell did much better in the ratings,
much much better, there was no way it could ever
(40:57):
make enough money to make the move makes sense. O'Donnell's
new show would necessarily cost miss NBC between ten and
fifteen million dollars to produce every year. Didn't have anything
to do with him. That was the cost. The Countdown
rerun cost, not ten fifteen million dollars a year. It count.
However much they paid the guy who pushed the play
(41:20):
button that fired up the video tape of the Countdown
replay amortized. Later that day, a sympathetic NBC executive called
me up and explained the move to me. First, Griffin
was convinced O'Donnell was about to leave US and sign
with CNN. I said, well, that's a good idea for
(41:42):
everybody involved except CNN. Turned out CNN had not even
talked to him, but Griffin did not know that. More importantly,
Comcast had already finalized its agreement to buy NBC effect
of the following January, and as part of the deal,
they were entitled to review what all the executives in
the company had done, and they had already looked at
MSNBC president Phil Griffin and discovered he had never done anything.
(42:07):
In panic, Griffin told colleagues he had to launch a
new show of his own immediately. This is the series
Aaron Sirkin should have made. As to the producers who
left my show to go with O'Donnell while my father
was dying, one of them told me a couple of
years after she left MSNBC for the last time, every
(42:30):
day when I went into that last word office, I
realized you were getting your revenge on me without even
having to lift a finger. Lots of people I've worked with,
probably a majority of people i've helped, have behaved like
Laurence O'Donnell, Because remember it's television. It is a mental illness.
The comparatively healthy people are the ones who acknowledge it's
(42:52):
a mental illness. But Lawrence O'Donnell was something special. A
year before my dad died, almost to the day, in fact,
I was in Los Angeles appearing on Bill Maher's show,
and one of the other us that night was the
actress Carrie Washington. She was very nice to me, very sweet,
a very big fan, and she asked to stay in touch.
(43:12):
Sure enough, after my father died. After the memorial, after
I was back at work, I had to go to
his house for the first time since he had passed away.
It was about as much fun as it sounds. In
the car on the way back into New York City.
The solemnity of it. Both my parents died within eleven
months of each other. It really hit me for some
(43:33):
reason for the first time, full force, and I was
about to lose it when the car approach to billboard
overlooking the West Side Highway in New York City, and
whose big smiling face was on the ad on that billboard,
Carrie Washington, And it flashed me right back to her
kindness in l a and it helped me overcome this
(43:54):
bump in my morning. So I wanted to drop her
a note. Nothing big, nothing suggestive. I wasn't hinting at
asking her out. Just you never know how you might
help somebody in a time of crisis. Thanks for letting
me smile. That was the whole message. I asked my
assistant to figure out how to get it to her,
(44:15):
and that was the end of it, except a week later,
the fact that I wrote her a note wound up
in a column written by a Coulter. I was astonished,
how why? And Coulter it was her usual the brain
doesn't quite work right kind of stuff. She implied. I
(44:38):
was hitting on Carrie Washington and said how stupid I
had to be to not realize she was involved with somebody,
and on and on and on, no mention of my
father's passing, or the Mars show or the billboard or
her smiling face. I went back to my assistant and
I said, what on earth did you do with that
note to carry Washington? And she said, oh, I gave
(45:01):
it to this Laurence O'Donnell guy. And I said, good God,
why did you do that? And she said, well, he's
dating Carrie Washington. I thought you knew that. I thought
that's why you asked me to get it to her,
so it wasn't hard to figure out from there. Lawrence
had called his old friend from the old MSNBC Friends
(45:21):
of Nine and Coulter and told her about the note,
inventing whatever motive his jealous little mind could dream up,
it should have gotten him fired from NBC, but unfortunately
his boss was just as much of a fourteen year
old emotionally as he was. And meanwhile, I had decided
to get out of MSNBC anyway when the time was ripe.
As it turned out, it ripened in January two thousand eleven.
(45:45):
I've told that story in other episodes, like sixty of them.
It's kind of complicated, and since nobody ever actually asked
me why Countdown the TV show ended, I've probably got
another sixty episodes worth of information about that anyway in
two thousand fifteen. Since repeatedly over the following ten years,
there were over years by both sides to bring Countdown
(46:06):
and Me back to MSNBC. In two thousand fifteen, during
the World Series, in fact, the then president of NBC News,
Andy Lack, asked me to come back and do a
new show at MSNBC and moved to Los Angeles and
have a co host a conservative, and not do any commentaries.
And and actually this new show was somehow less appealing
(46:28):
than it sounds. But the punch line of all punch
lines is contained in what Lack wanted to call my
new two thousand fifteen MSNBC show that never was. It
tells you all you really need to know about the
Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and MSNBC and O'Donnell's place
in TV history at its demise and the end of MSNBC.
(46:50):
NBC new President Lack was brimming with enthusiasm about this
name that he had come up with for my new show.
I've got the perfect title. Lack told me, we're gonna
call it The Last Word with Keith Olberman. And I
didn't laugh for guffaw. I just said, Andy, you have
a show called the Last Word The Last Word with
(47:13):
Lawrence O'Donnell. Andy Lack now laughed, huh, hopefully not for
much longer. I don't under five thousand viewers in the
(47:35):
advertising demo for Lawrence O'Donnell for the most recent day.
The ratings are in for last Thursday. That is the
size of the MSNBC audience in two thousand three. Countdown
has come to you from the studios of All Women
Broadcasting Empire World headquarters in the Sports Capsule Building in
New York, where we remember everything. Thanks for listening here
(47:57):
the credits. Most of the music, including our theme here
from Beethoven's Ninth was arranged, produced and performed by Brian
Ray and John Philip Chanelle. They are the Countdown musical directors.
All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitarist based
on drums by Brian Ray, produced by T K O Brothers.
Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No
Horns allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from
(48:21):
ESPN Too, and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis
and appears courtesy of ESPN Incorporated. Musical comments throughout by
Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer
today was Tony Kornheiser, and that means everything else was
pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this the
sifty fifth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against
(48:41):
the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now,
while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Till then, I'm Keith, all remain good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production
(49:11):
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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