April 30, 2024 • 46 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 166: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: We need a special counsel to investigate the six conservatives on the Supreme Court.
We know Harlan Crow spent thousands on Clarence Thomas – for what precise purpose We know somebody paid off Brett Kavanaugh’s debts – who? When? Why? We know Leonard Leo’s gang spent millions to put Gorsuch and the others in place – what did they get in return? We know the Trump appointees all lied to the Senate and said Roe-V-Wade was settled, then voted to overturn it – were they paid to? We know the conservatives looked at the 14th Amendment, which states when, why, and how to appeal disqualification from the ballot, and ignored the Constitution. To what end?
We know those conservatives have now signaled that they will countenance a coup, or presidentially-ordered domestic assassinations, or anything, so long as they can pretend they were official acts, and so long as they don’t have to rule until and unless Trump is president again. What inducement could make even conservatives – even conservative lawyers – prostitute themselves? And most of all we know, that if the polarity was reversed – if this was a Republican administration now and that was an utterly corrupt and criminal DEMOCRATIC president on trial – and a 6-3 LIBERAL Supreme Court impeding and slowing and obstructing justice – we KNOW that the Republican administration would do: There would be a Special Counsel investigating the Court.
There are lesser solutions. Joyce Vance suggests Jack Smith empty his January 6th evidence at a hearing to determine what might be subject to 'presidential immunity.' Brian Beutler suggests something stronger. The gist is: we – I mean all of us who have a faint hope that there’ll be representative government in this country a year from today – WE must stop assuming that being right about everything DECIDES everything any more (if it ever did). The Biden campaign is going to have to stop assuming that the president being right and good and Trump being the worst person in this country’s history is going to be enough. We need to go on OFFENSE and the goal has to be to metaphorically GUT the bastard – and to metaphorically GUT all the OTHER bastards in his gang. As said by the character of the prime minister in “House of Cards” – the good version – we need to put a bit of stick about.
ALSO: There's little new left to say about the psychopathic monster Kristi Noem. Yet I actually found something. It's not good. And it's from her alleged boyfriend.
B-Block (25:41) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The lovely celebrity columnist Cindy Adams just turned 94. Somebody leaked her birthday party guest list and it's the twelve people you meet when you get to hell. The New York Times is so strung out over Politico's reveal that its publisher is altering the news to punish Biden for not doing an interview that it has issued a furious denial about journalism and principles and THE STATEMENT IS ANONYMOUS. And unfortunately not only did Nancy Pelosi call out my ex for being a Trump apologist but based on her reaction she has no idea that everybody agrees she's a Trump apologist.
C-Block (35:16) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well it ain't Thursday but it IS Tur-Day. Since I'm already talking about my ex, face planting on MSNBC every afternoon, I might as well tell you the rest of the story. About her jumping the political shark. About her book. And about how she deceived me. And The New York Times. And The Washington Post. It's exhausting.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. We
need a special council to investigate the six Conservatives on
(00:25):
the Supreme Court. We know Harlan Crowe spent thousands on
Clarence Thomas for what precise purpose. We know somebody paid
off Bret Kavanaugh's debts, who, when, why? We know Leonard
Leo's gang spent millions to put Gorsic and the others
in place. What did they get in return? We know
(00:47):
the Trump appointees all lied to the Senate and said
Roe v. Wade was settled law, then voted to overturn
it where they paid to do so indirectly, directly, we
know the Conservatives looked at the fourteenth Amendment, which states when, why,
and how to appeal disqualification from the ballot, and ignored
the Constitution anyway. To what end? We know those conservatives
(01:12):
have now signaled that they will countenance a coup or
presidentially ordered domestic assassinations or anything, so long as they
can pretend they were official acts by a president, and
so long as they don't have to rule until and
unless Trump is president again. What inducement could make even conservatives,
even conservative lawyers prostitute themselves in that way. And most
(01:37):
of all, we know that if the polarity was reversed,
if this were a Republican administration now, and that were
an utterly corrupt and criminal democratic president on trial and
a six ' three liberal Supreme Court impeding and slowing
and obstructing justice, we know what the Republican administration would do.
It would accuse the six liberal justices in public hourly
(02:01):
of corruption, and it would appoint a special council to
turn their lives upside down, and the lives of some
fictional liberal versions of Harlan Crowe and Leonard Leo and
hundreds of other people. We know this would be happening
right now. There would be a special Council prosecuting them today,
(02:26):
regardless of the consequences, regardless of the optics, regardless of
the blowback, regardless of the traditions, regardless of the date
on the electoral calendar. Because part of the reason Trump
and his minions and the Supreme Court are warning about
a political vortex in which every departing president will be
(02:46):
prosecuted by his successor is that the Conservatives are doing
what they always do. They are setting those mechanisms in
place to prosecute and marginalize and gerrymander and cheat against
Democrats and liberals and anybody who will stand in their way,
and then finding so high horse on which to jump,
(03:07):
and to suddenly claim that the process is sacrosanct, and
any action by any Democrat against any Republican is necessarily
partisan and wrong and against the Constitution and the founding fathers,
And now that they own the Supreme Court, it's also unconstitutional.
We need a special council appointed by the Department of
(03:30):
Justice to investigate the six conservative members of the Supreme
Court today, and Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow and the
entirety of the Federalist Society and the Claremont Institute, and
Russell Vote and Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, all of them.
(03:52):
Drag them through hell as fast as possible, well as
slowly as possible, because at least three Supreme Court justices
are perjurers, and five or six of them had to
have reasons other than constitutional ones to ignore the Fourteenth Amendment,
(04:15):
and all six of them are clearly in the bag
for Trump presidential immunity in some form, but not for
Biden presidential immunity in any form Alito and Barrett and
Gorsich and Kavanaugh and Roberts and Thomas are crooks. We've
known that for a long time. And not only do
we need to find out now how crooked they are,
(04:35):
but we need to know if they and their masters
have left what these arrogant, condescending domestic conservative terrorists always
leave a trail a mile long. The attorney and analyst
Joyce Vant set a far less dramatic and maybe far
(04:56):
more effective than my default position of scorched earth idea.
She heard the same subtext to the Supreme Court hearing
last week. We're gonna help Trump. We just have to
figure out something to write that sounds like we're not
helping Trump. Her expectation aligns with my guests that they'll
send the case back to Tanya Chutkin with a phony
(05:17):
checklist that she must fill out of what might be
official duties deserving presidential immunity and what isn't deserving presidential immunity.
Vance suggests that to do what the corrupted Supreme Court
wants there, Judge Chutkin should have an evidentiary hearing on remand.
In other words, in Dvance's words, briefs, and even live
(05:40):
testimony where the government would get to lay out all
of its evidence against Trump. The House January sixth committee hearings,
she writes, grypt the nation. The Special Council, with access
to the powers of an investigative grand jury and the
possibility of more cooperating witnesses, would have an even larger
story to tell. In other words, no Trump trial for
(06:05):
subverting the election because of the Supreme Court subverted the
trial put him on trial in the court of opinion
before the election. Does this evidence about which senators Trump
called on January sixth deserve immunity? Jack, I don't know,
Tanya does it? Does this evidence of Trump demanding the
magnetometers be disabled before his speech so his militias could
(06:28):
bring machine guns to the Capitol? Does that deserve immunity?
Empty the damn evidence vault under oath and in his
newsletter off message, the impeccable Brian Boiler adds another layer.
If the court really does kneecap Jack Smith quote, Senate
Democrats could haul him before the Judiciary Committee to air
(06:52):
any information the public has a right to know. And
Boiler also adds one more dimension to something else I've
emphasized here any presidential immunity the Court might try to
invent for Trump would have to go for Biden. Bouler says, quote,
Biden could warn the Court, really the Republican justices, not
to contrive a new category of presidential immunity, official acts,
(07:14):
or otherwise by promising to exploit any new powers the
Court vests in him while he enjoys them. Unquote, I
love this. He also notes that there's a lot of
stuff and immunize Biden could do that would not fall
to Trump's levels, but would still remind the Court that
it does not run this country, no matter what sam
(07:35):
Alito thinks. To quote Boiler again, the Constitution gives the
president all kinds of non murderous powers that, if abused,
could nevertheless throw the Republic and Trump's best laid plans
into disarray. Biden could theoretically order Congress into session to
debate legislation to expand the Supreme Court. When the House
(07:58):
and Senate disagree, as they surely would, over when and
whether to adjourn the special session, Biden could then force
Congress in to adjournment indefinitely. It's right there in Article two.
He could leave Congress adjourned through the election, readjourn it
if necessary, and refuse to convene the House and Senate
again unless it certifies the winner of the national popular vote.
(08:21):
This would of course represent a flagrant violation of the
rules and the Constitution, and would plunge the nation into crisis,
but it would also be within the president's official powers
and thus presumably immune. I love that too. What these
ideas all underscore is that we, I mean all of
(08:43):
us who have a faint hope that there will be
representative government in this country a year from today. We
must stop assuming that being right about everything decides everything anymore,
if ever it did, and the Biden campaign is going
to have to stop assuming that the President being right
and good and Trump being the worst person in this
(09:03):
country's history is going to be enough. We need to
go on offense, and the goal has to be to
metaphorically got the bastard and to metaphorically got all the
other bastards in Trump's gang, as said by the character
of the Prime Minister in House of Cards, the good version,
(09:25):
we need to put a bit of stick about because
there is already political persecution in this country, and there
is already a two tier justice system. And if you
don't believe it, ask any woman needing reproductive health care
in a red state. Ask them if they are not
(09:45):
being persecuted. Ask Trump's lawyers who walked out of the
Supreme Court muttering to themselves, we made up this entirely
fictitious immunity bullshit based on absolutely nothing in the Constitution
and nothing in American history. And Alito and these other
assholes said, sure, whatever the point is, Liberals, democrats, and
(10:05):
women and minorities and constitutionalists and small R Republicans and
small D Democrats alike, and all non fascists have to
win the political persecution that began long ago in this
country against us. And we have to win the two
tiered justice system that has kept a political party that
(10:27):
should have been killed off by the demographics a quarter
century ago not just alive but in power despite an
ever shrinking minority. We have to metaphorically kill them and
eat them. We need a special counsel to investigate Supreme
Court corruption and at minimum have a Robert Hrr kind
(10:47):
of report with which to bonk them. We need a
court evidentiary hearing and a Senate panel into what Jack
Smith found we need Biden to warn the court, maybe
in a primetime speech that would be fun, that they
are playing with fire and wearing robes while they play
with fire. We need the Biden campaign to hire a
(11:10):
couple of Joyce Vance's and Brian Boutler's and the Supreme Court,
where they may be many things, but tough is not
one of them, would be a great place to start. Hell,
we've seen that asshole Kavanaugh under pressure. If we can
sweat them enough, he might even flip on the rest
(11:31):
of those dicks. I'm not sure if Trump's mental illness
(12:02):
has spread from speech problems to written problems, but something
is going on, something new. It could just be a
brief from a lawyer about more from I don't know,
Egene Carroll, or some other actual private legal action. Or
it could be that Trump is now so sick that
he is conflating the prosecutions in federal court in Florida
(12:24):
and Washington and state court in New York and Georgia
with lawsuits. Six fifteen yesterday morning, he writes, of all
of these ridiculous DC inspired lawsuits against me, drop the lawsuits,
the New York lawsuit, or as those of us who've
(12:45):
only sustained partial head injuries called the criminal trial resumes today,
and whatever is wrong with daddy evidence is that it
is hereditary. The dummer of his grown sons, Eric has
now joined Trump's fantasy that there are eleventy billion pro
Trump protesters out there being held back by sweating, heaving
(13:07):
New York cops. Quote. My father is drawing these massive
crowds at the New York trial. He isn't no crowds
at all. Moreover, the right wing fantasy that there are
barricades holding them back somewhere out of frame is wildly untrue.
I mean, you can't necessarily walk into the courthouse and
(13:29):
stop by and say hi to Donnie on the fifteenth floor.
But the blocks around the building are completely open. The
only disruptions now are on the highways when they dragged
Trump's ass to and from the courthouse Thursday. By the way,
hearing number two into Trump's gag order violations, and I'm
beginning to suspect that Justice Merchaan does not want to
(13:50):
do what the law tells him he must do. Also,
as the Trump hush money and election interference trial resumes,
or as he calls it, nap time, the Biden campaign
has finally found its template for going after Trump on
its social media yesterday, quote, Trump continues to sleep through
(14:14):
his Hailey voter problem. Brilliant and endlessly useful around the
Trump legal League, proving nobody learns anything. Ever. Rudy Giuliani
went on Real America's Voice yesterday and said that speaker
Mike Johnson and Jim Jordan should make all further Ukraine
aid dependent on I'll see if this sounds familiar. Quote,
(14:36):
somebody should lean on Zelensky. You want another penny, give
us your Biden file. Unquote. This is what happens when
you inject a liquid form of the viagra directly into
your own brain. Even Juliani's instinct to blackmail the man
who ended his political career goes into reruns. Meanwhile, another
(15:03):
version of Real America's Voice called One America News just
retracted its smear against Michael Cohen that it was he
who had the affair with Stormy Daniels. They were attracted
at just thirty three days after they smeared him. This
is a record. Hunter Biden apparently served noticed two weeks
ago that he intended to sue Fox over its endless
(15:25):
defamations of him, and they asked for more time to
I don't know, burn the records. I don't know, which
makes me circle back to investigations. Hunter Biden cannot sue
James Comer and Marjorie Trotsky Green over how they slandered
him in the house. But where is the Special council investigating?
(15:46):
Why what they said about him and what others said
about him matched sometimes word for word what Russian intelligence
disinformation said about him, and which all depended on an
expatriate Russian witness who says he was in indirect contact
with Russian intel and who that arrested for lying.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
To the FBI.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
It is absolutely possible that Jamie Comer and Midge Green
were maronic, dupe idiots. I mean, just look at them.
But once again, the Department of Justice has a big
budget and would be special councils apparently hang around headquarters
each morning like day workers and construction sites. Let's go,
(16:30):
I want seventy three special councils by the beginning of
next week. Now we know why the surge in twenty
twenty fake electors, investigations and indictments is happening. CNN found
out that Kenny the Cheese. Trump lawyer Ken Chesbro had
a burner account on Twitter didn't exactly tell the Attorney
(16:50):
General of Michigan, Dana Nessel about it, even though investigators
asked and he said no, and the answer actually was yes.
Behind the scenes, Nestl sued and got hundreds of files,
including his dms to and from Chesbro. Now, in addition
to everything else and whatever unfolds from this everywhere else,
(17:10):
Chesbro may also face charges of lying to the investigators
in Michigan. The indictments on this subject in Arizona are
so panoramic that they indicted State Senator Jake Hoffman just
as he was being elected a Republican National Committee member
for Arizona. And they indicted Trump attorney's spokesmodel Christina Bob
as she was being appointed senior counsel for the same
(17:33):
committee's election integrity team. As Morty the pathologist says to
Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And that's something metal of a drought and a water
commissioner drowns, and no cancelation yet from interviewer or interviewee.
But this.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Is how face the nation did on CBS Sunday. Join
us next week when we'll talk to South Dakota Republican
Governor Christy no about her new book, No Going Back. Oh,
there's still time for Nome to cancel, or the publicists
to cancel, or CBS to cancel, or CBS to make
(18:25):
it pay per view, or most appropriately, or CBS to
Lurenome into a gravel pit for the interview. There's also
the question of the book itself. It's being published by
Center Street, a conservative imprint of Hatchet, one of the
Big five publishers. It used to be Time Warner Books.
It still publishes Little Brown and many others. It may
(18:46):
want to bail out on this book before the boycott begins.
And as to Nome, a psychopathic sadist, I think I
said all I needed to say over the weekend on
social media about this monster, and thank you for all
of the kind words as I told the story of
my rescue mine and the moment he realized I was
now his human, and the transcendent affection of that, and
(19:10):
all of our time since that chance for some kind
of love like that that Gnome destroyed when she shot
poor Cricket. What matters now will be what happens when
Noome next tries to surface and do something anything that
is not about the fact that she murdered her daughter's
puppy because she failed to train it and she could
(19:32):
not be bothered to give it away to someone else
or to a rescue or to a shelter. I can
add only this two old found tweets. On September twenty
sixth of last year, someone tweeted a link to a
CNN story and added quote, Commander Biden bites another Secret
Service agent the eleventh known incident. No such thing as
(19:55):
a bad dog, just a bad owner unquote. Then two
months and nine days ago in February, another CNN link
and another subtweet, same account, Biden's dog commander bit Secret
Service personnel in at least twenty four incidents. Experts say
there are no bad dogs, just bad dog owners. I agree.
(20:18):
The author of both of these tweets, Corey Lewandowski. Corey Lewandowski,
as in per The New York Post, have last September fifteenth,
married Republican South Dakota Governor Christy Nome has engaged in
a year's long affair with longtime Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski.
(20:41):
Multiple sources told the Post Friday, quote it is our
task now to make certain that for the rest of
her life and may she live to be two hundred
and six, Christy Nome and everyone who supports her spends
every minute inside a metaphorical gravel pitch. Also of interest
(21:11):
here panic at the New York Times over the ag
Sealzburger Biden grudge story. And it's so bad that the
official statement from the Times denying it is anonymous. And yes,
if you were paying attention yesterday, you knew this was
going to happen. Guess who made the worst Person's list
(21:34):
thanks to Nancy Pelosi one of my exes. Now, can
you guess which one of my exes that's next? This
is Countdown.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
This is Countdown, with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Still ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. It
is rare when one person is the star of worse
persons in the world and things I promise not to tell,
and I used to live with them, and they get
killed daily on social media, and now they get killed
on their own newscast by another friend of mine who
used to be the Speaker.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Of the House ah Preservatives.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
But while it may not be Thursday, it is thurday
on things I promised not to tell coming up first,
still more new idiots to talk about, and there is
overlap the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning
Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
(23:02):
The bronze. I don't want to give this two Cindy Adams.
It was her birthday party, but a she's ninety four
years old, be given her career writing about celebrities. She's
a really dedicated reporter. She's taken the accuracy of her
stories way more seriously than anybody else in her field.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
And see she.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Called me up years ago and said, I just saw
your show for the first time. I think it's exactly
what our country needs right now. How can I help
you in my own silly way? So the bronze is
to whoever leaked this list of guests to New York Magazine.
Quote spotted at Cindy Adams's ninety fourth birthday party, Kathy Hochel,
(23:45):
Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams, Woody and Soon Yee, Al Sharpton,
Kelly Ann Conway, Heillo, Riley, Don Lemon, Robert Thompson, Keith Fool,
Al Sharpton, unquote, what was the title of that book,
the two twell people you meet when you Go to Hell,
(24:06):
was that it tell people even go Andrew Cuomo, O'Reilly,
Kelly and Conway, Jesus Cindy after they left. I hope
you counted the spoons. Also, why is al Sharpton listed twice?
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Are there?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Two?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Are Al Sharpton's? Are there?
Speaker 1 (24:25):
The runners up? Worser The New York Times. You may
recall that writer Peter Baker and an executive named Elizabeth
but Miller, and the publisher A. G. Selzburger all made
this last last Friday, after Politico's expos on Sealzburger's vendetta
against President Biden because he will not give The Times
a one on one exclusive, so bad that during a
(24:49):
one on one exclusive with Vice President Harris, he wasted
some of the time arguing with her to ask Biden
on the Times.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Behalf to do the interview pretty please.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
So bad that Politico quoted a Times journalist who said,
it is Sealzburger who responded to this by ordering the
newspaper to keep doing stories on Joe Biden's age until
he proves to them he's not too old by successfully
doing a good one on one with The Times. The quote,
it's ag he's the one who's pissed that Biden hasn't
(25:22):
done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting
on his age. Unquote. The Times has fallen apart over this.
Nobody is denying that. Sealzburger asked the Vice President, pretty
please get him to do the interview, Please please, please,
please don't let him do an interview with the Post
for God's sake. So or what if it's the Daily News,
the New York Daily News, we will have to go
(25:43):
out of business. I just made that part up. Nobody
is denying. The President went on with Howard Stern, though,
just to thumb his nose at The Times last week,
but this idea that the publisher ordered the negative coverage
and was intentionally or inadvertently helping Trump as a result.
As petulant revenge. On Sunday morning, Maggie Haberman posted a
(26:05):
seven tweet thread, each with a link to a Times
piece in which The Times had criticized Trump deportations. They'd
be bad, pulling out of NATO, that would be bad.
Prosecuting Biden problematic. It was clearly a response to the
political story on the weekend of the White House Correspondence Dinner,
(26:27):
no less and as a response to that, it's pretty
damn mediocre. We know Trump is bad. He says he
wants to be a dictator. He says he's going to
be bad to people. America needs the time to show
a little enthusiasm and burn Trump down like it helped
the Washington Post burn Richard Nixon down. Pretend not just
(26:49):
that our lives depend upon it, but just think maybe
your lives depend upon it, because your lives do depend
upon it. Two other reporters, Jonathan Swan and Peter Baker,
were sent out to defend the publisher personally. Peter Baker
texted a media reporter quote, I've never heard AG say
(27:10):
anything like that and can't imagine you ever would. Swan posted,
I have spoken to AG over the past year. Sorry,
he's Australian. I've spoken to Ig over the past year
about this topic. This caricature is unrecognizable. It's such a
BS mischaracterization of his views about the importance of serious
long form presidential interviews. Boys, I have bad news from
(27:34):
you for you. Rather, I have been personally talking to
bosses on the AG Sealzburger level. I mean owners, corporate chairman, founders,
the big guys. Since I went to work for Ted
Turner in nineteen eighty one. Emmelt Iiger the head of
Tribune Broadcasting, guys at CBS, dozens of presidents at NBC,
(27:59):
you name them. The higher up they are, the more
likely they are ever tell you the truth. Oh, they'll
talk to you, and they'll tell you to call them
by their first names, so you can say, I've never
heard Ag say anything like that, or I've never heard
Ted say anything like that, or you know, emmelt was
telling me, or you know. And while they're doing that,
(28:24):
they are telling your bosses, bosses, bosses, boss exactly what
to do and to have you do it. But the
real tell on how phony the Times issued on this
was their formal denial, the statement, it is true that
The Times has sought an on the record interview with
(28:45):
mister Biden, as it has done with all presidents going
back more than a century. If the President chooses not
to sit down with the Times because he dislikes our
independent coverage, that is his right, and we will continue
to cover him fully and fairly either way. By the way,
this sounds like the ag Sealzburger they talked about in
the Politic, Like he wrote this statement himself. It's petulant
(29:08):
and it's childish. However, in meetings with Vice President Harris
and other administration officials, the publisher of The Times focused
instead on a higher principle that systematically avoiding interviews and
questions for major news organizations doesn't just undermine an important
norm and also establishes a dangerous precedent that future presidents
can use to avoid scrutiny and accountability. That is why
(29:30):
mister Selzberger has repeatedly urged the White House blah blah
blah blah blah. The punchline is this issue of this
Time statement about accountability and scrutiny and principle and president
and journalism, and the New York Times statement about all
(29:54):
this is anonymous. It's attributed to a spokesperson. Nobody will
put their name on it. We're talking about journalistic hontability
in the Times is acting as a background source frauds
sell the team Sealzburger, but our winner. Here we go.
(30:18):
It's finally come to this. What could possibly top ag
Sealzburger and his personal grudge against the President of the
United States, so that he is tampering with news coverage
in the New York Times to favor a guy who
would burn The New York Times to the ground and
(30:38):
think he was being generous by asking everybody to leave
the building first. What could top Bat on the Worst
Person's List? What could ever in a million years top Bat.
It's finally come to this. Someone I lived with for
three years, with whom I remained good friends for eight years,
(31:02):
whose rent I paid for the year after we broke
up so she could keep going in her career and
not have to leave New York. Such good friends that
she asked me to write her book for her. I'll
go into length about that coming up. But it's Katie
Turr and she's jumped the shark. She trends an average
(31:25):
of once a week, maybe it's twice a week. We're
saying something ineffably stupid and biased and pro Trump on MSNBC.
It's like watching a football team lose every week for
five seasons in a row, with the same interception at
the same moment in the same fashion every week. And
(31:49):
yesterday the team she lost to was quarterbacked by Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Joe Biden is doing that created nine million jobs in
his tournament office. Donald Trump as the worst record of
job loss of any president. So we just have to
make sure people.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Know that was a global pandemic.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
She had the worst record of any president. We've had
other concerns in our country. If you want to be
an apologist for Donald Trump, that may be your role,
but it ain't mine.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And he has a word and we know, but may
just say, okay, See, the problem isn't that Nancy Pelosi
stuffed Katie Turr in a locker in her own locker
on her own TV show Live. And the problem isn't
even that Katie, whom Trump used to try to, you know,
get killed, has become what my friend, speaker Emereta Pelosi
(32:46):
called her just there, an apologist for Trump, and she has.
It's what Katie mumbled during that. I don't think anybody
can accuse me of that. Katie, I'm accusing you of
becoming an apologist for Donald Trump. While she was on
the trail covering Trump in two thousand sex six, nobody
did a better job covering Trump, and nobody. Nobody supported Katie,
(33:12):
nor defended Katie Nor advocated for Katie even within NBC
long after I left, still advocating for her in there.
Nobody did it more than I did, and she did
great and courageous work. And somehow since then she has
turned into an apologist for Donald Trump. I'll go into
(33:32):
why in the last segment. I have a theory. But
the point here is, isn't there anybody who cares enough
for her to tell her that it's not just Nancy
Pelosi or some random Democrat accusing her of that. It's everybody,
everybody every day. Only the only person who even cares
(33:58):
this much to tell her, yes, that's what you've become.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Get some help.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I'm the only one, and I can't stand her anymore
because she turned on me too. And I'm the only
one who's willing to say this other than five million
people on Twitter every day. The first measure of mental
health is can you correctly guess? Just more or less?
Can you correctly guess what all those around you think
(34:23):
of you and how they would describe you. And if
the former Speaker of the House accuses you of being
a Trump apologist and you say, I don't think anybody
can accuse me of that, and within minutes, you are
trending on Twitter and everybody is saying you are a
Trump apologist. Pelosi is right, you have not correctly guessed
what those around you think of you.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Katie.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
For God's sake, we'll never talk again in our lives,
and I'm fine with that. But you've lost the plot.
And worse yet, that little condescending snarl in your voice there.
To Nancy Pelosi, you sound like effing Harris Faulkner from Fox. Katie,
(35:06):
maybe that will wake her up ter today's worst person
in the world. More on Katie turn next. For a
(35:31):
year and a half after he came down that escalator,
Donald Trump tried to get Katie Urr killed, called her
out repeatedly at his campaign speeches, pointed her out to
his mobs sooner rather than later, they had to get
her Secret Service protection. Last Friday on MSNBC, Katie carried
(35:54):
so much water so quickly for Trump that she was
still trending for it on Saturday, and she was the
headline story on nearly every right wing propaganda website. Not good,
She insisted he was a legend in New York City.
Trump is synonymous with New York. She then posited that
there were no true victims in the business fraud case,
(36:17):
for which Trump must now pay three hundred and fifty
five million dollars in fines. She asked a panel of
startled guests, is this fair to go after Donald Trump
like this in this environment? Ah, don't know where to
begin here. I am beginning to suspect sort of late
(36:39):
blossoming Stockholm syndrome or blackmail maybe, or something else unknown
in this equation. When they asked Katie to go cover
Trump's announcement that he was running, she was working out
of NBC's London bureau and was only back here in
the city for a few days to meet her new
boss and stop buy and visit her old friends and me.
(37:02):
She told me she did not want anything to do
with American politics. She had gotten an interview with him.
When she eventually went to cover his announcement. He knew
that she and I had lived together in one of
his buildings. The interview was good, It was contentious in
many respects. It was the last solid interview anybody ever
did with Trump, and NBC immediately saw that and asked
(37:24):
her to cover his campaign full time, figuring it would
sput her out at some point, but that she had
access to him. She told me she didn't want anything
to do with that either, and I suggested that was
probably the wrong answer, and that I'd help her get
through it, that it could make her career. So off
she went. She would send me her NBC story scripts
(37:44):
to edit or rewrite for her, and as the threats
continued against her, I just tried to be supportive and reassuring.
I had broken up with her seven years earlier, but
we had parted at as friends. I had never had
any reason to doubt that would continue. And then one
day I attacked Kelly An Conway on Twitter. I know,
not a very high bar, but still, oh, I did it.
(38:06):
The next thing I know, I'm getting a text from
Katie Urr and then a phone call and she's really
angry at me, saying Conway called her up about what
I had tweeted, and that I needed to remember that
there were decent people on both sides and bad ones,
and everybody got threats and it was really inappropriate for
me to contribute to the quote dangers Kellyanne Conway faced,
(38:27):
I said something about, well, yeah, I'm sure there are
decent people on both sides. But she's not one of them.
I said to her, KellyAnn Conway, you're worried about about
Kelly and Conway. She's part of a gang that has
spent the last year trying to get you killed, killed,
not inconvenience, not fired, killed enough that the Secret Service
(38:51):
stepped in. Are you nuts?
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Well?
Speaker 1 (38:55):
It turned out Kelly and Conway was one of Katie's sources.
In fact, she might have been the main source for
the networks and the big newspapers during the two thousand
six sixteen campaign and beyond. Apparently she cannot stop talking.
But even so, Katie's attitude towards her and against me
was out of the blue and really offensive. Anyway, it passed,
(39:18):
and maybe two months later I got a text from
her at nine to fourteen PM on December eleven, twenty sixteen.
This is called having the receipts. Trump had won. Our
nightmare had begun, and Katie had gotten a book deal
about her experience. I'd been keeping a document in my
laptop with hundreds of pages of Trump stories and links
and commentaries that I used for the Resistance video series
(39:41):
for GQ. It was my Trump doc, and given that
Katie was writing that book. I'd offered to give her
a copy of it so she had something chronological to
use as research as she wrote her book because she
hadn't really been keeping notes, she'd just been trying not
to get killed. I still have her text. It reads,
do you still want to share your trump dock with me?
(40:02):
I joked back, sure, how much? And she joked back
ten twenty dollars. And while we were texting, I emailed
her the doc and I said, no charge, but don't
forget my one demand. Do not leave me out of
your acknowledgments in your book. More than a month later,
at two thirty five pm on Sunday, January twenty second,
twenty seventeen, I was just back from LA and I
(40:24):
had just done Bill Maher's show for the last time,
and Katie Tert texted me about why they had never
invited her to be on Bill Maher's show, and then
she switched topics, quote want to write this book? I
wrote back at five point thirty two, what You're not serious?
How would that work? That's when she phoned. She was
(40:45):
about to give the advanced money back to the publisher.
I can't write a book. I'm like fifty thousand words short,
and it's terrible.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
I'll give you.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Half the money. I'll give you more than half the money.
I pointed out to her that I had written or
rewritten dozens of her stories for NBC News and MSNBC,
and it was not a question of the money. It
was the question of what we could get away with.
No viewer and maybe only one producer in a million,
would ever notice that one sentence or one paragraph of
(41:13):
one script in her two minute report was actually written
by me or even sounded like me. First of all,
she was the one saying it each time I wrote
or re wrote in her name for NBC. It was
a fireable offense for her, but one that nobody would
ever think to look for, even though there is necessarily
an email trail ten miles long. But a book, a
(41:35):
book about Trump in my writing style, not hers in print.
I have a fairly distinct writing style, and I'm not
good at hiding it. Somebody would notice. Her publisher might
cancel it or even sue, or if it got published,
NBC might notice it and fire her. This was not
just a bad idea, I pointed out to her, and
(41:57):
very dubious ethically, but it stood an excellent chance of
destroying her career and maybe damaging mine. She said, oh,
And she told me she was going to talk it
over with her boyfriend Tony from CBS that night, and
her thought was to give back the advance and cancel
the book. And I said, did you think about a ghostwriter?
And she said, like who? And I said, I had
no idea. I tried to joke her out of these
(42:20):
grim prospects by reminding her that at least with a
several thousand dollars worth of research I gave her, I
had cut the price to no dollars and no sense.
And all I wanted was to not be left out
of the acknowledgments. The next thing I knew the book
had been published. She didn't give the money back. There
was not a paragraph of it that reads like the
(42:40):
rest of her writing, and the three years we lived
together is reduced to about four paragraphs in which she
tells the story of the day Kelly an Khan Job
called her to complain about me. The book dismissed me
as somebody she dated briefly in her twenties. I mean
(43:03):
I paid off her student loan, I rented an apartment
for her after we broke up for a year so
she could continue to work in this city and punchline
of all punchlines. Remember my one request to her, don't
leave me out of the acknowledgments. She left me out
of the acknowledgements. There were later problems. She talked me
(43:24):
out of doing an interview with the Washington Post that
wanted to interview me about her, saying she wasn't going
to participate in the story and it was sexist to
call her ex boyfriend, and she hoped I wouldn't do
it either, and I agreed it was sexist. Then the
article came out and she had done the interview for it,
and the article reads, her former boyfriend, Keith Olberman, refused
(43:45):
to comment for this article, and I look like a schmuck.
Then a month or two later, there's a New York
Times article about her and the book, and it says
I had refused the writer's request to comment to the Times.
And not only did nobody from the Times ever request
to comment, but I didn't even recognize the writer's name.
So I find it all her up and I say,
(44:05):
have we ever spoken before? And she says no. But
I asked Katie to ask you for a comment, and
she called me back and she said she'd spoken to
you and asked you to do the interview with me,
and you said no, and I said bad news. She
she never called me, the writer gasped. But the problems
at the times this is a subject of an entirely
different commentary. So that was the last time I had
(44:28):
any contact with Katie Chair. I told her that that
was it for the friendship. She said she was sorry,
she was a terrible person. I've done all the damage
(44:49):
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Count On
musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars,
bass and drums. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, produced
by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the MA
open compositions, were arranged and performed by the group No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from
(45:11):
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust,
the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is
my friend Stevie van Zant, and everything else was pretty
much my fault. So that's countdown for this the one
hundred and ninetieth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
(45:31):
the two hundred and eleventh day since Defendant Jay Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Use the fourteenth Amendment and the not regularly
given elector objection option. Use the insurrection at use the
justice system, use the mental health system to stop him
from doing it again while we still can. The next
(45:56):
scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bolton says, the news warrants till then,
I'm Keith Ulderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(46:27):
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. We
need a special council to investigate the six Conservatives on
(00:25):
the Supreme Court. We know Harlan Crowe spent thousands on
Clarence Thomas for what precise purpose. We know somebody paid
off Bret Kavanaugh's debts, who, when, why? We know Leonard
Leo's gang spent millions to put Gorsic and the others
in place. What did they get in return? We know
(00:47):
the Trump appointees all lied to the Senate and said
Roe v. Wade was settled law, then voted to overturn
it where they paid to do so indirectly, directly, we
know the Conservatives looked at the fourteenth Amendment, which states when, why,
and how to appeal disqualification from the ballot, and ignored
the Constitution anyway. To what end? We know those conservatives
(01:12):
have now signaled that they will countenance a coup or
presidentially ordered domestic assassinations or anything, so long as they
can pretend they were official acts by a president, and
so long as they don't have to rule until and
unless Trump is president again. What inducement could make even conservatives,
even conservative lawyers prostitute themselves in that way. And most
(01:37):
of all, we know that if the polarity was reversed,
if this were a Republican administration now, and that were
an utterly corrupt and criminal democratic president on trial and
a six ' three liberal Supreme Court impeding and slowing
and obstructing justice, we know what the Republican administration would do.
It would accuse the six liberal justices in public hourly
(02:01):
of corruption, and it would appoint a special council to
turn their lives upside down, and the lives of some
fictional liberal versions of Harlan Crowe and Leonard Leo and
hundreds of other people. We know this would be happening
right now. There would be a special Council prosecuting them today,
(02:26):
regardless of the consequences, regardless of the optics, regardless of
the blowback, regardless of the traditions, regardless of the date
on the electoral calendar. Because part of the reason Trump
and his minions and the Supreme Court are warning about
a political vortex in which every departing president will be
(02:46):
prosecuted by his successor is that the Conservatives are doing
what they always do. They are setting those mechanisms in
place to prosecute and marginalize and gerrymander and cheat against
Democrats and liberals and anybody who will stand in their way,
and then finding so high horse on which to jump,
(03:07):
and to suddenly claim that the process is sacrosanct, and
any action by any Democrat against any Republican is necessarily
partisan and wrong and against the Constitution and the founding fathers,
And now that they own the Supreme Court, it's also unconstitutional.
We need a special council appointed by the Department of
(03:30):
Justice to investigate the six conservative members of the Supreme
Court today, and Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow and the
entirety of the Federalist Society and the Claremont Institute, and
Russell Vote and Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, all of them.
(03:52):
Drag them through hell as fast as possible, well as
slowly as possible, because at least three Supreme Court justices
are perjurers, and five or six of them had to
have reasons other than constitutional ones to ignore the Fourteenth Amendment,
(04:15):
and all six of them are clearly in the bag
for Trump presidential immunity in some form, but not for
Biden presidential immunity in any form Alito and Barrett and
Gorsich and Kavanaugh and Roberts and Thomas are crooks. We've
known that for a long time. And not only do
we need to find out now how crooked they are,
(04:35):
but we need to know if they and their masters
have left what these arrogant, condescending domestic conservative terrorists always
leave a trail a mile long. The attorney and analyst
Joyce Vant set a far less dramatic and maybe far
(04:56):
more effective than my default position of scorched earth idea.
She heard the same subtext to the Supreme Court hearing
last week. We're gonna help Trump. We just have to
figure out something to write that sounds like we're not
helping Trump. Her expectation aligns with my guests that they'll
send the case back to Tanya Chutkin with a phony
(05:17):
checklist that she must fill out of what might be
official duties deserving presidential immunity and what isn't deserving presidential immunity.
Vance suggests that to do what the corrupted Supreme Court
wants there, Judge Chutkin should have an evidentiary hearing on remand.
In other words, in Dvance's words, briefs, and even live
(05:40):
testimony where the government would get to lay out all
of its evidence against Trump. The House January sixth committee hearings,
she writes, grypt the nation. The Special Council, with access
to the powers of an investigative grand jury and the
possibility of more cooperating witnesses, would have an even larger
story to tell. In other words, no Trump trial for
(06:05):
subverting the election because of the Supreme Court subverted the
trial put him on trial in the court of opinion
before the election. Does this evidence about which senators Trump
called on January sixth deserve immunity? Jack, I don't know,
Tanya does it? Does this evidence of Trump demanding the
magnetometers be disabled before his speech so his militias could
(06:28):
bring machine guns to the Capitol? Does that deserve immunity?
Empty the damn evidence vault under oath and in his
newsletter off message, the impeccable Brian Boiler adds another layer.
If the court really does kneecap Jack Smith quote, Senate
Democrats could haul him before the Judiciary Committee to air
(06:52):
any information the public has a right to know. And
Boiler also adds one more dimension to something else I've
emphasized here any presidential immunity the Court might try to
invent for Trump would have to go for Biden. Bouler says, quote,
Biden could warn the Court, really the Republican justices, not
to contrive a new category of presidential immunity, official acts,
(07:14):
or otherwise by promising to exploit any new powers the
Court vests in him while he enjoys them. Unquote, I
love this. He also notes that there's a lot of
stuff and immunize Biden could do that would not fall
to Trump's levels, but would still remind the Court that
it does not run this country, no matter what sam
(07:35):
Alito thinks. To quote Boiler again, the Constitution gives the
president all kinds of non murderous powers that, if abused,
could nevertheless throw the Republic and Trump's best laid plans
into disarray. Biden could theoretically order Congress into session to
debate legislation to expand the Supreme Court. When the House
(07:58):
and Senate disagree, as they surely would, over when and
whether to adjourn the special session, Biden could then force
Congress in to adjournment indefinitely. It's right there in Article two.
He could leave Congress adjourned through the election, readjourn it
if necessary, and refuse to convene the House and Senate
again unless it certifies the winner of the national popular vote.
(08:21):
This would of course represent a flagrant violation of the
rules and the Constitution, and would plunge the nation into crisis,
but it would also be within the president's official powers
and thus presumably immune. I love that too. What these
ideas all underscore is that we, I mean all of
(08:43):
us who have a faint hope that there will be
representative government in this country a year from today. We
must stop assuming that being right about everything decides everything anymore,
if ever it did, and the Biden campaign is going
to have to stop assuming that the President being right
and good and Trump being the worst person in this
(09:03):
country's history is going to be enough. We need to
go on offense, and the goal has to be to
metaphorically got the bastard and to metaphorically got all the
other bastards in Trump's gang, as said by the character
of the Prime Minister in House of Cards, the good version,
(09:25):
we need to put a bit of stick about because
there is already political persecution in this country, and there
is already a two tier justice system. And if you
don't believe it, ask any woman needing reproductive health care
in a red state. Ask them if they are not
(09:45):
being persecuted. Ask Trump's lawyers who walked out of the
Supreme Court muttering to themselves, we made up this entirely
fictitious immunity bullshit based on absolutely nothing in the Constitution
and nothing in American history. And Alito and these other
assholes said, sure, whatever the point is, Liberals, democrats, and
(10:05):
women and minorities and constitutionalists and small R Republicans and
small D Democrats alike, and all non fascists have to
win the political persecution that began long ago in this
country against us. And we have to win the two
tiered justice system that has kept a political party that
(10:27):
should have been killed off by the demographics a quarter
century ago not just alive but in power despite an
ever shrinking minority. We have to metaphorically kill them and
eat them. We need a special counsel to investigate Supreme
Court corruption and at minimum have a Robert Hrr kind
(10:47):
of report with which to bonk them. We need a
court evidentiary hearing and a Senate panel into what Jack
Smith found we need Biden to warn the court, maybe
in a primetime speech that would be fun, that they
are playing with fire and wearing robes while they play
with fire. We need the Biden campaign to hire a
(11:10):
couple of Joyce Vance's and Brian Boutler's and the Supreme Court,
where they may be many things, but tough is not
one of them, would be a great place to start. Hell,
we've seen that asshole Kavanaugh under pressure. If we can
sweat them enough, he might even flip on the rest
(11:31):
of those dicks. I'm not sure if Trump's mental illness
(12:02):
has spread from speech problems to written problems, but something
is going on, something new. It could just be a
brief from a lawyer about more from I don't know,
Egene Carroll, or some other actual private legal action. Or
it could be that Trump is now so sick that
he is conflating the prosecutions in federal court in Florida
(12:24):
and Washington and state court in New York and Georgia
with lawsuits. Six fifteen yesterday morning, he writes, of all
of these ridiculous DC inspired lawsuits against me, drop the lawsuits,
the New York lawsuit, or as those of us who've
(12:45):
only sustained partial head injuries called the criminal trial resumes today,
and whatever is wrong with daddy evidence is that it
is hereditary. The dummer of his grown sons, Eric has
now joined Trump's fantasy that there are eleventy billion pro
Trump protesters out there being held back by sweating, heaving
(13:07):
New York cops. Quote. My father is drawing these massive
crowds at the New York trial. He isn't no crowds
at all. Moreover, the right wing fantasy that there are
barricades holding them back somewhere out of frame is wildly untrue.
I mean, you can't necessarily walk into the courthouse and
(13:29):
stop by and say hi to Donnie on the fifteenth floor.
But the blocks around the building are completely open. The
only disruptions now are on the highways when they dragged
Trump's ass to and from the courthouse Thursday. By the way,
hearing number two into Trump's gag order violations, and I'm
beginning to suspect that Justice Merchaan does not want to
(13:50):
do what the law tells him he must do. Also,
as the Trump hush money and election interference trial resumes,
or as he calls it, nap time, the Biden campaign
has finally found its template for going after Trump on
its social media yesterday, quote, Trump continues to sleep through
(14:14):
his Hailey voter problem. Brilliant and endlessly useful around the
Trump legal League, proving nobody learns anything. Ever. Rudy Giuliani
went on Real America's Voice yesterday and said that speaker
Mike Johnson and Jim Jordan should make all further Ukraine
aid dependent on I'll see if this sounds familiar. Quote,
(14:36):
somebody should lean on Zelensky. You want another penny, give
us your Biden file. Unquote. This is what happens when
you inject a liquid form of the viagra directly into
your own brain. Even Juliani's instinct to blackmail the man
who ended his political career goes into reruns. Meanwhile, another
(15:03):
version of Real America's Voice called One America News just
retracted its smear against Michael Cohen that it was he
who had the affair with Stormy Daniels. They were attracted
at just thirty three days after they smeared him. This
is a record. Hunter Biden apparently served noticed two weeks
ago that he intended to sue Fox over its endless
(15:25):
defamations of him, and they asked for more time to
I don't know, burn the records. I don't know, which
makes me circle back to investigations. Hunter Biden cannot sue
James Comer and Marjorie Trotsky Green over how they slandered
him in the house. But where is the Special council investigating?
(15:46):
Why what they said about him and what others said
about him matched sometimes word for word what Russian intelligence
disinformation said about him, and which all depended on an
expatriate Russian witness who says he was in indirect contact
with Russian intel and who that arrested for lying.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
To the FBI.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
It is absolutely possible that Jamie Comer and Midge Green
were maronic, dupe idiots. I mean, just look at them.
But once again, the Department of Justice has a big
budget and would be special councils apparently hang around headquarters
each morning like day workers and construction sites. Let's go,
(16:30):
I want seventy three special councils by the beginning of
next week. Now we know why the surge in twenty
twenty fake electors, investigations and indictments is happening. CNN found
out that Kenny the Cheese. Trump lawyer Ken Chesbro had
a burner account on Twitter didn't exactly tell the Attorney
(16:50):
General of Michigan, Dana Nessel about it, even though investigators
asked and he said no, and the answer actually was yes.
Behind the scenes, Nestl sued and got hundreds of files,
including his dms to and from Chesbro. Now, in addition
to everything else and whatever unfolds from this everywhere else,
(17:10):
Chesbro may also face charges of lying to the investigators
in Michigan. The indictments on this subject in Arizona are
so panoramic that they indicted State Senator Jake Hoffman just
as he was being elected a Republican National Committee member
for Arizona. And they indicted Trump attorney's spokesmodel Christina Bob
as she was being appointed senior counsel for the same
(17:33):
committee's election integrity team. As Morty the pathologist says to
Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And that's something metal of a drought and a water
commissioner drowns, and no cancelation yet from interviewer or interviewee.
But this.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Is how face the nation did on CBS Sunday. Join
us next week when we'll talk to South Dakota Republican
Governor Christy no about her new book, No Going Back. Oh,
there's still time for Nome to cancel, or the publicists
to cancel, or CBS to cancel, or CBS to make
(18:25):
it pay per view, or most appropriately, or CBS to
Lurenome into a gravel pit for the interview. There's also
the question of the book itself. It's being published by
Center Street, a conservative imprint of Hatchet, one of the
Big five publishers. It used to be Time Warner Books.
It still publishes Little Brown and many others. It may
(18:46):
want to bail out on this book before the boycott begins.
And as to Nome, a psychopathic sadist, I think I
said all I needed to say over the weekend on
social media about this monster, and thank you for all
of the kind words as I told the story of
my rescue mine and the moment he realized I was
now his human, and the transcendent affection of that, and
(19:10):
all of our time since that chance for some kind
of love like that that Gnome destroyed when she shot
poor Cricket. What matters now will be what happens when
Noome next tries to surface and do something anything that
is not about the fact that she murdered her daughter's
puppy because she failed to train it and she could
(19:32):
not be bothered to give it away to someone else
or to a rescue or to a shelter. I can
add only this two old found tweets. On September twenty
sixth of last year, someone tweeted a link to a
CNN story and added quote, Commander Biden bites another Secret
Service agent the eleventh known incident. No such thing as
(19:55):
a bad dog, just a bad owner unquote. Then two
months and nine days ago in February, another CNN link
and another subtweet, same account, Biden's dog commander bit Secret
Service personnel in at least twenty four incidents. Experts say
there are no bad dogs, just bad dog owners. I agree.
(20:18):
The author of both of these tweets, Corey Lewandowski. Corey Lewandowski,
as in per The New York Post, have last September fifteenth,
married Republican South Dakota Governor Christy Nome has engaged in
a year's long affair with longtime Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski.
(20:41):
Multiple sources told the Post Friday, quote it is our
task now to make certain that for the rest of
her life and may she live to be two hundred
and six, Christy Nome and everyone who supports her spends
every minute inside a metaphorical gravel pitch. Also of interest
(21:11):
here panic at the New York Times over the ag
Sealzburger Biden grudge story. And it's so bad that the
official statement from the Times denying it is anonymous. And yes,
if you were paying attention yesterday, you knew this was
going to happen. Guess who made the worst Person's list
(21:34):
thanks to Nancy Pelosi one of my exes. Now, can
you guess which one of my exes that's next? This
is Countdown.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
This is Countdown, with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Still ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. It
is rare when one person is the star of worse
persons in the world and things I promise not to tell,
and I used to live with them, and they get
killed daily on social media, and now they get killed
on their own newscast by another friend of mine who
used to be the Speaker.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Of the House ah Preservatives.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
But while it may not be Thursday, it is thurday
on things I promised not to tell coming up first,
still more new idiots to talk about, and there is
overlap the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning
Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world.
(23:02):
The bronze. I don't want to give this two Cindy Adams.
It was her birthday party, but a she's ninety four
years old, be given her career writing about celebrities. She's
a really dedicated reporter. She's taken the accuracy of her
stories way more seriously than anybody else in her field.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
And see she.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Called me up years ago and said, I just saw
your show for the first time. I think it's exactly
what our country needs right now. How can I help
you in my own silly way? So the bronze is
to whoever leaked this list of guests to New York Magazine.
Quote spotted at Cindy Adams's ninety fourth birthday party, Kathy Hochel,
(23:45):
Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams, Woody and Soon Yee, Al Sharpton,
Kelly Ann Conway, Heillo, Riley, Don Lemon, Robert Thompson, Keith Fool,
Al Sharpton, unquote, what was the title of that book,
the two twell people you meet when you Go to Hell,
(24:06):
was that it tell people even go Andrew Cuomo, O'Reilly,
Kelly and Conway, Jesus Cindy after they left. I hope
you counted the spoons. Also, why is al Sharpton listed twice?
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Are there?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Two?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Are Al Sharpton's? Are there?
Speaker 1 (24:25):
The runners up? Worser The New York Times. You may
recall that writer Peter Baker and an executive named Elizabeth
but Miller, and the publisher A. G. Selzburger all made
this last last Friday, after Politico's expos on Sealzburger's vendetta
against President Biden because he will not give The Times
a one on one exclusive, so bad that during a
(24:49):
one on one exclusive with Vice President Harris, he wasted
some of the time arguing with her to ask Biden
on the Times.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Behalf to do the interview pretty please.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
So bad that Politico quoted a Times journalist who said,
it is Sealzburger who responded to this by ordering the
newspaper to keep doing stories on Joe Biden's age until
he proves to them he's not too old by successfully
doing a good one on one with The Times. The quote,
it's ag he's the one who's pissed that Biden hasn't
(25:22):
done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting
on his age. Unquote. The Times has fallen apart over this.
Nobody is denying that. Sealzburger asked the Vice President, pretty
please get him to do the interview, Please please, please,
please don't let him do an interview with the Post
for God's sake. So or what if it's the Daily News,
the New York Daily News, we will have to go
(25:43):
out of business. I just made that part up. Nobody
is denying. The President went on with Howard Stern, though,
just to thumb his nose at The Times last week,
but this idea that the publisher ordered the negative coverage
and was intentionally or inadvertently helping Trump as a result.
As petulant revenge. On Sunday morning, Maggie Haberman posted a
(26:05):
seven tweet thread, each with a link to a Times
piece in which The Times had criticized Trump deportations. They'd
be bad, pulling out of NATO, that would be bad.
Prosecuting Biden problematic. It was clearly a response to the
political story on the weekend of the White House Correspondence Dinner,
(26:27):
no less and as a response to that, it's pretty
damn mediocre. We know Trump is bad. He says he
wants to be a dictator. He says he's going to
be bad to people. America needs the time to show
a little enthusiasm and burn Trump down like it helped
the Washington Post burn Richard Nixon down. Pretend not just
(26:49):
that our lives depend upon it, but just think maybe
your lives depend upon it, because your lives do depend
upon it. Two other reporters, Jonathan Swan and Peter Baker,
were sent out to defend the publisher personally. Peter Baker
texted a media reporter quote, I've never heard AG say
(27:10):
anything like that and can't imagine you ever would. Swan posted,
I have spoken to AG over the past year. Sorry,
he's Australian. I've spoken to Ig over the past year
about this topic. This caricature is unrecognizable. It's such a
BS mischaracterization of his views about the importance of serious
long form presidential interviews. Boys, I have bad news from
(27:34):
you for you. Rather, I have been personally talking to
bosses on the AG Sealzburger level. I mean owners, corporate chairman, founders,
the big guys. Since I went to work for Ted
Turner in nineteen eighty one. Emmelt Iiger the head of
Tribune Broadcasting, guys at CBS, dozens of presidents at NBC,
(27:59):
you name them. The higher up they are, the more
likely they are ever tell you the truth. Oh, they'll
talk to you, and they'll tell you to call them
by their first names, so you can say, I've never
heard Ag say anything like that, or I've never heard
Ted say anything like that, or you know, emmelt was
telling me, or you know. And while they're doing that,
(28:24):
they are telling your bosses, bosses, bosses, boss exactly what
to do and to have you do it. But the
real tell on how phony the Times issued on this
was their formal denial, the statement, it is true that
The Times has sought an on the record interview with
(28:45):
mister Biden, as it has done with all presidents going
back more than a century. If the President chooses not
to sit down with the Times because he dislikes our
independent coverage, that is his right, and we will continue
to cover him fully and fairly either way. By the way,
this sounds like the ag Sealzburger they talked about in
the Politic, Like he wrote this statement himself. It's petulant
(29:08):
and it's childish. However, in meetings with Vice President Harris
and other administration officials, the publisher of The Times focused
instead on a higher principle that systematically avoiding interviews and
questions for major news organizations doesn't just undermine an important
norm and also establishes a dangerous precedent that future presidents
can use to avoid scrutiny and accountability. That is why
(29:30):
mister Selzberger has repeatedly urged the White House blah blah
blah blah blah. The punchline is this issue of this
Time statement about accountability and scrutiny and principle and president
and journalism, and the New York Times statement about all
(29:54):
this is anonymous. It's attributed to a spokesperson. Nobody will
put their name on it. We're talking about journalistic hontability
in the Times is acting as a background source frauds
sell the team Sealzburger, but our winner. Here we go.
(30:18):
It's finally come to this. What could possibly top ag
Sealzburger and his personal grudge against the President of the
United States, so that he is tampering with news coverage
in the New York Times to favor a guy who
would burn The New York Times to the ground and
(30:38):
think he was being generous by asking everybody to leave
the building first. What could top Bat on the Worst
Person's List? What could ever in a million years top Bat.
It's finally come to this. Someone I lived with for
three years, with whom I remained good friends for eight years,
(31:02):
whose rent I paid for the year after we broke
up so she could keep going in her career and
not have to leave New York. Such good friends that
she asked me to write her book for her. I'll
go into length about that coming up. But it's Katie
Turr and she's jumped the shark. She trends an average
(31:25):
of once a week, maybe it's twice a week. We're
saying something ineffably stupid and biased and pro Trump on MSNBC.
It's like watching a football team lose every week for
five seasons in a row, with the same interception at
the same moment in the same fashion every week. And
(31:49):
yesterday the team she lost to was quarterbacked by Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Joe Biden is doing that created nine million jobs in
his tournament office. Donald Trump as the worst record of
job loss of any president. So we just have to
make sure people.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Know that was a global pandemic.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
She had the worst record of any president. We've had
other concerns in our country. If you want to be
an apologist for Donald Trump, that may be your role,
but it ain't mine.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And he has a word and we know, but may
just say, okay, See, the problem isn't that Nancy Pelosi
stuffed Katie Turr in a locker in her own locker
on her own TV show Live. And the problem isn't
even that Katie, whom Trump used to try to, you know,
get killed, has become what my friend, speaker Emereta Pelosi
(32:46):
called her just there, an apologist for Trump, and she has.
It's what Katie mumbled during that. I don't think anybody
can accuse me of that. Katie, I'm accusing you of
becoming an apologist for Donald Trump. While she was on
the trail covering Trump in two thousand sex six, nobody
did a better job covering Trump, and nobody. Nobody supported Katie,
(33:12):
nor defended Katie Nor advocated for Katie even within NBC
long after I left, still advocating for her in there.
Nobody did it more than I did, and she did
great and courageous work. And somehow since then she has
turned into an apologist for Donald Trump. I'll go into
(33:32):
why in the last segment. I have a theory. But
the point here is, isn't there anybody who cares enough
for her to tell her that it's not just Nancy
Pelosi or some random Democrat accusing her of that. It's everybody,
everybody every day. Only the only person who even cares
(33:58):
this much to tell her, yes, that's what you've become.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Get some help.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I'm the only one, and I can't stand her anymore
because she turned on me too. And I'm the only
one who's willing to say this other than five million
people on Twitter every day. The first measure of mental
health is can you correctly guess? Just more or less?
Can you correctly guess what all those around you think
(34:23):
of you and how they would describe you. And if
the former Speaker of the House accuses you of being
a Trump apologist and you say, I don't think anybody
can accuse me of that, and within minutes, you are
trending on Twitter and everybody is saying you are a
Trump apologist. Pelosi is right, you have not correctly guessed
what those around you think of you.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Katie.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
For God's sake, we'll never talk again in our lives,
and I'm fine with that. But you've lost the plot.
And worse yet, that little condescending snarl in your voice there.
To Nancy Pelosi, you sound like effing Harris Faulkner from Fox. Katie,
(35:06):
maybe that will wake her up ter today's worst person
in the world. More on Katie turn next. For a
(35:31):
year and a half after he came down that escalator,
Donald Trump tried to get Katie Urr killed, called her
out repeatedly at his campaign speeches, pointed her out to
his mobs sooner rather than later, they had to get
her Secret Service protection. Last Friday on MSNBC, Katie carried
(35:54):
so much water so quickly for Trump that she was
still trending for it on Saturday, and she was the
headline story on nearly every right wing propaganda website. Not good,
She insisted he was a legend in New York City.
Trump is synonymous with New York. She then posited that
there were no true victims in the business fraud case,
(36:17):
for which Trump must now pay three hundred and fifty
five million dollars in fines. She asked a panel of
startled guests, is this fair to go after Donald Trump
like this in this environment? Ah, don't know where to
begin here. I am beginning to suspect sort of late
(36:39):
blossoming Stockholm syndrome or blackmail maybe, or something else unknown
in this equation. When they asked Katie to go cover
Trump's announcement that he was running, she was working out
of NBC's London bureau and was only back here in
the city for a few days to meet her new
boss and stop buy and visit her old friends and me.
(37:02):
She told me she did not want anything to do
with American politics. She had gotten an interview with him.
When she eventually went to cover his announcement. He knew
that she and I had lived together in one of
his buildings. The interview was good, It was contentious in
many respects. It was the last solid interview anybody ever
did with Trump, and NBC immediately saw that and asked
(37:24):
her to cover his campaign full time, figuring it would
sput her out at some point, but that she had
access to him. She told me she didn't want anything
to do with that either, and I suggested that was
probably the wrong answer, and that I'd help her get
through it, that it could make her career. So off
she went. She would send me her NBC story scripts
(37:44):
to edit or rewrite for her, and as the threats
continued against her, I just tried to be supportive and reassuring.
I had broken up with her seven years earlier, but
we had parted at as friends. I had never had
any reason to doubt that would continue. And then one
day I attacked Kelly An Conway on Twitter. I know,
not a very high bar, but still, oh, I did it.
(38:06):
The next thing I know, I'm getting a text from
Katie Urr and then a phone call and she's really
angry at me, saying Conway called her up about what
I had tweeted, and that I needed to remember that
there were decent people on both sides and bad ones,
and everybody got threats and it was really inappropriate for
me to contribute to the quote dangers Kellyanne Conway faced,
(38:27):
I said something about, well, yeah, I'm sure there are
decent people on both sides. But she's not one of them.
I said to her, KellyAnn Conway, you're worried about about
Kelly and Conway. She's part of a gang that has
spent the last year trying to get you killed, killed,
not inconvenience, not fired, killed enough that the Secret Service
(38:51):
stepped in. Are you nuts?
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Well?
Speaker 1 (38:55):
It turned out Kelly and Conway was one of Katie's sources.
In fact, she might have been the main source for
the networks and the big newspapers during the two thousand
six sixteen campaign and beyond. Apparently she cannot stop talking.
But even so, Katie's attitude towards her and against me
was out of the blue and really offensive. Anyway, it passed,
(39:18):
and maybe two months later I got a text from
her at nine to fourteen PM on December eleven, twenty sixteen.
This is called having the receipts. Trump had won. Our
nightmare had begun, and Katie had gotten a book deal
about her experience. I'd been keeping a document in my
laptop with hundreds of pages of Trump stories and links
and commentaries that I used for the Resistance video series
(39:41):
for GQ. It was my Trump doc, and given that
Katie was writing that book. I'd offered to give her
a copy of it so she had something chronological to
use as research as she wrote her book because she
hadn't really been keeping notes, she'd just been trying not
to get killed. I still have her text. It reads,
do you still want to share your trump dock with me?
(40:02):
I joked back, sure, how much? And she joked back
ten twenty dollars. And while we were texting, I emailed
her the doc and I said, no charge, but don't
forget my one demand. Do not leave me out of
your acknowledgments in your book. More than a month later,
at two thirty five pm on Sunday, January twenty second,
twenty seventeen, I was just back from LA and I
(40:24):
had just done Bill Maher's show for the last time,
and Katie Tert texted me about why they had never
invited her to be on Bill Maher's show, and then
she switched topics, quote want to write this book? I
wrote back at five point thirty two, what You're not serious?
How would that work? That's when she phoned. She was
(40:45):
about to give the advanced money back to the publisher.
I can't write a book. I'm like fifty thousand words short,
and it's terrible.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
I'll give you.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Half the money. I'll give you more than half the money.
I pointed out to her that I had written or
rewritten dozens of her stories for NBC News and MSNBC,
and it was not a question of the money. It
was the question of what we could get away with.
No viewer and maybe only one producer in a million,
would ever notice that one sentence or one paragraph of
(41:13):
one script in her two minute report was actually written
by me or even sounded like me. First of all,
she was the one saying it each time I wrote
or re wrote in her name for NBC. It was
a fireable offense for her, but one that nobody would
ever think to look for, even though there is necessarily
an email trail ten miles long. But a book, a
(41:35):
book about Trump in my writing style, not hers in print.
I have a fairly distinct writing style, and I'm not
good at hiding it. Somebody would notice. Her publisher might
cancel it or even sue, or if it got published,
NBC might notice it and fire her. This was not
just a bad idea, I pointed out to her, and
(41:57):
very dubious ethically, but it stood an excellent chance of
destroying her career and maybe damaging mine. She said, oh,
And she told me she was going to talk it
over with her boyfriend Tony from CBS that night, and
her thought was to give back the advance and cancel
the book. And I said, did you think about a ghostwriter?
And she said, like who? And I said, I had
no idea. I tried to joke her out of these
(42:20):
grim prospects by reminding her that at least with a
several thousand dollars worth of research I gave her, I
had cut the price to no dollars and no sense.
And all I wanted was to not be left out
of the acknowledgments. The next thing I knew the book
had been published. She didn't give the money back. There
was not a paragraph of it that reads like the
(42:40):
rest of her writing, and the three years we lived
together is reduced to about four paragraphs in which she
tells the story of the day Kelly an Khan Job
called her to complain about me. The book dismissed me
as somebody she dated briefly in her twenties. I mean
(43:03):
I paid off her student loan, I rented an apartment
for her after we broke up for a year so
she could continue to work in this city and punchline
of all punchlines. Remember my one request to her, don't
leave me out of the acknowledgments. She left me out
of the acknowledgements. There were later problems. She talked me
(43:24):
out of doing an interview with the Washington Post that
wanted to interview me about her, saying she wasn't going
to participate in the story and it was sexist to
call her ex boyfriend, and she hoped I wouldn't do
it either, and I agreed it was sexist. Then the
article came out and she had done the interview for it,
and the article reads, her former boyfriend, Keith Olberman, refused
(43:45):
to comment for this article, and I look like a schmuck.
Then a month or two later, there's a New York
Times article about her and the book, and it says
I had refused the writer's request to comment to the Times.
And not only did nobody from the Times ever request
to comment, but I didn't even recognize the writer's name.
So I find it all her up and I say,
(44:05):
have we ever spoken before? And she says no. But
I asked Katie to ask you for a comment, and
she called me back and she said she'd spoken to
you and asked you to do the interview with me,
and you said no, and I said bad news. She
she never called me, the writer gasped. But the problems
at the times this is a subject of an entirely
different commentary. So that was the last time I had
(44:28):
any contact with Katie Chair. I told her that that
was it for the friendship. She said she was sorry,
she was a terrible person. I've done all the damage
(44:49):
I can do here. Thank you for listening. Count On
musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars,
bass and drums. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, produced
by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the MA
open compositions, were arranged and performed by the group No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from
(45:11):
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust,
the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is
my friend Stevie van Zant, and everything else was pretty
much my fault. So that's countdown for this the one
hundred and ninetieth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
(45:31):
the two hundred and eleventh day since Defendant Jay Trump's
first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Use the fourteenth Amendment and the not regularly
given elector objection option. Use the insurrection at use the
justice system, use the mental health system to stop him
from doing it again while we still can. The next
(45:56):
scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bolton says, the news warrants till then,
I'm Keith Ulderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(46:27):
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