March 24, 2025 • 57 mins
SEASON 3 EPISODE 112: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Give me liberty or give me death. Patrick Henry said it 250 years ago yesterday, to galvanize Americans against the tyranny growing around them brought by an insane dictator-king. Not whatever was manifesting near St. John’s Church in Richmond where the Second Virginia Convention was meeting; not what threatened them individually; not what was at their door, but what they knew WOULD be at their door soon or late because it was already inside the homes of their fellow Americans in far off Boston.
Give me liberty or give me death - because whether or not the tyrant is here for US now, he is here for our brothers and sisters. He will be here for us soon enough.
And what would OUR Patrick Henry have said on March 23rd, 2025?
Give me liberty or give me… a free 12-ounce coffee with the purchase of a dozen donuts while supplies last at participating outlets.
Add Columbia University, my alma mater Cornell and a major Democratic-heavy law firm to the list of those who when the chips were down saved themselves and told the rest of us to drop dead. The list already , the American news media, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party (save for AOC and Bernie), the former presidents, the laws, the courts, the Supreme Court, and every supposed guardrail you can think of
It's not just that democracy is being raped by Trump.
It's that we're standing around shrugging.
And as soon as Columbia caved, Trump decided to Disappear a Cornell student. As soon as Paul, Weiss collapsed, Pam Bondi was sicced on all firms supplying lawyers to deportees or suing Trump.
Give me liberty or give me up to 30 percent off on rooms at select Disney Resort Hotels when I stay five nights or longer.
B-Block (33:15) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Trump again threatens MSNBC and NBC, saying MSNBC (and CNN) "will be turned off." A week ago he declared them "illegal." Do not misunderstand him. He means it. And I suspect since it's a month since MSNBC fired Joy Reid and the other anchors of color, NBC is going to through someone or something out the MSNBC window, and that right soon.
C-Block (54:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: How unpopular is Wayne Gretzky in Canada? They smeared feces on the statue of him outside the Edmonton hockey arena. New York's Mayor may have Trump but he also has raised $36,000 this year. And while celebrating the demise of the Department of Education, Musk misspelled "Department."
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 iHeartRadio. Give
Me Liberty or Give Me Death. Patrick Henry said that
(00:27):
two hundred and fifty years ago, yesterday, to galvanize Americans
against the tyranny growing around them, brought by an insane
dictator king, not whatever was manifesting near Saint John's Church
in Richmond, where the Second Virginia Convention he was addressing
was meeting, Not what threatened them individually, not what was
(00:48):
at their door, but what they knew would be at
their door soon or late, because it was already inside
the homes of their fellow Americans in far off Boston.
Give me Liberty or give me death, because whether or not,
the tyrant is here for us now, he is here
(01:10):
already for our brothers and sisters. He will be here
for us soon enough, and soon the Virginia Militia embroidered
their battle shirts with Liberty or Death, and soon an
entirely new concept. Americans had destroyed those who intended to
(01:30):
enslave them, and they had won a liberty that lasted
two hundred and fifty years, well nearly closer to what
twenty twenty five minus eight two one hundred and forty
two years, give me liberty or give me death March
twenty third, seventeen hundred and seventy five. And what would
(01:55):
our Patrick Henry have said on March twenty third, two
thousand and twenty five, Give me liberty or give me
a free twelve ounce coffee with the purchase of a
dozen donuts while supplies last at participating outlets only. Our
(02:16):
collective selfishness and self obsession is virtually total. Our collective
incapacity to see anything further than our own needs. For
that matter, our own needs for no span of time
longer than a couple of weeks, is so powerful, so ritualized,
(02:39):
so rewarded, that we barely see it anymore. Even when
our laws, our courts, our institutions, our leaders, our media,
our political parties, our handful of responsible corporations, even when
they fold under pressure or just the fear of pressure,
or worst of all, even without any pressure whatsoever, we
(03:01):
sit there, pointing at them and at those of applying
the pressure, as if pointing at them were somehow enough,
as if shame would be enough to make them stiffen
and fight back and risk something, risk anything to save democracy.
And in that word, hour I include myself, and I
(03:24):
exclude literally no more than a handful of others like
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders, who are at least
out there yelling and warning and being the focal points
for the crowds and inviting the hatred and the pressure
of the fascists, and inviting worse than just pressure. The
(03:48):
rest of us are celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of Patrick Henry by proclaiming, give me liberty or
give me unlimited text and data when I trade in
my iPhone. The institutions that made their bones in this country,
that grew their gravitas that we're supposed to do this
(04:11):
when we needed them to do this, that earned some trust,
even as trust shrank in every corner with every passing year,
are now racing each other to capitulate and to collaborate
before their rivals do. Columbia University, whose board of trustees
(04:33):
co chair is one of my oldest professional friends and
one of the reporters I had the most respect for,
was barely done humiliating and prostrating itself in front of
Trump in hopes of getting back four hundred million dollars
in federal grants out of five billion in federal grants,
when Colombia's endowment is fourteen and a half billion. Columbia
(04:56):
was barely done getting the public praise yesterday from the
idiot former head of wrestling who is now Secretary of
Education without telling her to shove the four hundred million
dollars up Trump's ass, one silver dollar at a time,
without the student body walking out, or taking over Upper Manhattan,
(05:17):
or shutting down the entire goddamned city of New York.
Columbia was barely done collaborating when the entire infrastructure of
my alma mater, Cornell, did nothing about ice the Gestapo
demanding that one of Cornell's students turn himself in for
(05:38):
deportation today because of anti Israel protests. And let me
tell you, shutting down Inthaca, New York, would be a
lot goddamned easier than shutting down half of Manhattan. And
when I was still there, the majority of the faculty
and even some students had witnessed the response to rampant racism,
(05:58):
including a cross burning at a black women's dorm, and
the response was for students to take over the student
union while carrying long guns and wearing bandoliers. And even
in nineteen seventy nine when I graduated. A decade after
that and a group of low income minority students felt
they had been discriminated against because their degrees were being
(06:20):
withheld because they hadn't fully paid back tuition extensions when
they were black, even they peacefully and without weapons, took
over an administration building for a few hours just to
say this is wrong. You didn't do this with the
white students who were late with their money just to
do something, to do anything but obey in advance. Then
(06:50):
I don't give a damn if the protesters at Cornell
and Columbia or anywhere else are anti Semites, or are
defending a really unpopular cause, or seemingly have carefully chosen
every possible strategic move to make themselves and their causes
more unpopular and less palatable in this country. I don't
(07:14):
care who they are or what you think you have
to do to establish parameters for them. The parameters Columbia
cannot include establishing a campus thought police that can now
arrest the protesters it and you do not like, and
Trump does not like, and not arrest the protesters who
are demanding faster transfer of academic records for postgraduate applications
(07:38):
or job interviews. And I don't care who they are
or what you think you have to do to establish
parameters for them. The parameters Cornell cannot include completely ignoring
the demand that one of you gets yanked off campus
in the middle of the goddamned spring semester and deported
to where where they sent the gay barber they decided
(08:02):
was a terrorist, or where they sent the god with
the real Madrid soccer tattoo. It cannot, Cornell include ignoring
the disappearing of a Cornell student because it doesn't effing
matter which Cornell student they are disappearing for which unpopular opinion,
because next time that Cornell student could be you, and
(08:23):
at this rate, eventually it will be you. And it
doesn't matter what your campuses did not do when they
came for these mistaken and incompetent protesters, because your collaboration
will earn you nothing except the Trump dictatorship's recognition that
(08:45):
Cornell and Columbia are officially pushovers, and the next time
they need somebody for a show trial, they will go
to Cornell and Columbia first, because Cornell and Columbia will
help you round up whoever you want, whether it's a student,
a professor, or the head of the board of trust.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Please.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And if you didn't learn all this at Cornell, Cornell,
and if you didn't learn all this at Columbia Columbia,
go out of business and close Columbia and close Cornell
and sell the campuses, and do it today, because that
what you just did not do, That was your purpose,
(09:30):
that was why you existed, to teach that liberty requires
us to defend our liberty and the other guy's liberty.
And if you didn't learn all this at every college
and university and juco and community college in this country,
close them too. You have all lost the plot. Happily,
(09:58):
the students imperiled can always call the noted law firm
of Paul kama Weiss and its chairman Brad S. Karp,
advocate for corporations and protesters alike, and rich and poor alike.
(10:19):
Except mister Karp and Paul kama Weiss tried to challenge
a threat from Trump and have a pro Trump firm
called Quinn Comma, Immanuel Kamma, Erkut Kamma and Sullivan joined
them and when those pro trumpists saw the opportunity to
destroy a rival, and so what if it destroyed the
(10:40):
rule of law in the process, And when that rival
said no, Paul kama Weiss capitulated. Paul kama Weiss will
now bribe Trump with forty million dollars in free lawyer
hours to help Trump, because you know, somebody's got to
litigate whatever Trump's version of the Nuremberg Race laws turns
(11:02):
out to be. Thank you all for your patience during
this time, said Karp of Paul kama Weiss to his staff.
With this behind us, we can devote our complete focus
as we always do, to our clients, our work, our colleagues,
and our firm. Mister Carp, you are an idiot With
(11:29):
this behind us. It is not behind you. You have
assured that it will forever be in front of you.
Trump will be back soon, mister Carp, to tell you
who you can and cannot hire, and who you can
and cannot represent, and which other clients' confidential records Trump
(11:50):
does and does not want because hours after this idiot,
self interested, self deluding lawyer told the thousand lawyers who
worked for him that it would all be fine now
now that he had old their souls to the devil.
The White House sent out a memo Saturday to the
(12:11):
little witch now running the Department of Justice, which reads,
in part quote that she should seek sanctions against attorneys
and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious
litigation against the government. The slave overseers who work for
(12:33):
Trump also instructed the dog murdering head of Homeland Security
dress up Barbie with a thousand different action adventure outfits
in her closet to quote prioritize enforcement of those regulations
governing what lawyers can do inside the immigration courts. That
(12:54):
is a somewhat cloudy way of saying, represent somebody we
are trying to deport, and if we can, we will
deport you with them, or we will deport you or
employee or your friend or another student at Cornell or Columbia.
(13:16):
The Columbia case was Trump testing how much educational money
would need to be threatened before the universities were willing
to sell their core values. That figure turned out to
be four hundred million dollars, not very much if your
endowment is fourteen point eight something billion. The Paul comme
(13:37):
a wis case was Trump testing how much litigational money
would be needed to be threatened before the big law
firms were willing to sell their core values. That turned
out to be forty million dollars. Lawyers are cheaper than universities,
turned out, though in both cases they're very cheap, and
the cost wasn't very much at all. By the way,
(14:01):
lawyers all lawyers. The cowardice, the complicity of Paul kama
Weiss has now emboldened Trump to tell Pam Bondi to
try to punish law firms who take asylum cases pro bono,
to give her the right to start to poll security
clearances for firms she doesn't like, and to try to
(14:23):
prosecute lawyers who sued the government starting in oh twenty seventeen,
you know, the year when Trump took over the first time,
four years before we napoleoned him instead of putting him
in prison, because give me liberty or I'm not going
(14:46):
to pay a lot for this muffler. And so we
(15:15):
can add the universities and the lawyers to the list.
The list of the guard rails that turned out to
be made out of paper mache filled with oatmeal, The
list that includes pretty much every American institution of any
importance except the Visiting Nurse Association, the owners of the
(15:37):
television networks for instance, the other news organizations, more on
them presently. The Republican Party obviously, I mean, why should
any of them risk what they have the increased power
Trump's dictatorship has given them. It's not like Trump's going
to deport me or take away my power yet. On
(16:00):
the list, of course, the Democratic Party leadership. And thank
you to the TV networks for putting on Chuck Schumer
every goddamned day since he sold out this country so
he can keep selling his effing book without having to
face one single protester or obviously on the TV political shows,
having to face one difficult question. Thank you to the
(16:24):
Democratic leaders out of office who have joined this list.
Has any man squandered his post presidency more than Barack Obama?
No one in this country could enrage Trump faster or
more thoroughly than Barack Obama. He stops Trump so thoroughly
(16:51):
in his tracks that Trump thinks he ran a presidential
race against Obama. Almost no one in this country, no,
no one in this country, despite his flaws. Rally, the
dispirited and confused opposition begging for leadership now than could Obama. Well, happily,
(17:16):
he is all over the news at the moment with
his college basketball picks South Carolina over Southern I don't know,
because give me liberty or give me a two hundred
dollars bonus bet. When I sign up with sports Betting, Inc.
Must be twenty one or over gambling problem called one
(17:38):
eight hundred gambler. And most importantly on the list, the
law on the courts, the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice.
I begin to think his family name is justice, because
there's nothing justice about his work. Trump as President, as
(18:04):
he did before, publicly demands the removal of a judge
who thwarted him at in so he is testing to
see if he can get away with that, and John
Roberts comes out with a robust, profound, dramatic warning in response,
I'm kidding. He issued boiler plate Pablom quote. For more
(18:25):
than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is
not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.
The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. There's
got to be something else on this sheet. That's all
he said, thank you, Justice, Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts,
(18:51):
thank you for the three three and a half minutes
you devoted to this statement trying to defend democracy in
the rule of law. Not the faintest glimmer of understanding
that Roberts as Chief Justice, as the supposed restraint against
the corrupt influence peddling religious nuts on his own court.
Roberts still immunized Trump against virtually any prosecution for virtually
(19:14):
any crime, and now seems surprised when Trump decides to
try out the crime of threatening judges and dismantling the
judiciary and arresting political opponents. Oh, dismantling the judiciary, arresting
political opponents. I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm
(19:36):
reading one of my commentaries from next fall when Trump
tries to arrest Chuck Schumer or AOC or Sonya Sotomayor
or Mehdi Hassan. Actually, I'm just reading the news from Turkey.
The same day the opposition voted for its choice to
run against the quasi dictator Ereuwan. In twenty twenty eight,
(19:59):
Erewan had that man, the mayor of Istanbul, formally arrested
and charged with corruption ekkrem Imama Glue can still run
for president even if they keep him in detention until
twenty twenty eight. But if he's convicted of anything, and
how could he be convicted of anything in a Turkish
(20:20):
judicial system that at minimum exaggerated the severity of the
twenty sixteen quote coup quote against Erdiguan. If he's convicted
of anything, he cannot serve Now, of course Erdiguan is
prevented from running again in twenty twenty eight. But of
course he can't run again in twenty twenty eight because
(20:41):
of term limits in the constitution, which is why he's
now trying to change the constitution. Why does this all
sound so familiar? The Turks have been protesting for five nights.
It now seems, after years of this, as if they
will have only one option, which would be to remove
(21:02):
their dictator by force. I assume they are at this
point because ten or twenty or whenever years ago, when
celebrating the anniversary of their Patrick Henry, it came out,
give me liberty or give me up to thirty percent
(21:23):
on rooms that select Disney resort hotels when I stay
five nights or longer while I am burning things to
the ground on your time. Back to the media for
a moment, please. We have both long since discovered and
(21:46):
paid for the incompetence of the modern insulated self referential,
sealed in both a bubble and in bubble plastic political
media complex. But here's something new and terrible, even for them.
Hot off the presses, as it were, the ground zero
of world in which access is the only thing that
(22:07):
matters or is understood, and in which there is no
comprehension of the dangers to which that access provides front
row seats. The ground zero of that world is not
the Washington Post. It's not even the New York Times.
It's Politico. Its lead item day before yesterday was a
(22:30):
breathless account, a doubly fake scoop, a book excerpt. It's
from a book by Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes, and
Politico can't decide which is the bigger news, an anecdote
about Joe Biden's memory or the fact that it somehow
obtained a copy of this book long before it's supposed
(22:52):
to be available. It's only supposed to be available April first,
and they got it here at the March twenty second
or something. As to that second point. It is amazing
but deeply symbolic that political writers keep pulling this done
year after year after year, and expecting anybody to fall
for it. And there's always somebody at Politico to fall
(23:12):
for it. You got a copy of a book before
the publication date, you must be the greatest reporter since
Woodward and Bernstein. How is such a mighty feat possible
by mere humans? The answer is, of course, that proof
copies of a book come out months before publication. I
(23:34):
used to get a box of them at least six
weeks before publication, two months, mailed them to friends. If
I'd found a way to sell them on eBay, I
would have done it. These inexplicable pre publicity pre publication
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leaks happen as follows. Hey, Politico, says the author, my
book is coming out in a month. I need some
pub The Politico guy replies, well, what's good in it?
And the author responds, why I can give you this
anecdote because I already promised the other good one to
the post. Take that axios, The Politico guy says quietly
(24:15):
to himself, another scoop for yours. Truly, I bet my
European bosses will give me a five dollars bonus. The
new one Saturday from Politico has the added embarrassment of
underscoring how the authors do not understand politics, or America,
or in fact life. I'll just read what Politico excerpted
(24:39):
about how one Democrat who had run for the Democratic
nomination in twenty nineteen, quote became concerned about Biden's mental
acuity at a June twenty twenty three White House picnic
for members of Congress. Quote when they came face to face,
Biden did not immediately recognize his one time rival for
(25:00):
the party's nomination. Quote. The candidate quote had to Biden
with personal details to remind him that sounds bad about
last year's big story which X would be nominee was
so supposedly struck that Biden didn't remember that both of
(25:24):
them had run for president, could not identify his former
rival on the debate stage. Which one of them Eric Swollwell, now,
if you're anything like me, your response to hearing this
anecdote was, wait, Eric Swowell ran for president? The congressman, right, good,
(25:53):
good guy, but congressman from Illin, New York, California, California. Yes,
I can almost picture him in my mind, I had
no memory at all that Swalwell had run, just like
Biden had no memory at all that Swalwell had run.
I'm guessing just like you had no memory that Swalwell
(26:14):
had run. In fact, my surprise is that Swalwell remembered
that he had run, writing Jonathan Allen about how somebody
forgot he ran, and I'm still taking his word for this.
That he did run is not the negative flex against
Joe Biden you think it is. But wait, there's more.
The official Swallwell response to Politico was that there was
no White House party for members of Congress on the
(26:37):
date Allen has given June twenty twenty three, And it
turns out he's right. There was none. Politico then dives
into showing how great it is by proving that there
was one in July of twenty twenty three, and Swallowell
was there. See where journalists, we and the authors and
the editors forgot when the party was got it wrong.
(27:01):
But it's Biden who was already having trouble remembering things
in twenty twenty three, and Swawell didn't go public about it.
See we're smarter than they is. Wait, there's even more.
Politico's Adam Wren foolishly took credit for writing this. He
(27:21):
managed to please his new neo fascist European owners by
turning this story into a story by the way of
an author getting a date wrong about a piece of
trivia at at which somebody forgot a piece of trivia.
He turned this into a Democrats lied about Biden, and
(27:42):
now everybody hates the Democrats and the Democrats is dead
story quote Adam Wren, Politico. Biden's refusal to pass the
torch until more than a year later still looms over
the party, and the Democrats are still facing questions about
who knew what and when about Biden's faculties. It's not
difficult to see more of these anecdotes surfacing in the
(28:03):
coming weeks and months. What's harder is seeing how the
party regains voters trust trust Adam wrenn trust Politico, trust
Jonathan Allen. Joe Biden and the Democrats aren't the ones
(28:25):
who can't tell the difference between a president for getting
an actual campaign rival and an utterly and literally forgettable
vanity campaign for the nomination that lasted exactly three months
and out of which the guy himself bailed two hundred
and eleven days before the first primary, and Biden wasn't
the one who got the month of the party wrong
(28:47):
and published it anyway, And none of us out here
let our Politico White House Bureau Chief conduct an official
on stage event at Sea pack Nazi Party memberships for
(29:07):
people who don't like the letter Z. The real memory
loss about Politico that Politico should address is after it
goes out of business, will anybody remember it was? Ever?
There also of interest here because believe it or not,
(29:31):
I have some venom left, if not much voice. There's
also something up at NBC. I'm not sure what it is,
but Trump has now threatened them again about MSNBC. And
it's four months since Scarborough rehoard himself to Trump, and
it's a month tomorrow since they fired Joy Reid and
(29:53):
the other hosts of Color. So NBC is preparing to
throw somebody or something out the windows at the fifty
second floor corporate offices at thirty Rock. What is it?
Who is it? That's next? This is countdown? This is
Countdown with Keith Olberman host scripts to the news, some headlines,
(30:26):
some updates, some stark still ahead of course worse persons,
and you know why you need a Department of Education
so idiots like the South African Elon Musk can learn
English correctly and not wind up publicly misspelling the words
Department of education. First, this is the Countdown podcast, and
(30:52):
these are the places where there's news. Date line thirty Rock.
I live a few blocks from where I used to work. This,
of course, is an evergreen statement almost anywhere I've ever
lived in New York. I could say that about one
of the places I used to work, but this time
I am being specific about thirty Rock, thirty Rockefeller Center,
(31:14):
thirty Rockefeller Plaza, the heart of New York City, the
home of the National Broadcasting Company and the corporation that
owns it. I'm not sure what specific ass kissing they
have planned for Trump as our business quasi humans rush
for the exits to get the best deal from the
fascist state, but I can tell from the looks on
(31:36):
their faces they're thinking about it. In the month just closing,
Trump was nice enough to declare that MSNBC and CNN
are illegal. He used the word three times in his
reichs Parthai tog at the Ministry of Love. I'm sorry
the Department of justice. The Ministry of Love was in
the book nineteen eighty four. Anyway, When indictments did not
(31:59):
immediately follow his thrice use of the word illegal, he
brought the subject up again last week and blocks away.
I can smell the fear from the fifty second floor
at thirty Rock. It's not all I smell from there,
but mostly it's fear. They are planning to fold to Trump.
(32:20):
It's just a question of which way. I don't think
they're literally going to do what he suggested last week,
because frankly, that would not be enough for Trump at
this point. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want MSNBC
switched off. He wants them to go all Scarborough. He
wants msn VS keep the brand name, keep a lot
(32:43):
of the same people, pretend they are being critical of him,
and the Republicans become the official authorized controlled resistance, which
offers no resistance at all, except maybe complaining that Trump
hasn't praised his own bitcoon brand recently enough. God knows
(33:05):
NBC has done it before with Republicans. When Republicans have
said something like this, we just.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Need honest journalism and we don't have it.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
When you have a CNN. I watch.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
You have to watch these people every once in a
while just to see where they're coming from.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And it's so dishonest.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
MSNBC is, I think, probably worse, and they're both doing
horribly in the ratings.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
I think they're going to be turned off.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
I don't think they're not doing any ratings.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Wow, does this crap sound familiar? NBC corporate NBC is
in reruns. They were already blackmailed once by the Republicans,
long before Trump was sent here by the devil. And
boy did this flash me back? Because this happened to
(33:49):
me at MSNBC in two thousand and eight, courtesy the
supposed sane Republicans, and it underscores that they have never
been sane. There have never been sane Republicans. They have
always longed to dictate to the media what it can
and cannot say about whichever asshole is its presidential candidate,
(34:12):
and thanks to people like Tom Brokaw, they often get
away with it. Chris Matthews and I were co anchoring
the Republican Convention on MSNBC in two thousand and eight.
He was there at the convention in Minnesota. I was
in the studios at thirty Rock in New York, ostensibly
so I could also anchor hurricane coverage, though it was
(34:34):
pretty clear that at least half the reason I was
not in Minneapolis was because the Republicans had threatened NBC
or said they could not guarantee my safety there or
something like that. So I was the one on September two,
two thousand and eight, who had to throw it to
a video that we had been told by the Republicans
was a tribute to the dead of nine to eleven
(34:54):
that they were playing in the theater in their convention
in Minnesota. It was not a tribute. It was a
snuff film. All of the images that the net works
had stopped showing of nine to eleven within weeks or
even days of the attacks, all of them were in
this snuff film. People jumping, falling to their deaths from
the World Trade Center, endless replays of the planes hitting
(35:17):
the towers, dismembered bodies in the plaza, the building collapses,
the equally terrifying scenes at the Pentagon, and all with
the grotesque voiceover from that Fink Robert Dove, emphasizing that
this was all the Democrats fault. The message was they
might as well have praised it this way. Elect Obama
and you will die, and you will die like this.
(35:39):
I was angry just on that base level. For that
five and a half years I had been back at MSNBC,
we had been rigorous about not showing any of that
video that the Republicans had just forced upon us by
lying to us about it. There were rules that if
we had to for some reason sneed some snippet, we
(35:59):
would show only still images, and even then only with
extensive warnings to the viewers. But I knew from my
conversations with the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, who I
had known for twenty eight years at that point, that
he would insist that on the scene in Minneapolis, Matthews
and Tom Brokaw, whose career at NBC I had resuscitated
after Brian Williams had buried him alive two years earlier.
(36:22):
I knew from what Griffin told me that one or
both of them would rebuke the GOP for showing not
a nine to eleven tribute, but, as I just said,
a nine to eleven snuff film. The snuff film ended,
we came out to Brokaw and Matthews and Brokaw kind
of coughed, and Matthews said wow. And he turned to
Brokaw and said, in that loose fire hose delivery he
(36:44):
had tom that kind of scores terrorism, big thing for Republicans.
They try stuck Obama. Brokaw droned on approvingly the Republican
sneaking a snuff film, a banned video onto MSNBC and
by the way, also onto CNN, onto NBC proper, onto CBS,
onto ABC without any warning. That was not mentioned back
(37:08):
to New York to Keith, I was supposed to add
liberates about what we were expecting from the Republican convention
for the rest of the night and then throw to
a commercial instead, I said, and this is a paraphrase,
the original tape disappeared that night that before we moved on,
I felt I needed to apologize that we at MSNBC
and for that matter, at NBC News, at extremely strict
(37:30):
rules about not showing the video the Republicans had just
shown you via our network, without any warning, without any context,
and by lying to us, and we certainly would not
have shown the horror and death and blamed it on
the Democrats, or for that matter, on the Republicans. I said,
if we had done such a thing ourselves, there would
(37:52):
have been people fired. The public program the GOP provided
said that was going to be a nine to eleven
tribute film, I said, and so did the private conversations
with the network, which included the reminder from NBC and
MSNBC that we had rules against showing the scenes of
horrible death and mutilation and destruction. So I apologized on
(38:12):
behalf of whoever trusted the Republicans to live up to
their word that MSNBC viewers were forced to see the
video our network had promised never to show them. So
three nights later, without as much as an email to me,
this Griffin had called my agent and told her I
was fired and Matthews two from our coverage of the
(38:34):
upcoming McCain Obama debates. I happened to be off that
night in the press box watching a Mets Phillies game
at Shay Stadium, so she had to relate these details
to me by phone. As I walked down the many
ramps in the stadium's bowels and headed towards the subway,
I told her to call Griffin back and tell him
I was quitting on the spot. Right then, and he
(38:56):
could work his way out of the ensuing disaster by himself.
Liberal network MSNBC fires liberal host Alderman for criticizing Concerns
Servatives for sneaking nine to eleven snuff film onto MSNBC.
He could work his way out of that disaster any
way he chose, and then he could wait for my
response on Good Morning America, CBS, This Morning, the PBS
(39:17):
News Hour, any other news program that bothered to ask
and in court. I made a few phone calls to
friendly voices within the NBC management structure, got from them
a clearer picture of what had happened. And despite the
spotty cell service along the elevated train line heading back
into Manhattan, I got a message from a newspaper reporter
(39:38):
friend who neatly tied together all that I was hearing elsewhere.
Tom Brokaw is going around NBC saying he got you
fired from the debates because the Republicans told him to.
Nine maybe ten months earlier, the same Phil Griffin had
come to me and asked me if I would be
okay with Brokaw appearing during our weekly coverage of the
(39:59):
Democratic and Republican primaries. Just a couple of minutes, buddy
like from a perspective desk. That's all he wants to do.
He's so unhappy Brian Williams has frozen him out of everything.
I was appalled, but not surprised. The power had gone
to Brian's head, and of course there it had not
met very much resistance. Plus, as I said to Griffin,
(40:21):
you're asking me if i'd like to add Tom Brocaw's
experience and Tom brocaws gravitas to stuff I'm anchoring when
I'm not sure I know as much as I really
know to do this the right way. Tom to be
fair fit in beautifully, and twice after those long Tuesday
evenings during the primaries, he sent me brief emails awarding
(40:43):
me what he called the game ball, because he was
so impressed by my ability to balance the roles of
political anchor and political commentator. Having tried this myself, he wrote,
I know of a perilous tightroup. This is game ball
to Koh. I mock them now, but they meant so
(41:03):
much to me then that I print them out and
carried them in my wallet until September. And now Brokaw
had gotten me fired because, as my newspaper friend said,
the Republicans told him to Well, that wasn't hard to
unpack either. Tim Russard had died on the third of
June that year. I anchored that night until two in
(41:25):
the morning. It was still an open wound. There were
still tears. We didn't know it then, but the structure
of NBC News and the perilous tight group balancing NBC
and MSNBC had died with Tim Russard. So did the
role of moderator of the second debate between John McCain
and Barack Obama, scheduled for about a month. From my
(41:47):
subway ride on October seventh, two thousand and eight in Nashville,
Tim had not even been buried yet when Brokaw began
to angle to get that assignment that was now vacant,
along with brushing away the dirt of his Penny Anti
role on the MSNBC Perspective desk, leaving us in the
in order to take over Tim's spot as Brian's sage
(42:09):
sidekick on Big NBC. The one before August, there had
been a story coming out of the east end of
the third floor at thirty Rock, where NBC News managers
sat around not doing much of anything. That a Republican
goon named Ed Gillespie had been in there with Griffin
and the idiot NBC News president Steve kappis trying to
(42:29):
get me silenced or fired or off the convention coverage
or something, and that somebody prominent from NBC News was
in there with Gillespie or was invoked by Gillespie. The
rumor mill was not confident in who it was or
what exactly they were doing. That Friday night in September
(42:51):
two thousand and eight, as I switched from the elevated
seven train to the underground f the whole thing came together.
Before my comments about the GOP Convention nine to eleven
snuff film, Gillespie had come in and had somehow vaguely
threaten and Campus and Griffin about me using as leverage
the debate which Tom Brokaw was now supposed to moderate,
(43:12):
the one that had been Russots, And when I apologized
for their snuff video on our air, Gillespie must have
turned it into an either or get rid of me,
or McCain would refuse to participate in any debate moderated
by Brokaw. Tom Brokaw had already come back from the
dead once in two thousand and eight, I had made
(43:33):
that happen, and he would be damned if he would
be forced to do it a second time. But as
the train took me home to an apartment, I was
now going to have to sell since I had quit
MSNBC on the spot for folding to such obvious blackmail,
something else now occurred to me. Why would MSNBC or
NBC or our parent corporation GE actually think that they
(43:55):
could remove me from the debate coverage on MSNBC, where
the Rachel Meadow Show had not yet been born, was
only going to premiere the next week, and the three
times a night my show ran accounted for something like
sixty percent of the entire day's network audience and all
of its profits. How did they think they were going
(44:15):
to get away with that without a really bad reaction
from our audience. Plus, if a newspaper man already knew
the Brokaw part, how could this story be avoided something
like this? MSNBC has announced it had removed its liberal
star Keith Alderman from coverage of the McCain Obama presidential debates.
Sources confirmed former NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw now an
(44:37):
MSNBC commentator had helped the Republican Party to blackmail NBC
into the decision. Olderman immediately resigned, saying, quote in succumbing
to this coercion on behalf of John McCain, NBC has
now forfeited any further right to be called a news organization,
and I'm sad to say MSNBC, which I built, is
now dead. At that point, it dawned on me that
(45:00):
the only thing that could save the credibility of the
whole NBC News debate vision and the careers of Griffin
and Cappus and NBC Network president Jeff Zucker and especially
Tom Brokaw was for me to publicly state to lie
that I had asked to be removed from anchoring the
debates because the whatever was just too much blah blah
(45:22):
blah for me, and I felt I should just stick
to the post debate analysis in commentary and blah blah
blah blah blah. In short, they would have a choice.
They could fire me from the debates and destroy everything,
including the one hundred million dollars a year or so
in profits NBC was suddenly making off MSNBC after years
(45:43):
of losing about that much, or I could lie and
claim it was my idea and I could save everybody's
ass and their money, including my own. I got out
of the subway and raced home. I called my agent.
I explained it to her. I'm not quitting. In fact,
I'm going to get a huge raise. Listen carefully, you
(46:03):
call Griffin back and explain to him I will now
personally save his job, even though he doesn't deserve it,
and campuses and Zooker's and bro cause in everybody else's
I'll take the fall instead of letting them get fired
by the MSNBC audience. I'll say this was my idea,
and it will cost him only twelve million dollars. Oh,
(46:26):
and he has to leak the fact that it cost
him twelve million dollars. That's the deal. And she paused
for a second, and she said, hey, that's genius. It
might not quite be twelve, but I bet I get
at least nine million. On Sunday, several news organizations reported
I had asked to be taking off the anchor desk
(46:47):
for the debates. Two months and one week later, The
New York Times wrote, quote Keith Oldraman, the anchor of
countdown on MSNBC has extended his contract through the next
presidential election season. The networking outs mister Olderman and MSNBC
essentially tore up the four year, four million dollars a
year contract they signed last year and replaced it with
one worth about seven and a half million a year.
(47:11):
So that was a three and a half million dollar
raise for four years to a total of fourteen million dollars.
Except the new contract added two years to my old deal,
so the rais was actually twenty two million dollars. All
stories have punchlines. This punchline is about Brokaw. We would
have gotten away with this. NBC would have gotten its
(47:33):
money's worth for the twenty two million in hush money
it had to pay me because it had rolled over
for Republican Party blackmail. Except Brokaw couldn't keep his mouth shut.
So proud was he of preserving his role as moderator
of the October seventh debate that he had to explain
in explicit detail how he went to his bosses at
(47:53):
NBC News and threatened them on behalf of the GOP.
I mean on the record, he said this September twenty ninth,
a lengthy and glowing Brocaw profile in the New York Times. Quote,
mister Brocaws said that over the summer he'd quote advocated
within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the
(48:14):
anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Keith Olberman and Chris
Matthews on election Night and on knights where there were
presidential debates. Mister Brocaw said he had also conducted some
shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between NBC and the McCain campaign.
His mission, he said, was to assure the candidate's aids
that despite some negative on air commentary by mister Olderman
(48:35):
in particular, mister McCain could still get a fair shake
from NBC News. Unquote. That was his mission. The hell,
that was his mission. Happily, Rocaw just could not resist
boasting even further. The next sentence reads quote, mister Brocaws
said he had been told by a senior McCain aide
(48:57):
whom he did not name, that the campaign had been
reluctant to accept an NBC representative as one of the
moderators of the three presidential debates until his name was invoked.
One of the things I was told by this person
was that they were so irritated they said, if it's
an NBC moalorator for any of these debates, we won't go.
(49:18):
Mister Brocaw said, my name came up, and they said,
oh hell, we have to do it, because it's going
to be Brokaw. No insufferable person in all of broadcasting
history has a better rep and a better and more
undeserved rep than Tom Brokaw. So when a Trump leans
(49:40):
on NBC management because the coverage that he got was
not the coverage he wanted, don't think it won't have
an effect. Because in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
They loved me then as they love Meadow now. But
what they loved about each of us was not the
truth we provided, but the money.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Believe it or not, there are still more new idiots
to talk about the roundup of the misgrants, morons and
Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons
in the world. Here are the nominees, the brons worse
the perpetrators, in this case, Canadian anger towards that nation's
(50:48):
hockey immortal, well former immortal, Wayne Gretzky, has re redoubled
and here comes the feces smeared on the nine foot
tall statue of Gretzky outside the hockey rink in Edmond,
where Gretzky played the bulk of his career. Feses, a
(51:10):
lot of feces. The Edmonton Oilers executive vice president of
UH statue defecising or something, a man named Tim Shipton
telling the news division of CTV quote, it's unfortunate over
the past several years we've had to deal with issues
(51:31):
of disorder in our downtown core.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
Sir.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
That is not disorder, it's feces. They have not defaced
or done any disordering. They have defecis. Or to put
it in terms that invokes two of Gretzky's teams and
probably his best known teammate, it's messy. A that's a
(51:56):
hockey joke. The runner up worser New York Mayor Eric Adams,
who's just a joke joke. His re election campaign has
raised this year thirty six thousand dollars. Oh wait, that's
before he had to give eighteen thousand dollars back to
donors who were over the legal limit. For comparison, eight
hundred and forty five thousand dollars has been raised this
(52:19):
year by the campaign of Zoran Mamdani. Who is Zoran Mamdani.
I had no idea and I live here until I
looked him up. He is the Socialist candidate for mayor.
He outraised the mayor mayor same time span by a
factor of forty seven. On the other hand, Mayor Adams
(52:40):
doesn't seem to understand the implications here. He held a
town hall in the ocean side neighborhood of the Rockaways
and decided instead of talking about what he could do
to save the city and himself, he decided to reminisce
about riding the subways without paying so he could visit
his quote Shorty unquote who lived in the distant Rockaways.
(53:04):
Shorty means many things in the urban lingo. This time
it appears to be a reference to a girlfriend, possibly
a girlfriend on the side of another relationship. Or it's
Eric Adams, who the hell knows what he means.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
There's a real history for me.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
I had a shorty that lived out here, you know,
used to come out, come out, taking that long a train, right,
you know, and the cold, you know, love is blind,
and you know, taking that long, long a train I
did not have a car, and one or two times
I didn't have a tokens. So yes, I did jump
up with the turnstile. I'm not gonna it's over. The
(53:45):
statue of limitation is over.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
Statue of limitations. Statue of limitations. The Mayor of the
City of New York, everybody but the winner worst Ellen
Musk wait I may have mispronounced that. Yeah at Elon,
Elon Musk. Now that he and Trump have eliminated the
(54:08):
Department of Education, which Mayor Adams so desperately needed, who
knows how much more stupid we will each become. Musk,
of course, does not have much further to descend. He
celebrated the thing that will increase those non college white
trash men for Trump numbers by doing the graveside meme
(54:29):
with the guy kneeling in front of the tombstone giving
the two finger piece or V for victory sign. Only
in this one the guy is Trump and on the
tombstone it reads Department of Education. Yes, depart men d
E P R T M E N. Because Musk has
(54:49):
misspelled department because he's a clucking idiot. Elon Department of Education. Musk.
The law of proving Darwin was right. This has to
come into play with this loser at some point, doesn't it.
I mean, he's got to try to get the toast
out with a fork sooner rather than later, doesn't he
(55:13):
Elon Musk two days worse person and no word. I've
(55:58):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. Ryan Ray and John Phillip Chanel, the musical
directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on
the guitars, bass and drums, and it was produced by
Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by
the best baseball stadium organists ever, Nancy Faust. The sports
(56:20):
music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. And my
announcer today is my friend Larry David. Everything else was
as ever my fault. That's countdown for today, just three
hundred and ninety nine days. We've cleared fourteen hundred until
(56:43):
the scheduled end of his lane Duck lame reigned term
unless Musk removes him sooner or the actuarial tables due.
The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. Voice still tentative. As always,
Bolton's as the news warrants, remember im peach Trump. It
won't work now, it will win the Democrat. It's the
(57:04):
midterms if there are midterms, and remove Schumer immediately. Until
next time, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
The statue of limitation is over.
Speaker 1 (57:24):
Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Give
Me Liberty or Give Me Death. Patrick Henry said that
(00:27):
two hundred and fifty years ago, yesterday, to galvanize Americans
against the tyranny growing around them, brought by an insane
dictator king, not whatever was manifesting near Saint John's Church
in Richmond, where the Second Virginia Convention he was addressing
was meeting, Not what threatened them individually, not what was
(00:48):
at their door, but what they knew would be at
their door soon or late, because it was already inside
the homes of their fellow Americans in far off Boston.
Give me Liberty or give me death, because whether or not,
the tyrant is here for us now, he is here
(01:10):
already for our brothers and sisters. He will be here
for us soon enough, and soon the Virginia Militia embroidered
their battle shirts with Liberty or Death, and soon an
entirely new concept. Americans had destroyed those who intended to
(01:30):
enslave them, and they had won a liberty that lasted
two hundred and fifty years, well nearly closer to what
twenty twenty five minus eight two one hundred and forty
two years, give me liberty or give me death March
twenty third, seventeen hundred and seventy five. And what would
(01:55):
our Patrick Henry have said on March twenty third, two
thousand and twenty five, Give me liberty or give me
a free twelve ounce coffee with the purchase of a
dozen donuts while supplies last at participating outlets only. Our
(02:16):
collective selfishness and self obsession is virtually total. Our collective
incapacity to see anything further than our own needs. For
that matter, our own needs for no span of time
longer than a couple of weeks, is so powerful, so ritualized,
(02:39):
so rewarded, that we barely see it anymore. Even when
our laws, our courts, our institutions, our leaders, our media,
our political parties, our handful of responsible corporations, even when
they fold under pressure or just the fear of pressure,
or worst of all, even without any pressure whatsoever, we
(03:01):
sit there, pointing at them and at those of applying
the pressure, as if pointing at them were somehow enough,
as if shame would be enough to make them stiffen
and fight back and risk something, risk anything to save democracy.
And in that word, hour I include myself, and I
(03:24):
exclude literally no more than a handful of others like
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders, who are at least
out there yelling and warning and being the focal points
for the crowds and inviting the hatred and the pressure
of the fascists, and inviting worse than just pressure. The
(03:48):
rest of us are celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of Patrick Henry by proclaiming, give me liberty or
give me unlimited text and data when I trade in
my iPhone. The institutions that made their bones in this country,
that grew their gravitas that we're supposed to do this
(04:11):
when we needed them to do this, that earned some trust,
even as trust shrank in every corner with every passing year,
are now racing each other to capitulate and to collaborate
before their rivals do. Columbia University, whose board of trustees
(04:33):
co chair is one of my oldest professional friends and
one of the reporters I had the most respect for,
was barely done humiliating and prostrating itself in front of
Trump in hopes of getting back four hundred million dollars
in federal grants out of five billion in federal grants,
when Colombia's endowment is fourteen and a half billion. Columbia
(04:56):
was barely done getting the public praise yesterday from the
idiot former head of wrestling who is now Secretary of
Education without telling her to shove the four hundred million
dollars up Trump's ass, one silver dollar at a time,
without the student body walking out, or taking over Upper Manhattan,
(05:17):
or shutting down the entire goddamned city of New York.
Columbia was barely done collaborating when the entire infrastructure of
my alma mater, Cornell, did nothing about ice the Gestapo
demanding that one of Cornell's students turn himself in for
(05:38):
deportation today because of anti Israel protests. And let me
tell you, shutting down Inthaca, New York, would be a
lot goddamned easier than shutting down half of Manhattan. And
when I was still there, the majority of the faculty
and even some students had witnessed the response to rampant racism,
(05:58):
including a cross burning at a black women's dorm, and
the response was for students to take over the student
union while carrying long guns and wearing bandoliers. And even
in nineteen seventy nine when I graduated. A decade after
that and a group of low income minority students felt
they had been discriminated against because their degrees were being
(06:20):
withheld because they hadn't fully paid back tuition extensions when
they were black, even they peacefully and without weapons, took
over an administration building for a few hours just to
say this is wrong. You didn't do this with the
white students who were late with their money just to
do something, to do anything but obey in advance. Then
(06:50):
I don't give a damn if the protesters at Cornell
and Columbia or anywhere else are anti Semites, or are
defending a really unpopular cause, or seemingly have carefully chosen
every possible strategic move to make themselves and their causes
more unpopular and less palatable in this country. I don't
(07:14):
care who they are or what you think you have
to do to establish parameters for them. The parameters Columbia
cannot include establishing a campus thought police that can now
arrest the protesters it and you do not like, and
Trump does not like, and not arrest the protesters who
are demanding faster transfer of academic records for postgraduate applications
(07:38):
or job interviews. And I don't care who they are
or what you think you have to do to establish
parameters for them. The parameters Cornell cannot include completely ignoring
the demand that one of you gets yanked off campus
in the middle of the goddamned spring semester and deported
to where where they sent the gay barber they decided
(08:02):
was a terrorist, or where they sent the god with
the real Madrid soccer tattoo. It cannot, Cornell include ignoring
the disappearing of a Cornell student because it doesn't effing
matter which Cornell student they are disappearing for which unpopular opinion,
because next time that Cornell student could be you, and
(08:23):
at this rate, eventually it will be you. And it
doesn't matter what your campuses did not do when they
came for these mistaken and incompetent protesters, because your collaboration
will earn you nothing except the Trump dictatorship's recognition that
(08:45):
Cornell and Columbia are officially pushovers, and the next time
they need somebody for a show trial, they will go
to Cornell and Columbia first, because Cornell and Columbia will
help you round up whoever you want, whether it's a student,
a professor, or the head of the board of trust.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Please.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
And if you didn't learn all this at Cornell, Cornell,
and if you didn't learn all this at Columbia Columbia,
go out of business and close Columbia and close Cornell
and sell the campuses, and do it today, because that
what you just did not do, That was your purpose,
(09:30):
that was why you existed, to teach that liberty requires
us to defend our liberty and the other guy's liberty.
And if you didn't learn all this at every college
and university and juco and community college in this country,
close them too. You have all lost the plot. Happily,
(09:58):
the students imperiled can always call the noted law firm
of Paul kama Weiss and its chairman Brad S. Karp,
advocate for corporations and protesters alike, and rich and poor alike.
(10:19):
Except mister Karp and Paul kama Weiss tried to challenge
a threat from Trump and have a pro Trump firm
called Quinn Comma, Immanuel Kamma, Erkut Kamma and Sullivan joined
them and when those pro trumpists saw the opportunity to
destroy a rival, and so what if it destroyed the
(10:40):
rule of law in the process, And when that rival
said no, Paul kama Weiss capitulated. Paul kama Weiss will
now bribe Trump with forty million dollars in free lawyer
hours to help Trump, because you know, somebody's got to
litigate whatever Trump's version of the Nuremberg Race laws turns
(11:02):
out to be. Thank you all for your patience during
this time, said Karp of Paul kama Weiss to his staff.
With this behind us, we can devote our complete focus
as we always do, to our clients, our work, our colleagues,
and our firm. Mister Carp, you are an idiot With
(11:29):
this behind us. It is not behind you. You have
assured that it will forever be in front of you.
Trump will be back soon, mister Carp, to tell you
who you can and cannot hire, and who you can
and cannot represent, and which other clients' confidential records Trump
(11:50):
does and does not want because hours after this idiot,
self interested, self deluding lawyer told the thousand lawyers who
worked for him that it would all be fine now
now that he had old their souls to the devil.
The White House sent out a memo Saturday to the
(12:11):
little witch now running the Department of Justice, which reads,
in part quote that she should seek sanctions against attorneys
and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious
litigation against the government. The slave overseers who work for
(12:33):
Trump also instructed the dog murdering head of Homeland Security
dress up Barbie with a thousand different action adventure outfits
in her closet to quote prioritize enforcement of those regulations
governing what lawyers can do inside the immigration courts. That
(12:54):
is a somewhat cloudy way of saying, represent somebody we
are trying to deport, and if we can, we will
deport you with them, or we will deport you or
employee or your friend or another student at Cornell or Columbia.
(13:16):
The Columbia case was Trump testing how much educational money
would need to be threatened before the universities were willing
to sell their core values. That figure turned out to
be four hundred million dollars, not very much if your
endowment is fourteen point eight something billion. The Paul comme
(13:37):
a wis case was Trump testing how much litigational money
would be needed to be threatened before the big law
firms were willing to sell their core values. That turned
out to be forty million dollars. Lawyers are cheaper than universities,
turned out, though in both cases they're very cheap, and
the cost wasn't very much at all. By the way,
(14:01):
lawyers all lawyers. The cowardice, the complicity of Paul kama
Weiss has now emboldened Trump to tell Pam Bondi to
try to punish law firms who take asylum cases pro bono,
to give her the right to start to poll security
clearances for firms she doesn't like, and to try to
(14:23):
prosecute lawyers who sued the government starting in oh twenty seventeen,
you know, the year when Trump took over the first time,
four years before we napoleoned him instead of putting him
in prison, because give me liberty or I'm not going
(14:46):
to pay a lot for this muffler. And so we
(15:15):
can add the universities and the lawyers to the list.
The list of the guard rails that turned out to
be made out of paper mache filled with oatmeal, The
list that includes pretty much every American institution of any
importance except the Visiting Nurse Association, the owners of the
(15:37):
television networks for instance, the other news organizations, more on
them presently. The Republican Party obviously, I mean, why should
any of them risk what they have the increased power
Trump's dictatorship has given them. It's not like Trump's going
to deport me or take away my power yet. On
(16:00):
the list, of course, the Democratic Party leadership. And thank
you to the TV networks for putting on Chuck Schumer
every goddamned day since he sold out this country so
he can keep selling his effing book without having to
face one single protester or obviously on the TV political shows,
having to face one difficult question. Thank you to the
(16:24):
Democratic leaders out of office who have joined this list.
Has any man squandered his post presidency more than Barack Obama?
No one in this country could enrage Trump faster or
more thoroughly than Barack Obama. He stops Trump so thoroughly
(16:51):
in his tracks that Trump thinks he ran a presidential
race against Obama. Almost no one in this country, no,
no one in this country, despite his flaws. Rally, the
dispirited and confused opposition begging for leadership now than could Obama. Well, happily,
(17:16):
he is all over the news at the moment with
his college basketball picks South Carolina over Southern I don't know,
because give me liberty or give me a two hundred
dollars bonus bet. When I sign up with sports Betting, Inc.
Must be twenty one or over gambling problem called one
(17:38):
eight hundred gambler. And most importantly on the list, the
law on the courts, the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice.
I begin to think his family name is justice, because
there's nothing justice about his work. Trump as President, as
(18:04):
he did before, publicly demands the removal of a judge
who thwarted him at in so he is testing to
see if he can get away with that, and John
Roberts comes out with a robust, profound, dramatic warning in response,
I'm kidding. He issued boiler plate Pablom quote. For more
(18:25):
than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is
not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.
The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. There's
got to be something else on this sheet. That's all
he said, thank you, Justice, Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts,
(18:51):
thank you for the three three and a half minutes
you devoted to this statement trying to defend democracy in
the rule of law. Not the faintest glimmer of understanding
that Roberts as Chief Justice, as the supposed restraint against
the corrupt influence peddling religious nuts on his own court.
Roberts still immunized Trump against virtually any prosecution for virtually
(19:14):
any crime, and now seems surprised when Trump decides to
try out the crime of threatening judges and dismantling the
judiciary and arresting political opponents. Oh, dismantling the judiciary, arresting
political opponents. I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm
(19:36):
reading one of my commentaries from next fall when Trump
tries to arrest Chuck Schumer or AOC or Sonya Sotomayor
or Mehdi Hassan. Actually, I'm just reading the news from Turkey.
The same day the opposition voted for its choice to
run against the quasi dictator Ereuwan. In twenty twenty eight,
(19:59):
Erewan had that man, the mayor of Istanbul, formally arrested
and charged with corruption ekkrem Imama Glue can still run
for president even if they keep him in detention until
twenty twenty eight. But if he's convicted of anything, and
how could he be convicted of anything in a Turkish
(20:20):
judicial system that at minimum exaggerated the severity of the
twenty sixteen quote coup quote against Erdiguan. If he's convicted
of anything, he cannot serve Now, of course Erdiguan is
prevented from running again in twenty twenty eight. But of
course he can't run again in twenty twenty eight because
(20:41):
of term limits in the constitution, which is why he's
now trying to change the constitution. Why does this all
sound so familiar? The Turks have been protesting for five nights.
It now seems, after years of this, as if they
will have only one option, which would be to remove
(21:02):
their dictator by force. I assume they are at this
point because ten or twenty or whenever years ago, when
celebrating the anniversary of their Patrick Henry, it came out,
give me liberty or give me up to thirty percent
(21:23):
on rooms that select Disney resort hotels when I stay
five nights or longer while I am burning things to
the ground on your time. Back to the media for
a moment, please. We have both long since discovered and
(21:46):
paid for the incompetence of the modern insulated self referential,
sealed in both a bubble and in bubble plastic political
media complex. But here's something new and terrible, even for them.
Hot off the presses, as it were, the ground zero
of world in which access is the only thing that
(22:07):
matters or is understood, and in which there is no
comprehension of the dangers to which that access provides front
row seats. The ground zero of that world is not
the Washington Post. It's not even the New York Times.
It's Politico. Its lead item day before yesterday was a
(22:30):
breathless account, a doubly fake scoop, a book excerpt. It's
from a book by Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes, and
Politico can't decide which is the bigger news, an anecdote
about Joe Biden's memory or the fact that it somehow
obtained a copy of this book long before it's supposed
(22:52):
to be available. It's only supposed to be available April first,
and they got it here at the March twenty second
or something. As to that second point. It is amazing
but deeply symbolic that political writers keep pulling this done
year after year after year, and expecting anybody to fall
for it. And there's always somebody at Politico to fall
(23:12):
for it. You got a copy of a book before
the publication date, you must be the greatest reporter since
Woodward and Bernstein. How is such a mighty feat possible
by mere humans? The answer is, of course, that proof
copies of a book come out months before publication. I
(23:34):
used to get a box of them at least six
weeks before publication, two months, mailed them to friends. If
I'd found a way to sell them on eBay, I
would have done it. These inexplicable pre publicity pre publication
(23:55):
leaks happen as follows. Hey, Politico, says the author, my
book is coming out in a month. I need some
pub The Politico guy replies, well, what's good in it?
And the author responds, why I can give you this
anecdote because I already promised the other good one to
the post. Take that axios, The Politico guy says quietly
(24:15):
to himself, another scoop for yours. Truly, I bet my
European bosses will give me a five dollars bonus. The
new one Saturday from Politico has the added embarrassment of
underscoring how the authors do not understand politics, or America,
or in fact life. I'll just read what Politico excerpted
(24:39):
about how one Democrat who had run for the Democratic
nomination in twenty nineteen, quote became concerned about Biden's mental
acuity at a June twenty twenty three White House picnic
for members of Congress. Quote when they came face to face,
Biden did not immediately recognize his one time rival for
(25:00):
the party's nomination. Quote. The candidate quote had to Biden
with personal details to remind him that sounds bad about
last year's big story which X would be nominee was
so supposedly struck that Biden didn't remember that both of
(25:24):
them had run for president, could not identify his former
rival on the debate stage. Which one of them Eric Swollwell, now,
if you're anything like me, your response to hearing this
anecdote was, wait, Eric Swowell ran for president? The congressman, right, good,
(25:53):
good guy, but congressman from Illin, New York, California, California. Yes,
I can almost picture him in my mind, I had
no memory at all that Swalwell had run, just like
Biden had no memory at all that Swalwell had run.
I'm guessing just like you had no memory that Swalwell
(26:14):
had run. In fact, my surprise is that Swalwell remembered
that he had run, writing Jonathan Allen about how somebody
forgot he ran, and I'm still taking his word for this.
That he did run is not the negative flex against
Joe Biden you think it is. But wait, there's more.
The official Swallwell response to Politico was that there was
no White House party for members of Congress on the
(26:37):
date Allen has given June twenty twenty three, And it
turns out he's right. There was none. Politico then dives
into showing how great it is by proving that there
was one in July of twenty twenty three, and Swallowell
was there. See where journalists, we and the authors and
the editors forgot when the party was got it wrong.
(27:01):
But it's Biden who was already having trouble remembering things
in twenty twenty three, and Swawell didn't go public about it.
See we're smarter than they is. Wait, there's even more.
Politico's Adam Wren foolishly took credit for writing this. He
(27:21):
managed to please his new neo fascist European owners by
turning this story into a story by the way of
an author getting a date wrong about a piece of
trivia at at which somebody forgot a piece of trivia.
He turned this into a Democrats lied about Biden, and
(27:42):
now everybody hates the Democrats and the Democrats is dead
story quote Adam Wren, Politico. Biden's refusal to pass the
torch until more than a year later still looms over
the party, and the Democrats are still facing questions about
who knew what and when about Biden's faculties. It's not
difficult to see more of these anecdotes surfacing in the
(28:03):
coming weeks and months. What's harder is seeing how the
party regains voters trust trust Adam wrenn trust Politico, trust
Jonathan Allen. Joe Biden and the Democrats aren't the ones
(28:25):
who can't tell the difference between a president for getting
an actual campaign rival and an utterly and literally forgettable
vanity campaign for the nomination that lasted exactly three months
and out of which the guy himself bailed two hundred
and eleven days before the first primary, and Biden wasn't
the one who got the month of the party wrong
(28:47):
and published it anyway, And none of us out here
let our Politico White House Bureau Chief conduct an official
on stage event at Sea pack Nazi Party memberships for
(29:07):
people who don't like the letter Z. The real memory
loss about Politico that Politico should address is after it
goes out of business, will anybody remember it was? Ever?
There also of interest here because believe it or not,
(29:31):
I have some venom left, if not much voice. There's
also something up at NBC. I'm not sure what it is,
but Trump has now threatened them again about MSNBC. And
it's four months since Scarborough rehoard himself to Trump, and
it's a month tomorrow since they fired Joy Reid and
(29:53):
the other hosts of Color. So NBC is preparing to
throw somebody or something out the windows at the fifty
second floor corporate offices at thirty Rock. What is it?
Who is it? That's next? This is countdown? This is
Countdown with Keith Olberman host scripts to the news, some headlines,
(30:26):
some updates, some stark still ahead of course worse persons,
and you know why you need a Department of Education
so idiots like the South African Elon Musk can learn
English correctly and not wind up publicly misspelling the words
Department of education. First, this is the Countdown podcast, and
(30:52):
these are the places where there's news. Date line thirty Rock.
I live a few blocks from where I used to work. This,
of course, is an evergreen statement almost anywhere I've ever
lived in New York. I could say that about one
of the places I used to work, but this time
I am being specific about thirty Rock, thirty Rockefeller Center,
(31:14):
thirty Rockefeller Plaza, the heart of New York City, the
home of the National Broadcasting Company and the corporation that
owns it. I'm not sure what specific ass kissing they
have planned for Trump as our business quasi humans rush
for the exits to get the best deal from the
fascist state, but I can tell from the looks on
(31:36):
their faces they're thinking about it. In the month just closing,
Trump was nice enough to declare that MSNBC and CNN
are illegal. He used the word three times in his
reichs Parthai tog at the Ministry of Love. I'm sorry
the Department of justice. The Ministry of Love was in
the book nineteen eighty four. Anyway, When indictments did not
(31:59):
immediately follow his thrice use of the word illegal, he
brought the subject up again last week and blocks away.
I can smell the fear from the fifty second floor
at thirty Rock. It's not all I smell from there,
but mostly it's fear. They are planning to fold to Trump.
(32:20):
It's just a question of which way. I don't think
they're literally going to do what he suggested last week,
because frankly, that would not be enough for Trump at
this point. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want MSNBC
switched off. He wants them to go all Scarborough. He
wants msn VS keep the brand name, keep a lot
(32:43):
of the same people, pretend they are being critical of him,
and the Republicans become the official authorized controlled resistance, which
offers no resistance at all, except maybe complaining that Trump
hasn't praised his own bitcoon brand recently enough. God knows
(33:05):
NBC has done it before with Republicans. When Republicans have
said something like this, we just.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Need honest journalism and we don't have it.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
When you have a CNN. I watch.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
You have to watch these people every once in a
while just to see where they're coming from.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And it's so dishonest.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
MSNBC is, I think, probably worse, and they're both doing
horribly in the ratings.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
I think they're going to be turned off.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
I don't think they're not doing any ratings.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Wow, does this crap sound familiar? NBC corporate NBC is
in reruns. They were already blackmailed once by the Republicans,
long before Trump was sent here by the devil. And
boy did this flash me back? Because this happened to
(33:49):
me at MSNBC in two thousand and eight, courtesy the
supposed sane Republicans, and it underscores that they have never
been sane. There have never been sane Republicans. They have
always longed to dictate to the media what it can
and cannot say about whichever asshole is its presidential candidate,
(34:12):
and thanks to people like Tom Brokaw, they often get
away with it. Chris Matthews and I were co anchoring
the Republican Convention on MSNBC in two thousand and eight.
He was there at the convention in Minnesota. I was
in the studios at thirty Rock in New York, ostensibly
so I could also anchor hurricane coverage, though it was
(34:34):
pretty clear that at least half the reason I was
not in Minneapolis was because the Republicans had threatened NBC
or said they could not guarantee my safety there or
something like that. So I was the one on September two,
two thousand and eight, who had to throw it to
a video that we had been told by the Republicans
was a tribute to the dead of nine to eleven
(34:54):
that they were playing in the theater in their convention
in Minnesota. It was not a tribute. It was a
snuff film. All of the images that the net works
had stopped showing of nine to eleven within weeks or
even days of the attacks, all of them were in
this snuff film. People jumping, falling to their deaths from
the World Trade Center, endless replays of the planes hitting
(35:17):
the towers, dismembered bodies in the plaza, the building collapses,
the equally terrifying scenes at the Pentagon, and all with
the grotesque voiceover from that Fink Robert Dove, emphasizing that
this was all the Democrats fault. The message was they
might as well have praised it this way. Elect Obama
and you will die, and you will die like this.
(35:39):
I was angry just on that base level. For that
five and a half years I had been back at MSNBC,
we had been rigorous about not showing any of that
video that the Republicans had just forced upon us by
lying to us about it. There were rules that if
we had to for some reason sneed some snippet, we
(35:59):
would show only still images, and even then only with
extensive warnings to the viewers. But I knew from my
conversations with the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, who I
had known for twenty eight years at that point, that
he would insist that on the scene in Minneapolis, Matthews
and Tom Brokaw, whose career at NBC I had resuscitated
after Brian Williams had buried him alive two years earlier.
(36:22):
I knew from what Griffin told me that one or
both of them would rebuke the GOP for showing not
a nine to eleven tribute, but, as I just said,
a nine to eleven snuff film. The snuff film ended,
we came out to Brokaw and Matthews and Brokaw kind
of coughed, and Matthews said wow. And he turned to
Brokaw and said, in that loose fire hose delivery he
(36:44):
had tom that kind of scores terrorism, big thing for Republicans.
They try stuck Obama. Brokaw droned on approvingly the Republican
sneaking a snuff film, a banned video onto MSNBC and
by the way, also onto CNN, onto NBC proper, onto CBS,
onto ABC without any warning. That was not mentioned back
(37:08):
to New York to Keith, I was supposed to add
liberates about what we were expecting from the Republican convention
for the rest of the night and then throw to
a commercial instead, I said, and this is a paraphrase,
the original tape disappeared that night that before we moved on,
I felt I needed to apologize that we at MSNBC
and for that matter, at NBC News, at extremely strict
(37:30):
rules about not showing the video the Republicans had just
shown you via our network, without any warning, without any context,
and by lying to us, and we certainly would not
have shown the horror and death and blamed it on
the Democrats, or for that matter, on the Republicans. I said,
if we had done such a thing ourselves, there would
(37:52):
have been people fired. The public program the GOP provided
said that was going to be a nine to eleven
tribute film, I said, and so did the private conversations
with the network, which included the reminder from NBC and
MSNBC that we had rules against showing the scenes of
horrible death and mutilation and destruction. So I apologized on
(38:12):
behalf of whoever trusted the Republicans to live up to
their word that MSNBC viewers were forced to see the
video our network had promised never to show them. So
three nights later, without as much as an email to me,
this Griffin had called my agent and told her I
was fired and Matthews two from our coverage of the
(38:34):
upcoming McCain Obama debates. I happened to be off that
night in the press box watching a Mets Phillies game
at Shay Stadium, so she had to relate these details
to me by phone. As I walked down the many
ramps in the stadium's bowels and headed towards the subway,
I told her to call Griffin back and tell him
I was quitting on the spot. Right then, and he
(38:56):
could work his way out of the ensuing disaster by himself.
Liberal network MSNBC fires liberal host Alderman for criticizing Concerns
Servatives for sneaking nine to eleven snuff film onto MSNBC.
He could work his way out of that disaster any
way he chose, and then he could wait for my
response on Good Morning America, CBS, This Morning, the PBS
(39:17):
News Hour, any other news program that bothered to ask
and in court. I made a few phone calls to
friendly voices within the NBC management structure, got from them
a clearer picture of what had happened. And despite the
spotty cell service along the elevated train line heading back
into Manhattan, I got a message from a newspaper reporter
(39:38):
friend who neatly tied together all that I was hearing elsewhere.
Tom Brokaw is going around NBC saying he got you
fired from the debates because the Republicans told him to.
Nine maybe ten months earlier, the same Phil Griffin had
come to me and asked me if I would be
okay with Brokaw appearing during our weekly coverage of the
(39:59):
Democratic and Republican primaries. Just a couple of minutes, buddy
like from a perspective desk. That's all he wants to do.
He's so unhappy Brian Williams has frozen him out of everything.
I was appalled, but not surprised. The power had gone
to Brian's head, and of course there it had not
met very much resistance. Plus, as I said to Griffin,
(40:21):
you're asking me if i'd like to add Tom Brocaw's
experience and Tom brocaws gravitas to stuff I'm anchoring when
I'm not sure I know as much as I really
know to do this the right way. Tom to be
fair fit in beautifully, and twice after those long Tuesday
evenings during the primaries, he sent me brief emails awarding
(40:43):
me what he called the game ball, because he was
so impressed by my ability to balance the roles of
political anchor and political commentator. Having tried this myself, he wrote,
I know of a perilous tightroup. This is game ball
to Koh. I mock them now, but they meant so
(41:03):
much to me then that I print them out and
carried them in my wallet until September. And now Brokaw
had gotten me fired because, as my newspaper friend said,
the Republicans told him to Well, that wasn't hard to
unpack either. Tim Russard had died on the third of
June that year. I anchored that night until two in
(41:25):
the morning. It was still an open wound. There were
still tears. We didn't know it then, but the structure
of NBC News and the perilous tight group balancing NBC
and MSNBC had died with Tim Russard. So did the
role of moderator of the second debate between John McCain
and Barack Obama, scheduled for about a month. From my
(41:47):
subway ride on October seventh, two thousand and eight in Nashville,
Tim had not even been buried yet when Brokaw began
to angle to get that assignment that was now vacant,
along with brushing away the dirt of his Penny Anti
role on the MSNBC Perspective desk, leaving us in the
in order to take over Tim's spot as Brian's sage
(42:09):
sidekick on Big NBC. The one before August, there had
been a story coming out of the east end of
the third floor at thirty Rock, where NBC News managers
sat around not doing much of anything. That a Republican
goon named Ed Gillespie had been in there with Griffin
and the idiot NBC News president Steve kappis trying to
(42:29):
get me silenced or fired or off the convention coverage
or something, and that somebody prominent from NBC News was
in there with Gillespie or was invoked by Gillespie. The
rumor mill was not confident in who it was or
what exactly they were doing. That Friday night in September
(42:51):
two thousand and eight, as I switched from the elevated
seven train to the underground f the whole thing came together.
Before my comments about the GOP Convention nine to eleven
snuff film, Gillespie had come in and had somehow vaguely
threaten and Campus and Griffin about me using as leverage
the debate which Tom Brokaw was now supposed to moderate,
(43:12):
the one that had been Russots, And when I apologized
for their snuff video on our air, Gillespie must have
turned it into an either or get rid of me,
or McCain would refuse to participate in any debate moderated
by Brokaw. Tom Brokaw had already come back from the
dead once in two thousand and eight, I had made
(43:33):
that happen, and he would be damned if he would
be forced to do it a second time. But as
the train took me home to an apartment, I was
now going to have to sell since I had quit
MSNBC on the spot for folding to such obvious blackmail,
something else now occurred to me. Why would MSNBC or
NBC or our parent corporation GE actually think that they
(43:55):
could remove me from the debate coverage on MSNBC, where
the Rachel Meadow Show had not yet been born, was
only going to premiere the next week, and the three
times a night my show ran accounted for something like
sixty percent of the entire day's network audience and all
of its profits. How did they think they were going
(44:15):
to get away with that without a really bad reaction
from our audience. Plus, if a newspaper man already knew
the Brokaw part, how could this story be avoided something
like this? MSNBC has announced it had removed its liberal
star Keith Alderman from coverage of the McCain Obama presidential debates.
Sources confirmed former NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw now an
(44:37):
MSNBC commentator had helped the Republican Party to blackmail NBC
into the decision. Olderman immediately resigned, saying, quote in succumbing
to this coercion on behalf of John McCain, NBC has
now forfeited any further right to be called a news organization,
and I'm sad to say MSNBC, which I built, is
now dead. At that point, it dawned on me that
(45:00):
the only thing that could save the credibility of the
whole NBC News debate vision and the careers of Griffin
and Cappus and NBC Network president Jeff Zucker and especially
Tom Brokaw was for me to publicly state to lie
that I had asked to be removed from anchoring the
debates because the whatever was just too much blah blah
(45:22):
blah for me, and I felt I should just stick
to the post debate analysis in commentary and blah blah
blah blah blah. In short, they would have a choice.
They could fire me from the debates and destroy everything,
including the one hundred million dollars a year or so
in profits NBC was suddenly making off MSNBC after years
(45:43):
of losing about that much, or I could lie and
claim it was my idea and I could save everybody's
ass and their money, including my own. I got out
of the subway and raced home. I called my agent.
I explained it to her. I'm not quitting. In fact,
I'm going to get a huge raise. Listen carefully, you
(46:03):
call Griffin back and explain to him I will now
personally save his job, even though he doesn't deserve it,
and campuses and Zooker's and bro cause in everybody else's
I'll take the fall instead of letting them get fired
by the MSNBC audience. I'll say this was my idea,
and it will cost him only twelve million dollars. Oh,
(46:26):
and he has to leak the fact that it cost
him twelve million dollars. That's the deal. And she paused
for a second, and she said, hey, that's genius. It
might not quite be twelve, but I bet I get
at least nine million. On Sunday, several news organizations reported
I had asked to be taking off the anchor desk
(46:47):
for the debates. Two months and one week later, The
New York Times wrote, quote Keith Oldraman, the anchor of
countdown on MSNBC has extended his contract through the next
presidential election season. The networking outs mister Olderman and MSNBC
essentially tore up the four year, four million dollars a
year contract they signed last year and replaced it with
one worth about seven and a half million a year.
(47:11):
So that was a three and a half million dollar
raise for four years to a total of fourteen million dollars.
Except the new contract added two years to my old deal,
so the rais was actually twenty two million dollars. All
stories have punchlines. This punchline is about Brokaw. We would
have gotten away with this. NBC would have gotten its
(47:33):
money's worth for the twenty two million in hush money
it had to pay me because it had rolled over
for Republican Party blackmail. Except Brokaw couldn't keep his mouth shut.
So proud was he of preserving his role as moderator
of the October seventh debate that he had to explain
in explicit detail how he went to his bosses at
(47:53):
NBC News and threatened them on behalf of the GOP.
I mean on the record, he said this September twenty ninth,
a lengthy and glowing Brocaw profile in the New York Times. Quote,
mister Brocaws said that over the summer he'd quote advocated
within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the
(48:14):
anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Keith Olberman and Chris
Matthews on election Night and on knights where there were
presidential debates. Mister Brocaw said he had also conducted some
shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between NBC and the McCain campaign.
His mission, he said, was to assure the candidate's aids
that despite some negative on air commentary by mister Olderman
(48:35):
in particular, mister McCain could still get a fair shake
from NBC News. Unquote. That was his mission. The hell,
that was his mission. Happily, Rocaw just could not resist
boasting even further. The next sentence reads quote, mister Brocaws
said he had been told by a senior McCain aide
(48:57):
whom he did not name, that the campaign had been
reluctant to accept an NBC representative as one of the
moderators of the three presidential debates until his name was invoked.
One of the things I was told by this person
was that they were so irritated they said, if it's
an NBC moalorator for any of these debates, we won't go.
(49:18):
Mister Brocaw said, my name came up, and they said,
oh hell, we have to do it, because it's going
to be Brokaw. No insufferable person in all of broadcasting
history has a better rep and a better and more
undeserved rep than Tom Brokaw. So when a Trump leans
(49:40):
on NBC management because the coverage that he got was
not the coverage he wanted, don't think it won't have
an effect. Because in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
They loved me then as they love Meadow now. But
what they loved about each of us was not the
truth we provided, but the money.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Believe it or not, there are still more new idiots
to talk about the roundup of the misgrants, morons and
Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons
in the world. Here are the nominees, the brons worse
the perpetrators, in this case, Canadian anger towards that nation's
(50:48):
hockey immortal, well former immortal, Wayne Gretzky, has re redoubled
and here comes the feces smeared on the nine foot
tall statue of Gretzky outside the hockey rink in Edmond,
where Gretzky played the bulk of his career. Feses, a
(51:10):
lot of feces. The Edmonton Oilers executive vice president of
UH statue defecising or something, a man named Tim Shipton
telling the news division of CTV quote, it's unfortunate over
the past several years we've had to deal with issues
(51:31):
of disorder in our downtown core.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
Sir.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
That is not disorder, it's feces. They have not defaced
or done any disordering. They have defecis. Or to put
it in terms that invokes two of Gretzky's teams and
probably his best known teammate, it's messy. A that's a
(51:56):
hockey joke. The runner up worser New York Mayor Eric Adams,
who's just a joke joke. His re election campaign has
raised this year thirty six thousand dollars. Oh wait, that's
before he had to give eighteen thousand dollars back to
donors who were over the legal limit. For comparison, eight
hundred and forty five thousand dollars has been raised this
(52:19):
year by the campaign of Zoran Mamdani. Who is Zoran Mamdani.
I had no idea and I live here until I
looked him up. He is the Socialist candidate for mayor.
He outraised the mayor mayor same time span by a
factor of forty seven. On the other hand, Mayor Adams
(52:40):
doesn't seem to understand the implications here. He held a
town hall in the ocean side neighborhood of the Rockaways
and decided instead of talking about what he could do
to save the city and himself, he decided to reminisce
about riding the subways without paying so he could visit
his quote Shorty unquote who lived in the distant Rockaways.
(53:04):
Shorty means many things in the urban lingo. This time
it appears to be a reference to a girlfriend, possibly
a girlfriend on the side of another relationship. Or it's
Eric Adams, who the hell knows what he means.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
There's a real history for me.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
I had a shorty that lived out here, you know,
used to come out, come out, taking that long a train, right,
you know, and the cold, you know, love is blind,
and you know, taking that long, long a train I
did not have a car, and one or two times
I didn't have a tokens. So yes, I did jump
up with the turnstile. I'm not gonna it's over. The
(53:45):
statue of limitation is over.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
Statue of limitations. Statue of limitations. The Mayor of the
City of New York, everybody but the winner worst Ellen
Musk wait I may have mispronounced that. Yeah at Elon,
Elon Musk. Now that he and Trump have eliminated the
(54:08):
Department of Education, which Mayor Adams so desperately needed, who
knows how much more stupid we will each become. Musk,
of course, does not have much further to descend. He
celebrated the thing that will increase those non college white
trash men for Trump numbers by doing the graveside meme
(54:29):
with the guy kneeling in front of the tombstone giving
the two finger piece or V for victory sign. Only
in this one the guy is Trump and on the
tombstone it reads Department of Education. Yes, depart men d
E P R T M E N. Because Musk has
(54:49):
misspelled department because he's a clucking idiot. Elon Department of Education. Musk.
The law of proving Darwin was right. This has to
come into play with this loser at some point, doesn't it.
I mean, he's got to try to get the toast
out with a fork sooner rather than later, doesn't he
(55:13):
Elon Musk two days worse person and no word. I've
(55:58):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. Ryan Ray and John Phillip Chanel, the musical
directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on
the guitars, bass and drums, and it was produced by
Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by
the best baseball stadium organists ever, Nancy Faust. The sports
(56:20):
music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by
Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. And my
announcer today is my friend Larry David. Everything else was
as ever my fault. That's countdown for today, just three
hundred and ninety nine days. We've cleared fourteen hundred until
(56:43):
the scheduled end of his lane Duck lame reigned term
unless Musk removes him sooner or the actuarial tables due.
The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. Voice still tentative. As always,
Bolton's as the news warrants, remember im peach Trump. It
won't work now, it will win the Democrat. It's the
(57:04):
midterms if there are midterms, and remove Schumer immediately. Until
next time, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
The statue of limitation is over.
Speaker 1 (57:24):
Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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