February 6, 2025 • 46 mins
SEASON 3 EPISODE 95: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Now that the Democratic Party and the nation has realized that Musk is at the center of a Trumpian coup to privatize the government, the question becomes: HOW do we arrest Elon and his Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles?
The reality of the crises of the tech-bro coup and the putsch to violate the constitution and the multi trillion-dollar attempted heist and Trump’s plan to invade Gaza so he can personally own it has gotten through. Congressman Al Green has confirmed he will make a motion to impeach Trump and remember even failed impeachment bills give the impeaching party a perfect record in the next House, Senate, and Presidential elections. But until we can replace the Supreme Court, Trump is immune.
However, Musk is not immune. None of his little minions are immune. Any of the officials at USAid or in the Treasury Department or OMB who admitted these little clowns into secure areas are not immune, in fact they are subject to espionage charges and they will still be subject to them four years from now. There are at least 28 lawsuits in progress against the various tentacles of Musk's cyber-version of Oceans 11 meets The Nigerian Prince who only needs your routing number. One has already stopped the destruction of birthright citizenship in its tracks.
And local prosecutions are doable and reasonable. The key to putting Musk away is publicity. What he is doing a story CREATED for local television news and its older, less affluent audience: somebody sent hackers into the government where they, right now, could be stealing your medicare money and social security? It’s EXACTLY what local television producers live for: Here’s Jack Liveshot in Scarsdale with his guest Concerned Grandma. This is low-hanging fruit because everybody hates Elon Musk. EVERYBODY. And body will hate him more than all the little tech-bros after it turns out Musk is NOT omnipotent and to do his dirty work for him, ends with your ass in jail.
First one to flip on Musk gets probation and a brand new Hotmail account and AOL installation disk.
B-Block (29:24) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Did nobody tell Roger Goodell of the NFL that to suddenly declare yourself anti-"End Racism" is the same thing as saying you are PRO-Racism? The average Conservative who got David-and-Goliath wrong. And Rahm Emanuel is destroyed online by my pal Will Bunch with one of the most efficient burns I've ever seen.
C-Block (38:40) THINGS I PROMISE NOT TO TELL: I was quoted by the Washington Post complimenting Maddow and reportedly she's pissed (that they put me in her story). Coincidentally, this is more or less the anniversary that I bypassed my bosses and hired her at MSNBC out of my own pocket.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
The question becomes, how do we get Elon Musk and
his teenage mutant Ninja Turtles arrested? The Democratic Party Rip
van Winkle chairman, has awakened from its slumber and the
nation with it. It has appreciated the reality of the
crises of the tech pro coup and the push to
(00:45):
privatize government and the multi trillion dollar attempted heist, and
Trump's plan to invade Gaza so he can personally own it.
Lawsuits are flying, impeachment symbolic but even symbolically undefeated is underway,
and more on each in a moment. Trump is immune
(01:06):
until we eventually replace this Supreme Court with something to
do with the law and the constitution. However, Musk is
not immune. Marco Els, the twenty five year old Musk
fop allegedly rewriting code and in a position to do
anything he wants your tax dollars, He's certainly not immune.
The new Treasury Secretary Besant is not immune. Nicole Hollander
(01:29):
is not immune. Akasha Baba is not immune. Luke Farretor
is not immune. F Then Shao Tran is not immune.
Edward Korstine is not immune. Gautier cole Killian is not immune.
Gavin Kligger is not immune. And any of the officials
at USAID or in the Treasury Department or anywhere else
who admitted these little clowns into secure areas as has
(01:53):
been alleged, they are not immune. In fact, they are
subject to espionage charges, and they will still be subject
to them four years from now. But Elon Musk is
especially not immune. And what the hell is going on
with him now? Anyway, his usual state semi delusional, frantic, irrational,
(02:17):
it's given way to full fledged euphoria and delusional delusions,
not of grandeur but of omnipotence. Somebody listed the names
of his teenage mutant Ninja Turtles in a post on
Twitter x, and Musk, acting like he was zonked out
of his mind, responded, you have committed a crime, even
though hours earlier he Musk amplified another post on Twitter
(02:42):
x listing the same names. Musk has conflated a violation
of Twitter doxing rules with actual violations of the law,
And then it turned out that simply giving somebody's name
is in fact not a violation of Twitter doxing rules.
You have committed a crime. No elon check your mirror,
(03:04):
you may have committed a crime. The lawsuits have already
begun by government employee unions whose pensions, they say Musk
and others have illegally put at risk by the Democrats,
by ethics groups to whom Trump gave the priceless gift
of declaring Musk and administration employee making Musk subject to
conflict of interest laws. A federal judge in Maryland has
(03:27):
already stopped Trump dead in his tracks on sabotaging birthright citizenships.
There are six other lawsuits already in progress just on
birthright citizenship. There are five over various aspects of his
executive orders on immigration policy. There are thirteen about the
phony buyouts and the attempts to thus dissolve the CIA, USAID,
(03:51):
the Department of Education. There are four lawsuits about acts
against transgender people. Just security dot org has a litigation
tracker up go there. Odds are like one in three.
While you are looking at this, it will update while
you're reading it because there's been a new lawsuit and
the bids to get temporary restraining orders against Musk and
(04:14):
the other pirates in the Trump maladministration have unexpectedly been
as efficient and as subtle as Trump has been. In
Trump's work as a saboteur of the courts, it is
the exact opposite of what Musk has been in his
cyber version of Ocean's eleven meets the Nigerian Prince who
(04:34):
only needs your bank routing number. But Trump has yet
to completely destroy the justice system, and there are still
enough judges to tie Musk up in local jurisdictions for
the rest of his goddamned life, and especially to tie
up these little shit weasels of his who will suddenly
discover that their secret mainframes and social media accounts and
(04:56):
SpaceX business cards don't mean crap, and that, as my
friend William H. Macy once said in a classic pro
for his show Shameless, Real Worlds out here Pal, but
the goal has got to be to put Musk in prison.
The side effect to Trump getting away with it for
(05:18):
now is the residual rage for all of us, from
nine year old politically aware kids to liberal Supreme Court justices,
all of us who know Trump deserves to die in jail,
not in the White House bathroom. We can't do anything
about this for now. So who's the next best choice
to absorb our legal wrath? Two hints that person will
(05:43):
never corner any product nor industry the way he has
cornered the world supplies of smug and snide, and visually
he looks like a skull with some coagulated botox stretched
across it. The key to getting Elon Musk arrested is publicity.
(06:04):
What he is doing is a story, by the way,
created for local television news for the older, less affluent
audience of local television news. Musk's hackers allegedly go into
the government, where they write, now could be stealing your
Medicaid money and Social Security live at eleven. It is
(06:29):
exactly what local television producers want. It's exactly what they
dream of. Let's take you now live to Jack liveshot
in Scarsdale with his concerned guest, concerned Grandma. Call your
local newsroom. Once the publicity cycle begins to inflate, then
we get to the local prosecutions. Because Trump has not
(06:51):
corrupted the entirety of the legal system yet, and he's
not forced out all the US attorneys, and a clever city, county,
or state prosecutor could bring countless charges against Musk or
his saboteurs or anybody else for everything from I don't know, theft,
breaking an entering. You could do it in DC too.
The Watergate burglars were not arrested by the FBI for
(07:13):
you know, seventeen counts of trying to end democracy. They
were arrested for burglary by the Washington Metropolitan Police Department.
This is low hanging fruit because everybody hates Elon Musk. Everybody,
especially all the little tech pros, are gonna hate Elon
(07:34):
Musk after it turns out Musk is not omnipotent, and
to do his dirty work for him ends up with
you getting your ass taken to jail. First one to
flip on Musk gets probation and a brand new hotmail
account and an Aol installation.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Disc Impeachment today, impeachment tomorrow, impeachment forever.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Preach Al Green, preach, I rise to announce.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
That the movement to impeach the president has begun. I
rise to announce that I will bring articles of impeachments
against the President for destately deeds proposed and desperately deeds done.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Congressman Al Green al Green of Texas. I have mentioned before,
I will mention again, no, it will not pass. I
know that Congressman Green knows that we all know that.
But we are for the time being limited to carefully
tactical actions in the courts, holds in the Senate, and
(09:10):
impeachment bills one a week in the House. And the
history of impeachment since Richard Nixon is simple and instructive.
Impeachment bills pass, and impeachment bills fail, and impeachments happen,
and impeachments don't happen, and no president has ever been
removed from office. And it don't matter the party that
(09:30):
merely attempts and fails to impeach, no matter, the outcome
is thirteen and oh in the following how Senate and
presidential elections, that includes the Republicans and all the crap
from Lauren Bobert and Jamie Comer in twenty twenty three
and twenty twenty four. You don't even have to get
a vote on your bill. Just keep saying the word impeachment.
(09:53):
Damn thing works. The statistic the precise number thirteen and
oh is disputed. As a historian, I would note it's
probably fourteen and Oh, the infeatument of Andrew Johnson worked
because it was one faction of the then monopolistic Republicans
defeating the other faction of the monopolistic Republicans. On the
(10:14):
other hand, a Congressional aid of my acquaintance says it
shouldn't be thirteen and ohero and fourteen and oh, it's
thirteen and one because Trump was impeached as his term
ended in twenty twenty one, and the Republicans won the
House in twenty twenty two. I replied that the Democrats
lost fewer seats in twenty twenty two, then predicted, then
predicted the morning of the election. And so you say
(10:38):
the Republicans won the House in twenty twenty two, how
did that work out for them? Elsewhere? Surprisingly enough, Trump's
plan to take Gaza and maybe own it himself and
(10:59):
turn it into the Middle Eastern Riviera. The division of
trump World, inc oh, and to what amounts to ethnic
cleansing of the current two million Palestinians who live there,
as if he were doing the world a favor, has
made him an international laughing stock the way nothing else
in ten years has. And this is a world, after
(11:19):
all that laughed at him during his speech to the UN.
The bar is kind of high. The man who ran
on ending forever wars and who mocks Bush to this
day about Iraq at every opportunity, who falsely claims he
was against the Iraq invasion, is ready to send what
would have to be dozens of times as many American
troops as went into Iraq six hundred miles east, to
(11:43):
forcibly remove anybody still in Gaza and send them to
Egypt and Jordan, whether they like it or not, or
Egypt and Jordan like it or not. Oh, by the way,
there's still Hamas in Gaza, and I'm not thinking they're
going to be lining up at the counter for their
tickets on the Trump shuttle to Aman. And of course
Trump is still sending little twits like Marco Rubio around
(12:04):
insisting we're going to take back the Panama Canal and
his son idiot Junior to take over Greenland, and all
of a sudden, those million, three hundred thousand active duty
American troops they're just not going to be enough, now,
are they. So now Trump's backed himself into the next
corner bringing back the draft. Hasn't said it yet, Wait
(12:26):
for it. If there is one thing that will guarantee
riots in the streets that, oh, by the way, the
rioters will win. It's another draft. The last one was
expanded for Vietnam in the sixties, at a time when
the nation still largely believed its government meant well and
had judgment, and when parents would actually willingly let the
(12:48):
government take their children to send them to die meaninglessly
in a conflict we could not win or even influence,
when we still believed in large part that the government's
judgment on such things could be trusted. And still within
three years there were daily protests and draft card burnings
(13:09):
and violent underground terrorist organizations, and enough chaos to end
Lyndon Johnson's presidency and force an end to the war
and the draft within the decade. If Trump, if any president,
for Gaza or Greenland or Panama or whatever else he
pulls out of his own ass, If Trump or any
president tried a draft, except in the event of something
(13:32):
on the scale of World War Two, in these days,
when the idea of people agreeing to be forced by
the government to risk their lives in an optional war
is met with only rage and uncontrollable laughter. If Trump
actually tried a draft, and to clean out Gaza, he'd
(13:53):
have to have a draft. If he actually did it,
I'd give his presidency it a week to ten days
before he and everybody in it were forced out of office.
It may not have occurred to Trump yet that to
do just Gaza, maybe just Greenland, or just Panama, it
(14:16):
would require a draft. And by the way, I'd like
to take this opportunity to congratulate those who protested Israel
and Biden's attempts to find a way out of the
Gordian not of the Middle East by not voting for
Kamala Harris, Your boy Trump is demanding all Palestinians get
out of Gaza. Nice protests, it's ethnic cleansing. Wait until
(14:40):
Trump responds to the blowback to that, domestic and international,
to his insane belief that he personally can make gazillions
in Gaza tourism when somebody tells him he has just
damaged himself and beclowned himself and made the world wonder
if it needs to try to forcibly remove him because
he's crazy. His next move won't be all out Palestinians
out of Gaza. It will be all Palestinians out of America.
(15:14):
I'm not favoring that, by the way, I'm just saying
that's how he will react. Good call vote against Kamala Harris.
What could go wrong? Who knew this could happen? Everybody
told us this, but we thought they were just who knows,
(15:35):
you bought it, you lie in it. The irony of
the first two weeks of the Trump reducs is that
his minions have been studdingly successful. Illegally successful, of course,
but still we don't got to show you any stinking badges.
The drag on their plan for world domination is this
idiot Trump and is idiot pal idiot Musk, whereas they
(15:58):
may soon be known Thelma and Louise Tariffs Tariff's tariffs
start now, let me just talk to Canada and Mexico. First,
Oh okay, no tariffs end results headline in the Wall
Street Journal, Trump blinks on North American tariffs. Well played, sir,
all in one first sixty shots didn't count. Then there
(16:21):
was yesterday's farce of quote banning transgendered women from competing
in women's sports at the collegiate and grade school and
high school level, which part of Trump's promise to return
all control of education to the States. Would this be
all control of education of the States except for sports.
(16:42):
I will also remind you of two things I have
mentioned before. The estimated number of women athletes at the
scholastic level whose birth gender was male in this country
is one hundred and five one one hundred and five.
Of course, that estimate is old. It's a month ago.
It was made by a group seeking to ban them,
(17:04):
so it may now be up to one hundred and six.
And I will add that nearly fifty years ago and
my friend doctor Renee Richards formerly doctor Richard Raskin, reached
tennis's US Open. She of course wiped out Chris Everett
and Martina Navratilova and all the rest. And you'll remember
she won twenty three consecutive Wimbledon's and she destroyed women's
tennis for all time because of her bone structure advantage.
(17:26):
Oh that's right. None of that happened, because this issue
is trivial, because there's one hundred and six of them
in the country, and it only became a cause celebra
for morons and mediocrits like the swimmer Riley Gaines, who
finished well behind a transgendered woman once and then devoted
her life to hounding transgendered people. Congrats on the Riley
(17:50):
Gains was a mediocre swimmer, but a worse person order.
Couple of vsh media notes, as Marjorie Taylor Green, who
declared yesterday that the music magazine and news outlet is
called Rolling Stones, demanded NPR and PBS testify to some
(18:16):
committee she runs or subcommittee at the doge who knows
hai this is the subcommittee for morons. PBS has commissioned
a poll in which seventy two percent of Trump voters
said they valued PBS for its kids programming. Sixty five
percent of Trump voters think PBS is either adequately funded
(18:38):
by the government or insufficiently funded government by the government. Unbelievable.
There's large group of Trump voters who believe we should
be giving more taxpayer money to PBS. Government funds are
only fifteen percent of the PBS budget. Anyway, have a
nice time with that data, Marge. I don't know a
(19:02):
number as big as sixty five. She may just faint.
Stephen A. Smith is skating further and further onto thin ice.
He says it would be a sacrifice, but he might
run for the Democratic nomination in twenty twenty eight, how's
your shoulder for? Did you have an injury panning yourself
(19:23):
on the back with both arms at the same time?
Surgery Polling and it's by a Trump pollster has Kamala
Harris at thirty five percent right now for the twenty
twenty eight nomination, and nobody else in double digits. But
just for giggles, here's the rest of the list. Buddha
Jedge nine, Newsom seven AOC six, Governor Shapiro three, Governor
(19:47):
Walls three, Governor Whitmter three, Senator Klobashar three, Corey Booker two,
Governor Moore two, Stephen A. Smith two, Governor Pritzker one,
Beto O'Rourke one, Governor Murphy one, Governor Polis one. So
Stephen trails, Tim Walls and Amy Klobashar. But he's got
twice the support of Jared Polis, who's been collaborating with Republicans.
(20:11):
Well done, Steve. The problem with Stephen A. Smith is
I'm not sure if he doesn't realize that two percent
is nothing, or if he was just so excited to
see his name on the list that he didn't even
look at the number. And we have a nearly weekly,
(20:33):
self owned by Van Jones, now in its tenth year,
Van Jones is still on CNN. Van Jones commented on
Scott Jennings, the racist, misogynist CNN platforms every night in
hopes of getting an audience that just will not show
up for Abby Phillip Show no matter who you put
on it. She is at a little better than one
(20:55):
third the Lawrence O'Donnell audience. And I assume most of
Loade's audience at this point is people who died in
front of the team and left it on MSNBC. That's
just my guest based on my experience with him. Anyway,
Van Jones told The Wall Street Journal about mister Jennings
of the Abby Phillips Show, quote, I've never fell on
(21:19):
air that Scott was saying something he didn't believe in
a way that was unnecessarily incendiary just to go viral.
So so, Ben, you're saying, Scott Jennings isn't a white
supremacist asshole, clickbaiting poser. He's a real white supremacist asshole.
(21:40):
And that's better somehow. If CNN canceled its primetime lineup
and went all cartoons, the quality of CNN commentary and
CNN journalism would shoot through the roof. In the interim,
I have this suggestion CNN should try to get Van
(22:01):
Jones and Scott Jennings shoot through the roof. See you boys.
Also of interest here, Rom Emmanuel and David Axelrod are
upset at the democrats reaction to Musk canceling the US
AID program. Not righteously indignant enough, not protesting enough, not
(22:25):
acting enough. No, no, no, These two dinosaurs think Democrats
should not have reacted at all. Happily, my pal Will
Bunch ended Rom Emmanuel's remaining credibility with one of the
greatest burns I have ever read. That's next. This is countdown.
(22:49):
This is countdown, with Keith Elberman still ahead. I was
(23:14):
quoted in the Washington Post the other day as saying
about Rachel Matadow quote, television political commentary is better when
she's on the air. My understanding is she's pissed about that.
Why because there's an article about her in which I
(23:35):
am quoted. This is not an odd phenomenon, although she
has elevated it to real weirdness. Not long after I
got to ESPN in nineteen ninety two, people magazine found
out that I had gone to school with was a
protege there of and then successor to Chris Berman, and
(24:00):
they were doing a story on him, so they interviewed
me about him, and when it came out, Chris took
me into a studio and they rolled up. Copy of
the magazine was in his hand, and he was angry,
they've quoted you in here more than they have quoted me.
What I pointed out that I'd only said nice things, Chris,
(24:20):
and this is him in brief quickly apologized, I'm sorry
a family member is upset. Anyway.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
What I really should have said was I'm glad somebody
who knew me before I was a big deal still
likes me now when I am a big deal.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
That is also Chris. It's way less conceited than it sounds.
I could not resist the joke though, that he had
just set up. I pointed at his copy of People,
and I said, where in there does it say I
like you? He scowled, and then said, so, if they
ever do a piece on you for some reason, I'll
just say you were as big a wise ass now
(25:03):
as you were when you were thirty. I said that
was fair, and that was the end of it. When
they did do a story on me, they didn't even
call him Mattow though didn't apologize. And a last to that,
the post noted quote that I helped jumpstart Matdow's career
and that of other network stars, which is the first
time that reality has sneaked into print in like five years.
(25:27):
And it's true, but it doesn't get to the gist
of it, which is I fought my bosses for a year,
the ones who said MSNBC viewers would never watch a
woman do political news. One of those geniuses is now
president of her production company. Because TV damages the brains
of everybody connected to it, myself included, you have to
(25:47):
work your way back from that kind of damage. Few do.
In point of fact, I actually wound up personally stopping
MSNBC from losing Madow to CNN when Larry King offered
her two hundred and fifty dollars to be a guest
one night. Turned out we were getting her work for
first here. That's right, two hundred and fifty dollars. I
(26:08):
stepped in, hired her myself, spent four hundred and thirty
seven dollars literally out of my own wallet to keep
her there and billions of dollars later. I will tell
you the story in full, because I think this is
the anniversary of the event. It is a story that
sounds crazier and crazier every time I tell it. I
(26:28):
will tell it in full next in Things I promised
not to tell first, Believe it or not, there's still
more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of
the miss Grants, morons undone in Kruger Effects specimens who
constitute today's other worst persons in the world. Today's episode
is dedicated to dishonorable Mention recipient Nancy Mace, the congresswoman
(26:53):
stood on the floor of the House yesterday and shouted repeatedly,
quote tranny, tranny, tranny, which wouldn't be news. She has
episodes like that also. And Mace does not have a
screw loose. She has a hardware store full of screws loose.
The reason this matters is that after her former communications director,
(27:14):
Natalie Johnson wrote to Mace on social about quote your
botched cheap hooker inspired boob job unquote, it is evident
that the average transgendered person has had less plastic surgery
than has Nancy Mace any who. Thus we proceed to
the medallists the bronze worse. The NFL, the National Football
(27:38):
League from the athletic a Super Bowl change, something that
had been in place since the twenty twenty one game.
By the way, can we drop the moronic Roman numerals already?
This isn't ancient rome. We barely use them at all
anymore except for this stupid game. And nobody knows what
LX means in mathematics anymore. Anyway, l i X everybody
(28:03):
already has a joke about what LIX could mean. Anyway.
The change from the athletic NFL to remove end racism
messaging in end zone ahead of Super Bowl sources, And
there is a picture of a preceding Super Bowl that
the chief slogo in the end zone and then above
(28:23):
it in smaller letters right under the goalpost and racism. Hey,
Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, I know you're an idiot,
but certainly somebody's had to you. Somebody had to have
mentioned this. Hey, you know what if we suddenly become
against end racism, isn't that the same as being for racism?
(28:46):
NFL not see Football League the runner up generic Get
off My Lawn, Republican octagenarian Jack Miladden, who decided to
engage Justin Trudeau with one of the oldest cliches of
all time on social media. It's literally at least two
thousand years old, and Jack screwed it up. Trudeau wrote,
(29:08):
the United States has confirmed that it intends to impose
twenty five percent tariffs on most Canadian goods, with ten
percent tariffs on energy starting February fourth. Obviously things have
changed since this was written. I've met with the premieres
and our cabinet today and I'll be speaking with President
Scheinbaum of Mexico. Shortly we did et cetera, et cetera,
and Jack Maladden, whose handle is at John Maladden, signifying
(29:32):
a life of utter confusion on his part. Had Canada
been treating us fairly, Jack added, this would never have happened,
So buckle up, Canada, you're taking on Goliath. It got
community noted because, of course, as the note said, Goliath
died in that story. This Maladden guy, whoever it was is,
(29:57):
was reduced to explaining that he knew all that, of course,
But then clearly this time the odds were Goliath will win.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Ms.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Maloden is, of course mister Maladen. Whatever he is is,
of course more representative of a different Biblical bit of imagery,
namely the jawbone of an ass. But our winner is
Rom Immanuel. Boy, oh boy, did this idiot not recognize
his own sell by date? Never noticed when the sand
(30:25):
had run out in his hour glass. His Washington post
op ed was bad enough. Democrats had become the pointy
of permissiveness. That's ballot box poison. This whole article, flimsy,
badly written, repetitive, was an excuse to explain that only
Bill Clinton's campaign in nineteen ninety two really got that
(30:47):
balance right between big issues and kitchen table issues, and
who worked on that campaign? Why it was whiny, holier
than now, sound of one hand clapping, and the hand
was immanuals and he was looking at a picture of
himself as he did it. Rom Emmanuel, Well, that op
ed was bad enough. But Emmanuel's interview with Politico, in
(31:10):
which he insists that the Democrats are wrong to devote
any time to try to stop Elon Musk savaging American
foreign aid and breaking into the digital equivalent of Fort Knox,
that's way worse. Rom Emmanuel is a fool. He got
lucky once, like David Axelrod got lucky once. Axelrod is
(31:31):
in the same story. He echoed to Politico, this same
stick to kitchen table issues, while Trump is trying to
steal everybody's kitchen table and gaza and open up. I
don't know a restaurant with your kitchen table in it.
Rom Emmanuel, David Axelrod, and Politico all in the same place,
(31:54):
the all star team of conventional wisdom. As long as
it's still nineteen ninety six, missing only Chuck Todd and Christial,
how could it get worse? Well, I will offer for
one immanual quote with this preface. I've mentioned it before.
I brought up Chris Berman in high school, Will Bunch
of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who used to answer to Bill Bunch,
(32:16):
by the way, was from the day he joined our
high school newspaper, which Berman had just graduated from. Bunch
was our best reporter, my best reporter. I was news
editor and editor in chief, and I'd been on the
paper four years, and I really was a good editor.
It was my calling. And then this got in the way. Anyway,
(32:37):
Bunch was so good back then. This is fifty two
years ago that I remember saying to him at the time,
your article is the first one I'll do my voice
from then, your article is the first one. I can't
do anything too to make it better. Well, Bunch is
still that good. First the Immanual quote from Politico that
(32:57):
I referred to, then Bunch responding to it with the
best burn of the year so far. Quote Manual, the
former House leader, Chicago mayor, and diplomat, told me much
the same quote. You don't find every fight, you don't
swing at every pinch. And my view is, while I
care about the USAID as a former ambassador, that's not
(33:19):
the hill I'm going to die on, he said. Will
Bunch screenshot at this and posted it with this kill
shot directed at Immanuel, quoting, will please tell me the
hill that you will die on, so that I can't
transport you there immediately. Oh, I'll pay for the uber.
(33:45):
Will rom your dead son, get yourself buried? Immanuel, Today's
worst person than the word.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
The geniuses of MSNBC. So I looked up the details
of this, and it looks like this is the anniversary.
It's somewhere around here at the beginning of February from
two thousand and eight. Late in November two thousand and seven,
after several months of pressuring my MSNBC bosses to hire
(34:35):
Rachel Maddow to try out as My guest host with
a goal of then showcasing her and spinning her off
into her own show, the vice president in charge of
the network, Phil Griffin, agreed to give Madow a deal
for forty or fifty grand as an MSNBC contributor. It
would do nothing more than lock her in place so
(34:56):
that CNN would not steal her from us. I mean,
I knew that that conversation and that concession still would
not get her her own show. What I did not
know was the concession I was told about the contributors contract.
It was a lie. And by January two thousand and eight,
as the Clinton Obama primary race turned into a tong war,
(35:16):
we were imposing upon Rachel Meadow to join the desk
each Tuesday for Primary Night. She was not anchoring, she
was not even the lead analyst. And my uncontrollable fire
hose co host Matthews, who was consistently pretending that she
did not actually exist, but she existed, she was there,
and I quizzed her about every topic every chance I got.
(35:38):
Soon I began to include her appearances in the pre
recorded open that I would write two minutes of hyperbole
that was really designed merely to give everybody enough time
to get my fat ass into the anchor chair and
everybody else's mics on with Tim Russard in the NBC
News Washington Bureau, David Gregory at Clinton Headquarters, Howard Feineman
(35:59):
and Eugene Robinson in New York, Chuck Todd at the
exit poll desk, Tom broke off the perspective desk, MC
Esher at the lack of Perspective Desk. Then came Super Tuesday,
February fifth, two thousand and eight. I was writing this
orgasmic drivel, as I always did on Tuesday, crossing the
(36:20):
names of who was where off the list as I
went the list handed to me by the executive producer, Izypovich.
When I noticed the list did not include either Rachel
or the Rachel Desk, I knocked on the wall that
separated our little offices at thirty Rock, and she shuffled
in complete with a sincere smile, friendship, but always also
(36:40):
with what seemed to be a little space kept in
reserve where she could wonder if I was mad enough
to try to take somebody hostage. Yes, my third child.
Where's Rachel tonight? I asked, as I waved the paper
at her, assuming oversight, but leaving my own little space
in reserve where my earlier nightmare had come true. Not
(37:01):
on paper. Please to put name Rachel on paper? Is
Isipovich said it matter of factly. Oh, yeah, well, oh,
I was in trouble. That elongated consonant always meant trouble.
She's on Larry King tonight. Momentarily, I went very stupid.
(37:23):
How in the hell does that work when she has
a contract with us? I'll tell you, but you have
to promise not to hate me. The Izypovich fake cringe
and crouch ensued. Phil made me promise not to tell you.
Rachel doesn't have a contract with us. He told me
he told you he'd get her one, then his boss
refused to give him the money. I'm sorry, you promised
not to hate me. Momentarily, I was calm. Momentarily, but
(37:49):
why didn't you tell me that before? Approximately? Oh right, now,
why didn't you tell me this before? She agreed to
go on Larry King's show, while she only decided this morning,
apparently she really needs the cash. I told Phil, and
he said, those are the breaks, buddy. The last thing
I actually remember doing, the last part that I did
(38:10):
not need to recreate from the memories of others and
an occasional flashback in therapy, was asking how much my
old friend Larry King was going to give Rachel Is
he pursed her lips two hundred and fifty dollars. I
remember screaming that figure several times, along with all the
swear words I knew. I remember vocalizing, we are going
(38:34):
to lose Rachel Meadow, the next great talent of cable news,
to effing CNN, for two hundred and fifty fing dollars.
Everything else after that statement is darkness. I know. I
phoned Phil Griffin and threatened him. Is He recently confirmed
(38:54):
for me that I asked her to leave before I
called him and threatened him. I believe I warned him
that if he did not sign her to a contributor's
contract within twenty four hours, I would walk off the
set during that night's primary coverage, or maybe the next
week's or maybe during countdown tomorrow night. It would be
a surprise. I'm also confident that I warned him that
(39:14):
of all the talent on television, Larry King had the
best knowledge of what and who else would succeed more
than the rest of us combined. He was a savant,
and when he saw her in real time on his
primary night panel, we would never see her again, and
(39:35):
she would have a CNN contract before midnight. I told
Phil that when that happened, I would then kill him
with my bare hands, or Jeff Zucker would kill him
when she wound up beating the hell out of us
in the ratings. This statement all took longer than this
paragraph would imply, because I know, without fear of contradiction,
(39:56):
every other word out of my mouth was either what
we used to call an oath or the phrase Jesus
h ka Christ. Mind you, these people the president of NBC,
Jeff Zucker, and it's a year since they got rid
of him at CNN, the president of NBC News Steve Cappus,
and the soon to be president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin.
(40:18):
These had been the same people who, about a year earlier,
had decided that their ten PM host, Tucker Carlson, yep,
Tucker Carlson was on MSNBC that Tucker Carlson did not
need two people to play the role of liberal foil
on his show at like fifty grand a year, So
they kept one of them, his name was Max Kellerman,
(40:41):
and they fired the other one. Her name was Rachel Maddow.
They fired Rachel Maddow at MSNBC to save fifty thousand dollars.
She was back now at MSNBC only because my producer
is He had suggested making her a regular guest, and
within a couple of months I realized she would be
(41:02):
the next great host in cable news. And after months
of pleading, including pleading with her because she didn't want
to do it, I had just convinced them to put
her back under contract. Except they had lied to me,
and they had not put her back under contract. I
may have mentioned this to Phil Griffin during our phone
call one hundred and eleven different times. I may have
(41:23):
mentioned it to him. I also telephoned Rachel. I did
not swear at her here. Every other word out of
my mouth was not an oath but an apology, I said.
I had genuinely believed she was already being paid, and
I was not only humiliated on behalf of my network,
but that I was far more humiliated that I had
not double checked with her that they'd actually given her
(41:45):
the contract they told me they had given her. I
begged her to please, please, please, don't go and see
an end tonight. I did not ask her to skip
out on them and return to us unless she thought
she could pull that off gracefully and with a clean conscience,
but just not to go on with Larry. And that's
where I at the little four hundred and thirty seven
(42:06):
dollars stunt. I'm sorry about the money situation, I said.
I didn't know. Now I know I can only do this.
I think they will give you forty or fifty thousand
for a contributors deal, just to start. But what I
will do is, and while making as many sound effects
of exertion as I could dream up, I stretched around it,
pulled my wallet out of my back pocket, and I
(42:27):
emptied it onto my desk. I need to keep five
bucks to tip my driver tonight. You can have the
rest of whatever cash I have on me. I'm counting
it now. There's one hundred twenty twenty twenty. My play
by play skipped no bills four hundred and forty two
(42:48):
bucks American five for the driver, the rest for you
four hundred and thirty seven dollars. Rachel deal, She laughed,
I'll see you tonight. I'll just tell Larry I couldn't
be disloyaled to you. Oh, and I will take the money.
And she took the money. In point of fact, when
I like to say anything that Rachel Mattow did with
(43:09):
her career after we got her show on the air
in August of two thousand and eight, that's all her doing.
I have nothing to do with that except being the
lead in for the first two years. That's true. But
I also like to say that I got that show
on the air. And I also like to say I
hired Rachel Mattow at MSNBC. And this is my point,
it was not figuratively, it was not metaphorically. I hired
(43:32):
her out of my own pocket. I literally hired Medow
at MSNBC for four hundred and thirty seven dollars. And
I will point this out again, I never even got
the four hundred and thirty seven dollars back when I
(44:04):
sent a segment a go doing TV damages the brain.
I don't know if it's something in the camera. I
don't know if it's something in the wiring. I don't
know if it's something that attracts already flawed people to it.
But the first thing it does is it takes whatever
part of you is grateful and burns that to a cinder.
(44:27):
You begin to think. I used to think this myself,
that the people who helped you succeed somehow subtracted from
your own value today and you had to erase them.
The premise, as near as I can figure out, was
if they were important to your success, were you important
to your own success? Or was it all an accident
(44:49):
of timing. It's illogical, paranoid and the epitome of ingratitude.
Of course, then, of course that's the definition of MSNBC.
Any who let me descend from the so box and
send you on your way with my thanks for listening.
Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil, the musical directors of Countdown, Arranged,
(45:12):
produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled
orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass
and drums as the third member of Tko Brothers, which
produced it. I'm very grateful to them. Both our satirical
and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium
organist ever, Nancy Faust. I am grateful to her contributions
(45:33):
and the fact that she gave me an interview at
UPI in nineteen eighty. The sports music is the Olderman
theme from ESPN two. I'm grateful that Mitch Warren Davis
wrote it, and I'm grateful to ESPN for letting me
play it. Other music arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed, and I'm grateful to them. My announcer
(45:53):
today was my friend John Dean, whose friendship is one
of my greatest sources of pride and to whom I
thank every day. And everything else was as ever my fault.
That's countdown today just and forty five days until the
scheduled end of his lane duck lame brained term, unless
Musk removes him sooner. The next scheduled countdown is Monday.
(46:16):
As always, bulletins, as the news warrants, remember Al Green
is right, impeach Trump and Keith impeaching Trump. It won't
pass now, it won't work now, it will win the
Democrats the midterms until next time, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman
(46:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
The question becomes, how do we get Elon Musk and
his teenage mutant Ninja Turtles arrested? The Democratic Party Rip
van Winkle chairman, has awakened from its slumber and the
nation with it. It has appreciated the reality of the
crises of the tech pro coup and the push to
(00:45):
privatize government and the multi trillion dollar attempted heist, and
Trump's plan to invade Gaza so he can personally own it.
Lawsuits are flying, impeachment symbolic but even symbolically undefeated is underway,
and more on each in a moment. Trump is immune
(01:06):
until we eventually replace this Supreme Court with something to
do with the law and the constitution. However, Musk is
not immune. Marco Els, the twenty five year old Musk
fop allegedly rewriting code and in a position to do
anything he wants your tax dollars, He's certainly not immune.
The new Treasury Secretary Besant is not immune. Nicole Hollander
(01:29):
is not immune. Akasha Baba is not immune. Luke Farretor
is not immune. F Then Shao Tran is not immune.
Edward Korstine is not immune. Gautier cole Killian is not immune.
Gavin Kligger is not immune. And any of the officials
at USAID or in the Treasury Department or anywhere else
who admitted these little clowns into secure areas as has
(01:53):
been alleged, they are not immune. In fact, they are
subject to espionage charges, and they will still be subject
to them four years from now. But Elon Musk is
especially not immune. And what the hell is going on
with him now? Anyway, his usual state semi delusional, frantic, irrational,
(02:17):
it's given way to full fledged euphoria and delusional delusions,
not of grandeur but of omnipotence. Somebody listed the names
of his teenage mutant Ninja Turtles in a post on
Twitter x, and Musk, acting like he was zonked out
of his mind, responded, you have committed a crime, even
though hours earlier he Musk amplified another post on Twitter
(02:42):
x listing the same names. Musk has conflated a violation
of Twitter doxing rules with actual violations of the law,
And then it turned out that simply giving somebody's name
is in fact not a violation of Twitter doxing rules.
You have committed a crime. No elon check your mirror,
(03:04):
you may have committed a crime. The lawsuits have already
begun by government employee unions whose pensions, they say Musk
and others have illegally put at risk by the Democrats,
by ethics groups to whom Trump gave the priceless gift
of declaring Musk and administration employee making Musk subject to
conflict of interest laws. A federal judge in Maryland has
(03:27):
already stopped Trump dead in his tracks on sabotaging birthright citizenships.
There are six other lawsuits already in progress just on
birthright citizenship. There are five over various aspects of his
executive orders on immigration policy. There are thirteen about the
phony buyouts and the attempts to thus dissolve the CIA, USAID,
(03:51):
the Department of Education. There are four lawsuits about acts
against transgender people. Just security dot org has a litigation
tracker up go there. Odds are like one in three.
While you are looking at this, it will update while
you're reading it because there's been a new lawsuit and
the bids to get temporary restraining orders against Musk and
(04:14):
the other pirates in the Trump maladministration have unexpectedly been
as efficient and as subtle as Trump has been. In
Trump's work as a saboteur of the courts, it is
the exact opposite of what Musk has been in his
cyber version of Ocean's eleven meets the Nigerian Prince who
(04:34):
only needs your bank routing number. But Trump has yet
to completely destroy the justice system, and there are still
enough judges to tie Musk up in local jurisdictions for
the rest of his goddamned life, and especially to tie
up these little shit weasels of his who will suddenly
discover that their secret mainframes and social media accounts and
(04:56):
SpaceX business cards don't mean crap, and that, as my
friend William H. Macy once said in a classic pro
for his show Shameless, Real Worlds out here Pal, but
the goal has got to be to put Musk in prison.
The side effect to Trump getting away with it for
(05:18):
now is the residual rage for all of us, from
nine year old politically aware kids to liberal Supreme Court justices,
all of us who know Trump deserves to die in jail,
not in the White House bathroom. We can't do anything
about this for now. So who's the next best choice
to absorb our legal wrath? Two hints that person will
(05:43):
never corner any product nor industry the way he has
cornered the world supplies of smug and snide, and visually
he looks like a skull with some coagulated botox stretched
across it. The key to getting Elon Musk arrested is publicity.
(06:04):
What he is doing is a story, by the way,
created for local television news for the older, less affluent
audience of local television news. Musk's hackers allegedly go into
the government, where they write, now could be stealing your
Medicaid money and Social Security live at eleven. It is
(06:29):
exactly what local television producers want. It's exactly what they
dream of. Let's take you now live to Jack liveshot
in Scarsdale with his concerned guest, concerned Grandma. Call your
local newsroom. Once the publicity cycle begins to inflate, then
we get to the local prosecutions. Because Trump has not
(06:51):
corrupted the entirety of the legal system yet, and he's
not forced out all the US attorneys, and a clever city, county,
or state prosecutor could bring countless charges against Musk or
his saboteurs or anybody else for everything from I don't know, theft,
breaking an entering. You could do it in DC too.
The Watergate burglars were not arrested by the FBI for
(07:13):
you know, seventeen counts of trying to end democracy. They
were arrested for burglary by the Washington Metropolitan Police Department.
This is low hanging fruit because everybody hates Elon Musk. Everybody,
especially all the little tech pros, are gonna hate Elon
(07:34):
Musk after it turns out Musk is not omnipotent, and
to do his dirty work for him ends up with
you getting your ass taken to jail. First one to
flip on Musk gets probation and a brand new hotmail
account and an Aol installation.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Disc Impeachment today, impeachment tomorrow, impeachment forever.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Preach Al Green, preach, I rise to announce.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
That the movement to impeach the president has begun. I
rise to announce that I will bring articles of impeachments
against the President for destately deeds proposed and desperately deeds done.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Congressman Al Green al Green of Texas. I have mentioned before,
I will mention again, no, it will not pass. I
know that Congressman Green knows that we all know that.
But we are for the time being limited to carefully
tactical actions in the courts, holds in the Senate, and
(09:10):
impeachment bills one a week in the House. And the
history of impeachment since Richard Nixon is simple and instructive.
Impeachment bills pass, and impeachment bills fail, and impeachments happen,
and impeachments don't happen, and no president has ever been
removed from office. And it don't matter the party that
(09:30):
merely attempts and fails to impeach, no matter, the outcome
is thirteen and oh in the following how Senate and
presidential elections, that includes the Republicans and all the crap
from Lauren Bobert and Jamie Comer in twenty twenty three
and twenty twenty four. You don't even have to get
a vote on your bill. Just keep saying the word impeachment.
(09:53):
Damn thing works. The statistic the precise number thirteen and
oh is disputed. As a historian, I would note it's
probably fourteen and Oh, the infeatument of Andrew Johnson worked
because it was one faction of the then monopolistic Republicans
defeating the other faction of the monopolistic Republicans. On the
(10:14):
other hand, a Congressional aid of my acquaintance says it
shouldn't be thirteen and ohero and fourteen and oh, it's
thirteen and one because Trump was impeached as his term
ended in twenty twenty one, and the Republicans won the
House in twenty twenty two. I replied that the Democrats
lost fewer seats in twenty twenty two, then predicted, then
predicted the morning of the election. And so you say
(10:38):
the Republicans won the House in twenty twenty two, how
did that work out for them? Elsewhere? Surprisingly enough, Trump's
plan to take Gaza and maybe own it himself and
(10:59):
turn it into the Middle Eastern Riviera. The division of
trump World, inc oh, and to what amounts to ethnic
cleansing of the current two million Palestinians who live there,
as if he were doing the world a favor, has
made him an international laughing stock the way nothing else
in ten years has. And this is a world, after
(11:19):
all that laughed at him during his speech to the UN.
The bar is kind of high. The man who ran
on ending forever wars and who mocks Bush to this
day about Iraq at every opportunity, who falsely claims he
was against the Iraq invasion, is ready to send what
would have to be dozens of times as many American
troops as went into Iraq six hundred miles east, to
(11:43):
forcibly remove anybody still in Gaza and send them to
Egypt and Jordan, whether they like it or not, or
Egypt and Jordan like it or not. Oh, by the way,
there's still Hamas in Gaza, and I'm not thinking they're
going to be lining up at the counter for their
tickets on the Trump shuttle to Aman. And of course
Trump is still sending little twits like Marco Rubio around
(12:04):
insisting we're going to take back the Panama Canal and
his son idiot Junior to take over Greenland, and all
of a sudden, those million, three hundred thousand active duty
American troops they're just not going to be enough, now,
are they. So now Trump's backed himself into the next
corner bringing back the draft. Hasn't said it yet, Wait
(12:26):
for it. If there is one thing that will guarantee
riots in the streets that, oh, by the way, the
rioters will win. It's another draft. The last one was
expanded for Vietnam in the sixties, at a time when
the nation still largely believed its government meant well and
had judgment, and when parents would actually willingly let the
(12:48):
government take their children to send them to die meaninglessly
in a conflict we could not win or even influence,
when we still believed in large part that the government's
judgment on such things could be trusted. And still within
three years there were daily protests and draft card burnings
(13:09):
and violent underground terrorist organizations, and enough chaos to end
Lyndon Johnson's presidency and force an end to the war
and the draft within the decade. If Trump, if any president,
for Gaza or Greenland or Panama or whatever else he
pulls out of his own ass, If Trump or any
president tried a draft, except in the event of something
(13:32):
on the scale of World War Two, in these days,
when the idea of people agreeing to be forced by
the government to risk their lives in an optional war
is met with only rage and uncontrollable laughter. If Trump
actually tried a draft, and to clean out Gaza, he'd
(13:53):
have to have a draft. If he actually did it,
I'd give his presidency it a week to ten days
before he and everybody in it were forced out of office.
It may not have occurred to Trump yet that to
do just Gaza, maybe just Greenland, or just Panama, it
(14:16):
would require a draft. And by the way, I'd like
to take this opportunity to congratulate those who protested Israel
and Biden's attempts to find a way out of the
Gordian not of the Middle East by not voting for
Kamala Harris, Your boy Trump is demanding all Palestinians get
out of Gaza. Nice protests, it's ethnic cleansing. Wait until
(14:40):
Trump responds to the blowback to that, domestic and international,
to his insane belief that he personally can make gazillions
in Gaza tourism when somebody tells him he has just
damaged himself and beclowned himself and made the world wonder
if it needs to try to forcibly remove him because
he's crazy. His next move won't be all out Palestinians
out of Gaza. It will be all Palestinians out of America.
(15:14):
I'm not favoring that, by the way, I'm just saying
that's how he will react. Good call vote against Kamala Harris.
What could go wrong? Who knew this could happen? Everybody
told us this, but we thought they were just who knows,
(15:35):
you bought it, you lie in it. The irony of
the first two weeks of the Trump reducs is that
his minions have been studdingly successful. Illegally successful, of course,
but still we don't got to show you any stinking badges.
The drag on their plan for world domination is this
idiot Trump and is idiot pal idiot Musk, whereas they
(15:58):
may soon be known Thelma and Louise Tariffs Tariff's tariffs
start now, let me just talk to Canada and Mexico. First,
Oh okay, no tariffs end results headline in the Wall
Street Journal, Trump blinks on North American tariffs. Well played, sir,
all in one first sixty shots didn't count. Then there
(16:21):
was yesterday's farce of quote banning transgendered women from competing
in women's sports at the collegiate and grade school and
high school level, which part of Trump's promise to return
all control of education to the States. Would this be
all control of education of the States except for sports.
(16:42):
I will also remind you of two things I have
mentioned before. The estimated number of women athletes at the
scholastic level whose birth gender was male in this country
is one hundred and five one one hundred and five.
Of course, that estimate is old. It's a month ago.
It was made by a group seeking to ban them,
(17:04):
so it may now be up to one hundred and six.
And I will add that nearly fifty years ago and
my friend doctor Renee Richards formerly doctor Richard Raskin, reached
tennis's US Open. She of course wiped out Chris Everett
and Martina Navratilova and all the rest. And you'll remember
she won twenty three consecutive Wimbledon's and she destroyed women's
tennis for all time because of her bone structure advantage.
(17:26):
Oh that's right. None of that happened, because this issue
is trivial, because there's one hundred and six of them
in the country, and it only became a cause celebra
for morons and mediocrits like the swimmer Riley Gaines, who
finished well behind a transgendered woman once and then devoted
her life to hounding transgendered people. Congrats on the Riley
(17:50):
Gains was a mediocre swimmer, but a worse person order.
Couple of vsh media notes, as Marjorie Taylor Green, who
declared yesterday that the music magazine and news outlet is
called Rolling Stones, demanded NPR and PBS testify to some
(18:16):
committee she runs or subcommittee at the doge who knows
hai this is the subcommittee for morons. PBS has commissioned
a poll in which seventy two percent of Trump voters
said they valued PBS for its kids programming. Sixty five
percent of Trump voters think PBS is either adequately funded
(18:38):
by the government or insufficiently funded government by the government. Unbelievable.
There's large group of Trump voters who believe we should
be giving more taxpayer money to PBS. Government funds are
only fifteen percent of the PBS budget. Anyway, have a
nice time with that data, Marge. I don't know a
(19:02):
number as big as sixty five. She may just faint.
Stephen A. Smith is skating further and further onto thin ice.
He says it would be a sacrifice, but he might
run for the Democratic nomination in twenty twenty eight, how's
your shoulder for? Did you have an injury panning yourself
(19:23):
on the back with both arms at the same time?
Surgery Polling and it's by a Trump pollster has Kamala
Harris at thirty five percent right now for the twenty
twenty eight nomination, and nobody else in double digits. But
just for giggles, here's the rest of the list. Buddha
Jedge nine, Newsom seven AOC six, Governor Shapiro three, Governor
(19:47):
Walls three, Governor Whitmter three, Senator Klobashar three, Corey Booker two,
Governor Moore two, Stephen A. Smith two, Governor Pritzker one,
Beto O'Rourke one, Governor Murphy one, Governor Polis one. So
Stephen trails, Tim Walls and Amy Klobashar. But he's got
twice the support of Jared Polis, who's been collaborating with Republicans.
(20:11):
Well done, Steve. The problem with Stephen A. Smith is
I'm not sure if he doesn't realize that two percent
is nothing, or if he was just so excited to
see his name on the list that he didn't even
look at the number. And we have a nearly weekly,
(20:33):
self owned by Van Jones, now in its tenth year,
Van Jones is still on CNN. Van Jones commented on
Scott Jennings, the racist, misogynist CNN platforms every night in
hopes of getting an audience that just will not show
up for Abby Phillip Show no matter who you put
on it. She is at a little better than one
(20:55):
third the Lawrence O'Donnell audience. And I assume most of
Loade's audience at this point is people who died in
front of the team and left it on MSNBC. That's
just my guest based on my experience with him. Anyway,
Van Jones told The Wall Street Journal about mister Jennings
of the Abby Phillips Show, quote, I've never fell on
(21:19):
air that Scott was saying something he didn't believe in
a way that was unnecessarily incendiary just to go viral.
So so, Ben, you're saying, Scott Jennings isn't a white
supremacist asshole, clickbaiting poser. He's a real white supremacist asshole.
(21:40):
And that's better somehow. If CNN canceled its primetime lineup
and went all cartoons, the quality of CNN commentary and
CNN journalism would shoot through the roof. In the interim,
I have this suggestion CNN should try to get Van
(22:01):
Jones and Scott Jennings shoot through the roof. See you boys.
Also of interest here, Rom Emmanuel and David Axelrod are
upset at the democrats reaction to Musk canceling the US
AID program. Not righteously indignant enough, not protesting enough, not
(22:25):
acting enough. No, no, no, These two dinosaurs think Democrats
should not have reacted at all. Happily, my pal Will
Bunch ended Rom Emmanuel's remaining credibility with one of the
greatest burns I have ever read. That's next. This is countdown.
(22:49):
This is countdown, with Keith Elberman still ahead. I was
(23:14):
quoted in the Washington Post the other day as saying
about Rachel Matadow quote, television political commentary is better when
she's on the air. My understanding is she's pissed about that.
Why because there's an article about her in which I
(23:35):
am quoted. This is not an odd phenomenon, although she
has elevated it to real weirdness. Not long after I
got to ESPN in nineteen ninety two, people magazine found
out that I had gone to school with was a
protege there of and then successor to Chris Berman, and
(24:00):
they were doing a story on him, so they interviewed
me about him, and when it came out, Chris took
me into a studio and they rolled up. Copy of
the magazine was in his hand, and he was angry,
they've quoted you in here more than they have quoted me.
What I pointed out that I'd only said nice things, Chris,
(24:20):
and this is him in brief quickly apologized, I'm sorry
a family member is upset. Anyway.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
What I really should have said was I'm glad somebody
who knew me before I was a big deal still
likes me now when I am a big deal.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
That is also Chris. It's way less conceited than it sounds.
I could not resist the joke though, that he had
just set up. I pointed at his copy of People,
and I said, where in there does it say I
like you? He scowled, and then said, so, if they
ever do a piece on you for some reason, I'll
just say you were as big a wise ass now
(25:03):
as you were when you were thirty. I said that
was fair, and that was the end of it. When
they did do a story on me, they didn't even
call him Mattow though didn't apologize. And a last to that,
the post noted quote that I helped jumpstart Matdow's career
and that of other network stars, which is the first
time that reality has sneaked into print in like five years.
(25:27):
And it's true, but it doesn't get to the gist
of it, which is I fought my bosses for a year,
the ones who said MSNBC viewers would never watch a
woman do political news. One of those geniuses is now
president of her production company. Because TV damages the brains
of everybody connected to it, myself included, you have to
(25:47):
work your way back from that kind of damage. Few do.
In point of fact, I actually wound up personally stopping
MSNBC from losing Madow to CNN when Larry King offered
her two hundred and fifty dollars to be a guest
one night. Turned out we were getting her work for
first here. That's right, two hundred and fifty dollars. I
(26:08):
stepped in, hired her myself, spent four hundred and thirty
seven dollars literally out of my own wallet to keep
her there and billions of dollars later. I will tell
you the story in full, because I think this is
the anniversary of the event. It is a story that
sounds crazier and crazier every time I tell it. I
(26:28):
will tell it in full next in Things I promised
not to tell first, Believe it or not, there's still
more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of
the miss Grants, morons undone in Kruger Effects specimens who
constitute today's other worst persons in the world. Today's episode
is dedicated to dishonorable Mention recipient Nancy Mace, the congresswoman
(26:53):
stood on the floor of the House yesterday and shouted repeatedly,
quote tranny, tranny, tranny, which wouldn't be news. She has
episodes like that also. And Mace does not have a
screw loose. She has a hardware store full of screws loose.
The reason this matters is that after her former communications director,
(27:14):
Natalie Johnson wrote to Mace on social about quote your
botched cheap hooker inspired boob job unquote, it is evident
that the average transgendered person has had less plastic surgery
than has Nancy Mace any who. Thus we proceed to
the medallists the bronze worse. The NFL, the National Football
(27:38):
League from the athletic a Super Bowl change, something that
had been in place since the twenty twenty one game.
By the way, can we drop the moronic Roman numerals already?
This isn't ancient rome. We barely use them at all
anymore except for this stupid game. And nobody knows what
LX means in mathematics anymore. Anyway, l i X everybody
(28:03):
already has a joke about what LIX could mean. Anyway.
The change from the athletic NFL to remove end racism
messaging in end zone ahead of Super Bowl sources, And
there is a picture of a preceding Super Bowl that
the chief slogo in the end zone and then above
(28:23):
it in smaller letters right under the goalpost and racism. Hey,
Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, I know you're an idiot,
but certainly somebody's had to you. Somebody had to have
mentioned this. Hey, you know what if we suddenly become
against end racism, isn't that the same as being for racism?
(28:46):
NFL not see Football League the runner up generic Get
off My Lawn, Republican octagenarian Jack Miladden, who decided to
engage Justin Trudeau with one of the oldest cliches of
all time on social media. It's literally at least two
thousand years old, and Jack screwed it up. Trudeau wrote,
(29:08):
the United States has confirmed that it intends to impose
twenty five percent tariffs on most Canadian goods, with ten
percent tariffs on energy starting February fourth. Obviously things have
changed since this was written. I've met with the premieres
and our cabinet today and I'll be speaking with President
Scheinbaum of Mexico. Shortly we did et cetera, et cetera,
and Jack Maladden, whose handle is at John Maladden, signifying
(29:32):
a life of utter confusion on his part. Had Canada
been treating us fairly, Jack added, this would never have happened,
So buckle up, Canada, you're taking on Goliath. It got
community noted because, of course, as the note said, Goliath
died in that story. This Maladden guy, whoever it was is,
(29:57):
was reduced to explaining that he knew all that, of course,
But then clearly this time the odds were Goliath will win.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Ms.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Maloden is, of course mister Maladen. Whatever he is is,
of course more representative of a different Biblical bit of imagery,
namely the jawbone of an ass. But our winner is
Rom Immanuel. Boy, oh boy, did this idiot not recognize
his own sell by date? Never noticed when the sand
(30:25):
had run out in his hour glass. His Washington post
op ed was bad enough. Democrats had become the pointy
of permissiveness. That's ballot box poison. This whole article, flimsy,
badly written, repetitive, was an excuse to explain that only
Bill Clinton's campaign in nineteen ninety two really got that
(30:47):
balance right between big issues and kitchen table issues, and
who worked on that campaign? Why it was whiny, holier
than now, sound of one hand clapping, and the hand
was immanuals and he was looking at a picture of
himself as he did it. Rom Emmanuel, Well, that op
ed was bad enough. But Emmanuel's interview with Politico, in
(31:10):
which he insists that the Democrats are wrong to devote
any time to try to stop Elon Musk savaging American
foreign aid and breaking into the digital equivalent of Fort Knox,
that's way worse. Rom Emmanuel is a fool. He got
lucky once, like David Axelrod got lucky once. Axelrod is
(31:31):
in the same story. He echoed to Politico, this same
stick to kitchen table issues, while Trump is trying to
steal everybody's kitchen table and gaza and open up. I
don't know a restaurant with your kitchen table in it.
Rom Emmanuel, David Axelrod, and Politico all in the same place,
(31:54):
the all star team of conventional wisdom. As long as
it's still nineteen ninety six, missing only Chuck Todd and Christial,
how could it get worse? Well, I will offer for
one immanual quote with this preface. I've mentioned it before.
I brought up Chris Berman in high school, Will Bunch
of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who used to answer to Bill Bunch,
(32:16):
by the way, was from the day he joined our
high school newspaper, which Berman had just graduated from. Bunch
was our best reporter, my best reporter. I was news
editor and editor in chief, and I'd been on the
paper four years, and I really was a good editor.
It was my calling. And then this got in the way. Anyway,
(32:37):
Bunch was so good back then. This is fifty two
years ago that I remember saying to him at the time,
your article is the first one I'll do my voice
from then, your article is the first one. I can't
do anything too to make it better. Well, Bunch is
still that good. First the Immanual quote from Politico that
(32:57):
I referred to, then Bunch responding to it with the
best burn of the year so far. Quote Manual, the
former House leader, Chicago mayor, and diplomat, told me much
the same quote. You don't find every fight, you don't
swing at every pinch. And my view is, while I
care about the USAID as a former ambassador, that's not
(33:19):
the hill I'm going to die on, he said. Will
Bunch screenshot at this and posted it with this kill
shot directed at Immanuel, quoting, will please tell me the
hill that you will die on, so that I can't
transport you there immediately. Oh, I'll pay for the uber.
(33:45):
Will rom your dead son, get yourself buried? Immanuel, Today's
worst person than the word.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
The geniuses of MSNBC. So I looked up the details
of this, and it looks like this is the anniversary.
It's somewhere around here at the beginning of February from
two thousand and eight. Late in November two thousand and seven,
after several months of pressuring my MSNBC bosses to hire
(34:35):
Rachel Maddow to try out as My guest host with
a goal of then showcasing her and spinning her off
into her own show, the vice president in charge of
the network, Phil Griffin, agreed to give Madow a deal
for forty or fifty grand as an MSNBC contributor. It
would do nothing more than lock her in place so
(34:56):
that CNN would not steal her from us. I mean,
I knew that that conversation and that concession still would
not get her her own show. What I did not
know was the concession I was told about the contributors contract.
It was a lie. And by January two thousand and eight,
as the Clinton Obama primary race turned into a tong war,
(35:16):
we were imposing upon Rachel Meadow to join the desk
each Tuesday for Primary Night. She was not anchoring, she
was not even the lead analyst. And my uncontrollable fire
hose co host Matthews, who was consistently pretending that she
did not actually exist, but she existed, she was there,
and I quizzed her about every topic every chance I got.
(35:38):
Soon I began to include her appearances in the pre
recorded open that I would write two minutes of hyperbole
that was really designed merely to give everybody enough time
to get my fat ass into the anchor chair and
everybody else's mics on with Tim Russard in the NBC
News Washington Bureau, David Gregory at Clinton Headquarters, Howard Feineman
(35:59):
and Eugene Robinson in New York, Chuck Todd at the
exit poll desk, Tom broke off the perspective desk, MC
Esher at the lack of Perspective Desk. Then came Super Tuesday,
February fifth, two thousand and eight. I was writing this
orgasmic drivel, as I always did on Tuesday, crossing the
(36:20):
names of who was where off the list as I
went the list handed to me by the executive producer, Izypovich.
When I noticed the list did not include either Rachel
or the Rachel Desk, I knocked on the wall that
separated our little offices at thirty Rock, and she shuffled
in complete with a sincere smile, friendship, but always also
(36:40):
with what seemed to be a little space kept in
reserve where she could wonder if I was mad enough
to try to take somebody hostage. Yes, my third child.
Where's Rachel tonight? I asked, as I waved the paper
at her, assuming oversight, but leaving my own little space
in reserve where my earlier nightmare had come true. Not
(37:01):
on paper. Please to put name Rachel on paper? Is
Isipovich said it matter of factly. Oh, yeah, well, oh,
I was in trouble. That elongated consonant always meant trouble.
She's on Larry King tonight. Momentarily, I went very stupid.
(37:23):
How in the hell does that work when she has
a contract with us? I'll tell you, but you have
to promise not to hate me. The Izypovich fake cringe
and crouch ensued. Phil made me promise not to tell you.
Rachel doesn't have a contract with us. He told me
he told you he'd get her one, then his boss
refused to give him the money. I'm sorry, you promised
not to hate me. Momentarily, I was calm. Momentarily, but
(37:49):
why didn't you tell me that before? Approximately? Oh right, now,
why didn't you tell me this before? She agreed to
go on Larry King's show, while she only decided this morning,
apparently she really needs the cash. I told Phil, and
he said, those are the breaks, buddy. The last thing
I actually remember doing, the last part that I did
(38:10):
not need to recreate from the memories of others and
an occasional flashback in therapy, was asking how much my
old friend Larry King was going to give Rachel Is
he pursed her lips two hundred and fifty dollars. I
remember screaming that figure several times, along with all the
swear words I knew. I remember vocalizing, we are going
(38:34):
to lose Rachel Meadow, the next great talent of cable news,
to effing CNN, for two hundred and fifty fing dollars.
Everything else after that statement is darkness. I know. I
phoned Phil Griffin and threatened him. Is He recently confirmed
(38:54):
for me that I asked her to leave before I
called him and threatened him. I believe I warned him
that if he did not sign her to a contributor's
contract within twenty four hours, I would walk off the
set during that night's primary coverage, or maybe the next
week's or maybe during countdown tomorrow night. It would be
a surprise. I'm also confident that I warned him that
(39:14):
of all the talent on television, Larry King had the
best knowledge of what and who else would succeed more
than the rest of us combined. He was a savant,
and when he saw her in real time on his
primary night panel, we would never see her again, and
(39:35):
she would have a CNN contract before midnight. I told
Phil that when that happened, I would then kill him
with my bare hands, or Jeff Zucker would kill him
when she wound up beating the hell out of us
in the ratings. This statement all took longer than this
paragraph would imply, because I know, without fear of contradiction,
(39:56):
every other word out of my mouth was either what
we used to call an oath or the phrase Jesus
h ka Christ. Mind you, these people the president of NBC,
Jeff Zucker, and it's a year since they got rid
of him at CNN, the president of NBC News Steve Cappus,
and the soon to be president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin.
(40:18):
These had been the same people who, about a year earlier,
had decided that their ten PM host, Tucker Carlson, yep,
Tucker Carlson was on MSNBC that Tucker Carlson did not
need two people to play the role of liberal foil
on his show at like fifty grand a year, So
they kept one of them, his name was Max Kellerman,
(40:41):
and they fired the other one. Her name was Rachel Maddow.
They fired Rachel Maddow at MSNBC to save fifty thousand dollars.
She was back now at MSNBC only because my producer
is He had suggested making her a regular guest, and
within a couple of months I realized she would be
(41:02):
the next great host in cable news. And after months
of pleading, including pleading with her because she didn't want
to do it, I had just convinced them to put
her back under contract. Except they had lied to me,
and they had not put her back under contract. I
may have mentioned this to Phil Griffin during our phone
call one hundred and eleven different times. I may have
(41:23):
mentioned it to him. I also telephoned Rachel. I did
not swear at her here. Every other word out of
my mouth was not an oath but an apology, I said.
I had genuinely believed she was already being paid, and
I was not only humiliated on behalf of my network,
but that I was far more humiliated that I had
not double checked with her that they'd actually given her
(41:45):
the contract they told me they had given her. I
begged her to please, please, please, don't go and see
an end tonight. I did not ask her to skip
out on them and return to us unless she thought
she could pull that off gracefully and with a clean conscience,
but just not to go on with Larry. And that's
where I at the little four hundred and thirty seven
(42:06):
dollars stunt. I'm sorry about the money situation, I said.
I didn't know. Now I know I can only do this.
I think they will give you forty or fifty thousand
for a contributors deal, just to start. But what I
will do is, and while making as many sound effects
of exertion as I could dream up, I stretched around it,
pulled my wallet out of my back pocket, and I
(42:27):
emptied it onto my desk. I need to keep five
bucks to tip my driver tonight. You can have the
rest of whatever cash I have on me. I'm counting
it now. There's one hundred twenty twenty twenty. My play
by play skipped no bills four hundred and forty two
(42:48):
bucks American five for the driver, the rest for you
four hundred and thirty seven dollars. Rachel deal, She laughed,
I'll see you tonight. I'll just tell Larry I couldn't
be disloyaled to you. Oh, and I will take the money.
And she took the money. In point of fact, when
I like to say anything that Rachel Mattow did with
(43:09):
her career after we got her show on the air
in August of two thousand and eight, that's all her doing.
I have nothing to do with that except being the
lead in for the first two years. That's true. But
I also like to say that I got that show
on the air. And I also like to say I
hired Rachel Mattow at MSNBC. And this is my point,
it was not figuratively, it was not metaphorically. I hired
(43:32):
her out of my own pocket. I literally hired Medow
at MSNBC for four hundred and thirty seven dollars. And
I will point this out again, I never even got
the four hundred and thirty seven dollars back when I
(44:04):
sent a segment a go doing TV damages the brain.
I don't know if it's something in the camera. I
don't know if it's something in the wiring. I don't
know if it's something that attracts already flawed people to it.
But the first thing it does is it takes whatever
part of you is grateful and burns that to a cinder.
(44:27):
You begin to think. I used to think this myself,
that the people who helped you succeed somehow subtracted from
your own value today and you had to erase them.
The premise, as near as I can figure out, was
if they were important to your success, were you important
to your own success? Or was it all an accident
(44:49):
of timing. It's illogical, paranoid and the epitome of ingratitude.
Of course, then, of course that's the definition of MSNBC.
Any who let me descend from the so box and
send you on your way with my thanks for listening.
Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil, the musical directors of Countdown, Arranged,
(45:12):
produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled
orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass
and drums as the third member of Tko Brothers, which
produced it. I'm very grateful to them. Both our satirical
and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium
organist ever, Nancy Faust. I am grateful to her contributions
(45:33):
and the fact that she gave me an interview at
UPI in nineteen eighty. The sports music is the Olderman
theme from ESPN two. I'm grateful that Mitch Warren Davis
wrote it, and I'm grateful to ESPN for letting me
play it. Other music arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed, and I'm grateful to them. My announcer
(45:53):
today was my friend John Dean, whose friendship is one
of my greatest sources of pride and to whom I
thank every day. And everything else was as ever my fault.
That's countdown today just and forty five days until the
scheduled end of his lane duck lame brained term, unless
Musk removes him sooner. The next scheduled countdown is Monday.
(46:16):
As always, bulletins, as the news warrants, remember Al Green
is right, impeach Trump and Keith impeaching Trump. It won't
pass now, it won't work now, it will win the
Democrats the midterms until next time, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning,
good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman
(46:53):
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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