IF TRUMP WAS A FOREIGN AGENT, WHAT WOULD HE BE DOING DIFFERENTLY? - 3.13.25 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. If
Donald Trump were a foreign agent trying to destroy the

(00:27):
United States of America from within, what would he be
doing differently? Crash the stock market, bring on a recession,
make it worldwide, maybe a worldwide depression. Use economic policy
so insane that yesterday they were called insane by CNBC.
Not only get out of NATO, but pit the US

(00:49):
against NATO. Sacrifice countries to the Russian dictator. Push a
ceasefire in Ukraine that serves only to give Russia thirty
days to refortify its troop positions, threaten our forever. Allies
like Canada and Mexico. Cut off humanitarian aid worldwide enough
to start killing people via disease outbreaks in the same month.
Start dragging our citizens and legal immigrants off the streets

(01:12):
and out of their homes and hold them in communicado
in distant concentration camps without trial prior to deportation. Try
to break the constitution to hold office to avoid prison indefinitely.
Blackmail the owners of the major media companies to support
him or at least destroy their own news outlets. Violate
every law, and make sure all the prosecutors and all

(01:35):
the judges are loyal to you and not to the law.
Decapitate not the excess in government, but the people who
know how to stop plane crashes and epidemics. Turn the
agencies over to every con man, an idiot and loser
and lunatic. You could find roll back human rights on
the failed economic policy of eighteen ninety four that the

(01:56):
professor must have been talking about the one day he
didn't cut class in college and burn all governmental records.
Give a lie an item veto to a compulsive liar,
drugged up foreigner who literally blows up everything he touches
and finally take a one hundred million dollar bribe I'm sorry,
contribution in public during a live infomercial for the Druggies

(02:19):
self driving self detonating cars, right after announces he's going
to treat attacks on the dealerships as domestic terrorism, even
though the last president refused to treat an actual attack
on the Capitol and an attempt to overturn an election
by the current president as domestic terrorism. I mean, what
else could a foreign agent vent on destroying America who

(02:43):
somehow rose to ultimate power in America do besides that,
other than maybe start shooting people on Fifth Avenue. The
then paranoid idea that the country, maybe the presidency, was
in the grip of, or about to be, in the
grip of, a foreign AI agent, was the dominant conspiracy

(03:06):
theory of American politics from nineteen eighteen through the nineteen seventies.
It gave Richard Nixon a career, It gave Bobby Kennedy
a career, gave Joe McCarthy a career, and Joe McCarthy's henchman,
Roy Khane a career, And thus it gave Roy Cohnes
henchman Donald Trump a career. And when they weren't destroying

(03:26):
America by claiming other people were destroying America, you could
turn to the movies where the Manchurian candidate about a
joint Chinese Russian operation to brainwash Key Americans and thus
put a stooge in the White House came out in
theaters in nineteen sixty two, and The One Hundred Days
of the Dragon, in which the Chinese perfect a way
to change any person's appearance into that of almost any

(03:49):
other person and thus put a body double in the
White House, came out on television in nineteen sixty three.
So even if you haven't thought about this, you have
been exposed to the idea of what more could a
foreign agent do? Then Donald Trump is doing now to
destroy America. By the way, if you didn't see the

(04:11):
original Manchurian Candidate, they remade it in two thousand and four.
Though if if you didn't see the original and you
got the plot of the remake, you are a better
person than I am. The problem with the plots, both
imagined by politicians and those imagined by Hollywood, is that
they are far too complicated. They certainly don't need to

(04:33):
be that complicated. The Liberals had been converted by Russian
propaganda in the thirties, Time to go off in the
fifties in the movies, they used mind control and hypnotism.
On television, they used a drug that turned your face
into putty like Trump's, only it could be turned back
to la human Again, way too complicated. Everybody from Attorney

(04:55):
General A. Mitchell Palmer to McCarthy to the author of
The Manchurian Candidate, Richard Condon, never stopped to think that
truly all you would need was cash. I always like
to speculate that those who caved to Trump. From Lindsay
Graham to Jeff Bezos to Mark Zuckerberg have been blackmailed.
But that's not really necessary, at least not in the

(05:19):
non financial sense. Like the fella said, nothing is more
easily frightened than a billion dollars. I mean, ask Disney
and ABC, asked Comcast and NBC, Ask Warner Brothers, Discovery
and CNN. Why waste all that time and effort to
brainwash Sergeant Raymond Shaw or to create a Chinese puddy

(05:44):
faced body double for President William lyons Selby when all
the Raymond Shaws and William lyon Selby's of real life
you could ever want are available for sale and at
popular prices. Throw in just enough insanity and Trump has
that in spades. And now the added element of Trump's
obvious heroin level addiction to revenge, and you've got your

(06:08):
foreign agent or good as a foreign agent in chief.
I mean, hell, what if Trump is so crazy that
his addiction jones demands that he takes revenge against those
who hurt him the most in his life. That would
be the American voter in his three elections one hundred
and sixty nine million, four hundred and sixty three thousand,

(06:28):
two hundred and eighty two votes have been cast against Trump.
That's a lot of people to avenge yourself against. Why
try it one at a time? Why not just wipe
out the United States. But even as much as this
strays from my first point, it still all fits because
you can post mortem the man who is intent on

(06:50):
destroying this country, and the sooner you do it, the better.
But the baseline is still going to be the same.
One of the two or three noble characters in the movie,
the Manchurian candidate John mcgiver playing Senator Thomas Jordan, sums
up my thought here and incidentally gives the attentive viewer
of the film the ultimate easter egg. This is the

(07:11):
entirety of the plot. When the actual foreign agent, the
wife of the idiot to be installed as president in
the movie, asks Senator Jordan if he will try to
block her husband's nomination to the ticket, he says, would
I block you? I would spend every cent I own

(07:31):
and all I could borrow to block you. There are
people who think of Johnny as a clown and a buffoon,
but I do not. I despise John Iceland and everything
that iceland Ism has come to stand for. I think
if John Iceland were a paid Soviet agent, he could
not do more to harm this country than he's doing now.

(07:57):
Given that the movie script is sixty three years old,
there's not very much to be changed there. People who
think of as a clown and a buffoon. I despise
Donald trump trump Ism. If Donald Trump were a paid
Russian agent, he could not do more to harm this
country than he's doing now. The one other thing conspiracy

(08:48):
theorists and the writers of political science fiction failed to
see in the fifties and sixties, and thus failed to
put into their plots, was the maddening reality that those
who suspected or who saw that might as well be
a foreign agent president would actually have to stop him.
They never thought we would hesitate to stop him. Well,

(09:10):
we are at another one of those moments in which
the Democrats have the road plock to at least slow
Trump down, and Chuck Schumer finally came out yesterday and
said Senate Democrats are going to use it. But I,
having been burned a few times this month, will believe
it when I see it, because some of them may

(09:30):
not use their power because they'll look mad. Please don't
put it in the newspaper that we got mad. House
Republicans passed the let Elon Musk do anything he damn
well pleases, and stop anybody trying to even investigate him bill,
the one they dressed up as a continuing reservation to
fund the government for six months and prevent a shutdown.

(09:52):
They would need eight votes from Democrats in the Senate
to get around the filibuster and make this law. They
could still get them. And if you say, how in
the hell would that be possible, how in the hell
did ten Democratic congress people to censure another Democratic Congressman,
Fetterman said he would vote for it because if you
want the guy in the government who most looks like

(10:13):
a foreign agent, foreign as in from the planet of
the cannimates, it's him. Plus you will never convince me
he has fully recovered from his stroke. So that's only
seven more cowards required besides Fetterman. Those seven and Fetterman
don't really have a strategy as to what to do
about Trump. They just want to make themselves look good.

(10:34):
They are all potential Fettermans because they too are here
to serve Man. The irony is even the Democrats, who
are prepared to do the right thing, are scared of
being blamed if there is a government shut down while
the Republicans are boasting about making a government shut down.
They are scared because the Republicans theoretically have raised the stakes.

(10:57):
Oh knows, if the government shuts down, Elon Musk will
have to fire more government employees and that will be
the fault of Musk or Trump. No, sir, it's the
Democrats you're doing it. See if you can follow the
lack of logic here, the Republicans are not only shutting

(11:18):
down the government building by building, room by room and
desk by desk, but they are glorying in it. They
built a clause into this continuing resolution to protect Elon
Musk as he fires more government employees. They already are
shutting down the government, but the Democrats are afraid. If

(11:39):
the government completely shuts down and the Republicans say the
Democrats did this, the Democrats won't be able to think
of a believable answer like, I don't know, the goddamn
Republicans already shut the effing government down. What the effort
you talking about? Will Flitzer? So here's an idea when Senate. Democrats,

(12:01):
any Democrats you at home, when you get add about
a government shutdown, do what MAGA does. Change the topic
and yell. Remind the questioner that the bill eliminates any
chance of the House or the Senate or anybody else
overriding Elon Musk killing the government and many people who

(12:24):
rely on the government to stay alive. He is being
authorized to kill them by remote control and taking the
cash out of the government. It actually codifies him doing this.
It is a backfill house and Senate measure confirming him
as stoned apartheid. Clyde in Chief say something like again,

(12:49):
just off the top of my head, if Elon Musk
were a paid Russian agent, he could not do more
to harm this country than he's doing now. Christ I

(13:10):
do surprisingly have little shoots of hope for you, little
crocuses popping up from the march permafrost in media, of course,
they are popping up through the new piles of manure.
Gavin Newsom's next career, because he doesn't have one in
politics anymore, which began with a podcast in which he

(13:33):
interviewed the anti semi Charlie Kirk, has now proceeded to
a new interview of the horrible and by the way,
so out of date lunatic that I really thought he
was dead already homophobe Michael Savage knee Wiener, and Gavin
Newsom's next podcast guest will be Steve mannin because Governor
Newsom didn't like being one of the favorites for the

(13:54):
Democratic presidential nomination. He apparently always wanted instead to try
professional suicide. Speaking of podcasts, the loathsome Rom Immanuel now has,
which he appears to be devoting to telling Democrats to
stop defending trans athletes and transgendered people and woke issues
like you know, democracy, and just concentrate on food prices.

(14:17):
Rom Political Reports is running for president, to which I ask,
of what country now? The good news Oliver Darcy reports
that the White House Correspondence Association's mealy mouthed non response
to Trump pushing around the Associated Press was so mealy

(14:38):
mouthed that even some members of the White House Correspondent's
Association have sat up and taken notice. Association President Eugene,
don't bother me. I'm about to be a TV star.
Daniels was excoriated by membership on a conference call, and
he evaded nearly all of their questions, but there is
now a move a foot to depose him and to

(14:58):
put somebody else in as president who will make some
kind of response to Trump before Trump simply cuts to
the chase and bans all reporters from the White House,
or from the Eastern time zone or from the country.
Even more impressively, CBS, Yeah, that's CBS, the un spelled
CBS has found its hind legs. Turns out late last

(15:23):
week that company, which was on the verge of completely
caving to Trump over his blackmail lawsuit about the sixty
minutes interview with Kamala Harris, instead filed two motions to
dismiss Trump's amended complaint against them. And then on Monday,
CBS went to the FCC and its new chief Goebbels.
I think that's his name. Might be wrong, it might

(15:44):
be Brendan something. It's hard to keep track of all
these people. CBS demanded the FCC drop its inquiry into
the Harris interview, which is after all, an utter fascist,
pro Trumpist political revenge bullshit investigation, because it quote says,
CBS completely disregard Yards both the letter and the spirit

(16:06):
of the Commission's news distortion policy, CBS News, you have
unsuspected depth for the first time in at least a decade.
Edward R. Murrow would be proud, speaking of which I

(16:32):
had the pleasure of attending the first preview of George
Clooney's new play good Night and good Luck on Broadway
last night, and Murrow would probably have been proud of
it too, because it is, like Clooney's movie version of
twenty years ago, now, a play about Edward R. Murrow
that is not entirely about Edward R. Murrow. It is

(16:53):
also artfully and helpfully updated with some creative license, not
just to the present time, but almost to the present minute.
The loudest sound all night was the booing that shook
the Winter Garden Theater when a video montage bridging what
terrified Murrow about television in his famous nineteen fifty eight
speech on the subject from that Time to Today ended.

(17:16):
The last clip in the montage was a shot of
Elon Musk deafening rabid booing entirely deserved ensued. Other updating
was done more subtly now. In both versions, Clooney has
emphasized the tragedy of Don Holland Beck the CBS newscaster
who was driven to suicide by a right wing TV

(17:39):
critic in the Hearst newspapers named Jack O'Brien, who persecuted
Holland Beck as an alleged communist who slanted the news.
Holland Beck really was as good and as influential as
Murrow and Cloney have made him out to be, and
in fact, his signed photo hangs above this microphone as
I record these commentaries. At one point, Clark Gregg, who

(18:02):
is superb as Holland Beck, refered on the collapse of
his personal and professional lives. He says he woke up
that morning feeling as if somebody had hijacked the last
three years, and that, among other things, all the sensible
people had moved away. The laughter of surprise and self
recognition was spontaneous and unanimous as it died down, greg

(18:25):
as Holland Beck added to Europe, and now the laughter
was louder. I would be remiss if I did not
mention again that video montage of television news. In the play,
dozens of newscasters, good and horrific and everything in between
are shown, and at one point there is a brief
clip of one newscaster who is probably identifiable to only

(18:48):
a handful of us in that theater. The newscaster was
from WKRC in Cincinnati, and as when I knew him
in the eighties, KNBC in Los Angeles. His name is
Nick Clooney, George's father. As to the stage craw As
to the play itself, it is a technical and logistical masterpiece,

(19:08):
with more moving sets than if Broadway tried to make
a musical out of Star Wars, all of them at once.
I actually feared the possibility of Murrow's studio colliding with
one of the giant one hundred foot high descending video
screens which suddenly appear and show him giving Murrow's commentaries

(19:29):
live as he recreates them on stage. They really have
tried also to recreate the film, but a live film,
and in many parts they've done it better, complete with
vintage clips of McCarthy and Milo Radulovich and others. They
have largely succeeded in this effort, and certainly, given that
this was the first preview, they will get better. But

(19:51):
of course, the point of a Murrow play in the
year twenty twenty five is that Murrow took risks that
were in his time, as great as any risk any broadcaster,
any politician, or any public figure could take today against Trump.
To the service of that point, Clooney and his team
managed a third update to the present day. As Murrow

(20:13):
giving his nineteen fifty eight speech to news directors in
Chicago about the future of news, about the future of television,
about wires and lights in a box. He tells that
audience and tells the audience in the theater that the
real question isn't what unbridled power will do to us.
We've seen that, It is what are we willing to

(20:35):
do about it? This serves as a reminder that we
begin to lose all chance of stopping Trump and the
fascists when we begin to cooperate with them or find
silver linings in their crimes. I can't think of anything
I agree with with this, Mahmod Khalil, from beliefs to tactics.

(20:56):
I have looked at this movement and thought it is
doing more harm to itself than anybody else could. But
when we start allowing these trumpest bastards to kidnap Green
card holders with American wives off the streets of major
American cities because they are non violent anti Semites, or

(21:20):
they don't like Israel, or they're protesting American policy. And
because Trump's whores say they are somehow connected to Hamas
without offering any proof other than Trump ran promising to
do this. You elected him so he can do it.
Then when we start doing that, we've already lost the
country because the next person to be dragged off will
be the one on campus protesting Trump. If Marco Efing Rubio,

(21:46):
whose grandfather was ordered deported from this country sixty years
ago because he violated immigration law, only the order was
never enforced and Grandpa was later declared a paro lee.
If Marco Rubio has a case against Mahmud Khalil, go
to a grand jury and get him indicted, you bastard.

(22:08):
After al Rubio is a lawyer in the same way
he is a Secretary of State because somebody else said
he is, and you know, somebody else said he is.
That's fine for the definition of lawyers and Trump whorees
and Trump poor cabinet members, but it is not enough
to arrest somebody, even somebody we think hurts this country

(22:30):
with words. Because if we can start doing that again
like we did a century ago, when we did it
to people like Emma Goldman then or now my mood Khaliliel,
we can start simply doing it to all anti Semites,
in which case I demand that Ice kidnap and detain
Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, all the fundamentalist senators and congressmen

(22:51):
who only support Israel because they want all the Jews
converted so they can have their big rapture thing, and
all other anti Semites in this country, like that guy
in wa Washington and Florida who quotes Hitler. It said
Hitler did good things and has Hitler's speeches or at

(23:16):
least did long ago on his bedside table. That Trump guy.
This is the new criteria detain Trump without trial. Also
of interest, here the new souvenir Major League Baseball cap
with the logo that spells out a vulgar Hispanic term

(23:38):
for women's breasts. And there's no question of it. Now
there is an organized campaign to try to make Stephen A.
Smith into a doesn't make you laugh presidential candidate, mostly
by insisting he's too modest to ever be a presidential candidate.

(24:01):
That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman.

(24:29):
Stell ahead on this edition to countdown a story that
fits with the winner of Today's Worst Person's dishonories, part
of the saga of how I went from sports simple
things to politics not so simple things, and why that
may not be as good an idea as it sounded

(24:50):
at the time, coming up in Things I Promised not
to tell first, Believe it or not, there's still more
new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miss Grants,
morons and Dunning Kruger Effects specimens who constitute today's other
worst persons in the world. Here are the nominees the
Bronze Worse major League Baseball and it's merch partner New Era.

(25:16):
They've done it again. The two companies have put out
another set of grotesquely bad novelty caps using the team logos.
Well abusing the team logos. These are called overlaps. No,
they don't have your laps. Overlaps your cost forty five dollars,
and overlap does not mean overlap between baseball logos and

(25:40):
anybody having thought about what the new product would actually
look like. No, the caps have the team or city
name on them, with the team logo like superimposed atop it.
Like it would say Yankees, and they don't have the NY.
The Yankees interlocking logo superimposed or overlapping where they get

(26:02):
the name overlap from. Needless to say, these caps look
like a series of automobile accidents. Boston the Red Sox
Big Red be logo on top of the word Boston,
so it reads bobon, which makes me think of bubonds

(26:25):
and bubonds as in bubonic plague. The interlocking SD of
the San Diego Padres over the word padres that one
reads pass deess airs an unfortunate one. The H of
the Houston Astros plus the word Astros reads ass hose

(26:47):
as big h os ass hose, or maybe as hose
because that's much better sounding. And worst of all, the
Texas word mark of the Texas Rangers has their big
T letter logo overlapping it, so it's spells out te tas, which,

(27:08):
if you know your colloquial Mexican language, is a word
in Spanish translating roughly to a vulgarity for women's breasts.
That one has been removed from sale, but you can
still buy as hose your price forty five dollars amount
of time they actually spent thinking about these forty five seconds.

(27:32):
Lebrons worser. If at first you don't destroy yourself, try
to try again. Darren Batty fired as a Trump speech
writer the first time after CNN revealed he had attended
a conference starring white nationalists. He's on the ropes again.
Now he's acting under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy.
CNN has now found tweets of his that wed deleted.

(27:54):
I will leave out the name of who he's referencing
here because it'll be way funnier if I do it
this way, Beatty wrote, quote, forget Wainwright Park, that would
be a scandal once twisted into a rumor that this
mister X of ours was gay. Forget the foam that
would be foam parties at gay bars. Forget the war
promotion and the Neocon sugar daddies. Forget the low IQ,

(28:17):
forget the twenty sixteen primary. Mister X is tough on
China and good for military industrial complex, So be a
good dog and vote for him. Another tweet about mister X,
if a bunch of DC wants try to reinvent mister
X as a nationalist, but a respectable one who promises
tax credits to Black Lives Matter supporters. That is tough

(28:40):
on China. Will you be a good dog and vote
for him? And lastly, what happens in the cabana stays
in the cabana hashtag, Well, mister X. The guy I'm
calling mister X, but Darren Beatty of the State Department
did not, is, of course, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of
State and Darren Beatty's current boss. Only the best people,

(29:07):
but our winner the worst. David Smith of the British
newspaper The Guardian, speculating on the twenty twenty eight American
presidential race. Mister Smith is the Washington bureau chief of
the Guardian. He attended college and Leeds in England. He
was the Africa correspondent for the paper. He moved to
Washington in twenty fifteen. He got married at the Boat
House in Central Park, and he still doesn't have a

(29:29):
clue about the country he now covers. He has devoted
an entire column to well, just read parts of it
and then I'll notate or i'll translator answer quote. Stephen A.
Smith was asked by co host Elissa Farrick Griffin what
he makes of hypothetical polls that show him among the

(29:49):
leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in twenty twenty eight.
Actually it shows him last on the list of contenders
for the presidential nomination in twenty twenty eight at two percent.
This wasn't some name, you're none a knee poll. This
was pick from this list. He finished behind Tim Walls.

(30:10):
But the premise of this attempt to make people stop
laughing at Stephen A. Smith president is he's fresh and different.
We don't want these people we've been nominating lately. And
I Tim Walls, who is as not as fresh and
as not as different as you can possibly get, has
fifty percent more support than Steven A. Smith in a
closed poll. I mean, if Bozo were on this list,

(30:31):
he would have finished like fifth. The charismatic sports news
host has become an unlikely force and a party that
needs critical friends and fresh ideas. Unquote name one name,
one fresh idea, Name anybody to whom Steven A. Smith

(30:54):
in politics is a critical friend. Quote Despite or because
of his lack of political experience, Smith is emerging jing
as an unlikely force and a Democratic party badly in
need of critical friends, fresh ideas, and blunt truth. Telling look,

(31:14):
this is like the fiftieth story about this nonsense, and
it uses the idea of critical friends and fresh ideas
twice in one article fifty stories. At least, I would
guess Stephen A. Smith has forty nine supporters for president,
also emerging as an unlikely force two percent in the

(31:36):
poll you're quoting. That's not a force, that's a margin
of error. And if that phrase ever applied better to
anybody that I've ever met, I don't know who could be.
Maybe Joe Scarborough quote. The idea of him running for
the White House remains wildly speculative, you bet your ass,
but speaks volumes about a shift in the US media
ecosystem and a blurring of the lines between culture, entertainment

(31:58):
and politics. No, it doesn't. It's something to write about
while you're killing time until the actual dimensions and areas
of the twenty twenty eight campaign emerged. I mean this time.
In the two thousand and eight Republican campaign, Rudy Giuliani
was the leading Republican by a mile. He got one delegate. Also,

(32:22):
he's a sportscaster. He's a sportscaster known not for breaking stories,
nor news, nor providing insight, nor being funny, nor being informative,
but for killing time, for taking a situation where one
word would do, and using say, twenty seven and forty
three of them. That is not a blurring of the
lines between culture, entertainment and politics. That's a blurring of

(32:45):
your vision if you try to watch him too long. Quote.
His fans include Kurt Bardella, a media relations consultant and
democratic strategist who watches First Take That's the show Smith's
son religiously. Bardella said, he's out there with passion and charisma,
and he provokes emotion and converse and debate. He's become

(33:05):
the singular most influential person in all of sports. Well,
it may be in basketball. The NFL people will cat
ESPN kind of kind of laugh at him. I mean,
I've heard them. I don't want to embarrass them and
use their names if it's anything else like baseball or

(33:26):
the Olympics, or god forbid, anything lesser than those levels sports, golf, tennis,
stuff like that. His biggest insight so far has been
the phrase, we will be right back to talk more NBA.
That's what he knows about the other sports. Quote more
from this Kurt Bardella rather than just dismiss it or
make fun of it or ignore it, Democrats would be

(33:48):
wise to study what makes him so successful, because there
is nobody in the Democratic Party that is as relevant
a voice on a day to day basis as Stephen A. Smith.
Kurt Bardella, who used to be a Republican, has to
show on News Nation, the right wing outlet that pretends
it's some sort of voice of consensus. Some of its hosts, No,

(34:09):
it's a scam. No, it's the nick at night of
TV news, where you go after you get fired, and
they're just there for the paycheck. Some of them seem
to think they are actually representatives of the great American middle.
News Nation is where Andrew Cuomo praises Donald Trump and
Bill O'Reilly. News Nation is where Kurt Vardella praises Stephen A. Smith. Quote.

(34:34):
Smith's eloquence and in your face style could be appealing
to voters in this political moment. Unquote. Now Here in
this story, the other mister Smith of the Guardian has
actually broke some news Smith's eloquence and in your face.
This is the first time the words Stephen A. Smith
and eloquence have been used, not only in the same sentence,

(34:56):
but in the same twenty four hour period volume Yes,
grand eloquence, Yes eloquence. I don't think so. Seriously, What
the hell's going on here? A man who's resilience I admire.
He was fired by ESPN, he fought his way back there.

(35:16):
He's now going to make twenty million a year from them.
A man whose company I have enjoyed because he and
I went to a Knicks game once. We said almost
nothing to each other, just watched and tried to understand
what we were seeing. But the twelve things he said
to me were insightful and cogent. A man who beat
the TV system. He keeps going around saying he's not
running for president. His agent, Mark Shapiro, one of the

(35:36):
great and this is a compliment. Huckster showman of all time.
Mark Shapiro says he's not running for president, and week
after week there's another story about him running for president,
and all of a sudden, I'm thinking this is Richard
the Third refusing the crown and adding the word however
to it. Only Stephen A. Smith is also doing things

(35:57):
like complimenting the horrible anti semite Candice Owens on a
podcast his own podcast, and attacking all the Democratic candidates
and getting pumped by a guy on News Nation. I
have only spent four years of this century exclusively in sports,
But I was one of the most prominent figures in

(36:18):
TV sports, certainly for the last decade of the previous century.
And then I was one of the most prominent figures
in TV political commentary while also being a prominent figure
in the world of sports for the first fifteen years
of this century. And guess what, I am not qualified
to run for president. Not qualified, even with how far

(36:39):
the bar has been lowered, I know how much I
don't know. I would not vote for me. This whole
thing seems to be some sort of attempt to build
for Stephen one quality I think even he would have been.
He's never been publicly accused of humility. Oh, he's a
good guy. I didn't really want to be president. Well

(37:01):
it's a great strategy, I guess, especially if you're not
going to be president. It'll help his nonsports podcasts unless
he keeps having people like Candace Owens and Charlie kirk
On as guests. I mean, there's still people out there
who think Trump gave up his business and gave back
money to become dictator. But political journalists grabbed this third

(37:23):
rail idea at your peril. You look stupid when you
talk about it. And by the way, I know he
hasn't had Charlie Kirk on yet yet he had Candace
Owens on. Charlie kirk is a step up from Candace Owens,
especially when, like The Guardian, the headline to the David
Smith article reads, quote you ready democrats are reeling? Is

(37:48):
Stephen A. Smith the way back to the White House? No?
David Smith and the Guardian No two days worst persons
in the world to the number one story on the

(38:24):
countdown and things I promised not to tell. And the
further I get away from the day I left NBC,
the more I realize that almost everybody there and many
who are still there, was crazy remains crazy. It is
a nest for aggressive ingratitude and the rewriting of history

(38:47):
to make sure that everybody who is a success did
it all on their own, sprang fully grown from the ground,
and nobody owes anybody anything. And those are the good parts.
Then there are the really crazy people, the ones who
are are in charge of covering the election, the ones

(39:08):
who laid the groundwork years ago for the bottomless pit
that American news media has fallen into, particularly the curse
that will, if not corrected, kill us all both sides
ism Chuck Todd disease, sadly, Katie Turrer disease outside of

(39:31):
the NBC, Chrystalizid disease, Ryan Lizzid disease, New York Times,
at this Ohio diner disease. It started with the scumbag
Roger Ayles at Fox News, It migrated to ken Starr
and the Bill Clinton prosecution, and it then became, after

(39:55):
the sufficient number of refs were worked, the we can't
dismiss these sleeze balls on the right because even if
they are sleeves balls, they have public support. We need
every viewer we can get. It's a declining marketplace. Instead
of saying what American News once said to the sleeze
balls of any party like Joe McCarthy or Father Coughlin

(40:17):
or any of the others, which was screw you, We're
gonna write or broadcast about your perfidy every day until
you die, they looked at ken Starr's read thin persecution
of Bill Clinton and said, well, no, they've found nothing
in two months, in six months, in two years. But
what if they find something later and it turns out
we opposed them and we were wrong. We'll get killed

(40:39):
by right wing media and our fascist bosses like Bob Wright,
ken Starr and his thugs who went after Bill Clinton
played the American news media, especially TV news, like the
proverbial two dollars banjo. No news in the Clinton Lewinsky scandal,
no problem. A quick phone call Alisa Meyers at NBC

(41:01):
or any of several correspondents at CNNABC or CBS, or
anybody at Fox, and suddenly there was breaking news and
another alleged victim ready to do a tiery on camera
interview which had already aired a dozen times with clips
on every network before anybody realized the alleged victim hadn't
actually alleged anything. It was putrid, but worse, it was profitable.

(41:27):
And if you questioned it, if you said, this isn't journalism,
the other networks, the other newspapers, the others invested in
this story. A real time twenty four to seven soap
opera would go do any length to attack you. And
what would your own network do? Hell sir, That's why

(41:48):
I wanted to tell this story in full, I haven't before.
Almost by accident, I had become the face of the
star Clinton Lewinsky story on cable news early in nineteen
ninety eight, and one day I had enough. I decided
to get out, and the reaction at NBC News was
to try to prevent me from leaving. It was going

(42:11):
to be a hostage situation, to literally threaten my career,
my income, my future, my family, to try to force
me to keep working there, to keep pushing whatever Ken
Starr was cooking. Until you were in the middle of that,
you can never really imagine what television executives will do

(42:35):
for ratings or money. I think sometimes they are worse
than politicians. By that point, I had been in TV
for sixteen years. I was already thirty nine years old,
I had some gray hair, I'd already been through the
grinding machinery of local news in Boston and Los Angeles.
I had already made my mark on SportsCenter and moved on.

(42:56):
I thought I had seen it all, ha ha, dumb me.
I had not, however, seen NBC News president Andrew Lack
nor had I imagined that he would actually have ready
to go at a moment's notice, an employee who would
be willing to try to blackmail me literally threatened to

(43:18):
bankrupt me and my parents and put them, as Lack's
employee phrased it, quote on the street. This was in
the spring of nineteen ninety eight. As I said, I
had decided I didn't want to do the nightly show
anymore that was devoted to covering the Bill Clinton Monica
Lewinsky story, whether there was any news about it that

(43:39):
day or not, and especially since the network was devoted
to portraying the Clinton Lewinski story as the worst thing
to happen to America since the Civil War. The problem
was the shows I did for Andy Lack's MSNBC in
nineteen ninety eight. They were making millions of dollars a
week in profit, and the rest of the network was

(44:02):
losing money. It had I've never had ratings before. I
wanted to do something else, something else, anything else, fifty
percent Lewinski, fifty percent, something else inside NBC. Failing that
outside NBC, stay in New is, go back to sports,
do it in New York, go to Los Angeles, anything

(44:24):
except the show as it was constituted. So, through his personnel,
Vice president, Elena Nackmanoff, an otherwise fairly pleasant person. There
came a message from Andy Lack in May of nineteen
ninety eight. If you go see our personnel consultant, a
woman named Deborah Byrne, and you talk to her frankly,
we will consider letting you leave NBC immediately. I went

(44:53):
first off, Elena Nackmanoff told me on Friday afternoon, June fifth,
nineteen ninety eight, some of us understand where you're coming from,
about the madness of covering this scandal every night like this.
So you're the good sport, a war winner for doing
this today, Keith, you'll like Deborah Byurn. She's a certified
social worker, and she's done great things for us. She
saved a lot of people who were in trouble. I

(45:15):
don't mean ethical crises like yours, Keith. I mean people
who were passed out drunk at their desks. I didn't
stop to ask her, which she thought was worse. In
any event, Elena walked me through a labyrinth of hallways
at thirty Rock in New York to the office of
this Deborah burn She was a bespectacled, bent looking woman
of about sixty with badly dyed hair and a fiercely

(45:39):
aggressive handshake. She was not big, but frankly, I was
not convinced I could take her in a fight if
it came to that. And from the get go her
manager suggested it might come to that. I am not
an employee of NBC or MSNBC, and I'm not beholden
to them. Deborah Burn began loudly and too quickly. I

(46:00):
work on a contractual basis, meaning I don't get ten
percent of anything, and I don't get money for attracting
more business. It was clear whatever money they gave her,
it did not go to office decorps. There were a
dozen filing cabinets, no windows, two lamps, her high back chair,
a metal desk, and the plain wooden chair at its

(46:20):
side on which I was instructed to sit. I'm not
here to be critical of NBC or MSNBC or Andy Lack.
I'm not here to be critical of you. I'm an
impartial observer and I'm simply here to help nackman off.
The talent vice president was still there, and Burn turned
to her for the record. Elena, I need you to
describe the company's position about Keith's employment Keith, Elena said,

(46:44):
understands that if he chooses not to work for NBC
as NBC wants him to work, he will have to
face consequences. Now, this was a slightly changed story from
the one Elena Knackmanoff had given me even minutes earlier.
The one she had given me in her own office.
Gone was the good sport a war winner crap. Obviously,

(47:07):
she said, We're not going to release you from your contract, Keith.
If you want to be on the beach for the
next two years plus whatever remains after that, so be it.
That's his contract status. Deborah with a crisp thanks. Deborah
burn now dismissed the vice president of NBC News who left.

(47:29):
Burne produced and opened and improbably large folder with my
name on it in improbably large letters, so I could
see they had a folder on me ostentatiously shuffled quickly
through one hundred assorted documents, got to a blank form
of some kind, and asked me to describe the circumstances
that had brought me into her office. I explained I

(47:50):
was asked to come in. I also explained my conviction
that I had made a complete mistake going into News
in the first place that I missed doing sports, and
on top of all that, there had now emerged this
new kind of news, which I felt was against my
personal ethics and beliefs about what I should be doing,
or in fact, what the media should be doing. I
threw in the word pollution a couple of times. Very

(48:13):
grand of me, I thought. She didn't look up at me.
Once all of media is becoming polluted in the way
you've described. She yanked off her glasses and staring at me,
not with anger, but with annoyance. You should learn how
to live with it. It'll be a lot easier for
everybody if you just do that. You're not a child.
Grow up. Maybe next time you'll learn to read the
contract before you sign it. I had to fight a smile.

(48:38):
This wasn't some sort of counselor. This was Andy Lack's enforcer.
She'd be threatening to break my legs before we were done.
They might bring in Brokaw to narrate it. I did
read the contract thoroughly, I said, suppressing my laughter. This

(49:02):
isn't about the contract. This is about my morals and
nobody else's morals, I said, not NBC's not mister Lax.
Just mine. I don't like the way the news industry
is handling this story. I have no delusion about being
able to change the news industry. I don't even feel
it's my responsibility to try to change the news industry.
This is about my ethics and my incorrect choices related

(49:24):
to TV news and TV sports. Now, she put her
glasses back on. She wrote some notes. She chuckled as
she wrote them. You may indeed miss sports as you
put it, and you may feel that sincerely, but it's
nonetheless an adolescent fantasy. And as to the pollution of
the media, that's also part of this fantasy world you

(49:44):
live in. You're grown up now, and you have to
live with the consequences of your actions. You heard what
Elena said. If you try to break this contract, NBC
will punish you severely. This is David and Goliath here, Keith,
and you're just not seeing it. I started to reply
something about how I had come down there as there's
a gesture of compromise that there quest and then she

(50:05):
shouted me down. You'll have to learn to compromise. She
emphasized the word as if I had not only not
just said it, but as if she had just invented it.
This is what the company wants, this is what the
audience wants, and you signed the contract. That's your responsibility.
I've been an NBC employee for twenty years, and they're
very big, and they're very successful, and they just won't

(50:27):
sit idly by. This will be David and Goliath, and
I'm very sorry to have to break it to you,
but you are not Goliath. I asked her why she
had just said she'd been an NBC employee for twenty years.
Two minutes after telling me that she was not an
NBC employee, she looked at me. She snickered. She wrote

(50:49):
that down too, Otherwise, she just kept talking. Television viewers
are fickle, and if you're off the air for two years,
it'll be real difficult to get back on. People will
forget you. That's the real world now. Deborah Byrn paused
and looked over at nothing over in the corner of
the room. I have a daughter who isn't realistic, she

(51:14):
suddenly whispered, just like you, lives in a world of
her own. She judges others and moralizes to them too.
She's tall like you too. It's difficult for parents to
have to look up at their children and discipline them.
Your height has always made it difficult for your parents

(51:35):
to discipline you. Thus you remain headstrong child. The defeat
in her voice was total and as disturbing as that,
and this whole line was getting I really did think
somebody was gonna pop out from between those filing cabinets
to tell me I'd been punked, or that this was

(51:56):
a remake of Candid Camera or something. I patiently explained
to Deborah Burn that I had not been born at
my current home of six three and a half inches,
that in fact, my mother was taller than me until
I was probably twelve thirteen years old. That my father
was still taller than me until I got to college.

(52:19):
But your mother is short, she blurted, with great satisfaction.
I need descriptions of your parents, of their personalities, for
my diagnosis, and please stop giving me your obviously prepared answers.
I was still trying at this point. I started to
describe my parents. She cut me off. Father passive, of course,
this time I actually couldn't stop laughing. I said that

(52:40):
was not my father at all, that he usually did
what he damned well pleased. This annoyed Debora Burn. No,
he's passive. I can tell I'm a professional Keith. He
didn't stand up to your mother, did he. He never
told her to grow up or act her age? Did he?
That means he was passive. I could see her writing
the word passive in block letters on one of the

(53:01):
forms in which she'd been putting her notes. She's done
detached this page theatrically. She stuck it into the large
pile of documents on the top of the thing, and
she grabbed a fresh page from a stack to her right.
What about your parents' finances, I explained, they were both retired,
so you take care of them. I began to answer

(53:21):
that they were both extremely independent, when she cut me
off again. I said, so you are responsible for them financially,
don't evade me. My amusement at this obviously deranged woman
now began to be overcome by anger. I swallowed both
the anger and the amusement, and I explained I handled
their finances, so you're their sole financial support, just as

(53:45):
Elena and Nachmanoff's report to me indicates. I thought, so,
so you're the superstar in the family, are you. I
began to try to bring us back to this planet.
When Deborah Byurn rose in her chair and leaned in
toward me and tell me, Keith, what exactly will your

(54:09):
parents do for money? What will keep them from being
out on the street when their precious superstar is blacklisted
from television? This purported social worker who worked for NBC
or didn't work for NBC, or maybe both, depending on

(54:30):
which minute it was, went into detail about the threat
she was now making on behalf of NBC News MSNBC,
Andy lack Lanna nackman Off, and our corporate parent ge.
Even if I simply quit the Clinton Lewinsky Show, indeed
quit television, NBC would declare that my contract was still

(54:53):
in force. It would suspend me, It would not pay me.
It would then sue me for the salary it had
already paid me. Then it would sue me for the
money it had spent on promoting the show. Then it
would get a co order extending my contracts indefinitely until
the suspension ended, and then it would suspend me some more.
Let that sink in, she said, first time I ever

(55:17):
heard that phrase, Let that sink in. And then she
didn't even pause for a second to let me let
that sink in Instead, she burst out with this, the
greatest of all the non secutors on a day of
non sequiturs, you have what I would classify as a
Howard Stern kind of personality. Well now I was back
to actually biting my tongue to keep from laughing at

(55:39):
the image of a bunch of therapists at a conference somewhere,
dryly discussing the parameters of the Howard Stern kind of personality, Dogmatic, unbending,
presenting absolutely forceful opinions on the air that no one
is permitted to disagree with. Imagine going on a date
with Howard Stern. I tried not to. All he would
be doing would be talking about himself. It would be unbearable.

(56:01):
You're like him on the air, and I can see
that who you are on the airs who you are
in life. Of course, I've never seen your show. I
don't have cable. Ever been married? I recovered from these
non sequitors quickly enough to explain that I had not
been married engaged again, No, I thought I might be
about to be. Ever had a long term relationship of

(56:23):
any kind? I told her I had, Oh, really, how
long term? I answered? Eleven years? And when did that end?
I calculated it had ended four years previously to the month,
in fact, and you haven't had an eleven year relationship since,
I explained to her as pleasantly as I could. While

(56:46):
I looked to see if there were any emergency exits,
or calculated if there might be a window somewhere outside
that I could throw myself through to get out of
the building as fast as possible, I explained to her
as pleasantly as possible that I didn't know any way
of squeezing an eleven year long relationship into four calendar years,
so that I answer here would have to be no.

(57:07):
I told you to stop giving me prepared answers right
then again, she switched tones and topics. How much do
you drink? She demanded. I said, I almost never drank.
She dropped her pen and stared at me again. Well
what does that mean, I said, I believed I'd had

(57:28):
four glasses of wine during the current calendar year, and
it was June. She took the glasses off and leaned
in as far as she could without again rising from
her chair or falling off it. Well, then, how much
drug do you do? Told her, I'd never used drug
or drugs stronger than alcohol, And before I could criticize

(57:52):
her grammar, she got red and angry. Then what's that
smell on your breath? Look, you just don't get this.
Do you look at my telephone? Keith, and I did
as instructed. I looked at an ordinary a black telephone,
although given her manifest insanity, for all I knew she
would shortly reveal it was a direct line to Elvis Presley.

(58:12):
If I didn't want a black telephone and I have
a black telephone, I'll just have to make the best
of it, won't I, I said. I thought she was
holding up very well under the strain of that disappointment.
I instantly regretted the snidness of that remark, because it
was just gonna make things worse. And then, to my astonishment,
she sat back in her chair, ran her hand through
her hair, and almost whispered, thank you for saying that.

(58:34):
I appreciate it. The pause in the storm did not
last long. You're seeing a therapist, it says here you've
been discussing these so called ethical issues. I said, we've
made a lot of progress. Well, you can't resolve the
work matters without getting at the core problems, which are
obviously personal and family related, not to mention the alcohol

(58:55):
and the drug. So talking about work with your therapist
is probably not going to solve this to the satisfaction
of NBC. So I will need to talk to your therapist.
And I want you to sign a here and now
permitting me to do so, unless that is this therapist
of yours is working towards making you adjust to the
facts that you signed this contract and this is your job,
and this is the real world, and this is David

(59:15):
and Goliath, and that's all there is to it. And
you're on the air tonight at eight o'clock, and that's
it now. She paused and stared off into space again,
like when she mentioned her daughter. When I was in
my early twenties, I was traveling from Smith College to
Montreal by train. She suddenly announced My meeting with her

(59:37):
went on for two hours. It featured threats against my parents,
It had her yelling at me, it had her accusing
me of using alcohol and drug And yet this was
the only point where I really considered trying to make
a break for the door. The Montreal Canadians hockey team
were on that train, very drunk, very happy, very boastful

(59:59):
of their conquests during their trips to the various cities
of their hockey league. In one of them, I suspect,
giving your fantasy world interest in sports, you may have
heard of him, Boom boom, Jeffreyon. He came over and
tried to pick me up. I nodded robotically and began
to wonder if I suddenly leaped from the wooden chair
and did run out of her office, would she continued

(01:00:21):
to tell this story anyway after I left. We didn't
talk of such things then, not in the nineteen fifties.
A married man, an athlete, a tall athlete. Now, of course,
if I was a reporter and this happened, I'd have
to report it. I'd put it on the news. That's
just the way the world has changed the real world,
that is. Keith. I suggested that at every news organization
for which I had worked, the code had been the

(01:00:42):
same that unless an incident involved the law, or it
diminished a player's ability or availability in a game, we
in fact didn't report it. Like at ESPN. I related
a story similar to her own that had occurred in
Miami at the past World Series in nineteen ninety seven. Well,
she resumed indignantly. You might have gotten away with that
under an old contractor in the sixties, where hippy like

(01:01:05):
you might have fit in. But this isn't the sixties.
This is the real world of today, and you won't
get away with that kind of attitude under this contract
or any other contract in the future. You could even
go back to your precious sports and you'd soon find
out about the real world. Don't kid yourself, it'll be
David and Goliath. I said that the decision not to
report the story in Miami was made under this contract

(01:01:29):
by executives from NBC Sports. And now she sat bolt
upright and slammed her glasses back on her face. I
can't get this done in just one session, you know,
Deathly afraid that she was about to recite another memory
from the glorious days of rail travel, I agreed to
return the following Thursday, knowing full well, as I said so,

(01:01:49):
that I would never come back to her office, even
as a hostage or in a body bag. Well, I
don't know about you, she said, as she opened her door.
But I'm exhausted, I told her. Indeed so was I,
which was rather un fortunate, because now I had to
go Doe two live hours of television. Yes, I guess
you do. She suddenly stared at my feet, then quickly

(01:02:13):
up at my head, as if she were estimating what
size I took in caskets. But you're so much taller
than I am, so you'll recover more quickly. MSNBC had
arranged a car service to take me out to the
studios in New Jersey from thirty Rock, and I spent
the entire trip writing all this down, pages and pages

(01:02:38):
of notes and quotes and boom boom Jeffreon and my
own height at birth. And I called my therapist on
my phone, and I asked her if there was a
New York state number that I could call to complain
about a certified social worker who seemed to be certifiable
and who had just threatened me. She gave me a

(01:02:58):
number I called while still in the car, and they
said they had no record of any social worker named Deborah.
When I got to the MSNBC studios in Seicaugus, New Jersey,
now the home of MLB Network of all things, I
went to my little office. I picked up a small
microcassette tape recorder that I kept in the desk there
and I went in to see my executive producer, Phil Griffin.

(01:03:21):
I explained how this woman Burn had threatened me, and
I mentioned that I'd called the state Social worker hotline
and appeared that Deborah Burn was operating without a license.
And as I did this, I kept flipping that mini
cassette machine from hand to hand until I was sure
Phil Griffin had gotten the implication. Completely phony on my part,

(01:03:42):
But like James Jones says in Field of Dreams, there
are rules here. No, there are no rules here. My
executive producer buried his head in his hands. Needless to say,
the Deborah Burn thing had blown up in NBC's face.
They went into a full fledged panic at the news
that she was not registered as a certified social worker.

(01:04:03):
And it turned out that was a clerical mistake. It
was her own clerical mistake. She was registered, but she
was registered only under her maiden name. But for the
next few weeks NBC was completely on the defensive about me.
Soon they were promising to make me Tom Brokaw's air
Apparent if I would only stay. I said, yeah, but
it says in Brian Williams' contract that he's Tom Brokaw's

(01:04:26):
air apparent. The executive in question laughed and said, no,
Brian only thinks it says in Brian Williams contract that
he's Tom Brokaw's heir apparent. It can be you stick
with the Lewinsky story, oh and layoff ken Starr, and
I have to think that one through too long. If
they could make poor Brian think that he was the

(01:04:47):
heir apparent when he wasn't, they could make me think
I was the heir apparent when I wasn't as well,
and that price laying off ken Starr, that was a
non starter. The stalemate continued for a few weeks until,
as I have related here previously, a friend in the
Sports division revealed that NBC had lied to me to
get me to sign my contract with them, that I
was not being paid as they had told me, primarily

(01:05:09):
by the News division, but by the Sports division. I
then met with Monica Lewinsky's first lawyer, Bill Ginsburg, to
discuss suing NBC over such illegal negotiation tactics. Ginsburg thought
just leaking the fact that we had met would spring
me sure enough. About six weeks later, Leanna Akmanoff suddenly
called my agent told her they were willing to sell

(01:05:30):
my contract to Fox Sports in Los Angeles, yippie. So
do not doubt what television executives are willing to do
to protect their ratings and their profits even in the
event of full fledged fascism. And do not doubt what
a zelot with even minimal skills at medium manipulation like
Ken Starr can do to the news you watch or

(01:05:52):
hear or read, even after he's dead. Also, most relevantly now,
as CNN's talent faced the prospect of conforming to the
right wing party line, or suddenly finding themselves with a
conservative co host, or finding themselves unemployed. There's one more
MSNBC story to tell that is relevant. I went back
there in two thousand and three and we did pretty well.

(01:06:15):
And then in twenty ten they began to pressure me
to change my tone and to add in more diverse voices.
And they did not mean women or members of minority groups,
or people like i'd hired, like Rachel Meadow. They meant conservative,
diverse voices. That's when I began to pack my bags

(01:06:36):
to leave, and a few months later I left, and
then four years later they asked me to come back
as long as I agreed to have a conservative co host.
I passed. But here's the problem. I don't know anybody
else pressured in those ways who has also passed, Not
at CNN, not at MSNBC, not anywhere else. Do not

(01:07:01):
doubt what some television talents are willing to do just
to remain. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Thank you for listening. I swear I had that conversation

(01:07:24):
with that woman, I swear to God, and it went
on and on and on and on. Brian Ray and
John Phillip Chanel, the musical directors of Countdown. Once she
started talking about getting hit on by Boom Boom jeffreyon
of the Montreal Canadians, I really thought it was being
recorded for use on some ESPN show or NBC Sports
show or something. I just to this day. Brian Ray

(01:07:46):
and John Phillip Shaneil, the musical directors of Countdown Arrange,
produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanel handled
orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass
and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical
and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium
organist ever Nancy Faust the sports I'm getting choked up over.
This is the Olderman Thief from the ESPN two written

(01:08:10):
by Stephen A. Smith, No written by Mitch Warren Davis
Curtis VSPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my friend
Larry David. Everything else was as ever my fault Larry
David for the Democratic nomination. That's countdown for today, just

(01:08:33):
four hundred and ten days. Ten days until the scheduled
end of his lame duck and lame brained term, unless
Musk removes Trump sooner or the actuarial tables to The
next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always, bulletins as the
news warrants, remember impeach Trump. It will not work now.

(01:08:54):
It will, however, win the Democrats the midterms as long
as there are midterms. Until next time. I'm Keith Olberman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown

(01:09:24):
with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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IF TRUMP WAS A FOREIGN AGENT, WHAT WOULD HE BE DOING DIFFERENTLY? - 3.13.25

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}IF TRUMP WAS A FOREIGN AGENT, WHAT WOULD HE BE DOING DIFFERENTLY? - 3.13.25