March 28, 2024 • 53 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 148: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The head of the POLITICAL unit at NBC News is now reported to have been actively working with the former Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee to try to stir up a social media groundswell to save Ronna McDaniel’s job at NBC. And she – and perhaps the CHAIRMAN of NBC News as well - were reportedly willing to throw MSNBC under the bus - specifically, willing to throw its ex-Biden-Press-Secretary, now budding star Jen Psaki, under the bus, and throw Chuck Todd under the bus, in hopes of saving Ronna McDaniel.
Puck News is reporting that after Ronna McDaniel debuted on “Meet The Press” on Sunday and after Kristen Welker told the audience she had no say in McDaniel’s hiring and after Chuck Todd attacked the hiring, NBC News Chairman Cesar Conde and Vice President Carrie Budoff Brown were unnerved, but both quote “seemed to anticipate the impending insurgency and frantically tried to pre-empt it. On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the RNC Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her BEHALF. The two sides also discussed having those folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard – after all this was the same network that was turning Psaki… into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against (Chuck) Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him,” unquote.
The report - and a similar story by The Hollywood Reporter - also highlights MSNBC President Rashida Jones's role in hiring McDaniel, and raises questions about Kristen Welker's on-air denial that she was at all involved in the hiring (it says she was AT a meeting at which Budoff Brown continued to pitch McDaniel).
It's a disaster, it's still unfolding, and there's no telling how many different NBC News executives will follow McDaniel out the door.
B-Block (28:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: First Maria Bartiromo blamed the Baltimore bridge collapse on "wide open borders." Now she wants to make sure no money is allocated to rebuild it. James Comer claims Merrick Garland and The Deep State are indoctrinating people into believing he has no evidence against Biden. And Sage Steele, with whom I once co-anchored SportsCenter, says the devil tried to keep her from speaking out against liberals by hitting her in the mouth with a golf ball.
C-Block (40:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Okay, the still-evolving Ronna McDaniel scandal is a doozy. But this is NOT NBC/MSNBC's worst crisis ever. Let me take you back to the thrilling day of Existential Challenge when the Chairman of GE was ready to shut the network down, pay everybody off, and fire all of us, because his Mommy had seen Bill O'Reilly criticize him on Fox, because of what I said about O'Reilly on MSNBC.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
head of the political unit at NBC News is now
reported to have been actively working with the former chief
(00:27):
of staff of the Republican National Committee to try to
stir up a social media ground swell to save Rana
McDaniel's job at NBC News, and she and perhaps the
chairman of NBC News as well, were reportedly willing to
throw MSNBC under the bus, and reportedly willing to throw
(00:48):
its ex Biden Press secretary now budding star Jensaki under
the bus, and for good measure, reportedly willing to throw
Chuck Todd under the bus in hopes of saving Rana
McDaniel and perhaps saving their own jobs as NBC executives.
(01:09):
This is important beyond your ordinary media car crash and
debris field, and it's fascinating confirmation that there are no
adults in television and very few smart people as well, because,
unlike say CNN, NBC is not one news entity. It
has NBC News, it has MSNBC, it has CNBC, it
(01:33):
has Telemundo, it has local NBC News operations in most
major cities. If its key executives are colluding with operatives
of one political party, one very anti press, anti news,
anti democracy political party, by being willing to damage figures
formerly with the other political party who they now employ
(01:55):
and the primary source of TV commentary design for the
adherents to that other political party. If they are willing
to do that, this is an ormous scandal that transcends
the hiring of Rona McDaniel, the firing of Rona McDaniel,
or television news itself. It's Puck News that is reporting that.
(02:17):
After McDaniel debuted on Meet the Press on Sunday, and
after Kristen Welker told the audience she had no say
in McDaniel's hiring, and after Chuck Todd attacked that hiring,
NBC News Chairman Saysar Conde and Vice president Carrie Bodoff
Brown were unnerved, but both quote seemed to anticipate the
(02:37):
impending insurgency and frantically tried to pre empt it. On Sunday,
Bootoff Brown reached out to Ronal McDaniel's aide and former
chief of staff at the RNC, Richard Walters, to see
if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak
up on her behalf. The two Sides also discussed having
(03:00):
those folks call attention to what they saw as a
double standard. After all, this was the same network that
was turning Saki into a Maddow adjacent primetime star. Walters
later assured Budoff Brown, the NBC vice president, that they'd
been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against
(03:24):
Chuck Todd specifically, and that this might give NBC News
some cover, for which Budholph Brown thanked him unquote, you
heard that right. The vice president of News for political
coverage coordinated with the former chief of staff at the
Republican National Committee to try to dirty up MSNBC's first
(03:48):
promising new host since I hired Madow out of my
own pocket in two thousand and eight, to subject Jensaki
to at least ginned up criticism from the right on
social media and maybe by television columnists and those who
covered news about the news. Puck does not explain why
Conde is mentioned at the start of this startling detail,
(04:11):
or if he knew or approved of what Bututoff Brown
was doing with the x RNC chief of staff. Incredibly
that NBC News Vice President Carrie Budoff Brown confirmed all
this to Puck News in a statement to quote it.
After Meet the Press, I had a conversation with Richard
(04:31):
Walters and asked if McDaniel had supporters who could speak
on behalf of her being an NBC News contributor. I
never discussed what to say, how to say it, or
who to focus on. Unquote Carrie Butoff Brown everybody, Vice
president of NBC News and chair of the board of
(04:53):
directors for the International Center for Journalists, which describes itself
as a nonprofit dedicated to promoting journalistic in integrity. I
might add journalistic integrity, but not at NBC or MSNBC,
and not if you're Jensaki, or even if you're Chuck Todd,
(05:15):
confirming that she conspired with the chief of staff at
a political party now dedicated to undermining faith in elections
and democracy itself to bolster a disqualified, dishonest commentator in
Who's hiring She had just played a primary role by
undermining her company's primary news operation and its newest anchor.
(05:40):
And despite whatever complaints you or especially I might have
with him, and the complaints I have with him are
large enough and public enough that he hates my guts.
Who moderated your own operations primary news vehicle for nine years,
and if he didn't work out, Chuck Todd Damnsure worked hard.
In some respects, it is more unbelievable that Carrie Butdoff
(06:02):
Brown did this than that NBA News hired Ronal McDaniel
in the first place. That statement ain't the flex you
think it is, madam. It is a confession to the
business equivalent of a cover up. Somebody who read it
asked me why she hasn't been fired yet. My answer
was because it isn't five pm on Friday yet. And
(06:26):
now we move on to the next question. Is Carrie
Budolph Brown going to be the only one of the
NBC News executives likely to get fired now? Because they
were stupid enough to think that their audiences, that America,
that their journalists and opinionators would accept the former head
(06:48):
of the Republican Party, who still actively denying the legitimacy
of an American presidential election, still rationalizing her own effort
to undermine democracy, as recently as in her debut on
Meet the Press, still still lying about provable facts about
the Democratic Party as recently as this passed Sunday on NBC, which,
(07:10):
if any other NBC News executive is going to take
the fall for having engaged that network in a shocking
and disgraceful episode. Who else is primarily responsible for this
colossally stupid plan and its newest, extraordinarily panoramically almost immeasurably
(07:32):
unconscionable coda, the butt off Brown scheme to make Rona
McDaniel look better by making Jensaki and M's NBC look worse.
The favorite among the early answers is all of them.
The Hollywood Reporter has also published its insider TikTok piece,
(07:54):
not as well sourced as Pucks, and the title is
kind of boring. The leadership vacuum that led to the
Rona McDaniel fail at NBC is Rana Ghazi, but the
pictures under the Hollywood Reporter headline are the real tell.
There's an image of McDaniel next to a picture of
(08:16):
NBC News chairman Sayesar Conde, and Condy is on there
because the point of the Hollywood Reporter piece is saysar
Conde will not survive this. The first non Rana part
of their story is about Condey's failures. The first non
Rana paragraph begins with the unstated prediction that Conde just
(08:38):
blew his chances for promotion within NBC, and it ends
with the unstated doubt that he'll be able to keep
his current job. It starts with quote for Conde, who
is believed to be angling to rise to the CEO
job at NBC Universal in the fullness of time, it's
fair to question whether this deeply embarrassing episode will have
(09:00):
major consequences. The same paragraph ends with quote, the News
division seems to have fallen prey to a confusing leadership
structure at a level one wrung below Condey, who, as
one insider put it, quote, is not a news guy.
End quote. Well, even if he is a newsguy, the
(09:23):
Hollywood reporter's implication is he won't be one for much longer.
The official version of all this is that the McDaniel
hiring began with Carrie butoff Brown extended to the President
of Editorial at NBC News, Rebecca Blumenstein, got unanticipated support
from the hapless president of MSNBC, Rashida Jones, and culminated
(09:44):
in the green light from Caesar Conde that those above
Conday in the NBC and Comcast management structure, like the
acting chairman Michael Cavanaugh and the ultimate boss, the owner,
Brian Roberts, that they knew nothing. However, again quoting the
Hollywood Reporter, one NBC veteran questions whether higher ups, even
(10:07):
including Roberts, weren't at least informed of the arrangement, that is,
the hiring of Ronald McDaniel before it was announced. At minimum,
this person suspects that Kavanaugh might have been looped in quote,
you do not hire an election denier without having it vetted.
If that wasn't the case, says another longtime insider, leadership
(10:29):
problems are to blame. In terms of NBC News, this
person says, it sort of stinks. From the head of
all the divisions in the company, someone has to be
in charge of news unquote. Yikes. If that were not enough,
(10:49):
Puck News adds on this subject, quoting another NBC News journalist,
Executives need a moment where they fight for the team,
and Sazar never had that moment. He has no relationships
with the news division. The journalist later added, never really
has tried. Good night, says our conde. Wherever you are,
(11:14):
it is hard to believe that this sentence might now apply.
But wait, there's more. While the third member of the
NBC gang that couldn't shoot straight. The president for editorial Bluemenstein,
gets away with no more of a connection to Rona
McDaniel than a love of Michigan that they share. There
is one more genuinely shocking development, again from Puck News quote.
(11:39):
There was no discussion of putting McDaniel on the avowedly
anti Trump MSNBC. Late in February, however, Carrie but Off
Brown reached out to McDaniel with a new development. Rashida Jones,
the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel
appear as a contributor on her network as well. Was
(12:00):
that something McDaniel would consider, McDaniel said she would well
if she did. She was the only person connected to
MSNBC who would have ever said that in ten million years,
except the president of MSNBC. And remember when the spit
(12:21):
hit the fan last Sunday, when seemingly everybody in American
politics who was not a vice president, a president, or
a chairman at some branch of NBC News or another
realized that this was not just the hiring of an
election denier, but the elevating of election denial to a
place of legitimacy in the unending corporate quest for political media.
(12:44):
Both Sides ism and it was the whitewashing of an
amnesty for somebody on the outer fringes of actual conspiracies
like the Trump fake Elector's plot. While everybody was figuring
that out, MSNBC President Rashida Jones was telling her enraged
on air talent and producers that no, no, of course
(13:05):
Roni McDaniel would never appear on MSNBC, just because weeks earlier,
MSNBC President Rashida Jones had offered her money to appear
on MSNBC. Now Jones was saying the opposite, even as
the Vice President Budolph Brown worked with Republicans to save
(13:28):
McDaniel by making MSNBC and Jensaki the victims in the
latest corporate round of both Sides and what about ism?
And then Jones was additionally quoted as saying yet another thing,
that she had never promised anybody McDaniel would not appear
on MSNBC. She had only said there was no anticipation
(13:49):
that she would appear on MSNBC. And if that sounds
like it was a distinction without a difference, remember that
on the air Monday Night. Matdows specifically called out attempts
to leave the door open for McDaniel on MSNBC. Quote
were told this weekend in clear terms, Rona McDaniel will
not be on our air. Rona McDaniel will not be
(14:11):
on MSNBC unquote. Rasheedah Jones may still have an office
at thirty Rock, she may still have business cards that
say otherwise. But for all intents and purposes, Rashida Jones
is already the ex president of MSNBC. And we are
(14:34):
still not done here. The new insight into the Rona
McDaniel era at NBC and MSNBC five days that felt
like five lifetimes, five days that were unforgettable no matter
how hard we will try, is also extremely damaging to
somebody else, somebody on the air, to the already wobbling
(14:58):
moderator of Meet the Press, Kristen Welker again from Puck News.
As chance would have it, McDaniel was already scheduled to
visit the NBC News bureau in Washington for an off
the record meeting with Meet the Press's moderator, Kristin Welker
uh Oh, quoting in light of the network's new interest,
(15:21):
but off. Brown joined that meeting and with Welker present,
continued to pitch McDaniel on coming to NBC News as
a contributor. In a statement, an NBC News spokesperson said,
as Kristen disclosed viewers on Sunday, she was in no
way involved in McDaniel's hiring, nor was involved in the
(15:42):
decision making process, and did not participate in conversations surrounding
a contributor contract. Now that's a distinction without a difference.
Kristin Welker had a meeting with Rona McDaniel a month ago. Suddenly,
the vice president for Political Condent of NBC News shows
(16:06):
up at that meeting along with Ronald McDaniel. At that
meeting with Ronald McDaniel and Kristin Welker, that vice president
continues to pitch McDaniel on coming to NBC News as
a contributor. A month later, McDaniel has suddenly booked as
the lead guest on Meet the Press and a week
ago today, Kristin Welker is informed that McDaniel had been
(16:28):
hired as an NBC News employee, but Kristin Welker didn't
have any idea she might have been hired as an
NBC News contributor. She said so on Sunday. This speaks
poorly to Kristin Welker's honesty or her memory or both. Whew.
(16:53):
There are other bits of collateral damage strewn about that
part of the morgue now containing Ronal McDaniel's NBC News career,
That part of the morgue which may soon have room
for the careers of Rashida Jones, Carrie Budoff Brown, Caser Condey,
maybe Kristin Welker. An NBC News PR flack is said
(17:13):
to have told McDaniel on Monday afternoon that the MSNBC
hosts wire quote efing insane, only he didn't say fing.
The pr flack is then quoted by the Puck Newswriter
as saying that's not true, and the PR flack implies
that it was told to the Puck newswriter by Roni McDaniel.
There is also the hilarious and hilariously and conclusively damaging
(17:38):
tidbit that, until they dropped her, the CAAA Talent Agency
represented Rona McDaniel at the same time that it represented
Carrie Budolph Brown. I could go through the history of
management at NBC News and MSNBC. I mean, this is
(18:00):
technically the internet. It is infinite. Just for the moment,
think of the worst people you could find for a
job like that, getting those jobs. And then as the
cliff is approached, suddenly somebody says, wait, I found people
who are even worse. And the first group of disasters
(18:21):
is fired and the second group is hired, and as
the cliff is reached, then somebody else says, no, no, no, wait,
this third group over here, they're even worse than the
first two combined. I'll tell the saga later in the podcast,
the representative saga of the two hundred or so saga.
(18:41):
As I went through in my decade at NBC News
of the Day, things got so bad and management proved
so incompetent that the chairman of GE called Jeff Zooker
and threatened to shut MSNBC at its two hundred million
dollar a year profits off that day because they were
(19:02):
criticizing him by name on Fox News and his mother
had heard it. But ultimately, if there is one glimmer
of hope in this amazingly bad saga, it is the
idea that NBC will not try this again, and the
underbidders the grateful underbidders for McDaniel from ABC and CNN.
(19:27):
They are not going to go grab her now that
she's available, And I don't think any network with any
level of responsibility is going to offer anything to anyone
more trumpest and less radioactive than Mike Pence or Michael
Cohen any time soon. In fact, there seems to be
(19:49):
that rarest of things in TV news journalistic introspection right
now about the whole concept of bringing in former party
officials and executives as experts, as if they were foot
fall coaches between jobs. Quote as one former Republican official
(20:10):
who achieved great success in the television business said of McDaniel,
added puck News. She's not entertaining and she's not an expert,
so what's the point. A couple of postscripts, I mentioned
that McDaniel had lied about Democrats on Meet the Press
(20:33):
last Sunday, so that meant she had a lifetime lying
average of one thousand on NBC. Here is my math.
McDaniel said. The RNC is involved with seventy eight election
integrity lawsuits, including quote ones in Montana right now, with
Democrats suing to say you should be allowed to be
(20:54):
registered to vote in two states. Why are they suing
on that, unquote, they aren't. Two liberal groups in Montana
are suing to block law there that would establish a
criminal penalty for anybody who is registered to vote in
one state then moves to Montana and fails to immediately
(21:17):
de register in their former home state. It is already
illegal in Montana to vote in each of two states.
The liberal groups just want to make sure nobody gets
fined or sent to prison for still being on the
rolls in another state and not voting in the other state.
(21:37):
In the Trumpo sphere, McDaniel, who was late as last
Friday was the equivalent of roadkill, is rapidly being remodeled
into a martyr. I don't know who is going to
keep MSNBC informed of what normal people think, said Hugh Hewitt,
fired by MSNBC on Fox yesterday. Hugh Hewitt, who like
(22:01):
all normal people, could not afford completely different first than
last names. Because Rona McDaniel is about as normal as
they come. She represents the Republican Party. Hewitt redefined what
it means to represent the Republican Party. She said that
McDaniel never denied the election results. Ronal McDaniel July fourteenth,
(22:25):
twenty twenty three. Quote, I don't think Biden won it fair.
I don't. I'm not going to say that. Unquote Rona
McDaniel a little bit more recently than last July March
twenty fourth, twenty twenty four on Meet the Press, I
think it is fair to say. I think there were concerns.
Then in twenty twenty and lastly Trump all caps managed
(22:51):
to attack Brian Roberts of Comcast, Chuck Todd, everybody on MSNBC,
and the person he now is suddenly again calling Rona Romney.
It is notable, and it is a good final laugh
that in this story, Trump is a sideshow. Also of
(23:15):
interest here, I'll tell that whole saga of the day.
They literally were ready to shut down MSNBC. Fire and
pay me, fire, and Paymato fire, and pay Matthews fire
and pay everybody, replace us with cartoons or the news
in Welsh or something. And then God may work in
mysterious ways. But when the devil wants you to deny
(23:38):
yourself and deny your beliefs, apparently he does so by
hitting you in the mouth with a gulf ball. Oh
you may laugh, but that was set in public at
a convocation speech at Liberty University. No less and unlike you,
I have to say it was said in public by
a woman with whom I used to host SportsCenter. That's next.
(24:03):
This is a sports center. It's countdown. This is countdown
with Keith Oberman still ahead of us on this ediative countdown. Well,
(24:34):
as we near the one week mark of the NBC
MSNBC Ronni McDaniel crisis that I'm enjoying way too much,
let me tell you the whole story of the real
NBC MSNBC crisis, the greatest of all time, the day
the chairman of the corporation that owned both networks got
(24:57):
so pissed off at being stalked by Jesse Waters of Fox,
and so pissed off at me, and so pissed off
at MSNBC that he decided to close MSNBC to shut
it down that day, starring Jeff Zooker, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ayles,
(25:19):
Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Bill O'Reilly Me, and a cast
of thousands in things I promised not to tell first,
Still more new idiots to talk about, the daily roundup
of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's worse persons in the world. First the
(25:41):
brons worse Maria Bartiromo. Tuesday, she was insisting that the
Baltimore Bridge collapse was the fault of open badhas, which
translated from the long island means open borders. Yesterday a
new story, she was complaining to a Conservative congress slob
named Jeff Van Drew that money might be spent to
(26:04):
rebuild the bridge in their money already allocated towards transportation,
which meant isn't there money already allocated towards transportation? She
wants the Francis Scott Key Bridge rebuilt out of whatever
loose change we can find in the government. This person
used to do actual business news. I do not know
(26:28):
in retrospect how the nation survived that. I will congratulate
Maria Bartiromo, though on one thing, it's impressive that in
the morning she's on one Fox propaganda channel as herself,
and then in the afternoons she uses a slightly different
New York Area accent to create a slightly different character
on the other Fox propaganda channel, where she portrays quote
(26:52):
Judge Janine Piro unquote, it's a lot of work. The
runner up were Sir Jamie Comer. You remember Jamie Comer.
He's the guy who spent fourteen out of the Republicans
first fourteen months in the con reational majority trying to
impeach Joe Biden or Hunter Biden or Larry Bliden or
tr Bryden of the nineteen eighty six California Angels, or
(27:15):
Joe Buden or somebody. Damn. It turned out there was
no evidence, no witnesses who weren't in jail or lying
or lying then in jail or lying then left lying
down in jail. There was no vote, there was no nothing.
Comer is radioactive now even within Republican circles, having failed
to dirty up the president, let alone get him on television.
(27:38):
But that's not the way he sees it. There's loads
of evidence, there's convincing witnesses, unavoidable crimes. Except the conspiracy
is keeping America from realizing all that's true, because, according
to Comer, there is one man who is using some
sort of super mental powers to hypnotize the nation into
(28:03):
not seeing the evidence that is right before them. In
this interview with generic Right, wing podcaster number two twenty seven,
James Comer reveals that the man hypnotizing the nation, the
man mesmerizing America's conservatives and liberals and everybody else, that
(28:23):
man with the super powerful mind is Merrick Garland.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
There's this counter effort being made to try to sell
the American public on the idea that you guys haven't
found anything. And I think we're dealing here with actual, living,
breathing business partners testifying on the contrary to quite an extent.
So what do you like in this too? Is this
Garland just trying to be a human shield for the president.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
What is this? Well, Garland's working with the deep state,
who's working with the liberal mainstream media to try to
indoctrinate into people's minds. There's no evidence Merrick Garland working
with the deep state and the liberal media indoctrinating America.
I wish Merrick Garland working. I wish. I mean, Jamie
(29:17):
picked somebody influential in the Biden administration for your telepathic
conspiracy thing, and maybe we can talk somebody like Commander
the Dog. But our winner the worst Sage Steel On
those half dozen or so occasions when I co anchored
(29:38):
ESPN Sports Center with Sage Steel, including those couple of
days when she came to New York to try to
figure out why it was people actually thought I was
almost as good at doing SportsCenter as she was. I
frequently and silently asked myself how it was that she
had not yet done something so overwhelmingly stupid that it
(29:59):
would instantly end her career. She was so disconnected from reality,
and I'm she didn't understand that the microphone she was
wearing on her lapel could be turned on by somebody
she couldn't see, so she wouldn't know when that microphone
was live. She was so disconnected from that reality that
I really used to fear that she would accidentally wander
(30:21):
out into the streets of Manhattan and towards the East
River and never be seen again, because she did not
seem to know that she could not walk on water.
Then she started doing these overwhelmingly stupid things that I
always worried about in bunches, attacking her bosses for vaccination
requirements to work in a huge studio complex during the
(30:45):
height of the pandemic, and then suing them, getting angry
because as a conservative and an army brat and thus
a real American as opposed to the rest of us.
She had the right to tell Barack Obama that he
shouldn't identify as black when he, like she herself, was
actually bi racial. And then they had her do the
(31:05):
convocation address at Liberty University, which is not an actual
college or anything, but it has dorms and ceremonies. I
gave a convocation address at Cornell once, and I talked about,
you know, the students and their lives and the issue
of moral force, and went in their lives on the outside,
they might have to stand up in the real world
(31:27):
for what's right, because there are no adults out here.
Sage Steeles convocation speech apparently this past week at Liberty
was about Sage steel her career, her highlights, her ex husband.
She did a slide show with highlights from her career,
her her and best of all, a slide show about
(31:52):
the day the devil hit her in the mouth with
a golf ball.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I heard and felt the worst thing I'd ever experienced
in my life. I got hit in the mouth directly
two hundred and eighty yards away a line drive from
John Rahm's Powerful Club.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
That we were too far away.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
To hear him say four, and it hit me at
one hundred and fifty miles an hour, directly in my mouth.
I want you to know what's going through my mind
at this moment. I was on my knees. Do you
see my bloody left hand. I had finally realized they're
not gonna be able to glue the teeth back in,
They're not gonna be able to put the flesh back
in my lip, and I threw it on the ground
and I thought. I sat there and I realized God
(32:37):
doesn't want me to do this. God is telling me
to be quiet. God is telling me telling me to
just stop standing up for myself, Stop standing up for others,
stop being true to myself. If they want you to
say you're black and not by racial say it. If
they want you to say, go vaccine, everybody, get it.
If not, you want to kill everybody, say whatever they want,
(32:57):
because this is what happens. This is what happens when
you're true to yourself. Apparently, then I realized, as I
was put on this train, sure in the ambulance, that
wasn't God talking to me. That was something else that
was evil, That was the devil in my opinion, trying
to scare me into silence because I just filed this
(33:18):
lossit that had made global headlines, and I realized it
was up to me that that hit me there in
the mouth of all places for a reason to make
sure I didn't stay silent.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Let me skip the other interpretation of this, which was,
why would the devil hit you in the mouth of
the golf ball after you said all the stupid stuff
that ended your television career and thus brightened the lives
of literally hundreds of employees at the ESPN campus in Bristol, Connecticut,
to say nothing of countless thousands of viewers, and of
(33:49):
course that select group of your sports center co anchors
who have since lost weight or seen their hair grow
back and darken simply because they now get to work
with somebody who does not fly into a rage when
she isn't the one who gets to say the first
four words on the show every night. If the devil
hit you in the mouth to get you to stop
(34:10):
saying that, who made you say all those things that
hurt you but helped thousands, maybe millions, that benefited humanity itself,
and did so without knocking you teeth out your mouth?
But let me focus on the background reality here that's
far more important than that rhetorical question. There, the reality
(34:32):
that the evangelicals and the self absorbed like Sage Steel
are uniformly convinced that they and they alone are important
enough for God to hit them in the mouth with
a golf ball or for the devil to hit them
in the mouth with a golf ball, because it couldn't
possibly be an accident. Somebody sent that golf ball into
(34:54):
your mouth. How many times in your life have you
said something that got you into enormous trouble and realized
that neither God, no or the devil loved nor hated
you enough to have hit you in the mouth with
a golf ball to keep you from saying dumb spit
like that. You are just not important enough for God's.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Golf ball, But Sage Steel is for Sage God's golf balls.
Nothing but God's golf balls. Steel Today's worst person.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
In the world.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Talk about rough.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
The executive producer of our MSNBC newscast Countdown, Izzy Povich,
and I were on the grown up elevator to the
office of NBC President Jeff Zuocker on the fifty second
floor of thirty Rock in New York, summoned there by
some garbled message from MSNBC president Phil Griffin about MSNBC
being taken off the air. I was mumbling to Izzy
(36:30):
Sundry imprecations and reminiscences. Eight freaking months is we spent
twelve freaking months forcing them to create Meadows show? At
last eight months, all the crap prompter practice getting her
over her fears rockets past CNN only eight months of
show and now it's all gone. Izzy reminded me it
was not just Rachel's show that was threatened, which was
(36:52):
why poor Court Harson from Hardball was already upstairs along
with poor Ed Schultz and Phil Griffin, at Rachel's executive
producer Bill Wolf and some clown from Morning Joe and
a couple of other NBC executives and us. I know,
I know. I did the line from the drunken irishman
from Hitchcock's The Birds, complete with the bad accent. It's
(37:14):
the end of the world, I said, Jeff Immelt is
going to take MSNBC off the air. I didn't need
any of my overwrought visions from two years earlier of
the future of liberal news commentary falling out the NBC
window to its death on the rink. This was the
real thing. The chairman of General Electric was threatening to
(37:35):
open the window himself, throw us out the window himself,
and then race down to the pavement to stomp on
our dying remains himself. Poor Ed Schultz heard Jeff Zucker
say those words, and he had screwed up his face
and tilted his head like a puppy hearing a car crash.
He had not believed it the first time. He had
(37:56):
not believed it the second time. Zucker said it a
third time. Immelt is going to take MSNBC off the
effing air, Schultz groaned. After weeks of Griffin's coaxing, he
had finally just moved from Nebraska to New York the
preceding weekend. Yet he was still, somehow only the second
most strung out person in the room. You, Zucker shouted
(38:19):
at me, You're the smartest one in the room. What
the f do we do now? I'll confess I was
shaken by this because it appeared for once that Zucker
was not being sarcastic. I had never before seen him
flush nor flustered. This was a guy who wore fleece
in July, Yet now he was beat red and sweating.
(38:40):
Sometimes he knew what he was doing, and as his
opposition to hiring Madow had proved, sometimes he didn't know
what he was doing, but he always acted as the
most confident man in the galaxy. But now he literally
had no clue what to do next. And he not
only could not ignore my advice, he desperately needed it.
This situation and that color on his face were almost
(39:01):
worth watching the corporate fascists new my network. I asked
Zucker to explain what happened? You got Dan, Well know
what happened. Zucker moved towards me, and I stood up
and I told him I would see myself out. He stopped,
remembering that he did indeed actually need my help. I'm sorry.
I apologize. This isn't rational, this is immelt. Last week
(39:24):
sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped. He told Murdoch he wasn't gonna
take any more of what you were saying about him
on the air. So he did a piece last night
accusing Ge of manufacturing the components that been used in
roadside bombs that were built in Iran to kill Americans
in Iraq, which is true. Legally, that's legally true. They
found roadside bombs that had like thirty year old GE
(39:46):
transistors or TV tubes from nineteen fifty four or something
in them. Legally, GE did manufacture components that were used
in roadside bombs that were built in Iran to kill
Americans in Iraq. So O'Reilly puts this on his effing
show as a lead story, and then Fox sent two
camera crews and this little crap producer from a Riley show,
(40:07):
Jesse Waters something to steak emmelt out and chase him
around the GE shareholders meeting in Charlotte. Zucker finally came
up for air, and I jumped in, Why didn't emmelt
have six camera crews to stake out the two Fox
crews and chase them around in Charlotte? I mean, isn't
that one of our news hubs Charlotte. Doesn't emmelt own
(40:28):
like twenty camera crews? There? He bring a camera crew,
you'll bring two camera crews. Zucker started to not like
me again. Now you suggest that where were you when?
All right, never mind, it doesn't matter, Emmel says, if
there's one more story on Bill O'Reilly about GE manufacturing
components for roadside bombs in Iraq. He's taking MSNBC off
(40:49):
the air immediately. It'll just be twenty four hours of
lock up. And I'm fired, and you're fired. And then
he pointed at Chris Matthews, producer, and Matthews is fired.
And he pointed at poor Ed Schultz and you're fired,
and Ed whimpered, So smart ass, what the F do
we do? I feigned all the nonchalants I could feign.
(41:09):
If I could have lit a shroot by striking a
match on the soul of my boot, I would have.
It's manageable. But Jeff, why is Emmelt so worked up
about what O'Reilly said about him? Only O'Reilly's nutjob viewers
actually believe any of that crap. Nobody at GE, nobody
investing in GE, could possibly believe we're building components for
(41:31):
roadside bombs. Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's mother believes it. All
the heads in the room turned toward the president of NBC. Missus.
Emmelt back in Cincinnati is a devoted bill O'Reilly viewer
watches him every night, sees this, calls him, says Sonny,
(41:53):
why are you manufacturing components that were used in roadside
bombs built in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq? I
had not expected that, I said to Zucker. So he'll
really burn what two hundred million a year in profits
just between Rachel and me? Because his mom watches Bill O'Reilly.
(42:15):
Zucker got angry again. You bet your effing ass he will.
Now you said it was manageable. How how the hef
do we manage it? Alberman, just a minute? How old
is she? Zucker summoned all his annoyance. How old is
who ML's mother? How old is she? Jeff Zucker was
(42:35):
really annoyed. How the f should I know? You're missing
the point? I had him really worked up, nearly to
the boiling point. It was great, guess, Zucker spluttered, I
don't know. He's in his mid fifties. She's got to
be eighty ninety something. I stifled a fake yawn. Yeah,
you're right, probably closer to ninety now that I think
(42:56):
of it. So the problem is she watches O'Reilly. She
tells him what's on Fox, what O'Reilly's saying about Ge. Well,
I think you have a simple solution. I'd say, the
first thing you do is you send over a couple
of big guys to her house and you pull the
freaking cable out of the wall. Zucker actually gasped. My
(43:17):
producer is Ipovich unsuccessfully stifled a laugh, and I saw
Rachel crack a smile. Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Olderman,
I crossed my legs. Oh, it's a little funny. And anyway,
it's not essential if the problem is emailed is threatening
to take the network off the air because O'Reilly is
avenging himself against me by attacking him and attacking ge.
(43:39):
The short term solution is easy, and in fact it
is manageable. The long term solution that's not easy, and
that's not manageable. But the short term one that's simple.
Rest of this week, next week, maybe the week after that,
even we just don't mention Fox News on MSNBC. Something
resembling a smile crossed Zucker's face. It made him look
(44:02):
a little less like a lizard person, more like a
monkey with glasses. You do that forever? No, not forever.
I would not do that, I said to Bias time. Yes,
but remember who was it who was in my office?
Last winter telling me that I should go on the
air and just to f with Fox. I should ask
(44:23):
why Rupert Murdoch was still running a huge international media
company like News Corp, despite all the reports that he's
suffering from dementia, even though there haven't been any reports
that he's suffering from dementia. For everybody's sake, here, who
was that again who told me to do that? Zucker's
goodwill was gone again? Obviously that was me. What's your point?
(44:44):
My point is, we built this new brand of ours
organically on a couple of themes, a couple of statements
of principle, and one of them is to use your
words just to f with Fox. If we don't f
with Fox for a couple of weeks at the start
of the summer, who's gonna care. Who's gonna notice? But
like after two weeks, three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice,
(45:08):
and the TV writers are gonna notice, And then the
crap we'll hit from every direction you can think of.
Temporary freeze on mentioning Fox and mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdock. Fine,
permanent freeze. Might as well let Immelt turn us off
in the morning. After all, I don't think Zooker actually
heard the last part about Immelt turning us off. After all,
(45:29):
the lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe,
he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He
looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Izzy and
at Phil Griffin and me. You and you and you
and I. We will talk tomorrow, maybe tonight, and we'll
all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox, anybody,
(45:50):
are we clear? Nothing on the air about Fox. Silence
in the room. Then the assorted noises of people rising,
mixed with attempts to resuscitate poor Ed Schultz. Somebody Matthew's
guy Harson I think, was almost at the door out
of Zucker's office, an office so big that it was
to steal the Ring Lardner line, the size of the
Yale Bowl, but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up,
(46:15):
quietly but firmly. Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me.
I will not have the content of my show dictated
by any corporations, including the one I work for. Remember
this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt
that way then, and especially one I don't work for,
I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience
(46:36):
wondering what else I have not told them. I don't
do a lot about Fox on my show, but if
there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
this freeze. I will report that story. And if I'm
prevented from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,
Zucker barked Phil Alderman, is he stay? When the rest
of the room had cleared, Zucker blew air out of
(46:59):
his mouth as if it were smoke. He gestured violently
at me with his right arm. I told you she
was a mistake. You didn't listen to me. I told you.
Now she's your problem. All of this is your problem.
Get her back on the reservation or else. Now I
had run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh, I'll get
her back on the reservation, Jeff. But if you think
this is my problem, just think about what happens if
(47:21):
he really does take us off the air, or if
it just gets out that he threatened to take us
off the air because his mother didn't like what Fox
said about him. That's my problem. Uh uh, that's your problem.
And it's the problem of the CEO of the freaking
(47:43):
sixth largest corporation in the world who makes his business
decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars of profits based
on what his mother says. At this point, Phil Griffin
managed to pull Zucker away and Izzy and I made
for the door, saying nothing until we were in the elevator. Finally,
(48:04):
she asked, what are you going to do about Rachel?
I look straight ahead. I have depth perception issues while
traveling forward, backwards, up or down. Yeah, if I know
what I'm gonna do about her. But I got an idea.
I mean, the only person she was really talking to
in there was herself. This isn't a brand new surprise
success for her anymore. This is successful. This is what
(48:26):
nine ten months she's successful. She said she was once
a dancing cell phone outside of a cell phone store
outside of Boston. She ain't going back to that. I
went to talk to Rachel about an hour later and
reassured her. I mentioned that powerful as Fox was, they
were not going to be able to re invade Iraq
by themselves, and unless she moved it way closer than
(48:48):
it had been, nobody would cross her censorship line, and
I said, just give me as much time as the
French government took before fleeing during the Nazi advance in
nineteen forty. I said, give me, what was it, thirty
three days? Give me thirty three days if we aren't
back where we were this morning, and both quit on
the air, I mean that'd be fun, right. Three nights later,
(49:10):
well after midnight on a Friday, my NBC issued BlackBerry
buzzed with a quick email from Rachel matdow Hey. She wrote,
don't necessarily quote me because I'm really drunk, but just
make the best deal you can for us. I trust you.
We don't need to do Fox all the time. I
never do Fox stories anyway. I just had to say that,
and this is the best platform we will ever have.
(49:33):
Well she was right, at least for the time being.
A couple of weeks later, I had to sneak in
a script that blasted Fox, and at ten thirty at
home that night, I got a call from a drunken
Phil Griffin shouting into the phone. I have a family.
Zucker had to go meet with Roger Ayles secretly inside
thirty Rock, and I hope they remember to clean the
(49:55):
room afterwards, and mlt even had to meet with Murdoch,
and then, happily, some idiot GE executive decided to boast
to The New York Times about getting us little talent
children under control and a big deal with the executives
over at Fox and how they'd settled everything, which blew
up the whole deal instantly, because the moment the deal
went public, NBC looked so stupid, and even NBC News
(50:19):
was now risked. The only point of the whole thing
was to keep the Immelts and the Zookers and the
Griffins and the ales Is from throwing us and our
little island of liberal commentary out of that window at
thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow and I would be
constantly reminded in the ensuing years, thirty Rock has a
(50:40):
lot of freaking windows. I've done all the damage I
can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors
Brian Ray and John Phillip Scheneil arranged, produced and performed
(51:03):
most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitarist, bass
and drums, and mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Produced
by Tko Brothers, I keep thinking we are nowhere near
the end of the current MSNBC NBC News controversy, because,
among other things, we haven't had the lawsuits yet, or
(51:23):
the managerial firings, or or whatever's next wherever in television
they now hire her without ever noticing nine Khank math
Man Chang's terrible on television even before you get to
the interaction part. The settlement is clear to me, all right,
never mind the settlement between Romney McDaniel, Romney McDaniel and
(51:49):
NBC's it's clear to me where this ends. Any who.
Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by
Mitch Warren Davis. To see a ESPN inc see The
solution is NBC pays to have her deviated septum fixed
(52:13):
and then hires her to anchor between say two and
four in the afternoons. They already have a contract. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the
best baseball stadium organist ever, who mistakenly thinks I can
actually sing our announce to you today was my friend Howard Feinneman,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown
(52:35):
for this the two hundred and twenty third day until
the twenty twenty four presidential election, the one and seventy
eighth day since dementia J Trump's first attempted coup against
the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the
fourteenth Amendment and the not regularly given elector objection option,
Use the Insurrection Act, use the justice system, use the
(52:56):
mental health system to stop him from doing it again
while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Bulletins as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olremman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(53:27):
with Keith Olderman 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. The
head of the political unit at NBC News is now
reported to have been actively working with the former chief
(00:27):
of staff of the Republican National Committee to try to
stir up a social media ground swell to save Rana
McDaniel's job at NBC News, and she and perhaps the
chairman of NBC News as well, were reportedly willing to
throw MSNBC under the bus, and reportedly willing to throw
(00:48):
its ex Biden Press secretary now budding star Jensaki under
the bus, and for good measure, reportedly willing to throw
Chuck Todd under the bus in hopes of saving Rana
McDaniel and perhaps saving their own jobs as NBC executives.
(01:09):
This is important beyond your ordinary media car crash and
debris field, and it's fascinating confirmation that there are no
adults in television and very few smart people as well, because,
unlike say CNN, NBC is not one news entity. It
has NBC News, it has MSNBC, it has CNBC, it
(01:33):
has Telemundo, it has local NBC News operations in most
major cities. If its key executives are colluding with operatives
of one political party, one very anti press, anti news,
anti democracy political party, by being willing to damage figures
formerly with the other political party who they now employ
(01:55):
and the primary source of TV commentary design for the
adherents to that other political party. If they are willing
to do that, this is an ormous scandal that transcends
the hiring of Rona McDaniel, the firing of Rona McDaniel,
or television news itself. It's Puck News that is reporting that.
(02:17):
After McDaniel debuted on Meet the Press on Sunday, and
after Kristen Welker told the audience she had no say
in McDaniel's hiring, and after Chuck Todd attacked that hiring,
NBC News Chairman Saysar Conde and Vice president Carrie Bodoff
Brown were unnerved, but both quote seemed to anticipate the
(02:37):
impending insurgency and frantically tried to pre empt it. On Sunday,
Bootoff Brown reached out to Ronal McDaniel's aide and former
chief of staff at the RNC, Richard Walters, to see
if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak
up on her behalf. The two Sides also discussed having
(03:00):
those folks call attention to what they saw as a
double standard. After all, this was the same network that
was turning Saki into a Maddow adjacent primetime star. Walters
later assured Budoff Brown, the NBC vice president, that they'd
been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against
(03:24):
Chuck Todd specifically, and that this might give NBC News
some cover, for which Budholph Brown thanked him unquote, you
heard that right. The vice president of News for political
coverage coordinated with the former chief of staff at the
Republican National Committee to try to dirty up MSNBC's first
(03:48):
promising new host since I hired Madow out of my
own pocket in two thousand and eight, to subject Jensaki
to at least ginned up criticism from the right on
social media and maybe by television columnists and those who
covered news about the news. Puck does not explain why
Conde is mentioned at the start of this startling detail,
(04:11):
or if he knew or approved of what Bututoff Brown
was doing with the x RNC chief of staff. Incredibly
that NBC News Vice President Carrie Budoff Brown confirmed all
this to Puck News in a statement to quote it.
After Meet the Press, I had a conversation with Richard
(04:31):
Walters and asked if McDaniel had supporters who could speak
on behalf of her being an NBC News contributor. I
never discussed what to say, how to say it, or
who to focus on. Unquote Carrie Butoff Brown everybody, Vice
president of NBC News and chair of the board of
(04:53):
directors for the International Center for Journalists, which describes itself
as a nonprofit dedicated to promoting journalistic in integrity. I
might add journalistic integrity, but not at NBC or MSNBC,
and not if you're Jensaki, or even if you're Chuck Todd,
(05:15):
confirming that she conspired with the chief of staff at
a political party now dedicated to undermining faith in elections
and democracy itself to bolster a disqualified, dishonest commentator in
Who's hiring She had just played a primary role by
undermining her company's primary news operation and its newest anchor.
(05:40):
And despite whatever complaints you or especially I might have
with him, and the complaints I have with him are
large enough and public enough that he hates my guts.
Who moderated your own operations primary news vehicle for nine years,
and if he didn't work out, Chuck Todd Damnsure worked hard.
In some respects, it is more unbelievable that Carrie Butdoff
(06:02):
Brown did this than that NBA News hired Ronal McDaniel
in the first place. That statement ain't the flex you
think it is, madam. It is a confession to the
business equivalent of a cover up. Somebody who read it
asked me why she hasn't been fired yet. My answer
was because it isn't five pm on Friday yet. And
(06:26):
now we move on to the next question. Is Carrie
Budolph Brown going to be the only one of the
NBC News executives likely to get fired now? Because they
were stupid enough to think that their audiences, that America,
that their journalists and opinionators would accept the former head
(06:48):
of the Republican Party, who still actively denying the legitimacy
of an American presidential election, still rationalizing her own effort
to undermine democracy, as recently as in her debut on
Meet the Press, still still lying about provable facts about
the Democratic Party as recently as this passed Sunday on NBC, which,
(07:10):
if any other NBC News executive is going to take
the fall for having engaged that network in a shocking
and disgraceful episode. Who else is primarily responsible for this
colossally stupid plan and its newest, extraordinarily panoramically almost immeasurably
(07:32):
unconscionable coda, the butt off Brown scheme to make Rona
McDaniel look better by making Jensaki and M's NBC look worse.
The favorite among the early answers is all of them.
The Hollywood Reporter has also published its insider TikTok piece,
(07:54):
not as well sourced as Pucks, and the title is
kind of boring. The leadership vacuum that led to the
Rona McDaniel fail at NBC is Rana Ghazi, but the
pictures under the Hollywood Reporter headline are the real tell.
There's an image of McDaniel next to a picture of
(08:16):
NBC News chairman Sayesar Conde, and Condy is on there
because the point of the Hollywood Reporter piece is saysar
Conde will not survive this. The first non Rana part
of their story is about Condey's failures. The first non
Rana paragraph begins with the unstated prediction that Conde just
(08:38):
blew his chances for promotion within NBC, and it ends
with the unstated doubt that he'll be able to keep
his current job. It starts with quote for Conde, who
is believed to be angling to rise to the CEO
job at NBC Universal in the fullness of time, it's
fair to question whether this deeply embarrassing episode will have
(09:00):
major consequences. The same paragraph ends with quote, the News
division seems to have fallen prey to a confusing leadership
structure at a level one wrung below Condey, who, as
one insider put it, quote, is not a news guy.
End quote. Well, even if he is a newsguy, the
(09:23):
Hollywood reporter's implication is he won't be one for much longer.
The official version of all this is that the McDaniel
hiring began with Carrie butoff Brown extended to the President
of Editorial at NBC News, Rebecca Blumenstein, got unanticipated support
from the hapless president of MSNBC, Rashida Jones, and culminated
(09:44):
in the green light from Caesar Conde that those above
Conday in the NBC and Comcast management structure, like the
acting chairman Michael Cavanaugh and the ultimate boss, the owner,
Brian Roberts, that they knew nothing. However, again quoting the
Hollywood Reporter, one NBC veteran questions whether higher ups, even
(10:07):
including Roberts, weren't at least informed of the arrangement, that is,
the hiring of Ronald McDaniel before it was announced. At minimum,
this person suspects that Kavanaugh might have been looped in quote,
you do not hire an election denier without having it vetted.
If that wasn't the case, says another longtime insider, leadership
(10:29):
problems are to blame. In terms of NBC News, this
person says, it sort of stinks. From the head of
all the divisions in the company, someone has to be
in charge of news unquote. Yikes. If that were not enough,
(10:49):
Puck News adds on this subject, quoting another NBC News journalist,
Executives need a moment where they fight for the team,
and Sazar never had that moment. He has no relationships
with the news division. The journalist later added, never really
has tried. Good night, says our conde. Wherever you are,
(11:14):
it is hard to believe that this sentence might now apply.
But wait, there's more. While the third member of the
NBC gang that couldn't shoot straight. The president for editorial Bluemenstein,
gets away with no more of a connection to Rona
McDaniel than a love of Michigan that they share. There
is one more genuinely shocking development, again from Puck News quote.
(11:39):
There was no discussion of putting McDaniel on the avowedly
anti Trump MSNBC. Late in February, however, Carrie but Off
Brown reached out to McDaniel with a new development. Rashida Jones,
the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel
appear as a contributor on her network as well. Was
(12:00):
that something McDaniel would consider, McDaniel said she would well
if she did. She was the only person connected to
MSNBC who would have ever said that in ten million years,
except the president of MSNBC. And remember when the spit
(12:21):
hit the fan last Sunday, when seemingly everybody in American
politics who was not a vice president, a president, or
a chairman at some branch of NBC News or another
realized that this was not just the hiring of an
election denier, but the elevating of election denial to a
place of legitimacy in the unending corporate quest for political media.
(12:44):
Both Sides ism and it was the whitewashing of an
amnesty for somebody on the outer fringes of actual conspiracies
like the Trump fake Elector's plot. While everybody was figuring
that out, MSNBC President Rashida Jones was telling her enraged
on air talent and producers that no, no, of course
(13:05):
Roni McDaniel would never appear on MSNBC, just because weeks earlier,
MSNBC President Rashida Jones had offered her money to appear
on MSNBC. Now Jones was saying the opposite, even as
the Vice President Budolph Brown worked with Republicans to save
(13:28):
McDaniel by making MSNBC and Jensaki the victims in the
latest corporate round of both Sides and what about ism?
And then Jones was additionally quoted as saying yet another thing,
that she had never promised anybody McDaniel would not appear
on MSNBC. She had only said there was no anticipation
(13:49):
that she would appear on MSNBC. And if that sounds
like it was a distinction without a difference, remember that
on the air Monday Night. Matdows specifically called out attempts
to leave the door open for McDaniel on MSNBC. Quote
were told this weekend in clear terms, Rona McDaniel will
not be on our air. Rona McDaniel will not be
(14:11):
on MSNBC unquote. Rasheedah Jones may still have an office
at thirty Rock, she may still have business cards that
say otherwise. But for all intents and purposes, Rashida Jones
is already the ex president of MSNBC. And we are
(14:34):
still not done here. The new insight into the Rona
McDaniel era at NBC and MSNBC five days that felt
like five lifetimes, five days that were unforgettable no matter
how hard we will try, is also extremely damaging to
somebody else, somebody on the air, to the already wobbling
(14:58):
moderator of Meet the Press, Kristen Welker again from Puck News.
As chance would have it, McDaniel was already scheduled to
visit the NBC News bureau in Washington for an off
the record meeting with Meet the Press's moderator, Kristin Welker
uh Oh, quoting in light of the network's new interest,
(15:21):
but off. Brown joined that meeting and with Welker present,
continued to pitch McDaniel on coming to NBC News as
a contributor. In a statement, an NBC News spokesperson said,
as Kristen disclosed viewers on Sunday, she was in no
way involved in McDaniel's hiring, nor was involved in the
(15:42):
decision making process, and did not participate in conversations surrounding
a contributor contract. Now that's a distinction without a difference.
Kristin Welker had a meeting with Rona McDaniel a month ago. Suddenly,
the vice president for Political Condent of NBC News shows
(16:06):
up at that meeting along with Ronald McDaniel. At that
meeting with Ronald McDaniel and Kristin Welker, that vice president
continues to pitch McDaniel on coming to NBC News as
a contributor. A month later, McDaniel has suddenly booked as
the lead guest on Meet the Press and a week
ago today, Kristin Welker is informed that McDaniel had been
(16:28):
hired as an NBC News employee, but Kristin Welker didn't
have any idea she might have been hired as an
NBC News contributor. She said so on Sunday. This speaks
poorly to Kristin Welker's honesty or her memory or both. Whew.
(16:53):
There are other bits of collateral damage strewn about that
part of the morgue now containing Ronal McDaniel's NBC News career,
That part of the morgue which may soon have room
for the careers of Rashida Jones, Carrie Budoff Brown, Caser Condey,
maybe Kristin Welker. An NBC News PR flack is said
(17:13):
to have told McDaniel on Monday afternoon that the MSNBC
hosts wire quote efing insane, only he didn't say fing.
The pr flack is then quoted by the Puck Newswriter
as saying that's not true, and the PR flack implies
that it was told to the Puck newswriter by Roni McDaniel.
There is also the hilarious and hilariously and conclusively damaging
(17:38):
tidbit that, until they dropped her, the CAAA Talent Agency
represented Rona McDaniel at the same time that it represented
Carrie Budolph Brown. I could go through the history of
management at NBC News and MSNBC. I mean, this is
(18:00):
technically the internet. It is infinite. Just for the moment,
think of the worst people you could find for a
job like that, getting those jobs. And then as the
cliff is approached, suddenly somebody says, wait, I found people
who are even worse. And the first group of disasters
(18:21):
is fired and the second group is hired, and as
the cliff is reached, then somebody else says, no, no, no, wait,
this third group over here, they're even worse than the
first two combined. I'll tell the saga later in the podcast,
the representative saga of the two hundred or so saga.
(18:41):
As I went through in my decade at NBC News
of the Day, things got so bad and management proved
so incompetent that the chairman of GE called Jeff Zooker
and threatened to shut MSNBC at its two hundred million
dollar a year profits off that day because they were
(19:02):
criticizing him by name on Fox News and his mother
had heard it. But ultimately, if there is one glimmer
of hope in this amazingly bad saga, it is the
idea that NBC will not try this again, and the
underbidders the grateful underbidders for McDaniel from ABC and CNN.
(19:27):
They are not going to go grab her now that
she's available, And I don't think any network with any
level of responsibility is going to offer anything to anyone
more trumpest and less radioactive than Mike Pence or Michael
Cohen any time soon. In fact, there seems to be
(19:49):
that rarest of things in TV news journalistic introspection right
now about the whole concept of bringing in former party
officials and executives as experts, as if they were foot
fall coaches between jobs. Quote as one former Republican official
(20:10):
who achieved great success in the television business said of McDaniel,
added puck News. She's not entertaining and she's not an expert,
so what's the point. A couple of postscripts, I mentioned
that McDaniel had lied about Democrats on Meet the Press
(20:33):
last Sunday, so that meant she had a lifetime lying
average of one thousand on NBC. Here is my math.
McDaniel said. The RNC is involved with seventy eight election
integrity lawsuits, including quote ones in Montana right now, with
Democrats suing to say you should be allowed to be
(20:54):
registered to vote in two states. Why are they suing
on that, unquote, they aren't. Two liberal groups in Montana
are suing to block law there that would establish a
criminal penalty for anybody who is registered to vote in
one state then moves to Montana and fails to immediately
(21:17):
de register in their former home state. It is already
illegal in Montana to vote in each of two states.
The liberal groups just want to make sure nobody gets
fined or sent to prison for still being on the
rolls in another state and not voting in the other state.
(21:37):
In the Trumpo sphere, McDaniel, who was late as last
Friday was the equivalent of roadkill, is rapidly being remodeled
into a martyr. I don't know who is going to
keep MSNBC informed of what normal people think, said Hugh Hewitt,
fired by MSNBC on Fox yesterday. Hugh Hewitt, who like
(22:01):
all normal people, could not afford completely different first than
last names. Because Rona McDaniel is about as normal as
they come. She represents the Republican Party. Hewitt redefined what
it means to represent the Republican Party. She said that
McDaniel never denied the election results. Ronal McDaniel July fourteenth,
(22:25):
twenty twenty three. Quote, I don't think Biden won it fair.
I don't. I'm not going to say that. Unquote Rona
McDaniel a little bit more recently than last July March
twenty fourth, twenty twenty four on Meet the Press, I
think it is fair to say. I think there were concerns.
Then in twenty twenty and lastly Trump all caps managed
(22:51):
to attack Brian Roberts of Comcast, Chuck Todd, everybody on MSNBC,
and the person he now is suddenly again calling Rona Romney.
It is notable, and it is a good final laugh
that in this story, Trump is a sideshow. Also of
(23:15):
interest here, I'll tell that whole saga of the day.
They literally were ready to shut down MSNBC. Fire and
pay me, fire, and Paymato fire, and pay Matthews fire
and pay everybody, replace us with cartoons or the news
in Welsh or something. And then God may work in
mysterious ways. But when the devil wants you to deny
(23:38):
yourself and deny your beliefs, apparently he does so by
hitting you in the mouth with a gulf ball. Oh
you may laugh, but that was set in public at
a convocation speech at Liberty University. No less and unlike you,
I have to say it was said in public by
a woman with whom I used to host SportsCenter. That's next.
(24:03):
This is a sports center. It's countdown. This is countdown
with Keith Oberman still ahead of us on this ediative countdown. Well,
(24:34):
as we near the one week mark of the NBC
MSNBC Ronni McDaniel crisis that I'm enjoying way too much,
let me tell you the whole story of the real
NBC MSNBC crisis, the greatest of all time, the day
the chairman of the corporation that owned both networks got
(24:57):
so pissed off at being stalked by Jesse Waters of Fox,
and so pissed off at me, and so pissed off
at MSNBC that he decided to close MSNBC to shut
it down that day, starring Jeff Zooker, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ayles,
(25:19):
Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Bill O'Reilly Me, and a cast
of thousands in things I promised not to tell first,
Still more new idiots to talk about, the daily roundup
of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens
who constitute today's worse persons in the world. First the
(25:41):
brons worse Maria Bartiromo. Tuesday, she was insisting that the
Baltimore Bridge collapse was the fault of open badhas, which
translated from the long island means open borders. Yesterday a
new story, she was complaining to a Conservative congress slob
named Jeff Van Drew that money might be spent to
(26:04):
rebuild the bridge in their money already allocated towards transportation,
which meant isn't there money already allocated towards transportation? She
wants the Francis Scott Key Bridge rebuilt out of whatever
loose change we can find in the government. This person
used to do actual business news. I do not know
(26:28):
in retrospect how the nation survived that. I will congratulate
Maria Bartiromo, though on one thing, it's impressive that in
the morning she's on one Fox propaganda channel as herself,
and then in the afternoons she uses a slightly different
New York Area accent to create a slightly different character
on the other Fox propaganda channel, where she portrays quote
(26:52):
Judge Janine Piro unquote, it's a lot of work. The
runner up were Sir Jamie Comer. You remember Jamie Comer.
He's the guy who spent fourteen out of the Republicans
first fourteen months in the con reational majority trying to
impeach Joe Biden or Hunter Biden or Larry Bliden or
tr Bryden of the nineteen eighty six California Angels, or
(27:15):
Joe Buden or somebody. Damn. It turned out there was
no evidence, no witnesses who weren't in jail or lying
or lying then in jail or lying then left lying
down in jail. There was no vote, there was no nothing.
Comer is radioactive now even within Republican circles, having failed
to dirty up the president, let alone get him on television.
(27:38):
But that's not the way he sees it. There's loads
of evidence, there's convincing witnesses, unavoidable crimes. Except the conspiracy
is keeping America from realizing all that's true, because, according
to Comer, there is one man who is using some
sort of super mental powers to hypnotize the nation into
(28:03):
not seeing the evidence that is right before them. In
this interview with generic Right, wing podcaster number two twenty seven,
James Comer reveals that the man hypnotizing the nation, the
man mesmerizing America's conservatives and liberals and everybody else, that
(28:23):
man with the super powerful mind is Merrick Garland.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
There's this counter effort being made to try to sell
the American public on the idea that you guys haven't
found anything. And I think we're dealing here with actual, living,
breathing business partners testifying on the contrary to quite an extent.
So what do you like in this too? Is this
Garland just trying to be a human shield for the president.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
What is this? Well, Garland's working with the deep state,
who's working with the liberal mainstream media to try to
indoctrinate into people's minds. There's no evidence Merrick Garland working
with the deep state and the liberal media indoctrinating America.
I wish Merrick Garland working. I wish. I mean, Jamie
(29:17):
picked somebody influential in the Biden administration for your telepathic
conspiracy thing, and maybe we can talk somebody like Commander
the Dog. But our winner the worst Sage Steel On
those half dozen or so occasions when I co anchored
(29:38):
ESPN Sports Center with Sage Steel, including those couple of
days when she came to New York to try to
figure out why it was people actually thought I was
almost as good at doing SportsCenter as she was. I
frequently and silently asked myself how it was that she
had not yet done something so overwhelmingly stupid that it
(29:59):
would instantly end her career. She was so disconnected from reality,
and I'm she didn't understand that the microphone she was
wearing on her lapel could be turned on by somebody
she couldn't see, so she wouldn't know when that microphone
was live. She was so disconnected from that reality that
I really used to fear that she would accidentally wander
(30:21):
out into the streets of Manhattan and towards the East
River and never be seen again, because she did not
seem to know that she could not walk on water.
Then she started doing these overwhelmingly stupid things that I
always worried about in bunches, attacking her bosses for vaccination
requirements to work in a huge studio complex during the
(30:45):
height of the pandemic, and then suing them, getting angry
because as a conservative and an army brat and thus
a real American as opposed to the rest of us.
She had the right to tell Barack Obama that he
shouldn't identify as black when he, like she herself, was
actually bi racial. And then they had her do the
(31:05):
convocation address at Liberty University, which is not an actual
college or anything, but it has dorms and ceremonies. I
gave a convocation address at Cornell once, and I talked about,
you know, the students and their lives and the issue
of moral force, and went in their lives on the outside,
they might have to stand up in the real world
(31:27):
for what's right, because there are no adults out here.
Sage Steeles convocation speech apparently this past week at Liberty
was about Sage steel her career, her highlights, her ex husband.
She did a slide show with highlights from her career,
her her and best of all, a slide show about
(31:52):
the day the devil hit her in the mouth with
a golf ball.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I heard and felt the worst thing I'd ever experienced
in my life. I got hit in the mouth directly
two hundred and eighty yards away a line drive from
John Rahm's Powerful Club.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
That we were too far away.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
To hear him say four, and it hit me at
one hundred and fifty miles an hour, directly in my mouth.
I want you to know what's going through my mind
at this moment. I was on my knees. Do you
see my bloody left hand. I had finally realized they're
not gonna be able to glue the teeth back in,
They're not gonna be able to put the flesh back
in my lip, and I threw it on the ground
and I thought. I sat there and I realized God
(32:37):
doesn't want me to do this. God is telling me
to be quiet. God is telling me telling me to
just stop standing up for myself, Stop standing up for others,
stop being true to myself. If they want you to
say you're black and not by racial say it. If
they want you to say, go vaccine, everybody, get it.
If not, you want to kill everybody, say whatever they want,
(32:57):
because this is what happens. This is what happens when
you're true to yourself. Apparently, then I realized, as I
was put on this train, sure in the ambulance, that
wasn't God talking to me. That was something else that
was evil, That was the devil in my opinion, trying
to scare me into silence because I just filed this
(33:18):
lossit that had made global headlines, and I realized it
was up to me that that hit me there in
the mouth of all places for a reason to make
sure I didn't stay silent.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Let me skip the other interpretation of this, which was,
why would the devil hit you in the mouth of
the golf ball after you said all the stupid stuff
that ended your television career and thus brightened the lives
of literally hundreds of employees at the ESPN campus in Bristol, Connecticut,
to say nothing of countless thousands of viewers, and of
(33:49):
course that select group of your sports center co anchors
who have since lost weight or seen their hair grow
back and darken simply because they now get to work
with somebody who does not fly into a rage when
she isn't the one who gets to say the first
four words on the show every night. If the devil
hit you in the mouth to get you to stop
(34:10):
saying that, who made you say all those things that
hurt you but helped thousands, maybe millions, that benefited humanity itself,
and did so without knocking you teeth out your mouth?
But let me focus on the background reality here that's
far more important than that rhetorical question. There, the reality
(34:32):
that the evangelicals and the self absorbed like Sage Steel
are uniformly convinced that they and they alone are important
enough for God to hit them in the mouth with
a golf ball or for the devil to hit them
in the mouth with a golf ball, because it couldn't
possibly be an accident. Somebody sent that golf ball into
(34:54):
your mouth. How many times in your life have you
said something that got you into enormous trouble and realized
that neither God, no or the devil loved nor hated
you enough to have hit you in the mouth with
a golf ball to keep you from saying dumb spit
like that. You are just not important enough for God's.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Golf ball, But Sage Steel is for Sage God's golf balls.
Nothing but God's golf balls. Steel Today's worst person.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
In the world.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Talk about rough.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
The executive producer of our MSNBC newscast Countdown, Izzy Povich,
and I were on the grown up elevator to the
office of NBC President Jeff Zuocker on the fifty second
floor of thirty Rock in New York, summoned there by
some garbled message from MSNBC president Phil Griffin about MSNBC
being taken off the air. I was mumbling to Izzy
(36:30):
Sundry imprecations and reminiscences. Eight freaking months is we spent
twelve freaking months forcing them to create Meadows show? At
last eight months, all the crap prompter practice getting her
over her fears rockets past CNN only eight months of
show and now it's all gone. Izzy reminded me it
was not just Rachel's show that was threatened, which was
(36:52):
why poor Court Harson from Hardball was already upstairs along
with poor Ed Schultz and Phil Griffin, at Rachel's executive
producer Bill Wolf and some clown from Morning Joe and
a couple of other NBC executives and us. I know,
I know. I did the line from the drunken irishman
from Hitchcock's The Birds, complete with the bad accent. It's
(37:14):
the end of the world, I said, Jeff Immelt is
going to take MSNBC off the air. I didn't need
any of my overwrought visions from two years earlier of
the future of liberal news commentary falling out the NBC
window to its death on the rink. This was the
real thing. The chairman of General Electric was threatening to
(37:35):
open the window himself, throw us out the window himself,
and then race down to the pavement to stomp on
our dying remains himself. Poor Ed Schultz heard Jeff Zucker
say those words, and he had screwed up his face
and tilted his head like a puppy hearing a car crash.
He had not believed it the first time. He had
(37:56):
not believed it the second time. Zucker said it a
third time. Immelt is going to take MSNBC off the
effing air, Schultz groaned. After weeks of Griffin's coaxing, he
had finally just moved from Nebraska to New York the
preceding weekend. Yet he was still, somehow only the second
most strung out person in the room. You, Zucker shouted
(38:19):
at me, You're the smartest one in the room. What
the f do we do now? I'll confess I was
shaken by this because it appeared for once that Zucker
was not being sarcastic. I had never before seen him
flush nor flustered. This was a guy who wore fleece
in July, Yet now he was beat red and sweating.
(38:40):
Sometimes he knew what he was doing, and as his
opposition to hiring Madow had proved, sometimes he didn't know
what he was doing, but he always acted as the
most confident man in the galaxy. But now he literally
had no clue what to do next. And he not
only could not ignore my advice, he desperately needed it.
This situation and that color on his face were almost
(39:01):
worth watching the corporate fascists new my network. I asked
Zucker to explain what happened? You got Dan, Well know
what happened. Zucker moved towards me, and I stood up
and I told him I would see myself out. He stopped,
remembering that he did indeed actually need my help. I'm sorry.
I apologize. This isn't rational, this is immelt. Last week
(39:24):
sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped. He told Murdoch he wasn't gonna
take any more of what you were saying about him
on the air. So he did a piece last night
accusing Ge of manufacturing the components that been used in
roadside bombs that were built in Iran to kill Americans
in Iraq, which is true. Legally, that's legally true. They
found roadside bombs that had like thirty year old GE
(39:46):
transistors or TV tubes from nineteen fifty four or something
in them. Legally, GE did manufacture components that were used
in roadside bombs that were built in Iran to kill
Americans in Iraq. So O'Reilly puts this on his effing
show as a lead story, and then Fox sent two
camera crews and this little crap producer from a Riley show,
(40:07):
Jesse Waters something to steak emmelt out and chase him
around the GE shareholders meeting in Charlotte. Zucker finally came
up for air, and I jumped in, Why didn't emmelt
have six camera crews to stake out the two Fox
crews and chase them around in Charlotte? I mean, isn't
that one of our news hubs Charlotte. Doesn't emmelt own
(40:28):
like twenty camera crews? There? He bring a camera crew,
you'll bring two camera crews. Zucker started to not like
me again. Now you suggest that where were you when?
All right, never mind, it doesn't matter, Emmel says, if
there's one more story on Bill O'Reilly about GE manufacturing
components for roadside bombs in Iraq. He's taking MSNBC off
(40:49):
the air immediately. It'll just be twenty four hours of
lock up. And I'm fired, and you're fired. And then
he pointed at Chris Matthews, producer, and Matthews is fired.
And he pointed at poor Ed Schultz and you're fired,
and Ed whimpered, So smart ass, what the F do
we do? I feigned all the nonchalants I could feign.
(41:09):
If I could have lit a shroot by striking a
match on the soul of my boot, I would have.
It's manageable. But Jeff, why is Emmelt so worked up
about what O'Reilly said about him? Only O'Reilly's nutjob viewers
actually believe any of that crap. Nobody at GE, nobody
investing in GE, could possibly believe we're building components for
(41:31):
roadside bombs. Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's mother believes it. All
the heads in the room turned toward the president of NBC. Missus.
Emmelt back in Cincinnati is a devoted bill O'Reilly viewer
watches him every night, sees this, calls him, says Sonny,
(41:53):
why are you manufacturing components that were used in roadside
bombs built in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq? I
had not expected that, I said to Zucker. So he'll
really burn what two hundred million a year in profits
just between Rachel and me? Because his mom watches Bill O'Reilly.
(42:15):
Zucker got angry again. You bet your effing ass he will.
Now you said it was manageable. How how the hef
do we manage it? Alberman, just a minute? How old
is she? Zucker summoned all his annoyance. How old is
who ML's mother? How old is she? Jeff Zucker was
(42:35):
really annoyed. How the f should I know? You're missing
the point? I had him really worked up, nearly to
the boiling point. It was great, guess, Zucker spluttered, I
don't know. He's in his mid fifties. She's got to
be eighty ninety something. I stifled a fake yawn. Yeah,
you're right, probably closer to ninety now that I think
(42:56):
of it. So the problem is she watches O'Reilly. She
tells him what's on Fox, what O'Reilly's saying about Ge. Well,
I think you have a simple solution. I'd say, the
first thing you do is you send over a couple
of big guys to her house and you pull the
freaking cable out of the wall. Zucker actually gasped. My
(43:17):
producer is Ipovich unsuccessfully stifled a laugh, and I saw
Rachel crack a smile. Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Olderman,
I crossed my legs. Oh, it's a little funny. And anyway,
it's not essential if the problem is emailed is threatening
to take the network off the air because O'Reilly is
avenging himself against me by attacking him and attacking ge.
(43:39):
The short term solution is easy, and in fact it
is manageable. The long term solution that's not easy, and
that's not manageable. But the short term one that's simple.
Rest of this week, next week, maybe the week after that,
even we just don't mention Fox News on MSNBC. Something
resembling a smile crossed Zucker's face. It made him look
(44:02):
a little less like a lizard person, more like a
monkey with glasses. You do that forever? No, not forever.
I would not do that, I said to Bias time. Yes,
but remember who was it who was in my office?
Last winter telling me that I should go on the
air and just to f with Fox. I should ask
(44:23):
why Rupert Murdoch was still running a huge international media
company like News Corp, despite all the reports that he's
suffering from dementia, even though there haven't been any reports
that he's suffering from dementia. For everybody's sake, here, who
was that again who told me to do that? Zucker's
goodwill was gone again? Obviously that was me. What's your point?
(44:44):
My point is, we built this new brand of ours
organically on a couple of themes, a couple of statements
of principle, and one of them is to use your
words just to f with Fox. If we don't f
with Fox for a couple of weeks at the start
of the summer, who's gonna care. Who's gonna notice? But
like after two weeks, three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice,
(45:08):
and the TV writers are gonna notice, And then the
crap we'll hit from every direction you can think of.
Temporary freeze on mentioning Fox and mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdock. Fine,
permanent freeze. Might as well let Immelt turn us off
in the morning. After all, I don't think Zooker actually
heard the last part about Immelt turning us off. After all,
(45:29):
the lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe,
he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He
looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Izzy and
at Phil Griffin and me. You and you and you
and I. We will talk tomorrow, maybe tonight, and we'll
all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox, anybody,
(45:50):
are we clear? Nothing on the air about Fox. Silence
in the room. Then the assorted noises of people rising,
mixed with attempts to resuscitate poor Ed Schultz. Somebody Matthew's
guy Harson I think, was almost at the door out
of Zucker's office, an office so big that it was
to steal the Ring Lardner line, the size of the
Yale Bowl, but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up,
(46:15):
quietly but firmly. Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me.
I will not have the content of my show dictated
by any corporations, including the one I work for. Remember
this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt
that way then, and especially one I don't work for,
I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience
(46:36):
wondering what else I have not told them. I don't
do a lot about Fox on my show, but if
there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
this freeze. I will report that story. And if I'm
prevented from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,
Zucker barked Phil Alderman, is he stay? When the rest
of the room had cleared, Zucker blew air out of
(46:59):
his mouth as if it were smoke. He gestured violently
at me with his right arm. I told you she
was a mistake. You didn't listen to me. I told you.
Now she's your problem. All of this is your problem.
Get her back on the reservation or else. Now I
had run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh, I'll get
her back on the reservation, Jeff. But if you think
this is my problem, just think about what happens if
(47:21):
he really does take us off the air, or if
it just gets out that he threatened to take us
off the air because his mother didn't like what Fox
said about him. That's my problem. Uh uh, that's your problem.
And it's the problem of the CEO of the freaking
(47:43):
sixth largest corporation in the world who makes his business
decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars of profits based
on what his mother says. At this point, Phil Griffin
managed to pull Zucker away and Izzy and I made
for the door, saying nothing until we were in the elevator. Finally,
(48:04):
she asked, what are you going to do about Rachel?
I look straight ahead. I have depth perception issues while
traveling forward, backwards, up or down. Yeah, if I know
what I'm gonna do about her. But I got an idea.
I mean, the only person she was really talking to
in there was herself. This isn't a brand new surprise
success for her anymore. This is successful. This is what
(48:26):
nine ten months she's successful. She said she was once
a dancing cell phone outside of a cell phone store
outside of Boston. She ain't going back to that. I
went to talk to Rachel about an hour later and
reassured her. I mentioned that powerful as Fox was, they
were not going to be able to re invade Iraq
by themselves, and unless she moved it way closer than
(48:48):
it had been, nobody would cross her censorship line, and
I said, just give me as much time as the
French government took before fleeing during the Nazi advance in
nineteen forty. I said, give me, what was it, thirty
three days? Give me thirty three days if we aren't
back where we were this morning, and both quit on
the air, I mean that'd be fun, right. Three nights later,
(49:10):
well after midnight on a Friday, my NBC issued BlackBerry
buzzed with a quick email from Rachel matdow Hey. She wrote,
don't necessarily quote me because I'm really drunk, but just
make the best deal you can for us. I trust you.
We don't need to do Fox all the time. I
never do Fox stories anyway. I just had to say that,
and this is the best platform we will ever have.
(49:33):
Well she was right, at least for the time being.
A couple of weeks later, I had to sneak in
a script that blasted Fox, and at ten thirty at
home that night, I got a call from a drunken
Phil Griffin shouting into the phone. I have a family.
Zucker had to go meet with Roger Ayles secretly inside
thirty Rock, and I hope they remember to clean the
(49:55):
room afterwards, and mlt even had to meet with Murdoch,
and then, happily, some idiot GE executive decided to boast
to The New York Times about getting us little talent
children under control and a big deal with the executives
over at Fox and how they'd settled everything, which blew
up the whole deal instantly, because the moment the deal
went public, NBC looked so stupid, and even NBC News
(50:19):
was now risked. The only point of the whole thing
was to keep the Immelts and the Zookers and the
Griffins and the ales Is from throwing us and our
little island of liberal commentary out of that window at
thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow and I would be
constantly reminded in the ensuing years, thirty Rock has a
(50:40):
lot of freaking windows. I've done all the damage I
can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors
Brian Ray and John Phillip Scheneil arranged, produced and performed
(51:03):
most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitarist, bass
and drums, and mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Produced
by Tko Brothers, I keep thinking we are nowhere near
the end of the current MSNBC NBC News controversy, because,
among other things, we haven't had the lawsuits yet, or
(51:23):
the managerial firings, or or whatever's next wherever in television
they now hire her without ever noticing nine Khank math
Man Chang's terrible on television even before you get to
the interaction part. The settlement is clear to me, all right,
never mind the settlement between Romney McDaniel, Romney McDaniel and
(51:49):
NBC's it's clear to me where this ends. Any who.
Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by
Mitch Warren Davis. To see a ESPN inc see The
solution is NBC pays to have her deviated septum fixed
(52:13):
and then hires her to anchor between say two and
four in the afternoons. They already have a contract. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the
best baseball stadium organist ever, who mistakenly thinks I can
actually sing our announce to you today was my friend Howard Feinneman,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown
(52:35):
for this the two hundred and twenty third day until
the twenty twenty four presidential election, the one and seventy
eighth day since dementia J Trump's first attempted coup against
the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the
fourteenth Amendment and the not regularly given elector objection option,
Use the Insurrection Act, use the justice system, use the
(52:56):
mental health system to stop him from doing it again
while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Bulletins as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olremman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(53:27):
with Keith Olderman 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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