February 27, 2025 • 55 mins
SEASON 3 EPISODE 103: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: There is an alternate, rogue religious theory about an afterlife. It goes like this: "Hell" is not some place deep in the earth or anywhere else with eternal torture and fire. In fact, what we call "life" - THIS is hell.
There is considerable new evidence this week that this theory is probably correct. The Washington Post had already been proving that its slogan "Democracy Dies In Darkness" was not a warning but Jeff Bezos's game plan. Now he's made it official: Op-eds are out; pro-Trump "liberties" and "free markets" are in. Other opinions need not apply. Bezos is a fascist.
And he's only the third of three media disasters this week. To my surprise, Rachel Maddow DID say something about the Racist Purge at her MSNBC. Unfortunately, it wasn't the truth. She gave out the corporate cover story that Joy Reid "left" and "went out the door" and and and... she was FIRED.
I guess I should've known. Rachel also didn't tell the truth when I left. I had kept her in my confidence as I negotiated my exit in 2010 and 2011 and the night it happened she was on Maher's show and though she knew everything, when he asked her about the breaking news - a few hours after my last email to her suggesting "this is it" she answered "This is the first I’m hearing about any of this. I know nothing about it.”
And Trump's response to MSNBC throwing Reid into the volcano as a human sacrifice? He's threatening to sue them all anyway. And change the laws.
And then there's the White House Correspondents Association. It did nothing about Trump trying to rewrite the Associated Press's stories. So now he's told them they will no longer select the pool reporter. But don't worry, the WHCA's cowardice won't go unpunished. Its president will be one of the new MSNBC hosts who can get sacrificed in the Trump Bottomless Bit later.
B-Block (35:38) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Welcome to political scrutiny, Stephen A. Smith. Musk loves Trump - now. 2020? Called him an effing idiot. And this is how bad it is: Trump put one of my exes on the Kennedy Center board.
C-Block (44:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: She's in the news and we need the laugh, so once again, the saga of my two dates with Laura Ingraham, one of the last times I thought "this might be the night I die."
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Ever
heard the alternative rogue theory of religion? The one about
(00:29):
the place that all the mainstream faiths call hell. That
hell is not some fiery, eternal nightmare deep in the
center of the earth, nor anywhere else that in fact,
this this what we call life, This is hell. I'm
writing to let you know about a change coming to
(00:52):
our opinion pages. Jeff Bezos had somebody write for him
yesterday and stick his name on it, and then email
it to the Washington Post staff and then post it online,
resuming the quote, we are going to be writing every
day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties
and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course,
(01:13):
but few points opposing those pillars will be left to
be published by others. There was a time when a newspaper,
especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen
it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep
every morning a broad paced opinion section that sought to
cover all views. Today, the Internet does that job. I
(01:36):
am of America and for America, and proud to be so.
Our country did not get here by being typical and
A big part of America's success has been freedom in
the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical, It
minimizes coercion, and practically it lives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
(01:57):
Oh nothing, just another fascist throwing around the word freedom.
What he means is freedom for him to enslave youew
Oh nothing, just the Washington Post having self defenestrated already,
and now somehow crawling back to the top of the
stairwell and throwing itself out a different window, and another
(02:19):
chunk of freedom of the press along with it. Oh nothing,
Just confirmation of the rogue theory of eternal life that
this is hell. As a side note, if that is correct,
If this is hell, Jeff Bezos's girlfriend, my ex Fox
Sports colleague, Laurin Sanchez, is reminded not to stand too
(02:43):
close to any open flames here in hell. The melting
plastic smell could kill us all. And Jeff Bezos's gleeful
final transformation of The Washington Post from a newspaper to
a Trump cheerleading newsletter is only the newest of three
(03:04):
media cans this week, including the cowardice of the White
House Correspondence Association and especially the startling reality that Rachel Meadow,
whom I hired at MSNBC out of my own pocket,
has avoided the truth on the air, evidently to make
it look like her corporate masters did not complete a
(03:24):
race purge at MSNBC, not told the truth for the
second time about other anchors leaving MSNBC, And I'll tell
the story of the first time in a few minutes. Look,
this is not a media podcast, though I do a
lot of it since I know a lot about it.
(03:45):
But when the history is written of this increasingly successful
attempt to overthrow the government of the United States by Trump,
if he lets anybody write it one of the final straws,
maybe the final straw will have been how stunningly quickly
the American free press collapsed, gave in, gave up. And
(04:06):
then how the same news organizations and networks managed to
find yet another new lower level to which to descend.
And then finally, how it all of it managed without
being really coerced or threatened or even rewarded in any
way to become cheerleading collaborators of Trump. Because all of
(04:28):
it today a white supremacist, stoned foreigner being allowed in
the White House let alone in the Oval office during
a cabinet meeting, and he and Trump promising to fire
all federal employees and basically privatize the government. A measles
outbreak in Texas, and there's now a death and it
was an unvaccinated child. Polling showing roughly thirty five percent
(04:50):
of all Republicans favoring eliminating elections and Congress, and fifty
five percent of Trump Republicans supporting rule by an authoritarian
strong man. To the Republicans who have for forty years
done nothing but run up deficits, getting away with pretending
to be fixing the urgent crisis of deficits that they
caused and which isn't urgent anyway. To the five million
(05:12):
dollars citizenship gold cards and the Ukraine extortion and the
Gaza theft, and the entire protection racket infomercial presidency of
this asshole. All of that is possible only because our media,
our news reporting, our journalism, our free press, is broken,
(05:32):
and probably irretrievably and fatally. So. They didn't start this fire,
but they did stand there taking great pictures of it.
It starts with what self absorbed, bubble protected lemmings our
news media members are reporters, commentators, editors, but especially owners.
(05:59):
And I've promised here on both podcasts on Monday that
if Mattow actually said anything about the racist purge by
her employers, the one that claimed Joy Reid and Katie
Fang and three other shows fronted by people of color,
I would apologize to her. Well, I do apologize to her.
She said something, and I will also apologize for her
(06:19):
because what Rachel Mattow said was something worse and somehow
worse than if she'd said nothing and pretended everything was fine,
because all she did was whitewash it, literally white wash it.
Let me parse what Maddow said. It is shameful. And
(06:41):
I don't know if she deliberately rewrote the narrative on
behalf of her bosses, or she has somehow actually convinced
herself that this revised, unreal version of what happened to
Joyreid and the others is the actual truth. Quote Joy
Reid's show the readout ended tonight unquote. Rachel, you mean
(07:03):
she was fired. They fired her quote and Joy is
not taking a different job in the network unquote. That's
because she was fired, Rachel. Your bosses fired her. Quote,
she is leaving the network altogether, and that is very
very very hard to take. Unquote, She's leaving because Rachel,
(07:29):
she was fired, and it's unfortunate. You've found it very
very very hard to take. But I'm wondering what you
with essentially veto power over personnel at that network that
you have previously exercised. I'm wondering what you did to
try to prevent it, because if it is very very
hard to take, maybe you should have stood up a
(07:50):
little taller, or thrown your weight around a little more adroitly,
or said, if she leaves this network, so do I.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
I love everything about joy Reid. I've learned so much
from her. I have so much more to learn from her.
I do not want to lose her as a colleague
here at MSNBC, And personally, I think it is a
bad mistake to let her walk out the door. Unquote Rachel,
she didn't walk, she was pushed. I walked out the door.
(08:20):
She was fired. Katie Fang was fired, Alex Wagner, Jonathan
k Part and Iman were all at best demoted. They
were in essence fired. Five anchors of color, two outright
firings and three virtual firings. They didn't walk out the
goddamn door, Rachel. They were thrown out the window, and
you are covering up for that, quoting her again, it's
(08:42):
not my call, and I understand that unquote. At what
was formerly thirty one million dollars a year to do
fifty two shows a year and is now twenty five
million dollars a year to do one hundred and thirty
two shows a year, you know what, it is your
goddamn call, Rachel. You go in and you tell these morons.
She stays, or I go and guess what she stays.
(09:06):
Could have done that too with your own staff, Rachel. Tuesday.
Apparently MSNBC informed most of Madow's staff that they were
being let go as part of this schedule shakeup. And
once again, when you are the brand, it is your
goddamn call, Rachel. When I was the MSNBC brand, and
they refused for six months to even give Rachel Maddow
(09:29):
a chance to be my guest host for one night,
and went so far as to lie to me claiming
they had hired her as a contributor when they hadn't,
And as a result, she almost left us to go
to CNN for two hundred and fifty fing dollars. I
told my bosses, either you hire her within the next
twenty four hours, or I will walk out during the
(09:50):
middle of a program. Quoting her again. I will tell
you it is also unnerving to see that on a
network where we have two, count them, two non white
hosts in primetime. Both of our non white hosts in
primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on
the weekend. And that feels worse than bad no matter
(10:11):
who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not
defend it. Unquote, ah, you do not defend it. You
know who. You sound like, Rachel You sound like Senator
Susan Collins. You sound like the headline writers at the
(10:31):
New York Times. Leave the impression that Joy Read and
Katie Fang and the others quote lost quote their shows,
misplace them perhaps, or or lost them because well, Joy
Read and Katie Fang and the others they got hit
by a meteor, rather than you know, your Comcast bosses
(10:55):
turned them joy Read, especially into human sacrifices in hopes
of appeasing the evil spirit of the devil Trump. Good God.
I sat there next to Rachel Meadow on the fifty
second floor of thirty Rock in Jeff Zucker's office in
(11:17):
June two thousand and nine, when our bosses at GE
threatened Zucker personally that they were about to take MSNBC
off the air, literally throw the off switch, because Bill
O'Reilly had smeared the chairman of GE, Jeff Immelt, and
Jeff Immelt's mother was a Bill O'Reilly fan. And in
a meeting of all the anchors and executive producers and
(11:38):
Jeff Zucker and everybody else, we agreed on an interim
emergency solution that I proposed, like a month long moratorium
on mentioning Fox News, just to do we can figure
out what the hell to do next. And as we
were congratulating ourselves on this grim averting of nuclear war
(11:58):
with our own owners, which we would lose, Rachel stood
up and said, I will not accept this. If anyone
attempts to stop me from doing a story about Fox News,
I will walk out. My audience has to know I
make the editorial decisions on my show and no one else,
because if they think I might have let other people
tell me what I could and couldn't say about Fox News.
(12:18):
They will be right in assuming that I might have
let other people tell me what I could and couldn't
say about every other controversial topic. And she got up
and left the room, and as the door closed, Jeff
Zucker screamed at me to get her back on the reservation.
And I went down to her office and I said,
give me just as long as the French held out
against Hitler. I think I know how to make this work.
(12:41):
I think I know how to retain our editorial control.
But I need like thirty three days. She nodded, and
I said, if it doesn't work, or they try to
do this to us again, I will then come on
your show and we can tell the story together of
what they did, and we can quit simultaneously on the
air and go out and get really drunk, okay, And
(13:06):
she said she liked that scenario. Rachel Mattow threatened to
quit over story editing, and then she and I threatened
to quit over story editing six years earlier, one month
into countdown on MSNBC and into a new seven figure
salary that I really enjoyed, and I threatened to walk
(13:27):
out quit an hour from that moment if they tried
to run a commentary from the fascist nutjob Michael Savage
on Countdown and where are we now at MSNBC. We
gone from that MSNBC to Rachel's quote. I think it
is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door.
That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it. What
(13:52):
Matdow said was as Mealy mouthed at, as cowering, and worse,
as much of a surrender as what her colleague Ali
Velshi wrote. My show, he wrote, exists because Joy read
made that viable and important. Joy is a builder, a
thought leader, a fierce warrior for justice, fairness and equity.
Joy is a masterclass in holding power to account. I
(14:14):
can't wait to see what she ends up doing next
hashtag my hero unquote. Well apparently it's a masterclass. You
learn nothing from you, son of a bitch. You not
only didn't speak truth to power, Ali Belchi, you didn't
speak truth. She was fired. It was a purge. It
was a racist purge at MSNBC by Comcast. And they've
(14:39):
wiped out all the anchors of colors. Oh wait, there's
one left. His name is Ali Velshie. And none of
this is the most infuriating part the purge was designed
to appease Trump. Did it work, of course not? Has
(14:59):
it ever worked? Of course not. He's not an actual
human being. He is not satiated. He does not leave
the table with his winnings. You compromise, he decides you
are weak. His response to Comcast throwing joy Read into
the bottomless pit of Trump inside the volcano, He made
(15:22):
more threats, greater threats. He described MSNBC as a whole
corrupt operation, nothing more than an illegal arm of the
Democrat Party. They should be forced to pay vast sums
of money for the damage they've done to our country.
Fake news is an unpardonable sin. So good call, Rachel,
good call to present the corporate version of what happened
(15:43):
to Joy Read and Katie Fang and the others. Good
call to refuse to use the word racism, good call
to sell the cover story, good call to not tell
the truth about it. And if there is one more
level of hell to drop down to, how did media
(16:03):
reporters cover all this? I mean, they are individually and
collectively dumber than at any other point in my fifty
years doing this. But now the ones who think they
are smart see an opportunity. As I said Monday, the
word liberal is becoming what the word communist was in
the fifties. And the media reporters who've gone from being
(16:24):
part of the enabling process for this now see their
chance to curry favor with the fascists by going along
with it. They fired Read, they fired Fang, they demoted
the others, They installed a panel show. I believe it
will be the one millionth panel show in cable TV
news at the moment. It will feature the former head
(16:44):
of the Republican Party, in other words, a political salesman,
a spokesperson for a brand, not commentator, not analyst, not journalists,
just a salesman. Another host will be a former Democratic strategist,
another political salesperson, spokeswoman for a brand, not commentator, not analyst,
not journalists, just salesperson, the daughter of Senator Menendez. And
(17:10):
they will put Jensaki, the ultimate political salesperson, on four
nights a week in the nine pm Meadows slot. And
how is this lurch from diversity to sameness, from original thought,
even when it's wrong to literally Democratic Party talking points?
How is this lurch from the left of the Democratic
(17:31):
Party to the boring, losing mainstream How is this covered?
By Sarah Fisher, media writer at Axios. The headline of
her story about all this quote MSNBC turns farther left
the completely erroneous conclusion MSNBC. Fisher somehow says with a
straight face, will quote elevate some of its most progressive voices.
(17:55):
The changes signaled the network's intent to double down on
its liberal bent instead of moving towards the center in
the new Trump era. Unbelievable elevate some of its most
progressive voices after firing Joyreid and Katie Fang and three
(18:17):
other of its most progressive voices, and its most progressive
voice covered for it again fourteen years ago after they
tried to suspend me for violating NBC News employee rules,
even though they had written my contract so it repeatedly
and specifically stated I was not an NBC News employee.
(18:39):
I prepared to sue NBC for breach of contract, or
to negotiate a new set of work rules covering their
complaints as well, I might add, or most likely to
negotiate an exit so I could go take the money.
Al Gore was offering me to take countdown to his network,
Current TV for nearly three months as this was evolving,
(19:03):
I told one person, and one person alone, about every
development daily or nearly daily, every Twist at thirty Rock,
every update on the Gore offer, one person who needed
to know that if they wanted to come with me,
I could get the millions, or more likely that when
I left, NBC would have to give them millions. They
(19:25):
needed to know, and I needed to tell them. This
was a person I thought was one of my closest friends,
and that person in November and December of twenty ten
and January of twenty eleven, to whom I told everything
was Rachel Maddow. When NBC and I finally reached an
exit deal, I signed it during a commercial break during
(19:47):
my own show and announced the end of the show
on the air. I apologize again to my staff. There
was no other way to do it, and by chance,
that night, as I was literally signing off, Maddow was
in Los Angeles to be the lead guest on Bill
Maher's show. So I announced, the show is over at
(20:08):
eight forty five Eastern, and it's the lead story on
CNN for twenty two minutes at nine o'clock. At twenty
two minutes at ten o'clock and mar is on at
eleven Eastern, and he leads with it, obviously, and most
of the audience at his show doesn't know, and there's
a gasp, and then he says, by coincidence, Rachel Meadow
is here tonight, and mar asks her for her reaction,
And Rachel, who would have gotten an email update from
(20:30):
me no later than four hours earlier in which I wrote,
I think this is it? Says live on National TV
to Bill Maher, asked about Oberman quitting. This is the
first I'm hearing about any of this. I know nothing
about it. An absolute lie, the first one. It is
(20:56):
one thing to sell your soul, Rachel. It is one
thing to sell the corporate equivalent of your soul, Comcast,
but then it's quite another to sell it and discover
the check with which they paid you was signed by
Donald Trump in Disappearing Ink. Amazingly, this whole disaster at MSNBC,
(21:39):
I mean the new one, not the one from twenty eleven,
might be the only second most important example of what
happens to those who collaborate with evil. It was two
weeks ago this past Tuesday, when Trump personally got so
angry at the Associated Press because the Associated Press refused
to call it the Gulf of America, that he banned,
the wire Service from White House Access and the other
(22:01):
news organizations. Rallied to the AP's defense. And when I
say rallied to its defense, I mean they did nothing.
Lots of bad mistake style statements, lots of I do
not defend it kind of statements, lots of handbringing, lots
of First Amendment citations. Action like the White House Press
Corps collectively boycotting the next Trump event or just sending
(22:23):
one reporter to cover it. No, nothing, nothing from the networks,
nothing from the New York Times, and most pathetically, nothing
from the White House Correspondence Association. You would think this
event in which one of their correspondents, one of their
major members, gets banned for refusing to edit according to
(22:46):
Trump's whims, you would think this would be in their wheelhouse.
You would think somewhere, at some point, at a meeting
of the White House Correspondence Association, somebody might have said,
you know, if ever we get a president who's decides
to write our copy for us, we'll have to do
something about it. No, apparently not so two weeks without
paying any price for his censorship. That's what it is.
(23:08):
Censorship to salitarian style attempts to control the content of
the news. And the administration correctly reads the weakness in
the White House Correspondents Association and the White House Press Corps.
And it goes further. And now the White House pool reporter,
the gal or the guy who covers for everybody when
there's no practical way for every reporter to be there,
(23:30):
always selected by the White House Correspondents Association. And by
the way, in a rotation basis, it's not like, hey, Gabe,
you go do this one now. It will now be
selected by the White House. Trump will pick his own reporter.
Expect a strongly worded statement from a Washington journalist if
(23:52):
there is one left. And by the way, the White
House Correspondence Association inert, incompetent, almost inanimate response that contributed
to Trump thinking, to Trump knowing he could get away
with it.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
And more.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
In the wake of MSNBC purging its hosts of Color
and its true liberals and its true independent thinkers, the
network leaked anything it could think of to make it
look better, especially on the People of Color front. One
of these brand new innovation panel shows innovative as long
as this is the year nineteen eighty seven that will
replace the real programs just shot to hell by MSNBC.
(24:30):
It will be co hosted by the African American Politico
editor named Eugene Daniels. Oh, by the way, the lame
duck president of the White House Correspondence Association is.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Eugene Daniels.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Who's the lamest, weakest guy we can get in the
White House Press Corps. Ah, I make him the host
of the show. By the way, all the sucking of
Trump sure has paid off. Trump's reaction to these folderous
by our vaunted free press. Here come the fake books
and stories with the so called anonymous or off the
(25:14):
record quotes. At some point, I'm going to sue some
of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media
in general to find out whether or not these anonymous
sources even exist, which they largely do not. They are
made up defamatory fiction, and a big price should be
paid for this blatant dishonesty. I'll do it as a
service to our country. Who knows, maybe we will create
(25:36):
some nice new law. Sure glad you're collaborating with him.
Jeff Bezos. Sure glad you're collaborating with him, NBC, Comcast,
Sure glad you're collaborating with him, White House Correspondence Association,
and I'm sure glad you're by extension, covering for those
who are collaborating with him. Rachel, what's next? What's going
(26:01):
to happen next? Oliver Darcy of Status says that before
four he addresses a joint session of Congress. Next week,
Trump intends to have lunch with the major network anchors
a who would that be? Nora O'Donnell was fired and
replaced by some guys. B Lesterholt just transferred to Dateline.
(26:22):
Hey maybe this was why? See that would leave David Muir.
Now if any of them, I assume Lester will go
and one of the CBS guys are all sixty three
of them, if any of them have any journalistic or
patriotic chops, they will go to that lunch and keep
saying things that not only make Trump so mad he
throws his ketchup slathered burger against the wall. But there's
(26:44):
two like just a suggestion, play this tape of him
from the Cabinet meeting yesterday. This country has gotten bloated
and fat and disgusting, and incompetently run play that tape
about the country being bloated and everything else, then say hey,
the fat same law, Am I right? Yeah? They'll insult
(27:07):
him to his face or criticize him to his face.
Who in the hell am I kidding. The older I've gotten,
the longer I've done this, the more I've realized, and
the more I've told friends and especially younger colleagues, that
the greatest of all the thousand shocks my flesh has
been air to since nineteen seventy five is the realization
(27:28):
that each of us is on our own. Simply put,
there are no adults. You have to be your own adult.
The last generation adults was never replaced. There is no
group that will do the right thing, no matter the
personal cost, No group that will sacrifice for the greater good,
No one who will say, if you do this, I
(27:48):
will quit. Well, the op ed editor at the Washington
Post quit good for him? No adults other than him.
Right now, I will again quote Jean Renoir as actav
in Renoire's nineteen thirty nine French film Rules of the Game,
about the loss of personal moral and courage and just
a minimal effort to just maybe occasionally do what's effing right.
(28:12):
You see, in this world, there is one awful thing
Octob says, seemingly fighting back, and then he gives up
to with his own shrug, and that is that everyone
has his reasons. Our reaction to nearly every metaphorical rape
(28:34):
of this nation by Trump is to list our reasons
to do nothing about it. The more possible power you
actually have, your democratic leadership, you're the White House Correspondence Association,
your Rachel Maddow, the more reasons you have to not
risk at all. I cannot process this thinking, this lack
of thinking, but it is now universal in this country.
(28:56):
And it's no longer a question of the guard rails
falling to the wayside. It is the roads falling to
the wayside. But whether it can be understood or accepted
or processed or not, it's true, there are no adults.
If we are going to save this country, we are
going to have to save this country ourselves. Those we
(29:17):
trusted have all the tools, and we have only imagination
and despair. And all I can say is I suspect
the one action you and I can accomplish if we
can organize. If we can get past our own rules
of the game, reasons for inaction, if we can be
our own adults, it's got to be economic in origin. Now,
(29:39):
this idea of mine is about one percent complete. The
route may not even exist. That collective will may be illusory.
But the fascists only understand money. And it's increasingly obvious
that the middle and the left in whom we hoped
and relied on, may understand other things as well. But
(30:00):
even they understand money best. We may have to break
this nation's economic system. We may have to literally extort
democracy out of the corporate state. I don't know what
that means. I don't know if it's a federal tax
strike or a moratorium on buying unnecessary new consumer goods.
(30:23):
I mean, what would you do to this country if
you didn't buy a phone, or a coffee or a
car for the next five years. Maybe it's something else.
I don't know. My job has always been just to
be the annoying stand up and shout this is wrong guy.
(30:43):
Like I said, this idea is one percent baked. I
will contend, however, that at one percent it's already better
than coming on television and saying it's a bad mistake
to let democracy walk out the door this way, and
it's very very hard to take, and I do not
defend it. And thus I have done my part. I
(31:06):
have earned my one hundred and eighty nine thousand, three
hundred and ninety four dollars per night, haven't I also
of interest if you think the idea of cultural black hole,
a guy like Trump who defines the idea of the
(31:28):
cultural black hole running the John F. Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts in Washington, If you think that is
the ultimate dark irony, you have not yet heard about
the new board of trustees at the Kennedy Center that
includes one of my exes. No, I'm not gonna tell
(31:50):
you right now. I'm gonna let you guess that's next.
This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still
(32:22):
ahead on this all new edition of Countdown. I don't
want to spoil the surprise of the winner of Worse Persons,
so I'll just say that in the next segment, things
I promised not to tell is about my two dates
with today's worst person in the world. That was one
of the last times I thought, you know, this might
be the night I die that's next first, believe it
(32:46):
or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about.
The daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning
Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in
the world. Here are the nominees, the brons worse Stephen A. Smith,
or if you prefer Stephen A. Smith. Do you see
(33:06):
what happens? Stephen? Do you see what happens when you
wade into politics and you think you know everything and
you don't know Jack Spitt, I'm quoting the site awful Announcing.
Tuesday night, far right social media account af post shared
a screenshot of Smith being among those who clicked the
like button on an Instagram video from Nick Fuentes. In
(33:31):
the clip, Fuentes, a far right political commentator, accuses the
United States government of being under Israeli influence. Wednesday morning,
Smith denied clicking the like button, intently, claiming he didn't
know what Fuentes or the video was. The exact post
by Stephen A. Smith, I do not know who this
(33:51):
is or what that video is. If it was quote
liked unquote, it was unintentional. Now there are social media
managers for some of the bigger names at ESPN and
I wilse swear. But this is why talent is advised
use one. So I mean, it's possible somebody running his
accounts did this in Stephen A. Smith's name. But if so,
(34:16):
why didn't Stephen say that? Why didn't you say I've
got a social media manager and he must have done this.
She must have done this, because instead he seems to
be saying it's a coincidence or an accident. There was
some unintentional like of a video, a video done by
a rabid anti Semite and anti immigrant fascist, and accidentally,
(34:38):
somehow it was accidentally like like the like button was
hit by another meteor or lightning or something, and the
like button is somehow connected to Stephen A's account, because
that happens all the time. No, actually it doesn't. It's
as unlikely as Stephen A. Smith going on ESPN and
being right about something. The runner up worser Elong Musk,
(35:03):
the metaphorical before guy in the penile implant ads he
was at the cabinet meeting yesterday, showing his unofficial status
by standing while everybody else was sitting. Politico had just
published a unique anecdote. It was not Elong's first visit
to Trump there in the White House in twenty twenty,
I quote Politico. Before the meeting, Musk, an associate, met
(35:24):
with Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner, and then were
hosted by Tim Pataki, who served as assistant to the President,
the deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison,
a person who was within earshot of Musk, who West
Wing Playbook granted anonymity to provide to describe a private conversation.
The immedia, doing its job as usual, later recounted that
Musk called Trump a fing moron behind his back while
(35:47):
in the White House. I made the editorial decision not
to quote hims calling him then you know what effing
stands for quote. We walk into the Oval and he
Musk kind of looks around, and he's looking around. This
person in the room said, He's like, gush, I tell you,
I mean, I was just in China and man and
their palaces just make the White House kind of look
(36:07):
more like an outhouse. Steroids is a hell of a drug.
So's ozempic and Ketteman. By the way, anybody noticed that
Elon's South African accent has suddenly had dramatically gotten, even
more impenetrable and apartheidy than ever mean? Was he hit
(36:28):
by lightning? But our winner? I've teased it twice. So
here it is. They made fun of Trump. So Trump
had to punish the Kennedy Senator for performing arts in Washington.
And there's no better way to punish a group than
making Trump a part of it. Ah, you hate me,
I will now be on your board. So he's now
in charge of the Kennedy Center. And some of the
new board of trustees' names have been publicized, but not
(36:50):
all of them. When I saw the full list, one
of the names just popped off the page. No, it
wasn't Lee Greenwood, who shouldn't be admitted even if he
has a ticket. Wasn't Susie Wiles, Susie, please wipe the
cow crap off your shoes. It wasn't her statle, mother's
Cherry Summer, all widow of Pat Pat Summer, all Hai
pet Some are all here who would have been forgotten
(37:11):
by now but for John Madden. Let's see. Also on
this list there's Pam Bondi, Dan Scavino, Dana Craft, Dana Craft, Trophy,
wife of New England, Patriots owner Robert Kraft. No, I
don't know if she ever worked at a nail salon.
And then there's Lauren Ingram.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Oh Ah.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
I have been scouring my memory to try to remember
during our two dates if there was any music or
culture or anything but politics. I mean, she sent me
a workout tape and it was like all military music.
I mean, both dates events were her ideas. One was
(37:59):
a visit to Clarence Thomas's chair at the Supreme Court.
I did what he did. I sat there and did
nothing to help the country. The other was crashing the
party at a museum here in New York that was
thrown by her former law firm. But plays or entertainment
or culture or stuff they'd have at the Kennedy Center.
The only non political thing I remember she was interested
(38:19):
in was alcohol. For years, I've been trying to remember
if after we crashed that party she had ten Cosmopolitans
or was it ten Metropolitans, And it finally dawned on
me it was five of each. It was ten Cosmopolitans
and Metropolitans, which was shortly before I discovered what they
(38:40):
actually mean by the phrase. And then I had to
pour her into a cab and now she'll be at
the table with the rest of the board of the
freaking Kennedy Center, or under the table.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Laura.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
By the way, did you notice the latest work that
she's had done on her face? She's made herself look
like sweet poll purebread from the cartoon underdog Ingram two
days Worse Person And finally to the number one story
(39:31):
on the countdown and my favorite topic, me and how
should we spend these waning months of democracy? I would
guess that during breaks from you know, fighting and packing,
we should try to laugh at the fascists. And few
fascists I have ever met have provided greater dark laughs
than our winner of Worst Persons today. The anniversary, the
(39:55):
twenty seventh anniversary is the middle of next month. I
went on my first date where a guest on my
original MSN show, a woman who would later boast to
me that her mother's dying words to her were, why
are you so bossy? I mean, who would do that?
Even if it's true? Why wouldn't you make up something else,
(40:19):
like you've been a wonderful daughter, or at least make
sure you don't steal my silverware? You witch? I mean,
who's gonna check. You said these were your mother's last words.
I presume that means she's gone. Who else would reveal?
Why are you so bossy? Was her the last thing
she said? I mean, who else? The full farewell quote
was why are you so bossy?
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Laura?
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Laura Ingram. This began a process that ended in us
going out on two dates, and something she told me
on the first of these dates has resonated with me
literally every month since and is relevant to politics today.
I know, I know. I did not so much date
(41:06):
her as survive her. Even then before nine to eleven
helped to slide her cheese off her cracker. I find
a diary entry referring to her as Hurricane Laura. That
was March fifteenth, nineteen ninety eight. Beware the odds of
March Julius Caesar. I didn't, honestly, and God helped me.
(41:31):
Nearly forty eight years of dating, I have not been
a kiss and tell her I have dated. I don't
know dozens. We're in a couple of hundred, actually thirteen, seriously,
with maybe three exceptions. You don't know any of their names.
One of them, now a political writer, basically lived with
me for three years. I keep that confidence. So why
(41:52):
am I telling this story violating that? Because not three
months after that first date, when we were still going out,
Laura Ingram asked me if she could look at a
speech I was going to give it Corneill's graduation weekend
and offer suggestions. This is so long ago. I literally
faxed it to her. Sure enough, a couple days later,
(42:14):
I'm watching Imus in the morning, which was televised by
my network MSNBC, and there on his desk in front
of him is the faxed copy of my speech, and
he is reading from my facts. I could recognize the
exact sequence of the vertical stripes. My cheap fax machine
used to streak all my outgoing pages with Laura used
(42:38):
to go on his show a lot, so to curry
favor with iMOS, she sent him the speech without asking me.
As I told her that day, all bets are now off.
So I've told parts of this story before, like she
had been a Supreme Court clerk for Clarence Thomas, and
our first date consisted of taking me on an insider's
(43:00):
tour of the court and having me sit in his
chair in tribute to him. I did not say or
do anything constructive. She then cooked me the largest steak
I had ever seen that did not have a rodeo
cowboy riding on it, and we watched a woman later
discredited because she could not keep her stories straight, go
on sixty minutes and make allegations against Bill Clinton. This
(43:23):
is my perfect date, Laura told me, seared into my memory.
But the important Laura Ingram's story sitting there in the
middle of all the debris. I don't think I've ever
told this. The first date was only about six weeks
after the then First Lady Hillary Clinton got on the
Today Show and blamed the at best exaggerated scandal about
(43:46):
her husband at Monica Lewinsky on the quote vast right
wing conspiracy that is sound stumpid. Laura said that night,
as she showed me her small office upstairs, I expected
that she was about to decry the idea that Republicans
would exploit television, talk radio and the brand new Internet
to try to bring down a president from the other party.
(44:08):
And I said, so naive little boy, that I was no,
not that, of course we're doing that. She was kind
of offended that I doubted the conspiracy part. I explained,
I'd only been covering politics for two months. At the
end of the day, she said, end of the day, constantly,
at the end of the day, it's that vast part.
(44:29):
It's not vast, vast right wing conspiracy. Why, I bet
there's not even thirty of us. Laura Ingram then explained
that she was essentially the central desk for what she
called the miniature right wing conspiracy. She showed me a
printed page that had the facts numbers of about two
dozen people. There at the top are the sources. She said.
(44:50):
There was Ted Olsen, the attorney, founder of the so
called Arkansas Project and the husband of Barbara Olson, a
constant presence as a talking head on cable news. She
later died on nine to eleven. Everybody liked her. There
were several numbers in the office of Independent Counsel ken Starr.
One of them read B. Cavanaugh. I said, who's that?
(45:11):
She said, nobody important. The only other name I remember
was Spencer Abraham, who then was a senator from Michigan.
She said, they, including the people in ken Starr's office,
sent her all the rumors, the ideas, stuff about Clinton,
stuff they made up, and she distributed them to the
other parts of the list. That's these numbers. One number
(45:32):
was marked Hannity Radio, another Hannity TV, O'Reilly Radio, O'Reilly TV.
There was one for Limbaugh. There was one mark Justice Thomas,
and I pointed to it. He likes to stay and farmed. Now,
maybe the most important name is not on that list.
That's Matt Dradge. She said. Matt Drudge used all her stuff,
(45:55):
but he didn't want any of it to be traceable,
very big on not traceable, so I never fax it
to him. She said, I just give it to my brother.
This is when she still liked her brother. He sees
Drudge all the time. He gives the stuff to Drudge. Now, Oliver,
here is my baseball collection. See, there were reasons to
go out with her. At the time, I could think
(46:19):
only of an old cartoon I had once seen. It
was an octopus working in the post office, using all
eight of its limbs to sort the mail. But every
couple of weeks it dawns on me afresh. Then I
was actually a witness to one of the earliest configurations
of the machinery. And there is no doubt today whether
it is vast or miniature, it's best the machinery that
(46:42):
links the right wing politicians and those who are supposed
to be above the fray, like Supreme Court justices and
special prosecutors and people like that. There with the right
wing publicity outlets that pretend to be news organizations like
Fox and Drudge and Oan and Newsmax, and the ones
that don't even pretend, like those who succeeded Limbaugh. This
machine is, in fact every thing that your typical paranoid conservative,
(47:08):
republican fascist trumpst thinks is being run by George Soros
or Bill Gates or doctor Fauci or me. You want
to be able to say, there are reports or accusations
about some Democrat or a liberal figure or celebrity. Well,
somebody puts a rumor in at one end of the machinery,
(47:29):
or somebody makes up a rumor at one end of
the machinery. It is then sent to dozens of other people.
They repeat it, voila. Suddenly there are reports. The reports
then get fed back to Fox News or Breitbart or
the Wall Street Journal or the Supreme Court, or they're
just tweeted by a thousand bots simultaneously. You want to
(47:52):
push this ancient racist, anti Semitic paranoia called the great replacement,
but you want it to come out washed clean enough
that soulless opportunists like Elis Stefanic and jd Vance can
say it aloud on the campaign trail without forfeiting their candidacies.
This is the machinery. And I saw the machinery when
(48:13):
it was just a list of twenty and thirty people,
And at that moment I barely recognized the importance of
what I saw. Then again, I was still on that night,
recovering from not just the giant's steak, but something far
more visceral. Earlier that day, as we were leaving the
Supreme Court, Laura Ingram had boasted about getting even with
(48:36):
an ex boyfriend by going back into what had been
their house and putting up exact copies of all the
photos of the two of them together that he had
taken down from his walls. And when he got smart
and changed the locks, she went back again to finish
the job. Found her key didn't work so naturally as
(49:00):
you would. She stuffed his garden hose through the mails
a lot of his front door, and turned on the outdoors.
Spagott ten thousand dollars worth of heart. When Florence ruined,
she said proudly, and part of me screamed, flee, flee
now I didn't flee. Later, as I tried to sleep,
(49:26):
two noises kept me awake, snoring, not my own, and
Laura's dog. Laura's dog kept talking in his sleep, I
mean almost in syllables, ye like that. It was something
like twenty five degrees out and I was on the
(49:49):
second floor. And yet I resolved that if her dog
really did make that last leap to formulate actual syllables.
And it turned out her dog was the one telling
her what to do, I was simply going to leave
by the window without bothering to open it first. The
next morning, Laura and I walked her dog. We got
(50:10):
to an empty field. She threw a tennis ball, He
went and got it. She cocked her arm back again.
He took off, loving life as he did. She did
not throw it. He went forty to fifty sixty feet,
then stopped and looked back at her with such disappointment
and even a sense of betrayal, and she said, loudly,
(50:33):
without a trace of affection for him or anything else,
wait far at which is when I realized I was
being courted.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
To be the next dog.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
A few weeks later, back home in New York, I
got home from working an early morning shift filling in
for the commentator Paul Harvey at ABC Radio. I was
just waking up from a tortured nap when the phone
rang and it's Lara. I'm downstairs. We're going to my
old law firms party at the Museum. I said. I
was exhausted. We're going, or I'll just stay here at
this payphone outside. Your plane's calling you all night. We went.
(51:14):
The next opportunity probably was going to be me on
the wrong end of a hostage drama. Turned out she
was not invited to her party. We're crashing it. I'm
going to drink heavily. Frankly. It was a great party.
I got to meet Hillary Clinton's mother and her brother.
And if you think the fascists are completely sincere about everything,
(51:34):
even their neuroses and their paranoia, no, Laura Ingram hugged
Hillary Clinton's mother and Hillary Clinton's brother. They seem to
be friends. Later we wound up meeting friends of her
in the Oak bar at the Plaza Hotel, where she
kept drinking. I was astonished after about her sixth Cosmopolitan
(51:56):
on top of everything she'd had at the party. She
began to droop her head, nodding like a bobblehead doll.
Her friend said, Okay, that's it. We'll take care of
the check. You take care of her. She had not
gotten a hotel room or anything. And if you've ever
heard of anybody who needed to be poured into a
cab because they were so drunk, you don't really know
(52:18):
what that means until you have to pour them into
a cab. Frankly, I wanted to put her in a
hotel somewhere, but the spectacle would have made the gossip pages.
She basically could not stand up, so I took her
to my apartment, put her into my bed, and I
went and slept on the couch at the far end
(52:38):
of the apartment, which is where I was hours later
in the morning when she woke me up because she
came parading through using my phone to call my assistant
to get a car sent to my address to take
her to the airport, and to make sure that everybody
in my office knew she had stayed overnight at my apartment.
And all I kept thinking was why didn't I follow
(53:01):
my instincts, My instincts said flee. I fleed. Not, of course,
if I had fled, I would have missed seeing the
telephone tree of the miniature right wing conspiracy, wouldn't I.
(53:30):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel, the
musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of
our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration in keyboards. Mister Ray
was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced
by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fify musical comments are
by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The
(53:51):
sports music is the Oberman theme from ESPN two, written
by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My
announcer today was my friend John Deane. Portions produced by
Ted and Kit. Kit just got fixed the other day,
so we can understand why he's growling if you listen carefully.
(54:13):
Every time Ted growled during the recording, he was in
an appropriate moment. I believe Ted understands what I'm saying.
Everything else was as ever. My fault. That's countdown for today,
just one thousand, twenty four days until the scheduled end
of his lane duck lame brain term unless Musks removes
him sooner where the actuarial tables doe. The next scheduled
(54:38):
countdown is Monday. As always, bulletins, as the news warrants,
remember impeach Trump. It will not work now, it will
win the Democrats the mid terms, if there are midterms.
Get off the stick, kids. Until next time, I'm Keith Olverman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(55:16):
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. Ever
heard the alternative rogue theory of religion? The one about
(00:29):
the place that all the mainstream faiths call hell. That
hell is not some fiery, eternal nightmare deep in the
center of the earth, nor anywhere else that in fact,
this this what we call life, This is hell. I'm
writing to let you know about a change coming to
(00:52):
our opinion pages. Jeff Bezos had somebody write for him
yesterday and stick his name on it, and then email
it to the Washington Post staff and then post it online,
resuming the quote, we are going to be writing every
day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties
and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course,
(01:13):
but few points opposing those pillars will be left to
be published by others. There was a time when a newspaper,
especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen
it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep
every morning a broad paced opinion section that sought to
cover all views. Today, the Internet does that job. I
(01:36):
am of America and for America, and proud to be so.
Our country did not get here by being typical and
A big part of America's success has been freedom in
the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical, It
minimizes coercion, and practically it lives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
(01:57):
Oh nothing, just another fascist throwing around the word freedom.
What he means is freedom for him to enslave youew
Oh nothing, just the Washington Post having self defenestrated already,
and now somehow crawling back to the top of the
stairwell and throwing itself out a different window, and another
(02:19):
chunk of freedom of the press along with it. Oh nothing,
Just confirmation of the rogue theory of eternal life that
this is hell. As a side note, if that is correct,
If this is hell, Jeff Bezos's girlfriend, my ex Fox
Sports colleague, Laurin Sanchez, is reminded not to stand too
(02:43):
close to any open flames here in hell. The melting
plastic smell could kill us all. And Jeff Bezos's gleeful
final transformation of The Washington Post from a newspaper to
a Trump cheerleading newsletter is only the newest of three
(03:04):
media cans this week, including the cowardice of the White
House Correspondence Association and especially the startling reality that Rachel Meadow,
whom I hired at MSNBC out of my own pocket,
has avoided the truth on the air, evidently to make
it look like her corporate masters did not complete a
(03:24):
race purge at MSNBC, not told the truth for the
second time about other anchors leaving MSNBC, And I'll tell
the story of the first time in a few minutes. Look,
this is not a media podcast, though I do a
lot of it since I know a lot about it.
(03:45):
But when the history is written of this increasingly successful
attempt to overthrow the government of the United States by Trump,
if he lets anybody write it one of the final straws,
maybe the final straw will have been how stunningly quickly
the American free press collapsed, gave in, gave up. And
(04:06):
then how the same news organizations and networks managed to
find yet another new lower level to which to descend.
And then finally, how it all of it managed without
being really coerced or threatened or even rewarded in any
way to become cheerleading collaborators of Trump. Because all of
(04:28):
it today a white supremacist, stoned foreigner being allowed in
the White House let alone in the Oval office during
a cabinet meeting, and he and Trump promising to fire
all federal employees and basically privatize the government. A measles
outbreak in Texas, and there's now a death and it
was an unvaccinated child. Polling showing roughly thirty five percent
(04:50):
of all Republicans favoring eliminating elections and Congress, and fifty
five percent of Trump Republicans supporting rule by an authoritarian
strong man. To the Republicans who have for forty years
done nothing but run up deficits, getting away with pretending
to be fixing the urgent crisis of deficits that they
caused and which isn't urgent anyway. To the five million
(05:12):
dollars citizenship gold cards and the Ukraine extortion and the
Gaza theft, and the entire protection racket infomercial presidency of
this asshole. All of that is possible only because our media,
our news reporting, our journalism, our free press, is broken,
(05:32):
and probably irretrievably and fatally. So. They didn't start this fire,
but they did stand there taking great pictures of it.
It starts with what self absorbed, bubble protected lemmings our
news media members are reporters, commentators, editors, but especially owners.
(05:59):
And I've promised here on both podcasts on Monday that
if Mattow actually said anything about the racist purge by
her employers, the one that claimed Joy Reid and Katie
Fang and three other shows fronted by people of color,
I would apologize to her. Well, I do apologize to her.
She said something, and I will also apologize for her
(06:19):
because what Rachel Mattow said was something worse and somehow
worse than if she'd said nothing and pretended everything was fine,
because all she did was whitewash it, literally white wash it.
Let me parse what Maddow said. It is shameful. And
(06:41):
I don't know if she deliberately rewrote the narrative on
behalf of her bosses, or she has somehow actually convinced
herself that this revised, unreal version of what happened to
Joyreid and the others is the actual truth. Quote Joy
Reid's show the readout ended tonight unquote. Rachel, you mean
(07:03):
she was fired. They fired her quote and Joy is
not taking a different job in the network unquote. That's
because she was fired, Rachel. Your bosses fired her. Quote,
she is leaving the network altogether, and that is very
very very hard to take. Unquote, She's leaving because Rachel,
(07:29):
she was fired, and it's unfortunate. You've found it very
very very hard to take. But I'm wondering what you
with essentially veto power over personnel at that network that
you have previously exercised. I'm wondering what you did to
try to prevent it, because if it is very very
hard to take, maybe you should have stood up a
(07:50):
little taller, or thrown your weight around a little more adroitly,
or said, if she leaves this network, so do I.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
I love everything about joy Reid. I've learned so much
from her. I have so much more to learn from her.
I do not want to lose her as a colleague
here at MSNBC, And personally, I think it is a
bad mistake to let her walk out the door. Unquote Rachel,
she didn't walk, she was pushed. I walked out the door.
(08:20):
She was fired. Katie Fang was fired, Alex Wagner, Jonathan
k Part and Iman were all at best demoted. They
were in essence fired. Five anchors of color, two outright
firings and three virtual firings. They didn't walk out the
goddamn door, Rachel. They were thrown out the window, and
you are covering up for that, quoting her again, it's
(08:42):
not my call, and I understand that unquote. At what
was formerly thirty one million dollars a year to do
fifty two shows a year and is now twenty five
million dollars a year to do one hundred and thirty
two shows a year, you know what, it is your
goddamn call, Rachel. You go in and you tell these morons.
She stays, or I go and guess what she stays.
(09:06):
Could have done that too with your own staff, Rachel. Tuesday.
Apparently MSNBC informed most of Madow's staff that they were
being let go as part of this schedule shakeup. And
once again, when you are the brand, it is your
goddamn call, Rachel. When I was the MSNBC brand, and
they refused for six months to even give Rachel Maddow
(09:29):
a chance to be my guest host for one night,
and went so far as to lie to me claiming
they had hired her as a contributor when they hadn't,
And as a result, she almost left us to go
to CNN for two hundred and fifty fing dollars. I
told my bosses, either you hire her within the next
twenty four hours, or I will walk out during the
(09:50):
middle of a program. Quoting her again. I will tell
you it is also unnerving to see that on a
network where we have two, count them, two non white
hosts in primetime. Both of our non white hosts in
primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on
the weekend. And that feels worse than bad no matter
(10:11):
who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not
defend it. Unquote, ah, you do not defend it. You
know who. You sound like, Rachel You sound like Senator
Susan Collins. You sound like the headline writers at the
(10:31):
New York Times. Leave the impression that Joy Read and
Katie Fang and the others quote lost quote their shows,
misplace them perhaps, or or lost them because well, Joy
Read and Katie Fang and the others they got hit
by a meteor, rather than you know, your Comcast bosses
(10:55):
turned them joy Read, especially into human sacrifices in hopes
of appeasing the evil spirit of the devil Trump. Good God.
I sat there next to Rachel Meadow on the fifty
second floor of thirty Rock in Jeff Zucker's office in
(11:17):
June two thousand and nine, when our bosses at GE
threatened Zucker personally that they were about to take MSNBC
off the air, literally throw the off switch, because Bill
O'Reilly had smeared the chairman of GE, Jeff Immelt, and
Jeff Immelt's mother was a Bill O'Reilly fan. And in
a meeting of all the anchors and executive producers and
(11:38):
Jeff Zucker and everybody else, we agreed on an interim
emergency solution that I proposed, like a month long moratorium
on mentioning Fox News, just to do we can figure
out what the hell to do next. And as we
were congratulating ourselves on this grim averting of nuclear war
(11:58):
with our own owners, which we would lose, Rachel stood
up and said, I will not accept this. If anyone
attempts to stop me from doing a story about Fox News,
I will walk out. My audience has to know I
make the editorial decisions on my show and no one else,
because if they think I might have let other people
tell me what I could and couldn't say about Fox News.
(12:18):
They will be right in assuming that I might have
let other people tell me what I could and couldn't
say about every other controversial topic. And she got up
and left the room, and as the door closed, Jeff
Zucker screamed at me to get her back on the reservation.
And I went down to her office and I said,
give me just as long as the French held out
against Hitler. I think I know how to make this work.
(12:41):
I think I know how to retain our editorial control.
But I need like thirty three days. She nodded, and
I said, if it doesn't work, or they try to
do this to us again, I will then come on
your show and we can tell the story together of
what they did, and we can quit simultaneously on the
air and go out and get really drunk, okay, And
(13:06):
she said she liked that scenario. Rachel Mattow threatened to
quit over story editing, and then she and I threatened
to quit over story editing six years earlier, one month
into countdown on MSNBC and into a new seven figure
salary that I really enjoyed, and I threatened to walk
(13:27):
out quit an hour from that moment if they tried
to run a commentary from the fascist nutjob Michael Savage
on Countdown and where are we now at MSNBC. We
gone from that MSNBC to Rachel's quote. I think it
is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door.
That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it. What
(13:52):
Matdow said was as Mealy mouthed at, as cowering, and worse,
as much of a surrender as what her colleague Ali
Velshi wrote. My show, he wrote, exists because Joy read
made that viable and important. Joy is a builder, a
thought leader, a fierce warrior for justice, fairness and equity.
Joy is a masterclass in holding power to account. I
(14:14):
can't wait to see what she ends up doing next
hashtag my hero unquote. Well apparently it's a masterclass. You
learn nothing from you, son of a bitch. You not
only didn't speak truth to power, Ali Belchi, you didn't
speak truth. She was fired. It was a purge. It
was a racist purge at MSNBC by Comcast. And they've
(14:39):
wiped out all the anchors of colors. Oh wait, there's
one left. His name is Ali Velshie. And none of
this is the most infuriating part the purge was designed
to appease Trump. Did it work, of course not? Has
(14:59):
it ever worked? Of course not. He's not an actual
human being. He is not satiated. He does not leave
the table with his winnings. You compromise, he decides you
are weak. His response to Comcast throwing joy Read into
the bottomless pit of Trump inside the volcano, He made
(15:22):
more threats, greater threats. He described MSNBC as a whole
corrupt operation, nothing more than an illegal arm of the
Democrat Party. They should be forced to pay vast sums
of money for the damage they've done to our country.
Fake news is an unpardonable sin. So good call, Rachel,
good call to present the corporate version of what happened
(15:43):
to Joy Read and Katie Fang and the others. Good
call to refuse to use the word racism, good call
to sell the cover story, good call to not tell
the truth about it. And if there is one more
level of hell to drop down to, how did media
(16:03):
reporters cover all this? I mean, they are individually and
collectively dumber than at any other point in my fifty
years doing this. But now the ones who think they
are smart see an opportunity. As I said Monday, the
word liberal is becoming what the word communist was in
the fifties. And the media reporters who've gone from being
(16:24):
part of the enabling process for this now see their
chance to curry favor with the fascists by going along
with it. They fired Read, they fired Fang, they demoted
the others, They installed a panel show. I believe it
will be the one millionth panel show in cable TV
news at the moment. It will feature the former head
(16:44):
of the Republican Party, in other words, a political salesman,
a spokesperson for a brand, not commentator, not analyst, not journalists,
just a salesman. Another host will be a former Democratic strategist,
another political salesperson, spokeswoman for a brand, not commentator, not analyst,
not journalists, just salesperson, the daughter of Senator Menendez. And
(17:10):
they will put Jensaki, the ultimate political salesperson, on four
nights a week in the nine pm Meadows slot. And
how is this lurch from diversity to sameness, from original thought,
even when it's wrong to literally Democratic Party talking points?
How is this lurch from the left of the Democratic
(17:31):
Party to the boring, losing mainstream How is this covered?
By Sarah Fisher, media writer at Axios. The headline of
her story about all this quote MSNBC turns farther left
the completely erroneous conclusion MSNBC. Fisher somehow says with a
straight face, will quote elevate some of its most progressive voices.
(17:55):
The changes signaled the network's intent to double down on
its liberal bent instead of moving towards the center in
the new Trump era. Unbelievable elevate some of its most
progressive voices after firing Joyreid and Katie Fang and three
(18:17):
other of its most progressive voices, and its most progressive
voice covered for it again fourteen years ago after they
tried to suspend me for violating NBC News employee rules,
even though they had written my contract so it repeatedly
and specifically stated I was not an NBC News employee.
(18:39):
I prepared to sue NBC for breach of contract, or
to negotiate a new set of work rules covering their
complaints as well, I might add, or most likely to
negotiate an exit so I could go take the money.
Al Gore was offering me to take countdown to his network,
Current TV for nearly three months as this was evolving,
(19:03):
I told one person, and one person alone, about every
development daily or nearly daily, every Twist at thirty Rock,
every update on the Gore offer, one person who needed
to know that if they wanted to come with me,
I could get the millions, or more likely that when
I left, NBC would have to give them millions. They
(19:25):
needed to know, and I needed to tell them. This
was a person I thought was one of my closest friends,
and that person in November and December of twenty ten
and January of twenty eleven, to whom I told everything
was Rachel Maddow. When NBC and I finally reached an
exit deal, I signed it during a commercial break during
(19:47):
my own show and announced the end of the show
on the air. I apologize again to my staff. There
was no other way to do it, and by chance,
that night, as I was literally signing off, Maddow was
in Los Angeles to be the lead guest on Bill
Maher's show. So I announced, the show is over at
(20:08):
eight forty five Eastern, and it's the lead story on
CNN for twenty two minutes at nine o'clock. At twenty
two minutes at ten o'clock and mar is on at
eleven Eastern, and he leads with it, obviously, and most
of the audience at his show doesn't know, and there's
a gasp, and then he says, by coincidence, Rachel Meadow
is here tonight, and mar asks her for her reaction,
And Rachel, who would have gotten an email update from
(20:30):
me no later than four hours earlier in which I wrote,
I think this is it? Says live on National TV
to Bill Maher, asked about Oberman quitting. This is the
first I'm hearing about any of this. I know nothing
about it. An absolute lie, the first one. It is
(20:56):
one thing to sell your soul, Rachel. It is one
thing to sell the corporate equivalent of your soul, Comcast,
but then it's quite another to sell it and discover
the check with which they paid you was signed by
Donald Trump in Disappearing Ink. Amazingly, this whole disaster at MSNBC,
(21:39):
I mean the new one, not the one from twenty eleven,
might be the only second most important example of what
happens to those who collaborate with evil. It was two
weeks ago this past Tuesday, when Trump personally got so
angry at the Associated Press because the Associated Press refused
to call it the Gulf of America, that he banned,
the wire Service from White House Access and the other
(22:01):
news organizations. Rallied to the AP's defense. And when I
say rallied to its defense, I mean they did nothing.
Lots of bad mistake style statements, lots of I do
not defend it kind of statements, lots of handbringing, lots
of First Amendment citations. Action like the White House Press
Corps collectively boycotting the next Trump event or just sending
(22:23):
one reporter to cover it. No, nothing, nothing from the networks,
nothing from the New York Times, and most pathetically, nothing
from the White House Correspondence Association. You would think this
event in which one of their correspondents, one of their
major members, gets banned for refusing to edit according to
(22:46):
Trump's whims, you would think this would be in their wheelhouse.
You would think somewhere, at some point, at a meeting
of the White House Correspondence Association, somebody might have said,
you know, if ever we get a president who's decides
to write our copy for us, we'll have to do
something about it. No, apparently not so two weeks without
paying any price for his censorship. That's what it is.
(23:08):
Censorship to salitarian style attempts to control the content of
the news. And the administration correctly reads the weakness in
the White House Correspondents Association and the White House Press Corps.
And it goes further. And now the White House pool reporter,
the gal or the guy who covers for everybody when
there's no practical way for every reporter to be there,
(23:30):
always selected by the White House Correspondents Association. And by
the way, in a rotation basis, it's not like, hey, Gabe,
you go do this one now. It will now be
selected by the White House. Trump will pick his own reporter.
Expect a strongly worded statement from a Washington journalist if
(23:52):
there is one left. And by the way, the White
House Correspondence Association inert, incompetent, almost inanimate response that contributed
to Trump thinking, to Trump knowing he could get away
with it.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
And more.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
In the wake of MSNBC purging its hosts of Color
and its true liberals and its true independent thinkers, the
network leaked anything it could think of to make it
look better, especially on the People of Color front. One
of these brand new innovation panel shows innovative as long
as this is the year nineteen eighty seven that will
replace the real programs just shot to hell by MSNBC.
(24:30):
It will be co hosted by the African American Politico
editor named Eugene Daniels. Oh, by the way, the lame
duck president of the White House Correspondence Association is.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Eugene Daniels.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Who's the lamest, weakest guy we can get in the
White House Press Corps. Ah, I make him the host
of the show. By the way, all the sucking of
Trump sure has paid off. Trump's reaction to these folderous
by our vaunted free press. Here come the fake books
and stories with the so called anonymous or off the
(25:14):
record quotes. At some point, I'm going to sue some
of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media
in general to find out whether or not these anonymous
sources even exist, which they largely do not. They are
made up defamatory fiction, and a big price should be
paid for this blatant dishonesty. I'll do it as a
service to our country. Who knows, maybe we will create
(25:36):
some nice new law. Sure glad you're collaborating with him.
Jeff Bezos. Sure glad you're collaborating with him, NBC, Comcast,
Sure glad you're collaborating with him, White House Correspondence Association,
and I'm sure glad you're by extension, covering for those
who are collaborating with him. Rachel, what's next? What's going
(26:01):
to happen next? Oliver Darcy of Status says that before
four he addresses a joint session of Congress. Next week,
Trump intends to have lunch with the major network anchors
a who would that be? Nora O'Donnell was fired and
replaced by some guys. B Lesterholt just transferred to Dateline.
(26:22):
Hey maybe this was why? See that would leave David Muir.
Now if any of them, I assume Lester will go
and one of the CBS guys are all sixty three
of them, if any of them have any journalistic or
patriotic chops, they will go to that lunch and keep
saying things that not only make Trump so mad he
throws his ketchup slathered burger against the wall. But there's
(26:44):
two like just a suggestion, play this tape of him
from the Cabinet meeting yesterday. This country has gotten bloated
and fat and disgusting, and incompetently run play that tape
about the country being bloated and everything else, then say hey,
the fat same law, Am I right? Yeah? They'll insult
(27:07):
him to his face or criticize him to his face.
Who in the hell am I kidding. The older I've gotten,
the longer I've done this, the more I've realized, and
the more I've told friends and especially younger colleagues, that
the greatest of all the thousand shocks my flesh has
been air to since nineteen seventy five is the realization
(27:28):
that each of us is on our own. Simply put,
there are no adults. You have to be your own adult.
The last generation adults was never replaced. There is no
group that will do the right thing, no matter the
personal cost, No group that will sacrifice for the greater good,
No one who will say, if you do this, I
(27:48):
will quit. Well, the op ed editor at the Washington
Post quit good for him? No adults other than him.
Right now, I will again quote Jean Renoir as actav
in Renoire's nineteen thirty nine French film Rules of the Game,
about the loss of personal moral and courage and just
a minimal effort to just maybe occasionally do what's effing right.
(28:12):
You see, in this world, there is one awful thing
Octob says, seemingly fighting back, and then he gives up
to with his own shrug, and that is that everyone
has his reasons. Our reaction to nearly every metaphorical rape
(28:34):
of this nation by Trump is to list our reasons
to do nothing about it. The more possible power you
actually have, your democratic leadership, you're the White House Correspondence Association,
your Rachel Maddow, the more reasons you have to not
risk at all. I cannot process this thinking, this lack
of thinking, but it is now universal in this country.
(28:56):
And it's no longer a question of the guard rails
falling to the wayside. It is the roads falling to
the wayside. But whether it can be understood or accepted
or processed or not, it's true, there are no adults.
If we are going to save this country, we are
going to have to save this country ourselves. Those we
(29:17):
trusted have all the tools, and we have only imagination
and despair. And all I can say is I suspect
the one action you and I can accomplish if we
can organize. If we can get past our own rules
of the game, reasons for inaction, if we can be
our own adults, it's got to be economic in origin. Now,
(29:39):
this idea of mine is about one percent complete. The
route may not even exist. That collective will may be illusory.
But the fascists only understand money. And it's increasingly obvious
that the middle and the left in whom we hoped
and relied on, may understand other things as well. But
(30:00):
even they understand money best. We may have to break
this nation's economic system. We may have to literally extort
democracy out of the corporate state. I don't know what
that means. I don't know if it's a federal tax
strike or a moratorium on buying unnecessary new consumer goods.
(30:23):
I mean, what would you do to this country if
you didn't buy a phone, or a coffee or a
car for the next five years. Maybe it's something else.
I don't know. My job has always been just to
be the annoying stand up and shout this is wrong guy.
(30:43):
Like I said, this idea is one percent baked. I
will contend, however, that at one percent it's already better
than coming on television and saying it's a bad mistake
to let democracy walk out the door this way, and
it's very very hard to take, and I do not
defend it. And thus I have done my part. I
(31:06):
have earned my one hundred and eighty nine thousand, three
hundred and ninety four dollars per night, haven't I also
of interest if you think the idea of cultural black hole,
a guy like Trump who defines the idea of the
(31:28):
cultural black hole running the John F. Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts in Washington, If you think that is
the ultimate dark irony, you have not yet heard about
the new board of trustees at the Kennedy Center that
includes one of my exes. No, I'm not gonna tell
(31:50):
you right now. I'm gonna let you guess that's next.
This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still
(32:22):
ahead on this all new edition of Countdown. I don't
want to spoil the surprise of the winner of Worse Persons,
so I'll just say that in the next segment, things
I promised not to tell is about my two dates
with today's worst person in the world. That was one
of the last times I thought, you know, this might
be the night I die that's next first, believe it
(32:46):
or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about.
The daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning
Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in
the world. Here are the nominees, the brons worse Stephen A. Smith,
or if you prefer Stephen A. Smith. Do you see
(33:06):
what happens? Stephen? Do you see what happens when you
wade into politics and you think you know everything and
you don't know Jack Spitt, I'm quoting the site awful Announcing.
Tuesday night, far right social media account af post shared
a screenshot of Smith being among those who clicked the
like button on an Instagram video from Nick Fuentes. In
(33:31):
the clip, Fuentes, a far right political commentator, accuses the
United States government of being under Israeli influence. Wednesday morning,
Smith denied clicking the like button, intently, claiming he didn't
know what Fuentes or the video was. The exact post
by Stephen A. Smith, I do not know who this
(33:51):
is or what that video is. If it was quote
liked unquote, it was unintentional. Now there are social media
managers for some of the bigger names at ESPN and
I wilse swear. But this is why talent is advised
use one. So I mean, it's possible somebody running his
accounts did this in Stephen A. Smith's name. But if so,
(34:16):
why didn't Stephen say that? Why didn't you say I've
got a social media manager and he must have done this.
She must have done this, because instead he seems to
be saying it's a coincidence or an accident. There was
some unintentional like of a video, a video done by
a rabid anti Semite and anti immigrant fascist, and accidentally,
(34:38):
somehow it was accidentally like like the like button was
hit by another meteor or lightning or something, and the
like button is somehow connected to Stephen A's account, because
that happens all the time. No, actually it doesn't. It's
as unlikely as Stephen A. Smith going on ESPN and
being right about something. The runner up worser Elong Musk,
(35:03):
the metaphorical before guy in the penile implant ads he
was at the cabinet meeting yesterday, showing his unofficial status
by standing while everybody else was sitting. Politico had just
published a unique anecdote. It was not Elong's first visit
to Trump there in the White House in twenty twenty,
I quote Politico. Before the meeting, Musk, an associate, met
(35:24):
with Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner, and then were
hosted by Tim Pataki, who served as assistant to the President,
the deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison,
a person who was within earshot of Musk, who West
Wing Playbook granted anonymity to provide to describe a private conversation.
The immedia, doing its job as usual, later recounted that
Musk called Trump a fing moron behind his back while
(35:47):
in the White House. I made the editorial decision not
to quote hims calling him then you know what effing
stands for quote. We walk into the Oval and he
Musk kind of looks around, and he's looking around. This
person in the room said, He's like, gush, I tell you,
I mean, I was just in China and man and
their palaces just make the White House kind of look
(36:07):
more like an outhouse. Steroids is a hell of a drug.
So's ozempic and Ketteman. By the way, anybody noticed that
Elon's South African accent has suddenly had dramatically gotten, even
more impenetrable and apartheidy than ever mean? Was he hit
(36:28):
by lightning? But our winner? I've teased it twice. So
here it is. They made fun of Trump. So Trump
had to punish the Kennedy Senator for performing arts in Washington.
And there's no better way to punish a group than
making Trump a part of it. Ah, you hate me,
I will now be on your board. So he's now
in charge of the Kennedy Center. And some of the
new board of trustees' names have been publicized, but not
(36:50):
all of them. When I saw the full list, one
of the names just popped off the page. No, it
wasn't Lee Greenwood, who shouldn't be admitted even if he
has a ticket. Wasn't Susie Wiles, Susie, please wipe the
cow crap off your shoes. It wasn't her statle, mother's
Cherry Summer, all widow of Pat Pat Summer, all Hai
pet Some are all here who would have been forgotten
(37:11):
by now but for John Madden. Let's see. Also on
this list there's Pam Bondi, Dan Scavino, Dana Craft, Dana Craft, Trophy,
wife of New England, Patriots owner Robert Kraft. No, I
don't know if she ever worked at a nail salon.
And then there's Lauren Ingram.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Oh Ah.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
I have been scouring my memory to try to remember
during our two dates if there was any music or
culture or anything but politics. I mean, she sent me
a workout tape and it was like all military music.
I mean, both dates events were her ideas. One was
(37:59):
a visit to Clarence Thomas's chair at the Supreme Court.
I did what he did. I sat there and did
nothing to help the country. The other was crashing the
party at a museum here in New York that was
thrown by her former law firm. But plays or entertainment
or culture or stuff they'd have at the Kennedy Center.
The only non political thing I remember she was interested
(38:19):
in was alcohol. For years, I've been trying to remember
if after we crashed that party she had ten Cosmopolitans
or was it ten Metropolitans, And it finally dawned on
me it was five of each. It was ten Cosmopolitans
and Metropolitans, which was shortly before I discovered what they
(38:40):
actually mean by the phrase. And then I had to
pour her into a cab and now she'll be at
the table with the rest of the board of the
freaking Kennedy Center, or under the table.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Laura.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
By the way, did you notice the latest work that
she's had done on her face? She's made herself look
like sweet poll purebread from the cartoon underdog Ingram two
days Worse Person And finally to the number one story
(39:31):
on the countdown and my favorite topic, me and how
should we spend these waning months of democracy? I would
guess that during breaks from you know, fighting and packing,
we should try to laugh at the fascists. And few
fascists I have ever met have provided greater dark laughs
than our winner of Worst Persons today. The anniversary, the
(39:55):
twenty seventh anniversary is the middle of next month. I
went on my first date where a guest on my
original MSN show, a woman who would later boast to
me that her mother's dying words to her were, why
are you so bossy? I mean, who would do that?
Even if it's true? Why wouldn't you make up something else,
(40:19):
like you've been a wonderful daughter, or at least make
sure you don't steal my silverware? You witch? I mean,
who's gonna check. You said these were your mother's last words.
I presume that means she's gone. Who else would reveal?
Why are you so bossy? Was her the last thing
she said? I mean, who else? The full farewell quote
was why are you so bossy?
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Laura?
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Laura Ingram. This began a process that ended in us
going out on two dates, and something she told me
on the first of these dates has resonated with me
literally every month since and is relevant to politics today.
I know, I know. I did not so much date
(41:06):
her as survive her. Even then before nine to eleven
helped to slide her cheese off her cracker. I find
a diary entry referring to her as Hurricane Laura. That
was March fifteenth, nineteen ninety eight. Beware the odds of
March Julius Caesar. I didn't, honestly, and God helped me.
(41:31):
Nearly forty eight years of dating, I have not been
a kiss and tell her I have dated. I don't
know dozens. We're in a couple of hundred, actually thirteen, seriously,
with maybe three exceptions. You don't know any of their names.
One of them, now a political writer, basically lived with
me for three years. I keep that confidence. So why
(41:52):
am I telling this story violating that? Because not three
months after that first date, when we were still going out,
Laura Ingram asked me if she could look at a
speech I was going to give it Corneill's graduation weekend
and offer suggestions. This is so long ago. I literally
faxed it to her. Sure enough, a couple days later,
(42:14):
I'm watching Imus in the morning, which was televised by
my network MSNBC, and there on his desk in front
of him is the faxed copy of my speech, and
he is reading from my facts. I could recognize the
exact sequence of the vertical stripes. My cheap fax machine
used to streak all my outgoing pages with Laura used
(42:38):
to go on his show a lot, so to curry
favor with iMOS, she sent him the speech without asking me.
As I told her that day, all bets are now off.
So I've told parts of this story before, like she
had been a Supreme Court clerk for Clarence Thomas, and
our first date consisted of taking me on an insider's
(43:00):
tour of the court and having me sit in his
chair in tribute to him. I did not say or
do anything constructive. She then cooked me the largest steak
I had ever seen that did not have a rodeo
cowboy riding on it, and we watched a woman later
discredited because she could not keep her stories straight, go
on sixty minutes and make allegations against Bill Clinton. This
(43:23):
is my perfect date, Laura told me, seared into my memory.
But the important Laura Ingram's story sitting there in the
middle of all the debris. I don't think I've ever
told this. The first date was only about six weeks
after the then First Lady Hillary Clinton got on the
Today Show and blamed the at best exaggerated scandal about
(43:46):
her husband at Monica Lewinsky on the quote vast right
wing conspiracy that is sound stumpid. Laura said that night,
as she showed me her small office upstairs, I expected
that she was about to decry the idea that Republicans
would exploit television, talk radio and the brand new Internet
to try to bring down a president from the other party.
(44:08):
And I said, so naive little boy, that I was no,
not that, of course we're doing that. She was kind
of offended that I doubted the conspiracy part. I explained,
I'd only been covering politics for two months. At the
end of the day, she said, end of the day, constantly,
at the end of the day, it's that vast part.
(44:29):
It's not vast, vast right wing conspiracy. Why, I bet
there's not even thirty of us. Laura Ingram then explained
that she was essentially the central desk for what she
called the miniature right wing conspiracy. She showed me a
printed page that had the facts numbers of about two
dozen people. There at the top are the sources. She said.
(44:50):
There was Ted Olsen, the attorney, founder of the so
called Arkansas Project and the husband of Barbara Olson, a
constant presence as a talking head on cable news. She
later died on nine to eleven. Everybody liked her. There
were several numbers in the office of Independent Counsel ken Starr.
One of them read B. Cavanaugh. I said, who's that?
(45:11):
She said, nobody important. The only other name I remember
was Spencer Abraham, who then was a senator from Michigan.
She said, they, including the people in ken Starr's office,
sent her all the rumors, the ideas, stuff about Clinton,
stuff they made up, and she distributed them to the
other parts of the list. That's these numbers. One number
(45:32):
was marked Hannity Radio, another Hannity TV, O'Reilly Radio, O'Reilly TV.
There was one for Limbaugh. There was one mark Justice Thomas,
and I pointed to it. He likes to stay and farmed. Now,
maybe the most important name is not on that list.
That's Matt Dradge. She said. Matt Drudge used all her stuff,
(45:55):
but he didn't want any of it to be traceable,
very big on not traceable, so I never fax it
to him. She said, I just give it to my brother.
This is when she still liked her brother. He sees
Drudge all the time. He gives the stuff to Drudge. Now, Oliver,
here is my baseball collection. See, there were reasons to
go out with her. At the time, I could think
(46:19):
only of an old cartoon I had once seen. It
was an octopus working in the post office, using all
eight of its limbs to sort the mail. But every
couple of weeks it dawns on me afresh. Then I
was actually a witness to one of the earliest configurations
of the machinery. And there is no doubt today whether
it is vast or miniature, it's best the machinery that
(46:42):
links the right wing politicians and those who are supposed
to be above the fray, like Supreme Court justices and
special prosecutors and people like that. There with the right
wing publicity outlets that pretend to be news organizations like
Fox and Drudge and Oan and Newsmax, and the ones
that don't even pretend, like those who succeeded Limbaugh. This
machine is, in fact every thing that your typical paranoid conservative,
(47:08):
republican fascist trumpst thinks is being run by George Soros
or Bill Gates or doctor Fauci or me. You want
to be able to say, there are reports or accusations
about some Democrat or a liberal figure or celebrity. Well,
somebody puts a rumor in at one end of the machinery,
(47:29):
or somebody makes up a rumor at one end of
the machinery. It is then sent to dozens of other people.
They repeat it, voila. Suddenly there are reports. The reports
then get fed back to Fox News or Breitbart or
the Wall Street Journal or the Supreme Court, or they're
just tweeted by a thousand bots simultaneously. You want to
(47:52):
push this ancient racist, anti Semitic paranoia called the great replacement,
but you want it to come out washed clean enough
that soulless opportunists like Elis Stefanic and jd Vance can
say it aloud on the campaign trail without forfeiting their candidacies.
This is the machinery. And I saw the machinery when
(48:13):
it was just a list of twenty and thirty people,
And at that moment I barely recognized the importance of
what I saw. Then again, I was still on that night,
recovering from not just the giant's steak, but something far
more visceral. Earlier that day, as we were leaving the
Supreme Court, Laura Ingram had boasted about getting even with
(48:36):
an ex boyfriend by going back into what had been
their house and putting up exact copies of all the
photos of the two of them together that he had
taken down from his walls. And when he got smart
and changed the locks, she went back again to finish
the job. Found her key didn't work so naturally as
(49:00):
you would. She stuffed his garden hose through the mails
a lot of his front door, and turned on the outdoors.
Spagott ten thousand dollars worth of heart. When Florence ruined,
she said proudly, and part of me screamed, flee, flee
now I didn't flee. Later, as I tried to sleep,
(49:26):
two noises kept me awake, snoring, not my own, and
Laura's dog. Laura's dog kept talking in his sleep, I
mean almost in syllables, ye like that. It was something
like twenty five degrees out and I was on the
(49:49):
second floor. And yet I resolved that if her dog
really did make that last leap to formulate actual syllables.
And it turned out her dog was the one telling
her what to do, I was simply going to leave
by the window without bothering to open it first. The
next morning, Laura and I walked her dog. We got
(50:10):
to an empty field. She threw a tennis ball, He
went and got it. She cocked her arm back again.
He took off, loving life as he did. She did
not throw it. He went forty to fifty sixty feet,
then stopped and looked back at her with such disappointment
and even a sense of betrayal, and she said, loudly,
(50:33):
without a trace of affection for him or anything else,
wait far at which is when I realized I was
being courted.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
To be the next dog.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
A few weeks later, back home in New York, I
got home from working an early morning shift filling in
for the commentator Paul Harvey at ABC Radio. I was
just waking up from a tortured nap when the phone
rang and it's Lara. I'm downstairs. We're going to my
old law firms party at the Museum. I said. I
was exhausted. We're going, or I'll just stay here at
this payphone outside. Your plane's calling you all night. We went.
(51:14):
The next opportunity probably was going to be me on
the wrong end of a hostage drama. Turned out she
was not invited to her party. We're crashing it. I'm
going to drink heavily. Frankly. It was a great party.
I got to meet Hillary Clinton's mother and her brother.
And if you think the fascists are completely sincere about everything,
(51:34):
even their neuroses and their paranoia, no, Laura Ingram hugged
Hillary Clinton's mother and Hillary Clinton's brother. They seem to
be friends. Later we wound up meeting friends of her
in the Oak bar at the Plaza Hotel, where she
kept drinking. I was astonished after about her sixth Cosmopolitan
(51:56):
on top of everything she'd had at the party. She
began to droop her head, nodding like a bobblehead doll.
Her friend said, Okay, that's it. We'll take care of
the check. You take care of her. She had not
gotten a hotel room or anything. And if you've ever
heard of anybody who needed to be poured into a
cab because they were so drunk, you don't really know
(52:18):
what that means until you have to pour them into
a cab. Frankly, I wanted to put her in a
hotel somewhere, but the spectacle would have made the gossip pages.
She basically could not stand up, so I took her
to my apartment, put her into my bed, and I
went and slept on the couch at the far end
(52:38):
of the apartment, which is where I was hours later
in the morning when she woke me up because she
came parading through using my phone to call my assistant
to get a car sent to my address to take
her to the airport, and to make sure that everybody
in my office knew she had stayed overnight at my apartment.
And all I kept thinking was why didn't I follow
(53:01):
my instincts, My instincts said flee. I fleed. Not, of course,
if I had fled, I would have missed seeing the
telephone tree of the miniature right wing conspiracy, wouldn't I.
(53:30):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel, the
musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of
our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration in keyboards. Mister Ray
was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced
by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fify musical comments are
by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The
(53:51):
sports music is the Oberman theme from ESPN two, written
by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My
announcer today was my friend John Deane. Portions produced by
Ted and Kit. Kit just got fixed the other day,
so we can understand why he's growling if you listen carefully.
(54:13):
Every time Ted growled during the recording, he was in
an appropriate moment. I believe Ted understands what I'm saying.
Everything else was as ever. My fault. That's countdown for today,
just one thousand, twenty four days until the scheduled end
of his lane duck lame brain term unless Musks removes
him sooner where the actuarial tables doe. The next scheduled
(54:38):
countdown is Monday. As always, bulletins, as the news warrants,
remember impeach Trump. It will not work now, it will
win the Democrats the mid terms, if there are midterms.
Get off the stick, kids. Until next time, I'm Keith Olverman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
(55:16):
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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