THIS WAS THE WEEKEND ELON TRULY BECAME PRESIDENT - 12.23.24

SEASON 3 EPISODE 81: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: To paraphrase Van Jones and other panderers: This was the weekend Elon Musk truly became president.

It was also the weekend the other guy became Donald J. Trumpuppet.

The number of Republicans who defied Trump over the Continuing Resolution ranges, depending on your point of view, from 29 to ALL of them. Because they also voted by unanimous consent to bury Musk's fabricated controversy over the no-cost land transfer to the District of Columbia. Trump, for his part, is in a bigger hole now than he ever was during his presidency as the self-inflicted losses pile up:

The Gaetz Lack-of-Ethics Report may come out today. Other nominations are in trouble. One new one may be Alan Dershowitz and another may have padded his resume. The idea of Recess Appointments is forgotten. Trump has been taunted with the "Musk Is President" chatter. Some Republicans are taking it seriously and suggesting him for Speaker. And that in turn let Democrats emphasize Trump tanked the deal to benefit his interests with the Chinese Communist Party.

And Trump spoke yesterday for the first time in weeks and sounded drunk - which is a problem, because he doesn't drink. All while he is being pursued by his two worst enemies: himself - and Musk.

B-BLOCK (27:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Remember my suggestion that MSNBC's response to Trump's win and its own tanking ratings was to do nothing but double down and exploit the Liberal Media Monopoly the cowards at CNN, The Washington Post and others were giving them? Guess what! MSNBC's new boss wants... better relationships with Republicans. (40:56) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Martin Shrkeli emerged from his sewer to get owned on social media, New York sends a bill for damages to the family of a guy a police officer killed with an unmarked car, and are there secret Mark Burnett Trump Outtake Tapes? Don't ask Burnett - he now works for Trump.

C-BLOCK (50:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: You have your Christmas story, I have mine. Mine is about falling off a cliff near Malibu filming a commercial for fast-food chicken. Stick around for the post-closing theme guest appearance Easter eggs courtesy some of my dogs.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. To
repurpose the old phrase. This was the weekend when Elon

(00:28):
Musk truly became president. And it was also the weekend
when the marionette he's leading around by his orange nose
truly became Donald J. Trump Puppet. One month until the inauguration,
and Trump Puppet has already dug himself a bigger hole
than he was in at any point during his presidency.

(00:50):
And during his presidency they impeached the bastard twice. God
rest you married, gentlemen. Let nothing you dismay for Donald Trump.
Their savior to Elon Musk must pay. It is now
just five days. And I know that in the kaleidoscopic
dementia of trump Land, five days can be ancient history.

(01:12):
But still five days since Trump Puppet vowed to primary
quote any Republican unquote who voted for a clean continuing
resolution without an extension of the debt limit or later
elimination of the debt limit. After Musk and not Trump
Puppet blew up that bill. Two days later, one hundred

(01:33):
and seventy different Republicans voted for a clean continuing resolution
without an extension of the debt limit anyway. Thus there
are only two questions left. One which scam Musk is
actually running here. I'll get to that in a moment.
And two how many Republicans then gave Trump puppet the

(01:56):
finger all one hundred and seventy or thirty eight, which
was the number of no votes on the final bill
Friday night, or just twenty nine, because nine of the
thirty eight are lame ducks who vanished in two weeks.
Even if it's just twenty nine. Remember, Trump threatened primaries primaries,
and Trump wanted to shut down, and Trump insisted a
shutdown would be counted against Biden. They defied him anyway.

(02:22):
They defied him because when at the end of these
segments I refer to the lane duck presidency of Donald J.
Trump Puppet, I am not looking at it solely from
the pro democracy nor the pro Democrat point of view.
The Republicans, the smarter ones, know this is true. In

(02:42):
twenty seventeen, he held all of their futures in his
cartoon ready three fingered orange hands. But in twenty twenty five,
with each new day that dawns, his power over them
will diminish slightly. At first, and then with ever increasing
momentum each day more Duck, assuming at both extremes that

(03:07):
he stages no coup and that he actually lives until
the year twenty twenty nine, there will be fifteen Republicans
who will be sworn into the Senate next month who
will still be there when Trump goes. There was one
underreported twist of the knife here. Remember the story Musk

(03:29):
made up that the Continuing Resolution included the government spending
three billion dollars of your money to build a new
football stadium in DC. It was never close to the truth,
and the Republicans and the Democrats wound up telling Musk
and Trump puppet to shove it anyway after they passed

(03:50):
the cr that Musk thought he'd killed completely, that Trump
thought he had stopped. That Trump thought they would all
just salute and eat whatever he had done in their hats.
The Republicans went ahead with the original plan for the
federal government to give control of the land surrounding RFK Stadium,
which is so old the upper deck literally sways in

(04:13):
a stiff breeze, to give that land to the District
of Columbia. The Senate passed it by unanimous consent at
one in the morning on Saturday. There are terms in
the bill prohibiting any federal funds to build any stadium
on that land. It just gives the district the place
which was federal property, so that a Washington team can

(04:36):
build a stadium on if they make a deal. All
the Republican senators participated in the unanimous consent, and in
the House it was approved under the guidance and shepherding
of its top proponent there, Congressman James Comer. Any way
you cut this, fifteen Trump defiant Republicans or twenty nine

(05:00):
or thirty eight or one hundred and seventy or all
of them on the RFK stadium is after this weekend passed,
you can no longer spell the word Trump without at
least nine els. The first l that was the own
goal nomination disaster of Matt Gates, which as soon as
it already happened today after I recorded this, We'll turn

(05:24):
into the second disaster, when House Republicans defied Trump puppet
again and voted to release its lack of ethics investigation
into Gates as early as it already happened today after
I recorded this. Third, he's got the continuing controversy over
the Pete Hegseth nomination, and heg Seth continues to try

(05:45):
to negotiate whether or not he is legally an alcoholic.
Heg Seth raged against an NBC News report that quote,
I had a drinking problem at Fox or was drunk
on the air. Check the tape, Check every tape, find
the drunken. Whereupon the Midas Fellows found video of Hegzeth
drinking something and saying bottom's up live on Fox not

(06:08):
quite a year ago on New Year's Eve. And if
it wasn't champagne in the champagne bottle, well good for him.
He fooled everybody. Fourth It's not like the other Trump
nominees are sailing along, but of course Hegseth might just
be sailing. Gabbard remains in trouble. Fatel looks like he's
keeping an eye out for other shoes dropping, as if

(06:31):
he learned nothing from Gates. He is floating. Alan Dershowitz
to be Special Envoy to Monitor and combat Anti Semitism.
That requires that position requires Senate confirmation, and Senate confirmation
of Alan Dershowitz could bring up Dershowitz's uh dating history

(06:54):
Trump has also somewhere dug up ex Missouri congressman and
ex auctioneer Billy Long to be Commissioner of the Internal
Revenue Service. The website Pro Publica discovered something wrong with Long.
In his resume, he advertises himself as an expert who
can help you quote save forty percent on your taxes unquote,

(07:15):
because he is not just Billy Long, he is Billy
Long's CTBA Certified Tax and Business Advisor. This acronym turns
out to carry about as much weight as a PhD
from Wasamatta U as Pro public Rights quote. The designation
is offered by a small Florida firm, excel Empire, which

(07:38):
was established just two years ago and only requires attendance
at a three day seminar. Its upcoming session is advertised
at four nine hundred and ninety seven dollars. One of
its founders said this summer in a podcast that about
one hundred and thirty five people have earned the CTBA designation,
which the firm designed to help people without tax backgrounds

(08:02):
to become tax advisors. Billy Long CTBA, which has the
C N the A from CYA in it. The fifth
Trump l remember the whole Trump plan to get around
these pesky possible problems of you know, sex with children

(08:24):
and alcoholism and resume padding past praise of Putin and
Assad and generalized fascism and stupidity. The way he had
to get around all that was to avoid Senate hearings
for these appointees requiring confirmation through the expediency of recess appointments.
Haven't heard that in a while, have you? The Senate

(08:46):
is already scheduling the confirmation hearings. Fifteen Republican senators who
will be there when you are gone. Trump is a
lot of senators. Sixth that landslide and mandate he keeps
claiming he won in November, the number gets smaller every week.

(09:06):
He won based on about two hundred and twenty five
thousand total votes in the swing states, and his national
margin is at last check at just one point four
to seven percent. The irony, of course, here, is that
if he just shut up about it, it would have
looked like a landslide and a mandate, even if he'd
only won by one vote, because he was the first

(09:28):
Republican not named Bush to win the popular vote since
nineteen eighty four. Add to these the new Els number seven,
the disastrous and now unshakable image that Musk is president
and Trump puppet is just one of his many impotent employees.
This is a self own of biblical proportions. Musk's primary

(09:51):
skill is making it whatever it is about Musk. His
secondary skill is making other people's work look like it
was something he did. His tertiary skill is making people
mistakenly believe he is loved, especially among the utes. Well
hell beloved are billionaires, and especially CEOs at the moment.

(10:14):
Oddly enough, media companies owned by billionaires and run by
CEOs did not give this next story a lot of play.
But Emerson polled on the shooting of the insurance boss
Brian Thompson around the corner from me and the number
of Americans aged eighteen to twenty nine who found his
assassination acceptable or somewhat acceptable was forty one percent, four

(10:43):
out of ten adults under the age of thirty, and
their strongest reaction to this was MEH, this might be
a poor time for a guy who became famous as
a businessman pirate to link himself to another businessman pirate.

(11:03):
And the number I think and the poll is low
in part because it is a majority of those with
an opinion, forty one percent said acceptable or somewhat acceptable.
Another forty percent of the kiddos found it unacceptable, which
means that the number who found it acceptable, somewhat acceptable,
or did not have an opinion totals to sixty percent.

(11:24):
Sixty percent. Six out of ten young Americans will not
say it was unacceptable to shoot the boss of the
healthcare company, and even that number is probably low. I
think it's a reasonable guess. I don't know about you,
but I would be reluctant to tell a polster, or
to tell almost anybody that any murder was acceptable. It's

(11:48):
not just that forty one percent of people under thirty
say this was acceptable or somewhat acceptable. Once that they
set it out loud, and maybe even more startling from
Musk and Trump puppet, is that the overall number of
those of all ages in this poll who found it
not acceptable was sixty eight percent. I think the word

(12:11):
just is applicable here, just sixty eight percent. That is
three to ten who responded sure or whatever or sure whatever.
That's not good for CEOs. The whole connection to Musk
was bad enough that Trump went in front of the

(12:32):
Hitler youuth convention yesterday in Arizona. And by the way,
twelve percent of young Republicans found the Thompson murder quote
acceptable unquote. It's bad enough this Trump Musk linkage that
developed over the weekend President Musk that Trump twice tried
to make a joke about Musk being the real president,

(12:53):
and the first time and listen for this, the response
from the audience of young Republicans was crickets, No, he's not.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Gonna be president. I can't tell you, and I'm safe.
You know why he can't be He wasn't born in
this country.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
He almost said, please clap, which leads us to Trump's
eighth l. Did you hear anything else from that speech
in Arizona yesterday? I mean, apart from the content I
will play for you next, which is Trump doubling down
on the anti vax crusade. Even sideshow Bob Kennedy himself
has been smart enough to try to tamp down then

(13:36):
Trump inadvertently implying that Kennedy himself is autistic. Just listen
to Trump talk. The election was forty nine days ago.
He has barely left marri Lago since, let alone kept
up the pace of the campaign. Why is he slurring
his words? Why are the non slurred words thick with effort?

(14:00):
Why does he sound this bad? And to be our
next Secretary of Health and Human Services?

Speaker 2 (14:11):
I decided, look, something's going on here. When you look
at like autism from twenty five years ago and you
look at it now, something's going on. And I nominated
Robert F.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
Kennedy In Arizona, Trump, I think that's Trump doesn't sound
like Trump. In Arizona, Trump again floated his latest possible war.
First it was invading Mexico, then it was annext in Canada.
Now it is reclaiming the Panama Canal from Panama because
he still thinks it's nineteen seventy seven or maybe nineteen

(14:47):
oh seven when most Americans still knew what the Panama
Canal was. But the Panama Canal where the biggest beef
seems to be that there are a couple of Hong
Kong based companies managing the ports at either end or
could there be war? Oh wait, there's always more again
pro Publica re upping over the weekend. It's article from

(15:10):
June third, twenty nineteen, and as explanation, the headline will
suffice quote Trump companies accused of tax evasion in Panama.
In the latest chapter in ongoing litigation, the private equity
fund that bought what used to be called the Trump
Ocean Club claims the Trump entities pocketed money that should

(15:33):
have gone to the Panamanian government. Revenge is a dish
which people of taste prefer to eat cold, but Trump
has no taste. And of course, thanks to Trump's strain
of stepped upon rakes and humiliating L's and self demotions

(15:56):
to Musk's assistant, what Trump is eating right now, that's
not revenge, hsh All of which brings us back to

(16:31):
what the hell Musk was doing in the middle of this.
Did you see his political skill and gifts play out
over the weekend? No? I didn't, either nobody did. Musk
made a fool of himself, and whether he or Trump
puppet realize it now, sooner rather than later, Trump will realize.
We'll see that light bulb flicker slowly on above his hair,

(16:57):
just what a power hungry lunatic Musk really is, and
how wherever Trump is at the moment, there is only
room for one power hungry lunatic. Democratic representatives Rose Delaro
and Jim McGovern explained why Musk waded into this what
turned out to be quicksand you need some help over there, Elon, Sorry,

(17:23):
my hands are busy. As McGovern wrote, the original funding
bill that he killed, included that's called an outbound investment provision,
which would limit and screen US money flowing to China.
That would have made it easier to keep cutting edge
AI and quantum computing tech, as well as jobs in America.

(17:43):
But Elon had a problem. His second largest market is China.
He's building huge factories there. His bottom line depends on
staying in China's good graces. He wants to build an
AI data center there too, which could endanger US security.
He's been bending over backwards to ingratiate himself with Chinese leaders.
So what did Elon doanked the whole thing, telling Trump

(18:07):
to oppose it and threatening to primary anyone who voted yes,
And to cover his tracks, he claimed it was about spending.
What did Trump get out of all this? Nothing? But
President Musk got what he wanted, the ability to sell
out the US so he could make money in China.
End quote. What Congressman Deloro, the top dem On appropriations

(18:33):
did was to i believe be the first to call
him President Musk and to go on to write that
Musk might have tanked the bill to protect quote extensive
investments in China in key sectors and his personal ties
with Chinese Communist Party leadership, and calls into question the
real reason for Musk's opposition to the original funding deal. Well,

(18:54):
Musk went crazier than he would have if the Ketaman
was late. He replied that Deloro quote needs to be
expelled from Congress, which is not a thing. Maybe it
is in South Africa. In Lan, Musk got into and
lost a fight with an older congresswoman who dyes her

(19:16):
hair purple and then wears green eyeglasses. She managed to
pin the president tag on the donkey and tie him
to China and make Trump doubt him and make Maga
wonder what Musk's connections to China really are. Then, Senator

(19:39):
Mark Wayne Mullen, come on, Mark or Wayne, just choose one, goober.
Senator Mark Kwaine Mullen, who clearly did not get the
memo that the Trump Musk partnership had nearly killed them all.
Senator Mark Kwayne Mullen went on Fox yesterday, fury is
that Democrats were complaining about Musk because he was just

(20:02):
a businessman. I didn't say no Democrats complaining about the
businesses of Joe and Hunter Biden. I'm wondering if anybody
has yet told Mark Quain that he just compared Musk
and the Bidens as businessmen. Mark Quain, if your internet

(20:25):
doesn't work today, you know what happened. And if that
still ain't enough. A weekend in which Trump hurt himself
and Musk hurt himself, Musk also began the weekend tying
himself to German neo Nazis. On Friday, Musk, who has

(20:45):
already tried to shove the furor out of the American
picture and who's already gotten into bed with England's lizard person,
fascist Nigel Farage, reposted a video from a German neo Nazi,
and Musk added, only the AfD can save Germany. The
AfD is the anti immigrant political party there, one of

(21:07):
the worst in Europe, if not the whole world, that
has been designated a suspected extremist organization by the German judiciary,
whose own leader quit two years ago because the AfD
had gotten a little two third reichi even for his tastes.
This is not the first time Musk I sympathized with

(21:28):
the AfD, and face it. If you're German and you're
called neo Nazis, you can probably drop the neo good
weekend for President Musk. I suspect the Trump puppet will
figuratively off him and soon. But of course not before

(21:49):
a peck of Republicans made the mistake of standing way
too close to Musk's horse on the charge Rand Paul
said Musk should be the new Speaker of the House,
and Marjorie Taylor Green rolled it along into the valley
of death along with Senator love thy neighbor, and now

(22:09):
they have both found out what happens when you stand
too close to the back of a horse. Incidentally, I
completely endorse making Musk Speaker of the House. First, just
what the one vote majority Republicans need in the House,
a strung out political amateur running their show. Secondly, sure

(22:31):
make him the speaker. Then the Republicans will do to
him what they always do to their speakers, torture him
for a while, and then vote him out in six months.
Also of interest here, remember my piece from last week
and the expansion of it that I did hear on
the podcast about how if MSNBC has any vision they

(22:54):
can just stay the course whether the storm, and what
with the Washington Post and Twitter and CNN and the
LA Times and almost everybody else completely abandoning news for
people who like democracy, MSNBC could have a monopoly in
the entire field all forms of news media, just like

(23:15):
we did back when I breathed life into the network
in two thousand and four. In two thousand and five,
they could own the entirety of the resistance if they
just had a little vision. They don't have a little vision.
The new MSNBC boss now says he wants to be
on better terms with Republicans. Sir, the only terms the

(23:37):
Republicans want from MSNBC are surrender terms.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
That's next.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman. Post
scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
still ahead of course, worse persons And if you're wondering
why that rumored real of Trump Apprentice terrible outtakes has

(24:08):
never been leached by the producer, you can stop wondering.
Just call him almost ambassador producer. Next, this is the
new Countdown podcast. And these are the places where there's
news dateline Secaucus, New Jersey. I know MSNBC is not

(24:30):
still in Secaucus, New Jersey. We moved out in two
thousand and seven. I helped to pack. But it's useful
to remember its roots, and its roots are next to
the London Fog Factory discount warehouse, and they lived down
to that every damn year. A week ago I wrote
for Variety and expanded upon it here that after Trump

(24:51):
won an MSNBC's audience cratered, and its Comcast owners wanted
to get so much distance from it they spun it
off into a new company that they didn't even bother
to give a name to, and are still referring to
as spin Co. That there was an easy answer to
the seemingly existential question, what does MSNBC do now? Well,

(25:12):
I said, do nothing. Oh fire the Morning Joe team
of Mika Brazhinski and her husband Neville Chamberlain. You can't
have appeasers on the air. For that matter, you can't
have untalented, gutless, disloyal, hated appeasers. Not if you're going
to take the god given business gift of a monopoly

(25:33):
for anti Trump, anti dictatorship, pro democracy coverage for the
forty eight point six percent of the country that voted
against him. I mean the Washington Post went fascist. The
New York Times is both siding itself into complicit silence.
CNN is now the Scott Jennings network. Elon Musk spent

(25:54):
forty four billion to turn Twitter into pro Nazi, pro Russia,
pro China, pro Trump dribble. The field is empty except
for all the money that is still sitting there, more
money than all of the right wing news outlets can
make combined. Grab it. It's all yours. They're not going

(26:16):
to grab it. No sooner had my Variety article published
before the two good media reporters out there, Lachland Cartwright
and Oliver Darcy, had each published source stories indicating that
Comcast stuffed suit Mark Lazarus, now in charge of spin
Co and thus in charge of MSNBC, was already ready

(26:36):
to join Joe Scarborough and reciting the I for one
welcome our insect overlords gag from the Simpsons. Cartwright reported that, no,
Lazarus is not going to hire this bozo Jennings to
co anchor with matdow nor shut down the other liberal
albeit sleepy primetime shows. He has merely told people that

(26:57):
the public perception of MSNBC is a place where Republicans
can't get a fair shake needs to be changed. One
who the f thinks Republicans need a fair shake. They're
trying to overthrow representative government in this country. We don't
give them a fair shake. We chase them out. Also,
I guess mister Lazarus never saw Joe and Mika pimping

(27:20):
for Trump in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen. That was
enough of a fair shake to last couple centuries. And
he didn't see them last month when they announced they'd
been down to Mary Lago to help the Trump puppet hide.
I don't know boxes of top secret documents in his
toilet or whatever they were doing down there, I forget, honestly, anyway.

(27:42):
Oliver Darcy, in his newsletter Status went into a little
bit more detail. He writes, quote Lazarus would like MSNBC
to be on better terms with Republicans and has indicated
to people in private conversations over the past month that
he would like the network to incorporate more GOP voices
on its air. I know the word is incorporate, that

(28:03):
we're talking about a corporate so incorporate sounded better. You know,
I've heard that phrasing before. Work to incorporate more geopple.
When NBC put new producers on my show in twenty ten,
they told me I should incorporate more GOP voices, like,
you know, maybe giving equal time to them after each

(28:25):
of my special comments. Or in twenty fifteen, when Andy
Lack of NBC asked me to return to MSNBC only
he wanted me to do a nightly show without any
commentaries and to have a conservative co host, you know,
no comments, no bomb throwing, as Lack put it. But
back to today, nearly a decade later, and to again

(28:47):
quote Darcy in free wheeling conversations, the spin co bosses
indicated to people that it does not want bomb throwing
from hosts and commentators, which might unnecessarily alienate Republicans and
spawn bad press. I'm told. While Primetime is made up
of progressive opinion programming, the thinking is that the more

(29:08):
news oriented day side lineup could perhaps incorporate more conservative
voices into the mix. I don't fully understand this. Scarborough
and Katie Turr aren't conservative enough. Scarborough is on for
four goddamned hours a day. They are at MSNBC right

(29:28):
now trying to kill off the eleven PM show, and
that would mean an eight o'clock show, a nine o'clock show,
and a ten o'clock show, which would mean there would
not be four hours of liberal hosts on MSNBC, but
there would be four hours of Scarborough and two more
of terr To resume mister Darcy quote. Lazarus's view seems

(29:49):
to be that the network should welcome all sorts of
voices with different perspectives while still maintaining a liberal bent
amongst talent, so as not to alienate the channel's core viewership.
We're gonna have all sorts of voices. You're gonna have
this guy, Luigi Mangione, come on, talk about corporate business.

(30:12):
If you want all sorts of voices with different perspectives,
how about a guy who thinks we should kill all
of them. Well, that's what MAGA is. Only substitute democracy
for corporations in that equation. Back to the article, executives
like Lazarus really want more MAGA friendly voices on the air.
There are already times when MSNBC programs will successfully book

(30:36):
MAGA figures for interviews aary Melber has hosted a number
of such people over the year, including Peter Navarro and
Steven Miller. But Melbur thoroughly prepares for such conversations and
in a respectful manner interrogates their positions, not allowing them
to get away with spreading falsehoods on his air. I
should note as an aside, that those programs, no matter
how well done Melbur does, them, diminish MSNBC's reputation among

(31:00):
its own viewership. Those shows are not more highly rated
than the average MSNBC show. They're lower rated, and they
therefore affect as lead ins the entirety of the MSNBC
primetime lineup. So if somebody is sitting there at Spenco
thinking they're going to make more money or as much
money in some way by doing this, they obviously have

(31:20):
not even looked at the data that is presented to them.
And the data is like in three digit totals, it's
not complicated math. Let's see one hundred and ten thousand
viewers versus two hundred and ten thousand viewers, which is more.
Why was it more? Back to Darcy, it's unlikely that

(31:41):
when Lazarus talks of inviting more Republicans on the air,
that he has that style of no holds bar confrontational
interviews in mind. Instead, he's likely thinking of a model
similar to CNBC's The Business news channel, sister to MSNBC,
regularly features a mix of Republican and Democratic lawmakers on
the air. CNBC is a conservative channel. In fact, there

(32:03):
are moments at which CNBC is a fascist money grubbing channel.
When Trump went to the New York Stock Exchange last week,
was it Jim Kramer wet his pants with excitement? This
is a network that has Joe Kernan on every day.
Joe Kernan, who slammed Frank Lunch during the campaign for
criticizing Trump over the Haitians eating pets lie that Trump

(32:27):
ran on, Kernin defended Trump lying about that, and by
the way, Kernin versus Lunz two pays at twenty paces quote.
As Lazarus thinks about how he would like to tweak
MSNBC's programming, he would be wise to think twice about
meddling too much. While MSNBC is facing ratings lows post elections,

(32:50):
the strategy has largely led to strong viewership numbers over
the years, You're welcome. In contrast, CNN's softening of its
Trump coverage and its integration of dishonest MAGA voices into
its programming under Warner Bros. Discovery boss David zas Lav
and by the way, this would be Zazz and laz

(33:11):
running these two networks has alienated viewers. Instead of seeing
audience gains, CNN has seen its audience shrink. I have
to commend Oliver Darcy, who I met once. We had
a very nice lunch and long conversation, and he's very
polite and he's very circumspected. What he has said is
something I would say, only I would phrase it. You moron,

(33:32):
You're going to drive away everybody who watches and not
attract anybody who doesn't watch. But back to the more
dignified Oliver Darcy, if Lazarus ends up tampering with the
coverage too much, he very much risks an outcome like
that For MSNBC, the fanciful notion that Republicans will switch
over from Fox News if only other channels would cater
more to them is never born out in reality, no

(33:53):
matter how much the executive class might wish it. So
what is more likely to happen is loyal viewers will
feel betrayed and turn off the channel. In other words,
not only would it be editorially misguided for Lazarus to
be too heavy handed in pushing Republicans on MSNBC's air,
but such a move could also adversely impact the financials
of the crown jewel of his cable empire. Once again,

(34:15):
you're welcome, and that would simply be bad for business.
Darcy is right, of course, I am right. Of course
it's a monopoly. But even Oliver Darcy misses the real point.
Back in two thousand and nine, when we only profited
about two hundred and fifty million a year after losing

(34:38):
something like that every year for the first ten years
of the network's existence, the chairman of GE was still
ready to shunt the network off. And I mean in
the middle of the words I was saying, because Fox
had retaliated against me by criticizing him personally, and his mommy,
the Bill O'Reilly fan called him up and yelled at him.

(35:01):
And what was two hundred and fifty million in profits
to the sixth the biggest corporation in the world at
its chairman A Mama's Boy. Now, the MSNBC profit today
is closer to a billion a year, and sure that
seems like a lot. But in the year ending September thirtieth,
the parent corporation, Comcast, reported a gross profit of forty

(35:23):
five billion, two hundred and fifty four million. Would Comcast
like to keep the one billion that MSNBC makes for it?
Of course it would. Would it miss that one billion?
Of course it wouldn't. Would it be happy to buy
itself a quiet stalemate with Trump and the fascists and
a dictatorship at a cost of a watered down MSNBC

(35:44):
making a profit of only half a billion or even less,
or I don't know, breaking even on the assumption that
the old Coot Alderman is right and MSNBC will still
be a liberal monopoly even if it isn't that liberal,
even if Scarborough is pumping and pimping Trump every day.
I mean, if half the audience stays, that's a win

(36:07):
or at least a draw, isn't it. Of course democracy
dies in draws, and the feasibility of MSNVS depends on
you watching it. So if they do this, if they
let Mark Lazarus water the product down or drown it,

(36:29):
which is the true watering down. The solution is simple,
do what you did when CNN went fascist, Stop watching
the crap, listen to I don't know news podcasts. I'm
not suggesting any particular news podcasts. Mind you still ahead

(37:11):
of us on countdown For each and every one of us,
this time of year summons a cherished and gauzed covered memory,
happy reunionss, the wonder of childhood, the joy of giving,
or in my case, falling off a goddamned cliff in Malibu,

(37:38):
California while you are filming a fast food commercial for
Chicken pro tip. If they ever ask you, can you
climb that rock out cropping while wearing brand new goddamn
Fosheim shoes, Tell them no, no, no, Keith just avoids

(37:58):
breaking his neck again. Or a Christmas story. Next in Things,
I Promise not to hell first, Believe it or not,
there's still more new idiots to talk about. The daily
roundup of the miss grants, morons and done in Krug
effect specimens who constitute today's other worse persons in the
world therons worse. You remember Martin Screlly. He's the hedge

(38:26):
fun guy and noted pine Cone the leading example of
what happens when you see a trump or a musk
coming and you stop him in time. Screlley was the
asshole who, for his firm, obtained the manufacturing license for
the drug darra prim and anti aids and anti parasitic
drug used to treat fungus caused pneumonia. He raised the

(38:46):
price to insurance companies of darraprim from thirteen dollars and
fifty cents a pill to seven hundred and fifty dollars
a pill. It was an increase of fifty six times
the price. He did this because he could. There were, however,
other things he could not do well, sir. They indicted
him on two federal counts of securities fraud. Two years

(39:07):
later he was sentenced to seven years in prison a
find of more than seven million, and then he lost
a civil case over daraprim sixty five million more in damages.
They let him out two years early, supposedly for good behavior,
but probably because they just couldn't stand him in there
anymore so. The other day the Virginia Congress and Don

(39:27):
Bayer tweeted about the musk disaster. The richest man in
the world says he wants to shut down the government,
forcing millions of American workers, including our troops, to go
without pay through the holidays. Republicans are following his orders.
This is insane, to which Martin Screlley, who has apparently
had his mobile devices returned to him after his time

(39:50):
in the clink, Martin Screlley writes, we can vote you
out too. Don't worry baebay b e b e bae bee,
as many many people replied, s is a convicted fellow.
How can he vote? Who's this WII? While by statute,
his voting rights are supposed to be restored upon release

(40:11):
from prison in Pennsylvania, and he's reportedly living in New
York and Representative Bayer serves Virginia, so who is this
wi baby? On the other hand, if you were to
suffer a paper cut while waiting to vote and you
needed a band aid, mister Shrelley before going into cast
that vote, you would be charged by anybody who knew

(40:33):
you two billion dollars for that band aid. So maybe
not Babey the runner up worser. He was such a
bad man that we learned how to pronounce that stupid
name of his. The worse, sir, You're good Old City
of New York Eric chosen by god Adams Mayor. The
independent news site The City, and other news outlets here

(40:56):
report that on May twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, Samuel
Williams was riding his motorbike on the University Heights Bridge
that connects Manhattan and the Bronx. Suddenly, a car swerved
in front of him. Williams, thirty six, and the father
of a six year old daughter, was thrown from the bike.
He died a day later. Turns out the car that

(41:18):
killed him was an unmarked New York Police vehicle involved
in a police pursuit. Such vehicles have killed about a
dozen New Yorkers in the last two years. This was
on Memorial Day twenty twenty three. By the fourth of July,
the family Williams left behind received the following letter from
the city on behalf of our eleven billion dollar police department.

(41:38):
Addressed to the late mister Williams. It read, quote, our
records indicate that your vehicle damaged city property on the
above date. City of New York is seeking reimbursement for
these damages. The city sent them a bill for three
thousand four hundred and twenty nine dollars and twenty three
cents for killing Dad, just like in the Terry Gilliam

(42:04):
movie Brazil Bill, where the dictatorship identifies the wrong man,
kidnaps him, tortures and kills him, then sends his widow
a bill for its services. Only this is run by
Eric Adams, not by Terry Gilliam. The city's comptroller found
out about this from news reports. He's outraged. He's written
the Williams family a letter of apology. He's withdrawn the

(42:26):
city's demand for money. He said the police did notify
his office of the damage, but never that the man
on the bike caused the damaged by being killed by
an NYPD officer, because that's not what the NYPD does.
Waiting for the statement of outrage from the NYPD Detectives
Union about how not paying this bill makes them look bad.

(42:48):
Eleven billion dollars a year, we in New York pay
for these guys, and they do a nice slow motion
perp walk and think they're good at it. For twenty
three years after nine to eleven, during which twenty three
New York Police officers were killed. On nine to eleven,
all the first line responders in this city have been
revered and lionized and thanked and in recent years fetishized.

(43:13):
They've gotten anything they've wanted in terms of the budget,
until we're paying eleven billion dollars for a police department
that could not cover a stolen manhole cover, and they
have burned through all of that goodwill. It is nineteen
seventy again in New York City. Eric Adams mayor, but

(43:34):
the winner the worst television producer Mark Burnett. You may
remember him from such hits as having helped to ruin television,
but more likely you'll remember him and his association with
Trump and the stories that circulated before the twenty sixteen
and twenty twenty elections, though less before this pass one
that as the boss of Trump's old show, The Apprentice,

(43:55):
it was he Mark Burnett, who had access to all
the outtakes in which Trump may have said things that
would have alienated even his most loyal rabbity insane supporters,
or which may have included something very untoward and long
rumored or not, Tom Arnold seemed to think or was

(44:16):
the correct answer. The tapes might have been erased, they
might have been lost, They might have been exculpatory. If
it's Trump, they might have been really boring and just
him talking about himself. Or quote statement from President Donald J.
Trump elon Musk Proprietor. It is my great honor to
appoint Mark Burnett as the Special Envoy to the United Kingdom.

(44:41):
With a distinguished career in television production and business, Mark Bramsey,
a nick blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition, to
this important role. I'm trying to read it as Trump
and says. Mark is known for creating and producing some
of the biggest shows in television history, including Survivor, Shark Tank,

(45:02):
The Voice, and most notably The Apprentice. He is the
former chairman of MGM, and he has won thirteen Emmy Awards.
Mark Burnett's Special Envoy and keeper of the Trump Flame
and maybe the maybe the apocryphal Trump tape. Wait a minute,

(45:24):
why did Trump appoint him to a post with that
word in it? Mark Burnett n boy Today's worst person?

Speaker 2 (45:41):
Why that of all words?

Speaker 1 (45:55):
To the number one story on the Countdown and my
favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
And it was this time of year in nineteen ninety
six when my agent called me at ESPN. There's an
ad agency in Santa Monica. They just called me, would
you like to do two commercials for Boston Market? I answered,
with profound indifference, okay, would you like to do two

(46:15):
commercials for Boston Market for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
I believe my next words were, well, I can't do
them today, but sure. They faxed me the scripts. They're
actually pretty funny, very well done. I think you like them.
I believe my next next words were, if I don't
have to kill anybody in them, call them back and
say yes and get the money. Since the idea was

(46:39):
these ads would run on sports telecasts, most of them
on ESPN. My yes got back to management at ESPN
pretty quickly. You can't do these, one of the executives explained, dismissively.
We don't let anybody do commercials. I laughed. Every one
of us has done the this is sports center commercials.
Some of us have written that this is sports center commercials.

(47:00):
You don't even give us days off for making them,
let alone give us money. This is money I don't
have to ask you for. The executive shook his head.
Those aren't commercials. Those are promotional announcements. They're in your contract.
Nobody here does commercials, I said. Chris Berman has done
a beer commercial in three out of the last five
Super Bowls. My commercial is just for food. Well, he's Berman,

(47:25):
I pointed out. I went to high school with him,
and I was the star of their most popular program,
a little thing called Sports Center. TV guy had just
named us one of the top ten shows on TV
shows not sports shows usin Seinfeld. Sorry, well, now I
got a little angry, which never happened to me at ESPN,
and I went to my ace in the hole. My

(47:47):
contract expires in like ten months, and you know I
intend to leave. And during those ten months, you're going
to pay me about two hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
So Boston Market is going to pay me two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars for two days work instead of
ten months work. Plus they're going to take me out
for class to LA for a couple of days, and

(48:07):
they're probably gonna do some radio spots and I'll make
another twenty five grant. So you're giving me a choice,
make say two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars in
like five days for them, or make two hundred and
sixty thousand dollars here between now and next September, when
I'm planning and leaving. Anyway, if you make me choose
between those two, which do you expect me to choose?

(48:30):
The executive coughed, we'll get back to you. An hour later.
He got back to me by phone. Okay, we see
your point, but there's still two problems. We can't just
let everybody do commercials. I said, well, you know, why
don't you just let anybody who went to the high
school that Berman and I went to do commercials. He
did not laugh at that. Well, how about only your
regular weekday sports center anchors get to do commercials? There

(48:53):
was a grunt and a maybe. Then we got to
the gist of the real problem. Here's the real problem.
People on your show. They'll be resentful. I said, Why
will they be resentful? Because the production assistants are expecting
that they're going to get their own commercials too. And
I said, how about this, the day I'm out there

(49:14):
actually shooting the commercial, I will get Boston Market to
like cater dinner for the show staff, even if I
have to pay for it myself. There was a long silence.
Would management be included in that? And can we get
all the side dishes too? I swear to God so off.

(49:34):
I flew at the beginning of December, during a winter
that had gone frigid in October in Bristol, Connecticut, and
the next thing I knew, I was on the beach
in Malibu at Leo Correo State Park. The crew is
complaining because it is raining lightly and only about fifty
five degrees. To me, fresh from the hinterlands and having

(49:56):
not been back to la since I had moved out
in nineteen ninety two, It's like I'm in Tahiti. And
my agent was right. The scripts were funny and original.
They were ascend of the old Calvin Kleine obsession perfume commercials.
There are two extremely thin models and they are filmed
writhing in frustration on the beach on the big rock

(50:16):
outcroppings at Leo Correo State Park. She is supposed to say, emptiness,
How can I fill this empty void of emptiness? They
are in black and white, but I emerge from behind
a rock or wherever I'm in color. They are in
black and white, and I say when they say, don't
know what to do about this emptiness? I say, eat something.

(50:40):
I then sell the sandwich. Then it cuts to a
shot of me walking them down the beach with my
arm over each of their shoulders, telling them eating is
a good thing, and who's wearing cologne or who likes
sports or other stupid things like that. For a quarter
of a million dollars, Well, we start this at eight am,
and the producer and the director John say to me

(51:02):
and the two models and the crew, look, this rain
is just going to get heavier as the day goes on.
So what we want to do is not take a
break for lunch. We'll just shoot until like two pm,
and then you can have lunch, or you can take
your lunch with you, and you'll all get paid for
a full day. And everybody agrees. The actress agrees, and
she swears as she agrees. The actress is named Una.

(51:22):
Una is from Chicago, and it will soon prove Una
swears more than a long shoreman. This blanking colt can
blank my blanking blank. To be fair, Una and the
guy are dressed in Calvin Klein rags, and they are
there and they are from there, and they are freezing
while I am wearing a production company brand new suit

(51:45):
and shoes, and to me it feels like it's Tahiti.
We take a couple of hours where we do all
the shots where I emerge from behind the rocks, or
go around the rocks, or over the rocks, or I
look over the rocks, and the director finally says, okay,
we got five good options. Let's set up for the
walk down the beach with your arms around each other's show.

(52:06):
By now it's noon or twelve thirty And as they
move the cameras and the rain starts to move from
a mist to like a light rain, two prop guys
bring out rakes. Then I'm sitting with the crew and
I've been asking them questions all morning in between takes
about how this is all being arranged and made and lit.
And I say, rakes, what do you need rakes for

(52:28):
on a commercial? And they say you'll see. And then
each time me and Una and the guy walk down
the beach and the director says cut, we go back
to the starting point. Now out come two stage hands
with rakes and they rake the sand on the beach smooth,
and I say, oh, footprints. So each time I walk

(52:50):
down this damp beach with the rain just a little
harder than it was the take before, in my brand
new dress shoes. What I'm basically doing is polishing the
soles of these brand new shoes on damp sand. I mean,
by the time the director John says, we are done,
and these soles of these shoes are so shiny. I
could go ice skating in these shoes. And John comes

(53:12):
over and he says, listen, we got another half an hour.
Can we go back and try a new way for
you to appear on the rocks? I mean, can you
climb rocks at all? And I say, yeah, actually, I'm
surprisingly good at it. You wouldn't think so, but I
can climb rocks. And he points to one rock out
cropping on the beach. Maybe it's eighteen twenty feet high,
and he says, try to climb up that and go

(53:33):
as high as you can. If there's nothing that'll support you,
we'll forget it. And I try, and sure enough, I
get up near the top and there is a perfect
little shelf in the rock that I can comfortably stand on.
And the director points the camera up and he says, oh, damn,
the angle's too tough. I can't swing the camera down
fast enough for when you say eat something, so I
refocus on the models. It won't work. Is there anything

(53:55):
lower on the rock where you could stand? Can you
come down at all? And I said, I think so,
I think I can come down a little bit. Well,
little did I know? Sure enough, maybe nine ten feet
from the beach, up in the sky, there is another
little foothold on this rock outcropping. It is not big

(54:17):
enough for me to put both my feet on it.
But I say, if you don't mind me holding onto
the rock as I say eat something, I can do
it from here. And the director says, okay, let's try it.
And I climb down the rock and he's moving the
camera and I put my left foot on this flat
part which is nine or ten feet up from the beach,
and for a couple of seconds everything is fine. I'm good.

(54:39):
And that's when I feel that my left shoe, my
brand new left shoe, straight from the floor, shine catalog,
bright and shiny and now having been polished by four
hours of walking up and down on a wet beach,
complete with two guys there to rake the beach and
make sure it is as shiny as it possibly can

(55:00):
be my left shoe slipperier than and a diamond is
now moving of its own accord. I'm holding, I'm doing
a good rock climbing job, but the shoe, the shoe
is not holding. Hey, I say, with some alarm, I'm
about to fall off. I hit the sand no more

(55:24):
than five seconds later. So that's about a sixteen foot
drop from my head to the beach. And for weeks,
for years still to this day, it has amazed me
more than anything else that happened. It has amazed me
how much went through my mind before I crashed. In fact,
before I actually fell, I know, I did a quick

(55:46):
height calculation. Yeah, fifteen sixteen feet. I recognized that the
outcropping was so vertical that I was unlikely to hit
any of the rock on the way down. But just
the same I remember that the rocks continued under the sand. See.
I took two years of geology, and this was going
to be a hard landing. More amazingly than all that,

(56:08):
though I had taken Judo as a kid, I hated
every minute of Judo nineteen sixty five, nineteen sixty six,
so twenty six and twenty seven years before we shot
this commercial. I was in the studio, the Judo Studio
in White Plains, New York, the day of the nineteen

(56:29):
sixty five Northeast blackout, and the only happy memory of
the entire judo experience I had was one hour instructor
Bob Durocher locked us in the dojo that had been
converted from a store that had a front door that
was set in several feet from the street so they
could put display cases up. And now it's pitch black.

(56:49):
So he went out and got his Volkswagen Carmen Gia,
drove it up over the sidewalk into that set in
entryway of this converted storefront. He put his high beams on.
He flooded the dojo with enough light that we kids
could change out of our judo stuff back into our
regular clothes and wait for our parents to come get us.
He did a great job. I didn't like the judo

(57:12):
so much, but his blackout operations practice was superb. So now,
with all of this having gone through my head, in
a second, I began to fall, and everything else from
that year of once a week judo classes comes back
to me. Relax. As you drop, the more of your
body that hits the less you'll get hurt. Hands protect

(57:33):
the head drop like a sack of sand. I did
not hit the sand, per se. I kind of splattered
on my left side swap as I rolled over onto
my back and took a breath and sat up. Of
all people, Una was the first to race over to me.
You want some blank and tea? I said, no, thanks,

(57:56):
let me see if I'm dead. The grips tried to
help me to my feet, but I felt some very
sharp pain, which suggested we should slow down. The problem was, though,
even if I needed an ambulance, it was no way
to get one down to where we were shooting. As
that rock out cropping that I had just fallen from suggested,
I like to call it a cliff every now and again.

(58:17):
Leo Corrio State Park had a real cliff in it
and a flight of stairs, I mean one hundred steps
two hundred steps up to the Pacific Coast Highway and
a park. Sure enough, I was able to stand, but
I couldn't move easily. Everything hurt. So the two biggest
members of the crew let me drape my arms over
their shoulders exactly the way I had draped my arms

(58:40):
over their shoulders of the models during the beach shot.
I stopped for a second. Hey, Ona, you sure you
don't want to Frankin carry me up the stairs, she said,
with genuine sincerity. Now that's blank and funny. Seemed to
me like it took about a month to get up

(59:01):
those stairs. I assumed there would be an ambulance waiting
by this point. Instead there was a park ranger. This
is a state park. I have to see you first,
then I have to call the fire department. I said, well,
this pain on my side here, this feels like fire,
but I don't think it's actually fire. He called the
fire department. They showed up, They assessed me. They called
the ambulance. At some point, probably when I was being

(59:25):
half dragged up the steps, something happened on the impact side.
If I now tried to lower my left arm from
way above my head, I got severe shooting, burning pain
from my left arm pit to about my left knee.
Cleverly I figured out not to do that. Keep your

(59:46):
left arm above your head and it won't hurt. I
use the restroom in the ranger station. There was no blood,
so no kidney damage. I'm okay. It does, however, hurt,
and something could be broken. Now I go back outside,
my arm above my head like I'm sign for a
cab on the streets of New York City. And the

(01:00:08):
ambulance shows up and the amts tell me to get
on there gurney, and I said, I can't. I can't
lower my arm unless I want excruciating pain. I can't
move my arm. I have to stay in this position,
looking like a Flamenco dancer. But I said, listen, can
you lock the wheels on this gurney? And they said, sure,

(01:00:29):
we can, of course we can. And I said, just
lock the wheels and I'll just back up onto the
end of it and I'll fall backwards. And it worked,
and so with my left arm still extended over my head,
they loaded me into the ambulance. Apparently, when I fell
from that rock or cliff, as I call it, it
looked like I had been shot. Fifty sixty people on

(01:00:52):
a commercial crew, the shooting day is over. They have
missed lunch. There is a very nice catered lunch sitting there.
And they told me later that everybody was so disturbed
by what happened to me that only three people even
took something to go and know the director was not
filming as I fell sadly, so we hit every pothole

(01:01:14):
on Pacific Coast Highway on the trip from the beach
to the hospital.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Oh ah, ooh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
I call my agent from my cell phone, she laughed.
I called ESPN actually to check on the catered dinner.
Oh what's new. Oh, I fell off a cliff shooting
the commercial, they laughed. And I'm lying there in the
emergency room waiting for X rays when my cell phone
rings again and I reach into my left pocket and
I had the phone halfway to my ear when I
realized my left side does not hurt anymore at all.

(01:01:44):
It does not hurt at all. Well, that was a
quick recovery. I sat up. My left side felt fine,
In fact, it felt great, and a nurse came over
and suggested I should lie back down again. I said why.
Somehow I got better on the trip from all the
potholes and just lying here. In fact, I feel great.
Did you guys remove my left leg while I wasn't looking.

(01:02:05):
Did you replace it with the left leg that I
had when I was twelve? Because I could hop back
to Connecticut on my left leg. Right now, just cancel
the flight, She laughed. She said, no, what I was
feeling would be the morphine they gave me so they
could twist me around and take the X rays they needed.
And I said, please, never ever give me any more
of that ever again. Thank you. My Judo flashback, as

(01:02:29):
it turned out, had done the job. I had broken nothing.
The er doctor complimented me on my fall, and he
said I probably had six or eight different sprains on
my left side. It would hurt, but it would keep
getting better and I'd be able to make my flight
home the day after next. He was completely right, although
I now I found twenty five years later that it's

(01:02:50):
beginning to hurt like I just fell off the cliff. Anyway,
I went back to the hotel. I ate well, I
slept well, I managed to walk around with the help
of a cane, and I went back for day two
of the commercial shoot. This one is in a mansion
in Pasadena, a room teeming full of UNA's lying on
the floor. They're photographs through chandeliers. They're lazy, rich kids

(01:03:10):
who also need to be told to eat something. I
arrived and walked into applause from the crew, and I
delivered a well rehearsed line and now for my next trick,
which is when the director John came over and apologized,
and he said he thought this entry into shot for
me would be way easier. What I had to do
is lie on the floor, then sit up and deliver

(01:03:33):
the line, eat something. If you can sit up, he said,
that is. If you can't, we can do something else.
Can you sit up? And I thought about it, and
I rubbed my lower back and I said, based on
the day so far, yeah, I could, but probably only
six or seven times. And I said, while I can
sit up, it's clear to me one of those bad

(01:03:56):
sprains was in the muscles somewhere of my lower back.
And if I try to lay back down, I lose control.
I'll just crash back to the floor. That actually happened
and getting out of bed this morning. So after each take,
the same two guys who had walked me up the
stairs after I fell at the beach gently held my
arms and shoulders and lowered me back to lying on

(01:04:18):
the floor. We got what we needed. I went back
to the hotel, I had dinner with some friends. The
next day. I was a little sore, but perfectly fine
to get back on the plane east and sure enough.
Only time ever, I had a west to east tailwind.
The flight from lax to Newark took three hours and
forty eight minutes. We traversed the country like a dart

(01:04:39):
shot from a gun, or an Ulderman falling from a
rock out cropping. Oh, by the way, the commercial was
an immediate success, unlike any that Boston Market had ever
done before. In those days, they were packed each night
for dinner at every location, selling half chickens and full

(01:04:59):
meals with potatoes and salads, and they were getting an
average of twelve dollars out of every customer. The rest
of the day the place was empty. The idea behind
my commercials. They were designed to bring in a lunch
crowd a sandwich and a soda and a bag of
chips for four dollars. Soon they were swamped at lunchtime.
Boston Market ordered three more commercials, these to be shot

(01:05:22):
in a studio in New York. They offered me fifty
grand a day. An entire new career Vista was opening
in front of me. I was, for a week or
two in early nineteen ninety seven, the most successful male
commercial actor in the country. We shot those three spots.
I interrupted a grunge concert to shout eat something at

(01:05:44):
the band, and then I got carried off by the
crowd in a mosh pit, and I interrupted a Romeo
soap opera surgeon coming on to his nurse by rising
from the operating table to shout eat something. And then
we did something with ballplayers at the stadium on Randall's Island.
And I remember nothing of that because, unlike the first two,
they never edited the film, because that's when it happened,

(01:06:08):
their equivalent of falling off the cliff. I will confess
it had not occurred to me. Then again, I did
not own Boston Market. I did not work for their
marketing department. I did not run the ad agency they employed.
But none of them anticipated it either. After the first
few weeks of giddy glee about the lunch crowds I

(01:06:29):
had brought them, somebody noticed something unfortunate and unexpected. Basically,
for every four dollars lunch they were now selling, they
were selling one fewer twelve dollars dinner. They had not
gained any new customers. They had just managed to get
their customers to each spend eight dollars less. These very

(01:06:50):
well made, very memorable commercials worked very very well. And
the problem with that was each time they did work
it cost Boston Market eight dollars. By the end of
nineteen ninety seven, Boston Market was something like nine hundred
million dollars in debt, it had filed for bankruptcy and
had had been taken over by McDonald's. On the other hand,

(01:07:13):
I got my money, and in the twenty five years
plus since, Boston Market has not once used a celebrity
endorser to try to sell their food. Oh and there
was one other positive outcome from my header off that
cliff that December, so many Decembers ago, the ad Agency
actually received the award. I did not, so I can't

(01:07:36):
quote the title of it for you. I don't know
which group gave it to us, but the Eat Something
campaign it actually won an award because apparently my shouting
eat something at Una and the others that somehow cuts
through to some victims of some eating disorders. What I
was told was we got an award from a national

(01:08:00):
Bolimia association. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Thank you for listening. Everybody got a lot of sandwiches.

(01:08:21):
I became a vegetarian. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle,
the musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most
of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister
Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was
produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.

(01:08:42):
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy ESPN Inc. Other music
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Mind's
outcer today was my friend John Deane, and I should
have let him read the whole script. Everything else was
as ever my fault. That's countdown for today, just ninety

(01:09:07):
days until the scheduled end of the lame duck presidency
of Trump. Probably and it's maybe Matt Gates stars in
the remakeup Back to School Day. The next scheduled countdown
is next Monday, because it's Christmas, dammit. As always, bulletins
as the news warrants till next time for my co

(01:09:27):
producers Ted and Kit Kitt say something Kid is reluctant
to make his podcast debut. Kitty, kitty kat kid. Hey, No,
he just looks at me and like, what are you
doing till next time? I'm Keith Ulberman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, good luck.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
And o how.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
Oh now he's talking and Stevie's in here too. You
have something to say? You want to eat? Tell me
you want something to eat? Okay, Ted, Kit, you want
something to eat?

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
All right?

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
Stevie's speaking on behalf of the group. A right, Ted
just gave me a little sniff here.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
What Ted?

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
This is called letting the mic open and leaving the
tape roll. Ted, say something here, speak into the microphone
like that. No, you got nothing to say? You sure?

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):
You can't see this at home, but Steve, he is
being attacked by a young six month old Kit, who,
though half her size, likes to grab her by the
throat with his front legs just as a sign of love. Anyway,
Merry Christmas from the whole gang. Rose, who will have
nothing to do with this, is outside waiting for food. Up.

(01:11:25):
Kit likes to make a stretchy noise. Did you hear that?
Hopefully see it? Just before the new year? All right,
let's got something to eat? Countdown with Keith Olderman is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit

(01:11:46):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.