TRUMP GOES NUTS, COMPARES HIMSELF TO JESUS - 3.26.24 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. One
court ruled the Stormy Daniel's hush money trial will start

(00:25):
on time. Another gave Trump another ten days and lowered
his bond to one hundred and seventy five million. And
neither of these is the lead Trump story, because the
lead Trump story is Trump is nuts. He has now
compared himself to Jesus, No Christ, Jesus Christ received this morning,
beautiful thank you. He posted a ten thirty Eastern dementia time.

(00:50):
It's ironic that Christ walked through his greatest persecution the
very week. They are trying to steal your property from you.
But have you seen this verse? Then? Whoever sent this
to him sent him Psalm one oh nine three to eight,
adapted for biblical purpose of election denial. And finally, I'm
praying this over you daily. So many are praying for you.

(01:11):
Thank you again for taking the arrows intended for us.
He compared himself to Christ, and I always thought he
would go first with Napoleon, No Bonaparte, not Napoleon dynamite Bonaparte.
And then in front of the microphones outside the courtroom.

(01:36):
One of his courtrooms, he also had another sort of
Well he went a little funny in the head, you know,
just a little funny.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
You can't have an election in the middle of a
political season. We just had Super Tuesday, and we had
a Tuesday after Tuesday already.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
No, we never have elections in the middle of a
political season. We always have them in the middle of
webbit season, duck season, webbit season. Well, you can't fight
in here. This is the war room. And it's not
just that the fluent aphasia or phenomic paraphasius or whatever

(02:14):
abruptly killed off another million Trumpian brain cells while he
was live on all networks had a field day yesterday.
Trump the cornered animal also screwed up strategically. Just as
last week, the world's leading legal authority on parking lot
law missed the chance to deny that Trump would ever

(02:34):
sell something to a foreign government or a foreign gangsters
or Vladimir Putin for the money needed in the business
fraud case. Now Trump has done exactly the same thing,
produced an unusually cogent word salad when the one and
only correct answer to this next question is quote no
unquote foreign governments pay under f or no don't, I

(02:58):
don't do that i've I think you'd be allowed to possibly,
I don't know. I mean, if you go borrow from
a big bank. Many of the banks are outside of
this as you know, the biggest banks for actually are
outside of our country Russia. If you're listening, I hope
you're able to find the sixteen billion, one hundred and
thirty one million, five hundred and fifty nine thou seven

(03:18):
hundred and eighty four rubles I need. Anyway, Trump clearly
had another episode or episodes, and the additional evidence was
another social media post. Weird even for him. There should
be no fine, he wrote at seven fifty four Eastern
Dementia time, long before the bond was reduced. Did nothing wrong.

(03:41):
Why should I be forced to sell my quote marks
babies and quote marks because a, et cetera. So Trump
sells babies, he says, that's another good look. If Trump
is to be believed he has more than enough money
to pay a bond of eleventy billion dollars but won't

(04:03):
and would have to sell babies to get the money
and devoid having his assets seized. And I happily quote
my high school friend Will Bunch, noting we worry so
much about Biden's health, and yet Trump is the one
experiencing seizures. The legalities were overshadowed by the timeless words

(04:24):
you can't have an election in the middle of a
political season. But in the parlance of baseball spring training,
Trump and his lawyers played a split squad schedule yesterday,
and nominally they got one loss and one win. But
I'm not exactly seeing how the win is actually a win.
The loss is obvious the Stormy Daniels hush money election
influence trial, thirty four felonies in all but probably no

(04:46):
jail time will start as scheduled three weeks from yesterday,
April fifteenth. This supposed win. Well, a grace period for
paying the four hundred and fifty four million he owes
is extended by the appeals court by ten days until
a week from Thursday, and the bond is reduced tw
one hundred and seventy five million. Now, how is this

(05:07):
a win? If Eric Trump more on twin number two
spent the weekend literally screaming at cameras that quote, a
ten million dollar bond is a large bond, A fifteen
million dollar bond is an enormous bond. So bond being
reduced from half a billion to one hundred and seventy
five million would seem like a token adjustment under Statute

(05:30):
thirty nine B sub Section three make rich people feel better.
Eric Trump also explained that every single person, when I
came to them saying can I get a half billion
dollar bond, they were laughing. They were laughing unquote. That
might have a different explanation, Sonny. I mean, have you

(05:50):
ever met yourself? If meanwhile, you were hoping Aaron Rodgers
would be Robert F. Kennedy Junior's choice for vice president
on his Trump Stalking Horse campaign, and thus the pair
of them would immediately tear their Achilles tendons and be

(06:13):
forced to miss the entire twenty twenty four NFL season.
That's the NFL National Fruitcake League. Ah, bad news. He
was expected to announce his vice president on Tuesday, and
it's Nicole Shanahan. Nicole Shanahan, Nicole Shanahan. Jeez, she has
superior credentials. She paid for most of Kennedy's disastrous ripoff

(06:36):
of his uncle's nineteen sixty presidential commercial, and she was
married to Google co founder Sergei Brinn and then allegedly
slept with Musk and then she demanded a billion dollar
divorce settlement. We don't know how much she got, but
if you are bargaining down from a buy it now
price of a billion, you're doing just fine. And here

(06:58):
is my bank role, my vice president. They were to
announce this at two pm Eastern in Oakland, California, at
the Henry J. Kaisers Center for the Arts. Henry J.
Kaiser the aluminum guy and philanthropist who also made cars
for a while, one of which he named the Henry J.

(07:18):
And he wanted to introduce steam powered automobiles in the
nineteen fifties. So it's all going well for Bobby Junior
except for this small detail. The news that he had
fifteen thousand signatures enough to qualify for the presidential ballot
in Nevada. Not so much. CBS News reporting Kennedy apparently

(07:39):
overlooked the proviso in the law in Nevada requiring that
to be valid the ballot petitions of any independent candidate
must list a president and a vice president, and obviously
none of them filed before today could have done that,
So technically the number of petition signatures Kennedy has in
Nevada is approximately carry the one turn none. Kennedy will

(08:03):
have until August to again reach the fifteen thousand threshold
if he can only find somebody to pay for printing
the new petitions and the cost of canvassing the state.
And all right, missus ex Google will be able to
help you there. And now to the latest on the

(08:25):
NBC Rana Romney McDaniel fluster cluck. No, she has not
been spitcnned. No, the people who hired her have also
not been spit canned yet. First, if you think you
read somewhere that the serial liar and confessed organizer for
the Trump fake elector's scheme who changed her name because

(08:47):
Trump insisted, but she was only being a team player,
a good soldier. She was only following orders. Rana Romney,
not Romney, just McDaniel, would be appearing only on NBC
News and not MSNBC. That was the headline everywhere over
the weekend. Just NBC News and not MSNBC was somehow better.

(09:08):
Turns out that's not true. MSNBC's president Rashida Jones, identified
by Politico as one of the NBC News apparatchicks who
unanimously supported the hiring of Ronald McDaniel reportedly reassured cable
staffers that McDaniel would not appear on MSNBC. But the
Washington Post, Deadline, the Wall Street Journal, Semaphore News, and

(09:33):
now Politico, basically everybody but the International Stamp Gazette are
all reporting that that is not what. Rashida Jones said
that she responded to her angry staff only that there
was no expectation that McDaniel would ever be on MSNBC. Separately,
she told MSNBC talent and executives they were welcome to

(09:56):
book McDaniel as a pundit, a guest, or whatever. And
Mitchell second, if you read somewhere about Chuck Todd's principled
and even self endangering stance against an apology for the
foisting of one of Trump's top ten all paid toly

(10:17):
shills on television news viewers, two caveats. I am actually
going to say this. I commend Chuck Todd. We're going
on Meet the Press and commencing his remarks by savaging
McDaniel and saying, quote, I don't know what to believe.
I have no idea whether any answer she gave to
you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract.

(10:39):
It was ballzy and journalistic, but it wasn't that ballz
or that journalistic. Chuck Todd did say, our bosses owe
you an apology for putting you in this situation. But
he was looking at the Meet the Press host Kristen
allegedly Welker when he said that he was not looking
at the camera, not looking at the public. Chuck was

(11:00):
mad because the next future ex host of Meet the
Press had been hung out to dry. She had been
told that McDaniel would be a guest on Sunday, not
a paid contributor. He was angry about that. He did
not say anything about being angry because NBC had hired
somebody who tried to undo an election and put them
in front of the public as some sort of analyst

(11:23):
or neutral observer or who knows what. He wasn't even
angry because just ten months ago, Rona tweeted quote. MSNBC's
primetime propagandists wasted countless hours pushing the Russia collusion hoax.
Last night, they discussed Durham's report for barely ten minutes,

(11:44):
in which they insisted the weaponization of government found in
the report was no big deal. Chuck Todd went back
into the fray again last night on Twitter, and again
missed the point quote. This is about whether honest journalists
are supposed to lend their credibility to someone who intentionally
tried to ruin hours. While that is certainly a component,

(12:08):
it remains incidental Ronald McDaniel did not just try to
make life tough for Chuck Todd or for other journalists.
She tried to help install an unelected dictator in the
United States of America, and do heavens know what to
the elected usurped president, a man named Joe Biden. The

(12:30):
other caveat about Chuck Todd is this he signed a
two year contract extension with NBC News in July or
August of twenty twenty two. They made a big deal
about it. It was in all the papers, of course,
they made a big deal about it. He had yet
to be fired as the host of Meet the Press.
There has not been word one since though, about any
further contracts, which leads to the inevitable mathematical conclusion that

(12:54):
Chuck Todd is now lame. Duck Todd he risked something
by saying what he did, but that's something looks like
maybe maybe at maximum nine months of a paycheck. Similarly,
Joe Scarborough went out on a leaf yesterday morning. He
and the latest Missus Joe accurately called McDaniel quote an

(13:18):
anti democracy election denier, adding we hope NBC will reconsider
its decision trust me on this. Joe Scarborough used far
stronger language trying to get me fired at NBC in
public than he did about Ron McDaniel, and I used

(13:40):
far stronger language trying to get him fired in public.
I'll go into that and the surprisingly long history of
news talent daring management to fire them at thirty Rock
at length at the end of this podcast. For now, though,
let us salute Joe Scarborough proudly defying his masters and

(14:00):
becoming the six three hundred and ninety seventh person to
storm the bastille. Of course, back there, behind even Joey
scars at six three hundred and ninety eight or later
is Rachel Meadow, with her clout with NBCs terrified and

(14:23):
unfathomable conviction that she is all but stands between them
and MSNBC evaporating overnight. She should and could have said something.
She could have said anything last Friday when her employers
stabbed her credibility and the credibility of her network in
the back. But her ship on this had sailed. Her

(14:45):
ship on this, in fact, had sunk. On March fifth,
it was Meadow who had proudly and justifiably proudly announced
that her network would no longer take Trump's speeches live,
and then on Super Tuesday, MSNBC carried Trump's speech live.
Rachel solemnly announced that quote allowing somebody to knowingly lie

(15:09):
on your air was irresponsible, and then she stayed on
the air anyway, because the correct thing to do when
your editorial bosses shit all over you and revoke your
say in what your program looks like live am the air,
on your program, the correct thing to do is to

(15:29):
stand up and say I'll be back when MSNBC returns
to the agreed upon journalistically correct policy of not showing
Trump live. Instead, she in fact said I'll be back
after this message from ozempic. No wonder they hired Rona

(15:49):
McDaniel who was going to protest, not Matdow. Then there's
Kristin Welker herself. Her protest consisted of bravely insisting to
viewers that she had nothing to do with the hiring
of Rona McDaniel. She might as well have called her
herself what McDaniel did, called herself a team player. This
was cowardice in action, buck passing. You want clean hands

(16:11):
in this situation, then you should have refused to go
on the air with her. I know of at least
four occasions at NBC and MSNBC when newspeople refused to
go on the air with somebody to whom they objected
again details later, Mattow did it, I did it, getting

(16:32):
no applause, while Todd and Scarborough and Welker Basque in
the afterglow of having run the gamut of protest emotions
from A to B is an NBC reporter named Brandy Zudrosny.
She tweeted, so many talented reporters laid off this year.
Workers who provided the content won the awards, built the

(16:53):
credibility of their shops, and worked for a yearly salary
at a fraction of what big name contributors get in
fancy contracts to fill pundit boxes on TV. Unquote, Rona
McDaniel's name is carefully excluded from her text, but not
from her point. Separately, Zadrasni wrote reporters have no control

(17:14):
over the opinion or pundit section. Not coincidentally, Brandy Sidrosny,
who deserves the applause, is the specialist at NBC News
covering political radicalization, extremism, and disinformation on the Internet. In
other words, the Rona McDaniels of this world are her meat.

(17:37):
Her PostScript there about reporters having no control over the
McDaniels situation was not gratuitous. A prominent PR person and
former Obama adviser wrote reporters to cry the demonization of
the press and then offer the demonizer a three hundred
thousand dollars retainer. Let me assure you nobody involved in

(17:59):
the hiring of Rona McDaniel by NBC News was a report.
The four people on the hot seat at the moment
for this disaster at NBC. The four people most likely
to get fired carry Bodoff Brown and Rebecca Blumenstein. They
did reporting last more than a decade ago. Rashida Jones,

(18:20):
president of MSNBC. She lasted any in college in two
thousand and two. The chairman of NBC News, the chairman,
Sayesar Conde, has never been a reporter, or an editor
or a producer, but he is on a lot of
boards of directors. Condey will likely survive this, though if
he leaves NBC and Comcast in the next few years.

(18:43):
This will have been why Boodoff Brown, NBC senior vice
president in charge of Politics, and Blumenstein, the president in
charge of Meet the Press, are in more imminent danger.
As Politico put it, the idea of bringing the Trump
flunky into NBC News began with negotiations for NBC to
cover one of the Republican debates, quoting. Through that process,

(19:07):
McDaniel built a good rapport with Budolph Brown and Blumenstein.
McDaniel left the RNC, signed on with the CIA Talent Agency,
and went looking for a TV contract. While McDaniel had
talks with other networks, she was trying to avoid working
for CNN, but had serious discussions with ABC. NBC always

(19:27):
had the inside track. Quote Rona had a good experience
with Carrie and Rebecca and felt more comfortable than with
some of the other networks. A person close to McDaniel said, unquote,
not good Carrie and Rebecca. After the last big disaster
at NBC News, the Brian Williams I captured Saddam fiasco,

(19:51):
NBC slowly eased out its news president, Deborah Turness, eased
out her boss, the Comcast president of all the company's
news presidents, Pat Philly, And of course they tried to
fire Brian Williams, only to discover that in his contract
there was a poisoned pill that meant if they fired him,
they owed him more than if they did not fire him. Anyway,

(20:14):
that's the future. The present. Stuff is still falling out
of the sky on everybody at NBC News and MSNBC.
Somebody on Fox News yesterday asked what the difference was
between NBC hiring Rona McDaniel and Fox hiring a liberal
guest commentator named Jessica Tarlov, an intelligent conservative friend of

(20:40):
mine for more than three decades. Sincerely and calmly asked
me to explain the difference between Rana on NBC and
Donna on ABC Donna Brazil. Well, the points are Jessica
Tarlov's role in the Democratic Party topped off at as
she used to work for consultant Doug Showing. Doug Showen

(21:02):
was kind of a Democrat, I guess, And while Donna
Brazil was twice acting chair of the Democratic National Committee
kind of a match. You know, she never did stand
idly by while her president tried to foment a revolution
against the government, and she didn't participate in one of

(21:23):
his coup attempts. Neither Tarlov, nor Brazil for that matter,
nor anybody else has ever said. Quote in November twenty twenty,
there were concerns everywhere. Imagine you saw it, videos being
put out, all types of things. You have to track
that down. So where I was in twenty twenty and
the quotes are that being taken a very long time ago,

(21:46):
three and a half years ago to where I am today.
You've got to allow the process to play out. And
I think it is fair to say I think there
were concerns. Then that's what Ronal McDaniel said about sewing
conspiracy theories about an illegitimate election. It's what she's still saying.
Still insists there was reason to question or challenge or

(22:08):
undermine or reply with blood to the twenty twenty election.
She's still saying it. She said that Sunday. That quote
was from Sunday. That quote was from her NBC debut
on Meet the Press. She is still an election denier
and damn her to hell for it. More cynically, Tarlov

(22:29):
and Brazil have some And this is the way television
executives think. Television news executives are dealing with a brand.
Television news executives think this way, Tarlov and Brazil have
some television value. Ronald McDaniel starts with the whole insurrectionist

(22:49):
adjacent thing, and then she goes downhill from there. She
is hated by every Democrat and liberal and loyal American. Meanwhile,
Trump just got her fired as head of the Republican
National Committee, and any MAGA cultists who had not already
blamed her for the losses in twenty eighteen, in twenty twenty,
in twenty twenty two, they're blaming her now. She brings

(23:13):
her new employer no access inside the Maga world. She's
just been thrown out of what was left of the
Republican world. And oh, by the way, she's terrible on television.
Yet ultimately the problem is this, people paid big salaries
to make essential decisions about the coverage of an election

(23:36):
that will decide whether or not we still have a
democracy next January. They thought she was a great hire
and nice. As the protests from Todd and Welker and
Golly I hope they reconsider Scarborough were bluntly the moment
the hiring of Rona Romney McDaniel was announced, MSNBC anchors

(23:59):
and producers and writers and NBC News anchors and producers
and writers should have literally walked off that job right
then gone on strike. Because it all comes down to this.
The hiring of Rona McDaniel did not represent some kind

(24:20):
of attempt gone crazy wrong for political balance the way
hiring her uncle Mitt might might. The hiring of Rona
McDaniel conceded stipulated that on American television news there can
be some kind of balance, some kind of equation, some

(24:45):
kind of yes, but some kind of both sides ism
between the reality of the twenty twenty election and election
deniers and the trumpest cult and the people who wanted
to kill Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. Rona McDaniel is
the flat earthers, Ronal McDaniel is the climate change deniers.

(25:09):
Ronal McDaniel might as well be q from QAnon. This
is an example of reality trying to appease hallucination and
conspiracy theory and mental illness in hopes of making more
money off its newscasts. Rana Romney. McDaniel's presence as an

(25:33):
NBC News employee legitimizes the election deniers and the conspiracy
theorists and Trump. It is an act of journalistic self defenestration,
and for the future of democracy in this country, an
act of self immolation. Until NBC News fires Rona McDaniel

(25:57):
and all those responsible for her it, and MSNBC and
CNBC and all the local NBC stations and every other
NBC Comcast universal property, they all can no longer be
considered part of an actual news organization. Also of interest

(26:27):
here has promised the full story of all of the times,
all the times I know about when NBC and MSNBC
talent stood up to management and said if you do this,
I'm out, or I'm going public, or other risky things
that nobody said or did about the hiring of Ronald McDaniel.

(26:49):
And it's not just about me. It takes a little
while to tell the whole story, but only like twenty
seven minutes. But first, on this all new edition of
Countdown show, Hey Otani addresses the media. But it's not
what he said, it's what he didn't say that just
made the baseball gambling scandal way worse. And now, surprise, surprise,

(27:14):
there's another sports gambling scandal in basketball. This is about
the three pointer that never was from Why Downtown doubts
that overhang. That's next. That's just countdown. This is countdown
with Keith Oberman. Oberman.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
This is Sports Center. Wait check that not anymore. This
is countdown with Keith Olberman.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
In Sports Dateline Los Angeles. One assumes show Hey Otani's
people think they made the scandal involving his former interpreter
and friend and maybe involving him. Show he Otani that
they made it go away yesterday by having the seven

(28:21):
hundred million dollar Dodger read a statement to the media
yesterday and then not take any questions. But it did
not go away because those questions did not go away.
The explanation was very simple. Otani says he never bet
on baseball or any sports. He never asked anybody to
bet on his behalf. He never went to a bookie.
He says, is now fired interpreter and friend. If a

(28:44):
Misuhara stole all the money from him, that Misuhara ran
up the massive illegal gambling debts himself at least four
and a half million, and also that Misuhara never told
Otani that the story had begun to leak out. Otani
implied that the interpreter went to Otani's spokespeople last week
and lied to them too, by by telling them Otani

(29:06):
was covering for a friend in trouble and paying his debts,
and that Otani wanted him to have his handlers let
Missahara tell the story. In an interview with ESPN, Otani
says Misuhara never asked him for permission to talk to
his people, never asked him for permission to do the interview,

(29:26):
and that the spokespeople never double checked with Otani that
Misihara was not making it all up, which is exactly
what Otani says happened. Otani insists that the first time
he heard anything about Missahara gambling or about him Otani
paying the debts was when Misihara addressed the Dodger team
after a game last week in South Korea to warn

(29:49):
them that the story was about to break. This is
all plausible, This is all believable. This has all happened before. Employees,
even trusted ones do rip off their employers, even their friends,
even their relatives all the time, even for millions, and
mix this part in. If you are somebody's translator, it

(30:12):
would be all that much easier to get away with it.
But sho Haotani never addressed, didn't take questions about one
pivotal detail. If he did not know Missihara gambled, if
he did not know Mizihara owed a bookie four and
a half million or more. If he did not know
Missihara owed somebody that amount of money, how did the

(30:34):
money get wired from sho Haotani's bank account into the
bank account of the bookie. At no point in his
statement did Otani even imply that he had foolishly given
Misihara access to his accounts, or even that Missihara had
somehow improperly gained access to his accounts. As long as

(30:57):
questions about that remain unanswered, the story remains alive. Dateline
toronto I said to a friend yesterday that the over
under on an actual sports gambling game fixing scandal after
the Otani stuff was now six months. I was off
by five months thirty days. In about twenty two hours,

(31:20):
ESPN quote sources who say the National Basketball Association is
investigating a fringe player named John Tay Porter of the
Toronto Raptors. On January twenty sixth, Draft Kings, the official
betting something of the NBA, had reported increased interest from
its betters on what are called prop bets involving John

(31:42):
Tay Porter, combination bets based on his statistics in the
game that night. And that night, the over unders for
Porter's stats were set at five and a half points,
four and a half rebounds, one and a half assists,
and one half of a three point shot. But Porter
played only four minutes in that game and then left
the game, and the team said he had reaggravated a

(32:05):
previous eye injury. Ultimately, he scored no points. He had
only three rebounds, only one assist, no three pointers. In
other words, if you bet the under on all of
his stats in a prop bet on John Tay Porter,
you won a bundle. Draftking said it was in fact
the biggest money winner for betters of any NBA player

(32:28):
props from games that night and then last week March
twenty first, Draftking Sportsbooks reported that prop bets involving Porter
produced the number one money maker the previous night in
basketball betting. In the game that night, Porter scored no points.
He attempted only one shot, he got two rebounds. He
played only three minutes because he left the game early

(32:51):
because of what the team said was an illness. Porter
did not play in Toronto's game Saturday night, personal reasons.
He did not play in Toronto's game last night, personal reasons.
It is a huge, huge mess. From this angle, it
looks like a bottomless pit. It's not game fixing, per se,

(33:11):
But what it looks like is like a cousin of
what they used to call point shaving. Point shaving was
deliberately missing shots to keep a game close in order
to beat the expectations of odds makers. Point shaving nearly
destroyed college basketball in the nineteen fifties and again in
the late seventies and early eighties. And no, sorry, you

(33:32):
cannot bet on whether or not they banned John Tay
Porter for a season for life or not at all.
At least you can't bet on it legally. I think
you can't. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates,

(33:56):
some snarks, some predictions, and in this edition, a lot
of sadness. Dateline, Central Park in New York. The worst
of our fears here has come true. Flacco, the Eurasian
owl who escaped or was freed from his enclosure in
the zoo here in February twenty twenty three, and who
died after a collision with a Manhattan building on February

(34:16):
twenty fourth of this year, had residue of four different
rat poisons in his system when he died, and the
virus contracted from eating infected pigeons. To reduce the post
mortem report from Central Park to its essentials, the rat
poison and the disease quote would have been debilitating and

(34:36):
ultimately fatal even without a traumatic injury, and may have
predisposed him to flying into or falling from the building.
His admirers, and this city was and is filled with them,
wondered why his wonderful nighttime hooting had stopped several days
before he met his end. They suspect now it was

(34:58):
because he was so sick. There's no evidence this was deliberate.
It was, however, what experts worried a the day he
got out of the zoo, that he could get sick
eating the rodent life around here, and that the city
was also full of poisons out in the open intended
for rodents or already in rodents I'm not going to

(35:19):
wax poetic about this striking, huge owl with his eerie,
glowing orange eyes. But there was something transcendent about him
living a year free in the neighborhood and yet choosing
always to stay nearby the humans he had gotten used
to in captivity. He spent time all around this city.
He spent evenings as far away as sixty blocks south

(35:42):
of the park. And then he came back, and he
settled in in the park's northern reaches, enjoying this place
just as the humans did. They may build a statue
to him. I hope they do. It will be nice
to remember him, But it was much nicer each night
knowing he was out there. Eight Line, Franklin, North Carolina.

(36:06):
This news probably will not mean much to you, but
Bill Jorgensen has died. It will not mean much to
you unless you know every second of the movie The
King of Comedy by heart, or unless you used to
watch this.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
It's ten pm.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Do you know where your children are?

Speaker 2 (36:30):
The tragedy on twenty eighth Street with nine Nixon talks
about the dumping of sparrow Agnow money lives still on
the line in Holland tonight, and for the gossips Jecki's
German friends on Bill Jorgenson, this is the ten o'clock news.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
That was who anchored the newscast on which I was
an intern when I was nineteen years old. And you
can probably understand my uncertainty that I had the skills,
or the voice, or the shock of white hair to last, say,
one hour in the business. Thankfully, they did not all
sound like Bill Jorgensen. He was a news anchorman in Columbus,

(37:07):
Ohio in the fifties, Cleveland starting in nineteen sixty one,
and New York from nineteen sixty seven through nineteen eighty three.
He pioneered the concept of the ten o'clock news here
when all the other stations had network dramas on or reruns.
The newscast aimed to tell you everything that happened that
day in one hour, seriously everything. This was made more

(37:32):
plausible by the fact that Bill Jorgenson kinda sounded like God.
He did not suffer fools gladly, and he thought all
television executives were fools. I'd like to say I got
that from him, but I doubt it. By nineteen seventy eight,
year twelve for him in New York. He had pretty
much run out of patience with the executives at Channel five,

(37:52):
and he was beginning to lash out, and everybody agreed
a month or two off would be a good idea.
So he bought a Winnebago and he and the wife
took off to see America on a sabbatic They laughed
about a week or ten days before my internship at
Channel five started. My story with Bill Jorgensen can be
summarized in four phone calls. My first week at the

(38:16):
news assignment desk. The phone rings. I am a clan
call for anyone from Kansas City, Missouri, from Bill Jorgensen.
Will you accept the charges impulsively? I made an executive decision,
we will operator. The next voice seemed to be coming
not from the phone, not from Kansas City, but from
some sort of pa system vibrating above the city, from

(38:39):
way above my head, this is Jorgensen. Get me Monsky,
please Monsky, Mark Monsky, or as it said in the
credits to our newscast, Mark bvs Monsky, Director of News,
Mark B von summer Monsky, the boss, the news director.

(39:02):
The bad news was Mark b. Von sum Monsky carried
a gun. The good news was he liked me, I
told his secretary. His secretary handled the call, got Monsky.
Three minutes later, Monsky came out and said to all
of us at the desk, me included for God's sake,
Jorgensen just called from Kansas City. They were having breakfast
at the International House of Pancakes. They come out, he

(39:24):
and the wife, to the parking lot and somebody has
stolen the win of Bago. We got to get them
out of there. They have nothing. Wire them some cash
or something. Hereupon, the news director reached into his pocket
and grabbed a stack of bills. Here's five hundred bucks.
The sabbatical had not started all that well. On the

(39:45):
other hand, only once before in my life had I
seen five hundred dollars in cash. The sabbatical had been noticed, however,
We interns were given instructions on what to do when
we got phone calls like well, like phone call number two.
What happened to Bill Jargenson asked the woman who said
she was from Booton, New Jersey. He's on assignment, ma'am.

(40:08):
I said, we expect him back in I believe two weeks,
perhaps sooner. She laughed at me. Yeah, sabbatical like you.
Bastard's assigned George Sharmon to a sabbatical. There had been
three primary anchors of the Channel five ten o'clock news, Jorgensen,
his deputy George Sharmon, who also had a shock of

(40:30):
white hair, and their deputy, Bill McCreary. And then one
day George Sharmon was gone and a new kid from
California had replaced him. They did this to the assignment
desk one weekend as well. I was interning for Steve,
the assignment editor, on Friday and said goodbye and have
a nice weekend to him, and he said the same
to me. And then on Monday, I was working for Joe,

(40:52):
the new assignment editor. I said to my first mentor
at Channel five, a researcher named Stanley Pinsley, as quick
as death. And Stanley paused, and he congratulated me. You
figured out the entire news business and you're only nineteen.
Bill Jorgensen came back to the newsroom soon after. I

(41:13):
had not known him before, I didn't really know him now.
He came out of his office only occasionally, might as
well have won to worn a hood over his head,
no eye contact. He ducked out a side door one
night that they didn't fire the assignment editors. So at
nine forty five we all sat back and prepared to
finally exhale after a crazy day and watch the actual

(41:35):
newscast in progress. And now comes phone call number three
Channel five News. This is Jorgenson. Who's this? I thought, quickly,
I'm an intern. You wouldn't know me, he thought quickly,
fair enough, Tell Gary, Kay and Troffy and Jay. Tell
them the elevator to the studio is stuck. Use the stairs. Goodbye.

(41:59):
I did as told. I went back to producer's rowe. Hey,
Bill just called to tell you the levator to the
studio as stuck, so use the stairs. Jay, who I
believe was the director that night, looked up optimistically, is
is he on it? When I shook my head no.
The look of disappointment verging on tears on Jay's face

(42:22):
remains to this day indescribable. Towards the end of my internship,
things went south with Bill Jorgenson and he took another sabbatical. Now,
the newscast was anchored by the kid from California whose
name was John Rowland and Bill McCreary, and they were
great to me. As was Bill Mazer, the sportscaster for
whom I interned half the time. They were all great

(42:43):
to me. My friend Stanley Pinsley was the writer, Bobby Campbell,
all of them. Bill McCreary also did the sports on Fridays,
and one Friday he and Bill Maser were going to
both be off and their backup was to and they
and the sports producer Cliff Gelb decided I should do
the sports cast, and they were serious. Mark bvs My

(43:05):
told them, no, no, you're not serious. Even he said,
soon enough, kid, you'll do it. Soon enough. I went
back to Cornell for my senior year, and I realized
our newscasts, which were unsurpassed for a college radio station,
we're running at about nine miles an hour, while Bill
Jorgenson's ten o'clock news was doing one hundred, one hundred

(43:27):
and twenty sometimes two hundred and fifty miles an hour.
I thought to myself, you're gonna have to step it
up a little. Anyway. One night the next March, there's
a ring in my apartment at two oh seven Delaware Avenue, Ahaca,
New York, and it's a phone call, phone call number four,
and it's my friend Stanley Pinsley calling from Channel five,
and I'm going to emphasize this is what he told

(43:48):
me in nineteen seventy nine. It was only later confirmed
for me by one other source. So who knows, Uh,
you missed it, Bubby Stanley said, Jargonson's back. Well, he
was back. He comes in, he does a week, he's
shaky as hell, and the general manager take him to lunch.
They tell him we're letting you go, and he's like,

(44:09):
okay with it. He's very calm. He has a little
meeting with the senior staff and he thanks everybody and
he apologizes and everybody goes, ah, great, But you know,
he just wasn't right even for him. So today, evidently
before I got in, he's got a little practical joke
to play on everybody. And from what he said as
they took him out of the building, he thought this
would show everybody he was handling his firing. Okay, So

(44:32):
I guess about five, he comes out of his office
carrying this big box and on each side of the
box it's got one word stenciled on it, dynamite. And
he stands by producer's row and he says, if I
have to go I'm taking all ues with me, and
the box doesn't look real, but who knows with Jorgensen.
So Choffey hits him high, and Gary Kay hits him low,

(44:54):
and Jay grabs the box as it falls, and that's
the last we've seen at Jorgenson. I understand he's resting somewhere.
I'm sorry you missed it. On March fourteenth, nineteen seventy nine,
Channel five in New York announced that Bill Jorgensen had resigned,
and his lawyer told The New York Times he had

(45:15):
quit to go do something better. And I just assumed, well,
even as crazy as I found television news in my
slice of my internship, that would be the end of him.
And then on April sixth Stanley calls me again, Bobby,
guess who's the new anchor guy at Channel eleven? Jargonson?
What a business? You sure you want those job referrals?

(45:39):
He started on the Channel eleven news at ten on
April twenty third, nineteen seventy nine. He'd barely been off
the air one month. He lasted four years. He was
ninety six when he died, according to his daughter on
March thirteenth. Nobody noted this, but March thirteenth. This March

(45:59):
thirteenth was the fifty seventh anniversary of the first edition
of Channel five to ten o'clock News with Bill Jorgenson.
Even his obituary in The New York Times said quote,
mister Jorgenson struggled with station management. Clearly he did not
struggle enough, however, to outweigh his skill and his drive,

(46:22):
and his brilliance and his dedication to journalism, and his
voice and especially his sign off. He was, now that
I think of it, the last newscaster I knew who
had his own sign off.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
There's our report for tonight, Bill Jorgenson, for Channel five News.
Thanking you for your time this time until.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
Next time, stell ahead of us on this all new

(47:10):
edition of Countdown Things. I promised not to tell the
damnedest thing about this Rona McDaniels story at NBC News.
Where are all the people threatening to quit? Hell matdow
wants threatened to quit over something? I threatened to quit twice,
at least that I remember. Joe Scarborough blackmailed his bosses twice.

(47:31):
Hayes refused to go on one night. And then there
was the time John McCain bullied NBC News into offering
me and was helped by Tom Brokaw A lot of
things I promised not to tell in the wake of
help Me, Rana coming up first, still more idiots to
talk about. The daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and
Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worse persons in

(47:55):
the world. First the Bronze Worse Rhys Davis, one of
the nicest guys in sportscasting and somebody I met thirty
years ago at ESPN. And what's the one thing you
do not want? In the middle of the show, Hey
Otani Jazz and March Madness and the new thing in
the NBA with the guy from the Raptors what you

(48:17):
don't want? Is a controversy over sports gambling. On ESPN,
Reese Davis is doing a segment with the new face
of wagering there named Aaron Dolan, and she goes so
overboard trying to get people to bet one way and
with ESPN's betting service, by the way, suppress press that.
Reese comes back with a joke about how over the
top she is. But the joke is comparatively subtle, as

(48:39):
is Reese. You know, what he says. Some would call
this wagering gambling. The way you've sold this, I think
what it is is a risk free investment. That's the
way to look at it. Now. Reese Davis is so
straight laced that it's genuinely tough to tell when he's
kidding around. So the reaction was, oh God, no, he
just said a bet was a risk free investment, like

(49:01):
you couldn't lose. Tweeted a clarification and an apology. But
this is another one of the risks of sports gambling,
besides the whole oh yeah, now we have to ban
you from basketball for life kind of thing. Jokes about
gambling can't be funny because people who are gambling, at
least some of them, are not necessarily in full control

(49:24):
of their minds at that moment. By the way, two
other ESPN talent, Dan Orlovsky and Mike Greenberg, they made
a dinner bet again mentioning ESPN's betting site on Twitter
x same day, and I was flashed back to the
day the guy in charge of Sports Center in the
nineties would not let me and Dan Patrick and the
other fellas in an ESPN Fantasy Baseball league conduct our

(49:47):
player draft at our desks because it was too close
to the newsroom and it made him feel uncomfortable. We
had to go do it in the cafeteria. I swear
the runners up worser Jeff Yass and dishonest Jay Trump.
So now we know what happened when Yas, who owns
thirty three billion dollars worth of TikTok, met with Trump

(50:09):
and suddenly Trump went from having threatened to ban TikTok
within forty five days to demanding that it not be banned.
The deal to merge that holding company with Trump's Truth
Social disaster site and at minimum get him out from
under the financial sort of damicles. It represents. The biggest
institutional investor in that holding company that's going to merge
with Truth Social is Susquehanna International, which was co founded

(50:33):
by Jeff Yas. Always good to keep track of what
Trump has been bought with this time, but our winner
the worst Charlie Kirk. When last we heard from Balloonhead,
he was calling for live televised pay per view executions
of those trying to bring Trump to justice and forcing

(50:55):
kids to watch the executions. Now he wants rubber bullets,
whips and machine guns at the border. Quote, at what
point is it time to start to at least use
rubber bullets or use some sort of tear gas to
prevent this and quail this invasion? At what point do
we use real force? Why do we have a military?

(51:16):
Why do we have men with guns if we can't
use them? Of course you should be able to use
whips against foreigners. See, I don't know. My thought is
apart from this being country made up as a haven
for people in trouble who are fleeing other lands, apart
from the fact that everybody here is the descendant of

(51:38):
an immigrant. Apart from that, maybe we should never resort
to more force at the border than we used when
Charlie Kirk's friends, many of whom got there thanks to
his turning point, USA attacked the capitol on January sixth,
Or we shouldn't use more force than we plan to
use when they try it again next fall and winter, whips,

(51:59):
rubber bullets, military with guns. And as to Charlie, Charlie,
and if you see him, you're gonna need an elephant
tranquilizer gun to bring him down with that gigantic inflated
bean of his. Kirk he is two days worst person
if he's a person in the way. Now to the

(52:33):
number one story on this all new edition of Countdown
and Things I promised not to tell. And in the
wake of the Rna McDaniel train wreck at MSNBC and
NBC News well train wrecks, how could the number one
story not be this long Before MSNBC staffers forced their
networks chief to guarantee them they would never have to

(52:56):
put Rana McDaniel on their shows, there were at least
six incidents in which on air talent at MSNBC stood
up Ben said no and no it was These were
not always good things, but they underscore a reality management
cannot get away with everything, and it is often incumbent

(53:18):
upon talent to make sure that is the case. I'll
get through the two times I threatened to quick as
quickly as I can. I got back to MSNBC. In
two thousand and three, as NBC tried to swing MSNBC
to the hard right right of Fox, it put on
the disgusting radio host Michael Savage. Gave him a weekend
show that was an audition for a weeknight show, and

(53:40):
of course he couldn't resist telling a caller he was
a sodomite and should get AIDS. And they got fired.
But before that, they had guaranteed me upon my return
that the one thing that would never appear in Countdown
was a Michael Savage segment. Sure enough, one day, just
weeks into the show, I come in and there in
the rundout of my show page, like C eleven or something,

(54:04):
Michael Savage commentary. Three minutes within moments, the executive producer
of the show came in and said the Savage commentary
was running, whether I liked it or not, and that
the executive who had guaranteed to me that this would
never happen, Phil Griffin, was traveling, so I couldn't complain
to him, and that was it, and he left. So
I called my agent and I said to her, very calmly,

(54:27):
I have no choice here. I got to quit, right,
And she said, and she had just spent seven weeks
negotiating the new contract by which I returned to the
place I had left five years earlier. She said, yeah,
you have to quit immediately, but call Phil first. And
I called Phil's office, and just as the executive producer said,
he was not there. So I told his assistant, Well,

(54:48):
I don't want to dump this problem on you, but
you should find him so he can decide who's doing
Countdown tonight, because if there's a Michael Savage commentary running
in it, I'm not doing Countdown tonight. In fact, this
is the sound of me calling a cab right now.
Amazingly enough, Phil Griffin called five minutes later and said, okay,
we won't run it. We won't run it, but you

(55:09):
got to find me some non political reason to not
run it. So I went along with his little game.
And I looked at the commentary and the guy was
dressed head to toe in brown, and he kept repeating himself.
And I called Phil and they told him that, and
Phil said, look good enough, we'll just put it in
Scarborough's show. The other one I've told many times. It's

(55:30):
early two thousand and eight. Now, five years later, and
I'm trying to get them to let me have somebody
that Phil Griffin had fired Rachel Maddow, guest host Countdown.
I have gotten them to the point where they have
told me they have hired her as an MSNBC contributor
for fifty thousand dollars a year for comparison Ronald McDaniel
got three hundred thousand. Except one night I discovered they've

(55:54):
lied to me. They have not hired her. She was
still working for free. And that night was a primary night.
And I looked down at our rundown of the prime
imary coverage Republicans and Democrats, and there's no Rachel. And
I asked the executive producer who took over after I
got the first executive producer fired. Why not? She says, Well,
Rachel ran out of cash, so when Larry King offered

(56:17):
her two hundred and fifty dollars to go on his
show tonight on CNN, she had to take it. I'm sorry.
So now I have to call her and apologize and
offer her all the cash in my wallet except the
five bucks I'm saving for the tip for the driver
that night. And Rachel says okay. And I literally hire
her for MSNBC out of my own pocket for four
hundred and thirty seven dollars. And I call Phil Griffin

(56:38):
and I say, you lied to me again. So now
here's the deal. You get her the fifty K you
told me you gave her, and you make her a contributor.
And if you don't I'll be walking out in the
middle of the primary coverage tonight, or maybe in the
middle of my show tomorrow night. You'll never know when.

(56:59):
Do you know how fast they can draw up a contract?
Rachel had Hers. I think that night at latest the
next morning. The other small ticket talent victory was on
my behalf, but I had nothing to do with it.
On the day, NBC suspended me for making donations to
three Democratic candidates in twenty ten because that violated NBC

(57:22):
News employee rules, even though they had drawn up a
contract that specified several different times that I was not
an NBC News employee and subject to none of the
rules or the benefits of being an NBC News employee,
and they wound up having to rescind the suspension and
pay me anyway, and having to negotiate a settlement with
me because what they had done was preach my contract,

(57:44):
which was ultimately when I left in twenty eleven. That
night it went down and in four hours, two hundred
and fifty thousand people signed an online petition demanding my reinstatement.
NBC asked Chris Hayes, who was then just getting started
as my new fill in and spinoff show candidate. After

(58:05):
Matdow and Lawrence O'Donnell, they asked Chris to do countdown
and he said no. I've had my differences with Chris
since then, but given that if he had a contract
at that point, it could not have been for more
than the fifty k they sort of gave Rachel three
years earlier. Saying no was ballsy, courageous, and principle. Again.

(58:25):
Standing up to management, however, is not necessarily a weapon
that can only be used by the righteous. At the
height of the Roni McDaniel thing, I saw Steve Schmidt
ask rhetorically what would Tom Brokaw have done? And the
answer would have been he would have done whatever was
best for Tom Brokaw. In August two thousand and eight,

(58:45):
there was a story coming out of the NBC News
management end of the third floor at thirty Rock that
a Republican goon with extra chins named Ed Gillespie had
been in there with Phil Griffin and the president of
NBC News, Steve Campus, trying to get me silenced, were
fired or off the convention coverage or something. They didn't

(59:09):
like Chris Matthews, but it was me they wanted fired,
and the story was that somebody prominent from NBC News
was in there with Gillespie or was invoked by Gillespie.
The rumor mill was not certain. And then on September fifth,
I found out without as much as a meeting, NBC

(59:29):
ordered me and Chris Matthews off the coverage of the
upcoming presidential debates between McCain and Obama. Within twelve hours,
my agent had the complete story and with it the
identity of which prominent NBC news guy had been in
there with the Republican Party hack. Within three weeks that
NBC News guy was boasting about being in there. On

(59:52):
September twenty ninth, a lengthy and glowing profile appeared in
The New York Times of Tom Brokaw. Quote. Mister Brokaw
said that over the summer he had advocated within the
executive suite of NBC News to modify the anchor duties
of the MSNBC hosts Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews on
election night and on nights when there were presidential debates. Unquote.

(01:00:18):
This was especially odd because twice during the primary season,
Brokaw had sent me emails that were so flattering that
I printed them out cut them up and stuck them
in my wallet about how well I had balanced the
commentary part of my job with the anchoring Primary night
part of my job. Well, that all changed after Tim
Russert died and suddenly Tom Brokaw was to be the

(01:00:39):
moderator of the NBC debate in the debate cycle of
the two thousand and eight presidential election to resume from
this Times piece. This is how we all found out
what Brokaw did. He boasted about it quote. Mister Brokaw
said he had also conducted some shuttle diplomacy in recent
weeks between NBC and the McCain campaign. His mission, he said,

(01:01:01):
was to assure the candidate's aids that despite some negative
on air commentary by mister Olderman in particular, mister McCain
could still get a fair shake from NBC News. Mister
Brocaw said he had been told by a senior McCain
aide whom he did not name. It was Ed Gillespie,

(01:01:21):
that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC
representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential
debates until his name was invoked. One of the things
I was told by this person was that. They were
so irritated they said, if it's an NBC moderator for
any of these debates, we won't go. Mister Brocaw said,

(01:01:42):
my name came up, and they said, oh, hell, I
have to do it because it's going to be Brokaw.
This is not me quoting Tom Brokaw. This is The
New York Times quoting Tom Brokaw. And in one part
of this it's Tom Brokaw quoting Tom Brokaw. Translation, the
GOP said, if Brokaw did not get me and Matthews
bounced from the MSNBC coverage of all the John McCain

(01:02:06):
would not show up for Brocaus debate. So Brocaw went
in and blackmailed his own bosses. Okay, so now back
to a righteous bit of talent power at MSNBC. The
next June two thousand and nine, Fox put huge pressure
on MSNBC and NBC News and the parent corporation GE

(01:02:26):
and NBC's network, and especially the chairman of GE, Jeff Immelt.
The goal was to silence my on air stories about Fox,
and especially about Bill O'Reilly. The wild card here was
this chairman Jeff Immelt. His mother was a fan of
Bill O'Reilly's watched the show nightly and she heard all

(01:02:49):
the stuff about her son and ge so she called
him up and yelled at him. So the chairman of
the sixth largest corporation in the world had to do
something so his ninety something mother would not yell at
him him again. All of us were hastily summoned that

(01:03:10):
day to Jeff Zucker's office. He was president of NBC
at that point. He told us that Emmelt had told
him that if there were any more anti Fox stories
on MSNBC, he Emmelt would simply shut the network off
and fire everybody. I thought about all the money they'd
have to pay me and all the work I wouldn't

(01:03:31):
have to do, and thought for a second, Hey, that's
a great idea, and then I thought better of it.
Zucker asked me what to do, and I said, well,
I don't know about long term here, but I would
suggest that for a while, like a few weeks, maybe
we say, shouldn't do any anti Fox stories until we
figure out how we can do it safely. Zucker looked

(01:03:52):
at me and nodded. He pointed at Phil Griffin and
my producer and me and he said, you and you
and you and I will talk tonight or tomorrow, and
we'll all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox.
We clear, nothing Silent. There were the assorted noises of
people rising, producers for Hardball and Rachel's show and my show,
and Ed Schultz's show and some of the daytime shows.

(01:04:17):
And I was almost at the door of Zucker's office,
which was an office so big that it was, to
steal the line from the Great Ring Lardner, the size
of the Yale Bowl, only with lamps. And then a
voice spoke up, quietly but firmly in the silence. Excuse me.

(01:04:37):
It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me. I will not have
the content of my show dictated by any corporations, including
the one I work for. Now. Remember this is June
two thousand and nine. She's only been on the air
like ten months, and she still felt that way then,

(01:04:58):
and especially a corporation I don't work for. I'll walk
out first. I cannot have the audience wondering what else
I have not told them. I don't do a lot
about Fox on my show, but if there's a story
about Fox, I will not honor this freeze I will
report that story, and if I am prevented from doing so,
I will leave this place. Whereupon she left that place,

(01:05:21):
just the room. When she was gone, Jeff Zucker exploded
at me. I told you she was a mistake. You
didn't listen to me. I told you. Now she's your problem. Oh,
this is your problem. Get her back on the reservation
or else. I said a few kind words about Jeff
Mmel's mother, who was really running the network apparently, and
they separated us. And then in the elevator, my producer said,

(01:05:43):
what are you gonna do about Rachel? And I said
the f if I know, I said, I did have
an idea. I said. The only person she was talking
to in there was herself. This was not some sort
of brand new surprise for her anymore. The show was successful.
She was successful. She said, she was a dancing cell
phone outside a cell phone store one on. She's not

(01:06:05):
going back to that voluntarily. So I went in to
talk to Rachel about an hour later, and I reassured her.
I said, just give me as much time as the
French government took before fleeing during the Nazi advance in
nineteen forty. I said, give me what was it thirty
three days? Give me thirty three days. If we aren't

(01:06:25):
back where we were this morning, we can both quit
live on the air together, or I'll quit. They'll start
your show early and then you can quit. That'd be fun, huh.
Three nights later, well after midnight on a Friday, my
NBC issue BlackBerry buzzed with a quick email from Rachel

(01:06:49):
matdow Hey. She wrote, don't necessarily quote me because I'm
really drunk, but just make the best deal you can
for us. I trust you. We don't need to do
Fox all the time. I never do Fox stories anyway.
I just had to say that in the meeting, and
this is the best platform we'll ever have eventually, between
Rachel being the bad cop and me being the good cop.

(01:07:10):
And I know you're not used to me in that role.
We overrode the ban on criticizing Fox. Sadly, the master
of threatening management at NBC does not do it for
good or for fairness. He does it for himself. Joey
Scars Joe Scarborough, you know who he is. He's the
conservative turned liberal at the moment, maybe because Trump wouldn't

(01:07:35):
take him as his vice president. In twenty sixteen, but
I'm sure this is the way he really feels at
the moment. Early in January twenty ten, the Republican candidate
to fill the Senate seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy,
Scott Brown, literally a former nude model, was at a

(01:07:58):
rally when one of his supporters talked about quote shoving
a curling iron up the back side of the Democratic
candidate he was running against, Martha Cochley. Scott Brown clearly
heard the remark, and he responded, quote, we could do that.
So on January eighteenth, on Countdown, I did a brief
commentary about how unsuitable Brown was for public office, and

(01:08:20):
this was another example of it. I said he was
quoting an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary x nude model, t bagging,
supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom
he disagrees unquote. I followed that with quotes from Brown
and videotape of him disparaging his minority opponent in a

(01:08:41):
local election to her face at a debate some years earlier,
to back up my point of view. One hour later,
Joe Scarborough did a tweet storm about me. Quote Olderman
calls Brown a homophobic, racist, reactionary who supports violence against women.
How reckless and how sad Joe left out. How true

(01:09:04):
It is no longer enough to simply disagree with someone,
just as when Beck called the President racist, this sort
of rhetorical extreme as it must be discouraged. It cheapens
the debate end quote. As we all know. If anybody
as an expert on cheapening the debate, it's Joe effing Scarborough.
But back to the point of this, there was a

(01:09:24):
standing rule at MSNBC. If you want to criticize another
MSNBC personality, go ahead, have a blast, but it can
only be done on the air on MSNBC, and that
other person must have an opportunity to reply in real time,
same show, or in some face to face way. No

(01:09:46):
hit and run, no tweet storms. If you criticize them
by name or by inference in any other medium, in
a newspaper, interview, on radio, on social media, you were
to receive an automatic suspension. The only question was how long.
So the next day, the nineteenth of January, called the
now president of MSNBC, Phil Backbone of Jelly Griffin, and

(01:10:10):
I asked him how long Scarborough's suspension was going to be.
He asked me to come into his office. He said
he'd already had a meeting about the tweets that morning
with Scarborough's executive producer, Chris Licked. Remember Chris lickt Griffin
explained that Scarborough considered Scott Brown a friend. More importantly,

(01:10:30):
Licked had warned Griffin that if Griffin followed through and
enforced the suspension rule, Scarborough would have no other option
than to go to the media and tell reporters, especially
reporters at right wing websites like Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller,
to tell them that he had been suspended because he
was a conservative and I was a liberal. Not that

(01:10:54):
it was the rules, but because he was a conservative
and I was a liberal, and I and not Phil
Griffin actually ran MSNBC what can I do? Griffin was scared. Scared.
I told him this was his big chance. He could
fire Scarborough and Licked they'd just gone into blackmail them. Eventually,
he was going to have to fire them anyway. But

(01:11:14):
I also said, I know you're not going to do that,
and I know you're not going to suspend Scarborough either,
And he didn't despite the rule. But Griffin did send
out a strongly worded memo to the entire company, insisting
that anybody who criticized another MSNBC show or host in
another medium would be suspended from now on, except Scarborough,

(01:11:38):
who had just done exactly that and threatened his employers.
Weeks later, just before my birthday, In fact, Brian Stelter's
old blog TV newser got a copy of Griffin's memo.
I didn't send it to him. They wondered why Scarborough
had not been suspended, since he'd done exactly what was
described in the memo, so they called the MSNBC president

(01:12:01):
and then they printed quote Griffin responds to t V
News quote an important rule was broken. I spoke to
Keith and he said, in the spirit of teamwork and
the free flow of ideas, he didn't think it warranted
punishment or suspension. Now when have I ever been accused
of the spirit of teamwork quote? I also talked to

(01:12:24):
Joe and he apologized to me. That's why I made
the decision that this didn't rise to the level of punishment,
but I felt it was necessary to reiterate my long
standing policy one hundred percent bulkrap total fabrication licked and
Scarborough had blackmailed their own boss with a threat to
smear them and me to Tucker Carlson, who we had

(01:12:47):
fired two years earlier, into the right wing echo chamber.
They all should have been fired on the spot, Griffin included.
Emboldened by that win, about three months later, Scarborough said
something on the air about a Democrat getting away with
not being investigated for something, which is what his show
used to be one hundred percent of the time until

(01:13:08):
Trump turned him down. It was Marcos Malitzus, the editor
of the Daily Cohost website, not just a regular contributor
to Countdown, but somebody who had been promoting the MSNBC
brand and my show and Rachel on that website for
five years. Marcos sent a snarky but legitimate tweet questioning

(01:13:29):
Scarborough's credentials to criticize others who were not investigated. Marcos
invoked the staffer who died in an accident in Joe's office.
Scarborough went nuts. He attacked Malitsus on Twitter. He inaccurately
claimed Malitsus had accused him of murder, and a few
days later I got a phone call from Phil Griffin.

(01:13:49):
He told me Chris Lick has been in to see me. Remember,
Chris lickt Joe won't put up with having Marcos Malitzus
on his network anymore. Not only that, but Lick says
many of Joe's friends, who also appear in Dayside and
Primetime won't. I'm on if Marcos Mulitzus permitted to continue here,
Chris is insisting Marcos must be banned from MSNBC immediately.

(01:14:12):
Chris says he's afraid that if we don't do that,
Joe won't come into work tomorrow. I laughed, I said, hallelujah.
I congratulated Phil Griffin on the clear win win. Griffin
was not a very good executive, except in terms of
preserving his paycheck. He was very bad at enforcing MSNBC's rules,

(01:14:35):
but very good at creating new rules on the spot
in order to protect Joe Scarborough and Chris Licht's friends,
and most importantly, Phil Griffin. I'm banning Mlitsus for any
further appearances on MSNBC, I said Phil. He's a contributor
to my show. You're suspending my guest who has driven
hundreds of thousands of viewers to this show to MSNBC,

(01:14:57):
and I don't have any say in it. Joe Scarborough
and Chris lickt own you, buddy, what you know have
to worry about his whether or not I go tell
this story on the air tonight, or I wait and
I tell it later. Phil scared again, got a little conciliatory,
and he said it could be just a suspension if
I cooperated. I didn't really feel like cooperating. I'd known

(01:15:20):
Phil Griffin since nineteen eighty one, and my desire to
cooperate with him ended about nineteen eighty one. But I
thought I'll leave this to Marcos. I told him, and
he said he enjoyed his contributions to Countdown. He also
did occasional appearances on the Old Ed Schult Show. He said,
if there were a chance at resuming them, he prefer
to at least try that. So Phil Griffins suspended Marcos Militsus,

(01:15:42):
and to my knowledge that's twenty ten and he has
not been on MSNBC since. The suspension has lasted longer
than the network had to that point. So that one,
obviously is one where the wrong guy stood up and
threatened MSNBC and NBC News. Scarborough and Licked prevailed. I

(01:16:04):
did similar things again and again, and after I left,
again and again and again and again. Licked was eventually
mistaken because of this for some sort of responsible adult producer,
and he became president of CNN and screwed that place
up so much that a year after he was fired,
it still got into a bidding war with NBC for
Ronald McDaniel. And instead of saying, you know what, if

(01:16:25):
Scarborough's not suspended, if Marcos is not on the air tonight,
I'm walking, I just said, you know, I have a
torn rotator cuff that makes being Justice with his shining
sword all the time really painful. I mean, I've done
it twenty times already this month. This time I'll just

(01:16:49):
I'll just take the money and I'll go, which I
did a year later. Sorry, but it should serve All
of these stories should serve as reminders to everybody in
similar positions. You can do it, at least once I've

(01:17:23):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip
schaneil arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Seriously.
Jeff ML's mother ninety ninety three ninety four years old
when We resolved all this when I got the right
to criticize Fox back. We had a big dinner, the
two of us and Zucker in the executive dining room

(01:17:44):
atop thirty Rock, and I said to him, how old
is your mother? He said ninety three or whatever he answered.
And I said, so, why don't you just send some
guys in there to pull the cable out of the
wall so she can't watch Bill O'Reilly's show. Well, he
did not respond well to that, and I said, understand,

(01:18:05):
I understand that's stupid and ridiculous and offensive. That's what
it's like to us when you say you'd rather take
MSNBC off the air than find a solution to this. Well,
he listened to that. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
bass and drums, and mister Shanelle handled orchestration at keyboards
produced by Tko Brothers. I think this cemented in his

(01:18:25):
mind the idea that he was going to sell in BC. Unfortunately,
he sold him to comcast more pillows of joenalo any Who.
Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged
and performed by no horns allowed. The sports music is
the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Davis courtesy of ESPN inc. Our satirical and pithy musical

(01:18:49):
comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Larry David. Everything else
was pretty much my fault. Send me why are you
sending improvised explosive devices to Iran Americans? That's countdown for
this the two and twenty fifth day until the twenty

(01:19:10):
twenty four presidential election, the one and seventy sixth day
since dementia Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Use the fourteenth Amendment
and the not regularly given elector objection option provided by
the Supreme Court. Use the Insurrection Act, use the justice system,
use the mental health system to stop him from doing

(01:19:32):
it again while we still can. A final addendum on
this one topic, as I say to everybody starting in
the media business, one thing to remember. There are no adults.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Boltons is the news
warrants till then. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is

(01:20:12):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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TRUMP GOES NUTS, COMPARES HIMSELF TO JESUS - 3.26.24

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Keith Olbermann

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}TRUMP GOES NUTS, COMPARES HIMSELF TO JESUS - 3.26.24