December 18, 2024 • 50 mins
SEASON 3 EPISODE 80: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump’s chief thug wants to put Rachel Maddow in prison. Steve Bannon: “I need investigations, trials and then incarceration… Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and all of them."
Oh and just so we are clear on this: YOU are next. Or close to it. Trump is this close to suing YOU for writing mean tweets about him. Or for not voting for him. Or, if your name is Anne Selzer, for putting out a Des Moines Register election poll that didn’t favor him. Emboldened by such pathetic self-prostituting excuses for American leadership as Jeff Bezos, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Joe Scarborough -- and Bob Iger and all the snatch-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory cowards at Disney and ABC News -- Trump has now lost any remaining sense that anybody is even going to try to stop him. It is hard to point at a crazy man and say he’s now lost it, but… he’s now lost it.
You are next. Well, you’re probably behind me, and we’re both behind Maddow, and she’s behind Anne Selzer, but you know what I mean.
So Bannon wants to lock up Maddow and others at MSNBC and their co-workers Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski scuttled to Mar-a-Lago to save their own worthless asses. Ten days ago the entertainment news site Variety asked me to write a piece for their year-in-review on what MSNBC should do now. The TL;dr was: double down because all the other progressive and neutral news organizations have fled in fear and left you the same kind of opportunity for monopoly that we had there in 2005. The audience will be back with you directly. Stay the course. Of course you have to fire Mr. and Mrs. Scarborough or you let them turn you into MSN-Vichy. I'll give you a longer version of what I did for the magazine.
B-Block (32:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump's Tariffs Plan. It apparently never dawned on him it would draw retribution. Ontario's premier threatens to cut off the Canadian electricity that directly services 1.5 million Americans. A Democratic pollster says the campaign should've been food costs not democracy and never once gets near the actual answer: both. And the most recent GOP candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania can't tell the difference between a "downed drone" and a "toy movie prop headed for the next Comicon."
C-Block (41:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: At 86, Ted Turner is in-and-out. At 43, when I worked for him, none of us would have bet on him still being in, at all. He was a crazy man and a danger to himself, and thank goodness he steered out of the skid. But the crazy version left me countless stories, like the time he nearly fired me over the cameraman's choice of hats, and I nearly responded by socking him.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump's
(00:24):
sheef thug wants to put Rachel Meadow in prison. This
is not hyperbole, This is not symbolism. This is not
an empty threat. Quote. I need investigations, trials and then incarceration.
Andrew Weissman on MSNBC and Rachel Matadow and all of
them unquote. Oh and just so we are clear on this,
(00:47):
it's Rachel Matdow. Now you are next. We're close to
it because Trump is this close to suing you for
writing mean tweets about him, or for not voting for him,
or if your name is Anne Seltzer, for putting out
a Des Moines Register action poll that did not favor
him enough not I may sue them. At least I'll
(01:10):
scare them. A lawsuit in Iowa for consumer fraud filed
against the Des Moines Register lawyer hired. His name is
Alan Ostergren, and if you look him up in Google reviews,
like Phil Bump of The Washington posted, you will find
he literally has a one star rating. Emboldened by such
(01:31):
pathetic self prostituting excuses for American leadership as Jeff Bezos
Patrick Soun Schong, Joe Scarborough and Bob Eiger and all
the snatch defeat from the jaws of victory cowards at
Disney and ABC News. Trump has now lost any remaining
sense that anybody is even going to try to stop him.
(01:52):
It is hard to point at a crazy man and
say he's now lost it. But he's now lost it.
You are next, Well, you're probably behind me, and you
and I are both behind Matadow, and she's behind Anne Seltzer.
But you know what I mean. ABC folds on Saturday
(02:16):
and by Tuesday. Trump has sued the Des Moines Register
for what might have been an accurate poll because it
said he wouldn't win Iowa by as much as he
thought he would. In other words, he's suing a newspaper
for having dared to not predict he was going to
(02:36):
run up the score. And the creature who wants to
imprison Meadow for some conspiracy that exists only in the
place his brain should be is Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon,
the guy who looks like a boxing hobo traveling the
country in empty freight trains. Trump, though, is still thinking
about suing Bob Woodward for election interference. He is still
(02:59):
thinking about suing the Pulitzer Prize Committee. And if that
sounds familiar, it's because he already sued them two years
years ago. Helpfully, an op ed in the Washington Post,
Jay Bezo's proprietor from a Columbia historian named Robert Y. Shapiro,
which is still prominent on the Washington Post site, insists
(03:20):
none of this will happen, mister Shapiro, and I want
to see a copy of his diploma before I call him.
Professor insists Joe Biden should pardon Trump in part because quote,
it would enable Trump to devote all of his administration's
attention to governing instead of seeking revenge and retribution against
(03:42):
his enemies unquote. And if that isn't the dumbest, most
naive thing ever written, it's close. Revenge and retribution are
two of only four or five emotions that Trump shares
with human beings. Mister Shapiro also notes in his op
(04:02):
ed how well fords pardon of Nixon worked out for
the country. And here's a man employed at any institution
of higher learning more respected than the Good Humor ice
cream truck. And he does not realize that Ford's pardon
of Nixon is how humanoids like Trump first understood that
he could get away with it. Trump sued ABC, He
(04:25):
may sue CBS. He's just sued a polster. His boxing
hobo wants to arrest Meadow. Trump wants to sue the
Politzer Prize people again. They're going after Liz Cheney. He's
in revenge and retribution reruns. But go on, tell me
why we should permit him to become president a month
from now.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I'm doing this not because I want to. I'm doing
this because I feel I have an obligation to. I'm
going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa.
Their newspaper, which had a very very good pulster who
got me right all the time. And then just before
the election she said I was going to lose by
three or four points. That it became the biggest story
all over the world because I was going to win
(05:08):
Iowa by twenty points. The farmers loved me, and I
love the farmers, and it was interesting the way she
did it. She brought it down two weeks before she
said I was going to only win by four That
was a big story.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Suing the polster for publishing a poll that had him
winning insisting that is consumer fraud when he won Iowa,
when he won the election, How can he say this
with a straight face, Because he thinks he has now
gotten the right to avenge himself against anybody who didn't
(05:41):
support him or who didn't support him enough. And crazier still,
he thinks there is general agreement that he is entitled
to this. I cannot state this more simply, nor state
it too often. This is just the beginning. Today, Trump
and his scumbags are merely suing or threatening public figures
(06:04):
who have arded or angered or disagreed or just not
agreed enough with him. He is still threatening CBS with
a lawsuit over how it edited an interview that wasn't
with or about him. Next he will be suing people
for voting for Nicki Hayley, or for moving out of
a Trump building, or for thinking bad thoughts about him,
(06:26):
like in that Twilight Zone episode. Some of these hypotheticals
are too crazy even for Trump. But do not forget
that part of Trump's personal motivation for pursuing the presidency
in the first place was his long standing dream of,
as he put it in twenty sixteen, opening up the
libel laws. Opening them up to make it easier to
(06:49):
sue you for anything, not voting for him, not writing
an op ed praising him, enough, giving an award to
somebody who had investigated his crimes. From this day on,
the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish, says
(07:11):
the revolutionary leader Esposito after he sees his control in
the political comedy Bananas and goes crazy with power. In
addition to that, all citizens will be required to change
their underwear every half hour. Underwear will be worn on
the outside so we can check. I mean, what is
the exact distance between that and suing a polster for
(07:36):
saying you are winning? How much shorter is it than
we would have thought before this blight descended upon us?
How much shorter is it when Trump has appointed former
newspaper Flamenco Correspondence as his own concierge judges and cases
go to this judge? How far are we away from this?
(08:00):
When nutjob Congress and Barry lauder Milk just issued his
own made up reports in which he recommends criminal charges
against Liz Cheney for I don't know snydness. I don't know,
but I'm so glad ABC News and Disney and mild
(08:23):
pal Bob Eiger settled Trump's case against them, and everybody's
just moving on to morning in America. That's the case
where George Stephanopolis accurately paraphrased Judge Lewis Kaplan's finding about
Trump and rape, the one in which Judge Caplan wrote,
(08:45):
quoting the judge. The only point on which Ms. Carroll
did not prevail was whether she had proved that mister
Trump had quote raped unquote her within the narrow technical
meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law,
a section that provides that the label rape has used
in criminal prosecutions in New York flies only to vaginal
(09:05):
penetration by a penis. The definition of rape in the
New York Penal Law is far narrower than the meaning
of rape in common modern parlance. It's definition in some dictionaries,
in some federal and state criminal statutes, and elsewhere. The
finding that Missus Carroll failed to prove that she was
quote raped unquote within the meaning of the New York
(09:26):
Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove
that mister Trump quote raped unquote her. As many people
commonly understand the word quote rape unquote. Indeed, as the
evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found
that mister Trump in fact did exactly that unquote. Judge
Kaplan in his written filing in the Egene Carroll case, Hell,
(09:52):
I wouldn't have wanted to go on the court with
just that as my evidence that I didn't make a
demonstrously false statement of fact, would I, Bob Igern't I
wanted I have to prove that George's statement wasn't false
and didn't have reckless disregard for its lack of falsity.
(10:13):
Wouldn't I wanted to have to prove you didn't damage
Trump's reputation. That's Trump, whose own Vice president elect JV.
Vance once called him hitler. Gotta settle that case, because
not only do you have to protect your money, but
(10:34):
you know, there was this great op ed in the
Washington Post by some guy named Shapiro about how pardoning
Trump would enable him to stop seeking revenge and retribution
against his enemies. This is for the public good. Tell
me something, Bob, tell me something. Jeff Bezos, tell me something.
Patrick schun Shanng, you little La Times whore, after you
(10:56):
ordered your newspaper to stop writing about Trump's nominees for
a while, and to send you anything they ever did.
Write about them again. Tell me what you do now
the next time you report that Trump lost the twenty
twenty election and Trump sues you, Suddenly I have the
(11:45):
perfect idea for an ABC reality show. Just put a
little lipstick camera next to every one of the executives
at ABC and Disney going forward, and when Trump sues
them next time, because he will just take their reactions
and put them on TV, you'll break all ratings records.
(12:06):
But we settled with him. We gave him fifteen million
dollars for his Trump presidential memorial sinkhole. They have all
gone nuts further nuts. It was at the same Young
Republican dinner in New York where that one bozo pitched
(12:29):
face first off the stage and took the podium down
with him in the most eloquent expression by any Trumpist
in the history of their movement, at which Steve Bannon
issued his threat against Rachel Maddow. The third term Magic Act,
in which you make the twenty second Amendment to the
Constitution disappear, came up again. I recall being mocked for
(12:52):
insisting here again and again and again that as soon
as Trump was back in office, they would start making
up a path focused on whether it means only two
terms or only two consecutive terms by which he could
run again in twenty twenty eight if he isn't dead then,
or maybe even if he is. I was told I
(13:14):
was laugh out loud wrong, he'd never try that. It's
in the constitution, and I was wrong. They didn't wait
for him to go back into office before they started
this Bannon quote. The Viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since
it doesn't actually say consecutive, that maybe we do it
(13:36):
again in twenty eight. Here it comes, and then the
smooth segue into Soviet style vast conspiracy show trials. Quoting
Bannon again, we want retribution and we're going to get retribution.
You have to. It's not personal, it's not personal. They
(13:57):
need to learn what populist nationalist power is on the
receiving end. I need investigations, trials, and then incarceration. And
I'm just talking about the media. Should the media be
included in the mass criminal conspiracy against President Trump? Should
Andrew Weisman on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and all of
them We want all your emails, all your text messages,
(14:18):
everything you did. You colluded in a conspiracy with Merrick Garland,
Nancy Pelosi, Lisa Monico, and Jack Smith unquote, a conspiracy
against Trump involving Merrick Garland. I wish these are the
people who guide Trump, the ones Joe Scarborough and Mika
(14:43):
Przhinsky in effect went and before whom they prostrated themselves,
the ones who want to arrest Scarborough's and Prashinski's co workers. Now, honestly,
it's not that big a jump for Scarborough. He tried
to get Matdow fired in two thousand, Seve Evan two
(15:05):
thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, twenty ten. I
can't testify to any days since, but I've been told
it continued after I left there, So arrest her. Eh.
A week ten days ago, the entertainment website Variety asked
me to write a thing for their year end issue,
seven hundred words on what MSNBC should do now, because,
(15:26):
of course, the ratings collapsed at MSNBC after the election,
and Scarborough and Mika also collapsed. Seven hundred words now,
Surprisingly enough, I have a lot more than seven hundred
words on this topic. I believe, in fact the word
count on my laptop read infinity. But Variety did a
(15:50):
nice job of editing, and I thanked them for it
before it posted yesterday. I'd like to read you the
piece now, but annotated and expanded upon in some places,
and I put a few things back in that they
took out for space, nothing more than that, and amplify
in a couple of points. Originally they titled this when
it posted yesterday Keith Olberman on how MSNBC should approach
Trump two point zero, But shortly thereafter they changed the headline,
(16:14):
and unlike the New York Times, they didn't stuff it
through the deflavorizing machine. The new Variety headline Keith Olberman,
how can MSNBC save itself after Trump's win? First step
fire Mika and Joe. Okay, I have to admit I
giggled for an hour and then I give fawed Keith Olderman.
(16:37):
How can MSNBC save itself after Trump's win? First step
fire Mika and Joe? By Keith Olderman. This is the
article quote by Keith Olberman, What does MSNBC do now
after Trump accomplished the undead thing and retook the White House?
After Comcast announced plans to spin off the network along
(16:58):
with others, in such haste that its new company was
named spin Co after Joe Scarborough and Mika Braginski went
on their show and welcomed our new insect overlords after
its audience vanished, nothing stay the course. The audience is
exhausted and needs a break. It'll be back and resistier
(17:19):
than ever. Suffer the ratings troth. Here's my first aside.
How has this not occurred to anybody else that it's
a troth? I cut back from five podcasts a week
to two. You want to listen to five of these
right now? Every week? You think I want to write
(17:41):
five of these. I'm having trouble doing two. Maybe in
January we do more. Right now, we need to rest
and husband our resources, and I might point out and then,
in terms of the ratings, although the Fox ratings went
up from disastrous to twenty percent better than disastrous after
Trump won, After Obama one in two thousand and eight,
(18:04):
at MSNBC collapsed. There were meetings with executives there who
couldn't understand it. But Obama won. Why a week later
are we getting one tenth of the audience? And I said,
everybody's still drunk. They really didn't understand it. I believe
sometimes often as I'm just dozing off falling to sleep
(18:28):
at night, I sometimes actually believe that there is a
place in this country where they decide who runs all
the television networks, all of them. Not just MSNBC or
ESPN or any of the ones I've worked at, but
all of them. Who ne Vision and Telemundo included. Where
they all sit around and they go, all right, who's
(18:48):
the worst possible person to run the Hallmark channel? This
guy doesn't like romance movies. Put him in charge. I
really think so. The ratings are down at MSNBC. I
can't imagine why the audience does not want to see
the news. And unlike other places, you can't just lie
(19:11):
to them about what's happening. I mean not really. You
can soften it up a little bit. You can try
to be encouraging, you can try to be entertaining. You
can do that maybe twice a week, like I'm doing,
rather than say, twenty four hours a day. Of course,
the audience is going to go away anyway. Back to
what I wrote for Variety, I mean, obviously you have
(19:34):
to fire mister and missus Scared Bro, however, continue their
banal but largely benign political coffee class show without them
and their insistence that we all join their msn VS,
nobody will remember they were ever there. Another aside, I
happen to be very proud of that phrase, msn VS.
(19:57):
You don't know about VC France, Google it. It's on
every morning now with cout Scarborough. They also cut the
neck sentence, which I thought sold the point. Remember the
Daily Show with Craig Kilbourne. Yeah, when Craig Kilbourne left
the Daily Show to go do the CBS Show after
David Letterman, boy oh boy, the predictions where the new
(20:20):
host was never going to be able to live up
to Kilbourne's reputation. It was never going to be as
good as it was with Kilbourne. The next host was
Sean Stewart. Do you remember MSNBC Mornings with David Gregory
and Contessa Brewer. They were the ones who succeeded Don
iMOS when they fired Imus when they didn't work out,
they went to Scarborough and get some We have some
(20:41):
woman who's free in the mornings Brushinski. Okay, I guess
that's how that happened. I mean, look, at how MSNBC
has excised me from their history. Nobody would notice if
Scarborough disappeared, or if you don't like the idea of
firing them both, just have him come back next Monday
with a different wife. Lord knows it wouldn't be the
(21:02):
first time. Back to the article. Plus, the next money
is coming from more fervent opposition to Maga. Not less,
wasn't the Scarborough disaster sixty percent of the demo audience
gone in three days? Instructive enough? Did you not notice
CNN going from fact based criticism of Trump's madness to
hours of cacophonists shouting and sinking to whatever is the
(21:25):
next level down from irrelevance. Another aside, looking at you, Abby, Philip.
This formula in which you get eight people around a
table yelling at Scott Jennings, everybody yelling at everybody else.
This was the one trick that the former MSNBC executive
later president, Phil Griffin knew. Every show, every show that
(21:48):
ever got into ratings trouble, every new show, every old
show was eventually approached by the show doctor, the man
with the magic touch at MSNBC, Phil Griffin, and his
solution was always I think we should have a panel
with like six people at it every show. Phil Griffin
is now the president of the Rachel Mattow Production Company.
(22:09):
If there are any actual charges to be brought against
Rachel Matdow for anything in this world, it's hiring Phil Griffin.
Back to the article, did the quarter of a million
canceled Washington Post subscriptions not tell you something? Or the
exodus from Twitter X? What do you think happened to
all these news consumers that they were raptured? They're all
(22:30):
still there waiting to spend their time and money at
the only liberal candy store still open, yours. These other
supposed bastions of journalism have left you a near monopoly.
And MSNBC only exists today because the last time NBC
was handed a near monopoly, your management ancestors said, one
(22:52):
hundred million in profits from Alderman's liberal show. I guess
we'll take it if we have to. They did cut
out something which suggests that the resonance of what you
and I know about what's going on in the media
not necessarily nationally understood. I added to the part about
the exodus from Twitter X and the quarter of a
(23:14):
million Washington Post subscriptions canceled, and the Scarborough disaster and
the CNN ratings. I added the New York Times losing
its way for the sake of some flaccid both sides
of headlines. They cut that out, Still true back to
the article. In the early years of this century, the
great minds at GE, then NBC's parent were trying to
(23:37):
go to the right of Fox by putting on Tucker Carlson,
Michael Savage, and Laura Ingram. They were thus too busy
to notice that I was putting on Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell,
and Chris Hayes while they were trying to steal Bill
O'Reilly away from Fox, or failing that, to transform MSNBC
into a literal prison documentary channel. I kept Rachel from
jumping to CNN by giving her four hundred and thirty
(23:58):
seven dollars out of my own pocket. And the next
thing the corporate masters knew, we'd spun them all off
into their own shows an MSNBC was profiting a billion
a year. By the way, I'd like the four hundred
and thirty seven dollars reimbursed. Please another side. I know
you haven't heard the four hundred and thirty seven dollars
story before. I've kept that as a relative secret. I've
(24:20):
only told it on let's see two hundred and sixteen
episodes of this podcast. Well, I'm bitter. Back to the article.
Generation after generation of NBC executive idiots viewed politics as
nothing more than a soda brand and believe there was
some additional audience, undecided or right wing, that they could
(24:41):
add to the present one if only they also offered
a different flavor called new MSNBC. The new flavor invariably
turns out to be turnip. Besides that right wing ruled
you out in nineteen ninety six. Pursuing it results in
only one thing, the Scarboroughing of your present audience. That
(25:03):
doesn't mean you can't tweet stuff. Your primetime audience doesn't
want new faces. It wants comfort food. So refresh the
menu and decor scuttle those daytime shows which always existed
solely to give NBC News execs something to stare at
while they pretended to work, and replace them with the
morning formula, only with different sets in different titles. Try
(25:23):
outsider big personality hosts like Elie Mistal and Pablo Torre.
You could even try for a truce with your prodigal anchor,
so he'll be inside the tent peeing out for a change.
You may have noticed that I included in this one
paragraph and buried rather successfully. I might add a suggestion
(25:46):
that they fire Katie Turr and hire me back to
the article, And now you can finally do something I
first suggested in nineteen ninety eight. Change the damn name
of the network. Use the acronym NYWS or American News Network.
A nice self explanatory f Trump TV. What all this
(26:10):
will get you? Besides the kinds of profits only a
monopoly can provide, are non cash virtues like moral force
and ethics, and journalism and patriotism and liberty. You may
now be the last line of defense for the free
press and thus the future of representative government in this country.
The bullies don't stop hitting you because you are nice
to them. They stop hitting you when you knock them
(26:32):
out cold. Put that on MSNBC and all will be well.
Thanks Keith, great report. Also of interest here Pennsylvania state senator.
(26:57):
They're twenty twenty two Republican nominee for governor in that state.
Erupts at a photo of a downed drone being carted
off on a Northeastern expressway. He feeds all the conspiracy crap.
Only one problem. That was not a downed drone. It
was a famous movie prop. Now this had been Trump,
(27:20):
he would be suing me for disagreeing with him. That's next.
This is countdown.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
This is countdown, with Keith Alberman.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Still ahead of us. At lunch the other day, a
new friend and fellow former colleague of Ted Turner said
he would be going south and seeing Ted while he
was south, and he hoped to get him on a
good day. Ted is eighty six years old. And I
don't think I'm telling anybody anything. They don't know he's
been in and out for at least ten years, fifteen
(28:14):
years now. Having known him half his life, having worked
for him half Ted's lifetime ago, I think we should
look at this positively. When Ted Turner was forty three
years old, none of us who worked for him would
have expected him to live to well forty four. He
(28:35):
drank incessantly, he never slept, He took every risk he
could find. He's eighty six. He's still in and out
rather than just out. That's a win. Ted won again,
and boy, could CNN use Ted now, But I want
to tell one of those stories from the out days,
(28:56):
when his outness often produced such rage inside him that
he almost fired me over the hat that my cammerman
was wearing. It a story, and I almost responded by
socking him in the jaw, But we made up in
the end. Things I promise not to tell about Ted
Turner next first. Believe it or not, there's still more
(29:18):
new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the missgrints,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other
worse persons in the world, the bronze worse Trump and
this tariff bullshit because he thinks the year eighteen ninety
four was great. The Premiere of Ontario, Doug Ford, has
(29:41):
responded in a way that could help us go back
to eighteen ninety four. He says, if Trump follows through
on this thread of a twenty five percent tariff on
Canadian goods, he will simply stop Ontario from exporting to
the US anymore. Electricity. Canada is the source of twenty
percent of our crude oil, a lot of our our
(30:04):
natural gas, and of course electricity they generate, which a
million and a half Americans use in Michigan, New York, Wisconsin,
places like that lights Out. Incidentally, the website gas Buddy
says the tariffs could increase the price of a gallon
of gas by at least thirty cents a gallon, maybe
seventy cents. The runner up Molly Murphy, a polster who
(30:26):
did work for Kamala Harrison, who should now be on
a rocket ship to the sun. She addressed the Democratic
National Committee Executive Committee's first post election party I'm sorry
post election conference. Molly Murphy said they blew the election
because they spent too much time attacking Trump over this
irrelevant topic of norms. Voters, Molly says, believe quote norms
(30:50):
if not worked for them, and so we certainly shouldn't
ask them to clutch their pearls. We risk sounding like
hall monitors. As to the here and now. Molly adds
that voters don't care who he's putting in cabinet positions.
These voters are saying, I always give him pass on
the outrageous if my costs come down. She insists, they
(31:10):
should have been focused on household costs. Look, if you
were a Harris Polster and you are speaking up now
instead of on October eighteenth or August eighteenth. First off,
f U. Secondly, it's pretty clear millions of Americans, or
at least the two hundred and twenty nine thousand, seven
(31:32):
hundred and sixty six voters in the swing states who
actually decided the election. It's pretty clear two hundred and
twenty nine thousand, seven hundred and sixty six people who
have the right to vote in America chose the wallet
over the polio and the fascism. Nobody's arguing that they're morons.
We have bred them to be morons, we have educated
(31:53):
them to be morons. We have let them educate themselves
in homeschooling to be morons. They are morons. What a shock.
But the point that continues to mystify me about second
guessers like mal Le Murphy and other narrow minded pinheads
is this, the Democrats spent eleventy billion dollars on advertising
(32:14):
that much money. I'm just guessing here, but I think
I think hear me out. We could have covered both topics.
We could have covered the whole insurrectionisty dictatorshippy thing in
the ads and the price of the sandwiches and the
gas thing. Could have done them both, could have put
them both in the same commercials. Even you think the
(32:39):
cost of groceries is going down under a Trump dictatorship,
he wants tariffs on everything, including oil and gas and electricity.
Your gas is going up under Trump at least thirty
cents a gallon at least oh and if you try
to complain about it, Trump will sue you. I'm Kamala
Harris and I approved this message because your food prices
will so double under Trump. See other than the choice
(33:03):
of voices. There you can walk and chew gum at
the same time. Molly Murphy, well the generic you, but
our winner. State Senator Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania. If that
name sends a shutter down your spine, well it should please.
He was the GOP nominee for governor that year in
twenty twenty two, the one who lost to Josh Shapiro
(33:25):
by fourteen because Mastriano was a fundamentalist theocrat and an
election subverter, and a COVID denier and most importantly a
murn and he's still a mourn. Mastriano posted a photo
of what he says is a drone looks to be
four or five feet high, maybe twelve feet wide, lashed
(33:48):
to the back of a flatbed trailer and being transported
on a major highway. Breaking News reads the caption to
this photo. Crashed drone in Orange Beach, retrieved from water
and taken to undisclosed location for further investigation. But Mastriano,
though he has the IQ of a brain damaged fish
that just had a drone crash into it, had much
(34:09):
more to say about this above the photo of the drone.
It is inconceivable that the federal government has no answers
nor has taken any action to get to the bottom
of the unadefied drones. The fecklessness of this administration was
on display last year when a Chinese surveillance balloon was
allowed to fly over the entire continental United States before
(34:29):
being shot down. Such should be viewed as a threat
to our nation and citizens. An action is long overdue.
We have recourses and assets in our arsenal to get answers,
but I suppose Ukraine is more important to the White House.
January twentieth can't come soon enough. Mastriano's post got a
community note because the photo that has driven into this
(34:50):
madness is not of one of the so called Northeast drones.
It's a model of a tie fighter from Star Wars.
A motion picture this photograph being driven along a highway
in the Philippine, which Doug Mastriano could not distinguish from
his ass or his elbow. The community note also disappeared
(35:13):
sometime yesterday, then reappeared, leading to the conclusion that perhaps
Elon Musk also cannot tell the difference between an actual
craft capable of flight and a toy. On the way
to the local Comic con convention, Doug Mastriano boasts he
spent thirty years in the army and is a veteran
of desert storm in Afghanistan, and thank you for If
(35:34):
we hadn't already been doing this, we should start doing
this immediately. We should question anybody who served in combat
in the last thirty five years about literal brain damage,
because we see this time after time they come out
of service with the best of intentions and with the
iq of a fish that was just hit by a drone.
Because this bone had simply picked up this photo from
(35:57):
some conspiracy website and either assumed he could fool everybody
with it, or is too far gone himself to know
it was a pheo of a movie prop. Doug these
Ano the drunes you're looking for, Mastriano, idiot, and today's
other worse BUYSI and outer Space. I have one more
(36:36):
story to tell you about covering the nineteen eighty two
National Football League players strike, and this is less about
the strike itself and more about the man for whom
I covered it, Ted Turner. Ted Turner had put CNN
on the air just two years earlier, and his sports
guy Bill McPhail had interviewed me for a job as
their New York Sports reporter even earlier than that May
(36:58):
of nineteen eighty and when I did not get it,
I was genuinely relieved, because I was convinced there was
no way they would ever get CNN on the air.
No chance. Ever, Obviously I did not account for Ted
Turner's stubbornness. Anyway, I wound up going there freelance in
nineteen eighty one, as I have related in some detail here,
when Lou Dobbs and his girlfriend, the New York Sports Reporter,
(37:20):
had to get out of town fast at the existence
of missus Lou Dobbs. Eight months later, as the nineteen
eighty two NFL strike loomed. They had made me staff
and given me a contract, first offering me one thousand
dollars less a year than they were paying me freelance.
Even CNN of nineteen eighty two acknowledged the absurdity of
that mathematical proposition. So I was invested already whining about
(37:43):
Ted Turner, employee of CNN, when the football players walked
out in strike in September nineteen eighty two, and that
strike was my beat every day from March to November.
A day or so after the strike began, we sent
up an interview with the president of CBS Sports, Neil Pilson,
about the effect that the strike would have on TV
Sports in general and CBS Sports in particular, And as
(38:05):
the camera crew and I filed into his office, Pilson
wearily said, nothing against you, guys, but I've done so
many interviews already about this strike that if you actually
come up with a question I haven't been asked already,
I'll give you well. We all leaned in towards him.
Give us what the job a job interview at least
fifty dollars, I'll give you CBS Sports caps, not exactly
(38:31):
a job, but better than nothing. So we rolled tape
and I said, so, mister Pilson, in light of the strike,
do you wish CBS Sports did not have the Super
Bowl this year? As it does? And he laughed, and
he took off his mic and he went over to
his office phone. He buzzed his assistant, bring in three caps,
will you? And he sat back down. He said, you guys,
did it. Nobody asked me that yet, and it's like
(38:53):
the only question that really interests me. You're still rolling.
Neil Pilson then proceeded to give a lengthy and thoughtful
answer about how as long as the season was not canceled,
it was probably better to have the Super Bowl because
people would be so grateful that after the strike they
wound up playing in anyway. So now a week goes
(39:13):
by after that interview, and the bargaining sessions between the
players and the owners are taking place in a Manhattan hotel,
the Lows on Lexington Avenue, a dump with a nice lobby.
All that matters to me is the Lows with the dump,
and the nice lobby is literally three blocks from my apartment.
The players and the owners just march through a long
(39:33):
hallway into private rooms. That's all we see of them.
It is not heavy lifting. There are nice seats at
least in that lobby, but it is enlivened one day
by news that our boss, Ted Turner has asked the
union if he can come in and meet with their
twenty odd player negotiating team because he wants to pitch
them on something. He was in fact due there yesterday
(39:56):
but was unavoidably detained. The rumor the players told me
never confirmed, was that while changing planes in Chicago, Turner
and an air hostess had ensconced themselves in a dumpster
or the other version was in a janitor's closet for
twelve hours of whoopee, and that's why he was a
day late. Anyway, I walk into the Lows that morning,
(40:19):
and if somehow I had not been able to recognize
my camera crew, sure enough it is the same two
guys who had been with me at Neil Pilson's office
at CBS when I asked him the question he had
not been asked before, earning us free CBS sports caps,
and the cameraman and the deck operator are of course
wearing their CBS sports caps and understand in nineteen eighty two.
(40:40):
CNN was not an upstart. It was not the feisty outsider,
It was not the future of news. We were called
pretend TV. It was said that CNN stood for Chicken
Noodle News. One day, I called somebody up and asked
for press credentials for Cable News Network, and the guy said,
Cable News Network. The either people own the news stands downtown.
(41:05):
I had no idea what he was talking about, so
I went to one of the newstands and I asked
the guy who owns this place? And he pointed to
a plaque and it said owned by Cabbell News Company.
The Kabbell News Company, owner of downtown newstands, was better
known than Cable News Network. We got scoffed at in
some arenas and venues like Madison Square Garden in New York.
(41:28):
Our crews were not admitted because they were not in
the Union. So the CBS sports caps were an important,
albeit borrowed touch of legitimacy and dignity, especially for my
cameraman and my deck guy. So the three of us
position ourselves in that long haul in the lobby, waiting
for my boss, Ted Turner, me holding the mic, with
(41:48):
the big red CNN logo on the mic flag and
the crew wearing their gaudy CBS sports caps, and in
Ted walks emerging from the brilliant early autumn sunshine, filtering
in from behind him from the street like this was
a perfectly lit movie scene, and he sees me and
recognize me and smiles and comes over and beams hot, damn,
(42:09):
it's my CNN crew, And he shakes my hand and
we roll tape and I start to asking my first question,
and suddenly the joy drains from his face and he
stops me. Oh, did what they wearing on their heads?
He gestures at the cameraman and the deck guy, and
I explained the Baxter, I don't give a damn who
gave him them? Is a CNN crew, they wearing CBS
(42:30):
sports caps. Get them off they damn heads. And he
pushes me, I mean really shoves me and strides past us. Now,
even then, I'm five six inches taller than Ted Turner
and twenty five pounds heavier at least, And maybe I
can live with my employer embarrassing me in public, but
I do not have to let him shove me in
(42:50):
front of all the other reporters. So for a second,
I think, Ah, I'm just gonna run down the hall
and catch him and horse collar the bastard from behind.
About a year into my TV career, I have already
accepted that there are positives to television, but I've also
already learned nearly all the negatives. And not three months earlier,
I had gone over to ABC to interview with them
(43:12):
about going back to do radio sports. Seems to me,
given what I know about Ted Turner, dragging him to
the ground and then quitting TV forever would be a
pretty appropriate farewell. And then one word popped in my head. Rent, Ah, right, Rent,
(43:34):
So quickly I go to Plan B to be fair
in thought, if not an action. Ted Turner was right.
Look pretty silly to have the CNN camera crew wearing
CBS sports caps while interviewing the founder and owner of CNN, who,
by the way, was in the newspaper constantly because he
kept saying he was going to buy CBS. Plus, I
still had a story to do that day, and that
(43:55):
crew is going to have to go back into the
room where Turner would be meeting with the players about
an hour later for the proverbial spray shot that would
give us some video to use of their meeting, and
simply having my guys take their caps off was not
going to suffice. So I ran the three blocks back
to my apartment to grab the only bit of merch
or swag produced in the first two years of CNN.
(44:18):
Something they had and apparently inexhaustible supply of CNN bumper stickers.
I must have had one hundred of them in my
place alone, and there were boxes and cartons and boxes
and cartons of them in the New York bureau, which
was funny enough as it was, since I don't think
all the people who worked at CNN in New York
in nineteen eighty two owned six cars among them. Anyway,
(44:41):
I trimmed a couple of the stickers down to just
the CNN logos and raced back to the Crappy Low's hotel,
and just as they were calling for the crews to
come in to get the spray shots of Ted meeting
with the players, I put those CNN logo stickers over
the CBS logos on my guys caps, and to my delight,
they stuck in place a little large, but it worked.
(45:04):
Later the boys came out of the meeting room, and
the cameraman was in hysterics. He wound the video back
and had me watch it through the viewfinder of the camera.
As soon as they had walked in, Turner started to
give them dirty looks, and then suddenly one of the
NFL players said, Hey, Ted, there's your crew. There's your
CNN crew. Hey CNN over here. Everybody was laughing, and
(45:26):
now Ted was beaming that them. That's my CNN crew.
All right, good work boys. When his meeting with the
players broke up an hour later, I got a message
from Ted's assistant to wait for him around a corner
from the main lobby so he could give me give
CNN exclusive details about what he was trying to sell
the players on. It was a series of exhibition games
(45:48):
so the striking players could make a little money on
the side, that he could televise and there would be
a pitch to the National Labor Relations Board that the
strike had been forced on the players by the owners,
which would have meant the players would have all become
free agents. Ted won haunted them, all of them, every
player in the National Football League to sign instead with him.
(46:10):
He would create a twenty four team league. He would
give the union half ownership of every team. He would
find backers for the other half, and all he wanted
was the TV rights. It didn't happen, obviously, but what
a breathtaking scheme. Anyway, Turner was all smiles when he
came out of the meeting to tell me before he
met with the rest of the press, and he said,
(46:31):
great with the hat, good work, but I have to
get you guys some real sea and ed sports hats
for Christmas. Ted stayed another fifteen or twenty minutes doing
god knows what with God knows whom. I didn't see
any dumpsters in the hotel, and then he left by
the main exit as the rest of the camera crews
and reporters trailed him. I went along just to see
if there was anything he hadn't told me, And as
(46:51):
he went out the doors to his car, he said,
see overman, and I said, don't forget the hats, and
Ted Turner gave me one of the dirtiest looks I
have ever gotten in my life. Sure enough, a couple
of days before Christmas, I get a call from my
boss in Atlanta. I mean just got a box of
(47:12):
one hundred CNN Sports Truckers caps from Ted Turner's office.
I don't know what the hell this is all about,
but his assistant says, if we wanted to know, we
should call you. I was very proud of making the
correct choice between correcting mistake and getting us all hats
and dissaulting him. There is one PostScript. Ted talked the
(47:34):
players into the exhibition games. I mentioned only two of them,
one at RFK Stadium in Washington, which I went to
on assignment, seated next to Ted Turner. He had two
flasks with him. Anyway, the crowd was so small at
RFK Stadium in Washington that at one point they got
on the PA system and asked all the fans to
(47:55):
go sit down behind the player benches so the TV
shots of the game wouldn't show all those empty seats.
The other game was in the Los Angeles Collis. They
drew even less, maybe one thousand fans, probably more like
five hundred five hundred fans in the LA Coliseum. Five
hundred fans looks like the raisins and rice pudding. But
(48:17):
it was the name of his ad hoc league with
these games in Washington and LA that still sticks with
me forty years later Ted named it himself. I'm pretty
sure he did this deliberately. I know nobody else noticed
it until I made a big deal about it. Ted
Turner called his ill fated venture his Erzatz National Football
(48:38):
League the quote all Star season, and I said, perfect.
The acronym you have built for it is a s S.
(49:03):
I've done all that average I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil the
musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of
our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration at keyboards, mister Ray
was on the guitars, bass and drums, and it was
produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty musical comments
are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
(49:26):
written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of ESPN Inc. Other
music arranged and performed by the group No Horns allowed,
and my announcer was my friend. Why this is a coincidence,
Nancy Faust? Everything else was, as ever my fault. My
best wish is, of course, to Ted Turner. My first
television boss of bosses. That's countdown for today, Just one
(49:49):
four hundred and ninety five days until the scheduled end
of the lame duck presidency of Trump. Probably your lawsuit
may vary. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always,
bulletins as the news warrants till the next one, and
I'm Keith Aldrimman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
(50:09):
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(50:34):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump's
(00:24):
sheef thug wants to put Rachel Meadow in prison. This
is not hyperbole, This is not symbolism. This is not
an empty threat. Quote. I need investigations, trials and then incarceration.
Andrew Weissman on MSNBC and Rachel Matadow and all of
them unquote. Oh and just so we are clear on this,
(00:47):
it's Rachel Matdow. Now you are next. We're close to
it because Trump is this close to suing you for
writing mean tweets about him, or for not voting for him,
or if your name is Anne Seltzer, for putting out
a Des Moines Register action poll that did not favor
him enough not I may sue them. At least I'll
(01:10):
scare them. A lawsuit in Iowa for consumer fraud filed
against the Des Moines Register lawyer hired. His name is
Alan Ostergren, and if you look him up in Google reviews,
like Phil Bump of The Washington posted, you will find
he literally has a one star rating. Emboldened by such
(01:31):
pathetic self prostituting excuses for American leadership as Jeff Bezos
Patrick Soun Schong, Joe Scarborough and Bob Eiger and all
the snatch defeat from the jaws of victory cowards at
Disney and ABC News. Trump has now lost any remaining
sense that anybody is even going to try to stop him.
(01:52):
It is hard to point at a crazy man and
say he's now lost it. But he's now lost it.
You are next, Well, you're probably behind me, and you
and I are both behind Matadow, and she's behind Anne Seltzer.
But you know what I mean. ABC folds on Saturday
(02:16):
and by Tuesday. Trump has sued the Des Moines Register
for what might have been an accurate poll because it
said he wouldn't win Iowa by as much as he
thought he would. In other words, he's suing a newspaper
for having dared to not predict he was going to
(02:36):
run up the score. And the creature who wants to
imprison Meadow for some conspiracy that exists only in the
place his brain should be is Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon,
the guy who looks like a boxing hobo traveling the
country in empty freight trains. Trump, though, is still thinking
about suing Bob Woodward for election interference. He is still
(02:59):
thinking about suing the Pulitzer Prize Committee. And if that
sounds familiar, it's because he already sued them two years
years ago. Helpfully, an op ed in the Washington Post,
Jay Bezo's proprietor from a Columbia historian named Robert Y. Shapiro,
which is still prominent on the Washington Post site, insists
(03:20):
none of this will happen, mister Shapiro, and I want
to see a copy of his diploma before I call him.
Professor insists Joe Biden should pardon Trump in part because quote,
it would enable Trump to devote all of his administration's
attention to governing instead of seeking revenge and retribution against
(03:42):
his enemies unquote. And if that isn't the dumbest, most
naive thing ever written, it's close. Revenge and retribution are
two of only four or five emotions that Trump shares
with human beings. Mister Shapiro also notes in his op
(04:02):
ed how well fords pardon of Nixon worked out for
the country. And here's a man employed at any institution
of higher learning more respected than the Good Humor ice
cream truck. And he does not realize that Ford's pardon
of Nixon is how humanoids like Trump first understood that
he could get away with it. Trump sued ABC, He
(04:25):
may sue CBS. He's just sued a polster. His boxing
hobo wants to arrest Meadow. Trump wants to sue the
Politzer Prize people again. They're going after Liz Cheney. He's
in revenge and retribution reruns. But go on, tell me
why we should permit him to become president a month
from now.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I'm doing this not because I want to. I'm doing
this because I feel I have an obligation to. I'm
going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa.
Their newspaper, which had a very very good pulster who
got me right all the time. And then just before
the election she said I was going to lose by
three or four points. That it became the biggest story
all over the world because I was going to win
(05:08):
Iowa by twenty points. The farmers loved me, and I
love the farmers, and it was interesting the way she
did it. She brought it down two weeks before she
said I was going to only win by four That
was a big story.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Suing the polster for publishing a poll that had him
winning insisting that is consumer fraud when he won Iowa,
when he won the election, How can he say this
with a straight face, Because he thinks he has now
gotten the right to avenge himself against anybody who didn't
(05:41):
support him or who didn't support him enough. And crazier still,
he thinks there is general agreement that he is entitled
to this. I cannot state this more simply, nor state
it too often. This is just the beginning. Today, Trump
and his scumbags are merely suing or threatening public figures
(06:04):
who have arded or angered or disagreed or just not
agreed enough with him. He is still threatening CBS with
a lawsuit over how it edited an interview that wasn't
with or about him. Next he will be suing people
for voting for Nicki Hayley, or for moving out of
a Trump building, or for thinking bad thoughts about him,
(06:26):
like in that Twilight Zone episode. Some of these hypotheticals
are too crazy even for Trump. But do not forget
that part of Trump's personal motivation for pursuing the presidency
in the first place was his long standing dream of,
as he put it in twenty sixteen, opening up the
libel laws. Opening them up to make it easier to
(06:49):
sue you for anything, not voting for him, not writing
an op ed praising him, enough, giving an award to
somebody who had investigated his crimes. From this day on,
the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish, says
(07:11):
the revolutionary leader Esposito after he sees his control in
the political comedy Bananas and goes crazy with power. In
addition to that, all citizens will be required to change
their underwear every half hour. Underwear will be worn on
the outside so we can check. I mean, what is
the exact distance between that and suing a polster for
(07:36):
saying you are winning? How much shorter is it than
we would have thought before this blight descended upon us?
How much shorter is it when Trump has appointed former
newspaper Flamenco Correspondence as his own concierge judges and cases
go to this judge? How far are we away from this?
(08:00):
When nutjob Congress and Barry lauder Milk just issued his
own made up reports in which he recommends criminal charges
against Liz Cheney for I don't know snydness. I don't know,
but I'm so glad ABC News and Disney and mild
(08:23):
pal Bob Eiger settled Trump's case against them, and everybody's
just moving on to morning in America. That's the case
where George Stephanopolis accurately paraphrased Judge Lewis Kaplan's finding about
Trump and rape, the one in which Judge Caplan wrote,
(08:45):
quoting the judge. The only point on which Ms. Carroll
did not prevail was whether she had proved that mister
Trump had quote raped unquote her within the narrow technical
meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law,
a section that provides that the label rape has used
in criminal prosecutions in New York flies only to vaginal
(09:05):
penetration by a penis. The definition of rape in the
New York Penal Law is far narrower than the meaning
of rape in common modern parlance. It's definition in some dictionaries,
in some federal and state criminal statutes, and elsewhere. The
finding that Missus Carroll failed to prove that she was
quote raped unquote within the meaning of the New York
(09:26):
Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove
that mister Trump quote raped unquote her. As many people
commonly understand the word quote rape unquote. Indeed, as the
evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found
that mister Trump in fact did exactly that unquote. Judge
Kaplan in his written filing in the Egene Carroll case, Hell,
(09:52):
I wouldn't have wanted to go on the court with
just that as my evidence that I didn't make a
demonstrously false statement of fact, would I, Bob Igern't I
wanted I have to prove that George's statement wasn't false
and didn't have reckless disregard for its lack of falsity.
(10:13):
Wouldn't I wanted to have to prove you didn't damage
Trump's reputation. That's Trump, whose own Vice president elect JV.
Vance once called him hitler. Gotta settle that case, because
not only do you have to protect your money, but
(10:34):
you know, there was this great op ed in the
Washington Post by some guy named Shapiro about how pardoning
Trump would enable him to stop seeking revenge and retribution
against his enemies. This is for the public good. Tell
me something, Bob, tell me something. Jeff Bezos, tell me something.
Patrick schun Shanng, you little La Times whore, after you
(10:56):
ordered your newspaper to stop writing about Trump's nominees for
a while, and to send you anything they ever did.
Write about them again. Tell me what you do now
the next time you report that Trump lost the twenty
twenty election and Trump sues you, Suddenly I have the
(11:45):
perfect idea for an ABC reality show. Just put a
little lipstick camera next to every one of the executives
at ABC and Disney going forward, and when Trump sues
them next time, because he will just take their reactions
and put them on TV, you'll break all ratings records.
(12:06):
But we settled with him. We gave him fifteen million
dollars for his Trump presidential memorial sinkhole. They have all
gone nuts further nuts. It was at the same Young
Republican dinner in New York where that one bozo pitched
(12:29):
face first off the stage and took the podium down
with him in the most eloquent expression by any Trumpist
in the history of their movement, at which Steve Bannon
issued his threat against Rachel Maddow. The third term Magic Act,
in which you make the twenty second Amendment to the
Constitution disappear, came up again. I recall being mocked for
(12:52):
insisting here again and again and again that as soon
as Trump was back in office, they would start making
up a path focused on whether it means only two
terms or only two consecutive terms by which he could
run again in twenty twenty eight if he isn't dead then,
or maybe even if he is. I was told I
(13:14):
was laugh out loud wrong, he'd never try that. It's
in the constitution, and I was wrong. They didn't wait
for him to go back into office before they started
this Bannon quote. The Viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since
it doesn't actually say consecutive, that maybe we do it
(13:36):
again in twenty eight. Here it comes, and then the
smooth segue into Soviet style vast conspiracy show trials. Quoting
Bannon again, we want retribution and we're going to get retribution.
You have to. It's not personal, it's not personal. They
(13:57):
need to learn what populist nationalist power is on the
receiving end. I need investigations, trials, and then incarceration. And
I'm just talking about the media. Should the media be
included in the mass criminal conspiracy against President Trump? Should
Andrew Weisman on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and all of
them We want all your emails, all your text messages,
(14:18):
everything you did. You colluded in a conspiracy with Merrick Garland,
Nancy Pelosi, Lisa Monico, and Jack Smith unquote, a conspiracy
against Trump involving Merrick Garland. I wish these are the
people who guide Trump, the ones Joe Scarborough and Mika
(14:43):
Przhinsky in effect went and before whom they prostrated themselves,
the ones who want to arrest Scarborough's and Prashinski's co workers. Now, honestly,
it's not that big a jump for Scarborough. He tried
to get Matdow fired in two thousand, Seve Evan two
(15:05):
thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, twenty ten. I
can't testify to any days since, but I've been told
it continued after I left there, So arrest her. Eh.
A week ten days ago, the entertainment website Variety asked
me to write a thing for their year end issue,
seven hundred words on what MSNBC should do now, because,
(15:26):
of course, the ratings collapsed at MSNBC after the election,
and Scarborough and Mika also collapsed. Seven hundred words now,
Surprisingly enough, I have a lot more than seven hundred
words on this topic. I believe, in fact the word
count on my laptop read infinity. But Variety did a
(15:50):
nice job of editing, and I thanked them for it
before it posted yesterday. I'd like to read you the
piece now, but annotated and expanded upon in some places,
and I put a few things back in that they
took out for space, nothing more than that, and amplify
in a couple of points. Originally they titled this when
it posted yesterday Keith Olberman on how MSNBC should approach
Trump two point zero, But shortly thereafter they changed the headline,
(16:14):
and unlike the New York Times, they didn't stuff it
through the deflavorizing machine. The new Variety headline Keith Olberman,
how can MSNBC save itself after Trump's win? First step
fire Mika and Joe. Okay, I have to admit I
giggled for an hour and then I give fawed Keith Olderman.
(16:37):
How can MSNBC save itself after Trump's win? First step
fire Mika and Joe? By Keith Olderman. This is the
article quote by Keith Olberman, What does MSNBC do now
after Trump accomplished the undead thing and retook the White House?
After Comcast announced plans to spin off the network along
(16:58):
with others, in such haste that its new company was
named spin Co after Joe Scarborough and Mika Braginski went
on their show and welcomed our new insect overlords after
its audience vanished, nothing stay the course. The audience is
exhausted and needs a break. It'll be back and resistier
(17:19):
than ever. Suffer the ratings troth. Here's my first aside.
How has this not occurred to anybody else that it's
a troth? I cut back from five podcasts a week
to two. You want to listen to five of these
right now? Every week? You think I want to write
(17:41):
five of these. I'm having trouble doing two. Maybe in
January we do more. Right now, we need to rest
and husband our resources, and I might point out and then,
in terms of the ratings, although the Fox ratings went
up from disastrous to twenty percent better than disastrous after
Trump won, After Obama one in two thousand and eight,
(18:04):
at MSNBC collapsed. There were meetings with executives there who
couldn't understand it. But Obama won. Why a week later
are we getting one tenth of the audience? And I said,
everybody's still drunk. They really didn't understand it. I believe
sometimes often as I'm just dozing off falling to sleep
(18:28):
at night, I sometimes actually believe that there is a
place in this country where they decide who runs all
the television networks, all of them. Not just MSNBC or
ESPN or any of the ones I've worked at, but
all of them. Who ne Vision and Telemundo included. Where
they all sit around and they go, all right, who's
(18:48):
the worst possible person to run the Hallmark channel? This
guy doesn't like romance movies. Put him in charge. I
really think so. The ratings are down at MSNBC. I
can't imagine why the audience does not want to see
the news. And unlike other places, you can't just lie
(19:11):
to them about what's happening. I mean not really. You
can soften it up a little bit. You can try
to be encouraging, you can try to be entertaining. You
can do that maybe twice a week, like I'm doing,
rather than say, twenty four hours a day. Of course,
the audience is going to go away anyway. Back to
what I wrote for Variety, I mean, obviously you have
(19:34):
to fire mister and missus Scared Bro, however, continue their
banal but largely benign political coffee class show without them
and their insistence that we all join their msn VS,
nobody will remember they were ever there. Another aside, I
happen to be very proud of that phrase, msn VS.
(19:57):
You don't know about VC France, Google it. It's on
every morning now with cout Scarborough. They also cut the
neck sentence, which I thought sold the point. Remember the
Daily Show with Craig Kilbourne. Yeah, when Craig Kilbourne left
the Daily Show to go do the CBS Show after
David Letterman, boy oh boy, the predictions where the new
(20:20):
host was never going to be able to live up
to Kilbourne's reputation. It was never going to be as
good as it was with Kilbourne. The next host was
Sean Stewart. Do you remember MSNBC Mornings with David Gregory
and Contessa Brewer. They were the ones who succeeded Don
iMOS when they fired Imus when they didn't work out,
they went to Scarborough and get some We have some
(20:41):
woman who's free in the mornings Brushinski. Okay, I guess
that's how that happened. I mean, look, at how MSNBC
has excised me from their history. Nobody would notice if
Scarborough disappeared, or if you don't like the idea of
firing them both, just have him come back next Monday
with a different wife. Lord knows it wouldn't be the
(21:02):
first time. Back to the article. Plus, the next money
is coming from more fervent opposition to Maga. Not less,
wasn't the Scarborough disaster sixty percent of the demo audience
gone in three days? Instructive enough? Did you not notice
CNN going from fact based criticism of Trump's madness to
hours of cacophonists shouting and sinking to whatever is the
(21:25):
next level down from irrelevance. Another aside, looking at you, Abby, Philip.
This formula in which you get eight people around a
table yelling at Scott Jennings, everybody yelling at everybody else.
This was the one trick that the former MSNBC executive
later president, Phil Griffin knew. Every show, every show that
(21:48):
ever got into ratings trouble, every new show, every old
show was eventually approached by the show doctor, the man
with the magic touch at MSNBC, Phil Griffin, and his
solution was always I think we should have a panel
with like six people at it every show. Phil Griffin
is now the president of the Rachel Mattow Production Company.
(22:09):
If there are any actual charges to be brought against
Rachel Matdow for anything in this world, it's hiring Phil Griffin.
Back to the article, did the quarter of a million
canceled Washington Post subscriptions not tell you something? Or the
exodus from Twitter X? What do you think happened to
all these news consumers that they were raptured? They're all
(22:30):
still there waiting to spend their time and money at
the only liberal candy store still open, yours. These other
supposed bastions of journalism have left you a near monopoly.
And MSNBC only exists today because the last time NBC
was handed a near monopoly, your management ancestors said, one
(22:52):
hundred million in profits from Alderman's liberal show. I guess
we'll take it if we have to. They did cut
out something which suggests that the resonance of what you
and I know about what's going on in the media
not necessarily nationally understood. I added to the part about
the exodus from Twitter X and the quarter of a
(23:14):
million Washington Post subscriptions canceled, and the Scarborough disaster and
the CNN ratings. I added the New York Times losing
its way for the sake of some flaccid both sides
of headlines. They cut that out, Still true back to
the article. In the early years of this century, the
great minds at GE, then NBC's parent were trying to
(23:37):
go to the right of Fox by putting on Tucker Carlson,
Michael Savage, and Laura Ingram. They were thus too busy
to notice that I was putting on Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell,
and Chris Hayes while they were trying to steal Bill
O'Reilly away from Fox, or failing that, to transform MSNBC
into a literal prison documentary channel. I kept Rachel from
jumping to CNN by giving her four hundred and thirty
(23:58):
seven dollars out of my own pocket. And the next
thing the corporate masters knew, we'd spun them all off
into their own shows an MSNBC was profiting a billion
a year. By the way, I'd like the four hundred
and thirty seven dollars reimbursed. Please another side. I know
you haven't heard the four hundred and thirty seven dollars
story before. I've kept that as a relative secret. I've
(24:20):
only told it on let's see two hundred and sixteen
episodes of this podcast. Well, I'm bitter. Back to the article.
Generation after generation of NBC executive idiots viewed politics as
nothing more than a soda brand and believe there was
some additional audience, undecided or right wing, that they could
(24:41):
add to the present one if only they also offered
a different flavor called new MSNBC. The new flavor invariably
turns out to be turnip. Besides that right wing ruled
you out in nineteen ninety six. Pursuing it results in
only one thing, the Scarboroughing of your present audience. That
(25:03):
doesn't mean you can't tweet stuff. Your primetime audience doesn't
want new faces. It wants comfort food. So refresh the
menu and decor scuttle those daytime shows which always existed
solely to give NBC News execs something to stare at
while they pretended to work, and replace them with the
morning formula, only with different sets in different titles. Try
(25:23):
outsider big personality hosts like Elie Mistal and Pablo Torre.
You could even try for a truce with your prodigal anchor,
so he'll be inside the tent peeing out for a change.
You may have noticed that I included in this one
paragraph and buried rather successfully. I might add a suggestion
(25:46):
that they fire Katie Turr and hire me back to
the article, And now you can finally do something I
first suggested in nineteen ninety eight. Change the damn name
of the network. Use the acronym NYWS or American News Network.
A nice self explanatory f Trump TV. What all this
(26:10):
will get you? Besides the kinds of profits only a
monopoly can provide, are non cash virtues like moral force
and ethics, and journalism and patriotism and liberty. You may
now be the last line of defense for the free
press and thus the future of representative government in this country.
The bullies don't stop hitting you because you are nice
to them. They stop hitting you when you knock them
(26:32):
out cold. Put that on MSNBC and all will be well.
Thanks Keith, great report. Also of interest here Pennsylvania state senator.
(26:57):
They're twenty twenty two Republican nominee for governor in that state.
Erupts at a photo of a downed drone being carted
off on a Northeastern expressway. He feeds all the conspiracy crap.
Only one problem. That was not a downed drone. It
was a famous movie prop. Now this had been Trump,
(27:20):
he would be suing me for disagreeing with him. That's next.
This is countdown.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
This is countdown, with Keith Alberman.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Still ahead of us. At lunch the other day, a
new friend and fellow former colleague of Ted Turner said
he would be going south and seeing Ted while he
was south, and he hoped to get him on a
good day. Ted is eighty six years old. And I
don't think I'm telling anybody anything. They don't know he's
been in and out for at least ten years, fifteen
(28:14):
years now. Having known him half his life, having worked
for him half Ted's lifetime ago, I think we should
look at this positively. When Ted Turner was forty three
years old, none of us who worked for him would
have expected him to live to well forty four. He
(28:35):
drank incessantly, he never slept, He took every risk he
could find. He's eighty six. He's still in and out
rather than just out. That's a win. Ted won again,
and boy, could CNN use Ted now, But I want
to tell one of those stories from the out days,
(28:56):
when his outness often produced such rage inside him that
he almost fired me over the hat that my cammerman
was wearing. It a story, and I almost responded by
socking him in the jaw, But we made up in
the end. Things I promise not to tell about Ted
Turner next first. Believe it or not, there's still more
(29:18):
new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the missgrints,
morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other
worse persons in the world, the bronze worse Trump and
this tariff bullshit because he thinks the year eighteen ninety
four was great. The Premiere of Ontario, Doug Ford, has
(29:41):
responded in a way that could help us go back
to eighteen ninety four. He says, if Trump follows through
on this thread of a twenty five percent tariff on
Canadian goods, he will simply stop Ontario from exporting to
the US anymore. Electricity. Canada is the source of twenty
percent of our crude oil, a lot of our our
(30:04):
natural gas, and of course electricity they generate, which a
million and a half Americans use in Michigan, New York, Wisconsin,
places like that lights Out. Incidentally, the website gas Buddy
says the tariffs could increase the price of a gallon
of gas by at least thirty cents a gallon, maybe
seventy cents. The runner up Molly Murphy, a polster who
(30:26):
did work for Kamala Harrison, who should now be on
a rocket ship to the sun. She addressed the Democratic
National Committee Executive Committee's first post election party I'm sorry
post election conference. Molly Murphy said they blew the election
because they spent too much time attacking Trump over this
irrelevant topic of norms. Voters, Molly says, believe quote norms
(30:50):
if not worked for them, and so we certainly shouldn't
ask them to clutch their pearls. We risk sounding like
hall monitors. As to the here and now. Molly adds
that voters don't care who he's putting in cabinet positions.
These voters are saying, I always give him pass on
the outrageous if my costs come down. She insists, they
(31:10):
should have been focused on household costs. Look, if you
were a Harris Polster and you are speaking up now
instead of on October eighteenth or August eighteenth. First off,
f U. Secondly, it's pretty clear millions of Americans, or
at least the two hundred and twenty nine thousand, seven
(31:32):
hundred and sixty six voters in the swing states who
actually decided the election. It's pretty clear two hundred and
twenty nine thousand, seven hundred and sixty six people who
have the right to vote in America chose the wallet
over the polio and the fascism. Nobody's arguing that they're morons.
We have bred them to be morons, we have educated
(31:53):
them to be morons. We have let them educate themselves
in homeschooling to be morons. They are morons. What a shock.
But the point that continues to mystify me about second
guessers like mal Le Murphy and other narrow minded pinheads
is this, the Democrats spent eleventy billion dollars on advertising
(32:14):
that much money. I'm just guessing here, but I think
I think hear me out. We could have covered both topics.
We could have covered the whole insurrectionisty dictatorshippy thing in
the ads and the price of the sandwiches and the
gas thing. Could have done them both, could have put
them both in the same commercials. Even you think the
(32:39):
cost of groceries is going down under a Trump dictatorship,
he wants tariffs on everything, including oil and gas and electricity.
Your gas is going up under Trump at least thirty
cents a gallon at least oh and if you try
to complain about it, Trump will sue you. I'm Kamala
Harris and I approved this message because your food prices
will so double under Trump. See other than the choice
(33:03):
of voices. There you can walk and chew gum at
the same time. Molly Murphy, well the generic you, but
our winner. State Senator Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania. If that
name sends a shutter down your spine, well it should please.
He was the GOP nominee for governor that year in
twenty twenty two, the one who lost to Josh Shapiro
(33:25):
by fourteen because Mastriano was a fundamentalist theocrat and an
election subverter, and a COVID denier and most importantly a
murn and he's still a mourn. Mastriano posted a photo
of what he says is a drone looks to be
four or five feet high, maybe twelve feet wide, lashed
(33:48):
to the back of a flatbed trailer and being transported
on a major highway. Breaking News reads the caption to
this photo. Crashed drone in Orange Beach, retrieved from water
and taken to undisclosed location for further investigation. But Mastriano,
though he has the IQ of a brain damaged fish
that just had a drone crash into it, had much
(34:09):
more to say about this above the photo of the drone.
It is inconceivable that the federal government has no answers
nor has taken any action to get to the bottom
of the unadefied drones. The fecklessness of this administration was
on display last year when a Chinese surveillance balloon was
allowed to fly over the entire continental United States before
(34:29):
being shot down. Such should be viewed as a threat
to our nation and citizens. An action is long overdue.
We have recourses and assets in our arsenal to get answers,
but I suppose Ukraine is more important to the White House.
January twentieth can't come soon enough. Mastriano's post got a
community note because the photo that has driven into this
(34:50):
madness is not of one of the so called Northeast drones.
It's a model of a tie fighter from Star Wars.
A motion picture this photograph being driven along a highway
in the Philippine, which Doug Mastriano could not distinguish from
his ass or his elbow. The community note also disappeared
(35:13):
sometime yesterday, then reappeared, leading to the conclusion that perhaps
Elon Musk also cannot tell the difference between an actual
craft capable of flight and a toy. On the way
to the local Comic con convention, Doug Mastriano boasts he
spent thirty years in the army and is a veteran
of desert storm in Afghanistan, and thank you for If
(35:34):
we hadn't already been doing this, we should start doing
this immediately. We should question anybody who served in combat
in the last thirty five years about literal brain damage,
because we see this time after time they come out
of service with the best of intentions and with the
iq of a fish that was just hit by a drone.
Because this bone had simply picked up this photo from
(35:57):
some conspiracy website and either assumed he could fool everybody
with it, or is too far gone himself to know
it was a pheo of a movie prop. Doug these
Ano the drunes you're looking for, Mastriano, idiot, and today's
other worse BUYSI and outer Space. I have one more
(36:36):
story to tell you about covering the nineteen eighty two
National Football League players strike, and this is less about
the strike itself and more about the man for whom
I covered it, Ted Turner. Ted Turner had put CNN
on the air just two years earlier, and his sports
guy Bill McPhail had interviewed me for a job as
their New York Sports reporter even earlier than that May
(36:58):
of nineteen eighty and when I did not get it,
I was genuinely relieved, because I was convinced there was
no way they would ever get CNN on the air.
No chance. Ever, Obviously I did not account for Ted
Turner's stubbornness. Anyway, I wound up going there freelance in
nineteen eighty one, as I have related in some detail here,
when Lou Dobbs and his girlfriend, the New York Sports Reporter,
(37:20):
had to get out of town fast at the existence
of missus Lou Dobbs. Eight months later, as the nineteen
eighty two NFL strike loomed. They had made me staff
and given me a contract, first offering me one thousand
dollars less a year than they were paying me freelance.
Even CNN of nineteen eighty two acknowledged the absurdity of
that mathematical proposition. So I was invested already whining about
(37:43):
Ted Turner, employee of CNN, when the football players walked
out in strike in September nineteen eighty two, and that
strike was my beat every day from March to November.
A day or so after the strike began, we sent
up an interview with the president of CBS Sports, Neil Pilson,
about the effect that the strike would have on TV
Sports in general and CBS Sports in particular, And as
(38:05):
the camera crew and I filed into his office, Pilson
wearily said, nothing against you, guys, but I've done so
many interviews already about this strike that if you actually
come up with a question I haven't been asked already,
I'll give you well. We all leaned in towards him.
Give us what the job a job interview at least
fifty dollars, I'll give you CBS Sports caps, not exactly
(38:31):
a job, but better than nothing. So we rolled tape
and I said, so, mister Pilson, in light of the strike,
do you wish CBS Sports did not have the Super
Bowl this year? As it does? And he laughed, and
he took off his mic and he went over to
his office phone. He buzzed his assistant, bring in three caps,
will you? And he sat back down. He said, you guys,
did it. Nobody asked me that yet, and it's like
(38:53):
the only question that really interests me. You're still rolling.
Neil Pilson then proceeded to give a lengthy and thoughtful
answer about how as long as the season was not canceled,
it was probably better to have the Super Bowl because
people would be so grateful that after the strike they
wound up playing in anyway. So now a week goes
(39:13):
by after that interview, and the bargaining sessions between the
players and the owners are taking place in a Manhattan hotel,
the Lows on Lexington Avenue, a dump with a nice lobby.
All that matters to me is the Lows with the dump,
and the nice lobby is literally three blocks from my apartment.
The players and the owners just march through a long
(39:33):
hallway into private rooms. That's all we see of them.
It is not heavy lifting. There are nice seats at
least in that lobby, but it is enlivened one day
by news that our boss, Ted Turner has asked the
union if he can come in and meet with their
twenty odd player negotiating team because he wants to pitch
them on something. He was in fact due there yesterday
(39:56):
but was unavoidably detained. The rumor the players told me
never confirmed, was that while changing planes in Chicago, Turner
and an air hostess had ensconced themselves in a dumpster
or the other version was in a janitor's closet for
twelve hours of whoopee, and that's why he was a
day late. Anyway, I walk into the Lows that morning,
(40:19):
and if somehow I had not been able to recognize
my camera crew, sure enough it is the same two
guys who had been with me at Neil Pilson's office
at CBS when I asked him the question he had
not been asked before, earning us free CBS sports caps,
and the cameraman and the deck operator are of course
wearing their CBS sports caps and understand in nineteen eighty two.
(40:40):
CNN was not an upstart. It was not the feisty outsider,
It was not the future of news. We were called
pretend TV. It was said that CNN stood for Chicken
Noodle News. One day, I called somebody up and asked
for press credentials for Cable News Network, and the guy said,
Cable News Network. The either people own the news stands downtown.
(41:05):
I had no idea what he was talking about, so
I went to one of the newstands and I asked
the guy who owns this place? And he pointed to
a plaque and it said owned by Cabbell News Company.
The Kabbell News Company, owner of downtown newstands, was better
known than Cable News Network. We got scoffed at in
some arenas and venues like Madison Square Garden in New York.
(41:28):
Our crews were not admitted because they were not in
the Union. So the CBS sports caps were an important,
albeit borrowed touch of legitimacy and dignity, especially for my
cameraman and my deck guy. So the three of us
position ourselves in that long haul in the lobby, waiting
for my boss, Ted Turner, me holding the mic, with
(41:48):
the big red CNN logo on the mic flag and
the crew wearing their gaudy CBS sports caps, and in
Ted walks emerging from the brilliant early autumn sunshine, filtering
in from behind him from the street like this was
a perfectly lit movie scene, and he sees me and
recognize me and smiles and comes over and beams hot, damn,
(42:09):
it's my CNN crew, And he shakes my hand and
we roll tape and I start to asking my first question,
and suddenly the joy drains from his face and he
stops me. Oh, did what they wearing on their heads?
He gestures at the cameraman and the deck guy, and
I explained the Baxter, I don't give a damn who
gave him them? Is a CNN crew, they wearing CBS
(42:30):
sports caps. Get them off they damn heads. And he
pushes me, I mean really shoves me and strides past us. Now,
even then, I'm five six inches taller than Ted Turner
and twenty five pounds heavier at least, And maybe I
can live with my employer embarrassing me in public, but
I do not have to let him shove me in
(42:50):
front of all the other reporters. So for a second,
I think, Ah, I'm just gonna run down the hall
and catch him and horse collar the bastard from behind.
About a year into my TV career, I have already
accepted that there are positives to television, but I've also
already learned nearly all the negatives. And not three months earlier,
I had gone over to ABC to interview with them
(43:12):
about going back to do radio sports. Seems to me,
given what I know about Ted Turner, dragging him to
the ground and then quitting TV forever would be a
pretty appropriate farewell. And then one word popped in my head. Rent, Ah, right, Rent,
(43:34):
So quickly I go to Plan B to be fair
in thought, if not an action. Ted Turner was right.
Look pretty silly to have the CNN camera crew wearing
CBS sports caps while interviewing the founder and owner of CNN, who,
by the way, was in the newspaper constantly because he
kept saying he was going to buy CBS. Plus, I
still had a story to do that day, and that
(43:55):
crew is going to have to go back into the
room where Turner would be meeting with the players about
an hour later for the proverbial spray shot that would
give us some video to use of their meeting, and
simply having my guys take their caps off was not
going to suffice. So I ran the three blocks back
to my apartment to grab the only bit of merch
or swag produced in the first two years of CNN.
(44:18):
Something they had and apparently inexhaustible supply of CNN bumper stickers.
I must have had one hundred of them in my
place alone, and there were boxes and cartons and boxes
and cartons of them in the New York bureau, which
was funny enough as it was, since I don't think
all the people who worked at CNN in New York
in nineteen eighty two owned six cars among them. Anyway,
(44:41):
I trimmed a couple of the stickers down to just
the CNN logos and raced back to the Crappy Low's hotel,
and just as they were calling for the crews to
come in to get the spray shots of Ted meeting
with the players, I put those CNN logo stickers over
the CBS logos on my guys caps, and to my delight,
they stuck in place a little large, but it worked.
(45:04):
Later the boys came out of the meeting room, and
the cameraman was in hysterics. He wound the video back
and had me watch it through the viewfinder of the camera.
As soon as they had walked in, Turner started to
give them dirty looks, and then suddenly one of the
NFL players said, Hey, Ted, there's your crew. There's your
CNN crew. Hey CNN over here. Everybody was laughing, and
(45:26):
now Ted was beaming that them. That's my CNN crew.
All right, good work boys. When his meeting with the
players broke up an hour later, I got a message
from Ted's assistant to wait for him around a corner
from the main lobby so he could give me give
CNN exclusive details about what he was trying to sell
the players on. It was a series of exhibition games
(45:48):
so the striking players could make a little money on
the side, that he could televise and there would be
a pitch to the National Labor Relations Board that the
strike had been forced on the players by the owners,
which would have meant the players would have all become
free agents. Ted won haunted them, all of them, every
player in the National Football League to sign instead with him.
(46:10):
He would create a twenty four team league. He would
give the union half ownership of every team. He would
find backers for the other half, and all he wanted
was the TV rights. It didn't happen, obviously, but what
a breathtaking scheme. Anyway, Turner was all smiles when he
came out of the meeting to tell me before he
met with the rest of the press, and he said,
(46:31):
great with the hat, good work, but I have to
get you guys some real sea and ed sports hats
for Christmas. Ted stayed another fifteen or twenty minutes doing
god knows what with God knows whom. I didn't see
any dumpsters in the hotel, and then he left by
the main exit as the rest of the camera crews
and reporters trailed him. I went along just to see
if there was anything he hadn't told me, And as
(46:51):
he went out the doors to his car, he said,
see overman, and I said, don't forget the hats, and
Ted Turner gave me one of the dirtiest looks I
have ever gotten in my life. Sure enough, a couple
of days before Christmas, I get a call from my
boss in Atlanta. I mean just got a box of
(47:12):
one hundred CNN Sports Truckers caps from Ted Turner's office.
I don't know what the hell this is all about,
but his assistant says, if we wanted to know, we
should call you. I was very proud of making the
correct choice between correcting mistake and getting us all hats
and dissaulting him. There is one PostScript. Ted talked the
(47:34):
players into the exhibition games. I mentioned only two of them,
one at RFK Stadium in Washington, which I went to
on assignment, seated next to Ted Turner. He had two
flasks with him. Anyway, the crowd was so small at
RFK Stadium in Washington that at one point they got
on the PA system and asked all the fans to
(47:55):
go sit down behind the player benches so the TV
shots of the game wouldn't show all those empty seats.
The other game was in the Los Angeles Collis. They
drew even less, maybe one thousand fans, probably more like
five hundred five hundred fans in the LA Coliseum. Five
hundred fans looks like the raisins and rice pudding. But
(48:17):
it was the name of his ad hoc league with
these games in Washington and LA that still sticks with
me forty years later Ted named it himself. I'm pretty
sure he did this deliberately. I know nobody else noticed
it until I made a big deal about it. Ted
Turner called his ill fated venture his Erzatz National Football
(48:38):
League the quote all Star season, and I said, perfect.
The acronym you have built for it is a s S.
(49:03):
I've done all that average I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil the
musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of
our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration at keyboards, mister Ray
was on the guitars, bass and drums, and it was
produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty musical comments
are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
(49:26):
written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of ESPN Inc. Other
music arranged and performed by the group No Horns allowed,
and my announcer was my friend. Why this is a coincidence,
Nancy Faust? Everything else was, as ever my fault. My
best wish is, of course, to Ted Turner. My first
television boss of bosses. That's countdown for today, Just one
(49:49):
four hundred and ninety five days until the scheduled end
of the lame duck presidency of Trump. Probably your lawsuit
may vary. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always,
bulletins as the news warrants till the next one, and
I'm Keith Aldrimman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
(50:09):
good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(50:34):
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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