January 24, 2024 • 57 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 111: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has never been truer to himself than after his solid but unspectacular victory over Nikki Haley in New Hampshire last night. His toadies like Marjorie Taylor Greene were whining within 10 minutes of the closing of the polls that the tally had been rigged against him. And he overshadowed his own victory by getting up and sweating through an angry, petty, vindictive "victory" speech in which he once again resorted to stochastic threats against Haley, this time promising he could reveal enough about her to get her investigated by "them."
President Biden, meanwhile, won a non-primary primary in which he wasn't even on the Beauty Pageant Ballot, and he still got about 67% of the votes. And new polling in Pennsylvania - showing him up +8 over Trump there - was probably yesterday's REAL biggest presidential race story.
Meanwhile it's Day 9 of Trump's Dementia Crisis. Not only are other Republicans noticing he's making less sense and seeming less present every day, but Trump is now blithering his way through teleprompter speeches and making sound effects on camera - all of which can be neatly folded into Biden Campaign Commercials.
And while Jamie Combover's impeachment theater may be coming to the end of its run, there's a sudden revival of the Matt Gaetz Ethics Investigation in Congress. Plus why the President needs to federalize the Texas National Guard and arrest Governor Greg Abbott - today.
B-Block (21:00) IN SPORTS: Baseball's Hall of Fame elects new members - one too few, or two too many? Beltre was a lock but I have deep doubts about Helton and Mauer. And look out, another MLB team will be forced to wear those horrific City Connect Uniforms. (25:57) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: How do the Oscars folks do this every year? You nominate Ken but not Barbie? You nominate Barbie for best picture but not its director? This is a tradition that dates back to "How Green Was My Valley" winning best picture in 1941 instead of say, Citizen Kane or The Maltese Falcon. One weird trick that connects Lenin and Benny Hill. And farewell to the greatest radio newscaster of all-time, Charles Osgood. (35:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Eric Adams plays Musical Chairs with actual chairs. Oklahoma's immoral School Superintendent gives a job to the immoral LibsOfTikTok witch. And Tiffany Cross finally breaks her silence on who knifed her in the back at MSNBC. The answer? Joey Scars himself. Joe Scarborough.
C-BLOCK (43:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since we're already in Trash-MSNBC-Mode, let me tell you again of the story of how Lawrence O'Donnell, kindly filling in for me in 2010 while my Dad was dying, used the opportunity to try to get me fired, or try to get all my producers to leave with him for his new show. Scarborough is always the worst - but O'Donnell is close.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
is Countdown for Wednesday, January twenty fourth, twenty twenty four,
(00:25):
day nine of Donald J. Trump's dementia crisis. I can't
believe Nikki Haley blew that six nothing lead she had
in Dixville, notch. I can believe though, that Trump, bright, orange,
glossy and sweating at his petty victory speech did not
do as well as he needed to, as well as
(00:46):
his cult needed him to, as well as they expected
him to, because ten minutes after the polls closed in
New Hampshire last night, Marjorie Taylor Barney Rubbell Green was
on one of the fascist propaganda channels claiming the vote
had been rigged against Trump, even though he had clearly
won by a lot. And I know she's insane, but
(01:08):
so is he, and so are they. Trump himself, who
will never be accused of being gracious in victory, was
clearly more angry than triumphant, and at times he seemed
even more angry with the microphone that would not move
when he tried to adjust it than he was even
at Nikki Haley. And he was plenty angry at Nikki Haley.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Who the hell was the impostor that went up on
the stage before and like claimed a victory.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
She did very poorly. Actually she had to win.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
The governor said she's gonna win, she's gonna win, She's
gonna win.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Then she failed badly.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Still dementia. Jay Trump was so true to himself last night, cranky, vindictive, small,
full of easily refuted factual lives to cover up the
reality that he lost to Hampshire in two consecutive presidential elections.
Just petty. He complained for a while, and then he
had his creepy new Renfield Viviq Ramaswami get up and
(02:10):
in soell America's intelligence for another minute or so. And
then Trump got back up and basically turned his stochastic
terrorist gun in the direction of Nicki Haley, muted this
time with a third party involved to carry out the threat.
But muted or not, this was still a threat against
(02:30):
Nicki Haley.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
And just a little note to Nicki.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
She's not going to win, but if she did, she
would be under investigation by those people in fifteen minutes.
And I could tell you five reasons why already not
big reasons.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
A little stuff that she doesn't want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
But she will be under investigation within minutes, and so
would Ron have been.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
But he decided to get out. He decided to get out.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
What an asshole. Anyway. Haley has vowed to stay in
this race, even though she will not do as well
in her own state of South Carolina as she did
in New Hampshire, and even though Trump will clearly have
done slightly better against the field than he did against
the field in Iowa, and more or less he will
hit everybody's expectations, but I guess his own with fifty
(03:21):
seven percent or more. Haley has also hung two albatrosses
around her own neck. You cannot say, as she did,
we almost got half the votes and not have that
shouted at you every day for the next month, even
if the context of that performance makes almost half the
votes more impressive than it might initially sound. Her second
(03:42):
problem is more symbolic. If you cannot do very well
in a state that has the same initials as you do,
you have a problem. The overall issue, underscored time and
time again within the Republican Party for the last thirty years,
is that political office is no longer attracting as many
quality human beings as it used to And when I
(04:04):
say quality human beings, I mean non felons and non idiots.
Trump is a felon, Haley is an idiot, DeSantis is
an idiot, Ramaswami is two idiots, and Tim Scott is
three idiots. There is also probably little to be gleaned
(04:24):
from the New Hampshire exit polls. Half the voters there
were not registered Republicans, and so the exits were far
too optimistic for our purposes. Anyway, forty four percent voting
in the primary say if convicted of a crime, Trump
is unfit for the presidency, But probably more than half
of that forty four percent are not registered Republicans, and
(04:45):
the registered Republicans went for Trump by about three quarters.
As to the general election, of course, three quarters. If
one out of every four Republicans votes against Trump, Biden
would win in a landslide. There was one interesting exit
poll number. Eight percent of Hailey supporters say they would
(05:07):
be dissatisfied if Trump wins the nomination, and dissatisfied is
not automatically the same as I will never vote for him,
but that is still a huge number eighty eight percent,
And even if all the registered Republicans were in the
minority in the twelve percent, it would still be satisfied.
You've still got a large enough number of dissatisfied Republicans
that if the number were repeated nationally, it would sink
(05:31):
Trump if one out of every four Republicans votes against Trump.
If forty five percent, forty percent of Republicans are dissatisfied
with Trump as the nominee, it would sink Trump. There
wasn't actually a Democratic primary in Hampshire last night, and
Biden wasn't even on the beauty pageant ballot that they
(05:52):
did have, which makes his win by right in at
about sixty eight percent terrifically impressive. Dean Phillips got most
of the rest, and he managed to be ungracious in defeat,
swear at reporters early in the day, claiming the voters
missed the chance to do the most important thing in
American history or something when they didn't vote for him.
(06:14):
I believe the technical term for what he's been doing
lately is hallucinating, except perhaps when he reversed his statement
from Tuesday that he would consider running as the no
labels candidate. If he had done that, he would have
had to have entered a witness relocation program. As always,
a primary sucks the oxygen right out of the political room.
(06:36):
And that is too bad because there actually was a
huge nuts and bolts presidential race news story yesterday and
it got buried. Susquehanna Polling and Research not the best,
but pretty good in Pennsylvania even when it has seemed
like an outlier. Susquehanna Polling and Research did a week
long poll ending Sunday on the presidential race. It has
(06:59):
Biden winning in Pennsylvania forty seven to thirty nine. Polls
show Biden up in Pennsylvania, but like by one. As
John Harwood wrote, and he was the first reporter fired
by the right wing regime when it took over CNN,
and a man I knew at NBC to be a
small c conservative. John Harwood wrote yesterday, quote, we're in
(07:22):
early stages of massive analytics shift from Biden's in big
trouble to Trump's in big trouble. I think he's right.
I think this is just the start. And now Dementia
watch twenty twenty four. Thank you, Nancy Faust. Apart from
(08:18):
the stuff on the ground in New Hampshire yesterday, Several
other cries for help have emerged from the hellscape of
Trump's addled brain. Most disturbing among them, he reposted an
AI image supplied by a cultist of him praying in
a church. How do we know it's Ai, Well, he's
praying in a church. But the dementia part of it is.
(08:42):
This man who is obsessed with his own image reposted
this praying in church fake, even though it is quite
clearly afflicted with the so far unsalvable bugaboo of AI.
Bonus fingers in the picture which is about Trump praying
hands clasped, his right hand has at least five fingers
(09:04):
plus a thumb, and the left hand, which is partially
obscured by the right hand, may have five fingers and
two thumbs. Sure, put it out, they'll never know the difference.
Not long after, Trump posted all caps, I get much
better poll numbers against Biden. And of course he spelled
(09:25):
pole wrong pol e as in stripper pole. And of
course he did. He's a moron. He didn't go to school.
Dad bought him a series of diplomas. It's not his
stupidity he's always had that. It's his decreasing ability to
check just in case somebody does notice how stupid he is.
(09:48):
How do you bring these nicky Hailey goods, someone who
has voted for you in twenty twenty but said they
don't want you now.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Vote, How do you bring them back into the ticket.
All vote for me again? You can all vote for
me again, everybody. And I'm not sure we need too many.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That was Londonderry, New Hampshire, about one thirty yesterday afternoon,
where firs He said all of Haley's voters would vote
for him, and then he immediately said he didn't need
Haley's voters to vote for him, which is a damn
stupid thing even for Trump to say, given that forty
three percent of Haley's voters in Iowa said they wouldn't
vote for him, and within the Republican Party and Republican
(10:22):
Leaning independence nationally, fourteen percent of them say they won't
vote for him, compared to only nine percent of Democrats
and Democratic leaners who say they won't vote for President Biden.
Trump would need every vote he could get, and just
as Haley was willing to question Trump's mental state, so
is her leading advocate from New Hampshire Governor Chris Sanunu
(10:45):
Trump has no energy, he said at least twice. The
guy can barely read a teleprompter right now on quote
why governor whatever do you mean?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Which is incapable of solving even the solst smallest problem,
the simplest of problems, we can no longer solve.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
We can't do anything. We are an institute and a
powerful death penalty.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
We will put this on incapable of solvent. You say
we are an institute, Uh huh in a powered death penalty.
First rule of teleprompter club is pre read the goddamned
script moron. Second rule of teleprompter club is never use
(11:31):
the third person.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yes, oh, yes, and quickly says President Trump. We will
be there very quickly.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And the first rule of campaign club is never write
your opponent's commercials for him. I have told you before
of the reported Biden campaign belief that they want Trump
to wrap up the nomination quickly, because the campaign's research
indicates that three out of four undecided voters still really
can't or won't believe Trump will be the Republican nominee,
(12:02):
and when he is, that will produce what Biden campaign
staffer is quaintly characterized as the quote, oh, shit moment
and then a huge swing towards Biden. Don't write Biden's
ads for him. Example number one. If you don't want
to be connected to the lunatic fringe cult called QAnon,
(12:23):
don't give a thumbs up when one of those infected
with the q paranoia shows up at your rally and
shouts out their nonsensical slogan, and especially don't follow it
up seconds later with a smirking promise to pardon the
traders of January sixth will and don't write Biden's ads
(13:00):
for him. Example number two. If you are not mentally well,
or if you want people to disbelieve the mounting evidence
that you are not mentally well, do not do sound
effects during a speech.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
And they calmly walk to a seat bing ding ding
ding ding ding.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
They've only got seventeen seconds to figure this whole thing
out right, bomb okay, Misi launch phin pom six eye.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Free.
Speaker 5 (13:41):
Why these are the stakes?
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Bing ding ding ding ding ding Misi launch phin pom.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
We must either love each other or we must die.
Vote for President Biden on November fifth. The stakes are
too high for you to stay home in stuff that
is neither dementia or New Hampshire if you're wondering where
(14:14):
the Republican impeachment theater went a huge blow yesterday at
a House oversight Chairman Congressman Jamie comb Over last week,
the attorney for Kevin Morris, one of the Hunter Biden
witnesses Comber deposed in private, demanded that Comer immediately release
the full transcript of the deposition and said that Comber
had lied about what Morris had said. The lawyer used
(14:35):
the word mischaracterized, He meant the word lied. Now some
of the transcripts of the depositions have come out, selected
by Republicans on the Committee, and in them two of
Hunter Biden's friends have testified under oath that they never
discussed business with nor received any benefit from the President.
There is no cause nor excuse for any more impeachment talk.
(14:59):
On the other hand, you know which investigation is suddenly
alive in the House, the Ethics pro into Matt Gates,
with George Santos out of the way. ABC News is
reporting that in the last few days, the Committee quote
has reached out to multiple new witnesses, expanding its contact
with individuals who have ties to the initial Justice Department
investigation into Gates and have begun conducting interviews. The lawyer
(15:25):
for Gates buddy Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking,
will neither quote, confirm or deny that Greenberg is cooperating
as House Republicans try to expel Gates on some kind
of iglicit sex charge. The trial to determine how much
Trump owes E. Gene Carroll was to resume today in
New York. It will not. Illness still running roughshan through
(15:46):
the jury and in a story that could flare at
any moment into the biggest story in the country. The
Supreme Court ruled Monday that the federal government can go
in and take out the razor wire death traps installed
in rivers along the Texas Mexico border. Yesterday, Texas National
Guard soldiers were caught on video not only still blocking
(16:08):
federal authorities from removing the razor wire, in direct violation
of the Supreme Court order, but putting more of it
in to kill more people seeking asylum here. Look, this
isn't complicated. Texas has gone rogue, and its governor, Greg
Abbott is in violation of the constitution, to say nothing
(16:29):
of all human morals, didn't some senator threaten to have
me arrested for saying the court could be ignored. Well,
if those are the rules, President Biden now has the
right to federalize the Texas National Guard the way Eisenhower
and Kennedy federalized the National Guard when lawless governors in
the fifties and sixties tried to block court mandated integration.
(16:51):
And while the president is at it, he should send
in a purely federal unit to arrest anyone who furthers
this atrocity along the border. That means arrest Governor Greg Abbott,
arrest scumbag Already Also of interest here, the greatest radio
(17:13):
newscaster of all time, also one of the best ever
in television, has died. It's also awards season, and as usual,
both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Oscars screwed
it up. You nominated Ken but not Barbie and Tiffany
Cross finally reveals which MSNBC host was behind her firing
(17:35):
there and you believe Hotez. That's next.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
This is cave game.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman. This is Sports Senate. Wait,
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Ulberman
(18:09):
in Sports Dateline, Cooperstown, New York. The Baseball Writers' Association
of America continues its flawless voting record for the Baseball
Hall of Fame. It has never gotten it exactly right.
This year, it has managed to get it wrong in
two different directions, depending on your point of view, either
(18:31):
one or two guys too many or one guy too few.
The writers elected third baseman Adrian Beltray of the Dodgers,
of the Rangers, of the Red Sox, of the Mariners, everywhere,
the last player from the twentieth century who was still
playing in the twenty first an acclaimed Hall of Famer,
and he got ninety five percent of the vote. Two
(18:52):
years ago, the great Colorado first baseman Todd Helton, who
was benched in favor of Peyton Manning as the quarterback
at the University of Tennessee. Helton got barely more than
fifty percent of the vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame,
but this year he got to nearly eighty and was elected.
Helton is a terrific guy, spent his whole career in Colorado.
(19:12):
I always loved visiting with him. Smart, funny, self deprecating However,
wins above replacement is not everything, but it's a good
starting point. And Helton's wins above replacement war was sixty
one point eight And that's less than Andrew Jones, less
than Chase Utley, less than Reggie Smith, less than Willie Randolph,
(19:34):
less than Buddy Bell. None of them are in the
Hall of Fame, and only Jones is likely to be. Ever,
and seventy six percent of voters chose the Twins catcher
and later first baseman Joe Mauer. Seventy five percent needed
for election and he got seventy six. Everybody loved Maer
and he won three batting championships as a catcher, unheard of.
(19:55):
But at age thirty, after injuries, he turned back into
a pumpkin like Helton, extremely popular, a local icon, always
of pleasure to deal with. And I'm not sure what
he's doing in the Hall of Fame. His wins above
replacement is less than that of Robin Ventura and Johnny
Damon and Will Clark and Jim Winn and Chet Lemon
(20:18):
and a whole lot of other guys who would themselves
tell you we are not Hall of famers. Billy Wagner,
the Astros, Phillies and Mets closer missed by five votes
of being the fourth player elected, and he would have
been a controversial choice too. Gary Sheffield, himself, a controversial slugger,
got only sixty four percent in his last year of
eligibility and has now fallen off the ballot. Reuters Alex
(20:42):
Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez did not get close, so at
least the writers got that right dateline New York. Since
it is twenty one days until spring training, and since
both the local teams are unlikely to have to worry
about being in the pennant races, why shouldn't the lead
stories about the New York Yankees and New York Mets
(21:02):
be about their uniforms. The uniform centric website uni watch
reports that the Yankees will make their first serious change
to one of their uniforms since nineteen seventy three. Uni
watch reports the Yankees will be taking off the white
outlining and white sleeve trim. That's the little dark blue,
white blue, dark blue ring at the end of the sleeves.
(21:24):
They'll take that off their road uniforms, which will just
basically be gray with the word New York on them.
Those unis will now look like the ones the Yankees
wore from the teens until nineteen seventy three. By the way,
in the winter of nineteen seventy five, Yankees owner George
Steinbrenner decided he really wanted to change their road uniforms
(21:45):
from gray to dark blue with white pinstripes, and somebody
managed to talk him out of it because the Yankees
were not a nineteen thirties movie. As to the New
York Mets, Uni Watch says they have scheduled April twenty
sixth for the debut of their City Connect uniforms. If
you're unfamiliar of the worst uniforms you could put baseball
(22:07):
players in, then screw up the colors, then drop some
acid and redesign them so they look even worse, and
then you have your City Connect uniforms. The Red Sox
City Connect uniforms look like the Boston phone Book. The
White Sox City Connect uniforms have the same exact lettering
as a vodka advertisement. The Chicago Cubs City Connect uniforms
(22:29):
are in fact duplicates of uniforms the Chicago White Sox
used to wear. The padres all look like two can
sam The Colorado Rockies look like somebody spilled paint on
the shoulders of some otherwise okay green uniforms. The Arizona
Diamondbacks look great, largely because the Arizona Diamondbacks regular uniforms
(22:50):
look like crap. Nobody knows what the Mets City Connect
uniforms are going to look like in April. But if
you want to place a bet, just bet on they'll
suck postscripts to the news, some.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Headlines, some updates, some snarks, some format changes, some predictions, dateline, Hollywood,
the OSCARS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
and Jim and Lunch and whatever. The OSCARS committee has
done it again. How do they do this? How do
(23:28):
they always do this? Now? Look, Barbie is not my
kind of film, so what doesn't have to be? Apparently
they made it good. And if you nominate it for
good enough to be Best Picture, and you nominate one
of its actors as Best Supporting Actress, and you nominate
Ken as Best Supporting Actor, how in the hell do
(23:51):
you not nominate Barbie herself as Best Actress? Margo Robbie
got snubbed, and the director Greta Gerwig also snubbed, not
nominated sounds a little misogynistic to me. Of course, the
Uskers have always done this. The runaway winner of the
Oscars for nineteen forty one was the movie How Green
Was My Valley For Best Supporting Actor. Donald Crisp in
(24:16):
How Green Was My Valley beat out Sidney green Street
in The Maltese Falcon. For Best Director. John Ford of
How Green Was My Valley beat out Orson Wells for
a little flim he called Citizen Kane for Best Art
Direction and Best Cinematography. How Green Was My Valley also
beat out Citizen Kane for Best Film. How Green Was
(24:38):
My Valley beat out Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon
and Hitchcock's Suspicion, and even Here Comes Mister Jordan, which
is just a charming little film. Just a quick quiz,
don't google this, Just tell me who besides Donald Crisp
was in How Green Was My Valley? Or what was
(25:01):
My Picture about? How Green Was My Valley? What was
I about? Or was I in color? Citizen Kane, The
Maltese Falcon and Suspicion got a total of twenty two
nominations for nineteen forty one and a total of three
(25:22):
Oscars and ever since, people who actually know Hollywood have
viewed them, the Oscars and the Oscars nominations and the
Oscars winners as the well, the Toronto maple Leafs of awards.
Whatever the decade, whatever the style, you can count on
the Oscars and the Maple Leafs to find a way
(25:43):
to screw it up. One might think that the annual
Oscars screw up is designed just for the publicity. I mean,
you're trying to drive a TV audience to watch the
awards show, and drive a movie audience to watch the movies,
and a streaming or DVD audience to watch the movies
at home. Publicity about controversy. It's as useful as publicity
(26:04):
of about serenity. Maybe that also explains the Toronto maple leiefs.
I never thought of that before. By the way, the
answer to my little challenge, how green was my Valley?
Was about welshman. It was about Welsh miners, the Morgan family.
It starred Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara and Roddy McDowell. And
(26:28):
I swear, until I looked it up, I had always
assumed I mean, since I was a teenager, I just
assumed how Green was My Valley? Was that John Wayne
film about the boxer who goes home to Ireland? But no,
apparently that's the quiet Man. How Green was My Valley?
Is about Welshman And to answer the rhetorical question in
(26:53):
the title, how green was My Valley? Not very green?
The film is in black and white dateline the Kremlin
I left this out yesterday anyway. The actual anniversary was Sunday,
but it's too good to let it go. Sunday was
(27:13):
the one hundredth anniversary of the day the Russian revolutionary
Vladimir Ilichiulianov Lenin died. It was also the one hundredth
anniversary of the day the British comedian Benny Hill was born. Wait,
there's more. This is too good to check. I don't
want to find out this is not true. Lenin, it
(27:37):
is said, died on January twenty first, nineteen twenty four,
at four to fifty pm Greenwich meantime. We know that
that's the literal announcement, four to fifty pm Greenwich meantime.
And Benny Hill was supposedly born on January twenty first,
nineteen twenty fourth, same day, at seven fifty pm Greenwich meantime,
(27:58):
which explains either Russia or British comedy or both. Thank you,
(28:24):
Nancy Faust, Dateline, New Jersey. The best radio newscaster of
all time has died. Charles Osgood passed away at his
home after a lengthy battle with dementia yesterday after fifteen
years in radio and TV, most of them in Baltimore.
He signed on WCBS Radio in New York, the first
(28:47):
of the legendary CBS all news radio stations, in nineteen
sixty seven. Osgood was quickly promoted to primary morning anchor
on the CBS Radio network. He did up to six
newscasts Today, then to CBS's morning television news, and finally,
in nineteen ninety four, the job for which he will
be remembered, the anchor and the centerpiece of the CBS
(29:08):
news program Sunday Morning. He retired from it and from
his continuing radio assignment, The Osgood File, in twenty sixteen.
And none of this captures what he did. The TV
was great. He was at perfect pitch nearly all the time, pleasant, authoritative, knowledgeable, serious,
occasionally silly. But nobody wrote better for radio. Ever, nobody
(29:36):
his mantra short words, short sentences short paragraphs. In nineteen
eighty one, I happened to be listening to WCBS in
New York, preparing for my workday in radio, and Charles
Osgood devoted an addition of the Osgood File to the
story of a man who was drowning in a river
(29:56):
in Idaho, who was saved because a worker driving a
one man train over a trestle over that river saw him,
then saw a work train coming on in the opposite
direction on the other track, scribbled a note about the
drowning man, rolled it up into the ball, and threw
it into the window of the passing train engine. The
(30:17):
engineer read the note, stopped the train at the trestle,
and they saved the drowning man. It is an extraordinary story.
I do not do it justice, and I certainly do
not do justice. How Charles Osgood told that story. My
heart only stopped racing about five minutes after he signed off.
(30:40):
The only time in my life I have ever written
to anybody in this business asking for a copy of
their script, it was to Charles Osgood for that Idaho story.
I still have the copy somewhere. Osgood did at least
one book of his scripts called the osgood Files. If
you want to learn how to write for stuff that's
(31:03):
going to be read aloud, get it. Fifteen years ago,
maybe I bumped into him at a corner deli in
my neighborhood. I introduced myself. I told him about that
story nineteen eighty one. He said, goodness. I got to
tell him. That's how good he was at what he did.
He then said goodbye, as he used to on all
(31:24):
of his television appearances. See you on the radio. Charles
Osgoode was ninety one years old, still ahead on countdown.
(31:54):
Since I am about to mention somebody from MSNBC as
the worst person in the world spoiler alert, why not
also tell you about the day I ran into somebody
else from there who could win that honor? The guy who,
while my father was dying, filled in for me on
the network, and while he did so, he tried to
get me fired. He tried to take over my show,
and when that failed, he tried to rustle all my
(32:16):
producers to go work for him on his own show.
Who could it be? Coming up? In Things I promised
not to tell? First time For the daily roundup of
the Miscreants, Morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens, who constitute
two days worst persons in the world except for that
one guy Lebrons worse Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.
(32:38):
The tone deafness.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
It hurts.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
This is a tiny thing, but so is Eric Adams.
New York's City Council scheduled a press conference in the
rotunda of City Hall in New York yesterday. The mayor
did not authorize it. The city council was going to
do something that went against Mayor Adams's ego. So his
staffers went down to where they were setting up the
(33:01):
press conference and they took away all the city Hall
chairs that were being placed for the press and the
council members, And of course they got themselves recorded on
video doing so, looking like petty, childish amateurs. And that's
probably unfair to the staffers because we all know that
the petty childish amateur in City Hall in New York
is the mayor. The runners up worser Chaia Rachick, the
(33:26):
libs of TikTok Witch, whereas Harvard's Alejandro Carrabaio calls her
terrorist Chaia Rachick and Oklahoma Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters
in August, Raychick targeted a Tulsa elementary school librarian because
because she's one of the worst persons in the world.
That's why she targeted the other woman. The school received
(33:46):
at least half a dozen bomb threats because Raychick is
supported by the kind of coward slug lunatics who do
that stuff now writing, no one has done more to
expose what the radical left is all about, porn in schools,
woken doctrination. This fascist school superintendent Walter As named her
to the Oklahoma State School Library Media Advisory Committee. I
(34:11):
say this every time, and I mean it because the
fascists are not going to stop voluntarily, and you're not
going to vote them out, and you're not going to
get the Supreme Court to stop them, not in Oklahoma,
you're not the Only way to beat them is to
break them. And the only way to break them is
for every employer outside of Oklahoma and every college and
(34:31):
junior college and grad school outside of Oklahoma to state
simply that an Oklahoma high school diploma is not sufficient
to get a job or to get admission to a
college outside Oklahoma. In other words, the states that are
trying to turn public education into fascism factories, or to
destroy it outright. They have to be quarantined, blockaded. But
(34:58):
our winner the worst, worse even than that, Joey Scars,
MSNBC's hot and cold double faucet of running fraud. It's fake,
non conservative. The man who mainstreamed Trump on the network,
the man who wanted to be Trump's vice president, the
man who now pretends like that never happened. The man
(35:18):
who broke up his co host's marriage, the man who
wants carried water for Newt Gingrich, the single biggest scumbag
I have ever worked with, Joe fing Scarborough. Remember when
MSNBC fired the host of its top weekend show, No No, No,
(35:38):
not Meydi Hassan. The one before that, Tiffany Cross. She's
finally gone public with what happened. Tiffany Cross said she
had an on air argument over race with oh who
knows Joe Scarborough a racist? Or, as she calls him
on her new podcast, Joe Scarborough MSNBC's favorite white boy.
(36:03):
I guess he's favorite. There's nobody whiter. And after that, Scarborough,
she says, did everything he could to undermine her and
keep her from getting her own show and then get
her own show canceled.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
There's an unspoken rule that you're not supposed to disagree
with Joe, and I didn't get the memo. You may
remember once at a convention, I once said after Joe,
throughout standard Republican talking points, that he should go get
a shovel. He was so shocked that I actually said
that about him on the air. It was an accident.
My mic wasn't supposed to be open. I was glad
it was open. I apologized to him for saying it
(36:37):
on the air. It was true. Joe Scarborough shovels shit
every day anyway. I know the feeling that miss Cross
is having here. Scarborough sabotaged my show when he could,
and Madows and then Lawrence O'Donnell's, and he basically sabotaged
every show he did not control. He had something never
(36:58):
found out what on the previous MSNBC president, Phil Griffin,
who got fired two years ago, and he used it
against Griffin. He got some of my guests canceled, he
got some of them banished from the network. He had
his staffers trying to find out our upcoming guest bookings
on countdown so he could steal the guests, or screw
up the scheduling, or threaten them that if they went
(37:18):
on my show, they couldn't go on his show. After
he attacked me once on Twitter, a violation of MSNBC
rules that was supposed to result in an automatic suspension,
Scarborough threatened the president, Phil Griffin, and me and my
agent and my producer that if he was suspended, as
the rule said, he would tell everybody I got him
suspended because he was a conservative and I secretly ran
(37:42):
the place. Tiffany Cross also said that her other fatal
mistake was not criticizing Trump enough. That may sound like
a paradox, but she wanted to talk a host of
issues not related directly to the presidential race or the
Trump crises, and MSNBC told her to cut it out
and just do what they said, which is what they
did to me in nineteen ninety eight when I wanted
(38:03):
to talk about something other than Clinton Lewinsky. Cross also
said after Tucker Carlson accused her of trying to start
a genocide against American white people, No, we don't want
to kill all white people, Tucker, just one's named Tucker.
The network didn't even issue a statement in support of her,
and after it fired her, it planted as many bad
(38:25):
stories about her as it could. That is the NBC
Playbook and the Scarborough Playbook, and Scarborough has long run
roughshot over official management there, which is why MSNBC has
sunk into mediocrity in a time when events should have
given it a monopoly. It has done so because of
(38:46):
three words, Joe Scarborough's ego. So thank you Tiffany Cross
for reminding us Joe Scarborough two days and every days
worst first in and let he got to get up
at two o'clock or morning now to the number one
(39:21):
story on the countdown on my favorite topic, me and
things I promised not to tell. Early on the afternoon
of Monday May twenty third, twenty sixteen, I bounced out
of my New York City apartment building, began to walk
past the tourist trap brunch spot in the lobby, and
froze there at one of the cramped outdoor tables staring
(39:43):
up at me in blank surprise that must have matched
my own staring down at him in blank surprise. Was
Laurence O'Donnell. I decided to go silly, hey, get out
of my house. He laughed. I laughed. It didn't seem forced.
He introduced me to his companion, his daughter. This, my
dear is Keith ol Rman. Keith started us all at MSNBC,
(40:07):
and then he left. And here Lawrence gave one of
his long pauses, and we crashed it. I wanted to
be generous, I started to politely contradict him, and I
just couldn't do it. Yeah, pretty much anyway, About thirty
seconds of courteous nothingness followed, and I wish the O'Donnell's well,
(40:30):
and then I left. It was the most pleasant experience
I ever had with Lawrence O'Donnell. In fact, it might
have been the only pleasant experience I ever had with
Lawrence O'Donnell. After I finally convinced and bullied and blackmailed
MSNBC management into letting Rachel Meadow become the regular guest
host for my show, and she aced it and then
(40:51):
rightly got her own show, and she aced that and
became a star. I went looking for a new guest host.
My first idea was a frequent guest we had named
Chris Hayes. I didn't get far had its own idea,
and my input was not required they wanted former Vermont
governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean. And Howard is
(41:13):
a really smart guy and great on TV. But Howard
had a bit of a teleprompter problem. One of my
producers swears that Howard once read good Evening. I'm Howard Dean,
former governor of Vermont. This is countdown. I do know.
Whatever he did on the air, it was bad enough
that one week when I was off and at the
(41:35):
Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and a
baseball news story broke and he was filling in for me.
My producers called me there and asked me to come
on from the streets of Cooperstown and be a guest
on my own show, just to help Howard Dean out. Anyway,
Their next idea was a guy who had been kicking
around MSNBC since its founding in nineteen ninety six. Lawrence
(41:59):
O'Donnell was one of the original MSNBC Friends, The MSNBC
Friends political pundits who sat on clear stools at a
clear table or in a set designed to look like
a booth at a coffee shop. No, I'm not making
this up. Among the friends were and Colter and Laura Ingram,
(42:22):
if you can believe it, once or twice an hour,
the rather CNN like all news coverage on MSNBC in
its first couple of years, would pause and three or
more of these friends would appear, chew over the MSNBC
headlines and then disappear. Lawrence O'Donnell was one of the friends.
(42:45):
It was as bad as it sounds. Then Lawrence o'donald
pretty much disappeared. You would see him on MSNBC as
a guest every once in a while, but mostly he
pursued his acting and producing career. He played President Bartlett's
father on the West Wing, the one who beat him.
Throughout college, Lawrence was very convince and then around two
(43:06):
thousand and eight, we started getting pressure to bring him
in as a guest on Countdown, like once a week
or twice a week. I was not sure what that
was all about, but he had been a Senate staffer
and he knew the healthcare debate and other wonky stuff
pretty well, so I gave my assent for whatever that
was worth. Not long after that, Lawrence came into my office.
(43:27):
He really needed my support, he said, to get him
more involved in MSNBC. He knew I had gone to
bat for Rachel, and before her, I'd gone to bat
for Tom Brokaw, and for people like Chuck Todd and
Chris Hayes and others who are now getting steady incomes
from NBC. I don't remember his argument on his own behalf.
I do remember I didn't have much of a reason
(43:48):
to say no, and he wasn't asking me to do
a lot, so I said yes. The next thing I knew,
I was reading a memo announcing that Lawrence O'Donnell had
been appointed as the new full time guest host of Countdown.
This was in the winter of two thousand and nine,
when my late dad was fighting so valiantly to stay
alive after colon cancer and more importantly, a series of infections.
(44:11):
Dad had the immune system of an alien. The average
white cell count in a healthy adult is between four
thousand and eleven thousand. One night, Dad's was at thirty
three thousand, and the doctors told me to prepare to
make the call to let him go. They had one
antibiotic left to try on him. The next morning, Dad's
white cell count, which had been thirty three thousand, was
(44:35):
eight thousand. Onward he fought. Unfortunately, he was eighty years
old and he had not exercised since Harry Truman was president,
and eventually he ran out of Houdini tricks. I had
been visiting him twice a day for six months while
still doing Countdown and the NBC Sunday Night Football Show.
(44:55):
But now, as it hit late February of twenty ten,
his bright days became fewer and farther in between, and
the hope that was propelling me to keep being his
full time caregiver and Countdown's full time host both began
to fade. In the last two weeks of my dad's life,
as the doctors tried all the long shot things, I
asked MSNBC for a leave of absence. Finally the inevitability
(45:19):
became inarguable, and we let Dad go. On Saturday, March thirteenth,
twenty ten. My sister held his hand and I read
him his favorite Thurber story, and as soon as I
finished it, he exhaled deeply and peacefully, and he died.
I think I took another week off, maybe two, and
I vaguely recall emails from friends at Countdown that I
(45:42):
may have paid passing attention to but I really didn't.
Most of the staff, including people who came up from Washington,
like Howard Feynman or Gene Robinson of the Washington Post,
always friends to me. They attended my dad's memorial service.
I believe Lawrence o'donald, who was of course filling in
for me on Countdown, was there, too, but maybe not,
(46:03):
I do not remember. And then came the day when
I went back to the office full time and my
assistant grabbed me both hands on my wrist. You did
not answer my emails, she said, with a fervency she
rarely exhibited. For God's sake, do not ever leave me
alone with Lawrence O'Donnell again, I snapped back to attention.
(46:25):
Had he, you know, bothered her? Not that way, she said,
But he's a son of a bitch. He treats me
and everybody who was in a producer here like dirt.
And since you didn't read my emails, I just have
to tell you this. He's trying to get you fired
so he can take over Countdown. And if you think
he's nuts, one of your senior producers is in on
it too with him. I have to admit, even now,
(46:50):
of all the things I went through at that very
very strange place MSNBC. Even now, this story still shocks me.
The senior producers of Countdown consisted of a guy who'd
been a producer who booked satellite transmissions for MSNBC until
I asked that he'd be promoted, and one was a
(47:11):
guest booker for the daytime shows until I asked that
she be promoted. Another was a line producer who was
well regarded only for his ability to time a show
until I asked for him to be promoted. And then
there was the old friend of mine who had been
blown out of ESPN in a sexual harassment porn link
email scandal and was headed back to college to start
his career all over again until I asked that he'd
(47:33):
be hired and then promoted. I did some digging and
I was going to confront O'Donnell about it when somebody
told me he had tweeted something negative about me and
about Countdown. So I got a hold of him and
I said, this did not seem to be in keeping
with MSNBC traditions and rules, you know, the ones about
not peeing inside the tent. And he said, what do
you know about MSNBC? Traditions. I've been here since nineteen
(47:57):
ninety six. I never left and came back. So I
went to my boss, the president of the network field,
the one who would not hire Rachel Maddow, And before
I could say they'd have to get rid of him,
Griffin said it was all academic. They were preparing the
press release as we spoke for Lawrence's new show at
ten o'clock called The Last Word, and oh, by the way, Keith,
(48:18):
two of your senior producers are going with him to
run his show. If this sounds vaguely familiar to you,
it is the plot of the pilot for the old
Aaron Sorkin HBO series Newsroom. I was still friendly with
Aaron then, so he actually asked. As I related this
to him in real time in emails and phone calls,
(48:40):
he asked if he could use it in the plot,
rather than just what he often did, which was to
use it without asking. The problem was none of this
made any sense in the real world, although it made
a pretty good pilot for Aaron Sorkin in going into
the ten PM slot, Lawrence O'Donnell would be replacing a
rerun of Countdown, and even if O'Donnell did much better
(49:03):
in the ratings, much much better. There was no way
it could ever make enough money to make the move
make sense. O'Donnell's new show would necessarily cost MSNBC between
ten and fifteen million dollars to produce every year. Didn't
have anything to do with him. That was the cost.
The Countdown rerun cost, not ten fifteen million dollars a year.
(49:26):
It count however much they paid the guy who pushed
the play button that fired up the videotape of the
Countdown replay amortized. Later that day, a sympathetic NBC executive
called me up and explained the move to me. First,
Griffin was convinced O'Donnell was about to leave us and
(49:47):
sign with CNN. I said, well, that's a good idea
for everybody involved except CNN. Turned out CNN had not
even talked to him, but Griffin did not know that.
More importantly, Comcast had already finalized its agreement to buy
NBC effective the following January, and as part of the deal,
they were entitled to review what all the executives in
(50:09):
the company had done, and they had already looked at
MSNBC President Phil Griffin and discovered he had never done
anything in panic. Griffin told colleagues he had to launch
a new show of his own immediately. This is the
series Aaron Sorkin should have made. As to the producers
(50:29):
who left my show to go with O'Donnell while my
father was dying, one of them told me a couple
of years after she left MSNBC for the last time,
every day when I went into that Last Word office,
I realized you were getting your revenge on me without
even having to lift a finger. Lots of people I've
worked with, probably a majority of people i've helped, have
(50:52):
behaved like Lawrence O'Donnell, because, remember it's television. It is
a mental illness. The comparatively healthy people are the ones
who acknowledge it's a mental illness. But Lawrence O'Donnell was
some one thing special. A year before my dad died,
almost to the day, In fact, I was in Los
Angeles appearing on Bill Maher's show, and one of the
(51:14):
other guests that night was the actress Carrie Washington. She
was very nice to me, very sweet, a very big fan,
and she asked to stay in touch. Sure enough, after
my father died, after the memorial. After I was back
at work, I had to go to his house for
the first time since he had passed away. It was
about as much fun as it sounds. In the car
(51:34):
on the way back into New York City. The solemnity
of it. Both my parents died within eleven months of
each other. It really hit me for some reason for
the first time, full force, and I was about to
lose it when the car approached a billboard overlooking the
West Side Highway in New York City. And whose big
smiling face was on the ad on that billboard, Carrie Washington.
(51:59):
And it flashed me right back to her kindness in
la and it helped me overcome this bump in my
mid morning. So I wanted to drop her a note,
nothing big, nothing suggestive. I wasn't hinting at asking her out.
Just you never know how you might help somebody in
a time of crisis. Thanks for letting me smile. That
(52:21):
was the whole message. I asked my assistant to figure
out how to get it to her, and that was
the end of it, except a week later, the fact
that I wrote her a note wound up in a
column written by an colter. I was astonished how why,
and Colter it was her usual the brain doesn't quite
(52:46):
work right kind of stuff. She implied, I was hitting
on Carrie Washington and said how stupid I had to
be to not realize she was involved with somebody, and
on and on and on, no mention of my father's passing,
or the mar show or the billboard or her smiling face.
I went back to my assistant and I said, hey,
one on earth did you do with that note to
(53:07):
Carrie Washington? And she said, oh, I gave it to
this Lawrence O'Donnell guy. And I said, good God, why
did you do that? And she said, well, he's dating
Carrie Washington. I thought you knew that. I thought that's
why you asked me to get it to her. So
it wasn't hard to figure out from there. Lawrence had
(53:28):
called his old friend from the old MSNBC Friends of
nineteen ninety six and Colter and told her about the note,
inventing whatever motive his jealous little mind could dream up.
It should have gotten him fired from NBC, but unfortunately
his boss was just as much of a fourteen year
old emotionally as he was. And meanwhile, I had decided
to get out of MSNBC anyway when the time was ripe,
(53:51):
and as it turned out, it ripened in January twenty eleven.
I've told that story in other episodes, like sixty of them.
It's kind of complicated, and since nobody ever actually asked
me why count Down the TV show ended, probably got
another sixty episodes worth of information about that anyway in
twenty fifteen, since repeatedly over the following ten years, there
(54:14):
were overtures by both sides to bring Countdown and Me
back to MSNBC. In twenty fifteen during the World Series,
in fact, the then president of NBC News, Andy Lack,
asked me to come back and do a new show
at MSNBC and move to Los Angeles and have a
co host, a conservative, and not do any commentaries. And
(54:35):
actually this new show was somehow less appealing than it sounds.
But the punchline of all punchlines is contained in what
Lack wanted to call my new twenty fifteen MSNBC show
that never was. It tells you all you really need
to know about the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell and
MSNBC and O'Donnell's place in TV history at its demise
(54:57):
and the end of MSNBC. NBC new president Lack was
brimming with enthusiasm about this name that he had come
up with for my new show of good the perfect title.
Lack told me, we're gonna call it The Last Word
with Keith Alderman, and I didn't laugh for guffaw. I
just said, Andy, you have a show called the Last Word,
(55:22):
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. Andy Lack now laughed, huh,
hopefully not for much longer. I don't O'Donnell not a fan.
(55:45):
Scarborough not a fan. Then again, why would I be
a fan of either of them. I'm a human being.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John
Phillips Chanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister
Shaneale handled orchestration and keyboards. Produced by T Brothers. Other music,
(56:06):
including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by
the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Olderman
theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
of espn inc Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today is my friend Richard Lewis, and everything else
was as usual, pretty much my fault. So that's countdown
(56:29):
for this the two hundred and eighty seventh day until
the twenty twenty four US presidential election, and the one
and fourteenth day since dementia J Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use
the fourteenth Amendment, use the Insurrection Act, use the justice
system and the mental health system to stop him from
(56:50):
doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is tomorrow. Bolton says, the news warrants till then.
I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(57:22):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
is Countdown for Wednesday, January twenty fourth, twenty twenty four,
(00:25):
day nine of Donald J. Trump's dementia crisis. I can't
believe Nikki Haley blew that six nothing lead she had
in Dixville, notch. I can believe though, that Trump, bright, orange,
glossy and sweating at his petty victory speech did not
do as well as he needed to, as well as
(00:46):
his cult needed him to, as well as they expected
him to, because ten minutes after the polls closed in
New Hampshire last night, Marjorie Taylor Barney Rubbell Green was
on one of the fascist propaganda channels claiming the vote
had been rigged against Trump, even though he had clearly
won by a lot. And I know she's insane, but
(01:08):
so is he, and so are they. Trump himself, who
will never be accused of being gracious in victory, was
clearly more angry than triumphant, and at times he seemed
even more angry with the microphone that would not move
when he tried to adjust it than he was even
at Nikki Haley. And he was plenty angry at Nikki Haley.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Who the hell was the impostor that went up on
the stage before and like claimed a victory.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
She did very poorly. Actually she had to win.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
The governor said she's gonna win, she's gonna win, She's
gonna win.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Then she failed badly.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Still dementia. Jay Trump was so true to himself last night, cranky, vindictive, small,
full of easily refuted factual lives to cover up the
reality that he lost to Hampshire in two consecutive presidential elections.
Just petty. He complained for a while, and then he
had his creepy new Renfield Viviq Ramaswami get up and
(02:10):
in soell America's intelligence for another minute or so. And
then Trump got back up and basically turned his stochastic
terrorist gun in the direction of Nicki Haley, muted this
time with a third party involved to carry out the threat.
But muted or not, this was still a threat against
(02:30):
Nicki Haley.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
And just a little note to Nicki.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
She's not going to win, but if she did, she
would be under investigation by those people in fifteen minutes.
And I could tell you five reasons why already not
big reasons.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
A little stuff that she doesn't want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
But she will be under investigation within minutes, and so
would Ron have been.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
But he decided to get out. He decided to get out.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
What an asshole. Anyway. Haley has vowed to stay in
this race, even though she will not do as well
in her own state of South Carolina as she did
in New Hampshire, and even though Trump will clearly have
done slightly better against the field than he did against
the field in Iowa, and more or less he will
hit everybody's expectations, but I guess his own with fifty
(03:21):
seven percent or more. Haley has also hung two albatrosses
around her own neck. You cannot say, as she did,
we almost got half the votes and not have that
shouted at you every day for the next month, even
if the context of that performance makes almost half the
votes more impressive than it might initially sound. Her second
(03:42):
problem is more symbolic. If you cannot do very well
in a state that has the same initials as you do,
you have a problem. The overall issue, underscored time and
time again within the Republican Party for the last thirty years,
is that political office is no longer attracting as many
quality human beings as it used to And when I
(04:04):
say quality human beings, I mean non felons and non idiots.
Trump is a felon, Haley is an idiot, DeSantis is
an idiot, Ramaswami is two idiots, and Tim Scott is
three idiots. There is also probably little to be gleaned
(04:24):
from the New Hampshire exit polls. Half the voters there
were not registered Republicans, and so the exits were far
too optimistic for our purposes. Anyway, forty four percent voting
in the primary say if convicted of a crime, Trump
is unfit for the presidency, But probably more than half
of that forty four percent are not registered Republicans, and
(04:45):
the registered Republicans went for Trump by about three quarters.
As to the general election, of course, three quarters. If
one out of every four Republicans votes against Trump, Biden
would win in a landslide. There was one interesting exit
poll number. Eight percent of Hailey supporters say they would
(05:07):
be dissatisfied if Trump wins the nomination, and dissatisfied is
not automatically the same as I will never vote for him,
but that is still a huge number eighty eight percent,
And even if all the registered Republicans were in the
minority in the twelve percent, it would still be satisfied.
You've still got a large enough number of dissatisfied Republicans
that if the number were repeated nationally, it would sink
(05:31):
Trump if one out of every four Republicans votes against Trump.
If forty five percent, forty percent of Republicans are dissatisfied
with Trump as the nominee, it would sink Trump. There
wasn't actually a Democratic primary in Hampshire last night, and
Biden wasn't even on the beauty pageant ballot that they
(05:52):
did have, which makes his win by right in at
about sixty eight percent terrifically impressive. Dean Phillips got most
of the rest, and he managed to be ungracious in defeat,
swear at reporters early in the day, claiming the voters
missed the chance to do the most important thing in
American history or something when they didn't vote for him.
(06:14):
I believe the technical term for what he's been doing
lately is hallucinating, except perhaps when he reversed his statement
from Tuesday that he would consider running as the no
labels candidate. If he had done that, he would have
had to have entered a witness relocation program. As always,
a primary sucks the oxygen right out of the political room.
(06:36):
And that is too bad because there actually was a
huge nuts and bolts presidential race news story yesterday and
it got buried. Susquehanna Polling and Research not the best,
but pretty good in Pennsylvania even when it has seemed
like an outlier. Susquehanna Polling and Research did a week
long poll ending Sunday on the presidential race. It has
(06:59):
Biden winning in Pennsylvania forty seven to thirty nine. Polls
show Biden up in Pennsylvania, but like by one. As
John Harwood wrote, and he was the first reporter fired
by the right wing regime when it took over CNN,
and a man I knew at NBC to be a
small c conservative. John Harwood wrote yesterday, quote, we're in
(07:22):
early stages of massive analytics shift from Biden's in big
trouble to Trump's in big trouble. I think he's right.
I think this is just the start. And now Dementia
watch twenty twenty four. Thank you, Nancy Faust. Apart from
(08:18):
the stuff on the ground in New Hampshire yesterday, Several
other cries for help have emerged from the hellscape of
Trump's addled brain. Most disturbing among them, he reposted an
AI image supplied by a cultist of him praying in
a church. How do we know it's Ai, Well, he's
praying in a church. But the dementia part of it is.
(08:42):
This man who is obsessed with his own image reposted
this praying in church fake, even though it is quite
clearly afflicted with the so far unsalvable bugaboo of AI.
Bonus fingers in the picture which is about Trump praying
hands clasped, his right hand has at least five fingers
(09:04):
plus a thumb, and the left hand, which is partially
obscured by the right hand, may have five fingers and
two thumbs. Sure, put it out, they'll never know the difference.
Not long after, Trump posted all caps, I get much
better poll numbers against Biden. And of course he spelled
(09:25):
pole wrong pol e as in stripper pole. And of
course he did. He's a moron. He didn't go to school.
Dad bought him a series of diplomas. It's not his
stupidity he's always had that. It's his decreasing ability to
check just in case somebody does notice how stupid he is.
(09:48):
How do you bring these nicky Hailey goods, someone who
has voted for you in twenty twenty but said they
don't want you now.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Vote, How do you bring them back into the ticket.
All vote for me again? You can all vote for
me again, everybody. And I'm not sure we need too many.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That was Londonderry, New Hampshire, about one thirty yesterday afternoon,
where firs He said all of Haley's voters would vote
for him, and then he immediately said he didn't need
Haley's voters to vote for him, which is a damn
stupid thing even for Trump to say, given that forty
three percent of Haley's voters in Iowa said they wouldn't
vote for him, and within the Republican Party and Republican
(10:22):
Leaning independence nationally, fourteen percent of them say they won't
vote for him, compared to only nine percent of Democrats
and Democratic leaners who say they won't vote for President Biden.
Trump would need every vote he could get, and just
as Haley was willing to question Trump's mental state, so
is her leading advocate from New Hampshire Governor Chris Sanunu
(10:45):
Trump has no energy, he said at least twice. The
guy can barely read a teleprompter right now on quote
why governor whatever do you mean?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Which is incapable of solving even the solst smallest problem,
the simplest of problems, we can no longer solve.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
We can't do anything. We are an institute and a
powerful death penalty.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
We will put this on incapable of solvent. You say
we are an institute, Uh huh in a powered death penalty.
First rule of teleprompter club is pre read the goddamned
script moron. Second rule of teleprompter club is never use
(11:31):
the third person.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yes, oh, yes, and quickly says President Trump. We will
be there very quickly.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And the first rule of campaign club is never write
your opponent's commercials for him. I have told you before
of the reported Biden campaign belief that they want Trump
to wrap up the nomination quickly, because the campaign's research
indicates that three out of four undecided voters still really
can't or won't believe Trump will be the Republican nominee,
(12:02):
and when he is, that will produce what Biden campaign
staffer is quaintly characterized as the quote, oh, shit moment
and then a huge swing towards Biden. Don't write Biden's
ads for him. Example number one. If you don't want
to be connected to the lunatic fringe cult called QAnon,
(12:23):
don't give a thumbs up when one of those infected
with the q paranoia shows up at your rally and
shouts out their nonsensical slogan, and especially don't follow it
up seconds later with a smirking promise to pardon the
traders of January sixth will and don't write Biden's ads
(13:00):
for him. Example number two. If you are not mentally well,
or if you want people to disbelieve the mounting evidence
that you are not mentally well, do not do sound
effects during a speech.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
And they calmly walk to a seat bing ding ding
ding ding ding.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
They've only got seventeen seconds to figure this whole thing
out right, bomb okay, Misi launch phin pom six eye.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Free.
Speaker 5 (13:41):
Why these are the stakes?
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Bing ding ding ding ding ding Misi launch phin pom.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
We must either love each other or we must die.
Vote for President Biden on November fifth. The stakes are
too high for you to stay home in stuff that
is neither dementia or New Hampshire if you're wondering where
(14:14):
the Republican impeachment theater went a huge blow yesterday at
a House oversight Chairman Congressman Jamie comb Over last week,
the attorney for Kevin Morris, one of the Hunter Biden
witnesses Comber deposed in private, demanded that Comer immediately release
the full transcript of the deposition and said that Comber
had lied about what Morris had said. The lawyer used
(14:35):
the word mischaracterized, He meant the word lied. Now some
of the transcripts of the depositions have come out, selected
by Republicans on the Committee, and in them two of
Hunter Biden's friends have testified under oath that they never
discussed business with nor received any benefit from the President.
There is no cause nor excuse for any more impeachment talk.
(14:59):
On the other hand, you know which investigation is suddenly
alive in the House, the Ethics pro into Matt Gates,
with George Santos out of the way. ABC News is
reporting that in the last few days, the Committee quote
has reached out to multiple new witnesses, expanding its contact
with individuals who have ties to the initial Justice Department
investigation into Gates and have begun conducting interviews. The lawyer
(15:25):
for Gates buddy Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking,
will neither quote, confirm or deny that Greenberg is cooperating
as House Republicans try to expel Gates on some kind
of iglicit sex charge. The trial to determine how much
Trump owes E. Gene Carroll was to resume today in
New York. It will not. Illness still running roughshan through
(15:46):
the jury and in a story that could flare at
any moment into the biggest story in the country. The
Supreme Court ruled Monday that the federal government can go
in and take out the razor wire death traps installed
in rivers along the Texas Mexico border. Yesterday, Texas National
Guard soldiers were caught on video not only still blocking
(16:08):
federal authorities from removing the razor wire, in direct violation
of the Supreme Court order, but putting more of it
in to kill more people seeking asylum here. Look, this
isn't complicated. Texas has gone rogue, and its governor, Greg
Abbott is in violation of the constitution, to say nothing
(16:29):
of all human morals, didn't some senator threaten to have
me arrested for saying the court could be ignored. Well,
if those are the rules, President Biden now has the
right to federalize the Texas National Guard the way Eisenhower
and Kennedy federalized the National Guard when lawless governors in
the fifties and sixties tried to block court mandated integration.
(16:51):
And while the president is at it, he should send
in a purely federal unit to arrest anyone who furthers
this atrocity along the border. That means arrest Governor Greg Abbott,
arrest scumbag Already Also of interest here, the greatest radio
(17:13):
newscaster of all time, also one of the best ever
in television, has died. It's also awards season, and as usual,
both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Oscars screwed
it up. You nominated Ken but not Barbie and Tiffany
Cross finally reveals which MSNBC host was behind her firing
(17:35):
there and you believe Hotez. That's next.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
This is cave game.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman. This is Sports Senate. Wait,
check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Ulberman
(18:09):
in Sports Dateline, Cooperstown, New York. The Baseball Writers' Association
of America continues its flawless voting record for the Baseball
Hall of Fame. It has never gotten it exactly right.
This year, it has managed to get it wrong in
two different directions, depending on your point of view, either
(18:31):
one or two guys too many or one guy too few.
The writers elected third baseman Adrian Beltray of the Dodgers,
of the Rangers, of the Red Sox, of the Mariners, everywhere,
the last player from the twentieth century who was still
playing in the twenty first an acclaimed Hall of Famer,
and he got ninety five percent of the vote. Two
(18:52):
years ago, the great Colorado first baseman Todd Helton, who
was benched in favor of Peyton Manning as the quarterback
at the University of Tennessee. Helton got barely more than
fifty percent of the vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame,
but this year he got to nearly eighty and was elected.
Helton is a terrific guy, spent his whole career in Colorado.
(19:12):
I always loved visiting with him. Smart, funny, self deprecating However,
wins above replacement is not everything, but it's a good
starting point. And Helton's wins above replacement war was sixty
one point eight And that's less than Andrew Jones, less
than Chase Utley, less than Reggie Smith, less than Willie Randolph,
(19:34):
less than Buddy Bell. None of them are in the
Hall of Fame, and only Jones is likely to be. Ever,
and seventy six percent of voters chose the Twins catcher
and later first baseman Joe Mauer. Seventy five percent needed
for election and he got seventy six. Everybody loved Maer
and he won three batting championships as a catcher, unheard of.
(19:55):
But at age thirty, after injuries, he turned back into
a pumpkin like Helton, extremely popular, a local icon, always
of pleasure to deal with. And I'm not sure what
he's doing in the Hall of Fame. His wins above
replacement is less than that of Robin Ventura and Johnny
Damon and Will Clark and Jim Winn and Chet Lemon
(20:18):
and a whole lot of other guys who would themselves
tell you we are not Hall of famers. Billy Wagner,
the Astros, Phillies and Mets closer missed by five votes
of being the fourth player elected, and he would have
been a controversial choice too. Gary Sheffield, himself, a controversial slugger,
got only sixty four percent in his last year of
eligibility and has now fallen off the ballot. Reuters Alex
(20:42):
Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez did not get close, so at
least the writers got that right dateline New York. Since
it is twenty one days until spring training, and since
both the local teams are unlikely to have to worry
about being in the pennant races, why shouldn't the lead
stories about the New York Yankees and New York Mets
(21:02):
be about their uniforms. The uniform centric website uni watch
reports that the Yankees will make their first serious change
to one of their uniforms since nineteen seventy three. Uni
watch reports the Yankees will be taking off the white
outlining and white sleeve trim. That's the little dark blue,
white blue, dark blue ring at the end of the sleeves.
(21:24):
They'll take that off their road uniforms, which will just
basically be gray with the word New York on them.
Those unis will now look like the ones the Yankees
wore from the teens until nineteen seventy three. By the way,
in the winter of nineteen seventy five, Yankees owner George
Steinbrenner decided he really wanted to change their road uniforms
(21:45):
from gray to dark blue with white pinstripes, and somebody
managed to talk him out of it because the Yankees
were not a nineteen thirties movie. As to the New
York Mets, Uni Watch says they have scheduled April twenty
sixth for the debut of their City Connect uniforms. If
you're unfamiliar of the worst uniforms you could put baseball
(22:07):
players in, then screw up the colors, then drop some
acid and redesign them so they look even worse, and
then you have your City Connect uniforms. The Red Sox
City Connect uniforms look like the Boston phone Book. The
White Sox City Connect uniforms have the same exact lettering
as a vodka advertisement. The Chicago Cubs City Connect uniforms
(22:29):
are in fact duplicates of uniforms the Chicago White Sox
used to wear. The padres all look like two can
sam The Colorado Rockies look like somebody spilled paint on
the shoulders of some otherwise okay green uniforms. The Arizona
Diamondbacks look great, largely because the Arizona Diamondbacks regular uniforms
(22:50):
look like crap. Nobody knows what the Mets City Connect
uniforms are going to look like in April. But if
you want to place a bet, just bet on they'll
suck postscripts to the news, some.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Headlines, some updates, some snarks, some format changes, some predictions, dateline, Hollywood,
the OSCARS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
and Jim and Lunch and whatever. The OSCARS committee has
done it again. How do they do this? How do
(23:28):
they always do this? Now? Look, Barbie is not my
kind of film, so what doesn't have to be? Apparently
they made it good. And if you nominate it for
good enough to be Best Picture, and you nominate one
of its actors as Best Supporting Actress, and you nominate
Ken as Best Supporting Actor, how in the hell do
(23:51):
you not nominate Barbie herself as Best Actress? Margo Robbie
got snubbed, and the director Greta Gerwig also snubbed, not
nominated sounds a little misogynistic to me. Of course, the
Uskers have always done this. The runaway winner of the
Oscars for nineteen forty one was the movie How Green
Was My Valley For Best Supporting Actor. Donald Crisp in
(24:16):
How Green Was My Valley beat out Sidney green Street
in The Maltese Falcon. For Best Director. John Ford of
How Green Was My Valley beat out Orson Wells for
a little flim he called Citizen Kane for Best Art
Direction and Best Cinematography. How Green Was My Valley also
beat out Citizen Kane for Best Film. How Green Was
(24:38):
My Valley beat out Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon
and Hitchcock's Suspicion, and even Here Comes Mister Jordan, which
is just a charming little film. Just a quick quiz,
don't google this, Just tell me who besides Donald Crisp
was in How Green Was My Valley? Or what was
(25:01):
My Picture about? How Green Was My Valley? What was
I about? Or was I in color? Citizen Kane, The
Maltese Falcon and Suspicion got a total of twenty two
nominations for nineteen forty one and a total of three
(25:22):
Oscars and ever since, people who actually know Hollywood have
viewed them, the Oscars and the Oscars nominations and the
Oscars winners as the well, the Toronto maple Leafs of awards.
Whatever the decade, whatever the style, you can count on
the Oscars and the Maple Leafs to find a way
(25:43):
to screw it up. One might think that the annual
Oscars screw up is designed just for the publicity. I mean,
you're trying to drive a TV audience to watch the
awards show, and drive a movie audience to watch the movies,
and a streaming or DVD audience to watch the movies
at home. Publicity about controversy. It's as useful as publicity
(26:04):
of about serenity. Maybe that also explains the Toronto maple leiefs.
I never thought of that before. By the way, the
answer to my little challenge, how green was my Valley?
Was about welshman. It was about Welsh miners, the Morgan family.
It starred Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara and Roddy McDowell. And
(26:28):
I swear, until I looked it up, I had always
assumed I mean, since I was a teenager, I just
assumed how Green was My Valley? Was that John Wayne
film about the boxer who goes home to Ireland? But no,
apparently that's the quiet Man. How Green was My Valley?
Is about Welshman And to answer the rhetorical question in
(26:53):
the title, how green was My Valley? Not very green?
The film is in black and white dateline the Kremlin
I left this out yesterday anyway. The actual anniversary was Sunday,
but it's too good to let it go. Sunday was
(27:13):
the one hundredth anniversary of the day the Russian revolutionary
Vladimir Ilichiulianov Lenin died. It was also the one hundredth
anniversary of the day the British comedian Benny Hill was born. Wait,
there's more. This is too good to check. I don't
want to find out this is not true. Lenin, it
(27:37):
is said, died on January twenty first, nineteen twenty four,
at four to fifty pm Greenwich meantime. We know that
that's the literal announcement, four to fifty pm Greenwich meantime.
And Benny Hill was supposedly born on January twenty first,
nineteen twenty fourth, same day, at seven fifty pm Greenwich meantime,
(27:58):
which explains either Russia or British comedy or both. Thank you,
(28:24):
Nancy Faust, Dateline, New Jersey. The best radio newscaster of
all time has died. Charles Osgood passed away at his
home after a lengthy battle with dementia yesterday after fifteen
years in radio and TV, most of them in Baltimore.
He signed on WCBS Radio in New York, the first
(28:47):
of the legendary CBS all news radio stations, in nineteen
sixty seven. Osgood was quickly promoted to primary morning anchor
on the CBS Radio network. He did up to six
newscasts Today, then to CBS's morning television news, and finally,
in nineteen ninety four, the job for which he will
be remembered, the anchor and the centerpiece of the CBS
(29:08):
news program Sunday Morning. He retired from it and from
his continuing radio assignment, The Osgood File, in twenty sixteen.
And none of this captures what he did. The TV
was great. He was at perfect pitch nearly all the time, pleasant, authoritative, knowledgeable, serious,
occasionally silly. But nobody wrote better for radio. Ever, nobody
(29:36):
his mantra short words, short sentences short paragraphs. In nineteen
eighty one, I happened to be listening to WCBS in
New York, preparing for my workday in radio, and Charles
Osgood devoted an addition of the Osgood File to the
story of a man who was drowning in a river
(29:56):
in Idaho, who was saved because a worker driving a
one man train over a trestle over that river saw him,
then saw a work train coming on in the opposite
direction on the other track, scribbled a note about the
drowning man, rolled it up into the ball, and threw
it into the window of the passing train engine. The
(30:17):
engineer read the note, stopped the train at the trestle,
and they saved the drowning man. It is an extraordinary story.
I do not do it justice, and I certainly do
not do justice. How Charles Osgood told that story. My
heart only stopped racing about five minutes after he signed off.
(30:40):
The only time in my life I have ever written
to anybody in this business asking for a copy of
their script, it was to Charles Osgood for that Idaho story.
I still have the copy somewhere. Osgood did at least
one book of his scripts called the osgood Files. If
you want to learn how to write for stuff that's
(31:03):
going to be read aloud, get it. Fifteen years ago,
maybe I bumped into him at a corner deli in
my neighborhood. I introduced myself. I told him about that
story nineteen eighty one. He said, goodness. I got to
tell him. That's how good he was at what he did.
He then said goodbye, as he used to on all
(31:24):
of his television appearances. See you on the radio. Charles
Osgoode was ninety one years old, still ahead on countdown.
(31:54):
Since I am about to mention somebody from MSNBC as
the worst person in the world spoiler alert, why not
also tell you about the day I ran into somebody
else from there who could win that honor? The guy who,
while my father was dying, filled in for me on
the network, and while he did so, he tried to
get me fired. He tried to take over my show,
and when that failed, he tried to rustle all my
(32:16):
producers to go work for him on his own show.
Who could it be? Coming up? In Things I promised
not to tell? First time For the daily roundup of
the Miscreants, Morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens, who constitute
two days worst persons in the world except for that
one guy Lebrons worse Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.
(32:38):
The tone deafness.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
It hurts.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
This is a tiny thing, but so is Eric Adams.
New York's City Council scheduled a press conference in the
rotunda of City Hall in New York yesterday. The mayor
did not authorize it. The city council was going to
do something that went against Mayor Adams's ego. So his
staffers went down to where they were setting up the
(33:01):
press conference and they took away all the city Hall
chairs that were being placed for the press and the
council members, And of course they got themselves recorded on
video doing so, looking like petty, childish amateurs. And that's
probably unfair to the staffers because we all know that
the petty childish amateur in City Hall in New York
is the mayor. The runners up worser Chaia Rachick, the
(33:26):
libs of TikTok Witch, whereas Harvard's Alejandro Carrabaio calls her
terrorist Chaia Rachick and Oklahoma Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters
in August, Raychick targeted a Tulsa elementary school librarian because
because she's one of the worst persons in the world.
That's why she targeted the other woman. The school received
(33:46):
at least half a dozen bomb threats because Raychick is
supported by the kind of coward slug lunatics who do
that stuff now writing, no one has done more to
expose what the radical left is all about, porn in schools,
woken doctrination. This fascist school superintendent Walter As named her
to the Oklahoma State School Library Media Advisory Committee. I
(34:11):
say this every time, and I mean it because the
fascists are not going to stop voluntarily, and you're not
going to vote them out, and you're not going to
get the Supreme Court to stop them, not in Oklahoma,
you're not the Only way to beat them is to
break them. And the only way to break them is
for every employer outside of Oklahoma and every college and
(34:31):
junior college and grad school outside of Oklahoma to state
simply that an Oklahoma high school diploma is not sufficient
to get a job or to get admission to a
college outside Oklahoma. In other words, the states that are
trying to turn public education into fascism factories, or to
destroy it outright. They have to be quarantined, blockaded. But
(34:58):
our winner the worst, worse even than that, Joey Scars,
MSNBC's hot and cold double faucet of running fraud. It's fake,
non conservative. The man who mainstreamed Trump on the network,
the man who wanted to be Trump's vice president, the
man who now pretends like that never happened. The man
(35:18):
who broke up his co host's marriage, the man who
wants carried water for Newt Gingrich, the single biggest scumbag
I have ever worked with, Joe fing Scarborough. Remember when
MSNBC fired the host of its top weekend show, No No, No,
(35:38):
not Meydi Hassan. The one before that, Tiffany Cross. She's
finally gone public with what happened. Tiffany Cross said she
had an on air argument over race with oh who
knows Joe Scarborough a racist? Or, as she calls him
on her new podcast, Joe Scarborough MSNBC's favorite white boy.
(36:03):
I guess he's favorite. There's nobody whiter. And after that, Scarborough,
she says, did everything he could to undermine her and
keep her from getting her own show and then get
her own show canceled.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
There's an unspoken rule that you're not supposed to disagree
with Joe, and I didn't get the memo. You may
remember once at a convention, I once said after Joe,
throughout standard Republican talking points, that he should go get
a shovel. He was so shocked that I actually said
that about him on the air. It was an accident.
My mic wasn't supposed to be open. I was glad
it was open. I apologized to him for saying it
(36:37):
on the air. It was true. Joe Scarborough shovels shit
every day anyway. I know the feeling that miss Cross
is having here. Scarborough sabotaged my show when he could,
and Madows and then Lawrence O'Donnell's, and he basically sabotaged
every show he did not control. He had something never
(36:58):
found out what on the previous MSNBC president, Phil Griffin,
who got fired two years ago, and he used it
against Griffin. He got some of my guests canceled, he
got some of them banished from the network. He had
his staffers trying to find out our upcoming guest bookings
on countdown so he could steal the guests, or screw
up the scheduling, or threaten them that if they went
(37:18):
on my show, they couldn't go on his show. After
he attacked me once on Twitter, a violation of MSNBC
rules that was supposed to result in an automatic suspension,
Scarborough threatened the president, Phil Griffin, and me and my
agent and my producer that if he was suspended, as
the rule said, he would tell everybody I got him
suspended because he was a conservative and I secretly ran
(37:42):
the place. Tiffany Cross also said that her other fatal
mistake was not criticizing Trump enough. That may sound like
a paradox, but she wanted to talk a host of
issues not related directly to the presidential race or the
Trump crises, and MSNBC told her to cut it out
and just do what they said, which is what they
did to me in nineteen ninety eight when I wanted
(38:03):
to talk about something other than Clinton Lewinsky. Cross also
said after Tucker Carlson accused her of trying to start
a genocide against American white people, No, we don't want
to kill all white people, Tucker, just one's named Tucker.
The network didn't even issue a statement in support of her,
and after it fired her, it planted as many bad
(38:25):
stories about her as it could. That is the NBC
Playbook and the Scarborough Playbook, and Scarborough has long run
roughshot over official management there, which is why MSNBC has
sunk into mediocrity in a time when events should have
given it a monopoly. It has done so because of
(38:46):
three words, Joe Scarborough's ego. So thank you Tiffany Cross
for reminding us Joe Scarborough two days and every days
worst first in and let he got to get up
at two o'clock or morning now to the number one
(39:21):
story on the countdown on my favorite topic, me and
things I promised not to tell. Early on the afternoon
of Monday May twenty third, twenty sixteen, I bounced out
of my New York City apartment building, began to walk
past the tourist trap brunch spot in the lobby, and
froze there at one of the cramped outdoor tables staring
(39:43):
up at me in blank surprise that must have matched
my own staring down at him in blank surprise. Was
Laurence O'Donnell. I decided to go silly, hey, get out
of my house. He laughed. I laughed. It didn't seem forced.
He introduced me to his companion, his daughter. This, my
dear is Keith ol Rman. Keith started us all at MSNBC,
(40:07):
and then he left. And here Lawrence gave one of
his long pauses, and we crashed it. I wanted to
be generous, I started to politely contradict him, and I
just couldn't do it. Yeah, pretty much anyway, About thirty
seconds of courteous nothingness followed, and I wish the O'Donnell's well,
(40:30):
and then I left. It was the most pleasant experience
I ever had with Lawrence O'Donnell. In fact, it might
have been the only pleasant experience I ever had with
Lawrence O'Donnell. After I finally convinced and bullied and blackmailed
MSNBC management into letting Rachel Meadow become the regular guest
host for my show, and she aced it and then
(40:51):
rightly got her own show, and she aced that and
became a star. I went looking for a new guest host.
My first idea was a frequent guest we had named
Chris Hayes. I didn't get far had its own idea,
and my input was not required they wanted former Vermont
governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean. And Howard is
(41:13):
a really smart guy and great on TV. But Howard
had a bit of a teleprompter problem. One of my
producers swears that Howard once read good Evening. I'm Howard Dean,
former governor of Vermont. This is countdown. I do know.
Whatever he did on the air, it was bad enough
that one week when I was off and at the
(41:35):
Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and a
baseball news story broke and he was filling in for me.
My producers called me there and asked me to come
on from the streets of Cooperstown and be a guest
on my own show, just to help Howard Dean out. Anyway,
Their next idea was a guy who had been kicking
around MSNBC since its founding in nineteen ninety six. Lawrence
(41:59):
O'Donnell was one of the original MSNBC Friends, The MSNBC
Friends political pundits who sat on clear stools at a
clear table or in a set designed to look like
a booth at a coffee shop. No, I'm not making
this up. Among the friends were and Colter and Laura Ingram,
(42:22):
if you can believe it, once or twice an hour,
the rather CNN like all news coverage on MSNBC in
its first couple of years, would pause and three or
more of these friends would appear, chew over the MSNBC
headlines and then disappear. Lawrence O'Donnell was one of the friends.
(42:45):
It was as bad as it sounds. Then Lawrence o'donald
pretty much disappeared. You would see him on MSNBC as
a guest every once in a while, but mostly he
pursued his acting and producing career. He played President Bartlett's
father on the West Wing, the one who beat him.
Throughout college, Lawrence was very convince and then around two
(43:06):
thousand and eight, we started getting pressure to bring him
in as a guest on Countdown, like once a week
or twice a week. I was not sure what that
was all about, but he had been a Senate staffer
and he knew the healthcare debate and other wonky stuff
pretty well, so I gave my assent for whatever that
was worth. Not long after that, Lawrence came into my office.
(43:27):
He really needed my support, he said, to get him
more involved in MSNBC. He knew I had gone to
bat for Rachel, and before her, I'd gone to bat
for Tom Brokaw, and for people like Chuck Todd and
Chris Hayes and others who are now getting steady incomes
from NBC. I don't remember his argument on his own behalf.
I do remember I didn't have much of a reason
(43:48):
to say no, and he wasn't asking me to do
a lot, so I said yes. The next thing I knew,
I was reading a memo announcing that Lawrence O'Donnell had
been appointed as the new full time guest host of Countdown.
This was in the winter of two thousand and nine,
when my late dad was fighting so valiantly to stay
alive after colon cancer and more importantly, a series of infections.
(44:11):
Dad had the immune system of an alien. The average
white cell count in a healthy adult is between four
thousand and eleven thousand. One night, Dad's was at thirty
three thousand, and the doctors told me to prepare to
make the call to let him go. They had one
antibiotic left to try on him. The next morning, Dad's
white cell count, which had been thirty three thousand, was
(44:35):
eight thousand. Onward he fought. Unfortunately, he was eighty years
old and he had not exercised since Harry Truman was president,
and eventually he ran out of Houdini tricks. I had
been visiting him twice a day for six months while
still doing Countdown and the NBC Sunday Night Football Show.
(44:55):
But now, as it hit late February of twenty ten,
his bright days became fewer and farther in between, and
the hope that was propelling me to keep being his
full time caregiver and Countdown's full time host both began
to fade. In the last two weeks of my dad's life,
as the doctors tried all the long shot things, I
asked MSNBC for a leave of absence. Finally the inevitability
(45:19):
became inarguable, and we let Dad go. On Saturday, March thirteenth,
twenty ten. My sister held his hand and I read
him his favorite Thurber story, and as soon as I
finished it, he exhaled deeply and peacefully, and he died.
I think I took another week off, maybe two, and
I vaguely recall emails from friends at Countdown that I
(45:42):
may have paid passing attention to but I really didn't.
Most of the staff, including people who came up from Washington,
like Howard Feynman or Gene Robinson of the Washington Post,
always friends to me. They attended my dad's memorial service.
I believe Lawrence o'donald, who was of course filling in
for me on Countdown, was there, too, but maybe not,
(46:03):
I do not remember. And then came the day when
I went back to the office full time and my
assistant grabbed me both hands on my wrist. You did
not answer my emails, she said, with a fervency she
rarely exhibited. For God's sake, do not ever leave me
alone with Lawrence O'Donnell again, I snapped back to attention.
(46:25):
Had he, you know, bothered her? Not that way, she said,
But he's a son of a bitch. He treats me
and everybody who was in a producer here like dirt.
And since you didn't read my emails, I just have
to tell you this. He's trying to get you fired
so he can take over Countdown. And if you think
he's nuts, one of your senior producers is in on
it too with him. I have to admit, even now,
(46:50):
of all the things I went through at that very
very strange place MSNBC. Even now, this story still shocks me.
The senior producers of Countdown consisted of a guy who'd
been a producer who booked satellite transmissions for MSNBC until
I asked that he'd be promoted, and one was a
(47:11):
guest booker for the daytime shows until I asked that
she be promoted. Another was a line producer who was
well regarded only for his ability to time a show
until I asked for him to be promoted. And then
there was the old friend of mine who had been
blown out of ESPN in a sexual harassment porn link
email scandal and was headed back to college to start
his career all over again until I asked that he'd
(47:33):
be hired and then promoted. I did some digging and
I was going to confront O'Donnell about it when somebody
told me he had tweeted something negative about me and
about Countdown. So I got a hold of him and
I said, this did not seem to be in keeping
with MSNBC traditions and rules, you know, the ones about
not peeing inside the tent. And he said, what do
you know about MSNBC? Traditions. I've been here since nineteen
(47:57):
ninety six. I never left and came back. So I
went to my boss, the president of the network field,
the one who would not hire Rachel Maddow, And before
I could say they'd have to get rid of him,
Griffin said it was all academic. They were preparing the
press release as we spoke for Lawrence's new show at
ten o'clock called The Last Word, and oh, by the way, Keith,
(48:18):
two of your senior producers are going with him to
run his show. If this sounds vaguely familiar to you,
it is the plot of the pilot for the old
Aaron Sorkin HBO series Newsroom. I was still friendly with
Aaron then, so he actually asked. As I related this
to him in real time in emails and phone calls,
(48:40):
he asked if he could use it in the plot,
rather than just what he often did, which was to
use it without asking. The problem was none of this
made any sense in the real world, although it made
a pretty good pilot for Aaron Sorkin in going into
the ten PM slot, Lawrence O'Donnell would be replacing a
rerun of Countdown, and even if O'Donnell did much better
(49:03):
in the ratings, much much better. There was no way
it could ever make enough money to make the move
make sense. O'Donnell's new show would necessarily cost MSNBC between
ten and fifteen million dollars to produce every year. Didn't
have anything to do with him. That was the cost.
The Countdown rerun cost, not ten fifteen million dollars a year.
(49:26):
It count however much they paid the guy who pushed
the play button that fired up the videotape of the
Countdown replay amortized. Later that day, a sympathetic NBC executive
called me up and explained the move to me. First,
Griffin was convinced O'Donnell was about to leave us and
(49:47):
sign with CNN. I said, well, that's a good idea
for everybody involved except CNN. Turned out CNN had not
even talked to him, but Griffin did not know that.
More importantly, Comcast had already finalized its agreement to buy
NBC effective the following January, and as part of the deal,
they were entitled to review what all the executives in
(50:09):
the company had done, and they had already looked at
MSNBC President Phil Griffin and discovered he had never done
anything in panic. Griffin told colleagues he had to launch
a new show of his own immediately. This is the
series Aaron Sorkin should have made. As to the producers
(50:29):
who left my show to go with O'Donnell while my
father was dying, one of them told me a couple
of years after she left MSNBC for the last time,
every day when I went into that Last Word office,
I realized you were getting your revenge on me without
even having to lift a finger. Lots of people I've
worked with, probably a majority of people i've helped, have
(50:52):
behaved like Lawrence O'Donnell, because, remember it's television. It is
a mental illness. The comparatively healthy people are the ones
who acknowledge it's a mental illness. But Lawrence O'Donnell was
some one thing special. A year before my dad died,
almost to the day, In fact, I was in Los
Angeles appearing on Bill Maher's show, and one of the
(51:14):
other guests that night was the actress Carrie Washington. She
was very nice to me, very sweet, a very big fan,
and she asked to stay in touch. Sure enough, after
my father died, after the memorial. After I was back
at work, I had to go to his house for
the first time since he had passed away. It was
about as much fun as it sounds. In the car
(51:34):
on the way back into New York City. The solemnity
of it. Both my parents died within eleven months of
each other. It really hit me for some reason for
the first time, full force, and I was about to
lose it when the car approached a billboard overlooking the
West Side Highway in New York City. And whose big
smiling face was on the ad on that billboard, Carrie Washington.
(51:59):
And it flashed me right back to her kindness in
la and it helped me overcome this bump in my
mid morning. So I wanted to drop her a note,
nothing big, nothing suggestive. I wasn't hinting at asking her out.
Just you never know how you might help somebody in
a time of crisis. Thanks for letting me smile. That
(52:21):
was the whole message. I asked my assistant to figure
out how to get it to her, and that was
the end of it, except a week later, the fact
that I wrote her a note wound up in a
column written by an colter. I was astonished how why,
and Colter it was her usual the brain doesn't quite
(52:46):
work right kind of stuff. She implied, I was hitting
on Carrie Washington and said how stupid I had to
be to not realize she was involved with somebody, and
on and on and on, no mention of my father's passing,
or the mar show or the billboard or her smiling face.
I went back to my assistant and I said, hey,
one on earth did you do with that note to
(53:07):
Carrie Washington? And she said, oh, I gave it to
this Lawrence O'Donnell guy. And I said, good God, why
did you do that? And she said, well, he's dating
Carrie Washington. I thought you knew that. I thought that's
why you asked me to get it to her. So
it wasn't hard to figure out from there. Lawrence had
(53:28):
called his old friend from the old MSNBC Friends of
nineteen ninety six and Colter and told her about the note,
inventing whatever motive his jealous little mind could dream up.
It should have gotten him fired from NBC, but unfortunately
his boss was just as much of a fourteen year
old emotionally as he was. And meanwhile, I had decided
to get out of MSNBC anyway when the time was ripe,
(53:51):
and as it turned out, it ripened in January twenty eleven.
I've told that story in other episodes, like sixty of them.
It's kind of complicated, and since nobody ever actually asked
me why count Down the TV show ended, probably got
another sixty episodes worth of information about that anyway in
twenty fifteen, since repeatedly over the following ten years, there
(54:14):
were overtures by both sides to bring Countdown and Me
back to MSNBC. In twenty fifteen during the World Series,
in fact, the then president of NBC News, Andy Lack,
asked me to come back and do a new show
at MSNBC and move to Los Angeles and have a
co host, a conservative, and not do any commentaries. And
(54:35):
actually this new show was somehow less appealing than it sounds.
But the punchline of all punchlines is contained in what
Lack wanted to call my new twenty fifteen MSNBC show
that never was. It tells you all you really need
to know about the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell and
MSNBC and O'Donnell's place in TV history at its demise
(54:57):
and the end of MSNBC. NBC new president Lack was
brimming with enthusiasm about this name that he had come
up with for my new show of good the perfect title.
Lack told me, we're gonna call it The Last Word
with Keith Alderman, and I didn't laugh for guffaw. I
just said, Andy, you have a show called the Last Word,
(55:22):
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. Andy Lack now laughed, huh,
hopefully not for much longer. I don't O'Donnell not a fan.
(55:45):
Scarborough not a fan. Then again, why would I be
a fan of either of them. I'm a human being.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John
Phillips Chanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister
Shaneale handled orchestration and keyboards. Produced by T Brothers. Other music,
(56:06):
including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by
the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Olderman
theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
of espn inc Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today is my friend Richard Lewis, and everything else
was as usual, pretty much my fault. So that's countdown
(56:29):
for this the two hundred and eighty seventh day until
the twenty twenty four US presidential election, and the one
and fourteenth day since dementia J Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use
the fourteenth Amendment, use the Insurrection Act, use the justice
system and the mental health system to stop him from
(56:50):
doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled
countdown is tomorrow. Bolton says, the news warrants till then.
I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldman is a production of iHeartRadio.
(57:22):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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