Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. My
Speaker 1: friend and colleague of twenty six years, Howard Feinneman has died,
Speaker 1: and I have much to tell you about him, and
Speaker 1: I will do so. But the journalist in Howard Feyneman
Speaker 1: would kick me in the shins if I led with
Speaker 1: his passing instead of with the alice through the looking glass.
Speaker 1: News that the head of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan,
Speaker 1: has managed to get the Attorney General of the United States,
Speaker 1: Merrick Garland, held in contempt of Congress for ignoring a
Speaker 1: House subpoena, even though it is now exactly seven hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty four days, two years and a month that
Speaker 1: Jim Jordan himself has been ignoring a House subpoena. I
Speaker 1: have no use for Merrick Garland, and in part that
Speaker 1: is because Merrick Garland would never think of doing what
Speaker 1: he should do today, what he should do right now,
Speaker 1: which is to seek today and gain today and announce
Speaker 1: today the indictment of Jim Jordan for contempt of Congress.
Speaker 1: We are metaphorically at war with these fascists who live
Speaker 1: among us, and who have decades ago jennisoned any standards
Speaker 1: or morality, have embraced only cheating, have used the legal
Speaker 1: system for purely political purposes as long ago as the
Speaker 1: Ken Star investigation of Bill Clinton and the illegal publication
Speaker 1: of Clinton's videotape grand jury testimony a quarter century ago.
Speaker 1: They created what they have now named law fair. They
Speaker 1: created it in a preceding century, and they are pretending
Speaker 1: that they are its victims when they are its inventors
Speaker 1: and manipulators, when they are the criminals and the corrupted,
Speaker 1: remorseless authoritarians. When any time they lie that they are
Speaker 1: not behaving that way, they are pretending solely because their
Speaker 1: base now expects them to pretend and lie, and only
Speaker 1: expects of them a well crafted lie they can hold
Speaker 1: on to. And there is no easier to digest proof
Speaker 1: of this than just the last two morally bankrupt years
Speaker 1: out of the morally bankrupt life of Jim Jordan and Merrick.
Speaker 1: Garland should announce charges against him today now, and if
Speaker 1: he doesn't think so, and he doesn't, Garland should just
Speaker 1: change the names in this equation around and make the
Speaker 1: Attorney General Mike Davis the Trump lunatic, and make the
Speaker 1: chairman Jamie Raskin and ask what the Trumpsts would do
Speaker 1: in the hypothetical future, and the answer is Davis would
Speaker 1: have had Raskin indicted and arrested or just arrested, screw
Speaker 1: bothering with an indictment or a trial just arrested seven
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty four days ago. The House Republicans did
Speaker 1: this yesterday because they and Trump's Republican Senate slaves are
Speaker 1: set to promise fealty to Trump at meetings today in Washington.
Speaker 1: It is a relief they do not have to offer
Speaker 1: him his weight in gold, as if there were that
Speaker 1: much gold. Fox reports that for his first trip to
Speaker 1: Capitol Hill since his attempted coup on January sixth, Trump
Speaker 1: will be at the Capitol Hill Club, and boy, they
Speaker 1: sure amp the symbol up to eleven. This time. It
Speaker 1: was right between the Republican National Committee headquarters and the
Speaker 1: very same Capitol Hill Club that one of the pipe
Speaker 1: bombs was left the night before January sixth by a
Speaker 1: still unidentified mass murderer wannabe March. Of course, by the
Speaker 1: time of those kiss the ass meetings between Trump and
Speaker 1: the Republicans on Capitol Hill, America may have figuratively already
Speaker 1: been blown up. The Supreme Court will issue rulings on
Speaker 1: pending cases like oh, maybe the Trump's fabricated monarchical concept
Speaker 1: of quote presidential immunity. We don't know which cases the
Speaker 1: Court will rule on today, We don't know when. We
Speaker 1: do know they scheduled two days for publishing decisions, which
Speaker 1: is an unusual step for them. And yes, you're right,
Speaker 1: Sam Alito, tomorrow is Flag Day. Why do you ask
Speaker 1: if you were hoping that somehow Democrats would get a
Speaker 1: first step towards mandatory Supreme Court ethics codes through on
Speaker 1: unanimous consent. Oh well, why did you think that? Secondly,
Speaker 1: guess which Trump whore stepped up to proudly stop that,
Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham. Still more ripples in the pool of the
Speaker 1: conviction of elderly first offender j. Trump. New Jersey's Attorney
Speaker 1: General and the Division of Alcoholic Beverage ConTroll There are
Speaker 1: now reviewing the liquor licenses at the three Trump owned
Speaker 1: golf courses. Quote. No license of any class shall be
Speaker 1: issued to any person under the age of eighteen years,
Speaker 1: or to any person who has been convicted of a
Speaker 1: crime involving moral turpitude, reads Jersey state law. The alcoholic
Speaker 1: Beverage Control Division guidebook offers a definition quote a serious
Speaker 1: crime from the viewpoint of society in general, and usually
Speaker 1: contains elements of dishonesty, fraud, or depravity. Dishonesty, fraud, or depravity.
Speaker 1: They got you there, don And just one other note.
Speaker 1: June thirteenth, This is so two weeks from tonight is
Speaker 1: the first Biden Trump debate, the one at CNN in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: which means Trump now has less than fourteen days to
Speaker 1: choose the excuse for backing out that he thinks we'll
Speaker 1: make it look most like Biden was actually the one
Speaker 1: backing out. This is countdown with Keith Oberman. That was
Speaker 1: my friend Howard Fineman, who died yesterday after And it
Speaker 1: is a cliche a long struggle with pancreatic cancer. This
Speaker 1: is one of the worst of the diseases. And I
Speaker 1: will tell you the extraordinary story of Howard versus pancreatic
Speaker 1: cancer and how despite the outcome, Howard won at length.
Speaker 1: In a moment, Howard Fineman told me in the middle
Speaker 1: of January last year, twenty twenty three, that he had
Speaker 1: been diagnosed that they had found pancreatic cancer during another surgery.
Speaker 1: And that they had given him four to six months
Speaker 1: to live, and he was writing and then talking to
Speaker 1: me to say goodbye. And he died yesterday, having survived
Speaker 1: the disease and survived it extraordinarily well for eighteen months.
Speaker 1: But let me tell that story in the correct chronological order.
Speaker 1: About a week before my thirty ninth birthday in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, when I was the unhappy new host of
Speaker 1: a show on MSNBC called The Big Show, and we
Speaker 1: did things like this. I was in Hollywood, in Burbank,
Speaker 1: I think, on the set of Third Rock from the Sun,
Speaker 1: about to interview its lead actor, the great actor John Lithgow,
Speaker 1: when the producer of the show came to me and said, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, slight change of plans. And I know
Speaker 1: I've told this story before, slight change of plans. We
Speaker 1: are going to instead be doing a talkback with Tim
Speaker 1: Russert because the president may resign, and then we'll do
Speaker 1: lithgo and we'll we'll tape lithgo now and we'll get
Speaker 1: that out of the way, but we're going to do
Speaker 1: this first. And I went say that again. He went,
Speaker 1: what will tape lifth go now? He later became the
Speaker 1: president of MSNBC. I actually had to say to him, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: not the part about taping the actor. What was that
Speaker 1: about the president resigning? Suffice to say, shortly thereafter, I
Speaker 1: was on the air with the top ranked person from
Speaker 1: Newsweek who would go on our air because our show
Speaker 1: was nothing. We had perhaps one hundred thousand viewers a night.
Speaker 1: Within a week we would have a million. The man
Speaker 1: from Newsweek who consented to come on with the Big
Speaker 1: Show with Keith Olberman then in its I guess third
Speaker 1: month on the air, not drawing any viewers, was named
Speaker 1: Howard Feinneman. He was one of the political writers, and
Speaker 1: he was, if I remember correctly, if not the first guest,
Speaker 1: because the first guest was Tim Russert, but the first
Speaker 1: one to analyze what we were dealing with was Howard Feineman.
Speaker 1: I don't know that he knew me, other than perhaps
Speaker 1: from ESPN. I did not know him. We immediately hit
Speaker 1: it off. At some point during the interview he laughed
Speaker 1: at something I said, and soon we were bringing on
Speaker 1: Howard Feinman as often as we could, because Howard had
Speaker 1: a unique capacity to not only tell you the facts
Speaker 1: of a story, what was actually out there to that minute,
Speaker 1: but he could then assess what that probably meant in
Speaker 1: the next week, month, year to these key people involved
Speaker 1: in it. And then if you wanted him to to
Speaker 1: express some sort of historical perspective or analysis of the
Speaker 1: pasts of the people involved in this case, Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: Knut Gingrich, ken Starr, whoever you needed to know about.
Speaker 1: If he didn't already know, give him twenty minutes and
Speaker 1: he would have found it out from people that he trusted,
Speaker 1: who knew the individuals. He was an all purpose all
Speaker 1: star for us. And as I began to become disenchanted
Speaker 1: with the journalism surrounding that story, the person who told
Speaker 1: me I was right when everybody else covered the goddamned
Speaker 1: Clinton Lewinsky story insisted this was the worst thing that
Speaker 1: had happened in human history and we needed to cover
Speaker 1: it twenty four hours a day. And I said, sounds
Speaker 1: like they're trying to shoot the proverbial fly with an
Speaker 1: atomic bomb. The one person who agreed with me from
Speaker 1: the beginning was Howard Feyneman, who said, I can't go
Speaker 1: full bore into this the way you are saying it,
Speaker 1: but I will backstop you anywhere I can say what
Speaker 1: you feel, and I will support what you say because
Speaker 1: you are right. Do not think I am somehow criticizing
Speaker 1: you by not going yes, You're absolutely right. This is
Speaker 1: insane and illegal, and it is Newt Gingrich trying to
Speaker 1: become president of the United States because he really thinks
Speaker 1: it can happen. But that's what he's doing, needless to say.
Speaker 1: As I became more and more disenchanted with the story,
Speaker 1: Howard Feinneman became more and more valuable to me as
Speaker 1: a friend, and I talked to him more. Were often
Speaker 1: off the air, and he was one of the few
Speaker 1: bright spots of a long year in which I had
Speaker 1: to cover that story while I was trying to extricate
Speaker 1: myself from a company that could not understand why I
Speaker 1: would want to leave a show that now had an
Speaker 1: audience of fifty or sixty times what it had when
Speaker 1: it began. When all this at NBC News was available
Speaker 1: to me, if I just stuck with the story and
Speaker 1: kept telling it, Howard Feineman got it. Howard Feieman was
Speaker 1: an old school newsman from Newsweek, and he'd been a
Speaker 1: great local reporter in Louisville and was a master of
Speaker 1: Kentucky politics. If you wanted to know about the Mitch
Speaker 1: McConnell of eighteen eighty seven, he would know, and he
Speaker 1: knew everything about Pittsburgh from where he was. At the end,
Speaker 1: I finally extricated myself from this, and again one of
Speaker 1: the few people who called on the last day, because
Speaker 1: the NBC people were all mad at me, one of
Speaker 1: the few people who called me the last day to
Speaker 1: say goodbye was Howard Feineman. Not long after I left
Speaker 1: NBC in nineteen ninety eight and went to Fox Sports,
Speaker 1: a box showed up on my desk on the Fox
Speaker 1: office in Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. It was the
Speaker 1: size of a baseball, and I opened it up in
Speaker 1: much to my surprise, it was a baseball. It was
Speaker 1: an autographed baseball, signed by all of the regulars on
Speaker 1: the MSNBC show The Big Show, including Howard. A souvenir
Speaker 1: he said, or if you really don't want to remember
Speaker 1: any of it, just throw it through the window. For
Speaker 1: a couple of years, as I went back into sports,
Speaker 1: I heard about Howard and heard from Howard. Occasionally. I
Speaker 1: get a letter, saw you on the World Series, saw
Speaker 1: at the All Star Game, saw at the Super Bowl whatever.
Speaker 1: Always stayed in touch, and not stayed in touch because
Speaker 1: he thought, well, he's going to go back into politics
Speaker 1: someday and this will be my access to television. No,
Speaker 1: he stayed in touch. Howard stayed in touch with everybody.
Speaker 1: Howard was one of the original networkers in the best
Speaker 1: possible sense of that word. If you were in news
Speaker 1: and you did not know Howard Feineman and you did
Speaker 1: not know he was a good guy, guess what, I
Speaker 1: don't think you were in news the first or second time.
Speaker 1: I appeared as a fill in host on MSNBC in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three as a little gratuitous mend some
Speaker 1: fences throwaway when I went back to what was supposed
Speaker 1: to be an NBC Sports Olympic hosting job at the
Speaker 1: two thousand and four Summer Olympics in Greece. I went
Speaker 1: over and did a couple of shows as a fill
Speaker 1: in for Jerry Nackman, who was very sick, in fact,
Speaker 1: fatally sick. Got a call from Howard Fyeman in the office,
Speaker 1: My god, you're back. What happened? He wanted to hear
Speaker 1: the whole story, and he wanted to come on. Although
Speaker 1: we didn't cover much politics on that show, but soon
Speaker 1: we would cover politics again because then I came back
Speaker 1: to MSNBC with the Countdown program, and Howard was the
Speaker 1: first person I asked them to make an arrangement with
Speaker 1: to be a regular contributor to the show. And as
Speaker 1: Howard would say, he was not a television great. He
Speaker 1: did not have the sexiest stories, he did not have
Speaker 1: the hottest takes. But as I'm referenced earlier, whatever you
Speaker 1: needed him to talk about, he knew it, and what
Speaker 1: he did not know, and sometimes what he already thought
Speaker 1: he knew. He would go and research fresh just to
Speaker 1: make sure that he was giving you his best. Howard Feineman,
Speaker 1: I in fact did approach him when I left MSNBC
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven after they breached my contract and I
Speaker 1: went over to Current TV for a lot of money.
Speaker 1: I approached him about joining me there, about becoming a
Speaker 1: contributor or perhaps full time, and he said, no, I
Speaker 1: have something else I'm working on. I'll be probably leaving
Speaker 1: in a year or two, And sure enough he had,
Speaker 1: and he was one of the first people to recognize this.
Speaker 1: He was a by this point star at Newsweek, and
Speaker 1: he realized that Newsweek's shelf life was not very long.
Speaker 1: In fact, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, all the great
Speaker 1: news organizations of the early twenty tens, they were not
Speaker 1: going to make it. Howard took a job basically running
Speaker 1: Huffington Post, and everybody went, he's going to go do
Speaker 1: something on the computer. Guess who was right there. There's
Speaker 1: not only no longer copies of Newsweek on newsstands in
Speaker 1: this country, there are no longer any newsstands on this country.
Speaker 1: Howard Fineman saw it coming old school, and yet one
Speaker 1: of those few who saw the future coming. All this time,
Speaker 1: I stayed in touch with Howard Feinneman off and on irregularly,
Speaker 1: sometimes bursts of conversation, phone calls, running into him somewhere,
Speaker 1: sometimes a text, sometimes nothing for a year and then,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned that my first contact with him was
Speaker 1: just before my thirty ninth birthday, just before my sixty
Speaker 1: fourth birthday. So in January of last year, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: I got an email from Howard and it was short,
Speaker 1: and it was sweet, and it ended with the word love.
Speaker 1: He'd had an operation. Then. I don't think I'm telling
Speaker 1: too much out of school, especially since Howard said when
Speaker 1: I'm gone, you can say anything you want about me,
Speaker 1: You can tell any details you want, because he won.
Speaker 1: And I'm getting to that. They had brought him in
Speaker 1: for surgery of some kind, and when he awoke, he
Speaker 1: was told he had pancreatic cancer. He had four to
Speaker 1: six months to live. He said, he cherished our friendship.
Speaker 1: He was sorry to shock me goodbye. Well not quite. Uh,
Speaker 1: sometime in the middle of early spring, if that makes
Speaker 1: any sense. So sometime in late March or early April
Speaker 1: of last year, I called him or he called me,
Speaker 1: I don't remember which, and I said, well, how how
Speaker 1: are you? He goes, I'm I'm surprisingly well, he said.
Speaker 1: I never really knew what that meant until now. I've
Speaker 1: been sitting here waiting for it to start, and it
Speaker 1: it hasn't started yet. And I just got back from
Speaker 1: my doctor and they haven't. They haven't found any more
Speaker 1: any more cancer. It's it's still there, but it hasn't
Speaker 1: moved or gotten worse. Or In May, another conversation about
Speaker 1: the same thing. July fourth, he was planning a trip
Speaker 1: to New York. Did I have any time? Yes, I
Speaker 1: think I do. August September, mind you, he was supposed
Speaker 1: to be dead at the latest by June, or maybe July.
Speaker 1: I think it was August of last year when he
Speaker 1: said his kids had gotten him at T shirt that
Speaker 1: read outlier, and they went through the whole logic of
Speaker 1: the thing. If the average survival time for a diagnosis
Speaker 1: of advanced pancreatic cancer is four to six months, well
Speaker 1: to get that number. There's some people who heartbreakingly don't
Speaker 1: make it a month, and then there are the other
Speaker 1: ones who go on for a long time. And as
Speaker 1: Howard said, I guess I'm one of those. He traveled.
Speaker 1: He went to see things, He went to see people,
Speaker 1: He went to visits. He went to Pittsburgh, he went
Speaker 1: to Kentucky. He went to New York to see his
Speaker 1: son who was a producer at MSNBC. He went everywhere.
Speaker 1: The holidays came and went last year and he was
Speaker 1: feeling fine February doing great, and he has now survived
Speaker 1: twice as long as they said he might. In March
Speaker 1: came the first bad sign. Quick texts say hello. I said,
Speaker 1: how are you feeling? And he said fine, there's no
Speaker 1: pain or anything, but I'm beginning to fade. Well that
Speaker 1: was the sign. Howard Feinneman died after a long battle
Speaker 1: with pancreatic cancer. He died a year after what they
Speaker 1: had told him would be the longest he would survive.
Speaker 1: He played all that time with house money, and I
Speaker 1: can tell you without fear of contradiction, that he knew
Speaker 1: it and was rapturous about it, as were all of
Speaker 1: us who considered ourselves having the privilege to be his friend.
Speaker 1: He beat the system, he beat the pancreatic cancer. If
Speaker 1: you accept the premise of the memento mora, we're all
Speaker 1: going to die. If you accept that premise, longevity is
Speaker 1: in fact victory. And when you are told you have
Speaker 1: maybe six months, mind you that was the high end,
Speaker 1: and you last for eighteen. When you treble the score,
Speaker 1: you have won. None of us. And my heartfelt condolences
Speaker 1: go out to his son Nick, and his wife Amy
Speaker 1: and everybody in the Fineman family. But all of us
Speaker 1: had some sense of goddamn it, Howard, you pulled this off. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: So this is an awful time, and yes, it is
Speaker 1: an awful shock to those of us who were his friends.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, there is still that little corner
Speaker 1: of it in which we're kind of kind of laughing
Speaker 1: with him. I still have that autograph Baseball. It's still
Speaker 1: on my desk, along with all of my memories of
Speaker 1: Howard Feyneman, Pittsburgh Pirates fan. Thank you, Howard, from the
Speaker 1: sublime to the ridiculous. I guess I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to talk about Katie Turr again. I'll do that next.
Speaker 1: I guess this counts as another episode of things I
Speaker 1: promised not to tell, honest to goodness, and I know
Speaker 1: this will not sound like me, but I am getting
Speaker 1: tired of talking about my ex living girlfriend Katie Terr,
Speaker 1: as you probably know. On the air, at the announcement
Speaker 1: of the guilty verdict in the Hunter Biden case on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: Katie Urr on MSNBC emphasized that Jill Biden, who flew
Speaker 1: to Delaware to be at the trial, was not, as
Speaker 1: she put it, Hunter Biden's birth mother. The wrath of
Speaker 1: anger from people who have mothers who may not be
Speaker 1: biologically their mother, their birth mother. There might be some
Speaker 1: other consideration involved in this. The wrath of people for
Speaker 1: whom that is true has actually, I think, been exceeded
Speaker 1: by the wrath of people for whom that is not true,
Speaker 1: and who are just offended by that remark, the latest
Speaker 1: in a series of indefensible remarks from a woman who
Speaker 1: I once loved, who proposed herself as the mother of
Speaker 1: my children. So this issue of motherhood, as much as
Speaker 1: I really am tired of talking about her and the
Speaker 1: things that have happened to her and have changed her
Speaker 1: in the last decade, I don't feel like I have
Speaker 1: any option but to talk to you about them, because
Speaker 1: this issue of motherhood is essential to the history of
Speaker 1: my relationship with her, and I would argue it is
Speaker 1: essential to her history. And I think things have escalated
Speaker 1: or decomposed to the point where there is no rationale
Speaker 1: for continuing her career as an anchor, if it has
Speaker 1: anything to do with politics in this country. Something has
Speaker 1: warped her perception of reality and the reality we are in,
Speaker 1: and the frankly reality of the network she is on.
Speaker 1: MSNBC is not supposed to be a liberal network. It
Speaker 1: is supposed to be a true network. That these things
Speaker 1: tend to overlap a lot is actually coincidental. But she
Speaker 1: seems to be rebelling against reality, and it is come
Speaker 1: to the fore now. It was also described what she
Speaker 1: said on the air on Tuesday, and I did not
Speaker 1: hear these things, and I have not seen clips of them,
Speaker 1: so I cannot verify this. But it was described as
Speaker 1: an emphasis on her part about who's the biological mother
Speaker 1: of Hunter Biden, as someone phrased it on Twitter. Ex
Speaker 1: Katie Terre wants you to believe that President Biden is
Speaker 1: showing signs of dementia because he referred to Hunter as
Speaker 1: our son, meaning the hour being him and Jill. I
Speaker 1: cannot verify that that was said. I don't doubt for
Speaker 1: a moment that it could have been, and she would
Speaker 1: have meant that. The one component to this that I
Speaker 1: think I can actually add in terms of people's understanding
Speaker 1: or decreasing their understanding of what is actually going on here,
Speaker 1: is that Katie Urr is herself a stepmother. Her husband
Speaker 1: was previously married, He has two children. There's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that. They live in Israel, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1: I do not know to what degree her relationship with
Speaker 1: them is good, bad, or indifferent or infrequent. I do
Speaker 1: know when she took and we had remained friends, solid friends,
Speaker 1: better friends as friends than when she lived with me
Speaker 1: for eight years after I asked her to leave my apartment.
Speaker 1: She was excited and a little confused by the fact
Speaker 1: that she was going to be a stepmother. This was
Speaker 1: going to be something she was looking forward to. And
Speaker 1: since then she and Tony have had two children of
Speaker 1: their own. So she is a stepmother. And to emphasize that, technically,
Speaker 1: Jill Biden is a stepmother and a stepmother because of course,
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden's mother and his sister were killed in an
Speaker 1: automobile accident in nineteen seventy two. To emphasize this is
Speaker 1: not just the wrong thing to do on television, But
Speaker 1: I don't understand where it is coming from from inside her.
Speaker 1: And this is the part that transcends the fact that
Speaker 1: I used to live with this woman. I wouldn't understand
Speaker 1: it if it was said by a man referring to stepfathers.
Speaker 1: If it was said by somebody I didn't know, If
Speaker 1: was said by somebody I was related to, it makes
Speaker 1: it all the stranger. Why would you emphasize and seemingly
Speaker 1: criticize the fact that Jill Biden is the stepmother when
Speaker 1: you yourself are a stepmother more amazingly, And I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm telling stories out of school here, And I
Speaker 1: don't think that she meant it. I never since that
Speaker 1: she meant this fact as a kind of detriment or
Speaker 1: criticism of her own mother. But Katie made no bones
Speaker 1: for years about the fact that the person in her
Speaker 1: family she was closest to, the one she relied on,
Speaker 1: the one whose memory she relied on, the one whose
Speaker 1: advice that she had been given a decade earlier when
Speaker 1: I knew her before this person passed away, the person
Speaker 1: she was closest to in her family was not her mother,
Speaker 1: or a father or a brother, but her grandmother. So
Speaker 1: the idea that the sense of strength of who has
Speaker 1: raised you comes from outside the traditional well, biologically, that's
Speaker 1: my dad and that's my mom, and that can be
Speaker 1: fine too, but it doesn't have to be and it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be the only solution for a family
Speaker 1: or configuration of a family. I don't understand this. I
Speaker 1: know relationships have always been fraught things for her. This
Speaker 1: I can talk about for several months without interruption. I
Speaker 1: will spare you that. I will tell you that, in
Speaker 1: an attempt to keep our relationship going, we went to
Speaker 1: see a relationship counselor at whom she screamed, who told
Speaker 1: her at one point that she was being childish, who said, no,
Speaker 1: you're wrong about that, And even though I was not
Speaker 1: there to get validated, he said, this guy is right
Speaker 1: and you are wrong. It's normally not this black and white,
Speaker 1: but you're really wrong here, and she stormed out of
Speaker 1: the place, swearing at the man. We got into a
Speaker 1: car on our way to see my friend Norman Lloyd,
Speaker 1: who was about ninety six years old at the time,
Speaker 1: for lunch, and she would not stop swearing in the car.
Speaker 1: It got so bad I got out of the car
Speaker 1: in the middle of traffic in New York and I said,
Speaker 1: you go wherever you need to go. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go have lunch with Norman. Do not show up. I'm
Speaker 1: not telling you where we're going. I may come off
Speaker 1: as a little mean in this except she then apologized
Speaker 1: and said, let's go to see another counselor. Whether I
Speaker 1: screwed that up or he did, maybe we could try
Speaker 1: a different counselor. I said, yes, she did exactly the
Speaker 1: same thing. So this subject of family is fraught, and
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to come up with excuses for her.
Speaker 1: I was baked a little bit on Twitter by people
Speaker 1: who misunderstood a pronoun I used when I said she
Speaker 1: is a stepmother. They thought I was referring to Jill Biden. No,
Speaker 1: I was referring to Katie. I wasn't trying to defend
Speaker 1: her then, and I'm not trying to defend her now.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to rehash every story I've told you
Speaker 1: previously about the vagaries of the relationship that I had.
Speaker 1: I'll leave a couple of details out and tell a
Speaker 1: couple of other details I have not told before. There
Speaker 1: was physical violence in the relationship, not a lot of it,
Speaker 1: but periodically when she would get frustrated, she hit me.
Speaker 1: She hit me once the day after I came back
Speaker 1: from an emergency appendectomy and could barely stand up and
Speaker 1: could not wear a shirt because my temperature was like
Speaker 1: one hundred and three degrees and I was profusely sweating.
Speaker 1: I'll stop that imagery for you right now. She came
Speaker 1: over and hit me. I'm a foot taller than she is.
Speaker 1: What was I supposed to do? Apart from the fact
Speaker 1: that I was a little worried about toppling over because
Speaker 1: I was weak from the appendectomy and three days of hospitalization, Like,
Speaker 1: what do you do? I couldn't even push her away.
Speaker 1: I could have knocked her over, or in the condition
Speaker 1: I was in, I could have fallen over. So there
Speaker 1: has been physical violence in a relationship situation instigated by her,
Speaker 1: And I'll balance this out by saying that she did
Speaker 1: many wonderful things in the relationship. I have no doubt
Speaker 1: she is an excellent mother. I have no doubt she's
Speaker 1: an excellent wife. I saw the good things too. The
Speaker 1: good things are good. She was a good friend for
Speaker 1: a long time. These bad things are really bad, and
Speaker 1: they're especially bad if you happen to do an hour
Speaker 1: or two of news on a national network, the only
Speaker 1: one that is not in some way pandering to the fascists,
Speaker 1: either Lively Today because you are the fascist news channel,
Speaker 1: or like CNN preparing for the possibility that the fascists
Speaker 1: will take over in January of next year and you
Speaker 1: want to get in good with them, even though none
Speaker 1: of this will help you get in good with them.
Speaker 1: She's on the only network that is not ostensibly doing that,
Speaker 1: and she is to some degree doing it and criticizing
Speaker 1: Jill for being stepmother to Hunter Biden and perhaps using
Speaker 1: it as a step back towards arguing that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: should not be president, should not be a candidate. You
Speaker 1: know what Nancy Pelosi said about her. It's been a
Speaker 1: rough year or so. And I don't want to make
Speaker 1: this just about me, even though it is things I
Speaker 1: promised not to tell. But have you ever trended on Twitter? Okay?
Speaker 1: It's sometimes a pleasant experience. Sometimes it's a disturbing experience.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had a woman you used to live
Speaker 1: with trend on Twitter? How about twice? Three times in
Speaker 1: a week. Katie started trending on Tuesday afternoon and was
Speaker 1: still trending as I sat down to record this. And
Speaker 1: it's not just that. I'll tell you one comical story now,
Speaker 1: I'll save that for the end. I wanted to make
Speaker 1: the one point about the professional element here. Things were,
Speaker 1: as I said, really good professionally. They probably were aided
Speaker 1: when Katie moved to London to work out of the
Speaker 1: NBC London Bureau in twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen, and
Speaker 1: her visits to New York were very, very sporadic, and
Speaker 1: I only saw her briefly, but we always visited, always
Speaker 1: talked about careers, always talked about advice. I always helped
Speaker 1: her with her scripts from the time she was working
Speaker 1: for News twelve of the Bronx until she was on
Speaker 1: NBC Nightly News. Helped her write the scripts, rewrite the scripts,
Speaker 1: suggest things she could look into, try to steer her
Speaker 1: away from problems. When she was assigned to cover Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's campaign, she knew next to nothing about Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: even though we had lived together in a building that
Speaker 1: was called Trump Palace at the time, and she knew
Speaker 1: next to nothing about Hitler. In any event, things changed
Speaker 1: late in the campaign of twenty sixteen, and I have
Speaker 1: always wondered if something between stuff home syndrome, and the
Speaker 1: impact of having your life threatened for doing your job
Speaker 1: on television combined to change her in some way. But
Speaker 1: one day late in the campaign, I got a call
Speaker 1: from Katie. And mostly I heard from her by email
Speaker 1: or text, especially when she was on the campaign, and
Speaker 1: one day I got a call from her criticizing me
Speaker 1: for saying something mean about Kelly and Conway. If anything
Speaker 1: on the left is universally agreed upon, if anything in
Speaker 1: the middle is universally agreed upon, if anything of all
Speaker 1: the people, the entire subset of human beings who know
Speaker 1: Kelly and Conway is agreed upon, it's that Kelly and
Speaker 1: Conway is not only one of the worst persons in
Speaker 1: the world, but also has and I mean this metaphorically,
Speaker 1: the skin of a crocodile and three elephants wearing armor
Speaker 1: on top of all of that. And Katie ter called
Speaker 1: me and said, you really shouldn't say such terrible things
Speaker 1: about Kelly Ann Conway. And I said, why not? Am
Speaker 1: I repeating myself? And she said, there are bad people
Speaker 1: on both sides. There are threats on both sides. And
Speaker 1: I said, I didn't know that I was supposed to
Speaker 1: prevent threats being made against someone who is trying to
Speaker 1: get a fascist dictator. And this is twenty sixteen, a
Speaker 1: fascist dictator who's out of his mind and kept a
Speaker 1: book of Hitler's speeches on a bedstand, trying to get
Speaker 1: him elected president of the United States, where he probably
Speaker 1: when he is ever supposed to leave office, will probably
Speaker 1: not go voluntarily. As I said to her in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: I did not know I had to defend her or
Speaker 1: to somehow mute my comments, because what she's your source.
Speaker 1: There's a long silence. Katie would not confirm she was
Speaker 1: one of her sources. She later did confirm that, but
Speaker 1: there was genuine anger in her voice. No, you should
Speaker 1: take that back, and she was totally confused about why
Speaker 1: I refused to delete the tweets in which I had
Speaker 1: called Kelly Ane Conway a liar and far worse than that.
Speaker 1: And the name Kelly Ane Conway would come up again
Speaker 1: when she wrote her first book. I've told before the
Speaker 1: story of Katie coming to me late in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: or early in twenty seventeen and asking me to write
Speaker 1: her book about the Trump campaign and her experiences on
Speaker 1: it for her, and I said, I think they'd catch us.
Speaker 1: And then she said, well, I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: give the money back because I can't write a book.
Speaker 1: And the next thing I knew the book was out.
Speaker 1: In the interim, I had given her all of my
Speaker 1: files on the Trump campaign and on Trump, probably amounting
Speaker 1: to in a computer four hundred pages worth of links.
Speaker 1: And she said, what's the price for this? And I said,
Speaker 1: of course it's free. Just use it in good health.
Speaker 1: I said, just you know, don't leave me out of
Speaker 1: the acknowledgments the book comes out. I'm not in the
Speaker 1: acknowledgments the book comes out. I'm not in the book
Speaker 1: except for one story, the story the Kelly an Conway story,
Speaker 1: her defense of Kelly an Conway, and there were some
Speaker 1: platitudes about how I was always a wonderful person and
Speaker 1: I've been a great friend to her. But I was
Speaker 1: only in the book mentioned once as somebody she had
Speaker 1: briefly dated in her twenties, because she wanted to tell
Speaker 1: the Kelly ane Conway anecdote. I've mentioned before that she
Speaker 1: was promoting the book. The Washington Post wanted my comments
Speaker 1: on her and on the book. She asked me not
Speaker 1: to talk to the Post. I said, fine, whatever you want.
Speaker 1: She said, I'm not talking to the Post. A week later,
Speaker 1: the article came out in the Post. She had talked
Speaker 1: to the Post. She had lied to me to get
Speaker 1: me to not talk to the Washington Post. Several months later,
Speaker 1: The New York Times came out with a whole story,
Speaker 1: and in the middle of it, her former boyfriend Keith
Speaker 1: Olberman refused to meant to The New York Times for
Speaker 1: this article. I'd never even heard of the name of
Speaker 1: the writer. She had, in fact told the writer who
Speaker 1: I spoke to that she would ask me on the
Speaker 1: writer's behalf to talk to the New York Times about her.
Speaker 1: She never did. She lied again. So this is the
Speaker 1: roots of this week, and that singular feeling of going
Speaker 1: to see what's trending on Twitter and finding it's always
Speaker 1: your ex girlfriend. The roots of this are very deep,
Speaker 1: and I wish I could wade through them, but this
Speaker 1: is as far as I want to go. My knowledge
Speaker 1: of her directly ended with those lies about the Times
Speaker 1: and the Post, less so the book, although I thought
Speaker 1: that was a pretty schmuck move on her part, but
Speaker 1: it really ended when she was actively lying to keep
Speaker 1: my name out of articles about her. And yes, I
Speaker 1: told her, I agreed with her it was sexist and
Speaker 1: unfair for every article about her to contain some kind
Speaker 1: of reference to me. And I helped her, in fact,
Speaker 1: to try to scrub my own name out of articles
Speaker 1: and references to her online. But I thought lying to
Speaker 1: the New York Times and to me and to the
Speaker 1: Washington Post to keep me out of those articles was
Speaker 1: just a little bit beyond the pale. And now we
Speaker 1: have this whole episode with Jill Biden is not Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden's birth mother. Shame on you, Katie, and no apology.
Speaker 1: And now the lighter side of the story as you know,
Speaker 1: twice in the last ten years, I have escaped this
Speaker 1: golden prison of mine in the world of politics that
Speaker 1: I have occupied off and on since nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: Twice I have escaped to go back and work for
Speaker 1: ESPN for a time, largely simply because I wanted to
Speaker 1: enjoy what I do. This is why I do these
Speaker 1: terrible songs in this podcast, because it's just a little stupid,
Speaker 1: silly thing that makes me laugh and maybe it makes
Speaker 1: you laugh. And here I thought, Okay, here's an opportunity
Speaker 1: to go work for ESPN and just do fun things
Speaker 1: and reminiscent things of my childhood in the media. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was thirty three years old today I showed up
Speaker 1: at ESPN. In fact, I was still thirty two years old.
Speaker 1: It was just before my birthday. It was nice to
Speaker 1: be nostalgic. It was nice to be giving scores. And then,
Speaker 1: of course, as the elections approached in twenty sixteen, in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, I said I'd better get back to work now,
Speaker 1: and I did, and here we are. But while I
Speaker 1: was at ESPN the second time, one of the joys
Speaker 1: of that assignment, in addition to getting to do a
Speaker 1: few baseball games with mixed results as a play by
Speaker 1: play man with mixed results and SportsCenter and go back
Speaker 1: to ESPN for the first time since nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: and be Rip van Winkle, Where did these eighty seven
Speaker 1: extra buildings come from? In addition to that, one of
Speaker 1: the joys was that several times they sent me to
Speaker 1: Washington to fill in for Michael Wilbon and co host
Speaker 1: with Tony Kornheiser. Pardon the interruption. I loved working with
Speaker 1: Tony and he could not have been nicer nor more
Speaker 1: supportive to me, and we had a great time, and
Speaker 1: I'd do it again in a heartbeat. But one day,
Speaker 1: in the very well equipped newsroom that they occupied at
Speaker 1: ABC News in Washington, in their building, I was seated
Speaker 1: out in the middle of the newsroom and talking to
Speaker 1: the executive producer of the show, and over his shoulder
Speaker 1: I could see into his office where he had three TVs.
Speaker 1: One of them was on Fox News, one of them
Speaker 1: was on CNN, and one of them was on MSNBC.
Speaker 1: And it was the middle of the day. We were
Speaker 1: going to tape in an hour or two when we
Speaker 1: were preparing the show, and I was looking at the
Speaker 1: producer and we were talking. I don't know about what,
Speaker 1: but it was an interesting conversation. And yet my few
Speaker 1: kept drifting over to those three TVs that were framed
Speaker 1: right over his left shoulder, because they were the three
Speaker 1: news channels. Fox News was in a commercial. On CNN,
Speaker 1: there was a pundit, a young woman that I also
Speaker 1: used to go out with, who I lived with in
Speaker 1: fact more or less for three and a half years.
Speaker 1: And then on the right channel, the one with MSNBC,
Speaker 1: Katie was anchoring. So we have two television networks, two
Speaker 1: of the three major news operations hebex live in Girlfriends
Speaker 1: of Mine, and the third one, Fox is in commercial.
Speaker 1: And I finally said to the executive producer of the
Speaker 1: pardon the interim show, turn around, look at this. See
Speaker 1: Fox is in commercial. I used to live with her.
Speaker 1: I used to live with her on MSNBC. If when
Speaker 1: Fox comes back, Laura Ingram is on the air, run
Speaker 1: over to your TVs because I think a bunch of
Speaker 1: gold coins will come out of that bank of TVs.
Speaker 1: Because you have just hit the Keith Olderman girlfriend Jack Pott.
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. Count on. Musical directors Brian Ray and
Speaker 1: John Phillip Schaneale arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.
Speaker 1: Mister Ray was on guitars, bass, and drums, and mister
Speaker 1: Shaneale handled orchestration and keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
Speaker 1: Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged
Speaker 1: and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Its music
Speaker 1: is the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was written
Speaker 1: by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical
Speaker 1: and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best
Speaker 1: baseball stadium organist ever, and everything else was pretty much
Speaker 1: my fault. So that's countdown for this. The one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty sixth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
Speaker 1: the two hundred and fifty fifth day since convicted felon
Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
Speaker 1: government of the United States. Use the July eleventh sentencing hearing,
Speaker 1: use the mental health system, use presidential immunity if it happens,
Speaker 1: use the not regularly given elector objection option to stop
Speaker 1: him from doing it again. While we still can. The
Speaker 1: next scheduled countdown is tomorrow bulletins as the news warrants
Speaker 1: till then, I'm Keith Oulderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
Speaker 1: and good luck, and this episode has been dedicated to
Speaker 1: the memory of my friend our refinement. Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.