Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: is a Countdown Boulton podcast. I'm Keith Oldreman. The racist
Speaker 1: purge has escalated at MSNBC. We told you this morning
Speaker 1: about Joy Reid getting fired and no pretense being made
Speaker 1: about why it was done, and Alex Wagner not going
Speaker 1: to return to her own show, though supposedly staying on
Speaker 1: as a correspondent. The number is now five. Katie Fang
Speaker 1: is out. Her show has been canceled outright. Jonathan k
Speaker 1: Part's show and Iman's show have also been canceled. They
Speaker 1: may or may not stay on at the network. So
Speaker 1: that is five Reid, Wagner, Iman, Katie Fang, and Jonathan
Speaker 1: k Parts. What do they all have in common? This
Speaker 1: on top of the previous firings of Meddi Hassan and
Speaker 1: Tiffany Cross and others long before that. They did not
Speaker 1: even attempt to cover this up with a fig leaf
Speaker 1: by firing an unnecessary non person of color, somebody like
Speaker 1: Stephanie Rule, who show is actually still on the air
Speaker 1: at eleven o'clock, even though MSNBC would make more money
Speaker 1: by simply replaying a Mattow rerun or a Hayes rerun
Speaker 1: or an O'Donnell rerun, or a joy Read rerun. Well,
Speaker 1: that's right, she's gone now, isn't she. After tonight, they
Speaker 1: didn't even fire somebody as a fig leaf. That is
Speaker 1: how truly naked. To continue the analogy, this racist purge is.
Speaker 1: And there has not been a word from any of
Speaker 1: the three main liberal anchors, my former guest hosts who
Speaker 1: constitute the MSNBC primetime lineup. Because I'd like to think
Speaker 1: they're thinking about it, I'm afraid I think they're thinking
Speaker 1: about the money. There is a problem that happens to
Speaker 1: someone who becomes a success suddenly and unexpectedly in their
Speaker 1: life after failure. I've discussed it many times previously. You
Speaker 1: suddenly wonder if it could all go away tomorrow, and
Speaker 1: if you've had enough success and if you have had
Speaker 1: enough money. Even if you have it doesn't register. But
Speaker 1: back to the main point here, why on earth would
Speaker 1: they do this? Why on earth would they do this
Speaker 1: on the same day that NBC announces that less your
Speaker 1: Holt is stepping down as the anchor of NBC Nightly News,
Speaker 1: Although that had been rumored for a long time and
Speaker 1: was apparently his choice, or at least partially his choice
Speaker 1: to stay with the network and stick to dateline. The
Speaker 1: nightly news format is dying finally, as we have seen
Speaker 1: at CBS. That's perhaps separate of this, but to do
Speaker 1: it all in a span of one day reeks of
Speaker 1: we don't care if you think we are racist. And
Speaker 1: the only people who would do something like that would
Speaker 1: be people who were following the CNN game plan from
Speaker 1: three years ago. The people who took over CNN, Warner Bros. Discovery,
Speaker 1: led by David Zaslav and Chris Lick, who used to
Speaker 1: be in the broadcasting business, decided rather openly to try
Speaker 1: to make the thing right wing to please they're leading
Speaker 1: new right wing investors. And if it didn't work, since
Speaker 1: people simply stopped watching CNN, well so much the better.
Speaker 1: You've neutralized CNN as a liberal outlet, or a partially
Speaker 1: liberal outlet, or an occasionally liberal outlet, or even just
Speaker 1: a neutral outlet, the way Twitter was neutralized by Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: And now it comes to MSNBC. You don't go and
Speaker 1: fire meadow. You can't. That would be the tent pole
Speaker 1: collapsing and any value of the network completely vanishing. You
Speaker 1: can't probably fire Hayes and O'Donnell, And what would the
Speaker 1: difference be if you did but fire all the minorities
Speaker 1: around the place, and you are signaling to the viewers
Speaker 1: that you do not care about diversity of opinion in
Speaker 1: a time in which the word diversity is suddenly like
Speaker 1: the word communist was in the nineteen fifties. I've told
Speaker 1: many times the story about what these networks really mean
Speaker 1: to their corporate officers and owners. In two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: when Jeff Immelt, the chairman of GE, which I believe
Speaker 1: was the sixth largest corporation in the world at that point,
Speaker 1: was bothered by a reporter from Fox News who trailed
Speaker 1: him and bothered him because I was critical of Fox
Speaker 1: News and Bill O'Reilly on MSNBC. The reporter, by the way,
Speaker 1: was named Jesse Waters. If that name rings a bell
Speaker 1: when he was followed Immelt, that is, and he was
Speaker 1: criticized on O'Reilly's show and accused of manufacturing parts GE
Speaker 1: was manufacturing parts to make into IED's to kill Americans
Speaker 1: in Iraq. When that happened, Jeff Immelt's mother, a Bill
Speaker 1: O'Reilly fan, a Bill O'Reilly fan, called him up and
Speaker 1: yelled at him, And after being harassed by Jesse Waters
Speaker 1: and by his own mother, Jeff Immelt called Jeff Zooker,
Speaker 1: the president of NBC, and said, take MSNBC off the air.
Speaker 1: If I am bothered again by this, I am discontinuing
Speaker 1: the network. Immediately, pay everybody off, and everybody is fired,
Speaker 1: all at once. We were at that point perhaps profiting
Speaker 1: two or three hundred million dollars a year, which seems
Speaker 1: to you and me to be a lot of money.
Speaker 1: But if yours is the fourth or fifth or sixth
Speaker 1: largest corporation in the world, it's pocket change. You can
Speaker 1: do without it. And even now, Comcast could spin off MSNBC,
Speaker 1: which has been profitable through all of its travails the
Speaker 1: last few years, and would be as profitable again as
Speaker 1: it was during the first Trump administration with a little
Speaker 1: care and feeding. They have spun it off with the
Speaker 1: design to sell it and the other less than productive
Speaker 1: cable networks to sell it, or as we are seeing here,
Speaker 1: to kill it. But the doing of it this way
Speaker 1: when you don't even as I said before, you don't
Speaker 1: even offer the fig leaf of firing somebody who isn't
Speaker 1: Mehdi Hassan or Katie Fang or Jonathan cape Hart or
Speaker 1: Joy Reed or Alex Wagner or Eiman or any of them,
Speaker 1: when you don't even bother to cover up what you
Speaker 1: are doing. What you are doing is racism bluntly. If
Speaker 1: I were Mado, if I were still working at MSNBC,
Speaker 1: I would either go on the air and announce I
Speaker 1: am leaving and will not return until these people are
Speaker 1: restored or this is corrected in some other way, and
Speaker 1: get up from the chair and let the network go
Speaker 1: to blank, darkness or tone and bars. I would do that.
Speaker 1: I almost did that on several occasions in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, in two thousand and nine, but the crisis
Speaker 1: was averted. I hope somewhere behind the scenes, Mattow is
Speaker 1: doing something like that, or Hayes or O'Donnell or all
Speaker 1: three of them. God knows. Matto and I put that
Speaker 1: possibility to MSNBC and NBC executives several times in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, nine and ten, and we prevailed. But
Speaker 1: you have to go and do it. And if you
Speaker 1: don't do it, Rachel, Lawrence, Chris, you are complicit in this.
Speaker 1: And this is racism, and this is this is what
Speaker 1: Joe Scarborough would do. I talked for half an hour
Speaker 1: in today's episode of the podcast about the Joy Reid
Speaker 1: firing and the Alex Wagner demotion or firing before we
Speaker 1: knew about the rest of the purge on Monday afternoon.
Speaker 1: I'd like to if you haven't heard that, play it
Speaker 1: for you again. If you've heard it, feel free to
Speaker 1: hit stop right now. This has been a countdown bulletin
Speaker 1: podcast on the racist purge at MSNBC. I heard the
Speaker 1: new Saturday Night Joy Reid out at MSNBC, and it turned
Speaker 1: out to be much bigger than that. Joy Reid per
Speaker 1: The New York Times to be replaced from her seven
Speaker 1: PM show by moving a weekend show on MSNBC featuring
Speaker 1: Michael Steele, who is a politician and brand salesman, although
Speaker 1: he has not been active recently in the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: He's a salesman. Simone Sanders a politician and brand saleswoman
Speaker 1: from the Democratic Party. She's a saleswoman. Alicia Menendez, who
Speaker 1: is the daughter of the senator from New Jersey. You
Speaker 1: may have heard about him, who's a different kind of
Speaker 1: salesman and she has largely been a party salesperson. Nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with that show. It's been on for several years
Speaker 1: on the weekends on MSNBC, and it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: I suppose there's nothing wrong with it unless you want
Speaker 1: insight or commentary or new people you have not heard
Speaker 1: from before. It is textbook MSNBC. They lost the idea
Speaker 1: I gave them and thought this is what it was,
Speaker 1: salesmanship as opposed to commentary or insight. They're also offering
Speaker 1: Alex Wagner in addition to Joy Read. Alex Wagner will
Speaker 1: not return after what happens to Mattow happens at the
Speaker 1: end of the one hundred days, they may replace her
Speaker 1: with Jen Saki. And if anybody on television besides her
Speaker 1: counterparts who are all on Fox, anybody is a salesperson
Speaker 1: as opposed to an analyst or a commentator, it's Jensaki.
Speaker 1: Jensaki who recently said that she was wondering if maybe
Speaker 1: maybe she had oversold Merrick Garland and if perhaps she
Speaker 1: regretted She was beginning to wonder if she regretted doing
Speaker 1: such a good job convincing people Merrick Garland should be
Speaker 1: the Attorney General of the United States and one wonders
Speaker 1: if everything that we're going through now ends up in
Speaker 1: the worst possible place, if as we all get marched
Speaker 1: into the camps, Jensaki will be still wondering if she
Speaker 1: made a mistake supporting Merrick Garland. These people are salespersons.
Speaker 1: Salespersons doctrinaire, and often it's doctrinaire bullshit. If you have
Speaker 1: been a salesperson, a press secretary for a politician these days,
Speaker 1: you have sorry lied. Some people managed to swerve back
Speaker 1: from this to become decent human beings, believe it or not.
Speaker 1: One of Bush's secretaries, Scott McClellan, actually one day woke
Speaker 1: up and said I'm better than this and wrote a
Speaker 1: tell all book and promptly disappeared from politics. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure he's had a happy life since. Because if you're
Speaker 1: going to sell politics to people, if you're actually going
Speaker 1: to sell things that you don't believe in, that you
Speaker 1: haven't analyzed, that you can't find flaw in, that you
Speaker 1: feel like you shouldn't mention the flaws in, you're irrelevant.
Speaker 1: Michael Steele was the chairman of the Republican Party, and
Speaker 1: as much as he's come to be an anti Trump
Speaker 1: voice and a useful one. Every time I see him,
Speaker 1: I think, what is this guy trying to sell me? Also,
Speaker 1: that's a nighttime version three hosts of The Scarborough Show
Speaker 1: in the morning. But I'm wandering off the main topics here.
Speaker 1: I've had lots of problems with Alex Wagner. I've told
Speaker 1: you the stories. I told you that she was not
Speaker 1: when I tried to bring her in as the guest
Speaker 1: host who would have succeeded Lawrence O'Donnell after Laurence o'donald
Speaker 1: succeeded Rachel Mattow as the guest host on my show.
Speaker 1: I told you that it was apparent from the beginning
Speaker 1: she was not interested in doing the harder parts of
Speaker 1: the job. Very smart, insightful, obviously very good on television,
Speaker 1: but just not interested. I told the story about how
Speaker 1: she did not want to learn how to use the
Speaker 1: teleprompter and was confident she would pick it up. And
Speaker 1: that's when we sort of bailed out on her, and
Speaker 1: on her first show on MSNBC just twelve years later,
Speaker 1: the prompter failed and she did not know what to
Speaker 1: do and stood there for several moments waving at the
Speaker 1: prompter as if she could get it to move by
Speaker 1: waving at it and nobody would notice. So I have
Speaker 1: lots of problems with her. But Alex Wagner was not
Speaker 1: a salesperson for some politician or political point of view.
Speaker 1: That political points of view you might have coincided with
Speaker 1: her opinions. Yes, that was true of me too. I
Speaker 1: was not a salesperson for the Democratic Party and all
Speaker 1: things Democrat. And if you doubt that, ask Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: how she feels about me as a salesperson for all
Speaker 1: things Democrat. But I am moving away from the main
Speaker 1: topic here. Joy Reid was fired by MSNBC. There's lots
Speaker 1: of other ways to phrase this, and I'm sure they
Speaker 1: will dress this up to some degree, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: she will get some money out of the deal. But
Speaker 1: I don't think we are really understanding the impact this
Speaker 1: is going to have on the MSNBC brand inside, the
Speaker 1: new company that's running NBC or MSNBC and the ex
Speaker 1: NBC cable networks inside that this is a big day
Speaker 1: for them because they've just removed a pain in the ass,
Speaker 1: just like when I agreed to leave after they breached
Speaker 1: my contract, even though they had to give me roughly
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars over the course of several years because
Speaker 1: they've breached my contract. They were so happy that I went.
Speaker 1: They are still happy, even though we spent the next
Speaker 1: ten years dancing about possibly me coming back because things
Speaker 1: were so bad over there. But where is the reaction here?
Speaker 1: Where's the reaction from the MSNBC host who didn't get
Speaker 1: fired in a Saturday night massacre? In all small letters,
Speaker 1: the reaction from the MSNBC hosts is no surprise. It's
Speaker 1: no surprise because there's been no reaction. Mattow, nothing, Al Sharpton.
Speaker 1: Have we heard anything from Al Sharpton? Because there's something
Speaker 1: about Joy read that I haven't gotten to yet. That's
Speaker 1: kind of important here, in addition to the fact that,
Speaker 1: just practically speaking, the conduit to bring people to MSNBC
Speaker 1: and thus to what remains of mainstream television news. The
Speaker 1: conduit the person who said, let's book this guest, and
Speaker 1: let's bring in that guy, and let's bring in this woman,
Speaker 1: and let's talk about this topic, which would have been
Speaker 1: different than everything else on the air on MSNBC. That
Speaker 1: was Joy Reid. And I had lots of problems with
Speaker 1: lots of stuff she said, and I thought lots of
Speaker 1: stuff she said was absolutely crazy, and so what going
Speaker 1: back and looking at my shows from two thousand and seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
Speaker 1: I don't agree with everything I said then myself, let
Speaker 1: alone what other people said. It's not supposed to be
Speaker 1: like that. It's supposed to be inconsistent. It's supposed to
Speaker 1: be poking different areas to see what holds up and
Speaker 1: what doesn't. It's supposed to be saying, yeah, I like
Speaker 1: this Occupy Wall Street thing. No, this is bullshit. It's
Speaker 1: supposed to be like that. It's not supposed to be
Speaker 1: here is today's show. We could record this and play
Speaker 1: it back to you two years from now and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't know the difference. That's not what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately the entirety of the MSNBC lineup has become that,
Speaker 1: except the Morning Show, which is of course MSNVS. Because
Speaker 1: there's a problem here, larger problem, and nobody is going
Speaker 1: to say this. Do you remember Melissa Harris Perry, she
Speaker 1: used to be on My Show, later known as Melissa
Speaker 1: Harris Lacewell. They gave her her own show in large
Speaker 1: part because she did such a good job as an
Speaker 1: analyst on Mine and a couple of other shows, and
Speaker 1: she got her own show and they fired her. You
Speaker 1: remember Tiffany Cross. Now, there was somebody who liked to
Speaker 1: poke at things and see whether or not they were true.
Speaker 1: And again, lots of things she said, I went holy
Speaker 1: crap wrong. But so what you have to have room
Speaker 1: for that, and what they're saying in MSNBC is we're
Speaker 1: not going to have room for that anymore. She got fired.
Speaker 1: So Melissa Harris Lacewell, Perry or Melissa Harris Perry Lacewell,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Melissa. I could never keep it straight. She
Speaker 1: got fired. Tiffany Cross got fired. Remember Tiffany Cross, among
Speaker 1: the other things, Tucker Carlson attacked her. She was the
Speaker 1: one who would go back and say, this was on
Speaker 1: Fox the way I used to. Tucker Carlson claimed that
Speaker 1: Tiffany Cross was inspiring genocide like Rwanda. Seriously, MSNBC's response,
Speaker 1: rather than to come at Tucker Carlson with five million
Speaker 1: metaphorical machine guns, was to fire Tiffany Cross. Because you
Speaker 1: can have controversy as long as it's controversy trademark, and
Speaker 1: you can sell it trademark, and you can put a
Speaker 1: smile on its face trademark, and you can give it
Speaker 1: a little silly grin or a kind of sad grin,
Speaker 1: or a feel good grin, and then you can say,
Speaker 1: now here's Laurence O'Donnell. They fired her, They fired Melissa
Speaker 1: Harris Lacewell. Now they fired Joy Reid. Now they fired
Speaker 1: Alex Wagner. Humm, Melissa Harris, Perry, Tiffany Cross, Joy Reid,
Speaker 1: Alex Wagner. For women, what did they have in common? Well,
Speaker 1: let's see, they all had their own shows solo hosts
Speaker 1: on MSNBC, and they were all women of color, and
Speaker 1: they've all been fired. I believe I'm not certain of this.
Speaker 1: I didn't I spent enough time wondering about MSNBC firings.
Speaker 1: I don't need to go through the list again. Forgive
Speaker 1: me if I've gotten this wrong, but I do know
Speaker 1: they're the last, four, if not the only four women
Speaker 1: of color who have hosted shows on MSNBC. And they've
Speaker 1: all been fired, and they've all been replaced by Well,
Speaker 1: but you're what's Michael Steele was a man of color,
Speaker 1: and Simon Sanders is a woman of color, and Alicia
Speaker 1: Menendez is a woman of color. Yeah, they are official,
Speaker 1: they are safe. They are not going to do crazy
Speaker 1: things or bring on people you've never heard of before
Speaker 1: who turn out to be better than the people you've
Speaker 1: heard of. And they also may hire a professor from
Speaker 1: Columbia's a woman of color, and they fired the only
Speaker 1: remaining women of color who were solo anchoring political commentary
Speaker 1: shows on prominent national television networks. Alex Wagner I think
Speaker 1: probably is relieved by this. And it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: just because you're a woman of color or a person
Speaker 1: of color, your show should be held to a lower
Speaker 1: standard and you should get twenty five years to improve it. No,
Speaker 1: at some point, guess what, I don't care who it is.
Speaker 1: I don't care if it's Jesus Christ fresh off the cross,
Speaker 1: a man of color that you would say, hey, you know, Jesus,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. It doesn't quite work. And the new woodworking
Speaker 1: segments they weren't any good either. That's not the point.
Speaker 1: The point is not you must protect all people of
Speaker 1: color who get television shows, but if the show is
Speaker 1: of value, and the ratings for Joy Reid's show went
Speaker 1: up and down, just as MSNBC's overall ratings went and
Speaker 1: is it possible that maybe she wasn't best for the
Speaker 1: seven o'clock slot, Maybe maybe later in the evening, maybe
Speaker 1: there might have been a greater audience, maybe at ten o'clock.
Speaker 1: Now what they saw was people have been sharing clips
Speaker 1: of the nightmare that is the Scott what's his name? Show?
Speaker 1: Scott Jennings on CNN, which is nominally Abby Phillips show,
Speaker 1: and poor Abby Phillips goes out there, Abby Phillip, excuse me,
Speaker 1: Abby Phillip goes out there and gets tortured by this
Speaker 1: racist Scott Jennings. It's his show, and it's a bunch
Speaker 1: of people talking about how much of a racist he is.
Speaker 1: And he leans back in the chair and rocks back
Speaker 1: and forth and mugs to the camera and creates viral clips.
Speaker 1: And somebody at MSNBC said, wouldn't we rather have that
Speaker 1: than Joy Reid, who's now bald, appearing on television every
Speaker 1: night at seven o'clock? Don't we want this? Won't this
Speaker 1: make it easier to sell this company when we want to?
Speaker 1: Won't it make it easier? The next time Trump threatens
Speaker 1: NBC and MSNBC for us to say, but we fired
Speaker 1: Joy Reid. More Practically, MSNBC's problems in terms of its
Speaker 1: profitability and its ratings had nothing to do with Joy Reid.
Speaker 1: As I said, her ratings went up and down exactly
Speaker 1: as Chris Hayes's ratings went up and down, and Maddow's
Speaker 1: ratings went up and down, and Maddow's replacements like Wagner,
Speaker 1: their ratings went up and down. Lawrence O'Donnell went up
Speaker 1: and down. A Weekends went up and down, including the
Speaker 1: Simone Sanders, Michael Steele Alisha Menendez show ratings went up
Speaker 1: and down, all in the same sign curves. The problem
Speaker 1: at MSNBC is Joe Scarborough and until you fire Joe
Speaker 1: Scarborough and get rid of msn V, she and what
Speaker 1: that told people who watch that network, which I'm talking
Speaker 1: about largely because A. I did invent it. B. It
Speaker 1: is the only liberal network. It is the only thing
Speaker 1: even close to being a liberal network. And the better
Speaker 1: it is, the better it is for our society as
Speaker 1: we attempt to keep democracy or some shred of democracy alive.
Speaker 1: We need a strong, vibrant, loud, fearless MSNBC and not
Speaker 1: the view forgive me at seven o'clock night. We need
Speaker 1: people like Joy Reid. Even if you sit there and go,
Speaker 1: I'm not watching that, it's important that she's there for
Speaker 1: the people who want to identify with somebody who looks
Speaker 1: like Joy Reid and say that woman is out here
Speaker 1: trying to argue my point and is talking to me,
Speaker 1: and is bringing people who look like me and look
Speaker 1: like her onto television for the first time, and some
Speaker 1: of them are going to become superstars. And if we
Speaker 1: ever get out of this goddamned mess caused by lack
Speaker 1: of courage, often on places like MSNBC, often in places
Speaker 1: in the public discourse, we're ever going to get out
Speaker 1: of this mess and restore this democracy, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: because of people like Joyreaid. Even if you don't agree
Speaker 1: with the goddamn word she said. No, keep Joe Scarborough
Speaker 1: um now supporting Chump again. You've heard me talk about
Speaker 1: Chump being Hitler all this time. I guess I was wrong.
Speaker 1: Remember when I was trying to be his vice president.
Speaker 1: Take somebody off his show to put him on in
Speaker 1: primetime Michael Steele. Not take somebody off his show, Joe
Speaker 1: Scarborough and put anything on, including bugs bunny cartoons, would
Speaker 1: be a better political statement at seven o'clock in the
Speaker 1: morning on MSNBC, and much more consistent and eloquent, and
Speaker 1: bugs Bunny did not have a deviated septum either. One
Speaker 1: last procedural thing about this about MSNBC and it is
Speaker 1: I think of it the way I do ESPN, not
Speaker 1: like an ex spouse, but really as and it's a
Speaker 1: little pretentious, but as a child, as a child that
Speaker 1: sometimes I have had good relationships with and sometimes I
Speaker 1: have not. And to some degree it's the same thing
Speaker 1: in limited doses with ESPN. I did not father ESPN.
Speaker 1: It was well established before I got there. But there
Speaker 1: are aspects to that relationship in which I go, oh, boy,
Speaker 1: that's not going to work out for you later on.
Speaker 1: Take it from an old man, and I feel that
Speaker 1: way about MSNBC. And the other part about this is, okay,
Speaker 1: you have turmoil now. At nine o'clock, Mattow retired. Mattow
Speaker 1: went to once a week. They didn't know what to
Speaker 1: do about Mattow. Mattow's going to be replaced four days
Speaker 1: week by Alex Wagner. Oh no, that's not working. We're
Speaker 1: going to bring Mattow back for five days week. She's
Speaker 1: not going to do it long term. We'll bring Alex
Speaker 1: Wagner back after this in April. Oh no, we're not
Speaker 1: bringing her back. It's probably going to be Jensaki. You
Speaker 1: know what. Jensaki is going to prove to not really
Speaker 1: be a television person. There's going to be somebody else
Speaker 1: needed at nine o'clock. Oh and what's now create chaos
Speaker 1: at seven o'clock Because, honest to God, the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought of when I was told on Saturday night
Speaker 1: that they might get rid of joy Read, or that
Speaker 1: it was done already, the first thing I thought of.
Speaker 1: You now they're going to try to bring back Chris Matthews,
Speaker 1: because they've tried to bring back Chris Matthews in the
Speaker 1: Morning with Joe Scarborough. Because we need Chris Matthews right now,
Speaker 1: because the shallow, random firings of the few electric in
Speaker 1: his brain, something actually getting across those synapses knocking his
Speaker 1: references to himself out of the way for a brief second.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what MSNBC and the political dialogue needs right now,
Speaker 1: Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews. When we go to the
Speaker 1: camps and the doors open, the guys in the hats
Speaker 1: with the keys will be Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews.
Speaker 1: But back to the point about Joy Reid, and I
Speaker 1: would love to see I would love to come to
Speaker 1: you again on Thursday and say, you know what, I
Speaker 1: apologize to this MSNBC anchor, and I apologize to Al Sharpton,
Speaker 1: and I apologize to this group that I said they
Speaker 1: were going to say nothing. And look at this. There's
Speaker 1: a five thousand person encampment outside thirty Rock protesting Joy
Speaker 1: Reid getting fired. I'd love to say that to you.
Speaker 1: I do not expect to have to do it. I'm
Speaker 1: not writing notes down for Thursday's show about the big
Speaker 1: backlash within MSNBC about Joy Reid because Joy Reid threatens
Speaker 1: all their money. Joy Reid says something controversial. Rachel Maddow
Speaker 1: thinks I have twenty five million dollars coming to me.
Speaker 1: I want my money. But the chaos is the real legend,
Speaker 1: the real history of MSNBC. I don't know that I've
Speaker 1: ever shared this with you. It took a friend of
Speaker 1: mine named Rainy and I several days' worth of going
Speaker 1: through old memos to compile this list. I've told you
Speaker 1: many times that I worked and this is my story
Speaker 1: about Joy Reid getting fired. It of course comes back
Speaker 1: to me. I worked at MSNBC from its second year
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven through the end of its third year
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight. I did the eight o'clock show. It
Speaker 1: is the first show anybody paid attention to on MSNBC,
Speaker 1: and eventually I couldn't stand doing it anymore. It was
Speaker 1: all about Bill Clinton, and I couldn't do it anymore,
Speaker 1: and they sold me to Fox and I got out,
Speaker 1: and then that didn't work and I went to see
Speaker 1: it in for a while and they Connie Chung to
Speaker 1: host their eight o'clock show instead of me, so that
Speaker 1: didn't work out, and NBC was short an anchor at
Speaker 1: MSNBC and invited me to come over for a couple
Speaker 1: of days, and the next thing I knew, I signed
Speaker 1: a contract to do the eight o'clock show again five
Speaker 1: years later, and my friend Rany and I before it
Speaker 1: was a parent that I was going to stay there
Speaker 1: when it looked like I was just there for a
Speaker 1: couple of days filling in because they were short of anchors.
Speaker 1: We compiled this list of all the shows that had
Speaker 1: been on after I left the network. On December fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight. And this is my fear of what
Speaker 1: is going to happen at MSNBC in the next couple
Speaker 1: of years. The Revolving Door, the Game of Musical Chairs.
Speaker 1: Just listen to this. So they had started the network
Speaker 1: with a show called Internight, which had like sixteen different hosts.
Speaker 1: They'd try to get somebody to sit down and do
Speaker 1: an hour long interview, and they had everybody from Bob
Speaker 1: Costas to Bill Moyers. They had sixteen different hosts and
Speaker 1: it was filmed. It was on at eight o'clock at night,
Speaker 1: and nobody watched it. So they needed a live television
Speaker 1: news show before the Brian Williams newscast at nine o'clock.
Speaker 1: And I was it October first, nineteen ninety seven to
Speaker 1: December fourth, nineteen ninety eight, and then I escaped and
Speaker 1: they replaced me with a guy who they thought was
Speaker 1: exactly the same kind of show, John Hockenberry. John lasted
Speaker 1: from December of ninety eight all the way through to
Speaker 1: February of ninety nine, and then eventually they moved him
Speaker 1: to the afternoon and when they fired him in August
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety nine, and his last show. He asked
Speaker 1: rhetorically how much does cable suck? And the answer is
Speaker 1: still being played out. John had all kinds of problems
Speaker 1: dealing with women, as in he was a sexual harriser. Okay, anyway,
Speaker 1: so he gets fired. The show that replaced me lasted
Speaker 1: three months. Then they put on two half hour shows,
Speaker 1: Equal Time with Oliver North premiering in February of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine and the McLaughlin Special Report John McLoughlin from
Speaker 1: the McLoughlin Report, wrong that guy. They did two half
Speaker 1: hours that lasted a month. They decided Oliver North needed
Speaker 1: half an hour, but he needed a rotating set of
Speaker 1: co hosts. Now, I want to clear this up. None
Speaker 1: of the co hosts sat there and rotated. They had
Speaker 1: different hosts. They were on a rotational basis. I think
Speaker 1: in retrospect they regret this that it should have been
Speaker 1: Oliver North with a co host who rotated. The co
Speaker 1: hosts included Cynthia Axney, Peter Fenn and Keky Moore. I
Speaker 1: can picture two of these three people. And at eight
Speaker 1: thirty they replaced Special Report from McLaughlin that was canceled
Speaker 1: and they brought in Time and Again, which was reruns
Speaker 1: of old NBC news features in April of nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: so a month later it became a permanent hour long
Speaker 1: show with Oliver North and Paul Begala as co hosts.
Speaker 1: May thirtieth of nineteen ninety nine, so six weeks later
Speaker 1: it became North and Begala shortened to half an hour,
Speaker 1: and time and again came back. So it was time
Speaker 1: and again, and it's time and again. Another month later,
Speaker 1: in June nineteen ninety nine, they replaced the whole thing
Speaker 1: Oliver North out special Edition with Ann Curry in filmed
Speaker 1: recuts of Ann Curry pieces from Dateline and other shows. Now,
Speaker 1: I love Ann Curry. I worked with her in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: A great person, a wonderful human being to my mind.
Speaker 1: And again at eight thirty, time and again. Then they
Speaker 1: expanded in about a month. In July of nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: the Special Edition with Ann Curry went to an hour.
Speaker 1: Then Ann Curry left the program in May of two
Speaker 1: thousand and they made it special Edition with Louri dou
Speaker 1: Then in August, so now what three months later it
Speaker 1: became MSNBC Investigates and the Joke, WASSC and NBC Investigates,
Speaker 1: What happened to Lori dew On September twenty eighth, two thousand,
Speaker 1: they made MSNBC Investigates a four day a week show,
Speaker 1: so Monday through Thursday it was MSNBC Investigates again. This
Speaker 1: is all the eight o'clock out after I left, We're
Speaker 1: on Show twelve so far year two, Show twelve in
Speaker 1: the eight o'clock slot MSNBC Investigates. But on Friday it
Speaker 1: wasn't MSNBC Investigates. It was a weekly show called Missing
Speaker 1: Persons with Diane Diamond. Soon it was Missing Missing Persons
Speaker 1: with Diane Diamond. It was canceled after one month, so
Speaker 1: they go back to an hour of MSNBC Investigates, a
Speaker 1: pre tape show every night in October two thousand. Then
Speaker 1: as the election approached, it became News Force with Forests Sawyer.
Speaker 1: News Force. I don't want to know who thought Force
Speaker 1: was a good name to put in a newscast. So
Speaker 1: that evolved into Decision two thousand in December because there
Speaker 1: was no decision in the election, and it became Decision
Speaker 1: two thousand with Forest Sawyer. And when they finally to
Speaker 1: MSNBC's great regret resolved the Gore Bush election. In January
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, it became MSNBC Investigates again till July,
Speaker 1: and in July two thousand and one they solved the
Speaker 1: crisis of what to do at eight o'clock, only two
Speaker 1: and a half years after I had left the news
Speaker 1: with Brian Williams at eight o'clock for nearly fourteen months,
Speaker 1: and then he said I don't want anything to do
Speaker 1: with MSNBC ever again. In September two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: at eight o'clock they premiered The Phil Donahue Show, which
Speaker 1: lasted until February two thousand and three because the show
Speaker 1: cost more money than they could possibly make in advertising,
Speaker 1: and they replaced it with Countdown Iraq with Lester Holt
Speaker 1: and segments with Pat Buchanan and Bill Press. In the
Speaker 1: middle of a show Getting America Ready for War at
Speaker 1: eight o'clock, MSNBC had Countdown Iraq with lester Holt and
Speaker 1: Buchanan and Press, and then they had to move lester
Speaker 1: Holt to the network and so Operation Iraqi Freedom with
Speaker 1: Keith Olberman. Soon that was not enough. The news from
Speaker 1: Iraq was no longer interesting, and we made it Countdown
Speaker 1: with Keith Olberman March thirty first, two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: So that was twenty shows me twenty new shows in
Speaker 1: four years, and then me again because you can't have this.
Speaker 1: And then after I left in twenty eleven, it was
Speaker 1: the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell for a while, like
Speaker 1: nine months. Then they put ed Schultz on instead. Then
Speaker 1: they put in Chris Hayes in twenty thirteen. The idea
Speaker 1: here is to return finally to the subject of Joyread.
Speaker 1: You put people on TV who you, the executives can
Speaker 1: control when the chips are down, when the company is
Speaker 1: in trouble, when the boss goes to the anchor and says,
Speaker 1: don't say this, they say, don't say what, and then
Speaker 1: they don't say anything. When the company is in trouble,
Speaker 1: when a dollar might not be earned, you won't hear
Speaker 1: crap out of Maadow or O'Donnell or Hayes or Sanders
Speaker 1: or Steel or Menendez or Jensaki. My version of this,
Speaker 1: and it might have been stylistically philosophically it might have
Speaker 1: been the only thing I shared with joy Read was
Speaker 1: that when the chips were down in this circumstance and
Speaker 1: a dollar was at risk, I felt it was my
Speaker 1: job to say what they did not want me to say.
Speaker 1: Not always, there are sometimes management is right. But if
Speaker 1: they don't want you to touch a controversial topic, grab
Speaker 1: it with both hands. That's your job. If not, if
Speaker 1: you're not willing to do that, you can be replaced.
Speaker 1: You can be replaced by missing persons with Diane Diamond.
Speaker 1: Nothing against Diana used to work with her in radio
Speaker 1: Lovely Woman. You could be replaced by news force. News force,
Speaker 1: we break down your door and drag you away. It
Speaker 1: is your job as a political commentator to get yourself
Speaker 1: into trouble whenever possible, now, whenever necessary. I did that.
Speaker 1: Joy Reid did that. I'm sure she looked at my
Speaker 1: times in trouble and went, what are you doing that for?
Speaker 1: And I know I've looked at her in some occasions
Speaker 1: and gone, what are you doing that for? Doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: The other thing you're supposed to do is you are
Speaker 1: supposed to spend your political capital, your small p political capital,
Speaker 1: your business capital inside your own operation, defending your colleagues,
Speaker 1: or becoming a pain in the ass to management, develop
Speaker 1: a reputation with management, to get people they didn't want
Speaker 1: hired hired or to get people they didn't want on
Speaker 1: the air on the air. Madam is a perfect example
Speaker 1: of that. I'm not going to belabor that point, but
Speaker 1: Joy Reid did that with a dozen people, and they
Speaker 1: might as well have been all of them might as
Speaker 1: well have been Huey Newton from the eyes of MSNBC
Speaker 1: management from the day they put her on the air
Speaker 1: on the weekends to the day they put her on
Speaker 1: at eight o'clock with the current executives who just sold
Speaker 1: the thing off so they could distance themselves from anything
Speaker 1: good in television news. Again, I will be delighted to
Speaker 1: come out here and apologize profusely and for an hour,
Speaker 1: and this has been half an hour. Here, I will
Speaker 1: profusely apologize to anybody at MSNBC who stands up in
Speaker 1: defensive Joy Reid and says this stinks, this makes us white.
Speaker 1: This is contributing to the entirety of the Trump racism
Speaker 1: enveloping this country, and it is part of a stampede
Speaker 1: to see which formerly liberal company can get to the
Speaker 1: head of the racism line, the approved racism line, as
Speaker 1: fast as possible. And Joy Read getting removed from the
Speaker 1: primetime lineup of MSNBC is MSNBC's biggest contribution yet, although
Speaker 1: Scarborough could top it at any moment, but honestly, what
Speaker 1: do you expect to hear about Joy? Read from the
Speaker 1: other people who count at MSNBC you want to hear
Speaker 1: it again. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.