Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I'd
Speaker 1: like to congratulate Vice President Kamala Harris on her victory
Speaker 1: in the presidential debate last night. Against Chex's notes, Brett beher,
Speaker 1: despite the refusal by the moderator to stopped her opponent
Speaker 1: from compulsively interrupting her. The moderator Chex's notes again, Brett beher,
Speaker 1: and despite the fact that when she called out Trump
Speaker 1: for threatening to use the military against citizens and jailing
Speaker 1: those who criticize him and about the enemy within, the
Speaker 1: anchor claimed to be playing a clip of Trump pertaining
Speaker 1: to that. Only they did a bait and switch. The
Speaker 1: anchor played a Trump clip about a different topic. The
Speaker 1: anchor Chex' notes a third time.
Speaker 2: Brett beher question to the former president today, hers Faulkner
Speaker 2: had a town hall, and this is how he responded.
Speaker 3: I heard about that. They were saying I was like threatening.
Speaker 3: I'm not threatening anybody. They're the ones doing the threatening.
Speaker 3: They do phony investigations. I've been investigated more than Alphonse Capone.
Speaker 1: He was the greatest action. No, it's true, we don't
Speaker 1: but think of it.
Speaker 3: It's called weaponization of government.
Speaker 1: Is a terrible thing.
Speaker 4: So, Bret, I'm sorry, and with all due respect, that
Speaker 4: clip was not what he has been saying about the
Speaker 4: enemy within that he has repeated when he's speaking about
Speaker 4: the American people.
Speaker 5: That's not what you just showed.
Speaker 1: He was asking.
Speaker 5: No, no, that's not what you just showed. In all
Speaker 5: fairness and respect to you, the question that we asked him,
Speaker 5: he didn't show that. And here's the bottom line. He
Speaker 5: has repeated it many times, and you and I both
Speaker 5: know that. And you and I both know that he
Speaker 5: has talked about turning the American military on the American people.
Speaker 5: He has talked about going after people who are engaged
Speaker 5: in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up
Speaker 5: because they disagree with him. This is a democracy and
Speaker 5: an inner democracy. The president of the United States, in
Speaker 5: the United States of America should be willing to be
Speaker 5: able to handle criticism without saying he'd lock people up
Speaker 5: for doing it. And this is what is at stake,
Speaker 5: which is why you have someone like the former Chairman
Speaker 5: of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying what Mark Milly
Speaker 5: has said about Donald Trump being a threat to the
Speaker 5: United States of America. He's quoted in the Bob Woodward
Speaker 5: book that way.
Speaker 2: Yes, let me ask you this matter, Vice President, you
Speaker 2: called Donald Trump unificant.
Speaker 1: You back, she kicked Bear's ass. She went on Fox,
Speaker 1: and despite being subjected to a failed gotcha and conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory interview that could have been prepared by Cat Turd
Speaker 1: or another one of those neurotic paranoids on the right
Speaker 1: like Trump, she answered his questions and called Fox out
Speaker 1: on its lies. On Fox. Although I give bare credit,
Speaker 1: he is apparently not resigned nor realized that until last
Speaker 1: night he had not actually been out in the real
Speaker 1: world talking to people who weren't sycophantic towards him in
Speaker 1: his propaganda channel and the poisonous bastard who owns it,
Speaker 1: Rupert Murdoch hadn't been out in the real world since
Speaker 1: he was a local newscaster in Charlotte in nineteen FN
Speaker 1: ninety eight. He hasn't quit the business nor fled the country.
Speaker 1: Well done. At the other extreme, Trump yesterday went on
Speaker 1: a Fox women's town hall with actual Republican Party officials
Speaker 1: among the questioners. They didn't reveal that, and when he
Speaker 1: was still asked by somebody why the government had any
Speaker 1: authority over a woman's body. He answered by lying again
Speaker 1: that everybody wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. And then he
Speaker 1: went on Univision and did a town hall with questions
Speaker 1: from the people he is the most prejudiced against him? Boy?
Speaker 1: Is that saying something? Hispanics one man asking one question
Speaker 1: in Spanish about this bullshit about the legal immigrants in
Speaker 1: Ohio eating pets that resulted in Trump denying that he
Speaker 1: had ever said that was happening. He was just repeating
Speaker 1: reports the central dehumanizing and degrading theme of his a
Speaker 1: vance's campaign of hate and violence and nightmare, and Trump
Speaker 1: disabout it completely. Do you really believe that these people
Speaker 1: are eating the people's pets?
Speaker 2: Thank you well, thank you very much. And this was
Speaker 2: just reported. I was just saying what was reported, that's
Speaker 2: been reported, and eating other things too that they're not
Speaker 2: supposed to be. But this is all I do is report.
Speaker 2: I have not I was there, I'm going to be there,
Speaker 2: and we're going to take a look, and I'll give
Speaker 2: you a full report when I do. But that's been
Speaker 2: in the newspapers and reported pretty broadly.
Speaker 1: Via Condio Donnie your meat. And just to round out
Speaker 1: the set, Tim Walls did some more Tim waltzing yesterday,
Speaker 1: which is why his approval numbers are within one point
Speaker 1: of where they were right after the vice presidential debate.
Speaker 1: But JV Vance did some more jv vancing yesterday, which
Speaker 1: is why his approval numbers were minus two right after
Speaker 1: the debate but are now minus ten. Vance was again
Speaker 1: asked about his repeated endless, nauseating tiptoeing around the question
Speaker 1: of whether or not he believes Trump lost in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and he finally answered it, and the answer was not great.
Speaker 1: Not great JV on the election of twenty twenty. I've
Speaker 1: answered this question directly a million times. No, I think
Speaker 1: there are serious problems in twenty twenty. So did Donald
Speaker 1: Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I
Speaker 1: would use. So it's Harris fresh off of victory over
Speaker 1: Fox News on Fox News and over Trump by proxy
Speaker 1: on Fox News versus Trump of the famous Trump pre
Speaker 1: recorded concert series and his running mate, a lunatic election
Speaker 1: denier wearing eyeliner but back for a moment to bear
Speaker 1: and the vice president. Throughout the interview, I kept flashing
Speaker 1: back to thirty six years ago. May have been this month.
Speaker 1: I was trying too hard in a brand new job
Speaker 1: at Channel two in Los Angeles. I did an absolutely terrible,
Speaker 1: long satirical segment about a top draft choice who was
Speaker 1: in the middle of a contract holdout from a local
Speaker 1: sports team, and then I ran it again and only
Speaker 1: shortened it a little bit, and it was terrible, not funny,
Speaker 1: not clever, not worth it. Bill Stout was one of
Speaker 1: my friends and role models at KCBSTV. He had been
Speaker 1: on the air doing news in LA at that point
Speaker 1: for thirty nine years, and he was still in the
Speaker 1: office every day though he was desperately ill, and he
Speaker 1: would die still on the job almost exactly a year later.
Speaker 1: Bill had been involved in my hiring. He was very supportive,
Speaker 1: and as I walked back to my desk after the
Speaker 1: disaster of the Danny Manning satire, he looked at me
Speaker 1: and said, I know, I know, look at it this way.
Speaker 1: You have far more courage than I do. My boy,
Speaker 1: if I had just put that on the air, I'd
Speaker 1: have gone home and nobody would have ever seen me
Speaker 1: on TV again. And I laughed and I thanked him,
Speaker 1: and I said, next time, tell me beforehand, and he
Speaker 1: agreed in that spirit. Brett Vair Next time you're going
Speaker 1: to try to bully and talk over and play gotcha
Speaker 1: with and smear the Vice president of the United States
Speaker 1: and the likely next president of the United States. My
Speaker 1: advice to you is, first quit your job and go
Speaker 1: right to a monastery to atone I say the likely
Speaker 1: next president for a reason. As the Harris interview aired
Speaker 1: on Fox News, Fox put out its new polling. Last month,
Speaker 1: Fox had Harris up by two fifty to forty eight.
Speaker 1: Now it has Trump ahead by two fifty to forty eight,
Speaker 1: a four point swing. However, Fox's polling registered voters shows
Speaker 1: Harris ahead in the battleground states by six points. Six
Speaker 1: points in the battlegrounds, that's all they say. Surprisingly enough,
Speaker 1: they did not break this downstate by state, nor after
Speaker 1: the initial mention in a very long story full of
Speaker 1: very pretty graphs, did they ever circle back to the
Speaker 1: point that she's winning in the battle ground states according
Speaker 1: to their polling, by six points. They made only one
Speaker 1: further point way at the end, namely that if their
Speaker 1: current polling is correct, Trump would win the popular vote,
Speaker 1: but Harris would win the electoral College. I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but if Trump wins the popular vote and
Speaker 1: Harris wins the Electoral College, I would be laughing so
Speaker 1: long that they would have to tape my mouth shut
Speaker 1: during her inauguration address. Also on polling you gov for
Speaker 1: the Economist, polling concluded Tuesday Harris forty nine Trump forty five,
Speaker 1: Harris by four. But more importantly, last week in this
Speaker 1: poll among Hispanic voters you gov for the Economist, it
Speaker 1: was Harris forty eight Trump forty three. This week in
Speaker 1: the Economists poll among Hispanic voters, Harris sixty Trump thirty five.
Speaker 1: That is a swing in Hispanic voters of twenty points
Speaker 1: to Harris in one week. Economist average of polls Harris
Speaker 1: forty nine point eight Trump forty six point seven, Harris
Speaker 1: by three and change and almost at fifty percent. Also
Speaker 1: fairly Dickinson University poll Harris fifty Trump forty seven, and
Speaker 1: two other polls to mention. As analyzed by the former
Speaker 1: top Republican strategist Matt Dowd. He notes the most accurate
Speaker 1: national poll from twenty twenty tip it had Biden up
Speaker 1: by four, and Biden won the popular vote by four
Speaker 1: and a half, now has Harris up by three. He
Speaker 1: notes that the most accurate poll from twenty sixteen, Marrist
Speaker 1: had Clinton up by two in the popular vote. Clinton
Speaker 1: won the popular vote by two point one percent. It
Speaker 1: Marrist has Harris up by five. He concludes, very simply,
Speaker 1: this race has been very stable for six weeks. For once.
Speaker 1: The actual numbers, even the ones Dowd does not cite
Speaker 1: mean something. In that Mari Harris pole, she is up
Speaker 1: by five. She's up fifty two to forty seven. In
Speaker 1: that Tip pole. He mentions, it's Harris fifty to forty six.
Speaker 1: I mentioned Fairley Dickinson in that one. It's Harris fifty
Speaker 1: Trump forty seven. That is three prominent poles where she
Speaker 1: is at fifty percent or more. We don't know what
Speaker 1: the number is in the Swing States in the Fox pole,
Speaker 1: but if she's winning by six, she may be at
Speaker 1: fifty in the Swing States. In the Fox pole. The
Speaker 1: five point thirty eight average of poles has her up
Speaker 1: by two point six. That is her biggest margin in
Speaker 1: eight days. This crap turns on a dime. The Swing
Speaker 1: States in other polling still nauseatingly tight. No matter what
Speaker 1: Fox says. That's so beneficial to Kamala Harris. But there
Speaker 1: is unquestionably a polling surge going on right now, and
Speaker 1: as of this moment, it is towards Kamala Harris, not
Speaker 1: that you would know that from the new Ouse outlets.
Speaker 1: It continues the lead at Politico yesterday, Harris and Trump
Speaker 1: exit their comfort zones, quoting actor sticking mostly though not entirely,
Speaker 1: with more liberal friendly shows and podcasts. Sixty minutes is
Speaker 1: a liberal friendly show, univisione town Hall idiots. She'll be
Speaker 1: in for a drastic change on Fox. Pete Buddha Jedgiside.
Speaker 1: Party leaders rarely appear on the network because they think
Speaker 1: the risk isn't worth the reward. You even absent the
Speaker 1: hunt of the neck and neck presidential race, she kicked
Speaker 1: their ass. How does Politico think Trump exited his comfort zone,
Speaker 1: by the way, by being interviewed at the Economic Club
Speaker 1: at Chicago? Politicoat you had a wellness check lately? Is
Speaker 1: this whole Liza thing really destroyed the place? I find
Speaker 1: that hard to believe. When self proclaimed super business man
Speaker 1: Trump sits down to talk business at an economic club
Speaker 1: with a business publication Bloomberg whose Twitter handle is at Business,
Speaker 1: and he takes business questions from the business editor. He
Speaker 1: did not just leave his business comfort Business Zone, Harris
Speaker 1: kicked Brett Bear's ass, Trump crashed and burned in front
Speaker 1: of an audience full of of businessmen. Also of interest here, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's still more newsy nudes news. There's so much revenge
Speaker 1: popcorn and has caused the lining of my stomach to
Speaker 1: burst in some places. And it's cold revenge popcorn too.
Speaker 1: And if that is not nightmare fuel, were you? Maybe
Speaker 1: this will be? How about CNN being sold to Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: That's next? Ted didn't like it. This is countdown.
Speaker 5: This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1: Still ahead on this edition to countdown. So The New
Speaker 1: York Post attacked me yesterday because I made a joke,
Speaker 1: a crass joke. The crass joke consisted of one word
Speaker 1: and an emoji, and it wasn't crass. You may not
Speaker 1: have thought it was funny, but it wasn't crass. The
Speaker 1: Post tweeted about the Ryan Lizzer reply to my ex's
Speaker 1: legal filing for what amounts to a restraining order against
Speaker 1: her ex, with him saying she told him RFK Junior's
Speaker 1: plan for Live was to impregnate and possess. I added
Speaker 1: same with the shrug emoji. Now it might not be funny,
Speaker 1: but to deconstruct the effort. Phrasing it that way, I
Speaker 1: could have meant same as in that was also my
Speaker 1: plan for her, or same that it was rfk's plan
Speaker 1: for me. Anyway, you decide if it's funny. I think
Speaker 1: it was. But they wrote an entire article about this
Speaker 1: incredibly crass because they were punishing me. When The New
Speaker 1: York Post attacks someone, if that person fights back, the
Speaker 1: rule there is and I have been told this by
Speaker 1: people who work and worked there, they have to attack harder.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to accept the Post's punishment and shut up.
Speaker 1: This is Murdoch. Murdoch runs his operation like the mafia
Speaker 1: runs their operation. Anyway, I don't do that. They were
Speaker 1: about to report if you'll remember that Olivia and I
Speaker 1: had dated, so I beat them to it. Rupert mad,
Speaker 1: excuse me? Ope? It mad? So this was my punishment. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: they make up a story. They've been doing this fake
Speaker 1: scandals followed by reactions to fake scandals if I thwart them.
Speaker 1: They've been doing this since nineteen ninety six. To me,
Speaker 1: they've been doing it to everybody since Murdoch bought the paper.
Speaker 1: The process coming up and examples of it in things
Speaker 1: I promised not to tell first, there are still more
Speaker 1: new idiots to talk about, the daily roundup of the
Speaker 1: miss Grants, morons and Dunn Kruger effects specimens who constitute
Speaker 1: today's last passions in the world, the Bronze Worse. Okay,
Speaker 1: why not, we're here anyway, new Zy, Ryan Lizza, and
Speaker 1: RFK Junior. Again, I don't know what day of this is,
Speaker 1: but seriously, they are now in the Washington Post, and
Speaker 1: clearly somebody gave the Washington Post the entirety of my
Speaker 1: ex's ex's self defense filing to the court because this
Speaker 1: is new and quoting the paper. Quoting this filing by
Speaker 1: Ryan lizab and a document filed with the court Friday
Speaker 1: and made public Tuesday, Liza said Newsy's allegations were quote
Speaker 1: defamatory lies that were meant to create sensational headlines, damage
Speaker 1: my reputation, and distract from press attention about ms Newsy's
Speaker 1: catastrophically reckless behavior. Unquote uh oh, catastrophically reckless behavior. You say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's her. I'd recognize here anywhere. All right, So this
Speaker 1: might change again, but right now I'm leaning towards Liza
Speaker 1: being less wrong than Newsy. And by the way, Liza Newsy,
Speaker 1: can we somehow work Lizo into this story. Also, there's
Speaker 1: this from the wa Po, quoting the paper during tuesdays
Speaker 1: virtual court hearing, Newsy's video showed her in a tastefully
Speaker 1: decorated room, wearing a black crew neck shirt with her
Speaker 1: hair loose. She kept a straight face throughout the attorney's negotiations.
Speaker 1: Liza appeared seated with his attorneys in a blue sweater
Speaker 1: with a gray jacket. He looked disappointed when the judge
Speaker 1: decided that the trial would be postponed until November. Two things.
Speaker 1: Once again, The Washington Post cannot look at Donald Trump
Speaker 1: with makeup on his face where he's missed the whole
Speaker 1: spot near his ear and say he put on his
Speaker 1: makeup badly today, or whoever put it on for him
Speaker 1: did it badly today. They can't say that. They can't
Speaker 1: listen to him being insane every day of the week
Speaker 1: for the last nine years at least, and say the
Speaker 1: man is insane. They can't publish historial, though they came
Speaker 1: closest to it, describing what happened in Pennsylvania on Monday night,
Speaker 1: what happened in Oaks Pennsylvania. When he went into that
Speaker 1: fugue stayed and just decided to play all the hits.
Speaker 1: They can't do that, but they can say that Ryan
Speaker 1: Lizza looked disappointed when the judge decided it. Did he
Speaker 1: say something or you just saw the smirk on his
Speaker 1: face changed slightly. You're basing the phrase he looked disappointed,
Speaker 1: which is now in the Washington Post as fact based
Speaker 1: on a reporter interpreting what they saw. Why don't you
Speaker 1: do that with Trump? Why don't you all do that
Speaker 1: with Trump? Interpret what you saw? That's why you're there.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they could just send the tape recorder and a
Speaker 1: guy who presses the button and then goes second. Aside
Speaker 1: with the popcorn I have already consumed during this story,
Speaker 1: I have regained ten of the forty five pounds I
Speaker 1: had lost, thanks a lot of kids. The runner up
Speaker 1: worser James Dolan, you know, the owner of the New
Speaker 1: York Knicks, New York Rangers, and the home of the
Speaker 1: only most famous arena in the world that he is
Speaker 1: now responsible for having rented out to Nazi in two
Speaker 1: consecutive centuries, Madison Square Nazi Garden. Dolan's name has popped
Speaker 1: up again where trash like him should probably try to
Speaker 1: avoid it. First, it was renting the garden to Trump
Speaker 1: for a fascist rally and fundraiser eight days before the election.
Speaker 1: It'll be like when the Elephants used to come in
Speaker 1: for the circus during the playoffs, the Stanley Cup playoffs,
Speaker 1: and you'd go to a Rangers playoff game which had
Speaker 1: to be rescheduled because the elephants had been taking huge
Speaker 1: dumps on top of the garden over the ice, and
Speaker 1: all you could do was go get a shovel. As
Speaker 1: I once said in radio in college. Yeah, elephant crap
Speaker 1: and Trump. That's about the same now, in an event,
Speaker 1: the Legal Defense Fun for New York's possibly doing this
Speaker 1: deliberately as some sort of prank for a TV series
Speaker 1: or something. Mayor Eric Adams Eric Adams, who has an
Speaker 1: approval rating of not and whose city leadership divides evenly
Speaker 1: now into his appointees who have resigned, some under indictment
Speaker 1: at his appointees who have not yet resigned. Dolan has
Speaker 1: given the Eric Adams Legal Defense Fund five grand, and
Speaker 1: another Dolan at the same address named Aiden, who appears
Speaker 1: to be his son, has given another five grand, so
Speaker 1: they have James Dolan, on the one hand tied to
Speaker 1: the disastrous, messianic mayor of New York and on the
Speaker 1: other tied to the disastrous, psychotic presidential candidate of the
Speaker 1: Republican Nazi Party. Let's go Rangers, but our winners David
Speaker 1: Zaslav and Evon Musk. David Zaslav, Warner Bros. Discovery chieftain,
Speaker 1: the man who has run CNN into the ground to
Speaker 1: the point where Lachlan Cartwright has reported now that they
Speaker 1: couldn't afford raises for all their quote stars un quote.
Speaker 1: The best anybody's getting is the same. They're already being
Speaker 1: paid in new contracts, and they may let Chris Wallace go.
Speaker 1: You know how old Chris Wallace is. He's two hundred
Speaker 1: and six US more. Though, Oliver Darcy reports in his
Speaker 1: newsletter that David Zaslab is courting Elon Musk, Yes, Daddy
Speaker 1: Warbucks himself Elon Musk, As Darcy notes in his newsletter's
Speaker 1: status in March, Musky wrote, as mind blowingly tragic as
Speaker 1: this sounds, some poor suckers still believe CNN. Yet Darcy
Speaker 1: scoops that when Musk and Zazlab were seen on the
Speaker 1: telecast of Tennis's US Open last month, sitting next to
Speaker 1: each other, it was actually just part two, again quoting Darcy.
Speaker 1: Earlier in the summer, Zaslab had hosted Musk at his
Speaker 1: ocean side estate off Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton.
Speaker 1: People familiar with the matter told me Musk was traveling
Speaker 1: in the Haptins for a Michael Milken event and Zazlab
Speaker 1: urged him to drop by regardless, Zaslav's relationship with Musk
Speaker 1: extends beyond the occasional meetup. When not spending time together
Speaker 1: in person, the two have been regularly exchanged For a second,
Speaker 1: I thought it was FaceTime. In New Zealand, Lizzig and
Speaker 1: an RFK Junior, thank God, have been regularly exchanging text messages.
Speaker 1: One of the people familiar with their relationship told me
Speaker 1: they have a relationship. What kind of a relationship. No, don't, don't,
Speaker 1: don't tell me. Oliver Darcy seems to think courting Musk
Speaker 1: is just a mistake by Zaslav, And I mean that's
Speaker 1: a valid thought. Zaslav makes mistakes by the car load lot.
Speaker 1: But I think mister Darcy may be missing the real
Speaker 1: purpose here. Musk was willing to throw away billions to
Speaker 1: buy Twitter, just to be the king of Dung Mountain
Speaker 1: and turn the place into a huge contribution in kind
Speaker 1: to the Trump campaign. If Musk is that dumb or
Speaker 1: that stoned, why wouldn't he be dumb enough and stoned
Speaker 1: enough to buy CNN from Zaslav. Can you imagine CNN
Speaker 1: owned by Elon Musk, the new lineup CNN Mornings with
Speaker 1: the team of Elon Musk, Elon Musk and Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: then the Midday Musk, then a phone in show called
Speaker 1: Musk Hotel I like that one, Anderson Cooper Tonight with
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, and of course the Situation Room with Wolf
Speaker 1: Flitzer with Elon Musk, And of course every time you
Speaker 1: click over to CNN, your TV would explode. David, I
Speaker 1: swear I don't look for these disasters. They choose me
Speaker 1: Zaslab and Elon. I know we could close CNN, Musk CTV.
Speaker 1: You get it must only with a K, you get
Speaker 1: it K instead of T. I'm funny. I'm funny. You
Speaker 1: will laugh now K for ketamine, No, forget that part,
Speaker 1: K for Musk Musk CTV, laugh now Musk two days
Speaker 1: worst person and no wa he the number one story
Speaker 1: on the countdown on my favorite topic, me and things
Speaker 1: I promised not to tell. And here we go again,
Speaker 1: Rupert Murdoch's quote news outlets unquote shooting themselves in the
Speaker 1: groin yet again while they were aiming at me. A
Speaker 1: little timeline is required on this one. April eighteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, was assassinated May
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, maybe earlier. May twenty twenty was the earliest
Speaker 1: I remembered or found. Trump started claiming he had been
Speaker 1: treated far worse than Abraham Lincoln had. March sixteenth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. Trump said it again. Then Biden Harris Headquarters
Speaker 1: tweets the clip, adding Trump says he's been treated worse
Speaker 1: than Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated also March sixteenth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. I retweeted that, adding there's always the hope.
Speaker 1: March eighteenth, twenty twenty four, Fox News publishes a story
Speaker 1: first headlined Keith Olderman appears to hope for Trump assassination,
Speaker 1: but the headline was then changed to Keith Olderman's sparks
Speaker 1: outrage by hinting at trump assassination with a blue stripe
Speaker 1: over my face reading Blue Blood Bath, meaning on some
Speaker 1: level I am the same as Trump to the New
Speaker 1: York Post and the Fox News and all the rest
Speaker 1: of Murdoch's outlets. While I was tempted to answer this
Speaker 1: by saying I was just referring to the auto industry,
Speaker 1: in reality, obviously I was and am hoping that Trump
Speaker 1: will be right, and that he will be treated worse
Speaker 1: than Abraham Lincoln, something worse than assassination, which would be
Speaker 1: that Trump is convicted and dies in prison. I don't
Speaker 1: know how many times I have said this, maybe more
Speaker 1: than Trump's ludicrous charge that he's been treated worse than Lincoln.
Speaker 1: I may have actually said it more than he has
Speaker 1: said that. I think I first said I hope he
Speaker 1: dies in prison. I expect he dies in prison in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. This is because I hope he dies in prison.
Speaker 1: But of course the point of this is Murdoch and
Speaker 1: Fox and especially the New York Post have been doing
Speaker 1: this to me since about nineteen ninety six, always always
Speaker 1: getting it wrong, ever since I caught the Post in
Speaker 1: a lie that year about a couple of hockey players
Speaker 1: that it claimed had been thrown out of a New
Speaker 1: York City bar for knocking over tables to the horror
Speaker 1: of customers, when in fact I was with them, and
Speaker 1: they left the place in their own form of horror
Speaker 1: because as one of them, Eric Lindross, stood up, he
Speaker 1: almost knocked over the chair he was sitting in. He
Speaker 1: said to the other, John Leclair, I think I've had enough.
Speaker 1: We got to go home, Johnny, and they politely left,
Speaker 1: but not before asking if I needed a lift. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, the Post slammed me because I
Speaker 1: attended a New York Mets game while wearing cargo shorts.
Speaker 1: A few years later, the Post showed a picture somebody
Speaker 1: had snapped of me leaning against one of the gates
Speaker 1: of Central Park here in New York and said I
Speaker 1: was alone and depressed. Actually, I was alone and early
Speaker 1: to my dental appointment across the street, and I was
Speaker 1: trying to talk myself into actually going into my doctor's office.
Speaker 1: There was a brief interruption in the year during the
Speaker 1: two and a half years or so that I worked
Speaker 1: for Murdoch in Sports, a brief interruption in these constantly
Speaker 1: hilarious stories before Murdoch personally fired me after I had
Speaker 1: reported with his office's full approval in advance that he
Speaker 1: was working behind the scenes to sell the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Dodgers baseball team, which he was. Murdoch later boasted about
Speaker 1: firing me, but he didn't say that. He didn't boast
Speaker 1: about it until after he had sold the La Dodgers
Speaker 1: baseball team. The origin of the post's quarter century of
Speaker 1: badly aimed shots at me stems from that firing. When
Speaker 1: Murdoch fired me, his minions did it slowly in stages
Speaker 1: over the course of a couple of days, in hopes
Speaker 1: that they could get me angry and bait me into
Speaker 1: attacking Fox and News Corp. In the newspapers, so that
Speaker 1: then they could fire me for cause that way they
Speaker 1: wouldn't owe me the rest of the money on my
Speaker 1: contract instead. As I've mentioned here before, given the choice
Speaker 1: between waiting eight months to insult someone and getting a
Speaker 1: lot of money, or getting no money and yelling at
Speaker 1: them right now, I'll always wait the eight months. I
Speaker 1: remained quiet for eight lovely months, and Rupert had to
Speaker 1: pay me one one hundred thousand dollars a month to
Speaker 1: do that best job I ever had. So whenever this
Speaker 1: happens and somebody says, why don't you sue Murdoch Go,
Speaker 1: sue News Corps, sue the New York Post. I always say,
Speaker 1: what kind of money could I get from them that
Speaker 1: could hurt them more than that eight hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and one. Also, most of the
Speaker 1: stuff they do is so hilariously wrong, like the worse
Speaker 1: than Lincoln story, that it's transparently desperate. But twice they
Speaker 1: threatened me with stories that I had to take some
Speaker 1: action about. Once they completely made one up, and once
Speaker 1: they ran a story even though the FBI and the
Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security specifically asked them not to run it.
Speaker 1: The obligatory reminder before I tell you those two stories,
Speaker 1: you should never believe any source story you read in
Speaker 1: The New York Post or indeed on any mets me
Speaker 1: outlet owned by the Murdochs. Like Fox, they occasionally report
Speaker 1: real things, but just as often they make stuff up.
Speaker 1: Not exaggerate or get slightly wrong or twist, but utterly fabricate.
Speaker 1: On April eleventh, two thousand and five, the New York
Speaker 1: Post was to run exactly the kind of story I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, only under threat of multiple lawsuits did they
Speaker 1: actually spike it. I hadn't told this story before, but
Speaker 1: I was reminded of it. I think going through the
Speaker 1: mechanics of it will illustrate just how evil an organization
Speaker 1: News Corp. Actually Is and more importantly, how unreliable it
Speaker 1: is as a source of news. As a New York
Speaker 1: Post Page six gossip story, this one, though, had everything.
Speaker 1: It attacked MSNBC. It had quotes from informed sources, and
Speaker 1: even at one point it had a witness. Now the
Speaker 1: witness disappeared during the evolution of this story, but at
Speaker 1: one point it had a witness. It had somebody prominent
Speaker 1: insulting Peter Jennings, the newscaster, right after he had revealed
Speaker 1: he had lung cancer, and it was constructed in such
Speaker 1: a way that if I did not comment on it,
Speaker 1: they could print the story, then come back the next day,
Speaker 1: rehash it and add that I was still refusing to
Speaker 1: comment on it. But there was one overriding problem. It
Speaker 1: was a complete fabrication, and thus it was full of
Speaker 1: events that didn't happen and people who did not exist.
Speaker 1: New York Post Page six contacted MSNBC's then media relations guy,
Speaker 1: Jeremy Gaines on Thursday, April seventh, two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: with the following story. Keith Olderman, a quote frequent critic
Speaker 1: of President Bush, had refused to anchor the coverage of
Speaker 1: the death of Pope John Paul the Second, pretended to
Speaker 1: be ill and called in sick instead. There was, as
Speaker 1: I suggested earlier, a major problem here. I had anchored
Speaker 1: the coverage of the death of Pope John Paul the Second.
Speaker 1: I had been anchoring the primetime coverage four hours each weeknight,
Speaker 1: day after day, leading up to the potiffs passing. There
Speaker 1: were viewers who had seen me. There were studio staffers.
Speaker 1: Carl Bernstein was there. He was the inn studio papal expert.
Speaker 1: He was on the air with me every night for
Speaker 1: like six nights in a row. There were video tapes.
Speaker 1: Joe Torre, then the manager of the New York Yankees,
Speaker 1: called me to compliment me on my reverential coverage of
Speaker 1: the Pope's illness. That did not stop. The New York
Speaker 1: Post in the first version that page six told us
Speaker 1: it was going to print their unnamed source had been
Speaker 1: on board an Amtrak Acella train going from Washington, DC
Speaker 1: to New York, sitting near my agent. As my agent
Speaker 1: talked to somebody on a cell phone. This is apparently
Speaker 1: a very favorite construction when the New York Post wants
Speaker 1: to make up a story about somebody their witness said.
Speaker 1: My agent complained that I had had a quote meltdown
Speaker 1: after quote calling in sick rather than anchoring the papal coverage,
Speaker 1: which I anchored, but there was more quote. Alderman, a
Speaker 1: frequent critic of the president's policies, said it was better
Speaker 1: in sports. They quoted my agent quoting me into the phone.
Speaker 1: I'll be dealing with this all day now. Apart from
Speaker 1: the fact that I had anchored the coverage, they said
Speaker 1: I had not anchored. There was another major flaw in
Speaker 1: this story. My agent was not on a train from
Speaker 1: Washington to New York on the day in question, or
Speaker 1: the week in question, or the month, or in fact,
Speaker 1: the year in question. My agent told me she thought
Speaker 1: she had once been on a train from Washington to
Speaker 1: New York in the year nineteen sixty seven. My agent
Speaker 1: at that time lived a top Mount Shasta in California,
Speaker 1: and so seldom left there that when she once drove
Speaker 1: to town to get the mail, I asked her for
Speaker 1: the details of her trip because I jokingly suggested to
Speaker 1: her we should lead the newscast with it. So the
Speaker 1: next day, Friday, April eighth, two thousand and five, New
Speaker 1: York Post Page six came back with a different version
Speaker 1: of this same story. They had misheard their source. Of course,
Speaker 1: it wasn't my agent on the train from DC to
Speaker 1: New York. It was a woman who worked for my agent,
Speaker 1: a woman named Susan. A woman named Susan whom I had,
Speaker 1: they would report, already phoned three times that morning, and
Speaker 1: I was to meet her urgently at the boat House
Speaker 1: in Central Park, presumably because meeting her in the middle
Speaker 1: of Penn Station when she got off that train would
Speaker 1: have been a little too public. MSNBC's Jeremy Gaines responded
Speaker 1: again with some irrefutable refutations. Nobody named Susan worked for
Speaker 1: my agent. In fact, nobody at all worked for my agent.
Speaker 1: She was independent. She had a working relationship with a
Speaker 1: small agency in Los Angeles, and basically they covered her
Speaker 1: phone calls when she was on vacation, which she almost
Speaker 1: never was, because she never left the top of Mount
Speaker 1: effing Shasta. We called that agency and they confirmed that
Speaker 1: not only did they not have anybody working for them
Speaker 1: named Susan, but nobody from that agency was even on
Speaker 1: the East Coast or had been so far that entire year.
Speaker 1: At this point I called the television columnist of the
Speaker 1: New York Post and off the record, explained to him
Speaker 1: that I was kind of furious, and this time I
Speaker 1: was actually going to sue, but that NBC was far
Speaker 1: angrier than I was, and that they were going to
Speaker 1: sue as well, and sue the editor of page six. Personally,
Speaker 1: I calmly went through the facts of this. This guy,
Speaker 1: the TV guy, had a conscience, he sighed. He said
Speaker 1: he got those kind of calls more often than I
Speaker 1: would believe. And I said, no, I believe it. And
Speaker 1: he said he would go to the editor of page
Speaker 1: six and explained somebody was lying to him, the editor,
Speaker 1: and he was going to get himself sued into bankruptcy
Speaker 1: over a really obviously untrue and completely disproved story. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now a couple hours later, New York Post Page
Speaker 1: six calls again demanding a comment from me on the
Speaker 1: third different version of their exhaustive papals scoop. No. The
Speaker 1: woman their witness heard, who they first said was my agent,
Speaker 1: then said she had gotten it wrong. It was a
Speaker 1: woman named Susan who worked for my agent. She had
Speaker 1: now become a woman who worked for my agent, whose
Speaker 1: name the witness never heard. But she was talking to
Speaker 1: somebody else named Susan. And there was an additional quote
Speaker 1: now thrown in, I'll be dealing this all day now,
Speaker 1: had morphed into I'll be dealing with this all day now.
Speaker 1: The same week Peter Jennings makes his announcement about having
Speaker 1: lung cancer, this idiot, a frequent critic of President Bush,
Speaker 1: is sitting around in his pajamas calling me about this.
Speaker 1: I'll spare you how I know this was not true.
Speaker 1: It has something to do with the fact that I
Speaker 1: don't wear pajamas. Years later, a former gossip reporter in
Speaker 1: Murdoch's employ explained to me that his celebrity and gossip
Speaker 1: people are taught never to back down from a confrontation,
Speaker 1: and that if the subject of one of their hit
Speaker 1: jobs fires back or tries to refute, or especially threatens
Speaker 1: legal action, to keep making the story worse and worse
Speaker 1: for them. And in the first decade of this century, anyway,
Speaker 1: you were supposed to try to work in a defense
Speaker 1: of George W. Bush but there's also what she said.
Speaker 1: They called an emergency exit. If there is no question
Speaker 1: that the story is nonsensical, if the basic spine of
Speaker 1: the story does not line up with provable facts, just
Speaker 1: abandon it. Abandon it. Don't tell the subject of your
Speaker 1: attack that you are abandoning it. Just don't make any
Speaker 1: more phone calls, don't send it any more emails about it.
Speaker 1: Just vanish. Just disappear the story, and then send the
Speaker 1: name of the subject of the story that you've just punted.
Speaker 1: Send it around to all the other Murdoch operations to
Speaker 1: see if they can come up with any dirt on
Speaker 1: the subject, to punish them for fighting back against Rupert
Speaker 1: Murdoch's lies. So they abandoned the story, and it took
Speaker 1: the New York Post a year and a half to
Speaker 1: get me back, and to get back the Department of
Speaker 1: Homeland Security and the FBI. On September twenty six, two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, I opened an envelope bearing a California
Speaker 1: postmark at my home in New York. I shouldn't have
Speaker 1: done it, but bluntly, I'll confess to this, I thought
Speaker 1: it was some baseball cards I had bought off eBay
Speaker 1: Well it wasn't. The envelope contained a sticky substance looked
Speaker 1: like draino mixed with talcum powder, and it fell out,
Speaker 1: and accompanying notes said it was anthrax. Now I and
Speaker 1: other Liberals would get a taste of our own medicine.
Speaker 1: Even reading those chilling words and having covered the actual
Speaker 1: anthrax letters terrorist attacks of two thousand and one when
Speaker 1: I was with CNN, I knew it was an anthrax.
Speaker 1: The guy who supposedly sent the actual anthrax in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one was an expert in the field, and
Speaker 1: even he masshandled the stuff so badly that supposedly he
Speaker 1: gave himself anthrax and died of it. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: I know the odds were impossible, but what if I
Speaker 1: was wrong. My apartment building was filled with little old
Speaker 1: ladies who had lived there since Roosevelt was president. I
Speaker 1: only assumed that meant Franklin, not Theodore. The odds were.
Speaker 1: I don't know one in a billion that it was anthrax.
Speaker 1: But who was I to dismiss this one in a
Speaker 1: billion chance that these little old ladies were going to
Speaker 1: get anthrax? Who was I to make that call? So
Speaker 1: instead I made a call. I called the FBI. Well,
Speaker 1: it was quite an evening. The cops showed up, the
Speaker 1: FBI showed up. They said, of course it's not anthrax,
Speaker 1: but we have to act like it is. Welcome to
Speaker 1: our new world. The hazmat squad came in. They set
Speaker 1: up a command post in the building. They swept my
Speaker 1: apartment and they said, okay, now you have to go
Speaker 1: to the emergency room for tests. And I said, it's
Speaker 1: not anthrax. You just said so. And they said, if
Speaker 1: we have to do this, you have to do this too.
Speaker 1: I laughed. Plus, if you don't, we can arrest you
Speaker 1: as a threat to public health, and we can make
Speaker 1: you go to the hospital. So out I went into
Speaker 1: an ambulance dressed in a hazmat suit one size too
Speaker 1: small that really cut in the groin. I spent the
Speaker 1: night getting checked out. The FBI then called and said,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like draino with ivory soap flakes. But
Speaker 1: they also said there had been other letters that had
Speaker 1: arrived that night and the night before, sent to people
Speaker 1: like the chairman of CBS and David Letterman's office, and
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi and some poor guy who happened to have
Speaker 1: the name John Stewart, who was not the John Stuart.
Speaker 1: And they couldn't make me do this, but it would
Speaker 1: really help if I did not report what happened on
Speaker 1: my TV show that night, just for the one day,
Speaker 1: do it tomorrow, because they had a lead on the
Speaker 1: guy who had sent all these letters and they didn't
Speaker 1: want to scare them off. And I said, sure, I'm
Speaker 1: a patriot. The next day, while we were still observing
Speaker 1: the embargo on the story, my story, planning to run
Speaker 1: it at eight o'clock at night, New York Post page
Speaker 1: six led with a picture of me with the headline
Speaker 1: powder Puff spooks Keith and making sure to identify me
Speaker 1: as quote, a frequent critic of President Bush's policies. The
Speaker 1: New York Post mocked me for not just assuming it
Speaker 1: was fake antrax and ignoring it, and claimed I insisted
Speaker 1: the cops should take me to the hospital. Quote whether
Speaker 1: they gave him a lollipop on the way out isn't known.
Speaker 1: By the way, one of the actual anthrax letters in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, one of the letters with actual
Speaker 1: anthrax in it that got some people sick and killed
Speaker 1: a little old lady, had been mailed to the New
Speaker 1: York post and one of their staffers had contracted anthrax,
Speaker 1: and still this was their attitude towards anthrax threats. Anyway,
Speaker 1: as it turned out, there was a guy in California
Speaker 1: sending out these threatening letters, each with fake antras, to
Speaker 1: about a dozen people. He sent me four of them. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: I soon knew the FBI guys by their first names.
Speaker 1: I pointed out to FBI Doug that the last envelope
Speaker 1: I received had a bar code on it. Maybe they
Speaker 1: could track the guy that way, and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: you're right, And the next time I knew the FBI
Speaker 1: had just videotaped the suspect mailing yet another letter to me,
Speaker 1: the fifth from his home in Woodland Hills, California, and
Speaker 1: I swear to god he actually lived in his mother's
Speaker 1: basement at age thirty seven or something. And FBI Doug said,
Speaker 1: do we have your permission to pull a letter out
Speaker 1: of the mailbox and open it? I said sure, And
Speaker 1: the next thing I knew the guy was sentenced to
Speaker 1: prison for like eighteen months, but not before FBI Doug said,
Speaker 1: by the way, that barcode, you noticed it. It connected
Speaker 1: to the post office here, and that's where we found
Speaker 1: his address, and we also found the fact that he
Speaker 1: purchased a postal money order for fifteen dollars made out
Speaker 1: to the Catherine Harris for Florida Senate campaign, if you
Speaker 1: remember her from Gore V. Bush and his online history.
Speaker 1: We looked that all up. It's all about how she
Speaker 1: Catherine Harris and some woman Na Laura something or another.
Speaker 1: They are the most beautiful women in history. And I said, Laura,
Speaker 1: Laura Ingram, and FBI Doug said, yeah, that's it, Laura Ingraham.
Speaker 1: And if that isn't ten years of my life in
Speaker 1: one sentence, courtesy of the New York effing Post, I
Speaker 1: don't know what is. I've done all the damage I
Speaker 1: can do here. Thank you for listening. We're now back
Speaker 1: to five episodes a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern.
Speaker 1: Follow me for the podcast promo videos on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and tube face. Once again, there is a Monday countdown
Speaker 1: at least through the election whatever happens after that. Please
Speaker 1: send this podcast to somebody who does not know they
Speaker 1: need to listen, but they should. We have a new
Speaker 1: addition to the staff, Kit has joined us. In fact,
Speaker 1: Kit and Ted sat through these last two segments. Ted
Speaker 1: is already asleep, and Kit, who is four months old,
Speaker 1: is looking up at me quizically like what the hell
Speaker 1: are you talking about? As often Brian Ray and John
Speaker 1: Phillip Shaneil the musical directors have countdown, have looked at me.
Speaker 1: They have arranged, produced and performed most of our music.
Speaker 1: Mister Shanelle handling orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on
Speaker 1: the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
Speaker 1: Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best
Speaker 1: baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is
Speaker 1: the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Speaker 1: Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed
Speaker 1: by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was
Speaker 1: my friend Dennis Leary, and everything else was as usual,
Speaker 1: pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for today. Two
Speaker 1: weeks and five days until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
Speaker 1: the one three hundred and eighty first day since convicted
Speaker 1: feldon dissociative fugue Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the
Speaker 1: democratically elected government of the United States, use the election,
Speaker 1: use the mental health system, use presidential immunity to keep
Speaker 1: him from doing it again while we still have a
Speaker 1: chance to do so. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Bulletins as the news requires. Till then, I'm Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
Speaker 1: with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 2: Gusts