Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. We
Speaker 1: rightfully fear a Donald Trump dictatorship. Right now, however, we
Speaker 1: are being ruled by a Samuel Alito dictatorship, and right
Speaker 1: now we have to take measures to overthrow it. Caught
Speaker 1: flying one insurrectionist flag at his Virginia home while he
Speaker 1: was at judicating cases that could have benefited the Trump
Speaker 1: coup attempt, Alito simply lied about it, claiming he had
Speaker 1: no role in it, then contradicted himself by telling a
Speaker 1: backstory of petty personal recrimination involving his wife and neighbors,
Speaker 1: a backstory which had its own set of lies. And
Speaker 1: now we know that that entire story was at best
Speaker 1: a lie of omission, because when Alito was caught improperly
Speaker 1: flying a disqualifying insurrectionist symbol in public at his primary
Speaker 1: home in twenty twenty one, he was still continuing to
Speaker 1: hide the fact that through much or all of last
Speaker 1: summer he was flying a different disqualifying insurrectionist symbol in
Speaker 1: public at his vacation home in New Jersey. It is,
Speaker 1: as you know by now, the Appeal to Heaven flag,
Speaker 1: the Appeal to Heaven flag stolen by groups of Christo
Speaker 1: fascists from its historical role in our founding revolution and
Speaker 1: repurposed by them to rationalize a fundamentalist religious dictatorship replacing
Speaker 1: representative government in our country. As The New York Times
Speaker 1: noted in reporting this story, quote, the phrase appeal to
Speaker 1: heaven comes from the seventeenth century philosopher John Locke, who
Speaker 1: wrote of a responsibility to rebel, even use violence to
Speaker 1: overthrow unjust rule. Quote it's a paraphrase for trial by arms.
Speaker 1: Anthony Grafton, a historian at Princeton University, said in an
Speaker 1: interview Unquote it's a paraphrase for trial by arms. And
Speaker 1: it's been flying in public view from Samuel Alito's home.
Speaker 1: And this is not merely the kind of anti democracy
Speaker 1: symbol of the so called distress flag, the US flag
Speaker 1: flown upside down. This one, the Jersey flag, is an
Speaker 1: implied call to violence, and Alito flew it, or let
Speaker 1: it be flown, from his vacation home in Long Beach Island,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. For much of last summer, Alito had yet
Speaker 1: to comment on this extraordinary, indefensible violation of the most
Speaker 1: minimal standard of judicial impartiality and loyalty to the Constitution.
Speaker 1: Presumably he was too busy trying to figure out who
Speaker 1: to blame the flying of this flag on. It goes
Speaker 1: without saying that if there were any remaining ethical or
Speaker 1: even political justifications for permitting Alito to remain on our
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, they have now come to an end. There
Speaker 1: are no traditional means to remove him from his position.
Speaker 1: He and Clarence Thomas and John Roberts and the three
Speaker 1: Trump whores they serve with are untouchable. Certainly they think
Speaker 1: they are. There are only three ways to proceed, and
Speaker 1: all should be used. If you will harken back to
Speaker 1: yesterday's episode, I noted the Bloomberg News report on increasing
Speaker 1: indications from political polsters and focus group stages that voters
Speaker 1: from all political extremes have suddenly begun to view the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court as rogue, as dangerous, as unpredictable. If running
Speaker 1: a campaign to expand the Court or to purge its
Speaker 1: corrupted members like Alito seems too strong or too risky
Speaker 1: right now, at minimum, democrats from local city candidates to
Speaker 1: President Biden must adopt, as at least one of their
Speaker 1: campaign strategies, a direct statement that they will rein in
Speaker 1: this renegade, anti democracy, anti woman, anti minority, anti American,
Speaker 1: collection of theocrats and political zealots who have hijacked the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. Secondly, there must be hearings by the Senate
Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Chairman Durbin of Illinois should have an outline ready by
Speaker 1: a week from Monday of what he wants and from who,
Speaker 1: and he should prioritize it ahead of all other business.
Speaker 1: As Brian Boitler suggested, if he fears that subpoenas to
Speaker 1: Alito and Thomas and the others would be ignored, he
Speaker 1: can instead subpoena the three liberals and have them testify
Speaker 1: to what the fascists like Alito are saying in private
Speaker 1: and to what they Jackson, Kagan, Sotomayor have really meant
Speaker 1: by their alarming cryptic brief criticisms of Alito and the others. Thirdly,
Speaker 1: if necessary, we may be placed in a position of
Speaker 1: having to ignore the Supreme Court the way Abraham Lincoln did.
Speaker 1: This would require the president's re election and in theory
Speaker 1: both retention of the Senate and gaining control of the House.
Speaker 1: Although the latter two are not really mandatory, it may
Speaker 1: come down to this. Ultimately, the message to Roberts and
Speaker 1: Alito may have to be in effect. You have made
Speaker 1: your ruling on such and such a case. Now, how
Speaker 1: exactly do you expect to be able to enforce it?
Speaker 1: Translation you and what army? Because the appeal to heaven
Speaker 1: flag that Alito has been flying is an exhortation to
Speaker 1: physical violence, and we need to be prepared for that.
Speaker 1: The people who would, by any means available, turn this
Speaker 1: country into a religious dictatorship, a kind of westernized Iran,
Speaker 1: have already overtaken one political party. This same flag sits
Speaker 1: outside the office of Speaker Mike Johnson and other representatives,
Speaker 1: including Bobert and Chip Roy right now, and now we
Speaker 1: learn at least one member of the Supreme Court's home
Speaker 1: and if these are their rules, now we must beat
Speaker 1: them at their own game, because sam Alito is a prejudiced, dishonest, lazy,
Speaker 1: proselytizing fraud with a Messiah complex and an agenda, an
Speaker 1: agenda not to serve the law, not the democracy, not
Speaker 1: the nation, but his own religious beliefs. If it was
Speaker 1: not obvious before, it is unavoidable now. He is intent
Speaker 1: on turning the Supreme Court into the Republican Supreme religious
Speaker 1: court and intent on turning this nation into a theocracy.
Speaker 1: He may have already done the former and is well
Speaker 1: on his way towards the latter. He had revealed this
Speaker 1: bit by bit for years. Then in twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: he pretty much stopped pretending. Quote it goes without saying
Speaker 1: that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions
Speaker 1: and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit, Alito
Speaker 1: said then, in response to a stark but actually mild
Speaker 1: reality check from Justice Atlanta Kagan. But saying or implying
Speaker 1: that the Court is becoming an illegitimate institution, or questioning
Speaker 1: our integrity crosses an important line, of course, Alito, and
Speaker 1: this Court already had no integrity left to be questioned.
Speaker 1: And this was before we found out about his flag collection.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, sixty seven percent of this country said
Speaker 1: it had a great deal or fair amount of trust
Speaker 1: in the Supreme Court. Last year, the number was still
Speaker 1: at about fifty four percent. It is now forty seven percent.
Speaker 1: The Court's job approval in twenty twenty was fifty eight percent.
Speaker 1: It is now forty percent. The political majority has not
Speaker 1: changed on the Court since twenty twenty indeed, it has
Speaker 1: not changed since nineteen seventy. The citizens of this country
Speaker 1: have not been the ones who politicized their view of
Speaker 1: the court. Mister Ledo and the frauds with whom he
Speaker 1: sits have politicized the Court beyond this nation's ability to
Speaker 1: withstand it anymore. And it is Alito and the frauds
Speaker 1: with whom he sits who have now substituted the Bible
Speaker 1: for the Constitution. The very worst moments, said Justice Kagan,
Speaker 1: of the Court's history, have been times when judges have
Speaker 1: even essentially reflected one parties or one one ideology set
Speaker 1: of views in their legal decisions. The thing that builds
Speaker 1: up reservoirs of public confidence is the court acting like
Speaker 1: a court and not acting like an extension of the
Speaker 1: political process. If over time the court loses all connection
Speaker 1: with the public and with public sentiment, that is a
Speaker 1: dangerous thing for democracy. It would be nice to have
Speaker 1: Justice Kaigan questioned forced to speak on the record in
Speaker 1: front of the Senate as to exactly what caused her
Speaker 1: to say that you already know I think of sam
Speaker 1: Alito's speech in Rome July twenty twenty two at the
Speaker 1: Notre Dame Religious Freedom Summit, which, as with most religious conferences,
Speaker 1: was misnamed and was actually the Notre Dame Religious You
Speaker 1: have no freedom but to obey us summit. You may
Speaker 1: have heard him mock the world leaders who were appalled
Speaker 1: by the court's de dishonest overturn of Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 1: with its reliance on the legal wisdom of a judge
Speaker 1: who used to oversee the hanging of witches. You may
Speaker 1: have heard Alito bash secular values and the quote new
Speaker 1: moral code. You probably, though did not hear him, Tell
Speaker 1: the following meaningless anecdote, and tell it with the gravity
Speaker 1: of someone who has just watched the burning of I
Speaker 1: was going to say the Constitution, but obviously I really mean,
Speaker 1: in Alito's case, somebody's just watched the burning of something sacred.
Speaker 1: The appeal to heaven flagged.
Speaker 2: I'm reminded of an experience I had a number of
Speaker 2: years ago in a museum in.
Speaker 1: Berlin.
Speaker 2: One of the exhibits was a rustic wooden cross. An
Speaker 2: affluent woman, a well dressed woman, and a young boy
Speaker 2: were looking at this exhibit, and the young boy turned
Speaker 2: to the woman, presumably his mother, and said.
Speaker 1: Who is that man?
Speaker 2: That memory has stuck in my mind as a harbinger
Speaker 2: of what may lie ahead for our culture.
Speaker 1: Alito believes it is his job. It is the job
Speaker 1: of an American judge, It is the job of the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. It is the job of the United States
Speaker 1: of America to force citizens to be able to identify
Speaker 1: a man who may or may not have ever existed.
Speaker 1: To also force them to honor the businesses that have
Speaker 1: built themselves into world influencing corporations by attributing quotes to
Speaker 1: this potentially fictional character, And to force us to defer
Speaker 1: to the interpretations of this man who may or may
Speaker 1: not have ever lived, about what the laws of the
Speaker 1: United States of America should be, and who the President
Speaker 1: of the United States of America should be, and if
Speaker 1: we should have a president of the United States of
Speaker 1: America or if a king or dictator would be better.
Speaker 1: For the church, there is one last vital point about
Speaker 1: what Samuel Alito said and the danger it represents and
Speaker 1: the necessity for action that it causes. When Alito said
Speaker 1: questioning the Court's integrity, quote crosses an important line. What
Speaker 1: does he mean? What does he believe should be done
Speaker 1: after that line is crossed? As he seemed to say
Speaker 1: Kagan had crossed it. I believe the answer is far
Speaker 1: more ominous than is currently being realized. Two years ago.
Speaker 1: Next month, I tweeted, and forgive the self quote, it
Speaker 1: has become necessary to dissolve the Supreme Court of the
Speaker 1: United States. The first step is for a state the
Speaker 1: Court has now forced guns upon to ignore this ruling.
Speaker 1: Great your court, why and how do you think you
Speaker 1: can enforce your rulings? Ignore the court? A few days later,
Speaker 1: Senator Marco Rubio of Florida retweeted my remarks and added,
Speaker 1: it is a federal offense to incite rebellion or insurrection
Speaker 1: against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof.
Speaker 1: First I thought he meant it for Trump to read
Speaker 1: and just got the name wrong. What Rubio, in fact
Speaker 1: Paul but said there What Alito has opaquely danced around
Speaker 1: when asserting that questioning the Court's integrity crosses an important
Speaker 1: line is that they intend not just to complete the
Speaker 1: job of corrupting the Supreme Court and using it to
Speaker 1: convert this nation into a theocracy, and not just to
Speaker 1: suppress criticism of a corrupt, prostituted Supreme Court, but to
Speaker 1: criminalize criticism of the court. If Marco Rubio could look
Speaker 1: at a tweet from some guy calling for states to
Speaker 1: ignore court rulings, which by the way, is one of
Speaker 1: the core values of his Republican party and which was
Speaker 1: bracketed historically. We now find out by Justice alit so
Speaker 1: hanging one insurrectionist flag at one of his homes and
Speaker 1: a worse flag at another one of his homes. If
Speaker 1: Rubio could look at that and imply that I am
Speaker 1: guilty of inciting rebellion and insurrection by tweeting, then, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we have to take Alito's referencing to saying or implying
Speaker 1: that the Court is becoming an illegitimate institution. For questioning
Speaker 1: our integrity crosses an important line. Not as a defensive
Speaker 1: Holier than Thou spasm, but as a threat. Samuel Alito
Speaker 1: is a threat to the United States of America, and
Speaker 1: we must defend our nation. The would be dictatorships are
Speaker 1: stacked up so thick they have to wait for permission
Speaker 1: to land in a surprise announcement. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has declared himself dead. They were authorized to
Speaker 1: shoot me, begins his email to try to con more
Speaker 1: money out of his dumbest cult members. Quote, I nearly
Speaker 1: escaped death. Uh, I nearly escaped death. I mean, so
Speaker 1: you did you? You didn't? You didn't escape death? I
Speaker 1: nearly escaped death. Well, that's certainly would explain the cognitive
Speaker 1: decline of his wouldn't it? All jokes aside? And metaphorically speaking,
Speaker 1: Trump may actually be right. Something big has changed this week.
Speaker 1: If it is foddled up upon, it will be with
Speaker 1: us through the election, It will expand, and it will
Speaker 1: help us fight back against the mass stupidity the extraordinarily
Speaker 1: uninformed part of the electorate Trump was writing to. There,
Speaker 1: the teeming millions of morons who were shown a standard
Speaker 1: boilerplate authorization given to every FBI agent and virtually every
Speaker 1: policeman in this country every day, every hour, and who,
Speaker 1: having been shown this in the Bill Hicks line like
Speaker 1: a dog being shown a card trick, are now convinced
Speaker 1: or pretending to be convinced, that it was a death
Speaker 1: warrant issued by Biden against Trump. Obviously, Biden didn't do that.
Speaker 1: What he did, what he changed was he and those
Speaker 1: around him apparently decided yesterday Tuesday, maybe earlier, to take
Speaker 1: the foot off the break, to pull out the stops.
Speaker 1: They have decided, Yes, we will call Donald Trump all
Speaker 1: those things. He is a loser, a madman, a fascist,
Speaker 1: and after this week and the Unified Reich video, an
Speaker 1: anti Semite.
Speaker 3: This on his official account, Wow, a Unified Reich.
Speaker 1: That Sitler's line.
Speaker 4: Greaves, that's not America's.
Speaker 1: Took to social media and highlighted language from Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1: Highlighted language from Nazi Germany.
Speaker 4: A last person I'm going to take advice from as
Speaker 4: a Jewish person is a known anti semi who's had
Speaker 4: dinner with anti Semits, who said there was good people
Speaker 4: on both sides after Charlottesville. He's a last person I'm
Speaker 4: going to take advice.
Speaker 1: From president, vice president and the first gentleman calling an
Speaker 1: anti semite an anti semite. It is a start. Those
Speaker 1: are the terms that must be used about Trump every
Speaker 1: day from now to the election. Every day. Do not
Speaker 1: get caught up in the well. They only reposted the
Speaker 1: work of a fan fiction guy using a cheap online template.
Speaker 1: It turns out that cheap online template that spewed out
Speaker 1: the Unified Reich filth could have been easily reset to
Speaker 1: not include those words and to replace them with any
Speaker 1: other words in human communication. Trump reposted it Reich, and
Speaker 1: it's not a month since Trump had boasted that only
Speaker 1: he and Dance Gabino are permitted to post on his account.
Speaker 1: This talk of some staffer doing it without checking is
Speaker 1: a typical Trump. Why Trump reposted it because he wants
Speaker 1: his cult to know he remains the same anti semi
Speaker 1: he was six months ago, and sixteen months ago and
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. He goes through this every month, so
Speaker 1: they don't have any doubts about him. We go through
Speaker 1: this every month, and inexplicably, we continue to try to
Speaker 1: manufacture doubts he's a Nazi. Trump plays your roundup of
Speaker 1: the great anti Semitic hits. He has insisted repeatedly that
Speaker 1: American Jews quote, have to get their act together before
Speaker 1: it is too late. He has repeatedly pushed the calumny
Speaker 1: that Jews are loyal to is not to the United States.
Speaker 1: At the White House on Hanukkah, he referred to your country.
Speaker 1: He meant Israel. He had dinner with the avowedly anti
Speaker 1: Semitic Nick Fuentes and Kanye West. He praised Hitler to
Speaker 1: former Chief of Staff John Kelly, and of course, the
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair article from nineteen ninety quote if Anna Trump
Speaker 1: told her lawyer that from time to time her husband
Speaker 1: reads a book of Hitler's collected speeches which he keeps
Speaker 1: in a cabinet by his bed, which was confirmed by
Speaker 1: the former Chief of Gulf and Western and Paramount Marty Davis,
Speaker 1: who gave Trump that book. This is not a complicated calculation.
Speaker 1: If Trump determined today that he could get elected by
Speaker 1: beginning a full fledged attack on Jewish people, Jewish influence, whatever,
Speaker 1: he'd do it. When we speak of him as having
Speaker 1: the soul of a mass murderer, that's what we mean.
Speaker 1: People do not have any actual value to him. Reenact
Speaker 1: the Holocaust in whole or in part to get reelected
Speaker 1: to stay out of jail. Of course he'll do that,
Speaker 1: and to any group you could name. If he became
Speaker 1: convinced that he could regain the White House by rounding
Speaker 1: up and killing all the left handed people, he would
Speaker 1: do it. In March of this year, he introduced whole
Speaker 1: new Hitler ploys. The whole January sixth hostages thing is
Speaker 1: just a replay of how Hitler used to talk about
Speaker 1: Nazi Party members who had been jailed. Trump's reverence for
Speaker 1: Ashley Babbitt. That's just a replay of Hitler's constant invocation
Speaker 1: of horse vessel shot by the Communists and the idea
Speaker 1: of having that second national anthem, that creepy thing he
Speaker 1: plays at his bund rallies, that's just stolen from the
Speaker 1: Germans and they used it until nineteen forty five and
Speaker 1: called it the horse vessel song. I don't know how
Speaker 1: this could be any clearer. The terminology must be used,
Speaker 1: and it must get stronger as election day nears. Today
Speaker 1: we call him an anti semi. Tomorrow I want to
Speaker 1: hear the first gentleman call Trump a Nazi. Because whatever
Speaker 1: the deeper psychology of Trump, from being a disturbed and
Speaker 1: apparently homicidal child, through adulthood and now into old age,
Speaker 1: when deterioration has been added to this fatal mix, there
Speaker 1: is a simple through line. He craves money and power.
Speaker 1: He does not feel alive without both everything and everyone
Speaker 1: else he pretends to like and love. He does so
Speaker 1: because he believes it or they can get him money
Speaker 1: and power. There are no other genuine emotions. If he
Speaker 1: could win the election by imprisoning America's Jews, he'd do it.
Speaker 1: If he could win the election by forcibly converting the
Speaker 1: Gentiles to Jews. He'd do that, In fact, he do
Speaker 1: them both one day after the other, if that would work.
Speaker 1: And therein lies the ultimate danger of Trump's particular version
Speaker 1: of anti Semitism, and why he must be called on
Speaker 1: it every day. It is actually a moral He can
Speaker 1: switch it on or off as the moment requires. Today
Speaker 1: he is defending Jews and claiming his political opponents are
Speaker 1: attacking them and endangering their country. Tomorrow he will again
Speaker 1: be insisting that they are endangering him by being loyal
Speaker 1: to their country. Of the thousand different madnesses of Trump,
Speaker 1: this one may be the most dangerous. And we are
Speaker 1: reminded again that of the thousand different madnesses of the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, including its most influential justice, the Flag Collector,
Speaker 1: the most dangerous one is that its majority sees this
Speaker 1: scumbag Trump as a through which it can impose its
Speaker 1: theocracy to replace the democracy the Supreme Court seeks to murder.
Speaker 1: Also of interest here, Jim Jordan says something stupid about
Speaker 1: Alito and Thomas, but it's actually funny, and god damn it,
Speaker 1: we could use some funny right about now. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman stell
Speaker 1: ahead of us on this edition to Countdown. I ran
Speaker 1: into al Roker at the Annimal Hospital the other day,
Speaker 1: so after he left I had to tell my friends
Speaker 1: there my matt Lower stories. So let me tell them
Speaker 1: to you too. Ahead in things I promised not to tell.
Speaker 1: I lied, But first, as ever, there are still new
Speaker 1: idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miss Grits,
Speaker 1: morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days
Speaker 1: Where in the world are the worst persons in the world,
Speaker 1: the bronze worse the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. In polling,
Speaker 1: his Conservative Party is down by an average of twenty
Speaker 1: one points to the Labor Party. The conservatives big cell
Speaker 1: at the moment is that they're finally going to start
Speaker 1: expelling immigrants and sending them to Rwanda, and the government
Speaker 1: would be allowed to stay in office until New Year's Day.
Speaker 1: But yesterday's Sunac called what the Brits referred to as
Speaker 1: a snap election on July fourth. This July fourth, July fourth,
Speaker 1: good Calling says the continuity of British government like putting
Speaker 1: it up for a vote on the fourth of July.
Speaker 1: Every parliamentary seat will be voted on forty three days
Speaker 1: from now. Now, I'll have to say nothing pleases me
Speaker 1: more than the idea that you could have an election,
Speaker 1: say an election in this country for the chief executive
Speaker 1: officer of the nation, and have the entire campaign last
Speaker 1: only six weeks and one day. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: who exactly runs mister Sunac's optics. He bounded out of
Speaker 1: Number ten Downing Street to a famous outdoor podium to
Speaker 1: announce the election, and within seconds, sirens from police vehicles
Speaker 1: driving by drowned him out. And that was met metaphorically.
Speaker 1: Then came the literal part. That's when it started to rain.
Speaker 1: It rained so hard, so fast that water collected in
Speaker 1: tiny puddles on the Prime Minister's suit. Somebody somewhere then
Speaker 1: probably turned on a rival public address system and played
Speaker 1: a song called things can Only Get Better.
Speaker 5: Earlier today, I spoke with His Majesty the King to
Speaker 5: request the dissolution of Parliament. The King has granted this
Speaker 5: request and we will have a general election on the
Speaker 5: fourth of July. This election will take place at a
Speaker 5: time when the world is more dangerous than it has
Speaker 5: been since the end of.
Speaker 1: The cold the crack. BBC correspondent looks me Gopal reports
Speaker 1: that was things can only get better by a Northern
Speaker 1: Ireland group called d Reem from nineteen ninety four. I
Speaker 1: guess that was the ultimate message for the poor Prime minister,
Speaker 1: since as he finished his message and turned his back
Speaker 1: on the cameras and went back inside Number ten, he
Speaker 1: did not slip on the soaked street and do a
Speaker 1: face plant. But for goodness sakes, how bad are things there?
Speaker 1: Catch you buy this man a weather app? And what
Speaker 1: did he find waiting for himself? Indoor reports that his
Speaker 1: Conservative members of Parliament are now planning to try to
Speaker 1: oust him as party leader and thus as Prime Minister
Speaker 1: before the election forty three days from now, because he
Speaker 1: called the election forty three days from now. I'd just
Speaker 1: like to add this, Liz Trusts tanned, rested and ready.
Speaker 1: The runner up worser Larry Hogan, the lame duck governor
Speaker 1: of Maryland running for the Senate. A reasonable Republican but
Speaker 1: still just a Republican, I e. A liar. Hogan has
Speaker 1: posted his first campaign video and with it he has written,
Speaker 1: as governor, I promise to uphold Maryland law on abortion,
Speaker 1: and I kept my word in the Senate. I will
Speaker 1: support legislation that makes row the law of Land in
Speaker 1: every state so every woman gets the reproductive care she needs,
Speaker 1: because no one should come between a woman and her doctor.
Speaker 1: Sounds very nice, but it was left to David Simon,
Speaker 1: the Baltimorean and O Tour of the Wire series to
Speaker 1: note that mister Hogan was not being completely honest or
Speaker 1: honest at all, or, as Simon put it, quote callo
Speaker 1: lying mook. Larry Hogan, your veto had to be overridden
Speaker 1: by the Democratic legislature, and then you withheld funds as
Speaker 1: a means of undermining the ability of Maryland women to
Speaker 1: control their own bodies. And now you have the nerve
Speaker 1: to tweet this dishonesty. Well, of course, David Simon that
Speaker 1: he had the nerve to tweet that dishonesty. He's in
Speaker 1: the party of if all the other Republicans, but the
Speaker 1: winner the worst. Good old Jim Jordan, with one of
Speaker 1: his typical simplistic tweets, quote, America needs more justice Thomas
Speaker 1: and justice Alito and less Wan Mershan. Well, then here's
Speaker 1: good news for you, Jim Jordan. Republican. If you want
Speaker 1: more of Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, all you need
Speaker 1: is cash him stepped on another rake Jordan two days
Speaker 1: worst Parson.
Speaker 2: And now.
Speaker 1: To the number one story on the Countdown and my
Speaker 1: favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
Speaker 1: And somebody asked me the other day, whatever happened to
Speaker 1: Matt Lower? And I said, I don't know, but I
Speaker 1: hope it was unpleasant. If the name Matt Lower is
Speaker 1: remembered at all today, it is for two facts. One
Speaker 1: but he was the face of NBC News until November
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, twenty seventeen, when the network suddenly announced there
Speaker 1: were credible allegations against him of sexual misconduct and that
Speaker 1: he had been fired, effective immediately. And two the lesser
Speaker 1: known fact that everybody at NBC knew he He was
Speaker 1: an evil figure who dominated all of management at thirty
Speaker 1: Rock and in many cases coerced them into looking the
Speaker 1: other way, despite decades of abuse of women employees and
Speaker 1: of bullying and retribution against male employees, including other people
Speaker 1: on TV. This was so well known inside NBC News
Speaker 1: that even some of us who had left and had
Speaker 1: been gone for years knew. In advance he was to
Speaker 1: be fired. I found out like four days before it happened.
Speaker 1: And much of the bad conduct, at least the bad
Speaker 1: conduct in the office involving the male employees, I saw
Speaker 1: happen in real time. When I returned to NBC in
Speaker 1: February two thousand and three, I was one of Lower's favorites.
Speaker 1: For some reason, My show Countdown was the last program
Speaker 1: he watched before he went to sleep, or maybe more correctly,
Speaker 1: before he went to bed. He used to do these
Speaker 1: moronic where in the world is Matt Lower segments in
Speaker 1: which it created video clues as to his whereabouts that
Speaker 1: would run on the Today And one day one of
Speaker 1: his producers called and said Lower was such a fan
Speaker 1: of Countdown he wanted to do a special clue just
Speaker 1: for Countdown. Well, we had like two hundred thousand viewers
Speaker 1: a night. We took whatever we could get some free
Speaker 1: Matt Lower. Sure. By the way, I was reminded recently
Speaker 1: that one MSNBC wag used to answer that rhetorical question
Speaker 1: where in the world is Matt Lower by answering in
Speaker 1: the bedroom of somebody else's wife. Anyway, Lower, if you
Speaker 1: think the Republican's ability to turn any tragedy into a
Speaker 1: political issue is something new, or that television's ability to
Speaker 1: turn any tragedy into ratings is something new, or that
Speaker 1: Matt Lower's ability to make anything worse was something new.
Speaker 1: Consider the case of Terry Schivo. Terry Schivo was a
Speaker 1: woman in Florida, twenty six years old, struck by cardiac arrest.
Speaker 1: It did not kill her, but it left her in
Speaker 1: a living nightmare. She was in a quote persistent vegetative state,
Speaker 1: not brain dead, but neither was she conscious. And worse,
Speaker 1: her eyes were open and her head moved constantly and
Speaker 1: involuntarily and in a regular pattern. Her parents, I guess,
Speaker 1: understandably unwilling to accept this terrible fate, quickly discovered that
Speaker 1: if you moved a balloon through her hospital room, Terry
Speaker 1: Shibo's head and gaze would seem to follow the balloon. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: if you did not move a balloon through her hospital room,
Speaker 1: Terry Shibo's head and gaze would still follow the same
Speaker 1: exact path as it did when there was a balloon.
Speaker 1: Her husband, Michael, spent seven years in the courts trying
Speaker 1: to get his wife's feeding tube removed and thus release
Speaker 1: her and him and everybody in the family from this
Speaker 1: living hell, and her parents fought him, and finally in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, the parents went public. They showed
Speaker 1: video of their daughter her head following that balloon around
Speaker 1: the hospital room. They contacted it every politician who would
Speaker 1: take their call. The Republican leader in the Senate, doctor
Speaker 1: Bill Frist of Tennessee, a heart surgeon, said on the
Speaker 1: Senate floor that, of course he could not diagnose a
Speaker 1: patient just from a videotape. And then he proceeded to
Speaker 1: diagnose a patient just from a videotape. He said on
Speaker 1: the Senate floor. She should not be taken off life support.
Speaker 1: The Shaivohs eventually got Republicans to pass a bill in
Speaker 1: the House and Senate taking her case away from the
Speaker 1: Florida courts and putting it into the federal courts, and
Speaker 1: President George W. Bush actually flew back from vacation in
Speaker 1: Texas to Washington just to sign that law on camera.
Speaker 1: Of course, this was a topic for all of tabloid television,
Speaker 1: and for all of tabloid television that pretends it is
Speaker 1: not tabloid television, like the Today Show, and it went
Speaker 1: on for months. Eventually, there was a pack of guests
Speaker 1: willing to appear on your show and imply cleverly that
Speaker 1: Michael Shay had caused his wife's vegetative state and was
Speaker 1: now trying to quote finish the job from my own network.
Speaker 1: Joe Scarborough, who had been a lawyer, put on Terry
Speaker 1: Schibo's brother and sister, and they both implied there was
Speaker 1: quote foul play. Joey scars put it this way. I
Speaker 1: am quoting him. They can attack every last person who
Speaker 1: is trying to save this young woman from starvation. But
Speaker 1: in the Americans shocked by this macabre chapter in American politics,
Speaker 1: we'll see the Democrats as the party on the side
Speaker 1: of death and see George Bush as the defender of defenseless.
Speaker 1: Unquote Joe Scarborough MSNBC, Joe Scarborough is a jackass and
Speaker 1: a fraud. If you watch his show, you are getting hustled.
Speaker 1: If you go on his show, there's another word for
Speaker 1: that anyway. Finally, sanity prevailed. A court ordered the feeding
Speaker 1: tube removed in March two thousand and five. Two weeks later,
Speaker 1: Terry shi died. The autopsy showed her brain was half
Speaker 1: its normal size. It had been irreversibly damaged fifteen years earlier.
Speaker 1: There were no signs of physical trauma, not the slightest
Speaker 1: indication of foul play. In January of two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: I got a phone call. It was Michael Schaivo. He said,
Speaker 1: rather matter of factly, that he had tried to avoid
Speaker 1: watching as the tragedy he and his wife endured was
Speaker 1: turned into a multi network soap opera, but he found
Speaker 1: that there was one reporter who tried to balance the
Speaker 1: hysteria and to treat him fairly, and that that was me.
Speaker 1: And he wanted to know if I wanted to be
Speaker 1: the first person to interview him. Nothing fancy, he said.
Speaker 1: This guy, Matt Lower, he said, had been calling him
Speaker 1: once a week and wanted to walk with him on
Speaker 1: the beaches of Florida and do a three hour interview
Speaker 1: for Today in Nightly News and Dateline and MSNBC. Michael
Speaker 1: Chaibo didn't want to do any of that, and he
Speaker 1: didn't like Matt Lauer at all, and he was thinking
Speaker 1: if he had to sit down with one of the
Speaker 1: celebrity interviewers, it would probably Ben Sawyer, but he hadn't
Speaker 1: made up his mind yet. What Michael Schaibo wondered was
Speaker 1: if he could just go to a studio in Tampa
Speaker 1: one morning before work and have me go to a
Speaker 1: studio in New York and I could interview him remotely
Speaker 1: well naturally, I said yes. So on February first, two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, I got up way earlier than usual.
Speaker 1: I went into thirty Rock, I got into a studio.
Speaker 1: I taped an interview with Michael Schaibo. Bluntly, he was
Speaker 1: as dull an interviewee as I could imagine, and my
Speaker 1: questions were deliberately not hysterical. But it was a good,
Speaker 1: factual interview, and for a network that struggled as much
Speaker 1: as MSNBC, it was a big deal just for journalistic credibility,
Speaker 1: just to balance what we had been playing on the
Speaker 1: Scarborough Show. Everybody at NBC News knew we were doing it.
Speaker 1: We recorded it at NBC News using NBC News control
Speaker 1: rooms and videotape. Everybody knew, including the President of NBC News,
Speaker 1: Steve Campus, and the executive producers of Today Nightly News Dateline,
Speaker 1: all of whom were interested in using clips of the interview.
Speaker 1: After I finished, I went and visited the executive in
Speaker 1: charge of MSNBC in his office at thirty Rock. Then
Speaker 1: I went home and I took a nap before I
Speaker 1: went into MSNBC in the late afternoon to prepare my
Speaker 1: eight pm show. When the phone rang there, it was
Speaker 1: Steve CAPPIs, President of NBC News. Look, you've interfered with
Speaker 1: the Today Show's long standing plans and commitments. We have
Speaker 1: signed contracts with Michael Chaibo. Matt Louer is furious, but
Speaker 1: I understand Chivo offered you this interview, so you couldn't
Speaker 1: have known how you were violating the Today Show. And
Speaker 1: Matt I pointed out that Chibo had said specifically that
Speaker 1: he had not signed anything with anybody. President of NBC
Speaker 1: News ignored this. Here's the offer, Matt and I will
Speaker 1: make you. You don't run the interview tonight, we will
Speaker 1: run a segment of it tomorrow on Today, giving a
Speaker 1: full plug to countdown. Then tomorrow night you can run
Speaker 1: a four minute segment. The rest of your interview can run.
Speaker 1: And I think, despite what you've done to us, your
Speaker 1: interview should run after Matt Lowers does sometime next month.
Speaker 1: I think this is a great idea. Since Matt wants
Speaker 1: me to fire you. I said, this was the dumbest
Speaker 1: thing I had ever heard, which was saying a lot
Speaker 1: since I had spent nearly three years working at Fox.
Speaker 1: There was nothing about our interview that risked Matt Lower's
Speaker 1: prospects of getting his own interview. In fact, it probably
Speaker 1: increased them. I could now pitch Michael Chaibo on Lower's behalf.
Speaker 1: Michael Chabo did not like Lawer. On the other end
Speaker 1: of the phone, Cappus gasped, doesn't like Lower. Don't say that,
Speaker 1: But to bury our interview for a month was crapping
Speaker 1: all over MSNBC and me and Michael Schaibo and journalistically
Speaker 1: it was indefensible and it made me feel like walking out.
Speaker 1: Steve Cappus, whose later boss at NBC told me that
Speaker 1: she fired him for telling her that he would never
Speaker 1: take orders from a woman, began to scream, as I
Speaker 1: noted at the time in my die like a twelve
Speaker 1: year old.
Speaker 3: I offer you a way out and not getting fired
Speaker 3: and not get Matt Lawer on your ass, and you
Speaker 3: threatened to quit.
Speaker 1: I pointed out that I had not threatened to quit.
Speaker 1: I told him that if there really had been a
Speaker 1: contract with Michael Chaivo, even if he had not mentioned
Speaker 1: it to me, any of the one hundred NBC executives
Speaker 1: who had known about my interview with Michael Schaivo for
Speaker 1: like a week would have. I had even sent Brian
Speaker 1: Williams a note asking if there were any specific questions.
Speaker 1: He wanted me to ask Chaivo so he could use
Speaker 1: a clip on NBC Nightly News. Somehow, Kappus began to
Speaker 1: scream again in an even higher pitched voice.
Speaker 3: Matt Lawer advises me to simply kill your interview with
Speaker 3: Michael Schaibo, and I'm trying to find a way out
Speaker 3: for you. You start bringing up ancient history from a week ago.
Speaker 1: He really said that ancient history from a week ago.
Speaker 1: I said, why don't we do it this way? We
Speaker 1: run a thirty second clip tonight, the Today Show runs
Speaker 1: whatever it wants to tomorrow, then we run the rest
Speaker 1: of the U interview tomorrow night and the night after. Well,
Speaker 1: Cappus resumed screaming. So let me see what I got
Speaker 1: this straight. Matt Lauer is incensed over you stepping in
Speaker 1: on his interview. I'm offering you publicity on the Today
Speaker 1: Show and not getting fired. And your answer is we're
Speaker 1: going to run seventeen minutes of it. I'm so impressed
Speaker 1: with your professionalism, Keith. I will always remember how cooperative
Speaker 1: you were. Fine, you do.
Speaker 3: Whatever you want, mister professional. Run the whole half hour tonight.
Speaker 3: Don't you understand television? Matt needs to be able to
Speaker 3: say in his first interview since his wife's death.
Speaker 1: For the fifty third time in my career at NBC News,
Speaker 1: I thought somebody was secretly filming this and making a
Speaker 1: segment on it for I don't know, punked or did
Speaker 1: they still run candid camera? Well, getting back to the
Speaker 1: interview here with Cappus, I said that in a month,
Speaker 1: nobody was going to remember my interview and Matt could
Speaker 1: still say in his first network interview since his wife's death. Well.
Speaker 1: Kappus ignored that too.
Speaker 3: I have been advised to kill the countdown piece outright,
Speaker 3: but you do whatever you want for your little countdown show.
Speaker 3: Go ahead and curry the enmity of Matt lower you
Speaker 3: think he'll forget this Over the next two years, Matt
Speaker 3: Lauer hired away two of my producers, then made a
Speaker 3: supposed peace offering by running a segment that was to
Speaker 3: be produced by my show every Friday on the Today
Speaker 3: Show that required two of my producers to stay up
Speaker 3: all night editing and thus not work on my show
Speaker 3: on Friday. By some strange coincidence, for four consecutive weeks,
Speaker 3: the Countdown piece never ran. It was just more petty revenge.
Speaker 3: The Today Show also booked me as a guest four times,
Speaker 3: canceled all four times, once the morning of my interview
Speaker 3: as I was shaving to go in and do the interview.
Speaker 3: The punchline, of course, my little interview back then with
Speaker 3: Michael Schaibo ran over the next three nights. It did
Speaker 3: not really affect our ratings. It did contribute some tiny
Speaker 3: amount to the tiny amount of actual journalism MSNBC had
Speaker 3: done on the Shibo story. It counterbalanced that schmuck Scarborough.
Speaker 3: And on March twenty six, two thousand and six, the
Speaker 3: Matt Lauer Interview aired with Michael Schaibo, and, as NBC
Speaker 3: publicity phrased it, Michael and his new wife sit down
Speaker 3: for their first network interview with NBC News. Is Matt Lauer?
Speaker 3: Just likek I had suggested, I've.
Speaker 1: Done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip
Speaker 1: Shaneil arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister
Speaker 1: Ray was on the guitars, bass, and drums, and mister
Speaker 1: Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, and it was produced by
Speaker 1: Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven, arranged
Speaker 1: and performed by No Horns Allowed Sports Music is the
Speaker 1: Lderman theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch
Speaker 1: Warren Davis and appears courtesy of ESPN. Our satirical and
Speaker 1: pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust. The best baseball
Speaker 1: stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is my friend Kenny Maine,
Speaker 1: and everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's
Speaker 1: countdown for this, the one hundred and sixty seventh day
Speaker 1: until the twenty twenty four presidential election, and the one thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty fourth day. That's one two three
Speaker 1: four since Dictator J. Trump's first attempted coup against the
Speaker 1: democratically elected government of the United States. Use the legal
Speaker 1: system such as it is, use the mental health system,
Speaker 1: use presidential immunity if it happens, to stop him from
Speaker 1: doing it again while we still can here in New
Speaker 1: York anyway. The Memorial Day weekend began about quarter past
Speaker 1: seven Tuesday night, So I'm gonna give the throat and
Speaker 1: the sinuses a bit of a vacation. The next scheduled
Speaker 1: countdown is Tuesday Bulletins. As the news warrants, I'll be
Speaker 1: on standby for that Trump rally in the South Bronx tonight.
Speaker 1: You never know when sam Alito's gonna fly another freak
Speaker 1: flag somewhere. Maybe this one was over the Supreme Court headquarters.
Speaker 1: Till the next one. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
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