Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Protect
Speaker 1: Elon Musk at all costs, also indict Elon Musk now.
Speaker 1: Also don't let Elon Musk leave the White House. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and
Speaker 1: still remain fully functional. I'm an artist. Since Tuesday night, anyway,
Speaker 1: three opposing viewpoints. For two days now, I've been wondering
Speaker 1: whether to try to get Elon Musk arrested in Wisconsin
Speaker 1: or to send him a gift basket of ketamin and acid,
Speaker 1: all the while fearing that Politico is right, and even
Speaker 1: Trump now realizes Musk couldn't be helping us more if
Speaker 1: he were actually George Soros in a Musk mask. And
Speaker 1: Trump has told cabinet members they're going to phase Musk
Speaker 1: out by the end of May. And first the Press
Speaker 1: Secretary of Softball Scholarships denied this, but by late yesterday
Speaker 1: the fascists were leaking it out via Murdoch's New York Post.
Speaker 1: Musk is on the way out. No no, no, no
Speaker 1: more Musk. Give him all the drugs that he can do,
Speaker 1: because all he wants to do is all he wants
Speaker 1: to do is dance. While wearing a cheesehead and shaking
Speaker 1: the Trump cult out of its hypnotized coma. Sure, it's
Speaker 1: a felony to offer people money to vote or to
Speaker 1: not vote, or to vote your way. And sure he
Speaker 1: offered two giant, one million dollar checks, and sure he
Speaker 1: offered twenty dollars bill for selfies holding up photos of
Speaker 1: the unabashed fascist maga judge candidate at the polling places
Speaker 1: where it is illegal to campaign like that. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, if all that didn't win us the Wisconsin
Speaker 1: Supreme Court election, I don't know what could have. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: maybe it was when Musk went on Fox and said,
Speaker 1: losing this judge race has good chance of causing Republicans
Speaker 1: to lose control of the House. You lose control of
Speaker 1: the House, there will be non stop impeachment hearings and subpoenas.
Speaker 1: And America, Real America, Democracy America heard that and said, yes,
Speaker 1: goddamn it, yes exactly, You sir, are the son of
Speaker 1: a bitch we've been looking for all this time. Yes,
Speaker 1: Republicans lose the House, NonStop impeachment hearings and subpoenas. Woo
Speaker 1: effing ooh send that man some horse. I think Elon
Speaker 1: Musk doesn't really know it yet, couldn't understand it if
Speaker 1: he did, can't intuitively process America or any polyglot society.
Speaker 1: Is so far inside his own bubble that he never
Speaker 1: has to confront anybody who would tell him any of this.
Speaker 1: But he maybe our way out of Trump. What we
Speaker 1: saw Tuesday night was America versus Elon Musk, Democracy versus
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, Life versus Elon Musk. Just when the anti
Speaker 1: Trump message has been repeated so often that it barely
Speaker 1: registers with you and me, worn down with a decade
Speaker 1: of that stupid son of a bitch Trump, and that
Speaker 1: stupid son of a bitch Trump somehow finds an even
Speaker 1: stupider son of a bitch named Musk, and Musk has
Speaker 1: all of Trump's failures, us that apartheid accent and the
Speaker 1: pastiness of the ozempic attic and the on stage rhythm
Speaker 1: of a victim of Saint Vitas's dance. Can we run
Speaker 1: against Elon Musk? Not only in Wisconsin? Please? Can we
Speaker 1: run against Elon Musk everywhere? You know what Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: disapproval number is among Democrats in Wisconsin? Now, it's ninety
Speaker 1: seven percent ninety seven percent. You can't get ninety seven
Speaker 1: percent of Democrats to agree. How to spell the word
Speaker 1: Democrats ninety seven percent disapproval. He's ninety four points underwater
Speaker 1: on approval. More Musk spending, more millions, more Musk outspending.
Speaker 1: George sorows ten to one. I want Musk in every
Speaker 1: House and Senate race in this country next year. I
Speaker 1: want him trying to buy the school Board of Hastings
Speaker 1: on Hudson News, New York. I want him in a
Speaker 1: cheesehead in Wisconsin, and in foam cowboy hats in Texas,
Speaker 1: and in Gulf of America, trucker caps near the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico. And now he may be leaving the White House,
Speaker 1: there is still hope. The Musk is on the way
Speaker 1: out story evolved this way yesterday. Yesterday morning, Politico reported
Speaker 1: quote Trump has told his inner circle, including members of
Speaker 1: his cabinet, that Elon Musk will be stepping back in
Speaker 1: the coming weeks from his current role as governing partner,
Speaker 1: ubiquitous cheerleader, and Washington hatchetman, and that this would be
Speaker 1: pegged to the deadline to terminate the so called special
Speaker 1: government employees. They're only allowed one hundred and thirty days.
Speaker 1: That would be May thirtieth, unless the drugs were to
Speaker 1: put somebody in suspended animation or something. I guess that, however,
Speaker 1: is just the excuse. This is not tied to SGE
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty day limits. It's tied, in fact
Speaker 1: to Elease Steffanic Politico again quote. Trump is increasingly mindful
Speaker 1: of next year's midterms and making sure he doesn't jeopardize
Speaker 1: his House majority. He's kept a careful eye on the
Speaker 1: town haul outrage over DOGE, even as Republicans have chalked
Speaker 1: those scenes up to coordinated liberal stagecraft. His discussions about
Speaker 1: next steps for Musk came just days before he grew
Speaker 1: so worried about the GOP's narrow House margin that he
Speaker 1: withdrew New York Rep Elise Staffhanic's nomination to be Ambassador
Speaker 1: to the UN. This has nothing to do with one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty days. This has something to do with
Speaker 1: a two vote margin. By late afternoon yesterday, one Trump
Speaker 1: minion had told another Trump minion to print in The
Speaker 1: New York Post a story headline, the real reason behind
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's departure from DOGE and why it was always
Speaker 1: part of the plan. H that's the story that sentence
Speaker 1: repeated again and again with different constructions, that it was
Speaker 1: always to be four months and out. White House sources
Speaker 1: said the plan has always been to let Musk return
Speaker 1: to civilian life after his SGE status expires. Bullshit. This
Speaker 1: is the first time they've mentioned this, and anyway, as
Speaker 1: I said, there is hope Politico. One senior Administration official said,
Speaker 1: Musk is likely to retain an informal role as an
Speaker 1: advisor and continue to be an occasional face around the
Speaker 1: White House crowds. Oh thank Jesus. Another caution that anyone
Speaker 1: who thinks Musk is going to disappear entirely from Trump's
Speaker 1: orbit is fooling themselves. Gat. I promise I won't fool myself.
Speaker 1: Keep them around photo ops, not think of substance. Just
Speaker 1: keep his great uncontrollable ego and his perpetual fugue state
Speaker 1: front and center often enough that the Democrats can keep
Speaker 1: running against him until at least the midterms. And if
Speaker 1: Trump stops pushing Musk, if Musk stops blowing up like
Speaker 1: some of his own rockets, we have to take over.
Speaker 1: We then have to keep rebuilding the link between the
Speaker 1: two of them, shackled to a corpse, each of them,
Speaker 1: Musk and Trump, Musk and Trump, Trump and Musk, Trusk
Speaker 1: and Mump, Truck and Mumps. Yeah. I want Elon Musk
Speaker 1: indicted in Wisconsin because I want them all indicted in
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and forty nine other states. I want Steven Miller
Speaker 1: on the next plane to fing L Salvador. But more
Speaker 1: than that, I want Elon Musk to win all our
Speaker 1: races for us. And if he's gonna do that, he's
Speaker 1: gonna need our help one way or the other in
Speaker 1: for more still it, dude, he's gonna need that little
Speaker 1: extra to keep him campaigning twenty four to seven. The
Speaker 1: Trump part is easy. Just keep Trump convinced Musk is
Speaker 1: funneling attention to Trump, and Trump will make sure he
Speaker 1: grabs him whenever possible. But Musk himself, Musk's gonna need
Speaker 1: all the drugs he can find, So won't you help?
Speaker 1: Won't you gather all the drugs you can find and
Speaker 1: send them on to him? More Musk all, Musk, all
Speaker 1: the time, Musk today, Musk tomorrow, Musk forever. I want
Speaker 1: Musk's face with that crooked eyes unfocused. The stuff just
Speaker 1: kicked in smirk of his visible at every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, headhouse, outhouse, doghouse,
Speaker 1: white house in America. In mind of the first ten
Speaker 1: minutes of today's podcast, I would like to point out
Speaker 1: that I was the breaking news anchor for MSNBC, and
Speaker 1: for one week about twenty years ago, every night I
Speaker 1: was on for six hours talking about how the pope
Speaker 1: was dying. Not with that inflection, all right, let me
Speaker 1: explain some of the other headlines. Briefly. Trump's day of
Speaker 1: Liberation actually means his liberation from paying taxes. That is
Speaker 1: the substance to this, though the root cause in Trump's
Speaker 1: brain dead head for tariffs is far dumber. Ten percent
Speaker 1: tariffs on all training partners, fifty four percent on China,
Speaker 1: twenty four percent for the European Union, which Trump still
Speaker 1: thinks is a country, twenty six on India, et cetera.
Speaker 1: After hours, Gee whiz, who would have expected this? The
Speaker 1: market crashed, which is not just the standard response from
Speaker 1: betrayed Trump's supporters. I didn't expect him to eat my face.
Speaker 1: This is something beyond that. This is other leopards learning
Speaker 1: that the leopard eating faces party are also cannibals and
Speaker 1: will eat leopards faces too. This will not end well
Speaker 1: for Trump, and just how not well, we will get
Speaker 1: an idea very quickly. I might actually watch the opening
Speaker 1: bell of the stock market for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, just to see if some fascists CEO unfurls
Speaker 1: a flag that reads impeach Trump today, tariffs or madness.
Speaker 1: Of course, they will destroy tourism to this country, probably
Speaker 1: raise domestic prices five to ten percent, kill international trade,
Speaker 1: destroy American farming, worldwide depression absolutely possible now. And the
Speaker 1: ultimate reason for doing this as he learned to mimic
Speaker 1: human behavior, which is, as we know, not natural to Trump.
Speaker 1: Trump obviously and very early on in his existence, became
Speaker 1: fixated with the idea and the color of gold. He
Speaker 1: doesn't really understand gold. He does not know the difference
Speaker 1: between gold and gold plate, or gold plastic and gold rustolium,
Speaker 1: which is why his buildings look like that's so cheap,
Speaker 1: and why his bronzer looks so bad, and why his
Speaker 1: hair looks so fake. That's one of the reasons people
Speaker 1: who knew him believed in the pee tape. The color
Speaker 1: so the eighteen nineties he found out and apparently relatively
Speaker 1: recently or he just remembered it recently. Were called the
Speaker 1: Gilded age guilded gold cupboard, and it sort of looks
Speaker 1: like the word gold guild, gold, gold, guild, gold good,
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties good, eighteen nineties gold rich, super rich. No
Speaker 1: taxes in the eighteen nineties, only tariffs. So bring back tariffs,
Speaker 1: big tariffs, big beautiful tariffs, bingo fifty four percent tariff
Speaker 1: on Chinese goods, because this human like multi celled parasite
Speaker 1: once learned gold good. Okay, the disappearing by our government
Speaker 1: of Kilmar Abrego, Garcia. They sent a man who was
Speaker 1: legally entitled to be here, whom this country in fact
Speaker 1: ruled during Trump's first presidency. We were protecting from going
Speaker 1: back to El Salvador because he would be tortured and
Speaker 1: killed there, and Trump sent him back because of what
Speaker 1: they now claim is a clerical error by Ice, which
Speaker 1: it cannot correct because it can't force El Salvador to
Speaker 1: return him, which is bullshit, because all it has to
Speaker 1: do is threaten to cut the money off going to
Speaker 1: the corrupt Al Salvador strong man, and mister Abrego will
Speaker 1: be home for breakfast. And if Tom Holman and Pete
Speaker 1: Hegseth and the insufferable child JV. Vance and that inflatable
Speaker 1: rubber device known as Christy Nome claim they can't extract him,
Speaker 1: you go to them and you say you get him
Speaker 1: back or you have to go get him personally. They
Speaker 1: are still doing this deliberately to that man and others
Speaker 1: because it's part of the plan and there is no
Speaker 1: legal retribution against these scumbags, especially this deviant flotation device.
Speaker 1: No home. That will be too extreme and it will
Speaker 1: come soon or late. Hope you got a good look
Speaker 1: at that prison. Christy or mister Abrigo was in line
Speaker 1: looking for day labor in twenty nineteen and the cops
Speaker 1: picked him up and they claimed a confidential informant who
Speaker 1: may or may not have ever existed, said he was
Speaker 1: in the MS thirteen gang in another state in which
Speaker 1: the man never lived. And they claim this because he
Speaker 1: was wearing Chicago Bulls clothing, which is really bad news
Speaker 1: for like Michael Jordan, I want Tom Holman and Christy
Speaker 1: Noman JD. Vance who was still slandering this man. I
Speaker 1: want them in the El Salvador in prison instead of
Speaker 1: mister Abrigio and in twenty twenty nine, I want the
Speaker 1: President to say, oh, while they're in there now, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: there's nothing we can do about getting them back. They're
Speaker 1: out of our control now, the president twenty twenty nine,
Speaker 1: President Booker, Sure, that's fine. President Okasio Cortes, President President.
Speaker 1: Whoever is narking on Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth, I'll
Speaker 1: take him. That is not over. Leaks last week about
Speaker 1: Hegzeth bringing the wife to sensitive international intelligence meetings, Leaks
Speaker 1: this week about Waltz and staff using Gmail for technical
Speaker 1: conversations and for his schedule. Once again, amateurs like Waltz
Speaker 1: and Hegseeth don't realize that your schedule tells the spies
Speaker 1: when you will be somewhere and when other people will
Speaker 1: be somewhere, in case you know they want to blow
Speaker 1: you up or just to access all the places you
Speaker 1: won't be. And don't tell me that your Gmail is secure.
Speaker 1: I once heard from the Gmail people that the Russian
Speaker 1: State actors had hacked my Gmail. Waltz and Hegseth is
Speaker 1: not over, and the third term stuff is not over.
Speaker 1: Again a reminder, this is not going to be a
Speaker 1: bid to let any president get a third term. This
Speaker 1: will only be Trump, not Obama, not Clinton, not Bush,
Speaker 1: just Trump and Grover Cleveland, who's been dead since nineteen
Speaker 1: to eight, whether on the non consecutive terms bullshit or
Speaker 1: some other bullshit. Sam Alito dreams up and Lawrence tribe
Speaker 1: has another hole in the defensive line. They can drive
Speaker 1: a mac truck through, just to haunt your dreams a
Speaker 1: little further, quoting him. Anyone discounting a third Trump term
Speaker 1: per the twenty second Amendment and the twelfth Amendment is
Speaker 1: thinking magically. The twenty second doesn't bar serving a third term,
Speaker 1: only being elected three times. The twelfth doesn't bar running
Speaker 1: for VP unless ineligible to serve as president. But Trump
Speaker 1: isn't ineligible qed. So like last year, the easiest scenario
Speaker 1: Trump runs, says, try and stop me, and his Supreme
Speaker 1: Court doesn't. And Trump can almost taste this. I mean,
Speaker 1: listen to him. He's dying to say it.
Speaker 2: You we're not joking about a third term, about possibly
Speaker 2: planning a third term? Does that mean you're not planning
Speaker 2: to leave Amason.
Speaker 3: I'm not looking at that, but I'll tell you I
Speaker 3: have had more people asking me do have a third term,
Speaker 3: which is in a way at the fourth term because
Speaker 3: the other election, the twenty twenty election, was totally rigged,
Speaker 3: So it's actually sort of a fourth term in a
Speaker 3: certain way. I just don't want the credit for the
Speaker 3: second because Biden was so bad. He did such a
Speaker 3: man job, and I think that's one of the reasons
Speaker 3: that I'm popular.
Speaker 1: If you wander the truth and from what passes for
Speaker 1: our news media and our serene political discourse, Bill Maher
Speaker 1: has lost whatever small amount of self control he had left.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, just as mar is killing off every
Speaker 1: last one of his fans with his tiny, bare hands,
Speaker 1: Bill thinks he's some kind of healing deity from Fox
Speaker 1: and the statesman who made all this happen, Ambassador kid Rock.
Speaker 1: Trump took mar at the White House Monday night to
Speaker 1: see the Lincoln bedroom and to see a copy of
Speaker 1: the Gettysburg Address. Bill, I hate to break this to
Speaker 1: you at this late date, but as a member of
Speaker 1: the class of Cornell seventy nine, and you as a
Speaker 1: member of the class of Cornell seventy eight, you do
Speaker 1: know that Cornell has had a copy of the Gettysburg
Speaker 1: Address hand copied by Lincoln at the request of Ambassador
Speaker 1: George Bancroft. They've had it since the nineteenth century. Was
Speaker 1: in a house at Cornell Bancroft's grandson, and then they
Speaker 1: bought it back and it was donated and they keep
Speaker 1: it right now under URIs Library and they show it
Speaker 1: to classes at Cornell, but of course you never went
Speaker 1: to class, and they also show it though they show
Speaker 1: it to alumni. They like, Oh okay, ego, trip over.
Speaker 1: This is the operative part from Fox. Kid Rock said
Speaker 1: that he told mar before the meeting some of this
Speaker 1: Hollywood stuff, it would be great for you to get
Speaker 1: thrown out, probably be great for you to double down.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't stand this guy, mar kid Rock said,
Speaker 1: told him, I'm not going to sabotage something that could
Speaker 1: potentially bring us and other people together. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's the beginning of the predicted two thousand years of
Speaker 1: universal peace when Bill Maher and Donald Trump are brought
Speaker 1: together and they unzip and stage an actual battle with
Speaker 1: their tiny little egos. And I'm going to to advertize
Speaker 1: something that could potentially bring other people together. There, Oh god, Bill,
Speaker 1: for crying out loud. If you just tell the truth
Speaker 1: and say, look, my new boss is this idiot david'saz
Speaker 1: lab of Warner Bros. Discovery and the fascists who now
Speaker 1: own CNN and HBO and him. And if I don't
Speaker 1: go as far pro Trump as I can, they'll fire
Speaker 1: me and they'll replace me with with Chris Cuomo or
Speaker 1: somebody who's an even bigger whore than I am. Just
Speaker 1: admit it and we go fine, we got it. Go ahead,
Speaker 1: nobody's watching anyway. Chris Cuomo on stage on Long Island
Speaker 1: with what used to be Bill O'Reilly and the new
Speaker 1: giant of American political analysis, Stephen A. Smith. Three Americans.
Speaker 1: They called this. This is how little Stephen A. Smith
Speaker 1: knows of the world going on around him. He attacked
Speaker 1: Bill O'Reilly on stage, which, trust me, was pretty much
Speaker 1: exhausted by the year twenty eleven. Quote. You and I
Speaker 1: hey got into it when we were on Cuomo's show
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. Steve Bannon comes on national
Speaker 1: television with a straight face first and then smirk thereafter,
Speaker 1: talking about violating the Constitution of the United States, the
Speaker 1: twenty second Amendment two terms. He said three. Chris Cromo says, yo,
Speaker 1: you understand what the twenty second amendment says right. He said, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: we're working on it. Everybody just glosses over it. That's right, Steven,
Speaker 1: everybody's been glossing over it. No, but nobody's been talking
Speaker 1: about Trump's claims plots to get a third term. Nobody's
Speaker 1: been mentioning this other than all of us who've been
Speaker 1: saying it since twenty fifteen, or the actual movement within
Speaker 1: the conservative ranks and the quote unquote scholarly reinterpretations of
Speaker 1: the twenty second Amendment that began on the far rid
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three to get them a third term.
Speaker 1: Just you, you're the first one who noticed. Steven also
Speaker 1: reports there's something called the National Basketball Association. Thank you
Speaker 1: for mentioning that, Stephen. None of the rest of us
Speaker 1: new although I'm beginning to smell a new host for
Speaker 1: HBO Real Time with Steven A. Smith, or put them
Speaker 1: on MSNBC in the mornings, God knows it's that, or
Speaker 1: cartoons in black and white from Oliver Darcy's status. The
Speaker 1: quarter one ratings are in for cable news. MSNBC averaged
Speaker 1: one point two million viewers in prime time, down eighteen
Speaker 1: percent year over year. CNN averaged five hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: eight thousand viewers in prime down six percent over the
Speaker 1: same period. One interesting nugget. I'm told that CNN's News
Speaker 1: Central beat MSNBC's Morning Joe in the Advertiser coveted at
Speaker 1: twenty five to fifty four demographic for the first time
Speaker 1: since twenty twenty two, a sign Oliver is really in
Speaker 1: self control. Here a sign that the Joe Scarborough and
Speaker 1: Mika Brazinski led show still hasn't recovered after the marri
Speaker 1: Lago pilgrimage aimed at cozying up to Trump. Let me
Speaker 1: give you a quick pro tip. It's not going to recover.
Speaker 1: They're going to have to fire Joe Scarborough, or at
Speaker 1: least bring in a new Joe Scarborough, somebody else playing
Speaker 1: the role of Joe Scarborough, Caul Lawrence, o'donald, Joe Scarborough.
Speaker 1: Who will notice the difference except Mika. Maybe. The Morning
Speaker 1: Joe ratings have always been bad. They are what a
Speaker 1: loss leader. That's a very niche audience. Everybody in that
Speaker 1: niche It's like the White House Correspondence dinner with more
Speaker 1: lights and better food. I might add that's true, but
Speaker 1: below CNN, this is how bad it is. I have
Speaker 1: been in television since nineteen eighty one. I started at
Speaker 1: CNN in nineteen eighty one, in its second full year,
Speaker 1: And as I'm reading this, I went, wait, CNN's morning
Speaker 1: show is called News Central. Since when I didn't even
Speaker 1: know the name of the show, and it's now beating
Speaker 1: Morning Joe. The name of the CNN Morning show could
Speaker 1: have been CNN Tonight, and I would have went, oh,
Speaker 1: it's awesome, it's novel below. CNN is amazing, but the
Speaker 1: MSNV Morning Show is not sufficient to explain the overall
Speaker 1: collapse here. Averaging one point zero two million in primetime
Speaker 1: total viewers in primetime, that's like what we were doing
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four. The new company and whoever
Speaker 1: is buying it or going to buy it wants this.
Speaker 1: That's the point. They're tanking it. They're tanking it the
Speaker 1: way Warner Bros. Tanked CNN and Mar whether he knows
Speaker 1: it or not, the way Mar is tanking. There's one
Speaker 1: more move MSNBC can make to seal the deal. Now.
Speaker 1: It's not Stephen A. Smith. I think he should be
Speaker 1: doing the CBS Evening News. Actually Chuck Todd in the mornings.
Speaker 1: I'm serious, No, I'm not serious. But there was a
Speaker 1: New York Times story yesterday about Chuck a scoop they claimed.
Speaker 1: I've read it three times. I still don't get it, though.
Speaker 1: I think now, if you told me that Chuck Todd
Speaker 1: has spent all this time writing all those bad headlines
Speaker 1: in the New York those both sidesist headlines, I would
Speaker 1: believe you. And the payoff was this thirteen fourteen paragraph
Speaker 1: story about I still don't know what this story is about. Quote.
Speaker 1: After leaving the corporate home of Meet the Press in January,
Speaker 1: he got fired. Mister Todd is embarking on a career
Speaker 1: as a media entrepreneur. He has a podcast and a
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. I've had a podcast for two and a
Speaker 1: half years. I've had a YouTube channel for five years.
Speaker 1: And guess what I am not. I'm not a media entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: I have a podcast and a YouTube channel. This makes
Speaker 1: me part of the majority in this country. I believe.
Speaker 1: He has a podcast and a YouTube channel and plans
Speaker 1: to hire other hosts for a podcast and video network
Speaker 1: focused on politics and culture. He also said that he
Speaker 1: was working with an advisor from a major financial firm
Speaker 1: to build or acquire a company focused on community news.
Speaker 1: Mister Todd's business plan, the Times goes on, calls for
Speaker 1: a constellation of local sites owned by their communities, like
Speaker 1: his beloved Green Bay Packers, and anchored by coverage of
Speaker 1: local youth sports, local ute sports utes. The growing popularity
Speaker 1: of athletics and their importance to families who view them
Speaker 1: as a gateway to college make them an ideal subject
Speaker 1: to build around. No matter your politics, mister Todd said,
Speaker 1: you care about local coverage of your child's latest game.
Speaker 1: Like all parents. Chuck thinks everybody else is also a parent.
Speaker 1: The number of kids in scholastic sports in this country
Speaker 1: is approximate lee one hundred and seventy five million. No,
Speaker 1: it's eight million, eight million kids high school and grammar
Speaker 1: school sports and college eight million. If a quarter of
Speaker 1: all parents of scholastic athletes in this country use Chuck's
Speaker 1: network of websites, that's four million people. If it's a brilliant,
Speaker 1: almost total success, the ceiling is four million people. Maybe.
Speaker 1: And here is here is what he thinks that's worth.
Speaker 1: Quote mister Todd and the bank he is working with
Speaker 1: there eyeing a purchase that could cost up to two
Speaker 1: billion dollars. He said. He declined to say whether he
Speaker 1: had lined up any backers or specify the company they
Speaker 1: were looking at, but he ruled out major newspaper publishers.
Speaker 1: You know what major newspapers you could get for two
Speaker 1: billion dollars, all of them. That's two billion dollars for
Speaker 1: podcasts or websites about high school sports scores or podcasts
Speaker 1: where the first guest is as his first podcast guest
Speaker 1: was John Fetterman. Couldn't get Chris Cuomo and Steven A.
Speaker 1: Smith two billion dollars for podcasts, Chuck for two billion dollars,
Speaker 1: you better be getting two billion podcasts. Ah. Also of interest,
Speaker 1: here we're going to talk about Chuck. I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about Chuck about when I hit the wall and
Speaker 1: had enough of him. It's going on six years now.
Speaker 1: I'm very proud I was a trendsetter because this is
Speaker 1: the way he thinks. He thinks he can get two
Speaker 1: billion dollars to go into this new field of podcasting
Speaker 1: about high school sports. Everybody has a kid playing sports.
Speaker 1: Also Ahead, one of the worst human beings of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century is now dead. He transcends the stories of transphobia, politics, sports, fascism, television,
Speaker 1: News Renee Richards and Tucker Carlson. He's part of all
Speaker 1: of those stories and he's dead. And I unapologetically say
Speaker 1: I'm glad because I'm a believer in for whom the
Speaker 1: Bill tolds. But I will remain until my death unconvinced
Speaker 1: this guy was ever actually for one minute, a human being.
Speaker 1: That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: Alberman still ahead. In this new edition of Countdown. Well,
Speaker 1: I mentioned Chuck Todd podcast billionaire. He owns a mansion
Speaker 1: and a yacht. He's going to start a two billion
Speaker 1: dollar podcast network based on high school sports scores or something.
Speaker 1: I wasn't quite clear. And I read the article one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirteen times, but it has to be true.
Speaker 1: It's in the New York Times. And I think we
Speaker 1: finally now know who's been writing all those headlines in
Speaker 1: the New York Times the few plague years. It's been
Speaker 1: Chuck Todd. Have I ever told you my Chuck Todd story?
Speaker 1: Actually I have, Well a fat I'm gonna tell it
Speaker 1: to you again in Things I promised not to tell
Speaker 1: next first, believe it or not, there's still more new
Speaker 1: idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miscrants, morons
Speaker 1: and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute the latest other
Speaker 1: Worst Persons in the World. Here are the nominees the
Speaker 1: Bronze Worst BBC News. Now I'm kind of soft pedaling
Speaker 1: this because if I thought it was not an accident,
Speaker 1: just one of those things, I would have led the
Speaker 1: show with it. As you know, there are at least
Speaker 1: twenty five hundred people dead in me on Mar after
Speaker 1: the horrible earthquake that was so destructive at knockdown buildings
Speaker 1: in Thailand, one of the most affected cities in me
Speaker 1: on Mar, and details are still being withheld by the
Speaker 1: military dictatorship. There is Mandalay. If you know anything about Mandalay.
Speaker 1: If you've heard the name of the city of Mandalay,
Speaker 1: it's probably from a song. There is a Rudyard Kipling
Speaker 1: poem on the Road to Mandalay from eighteen ninety that
Speaker 1: they set to music twenty years later, and it is
Speaker 1: classic British imperialist cornball nonsense, with lyrics centered around on
Speaker 1: the Road to Mandalay. I won't say the whole thing,
Speaker 1: but it's on the Road to Mandalay where the flying
Speaker 1: Fishies play and the dawn comes up like thunder outer
Speaker 1: China crossed the Bay on the road to Mandalay. Then
Speaker 1: there was another song called the Road to Mandalay by
Speaker 1: Robbie Williams, like twenty years ago, and the same lyric
Speaker 1: is in that totally different context on the Road to Mandalay.
Speaker 1: So this is the key to the thing that there
Speaker 1: are songs that have been sung for literally one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen years that have this lyric on the Road
Speaker 1: to Mandalay. So the BBC's otherwise extraordinary report, including hard
Speaker 1: to smuggle out video of mean mar after the earthquake.
Speaker 1: Their report on Tuesday from their correspondent somehow reporting from
Speaker 1: behind the lines, opened with that reporter narrating video of
Speaker 1: the destruction that was shot from a moving vehicle, and
Speaker 1: he began with the opening line was on the road
Speaker 1: to Mandalay. And I've bet a million viewers worldwide involuntarily
Speaker 1: thought where the flying fishies play. It's not what you
Speaker 1: want to think during a terrible earthquake aftermath, but there
Speaker 1: it is. As I said, I'm sure it had to
Speaker 1: have been accidental. So I'm leaving the reporter's name out,
Speaker 1: but somebody still should said no, no, just erase that
Speaker 1: opening line or cut out the on, so he just
Speaker 1: says the road to Mandalay. I mean, that's kind of
Speaker 1: an invocation of the line, but it's not. I'm going
Speaker 1: to start this tragic story with a quotation from a
Speaker 1: song from two songs to be fair, As I said,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's an accident. The reporter, not a native
Speaker 1: English speaker, was in fact on the road to Mandalay.
Speaker 1: The runner up worser Matt Taibi, who has no such excuse.
Speaker 1: You remember him when he was an independent journalist before
Speaker 1: he became a stooge for Elon Musk, who then did
Speaker 1: Musk's bidding, then got banished by Musk, and is now
Speaker 1: on the fringes of right wing conspiracy theory. It's a shame.
Speaker 1: He was a good kid. He did good work for
Speaker 1: me on Countdown. His dad was a great reporter. He's
Speaker 1: turned into like Joe paranoia. In a great illustration of
Speaker 1: what democrats should do when the fascists stage their show
Speaker 1: hearings in Congress over bullshit, California Congressman Sidney Kamliger Dove
Speaker 1: decided to have Matt tayebe for lunch here. They have
Speaker 1: called him to testify, as they turned the first hearing
Speaker 1: of the sub Committee on South and Central Asia into
Speaker 1: instead hearing on how conservatives are censored. This is the
Speaker 1: fifth of these hearings they've already had into how they
Speaker 1: never get to talk at hearings. After this from Congresswoman
Speaker 1: Kamlegger Dove, I don't think Matt Tayibi will be willing
Speaker 1: to testify at any more of these goddamned hearings.
Speaker 2: Majority is relitigating a made up conspiracy theory about a
Speaker 2: part of the State Department that no longer exists. To
Speaker 2: distract from the dumpster fire foreign policy. This administration is
Speaker 2: per suing and elevating a serial sexual harasser as their
Speaker 2: star witness in the process. Mister Chair, I request unanimous
Speaker 2: consent to enter into the record two articles about the
Speaker 2: Republican witness, Matt Taybee. The first is a Chicago Reader
Speaker 2: article entitled twenty years ago in Moscow, Matt Taybe was
Speaker 2: a misogynist a whole and possibly worse, and a Washington
Speaker 2: Post article titled the two expat bros Who terrorized women
Speaker 2: correspondence in Moscow with out ob check. This hearing could
Speaker 2: not be more out of touch with the concerns of
Speaker 2: everyday Americans. People's retirement savings are being decimated as Trump's
Speaker 2: arbitrary temper tariffs tank the stock market. They are staring
Speaker 2: down the barrel of cuts to their Social Security and
Speaker 2: Medicare because the Republican majority wants to give a tax
Speaker 2: break to billionaires like Elon Musk, who have deep financial
Speaker 2: ties to our adversaries. Meanwhile, Trump is siding with Putin,
Speaker 2: against our national security interests, and risking the lives of
Speaker 2: American soldiers. In a signal group chat, I've been to
Speaker 2: the State Department, and I do have concerns about censorship.
Speaker 2: Censorship of the employees who are terrified to say the
Speaker 2: wrong thing, to say anything, or have the wrong word
Speaker 2: in their job title, and be terminated by an administration
Speaker 2: that publicly relishes punishing people for their speech. If we
Speaker 2: want to talk about censorship, we should begin with Trump's
Speaker 2: unprecedented assault on the First Amendment and rule of law.
Speaker 1: Hey, Matt, we're all those clippings in the Twitter files, hobro.
Speaker 1: We'll help you scoop the rest of your reputation up
Speaker 1: with this spoon in this terreen and you can just
Speaker 1: carry it out with you, but the winner the worst
Speaker 1: a man named Richard Carlson. You've never heard of Richard Carlson,
Speaker 1: but a long time ago he was a scumbag posing
Speaker 1: as a journalist in TV in California, mostly San Diego
Speaker 1: and La. As The New York Times noted the other day,
Speaker 1: Carlson quote collaborated with another journalist, Lance Brisson, on an
Speaker 1: expose for Look Magazine in nineteen sixty nine that accused
Speaker 1: Mayor Joseph Alioto of San Francisco of having ties to
Speaker 1: mafia figures. Mister Alioto sued Looks owner Cowell's Communications for libel.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy seven, six years after Look magazine had folded,
Speaker 1: and following four trials in federal court, a judge awarded
Speaker 1: mister Alioto three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in damages.
Speaker 1: Mister Carlson and brister Berson were not defendants. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, mister Carlson exposed a transgender automobile executive on
Speaker 1: TV in Los Angeles, even though the real story was
Speaker 1: all the lies about her claims about her special car
Speaker 1: that got I don't know seventy miles per gallon so
Speaker 1: She sued two and when Carlson testified against her, he
Speaker 1: continually referred to this woman as he and him after
Speaker 1: he got fired in La After that he had to
Speaker 1: move down to San Diego as a sportscaster. Somebody told
Speaker 1: him that the doctor who had just won a local
Speaker 1: women's tennis tournament was also transgender, so he phoned her
Speaker 1: and said he was going to expose her on his sportscast.
Speaker 1: She replied, mister Carlson, I am a private person. You
Speaker 1: can't do that. He replied, doctor Richards, you were until
Speaker 1: you won that tournament in La Joya yesterday. She pleaded
Speaker 1: with him to respect her privacy. He went on the
Speaker 1: air anyway and announced a man has just won the
Speaker 1: La Joya women's tennis tournament. She hurriedly called a news
Speaker 1: conference and had to explain not just her story to
Speaker 1: the media, but the promise of and premissive transsexuals and
Speaker 1: transgenders as a whole, because then people didn't really understand
Speaker 1: what it was all about. Her name is doctor Renee Richards,
Speaker 1: and to this day she remains not only one of
Speaker 1: the very best doctors I've ever had the privilege to consult,
Speaker 1: she's eyes specialist, although she just retired at the age
Speaker 1: of ninety. Eye muscles and eye muscle surgery the best
Speaker 1: in the world, probably, I've known her forty three years.
Speaker 1: But she's also one of the best and funniest people
Speaker 1: I've ever known, And she taught me more about what
Speaker 1: it is like when one of us does a story
Speaker 1: on somebody taught me, Yeah, it's my story, but guess what,
Speaker 1: it's their life. You've got to try to consider that.
Speaker 1: I am happy to say I had the privilege of
Speaker 1: informing Renee Richards that Richard Carlson is now dead. He
Speaker 1: died March twenty fourth. She was dignified and restrained and
Speaker 1: did not even make a big deal out of the
Speaker 1: fact that she won. I did. Maybe she didn't because
Speaker 1: she and the rest of the world knew that this bad, unqualified, unprincipled, unsuccessful,
Speaker 1: hate filled dead bastard did something even worse than involuntarily
Speaker 1: outing transsexual women and then trying to make up excuses
Speaker 1: for some public right to know for doing so. About
Speaker 1: ten Richard Carlson did something worse than that, because Richard
Speaker 1: Carlson was the father of Tucker Carlson, probably more of
Speaker 1: a fascist and probably more unhinged and dangerous even than
Speaker 1: his sick, dead father. I would add that under ordinary circumstances,
Speaker 1: it is disturbing to feel oneself expressing anything but sadness
Speaker 1: at the death of another human being or at the
Speaker 1: mourning of those humans they have left behind. But you
Speaker 1: would first have to convince me that Richard and Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson were ever human beings before I would feel that way.
Speaker 1: I feel none of what I normally do, none of
Speaker 1: this for whom the bell tolls stuff that bell is
Speaker 1: not tolling for me. Richard Carlson left television a year
Speaker 1: after he outed Renee. He later told San Diego Magazine
Speaker 1: that he considered television news quote insipid, sophomoric, and superficial. Oddly,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good summary of his life, and his
Speaker 1: sons put it this way. Renee Richards was twice the
Speaker 1: man that Richard Carlson ever was, and probably two hundred
Speaker 1: times the woman. Richard Dick Carlson, and the name Dick
Speaker 1: was just a remarkable coincidence. I will note that though
Speaker 1: he died on March twenty fourth, his son announced it
Speaker 1: over last weekend, and it got wide public play this
Speaker 1: past Monday, which was the National Transgender Day of Visibility.
Speaker 1: Revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to
Speaker 1: eat cold. Dick Carlson Today's worst person in the world. Well,
Speaker 1: not really. He's not here anymore, is he. So at
Speaker 1: least that corner of this country is now better. It
Speaker 1: is unlikely that you have ever been able to do
Speaker 1: anything about Chuck Todd, so I wanted to tell you
Speaker 1: of the day that I did do something about him.
Speaker 1: That day was August eleventh, twenty nineteen. I knew Chuck
Speaker 1: for about fifteen years, early in his career, when he
Speaker 1: was with the DC Insider publication the Hotline. He was
Speaker 1: a frequent guest on Countdown, and in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: when Tim Russert was thinking of hiring him at NBC News,
Speaker 1: mine was one of dozens of temperatures Tim took. As
Speaker 1: Chuck later wrote to me, quote, you certainly were a
Speaker 1: tremendous advocate and cheerleader for me over the years, and
Speaker 1: I don't forget that. Yeah, well that wasn't true. He
Speaker 1: forgot it, all right, But I'm veering away from the
Speaker 1: main story. In two thousand and eight, a couple of
Speaker 1: Washington political types started a fantasy football league. If you
Speaker 1: don't think fantasy football leagues are important, you should know
Speaker 1: that last spring, a major league baseball player in uniform
Speaker 1: walked up to another Major League baseball player in uniform
Speaker 1: on a Major League baseball field with thousands of people
Speaker 1: already in the stands, and he slapped him in the
Speaker 1: face over a roster move that the second player had
Speaker 1: made in their fantasy football league. The second guy had
Speaker 1: managed to retain the rights to an injured player, and
Speaker 1: the first guy was upset about this. So six months
Speaker 1: after their fantasy season ended, this major league baseball player
Speaker 1: walked up and slapped the other Major League baseball player.
Speaker 1: If slaps or duels or kidnappings are not everyday occurrences
Speaker 1: in fantasy football, they do represent the kind of baseline
Speaker 1: intensity of the thing. So when I and others were
Speaker 1: approached about this Washington centric league in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: it was already a big deal, even before we were
Speaker 1: all sworn to secrecy, because a spot in the league
Speaker 1: was being for some DC guy named Barack Obama. It
Speaker 1: turned out he did not join our league, some excuse
Speaker 1: about too much work, when obviously he was just afraid
Speaker 1: of my fantasy football skills. But some people in his
Speaker 1: white house did join the league, and I still will
Speaker 1: not identify them, because the premise of this league was
Speaker 1: the first rule of fantasy football club is you do
Speaker 1: not talk about fantasy football club. I will say that
Speaker 1: Chuck Todd, like me, was an original player. We call
Speaker 1: ourselves owners because we are nuts and it's a fantasy.
Speaker 1: It's in the title Fantasy Football Fantasy Football Owners. And
Speaker 1: one year, I think it was twenty ten, I had
Speaker 1: assembled in this league, mostly by accident, a team that
Speaker 1: was almost perfect. It literally lost one game all season,
Speaker 1: and that was in the middle of the year to
Speaker 1: Chuck Todd's team. And the night after I lost to
Speaker 1: Chuck Todd's team, he was giving a speech I think
Speaker 1: at the University of Virginia, and witnesses called to tell
Speaker 1: me that he began his speech by saying, I have
Speaker 1: much to tell you, but first I have to tell
Speaker 1: you that I am in a fantasy football league with
Speaker 1: Keith Lderman, and he has a great team this year,
Speaker 1: and this week I upset him by a final score
Speaker 1: of one hundred forty three to one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: one or whatever the score was. I thought it was
Speaker 1: pretty dumb. But by twenty ten, Chuck was the NBC
Speaker 1: News White House correspondent, and we all cringed whenever we
Speaker 1: saw he was going to be on with one of
Speaker 1: us on MSNBC. See, some people respond well to pressure
Speaker 1: and success, and some people do not, and some people
Speaker 1: become entirely different people. So when Chuck violated the prime
Speaker 1: directive of this fantasy football league and talked about it,
Speaker 1: I shrugged. The other guys in the league did not.
Speaker 1: Chuck was actually punished. The commissioner of the league ordered
Speaker 1: that he had to skip his fourth choice in the
Speaker 1: following year's player draft. Chuck was berefed. He believed this
Speaker 1: would destroy his chances. He apologized to me every week,
Speaker 1: and finally I said, you know, guys, maybe this is
Speaker 1: too much. And as the supposed victim in the equation,
Speaker 1: I got final say and Chuck got to keep his
Speaker 1: fourth draft choice. By twenty sixteen, Chuck was because Tim
Speaker 1: Russeer died, Tom Brokaw retired, and David Gregory flamed out.
Speaker 1: Chuck was the host of Meet the Press. He was
Speaker 1: also political director of NBC News, another part of Russer's
Speaker 1: old portfolio, but whereas Tim was a master who could
Speaker 1: convince the Republicans, he was ordering that I be punished
Speaker 1: for what I said, when in fact he would be
Speaker 1: calling me and asking me what stupid, meaningless thing I
Speaker 1: could think of to tell the Republicans. He was punishing
Speaker 1: me with or four. He was sublime, subtlety, not Chuck.
Speaker 1: No subtlety there. In twenty sixteen, Chuck was preparing to
Speaker 1: not name my ex lib in girlfriend Katie Turr as
Speaker 1: the new NBC White House correspondent, even though she had
Speaker 1: suffered as the primary NBC correspondent covering the Trump campaign,
Speaker 1: and out of nowhere, Chuck emails me that he's going
Speaker 1: to be in New York and he wants to take
Speaker 1: me to dinner. I had known him more than a
Speaker 1: decade by then, we had never as much as shared
Speaker 1: pieces of the same pizza. I had not seen him
Speaker 1: in the flesh in more than five years, and I
Speaker 1: knew as we sat down that Chuck's idea was to
Speaker 1: get me to tell Katie that she was not going
Speaker 1: to be White House correspondent so he did not have to.
Speaker 1: He kept bringing it up, what do you think Katie
Speaker 1: would think? And then I'd switch the topic to fantasy football,
Speaker 1: and then he'd say, but let me ask you about
Speaker 1: Katie in the White House job. We did this for
Speaker 1: ninety minutes, and finally I said, Okay, Chuck, I've avoided
Speaker 1: it long enough. Maybe I could call her and soften
Speaker 1: the blow for her. And that's when he said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going back to DC tonight, so if I want
Speaker 1: to catch that last train, I better leave. Bye. Chuck
Speaker 1: is not subtle. I'll spare you the other crap from
Speaker 1: the fantasy league. Suffice to say, I was reminded of
Speaker 1: how annoyingly and obviously he used to conduct himself when
Speaker 1: I read that last May, one of Chuck's guest bookers
Speaker 1: for the now no longer on TV Meet the Press Daily, Joe,
Speaker 1: had emailed the office of Alaska Congressman Don Jung, hoping
Speaker 1: to get Young to appear the next day, which would
Speaker 1: have been the ultimate great guest get because Don Jung
Speaker 1: had died two months earlier. Anyway, this fantasy football league
Speaker 1: was fun and unique in that there had only been
Speaker 1: one change in its composition in all that time. Chuck's
Speaker 1: team defeated mine in the Fantasy Football super Bowl one year,
Speaker 1: and mostly he was just annoying, like he was on
Speaker 1: the air, nothing worse than that. And then on June nineteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Representative Alexandria Ocazio Cortes AOC ripped the Trump
Speaker 1: administration's migrant policies. She said, quote, the United States is
Speaker 1: running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is
Speaker 1: exactly what they are. They are concentration camps. End quote.
Speaker 1: Chuck went on MSNBC and said the following in response, quote,
Speaker 1: you can call our government's detention of migrants many things,
Speaker 1: depending on how you see it. It's a stain on
Speaker 1: our nation, maybe a necessary evil to others to deal
Speaker 1: with an unten situation, perhaps, but do you know what
Speaker 1: you can't call it. Chuck then played the clip of
Speaker 1: AOC calling it concentration camps, and Chuck resumed, if you
Speaker 1: want to criticize the shameful treatment of people at our
Speaker 1: southern border, fine, you'll have plenty of company, but be
Speaker 1: careful comparing them to Nazi concentration camps, because they're not
Speaker 1: at all comparable. In the slightest A lot of people
Speaker 1: me included, were stunned. Ocasio Cortes never mentioned the Nazis
Speaker 1: and concentration camps did not begin with the Nazis or Hitler.
Speaker 1: They began with the British in the Boer War in
Speaker 1: South Africa at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Speaker 1: Yet here was Chuck putting a word in her mouth,
Speaker 1: and that word was Nazi, and then he attacked her
Speaker 1: for something she never said. He lied about her. He lied,
Speaker 1: Chuck Todd made it up on the news. I was
Speaker 1: furious enough to email him that night. I thought by
Speaker 1: now somebody at NBC would have pointed out that concentration
Speaker 1: camps and Nazi death camps are not the same. But no,
Speaker 1: NBC had simply tweeted out the clip of Chuck lying
Speaker 1: about the congresswoman and putting the word Nazi in her mouth,
Speaker 1: as if it were something NBC News should be proud of.
Speaker 1: Chuck was furious at me. He emailed back, quote, come on,
Speaker 1: own up, that she invoked the wrong image and should
Speaker 1: have simply walked the imagery back. And I wrote him
Speaker 1: back that the person who had to walk back imagery
Speaker 1: here was him, since he had said Nazi and she
Speaker 1: had not said Nazi. On my angriest day, he now replied,
Speaker 1: I'd like to think I treated you with more respect
Speaker 1: than this. Sad I feel like we won't recover from this,
Speaker 1: and we had recovered from a lot. I wrote back
Speaker 1: to Chuck that we weren't going to recover from anything
Speaker 1: if he insisted that all concentration camps were Nazi death
Speaker 1: camps and that somebody who never said Nazis owed somebody
Speaker 1: else an apology for what not saying Nazis. There was
Speaker 1: no getting past the reality that Chuck had no idea
Speaker 1: that he was one hundred percent in the wrong here,
Speaker 1: historically wrong, factually wrong, ethically wrong, not a leg to
Speaker 1: stand on. So I of course began to contemplate the
Speaker 1: year ahead in fantasy football. I couldn't face it. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I let real life and fantasy sports mix, and I
Speaker 1: just I just couldn't spend another autumn having to deal
Speaker 1: with Chuck Todd. Chuck had often said that he was
Speaker 1: now just too busy to play in the league anymore,
Speaker 1: and he would have to leave it this year. So
Speaker 1: on August eleventh, twenty nineteen, more in sadness than an anger,
Speaker 1: I asked the commissioner of the league if Chuck was
Speaker 1: coming back for the twenty nineteen season. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe not, was the answer. I said, Look, this is
Speaker 1: not him or me. I'm not asking you to not
Speaker 1: let him come back. It's not like that. But if
Speaker 1: he tells you one way or the other, let me know,
Speaker 1: because I just can't stand another year of him. He
Speaker 1: takes all the fun of it out of it for me.
Speaker 1: I understand, said the commissioner. It's a but why do
Speaker 1: it if it's not fun. At eight am on the
Speaker 1: morning of August fourteenth, twenty nineteen, the official email notifying
Speaker 1: everybody of the new fantasy football season went out. I
Speaker 1: was not listed among the players. Nineteen minutes later, I
Speaker 1: got an email from Chuck Todd's subject line, it's just
Speaker 1: a game content quote just play. I won't speak to you,
Speaker 1: and please do me the same courtesy. Grow the f
Speaker 1: up and know I am not editing this. He really wrote,
Speaker 1: grow the f up. I wrote back that I thought
Speaker 1: he'd become part of the problem that imperils our nation
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to have anything more to do
Speaker 1: with him. I ended it with quote, do not contact
Speaker 1: me again. At ten thirteen am, he contacted me again. Amazing,
Speaker 1: how you believe what you believe about me? I'm sorry
Speaker 1: for ever helping you get credibility. I did not reply.
Speaker 1: At ten eighteen, he wrote me again again, I'm happy
Speaker 1: to never speak with you again. I'd prefer to pretend
Speaker 1: you don't exist. Don't make me care about you. No, boy,
Speaker 1: when Chuck Todd asks you to not make him care
Speaker 1: about you, you are in deep and dangerous waters. Boy.
Speaker 1: Another Chuck email at ten twenty nine, you are truly
Speaker 1: a tiny little man. I don't even feel sorry for
Speaker 1: you anymore. You have done this to yourself, and here
Speaker 1: I made a mistake. I did not ask him what
Speaker 1: he felt sorry for me about and what I had
Speaker 1: done to myself. I assume it was about losing the
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen Fantasy Football super Bowl to him At eleven
Speaker 1: oh nine, another email quote, you deliberately misinterpreted what I
Speaker 1: said shot first, and then rationalized the mistaken shot with
Speaker 1: some convoluted, full of bleef explanation. This presumably was the
Speaker 1: silly little detail about him lying and saying Representative Ocasio
Speaker 1: Cortes had referred to Nazi concentration camps. Then he wrote
Speaker 1: that what she said quote evokes Gash Chambers, and I
Speaker 1: think that's where we should leave it. A fantasy sports
Speaker 1: league is just a fantasy sports league, And having been
Speaker 1: in various kinds of them since nineteen good God eighty five,
Speaker 1: I often wonder if they aren't a kind of therapeutic,
Speaker 1: cathartic pressure valve for our inner demons. I do know this.
Speaker 1: You find out a lot about the other people in
Speaker 1: a fantasy sports league. So when that baseball player slapped
Speaker 1: the other baseball player over the reserve running back that
Speaker 1: he kept on his roster, and most people said, I
Speaker 1: just don't understand why he slapped him, I said, oh,
Speaker 1: I understand why he slapped him. Chuck Todd, billionaire. I've
Speaker 1: done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Scheneil, the musical
Speaker 1: directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed of our music.
Speaker 1: Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on
Speaker 1: the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
Speaker 1: Our Satirical on fifty. 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 and courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged and
Speaker 1: performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today
Speaker 1: was my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else was, as ever,
Speaker 1: pretty much my fault one plug before I go on
Speaker 1: October seventh of this year, at eleven fifteen pm Eastern daylight,
Speaker 1: it will be the exact fiftieth anniversary of the day
Speaker 1: I made my debut on an actual radio station that
Speaker 1: people paid money to put commercials on. WVBRFM, the student owned,
Speaker 1: student run commercial station at Cornell, now the community owned
Speaker 1: commercial stateation of Cornell and Ithaca, New York and Tompkins County,
Speaker 1: and the World Online operating from the palatial Olberman Cornelius
Speaker 1: Studios on East Buffalo Street, Ithaca, New York. And if
Speaker 1: October seventh is my fiftieth anniversary, that means that this Saturday,
Speaker 1: April fifth is the date that my friend John Rudan
Speaker 1: is celebrating his fiftieth anniversary hosting wvbr's oldie show Rock
Speaker 1: and Remnants. Only John was able to keep his show
Speaker 1: on WVBR, whereas Mind was canceled in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: So congrats, John, You're a better man than I am,
Speaker 1: and I hope that's a new windbreaker by now Rock
Speaker 1: and remnants the Big Five. Oh Saturday Night WVBRFM. Be there, Aloha.
Speaker 1: That's countdown for today, Just one three hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: nine days until the scheduled end of his lame duck
Speaker 1: and lame brained term, unless Musk removes him sooner. Please
Speaker 1: don't move Musk Trump, Please leave Musk. Put him out
Speaker 1: there every day, have him stand next to you during
Speaker 1: the speeches, have him there all the time, all the time.
Speaker 1: We want him there all the time. Seven ninety seven
Speaker 1: percent disapproval in Wisconsin, ninety seven percent. The next scheduled
Speaker 1: countdown is Monday, or as we're calling it here, Musk Day.
Speaker 1: Tuesday is also going to be Musk Day. Wednesday will
Speaker 1: be Musk Day. You get the point. As always, bulletins,
Speaker 1: as the news warrants, remember im peach Trump. It won't
Speaker 1: work now, it will win the Democrats the midterms, if
Speaker 1: there are midterms, if they're just Musk terms. Until next time,
Speaker 1: I'm Keith Overman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
Speaker 1: good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.