Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. If
Speaker 1: Donald Trump were a foreign agent trying to destroy the
Speaker 1: United States of America from within, what would he be
Speaker 1: doing differently? Crash the stock market, bring on a recession,
Speaker 1: make it worldwide, maybe a worldwide depression. Use economic policy
Speaker 1: so insane that yesterday they were called insane by CNBC.
Speaker 1: Not only get out of NATO, but pit the US
Speaker 1: against NATO. Sacrifice countries to the Russian dictator. Push a
Speaker 1: ceasefire in Ukraine that serves only to give Russia thirty
Speaker 1: days to refortify its troop positions, threaten our forever. Allies
Speaker 1: like Canada and Mexico. Cut off humanitarian aid worldwide enough
Speaker 1: to start killing people via disease outbreaks in the same month.
Speaker 1: Start dragging our citizens and legal immigrants off the streets
Speaker 1: and out of their homes and hold them in communicado
Speaker 1: in distant concentration camps without trial prior to deportation. Try
Speaker 1: to break the constitution to hold office to avoid prison indefinitely.
Speaker 1: Blackmail the owners of the major media companies to support
Speaker 1: him or at least destroy their own news outlets. Violate
Speaker 1: every law, and make sure all the prosecutors and all
Speaker 1: the judges are loyal to you and not to the law.
Speaker 1: Decapitate not the excess in government, but the people who
Speaker 1: know how to stop plane crashes and epidemics. Turn the
Speaker 1: agencies over to every con man, an idiot and loser
Speaker 1: and lunatic. You could find roll back human rights on
Speaker 1: the failed economic policy of eighteen ninety four that the
Speaker 1: professor must have been talking about the one day he
Speaker 1: didn't cut class in college and burn all governmental records.
Speaker 1: Give a lie an item veto to a compulsive liar,
Speaker 1: drugged up foreigner who literally blows up everything he touches
Speaker 1: and finally take a one hundred million dollar bribe I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: contribution in public during a live infomercial for the Druggies
Speaker 1: self driving self detonating cars, right after announces he's going
Speaker 1: to treat attacks on the dealerships as domestic terrorism, even
Speaker 1: though the last president refused to treat an actual attack
Speaker 1: on the Capitol and an attempt to overturn an election
Speaker 1: by the current president as domestic terrorism. I mean, what
Speaker 1: else could a foreign agent vent on destroying America who
Speaker 1: somehow rose to ultimate power in America do besides that,
Speaker 1: other than maybe start shooting people on Fifth Avenue. The
Speaker 1: then paranoid idea that the country, maybe the presidency, was
Speaker 1: in the grip of, or about to be, in the
Speaker 1: grip of, a foreign AI agent, was the dominant conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory of American politics from nineteen eighteen through the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: It gave Richard Nixon a career, It gave Bobby Kennedy
Speaker 1: a career, gave Joe McCarthy a career, and Joe McCarthy's henchman,
Speaker 1: Roy Khane a career, And thus it gave Roy Cohnes
Speaker 1: henchman Donald Trump a career. And when they weren't destroying
Speaker 1: America by claiming other people were destroying America, you could
Speaker 1: turn to the movies where the Manchurian candidate about a
Speaker 1: joint Chinese Russian operation to brainwash Key Americans and thus
Speaker 1: put a stooge in the White House came out in
Speaker 1: theaters in nineteen sixty two, and The One Hundred Days
Speaker 1: of the Dragon, in which the Chinese perfect a way
Speaker 1: to change any person's appearance into that of almost any
Speaker 1: other person and thus put a body double in the
Speaker 1: White House, came out on television in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: So even if you haven't thought about this, you have
Speaker 1: been exposed to the idea of what more could a
Speaker 1: foreign agent do? Then Donald Trump is doing now to
Speaker 1: destroy America. By the way, if you didn't see the
Speaker 1: original Manchurian Candidate, they remade it in two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: Though if if you didn't see the original and you
Speaker 1: got the plot of the remake, you are a better
Speaker 1: person than I am. The problem with the plots, both
Speaker 1: imagined by politicians and those imagined by Hollywood, is that
Speaker 1: they are far too complicated. They certainly don't need to
Speaker 1: be that complicated. The Liberals had been converted by Russian
Speaker 1: propaganda in the thirties, Time to go off in the
Speaker 1: fifties in the movies, they used mind control and hypnotism.
Speaker 1: On television, they used a drug that turned your face
Speaker 1: into putty like Trump's, only it could be turned back
Speaker 1: to la human Again, way too complicated. Everybody from Attorney
Speaker 1: General A. Mitchell Palmer to McCarthy to the author of
Speaker 1: The Manchurian Candidate, Richard Condon, never stopped to think that
Speaker 1: truly all you would need was cash. I always like
Speaker 1: to speculate that those who caved to Trump. From Lindsay
Speaker 1: Graham to Jeff Bezos to Mark Zuckerberg have been blackmailed.
Speaker 1: But that's not really necessary, at least not in the
Speaker 1: non financial sense. Like the fella said, nothing is more
Speaker 1: easily frightened than a billion dollars. I mean, ask Disney
Speaker 1: and ABC, asked Comcast and NBC, Ask Warner Brothers, Discovery
Speaker 1: and CNN. Why waste all that time and effort to
Speaker 1: brainwash Sergeant Raymond Shaw or to create a Chinese puddy
Speaker 1: faced body double for President William lyons Selby when all
Speaker 1: the Raymond Shaws and William lyon Selby's of real life
Speaker 1: you could ever want are available for sale and at
Speaker 1: popular prices. Throw in just enough insanity and Trump has
Speaker 1: that in spades. And now the added element of Trump's
Speaker 1: obvious heroin level addiction to revenge, and you've got your
Speaker 1: foreign agent or good as a foreign agent in chief.
Speaker 1: I mean, hell, what if Trump is so crazy that
Speaker 1: his addiction jones demands that he takes revenge against those
Speaker 1: who hurt him the most in his life. That would
Speaker 1: be the American voter in his three elections one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty nine million, four hundred and sixty three thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred and eighty two votes have been cast against Trump.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of people to avenge yourself against. Why
Speaker 1: try it one at a time? Why not just wipe
Speaker 1: out the United States. But even as much as this
Speaker 1: strays from my first point, it still all fits because
Speaker 1: you can post mortem the man who is intent on
Speaker 1: destroying this country, and the sooner you do it, the better.
Speaker 1: But the baseline is still going to be the same.
Speaker 1: One of the two or three noble characters in the movie,
Speaker 1: the Manchurian candidate John mcgiver playing Senator Thomas Jordan, sums
Speaker 1: up my thought here and incidentally gives the attentive viewer
Speaker 1: of the film the ultimate easter egg. This is the
Speaker 1: entirety of the plot. When the actual foreign agent, the
Speaker 1: wife of the idiot to be installed as president in
Speaker 1: the movie, asks Senator Jordan if he will try to
Speaker 1: block her husband's nomination to the ticket, he says, would
Speaker 1: I block you? I would spend every cent I own
Speaker 1: and all I could borrow to block you. There are
Speaker 1: people who think of Johnny as a clown and a buffoon,
Speaker 1: but I do not. I despise John Iceland and everything
Speaker 1: that iceland Ism has come to stand for. I think
Speaker 1: if John Iceland were a paid Soviet agent, he could
Speaker 1: not do more to harm this country than he's doing now.
Speaker 1: Given that the movie script is sixty three years old,
Speaker 1: there's not very much to be changed there. People who
Speaker 1: think of as a clown and a buffoon. I despise
Speaker 1: Donald trump trump Ism. If Donald Trump were a paid
Speaker 1: Russian agent, he could not do more to harm this
Speaker 1: country than he's doing now. The one other thing conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists and the writers of political science fiction failed to
Speaker 1: see in the fifties and sixties, and thus failed to
Speaker 1: put into their plots, was the maddening reality that those
Speaker 1: who suspected or who saw that might as well be
Speaker 1: a foreign agent president would actually have to stop him.
Speaker 1: They never thought we would hesitate to stop him. Well,
Speaker 1: we are at another one of those moments in which
Speaker 1: the Democrats have the road plock to at least slow
Speaker 1: Trump down, and Chuck Schumer finally came out yesterday and
Speaker 1: said Senate Democrats are going to use it. But I,
Speaker 1: having been burned a few times this month, will believe
Speaker 1: it when I see it, because some of them may
Speaker 1: not use their power because they'll look mad. Please don't
Speaker 1: put it in the newspaper that we got mad. House
Speaker 1: Republicans passed the let Elon Musk do anything he damn
Speaker 1: well pleases, and stop anybody trying to even investigate him bill,
Speaker 1: the one they dressed up as a continuing reservation to
Speaker 1: fund the government for six months and prevent a shutdown.
Speaker 1: They would need eight votes from Democrats in the Senate
Speaker 1: to get around the filibuster and make this law. They
Speaker 1: could still get them. And if you say, how in
Speaker 1: the hell would that be possible, how in the hell
Speaker 1: did ten Democratic congress people to censure another Democratic Congressman,
Speaker 1: Fetterman said he would vote for it because if you
Speaker 1: want the guy in the government who most looks like
Speaker 1: a foreign agent, foreign as in from the planet of
Speaker 1: the cannimates, it's him. Plus you will never convince me
Speaker 1: he has fully recovered from his stroke. So that's only
Speaker 1: seven more cowards required besides Fetterman. Those seven and Fetterman
Speaker 1: don't really have a strategy as to what to do
Speaker 1: about Trump. They just want to make themselves look good.
Speaker 1: They are all potential Fettermans because they too are here
Speaker 1: to serve Man. The irony is even the Democrats, who
Speaker 1: are prepared to do the right thing, are scared of
Speaker 1: being blamed if there is a government shut down while
Speaker 1: the Republicans are boasting about making a government shut down.
Speaker 1: They are scared because the Republicans theoretically have raised the stakes.
Speaker 1: Oh knows, if the government shuts down, Elon Musk will
Speaker 1: have to fire more government employees and that will be
Speaker 1: the fault of Musk or Trump. No, sir, it's the
Speaker 1: Democrats you're doing it. See if you can follow the
Speaker 1: lack of logic here, the Republicans are not only shutting
Speaker 1: down the government building by building, room by room and
Speaker 1: desk by desk, but they are glorying in it. They
Speaker 1: built a clause into this continuing resolution to protect Elon
Speaker 1: Musk as he fires more government employees. They already are
Speaker 1: shutting down the government, but the Democrats are afraid. If
Speaker 1: the government completely shuts down and the Republicans say the
Speaker 1: Democrats did this, the Democrats won't be able to think
Speaker 1: of a believable answer like, I don't know, the goddamn
Speaker 1: Republicans already shut the effing government down. What the effort
Speaker 1: you talking about? Will Flitzer? So here's an idea when Senate. Democrats,
Speaker 1: any Democrats you at home, when you get add about
Speaker 1: a government shutdown, do what MAGA does. Change the topic
Speaker 1: and yell. Remind the questioner that the bill eliminates any
Speaker 1: chance of the House or the Senate or anybody else
Speaker 1: overriding Elon Musk killing the government and many people who
Speaker 1: rely on the government to stay alive. He is being
Speaker 1: authorized to kill them by remote control and taking the
Speaker 1: cash out of the government. It actually codifies him doing this.
Speaker 1: It is a backfill house and Senate measure confirming him
Speaker 1: as stoned apartheid. Clyde in Chief say something like again,
Speaker 1: just off the top of my head, if Elon Musk
Speaker 1: were a paid Russian agent, he could not do more
Speaker 1: to harm this country than he's doing now. Christ I
Speaker 1: do surprisingly have little shoots of hope for you, little
Speaker 1: crocuses popping up from the march permafrost in media, of course,
Speaker 1: they are popping up through the new piles of manure.
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom's next career, because he doesn't have one in
Speaker 1: politics anymore, which began with a podcast in which he
Speaker 1: interviewed the anti semi Charlie Kirk, has now proceeded to
Speaker 1: a new interview of the horrible and by the way,
Speaker 1: so out of date lunatic that I really thought he
Speaker 1: was dead already homophobe Michael Savage knee Wiener, and Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsom's next podcast guest will be Steve mannin because Governor
Speaker 1: Newsom didn't like being one of the favorites for the
Speaker 1: Democratic presidential nomination. He apparently always wanted instead to try
Speaker 1: professional suicide. Speaking of podcasts, the loathsome Rom Immanuel now has,
Speaker 1: which he appears to be devoting to telling Democrats to
Speaker 1: stop defending trans athletes and transgendered people and woke issues
Speaker 1: like you know, democracy, and just concentrate on food prices.
Speaker 1: Rom Political Reports is running for president, to which I ask,
Speaker 1: of what country now? The good news Oliver Darcy reports
Speaker 1: that the White House Correspondence Association's mealy mouthed non response
Speaker 1: to Trump pushing around the Associated Press was so mealy
Speaker 1: mouthed that even some members of the White House Correspondent's
Speaker 1: Association have sat up and taken notice. Association President Eugene,
Speaker 1: don't bother me. I'm about to be a TV star.
Speaker 1: Daniels was excoriated by membership on a conference call, and
Speaker 1: he evaded nearly all of their questions, but there is
Speaker 1: now a move a foot to depose him and to
Speaker 1: put somebody else in as president who will make some
Speaker 1: kind of response to Trump before Trump simply cuts to
Speaker 1: the chase and bans all reporters from the White House,
Speaker 1: or from the Eastern time zone or from the country.
Speaker 1: Even more impressively, CBS, Yeah, that's CBS, the un spelled
Speaker 1: CBS has found its hind legs. Turns out late last
Speaker 1: week that company, which was on the verge of completely
Speaker 1: caving to Trump over his blackmail lawsuit about the sixty
Speaker 1: minutes interview with Kamala Harris, instead filed two motions to
Speaker 1: dismiss Trump's amended complaint against them. And then on Monday,
Speaker 1: CBS went to the FCC and its new chief Goebbels.
Speaker 1: I think that's his name. Might be wrong, it might
Speaker 1: be Brendan something. It's hard to keep track of all
Speaker 1: these people. CBS demanded the FCC drop its inquiry into
Speaker 1: the Harris interview, which is after all, an utter fascist,
Speaker 1: pro Trumpist political revenge bullshit investigation, because it quote says,
Speaker 1: CBS completely disregard Yards both the letter and the spirit
Speaker 1: of the Commission's news distortion policy, CBS News, you have
Speaker 1: unsuspected depth for the first time in at least a decade.
Speaker 1: Edward R. Murrow would be proud, speaking of which I
Speaker 1: had the pleasure of attending the first preview of George
Speaker 1: Clooney's new play good Night and good Luck on Broadway
Speaker 1: last night, and Murrow would probably have been proud of
Speaker 1: it too, because it is, like Clooney's movie version of
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, now, a play about Edward R. Murrow
Speaker 1: that is not entirely about Edward R. Murrow. It is
Speaker 1: also artfully and helpfully updated with some creative license, not
Speaker 1: just to the present time, but almost to the present minute.
Speaker 1: The loudest sound all night was the booing that shook
Speaker 1: the Winter Garden Theater when a video montage bridging what
Speaker 1: terrified Murrow about television in his famous nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 1: speech on the subject from that Time to Today ended.
Speaker 1: The last clip in the montage was a shot of
Speaker 1: Elon Musk deafening rabid booing entirely deserved ensued. Other updating
Speaker 1: was done more subtly now. In both versions, Clooney has
Speaker 1: emphasized the tragedy of Don Holland Beck the CBS newscaster
Speaker 1: who was driven to suicide by a right wing TV
Speaker 1: critic in the Hearst newspapers named Jack O'Brien, who persecuted
Speaker 1: Holland Beck as an alleged communist who slanted the news.
Speaker 1: Holland Beck really was as good and as influential as
Speaker 1: Murrow and Cloney have made him out to be, and
Speaker 1: in fact, his signed photo hangs above this microphone as
Speaker 1: I record these commentaries. At one point, Clark Gregg, who
Speaker 1: is superb as Holland Beck, refered on the collapse of
Speaker 1: his personal and professional lives. He says he woke up
Speaker 1: that morning feeling as if somebody had hijacked the last
Speaker 1: three years, and that, among other things, all the sensible
Speaker 1: people had moved away. The laughter of surprise and self
Speaker 1: recognition was spontaneous and unanimous as it died down, greg
Speaker 1: as Holland Beck added to Europe, and now the laughter
Speaker 1: was louder. I would be remiss if I did not
Speaker 1: mention again that video montage of television news. In the play,
Speaker 1: dozens of newscasters, good and horrific and everything in between
Speaker 1: are shown, and at one point there is a brief
Speaker 1: clip of one newscaster who is probably identifiable to only
Speaker 1: a handful of us in that theater. The newscaster was
Speaker 1: from WKRC in Cincinnati, and as when I knew him
Speaker 1: in the eighties, KNBC in Los Angeles. His name is
Speaker 1: Nick Clooney, George's father. As to the stage craw As
Speaker 1: to the play itself, it is a technical and logistical masterpiece,
Speaker 1: with more moving sets than if Broadway tried to make
Speaker 1: a musical out of Star Wars, all of them at once.
Speaker 1: I actually feared the possibility of Murrow's studio colliding with
Speaker 1: one of the giant one hundred foot high descending video
Speaker 1: screens which suddenly appear and show him giving Murrow's commentaries
Speaker 1: live as he recreates them on stage. They really have
Speaker 1: tried also to recreate the film, but a live film,
Speaker 1: and in many parts they've done it better, complete with
Speaker 1: vintage clips of McCarthy and Milo Radulovich and others. They
Speaker 1: have largely succeeded in this effort, and certainly, given that
Speaker 1: this was the first preview, they will get better. But
Speaker 1: of course, the point of a Murrow play in the
Speaker 1: year twenty twenty five is that Murrow took risks that
Speaker 1: were in his time, as great as any risk any broadcaster,
Speaker 1: any politician, or any public figure could take today against Trump.
Speaker 1: To the service of that point, Clooney and his team
Speaker 1: managed a third update to the present day. As Murrow
Speaker 1: giving his nineteen fifty eight speech to news directors in
Speaker 1: Chicago about the future of news, about the future of television,
Speaker 1: about wires and lights in a box. He tells that
Speaker 1: audience and tells the audience in the theater that the
Speaker 1: real question isn't what unbridled power will do to us.
Speaker 1: We've seen that, It is what are we willing to
Speaker 1: do about it? This serves as a reminder that we
Speaker 1: begin to lose all chance of stopping Trump and the
Speaker 1: fascists when we begin to cooperate with them or find
Speaker 1: silver linings in their crimes. I can't think of anything
Speaker 1: I agree with with this, Mahmod Khalil, from beliefs to tactics.
Speaker 1: I have looked at this movement and thought it is
Speaker 1: doing more harm to itself than anybody else could. But
Speaker 1: when we start allowing these trumpest bastards to kidnap Green
Speaker 1: card holders with American wives off the streets of major
Speaker 1: American cities because they are non violent anti Semites, or
Speaker 1: they don't like Israel, or they're protesting American policy. And
Speaker 1: because Trump's whores say they are somehow connected to Hamas
Speaker 1: without offering any proof other than Trump ran promising to
Speaker 1: do this. You elected him so he can do it.
Speaker 1: Then when we start doing that, we've already lost the
Speaker 1: country because the next person to be dragged off will
Speaker 1: be the one on campus protesting Trump. If Marco Efing Rubio,
Speaker 1: whose grandfather was ordered deported from this country sixty years
Speaker 1: ago because he violated immigration law, only the order was
Speaker 1: never enforced and Grandpa was later declared a paro lee.
Speaker 1: If Marco Rubio has a case against Mahmud Khalil, go
Speaker 1: to a grand jury and get him indicted, you bastard.
Speaker 1: After al Rubio is a lawyer in the same way
Speaker 1: he is a Secretary of State because somebody else said
Speaker 1: he is, and you know, somebody else said he is.
Speaker 1: That's fine for the definition of lawyers and Trump whorees
Speaker 1: and Trump poor cabinet members, but it is not enough
Speaker 1: to arrest somebody, even somebody we think hurts this country
Speaker 1: with words. Because if we can start doing that again
Speaker 1: like we did a century ago, when we did it
Speaker 1: to people like Emma Goldman then or now my mood Khaliliel,
Speaker 1: we can start simply doing it to all anti Semites,
Speaker 1: in which case I demand that Ice kidnap and detain
Speaker 1: Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, all the fundamentalist senators and congressmen
Speaker 1: who only support Israel because they want all the Jews
Speaker 1: converted so they can have their big rapture thing, and
Speaker 1: all other anti Semites in this country, like that guy
Speaker 1: in wa Washington and Florida who quotes Hitler. It said
Speaker 1: Hitler did good things and has Hitler's speeches or at
Speaker 1: least did long ago on his bedside table. That Trump guy.
Speaker 1: This is the new criteria detain Trump without trial. Also
Speaker 1: of interest, here the new souvenir Major League Baseball cap
Speaker 1: with the logo that spells out a vulgar Hispanic term
Speaker 1: for women's breasts. And there's no question of it. Now
Speaker 1: there is an organized campaign to try to make Stephen A.
Speaker 1: Smith into a doesn't make you laugh presidential candidate, mostly
Speaker 1: by insisting he's too modest to ever be a presidential candidate.
Speaker 1: That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1: Stell ahead on this edition to countdown a story that
Speaker 1: fits with the winner of Today's Worst Person's dishonories, part
Speaker 1: of the saga of how I went from sports simple
Speaker 1: things to politics not so simple things, and why that
Speaker 1: may not be as good an idea as it sounded
Speaker 1: at the time, coming up in Things I Promised not
Speaker 1: to tell first, Believe it or not, there's still more
Speaker 1: new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miss Grants,
Speaker 1: morons and Dunning Kruger Effects specimens who constitute today's other
Speaker 1: worst persons in the world. Here are the nominees the
Speaker 1: Bronze Worse major League Baseball and it's merch partner New Era.
Speaker 1: They've done it again. The two companies have put out
Speaker 1: another set of grotesquely bad novelty caps using the team logos.
Speaker 1: Well abusing the team logos. These are called overlaps. No,
Speaker 1: they don't have your laps. Overlaps your cost forty five dollars,
Speaker 1: and overlap does not mean overlap between baseball logos and
Speaker 1: anybody having thought about what the new product would actually
Speaker 1: look like. No, the caps have the team or city
Speaker 1: name on them, with the team logo like superimposed atop it.
Speaker 1: Like it would say Yankees, and they don't have the NY.
Speaker 1: The Yankees interlocking logo superimposed or overlapping where they get
Speaker 1: the name overlap from. Needless to say, these caps look
Speaker 1: like a series of automobile accidents. Boston the Red Sox
Speaker 1: Big Red be logo on top of the word Boston,
Speaker 1: so it reads bobon, which makes me think of bubonds
Speaker 1: and bubonds as in bubonic plague. The interlocking SD of
Speaker 1: the San Diego Padres over the word padres that one
Speaker 1: reads pass deess airs an unfortunate one. The H of
Speaker 1: the Houston Astros plus the word Astros reads ass hose
Speaker 1: as big h os ass hose, or maybe as hose
Speaker 1: because that's much better sounding. And worst of all, the
Speaker 1: Texas word mark of the Texas Rangers has their big
Speaker 1: T letter logo overlapping it, so it's spells out te tas, which,
Speaker 1: if you know your colloquial Mexican language, is a word
Speaker 1: in Spanish translating roughly to a vulgarity for women's breasts.
Speaker 1: That one has been removed from sale, but you can
Speaker 1: still buy as hose your price forty five dollars amount
Speaker 1: of time they actually spent thinking about these forty five seconds.
Speaker 1: Lebrons worser. If at first you don't destroy yourself, try
Speaker 1: to try again. Darren Batty fired as a Trump speech
Speaker 1: writer the first time after CNN revealed he had attended
Speaker 1: a conference starring white nationalists. He's on the ropes again.
Speaker 1: Now he's acting under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy.
Speaker 1: CNN has now found tweets of his that wed deleted.
Speaker 1: I will leave out the name of who he's referencing
Speaker 1: here because it'll be way funnier if I do it
Speaker 1: this way, Beatty wrote, quote, forget Wainwright Park, that would
Speaker 1: be a scandal once twisted into a rumor that this
Speaker 1: mister X of ours was gay. Forget the foam that
Speaker 1: would be foam parties at gay bars. Forget the war
Speaker 1: promotion and the Neocon sugar daddies. Forget the low IQ,
Speaker 1: forget the twenty sixteen primary. Mister X is tough on
Speaker 1: China and good for military industrial complex, So be a
Speaker 1: good dog and vote for him. Another tweet about mister X,
Speaker 1: if a bunch of DC wants try to reinvent mister
Speaker 1: X as a nationalist, but a respectable one who promises
Speaker 1: tax credits to Black Lives Matter supporters. That is tough
Speaker 1: on China. Will you be a good dog and vote
Speaker 1: for him? And lastly, what happens in the cabana stays
Speaker 1: in the cabana hashtag, Well, mister X. The guy I'm
Speaker 1: calling mister X, but Darren Beatty of the State Department
Speaker 1: did not, is, of course, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of
Speaker 1: State and Darren Beatty's current boss. Only the best people,
Speaker 1: but our winner the worst. David Smith of the British
Speaker 1: newspaper The Guardian, speculating on the twenty twenty eight American
Speaker 1: presidential race. Mister Smith is the Washington bureau chief of
Speaker 1: the Guardian. He attended college and Leeds in England. He
Speaker 1: was the Africa correspondent for the paper. He moved to
Speaker 1: Washington in twenty fifteen. He got married at the Boat
Speaker 1: House in Central Park, and he still doesn't have a
Speaker 1: clue about the country he now covers. He has devoted
Speaker 1: an entire column to well, just read parts of it
Speaker 1: and then I'll notate or i'll translator answer quote. Stephen A.
Speaker 1: Smith was asked by co host Elissa Farrick Griffin what
Speaker 1: he makes of hypothetical polls that show him among the
Speaker 1: leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Actually it shows him last on the list of contenders
Speaker 1: for the presidential nomination in twenty twenty eight at two percent.
Speaker 1: This wasn't some name, you're none a knee poll. This
Speaker 1: was pick from this list. He finished behind Tim Walls.
Speaker 1: But the premise of this attempt to make people stop
Speaker 1: laughing at Stephen A. Smith president is he's fresh and different.
Speaker 1: We don't want these people we've been nominating lately. And
Speaker 1: I Tim Walls, who is as not as fresh and
Speaker 1: as not as different as you can possibly get, has
Speaker 1: fifty percent more support than Steven A. Smith in a
Speaker 1: closed poll. I mean, if Bozo were on this list,
Speaker 1: he would have finished like fifth. The charismatic sports news
Speaker 1: host has become an unlikely force and a party that
Speaker 1: needs critical friends and fresh ideas. Unquote name one name,
Speaker 1: one fresh idea, Name anybody to whom Steven A. Smith
Speaker 1: in politics is a critical friend. Quote Despite or because
Speaker 1: of his lack of political experience, Smith is emerging jing
Speaker 1: as an unlikely force and a Democratic party badly in
Speaker 1: need of critical friends, fresh ideas, and blunt truth. Telling look,
Speaker 1: this is like the fiftieth story about this nonsense, and
Speaker 1: it uses the idea of critical friends and fresh ideas
Speaker 1: twice in one article fifty stories. At least, I would
Speaker 1: guess Stephen A. Smith has forty nine supporters for president,
Speaker 1: also emerging as an unlikely force two percent in the
Speaker 1: poll you're quoting. That's not a force, that's a margin
Speaker 1: of error. And if that phrase ever applied better to
Speaker 1: anybody that I've ever met, I don't know who could be.
Speaker 1: Maybe Joe Scarborough quote. The idea of him running for
Speaker 1: the White House remains wildly speculative, you bet your ass,
Speaker 1: but speaks volumes about a shift in the US media
Speaker 1: ecosystem and a blurring of the lines between culture, entertainment
Speaker 1: and politics. No, it doesn't. It's something to write about
Speaker 1: while you're killing time until the actual dimensions and areas
Speaker 1: of the twenty twenty eight campaign emerged. I mean this time.
Speaker 1: In the two thousand and eight Republican campaign, Rudy Giuliani
Speaker 1: was the leading Republican by a mile. He got one delegate. Also,
Speaker 1: he's a sportscaster. He's a sportscaster known not for breaking stories,
Speaker 1: nor news, nor providing insight, nor being funny, nor being informative,
Speaker 1: but for killing time, for taking a situation where one
Speaker 1: word would do, and using say, twenty seven and forty
Speaker 1: three of them. That is not a blurring of the
Speaker 1: lines between culture, entertainment and politics. That's a blurring of
Speaker 1: your vision if you try to watch him too long. Quote.
Speaker 1: His fans include Kurt Bardella, a media relations consultant and
Speaker 1: democratic strategist who watches First Take That's the show Smith's
Speaker 1: son religiously. Bardella said, he's out there with passion and charisma,
Speaker 1: and he provokes emotion and converse and debate. He's become
Speaker 1: the singular most influential person in all of sports. Well,
Speaker 1: it may be in basketball. The NFL people will cat
Speaker 1: ESPN kind of kind of laugh at him. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've heard them. I don't want to embarrass them and
Speaker 1: use their names if it's anything else like baseball or
Speaker 1: the Olympics, or god forbid, anything lesser than those levels sports, golf, tennis,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. His biggest insight so far has been
Speaker 1: the phrase, we will be right back to talk more NBA.
Speaker 1: That's what he knows about the other sports. Quote more
Speaker 1: from this Kurt Bardella rather than just dismiss it or
Speaker 1: make fun of it or ignore it, Democrats would be
Speaker 1: wise to study what makes him so successful, because there
Speaker 1: is nobody in the Democratic Party that is as relevant
Speaker 1: a voice on a day to day basis as Stephen A. Smith.
Speaker 1: Kurt Bardella, who used to be a Republican, has to
Speaker 1: show on News Nation, the right wing outlet that pretends
Speaker 1: it's some sort of voice of consensus. Some of its hosts, No,
Speaker 1: it's a scam. No, it's the nick at night of
Speaker 1: TV news, where you go after you get fired, and
Speaker 1: they're just there for the paycheck. Some of them seem
Speaker 1: to think they are actually representatives of the great American middle.
Speaker 1: News Nation is where Andrew Cuomo praises Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: Bill O'Reilly. News Nation is where Kurt Vardella praises Stephen A. Smith. Quote.
Speaker 1: Smith's eloquence and in your face style could be appealing
Speaker 1: to voters in this political moment. Unquote. Now Here in
Speaker 1: this story, the other mister Smith of the Guardian has
Speaker 1: actually broke some news Smith's eloquence and in your face.
Speaker 1: This is the first time the words Stephen A. Smith
Speaker 1: and eloquence have been used, not only in the same sentence,
Speaker 1: but in the same twenty four hour period volume Yes,
Speaker 1: grand eloquence, Yes eloquence. I don't think so. Seriously, What
Speaker 1: the hell's going on here? A man who's resilience I admire.
Speaker 1: He was fired by ESPN, he fought his way back there.
Speaker 1: He's now going to make twenty million a year from them.
Speaker 1: A man whose company I have enjoyed because he and
Speaker 1: I went to a Knicks game once. We said almost
Speaker 1: nothing to each other, just watched and tried to understand
Speaker 1: what we were seeing. But the twelve things he said
Speaker 1: to me were insightful and cogent. A man who beat
Speaker 1: the TV system. He keeps going around saying he's not
Speaker 1: running for president. His agent, Mark Shapiro, one of the
Speaker 1: great and this is a compliment. Huckster showman of all time.
Speaker 1: Mark Shapiro says he's not running for president, and week
Speaker 1: after week there's another story about him running for president,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I'm thinking this is Richard
Speaker 1: the Third refusing the crown and adding the word however
Speaker 1: to it. Only Stephen A. Smith is also doing things
Speaker 1: like complimenting the horrible anti semite Candice Owens on a
Speaker 1: podcast his own podcast, and attacking all the Democratic candidates
Speaker 1: and getting pumped by a guy on News Nation. I
Speaker 1: have only spent four years of this century exclusively in sports,
Speaker 1: But I was one of the most prominent figures in
Speaker 1: TV sports, certainly for the last decade of the previous century.
Speaker 1: And then I was one of the most prominent figures
Speaker 1: in TV political commentary while also being a prominent figure
Speaker 1: in the world of sports for the first fifteen years
Speaker 1: of this century. And guess what, I am not qualified
Speaker 1: to run for president. Not qualified, even with how far
Speaker 1: the bar has been lowered, I know how much I
Speaker 1: don't know. I would not vote for me. This whole
Speaker 1: thing seems to be some sort of attempt to build
Speaker 1: for Stephen one quality I think even he would have been.
Speaker 1: He's never been publicly accused of humility. Oh, he's a
Speaker 1: good guy. I didn't really want to be president. Well
Speaker 1: it's a great strategy, I guess, especially if you're not
Speaker 1: going to be president. It'll help his nonsports podcasts unless
Speaker 1: he keeps having people like Candace Owens and Charlie kirk
Speaker 1: On as guests. I mean, there's still people out there
Speaker 1: who think Trump gave up his business and gave back
Speaker 1: money to become dictator. But political journalists grabbed this third
Speaker 1: rail idea at your peril. You look stupid when you
Speaker 1: talk about it. And by the way, I know he
Speaker 1: hasn't had Charlie Kirk on yet yet he had Candace
Speaker 1: Owens on. Charlie kirk is a step up from Candace Owens,
Speaker 1: especially when, like The Guardian, the headline to the David
Speaker 1: Smith article reads, quote you ready democrats are reeling? Is
Speaker 1: Stephen A. Smith the way back to the White House? No?
Speaker 1: David Smith and the Guardian No two days worst persons
Speaker 1: in the world to the number one story on the
Speaker 1: countdown and things I promised not to tell. And the
Speaker 1: further I get away from the day I left NBC,
Speaker 1: the more I realize that almost everybody there and many
Speaker 1: who are still there, was crazy remains crazy. It is
Speaker 1: a nest for aggressive ingratitude and the rewriting of history
Speaker 1: to make sure that everybody who is a success did
Speaker 1: it all on their own, sprang fully grown from the ground,
Speaker 1: and nobody owes anybody anything. And those are the good parts.
Speaker 1: Then there are the really crazy people, the ones who
Speaker 1: are are in charge of covering the election, the ones
Speaker 1: who laid the groundwork years ago for the bottomless pit
Speaker 1: that American news media has fallen into, particularly the curse
Speaker 1: that will, if not corrected, kill us all both sides
Speaker 1: ism Chuck Todd disease, sadly, Katie Turrer disease outside of
Speaker 1: the NBC, Chrystalizid disease, Ryan Lizzid disease, New York Times,
Speaker 1: at this Ohio diner disease. It started with the scumbag
Speaker 1: Roger Ayles at Fox News, It migrated to ken Starr
Speaker 1: and the Bill Clinton prosecution, and it then became, after
Speaker 1: the sufficient number of refs were worked, the we can't
Speaker 1: dismiss these sleeze balls on the right because even if
Speaker 1: they are sleeves balls, they have public support. We need
Speaker 1: every viewer we can get. It's a declining marketplace. Instead
Speaker 1: of saying what American News once said to the sleeze
Speaker 1: balls of any party like Joe McCarthy or Father Coughlin
Speaker 1: or any of the others, which was screw you, We're
Speaker 1: gonna write or broadcast about your perfidy every day until
Speaker 1: you die, they looked at ken Starr's read thin persecution
Speaker 1: of Bill Clinton and said, well, no, they've found nothing
Speaker 1: in two months, in six months, in two years. But
Speaker 1: what if they find something later and it turns out
Speaker 1: we opposed them and we were wrong. We'll get killed
Speaker 1: by right wing media and our fascist bosses like Bob Wright,
Speaker 1: ken Starr and his thugs who went after Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: played the American news media, especially TV news, like the
Speaker 1: proverbial two dollars banjo. No news in the Clinton Lewinsky scandal,
Speaker 1: no problem. A quick phone call Alisa Meyers at NBC
Speaker 1: or any of several correspondents at CNNABC or CBS, or
Speaker 1: anybody at Fox, and suddenly there was breaking news and
Speaker 1: another alleged victim ready to do a tiery on camera
Speaker 1: interview which had already aired a dozen times with clips
Speaker 1: on every network before anybody realized the alleged victim hadn't
Speaker 1: actually alleged anything. It was putrid, but worse, it was profitable.
Speaker 1: And if you questioned it, if you said, this isn't journalism,
Speaker 1: the other networks, the other newspapers, the others invested in
Speaker 1: this story. A real time twenty four to seven soap
Speaker 1: opera would go do any length to attack you. And
Speaker 1: what would your own network do? Hell sir, That's why
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell this story in full, I haven't before.
Speaker 1: Almost by accident, I had become the face of the
Speaker 1: star Clinton Lewinsky story on cable news early in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, and one day I had enough. I decided
Speaker 1: to get out, and the reaction at NBC News was
Speaker 1: to try to prevent me from leaving. It was going
Speaker 1: to be a hostage situation, to literally threaten my career,
Speaker 1: my income, my future, my family, to try to force
Speaker 1: me to keep working there, to keep pushing whatever Ken
Speaker 1: Starr was cooking. Until you were in the middle of that,
Speaker 1: you can never really imagine what television executives will do
Speaker 1: for ratings or money. I think sometimes they are worse
Speaker 1: than politicians. By that point, I had been in TV
Speaker 1: for sixteen years. I was already thirty nine years old,
Speaker 1: I had some gray hair, I'd already been through the
Speaker 1: grinding machinery of local news in Boston and Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I had already made my mark on SportsCenter and moved on.
Speaker 1: I thought I had seen it all, ha ha, dumb me.
Speaker 1: I had not, however, seen NBC News president Andrew Lack
Speaker 1: nor had I imagined that he would actually have ready
Speaker 1: to go at a moment's notice, an employee who would
Speaker 1: be willing to try to blackmail me literally threatened to
Speaker 1: bankrupt me and my parents and put them, as Lack's
Speaker 1: employee phrased it, quote on the street. This was in
Speaker 1: the spring of nineteen ninety eight. As I said, I
Speaker 1: had decided I didn't want to do the nightly show
Speaker 1: anymore that was devoted to covering the Bill Clinton Monica
Speaker 1: Lewinsky story, whether there was any news about it that
Speaker 1: day or not, and especially since the network was devoted
Speaker 1: to portraying the Clinton Lewinski story as the worst thing
Speaker 1: to happen to America since the Civil War. The problem
Speaker 1: was the shows I did for Andy Lack's MSNBC in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight. They were making millions of dollars a
Speaker 1: week in profit, and the rest of the network was
Speaker 1: losing money. It had I've never had ratings before. I
Speaker 1: wanted to do something else, something else, anything else, fifty
Speaker 1: percent Lewinski, fifty percent, something else inside NBC. Failing that
Speaker 1: outside NBC, stay in New is, go back to sports,
Speaker 1: do it in New York, go to Los Angeles, anything
Speaker 1: except the show as it was constituted. So, through his personnel,
Speaker 1: Vice president, Elena Nackmanoff, an otherwise fairly pleasant person. There
Speaker 1: came a message from Andy Lack in May of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight. If you go see our personnel consultant, a
Speaker 1: woman named Deborah Byrne, and you talk to her frankly,
Speaker 1: we will consider letting you leave NBC immediately. I went
Speaker 1: first off, Elena Nackmanoff told me on Friday afternoon, June fifth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, some of us understand where you're coming from,
Speaker 1: about the madness of covering this scandal every night like this.
Speaker 1: So you're the good sport, a war winner for doing
Speaker 1: this today, Keith, you'll like Deborah Byurn. She's a certified
Speaker 1: social worker, and she's done great things for us. She
Speaker 1: saved a lot of people who were in trouble. I
Speaker 1: don't mean ethical crises like yours, Keith. I mean people
Speaker 1: who were passed out drunk at their desks. I didn't
Speaker 1: stop to ask her, which she thought was worse. In
Speaker 1: any event, Elena walked me through a labyrinth of hallways
Speaker 1: at thirty Rock in New York to the office of
Speaker 1: this Deborah burn She was a bespectacled, bent looking woman
Speaker 1: of about sixty with badly dyed hair and a fiercely
Speaker 1: aggressive handshake. She was not big, but frankly, I was
Speaker 1: not convinced I could take her in a fight if
Speaker 1: it came to that. And from the get go her
Speaker 1: manager suggested it might come to that. I am not
Speaker 1: an employee of NBC or MSNBC, and I'm not beholden
Speaker 1: to them. Deborah Burn began loudly and too quickly. I
Speaker 1: work on a contractual basis, meaning I don't get ten
Speaker 1: percent of anything, and I don't get money for attracting
Speaker 1: more business. It was clear whatever money they gave her,
Speaker 1: it did not go to office decorps. There were a
Speaker 1: dozen filing cabinets, no windows, two lamps, her high back chair,
Speaker 1: a metal desk, and the plain wooden chair at its
Speaker 1: side on which I was instructed to sit. I'm not
Speaker 1: here to be critical of NBC or MSNBC or Andy Lack.
Speaker 1: I'm not here to be critical of you. I'm an
Speaker 1: impartial observer and I'm simply here to help nackman off.
Speaker 1: The talent vice president was still there, and Burn turned
Speaker 1: to her for the record. Elena, I need you to
Speaker 1: describe the company's position about Keith's employment Keith, Elena said,
Speaker 1: understands that if he chooses not to work for NBC
Speaker 1: as NBC wants him to work, he will have to
Speaker 1: face consequences. Now, this was a slightly changed story from
Speaker 1: the one Elena Knackmanoff had given me even minutes earlier.
Speaker 1: The one she had given me in her own office.
Speaker 1: Gone was the good sport a war winner crap. Obviously,
Speaker 1: she said, We're not going to release you from your contract, Keith.
Speaker 1: If you want to be on the beach for the
Speaker 1: next two years plus whatever remains after that, so be it.
Speaker 1: That's his contract status. Deborah with a crisp thanks. Deborah
Speaker 1: burn now dismissed the vice president of NBC News who left.
Speaker 1: Burne produced and opened and improbably large folder with my
Speaker 1: name on it in improbably large letters, so I could
Speaker 1: see they had a folder on me ostentatiously shuffled quickly
Speaker 1: through one hundred assorted documents, got to a blank form
Speaker 1: of some kind, and asked me to describe the circumstances
Speaker 1: that had brought me into her office. I explained I
Speaker 1: was asked to come in. I also explained my conviction
Speaker 1: that I had made a complete mistake going into News
Speaker 1: in the first place that I missed doing sports, and
Speaker 1: on top of all that, there had now emerged this
Speaker 1: new kind of news, which I felt was against my
Speaker 1: personal ethics and beliefs about what I should be doing,
Speaker 1: or in fact, what the media should be doing. I
Speaker 1: threw in the word pollution a couple of times. Very
Speaker 1: grand of me, I thought. She didn't look up at me.
Speaker 1: Once all of media is becoming polluted in the way
Speaker 1: you've described. She yanked off her glasses and staring at me,
Speaker 1: not with anger, but with annoyance. You should learn how
Speaker 1: to live with it. It'll be a lot easier for
Speaker 1: everybody if you just do that. You're not a child.
Speaker 1: Grow up. Maybe next time you'll learn to read the
Speaker 1: contract before you sign it. I had to fight a smile.
Speaker 1: This wasn't some sort of counselor. This was Andy Lack's enforcer.
Speaker 1: She'd be threatening to break my legs before we were done.
Speaker 1: They might bring in Brokaw to narrate it. I did
Speaker 1: read the contract thoroughly, I said, suppressing my laughter. This
Speaker 1: isn't about the contract. This is about my morals and
Speaker 1: nobody else's morals, I said, not NBC's not mister Lax.
Speaker 1: Just mine. I don't like the way the news industry
Speaker 1: is handling this story. I have no delusion about being
Speaker 1: able to change the news industry. I don't even feel
Speaker 1: it's my responsibility to try to change the news industry.
Speaker 1: This is about my ethics and my incorrect choices related
Speaker 1: to TV news and TV sports. Now, she put her
Speaker 1: glasses back on. She wrote some notes. She chuckled as
Speaker 1: she wrote them. You may indeed miss sports as you
Speaker 1: put it, and you may feel that sincerely, but it's
Speaker 1: nonetheless an adolescent fantasy. And as to the pollution of
Speaker 1: the media, that's also part of this fantasy world you
Speaker 1: live in. You're grown up now, and you have to
Speaker 1: live with the consequences of your actions. You heard what
Speaker 1: Elena said. If you try to break this contract, NBC
Speaker 1: will punish you severely. This is David and Goliath here, Keith,
Speaker 1: and you're just not seeing it. I started to reply
Speaker 1: something about how I had come down there as there's
Speaker 1: a gesture of compromise that there quest and then she
Speaker 1: shouted me down. You'll have to learn to compromise. She
Speaker 1: emphasized the word as if I had not only not
Speaker 1: just said it, but as if she had just invented it.
Speaker 1: This is what the company wants, this is what the
Speaker 1: audience wants, and you signed the contract. That's your responsibility.
Speaker 1: I've been an NBC employee for twenty years, and they're
Speaker 1: very big, and they're very successful, and they just won't
Speaker 1: sit idly by. This will be David and Goliath, and
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry to have to break it to you,
Speaker 1: but you are not Goliath. I asked her why she
Speaker 1: had just said she'd been an NBC employee for twenty years.
Speaker 1: Two minutes after telling me that she was not an
Speaker 1: NBC employee, she looked at me. She snickered. She wrote
Speaker 1: that down too, Otherwise, she just kept talking. Television viewers
Speaker 1: are fickle, and if you're off the air for two years,
Speaker 1: it'll be real difficult to get back on. People will
Speaker 1: forget you. That's the real world now. Deborah Byrn paused
Speaker 1: and looked over at nothing over in the corner of
Speaker 1: the room. I have a daughter who isn't realistic, she
Speaker 1: suddenly whispered, just like you, lives in a world of
Speaker 1: her own. She judges others and moralizes to them too.
Speaker 1: She's tall like you too. It's difficult for parents to
Speaker 1: have to look up at their children and discipline them.
Speaker 1: Your height has always made it difficult for your parents
Speaker 1: to discipline you. Thus you remain headstrong child. The defeat
Speaker 1: in her voice was total and as disturbing as that,
Speaker 1: and this whole line was getting I really did think
Speaker 1: somebody was gonna pop out from between those filing cabinets
Speaker 1: to tell me I'd been punked, or that this was
Speaker 1: a remake of Candid Camera or something. I patiently explained
Speaker 1: to Deborah Burn that I had not been born at
Speaker 1: my current home of six three and a half inches,
Speaker 1: that in fact, my mother was taller than me until
Speaker 1: I was probably twelve thirteen years old. That my father
Speaker 1: was still taller than me until I got to college.
Speaker 1: But your mother is short, she blurted, with great satisfaction.
Speaker 1: I need descriptions of your parents, of their personalities, for
Speaker 1: my diagnosis, and please stop giving me your obviously prepared answers.
Speaker 1: I was still trying at this point. I started to
Speaker 1: describe my parents. She cut me off. Father passive, of course,
Speaker 1: this time I actually couldn't stop laughing. I said that
Speaker 1: was not my father at all, that he usually did
Speaker 1: what he damned well pleased. This annoyed Debora Burn. No,
Speaker 1: he's passive. I can tell I'm a professional Keith. He
Speaker 1: didn't stand up to your mother, did he. He never
Speaker 1: told her to grow up or act her age? Did he?
Speaker 1: That means he was passive. I could see her writing
Speaker 1: the word passive in block letters on one of the
Speaker 1: forms in which she'd been putting her notes. She's done
Speaker 1: detached this page theatrically. She stuck it into the large
Speaker 1: pile of documents on the top of the thing, and
Speaker 1: she grabbed a fresh page from a stack to her right.
Speaker 1: What about your parents' finances, I explained, they were both retired,
Speaker 1: so you take care of them. I began to answer
Speaker 1: that they were both extremely independent, when she cut me
Speaker 1: off again. I said, so you are responsible for them financially,
Speaker 1: don't evade me. My amusement at this obviously deranged woman
Speaker 1: now began to be overcome by anger. I swallowed both
Speaker 1: the anger and the amusement, and I explained I handled
Speaker 1: their finances, so you're their sole financial support, just as
Speaker 1: Elena and Nachmanoff's report to me indicates. I thought, so,
Speaker 1: so you're the superstar in the family, are you. I
Speaker 1: began to try to bring us back to this planet.
Speaker 1: When Deborah Byurn rose in her chair and leaned in
Speaker 1: toward me and tell me, Keith, what exactly will your
Speaker 1: parents do for money? What will keep them from being
Speaker 1: out on the street when their precious superstar is blacklisted
Speaker 1: from television? This purported social worker who worked for NBC
Speaker 1: or didn't work for NBC, or maybe both, depending on
Speaker 1: which minute it was, went into detail about the threat
Speaker 1: she was now making on behalf of NBC News MSNBC,
Speaker 1: Andy lack Lanna nackman Off, and our corporate parent ge.
Speaker 1: Even if I simply quit the Clinton Lewinsky Show, indeed
Speaker 1: quit television, NBC would declare that my contract was still
Speaker 1: in force. It would suspend me, It would not pay me.
Speaker 1: It would then sue me for the salary it had
Speaker 1: already paid me. Then it would sue me for the
Speaker 1: money it had spent on promoting the show. Then it
Speaker 1: would get a co order extending my contracts indefinitely until
Speaker 1: the suspension ended, and then it would suspend me some more.
Speaker 1: Let that sink in, she said, first time I ever
Speaker 1: heard that phrase, Let that sink in. And then she
Speaker 1: didn't even pause for a second to let me let
Speaker 1: that sink in Instead, she burst out with this, the
Speaker 1: greatest of all the non secutors on a day of
Speaker 1: non sequiturs, you have what I would classify as a
Speaker 1: Howard Stern kind of personality. Well now I was back
Speaker 1: to actually biting my tongue to keep from laughing at
Speaker 1: the image of a bunch of therapists at a conference somewhere,
Speaker 1: dryly discussing the parameters of the Howard Stern kind of personality, Dogmatic, unbending,
Speaker 1: presenting absolutely forceful opinions on the air that no one
Speaker 1: is permitted to disagree with. Imagine going on a date
Speaker 1: with Howard Stern. I tried not to. All he would
Speaker 1: be doing would be talking about himself. It would be unbearable.
Speaker 1: You're like him on the air, and I can see
Speaker 1: that who you are on the airs who you are
Speaker 1: in life. Of course, I've never seen your show. I
Speaker 1: don't have cable. Ever been married? I recovered from these
Speaker 1: non sequitors quickly enough to explain that I had not
Speaker 1: been married engaged again, No, I thought I might be
Speaker 1: about to be. Ever had a long term relationship of
Speaker 1: any kind? I told her I had, Oh, really, how
Speaker 1: long term? I answered? Eleven years? And when did that end?
Speaker 1: I calculated it had ended four years previously to the month,
Speaker 1: in fact, and you haven't had an eleven year relationship since,
Speaker 1: I explained to her as pleasantly as I could. While
Speaker 1: I looked to see if there were any emergency exits,
Speaker 1: or calculated if there might be a window somewhere outside
Speaker 1: that I could throw myself through to get out of
Speaker 1: the building as fast as possible, I explained to her
Speaker 1: as pleasantly as possible that I didn't know any way
Speaker 1: of squeezing an eleven year long relationship into four calendar years,
Speaker 1: so that I answer here would have to be no.
Speaker 1: I told you to stop giving me prepared answers right
Speaker 1: then again, she switched tones and topics. How much do
Speaker 1: you drink? She demanded. I said, I almost never drank.
Speaker 1: She dropped her pen and stared at me again. Well
Speaker 1: what does that mean, I said, I believed I'd had
Speaker 1: four glasses of wine during the current calendar year, and
Speaker 1: it was June. She took the glasses off and leaned
Speaker 1: in as far as she could without again rising from
Speaker 1: her chair or falling off it. Well, then, how much
Speaker 1: drug do you do? Told her, I'd never used drug
Speaker 1: or drugs stronger than alcohol, And before I could criticize
Speaker 1: her grammar, she got red and angry. Then what's that
Speaker 1: smell on your breath? Look, you just don't get this.
Speaker 1: Do you look at my telephone? Keith, and I did
Speaker 1: as instructed. I looked at an ordinary a black telephone,
Speaker 1: although given her manifest insanity, for all I knew she
Speaker 1: would shortly reveal it was a direct line to Elvis Presley.
Speaker 1: If I didn't want a black telephone and I have
Speaker 1: a black telephone, I'll just have to make the best
Speaker 1: of it, won't I, I said. I thought she was
Speaker 1: holding up very well under the strain of that disappointment.
Speaker 1: I instantly regretted the snidness of that remark, because it
Speaker 1: was just gonna make things worse. And then, to my astonishment,
Speaker 1: she sat back in her chair, ran her hand through
Speaker 1: her hair, and almost whispered, thank you for saying that.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. The pause in the storm did not
Speaker 1: last long. You're seeing a therapist, it says here you've
Speaker 1: been discussing these so called ethical issues. I said, we've
Speaker 1: made a lot of progress. Well, you can't resolve the
Speaker 1: work matters without getting at the core problems, which are
Speaker 1: obviously personal and family related, not to mention the alcohol
Speaker 1: and the drug. So talking about work with your therapist
Speaker 1: is probably not going to solve this to the satisfaction
Speaker 1: of NBC. So I will need to talk to your therapist.
Speaker 1: And I want you to sign a here and now
Speaker 1: permitting me to do so, unless that is this therapist
Speaker 1: of yours is working towards making you adjust to the
Speaker 1: facts that you signed this contract and this is your job,
Speaker 1: and this is the real world, and this is David
Speaker 1: and Goliath, and that's all there is to it. And
Speaker 1: you're on the air tonight at eight o'clock, and that's
Speaker 1: it now. She paused and stared off into space again,
Speaker 1: like when she mentioned her daughter. When I was in
Speaker 1: my early twenties, I was traveling from Smith College to
Speaker 1: Montreal by train. She suddenly announced My meeting with her
Speaker 1: went on for two hours. It featured threats against my parents,
Speaker 1: It had her yelling at me, it had her accusing
Speaker 1: me of using alcohol and drug And yet this was
Speaker 1: the only point where I really considered trying to make
Speaker 1: a break for the door. The Montreal Canadians hockey team
Speaker 1: were on that train, very drunk, very happy, very boastful
Speaker 1: of their conquests during their trips to the various cities
Speaker 1: of their hockey league. In one of them, I suspect,
Speaker 1: giving your fantasy world interest in sports, you may have
Speaker 1: heard of him, Boom boom, Jeffreyon. He came over and
Speaker 1: tried to pick me up. I nodded robotically and began
Speaker 1: to wonder if I suddenly leaped from the wooden chair
Speaker 1: and did run out of her office, would she continued
Speaker 1: to tell this story anyway after I left. We didn't
Speaker 1: talk of such things then, not in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: A married man, an athlete, a tall athlete. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: if I was a reporter and this happened, I'd have
Speaker 1: to report it. I'd put it on the news. That's
Speaker 1: just the way the world has changed the real world,
Speaker 1: that is. Keith. I suggested that at every news organization
Speaker 1: for which I had worked, the code had been the
Speaker 1: same that unless an incident involved the law, or it
Speaker 1: diminished a player's ability or availability in a game, we
Speaker 1: in fact didn't report it. Like at ESPN. I related
Speaker 1: a story similar to her own that had occurred in
Speaker 1: Miami at the past World Series in nineteen ninety seven. Well,
Speaker 1: she resumed indignantly. You might have gotten away with that
Speaker 1: under an old contractor in the sixties, where hippy like
Speaker 1: you might have fit in. But this isn't the sixties.
Speaker 1: This is the real world of today, and you won't
Speaker 1: get away with that kind of attitude under this contract
Speaker 1: or any other contract in the future. You could even
Speaker 1: go back to your precious sports and you'd soon find
Speaker 1: out about the real world. Don't kid yourself, it'll be
Speaker 1: David and Goliath. I said that the decision not to
Speaker 1: report the story in Miami was made under this contract
Speaker 1: by executives from NBC Sports. And now she sat bolt
Speaker 1: upright and slammed her glasses back on her face. I
Speaker 1: can't get this done in just one session, you know,
Speaker 1: Deathly afraid that she was about to recite another memory
Speaker 1: from the glorious days of rail travel, I agreed to
Speaker 1: return the following Thursday, knowing full well, as I said so,
Speaker 1: that I would never come back to her office, even
Speaker 1: as a hostage or in a body bag. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, she said, as she opened her door.
Speaker 1: But I'm exhausted, I told her. Indeed so was I,
Speaker 1: which was rather un fortunate, because now I had to
Speaker 1: go Doe two live hours of television. Yes, I guess
Speaker 1: you do. She suddenly stared at my feet, then quickly
Speaker 1: up at my head, as if she were estimating what
Speaker 1: size I took in caskets. But you're so much taller
Speaker 1: than I am, so you'll recover more quickly. MSNBC had
Speaker 1: arranged a car service to take me out to the
Speaker 1: studios in New Jersey from thirty Rock, and I spent
Speaker 1: the entire trip writing all this down, pages and pages
Speaker 1: of notes and quotes and boom boom Jeffreon and my
Speaker 1: own height at birth. And I called my therapist on
Speaker 1: my phone, and I asked her if there was a
Speaker 1: New York state number that I could call to complain
Speaker 1: about a certified social worker who seemed to be certifiable
Speaker 1: and who had just threatened me. She gave me a
Speaker 1: number I called while still in the car, and they
Speaker 1: said they had no record of any social worker named Deborah.
Speaker 1: When I got to the MSNBC studios in Seicaugus, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: now the home of MLB Network of all things, I
Speaker 1: went to my little office. I picked up a small
Speaker 1: microcassette tape recorder that I kept in the desk there
Speaker 1: and I went in to see my executive producer, Phil Griffin.
Speaker 1: I explained how this woman Burn had threatened me, and
Speaker 1: I mentioned that I'd called the state Social worker hotline
Speaker 1: and appeared that Deborah Burn was operating without a license.
Speaker 1: And as I did this, I kept flipping that mini
Speaker 1: cassette machine from hand to hand until I was sure
Speaker 1: Phil Griffin had gotten the implication. Completely phony on my part,
Speaker 1: But like James Jones says in Field of Dreams, there
Speaker 1: are rules here. No, there are no rules here. My
Speaker 1: executive producer buried his head in his hands. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: the Deborah Burn thing had blown up in NBC's face.
Speaker 1: They went into a full fledged panic at the news
Speaker 1: that she was not registered as a certified social worker.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that was a clerical mistake. It
Speaker 1: was her own clerical mistake. She was registered, but she
Speaker 1: was registered only under her maiden name. But for the
Speaker 1: next few weeks NBC was completely on the defensive about me.
Speaker 1: Soon they were promising to make me Tom Brokaw's air
Speaker 1: Apparent if I would only stay. I said, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it says in Brian Williams' contract that he's Tom Brokaw's
Speaker 1: air apparent. The executive in question laughed and said, no,
Speaker 1: Brian only thinks it says in Brian Williams contract that
Speaker 1: he's Tom Brokaw's heir apparent. It can be you stick
Speaker 1: with the Lewinsky story, oh and layoff ken Starr, and
Speaker 1: I have to think that one through too long. If
Speaker 1: they could make poor Brian think that he was the
Speaker 1: heir apparent when he wasn't, they could make me think
Speaker 1: I was the heir apparent when I wasn't as well,
Speaker 1: and that price laying off ken Starr, that was a
Speaker 1: non starter. The stalemate continued for a few weeks until,
Speaker 1: as I have related here previously, a friend in the
Speaker 1: Sports division revealed that NBC had lied to me to
Speaker 1: get me to sign my contract with them, that I
Speaker 1: was not being paid as they had told me, primarily
Speaker 1: by the News division, but by the Sports division. I
Speaker 1: then met with Monica Lewinsky's first lawyer, Bill Ginsburg, to
Speaker 1: discuss suing NBC over such illegal negotiation tactics. Ginsburg thought
Speaker 1: just leaking the fact that we had met would spring
Speaker 1: me sure enough. About six weeks later, Leanna Akmanoff suddenly
Speaker 1: called my agent told her they were willing to sell
Speaker 1: my contract to Fox Sports in Los Angeles, yippie. So
Speaker 1: do not doubt what television executives are willing to do
Speaker 1: to protect their ratings and their profits even in the
Speaker 1: event of full fledged fascism. And do not doubt what
Speaker 1: a zelot with even minimal skills at medium manipulation like
Speaker 1: Ken Starr can do to the news you watch or
Speaker 1: hear or read, even after he's dead. Also, most relevantly now,
Speaker 1: as CNN's talent faced the prospect of conforming to the
Speaker 1: right wing party line, or suddenly finding themselves with a
Speaker 1: conservative co host, or finding themselves unemployed. There's one more
Speaker 1: MSNBC story to tell that is relevant. I went back
Speaker 1: there in two thousand and three and we did pretty well.
Speaker 1: And then in twenty ten they began to pressure me
Speaker 1: to change my tone and to add in more diverse voices.
Speaker 1: And they did not mean women or members of minority groups,
Speaker 1: or people like i'd hired, like Rachel Meadow. They meant conservative,
Speaker 1: diverse voices. That's when I began to pack my bags
Speaker 1: to leave, and a few months later I left, and
Speaker 1: then four years later they asked me to come back
Speaker 1: as long as I agreed to have a conservative co host.
Speaker 1: I passed. But here's the problem. I don't know anybody
Speaker 1: else pressured in those ways who has also passed, Not
Speaker 1: at CNN, not at MSNBC, not anywhere else. Do not
Speaker 1: doubt what some television talents are willing to do just
Speaker 1: to remain. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. I swear I had that conversation
Speaker 1: with that woman, I swear to God, and it went
Speaker 1: on and on and on and on. Brian Ray and
Speaker 1: John Phillip Chanel, the musical directors of Countdown. Once she
Speaker 1: started talking about getting hit on by Boom Boom jeffreyon
Speaker 1: of the Montreal Canadians, I really thought it was being
Speaker 1: recorded for use on some ESPN show or NBC Sports
Speaker 1: show or something. I just to this day. Brian Ray
Speaker 1: and John Phillip Shaneil, the musical directors of Countdown Arrange,
Speaker 1: produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanel handled
Speaker 1: orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass
Speaker 1: and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical
Speaker 1: and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium
Speaker 1: organist ever Nancy Faust the sports I'm getting choked up over.
Speaker 1: This is the Olderman Thief from the ESPN two written
Speaker 1: by Stephen A. Smith, No written by Mitch Warren Davis
Speaker 1: Curtis VSPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the
Speaker 1: group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my friend
Speaker 1: Larry David. Everything else was as ever my fault Larry
Speaker 1: David for the Democratic nomination. That's countdown for today, just
Speaker 1: four hundred and ten days. Ten days until the scheduled
Speaker 1: end of his lame duck and lame brained term, unless
Speaker 1: Musk removes Trump sooner or the actuarial tables to The
Speaker 1: next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always, bulletins as the
Speaker 1: news warrants, remember impeach Trump. It will not work now.
Speaker 1: It will, however, win the Democrats the midterms as long
Speaker 1: as there are midterms. Until next time. I'm Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
Speaker 1: with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.