Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump's
Speaker 1: sheef thug wants to put Rachel Meadow in prison. This
Speaker 1: is not hyperbole, This is not symbolism. This is not
Speaker 1: an empty threat. Quote. I need investigations, trials and then incarceration.
Speaker 1: Andrew Weissman on MSNBC and Rachel Matadow and all of
Speaker 1: them unquote. Oh and just so we are clear on this,
Speaker 1: it's Rachel Matdow. Now you are next. We're close to
Speaker 1: it because Trump is this close to suing you for
Speaker 1: writing mean tweets about him, or for not voting for him,
Speaker 1: or if your name is Anne Seltzer, for putting out
Speaker 1: a Des Moines Register action poll that did not favor
Speaker 1: him enough not I may sue them. At least I'll
Speaker 1: scare them. A lawsuit in Iowa for consumer fraud filed
Speaker 1: against the Des Moines Register lawyer hired. His name is
Speaker 1: Alan Ostergren, and if you look him up in Google reviews,
Speaker 1: like Phil Bump of The Washington posted, you will find
Speaker 1: he literally has a one star rating. Emboldened by such
Speaker 1: pathetic self prostituting excuses for American leadership as Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: Patrick Soun Schong, Joe Scarborough and Bob Eiger and all
Speaker 1: the snatch defeat from the jaws of victory cowards at
Speaker 1: Disney and ABC News. Trump has now lost any remaining
Speaker 1: sense that anybody is even going to try to stop him.
Speaker 1: It is hard to point at a crazy man and
Speaker 1: say he's now lost it. But he's now lost it.
Speaker 1: You are next, Well, you're probably behind me, and you
Speaker 1: and I are both behind Matadow, and she's behind Anne Seltzer.
Speaker 1: But you know what I mean. ABC folds on Saturday
Speaker 1: and by Tuesday. Trump has sued the Des Moines Register
Speaker 1: for what might have been an accurate poll because it
Speaker 1: said he wouldn't win Iowa by as much as he
Speaker 1: thought he would. In other words, he's suing a newspaper
Speaker 1: for having dared to not predict he was going to
Speaker 1: run up the score. And the creature who wants to
Speaker 1: imprison Meadow for some conspiracy that exists only in the
Speaker 1: place his brain should be is Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon,
Speaker 1: the guy who looks like a boxing hobo traveling the
Speaker 1: country in empty freight trains. Trump, though, is still thinking
Speaker 1: about suing Bob Woodward for election interference. He is still
Speaker 1: thinking about suing the Pulitzer Prize Committee. And if that
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, it's because he already sued them two years
Speaker 1: years ago. Helpfully, an op ed in the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: Jay Bezo's proprietor from a Columbia historian named Robert Y. Shapiro,
Speaker 1: which is still prominent on the Washington Post site, insists
Speaker 1: none of this will happen, mister Shapiro, and I want
Speaker 1: to see a copy of his diploma before I call him.
Speaker 1: Professor insists Joe Biden should pardon Trump in part because quote,
Speaker 1: it would enable Trump to devote all of his administration's
Speaker 1: attention to governing instead of seeking revenge and retribution against
Speaker 1: his enemies unquote. And if that isn't the dumbest, most
Speaker 1: naive thing ever written, it's close. Revenge and retribution are
Speaker 1: two of only four or five emotions that Trump shares
Speaker 1: with human beings. Mister Shapiro also notes in his op
Speaker 1: ed how well fords pardon of Nixon worked out for
Speaker 1: the country. And here's a man employed at any institution
Speaker 1: of higher learning more respected than the Good Humor ice
Speaker 1: cream truck. And he does not realize that Ford's pardon
Speaker 1: of Nixon is how humanoids like Trump first understood that
Speaker 1: he could get away with it. Trump sued ABC, He
Speaker 1: may sue CBS. He's just sued a polster. His boxing
Speaker 1: hobo wants to arrest Meadow. Trump wants to sue the
Speaker 1: Politzer Prize people again. They're going after Liz Cheney. He's
Speaker 1: in revenge and retribution reruns. But go on, tell me
Speaker 1: why we should permit him to become president a month
Speaker 1: from now.
Speaker 2: I'm doing this not because I want to. I'm doing
Speaker 2: this because I feel I have an obligation to. I'm
Speaker 2: going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa.
Speaker 2: Their newspaper, which had a very very good pulster who
Speaker 2: got me right all the time. And then just before
Speaker 2: the election she said I was going to lose by
Speaker 2: three or four points. That it became the biggest story
Speaker 2: all over the world because I was going to win
Speaker 2: Iowa by twenty points. The farmers loved me, and I
Speaker 2: love the farmers, and it was interesting the way she
Speaker 2: did it. She brought it down two weeks before she
Speaker 2: said I was going to only win by four That
Speaker 2: was a big story.
Speaker 1: Suing the polster for publishing a poll that had him
Speaker 1: winning insisting that is consumer fraud when he won Iowa,
Speaker 1: when he won the election, How can he say this
Speaker 1: with a straight face, Because he thinks he has now
Speaker 1: gotten the right to avenge himself against anybody who didn't
Speaker 1: support him or who didn't support him enough. And crazier still,
Speaker 1: he thinks there is general agreement that he is entitled
Speaker 1: to this. I cannot state this more simply, nor state
Speaker 1: it too often. This is just the beginning. Today, Trump
Speaker 1: and his scumbags are merely suing or threatening public figures
Speaker 1: who have arded or angered or disagreed or just not
Speaker 1: agreed enough with him. He is still threatening CBS with
Speaker 1: a lawsuit over how it edited an interview that wasn't
Speaker 1: with or about him. Next he will be suing people
Speaker 1: for voting for Nicki Hayley, or for moving out of
Speaker 1: a Trump building, or for thinking bad thoughts about him,
Speaker 1: like in that Twilight Zone episode. Some of these hypotheticals
Speaker 1: are too crazy even for Trump. But do not forget
Speaker 1: that part of Trump's personal motivation for pursuing the presidency
Speaker 1: in the first place was his long standing dream of,
Speaker 1: as he put it in twenty sixteen, opening up the
Speaker 1: libel laws. Opening them up to make it easier to
Speaker 1: sue you for anything, not voting for him, not writing
Speaker 1: an op ed praising him, enough, giving an award to
Speaker 1: somebody who had investigated his crimes. From this day on,
Speaker 1: the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish, says
Speaker 1: the revolutionary leader Esposito after he sees his control in
Speaker 1: the political comedy Bananas and goes crazy with power. In
Speaker 1: addition to that, all citizens will be required to change
Speaker 1: their underwear every half hour. Underwear will be worn on
Speaker 1: the outside so we can check. I mean, what is
Speaker 1: the exact distance between that and suing a polster for
Speaker 1: saying you are winning? How much shorter is it than
Speaker 1: we would have thought before this blight descended upon us?
Speaker 1: How much shorter is it when Trump has appointed former
Speaker 1: newspaper Flamenco Correspondence as his own concierge judges and cases
Speaker 1: go to this judge? How far are we away from this?
Speaker 1: When nutjob Congress and Barry lauder Milk just issued his
Speaker 1: own made up reports in which he recommends criminal charges
Speaker 1: against Liz Cheney for I don't know snydness. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I'm so glad ABC News and Disney and mild
Speaker 1: pal Bob Eiger settled Trump's case against them, and everybody's
Speaker 1: just moving on to morning in America. That's the case
Speaker 1: where George Stephanopolis accurately paraphrased Judge Lewis Kaplan's finding about
Speaker 1: Trump and rape, the one in which Judge Caplan wrote,
Speaker 1: quoting the judge. The only point on which Ms. Carroll
Speaker 1: did not prevail was whether she had proved that mister
Speaker 1: Trump had quote raped unquote her within the narrow technical
Speaker 1: meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law,
Speaker 1: a section that provides that the label rape has used
Speaker 1: in criminal prosecutions in New York flies only to vaginal
Speaker 1: penetration by a penis. The definition of rape in the
Speaker 1: New York Penal Law is far narrower than the meaning
Speaker 1: of rape in common modern parlance. It's definition in some dictionaries,
Speaker 1: in some federal and state criminal statutes, and elsewhere. The
Speaker 1: finding that Missus Carroll failed to prove that she was
Speaker 1: quote raped unquote within the meaning of the New York
Speaker 1: Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove
Speaker 1: that mister Trump quote raped unquote her. As many people
Speaker 1: commonly understand the word quote rape unquote. Indeed, as the
Speaker 1: evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found
Speaker 1: that mister Trump in fact did exactly that unquote. Judge
Speaker 1: Kaplan in his written filing in the Egene Carroll case, Hell,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have wanted to go on the court with
Speaker 1: just that as my evidence that I didn't make a
Speaker 1: demonstrously false statement of fact, would I, Bob Igern't I
Speaker 1: wanted I have to prove that George's statement wasn't false
Speaker 1: and didn't have reckless disregard for its lack of falsity.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't I wanted to have to prove you didn't damage
Speaker 1: Trump's reputation. That's Trump, whose own Vice president elect JV.
Speaker 1: Vance once called him hitler. Gotta settle that case, because
Speaker 1: not only do you have to protect your money, but
Speaker 1: you know, there was this great op ed in the
Speaker 1: Washington Post by some guy named Shapiro about how pardoning
Speaker 1: Trump would enable him to stop seeking revenge and retribution
Speaker 1: against his enemies. This is for the public good. Tell
Speaker 1: me something, Bob, tell me something. Jeff Bezos, tell me something.
Speaker 1: Patrick schun Shanng, you little La Times whore, after you
Speaker 1: ordered your newspaper to stop writing about Trump's nominees for
Speaker 1: a while, and to send you anything they ever did.
Speaker 1: Write about them again. Tell me what you do now
Speaker 1: the next time you report that Trump lost the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election and Trump sues you, Suddenly I have the
Speaker 1: perfect idea for an ABC reality show. Just put a
Speaker 1: little lipstick camera next to every one of the executives
Speaker 1: at ABC and Disney going forward, and when Trump sues
Speaker 1: them next time, because he will just take their reactions
Speaker 1: and put them on TV, you'll break all ratings records.
Speaker 1: But we settled with him. We gave him fifteen million
Speaker 1: dollars for his Trump presidential memorial sinkhole. They have all
Speaker 1: gone nuts further nuts. It was at the same Young
Speaker 1: Republican dinner in New York where that one bozo pitched
Speaker 1: face first off the stage and took the podium down
Speaker 1: with him in the most eloquent expression by any Trumpist
Speaker 1: in the history of their movement, at which Steve Bannon
Speaker 1: issued his threat against Rachel Maddow. The third term Magic Act,
Speaker 1: in which you make the twenty second Amendment to the
Speaker 1: Constitution disappear, came up again. I recall being mocked for
Speaker 1: insisting here again and again and again that as soon
Speaker 1: as Trump was back in office, they would start making
Speaker 1: up a path focused on whether it means only two
Speaker 1: terms or only two consecutive terms by which he could
Speaker 1: run again in twenty twenty eight if he isn't dead then,
Speaker 1: or maybe even if he is. I was told I
Speaker 1: was laugh out loud wrong, he'd never try that. It's
Speaker 1: in the constitution, and I was wrong. They didn't wait
Speaker 1: for him to go back into office before they started
Speaker 1: this Bannon quote. The Viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually say consecutive, that maybe we do it
Speaker 1: again in twenty eight. Here it comes, and then the
Speaker 1: smooth segue into Soviet style vast conspiracy show trials. Quoting
Speaker 1: Bannon again, we want retribution and we're going to get retribution.
Speaker 1: You have to. It's not personal, it's not personal. They
Speaker 1: need to learn what populist nationalist power is on the
Speaker 1: receiving end. I need investigations, trials, and then incarceration. And
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about the media. Should the media be
Speaker 1: included in the mass criminal conspiracy against President Trump? Should
Speaker 1: Andrew Weisman on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and all of
Speaker 1: them We want all your emails, all your text messages,
Speaker 1: everything you did. You colluded in a conspiracy with Merrick Garland,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi, Lisa Monico, and Jack Smith unquote, a conspiracy
Speaker 1: against Trump involving Merrick Garland. I wish these are the
Speaker 1: people who guide Trump, the ones Joe Scarborough and Mika
Speaker 1: Przhinsky in effect went and before whom they prostrated themselves,
Speaker 1: the ones who want to arrest Scarborough's and Prashinski's co workers. Now, honestly,
Speaker 1: it's not that big a jump for Scarborough. He tried
Speaker 1: to get Matdow fired in two thousand, Seve Evan two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, twenty ten. I
Speaker 1: can't testify to any days since, but I've been told
Speaker 1: it continued after I left there, So arrest her. Eh.
Speaker 1: A week ten days ago, the entertainment website Variety asked
Speaker 1: me to write a thing for their year end issue,
Speaker 1: seven hundred words on what MSNBC should do now, because,
Speaker 1: of course, the ratings collapsed at MSNBC after the election,
Speaker 1: and Scarborough and Mika also collapsed. Seven hundred words now,
Speaker 1: Surprisingly enough, I have a lot more than seven hundred
Speaker 1: words on this topic. I believe, in fact the word
Speaker 1: count on my laptop read infinity. But Variety did a
Speaker 1: nice job of editing, and I thanked them for it
Speaker 1: before it posted yesterday. I'd like to read you the
Speaker 1: piece now, but annotated and expanded upon in some places,
Speaker 1: and I put a few things back in that they
Speaker 1: took out for space, nothing more than that, and amplify
Speaker 1: in a couple of points. Originally they titled this when
Speaker 1: it posted yesterday Keith Olberman on how MSNBC should approach
Speaker 1: Trump two point zero, But shortly thereafter they changed the headline,
Speaker 1: and unlike the New York Times, they didn't stuff it
Speaker 1: through the deflavorizing machine. The new Variety headline Keith Olberman,
Speaker 1: how can MSNBC save itself after Trump's win? First step
Speaker 1: fire Mika and Joe. Okay, I have to admit I
Speaker 1: giggled for an hour and then I give fawed Keith Olderman.
Speaker 1: How can MSNBC save itself after Trump's win? First step
Speaker 1: fire Mika and Joe? By Keith Olderman. This is the
Speaker 1: article quote by Keith Olberman, What does MSNBC do now
Speaker 1: after Trump accomplished the undead thing and retook the White House?
Speaker 1: After Comcast announced plans to spin off the network along
Speaker 1: with others, in such haste that its new company was
Speaker 1: named spin Co after Joe Scarborough and Mika Braginski went
Speaker 1: on their show and welcomed our new insect overlords after
Speaker 1: its audience vanished, nothing stay the course. The audience is
Speaker 1: exhausted and needs a break. It'll be back and resistier
Speaker 1: than ever. Suffer the ratings troth. Here's my first aside.
Speaker 1: How has this not occurred to anybody else that it's
Speaker 1: a troth? I cut back from five podcasts a week
Speaker 1: to two. You want to listen to five of these
Speaker 1: right now? Every week? You think I want to write
Speaker 1: five of these. I'm having trouble doing two. Maybe in
Speaker 1: January we do more. Right now, we need to rest
Speaker 1: and husband our resources, and I might point out and then,
Speaker 1: in terms of the ratings, although the Fox ratings went
Speaker 1: up from disastrous to twenty percent better than disastrous after
Speaker 1: Trump won, After Obama one in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: at MSNBC collapsed. There were meetings with executives there who
Speaker 1: couldn't understand it. But Obama won. Why a week later
Speaker 1: are we getting one tenth of the audience? And I said,
Speaker 1: everybody's still drunk. They really didn't understand it. I believe
Speaker 1: sometimes often as I'm just dozing off falling to sleep
Speaker 1: at night, I sometimes actually believe that there is a
Speaker 1: place in this country where they decide who runs all
Speaker 1: the television networks, all of them. Not just MSNBC or
Speaker 1: ESPN or any of the ones I've worked at, but
Speaker 1: all of them. Who ne Vision and Telemundo included. Where
Speaker 1: they all sit around and they go, all right, who's
Speaker 1: the worst possible person to run the Hallmark channel? This
Speaker 1: guy doesn't like romance movies. Put him in charge. I
Speaker 1: really think so. The ratings are down at MSNBC. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine why the audience does not want to see
Speaker 1: the news. And unlike other places, you can't just lie
Speaker 1: to them about what's happening. I mean not really. You
Speaker 1: can soften it up a little bit. You can try
Speaker 1: to be encouraging, you can try to be entertaining. You
Speaker 1: can do that maybe twice a week, like I'm doing,
Speaker 1: rather than say, twenty four hours a day. Of course,
Speaker 1: the audience is going to go away anyway. Back to
Speaker 1: what I wrote for Variety, I mean, obviously you have
Speaker 1: to fire mister and missus Scared Bro, however, continue their
Speaker 1: banal but largely benign political coffee class show without them
Speaker 1: and their insistence that we all join their msn VS,
Speaker 1: nobody will remember they were ever there. Another aside, I
Speaker 1: happen to be very proud of that phrase, msn VS.
Speaker 1: You don't know about VC France, Google it. It's on
Speaker 1: every morning now with cout Scarborough. They also cut the
Speaker 1: neck sentence, which I thought sold the point. Remember the
Speaker 1: Daily Show with Craig Kilbourne. Yeah, when Craig Kilbourne left
Speaker 1: the Daily Show to go do the CBS Show after
Speaker 1: David Letterman, boy oh boy, the predictions where the new
Speaker 1: host was never going to be able to live up
Speaker 1: to Kilbourne's reputation. It was never going to be as
Speaker 1: good as it was with Kilbourne. The next host was
Speaker 1: Sean Stewart. Do you remember MSNBC Mornings with David Gregory
Speaker 1: and Contessa Brewer. They were the ones who succeeded Don
Speaker 1: iMOS when they fired Imus when they didn't work out,
Speaker 1: they went to Scarborough and get some We have some
Speaker 1: woman who's free in the mornings Brushinski. Okay, I guess
Speaker 1: that's how that happened. I mean, look, at how MSNBC
Speaker 1: has excised me from their history. Nobody would notice if
Speaker 1: Scarborough disappeared, or if you don't like the idea of
Speaker 1: firing them both, just have him come back next Monday
Speaker 1: with a different wife. Lord knows it wouldn't be the
Speaker 1: first time. Back to the article. Plus, the next money
Speaker 1: is coming from more fervent opposition to Maga. Not less,
Speaker 1: wasn't the Scarborough disaster sixty percent of the demo audience
Speaker 1: gone in three days? Instructive enough? Did you not notice
Speaker 1: CNN going from fact based criticism of Trump's madness to
Speaker 1: hours of cacophonists shouting and sinking to whatever is the
Speaker 1: next level down from irrelevance. Another aside, looking at you, Abby, Philip.
Speaker 1: This formula in which you get eight people around a
Speaker 1: table yelling at Scott Jennings, everybody yelling at everybody else.
Speaker 1: This was the one trick that the former MSNBC executive
Speaker 1: later president, Phil Griffin knew. Every show, every show that
Speaker 1: ever got into ratings trouble, every new show, every old
Speaker 1: show was eventually approached by the show doctor, the man
Speaker 1: with the magic touch at MSNBC, Phil Griffin, and his
Speaker 1: solution was always I think we should have a panel
Speaker 1: with like six people at it every show. Phil Griffin
Speaker 1: is now the president of the Rachel Mattow Production Company.
Speaker 1: If there are any actual charges to be brought against
Speaker 1: Rachel Matdow for anything in this world, it's hiring Phil Griffin.
Speaker 1: Back to the article, did the quarter of a million
Speaker 1: canceled Washington Post subscriptions not tell you something? Or the
Speaker 1: exodus from Twitter X? What do you think happened to
Speaker 1: all these news consumers that they were raptured? They're all
Speaker 1: still there waiting to spend their time and money at
Speaker 1: the only liberal candy store still open, yours. These other
Speaker 1: supposed bastions of journalism have left you a near monopoly.
Speaker 1: And MSNBC only exists today because the last time NBC
Speaker 1: was handed a near monopoly, your management ancestors said, one
Speaker 1: hundred million in profits from Alderman's liberal show. I guess
Speaker 1: we'll take it if we have to. They did cut
Speaker 1: out something which suggests that the resonance of what you
Speaker 1: and I know about what's going on in the media
Speaker 1: not necessarily nationally understood. I added to the part about
Speaker 1: the exodus from Twitter X and the quarter of a
Speaker 1: million Washington Post subscriptions canceled, and the Scarborough disaster and
Speaker 1: the CNN ratings. I added the New York Times losing
Speaker 1: its way for the sake of some flaccid both sides
Speaker 1: of headlines. They cut that out, Still true back to
Speaker 1: the article. In the early years of this century, the
Speaker 1: great minds at GE, then NBC's parent were trying to
Speaker 1: go to the right of Fox by putting on Tucker Carlson,
Speaker 1: Michael Savage, and Laura Ingram. They were thus too busy
Speaker 1: to notice that I was putting on Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell,
Speaker 1: and Chris Hayes while they were trying to steal Bill
Speaker 1: O'Reilly away from Fox, or failing that, to transform MSNBC
Speaker 1: into a literal prison documentary channel. I kept Rachel from
Speaker 1: jumping to CNN by giving her four hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: seven dollars out of my own pocket. And the next
Speaker 1: thing the corporate masters knew, we'd spun them all off
Speaker 1: into their own shows an MSNBC was profiting a billion
Speaker 1: a year. By the way, I'd like the four hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty seven dollars reimbursed. Please another side. I know
Speaker 1: you haven't heard the four hundred and thirty seven dollars
Speaker 1: story before. I've kept that as a relative secret. I've
Speaker 1: only told it on let's see two hundred and sixteen
Speaker 1: episodes of this podcast. Well, I'm bitter. Back to the article.
Speaker 1: Generation after generation of NBC executive idiots viewed politics as
Speaker 1: nothing more than a soda brand and believe there was
Speaker 1: some additional audience, undecided or right wing, that they could
Speaker 1: add to the present one if only they also offered
Speaker 1: a different flavor called new MSNBC. The new flavor invariably
Speaker 1: turns out to be turnip. Besides that right wing ruled
Speaker 1: you out in nineteen ninety six. Pursuing it results in
Speaker 1: only one thing, the Scarboroughing of your present audience. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you can't tweet stuff. Your primetime audience doesn't
Speaker 1: want new faces. It wants comfort food. So refresh the
Speaker 1: menu and decor scuttle those daytime shows which always existed
Speaker 1: solely to give NBC News execs something to stare at
Speaker 1: while they pretended to work, and replace them with the
Speaker 1: morning formula, only with different sets in different titles. Try
Speaker 1: outsider big personality hosts like Elie Mistal and Pablo Torre.
Speaker 1: You could even try for a truce with your prodigal anchor,
Speaker 1: so he'll be inside the tent peeing out for a change.
Speaker 1: You may have noticed that I included in this one
Speaker 1: paragraph and buried rather successfully. I might add a suggestion
Speaker 1: that they fire Katie Turr and hire me back to
Speaker 1: the article, And now you can finally do something I
Speaker 1: first suggested in nineteen ninety eight. Change the damn name
Speaker 1: of the network. Use the acronym NYWS or American News Network.
Speaker 1: A nice self explanatory f Trump TV. What all this
Speaker 1: will get you? Besides the kinds of profits only a
Speaker 1: monopoly can provide, are non cash virtues like moral force
Speaker 1: and ethics, and journalism and patriotism and liberty. You may
Speaker 1: now be the last line of defense for the free
Speaker 1: press and thus the future of representative government in this country.
Speaker 1: The bullies don't stop hitting you because you are nice
Speaker 1: to them. They stop hitting you when you knock them
Speaker 1: out cold. Put that on MSNBC and all will be well.
Speaker 1: Thanks Keith, great report. Also of interest here Pennsylvania state senator.
Speaker 1: They're twenty twenty two Republican nominee for governor in that state.
Speaker 1: Erupts at a photo of a downed drone being carted
Speaker 1: off on a Northeastern expressway. He feeds all the conspiracy crap.
Speaker 1: Only one problem. That was not a downed drone. It
Speaker 1: was a famous movie prop. Now this had been Trump,
Speaker 1: he would be suing me for disagreeing with him. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is countdown.
Speaker 3: This is countdown, with Keith Alberman.
Speaker 1: Still ahead of us. At lunch the other day, a
Speaker 1: new friend and fellow former colleague of Ted Turner said
Speaker 1: he would be going south and seeing Ted while he
Speaker 1: was south, and he hoped to get him on a
Speaker 1: good day. Ted is eighty six years old. And I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm telling anybody anything. They don't know he's
Speaker 1: been in and out for at least ten years, fifteen
Speaker 1: years now. Having known him half his life, having worked
Speaker 1: for him half Ted's lifetime ago, I think we should
Speaker 1: look at this positively. When Ted Turner was forty three
Speaker 1: years old, none of us who worked for him would
Speaker 1: have expected him to live to well forty four. He
Speaker 1: drank incessantly, he never slept, He took every risk he
Speaker 1: could find. He's eighty six. He's still in and out
Speaker 1: rather than just out. That's a win. Ted won again,
Speaker 1: and boy, could CNN use Ted now, But I want
Speaker 1: to tell one of those stories from the out days,
Speaker 1: when his outness often produced such rage inside him that
Speaker 1: he almost fired me over the hat that my cammerman
Speaker 1: was wearing. It a story, and I almost responded by
Speaker 1: socking him in the jaw, But we made up in
Speaker 1: the end. Things I promise not to tell about Ted
Speaker 1: Turner next first. Believe it or not, there's still more
Speaker 1: new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the missgrints,
Speaker 1: morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other
Speaker 1: worse persons in the world, the bronze worse Trump and
Speaker 1: this tariff bullshit because he thinks the year eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: four was great. The Premiere of Ontario, Doug Ford, has
Speaker 1: responded in a way that could help us go back
Speaker 1: to eighteen ninety four. He says, if Trump follows through
Speaker 1: on this thread of a twenty five percent tariff on
Speaker 1: Canadian goods, he will simply stop Ontario from exporting to
Speaker 1: the US anymore. Electricity. Canada is the source of twenty
Speaker 1: percent of our crude oil, a lot of our our
Speaker 1: natural gas, and of course electricity they generate, which a
Speaker 1: million and a half Americans use in Michigan, New York, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: places like that lights Out. Incidentally, the website gas Buddy
Speaker 1: says the tariffs could increase the price of a gallon
Speaker 1: of gas by at least thirty cents a gallon, maybe
Speaker 1: seventy cents. The runner up Molly Murphy, a polster who
Speaker 1: did work for Kamala Harrison, who should now be on
Speaker 1: a rocket ship to the sun. She addressed the Democratic
Speaker 1: National Committee Executive Committee's first post election party I'm sorry
Speaker 1: post election conference. Molly Murphy said they blew the election
Speaker 1: because they spent too much time attacking Trump over this
Speaker 1: irrelevant topic of norms. Voters, Molly says, believe quote norms
Speaker 1: if not worked for them, and so we certainly shouldn't
Speaker 1: ask them to clutch their pearls. We risk sounding like
Speaker 1: hall monitors. As to the here and now. Molly adds
Speaker 1: that voters don't care who he's putting in cabinet positions.
Speaker 1: These voters are saying, I always give him pass on
Speaker 1: the outrageous if my costs come down. She insists, they
Speaker 1: should have been focused on household costs. Look, if you
Speaker 1: were a Harris Polster and you are speaking up now
Speaker 1: instead of on October eighteenth or August eighteenth. First off,
Speaker 1: f U. Secondly, it's pretty clear millions of Americans, or
Speaker 1: at least the two hundred and twenty nine thousand, seven
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty six voters in the swing states who
Speaker 1: actually decided the election. It's pretty clear two hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty nine thousand, seven hundred and sixty six people who
Speaker 1: have the right to vote in America chose the wallet
Speaker 1: over the polio and the fascism. Nobody's arguing that they're morons.
Speaker 1: We have bred them to be morons, we have educated
Speaker 1: them to be morons. We have let them educate themselves
Speaker 1: in homeschooling to be morons. They are morons. What a shock.
Speaker 1: But the point that continues to mystify me about second
Speaker 1: guessers like mal Le Murphy and other narrow minded pinheads
Speaker 1: is this, the Democrats spent eleventy billion dollars on advertising
Speaker 1: that much money. I'm just guessing here, but I think
Speaker 1: I think hear me out. We could have covered both topics.
Speaker 1: We could have covered the whole insurrectionisty dictatorshippy thing in
Speaker 1: the ads and the price of the sandwiches and the
Speaker 1: gas thing. Could have done them both, could have put
Speaker 1: them both in the same commercials. Even you think the
Speaker 1: cost of groceries is going down under a Trump dictatorship,
Speaker 1: he wants tariffs on everything, including oil and gas and electricity.
Speaker 1: Your gas is going up under Trump at least thirty
Speaker 1: cents a gallon at least oh and if you try
Speaker 1: to complain about it, Trump will sue you. I'm Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris and I approved this message because your food prices
Speaker 1: will so double under Trump. See other than the choice
Speaker 1: of voices. There you can walk and chew gum at
Speaker 1: the same time. Molly Murphy, well the generic you, but
Speaker 1: our winner. State Senator Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania. If that
Speaker 1: name sends a shutter down your spine, well it should please.
Speaker 1: He was the GOP nominee for governor that year in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, the one who lost to Josh Shapiro
Speaker 1: by fourteen because Mastriano was a fundamentalist theocrat and an
Speaker 1: election subverter, and a COVID denier and most importantly a
Speaker 1: murn and he's still a mourn. Mastriano posted a photo
Speaker 1: of what he says is a drone looks to be
Speaker 1: four or five feet high, maybe twelve feet wide, lashed
Speaker 1: to the back of a flatbed trailer and being transported
Speaker 1: on a major highway. Breaking News reads the caption to
Speaker 1: this photo. Crashed drone in Orange Beach, retrieved from water
Speaker 1: and taken to undisclosed location for further investigation. But Mastriano,
Speaker 1: though he has the IQ of a brain damaged fish
Speaker 1: that just had a drone crash into it, had much
Speaker 1: more to say about this above the photo of the drone.
Speaker 1: It is inconceivable that the federal government has no answers
Speaker 1: nor has taken any action to get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of the unadefied drones. The fecklessness of this administration was
Speaker 1: on display last year when a Chinese surveillance balloon was
Speaker 1: allowed to fly over the entire continental United States before
Speaker 1: being shot down. Such should be viewed as a threat
Speaker 1: to our nation and citizens. An action is long overdue.
Speaker 1: We have recourses and assets in our arsenal to get answers,
Speaker 1: but I suppose Ukraine is more important to the White House.
Speaker 1: January twentieth can't come soon enough. Mastriano's post got a
Speaker 1: community note because the photo that has driven into this
Speaker 1: madness is not of one of the so called Northeast drones.
Speaker 1: It's a model of a tie fighter from Star Wars.
Speaker 1: A motion picture this photograph being driven along a highway
Speaker 1: in the Philippine, which Doug Mastriano could not distinguish from
Speaker 1: his ass or his elbow. The community note also disappeared
Speaker 1: sometime yesterday, then reappeared, leading to the conclusion that perhaps
Speaker 1: Elon Musk also cannot tell the difference between an actual
Speaker 1: craft capable of flight and a toy. On the way
Speaker 1: to the local Comic con convention, Doug Mastriano boasts he
Speaker 1: spent thirty years in the army and is a veteran
Speaker 1: of desert storm in Afghanistan, and thank you for If
Speaker 1: we hadn't already been doing this, we should start doing
Speaker 1: this immediately. We should question anybody who served in combat
Speaker 1: in the last thirty five years about literal brain damage,
Speaker 1: because we see this time after time they come out
Speaker 1: of service with the best of intentions and with the
Speaker 1: iq of a fish that was just hit by a drone.
Speaker 1: Because this bone had simply picked up this photo from
Speaker 1: some conspiracy website and either assumed he could fool everybody
Speaker 1: with it, or is too far gone himself to know
Speaker 1: it was a pheo of a movie prop. Doug these
Speaker 1: Ano the drunes you're looking for, Mastriano, idiot, and today's
Speaker 1: other worse BUYSI and outer Space. I have one more
Speaker 1: story to tell you about covering the nineteen eighty two
Speaker 1: National Football League players strike, and this is less about
Speaker 1: the strike itself and more about the man for whom
Speaker 1: I covered it, Ted Turner. Ted Turner had put CNN
Speaker 1: on the air just two years earlier, and his sports
Speaker 1: guy Bill McPhail had interviewed me for a job as
Speaker 1: their New York Sports reporter even earlier than that May
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty and when I did not get it,
Speaker 1: I was genuinely relieved, because I was convinced there was
Speaker 1: no way they would ever get CNN on the air.
Speaker 1: No chance. Ever, Obviously I did not account for Ted
Speaker 1: Turner's stubbornness. Anyway, I wound up going there freelance in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, as I have related in some detail here,
Speaker 1: when Lou Dobbs and his girlfriend, the New York Sports Reporter,
Speaker 1: had to get out of town fast at the existence
Speaker 1: of missus Lou Dobbs. Eight months later, as the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two NFL strike loomed. They had made me staff
Speaker 1: and given me a contract, first offering me one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars less a year than they were paying me freelance.
Speaker 1: Even CNN of nineteen eighty two acknowledged the absurdity of
Speaker 1: that mathematical proposition. So I was invested already whining about
Speaker 1: Ted Turner, employee of CNN, when the football players walked
Speaker 1: out in strike in September nineteen eighty two, and that
Speaker 1: strike was my beat every day from March to November.
Speaker 1: A day or so after the strike began, we sent
Speaker 1: up an interview with the president of CBS Sports, Neil Pilson,
Speaker 1: about the effect that the strike would have on TV
Speaker 1: Sports in general and CBS Sports in particular, And as
Speaker 1: the camera crew and I filed into his office, Pilson
Speaker 1: wearily said, nothing against you, guys, but I've done so
Speaker 1: many interviews already about this strike that if you actually
Speaker 1: come up with a question I haven't been asked already,
Speaker 1: I'll give you well. We all leaned in towards him.
Speaker 1: Give us what the job a job interview at least
Speaker 1: fifty dollars, I'll give you CBS Sports caps, not exactly
Speaker 1: a job, but better than nothing. So we rolled tape
Speaker 1: and I said, so, mister Pilson, in light of the strike,
Speaker 1: do you wish CBS Sports did not have the Super
Speaker 1: Bowl this year? As it does? And he laughed, and
Speaker 1: he took off his mic and he went over to
Speaker 1: his office phone. He buzzed his assistant, bring in three caps,
Speaker 1: will you? And he sat back down. He said, you guys,
Speaker 1: did it. Nobody asked me that yet, and it's like
Speaker 1: the only question that really interests me. You're still rolling.
Speaker 1: Neil Pilson then proceeded to give a lengthy and thoughtful
Speaker 1: answer about how as long as the season was not canceled,
Speaker 1: it was probably better to have the Super Bowl because
Speaker 1: people would be so grateful that after the strike they
Speaker 1: wound up playing in anyway. So now a week goes
Speaker 1: by after that interview, and the bargaining sessions between the
Speaker 1: players and the owners are taking place in a Manhattan hotel,
Speaker 1: the Lows on Lexington Avenue, a dump with a nice lobby.
Speaker 1: All that matters to me is the Lows with the dump,
Speaker 1: and the nice lobby is literally three blocks from my apartment.
Speaker 1: The players and the owners just march through a long
Speaker 1: hallway into private rooms. That's all we see of them.
Speaker 1: It is not heavy lifting. There are nice seats at
Speaker 1: least in that lobby, but it is enlivened one day
Speaker 1: by news that our boss, Ted Turner has asked the
Speaker 1: union if he can come in and meet with their
Speaker 1: twenty odd player negotiating team because he wants to pitch
Speaker 1: them on something. He was in fact due there yesterday
Speaker 1: but was unavoidably detained. The rumor the players told me
Speaker 1: never confirmed, was that while changing planes in Chicago, Turner
Speaker 1: and an air hostess had ensconced themselves in a dumpster
Speaker 1: or the other version was in a janitor's closet for
Speaker 1: twelve hours of whoopee, and that's why he was a
Speaker 1: day late. Anyway, I walk into the Lows that morning,
Speaker 1: and if somehow I had not been able to recognize
Speaker 1: my camera crew, sure enough it is the same two
Speaker 1: guys who had been with me at Neil Pilson's office
Speaker 1: at CBS when I asked him the question he had
Speaker 1: not been asked before, earning us free CBS sports caps,
Speaker 1: and the cameraman and the deck operator are of course
Speaker 1: wearing their CBS sports caps and understand in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: CNN was not an upstart. It was not the feisty outsider,
Speaker 1: It was not the future of news. We were called
Speaker 1: pretend TV. It was said that CNN stood for Chicken
Speaker 1: Noodle News. One day, I called somebody up and asked
Speaker 1: for press credentials for Cable News Network, and the guy said,
Speaker 1: Cable News Network. The either people own the news stands downtown.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what he was talking about, so
Speaker 1: I went to one of the newstands and I asked
Speaker 1: the guy who owns this place? And he pointed to
Speaker 1: a plaque and it said owned by Cabbell News Company.
Speaker 1: The Kabbell News Company, owner of downtown newstands, was better
Speaker 1: known than Cable News Network. We got scoffed at in
Speaker 1: some arenas and venues like Madison Square Garden in New York.
Speaker 1: Our crews were not admitted because they were not in
Speaker 1: the Union. So the CBS sports caps were an important,
Speaker 1: albeit borrowed touch of legitimacy and dignity, especially for my
Speaker 1: cameraman and my deck guy. So the three of us
Speaker 1: position ourselves in that long haul in the lobby, waiting
Speaker 1: for my boss, Ted Turner, me holding the mic, with
Speaker 1: the big red CNN logo on the mic flag and
Speaker 1: the crew wearing their gaudy CBS sports caps, and in
Speaker 1: Ted walks emerging from the brilliant early autumn sunshine, filtering
Speaker 1: in from behind him from the street like this was
Speaker 1: a perfectly lit movie scene, and he sees me and
Speaker 1: recognize me and smiles and comes over and beams hot, damn,
Speaker 1: it's my CNN crew, And he shakes my hand and
Speaker 1: we roll tape and I start to asking my first question,
Speaker 1: and suddenly the joy drains from his face and he
Speaker 1: stops me. Oh, did what they wearing on their heads?
Speaker 1: He gestures at the cameraman and the deck guy, and
Speaker 1: I explained the Baxter, I don't give a damn who
Speaker 1: gave him them? Is a CNN crew, they wearing CBS
Speaker 1: sports caps. Get them off they damn heads. And he
Speaker 1: pushes me, I mean really shoves me and strides past us. Now,
Speaker 1: even then, I'm five six inches taller than Ted Turner
Speaker 1: and twenty five pounds heavier at least, And maybe I
Speaker 1: can live with my employer embarrassing me in public, but
Speaker 1: I do not have to let him shove me in
Speaker 1: front of all the other reporters. So for a second,
Speaker 1: I think, Ah, I'm just gonna run down the hall
Speaker 1: and catch him and horse collar the bastard from behind.
Speaker 1: About a year into my TV career, I have already
Speaker 1: accepted that there are positives to television, but I've also
Speaker 1: already learned nearly all the negatives. And not three months earlier,
Speaker 1: I had gone over to ABC to interview with them
Speaker 1: about going back to do radio sports. Seems to me,
Speaker 1: given what I know about Ted Turner, dragging him to
Speaker 1: the ground and then quitting TV forever would be a
Speaker 1: pretty appropriate farewell. And then one word popped in my head. Rent, Ah, right, Rent,
Speaker 1: So quickly I go to Plan B to be fair
Speaker 1: in thought, if not an action. Ted Turner was right.
Speaker 1: Look pretty silly to have the CNN camera crew wearing
Speaker 1: CBS sports caps while interviewing the founder and owner of CNN, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, was in the newspaper constantly because he
Speaker 1: kept saying he was going to buy CBS. Plus, I
Speaker 1: still had a story to do that day, and that
Speaker 1: crew is going to have to go back into the
Speaker 1: room where Turner would be meeting with the players about
Speaker 1: an hour later for the proverbial spray shot that would
Speaker 1: give us some video to use of their meeting, and
Speaker 1: simply having my guys take their caps off was not
Speaker 1: going to suffice. So I ran the three blocks back
Speaker 1: to my apartment to grab the only bit of merch
Speaker 1: or swag produced in the first two years of CNN.
Speaker 1: Something they had and apparently inexhaustible supply of CNN bumper stickers.
Speaker 1: I must have had one hundred of them in my
Speaker 1: place alone, and there were boxes and cartons and boxes
Speaker 1: and cartons of them in the New York bureau, which
Speaker 1: was funny enough as it was, since I don't think
Speaker 1: all the people who worked at CNN in New York
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two owned six cars among them. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I trimmed a couple of the stickers down to just
Speaker 1: the CNN logos and raced back to the Crappy Low's hotel,
Speaker 1: and just as they were calling for the crews to
Speaker 1: come in to get the spray shots of Ted meeting
Speaker 1: with the players, I put those CNN logo stickers over
Speaker 1: the CBS logos on my guys caps, and to my delight,
Speaker 1: they stuck in place a little large, but it worked.
Speaker 1: Later the boys came out of the meeting room, and
Speaker 1: the cameraman was in hysterics. He wound the video back
Speaker 1: and had me watch it through the viewfinder of the camera.
Speaker 1: As soon as they had walked in, Turner started to
Speaker 1: give them dirty looks, and then suddenly one of the
Speaker 1: NFL players said, Hey, Ted, there's your crew. There's your
Speaker 1: CNN crew. Hey CNN over here. Everybody was laughing, and
Speaker 1: now Ted was beaming that them. That's my CNN crew.
Speaker 1: All right, good work boys. When his meeting with the
Speaker 1: players broke up an hour later, I got a message
Speaker 1: from Ted's assistant to wait for him around a corner
Speaker 1: from the main lobby so he could give me give
Speaker 1: CNN exclusive details about what he was trying to sell
Speaker 1: the players on. It was a series of exhibition games
Speaker 1: so the striking players could make a little money on
Speaker 1: the side, that he could televise and there would be
Speaker 1: a pitch to the National Labor Relations Board that the
Speaker 1: strike had been forced on the players by the owners,
Speaker 1: which would have meant the players would have all become
Speaker 1: free agents. Ted won haunted them, all of them, every
Speaker 1: player in the National Football League to sign instead with him.
Speaker 1: He would create a twenty four team league. He would
Speaker 1: give the union half ownership of every team. He would
Speaker 1: find backers for the other half, and all he wanted
Speaker 1: was the TV rights. It didn't happen, obviously, but what
Speaker 1: a breathtaking scheme. Anyway, Turner was all smiles when he
Speaker 1: came out of the meeting to tell me before he
Speaker 1: met with the rest of the press, and he said,
Speaker 1: great with the hat, good work, but I have to
Speaker 1: get you guys some real sea and ed sports hats
Speaker 1: for Christmas. Ted stayed another fifteen or twenty minutes doing
Speaker 1: god knows what with God knows whom. I didn't see
Speaker 1: any dumpsters in the hotel, and then he left by
Speaker 1: the main exit as the rest of the camera crews
Speaker 1: and reporters trailed him. I went along just to see
Speaker 1: if there was anything he hadn't told me, And as
Speaker 1: he went out the doors to his car, he said,
Speaker 1: see overman, and I said, don't forget the hats, and
Speaker 1: Ted Turner gave me one of the dirtiest looks I
Speaker 1: have ever gotten in my life. Sure enough, a couple
Speaker 1: of days before Christmas, I get a call from my
Speaker 1: boss in Atlanta. I mean just got a box of
Speaker 1: one hundred CNN Sports Truckers caps from Ted Turner's office.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell this is all about,
Speaker 1: but his assistant says, if we wanted to know, we
Speaker 1: should call you. I was very proud of making the
Speaker 1: correct choice between correcting mistake and getting us all hats
Speaker 1: and dissaulting him. There is one PostScript. Ted talked the
Speaker 1: players into the exhibition games. I mentioned only two of them,
Speaker 1: one at RFK Stadium in Washington, which I went to
Speaker 1: on assignment, seated next to Ted Turner. He had two
Speaker 1: flasks with him. Anyway, the crowd was so small at
Speaker 1: RFK Stadium in Washington that at one point they got
Speaker 1: on the PA system and asked all the fans to
Speaker 1: go sit down behind the player benches so the TV
Speaker 1: shots of the game wouldn't show all those empty seats.
Speaker 1: The other game was in the Los Angeles Collis. They
Speaker 1: drew even less, maybe one thousand fans, probably more like
Speaker 1: five hundred five hundred fans in the LA Coliseum. Five
Speaker 1: hundred fans looks like the raisins and rice pudding. But
Speaker 1: it was the name of his ad hoc league with
Speaker 1: these games in Washington and LA that still sticks with
Speaker 1: me forty years later Ted named it himself. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure he did this deliberately. I know nobody else noticed
Speaker 1: it until I made a big deal about it. Ted
Speaker 1: Turner called his ill fated venture his Erzatz National Football
Speaker 1: League the quote all Star season, and I said, perfect.
Speaker 1: The acronym you have built for it is a s S.
Speaker 1: I've done all that average I can do here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil the
Speaker 1: musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of
Speaker 1: our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration at keyboards, mister Ray
Speaker 1: was on the guitars, bass and drums, and it was
Speaker 1: produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty musical comments
Speaker 1: are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
Speaker 1: The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
Speaker 1: written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of ESPN Inc. Other
Speaker 1: music arranged and performed by the group No Horns allowed,
Speaker 1: and my announcer was my friend. Why this is a coincidence,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust? Everything else was, as ever my fault. My
Speaker 1: best wish is, of course, to Ted Turner. My first
Speaker 1: television boss of bosses. That's countdown for today, Just one
Speaker 1: four hundred and ninety five days until the scheduled end
Speaker 1: of the lame duck presidency of Trump. Probably your lawsuit
Speaker 1: may vary. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always,
Speaker 1: bulletins as the news warrants till the next one, and
Speaker 1: I'm Keith Aldrimman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
Speaker 1: good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman 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.