Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio has
Speaker 1: convicted Felon Donald Trump completed a quid pro quo with
Speaker 1: Putin and with the Wall Street Journal? Is he that
Speaker 1: low to have traded the life of an American hostage
Speaker 1: for a big anti Biden newspaper story that in depth
Speaker 1: in a moment but first breaking news. Convicted felon Donald
Speaker 1: Trump has lost seven percent of his voters because he
Speaker 1: now is convicted felon Donald Trump, and per new polling
Speaker 1: from The New York Times, nearly half of that seven
Speaker 1: percent has already committed to voting for President Biden. The
Speaker 1: Times did its best to bury this last night, but
Speaker 1: even from a low rent corner of the front page,
Speaker 1: the truth screams out. It's one of the biggest questions
Speaker 1: in the wake of Trump's conviction. Did the verdict change
Speaker 1: anyone's mind? Write Snate Cone and others early on, The
Speaker 1: answer appears to be an equivocal Yes. Times clearly saw
Speaker 1: a good polling idea and stole it. Remember those polsters
Speaker 1: who didn't just ask randos, did Trump becoming a convicted
Speaker 1: fella make you less likely to vote for him? But
Speaker 1: actually recontacted previous polices and ask them that question. The
Speaker 1: Times got two thousand voters it had pulled in April
Speaker 1: and May. That block had Trump ahead by three. That
Speaker 1: same group, as of yesterday had Trump ahead by one,
Speaker 1: and fully seven percent of Trump's April supporters no longer
Speaker 1: back him because he was convicted. The Times says three
Speaker 1: percent has switched from Trump to Biden, and the remaining
Speaker 1: four percent is still on decided about where they will
Speaker 1: now move their vote. Better still, the Time says the
Speaker 1: shift away from Trump is strongest among quote, young, non
Speaker 1: white and disengaged, democratically leaning voters. Of the people who
Speaker 1: previously told us they had voted for mister Biden in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty but would vote for mister Trump in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, around one quarter now say they would vote
Speaker 1: for mister Biden, and The Time says the double haters
Speaker 1: who were split among Biden and Trump but didn't really
Speaker 1: like either, a fifth of Trump's support among them is gone.
Speaker 1: These were all huge Biden vulnerabilities two weeks ago. They
Speaker 1: have now shrunk to bite sized. Remember last Saturday, I
Speaker 1: told you that each point lost by Trump from his
Speaker 1: base is seven hundred and fifty thousand Trump votes, that
Speaker 1: a five percent loss would mean something like a dozen
Speaker 1: electoral votes going to Biden, and that each new poll
Speaker 1: reflecting the outcome of the trial here in New York
Speaker 1: affirms damage to Trump of at least at minimal two
Speaker 1: or three percent. The convictions had the effect we all
Speaker 1: knew they would. It is a good bet that the
Speaker 1: use of the magic words will have that effect too.
Speaker 1: The magic words convicted felon Donald Trump. One other set
Speaker 1: of polls more granular, also good News Decision Desk, HQ
Speaker 1: and The Hill have put out their averages of polling
Speaker 1: in the swing states. They have seven swing states. They
Speaker 1: include North Carolina, I mean, I guess, I think of six, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada,
Speaker 1: and Georgia. In three way races with Kennedy included. The
Speaker 1: average of twenty two different polls in Wisconsin now has
Speaker 1: Bidden up by three point one points. Using thirty one
Speaker 1: different polls in Michigan, it's now Biden by half a
Speaker 1: point twenty nine polls. In Pennsylvania, Trump had forty one
Speaker 1: point six to forty one point three twenty eight poles.
Speaker 1: In Arizona, the Trump lead is back down to three
Speaker 1: and a hay twenty one poles in Nevada, Trump by
Speaker 1: four point six, twenty six poles in Georgia, Trump by five.
Speaker 1: We are just four weeks removed from the Times Siena
Speaker 1: polls in which Trump was up and up big in
Speaker 1: all of the swing states. Biden in that time, thanks
Speaker 1: largely to the convictions of Trump here in New York,
Speaker 1: Biden has in short, caught up. Now, what would the
Speaker 1: editors of the Wall Street Journal do if convicted felon
Speaker 1: Donald Trump went to them and said, I can get
Speaker 1: putin to send home his American hostage, your reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Speaker 1: What would the editors then do if Trump paused and added,
Speaker 1: I would like you to do us a favor, though,
Speaker 1: And what would the editors do if Trump then paused
Speaker 1: again and said, you need to help get me elected.
Speaker 1: I need you to join our Biden age plot. I
Speaker 1: need you to write a piece that restarts the Biden
Speaker 1: age plot. I'm a convict now, I need to change
Speaker 1: the subject immediately. I need you to publish this by
Speaker 1: Wednesday latest. That imaginary conversation is bluntly the worst thing
Speaker 1: I have ever thought about any journalists in this country,
Speaker 1: any news organization through half a century of cynicism that
Speaker 1: has only grown by dint of the decades of personally
Speaker 1: witnessing the horrible people and horrible acts of this industry,
Speaker 1: grown through three years of working for a Rupert Murdoc
Speaker 1: company and then being personally fired by him because I
Speaker 1: followed his instructions exactly. Even through all that, I have
Speaker 1: never even thought this badly of him and all of
Speaker 1: his journalistic prostitutes. But then it turned out the Washington
Speaker 1: Post buried Trump's foe knowledge of the horrors of COVID,
Speaker 1: as expressed Bob Woodward on tape, and it buried for
Speaker 1: three years the Alito flag scandal, and The New York
Speaker 1: Times led a multitude of its quote reporters unquote sit
Speaker 1: on vital and exclusive Trump news, possibly vital to the
Speaker 1: safeguarding of the democracy, for months, for years for book deals.
Speaker 1: And then the Wall Street Journal printed a piece on
Speaker 1: President Biden's age, again, a piece that is as journalistically
Speaker 1: bankrupt as anything I have ever read in the press
Speaker 1: of this country, a piece which quoted only Republicans, including
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy, but not including Kevin McCarthy's other comments that
Speaker 1: know Biden was sharp as hell, after which the co
Speaker 1: author of the piece, Shoubin Hughes, went on CNN and
Speaker 1: dismissed McCarthy's sharpness comments by insisting, quote McCarthy was doing
Speaker 1: that tactically because he also had to get along with
Speaker 1: President Biden. In other words, this reporter was acknowledging that
Speaker 1: McCarthy either lied to her about Biden, or he lied
Speaker 1: to Biden and everybody else about Biden. But they at
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal believed him credible enough to serve
Speaker 1: as the primary source for this piece when McCarthy is
Speaker 1: in fact a worthless, bitter and broken man who is
Speaker 1: twoh sleazy even for his own Republican party. This is
Speaker 1: a piece for which Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Senator
Speaker 1: Patty Murray and Senator Jack Reid were interviewed, but when
Speaker 1: they said on the record, no, he's fine, they were
Speaker 1: edited out. Their quotes were not included, their conclusions were
Speaker 1: not included, But several dozen Republicans who would not go
Speaker 1: on the record were permitted to slander the president anonymously.
Speaker 1: A piece so bad, so devoid of even the attempt
Speaker 1: to make it not look like something written by the
Speaker 1: Gateway Pundit so bad that it was defended by Chris Silizza.
Speaker 1: And still I hesitated to even suggest that this Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal piece did not occur in a vacuum, but
Speaker 1: in perhaps a quid pro quote, because to do that
Speaker 1: would require a degree of moral corruption at the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, a kind of terrible disqualifiing conclusion to the
Speaker 1: entire ethical construction of the lives of not just the
Speaker 1: writers of the story, Annie Lynsky and Shauvin Hughes, but
Speaker 1: every editor and every publisher at the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: who touched this piece. It requires them all to have
Speaker 1: sold their souls in exchange for what might be a
Speaker 1: worthless promise by two of the worst human beings who
Speaker 1: have ever lived. It requires the Wall Street Journal to
Speaker 1: literally be just as subhuman and as selfish and as
Speaker 1: corrupt as Trump. The saddest thing here is the possibility
Speaker 1: that these events are not connected, that there was no
Speaker 1: quid pro quote, but that it will always look like
Speaker 1: there was one. The saddest thing is that the corruption
Speaker 1: unleashed upon our country by Trump, by this Murdoch slime,
Speaker 1: these personifications of evil and immorality, that what they have
Speaker 1: done to us is so great that this exchange true
Speaker 1: or not, is plausible. This exchange if you hurt Biden
Speaker 1: for me, I'll make sure if Putin doesn't kill your friend,
Speaker 1: that is true or false, entirely plausible. And that is
Speaker 1: Rupert Murdoch's fault, and that is Donald Trump's fault. And
Speaker 1: may they both burn in hell forever for that especially.
Speaker 1: And yes, I hesitate about this part too, because to
Speaker 1: the core of my being I hate conspiracy theories. And
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theories I hate most are the ones that
Speaker 1: seep into journalism and into life just because of the
Speaker 1: sequence of timing, because of the logical fallacy that be
Speaker 1: followed a therefore a caused B and yet there is
Speaker 1: the timing. On May twenty third, Trump suddenly started talking
Speaker 1: about Evan Gershkovich, the kidnapped, detained Wall Street Journal reporter,
Speaker 1: and about bringing him back from Moscow, and how the
Speaker 1: only way to bring him back was to elect him,
Speaker 1: because Putin will send him back, but only to Trump,
Speaker 1: not to Biden. He'd be back after a Trump election,
Speaker 1: but before the inauguration, and almost nobody pointed out that
Speaker 1: by saying this, Trump was admitting that actually he could
Speaker 1: convince Putin to send Gershkovich home now, but he won't,
Speaker 1: and nobody pointed out that in doing so, Trump also
Speaker 1: had made himself part of the Russian gang holding Evan
Speaker 1: Gershkovich hostage to day. And yet it was late Tuesday night,
Speaker 1: nine pm Eastern that the Wall Street Journal's genuinely unbelievable
Speaker 1: attempt to reignite what even Politico had termed the Republican's
Speaker 1: biden Age plot, an effort for whom editors on my
Speaker 1: high school newspaper would have been fired and probably expelled.
Speaker 1: This story dropped like a hunk of excrement from Rupert
Speaker 1: Murdoch's soul nine pm Eastern Tuesday night. And what had
Speaker 1: happened earlier Tuesday, What had happened at eleven twenty two
Speaker 1: am Eastern Tuesday, involving Trump and the same Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2: Gershkevich, the reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who is
Speaker 2: being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after
Speaker 2: the election, but definitely before I assume office. He will
Speaker 2: be home, He will be safe. Vladimir Putin, president of Russia,
Speaker 2: will do that for me, and I don't believe he'll
Speaker 2: do it for anyone else.
Speaker 1: Coincidence no doubt. Trump posts a video out of nowhere
Speaker 1: in response to no one again dangling the carrot that
Speaker 1: he and he alone can free the Wall Street Journal hostage,
Speaker 1: and nine hours and thirty eight minutes later, the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal posts an article in which facts and on
Speaker 1: the record quotes which contradict the Trump campaign lie were
Speaker 1: deliberately edited out by The Wall Street Journal The same day,
Speaker 1: would Trump have demanded this piece of fiction hit job
Speaker 1: on Biden be written by Lynskey and Hughes, or rewritten
Speaker 1: by editors and blamed on Lynsky and Hughes in exchange
Speaker 1: for ransoming their friend. Well, he already did something like that.
Speaker 1: He did it to President Zelenski on July twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. I would like you to do us a favor,
Speaker 1: though He'd help Zelenski defend Ukraine against Putin's crimes, as
Speaker 1: long as Zelensky concocted false evidence smearing Joe Biden. If
Speaker 1: you think Trump wouldn't call Murdoch or Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: editor Emma Tucker a Murdoch import from his Times of
Speaker 1: London and say I can get Evan home. On November sixth,
Speaker 1: I can help you defend him against Putin's crimes. I
Speaker 1: would like you to do us a favor, though you're crazy.
Speaker 1: The question isn't whether what Trump would do that. My god,
Speaker 1: it's only a surprise he didn't do it earlier, given
Speaker 1: his statement in May. Given this new video, I would
Speaker 1: be willing to wager he did do this. The only
Speaker 1: question is whether the Wall Street Journal would do it
Speaker 1: with him. And if they didn't and the Biden age
Speaker 1: plot piece was actually somehow published coincidentally nine hours later,
Speaker 1: then perhaps the Journal and Rupert Murdoch and Emma Tucker
Speaker 1: are not so much soulless monsters but utter morons. And
Speaker 1: amid the thousand terrible things I have accurately accused Rupert
Speaker 1: Murdoch of being, perhaps the only one I never have
Speaker 1: is accusing him of being an utter moron. Now, about
Speaker 1: this piece and its authors and their willingness to manipulate
Speaker 1: the news or to be manipulated by Republicans or Trump
Speaker 1: cultists or their bosses or Rupert Murdoch or whoever, there
Speaker 1: are significant reasons to be of doubt about the credibility
Speaker 1: of Annie Lynsky and Shauvin Hughes. If you remember the
Speaker 1: Washington Post reporter who mocked President Biden quote walking through
Speaker 1: a graveyard. That was Annie Lynsky quote, Biden goes to
Speaker 1: a church and walks through a graveyard in Wilmington as
Speaker 1: his legislative agenda is dying in Washington, with a picture
Speaker 1: of it. October third, twenty twenty one. At face value,
Speaker 1: it was tasteless enough that she should have been fired
Speaker 1: on the spot. But that was just face value. Annie
Speaker 1: Lynskey either did not know enough about her own job
Speaker 1: or did not care enough to know that the graveyard
Speaker 1: in Wilmington is the one in which Biden's late son,
Speaker 1: his late infant daughter, and his late first wife are
Speaker 1: all buried. Annie Lynsky, co author of this Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal crap, initially deleted her tweet about the graveyard without
Speaker 1: even apologizing, and then she had to correct that tweet
Speaker 1: and put in an emotionless tweet reading I'm sorry. And
Speaker 1: the attack on Biden visiting the graves of his son
Speaker 1: bo and his wife Nelia, and his daughter Naomi. His
Speaker 1: daughter was one year old when she and her mother
Speaker 1: were killed in a car accident, the attack on Biden
Speaker 1: and the tasteless ain't I clever? Linkage of the graveyard
Speaker 1: and the dying agenda actually worse than they seemed at
Speaker 1: the time. Annie Lynskey covered the twenty sixteen Clinton campaign
Speaker 1: for The Boston Globe, and at a substance abuse event
Speaker 1: on the campaign trail, a woman in the audience stood
Speaker 1: up and revealed her son was an addict who had
Speaker 1: committed suicide. And Annie Lynskey, who would later mock Biden
Speaker 1: going to see his dead family, decided that Hillary Clinton's
Speaker 1: response to this poor woman was stilted and cold, and
Speaker 1: annie Lynskey's assessment of Secretary Clinton's emotions was published on
Speaker 1: the front page of the Sunday Boston Globe under the
Speaker 1: headline in New Hampshire, Clinton is lacking in the art
Speaker 1: of contact. This fiasco, this week's fiasco, This complete, unalloyed
Speaker 1: appearance of a quid pro quoll between her and her
Speaker 1: paper and the Trump campaign. This is only the latest
Speaker 1: in this series of self degradations, which are the only
Speaker 1: stories of consequence written in the entire career of Annie Lynskey.
Speaker 1: And as to her partner in this piece of journalism,
Speaker 1: Shoubin Hughes, who seemed unconcerned that she was admitting on
Speaker 1: national television that Kevin McCarthy was a tactical liar, while
Speaker 1: simultaneously evincing that it had never dawned and may never
Speaker 1: yet dawn on her. That McCarthy may have been tactically
Speaker 1: lying to her. Her mediocre career is best summed up
Speaker 1: by this from the thirteenth of February twenty thirteen. Assigned
Speaker 1: by the Wall Street Journal to cover reaction to the
Speaker 1: first State of the Union Address for the second term
Speaker 1: by President Obama, Her dispatch from Washington begins quote Ted Nugent,
Speaker 1: the rock star and gun rights advocate, stuck to his
Speaker 1: promise to remain respectful as US President Barack Obama delivered
Speaker 1: the State the Union address, but after the speech concluded,
Speaker 1: mister Nugent returned to form unquote Honestly, I am still
Speaker 1: looking for reasons to believe that my wild theory that
Speaker 1: the journal is trying to ransom its reporter by servicing
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is nonsense? Is paranoia? Is something else? That
Speaker 1: This deplorably bad story was co written by this Lynsky
Speaker 1: idiot and by the journal's resident expert on Ted Nugent's
Speaker 1: responses to State of the Union addresses. That's not helping me,
Speaker 1: nor are the other reporters who, before the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal story became toxic, decided to defend it and promote it.
Speaker 1: I mentioned Soliza, also known by his real name Kiss
Speaker 1: of Death. There's also Boston Globe Washington Bureau chief Jackie Kucinich,
Speaker 1: whose only concern was that the Democh who were interviewed
Speaker 1: for the piece but whose quotes were then dropped because
Speaker 1: they disproved the journals slash Trump narrative. Qcinich didn't care
Speaker 1: about the journalistic malpractice there. Her interest was what those
Speaker 1: Democratic protests said about Biden's security. They don't say a
Speaker 1: goddamn thing about his acuity, ma'am. They say a lot
Speaker 1: of things about the Wall Street Journal's honesty, and Annie
Speaker 1: Lynsky's honesty, and Schaubin Hughes's honesty, or, more accurately, their
Speaker 1: utter lack of honesty. The last straw was Kendelanian from
Speaker 1: NBC News, pimping this story by adding only the word stunning.
Speaker 1: When last we heard from this boil on journalism's ass
Speaker 1: Dalanian was defending Robert Herr, the corrupt Partisan Special Council,
Speaker 1: the Trump groupie who turned his report exonerating Biden of
Speaker 1: all wrongdoing into a psychological evaluation of the press. And
Speaker 1: I think in doing this Dealanian gave away probably inadvertently.
Speaker 1: I mean, who would deliberately include Kendalanian in a media conspiracy?
Speaker 1: But I think he inadvertently gave away what this is
Speaker 1: all about. Remember, in March, Delanian had written one of
Speaker 1: the most hilariously self unaware paragraphs in recent American journalistic history.
Speaker 1: Quote the Robert Herr hearing is a perfect example of
Speaker 1: what American politics has become. A career public servant spends
Speaker 1: a year reaching conclusions that are inconvenient for partisans of
Speaker 1: each party, so they set about questioning his motives and
Speaker 1: ethics on national television. Ah, there we are. The House
Speaker 1: is trying to get the Robert Herr President Biden interview
Speaker 1: tapes right now, trying to get them out of the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice so that the House Republicans can quote
Speaker 1: them and leak them and put them in Trump campaign ads.
Speaker 1: The fascists are circling back to what again. Even Politico
Speaker 1: recognize this as the Biden age plot, because Biden has
Speaker 1: caught up to Trump in the polls, because Trump has
Speaker 1: been convicted, because Trump is a convicted felon because Trump
Speaker 1: is a convict, because it is affecting his support seven
Speaker 1: percent in the goddamn New York Times. It is trying
Speaker 1: to revive the Biden age question. And yesterday it was
Speaker 1: the turn of the Wall Street Journal to carry water
Speaker 1: for Trump. And he's sick of fans like Robert her
Speaker 1: And oh yeah, who was the main named source in
Speaker 1: that journal piece? Why was Kevin McCarthy another Trump whore?
Speaker 1: Make no mistake what the Wall Street Journal did. It
Speaker 1: prostituted its news pages for Donald Trump. The only doubt
Speaker 1: is precisely why. I think the circumstantial evidence and the
Speaker 1: timing support this crazy idea that there could have been
Speaker 1: a quid pro quo over Gershkovich. And it is with
Speaker 1: that unfortunate man I would like to leave this. I
Speaker 1: am not Annie Lynsky. I am not going to mock
Speaker 1: the human concern for his well being, his release, his
Speaker 1: very survival. He is a prisoner of a man the
Speaker 1: world should rid itself of as quickly as possible, Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 1: I am not going to mock even the thinking that
Speaker 1: must have crossed the minds of dozens of good people
Speaker 1: at the Wall Street Journal, who have said to themselves
Speaker 1: in the last year, I'd do anything to get my
Speaker 1: friend Evan home. I have only sympathy and empathy. I
Speaker 1: had a pow Miia bracelet, a Vietnam pow Mia bracelet
Speaker 1: as a teenager. If he were my relative, my friend,
Speaker 1: my colleague. I do not know how far I would
Speaker 1: go to get him back, or at least think of
Speaker 1: going to get him back. But I still know that
Speaker 1: I would not do a deal with Trump and by
Speaker 1: extension putin and bluntly, I have no idea whether or
Speaker 1: not people at the Journal would say the same thing,
Speaker 1: or if perhaps they have already faced that choice and
Speaker 1: that article was the result of them already having made
Speaker 1: that deal. Okay, I am not going to put the
Speaker 1: blame solely on her. Georgia is a red state, despite
Speaker 1: who the senators are. The governors who appointed the appeals
Speaker 1: judges were Republicans. But everything in the Georgia election interference
Speaker 1: can is now on hold after the State Court of
Speaker 1: Appeals stays all proceedings. That's every hearing and every motion
Speaker 1: and even every scheduling until the challenge to that decision
Speaker 1: not to disqualify Fannie Willis is heard at the beginning
Speaker 1: of October. There is no chance this will be completed
Speaker 1: before the election. Again, How she could have not known
Speaker 1: that she had to be a million miles beyond the
Speaker 1: slightest hint of the mildest reproach. How she could not
Speaker 1: have known? That makes my blood run cold. Trump, though
Speaker 1: was defeated in New York, the gag order will stay
Speaker 1: in effect until at least sentencing on July eleventh, and
Speaker 1: there's still nothing new on any attempt to postpone that
Speaker 1: sentencing until after the Republican Convention the next week. In
Speaker 1: ho Chi Min City. I'm sorry in Milwaukee, I was
Speaker 1: looking at that Internet archive shot of their website with
Speaker 1: the photo of Hochi City instead of Milwaukee. And since
Speaker 1: everything legal about Trump ends at the Supreme Court anyway,
Speaker 1: I will actually direct you to an excellent story from
Speaker 1: the Washington Post to clip and save. Justin Juvenile's piece
Speaker 1: is headlined Alito's account of the upside down flag doesn't
Speaker 1: fully add up. Here's why. Of course they should have
Speaker 1: gone with doesn't fully fly. Here's why. But I'm nitpicking.
Speaker 1: It is a very useful article and literally worth saving
Speaker 1: somewhere in your computer. And there is one point I
Speaker 1: have not heard articulated this well, and this simply before that,
Speaker 1: I would like to quote in full. The most pivotal
Speaker 1: question about the upside down American flag has yet to
Speaker 1: be fully answered, Martha and Alito's motivation for flying it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this is about Alito's insistence that his wife flew all
Speaker 1: her flags a politically, that the Virginia upside down flag was,
Speaker 1: as she so colorfully put it, an international sign of distress.
Speaker 1: Quoting the Post again, Alito repeated his contention that a
Speaker 1: neighborhood dispute sparked the flag flying in a statement to
Speaker 1: The New York Times, which first reported the flag controversy
Speaker 1: last month. The Justice then told Fox News reporter Shannon
Speaker 1: Breem the dispute began when his wife confronted a neighbor
Speaker 1: about an anti Trump sign that featured an expletive, indicating
Speaker 1: the argument likely did have a political dimension. Ah, so
Speaker 1: it was not political, except that missus Alito started it
Speaker 1: by complaining about a political sign. Gotcha? Also of interest here,
Speaker 1: how crazy, how self abnegated? How horrorsh are African American
Speaker 1: elected officials of this nation who are campaigning for convicted
Speaker 1: fellon Donald Trump? Even though he is an obvious white supremacist.
Speaker 1: Congressman Byron donalds now says it was better for black
Speaker 1: people during Jim Crow because Byron Donald's is either a
Speaker 1: political prostitute and an ignoramus, or if you're a glass
Speaker 1: full kind of person, he's just an ignoramus. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is Countdown. This is Countdown, with Keith Olberman still
Speaker 1: ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. I just
Speaker 1: mentioned that when I talk about the pervasive baseline corruption
Speaker 1: of all Rupert Murdoch news operations like the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: I know it firsthand. I worked for Murdoch, and after
Speaker 1: a decade of denying it, he finally confirmed it. He
Speaker 1: fired me personally because I had done exactly what he
Speaker 1: told me to do, things I promised not to tell
Speaker 1: coming up, But first, as ever, there are still more
Speaker 1: new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the
Speaker 1: miss Grants, Morons, Undone and krugriffect specimens who constitute to
Speaker 1: Die's worse fashions in the world. Yeah, the runner up
Speaker 1: worse Speaker of the House, Mike I may look like
Speaker 1: a sick, sick man, but you can't prove anything. Johnson,
Speaker 1: He's appointed two new members to the House Intelligence Committee,
Speaker 1: Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, of course, had to turn over
Speaker 1: his phone to investigators looking into the attempt to subvert
Speaker 1: the election. And doctor Ronnie glug glug Jackson of Texas,
Speaker 1: who just got into a profanity laden fight with state
Speaker 1: troopers at a rodeo there last year.
Speaker 2: Glum.
Speaker 1: Now, see, mister speaker, the Intelligence Committee is intended to
Speaker 1: oversee the nation's spies and researchers and gatherers. It's not
Speaker 1: for members of your caucus who need to correct their
Speaker 1: own lack of personal intelligence. That's not why they call
Speaker 1: it the Intelligence Committee. The runner up, good old Matt
Speaker 1: slap the sound of one hand slapping still somehow head
Speaker 1: of Seapack. I don't know whether to laugh or cry
Speaker 1: or applaud Matt's freudian's slip here, but he has written
Speaker 1: and since deleted quote the sham prosecutions of President Trump
Speaker 1: have ignited a fire in the American people. They know
Speaker 1: that it's a rotten process and it's why President Trump
Speaker 1: isn't doing so well with young, Hispanic and Black voters
Speaker 1: on quote vote. If the polling I mentioned earlier in
Speaker 1: this program doesn't convince you if the polling I cited
Speaker 1: yesterday in this program doesn't convince you, if the pro
Speaker 1: polling I cited on Saturday in the special report doesn't
Speaker 1: convince you, that the convictions are killing Trump and totally
Speaker 1: disorienting his supporters, that Freudian slip must convince you. That's
Speaker 1: why President Trump isn't doing so well with young, Hispanic
Speaker 1: and Black voters. Thank you, Matt Well said, But our winner,
Speaker 1: Congressman Byron Donalds the Tim Scott of herschel Walker's. Byron
Speaker 1: wants to be vice president. He wants to prove he
Speaker 1: can be the kind of African American political leader who
Speaker 1: can appeal to Trump's base, the one who's willing to
Speaker 1: deny he is African American. First, there was a Black
Speaker 1: Americans for Trump event in Philadelphia, and almost nobody but
Speaker 1: white folks showed up for that. Then there was a second,
Speaker 1: an event to court the black vote, literally titled Congress
Speaker 1: Kognac and Cigars, at which Donald spoke and my long
Speaker 1: ago ESPN colleague Michelle Tafoya was the moderator. She, of course,
Speaker 1: is so proud of her minority heritage She's partially Hispanic,
Speaker 1: that she used to use the air name Mickey Conley.
Speaker 1: She m seated, and Donald told the Philadelphia Inquire everything
Speaker 1: that every white supremacist would want to hear, a Byron
Speaker 1: Donald say, quoting the paper's report. At another point, Donald
Speaker 1: said he is starting to see the reinvigoration of the
Speaker 1: black family, which he described as younger people forming nuclear
Speaker 1: family units and helping to breathe the revival of a
Speaker 1: black middle class in America. He went on to say
Speaker 1: that those family values had previously been eroded by Democratic
Speaker 1: policies that black voters embraced after becoming loyal to the
Speaker 1: party due to the Civil Rights movement. Quote, you see
Speaker 1: during Jim Crow, the black family was together. During Jim Crow,
Speaker 1: more black people were not just conservative, black people have
Speaker 1: always been conservative minded, but more black people voted conservatively,
Speaker 1: he said. And then hw Lyndon Johnson, you go down
Speaker 1: that road and now we are where we are, he added,
Speaker 1: referring to the former US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Speaker 1: So Congressman was better during Jim Crow, where there were
Speaker 1: more conservative votes among black people. Yeah, for the most part,
Speaker 1: black people could not vote at all. Couldn't have voted conservative, liberal,
Speaker 1: or communists or fascist or anything else. Yeah, they often
Speaker 1: got shot when they tried to vote. When between eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty two and nineteen sixty eight, according to the Equal
Speaker 1: Justice Initiatives' extensive research, at least three thousand, four hundred
Speaker 1: and forty six African Americans were lynched in this country,
Speaker 1: at least eight of them in Pennsylvania, where you made
Speaker 1: this idiotic asshole statement of yours about how it was
Speaker 1: better Jim Crow. And if that wasn't bad enough for
Speaker 1: you Byron Donald's Jim Crow fan was also offended when
Speaker 1: Michelle Tafoy asked him about why the cognac and cigar
Speaker 1: events seemed to be almost all male and why almost
Speaker 1: all of Trump's African American support seems to be male only.
Speaker 1: First of all, there's a difference between men and women anyway,
Speaker 1: Donald said. Men have been created by God to be conquerors,
Speaker 1: to be hunters. That's who they are. And so a
Speaker 1: black man in today's America is looking around and saying,
Speaker 1: how can I go hunt for my people and hunt
Speaker 1: for my family. They're looking at what Joe Biden has
Speaker 1: done and saying I can't hunt. You took my spear
Speaker 1: unquote spear. You heard him Congressman Byron, Who's gonna tell
Speaker 1: him they just made the racist reference to black men
Speaker 1: throwing spears. Donald's Today's worse person in the world. See
Speaker 1: the number one story on the countdown on my favorite topic,
Speaker 1: me and things I promised not to tell. Over the weekend,
Speaker 1: watching hockey, I had occasion to invoke my days hosting
Speaker 1: the Baseball Game of the Week and the World Series
Speaker 1: for Fox, and it reminded me of the delightful way
Speaker 1: that ended with me being paid one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a month not to do anything. I have changed jobs
Speaker 1: a lot, and seldom have the departures included gold watches
Speaker 1: and going away parties, at least not going away parties
Speaker 1: to which I was invited. But in forty three years
Speaker 1: in radio and television, I have only actually been fired
Speaker 1: in the traditional sense of go clean out your desk
Speaker 1: and get out twice. Once the order was from a
Speaker 1: drunken radio executive who did not like the fact that
Speaker 1: I was twenty one years old, and he was overruled,
Speaker 1: and he was sent home with a warning by his
Speaker 1: bosses hours later, and I was back on the job
Speaker 1: forty eight hours after that. The other time, when it
Speaker 1: actually happened, You're fired, clean out your desk. That was,
Speaker 1: unsurprisingly at the hands of Rupert Murdoch and Fox, and
Speaker 1: I mean Rupert Murdoch personally, or so he claims. When
Speaker 1: I finally convinced NBC News that I was serious about
Speaker 1: no longer hosting its Monica Lewinsky Athon in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: the head of NBC Sports, Dick Eversoll, had an ingenious solution.
Speaker 1: He knew his friends at Fox Sports longed to have
Speaker 1: me front their version of SportsCenter, and so he proposed
Speaker 1: the following NBC would give my agent ten days in
Speaker 1: which to negotiate two deals. A deal for me to
Speaker 1: go to LA and host Fox Sports News and Major
Speaker 1: League Baseball on Fox, and another deal in which Fox
Speaker 1: would pay NBC one million dollars for my contract, like
Speaker 1: I was a mediocre baseball pitcher. Amazingly, it worked. I
Speaker 1: got what was then a record breaking salary for any
Speaker 1: cable sportscaster. Ever, NBC got its million, and maybe most startlingly,
Speaker 1: NBC then asked me to stay on the air as
Speaker 1: a lane duck at MSNBC for like six weeks. Curiously
Speaker 1: throughout my career, no matter how abrasive the exit. My
Speaker 1: Lane Duck employers have always, for some reason trusted me
Speaker 1: to stay on their air, even though I was leaving
Speaker 1: in local news in Los Angeles once. I did this
Speaker 1: for three months. Anyway. At first, going to work at
Speaker 1: Fox Sports was a delight. Their news guys, the evil
Speaker 1: Roger Ales and his henchman John Moody, pitched me on
Speaker 1: doing stuff for them, maybe co anchoring with Bill O'Reilly.
Speaker 1: I'm serious. I passed sports. We spent money. I worked
Speaker 1: with friends. I didn't have to talk about politics. I
Speaker 1: could narrate highlights. I could do funny voices way downtown
Speaker 1: Bang I lived on the beach. I mean, my next
Speaker 1: door neighbor was Hawaii. Every time there was a newspaper
Speaker 1: story about ESPN, even though our ratings were terrible, there
Speaker 1: was also my picture in it with a caption like
Speaker 1: challenging ESPN. It was great. But then two things happened.
Speaker 1: The Fox guy, who knew we needed five years at
Speaker 1: minimum just to tie ESPN in the ratings, took me
Speaker 1: to lunch one day and said, sorry, mate, my missus
Speaker 1: is moving back to England tomorrow without me, so I'm
Speaker 1: going good luck. He was replaced by guys who replaced
Speaker 1: the five year plan with a five week plan to
Speaker 1: raise the ratings by literally one fifth of one point.
Speaker 1: I left that meeting, in which they explained their suicidal
Speaker 1: plan and revealed that my salary represented an unsustainable twenty
Speaker 1: percent of their entire budget, and I called my real
Speaker 1: estate agent and put my house on the beach up
Speaker 1: for sale. Not long after, my doctor gave me a
Speaker 1: physical and a warning, cut back on work and stress
Speaker 1: and everything else, or you can have a heart attack
Speaker 1: ten years from now. I told my bosses this, and
Speaker 1: their response was to blackmail me. We have a clause
Speaker 1: in your contract which allows us to send you on
Speaker 1: the road once a week while you are still working
Speaker 1: five days in the studio. We're going to enforce that
Speaker 1: unless you kick back two thirds of your salary. They
Speaker 1: put this in a document. There are, as the kids, say, receipts.
Speaker 1: So I folded to blackmail because two thirds of three
Speaker 1: million dollars a year is still pretty good. But I
Speaker 1: kept doing the job. In nineteen ninety, I broke a
Speaker 1: story that everybody laughed at that Michael Jordan was unhappy
Speaker 1: in retirement and he wanted to come back to play
Speaker 1: in the NBA, but instead of getting a salary, he
Speaker 1: wanted an ownership stake in a team. Two years later,
Speaker 1: he did exactly that. In two thousand, I got to
Speaker 1: host the first Mets Yankees World Series, and hosting baseball
Speaker 1: every Saturday on Fox was a pretty good gig, and
Speaker 1: we were just gearing up for the two thousand and
Speaker 1: one baseball season when I got a tip on April
Speaker 1: twentieth that the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers had
Speaker 1: unofficially put their team up for sale, and in fact
Speaker 1: they were talking to the old owners, the O'Malley family,
Speaker 1: about taking the Dodgers off their hands, selling the Dodgers
Speaker 1: back to the son of Walter O'Malley. This was a
Speaker 1: great scoop, but it had great danger because the owners
Speaker 1: of the Dodgers were Fox, my own employers. The next day,
Speaker 1: after getting this scoop, I made about one hundred phone calls,
Speaker 1: and sure enough I got the friend a friend of
Speaker 1: a friend of my agent to confirm that he and
Speaker 1: his family were in preliminary discussions joining the O'Malleys to
Speaker 1: buy the Dodgers from Fox. Two sources great scoop, and
Speaker 1: that night I reached out to my bosses and said,
Speaker 1: what the hell do we do here? The story is solid,
Speaker 1: The Dodgers are for sale. But look, this is your
Speaker 1: candy store, and I do work for you, and if
Speaker 1: you don't want me to report this, I'm obviously not
Speaker 1: going to report it, and I'm not going to pouch
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to give the story to somebody else.
Speaker 1: My boss has replied, good for you. Why don't we
Speaker 1: all get on the phone with the top rupert. Murdoch
Speaker 1: has his own Personal News Corp Public relations department. Let's
Speaker 1: see what he says. So on Sunday, April twenty second,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, we got Murdoch's own PR guy
Speaker 1: on the blower and I explained it to him. Now,
Speaker 1: mister Murdoch has a policy about this. He never interferes
Speaker 1: in editorial decisions, not even in sourced business stories, not
Speaker 1: even if they involve him. So longung as you make
Speaker 1: it clear your sources are not from within the company,
Speaker 1: and so long as you're confident in your sources, and
Speaker 1: so long as you include our denial, you should proceed
Speaker 1: with this Dodger story. That is what we are paying
Speaker 1: you for. For a brief moment, I thought maybe I
Speaker 1: have misjudged Rupert Murdoch. Well, it turned out to be
Speaker 1: a very brief moment and a very wrong moment. I
Speaker 1: reported the story that night, howls of denials. Five days later, though,
Speaker 1: the Long Beach Press Telegram newspaper had its own story said,
Speaker 1: despite denials, Dodgers are for sale, with far more details
Speaker 1: than I had, And that really was the end of it.
Speaker 1: The team was unofficially for sale. Dodger fans, who hated
Speaker 1: what Fox had done to the team seemed happy, and
Speaker 1: the vast stinking pile of burning excrement that was Fox
Speaker 1: and NewsCorp and Murdoch sailed on unperturbed. But twelve days
Speaker 1: after that, just before I was getting in my car
Speaker 1: to go to the first Fox Baseball meeting for our
Speaker 1: two thousand and one season coverage, the president of Fox Sports,
Speaker 1: yet another Aussie called David Hill, called my agent and
Speaker 1: told her case, not doing any baseball for us this year.
Speaker 1: Business decision click, end of conversation. Nothing else, no firing,
Speaker 1: no get out, no clean out your desk, no announcement.
Speaker 1: But then two days later they turned off my access
Speaker 1: to the Fox computer system, And four days after that
Speaker 1: they called and canceled my cable show, and then that
Speaker 1: night I got two weird calls from Rich Sandomir, who
Speaker 1: was the TV sports critic and TV sports business reporter
Speaker 1: for the New York Times. And Rich asks me, so,
Speaker 1: did you know you got fired by Rupert Murdoch personally?
Speaker 1: And I said, with genuine astonishment that I not only
Speaker 1: didn't know that, but even given my thoughts about Rupert Murdoch,
Speaker 1: I didn't believe that. Well, that's what my sources at
Speaker 1: Fox tell me. Apparently your Dodger story really pissed him off,
Speaker 1: but really, and I said, I had cleared it through
Speaker 1: his personal PR guy. I don't know, Rich Sandomir said,
Speaker 1: apparently he was on vacation and he got back like
Speaker 1: the ninth of this month, and he read all these
Speaker 1: stories about the Dodgers being for sale and how Fox
Speaker 1: Sports was the first to report it, and he called
Speaker 1: up David Hill and he told Hill to fire you immediately.
Speaker 1: So I told Rich, this is the first I have
Speaker 1: heard of this, and I still don't believe it, even
Speaker 1: though the day he mentioned May ninth was the day
Speaker 1: David Hill had called my agent and told her I
Speaker 1: would not be doing baseball for Fox that year. An
Speaker 1: hour later, the phone rings again and it's Rich Sandomir again,
Speaker 1: and he sounds shaken. I got it wrong. I don't
Speaker 1: have any sources at Fox who told me Rupert fired
Speaker 1: you personally. My source said that you were telling people
Speaker 1: Rupert had fired you personally over the Dodger story. And
Speaker 1: I gave Rich a sequence of well, kind of friendly
Speaker 1: uh huhs, and I said, no, I didn't, and know
Speaker 1: you've never been dumb enough in your life to make
Speaker 1: the mistake you're saying you just made. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: I never said somebody at Fox said Murdock fired Joek. Thanks.
Speaker 1: By the next day, they had me come into the
Speaker 1: Fox building on Pico Boulevard and clean out my office
Speaker 1: while a guard watched. And she was a really nice guard.
Speaker 1: In fact, she brought donuts but a lovely way to
Speaker 1: go out. As I packed, I thought more and more
Speaker 1: of what had happened in the month since I had
Speaker 1: gotten that tip about the Dodgers being for sale. As
Speaker 1: I left the Fox lot for the last time as
Speaker 1: an employee, I went back a couple of times to
Speaker 1: attend table reads for the Simpsons. Table reads for the
Speaker 1: Simpsons were much more fun than being an employee at Fox.
Speaker 1: I called a couple of reporters I knew, and my
Speaker 1: agent and some people in the business, and we tried
Speaker 1: to put together a timeline that made some sort of sense,
Speaker 1: because the slow motion firing thing. May ninth, you're not
Speaker 1: doing baseball. May eleventh, your computer it won't work. Teenth,
Speaker 1: your cable show is canceled. May sixteenth, clean out your office.
Speaker 1: A week long firing made no sense until one reporter
Speaker 1: friend said, you know, Fox called me and said, call
Speaker 1: Keith up and provoke him, get him to call us names,
Speaker 1: tell him about this story and that paper, calling him
Speaker 1: washed up, get him going, And then it all clicked.
Speaker 1: My contract ran through the end of the year two
Speaker 1: thousand and one because Fox was firing me without any
Speaker 1: cause or even claiming there was a cause, without any
Speaker 1: violation of my contract or their rules. Because I had
Speaker 1: left a trail of good behavior on the Dodger story.
Speaker 1: They were trying to enrage me and get me to
Speaker 1: say something nasty that itself would be a violation of
Speaker 1: my contract so they could outright fire me and keep
Speaker 1: the money. And the money still on the contract was
Speaker 1: about eight hundred thousand dollars now after decades of contemplating this,
Speaker 1: I am confident that I am no than the next guy,
Speaker 1: at least not the next guy in television. But on
Speaker 1: my worst, craziest, least rational day, if you said you
Speaker 1: have two choices, Alderman, you can blow up these people
Speaker 1: who are firing you, and you can make them look
Speaker 1: bad in a newspaper for a day and then they'll
Speaker 1: fire you and keep all the money they owe you.
Speaker 1: Or you can keep your big bazoo shut for just
Speaker 1: seven months. You can keep the eight hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and you can spend the summer doing whatever the hell
Speaker 1: you want, and you can then spend the rest of
Speaker 1: your natural life blowing these people up. If that's the choice,
Speaker 1: I will always take the scenario that gives me the
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand dollars for doing nothing. Always so. On
Speaker 1: January first, two thousand and two, after the last Fox
Speaker 1: check cleared, I began making a professional avocation out of
Speaker 1: attacking Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Business, Fox Murdoch, Fox O'Reilly, Fox,
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, whatever. And I got the eight hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: but they're lingered for years. This kind of academic question
Speaker 1: of whether Rupert Murdoch had actually fired me for having
Speaker 1: followed the rules set out by his own personal pr guy.
Speaker 1: As usual, these things resolve themselves when you least expect
Speaker 1: them to. Murdoch was speaking at a Dow Jones conference
Speaker 1: in Carlsbad, California, on May twenty eighth, two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: seven years to the month they got rid of me
Speaker 1: and a story came across the wire with my name
Speaker 1: on it. The guy interviewing him at this conference talked
Speaker 1: about whether there should be dissenting voices on Fox quote
Speaker 1: news unquote, like that guy who was killing it on
Speaker 1: MSNBC Keith Olderman. Now, Murdoch barked, I fired him five
Speaker 1: years ago. He was crizy, timing was off, But there
Speaker 1: it was Rupert Murdoch confessing in front of a crowd
Speaker 1: that he fired me personally, the red badge of courage
Speaker 1: in quotes. I wondered if it still pissed him off
Speaker 1: that he had to pay me the eight hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars when I didn't take the grievance bait. Three years
Speaker 1: after that, Murdoch said it again, like I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: it the first time. On February first, twenty eleven, Rupert
Speaker 1: Murdoch was interviewed by his business talking had Neil Cavudo,
Speaker 1: who for some reason asked him if he would consider
Speaker 1: hiring me to put me on Fox News. Now we
Speaker 1: fired him once. We don't believe in firing people. Twice,
Speaker 1: Kavoodo replied, you called him a nut. Lady was a nut?
Speaker 2: On?
Speaker 1: Well, we had him on late night Fox Sports. There
Speaker 1: was never any such show called late night Fox Sports.
Speaker 1: But never mind, Rupe went on, it was impossible. I
Speaker 1: fired him. He he was crizy, fired me for following
Speaker 1: his rules, and I was the one who was crazy. Finally,
Speaker 1: speaking of crazy, I have had for sixty three nearly
Speaker 1: sixty four years now a love hate relationship with the
Speaker 1: name Keith. But did you know that Rupert Murdoch's real
Speaker 1: first name is also Keith, but that rather than call
Speaker 1: himself Keith, he voluntarily chooses to call himself Rupert. I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: my name is Keith, but at least my name ain't
Speaker 1: freaking Rupert. See twenty three years later, It's quite clear
Speaker 1: to me the rules are very simple in Rupert murdoch Land.
Speaker 1: You do what Rupert Murdoch tells you to do, and
Speaker 1: you get fired. You don't do what Rupert Murdoch tells
Speaker 1: you to do, and you get fired. I've done all
Speaker 1: the damage I can do here, still have the eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and performed
Speaker 1: most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass,
Speaker 1: and drums, and mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. It
Speaker 1: was produced by Tko Brothers. The other music, including some
Speaker 1: of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by the
Speaker 1: group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman
Speaker 1: theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
Speaker 1: of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
Speaker 1: by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
Speaker 1: announcer today was my friend Kenny Maine, and everything else
Speaker 1: was pretty much my fault. Oh no, ruper Verdock just
Speaker 1: fired me again. Send me eight hundred thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: the following address. That's countdown for this the one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty fourth day until the twenty twenty four presidential
Speaker 1: election and forty seventh day since convicted fellon Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
Speaker 1: United States. Use the July sentencing here and use the
Speaker 1: mental health system, use presidential immunity if it happens, use
Speaker 1: the not regularly given elector objection option from the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court to stop him from doing it again while we
Speaker 1: still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as
Speaker 1: the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Oldraman. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.