Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm suggesting,
Speaker 1: mister President, says Kirk Douglas, is jaw straighter line even
Speaker 1: than usual. There's a military plot to take over the government.
Speaker 1: That is the fulcrum in a movie called Seven Days
Speaker 1: in May. When it came out, was terrifying political science fiction.
Speaker 1: And yet now as Trump brings the plot points of
Speaker 1: that film to life, this life, in this America today,
Speaker 1: it is clear that the military plot to take over
Speaker 1: the government posited in that film undersold the idea because
Speaker 1: it left out what is now evident. After Trump's purge
Speaker 1: of the Pentagon over the weekend, and after what his
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense just said about removing eagle roadwalks to
Speaker 1: what they intend to do, I'm suggesting there's a military
Speaker 1: plot to take over the government orchestrated by the government.
Speaker 1: Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Speaker 1: and replaced him with a junior officer he brought back
Speaker 1: from retirement, whom he claims once wore a Maga cap
Speaker 1: in his presence, a retired lieutenant general named Dan Raisin Cain.
Speaker 1: Trump likes the nickname the way he liked Mad dog
Speaker 1: mattis because Trump as the brain of a not very
Speaker 1: bright fourth grader. Trump fired the judge Advocate of the Army,
Speaker 1: the judge advocate of the Navy, and the judge advocate
Speaker 1: of the Air Force as well. Friday. Trump also fired
Speaker 1: the chief of Naval Operations and the Vice chief of
Speaker 1: the Air Force, and fifty four hundred civilian Pentagon employees.
Speaker 1: To start, what you have been told by news organizations,
Speaker 1: even ones that still have good reporters, is that this
Speaker 1: is part of the Trump racism orgy. The fired Joint
Speaker 1: Chief Chairman Charles Q. Brown is black. The Chief of
Speaker 1: Naval Operations was a woman. Their identities are cover stories
Speaker 1: and red meat for the Trump cult. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: that pleases Musk and the rest of the apartheid gang,
Speaker 1: but they are incidental to the real purpose here. Trump
Speaker 1: fired the head of the military and replaced him with
Speaker 1: somebody he believes, though General Caine denies it war the
Speaker 1: I am a Trump slave cap. Trump looked at the
Speaker 1: top lawyers at the Army, Navy, and Air Force, the
Speaker 1: ones who would tell him, no, you cannot have the
Speaker 1: Army shoot civilians, and know you cannot have the Navy
Speaker 1: blockade Vancouver and Greenland and the Panama Canal, and you
Speaker 1: can't bomb the next Democratic convention, and he fired those people.
Speaker 1: At least six different reporters and commentators regularly on the
Speaker 1: mid Terry Beets said the same thing. Firing the chairman
Speaker 1: of the Joint Chiefs is bad. It is a red
Speaker 1: flag firing the t jacks. The judge advocates the lawyers
Speaker 1: who tell you when something you are going to do
Speaker 1: with the military is illegal, that that can mean only
Speaker 1: one thing. You are planning to do something with the
Speaker 1: military that is illegal. You fire the people who would
Speaker 1: say it's illegal and replace them in advance with the
Speaker 1: people who would say it isn't illegal. Where am I
Speaker 1: getting this from? There is one positive and one positive
Speaker 1: only if you happened to have made a guy who
Speaker 1: may have brain damage from alcoholism your secretary of Defense,
Speaker 1: he would not know when to hide the secret parts.
Speaker 1: Why did they fire the t jags? Pete Hegseth on
Speaker 1: Fox yesterday, quote, we want lawyers who don't exist to
Speaker 1: attempt to be roadblocks to anything that happens. Thing that happens,
Speaker 1: Pistol Pete, anything in particular General Barry McCaffrey with whom
Speaker 1: I briefly worked at MSNBC, and who I found unexpectedly
Speaker 1: complete and very civilian ish. What even further quote, This
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with confidence. This is creating an
Speaker 1: oath of loyalty by the armed forces to the leader.
Speaker 1: You will recall that more than two months ago a
Speaker 1: story appeared, burst across our horizons and then vanished. Prospective
Speaker 1: occupants of high posts inside the Pentagon were at the
Speaker 1: New York Times were asked, quote which candidate the applicants
Speaker 1: had supported in the three most recent elections, what they
Speaker 1: thought about the events of January sixth, and whether they
Speaker 1: believed the twenty twenty election was stolen. Then, with dry,
Speaker 1: macabre wit not usually associated with the New York Times quote,
Speaker 1: the sense they got was there was only one right
Speaker 1: answer to each question. No one who answered any of
Speaker 1: the questions with the the truth got the job. This
Speaker 1: is not complicated. I'm suggesting there's a military plot to
Speaker 1: take over the government, orchestrated by the government, and it
Speaker 1: starts not with any military, but with a private military
Speaker 1: loyal to Trump, beholden to Trump because it is nominally
Speaker 1: run by incompetence and drunks and people who not only
Speaker 1: have skeletons in their closets, but had to build additions
Speaker 1: to their homes. Were extra closets spaced just for the skeletons.
Speaker 1: If you put Pete Hegseth, who could never make the
Speaker 1: giant career leap all the way from weekend propagandist on
Speaker 1: Fox to weekday propagandist on Fox, if you put him
Speaker 1: in charge of all this, he is going to thank
Speaker 1: his lucky stars and you. And by thank you, I
Speaker 1: mean he will kill people for you. Now, there are
Speaker 1: different degrees of hell here. In the best case, sinner,
Speaker 1: what Trump did Friday night, firing Joint Chiefs Chairman Brown
Speaker 1: and the Advocates General and the others was a complete
Speaker 1: and self contained act. Trump is still stinging from Mathis
Speaker 1: and John Kelly and Mark Milly, and he wants his generals.
Speaker 1: He's no specific use for them right now, no specific plan,
Speaker 1: not yet anywhere, not near term anyway. He likes Russia.
Speaker 1: He likes Putin's relationship with the military. Russia is great
Speaker 1: if you're Putin. Russia is great if you're Trump and
Speaker 1: the rest of you can go f yourselves. Trump wants
Speaker 1: military parades with tanks. He wants a big hat like
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un has. He wants a world in which
Speaker 1: everybody not only calls him sir, but everybody has to
Speaker 1: call him sir. Because of all the successful men in
Speaker 1: the history of the world, Trump is easily the unhappiest.
Speaker 1: Muscus second, but Trump is the unhappiest, and he needs
Speaker 1: to be saluted because nothing convinces him he's not a
Speaker 1: draft dodger more than having generals call him sir and
Speaker 1: having his own army of suck ups would fill that
Speaker 1: hole where his life should have been. Well, it will
Speaker 1: fill that hole for a minute, the vanity army. And
Speaker 1: that is if we are lucky. The next best case,
Speaker 1: the Pentagon over to the dark side. Is there to
Speaker 1: be a political weapon. The generals generally will not say, yes,
Speaker 1: we could overtake Greenland in three four days, we could
Speaker 1: defeat Canada in a month. No, not that we're going
Speaker 1: to Maga generals. That would be my American generals again,
Speaker 1: generals under Raisin Cain. They would say all that. The problems, though,
Speaker 1: really arise if it's the next level, if this is
Speaker 1: not about literal saber rattling, having your private Chairman of
Speaker 1: the Joint Chiefs and not just the military equivalents of
Speaker 1: Pam Bondy or cash Pattel. We telling you, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: you sure can use the army that way, sir. Is
Speaker 1: that when Trump sends them to shoot migrants and refugees
Speaker 1: and babies at the southern border, or when he sends
Speaker 1: them to Panama, or when he sends them into Mexico
Speaker 1: or into Canada. Because all dictators in each country on
Speaker 1: each page of history always eventually descended to territorial expansion.
Speaker 1: When Trump says, go invade Canada, they would snap a
Speaker 1: salute and give him another medal and another braid of gold,
Speaker 1: and they'd go invade Canada. Still, it can get worse
Speaker 1: from here. No, I am not defending or even theoretically
Speaker 1: tolerating invading Canada or quote taking back the Panama Canal.
Speaker 1: But if that's the limit of Trump's plan for his
Speaker 1: private Pentagon, those things could be undone. The next scenarios cannot.
Speaker 1: The next scenario is when Trump goes to the judge
Speaker 1: advocates and says, I want you to legally approve Operation
Speaker 1: Undetectable Combover, and they say Undetectable Combover is legally approved,
Speaker 1: and he hands it to the Chairman of the Joint
Speaker 1: Chiefs and he says, I serve at the pleasure of
Speaker 1: the President, and the Chairman of the Joint chief engages,
Speaker 1: and that's when we all find out that Operation Undetectable
Speaker 1: Combover is the revelation of a fabricated crisis, or a
Speaker 1: fabricated insurrection plot, or a fabricated coup attempt against Trump.
Speaker 1: And the military rolls onto the streets in the Blue
Speaker 1: States and starts rounding up politicians and governmental leaders, and
Speaker 1: it starts shooting Democrats, and of course the road Trump
Speaker 1: took his first big steps down Friday night could go
Speaker 1: one mile further, one nightmare worse. It's now Operation Perpetual
Speaker 1: Stability we are talking about, and it's all the previous
Speaker 1: fake plots and non eg existent threats, and it includes
Speaker 1: every right wing paranoid conspiracy theory, and it reprises all
Speaker 1: those good old fake Bush era terrorist threats with exploding
Speaker 1: ATMs and the guy who thought he could snap the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Bridge using only a lug nut wrench, only this
Speaker 1: time Trump's Army and Trump's Navy and Trump's Air Force
Speaker 1: and Trump's new elite gold Bronzers storm troops probably are
Speaker 1: not there to shoot their weapons. They're just there to
Speaker 1: point them because Operation Perpetual Stability requires that Trump stays
Speaker 1: in office indefinitely and that the elections be suspended. And
Speaker 1: if you don't like it, tell it to the tank.
Speaker 1: I'm suggesting there's a military plot to take over the
Speaker 1: government orchestrated by the government. Where are the Democrats on this, Well,
Speaker 1: it was the weekend, what wereptum? There's no overtime paid
Speaker 1: defending democracy against the dictator. Besides which, all of our
Speaker 1: visual aids and easel boards are still at ADIAMA for
Speaker 1: the big news conference this week about egg prices. Because
Speaker 1: I mean, weren't you here in November fifth. This whole
Speaker 1: democracy thing just does not sell as a campaign issue.
Speaker 1: And you may be suggesting there's a military plot to
Speaker 1: take over the government, But I'm suggesting every one of
Speaker 1: our forty three million democratic consultants agrees we can't do
Speaker 1: more than one thing at a time, and we can't,
Speaker 1: under any circumstances, prioritize anything over this graphic that shows
Speaker 1: the cost of a gallon of gas. So in response,
Speaker 1: we need democratic leg breakers out there. Metaphorically, the courts
Speaker 1: can slow this down. The lawsuits can buy time until
Speaker 1: the midterms, but the Democratic electeds have to rip up
Speaker 1: the railroad tracks. I'm not going to start again about impeachment. However, finally, finally,
Speaker 1: a sign from a Keem Jeffries yesterday that he may
Speaker 1: get some of this. He went on the Sunday shows
Speaker 1: and said, the Republicans have the White House, they have
Speaker 1: the Senate, they have the Congress. They are the ones
Speaker 1: who have to pass the budget and pass everything else,
Speaker 1: and that his job as the leader of the two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen Democrats in the House is to find
Speaker 1: just three Republicans to sink the budget, or sink the
Speaker 1: latest giveaways to the billionaires, or sink just about anything apartheid.
Speaker 1: Clyde Musk tries finding three Republicans, quoting Jeffrees. That is
Speaker 1: going to be an ongoing effort over these next few
Speaker 1: days to identify those individuals whoo at minimum, Jeffreys and
Speaker 1: other Democrats at all levels can piss Trump off because
Speaker 1: nobody makes mistakes like Trump, and nobody makes worse mistakes
Speaker 1: than a pissed off Trump. I give you as an
Speaker 1: example of that. Democratic Governor Janet Mills of Maine telling
Speaker 1: Trump she would see him in court over this imaginary
Speaker 1: trans athlete crisis.
Speaker 2: The NCAA has complied immediately, by the way, that's good.
Speaker 2: But I understand Maine is the main here, the governor
Speaker 2: of Maine out here. Are you not going to comply
Speaker 2: with it state federal laws? Well, I'm we are the
Speaker 2: federal law. Well, you better do it. You better do
Speaker 2: it because you're not going to get any federal funding
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: If you don't.
Speaker 2: And by the way, your population, even though it's somewhat liberal,
Speaker 2: although I did very well there, your population doesn't want
Speaker 2: men playing in women's sports. So you better you better
Speaker 2: comply because otherwise you're not going to any any federal funding.
Speaker 2: See every state. Good, I'll see and I look forward
Speaker 2: to that. That should be a really easy one. And
Speaker 2: enjoy your life after governor, because I don't think you'll
Speaker 2: be an elected.
Speaker 3: Politics few fats.
Speaker 1: Usually when states go to court rights the civil rights
Speaker 1: lawyer Matthew Siegel alleging federal coercion in violation of the
Speaker 1: Tenth Amendment, there is not a literal video of the
Speaker 1: president doing it. There's something else to impeach in four.
Speaker 1: There's something more to impeach in four put.
Speaker 3: It on the list.
Speaker 1: And a reminder, by the way, Democrats, you do not
Speaker 1: have to wait until he has violated every amendment and
Speaker 1: each clause to impeach him. Tenth Amendment a real quickie quote.
Speaker 1: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
Speaker 1: nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to
Speaker 1: the States, respectively or to the people. Thank you for
Speaker 1: the on camera confession, Donald Krasnov. There are other Trump
Speaker 1: owned goals to celebrate. Republicans are openly cheering the illegal
Speaker 1: dismantling of the government by Musk and the in cells,
Speaker 1: but Politico reported that privately, they are all using back
Speaker 1: channels everyone they can find to make it stop, especially
Speaker 1: when veterans are fired, where Department of Agriculture employees are fired,
Speaker 1: as bird flu decimates the farms, or as more and
Speaker 1: more polls show the public is not all on board
Speaker 1: with any of this. CNN poll, sixty six percent say
Speaker 1: Trump shouldn't freeze funding without congressional approval, sixty six two thirds,
Speaker 1: fifty two percent say he's overstepped his powers, and fifty
Speaker 1: seven percent say he's exceeded his authority. By the way,
Speaker 1: talk about polling the new Nazis in Germany, the AfD party,
Speaker 1: Musk's stormtroopers, the ones he campaigned for, they underperformed polling
Speaker 1: in yesterday's elections. There, then there's Musk and this reply
Speaker 1: to this email with the top five things you did
Speaker 1: this week or you have resigned email, which it will
Speaker 1: be clear very shortly was Trump's idea, but which Trump
Speaker 1: intends to let Musk take the fall for. While the
Speaker 1: emails were still fresh in the inboxes, leadership in the
Speaker 1: State Department, at the VA, at the FBI, at other
Speaker 1: government arms had instructed their employees to ignore the email.
Speaker 1: For Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. Somebody at OPM
Speaker 1: the government Office of Personnel Management saw all this coming
Speaker 1: last month and put out a preliminary warning then last
Speaker 1: month that the threats in any emails carried no weight,
Speaker 1: and responding to Doge was entirely voluntary. Turns out Musk
Speaker 1: is not a strung out and flawed genius. He's just
Speaker 1: strung out and flawed. You got to protect the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: It's not much more important than that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got a lot of Chris criticism, and Peel said, well,
Speaker 4: that proves he is a huge idiot from a you know,
Speaker 4: like like you know, voter four whatever forty four billion
Speaker 4: dollars and US worth like eight cents and.
Speaker 3: Its sense. But you know that's.
Speaker 4: But the Yeah, it was essentially to you know, by
Speaker 4: freedom of expression.
Speaker 1: Sure whatever you say, chainsaw boy, Kat got your tongue.
Speaker 1: Why is Musk so nuts? I don't travel in these
Speaker 1: social media circles, so I am new to this info,
Speaker 1: which I guess is more than a week old now.
Speaker 1: But the rapper Azalea Banks, may have answered that question
Speaker 1: while answering a Randos question about why it seems and
Speaker 1: we are covered by the fog of war here, but
Speaker 1: why it seems Musk fathered another baby with a right
Speaker 1: wing influencer. But did it? By in vitro, the rando wrote,
Speaker 1: I heard he has a botched penis implant. Azalea Banks
Speaker 1: retweeted this and added five crucial words to I heard
Speaker 1: he has a botched penis implant. Grimes told me this too.
Speaker 3: Oh there we go.
Speaker 1: That friend would explain everything for most of us guys.
Speaker 1: Just the phrase botched penis implant can cause sixty eight
Speaker 1: weeks of clouded, irrational thinking. Imagine actually suffering one e
Speaker 1: long musk am.
Speaker 3: I right am I right elong musk watched penis implant.
Speaker 1: You would try to destroy the world. Two two notes
Speaker 1: before we get to the joy Reid firing. This is
Speaker 1: also media news. They may still supply useful reporting from
Speaker 1: time to time. I just quoted them in fact, but
Speaker 1: you must now officially be suspicious of anything you hear
Speaker 1: from Politico. Not only did the new European owners of
Speaker 1: that company praise JV Vance's attack on European leaders, but
Speaker 1: the new White House Bureau chief of Politico, Dasha Burns,
Speaker 1: legitimized a discussion at the latest Seapack fascist rally Ms
Speaker 1: Burns of Politico as Miss Burns of Politico did a
Speaker 1: one on one interview with a crowd with all purpose
Speaker 1: trumpest idiot Rick Grennell at Seapack. She's done, They're done.
Speaker 1: It's journalistically disqualifying. I can never trust another word, she says,
Speaker 1: what do you mean you did an event at Sea Pack?
Speaker 1: At Sea Pack, I can only suggest that this would
Speaker 1: be identical to Miss Burns sitting down at some gigantic
Speaker 1: gathering of the Communist Party or maybe the American Association
Speaker 1: of Cannibals and interviewing the head to Chief Cannibal if
Speaker 1: her name Dasha Burns rings a bell, she was at
Speaker 1: NBC when she and Kristen Welker and ten other top
Speaker 1: political reporters violated every possible journalistic ethic by accepting a
Speaker 1: free meal the night before the twenty twenty three Republican
Speaker 1: presidential debate in Milwaukee from Trump thug, Stephen Chung, Slasovita,
Speaker 1: and Jason Miller. Hope everybody watched their drinks. So anyway,
Speaker 1: if you were thinking, what about dash of Burns, his
Speaker 1: own personal standards don't got any. And then there's this
Speaker 1: we know Trump looks at our form of government, points
Speaker 1: at all the humans in it, and thinks it divides
Speaker 1: evenly into two parts. Those parts he can grab for himself,
Speaker 1: and those parts he can privatize and sell off. The
Speaker 1: Post Office turns out to be one of the latter.
Speaker 1: The first step to look for this week is for
Speaker 1: him to dissolve the leadership of USPS and fold the
Speaker 1: service into the Commerce Department. One online wag suggested the
Speaker 1: first result would be a brand new postage stamp that
Speaker 1: would honor Donald Trump. I would add that a Trump
Speaker 1: stamp would be the first one ever designed that could.
Speaker 3: Lick its health Elong musk Am.
Speaker 1: I right, also of interest here on an all new
Speaker 1: edition of Countdown, and I hope you have some time
Speaker 1: for Segment B is about half an hour long. MSNBC
Speaker 1: fired Joy Reid, and yes it is racist and maybe worse. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is designed to keep out people who might think differently.
Speaker 1: And it is designed to reward professional political salespeople like
Speaker 1: ex party chairman and former press secretaries who will do
Speaker 1: what they are told by their bosses. But most of all,
Speaker 1: since they also fired Alex Wagner as they fired Joy Reid,
Speaker 1: at least The New York Times says this, it means
Speaker 1: that four women of color have solo hosted prominent shows
Speaker 1: on MSNBC, and all four of them have now been fired.
Speaker 1: And then there is the turmoil around Hockey's Wayne Gretzky,
Speaker 1: or as he is now known, the Man without a Country.
Speaker 1: That's next. This is his Countdown.
Speaker 3: This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1: I heard the new Saturday night Joy Reid out at
Speaker 1: MSNBC and it turned out to be much bigger than that.
Speaker 1: Joy Reid per The New York Times to be replaced
Speaker 1: from her seven PM show by moving a weekend show
Speaker 1: on MSNBC featuring Michael Steele, who is a politician and
Speaker 1: brand salesman, although he has not been active recently in
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. He's a salesman. Simone Sanders a politician
Speaker 1: and brand saleswoman from the Democratic Party. She's a saleswoman.
Speaker 1: Alicia Menendez, who is the daughter of the senator from
Speaker 1: New Jersey. You may have heard about him, who's a
Speaker 1: different kind of salesman, and she has largely been a
Speaker 1: party salesperson. Nothing wrong with that show. It's been on
Speaker 1: for several years on the weekends on MSNBC, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. I suppose there's nothing wrong with it
Speaker 1: unless you want insight or commentary or new people you
Speaker 1: have not heard from before. It is textbook MSNBC. They
Speaker 1: lost the idea I gave them and thought this is
Speaker 1: what it was, salesmanship as opposed to commentary or insight.
Speaker 1: They're also offering Alex Wagner in addition to Joy Read.
Speaker 1: Alex Wagner will not return after what happens to Mattow
Speaker 1: happens at the end of the one hundred days. They
Speaker 1: may replace her with Jen Saki and if anybody body
Speaker 1: on television, besides her counterparts who are all on Fox.
Speaker 1: Anybody is a salesperson as opposed to an analyst or
Speaker 1: a commentator. It's Jensaki. Jensaki who recently said that she
Speaker 1: was wondering if maybe maybe she had oversold Merrick Garland,
Speaker 1: and if perhaps she regretted She was beginning to wonder
Speaker 1: if she regretted doing such a good job convincing people
Speaker 1: Merrick Garland should be the Attorney General of the United States,
Speaker 1: And one wonders if everything that we're going through now
Speaker 1: ends up in the worst possible place, if as we
Speaker 1: all get marched into the camps, Jensaki will be still
Speaker 1: wondering if she made a mistake supporting Merrick Garland. These
Speaker 1: people are salespersons. Salespersons doctrinaire, and often it's doctrinaire bullshit.
Speaker 1: If you have been a salesperson, a press secretary for
Speaker 1: a politician these days, you have sorry lied. Some people
Speaker 1: managed to swerve back from this to become decent human beings,
Speaker 1: believe it or not. One of Bush's secretaries, Scott McClellan,
Speaker 1: actually one day woke up and said I'm better than
Speaker 1: this and wrote a tell all book and promptly disappeared
Speaker 1: from politics, and I'm sure he's had a happy life since.
Speaker 1: Because if you're going to sell politics to people, if
Speaker 1: you're actually going to sell things that you don't believe in,
Speaker 1: that you haven't analyzed, that you can't find flaw in
Speaker 1: that you feel like you shouldn't mention the flaws in,
Speaker 1: you're irrelevant. Michael Steele was the chairman of the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: and as much as he's come to be an anti
Speaker 1: Trump voice and a useful one, every time I see him,
Speaker 1: I think, what is this guy trying to sell me? Also,
Speaker 1: that's a nighttime version three hosts of The Scarborough Show
Speaker 1: in the morning. But I'm wandering off the main topics here.
Speaker 1: I've had lots of problems with Alex Wagner. I've told
Speaker 1: you the stories. I told you that she was not
Speaker 1: when I tried to bring her in as the guest
Speaker 1: host who would have succeeded Lawrence O'Donnell after Laurence o'donald
Speaker 1: succeeded Rachel Maddow as the guest host on my show.
Speaker 1: I told you that it was apparent from the beginning
Speaker 1: she was not interested in doing the harder parts of
Speaker 1: the job. Very smart, insightful, obviously very good on television,
Speaker 1: but just not interested. I told the story about how
Speaker 1: she did not want to learn how to use the
Speaker 1: teleprompter and was confident she would pick it up, and
Speaker 1: that's when we sort of bailed out on her, and
Speaker 1: on her first show on MSNBC just twelve years later,
Speaker 1: the prompter failed and she did not know what to
Speaker 1: do and stood there for several moments waving at the
Speaker 1: prompter as if she could get it to move by
Speaker 1: waving at it, and nobody would notice. So I have
Speaker 1: lots of problems with her. But Alex Wagner was not
Speaker 1: a salesperson for some politician or political point of view.
Speaker 1: That political points if you might have coincided with her opinions. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was true of me too. I was not a
Speaker 1: salesperson for the Democratic Party and all things Democrat. And
Speaker 1: if you doubt that, ask Hillary Clinton how she feels
Speaker 1: about me as a salesperson for all things Democrat. But
Speaker 1: I am moving away from the main topic here. Joy
Speaker 1: Reid was fired by MSNBC. There's lots of other ways
Speaker 1: to phrase this, and I'm sure they will dress this
Speaker 1: up to some degree and I'm sure she will get
Speaker 1: some money out of the deal, but I don't think
Speaker 1: we are really understanding the impact this is going to
Speaker 1: have on the MSNBC brand inside, the new company that's
Speaker 1: running NBC or MSNBC and the ex NBC cable networks
Speaker 1: inside that this is a big day for them because
Speaker 1: they've just removed a pain in the ass, just like
Speaker 1: when I agreed to leave after they breached my contract,
Speaker 1: even though they had to give me roughly twenty million
Speaker 1: dollars over the course of several years because they've breached
Speaker 1: my contract, they were so happy that I went. They
Speaker 1: are still happy even though we spent the next ten
Speaker 1: years dancing about possibly me coming back because things were
Speaker 1: so bad over there. But where is the reaction here?
Speaker 1: Where's the reaction from the MSNBC host who didn't get
Speaker 1: fired in a Saturday night massacre? In all small letters.
Speaker 1: The reaction from the MSNBC hosts is no surprise. It's
Speaker 1: no surprise because there's been no reaction. Mattow, nothing, Al Sharpton.
Speaker 1: Have we heard anything from Al Sharpton, Because there's something
Speaker 1: about joy read that I haven't gotten to yet that's
Speaker 1: kind of important here. In addition, to the fact that,
Speaker 1: just practically speaking, the conduit to bring people to MSNBC,
Speaker 1: and thus to what remains of mainstream television news. The
Speaker 1: conduit the person who said, let's book this guest, and
Speaker 1: let's bring in that guy, and let's bring in this
Speaker 1: woman and let's talk about this topic, which would have
Speaker 1: been different than every something else on the air on MSNBC.
Speaker 1: That was Joy Reid. And I had lots of problems
Speaker 1: with lots of stuff she said. And I thought lots
Speaker 1: of stuff she said was absolutely crazy. And so what
Speaker 1: going back and looking at my shows from two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, eight, nine, ten eleven, I don't agree with
Speaker 1: everything I said then myself, let alone what other people said.
Speaker 1: It's not supposed to be like that. It's supposed to
Speaker 1: be inconsistent. It's supposed to be poking different areas to
Speaker 1: see what holds up and what doesn't. It's supposed to
Speaker 1: be saying, yeah, I like this Occupy Wall Street thing. No,
Speaker 1: this is bullshit. It's supposed to be like that. It's
Speaker 1: not supposed to be. Here is today's show. We could
Speaker 1: record this and play it back to you two years
Speaker 1: from now, and you wouldn't know the difference. That's not
Speaker 1: what it's supposed to be. And unfortunately the entirety of
Speaker 1: the MSNBC lineup has become that, except the Morning Show,
Speaker 1: which is of course MSNVS. Because there's a problem here,
Speaker 1: a larger problem, and nobody is going to say this.
Speaker 1: Do you remember Melissa Harris Perry, she used to be
Speaker 1: on My Show, later known as Melissa Harris Lacewell. They
Speaker 1: gave her her own show in large part because she
Speaker 1: did such a good job as an analyst on Mine
Speaker 1: and a couple of other shows, and she got her
Speaker 1: own show, and they fired her. You remember Tiffany Cross.
Speaker 1: Now there was somebody who liked to poke at things
Speaker 1: and see whether or not they were true, and again
Speaker 1: lots of things she said, I went holy crap wrong.
Speaker 1: But so what you have to have room for that,
Speaker 1: And what they're saying in MSNBC is we're not going
Speaker 1: to have room for that anymore. She got fired. So
Speaker 1: Melissa Harris Lacewell Perry or Melissa Harris Perry Lacewell. I'm sorry, Melissa,
Speaker 1: I could never keep it straight. She got fired. Tiffany
Speaker 1: Cross got fired. Remember Tiffany Cross, among the other things,
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson attacked her. She was the one who go
Speaker 1: back and say this was on Fox the way I
Speaker 1: used to Tucker Carlson claimed that Tiffany Cross was inspiring
Speaker 1: genocide like Rwanda. Seriously. MSNBC's response, rather than to come
Speaker 1: at Tucker Carlson with five million metaphorical machine guns, was
Speaker 1: to fire Tiffany Cross, because you can have controversy as
Speaker 1: long as it's controversy trademark, and you can sell it trademark,
Speaker 1: and you can put a smile on its face trademark,
Speaker 1: and you can give it a little silly grin or
Speaker 1: a kind of sad grin or a feel good grin,
Speaker 1: and then you can say, now here's Lawrence O'Donnell. They
Speaker 1: fired her, They fired Melissa Harris Lacewell. Now they fired
Speaker 1: Joy Reid. Now they fired Alex Wagner. Humm, Melissa Harris, Perry,
Speaker 1: Tiffany Cross, Joy Reid, Alex Wagner. For women, what did
Speaker 1: they have in common? Well, let's see, they all had
Speaker 1: had their own shows solo hosts on MSNBC, and they
Speaker 1: were all women of color, and they've all been fired.
Speaker 1: I believe I'm not certain of this. I didn't I
Speaker 1: spent enough time wondering about MSNBC firings. I don't need
Speaker 1: to go through the list again. Forgive me if I've
Speaker 1: gotten this wrong, but I do know. They're the last four,
Speaker 1: if not the only four women of color who have
Speaker 1: hosted shows on MSNBC, and they've all been fired, and
Speaker 1: they've all been replaced by well, but you're what's Michael
Speaker 1: Steele is a man of color, and Simon Sanders is
Speaker 1: a woman of color, and Alicia Menendez is a woman
Speaker 1: of color. Yeah, they are official, they are safe. They
Speaker 1: are not going to do crazy things or bring on
Speaker 1: people you've never heard of before who turn out to
Speaker 1: be better than the people you've heard of. And they
Speaker 1: also may hire a professor from Columbia's a woman of color.
Speaker 1: And they fired the only remaining women of color who
Speaker 1: were solo anchoring political commentary shows on prominent national television networks.
Speaker 1: Alex Wagner, I think probably is relieved by this. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that just because you're a woman of
Speaker 1: color or a person of color, your show should be
Speaker 1: held to a lower standard and you should get twenty
Speaker 1: five years to improve it. No, at some point, guess what,
Speaker 1: I don't care who it is. I don't care if
Speaker 1: it's Jesus Christ fresh off the cross, a man of color,
Speaker 1: that you would say, hey, you know, Jesus, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: It doesn't quite work. And the new Woodworking segments they
Speaker 1: weren't any good either. That's not the point. The point
Speaker 1: is not you must protect all people of color who
Speaker 1: get television shows. But if the show is of value,
Speaker 1: and the ratings for Joy Reid's show went up and down,
Speaker 1: just as MSNBC's overall ratings went, and is it possible
Speaker 1: that maybe she wasn't best for the seven o'clock slot,
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe later in the evening, maybe there might have
Speaker 1: been a greater audience, maybe at ten o'clock. Now what
Speaker 1: they saw was people have been sharing clips of the
Speaker 1: nightmare that is the Scott what's his name show Scott
Speaker 1: Jennings on CNN, which is nominally Abby Phillips show, and
Speaker 1: poor Abbi Phillips goes out there, Abby Phillip, excuse me,
Speaker 1: Abby Phillip goes out there and gets tortured by this
Speaker 1: racist Scott Jennings. It's his show, and it's a bunch
Speaker 1: of people talking about how much of a racist he is,
Speaker 1: and he leans back in the chair and rocks back
Speaker 1: and forth and mugs to the camera and creates viral clips.
Speaker 1: And somebody at MSNBC said, wouldn't we rather have that
Speaker 1: than Joy Reid, who's now bald, appearing on television every
Speaker 1: night at seven o'clock? Don't we want this? Won't this
Speaker 1: make it easier to sell this company when we want to?
Speaker 1: Won't it make it easier the next time Trump threatens
Speaker 1: NBC and MSNBC for us to say, but we fired
Speaker 1: Joy Reid. More practically, MSNBC's problems in terms of its
Speaker 1: profitability and its ratings had nothing to do with Joy Reid.
Speaker 1: As I said, her ratings went up and down, exactly
Speaker 1: as Chris Hayes's ratings went up and down, and Maddow's
Speaker 1: ratings went up and down, and Maddow's replacements like Wagner,
Speaker 1: their ratings went up and down. Lawrence O'Donnell went up
Speaker 1: and down. A weekends went up and down, including the
Speaker 1: Simone Sanders, Michael Steele Alishamanendez show ratings went up and down,
Speaker 1: all in the same sign curves. The problem at MSNBC
Speaker 1: is Joe Scarborough, and until you fire Joe Scarborough and
Speaker 1: get Rid of msn V. She and what that told
Speaker 1: people who watch that network, which I'm talking about largely
Speaker 1: because A. I did invent it. B. It is the
Speaker 1: only liberal network. It is the only thing even close
Speaker 1: to being a liberal network. And the better it is,
Speaker 1: the better it is for our society as we attempt
Speaker 1: to keep democracy or some shred of democracy alive. We
Speaker 1: need a strong, vibrant, loud, fearless MSNBC and not the
Speaker 1: view forgive Me at seven clock every night. We need
Speaker 1: people like Joyreid. Even if you sit there and go,
Speaker 1: I'm not watching that, it's important that she's there for
Speaker 1: the people who want to identify with somebody who looks
Speaker 1: like Joyreid and say that woman is out here trying
Speaker 1: to argue my point and is talking to me and
Speaker 1: is bringing people who look like me and look like
Speaker 1: her onto television for the first time, and some of
Speaker 1: them are going to become superstars. And if we ever
Speaker 1: get out of this goddamned mess caused by lack of courage,
Speaker 1: often on places like MSNBC, often in places in the
Speaker 1: public discourse, we're ever going to get out of this
Speaker 1: mess and restore this democracy. It's gonna be because of
Speaker 1: people like Joyreid, even if you don't agree with a
Speaker 1: goddamned word. She said, no, keep Joe Scarborough um now
Speaker 1: supporting Chump again. You've heard me talk about Chump being
Speaker 1: Hitler all this time. I guess I was wrong. Remember
Speaker 1: when I was trying to be his vice pasident take
Speaker 1: somebody off his show to put him on in primetime
Speaker 1: Michael Steele. Not take somebody off his show, Joe Scarborough
Speaker 1: and put anything on, including bugs Bunny cartoons would be
Speaker 1: a better political statement at seven o'clock in the morning
Speaker 1: on MSNBC, and much more consistent and eloquent, and Bugs
Speaker 1: Bunny did not have a deviated septum either. One last
Speaker 1: procedural thing about this about MSNBC and it is I
Speaker 1: think of it the way I do ESPN, not like
Speaker 1: an ex spouse, but really as and it's a little pretentious,
Speaker 1: but as a child, as a child that sometimes I
Speaker 1: have had good relationships with and sometimes I have not.
Speaker 1: And to some degree it's the same thing in limited
Speaker 1: doses with ESPN. I did not father ESPN. It was
Speaker 1: well established before I got there. But there are aspects
Speaker 1: to that relationship in which I go, oh boy, that's
Speaker 1: not going to work out for you later on. Take
Speaker 1: it from an old man, and I feel that way
Speaker 1: about MSNBC. And the other part about this is okay,
Speaker 1: you've had turmoil. Now at nine o'clock, Mattow retired. Mattow
Speaker 1: went to once a week. They didn't know what to
Speaker 1: do about Mattow. Matto's going to be replaced four days
Speaker 1: week by Alex Wagner. Oh no, that's not working. We're
Speaker 1: going to bring Matto back for five days week. She's
Speaker 1: not going to do it long term. We'll bring Alex
Speaker 1: Wagner back after this in April. Oh no, we're not
Speaker 1: bringing her back. It's probably going to be Jensaki. You
Speaker 1: know what. Jensaki is going to prove to not really
Speaker 1: be a television person. There's going to be somebody else
Speaker 1: needed at nine o'clock. Oh and let's now create chaos
Speaker 1: at seven o'clock, because, honest to god, the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought of when I was told on Saturday night
Speaker 1: that they might get rid of joy read or that
Speaker 1: it was done already. The first thing I thought of,
Speaker 1: you now they're going to try to bring back Chris Matthews.
Speaker 1: Because they've tried to bring back Chris Matthews in the
Speaker 1: morning with Joe Scarborough, because we need Chris Matthews right
Speaker 1: now because the shallow, random firings of the few electtions
Speaker 1: Trodden's in his brain, something actually getting across those synapses,
Speaker 1: knocking his references to himself out of the way for
Speaker 1: a brief second. That's exactly what MSNBC and the political
Speaker 1: dialogue needs right now, Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews. When
Speaker 1: we go to the camps and the doors open, the
Speaker 1: guys in the hats with the keys will be Joe
Speaker 1: Scarborough and Chris Matthews. But back to the point about
Speaker 1: Joy Reid, and I would love to see I would
Speaker 1: love to come to you again on Thursday and say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I apologize to this MSNBC anchor, and
Speaker 1: I apologize to Al Sharpton, and I apologize to this
Speaker 1: group that I said they were going to say nothing.
Speaker 1: And look at this, there's a five thousand person encampment
Speaker 1: outside thirty Rock protesting Joy Reid getting fired. I'd love
Speaker 1: to say that to you. I do not expect to
Speaker 1: have to do it. I'm not writing notes down for
Speaker 1: Thursday's show about the big backlash within MSNBC about Joy Reid.
Speaker 1: Because Joy Reid threatens all their money. Joy Reid says
Speaker 1: something controversial. Rachel Maddow thinks I have twenty five million
Speaker 1: dollars coming to me. I want my money. But the
Speaker 1: chaos is the real legend, the real history of MSNBC.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've ever shared this with you.
Speaker 1: It took a friend of mine named Rainy and I
Speaker 1: several days' worth of going through old memos to compile
Speaker 1: this list. I've told you many times that I worked,
Speaker 1: and this is my story about Joy Reid getting fired.
Speaker 1: It of course comes back to me. I worked at
Speaker 1: MSNBC from its second year nineteen ninety seven through the
Speaker 1: end of its third year nineteen ninety eight. I did
Speaker 1: the eight o'clock show. It's the first show anybody paid
Speaker 1: attention to on MSNBC. And eventually I couldn't stand doing
Speaker 1: it anymore. It was all about Bill Clinton, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't do it anymore, and they sold me to Fox
Speaker 1: and I got out, and then that didn't work and
Speaker 1: I went to see it in for a while and
Speaker 1: they shows Connie Chung to host their eight o'clock show
Speaker 1: instead of me, so that didn't work out, and NBC
Speaker 1: was short an anchor at MSNBC and invited me to
Speaker 1: come over for a couple of days, and the next
Speaker 1: thing I knew, I signed a contract to do the
Speaker 1: eight o'clock show again five years later. And my friend
Speaker 1: Rany and I before it was a parent that I
Speaker 1: was going to stay there when it looked like I
Speaker 1: was just there for a couple of days filling in
Speaker 1: because they were short of anchors. We compiled this list
Speaker 1: of all the shows that had been on after I
Speaker 1: left the network on December fourth, nineteen ninety eight. And
Speaker 1: this is my fear of what is going to happen
Speaker 1: MSNBC in the next couple of years. The Revolving Door,
Speaker 1: the Game of Musical Chairs. Just listen to this. So
Speaker 1: they had started the network with a show called Internight,
Speaker 1: which had like sixteen different hosts. They'd try to get
Speaker 1: somebody to sit down and do an hour long interview,
Speaker 1: and they had everybody from Bob Costas to Bill Moyers.
Speaker 1: They had sixteen different hosts and it was filmed. It
Speaker 1: was on at eight o'clock at night, and nobody watched it.
Speaker 1: So they needed a live television news show before the
Speaker 1: Brian Williams newscast at nine o'clock and I was it
Speaker 1: October first, nineteen ninety seven to December fourth, nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: and then I escaped and they replaced me with a
Speaker 1: guy who they thought was exactly the same kind of show,
Speaker 1: John Hockenberry. John lasted from December of ninety eight all
Speaker 1: the way through to February of ninety nine, and then
Speaker 1: eventually they moved him to the afternoon and when they
Speaker 1: fired him in August of nineteen ninety nine, and his
Speaker 1: last show, he asked rhetorically how much does cable suck?
Speaker 1: And the answer is still being played out. John had
Speaker 1: all kinds of problems dealing with women, as in he
Speaker 1: was a sexual harriser. Okay anyway, so he gets fired.
Speaker 1: The show that replaced me lasted three months. Then they
Speaker 1: put on two half hour shows equal time with Oliver North,
Speaker 1: premiering in February of nineteen ninety nine and The McLaughlin
Speaker 1: Special Report John McLoughlin from the mclaffelin Report wrong that guy.
Speaker 1: They did two half hours that lasted a month. They
Speaker 1: decided Oliver North needed half an hour, but he needed
Speaker 1: a rotating set of co hosts. Now, I want to
Speaker 1: clear this up. None of the co hosts sat there
Speaker 1: and rotated. They had different hosts, they were on a
Speaker 1: rotational basis. I think in retrospect they regret this that
Speaker 1: it should have been Oliver North with a co host
Speaker 1: who rotated. The co hosts included Cynthia Axney, Peter Fenn
Speaker 1: and Keky Moore. I can picture two of these three people.
Speaker 1: And at eight thirty they replaced Special Report from McLaughlin
Speaker 1: that was canceled and they brought in Time and Again,
Speaker 1: which was reruns of old NBC news features in April
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety nine, so a month later it became
Speaker 1: a permanent hour long show with Oliver North and Paul
Speaker 1: Begala as co hosts. May thirtieth of nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: so six weeks later it became North and Begala shortened
Speaker 1: to half an hour, and Time and Again came back,
Speaker 1: so it was Time and Again. It's Time and Again.
Speaker 1: Another month later, in June nineteen ninety nine, they replaced
Speaker 1: the whole thing Oliver North out special edition with Ann
Speaker 1: Curry in filmed recuts of Ann Curry pieces from Dateline
Speaker 1: and other shows. Now. I love Ann Curry, I worked
Speaker 1: with her in Los Angeles, A great person, a wonderful
Speaker 1: human being to my mind, and again at eight thirty time,
Speaker 1: and again. Then they expanded in about a month. In
Speaker 1: July of nineteen ninety nine, the Special Edition with Ann
Speaker 1: Curry went to an hour. Then Ann Curry left the
Speaker 1: program in May of two thousand, and they made it
Speaker 1: Special Edition with Louri Do. Then in August, so now
Speaker 1: what three months later it became MSNBC Investigates, and the
Speaker 1: joke was NBC Investigates, What happened to Lori Do? On
Speaker 1: September twenty eighth, two thousand, they made MSNBC Investigates a
Speaker 1: four day a week show, So Monday through Thursday it
Speaker 1: was MSNBC Investigates. Again, this is all the eight o'clock
Speaker 1: after I left, We're on show twelve so far year two,
Speaker 1: Show twelve in the eight o'clock slot MSNBC Investigates. But
Speaker 1: on Friday it wasn't MSNBC Investigates. It was a weekly
Speaker 1: show called Missing Persons with Diane Diamond. Soon it was
Speaker 1: Missing Missing Persons with Diane Diamond. It was canceled after
Speaker 1: one month, so they go back to an hour of
Speaker 1: MSNBC Investigates. A pre tape show every night in October
Speaker 1: two thousand. Then as the election approached, it became News
Speaker 1: Force with Forests Sawyer News Force. I don't want to
Speaker 1: know who thought Force was a good name to put
Speaker 1: in a newscast. So that evolved into Decision two thousand
Speaker 1: in December because there was no decision in the election,
Speaker 1: and it became Decision two thousand with Forest Sawyer. And
Speaker 1: when they finally, to MSNBC's great resil regret, resolved the
Speaker 1: Gore Bush election in January two thousand and one, it
Speaker 1: became MSNBC Investigates again till July. And in July two
Speaker 1: thousand and one they solved the crisis of what to
Speaker 1: do at eight o'clock, only two and a half years
Speaker 1: after I had left the news with Brian Williams at
Speaker 1: eight o'clock for nearly fourteen months, and then he said
Speaker 1: I don't want anything to do with MSNBC ever again.
Speaker 1: In September two thousand and two, at eight o'clock they
Speaker 1: premiered The Phil Donahue Show, which lasted until February two
Speaker 1: thousand and three because the show cost more money than
Speaker 1: they could possibly make in advertising, and they replaced it
Speaker 1: with Countdown Iraq with Lester Holt and segments with Pat
Speaker 1: Buchanan and Bill Press. In the middle of a show
Speaker 1: Getting America Ready for War at eight o'clock, MSNBC had
Speaker 1: Countdown Iraq with Lester Holt and Buchanan and Press. And
Speaker 1: then they had to move less your Holt to the
Speaker 1: network and so Operation Iraqi Freedom with Keith Olberman. Soon
Speaker 1: that was not enough, the news from Iraq was no
Speaker 1: longer interesting, and we made it Countdown with Keith Olderman
Speaker 1: March thirty first, two thousand and three. So that was
Speaker 1: twenty shows me twenty new shows in four years, and
Speaker 1: then me again because you can't have this. And then
Speaker 1: after I left in twenty eleven, it was the last
Speaker 1: Word with Lawrence O'Donnell for a while, like nine months.
Speaker 1: Then they put ed Schultz on instead. Then they put
Speaker 1: in Chris Hayes in twenty thirteen. The idea here is
Speaker 1: to return finally to the subject of joyread. You put
Speaker 1: people on TV who you, the executives can control when
Speaker 1: the chips are down, when the company is in trouble,
Speaker 1: when the boss goes to the anchor and says, don't
Speaker 1: say this, they say, don't say what and then they
Speaker 1: don't say anything when the company is in trouble, when
Speaker 1: a dollar might not be earned. You won't hear crap
Speaker 1: out of Madow or O'Donnell or Hayes or Sanders or
Speaker 1: Steel or Menendez or Jensaki. My version of this, and
Speaker 1: it might have been stylistically philosophically, it might have been
Speaker 1: the Only thing I shared with Joy Read was that
Speaker 1: when the chips were down in this circumstance and a
Speaker 1: dollar was at risk, I felt it was my job
Speaker 1: to say what they did not want me to say.
Speaker 1: Not always, there are sometimes management is right. But if
Speaker 1: they don't want you to touch a controversial topic, grab
Speaker 1: it with both hands. That's your job. If not, if
Speaker 1: you're not willing to do that, you can be replaced.
Speaker 1: You can be replaced by missing persons with Diane Diamond.
Speaker 1: Nothing against Diana. Used to work with her in Radio
Speaker 1: Lovely Woman. You could be replaced by news Force. News Force,
Speaker 1: we break down your door and drag you away. It
Speaker 1: is your job as a political commentator to get yourself
Speaker 1: into trouble whenever possible, now, whenever necessary. I did that.
Speaker 1: Joy Reid did that. I'm sure she looked at my
Speaker 1: times in trouble and went, what are you doing that for?
Speaker 1: And I know I've looked at her in some occasions
Speaker 1: and gone, what are you doing that for? Doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: The other thing you're supposed to do is you are
Speaker 1: supposed to spend your political capital, your small p political capital,
Speaker 1: your business capital inside your own operation, defending your colleagues
Speaker 1: or becoming a pain in the ass to management, develop
Speaker 1: a reputation with management, to get people they didn't want
Speaker 1: hired hired, or to get people they didn't want on
Speaker 1: the air on the air. Matdaw is a perfect example
Speaker 1: of that. I'm not going to belabor that point, but
Speaker 1: Joy Reid did that with a dozen people, and they
Speaker 1: might as well have been all of them might as
Speaker 1: well have been Hughey Newton from the eyes of MSNBC
Speaker 1: management from the day they put her on the air
Speaker 1: on the weekends to the day they put her on
Speaker 1: at eight o'clock with the current executives who just sold
Speaker 1: the thing off so they could distance themselves from anything
Speaker 1: good in television news. Again, I will be delighted to
Speaker 1: come out here and apologize profusely and for an hour,
Speaker 1: and this has been half an hour. Here I will
Speaker 1: profusely apologize to anybody at MSNBC who stands up in
Speaker 1: defensive joy Reid and says this stinks. This makes us white.
Speaker 1: This is contributing to the entirety of the Trump racism
Speaker 1: enveloping this country. And it is part of a stampede
Speaker 1: to see which formerly liberal company can get to the
Speaker 1: head of the racism line, the approved racism line, as
Speaker 1: fast as possible. And joy Read getting removed from the
Speaker 1: primetime lineup of MSNBC is MSNBC's biggest contribution yet, although
Speaker 1: Scarborough could top it at any moment. But honestly, what
Speaker 1: do you expect to hear about joy Read from the
Speaker 1: other people who count at MSNBC. You want to hear
Speaker 1: it again? Worst persons next, and the sad self destruction
Speaker 1: of a man named Wayne Gretzky formerly of Canada, now
Speaker 1: the man without a country. That's next. This is Countdown.
Speaker 5: This is sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This
Speaker 5: is Countdown with Keith.
Speaker 1: Ulberman from the sports ball Central centered news desk tonight, Dateline, Boston, Massachusetts. Hello, Okay,
Speaker 1: when I get him wrong, I get him wrong. That
Speaker 1: irrelevant NHL four Nations face off exhibition series that I
Speaker 1: complained about last week before it happened. Turned out to
Speaker 1: be as big a hockey event as anything since probably
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty Miracle on Ice. Three hundred thousand viewers
Speaker 1: on ABC last Thursday night for the final game between
Speaker 1: the US and Canada, which was won by the good guys.
Speaker 1: You heard me. These days, Canada is America if America
Speaker 1: had not dropped out of school anyway. Now that the
Speaker 1: tournament is over, and it isn't really over, the Canadians
Speaker 1: are still talking about it. Oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: the one downturn to this. The Canadians will be showing
Speaker 1: the highlights of that overtime winning goal for the next
Speaker 1: sixty seven years. As the planet burns to a cinder,
Speaker 1: the last thing seen on Canadian television will be that goal.
Speaker 1: But in the interim, there are two questions. Were the
Speaker 1: circumstances for this unique could it be replicated and institutionalized
Speaker 1: or was it a one off? Was this just about
Speaker 1: Trump's fifty first state and tariff idiocy? And what is
Speaker 1: perceived in Canada as a mortal threat to the nation.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well we're thinking of invading Canada. That's not
Speaker 1: the way they see it because the US Canada rivalry
Speaker 1: has always been gigantic in Canada, but here it's more like,
Speaker 1: all right, I guess we're rivals, all right. I guess
Speaker 1: they would be offended if we're going to invade them,
Speaker 1: I suppose. So, what's that newest movie being made out
Speaker 1: of a comic book? Avenger Action Star Wars Galaxy comic book.
Speaker 1: Canadian hockey figures often break her up the twenty ten
Speaker 1: Olympic gold medal game, which was decided by Sidney Crosby's
Speaker 1: golden goal Canada over the US, as if it would
Speaker 1: hurt you as an American very badly. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't know what percentage of Americans know about the
Speaker 1: twenty ten Olympics. It's got to be something like one
Speaker 1: tenth of one percent. In Canada, something like ninety nine
Speaker 1: point nine percent. This registered. This tournament registered probably because
Speaker 1: of the booing the American anthem stuff with a lot
Speaker 1: of morons in this country. The morons who think it
Speaker 1: just sort of happened, the booing of the American anthem
Speaker 1: at National Hockey League games, and it was not instigated, provoked,
Speaker 1: entirely created by Trump's insane threats or the smarter ones
Speaker 1: know that this started with Trump's threats, but they still
Speaker 1: reacted viscerably or viscerally in English, as if no provocation
Speaker 1: could possibly justify booing our beloved national song that all
Speaker 1: Americans know by heart. Well, no almost nobody can sing
Speaker 1: it here. Ninety percent of American professional singers who go
Speaker 1: out and sing it at ballgames get at least one
Speaker 1: wrong word, usually instead of saying or the Land of
Speaker 1: the Free, oh hyphen er, oh apostrophe er, it's an
Speaker 1: abbreviation for over invariably that is sung as for the
Speaker 1: Land of the Free, usually twice. Anyway, from a hockey viewpoint,
Speaker 1: the whole thing was gold. But the problem is gold,
Speaker 1: as in Olympic gold. The NHL is going to interrupt
Speaker 1: its season next year for the Winter Olympics in Italy.
Speaker 1: Then the NHL plans to resume the World Cup of
Speaker 1: Hockey in twenty twenty eight. Now it's players want this
Speaker 1: four nations faceoff to return. That would presumably be in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty seven, but the Swedes and the Finns are
Speaker 1: demanding that some games be played in Scandinavia. Oh, that's right.
Speaker 1: The Swedes and the Finns had teams in the four
Speaker 1: Nations faceoff too. You may not have noticed them. They were,
Speaker 1: as we say in trade filler. Now, this is all
Speaker 1: well and good for a hockey championship. Of course there
Speaker 1: should be games in Europe. It's a Swedish team and
Speaker 1: a Finnish team, and it's all good for Canadian hockey
Speaker 1: fans who think the idea of going to Finland in
Speaker 1: February for Canada Finland game is a reasonable vacation. But
Speaker 1: the NHL has already forgotten the real lesson of the
Speaker 1: success of the tournament last week. In the United States,
Speaker 1: sports fans they don't really care about the Olympics. When
Speaker 1: they do care about the Olympics, it's about the American
Speaker 1: team about to win in the Olympics, nothing else. If
Speaker 1: that had been America versus Finland in the final, that
Speaker 1: would not have been nine million, three hundred thousand viewers.
Speaker 1: It might have been nine hundred and thirty viewers, because
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't threaten to invade Finland yet, Which
Speaker 1: brings me to my second question. The NHL has this
Speaker 1: history of not just failing to exploit marketing gifts, but
Speaker 1: absolutely erasing them. The league did almost nothing after the
Speaker 1: Americans won the nineteen eighty Olympics. It would have required
Speaker 1: contractual and legal gymnastics, but the play would have been
Speaker 1: to take that American Olympic team that beat the Russians
Speaker 1: intact and give it its own franchise, put it in
Speaker 1: the Stanley Cup playoffs, and see how it does against
Speaker 1: the pros. Of course, nobody even contemplated doing something like that,
Speaker 1: or some sliver of that. The players were instead scattered
Speaker 1: among all the other teams and fell back into obscurity.
Speaker 1: Nice movie, not nice playing careers. In nineteen ninety four, though,
Speaker 1: the New York Rangers won their first Stanley Cup in
Speaker 1: fifty four years, not that they really tried for most
Speaker 1: of that time. I mean, their owners owned the arena,
Speaker 1: and the owners would still refuse to give up valuable
Speaker 1: money renting Madison Square Garden to the Wringling Brothers Barnum
Speaker 1: and Bailey Circus every April. Their New York Rangers made
Speaker 1: the Stanley Cup Final in nineteen fifty and they had
Speaker 1: to play all seven games on the road because their
Speaker 1: home arena, owned by the team, was busy is being
Speaker 1: used for the circus, so the Elephants could take a
Speaker 1: dump on Center Ice still in nineteen ninety four, the
Speaker 1: Rangers winning was a story that, in the utterly New
Speaker 1: York centric advertising world of thirty one years ago, completely
Speaker 1: blotted out basketball and football and baseball at least for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. Madison Avenue was prepared to go
Speaker 1: to Madison Square Garden and spend all of its money
Speaker 1: there the next season, and of course, the next season,
Speaker 1: the NHL owners locked out the players. The next hockey
Speaker 1: game after the Rangers hoisted the Stanley Cup was two
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty one days later. They didn't play till
Speaker 1: the following January, and by then the momentum was not
Speaker 1: just dead, it was forgotten. If the NHL is really
Speaker 1: interested in taking the unlikely success of the four Nations
Speaker 1: Face Off and turning it into increased popularity and profits,
Speaker 1: it would make it a an annual event b and
Speaker 1: make it into the Two Nations Face Off, a best
Speaker 1: four out of seven series scheduled over two weeks America
Speaker 1: versus Canada period Finns, Swedes, Russians. Here here's a home
Speaker 1: version of the two Nations Faceoff game you can play
Speaker 1: in your basement if you insist that some of the
Speaker 1: greatest players are not North American. Fine, you can have
Speaker 1: the coaches and the captains of the American and the
Speaker 1: Canadian teams draft two or three non North Americans as
Speaker 1: honorary Americans or Canadians if you insist. If you have
Speaker 1: to have Alex Ovechkin there, although I'd rather have them
Speaker 1: on the Canadian team than the American team, I don't
Speaker 1: want anything with that guy. They won't do this. The
Speaker 1: Canadian teams would never accept this. They want this tournament.
Speaker 1: They want this tournament. They want to beat the world,
Speaker 1: especially US, but not just US. I mean America is
Speaker 1: satisfied to beat the Canadian team. We don't need to
Speaker 1: beat the Finns. Seven and eighths of our population doesn't
Speaker 1: know what a Finland is. We're morons here. We dropped
Speaker 1: out of school in the ninth grade. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: the Canadians are wrong, the franchise is No, they're not wrong.
Speaker 1: The commissioner and the Canadian influencers in the NHL, they're
Speaker 1: not wrong. I'm just being bloodless and mercenary. I'm pretending
Speaker 1: I'm a businessman. But there are thirty two franchises in
Speaker 1: the National Hockey League and twenty five of them are
Speaker 1: in the United States. That's seventy eight percent, or if
Speaker 1: you prefer seventy eight percent or seventy eight percent Celsius Dateline,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles or Brantford, Ontario or somewhere. There was one awful, terrible,
Speaker 1: serious component to the Four Nations Cup, the public disintegration
Speaker 1: of the man who is probably Canada's greatest living hero,
Speaker 1: accelerated and may not be reversible. Now, Wayne Gretzky for
Speaker 1: a nation still grieving from the day he was traded
Speaker 1: away by Edmonton thirty six years ago last August. It
Speaker 1: is almost impossible to believe, but Canada is now furious
Speaker 1: at Wayne Gretzky. The Canadians had pretty much come to
Speaker 1: terms with Gretzky's lurch to the right. His son in
Speaker 1: law has been a Trumpist, his wife is in one. Okay,
Speaker 1: he was still Wayne Gretzky. He wore a Maga hat,
Speaker 1: but Wayne Gretzky, he was Wayne Gretzky. He took over
Speaker 1: the role of Gordy Howe after Gordy Howe died, So
Speaker 1: he's both Wayne Gretzky and Gordy How's ghost. So what
Speaker 1: he went to Trump's election night, victory party and the inauguration.
Speaker 1: It happens, white guys get old. But when Trump turned
Speaker 1: on Canada and threatened it and threatened to invade, to
Speaker 1: buy it, or turned it into the fifty first state
Speaker 1: or pressure it, Gretzky said nothing. Then Trump said Gretzky
Speaker 1: was his great friend, said Gretzky should run for Prime Minister.
Speaker 1: Gretzky laughed. Then Trump said no, Let's make a governor
Speaker 1: of Canada of our fifty first state, and Gretzky said nothing. Then,
Speaker 1: when this tournament played out in the middle of Trump's threats,
Speaker 1: Canada's standing up metaphorically symbolically for its national existence. Gretzky,
Speaker 1: the honorary captain of Team Canada, not only did not
Speaker 1: wear a Canadian jersey at any point, the honorary American
Speaker 1: captain American jersey. But he didn't stick up for the
Speaker 1: place that made him a hero, literally a companion of
Speaker 1: the Order of Canada. He didn't even visit the Canadian
Speaker 1: team before the game and before the game. Before the
Speaker 1: title game against the US last Thursday, Gretzky was seen
Speaker 1: recorded on camera giving a thumbs up to the American
Speaker 1: team after the Canadians beat the American team. Gretzky stopped
Speaker 1: by the locker room, as The Toronto Star wrote, after
Speaker 1: the win, quote he handed the Canadian players' hats that
Speaker 1: said be great. I hope somebody threw it at him
Speaker 1: and said, we are great. You're the one who's no
Speaker 1: longer great. Terry Jones, a sportswriter who covered Gretzky's entire
Speaker 1: career with the Edmonton Oilers and covered the team for
Speaker 1: fifty five years, has now written I authored books on
Speaker 1: Wayne Gretzky. I covered him for a decade in Edmonton
Speaker 1: in the WHA and NHL, and extensively after he departed.
Speaker 1: I have viewed him as the greatest player in history
Speaker 1: and as a great Canadian. He needs to face the
Speaker 1: nation and explain his relationship with Donald Trump, and more
Speaker 1: than that. Perhaps there is a freeway in Edmonton, Alberta,
Speaker 1: Canada named for Wayne Gretzky, Named for Wayne Gretzky, and
Speaker 1: there is a group of locals there now trying to
Speaker 1: get his name removed from the freeway. Known Wayne Gretzky
Speaker 1: since nineteen eighty eight, I broke the story of him
Speaker 1: getting traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles. I always liked him.
Speaker 1: Not a big effusive guy, but stood up when accounted.
Speaker 1: Not anymore. Gotta make a choice here now, Gretz. It's
Speaker 1: your time do or die. It's Trump or your soul.
Speaker 1: You clearly cannot have both, and clearly you already do
Speaker 1: not have both. Before I wrap this up, boy, this
Speaker 1: has been a long edition. Believe it or not, there
Speaker 1: are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily
Speaker 1: roundup of the misigrants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens
Speaker 1: who constitute today's other worse persons in the world. As
Speaker 1: if there's anybody left. Here are the nominees. They are
Speaker 1: all elected officers, and two of them are Democrats. I
Speaker 1: guess bronze worst runner up. Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Two tweets.
Speaker 1: From yesterday, President Trump has accomplished more in one month
Speaker 1: than Joe Biden did in four years. Well, if you
Speaker 1: knuke a country right, you can be said to have
Speaker 1: accomplished more in one second than all the other presidents combined.
Speaker 1: Also from Senator Tom Tillis, that's Tom with an H.
Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump is our President, Pam Bondy is our
Speaker 1: Attorney General. Cash Patel is our FBI director, It's a
Speaker 1: great time to be an American. If that's a point
Speaker 1: of view, it's a damn shame. Trump, Bondi and Patel
Speaker 1: aren't Americans anyway. What's so special about this? I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a Republican. Tom tell Us is not necessarily ever
Speaker 1: a never Trumper, but as late as twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: he was censured by the North Carolina State Party, the
Speaker 1: GOP in his home state for not being maga enough Jesus,
Speaker 1: So what is this rancid toadying? It's a great time
Speaker 1: to be an American. Pam Bondi is Pam Bondy put
Speaker 1: Dwight Gooden in jail and as a good stylist. Those
Speaker 1: are her life accomplishments. So what's all the rancid todying
Speaker 1: about from Senator tell Us? With guess who's up for
Speaker 1: election next year and maybe a primary? The technical term
Speaker 1: for what Tillis is is gutlass scumback the runner up worser,
Speaker 1: Governor Jared Poulis of Colorado, nominally a Democrat, He went
Speaker 1: on Morning Collaborators MSNV. She alongside Kevin Skitt, the fascist
Speaker 1: governor of Oklahoma, who looks even more fascist now that
Speaker 1: he's grown a beard, because he's trying to look like Lincoln.
Speaker 1: Trying to look like Lincoln. You know what he's accomplished
Speaker 1: looking like Lincoln. He also looks like he was born
Speaker 1: in eighteen oh seven. Governor Polis saying he agrees with
Speaker 1: Trump about saving money and about how flawed FEMA is
Speaker 1: not the wrecking ball part. But I want to commend
Speaker 1: Trump and I want to command like f you. Governor.
Speaker 1: First off, you're on Morning Joe. Grandpa Joe is off
Speaker 1: that day. Grandma Joe was there though, And you're sitting
Speaker 1: next to Kevin Stitt. First off, his name is Stitt.
Speaker 1: He's the governor of Oklahoma, where they are trying to
Speaker 1: put the Bible in the classroom in lou of all
Speaker 1: the textbooks. And you're sitting next to this guy and
Speaker 1: he's selling Musk talking points as if these were the
Speaker 1: opinions of human beings. And he's the one Jared Polis
Speaker 1: who saw great promise in Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior,
Speaker 1: F you Pal, get the f out of my country,
Speaker 1: you collaboratist Vshi, son of a bitch and stupid son
Speaker 1: of a bitch. Resign. But the winner of the worst,
Speaker 1: Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey. I want to thank
Speaker 1: President Trump and Secretary Duffy. I mean, that's enough, right,
Speaker 1: you don't need need to even hear the rest of this.
Speaker 1: I want to thank President Trump and Secretary Don't you
Speaker 1: do that and get the hell out of the Democratic Party, asshole.
Speaker 1: I want to thank President Trump and Secretary Duffy rites
Speaker 1: with Governor Murphy for their efforts to halt the current
Speaker 1: congestion pricing program. While I have consistently expressed openness to
Speaker 1: a form of congestion pricing, this is the tax that
Speaker 1: is being charged, as it has been done in countless
Speaker 1: cities around the world, on people who don't live in
Speaker 1: a state and yet come in and commute into the
Speaker 1: city that's already too congested and choking on its own
Speaker 1: pollution and needs money for transportation, that is being threatened
Speaker 1: by President Trump and Secretary Duffy. This is the New
Speaker 1: York City means of coping with that. And Governor Murphy
Speaker 1: is spitting all over and I don't mean spitting. While
Speaker 1: I've consistently expressed openness to a form of congestion pricing,
Speaker 1: the current program lines the end pockets at the expense
Speaker 1: of New Jersey's You know who runs on the MTA.
Speaker 1: You know what sort of trains, what people run or
Speaker 1: ride on the MTA. People from New Jersey do, and
Speaker 1: people from Connecticut and people from New York. It is
Speaker 1: the greatest mass transportation system in the world. It is
Speaker 1: the only thing that makes the City of New York functional.
Speaker 1: And it's underfunded. And it also costs nothing. It costs
Speaker 1: less than three dollars, and you can go in one
Speaker 1: day and come out like six weeks later for three dollars.
Speaker 1: Governor Murphy, get out out, Get the f out. I mean,
Speaker 1: I suppose you think the City of New York should
Speaker 1: pay for your Jersey residents train fares into the city too.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of nerve charging you for congesting
Speaker 1: our streets that you don't do anything to improve, or
Speaker 1: giving you some place to go when otherwise you and
Speaker 1: your people would have to spend your entire lives in
Speaker 1: New Jersey. I used to commute to this city from
Speaker 1: Westchester County. It was a privilege. I got to live
Speaker 1: in a spacious, open area with trees, and for a
Speaker 1: nominal cost, I used to get the train in here
Speaker 1: or a car, pay the tolls come on in. I
Speaker 1: used to commute from the city to New Jersey and
Speaker 1: there was never any traffic going to New Jersey. Know why,
Speaker 1: because who in the hell wanted to leave New York
Speaker 1: City to go to freaking Jersey on purpose? Unless you've
Speaker 1: been served at subpoena, why are you going to New Jersey? Seriously?
Speaker 1: Congestion pricing has made New York City livable again. Traffic
Speaker 1: now flows. You can go across town, you can go up,
Speaker 1: you can go down, you can go east, you can
Speaker 1: go west. There are fewer bridge and tunnels vomiting outside
Speaker 1: clubs at two o'clock in the morning. We're funding improvements
Speaker 1: and safety measures for the subway. And I'm sure business
Speaker 1: has picked up in places like Secaucus, New Jersey, the
Speaker 1: only city in America that is entirely devoted to factory
Speaker 1: outlet stores, Burbury factory outlet store, London Fog factory outlet,
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball factory outlet, etc. Governor, Phil governor, shut
Speaker 1: up or resign.
Speaker 3: I don't care.
Speaker 1: There's one thing about governors of New Jersey we learned
Speaker 1: from Chris Christy and all who preceded him. There's always
Speaker 1: another governor of Jersey waiting to happen. Murphy two Day's
Speaker 1: other worst person, and I've done all the damage I
Speaker 1: can do here. Thank you for listening, and goodbye to
Speaker 1: all of you who are from New Jersey. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: you know it's true. I understand. Just say you don't
Speaker 1: want to pay the money. I'd have greater respect if
Speaker 1: you just said, we don't want to pay this money.
Speaker 1: It costs too much. A congressman named Gottheimer said, oh,
Speaker 1: there's environmental concerns. Bullshit, you don't want to pay the money.
Speaker 1: Just say it. Since why has anybody from Jersey been
Speaker 1: reluctant to say I don't want to pay sixteen dollars?
Speaker 1: I mean, you're from Jersey, you don't want to pay
Speaker 1: sixteen cents?
Speaker 3: I get it. It's fine.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to pay sixteen dollars to go to
Speaker 1: Jersey either, although it be a hell of an excuse
Speaker 1: not to go there. Okay, I've done enough damage here
Speaker 1: to myself. Thank you for listening. Ryan Ray and John
Speaker 1: Phillip Shanelle musical directors have Countdown Range, produced and performed
Speaker 1: most of the music. Mister Chanelle on orchestration and keyboards,
Speaker 1: mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums, and it was
Speaker 1: all produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical
Speaker 1: comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust,
Speaker 1: who is not from New Jersey. The sports music is
Speaker 1: the Olber theme from ESPN two, which has never been
Speaker 1: located in New Jersey, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
Speaker 1: of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the
Speaker 1: group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today, wash, Oh, here's
Speaker 1: I'm in trouble now. My announcer today is my friend
Speaker 1: Stevie van Zandt, who has portrayed someone from New Jersey.
Speaker 1: What everything else was as ever my fault. That's countdown
Speaker 1: for today, Just four and twenty seven days until the
Speaker 1: scheduled end of the lame duck, lame brain term of
Speaker 1: Donald t Rump, unless Musk removes him sooner or the
Speaker 1: actuarial tables do. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. As always, bulletins,
Speaker 1: as the news warrants, remember impeach trumpe It will not
Speaker 1: work now, it will win the Democrats the midterms if
Speaker 1: we have midterms, if we ever have an election again.
Speaker 3: Maybe in congestion. Pray saying is any it's.
Speaker 1: Lining the brockets. You don't want to spend the sixteen dollars,
Speaker 1: Just say it. Until next time. I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning,
Speaker 1: good afternoon, good night, and good effing luck. Countdown with
Speaker 1: Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.