Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Harris
Speaker 1: fifty one, Trump forty five, Morning Consult, Harris fifty one,
Speaker 1: Trump forty three, Big Village, Harris forty nine, Trump forty five,
Speaker 1: Monmouth University Harris fifty two Trump forty eighth, Harris Pohle,
Speaker 1: Harris is Mark Penn on July twenty six, Mark Penn,
Speaker 1: the Dick Morris of Bill Rasmussen's Only Bitterer, had it
Speaker 1: Trump by two, Now he has it Harris by four.
Speaker 1: This is the debate bounce, and maybe it is more
Speaker 1: than that. She may repeat, may caveat may warning. Even
Speaker 1: if so, keep your foot on the gas. May be
Speaker 1: pulling away from Trump. There may be new polls today
Speaker 1: reflecting Trump's Sunday, when a twenty sixteen Trump voter with
Speaker 1: a gun tragically snuffed out the life of Trump's round
Speaker 1: of golf. It was only five holes.
Speaker 2: Old e.
Speaker 1: He may get a bump. We don't have any of
Speaker 1: those yet. And there could be a bounce, because Lord knows,
Speaker 1: Trump and Vance and the louder and dumber of the
Speaker 1: Trump surrogates are doing everything they can to milk this,
Speaker 1: except for saying you better support Trump. Or we'll have
Speaker 1: to have somebody else from our own side try a
Speaker 1: third time, even as the campaign leadership itself is reportedly
Speaker 1: desperate to move on from the shooting attempts and try
Speaker 1: to focus him on policy. You know, policy like mandatory childbirthing,
Speaker 1: with Sarah Huckabee Sanders attacking the Vice president last night
Speaker 1: for only being a stepmother, even though she Huckaby has
Speaker 1: endowed her unfortun child with the name huck huck Huckabee,
Speaker 1: although what a lectern he will inherit someday policies They
Speaker 1: want to keep Trump on policies, killing off another Senate
Speaker 1: attempt to protect in vitro fertilization yesterday, and Vance's clever
Speaker 1: revelation that under Trump Bamacare, that would take people with
Speaker 1: pre existing conditions and put them in their own insurance
Speaker 1: pool so that they can't afford healthcare and the insurance
Speaker 1: companies don't have to pay for healthcare, which is just
Speaker 1: the old Monty Python joke about how they'd love to
Speaker 1: pay you your claim, but unfortunately you signed up for
Speaker 1: their never pay policy. Back to the Vice President's polling,
Speaker 1: and it is so good. Even Axios was forced to
Speaker 1: write an article headlined Kamala Harris's polling renaissance and lead
Speaker 1: with the fact that, according to the five thirty eight
Speaker 1: average of polls yesterday, for the first time since July
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one, her net favorability moved into positive
Speaker 1: territory forty six point six percent approval to forty six
Speaker 1: point five percent disapproval. Now that is about as not
Speaker 1: a landslide as you could get. But I can't believe
Speaker 1: I'm saying this. As Axios notes, it is an almost
Speaker 1: unprecedented turnaround. Vice President Harris, whose net approval is plus
Speaker 1: zero point one above water, was on July fourteenth at
Speaker 1: minus seventeen, and again Axios is sticking to averages of
Speaker 1: large numbers of poles. It also highlighted the five point
Speaker 1: thirty eight polling average, where she's up by three, and
Speaker 1: its electoral college model, in which Harris wins sixty one
Speaker 1: times out of one hundred, and the Economist polling average,
Speaker 1: which shows her up by four. And Nate Silver's Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe I did pull this number out of my ass model,
Speaker 1: which he acknowledges went from last week giving Trump a
Speaker 1: two thirds chance of winning to Nate now saying to
Speaker 1: Axios that Harris is quote moving up in the polls
Speaker 1: enough that the model is converging back toward fifty to
Speaker 1: fifty in the electoral college. There is one other number
Speaker 1: of note inside the ABC poll from Sunday in that
Speaker 1: Harris is at forty five percent among likely voters who
Speaker 1: are white. So what that's not a majority? Well, if accurate,
Speaker 1: forty five percent would be the largest white support for
Speaker 1: any Democratic nominee since Jimmy Carter in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Is that number accurate? I don't know the five thirty
Speaker 1: eight net approval number who knows Harris by six in
Speaker 1: Morning consult seven to eight in Big Village got a
Speaker 1: six point swing in the Mark Penn poll. I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know what we need? We need some poll numbers
Speaker 1: on whether or not the poll numbers are at all reliable.
Speaker 1: I see them chiefly, not as some sort of guarantee,
Speaker 1: nor even a disincentive to work harder, work harder than that.
Speaker 1: I see them chiefly as everybody involved getting to sleep
Speaker 1: more and spending more time trying to get her elected
Speaker 1: and less time trying to choose move to Montreal or
Speaker 1: move to Toronto. Oh Toronto, Because there's baseball no Montreal
Speaker 1: because that baseball is the Blue Jays. Oh, there goes
Speaker 1: the Canadian audience. Actually they know, they know about the
Speaker 1: Blue Jays. They know. Meanwhile, I wish there were a
Speaker 1: kind of all purpose omnibus polling number to indicate just
Speaker 1: how much of a gift from a divine providence JD.
Speaker 1: Vance really is. I mean, maybe his IQ plus the
Speaker 1: number of points Harris has gained since Trump picked him.
Speaker 1: I bet the number is like up to eighty seven
Speaker 1: or eighty eight by now. Because JV is a freaking moron.
Speaker 1: I mean, he may be functionally dumber than Trump. He
Speaker 1: certainly has an advantage on Trump of being generally aware
Speaker 1: of what those sounds are that are coming out of
Speaker 1: his mouth. Yet he is magnificently unaware that what is
Speaker 1: coming out of his mouth is wildly unpopular, totally untrue,
Speaker 1: and additionally far too complex for the idiots who are
Speaker 1: going to vote dictatorship because they have convinced themselves it's freedom.
Speaker 1: At Sparta, Michigan, yesterday, JV doubled down on the Republican
Speaker 1: lies about the immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Never mind that
Speaker 1: Senator Vance senator from Ohio is literally terrorizing residents of
Speaker 1: his own state. And I don't even mean the immigrants here,
Speaker 1: I mean the multi generational Springfield residents, Jebediah Springfield himself,
Speaker 1: who have seen their city shut down over this nonsense.
Speaker 1: Vance is insistent that the Democrats and the media owe
Speaker 1: him and Trump apologies because all those bomb threats, not
Speaker 1: one of them has turned out to be a bomb,
Speaker 1: not yet.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I've seen this from the American media, a lot
Speaker 3: of people who pretend.
Speaker 1: To be fair journalists.
Speaker 3: You know what, they've been saying for the last few days,
Speaker 3: Springfield has been experiencing an unbelievable number, something like thirty
Speaker 3: five forty bomb threats in Springfield and the last and
Speaker 3: just the last few days. And you know what, the
Speaker 3: governor of Ohio came out yesterday and said every single
Speaker 3: one of those bomb threats was a hoax.
Speaker 1: Vance might as well have quoted sideshow Bob from the Simpsons.
Speaker 1: There attempted murder. Now, honestly, what is that? Do they
Speaker 1: give an Obel prize for attempted chemistry? Do they? Remarkably,
Speaker 1: that was the highlight of Vance's day. Here he is
Speaker 1: insisting that the Haitian immigrants there all there, legally, all
Speaker 1: invited to work there by employers who had jobs that
Speaker 1: the incumbent Ohioans wouldn't take. None of the Haitians eating pets.
Speaker 1: Vance is insisting that the Haitians come from some foreign land,
Speaker 1: a land that exists only in JV's mind, a land
Speaker 1: called Haitia. Oh And then he has a surprise for
Speaker 1: Trump prostitute Robert F. Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 3: Twenty thousand migrants, primarily from Haitia have been dropped into Springfield, Ohio.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're very proud on our side to have
Speaker 3: the support of Bobby Kennedy Junior, and he's a great guy.
Speaker 3: Have gotten known very well over the last few weeks.
Speaker 3: But I think in many ways this country never healed
Speaker 3: from the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 1: Robert F. Kennedy Junior has not been assassinated. In fact,
Speaker 1: he's very much alive, if you call that living. I
Speaker 1: wonder if JV has even noticed what he said, or
Speaker 1: if after each speech he just asks his team to
Speaker 1: rate his eyeliner game. And a quick note about where
Speaker 1: Vance spoke. Sparta, Michigan, named for the almost legendary city
Speaker 1: of ancient Greece. The original Sparta had a social structure,
Speaker 1: at least as complicated as ancient Rome. The laws favored
Speaker 1: the native citizens Spartiates, moth acts, other mixed heritage residents
Speaker 1: with full rights, and then there were the Periacoy, who
Speaker 1: were non Sparta natives of the town. And then there
Speaker 1: were the slaves, the helots. The helots were made famous
Speaker 1: again in the Frank Capra Gary Cooper film Meet John Doe,
Speaker 1: in which Cooper's sidekick played by Walter Brennan, calls people
Speaker 1: he doesn't like helots. When pressed for a definition, Brennan
Speaker 1: finally explains helots a lot of heels, which brings us
Speaker 1: back to Vance and Trump helots a lot of heels.
Speaker 1: The leads story tomorrow might yet be Trump's Arlington National
Speaker 1: Cemetery defilement. ABC News, which has been way ahead on
Speaker 1: this story after NPR broke it, originally says the investigation
Speaker 1: is still alive even though the Army considers the matter closed.
Speaker 1: Quote the investigation is ongoing at Joint Base Meyer Henderson
Speaker 1: Hall by base authorities, the Pentagon told ABC, which translates
Speaker 1: as the police department at the base that has jurisdiction
Speaker 1: over Arlington National Cemetery is still on the job. ABC
Speaker 1: says it has yet to get hold of Trump campaign
Speaker 1: officials for necessary interviews. You will recall NPR identified two
Speaker 1: of the key ones two weeks ago as the deputy
Speaker 1: campaign manager, Justin Caparrale and Trump advance man Michelle Picard.
Speaker 1: Picard was reported the one who shoved a female cemetery
Speaker 1: staffer out of the way after she tried to tell
Speaker 1: them it was against military rules to film while standing
Speaker 1: atop the graves of our war dead. Meanwhile, the lead
Speaker 1: story today might have been Trump Junior, but he deleted it.
Speaker 1: You will recall the guy in charge of social media
Speaker 1: for the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire who tweeted that
Speaker 1: anybody who murdered Kamala Harris would be a hero. He
Speaker 1: then deleted that. Then the FBI came to say hello
Speaker 1: to him anyway yesterday. And Jeremy Kaufman, who turns out
Speaker 1: to have some connection to that New Hampshire town of
Speaker 1: Grafton that the Libertarians took over like twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: until the lack of laws or rules, or the lack
Speaker 1: of even a willingness to submit to organized garbage pickups
Speaker 1: led all the humans to have to flee when the
Speaker 1: bears came out of the woods and attacked them for
Speaker 1: their food. Jeremy Hoffman posted video of the FBI explaining
Speaker 1: assassination threats to him, and he wrote, you can see
Speaker 1: the shame on their faces. You couldn't and this is
Speaker 1: the democratic regime manifest It wasn't initially Trump, Junior Ouday retweeted.
Speaker 1: Kaufman added quote a masterclass on how to handle what
Speaker 1: appears to be regime intimidation tactics. I don't know anything
Speaker 1: about Jeremy, but everyone should take note and handle themselves
Speaker 1: accordingly when they inevitably come knocking on your door. Junior
Speaker 1: was real proud of this until somebody apparently pointed out
Speaker 1: to him that he had just praised a guy who
Speaker 1: had praised assassinating presidential candidates and sooner or later talking
Speaker 1: about lead stories, the sheriff of Portage County, Ohio, which
Speaker 1: is between Akron and Youngstown. He will be the lead story,
Speaker 1: or somebody like him will be. Bruce Zakowski posted to
Speaker 1: Facebook over the weekend quote, when people ask me what
Speaker 1: will happen if the flip flopping laughing hyena wins, I say,
Speaker 1: write down all the addresses of people who had her
Speaker 1: signs in their yards. So multiple o's. When the illegal
Speaker 1: human locust when which she supports, need places to live,
Speaker 1: we'll already have the addresses of their new families who
Speaker 1: supported their arrival. Mister Zukowski incidentally has a fu Man
Speaker 1: chew mustache, a cowboy hat, badly dyed hair, and a
Speaker 1: large collection of chins. His post included a close up
Speaker 1: shot of this story being told by Laura Ingram on Fox.
Speaker 1: He now says, you and I have gotten it all wrong.
Speaker 1: His newest Facebook post quote, As the chief law enforcement
Speaker 1: officer of Portage County, I have sworn to protect all
Speaker 1: citizens of my county. Recently, I placed a post on
Speaker 1: my personal Facebook page that may have been a little misinterpreted. I,
Speaker 1: as the elected sheriff, do have a First Amendment right,
Speaker 1: as do all citizens. If the citizens of Portage County
Speaker 1: want to elect an individual who has supported open borders,
Speaker 1: which I personally visited twice and neglected to enforce the
Speaker 1: laws of our country, then that is their prerogative. With elections,
Speaker 1: there are consequences. That being said, I believe that those
Speaker 1: who vote for individuals with liberal policies have to accept
Speaker 1: responsibility for their actions. I am a lawman, not a politician.
Speaker 1: So he made a veiled threat against Harris supporters. He
Speaker 1: called legal immigrants into his own state quote locust unquote.
Speaker 1: He insisted he had been misinterpreted, and then he said
Speaker 1: all of it again. Good God. Maybe we shouldn't make
Speaker 1: him the lead story, because if jd. Vance has to
Speaker 1: withdraw from Trump's ticket for some reason, they could put
Speaker 1: this helot Zakowski in as the new running mate and
Speaker 1: nobody would know the goddamned difference. Also of interest here,
Speaker 1: if you're wondering why Elon Musk, I'm sorry Leon Leon Musk.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering why Leon Musk has done the crazy
Speaker 1: anti American things he's done lately. No, he's not running
Speaker 1: for sheriff of Portage County, Ohio. But it turns out
Speaker 1: one of his anti Ukraine memes, one that's been retweeted
Speaker 1: eighty six thousand times, it was designed by, according to
Speaker 1: Radio Free Europe, the Kremlin. That's next this discountdown. This
Speaker 1: is countdown with Keith Olberman Stella ahead of us on
Speaker 1: this editiontive Countdown. I just told this story again at
Speaker 1: lunch on Monday and the listener was somebody who is
Speaker 1: now in this business, who said he was just a kid,
Speaker 1: just a nightly viewer fifteen years ago, and he had
Speaker 1: absolutely no idea that this drama was playing out behind
Speaker 1: the scenes as he watched that it consumed nearly the
Speaker 1: entire summer of two thousand and nine at MSNBC. That
Speaker 1: was the year that the CEO of the International Monolith
Speaker 1: Corporation ge General Electric nearly shut down MSNBC like he
Speaker 1: was hitting the off button on a remote, simply because
Speaker 1: his mother was a Bill O'Reilly cultist, and Billo had
Speaker 1: said mean things about her boy, and she had called
Speaker 1: him up and yelled at him. And for some reason,
Speaker 1: the chairman did not like my idea, which was to
Speaker 1: go over to his mom's house in Cincinnati and yank
Speaker 1: the cable out of her wall so she would not
Speaker 1: hear Bill O'Reilly say any more bad things about her
Speaker 1: boy Jeff. Instead, he's wanted to fire all of us
Speaker 1: and give back the two hundred million dollars a year
Speaker 1: in profit coming up in things I promised not to tell.
Speaker 1: Business is a matter of business. The business of America
Speaker 1: is business, except if my mom is upset. First, there
Speaker 1: are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily
Speaker 1: roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects
Speaker 1: specimens who constitute two days Mommy's really mad at me?
Speaker 1: Worst persons in the world. I still can't get over it.
Speaker 1: It's fifteen years ago. I still can't get I'm not
Speaker 1: even near getting over it. The last things I say
Speaker 1: on Earth may be can you believe this idiot, Jeff
Speaker 1: imilt AnyWho speaking of idiocy at NBC The Bronze Worst.
Speaker 1: Meghan Kelly, No, this is not about her ongoing death
Speaker 1: struggle war against Carrie Lake. One of them will corner
Speaker 1: the market on camera filters and the other will be
Speaker 1: left unfiltered. God help us all. No, no, this is
Speaker 1: about what she said this time. Megan Kelly was never
Speaker 1: really talented. She used to have a somewhat icy allure
Speaker 1: to her. Now she's just getting a little bit more
Speaker 1: kareny everyfing day. I'm allowed to criticize Taylor Swift and
Speaker 1: I don't give a s. I don't like putting the
Speaker 1: word S in women's mouths like this. I don't give
Speaker 1: a who gets upset this is disgusting. If she wants
Speaker 1: to vote Harris Wallas. She can do it all she wants,
Speaker 1: but say, the reason she's doing it is because of
Speaker 1: Tim Walls's position on LGBTQ. F you, Taylor Swift, this
Speaker 1: is unbelievable. Megan has a screw loose and i'd say
Speaker 1: f you back, Megan Kelly. But Fox fired you and
Speaker 1: NBC fired you, and your television careers over at age
Speaker 1: fifty three. So what's the point of saying FU two?
Speaker 1: Life has already done that to you? The runner up worser.
Speaker 1: Maybe she can get a job with this guy, Leon
Speaker 1: Elon Musk to you Leon, Donald Trump per Julia Davis,
Speaker 1: the invaluable columnist of The Daily Beast, creator of the
Speaker 1: Russian media Monitor. She watches, as she says in her bio,
Speaker 1: she watches Russian state TV, so you don't have to god.
Speaker 1: Is that true? She's quoting Radio Free Europe. A trove
Speaker 1: of leaked records from a Russian disinfo campaign reveals how
Speaker 1: Moscow sought to discredit Ukraine and Western governments that support it,
Speaker 1: while also trying to boost support for far right political
Speaker 1: parties in the European Union. The documents highlight the internal
Speaker 1: operations of the Social Design Agency the Social Design Agency. Wow,
Speaker 1: that sounds kind of twenty second century, doesn't it No,
Speaker 1: it's just a Moscow based company that the United States
Speaker 1: says has led the propaganda campaign at the Kremlins behest
Speaker 1: the design in the Moscow Social Design Agency its memes.
Speaker 1: The campaign to continue Radio Free Europe includes a diverse
Speaker 1: mix of memes, falsified videos, and government documents, and a
Speaker 1: network of websites impersonating legitimate news outlets to disseminate fake
Speaker 1: stories aimed at undermining Western support for Ukraine. In the records,
Speaker 1: there is the production trail kind of the a family
Speaker 1: tree of one particular meme which shows President Zelenski of
Speaker 1: Ukraine his face tense, he's sort of coiled, he's staring
Speaker 1: as if angry, as if he's looking for an email
Speaker 1: to come in on a computer screen, and the caption
Speaker 1: reads when it's been five minutes and you haven't asked
Speaker 1: for a billion dollars in aid. The meme was posted
Speaker 1: by Elon Musk on October first, twenty twenty three, and
Speaker 1: it has been retweeted eighty six thousand times since and
Speaker 1: Julia Davis and Radio Free Year Report. It was created
Speaker 1: by the Kremlin's own social design agency. I'm beginning to
Speaker 1: think Musk was created by the Kremlin's own social design agency.
Speaker 1: Musk might as well be Benny Johnson at this point,
Speaker 1: Kremlinny Benny. He might as well be doing the work
Speaker 1: of a Russian agent inside this country. And this is
Speaker 1: forty eight hours after he asked on his own website
Speaker 1: why nobody had yet tried to assassinate Joe Biden and
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris and then deleted it without explanation except the
Speaker 1: lame excuse that, oh, you didn't left at my joke. Well,
Speaker 1: that's because we're not as stoned as you are. Elmo,
Speaker 1: why do we permit Leon to stay in our country?
Speaker 1: I'll compromise in this. I mean he can stay in
Speaker 1: our country, but only in jail. Arrest Elon Musk today
Speaker 1: for threatening the lives of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: and investigate him just on this meme created by the Kremlins. Memesar,
Speaker 1: but our winner, And yes, somebody's worse than that. He's
Speaker 1: the worst. But he's the worst because he always manages
Speaker 1: to do something horrible, but to do it so badly,
Speaker 1: so self destructively, so self owningly that we all manage
Speaker 1: to get enraged and then we get a great laugh
Speaker 1: out of it and him and we are laughing at him.
Speaker 1: And that is none other than Bill Ackman. Bill Ackman
Speaker 1: is the billionaire hedge clipper manufacturer. Oh I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: read that wrong, hedge fund manager. His company is called
Speaker 1: Pershing Square. If you have money in Pershing Square, I'm
Speaker 1: suggesting you get it out now. I know nothing about
Speaker 1: hedge funds, but all I know is this guy is
Speaker 1: an idiot. And if he's decided to do what he's
Speaker 1: done and he's managing money, I would when you put
Speaker 1: your money in, I'd give it a nice long kiss
Speaker 1: goodbye and wish it a happy existence somewhere else. This
Speaker 1: is the guy who remember trying to destroy his alma mater, Harvard,
Speaker 1: because I forget exactly what he wanted, but it would
Speaker 1: not make him king of Harvard or whatever he wanted.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I went to Cornell. We're simple country folk.
Speaker 1: We're the ones who helped prosecute the anti Semites on
Speaker 1: our campus last year. We don't understand your city slicker,
Speaker 1: Havid Yawd ways. Bill Ackman has now taken this pathetic,
Speaker 1: obvious fake ABC whistleblower Affidavid about the debate. It's supposedly
Speaker 1: from a technician or somebody at ABC, full of redactions
Speaker 1: like the guy's name or his job or any facts
Speaker 1: that he might have at his hands. And at one
Speaker 1: point he says he's worked there ten years. No, it's
Speaker 1: thirty years since Disney took over ABC. No, it's ten years.
Speaker 1: And the deal, he says they made with Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: was she was not to be asked any questions. This
Speaker 1: was her deal breaker. You could not ask the vice
Speaker 1: president in the ABC debate about when she was Attorney
Speaker 1: General of San Francisco. Well, she never was the attorney
Speaker 1: general of San Francisco, because there is no such job
Speaker 1: as attorney general of San Francisco. Whoever made this thing
Speaker 1: up didn't know the fundaments that the job she had
Speaker 1: was was attorney general of the state of California. You'd
Speaker 1: have a district attorney that was a different job in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, a different controversy with a different person. Morons.
Speaker 1: So Bill Ackman puts out half a dozen tweets about
Speaker 1: a really badly done fake, clearly does not read any
Speaker 1: of the replies, because the moment he put out this one.
Speaker 1: Everybody jumped on and even the ones who supported him
Speaker 1: and said, Bill, you've topped yourself. Here's here it is
Speaker 1: it forbade him? Come to think of it, I am
Speaker 1: going to alert the at SEC directly about at Disney,
Speaker 1: at ABC and their misleading response to the whistleblowers accusations
Speaker 1: about the presidential debate. Six fifty seven am, September seventeenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, seven hundred and twenty three thousand views,
Speaker 1: three point three thousand retweets, nineteen thousand likes. I'm going
Speaker 1: to alert the at SEC. At SEC is the Twitter
Speaker 1: x handle four No, not the Security Is and Exchange Commission,
Speaker 1: which Bill seems to think. At SEC is the two
Speaker 1: handle for the Southeastern Conference College Sports League, the sixteen
Speaker 1: universities of the Southeastern Conference, the SEC most recent football champs, Alabama.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they'll they'll say, thanks, Bill, we'll send some
Speaker 1: refs right over and look into it. Ten yards for
Speaker 1: getting the handle wrong, Say Bill, did you really go
Speaker 1: to college and get to your current age of eighty
Speaker 1: five or whatever you are without knowing that the Twitter
Speaker 1: handle for the Securities and Exchange Commission is sec GUB
Speaker 1: Did you even check Bill, where's all that money in
Speaker 1: your hedge fund? Could you've asked your twenty year old
Speaker 1: wife about it? Maybe I'm sorry for the Southern accent.
Speaker 1: It just it went with the Southeastern Conference thing. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I would bet professors Dunning and Krueger would pay millions
Speaker 1: for the rights to study Bill Ackman. Two days.
Speaker 2: Worst person in the world received, we will receive Captain,
Speaker 2: said Bo cap Custer, said Bo catgut a cc.
Speaker 1: He went to Harvard. He attended Harvard. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he went. The executive producer of our MSNBC newscast Countdown,
Speaker 1: Isy Povich and I were on the grown up elevator
Speaker 1: to the office of NBC President Jeff Zuocker on the
Speaker 1: fifty second floor of thirty Rock in New York, Summoned
Speaker 1: there by some garbled message from MSNBC president Phil Griffin
Speaker 1: about MSNBC being taken off the air. I was mumbling
Speaker 1: to Izzy, Sundry imprecations and reminiscences eight freaking months? Is
Speaker 1: we spent twelve freaking months forcing them to create meadows
Speaker 1: show It last eight months, all the crap prompter practice
Speaker 1: getting her over her fears rockets past. CNN only eight
Speaker 1: months of show, and now it's all gone. Izzy reminded
Speaker 1: me it was not just Rachel's show that was threatened,
Speaker 1: which was why poor Court Harson from Hardball was already upstairs,
Speaker 1: along with poor Ed Schultz and Phil Griffin and Rachel's
Speaker 1: executive producer, Bill Wolf and some clown from Morning Joe
Speaker 1: and a couple of other MSNBC executives and us. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I did the line from the drunken Irishman
Speaker 1: from Hitchcock's The Birds, complete with the bad accent. It's
Speaker 1: the end of the world, I said, Jeff Immelt is
Speaker 1: going to take MSNBC off the air. I didn't need
Speaker 1: any of my overwrought visions from two years earlier of
Speaker 1: the future of liberal news commentary falling out the NBC
Speaker 1: window to its death on the rink. This was the
Speaker 1: real thing. The chairman of General Electric was threatening to
Speaker 1: open the window himself, throw us out the window himself,
Speaker 1: and then race down to the pavement to stomp on
Speaker 1: our dying remains himself. Poor Ed Schultz heard Jeff Zucker
Speaker 1: say those words, and he had screwed up his face
Speaker 1: and tilted his head like a puppy hearing a car crash.
Speaker 1: He had not believed it the first time. He had
Speaker 1: not believed at the second time. Zucker said it a
Speaker 1: third time. Immelt is going to take MSNBC off the
Speaker 1: effing air at, Schultz groaned. After weeks of Griffin's coaxing,
Speaker 1: he had finally just moved from Nebraska to New York
Speaker 1: the preceding weekend. Yet he was still, somehow only the
Speaker 1: second most strung out person in the room. You, Zucker
Speaker 1: shouted at me, You're the smartest one in the room.
Speaker 1: What the f do we do now? I'll confess I
Speaker 1: was shaken by this because it appeared for once that
Speaker 1: Zucker was not being sarcastic. I had never before seen
Speaker 1: him flush nor flustered. This was a guy who wore
Speaker 1: fleece in July. Now he was beat red and sweating.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he knew what he was doing, and, as his
Speaker 1: opposition to hiring Matdow had proved, sometimes he didn't know
Speaker 1: what he was doing. But he always acted as the
Speaker 1: most confident man in the galaxy. But now he literally
Speaker 1: had no clue what to do next. And he not
Speaker 1: only could not ignore my advice, he desperately needed it.
Speaker 1: This situation and that color on his face were almost
Speaker 1: worth watching the corporate fascists nuke my network. I asked
Speaker 1: Zucker to explain what happened? You got Dan, Well know
Speaker 1: what happened. Zucker moved towards me, and I stood up
Speaker 1: and I told him I would see myself out. He stopped,
Speaker 1: remembering that he did indeed actually need my help. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I apologize. This isn't Rachal, this is this is immelt.
Speaker 1: Last week sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped. He told Murdoch he
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna take any more of what you were saying
Speaker 1: about him on the air. So he did a piece
Speaker 1: last night accusing GE of manufacturing the components that been
Speaker 1: used in roadside bombs that were built in a rand
Speaker 1: to kill Americans in Iraq, which is which is true legally,
Speaker 1: that's legally they found roadside bombs that had like thirty
Speaker 1: year old GE transistors or TV tubes from nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: four or is something in them. Legally, GE did manufacture
Speaker 1: components that were used in roadside bombs that were built
Speaker 1: in around to kill Americans in Iraq. So o'reiley puts
Speaker 1: this on his effing show as a lead story and
Speaker 1: then Fox sent two camera crews in this little crap
Speaker 1: producer from a Riley show, Jesse Waters something to steak
Speaker 1: Emmelt out and chase him around the GE shareholders meeting
Speaker 1: in Charlotte. Zucker finally came up for air, and I
Speaker 1: jumped in, Why didn't emmelt have six camera crews to
Speaker 1: stake out the two Fox crews and chase them around
Speaker 1: in Charlotte? I mean, isn't that one of our news
Speaker 1: hubs Charlotte doesn't emmelt own like twenty camera crews?
Speaker 2: There?
Speaker 1: He bring a camera crew, you'll bring two camera crews.
Speaker 1: Zucker started to not like me again. Now you suggest
Speaker 1: that where were you in? All right, never mind, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. Emmel says. If there's one more story on
Speaker 1: Bill O'Reilly about GE manufacturing components for roadside bombs in Iraq,
Speaker 1: he's taking MSNBC off the air immediately. It'll just be
Speaker 1: twenty four hours of lock up and I'm fired, and
Speaker 1: you're fired. And then he pointed at Chris Matthews, producer,
Speaker 1: and Matthews is fired. And he pointed at poor Ed
Speaker 1: Schultz and you're fired, and Ed whimpered, So smart asked,
Speaker 1: what the f do we do. I feigned all the
Speaker 1: nonchalants I could feign. If I could have lit a
Speaker 1: shroot by striking a match on the sole of my boot,
Speaker 1: I would have. It's manageable. But Jeff, why is Emmelt
Speaker 1: so worked up about what O'Reilly said about him? Only
Speaker 1: O'Reilly's nutjob viewers actually believe any of that crap. Nobody
Speaker 1: at GE, nobody investing in GE could possibly believe we're
Speaker 1: building components for roadside bombs. Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's mother
Speaker 1: believes it. All the heads in the room turned toward
Speaker 1: the press. In of NBC Missus. Emmelt back in Cincinnati
Speaker 1: is a devoted Bill O'Reilly viewer watches him every night,
Speaker 1: sees this, calls him, says, Sonny, why are you manufacturing
Speaker 1: components that were used in roadside bombs built in Iran
Speaker 1: to kill Americans in Iraq? I had not expected that,
Speaker 1: I said to Zucker, So so he'll really burn what
Speaker 1: two hundred million a year in profits just between Rachel
Speaker 1: and me? Because his mom watches Bill O'Reilly, Zucker got
Speaker 1: angry again. You bet your effing ass he will now
Speaker 1: you said it was manageable. How how the hef do
Speaker 1: we manage it? Ulberman? Just a minute? How old is she?
Speaker 1: Zucker summoned all his annoyance. How old is who Emmelt's mother?
Speaker 1: How old is she? Jeff Zucker was really annoyed. How
Speaker 1: the f should I know? You're missing the point? I
Speaker 1: had him really worked up, nearly to the boiling point.
Speaker 1: Great guess, Zucker spluttered, I don't know. He's in his
Speaker 1: mid fifties. She's got to be eighty ninety something. I
Speaker 1: stifled a fake yawn. Yeah, you're right, probably closer to
Speaker 1: ninety now that I think of it. So the problem
Speaker 1: is she watches O'Reilly. She tells him what's on Fox?
Speaker 1: What O'Reilly's saying about ge? Well, I think you have
Speaker 1: a simple solution. I'd say, the first thing you do
Speaker 1: is you send over a couple of big guys to
Speaker 1: her house and you pull the freaking cable out of
Speaker 1: the wall. Zucker actually gasped. My producer is Hepovich unsuccessfully
Speaker 1: stifled a laugh, and I saw Rachel crack a smile.
Speaker 1: Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Olderman. I crossed my legs. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's a little funny, and anyway, it's not essential if
Speaker 1: the problem is emailed is threatening to take the network
Speaker 1: off the air because O'Reilly is avenging himself against me
Speaker 1: by attacking him and attacking ge. The short term solution
Speaker 1: is easy, and in fact it is manageable. The long
Speaker 1: term solution that's not easy, and that's not manageable. But
Speaker 1: the short term one that's simple. Rest of this week,
Speaker 1: next week, maybe the week after that. Even we just
Speaker 1: don't mention Fox News on MSNBC. Something resembling a smile
Speaker 1: cross Zucker's face. It made him look a little less
Speaker 1: like a lizard person and more like a monkey with glasses.
Speaker 1: You do that forever? No, not forever. I would not
Speaker 1: do that, I said to Bias time. Yes, but remember
Speaker 1: who was it who was in my office last winter
Speaker 1: telling me that I should go on the air and
Speaker 1: just to f with Fox? I should ask why Rupert
Speaker 1: Murdoch was still running a huge international media company like
Speaker 1: News Corp, despite all the reports that he's suffering from dementia,
Speaker 1: even though there haven't been any reports that he's suffering
Speaker 1: from dementia. For everybody's sake, here, who was that again,
Speaker 1: who told me to do that? Zuker's goodwill was gone again.
Speaker 1: Obviously that was me. What's your point? My point is,
Speaker 1: we built this new brand of ours organically on a
Speaker 1: couple of themes, a couple of statements of principle, and
Speaker 1: one of them is to use your words just to
Speaker 1: f with Fox. If we don't f with Fox for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks at the start of the summer,
Speaker 1: who's going to care. Who's gonna notice? But like after
Speaker 1: two weeks, three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice, and
Speaker 1: the TV writers are gonna notice, and then the crap
Speaker 1: we'll hit from every direction. You can think of temporary
Speaker 1: freeze on mentioning Fox and mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdoch. Fine,
Speaker 1: permanent freeze. Might as well let Immelt turn us off
Speaker 1: in the morning. After all, I don't think Zooker actually
Speaker 1: heard the last part about em Milt turning us off.
Speaker 1: After all, the lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe,
Speaker 1: he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He
Speaker 1: looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Izzy and
Speaker 1: at Phil Griffin and me. You you, and you and I.
Speaker 1: We will talk tomorrow, maybe tonight, and we'll all meet
Speaker 1: again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox, anybody, are
Speaker 1: we clear? Nothing on the air about Fox. Silence in
Speaker 1: the room. Then the assorted noises of people rising, mixed
Speaker 1: with attempts to resuscitate poor Ed Schultz. Somebody Matthew's guy,
Speaker 1: Harson I think, was almost at the door out of
Speaker 1: Zucker's office, an office so big that it was to
Speaker 1: steal the Ring Lardner line, the size of the Yale Bowl,
Speaker 1: but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up, quietly
Speaker 1: but firmly, Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me.
Speaker 1: I will not have the content of my show dictated
Speaker 1: by any corporations, including the one I work for. Remember
Speaker 1: this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt
Speaker 1: that way then, and especially one I don't work for.
Speaker 1: I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience
Speaker 1: wondering what else I have not told them. I don't
Speaker 1: do a lot about Fox on my show. But if
Speaker 1: there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
Speaker 1: this freeze. I will report that story. And if I'm
Speaker 1: prevented from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,
Speaker 1: Zucker barked Phil Alderman, is he stay? When the rest
Speaker 1: of the room had cleared, Zucker blew air out of
Speaker 1: his mouth as if it were smoke. He gestured violently
Speaker 1: at me with his right arm. I told you she
Speaker 1: was a mistake. You didn't listen to me.
Speaker 2: I told you.
Speaker 1: Now, she's your problem. All of this is your problem.
Speaker 1: Get her back on the reservation or else. Now I
Speaker 1: had run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh, I'll get
Speaker 1: her back on the reservation, Jeff. But if you think
Speaker 1: this is my problem, just think about what happens if
Speaker 1: he really does take us off the air, or if
Speaker 1: it just gets out that he threatened to take us
Speaker 1: off the air because his mother didn't like what Fox
Speaker 1: said about him. That's my problem. Uh uh, that's your problem.
Speaker 1: And it's the problem of the CEO of the fricking
Speaker 1: sixth largest corporation in the world, who makes his business
Speaker 1: decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars of profits based
Speaker 1: on what his mother says. At this point, Phil Griffin
Speaker 1: managed to pull Zucker away and Izzy and I made
Speaker 1: for the door, saying nothing until we were in the elevator. Finally,
Speaker 1: she asked, what are you going to do about Rachel?
Speaker 1: I look straight ahead. I have depth perception issues while
Speaker 1: traveling forward, backwards, up or down. Yeah, if I know
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do about her. But I got an idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, the only person she was really talking to
Speaker 1: in there was herself. This isn't a brand new surprise
Speaker 1: success for her anymore. This is successful. This is what
Speaker 1: nine ten months she's successful. She said she was once
Speaker 1: a dancing cell phone outside of cell phone store outside
Speaker 1: of Boston. She ain't going back to that. I went
Speaker 1: to talk to Rachel about an hour later and reassured her.
Speaker 1: I mentioned that powerful as Fox was, they were not
Speaker 1: going to be able to re invade Iraq by themselves,
Speaker 1: and unless she moved it way closer than it had been,
Speaker 1: nobody would cross her censorship line. And I said, just
Speaker 1: give me as much time as the French government took
Speaker 1: before fleeing during the Nazi advance in nineteen forty. I said,
Speaker 1: give me, what was it, thirty three days? Give me
Speaker 1: thirty three days. If we aren't back where we were
Speaker 1: this morning, we can both quit on the air. I
Speaker 1: mean that'd be fun.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Three nights later, well after midnight on a Friday, my
Speaker 1: NBC issued BlackBerry buzzed with a quick email from Rachel Maddow. Hey,
Speaker 1: she wrote, don't necessarily quote me because I'm really drunk,
Speaker 1: but just make the best deal you can for us.
Speaker 1: I trust you. We don't need to do Fox all
Speaker 1: the time. I never do Fox stories anyway. I just
Speaker 1: had to say that, and this is the best platform
Speaker 1: we will ever have. Well she was right, at least
Speaker 1: for the time being. A couple of weeks later, I
Speaker 1: had to sneak in a script that blasted Fox, and
Speaker 1: at ten thirty at home that night, I got a
Speaker 1: call from a drunk can Phil Griffin shouting into the phone.
Speaker 1: I of a family. Zucker had to go meet with
Speaker 1: Roger Ayles secretly inside thirty Rock, and I hope they
Speaker 1: remember to clean the room afterwards. And mlt even had
Speaker 1: to meet with Murdoch. And then, happily, some idiot Ge
Speaker 1: executive decided to boast to The New York Times about
Speaker 1: getting us little talent children under control and a big
Speaker 1: deal with the executives over at Fox and how they'd
Speaker 1: settled everything, which blew up the whole deal instantly, because
Speaker 1: the moment the deal went public, NBC looked so stupid,
Speaker 1: and even NBC News was now risked. The only point
Speaker 1: of the whole thing was to keep the Immelts and
Speaker 1: the Zuckers and the Griffins and the ales Is from
Speaker 1: throwing us and our little island of liberal commentary out
Speaker 1: of that window at thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow
Speaker 1: and I would be constantly reminded in the ensuing years,
Speaker 1: thirty Rock has a lot of freaking windows. I've done
Speaker 1: all the damage I can do here as I await
Speaker 1: Bill Ackman reporting me to the Southeastern Conference, thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. We are now back to five episodes a week,
Speaker 1: posting nightly just after midnight Eastern. Once again, there is
Speaker 1: a Monday Countdown. If I can do that, you can
Speaker 1: send this to somebody who doesn't listen or subscribe. I
Speaker 1: mean somebody who'd like it, or somebody who wouldn't like it.
Speaker 1: That works too. Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel are
Speaker 1: the musical directors of Countdown and they arranged, produced and
Speaker 1: performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration in keyboards,
Speaker 1: Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and
Speaker 1: it was produced by Tko Brothers, And yes, Jeff mL
Speaker 1: really was going to take the network off the air,
Speaker 1: and the guy who was stalking him really was Jesse Waters,
Speaker 1: and they really were proud that they had made a
Speaker 1: deal with Fox in which they let Fox decide what
Speaker 1: NBC thought was news and what wasn't. And the moment
Speaker 1: it hit the fresh air of the real world, half
Speaker 1: a dozen NBC News executives threatened to quit anyway. Our
Speaker 1: satirical and fifty musical comments are by the best baseball
Speaker 1: stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, who had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with ge. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Speaker 1: And of course they're hearing about everything involved in this
Speaker 1: show right now from the Southeastern Conference thanks to Bill Ackman.
Speaker 1: Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer today is my friend John Dean. Everything else
Speaker 1: was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this
Speaker 1: the forty ninth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
Speaker 1: counting a election day for those of you who say no,
Speaker 1: it's the forty eighth and the forty fifth day since
Speaker 1: convicted felon domestic jay terrorists first attempted coup against the
Speaker 1: democratically elected government of the United States. Use the election,
Speaker 1: use the mental health system, use presidential immunity if you
Speaker 1: have to to keep him from doing it again while
Speaker 1: we still can. And please, Maga nuts, please stop trying
Speaker 1: to shoot at Trump. Please. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Bulletin says that it requires until the next one on
Speaker 1: Keith Olderman good Morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Oltram is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.