Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get to the I Lived with Olivia Newsy part of
Speaker 1: your day presently. But first, here's the actual news. There
Speaker 1: are heroes among us, and even in politics, and even
Speaker 1: in the Republican Party, there are heroes among us, and
Speaker 1: know their motives do not have to be absolutely pure,
Speaker 1: they don't even have to be a little bit pure.
Speaker 1: And such a man is State Senator Mike McDonald of Nebraska.
Speaker 1: And what he has now done quoting a proponent kind
Speaker 1: of closes the casket, kind of closes the lid on
Speaker 1: the Trump bid to reshape the electoral college just six
Speaker 1: weeks before the election by changing how Nebraska casts its
Speaker 1: five electoral votes from a split them by disc method
Speaker 1: that will probably give Kamala Harris one electoral vote and
Speaker 1: Trump four, changing it from that to winner take all,
Speaker 1: which would give Trump all five. There are many two
Speaker 1: seventy to two sixty eight Harris victories. They all pretty
Speaker 1: much include that one loan vote from Nebraska. McDonell a Republican,
Speaker 1: albeit a new Republican. He was a Democrat until they
Speaker 1: threw him out last spring. Now says in a statement
Speaker 1: quote election should be an opportunity for all voters to
Speaker 1: be heard, no matter who they are, where they live,
Speaker 1: or what party they support. I have taken the time
Speaker 1: to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both
Speaker 1: sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear
Speaker 1: to me that right now, forty three days from election
Speaker 1: day is not the moment to make this change. Holy crap,
Speaker 1: I mean seriously, so why the big spiel about impure motives.
Speaker 1: Senator McDonald is not only from the district that will
Speaker 1: likely go Harris, the proverbial blue dot of Big City Omaha, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: but he has long been discussing, toying, tinkering with running
Speaker 1: for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, and as a conservative Democrat
Speaker 1: or a moderate Republican or whatever. Guess what is not
Speaker 1: going to happen ever in twenty seven lifetimes if you
Speaker 1: are the decisive vote, essentially taking away the electoral vote
Speaker 1: from the citizens of Omaha no matter who they vote for,
Speaker 1: especially when his likely opponent, the incumbent Republican, is pledged
Speaker 1: to take away the electoral vote from Omaha. The last
Speaker 1: minute switcheroo would require thirty three yes votes from forty
Speaker 1: nine senators, There are fifteen Democrats. They're obviously voting against this.
Speaker 1: There is one independent assumed to also be a no,
Speaker 1: and a couple of Republicans who were supposedly waiting for
Speaker 1: McDonald to support the switch and then use him as
Speaker 1: cover for doing so himself. And they thought they might
Speaker 1: get that independent or a couple of the Democrats to
Speaker 1: go over to the side of one vote for Nebraska
Speaker 1: Senator Lauren Lippencott, the guy who said McDonald's statement closes
Speaker 1: the casket, closes the lid, and probably other upbeat life
Speaker 1: affirming phrases like that. He says McDonald is quote an
Speaker 1: absolute no. We're going to have to reintroduce this bill
Speaker 1: in the next session. McDonald doesn't even want that. He
Speaker 1: is suggesting instead a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment.
Speaker 1: Now back to motive. McDonald is a Republican because last
Speaker 1: year he came out as a Democrat and supportive draconian
Speaker 1: abortion restrictions and a ban on transgender care for youths.
Speaker 1: It looked like he was going to fold on this
Speaker 1: one too. A week ago tomorrow, he had two dozen
Speaker 1: Nebraska Republican senators met with Governor Jim Republican tool Pillin
Speaker 1: and Lindsey please help me. They'll do something terrible to
Speaker 1: me if Trump loses. Graham and McDonald was quoted by
Speaker 1: people in that room is saying he was looking for
Speaker 1: a way to get to Yes. Yeah, Well he didn't
Speaker 1: find that way. And from such lack of a GPS
Speaker 1: of courage and ethics comes heroes, profiles, encourage, or maybe,
Speaker 1: as Shakespeare wrote in the unsung single best line in Hamlet,
Speaker 1: assume a virtue if you have it, not assume take on.
Speaker 1: Don you want to be a principled hero, even if
Speaker 1: you're an unprincipled, cowardly politician, do something principled and heroic,
Speaker 1: like you know, Mike McDonald just did. I guess now,
Speaker 1: all Harris has to do is win the Nebraska second.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned yesterday, CBS News estimates that the Hoole
Speaker 1: average there is Harris by four. The last actual polls
Speaker 1: I can find are from the second half of August,
Speaker 1: and they are Harris by five or with the third
Speaker 1: party sock Puppets included Harris by eight. Not many polls. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: mass Ink Polling did Wisconsin has her up by seven.
Speaker 1: The Real Clear Politics average of polls, and that is
Speaker 1: a Republican slanted I don't know, dog and Pony show.
Speaker 1: It would produce a Harris Electoral College victory of two
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five to two hundred and sixty two.
Speaker 1: And we can say this with certainty. Either there has
Speaker 1: been a sea change that nobody has told any of
Speaker 1: the other posters about, or the New York Times is
Speaker 1: going to need.
Speaker 2: A whole new pole.
Speaker 1: They have Trump forty nine forty five in Georgia, they
Speaker 1: have Trump fifty forty five in Arizona. Redfield Wilton, British
Speaker 1: Posters has Arizona as a tie, and The Times has
Speaker 1: Trump forty nine forty seven in North Carolina. Now that
Speaker 1: is before Mark Robinson's porn Mountain. Its history turned out
Speaker 1: to be engraved on like ten Commandment style stones. More
Speaker 1: on that in a moment. But Times, why do you
Speaker 1: even print that poll? All but three members of the
Speaker 1: Republican candidate's campaign staff have quit since your North Carolina
Speaker 1: poll closed. It's useless. You needed to fill space in
Speaker 1: the paper or something. And the Arizona Times number is
Speaker 1: a ten point swing to Trump in a month a month.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't buy that if it was a ten point
Speaker 1: swing to Harris, and the poll was signed by every
Speaker 1: person who was polled, and they notarized the signatures. So
Speaker 1: as the Republicans are shackled to a corpse in Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: Trump is shackled to a corpse in North Carolina. Mark
Speaker 1: Robinson not only is not apologizing, is not quitting. He
Speaker 1: now says he's suing CNN, or he seemed to say that.
Speaker 1: He was asked, are you suing CNN? And he said,
Speaker 1: we're going after them? Well, hell, when I was at
Speaker 1: Current TV, we quote went after CNN two and look
Speaker 1: how that turned out.
Speaker 3: You've talked about the reporting being salacious, live not true.
Speaker 3: Have you taken steps then.
Speaker 4: To it's you?
Speaker 3: We absolutely are, We absolutely are. We We're in talks
Speaker 3: right now. Everything up to legal counsel to take CNN
Speaker 3: to task for what have done to us. We are
Speaker 3: going after him. Okay, we are going to go after
Speaker 3: him for what they've done, but we have five weeks
Speaker 3: left to this rights folks, and make no mistake about it,
Speaker 3: we are not gonna let CNN throw us off of
Speaker 3: our mission.
Speaker 1: This rocket scientist also announced CNN is going after him
Speaker 1: like CNN did while Reagan was in office, and like
Speaker 1: CNN went after Abraham Lincoln when Abraham Lincoln was in office. Look,
Speaker 1: I got hired by CNN when I was twenty two
Speaker 1: years old and CNN was fourteen months old. And if
Speaker 1: CNN was on when Abraham Lincoln was president, that makes
Speaker 1: me at least one hundred and eighty one years old.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm old, ask Olivia, but I ain't that old.
Speaker 1: You think I'm making this.
Speaker 5: Up sea rain today and contrasting with their lives for today.
Speaker 5: But every what you said about when he was at all,
Speaker 5: you decided him just as much as you decided all wrong.
Speaker 1: You decided him just as much as you despise they
Speaker 1: were having. Wait, there's more and more. He gave a
Speaker 1: speech at a Canvas Owen's event in twenty twenty uncovered
Speaker 1: by the website The Bulwark, in which he praised Jim Crow.
Speaker 1: Quote during Jim Crow, you can go back and you
Speaker 1: can look at it, and the record will show you.
Speaker 1: That's when black folks weren't their highest in this country,
Speaker 1: when the times were the toughest, that's when they were highest.
Speaker 1: And why because they knew they had to rely on themselves.
Speaker 1: My god. Oh and he praised slavery again, at least
Speaker 1: how the smart slaves accepted whipping, thinking ahead from twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: going for that pro Jim Crow pro slavery, pro whipping
Speaker 1: crowd quote. I can even imagine some of them with
Speaker 1: their slave chains on the rags they had on. They
Speaker 1: made sure those rags were as clean as could be,
Speaker 1: and they stood up and stiffened up their backs. They
Speaker 1: saw what was coming down in the pike, and they
Speaker 1: only knew that it would come if they took those
Speaker 1: stripes and took those beats beats beats by dre beats stripes,
Speaker 1: uh whip marks. He means, are there any references to
Speaker 1: transgender whipping in any of his resume? The Trump response
Speaker 1: to his guy being sent to a living hell radio
Speaker 1: silence about him, but a desperate attempt to get every
Speaker 1: racist and psycho in North Carolina to emerge from every warehouse, farmhouse,
Speaker 1: hen house, outhouse, and dog house and vote for Trump anyway.
Speaker 1: Because Trump now says he's going to send in federal
Speaker 1: law enforcement. An inference here is ice and troops to
Speaker 1: destroy all the sanctuary cities in North care Carolina and
Speaker 1: every other state. Trump will invade your town to get
Speaker 1: the immigrants out, including the ones that are legal. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know there are no sanctuary cities in North Carolina,
Speaker 1: but as the Carolina Journal notes quote, in North Carolina, Wake, Durham, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, Orange,
Speaker 1: and Chatham counties do not currently honor ICE detainers, according
Speaker 1: to a June report from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Speaker 1: On Friday, Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoed HB ten, which
Speaker 1: would require sheriffs across the state to cooperate with ICE.
Speaker 1: So this is Trump's guy, Mark tire fire Robinson and no.
Speaker 1: By the way, the Republican Governors Association has now said
Speaker 1: it does not plan any additional ads in North Carolina
Speaker 1: for Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. Rightly, So what with
Speaker 1: all this great free pub I'm beginning to think Trump
Speaker 1: picked J. D. Mantz because he's capable of saying dumber
Speaker 1: things even than Trump does. In North Carolina last night.
Speaker 4: A person who's more worried about missing a birdie pud
Speaker 4: than he isn't about an assassin's attempt on his own life.
Speaker 4: Because that is the definition of courage under fire, and
Speaker 4: Donald Trump has.
Speaker 1: It in space. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you have a golf club. He has a gun. Get
Speaker 1: out of the way. This is what he just described.
Speaker 1: This is actually the definition of an effing idiot. Okay,
Speaker 1: this I like, especially if there is any softening of
Speaker 1: the Harris momentum in the battleground polls. And I think
Speaker 1: she's going to pull sufficiently away in North Carolina going
Speaker 1: out on him there, and there are damn few ways
Speaker 1: Trump can win without North Carolina. Remembering that the Trump
Speaker 1: plan all along was to find a way to back
Speaker 1: out of debates and blame first Biden, then Harris. The
Speaker 1: Harris campaign is going to make damn sure that if
Speaker 1: there is no second debate a month from yesterday, Trump
Speaker 1: is going to hear about him chickening out of that
Speaker 1: debate every day for the next month. From NBC quote.
Speaker 1: The Democratic National Committee will launch static billboards and mobile billboards.
Speaker 1: There were supposedly ones at Trump rallies, like the one
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania last night. The chicken billboards include a digitally
Speaker 1: altered image of Trump in a chicken suit, alongside the
Speaker 1: words there's no debate, Donald Trump's a chicken unquote. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't get one part of this. Why digitally altered.
Speaker 1: He looks enough like a chicken as it is the
Speaker 1: hair quote. The DNC originally said that they would be
Speaker 1: sending staffers dressed in chicken suits to Trump rallies as
Speaker 1: part of this messaging campaign, but after publication on Monday,
Speaker 1: a spokesperson for the group said that this would no
Speaker 1: longer occur. Instead a pro Harris student group at the
Speaker 1: Indiana University of Pennsylvania College. Don't even try to figure
Speaker 1: that out where Trump is speaking. This was written before
Speaker 1: he spoke would send inflatable chickens to his rally there
Speaker 1: instead again inflatable chickens. I mean that's Trump. Speaking of appearances,
Speaker 1: CNN reports Milania Trump, who has not been on the
Speaker 1: campaign trail in well wait, how long is forever? Quote,
Speaker 1: spoke at two political fundraisers for the Log Cabin Republicans
Speaker 1: this year, and she was paid two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: seven five hundred dollars for an April event. According to
Speaker 1: former Trump for latest financial disclosure for him, the payment
Speaker 1: was listed as a speaking engagement. The problem is, although
Speaker 1: It's on Trump's financial disclosure form, nobody knows who wrote
Speaker 1: the checks to her. It's not listed anywhere the log cabin.
Speaker 1: Republicans say they did not pay this, so they'll have
Speaker 1: to search for other payments of two hundred and thirty seven,
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars to Milagna. Well, what's her contract with Donald?
Speaker 1: Got in it? Any two hundred and thirty seven five
Speaker 1: hundreds in there? And now things I promised not to
Speaker 1: tell him? Boy? Is that true in this one? Literally,
Speaker 1: when the RFK Junior Olivia Newsy relationship story broke, I thought, uh,
Speaker 1: here we go. Eventually and inevitably, this story will get
Speaker 1: around to me because long ago she and I lived together.
Speaker 1: We had dogs and tattoos and rings, and like all relationships,
Speaker 1: it was very nice at the start. Then things happened
Speaker 1: and we worked on it and it ended. One day
Speaker 1: I said, I think we've exhausted this, and I changed
Speaker 1: my mind. Then like the next day, she left, So
Speaker 1: I guess that makes it a tie. It's a while ago.
Speaker 1: She had a clothes closet in my apartment, and I
Speaker 1: meant what I said here about things I promised not
Speaker 1: to tell. Because when this story broke, I decided, if
Speaker 1: nobody asks, I'm not volunteering this. It's difficult to be
Speaker 1: even the most marginal public figure and keep any part
Speaker 1: of your life private, and nobody knows that better now
Speaker 1: than does Alivia. On the other hand, if I'm asked
Speaker 1: about this by the media, if somebody is going to
Speaker 1: write it, I'm not lying to them. I'm not denying it.
Speaker 1: I'm also not giving them the story, especially not the
Speaker 1: freaking New York Post which reached out yesterday. I confirmed
Speaker 1: we dated. That's what he asked, Did you date her?
Speaker 1: And I said yes, And I said I thought it
Speaker 1: was pretty general knowledge that we had dated, but that
Speaker 1: nobody cared, and that if they didn't know this well
Speaker 1: the paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle writing Sherlock Holmes's lines for him,
Speaker 1: I am not retained by the gossip columnists to supply
Speaker 1: their deficiencies. In other words, I am not the newsy
Speaker 1: nudes news network over here giving away free stories. Plus Seriously,
Speaker 1: nearly all of the relationship was surprisingly mundane, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't have anything to do with the RFK story except
Speaker 1: in the broadest possible sense. I mean, I'm sure she's
Speaker 1: not a completely different person than she was when we dated,
Speaker 1: but maybe I am left with a couple of overarching thoughts.
Speaker 1: She did some weird things during the three three and
Speaker 1: a half years this lasted. I'm sure I did two.
Speaker 1: She played around at one point, but how to pronounce
Speaker 1: her last name? What sounded best professionally NEWSYUSYNOTSI and her
Speaker 1: parents were not the best role models, And on the
Speaker 1: other hand, after the immediate and understandable astonishment on their part,
Speaker 1: they did a one eighty about me. I went to
Speaker 1: their house for Christmas every year, her mom used to
Speaker 1: dog sit for us, her dad and I went to
Speaker 1: a Stanley Cup final game and had coffee a lot.
Speaker 1: Though sometimes she so missed the mark on the consequences
Speaker 1: of her actions that nobody around her would have said
Speaker 1: anything except how could you not know that? Like the
Speaker 1: time long after we broke up, that she went to
Speaker 1: Corey Lewandowski's house and he didn't answer, so she just
Speaker 1: turned the handle on the front door and it was unlocked,
Speaker 1: and so she just walked in and didn't know that
Speaker 1: was unethical and probably illegal, and then made that story public.
Speaker 1: But nothing I know about her then or now suggests
Speaker 1: Olivia would have kept sending a guy nude photos unless
Speaker 1: he wanted them. I haven't talked with her since we
Speaker 1: broke up because nowadays you're supposed to ghost each other,
Speaker 1: I guess. But for whatever it's worth, I can't defend
Speaker 1: any of her journalistic choices here and I will not.
Speaker 1: But in the metaview of who's right who's wrong here,
Speaker 1: she's not the one who's wrong here. And of course,
Speaker 1: if you are a faithful listener, it will have dawned
Speaker 1: on you that all the times I have talked about
Speaker 1: my beloved dog Stevie, my other dogs, the ex girlfriend
Speaker 1: with whom I walked into the pet shop because her
Speaker 1: family dog was dying and she needed a puppy fix,
Speaker 1: that was Olivia. She took care of me that fateful
Speaker 1: day when we got Stevie, and she and I devoted
Speaker 1: our lives to Stevie. And Olivia largely taught me how
Speaker 1: to successfully be adopted by a dog and all dogs,
Speaker 1: and the anniversary of that is next Monday. And all
Speaker 1: my other dogs, and my late rescues Mishu and Mi Nay,
Speaker 1: and all my work with dogs and animal groups, that
Speaker 1: all comes from her. So that's the bottom line. Whatever
Speaker 1: else this is, Olivier is responsible for me being born
Speaker 1: again in dogs. She will always have my support if
Speaker 1: she needs it, though not the journalistic choices part. Maybe
Speaker 1: that is all I will ever say again about her.
Speaker 1: Maybe developments will warrant more details for now I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think they will. But from the department of
Speaker 1: Keith cannot possibly leave well enough alone. That does not
Speaker 1: mean I'm not going to make a couple of jokes
Speaker 1: about this, and maybe not just in this episode. Joke
Speaker 1: number one about the ethics of me dating her at
Speaker 1: my age. I don't want to go out on a
Speaker 1: limb here, but I am beginning to suspect she likes
Speaker 1: all old guys. I mean, she was going to marry
Speaker 1: one who was twenty years older than her. Also, I'm old.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I'm not as old as Bobby Kennedy.
Speaker 1: I win, son of a Bitch is five years older
Speaker 1: than I am. Clears up a lot of my conscience.
Speaker 1: Also of interest here, well, if there's a Keith story
Speaker 1: about Keith, there also has to be a Keith story
Speaker 1: about Bill O'Reilly that used to be a federal law
Speaker 1: He has stormed out of an interview, threatening to sue
Speaker 1: the interviewer, which leads me in this all new edition
Speaker 1: of Countdown to the story of How I met O'Reilly
Speaker 1: and Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and the faq to O'Reilly
Speaker 1: and the others believe their own poison? Or are they
Speaker 1: just whores coming up? And did you know there is
Speaker 1: an entire left wing industry that exists just to criticize
Speaker 1: Maggie Haberman and her colleagues, she says, So it must
Speaker 1: be true. The most important question here is why aren't
Speaker 1: they paying me? That's next, This is countdown. This is
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead of us on this
Speaker 1: all new edition of Countdown. So Bill O'Reilly is in
Speaker 1: the news again, a decade after he was last actually
Speaker 1: in the news. He has threatened to sue a PBS
Speaker 1: reporter or do something to her because she had the
Speaker 1: nerve to ask him about the rear and he stopped
Speaker 1: being in news. This led me, naturally to think about
Speaker 1: my many encounters with Bill, and especially one question I
Speaker 1: have been asked more often about him, and about Sean Hannity,
Speaker 1: and about Rush Limbaugh and about others of their ilk
Speaker 1: than I have about anything else about them. Do or
Speaker 1: did they actually believe the things they said and still
Speaker 1: say that have actually poisoned this nation's politics and enabled
Speaker 1: a creature like Trump, or if they just did it
Speaker 1: for the money. Some answers ahead next in Things I
Speaker 1: promised not to tell. First, there are still more new
Speaker 1: idiots to talk about, the daily roundup of the miss grants,
Speaker 1: morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worse
Speaker 1: persons than the world, Well, the bronze worse. Let's start
Speaker 1: with Bill mister Meyerhoffer. He did an interview with Margaret
Speaker 1: Hoover for the PBS show firing Line. This is what
Speaker 1: I was just referring to. Hoover says, I want to
Speaker 1: go back to twenty seventeen, your top rated talent at
Speaker 1: Fox News. You've just signed a four year deal to
Speaker 1: renew your contract, and The Times publishes a report on
Speaker 1: settlements that you had reached with several women over harassment
Speaker 1: misconduct claims, totaling thirteen million dollars. You're forced out of
Speaker 1: the network. The Times later reveals an additional settlement worth
Speaker 1: thirty two million dollars. I don't expect that you can
Speaker 1: comment on this, you think? She then read from a
Speaker 1: Times op ed that she herself, Margaret Hoover, had written,
Speaker 1: O'Reilly blamed others? She said, quoting herself, embracing the victimization.
Speaker 1: He's so ridiculed of the American left. He claimed his
Speaker 1: departure was no fault of his own, but the cost
Speaker 1: of doing business as a high profile media personality. This
Speaker 1: is an outlandish claim. William F. Buckley and Anderson Cooper
Speaker 1: are high profile media personalities, and yet they have never
Speaker 1: been dogged with repeated sexual harassment entangled. How do you respond,
Speaker 1: Billo replied, I don't. Then, he said Hoover was conducting
Speaker 1: an ambush interview. There's no ambush interview that has lasted
Speaker 1: as long in the history of the world as the
Speaker 1: question I just read you that she asked him. It's
Speaker 1: no longer an ambush. He would have had time to
Speaker 1: get to JFK Airport and fly to Brazil before she
Speaker 1: finished talking. That's no longer an ambush you're involved with
Speaker 1: that's almost your living with her. Oh why did I
Speaker 1: bring that up anyway? As the website Mediaite phrased, what
Speaker 1: happened next? O'Reilly repeatedly then told Hoover that she did
Speaker 1: not know the facts of the allegations against him, and
Speaker 1: claimed he had made no settlements himself, and then he
Speaker 1: was unaware of any actions taken by Fox News. Hoover
Speaker 1: countered that this claim could not possibly be true. O'Reilly
Speaker 1: finally threatened her, quoting O'Reilly, you're gonna use that stuff.
Speaker 1: You're in for a problem. So I'm telling you right
Speaker 1: now because that's just bull. I'm not going to record
Speaker 1: any phony like that. You're going to edit this thing,
Speaker 1: and you know my attorney is going to be watching.
Speaker 1: I thought Bill liked to do the watching himself. Do
Speaker 1: I have this story? Am I misremembering the story? Wasn't
Speaker 1: that the whole thing? AnyWho? Then Bill got up and
Speaker 1: left the interview. He actually turned down camera time. That's
Speaker 1: the story here. I should have led with that. It
Speaker 1: was thirty two million dollars. It cost him his Fox show,
Speaker 1: cost him his career, cost him his only friend in
Speaker 1: the world, Donald Trump, who now who wouldn't and now
Speaker 1: won't touch him. But he's gonna sue or demand they
Speaker 1: not play parts of the interview. I don't know, Hoover
Speaker 1: says his lawyer sent them a legal demand no details.
Speaker 1: Like I've told you before when I used to discuss
Speaker 1: his settlement with Andrew Macris and the other settlements with
Speaker 1: the other women. He decided his best strategy was to
Speaker 1: send his pa, his predessian assistant, Jesse Waters, to stalk
Speaker 1: the chairman of GE. That'd be General Electric. If I'm
Speaker 1: going to explain acronyms here which owned NBC, the National
Speaker 1: Broadcasting Company, which in turned own MSNBC, Microsoft NBC. That
Speaker 1: didn't work either. And this isn't going to work. The
Speaker 1: runner up, Why it's theme nights. We switch from Billow
Speaker 1: to The New York Times. All the both sides is
Speaker 1: that's fit to print. It is amazing. There's no sense
Speaker 1: whatsoever there that they violated every principle they claim and
Speaker 1: claim loudly and incessantly and condescendingly to represent headline number one.
Speaker 1: Controversies erupt as Trump and GOP make critical push to voters,
Speaker 1: and it's push, not push. It's the American English word
Speaker 1: push like sales job as opposed to the push word.
Speaker 1: A Republican who reportedly called himself a block Nazi, a
Speaker 1: false story about migrants eating cats and dogs, and a
Speaker 1: feud with Taylor Swift bring back as chaos. Yes, things
Speaker 1: like this erupt like volcanoes. Controversies erupt force of nature. Clearly,
Speaker 1: not because Trump made them happen, or made them up,
Speaker 1: or employs people like jd. Vance who makes them up,
Speaker 1: or he recruited people like Mark Robinson. And not because
Speaker 1: one political party is rather stumblingly traditionally inept, and it's
Speaker 1: on one set of American politics and the other political party.
Speaker 1: Trump's political party is filled with corrupt, morally bankrupt, fascist
Speaker 1: liars who are in fact not that good at getting
Speaker 1: away with their lies. No, no, no, nobody did that.
Speaker 1: Trump didn't cause this to happen. Trump wasn't the one
Speaker 1: who posted I hate Taylor Swift. Oh yeah he was. No, No,
Speaker 1: none of that, None of that was Trump's fault, of
Speaker 1: the Republican's fault. It just erupted, like Krakatoa east of Java.
Speaker 1: The other Times headline of note over a picture of
Speaker 1: Trump smiling at the vacant Sarah huh could be the
Speaker 1: politics of motherhood become a campaign trail cudgel. The presidential
Speaker 1: race has exposed a fault line in American political culture
Speaker 1: over the deeply personal decision to have children. Yes, this
Speaker 1: problem was always always there. It's a fault line like
Speaker 1: the San Andreas. Once again, things erupt, according to the
Speaker 1: New York Times, like volcanoes, and there are fault lines
Speaker 1: like San Andreas. This was not one party deciding to
Speaker 1: choose as the guy running for vice president a clown
Speaker 1: who insists that the vice president of the United States
Speaker 1: doesn't have any skin in the game because she's a
Speaker 1: step mother, not a birth mother, or that the person
Speaker 1: in the picture under that last headline I read, your
Speaker 1: Governor Huckabee of Arkansas is not a reprehensible, lying fraud
Speaker 1: because she somehow managed to find somebody to procreate with her.
Speaker 1: Oh no, said the New York Times headline editor, polishing
Speaker 1: his top hat as he did so.
Speaker 2: A political fault line and it's just erupted. Maybe this
Speaker 2: is due to climate change. Here, you assistant put our
Speaker 2: best fifty four. Both sidesists on this story. Oh I'm
Speaker 2: going to faint now. A political fault line has just erupted.
Speaker 2: Ooh fuck, but the winner the worst? Why more New
Speaker 2: York Times Maggie Haberman. If you've wondered if she's noticed that,
Speaker 2: we've noticed that she's just a Trumpian stenographer who occasionally
Speaker 2: reveals more than Trump would like her to. Oh, yes
Speaker 2: she has, and well, sir, she knows the real victim
Speaker 2: of her bad journalism. The real victim here is Maggie
Speaker 2: Haberman quote quote to NPR. I think the media does
Speaker 2: a very good job covering Trump. There are always going
Speaker 2: to be specific stories that could have been better, should
Speaker 2: have been better, that are written on deadline, and people
Speaker 2: are not being as precise as they should be.
Speaker 1: I think there is an industry, bluntly dave. My name's Keith, Maggie.
Speaker 1: I think there is an industry, bluntly dave that is
Speaker 1: dedicated toward attacking the media, especially as it relates to
Speaker 1: covering Donald Trump in all coverage of Trump, and I
Speaker 1: think that Trump is a really difficult figure to cover
Speaker 1: because he challenges news media process every day, has for years.
Speaker 1: The systems are just fundamentally they were not built to
Speaker 1: deal with somebody who says things that are not true
Speaker 1: as often as he does, or speaks as incoherently as
Speaker 1: he often does. I think the media has actually done
Speaker 1: a very good job showing people who he is, what
Speaker 1: he says, what he does. I think most of the
Speaker 1: information that the public has about Trump is because of
Speaker 1: reporting by the media, And I guess I don't really
Speaker 1: understand how this industry that literally exists to attack the
Speaker 1: press broadly, and the media is not a monolith, it's
Speaker 1: not a league. But this industry that exists to do that,
Speaker 1: I don't see how they think they are a solution
Speaker 1: by undermining faith in what we do. That's been very
Speaker 1: confusing to me. As an aside, I would suggest to
Speaker 1: this thing that is confusing her, it needs to take
Speaker 1: a number and get behind the line. At the end
Speaker 1: of the line of things that easily confuse Maggie Haberman,
Speaker 1: it's criticism of the media that's undermined faith in the media.
Speaker 1: The interviewer says, yeah, well, I mean part of the
Speaker 1: attacks are clearly partisan. I mean Republicans and Trump supporters
Speaker 1: are going to attack, and Maggie Haberman corrects him, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about that. I'm talking about now. The interviewer says, well, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: who is the industry you're talking about, and she goes,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about criticism on the left. Uh wait, there's
Speaker 1: an industry on the left that exists to attack the
Speaker 1: press broadly, and Maggie Hay in particular, an entire industry.
Speaker 1: I mean, was somebody gonna tell me at some point
Speaker 1: I've been throwing this stuff out for free on this
Speaker 1: podcast no offense to you. Thanks for listening, But I
Speaker 1: mean I could have been making thirty nine cents a
Speaker 1: shot or something. Here there's an industry. I need to
Speaker 1: talk to the people running this industry. I need to
Speaker 1: talk to the people cutting the checks in this industry.
Speaker 1: I have a quality product over here, and by the way,
Speaker 1: an infinite supply of Maggie Haberman's stuff. They need to
Speaker 1: be recompensing me for it. Maggie. She makes me begin
Speaker 1: to suspect I Keith Overman, am underpaid Haberman two days
Speaker 1: worst person in the world show, the number one story
Speaker 1: on the Countdown, and things I promised not to tell
Speaker 1: and I often asked. I was asked this weekend past
Speaker 1: about this exact question about the relative sincerity of the
Speaker 1: Wall of Fame of the Mount Rushmore of conservative fascist commentators.
Speaker 1: I don't mean the little nebeshy guys who are on now,
Speaker 1: who turns out have been getting money from the Kremlin
Speaker 1: wash through intermediaries, and not even the more recent group
Speaker 1: like Glenn Beck, but the founding fathers of this rush Limbaugh,
Speaker 1: Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity dead, career dead, brain dead. I
Speaker 1: have met them all, and I think the answer about
Speaker 1: whether or not they are being sincere or this is
Speaker 1: just a shtick that they do for money, is different
Speaker 1: in each of them, and yet eventually all becomes the
Speaker 1: same thing. Many of them do not start out believing
Speaker 1: a word they are saying, and then they discover success,
Speaker 1: and suddenly they want to say more of what they
Speaker 1: have been saying because it pays them so well. And
Speaker 1: the next thing, you know, after you say something long enough,
Speaker 1: it's not just the audience that begins to believe it,
Speaker 1: it's you who begins to believe it. One day, and
Speaker 1: I've tried to get the exact date of this, I
Speaker 1: know it was a Sunday, that's all ninety five, ninety six.
Speaker 1: Perhaps based on the memory of what the ESPN SportsCenter
Speaker 1: newsroom looked like before it's remodeling in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking it's nineteen ninety five. I walked in to
Speaker 1: do the Sunday eleven PM Sports Center and in an
Speaker 1: otherwise empty newsroom, a very small room with a bunch
Speaker 1: of cubicles around it, one of which was mine, so
Speaker 1: small that two anchors would share one computer. Standing next
Speaker 1: to my desk, not saying a word, but just looking
Speaker 1: into the newsroom as if he were Charlie visiting Willie
Speaker 1: Wankas chocolate factory. Was Russe Limbaugh, and given his size,
Speaker 1: perhaps that's a good analogy. Rush Limbaugh saw me walk
Speaker 1: in and he almost asked for an autograph. Oh, Keith, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Rush Limbaugh. Nothing like the person you heard or saw, restrained, whispering,
Speaker 1: behaving as if he were as he said in church,
Speaker 1: I'm such a fan. Oh my goodness, Oh, I remember
Speaker 1: you from the CNN days. I had to explain to
Speaker 1: him that we had met once. No, it was a
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty World Series when you worked for the Kansas
Speaker 1: City Royals. It's important to remember that rush Limbaugh's career
Speaker 1: path was he thought sports. He was going to be
Speaker 1: a broadcaster, a baseball broadcaster, or a baseball executive, and
Speaker 1: he got no further down that line then, as he
Speaker 1: put it, the assistant Media and Community Affairs director of
Speaker 1: the Kansas City Royals in charge of escorting the first
Speaker 1: pitch thrower and the national anthem singer onto the field.
Speaker 1: That was his job. But when the head of the
Speaker 1: PR department for the Kansas City Royals, whose name was
Speaker 1: Dean Vogelar and how could you forget that name? Introduces
Speaker 1: you to one of his assistants, and the guy's name
Speaker 1: is Rush Limbaugh. You remember that name. I don't remember
Speaker 1: the conversation. I don't know what it was about. I
Speaker 1: think he was just standing there and Dean Volgor was
Speaker 1: being nice to both of us. But we had met,
Speaker 1: and he was when I told him this story, he
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, I wish we had a
Speaker 1: picture of that. It was almost to the point of embarrassing.
Speaker 1: I'll take praise from anybody, especially in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: before I fully understood what Rush Limbaugh was doing to
Speaker 1: this country. But I will take praise from anybody. But
Speaker 1: Rush Limbaugh went from sports into what he did to
Speaker 1: this country because he failed at sports. His original radio
Speaker 1: work was as a sportscaster and call in show host
Speaker 1: in sports when that was not a very popular thing.
Speaker 1: And simply being good at killing four hours by repeating
Speaker 1: the same argument over who's the greatest player of all
Speaker 1: time this week was not enough to get you a
Speaker 1: thirty one millillion dollar a year contract. He got fired
Speaker 1: from that. He was a disc jockey for a while,
Speaker 1: and then they said we got some time to kill
Speaker 1: Why don't you just go on Limbaugh and do a
Speaker 1: news talk show. Well, he was of conservative leaning, and
Speaker 1: he found out as he began to criticize the liberals
Speaker 1: of California in the various small markets in which he
Speaker 1: worked there around to believe the Sacramento area. The more
Speaker 1: he did that, and the more vituperative he became, the
Speaker 1: more people listened. Soon he had a contract. Soon he
Speaker 1: wasn't about to get fired from another industry, having failed
Speaker 1: in baseball and then failed in sportscasting and failed as
Speaker 1: a disc jockey. Suddenly he had a contract. And then
Speaker 1: somebody said, we should syndicate your show. Other markets would
Speaker 1: love to hear this, and you know where it went
Speaker 1: from there. But in nineteen ninety five, and that's twelve
Speaker 1: thirteen years into the Limbaugh dynasty, Rush Limbaugh was speaking
Speaker 1: in hushed tones, having appeared like a ghost like the
Speaker 1: devil in Bristol, Connecticut. And by the way, I yes,
Speaker 1: I explained, what the hell what are you doing here?
Speaker 1: I asked him that question, and he explained he had
Speaker 1: been invited after years of pestering Chris Berman to sit
Speaker 1: with the football crew from ESPN that did the Sunday
Speaker 1: Night I believe it was called Countdown at that point.
Speaker 1: Ironically enough, football Highlight Show. After the NFL games on Sundays,
Speaker 1: they watched the games in a room upstairs that US
Speaker 1: civilians were never permitted to attend, and they watched in
Speaker 1: low definition all whatever ten twelve NFL games. There were
Speaker 1: a simultaneously and there were options for bringing in your friend.
Speaker 1: They once brought in a back specialist who brought his
Speaker 1: table and was doing acupuncture and was doing everything that
Speaker 1: you could do to try to improve people's If you
Speaker 1: could do something for the crew, you could come in.
Speaker 1: I don't know what Rushlanbaud did for the crew, but
Speaker 1: they finally le him in and he was there early,
Speaker 1: and he was about to go upstairs and join Chris
Speaker 1: Berman in that room. And I asked Berman later, what
Speaker 1: was that like? He went, I don't know.
Speaker 6: The guy didn't say a thing. I mean, he was
Speaker 6: just there. He was just there. He didn't maybe we
Speaker 6: didn't even do any chiropracty. What so, what lim Blas
Speaker 6: said to me that echoes through the years, and it's
Speaker 6: nearly thirty years ago, was that he would at that
Speaker 6: point trade everything he had and he was already successful.
Speaker 6: I mean he was already making I don't know ten
Speaker 6: times what I was making, twenty times what I was making.
Speaker 6: He was successful. He said he'd give it all up
Speaker 6: if he got to be my co host on Sports
Speaker 6: Center instead with the pay cut, or Dan Patrick's co host.
Speaker 6: He was ready to knock off either one of us
Speaker 6: because that was his goal. And much of the fuel
Speaker 6: for these raging, hateful men and women is that they
Speaker 6: have not succeeded in their first My first dream was
Speaker 6: to be play by play announcer for the New York Yankees.
Speaker 6: I never got close to it. Did I become bitter
Speaker 6: or written? Oh?
Speaker 1: I took my second dream and got that one, and
Speaker 1: my third, my fourth, and fifth, and my sixth, and
Speaker 1: myself not for the conservatives. Rush Limbaugh was going to
Speaker 1: be the great sportscaster, and he never got close to it.
Speaker 1: And when he finally got the opportunity to do it
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, I believe when ESPN finally
Speaker 1: put him on the NFL show, and he did know
Speaker 1: something about football. When they finally put him on, like
Speaker 1: three weeks into it, he existed that Donovan McNabb was
Speaker 1: highly rated by NFL experts simply because he was African
Speaker 1: American and they needed an African American to be a
Speaker 1: top quarterback. Bye, Rush, See, you got another chance after
Speaker 1: all those years, and you blew it in just three weeks.
Speaker 1: So that's where rush Limbaugh came from. And of course,
Speaker 1: if every time you say Bill Clinton is a rapist,
Speaker 1: or you say Nancy Pelosi is a fascist, or you
Speaker 1: say Kamala Harris is a communist, if every time you
Speaker 1: say that, somebody sends you ten thousand dollars, guess what
Speaker 1: you're going to say, and sooner rather than later, because
Speaker 1: it's impossible to go on at that volume of work
Speaker 1: saying things extemporaneously that you don't believe the truth will
Speaker 1: come out. At some point. You have to believe it.
Speaker 1: You have to begin to believe it. You get, as
Speaker 1: the cliche, goes high on your own supply, and each
Speaker 1: time you get a little higher, they send you a
Speaker 1: little bit more money. It is thus not a coincidence
Speaker 1: that rush Limbaugh nearly went to prison because he had
Speaker 1: a housekeeper who used to get him vicoden and other painkillers,
Speaker 1: prescription painkillers by the hundreds. He took high two digits
Speaker 1: in painkillers every day because ultimately he could not believe
Speaker 1: deep in his soul that what he was saying was true,
Speaker 1: even remotely true, but to sell fascism. It is a
Speaker 1: verified and thoroughly documented fact that the entirety of the
Speaker 1: Nazi brass in Germany in the thirties and into the
Speaker 1: war regularly got methamphetamines and other uppers and other prescription
Speaker 1: painkillers of the time. There's an entire book on it
Speaker 1: that is just revealing, and that was Rush Windbaugh. Sean
Speaker 1: Hannity would seemingly have been the exact opposite. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, two thousand and five, perhaps I went
Speaker 1: back to ESPN after years of nuclear war at the
Speaker 1: request of the head of ESPN Radio to do an
Speaker 1: hour every day on Dan Patrick's radio show. And we
Speaker 1: had a gas and they paid me an extraordinary amount
Speaker 1: of money, and it was such a nice break. The
Speaker 1: MSNBC show was just coming into prominence and it was
Speaker 1: a lot of work, and an hour with Dan Patrick
Speaker 1: was not a lot of work. I would get there,
Speaker 1: we did the three o'clock to four o'clock hour, remember, correctly,
Speaker 1: I would get there at three o'clock and he'd be
Speaker 1: in his break. They'd have a news update from Dan Davis,
Speaker 1: and I'd say to him on the line, what are
Speaker 1: we talking about ago, Barry? Are you going to talk
Speaker 1: about Barry Bonds? We're gonna talk about this, We're gonna
Speaker 1: tell Okay, great, let me call up a couple of
Speaker 1: stories on the computer and we'd go and then at
Speaker 1: the end of the hour, I'd say, I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you tomorrow. And there's Keith Ollerman, my friend. He has
Speaker 1: to go save the democracy now. But the studio that
Speaker 1: we used often, and I had one in my house,
Speaker 1: so I didn't have to do this, but it was
Speaker 1: nice to get into a big studio a top Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden was at the ABC Radio network, and it
Speaker 1: helped because every once in a while I had to
Speaker 1: do things for ABC Radio and WABC in New York
Speaker 1: as part of the deal. So I was very happy
Speaker 1: to be there. And one day, as I was leaving,
Speaker 1: I see sitting in a studio, a different studio, a
Speaker 1: couple of studios away from the one i'd just used
Speaker 1: for an hour. To my surprise, there is Sean Hannity
Speaker 1: and he pounds on the inside of the window like
Speaker 1: that and waves me in. And I had already I
Speaker 1: don't know how many times I put Sean Hannity in
Speaker 1: on the Worst Person's List, but there he was in
Speaker 1: the flesh, and we had never met before. So again,
Speaker 1: this is two thousand and five, six, somewhere like that,
Speaker 1: and it's I don't know, three point fifty seven or seven.
Speaker 1: He's going on the air at four and he says, listen,
Speaker 1: I don't understand this. Why do people think I hate you?
Speaker 1: People are assume my wait, we have a fistfight the
Speaker 1: moment we ever met. Every time you put me on
Speaker 1: that worst Person's list, we get another ten thousand viewers.
Speaker 1: Every time I make a reference to MSNBC. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you get another ten thousand viewers. It's just television. And
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my god, I hate this guy more
Speaker 1: than I hate Wimbaugh. He didn't believe a word of it,
Speaker 1: or if he believed it, he didn't think there was
Speaker 1: anything wrong with it or controversial about it. He didn't
Speaker 1: think it was worth standing up for or for somebody
Speaker 1: else to be standing against. He assumed I didn't believe
Speaker 1: what I was saying, that this was just a television act.
Speaker 1: In fact, he said, just stay there, and he signed
Speaker 1: a show on he goes. You know, people think I
Speaker 1: hate all liberals. Well, I don't hate all liberals at all.
Speaker 1: Some of them are really nice guys. There's one standing
Speaker 1: here now. I'm not gonna mention him because you know,
Speaker 1: I get him in trouble if we find out he
Speaker 1: finds we're friendly, and we haven't had a fist fight yet.
Speaker 1: But he's a great guy. He just said something really
Speaker 1: funny about sports, and I'm just gonna quote him, and so,
Speaker 1: you know what, you hate all those liberals, but leave
Speaker 1: a little room for the good ones. And I was
Speaker 1: like crying out loud. I'd rather deal with Rush Limbaugh well.
Speaker 1: And then there was the other, of course, future if
Speaker 1: Sean Hannity was to become a true believer, because once
Speaker 1: again he started that show for Fox in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: six when they went on the air. The story I
Speaker 1: told Drews from ten years later. Thirteen years later, he
Speaker 1: was seated a couple of boxes behind me at Yankee
Speaker 1: Stadium when the Yankees won the two thousand and nine
Speaker 1: World Series, and we waved and took photos of each
Speaker 1: other and tweeted the photos. We were still kind of friendly,
Speaker 1: and by you know, twenty sixteen, he was advocating for
Speaker 1: a man wants to be the dictator of America, and
Speaker 1: you can't do that if you don't believe it, if
Speaker 1: it's pure opportunism, you can't do what Sean Hannity did.
Speaker 1: So he, again, like Limbaugh, started selling a product and
Speaker 1: ended taking the product. O'Reilly, I believe, at some point
Speaker 1: must have been more moderate than he turned out to be.
Speaker 1: His story is largely different. He was what the exaggerations
Speaker 1: of my own career say I was, but he was
Speaker 1: it for real. He worked in three different local television
Speaker 1: markets in one year. He had to move three times
Speaker 1: in one year. I never did anything like that. I
Speaker 1: never worked in two local markets in one year. In fact,
Speaker 1: I only worked in two local markets in my life
Speaker 1: in television. I haven't had half the jobs that Bill
Speaker 1: O'Reilly did. And he was never successful. But his goal
Speaker 1: was to be I believe he wanted to be Walter Cronkite.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding Walter kronk And he got to work
Speaker 1: for NBC News and ABC News. He got to be
Speaker 1: an anchor at the same station in Boston that I
Speaker 1: worked at. For a while, we missed each other by
Speaker 1: like three months, and he wanted to be. He wanted
Speaker 1: to be Walter Cronkite. He wanted to be the voice
Speaker 1: of America. He wanted to be the most trusted man
Speaker 1: in America, absolutely devoid of political bias, trusted by everybody. Well,
Speaker 1: that didn't work out because they kept firing him, and
Speaker 1: so he was working on Inside Edition, owned by the
Speaker 1: Fox people when Fox launched the Fox News channel in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, and they said, well, we're going to
Speaker 1: have to kill some time here. What have we got.
Speaker 1: We got this guy O'Reilly under contract for another eight
Speaker 1: ten months here, and he's doing terribly with Inside Edition
Speaker 1: and everybody hates him there. Let's move him into the
Speaker 1: three pm slot or something on his Fox News and
Speaker 1: then when he's contract is up, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: if he makes some sort of impression, we can offer
Speaker 1: him half what he's making now, and if not, he's
Speaker 1: out the door. Well, Fox's primetime lineup and nobody remembers.
Speaker 1: This began with at eight clock Catherine Cryer, formerly of
Speaker 1: ABC and CNN and a former judge in Texas and
Speaker 1: really pretty much a straight down the middle, slightly leaning
Speaker 1: to the left news anchor and pretty good one. And
Speaker 1: she didn't draw flies at eight o'clock. Instead O'Reilly, who
Speaker 1: I believe was on at two o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: had an extraordinary spike because he went on expressing his frustration.
Speaker 1: People thought he was talking about the country and right
Speaker 1: wing versus left wing. He was talking about how everybody
Speaker 1: had dumped on Bill O'Reilly. The point of every episode
Speaker 1: of every show Bill O'Reilly ever did. Ultimately you could
Speaker 1: put his name in there when he talked about America
Speaker 1: or values, or this happened to a friend of his,
Speaker 1: or why I was so surprised I went to this
Speaker 1: restaurant in Harlem and they didn't say I want some
Speaker 1: more iced T MF. Or every one of those stories
Speaker 1: is about him and how he did not get to
Speaker 1: be Walter Cronkite and all the people he was now
Speaker 1: going to screw back and they loved it, and he
Speaker 1: became a template and hanned. He looked at that and went,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that too. Bill O'Reilly, by the
Speaker 1: time I met him, really really believed this. And again,
Speaker 1: if you're expressing your own rage and just dressing it
Speaker 1: up and making it in somehow some fashion generic for everybody.
Speaker 2: In the world.
Speaker 1: Of course you're going to believe it. You are angry.
Speaker 1: Bill O'Reilly will die without ever becoming Walter Cronkite. I
Speaker 1: will die without becoming the play by playman of the
Speaker 1: New York Yankees, and I'll go well. Travel would have
Speaker 1: been terrible crying out loud click in any event. O'Reilly,
Speaker 1: as I've outlined many times in many places, did not
Speaker 1: take well to the criticism that I began to unleash
Speaker 1: on him. Literally the day I returned to MSNBC in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, when I got a phone call
Speaker 1: from one of my old friends at NBC in Washington,
Speaker 1: Nora O'Donnell, who said, you should do a segment on
Speaker 1: Bill O'Reilly. It's so great to have you back. He
Speaker 1: lies every night. You should do something about O'Reilly, called
Speaker 1: O'Reilly factor fiction, and I went, thank you, Nora, thank
Speaker 1: you for resuscitating my career at MSNBC. And as soon
Speaker 1: as the war began to die down in Iraq, we
Speaker 1: began to go after Bill O'Reilly, And god knows he
Speaker 1: provided all the ammunition I could ever want. The rule
Speaker 1: is never punched down, and all he did was punched down.
Speaker 1: He wanted somebody to stop me. He tried to blackmail
Speaker 1: Jeff mL the GE chairman. I've told that story a
Speaker 1: dozen times. He threatened Jeff Zooker, he threatened to expose
Speaker 1: this and say that he threatened, And finally we ran
Speaker 1: into each other at Yankee Stadium. I went to a
Speaker 1: Yankee Mets game and had a credential because I was
Speaker 1: on the Dan Patrick Show every day. I was actually
Speaker 1: also a sports reporter. Two thousand and five, two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, Yankee Stadium, and there's O'Reilly and I walk
Speaker 1: out onto the field and to my surprise, there's Bill
Speaker 1: O'Reilly and he's got a not a press pass, but
Speaker 1: a pass given to him by the manager of the
Speaker 1: Yankees at the time, Joe Tory. So it was an
Speaker 1: FOJ Friend of Joe pass allows you to get on
Speaker 1: the field you're not allowed in certain areas. And he
Speaker 1: was at one end of the Yankee dugout as I
Speaker 1: came out of the Yankee dugout on the home plate side,
Speaker 1: and the moment he saw me, he moved ten feet
Speaker 1: further away, and every time I would look out onto
Speaker 1: the field, I could feel his eyes burning a hole
Speaker 1: in the side of my head, and I would turn
Speaker 1: my head quickly and he would look away. I would
Speaker 1: edge suddenly one inch closer to him, and I could
Speaker 1: see out of the corner of my eye him edging
Speaker 1: one inch further away from me. This went on for
Speaker 1: ten minutes while I talked to my friends among the
Speaker 1: sports reporters. Later, he tried to get into the met
Speaker 1: clubhouse and his friend of Joe Tory credential did not
Speaker 1: allow him near the clubhouse, and they asked him to leave.
Speaker 1: Two or three days later, I got a call from
Speaker 1: the Yankees. There was an international incident, was the way
Speaker 1: described to me about the fact that I had credentials
Speaker 1: and Bill O'Reilly did not Fox to the point of
Speaker 1: having the president of Fox's operations saying he was calling
Speaker 1: on behalf of Roger Ayle's demanding to know why I
Speaker 1: was given access to the Mets clubhouse, but Bill O'Reilly
Speaker 1: was not, And the head of pr for the Yankees,
Speaker 1: sounding like he was reading from a script, went through
Speaker 1: thirty minutes explaining that the Yankees didn't give credentials to
Speaker 1: celebrities and that these sort of situations won't be tolerated
Speaker 1: and only the working press gets credentials, and you could
Speaker 1: hear that there were other people on the phone call
Speaker 1: who were not talking. You could hear it because every
Speaker 1: once in a while the guy would stop suddenly and
Speaker 1: then you'd hear in the background. I assumed that was O'Reilly.
Speaker 1: The next day, I went to Yankee Stadium with my
Speaker 1: credential and I went to the PR director of the Yankees,
Speaker 1: and I said, what was that? He goes, what do
Speaker 1: you mean? I said, how come I have a credential today?
Speaker 1: Wasn't that about taking away my credit dentials? He goes,
Speaker 1: what did I say at the beginning of that conversation?
Speaker 1: I said, you said you were going to make this
Speaker 1: phone call and talk to me about the fact that
Speaker 1: we did not issue credentials to celebrities. Did we have
Speaker 1: that conversation? Did I do that? Yes? Do we issue
Speaker 1: you a credential because you're on the Dan Patrick shower,
Speaker 1: because you're a celebrity? And I went, I presume the
Speaker 1: former correct have a nice game. And that was It
Speaker 1: never came up again. O'Reilly believed he had somehow sabotaged
Speaker 1: my access to Yankee Stadium, and he tried it many
Speaker 1: other times, and I saw him once at a Joe
Speaker 1: Tory event, a charity event, and he did the same
Speaker 1: thing where he stared at me and then moved an
Speaker 1: inch away if I got too close to him. An
Speaker 1: extraordinarily crazy man and remained such to this day. But
Speaker 1: as I always say, I probably owe him ten percent
Speaker 1: of all of my earnings from MSNBC because he just
Speaker 1: couldn't ignore me. I mean, his ratings were initially at
Speaker 1: least five times mine. Even at the end, when we'd
Speaker 1: grown that thing into making one hundred two hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars a year profit for NBC, his ratings were still
Speaker 1: twice three times mine. He should never have once mentioned me. Instead,
Speaker 1: he put up a petition one day, had them do
Speaker 1: it on the Fox News website too, without mentioning my name,
Speaker 1: because he refused to ever mention my name. He wanted
Speaker 1: Phil Donahue reinstated as the eight pm anchor on MSNBC,
Speaker 1: and he did a whole thing about how Phil Donna,
Speaker 1: who had been treated so badly, so sign up here
Speaker 1: on foxnews dot com the get Phil Donahue the eight
Speaker 1: pm slot that he so richly deserves. And I was like,
Speaker 1: thank you, Bill. So the next thing I did was
Speaker 1: I got my camera, one of my camera crews from
Speaker 1: NBC in Secaucus to record everybody on the MSNBC Countdown
Speaker 1: staff lined up to get to the computer and all
Speaker 1: of them signing up to get me fired and get
Speaker 1: Phil Donahue and stated, because one thing about fascists and
Speaker 1: people who get high on their own supply, but people
Speaker 1: like Bill O'Reilly never understand people like that who believe
Speaker 1: all this, that people are at home taking notes, writing
Speaker 1: down how will I live my life? This is what
Speaker 1: Bill O'Reilly says, This is what Hannity says, this is
Speaker 1: what Limbo says. One thing is they really believe that
Speaker 1: they don't recognize that the job is just too largely
Speaker 1: inform But in many cases, simply reassure people who've already
Speaker 1: reached the opinion you have that they're not crazy, that
Speaker 1: there are other people who've reached that same opinion, and
Speaker 1: to add to their understanding and correct them sometimes or
Speaker 1: to have them correct you. It's illumination with maybe a
Speaker 1: few jokes and an entertaining broadcast of some kind. It
Speaker 1: is not I am writing the New Bible, and you
Speaker 1: will live your life this way. So we got that
Speaker 1: count of how many people wanted to have Phil Donahue
Speaker 1: reinstated like we managed to get it over five thousand.
Speaker 1: That was one of my favorite accomplishments, Right you are,
Speaker 1: mister Mayerhoffer. One of the great great practical jokes ever
Speaker 1: completed in the history of the world, certainly in the
Speaker 1: history of television. Billow used to read emails and texts,
Speaker 1: and somebody asked him a question and signed it mister
Speaker 1: Jack m E H F F E R Jack me Hoffer,
Speaker 1: and he read it. He later said, I knew what
Speaker 1: that meant, but I thought it was a good question.
Speaker 1: Swear to God, I swear to God. I've done all
Speaker 1: the damage I can do here, that not as much
Speaker 1: as Bill Thank you for listening. We're now back to
Speaker 1: five episodes a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern
Speaker 1: And as you have heard, you never know what you're
Speaker 1: going to hear here, do you? Once again, there is
Speaker 1: a Monday countdown at least through the election. Please forward
Speaker 1: this to a non listener who should fix being a
Speaker 1: non listener, because this is high quality material right here.
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanelle. Speaking of high quality material,
Speaker 1: are the musical directors of countdown, and they have arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
Speaker 1: and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums.
Speaker 1: It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
Speaker 1: musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Speaker 1: Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer today was my friend John Dee. Everything else
Speaker 1: was pretty much my fault. There's always Solan's countdown for today,
Speaker 1: one month and twelve days until the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: presidential election, the one hundred No A million, No three
Speaker 1: and fifty eighth day since convicted felon dementia j Trump's
Speaker 1: first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
Speaker 1: United States. Use the election, use the mental health system,
Speaker 1: use presidential immunity if we have to to keep him
Speaker 1: from trying to overthrow the government again while we still can.
Speaker 1: The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news
Speaker 1: requires till then on Keith Olderman, good Morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and I'm trying to hit the mark here
Speaker 1: the post good Luck, Yes Countdown with Keith Olderman is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.