Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
Speaker 1: has now doubled down on his smearing of military heroes
Speaker 1: of Medal of Honor recipients by comparing them to the
Speaker 1: likes of Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon, whose
Speaker 1: contribution to America was literally that a contribution giving Trump
Speaker 1: a out of campaign money. And no, I am not
Speaker 1: leading the podcast with the Democratic National Convention nor the
Speaker 1: lamest anti convention protest ever seen. To a local news
Speaker 1: reporter in Pennsylvania, Trump has now insisted veterans are not
Speaker 1: enraged at what he said, that he has not done
Speaker 1: untold damage to his supposedly ultra patriotic base, and naturally,
Speaker 1: in doing that, he made it worse because now he
Speaker 1: had to clarify that what he meant was that Miriam
Speaker 1: Adelson looks better than Medal of Honor winners because Medal
Speaker 1: of Honor winners are often horribly wounded or dead, and
Speaker 1: who wants to look horribly wounded or dead.
Speaker 2: Many veterans are upset about that, and clean hear in Pennsylvania. No,
Speaker 2: I didn't hear that. I only heard when I say better,
Speaker 2: I would rather in a certain way get it because
Speaker 2: people that get the Congressional of Honor, which I've given
Speaker 2: to many, are often horribly wounded or dead. They're often dead.
Speaker 2: They get it posthumously. And when you get the Congressional
Speaker 2: Medal of Honor, I always consider that to be the ultimate,
Speaker 2: but it is a painful thing to get it. When
Speaker 2: you get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it's usually for
Speaker 2: other things, like you've achieved great success in sports, so
Speaker 2: you've achieved great success someplace else. When you get the
Speaker 2: Medal of Honor, generally speaking, and I've met many of them,
Speaker 2: and I've seen the families of many of them, this
Speaker 2: is an incredible honor, but it was a statement that
Speaker 2: is much more painful to get because they're oftentimes in
Speaker 2: very bad shape. I've seen him come up and they've
Speaker 2: suffered greatly, Whereas the Presidential Medal of Freedom need to
Speaker 2: my knowledge, I don't think anybody suffered other than they've
Speaker 2: you know, they've worked hard, and they've done graz things.
Speaker 2: Onesday military award. One's a civilian award, but sometimes very
Speaker 2: painful to get the other.
Speaker 1: Well, that settles it. Trump took time out from digging
Speaker 1: that hole to insisting to a Pennsylvania audience yesterday that
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris's laugh is that of a crazy person, because
Speaker 1: clearly somebody has told him that people no names please
Speaker 1: have been calling him crazy, and because you know, he's
Speaker 1: never laughed in his life, except perhaps to express cruelty,
Speaker 1: he will get the chance to do that today when
Speaker 1: he could easily go full KKK level racist at a
Speaker 1: rally at Howell, Michigan, known for decades as the haven
Speaker 1: there for white supremacists, where marchers chanted we love Hitler
Speaker 1: last month when they followed we love Hitler with we
Speaker 1: love Trump, and that's Howell, Michigan, Howell and not howl.
Speaker 1: Trump is neither howling nor laughing cruelly or otherwise about
Speaker 1: the Poles. Morning Consult not only saying it's tracking Pole
Speaker 1: now has her up forty eight forty four. It was
Speaker 1: three points last week, it is now four points. She's
Speaker 1: also above water on favorability by fifty to forty five,
Speaker 1: so Kamala Harris is plus five favorable, her high water mark,
Speaker 1: something Trump has never come close to approaching. Morning Consult
Speaker 1: also notes that since she took over the campaign four
Speaker 1: weeks and two days ago, she has not trailed Trump.
Speaker 1: Once in any of the daily tracking updates. The poles
Speaker 1: continue to be so good, so uniformly, that it is
Speaker 1: now hard to keep up with them all and probably
Speaker 1: not worth the en effort, as you already know. Sunday,
Speaker 1: CBS News polling put her up three, but ABC and
Speaker 1: the Washington Post pegged it at six. Sienna in Arizona,
Speaker 1: for the Times, has gone from Trump by six in
Speaker 1: May to Harris by five. Now Sienna in North Carolina
Speaker 1: is Harris plus two, with or without Kennedy in the race.
Speaker 1: It is so consistent. Now let me caveat it again.
Speaker 1: It could all go south before you finish listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast. Who knows. But it's so consistent at just
Speaker 1: this moment that even Politico has noticed. Somebody there wrote,
Speaker 1: some Republicans are preparing for the possibility that Harris will
Speaker 1: have a larger lead on Labor Day than she does now,
Speaker 1: good grief, that is perhaps the only certainty here. Hell,
Speaker 1: Labor Day is two weeks from yesterday, and her post
Speaker 1: convention bump, which is average historically four points, will not
Speaker 1: show up in the polls until this weekend. She will
Speaker 1: probably give some of that back next week, but she
Speaker 1: will be up more and even more often by Labor Day,
Speaker 1: and then we will be in the home stretch. Historical
Speaker 1: analysis by a couple of authors indicates that whoever gets
Speaker 1: the largest bump from their convention maintains that bump through
Speaker 1: election day. The convention, although meaningless, as I will point
Speaker 1: out in a moment, is not meaningless when it comes
Speaker 1: to the polls. As an aside, though, I continue to
Speaker 1: be amazed by Democrats who are literally afraid of these
Speaker 1: good numbers, trauma leftover from the first half of this
Speaker 1: year and twenty sixteen, of course, fear of overconfidence. I
Speaker 1: look at them and I see an opportunity to be
Speaker 1: less afraid and to be more vindictive. There's a stable,
Speaker 1: small lead. Let's get more sleep now and be more
Speaker 1: vicious down the stretch. Let's metaphorically kill them and eat them.
Speaker 1: The bigger the lead, the bigger the win, the less
Speaker 1: likely the Republicans are to even try to force a
Speaker 1: contingent election where Republicans merely stall certification for Harris long
Speaker 1: enough to create a passive aggressive kind of January sixth,
Speaker 1: where the Electoral College count can't be finalized, and then
Speaker 1: God knows what happens next. Metaphorically, look at the poles,
Speaker 1: get more sleep, metaphorically, kill them and eat them. And
Speaker 1: please remember when you do that, don't be like JD. Vance.
Speaker 1: Remember what to eat them with. If you are going
Speaker 1: to demean yourself and do the eat the local food ritual,
Speaker 1: just eat the dam food. Don't go to pat Cheese
Speaker 1: Steaks in Philly and accuse them of hating Swiss cheese
Speaker 1: because the cheese steike wit is wit cheese whiz. It's
Speaker 1: like Swiss cheese either, but everybody says it's in souls.
Speaker 1: Why do you guys say Swiss cheese is the story
Speaker 1: native We just.
Speaker 3: Whiz first, all right.
Speaker 1: Okay, alright, love what I want? I wanna. I want
Speaker 1: a cheese steak with wiz. JV. Vance turning a cheese
Speaker 1: steak at a tourist trap into philosophy or being generous
Speaker 1: into a callback to a John Kerry campaign misstep from
Speaker 1: two thousand and three two thousand and three might as
Speaker 1: well invoke the campaigns of Rutherford B. Hayes and President Polk. JV.
Speaker 1: Vance continues to be the gift that keeps on giving.
Speaker 1: Last Friday, there was a new character on the Vance campaign, Atlas.
Speaker 1: Atlas is quotequote, his unquote dog named for Atlas shrugged
Speaker 1: because those book oriented trumpers of all. Red Ain rand As,
Speaker 1: a professional dog walker, pointed out to the website Jezebel
Speaker 1: as Vance introduced Atlas to the airplane stairs on Friday,
Speaker 1: he was holding the leash to Atlas's easy walk harness
Speaker 1: with just a couple of fingers. I mean, all I
Speaker 1: have is malteses, and even with them, I do what
Speaker 1: everybody else who's ever had a dog for more than
Speaker 1: ninety seconds. Does I double wrap the leash around my
Speaker 1: hand or quadruple wrappit, or I often have it go
Speaker 1: across my palm and intertwine it with my fingers. All
Speaker 1: dogs have outstanding body control and low centers of gravity.
Speaker 1: But as to JV quote his unquote dog, Atlas is
Speaker 1: a German shepherd. With that light grip, Vance looked like
Speaker 1: he was carrying a piece of string in his hand.
Speaker 1: If Atlas had pulled hard enough, he would have not
Speaker 1: only gotten away from JV, would have pulled him down
Speaker 1: the goddamn stairs. I would point out since Friday, we
Speaker 1: have not seen Atlas on the campaign trail. He did
Speaker 1: not go and get a cheese steak and strike up
Speaker 1: a conversation with the guy at PATS, although I'm sure
Speaker 1: it would have been a smarter conversation than the one
Speaker 1: JV had. From deep in their souls, you can hear
Speaker 1: the disappointment forcing its way out like a primal scream.
Speaker 1: It was the primal scream of reporters who were promised
Speaker 1: tear gas and violence and Billie clubs and got only
Speaker 1: their own tears. The reporters nationwide on Fox, internationally on BBC, heartbroken, stunned, leaving.
Speaker 1: There were no riots at the opening day of the
Speaker 1: Democratic National Convention in Chicago, not one goddamned canister of
Speaker 1: tear gas, unused pro Palestine protest signs that we got,
Speaker 1: got hundreds of them in Union Park. They're still sitting there, unclaimed, unused,
Speaker 1: staring up mockingly at Trump's stalking horse, Cornell West, as
Speaker 1: he wondered where all the protesters were at mint condition
Speaker 1: now available at extremely popular prices. I am somewhat agnostic
Speaker 1: on this issue, but organizers and journalists hoped for thirty thousand,
Speaker 1: perhaps forty thousand protesters to march to the United Center
Speaker 1: yesterday and to become as big a story as Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's farewell address, and actual estimates ran the gamut from
Speaker 1: maybe there were ten thousand more towards three thousand, twenty
Speaker 1: five hundred something like that. In short, the Chicago White Sox,
Speaker 1: who have lost ninety five out of one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five games this baseball season. They are more popular
Speaker 1: in Chicago than are the protests against the Democratic National Convention.
Speaker 1: Oh the humanity. I think you can tell I am
Speaker 1: not a big one for Democratic conventions nor Republican conventions.
Speaker 1: There has not been much to see or talk about
Speaker 1: at them since Ford tried to become Reagan's co president
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty or Kennedy almost knife Carter the same
Speaker 1: year at Madison Square Garden. Hell, maybe there hasn't been
Speaker 1: much to see or talk about since security tried to
Speaker 1: beat the crap out of Dan Rather while he was
Speaker 1: live on CBS talking to Walter Cronkye in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: The conventions were interesting even when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: because the primaries didn't used to decide the nominee for
Speaker 1: the most part, the conventions did you proved yourself eligible
Speaker 1: at the primaries. The decisions were made at the convention
Speaker 1: as long ago as nineteen eighty, when I was a
Speaker 1: sportscaster for United pres Internationals Radio network. I timidly asked
Speaker 1: our political chief if there was a chance that I
Speaker 1: could somehow borrow somebody's credential and go to the Democratic
Speaker 1: Convention in New York and just record a feature there,
Speaker 1: a feature that had a sports angle, just for the
Speaker 1: background noise. The political chief opened the top drawer of
Speaker 1: his desk and handed me four different credentials. If you
Speaker 1: need more, let me know. As recently as two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, I was MSNBC's anchor for the entirety of
Speaker 1: the network's coverage of the Democratic Convention in Denver, and
Speaker 1: neither I nor my co host, Chris Matthew spent one
Speaker 1: minute inside the convention because the news bosses had long
Speaker 1: ago figured out that nothing interesting happened inside the convention,
Speaker 1: and the backdrop inside the convention simply looked like a
Speaker 1: large crowd at an indoor arena attending a basketball game
Speaker 1: or a concert, except there was no game and there
Speaker 1: was no concert, just the crowd extremely boring, extremely fast.
Speaker 1: So they sat us outside with the train station in
Speaker 1: the background, and I thought, well, who on earth is
Speaker 1: going to leave the convention to come over here, and
Speaker 1: then President Carter showed up, and then everybody else showed up,
Speaker 1: and I realized they all wanted to get out of
Speaker 1: what was not just the convention boredom, but the convention
Speaker 1: boredom you had to pretend was fascinating. I don't know
Speaker 1: why they still hold the conventions. I mean, obviously it's
Speaker 1: an infomercial now and you get all your viral soundbites,
Speaker 1: but not from a political point of view. I mean,
Speaker 1: the dirty secret of the Democratic and Republican Conventions is
Speaker 1: that they are exactly like the conventions of every other
Speaker 1: business organization in this country, from the American Psychiatric Association
Speaker 1: conference to the wholesale beard, hair brush, manufacture and supply Cartel.
Speaker 1: They are vacations you can write off as tax deductions.
Speaker 1: There's free booze, free food, free entertainment, you get to
Speaker 1: see old friends, you get to see if you can
Speaker 1: talk your old friends into becoming something else but business news.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a nice handoff from President Biden
Speaker 1: to Vice President Harris last night, only we are well
Speaker 1: reminded throughout it and before it, and accurate that this
Speaker 1: is not the handoff that will be later, this was
Speaker 1: just the convention handoff. Now something wonderful. There is one
Speaker 1: thing I will give the entirety of the Trump fascist
Speaker 1: attempt to violently overthrow the government of the United States
Speaker 1: credit for, and that is message discipline. They may have
Speaker 1: been gifted by being given the man who can fool
Speaker 1: all the people, all of the time, long enough to
Speaker 1: get elected anyway, or they may now be shackled to
Speaker 1: a corpse, but they have always stayed true to their jackass.
Speaker 1: Unlike liberals, unlike reporters, they have never expected Trump to pivot. Never,
Speaker 1: they have never asked him to become something he's not, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a human being. And then came Tom Vasili
Speaker 1: of Newsmax, I hope you are sitting down.
Speaker 3: What some have called a slump over the last few
Speaker 3: weeks is a tremendous opportunity for reinvention. And whether the
Speaker 3: former president of the campaign allow it to happen, though,
Speaker 3: remains to be seen. Kamala Harris is getting a clever makeover.
Speaker 3: Mister Trump can and should use this moment to reintroduce
Speaker 3: himself to the electorate as well. Unlike the whistle stop
Speaker 3: tours of years past, when people heard from a candidate
Speaker 3: maybe once. Today they often hear elements of the sub
Speaker 3: speech dozens of times, and it frankly gets boring. That's
Speaker 3: why long speeches and hour long rallies don't win elections.
Speaker 1: Wait, there's more.
Speaker 3: Mister Trump shouldn't be campaigning in arenas. He should be
Speaker 3: campaigning in supermarket parking lots and gas stations like he's
Speaker 3: running for town council. Knock on some doors with some volunteers,
Speaker 3: drop into some living rooms and suburban neighborhoods along the
Speaker 3: way as well. How many Americans know the Donald Trump
Speaker 3: who loves music, everything from opera to Sinatra to Metallica.
Speaker 3: We know mister Trump plays golf a lot of it.
Speaker 3: What's his secret to playing the game so many people
Speaker 3: struggle to master for decades? Believe me, I'm one of them.
Speaker 3: Whatever happened to Grandpa Trump? I loved Grandpa Trump. We
Speaker 3: saw him at the convention, a smiling former president, one
Speaker 3: grandchild on his lap, another on stage telling the nation
Speaker 3: about the Donald Trump most of us have never met,
Speaker 3: the one who greets his grandkids with bear hugs and kisses,
Speaker 3: picking them up in the air and making them laugh.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump should treat this like celebrity apprentice in reverse
Speaker 3: earning it every day.
Speaker 1: Yes, more Trumpian retail politics, more parking lots. Have him
Speaker 1: take the tie off. Don't have him talk about himself
Speaker 1: or get up there for an hour. It's boring. Golf
Speaker 1: tips is what we need. Golf tips from Uncle don Old.
Speaker 1: That's the ticket. I'm sure he'll go for that. Throw
Speaker 1: out everything he understands, everything he enjoys talking about himself
Speaker 1: in front of large crowds, feeling, no existential dress, no memento.
Speaker 1: Mora is going to live forever. They love him. Now,
Speaker 1: throw all that out and give golf tips in parking lots. Brilliant.
Speaker 1: Tom Basili of News Max the new Trump, the kinder
Speaker 1: gentler Trump like Max Biali stock implores Franz Liebkin and
Speaker 1: the producers show the world the true Hitler, the Hitler.
Speaker 1: You loved the Hitler, you knew the Hitler with a
Speaker 1: song in his heart. What now you want me to
Speaker 1: change that quote to Trump? Why? Also of interest here,
Speaker 1: Phil Donahue has died. In addition to the recognition that
Speaker 1: he almost single handedly changed television talk shows and in
Speaker 1: fact changed television and is a Hall of Famer Pantheon
Speaker 1: television person. He remains the centerpiece of what is almost
Speaker 1: an article of faith here on the left that MSNBS
Speaker 1: fired him and ended his career when he had the
Speaker 1: highest ratings on that network because he dared to question
Speaker 1: the war in Iraq. I think you know I never
Speaker 1: defend MSNBC. I think you may remember I never criticized
Speaker 1: anybody who hit George W. Bush. But this whole Phil
Speaker 1: Donahue story, it's not true, none of it. And you
Speaker 1: know how I know it's not true because not only
Speaker 1: was I there, but when they canceled Phil Donahue in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three at MSNBC, the show they replaced
Speaker 1: him with was called Countdown with Keith Olriman. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is an all new edition of Countdown with Keith Olreman.
Speaker 3: This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1: Still ahead of us on this all new edition of Countdown.
Speaker 1: Phil Donahue has died a legend of television and in politics,
Speaker 1: a legend of corporate repression of the anti war protests
Speaker 1: as the Bushies led us into Iraq. The man who
Speaker 1: tried to warn us and lost his top rated show
Speaker 1: and maybe his career as a consequence. Except and as
Speaker 1: you know, I am the last person to ever defend
Speaker 1: MSNBC or to criticize anybody who attacked George Bush. That's
Speaker 1: not how it happened, not at all. The real story
Speaker 1: of bad ratings and cost overruns ahead in things I
Speaker 1: promise not to tell first. There are still more new
Speaker 1: idiots talk about the daily roundup of the miscrants, morons
Speaker 1: and Dunning Kruger effects specimens, who constitute in two days
Speaker 1: worst persons in the world. The Brons worse. Laura Ingram,
Speaker 1: who has her own show on Fox News called The
Speaker 1: Ingram Anger. No, I don't think that's what. It's called.
Speaker 1: The Rock Concert Vibe DNC, she writes, is in lieu
Speaker 1: of a convention where the main players are capable and
Speaker 1: confident enough to discuss the salient issues. They will entertain you,
Speaker 1: but you pay for it with lower living standards. Laura
Speaker 1: hit her head sometime about I don't know nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: and then again in nineteen ninety five, and then in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, and several times since. I think,
Speaker 1: just as a reminder, at the Republican Convention way back,
Speaker 1: month ago, month ago, it was they had Hulk Hogan
Speaker 1: on is like the keynote speaker Hulk effing Hogan from
Speaker 1: the year nineteen eighty one. Olk Hogan as the keynote
Speaker 1: speaker or something. He spoke the same night Trump did,
Speaker 1: and he ripped off his shirt and did a trump
Speaker 1: a Mania bit. But the Democrats are the ones who
Speaker 1: are not dealing with substance at their convention. Oh and
Speaker 1: by the way, at the twenty sixteen Republican Convention, Laura
Speaker 1: Ingram went on stage and gave a long siege Hile's
Speaker 1: salute to a giant image of Trump, a big, full,
Speaker 1: stiff armed, forty five degree angle right armed salute to
Speaker 1: Trump like he was Hitler. So please don't tell me
Speaker 1: about entertainment versus substance unless the substance you're talking about
Speaker 1: is how he is Hitler. The runner up worser Abby Phillip,
Speaker 1: Abby Phillip, Abby, Abby phil Lip. You don't know the
Speaker 1: name she's on CNN. No, No really, CNN, you don't
Speaker 1: know that name either. See Capital N, Capital N. You
Speaker 1: don't record anyway. She does a show it used to
Speaker 1: be a news network, nice five person panel the other
Speaker 1: night discussing the Harris campaign on her show, because after all,
Speaker 1: it's still nineteen ninety eight, right, and as many guests
Speaker 1: as you can have on so they can have a
Speaker 1: pie fight. That's the idea of cable news. This is
Speaker 1: what the third guy to run CNN since I started
Speaker 1: this podcast, and they just keep getting worse and worse.
Speaker 1: They brought in some British guy whose experiences in print
Speaker 1: and he drove the BBC for a while into the ground,
Speaker 1: and then he was with the Times and he's got
Speaker 1: imaginary newsrooms. And I don't know what's going on. Five
Speaker 1: people on a panel to discuss the day's news. Who
Speaker 1: wants this? The ratings indicate nobody wants this. Nobody wanted
Speaker 1: it in two thousand and three. Anyway, during this one
Speaker 1: of the five people in the five person panel on
Speaker 1: the Abby Phillip No, it's a real show. The Abby
Speaker 1: Phillip Show was the how do we put this play?
Speaker 1: Intellectually challenged Congresswoman from North Carolina Nancy I skip morning
Speaker 1: sex to be at this prayer breakfast Your holiness mace.
Speaker 1: Keith Boykin wrote after being one of the other panelists
Speaker 1: that Michael Eric Dyson and I had to correct Representative
Speaker 1: Nancy Mace RSC at least ten times last Night for
Speaker 1: purposely mispronouncing Kamala Harris's name. I will say Kamala's name
Speaker 1: anyway that I want. To Mace, who is either from
Speaker 1: South Carolina or North Carolina. I'll decide which Carolina she's from.
Speaker 1: Mace called her Kamala. I'll say Kamala's name anyway that
Speaker 1: I want. The only reason that Nancy Mace gets away
Speaker 1: with this sort of stuff is not because they put
Speaker 1: her on Fox News or Newsmax so she has a
Speaker 1: lot of followers on Twitter X. It's because people like
Speaker 1: Abby Phillip and CNN and platform her. I understand CNN
Speaker 1: has been in a kind of slow burning fire and
Speaker 1: they're all trying to get out of there before it
Speaker 1: actually turns into an ash heap metaphorically speaking. I understand
Speaker 1: they're trying anything they can to stop the disastrous collapse
Speaker 1: of ratings, which by the way, is affecting everything in television.
Speaker 1: Aim your profit goals lower and things won't be quite
Speaker 1: so bad. But who's going to do that. That's my
Speaker 1: money that you're not making because nobody's watching. We've got
Speaker 1: to have something else on this network until you get
Speaker 1: to the point where we can do the daffy duck
Speaker 1: bit where somebody self destructs live on television. The ratings
Speaker 1: are going to keep going down. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say it. I'm tempted to say it. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say it. I'm not going to say it. But
Speaker 1: our winner, Marcel Telloma, who is still identified on Twitter
Speaker 1: x as the head of Students for DeSantis. Marcel tweeted
Speaker 1: out a map in which an electoral map, an electoral
Speaker 1: college map in which Trump beats Kamala Harris two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy three electoral votes to two hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: five and explained, with the brilliance that can be conveyed
Speaker 1: only when you are this terse and this absolutely convinced
Speaker 1: that no one has ever thought of something like this before.
Speaker 1: If he writes Trump wins California, he does not need
Speaker 1: a single battleground state. This is the way to victory.
Speaker 1: This is not a troll count. This guy is legit
Speaker 1: well legitimately he was the head of students for Dsantis.
Speaker 1: There is a story about him online from last July.
Speaker 1: Students for DeSantis coalition of university student groups organized by
Speaker 1: Never Back Down said it's reached one hundred total chapters
Speaker 1: across thirty seven states. There's an incredible energy from young voters.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah blah. Governor DeSantis as our next president,
Speaker 1: said Marcel Teloma. The group stir. If Trump wins California,
Speaker 1: he does not need a single battleground state. This is
Speaker 1: the way to victory, Marcel Teloma. By the way, I
Speaker 1: got a better idea, Marcel. You know what, never mind
Speaker 1: having Trump try to win California. The real easy way
Speaker 1: to beat Harris and put Trump back in the White House.
Speaker 1: You ready, you gotta pen, Marcel, the real way to
Speaker 1: do this. Trump, as you know, has the Republican nomination already.
Speaker 1: Now you're with me still? Now he should also get
Speaker 1: the Democratic nomination. All right? This is the way to victory.
Speaker 1: Huh am, I right, Marcel Dechelle, this is the way
Speaker 1: to do it. If he's both candidates, he can't lose. Probably,
Speaker 1: Marcel Talloma, Trump wins California. Today's worst person California in
Speaker 1: the world. Phil Donahue died Sunday in New York. He
Speaker 1: was eighty eight. He had been sick for a while
Speaker 1: since last year at least, And so do our number
Speaker 1: one story and Phil Donahue. This is not about what
Speaker 1: a good guy Phil Donahue was and he was. This
Speaker 1: is not about what a committed liberal he was and
Speaker 1: he was. And this is not about how he changed
Speaker 1: television talk shows television, indeed for good or for ill,
Speaker 1: all of which is true and unquestionable. This is about
Speaker 1: the contention that has echoed for more than two decades
Speaker 1: that Phil Donahue was fired by his last employer and
Speaker 1: had his career ended by his last employer, MSNBC because
Speaker 1: he opposed the Iraq War. That's not why he was fired.
Speaker 1: That might have been why he was fired as soon
Speaker 1: as he was, but that was not why he was fired.
Speaker 1: And the reason I know this is I was there
Speaker 1: and as I saw this play out in real time. Initially,
Speaker 1: I was a disinterested bystander the firing played out, and
Speaker 1: people told me things in real time that they thought
Speaker 1: it was safe for me to know, because what the hell.
Speaker 1: I was only going to be back at MSNBC in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three for a couple of weeks, maybe
Speaker 1: just a couple of days. I'd been hired by NBC
Speaker 1: Sports do the Olympics and other stuff for them. It's
Speaker 1: not like I was going to replace Phil Donahue at
Speaker 1: eight o'clock on MSNBC when they eventually fired him. Well,
Speaker 1: actually I did replace Phil Donahue at eight pm on
Speaker 1: MSNBC when they actually fired him, but that was not
Speaker 1: the plan. That was never the plan. And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden one night, that was plan Phil Donnie
Speaker 1: who had retired in nineteen ninety six because his ratings
Speaker 1: had dropped from first because he was the originator of
Speaker 1: that format, the daytime drama live talk show. Barbara Walters
Speaker 1: did one, Doctor Phil did one. They've all done them.
Speaker 1: This was the original the Donahue Show, a high feminist content,
Speaker 1: a high liberal content, and given the fact that he
Speaker 1: often did really stupid topics, a high intellectual topic and content.
Speaker 1: But by nineteen ninety six he was done and he retired,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand and two MSNBC approached him about
Speaker 1: doing a primetime show on MSNBC, and again when they
Speaker 1: did fire him, the show that replaced him at eight
Speaker 1: o'clock on MSNBC was called Check's Notes Countdown with Keith Alderman.
Speaker 1: And see that's your first clue that Donahue was not
Speaker 1: fired because he opposed IRAQ and Bush Countdown originally started
Speaker 1: as essentially just another hour of the latest news from
Speaker 1: Iraq after we invaded, and gradually, i'd say within two months,
Speaker 1: I began to take a somewhat skeptical view of this.
Speaker 1: But before I went on the air, before they assigned
Speaker 1: me the eight o'clock show and replacing Phil Donahue, I
Speaker 1: had spent about a year doing a daily commentary on
Speaker 1: the ABC Radio network that was carried by a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred stations, including one in New York, in which
Speaker 1: I questioned the sanity of this impending war, and we
Speaker 1: all knew it was coming for a year. We all
Speaker 1: knew it was the only thing the Bush administration had
Speaker 1: been prepared for as of September eleventh, was an a
Speaker 1: war in Iraq. And the only conspiracy I ever put
Speaker 1: any weight in was the idea that they looked at
Speaker 1: nine to eleven and went, oh crap, what are we
Speaker 1: going to do now? Oh my god, it's an excuse
Speaker 1: to go into Iraq. That was the conspiracy of nine
Speaker 1: to eleven. That's the inside job, and that's the extent
Speaker 1: of it. They were prepared to go into Iraq at
Speaker 1: whatever excuse presented itself. If the weather had been bad
Speaker 1: six weeks in a row, they would have said, that's
Speaker 1: Sadam Hussein fault. We're going in. In any event, my
Speaker 1: point is that if you're going to get rid of
Speaker 1: a guy for opposing Iraq and George W. Bush, you
Speaker 1: are not going to replace the Phil Donahue Show with
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman. You are firing Donahue and replacing
Speaker 1: him with Olderman. Bad call, buddy. And again I don't
Speaker 1: defend MSNBC, and I am defending MSNBC because I saw
Speaker 1: this play out in real time. Countdown started it as
Speaker 1: another hour of news from Iraq, and by June I
Speaker 1: was telling the real story about the rescue of Private
Speaker 1: Jessica Lynch, who had been taken hostage by the Iraqis
Speaker 1: when in fact she was in a hospital and they
Speaker 1: were torturing her there, and knowing fact, the doctors turned
Speaker 1: out from the Iraqi hospital had contacted US servicemen through
Speaker 1: intermediaries and said, we don't have enough equipment to take
Speaker 1: care of her. We're worried about permanent spinal damage. Why
Speaker 1: don't you over and get her when we'll stand outside
Speaker 1: and you can go in and get her, And they
Speaker 1: turned it into the raid at Entebbe, and I was
Speaker 1: the first newscaster nationally to go and say, you know,
Speaker 1: there's this report from a Toronto newspaper that that's not
Speaker 1: the way it went down. And Bob Right, the head
Speaker 1: of NBC, called up the head of MSNBC Primetime, my boss,
Speaker 1: Phil Griffin, and said fire him. And Griffin talked him
Speaker 1: down to make him apologize. And I said, apologize to who, Phil,
Speaker 1: And he said, apologize to the troops. I said, I
Speaker 1: didn't even mention the troops. I guess that's why you're
Speaker 1: making the troops look like they didn't know that this
Speaker 1: was I said, so you want me to tell the
Speaker 1: story again and explain that I wasn't trying to insult
Speaker 1: the troops. Yes, that'll subtle it. Otherwise we'll have to
Speaker 1: cancel the show. And I said to myself, it's a
Speaker 1: little demeaning. On the other hand, I got to tell
Speaker 1: the story again. I got to throw a little cold
Speaker 1: water on this idea that this was some sort of rescue.
Speaker 1: So I told the story again. In fact, I said,
Speaker 1: would you like me to apologize again next week? And
Speaker 1: they said yes, And soon we were doing all the
Speaker 1: stories that question whether or not George W. Bush was
Speaker 1: lying to America, which he was. That's what they got
Speaker 1: instead of Phil Donahue. They did not fire Phil Donahue
Speaker 1: over IRAQ to get me, not just to get me,
Speaker 1: but to get eight goddamned years of me saying this,
Speaker 1: screaming at George Bush getting on the cover of The
Speaker 1: New Yorker. Shut the hell up, mister president. They fired
Speaker 1: Phil Donahue in two thousand and three for the following reasons.
Speaker 1: Number one, they made NBC management and MSNBC in particular,
Speaker 1: they made the classic daypart mistake. I have talked about
Speaker 1: day parts before. If you remember Katie Kurk being lured
Speaker 1: away from the Today Show on NBC to host the
Speaker 1: CBS Evening News and being an utter disaster, that was
Speaker 1: a dapart mistake. The daypart is the mornings, the afternoons,
Speaker 1: the middays, the evenings, the late nights, the overnights. It's
Speaker 1: a radio term, but it applies to television. And the
Speaker 1: simple truth about day parts is just because you are
Speaker 1: popular in one day part does not mean you will
Speaker 1: automatically be popular in another. In fact, it may mean
Speaker 1: you will be unpopular. I learned this at the age
Speaker 1: of thirty two. No earlier than that. I learned this
Speaker 1: at the age of twenty nine. I went from KTLA
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, where my sports cast was on at
Speaker 1: ten minutes to eleven o'clock every night, and it was
Speaker 1: the intellectual thing to watch on TV. I went from
Speaker 1: KTLA down the street to KCBS, from channel five to
Speaker 1: Channel two, where the sports cast came on not at
Speaker 1: ten fifty every night, but at eleven thirty every night.
Speaker 1: It was the same sports cast. I was the same guy,
Speaker 1: the lighting was a little bit better, the material was
Speaker 1: a little bit better, and everybody hated me because that
Speaker 1: was a different day part. Everybody who liked the thing
Speaker 1: and thought it was intellectual, they were going to bed
Speaker 1: at eleven o'clock. They were literally not going to stay
Speaker 1: up till eleven thirty. All the people who were watching
Speaker 1: me at eleven thirty were the people who did not
Speaker 1: have to be at their jobs early the next morning,
Speaker 1: people who were fungible, let's put it that way, in
Speaker 1: terms of their career. That's how I learned about day parts.
Speaker 1: Katie Kuric went from The Today Show, where she was
Speaker 1: a co host and when you got tired of her on.
Speaker 1: Then came that guy who later wound up to be
Speaker 1: a you know, and then she'd come back on when
Speaker 1: you were tired of him. And they took her and
Speaker 1: she mostly did interviews in little fluff pieces, and she
Speaker 1: was a happy gal. And they put her on the
Speaker 1: CBS Evening News, where her job was to read the
Speaker 1: teleprompter at six thirty at night, and nobody knew her
Speaker 1: at six thirty at night because she'd been on at
Speaker 1: seven thirty in the morning, and everybody hated her because
Speaker 1: she wasn't that good at reading the teleprompter and she
Speaker 1: couldn't do those little fluffy interviews. It was a newsreading job,
Speaker 1: and it was a disaster. And it happens again and again.
Speaker 1: And somebody, several somebodies, including the people who spent millions
Speaker 1: of dollars on the MSNBC Phil Donahue Show, thought that
Speaker 1: because Phil Donna You had been a brilliant success between
Speaker 1: the years nineteen sixty seven and nineteen ninety six on
Speaker 1: over the air television, usually running at one o'clock in
Speaker 1: the afternoon or two o'clock in the afternoon, that he
Speaker 1: would be a success at eight o'clock at night on
Speaker 1: cable in two thousand and two Daypart plus the other
Speaker 1: great mistake, which is a success on broadcast television, was
Speaker 1: automatically a success on cable television or vice versa. That
Speaker 1: was the primary reason they had violated the first rule.
Speaker 1: The show was doomed from the day they signed them
Speaker 1: to the contract. They also had another problem to get
Speaker 1: him to come out of retirement, even though he wanted to.
Speaker 1: He's from television. He wanted to keep doing it. I'm
Speaker 1: from television. I want to keep doing it. It's part
Speaker 1: of our psychological problems. Even though he wanted to do it,
Speaker 1: he knew he had them over a barrel. It was MSNBC.
Speaker 1: It was a minefield. There were littered corpses everywhere of
Speaker 1: shows that had not succeeded. The eight PM thing alone
Speaker 1: was a disaster area. Between my two stints there, I
Speaker 1: was gone for four years and four months and there
Speaker 1: were seventeen different shows on on at eight o'clock. You
Speaker 1: had to get what you wanted why you could get it,
Speaker 1: And Phil Donahue said, I want a huge staff, and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to Secocca's freaking New Jersey to do
Speaker 1: my show. I'm going to do it from thirty Rocker.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do it at all, and it's
Speaker 1: going to have a live audience, and I want a
Speaker 1: staff of three times the size of anybody else's. I
Speaker 1: want three executive producers. And I went, okay, mister Donahue, Okay,
Speaker 1: mister Donahue, Okay, mister Donahue. The show now cost about
Speaker 1: ten times as much to produce as any other hour
Speaker 1: on cable news, meaning that it didn't just have to
Speaker 1: do as well as the other shows on MSNBC or
Speaker 1: even slightly better to lift up the boat, but just
Speaker 1: to pay for itself, it basically had to do ten
Speaker 1: times better ratings than any other show on cable television.
Speaker 1: And guess what it didn't. The Donahue Show on MSNBC
Speaker 1: premiered in August of two thousand and two. The rating
Speaker 1: was zero point one. The network was averaging in its
Speaker 1: depths zero point two the Phil Donahue Show, after initial success,
Speaker 1: the highest rating they'd ever gotten for a premiere show,
Speaker 1: even mine, sank to about half of the average audience
Speaker 1: on MSNBC. Was it because he talked a lot about
Speaker 1: Iraq and doubted the reasonableness of going to war there? Maybe,
Speaker 1: maybe it was the fact that he was on at
Speaker 1: eight o'clock at night, and everybody who used to watch
Speaker 1: him was either dead or looking for him at two
Speaker 1: o'clock in the afternoon. Back to the day part subject. So,
Speaker 1: how come when the story of Phil Donahue's firing by
Speaker 1: MSNBC as the Iraq War started always points out that
Speaker 1: Donahue Show and Donahue were fired and canceled while it
Speaker 1: had the highest ratings on MSNBC. Well, they left out
Speaker 1: one detail in that, which was they had the highest
Speaker 1: ratings on MSNBC at the time that the show was canceled.
Speaker 1: For the month of February two thousand and three, it
Speaker 1: averaged four hundred and forty six thousand viewers. Just to
Speaker 1: give you a relative idea, at these sort of apex
Speaker 1: of countdown on MSNBC two thousand and nine, we did
Speaker 1: an average of a million, two hundred thousand viewers a night.
Speaker 1: Four hundred and forty six thousand was the best at
Speaker 1: MSNBC in two thousand and three as this war approached.
Speaker 1: It was terrible. It was a low number. It wasn't
Speaker 1: that much bigger than anybody else's, and it sure wasn't
Speaker 1: ten times bigger than every other cable show in the business.
Speaker 1: It had the highest ratings that month, and they canceled
Speaker 1: it anyway because it was hemorrhaging money. And my friend
Speaker 1: of the time, Phil Griffin, who had filled me in
Speaker 1: on the entirety of this story as it unfolded, said
Speaker 1: that they were only getting those high ratings because they
Speaker 1: were spending, now on top of everything else, a fortune
Speaker 1: in advertising. They bought every local commercial they could get.
Speaker 1: They put bus ads in most of the major cities
Speaker 1: trying to get people to watch Donahue. Was a desperate
Speaker 1: attempt to keep Phil Donahue on the air. As he
Speaker 1: put it, an unfortunate term, and Phil was known for
Speaker 1: them at the time of February. In March of two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, we had to carpet bomb with advertising
Speaker 1: as like, Phil, what about IRAQ? Oh, you're right, buddy.
Speaker 1: The reason we are left with the impression that MSNBC
Speaker 1: canceled the late Phil Donahues show because he was opposed
Speaker 1: to IRAQ was Phil Donahue wanted it that way. I
Speaker 1: understand this fully well. I think what happened to me.
Speaker 1: The biggest lesson, I think is the how corporate media
Speaker 1: shapes our opinions and our coverage. Donahue said, this was
Speaker 1: a decision, my decision, meaning relating to the cancelation of
Speaker 1: his show, the decision to release me came from far above.
Speaker 1: This was not an assistant program director who decided to
Speaker 1: separate me from MSNBC. They were terrified of the anti
Speaker 1: war voice. Let me interrupt to say these things are true.
Speaker 1: They were terrified of the anti war voice. My own
Speaker 1: experience over the Jessica Lynch story would explain that. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, of course, it wasn't the assistant program
Speaker 1: director who separated him from MSNBC. It was the president
Speaker 1: of MSNBC, the president of NBC News, and the president
Speaker 1: of NBC because that's the decisions they reserved for themselves,
Speaker 1: because those are the egotistical ones, the ones where you
Speaker 1: can call in some TV star and say either you
Speaker 1: do it my way or you're fired. To resume mister
Speaker 1: Dona Hues's comments, they were terrified of the anti war voice,
Speaker 1: and that is not an overstatement. Anti war voices were
Speaker 1: not popular, and if your general electric, you certainly don't
Speaker 1: want an anti war voice on a cable channel that
Speaker 1: you own. Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer. So by
Speaker 1: the way, I had to have two conservatives on for
Speaker 1: every liberal. I could have Richard Pearl on alone. Richard
Speaker 1: pearl was a diplomat in quotes who worked for Bush.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't have Dennis Kucinich on alone, former mayor
Speaker 1: of Cleveland, who was most anti war. I was considered
Speaker 1: two liberals. It really is funny almost when you look
Speaker 1: back on how the management was just frozen by the
Speaker 1: anti war voice. We were skolds, we weren't patriotic Erican
Speaker 1: people disagreed with us, and we weren't good for business,
Speaker 1: all of which is true, but all of which somewhat
Speaker 1: exaggerates the point here. If half a million people and
Speaker 1: it wasn't that many were watching Phil Donahue every night,
Speaker 1: half a million people in a country that even then
Speaker 1: was pushing three hundred million isn't very much. His anti
Speaker 1: war voice was an annoyance to these people, an embarrassment
Speaker 1: to people like Bob Wright, who ran NBC. Phil Donahue
Speaker 1: treated it as if he was I don't know, he
Speaker 1: was the guy amiel Zola writing jacquesues against the French
Speaker 1: government in eighteen ninety something Phil also forgot in making
Speaker 1: this statement that in the fall of two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: he was on the air on MSNBC, alongside the late
Speaker 1: Jerry Nackman, who also had a show that wasn't doing well,
Speaker 1: talking about they're terrible ratings. They're going to fire us,
Speaker 1: Nachman said to Donahue, and Donahue said, yeah, they are.
Speaker 1: That was in the fall of two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: Weeks after the Donahue Show had premiered. There was talk
Speaker 1: of moving Donahue to the middle of the day. There
Speaker 1: was talk of moving Donahue somewhere else. There was talk
Speaker 1: of putting him on a hey hiatus. Instead, everybody got
Speaker 1: fired except poor Knackman, who got sick. The reason I
Speaker 1: was at MSNBC was Jerry Knackman was sick. They didn't
Speaker 1: have enough anchors. They asked me to fill in for
Speaker 1: a few days, and the next thing you knew, I
Speaker 1: was doing the show again. Would they have fired Phil
Speaker 1: Donahue if Bush had said, we have fixed this, there
Speaker 1: will be no war in Iraq? Yes, they would have
Speaker 1: fired him. It was hemorrhaging money. It was putting out
Speaker 1: ten dollars for every dollar it took in. Would they
Speaker 1: have fired him that fast, no way. They were short
Speaker 1: of staff. They were so short of staff they brought
Speaker 1: me back. And I had left five years before in flames.
Speaker 1: That's why I was there. I'm wrapping this up. New
Speaker 1: York Magazine in twenty ten, I believe, wrote a long
Speaker 1: story about the then climaxing cable wars, particularly between CNN
Speaker 1: and MSNBC. Gabe Sherman, I think, wrote this with the
Speaker 1: surgeon patriotism. Following the terrorist attacks of nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: NBC CEO Bob Wright told Shapiro, that would be Neil Shapiro,
Speaker 1: then the head of NBC News, that MSNBC should try
Speaker 1: and out flank Fox on the right. We have to
Speaker 1: be more conservative than they are, right, told Shapiro pointedly,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely true. By the way, Bob Wright actually thought
Speaker 1: you could be to further right than Fox was at
Speaker 1: that time, And for years I thought he was an
Speaker 1: idiot who just had these psycho drama ideas going on
Speaker 1: in his head. Well, of course, then came Trump. He
Speaker 1: was right, he just didn't know how to do it.
Speaker 1: Swirling graphics of the American flag, New York Magazine wrote
Speaker 1: soon became a fixture on the network, along with the
Speaker 1: tagline America's News Channel, it said, in graphics that were
Speaker 1: taped to all the cameras so that all the anchors
Speaker 1: would see it and say it Erica's News Channel. Despite
Speaker 1: the network's emphasis on flag waving, MSNBC showed how little
Speaker 1: it understood the Fox model when, with Phil Griffin as
Speaker 1: MSNBC's primetime head, it hired the liberal Phil Donahue, who'd
Speaker 1: been Griffin's childhood idol, out of retirement in April two
Speaker 1: thousand and two to anchor an eight pm primetime talk
Speaker 1: show that would challenge Bill O'Reilly. The show debuted with
Speaker 1: the highest ratings ever for an MSNBC program, attracting more
Speaker 1: than a million viewers in its first night, but within
Speaker 1: a month the audience was cut in half. Standard for MSNBC.
Speaker 1: Rita Cosby once got nearly million viewers her first night,
Speaker 1: by the end of the week, she was down to
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy five thousand to resume. At the
Speaker 1: same time, executives expressed increasing unease about Donahue's vocal opposition
Speaker 1: to the looming war in Iraq. At a time when
Speaker 1: red meat patriotism prevailed, Donahue booked anti war guests like
Speaker 1: Michael Moore, Rosie O'Donnell, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins. By
Speaker 1: the way, I should point out that years later, when
Speaker 1: I was trying to explain to Phil Griffin that Rachel
Speaker 1: Maddow was the next star of MSNBC and she should
Speaker 1: be given her own show, he tried to hire Rosie
Speaker 1: O'Donnell instead. Soon, the Donahue pro problem threatened Griffin's job.
Speaker 1: In a tense phone conversation, NBC News President Shapiro told
Speaker 1: MSNBC president Eric Sorenson to fire Griffin, but Sorenson pushed back,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that, he told Shapiro. Number One,
Speaker 1: Phil's been loyal to me for a long time. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's right. Number Two, we're shorthanded. We have
Speaker 1: all this talent and he's the one who's managing it.
Speaker 1: Part two was a lie. They didn't have any talent
Speaker 1: at all. That's why I was back there. As a compromise,
Speaker 1: Griffin's job was spared, but he was stripped of responsibility
Speaker 1: for the show. The new producer insisted on a precise
Speaker 1: numerical balance between liberals and conservatives. Donahue's problems only increased
Speaker 1: when Chris Matthews let it be known that he wanted
Speaker 1: Donahue off the air. Matthews was a rising force at
Speaker 1: the network, with a reported salary of five million dollars
Speaker 1: a year. He cultivated former ge CEO Jack Welch and
Speaker 1: had the ear of the NBAC CEO, Bob Wright. The
Speaker 1: two summered together on Nantucket and you know the limerick
Speaker 1: about Nantucket. Matthew saw himself as MSNBC's biggest star. Well,
Speaker 1: he was MSNBC's biggest something, and he was upset that
Speaker 1: the network was pumping significant resources into Donahue's show. Again,
Speaker 1: I would never defend Chris Matthews under any circumstances, but
Speaker 1: he's absolutely right about this. Matthews was delivering ratings with
Speaker 1: almost no advertising, ratings that were usually much higher than
Speaker 1: those of Phil Donahue, and here thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars in advertising were spent daily to try to sell
Speaker 1: people on a Phil Donahue show that nobody wanted, whether
Speaker 1: it offered a solution for world peace and eternal life.
Speaker 1: In the fall of two thousand and two, US News
Speaker 1: and World Report ran a gossip item that had Matthew
Speaker 1: saying over lunch in Washington that if Donahue stays on
Speaker 1: the air, he could bring down the network. After the
Speaker 1: item was published, Matthews showed up at Donahue's office and apologized.
Speaker 1: He didn't deny it. Donahue remembers Matthews made a hobby
Speaker 1: within MSNBC of trying to get the rest of us fired.
Speaker 1: He tried to do that to me in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight during the coverage of the Republican National Convention,
Speaker 1: when we got removed because of something I said. Matthews
Speaker 1: had been saying equally stupid things and usually factually inaccurate ones.
Speaker 1: But he did call Jeff Zooker and then Jeff Immelt,
Speaker 1: the head of GE, and say you should fire Olderman
Speaker 1: and keep me. Back to the New York Magazine article.
Speaker 1: With the war looming, Sorenson and Griffin decided to take
Speaker 1: him off the air to make war for twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven make room for twenty four seven war coverage.
Speaker 1: Matthews told me he had nothing to do with the decision.
Speaker 1: That's true. They never listened to him. For Griffin, the
Speaker 1: firing of his childhood idol was a painful experience. The
Speaker 1: guy that got me into TV probably hates my guts,
Speaker 1: and I wish he didn't because I love the guy Griffin,
Speaker 1: says Griffin, who prevented Rachel Maddow from appearing on MSNBC
Speaker 1: for several years as an anchor. Anyway, he was paid
Speaker 1: back by the fact that somehow Rachel has forgotten this
Speaker 1: and made him the president of her production company. In
Speaker 1: any event, So all that was playing out, and I
Speaker 1: was just hanging around for a couple of days filling
Speaker 1: in for Jerry Knackman who was just out sick. And
Speaker 1: then the diagnosis came back about how sick Jerry Nackman was,
Speaker 1: and suddenly they didn't have enough anchors. Less Your Holt,
Speaker 1: who was doing something like four or five hours a
Speaker 1: day on MSNBC, was suddenly called to New York to
Speaker 1: do more action coverage from NBC News about the Iraq War.
Speaker 1: And now MSNBC had no anchors, They had nobody who
Speaker 1: was familiar to their audience, They had nobody. Nacman was sick.
Speaker 1: They certainly weren't going to have Phil Donahue anchor Iraq
Speaker 1: war coverage. And now Lester Holt was being taken away
Speaker 1: from them, and Brian Williams was already in Iraq personally
Speaker 1: looking for Sodom Hussein or whatever he was doing in Iraq.
Speaker 1: So the plan was canceled. Dona Hughes show hires somebody
Speaker 1: good like Sam Donaldson and have him do a show
Speaker 1: called Countdown with Sam Donaldson. I've already told you how
Speaker 1: they turned that into Countdown with Keith Olderman. But the
Speaker 1: gist of it was, as I said earlier, if there
Speaker 1: had been no threat of Iraq war, or if everybody
Speaker 1: had said, you know, Phil Donahue is right, this is asinine,
Speaker 1: This is power greedy. This is Bush trying to use
Speaker 1: nine to eleven in the most insincere and brutal way
Speaker 1: possible as an excuse for an unrelated war. If everybody
Speaker 1: had said that, if Bush had resigned from the presidency
Speaker 1: and Cheney with him, if they had made Michael Moore
Speaker 1: President of the United States, they still would have fired
Speaker 1: Phil Donahue because he lost money. Phil Donahue Television Hall
Speaker 1: of Famer, not fired over Iraq. I don't know the
Speaker 1: damage I can do here. I mean, I know it's
Speaker 1: disrespectful in many ways to have brought that up now,
Speaker 1: But when else is it relevant? This is a topical
Speaker 1: subject the passing of Phil Donahue anyway. Did they mistreat him? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Was it his fault that they spent ten times as
Speaker 1: much money as he was making. No, it was not
Speaker 1: his fault, but the idea that he then turned it
Speaker 1: into it is all about it. It was not all
Speaker 1: about it. Please share this podcast with somebody who doesn't
Speaker 1: listen for whatever reason. Friday's regular episode and then the
Speaker 1: bulletin on Trump insisting that the Medal of Honor winners
Speaker 1: were only as important as the Congressional Medal of Honors
Speaker 1: that he gave out to corporate donors that drew a
Speaker 1: total audience of a quarter million. So thank you. Keep
Speaker 1: it up any who. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil,
Speaker 1: the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most
Speaker 1: of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister
Speaker 1: Ray was on guitars, bass and drums. It was produced
Speaker 1: by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
Speaker 1: by the best baseball stadium organists ever, Nancy Faust. The
Speaker 1: sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written
Speaker 1: by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music
Speaker 1: arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My
Speaker 1: announcer today was my friend Larry David, and everything else
Speaker 1: was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this.
Speaker 1: The seventy eighth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
Speaker 1: the three hundred and twenty first day since convicted Felon
Speaker 1: Daventia J. Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
Speaker 1: government of the United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing
Speaker 1: hearing if it happens, because say what you will about
Speaker 1: Trump's lawyers, whatever the deadline is, they are never ready
Speaker 1: for it. Use the mental health system you have this
Speaker 1: President Biden used residential immunity to stop him from doing
Speaker 1: it again while we still can. And anti Semitic, anti immigration,
Speaker 1: gun nut Republicans, please stop shooting at Trump. The next
Speaker 1: scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news warrants till
Speaker 1: the next one. I'm Keith Oldremman. Good Morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, then good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldreman 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.