Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Trump appropriates the image of Jesus Christ again. This time
Speaker 1: it is not him pretending to be Jesus, it's him.
Speaker 1: How does one phrase something like this? It looks in
Speaker 1: this image like Trump is about to make out with Jesus.
Speaker 1: I mean, none of the components here would constitute my
Speaker 1: areas of expertise. But Jesus is clearly fondling Trump's chef,
Speaker 1: and Trump's eyes are closed in ecstasy. And I don't
Speaker 1: think it's religious ecstasy. Hey watch where you put your
Speaker 1: hands Jesus as Americans ranging from atheists to papists to
Speaker 1: Jesus impersonators recoil. Trump put this out just three days
Speaker 1: after his image of himself as Jesus or is doctor Jesus?
Speaker 1: Or is doctor Johnny Jesus or whatever he claimed it was.
Speaker 1: The radical left lunatics might not like this, but I
Speaker 1: think it's quite nice, he wrote. Apart from the fact
Speaker 1: that you are seeing how Trump's life of rationalization works,
Speaker 1: his existence fits the psychological phenomenon known as no true Scotsman.
Speaker 1: This is not trivial. This is not something that just
Speaker 1: pisss off a couple of religious nuts, It pisss off
Speaker 1: an amazing variety of Americans on a visceral level, somewhere
Speaker 1: approximating that of Trump, having insulted each of their mothers individually. Trump,
Speaker 1: though reflexively tells himself his supporters get it, and of
Speaker 1: course anybody who doesn't get it is a lunatic, so
Speaker 1: isn't a supporter, so doesn't count. So he has one
Speaker 1: hundred percent support. How does he sleep at night? You ask?
Speaker 1: That's how? In point of fact, if we accept the
Speaker 1: idea that Trump's cult, his beneficiaries, his enablers, his junta,
Speaker 1: have long since come to terms with the fact that
Speaker 1: they don't care if he's crazy, they don't care if
Speaker 1: he's evil, They don't care if every moment he is
Speaker 1: in power threatens the life of everybody and every animal
Speaker 1: and every plant on the planet, including them. So long
Speaker 1: as the power and the money keep on rolling in,
Speaker 1: we are, from their point of view, watching something worse
Speaker 1: than all of that end of the world. So what
Speaker 1: there's the rapture? This threatens the power and the money now, Oh,
Speaker 1: because it touches something that his dwindling base is enslaved
Speaker 1: to that entire spectrum running from deeply considered belief at
Speaker 1: the one end and then superstition and fear on the
Speaker 1: other end. I mean, this is so bad that after
Speaker 1: the first one, even Speaker Mike Johnson, who is Speaker
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson rather than ex Speaker Mike Johnson, because he
Speaker 1: is capable of greeting any evidence of Trump's brain turning
Speaker 1: to tapioca by saying, I didn't see it, I didn't
Speaker 1: hear I didn't read it, I didn't smell it, I
Speaker 1: didn't taste it. I didn't put my hands on its chest.
Speaker 1: Even Mike Johnson has noticed the Jesus stuff.
Speaker 2: Speaker Johnson asked you at the Presidence, and how Jesus
Speaker 2: I'm talked with the President about it, as says, I
Speaker 2: saw it and told him.
Speaker 3: That I don't think it was being received in the
Speaker 3: same way he intended, as he agreed, and he pulled
Speaker 3: it down.
Speaker 1: That was the very thing. He explained how he saw that.
Speaker 1: And I don't think he thought it was sacrilegious at all.
Speaker 2: So do you think he should have to?
Speaker 1: I think he respect to other facts.
Speaker 2: We're doing it.
Speaker 1: So, Mike, what about this new one with him and
Speaker 1: Jesus and the chest rub no comment. There is no
Speaker 1: question that the Iran war, the Epstein files, the economy,
Speaker 1: half a dozen other crises are causing Republican support to
Speaker 1: bleed out as the midterms approach. But if they do
Speaker 1: lose the House, especially if they lose the Senate, and
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer, not a reliable source, but certainly not a
Speaker 1: wild eyed one, said yesterday he thinks the Democrats are
Speaker 1: going to take the Senate this year. I guess he's
Speaker 1: going to resign and put somebody else in charge of
Speaker 1: the campaign. But he thinks the Democrats are going to
Speaker 1: win the Senate in the midterms. And if the Republicans
Speaker 1: lose the House at especially the Senate, depending on your viewpoint,
Speaker 1: either thank Jesus or blame Jesus, but not the Pope.
Speaker 1: The Republicans are in fact enjoying Trump doubling down on
Speaker 1: that part of this equation. Will someone please tell the Pope?
Speaker 1: He wrote, then his tired line about Iran killing protesters,
Speaker 1: the protesters Trump said he would protect and then didn't
Speaker 1: protect them, and saying all this is if Trump doesn't
Speaker 1: have protesters killed here, but about the Pope. If you're
Speaker 1: like me, spiritual, but you think all religions are wrong
Speaker 1: and maybe their leaders are a step down from telemarketers.
Speaker 1: You have to stand back and try to understand this.
Speaker 1: You have to look at it carefully and understand. This
Speaker 1: is as if three quarters of the world's population identified
Speaker 1: as firm fundamental believers in and to some degree is
Speaker 1: having based important decisions in their own lives, including how
Speaker 1: they live, who they marry, who they vote for, who
Speaker 1: they will comfort, who they will kill, based on which
Speaker 1: Marvel Entertainment French they like best. These are not Marvel
Speaker 1: Comics fans who have preferences and sort of chuckled at
Speaker 1: the other guys like the other ones. These are Spider
Speaker 1: Man fans who in their heart want to see all
Speaker 1: the Avengers fans dead. The Pope is the Pope Catholic?
Speaker 1: Why yes, yes he is. Is Mike Johnson Catholic? Why no,
Speaker 1: No he's not. He's a leader in the Baptist Church.
Speaker 1: Is Trump's base Catholic?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: Almost, not at all. Would Trump's space actually have supported
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy, a Catholic for president alive or as
Speaker 1: a reincarnated Catholic. No, no, of course not. Is Congressman
Speaker 1: Troy Nell's Catholic. No, no, and I really would find
Speaker 1: it hard to believe he's religious at all, but he's
Speaker 1: certainly not Catholic.
Speaker 4: Not after this, I've obviously the Pope needs to keep
Speaker 4: his business into leading his so to speak, leading the church,
Speaker 4: and probably stay out of the political arena. He doesn't
Speaker 4: need to be getting involved in the political arena. Go
Speaker 4: lead your church, but stay out of the politics.
Speaker 1: Right elect it.
Speaker 4: We didn't elect the Pope to be the president or
Speaker 4: be anything else. So just keep his nose in the
Speaker 4: church's business and stay out of the political arena.
Speaker 1: This is nothing new. Obviously, MAGA views Pope Leo as
Speaker 1: just another impediment, in large part because right wing governments
Speaker 1: have been attacking the Catholic Church since King Henry the Eighth,
Speaker 1: often with great reason. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Speaker 1: As I said, I don't care, especially although I have
Speaker 1: been told that in the nineties the Pope used to
Speaker 1: watch me on SportsCenter, and of course, to borrow from
Speaker 1: the other legendary Chicago White Sox fan besides the Pope,
Speaker 1: Jeene Shepherd the o tour of a Christmas story, I
Speaker 1: will tend to listen to a white Sox fan more
Speaker 1: than any other human and about eternity and suffering, because,
Speaker 1: as shep wrote, if I were going to storm a pillbox,
Speaker 1: going to shear utter certain death, and the colonel said,
Speaker 1: Shepherd picked six guys, I'd pick six white Sox fans
Speaker 1: because they have known death every day of their lives
Speaker 1: and it holds no terror for them. That's your Pope.
Speaker 1: The problem with the strutting of clowns like Troy Nells,
Speaker 1: who took the cigar out of his mouth briefly to
Speaker 1: give those comments is when they try to expand, as
Speaker 1: Nils did, their potshots at one religion, which I can
Speaker 1: support in principle, into some kind of dictum against going
Speaker 1: into the political lane by all Bible thumpers. Well, if
Speaker 1: religionists can't talk about politics, that means no support for
Speaker 1: Trump from Franklin Graham or from the crazy White House
Speaker 1: advisor PAULA White, or from you know, any megachurch or
Speaker 1: evangelic or that whole crowd that cheered as Trump said
Speaker 1: he was eliminating the Johnson rule and now pastors could
Speaker 1: campaign for him from the pulpit, or any of the
Speaker 1: End Time's clowns or any of the dozens of active
Speaker 1: Republicans who have insisted in the last two months, we
Speaker 1: are in Iran because Israel is owned biblical support. In
Speaker 1: other words, explain that the Pope has no right to
Speaker 1: talk politics, and you wipe out virtually the entire rationale
Speaker 1: for supporting Israel as it is understood by Trump's own cult,
Speaker 1: because Israel to them is only one thing. It's a
Speaker 1: means towards the rapture, which some days I sit around
Speaker 1: thinking the rapture can't happen soon enough. The other question
Speaker 1: raised by Trump's continuing fights with the Pope and Jesus
Speaker 1: is simply how many wars can Trump start and handle
Speaker 1: at the same time, War against the Pope, war against Iran,
Speaker 1: war against reality. The last two have become the same.
Speaker 1: Now he again insists he is blockading the Strait of Hormoz,
Speaker 1: when the Navy is clearly not blockading the Strait of
Speaker 1: horm moves the Navy is blockading the ports of Iran.
Speaker 1: He can't tell the difference. Many of the ships from
Speaker 1: the ports of Iran would go through the Strait of Hormuz,
Speaker 1: but that's not a blockade of the Strait of Horror moves.
Speaker 1: Trump does not understand this. It's too much trouble for him.
Speaker 1: He probably also doesn't understand when Iran comes back as
Speaker 1: it did yesterday, to say, it will now raise the
Speaker 1: ante and if Trump doesn't down from the blockade, he
Speaker 1: literally couldn't tell where it is from his assor's elbow.
Speaker 1: It will now attack and block shipping in the Red Sea.
Speaker 1: But don't worry about that, explains Scott Besant, adjusting his
Speaker 1: glasses for the four millionth time and making sure his
Speaker 1: head doesn't fall off. Gas will be back under four
Speaker 1: dollars a gallon in the summer, the summer which was
Speaker 1: when it was supposed to be under two dollars a
Speaker 1: gallon before Trump's plans were screwed up by that evil trader,
Speaker 1: checks notes Trump. It's just too bad Trump's brain did
Speaker 1: not live long enough to see any of this. These
Speaker 1: quotes are from the transcript of Maria Bartiromo's interview with
Speaker 1: him yesterday. I just can't play clips of Maria Bartiromo.
Speaker 1: I don't think I can legally. I just can't listen
Speaker 1: to that voice. She says about the war. You keep saying,
Speaker 1: what was is this war over? Trump says, I think
Speaker 1: it's close to over. Yeah, he's previously said it's over.
Speaker 1: I view it as very close over. If I pulled
Speaker 1: up stakes right now, it would take them twenty years
Speaker 1: to rebuild that country. We're not finished. We'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: I think they want to make a deal. He has
Speaker 1: no concept that there is anything to a war besides
Speaker 1: blowing stuff up. Second topic, Bartaromo, did you see that
Speaker 1: Britain suffered the biggest growth forecast downgrade in the G seven,
Speaker 1: so their economy is impacted. Trump's answer, they got to
Speaker 1: stop with the windmills. No, true, Scotsman, Bartiomo. Moving to
Speaker 1: domestic issues. What are your top priorities now for the
Speaker 1: economy for the rest of the year. Trump, to be honest,
Speaker 1: we are doing so well. You look at this. I
Speaker 1: hit the fifty thousand dow mark. Look at me. I
Speaker 1: made poopy in the potty trainer, mommy. Trump really is
Speaker 1: fighting reality now, not just avoiding it. He again insists
Speaker 1: he's already beaten Iran, while insisting there will be ceasefire
Speaker 1: talks again minutely, or at least talks about starting new
Speaker 1: talks or I wonder if Trump is even being told
Speaker 1: how bad it is going for America, in the Gulf
Speaker 1: right now and in the world generally. Or is this
Speaker 1: like Germany nineteen forty two, where citizens and many government
Speaker 1: officials were actually told don't worry about it. The Luftwaffe
Speaker 1: has already totally destroyed New York City. There are lots
Speaker 1: of things in history. I don't know. One of the
Speaker 1: fun things about history is finding out those things. But
Speaker 1: it still startles me when I read something like this.
Speaker 1: This was in the in house magazine of NBC. The
Speaker 1: transmitter was just radio then from January nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: and I tripped over this doing some other online research
Speaker 1: the other day. Quoting it, German prisoners transported to the
Speaker 1: United States express amazement that New York Skyline remains intact.
Speaker 1: Say they heard broadcasts describing how their planes had smashed
Speaker 1: our skyscrapers to rubble. There's just a sample of how
Speaker 1: our enemies use the radio to delude their own people.
Speaker 1: Put into practice Hitler's despicable theory that if lies are
Speaker 1: big enough, everyone will believe them. Make a Nazi perversion
Speaker 1: of an invention that is one of the world's greatest
Speaker 1: sources of good. One quote, NBC nineteen forty three apart
Speaker 1: from the fact that what you heard described in there
Speaker 1: is the America that much of MAGA wants to see
Speaker 1: in our future. And I mean I often get the
Speaker 1: feeling that given enough time FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, even
Speaker 1: from that influential but pretty dry office, even Brendan Carr,
Speaker 1: will somehow commit war crimes someday. I keep thinking that
Speaker 1: our present day version of the astonished German POWs finding
Speaker 1: out Goebbels was lying is Trump. I don't think it
Speaker 1: takes much effort to convince him not to listen to
Speaker 1: the bad news you don't want to tell him, But
Speaker 1: I think they don't tell him like the bad news
Speaker 1: about how it's going abroad, where the newly elected leader
Speaker 1: of Hungary, mad gr Pater Peter Magir if you prefer,
Speaker 1: just announced his government will not continue Victor orbn's policy
Speaker 1: of funding Seapack. The what now Hungary was funding Seapack?
Speaker 1: Wait wait wait wait wait. As my old colleague Juliet
Speaker 1: Kayam noted, Trump directed aid to Hungary, then Hungary sent
Speaker 1: money to Seapack. So is this a story of Trump
Speaker 1: washing taxpayer money and illegally contributing it to his own
Speaker 1: campaign if anybody would like to look at that, or
Speaker 1: talking about foreign bad news, the whole Pope thing. Guess
Speaker 1: where that's not going down? Well, Italy, you know where
Speaker 1: the Vatican is. We're an Italian reporter called Trump Trump
Speaker 1: who was apparently listed in the Yellow Pages under both
Speaker 1: despot and crackpot, and he got Trump to trash the
Speaker 1: Pope and Georgia Maloney, Or how it's going in England,
Speaker 1: where a Prime Minister Starmer once again yesterday insisted the
Speaker 1: UK will not get involved in Trump's war in Iran.
Speaker 1: But Ed Davey, who is the leader of the Liberal Democrats,
Speaker 1: who may be the third most influential party right now,
Speaker 1: maybe the second. What with the Conservatives melting trying to
Speaker 1: coalesce an all party move to convince King Charles not
Speaker 1: to make his scheduled state visit here, the King of
Speaker 1: England not to show up for the two hundred and
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of this country.
Speaker 5: A whole civilization will die tonight. Words I never thought
Speaker 5: I would hear from an American president, And though Donald
Speaker 5: Trump thankfully didn't follow through this time, these words are
Speaker 5: a start reminder of how reckless, immoral, and completely outside
Speaker 5: the bounds of international law. This president is, regrettably he
Speaker 5: is no friend of the United Kingdom. He's no leader
Speaker 5: of the free world. He is a dangerous and corrupt gangster,
Speaker 5: and that is how we must treat him. So will
Speaker 5: the Prime Minister advise the King to cool off his
Speaker 5: state visits to Washington before it's too late, because I
Speaker 5: really fear for what Trump might say or do while
Speaker 5: our king is forced to stand by his side. We
Speaker 5: cannot put his majesty in that position.
Speaker 1: You know, that really is the correct play for the King.
Speaker 1: By the way, among other things that are calm now
Speaker 1: but will blow up when Charles gets here. He won't
Speaker 1: be meeting with Epstein survivors, which is just that bad.
Speaker 1: As bad a plan as you could consider very unfortunate,
Speaker 1: as the most significant world figure implicated in the Epstein
Speaker 1: files just happens to be the King's brother. I think
Speaker 1: that may come up and closer to home. There are
Speaker 1: problems here too that Trump probably doesn't know about. One
Speaker 1: group of Democrats in the House is gathering steam for
Speaker 1: an impeachment bill, which will not succeed for another nine months.
Speaker 1: It won't, and a second group is gathering steam for
Speaker 1: a bill demanding that the Trump cabinet invoke the twenty
Speaker 1: fifth Amendment to depose Trump, which would take us to
Speaker 1: truly novel constitutional areas. But what the hell, We're already
Speaker 1: in them. And of course then the blowback against Trump
Speaker 1: takes us back to finish where we began with religion
Speaker 1: in America. Have you heard the name Joel Webbin. Joel
Speaker 1: Webbin is one of those bearded evangelicals without whom Trump
Speaker 1: drives up and blows away the good news on the
Speaker 1: evangelical front from Trump. Webin, president and founder of Right
Speaker 1: Response Ministries, Senior pastor of the Covenant Bible Church, and
Speaker 1: consultant to the First Church of the Gooey Death Now
Speaker 1: has asked this rhetorical question. Joel Webbin asks, is Trump
Speaker 1: the Antichrist? He's answered it, No, no biblical definitions. Trump
Speaker 1: is not the Antichrist. Congratulations, mister President, You're not the Antichrist.
Speaker 1: The bad news for Trump, Joel Webbin does say, quote,
Speaker 1: I genuinely believe Trump is currently demon possessed. Now at
Speaker 1: least that would explain him making out with Jesus. All
Speaker 1: se of interest here, you know, in the good old days,
Speaker 1: when I tried to warn everybody about Fox News. Fox
Speaker 1: News at least did big things like Billo once asking
Speaker 1: John McCain what he was going to do to protect
Speaker 1: the white power structure in this country. Those are the
Speaker 1: words the O'Reilly used. Now O'Reilly's time slot successor is
Speaker 1: obsessed with when the appropriate point in time is to
Speaker 1: whip it out. I swear, I swear he said whip
Speaker 1: it out, and that's what he meant on Fox. And
Speaker 1: he said it to your crazy maga grandma. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead.
Speaker 1: On this all new edition of Countdown. I promised you
Speaker 1: a story a few weeks back about the finest French
Speaker 1: restaurant in Washington, DC, and I'm gonna tell it as
Speaker 1: it was told to me by the alleged recipient. There
Speaker 1: was a candlelight meal, there was an aspiring reporter, there
Speaker 1: was Ted Turner still in his drinking days, and there
Speaker 1: was a really effective slap next in another thing I
Speaker 1: promised not to tell. In the interim, we always have
Speaker 1: more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miscreants,
Speaker 1: morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other
Speaker 1: worst persons in the world. This edition is dedicated to
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Rose Halligan, a self proclaimed digital creator, for her
Speaker 1: threads bio, and she says she's working on a thesis
Speaker 1: on anti colonialism, which as a society we should encourage
Speaker 1: because this is a much bigger problem today, let alone
Speaker 1: through history, than most people acknowledge. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: as Marcus Aurelius observed, you are always entitled to not
Speaker 1: have an opinion on something. This was one of those
Speaker 1: occasions where she should have listened to the old Roman
Speaker 1: emperor and colonizer. This was after the Artemis mission. And
Speaker 1: I quote miss Halligan and clean it up just a
Speaker 1: little bit, so I'm not trying to knock the gesture here,
Speaker 1: she writes, I get the sentiment. I feel for the
Speaker 1: astronaut who lost his wife, as it was devastating to
Speaker 1: lose my father in law who I loved very much
Speaker 1: to gleoblastoma suddenly in twenty twenty three. But four astronauts
Speaker 1: deciding to name a spot on the efing Moon after
Speaker 1: one guy's wife, while the other eight billion of us
Speaker 1: down here have no input on naming s word on
Speaker 1: the efing Moon still feels like colonizer behavior to me,
Speaker 1: and she concluded, I don't care if one of them
Speaker 1: was a black dude, the one saving grace on that
Speaker 1: that last line that sounds really racist. No, she's an
Speaker 1: African American. The rest of it. Okay, let me just
Speaker 1: do some numbers here. There are two million craters on
Speaker 1: the Moon. One point three million craters have been mapped.
Speaker 1: The total number that have been named, like for the
Speaker 1: late Carol Weisman, the late wife of the astronaut, the
Speaker 1: total number of named craters out of two million is
Speaker 1: nine thousand and three. Apart from the idea that if
Speaker 1: this is colonizing behavior, it's not going very well for
Speaker 1: the colonizers, exactly how far do you want to take this, madam?
Speaker 1: If you buy one of those thirty five dollars certificates
Speaker 1: naming a star after your girlfriend and you give it
Speaker 1: to her for Christmas, are you colonizing one of the
Speaker 1: oh infinity stars in the oh infinite galaxy. Moreover, when
Speaker 1: the first human looked up and saw it up there
Speaker 1: there was no sign on the moon reading this is
Speaker 1: the moon. We humans named it the moon, and in
Speaker 1: several other languages it's other words that mean that and
Speaker 1: collectively we consider it our moon, Earth's moon, like the
Speaker 1: two moons going around Mars are Mars's moons. Is that
Speaker 1: colonizing it? Or should we let the moon name itself?
Speaker 1: Miss Halligan tried to answer everybody, pointing out that no,
Speaker 1: she is trying to knock the gesture here despite what
Speaker 1: she wrote, and no she doesn't feel for the astronaut,
Speaker 1: and that yes, anti colonialism is important. But if you
Speaker 1: see it in a guy naming basically a large pothole
Speaker 1: on the moon after his dead wife, if you think
Speaker 1: that's colonizing, you may urgently need to see a therapist.
Speaker 1: And whatever you do, do not call that person your
Speaker 1: therapist colonizing because they named a hole in the moon
Speaker 1: after the man's late life. Anyway, the metallists the worst
Speaker 1: bronze clavicular. If like me, you heard that name but
Speaker 1: don't know what that is. This is a college dropout
Speaker 1: twenty years old, learning challenged, takes excessive amounts of testosterone.
Speaker 1: Apparently hits his bone with bones with a hammer to
Speaker 1: recreate his face or something so he thinks he looks better,
Speaker 1: attaches the suffix max to everything he looks maxed, so
Speaker 1: he's dumb Maxed and hammer maxed, and in an interview
Speaker 1: with sixty Minutes Australia, he had a canned insult ready
Speaker 1: for the interviewer and it blew up in his face Maxed.
Speaker 1: So the only thing Maxed he could think to do
Speaker 1: after that was walk out Maxed of the interview. Maxed.
Speaker 3: You've obviously shared company with Andrew tight and now the
Speaker 3: dare I say, ratic controversial figures?
Speaker 1: Why do you spend time with pay for lock that?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 3: Have an I say, are you trying to? I see
Speaker 3: you want to make this uh political?
Speaker 1: Too bad?
Speaker 3: I didn't have time to look into you know anything
Speaker 3: about potentially uh you know who's who your wife cheated with?
Speaker 3: But don't try to go down that line of questioning
Speaker 3: uh with me?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 3: I mean, because I'm not doing any political I'm not married.
Speaker 1: Next time, Clavical, just try your mom. By the way,
Speaker 1: Clavicular's real name is Brayden and he's from Hoboken, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: So what he's maxed actually is he's loser Maxed. I'm
Speaker 1: Braden the runner up worser and the Oguls, the congressman
Speaker 1: who introduced the Assimilation Act a week or so ago
Speaker 1: to prevent nearly all immigration to this country, promising that
Speaker 1: then i'm Erica would look like America again, even though
Speaker 1: Andy o Ogels looks kind of vaguely foreign, maybe a
Speaker 1: little of Iranian, let me say. Anyway, Congressman Crazy is
Speaker 1: back with a new proposal that suggests maybe Congress isn't
Speaker 1: the right group for him to belong to. He might
Speaker 1: have been better off being in charge of the Monday
Speaker 1: matine at the Roman Colisseum. He tried to back out
Speaker 1: of the Eric Swalwell part of this. I don't think
Speaker 1: he really managed to do it too well.
Speaker 6: The allegations of rape are like, consending adults is one thing,
Speaker 6: but when you're targeting and you're a predator and you're
Speaker 6: raping young women, let's hang them. Rapist should be hung, period,
Speaker 6: no questions. And so now I'm not I don't want
Speaker 6: to secret surface to come. I'm not talking about Eric Swalwell.
Speaker 6: I'm not threatening a member of Congress. But the point
Speaker 6: is that we got to say enough is enough.
Speaker 1: Ah, So Congressman ogles, if it's not about Swalwell, are
Speaker 1: you saying President Trump should be hanged? And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's hanged, not hung, paintings are hung, Impeachment notices are hung.
Speaker 1: Wanted posters for corrupt or crazy congressmen are hung in
Speaker 1: the post office. People who you hang get hanged. Imbecile, sadistic, crazy, imbecile.
Speaker 1: And the Ogles who kind of looks kind of Iranian,
Speaker 1: just saying, but the winner the worst, same topic, the
Speaker 1: same topic as Eric Swalwell, and the winner is little
Speaker 1: Jesse Waters, host of a Fox primetime show and co
Speaker 1: host of its highest rated show, which is now on
Speaker 1: at five o'clock because most Fox viewers are now so
Speaker 1: old they cannot stay up for primetime even a little.
Speaker 1: They're just coming back from dinner at five o'clock. They're
Speaker 1: going to bed at seven forty five. There for Fox
Speaker 1: is officially out of new people to host their propaganda shows,
Speaker 1: and the lineup is almost embarrassing. Now Sean Hannity, so
Speaker 1: it is embarrassing, but the rest of the lineup is
Speaker 1: almost embarrassing. Jesse is profoundly simple, and at Fox this
Speaker 1: is a prize commodity because it is the simple people
Speaker 1: who desperately need to be on TV and will do
Speaker 1: anything to be on TV, who do not have to
Speaker 1: be told what to say by their brainwashing bosses. They
Speaker 1: look for things that they know will please their bosses,
Speaker 1: and Jesse found something that will rile up his boss
Speaker 1: and his audience on the five those ninety seven year
Speaker 1: old women watching him. I quote about Swallowell quote don't
Speaker 1: just whip it out. As an aside, Yes, this was
Speaker 1: on TV at five in the afternoon. Quote don't just
Speaker 1: whip it out. Allegedly he was just whipping it out
Speaker 1: in a car and broad daylight in front of the intern.
Speaker 1: That's not the moment you do it. It has to
Speaker 1: be done in the moment of maybe some passion. With
Speaker 1: the co host Dana Perino, realizing that Waters was now
Speaker 1: about to damage the eternal Fox damnation of Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: rule one of Fox Dialogue, she interrupted with never within intern.
Speaker 1: Waters then parrotied, never with an intern. But he's giving
Speaker 1: advice about when to whip it out. So, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what this was all about, what
Speaker 1: the whole Jesse Waters Stephen Miller is a sexual matador
Speaker 1: thing was all about? What all the other Jesse Waters
Speaker 1: inappropriate and amazingly unattractive attempts at the Big Sexy are about.
Speaker 1: I can't explain Jesse Waters worked at Fox News for
Speaker 1: a decade for Bill O'Reilly Jesse, right, you are, mister
Speaker 1: Mayhoffer Waters two Day's other worse person in the In
Speaker 1: Monday's episode, I told the story of Senator Chris Murphy
Speaker 1: of Connecticut reportedly meeting with a bunch of progressive donors
Speaker 1: or activists at a French restaurant in Georgetown in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. To discuss what they thought was advancing their
Speaker 1: agenda and what he thought was an update for them
Speaker 1: on efforts to remove Chuck Schumer as the minority leader.
Speaker 1: Oh god, please, I told that story and there it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be an update on it, and we're
Speaker 1: still stuck apparently with Schumer through the midterms. But the
Speaker 1: whole story about where this happened, the venue, the Georgetown
Speaker 1: French restaurant, struck a chord with me and a memory
Speaker 1: deep in the back of my mind that is forty
Speaker 1: three years old, and for your purposes I think will
Speaker 1: have been worth the weight to the number one story
Speaker 1: on the countdown and the punchline. Yes, she hit him,
Speaker 1: but no, he didn't fall out of the chair. I
Speaker 1: have given you the punchline to the story. The climax
Speaker 1: of this entire saga. I am about to relate because
Speaker 1: I cannot in good conscience mention the name of the
Speaker 1: woman who told me that and the woman it happened to,
Speaker 1: the woman who hit him. But no, he didn't fall
Speaker 1: out of the chair. I will tell you that the
Speaker 1: guy who did not fall out of the chair, who
Speaker 1: she hit, was named Ted Turner. This is from nineteen
Speaker 1: I think eighty three or late nineteen eighty two, possibly
Speaker 1: in the early days of my first name in television
Speaker 1: with CNN, working for Ted Turner, when nobody but nobody
Speaker 1: knew who CNN was. And in fact, if you went
Speaker 1: into Washington, there were only three places in which CNN
Speaker 1: was visible. The Holiday Inn in Georgetown, which was next
Speaker 1: to the CNN bureau, in which we all stayed those
Speaker 1: of us who were not living in Washington working for CNN,
Speaker 1: the CNN offices themselves, and a bar down the street
Speaker 1: which was next to a graveyard across the street from
Speaker 1: the CNN headquarters at the time on Wisconsin Avenue, I
Speaker 1: believe it was. And then the third place was the Pentagon,
Speaker 1: where they used it because this was the first time
Speaker 1: they could see things live from Europe. And other places,
Speaker 1: because Ted spent money to his credit like it was
Speaker 1: going out of style, and like he knew that the
Speaker 1: news business was going to be immensely profitable someday, and
Speaker 1: it didn't matter how much he spent. The rest of
Speaker 1: us we were all terrified because he didn't pay us anything.
Speaker 1: And I was convinced that someday, with those meager checks,
Speaker 1: and with the seventy eighty one hundred million dollars a
Speaker 1: year he would add to his debt for CNN, we
Speaker 1: would somehow become individually responsible for part of that debt
Speaker 1: simply by endorsing our paychecks. It wasn't a fear based
Speaker 1: in fact, just paranoia, and in fact, if we were
Speaker 1: charged what we were being paid, well. I took a
Speaker 1: one third pay cut from part time work in radio
Speaker 1: to go work for CNN in nineteen eighty two, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't all that much to begin with. I literally
Speaker 1: had to bargain with them for five hours to get
Speaker 1: them to pay me twenty six thousand dollars a year
Speaker 1: to be the national sports correspondent based in New York,
Speaker 1: rather than twenty five thousand dollars. When they were paying me,
Speaker 1: I should add five hundred dollars a week freelance, which
Speaker 1: added up to twenty six thousand dollars. And then they
Speaker 1: offered me twenty five thousand dollars in a contract, and
Speaker 1: I said, why would I do that? And they said, well,
Speaker 1: again a contract, and I said, I don't want a contract.
Speaker 1: I want the one thousand dollars. Oh, I don't you
Speaker 1: want the security? I said, what security? This is CNN?
Speaker 1: How do I know you're going to be in business
Speaker 1: next year? Anyway, So forty odd years later, my prediction
Speaker 1: about how do I know you're going to be in
Speaker 1: business next year is finally coming true. Perhaps, but I
Speaker 1: have strayed from this wonderful story of yes she hit him,
Speaker 1: but no, he didn't fall out of the chair. I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in the Washington Bureau in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two and nineteen eighty three. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think I totaled it up, and it was something like
Speaker 1: over those two years, five or six months, usually a
Speaker 1: week or so at a time, going down to Washington
Speaker 1: and living in the Holiday Inn and getting to know
Speaker 1: a really nice and very talented group of people, many
Speaker 1: of whom went into the producers, that is, went into
Speaker 1: anchor jobs around the world, around the state, around California,
Speaker 1: around this country, and had brilliant successes in their futures.
Speaker 1: I worked with some of the more interesting people and
Speaker 1: and in fact worked with Daniel Shore, who was a
Speaker 1: legend of CBS News. I worked at CNN with Bernard Shaw,
Speaker 1: who was a legend both in reality and in his
Speaker 1: own mind. I met Gordon Barnes, who was a legendary
Speaker 1: meteorologist in Washington and New York. It was a great
Speaker 1: place in any event. Also, the hotel was pretty good
Speaker 1: and they cleaned up after me. One of the people
Speaker 1: I met on my often weekend responsibilities there was an
Speaker 1: intern who who managed to get herself a job maybe
Speaker 1: paying twenty dollars a week running camera on Saturday mornings.
Speaker 1: And I got to know her largely because she was
Speaker 1: a beautiful, six foot tall, super intelligent, blonde woman. And
Speaker 1: we'll just refer to her as her because she went
Speaker 1: on to a career in news. And I don't think
Speaker 1: she's ever authorized. I've lost touch with her, obviously, but
Speaker 1: I don't think she's ever authorized me to tell this story.
Speaker 1: And I don't think she'd like me too, because I
Speaker 1: believe she went into conservative of media at some point,
Speaker 1: So we'll just leave it out of her the story,
Speaker 1: out of her name. I do think that perhaps it
Speaker 1: would be justification here for telling the story based on
Speaker 1: some of the things she said on the air, but
Speaker 1: that would be small of me, and as you know,
Speaker 1: I never do anything small or petty about other people
Speaker 1: in the business. In any event, she and I got
Speaker 1: to be pretty good platonic friends. That was the premise
Speaker 1: going in. She didn't want to date anybody she worked with.
Speaker 1: So every time I would go to Washington, certainly the
Speaker 1: last year or so that I was down there, every
Speaker 1: time we'd go and have lunch and have a nice time.
Speaker 1: And she was great. She was funny and witty, and
Speaker 1: she had aspirations for going into the business. And she
Speaker 1: had already worked on Capitol Hill a couple of times.
Speaker 1: So although I think we were contemporaries in age, and
Speaker 1: I would have been twenty three or twenty four when
Speaker 1: I met her, she had lived an entire lifetime in
Speaker 1: addition to the one that I had. She'd worked on
Speaker 1: Little Hill, which meant she could run at about thirty
Speaker 1: five miles an hour in high heels if being chased
Speaker 1: by aggressive and unhappy men. In any event, that was
Speaker 1: the era of this of this story, in which sexual
Speaker 1: harassment was largely a challenge for women. When it got
Speaker 1: out of hand, usually a woman would tell other men
Speaker 1: with whom she worked, and they we would beat the
Speaker 1: crap out of the guy, or he'd be quietly fired,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't a big deal about it. This is
Speaker 1: not the nineteen sixties, in which it was encouraged and expected.
Speaker 1: This had already at least changed to a period of
Speaker 1: time in which women were entitled to defend themselves. And
Speaker 1: in fact this story may have been the first time
Speaker 1: that someone was reprimanded for sexual harassment and the victim
Speaker 1: was in some way compensated for it. And again late
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two or the beginning of nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: So my friend was, as I say, startlingly attractive and
Speaker 1: really talented, and was doing this just to get a
Speaker 1: foot in the door, and was now having given up
Speaker 1: her political career aspirations, going to go into television. Well,
Speaker 1: one day she was working on a Saturday morning and
Speaker 1: up from Atlanta pop Ted Turner on something or another,
Speaker 1: some sort of I don't know, pursuit of a rare
Speaker 1: bottle of something to drink, I don't know, or perhaps
Speaker 1: to get in a boat, and oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: not sink. I shouldn't leave you with the impression that
Speaker 1: I did not like Ted Turner. I did not like
Speaker 1: drunk Ted Turner. The Ted Turner who sobered up circ
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four eighty five after he met Jane
Speaker 1: Fonda and Jane Fonda saved his life. I like that
Speaker 1: Ted Turner very much. I've seen him a couple of
Speaker 1: times since then, and I liked him very very much,
Speaker 1: the drunk Ted Turner. He and I almost had a
Speaker 1: fistfight once. In any event, Ted got one look at
Speaker 1: my friend and immediately went over to her and made
Speaker 1: an excuse to talk to her separately. And so, little girl,
Speaker 1: what are your aspirations in this business that can't be
Speaker 1: running camera on Saturday morning? I'm I the Inn Bureau.
Speaker 1: You've in watching the DZ And she said, no, I have.
Speaker 1: I'd like to go into television full time, probably on
Speaker 1: the air. How about we have dinner. So she's telling
Speaker 1: me this story. The next time I was in Washington,
Speaker 1: probably a week or two after it actually happened, and
Speaker 1: she said sure, and I said, what are you thinking?
Speaker 1: What did you do that for? And she said, well,
Speaker 1: she said, I worked on Capitol Hill. There's nothing he
Speaker 1: can do that I hasn't been done to me already.
Speaker 1: I can really run fast in these high heels. And
Speaker 1: I said, I bet you can. I said, uh, I
Speaker 1: bet you can. And we'll just leave it at then. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now I said, well, let me know what happens.
Speaker 1: And one night I went back to New York. And
Speaker 1: one night I got a phone call from her at
Speaker 1: about ten thirty. And it was really a surprise because
Speaker 1: long distance phone calls, even from Washington to New York
Speaker 1: were really expensive in nineteen eighty two or eighty three.
Speaker 1: And she reported the following and we discussed it many
Speaker 1: times thereafter, and as you'll see, I didn't just let
Speaker 1: her story stand. I checked it out. I was a
Speaker 1: good reporter on this little story. She agrees to go
Speaker 1: and meet Ted Turner for dinner, and Ted picks someplace
Speaker 1: inconspicuous seventeen eighty nine restaurant in Georgetown, the finest French
Speaker 1: restaurant in Washington, possibly on the East Coast, certainly one
Speaker 1: of them, certainly top ten in the country, and the
Speaker 1: fine dining and violins playing in the background, and everything
Speaker 1: shimmering and ship shape, and the whole idea. You could
Speaker 1: eat off the plate or you could eat off the floor.
Speaker 1: And she sits there, and she sits down, and he's
Speaker 1: already ordered the wine, and she says, he starts to talk,
Speaker 1: and if you think I can talk drunk, ted T
Speaker 1: could talk literally for twenty four hours without interruption. He
Speaker 1: was once late to a meeting with the National Football
Speaker 1: League Players Association while it was out on strike because
Speaker 1: he talked and did other things with a flight attendant
Speaker 1: in what was supposedly a dumpster at O'Hare Airport in
Speaker 1: Chicago for twenty four hours. Anyhow, on he goes about
Speaker 1: his career, and as he always told people, for reasons,
Speaker 1: I never quite understood the details of his father's suicide
Speaker 1: and how CNN was financed and how precarious everything was,
Speaker 1: but how he was convinced that this was the future
Speaker 1: of news, and this was the future television, and also
Speaker 1: this would bring about world peace, and on and on
Speaker 1: and on and on in that wonderful accent that sounded
Speaker 1: like a bunch of southern bees talking to you, I
Speaker 1: had my pleasures of two full days with Ted Turner
Speaker 1: and once at a football game, and I heard this
Speaker 1: vo since sometimes it comes to me in my nightmares again,
Speaker 1: drunk Ted Turner. Ted Turner sober had a much higher
Speaker 1: and much much quieter voice. I liked sober Ted Turner
Speaker 1: a whole lot, and I was very glad that he
Speaker 1: became that. But we're talking about drunk Ted Turner who's
Speaker 1: out to dinner with a twenty dollars a week camera
Speaker 1: person at his bureau. And by the way, he is married.
Speaker 1: He has a full time mistress who already has a
Speaker 1: show on one of his other networks, and he probably,
Speaker 1: if you define girlfriends in the broadest possible terms, has
Speaker 1: three hundred to four hundred other girlfriends. At the time,
Speaker 1: he is telling this woman of all of his riches.
Speaker 1: And finally, after the meal has been ordered and it
Speaker 1: is a spectacular French meal, she said, it might have
Speaker 1: been the finest meal I ever ate, and I have
Speaker 1: been to all the restaurants in DC, because remember I
Speaker 1: used to work on Capitol Hill and I used to
Speaker 1: win races every week with congressmen and senators. She says,
Speaker 1: it was beyond belief. And finally, finally he pauses and says, well,
Speaker 1: that's my story, a little girl. What is it that
Speaker 1: you want to do in your career, because it can't
Speaker 1: be what I found you doing? Run the camera and
Speaker 1: my my than Am Bureau in Washington, DC on Saturday morning.
Speaker 1: I checked into it. I know you're making twenty dollars
Speaker 1: a week. I didn't know we could legally pay anybody
Speaker 1: just twenty dollars a week. And she says, well, mister Turner,
Speaker 1: call me Ted. Well, Ted, I want to go into
Speaker 1: television and I'd like to be a newscaster, and I
Speaker 1: figure I should start so I know what I'm talking
Speaker 1: about as a news reporter. And he says okay, and
Speaker 1: he takes out she says, a business card, and she
Speaker 1: can't see anything at the distance. The table was so big.
Speaker 1: It's a fine French restaurant in Washington, seventeen eighty nine Georgetown,
Speaker 1: and she's watching him write something on it, and finally
Speaker 1: he holds it up to her and now she can
Speaker 1: read it across the table. It says I R Ted Turner,
Speaker 1: give you and herein he actually remembered her name and
Speaker 1: put it on the card. A three year contract for
Speaker 1: a total of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: that's fifty thousand dollars a year. And for your frame
Speaker 1: of reference, I had just gotten a raised to forty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year, and I was the national sports correspondent,
Speaker 1: like their lead sports guy in the field. Fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year for a woman who is making twenty
Speaker 1: dollars a week for him, And it says, I, are
Speaker 1: Ted Turner, give you a three year contract for a
Speaker 1: total of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars as a
Speaker 1: reporter for the new CNN bureau in Detroit, Miami. And
Speaker 1: I can't remember where the third new CNN bureau opening
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three was supposed to be, but that
Speaker 1: was the third city, Detroit, Miami, and wherever signed are
Speaker 1: Ted Turner. And he holds it towards her and then
Speaker 1: pushes it towards her, and as she reaches for it,
Speaker 1: just to grab it to read it a little bit
Speaker 1: more clearly, to see what it's actually saying. He's giving
Speaker 1: me a job as a reporter based on dinner. I
Speaker 1: haven't even said anything, she said to me, as he
Speaker 1: holds it out to her, and she reaches for it,
Speaker 1: he yanks it back towards his own neck. It's now
Speaker 1: even with his own neck, and he says, uh uh.
Speaker 1: Up in my room, as I said, Cindy went to
Speaker 1: dinner with Ted Turner because of her confidence. She said,
Speaker 1: you don't know what I've done to senators and staffers
Speaker 1: and a few congressmen over the two or three years
Speaker 1: I was on Capitol Hill. I know what to do.
Speaker 1: I know what to do to make sure this doesn't
Speaker 1: happen again. And she said this time, I was just,
Speaker 1: for some reason, so frustrated by the fact that he
Speaker 1: had never until that point, two hours into this evening,
Speaker 1: let me say more than about three words. I didn't
Speaker 1: even get to order the meal, she said. Something just
Speaker 1: snapped inside me. And I stood up, and I leaned
Speaker 1: in as if to give him a kiss. And when
Speaker 1: he leaned forward and stuck his head up towards me,
Speaker 1: I hit him. I slapped him with an open palm
Speaker 1: right across his face, she said. And it was a
Speaker 1: really good slap. It was a full contact slap. The
Speaker 1: palm of my hand, she said, still hurts. I'm holding
Speaker 1: the phone with my left hand, and I usually use
Speaker 1: my right hand. For the phone and talking to you.
Speaker 1: I've got it in the other hand because the other
Speaker 1: one I got some ice on it earlier, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to have to ice it again before I go
Speaker 1: to sleep, she said. And then I got up and
Speaker 1: left and called a cab, and happily, my major major
Speaker 1: reaction to the entire evening, she said, was well, that
Speaker 1: was a great meal. I forget what it was she had.
Speaker 1: I think she had some beef dish. So we leave
Speaker 1: Ted Turner having just been slapped by a six foot
Speaker 1: tall blonde with a really big wingspan. I mean, this
Speaker 1: woman was, as I said, super intelligent, and obviously she
Speaker 1: made it into television. She was an anchor for many years,
Speaker 1: at least twenty five years, and then I think she
Speaker 1: went into Republican media, back when that was not necessarily
Speaker 1: an indication of insanity. But in any event, she was.
Speaker 1: She was gifted athletically as well, so I mean he
Speaker 1: probably got seriously hurt. Well, this is only the first
Speaker 1: part of the story, and that's the story I heard
Speaker 1: that night. The next day, I was awakened by a
Speaker 1: phone call at about seven am, and I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, who's who? Whatever? I have to go somebody
Speaker 1: in sports is dead. And it's Keith, it's and it's her.
Speaker 1: I said, what what are you? Okay, yes, I had
Speaker 1: to talk to somebody. I know I woke you up,
Speaker 1: but you already know the backstory, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: to go through the whole thing again. You're just not
Speaker 1: going to believe what happened. I said, well, you hit
Speaker 1: him right. Oh no, that was only the start. I said,
Speaker 1: Oh god, what did he do? Nothing? No, no, that's
Speaker 1: not no, no, I just I got to call at
Speaker 1: about four thirty, summoning me to the Washington Bureau. I said,
Speaker 1: four thirty. It's and I looked at my watch. It
Speaker 1: was seven am. I said, it's seven aa. What he
Speaker 1: used to be four to thirty this morning. This has
Speaker 1: already happened. Yes, they told me to come in. How
Speaker 1: quickly could I get in? And I get into the
Speaker 1: bureau before six o'clock. And there's Bill headline. That's actually
Speaker 1: his name. He was the head of the Washington Bureau.
Speaker 1: Headline was his name. I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: Cha or h Ed. If it was Hga, he changed
Speaker 1: his name. If it was Ahd, he had prophetic parents.
Speaker 1: Bill headline, the head of the CNN Washington Bureau and
Speaker 1: somebody else from HR in Washington, and the head of
Speaker 1: human resources, and this was not even titled human resources.
Speaker 1: This was like head of personnel for all of Turner
Speaker 1: Broadcasting had flown up from Atlanta. There are no over
Speaker 1: night flights, I don't think. I don't think there were
Speaker 1: then anyway from Atlanta to Washington. He didn't fly commercial.
Speaker 1: They put him on a private jet and send him
Speaker 1: to Washington in the middle of the night. So he
Speaker 1: must have gotten the phone call at midnight or one am.
Speaker 1: And he is sitting there, and she is sitting there,
Speaker 1: and the head of the bureau is sitting there, and
Speaker 1: there are other lawyers there, and she's thinking, oh my god,
Speaker 1: they're really going to go to this much trouble just
Speaker 1: to fire me because I didn't sleep with Ted Turner.
Speaker 1: And she says the Atlanta guy then says, Miss such
Speaker 1: and such, we are aware that there was an incident
Speaker 1: last night with mister Turner and on behalf of the
Speaker 1: Turner Broadcasting Company and all of its legal affiliates and organizations.
Speaker 1: We would like to apologize in full. Mister Turner is
Speaker 1: under a great deal of pressure because of the economic
Speaker 1: conditions about CNN, which I understand he informed you of,
Speaker 1: and we would appreciate it and take it as a
Speaker 1: great courtesy to the rest of us who work here
Speaker 1: if you did not share that information with anybody. But
Speaker 1: we understand if that's not going to be your attitude
Speaker 1: towards this, but we just wanted to apologize to you,
Speaker 1: and mister Turner would be here himself, but he is
Speaker 1: obviously stricken with remorse, and I'm thinking he's stricken with
Speaker 1: a hangover it dude. Anyway, so the story is told
Speaker 1: to me, continuing with this unbelievable outcome that now unfolds
Speaker 1: in front of this woman whose hands still hurts from
Speaker 1: hitting Ted Turner at seventeen eighty nine the restaurant in
Speaker 1: front of everybody on a busy weeknight in Georgetown in
Speaker 1: the year of our Lord nineteen eighty two or eighty three,
Speaker 1: and she's realizing that they have not brought her in
Speaker 1: to fire her. They brought her into to apologize or something.
Speaker 1: And they go on and Bill Headline says, this is
Speaker 1: what we'd like to offer you right now. We can't
Speaker 1: add you to the reporting staff, but we'd like to
Speaker 1: offer you a kind of ad hoc training program so
Speaker 1: that you can become a reporter sooner rather than later
Speaker 1: with US or somewhere else. But in the interim, we'd
Speaker 1: like to give you the kind of experience that most
Speaker 1: reporters find really valuable. We'd like you to work on
Speaker 1: the assignment desk. And she, of course knew what the
Speaker 1: assignment desk was. It was the busy place where you've
Speaker 1: made logistics and sent camera crews here and there, and
Speaker 1: tried to arrange interviews and decided what stories required which components.
Speaker 1: It was a very good training ground. There was another
Speaker 1: woman working there already, named Catherine Kirk. You may have
Speaker 1: heard of her. I don't know how she got there.
Speaker 1: I presume it was by no means resembling this one
Speaker 1: in any event. Now now she's beginning to understand they
Speaker 1: are offering her, not just according to Bill headline, a
Speaker 1: job on the assignment desk. And again she's making twenty
Speaker 1: dollars a week and is technically an intern at CNN.
Speaker 1: And Ted Turner has just propositioned her, and she has
Speaker 1: just hit him in public with an open faced slap.
Speaker 1: She said, I may have hit him hard enough to
Speaker 1: knock him out of the chair. I never even thought
Speaker 1: of that. She has hit him, and now they are
Speaker 1: offering her a job on the assignment desk, and here
Speaker 1: comes the punchline. We'd liked to offer you a contract
Speaker 1: for three years here for twenty five thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody at the assignment desk was
Speaker 1: making twenty five thousand dollars a year. But you may
Speaker 1: remember from earlier in this long story that when I
Speaker 1: first went to CNN full time, they offered me twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars a year to be on the air,
Speaker 1: like six times a week. Twenty five thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: CNN nineteen eighty three money was a boat load. Ted
Speaker 1: may not have made twenty five thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: So she goes okay, and they said, all we need
Speaker 1: from you is a is a signed promise that you're
Speaker 1: not going to take any legal action against mister Turner
Speaker 1: for the unfortunate episode last night. And she said sure,
Speaker 1: because she had worked on Capitol Hill and she knew
Speaker 1: how things worked. In the nineteen eighties, the best way
Speaker 1: to deal with a sexual harassment attempt was to turn
Speaker 1: it into something to your benefit. And she had just
Speaker 1: been offered what, as I said, might have been the
Speaker 1: first time officially a television network compensated a victim of
Speaker 1: a manager's sexual aggression. She went on, as I said
Speaker 1: to I believe, a twenty five year career as an anchor,
Speaker 1: and then into conservative media. But I was still not
Speaker 1: totally satisfied by this story, delightful as it was. And
Speaker 1: so next time I was in DC, which I think
Speaker 1: was a week or two later, I went to seventeen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. Not to eat there because it would have
Speaker 1: consumed most of my month's salary, but I went there
Speaker 1: to find out. And even then, even at a place
Speaker 1: like that, a ten dollars bill will buy you all
Speaker 1: sorts of information. And by happy happenstance, the major d
Speaker 1: on duty at that time said, I was not here
Speaker 1: that night, but of course we all know about it.
Speaker 1: But the bartender saw the whole thing. He'd be able
Speaker 1: to tell you. And so I went and bought him
Speaker 1: a drink, and I tad a drink, and he told me,
Speaker 1: and he confirmed every one of the details. She hit
Speaker 1: him as hard as I have seen anybody hit anybody
Speaker 1: with one slap. She should go into martial arts. This
Speaker 1: was before there were a lot of women boxers. I
Speaker 1: knew never to mess with her. And that's when he
Speaker 1: said it. The final story, the final part of the story. Yes,
Speaker 1: she hit him, She hit ted Turner in front of everybody.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear what happened beforehand, but there was something
Speaker 1: with a business card. And then she stood up and
Speaker 1: moved in like she was going to kiss him, and
Speaker 1: he tilted his head up. And yes, she hit him,
Speaker 1: but no, he didn't fall out of his chair. I've
Speaker 1: done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening again. I only have that confirmation from the
Speaker 1: guy at the bar, and of course the story as
Speaker 1: it was told to me by the slapper whose name
Speaker 1: I'm leaving out of it. I never brought it up
Speaker 1: with Ted. I wouldn't know if he would remember it,
Speaker 1: or would have remembered it then, or how often something
Speaker 1: like that happened, or maybe it didn't happen allow for
Speaker 1: that possibility. I just don't you know. I wasn't there
Speaker 1: when it happened. She was. Our musical directors have Countdown
Speaker 1: or John Phillips Chaneil on keyboards and handling, orchestration and
Speaker 1: Brian Ray on guitars, bass and drums, presumably slaps the
Speaker 1: drum every once in a while, and their work is
Speaker 1: produced by Tko Brothers. Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium
Speaker 1: Morganist ever is responsible for our satirical and pithy musical
Speaker 1: comments when we do play the sports music. It's the
Speaker 1: old theme from the Olberman Show on ESPN two, written
Speaker 1: by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of ESPN Inc. As an aside.
Speaker 1: You know they wanted to call that show. The first
Speaker 1: name of that show on ESPN two was KO, and
Speaker 1: I said, people are going to think it's a boxing show.
Speaker 1: So they actually had things printed. They had swag that
Speaker 1: was printed, like bags and t shirts and things that
Speaker 1: read KO and the name of the show is Olberman.
Speaker 1: Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns
Speaker 1: Allowed On My announcer today is my friend Dennis Leary.
Speaker 1: This program was produced by Ted Stevie Rose and Kit.
Speaker 1: Everything else was as always my fault. That's countdown for today.
Speaker 1: Day four hundred and forty two of America held hostage
Speaker 1: yet again, but just one and eleven days until the
Speaker 1: scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term
Speaker 1: unless he is removed sooner by Jesus H. Christ, or
Speaker 1: by doctor Jesus or by doctor Johnny Fever. The next
Speaker 1: scheduled countdown is Monday. Bulletins is the news merits until
Speaker 1: the next one. I'm Keith Olramman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
Speaker 1: and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldreman is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.