Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. There
Speaker 1: are not going to be any Biden Trump debates, at
Speaker 1: least not in the form that was announced yesterday. I know,
Speaker 1: I know they announced it yesterday. Why are you saying
Speaker 1: there aren't going to be any Well, something did not
Speaker 1: add up on the Biden Trump debate announcements yesterday. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of things did not add up. And what
Speaker 1: I think it is is Trump is planning right now
Speaker 1: to pull out of these debates and blame Biden. But
Speaker 1: there's also another possibility, which is Biden has also intentionally
Speaker 1: or otherwise given himself an emergency exit from these debates
Speaker 1: as well. There is and I know this is an
Speaker 1: unusual thing to hear from a political analyst of any kind.
Speaker 1: There is always the chance I might be wrong. I
Speaker 1: know who says that. There is always the chance I
Speaker 1: might be misreading this. This is only my interpretation, but
Speaker 1: I'm right. But if you go through the timeline of
Speaker 1: what happened yesterday, I don't think I am misreading this.
Speaker 1: I think this has been deliberately set up so that
Speaker 1: Trump can pull out and blame Biden for it. Biden
Speaker 1: makes his challenge and then they agree to the ABC
Speaker 1: debate and the CNN debate, and Biden puts out his
Speaker 1: video and Biden taunts Trump, all of which is great
Speaker 1: for Biden. Then CNN reports that Trump is irked because
Speaker 1: Biden has, in the words of its reporter, taken control
Speaker 1: of the narrative on the debates, a relevant point. Trump
Speaker 1: then posts, please let this true, and a reminder, truth
Speaker 1: is a brand name for Donald Trump, like Trump steaks.
Speaker 1: Please let this Trump steak serve to represent that I
Speaker 1: hereby accept debating Biden on Fox News. The date will
Speaker 1: be Wednesday, October second. The host will be Brett bhar
Speaker 1: and Martha McCallum. Thank you three tells in that the
Speaker 1: word represent the weighted word in his world hereby, and
Speaker 1: the thank you at the end. Those three words are
Speaker 1: code for listen up, you Rubes. This is a legal document.
Speaker 1: I'm accepting this offer that I can debate Biden on
Speaker 1: Fox News on October second, with Bear and McCallum as
Speaker 1: the anchor. There's been no offer. He has accepted it
Speaker 1: in advance solely so he can say he accepted it
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't happen, it's Biden's fault. Now, What
Speaker 1: use is that to him in October when the other
Speaker 1: two debates would be in June and September, the CNN
Speaker 1: one in Atlanta at the end of next month, and
Speaker 1: then the one on ABC coming up later in the
Speaker 1: early fall. I'm not sure what that would help him
Speaker 1: with if he were to cancel somehow afterwards after doing
Speaker 1: those first two debates, although that would give him an out,
Speaker 1: would it not. But I think it's for use far
Speaker 1: earlier than that. Sometime between now and the official announcement
Speaker 1: the full details of the CNN debate, he says, I
Speaker 1: will be there as long as Biden recommits to our
Speaker 1: debate on Fox News on October second, and when he doesn't,
Speaker 1: he calls them all off. And I think the Biden
Speaker 1: campaign already knows about this. There was a statement after
Speaker 1: this crazy by accept debating Biden, and I will pay
Speaker 1: him twelve Trump stakes on Wednesday, October second. The hosts
Speaker 1: will be Lara Trump and Christy Nome. Biden's campaign Jen
Speaker 1: O'Malley Dylan issued a statement after this crazy Trump Truth
Speaker 1: Truth is a brand name. It's meant ironically. She said,
Speaker 1: Trump has a long history of playing games with debates. Well,
Speaker 1: she's already clued in as to what he was doing yesterday,
Speaker 1: complaining about the rules, breaking those grules, pulling out at
Speaker 1: the last minute. Hello, where does Keith get this crazy
Speaker 1: idea that Trump will pull out at the last minute.
Speaker 1: It says it right here, pulling out at the last minute,
Speaker 1: She wrote. He said he would debate President Biden any time,
Speaker 1: and he where any place. In fact, he said and
Speaker 1: posted it dozens of times, with varying degrees of comprehension
Speaker 1: and basic grammar. Ooh nice. I would have been proud
Speaker 1: to say that myself. President Biden made his terms clear
Speaker 1: for two one on one debates, and Donald Trump accepted
Speaker 1: those terms. No more games, no more chaos, no more
Speaker 1: debate about debates. We'll see Donald Trump on June twenty
Speaker 1: seventh in Atlanta if he shows up, unquote, what does
Speaker 1: that mean if not that the Biden camp and campaign
Speaker 1: are both prepared for Trump not to show up for
Speaker 1: these debates that they may. In fact, as I suggested earlier,
Speaker 1: there is a slim chance. Although I put ninety percent
Speaker 1: of the weight on this on Trump pulling out, there's
Speaker 1: a ten percent chance that this has been set up
Speaker 1: this way so Biden can pull out when Trump insists
Speaker 1: on whatever he would insist on. In this case, he
Speaker 1: immediately insisted on a third debate on Fox, by the way,
Speaker 1: with Brett Bahar, who he formerly said would never serve
Speaker 1: as an MC or as a participant in any debate
Speaker 1: Trump ever did again, as you know, nothing that Donald
Speaker 1: Trump has ever said previously applies today. The past is
Speaker 1: irrelevant in Trump Land because there is no reality. There
Speaker 1: is no history. There is only him now radiating his wonderfulness.
Speaker 1: That Trump statement is his standard fake legal document. Hereby,
Speaker 1: you've won ten million dollars if you have all seventy
Speaker 1: three numbers drawn an hour lottery. But the Rubes believe this.
Speaker 1: That's why there were Trump steaks. Please let this serve
Speaker 1: to represent represent that I hereby accept well. That means
Speaker 1: he was offered it. The date will be thank you.
Speaker 1: The Rubes believe this. In that world, there are three debates,
Speaker 1: and one of them will be on Fox News. In
Speaker 1: the real world, Trump agreed to the ones on CNN
Speaker 1: and ABC, and that's it. So between now. In June
Speaker 1: twenty seven, Trump demands Biden reconfirms his commitment to October
Speaker 1: two on Fox. Biden tells him to f off. In fact,
Speaker 1: in some respects the statement from the campaign yesterday already
Speaker 1: told Trump to f off and there are no debates.
Speaker 1: Biden may have anticipated this, You could read it that
Speaker 1: way too, in which case he says, I tried, I
Speaker 1: challenged him, I committed to it, he committed to it,
Speaker 1: he backed out. He's a coward. And of course to
Speaker 1: pay this off. It's very simple. Joe Biden shows up
Speaker 1: at the CNN studios on June twenty seventh in Atlanta
Speaker 1: and says, helloooo, and there's no Trump. Because think about
Speaker 1: the other aspect here, Setting aside the possibility that Trump
Speaker 1: is fully aware that he is beginning to glitch significantly
Speaker 1: and making a fool of himself and really putting a
Speaker 1: hole in people's perception that he is he is the
Speaker 1: sharper one. And let's not get into why that's the perception.
Speaker 1: It is the perception. He may be aware of that.
Speaker 1: But even if he's not, it's irrelevant to my point,
Speaker 1: why would Trump agree to these two debates under the
Speaker 1: circumstances and the details as provided to the public yesterday.
Speaker 1: The debates will have no audience, no audience. Who does
Speaker 1: Trump con to if there's no audience. Who is he
Speaker 1: trying to sell, Who is he trying to smooth, Who
Speaker 1: is he trying to use, Who is he trying to
Speaker 1: get to cheer? Who is he trying to get to gasp?
Speaker 1: Who does he want alternatively on his side or oppose
Speaker 1: to him. If there's no audience, how do you have
Speaker 1: WrestleMania only? It's politics. The point of Trump and Trump's
Speaker 1: campaign is when he got involved in the wrestling world,
Speaker 1: he realized what his milieu was for politics to turn
Speaker 1: it into professional wrestling. Well, you cannot have professional wrestling
Speaker 1: without an audience. It may be twenty thousand people, it
Speaker 1: may be two hundred thousand people, or it could be
Speaker 1: twenty people. But if it's no people, there's no reason
Speaker 1: for Trump to go to it. There's nobody to con
Speaker 1: And if there's nobody to con on top of everything
Speaker 1: else that is inherent and necessary to the Trump perspective
Speaker 1: and the Trump campaign. If he's not conning somebody, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump dies figuratively, at least he's no longer alive. The
Speaker 1: other rule, each answer will be timed and the mics
Speaker 1: will shut off at that time. Well, that's worse than
Speaker 1: letting the moderator cut off the microphone. Why would Trump
Speaker 1: agree to that? Why would Trump agree to the mics,
Speaker 1: Why would he agree to no audience. There's nothing in
Speaker 1: this for him except the potential for those two disasters
Speaker 1: hurting him, plus his own increasing dementia or aphasia or whatever.
Speaker 1: It is becoming more and more evident in areas where
Speaker 1: it has not been seen. And yet there is also
Speaker 1: the even larger issue, the even larger risk for Trump.
Speaker 1: The risk is all on Trump's side because in Trump World,
Speaker 1: the belief is they still believe Joe Biden will be
Speaker 1: withdrawn as the Democratic nominee. To this date, they are expecting,
Speaker 1: depending where you are in there, Hillary Clinton or Michelle
Speaker 1: Obama or Rachel Maddow or I don't know who they're expecting,
Speaker 1: but they really believe that something is going to happen,
Speaker 1: and Biden is going to get up one day and
Speaker 1: go and he's not going to be the nominee. It is,
Speaker 1: as with every other Republican accusation, a confession about the
Speaker 1: situation they themselves find themselves in, which is that Trump
Speaker 1: is the one who is much more likely to say.
Speaker 1: But the outcome of any debate in Atlanta, in New
Speaker 1: York on ABC, on CNN, on Fox, going door to
Speaker 1: door with it. The outcome of any debate that does
Speaker 1: not include Joe Biden passing out or Joe Biden saying
Speaker 1: something in a tongue in a language only he knows,
Speaker 1: in some form of ancient Native American dialect that has
Speaker 1: not been spoken in five hundred years. If that does
Speaker 1: not happen, Biden wins, and more importantly, Trump gets hurt,
Speaker 1: and Trump has to confront the reality that what he
Speaker 1: believes the world is is incorrect and he can't do that.
Speaker 1: The whole thing about Trump, the entirety of Donald Trump's life,
Speaker 1: has been to avoid any inconvenient reality that would face
Speaker 1: him and challenge his perverted, twisted view in which he
Speaker 1: is king of everything. Whenever that is threatened, he shuts down.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he's falling asleep in court? It's
Speaker 1: his only way to get out. I don't think there
Speaker 1: will be debates. I'm not absolutely sold on this process.
Speaker 1: And again, I hope you've awakened from losing consciousness when
Speaker 1: I said I might be mistaken, but I might be mistaken.
Speaker 1: I don't think there will be debates. Ninety percent chance
Speaker 1: Trump pulls out because Biden has He'll say renegged, pulled
Speaker 1: out too scared? Whatever about this imaginary debate on Fox News,
Speaker 1: I hereby accept debating Biden. I'd serve to represent your mileage, Mayberry.
Speaker 1: Remember FDI see costs may be higher west of the Rockies.
Speaker 1: Trump knows what that post was. This truth served to represent.
Speaker 1: The inclusion of Brett Bear was the tell Trump is slipping.
Speaker 1: He's already said he wouldn't have anything to do with
Speaker 1: Brett Bher and I know, as I said before, everything changes,
Speaker 1: But he included Brett Bhar in there. He might as
Speaker 1: well have said Tucker Carlson on Fox. It's a tell
Speaker 1: that he did this sloppily and in panic. I don't
Speaker 1: think there will be debates now. There's sidebar fund to
Speaker 1: this whole process, because there is nothing more hilarious than
Speaker 1: seeing the entirety of the print journalism world go crazy
Speaker 1: because they have just been removed even further from the mainstream.
Speaker 1: There's nothing more hilarious than seeing pundits step on their
Speaker 1: own schwantzes. They are angry because now with Biden having
Speaker 1: cut out the Debate Commission and the Debate Commission out
Speaker 1: of the picture, all the writers are one further step
Speaker 1: removed from the debate process. There used to be not
Speaker 1: just writers involved in all the presidential debates. There used
Speaker 1: to be multi writers. There used to be two or
Speaker 1: three of them on a panel with a TV guy
Speaker 1: more or less as just the TV guy asking a
Speaker 1: question or two, but generally turning it over to Hugh
Speaker 1: Sidey from Time magazine, who has a question about the
Speaker 1: relationship between electromagnetic fields and the ratings in Poland. Used
Speaker 1: to be writers at the debates who dominated the debates.
Speaker 1: Some of the greatest questions in all of the debate's
Speaker 1: history were posed not by John Chancellor or Walter Cronkite
Speaker 1: or anybody else, or Howard Smith and Kennedy and Nixon
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty, but by writers. They're all gone now,
Speaker 1: and their dream, which is the dream of everybody who
Speaker 1: writes politics for a living, that they will be the
Speaker 1: star of the campaign, that it will be remembered as
Speaker 1: their presidential campaign, is one further step away from reality.
Speaker 1: It was never reality to begin with, and has not
Speaker 1: been for more than twenty five years. But that doesn't stop.
Speaker 1: As evidenced by some of the things that were written yesterday.
Speaker 1: Nate Silver savaged Biden for cutting that Debate Commission out.
Speaker 1: Nate Silver, You're supposed to be the candidate who stands
Speaker 1: up for norms and traditions, and now you're ducking this tradition,
Speaker 1: Oh Nate. On April fourteenth of twenty twenty two, so
Speaker 1: three April fourteenths ago, the Republican National Committee pulled out
Speaker 1: of the Debate Commission. The Debate Commission has been dead
Speaker 1: for two years. Nate Biden didn't end in tradition and
Speaker 1: a norm norms dead April fourteenth, twenty twenty two. The
Speaker 1: Commission on Presidential Debates is biased and has refused to
Speaker 1: enact simple and common sense reforms to help ensure fair debates,
Speaker 1: including hosting debates before voting begins and selecting moderators who
Speaker 1: have never worked for candidates on the debate stage. You
Speaker 1: know who said that? You know who didn't stand up
Speaker 1: for norms and traditions. Who cut the commission out? Nate Silver.
Speaker 1: Rona McDaniel said that you may remember her from such
Speaker 1: films as Meet the Press. Okay, you've met the press,
Speaker 1: get the hell out, and I had the shortest career
Speaker 1: in TV history two years ago. She said this, Nate
Speaker 1: Silver is another one of these, who is largely my fault.
Speaker 1: I knew him from baseball statistics when he proved in
Speaker 1: a way we didn't know nearly twenty years ago now
Speaker 1: that the numbers had their own numbers. That if you
Speaker 1: got enough baseball statistics together, and you factored in things
Speaker 1: like which ballparks each player played in, and you adjusted
Speaker 1: them for how a player would get better to a
Speaker 1: certain age and how he get worse after a certain age,
Speaker 1: you could predict next year's baseball statistics. And then Nate said,
Speaker 1: you know, you can do this with poles too, And
Speaker 1: I said, great, come on Countdown and talk about it.
Speaker 1: And to be fair, Nate was pretty good at it
Speaker 1: as long as he stuck to the numbers. Once Nate
Speaker 1: tried words, we got things like you're supposed to be
Speaker 1: the candidate who stands up for norms and traditions, and
Speaker 1: now you're ducking this tradition which died two years ago.
Speaker 1: Only I didn't even bother to google it before I
Speaker 1: wrote this tweet. I'm Nate Silver, I'm now seeking treatment.
Speaker 1: This was also great. This is Jonathan Martin And to
Speaker 1: go back and use another sports analogy, forgive me for
Speaker 1: this Politico stole Jonathan Martin from The New York Times
Speaker 1: like he was showhey flipping Otani. Oh, we've got Jonathan Martin,
Speaker 1: the Great Jonathan Martin, the eternal. Jonathan Martin is leaving
Speaker 1: the Times to join us here at Politico, the sausage
Speaker 1: factory of politics and politics news. This guy's not show
Speaker 1: Heo Tani. This guy might be shoe Heyo Tani's interpreter
Speaker 1: in terms of hefton reliability. April twenty eighth, Meet the Press,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Martin quote, Biden's folks don't want him to debate.
Speaker 1: They don't want to give Trump that platform and risk
Speaker 1: exposing Biden like that on National TV Jonathan Martin yesterday,
Speaker 1: which would be eighteen days after he said Biden's folks
Speaker 1: don't want them to debate, They don't want to give
Speaker 1: Trump that platform and exposing Biden with that a National TV.
Speaker 1: Eighteen days later, he subtweets Biden's video best reveal Yet,
Speaker 1: dar Biden does believe the polls. We think that was
Speaker 1: supposed to be that. Biden does believe the polls. Best
Speaker 1: reveal yet, Dar Biden does believe the polls. Dar and
Speaker 1: knows his only way back is to drag Trump back
Speaker 1: into living rooms, which the trial ain't doing. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: April twenty eighth, he says Biden's folks don't want him
Speaker 1: to debate. Eighteen days later, he says Biden's desire to
Speaker 1: debate proves that Biden does believe the polls. And of
Speaker 1: course he's just gone out onto another limb because now
Speaker 1: he's acting like the debates are going to happen. Definitely. Look,
Speaker 1: it's going to drag Trump back into the living rooms,
Speaker 1: which the trial ain't doing, which, by the way, the
Speaker 1: trial is doing the reason Every once in a while
Speaker 1: is revealed why people like Jonathan Martin and other pundits
Speaker 1: lean towards Trump. Maybe not politically, maybe not societally. Maybe
Speaker 1: if push they would actually say, nah, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'll stick with democracy. I won't go with Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: But in their heart of hearts, they like Trump, and
Speaker 1: they like Trump because they yearn to do what Trump
Speaker 1: is able to do. Say A one day about something
Speaker 1: and then say Z the next day and not only
Speaker 1: get away with it, but get a raise and more power.
Speaker 1: Eighteen days between these two statements, for Jonathan Martin, you
Speaker 1: do that on television, and he did do the first
Speaker 1: one on television? Well, I meet the press. You do
Speaker 1: that on television and they don't let you talk anymore
Speaker 1: if you're that bad at it. But it's what Trump does.
Speaker 1: And so in this era, Jonathan Martin is sho heey
Speaker 1: Otani's interpreter. Last sidebar. There is no NBC News in
Speaker 1: this equation. Eh Now they're doing ABC and CNN. No
Speaker 1: NBC News. Well done, you little both sides as twits.
Speaker 1: There's no CBS News at least for now. Who gets
Speaker 1: the debate of the broadcast networks ABC where George Stephanopoulos
Speaker 1: went out onto a limb and frick a Seed jd
Speaker 1: Vance one week and Nancy Mayce a couple of weeks later,
Speaker 1: and Chris Sinunu somebody who actually stood up for half
Speaker 1: an hour and called liars liars, And ABC says it
Speaker 1: will not hold this exclusively. It will offer its feed
Speaker 1: of its debate, which may just be Joe Biden. But
Speaker 1: it will offer its feed of its debate to the
Speaker 1: other networks. They can run them live if they want.
Speaker 1: CNN will not do that. Well, how could CNN offer
Speaker 1: its feed of its debate to anybody else? I mean,
Speaker 1: if it shared the debate with other networks. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it let MSNBC run the debate live, CNN would
Speaker 1: finish second in the cable ratings with its own debate,
Speaker 1: maybe finished third. Trump on Trial. And yes, the sign
Speaker 1: is this infection continues. It is getting better, but I
Speaker 1: still have to limit what I'm doing and the amount
Speaker 1: of work I'm doing. So this is ad libbed and
Speaker 1: a little ragged, but I'm beginning to enjoy it. The
Speaker 1: legal news, Trump's surrogates violating the gag order. We have
Speaker 1: no idea if the DA followed up yesterday. They do
Speaker 1: tend to keep this stuff close to the vest. We
Speaker 1: have no idea if the judge followed up. We do know.
Speaker 1: And there's an awful lot of MSNBC and here. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm being complimentary towards it, and sometimes i am not.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the I knots. MSNBC mes
Speaker 1: missed a huge scoop because its host stopped listening to
Speaker 1: its guests. The author Andrew Rice went on there late Tuesday,
Speaker 1: and he said he was in court Tuesday during the
Speaker 1: testimony of Michael Cohen, and he was sitting close enough
Speaker 1: to Trump that he could read over Trump's shoulders and
Speaker 1: see what Trump was looking at during the testimony, and
Speaker 1: to quote him, he was actually reading the quotes that
Speaker 1: these individuals were, meaning the ones who attended on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: presumably Speaker Johnson, Vivek Ramaswami. This is a scam. Politician, child, child,
Speaker 1: don't kill me, Trump, don't kill me. He was actually
Speaker 1: reading the quotes that these individuals were and going through
Speaker 1: and making notations with a pen. Chris Hayes adroitly asked
Speaker 1: before or after, meaning was he looking at the comments
Speaker 1: before or after the surrogates made them? And Rice took
Speaker 1: it wrong. He thought he was being asked whether these
Speaker 1: reviews of the quotes were done by Trump before or after.
Speaker 1: Michael Cohen testified, and he said during and instead of
Speaker 1: going back to this and clarifying it, where you go,
Speaker 1: What do you mean you saw Trump editing the comments
Speaker 1: that were being made on his behalf about the judge's
Speaker 1: daughter and how he's an innocent man, and what the
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House prostituted himself in front of everybody,
Speaker 1: and this interference in a criminal case that bordered on
Speaker 1: obstruction of justice. What do you mean? What did you see?
Speaker 1: What time did you write it? Down. Do you have witnesses?
Speaker 1: Did anybody else see instead of saying that Alex Wagner
Speaker 1: came in and changed the subject. Mean, there is a
Speaker 1: reason we did not hire Alex Wagner when we needed
Speaker 1: somebody like her in twenty ten. She changed the subject,
Speaker 1: and we've heard nothing more about this. This guy saw
Speaker 1: Trump looking at the quotes that were said on Trump's
Speaker 1: behalf because Trump can't say them because of the gag order,
Speaker 1: and he was making notations of some sort, going through
Speaker 1: and making notations with a pen as opposed to in
Speaker 1: blood or something, and they changed the subject. It appears
Speaker 1: that Justice meyr Shan self starts on these gag order violations.
Speaker 1: This is not like the case with Jack Smith and
Speaker 1: the case in Washington where he has to file for
Speaker 1: hearing that Mershawan schedules his own hearing. Let's hope he
Speaker 1: does one and calls Andrew Rice and says what Alex
Speaker 1: Wagner did not say, which is, what the hell did
Speaker 1: you mean? He needs to call Trump's surrogates. And by
Speaker 1: the way, we're calling them Trump's surrogates. You know who
Speaker 1: called them Trump surrogates? Trump called them that. What does
Speaker 1: the word surrogate mean? Legally, it means several things, one
Speaker 1: of which is you're the legal spokesperson for somebody. You
Speaker 1: are the legal representative for somebody when you are there,
Speaker 1: surrogate or the legal representative if they're unable to speak
Speaker 1: because they're in a coma. We should be so lucky.
Speaker 1: He called them his surrogates. They went out and said
Speaker 1: things he could not say. I wonder if there's some
Speaker 1: connection between these two things. He was actually reading the
Speaker 1: quotes that these individuals were and going through and making
Speaker 1: notations with a pen. On another matter, what about Michael
Speaker 1: Cohen's hairstyle. The judge needs to find Trump responsible for
Speaker 1: those violations by proxy and say, read the whole gag order.
Speaker 1: You can't say this stuff, and you cannot instruct anybody
Speaker 1: else to. And this is sufficient evidence in my mind
Speaker 1: that you did that. You instructed these people to say
Speaker 1: these things. And the next group that shows up on
Speaker 1: the next day of court, which would be oh, check's
Speaker 1: watch today, they better watch their asses because they may
Speaker 1: be called into this hearing too, because Trump has violated
Speaker 1: the gag order. And you know what Mershawn said last time,
Speaker 1: Lock them up, plenty of room and rikers, lock them up.
Speaker 1: And lose the key. Lock them up, and forget which
Speaker 1: celly you put him in. Just lock them up, Lock
Speaker 1: them up already. Imagine me being called to testify in
Speaker 1: Trump trial and Todd Blanche Trump's attorney says, have you
Speaker 1: ever said anything negative about Donald Trump? And I go yes,
Speaker 1: and he goes like what? And then I keep talking
Speaker 1: for three years. Speaking of MSNBC, also of interest here
Speaker 1: quote how MSNBC's leftward tilt delivers ratings and complications. NBC's
Speaker 1: leaders have been forced to grapple with how to square
Speaker 1: it's cable news networks embrace of progressive politics with the
Speaker 1: company's straight news operation. Un Quote the headline, Yes, I
Speaker 1: was just thumbing through my scrap books from two thousand
Speaker 1: and six and two thousand and seven and two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight and read that about how MSNBC's leftward tilt
Speaker 1: deliveries ratings and complications and what what that wasn't in
Speaker 1: the New York Times from two thousand and seven. That
Speaker 1: was in the New York Times yesterday. Deja vu all
Speaker 1: over again. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown
Speaker 1: with Keith Oberman postscripts to the news. I've forgotten the
Speaker 1: whole spiel. I give it the start of postscripts to
Speaker 1: the news. So I'm just not going to say it.
Speaker 1: I will say though, Dateline New York. I swear to goodness,
Speaker 1: this was in the New York Times yesterday and I
Speaker 1: suddenly felt young again. I read this and I was
Speaker 1: forty six years old and going out onto a limb
Speaker 1: in Secaucus, New Jersey, saying, nobody watches this network anyway.
Speaker 1: Management does not watch it, nobody cares. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to tell the truth. Let's see what happens. It worked
Speaker 1: for Warren Batty in that movie, didn't it. And the
Speaker 1: coverage that began after I started to criticize George W.
Speaker 1: Bush was at first glowing an extraordinary and then suddenly
Speaker 1: it turned dark. Yes, MSNBC is making a profit of
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty million dollars after losing about one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million dollars every year for the last decade. However,
Speaker 1: look at all the inconvenience it's covering up here. It's
Speaker 1: causing these executives at thirty Rock to have to stay
Speaker 1: an extra fifteen minutes and answer phone calls, and never
Speaker 1: mind the executives from the company. My goodness, the chairman
Speaker 1: of ge His mommy called him up and complained because
Speaker 1: of something she saw on Fox News. Time to tell
Speaker 1: that story again too. But first, this my point in
Speaker 1: going back in time, and I felt my hair get darker,
Speaker 1: and my knee get better, and my belly get smaller. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: Jim Ruttenberg and Michael Grinbaum wrote in The New York
Speaker 1: Times this story, the headline of which I gave you
Speaker 1: before the break, and the top of it was MSNBC
Speaker 1: placed a big bet on becoming comfort TV for liberals.
Speaker 1: Then it doubled down. First off, you're welcome. The moves
Speaker 1: have been a hit with viewers. Once again. Let me
Speaker 1: just interject here, you're welcome. MSNBC has leap frog passed
Speaker 1: its erstwhile rivals CNN in the ratings. Yeah. Actually we
Speaker 1: did that in two thousand and six. You're welcome. I
Speaker 1: once beat CNN in the ratings for a George Bush
Speaker 1: press conference with a burst appendix. I was dying of
Speaker 1: sepsis and I got rated CNN. So you're welcome. MSNBC
Speaker 1: has leaped. That'll be the last time I do this, Probably.
Speaker 1: MSNBC has leap frog passed its erstwhile rivals CNN in
Speaker 1: the ratings, and has seen viewership rise over the past year,
Speaker 1: securing second place in cable news, behind the perennial leader
Speaker 1: Fox News. Again, we did this in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: I don't know how this qualifies as news, Jim Rutenberg.
Speaker 1: But MSNBC success has had unintended consequences for its parent company, NBC.
Speaker 1: An original Big three broadcaster that still strives to appeal
Speaker 1: to a mass American audience. Okay, there's no what is
Speaker 1: this big three broadcaster? We're talking it's nineteen ninety four again,
Speaker 1: before there was a Fox, before there was streaming, where
Speaker 1: everybody had their own television network, an original Big three broadcaster.
Speaker 1: Half the people alive watching television have no idea what
Speaker 1: this means. It's like saying original six in hockey. There's
Speaker 1: no such thing as the original six. The original six
Speaker 1: were the teams that didn't go out of business before
Speaker 1: the start of World War two. Original Big three broadcast.
Speaker 1: How about original Big four broadcaster. Let's include the Dumont Network,
Speaker 1: which went out of business in nineteen fifty five, even
Speaker 1: though it had Jackie Gleeson and the Honeymooners, and by
Speaker 1: the way the National Football League. But I digress significantly.
Speaker 1: NBC's traditional political journalists, grin Baum and Rutenberg wrote yesterday,
Speaker 1: although this could have been written in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: NBC's traditional political journalists have cycled between ranker and resignation,
Speaker 1: that the cable network's partisanship, a regular target of mister Trump,
Speaker 1: will color perceptions of their straight news reporting. My first
Speaker 1: decide here is NBC's traditional political journalists have cycled between
Speaker 1: ranker and resignation. Have a lot of them resigned? Has
Speaker 1: Chuck Todd resigned? Did Tom Brokaw resign? Lester Holt resigned?
Speaker 1: Lester Holt who's career was saved by MSNBC and they
Speaker 1: put them on NBC News only because Brian Williams went
Speaker 1: pew up into the sky. Now they haven't. Really, that's
Speaker 1: not the way he meant resignation, I'm sir. The other
Speaker 1: thing about this is, since sometime in the late two thousands,
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight nine, I never got the exact
Speaker 1: date of this, the role of Horace and cart at
Speaker 1: NBC News switched MSNBC and CNBC and the other smaller
Speaker 1: cable news entities within the NBC News family A dysfunctional
Speaker 1: family like the Manson family. The NBC News family used
Speaker 1: to be led by NBC News, The Today's Show, Meet
Speaker 1: the Press, NBC Nightly News used to make all the money.
Speaker 1: And then people stop watching network television. Anybody who could
Speaker 1: afford cables started to watch cable. And sometime around two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven two thousand and eight, when frankly what
Speaker 1: I did, and then what Rachel Matdow did, and to
Speaker 1: some degree, what Chris Matthews did, started making MSNBC money.
Speaker 1: Suddenly it was MSNBC and CNBC were making more money,
Speaker 1: and NBC News was being carried by the cable networks.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what the numbers look like now,
Speaker 1: but I know at some point around two thousand and fifteen,
Speaker 1: the ratio was about cable producing two dollars for every
Speaker 1: one dollar produced by NBC News. So if the NBC
Speaker 1: traditional political journalists are cycling between ranker and resignation about
Speaker 1: the cable network's partisanship, then they should resign because the
Speaker 1: partisanship on MSNBC, and by the way, the reverse partisanship
Speaker 1: the right wing fascist we pray to God for more
Speaker 1: money every night CNBC partisanship. Those two partisanships keep NBC
Speaker 1: News alive. If you cut off MSNBC's partisanship and CNBC's
Speaker 1: partisanship tomorrow, the first thing you would notice would be
Speaker 1: all the NBC News broadcasts from here on in would
Speaker 1: be done in black and white to save money. To
Speaker 1: resume mister Rutenberg's article, local NBC stations between the coasts
Speaker 1: have demanded again and again that executives in New York
Speaker 1: do more to preserve nbc DA's nonpartisan brand, less MSNBC's
Speaker 1: Blue state bent alienate their red state viewers. If you
Speaker 1: would like to invest in something in which you can
Speaker 1: be guaranteed to lose all your money, invest in a
Speaker 1: local NBC station between the coasts, or in fact, a
Speaker 1: local ABC station, or a Fox station, or in fact,
Speaker 1: almost any local television station or local television broadcaster in
Speaker 1: this country. If you would like to lose your money
Speaker 1: and you can't find any interurban trolley lines to buy
Speaker 1: in the year twenty twenty four, buy a local TV station.
Speaker 1: If you want to buy a local TV station and
Speaker 1: it isn't between the coast, you want to buy KNBC
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, WNBC in New York. I'm sure all
Speaker 1: you have to do is open the window and yell out, Hey, NBC,
Speaker 1: I want to buy Channel four. I have cash, and
Speaker 1: they will call you within five five minutes. They are
Speaker 1: losing money hand over fists as if they were an
Speaker 1: ancient god with sixty one hands and thus sixty one
Speaker 1: fists local NBC stations. If local NBC stations called NBC
Speaker 1: headquarters in New York, collect the operators would be instructed
Speaker 1: not to accept the charges. This account of the tensions
Speaker 1: roiling NBC and its corporate overseers is based on interviews
Speaker 1: with more than two dozen people with knowledge of the
Speaker 1: company's inner workings, almost all of whom insisted on anonymity
Speaker 1: to share details of internal discussions. Well, I have to say,
Speaker 1: although executives have long Phil Griffin gone to The New
Speaker 1: York Times to whine and complain, particularly about talent, that
Speaker 1: they did not have the guts to talk to personally.
Speaker 1: Although that was the case once upon a time when
Speaker 1: at NBC, particularly at NBC News, were offended that things
Speaker 1: became more and more difficult for them because their Republican
Speaker 1: friends We're calling up and complaining of that that on
Speaker 1: MSNBC they used to put their own names on him
Speaker 1: Tom Brooker, there's nothing new to this. I really don't
Speaker 1: understand this piece. It is from two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: it is written in twenty twenty four. And the problem
Speaker 1: is that all the rationalizations for why they need to
Speaker 1: reel MSNBC in have now weighted against them. The fact
Speaker 1: that MSNBC is the thing that makes money within NBC
Speaker 1: News and everything else hemorrhage's money, or at least does
Speaker 1: not make enough money that the investors would be willing
Speaker 1: to start it anew if it was offered and presented
Speaker 1: to them tomorrow. That is the reality of cash, and
Speaker 1: for some reason, that's not included anywhere in this rather
Speaker 1: lengthy piece by Mistertburt and mister Grinbaum, and I don't
Speaker 1: criticize them. Although mister Ruttenberg and mister Grenbaum had simply
Speaker 1: repeated an article written for The New York Times by
Speaker 1: Brian Stelter circa nineteen two thousand and eight or two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine and put their own names on it
Speaker 1: and changed a few names in it, nobody would have
Speaker 1: known the difference. It's the same damn point. Those MSNBC
Speaker 1: people are ruining it for us. Do you know what
Speaker 1: kind of trouble we'll be in when we go fascist
Speaker 1: next year, Trump's gonna come and arrest all of us
Speaker 1: rather than just those guys on the third and fourth
Speaker 1: floors there at MSNBC. Screw them now. The other part
Speaker 1: that was left out of this is this desire to
Speaker 1: reel back in MSNBC. I'm not going to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time talking about another one of my exes.
Speaker 1: It's one of my greatest faults. It wasn't my intention
Speaker 1: for this series, at least not my primary intention for
Speaker 1: this series to talk about my exes. But Katie Turr
Speaker 1: is a disaster of biblical proportions, and then they have
Speaker 1: her on with Andrea Mitchell and the two of them
Speaker 1: are acting like it's the year eighteen eighty four and
Speaker 1: they know women will never have the right to vote,
Speaker 1: so why bother. Joe Scarborough also is not a liberal.
Speaker 1: Joe Scarborough is playing a liberal on TV because trying
Speaker 1: to be Trump's vice president twenty sixteen didn't work out
Speaker 1: for him, and they'll never admit him back inside the
Speaker 1: conservative club, even though he's just as conservative now as
Speaker 1: he was then. There are no actual principles or morals
Speaker 1: in Joe Scarborough, and he's on television five hours a
Speaker 1: day simply repeating gossip and hosting people like Jonathan Martin,
Speaker 1: who will change his opinion eighteen days from now. The
Speaker 1: rest the rest in here was about the protests of
Speaker 1: criticism of the Gaza Israel war in the hours after
Speaker 1: the attack by Hamas on October seventh, the ronal McDaniel disaster,
Speaker 1: like that was MSNBC's fault. Hey, Rachel, who do you
Speaker 1: think we should hire? I think we should hire ronal McDaniel.
Speaker 1: I don't think that conversation happened. I've had some criticisms
Speaker 1: of Rachel matdow here. You may have heard them. One
Speaker 1: of them is not that she was intending to hire
Speaker 1: ronal McDaniel. And the rest of this was about how
Speaker 1: the problem ultimately is insoluble, that there's no way for
Speaker 1: these two operations to continue, NBC News and MSNBC. It
Speaker 1: can't go on much longer, even though even though we're
Speaker 1: going to celebrate in about a year my first special
Speaker 1: comments twentieth anniversary, but it's never going to last. And
Speaker 1: those billions of dollars that MSNBC has made for NBC,
Speaker 1: first for Ge and now for Comcast, all of which,
Speaker 1: excuse me, all of which originates from my going screw it,
Speaker 1: nobody's watching. What's the difference. They'll fire me. I'll go
Speaker 1: back work at ESPN again. I have another ab I
Speaker 1: can do. I don't need this job. I'm a fully
Speaker 1: qualified brain surgeon. The rest of this article is about
Speaker 1: how this problem is insoluble, and how that they even
Speaker 1: thought maybe they could spin MSNBC off and stop saying
Speaker 1: it was news, and they could do this and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't use it as a spillover for NBC programming or
Speaker 1: an attempt to amortize the cost of sending a reporter
Speaker 1: somewhere to go do a stupid story on the stupid
Speaker 1: Today Show for two minutes and then throw it back.
Speaker 1: And then they wait, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, go
Speaker 1: back to that last one. They thought, maybe spin MSNBC
Speaker 1: off and exceparate the two operations and maybe call MSNBC
Speaker 1: something else. Oh my good god. We proposed this to
Speaker 1: them in two thousand and four. The first thing I
Speaker 1: did when I went back there for my second stint
Speaker 1: at the beginning of two thousand and three, the first
Speaker 1: thing I said was, you know what would make everything
Speaker 1: a lot easier for you, not for us, but for you.
Speaker 1: Don't put the NBC logo on this. We have to
Speaker 1: have the NBC logo on if this is what sells it. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: Don't you understand the people who are watching MSA NBC
Speaker 1: are the ones who've already decided they don't want to
Speaker 1: watch NBC nightly news. They don't want more Tom Brokaw.
Speaker 1: They don't want God Love Him, Carrie Sanders or more
Speaker 1: of Carrie Sanders. They want the two. Maybe they'll watch
Speaker 1: nightly news. I notice you never let us run nightly
Speaker 1: news on MSNBC. You want us to run leftovers. For years,
Speaker 1: we argued, and it was one of the few times
Speaker 1: I ever agreed with the then president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin.
Speaker 1: We argued, we have to have a separate identity, keep
Speaker 1: the two operations with the proverbial wall of China between them.
Speaker 1: Don't have people who are on MSNBC appear on NBC News.
Speaker 1: Don't have people who are on NBC News appear on MSNBC.
Speaker 1: And for a while we did that, and we made
Speaker 1: billions of dollars, and then somebody went, you know what,
Speaker 1: we could save one hundred and twenty seven dollars. If
Speaker 1: we had the same person do the early morning news
Speaker 1: on MSNBC and the newscast part of the Today Show,
Speaker 1: that same band would be great, brilliant, crossbro Synergy. It's synergy,
Speaker 1: and it saves one hundred and twenty seven dollars. And
Speaker 1: that's where all this problem originates, re originates, re reriginates.
Speaker 1: We killed this problem off in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and then it came back in twenty fifteen, and then
Speaker 1: when MSNBC tanked and nobody would go on MSNBC from NBC,
Speaker 1: it was solved again. And then MSNBC rose again, and
Speaker 1: now they have the same problem because they're trying to
Speaker 1: use people on both networks. We solved this. I didn't
Speaker 1: see that in the article either, But of course all
Speaker 1: of this could have been averted if I had simply said, sure,
Speaker 1: what the hell? When the phone call came in the
Speaker 1: summer of two thousand and nine and it was Jeff Zucker,
Speaker 1: and he said, you and the executive producer better get
Speaker 1: up here now to my palatial office on the fifty
Speaker 1: second floor, because the chairman of GE has just told
Speaker 1: me that he's going to take MSNBC off the air
Speaker 1: and replace it with cartoons because he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: be bothered with these phone calls anymore. And I said,
Speaker 1: whoa wait, We're making two hundred million dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Do you think that matters to him? Get your ass
Speaker 1: up here? And I did, so let me retell that story,
Speaker 1: because that's next. This is countdown. I said, Jeff Immelt
Speaker 1: is going to take MSNBC off the air. I didn't
Speaker 1: need any of my overwrought visions from two years earlier
Speaker 1: of the future of liberal news commentary falling out the
Speaker 1: NBC window to its death on the rink. This was
Speaker 1: the real thing. The chairman of General Electric was threatening
Speaker 1: to open the window himself, throw us out the window himself,
Speaker 1: and then race down to the pavement to stomp on
Speaker 1: our dying remains himself. Poor Ed Schultz heard Jeff Zucker
Speaker 1: say those words, and he had screwed up his face
Speaker 1: and tilted his head like a puppy hearing a car crash.
Speaker 1: He had not believed it the first time. He had
Speaker 1: not believed at the second time. Zucker said it a
Speaker 1: third time. Immelt is going to take MSNBC off the
Speaker 1: effing air at Schultz groaned, after weeks of Griffin's coaxing,
Speaker 1: he had finally just moved from Nebraska to New York
Speaker 1: the preceding weekend. Yet he was still, somehow only the
Speaker 1: second most strung out person in the room. You, Zucker
Speaker 1: shouted at me, You're the smartest one in the room.
Speaker 1: What the f do we do now? I'll confess I
Speaker 1: was shaken by this because it appeared for once that
Speaker 1: Zucker was not being sarcastic. I had never before seen
Speaker 1: him flush nor flustered. This was a guy who wore
Speaker 1: fleece in July. Now he was beat red and sweating.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he knew what he was doing, and, as his
Speaker 1: opposition to hiring Matdow had proved, sometimes he didn't know
Speaker 1: what he was doing. But he always acted as the
Speaker 1: most confident man in the galaxy. But now he literally
Speaker 1: had no clue what to do next. And he not
Speaker 1: only could not ignore my advice, he desperately needed it.
Speaker 1: This situation and that color on his face were almost
Speaker 1: worth watching the corporate fascists nuke my network. I asked
Speaker 1: Zucker to explain what happened? You got Dan, well know
Speaker 1: what happened. Zucker moved towards me and I stood up
Speaker 1: and I told him I would see myself out. He stopped,
Speaker 1: remembering that he did indeed actually need my help. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I apologize. This isn't raschal, this is immelt. Last week
Speaker 1: sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped, he told Murdoch he wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: take any more of what you were saying about him
Speaker 1: on the air. So he did a piece last night
Speaker 1: accusing GE of manufacturing the components that been used in
Speaker 1: roadside bombs that were built in a rand to kill
Speaker 1: Americans in Iraq, which is true legally, that's legally true.
Speaker 1: They found roadside bombs that had like thirty year old
Speaker 1: g E transistors or TV twobes from nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: or is something in them? Legally, GE did manufacture components
Speaker 1: that were used in roadside bombs that were built in
Speaker 1: around to kill Americans in Iraq. So o'reiley puts this
Speaker 1: on his effing show as a lead story, and then
Speaker 1: Fox sent two camera crews in this little crap producer
Speaker 1: from O'Riley show, Jesse Waters something to steak emmeilt out
Speaker 1: and chase him around the GE shareholders meeting in Charlotte.
Speaker 1: Zucker finally came up for air, and I jumped in.
Speaker 1: Why didn't emmelt have six camera crews to stake out
Speaker 1: the two Fox crews and chase them around in Charlotte?
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't that one of our news hubs Charlotte
Speaker 1: doesn't emmelt own like twenty camera crews? There, he bring
Speaker 1: a camera crew, You'll bring two camera crews. Zucker started
Speaker 1: to not like me again. Now you suggest that where
Speaker 1: were you in? All right, never mind, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Emmel says, if there's one more story on Bill O'Reilly
Speaker 1: about ge manufacturing components for roadside bombs in Iraq, he's
Speaker 1: taking MSNBC off the air immediately. It'll just be twenty
Speaker 1: four hours of lock up and I'm fired and you're fired.
Speaker 1: And then he pointed at Chris Matthews, producer and Matthews
Speaker 1: is fired. And he pointed at poor Ed Schultz and
Speaker 1: you're fired, and Ed whimpered, So Smart asked, what the
Speaker 1: f do we do? I feigned all the nonchalants I
Speaker 1: could feign. If I could have lit a shroot by
Speaker 1: striking a match on the sole of my boot, I
Speaker 1: would have. It's manageable. But Jeff, why is Emmelt so
Speaker 1: worked up about what O'Reilly said about him. Only O'Reilly's
Speaker 1: nutjob viewers actually believe any of that crap. Nobody at GE,
Speaker 1: nobody investing in GE, could possibly believe we're building components
Speaker 1: for roadside bombs. Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's mother believes it.
Speaker 1: All the heads in the room turned toward the president
Speaker 1: of NBC. Missus. Emmelt back in Cincinnati is a devoted
Speaker 1: Bill O'Reilly viewer watches him every night, sees this, calls him, says, Sonny,
Speaker 1: why are you manufacturing components that were used in roadside
Speaker 1: bombs built in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq? I
Speaker 1: had not expected that, I said to Zucker. So so
Speaker 1: he'll really burn what two hundred million a year in
Speaker 1: profits just between Rachel and me? Because his mom watches
Speaker 1: Bill O'Reilly, Zucker got angry again. You bet you're effing
Speaker 1: ass he will now you said it was manageable. How
Speaker 1: how the hef do we manage it? Ulderman? Just a minute?
Speaker 1: How old is she? Zucker summoned all his annoyance? How
Speaker 1: old is who ML's mother? How old is she? Jeff
Speaker 1: Zucker was really annoyed. How should I know? You're missing
Speaker 1: the point? I had him really worked up, nearly to
Speaker 1: the boiling point. It was great, guess, Zucker fluttered. I
Speaker 1: don't know. He's in his mid fifties. She's got to
Speaker 1: be eighty ninety something. I stifled a fake yawn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, probably closer to ninety now that I think
Speaker 1: of it. So the problem is she watches O'Reilly. She
Speaker 1: tells him what's on Fox? What O'Reilly's saying about Ge? Well,
Speaker 1: I think you have a simple solution. I'd say the
Speaker 1: first thing you do is you send over a couple
Speaker 1: of big guys to her house and you pull the
Speaker 1: freaking cable out of the wall. Zucker actually gasped. My producer,
Speaker 1: is Hepovich unsuccessfully stifled a laugh, and I saw Rachel
Speaker 1: crack a smile. Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Olderman.
Speaker 1: I crossed my legs. Oh, it's a little funny. And anyway,
Speaker 1: it's not essential. If the problem is emailed is threatening
Speaker 1: to take the network off the air because O'Reilly is
Speaker 1: avenging himself against me by attacking him and attacking Ge.
Speaker 1: The short term solution is easy and in fact, it
Speaker 1: is manageable. The long term solution that's not easy, and
Speaker 1: that's not manageable. But the short term one that's simple.
Speaker 1: Rest of this week, next week, maybe the week after that.
Speaker 1: Even we just don't mention Fox News on MSNBC something
Speaker 1: resembling a smile across Zucker's face. It made him look
Speaker 1: a little less like a lizard person and more like
Speaker 1: a monkey with glasses. You do that forever? No, not forever.
Speaker 1: I would not do that, I said to Bias time. Yes,
Speaker 1: but remember who was it who was in my office
Speaker 1: last winter telling me that I should go on the
Speaker 1: air and just to f with Fox? I should ask
Speaker 1: why Rupert Murdoch was still running a huge international media
Speaker 1: company like News Corp, despite all the reports that he's
Speaker 1: suffering from dementia, even though there haven't been any reports
Speaker 1: that he's suffering from dementia. For everybody's sake, here, who
Speaker 1: was that again who told me to do that? Zuker's
Speaker 1: goodwill was gone? Again? Obviously that was me. What's your point?
Speaker 1: My point is, we built this new brand of ours
Speaker 1: organically on a couple of themes, a couple of statements
Speaker 1: of principle and one of them is to use your
Speaker 1: words just to f with Fox. If we don't f
Speaker 1: with Fox for a couple of weeks at the start
Speaker 1: of the summer, who's gonna care, Who's gonna notice? But
Speaker 1: like after two weeks, three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice,
Speaker 1: and the TV writers are gonna notice, and then the
Speaker 1: crap we'll hit from every direction you can think of.
Speaker 1: Temporary freeze on mentioning Fox and mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdoch. Fine,
Speaker 1: permanent freeze. Might as well let em Milk turn us
Speaker 1: off in the morning. After all, I don't think Zooker
Speaker 1: actually heard the last part about em Milt turning us off.
Speaker 1: After all, the lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe,
Speaker 1: he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He
Speaker 1: looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Izzy and
Speaker 1: at Phil Griffin and me, You and you and you
Speaker 1: and I will we will talk tomorrow, maybe to and
Speaker 1: we'll all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox, anybody,
Speaker 1: are we clear? Nothing on the air about Fox. Silence
Speaker 1: in the room, then the assorted noises of people rising
Speaker 1: mixed with attempts to resuscitate poor Ed Schultz. Somebody Matthew's
Speaker 1: guy Harson, I think, was almost at the door out
Speaker 1: of Zucker's office, an office so big that it was
Speaker 1: to steal the Ring Lardner line, the size of the
Speaker 1: Yale Bowl, but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up,
Speaker 1: quietly but firmly. Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me.
Speaker 1: I will not have the content of my show dictated
Speaker 1: by any corporations, including the one I work for. Remember
Speaker 1: this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt
Speaker 1: that way then, and especially one I don't work for.
Speaker 1: I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience
Speaker 1: wondering what else I have not told them. I don't
Speaker 1: do a lot about Fox on my show, but if
Speaker 1: there is a story about Fox, I will not honor
Speaker 1: this freeze. I will report that story. And if I'm
Speaker 1: from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,
Speaker 1: Zucker barked Phil Olderman, is he stay? When the rest
Speaker 1: of the room had cleared, Zucker blew air out of
Speaker 1: his mouth as if it were smoke. He gestured violently
Speaker 1: at me with his right arm. I told you, she
Speaker 1: was a mistake. You didn't listen to me. I told you. Now,
Speaker 1: she's your problem. All this is your problem. Get her
Speaker 1: back on the reservation or else. Now I had run
Speaker 1: out of goodwill and jokes. Oh, I'll get her back
Speaker 1: on the reservation, Jeff. But if you think this is
Speaker 1: my problem, just think about what happens if he really
Speaker 1: does take us off the air, or if it just
Speaker 1: gets out that he threatened to take us off the
Speaker 1: air because his mother didn't like what Fox said about him.
Speaker 1: That's my problem. Uh uh, that's your problem. And it's
Speaker 1: the problem of the CEO of the frickin' sixth largest
Speaker 1: corporation in the world, who it makes his business decisions
Speaker 1: involving hundreds of millions of dollars of profits based on
Speaker 1: what his mother says. At this point, Phil Griffin managed
Speaker 1: to pull Zucker away and Izzy and I made for
Speaker 1: the door, saying nothing until we were in the elevator. Finally,
Speaker 1: she asked, what are you going to do about Rachel?
Speaker 1: I look straight ahead. I have depth perception issues while
Speaker 1: traveling forward, backwards, up or down. Yeah, if I know
Speaker 1: what I'm going to do about her. But I got
Speaker 1: an idea. I mean the only person she was really
Speaker 1: talking to in there was herself. This isn't a brand
Speaker 1: new surprise success for her anymore. This is successful. This
Speaker 1: is what nine ten months she's successful. She said she
Speaker 1: was once a dancing cell phone outside a cell phone
Speaker 1: store outside of Boston. She ain't going back to that.
Speaker 1: I went to talk to Rachel about an hour later
Speaker 1: and reassured her. I mentioned that powerful as Fox was,
Speaker 1: they were not going to be able to re invade
Speaker 1: Iraq by themselves, and unless she moved it way closer
Speaker 1: than it had been, nobody would cross her censorship line.
Speaker 1: And I said, just give me as much time as
Speaker 1: the French government took before fleeing during the Nazi advance
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty. I said, give me, what was it,
Speaker 1: thirty three days? Give me thirty three days. If we
Speaker 1: aren't back where we were this morning, we can both
Speaker 1: quit on the air. I mean that'd be fun, right.
Speaker 1: Three nights later, well after midnight on a Friday, my
Speaker 1: NBC issued BlackBerry buzzed with a quick email from Rachel Maddow. Hey,
Speaker 1: she wrote, don't necessarily quote me because I'm really drunk,
Speaker 1: but just make the best deal you can for us.
Speaker 1: I trust you, we don't need to do Fox all
Speaker 1: the time. I never do Fox stories anyway. I just
Speaker 1: had to say that, and this is the best platform
Speaker 1: we will ever have. Well she was right, at least
Speaker 1: for the time being. A couple of weeks later, I
Speaker 1: had to sneak in a script that blasted Fox, and
Speaker 1: at ten thirty at home that night, I got a
Speaker 1: call from a drunken Phil Griffin shouting into the phone,
Speaker 1: I have a Zucker had to go meet with Roger
Speaker 1: Ales secretly inside thirty Rock, and I hope they remember
Speaker 1: to clean the room afterwards, and MLT even had to
Speaker 1: meet with Murdoch. And then, happily, some idiot GE executive
Speaker 1: decided to boast to The New York Times about getting
Speaker 1: us little talent children under control and a big deal
Speaker 1: with the executives over at Fox and how they'd settled everything,
Speaker 1: which blew up the whole deal instantly, because the moment
Speaker 1: the deal went public, NBC looked so stupid, and even
Speaker 1: NBC News was now risked. The only point of the
Speaker 1: whole thing was to keep the Immelts and the Zuckers
Speaker 1: and the Griffins and the ales Is from throwing us
Speaker 1: and our little island of liberal commentary out of that
Speaker 1: window at thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow and I
Speaker 1: would be constantly reminded in the ensuing years, thirty Rock
Speaker 1: has a lot of freaking windows. I've done all the
Speaker 1: damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown.
Speaker 1: Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on
Speaker 1: the guitars, the bass, and the drums, and mister Shanelle
Speaker 1: handled the orchestration and the keyboards. It was produced by
Speaker 1: Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions,
Speaker 1: arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music
Speaker 1: is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch
Speaker 1: Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy
Speaker 1: musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium
Speaker 1: organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Howard Fineman,
Speaker 1: and everything else was pretty much my fault. Let's countdown
Speaker 1: for this the one hundred and seventy sixth day until
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four presidential election, but two hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty fifth day since Dictator Jay Trump's first attempted coup
Speaker 1: against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use
Speaker 1: the legal system such as it is, use the mental
Speaker 1: health system, Use presidential immunity if it happens, use the
Speaker 1: not regularly given elector objection option. Use the campaign to
Speaker 1: stop him from doing it again while we still can.
Speaker 1: The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Again, I'm going to
Speaker 1: label that as probable game time decision till the next one.
Speaker 1: I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and
Speaker 1: good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.