Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio Now.
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave the incorrect impression that I
Speaker 1: am opposed to this. But Trump is talking about his
Speaker 1: own mortality, or his own career mortality, or going to
Speaker 1: heaven or all of the above again. At the same time,
Speaker 1: he's talking about declaring insurrections and jailing more political opponents
Speaker 1: like Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker and any one of
Speaker 1: a dozen judges, including at least one he appointed. Not
Speaker 1: prosecuting them this time, just jailing them. And as if
Speaker 1: it could get any worse, he specifically segued from the
Speaker 1: issue of wanting to prove to God that he's been
Speaker 1: good to how great all those missiles are at his
Speaker 1: naval base. Honestly, I don't know why the few remaining
Speaker 1: news organizations do not have entire departments devoted to analysis
Speaker 1: about which heart of Trump's insanity is in charge today.
Speaker 2: It'll be very hard to be a good country. You know,
Speaker 2: there's no reason to be good. I want to be
Speaker 2: good because you want to prove to God that you're good,
Speaker 2: so you go to that next step, right, So that's
Speaker 2: very important to me. I think it's really very important.
Speaker 2: And yesterday was amazing. We went out, we went to
Speaker 2: the naval base, largest in the world actually, and I
Speaker 2: saw things that were incredible, the level.
Speaker 1: Of uh.
Speaker 2: I don't want to use the word weapons, but.
Speaker 1: They are weapons. The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, hallelujah. Quote
Speaker 1: Chicago mayor should be in jail for failing to protect
Speaker 1: ice officers. Governor Pritzker also unquote. You could read that
Speaker 1: as saying that the Chicago mayor should be in jail
Speaker 1: for failing to protect Governor Pritzker, but I don't think
Speaker 1: that's what Trump meant. Then again, who knows you? And
Speaker 1: I know it should be Trump in jail because he's
Speaker 1: not only broken laws, he's nearly collected the complete set
Speaker 1: of broken laws already, to say nothing of him being
Speaker 1: in some kind of psychiatric facility, because whatever is wrong
Speaker 1: with him, it's going faster to say nothing of his
Speaker 1: ren Field Stephen Miller, who talk about having news departments
Speaker 1: devoted to studying what's wrong with him Today Stephen Miller
Speaker 1: is manipulating Trump's untetheredness to reality and convincing Trump there
Speaker 1: really are insurrections. Then that Cash Pittzel isn't crazy when
Speaker 1: he says five percent of Chicago residents are active gang members,
Speaker 1: and Trump has long been one of those. Does what
Speaker 1: the last person to talk to him tells him? People.
Speaker 1: Miller has refined this into a self fulfilling prophecy machine.
Speaker 1: Tell Trump there is an insurrection in Portland. No, no, Chicago,
Speaker 1: Chicago turns out is easier right now. Tell him there's
Speaker 1: ice agents imperiled. Get him to send troops to Chicago.
Speaker 1: What troops? Who knows which ones are the worst, the
Speaker 1: most paranoid, the least traceable. Get the troops to try
Speaker 1: to provoke Chicago residents, and if they succeed, show that
Speaker 1: to Trump on Fox News and get him to declare
Speaker 1: whatever the residents do to be an insurrection, and poof,
Speaker 1: Steven Miller has just fabricated an insurrection out of nothing
Speaker 1: in Chicago. This formula is how they get Trump to
Speaker 1: do anything. Really, the whole mechanism of jailing his opponents
Speaker 1: has never been clearer than right now. You keep firing
Speaker 1: prosecutors until somebody, the one who won Miss Uncongeniality in
Speaker 1: the Beauty pageant is willing to the documents and bang
Speaker 1: James Comy is indicted, and you can say, see, mister President,
Speaker 1: he's been indicted. It's on Fox News. Even though ABC
Speaker 1: reported yesterday that Trump's main government witness will testify that
Speaker 1: Komy told him not to leak to the media, and
Speaker 1: this witness will almost certainly be branded a hostile witness.
Speaker 1: And the motion to dismiss will be filed by Komy's
Speaker 1: defense by a week from next Monday, the twentieth, as
Speaker 1: will the motion to unseat the fraudulently appointed HAIRD prosecutor.
Speaker 1: And the judge yesterday said, no, we're not slow tracking
Speaker 1: this process just so you can keep telling Trump. Look,
Speaker 1: the Komy trials now three months long. Your damn indictment
Speaker 1: was a page and a half. What Miller and Patel
Speaker 1: and Pam Bondi do. And once again my judgment was
Speaker 1: proved correct. From two thousand and six, I think it
Speaker 1: was when Pam Bondy hit on me outside men's room
Speaker 1: in the PBS station in Tampa. I think I said, dere,
Speaker 1: I'm just getting in the car. I gotta go to
Speaker 1: the airport to go to the moon. Anyway, what they
Speaker 1: all do when the judge rules in favor of the
Speaker 1: motion to dismiss the indictment of James Comy. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Maybe just pull Trump's TVs out of the wall. I've
Speaker 1: never understood why they didn't just set up their own
Speaker 1: version of Fox News in the White House basement or
Speaker 1: something and Taylor twenty four hours of programming just to him.
Speaker 1: I mean, Laura Ingram would work there instead in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: I mean for the same money, maybe less. Only one
Speaker 1: demand would, which would be that you'd have to give
Speaker 1: Laura three hours instead of one. I guess they don't
Speaker 1: need a fake Fox News of their own when they
Speaker 1: have the fake Fox News that Rupert Murdoch gives them
Speaker 1: for free. Although they are always running the risks, something
Speaker 1: will happen to the real world that Fox will have
Speaker 1: to report anyway, and Trump will see it, which is
Speaker 1: why you will still see these spasms of rage by
Speaker 1: him against Fox. Still, it's largely a good and efficient system,
Speaker 1: and it's not very much larger nor more original in
Speaker 1: scope than the means by which the Maga cult itself
Speaker 1: is manipulated. Decide what you want the outcome to be,
Speaker 1: create a phony news narrative that supports it, especially if
Speaker 1: you can work in paranoia and racism and disguise them
Speaker 1: as something else. Have some faithful maga Republicans say it
Speaker 1: while a fax camera is on him or on her.
Speaker 1: Put that on Fox. Trump sees it, the cult sees it.
Speaker 1: It becomes their reality. There are pitfalls. What do you
Speaker 1: do when Fox lies and CNN or the Washington Post
Speaker 1: tell the truth? Well, sir, you buy CNN and the
Speaker 1: Washington Post and you convert them to maga parrots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all that. What do you do about CBS News? Oh,
Speaker 1: you buy CBS News and you convert it, and you
Speaker 1: put an actual parrot named Barry Weiss in charge, which
Speaker 1: I will get to at length in a moment with
Speaker 1: the mystery of the broken number three CBS pencils story. Anyway,
Speaker 1: when the process creates an uncomfortable clash for one of
Speaker 1: Trump's slaves, like Speaker Mike Tiny Johnson, between Trump reality
Speaker 1: and reality reality, Johnson can then just employ the universal solvent,
Speaker 1: the three monkeys process. I didn't see it, I didn't
Speaker 1: hear it. I didn't say it. Should Mayor Johnson of
Speaker 1: Chicago and Governor Pritzker of Illinois be in prison? Speaker Johnson,
Speaker 1: Mayor of Should they be in prison? Should the mayor
Speaker 1: of Chicago and the governor of Illinois be in prison.
Speaker 1: I'm not the attorney general. I'm the Speaker of the House,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to manage the chaos here. I'm not
Speaker 1: following the day to day on that sure, Trump's invading cities,
Speaker 1: threatening elected officials, and like every eleventh of those officials
Speaker 1: is somebody Trump once appointed or favored or defended. You
Speaker 1: remember Mike Pence, don't you, Mike Johnson? What are you
Speaker 1: going to do on that day when you were Mike Pence?
Speaker 1: But you're not following the day to day. We're all
Speaker 1: day to day, Mike Johnson. Mike, of course, then proceeded
Speaker 1: to go into the details of the day to day,
Speaker 1: because like everything else, it's bullshit multiplied by stupidity. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: most of our Trump infested nation either doesn't understand or
Speaker 1: doesn't know about it. And then there's that tiny sliver
Speaker 1: that actually supports it, which looks sometimes like a majority,
Speaker 1: because we forget the majority actually has no idea about this,
Speaker 1: because it's got nothing to do with entertainment news or
Speaker 1: sports news. Oh, Ronaldo is worth a billion dollars, Yes,
Speaker 1: I know who he is. Why do I care how
Speaker 1: much money he has, Why don't you do a segment
Speaker 1: on instead, whether or not at forty he's still any
Speaker 1: good at the soccer. Mike Johnson actually blew that one.
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson should have said, I'm not following the day
Speaker 1: to day. In fact, this morning I spent in retreat praying,
Speaker 1: and I took a vow of silence and a vow
Speaker 1: to not follow the day to day. Amen, thank you Jesus.
Speaker 1: The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah. The idea that they
Speaker 1: all know Trump's nuts and they believe they have simply
Speaker 1: learned to ride that wave and not drown is in
Speaker 1: fact part of the Trump origin story. In February twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: I looked it up February thirteenth, twenty seventeen. I was,
Speaker 1: if you can imagine this, one of three guests in
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg building here in Funds City on the Charlie
Speaker 1: Rose Show, which used to run on PBS and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: before Charlie's little problem with knowing where his pants and
Speaker 1: hands were at a given moment. When that cropped up,
Speaker 1: there was a guest host, Judd Apatow, and this lineup,
Speaker 1: if you can imagine Republican strategist Ed Rollins, with whom
Speaker 1: I had shared grudging respect and a glimmer of like
Speaker 1: for about twenty years by that point, and Maggie Haberman,
Speaker 1: for God's sake and me Rollins and Apatow took me seriously.
Speaker 1: Haberman was condescending and dents I mentioned several times during
Speaker 1: the taping that we were all kind of missing the
Speaker 1: big picture, that all the analysis of what Trump had
Speaker 1: done was discounting this fact that there had been nothing
Speaker 1: in Trump's first three or four weeks in office that
Speaker 1: contradicted the idea that he was crazy. And I made
Speaker 1: a few references to the piece that I read here
Speaker 1: last week, which had been written the year before. Could
Speaker 1: Trump pass a sanity test? Well? As we finished this
Speaker 1: surprisingly informative and non violent show, even though Maggie Haberman
Speaker 1: was there and cameras were powered down and Mike's put away,
Speaker 1: Ed Rollins extended his hand and smiled and it looked sincere,
Speaker 1: and he said he always enjoyed our conversations, even though
Speaker 1: he often thought I was crazy. He then laughed and said,
Speaker 1: but you know about crazy about your Trump sanity test.
Speaker 1: There was a long pause, and then Ed Rollins said,
Speaker 1: you know, he is crazy. Ed Rollins gathered his belongings
Speaker 1: and made for the studio exit door. Of course he's crazy, Keith,
Speaker 1: I don't know why you need a test. Every once
Speaker 1: in a while, the degradation and deterioration of American society
Speaker 1: and particularly American journalism just sort of seeps into the
Speaker 1: background and we stop looking at how remarkable it actually is.
Speaker 1: At any other point in our history, if the daughter
Speaker 1: in law of the President of the United States had
Speaker 1: her own nominal news show on a cable news channel,
Speaker 1: it would be a scandal of unbelievable proportions, even if
Speaker 1: she were qualified. Lara Trump is qualified in the sense
Speaker 1: that she's almost as stupid as a native born Trump,
Speaker 1: but we no longer notice these things. I was thinking
Speaker 1: of Lara Trump because she is wonderfully incompetent, even in
Speaker 1: her role as propagandist on Fox News, lobbing softballs at
Speaker 1: people who are barely able to answer softballs. On behalf
Speaker 1: of her father in law. She is both the question
Speaker 1: and the answer. But I was thinking about her because
Speaker 1: I was trying to find somebody in my mind who
Speaker 1: would be worse than Barry Weiss. To run CBS News.
Speaker 1: Barry Weiss, if you don't know who she is, has
Speaker 1: failed upwards from being the naivete and dumbing down editor
Speaker 1: of New York Times Opinions. She was encouraged to leave
Speaker 1: and left and formed a new place called the Free Press,
Speaker 1: which is, of course, like everything else with a name
Speaker 1: on it in media today, it is the exact opposite
Speaker 1: of its title. It is not the free Press. It
Speaker 1: is not free. There's nothing to do with freedom of
Speaker 1: the press in it. It is just another rationalization for
Speaker 1: fascism blog and for some reason, because it has been
Speaker 1: dumbed down, it is essentially a substack for idiots. It
Speaker 1: was worth one hundred and fifty million dollars to the
Speaker 1: Ellison people, partially because they are still trying to curry
Speaker 1: favor with Trump, and this was another way of lifting
Speaker 1: up fascists who don't get enough help in this society.
Speaker 1: As you know, there is no oppressed group in this
Speaker 1: country today like fascists, except short, unappealing fascists. They are
Speaker 1: even in worse positions than regular fascists. So in any event,
Speaker 1: Barry Weiss was bought out for about one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars that's one of the reports of her
Speaker 1: free press site. And as part of the deal, she
Speaker 1: was put in charge of CBS News. And I was
Speaker 1: just thinking, would Lara Trump be worse or better for
Speaker 1: CBS News. Well, Lara Trump has now about a year's
Speaker 1: worth of experience in television, so she'd be better qualified
Speaker 1: than Barry Wise. We are watching once again those organizations
Speaker 1: in the news when they are needed the most in
Speaker 1: the history of this country, not only failing but voluntarily
Speaker 1: jumping off cliffs. Here's the first step. You build up
Speaker 1: a center and left intelligence audience that has come to
Speaker 1: depend upon you over the decades, as The Washington Post did,
Speaker 1: as CNN did. You make no bones about the fact
Speaker 1: that the thing probably does tend to lean a little
Speaker 1: bit liberal, because well, facts, as they say, do lean
Speaker 1: a little bit liberal, but money leans in both directions,
Speaker 1: and especially leans on liberals. And so no matter the
Speaker 1: news organization or its origins, or its history or its
Speaker 1: importance at the moment, if it can be sold, it
Speaker 1: will be sold, and usually to the wrong person, even
Speaker 1: to a person who does the right thing at first
Speaker 1: and then figures, oh no, this is hurting my other products.
Speaker 1: And also it's encouraging Trump to blackmail me. Hi, Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos talking to you. Bezos apparently got away with it
Speaker 1: the first time he announced that he was being blackmailed
Speaker 1: and he wasn't going to subject himself to it or
Speaker 1: his now ex wife. And he stood up nobly in
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. Was there to say that democracy dies
Speaker 1: in darkness, and it was going to shine the light.
Speaker 1: And then something else happened, and we don't know what
Speaker 1: it is. But then he got married to Lauren Sanchez,
Speaker 1: and all the fascists came to the wedding, and the
Speaker 1: next thing you know, the Washington Post is throwing all
Speaker 1: of its traditions and all of its readers out the
Speaker 1: effing window. There is a report from the invaluable and
Speaker 1: irreplaceable Oliver Darcy of status, formerly of CNN, who is
Speaker 1: so important that I would expect him to be bought
Speaker 1: by an Ellison anytime now, about more changes at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post this week. Benji sorrowin the editor he reports
Speaker 1: is gone. Benji used to work with me. He was
Speaker 1: on countdown and several other people, according to people familiar
Speaker 1: with the matter, are out. Contractors were not spared. He
Speaker 1: says the legendary journalist Mark Fisher is out, who'd been
Speaker 1: with the Post for nearly four decades. The Pulitzer Prize
Speaker 1: winner David Hoffman has gone. Jack Schaefer, who I know
Speaker 1: the media critic, is gone, and the economic columnist Heather
Speaker 1: Long all out at the Washington Post. This while the
Speaker 1: aforementioned Barry Weiss is taking over CBS News. Actually it's
Speaker 1: Larry Ellison and my old friend Jeff Shell, who having
Speaker 1: been basically career ended at NBC by Oh, Jeff Shell
Speaker 1: got another chance and now we'll do whatever the fascist wants.
Speaker 1: He is now running CBS News along with the Ellisons
Speaker 1: and Barry Weiss, who I believe has the following experience
Speaker 1: in television. She's managed to turn a set on once.
Speaker 1: And the statement from Larry Ellison going into this debacle
Speaker 1: in which CBS News will be what remains of it
Speaker 1: totally dismantled and destroyed, and everybody who works there forever
Speaker 1: have this stink of being in at the end in
Speaker 1: which the place was killed from the inside deliberately so
Speaker 1: that it would be silenced. Not that CBS News is
Speaker 1: the leader in anything, but it is part of the firmament,
Speaker 1: part of that remaining now porous c through skeleton of
Speaker 1: American journalism. It's also its value, like in some respects
Speaker 1: recently the Washington Post is more symbolic than anything else.
Speaker 1: It's as if the Democratic Congressional Committee were now run
Speaker 1: by Hawlly of Missouri. Well, he looks better in the
Speaker 1: pictures we name. I know he's not a Democrat, but
Speaker 1: he's really good. Larry Ellison, who made money in tech,
Speaker 1: did a Wall Street Journal interview Monday in which he said, quote,
Speaker 1: we want CBS to speak to that seventy percent of
Speaker 1: the audience that would really define themselves at center left
Speaker 1: to center right. Wow, you do see nobody ever thought
Speaker 1: about that, trying to maximize the audience. Nobody in American
Speaker 1: media ever thought once about trying to maximize the audience. Well,
Speaker 1: what a genius Larry Ellison is. He's going to go
Speaker 1: for a larger audience. Reminds me of the Bob and
Speaker 1: Ray character from their political sketch. The guy's running for
Speaker 1: president and they said, which party of these nomination you're
Speaker 1: going for? And he went, I figured out a mistake
Speaker 1: that they've all made. I'm going for both of them.
Speaker 1: That way I can get all the votes we want
Speaker 1: CBS to speak to that seventy percent of the audience
Speaker 1: that would really define themselves at setter left to Setter right.
Speaker 1: Mister Ellison, I understand you don't know any of this
Speaker 1: because you've spent the last couple of decades simply counting money.
Speaker 1: And if you're willing to spend your entire life dealing
Speaker 1: with money, you can make all the money in the
Speaker 1: world and miss everything else that happens in it, like
Speaker 1: the fact that all those people at Ceter left no
Speaker 1: longer want to talk to all those people at Ceter
Speaker 1: right and vice versa. And more importantly, they do not respect,
Speaker 1: nor understand nor eve acknowledge the existence of the other
Speaker 1: sides institutions like CBS News, like The Washington Post, like CNN.
Speaker 1: So what Ellison is doing at CBS with Barry Weiss
Speaker 1: is to replace everything that exists in the history of
Speaker 1: CBS News, from Edward R. Murrow to Dan Rather to
Speaker 1: Katie Kirk. For God's sakes, everything in that entire roster, good, bad,
Speaker 1: and okay will be replaced by right wing sewer droppings
Speaker 1: like Barry Weise, and then just magically assume because you
Speaker 1: have dumbed it down and made it available to right
Speaker 1: wing and center right people that they will now start
Speaker 1: watching it too. I mean, where are those left wing
Speaker 1: people going to go. It's not like there are other
Speaker 1: news networks. CNN did this and self destructed. The ratings
Speaker 1: at CNN were competitive with MSNBC three years ago. Then
Speaker 1: we all got licked. Chris licked as this podcast began,
Speaker 1: so too did his reign of terror inside CNN. We
Speaker 1: saw what happened. Everybody thought what a failure that was.
Speaker 1: Now it was a total success. They brought him in
Speaker 1: there to do that, to discredit everything that CNN did,
Speaker 1: to destroy everything that worked well, to take people off
Speaker 1: the air who were functioning in unusual positions because they
Speaker 1: were kind of protected, like Don Lemon, who had a
Speaker 1: purpose in this media ferment and who they immediately put
Speaker 1: in a position where he could not be comfortable with
Speaker 1: the people he was working with. Is that Don Lemon's
Speaker 1: fault on a personal basis, Yes, But anybody who would
Speaker 1: look at that situation and say, we're getting our money's
Speaker 1: worth out of Don Lemon, let's move him into a
Speaker 1: position where we can't possibly get thirty five cents out
Speaker 1: of him, it's their fault. Then CNN did it, The
Speaker 1: Washington Post did it, million and a half cancelations, something
Speaker 1: like that in subscriptions and NOWBS under Barry Weiss, the
Speaker 1: former naivete and dumbing down editor from New York Times Opinions,
Speaker 1: a quote that The New York Times a little too
Speaker 1: late used in its profile of mis Weiss. As she
Speaker 1: ascended to the throne at CBS News, she told the
Speaker 1: Federalist Society, the influential conservative legal group, you know, like
Speaker 1: the way the Luftwaffa was influential, she told them. According
Speaker 1: to The Times in twenty twenty three, ms Weiss, who
Speaker 1: is married to a woman, quote, I know that there
Speaker 1: are some people in this room who don't believe that
Speaker 1: my marriage should have been legal. And that's okay because
Speaker 1: we're all Americans who want lower taxes. Sure you don't
Speaker 1: have to respect my human rights as long as we
Speaker 1: all keep more money. This is the creature now running
Speaker 1: CBS News as editor in chief. Sure we'll send these
Speaker 1: people to prison camps. Sure we'll raid their homes and
Speaker 1: march their children naked into vans while pretending we are
Speaker 1: opposed to pedophilia. Sure we'll do that as long as
Speaker 1: our taxes come down. That's my job as the editor
Speaker 1: in chief of CBS News because I've got my marriage
Speaker 1: and it's okay, and you guys are going to leave
Speaker 1: me alone because I'm doing your bidding here. I believe,
Speaker 1: if you look carefully, Ms Weiss, the deal you have
Speaker 1: made is not with CBS News and the Allisons, but
Speaker 1: with the devil. I close from something that Oliver Darcy
Speaker 1: again wrote, and sometimes I feel as if I should
Speaker 1: just read his piece, his newsletter when it comes to
Speaker 1: the media. I'm quoting him, quoting Max Tanney from Semaphore.
Speaker 1: Barry Weiss met apparently with the employees of CBS News
Speaker 1: as they sat there trying to figure out what else
Speaker 1: they could do for a living, or at least where
Speaker 1: else they could do it, and her last line to them.
Speaker 1: Her exhortation to them was, according to Tanny of Semaphore,
Speaker 1: let's do the fucking news. Unquote the line, as mister
Speaker 1: Darcy writes, seemingly intended as a hip rally and cry
Speaker 1: hit the wrong note, you think, instead, leaving a number
Speaker 1: of staffers cringing as the independents justin Barragona reported, One
Speaker 1: CBS staffer told our Natalie Koratch that they actually laughed
Speaker 1: at the remark. Suffice to say, if Weiss wants to
Speaker 1: actually win over the hearts and minds of the staffers,
Speaker 1: she now leads, she's going to need to do a
Speaker 1: lot better than that. Well, that's almost unnecessary. She told
Speaker 1: the people at CBS News, the people who have helped
Speaker 1: to maintain CBS News in an environment that is anti news,
Speaker 1: anti intelligence, anti washing your clothes, anti not smelling like conservatives,
Speaker 1: they have kept this place together, and she's telling them,
Speaker 1: let's do the fucking news. As if you have ever
Speaker 1: done anything connected to news in your life, you immoral,
Speaker 1: total loser Barry Weiss. But some things never change. The
Speaker 1: last time I worked for CBS and CBS News was
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one. I was the lame duck sports director
Speaker 1: of Channel two case CBS in Los Angeles owned and
Speaker 1: operated station. Our sports cast usually finished second in the ratings,
Speaker 1: but the newscast finished third, and they were paying me
Speaker 1: quite a lot of money, and they had an option
Speaker 1: for another two years of quite a lot of money,
Speaker 1: about five hundred thousand dollars a year. And they had
Speaker 1: a newscaster who wasn't very good at it who they
Speaker 1: thought they could make back into the sportscaster and thus
Speaker 1: just eliminate my position, not just get rid of me
Speaker 1: and get somebody, but literally zero out the cost of
Speaker 1: Keith Oulverman save five hundred thousand dollars. In their position,
Speaker 1: I probably would have not picked up the option too,
Speaker 1: I had been notified of this, but because it was CBS,
Speaker 1: and because I actually am a professional and always have been,
Speaker 1: and I've always been in this position trusted to stay
Speaker 1: on even after my employers have told me, now we're
Speaker 1: going to fire you in three months, we'd like you
Speaker 1: to continue to do things. I stayed at CBS and
Speaker 1: among other things. There was a day in late nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one when I had already been a lame duck
Speaker 1: and had already I think, negotiated a deal to go
Speaker 1: to ESPN. In the beginning of the new year of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, I went to the Los Angeles Forum,
Speaker 1: the then home of the LA Lakers, and anchored from
Speaker 1: the field in a space that was the smallest place
Speaker 1: I've ever actually anchored from Magic Johnson's news conference in
Speaker 1: which he announced he had HIV. And nothing can permit
Speaker 1: me to explain to you what that was like, because
Speaker 1: that was presumed at that point by everybody in that
Speaker 1: room except Magic Johnson, to be a death sentence. If
Speaker 1: you look at the videotapes of every station and everybody
Speaker 1: on the air and everybody they interviewed, we're all white
Speaker 1: as sheets, and it's not some sort of interference with
Speaker 1: the signal from the basement of the LA Forum. It
Speaker 1: was a death sentence, except he didn't make so, and
Speaker 1: he was right and we were all wrong. And now,
Speaker 1: just on top of everything else, God bless him. He
Speaker 1: owns the entire town of Los Angeles, he owns half
Speaker 1: the Dodgers, he owns every theater in Los Angeles. Bless him.
Speaker 1: I always like Buck. I called him that because he said,
Speaker 1: call me Buck. My friends call me Buck. Okay, So
Speaker 1: now I'm the Lane Duck Sports director and the station's
Speaker 1: in third place again, and it's kind of a golden
Speaker 1: time for me. It was the time I enjoyed the
Speaker 1: job the most because there really wasn't anything I could
Speaker 1: screw up, and so if there were any restraints on
Speaker 1: what I was saying on the CBS Channel two Action
Speaker 1: News in Los Angeles, they all went away. I just said,
Speaker 1: what I felt, and so I'm called into a meeting
Speaker 1: in the news director's office. Now, this was I think
Speaker 1: the fourth news director who I worked for at CBS
Speaker 1: in LA and his name was Jose Rios, and he
Speaker 1: was a very successful news director, though not at Channel two. Then.
Speaker 1: He had just been promoted from managing editor of the
Speaker 1: newscast after the last guy had been marched out because
Speaker 1: he was not all there in the office. I believe
Speaker 1: they'd had something like fifteen news directors in eighteen years.
Speaker 1: And the woman who served as the assistant to all
Speaker 1: of them said one of them used to sit in
Speaker 1: the closet in the news director's office without his pants on.
Speaker 1: I said, how long did he last? And she just
Speaker 1: laughed at me. I did not realize that I had
Speaker 1: produced a double entendre. So this is the office we're in.
Speaker 1: It had been the control room years and years earlier.
Speaker 1: So it was a giant office, beautifully appointed by the
Speaker 1: news director who hired me there. And now two news
Speaker 1: directors later, the guy who's sort of overseeing the waning
Speaker 1: weeks of the Keith Olberman experience has got all of
Speaker 1: us in the newsroom. The ratings have come out. We're
Speaker 1: even further in third place behind NBC and ABC than
Speaker 1: we have before. The station has been in third place
Speaker 1: for sixteen years, ever since the suits in New York
Speaker 1: decided that winning every ratings book between nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: and nineteen seventy five was insufficient, and when they finished
Speaker 1: tied for second or tied for first in the spring
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy five, at just eleven o'clock, they wanted
Speaker 1: six and they were tied for first at eleven. They
Speaker 1: had to fire all the anchors, who all then dispersed
Speaker 1: to the other stations, and all of their viewers went
Speaker 1: with them, because that's what happens when you get rid
Speaker 1: of the people that people are used to watching, as
Speaker 1: Barry Weiss will soon discover, and the Ellisons and Jeff Schell.
Speaker 1: So this is nineteen ninety one. This is before these
Speaker 1: decisions were based on what you felt politically. This was
Speaker 1: simply a matter of what the ratings looked like and
Speaker 1: how much money you were paying for the ratings, and
Speaker 1: whether or not they could get the ratings with somebody cheaper.
Speaker 1: So I'm sitting in this meeting and at the beginning
Speaker 1: of it, the assistant to Jose Rios and as I said,
Speaker 1: he went on to a very successful career as the
Speaker 1: news director at Channel eleven, and I loved working with him.
Speaker 1: This is not about him. Somebody told him to do this.
Speaker 1: He came in and decided to do one of these.
Speaker 1: I was flashed back to the movie The Natural, in
Speaker 1: which a hypnotherapist is brought in to try to convince
Speaker 1: Robert Redford's baseball team that losing is a disease as
Speaker 1: contagious as bubonic plague, that kind of thing. We did
Speaker 1: a little exercise in trying to break the third place habit,
Speaker 1: and so what he did, Jose's assistant, I believe her
Speaker 1: name was Sherry Friese, handed us all number three pencils. Pencils,
Speaker 1: not number two pencils, but number three pencil They had
Speaker 1: boxes and boxes of these things, and they handed them
Speaker 1: to everybody in the room, probably seventy to one hundred staffers,
Speaker 1: and on que we were all supposed to break the
Speaker 1: pencil when Jose said three two one, we were supposed
Speaker 1: to snap the pencils in half and break the number
Speaker 1: three habit. You get it. I believe I was the
Speaker 1: only person in that room who knew they would not
Speaker 1: be working there for certain in six or seven weeks time.
Speaker 1: And so guess what, I didn't break the pencil, and
Speaker 1: people looked at me like I had just destroyed the magic.
Speaker 1: You didn't break the pencil, and I went, my pencil
Speaker 1: is just fine. Thank you very much to Chas. Change
Speaker 1: to slemm shows quote, let's do the fucking news to
Speaker 1: professionals from an utter amateur. Let's do the effing news,
Speaker 1: because I guess CBS no longer has a whole big
Speaker 1: supply of number three pencils. Also of interest here, the
Speaker 1: bad Bunny blowback has reached congress Woman Barney Rubble. Marjorie's
Speaker 1: stupid Green wants to make English the official language in
Speaker 1: response to Bad Bunny being selected to perform at the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl. Which English the official language, I guess means
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green is no longer allowed to talk ever again,
Speaker 1: because whatever that is she's speaking, it ain't English. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is countdown, George Crowing. Pleasure to have you here,
Speaker 1: Thank you. This is the best news show. However, I
Speaker 1: told that to one of your producers, and I want
Speaker 1: you to know that I've seen them all and it's
Speaker 1: just for especially the first thirty five minutes. Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's just unparalleled. I got bad news between you and I.
Speaker 1: We got six minutes to completely strom that in the back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good. Thank you George from wherever you are. I
Speaker 1: needed that today. Still ahead on this editional countdown. I
Speaker 1: haven't done Thurber in a while. Thursdays with Thurber, and
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the piece that most
Speaker 1: bizarrely gives me the most comforting times like these, which
Speaker 1: turn out pretty much to be twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: at the moment, a box to hide in. Next first,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to
Speaker 1: talk about. The roundup of the miss Greens, morons and
Speaker 1: Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons
Speaker 1: in the world. The runner up worse Texas Attorney General
Speaker 1: Ken Paxton, the cockroach of the judiciary breaking. I'm launching
Speaker 1: undercover operations to infiltrate and uproot leftist terror cells in Textas.
Speaker 1: Leftist political terrorism is a clear and present danger. I
Speaker 1: should have pronounced it in Texan. Leftist political terrorism a
Speaker 1: clear present dinger. There can be no compromise with those
Speaker 1: who want us dead. Well, Number one, that's your wife.
Speaker 1: You're talking about right, those who want you dead because
Speaker 1: this is undercover operations? Is this going to be different, Ken,
Speaker 1: from what you normally do? I mean you're normally you're
Speaker 1: undercover operations result in your wife suing you for divorce.
Speaker 1: Keep your eye on the prize, Ken, Runner up everybody's
Speaker 1: favorite Congressman from the CTE district, Derek van Orden. He
Speaker 1: uses a bad word in here and also shows some
Speaker 1: serious brain damage, so stand well back from your listening device.
Speaker 1: Civix one oh one. The Senate requires sixty votes to
Speaker 1: pass a bill. There are only fifty three Republicans in
Speaker 1: the Senate. That means seven Democrats would have to vote
Speaker 1: for the bill, or six could vote for it and
Speaker 1: jd Vance would cast the tiebreaker. Follow me for more
Speaker 1: shit you should have learned in fourth grade. Well, evidently
Speaker 1: Derek dropped out in the third grade. That's sixty. That's
Speaker 1: only for cloture. Cloture votes no, not cloak not closure
Speaker 1: c L O t U R E. Should I spell
Speaker 1: it for you? Things like nominations, budget reconciliations, house rules,
Speaker 1: house rules changes. The meat and potatoes of the Senate
Speaker 1: still simple majority fifty one forty nine or fifty one
Speaker 1: to fifty. That's why the vice president can break a
Speaker 1: fifty to fifty tie deck. Only there isn't one at
Speaker 1: the moment, so no vance can't vote to create a
Speaker 1: sixtieth vote. See how this works now, Civics one oh one.
Speaker 1: My god, he failed the course to get into Civics
Speaker 1: one oh one. Honestly, congressman, I'm confident there is a
Speaker 1: walk in clinic somewhere in Wisconsin where they can take
Speaker 1: you right now and scan your brain and see if
Speaker 1: whatever it is is reversible. It could easily be the
Speaker 1: onset of something serious. Your brain does not work correctly. Please,
Speaker 1: here's the frightening reality. There's somebody in Congress worse than him.
Speaker 1: Our winner, Marjorie Stupid Green, never mind the fact that
Speaker 1: she figured out that Obamacare is necessary to keep the
Speaker 1: cost of her own families medical premiums from doubling, has
Speaker 1: just one burst of intelligence in a sea of gurgling crap.
Speaker 1: Bad Bunny says America has four months to learn Spanish
Speaker 1: before his perverse, unwonted performance at Super Bowl halftime. By
Speaker 1: the way, speaker Johnson wants Lee Greenwood to perform Lee
Speaker 1: Greenwood one hit Wonder eighty three years old. Ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of the country has no idea who he is
Speaker 1: or that he's alive. Bad Bunny says America has four
Speaker 1: months to learn Spanish before perverse unwanted performance at the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl half time. It would be a good time
Speaker 1: to pass my bill to make English the official language
Speaker 1: of America. And the NFL needs to stop having demonic
Speaker 1: sexual performances during its halftime shows. I know, madam, we
Speaker 1: need to leave the demonic sexual performances to you in
Speaker 1: the privacy of your own gym. But Marjorie Taylor Green,
Speaker 1: you want to make English the official language. When you
Speaker 1: said that we were being pushed around by the Gaspacho police,
Speaker 1: when you said rights were being fragrantly violated, when you
Speaker 1: insisted that something was like a peachtree dish, Marge, if
Speaker 1: you make English the official language, you'll have to go
Speaker 1: to jail because that's not what you're speaking. Dim bulb
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor. She fails English and Van Orden fails fourth
Speaker 1: grade social study. He's Green. Today's other worst person been
Speaker 1: the Gyspatcho Police. It's been a long week, and every
Speaker 1: time I find myself thinking it's been a long week,
Speaker 1: I like to turn to my book of James Thurber,
Speaker 1: and it's Fridays with Thurber. And it's been a few
Speaker 1: fridays since I've done any James Thurber. And so let's
Speaker 1: start at the beginning. As I've mentioned many times, I
Speaker 1: read this story first aloud in a class in college
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, and a friend of mine came
Speaker 1: up to me and said, you should forget that sportscasting thing.
Speaker 1: You should read Thurber for a living, And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll ever happen. This is, for some reason, salvation for me, Catharsis,
Speaker 1: and every other emotion that is appropriate after it has
Speaker 1: been a long week. A Box to Hide In by
Speaker 1: James Thurber. I waited till the large woman with the
Speaker 1: awful hat took up her sack of groceries and went out,
Speaker 1: peering at the tomatoes and the lettuce on her way.
Speaker 1: The clerk asked me what mine was. Have you got
Speaker 1: a box, I asked, A large box. I want a
Speaker 1: box to hide in. You want a box, he asked,
Speaker 1: I want a box to hide in. I said, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? He said, you mean a big box?
Speaker 1: I said, I meant a big box big enough to
Speaker 1: hold me. I haven't got any boxes, he said, only
Speaker 1: cottons that cans come in. I tried several other groceries
Speaker 1: and none of them had a box big enough for
Speaker 1: me to hide in. There was nothing for it but
Speaker 1: to face life out. I didn't feel strong, and I'd
Speaker 1: had this overpowering desire to hide in a box for
Speaker 1: a long time. Well, what do you mean you want
Speaker 1: to hide in this box, one grocer asked me. It's
Speaker 1: a form of escape. I told him, hiding in a box.
Speaker 1: It circumscribes your worries in the range of your anguish.
Speaker 1: You don't see people either. How the hell do you
Speaker 1: eat when you're in this box? Asked the grocer. How
Speaker 1: don't the hell do you get anything to eat? I
Speaker 1: said I had never been in a box and didn't know,
Speaker 1: but that that would take care of itself. Well, he said, finally,
Speaker 1: I haven't got any boxes, only some pasteboard cartons that
Speaker 1: cans come in. It was the same every place. I
Speaker 1: gave up when it got dark and the groceries closed,
Speaker 1: and hid in my room again. I turned out the
Speaker 1: light and lay on the bed. You feel better when
Speaker 1: it gets dark. I could have hit in a closet,
Speaker 1: I suppose, but people are always opening doors. Somebody would
Speaker 1: find you in a closet. They would be startled, and
Speaker 1: you'd have to tell them why you're in the closet.
Speaker 1: Nobody pays attention to a big box lying on the floor.
Speaker 1: You could stay in it for days and nobody'd think
Speaker 1: to look in it, not even the cleaning woman. My
Speaker 1: cleaning woman came the next morning and woke me up,
Speaker 1: and I was still feeling bad. I asked her if
Speaker 1: she knew where I could get a large box. How
Speaker 1: big a box you want, she asked, I want a
Speaker 1: box big enough for me to get inside of, I said.
Speaker 1: She looked at me with big, dim eyes. There's something
Speaker 1: wrong with her glands. She's awful, but she has a
Speaker 1: big heart, which makes it worse. She's unbearable. Her husband
Speaker 1: is sick, and her children are sick, and she is
Speaker 1: sick too. I got to thinking how pleasant it would
Speaker 1: be if I were in a box now and didn't
Speaker 1: have to see her. I'd be in a box right
Speaker 1: there in the room, and she wouldn't know. I wondered
Speaker 1: if you had a desire to bark or laugh when
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't know walks by the box you were in.
Speaker 1: Maybe she would have a spell with her heart. If
Speaker 1: I did that would die right there. The officers and
Speaker 1: the elevator man and mister Grammage would find us funny,
Speaker 1: dog gone thing happened at the building last night. The
Speaker 1: doorman would say to his wife, I led in this
Speaker 1: woman to clean up tenf and she never come out.
Speaker 1: See she's never in there more in an hour, but
Speaker 1: she never come out. See. So when it got time
Speaker 1: for me to go off duty, why, I says to Credit,
Speaker 1: who was on the elevator, I says, what the hell
Speaker 1: you suppose has happened to that woman cleans tenf? He
Speaker 1: says he didn't know. He says he never seen her
Speaker 1: after he took her up. So I spoke to mister
Speaker 1: Grammage about it. Sorry to bother you, mister Grammage, I says,
Speaker 1: but there's something funny about that woman cleans ten f.
Speaker 1: So I told him. So he said we better have
Speaker 1: a look, and we all three goes up and knuts
Speaker 1: on the door and rings the bells, seeing nobody answers,
Speaker 1: so he said we'd have to walk in. So Credit
Speaker 1: opened the door and we walked in, and here was
Speaker 1: this woman cleans the apartment dead as a herring on
Speaker 1: the floor, and the gentleman that lives there was in
Speaker 1: a box. The cleaning woman kept looking at me. It
Speaker 1: was hard to realize she wasn't dead. It's a form
Speaker 1: of escape, I murmured, wat say. She asked, Dully, you
Speaker 1: don't know of any large packing boxes, do you? I asked, now,
Speaker 1: I don't. She said, I haven't found one yet. But
Speaker 1: I still have this overpowering urge to hide in a box.
Speaker 1: Maybe it will go away, maybe I'll be all right,
Speaker 1: Maybe it will get worse. It's hard to say. Forty
Speaker 1: six years since I first read that in public, I
Speaker 1: still didn't get any better at it. I've done all
Speaker 1: the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed
Speaker 1: by Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel. Our musical directors
Speaker 1: have Countdown. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray
Speaker 1: was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister Chanelle handled
Speaker 1: orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
Speaker 1: by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The
Speaker 1: Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis
Speaker 1: is courtesy of ESPN, Inc. That's the sports music when
Speaker 1: we do sports. Other music arranged and performed by the
Speaker 1: group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my late
Speaker 1: friend and inspiration, George Carlin. Everything else was, as always
Speaker 1: my fault. That's countdown for today. Day two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty three of America held hostage again, but just twelve
Speaker 1: hundred days, even twelve hundred until the scheduled end of
Speaker 1: Trump's lame duck and lame brain term unless he is
Speaker 1: removed sooner by MAGA and Jeffrey Epstein, or that pavement
Speaker 1: patch on his hand, or some stuck escalator somewhere, or
Speaker 1: the psychopathy test or Tailan Hall, or that judge guy
Speaker 1: he doesn't like, or that judge girl or some Illinois
Speaker 1: politician list lengthens, or the next scheduled countdown is Monday.
Speaker 1: I'll warn you right here. I may take this off.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you noticed a certain struggle recently,
Speaker 1: but in addition to the fact that I'm having some
Speaker 1: vision problems, it's not permanent. It's just as you don't
Speaker 1: want to know what it is, but it's temporary. It's
Speaker 1: just lasting longer than it should. In addition to that,
Speaker 1: my back went out. It's like, oh my god, what
Speaker 1: am I an old Yes? I am an old man.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I may take the day off. We'll see.
Speaker 1: The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Maybe maybe not till
Speaker 1: then or whenever. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.