Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Is
Speaker 1: Elon Musk going to buy MSNBC and turn it into
Speaker 1: a pro Trump propaganda channel? And if not Musk, somebody
Speaker 1: else I may be asking this question backwards. Is there
Speaker 1: anybody to stop someone Musk or otherwise from buying MSNBC
Speaker 1: and turning it into pro Trump propaganda? Well, sir, who
Speaker 1: stopped Musk from doing that? To Twitter? Who stopped Warner Bros.
Speaker 1: Discovery from buying CNN and doing that incompletely but sufficiently
Speaker 1: enough to render CNN irrelevant in television news? As preface,
Speaker 1: we don't know for certain that MSNBC is actually force.
Speaker 1: Companies like Comcast take assets like MSNBC, which by itself
Speaker 1: has made a profit of something around five or six
Speaker 1: billion dollars since I made it into the Liberal News
Speaker 1: Channel in two thousand and six and hired Mattow in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. They take assets like that and
Speaker 1: spin them off into another separate company they also own,
Speaker 1: and they throw in CNBC and Oxygen and the Golf
Speaker 1: Channel and USA Network and half a dozen other assets.
Speaker 1: And they do it so hastily they don't even have
Speaker 1: a name for their new company, and they're just calling
Speaker 1: it spin Co. Companies like Crompcast do that all the
Speaker 1: time and never sell the new separate company, especially after
Speaker 1: gifting it with a great, long lasting heritage of a
Speaker 1: name like spin Co. Oh, I'm being told no corporations
Speaker 1: ever do that. Comcast wants to get out of the
Speaker 1: cable based business, or at minimum give it self the
Speaker 1: option to get out of the cable based business Spinco.
Speaker 1: This is where Musk comes in, and if Musk comes in,
Speaker 1: maybe Trump comes in. As Musk's Twitter x dies, it
Speaker 1: seems like half the content now is Musk tweets. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's Musk interacting with bots or other foreign disinfo. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's Musk and a fellow brain dead tech pro. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a sequence like this. A tech pro posts that
Speaker 1: Comcast is putting MSNBC up for sale, not technically true,
Speaker 1: but Trump Junior screenshots that somehow steadies his hands long
Speaker 1: enough to post that screenshot and type above it. Hey
Speaker 1: at elon Musk, I have the funniest idea ever. And
Speaker 1: Musk replies and replies how much does it cost? Just
Speaker 1: for spits and giggles? Right after this, Megan Kelly, professional
Speaker 1: moron retweets a poll reading MSNBC is going up for sale?
Speaker 1: Should I buy it? I would like to fire Rachel
Speaker 1: Maddow and Kelly who self destructed at MSNBC and NBC
Speaker 1: News ads. Oh mg, do it? Never even noticing that
Speaker 1: the name on the account that put out the poll
Speaker 1: is quote not Elon Musk, and its address is I
Speaker 1: Am not Elon Musk. And one wonders which of those
Speaker 1: words caused Megan Kelly's tiny little mind to switch into
Speaker 1: the off position. But I digress, though the laugh is
Speaker 1: much needed. There are many nightmare nuggets in the news
Speaker 1: of the last round of Trump cabinet nominations that concluded
Speaker 1: this weekend. Past Pam Bondi was with Juliani at the
Speaker 1: Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco. Sebastian Gorka counter terrorism advisor.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no. The counter terrorism advisor is supposed
Speaker 1: to be opposed to terrorism. They found audio of RFK
Speaker 1: Junior comparing Trump to Hitler and his supporters to Nazis.
Speaker 1: So now, of course rf K Junior is apologizing for
Speaker 1: being right the last time he was ever right. The
Speaker 1: new Surgeon General nominee sold vitamin supplements on Fox and
Speaker 1: friends weekend along with still Secretary of Defense designate Pete
Speaker 1: shoot into the crowd. Hegseeth the new would be head
Speaker 1: of the CDC was the congressman who introduced the legislation
Speaker 1: to force Congress to intervene to force poor Terry Schaivo,
Speaker 1: the Florida woman who was brain dead and dependent on
Speaker 1: life support, but whose head kept moving from side to
Speaker 1: side as if she were following a moving object with
Speaker 1: her eyes that were opened but saw nothing. He introduced
Speaker 1: the legislation to force her husband to keep this poor
Speaker 1: woman alive. But hard as this may be to believe,
Speaker 1: with all of that, Musk may be a bigger danger
Speaker 1: than all of them combined, including Trump. The Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal reports that while companies like Apple are stretchgizing their
Speaker 1: business pitches to the White House by essentially saying they're
Speaker 1: going to go in and hold up just one shiny object,
Speaker 1: one shiny object alone. To Trump, that's Tim Cook's idea,
Speaker 1: or as Trump thinks, he's named Tim Apple. While that's
Speaker 1: one strategy quote, a number of companies are also considering
Speaker 1: whether to propose ideas directly to the Department of Government Efficiency,
Speaker 1: led by Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswami. It
Speaker 1: could be a way to develop new relationships within Trump's
Speaker 1: inner circle unquote, new relationships or as you civilians might
Speaker 1: call them, bribes. It's not just companies who now see
Speaker 1: Musk as a portal to Trump. A separate Wall Street
Speaker 1: journal piece reads quote. Chinese leaders enjoy some leverage over Musk,
Speaker 1: who has poured billions of dollars into investments in Shanghai.
Speaker 1: In China, Musk is a symbol of the American dream
Speaker 1: and of US technological prowess. Even musk seventy six year
Speaker 1: old mother May Musk boasts celebrity status. Sure sure, great
Speaker 1: idea Musk as the real president while Trump looks at
Speaker 1: shiny objects, while Musk owns what's left of Twitter X
Speaker 1: and owns say MSNBC, MSNBC which just got spun off.
Speaker 1: And we don't have the Thursday or Friday numbers yet,
Speaker 1: But on Wednesday morning, the new version of Morning Joe
Speaker 1: in which Joe and Mika like Trump again, it was
Speaker 1: down to fifty one thousand viewers in the so called
Speaker 1: ad demo. That's down sixty percent in that group since
Speaker 1: the third quarter of this year. Fifty one thousand viewers
Speaker 1: in the advertising demo is what we used to do
Speaker 1: on Countdown in two thousand and three. Meanwhile, Mika Brzhinsky
Speaker 1: continues to do damage could control, as in, she keeps
Speaker 1: doing more damage. She went on another podcast and still
Speaker 1: does not understand what the big deal is, quote taking
Speaker 1: stock of everything that's happened. I don't regret anything I've
Speaker 1: said during the campaign, and I stand by it, she
Speaker 1: told a Daily Beast podcast. But I'm also looking at
Speaker 1: how to do things differently, and I would never turn
Speaker 1: down an opportunity to gain insider information. Good idea, Mika,
Speaker 1: because at the present rate, it'll be far more efficient
Speaker 1: for you to dump this expensive to produce TV show
Speaker 1: with no audience anymore, and just gain your insider information
Speaker 1: by going door to door or stopping passers by in
Speaker 1: the street and asking them. So here it is perfect
Speaker 1: storm MSNBC hurriedly spun off by another terrified corporation that
Speaker 1: already leaned to the right as it was the network
Speaker 1: hitting an inevitable troth based on even the most violent
Speaker 1: swing of the political pendulum, as it has many times
Speaker 1: in the last twenty years, and now it's only identify
Speaker 1: Daily show imploding, and Trump Junior joking to a guy
Speaker 1: who already took one place for liberals, if not of liberals,
Speaker 1: and destroyed it and spent forty four billion dollars to
Speaker 1: do so. Because so what, Trump Junior joking, The Musky
Speaker 1: should buy it or not joking? I want to go
Speaker 1: into depth about how long MSNBC and NBC and its
Speaker 1: corporate masters have existed in painful tension. But first, speaking
Speaker 1: of tension, did you hear what his self professed former friend,
Speaker 1: neuroscientist Sam Harris now says about Musk on The Bulwark
Speaker 1: Podcast with Tim Miller. If you think the Musk Trump
Speaker 1: MSNBC story is some kind of tinderbox, well here is
Speaker 1: mister Harris describing Musk's collection of matches.
Speaker 2: In his case, perhaps more conspicuously than any other. We're
Speaker 2: seeing the total derangement of a personality based on social
Speaker 2: media addiction. I mean that is in fact what you
Speaker 2: see with Elon. He is a Twitter addict, so much
Speaker 2: so that he felt he needed to buy the platform.
Speaker 2: And now he has this this you know, free speech
Speaker 2: evangelist gloss on what he's up to. But really, what
Speaker 2: he's up to is you know, snorting ketamine and tweeting
Speaker 2: at all hours of the day and night. Right, And
Speaker 2: this is his influence on our politics. I mean, his
Speaker 2: behavior on Twitter is obviously palpably visibly deranged, right, I
Speaker 2: mean he signal boosts Pizzagate lunatics knowing who they are.
Speaker 2: He knows who they are because I and others have
Speaker 2: told him who they are, and he feels he has
Speaker 2: absolutely no compunction about. You know, he thinks he's doing
Speaker 2: a service to humanity by boosting to two hundred million
Speaker 2: followers obvious lies and conspiracy theories and making some of
Speaker 2: the most odious online trolls even more famous. And meanwhile
Speaker 2: just you know, declaring war on actually normal people who,
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, he's gotten on the wrong side of c.
Speaker 1: Boom. So to understand fully the MSNBC thing, spinning it off,
Speaker 1: maybe selling it, maybe c and ending it, maybe twittering it,
Speaker 1: maybe musking it, you have to understand the background. You
Speaker 1: have to understand that while the network went live on
Speaker 1: July fifteenth, nineteen ninety six, the friction between MSNBC and
Speaker 1: NBC News, and the calls within NBC to get rid
Speaker 1: of MSNBC or kill it or do something about it
Speaker 1: began on December eighth, nineteen ninety five, the day the
Speaker 1: news leaked that NBC was going to transform its failed
Speaker 1: chat show cable channel America is Talking, run by Roger
Speaker 1: Ayles of All People, Kill It, take on Microsoft as
Speaker 1: a partner, and rebrand that outlet as MSNBC News. For
Speaker 1: nearly three decades, NBC and its news bosses and its
Speaker 1: corporate owners have never been able to decide what MSNBC
Speaker 1: was supposed to be compliment to NBC News to which
Speaker 1: viewers of the broadcast network could be directed for the
Speaker 1: proverbial more coverage or a spillover channel or a separate entity,
Speaker 1: or what most of the newsies thought well into its
Speaker 1: second decade, a great place to train reporters and anchors
Speaker 1: and producers, and the moment they showed any aptitude or
Speaker 1: success in cable to promote them from MSNBC to real NBC.
Speaker 1: The last concept of what the network was usually prevailed,
Speaker 1: and obviously it was suicidal. It meant MSNBC was like
Speaker 1: a farm team in baseball. I mean, these were the
Speaker 1: Trenton Yankees. Your show is a success at MSNBC. The
Speaker 1: producer was good reward them by moving them up and
Speaker 1: replacing them at MSNBC with somebody not as good. This
Speaker 1: meant anybody who was good at MSNBC immediately left MSNBC
Speaker 1: and was replaced by somebody not as good. But it
Speaker 1: also meant that anybody who wasn't good at MSNBC and
Speaker 1: didn't improve, and wasn't attractive and didn't get promoted to NBC.
Speaker 1: Any of those people stayed at MSNBC forever and usually
Speaker 1: got worse. Three quarters of management fit that description. My
Speaker 1: original nineteen ninety seven MSNBC News Hours, The Big Show,
Speaker 1: and The White House in Crisis were the first programs
Speaker 1: that made MSNBC any money. I mean seriously. The network
Speaker 1: otherwise hemorrhaged cash from its launch in nineteen ninety ten
Speaker 1: until about two thousand and five. Throughout my first stint there,
Speaker 1: I kept telling the bosses that the problems they had
Speaker 1: what was MSNBC supposed to be would be simplified if
Speaker 1: not solved by one very easy solution, changed the damn
Speaker 1: name of the network. You could use the same people,
Speaker 1: the same set, the same cameras, but if MSNBC did
Speaker 1: not have the letters NBC in it, there would be
Speaker 1: a philosophical degree of separation that would benefit everybody, and
Speaker 1: being my bosses, they never listened. I literally put this
Speaker 1: in a thirty page proposal for a revamped MSNBC network
Speaker 1: master plan. I still have a copy of it. The
Speaker 1: date on it is July nineteen ninety eight. I finally
Speaker 1: left MSNBC late in nineteen ninety eight and returned almost
Speaker 1: by accident to NBC to work the Olympics in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two. My sports bosses one day asked me
Speaker 1: to help out MSNBC its lineup, depleted by anchor illness
Speaker 1: and the upcoming invasion in Iraq. By March of two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, the same people I had stormed away
Speaker 1: from five years earlier offered me the same eight pm
Speaker 1: time slot and a new contract. In the fifteen months
Speaker 1: between my departure and my return in that eight pm slot,
Speaker 1: MSNBC had had seventeen different shows. They had averaged thirteen
Speaker 1: weeks each. But that's deceiving because one of the eight
Speaker 1: PM shows on MSNBC in my absence lasted exactly one episode. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it was not until two thousand and five that my
Speaker 1: new show, my second show there countdown, a low rated
Speaker 1: nightly news Digest MAGAZINEI kind of thing started getting really
Speaker 1: political and really suspicious of Bush and Iraq and especially
Speaker 1: the Republican's political manipulation the threat of terrorism, and suddenly
Speaker 1: we had something new in the equation viewers. By the
Speaker 1: next year, the ad salesman, and contrary to all logic,
Speaker 1: they are the ones from whom you get the truth
Speaker 1: in a news company or any kind of television company.
Speaker 1: They were sending me bottles of champagne and revealing that
Speaker 1: Countdown by itself was now earning a fifty million dollar
Speaker 1: annual profit, then seventy five million a year, then one
Speaker 1: hundred million a year. The ad guys love me, but
Speaker 1: other management at NBC not so much, because this was
Speaker 1: a new problem. Rather than MSNBC being an annoying, self
Speaker 1: fulfilling prophecy of doom, suddenly it was an annoying, problematic success.
Speaker 1: Right after MSNBC started making money, it started making enemies.
Speaker 1: The Republicans came right to our door. The psychos at
Speaker 1: Fox News like O'Reilly and Hannity and Ale's. This is
Speaker 1: when we called them fixed News or Fox Noise. They
Speaker 1: started calling executives at NBC and its parent company GE
Speaker 1: demanding that I stopped criticizing them. The fascists are softer
Speaker 1: than church music. The reason I got personal was the
Speaker 1: more personal you got, the angrier they got. When Tim
Speaker 1: Russert was still alive and defending me internally and externally,
Speaker 1: he would watch every night and send me tips and
Speaker 1: warnings and ideas, and he was capable of playing the
Speaker 1: Republicans inside NBC and outside NBC like fiddles. It was
Speaker 1: pretty much fine. And then came that horrible day June thirteenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, Tim died, and suddenly NBC News
Speaker 1: was in the hands of a lot of cowards and
Speaker 1: bullies like Tom Brokaw and Joe Scarborough and Jeff Zucker
Speaker 1: and Chris Lickt and names you wouldn't know like Jeff
Speaker 1: Immelt and Steve Kappus and Phil Griffin and Rick Kaplan.
Speaker 1: In Russert's place, we were now run by men like Griffin,
Speaker 1: who spent a year fighting my entreaties to hire this
Speaker 1: Rachel Meadow, telling me I couldn't even put her on
Speaker 1: as my guest host because nobody would watch a woman,
Speaker 1: especially a lesbian or another liberal, do the news. Then,
Speaker 1: when it was obvious she was popular and they were wrong.
Speaker 1: They lied to me, and they told me they had
Speaker 1: hired her so that one night Larry King at CNN
Speaker 1: talked her into going on his show for two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars. I'll just say that again, two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars. I wound up hiring Rachel that night
Speaker 1: out of my own pocket to keep MSNBC from losing her.
Speaker 1: Literally the cash in my wallet. I gave her all
Speaker 1: but five dollars. I gave her four hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: seven dollars. Otherwise she goes to CNN and we never
Speaker 1: see her again, at least at NBC anyway. Of two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, the Republicans were threatening Brokaw that if
Speaker 1: he didn't get me fired or at least removed from
Speaker 1: MSNBC's coverage of the presidential election, John McCain would not
Speaker 1: show up for the debate that Brokaw had inherited from Russard.
Speaker 1: So Tom went in and threatened, and that is a
Speaker 1: nice euphemism for blackmailed NBC management on behalf of the
Speaker 1: GOP just so he could host one more debate. Then
Speaker 1: within a year it was Fox blackmailing the executives at
Speaker 1: GE actually getting the chairman of ge Jeff Immelt, to
Speaker 1: threaten to take MSNBC off the air if Fox continued
Speaker 1: to criticize him and hound him because Emmelt's mom was
Speaker 1: a Bill O'Reilly fan, and O'Reilly kept claiming her little boy,
Speaker 1: Jeff was producing weapons used to kill Americans in Iraq.
Speaker 1: There was a big meeting at which we were told
Speaker 1: the network might be going off the air in six hours.
Speaker 1: That meeting kind of summarized the MSNBC NBC corporate tension
Speaker 1: that exists to this day that opens the door for
Speaker 1: Elon Musk buying it. It could and would get meaner,
Speaker 1: and it could and would get easier from time to time,
Speaker 1: from year to year, but it's always there, and it
Speaker 1: is there to this day. As the spinning off of
Speaker 1: the network into part of a new company called Spinco
Speaker 1: suggests that meeting, by the way, from two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: the We're All going to Die meeting, that is worthy
Speaker 1: of its own lengthy recap, which I will give you shortly.
Speaker 1: But anyway, back to the main part of this story,
Speaker 1: the current part of this story. Back then, it was
Speaker 1: still getting worse and worse. Zucker and Roger Ayles wound
Speaker 1: up meeting inside thirty Rock No Less to decide what
Speaker 1: I could and could not say on MSNBC about Fox,
Speaker 1: and what Fox would and would not say about Ge
Speaker 1: negotiating what could be in the news on two of
Speaker 1: America's three cable news channels. By twenty ten, NBC started
Speaker 1: suggesting we put Republicans on Countdown. They wanted me to
Speaker 1: have Scarborough on every night. Nobody ever asked me a
Speaker 1: direct question as to how. In January twenty eleven, I
Speaker 1: wound up leaving this mess of MSNBC and leaving the
Speaker 1: highest rated cable news show that was not on Fox.
Speaker 1: And I left because they were beginning to throw up
Speaker 1: roadblocks to my commentaries and mess with my producers, and
Speaker 1: most importantly because twice they breached my contract. And again,
Speaker 1: this is all about the conflict that exists to this
Speaker 1: moment between the idea of NBC News and the false
Speaker 1: god of neutrality and both sidesmanship and Chuck Todd's and MSNBC.
Speaker 1: They suspended me once from making campaign donations. Donations I
Speaker 1: made after our election coverage had concluded to acquaintances like
Speaker 1: Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who had gotten death threats who had
Speaker 1: run out of money to pay for more security. NBC
Speaker 1: said I had violated the NBC News employee rules and
Speaker 1: really publicly slammed me, which was kind of unfortunate for
Speaker 1: them in so much as two years earlier, they had
Speaker 1: written up and demanded that I sign a new contract
Speaker 1: that specifically said I was not an NBC News employee.
Speaker 1: This had saved them thousands of dollars because if I
Speaker 1: wasn't an NBC News employee, they didn't have to pay
Speaker 1: for my dental care. I swear that was part of it.
Speaker 1: The other part of it was if I was not
Speaker 1: an NBC News employee, when the spit hit the fan,
Speaker 1: they could say, well, he doesn't work for NBC News,
Speaker 1: he worked for MSNBC. The sad thing was the original
Speaker 1: solution to the news of my campaign contributions had been
Speaker 1: president of MSNBC calling me and saying, well, this looks bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know it's your right to do it.
Speaker 1: It's not like going to suspend you or anything stupid
Speaker 1: like that, and this is sort of our fault, but
Speaker 1: this just looks bad. Can you can you think of
Speaker 1: is there anything you can do to make this look better?
Speaker 1: And I said, no, you're right, it does look bad.
Speaker 1: I'll apologize on the show tomorrow. And I don't have
Speaker 1: to do this. I want that it made clear, but
Speaker 1: I will voluntarily stop any campaign contributions as long as
Speaker 1: I am doing this show. And the president of MSNBC
Speaker 1: said great, and I said great. And I wrote the
Speaker 1: apology that night and I sent it to him that
Speaker 1: night and he said great. And I said great, and
Speaker 1: I said great, I already have part of tomorrow's show
Speaker 1: written and that was it. And the next morning, without
Speaker 1: a hearing, without a phone call, without an email, without
Speaker 1: any warning, this hysterical teenager named Steve Kappus, President NBC News,
Speaker 1: puts out a press release in which he angrily suspends
Speaker 1: me indefinitely without pay for violations of the NBC News
Speaker 1: employee rule book that says NBC News employees can't make
Speaker 1: donations to political campaign except oops, I'm not an NBC
Speaker 1: News employee. Because they wanted to give themselves distance between
Speaker 1: NBC News and MSNBC and not pay my dental And
Speaker 1: within hours there was a petition on social media demanding
Speaker 1: my reinstatement, with two hundred and fifty thousand signatures on it,
Speaker 1: plus at NBC there was a lot of shushing and
Speaker 1: worrying because everybody at NBC News made donations to political campaigns,
Speaker 1: they just hid them. They donated in their wife's name,
Speaker 1: or their kid's name, or whoever. I was the only
Speaker 1: one who admitted it. Joe Scarborough went on the air
Speaker 1: and complained about my donating to campaigns, and two days
Speaker 1: later they suspended him for donating to campaigns because he
Speaker 1: still was an NBC News employee. And this guy campus
Speaker 1: dug in again NBC News versus MSNBC, and demanded that
Speaker 1: I be suspended for a month without at least and
Speaker 1: all of this was public. In the short term. What
Speaker 1: happened was they told me on a Friday, I was suspended.
Speaker 1: On Tuesday, I was back on the air. They couldn't
Speaker 1: even dock my pay. They couldn't even charge me for
Speaker 1: any days off. In the long term, right after I
Speaker 1: was suspended, were actually not suspended. Al Gore phoned me
Speaker 1: and he offered me a fortune to take countdown to
Speaker 1: his struggling network called Current TV. Brain Countdown to Current
Speaker 1: TV will give you fifty million dollars, he said, plus bonuses,
Speaker 1: plus a piece of the network you'll be an owner. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the current thing turned out to be a scam. It
Speaker 1: blew up rather quickly. On the other hand, I got
Speaker 1: enough money to literally never have to work again for
Speaker 1: the next decade. Again touching on this subject of NBC
Speaker 1: News and its interests versus the interests of the corporate
Speaker 1: entities that owned it and MSNBC. NBC News and ms
Speaker 1: NBC and I flirted with a reunion for the next
Speaker 1: ten years. Comcast asked as far back as September twenty
Speaker 1: eleven if I would consider going back. Then came the message,
Speaker 1: we can't do it. We found out that too many
Speaker 1: people at NBC News wouldn't like it, although everybody at
Speaker 1: MSNBC would like it and we would like it. So
Speaker 1: now it was the corporation at MSNBC versus NBC News.
Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, I actually met with the new NBC
Speaker 1: News executives for two hours and they wanted me to
Speaker 1: bring countdown back and we started the process. And then
Speaker 1: the Brian Williams scandal broke and those news executives got
Speaker 1: fired because they ignored the Brian Williams scandal. In October
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, I met with the new new executives who
Speaker 1: replaced the ones who got fired. They wanted me to
Speaker 1: come back. They made an actual offer, and it was stupid,
Speaker 1: and it was predicated on having me not do any commentaries,
Speaker 1: like what was the point of countdown without the commentaries?
Speaker 1: What did you want me to do? Draw pictures? Teach
Speaker 1: people to paint? And then that guy got fired in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and the new chairman of the entire NBC operation,
Speaker 1: Jeff Shell, was an old friend of mine from Fox Sports,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to bring me back, and then Matdow
Speaker 1: said no, and then Shell got fired and that was
Speaker 1: the final stake in what would have been my third stint.
Speaker 1: So now, after twenty eight plus years on the air,
Speaker 1: they have done something to separate MSNBC from NBC News,
Speaker 1: but not really. They still haven't changed the name, and
Speaker 1: it may wind up being nothing more than an official
Speaker 1: new route of who's in charge and having distinct on
Speaker 1: air staffs. Even that could allow Comcasts to continue to
Speaker 1: own MSNBC and for it to remain vigorous and liberal
Speaker 1: and useful in a time of crisis that we are entering,
Speaker 1: or it will allow them to sell it to Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: who will change it to musk x TV. Also of interest, here,
Speaker 1: MSNBC is experiencing the proverbial existential crisis again, that little
Speaker 1: one I mentioned just fifteen and a half years ago.
Speaker 1: That one escalated even faster than this one has. And
Speaker 1: corporate was so mad back then. They were not talking
Speaker 1: about selling it. They were just going to push the
Speaker 1: off switch, and I helped. There is instruction for the
Speaker 1: future in that part of the past. Let me go
Speaker 1: into great detail about the meeting on the mount of
Speaker 1: Jeff Zucker's office in two thousand and nine. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olboman hell
Speaker 1: ahead of us here on countdown. Quote, I don't want
Speaker 1: to see your botched chief hooker inspired boob job on
Speaker 1: my television. Can we introduce a bill to bar that? Unquote?
Speaker 1: Which former woman staffer of which current member of Congress
Speaker 1: said that about which current member of Congress? Next in
Speaker 1: the other worst persons in the world. First, to complete
Speaker 1: my theatrical promise from before the break insigne the last
Speaker 1: time MSNBC was on the verge of extinction June two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, My executive producer is Epovich and I
Speaker 1: are summoned to the fifty second floor office of NBC
Speaker 1: president Jeff Zooker. This is at thirty Rock in New York.
Speaker 1: It is, in fact a top three rock in New York.
Speaker 1: The only other thing on the floor is the private
Speaker 1: dining room for Zooker and the other executives of his
Speaker 1: corporation and ge which owned us. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: Zucker's office, kind of like the Los Angeles Coliseum, only
Speaker 1: with floor lamps. Anyway, already in the room MSNBC president
Speaker 1: Phil Griffin, a producer from Hardball with Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz,
Speaker 1: his producer, some goon from Morning Joe, but not Scarborough
Speaker 1: or Brzhinski themselves, and from the new show that had
Speaker 1: been spun off from mine, Rachel Maddow and her producer
Speaker 1: Bill Wolf. Basically everybody with any chops at MSNBC. And
Speaker 1: the message from Zucker, who was bright red and sweating
Speaker 1: for the only time in his life, was so existential
Speaker 1: that he thought he had to repeat it to me.
Speaker 1: I said, Jeff, imilt is going to take MSNBC off
Speaker 1: the air. I didn't need any of my over wrought
Speaker 1: visions from two years earlier of the future of liberal
Speaker 1: news commentary falling out the NBC window to its death
Speaker 1: on the rink. This was the real thing. The chairman
Speaker 1: of General Electric was threatening to open the window himself,
Speaker 1: throw us out the window himself, and then race down
Speaker 1: to the pavement to stomp on our dying remains himself.
Speaker 1: Poor Ed Schultz heard Jeff Zucker say those words, and
Speaker 1: he had screwed up his face and tilted his head
Speaker 1: like a puppy hearing a car crash. He had not
Speaker 1: believed it the first time. He had not believed it
Speaker 1: the second time. Zucker said it a third time. Immelt
Speaker 1: is going to take MSNBC off the effing air at,
Speaker 1: Schultz groaned. After weeks of Griffin's coaxing, he had finally
Speaker 1: just moved from Nebraska to New York the preceding weekend,
Speaker 1: Yet he was still, somehow only the second most strung
Speaker 1: out person in the room. You, Zucker shouted at me,
Speaker 1: You're the smartest one in the room. What do we
Speaker 1: do now? I'll confess I was shaken by this because
Speaker 1: it appeared for once that Zucker was not being sarcastic.
Speaker 1: I had never before seen him flush nor flustered. This
Speaker 1: was a guy who wore fleece in July. Now he
Speaker 1: was beat red and sweating. Sometimes he knew what he
Speaker 1: was doing, and, as his opposition to hiring Matdow had proved,
Speaker 1: sometimes he didn't know what he was doing, but he
Speaker 1: always acted as the most confident man in the galaxy.
Speaker 1: But now he literally had no clue what to do next.
Speaker 1: And he not only could not ignore my advice, he
Speaker 1: desperately needed it. This situation and that color on his
Speaker 1: face were almost worth watching the corporate fascists nuke my network.
Speaker 1: I asked Zucker to explain what happened? You got Dan, Well,
Speaker 1: know what happened. Zucker moved towards me, and I stood
Speaker 1: up and I told him I would see myself out.
Speaker 1: He stopped, remembering that he did indeed actually need my help.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I apologize. This isn't Rachal, this is Melt.
Speaker 1: Last week sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped. He told Murdoch he
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna take any more of what you were saying
Speaker 1: about him on the air. So he did a piece
Speaker 1: last night accusing Ge of manufacturing the components that have
Speaker 1: been used in roadside bombs that were built in Iran
Speaker 1: to kill Americans in Iraq, which is true. Legally, that's
Speaker 1: legally true. They found roadside bombs that had like thirty
Speaker 1: year old GE transistors or TV tubes from nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: four or something in them. Legally, GE did manufacture components
Speaker 1: that were used in roadside bombs that were built in
Speaker 1: Iran to kill Americans in Iraq. So O'Reilly 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'reiley show, Jesse Waters something to stake emmelt 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 when? 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 ass, 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,
Speaker 1: says Sonny, why are you manufacturing components that were used
Speaker 1: in roadside bombs built in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq?
Speaker 1: I had not expected that, I said to Zucker. 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 your effing
Speaker 1: assi will. Now you said it was manageable. How how
Speaker 1: the hef do we manage it? Ulberman? 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 they should? I know you're
Speaker 1: missing the point. I had him really worked up, nearly
Speaker 1: to the boiling point. It was great, guess, Zucker spluttered.
Speaker 1: I don't know. He's in his mid fifties. She's got
Speaker 1: to 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 he Povich unsuccessfully stifled a laugh, and I saw
Speaker 1: Rachel crack a smile. Zuke 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 crossed 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? Zucker'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 will 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 iml turn us off
Speaker 1: in the morning. After all, I don't think Zooker actually
Speaker 1: heard the last part about Emil turning us off. After all,
Speaker 1: 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. We will talk tomorrow, maybe tonight, and we'll
Speaker 1: 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 guy,
Speaker 1: Harson I think, was almost at the door out of
Speaker 1: Zucker's office, an office so big that it was to
Speaker 1: steal the Ring Lardner line, the size of the Yale Bowl,
Speaker 1: but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up, quietly
Speaker 1: 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: prevented from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,
Speaker 1: Zucker barked Phil Alderman, 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.
Speaker 1: Now she's your problem. All this is your problem. Get
Speaker 1: her back on the reservation or else. Now I had
Speaker 1: run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh, I'll get her
Speaker 1: back on the reservation, Jeff. But if you think this
Speaker 1: is my problem, just think about what happens if he
Speaker 1: really does take us off the air, or if it
Speaker 1: just gets out that he threatened to take us off
Speaker 1: the air because his mother didn't like what Fox said
Speaker 1: about him. That's my problem. Uh uh, that's your problem.
Speaker 1: And it's the problem of the CEO of the fricking
Speaker 1: sixth largest corporation in the world, who makes his business
Speaker 1: decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars of profits based
Speaker 1: on what his mother says. At this point, Phil Griffin
Speaker 1: managed to pull Zucker away and Izzy and I made
Speaker 1: for 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 gonna do about her. But I got an idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, the only person she was really talking to
Speaker 1: in there was herself. This isn't a brand new Surprise
Speaker 1: six success for her anymore. This is successful. This is
Speaker 1: what nine ten months she's successful. She said she was
Speaker 1: once a dancing cell phone outside of 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
Speaker 1: madow Hey. She wrote, don't necessarily quote me because I'm
Speaker 1: really drunk, but just make the 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 2: I have a family.
Speaker 1: Zucker had to go meet with Roger Ayles secretly inside
Speaker 1: thirty Rock, and I hope they remember to clean the
Speaker 1: room afterwards, and mlt even had to meet with Murdoch.
Speaker 1: And then, happily, some idiot Ge executive decided to boast
Speaker 1: to The New York Times about getting us little talent
Speaker 1: children under control and a big deal with the executives
Speaker 1: over at Fox and how they'd settled everything, which blew
Speaker 1: up the whole deal instantly, because the moment the deal
Speaker 1: went public, NBC looked so stupid, and even NBC News
Speaker 1: was now risked. The only point of the whole thing
Speaker 1: was to keep the Immelts and the Zookers and the
Speaker 1: Griffins and the ales Is from throwing us and our
Speaker 1: little island of liberal commentary out of that window at
Speaker 1: thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow and I would be
Speaker 1: constantly reminded in the ensuing years, thirty Rock has a
Speaker 1: lot of freaking windows fiddling around with the format. Believe
Speaker 1: it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about,
Speaker 1: the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Krueger
Speaker 1: effects specimens, who constitute the other worse persons in the world,
Speaker 1: the Brons worse. Why for change of top it's NBC News. Well,
Speaker 1: this has nothing to do with MSNBC. Why is it
Speaker 1: in the show? My pal Will Bunch pointed this out
Speaker 1: because it was a story about a fire in his
Speaker 1: hometown of Philadelphia. The headline on the NBC News website
Speaker 1: US news man's burning body found in driveway of Philadelphia home.
Speaker 1: Police call death suspicious. A gas can instruct matches were
Speaker 1: found near the body of the man who was found
Speaker 1: with severe burns laying in a driveway shortly after three
Speaker 1: am Tuesday. Police said suspicious. You say, man's burning body
Speaker 1: found in driveway of Philadelphia home. Police called death suspicious suspicious?
Speaker 1: Why on earth does that make you think that suspicious
Speaker 1: spontaneous combustion is a real thing. This flashed me back
Speaker 1: to my youth as a Los Angeles sportscaster not long
Speaker 1: after I left there. This is April of nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: The following appear in the Los Angeles Times. Unfortunately, it
Speaker 1: was about a reporter I knew from my old station.
Speaker 1: Just the Facts reads this blurb. Last week, when the
Speaker 1: severed arms of a woman who has since been identified
Speaker 1: washed ashore at Venice Beach and Marina del Rey, Channel
Speaker 1: two sent Jody Baskerville in pursuit of the story Baskerville
Speaker 1: to a police official. Quote, do you suspect foul play? Unquote? No, no,
Speaker 1: of course not. The woman just stayed too long in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean. Her arms melted off. The runner up
Speaker 1: worser Pete hegseeth the creature Trump wants running. You know
Speaker 1: all of our military popular information dug up a piece
Speaker 1: that Pete Hegseth published in college, a bemusing yet mandatory
Speaker 1: orientation program, revolved entirely around whether an instance of sexual
Speaker 1: intercourse constituted quote rape unquote. He wrote, The actual instance
Speaker 1: portrayed in the kit was in fact not a clear
Speaker 1: case of rape, at least not in my home state.
Speaker 1: In short, though intercourse was not consented to, there was
Speaker 1: no duress because the girl drank herself into unconsciousness. Both
Speaker 1: criteria must be satisfied for rape. Unfortunately, the panelists never
Speaker 1: cited any legal definition of rape. Yet the panel, all
Speaker 1: females in the session I attended, claimed that rape it waste.
Speaker 1: In case you're thinking, well, everybody who writes anything in
Speaker 1: college writes something stupid, and this is, you know, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six or something. This thing from hegseith. You can't
Speaker 1: rape an unconscious woman because she's incapable of saying no right,
Speaker 1: no duress because she's unconscious. This scumbag graduated college in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. But our winner the worst, Nancy Mace,
Speaker 1: the ex Republican gadfly ron Philip Kowski says by his
Speaker 1: count in just thirty six hours, crazed Republican congress woman
Speaker 1: Nancy Pace posted just a few times on the subject
Speaker 1: of barring transgendered congress women from the women's bathroom in Congress.
Speaker 1: Just a few times, just two hundred and sixty two
Speaker 1: times in a day and a half. This is because
Speaker 1: Mace was also trying to fund race off of it.
Speaker 1: She text bombed all supporters and some non supporters too.
Speaker 1: Natalie Johnson had been Mace's communications director and was so
Speaker 1: embarrassed she not only quit, she left Washington. She left
Speaker 1: politics to go to Utah to become a skiing instructor.
Speaker 1: She got one of the Mace fundraising texts, and her
Speaker 1: response was to nuke her ex boss. She posted a
Speaker 1: screenshot from Mace's text, I don't want to see your
Speaker 1: junk in my bathroom. It's representative Mace. The trans mob
Speaker 1: wants to kill me, but I fought back and won,
Speaker 1: and then there's a link to making a donation. This
Speaker 1: is one of the two hundred and sixty two times
Speaker 1: that she I guess text and posted about it, according
Speaker 1: to Philip Kowski. Natalie Johnson put out this screenshot and added,
Speaker 1: I don't want to see your botched, cheap hooker inspired
Speaker 1: boob job on my television? Can we introduce a bill
Speaker 1: to bar that kinda say? Cheap hooker inspired boob job
Speaker 1: is one of my new favorite all time insults, up
Speaker 1: there with pine Cone. I don't want to see your
Speaker 1: cheap hooker inspired boob job you pine Cone? Well done?
Speaker 1: Ms Johnson, Nancy cheap hooker inspired boob job? Wait, aren't
Speaker 1: the terms boob and Nancy Mace redundant? Mace Today's other
Speaker 1: worse person in the world. I've done all the damage
Speaker 1: I can do here. Thank you for listening. Follow me
Speaker 1: for the podcast promo videos on Blue Sky, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: x if it's still there, Instagram, threads, and you twit.
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration
Speaker 1: and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass, and drums.
Speaker 1: It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy
Speaker 1: musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Speaker 1: Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
Speaker 1: Me ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of
Speaker 1: ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group
Speaker 1: No Horns Allowed. My announcer was my friend Larry David,
Speaker 1: and everything else was as ever my fault. That's countdown
Speaker 1: for today, just one five hundred and eighteen days until
Speaker 1: the scheduled end of the lame duck presidency of Trump.
Speaker 1: Probably I'm going to try to take the holiday off,
Speaker 1: but I suspect there will be a second podcast at
Speaker 1: some point this week. I will alert the media the
Speaker 1: next scheduled countdown is next Monday. As always bulletins as
Speaker 1: the news warrants till the next one, whenever the hell
Speaker 1: that is. I'm Keith Olremman. Good Morning, good afternoon, good night,
Speaker 1: and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts,