Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. As
Speaker 1: Wall Street prepares for its worst stock market crash since
Speaker 1: nearly Thursday. I want to see polling numbers on a
Speaker 1: presidential recall vote. I know there is no such thing
Speaker 1: as a presidential recall vote, but what the hell? The
Speaker 1: Republicans are always making up laws these days, inside the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court and out, demanding to have their way because
Speaker 1: they say the public wants it, trying to scam the
Speaker 1: Constitution for a third term, claiming the nation voted for Trump,
Speaker 1: and if Trump wants national suicide, then the nation has
Speaker 1: already pre approved national suicide. If they can do this crap,
Speaker 1: so can we. Because I want Republican congressmen and senators
Speaker 1: and state and city and village officials to understand right
Speaker 1: now that if we put it to a vote tomorrow,
Speaker 1: Trump and nearly all of them would be out on
Speaker 1: their asses out of office by Wednesday. I don't want
Speaker 1: to wait for the midterms and for this involuntary harakiri
Speaker 1: to be complete, for the pressure to begin to mount
Speaker 1: on Trump's prostitutes, who continue to insist the Emperor does
Speaker 1: too have clothes and that the insane worm dictator is
Speaker 1: actually a rational human being, and what someone called economic
Speaker 1: Munchausen by proxy, in which you make a nation sick
Speaker 1: in order to claim to be healing a sick nation,
Speaker 1: is somehow survivable. I don't want to wait. I want
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise and the House congressman with
Speaker 1: the stronger instincts towards self preservation to understand and today
Speaker 1: that in a parliamentary system, their public careers would already
Speaker 1: be dead, That they are shackled to a corpse in
Speaker 1: the White House, that there is no master plan, that
Speaker 1: the country knows Trump is not playing some long game,
Speaker 1: that the country suddenly understands, there is no Trump derangement syndrome,
Speaker 1: only Trump is deranged syndrome. That the country knows. This
Speaker 1: is an unmitigated, irredeemable by partisan national disaster, and Trump
Speaker 1: caused it deliberately. And their only chance is for them,
Speaker 1: the Republicans, to use the powers they have right now,
Speaker 1: to extract him from office, or at minimum new to
Speaker 1: him where he stands and pull all his powers from him,
Speaker 1: or they, the Republicans, will perish from the earth. I
Speaker 1: want them to know that in five months it's gone
Speaker 1: from their futures, depending on enslaving themselves to Trump, to
Speaker 1: their futures, depending on them removing him from office immediately.
Speaker 1: Them the GOP, the MAGA cult, not Trump but his assholes.
Speaker 1: They are the Roman senators, and metaphorically he is Julius
Speaker 1: Caesar figuratively speaking, obviously, I want to see polling on
Speaker 1: a presidential recall vote. I want one of these moribund, terrified,
Speaker 1: formerly journalistic media outlets to ask voters of every possible
Speaker 1: flavor if the election were rerun today, would you vote
Speaker 1: for Trump or a Democrat? Or would you vote for
Speaker 1: Trump or another Republican? Or would you vote for Trump
Speaker 1: or a fairly intelligent farm animal. I want the poster
Speaker 1: to ask, would you support a special emergency recall vote
Speaker 1: to potentially reverse the outcome of the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: presidential election. I want them to ask, would you describe
Speaker 1: the current financial panic and the upcoming tsunami of inflation
Speaker 1: and unemployment as a national emergency? I want them to ask,
Speaker 1: do you think Donald Trump has taken leave of his senses?
Speaker 1: I want them to ask, do you think Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is mentally fit to run this country? I want them
Speaker 1: to ask, do you think Donald Trump is acting to
Speaker 1: destroy the United States on behalf of a foreign country.
Speaker 1: I want them to ask, do you think it is
Speaker 1: necessary to act once and only once outside the constitution?
Speaker 1: If necessary to save the United States of America from
Speaker 1: Donald Trump? I want them to ask, if the midterm
Speaker 1: elections for the Senate and the House, where tomorrow would
Speaker 1: you vote Republican or Democrat. Let's see where we really
Speaker 1: stand right now, because we're not going to have a
Speaker 1: presidential recall vote. We're not going to rerun the election.
Speaker 1: We're not going to just this once act outside the constitution.
Speaker 1: We're not Republicans, but the Republicans without whose support Trump
Speaker 1: could not remain in office past noon need to see
Speaker 1: these numbers, need to see that they're elected offices, and
Speaker 1: their hopes for reelection, and their hopes for higher office,
Speaker 1: and their hopes for post governmental money are flying out
Speaker 1: to the effing window because Trump wants to make America
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four again. Because Trump doesn't know what he's doing,
Speaker 1: because Trump's mind is shattered beyond repair, shattered beyond rational thought.
Speaker 1: They need to see Trump has summoned doomsday, and the
Speaker 1: sooner they stick him with the bill for it, the
Speaker 1: better chance they have of surviving it, because this is
Speaker 1: neither as hopeless nor as complicated as it looks. A
Speaker 1: quarter of Republicans in the House and Sented are full
Speaker 1: kool aid drinkers. A quarter have doubts. The other half no,
Speaker 1: damn well, he's nuts. They've always known he's nuts. They've
Speaker 1: just enjoyed the power and the money and the popularity
Speaker 1: too much to ever dream of letting it go unless
Speaker 1: the choice became he goes or they go. In which
Speaker 1: case he goes, they could force him to resign, more
Speaker 1: likely to simply flee the country, to leave office and
Speaker 1: avoid prison, avoid prison, flee the country, then resign. They
Speaker 1: could force him to resign by making it clear that
Speaker 1: after his travesty of a mockery of a sham, of
Speaker 1: a mockery of two mockeries of a sham, there are
Speaker 1: now enough Republican votes to impeach him in the House
Speaker 1: and convict him in the Senate. They could force him
Speaker 1: out by simply introducing the measure to impeach themselves. Because
Speaker 1: there are two truths about American politics. Everything seems permanent
Speaker 1: and isn't, and the other one is, and it's true
Speaker 1: in this century. It was true last century. It's true
Speaker 1: the century before that. It's that there are always lots
Speaker 1: of politicians who will risk themselves for their leader, as
Speaker 1: long as he demands, they do so one at a time,
Speaker 1: or as long as the nation's business demands, they do
Speaker 1: so one at a time. But there is no group
Speaker 1: of politicians who will collectively risk themselves for their leader.
Speaker 1: When the choices are, they go down with him, or
Speaker 1: he goes down all by himself.
Speaker 2: It is always, always, always.
Speaker 1: He goes down by himself. Damn shame. He had a
Speaker 1: great run. Where are we going to lunch? You don't
Speaker 1: believe me? Ask Richard Nixon. The Democrats didn't finish Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: Republican Senate and House leadership finished Richard Nixon. Hell, ask
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln. Two months before the eighteen sixty four presidential election,
Speaker 1: the referendum on the future of the Civil War, Republican
Speaker 1: leaders were trying to figure out how to remove Lincoln
Speaker 1: from the ballot to two months because he was clearly
Speaker 1: going to lose to McClellan in the election, and McClellan
Speaker 1: was going to surrender days before Sherman took Atlanta. This
Speaker 1: was seven months before Robert E. Lee surrendered the South,
Speaker 1: seven months before. They were going to win the war,
Speaker 1: and they were going to kick Lincoln to the curb. Oh, oh,
Speaker 1: we got it, We got Atlanta. Okay, never mind, not
Speaker 1: enough examples. Try other places. The British Conservatives were the
Speaker 1: ones who knifed Margaret Thatcher, not the Liberals christ They
Speaker 1: knifed David Cameron, then Teresa May, then Boris Johnson, then
Speaker 1: Liz trust All while they were Prime Minister. In the
Speaker 1: last fifteen years, Trump has an iron grip on MAGA,
Speaker 1: on the Republican Party, on the House majority, on the
Speaker 1: Senate majority, on the nation U untill eight maybe ten
Speaker 1: Republicans in the House decide Trump is going to destroy
Speaker 1: them personally, and they get together and they go, let's
Speaker 1: not get destroyed personally until fourteen count them, fourteen Republicans
Speaker 1: in the Senate decide Trump is going to destroy them personally.
Speaker 1: Trump's iron grip is at its largest exactly twenty four
Speaker 1: self interested, amorl disloyal Republicans wide twenty four and trust
Speaker 1: me at least twenty four. House and Senate Republicans have
Speaker 1: always hated Trump's guts and right now at least twenty
Speaker 1: four House and Senate Republicans, probably closer to two hundred
Speaker 1: and four of them hate Trump's guts. So I want
Speaker 1: to see polling numbers on a presidential recall vote? Am
Speaker 1: I expecting to see polding numbers on a presidential recall
Speaker 1: vote commissioned by ABC, by cowering CNN, by MSNVC more
Speaker 1: unlikely still commissioned by some aspect of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: I am not. I mean, who listens to me? I
Speaker 1: am right with surprising frequency, but who listens to me?
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I have been pounding for weeks
Speaker 1: the idea of a shadow Democratic Cabinet and a weekly
Speaker 1: news conference every Sunday morning at eight am, which steals
Speaker 1: the agenda for the Sunday morning news shows for all
Speaker 1: of local television news all day Sunday, which steals the
Speaker 1: news agenda for almost all of media for at least
Speaker 1: part of Monday. And what did we get? The new
Speaker 1: DNC chair Ken Martin announced the People's Cabinet to provide
Speaker 1: stuff with which to hit the trumpests in the groin.
Speaker 1: It still sounds a little diffuse to me. He's going
Speaker 1: to have experts and random press conferences and data and
Speaker 1: stuff that you at home? Can you I want prominent,
Speaker 1: popular young Democrats in front of microphones outdoors every Sunday
Speaker 1: raising hell but the people's cabinet. It's a start, do
Speaker 1: you know, Ken Martin? I mean, tell him about polling
Speaker 1: on a presidential recall vote and the impact symbolic at
Speaker 1: least that a large number like seventy percent of the
Speaker 1: public wanting a new vote or or forty seven percent
Speaker 1: of the public wanting a new vote might have on
Speaker 1: current events, namely our twenty four Republicans. I mean, for months,
Speaker 1: I have been putting out apbs on Barack Obama, and
Speaker 1: what happened? He emerged. He did a Q and A
Speaker 1: at Hamilton College and not only spewed facts, spilled teas
Speaker 1: of infinite variety, but he underscored why he is an essential,
Speaker 1: maybe the essential messenger right now, even if it still
Speaker 1: doesn't seem clear to him that he needs to get
Speaker 1: out there at minimum every two weeks and he has
Speaker 1: to stop avoiding calling Trump out by name. But this
Speaker 1: message delivered this way is quietly, concisely, magnetically, brilliantly in inspirational.
Speaker 1: Just sit for two minutes and listen.
Speaker 3: Imagine if I had done any of this. Let me just,
Speaker 3: I just, I just want to be clear about this.
Speaker 2: It may imagine that imagine if I.
Speaker 3: Had pulled Fox News's credentials from the White House Press Court.
Speaker 3: You're laughing, but no, that this is what's happening. It
Speaker 3: may imagine if I had said to law firms that
Speaker 3: were representing parties that were upset with policies my administration
Speaker 3: had initiated that you will not be allowed into government buildings.
Speaker 3: We will punish you economically for decent from the Affordable
Speaker 3: caret or the Around Deal. We will ferret out students
Speaker 3: who protest against my policies. It's unimaginable that the same
Speaker 3: parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like
Speaker 3: that for me or a whole bunch of my predecessors.
Speaker 3: So and I say this. I say this not on
Speaker 3: a partisan basis. This has to do with something more ruscious,
Speaker 3: which is who are we as a country and what
Speaker 3: values do we stand for?
Speaker 1: Now you know why he got elected twice. Additionally, very
Speaker 1: matter of factly, President Obama noted that the divide in
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party stick to the kitchen table issues, no,
Speaker 1: stick to the democracy issues. They're the same issue. It's
Speaker 1: one thing without democracy. Trump sets tariffs, and tariffs set
Speaker 1: the prices of what's at your kitchen table. The cost
Speaker 1: of everything is going up under fascism. Again, Obama remains
Speaker 1: the best political speaker in this country. Clinton was once better,
Speaker 1: but age has and I mean this literally hurt his
Speaker 1: instrument and as an unavoidable aside for which I apologize.
Speaker 1: Barack Obama's first political proto speech was also in New
Speaker 1: York State at my high school, the one Will Bunch
Speaker 1: and Chris Berman and I went to years earlier, obviously
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, at the behest of the history teacher
Speaker 1: who told me on graduation day the sportscasting thing was nice,
Speaker 1: but someday I would wind up in politics, covering it
Speaker 1: or running in it. I was sixteen. I laughed at him.
Speaker 1: His name was Walter Schneller, and Walter was right about
Speaker 1: me and more importantly about Obama. As he put him
Speaker 1: on the train in Tarrytown, New York, he said, have
Speaker 1: you considered running for office? Now? Back to the point,
Speaker 1: put all these ideas together, the shadow cabinet, the Sunday
Speaker 1: morning news agenda, setting press conference, and having the speaker
Speaker 1: at it be at least once in a while Barack
Speaker 1: Obama armed with polling on a presidential recall vote and
Speaker 1: large protests like this past weekend, at least every other weekend.
Speaker 1: Give Ken Martin my email or just a link to
Speaker 1: the podcast. Christ Why is this such elabyrinth? Wouldn't it
Speaker 1: have been nice to have had Obama doing news conference
Speaker 1: yesterday morning instead of an event at Hamilton College yesterday
Speaker 1: morning Sunday morning, and forced Trump's parade of idiots on
Speaker 1: the Sunday shows to try to follow that, to have
Speaker 1: the headlines now not be about disproving these awful, imbecilic
Speaker 1: liars and their awful, imbecilic lies, but how awful and
Speaker 1: imbecilic they sounded compared to Obama. Also that president will
Speaker 1: recall vote. Dato. That's a stunner, isn't it? Steve Cornecki. Ordinarily,
Speaker 1: even if you were Trump, you would keep radio silence
Speaker 1: after a week in which you imposed tariffs based on
Speaker 1: a formula that you dreamt up. That is basically the
Speaker 1: ratio of our trade deficit with each country and that
Speaker 1: country's total exports to this country, divided by two. In
Speaker 1: Layman's terms, this is the equivalent of how much of
Speaker 1: your money you have lost to one guy when you
Speaker 1: play poker and he's better than you, are, divided by
Speaker 1: how much money he actually won from you, divided by
Speaker 1: two oh, and then you announce that number is the
Speaker 1: cheated by winning. Ordinarily, after a week like that, you
Speaker 1: keep radio silence after not only making up an unbelievably
Speaker 1: bullshit excuse for how Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlanta got
Speaker 1: added to the illegal signal chat about bombing Yemen. I'll
Speaker 1: just read this explanation the way Hugo Lowell scooped it
Speaker 1: in The Guardian. Hugo's got it right, but I still
Speaker 1: think they just made it up. Are you ready you
Speaker 1: have a drink nearby, because if you don't need alcohol
Speaker 1: after this, at least you I want a drink so
Speaker 1: you can do a spit take quote. According to three
Speaker 1: people briefed on the internal investigation, Goldberg had emailed the
Speaker 1: campaign about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude
Speaker 1: towards wounded service members. To push back against the story,
Speaker 1: the campaign enlisted the help of Mike Waltz, their national
Speaker 1: security surrogate. Goldberg's email was forwarded to then Trump's spokesperson
Speaker 1: Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of
Speaker 1: the email, including the signature block with Goldberg's phone number,
Speaker 1: into a text message that he sent to Waltz so
Speaker 1: that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story. Waltz
Speaker 1: did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in
Speaker 1: an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg's number in
Speaker 1: his iPhone under the contact card for Hughes, now the
Speaker 1: spokesperson for the National Security COUNCILOT. It took them thirteen
Speaker 1: days to make that up. And you don't think they're
Speaker 1: vulnerable to pressure from twenty four Republicans who would become
Speaker 1: convinced that their careers depend on Trump leaving the White House.
Speaker 1: Day seven, you got anything.
Speaker 2: No on anything.
Speaker 1: Day nine, well, I may have something, something about something
Speaker 1: about cutting and pasting. I'll put a team on it.
Speaker 1: Thirteen days to make that up. The entire Cuban missile
Speaker 1: crisis took thirteen days. We nearly blew up the world,
Speaker 1: then steered it all back from the edge of doomsday
Speaker 1: in thirteen days. And that's how long it took them
Speaker 1: to make that bullshit up. Ordinarily, after that, you'd keep
Speaker 1: radio silence, You keep all of your people off TV.
Speaker 1: You deny there was an attorney general. Sorry, we don't
Speaker 1: have one. No, I went out with that dodge stuff.
Speaker 1: Ordinarily you'd keep radio silence. After you crashed the stock
Speaker 1: market and the economy and then reposted a video saying
Speaker 1: you crashed the stock market intentionally, leaving Janine Piro to say,
Speaker 1: I don't really care about my four oh one K
Speaker 1: today you know why I believe in this man, and
Speaker 1: of course in wine, and you left Benny Johnson to
Speaker 1: say losing money needs nothing digital ones and zeros. In
Speaker 1: the end, you won't miss any of it. Losing your
Speaker 1: country costs you everything. You'll never get that back. Your
Speaker 1: kids will be slaved to foreign powers who hate us.
Speaker 1: Without America First policies, we become slaves. Fight this after
Speaker 1: promising Trump would make all his suckers rich, and Benny
Speaker 1: doesn't have to worry about money. There's always Russia. This
Speaker 1: reminds me of the famous line from the late great
Speaker 1: comic genius Ernie Cooe. The money means nothing. The money
Speaker 1: is nothing. Therefore the money means nothing. Ordinarily, after a
Speaker 1: week like that, you'd shut the f up and shut
Speaker 1: your cabinet, the f up, and not parade your dumbest
Speaker 1: people in front of even the milk toast cowering Sunday shows,
Speaker 1: not trumpy. I really can't decide who was dumbest. On Fox,
Speaker 1: Pam Bondy, who is actually the Attorney General? When she's
Speaker 1: so legally illiterate, she makes Alena Habba sound like Oliver
Speaker 1: fing Wendell Holmes interviewer, do you believe there's a method
Speaker 1: by which Trump could seek a third term? Bondy? I
Speaker 1: wish we could have him for twenty years as our president,
Speaker 1: maybe ninety eight, but I think he's going to be finished,
Speaker 1: probably after this term. Interviewer, Probably, Bondy, we'd have to
Speaker 1: look at the constitution. You do that, Pam, go look
Speaker 1: for of the Constitution, and while you're at it, look
Speaker 1: for a copy of your law degree, because I don't
Speaker 1: believe that exists either, at least you don't have one.
Speaker 1: On CNN, the Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins interviewer, you're imposing
Speaker 1: a ten percent charge on the Herd and MacDonald Islands.
Speaker 1: They have zero human inhabitants. Why are you putting tariffs
Speaker 1: on islands that are entirely populated by Penguins. Brook Rollins,
Speaker 1: Come on, Jake, whatever, listen. The people that are leading
Speaker 1: this are serious, intentional, patriotic, the smartest people I've ever
Speaker 1: worked with. When the nineteen ninety two Cotton Bowl, Queen
Speaker 1: brook Rollins tells you that these are the most serious, intentional, patriotic,
Speaker 1: smartest people she's ever worked with, you do realize, sir,
Speaker 1: she's including the likes of Lou Holtz and George W. Bush.
Speaker 1: Since we're invoking the sweeping stupidity of college football. Theres
Speaker 1: coach Tommy Tubberville, still a senator on Fox. Tommy also
Speaker 1: believes in brownies and elves. Tubberville quote, we have entire
Speaker 1: men's teams crosses country now that are turning trans. Women's
Speaker 1: teams are turning trans. That's gonna be a situation where
Speaker 1: it's gonna pick up speed because these woke globalists are
Speaker 1: pushing these kids. Tommy actually does very well, considering he
Speaker 1: was born without a brain. There are, by the way,
Speaker 1: an estimated nine transgendered athletes in American college sports. Nine.
Speaker 1: And of course you remember when my eye doctor, Rene
Speaker 1: Richards transitioned and played in the US Open starting in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, and won twenty seven consecutive US women's titles,
Speaker 1: and she destroyed the sport of women's tennis. And nobody
Speaker 1: ever heard of, say Chris Evert or Martinez Averertalova, and
Speaker 1: they don't play women's tennis any more. Oh right, you
Speaker 1: don't remember any of that because it didn't happen, because
Speaker 1: there are nine transgendered college athletes in this country in
Speaker 1: high school. The only data we have is from Michigan,
Speaker 1: where they say they have won. They might have a
Speaker 1: second whole teams is women is changing into what would
Speaker 1: the other one be? Man? Man could be changing into
Speaker 1: the third gender? Tubberville on NBC. Scott besson the Secretary
Speaker 1: of Treasury and if ever there was actually a reason
Speaker 1: to go check if the gold is still at Fort Knox,
Speaker 1: Scott Bessant, is it? Interviewer? The markets lost more than
Speaker 1: six trillion dollars in value? Was this disruption always part
Speaker 1: of the plan? Bessent. We had record volume on Friday,
Speaker 1: and everything is working very smoothly, So the American people
Speaker 1: can take great comfort in that record volume. Oh and
Speaker 1: the machine didn't break great like the day of the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine crash. Well, it's every moment of it
Speaker 1: as a disaster. But look, the machine is just ticking
Speaker 1: out like nobody's business, those humming machines. Besson actually gets
Speaker 1: two entries. He was also asked Trump promised he was
Speaker 1: going to improve the economy starting on day one. What
Speaker 1: is your message to Americans who want to retire right
Speaker 1: now and have just seen their lifetime savings drop significantly?
Speaker 1: Bessen't Most Americans who have put away for years in
Speaker 1: their savings account don't look at the day to day
Speaker 1: fluctuations of what's happening. My heroes, Bob Elliott and Ray
Speaker 1: Goulding did a sketch that I heard first when I
Speaker 1: was fourteen fifteen years old, about a paper clip factory
Speaker 1: somewhere in Ohio, of all places. Their news reporter Wallybloo
Speaker 1: played by Bob, is interviewing the owner of the place,
Speaker 1: the handmade paper clip factory. Literally, they were handmade paper clips,
Speaker 1: cut and bent into shape by hand. Ray, as the
Speaker 1: owner explains, how's that possible, Blue asks they must cost
Speaker 1: a fortune handmade. No, the owner says, they're ten cents
Speaker 1: a box. Fob Akron, we just signed a ninety nine
Speaker 1: year sweetheart deal with our union. We pay our employees
Speaker 1: eight cents a week. Blue screams eight cents a week?
Speaker 1: How do your people live on eight cents a week?
Speaker 1: And the owner says, mister Blue, we don't pry into
Speaker 1: the private lies of our employees. We don't pry into
Speaker 1: the private lives of our employees. People don't have any
Speaker 1: money in their checking account and savings account. They don't
Speaker 1: know that. They don't look day to day fluctuations in
Speaker 1: their account. To that point, possibly the dumbest person in
Speaker 1: any cabinet ever, excluding Trump himself obviously on CBS, Commerce
Speaker 1: Secretary Howard Lutnik, or as he has been unfortunately renamed
Speaker 1: Howard nut Lick Lutnick, you realize tillions of dollars in
Speaker 1: factories are going to be built in America. That's huge, GDP.
Speaker 1: The factories being built in America are huge, interviewer. That
Speaker 1: takes years. And you said that robots are going to
Speaker 1: fill those jobs. So those aren't union worker jobs, Lutnick,
Speaker 1: it's automated factories. The key is who is going to
Speaker 1: build and operate the factories, interviewer, You said robots, Lutnik,
Speaker 1: the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing
Speaker 1: in little screws to make iPhones. That kind of thing
Speaker 1: is going to come to America unquote oh child labor,
Speaker 1: which they are moving to make legal in Florida, where
Speaker 1: they can screw in little screws to make iPhones better
Speaker 1: if you have little hands screwing in little screws ten
Speaker 1: cents of box. Fob Ackron, the Bob and Ray sketch
Speaker 1: had another punchline. When pressed on the living conditions of
Speaker 1: his staff, the head of the handmade paper clip factory
Speaker 1: explained that it was his understanding that most of his
Speaker 1: employees wore old newspapers wrapped around their feet instead of shoes,
Speaker 1: and that they lived in caves on the outskirts of town.
Speaker 1: Twenty four Republicans I want pulling on a presidential we
Speaker 1: call vote. Also of interest on this whole new episode,
Speaker 1: the entire history of who was the first person an
Speaker 1: ever to be photographed giving the cameraman the finger now
Speaker 1: must be rewritten after discoveries from this weekend past and no,
Speaker 1: sorry sports fans, Alexander Ovechkin did not set the all
Speaker 1: time record for most goals scored in Big League hockey,
Speaker 1: and I will answer an additional question from politics. The
Speaker 1: question is Chuck Todd, Why that's next? This Discountdown? This
Speaker 1: is Countdown with Keith Oldwoman still ahead in this all
Speaker 1: new edition of Countdown now has more goals than Gretzky.
Speaker 1: But contrary to what you've heard, that does not mean
Speaker 1: Ovechkin now has the record for the most goals scored.
Speaker 1: I will explain and the history of the flipped finger
Speaker 1: has been entirely rewritten. And I received a question about
Speaker 1: Chuck Todd, and I want to answer it at length.
Speaker 1: The question is basically, why first believe it or not?
Speaker 1: There's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup
Speaker 1: of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who
Speaker 1: constitute the latest other worst persons in the world. Here
Speaker 1: are the nominees the Bronze Worse Baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates. The
Speaker 1: new season is upon us, and the little murders therein
Speaker 1: are becoming visible, such as the Pirates ballpark, at which
Speaker 1: they have understandably positioned as a shrine to the late
Speaker 1: superstar Roverto Clemente, whose death during a humanitarian mission to
Speaker 1: an earthquake in Icaragua is now fifty two years ago.
Speaker 1: The Pirates have dozens of tributes to Clemente, including a
Speaker 1: statue there's a bridge to the ballpark named after him,
Speaker 1: but none were as prominent, at least to the television
Speaker 1: audience for the games, than the official logo showing Clemente's
Speaker 1: retired uniform number twenty one that rests high up on
Speaker 1: the wall in the right field corner, just next to
Speaker 1: the foul pole. If the ball was hit to right field,
Speaker 1: you at home saw the Clemente logo, Well, it did
Speaker 1: rest high up on that wall in the right field corner.
Speaker 1: A fan noticed Saturday and posted a photo of that
Speaker 1: corner at the Pirates ballpark, and the Clemente uniform number
Speaker 1: plaque is gone, replaced by a very large advertisement for Celtze.
Speaker 1: This was retweeted by Roberto Clemente Junior, who added one
Speaker 1: word wow. The Pirates have confirmed that the Clemente tribute
Speaker 1: had been taken down and the Seltzer ad put up
Speaker 1: in its place, but they said the plaque had only
Speaker 1: been temporary. It was only supposed to be there for
Speaker 1: a short period of time before being taken down the
Speaker 1: last three years, when evidently they couldn't sell the ad
Speaker 1: space I guess. The pirates proceeded to list every tribute
Speaker 1: to Clemente they did not take down and replace with
Speaker 1: an ad for Celtza, which, of course only underscored the
Speaker 1: fact that, yes, they did take the most universally visible
Speaker 1: tribute to Roberto Clemente down so they could sell the
Speaker 1: space for an ad for a giant can of celtza. Oh,
Speaker 1: they never told the Clemente family in advance. They found
Speaker 1: out on Twitter runner up worser a MAGA influencer named
Speaker 1: Blair White, as in Blair White Project, another one apparently
Speaker 1: functioning without thumbs, with which she could google herself or
Speaker 1: google something before humiliating herself in public, but won't. Musician
Speaker 1: and author Michael Jalet observed the obvious foreign influence behind
Speaker 1: Trump's self destructive tariffs. He tweeted, Russia isn't on Trump's
Speaker 1: tariff list and repeated that sentence six times. That's the tweet.
Speaker 1: White retweeted Jalat and added, we don't import anything from Russia,
Speaker 1: repeating that sentence four times and then adding quote you're
Speaker 1: a retard unquote. Ms White was quickly community noted because,
Speaker 1: according to the Trump Office of the US Trade Representative
Speaker 1: the Trump US Trade Representative's office. US exports to Russia
Speaker 1: last year totaled five hundred and twenty six million dollars
Speaker 1: US imports from Russia, which she says there is none,
Speaker 1: in fact total two and a half billion dollars. Slight
Speaker 1: difference in the number here he says none. Trump says
Speaker 1: two and a half billion dollars. The punchline from the
Speaker 1: woman who dropped an R bomb on somebody who was
Speaker 1: right when she was wrong. She's transgender, she's maga transgender.
Speaker 1: Why do I think they're going to make her life
Speaker 1: more complicated? And that she should be nicer to those
Speaker 1: of us who won't because that doesn't make a difference
Speaker 1: to us. She is a moron, but the winner worst
Speaker 1: why he's making the rare two segment appearance. Scott besn't
Speaker 1: the Treasury secretary the maga guy who looks like he's
Speaker 1: been hitting the face with a shovel. Basically he has
Speaker 1: a flat face. He's the one happily responding to the
Speaker 1: crisis by insisting this is the ideal time to cut
Speaker 1: taxes on the rich. He wasn't supposed to say that
Speaker 1: out loud. That's the whole point of this that's the
Speaker 1: whole plan. That's the whole idea. They get rid of
Speaker 1: taxes for the rich. That's why Trump wants it to
Speaker 1: be the eighteen nineties again, and we're in any track.
Speaker 1: Taxes made money, kept, all the damn money. That's all
Speaker 1: he wants. That's all he wants before he dies. He
Speaker 1: wants all the damn money. Politico reports that hours after,
Speaker 1: Secretary Bessont added to his series of ridiculous statements by
Speaker 1: insisting that the correct American response to tariff disaster twenty
Speaker 1: five and terifflation was to quote by American. Seen in
Speaker 1: Scott Besson's driveway and scene parked there from months, according
Speaker 1: to neighbor, was a range Rover, which is manufactured mostly
Speaker 1: in Britain by a company based in India. Treasury Secretary
Speaker 1: Scott when I say buy American, I mean you should
Speaker 1: buy American, not that I have to buy American. Two
Speaker 1: Day's other worst person.
Speaker 2: In the world.
Speaker 4: This is Sports Senate. Wait check that not anymore. This
Speaker 4: is Countdown with Keith Ulberman.
Speaker 1: Still ahead on this all new edition of Countdown. The
Speaker 1: answer to the question Chuck Todd first from the Sports
Speaker 1: Balls Central Center newsdesk tonight Dateline, Washington on the twenty
Speaker 1: first anniversary of the day the Washington Capitals won the
Speaker 1: lottery for the first pick and the amateur draft in
Speaker 1: which they selected him. Alexander Ovechkin broke Wayne Gretzky's goal
Speaker 1: total of eight hundred and ninety four, scoring his eight
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety fifth and a loss in which that
Speaker 1: was the only goal for Washington and Gretzky, of course,
Speaker 1: threw himself off another cliff. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: Ovechkin did not set the record for most goals scored
Speaker 1: in a big league career in hockey, no matter how
Speaker 1: hard the National Hockey League and its partners are trying
Speaker 1: to sell you on this idea so you will buy merchandise.
Speaker 1: Gretzky first. When Ovechkin tied the mark Friday night in Washington,
Speaker 1: Wayne Gretzky was there and he was shown on television
Speaker 1: in a suite standing next to Popeye himself, Trump fixer,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist, all around nut job FBI director in this
Speaker 1: cheap horror film We're All in Cash Patel. The tying
Speaker 1: of the eight hundred and ninety four total now became
Speaker 1: Gretzky tied to Ovechkin, whose social media still shows imposing
Speaker 1: with Putin, for whom he has campaigned, and Gretzky now
Speaker 1: tied to Cash Patel. That's Gretzky, who three months ago
Speaker 1: was still one of Canada's all time icons and now
Speaker 1: flatley after his buddy Trump decided he's going to attack
Speaker 1: Canada one way or the other. Gretzky is hated in Canada.
Speaker 1: He attended Trump's victory party and inauguration event. He's been
Speaker 1: wearing the hat, He's been playing the golf, he's been
Speaker 1: distributing the kool aid. The depth of the heartbroken sense
Speaker 1: of betrayal in Canada was already pretty much maxed out.
Speaker 1: Then Canada had to watch as Gretzky's record was tied
Speaker 1: while Gretzky was standing next to one of Trump's biggest hoares.
Speaker 1: As Trump continues to threaten Canada with annexation, financial collapse,
Speaker 1: and ultimately inevitably invasion. Patel added to this by tweeting
Speaker 1: photos of himself with Gretzky and Ovechkin and the Washington
Speaker 1: Capitol's team. Somehow they didn't get Putin in the photo.
Speaker 1: Somehow they left Marshall Petan out of that shot anyway. Later,
Speaker 1: one of Gretzky's most accomplished teammates, Hall of Famer Kevin Lowe,
Speaker 1: posted about all this on Facebook, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: read it because it starts as if klow is going
Speaker 1: to end up crying leave Wayner alone into a pillow.
Speaker 1: But then it takes quite a turn. Kevin Lowe, I've
Speaker 1: been heartbroken, disillusioned, frustrated, furious, even from the moment the
Speaker 1: witch hunt towards Wayne Gretzky's name began. I've known Wayne
Speaker 1: for forty five years. We lived together, we grew up together.
Speaker 1: We put our asses on the line to help Canada
Speaker 1: win its first Olympic hockey gold medal in fifty years.
Speaker 1: I'd say few people qualify to know Wayne as well
Speaker 1: as I do. His character and loyalty to Canada have
Speaker 1: always been and will always remain impeccable. One thing I
Speaker 1: know for certain, Wayne may be the least political person alive,
Speaker 1: and as you so astutely presented, shame on anyone who's
Speaker 1: attempted to entrap him in Trump's maniacal orbit. Well, Sir,
Speaker 1: Kevin Lowe, you have unsuspected depth, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: about the term witch hunt. Gretzky brought this on himself.
Speaker 1: Nobody stitched the maga to his hair while he was
Speaker 1: out cold. But Lowe leaves an intriguing question there. Shame
Speaker 1: on anyone Who's attempted to entrap him in Trump's maniacal orbit.
Speaker 1: Anyone well, who would that be, who could have influence
Speaker 1: sufficient over Gretzky to entrap him to in essence, sell
Speaker 1: out his country that he loves so very well. Another
Speaker 1: social media post may have our answer. This is from
Speaker 1: right after the election. Congratulations mister President Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 1: Red heart, blue heart, American flag. You did it. You
Speaker 1: deserved it, you earned every bit of it. The world
Speaker 1: is a better place to have you as our leader.
Speaker 1: Proud capital, p to be an American. Thank you for
Speaker 1: being such a great friend. May God keep watching over you.
Speaker 1: Red heart prayers, red heart love, our family to yours.
Speaker 1: Space Explanation point Janet Jones Gretzky on Earth? Could any
Speaker 1: of this be salvaged?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: What can be inferred as the least political person alive
Speaker 1: being entrapped in Trump's maniacal orbit as missus Gretzky destroying
Speaker 1: mister Gretzky, How can we pull out of this nosedive. Well, sir,
Speaker 1: how about this. Wayne Gretzky does not hold the record
Speaker 1: for the most goals scored, not anymore. Matter of fact,
Speaker 1: he never did. And matter of fact, Alexandrovtchkin also does
Speaker 1: not hold the record for the most goals scored. Ovechkin
Speaker 1: has eight hundred and ninety five goals in the National
Speaker 1: Hockey League, but for nearly all of the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the National Hockey League did not have a monopoly on
Speaker 1: that sport. In the US and Canada, there was the
Speaker 1: World Hockey Association, in which nineteen future Hockey Hall of
Speaker 1: famers worked and played, including Mark Messier, Bobby Hall, Jacques Plantch,
Speaker 1: Bernie Parrott, Frank Mahablich. And this was only seven worth
Speaker 1: of hockey. They had two national television contracts. The National
Speaker 1: Hockey League also does not recognize World Hockey Association statistics,
Speaker 1: which is arrogant, egotistical, nonsense, and utterly inconsistent. The National
Speaker 1: Hockey League recognized the stats from its earlier rival leagues
Speaker 1: like the Pacific Coast Association, the Western Canada League. NHL
Speaker 1: champions played PCCHA and WCHL champions for the Stanley Cup.
Speaker 1: Lost three times in the Stanley Cup. To them, the
Speaker 1: NHL recognizes Stanley Cups won by teams that never played
Speaker 1: in the NHL recognizes the Stanley Cups its teams won
Speaker 1: against those teams that never played in the NHL. But
Speaker 1: for some reason, to this day, the WHA still angers
Speaker 1: some NHL owners and old timers, especially people even older
Speaker 1: than me, and so they decided the WHA never happened,
Speaker 1: which is even stranger considering that in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: the NHL, although they would not use the word merge,
Speaker 1: absorbed four of the teams from the WHA, and whatever
Speaker 1: anybody thought of the quality of play in the WHA,
Speaker 1: four WHA franchises immediately joined the National Hockey League, and
Speaker 1: in fact all four franchises are still in the National
Speaker 1: Hockey League. The Quebec NORDIQ now the Colorado Avalanche, the
Speaker 1: Winnipeg Jets, who moved to Phoenix and have been succeeded
Speaker 1: by a new Winnipeg Jets franchise, the Hartford Whalers of
Speaker 1: late lamented memory now the Carolina Hurricanes, and the Edmonton Oilers.
Speaker 1: Those four x WHA franchises have won nine of the
Speaker 1: forty four Stanley Cups since since the NHL took them
Speaker 1: in took the WHA over. That's several times the average
Speaker 1: number of Cups won by any four NHL franchises. Oh
Speaker 1: and by the way, those Edmonton Oilers, they came into
Speaker 1: the NHL with a player on their roster named Wayne Gretzky.
Speaker 1: His goals for the NHL Edmonton Oilers they count towards
Speaker 1: his total, but his forty six goals for the WHA
Speaker 1: Edmonton Oilers the same team and the WHA Indianapolis Racers
Speaker 1: for some reason, those goals do not count. In point
Speaker 1: of fact, while Ovechkin has eight hundred and ninety five
Speaker 1: career goals right now, Wayne Gretzky actually has nine hundred
Speaker 1: and forty career goals. Well, where does that put us?
Speaker 1: What good does that do us? Now we're back in
Speaker 1: the situation where Gretzky's in the spotlight and everybody hates Wayne. Well,
Speaker 1: neither of them has the most career goals. Gordy Howe
Speaker 1: scored eight hundred and one goals in the National Hockey
Speaker 1: League and one hundred and seventy four more in the WHA.
Speaker 1: That would be carry on nine hundred and seventy five.
Speaker 1: Gretzky is irrelevant to this discussion, and Ovechkin is still
Speaker 1: eighty short of Gordy Howe's all time goals scored record,
Speaker 1: and that is probably the best solution here for putin
Speaker 1: for a Vechkin, for Gretzki, for Missus Gretzky for Canada.
Speaker 1: The all time leading goal scorer is Gordie Howe. He
Speaker 1: put the biscuit in the basket. Period dateline, Kingston, New York,
Speaker 1: flipping the bird history has been discovered in a sale
Speaker 1: of sports memorabilia there by Love of the Game auctions.
Speaker 1: For decades, it's been acknowledged that Baseball Hall of Famer
Speaker 1: Charles old Hoss Radbourne, the pitcher who won sixty of
Speaker 1: his team's eighty four victories as they won the Pennant
Speaker 1: and the first World Series in eighteen eighty four. Yes,
Speaker 1: his wins above. Replacement that year was nineteen point two.
Speaker 1: Old Hass was the first American probably the first human
Speaker 1: to appear in a photograph giving the finger. It's plain
Speaker 1: as day. He posed with his Boston teammates with the
Speaker 1: New York Giants at the Polo Grounds on opening Day
Speaker 1: in the year eighteen eighty six, about what fifty blocks
Speaker 1: north of my home. And there it is top row,
Speaker 1: far left, left hand, middle finger cradled on the left
Speaker 1: shoulder of the teammate in the row ahead of him,
Speaker 1: Tom Porman. We believe it is the finger high eternity.
Speaker 1: I'm Charlie, turns out, though, that is not the first
Speaker 1: photo of anybody giving the one fingered salute to the photographer,
Speaker 1: certainly not in sports auctioned Saturday Night, the eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: two team photo of the Providence Grays, then a major
Speaker 1: league team in the National League. There hea is Charlie
Speaker 1: Old Hoss Radbourne again back row, second from the left,
Speaker 1: his right hand at his belt and kind of kind
Speaker 1: of hiding it sort of behind teammate George Wright and
Speaker 1: pointed sort of sideways at team manager Harry Wright, kind
Speaker 1: of in profile, Radbourne is again giving the finger, only
Speaker 1: with the other hand. He was ambedextrous baseball and obscene gesture.
Speaker 1: History is thus rewritten. The finger dates it is believed
Speaker 1: to ancient rome. The photographed finger now moves back four
Speaker 1: years in time, at least from eighteen eighty six to
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty two. The price of this priceless photo seventy
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars the year he started forty one of
Speaker 1: his team's last fifty one games and won thirty five
Speaker 1: of them, plus both that were won in the World Series.
Speaker 1: When they won the first World Series. Charles Oldhaus give
Speaker 1: him the finger. Radbourne apparently reportedly made a maximum of
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars. Photo of him is worth seventy two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, which is why he's giving the finger. Finally,
Speaker 1: on this all new edition of Countdown, things I promised
Speaker 1: not to tell and has promised back to a topic
Speaker 1: we addressed last week. I brought this up when news
Speaker 1: came out that the former host of Meet the Press,
Speaker 1: Chuck Todd, was bargaining with a bank and financiers to
Speaker 1: spend up to two billion dollars to buy some sort
Speaker 1: of media company, and I was thinking, who in the
Speaker 1: hell would trust Chuck Todd with two dollars, let alone
Speaker 1: two billion dollars. I've known him for nearly twenty years.
Speaker 1: We were in fantasy sports leagues for half that time,
Speaker 1: and we worked together at NBC News for the other
Speaker 1: half of that time, and he was one of those
Speaker 1: people who sort of descended in terms of how impressive
Speaker 1: he was the more you got to know him, I'm
Speaker 1: sure he would say the same thing about me. In
Speaker 1: any event, I don't do an ask me anything or
Speaker 1: any of that stuff. I don't solicit questions from the audience.
Speaker 1: I don't ask you to tell me what you want
Speaker 1: me to talk about, because well, if I needed you
Speaker 1: to produce material for me, I would probably pay you
Speaker 1: for it, or at least I should so. I feel
Speaker 1: that my part of this equation is I come up
Speaker 1: with the ideas, and you listen, and you listen to
Speaker 1: the commercials, and the people who buy the commercials indirectly
Speaker 1: pay me. I think that's fair. I don't have to
Speaker 1: mention that you can usually skip through the commercials. In
Speaker 1: any event, I don't do these amas. But occasionally a
Speaker 1: friend or just a listener will get a question true
Speaker 1: to me, and it occurs to me that I have
Speaker 1: left out something extraordinarily interesting or apparently interesting to the
Speaker 1: person at least who asked the question. Such a case
Speaker 1: occurred last week when a friend asked about Chuck Todd,
Speaker 1: not about Chuck Todd and the two billion dollars, not
Speaker 1: about Chuck Todd, and putting the words in Alexandria Acasio
Speaker 1: Cortes's mouth about the concentration camps. She said concentration camps.
Speaker 1: He said Nazi concentration camps, quoting her when she never
Speaker 1: said Nazi. And could not be convinced that there was
Speaker 1: a difference or that he had done anything wrong. Not that,
Speaker 1: and not the two billion dollars, and not what happened
Speaker 1: to him at Meet the Press, and not the bad Combover. Well, no,
Speaker 1: but nobody asked about the bad Combover, and I hadn't
Speaker 1: mentioned the bad comb over till just now, So sorry.
Speaker 1: This was something else and far more elemental. And it's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing I just never think of, because
Speaker 1: the number of times this question could have been asked
Speaker 1: about somebody I worked with, it was probably by now
Speaker 1: in the thousands. I'm sure it's been asked about me
Speaker 1: many times. I've read it about myself. In fact, the
Speaker 1: question was very simple, How in the hell did Chuck
Speaker 1: Todd ever get into the position of being the host
Speaker 1: of Meet the Press or anywhere else in which he
Speaker 1: could have failed so spectacularly, and to be in a
Speaker 1: position where he's so disconnected from reality that he would
Speaker 1: think he could walk into a bank or some sort
Speaker 1: of I don't know corporate investment fund or Trump's using
Speaker 1: taxpayer money for no good reason. I don't know where
Speaker 1: he thought he was going to get two billion dollars
Speaker 1: or where he thinks he's going to get two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: But the point was I was focused on the back
Speaker 1: end of it. And my questioner asked that elemental one
Speaker 1: that I didn't think about, and I thank him for
Speaker 1: asking it. How did Chuck even get that far to
Speaker 1: fail that bad? Well, sir, here's what I know between
Speaker 1: what Tim Russert told me and what others told me
Speaker 1: that Tim Russeer told them people whose confidence or in
Speaker 1: whose confidence Tim was to a greater degree than he
Speaker 1: was with me. We were friends, and he told me
Speaker 1: lots of great stuff, But I'm sure he didn't tell
Speaker 1: me everything, and he told other people things that he
Speaker 1: I know he didn't tell me, and other things that
Speaker 1: I've pieced together over the years, and other things that
Speaker 1: people who didn't like Chuck just as much as I
Speaker 1: didn't like Chuck told me. Here's what happened. There are,
Speaker 1: as always in these situations, circumstances beyond anybody's control. That
Speaker 1: played a huge factor. Tim Russeer told me once that
Speaker 1: years and years ago, at the height of his earliest
Speaker 1: success at NBC. And remember he was the host of
Speaker 1: Meet the Press and the bureau chief of NBC News
Speaker 1: in Washington. He ran the NBC News operation in Washington.
Speaker 1: He did, I don't think put together the schedule for
Speaker 1: the assignment editors, but I'm sure at some point he
Speaker 1: was involved in those, maybe once a year. He did
Speaker 1: bureaucratic work and then got on the phone and traded
Speaker 1: horses with Republicans and Democrats, and met people for drinks
Speaker 1: and tried to arrange guests, and then had to prep
Speaker 1: to trip up the great and the not so great
Speaker 1: on Meet the Press. And he did that job. No
Speaker 1: matter what the criticisms might have been of him, he
Speaker 1: did that job with surprising alacrity in a time in
Speaker 1: which it began to vanish from the other networks, and
Speaker 1: has not been seen since he died. He was also
Speaker 1: a wonderful and engaging human being, and his death was
Speaker 1: one of the great sadnesses of my life, truly, and
Speaker 1: I responded to it the way I could, which was
Speaker 1: to go on the air and relieve everybody else of
Speaker 1: the responsibility of anchoring that night, And I do remember,
Speaker 1: and we'll always remember that the guy who stayed up
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night in Paris and went
Speaker 1: to a street corner in Paris, France where he was
Speaker 1: on vacation to join us four or five different times,
Speaker 1: as late as I believe four am local time Paris
Speaker 1: that night, was Bob Schieffer, who was the host of
Speaker 1: the CBS equivalent to meet the Press face the nation.
Speaker 1: They were very close friends, and his respect for his
Speaker 1: friend and colleague and adversary his competitor, Tim Russert strikes
Speaker 1: me to this day in any event, at the beginning
Speaker 1: when I first knew Tim in the fall of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven and the Lewinsky story broke at the beginning
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety eight, I got to know Tim in
Speaker 1: bursts where I'd spend an hour with him and he
Speaker 1: would tell me three days worth of information and days
Speaker 1: later I'd be process it. Wait a minute, Russer told
Speaker 1: me this, I forgot all about that. I have to
Speaker 1: start taking notes. Russer told me that that long term
Speaker 1: he had plans to He wasn't sure which he would
Speaker 1: get rid of first, but at some point he could
Speaker 1: not envision doing both. Meet the press and running the
Speaker 1: NBC News bureau, and more than likely he would give
Speaker 1: up the bureaucratic job first because frankly, it didn't pay
Speaker 1: as well and it was not nearly as much fun,
Speaker 1: although it did allow him to influence so many things
Speaker 1: at NBC News. Without that influence, NBC News slowly and
Speaker 1: then with greater rapidity went to hell in a handbasket,
Speaker 1: into the condition that you see it in now. But
Speaker 1: Russert said that he was looking and was always on
Speaker 1: the lookout for somebody with that attention to detail who
Speaker 1: enjoyed dealing with details like the assignment editors' schedules that
Speaker 1: he had had once and then finally had to farm
Speaker 1: out as his on air responsibilities got more and more important.
Speaker 1: But being the NBC News bureau chief in Washington was
Speaker 1: a pretty damn good job to begin with, let alone
Speaker 1: also hosting Meet the Press, So he thought he could
Speaker 1: probably find somebody just right, just nuts enough, was the
Speaker 1: way he put it, and yet talented enough and responsible
Speaker 1: enough to do the job. So I left NBC News
Speaker 1: and MSNBC late in nineteen ninety eight and never finished
Speaker 1: that conversation with him. But I came back with his
Speaker 1: Blessing in two thousand and three, and he quickly got
Speaker 1: involved again in my show on MSNBC whenever he could,
Speaker 1: and stayed late and talked baseball with me in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night after election nights in the primary
Speaker 1: season of two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: just before his passing, and he told me, and had
Speaker 1: told me, I guess in two thousand and three or four,
Speaker 1: that they had found a guy who was kind of
Speaker 1: number obsessed, a fellow who worked for a news outlet,
Speaker 1: a small news outlet called I believe he was with
Speaker 1: Hotline and then The Hill, or it might have been
Speaker 1: the other way around. But this guy who was a
Speaker 1: pretty good guest. He had a kind of funky Fu
Speaker 1: Manchuw mustache going for him and thinning hair. But his
Speaker 1: name was Chuck Todd, and he was pretty good on
Speaker 1: the air. And would I try him out on Countdown?
Speaker 1: They were putting him on Hardball with Chris Matthews a lot.
Speaker 1: Would I try him out and report back to Tim
Speaker 1: what I thought of him, both in terms of his
Speaker 1: capability on the air and if I had that sense
Speaker 1: of whether or not he might make a good executive
Speaker 1: being somebody who had a lot of opinions on what
Speaker 1: made a good executive and what made a bad executive,
Speaker 1: And he said, should we hire him full time? Don't
Speaker 1: give me the answer right away, just thinking about it.
Speaker 1: In the next couple of years. At some point he
Speaker 1: called me back and he said, it's time for me
Speaker 1: to make a decision. What's your vote? And I said yes,
Speaker 1: I said, I think he was at his maximum position.
Speaker 1: I think that he might learn a little bit more television,
Speaker 1: that he might be a good guest, and maybe he
Speaker 1: could be a contributor doing things like exit polls or
Speaker 1: number crunching on election nights, very much the role that
Speaker 1: Steve Kornacki later assumed at NBC News and MSNBC after
Speaker 1: By the way, I started him on television at Court TV,
Speaker 1: excuse me, at Current TV and never got any credit
Speaker 1: from that from him because he's a little strange guy,
Speaker 1: and apparently he forgot that he was on the air
Speaker 1: with us at Current TV, and I was negotiating with
Speaker 1: him to join us full time when one day he
Speaker 1: did not show up for work and it turned out
Speaker 1: he'd signed a deal with MSNBC and never told us
Speaker 1: he was even negotiating it, and did not call to
Speaker 1: say I will not be there tonight because I've signed
Speaker 1: a deal with MSNBC. Quizzed on this later, he did
Speaker 1: not understand why this was a problem, as I said,
Speaker 1: a very very strange guy. The more positive aspects of
Speaker 1: this were the sort of thing I thought Chuck Todd
Speaker 1: might be good at. And Tim said, I'm glad to
Speaker 1: hear you say that. I've tried and tried, and I
Speaker 1: just don't see him being a kind of host. I mean,
Speaker 1: he might be able to host a daytime show on MSNBC.
Speaker 1: Maybe we could do something politically that could get him involved.
Speaker 1: That's what he wants to do. I think he's better
Speaker 1: suited for what you're talking about. Three or four minutes
Speaker 1: at a stretch and I said, okay, he said, what
Speaker 1: do you think of him as an executive? I'm thinking
Speaker 1: maybe he could be political director of NBC News, or
Speaker 1: he could be something in which we make him kind
Speaker 1: of a bureaucratic figure who then has that cachet on
Speaker 1: the air of being the political director of NBC News,
Speaker 1: who only's on the air, say a total of seventeen
Speaker 1: minutes a month. I said, I think that might be
Speaker 1: a good thing. He does seem to be very detail oriented,
Speaker 1: a little too detail oriented. Sometimes we have to steer
Speaker 1: him out of the weeds when he's on as a
Speaker 1: guest to talk about the substantial things. The bigger pictures
Speaker 1: back them off a little bit from the topicality of
Speaker 1: the moment to what it means and why we're having
Speaker 1: him on as a guest. So that's where we left it,
Speaker 1: and that's where Tim Russert died. Originally, Russert had talked
Speaker 1: about as a possible successor as the host of Meet
Speaker 1: the Press, the NBC News chief White House correspondent in
Speaker 1: the late nineties, David Bloom. To lead towards this, they
Speaker 1: had moved David Bloom to New York as the weekend
Speaker 1: host of Today, and then David Bloom in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two went to Iraq in late two thousand and
Speaker 1: two the beginning of two thousand and three, obviously with
Speaker 1: the conflict and the war there and our invasion of
Speaker 1: it under mister Bush, and David Bloom died there. He
Speaker 1: died there of deep vein thrombosis because he was riding
Speaker 1: around in this extraordinary then for the time, live tank.
Speaker 1: He could broadcast live from this tank, and it was
Speaker 1: a great thing for television. Unfortunately it meant that for
Speaker 1: several weeks he slept in a tank in a curled
Speaker 1: position with his knees bent, and as he got sicker
Speaker 1: and sicker and didn't know that it was a problem,
Speaker 1: he was turning greener and greener, and those of us
Speaker 1: who saw him on the air said, what's wrong with him? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's just the feeds a little off color, and went, well,
Speaker 1: everything else looks right, why does he look greenish bronze?
Speaker 1: The next day he was dead. It was a tragedy
Speaker 1: of unbelievable proportions. So David Bloom was gone, and then
Speaker 1: there was no apparent successor lined up in Washington. A
Speaker 1: lot of the people at NBC News who might actually
Speaker 1: have been good successors for Tim Russard if he had
Speaker 1: to pick somebody, moved off into different branches of the company.
Speaker 1: Noura O'Donnell was one. Noura O'Donnell was considered for a
Speaker 1: period of time as a possible successor to Russert on
Speaker 1: that show, and then she eventually moved on to CBS
Speaker 1: after Tim's death, and that didn't happen at NBC, but
Speaker 1: the only person that they'd ever really sort of talked about,
Speaker 1: maybe as a guest host, as a replacement if something
Speaker 1: happened where Tim wanted to retire. Apart from the idea
Speaker 1: that Tom Brokaw might make a good fill in, there
Speaker 1: was this idea about David Gregory. And then came the
Speaker 1: tragedy of the summer of two thousand and eight and
Speaker 1: the death of Tom Brokaw rather of Tim Russard, and
Speaker 1: the immediate replacement of him by Tom Brokaw on an
Speaker 1: interim basis, while they tried to get David Gregory up
Speaker 1: to speed to be the host to Meet the Press.
Speaker 1: I didn't think David Gregory did a bad job as
Speaker 1: the host of Meet the Press. Apparently I was in
Speaker 1: a minority of this, but he was very, very tense.
Speaker 1: The job weighed on him heavily, and he was very
Speaker 1: difficult to work with by all the accounts I heard of.
Speaker 1: And Rachel Maddow once played me the voicemail that David
Speaker 1: Gregory left her after she had to cancel for family
Speaker 1: reasons a trip to Washington to be on Meet the Press,
Speaker 1: and it was two minutes of perhaps non stop scatological terms.
Speaker 1: How dare you and then just words I won't even
Speaker 1: repeat here, and then she said and that was only
Speaker 1: the first message. He called right back and there was
Speaker 1: another two minutes of it. So that's that's what she
Speaker 1: played me. David, I don't think could handle the pressure
Speaker 1: of it. David had already flailed out in his role
Speaker 1: as the original replacement for Don iMOS when they fired
Speaker 1: Imus and canceled that show. And because David didn't do that,
Speaker 1: we got Joe Scarborough in the Mornings on MSNBC. And
Speaker 1: because David didn't do Meet the Press, well, although that
Speaker 1: lasted longer than he did on the Mornings, I believe
Speaker 1: they gave him three or four weeks on the Morning
Speaker 1: on MSNBC and then when next and we got Scarborough.
Speaker 1: But the Meat the Press thing went on for several years.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I wasn't at NBC News, I wasn't
Speaker 1: connected to it. I do know that by about twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen or so, they made that change. I do know
Speaker 1: that Chuck Todd then took me out to dinner one time.
Speaker 1: This was transparently designed to get me to convince Katie
Speaker 1: Turr to accept a lesser assignment than she wanted. After
Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen presidential campaign, and Chuck had turned completely
Speaker 1: condescending and completely above himself and completely out of his depth.
Speaker 1: And he had such a conviction that he and he
Speaker 1: alone knew what to do next. It was extraordinary. Any
Speaker 1: level of charm and maybe I don't have this right
Speaker 1: had been gone for a long time. And I think
Speaker 1: it was because Russert died. Because Russert was Chuck's rabbi.
Speaker 1: He was, in fact the man who was guiding Chuck.
Speaker 1: Still had hopes that Chuck might make an anchor, which
Speaker 1: he didn't. But the origins of all of that are
Speaker 1: as I told you. The reason that Chuck Todd got
Speaker 1: into the position that he got into was Tim Russert
Speaker 1: was looking for somebody to succeed him as bureau chief
Speaker 1: of NBC News in Washington. Couldn't find anybody he thought
Speaker 1: of that would be good. He was thinking of looking
Speaker 1: for somebody eventually to take over Meet the Press, and
Speaker 1: didn't really find anybody that he thought of, But he
Speaker 1: certainly thought that David Gregory would be a good choice
Speaker 1: and Chuck Todd would not. He took a poll of
Speaker 1: all the people at NBC News and MSNBC who he
Speaker 1: trusted as to whether or not he should hire Chuck
Speaker 1: Todd for any capacity, and I guess we all voted yes,
Speaker 1: and I apologize for that. What can I tell you
Speaker 1: in any event? I keep saying in any event, But
Speaker 1: that's the key operative word. Chuck Todd wound up in
Speaker 1: a position to be the host of Meet the Press
Speaker 1: because David Bloom died and Tim Russert died and David
Speaker 1: Gregory did not succeed. When you are, in essence, maybe
Speaker 1: the fourth choice, or the fourth reasonable choice, or the
Speaker 1: fourth consensus choice. Sometimes that's just not good enough. And
Speaker 1: that's what happened to Chuck. And I hope they ask
Speaker 1: him those questions before they give him the two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the
Speaker 1: musical directors have Countdown, have arranged, produced and performed most
Speaker 1: of our music on this Programmy mister Chanelle handled the
Speaker 1: orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars based
Speaker 1: on drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical
Speaker 1: and pithy musical comments are by the Best Baseball stadium
Speaker 1: organist ever Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman
Speaker 1: theme from ESPN, which was written by Mitch Warren Davis
Speaker 1: and appears courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged and
Speaker 1: performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today
Speaker 1: was my friend Jonathan Banks from Better Call Saw and
Speaker 1: Breaking Bad and Airplane. Everything else was as ever, pretty
Speaker 1: much my fault. Let's countdown for today, just three and
Speaker 1: eighty five days until the scheduled end of his lame
Speaker 1: doc lame brained term, unless Musk removes him sooner or
Speaker 1: the actuarial tables due. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday.
Speaker 1: As always boldens as the news warrants, remember impeach Trump.
Speaker 1: It will not work well now. It will, however, win
Speaker 1: the Democrats the mid terms, and I want polling on
Speaker 1: a presidential recall vote. Let's put as they said in
Speaker 1: the original British version of House of Cards, let's put
Speaker 1: a bit of stick about until next time. I'm Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown
Speaker 1: with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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