Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
Speaker 1: man handling of Jimmy Kimmel and the blackmailing of ABC
Speaker 1: may turn out to be the biggest gift this year
Speaker 1: to the Democrats. And if that is not a big
Speaker 1: enough plot twist, I am hearing from multiple sources that,
Speaker 1: at least right now, ABC thinks Jimmy Kimmel will stay
Speaker 1: on the air and will return on the air in
Speaker 1: the same show as early as later this month, maybe
Speaker 1: even this week. Kirk the Trump self impeaching memo to
Speaker 1: BONDI he tweeted in a stupor a lot more momentarily.
Speaker 1: But is Kimmel news first and a caveat. I'll believe
Speaker 1: it when I see it. However, these are the landmarks
Speaker 1: my sources pointed at, and a couple I thought of
Speaker 1: my own self. First, they haven't fired him. Second, they
Speaker 1: actually haven't said anything about him. ABC has not said
Speaker 1: anything about Jimmy Kimmel since that one sentence announcement about
Speaker 1: taking him off the air. Third, he hasn't said anything
Speaker 1: about ABC good, bad, or indifferent. Can you imagine me
Speaker 1: in this?
Speaker 2: Fourth?
Speaker 1: Remember the Sinclair owned local stations that started all the
Speaker 1: trouble the next Star stations, the ones who were bribing
Speaker 1: Trump and the FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr by demanding kimmelby
Speaker 1: sidelined so Trump and Carr would waive the rules and
Speaker 1: let Sinclair buy more than the legal limit of local
Speaker 1: TV stations. Remember their plan after the Kimmel suspension to
Speaker 1: run a Arly Kirk tribute last Friday Night in Kimmel's timeslot.
Speaker 1: What happened to that? They didn't run it. They didn't
Speaker 1: put it on the Sinclair stations. They put it on YouTube,
Speaker 1: no other explanation, They just didn't run it. Why didn't
Speaker 1: they run it? They won? Fifth, what happened to the
Speaker 1: Sinclair demand that Kimmel apologizes and pays a bribe, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: make a donation to Kirk's scam Turning Point Company Incorporated? Sixth,
Speaker 1: how much grief did ABC take and how much grief
Speaker 1: did Disney take for folding to Trump and for not
Speaker 1: defending Kimmel as the entire right wing misquoted him so
Speaker 1: much that no human mind can estimate it. And Seventh,
Speaker 1: how could you possibly put all the Kimmel and Kirk
Speaker 1: toothpaste back into the tube? As Eric Idle once sang,
Speaker 1: all you need is cash. The resurrection of Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 1: It has been rumored almost since ABC yanked him. Variety
Speaker 1: had a piece over the weekend about peace feelers. CNN
Speaker 1: had a story saying the outreach began the same day
Speaker 1: they took him off, led not by chairman Bob Iger,
Speaker 1: who really did destroy himself over this, no matter how
Speaker 1: it turns out, but by Disney Entertainment co chair Dana Walden,
Speaker 1: whom they report called Kimmel that day quote, everyone deeply
Speaker 1: values him and wants him to come back, but he
Speaker 1: has to take down the temperature. That was when the
Speaker 1: temperature was still warm, before the temperature turned ice cold
Speaker 1: for Disney and Bob Eiger. And that was also before
Speaker 1: anybody realized that any scenario in which Jimmy Kimmel returns
Speaker 1: to the air on ABC is a win for Jimmy
Speaker 1: Kimmel and for ABC and a defeat for Trump and
Speaker 1: a defeat for fascism, and especially a defeat for Brendan Carr,
Speaker 1: who could get fired over this. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons they realized this was you gov hold on this
Speaker 1: whole story On Thursday, the margin of adults thinking Kimmel's
Speaker 1: monologue on Monday was acceptable was forty three to thirty
Speaker 1: six percent in favor, a lot of undecideds, but barely
Speaker 1: more than one third who were opposed to it. Half
Speaker 1: of adults disapproved of ABC taking Kimmel off the air,
Speaker 1: and forty two percent said they strongly disapproved of it,
Speaker 1: by our margin of forty three to twenty six. Responding
Speaker 1: to the threat by FCC Commissioner car we can do
Speaker 1: this the easy wayer, we can do it the hard
Speaker 1: way quote, forty three to twenty six adults thought that
Speaker 1: was unacceptable. Again, I believe it when I see Jimmy
Speaker 1: Kimmel on my TV on Channel seven. Still, that's what
Speaker 1: everybody is telling me. So why how well? Given that
Speaker 1: last week Trump boasted he had avenged Charlie Kirk by
Speaker 1: getting some guy's show canceled, even though the guy never
Speaker 1: disparaged Kirk, and then he said no, I had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it, Given that there were still new
Speaker 1: articles saying that Jimmy Kimmel has been canceled that were
Speaker 1: published as late as Saturday night, the answer is the
Speaker 1: fccs Goebbels, Brendan Carr, May in fact, go into history
Speaker 1: as a hero of the left. Because it dawned on
Speaker 1: the right all of a sudden, like a bunch of
Speaker 1: flies deciding all of a sudden to move six feet
Speaker 1: to the left in a box in the middle of summer.
Speaker 1: It dawned on the right all of a sudden, late Thursday,
Speaker 1: early Friday. Maybe that they have not only authorized the
Speaker 1: left to the next time the left is in power,
Speaker 1: shut down Fox and Murdoch and Sinclair, take away all
Speaker 1: of Murdoch's waivers, take away all his stations, manage its
Speaker 1: news channels, destroy Murdoch's newspapers. But the right has now
Speaker 1: made this almost mandatory, and it has awakened in liberals
Speaker 1: something we always and sorely lack imagination. Remember, not every
Speaker 1: maga has a brain, but every other maga has a podcast.
Speaker 1: And as they were recording them and celebrating the downfall
Speaker 1: of Jimmy Kimmel, it hit them what government censorship could
Speaker 1: mean for them. These are the only circumstances in which
Speaker 1: anything will register with any of these people. It's not
Speaker 1: right or wrong, it's not even what they can get
Speaker 1: away with. It's just self interest. I mean, what would
Speaker 1: the world look like if Elon Musk's x was actually
Speaker 1: under true government supervision in a world where cut turn
Speaker 1: posts something that has to wait twenty four hours before
Speaker 1: it is approved or it isn't. At the same time,
Speaker 1: it's awakened the right and the realization that they just
Speaker 1: handed out rocks and said, please, please, everybody hit conservative
Speaker 1: media in the groin with your rocks. The Trump FCC
Speaker 1: blackmailing of ABC and the bullying of Jimmy Kimmel maybe
Speaker 1: a worse cell phone even than Trump's cover up of
Speaker 1: the Epstein fliles. Just the immediate blowback against Trump and
Speaker 1: Carr and for Kimmel from the right has been, I'm sorry, shocking, refreshing. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: Rand Paul went on this Week on ABC instead of
Speaker 1: the Kimmel disaster quote absolutely inappropriate. Brendan Carr has got
Speaker 1: no business weighing in on this. The FCC should have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it. Sinclair pulled out. They were
Speaker 1: disgusted by the comment. That's their rights, but the government's
Speaker 1: got no business in it, and the FCC was wrong
Speaker 1: to weigh in. No, the same, Ran Paul, and I'll
Speaker 1: fight any attempt by the government to get involved with speech.
Speaker 1: And I played these clips from Ted Cruz on his podcast,
Speaker 1: which he knows would be one of the first ones
Speaker 1: we would censor. I played these clips from Ted Cruz
Speaker 1: in the Friday Night bulletin I did on this. They're
Speaker 1: worth hearing again, as tin ear as him suddenly breaking
Speaker 1: into a bad dialect is my god. Otherwise Ted Cruz
Speaker 1: could be reading one of my scripts here.
Speaker 3: I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put
Speaker 3: itself in the position of saying, we're going to decide
Speaker 3: what speech we like and what we don't, and we're
Speaker 3: going to threaten to take you off air if we
Speaker 3: don't like what you're saying. And it might feel good
Speaker 3: right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, Yeah, but when it
Speaker 3: is you to silence every conservative in America, we will
Speaker 3: regret it. And and and so again. I like Brendan Carr,
Speaker 3: but we should not be in this business. We should
Speaker 3: denounce it. It's fine to say what Jimmy Kimmel said
Speaker 3: was deplorable, it was disgraceful, and he should be off air,
Speaker 3: but we shouldn't be threatening government power to force him
Speaker 3: off air. That's a real mistake. He threatens explicitly, we're
Speaker 3: going to cancel ABC's license. We're gonna take him off
Speaker 3: the air, so ABC cannot broadcast anymore. And I gotta
Speaker 3: say he threatens it. He says, we can do this
Speaker 3: the easy way, but we can do this the hard way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I got to say, that's right out of goodfellows.
Speaker 3: That that that that that that's right out of a
Speaker 3: mafioso coming into a bar going nice by you have here,
Speaker 3: it'd be a shame of something happened to it.
Speaker 1: And that was Ted Cruz and not me. Scott Adams
Speaker 1: Gilbert podcast quote I'm on Jimmy Kimmel's side. Unquote Ben Shpiro.
Speaker 1: I do not want the FCC in the business of
Speaker 1: telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if
Speaker 1: they broadcast material that the FCC deems to be informationally false.
Speaker 1: Why because one day the shoe will be on the
Speaker 1: other foot. If Democrats win the presidency and you got
Speaker 1: a Democrat in charge of the FCC, you got Adam
Speaker 1: Schiff in charge of the FCC. Please God, Please God,
Speaker 1: Please God. You know which affiliates are going to get threatened,
Speaker 1: all of the Fox affiliates. You know what's gonna happen,
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro, you have unsuspected depth. With the perspective of
Speaker 1: just a few days, this became such an obvious own
Speaker 1: goal that not only is Trump denying Brendan Carr did this,
Speaker 1: but Ewick Twump called into the mud Travis Bunk Sex
Speaker 1: Bump Show to deny that Dadams had anything to do
Speaker 1: with it. Quote, Listen, the guy has been a jerk. No,
Speaker 1: he's talking about Kimmel, not his father. Listen, the guy
Speaker 1: has been a jerk. He hasn't been funny. But honestly,
Speaker 1: I think the network used this as a way to
Speaker 1: get him out based on, you know, bad ratings. Eeriic
Speaker 1: had to say that because Dadams promised the exact opposite
Speaker 1: of what he and Carr just did to Jimmy Kimmel
Speaker 1: and ABC, and he promised it during his inaugural address.
Speaker 4: After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts
Speaker 4: to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive
Speaker 4: order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back
Speaker 4: free speech to America.
Speaker 1: Oops. Just say oops and get out now. Just roll
Speaker 1: through the list of the great intellects of MAGA and
Speaker 1: they are one hundred percent on this issue, and they're
Speaker 1: not on Brendan Carr side. Quote. If the idea of
Speaker 1: free speech enrages you, the cornerstone of democratic self government,
Speaker 1: then I regret to inform you that you are a fascist.
Speaker 1: Unquote Stephen Miller, April fifteenth, twenty twenty two. Congratulations, Brendan Carr.
Speaker 1: Stephen Miller just called you a fascist. This is even
Speaker 1: worse than that. The Attorney General of Missouri sued the
Speaker 1: then surgeon general for alleged government suppression of the anti
Speaker 1: vaccine bullshit online Murphy versus Missouri went to the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court listened to this from an amicus brief challenging any
Speaker 1: government censorship or pressure.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 1: Perhaps most disconcerting of all is the pressure applied to
Speaker 1: the platforms to enforce the government's new role as arbiter
Speaker 1: of truth, imposing a new federal orthodoxy, and that's in
Speaker 1: italics upon citizens speech. That plan clashes with the Court's
Speaker 1: clear declaration that government may not quote prescribe what shall
Speaker 1: be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.
Speaker 1: Amicus brief was filed by H. Turning Point USA and
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk. The Claremont Institute filed a similar brief in
Speaker 1: that case, and it has the name on it John Eastman.
Speaker 1: In a separate Supreme Court case last year NRA versus
Speaker 1: Vullo about pressuring groups to cut off the NRA, the
Speaker 1: National Rifle Association, in business dealings and the like. The
Speaker 1: Court ruled nine nothing against government infringement of opinion nothing
Speaker 1: a shutout the forfeit score. The unanimous opinion was written
Speaker 1: by Sonya Soda Mayor. Quote, Government officials cannot attempt to
Speaker 1: coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views
Speaker 1: that the government disfavors. You want more. What Brendan Carr
Speaker 1: did was not only self harm, it may have been
Speaker 1: illegal when the New Republic, quoting Ana Gomez, one of
Speaker 1: the three FCC commissioners, the only one appointed by a
Speaker 1: democratic president, quote, what the administration is doing violates the
Speaker 1: First Amendment and the Communication Acts. This administration is increasingly
Speaker 1: using the weight of government to suppress lawful expression. Gomez
Speaker 1: also decried Trump's campaign of censorship and control to quote
Speaker 1: silence dissent. Brendan Carr may want to relocate. We can
Speaker 1: do this the hard way, Brendan, or we can do
Speaker 1: it the easy way. So now, obviously ABC has to
Speaker 1: get Kimmel back on the air. In the worst case scenario,
Speaker 1: they don't and he sues. He sues the federal government
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump and Brendan Carr personally. The Trump part
Speaker 1: gets thrown out, but not until after the headlines. Jimmy
Speaker 1: Kimmel right now has a lawsuit against Brendan Carr and
Speaker 1: the FCC, to say nothing of enough lawsuits to potentially
Speaker 1: own Disney. I don't know why you'd want to own Disney,
Speaker 1: but there it is. To get him back on They
Speaker 1: will not give him full ownership of Disney, but they
Speaker 1: will have to throw some sop to the right to
Speaker 1: give them a climb down. Though, why let them fall
Speaker 1: off the cliff. They so carefully built this cliff. But
Speaker 1: they certainly will have to assuage Jimmy Kimmel's fears of
Speaker 1: going through this again. And that's always one of two things.
Speaker 1: A new longer contract his runs out next spring, or
Speaker 1: more money. They're both. I flashed back to my one
Speaker 1: thing that touched on something like this when the Republicans
Speaker 1: came in in two thousand and eight, after I said
Speaker 1: something they didn't like. During the Republican convention when they
Speaker 1: showed a snuff film and claimed it was a nine
Speaker 1: to eleven tribute, and I said, if we had shown
Speaker 1: you that video, I'd be here apologizing for showing you
Speaker 1: the video of the people from the World Trade Center.
Speaker 1: When the Republicans went in and blackmailed Tom Brokaw and said,
Speaker 1: our guy won't show up to your debate, and Brokaw
Speaker 1: went in and blackmailed NBC management into taking me and
Speaker 1: Chris Matthews off the air. They called and told me.
Speaker 1: My agent called and told me while I was at
Speaker 1: a ballgame in the press box, and I told her,
Speaker 1: you called them back and tell them I quit and
Speaker 1: they can deal with the aftermath of this. I got
Speaker 1: in the subway and went home, and by the time
Speaker 1: I got out of the subway twenty five minutes later,
Speaker 1: it had dawned on me that not only was I
Speaker 1: not going to quit, but I was going to say
Speaker 1: to them, I'll make you a deal if I quit,
Speaker 1: or if this just goes out and I don't quit,
Speaker 1: you guys will lose the entire MSNBC audience. They will
Speaker 1: literally walk away. This is either just days before we
Speaker 1: were to premiere Rachel Meadows Show, or days after we did.
Speaker 1: There was no other presence on that network but me.
Speaker 1: I was the network and they were silencing me. And
Speaker 1: if they wanted to throw away what we just built,
Speaker 1: they could do that, or I would say it was
Speaker 1: my idea to stop doing the part that the GOP wanted,
Speaker 1: which was me and Matthew's off the debates. I said,
Speaker 1: I'll take myself off that and I'll claim it's my
Speaker 1: idea and I'll sell it as best I can, and
Speaker 1: you give me, let's see, twelve million dollars three million
Speaker 1: dollars a year over four years. They gave me the
Speaker 1: twelve million. So an end result of this might be
Speaker 1: Jimmy Kimmel gets a raise and a contract when his
Speaker 1: contract and presumably his show was supposed to end next spring.
Speaker 1: But our purposes, we're not all Jimmy Kimmel. Our purposes.
Speaker 1: Given how much Trump fouled this up with his own people,
Speaker 1: with the right wing, how much they are opposed to this,
Speaker 1: Democrats need to hit the gas while it is still
Speaker 1: sitting there. Push on this. We need House and or
Speaker 1: Senate resolutions condemning car that the Republicans have to vote
Speaker 1: for or against. We need Rand Paul co signing something
Speaker 1: with AOC. We need something House and or Senate resolutions,
Speaker 1: something reaffirming the First Amendment. Just something like it is
Speaker 1: the sense of this House that we reaffirm the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: See how many Republicans are willing to sign off against
Speaker 1: that something? I mean just Democrats who go on ABC
Speaker 1: News or ABC shows. They need to hit ABC for
Speaker 1: doing this to Kimmel on ABC until they put Kimmel
Speaker 1: back on the air. The Democrats can do all the
Speaker 1: public investigation they want of this man car and especially
Speaker 1: what is clearly a quid pro quo about Sinclair Next
Speaker 1: Star and approving those stations. They can tie up those
Speaker 1: approval and in court for years. Mister Jeffries, mister Schumer,
Speaker 1: this is something so obvious, so obvious, so easy, so
Speaker 1: win win, win, win win. Even your strategists and consultants
Speaker 1: have probably heard about it by now. Still, maybe the
Speaker 1: best part of the Kimmel Kirk saga is that, of
Speaker 1: course they wind up giving Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon and
Speaker 1: Seth Myers, maybe even Colbert in a different venue, Extra Life.
Speaker 1: Those franchises were are winding down. Myers was down to
Speaker 1: three workdays week. Now, if Kimmel goes back on the air,
Speaker 1: it'll have to be with something providing security for both parties,
Speaker 1: and it will be with the wind at his back.
Speaker 1: Suddenly people will want to see what Jimmy Kimmel has
Speaker 1: to say, and Myers and Fallon and even FN Colbert.
Speaker 1: The second best part of the Kimmel Kirk saga is
Speaker 1: it took the Kirk shooting and it transformed it politically
Speaker 1: into the Kimmel Kirk saga until the weekend began and
Speaker 1: the canonization of Saint Charlie of Kirk in Phoenix yesterday loomed.
Speaker 1: Google searches for Jimmy Kimmel were greater than or equal
Speaker 1: to those of Google searches for Charlie Kirk. And of course,
Speaker 1: as I suggested last week, it is increasingly evident the
Speaker 1: right canon will continue to insist otherwise. But the killing
Speaker 1: of Charlie Kirk was a personal act, maybe with political undertones,
Speaker 1: and BC reported quote one person familiar with the federal
Speaker 1: investigation said that quote. Thus far, there is no evidence
Speaker 1: connecting the suspect with any left wing groups. Every indication
Speaker 1: so far is that this was one guy who did
Speaker 1: one really bad thing because he found Kirk's ideology personally offensive. Unquote.
Speaker 1: I had suggested last week that he saw and again
Speaker 1: I condemned shooting anybody, but I especially condemned shooting political
Speaker 1: commentators because g guess what, I'm a political commentator. I
Speaker 1: condemned shooting anybody, but I suggested the alleged shooter saw
Speaker 1: Kirk's demonizing of transgendered people as a direct threat to
Speaker 1: someone he loved who is transgendered. End of story, not
Speaker 1: that it will end the story. If you heard our
Speaker 1: bulletin Friday night, you know Trump declared criticism of himself
Speaker 1: on television is illegal. He made up statistics that it's
Speaker 1: ninety seven percent bad that coverage is, or maybe he
Speaker 1: didn't make it up. Hell, his presidency is eighty seven
Speaker 1: percent bad. Maybe the coverage is completely accurate. But clearly,
Speaker 1: between that and the whole Kirk mess and everything else
Speaker 1: he did over the weekend, the last remaining fraid damaged, diaphanous,
Speaker 1: decaying line tethering the good blimp Trump to reality has snapped,
Speaker 1: and it's snapped on this subject. Prosecute them anyway, I
Speaker 1: don't care if there's no crime, and convict them anyway.
Speaker 1: I don't care if there's no evidence and jail them anyway.
Speaker 1: I don't care if the jury found them not guilty.
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing, of course. That is the memo or text
Speaker 1: or whatever that was he composed Saturday night that began
Speaker 1: perm semi colon that he somehow wound up posting on
Speaker 1: truth Social instead of sending it to somebody to send
Speaker 1: a Pam Bondy or whatever he was trying to do,
Speaker 1: text it to her, email it because Grandpa Shardy really
Speaker 1: is losing it. It was full of stuff that had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Eric Sebret prosecutor resigning rather than
Speaker 1: prosecuting Letitia James over mortgage paperwork. It was full of
Speaker 1: the lies Trump tells himself He's always done this. There's
Speaker 1: one way to never be wrong. When you are wrong,
Speaker 1: just lie to yourself. Is it me or is it them? Oh?
Speaker 1: It's them, Pam. I have reviewed over thirty statements in
Speaker 1: posts saying that essentially same old story as last time.
Speaker 1: All talked, no action, nothing is being done. What about Komy, Adam,
Speaker 1: Shifty Shift, Letitia, They're all guilty as hell, but nothing
Speaker 1: is going to be done. Then we almost put a
Speaker 1: Democrat supported US attorney in Virginia with a really bad
Speaker 1: Republican past, awoke Rhino is never going to do his job.
Speaker 1: That's why two of the worst DEM senators pushed him
Speaker 1: so hard, even lied to the media and said he quit.
Speaker 1: We had no case, No I fired him. There's a
Speaker 1: great case of many layers legal pundency. So Lindsay's a
Speaker 1: really good lawyer, likes you a lot. We can't delay
Speaker 1: any longer. It's killing a ripping and credibility. They impeach
Speaker 1: me twice and knighted me five times exclamation point over nothing.
Speaker 1: Justice must be served now, President dj TA. Oddly enough,
Speaker 1: Trump deleted that rather than lying and pretending he did
Speaker 1: not mean to do that, or lying and pretending he
Speaker 1: did mean to do that. Lindsey, by the way, is
Speaker 1: not Lindsey Graham as you might have thought. It's Lindsey Halligan,
Speaker 1: an insurance attorney who Trump sicked on the Smithsonian, who
Speaker 1: has never prosecuted a case, but has really great TV hair,
Speaker 1: And we'll do whatever Trump wants in exchange for free perms. Next,
Speaker 1: Trump is going after the US attorney in Maryland, Kelly Hayes.
Speaker 1: Trump wants her to prosecute Adam Schiff for I don't know,
Speaker 1: illegal possession of soup spoons. This is different than the
Speaker 1: Siebert case with Letitia James. Trump can tell himself that
Speaker 1: Sebert was a Democratic plant. Hayes is the same prosecutor
Speaker 1: who approved the crack of Dawn's search of the home
Speaker 1: of John Bolton, which turned up found a spoon. Sir,
Speaker 1: she is a loyalist and Trump offing a Trump loyalist
Speaker 1: is a different thin tight rope for the fat man
Speaker 1: to try to walk across his man Poulty over to
Speaker 1: finance the Renfield who dug up the mortgage info, most
Speaker 1: of which appears to be wrong and totally legal, and
Speaker 1: the same thing that Paulty's father did. He's still at it.
Speaker 1: He still doesn't get it. Look up Brendan Carr online,
Speaker 1: mister Poulty. He's still insisting the Fed governor Lisa Cook
Speaker 1: must be prosecuted. He tweeted. Would a doc be allowed
Speaker 1: to see patients if he was accused of a crime
Speaker 1: punishable by jail? No, I don't know, mister pault Is
Speaker 1: this a Trump doctor? Also, this is all incredibly impeachable.
Speaker 1: Pressuring prosecutors to prosecute your political enemies, or not to
Speaker 1: prosecute your friends while you our president. Well, Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: got it right yesterday writing of the posted memo to
Speaker 1: Pam Bondy. Quote, imagine if Richard Nixon had just tweeted
Speaker 1: out the Watergate scandal rather than putting it on secret tape.
Speaker 1: This is not having the impact it should because he
Speaker 1: did it in front of everybody. Another secret to Trump's success.
Speaker 1: Why waste all that time trying to be secretive when
Speaker 1: most people don't know what they're seeing anyway, And of
Speaker 1: course he can now claim maybe he wasn't writing to
Speaker 1: Pam Bondy, maybe he was writing to Pam Anderson. I
Speaker 1: think you could make a really good attorney general. The
Speaker 1: other thing is you don't do this as high profile,
Speaker 1: front facing goons from your own dictatorship turn out to
Speaker 1: be digging their own professional grapes. You've heard about Tom Homan,
Speaker 1: the bully from Ice, and the recording of him taking
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars from two FBI agents he thought were
Speaker 1: businessmen who wanted to win Trump government contracts. Firstly, this
Speaker 1: is the cheapest bastard, the cheapest corrupt politician since Spiro
Speaker 1: Agnew took cash in a bag in the White House
Speaker 1: Office when he was Vice president, Like nine hundred dollars
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars, I could buy Tom Homan for fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. What do I get for one hundred thousand dollars? Okay?
Speaker 1: So then after this Trump's DOJ shut the investigation down
Speaker 1: even though there is a tape, and the person who
Speaker 1: recommended shutting it down was Emil Beauve. Anybody in this missing, anybody?
Speaker 1: We can't send a jail for this, shouldn't They have
Speaker 1: brought in Alina Habba to f this up. Words come on,
Speaker 1: as I noted online, how in the hell did we
Speaker 1: not see this coming? Tom Holman literally has the word
Speaker 1: ho in his name. Dave It's Cough of the New
Speaker 1: York Times and the Great book about the Movie Network
Speaker 1: pointed out that if you like cliches, the fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars was literally inside a bag a bag, as in
Speaker 1: it's in the bag, or he's left holding the bag,
Speaker 1: or Tom Holman is Trump's bag man, but the winner
Speaker 1: is From Saturday Night Live writer Brian Tucker quote, Look,
Speaker 1: Tom Holman has not had a trial and has never
Speaker 1: been proven guilty, So let's all take a step back
Speaker 1: and do what he would do. Send him to a
Speaker 1: secret prison in El Salvador until we can figure this out.
Speaker 1: Cass please well, by the way, Russia violated Estonian airspace
Speaker 1: now fighter jets not drones this time, and Poland had
Speaker 1: to scramble its jets again after another incursion. Trump slept
Speaker 1: through that MAGA is concerned only about one thing. When
Speaker 1: is Charlie Kirk coming back from the dead? And don't
Speaker 1: shout at me about that you think I made up
Speaker 1: that idea. I have lost count of how many social
Speaker 1: media posts there are right this minute asking if that's possible,
Speaker 1: or saying, oh, wouldn't it be great if he came
Speaker 1: back from the dead during the thing you didn't maybe tomorrow.
Speaker 1: The canonization of Saint Charlie of Kirk is the only
Speaker 1: thing they have left here. The Kirk memorial couldn't even
Speaker 1: break the NFL's hold on Sunday afternoon trending topics on
Speaker 1: social media, but they are in full Jesus mode here.
Speaker 1: A spokesman for Kirk's turning point in Doctrination Group actually
Speaker 1: put out a statement transforming the lack of an exit
Speaker 1: wound into a miracle, not a metaphor not like a
Speaker 1: miracle or kind of almost No, a miracle, and he
Speaker 1: quoted a surgeon. Now the surgeon is anonymous, and he's
Speaker 1: being quoted by a spokesman who needs turning point USA
Speaker 1: to continue. Even without Charlie Kirk, Fox ran this as
Speaker 1: a major story yesterday. Are you ready? Even in death,
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk may have saved lives. The surgeon explained that quote,
Speaker 1: I've seen wounds from this caliber many times, and they
Speaker 1: always just go through everything. This would have taken a
Speaker 1: moose or two down, an elk, et cetera. It was
Speaker 1: an absolute miracle that someone else didn't get killed. The
Speaker 1: doctor described, kirk bone is quote so healthy and quote
Speaker 1: so impressive that he's like the man of steel. All Right,
Speaker 1: anybody recognized the problem with saying he's the man of
Speaker 1: steel when he's not living anymore. Back to this fantasy
Speaker 1: from Fox News, the spokesman concluded, quote, even in death,
Speaker 1: Charlie managed to save the lives of those around him. Remarkable, miraculous. Ah.
Speaker 1: Of course, they are helped by morons like Thomas Cardinal
Speaker 1: Dolan of New York. First, the Cardinal said he'd never
Speaker 1: heard of Charlie Kirk, and then he said on Fox
Speaker 1: that he had looked at some videos, apparently in order
Speaker 1: to get the guest shot on Fox. Guess which videos
Speaker 1: he looked at? He looked at the Bible ones or
Speaker 1: did he look at the we should stone transgendered people
Speaker 1: and execute Biden and force twelve year olds to watch
Speaker 1: public executions with guillotineans and the ones about the great
Speaker 1: Replacement theory? Which ones do you think he watched? Cardinal
Speaker 1: Gullible added, this guy is a modern day Saint Paul.
Speaker 1: He was a missionary. He's an evangelist, he's a hero.
Speaker 1: He's one I think that knows what Jesus meant when
Speaker 1: he said the truth will set you free. Also, Stone
Speaker 1: a transgendered person today, he said, Cardinal Dolan. Also, you
Speaker 1: know that Charlie Kirk called Pope Francis a Marxist and
Speaker 1: suggested Pope Francis was a heretic, right, and that Kirk's
Speaker 1: first religious mentor was Jerry Folwell, Junior, Jerry, have I
Speaker 1: introduced you to my wife? And if so? Can I
Speaker 1: watch Fallwell Junior? They're not doing this well, the canonization
Speaker 1: of Charlie Kirk. There's Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia blasting
Speaker 1: the fifty eight Democrats who did not vote yes on
Speaker 1: the motion condemning the Kirk murder. And that's when somebody
Speaker 1: told Congressman Mike Collins that he also did not vote
Speaker 1: yes on the motion condemning the Kirk murder. Congressman Collins
Speaker 1: walked off the House floor without casting a vote. He said,
Speaker 1: it was a mistake, Mike, You bet your ass it
Speaker 1: was a mistake. But the winner the all time Lou
Speaker 1: Lou kat Kerr, who is a troubled woman who says
Speaker 1: she is a prophetess. She says she was brought to
Speaker 1: heaven to watch Kirk's ascension. She does not stop to
Speaker 1: explain why they went to such trouble to bring her there,
Speaker 1: and yet still nobody in the afterlife will help her
Speaker 1: at all with her purple red nightmare hair. But she
Speaker 1: did explain that Charlie Kirk's reward in the afterlife was
Speaker 1: a quiver with a thousand arrows of light and a
Speaker 1: large ice cream cone. She says she saw him eating
Speaker 1: an ice cream cone in heaven.
Speaker 2: Oh man, there are so many many terrible, terrible jokes
Speaker 2: available here. I don't even have to lean forward in
Speaker 2: my chair to grab the worst of them. But I
Speaker 2: won't make any of them because I won't make any
Speaker 2: of them even.
Speaker 1: About Charlie Kirk. Now, I'll make them about Nancy Mace.
Speaker 1: Also of interest here add me to the list. I
Speaker 1: think Nancy Mace has announced she's going to end my
Speaker 1: career or she's going to end her career. It was
Speaker 1: a little unclear, Like everything else, she says. This would mean, though,
Speaker 1: if it's me, it's now forty one years in a row,
Speaker 1: that somebody has made a threat to end my career
Speaker 1: and I'm still here eating ice cream and they are
Speaker 1: all gone. In fact, some of them are dead. It's
Speaker 1: a general manager in Boston audios. See you. That's next.
Speaker 2: Oh there's ice cream in heaven large cones.
Speaker 1: This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith old woman
Speaker 1: still ahead on this edition of Countdown. Good old Nancy Mace,
Speaker 1: half congresswoman, half plastic inflatable doll has retweeted me saying
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk and Sinclair Broadcasting are both going to hell
Speaker 1: if thet nothing else this week. Attacking Charlie Kirk as
Speaker 1: a guaranteed way to end your career, she wrote apart
Speaker 1: from Nancy leaving a few words out there. I mean,
Speaker 1: I get what she means, but technically she's saying the
Speaker 1: left has has already learned this, and it's I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what she wrote. Anyway. What are you gonna do, Nancy?
Speaker 1: Get me fired from Current TV, get me fired from
Speaker 1: my Disney pension. I'm independent. I literally work for nobody,
Speaker 1: and I have all the money I need for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life until I linger to like one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty two plus Nancy. People have been threatening
Speaker 1: to end my career since literally nineteen eighty four. He
Speaker 1: will never again work in this business. The Boston executive
Speaker 1: said to my agent, guess what he's dead now. A
Speaker 1: young writer who wrote My career was over in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one in a national magazine just starting there.
Speaker 1: He's already retired and I could die before this finishes posting.
Speaker 1: But professionally, right now, I'm still here and all of
Speaker 1: them are not. Goodbye, Nancy, Good evening, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the end of my career. Well not yet anyway. Next
Speaker 1: in things I promised not to tell first, believe it
Speaker 1: or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about.
Speaker 1: The roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning kruegerffect specimens
Speaker 1: who constitute today's other worst persons in the world, The brons,
Speaker 1: Congress and Randy Fine. Now, every time I think they
Speaker 1: found the dumbest person in America and elected them to Congress,
Speaker 1: we locate a dumber one. Now it's Randy Fine. Now,
Speaker 1: I've slimmed down, but I've been overweight my whole life
Speaker 1: since they took my tonsils out when I was six.
Speaker 1: In retrospect, that was a mistake. Swallowing was difficult. Then
Speaker 1: one day it was not difficult at all, and the
Speaker 1: food began to flow night and day. So I genuinely
Speaker 1: start here talking about Congressman Fine in a place of concern.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to pretend to you. I don't
Speaker 1: end in a place of concern. But Congressman Fine is
Speaker 1: like three hundred, three hundred and fifty pounds. He's a
Speaker 1: big guy. I want to tell you I saw him
Speaker 1: sitting on the George Washington Bridge dangling his feet in
Speaker 1: the water. Hey, I'll tell you so. Fine goes on
Speaker 1: CNN and bash is Kimmel quote. We live in a
Speaker 1: world where a meaningful percentage of people now believe violence
Speaker 1: is legitimate as in aside Randy, who did that? Yes, Randy,
Speaker 1: it was Trump. I got to flash back to bo
Speaker 1: Jack Horseman there, Randy, is this your fault? Dana Bash?
Speaker 1: And this might as well have been the lead story today.
Speaker 1: Dana Bash actually pushed back against Randy Fine, which, again,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen him, it's quite an accomplishment. Quote
Speaker 1: kim didn't legitimize violence. Fine kept throwing his weight around
Speaker 1: those comments, blaming MAGA for the death of Charlie Kirk. Well,
Speaker 1: Bash interrupted him again, that's not what Kimmel said. Fine
Speaker 1: still finished. I gasped when I read it. Randy is
Speaker 1: one fat guy to another. That gasp that may have
Speaker 1: been caused by something else. See Your Doctor Runner up
Speaker 1: worser Stephen A. Smith. Steven A. Smith has decided he
Speaker 1: is a political commentator. He does a show called an
Speaker 1: XM radio show called straight Shooter. Now that's offensive in
Speaker 1: light of Charlie kirk and in the background of the
Speaker 1: video version of this, there's the capitol. So that makes
Speaker 1: him a political commentator. Again, I don't have any objection
Speaker 1: to anybody going sports to politics. That would be like
Speaker 1: me saying, hey, Randy Fine is a big guy. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's a bit like, No, I get it. I did that,
Speaker 1: I know. But the call in line for people calling
Speaker 1: into the Stephen A. Smith Straight Shooter Show, the number
Speaker 1: ends in one of the letter equivalents P O t US,
Speaker 1: so it's you dial whatever the number is potus. Problem
Speaker 1: is Steve is not doing the work on this to
Speaker 1: use the kids phrase, tell me you didn't actually see
Speaker 1: the Jimmy Kimmel references to Kirk. Without telling me you
Speaker 1: didn't actually see the Jimmy Kimmel references to Kirk, the.
Speaker 4: Only thing that I would say, as it pertains to
Speaker 4: Jimmy Kimmel was where was the joke?
Speaker 2: Because you're a late night host and obviously.
Speaker 4: That has a comedic attachment attachment to it.
Speaker 1: Where was the joke? Obviously it wasn't anything funny about that. However, No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a joke. You're right about that. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a joke on a late night show. Surprise, like when
Speaker 1: Letterman did the first show after nine to eleven and
Speaker 1: he didn't make any jokes. You just back tears and
Speaker 1: the shows that were done after every assassination, and you know,
Speaker 1: the night after Martin Luther King was killed, that Johnny
Speaker 1: Carson didn't do jokes, and then you know they postponed
Speaker 1: these show. When you know Charlie Kirk gets shot, you
Speaker 1: don't go for the joke, even if you're Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 1: That wasn't supposed to be a joke. Stephen does not
Speaker 1: get this. Stephen thinks the controversy is that whatever was
Speaker 1: said about Kimmel or by Kimmel about Kirk wasn't funny.
Speaker 1: That's what he thinks was wrong. That's what he really thinks.
Speaker 1: This is about. Where is the joke. Steve doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: doesn't get this. He went on at length to blame Kimmel.
Speaker 1: I ha note Stephen is after all, paid by the
Speaker 1: people who caved on Kimmel, people like Bob Iger. Steven
Speaker 1: is a company man. Steven explained that Jimmy's failure was
Speaker 1: he didn't understand quote the game that he is playing.
Speaker 1: Steven is a very very simple view of the world,
Speaker 1: as evidence by thinking that everything is a game, and
Speaker 1: that every political show is like every sports show, where
Speaker 1: the point is how much time can you kill without
Speaker 1: saying anything? That's Stephen a Smith's specialty. I mean, honest
Speaker 1: to god, he's one of the all time greats. You
Speaker 1: have one idea and stretch it out the three hours
Speaker 1: a day, that's pretty good. That's his specialty. Anyway, Steve's
Speaker 1: naivete and his unwillingness to do the work, like read
Speaker 1: the quotes, watch the videotape, just have somebody pull it
Speaker 1: up on your gold plated machine for you. His unwillingness
Speaker 1: to do the work is going to be terribly exposed
Speaker 1: in the weeks and months to come, as will the
Speaker 1: fact that all those rumors about people encouraging him to
Speaker 1: run for president as a Democrat, they were all started
Speaker 1: by by him. How do we know this because, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, the number for the telephone call in line
Speaker 1: for listeners ends in botus. He chose that, Steve, you
Speaker 1: need to be a little more subtle. Your political audience
Speaker 1: is not as dumb as your sports audience is. Holy crap,
Speaker 1: But our winner the worst. Speaking of naive Vanity Fair
Speaker 1: magazine editor Mark Guiducci, We've already been through this with
Speaker 1: Mark about the new editor there breaking in by trying
Speaker 1: to put Milania Trump on the cover of Vanity Fair
Speaker 1: and the Vanity Fair staff, which leans a little to
Speaker 1: the left, threatening to walk out. It was thought their
Speaker 1: response might lead this guy Mark to reel himself in
Speaker 1: a little bit. It did not. Last week he named
Speaker 1: a new West Coast editor for Vanity Fair, responsible for
Speaker 1: some writing and for quote editing stories across platforms and
Speaker 1: topic areas, with a focus on events, industries and culture
Speaker 1: of the Pacific region. And the new editor is Alivia Newsy.
Speaker 1: She's back now. Look, she's the mother of my dogs,
Speaker 1: at least the two oldest dogs. So I'm not being
Speaker 1: cynical or ironic or anything when I say I will
Speaker 1: always value her for that and my introduction to the
Speaker 1: world of dogs, and if she's ever in real trouble,
Speaker 1: I'll help, no questions asked. I offered that last year,
Speaker 1: reached out to her agent and said, I don't know
Speaker 1: what help I could be, probably none. If she can
Speaker 1: think of anything, it's hers. I do have to figure
Speaker 1: out what to tell the dogs, because when we broke up,
Speaker 1: I told Rose and Stevie that Olivia had gone to
Speaker 1: live on a farm upstate. But she wants to make
Speaker 1: a comeback after the whole RFK Junior disaster. I'm fine
Speaker 1: with it. Maybe she learned something from a mistake everybody
Speaker 1: does eventually after mistake number nine hundred, one hopes one
Speaker 1: would learn from that mistake. Any who, she did what
Speaker 1: I always recommend in that situation, she waited. She waited
Speaker 1: nearly a year plus. Selfishly. This lets me remind people
Speaker 1: that it turned out who knew that when we broke up?
Speaker 1: I was too young for her. However, the reaction in
Speaker 1: writing circles has not been as forgiving two writers on
Speaker 1: Blue Sky. These guys made me gfaw Andrew Dignan or Dingion.
Speaker 1: Maybe Vanity Fair bringing Newsy on to cover the all
Speaker 1: important who's sending first traps southeast to members of Trump's cabinet?
Speaker 1: Beat oh oh, oh, man, I can see this is
Speaker 1: going away soon. And then Colin Dicky uh, obviously an
Speaker 1: expert on this subject. I'm sorry, Vanity Fair. Hiring Newsy
Speaker 1: is such a effing gut punch to all the great
Speaker 1: underemployed journalists out there who don't sext with their sources, which,
Speaker 1: to be fair, is pretty much everyone except Olivia Nowsy.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, and you thought I had complaints about her?
Speaker 1: My goodness, Oh Mark, what if I just cut out
Speaker 1: the pretense and named her West Coast sexting editor Guiducci,
Speaker 1: good luck with being Olivia's boss, Today's other worst person
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: Call me anytime.
Speaker 1: Oh so, here we go again. As I mentioned an
Speaker 1: offhand comment or retweet by plastic Woman Congresswoman Nancy mace Of,
Speaker 1: I forgot Stupidville has now joined the list of people
Speaker 1: who have promised to end my career or how I
Speaker 1: should know that if you criticize Charlie Kirk, sat Charlie
Speaker 1: of Kirk, your career is over. All I can say
Speaker 1: is madam, take a number. We'll call you when we
Speaker 1: are ready. I'm still dealing with the other three or
Speaker 1: four dozen people who have told me in the last
Speaker 1: forty one years that my career is now over. To
Speaker 1: our number one story on the countdown, and good evening,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the end of our careers, or more
Speaker 1: particularly the end of my career. No, I'm not retiring.
Speaker 1: I'm just quoting myself from nineteen ninety three in the
Speaker 1: launch of ESPN two and the subject of career ending announcements.
Speaker 1: Career ending announcements. Recently, a colleague of mine told me
Speaker 1: he was done, and I had to go through all
Speaker 1: of the times I have been told I was done.
Speaker 1: The first one was in nineteen eighty four. This would
Speaker 1: be in a previous century that I know. To a
Speaker 1: lot of younger listeners, seems like it might as well
Speaker 1: be eighteen eighty four. I have told before the story
Speaker 1: of my limited career in Boston, for which I waited
Speaker 1: about a year to start and lasted about half as
Speaker 1: long because I went to work at the wrong place,
Speaker 1: in the wrong city, outside in the wrong suburb of Boston,
Speaker 1: with the wrong boss, where they said, don't make any jokes,
Speaker 1: and I said, what did you hire me for? And
Speaker 1: I left very very quickly, and then they tried to
Speaker 1: fire me while I was filling out the terms of
Speaker 1: my contract and staying there until they could get a replacement.
Speaker 1: And the whole thing went up in flames. And the
Speaker 1: result of this was that the news director of the
Speaker 1: station Channel five in Boston, a man who actually answered
Speaker 1: to the name Philip Scribner Balboni, went to the Boston
Speaker 1: Globe TV sportswriter when they had such things as TV sportswriters,
Speaker 1: and said, oh, it was such a shame about Keith.
Speaker 1: He was potentially such a major talent. I will not
Speaker 1: deny that the use of that phrase did inspire me
Speaker 1: to some degree to get cracking on my career. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, I didn't work for nearly a year later,
Speaker 1: as I was taking care of some family business back
Speaker 1: home and sort of put everything about my own interest
Speaker 1: on the shelf. Off the record, the general manager of
Speaker 1: the station I had worked for, a man named James Coppersmith,
Speaker 1: said to my agent something that made Balbony's statement look
Speaker 1: like a compliment. Coppersmith said, he will never again work
Speaker 1: in our business. That got me motivated. I believe I
Speaker 1: read recently that Coppersmith died. In any event, I worked
Speaker 1: again in his business. The punchline to this one, and
Speaker 1: they all have punchlines, is that at some point around
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, I got an email at MSNBC
Speaker 1: and the return of was Philip Scribner Balboni, and there
Speaker 1: was a great email from my old brief news director
Speaker 1: Boston Channel five in Boston, who explained that I had
Speaker 1: been potentially such a major talent and was quoted on
Speaker 1: the record as saying that. And now he was saying
Speaker 1: how he watched Countdown every night and was so proud
Speaker 1: to have been in there at the start of my career.
Speaker 1: Not a word about the other part, about the oh,
Speaker 1: potentially such a major talent. I guess he meant it
Speaker 1: in the past future, perfect sense of the I don't know,
Speaker 1: my grammar education is not what it should be. But
Speaker 1: he managed to wriggle out of it. Never made any
Speaker 1: reference to it. And the one thing about surviving repeated
Speaker 1: announcements that your career is over is to never really
Speaker 1: go back and criticize the people who were wrong about it,
Speaker 1: because they know they were wrong, and your success is
Speaker 1: the best answer. Nevertheless, this all came up, and I
Speaker 1: thought i'd retell it to you because I had to
Speaker 1: retell it to a friend who recently told me his
Speaker 1: career was over. But as I said, that was just
Speaker 1: the first time that had ever happened in a fully
Speaker 1: professional setting. In two thousand and one, and I was
Speaker 1: just reading this, I guess about a year ago. I
Speaker 1: came across it somewhere online. I was reading it for
Speaker 1: a punchline in and of itself. It was a piece
Speaker 1: in Sports illustrated by a man named Chris Ballard, I believe,
Speaker 1: and Chris Baward wrote an article about my being fired
Speaker 1: by Fox Sports, which he wrote as I had resigned
Speaker 1: from Fox Sports, and went on to explain that I
Speaker 1: did not respond as Sports Illustrated's request by emails and
Speaker 1: phones for comment. I never received any of them because
Speaker 1: it never occurred to him that when they fired me
Speaker 1: and told everybody I had resigned, they cut off my
Speaker 1: access to my email and my phone, and they said
Speaker 1: to him when he wanted to talk to me, oh,
Speaker 1: just send him an email. He'll get back to you.
Speaker 1: And I didn't, and thus he made me look like
Speaker 1: a jerk. In any event, The article explained in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one that having gone through ESPN and now
Speaker 1: ESPN's sort of mini me rival, Fox Sports News, that
Speaker 1: there was nothing left for me to do in the business.
Speaker 1: I had tried news briefly in nineteen ninety seven and
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight. Clearly my career in both fields was over.
Speaker 1: I could not possibly work again in television, in news
Speaker 1: or in sports. We're now coming up next year if
Speaker 1: I get to it. Well, it's been twenty three, twenty
Speaker 1: four year. Okay. I recently saw this article and was
Speaker 1: inspired to look for it online because Chris Ballard was
Speaker 1: retiring from Sports Illustrated and I'm still here one question
Speaker 1: that came up as I was retelling the story of
Speaker 1: my various career ending moments that did not in fact
Speaker 1: end my career from my friend who's very worried about this,
Speaker 1: was how I managed not to have my career. And
Speaker 1: when Ballard's premise was not completely wrong, he was certainly
Speaker 1: looking at what he thought happened in television. He was
Speaker 1: not the TV sports writer for Sports Illustrated for very long.
Speaker 1: It was not a natural subject for him. Most people
Speaker 1: who did this job thought that it involved simply watching
Speaker 1: sports on TV and then writing what they thought as
Speaker 1: opposed to understanding an industry or its complexities, or its
Speaker 1: parameters or its sort of weird voodoo customs. In any event,
Speaker 1: I said, well, look, it's not very difficult to survive
Speaker 1: these things. You just have to acknowledge that perhaps your
Speaker 1: next job, after some sort of cataclysmic departure from an
Speaker 1: ESPN or a Fox Sports or an MSNBC or wherever else,
Speaker 1: perhaps it's not going to pay you quite as much
Speaker 1: as the last one did. And so, when my agent
Speaker 1: and I began to look around for more work in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, and I might add that after
Speaker 1: Fox fired me, they had to pay me for another
Speaker 1: eight months at one hundred thousand dollars a year. And
Speaker 1: if you can't survive on a job requires you to
Speaker 1: do nothing for eight months and pays you eight hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars that you can salt away. If you can't
Speaker 1: survive on that and enjoy your life while you're doing it,
Speaker 1: you're doing things wrong. In any event, what I said
Speaker 1: was just the next job. Just take a job that
Speaker 1: allows you to do what you can do and do
Speaker 1: it well, and you will succeed in it. You have
Speaker 1: talent a lot of other people don't. You will be
Speaker 1: low costs, so they're much more likely to overlook anything
Speaker 1: that happened in the past, and most importantly, if it
Speaker 1: is successful, you can then hold them up on the
Speaker 1: second contract negotiation. So I went first to CNN after
Speaker 1: the Fox Sports experience started to work for them for
Speaker 1: not a lot of money, and although they did not
Speaker 1: ultimately exercise this, they signed me to a contract to
Speaker 1: do the eight PM show on CNN for a certain
Speaker 1: large amount of money, and there were two finalists they
Speaker 1: wanted us lined up in advance, and they made the
Speaker 1: clever decision to choose Connie Chung instead of me, but
Speaker 1: they had sort of reauthorized me. They had re established me.
Speaker 1: By it was well known within the industry that I
Speaker 1: was the runner up for the job at eight o'clock,
Speaker 1: and within six months of them saying, nah, we think
Speaker 1: Connie's the right person to lead us into the future here,
Speaker 1: within six months of that, I was doing the eight
Speaker 1: o'clock show on MSNBC for in fact, twice what the
Speaker 1: agreement had been at CNN, And within three years they'd
Speaker 1: signed me to a new deal that was worth three
Speaker 1: times that more than I had ever made in my life.
Speaker 1: So the key thing to it is to be flexible financially.
Speaker 1: You sock them for the money while you're successful. And
Speaker 1: then by the way, once again, if you can't succeed
Speaker 1: in the business, if you can't succeed in life, when
Speaker 1: you have received in one year anything north of three
Speaker 1: million dollars in one year, four million dollars, maybe I
Speaker 1: forget what the actual financial floor is. But if you've
Speaker 1: made that much money in one year and can't live
Speaker 1: basically off that and simply in interest from the bank
Speaker 1: that that will provide you, if you can't do that,
Speaker 1: you must have some sort of addiction to drugs, because
Speaker 1: guess what, you can go a long way still. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true, four million dollars is what it used to be,
Speaker 1: but guess what it is now. It's still really good.
Speaker 1: I never failed to see one of these articles in
Speaker 1: which somebody who's lost a job paying in you know,
Speaker 1: the tens of millions of dollars, and I always finished.
Speaker 1: Now It's like, yes, he's finished. Now he can sit
Speaker 1: on a beach, he can hire somebody to do his
Speaker 1: exercise for him. He can sit on a beach and
Speaker 1: eat the money, and it won't make a difference. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have to do it again in any event. So
Speaker 1: the pattern here that I have described already has continued
Speaker 1: in subsequent years, even after I came back from the
Speaker 1: dead after my experience in Boston, where I was dubbed
Speaker 1: the dark prints of TV Sports and was winning awards
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles the next year. Although, to be fair,
Speaker 1: after that quote in nineteen eighty four about how I
Speaker 1: was potentially a great talent, I did get down to
Speaker 1: about my last one hundred dollars in the bank, and
Speaker 1: actually I actually had to borrow money from my dear
Speaker 1: sister to get on the bus to take me to
Speaker 1: the airport in New York so I could take the
Speaker 1: flight to Los Angeles to start my job there. That's
Speaker 1: how close I cut it. Another week and I would
Speaker 1: have been borrowing money for food. That's where I was.
Speaker 1: But you have to be willing to walk that tight
Speaker 1: rope to pull this off in any event. So that
Speaker 1: was Boston became the Los Angeles job, and the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles job. When they eliminated that, it's like, well, his
Speaker 1: career is over now. The next job was ESPN. ESPN
Speaker 1: led to NBC. When that didn't work out and I
Speaker 1: pushed to get out of there, they sold me to
Speaker 1: Fox for a million dollars and they paid me a
Speaker 1: lot of money and continued to pay me a lot
Speaker 1: of money even after they stopped putting me on TV.
Speaker 1: And that led to a doldrum period where I got
Speaker 1: to read about the guy who's now retired from Sports
Speaker 1: Illustrated explaining what network will sign him now, what team
Speaker 1: will sign him now? Whither Keith? This is two thousand
Speaker 1: and one. I was forty two years old. It's like
Speaker 1: I get nostalgic reading that, going, yeah, you were forty
Speaker 1: two years old. They fired you at that point people
Speaker 1: thought your career was over. Yeah, but I was forty two.
Speaker 1: My hair was dark most places in any event, So
Speaker 1: that led into the MSNBC job, and the MSNBC job,
Speaker 1: as sort of messy as that ended, the second one,
Speaker 1: anyway led to the Current TV job, and as disastrous
Speaker 1: as that was, since it was kind of a confidence trick,
Speaker 1: there was a day where between the money I got
Speaker 1: for leaving NBC and the money I got for joining
Speaker 1: Current TV, I made sixty eight million dollars in one day.
Speaker 1: I had to sew a lot of people afterwards to
Speaker 1: get all of it, but I got just about all
Speaker 1: of it. In any event, I'm now boasting back to
Speaker 1: the point of this whole story. An old friend of
Speaker 1: mine came in when I was doing the videos for
Speaker 1: GQ The Closer and The Resistance in twenty sixteen. In
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, came in to watch me do this and
Speaker 1: started to ask very very graciously and very gently about, well,
Speaker 1: isn't this something of a come down for you from
Speaker 1: the MSNBC experience where you had a staff, And I said, well,
Speaker 1: first off, the MSNBC experience consisted of two cameramen and
Speaker 1: a floor director and me and sometimes a guest in
Speaker 1: a studio. The staff, whereas they were all certainly dedicated
Speaker 1: to the project, consisted of basically a core of six
Speaker 1: or seven people. It never really felt like a big deal.
Speaker 1: I know it had more influence than I was ever
Speaker 1: led to understand, but it wasn't like, oh, well, you
Speaker 1: know those movies that you did with Richard Burton and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Taylor and Tom Cruise, and now you're just sitting
Speaker 1: at home with a camera. It didn't have that feel
Speaker 1: in the slightest. And I said to him, did you
Speaker 1: see the thing from CBS News the other day? And
Speaker 1: he went, what thing from CBS News? I said, don't
Speaker 1: you have the Google at the New York Times? And
Speaker 1: he said yes. I said, Google, Social Flow, Facebook, and
Speaker 1: he did on his phone and he read this political
Speaker 1: pundit Keith Alderman found a way to channel concerns about
Speaker 1: mister Trump. This is July twenty seventeen, started hosting a
Speaker 1: series of political commentary and special interviews titled The Resistance
Speaker 1: with Keith Olderman, with the first episode featured on GQ
Speaker 1: on November sixteenth, twenty sixteen, reaching fifty four million people
Speaker 1: equivalent to one in six Americans, And I said, look,
Speaker 1: I understand that if you measure things solely by the
Speaker 1: idea that I'm on your TV every night, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the doing a video and coming into a studio
Speaker 1: that isn't really designed for TV and there's an echo
Speaker 1: in it might seem like the end of my career.
Speaker 1: Fifty four million people saw that video and interacted with
Speaker 1: it in some kind. They either forwarded it, or watched it,
Speaker 1: or put a comment on it, or sometimes all three.
Speaker 1: That was, in fact the number one political video or
Speaker 1: story on Facebook in the period of time after Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's election. I think that's something of a success. And
Speaker 1: I said, by this point, I don't need the damn money.
Speaker 1: The money I'm making from doing this is going to
Speaker 1: dog charities. Okay, So we could go on at length
Speaker 1: about other small versions of that. I once went back
Speaker 1: and forth with this guy who now is one of
Speaker 1: the people at Puck News who insisted that I had
Speaker 1: not been negotiating with the then chairman of NBC Jeff Schell,
Speaker 1: about returning to MSNBC in twenty nineteen twenty and twenty one,
Speaker 1: because NBC News had insisted it wasn't true. And I said,
Speaker 1: who told you that, and they said a spokesman. And
Speaker 1: I said to this guy, his name was Dylan Byers,
Speaker 1: I said, well, who was the spokesman. Well, it's just
Speaker 1: supposed to be a spokesman, I said. So. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: even put their own name on it, not even a
Speaker 1: made up name Jim Jones, NBC News spokesman, which would
Speaker 1: have been, by the way, appropriate name for a series
Speaker 1: of NBC News spokespeople. They didn't even do that. And
Speaker 1: he said no. They were insistent, there's never been any
Speaker 1: contact between you and Jeff Shell. And I went hang on,
Speaker 1: and I called up from my phone twenty three emails
Speaker 1: and texts from Jeff Shell. I photo shot at them,
Speaker 1: I screen shotted them and gave him to the guy.
Speaker 1: And I don't think this guy Buyers has recovered since
Speaker 1: his worldview was totally destroyed. He was writing a story
Speaker 1: about how I had deteriorated to the point where I
Speaker 1: was hallucinating about being in contact with Jeff Shell from
Speaker 1: NBC News or from NBC about returning to NBC News
Speaker 1: and MSNBC when we were deep into negotiations about it,
Speaker 1: and we're delayed only by the pandemic. And as I
Speaker 1: pointed out here before the vetos of certain people working
Speaker 1: on the air at MSNBC, most of whose careers I started.
Speaker 1: But that's another story which I've already discussed. His whole
Speaker 1: worldview was shattered by this because should do be He
Speaker 1: could not comprehend that an NBC News spokesperson would lie
Speaker 1: to him, And he really said this. He said, I
Speaker 1: don't understand why would they lie to me? And I said,
Speaker 1: you don't have to understand that the idea that they
Speaker 1: would not put their own name on this statement might
Speaker 1: have suggested to you that they were lying to you. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'll keep that in mind. Well, he didn't keep that
Speaker 1: in mind. But that's again another story about Dylan Byers,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to him somedayday too, somewhere soon. Somebody
Speaker 1: asked towards the end of July twenty twenty four about
Speaker 1: my recent comeback and how I'd just gotten back into
Speaker 1: political commentary now with the new podcast, and I said,
Speaker 1: it's two years old. On August first, it was approaching
Speaker 1: five hundred episodes. We're doing like a million listens a week,
Speaker 1: a million audience participants a week. I mean, it's challenging
Speaker 1: certain hours on CNN for total audience. Good God, what
Speaker 1: do you mean recent comeback? But this is, as I said,
Speaker 1: if I had ten million dollars for every time somebody
Speaker 1: told me my career was over, A career is sort
Speaker 1: of over because I'm now of advanced years and now
Speaker 1: I've done something that I really didn't understand until the
Speaker 1: year twenty eleven, until I left MSNBC to go to
Speaker 1: Current TV, and there was built into this transfer a
Speaker 1: three month period of time where I could not work
Speaker 1: anywhere in television. I had not had such a period
Speaker 1: of time except for the aforementioned period when I was
Speaker 1: taken care of family members who were in trouble in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five after the Boston experience, I hadn't had
Speaker 1: such a length of time without being on the air somewhere.
Speaker 1: And in fact, during that period in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: I did a lot of freelance work just to get
Speaker 1: the cash that I didn't have to borrow from my sister,
Speaker 1: who was, by the way, seventeen years old at the time. Yeah, Jen,
Speaker 1: have you got a twenty Yeah, I need to go
Speaker 1: buy a cigar. In any event, the point of this
Speaker 1: was until twenty eleven, i'd really not had a day
Speaker 1: or at least a week without deadlines media deadlines. You
Speaker 1: have to have this written by eight o'clock because the
Speaker 1: show is starting with or without you. I hadn't had
Speaker 1: a day or a week without those since I was
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. I was to my shock. I found
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed not having those deadlines. And when we
Speaker 1: went back on the air in Current TV in June
Speaker 1: of twenty eleven, I was kind of disappointed, not because
Speaker 1: the studio was actually not a studio but more like
Speaker 1: a you know, a portal to Hell and not that
Speaker 1: part of it, which was disappointing, but not as much
Speaker 1: as I really enjoyed, you know, not shaving every weekday
Speaker 1: and not having to write, you know, ten thousand words
Speaker 1: a day, and not having to read the twelve seconds
Speaker 1: of script inside the twelve second window before the sound hit,
Speaker 1: and just the number of deadlines I suddenly did and
Speaker 1: a half. So since twenty eleven, I decided to cut
Speaker 1: back to four days work a week generally speaking, that's
Speaker 1: my concession to my mid sixties. And as I was
Speaker 1: preparing this to tell you this story, in light of
Speaker 1: the experience I had with my friend who thought his
Speaker 1: career was over, and I was reciting this, I realized
Speaker 1: that I had left out in telling him the story,
Speaker 1: and I have deliberately left it out of the chronological
Speaker 1: order of these tales of the actual first time I
Speaker 1: was told my career was over, I had forgotten completely
Speaker 1: about the day that the sports director what was then
Speaker 1: a prominent radio station told me that not only would
Speaker 1: he and the news director there not hire me, even
Speaker 1: though I had been told I was a candidate for
Speaker 1: a sports job there, but he told me that I
Speaker 1: would never get a job in radio or television of
Speaker 1: any prominence because of my attitude. No one will ever
Speaker 1: hire you. His name was Ernie Jackson, and I believe
Speaker 1: he left the town we were in to get a
Speaker 1: job selling airtime on a radio station in Cincinnati, and
Speaker 1: after that, I don't know what the hell happened to him.
Speaker 1: The news director was a guy named Bob Lynch, and
Speaker 1: he shortly thereafter moved to a job that I think
Speaker 1: he spent his entire professional career at traffic reporter in
Speaker 1: a plane above the beautiful city of Rochester, New York
Speaker 1: the date that mister Jackson, on mister Lynch's behalf told
Speaker 1: me that my career was over. The first time I
Speaker 1: was told you will never again work in this business,
Speaker 1: the first good evening and welcome to the end of
Speaker 1: my career, was October nineteen seventy seven. I've done all
Speaker 1: the damage I can do here, and yet thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. Most of our countdown music was arranged, produced,
Speaker 1: and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel. Our
Speaker 1: musical directors have countdown. Neither of their careers is over.
Speaker 1: It was produced by Tko Brothers. Mister Ray on the guitars,
Speaker 1: bass and drums, mister Chanelle handling, orchestration and keyboards. Our
Speaker 1: satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball
Speaker 1: stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, who's also heard that same
Speaker 1: message and whose career is also not over. The Olberman
Speaker 1: theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
Speaker 1: of ESPN, Inc. Is the sports music I can't speak
Speaker 1: to mister Davis. I don't know him personally, but ah,
Speaker 1: how many times has ESPN been declared dead since nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine and it's still here. Other music arranged and
Speaker 1: performed by the group No Horns allowed. I don't think
Speaker 1: they're still in business. Individually, They're all still in business,
Speaker 1: but I don't think the group performs anymore, so maybe
Speaker 1: their career is over. My announcer today was my friend
Speaker 1: Johnny Banks from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. His
Speaker 1: career ate over everything else was as always my fault.
Speaker 1: So that's countdown for today. Day two hundred and forty
Speaker 1: six of America held hostage again, just twenty seven days
Speaker 1: until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck lame brained term,
Speaker 1: unless he is removed sooner by MAGA than Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 1: or Tom I put the hoe in home Man, or
Speaker 1: the pavement on Trump's hand or whatever. The next scheduled
Speaker 1: countdown is Thursday. Until then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning,
Speaker 1: good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.