Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Happy
Speaker 1: Jack Smith Day to all who celebrate first. A sitting
Speaker 1: US congressman is now openly threatening Haitian immigrants, all of
Speaker 1: whom are here legally, some of whom have been here
Speaker 1: for generations. Clay Higgins, the disgraced ex cop from Louisiana
Speaker 1: who fabricated a story about evidence he fabricated about a
Speaker 1: thing he fabricated called January sixth ghost buses, told the
Speaker 1: Haitians to quote get their ass out of our country
Speaker 1: before January twentieth. In a tweet over a screenshot of
Speaker 1: the news we mentioned yesterday here that a group representing
Speaker 1: the immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, that Trump and Senator Van
Speaker 1: Ants and other Republicans are trying to get killed via
Speaker 1: stochastic terrorism. That that group was suing to try to
Speaker 1: force the prosecution of Trump and Vance for breaking the
Speaker 1: law by such incitement. Higgins writes, lull, these Haitians are wild,
Speaker 1: eating pets, voodoo, nastiest country in the Western Hemisphere, cults,
Speaker 1: slapstick gangsters, but damned if they don't feel all sophisticated.
Speaker 1: Now filing charges against our president and VP all these
Speaker 1: thugs better get their mind right and their ass out
Speaker 1: of our country before January twentieth, unquote. Leaving aside the
Speaker 1: question of whose mind is right, Clay Higgins apparently thinks JV.
Speaker 1: Vance is Vice president right now just because his fascist
Speaker 1: party has nominated him. The blowback was immediate. Before the
Speaker 1: House adjourned yesterday, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus
Speaker 1: attempted to get Higgins immediately censured for his racist lineage
Speaker 1: and his violent threats against legal residents of the United States.
Speaker 1: Now that, as Stephen Horsford says, he confronted Higgins and
Speaker 1: demanded Higgins delete the tweet. Quoting Horsford, he actually told
Speaker 1: me no, he would not. Horsford's censure bid was blocked
Speaker 1: for the moment by Republicans led my speaker Mike Johnson,
Speaker 1: also an ass from Louisiana. Johnson, who Tuesday revealed by
Speaker 1: what he refused to say, that he would be on
Speaker 1: the side of the next Republican attempt to nullify the
Speaker 1: election by legal trickery, just as he was on the
Speaker 1: side of the last Republican attempt to do so, said
Speaker 1: that this matter was now closed because Higgins did in fact,
Speaker 1: delete the get their ass out of our country tweet,
Speaker 1: Johnson claimed, Higgins quote prayed about it, and he regretted it,
Speaker 1: and he pulled the post down. That's what you want
Speaker 1: a gentleman to do. I'm sure he probably regrets some
Speaker 1: of the language he used, Johnson says, but you know,
Speaker 1: we move forward. We believe in redemption around here, right.
Speaker 1: The only regret Clay Higgins has about the language he
Speaker 1: used is that he stopped himself from using the N
Speaker 1: word to describe the targets of his stochastic terrorism. Johnson,
Speaker 1: who has long since solidified his reputation as the smarmiest
Speaker 1: and most morally weightless speaker in the history of the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives, did not explain why this scumbag Higgins
Speaker 1: didn't pray about his tweet before he posted it and
Speaker 1: reignited the nightmare unfolding in Ohio and elsewhere for Haitian
Speaker 1: Americans and Irish Americans and Ohio and Americans and non
Speaker 1: psychotic people named Higgins Americans. The most positive thing that
Speaker 1: can be said about the Higgins threat is that he
Speaker 1: declared he only wanted all the Haitians to leave the
Speaker 1: United States within four months, rather than to have them
Speaker 1: all killed. I don't know what kind of redemption Johnson
Speaker 1: thinks is possible here any longer, but bluntly, the only
Speaker 1: redemption is that of the United States of America, and
Speaker 1: it involves putting slime like Clay Higgins in prison or
Speaker 1: in a psychiatric institution as quickly as possible, and getting
Speaker 1: them out of the goddamned House of Representatives before it's
Speaker 1: too late. It is Clay Higgins or America. It is
Speaker 1: Clay Higgins and a fascist apartheid state in which every
Speaker 1: lie is truth as long as it is directed against
Speaker 1: someone who is not powerful or white, or the America
Speaker 1: we have spent two hundred and forty eight years trying
Speaker 1: to improve, even when white trash like Clay Higgins and
Speaker 1: those hiding their tolerance for bigotry behind tailored suits like
Speaker 1: Speaker Johnson, have tried to turn this country back to
Speaker 1: Jim Crow, to lynchings, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and an attitude
Speaker 1: that at its core amounts to this. My ancestors were
Speaker 1: allowed to come here and make my life possible, Yours
Speaker 1: are not. Why because I say so, If at any
Speaker 1: point between now and election day, you stop being enraged
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump and his fellow peddler of cultural heroine J. D. Vance,
Speaker 1: have let worser creatures like Clay Higgins crawl out of
Speaker 1: the woodwork. If you flag between now and then suck
Speaker 1: it up. The election of November fifth is as existential
Speaker 1: for this nation as was the Civil War, and many
Speaker 1: of the issues are unchanged from the Civil War, and
Speaker 1: the results must be identical. And by the way, the
Speaker 1: phrase cultural heroine to describe what Trump has done to America,
Speaker 1: that was coined in twenty sixteen by JD. Vance. As
Speaker 1: we await the amended Jack Smith filing in Washington, again
Speaker 1: we find ourselves on the subject of how far Trump
Speaker 1: is gone mentally. Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown this month.
Speaker 1: Yesterday Trump forgot he already admitted he lost the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election quote by a whisker, and then insisted, no, no,
Speaker 1: he didn't mean that. He was being sarcastic and cynical
Speaker 1: when he said whisker. And so he yesterday went back
Speaker 1: and again admitted that he lost the twenty twenty election
Speaker 1: by a whisker.
Speaker 2: More votes than any sitting president in the history of
Speaker 2: our country. But they beat us by a whisker. They
Speaker 2: beat us us by a little whisker.
Speaker 1: I am now waiting for somebody to ask drooling Jay
Speaker 1: Trump about the whisker and for him to say he
Speaker 1: was being sarcastic and cynical, so we can start this
Speaker 1: crap cycle all over again. Trump's new thing is that
Speaker 1: he has been targeted for assassination twice by Iran, that
Speaker 1: the assassination attempts were by Iran in some way. This
Speaker 1: is not entirely one of his hallucinations. He was apparently
Speaker 1: briefed on what Secretary of State Blincoln went public about yesterday,
Speaker 1: that Iran has targeted dozens of top US officials, including
Speaker 1: virtually everybody now in the White House and Trump, with
Speaker 1: assassination and hacking at everything else. Of course, to Trump,
Speaker 1: all the languages of the world, all spoken sounds sound
Speaker 1: like the teacher and the Charlie Brown specials, so all
Speaker 1: he would have heard, and that briefing was Trump Iran.
Speaker 1: Whoa whoa whoa whoa wow. And then of course Trump
Speaker 1: added the motive to this Iranian plot to kill him
Speaker 1: and only him. And they want to kill him because
Speaker 1: because of because of the furniture, because he's trying to
Speaker 1: bring back the furniture finishing business to Mint Hill in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. I bet even now you think I'm kidding
Speaker 1: about this one. I'm not kidding about this one.
Speaker 2: All of your furniture makers are going to come back
Speaker 2: and come back bigger and stronger and better than ever before.
Speaker 2: They're mostly gone. They're all coming back. This is why
Speaker 2: people in countries want to kill me. They're not happy
Speaker 2: with me. It is to say risky business. This is
Speaker 2: why they want to kill me. They only kill consequential presidents.
Speaker 1: Remember that, not at all insane. The Iranians want to
Speaker 1: kill him because he's bringing the furniture business back to
Speaker 1: North Carolina from Tehran. I guess because they only kill
Speaker 1: consequential presidents, the ones who restore America's furniture factories. He
Speaker 1: is trying to pre brag on himself in case they
Speaker 1: actually assassinate him. Oh, he's fine, He's out of his
Speaker 1: freaking gord. He continues to sound high as a kite,
Speaker 1: and in the video that accompanied what you just heard,
Speaker 1: his face looked like a box of melting candlesticks. But
Speaker 1: tell me again, Lindsey Graham, about why you don't think
Speaker 1: that if he's returned to office, He's still going to
Speaker 1: kill us all, including you. That day had begun just
Speaker 1: after Tuesday turned into Wednesday with the briefest, craziest, most
Speaker 1: harrowing Trump's social media post of all time. And I
Speaker 1: know I'm really saying something when I say that. At
Speaker 1: twelve twelve am Wednesday, Trump posted quote, a great day
Speaker 1: in Louisiana. He was in Georgia. That is perhaps why
Speaker 1: it was a great day in Louisiana. Meanwhile, what follows
Speaker 1: here was an actual surprise. Harris Faulkner of Fox News,
Speaker 1: dressed up like a cross between Angela Lansbury and the
Speaker 1: Manchurian candidate and a slightly cleaned up version of reach
Speaker 1: on He the anchor propagandist from North Korea Nightly News.
Speaker 1: Harris Faulkner explains to guests Congresswoman Nancy Mace that Trump
Speaker 1: was Let's just say that, according to what Harris Faulkner said,
Speaker 1: it appears we've all been carrying the lead these last
Speaker 1: twenty four hours.
Speaker 3: Why would anybody want to block information about the assassination
Speaker 3: of former President Trump?
Speaker 1: By the way, if I'm going to tell you, Harris
Speaker 1: Faulkner was dressed up like that North Korean news lady.
Speaker 1: In fairness, I had to tell you Nancy Mace was
Speaker 1: wearing a pearl necklace. No, a real one. Two national
Speaker 1: polls of note from yesterday, both head to head and
Speaker 1: full candidate slate by you gov for the economist Harris
Speaker 1: by three active vote for whatever active vote is worth,
Speaker 1: Harris by three. The swing states are all over the map.
Speaker 1: No pun intended Harris by three in Pennsylvania by Monmouth,
Speaker 1: or by two by Focal Data, or tied by RMG
Speaker 1: and SP and R. I'm imagining one of them's right,
Speaker 1: maybe of the most interest, maybe of the most interest.
Speaker 1: This week from the pollsters, survey USA has polled. Nebraska
Speaker 1: hasn't been done in a while. Districts one and three
Speaker 1: are Trump landslides District two. The blue dot is Harris
Speaker 1: by fifteen. There is no surprise there. It is the
Speaker 1: Nebraska Senate polling that is dumbfounding. Incumbent Republican Senator Fisher
Speaker 1: trails Independent Dan Osborne forty five forty four. The Republican
Speaker 1: is losing within the margin of error. For the Senate
Speaker 1: from Nebraska. Dan Osbourne is a steam fitter, a Navy Vet,
Speaker 1: a Union leader and a Democrat registered since twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: He is proving that the oldest of Republican tricks can
Speaker 1: work both ways. If and when your party affiliation is
Speaker 1: going to cost you a point or a vote, just
Speaker 1: pretend it never happened. Speaking of which, we swing back
Speaker 1: to that little shit Mike Johnson, who has ordered Ukrainian
Speaker 1: President Vladimir Zelensky to fire his ambassador, the Ukrainian Ambassador
Speaker 1: to the United States, because Zelensky went to the factory
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania where munitions for Ukraine have been manufactured. No seriously,
Speaker 1: little big man Mike thinks he runs two governments rather
Speaker 1: than you know none. The Republicans have now decided that
Speaker 1: the Zelenski factory visit was a campaign event and thus
Speaker 1: interference in the American election by Zelenski because Governor Josh
Speaker 1: Shapiro was at the factory too, and Shapiro was briefly
Speaker 1: a candidate to be Kamala Harris's running mate. No, seriously,
Speaker 1: Johnson is on firmer ground with Clay Higgins than he
Speaker 1: is with this one or with the other half of this.
Speaker 1: Johnson's little fat ass henchman, James Comer claims to be
Speaker 1: opening an investigation into Zolensky and the visit, and he
Speaker 1: wants the testimony of Merrick Garland and Lloyd Austin, and
Speaker 1: I don't know he wants Jesus to testify because, of
Speaker 1: course Trump is still pissed about that little favu he
Speaker 1: needed from Zelensky. Also, Comer has apparently decided that since
Speaker 1: his entire life has now become an utter failure because
Speaker 1: he never even took a vote on impeaching Biden as president,
Speaker 1: what the hell, maybe he can still try to impeach
Speaker 1: Zelenski as president. And yes, of course James Comer, Mike
Speaker 1: Johnson and Clay Higgins are not just congressional viruses with shoes.
Speaker 1: They all constitute part of Louisiana's Republican delegation. Squirt Louisiana,
Speaker 1: thank you for sending us your spoiled oysters. Also of
Speaker 1: interest here. Okay, the newsy RFK story may be petering out,
Speaker 1: but not before London's Daily Mail interviewed doctor Christina Irene Gillespie.
Speaker 1: And who is she? Well, we know this much about her.
Speaker 1: She had the dignity to tell the London Rag I
Speaker 1: am taking care of patients right now. Please don't call back.
Speaker 1: Oh if only all of us could have said something
Speaker 1: like that. An explanation is next. This is countdown.
Speaker 3: This is Countdown with Keith Olberman saw ahead of us
Speaker 3: on this edition to Countdown. I was watching the MSNBC
Speaker 3: promo campaign to advertise Kamala Harris's first interview last night. Oh,
Speaker 3: first one on one with somebody named Stephanie on a
Speaker 3: Wednesday at seven pm. But they're trying to make a
Speaker 3: count in the eight pm ratings by calling it the
Speaker 3: Chris Hayes Show. It's the first one of those.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like these endless, nauseating baseball desperate efforts
Speaker 1: to make clubs a thing showy Otani has seven triples,
Speaker 1: four cot stealings, and ten intentional walks. He's just become
Speaker 1: the first member of the seven four to ten club. Anyway,
Speaker 1: these advertisements made it dawn on me and knew that
Speaker 1: there was a prominent MSNBC anchor who twenty years ago
Speaker 1: was actively trying to destroy MSNBC and me and the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party on behalf of George W. Bush. And nobody
Speaker 1: even bats an Ie about what she's doing now. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't Joe Scarborough, the saga of the White House
Speaker 1: that couldn't spell straight. Next in Things I promised not
Speaker 1: to tell first, there are still more new idiots to
Speaker 1: talk about. The daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons
Speaker 1: and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today worst persons
Speaker 1: in the world. A preamble, there is no Newsy Nudes
Speaker 1: News network today, although The London Daily Mail managed to
Speaker 1: get a five word no comment from Newsy's former fiance's
Speaker 1: former wife, and that led me to figure out that
Speaker 1: relative to me, she is Are you ready? She is
Speaker 1: my ex girlfriends, x fiances because of my ex friends, sexts,
Speaker 1: ex wife a lot of exits. I also feel compelled
Speaker 1: to compliment The New York Post on turning Monday's accounty
Speaker 1: in this podcast into the first kind of fair, not cynical,
Speaker 1: not inaccurate story involving me in the Post in the
Speaker 1: last thirty years. They also spelled my name correctly roughly
Speaker 1: twenty five percent of the time in the piece, which
Speaker 1: I think is a new accuracy record for the Post.
Speaker 3: Bravo, sir.
Speaker 1: Anyway, the Bronze Worse Sheriff Bruce Sikowski of Portage County
Speaker 1: Ohio told you about Bruce previously. He's the guy with
Speaker 1: no neck and a bad rug who told voters there
Speaker 1: told them on his official sheriff's Facebook page to look
Speaker 1: for Kamala Harris campaign signs in yards in Portage County,
Speaker 1: Ohio and write down the addresses so that when the
Speaker 1: billions of the immigrants are sent to their Ohio towns
Speaker 1: to eat their I don't know what is the lie now,
Speaker 1: to eat their babies? What is it is? Is it fish?
Speaker 1: What is it? Anyway, right down their addresses so you
Speaker 1: can then send the migrants, or as Sheriff Zukowski called them,
Speaker 1: with his seventh grade education, the locust, to live at
Speaker 1: those houses. That was his excuse. Of course, writing down
Speaker 1: addresses of who is supporting the Democrat in a red
Speaker 1: county is stochastic terrorism. Well, God blessed the Elections Board
Speaker 1: of Portage County, Ohio. They, including one of the two Republicans,
Speaker 1: decided that Sheriff Zukowski was way over the line here.
Speaker 1: They have barred their own sheriff's office from providing the
Speaker 1: security during early voting, having determined that the mere sight
Speaker 1: of Zukowski's brown shirts may serve as an illegal form
Speaker 1: of electoral intimidation. They say they will borrow another county's
Speaker 1: officers or hire private security instead. The one member of
Speaker 1: the board who voted to keep the Nazis running the
Speaker 1: elections says, the real victims here are Zukowski's office, who
Speaker 1: committed no crime and blah blah blah blah blah. People
Speaker 1: were literally saying at a town meeting they were now
Speaker 1: afraid to vote because of what he posted. Zakowski should
Speaker 1: be rotting in prison for this, but I don't think
Speaker 1: we have the laws to put him there yet. The
Speaker 1: runner up worser, Jamie Diamond, CEO of JP Morgan and
Speaker 1: just as big a money grubbing swine as the founder
Speaker 1: of the firm, was quote, if you do not control
Speaker 1: the borders, you are going to destroy our country. Now
Speaker 1: that they are sending migrants into New York, he said
Speaker 1: on the Money is more important than Life Network CNBC.
Speaker 1: Now that they are sending migrants into New York, all
Speaker 1: my super liberal friends realize what a problem it is.
Speaker 1: Once again, I cherish my ancestors. I love the thought
Speaker 1: of my great great grandfather Frederick Olderman getting off the
Speaker 1: boat at Castle Garden in New York and opening up
Speaker 1: his blacksmith shop at forty sixth and Fifth in the
Speaker 1: year eighteen forty seven, and me maybe going back in
Speaker 1: time and telling him, look, Fred, never mind the blacksmith shop,
Speaker 1: try to buy this land right here. I love the
Speaker 1: fact that I am the end result of his courage.
Speaker 1: Lord knows I don't have his courage. Just the blessings
Speaker 1: Jamie Diamond. As the online commentator NYC Southpawd notes, Jamie
Speaker 1: Diamond dishonors his ancestors, quoting Jamie Diamond's paternal grandfather, Panos
Speaker 1: Papa Demetrio, immigrated from Greece to New York in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty one, the year a racist reaction against Southern and
Speaker 1: Eastern European immigration led to the Quota Act. So did
Speaker 1: Jamie Diamond's grandfather get into this country legally or illegally?
Speaker 1: Let's see the documents, Jamie. The last time we decided
Speaker 1: that we had to control the borders to keep immigrants
Speaker 1: skuf like Jamie Diamond's grandfather out. What happened?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: May your grandfather come back from the dead, Jamie, and
Speaker 1: drain your bank accounts and give all the money to
Speaker 1: the new immigrants who count not like you, mf R.
Speaker 1: But our winners the worst a tie between two senators
Speaker 1: we have thankfully disposed of, Joe Manchin of West Virginia
Speaker 1: and Kirsten Cinema of Arizona. And yes, if you are
Speaker 1: new to the podcast, I went out with her for
Speaker 1: a while too, and she and I also went to
Speaker 1: see Book of Mormon twice. And even I'm getting tired
Speaker 1: of this. And when I say tired, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: not tired at all. I mean, what's the phrase I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of laughing hysterically about all this. AnyWho, you've heard Manchin,
Speaker 1: who is a scumbag that we've all pretended to be
Speaker 1: nice to for twenty years because he occasionally voted with
Speaker 1: the Democrats in the Senate. He says he will not
Speaker 1: endorse Kamala Harris for president because she wants to eliminate
Speaker 1: the filibuster in order to enshrine Roe v. Wade in
Speaker 1: federal law. Now, setting aside for the moment the reality
Speaker 1: that this will probably increase Harris's vote count in West
Speaker 1: Virginia because they don't like Mansion there either, let's move
Speaker 1: on to his fellow theoretical constitutionalist idiot, Kirsten Cinema is
Speaker 1: a very different kind of person from Mansion. She's not
Speaker 1: really a moron. She's in fact exceedingly bright, but as
Speaker 1: they would say in baseball, she has reverse dunning. Krueger splits,
Speaker 1: she knows she's smart, but unlike most smart people who think, well,
Speaker 1: if I know this, lots of other people must know
Speaker 1: it too, she thinks she's not only the smartest one
Speaker 1: in the room, but the only smart one in the room. Sinny,
Speaker 1: responding to the plan to eliminate the philibuster quote to
Speaker 1: state the supremely obvious. Eliminating the filibuster to codify real
Speaker 1: V made also enable to future Congress to ban all
Speaker 1: aborich nahtan wide, Henny, what an absolutely terrible, short sighted idea.
Speaker 1: When is not dawned on Kirsten Because she is the
Speaker 1: smartest one in the room and the only one that's
Speaker 1: smart in the room. Rest of us are all idiots.
Speaker 1: What's not dawned on her is that her pals, the Republicans,
Speaker 1: they're not going to wait for Congress to ban all
Speaker 1: abortion nationwide. They're going to do it themselves. The next
Speaker 1: Republican president will do it himself. He'll probably send troops
Speaker 1: into the states that still permit abortion, and if he
Speaker 1: wants to make it all actually legal, if there's a
Speaker 1: Republican controlled Senate, he'll have them eliminate the filibuster or
Speaker 1: force an exception to it, like the exceptions to the
Speaker 1: filibuster have been forced roughly one hundred and fifty times
Speaker 1: in my lifetime alone. Idiots, Senator Joe Manchin and Senator
Speaker 1: Kirsten you self satisfied, unimaginative, smug ass clown cinema two
Speaker 1: days worst persons than the world. Finally to the number
Speaker 1: one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me
Speaker 1: and things I promised not to tell. And on Monday,
Speaker 1: May third, two thousand and four, my executive producer phoned
Speaker 1: me at home and said, we got Ambassador Joe Wilson.
Speaker 1: He'll be on the show tomorrow. Within hours, the communications
Speaker 1: office of the White House of George W. Bush began
Speaker 1: a desperate, ceaseless, tireless effort to send me one email
Speaker 1: with talking points about Ambassador Joe Wilson, which repeatedly hilariously
Speaker 1: failed to get through to me because none of them
Speaker 1: could spell my name correctly. By late in the evening
Speaker 1: of May third, and Throughout the morning of May the fourth,
Speaker 1: I got calls and forwarded emails from people throughout NBC
Speaker 1: who had received emails of their own from the Bush
Speaker 1: White House Communications Office, all of them with attachments addressed
Speaker 1: to Keith Oberman without the L, Keith Olberman with only
Speaker 1: one N, Kaieth Olberman Keith spelled wrong, and even Keith
Speaker 1: Oberman with a V. This was actually truly the first
Speaker 1: day I believed I was having an impact on the
Speaker 1: Bush White House, and also the first day I realized
Speaker 1: they were incredibly stupid. There democracy still had a slim chance.
Speaker 1: The Internet had been operating at more or less its
Speaker 1: present speed since about nineteen ninety seven or nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: My name was all over the Internet in articles about
Speaker 1: my news career, about my sports career, about my previous
Speaker 1: news career. There were articles I had written, there were
Speaker 1: books I had written, and these people who were trying
Speaker 1: to reshape the United States of America into a reactionary, conservative, cruel, xenophobic,
Speaker 1: semi authoritarian state were not smart enough to figure out
Speaker 1: how to spell my name, just so we know who
Speaker 1: we are talking about. By this point, Scott McClellan had
Speaker 1: succeeded the infamous Aary Fleischer as press secretary. His deputies
Speaker 1: were Dana Perino, who went from being the stupidest person
Speaker 1: ever to be White House Press secretary to being one
Speaker 1: of the stupidest persons ever to have a show on
Speaker 1: Fox News, Pamela is Stevens, who later wound up as
Speaker 1: a producer at CNN. Because political press people are exactly
Speaker 1: like unemployed football coaches or baseball managers who get TV
Speaker 1: jobs and then leave the TV jobs to go back
Speaker 1: onto the field. The communications director was named Dan Bartlett,
Speaker 1: and there was another communications person there named Nicole Wallace,
Speaker 1: who has somehow shaken off the stink of working for
Speaker 1: both George and Jeb Bush and is now considered a
Speaker 1: darling of MSNBC, even though her only true non fascist
Speaker 1: credential is she doesn't like Trump either. The crack White
Speaker 1: House media team representing the most powerful man in the world,
Speaker 1: the anxious and foreshadowing years after nine to eleven, and
Speaker 1: not one of them could even find anybody else who
Speaker 1: could spell my name, let alone spell it themselves. More
Speaker 1: on them in a moment, But I need to explain
Speaker 1: who Joe Wilson was if you don't know, and why
Speaker 1: he was so important. Long before Colin Powell confessed to
Speaker 1: Tim Russert that he had been lied to by the
Speaker 1: White House, and thus he himself had lied to the
Speaker 1: United Nations about Sadam Hussein's imaginary weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 1: Those were the excuses from Bush Cheney for dragging this
Speaker 1: country into an unnecessary and national soul destroying war in
Speaker 1: Iraq with lies and torture and scapegoating and suppression and brutality.
Speaker 1: Before that, there was Ambassador Joseph Charles Wilson fourth, and
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, after pressure from the White House,
Speaker 1: the CIA sent him back to the scene of his
Speaker 1: first diplomatic posting, the African nation of Niger to get
Speaker 1: proof for Bush that Saddam was trying to buy yellow
Speaker 1: cake uranium there to make nuclear bombses out of and
Speaker 1: Wilson quickly found out it was nonsense, and he reported
Speaker 1: back and the Bush White House promptly buried his findings
Speaker 1: and instead, in the two thousand and three State of
Speaker 1: the Union address just before he started bombing Iraq, George W.
Speaker 1: Bush said, the British government has learned that Sadam Hussein
Speaker 1: recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. It was
Speaker 1: and remains a complete lie, and war occurred because of it,
Speaker 1: and Joe Wilson called it a complete lie in an
Speaker 1: op ed in the New York Times on July sixth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. The Iraq War was still at
Speaker 1: this stage defined by Rah Rah, we're winning, but Sadam's
Speaker 1: WND and his biological weapons and his chemical weapons might
Speaker 1: be over the next hill. And you'd better not criticize
Speaker 1: what we're doing, or maybe you're a terrorist. Joe Wilson said.
Speaker 1: The emperor had no clothes in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: he was an American hero of the highest order. A
Speaker 1: week later, a Dick Cheney flunky named Scooter Libby and
Speaker 1: a Deputy Secretary of State named Armitage began a campaign
Speaker 1: to punish Joe Wilson and discredit him. They leaked to
Speaker 1: a dyspeptic and hate filled columnist named Robert Novak, who
Speaker 1: is now working in the Bureau in Hell, that Wilson's
Speaker 1: wife was an undercover agent for the CIA, and that
Speaker 1: her name was Valerie Plain, and that the pair of
Speaker 1: them were dirty Democrats. And moreover, it was Plain who
Speaker 1: had urged that her own husband be sent to Niger
Speaker 1: to deliberately not find the uranium or the Sadam Hussein
Speaker 1: signed receipts, or whatever Bush expected to find there. The
Speaker 1: Bush white House destroyed the career of risked the life
Speaker 1: of and ruined several assignments and contacts of one of
Speaker 1: this country's own secret CIA agents, just to make her
Speaker 1: husband look bad. So in May two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: when Joe Wilson wrote a book about all this crap,
Speaker 1: and he inexplicably wanted to go on MSNBC, which was
Speaker 1: still at that point trying to be more conservative than
Speaker 1: Fox Nudes, and wanted to go on My little watched show,
Speaker 1: which was considered the neutral outlier on a network full
Speaker 1: of Joe Scarboroughs and Michael Savage's. This was a happy
Speaker 1: surprise for us, which was followed by this wonderful, flailing
Speaker 1: effort by the Bush White House to send me talking
Speaker 1: points about Joe Wilson before I interviewed him. They not
Speaker 1: only could not spell my name, but they were utterly
Speaker 1: convinced that my interview was designed to discredit Joe Wilson.
Speaker 1: The talking points which eventually got to me from Assistant
Speaker 1: Press Secretary Pamela Stevens consisted of six items over two pages.
Speaker 1: The headings were as follows. One political motivation. This was
Speaker 1: about Wilson calling Dick Cheney a lying sob about a
Speaker 1: year after the knee jair trip. I couldn't figure this
Speaker 1: one out. Dick Cheney was a lying so b. That's
Speaker 1: how I got to be vice president. Two Gingrich spokesman
Speaker 1: calls allegations about alleged March two thousand and three meeting
Speaker 1: completely false. This cited Newt Gingrich and his people as
Speaker 1: if they were good sources, as opposed to the punchlines
Speaker 1: they already were back then. In two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: Talking point number three, McClellan points out political objective, and
Speaker 1: four McClellan addresses accusations. These were quotes from the press secretary.
Speaker 1: This man suddenly quit that job two years later two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, and confessed he had repeatedly lied for
Speaker 1: George W. Bush and the others, and now he just
Speaker 1: couldn't take it anymore, and he would come on my
Speaker 1: show and give one of the best Atonement interviews I've
Speaker 1: ever heard. It went on for forty five minutes. Five
Speaker 1: Fleischer says VP office did not request trip a quote
Speaker 1: from McLellan's predecessor, who unless he is talking about baseball,
Speaker 1: you should assume he's lying. Plus he might be lying
Speaker 1: about baseball. And finally, six statement by George J. Tennant
Speaker 1: July eleven, two thousand and three. This was a quote
Speaker 1: from the CIA director which they thought was their home run,
Speaker 1: and it basically consisted of this. Bush never saw that report.
Speaker 1: That was it. There are three punchlines to this story.
Speaker 1: Number one. I don't know why the Bush Communications office
Speaker 1: assumed I was there to take down Joe Wilson, But
Speaker 1: the moment I saw these talking points, any lingering doubt
Speaker 1: I had that they were not all lying bastards down
Speaker 1: there was erased. I used the talking points in my interview,
Speaker 1: all right. I read them out loud to Joe Wilson,
Speaker 1: and he rebutted each of them with impeccable charm and elegance.
Speaker 1: He and Valerie Plain became regular guests on My show
Speaker 1: and would beat the crap out of George Bush with
Speaker 1: the plom right through the morning of January twenty, two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. Second punchline a year earlier, a supply
Speaker 1: clerk with a maintenance company on the ground in Iraq,
Speaker 1: was captured Private Jessica Lynch. The military and the Bush
Speaker 1: administration immediately put out the story that she was being
Speaker 1: tortured by them evil Iraqi Sadam Hussein doctors. There was
Speaker 1: the glorious rescue of Jessica Lynch which followed, and the
Speaker 1: parades and the you better not question this story period,
Speaker 1: which lasted about six weeks until a Toronto newspaper printed
Speaker 1: a substantially different account that Lynch was rescued from an
Speaker 1: Iraqi hospital and a US military team in good faith
Speaker 1: went in to extract her, but that this was all arranged,
Speaker 1: not by some sort of part of intelligence or US
Speaker 1: operations or the Allies, but by the Iraqi doctors. Some
Speaker 1: of them sneaked over to American lines at great danger
Speaker 1: and said, one of your soldiers is hurt and we
Speaker 1: don't have the right equipment to help her. Could you
Speaker 1: swing by and pick her up. I reported that version
Speaker 1: on MSNBC, and the next day, as I was still
Speaker 1: taking my coat off, my boss, Phil Griffin called me
Speaker 1: in and said that the head of NBC News and
Speaker 1: the president of NBC, Bob Wright, had been on the
Speaker 1: phone all morning to him, insisting I should be fired
Speaker 1: for implying that the Bush administration had lied. Griffin proudly
Speaker 1: said he had talked him into letting me get away
Speaker 1: with just apologizing to the troops. I can't even read
Speaker 1: this with a straight face now, twenty years later, apologizing
Speaker 1: to the troops who rescued her, I must credit myself
Speaker 1: when my brain was fulled in that I did some
Speaker 1: quick thinking. The demand was comical nonsense journalistically. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, if I agreed to apologize to okay, the
Speaker 1: troops who rescued her, whoever you want, I would get
Speaker 1: the chance to tell the whole real story of Jessica
Speaker 1: Lynch again. So I did. The apology was fifteen seconds,
Speaker 1: and while unnecessary, was sincere. I didn't want to make
Speaker 1: the troops look bad. They didn't know anything about this crap.
Speaker 1: I made sure, however, that the retelling of the true
Speaker 1: Lynch rescue story took about two and a half minutes.
Speaker 1: That was in June of two thousand and three. So
Speaker 1: why as of May of two thousand and four, the
Speaker 1: Bush White House thought I was sympathetic to them, I'll
Speaker 1: never know, or why they bothered with me, I'll never know,
Speaker 1: which brings me to the last point. The unintended side
Speaker 1: effect with the long term impact of all those failed
Speaker 1: White House emails with my name misspelled was that this
Speaker 1: Pamelas Stevens person promptly forwarded them to people around NBC
Speaker 1: whom she considered friendly to George W. Bush. One of
Speaker 1: them was Tom Brokaw's assistant, another was in the office
Speaker 1: of future NBC News president Steve Cappus, and the final
Speaker 1: one was to some guy named George Uribe. And so
Speaker 1: I found about all the people in the Bush administrations
Speaker 1: we like them, list at NBC News who I should
Speaker 1: avoid under all circumstances. Let's see Brokaw's assistance. So no Brokaw,
Speaker 1: somebody in Cappus's office, and no Cappus, and this guy
Speaker 1: George Ribey. And George Rebay turned out to be a
Speaker 1: guy hired by MSNBC from Fox News to go work
Speaker 1: for Scarborough. He fell out of favor with Joe Scarborough,
Speaker 1: and I guess he didn't henchman enough for Joe's tastes,
Speaker 1: and his influence fell to a guy. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've mentioned him to you yet, Chris Licked. I've done
Speaker 1: all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: We're now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly
Speaker 1: just after midnight Eastern. Once again, there is a Monday Countdown.
Speaker 1: Please forward this podcast to a non listener who should
Speaker 1: start listening, and start listening now. Brian Ray and John
Speaker 1: Phillip Shaneil, the musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced, and
Speaker 1: performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards.
Speaker 1: Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums. It was
Speaker 1: produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
Speaker 1: are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
Speaker 1: The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
Speaker 1: written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other
Speaker 1: music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.
Speaker 1: My announcer today was my friend Nancy Faust. Everything else
Speaker 1: was as usual, pretty much my fault. That's countdown for today.
Speaker 1: Five weeks and five days until the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: presidential election and the one three hundred and sixtieth day
Speaker 1: since convicted felon drooling Jay Trump's first attempted coup against
Speaker 1: the democratically elected government of the United States, use the election,
Speaker 1: use the mental health system, use presidential immunity if we
Speaker 1: have to, to keep him from doing it again while
Speaker 1: we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow Bolton's,
Speaker 1: as the news requires. Till then, I'm Keith Oldremman. Good morning,
Speaker 1: good afternoon, goodnight, I miss the post, and good luck.
Speaker 2: They only kill consequential presidents. Remember that.
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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