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Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Foreshadowing

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Speaker 1: indictment foreshadowing quote, this is really bad news for Biden,

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Speaker 1: Trump wrote last night, though not really no quote, which

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Speaker 1: means I will probably be indicted again soon unquote. Do

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Speaker 1: you like that foreshadowing or how about this foreshadowing? Fannie

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Speaker 1: Willis sends an email to county commissioners asking them to

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Speaker 1: make sure they keep themselves and their staff safe and

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Speaker 1: orange security barriers have gone up around the Fulton County courthouse,

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Speaker 1: and yesterday was the first of ten days before August eighteenth,

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Speaker 1: when she ordered seventy percent of her staff to work remotely.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what could all that possibly mean. Willis

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Speaker 1: gave a TV interview quote, the work is accomplished. We've

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Speaker 1: been working for two and a half years. We're ready

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Speaker 1: to go. Unquote. I wish the district attorney would not

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Speaker 1: be so bloody evasive. The judge, the same judge, Robert McBurney,

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Speaker 1: like they only have the one in all of Georgia.

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Speaker 1: McBurney tossed the last Trump attempt to toss the evidence

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Speaker 1: yesterday and to disqualify the DA yesterday, and the untossed

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Speaker 1: DA also says her schedule is her schedule two grand juries.

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Speaker 1: Neither meets on Wednesday, and in the same interview quote,

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Speaker 1: I don't know what Jack Smith is doing, and Jack

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Speaker 1: Smith doesn't know what I'm doing. In all honesty, if

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Speaker 1: Jack Smith was standing next to me, I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: I would know who he was. My guess is he

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Speaker 1: probably can't pronounce my name correctly. Unquote. We can skip

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Speaker 1: for a moment the reality that it is essential that

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Speaker 1: the two of them do know what the other is doing,

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Speaker 1: if only after they announce what they are doing, because

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Speaker 1: simultaneous trials not only have their own perils and pitfalls,

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Speaker 1: but twin trials carry the danger that Georgia might assert

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Speaker 1: one fact or one date or one timeline and be

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Speaker 1: contradicted by what the Department of Justice is asserting, which

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Speaker 1: could be fatal for both cases. We now go back

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Speaker 1: to the DOJ, and there is still that January sixth

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Speaker 1: target letter from Jack Smith hanging like the sword of

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Speaker 1: Damocles over Trump's head. And the fact that if Smith

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Speaker 1: sticks to a timeline that matches the document's case, he

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Speaker 1: is indicting today or Thursday at the latest. And the

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Speaker 1: fact that his Trump January sixth Grand Jury was expected

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Speaker 1: to convene today, and while Trump's latest self pitying post,

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Speaker 1: which would be number three million, four, one hundred and

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Speaker 1: forty seven, two hundred and thirty seven collect the whole series,

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Speaker 1: this latest post is not necessarily time sensitive. It sure

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Speaker 1: is funny if he already knew from his attorneys that

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Speaker 1: the indictments are coming tomorrow or Thursday, and instead of

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Speaker 1: just revealing it like he did last time, he's milking

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Speaker 1: it this way in order to further feed the fascist

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Speaker 1: storyline that the entire prosecution of Trump is being made

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Speaker 1: up as they go along, and being made up in

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Speaker 1: just a matter of hours for one reason only, namely,

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Speaker 1: as Trump also posted last night in order to kill

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Speaker 1: the news cycle. Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. I mean,

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Speaker 1: what does Trump think his supporters are idiots? Yes, he

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Speaker 1: thinks they're idiots, and that's largely because they're idiots. You

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Speaker 1: doubtless saw the interior numbers on the latest New York

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Speaker 1: Times GOP poll, which were far more important than the

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Speaker 1: exterior ones about how much he's leading DeSantis by because

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Speaker 1: the interior numbers shows ninety one percent of Republicans who

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Speaker 1: rely on Fox do not think Trump committed any serious crimes.

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Speaker 1: Ninety one percent and eighty five percent say Republicans must

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Speaker 1: stand behind Trump regardless, and eighty three percent say Trump

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Speaker 1: was merely exercising his right to contest his twenty twenty loss.

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Speaker 1: And it's just too bad nobody was ever out there

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five years ago saying Fox News and Rupert

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Speaker 1: Murdoch would end democracy and kill us all, and the

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Speaker 1: uninfected portions of American media and the public had to

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Speaker 1: do everything we could to kill Fox News first. Oh yeah, right,

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Speaker 1: I did all that and got dismissed as the O'Reilly

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Speaker 1: of the left. And I was only doing it for ratings.

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Speaker 1: And my tendency to say I told you so only

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Speaker 1: in many, many, many more words is perhaps my least

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Speaker 1: attractive personality. Trait especially went up to half the nation

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Speaker 1: has literally succumbed to this mass hysteria in which no

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Speaker 1: fact or reality can interrupt their loyalty to an authoritarian,

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Speaker 1: anti democracy movement. And they believe that those of us

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Speaker 1: who will not simply get out of their imposition of

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Speaker 1: their own hallucination, we must somehow be removed from the equation.

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Speaker 1: And this is unfolding on the eve of the election

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Speaker 1: that will decide who is president during what is probably

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Speaker 1: mankind's last window to regain the rains of the uncontrolled

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Speaker 1: climate catastrophe, and the fascists literally have a thoroughly vetted

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Speaker 1: and organized plan to roll back all environmental controls and

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Speaker 1: actually burn more fossil fuels as part of their Project

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. Under the circumstances, I'll try to keep

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Speaker 1: the eye told you so as to a minimum. Also,

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Speaker 1: I will try not to either try to solve nor

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Speaker 1: to utterly succumb to the climate emergency during a podcast,

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Speaker 1: and instead he Marcus Aurelius and his wise words and

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Speaker 1: concentrate on doing that which is in front of us,

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Speaker 1: and that would be right now. This guy di Olivierira

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Speaker 1: and the postponement of his actual indictment yesterday because he

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Speaker 1: doesn't have a Florida lawyer just like the last guy,

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Speaker 1: add another week's delay to the Trump documents trial schedule.

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Speaker 1: Aileen the Olivera does have a Trump pack attorney named

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Speaker 1: John Irving, and thus Carlos the Boss wants the server deleted.

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Speaker 1: The Olivera lives in as my childhood friend Will Bunch

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Speaker 1: of the Philly Inquirer noted he lives in the world

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Speaker 1: according to Trump, This latest of Trump's countless victims. You

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Speaker 1: ft up, you trusted, U might scare the hell out

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Speaker 1: of Trump because if he flips the way the IT

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Speaker 1: manager you Seal Taveres flipped. Trump can't beat the obstruction

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Speaker 1: of justice rap cannot. But legal minds think the fact

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Speaker 1: that he's already been indicted makes him a less likely flippy,

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Speaker 1: because how does that look when he testifies for the

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Speaker 1: prosecution and the defense says, aren't you simply saying what

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Speaker 1: the special counsel told you to say? Because he indicted you,

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Speaker 1: then he dropped the charges, so you're not going to jail.

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Speaker 1: There was one other minor news blip last night. CNN

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Speaker 1: reported that a new court filing from Jack Smith's office

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Speaker 1: confirms that it has obtained new security video that pertains

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Speaker 1: to the effort to destroy evidence, and that is all

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Speaker 1: it reveals. We don't know what it is, just that

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Speaker 1: they got it after the last set of indictments. It'd

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Speaker 1: be video of di Olivera and Walt Nauda carrying bankers

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Speaker 1: boxes on their backs, would be video of the Evanna burial.

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Speaker 1: We don't know of much more interest. The federal election

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Speaker 1: campaign filings were due yesterday, and the Ethics Outfit Crew

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Speaker 1: analyzed the one submitted by the Trump Leadership Pack, which

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Speaker 1: is sarcastically named Save America. It finds the pack made

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Speaker 1: three payments to political allies, which is what a leadership

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Speaker 1: pack of any stripe is supposed to do. Three. It

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Speaker 1: made just a few more payments to Trump's lawyers, one

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty nine of them. The money figure is unclear,

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Speaker 1: could be twenty million, could be forty million, as originally reported.

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Speaker 1: The fact that Save America is now Save Trump's ass

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Speaker 1: with lawyers that is not unclear. Three payments to political allies,

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Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty nine of them to Trump's lawyers.

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Speaker 1: When news broke that Trump's campaign is actually short enough

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Speaker 1: on cash that that pack asked for sixty million dollars

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Speaker 1: back from another pro Trump pack. I have joked here

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Speaker 1: that if we can't put Trump in jail before the

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty four election, maybe Jack Smith and Fannie Willis

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Speaker 1: and Alvin Bragg can bill him into the ground. Those

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Speaker 1: lawyer hours can mount up quickly, even if other people

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Speaker 1: are paying for twenty million forty million eight hundred and

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Speaker 1: seventy five eleventy billion. It does hurt you because it

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Speaker 1: means that those same other people are not paying that

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Speaker 1: amount of money into your campaign. What if Trump or

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Speaker 1: his campaign or both really, really, really had money troubles.

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Speaker 1: This was posited seriously on Twitter yesterday, And as I

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Speaker 1: say that, I am thinking you have become everything you hate,

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Speaker 1: you are this close to saying that you read something

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Speaker 1: on Facebook from Trump's cousins, nephew's next door neighbor, entamer

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Speaker 1: But there is no mistaking than as devoted as Trump

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Speaker 1: has been to never letting a dollar go unspent as

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Speaker 1: long as it is your dollar, the legal bills are

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Speaker 1: mounting exponentially now and having your pack ask for your

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Speaker 1: money back from the other packs cannot be an ordinary

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Speaker 1: day at the campaign. God knows Trump has gone bankrupt before,

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Speaker 1: and his life has been structured exactly to project wealth,

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Speaker 1: whether or not he actually has any, and everybody I

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Speaker 1: actually have known in forty years of knowing Trump who

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Speaker 1: knows him better, has always insisted that he guarded the

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Speaker 1: tax returns so jealously because they would prove he was

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Speaker 1: nowhere close to being a billionaire, and perhaps only barely

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Speaker 1: into nine figures. This on Twitter was the thesis that

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Speaker 1: what Trump is is poor, that he could be telling

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Speaker 1: the truth about his net worth without revealing that. As

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Speaker 1: the writer put it, his businesses are worth a lot

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Speaker 1: of money, but they don't make a lot of money.

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Speaker 1: Some don't make any money at all. And that is

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Speaker 1: one hundred percent provably true. The writer was a man

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Speaker 1: named Brian Jacobson, a self announced veteran of twenty five

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Speaker 1: years in the tech sector and the cloud expert, and

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Speaker 1: also a second Amendment advocate. So I ain't just echoing

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Speaker 1: an opinion from our side of the cognitive gap here.

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Speaker 1: It is this Jacobson's contention that quote truth social is

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Speaker 1: killing Donald Trump's finances and may sink his presidential bid.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure about the second part of that, but

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Speaker 1: the first part may really be true. The idea he

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Speaker 1: posits was to launch that social media site, grab all

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Speaker 1: the Twitter users angry at Jack Dorsey's successors, and then

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Speaker 1: take it public and let stockholders fund it via the

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Speaker 1: merger with the Digital World acquisition company, the merger that

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Speaker 1: just fell through, the merger which government agencies are now querying. Instead.

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk bought Twitter turned it into what it has become,

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Speaker 1: the playpen of the clouds. Truth Social got half the

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Speaker 1: users it expected or less, the merger collapsed, and instead

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Speaker 1: of getting a check for up to half a billion dollars,

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Speaker 1: Trump winds up still owning ninety percent of truth Social

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Speaker 1: himself and paying all of its operating expenses. And what

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Speaker 1: are they fifty million, thirty million? Who knows how much

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Speaker 1: it is mister Jacobson's conclusion that this means Trump suddenly

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Speaker 1: has a little less than the five hundred million Trump

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Speaker 1: owned dollars with which to self finance his campaign, or

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Speaker 1: his legal defense or di Olivera's legal defense, or all

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Speaker 1: of the above. No cash flow, just bills, bills, bills

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Speaker 1: from lawyer about Jack Smith and lawyers about Fannie Willis,

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Speaker 1: and lawyer is about Alvin Bragg and lawyers about truth

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Speaker 1: Social and this merger that went belly up. Jacobson then

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Speaker 1: jumps to the rather startling conclusion, which is where I

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Speaker 1: seem to be getting off the train here, that Trump

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Speaker 1: will either have to get a huge amount of money

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Speaker 1: from this legal defense fund he is just starting, or

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Speaker 1: he will be faced with folding truth Social or bowing

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Speaker 1: out of the presidential race, and I think that's farcical.

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Speaker 1: Trump is not smart enough to do either, and he's

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Speaker 1: congenitally incapable of admitting defeat either in social media business

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Speaker 1: or in a presidential candidacy that, oh, by the way,

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Speaker 1: is literally necessary to keep his own ass out of jail.

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Speaker 1: But what is absolutely logical and legit is that the

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Speaker 1: truth social gambit may seriously hamstring Trump's ability to keep

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Speaker 1: money flowing into his legal defenses and into his campaign simultaneously.

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Speaker 1: And then my guest would be, no, he's not going

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Speaker 1: to drop out. He would simply try to campaign with

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Speaker 1: less money than this extraordinary attempt to extricate himself from

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Speaker 1: jail and put all the rest of us in it

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Speaker 1: in his place. We'll need plus ultimately. Even if the

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Speaker 1: theory is crap, the bottom line is Jacobson's theory is

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Speaker 1: absolutely delightful, and it's worth wallowing in for a moment because, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is true. And I hadn't thought about this before.

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump's social media ambitions and his personal finances and

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Speaker 1: to some degree fatal or trivial, have been seriously damaged

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Speaker 1: by Elon Musk Let them fight. Also, of interest, here

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Speaker 1: did I mention this is the anniversary of the podcast

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Speaker 1: a year ago today, and I said it would never last.

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Speaker 1: We will do minimal celebrations meantime, if you are a

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Speaker 1: Republican member of Congress and something messy involving you unfolds

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Speaker 1: at a public event, and your office then finds it

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Speaker 1: unavoidably necessary several days later to issue a statement that

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Speaker 1: refers to the police getting involved, and in that statement,

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Speaker 1: your office also finds it unavoidably necessary to insist that

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Speaker 1: the congressman quote was not drinking. Guess what literally or metaphorically, you, sir,

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Speaker 1: have a drinking problem. That's next? This is countdown? Is countdown?

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Speaker 1: Keith Alboman postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates,

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Speaker 1: some snark, some predictions, date line, White Deer, Texas. His

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Speaker 1: office now admits that Congressman Ronnie Jackson, the disgraced former

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Speaker 1: White House physician and withdrawn Trump candidate to run the VA,

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Speaker 1: was quote briefly detained by law enforcement at a rodeo

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Speaker 1: outside Amarillo, Texas, Saturday night. The office insists Jackson had

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Speaker 1: been summoned to help a fifteen year old girl having

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Speaker 1: some sort of medical emergency, and somehow it was so

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Speaker 1: noisy that the cops grabbed him. Then comes this remarkable statement.

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Speaker 1: Jackson was sitting the office says quote, in the stands

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Speaker 1: during the entire rodeo, in full view of the assembled crowd,

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Speaker 1: and was not drinking unquote. All you need to know

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Speaker 1: about Ronnie Jackson is contained in the reality that his

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Speaker 1: office needed to put out a statement saying he was

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Speaker 1: not drinking as the police detained him as he put

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Speaker 1: his hands on a fifteen year old girl at a rodeo. Also,

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Speaker 1: if Ronnie Jackson has not been drinking, watch out the

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Speaker 1: Texas economy is about to collapse. Thank you, Nancy Faust.

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Speaker 1: Dateline San Francisco. The giant glowing X sign has been

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Speaker 1: taken off the roof of Twitter headquarters. Looks like it

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Speaker 1: was an inside job rather than the city stepping in.

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Speaker 1: If only Musk himself could be removed so easily. Dateline

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Speaker 1: Colorado Springs Space Command will remain in Colorado. The Biden

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Speaker 1: administration overturning a January twenty twenty one Trump decision to

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Speaker 1: move it to Alabama. The good news is this really

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Speaker 1: pisses off Senator Tommy Tuberville. The bad news is this

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Speaker 1: lets Lauren Bobert claim she made it happen and Dateline Washington,

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Speaker 1: this will stun you. After the FEC filings yesterday, it

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Speaker 1: turns out Robert F. Kennedy Junior's presidential superpack raised nine million,

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Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand dollars through the end of June, five

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Speaker 1: million of which more than fifty percent was from one donor,

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Speaker 1: Timothy Mellon, eighty one year old heir to the banking

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Speaker 1: fortune and longtime Trump donor. So RFK Junior is running

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Speaker 1: as a Democrat financed by a Republican when in fact

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Speaker 1: he is actually an asshole. Still ahead on the first

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Speaker 1: anniversary edition countdown, we will go back to episode one

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Speaker 1: because you can't do that yourself. It's not like episode

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Speaker 1: one is still online anywhere. Oh right, it is what

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Speaker 1: the hell? First time for the daily roundup of misgrants,

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Speaker 1: morons and the Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's

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Speaker 1: worst persons in the world. The Bronze Musk again he

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Speaker 1: is threatening the Bill O'Reilly record, which has stood since

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Speaker 1: two thousand and five. Musk is a free speech absolutist,

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Speaker 1: as you know, and what that means is he's a

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Speaker 1: free hate speech absolutist. Musk is now threatening to sue

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Speaker 1: the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the nonprofit that tracks

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Speaker 1: hate speech online, for quote a series of troubling and

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Speaker 1: baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally and

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Speaker 1: its digital advertising business specifically. Unquote. First of all, please

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Speaker 1: it's x. It's not called Twitter. You think Musk would

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Speaker 1: know that. Secondly, Musk has spent the entirety of his

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Speaker 1: time owning that site trying to find out who is

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Speaker 1: destroying its reputation. We need to start a gofund me

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Speaker 1: to buy elon amirror. I think you'll show up in

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Speaker 1: a mirror. The runner up, Ron DeSantis, remember him, mister

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Speaker 1: Woki Finocchi Swamp Remember his fanboy magazine editor and Tucker

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Speaker 1: Carlson Darling Pedro Gonzalez and then Breitbart produced a series

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Speaker 1: of anti semitic text messages by Pedro Gonzalez and other

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Speaker 1: DeSantis supporters, including his unofficial magazine, The Florida Standard, rallied

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Speaker 1: to support Gonzales. Turned out, there were even more Gonzales

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Speaker 1: anti semitic text messages published by the right wing Washington

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Speaker 1: Free Beacon, in which Gonzales laments that Nancy Pelosi quote

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Speaker 1: can't be criticized because she is Jewish. Yeah, this is

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Speaker 1: one of those not that's smart anti Semites, waiting for

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Speaker 1: reaction from DeSantis if he can find his mouth with

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Speaker 1: both hands. But our winner, Congressman Derek van Orden of Wisconsin,

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Speaker 1: you heard about this right last week. A group of

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Speaker 1: sixteen and seventeen year old Senate pages, on their last

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Speaker 1: night in the Capitol, took photos of the place, and

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Speaker 1: some apparently got down on the floor to grab images

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Speaker 1: of the magnificent ceiling with their iPhones, which is when

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Speaker 1: Van Orden, in whose office the same night, passers by

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Speaker 1: photographed a significant amount of alcohol in bottles. Van Orden

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Speaker 1: approached the group and started swearing at the sixteen and

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Speaker 1: seventeen year old kids, what the f are you all doing?

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Speaker 1: Get the f out of here. You are defiling the space,

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Speaker 1: you pieces of s Who the f are you? They

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Speaker 1: told him, I don't give an f who you are.

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Speaker 1: Get out. Condemned by Democratic leaders and Republican leaders and

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Speaker 1: Senate leaders and House leaders, this Van Orden schmuck down.

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Speaker 1: He not only insisted the pages were treating the Capitol

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Speaker 1: quote like a fratthouse common room, he told a Milwaukee

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Speaker 1: paper that they were quote terribly disrespectful to lay on

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Speaker 1: the grave of a soldier that died fighting for freedom. Yeah, Congressman,

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Speaker 1: and I use the term loosely. Even in this day

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Speaker 1: and age. There are no graves in the US Capital.

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Speaker 1: You're thinking of the tomb of the unknown soldier Van Orden,

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Speaker 1: or you're thinking of Jack Daniels, or they taught it

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Speaker 1: at Excelsior College where you got your degree online. But this,

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Speaker 1: of course gets worse. Turns out that while Van Orden

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Speaker 1: was running for that house seat, he went into a

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Speaker 1: Wisconsin library and he went nuts over a display of

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Speaker 1: books on LGBTQ topics during Pride month. He started shoving

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Speaker 1: the books and he lit into what he assumed, I

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Speaker 1: guess was a library stafford, but was, guess what, a

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Speaker 1: seventy old girl, another teenager who was a library page

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Speaker 1: another page. So this Van Orden is not only a

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Speaker 1: historical ignoramus who thinks somebody is buried under the floor

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Speaker 1: of the Capitol, but he's a fifty three year old

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Speaker 1: man who has a habit of picking on teenage girls.

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Speaker 1: And there's an even bigger issue. Van Orden continues to

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Speaker 1: believe he is in the right here because the pages

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Speaker 1: were quote unquote defiling the capitol. Van Orden was in

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Speaker 1: Washington on January sixth, attended the Trump rally and then

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Speaker 1: went to the Capitol and he thinks somebody else defiled it, Derek.

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Speaker 1: The only thing buried at the Capitol is your empties,

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Speaker 1: Van Orden. Two Day's worse Parsonden.

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Speaker 2: And did I mention it was the anniversary of the podcast?

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Speaker 1: I can't remember. Have I brought that up at all?

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Speaker 1: I've always thought anniversaries were overdone things, but they do

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Speaker 1: provide excuses for assessment and calculation and milestones. And the

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Speaker 1: month we started, I think we were shy of six

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand downloads, which was still a pretty good start,

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Speaker 1: but not really near the threshold for success in one

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Speaker 1: of these podcasts, which is a million a month. Well

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Speaker 1: we hit that mark in January. Now with the addition

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Speaker 1: of the YouTube option, which is itself getting between one

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Speaker 1: hundred and twenty and one hundred and fifty thousand plays

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Speaker 1: a week. I mean, you guys listening to all or

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Speaker 1: most of the show, even though the the video on

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Speaker 1: YouTube is just a cartoon of me. I know, cartoon

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Speaker 1: of me. That phrase sometimes seems a little redundant. That

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Speaker 1: is pretty remarkable all things considered. Well, anyway, between YouTube

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Speaker 1: and all the podcast options for the month just passed,

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Speaker 1: we exceeded two million downloads and plays in one month,

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Speaker 1: and there were only eighteen new shows. I actually took

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Speaker 1: four days off for a change. Okay, enough boasting for

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Speaker 1: the moment. One of the many odd things about podcasts,

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Speaker 1: maybe the oddest is the reality that people do best

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Speaker 1: of podcasts even though all the originals are, as I

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Speaker 1: alluded to a segment ago, still online somewhere. I did

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Speaker 1: a few of these early on, and I may still

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Speaker 1: do some more, but at least when I do them,

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Speaker 1: I try to give you a little added value. I

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Speaker 1: stitched together thematically three segments, so you get three pieces

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Speaker 1: about that Trump is national security risk, or Biden confronting

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Speaker 1: MAGA or whatever the Supreme Court, and there is some

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Speaker 1: value in being able to hear shorter versions of the

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Speaker 1: commentaries as they happened in real time and trace a

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Speaker 1: story as it develops. Well, rather than do that for

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Speaker 1: this anniversary, I thought the simplest thing was to take

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Speaker 1: the first episode from a year ago, when the same

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Speaker 1: day audience was like forty percent of what it is

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Speaker 1: now and at least there's a chance people had not

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Speaker 1: heard this before, and replay the opening commentary, which was

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Speaker 1: a takeoff on the mad as Hell speech from Network,

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Speaker 1: and the closing commentary, which explained where the hell I

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Speaker 1: had been for the preceding two years. As always, if

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Speaker 1: you hit stop now, I'm not going to take it personally.

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Speaker 1: So those bastards who hit stop earlier, they're the ones

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Speaker 1: who frost my beer Stein. Where were you and what

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Speaker 1: were you doing on August one, twenty twenty two when

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Speaker 1: you first heard this? This is countdown with Keith Olberman.

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Speaker 1: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody

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Speaker 1: knows things are bad. It's a recession. Everybody goes to work,

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Speaker 1: but they're still scared of losing their job. The corporations

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Speaker 1: make sure the dollar buys in Nicholsworth Banks are making

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Speaker 1: record profits. Teachers are told to keep a gun under

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Speaker 1: the desk. Punks are running wild in Congress, and there's

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Speaker 1: nobody anywhere seems to know what to do, and there's

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Speaker 1: no end to it. We know the air is unfit

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Speaker 1: to breathe and our planet will be unfit for life,

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Speaker 1: and we sit watching our TVs while some Fox newscaster

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Speaker 1: tells us that today Trump is the real victim and

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Speaker 1: minorities are the real problem. As if that's the way

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Speaker 1: it's supposed to be. We all know things are bad.

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Speaker 1: Worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is

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Speaker 1: going crazy. So we don't go out anymore. We have

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Speaker 1: the Senate in the house, but slowly the democracy we're

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Speaker 1: living and is getting smaller. And all we say is, please,

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Speaker 1: at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let

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Speaker 1: me have my president, my RBG shrine and my January

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Speaker 1: sixth hearings, and I won't say anything, Just leave us alone. Well,

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you

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Speaker 1: to get mad. I want you to protest. I want

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Speaker 1: you to strike. I want you to write to your congressman,

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Speaker 1: because you don't need me to tell you what to write.

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Speaker 1: You know what to do about the recession and the

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00:28:22,595 --> 00:28:25,035
Speaker 1: inflation and the Russians and the Nazis in the street.

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Speaker 1: All I know is first you've got to get mad.

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Speaker 1: You've got to say I'm a human being, God damage,

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Speaker 1: my life has value. So I want you to get

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Speaker 1: up now. I want all of you to get up

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Speaker 1: and out of your chairs. I want you to get

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Speaker 1: up right now and go to the window, open it

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Speaker 1: and stick your head out and yell, I'm as mad

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Speaker 1: as hell and I'm not gonna take Trump anymore. I

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Speaker 1: want you to get up right now, Get up, go

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Speaker 1: to your windows, open them, and stick your head out

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Speaker 1: and yell, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not

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Speaker 1: gonna take Trump anymore. Things have got to change. But

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Speaker 1: first you've got to get mad. You've got to say

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Speaker 1: I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take

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Speaker 1: Trump anymore. Then we'll figure out what to do about

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Speaker 1: the recession and the inflation and the oil cartels. But first,

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Speaker 1: get up out of your chairs, open your windows, stick

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Speaker 1: your head out, and yell and say it. I am

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Speaker 1: as mad as Helen, I'm not gonna take Trump anymore.

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Speaker 1: The lot as hell, we're gonna take Trump anymore. I

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Speaker 1: am mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take Trump anymore.

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Speaker 1: Who but sorry, couldn't resist. And for the first time

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Speaker 1: in my life, even through the brutal years of Reagan

427
00:29:36,115 --> 00:29:39,595
Speaker 1: and even through the psychotic years of Bush, that famous

428
00:29:39,595 --> 00:29:42,715
Speaker 1: Howard Beal speech from the nineteen seventy six movie Network

429
00:29:42,755 --> 00:29:46,595
Speaker 1: seems to fit this moment. With some revisions. Of course,

430
00:29:46,795 --> 00:29:50,395
Speaker 1: the Beal character as portrayed by Peter Finch, and especially

431
00:29:50,435 --> 00:29:53,995
Speaker 1: that speech, and especially that catchphrase I'm as mad as

432
00:29:54,035 --> 00:29:57,075
Speaker 1: hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore, spoke to

433
00:29:57,675 --> 00:30:02,235
Speaker 1: long before it became a cliche. This weird overlap between

434
00:30:02,275 --> 00:30:05,115
Speaker 1: somebody who is so enraged that he is angry mad

435
00:30:05,115 --> 00:30:09,355
Speaker 1: as hell, and somebody who may be so insane that

436
00:30:09,435 --> 00:30:12,875
Speaker 1: he is crazy mad as hell. But there's also a

437
00:30:12,915 --> 00:30:16,475
Speaker 1: third subtext to it, which only occasionally gets mentioned and

438
00:30:16,555 --> 00:30:19,715
Speaker 1: only occasionally gets appreciated, And it is why beal and

439
00:30:19,915 --> 00:30:24,435
Speaker 1: mad as hell means something today. It's that line towards

440
00:30:24,435 --> 00:30:26,835
Speaker 1: the start. We all know things are bad. Worse than bad,

441
00:30:26,875 --> 00:30:31,595
Speaker 1: they're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy. In short,

442
00:30:31,635 --> 00:30:34,995
Speaker 1: it's like Howard Beale, representing all of us, is going

443
00:30:35,075 --> 00:30:39,315
Speaker 1: crazy because nobody else is when they should be. If

444
00:30:39,355 --> 00:30:42,035
Speaker 1: in school you had read that one hundred years ago,

445
00:30:42,115 --> 00:30:44,355
Speaker 1: or one hundred and fifty years ago, or whenever a

446
00:30:44,395 --> 00:30:48,115
Speaker 1: president of the United States fraudulently denied he lost the

447
00:30:48,115 --> 00:30:50,875
Speaker 1: election and tried to overturn it in the courts and

448
00:30:50,915 --> 00:30:53,235
Speaker 1: in the Congress, and it didn't work because it was

449
00:30:53,275 --> 00:30:57,195
Speaker 1: one big lie. So he invited gangs of thugs and

450
00:30:57,315 --> 00:31:01,075
Speaker 1: racists and guns suckers and militias to come to the

451
00:31:01,115 --> 00:31:05,715
Speaker 1: Capitol during the most boasted about part of democracy, the

452
00:31:05,755 --> 00:31:09,355
Speaker 1: peaceful transfer of power, And having invited them, he then

453
00:31:09,475 --> 00:31:13,155
Speaker 1: incited them to try to overthrow the government by violence.

454
00:31:13,355 --> 00:31:16,035
Speaker 1: You would have expected to then have read about the

455
00:31:16,075 --> 00:31:19,435
Speaker 1: police and the military and the laws that stopped him,

456
00:31:19,715 --> 00:31:22,835
Speaker 1: and the arrests and the indictments and the lifetimes in

457
00:31:22,835 --> 00:31:28,475
Speaker 1: prison and the vengeance that followed. Hell, what precipitated the

458
00:31:28,515 --> 00:31:33,075
Speaker 1: Civil War? If not eleven states trying to stop the

459
00:31:33,075 --> 00:31:37,115
Speaker 1: peaceful transfer of power because they didn't like who got elected.

460
00:31:38,035 --> 00:31:41,755
Speaker 1: We are supposed to do something about this. When a

461
00:31:41,875 --> 00:31:45,955
Speaker 1: large minority of Americans stood up and said only whites

462
00:31:46,075 --> 00:31:49,275
Speaker 1: are real people, and when they said we will use

463
00:31:49,315 --> 00:31:52,355
Speaker 1: the police to lynch black people, and when they said

464
00:31:52,395 --> 00:31:54,875
Speaker 1: guns settle everything, and when they said women are here

465
00:31:54,915 --> 00:31:56,955
Speaker 1: only to breed, and when they said we own the

466
00:31:56,995 --> 00:31:59,395
Speaker 1: Supreme Court now, and when they said we will not

467
00:31:59,515 --> 00:32:01,715
Speaker 1: teach history because we don't want children to know there's

468
00:32:01,755 --> 00:32:04,235
Speaker 1: a more righteous way, and when they said this is

469
00:32:04,275 --> 00:32:07,515
Speaker 1: our world, and you the majority, your votes do not

470
00:32:07,755 --> 00:32:11,155
Speaker 1: count here, your cities do not count here. Your lives

471
00:32:11,195 --> 00:32:14,075
Speaker 1: do not count here. Your president does not count here.

472
00:32:15,395 --> 00:32:19,475
Speaker 1: When all that happened within thirty nine days, our anger

473
00:32:19,555 --> 00:32:25,315
Speaker 1: and our vengeance, democracies anger and vengeance began. It was

474
00:32:25,355 --> 00:32:30,635
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty one. But first you've got to get mad.

475
00:32:31,755 --> 00:32:34,955
Speaker 1: Today they have Trump and Schedule F and a plan

476
00:32:35,035 --> 00:32:40,955
Speaker 1: to impeach Biden for whatever. And they've already turned the

477
00:32:40,995 --> 00:32:45,955
Speaker 1: Supreme Court into the theocratic Republican Supreme Religious Court, and

478
00:32:45,995 --> 00:32:48,995
Speaker 1: they've overturned abortion, and next will be marriage equality. And

479
00:32:49,035 --> 00:32:52,755
Speaker 1: they intend to investigate the January sixth committee members and

480
00:32:52,875 --> 00:32:55,795
Speaker 1: pardon everybody who actually attacked the capital, even though you

481
00:32:55,875 --> 00:32:57,955
Speaker 1: and I grew up presuming you know, if I attacked

482
00:32:57,995 --> 00:33:02,795
Speaker 1: the capital during the peaceful transfer of power, I'm gonna

483
00:33:02,795 --> 00:33:05,675
Speaker 1: guess they'll give me about five seconds to stop before

484
00:33:05,835 --> 00:33:09,035
Speaker 1: they start shooting at me. And they want to put

485
00:33:09,075 --> 00:33:13,075
Speaker 1: Fauci in prison, and their passing laws prosecuting doctors and

486
00:33:13,195 --> 00:33:15,795
Speaker 1: prosecuting women who leave a state to go to another

487
00:33:15,835 --> 00:33:18,755
Speaker 1: state for an abortion. In other words, they want to

488
00:33:18,795 --> 00:33:22,955
Speaker 1: prosecute women who leave a slave state to go to

489
00:33:23,155 --> 00:33:28,235
Speaker 1: a free state and bring them back to the slave state.

490
00:33:29,355 --> 00:33:33,355
Speaker 1: And they have a Fox News and another worse Fox News,

491
00:33:33,515 --> 00:33:36,795
Speaker 1: and another worser even than that Fox News. And what

492
00:33:37,035 --> 00:33:42,835
Speaker 1: do we have? We have once a week somebody who

493
00:33:42,915 --> 00:33:46,755
Speaker 1: says we must find a compromise with them. We must

494
00:33:46,795 --> 00:33:50,515
Speaker 1: be bi partisan, We must be Democrats and liberals who

495
00:33:50,555 --> 00:33:56,155
Speaker 1: act like Republicans and fascists and Nazis. We have Joe Mansion,

496
00:33:57,315 --> 00:34:02,795
Speaker 1: And for eighteen months, Joe Mansion has obstructed all the

497
00:34:02,835 --> 00:34:06,355
Speaker 1: good Joe Biden has tried to do and prevented all

498
00:34:06,395 --> 00:34:08,915
Speaker 1: the emergency measures we must have to keep the last

499
00:34:08,955 --> 00:34:12,475
Speaker 1: words by the last humans surviving the climate catastrophe on

500
00:34:12,515 --> 00:34:16,315
Speaker 1: this planet. From being a chairman of Excellent Mobile, I

501
00:34:17,115 --> 00:34:21,555
Speaker 1: want to report record profits for the year e twenty

502
00:34:21,675 --> 00:34:27,155
Speaker 1: fifty two. And when the bribe for Joe Manchin, the

503
00:34:27,235 --> 00:34:32,395
Speaker 1: Senator from fossil fuel gulch West Virginia, is finally sufficient

504
00:34:32,475 --> 00:34:35,635
Speaker 1: to his liking and he finally agrees with Chuck Schumer

505
00:34:35,835 --> 00:34:38,395
Speaker 1: on the seven hundred and forty billion dollar Climate and

506
00:34:38,435 --> 00:34:41,915
Speaker 1: Deficit Reduction Bill, what does he get? He gets to

507
00:34:41,955 --> 00:34:46,875
Speaker 1: go on all five network Sunday political television Nitwit shows

508
00:34:47,315 --> 00:34:52,955
Speaker 1: the proverbial full Ginsburg Glory, Glory, Hallelujah. It's Joe Manchin,

509
00:34:53,315 --> 00:35:00,395
Speaker 1: our lawgiver, the true Democrat. And yet Kirsten Cinema could

510
00:35:00,435 --> 00:35:04,155
Speaker 1: still kill the thing today and Joe Manchin would then

511
00:35:04,355 --> 00:35:08,395
Speaker 1: still look reasonable. By contrast, tomorrow, he'd still be the

512
00:35:08,435 --> 00:35:14,675
Speaker 1: hero who achieved nothing, and of all that Cinema stuff

513
00:35:14,715 --> 00:35:19,635
Speaker 1: bothers you. I used to go out with her. We

514
00:35:19,715 --> 00:35:22,795
Speaker 1: all know things are bad. Worse than bad, They're crazy.

515
00:35:23,115 --> 00:35:29,075
Speaker 1: It's like everything everywhere has going crazy. Even the fascists

516
00:35:29,115 --> 00:35:32,315
Speaker 1: who hate or fear Trump have something closer to a

517
00:35:32,355 --> 00:35:37,155
Speaker 1: plan than we do. This town. Author Mark Leibovich quoted

518
00:35:37,195 --> 00:35:40,875
Speaker 1: a former Republican congressman is saying, quote, look, we have

519
00:35:40,995 --> 00:35:46,115
Speaker 1: no plan for this except sitting around hoping he dies, unquote,

520
00:35:46,675 --> 00:35:49,675
Speaker 1: which actually sounds like more of a plan than our plan.

521
00:35:50,275 --> 00:35:57,355
Speaker 1: Our plan make sure Democrats help the craziest Trump supporters

522
00:35:57,355 --> 00:36:01,715
Speaker 1: and election deniers. And it's not iqanon. It's just QAnon.

523
00:36:02,075 --> 00:36:07,115
Speaker 1: Nutbags get nominated because us. We're confident we can beat

524
00:36:07,235 --> 00:36:15,915
Speaker 1: them right right right this weekend, it will be nineteen

525
00:36:16,115 --> 00:36:20,795
Speaker 1: months since the coup. They have plans for more coups.

526
00:36:20,875 --> 00:36:22,915
Speaker 1: A coup in Washington, a coup in every state, a

527
00:36:22,955 --> 00:36:26,715
Speaker 1: coup in every county. Looks like they compromise the Secret Service,

528
00:36:26,755 --> 00:36:29,955
Speaker 1: and it's still compromised. Looks like they compromise the Inspector

529
00:36:30,035 --> 00:36:34,355
Speaker 1: General at Homeland Security. They've compromised half the cops in

530
00:36:34,395 --> 00:36:38,395
Speaker 1: this country. A little less, a little more. They've compromised,

531
00:36:38,515 --> 00:36:41,875
Speaker 1: as my hero's Bob Elliott Ray Goulding once joked, everything

532
00:36:41,915 --> 00:36:45,395
Speaker 1: except the Visiting Nurse Association. They have built a cult

533
00:36:45,795 --> 00:36:48,835
Speaker 1: around denying the twenty twenty election. And if you haven't

534
00:36:48,835 --> 00:36:51,835
Speaker 1: figured out what's behind that nonsense, by the way, seemingly

535
00:36:51,955 --> 00:36:55,435
Speaker 1: quicksotic and academic at the same time, here's the little secret.

536
00:36:55,715 --> 00:36:58,955
Speaker 1: The idea about the twenty twenty stuff still being talked

537
00:36:58,955 --> 00:37:03,635
Speaker 1: about is if l. Douche gets elected in twenty twenty

538
00:37:03,635 --> 00:37:06,275
Speaker 1: four and goes back to the White House, he will

539
00:37:06,315 --> 00:37:10,675
Speaker 1: somehow make somebody like I don't know, the Supreme Court

540
00:37:11,315 --> 00:37:15,555
Speaker 1: confirm that, yes, he actually won in twenty twenty, but

541
00:37:15,795 --> 00:37:19,435
Speaker 1: was denied that rightful term in the White House, so

542
00:37:19,555 --> 00:37:23,595
Speaker 1: he will be given a third term in twenty twenty eight,

543
00:37:24,075 --> 00:37:27,435
Speaker 1: or at least allowed to run for it. In short,

544
00:37:27,835 --> 00:37:31,155
Speaker 1: if twenty twenty was stolen from him, he's owed another term.

545
00:37:31,235 --> 00:37:34,915
Speaker 1: Right That's in the Constitution, isn't it. Gee, maybe we

546
00:37:34,955 --> 00:37:37,715
Speaker 1: could just, you know, skip the twenty twenty eight election outright.

547
00:37:39,875 --> 00:37:42,675
Speaker 1: The fascists have all this in the works. And what

548
00:37:42,755 --> 00:37:49,115
Speaker 1: do we have. We have Chuck Todd three weeks ago

549
00:37:49,675 --> 00:37:54,235
Speaker 1: asking a Republican governor, quote, what's best for the country?

550
00:37:54,475 --> 00:37:57,795
Speaker 1: Do you think the country can handle prosecuting the former president?

551
00:37:58,395 --> 00:38:01,235
Speaker 1: And we have less year Holts one week ago telling

552
00:38:01,275 --> 00:38:04,395
Speaker 1: the Attorney General of the United States, quote, indictment of

553
00:38:04,755 --> 00:38:09,235
Speaker 1: former president and perhaps a candidate for president would arguably

554
00:38:09,355 --> 00:38:15,555
Speaker 1: tear the country apart. Is that your concern? They have

555
00:38:15,675 --> 00:38:24,035
Speaker 1: Fox News? We have Fox News only we call it NBC.

556
00:38:26,675 --> 00:38:30,435
Speaker 1: I will do this podcast every weekday morning, no holiday, mondays.

557
00:38:30,555 --> 00:38:33,195
Speaker 1: Sorry I'm getting old. It will be as best as

558
00:38:33,195 --> 00:38:34,795
Speaker 1: I can do with the podcast version of what the

559
00:38:34,835 --> 00:38:37,275
Speaker 1: old TV show was. I will explain to you later

560
00:38:37,355 --> 00:38:41,075
Speaker 1: in this first episode what exactly happened to the old

561
00:38:41,155 --> 00:38:45,275
Speaker 1: TV show. And here's a tease. It's none of the

562
00:38:45,275 --> 00:38:48,635
Speaker 1: things you've heard. And I'll have comments on the news

563
00:38:48,875 --> 00:38:51,035
Speaker 1: and comments on the sports. Did you know I used

564
00:38:51,075 --> 00:38:54,995
Speaker 1: to do sports? And the worst persons in the world

565
00:38:55,075 --> 00:38:58,155
Speaker 1: are back? And why Trump gets a tax break for

566
00:38:58,235 --> 00:39:01,755
Speaker 1: burying his wife in the golf course. But first I

567
00:39:01,875 --> 00:39:05,035
Speaker 1: want to button up this topic about getting mad as

568
00:39:05,035 --> 00:39:08,675
Speaker 1: hell with two quotes and one question. Quote number one,

569
00:39:09,355 --> 00:39:12,915
Speaker 1: it's General William to comes to Sherman, and it's meant metaphorically.

570
00:39:12,995 --> 00:39:16,955
Speaker 1: So don't think I'm talking about bloodshed, because you can't

571
00:39:17,035 --> 00:39:21,675
Speaker 1: do political bloodshed in this country unless you're a Republican.

572
00:39:22,715 --> 00:39:26,275
Speaker 1: This was Sherman the last time Americans tried to overthrow

573
00:39:26,315 --> 00:39:31,155
Speaker 1: American democracy. Quote. War is the remedy our enemies have chosen.

574
00:39:31,635 --> 00:39:35,155
Speaker 1: Other simple remedies were within their choice. You know it,

575
00:39:35,715 --> 00:39:39,235
Speaker 1: and they know it. But they wanted war. And I say,

576
00:39:39,315 --> 00:39:41,475
Speaker 1: let us give them all they want, not a word

577
00:39:41,515 --> 00:39:43,355
Speaker 1: of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave

578
00:39:43,435 --> 00:39:51,715
Speaker 1: in till we are whipped or they are end Sherman. Quote, First,

579
00:39:51,755 --> 00:39:55,715
Speaker 1: you've got to get mad. What greater act of war

580
00:39:55,875 --> 00:39:59,475
Speaker 1: against the United States by someone owing allegiance to the

581
00:39:59,595 --> 00:40:03,715
Speaker 1: United States within the United States could there ever be

582
00:40:04,115 --> 00:40:08,155
Speaker 1: than to and armed militias into the United States Capital,

583
00:40:08,435 --> 00:40:12,315
Speaker 1: than to encourage them to attack and kill members of Congress,

584
00:40:12,475 --> 00:40:15,955
Speaker 1: members of the Senate, even the Vice President. What greater

585
00:40:16,195 --> 00:40:19,195
Speaker 1: act of war against the United States could there be

586
00:40:19,715 --> 00:40:23,395
Speaker 1: than to try to prevent by violent revolution the peaceful

587
00:40:23,475 --> 00:40:27,195
Speaker 1: transfer of power in the United States. I have no

588
00:40:27,355 --> 00:40:30,835
Speaker 1: complaints about the January sixth Committee. I do not buy

589
00:40:30,875 --> 00:40:33,715
Speaker 1: the argument that it's the Liz Cheney Show, And so

590
00:40:33,875 --> 00:40:36,915
Speaker 1: what if it were. Chairman Thompson and the other Democrats

591
00:40:36,955 --> 00:40:40,795
Speaker 1: have been terrific if, as I speculated months ago, they

592
00:40:40,795 --> 00:40:44,395
Speaker 1: are programming to the proverbial audience of one and it

593
00:40:44,475 --> 00:40:49,715
Speaker 1: is named Merrick Garland Dandy. But I don't see exactly

594
00:40:49,755 --> 00:40:54,355
Speaker 1: how they plan to end this. So what if first

595
00:40:54,915 --> 00:40:57,955
Speaker 1: they realized, you've got to get mad, You've got to

596
00:40:57,995 --> 00:40:59,835
Speaker 1: say I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going

597
00:40:59,915 --> 00:41:02,355
Speaker 1: to take Trump anymore. What if they ended it with

598
00:41:02,475 --> 00:41:06,195
Speaker 1: another quote? What if the January sixth Committee ends its

599
00:41:06,235 --> 00:41:10,595
Speaker 1: final hearing by simply quoting just the start of Title

600
00:41:10,635 --> 00:41:18,755
Speaker 1: eighteen USC Chapter one fifteen, Section two three eight one quote. Whoever,

601
00:41:19,075 --> 00:41:22,755
Speaker 1: owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them,

602
00:41:22,875 --> 00:41:26,155
Speaker 1: or adheres to their enemies giving them aid and comfort

603
00:41:26,235 --> 00:41:30,915
Speaker 1: within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason

604
00:41:31,555 --> 00:41:53,795
Speaker 1: and shall suffer death. So for our number one story

605
00:41:53,835 --> 00:41:58,675
Speaker 1: on the Countdown, my favorite topic me. Each podcast will

606
00:41:58,675 --> 00:42:01,275
Speaker 1: conclude with me telling you a story from my career

607
00:42:01,395 --> 00:42:03,875
Speaker 1: or life, usually hanging off the day's news, or at

608
00:42:03,915 --> 00:42:06,395
Speaker 1: least an adverse of some kind. The people I've known,

609
00:42:06,475 --> 00:42:10,075
Speaker 1: the places I've worked, the innumerable morons I have encountered,

610
00:42:10,195 --> 00:42:12,675
Speaker 1: some of the women I've dated. If it's relevant, like Laura,

611
00:42:13,395 --> 00:42:16,795
Speaker 1: don't judge me. It all began with a small five

612
00:42:16,835 --> 00:42:21,595
Speaker 1: thousand watt radio station in Presno, California. On Fridays. Instead,

613
00:42:21,595 --> 00:42:23,595
Speaker 1: we will read from the great works of the great

614
00:42:23,675 --> 00:42:25,515
Speaker 1: James Thurber, just like we used to do on the

615
00:42:25,515 --> 00:42:27,515
Speaker 1: TV show. And when I say we, of course, I

616
00:42:27,635 --> 00:42:31,875
Speaker 1: mean I. If you're not interested, you just want the

617
00:42:31,915 --> 00:42:35,515
Speaker 1: day's news, cool, turn it off. I will not be offended,

618
00:42:35,835 --> 00:42:39,795
Speaker 1: but I think these stories will explain, entertain and often

619
00:42:40,035 --> 00:42:44,275
Speaker 1: enrage you. Lord knows they will enrage me. So as

620
00:42:44,275 --> 00:42:47,315
Speaker 1: I launched this frail bark, where better to start than

621
00:42:47,395 --> 00:42:50,595
Speaker 1: here if you were a viewer of the old TV show.

622
00:42:50,675 --> 00:42:55,595
Speaker 1: Let me explain finally how that became this my original

623
00:42:55,635 --> 00:42:58,915
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven MSNBC News Hours, The Big Show and

624
00:42:58,955 --> 00:43:01,715
Speaker 1: The White House in Crisis were the first programs that

625
00:43:01,835 --> 00:43:05,435
Speaker 1: made MSNBC any money. I mean seriously. The network otherwise

626
00:43:05,555 --> 00:43:09,275
Speaker 1: hemorrhaged cash from its launch in nineteen ninety six until

627
00:43:09,275 --> 00:43:12,235
Speaker 1: about two thousand and five. That's when the show I started.

628
00:43:12,275 --> 00:43:15,355
Speaker 1: Upon my return in two thousand and three, Countdown, a

629
00:43:15,475 --> 00:43:19,475
Speaker 1: low rated nightly news digest. It was a pretty good show,

630
00:43:20,075 --> 00:43:23,475
Speaker 1: started getting really political and suspicious of Bush and Iraq

631
00:43:23,515 --> 00:43:27,395
Speaker 1: and especially the Republicans political manipulation of the threat of terrorism,

632
00:43:27,835 --> 00:43:31,595
Speaker 1: and the viewers arrived in droves by the next year.

633
00:43:31,715 --> 00:43:35,195
Speaker 1: The ads salesman and contrary to all logic, they are

634
00:43:35,235 --> 00:43:37,155
Speaker 1: the ones from whom you get the truth in a

635
00:43:37,235 --> 00:43:40,515
Speaker 1: news company. They were sending me models of champagne and

636
00:43:40,595 --> 00:43:44,355
Speaker 1: revealing that Countdown was now earning a fifty million dollar

637
00:43:44,435 --> 00:43:48,675
Speaker 1: annual profit, then seventy five million, then one hundred million.

638
00:43:48,955 --> 00:43:53,235
Speaker 1: They liked me, they really really liked me. But management

639
00:43:53,235 --> 00:43:57,115
Speaker 1: at NBC not so much. Right after MSNBC started to

640
00:43:57,155 --> 00:44:00,875
Speaker 1: make money, it started making enemies. The Republicans came right

641
00:44:01,075 --> 00:44:04,675
Speaker 1: to our door and through it the psychos at Fox

642
00:44:04,795 --> 00:44:08,355
Speaker 1: News like O'Reilly and Hannity and Ales. Remember we called

643
00:44:08,355 --> 00:44:12,315
Speaker 1: them Fixed News or Fox Noise. They started calling the

644
00:44:12,355 --> 00:44:16,515
Speaker 1: executives at NBC and its parent company GE, demanding that

645
00:44:16,595 --> 00:44:21,195
Speaker 1: I stopped criticizing them softer than church music. These fascists

646
00:44:21,395 --> 00:44:25,875
Speaker 1: could not take criticism when Tim Russert was still alive

647
00:44:25,915 --> 00:44:29,435
Speaker 1: and defending me internally and externally, watching every night and

648
00:44:29,515 --> 00:44:33,115
Speaker 1: sending me tips and warnings and ideas, and capable of

649
00:44:33,155 --> 00:44:37,955
Speaker 1: playing the Republicans inside NBC and outside NBC like fiddles.

650
00:44:38,315 --> 00:44:42,355
Speaker 1: Everything was fine. Then came that horrible day June thirteenth,

651
00:44:42,435 --> 00:44:46,235
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. Tim died, and suddenly NBC News

652
00:44:46,275 --> 00:44:48,075
Speaker 1: was in the hands of a lot of cowards and

653
00:44:48,115 --> 00:44:53,315
Speaker 1: bullies like Tom Brokaw and Joe Scarborough and Jeff Zucker

654
00:44:53,395 --> 00:44:55,875
Speaker 1: in names you would not know, like Jeff Immelt and

655
00:44:55,955 --> 00:44:59,555
Speaker 1: Steve Kappus and Phil Griffin and Chris Licked And I

656
00:44:59,715 --> 00:45:02,315
Speaker 1: really wish you didn't need to know Chris Licht's name,

657
00:45:02,395 --> 00:45:05,395
Speaker 1: but he was Scarborough's henchman, and now he's the new

658
00:45:05,475 --> 00:45:09,155
Speaker 1: president of CNN, and you don't know how bad that

659
00:45:09,315 --> 00:45:14,075
Speaker 1: news is for the future of this country. Anyway. I

660
00:45:14,075 --> 00:45:17,195
Speaker 1: will go into depth on all this background in future episodes.

661
00:45:17,195 --> 00:45:20,235
Speaker 1: How men like these spent a year keeping Rachel Maddow

662
00:45:20,315 --> 00:45:22,435
Speaker 1: off the air, telling me I couldn't even put her

663
00:45:22,435 --> 00:45:25,355
Speaker 1: on as my guest host because nobody would watch a woman,

664
00:45:26,075 --> 00:45:30,955
Speaker 1: or a lesbian or another liberal. That's what they said.

665
00:45:31,155 --> 00:45:32,835
Speaker 1: Then they lied to me and told me they had

666
00:45:32,915 --> 00:45:35,035
Speaker 1: hired her so that one night Larry King talked to

667
00:45:35,035 --> 00:45:37,235
Speaker 1: her into going on his show on CNN for two

668
00:45:37,315 --> 00:45:40,155
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars, and I wound up hiring her

669
00:45:40,195 --> 00:45:43,835
Speaker 1: out of my own pocket to keep MSNBC from losing her.

670
00:45:43,955 --> 00:45:47,395
Speaker 1: Literally the cash in my wallet four hundred and thirty

671
00:45:47,395 --> 00:45:51,435
Speaker 1: seven bucks. Anyway, by August of two thousand and eight,

672
00:45:51,515 --> 00:45:54,275
Speaker 1: Republicans were threatening Brokaw that if he did not get

673
00:45:54,275 --> 00:45:58,275
Speaker 1: me fired from MSNBC's coverage of the presidential election, John

674
00:45:58,355 --> 00:46:01,075
Speaker 1: McCain would not show up for the debate that Brokaw

675
00:46:01,155 --> 00:46:04,515
Speaker 1: had inherited from the late Tim Russard. So Brocaw went

676
00:46:04,555 --> 00:46:08,835
Speaker 1: in and threatened, and that's a nice euphemism NBC management

677
00:46:08,875 --> 00:46:11,835
Speaker 1: on behalf of the GOP just to get to host

678
00:46:11,915 --> 00:46:15,315
Speaker 1: one more debate. I mean he boasted about it in

679
00:46:15,315 --> 00:46:18,155
Speaker 1: the New York Times. Then within a year it was

680
00:46:18,235 --> 00:46:22,075
Speaker 1: Fox blackmailing the executives at GE, actually getting the chairman

681
00:46:22,155 --> 00:46:25,555
Speaker 1: of GE, Jeff Immelt, to threaten to take MSNBC off

682
00:46:25,755 --> 00:46:29,155
Speaker 1: the air, just shut it down if Fox continued to

683
00:46:29,155 --> 00:46:33,075
Speaker 1: criticize him. Immelt because his mommy was a Bill O'Reilly

684
00:46:33,115 --> 00:46:35,635
Speaker 1: fan and Billow kept claiming her little boy Jeff was

685
00:46:35,675 --> 00:46:39,795
Speaker 1: producing weapons used to kill Americans in Iraq. I mean, honestly,

686
00:46:39,835 --> 00:46:44,275
Speaker 1: these were adults behaving like this. Well, as I tell

687
00:46:44,315 --> 00:46:47,635
Speaker 1: everybody in the business, there are no adults. It got

688
00:46:47,675 --> 00:46:51,715
Speaker 1: worse and worse. Zooker and Roger Ayles meeting inside thirty

689
00:46:51,795 --> 00:46:54,355
Speaker 1: Rock no Less to decide what I could and could

690
00:46:54,395 --> 00:46:57,555
Speaker 1: not say about Fox News, negotiating what could be in

691
00:46:57,675 --> 00:47:00,755
Speaker 1: our news and what could not. And in twenty ten,

692
00:47:00,915 --> 00:47:04,075
Speaker 1: NBC started suggesting that we put Republicans on countdown like

693
00:47:04,115 --> 00:47:08,195
Speaker 1: Michael's and the deplorable Scarborough. Nobody ever asked me a

694
00:47:08,235 --> 00:47:11,555
Speaker 1: direct question as to how in January twenty eleven, I

695
00:47:11,635 --> 00:47:15,035
Speaker 1: left MSNBC and the highest rated cable news show that

696
00:47:15,115 --> 00:47:17,915
Speaker 1: was not on Fox, and I kept telling them, just say,

697
00:47:17,955 --> 00:47:21,795
Speaker 1: we don't consider Fox to be news. It isn't news,

698
00:47:22,555 --> 00:47:25,635
Speaker 1: so why are we comparing our ratings to them? Was

699
00:47:25,675 --> 00:47:28,075
Speaker 1: I fired? Did I quit? Was it something else? So

700
00:47:28,075 --> 00:47:30,835
Speaker 1: I've never actually told the actual story because I wasn't

701
00:47:30,875 --> 00:47:33,955
Speaker 1: asked a direct question about it. Well, one of the

702
00:47:34,035 --> 00:47:35,875
Speaker 1: perks they threw at me when I re signed with

703
00:47:36,035 --> 00:47:39,115
Speaker 1: MSNBC rather than jumping to CNN in two thousand and

704
00:47:39,115 --> 00:47:41,235
Speaker 1: six two thousand and seven was a slot on the

705
00:47:41,275 --> 00:47:44,595
Speaker 1: Sunday night NBC football broadcast. It was a nice change.

706
00:47:45,075 --> 00:47:47,995
Speaker 1: I got to work with my old ESPN partner, Dan Patrick.

707
00:47:48,435 --> 00:47:51,235
Speaker 1: It wasn't life and death. I could do the catchphrases

708
00:47:51,235 --> 00:47:55,515
Speaker 1: and the silly voices and say they're not gonna got them.

709
00:47:55,835 --> 00:47:59,035
Speaker 1: But right before the twenty ten season, Jeff Zucker called

710
00:47:59,035 --> 00:48:00,835
Speaker 1: me into his office told me I was not focusing

711
00:48:00,955 --> 00:48:05,515
Speaker 1: enough on countdown and I was off the football show. Now,

712
00:48:06,155 --> 00:48:09,955
Speaker 1: the following portion is, of course a pure hypothetical, which

713
00:48:10,035 --> 00:48:13,475
Speaker 1: is really better designed for a college course in contract law.

714
00:48:14,115 --> 00:48:17,675
Speaker 1: But if in a case like this hypothetical, the guy

715
00:48:17,795 --> 00:48:21,715
Speaker 1: doing a let's say, hypothetical football show wasn't actually being

716
00:48:21,755 --> 00:48:24,515
Speaker 1: paid to do the hypothetical football show. If doing that

717
00:48:24,635 --> 00:48:28,115
Speaker 1: hypothetical football show were a perk, if it was a

718
00:48:28,235 --> 00:48:32,075
Speaker 1: non cash payment or an incentive to sign a contract

719
00:48:32,155 --> 00:48:35,475
Speaker 1: rather than to go to some other hypothetical network like

720
00:48:35,595 --> 00:48:40,435
Speaker 1: CN hypothetical n well, then when that hypothetical announcer is

721
00:48:40,475 --> 00:48:43,635
Speaker 1: taking off that hypothetical football show, the people who hypothetically

722
00:48:43,675 --> 00:48:47,875
Speaker 1: took him off the show have hypothetically breached his hypothetical

723
00:48:47,955 --> 00:48:51,355
Speaker 1: contract and all of a sudden, the hypothetical companies, hypothetical

724
00:48:51,435 --> 00:48:54,875
Speaker 1: lawyers are asking the hypothetical announcer how much money it

725
00:48:54,915 --> 00:48:59,715
Speaker 1: would hypothetically cost them to hypothetically cure a hypothetical breach.

726
00:49:00,755 --> 00:49:03,835
Speaker 1: Back to the non hypothetical portion of our story. So

727
00:49:03,875 --> 00:49:05,955
Speaker 1: now it's a few months the week before the twenty

728
00:49:05,995 --> 00:49:09,235
Speaker 1: ten midterms, which I would be anchoring on MSNBC, and

729
00:49:09,275 --> 00:49:11,515
Speaker 1: while I would be covering the Senate and governor races

730
00:49:11,595 --> 00:49:14,395
Speaker 1: right through election night, we were done reporting on the House.

731
00:49:14,875 --> 00:49:17,635
Speaker 1: I did an interview on Thursday, I think, with the

732
00:49:17,675 --> 00:49:20,635
Speaker 1: Congressman Raoul Grihalva of Arizona, and then I did a

733
00:49:20,635 --> 00:49:23,395
Speaker 1: special comment on Friday about all the Tea partiers running

734
00:49:23,435 --> 00:49:26,195
Speaker 1: for Congress that year, and that was it. And that

735
00:49:26,355 --> 00:49:29,715
Speaker 1: night I was on the phone with my friend Kirsten Cinema, YEP,

736
00:49:30,115 --> 00:49:33,355
Speaker 1: at Kirsten Cinema. How many Kirsten Cinemas could there be?

737
00:49:34,635 --> 00:49:37,835
Speaker 1: She told me that Grihalva and another Arizona representative had

738
00:49:37,875 --> 00:49:40,315
Speaker 1: gotten a lot of death threats late in the campaign

739
00:49:40,755 --> 00:49:43,995
Speaker 1: and they had spent virtually every last dollar they had

740
00:49:44,075 --> 00:49:48,395
Speaker 1: on security. Kirsten asked, can you donate to these campaigns?

741
00:49:48,795 --> 00:49:51,235
Speaker 1: And I said, I had never donated before, but yeah,

742
00:49:51,595 --> 00:49:55,555
Speaker 1: to Grahalva and to a senator in the South, I think,

743
00:49:56,035 --> 00:49:58,795
Speaker 1: and the other Arizona representative who had gotten a lot

744
00:49:58,875 --> 00:50:04,155
Speaker 1: of death threats. Her name was Gabby Giffords. The next Tuesday,

745
00:50:04,195 --> 00:50:06,795
Speaker 1: I anchored the those midterms, didn't mention one house race

746
00:50:06,875 --> 00:50:09,315
Speaker 1: or candidate, and everything was fine. And then somebody called

747
00:50:09,355 --> 00:50:13,075
Speaker 1: one of the political websites to say, oooh, Oberman donated

748
00:50:13,115 --> 00:50:16,795
Speaker 1: to some Democrats, and they called NBC public Relations, and

749
00:50:16,915 --> 00:50:19,715
Speaker 1: NBC public Relations called the president of MSNBC, and the

750
00:50:19,715 --> 00:50:22,395
Speaker 1: president of my MSIBC called me and he said, this

751
00:50:22,475 --> 00:50:24,635
Speaker 1: looks bad. I know it's your right to do it.

752
00:50:24,635 --> 00:50:26,435
Speaker 1: It's not like we're going to suspend you or anything

753
00:50:26,475 --> 00:50:28,875
Speaker 1: stupid like that. Why would we do that. This is

754
00:50:28,915 --> 00:50:31,115
Speaker 1: sort of our fault too, But it just looks bad.

755
00:50:31,195 --> 00:50:35,955
Speaker 1: Can you know, can you say something? And I said, yeah,

756
00:50:35,995 --> 00:50:39,875
Speaker 1: you're right, it does look bad. I'll apologize on the

757
00:50:39,875 --> 00:50:43,115
Speaker 1: show tomorrow, even though I don't have to. I will

758
00:50:43,195 --> 00:50:46,595
Speaker 1: voluntarily stop any campaign contributions as long as I'm doing

759
00:50:46,635 --> 00:50:49,515
Speaker 1: this show. And he said great, and I said great,

760
00:50:50,035 --> 00:50:52,035
Speaker 1: And I wrote the apology that night and I sent

761
00:50:52,035 --> 00:50:53,755
Speaker 1: it to him, and he said great, and I said

762
00:50:53,795 --> 00:50:56,995
Speaker 1: great because I already had part of tomorrow's show written.

763
00:50:57,915 --> 00:51:01,475
Speaker 1: And that was it. And the next morning, without a hearing,

764
00:51:01,595 --> 00:51:04,275
Speaker 1: without a phone call, without an email, without a warning,

765
00:51:04,315 --> 00:51:09,115
Speaker 1: this hysterical teenager disguised as an adult named Steve Cappus,

766
00:51:09,235 --> 00:51:11,875
Speaker 1: President of NBC News, he puts out a press release

767
00:51:11,915 --> 00:51:16,915
Speaker 1: in which he angrily suspends me indefinitely without pay, for

768
00:51:17,155 --> 00:51:21,395
Speaker 1: violations of the NBC News employee rule book that says

769
00:51:21,875 --> 00:51:26,595
Speaker 1: NBC News employees can't make donations to political campaigns. Now,

770
00:51:26,715 --> 00:51:30,515
Speaker 1: NBC had an obvious, huge problem. Within hours, there was

771
00:51:30,555 --> 00:51:34,115
Speaker 1: a petition on social media demanding my reinstatement two hundred

772
00:51:34,155 --> 00:51:39,555
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand signatures. I was stunned. NBC tried to

773
00:51:39,595 --> 00:51:41,475
Speaker 1: get Chris Hayes to fill in for me that night.

774
00:51:41,555 --> 00:51:44,995
Speaker 1: He refused. Even people at Fox News went on the

775
00:51:45,035 --> 00:51:48,755
Speaker 1: air and said this was absurd. And at NBC there

776
00:51:48,755 --> 00:51:52,275
Speaker 1: was a lot of shushing and worrying because everybody at

777
00:51:52,355 --> 00:51:55,915
Speaker 1: NBC News made political donations. They just hid them by

778
00:51:55,955 --> 00:51:59,355
Speaker 1: donating in their wife's name or the kid's name, or

779
00:51:59,395 --> 00:52:01,955
Speaker 1: to some sort of fund or whatever. I was the

780
00:52:01,955 --> 00:52:06,155
Speaker 1: only one who admitted to it, but this guy kappus.

781
00:52:06,475 --> 00:52:08,715
Speaker 1: He was pissed off and dug in and demanded I

782
00:52:08,835 --> 00:52:11,075
Speaker 1: be suspended for a month through I don't know, one

783
00:52:11,115 --> 00:52:14,715
Speaker 1: hundred years without pay at least and all. This is

784
00:52:14,755 --> 00:52:20,835
Speaker 1: already public and well documented, but hypothetically, again, there could

785
00:52:20,835 --> 00:52:24,395
Speaker 1: have been more to it. See if you hypothetically suspend

786
00:52:24,395 --> 00:52:28,475
Speaker 1: your hypothetical announcer guy again for violating the employee handbook.

787
00:52:29,475 --> 00:52:35,235
Speaker 1: What happens if that hypothetical announcer is not actually an employee.

788
00:52:36,075 --> 00:52:41,635
Speaker 1: What if the hypothetical employer has written the contract of

789
00:52:41,675 --> 00:52:46,915
Speaker 1: the hypothetical announcer so that it specifically declares, several different

790
00:52:46,995 --> 00:52:52,515
Speaker 1: hypothetical times in the hypothetical contract that the hypothetical announcer

791
00:52:52,675 --> 00:52:56,235
Speaker 1: is not an employee but just say, to pick a

792
00:52:56,435 --> 00:53:01,435
Speaker 1: term out of thin air, an independent contractor what if

793
00:53:01,555 --> 00:53:06,595
Speaker 1: hypothetically the employer could be NBAE, could be a bakery somewhere.

794
00:53:06,915 --> 00:53:10,555
Speaker 1: What if hypothetically the employer did this in contract legal

795
00:53:10,595 --> 00:53:13,675
Speaker 1: ees so they did not have to pay the hypothetical

796
00:53:13,715 --> 00:53:21,235
Speaker 1: announcer health insurance or dental will. Then, hypothetically, that phrase

797
00:53:21,395 --> 00:53:25,555
Speaker 1: breach re enters the chat and the hypothetical companies hypothetical

798
00:53:25,635 --> 00:53:28,435
Speaker 1: lawyers go to the executive who just suspended the employee

799
00:53:28,475 --> 00:53:31,435
Speaker 1: who legally is not an employee, And they say, hypothetically again,

800
00:53:31,915 --> 00:53:36,475
Speaker 1: you now have four hypothetical choices. One reinstate the hypothetical

801
00:53:36,515 --> 00:53:39,915
Speaker 1: non employee immediately and hope we don't get sued. Two

802
00:53:40,395 --> 00:53:44,195
Speaker 1: reinstate the hypothetical non employee, immediately, apologize and write up

803
00:53:44,235 --> 00:53:48,475
Speaker 1: a new contract for God's sake. Three end the show,

804
00:53:48,795 --> 00:53:51,915
Speaker 1: pay the hypothetical non employee every dollar you owe for

805
00:53:51,995 --> 00:53:54,395
Speaker 1: the remainder of the hypothetical contract, and hope you don't

806
00:53:54,395 --> 00:53:58,875
Speaker 1: get sued for damages anyway. Or four hypothetically throw a

807
00:53:58,995 --> 00:54:02,155
Speaker 1: lot of money in the air and negotiate a settlement

808
00:54:02,235 --> 00:54:07,475
Speaker 1: and end the hypothetical showithetically. In the short term, what

809
00:54:07,635 --> 00:54:10,475
Speaker 1: happened was, and I'm quoting from the New York Times,

810
00:54:10,715 --> 00:54:13,395
Speaker 1: they told me on Friday I was suspended. I was

811
00:54:13,435 --> 00:54:16,155
Speaker 1: back on the air Tuesday. They didn't even dock my

812
00:54:16,315 --> 00:54:20,835
Speaker 1: pay or charge me for any days off, making this

813
00:54:21,115 --> 00:54:26,395
Speaker 1: wilder still. Hours after I was suspended, Al Gore called me.

814
00:54:26,515 --> 00:54:30,115
Speaker 1: Al owned a struggling TV network called Current, and he said,

815
00:54:30,115 --> 00:54:33,355
Speaker 1: what NBC is doing is illegal, and if you sue them,

816
00:54:33,395 --> 00:54:35,755
Speaker 1: you could own the place. But I think I have

817
00:54:35,835 --> 00:54:38,075
Speaker 1: a better idea that can be the start of something big.

818
00:54:38,875 --> 00:54:42,515
Speaker 1: You can bring Countdown to Current TV. We'll give you

819
00:54:42,675 --> 00:54:46,115
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars plus bonuses, plus a piece of the network.

820
00:54:46,555 --> 00:54:51,275
Speaker 1: You'll be an owner. This is me talking in the

821
00:54:51,355 --> 00:54:54,395
Speaker 1: long term. For two months, these two roller coasters went

822
00:54:54,475 --> 00:54:57,915
Speaker 1: up and down, and my agents negotiated attentive contract with

823
00:54:58,035 --> 00:55:01,315
Speaker 1: Current while there was a hypothetical attempt to settle the

824
00:55:01,315 --> 00:55:06,955
Speaker 1: other hypothetical non employee cluster hypothetic f and then literally

825
00:55:07,155 --> 00:55:11,035
Speaker 1: during the MSNBC Countdown show on January twenty first, twenty eleven,

826
00:55:11,395 --> 00:55:16,915
Speaker 1: during a commercial break, everything got finalized all at once.

827
00:55:18,115 --> 00:55:20,675
Speaker 1: My agent told me it was done. I went on

828
00:55:20,715 --> 00:55:23,355
Speaker 1: the air and said so, and nobody, not even the

829
00:55:23,355 --> 00:55:28,475
Speaker 1: staff knew, which I am still sorry about. Very greatly unavoidable,

830
00:55:29,795 --> 00:55:31,515
Speaker 1: but that's the way it worked. So no, I was

831
00:55:31,555 --> 00:55:34,315
Speaker 1: not fired, Countdown was not canceled. The Current TV deal

832
00:55:34,435 --> 00:55:37,595
Speaker 1: had already been in place for weeks. And by the way,

833
00:55:38,675 --> 00:55:41,795
Speaker 1: during every step of this, I kept Madow and her agent,

834
00:55:41,955 --> 00:55:46,435
Speaker 1: who had been my agent for twenty seven years, fully informed,

835
00:55:46,475 --> 00:55:49,915
Speaker 1: and so that very night that Countdown ended on MSNBC,

836
00:55:50,075 --> 00:55:53,515
Speaker 1: Mattow was on Bill Maher's show right after it all happened,

837
00:55:53,555 --> 00:55:56,435
Speaker 1: and naturally he asked her about it, and she lied

838
00:55:56,515 --> 00:55:58,675
Speaker 1: and said, this is the first I'm hearing of it,

839
00:55:59,075 --> 00:56:02,355
Speaker 1: and I thought, uh boy, that might be the end

840
00:56:02,395 --> 00:56:08,835
Speaker 1: of that friendship. Haven't spoken since. Anyway, the current thing

841
00:56:08,875 --> 00:56:11,475
Speaker 1: turned out to be a scam and it blew up

842
00:56:11,595 --> 00:56:13,635
Speaker 1: rather quickly, and I'll tell that story in a future

843
00:56:13,675 --> 00:56:16,755
Speaker 1: episode two. On the other hand, I don't have to

844
00:56:16,795 --> 00:56:20,715
Speaker 1: work for money again. But the weirdest thing started happening

845
00:56:20,755 --> 00:56:24,515
Speaker 1: in September twenty eleven, not eight months after I left

846
00:56:24,715 --> 00:56:29,675
Speaker 1: MSNBC feelers from the new owners of NBC Comcast. Would

847
00:56:29,715 --> 00:56:34,995
Speaker 1: I consider coming back to MSNBC. Yes, I would. Then

848
00:56:35,035 --> 00:56:38,155
Speaker 1: they got cold feet. Then the next year more feelers.

849
00:56:38,155 --> 00:56:40,435
Speaker 1: This time I got cold feet, and I started negotiating

850
00:56:40,435 --> 00:56:42,915
Speaker 1: and go back to ESPN instead, and I did. In

851
00:56:42,955 --> 00:56:47,035
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, I actually met with the new NBC News

852
00:56:47,035 --> 00:56:49,995
Speaker 1: executives for two hours, and they wanted me to bring

853
00:56:50,075 --> 00:56:53,835
Speaker 1: Countdown back as soon as possible. And then the Brian

854
00:56:53,875 --> 00:56:57,235
Speaker 1: Williams scandal broke and these new executives all got themselves fired.

855
00:56:57,875 --> 00:57:00,315
Speaker 1: And then in October twenty fifteen, I met with the

856
00:57:00,355 --> 00:57:02,915
Speaker 1: new new executives, and they wanted me to come back.

857
00:57:02,955 --> 00:57:05,595
Speaker 1: They made an actual offer, and it was stupid. It

858
00:57:05,635 --> 00:57:09,515
Speaker 1: was predicated on my doing a show without commentaries, like

859
00:57:10,035 --> 00:57:14,195
Speaker 1: what was the point of Countdown or me without the commentaries?

860
00:57:14,835 --> 00:57:17,955
Speaker 1: And even that guy got fired in twenty nineteen, and

861
00:57:18,035 --> 00:57:21,435
Speaker 1: the new chairman of the entire NBC corporation, Jeff Shell,

862
00:57:22,075 --> 00:57:24,595
Speaker 1: was an old friend of mine from Fox Sports, and

863
00:57:24,635 --> 00:57:26,435
Speaker 1: he wanted me to bring the show back, and we

864
00:57:26,515 --> 00:57:29,075
Speaker 1: got close, and then the word came in from the

865
00:57:29,115 --> 00:57:32,475
Speaker 1: guy who was negotiating for me that the chairman of

866
00:57:32,595 --> 00:57:36,835
Speaker 1: NBC News, Caesar Conde, had told him the whole thing

867
00:57:36,875 --> 00:57:40,795
Speaker 1: had cratered because one person at NBC had never and

868
00:57:40,875 --> 00:57:47,435
Speaker 1: would never forgive me for something. And that person, said Condey,

869
00:57:48,275 --> 00:57:52,875
Speaker 1: was Rachel Mattow. Rachel Mattow, per Sezar Conde vetoed the

870
00:57:52,955 --> 00:57:56,115
Speaker 1: last chance and ended literally a decade of talks about

871
00:57:56,115 --> 00:58:01,595
Speaker 1: putting this program back on MSNBC. By the way, NBC's

872
00:58:01,675 --> 00:58:05,515
Speaker 1: denial of this last set of flirtations was that, yes,

873
00:58:06,115 --> 00:58:10,835
Speaker 1: for two years, NBC's CEO, Jeff Schell kept scheduling meetings

874
00:58:10,915 --> 00:58:13,635
Speaker 1: with me, but I should have known he didn't really

875
00:58:13,795 --> 00:58:17,275
Speaker 1: mean it. Basically, their explanation was I should have known

876
00:58:17,315 --> 00:58:21,155
Speaker 1: the chairman of NBC was a liar. As the kids say,

877
00:58:21,995 --> 00:58:29,195
Speaker 1: weird flex but okay, and that's the short version. So

878
00:58:29,355 --> 00:58:31,675
Speaker 1: last winter, that's when I began exploring a new venue

879
00:58:31,675 --> 00:58:35,275
Speaker 1: for Countdown, and here we are a daily podcast, Sam Keith,

880
00:58:35,395 --> 00:58:38,995
Speaker 1: new platform, and I don't have to shave or wear makeup,

881
00:58:39,035 --> 00:58:42,115
Speaker 1: and I hope you'll enjoy the content as much as

882
00:58:42,195 --> 00:58:59,555
Speaker 1: I already enjoy the not shaving. So that's where we

883
00:58:59,635 --> 00:59:02,395
Speaker 1: began a year ago today, two hundred and fifty eight

884
00:59:02,515 --> 00:59:07,355
Speaker 1: episodes ago. I thank you kindly for your patronage. Tell

885
00:59:07,395 --> 00:59:10,235
Speaker 1: the others I've done all the damage I can do here.

886
00:59:10,475 --> 00:59:12,235
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. Here the credits. Most of the

887
00:59:12,315 --> 00:59:15,275
Speaker 1: music arrange produced and performed by Brian Ray and John

888
00:59:15,315 --> 00:59:18,835
Speaker 1: Phillip Shaneil, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration

889
00:59:18,915 --> 00:59:21,995
Speaker 1: and keyboards by John Phillip, Schanel, guitars, bass and drums

890
00:59:21,995 --> 00:59:26,435
Speaker 1: by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections

891
00:59:26,475 --> 00:59:29,075
Speaker 1: have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.

892
00:59:29,515 --> 00:59:32,275
Speaker 1: Sports Music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and

893
00:59:32,355 --> 00:59:35,555
Speaker 1: it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.

894
00:59:36,075 --> 00:59:39,995
Speaker 1: Musical comments by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever,

895
00:59:40,035 --> 00:59:42,835
Speaker 1: and my special thanks to Nancy. Our announcer today was

896
00:59:42,875 --> 00:59:45,595
Speaker 1: my friend Larry David, and everything else was pretty much

897
00:59:45,635 --> 00:59:48,395
Speaker 1: my fault. So let's countdown for this, the nine hundred

898
00:59:48,395 --> 00:59:52,075
Speaker 1: and thirty seventh day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup

899
00:59:52,075 --> 00:59:55,475
Speaker 1: against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest

900
00:59:55,515 --> 00:59:58,515
Speaker 1: him again while we still can, I have an opening

901
00:59:58,515 --> 01:00:02,235
Speaker 1: this afternoon. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow, Bolton says.

902
01:00:02,235 --> 01:00:05,155
Speaker 1: The news warrants till then. I'm Keith Oulverman. Good morning,

903
01:00:05,235 --> 01:00:24,035
Speaker 1: good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith

904
01:00:24,075 --> 01:00:29,115
Speaker 1: Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

905
01:00:29,275 --> 01:00:33,275
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

906
01:00:33,315 --> 01:00:34,475
Speaker 1: your podcasts.