Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you Mini strokes Trump, Mini strokes Donald Trump on
Speaker 1: quote truth unquote social It's a brand name. Zuckerberg admits
Speaker 1: that the White House pushed to suppress Hunter Biden laptop
Speaker 1: story and much more. In other words, the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: presidential election was rigged. This is what everyone's been waiting for.
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty presidential election was rigged. Let me just
Speaker 1: read that operative part again, if I might, Trump writes,
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg admits the White House pushed to suppress Hunter Biden
Speaker 1: laptop story. In other words, the twenty twenty presidential election
Speaker 1: was rigged. So the White House in twenty twenty rigged
Speaker 1: the election, says Trump in twenty twenty. When the president
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, who pushed the suppression of the Biden
Speaker 1: laptop story. The president in twenty twenty was Trump. Trump
Speaker 1: is not only claiming he rigged the election against himself,
Speaker 1: the White House, he says, the White House. He puts
Speaker 1: the date on it, but the thing is still up
Speaker 1: on his website. He is having a series of episodes
Speaker 1: mini strokes. This is not to absolve him. You will
Speaker 1: recall that on Monday, Trump was caught taking selfies smiling
Speaker 1: with thumbs up at Arlington National Cemetery. NPR now reports
Speaker 1: this was in the area where recent American casualties have
Speaker 1: been buried. It has learned that two members of Trump's
Speaker 1: campaign had a verbal and physical altercation with an official
Speaker 1: at Arlington National Cemetery. A source with knowledge of the
Speaker 1: event said the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump's staffers
Speaker 1: from filming and photographing in a section where recent US
Speaker 1: casualties are buried. The source said Arlington officials had made
Speaker 1: clear that only a cemetery staff member could photograph in
Speaker 1: the area known as Section sixty and by the way,
Speaker 1: as an aside, this is for the privacy of the
Speaker 1: families of the recently deceased, the ones Trump was standing
Speaker 1: on giving a thumbs up and a big stupid shit
Speaker 1: eating grin. To continue the NPR report, When the cemetery
Speaker 1: official tried to prevent Trump campaign staff from entering Section sixty,
Speaker 1: campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the official aside. The
Speaker 1: source said. President Trump participate in a rethlaying ceremony at
Speaker 1: the cemetery on Monday. The event marked the third anniversary
Speaker 1: of a deadly attack on US troops in Afghanistan, as
Speaker 1: US forces withdrew. Is it bad enough? It is never
Speaker 1: bad enough for Donald J. Trump, This humanoid bully he
Speaker 1: has hired to portray the role of spokes idiot, former
Speaker 1: wrestler or something. Stephen Chung. He decided that what this
Speaker 1: needed was an insult against the Arlington Cemetery staffer quote.
Speaker 1: There was no physical altercation as described, and we are
Speaker 1: prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made,
Speaker 1: and PR notes and I would underscore they have not
Speaker 1: released this footage. The fact is it's Trump. There are
Speaker 1: no facts. A private photographer was permitted on the premises
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason, an unnamed individual clearly suffering from
Speaker 1: a mental health episode. I believe we're giving away a
Speaker 1: little too much here, mister Chung. That would be trumping
Speaker 1: the mental health episode, decided to physically block members of
Speaker 1: Trump's team during a very solemn ceremony. Stephen Chung, very
Speaker 1: solemn ceremony with Trump's stubby little thumb in the air,
Speaker 1: smiling next to headstones of dead American heroes, it is
Speaker 1: important to remember, no matter what's going on with him Neurologically,
Speaker 1: Trump is insane, He is unpatriotic, and the next time
Speaker 1: that he goes onto our nation's most hallowed ground, he
Speaker 1: might try to urinate on the graves. We have no
Speaker 1: idea what he could do next. He is that much
Speaker 1: of a psychopath. Happily this reminder that if Trump in
Speaker 1: fact loses in November to Kamala Harris, he will die
Speaker 1: in prison. The superseding indictment that Jack Smith filed yesterday
Speaker 1: in the January sixth insurrection case in Washington was enough
Speaker 1: of a big deal that some of the television networks
Speaker 1: broke into programming without really understanding what they were talking about.
Speaker 1: In point of fact, with a couple of exceptions, it
Speaker 1: is exactly the same set of charges phrased exactly the
Speaker 1: same way, and the difference is the references to President
Speaker 1: Trump have been for the most part changed to candidate
Speaker 1: Trump in order to follow the lead of presidential immunity
Speaker 1: as submitted by Trump's hand picked Supreme Court in its
Speaker 1: attempt to circumvent the Constitution. The January sixth speech, in
Speaker 1: which Trump not very so utly encouraged his gangs to
Speaker 1: attack the Capitol and try to kill congressmen and try
Speaker 1: to kill senators, and try to kill his own vice
Speaker 1: president and interrupt the peaceful transfer of power that is
Speaker 1: now described in the new superseding indictment as quote a
Speaker 1: campaign speech. In short, Jack Smith outsmarted the Court good
Speaker 1: because several members of the Supreme Court should die alongside
Speaker 1: Trump in prison, having spent the rest of their lives there.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, Trump has outsmarted the Governor of Georgia,
Speaker 1: Brian Kemp. Kemp stood up for the members of his
Speaker 1: own party when Trump tried to illegally overturn the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election results there, and then slandered the people who
Speaker 1: obeyed the law. Trump attacked Kemp as recently as a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago. Tomorrow, the headliner at a Trump fundraiser
Speaker 1: in Atlanta will be Governor Brian Kemp. Is it blackmail?
Speaker 1: Is fear? Is it a diet of forty years of
Speaker 1: right wing propaganda? He is from the South. That could
Speaker 1: very easily be the prospect of the choice being Trump
Speaker 1: or a woman of color. Which is it? I don't
Speaker 1: care anymore. These people, especially those who have lost all
Speaker 1: moral compass after showing briefly that they might have had
Speaker 1: some and then it turned out no, this was just
Speaker 1: another political trick. Those who have lost all moral compass,
Speaker 1: like Brian Kemp, like Nicki Haley, need to be removed
Speaker 1: from public discourse permanently. In some way. We must legally
Speaker 1: determine how the sound you heard late yesterday afternoons, columnist
Speaker 1: after columnist from Chris solicit to everybody at the New
Speaker 1: York Times opinion section hitting the delete key time after
Speaker 1: time after time. Vice President Harris will do her first
Speaker 1: sit down interview since Joe Biden Withdrew. It will be
Speaker 1: with Dana Bash CNN to air tomorrow. It'll be a twofer.
Speaker 1: Tim Walls will join them. This, of course, matters really
Speaker 1: only to CNN and the belt Way. There is no none,
Speaker 1: zero push among the public to force candidates to do interviews.
Speaker 1: Most people, even though most journalists don't, Most people understand
Speaker 1: that the policy issue is this. Who wants a democracy
Speaker 1: or a similar form of representative government. That would be Harris.
Speaker 1: Who does not? That would be Trump? And every other
Speaker 1: policy is subtlety and nuance. To the credit of the
Speaker 1: Harris campaign, they did pick the easiest one. Dana Bash
Speaker 1: occasionally lives up to the term journalists, probably above the average.
Speaker 1: At CNN, she would be a D plus, but usually not.
Speaker 1: She is also lifeless enough that you wonder if they
Speaker 1: have to slip a mirror under her nose periodically to
Speaker 1: make sure she's still you know, of course, after this,
Speaker 1: so as of sometime late Thursday night, what will follow
Speaker 1: next is demands by every other reporter to interview Harris immediately,
Speaker 1: and the replacement complaint to replace the one in which
Speaker 1: they say she hasn't done any sit down interviews, which
Speaker 1: is it has now been filled in the blank days
Speaker 1: since Kamala Harris gave a one on one interview, and
Speaker 1: don't forget there are no press conferences yet, and then
Speaker 1: there will not have been any press conferences while she
Speaker 1: was standing on her head in a bucket of piranha fish.
Speaker 1: To quote the python joke. There is one legitimate criticism here,
Speaker 1: which is, as follows CNN. They're doing this on CNN.
Speaker 1: It's now been x days since Kamala Harris gave an
Speaker 1: interview that anybody saw. This is not polling, per se,
Speaker 1: its analysis, but it continues the thread I talk about
Speaker 1: here every day. To my own disbelief, today some degree
Speaker 1: cook political report has now moved three more states closer
Speaker 1: to Kamala Harris. New Hampshire and Minnesota had been in
Speaker 1: their estimation lean Democrat. They are now likely Democrat, a
Speaker 1: minor distinction, but a meaningful one. More interestingly, North Carolina
Speaker 1: goes from lean Republican to toss up. North Carolina is
Speaker 1: officially from a very conservative, small sea conservative, very slow
Speaker 1: moving political analysis organization. North Carolina is now a toss up.
Speaker 1: This all might explain why Trump has agreed to the
Speaker 1: September tenth debate, or seemed to agree. Listen carefully, I
Speaker 1: have reached an agreement. I have reached an agreement with
Speaker 1: the radical left Democrats for a debate with Comrade Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: That's not the way a normal human being would say it,
Speaker 1: or without many strokes, you'd say, the debate is on.
Speaker 1: I will debate September tenth debate DEBATEMI. It will be
Speaker 1: broadcast live on ABC, fake news by far, the nastiest
Speaker 1: and most unfair newscaster in the business. Well, a newscaster
Speaker 1: is a person. ABC would be a news organization moron
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, September tenth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The rules will
Speaker 1: be the same as the last CNN debate, which seemed
Speaker 1: to work out well for everyone except perhaps Biden. The
Speaker 1: debate will be stand up and candidates cannot bring notes
Speaker 1: or cheat sheets. We have also been given assurance by
Speaker 1: ABC that this will be a fair and equitable that's
Speaker 1: in quotes, fair and equitable debate. As an aside, you
Speaker 1: will have noticed that recently he has been falling back
Speaker 1: on terms that you usually find in agreements about property.
Speaker 1: Fair and equitable is a rental or purchase agreement term.
Speaker 1: To continue Trump's statement and that neither side will be
Speaker 1: given the questions in advance. No Dona Brazil this time
Speaker 1: he spelled Brazil's name correctly. Harris would not agree to
Speaker 1: the Fox News debate on September fourth, but that date
Speaker 1: will be held open in case she changes her mind
Speaker 1: or flip flops, as she has done on every single
Speaker 1: one of her long held and cherished policy beliefs. That's
Speaker 1: too clever by half. Nobody who follows Trump will understand
Speaker 1: he's being sarcastic. A possible third debate, which would go
Speaker 1: to NBC Fake News, has not been agreed to by
Speaker 1: the radical left. He goes through several of the rules
Speaker 1: that will continue from the C and N debate. But
Speaker 1: there was no mention of muted microphones. Why was that
Speaker 1: no mention of muted microphones? And he did not say
Speaker 1: that he will be debating. He said he had agreed
Speaker 1: to it. You will recall that yesterday Senior Harris guru
Speaker 1: Brian Fallon said, we suspect Trump's team has not even
Speaker 1: told their boss about this dispute because it would be
Speaker 1: too embarrassing to admit. They don't think he can handle
Speaker 1: himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a
Speaker 1: mute button. CNN now reports Trump's handlers are trying to
Speaker 1: mute him on the debate stage. They want the mute
Speaker 1: because they know he will not look presidential. Per their
Speaker 1: reporter Elena Treen, they don't want him to come off
Speaker 1: looking like a bully. They want him to tone down
Speaker 1: his rhetoric. That is potentially even more important now. Before
Speaker 1: he posted he'd reached an agreement. And again that's not
Speaker 1: saying I'm doing the debate, just that he's reached an agreement.
Speaker 1: And god knows how many agreements Trump has gotten out
Speaker 1: of in his careers. Trump wrote something really bizarre, even
Speaker 1: for him from one fourteen yesterday afternoon. You know, if
Speaker 1: Biden didn't do the debate, he would be the Democrat
Speaker 1: candidate for president right now. The fact is debater, no debate.
Speaker 1: Democrats really did a number on him. The main confident
Speaker 1: that Trump is still trying to find a way out
Speaker 1: of doing this debate. I mean, other than he still
Speaker 1: thinks somehow he can force Biden to be the nominee
Speaker 1: or something. He still harbors that hope. What did that
Speaker 1: statement mean? Is it an excuse for him to not
Speaker 1: debate Harris out of some sort of fake empathy for Biden.
Speaker 1: I can't abide by what you did to Biden. Only
Speaker 1: I can abuse Biden. Is it something he thinks will
Speaker 1: cause his supporters to say, oh, no way, you should
Speaker 1: debate again, sir? Is it I already won that debate
Speaker 1: and I want it so much Biden dropped out. I
Speaker 1: don't need to debate again. I mean, what the hell?
Speaker 1: That statement doesn't make any sense. Combine it with the
Speaker 1: previous one, in which he does not say I'll be
Speaker 1: at the debate, just says he's agreed to one. And
Speaker 1: I don't think anything is more firm now than it
Speaker 1: was before. And by the way, from morning Consult voters
Speaker 1: are only slightly more likely to say weird better describes
Speaker 1: the Republican Party than the Democratic Party thirty four to
Speaker 1: twenty nine percent, suggesting that the rhetorical jab has yet
Speaker 1: to catch fire beyond the confines of liberal corners of
Speaker 1: social media. I feel seen Democrats' small advantage on the
Speaker 1: question is driven by their own voters, who are slightly
Speaker 1: more likely than GOP voters to say that word better
Speaker 1: describes the other party Morning Consult continues. The branding effort
Speaker 1: also appears to be resonating better with non white voters,
Speaker 1: especially black voters, who are thirty five points more likely
Speaker 1: to view the GOP as weird than the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: the largest gap along racial or ethnic lines. I once
Speaker 1: asked Kevin Costner when I was working the Red carpet
Speaker 1: one year in nineteen ninety nine at the Oscars. I
Speaker 1: asked him a question for a feature I was doing
Speaker 1: as a non writer, a non entertainment writer doing for
Speaker 1: the La Times. I said, what do you think of
Speaker 1: the idea of having like a six hour pregame show
Speaker 1: for the Oscars the way they do for the Super Bowl?
Speaker 1: And Kevin and said, I think we already know too
Speaker 1: much about the things we already know about, which I
Speaker 1: thought was a wonderful quote. He came back to me
Speaker 1: about five minutes later and said, could you not run that?
Speaker 1: I sound like Yogi bearra if we are now polling,
Speaker 1: actually polling on which minority or racial or ethnic group,
Speaker 1: or demographic or age group or majority group or group
Speaker 1: of people whose last names begin with the letter G
Speaker 1: over which one of them believes the Democrats are less
Speaker 1: weird than the Republicans. We may know too much about
Speaker 1: the things we already know about, but more importantly that number,
Speaker 1: that it's only thirty four to twenty nine. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to become the coach yelling at the team that just
Speaker 1: came from three touchdowns down to go ahead by five
Speaker 1: or six points. But Madame Vice President, this is not
Speaker 1: good enough. The Republicans are existentially weird, and a five
Speaker 1: point lead over them in weird team needs to push
Speaker 1: harder on this. To go back to doctor Strangelove and
Speaker 1: George C. Scott as General Turgenson, we must not allow
Speaker 1: a weirdness gap. Also, the headlines read Telsey Gabbard and
Speaker 1: Robert F. Kennedy Junior added to Trump transition BOYD did
Speaker 1: that surprised me. I thought, holy crap, Trump is transitioning.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't this be a bigger story. Turned out they meant
Speaker 1: transition team. I'd be surprised if either of them transitioned
Speaker 1: into a human being or an American. Once again, to
Speaker 1: alter the Rodney dangerfield quote, as Thornton mellon from Back
Speaker 1: to School, Here's what this is all about. If you
Speaker 1: want to look sane, you hang out with crazy people.
Speaker 1: This applies equally to Gabbard, RFK and of course Trump
Speaker 1: and maybe trump spokes liar Stephen Chung, who we visited
Speaker 1: with earlier, who gets the self awareness Award for complaining
Speaker 1: to the Washington Post about the Harris campaign and how
Speaker 1: it is I swear it says this. The Harris campaign
Speaker 1: is mocking Trump on social media, and Stephen Chung and
Speaker 1: Donald Trump are butt hurt. Acting like whiney school children
Speaker 1: is not a political strategy, Chung says, but it is
Speaker 1: a coping mechanism for the Kamala campaign, who knows they
Speaker 1: have a weak candidate incapable of being authentic. If anyone
Speaker 1: thinks that using emojis is some cutting edge message technique,
Speaker 1: they're severely out of touch. With reality and the seriousness
Speaker 1: of the challenges Americans face. So you heard him, No emojis.
Speaker 1: Emojis are for Whiney's school children. Racist and sexist and
Speaker 1: anti semitic and violent memes and stupid ass nick names.
Speaker 1: Those are what serious presidential candidates use. I got one question.
Speaker 1: Is there an emoji or a meme for a mini
Speaker 1: stroke asking for a friend? Also of interest here, it
Speaker 1: is rare when a former worst Person comes back and
Speaker 1: wins the award years later in an entirely new category.
Speaker 1: But a TV reporter fired for showing up in a
Speaker 1: bikini on tape at the house of a guy she
Speaker 1: was doing an investigative report on after his wife disappeared.
Speaker 1: She is now about to be fired for mocking Tim
Speaker 1: Walls's son. And the twist, not only is she a
Speaker 1: right wing media nut job now, but she's also the
Speaker 1: volleyball coach at a public school with a special and
Speaker 1: exemplary department dedicated to special needs high school kids. That's next.
Speaker 1: This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman stell
Speaker 1: ahead of us on this ediative countdown. So lou Dobbs
Speaker 1: has been dead for like six weeks now and just
Speaker 1: yesterday I found myself explaining to an old friend who
Speaker 1: didn't know that Lou Dobbs's inability to keep his pants
Speaker 1: on while he was living directly led to the start
Speaker 1: of my television career a scant forty three years ago.
Speaker 1: This month, Hey baby, I work for Cable News Network.
Speaker 1: If you get my drift, stocks are up ahead in things.
Speaker 1: I promised not to tell what I'm supposed to respect
Speaker 1: him because he's dead. First, there are still more new
Speaker 1: idiots to talk about. The daily round up, the miss Grants, morons,
Speaker 1: undunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
Speaker 1: the world. Respect. I never respected him when he was alive.
Speaker 1: The Bronze worst Bill Mitchell talk about lack of respect.
Speaker 1: He is chairman of Your Voice America, and he's also
Speaker 1: a human weather van. As near as I can figure,
Speaker 1: this is the plot of his course in Republican party
Speaker 1: circles since twenty fifteen. Hated Trump, liked Trump, hated Trump,
Speaker 1: liked Trump, wanted Trump to drop out, wanted Trump to
Speaker 1: stay in, supported Trump, rooted for Trump, demanded Trump, resign,
Speaker 1: got rid of Trump, disavowed Trump, got rid of his
Speaker 1: Twitter account, came back supported Trump, supported Trump some more
Speaker 1: now demanding Trump be elected. I've lost track how many
Speaker 1: times it is. It might be thirty five more times
Speaker 1: that I've for got. Now he likes Trump again. Why
Speaker 1: are the Democrats, he writes, completely uninterested in the investigation
Speaker 1: of the Trump assassination attempt? Hold on before we go
Speaker 1: into this bill. Got a surprise in a reply from
Speaker 1: Congressional reporter Jamie Dupree, who wrote, all six Democrats on
Speaker 1: the Trump Shooting Task Force showed up in Butler, Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: for a site visit on Monday. Four of the seven
Speaker 1: GOP lawmakers on that House panel missed the trip. Who
Speaker 1: is it that are completely uninterested in the investigation of
Speaker 1: the Trump assassination attempt? Phil wor Sir the Silver Donald himself.
Speaker 1: There's lots to complain about h R. McMaster, who was
Speaker 1: Trump's National security advisor, but McMaster did point out that
Speaker 1: Trump negotiated with the Taliban, forced the Afghanistan government to
Speaker 1: release five thousand of some of the most heinous people
Speaker 1: on earth, as McMaster put it, and he added, and
Speaker 1: stopped the active targeting of the Taliban in Afghanistan When
Speaker 1: he said that. Even Anderson Cooper noticed he did something
Speaker 1: that I thought was not allowed. On CNN, he asked
Speaker 1: a follow up question, Cooper, the Trump administration forced the
Speaker 1: Afghan government to release five thousand Taliban. The answer from
Speaker 1: hr McMaster correct. So Trump forced the release of five
Speaker 1: thousand Taliban terrorists, then caused Republicans to stop all the
Speaker 1: border security in this country and the deal to increase it,
Speaker 1: and then boasted the terrorists, including from the Middle East,
Speaker 1: were coming into this country over that border. So Trump's
Speaker 1: guilty of treason. Again, harasked him, he's at trade tour.
Speaker 1: I don't care if he's having mini strokes put them
Speaker 1: behind bars. But our winner, I have to say, I
Speaker 1: love this woman's ingenuity. Do you remember her Amy Jacobson.
Speaker 1: Amy Jacobson was the Chicago TV news reporter who got
Speaker 1: fired in two thousand and seven after while she was
Speaker 1: doing an investigative report on a guy whose wife had disappeared,
Speaker 1: video turned up of her at the guy's house and
Speaker 1: she's in the video and she's in a bathing suit.
Speaker 1: She got fired and then her husband filed for divorce
Speaker 1: against her. Remember her, Amy Jacobson? Well, Now, unsurprisingly, as
Speaker 1: all of the tumbling tumbleweeds blow over to this role.
Speaker 1: Everybody who got caught being a jackass winds up as
Speaker 1: a right wing nut job radio host or a member
Speaker 1: of the Trump transition team. She's on wid in Chicago, fittingly,
Speaker 1: what have you got on that radio? I've got wind?
Speaker 1: And guess who she mocked in the August twenty second show,
Speaker 1: Gus Walls, governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walls's son,
Speaker 1: the young man with the nonverbal learning disorder. She mimicked
Speaker 1: Gus's emotional reaction to his dad's acceptance speech at the
Speaker 1: Democratic National Convention. As you know, Gus is seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: If that were Baron Trump, who had been mocked that
Speaker 1: way by the liberals, I don't know, Trump would have
Speaker 1: taken hostages by now. Jacobson's co host compared Gus Walls
Speaker 1: to a Chris Farley character, and Jacobson laughed and laughed
Speaker 1: and laughed. And this is bad enough. As we've seen,
Speaker 1: even Ann Coulter felt a measure of remorse about doing
Speaker 1: the same thing. But this gets much worse. Amy Jacobson
Speaker 1: is the clubhouse leader in the insulting Gus Wall and
Speaker 1: showing a total lack of humanity and showing your ass,
Speaker 1: as they say, full the ass not unfamiliar to her
Speaker 1: from from the two thousand and seven story. Come to
Speaker 1: think of it, See, because Amy Jacobson is not just
Speaker 1: a right wing nut job on Chicago radio. She's also
Speaker 1: head coach of the varsity boys and girls volleyball teams
Speaker 1: at Roiled Amundson High School in Chicago. And guess what
Speaker 1: they have at Aminson High School in Chicago. Apart from
Speaker 1: periodic Arctic expeditions. I suppose they have a large so
Speaker 1: called cluster program designed for high school kids with learning disabilities.
Speaker 1: It's such a good program they have at Alminson that
Speaker 1: licensed therapists who treat these kids and help them out.
Speaker 1: Many of them send their kids specifically to this school.
Speaker 1: So the volleyball coach at the school helping special needs
Speaker 1: kids mocked the special needs kid of the Democratic vice
Speaker 1: presidential candidate, who himself used to be a football coach
Speaker 1: at a high school in Minnesota. Well, guess what the
Speaker 1: parents at Aminsen want. They want coach Amy fired, and hell,
Speaker 1: they want the guy who's jokes she laughed at. A
Speaker 1: guy named Dan Proft, fired two from his job. But oh,
Speaker 1: according to the Chicago trib what do you know, looks
Speaker 1: like he's already been removed as a board member of
Speaker 1: Envision Unlimited, which is, what else a disability advocacy organization.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Wind should fire this clown Jacobson, and obviously
Speaker 1: the school has to fire her. But happily, Amy Jacobson,
Speaker 1: you can always go back into TV reporting. Oh right,
Speaker 1: Amy Jacobson unemployable? Two days? Whis Tyson now to the
Speaker 1: number one story on this all new edition of Countdown?
Speaker 1: And it's that time of year again. It's August when
Speaker 1: the odometer turns over and my TV debut becomes forty
Speaker 1: three years ago. This holy crap, and it all owes
Speaker 1: to Ted Turner and Lou Dobbs. Part of this I've
Speaker 1: told before. I actually interviewed with Cable News Network twice,
Speaker 1: once in April nineteen eighty when they were not yet
Speaker 1: on the air, and after that interview I saw no
Speaker 1: reason they ever would be. I wrote in my diary
Speaker 1: there's no chance they're ever going to get it on
Speaker 1: the air in time. They were supposed to go on
Speaker 1: in September. Because the New York Bureau of CNN consisted
Speaker 1: of one coffee table, a couple of chairs, one coffee machine,
Speaker 1: a stairwell, one unisex bathroom, and one staffer New York
Speaker 1: Bureau chief Mary Alice Williams. Plus the day I went there,
Speaker 1: CNN Sports president Bill McPhail made it two staffers. He
Speaker 1: was up from Atlanta after a long year. My phone
Speaker 1: rang one day and McPhail asked me to fill in
Speaker 1: for two weeks. In two weeks for their New York
Speaker 1: sports reporter. I had no television experience at all. Well,
Speaker 1: I'd watched it. She was going on vacation on August third, sooner,
Speaker 1: McPhail added if the baseball strike ended before then. Her
Speaker 1: name was Debbie Segur, and all I knew was vacation
Speaker 1: me okay. Turned out it was part vacation, part get
Speaker 1: out of town quickly, very quickly. See CNN started as
Speaker 1: not just news news or just news and politics and
Speaker 1: interw views and guests. There was a half an hour
Speaker 1: business show every night, and a half an hour show
Speaker 1: business show every night, and a half an hour sports
Speaker 1: cast at seven, and another half an hour sports cast
Speaker 1: at eleven, and then one in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: There was a fashion program, and there were hourly stock reports,
Speaker 1: and they had a staff of meteorologists, and they had
Speaker 1: short sports casts almost every hour of the day. And
Speaker 1: the business anchor based in that New York bureau, which
Speaker 1: had expanded from the one unisex bathroom, was Lou Dobbs,
Speaker 1: and as the producer they had sent up to work
Speaker 1: with me when I filled in for this Debbie Sigura
Speaker 1: Phil Griffin later the president of MSNBC. As he explained
Speaker 1: to me, when we got in the car to go
Speaker 1: out to Shaye Stadium to interview all those New York
Speaker 1: Mets guys, Lou Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out
Speaker 1: on his wife with the CNN New York sports reporter,
Speaker 1: and missus Dobbs had found out, so there was even
Speaker 1: a rumor there was somebody else who also worked in
Speaker 1: the CNN New York bureau who found out. So Bill
Speaker 1: McPhail's hurried call asking me to fill in for the
Speaker 1: reporter for two weeks. In two weeks was because she
Speaker 1: was going on quote vacation. Not long after all this,
Speaker 1: Dobbs thought it would be smarter to leave New York
Speaker 1: for a while, like a decade or so, and Debbie
Speaker 1: went with him. They got married. This left New York
Speaker 1: without a sports reporter, and CNN tried another one of
Speaker 1: their Atlanta anchors for a while, but they kept giving
Speaker 1: him extra vacation time, so they would have to bring
Speaker 1: me in freelance every month, and finally the following March
Speaker 1: they offered me the job full time. And I have
Speaker 1: not earned an honest pay check since. And I mean
Speaker 1: that in two ways. CNN was paying me five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a week, that's one hundred dollars a day to
Speaker 1: go on national television. Even then, this seemed a little low,
Speaker 1: and it was about forty percent less than what I
Speaker 1: was making for like three days a week in network radio.
Speaker 1: I pointed this out acceptingly because I was learning how
Speaker 1: to do TV while on TV and getting paid for
Speaker 1: it was a vocational school. And that's when they told
Speaker 1: me that the five hundred dollars a week was already
Speaker 1: more than they had been paying Debbie Sigura and more
Speaker 1: than the guy they were paying as their reporter in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. And then Bill McPhail, the head of sports,
Speaker 1: called and offered me a contract for twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and I said, wait, twenty five thousands, five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a week is twenty six that wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you're offering me less for the contract. Why would I
Speaker 1: take less? Is there health insurance or something? And he
Speaker 1: said no, there's just the security of having the contract.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'd rather have the thousand dollars
Speaker 1: that you're docking me for signing, and they found it somewhere,
Speaker 1: but they always reminded me how generous they had been
Speaker 1: with that extra thousand dollars, and I kept saying, that's
Speaker 1: not extra. You are already paying me that. Anyway, None
Speaker 1: of that would have happened, though, without Ted Turner, because
Speaker 1: CNN was his idea, and in fact, most of what
Speaker 1: you saw from me on ESPN later that was also
Speaker 1: mostly his idea too, sort of anyway, the basic idea
Speaker 1: of SportsCenter sports news on national television on more or
Speaker 1: less a daily basis, Ted did that. Not ESPN and
Speaker 1: the daily sports news studio show on at the same
Speaker 1: time every day or night with the same anchors treated
Speaker 1: as seriously as a half an hour of news. Ted
Speaker 1: did that. And buying sports teams to have something to
Speaker 1: put on your television station, Ted did that too. WTCG
Speaker 1: Channel seventeen Atlanta was the fringiest of fringe ETV stations
Speaker 1: when Ted Turner bought it in nineteen seventy. But then
Speaker 1: six years later he bought first the Atlanta Braves and
Speaker 1: then the basketball Atlanta Hawks, and he bought a couple
Speaker 1: of satellite dishes, and the FCC made the fateful decision
Speaker 1: to let him put Channel seventeen up on the satellite
Speaker 1: so it could be shown on those fledgling cable systems
Speaker 1: around the country. And the next thing you knew, the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Braves were America's team, and Ted, who was shameless,
Speaker 1: promptly signed the first baseball player ever to take advantage
Speaker 1: of what we now know as free agency, Andy Messersmith.
Speaker 1: Andy Messersmith got what looked like all the money in
Speaker 1: the world, more money than any baseball player had ever
Speaker 1: gotten or or we were certain would ever get, one
Speaker 1: million dollars over three years with one catch. Andy Messersmith
Speaker 1: had to wear uniform number seventeen WTCG Channel seventeen. You
Speaker 1: see where this was going. He had to wear uniform
Speaker 1: number seventeen, and instead of having Messersmith written on the
Speaker 1: back of the shirt over the seventeen, he had to
Speaker 1: have the word channel. So Andy Messersmith's uniform when he
Speaker 1: broke in with the Atlanta Braves in nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: as the highest paid player in baseball history. The back
Speaker 1: of the uniform read channel seventeen. Baseball stopped that right quick.
Speaker 1: It stopped Ted the day he decided that he should
Speaker 1: see what it was like to manage the Braves and
Speaker 1: if it really was as difficult as his managers had
Speaker 1: made it seem. His lifetime record was zero to one,
Speaker 1: and he said, yes, this is very difficult. But the
Speaker 1: cable sports genie, that one was out of the bottle
Speaker 1: and nobody was stopping it, and he haspn ran with it.
Speaker 1: But next came news. Even then, his crazy idea cable
Speaker 1: news network rested squarely on the first regularly scheduled nightly
Speaker 1: sports newscast in national television history, CNN Sports Tonight at
Speaker 1: seven at eleven and two am Eastern. While Sports Center
Speaker 1: was on in those days for fifteen minutes one night
Speaker 1: at seven and then an hour the next night at
Speaker 1: ten and sports Tonight, was there come news or high
Speaker 1: water seven nights a week. Of course, Ted Turner was
Speaker 1: not just shameless, he was also technically penniless, so he
Speaker 1: hired a couple of real veterans to run and anchor
Speaker 1: the thing. Bill mcphil who helped invent the NFL on
Speaker 1: CBS and Monday Night Football, was also his idea. And
Speaker 1: his former CBS colleague Bob Wessler, and he hired Nick Charles,
Speaker 1: who was a star of sportscasting on the Washington and
Speaker 1: Baltimore newscasts, but everybody else the cheapest hires they could find.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty one, Turner sent McPhail to hire me.
Speaker 1: That was our second interview. When I told Bill I
Speaker 1: had made forty two thousand dollars the year before working
Speaker 1: for Charlie Steiner in radio. Bill spit his drink halfway
Speaker 1: across the room. We were planning on hiring six guys
Speaker 1: to start with, for a total of ninety five thousand.
Speaker 1: This is when they were staffing up what became CNN
Speaker 1: Headline News. I answered that I hoped that the other
Speaker 1: five guys he was going to hire were prepared to
Speaker 1: make it on seven grand each, because there was no
Speaker 1: way I was moving to Atlanta for less than sixty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Well, they got me anyway, and for less
Speaker 1: than sixty thousand dollars, but I did not move to Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Lou Dobbs. And they got Dan Patrick and
Speaker 1: Tanna Storm and Fred Hickman and Dan Hicks and Gary
Speaker 1: Miller and dozens of others and reporters and cameramen and
Speaker 1: producers and executives and editors, and one sports production assistant
Speaker 1: from the original crew of CNN Sports wound up becoming
Speaker 1: the president of CNN Worldwide, and another wound up becoming
Speaker 1: the president of MSNBC. ESPN reshaped television sports news anyway,
Speaker 1: CNN created it, and early on CNN staffed ESPN and
Speaker 1: much of the industry. And I'm skipping how Turner mainstreamed
Speaker 1: World Cup Yachting at least for a while, and Ted
Speaker 1: and TNT and Ted and the Goodwill Games and Ted
Speaker 1: and World Championship Wrestling, whose matches were actually held right
Speaker 1: above the CNN newsroom so that often you could hear
Speaker 1: the wrestlers slamming each other on our ceiling. And by
Speaker 1: the way, the Braves winning fourteen straight division titles, and
Speaker 1: the repopulation of Bison in the country. It was also
Speaker 1: Ted Turner, But my favorite Ted Turner story comes from
Speaker 1: something he did not pull off, not that he did
Speaker 1: not try. When the football owners forced the players out
Speaker 1: on strike in nineteen eighty two. Ted sent me to
Speaker 1: cover it every day for eight months, and one day
Speaker 1: he showed up at the football strike talks to meet
Speaker 1: with the players, and when he came out, he announced
Speaker 1: that he would be bankrolling and televising two football games
Speaker 1: in the middle of a football strike, one at RFK
Speaker 1: Stadium in Washington and the other at the Rose Bowl
Speaker 1: in southern California. And basically these two games would pit
Speaker 1: pickup teams of striking players the American Conference versus the
Speaker 1: National Conference. And he called his two games the All
Speaker 1: Star Season. I've mentioned this elsewhere and before. When I
Speaker 1: asked him about the acronym for the All Star Season,
Speaker 1: he winked at me and shushed me, and then he
Speaker 1: took me aside and he asked me what I thought.
Speaker 1: I told him, nobody's going to watch and he's going
Speaker 1: to lose money. And he looked at me and he said,
Speaker 1: nobody watches you. I lose money on you, so what,
Speaker 1: you'll make money eventually. He then explained that that was
Speaker 1: really just designed to set up the owners if he
Speaker 1: could put the games together and get them on TV
Speaker 1: with no more than one month's lead time, the players'
Speaker 1: union was willing to partner up with him. Ted's real
Speaker 1: motive for the ass the All Star season was nothing
Speaker 1: less than creating his own football league, twenty four teams,
Speaker 1: which would begin play in nineteen eighty three or sooner
Speaker 1: if necessary, and would be televised exclusively on TBS. All
Speaker 1: he needed was the players going along with him, and
Speaker 1: one little labor court ruling that the owners had forced
Speaker 1: the players union to go out on strike and that
Speaker 1: would allow the union to negotiate with other employers. Well, obviously,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be a football expert to know
Speaker 1: that he did not get that court ruling, but they
Speaker 1: went for it. Ted Turner was shooting for nothing less
Speaker 1: than killing off the National Football League and replacing it
Speaker 1: with a new National Football League owned by Ted Turner,
Speaker 1: and he was going to give the players fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the whole league. And don't forget, nearly all of
Speaker 1: this was done on a shoe string budget, with borrowed money,
Speaker 1: with all of his employees convinced that he was crazy,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't last until next Tuesday, and when we
Speaker 1: would get our paychecks at CNN in New York, we
Speaker 1: would race each other to the bank to cash them
Speaker 1: just in case there wasn't going to be enough for everybody.
Speaker 1: So whenever something causes me to get nostalgic about my
Speaker 1: start in TV, I inevitably find myself going back to
Speaker 1: tales of Ted Turner, Owen Lou and Missus Dobbs and
Speaker 1: the Other Missus Dobbs, Missus Dobbs one and Missus Dobbs two.
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. Please share this podcast with somebody who
Speaker 1: does not listen. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, the
Speaker 1: musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of
Speaker 1: our music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards.
Speaker 1: Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums.
Speaker 1: He's a first little guy. It was produced by Tko Brothers.
Speaker 1: Our satirical and fithy musical comments are by the best
Speaker 1: baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is
Speaker 1: the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
Speaker 1: Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed
Speaker 1: by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is
Speaker 1: my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
Speaker 1: Your assignment, if you choose to accept it. Write some
Speaker 1: lyrics to the Beatles song Penny Lane about Kenny Maine.
Speaker 1: Kenny Maine, the barber shaves another customer. That's countdown for
Speaker 1: this the seventieth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election,
Speaker 1: the three hundred and twenty ninth day since convicted felon
Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
Speaker 1: government of the United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing
Speaker 1: hearing if it happens, Use the mental health system. After all,
Speaker 1: he doesn't realize he was president in twenty twenty and
Speaker 1: you've got this President Biden. I mean, if Jack Smith
Speaker 1: can outsmart the Supreme Court, you and the White House
Speaker 1: can use the presidential immunity these idiots on the Court
Speaker 1: provided to stop him from doing it again while we
Speaker 1: still can. And anti Semitic, anti immigration, gun nut Republicans,
Speaker 1: please stop shooting at Trumph. More Democrats than Republicans showed
Speaker 1: up at the investigation at the site christ The next
Speaker 1: scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news requires until
Speaker 1: the next one. I'm Keith Oldreman. Good morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman is
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