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Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I heart radio. I don't want to call this the best of countdown. It's both pretentious and falsely modest. Let me try the you should listen to this again edition of countdown. Happily, maybe unhappily, for our country. Several of the segments I've done in the first few weeks here have unexpected residence even today. Let me start in August nineteen. This was right after the new president of CNN, Chris Licked, and I knew from his days as the Hatchetman for Joe Scarborough at MSNBC, began what we now realize is a full fledged purge of the Liberals at CNN. We did not know at this point that John Harwood, who I also worked with an MSNBC, had already been fired effective September two. We did not know Brianna Keller and Jeff Zeleny of CNN would tweet identical Republican talking point about the marines at President Biden's speech about the Republicans attempt to overthrow the government, and do so presumably to curry favor with licked and his boss, the trump funder John Malone. We did know, though, that lick had already canceled reliable sources and fired its host, Brian Stelter, and if anybody told you that was some sort of cost saving move. STELTER had three years left on his contract and John Harwood had two years left. Here's what I said on Augustine. I've had problems with some of Brian's work since he founded the TV newser blog while he was in college in two thousand four later at the New York Times, but I've never had any problem with his intent nor his work ethic. And his stuff on CNN made him such a target from the far right that you would have thought he was me or that he was on the air seventeen hours a day on CNN rather than once a week. The reason was simple. AFTER MSNBC CUT A deal to stop calling out Fox News, pretty much nobody in television called out Fox News and the rest of the lunatic right propaganda machine, except stelter. His firing was no surprise. You may not know it, but CNN was recently taken over by a company owned by billionaire trump Downer John Malone, and Malone intends to vary gradually reduce CNN to at best twenty four hours a day of both sides is him. Think Michael smirconish on a loop. stelter did the most damage to the right. Therefore stelter was the first to go. He will not be the last. CNN's new president, Chris Licked, is there to dismantle the liberal parts of CNN. I know this because I worked with him at MSNBC, where he decided that part of his job was to try to dismantle the liberal parts of MSNBC. When stelter was fired, the daily Beasts Impeccable Media Guy Lachlan Cartwright reported that quote. Everything about this rollout points to discovery board member John Malone and discovery CEO David Zaslov. A source familiar with the situation told the daily Beast Chris licked did not want to do this. I am sure the quote is accurate and I'm sure whoever told cartwright that believes the quote to be true, but it misses the point. What Chris Lick wants to do is whatever John Malone and David Zaslov tell him to do. He is a corporate lackey. Worse, he's a corporate henchman. So here's the story. I promised not to tell perhaps the most amazing thing about my ten years at MSNBC was the fact that Joe Scarborough and his producers, especially his chief henchman, ever got their own show on the air. Because nobody I have ever worked with in radio or television, in sports or news in the twentieth century or the one, ever spent more time trying to screw with other programs on the same network then did Joe Scarborough. And until just about the time I left in two thousand and eleven, the guy he sent in to do most of the sabotage for him was this henchman guy. The reason this should matter to you now is scarborough's henchman was Chris licked, the new president of CNN, and if they scoured the nation to find the worst person to run CNN in a time when democracy is threatened by one political party and tepidly defended by another, it's Chris licked. I know, I know, you turn on the TV and you see Joe Scarborough and you see exactly what I see. A blank, dazed, darting, paranoid, no soul, stupid check engine light. Look, but if you don't trust me, trust my scars, my Joey Scars. Behind that Vapid face is a master saboteur. Early in two thousand and eight, the late Tim Russert called me and warned me that the GOP had upped its pressure on me. He said he had heard from somebody in New York that somebody in New York was going into the office of the President of NBC News saying that Joe Scarborough couldn't get his friend John McCain to come on to his new morning show because I was so critical of McCain. On countdown, Tim was not sure it was scarborough, but if it wasn't, who else could have gotten in to see the president of NBC News other than Scarborough or his executive producer? The evidence for the new CNN president, Mr Licht, being directly involved in interfering with programming to benefit somebody else's friends or political cronies was vague in two thousand and eight, but not at all vague two years later, early in January two thousand ten, the Republican candidate to fill the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy, Scott Brown, the former semi nude model, was at a alley when one of his supporters talked about, quote, shoving a curling iron up the backside of the Democratic Senate candidate Martha Cokeley. Scott Brown clearly heard the remark from the crowd and responded, quote. We could do that. On January Eighteenth, on countdown, I did a brief commentary about how unsuitable Brown was for public office. I said he was, quote, an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, x Nude model, tea bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees. Unquote. I had quotes from Brown. I had videotape of him disparaging his minority opponent in a local election to her face at a debate to back up what I said. An hour later, Joe Scarborough commenced a tweet storm against me. Quote. Alberman calls Brown a homophobic, racist reactionary who supports violence against women. How reckless and how sad it's no longer enough to simply disagree with on one I'm sorry, I just fell into my scarborough impression. Justice went beck called the President Racist. This sort of rhetorical exclaimism must be discouraged. chapened the debate end. Quote and impression now there was a standing rule at MSNBC. You want to criticize another MSNBC PERSONALITY, go ahead, have a blast, but it must be on the air on MSNBC and the other person must have an opportunity to reply in real time in the same show or in some kind of face to face way. No hit and run, no Joe Scarborough tweet storms. If you criticize them by name or by inference in any other medium, newspaper, interview, Radio, social media, you were to receive an automatic suspension. The next day, January, called the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, and I asked how long Joe Scarborough's automatic suspension was gonna be. Griffin asked me to come into the office a little earlier than usual and to go see him. He said he had already had a meeting about the tweets that morning with Scarborough's executive producer, Chris Licht. Griffin explained that scarborough, according to Lickt, considered Scott Brown a friend. More importantly, Chris licked warned Griffin that if Griffin folloled through and enforced the suspension rule, scarborough would have no other option than to go to the press and tell reporters, especially reporters at right wing websites like Tucker Carlson's, the daily caller, that he scarborough had been suspended because he scarborough was a conservative, but I was a liberal and that I, and not Phil Griffin, RAN MSNBC. What can I do? Griffin was scared. I told him he could fire scarborough and licked because they had just tried to blackmail him and eventually he was going to have to fire them both anyway. But then I knew he would not do this and that I knew now that he would not suspend scarborough either. And Griffin did not suspend him. Partial score. Scarborough's friends to MSNBC's rules of behavior. Nothing. But Phil Griffin did send out a memo to the entire company insisting that anybody who criticized another MSNBC show or host in another medium would be suspended. Except Scarborough, who had just done exactly that and then threatened his own employers. On January, Brian stelter's old blog TV news or got a copy of Griffin's memo. They wondered why scarborough had not been suspended. So they called the MSNBC president and they printed quote Griffin Responds to TV news or quote. An important rule was broken. I spoke to Keith and he said in the spirit of teamwork and the free flow of ideas, he didn't think it warranted punishment or suspension. I also talked to Joe and he apologized to me. That's why I made the decision that this didn't rise to the level of punishment. But I felt it was necessary to reiterate my long standing policy bull crap. Reiterate my long standing policy, which I just did not enforce, against Joe Scarborough. The whole thing was totally fabricated, licked and scarborough had threatened to smear their own bosses in the right wing Echo Chamber. It should have been both fired on the spot. In May two thousand ten scarborough said something on the air about a Democrat getting away with not being investigated for something. I forget the details. I didn't bother to look it up. You can if you want, then. Marcos Malitzis the editor of the daily coast website and not just a regular contributor to countdown, but somebody who had been promoting the show and the MSNBC brand on that website every day for five years. Marcos sent a snarky but legitimate tweet questioning scarborough's credentials to criticize others who had not been investigated for stuff. Marcos invoked the staffer who died in an accident in Joe Scarborough's congressional office. Scarborough then attacked Meliitsus on twitter, inaccurately claiming melitsus had accused scarborough of murder. A few days after that I got a phone call from the MSNBC president, Phil Griffin, and if you got a phone call rather than a call to come into his office, you know he was really scared. Griffin told me Chris licked has been in to see me. Joe Won't put up with having Marcos militsis on his network anymore. Not only that, but lick says many of Joe's friends who also appear in dayside and prime time won't come on if Marcos melitzis is permitted to continue here. Chris is insisting that Marcos be banned from MSNBC immediately. Chris says he's afraid that if we don't do that, Joe Won't come into work tomorrow. Upon hearing that, I laughed and I congratulated Phil Griffin on the clear win win he'd just been given. But Phil was very bad at an forcing MSNBC's rules, but very good at creating new ones on the spot to protect Joe Scarborough and Chris licked and their friends. I'm banning the LITZAS for many further appearances on MSNBC. I said, Phil, he's a contributor to my show. You are suspending my contributor who has driven hundreds of thousands of viewers to countdown at MSNBC and I don't have any say in it. You are owned by Joe Scarborough and Chris Licked. What you now have to worry about is whether I tell this story on the air tonight or I just wait and tell it later. Phil now got conciliatory because he was scared again and said it could be just a suspension if I cooperated. So I called Marcos. He said he enjoyed his contributions to countdown. He also did occasional appearances on the old ED SCHULTZ MSNBC show and he said if there were a chance at resuming them, he'd preferred to at least try that. So Marcos and I went along with Griffin suspending Marcus Melitz's and to my knowledge, Marcus Melitzus has not been seen on MSNBC since. I wish I had better notes on some of my conversations from the two thousand eight nine eleven era about those conversations with the hosts and the producers of the other shows like Schultz and Rachel Maddow's show and even Chris Matthews and hardball. I must have heard a variation of this statement a dozen times from these people. Guess who was in Griffin's office explaining that such and such, as Joe's friend and Phil really needs to make sure we lay off him? Chris licked. It was usually an expletive in the middle between Chris and licked. I remember one of my producers at the MSNBC a version of countdown telling me that one of the other producers told him that licked had gone to NBC News President Steve Cappus with an actual list of Republicans that Matto and Olberman needed to stop criticizing because they were Joe's, here's the word again, friends. And we were hurting more joe. What's amazing is that, setting aside the issues of unrevealed toward love affairs, when CNN fired its nine pm host Chris Cuomo, President Jeff Zucker and Senior Vice President Alison Gallis. They fired them in essence, because they interfered with CNN content and practices in order to do favors for people who were their friends or, in Cuomo's case, their relatives at MSNBC, interfering with MSNBC content and practices to do favors for friends. It was seemingly the only reason Chris licked had a job. So CNN got rid of left wingers for a terrible violation of journalistic ethics and then hired as president right wing henchman who had committed exactly the same journalistic ethical problems and who, for his act, the first one of his career at CNN, killed off the only national television show that regularly held up box news, News Max and all the rest to the world to show that they were the threats to democracy that they are. This is CNN. So that was August nine and, as I said earlier, Chris licked had yet to fire his White House correspondent, John Harwood, thus eating five years of salaries just to knock two liberals and one liberal show off the air at CNN. If you think that is ominous. Well, you're right, it's sure as hell is ominous. Coming up on this. You should listen to this again. countdown. I have been there. You may not have noticed, but a long time AGO MSNBC tried to make all its liberal shows put on a bunch of conservatives for balance. It also let the Republican Party dictate who was anchoring the presidential debate coverage and who wasn't. The implications were the few, sure, and that chilling flashback. Next this is countdown, continuing with the you should listen to this again, edition of countdown. It is a sad but provable truth. Since trump's rise, in two thousand fifteen, there has been at least one meeting inside the upper echelons of every company that owns a news outlet in America. The topic of that meeting say, if the country goes fully fascist, how do we protect our profits? Those meetings began at Msnbc in two thousand six and they have never stopped, which is what I tried to recount at great length in the first episode of this podcast version of countdown, from August one, with a little piece I called the story so far. If you were a viewer of the old TV show. Let me explain finally how that became this. My original MSNBC news hours. The big show and the White House in crisis were the first programs that made MSNBC any money. I mean seriously. The network otherwise hemorrhaged cash from its launch in until about two thousand five. That's when the show I started upon my return in two thousand three, countdown, a low rated nightly news digest that was a pretty good show, started getting really political and suspicious of Bush and Iraq and especially the Republicans, political manipulation of the threat of terrorism, and the viewers arrived in droves. By the next year. The AD salesman, and contrary to all logic, they are the ones from whom you get the truth in a news company. They were sending me models of Champagne and revealing that countdown was now earning a fifty million dollar annual profit. Then V and d five million, then a hundred million. They liked me, they really really liked me, but management at NBC not so much. RIGHT AFTER MSNBC started to make money, it started making enemies. The Republicans came right to our door and through it the PSYCHOS at Fox News like O'Reilly and Hannity and Ales. Remember we called them fixed news or Fox noise. They started calling the executives at NBC and its parent company G E, demanding that I stopped criticizing them. SOFTER THAN CHURCH MUSIC. These fascists could not take criticism. When Tim Russier was still alive and defending me internally and externally, watching every night and sending me tips and warnings and ideas and capable of playing the Republicans inside NBC and outside NBC like Fiddles, everything was fine. Then came that horrible day June two thousand eight. Tim died and suddenly NBC new is was in the hands of a lot of cowards and bullies like Tom Brokaw and Joe Scarborough and Jeff Zucker and names you would not know, like Jeff Immelt and Steve Cappus and Phil Griffin and Chris Licked and I really wish you didn't need to know Chris lickt's name, but he was scarborough's henchman and now he's the new president of CNN and you don't know how bad that news is for the future of this country. Anyway, I will go into depth on all this background in future episodes. How men like these spent a year keeping Rachel maddow off the air, telling me I couldn't even put her on as my guest host because nobody would watch a woman or a lesbian or another liberal. That's what they said. Then they lied to me and told me they had hired her so that one night Larry King talked her into going on his show on CNN for two and fifty dollars, and I wound up hiring her out of my own pocket to keep MSNBC from losing her. Literally the cash in my wall four hundred and thirty seven bucks. Anyway, by August of two thousand eight Republicans were threatening broke call that if he did not get me fired from MSNBC's coverage of the presidential election, John McCain would not show up for the debate that bro call had inherited from the late Tim Russert. So broke call went in and threatened, and that's a nice euphemism, NBC management on behalf of the GOP just to get to host one more debate. I mean he boasted about it in the New York Times. Then within a year it was Fox blackmailing the executives at GE actually getting the Chairman of G E, Jeff M l, to threaten to TAKE MSNBC off the air, just shut it down, if Fox continued to criticize him. immilt because his mommy was a bill O'Reilly Fan and billow kept claiming her little boy jeff was producing weapons used to kill Americans in Iraq. I mean honestly, these were adults behaving like this. Well, as I tell everybody in the business, there are no adults. It got worse and worse. Zooker and Roger Ales Meeting Inside Thirty Rock, no less, to decide what I could and could not say about Fox News, negotiating what could be in our news and what could not, and in NBC started suggesting that we put Republicans on countdown, like Michael Steele and the deplorable scarborough. Nobody ever asked me a direct question as to how, in January, I left MSNBC and the highest rated cable news show that was not on Fox, and I kept telling them just say, we don't consider Fox to be news. It isn't news, so why are we comparing our ratings to them? Was I fired? Did I quit? Was it something else. So I've never actually told the actual story because I wasn't asked a direct question about it. Well, one of the perks they threw at me when I resigned with MSNBC RATHER THAN JUMPING TO CNN in two thousand six, two thousand and seven was a slot on the Sunday night NBC football broadcast. It was a nice change. I got to work with my old ESPN partner Dan Patrick. It wasn't life and death that could do the catch phrases and the silly voices and say they're not gonna got them. But right before season Jeff Zucker called me into his office told me I was not focusing enough on countdown and I was off the football show. Now, the following portion is, of course, a pure hypothetical which is really better designed for a college course in contract law. But if, in a case like this hypothetical, the guy doing a, let's say, hypothetical football show wasn't actually being paid to do the hypothetical football show, if doing that hypothetical football show were a perk, if it was a non cash payment or an incentive to sign a contract rather than to go to some other hypothetical network like C N Hypothetical. N Well, then, when that hypothetical announceres taken off that hypothetical football show, the people who hypothetically took him off the show have hypothetically breached his hypothetical contract and all of a sudden the hypothetical companies hypothetical lawyers are asking the hypothetical announcer how much money it would hypothetically cost them to hypothetically cure a hypothetical breach. Back to the non hypothetical portion of our story. So now it's a few months later, the week before mid terms, which I would be anchoring on MSNBC, and while I would be covering the Senate and governor races right through election night, we were done reporting on the house. I did an interview on Thursday, I think, with the congressman, Raoul Galva, of Arizona, and then I did a special comment on Friday about all the tea partiers running for Congress that year and that was it. And that night I was on the phone with my friend Kirsten Cinema. Yep, Bat Kirston Cinema. How many Kirsten cinemas could there be? She told me that Graalva and another Arizona representative had gotten a lot of death threats late in the campaign and they had spent virtually every last dollar they had on security. Kirston, can you donate to these campaigns? And I said I had never donated before, but yeah, to Grahalva and to a senator in the south, I think, and the other Arizona representative who had gotten a lot of death threats. Her name was Gabby Gifford's. The next Tuesday I anchored those mid terms. Didn't mention one house race or candidate and everything was fine. And then somebody called one of the political websites to say oho Alderman donated to some Democrats and they called NBC Public Relations. An NBC public relations called the President of MSNBC and the president of M M S and Wec called me and he said this looks bad. I know, what's your right to do it. It's not like we're gonna suspend to her anything stupid like that. Why would we do that? This is sort of our fault too, but it just looks bad. Can you know? Can you say something? And I said Yeah, you're right, it does look bad. I'll apologize on the show tomorrow, even though I don't have to, I will voluntarily stop any campaign contributions as long as I'm doing this show. And he said great, and I said great, and I wrote the apology that night and I sent it to him and he said great, and I said great because I already had part of tomorrow's show written. And that was it. And the next morning, without a hearing, without a phone call, without an email, without a warning, this hysterical teenager disguised as an adult named Steve Cappus, president of NBC News, he puts out a press release in which he angrily suspends me indefinitely without pay for violations of the NBC News Employee Rule Book that says NBC News Employees can't make donations to political campaigns. Now NBC had an obvious, huge problem. Within hours there was a petition on social media demanding my reinstatement, two hundred and fifty thousand signatures. I was stunned. NBC tried to get Chris Hayes to fill in for me that night. He refused. Even people at Fox News went on the air and said this was absurd. And at NBC there was a lot of shushing and worrying because everybody at NBC News Made Political Donations. They just hit them by donating in their wife's name or the kid's name or to some sort of fund or whatever. I was the only one who admitted to it, but this guy cappus. He was piste off and dug in and demanded I be suspended for a month through, I don't know, a hundred years without pay at least. And all this is already public and well documented. But hypothetically again, there could have been more to it. See if you hypothetically suspend your hypothetical announcer guy again for violating the employee handbook, what happens if that hypothetical announcer is not actually an employee? Why? If the hypothetical employer has written the contract of the hypothetical announcer so that it specifically declares several different hypothetical times in the hypothetical contract, that the hypothetical announcer is not an employee but just say, to pick a term out of thin air, an independent contractor what if, hypothetically, the employer could be NBC, could be a bakery somewhere? What if, hypothetically, the employer did this in contract legal ease so they did not have to pay the hypothetical announcer health insurance or dental. Well then, hypothetically, that phrase breach re enters the chat and the hypothetical companies, hypothetical lawyers go to the executive who just suspended the employee who legally is not an employee, and they say hypothetically again. You now have four hypothetical choices. One, reinstate the hypothetical non employee immediately and hope we don't get sued. To reinstate the hypothetical non employee, immediately, apologize and write up a new contract, for God's sake. Three, end the show, pay the hypothetical non employee every dollar you over the remainder of the hypothetical contract and hope you don't get sued for damages anyway. Or four, hypothetically, throw a lot of money in the air and negotiate a settlement and and the hypothetical show. Hypothetically, in the short term, what happened was, and I'm quoting from the New York Times, they told me on Friday I was suspended. I was back on the Air Tuesday. They didn't even dock my pay or charge me for any days off. Making this wilder still, hours after I was suspended. Al Gore called me. AL owned a struggling TV network called current and he said what NBC is doing is illegal and if you sue them you could own the place. But I think I have a better idea. That can be the start of something big. You can bring countdown to current TV. Will give you fifty million dollars, plus bonuses, plus a piece of the network. You'll be an owner. This is me talking in the long term. For two months these two roller coasters went up and down and my agents negotiated attentive contract with current while there was a hypothetical attempt to settle the other hypothetical non employee cluster, hypothetical F and then literally during the MSNBC countdown show on January, during a commercial break, everything got finalized all at once. My agent told me it was done. I went on the air and said so and nobody, not even the staff, knew, which I am still sorry about. Very greatly unavoidable, but that's the way it worked. So No, I was not fired, countdown was not canceled. The current TV deal had already been in place for weeks. And, by the way, during every step of this I kept mattow and her agent, who had been my agent for twenty seven years, fully in warmed. And so that very night that countdown ended on MSNBC. Mattow was on Bill Maher show right after it all happened and naturally he asked her about it and she lied and said it's the first time hearing of it, and I thought, uh, Blay, that might be the end of that friendship and we haven't spoken since. Anyway, the current thing turned out to be a scam and it blew up rather quickly and I'll tell that story in a future episode. Two. On the other hand, I don't have to work for money again. But the weirdest thing started happening in September two thousand eleven, not eight months after I left MSNBC, feelers from the new owners of NBC, comcast. What I consider coming BACK TO MSNBC? Yes, I would. Then they got cold feet. Then the next year, more feelers. This time I got cold feet and I started negotiating and go back to ESPN instead, and I did. In Two thousand fourteen I actually met with the new NBC News Executives for two hours and they wanted me to bring countdown back as soon as possible. And then the Brian Williams scandal broken. These new executives all got themselves fired and then in October two thou fifteen, I met with the new new executives and they wanted me to come back. They made an actual offer and it was stupid. It was predicated on my doing a show without commentaries, like what was the point of countdown or me without the commentaries? And even that guy got fired in two thousand nineteen and the new chairman of the entire NBC Corporation, Jeff Shell, was an old friend of mine from Fox sports and he wanted me to bring the show back and we got close. And then the word came in from the guy who was negotiating for me that the chairman of NBC News, Caesar Conde, had told him the whole thing had cratered because one person at NBC had never and would never forgive me for something, and that person, and said Conde, was Rachel Maddow. Rachel Maddow, Percy's our conde, vetoed the last chance and it literally a decade of talks about putting this program back on MSNBC. By the way, NBC's denial of this last set of flirtations was that? Yes, for two years NBC CEO Jeff Shell kept scheduling meetings with me, but I should have known he didn't really mean it. Basically, their explanation was I should have known the chairman of NBC was a liar. As the kids say. Weird flex but okay. It's so bad at MSNBC that when they did finally pick somebody as a placeholder in the matadow nine pm slot for Tuesday through Friday, the president of MSNBC, who when the new setup there's actually the president of scheduling everybody's vacation, said about what viewership might look like. Quote. The Universe is very different from when Rachel joined the Cable News Spectrum. My focus is less about how does this one hour perform in this one space? Unquote. Let me translate that to you from TV news executive ease. The ratings are going to suck and we don't care because we just need to look like a news channel with realistic liberal politics. We don't actually need to be a news channel with realistic liberal politics, because you never know how fast we may have to pivot to placate the fascists. One more flashback on this special edition. What all this is leading to? A month after conservatives convened in Dallas and said about themselves, we are all domestic terrorists, they actually pretended to be offended when Joe Biden called them semi fascists. That's next. This discountdown, Ladies and gentlemen, we are all domestic terrorists. One of the most subtle truths about the fascist semi fascists, Maga Republicans, Authoritarians, terrorists, all of the above, whatever you want to call them, one of the most subtle truths about them is that they are self martyring. President Biden called them out as the threats they are on the night of September one. He had called them semi fascist. On August. Oh how they how old and how old? But on the weekend of August five, nearly a month earlier, the infamous SEAPAC conference in Texas had an expert panel called, quote, we are all domestic terrorists. It is the old truth. Just because you don't hit back, that does not mean the bullies won't punch you anyway. For the third item on are you should listen to this again. countdown. Here's what I said about the importance of Biden on the morning of September two, compared to what CNN and others said about the Trivia of marines or no marines. On the same day twice, Biden took the oath of office of the vice presidency of the United States and said I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and at the first inauguration of a president since Lincoln in eighteen sixty one that was threatened by traitors within our midst, Biden took the oath of office of the presidency and on that day he said, I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States. Last night, Joe Biden fulfilled those oaths and he accomplished something an amazingly large number of those who heard him speak could not manage to do. To perceive that, when much of the partisan political structure of this nation has become a threat to the rule of law in this nation and to the very existence of representative government of this nation. It is not political to say so. It is above politics, beyond politics and in spite of politics. My Maxim in twenty five years of covering news and politics in this country has been simple. Every problem that has ever been solved has only begun to be solved on that day when somebody stood up and said this is wrong, this will not stand. We must fix this. And that is what Joe Biden did last night, which dovetails to a point I made first on Monday night here and now will repeat the most powerful thing the president can do in this fight is to mainstream the truth. Joe Biden used ugly words last night, because right now the truth is ugly. He invoked insurrectionists and white supremacists, extremists and extremism. He called out the mob and violence as a political tool. He called it not normal, he called it darkness. He repudiated lies told for profit and power and blind loyalty to a single leader. He brought up Charlottesville and a dagger at the throat of our democracy and rioting in the streets, and he named names. Thank God he named names. The Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the Magary Republicans, and that is a threat to this country. Magar Republicans do not respect the constitution, they did not believe in the rule of law, they did not recognize the will of the people, they refused to accept the results of a free election and they're working right now, as I speak, in state after state, to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and Crownies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself. Because within our power, it's in our hands, yours in mind, to stop the assault on American democracy. This was that rare presidential speech in which the sum of the parts may be less than the whole. The phrases are everything, the words are everything. He said what had to be said and not be said by you or by me. As I mentioned Monday, every phrase he used last week in the semi fascism speech last night and the we the People's speech will be repeated and normalized and reported and become the measuring sticks by which the peril of the present hour is qualified and quantified. And it underscores the peril of the present hour that a startling swath of the political media in this country could not comprehend what Joe Biden was saying, nor why he was saying it at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Political media in this country is a closed industry that understands only its own past and its own language. It cannot be flexible, it cannot respond to new threats. It is unable to function without first shoving everything that ever happens into one of the dozen or less templates that are the only things that can comprehend or process. People from CBS and NBC and ABC and the AP and the major newspapers all struggled with the newness of Biden's approach last night, as indeed they all struggled with the newness and new evil of trump's approach. But CNN deserves to be singled out. We know it has installed a former Hatchetman for Joe Scarborough as its new president. We know its new owner thinks Brent bear of Fox News is not only not a biased propagandist but a role model for journalism, and three of its correspondents apparently know all this as well. Before the speech, an anchor named Poppy Harlow demanded an apology to Republicans during the speech Anchor Brianna Keller said. Whatever you think of this speech, the military is supposed to be a political positioning marines in uniform behind President Biden for a political speech flies in the face of that, and CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny wrote, doing it against a backdrop of two Marines standing at attention and the marine band is a break with White House traditions, and one wonders where Keller and Zeleny were when trump staged the Republican convention on the White House lawn or when trump staged a hundred rallies with police and military beside or behind him, and still does so. One wonders if Keller and Zeleny know that the two marines standing behind Joe Biden at Independence Hall are stationed there and they were there before Biden arrived and they were there after he left and they will be there again today. And one wonders how desperate people like Brianna Keller and Jeff Zeleny and the others that the other outlets could be, how desperate to stay on TV that they could apply both sides. Is Hum to a speech by a president trying to keep them all from winding up having to read only official state approved news that compliments Donald Trump. You can't love your country only when you win, Joe Biden said last night again. He had said it in January two. It is so resonant, especially when you hear something else said about the January six insurrectionists. I will look very, very favorably about about full ardens, if I decided to run and if I win. I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons. I think that's probably going to be the best because even if they go for for two months or six months and you know they have sentences, that will be looking very, very seriously at full pardons because we can't let that happen. What's happened here, and I mean full pardons with an apology, just too many. That is what Joe Biden was addressing last night. The scum that is Donald Trump dangling mass pardons in front of traders. In an online interview hours before Biden's speech. I'm going to thank Donald Trump for something. You may want to sit down. Thank you, trump for proving Joe Biden's point. And, by the way, trump appears to be on the odd even plan. If you heard that carefully, on odd numbers days he suggests he may run for president. On even numbered days he says he already is president or should be proclaimed so immediately. And yet another interview, trump did something strange even for him. His new legal team, in its response to the Department of Justice in the special master's suit in Florida, pointedly never stated, suggested or implied that trump had ever declassified any of the documents trump stolen took to Mari Lago. Nor did his lawyers claim to. That was especially telling insomuch as the D O J had stated the same thing in its filings. The lawyers on both sides agree trump had all the documents and trump did not declassify them and has not legally claimed that he did declassify them. That is called, in Layman's terms, a confession. So what did trump immediately do after all these filings? He insisted he did declassify the documents. People think that when you walk at him as I have confidential documents or whatever it may be, Aldi classified, but I had confidential documents spread out. All of them flow and like a slab, not like a slab, a slab, confidential documents, he said, all the classified. Trump's public variants from what his lawyers are saying is a problem inside the courtroom of his appointee, Judge Eileen Cannon. But as clueless and often childish as her conduct so far has been, there is something fascinating about her statement late Thursday that, while she is not ruling on the trump request for a special master to evaluate the possibility of executive privilege for some of those documents, she will enter a written order quote, at some point. Every day the judge does nothing. Is, of course, positive inertia for the Justice Department, because it can continue to build its case against trump. The judge also said she may order that the justice depart stop looking at the documents it reclaimed, while allowing the intelligence services to continue to do so to assess damage to the national security. In other words, she may try to order something impossible, not just ordering that the toothpaste go back into the tube, but ordering that only some of the toothpaste has to go back into one of a series of tubes. It may be her way to respect the law while playcating trump. It would be better than say whatever Clarence Thomas would do. And of course that blight on the history of mankind is back in the news now as well. It turns out his ex cult member wife did not just email lawmakers in Arizona to erase the presidential vote there, but, according to the Washington Post, she tried the same stunt in Wisconsin. Quote. Please reflect on the Awesome Authority granted to you by our Constitution. She wrote to a Wisconsin State Rep and to the Wisconsin State Senate Elections Committee Chair. Jenny Thomas is a menace. She is one of the People Biden talked about last night. If Clarence Thomas were to publicly recuse himself from all political cases, he might find a way forward to remain on the Supreme Court, but he has not and therefore he must not. Lastly, back to the Biden speech and something you may or may not have noticed until Biden himself brought it up. The fascists make much of his sometimes halting speeches, his coughs, his pauses. That he had to make a long and painful recovery from stuttering is never mentioned by them. They simply questioned his capacities. Last night, for nearly the length of that speech, a heckler repeatedly bellowed F Joe Biden. I didn't hear it, I didn't notice it until Biden himself said the creature was entitled to be outrageous, even if quote good manners is nothing they've ever suffered from. One wonders if a similar critic of Donald Trump, having gotten that close to l Douche in the middle of one of his presidential speeches of self pity and shouting an identical message about F trump, would be hospitalized this morning. We're worse. So that's it for this special you should listen to this again edition of countdown. I've done all the damage I can do here. The countdown theme from Beethoven's ninth the range, produced and performed by countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitars, Bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by T K O brothers. The other Beethoven Selections have been arranged and performed by no horns allowed. Our sports music the Alberman theme from Espn Two, Written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN INC musical comments by Nancy Faust, the Best Baseball Stadium organist ever. At our and ounce there's my friends Jonathan Banks, Larry David John, Dene, Tony Kornheiser, Richard Lewis and Stevie vand's aunt. I'm Keith all Reman, good morning, good afternoon, goodnight and good luck. Countdown with Keith all reman is a production of I heart radio. For more podcasts from I heart radio, visit the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I heart radio. I don't want to call this the best of countdown. It's both pretentious and falsely modest. Let me try the you should listen to this again edition of countdown. Happily, maybe unhappily, for our country. Several of the segments I've done in the first few weeks here have unexpected residence even today. Let me start in August nineteen. This was right after the new president of CNN, Chris Licked, and I knew from his days as the Hatchetman for Joe Scarborough at MSNBC, began what we now realize is a full fledged purge of the Liberals at CNN. We did not know at this point that John Harwood, who I also worked with an MSNBC, had already been fired effective September two. We did not know Brianna Keller and Jeff Zeleny of CNN would tweet identical Republican talking point about the marines at President Biden's speech about the Republicans attempt to overthrow the government, and do so presumably to curry favor with licked and his boss, the trump funder John Malone. We did know, though, that lick had already canceled reliable sources and fired its host, Brian Stelter, and if anybody told you that was some sort of cost saving move. STELTER had three years left on his contract and John Harwood had two years left. Here's what I said on Augustine. I've had problems with some of Brian's work since he founded the TV newser blog while he was in college in two thousand four later at the New York Times, but I've never had any problem with his intent nor his work ethic. And his stuff on CNN made him such a target from the far right that you would have thought he was me or that he was on the air seventeen hours a day on CNN rather than once a week. The reason was simple. AFTER MSNBC CUT A deal to stop calling out Fox News, pretty much nobody in television called out Fox News and the rest of the lunatic right propaganda machine, except stelter. His firing was no surprise. You may not know it, but CNN was recently taken over by a company owned by billionaire trump Downer John Malone, and Malone intends to vary gradually reduce CNN to at best twenty four hours a day of both sides is him. Think Michael smirconish on a loop. stelter did the most damage to the right. Therefore stelter was the first to go. He will not be the last. CNN's new president, Chris Licked, is there to dismantle the liberal parts of CNN. I know this because I worked with him at MSNBC, where he decided that part of his job was to try to dismantle the liberal parts of MSNBC. When stelter was fired, the daily Beasts Impeccable Media Guy Lachlan Cartwright reported that quote. Everything about this rollout points to discovery board member John Malone and discovery CEO David Zaslov. A source familiar with the situation told the daily Beast Chris licked did not want to do this. I am sure the quote is accurate and I'm sure whoever told cartwright that believes the quote to be true, but it misses the point. What Chris Lick wants to do is whatever John Malone and David Zaslov tell him to do. He is a corporate lackey. Worse, he's a corporate henchman. So here's the story. I promised not to tell perhaps the most amazing thing about my ten years at MSNBC was the fact that Joe Scarborough and his producers, especially his chief henchman, ever got their own show on the air. Because nobody I have ever worked with in radio or television, in sports or news in the twentieth century or the one, ever spent more time trying to screw with other programs on the same network then did Joe Scarborough. And until just about the time I left in two thousand and eleven, the guy he sent in to do most of the sabotage for him was this henchman guy. The reason this should matter to you now is scarborough's henchman was Chris licked, the new president of CNN, and if they scoured the nation to find the worst person to run CNN in a time when democracy is threatened by one political party and tepidly defended by another, it's Chris licked. I know, I know, you turn on the TV and you see Joe Scarborough and you see exactly what I see. A blank, dazed, darting, paranoid, no soul, stupid check engine light. Look, but if you don't trust me, trust my scars, my Joey Scars. Behind that Vapid face is a master saboteur. Early in two thousand and eight, the late Tim Russert called me and warned me that the GOP had upped its pressure on me. He said he had heard from somebody in New York that somebody in New York was going into the office of the President of NBC News saying that Joe Scarborough couldn't get his friend John McCain to come on to his new morning show because I was so critical of McCain. On countdown, Tim was not sure it was scarborough, but if it wasn't, who else could have gotten in to see the president of NBC News other than Scarborough or his executive producer? The evidence for the new CNN president, Mr Licht, being directly involved in interfering with programming to benefit somebody else's friends or political cronies was vague in two thousand and eight, but not at all vague two years later, early in January two thousand ten, the Republican candidate to fill the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy, Scott Brown, the former semi nude model, was at a alley when one of his supporters talked about, quote, shoving a curling iron up the backside of the Democratic Senate candidate Martha Cokeley. Scott Brown clearly heard the remark from the crowd and responded, quote. We could do that. On January Eighteenth, on countdown, I did a brief commentary about how unsuitable Brown was for public office. I said he was, quote, an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, x Nude model, tea bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees. Unquote. I had quotes from Brown. I had videotape of him disparaging his minority opponent in a local election to her face at a debate to back up what I said. An hour later, Joe Scarborough commenced a tweet storm against me. Quote. Alberman calls Brown a homophobic, racist reactionary who supports violence against women. How reckless and how sad it's no longer enough to simply disagree with on one I'm sorry, I just fell into my scarborough impression. Justice went beck called the President Racist. This sort of rhetorical exclaimism must be discouraged. chapened the debate end. Quote and impression now there was a standing rule at MSNBC. You want to criticize another MSNBC PERSONALITY, go ahead, have a blast, but it must be on the air on MSNBC and the other person must have an opportunity to reply in real time in the same show or in some kind of face to face way. No hit and run, no Joe Scarborough tweet storms. If you criticize them by name or by inference in any other medium, newspaper, interview, Radio, social media, you were to receive an automatic suspension. The next day, January, called the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, and I asked how long Joe Scarborough's automatic suspension was gonna be. Griffin asked me to come into the office a little earlier than usual and to go see him. He said he had already had a meeting about the tweets that morning with Scarborough's executive producer, Chris Licht. Griffin explained that scarborough, according to Lickt, considered Scott Brown a friend. More importantly, Chris licked warned Griffin that if Griffin folloled through and enforced the suspension rule, scarborough would have no other option than to go to the press and tell reporters, especially reporters at right wing websites like Tucker Carlson's, the daily caller, that he scarborough had been suspended because he scarborough was a conservative, but I was a liberal and that I, and not Phil Griffin, RAN MSNBC. What can I do? Griffin was scared. I told him he could fire scarborough and licked because they had just tried to blackmail him and eventually he was going to have to fire them both anyway. But then I knew he would not do this and that I knew now that he would not suspend scarborough either. And Griffin did not suspend him. Partial score. Scarborough's friends to MSNBC's rules of behavior. Nothing. But Phil Griffin did send out a memo to the entire company insisting that anybody who criticized another MSNBC show or host in another medium would be suspended. Except Scarborough, who had just done exactly that and then threatened his own employers. On January, Brian stelter's old blog TV news or got a copy of Griffin's memo. They wondered why scarborough had not been suspended. So they called the MSNBC president and they printed quote Griffin Responds to TV news or quote. An important rule was broken. I spoke to Keith and he said in the spirit of teamwork and the free flow of ideas, he didn't think it warranted punishment or suspension. I also talked to Joe and he apologized to me. That's why I made the decision that this didn't rise to the level of punishment. But I felt it was necessary to reiterate my long standing policy bull crap. Reiterate my long standing policy, which I just did not enforce, against Joe Scarborough. The whole thing was totally fabricated, licked and scarborough had threatened to smear their own bosses in the right wing Echo Chamber. It should have been both fired on the spot. In May two thousand ten scarborough said something on the air about a Democrat getting away with not being investigated for something. I forget the details. I didn't bother to look it up. You can if you want, then. Marcos Malitzis the editor of the daily coast website and not just a regular contributor to countdown, but somebody who had been promoting the show and the MSNBC brand on that website every day for five years. Marcos sent a snarky but legitimate tweet questioning scarborough's credentials to criticize others who had not been investigated for stuff. Marcos invoked the staffer who died in an accident in Joe Scarborough's congressional office. Scarborough then attacked Meliitsus on twitter, inaccurately claiming melitsus had accused scarborough of murder. A few days after that I got a phone call from the MSNBC president, Phil Griffin, and if you got a phone call rather than a call to come into his office, you know he was really scared. Griffin told me Chris licked has been in to see me. Joe Won't put up with having Marcos militsis on his network anymore. Not only that, but lick says many of Joe's friends who also appear in dayside and prime time won't come on if Marcos melitzis is permitted to continue here. Chris is insisting that Marcos be banned from MSNBC immediately. Chris says he's afraid that if we don't do that, Joe Won't come into work tomorrow. Upon hearing that, I laughed and I congratulated Phil Griffin on the clear win win he'd just been given. But Phil was very bad at an forcing MSNBC's rules, but very good at creating new ones on the spot to protect Joe Scarborough and Chris licked and their friends. I'm banning the LITZAS for many further appearances on MSNBC. I said, Phil, he's a contributor to my show. You are suspending my contributor who has driven hundreds of thousands of viewers to countdown at MSNBC and I don't have any say in it. You are owned by Joe Scarborough and Chris Licked. What you now have to worry about is whether I tell this story on the air tonight or I just wait and tell it later. Phil now got conciliatory because he was scared again and said it could be just a suspension if I cooperated. So I called Marcos. He said he enjoyed his contributions to countdown. He also did occasional appearances on the old ED SCHULTZ MSNBC show and he said if there were a chance at resuming them, he'd preferred to at least try that. So Marcos and I went along with Griffin suspending Marcus Melitz's and to my knowledge, Marcus Melitzus has not been seen on MSNBC since. I wish I had better notes on some of my conversations from the two thousand eight nine eleven era about those conversations with the hosts and the producers of the other shows like Schultz and Rachel Maddow's show and even Chris Matthews and hardball. I must have heard a variation of this statement a dozen times from these people. Guess who was in Griffin's office explaining that such and such, as Joe's friend and Phil really needs to make sure we lay off him? Chris licked. It was usually an expletive in the middle between Chris and licked. I remember one of my producers at the MSNBC a version of countdown telling me that one of the other producers told him that licked had gone to NBC News President Steve Cappus with an actual list of Republicans that Matto and Olberman needed to stop criticizing because they were Joe's, here's the word again, friends. And we were hurting more joe. What's amazing is that, setting aside the issues of unrevealed toward love affairs, when CNN fired its nine pm host Chris Cuomo, President Jeff Zucker and Senior Vice President Alison Gallis. They fired them in essence, because they interfered with CNN content and practices in order to do favors for people who were their friends or, in Cuomo's case, their relatives at MSNBC, interfering with MSNBC content and practices to do favors for friends. It was seemingly the only reason Chris licked had a job. So CNN got rid of left wingers for a terrible violation of journalistic ethics and then hired as president right wing henchman who had committed exactly the same journalistic ethical problems and who, for his act, the first one of his career at CNN, killed off the only national television show that regularly held up box news, News Max and all the rest to the world to show that they were the threats to democracy that they are. This is CNN. So that was August nine and, as I said earlier, Chris licked had yet to fire his White House correspondent, John Harwood, thus eating five years of salaries just to knock two liberals and one liberal show off the air at CNN. If you think that is ominous. Well, you're right, it's sure as hell is ominous. Coming up on this. You should listen to this again. countdown. I have been there. You may not have noticed, but a long time AGO MSNBC tried to make all its liberal shows put on a bunch of conservatives for balance. It also let the Republican Party dictate who was anchoring the presidential debate coverage and who wasn't. The implications were the few, sure, and that chilling flashback. Next this is countdown, continuing with the you should listen to this again, edition of countdown. It is a sad but provable truth. Since trump's rise, in two thousand fifteen, there has been at least one meeting inside the upper echelons of every company that owns a news outlet in America. The topic of that meeting say, if the country goes fully fascist, how do we protect our profits? Those meetings began at Msnbc in two thousand six and they have never stopped, which is what I tried to recount at great length in the first episode of this podcast version of countdown, from August one, with a little piece I called the story so far. If you were a viewer of the old TV show. Let me explain finally how that became this. My original MSNBC news hours. The big show and the White House in crisis were the first programs that made MSNBC any money. I mean seriously. The network otherwise hemorrhaged cash from its launch in until about two thousand five. That's when the show I started upon my return in two thousand three, countdown, a low rated nightly news digest that was a pretty good show, started getting really political and suspicious of Bush and Iraq and especially the Republicans, political manipulation of the threat of terrorism, and the viewers arrived in droves. By the next year. The AD salesman, and contrary to all logic, they are the ones from whom you get the truth in a news company. They were sending me models of Champagne and revealing that countdown was now earning a fifty million dollar annual profit. Then V and d five million, then a hundred million. They liked me, they really really liked me, but management at NBC not so much. RIGHT AFTER MSNBC started to make money, it started making enemies. The Republicans came right to our door and through it the PSYCHOS at Fox News like O'Reilly and Hannity and Ales. Remember we called them fixed news or Fox noise. They started calling the executives at NBC and its parent company G E, demanding that I stopped criticizing them. SOFTER THAN CHURCH MUSIC. These fascists could not take criticism. When Tim Russier was still alive and defending me internally and externally, watching every night and sending me tips and warnings and ideas and capable of playing the Republicans inside NBC and outside NBC like Fiddles, everything was fine. Then came that horrible day June two thousand eight. Tim died and suddenly NBC new is was in the hands of a lot of cowards and bullies like Tom Brokaw and Joe Scarborough and Jeff Zucker and names you would not know, like Jeff Immelt and Steve Cappus and Phil Griffin and Chris Licked and I really wish you didn't need to know Chris lickt's name, but he was scarborough's henchman and now he's the new president of CNN and you don't know how bad that news is for the future of this country. Anyway, I will go into depth on all this background in future episodes. How men like these spent a year keeping Rachel maddow off the air, telling me I couldn't even put her on as my guest host because nobody would watch a woman or a lesbian or another liberal. That's what they said. Then they lied to me and told me they had hired her so that one night Larry King talked her into going on his show on CNN for two and fifty dollars, and I wound up hiring her out of my own pocket to keep MSNBC from losing her. Literally the cash in my wall four hundred and thirty seven bucks. Anyway, by August of two thousand eight Republicans were threatening broke call that if he did not get me fired from MSNBC's coverage of the presidential election, John McCain would not show up for the debate that bro call had inherited from the late Tim Russert. So broke call went in and threatened, and that's a nice euphemism, NBC management on behalf of the GOP just to get to host one more debate. I mean he boasted about it in the New York Times. Then within a year it was Fox blackmailing the executives at GE actually getting the Chairman of G E, Jeff M l, to threaten to TAKE MSNBC off the air, just shut it down, if Fox continued to criticize him. immilt because his mommy was a bill O'Reilly Fan and billow kept claiming her little boy jeff was producing weapons used to kill Americans in Iraq. I mean honestly, these were adults behaving like this. Well, as I tell everybody in the business, there are no adults. It got worse and worse. Zooker and Roger Ales Meeting Inside Thirty Rock, no less, to decide what I could and could not say about Fox News, negotiating what could be in our news and what could not, and in NBC started suggesting that we put Republicans on countdown, like Michael Steele and the deplorable scarborough. Nobody ever asked me a direct question as to how, in January, I left MSNBC and the highest rated cable news show that was not on Fox, and I kept telling them just say, we don't consider Fox to be news. It isn't news, so why are we comparing our ratings to them? Was I fired? Did I quit? Was it something else. So I've never actually told the actual story because I wasn't asked a direct question about it. Well, one of the perks they threw at me when I resigned with MSNBC RATHER THAN JUMPING TO CNN in two thousand six, two thousand and seven was a slot on the Sunday night NBC football broadcast. It was a nice change. I got to work with my old ESPN partner Dan Patrick. It wasn't life and death that could do the catch phrases and the silly voices and say they're not gonna got them. But right before season Jeff Zucker called me into his office told me I was not focusing enough on countdown and I was off the football show. Now, the following portion is, of course, a pure hypothetical which is really better designed for a college course in contract law. But if, in a case like this hypothetical, the guy doing a, let's say, hypothetical football show wasn't actually being paid to do the hypothetical football show, if doing that hypothetical football show were a perk, if it was a non cash payment or an incentive to sign a contract rather than to go to some other hypothetical network like C N Hypothetical. N Well, then, when that hypothetical announceres taken off that hypothetical football show, the people who hypothetically took him off the show have hypothetically breached his hypothetical contract and all of a sudden the hypothetical companies hypothetical lawyers are asking the hypothetical announcer how much money it would hypothetically cost them to hypothetically cure a hypothetical breach. Back to the non hypothetical portion of our story. So now it's a few months later, the week before mid terms, which I would be anchoring on MSNBC, and while I would be covering the Senate and governor races right through election night, we were done reporting on the house. I did an interview on Thursday, I think, with the congressman, Raoul Galva, of Arizona, and then I did a special comment on Friday about all the tea partiers running for Congress that year and that was it. And that night I was on the phone with my friend Kirsten Cinema. Yep, Bat Kirston Cinema. How many Kirsten cinemas could there be? She told me that Graalva and another Arizona representative had gotten a lot of death threats late in the campaign and they had spent virtually every last dollar they had on security. Kirston, can you donate to these campaigns? And I said I had never donated before, but yeah, to Grahalva and to a senator in the south, I think, and the other Arizona representative who had gotten a lot of death threats. Her name was Gabby Gifford's. The next Tuesday I anchored those mid terms. Didn't mention one house race or candidate and everything was fine. And then somebody called one of the political websites to say oho Alderman donated to some Democrats and they called NBC Public Relations. An NBC public relations called the President of MSNBC and the president of M M S and Wec called me and he said this looks bad. I know, what's your right to do it. It's not like we're gonna suspend to her anything stupid like that. Why would we do that? This is sort of our fault too, but it just looks bad. Can you know? Can you say something? And I said Yeah, you're right, it does look bad. I'll apologize on the show tomorrow, even though I don't have to, I will voluntarily stop any campaign contributions as long as I'm doing this show. And he said great, and I said great, and I wrote the apology that night and I sent it to him and he said great, and I said great because I already had part of tomorrow's show written. And that was it. And the next morning, without a hearing, without a phone call, without an email, without a warning, this hysterical teenager disguised as an adult named Steve Cappus, president of NBC News, he puts out a press release in which he angrily suspends me indefinitely without pay for violations of the NBC News Employee Rule Book that says NBC News Employees can't make donations to political campaigns. Now NBC had an obvious, huge problem. Within hours there was a petition on social media demanding my reinstatement, two hundred and fifty thousand signatures. I was stunned. NBC tried to get Chris Hayes to fill in for me that night. He refused. Even people at Fox News went on the air and said this was absurd. And at NBC there was a lot of shushing and worrying because everybody at NBC News Made Political Donations. They just hit them by donating in their wife's name or the kid's name or to some sort of fund or whatever. I was the only one who admitted to it, but this guy cappus. He was piste off and dug in and demanded I be suspended for a month through, I don't know, a hundred years without pay at least. And all this is already public and well documented. But hypothetically again, there could have been more to it. See if you hypothetically suspend your hypothetical announcer guy again for violating the employee handbook, what happens if that hypothetical announcer is not actually an employee? Why? If the hypothetical employer has written the contract of the hypothetical announcer so that it specifically declares several different hypothetical times in the hypothetical contract, that the hypothetical announcer is not an employee but just say, to pick a term out of thin air, an independent contractor what if, hypothetically, the employer could be NBC, could be a bakery somewhere? What if, hypothetically, the employer did this in contract legal ease so they did not have to pay the hypothetical announcer health insurance or dental. Well then, hypothetically, that phrase breach re enters the chat and the hypothetical companies, hypothetical lawyers go to the executive who just suspended the employee who legally is not an employee, and they say hypothetically again. You now have four hypothetical choices. One, reinstate the hypothetical non employee immediately and hope we don't get sued. To reinstate the hypothetical non employee, immediately, apologize and write up a new contract, for God's sake. Three, end the show, pay the hypothetical non employee every dollar you over the remainder of the hypothetical contract and hope you don't get sued for damages anyway. Or four, hypothetically, throw a lot of money in the air and negotiate a settlement and and the hypothetical show. Hypothetically, in the short term, what happened was, and I'm quoting from the New York Times, they told me on Friday I was suspended. I was back on the Air Tuesday. They didn't even dock my pay or charge me for any days off. Making this wilder still, hours after I was suspended. Al Gore called me. AL owned a struggling TV network called current and he said what NBC is doing is illegal and if you sue them you could own the place. But I think I have a better idea. That can be the start of something big. You can bring countdown to current TV. Will give you fifty million dollars, plus bonuses, plus a piece of the network. You'll be an owner. This is me talking in the long term. For two months these two roller coasters went up and down and my agents negotiated attentive contract with current while there was a hypothetical attempt to settle the other hypothetical non employee cluster, hypothetical F and then literally during the MSNBC countdown show on January, during a commercial break, everything got finalized all at once. My agent told me it was done. I went on the air and said so and nobody, not even the staff, knew, which I am still sorry about. Very greatly unavoidable, but that's the way it worked. So No, I was not fired, countdown was not canceled. The current TV deal had already been in place for weeks. And, by the way, during every step of this I kept mattow and her agent, who had been my agent for twenty seven years, fully in warmed. And so that very night that countdown ended on MSNBC. Mattow was on Bill Maher show right after it all happened and naturally he asked her about it and she lied and said it's the first time hearing of it, and I thought, uh, Blay, that might be the end of that friendship and we haven't spoken since. Anyway, the current thing turned out to be a scam and it blew up rather quickly and I'll tell that story in a future episode. Two. On the other hand, I don't have to work for money again. But the weirdest thing started happening in September two thousand eleven, not eight months after I left MSNBC, feelers from the new owners of NBC, comcast. What I consider coming BACK TO MSNBC? Yes, I would. Then they got cold feet. Then the next year, more feelers. This time I got cold feet and I started negotiating and go back to ESPN instead, and I did. In Two thousand fourteen I actually met with the new NBC News Executives for two hours and they wanted me to bring countdown back as soon as possible. And then the Brian Williams scandal broken. These new executives all got themselves fired and then in October two thou fifteen, I met with the new new executives and they wanted me to come back. They made an actual offer and it was stupid. It was predicated on my doing a show without commentaries, like what was the point of countdown or me without the commentaries? And even that guy got fired in two thousand nineteen and the new chairman of the entire NBC Corporation, Jeff Shell, was an old friend of mine from Fox sports and he wanted me to bring the show back and we got close. And then the word came in from the guy who was negotiating for me that the chairman of NBC News, Caesar Conde, had told him the whole thing had cratered because one person at NBC had never and would never forgive me for something, and that person, and said Conde, was Rachel Maddow. Rachel Maddow, Percy's our conde, vetoed the last chance and it literally a decade of talks about putting this program back on MSNBC. By the way, NBC's denial of this last set of flirtations was that? Yes, for two years NBC CEO Jeff Shell kept scheduling meetings with me, but I should have known he didn't really mean it. Basically, their explanation was I should have known the chairman of NBC was a liar. As the kids say. Weird flex but okay. It's so bad at MSNBC that when they did finally pick somebody as a placeholder in the matadow nine pm slot for Tuesday through Friday, the president of MSNBC, who when the new setup there's actually the president of scheduling everybody's vacation, said about what viewership might look like. Quote. The Universe is very different from when Rachel joined the Cable News Spectrum. My focus is less about how does this one hour perform in this one space? Unquote. Let me translate that to you from TV news executive ease. The ratings are going to suck and we don't care because we just need to look like a news channel with realistic liberal politics. We don't actually need to be a news channel with realistic liberal politics, because you never know how fast we may have to pivot to placate the fascists. One more flashback on this special edition. What all this is leading to? A month after conservatives convened in Dallas and said about themselves, we are all domestic terrorists, they actually pretended to be offended when Joe Biden called them semi fascists. That's next. This discountdown, Ladies and gentlemen, we are all domestic terrorists. One of the most subtle truths about the fascist semi fascists, Maga Republicans, Authoritarians, terrorists, all of the above, whatever you want to call them, one of the most subtle truths about them is that they are self martyring. President Biden called them out as the threats they are on the night of September one. He had called them semi fascist. On August. Oh how they how old and how old? But on the weekend of August five, nearly a month earlier, the infamous SEAPAC conference in Texas had an expert panel called, quote, we are all domestic terrorists. It is the old truth. Just because you don't hit back, that does not mean the bullies won't punch you anyway. For the third item on are you should listen to this again. countdown. Here's what I said about the importance of Biden on the morning of September two, compared to what CNN and others said about the Trivia of marines or no marines. On the same day twice, Biden took the oath of office of the vice presidency of the United States and said I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and at the first inauguration of a president since Lincoln in eighteen sixty one that was threatened by traitors within our midst, Biden took the oath of office of the presidency and on that day he said, I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States. Last night, Joe Biden fulfilled those oaths and he accomplished something an amazingly large number of those who heard him speak could not manage to do. To perceive that, when much of the partisan political structure of this nation has become a threat to the rule of law in this nation and to the very existence of representative government of this nation. It is not political to say so. It is above politics, beyond politics and in spite of politics. My Maxim in twenty five years of covering news and politics in this country has been simple. Every problem that has ever been solved has only begun to be solved on that day when somebody stood up and said this is wrong, this will not stand. We must fix this. And that is what Joe Biden did last night, which dovetails to a point I made first on Monday night here and now will repeat the most powerful thing the president can do in this fight is to mainstream the truth. Joe Biden used ugly words last night, because right now the truth is ugly. He invoked insurrectionists and white supremacists, extremists and extremism. He called out the mob and violence as a political tool. He called it not normal, he called it darkness. He repudiated lies told for profit and power and blind loyalty to a single leader. He brought up Charlottesville and a dagger at the throat of our democracy and rioting in the streets, and he named names. Thank God he named names. The Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the Magary Republicans, and that is a threat to this country. Magar Republicans do not respect the constitution, they did not believe in the rule of law, they did not recognize the will of the people, they refused to accept the results of a free election and they're working right now, as I speak, in state after state, to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and Crownies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself. Because within our power, it's in our hands, yours in mind, to stop the assault on American democracy. This was that rare presidential speech in which the sum of the parts may be less than the whole. The phrases are everything, the words are everything. He said what had to be said and not be said by you or by me. As I mentioned Monday, every phrase he used last week in the semi fascism speech last night and the we the People's speech will be repeated and normalized and reported and become the measuring sticks by which the peril of the present hour is qualified and quantified. And it underscores the peril of the present hour that a startling swath of the political media in this country could not comprehend what Joe Biden was saying, nor why he was saying it at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Political media in this country is a closed industry that understands only its own past and its own language. It cannot be flexible, it cannot respond to new threats. It is unable to function without first shoving everything that ever happens into one of the dozen or less templates that are the only things that can comprehend or process. People from CBS and NBC and ABC and the AP and the major newspapers all struggled with the newness of Biden's approach last night, as indeed they all struggled with the newness and new evil of trump's approach. But CNN deserves to be singled out. We know it has installed a former Hatchetman for Joe Scarborough as its new president. We know its new owner thinks Brent bear of Fox News is not only not a biased propagandist but a role model for journalism, and three of its correspondents apparently know all this as well. Before the speech, an anchor named Poppy Harlow demanded an apology to Republicans during the speech Anchor Brianna Keller said. Whatever you think of this speech, the military is supposed to be a political positioning marines in uniform behind President Biden for a political speech flies in the face of that, and CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny wrote, doing it against a backdrop of two Marines standing at attention and the marine band is a break with White House traditions, and one wonders where Keller and Zeleny were when trump staged the Republican convention on the White House lawn or when trump staged a hundred rallies with police and military beside or behind him, and still does so. One wonders if Keller and Zeleny know that the two marines standing behind Joe Biden at Independence Hall are stationed there and they were there before Biden arrived and they were there after he left and they will be there again today. And one wonders how desperate people like Brianna Keller and Jeff Zeleny and the others that the other outlets could be, how desperate to stay on TV that they could apply both sides. Is Hum to a speech by a president trying to keep them all from winding up having to read only official state approved news that compliments Donald Trump. You can't love your country only when you win, Joe Biden said last night again. He had said it in January two. It is so resonant, especially when you hear something else said about the January six insurrectionists. I will look very, very favorably about about full ardens, if I decided to run and if I win. I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons. I think that's probably going to be the best because even if they go for for two months or six months and you know they have sentences, that will be looking very, very seriously at full pardons because we can't let that happen. What's happened here, and I mean full pardons with an apology, just too many. That is what Joe Biden was addressing last night. The scum that is Donald Trump dangling mass pardons in front of traders. In an online interview hours before Biden's speech. I'm going to thank Donald Trump for something. You may want to sit down. Thank you, trump for proving Joe Biden's point. And, by the way, trump appears to be on the odd even plan. If you heard that carefully, on odd numbers days he suggests he may run for president. On even numbered days he says he already is president or should be proclaimed so immediately. And yet another interview, trump did something strange even for him. His new legal team, in its response to the Department of Justice in the special master's suit in Florida, pointedly never stated, suggested or implied that trump had ever declassified any of the documents trump stolen took to Mari Lago. Nor did his lawyers claim to. That was especially telling insomuch as the D O J had stated the same thing in its filings. The lawyers on both sides agree trump had all the documents and trump did not declassify them and has not legally claimed that he did declassify them. That is called, in Layman's terms, a confession. So what did trump immediately do after all these filings? He insisted he did declassify the documents. People think that when you walk at him as I have confidential documents or whatever it may be, Aldi classified, but I had confidential documents spread out. All of them flow and like a slab, not like a slab, a slab, confidential documents, he said, all the classified. Trump's public variants from what his lawyers are saying is a problem inside the courtroom of his appointee, Judge Eileen Cannon. But as clueless and often childish as her conduct so far has been, there is something fascinating about her statement late Thursday that, while she is not ruling on the trump request for a special master to evaluate the possibility of executive privilege for some of those documents, she will enter a written order quote, at some point. Every day the judge does nothing. Is, of course, positive inertia for the Justice Department, because it can continue to build its case against trump. The judge also said she may order that the justice depart stop looking at the documents it reclaimed, while allowing the intelligence services to continue to do so to assess damage to the national security. In other words, she may try to order something impossible, not just ordering that the toothpaste go back into the tube, but ordering that only some of the toothpaste has to go back into one of a series of tubes. It may be her way to respect the law while playcating trump. It would be better than say whatever Clarence Thomas would do. And of course that blight on the history of mankind is back in the news now as well. It turns out his ex cult member wife did not just email lawmakers in Arizona to erase the presidential vote there, but, according to the Washington Post, she tried the same stunt in Wisconsin. Quote. Please reflect on the Awesome Authority granted to you by our Constitution. She wrote to a Wisconsin State Rep and to the Wisconsin State Senate Elections Committee Chair. Jenny Thomas is a menace. She is one of the People Biden talked about last night. If Clarence Thomas were to publicly recuse himself from all political cases, he might find a way forward to remain on the Supreme Court, but he has not and therefore he must not. Lastly, back to the Biden speech and something you may or may not have noticed until Biden himself brought it up. The fascists make much of his sometimes halting speeches, his coughs, his pauses. That he had to make a long and painful recovery from stuttering is never mentioned by them. They simply questioned his capacities. Last night, for nearly the length of that speech, a heckler repeatedly bellowed F Joe Biden. I didn't hear it, I didn't notice it until Biden himself said the creature was entitled to be outrageous, even if quote good manners is nothing they've ever suffered from. One wonders if a similar critic of Donald Trump, having gotten that close to l Douche in the middle of one of his presidential speeches of self pity and shouting an identical message about F trump, would be hospitalized this morning. We're worse. So that's it for this special you should listen to this again edition of countdown. I've done all the damage I can do here. The countdown theme from Beethoven's ninth the range, produced and performed by countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle, guitars, Bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by T K O brothers. The other Beethoven Selections have been arranged and performed by no horns allowed. Our sports music the Alberman theme from Espn Two, Written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN INC musical comments by Nancy Faust, the Best Baseball Stadium organist ever. At our and ounce there's my friends Jonathan Banks, Larry David John, Dene, Tony Kornheiser, Richard Lewis and Stevie vand's aunt. I'm Keith all Reman, good morning, good afternoon, goodnight and good luck. Countdown with Keith all reman is a production of I heart radio. For more podcasts from I heart radio, visit the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
