Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio. When the walking and the handshakes and the selfies are over and President Biden reaches the rostrum in the House Chamber tonight, after the cheering and applause has reached its crescendo, but before it dies down fully, the President should reach into his jacket pocket, pull out his aviator sunglasses, put them on, then reach under the lectern and produced first a large, tattered, devastated white balloon and drape it in front of himself, and then reach under a second time and pull out an L A U seven launcher for an A I M nine X side winder missile, and rest the thing on his shoulder and asked the astonished representatives and say there's any other questions? Mother efforts, and then he should smile, put the props back down, take the glasses off, and say, Mr Speaker, Madam, Vice President, and our first lady and second gentleman, members of Congress, in the Cabinet, Justices of the Supreme Court, my fellow Americans, the state of the Union is. I feel the need the need for speed. Obviously he won't, but we need to face something that Republicans identified thirty years ago or longer, which we have refused to acknowledge. That goes to the heart of what was probably your first reaction when I gave voice just there to my little top gun state of the sidewinder missile message fantasy, which odds are was that would be great, only to be immediately followed by a different voice in your head saying you can't do that. We have to face the reality that this country is full of morons. I don't know if they are ten percent, and they're just allowed ten percent. I don't know if they are. I don't know if they are, and there are days I don't doubt this a bit, But however many they are. They elected Trump and nearly did it again and might try it once more. And bluntly, people in America are stupid and is ludicrous as the idea of Joe Biden showing up at the State of the Union with a fake missile launcher and a fake Chinese spy balloon is. How much more ludicrous is it? Then? Was George W. Bush landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May first, two thousand three, and getting out of the jet and a flight suit complete with a helmet and a high altitude oxygen mask, and then stepping out of all that gear and giving his mission accomplished speech, even though no mission had been accomplished and nothing close to it would be for eighteen years. And it's illegal to turn a U. S. Navy carrier into a political prop And if anybody had been paying attention, all that the flight imagery should have evoked was the day Bush was suspended from flying with the Texas Air National Guard, and whether or not he faked his service time, at what in hell did he invade Iraq? Fourth the nine eleven plotters had been shielded by Afghanistan, but it didn't it got Bush reelected because the country is full of idiots. Most of them are Republican idiots, but not all, and the ones who are not idiots, or who at least are not complete idiots, are still consumed by the proverbial shiny objects. This is a nation of memes, and of video games and of movies which are now adapted from comic books. And when I was sitting there at the MSNBC anchor desk on May first, two thousand three, asking about the Air National Guard and exactly what mission has supposedly been accomplished. My co anchor said, no, no, no, no, no Bush one this day, look at the bulge in his flight suit. My co anchor was Chris Matthews. Most of the time he is an idiot too, but actually that day he was not an idiot. He was channeling the idiocy of tens of millions of our fellow citizens who defy the odds each day and managed to get to and from their office or the store or the bar without killing themselves and everybody around them. And Matthews was right. Nobody thought about the Texas Air National Guard. They only saw George W. Bush mission accomplished in a flight suit with a big bulge. It began long before then, but from that day onwards, the Republicans have won virtually every battle of imagery fought on our political hell escape. What was Trump if not entirely imagery? The planes landing at his rallies. That was Hitler's idea, literally Hitler's idea. That's how he mesmerized the idiots he knew lived in his time in his country. The cheap, stupid looking snap back baseball caps, and we see them and we say, I would rather wear a plastic bag tied tightly over my head, and we missed the point. Half the country already owned stupid looking snapback baseball caps, and all Trump did was brand them and unify those who were already wearing them. And we recoil from these stunts because they are not dignified and they are not honest, and those who performed them are not served first at the cocktail parties in Washington. And it is all somehow beneath us, and we shake our heads, and still, in our quietest moments, we believe we can win the hearts and minds of America with logic and sincerity. Do you, And though with each passing day there is less and less evidence that there are enough minds left in America with which to win anything, And still we tisk tisk, and we pooh pooh, and we sighed profoundly at stunts and imagery and caps and shirts and bumper stickers and props, at American flag lapel pins. And yet tonight there will be congressmen in the House Chamber booing with the audacity of dope a president who handled this balloon nonsense perfectly. Even though these congressmen have now moved on from American flag lapel pins to actually wearing a K forty seven lapel pins. And they have not as they should be gotten dragged out of the House by their heels for mocking the victims of every mass shooting in this country. And they will not only get away with these lapel pins, some of them will be re elected because of them, because the Republicans and the fascists have tapped into and monopolized the greatest unstated voting block in this country. They got the balloon story entirely wrong. And yet here is Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who sounds and looks like she just accidentally electrocuted herself with a faulty hair curling iron. Tweeting Communist China tested Biden with their spy balloon, and he failed. And here is Kevin McCarthy, who social media avatar does not just capture his quintessential native stupidity, but makes him look like he's just realized that that car out there in the distance in the parking lot is on fire and it is his car. Here is perhaps our dumbest speaker of the House ever getting away with posting and keeping posted first. Biden refused to defend our borders. Now he won't defend our skies. And here is this reptile on its back legs, Marjorie Taylor Green, who we must congratulate because when she briefly presided over the House yesterday and they handed her the gabble, she grabbed it by the correct end. Here is this nitwit tweeting there's zero Chinese spy balloons during President Trump's administration. China owns Biden, and everyone knows why the Republicans are winning the visceral battle over this balloon because they will not let any facts get in their way, and they do not have to worry about the Democrats even bothering to respond, and they can count on the morons like Ryan Liza at Politico writing China deflates Biden's State of the Union swagger, and the morons like Doug Cameron at the Wall Street Journal writing Chinese craft raises fears of a balloon gap. There's no balloon gap. There is an imagery gap. There's a visceral reaction gap. There's a never mind the truth, the meme is much better gap. There is only an effing the other party up gap. Do you think that when I went on television and once a week called for George Bush to resign the presidency, that I ever thought for a moment that he was going to resign. I never once said it just for effect. But I also never once said it believing that it would ever happen. I said it because it was true, and because my low grade no training in politics political philosophy is borrowed not from Tip O'Neill but from Muhammad Ali. Yes, you might get in close enough to hit me and even hurt me, but every time you do, I'm gonna make sure you get hit as well. Gray's you or knock you out, I'm gonna f you up. The fascists invade Iraqs of their cronies can get all the planes blown up, and we have to spend more taxpayer money to pay them to build us new planes. Well, you may not stop them, but as they do it, make sure you f them up, make it personal, make it hurt hell. We should have a secretary of fffing them up, Cabinet meetings everybody here, Secretary of Defense here, State present, Agriculture, yo, secretary of effing them up right here, Mr President, I'm ready to ff ing f them up. Perhaps someday we will cure stupidity in this country, but until that distant and glorious future, we must court it, or at least neutralize it, because it is growing so rapidly that this actually happened yesterday, and I still don't believe it. This actually happened yesterday. There is a phrase in American journalism. It has spread to politics, to government, to the military. I heard it first at CNN in two or nine eighty three. When you want to present the timeline of something anything, usually in a newspaper story or a television report, you do what is called a tick talk t I c K t O c k, as in the sound that'll watch or clock makes tick talk, tick talk a timeline at ten am, this happened, at one pm. That happened at four pm, This other thing happened. This is what the Press Secretary Jean Pierre said yesterday at the White House. I knew there was a TikTok that went out to all of you from the National Security Council that was pretty detailed on how everything kind of broke down for the past week. TikTok t I c K t O c K For what I can tell from all the now deleted tweets. The first idiots who produced pseudo news content for other idiots who screwed this up was The Daily Caller quoting the Press Secretary as saying that the National Security Council had posted a TikTok t i k t ok a video on a Chinese driven social media site, you know, for kids. Next it was Fox News. Their tweet by their reporter read, Jean Pierre just told the press there was a TikTok t i k t okay that went out to all of you from the National Security Council. That's right, folks. They take security so seriously. They're using TikTok to tell us exclamation point unquote. The idiot who wrote that has worked for Fox News Channel on the air, where they used the journalistic shorthand TikTok t i c k t O c k worked there, and they hired him away from the Wall Street Journal, where they also used the journalistic shorthand TikTok and where he had worked since nive And his name is David David A. S m A and David Asman. We are surrounded by idiots. It is no use assuming they will go away. It is even less used to pretend that it is beneath us to manipulate them, maybe even pender to them, and most importantly, to try to get their votes from them. These are the stakes Biden manages to extract Chinese intelligence tradecraft from that balloon and block its transmissions back to China and learn enough to confirm that other balloons were here three times without Trump ever noticing, and then shoot it down over water where it couldn't kill Americans or destroy property. And Jim Jordan's has the audacity to tweet inflation illegal Immigration spy balloon on the House Judiciary geop account inflation illegal immigration spy balloon. If the President does not want to put on the shades and drape the destroyed balloon and rest the sidewinder missile launcher on his shoulder during the State of the Union, the least he should do is read that tweet and say, inflation it's down, illegal immigration it's down, and the spy balloon, You're goddamned right, it's effing down, Thank you, Nancy Faust still ahead of federal judge notices. Something the rest of us did not notice about the scrowtus repeal of Rovi Wade. It only applied to what rights are or are not in the amendment, not say amendment surprise. Who's the leading thief of other people's jokes on Twitter? Elon Musk, who's the leading amplifier of pro Russia disc info on Twitter? Uh huh? Whereas persons ahead and Flacco, the missing Central Park Eagle owl had at last word moved back to literally the sidewalk right outside his zwo like a regretful husband back from a bender. I'll watch twenty three continues. That's next. This is countdown. You know, this is countdown with you know Keith Alberman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. State line right here this podcast. A correction from before the break. Fascist congressmen are not wearing a K forty seven lapel pins. They're wearing a R fifteen lapel pins. What the hell do I care? I noticed one of them is wearing the lapel pin with the barrel of the gun pointed up towards his chin. I noticed that Tate Line, Washington hearing a criminal case involving anti abortion activists who blocked a clinic Federal Judge Colleen calar Catelli is asking that the prosecution and the defense address something she just noticed that maybe nobody else has. When it overturned Roe v. Wade last year, the Court was specific in its reasoning. It looked at the Fourteenth Amendment and only the fourteenth Amendment and found it contained no right to abortion. What asks Judge Collar Coateelly about the thirte Amendment. The thirteenth Amendment bands involuntary servitude. Could involuntary servitude include bearing a child against your will, as in the case of rape, or even any other kind of pregnancy that the woman does not want to continue. Who knows. Maybe by the time there is a Supreme Court hearing about maybe some of these current justices will be in jail for lying to the Senate or for insurrection dateline Salem, Massachusetts related topic public service and trolling. At the same time, the Satanic Temple says it will open a reproductive health clinic in New Mexico, offering abortion pills and health screening. Since calling it the Satanic Temple Clinic would not be scary enough, they say they are naming the facility the Samuel Alito's Mom's Satanic abortion clinic and Dateline New York. Flacco, the twelve year old legal owl to escape from the Central Park Zoo last Thursday when somebody cut the fencing around his habitat, has changed trees again, as you know. First Flacco went to the nearest city bank, then off to a tree across the street from me, then to a different tree a little west of there. Yesterday Flacco turned up in a tree directly on the other side of the southwest border of the Central Park Zoo. He was seen flying around at one point swooping down to the ground right next to the zoo wall. It is clear what is happening here. Like so many of us in this neighborhood and throughout Manhattan and throughout New York City, Flacco went looking for a better place to live, but he got a good look at what was available, and now he's trying to renew his current lease. Out of the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Donning Krueger effect specimens who constitute today's worst for sins in the world, Lebronze Elon Musk super genius, Well, he's been a busy little beaver. Forbes has done a story on how Musk has stolen at least eighteen jokes tweeted at him by his own followers, four of them last Saturday alone. Not retweets, not retweets with comments, just cut and pasting other people's work. The story of his life really. Ellen also continues to prove he has no idea, makes no effort or both to separate news from fake news. A pro Kremlin propaganda account tweeted directly at him and quoted a newspaper in Turkey. There is no link, and as it turns out, there's also no such newspaper. This fake newspaper supposedly claimed two thirty four U S and British trainers have been killed in Ukraine, along with two thousand, four eight NATO troops. It is utter fiction, completely made up. So naturally, Musk responded with his usual pith and insight quote, A tragic loss of life could have been worse. The account then asked him to mediate to settle the war. He did not reply, but of course Musk has previously suggested that the way to settle it is to just give into putin. Far more seriously, the New York Times is reporting that Musk's big brag that there was too much child born on Twitter, like there should be any, and he would immediately eliminate it has totally failed. There seems to be more than ever Quoting the Times over views of a video showing a boy being sexually assaulted, a recommendation engine suggesting that a user followed content related to exploited children unquote, and of course virtually the entirety of Twitter support and the Abuse Reporting Division. Musk fired all of them our runners up, news Max. As we continue to hear the fascist Karen ing over its removal from direct tv, we now have confirmation that this was a business dispute that the Republicans. See my opening commentary today that the Republicans are exploiting to score points with the vast eighteen to stupid voting demographic. Direct TV has finally gotten on the stick and issued a press release about this quote. Our differences with newsmax are economic, not political or ideological. News Max made unreasonable demands that would force Direct TV customers to fund the networks shift from a free nationwide streaming service to one that will require a pay TV subscription. Since we would not agree to newsmax Is demand to pay them tens of millions of dollars and licensing fees. Direct TV was no longer permitted by Newsmax to air its content. Direct TV is disappointed by newsmax position. We prefer Newsmax had ever left and remained interested in bringing news Max back under the right financial terms. The Daily Beast is reporting that that tens of millions of dollars figure is actually thirteen million per year, that news Max wanted on a multi year arrangement for that crap. But our winner, I guess this would be Chris Licht and John Malone of CNN and Bill Maher of CNN. That's right, my old friend, you now wear it. The aforementioned Daily Beasts Julia Davis, who monitors Russia, is increasingly hysterical war hyping machine on TV in that country, reports that one of its hosts, Vladimir Solovyov, has a new plan. He wants to a put the German Chancellor old Aff Schultz on trial in Nuremberg, which, as you can guess here, would presumably require that first Russia would beat Germany in a you know, war, and be Mr Solovyov wants to quote by CNN, well, why would the Russian fascists want to buy CNN when the American fascist already owns CNN. I mean to be fair, you could get it cheap right now. The ratings are in the debut of Bill Maher's segment last Friday night. At that hour drew seventy six thousand viewers for CNN eight nine thousand viewers under the age of fifty five. Those were the lowest ratings for any hour in cable news on Friday night. John Malone, Bill, I swear I was on CNN that night. I swear I know nobody watched it, but I know I was on mar and Chris. Did I ever mentioned that When we worked together at MSNBC, Alderman thought I ate paced licked two days worst persons in the still ahead on Countdown. I still remember the exact amount four and forty two dollars minus the five I had to keep to tip the driver later that night. You will not believe what I had to use their mating fo dollars to do. You will believe that I never got the money back things I promised not to tell. Next first, in each indition of Countdown, we feature dog in need you can help. Every dog has its day in Philadelphia Animal Control is still marveling that Pandora was still alive. She was starving to death on the proverbial streets of Philadelphia, and she was anemic. There were bone fragments in her stomach, black stool, and days after Outcast Rescue got hold of her, she's already up on her feet, with her eyes shining again and her striking black and white coat beginning to not show quite so much ribs and bone. She has a long way to go, but if you can donate, it looks like she will get there. You can find Pandora on Cuddly or on my Twitter feed, and your retweets will also help her. I thank you, and Pandora, thank you. And thus to the number one story on the countdown in my favorite topic, Me and I guess. I was reminded of this because I mentioned Chris Matthews earlier, ah the geniuses of MSNBC. So I looked up the details of this, and it looks like this is the anniversary. It's somewhere around here at the beginning of February from two thousand and eight. Late in November two thousand seven, after several months of pressuring my MSNBC bosses to hire Rachel Maddow to try out as My guest host, with a goal of then showcasing her and spinning her off into her own show. The vice president in charge of the network, Phil Griffin, agreed to give Maddow a deal for forty or fifty grand as an MSNBC contributor. It would do nothing more than lock her in place so that CNN would not steal her from us. I mean, I knew that that conversation and that concession still would not get her her own show. But what I did not know was the concession I was told about the contributors contract. It was a lie. And by January two thousand and eight, as the Clinton Obama primary race turned into a tongue war, we were imposing upon Rachel Meadow to join the desk each Tuesday for Primary Night. She was not anchoring, She's not even the lead analyst, and my uncontrollable fire hose co host Matthews was consistently pretending that she did not actually exist. But she existed. She was there, and I quizzed her about every topic every chance I got. Soon I began to include her appearances in the pre recorded open that I would write two minutes of hyperbole that was really designed merely to give everybody enough time to get my fat ass into the anchor chair and everybody else's mis on with Tim Russer in the NBC, knew was Washington Bureau, David Gregory at Clinton Headquarters, Howard Feynman and Eugene Robinson in New York, Chuck Todd at the Exit Pole desk, Tom broke off the Perspective desk, MC Escher at the lack of Perspective Desk. Then came Super Tuesday, February five, two thousand eight. I was writing this orgasmic dribble, as I always did on Tuesday, crossing the names of who was where off the list as I went, the list handed to me by the executive producer, Izzy Povich. When I noticed the list did not include either Rachel or the Rachel Desk, I knocked on the wall that separated our little offices at thirty Rock, and she shuffled in complete with a sincere smile friendship, but always also with what seemed to be a little space kept in reserve where she could wonder if I was mad enough to try to take somebody hostage. Yes, my third child, Where's Rachel tonight, I asked, as I waived the paper at her, assuming oversight, but leaving my own little space in reserve where my earlier nightmare had come true, not on paper. Please to put name Rachel on paper? Is Povich said it, matter of factly. Oh, yeah, well I was in trouble. That elongated concident always meant trouble. She's on Larry King tonight. Momentarily, I went, very stupid, Well, how in the hell does that work when she has a contract with us. I'll tell you, but you have to promise not to hate me. The Isipovich fake cringe and crouch ensued. Phil made me promise not to tell you. Rachel doesn't have a contract with us. He told me he told you we'd get her one. Then his boss refused to give him the money. I'm sorry, you promised not to hate me. Momentarily, I was calm momentarily, but why why didn't you tell me that before? Approximately? Oh right now, why didn't you tell me this before? Or she agreed to go on Larry King's show? Well, she only decided this morning. Apparently she really needs the cash. I told Phil, and he said, those are the brakes buddy. The last thing I actually remember doing, the last part that I did not need to recreate from the memories of others and an occasional flashback in therapy, was asking how much my old friend Larry King was going to give Rachel is he pursed her lips two fifty dollars. I remember screaming that figure several times, along with all the swear words I knew. I remember vocalizing, we are going to lose Rachel Meadow, the next great talent of cable news, to fing CNN, for two hundred and fifty fing dollars. Everything else after that statement is darkness. I know I phoned Phil Griffin and threatened him. Is He recently confirmed for me that I asked her to leave before I called him and threatened him. I believe I warned him that if he did not sign her to a contributor's contract within twenty four hours, I would walk off the set during that night's primary coverage, or maybe the next week's, or maybe during countdown tomorrow night. It would be a surprise. I'm also confident that I warned him that of all of a talent on television, Larry King had the best knowledge of what and who else would succeed more than the rest of us combined. He was a savant, and when he saw her in real time on his primary night panel, we would never see her again, and she would have a CNN contract before midnight. I told Phil that when that happened, I would then kill him with my bare hands, or Jeff Zucker would kill him when she wound up beating the hell out of us in the ratings. This statement all took longer than this paragraph would imply, because I know without fear of contradiction, and every other word out of my mouth was either what we used to call an oath or the phrase Jesus H car Rist. Mind you, these people the president of NBC, Jeff Zucker, and it's a year since they got rid of him at CNN, the president of NBC News Steve Cappus, and the soon to be president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin. These had been the same people who, about a year earlier, had decided that their ten PM host, Tucker Carlson Yep, Tucker Carlson was on MSNBC that Tucker Carlson did not need two people to play the role of liberal foil on his show At like fifty grand a year. So they kept one of them, his name was Max Kellerman, and they fired the other one. Her name was Rachel Maddow. They fired Rachel Meadow at MSNBC to save dollars. She was back now at msn BC only because my producer is He had suggested making her a regular guest, and within a couple of months I realized she would be the next great host in cable news. And after months of pleading, including pleading with her because she didn't want to do it, I had just convinced them to put her back under contract. Except they had lied to me, and they had not put her back under contract. I may have mentioned this to Phil Griffin during our phone call a hundred and eleven different times. I may have mentioned it to him. I also telephoned Rachel. I did not swear at her. Here. Every other word out of my mouth was not an oath but an apology. I said. I had genuinely believed she was already being paid, and I was not only humiliated on behalf of my network, but that I was far more humiliated that I had not double checked with her that they had actually given her the contract. They told me they had given her. I begged her to please, please, please, don't go and see an end tonight. I did not ask her to skip out on them and return to us unless she thought she could pull that off gracefully and with a clean conscience, but just not to go on with Larry. And that's where I added the little four hundred and thirty seven dollars stunt. I'm sorry about the money situation, I said. I didn't know. Now I know I can only do this. I think they will give you forty or fifty thousand for a contributors deal just to start. But what I will do is, and while making as many sound effects of exertion as I could dream up, I stretched around it, pulled my wallet out of my back pocket, and I emptied it onto my desk. I need to keep five bucks to tip my driver tonight. You can have the rest of whatever cash I have on me. I'm counting it now. There's a hundred twenty my play by place skipped, no bills, four d two bucks American five for the driver, the rest for you four dollars. Rachel deal, she laughed. I'll see you tonight. I'll just tell Larry. I couldn't be disloyaled to oh, and I will take the money, and she took the money. In point of fact, when I like to say anything that Rachel Meadow did with her career after we got her show on the air in August of two eight, that's all her doing. I have nothing to do with that except being the lead in for the first two years. That's true. But I also like to say that I got that show on the air. And I also like to say I hired Rachel Meadow at MSNBC. And this is my point. It was not figuratively, it was not metaphorically. I hired her out of my own pocket. I literally hired Meadow at MSNBC for four hundred and thirty seven dollars. And I will point this out again, I never even got the four hundred and thirty seven dollars back. Cowntown has come to from the studios of Alderman Broadcasting, Empire World Headquarters and the Sports Capsule Believing in New York. Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle, who are the Countdown musical directors Guitars, bass and drums by Brian ray All, orchestration and keyboards by John Philip. Channel produced by t k O Brothers, Our Beethobin selections. Other ones have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music When We Have Sports is the Alderman theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments throughout by Nancy Fausts. The best baseball stadium organist ever our announced you today was Richard Lewis, my friend of thirty years. Everything else is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the seven dead and sixty three day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olverman 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.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio. When the walking and the handshakes and the selfies are over and President Biden reaches the rostrum in the House Chamber tonight, after the cheering and applause has reached its crescendo, but before it dies down fully, the President should reach into his jacket pocket, pull out his aviator sunglasses, put them on, then reach under the lectern and produced first a large, tattered, devastated white balloon and drape it in front of himself, and then reach under a second time and pull out an L A U seven launcher for an A I M nine X side winder missile, and rest the thing on his shoulder and asked the astonished representatives and say there's any other questions? Mother efforts, and then he should smile, put the props back down, take the glasses off, and say, Mr Speaker, Madam, Vice President, and our first lady and second gentleman, members of Congress, in the Cabinet, Justices of the Supreme Court, my fellow Americans, the state of the Union is. I feel the need the need for speed. Obviously he won't, but we need to face something that Republicans identified thirty years ago or longer, which we have refused to acknowledge. That goes to the heart of what was probably your first reaction when I gave voice just there to my little top gun state of the sidewinder missile message fantasy, which odds are was that would be great, only to be immediately followed by a different voice in your head saying you can't do that. We have to face the reality that this country is full of morons. I don't know if they are ten percent, and they're just allowed ten percent. I don't know if they are. I don't know if they are, and there are days I don't doubt this a bit, But however many they are. They elected Trump and nearly did it again and might try it once more. And bluntly, people in America are stupid and is ludicrous as the idea of Joe Biden showing up at the State of the Union with a fake missile launcher and a fake Chinese spy balloon is. How much more ludicrous is it? Then? Was George W. Bush landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May first, two thousand three, and getting out of the jet and a flight suit complete with a helmet and a high altitude oxygen mask, and then stepping out of all that gear and giving his mission accomplished speech, even though no mission had been accomplished and nothing close to it would be for eighteen years. And it's illegal to turn a U. S. Navy carrier into a political prop And if anybody had been paying attention, all that the flight imagery should have evoked was the day Bush was suspended from flying with the Texas Air National Guard, and whether or not he faked his service time, at what in hell did he invade Iraq? Fourth the nine eleven plotters had been shielded by Afghanistan, but it didn't it got Bush reelected because the country is full of idiots. Most of them are Republican idiots, but not all, and the ones who are not idiots, or who at least are not complete idiots, are still consumed by the proverbial shiny objects. This is a nation of memes, and of video games and of movies which are now adapted from comic books. And when I was sitting there at the MSNBC anchor desk on May first, two thousand three, asking about the Air National Guard and exactly what mission has supposedly been accomplished. My co anchor said, no, no, no, no, no Bush one this day, look at the bulge in his flight suit. My co anchor was Chris Matthews. Most of the time he is an idiot too, but actually that day he was not an idiot. He was channeling the idiocy of tens of millions of our fellow citizens who defy the odds each day and managed to get to and from their office or the store or the bar without killing themselves and everybody around them. And Matthews was right. Nobody thought about the Texas Air National Guard. They only saw George W. Bush mission accomplished in a flight suit with a big bulge. It began long before then, but from that day onwards, the Republicans have won virtually every battle of imagery fought on our political hell escape. What was Trump if not entirely imagery? The planes landing at his rallies. That was Hitler's idea, literally Hitler's idea. That's how he mesmerized the idiots he knew lived in his time in his country. The cheap, stupid looking snap back baseball caps, and we see them and we say, I would rather wear a plastic bag tied tightly over my head, and we missed the point. Half the country already owned stupid looking snapback baseball caps, and all Trump did was brand them and unify those who were already wearing them. And we recoil from these stunts because they are not dignified and they are not honest, and those who performed them are not served first at the cocktail parties in Washington. And it is all somehow beneath us, and we shake our heads, and still, in our quietest moments, we believe we can win the hearts and minds of America with logic and sincerity. Do you, And though with each passing day there is less and less evidence that there are enough minds left in America with which to win anything, And still we tisk tisk, and we pooh pooh, and we sighed profoundly at stunts and imagery and caps and shirts and bumper stickers and props, at American flag lapel pins. And yet tonight there will be congressmen in the House Chamber booing with the audacity of dope a president who handled this balloon nonsense perfectly. Even though these congressmen have now moved on from American flag lapel pins to actually wearing a K forty seven lapel pins. And they have not as they should be gotten dragged out of the House by their heels for mocking the victims of every mass shooting in this country. And they will not only get away with these lapel pins, some of them will be re elected because of them, because the Republicans and the fascists have tapped into and monopolized the greatest unstated voting block in this country. They got the balloon story entirely wrong. And yet here is Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who sounds and looks like she just accidentally electrocuted herself with a faulty hair curling iron. Tweeting Communist China tested Biden with their spy balloon, and he failed. And here is Kevin McCarthy, who social media avatar does not just capture his quintessential native stupidity, but makes him look like he's just realized that that car out there in the distance in the parking lot is on fire and it is his car. Here is perhaps our dumbest speaker of the House ever getting away with posting and keeping posted first. Biden refused to defend our borders. Now he won't defend our skies. And here is this reptile on its back legs, Marjorie Taylor Green, who we must congratulate because when she briefly presided over the House yesterday and they handed her the gabble, she grabbed it by the correct end. Here is this nitwit tweeting there's zero Chinese spy balloons during President Trump's administration. China owns Biden, and everyone knows why the Republicans are winning the visceral battle over this balloon because they will not let any facts get in their way, and they do not have to worry about the Democrats even bothering to respond, and they can count on the morons like Ryan Liza at Politico writing China deflates Biden's State of the Union swagger, and the morons like Doug Cameron at the Wall Street Journal writing Chinese craft raises fears of a balloon gap. There's no balloon gap. There is an imagery gap. There's a visceral reaction gap. There's a never mind the truth, the meme is much better gap. There is only an effing the other party up gap. Do you think that when I went on television and once a week called for George Bush to resign the presidency, that I ever thought for a moment that he was going to resign. I never once said it just for effect. But I also never once said it believing that it would ever happen. I said it because it was true, and because my low grade no training in politics political philosophy is borrowed not from Tip O'Neill but from Muhammad Ali. Yes, you might get in close enough to hit me and even hurt me, but every time you do, I'm gonna make sure you get hit as well. Gray's you or knock you out, I'm gonna f you up. The fascists invade Iraqs of their cronies can get all the planes blown up, and we have to spend more taxpayer money to pay them to build us new planes. Well, you may not stop them, but as they do it, make sure you f them up, make it personal, make it hurt hell. We should have a secretary of fffing them up, Cabinet meetings everybody here, Secretary of Defense here, State present, Agriculture, yo, secretary of effing them up right here, Mr President, I'm ready to ff ing f them up. Perhaps someday we will cure stupidity in this country, but until that distant and glorious future, we must court it, or at least neutralize it, because it is growing so rapidly that this actually happened yesterday, and I still don't believe it. This actually happened yesterday. There is a phrase in American journalism. It has spread to politics, to government, to the military. I heard it first at CNN in two or nine eighty three. When you want to present the timeline of something anything, usually in a newspaper story or a television report, you do what is called a tick talk t I c K t O c k, as in the sound that'll watch or clock makes tick talk, tick talk a timeline at ten am, this happened, at one pm. That happened at four pm, This other thing happened. This is what the Press Secretary Jean Pierre said yesterday at the White House. I knew there was a TikTok that went out to all of you from the National Security Council that was pretty detailed on how everything kind of broke down for the past week. TikTok t I c K t O c K For what I can tell from all the now deleted tweets. The first idiots who produced pseudo news content for other idiots who screwed this up was The Daily Caller quoting the Press Secretary as saying that the National Security Council had posted a TikTok t i k t ok a video on a Chinese driven social media site, you know, for kids. Next it was Fox News. Their tweet by their reporter read, Jean Pierre just told the press there was a TikTok t i k t okay that went out to all of you from the National Security Council. That's right, folks. They take security so seriously. They're using TikTok to tell us exclamation point unquote. The idiot who wrote that has worked for Fox News Channel on the air, where they used the journalistic shorthand TikTok t i c k t O c k worked there, and they hired him away from the Wall Street Journal, where they also used the journalistic shorthand TikTok and where he had worked since nive And his name is David David A. S m A and David Asman. We are surrounded by idiots. It is no use assuming they will go away. It is even less used to pretend that it is beneath us to manipulate them, maybe even pender to them, and most importantly, to try to get their votes from them. These are the stakes Biden manages to extract Chinese intelligence tradecraft from that balloon and block its transmissions back to China and learn enough to confirm that other balloons were here three times without Trump ever noticing, and then shoot it down over water where it couldn't kill Americans or destroy property. And Jim Jordan's has the audacity to tweet inflation illegal Immigration spy balloon on the House Judiciary geop account inflation illegal immigration spy balloon. If the President does not want to put on the shades and drape the destroyed balloon and rest the sidewinder missile launcher on his shoulder during the State of the Union, the least he should do is read that tweet and say, inflation it's down, illegal immigration it's down, and the spy balloon, You're goddamned right, it's effing down, Thank you, Nancy Faust still ahead of federal judge notices. Something the rest of us did not notice about the scrowtus repeal of Rovi Wade. It only applied to what rights are or are not in the amendment, not say amendment surprise. Who's the leading thief of other people's jokes on Twitter? Elon Musk, who's the leading amplifier of pro Russia disc info on Twitter? Uh huh? Whereas persons ahead and Flacco, the missing Central Park Eagle owl had at last word moved back to literally the sidewalk right outside his zwo like a regretful husband back from a bender. I'll watch twenty three continues. That's next. This is countdown. You know, this is countdown with you know Keith Alberman. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions. State line right here this podcast. A correction from before the break. Fascist congressmen are not wearing a K forty seven lapel pins. They're wearing a R fifteen lapel pins. What the hell do I care? I noticed one of them is wearing the lapel pin with the barrel of the gun pointed up towards his chin. I noticed that Tate Line, Washington hearing a criminal case involving anti abortion activists who blocked a clinic Federal Judge Colleen calar Catelli is asking that the prosecution and the defense address something she just noticed that maybe nobody else has. When it overturned Roe v. Wade last year, the Court was specific in its reasoning. It looked at the Fourteenth Amendment and only the fourteenth Amendment and found it contained no right to abortion. What asks Judge Collar Coateelly about the thirte Amendment. The thirteenth Amendment bands involuntary servitude. Could involuntary servitude include bearing a child against your will, as in the case of rape, or even any other kind of pregnancy that the woman does not want to continue. Who knows. Maybe by the time there is a Supreme Court hearing about maybe some of these current justices will be in jail for lying to the Senate or for insurrection dateline Salem, Massachusetts related topic public service and trolling. At the same time, the Satanic Temple says it will open a reproductive health clinic in New Mexico, offering abortion pills and health screening. Since calling it the Satanic Temple Clinic would not be scary enough, they say they are naming the facility the Samuel Alito's Mom's Satanic abortion clinic and Dateline New York. Flacco, the twelve year old legal owl to escape from the Central Park Zoo last Thursday when somebody cut the fencing around his habitat, has changed trees again, as you know. First Flacco went to the nearest city bank, then off to a tree across the street from me, then to a different tree a little west of there. Yesterday Flacco turned up in a tree directly on the other side of the southwest border of the Central Park Zoo. He was seen flying around at one point swooping down to the ground right next to the zoo wall. It is clear what is happening here. Like so many of us in this neighborhood and throughout Manhattan and throughout New York City, Flacco went looking for a better place to live, but he got a good look at what was available, and now he's trying to renew his current lease. Out of the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Donning Krueger effect specimens who constitute today's worst for sins in the world, Lebronze Elon Musk super genius, Well, he's been a busy little beaver. Forbes has done a story on how Musk has stolen at least eighteen jokes tweeted at him by his own followers, four of them last Saturday alone. Not retweets, not retweets with comments, just cut and pasting other people's work. The story of his life really. Ellen also continues to prove he has no idea, makes no effort or both to separate news from fake news. A pro Kremlin propaganda account tweeted directly at him and quoted a newspaper in Turkey. There is no link, and as it turns out, there's also no such newspaper. This fake newspaper supposedly claimed two thirty four U S and British trainers have been killed in Ukraine, along with two thousand, four eight NATO troops. It is utter fiction, completely made up. So naturally, Musk responded with his usual pith and insight quote, A tragic loss of life could have been worse. The account then asked him to mediate to settle the war. He did not reply, but of course Musk has previously suggested that the way to settle it is to just give into putin. Far more seriously, the New York Times is reporting that Musk's big brag that there was too much child born on Twitter, like there should be any, and he would immediately eliminate it has totally failed. There seems to be more than ever Quoting the Times over views of a video showing a boy being sexually assaulted, a recommendation engine suggesting that a user followed content related to exploited children unquote, and of course virtually the entirety of Twitter support and the Abuse Reporting Division. Musk fired all of them our runners up, news Max. As we continue to hear the fascist Karen ing over its removal from direct tv, we now have confirmation that this was a business dispute that the Republicans. See my opening commentary today that the Republicans are exploiting to score points with the vast eighteen to stupid voting demographic. Direct TV has finally gotten on the stick and issued a press release about this quote. Our differences with newsmax are economic, not political or ideological. News Max made unreasonable demands that would force Direct TV customers to fund the networks shift from a free nationwide streaming service to one that will require a pay TV subscription. Since we would not agree to newsmax Is demand to pay them tens of millions of dollars and licensing fees. Direct TV was no longer permitted by Newsmax to air its content. Direct TV is disappointed by newsmax position. We prefer Newsmax had ever left and remained interested in bringing news Max back under the right financial terms. The Daily Beast is reporting that that tens of millions of dollars figure is actually thirteen million per year, that news Max wanted on a multi year arrangement for that crap. But our winner, I guess this would be Chris Licht and John Malone of CNN and Bill Maher of CNN. That's right, my old friend, you now wear it. The aforementioned Daily Beasts Julia Davis, who monitors Russia, is increasingly hysterical war hyping machine on TV in that country, reports that one of its hosts, Vladimir Solovyov, has a new plan. He wants to a put the German Chancellor old Aff Schultz on trial in Nuremberg, which, as you can guess here, would presumably require that first Russia would beat Germany in a you know, war, and be Mr Solovyov wants to quote by CNN, well, why would the Russian fascists want to buy CNN when the American fascist already owns CNN. I mean to be fair, you could get it cheap right now. The ratings are in the debut of Bill Maher's segment last Friday night. At that hour drew seventy six thousand viewers for CNN eight nine thousand viewers under the age of fifty five. Those were the lowest ratings for any hour in cable news on Friday night. John Malone, Bill, I swear I was on CNN that night. I swear I know nobody watched it, but I know I was on mar and Chris. Did I ever mentioned that When we worked together at MSNBC, Alderman thought I ate paced licked two days worst persons in the still ahead on Countdown. I still remember the exact amount four and forty two dollars minus the five I had to keep to tip the driver later that night. You will not believe what I had to use their mating fo dollars to do. You will believe that I never got the money back things I promised not to tell. Next first, in each indition of Countdown, we feature dog in need you can help. Every dog has its day in Philadelphia Animal Control is still marveling that Pandora was still alive. She was starving to death on the proverbial streets of Philadelphia, and she was anemic. There were bone fragments in her stomach, black stool, and days after Outcast Rescue got hold of her, she's already up on her feet, with her eyes shining again and her striking black and white coat beginning to not show quite so much ribs and bone. She has a long way to go, but if you can donate, it looks like she will get there. You can find Pandora on Cuddly or on my Twitter feed, and your retweets will also help her. I thank you, and Pandora, thank you. And thus to the number one story on the countdown in my favorite topic, Me and I guess. I was reminded of this because I mentioned Chris Matthews earlier, ah the geniuses of MSNBC. So I looked up the details of this, and it looks like this is the anniversary. It's somewhere around here at the beginning of February from two thousand and eight. Late in November two thousand seven, after several months of pressuring my MSNBC bosses to hire Rachel Maddow to try out as My guest host, with a goal of then showcasing her and spinning her off into her own show. The vice president in charge of the network, Phil Griffin, agreed to give Maddow a deal for forty or fifty grand as an MSNBC contributor. It would do nothing more than lock her in place so that CNN would not steal her from us. I mean, I knew that that conversation and that concession still would not get her her own show. But what I did not know was the concession I was told about the contributors contract. It was a lie. And by January two thousand and eight, as the Clinton Obama primary race turned into a tongue war, we were imposing upon Rachel Meadow to join the desk each Tuesday for Primary Night. She was not anchoring, She's not even the lead analyst, and my uncontrollable fire hose co host Matthews was consistently pretending that she did not actually exist. But she existed. She was there, and I quizzed her about every topic every chance I got. Soon I began to include her appearances in the pre recorded open that I would write two minutes of hyperbole that was really designed merely to give everybody enough time to get my fat ass into the anchor chair and everybody else's mis on with Tim Russer in the NBC, knew was Washington Bureau, David Gregory at Clinton Headquarters, Howard Feynman and Eugene Robinson in New York, Chuck Todd at the Exit Pole desk, Tom broke off the Perspective desk, MC Escher at the lack of Perspective Desk. Then came Super Tuesday, February five, two thousand eight. I was writing this orgasmic dribble, as I always did on Tuesday, crossing the names of who was where off the list as I went, the list handed to me by the executive producer, Izzy Povich. When I noticed the list did not include either Rachel or the Rachel Desk, I knocked on the wall that separated our little offices at thirty Rock, and she shuffled in complete with a sincere smile friendship, but always also with what seemed to be a little space kept in reserve where she could wonder if I was mad enough to try to take somebody hostage. Yes, my third child, Where's Rachel tonight, I asked, as I waived the paper at her, assuming oversight, but leaving my own little space in reserve where my earlier nightmare had come true, not on paper. Please to put name Rachel on paper? Is Povich said it, matter of factly. Oh, yeah, well I was in trouble. That elongated concident always meant trouble. She's on Larry King tonight. Momentarily, I went, very stupid, Well, how in the hell does that work when she has a contract with us. I'll tell you, but you have to promise not to hate me. The Isipovich fake cringe and crouch ensued. Phil made me promise not to tell you. Rachel doesn't have a contract with us. He told me he told you we'd get her one. Then his boss refused to give him the money. I'm sorry, you promised not to hate me. Momentarily, I was calm momentarily, but why why didn't you tell me that before? Approximately? Oh right now, why didn't you tell me this before? Or she agreed to go on Larry King's show? Well, she only decided this morning. Apparently she really needs the cash. I told Phil, and he said, those are the brakes buddy. The last thing I actually remember doing, the last part that I did not need to recreate from the memories of others and an occasional flashback in therapy, was asking how much my old friend Larry King was going to give Rachel is he pursed her lips two fifty dollars. I remember screaming that figure several times, along with all the swear words I knew. I remember vocalizing, we are going to lose Rachel Meadow, the next great talent of cable news, to fing CNN, for two hundred and fifty fing dollars. Everything else after that statement is darkness. I know I phoned Phil Griffin and threatened him. Is He recently confirmed for me that I asked her to leave before I called him and threatened him. I believe I warned him that if he did not sign her to a contributor's contract within twenty four hours, I would walk off the set during that night's primary coverage, or maybe the next week's, or maybe during countdown tomorrow night. It would be a surprise. I'm also confident that I warned him that of all of a talent on television, Larry King had the best knowledge of what and who else would succeed more than the rest of us combined. He was a savant, and when he saw her in real time on his primary night panel, we would never see her again, and she would have a CNN contract before midnight. I told Phil that when that happened, I would then kill him with my bare hands, or Jeff Zucker would kill him when she wound up beating the hell out of us in the ratings. This statement all took longer than this paragraph would imply, because I know without fear of contradiction, and every other word out of my mouth was either what we used to call an oath or the phrase Jesus H car Rist. Mind you, these people the president of NBC, Jeff Zucker, and it's a year since they got rid of him at CNN, the president of NBC News Steve Cappus, and the soon to be president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin. These had been the same people who, about a year earlier, had decided that their ten PM host, Tucker Carlson Yep, Tucker Carlson was on MSNBC that Tucker Carlson did not need two people to play the role of liberal foil on his show At like fifty grand a year. So they kept one of them, his name was Max Kellerman, and they fired the other one. Her name was Rachel Maddow. They fired Rachel Meadow at MSNBC to save dollars. She was back now at msn BC only because my producer is He had suggested making her a regular guest, and within a couple of months I realized she would be the next great host in cable news. And after months of pleading, including pleading with her because she didn't want to do it, I had just convinced them to put her back under contract. Except they had lied to me, and they had not put her back under contract. I may have mentioned this to Phil Griffin during our phone call a hundred and eleven different times. I may have mentioned it to him. I also telephoned Rachel. I did not swear at her. Here. Every other word out of my mouth was not an oath but an apology. I said. I had genuinely believed she was already being paid, and I was not only humiliated on behalf of my network, but that I was far more humiliated that I had not double checked with her that they had actually given her the contract. They told me they had given her. I begged her to please, please, please, don't go and see an end tonight. I did not ask her to skip out on them and return to us unless she thought she could pull that off gracefully and with a clean conscience, but just not to go on with Larry. And that's where I added the little four hundred and thirty seven dollars stunt. I'm sorry about the money situation, I said. I didn't know. Now I know I can only do this. I think they will give you forty or fifty thousand for a contributors deal just to start. But what I will do is, and while making as many sound effects of exertion as I could dream up, I stretched around it, pulled my wallet out of my back pocket, and I emptied it onto my desk. I need to keep five bucks to tip my driver tonight. You can have the rest of whatever cash I have on me. I'm counting it now. There's a hundred twenty my play by place skipped, no bills, four d two bucks American five for the driver, the rest for you four dollars. Rachel deal, she laughed. I'll see you tonight. I'll just tell Larry. I couldn't be disloyaled to oh, and I will take the money, and she took the money. In point of fact, when I like to say anything that Rachel Meadow did with her career after we got her show on the air in August of two eight, that's all her doing. I have nothing to do with that except being the lead in for the first two years. That's true. But I also like to say that I got that show on the air. And I also like to say I hired Rachel Meadow at MSNBC. And this is my point. It was not figuratively, it was not metaphorically. I hired her out of my own pocket. I literally hired Meadow at MSNBC for four hundred and thirty seven dollars. And I will point this out again, I never even got the four hundred and thirty seven dollars back. Cowntown has come to from the studios of Alderman Broadcasting, Empire World Headquarters and the Sports Capsule Believing in New York. Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music, including our theme from Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle, who are the Countdown musical directors Guitars, bass and drums by Brian ray All, orchestration and keyboards by John Philip. Channel produced by t k O Brothers, Our Beethobin selections. Other ones have been arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music When We Have Sports is the Alderman theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments throughout by Nancy Fausts. The best baseball stadium organist ever our announced you today was Richard Lewis, my friend of thirty years. Everything else is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the seven dead and sixty three day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olverman 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.