Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of I Heart Radio. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman. I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a recession. Everybody goes to work, but they're still scared of losing their job. The corporations make sure the dollar buys in Nickelsworth Banks are making record profits. Teachers are told to keep a gun under the desk. Punks are running wild in Congress, and there's nobody anywhere seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our planet will be unfit for life. And we sit watching our TVs while some Fox newscaster tells us that today Trump is the real victim and minorities are the real problem. As if that's the way it's supposed to be. We all know things are bad. Worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We have the Senate in the House, but slowly the democracy we're living and is getting smaller. And all we say is please at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my president and my R. B. G. Shrine and my January six hearings, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone. While I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I want you to protest. I want you to strike. I want you to write to your congressman, because you don't need me to tell you what to write. You know what to do about the recession and the inflation and the Russians and the Nazis in the street. All I know is first you've got to get mad. You've got to say I'm a human being, God damnaged, my life has value. So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up and out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it and stick your head out and yell, I am as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take Trump anymore. I want you to get up right now, get up, go to your windows, open them, and stick your head out and yell, I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take Trump anymore. Things have got to change. But first you've got to get mad. You've got to say I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take Trump anymore. Then we'll figure out what to do about the recession and the inflation in the oil cartels. But first, get up out of your chairs, open your windows, stick your head out, and yell and say it. I am as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take Trump anymore. The mold as hell, he'll take Trump anymore. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take Trump anymore. Sorry, I couldn't resist. And for the first time in my life, even through the brutal years of Reagan and even through the psychotic years of Bush, that famous Howard Beal's speech from the nineteen seventy six movie Network seems to fit this moment. With some revisions. Of course, the Beal character as portrayed by Peter Finch, and especially that speech, and especially that catchphrase I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore, spoke to long before it became a cliche. This weird overlap between somebody who is so enraged that he is angry mad as hell and somebody who may be so insane that he is crazy mad as hell. But there's also a third subtext to it, which only occasionally gets mentioned and only occasionally gets appreciated, And it is why Beale and mad as Hell means something today. It's that line towards the start. We all know things are bad. Worse than bad, they're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy. In short, it's like Howard Beale, representing all of us, is going crazy because nobody else is when they should be. If in school you had read that a hundred years ago, or a hundred and fifty years ago, or whenever a president of the United States fraudulently denied he lost the election and tried to overturn it in the courts and in the Congress, and it didn't work because it was one big lie. So he invited gangs of thugs and racists and guns suckers and militias to come to the capital during the most boasted about part of American democracy, the peaceful transfer of power, And having invited them, he then incited them to try to overthrow the government by violence. You would have expected to then have read about the police and the military and the laws that stopped him, and the arrests and the indictments and the lifetimes in prison and the vengeance that followed. Hell, what precipitated the Civil War if not eleven states trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power because they didn't like who got elected. We are supposed to do something about this. When a large minority of Americans stood up and said only whites are real people. And when they said we will use the police to lynch black people. And when they said guns settle everything, and when they said women are here only to breed, and when they said we own the Supreme Court now, and when they said we will not teach history because we don't want children to know there's a more righteous way. And when they said this is our world, and you the majority. Your votes do not count here. Your cities do not count here, your lives do not count here. Your president does not count here. When all that happened within thirty nine days, our anger and our vengeance democracies anger and vengeance began. It was eighteen sixty one. But first you've got to get mad. Today they have Trump and Schedule F and a plan to impeach Biden for whatever, and they've already turned the Supreme Court into the theocratic republican supreme religious Court, and they've overturned abortion, and next will be marriage equality. And they intend to investigate the January six committee members and pardon everybody who actually attacked the capitol, even though you and I grew up presuming you know, if I attacked the capital during the peaceful transfer of power. I'm gonna guess they'll give me about five seconds to stop before they start shooting at me. And they want to put Fauci in prison, and their passing laws prosecuting doctors and prosecuting women who leave a state to go to another state for an abortion. In other words, they want to prosecute women who leave a slave state to go to a free state and bring them back to the slave state. And they have a Fox News, and another worse Fox News, and another worser even than that Fox News. And what do we have? We have once a week somebody who says we must find a compromise with them. We must be by partisan, we must be democrats and liberals who act like Republicans and fascists and Nazis. We have Joe Mansion, and for eighteen months, Joe Mansion has obstructed all the good Joe Biden has tried to do and prevented all the emergency measures we must have to keep the last words by the last humans surviving the climate catastrophe on this planet. From being as chairman of Excellent Mobile, I don't want to report record profits for the year fifty two. And when the bribe for Joe Mansion, the Senator from fossil fuel gulch West Virginia, is finally sufficient to his liking and he finally agrees with Chuck Schumer on the seven hundred and forty billion dollar Climate and Deficit Reduction Bill, what does he get? He gets to go on all five network Sunday political television NIT, which shows proverbial full ginsburg glory, glory, hallelujah. It's Joe Mansion, our lawgiver, the true Democrat. And yet Kirsten Cinema could still kill the thing today and Joe Mansion would then still look reasonable. By contrast, tomorrow, he'd still be the hero who achieved nothing, and of all that cinema stuff bothers you. I used to go out with her. We all know things are bad. Worse than bad, they're crazy. It's like everything everywhere has going crazy, even the fascists who hate or fear Trump have something closer to a plan than we do. The This Town author Mark Leebevich, quoted a former Republican congressman is saying, quote, look, we have no plan for this except sitting around hoping he dies, unquote, which actually sounds like more of a plan than our plan. Our plan make sure Democrats help the craziest Trump supporters and election deniers, and it's not I Q and On, it's just Q and on nutbags get nominated because we're confident we can beat them right right, right this weekend, it will be nineteen months since the coup. They have plans for more coups. A coup in Washington, a coup in every state, of coup in every county. Looks like they compromise the Secret Service and it's still compromised. Looks like they compromise the inspector General at Homeland Security. They've compromised half the cops in this country, a little less, a little more. They've compromised, as my heroes, Bob Elliott Ray Golding once joked, everything except the Visiting Nurse Association. They have built a cult around denying. That's went twenty election. And if you haven't figured out what's behind that nonsense, by the way, seemingly quixotic and academic at the same time. Here's the little secret. The idea about the twenty stuff still being talked about is if L. Douche gets elected and goes back to the White House, he will somehow make somebody like I don't know, the Supreme Court confirm that yes, he actually won in but was denied that rightful term in the White House, so he will be given a third term in t or at least allowed to run for it. In short, was stolen from him. He's owed another term, right That's in the Constitution, isn't it. Gee, maybe we could just you know, skip the election outright. The fascists have all this in the works. And what do we have. We have Chuck Todd three weeks ago asking a Republican governor, quote, what's best for the country? Do you think the country can handle prosecuting a former president? And we have Lester Holts one week ago telling the Attorney General of the United States, quote, indictment of a former president and perhaps a candidate for president would arguably tear the country apart. Is that your concern? They have Fox News? We have Fox News, only we call it NBC. I will do this podcast every weekday morning, no holiday, mondays. Sorry I'm getting old. It will be as best as I can do with the podcast version of what the old TV show was. I will explain to you later in this first episode what exactly happened to the old TV show. And here's a tease. It's none of the things you've heard. And I'll have comments on the news and comments on the sports. Did you know he used to do sports? And the worst persons in the world are back? And why Trump gets a tax break for burying his wife in the golf course. But first I want to button up this topic about getting mad as hell with two quotes and one question. Quote number one, it's General William To comes to Sherman, and it's meant metaphorically. So don't think I'm talking about bloodshed, because you can't do political bloodshed in this country unless you're a Republican. This was Sherman the last time Americans tried to overthrow American democracy. Quote. War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. Other simple remedies were within their choice. You know it, and they know it. But they wanted war. And I say, let us give them all they want, not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave in until we are whipped or they are end Sherman quote. First, you've got to get mad. What greater act of war against the United States by someone owing allegiance to the United States within the United States could there ever be than to send armed militias into the United States Capital than to encourage them to attack and kill members of Congress, members of the Senate, even the Vice President. What greater act of war against the United States could there be than to try to prevent by violent revolution, the peaceful transfer of power in the United States. I have no complaints about the January sixth Committee. I do not buy the argument that it's the Liz Cheney Show, And so what if it were. Chairman Thompson and the other Democrats have been terrific if, as I speculated months ago, they are programming to the proverbial audience of one and it is named Merrick Garland Dandy. But I don't see exactly how they plan to end this. So what if first they realized you've got to get mad, You've got to say I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take Trump anymore? What if they ended it with another quote? What if the January six Committee ends its final hearing by simply quoting just the start of Title eighteen U s c. Chapter one fifteen, Section two three eight one quote. Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them, or adheres to their enemies giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death. Just a head my postscripts to the news segment plus Worse Persons and Sports. Bill Russell obviously is the big story in sports, but the guy who spent his life pretending to be Bill Russell is in Worse Person's first. In each edition of Countdown the Podcast, we will be featuring a dog in need whom you can help. Every dog has its day. You can find our first dog and all of our subjects on my Twitter feed for pups in trouble, that's at Tom Jumbo Grumbo Today. Are you near Chicago? Would you like a forty nine pound five year old gal with one white ear and one black ear Terrier pibble mix. Loves to go camping, loves to eat your food that you bring when you go camping, loves to camp her head on your shoulder. She is at one tail dot org in Chicago and her name is Oreo. The adoption fees for this lovely dog looking for a home are covered. Unconditional love is yours free, Oreo, one tail dot org in Chicago, and she's on my Twitter feed at tom Jumbo Grumbo coming up sports, Worst Persons in the World, and the premiere of stories about my favorite topic, me in Things I Promised not to tell, but first both scripts to the news, some headlines and some thoughts. Michelle Nichols has died to hera from Star Trek. It is impossible to recreate the world in which her character was controversial, largely because she helped to erase that world. Unlike other women actresses of color in the nineteen sixties, she was an astronaut on Star Trek. She was smart, she wasn't deferential, and she was sexy. I was seven when Star Trek premiered. I don't know for how many kids are adults in this country. She was their first fosure to such a person. All the struggles of her career and life did at the very minimum this. She rewired the minds of millions, and then she did recruiting videos for NASA in ninety seven from the Friday News Dump Dateline Washington. First, the Secret Service texts from January six disappeared, Then the Homeland Security texts from January six disappeared. Then House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's brain disappeared. Though Cassidy Hutchinson testified under oath that she and McCarthy spoke on January six about keeping Trump from going to the Capitol during the coup, McCarthy now says, quote, I don't remember that. This is what is so confusing. I didn't watch the speech. I was working, so I didn't see what was said. I had no idea he was going to come to the Capitol. I don't remember having any conversations with her. I don't recall, honest, I ran out of gas. I I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fair. My tuxt didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of out. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake, a terrible flood. Locust said, why is that my fault? I swear to God, I may have embellished that last part of the quote just a little bit. On the other hand, by the end of this week, Kevin McCarthy may claim he can't remember his own name. Wait, why would that be a bad thing? Also date Line Washington. The problem is McCarthy may yet get away with his role in the January six cover up, just like Trump may yet get away with his role in the January six coup. And BC News quoting more than a dozen sources who worry if the Department of Justice has allocated enough resources to the investigation, just like Trump may yet get away with all this because quote, we don't have the manpower. Here's a crazy ass idea. The Pentagon asked for a fiscal two thousand, twenty two budget of seven and twenty four billion freaking dollars. Congress gave it a budget of seven and eighty two billion dollars. That would be more. That would be fifty eight billion dollars more. Four billion of that is for more boots. We need more boats. How about giving the boats back and putting four billion dollars into trying to save the goddamn democracy. Gonna need a bigger boat. Dateline Philadelphia or is it actually New Jersey? The draws campaign. I'm sorry. Apparently that's the doctor Oz campaign is bailing water. According to Politico, the National Republican Senatorial Committee held a call with big roller campaign donors and basically they said that there's definitely a Republican path to take the Senate by flipping Arizona, Georgia and Nevada or New Hampshire and were defending North Carolina and Wisconsin. And that's when somebody noticed the n r SC had not mentioned Pennsylvania. Quote Oz just has not hit his stride as a candidate. One call participant to Politico, the viewpoint was it's more important to reallocate money to seats that we feel we can win. A committee official is quoted as also saying, we have a path with Pennsylvania, and don't worry, we have a path without Pennsylvania. In the latest polling, Draws trails the Democrat John Fetterman by eleven and the would be Pennsylvania senator who lives in New Jersey has never recovered from having misspelled the name of the Pennsylvania town he thinks he lives in Dateline Madison, Wisconsin. With Wisconsin Democrats coalescing behind Mandela Barnes in the bid to take the Senate seat away from Ron. I'm on my phone. No you're not. I can see your phone. I can see your screen, Johnson. It was inevitable time for former Governor Scott Walker, the Clarence the cross eye line of the Tea Party, to do something stupid. At two forty one prevailing local time Friday, he tweeted, quote Democrats rally behind a racial who wants to end cash bail. Did you say a racial? Two minutes later, Walker replied to his own tweet without making any attempt to alter the reality that he had just called an African American Senate candidate a quote racial, by adding quote a radical who wants to end the patrol that's supposed to protect us illegal drugs and firearms from coming across the border and finding their way to Wisconsin. Unquote. I just skip the image of Scott Walker, the thing he just evoked of that Wisconsin Mexico border. Let me just reread the first part of that follow up tweet, quote a radical who wants to end the patrol that's supposed to protect us illegal drugs. So I have your choice on Scott Walker. The first tweet was racist, and the second tweet was unintelligible and dateline Hendersonville, North Carolina. The latest employment innovation you will work for food the chick fil A on Highlands Square Drive. They're asking for quote volunteers to work its drive through express. Joel Benson, the visionary innovator in charge, brings a new spin to the workforce experience. New salary quote earned five free entrees per shift one hour worked. Read the Facebook post. The pay is lousy, but you get all the cholesterol you can eat. Corporate says it knows nothing of this, and the offer was withdrawn within hours of posting. As always, life is just another Bob and Ray sketch come to life. In the nineteen seventies, My hero is reported on a fictional company making paper clips by hand, with a workforce of two hundred assemblers. Price nineteen cents a box. How is that possible? Ask the startled interviewer character Wally blue Well, said the owner. We pay our employees two cents a day. How is that possible? Past blue fortunately came the answer, We got a ninety nine years sweetheart deal with the union. Most of our staff lives in caves on the outskirts of Town Blue then asks don't you worry about their health and survival? And the owner says blankly, we don't pry into the private lives of our employees. This is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Alberman, the old ESPN two show theme. Obviously you know. Basketball's Bill Russell has died at the age of eight eight, easily the game's most successful player to n C double A titles, an Olympic gold medal, eleven NBA championships in just thirteen seasons, the last two as player coach. What you may not have heard of. He and el Jin Baylor were the first African Americans to make the All NBA First Team the All Star Team in nineteen fifty eight fifty nine. He was also the league's first African American coach, although the claim that he was the first African American coaching any major sport is inaccurate. Football Immortal Fritz Pollard was a head coach in the NFL briefly in the nineteen twenties. Bill Russell was also a broadcaster whose main virtue on the ABC and CBS NBA coverage was his extraordinary laugh. He also did interview after interview with sportscasters at college radio stations. No not me. Jesse Agler from the s and Diego Padres mentioned this and others then echoed it extraordinarily generous with his time and his laugh and his contributions to society. On the other end of the sports spectrum, there is the Saudi Blood Money Golf Tournament which is over in New Jersey. Hendrick Stenson, who used to be a professional golfer but took blood money instead, defeating Matthew Wolf and Dustin Johnson who used to be professional golfers but who took blood money instead. For our purposes, we can just call this tournament the Kasgi Memorial. The tournament was held naturally at the Trump Course in Bedminster, New Jersey. Crowds were disappointing at best. In The Wall Street Journal reported the tickets for the penultimate round on Saturday it cost as little as one dollar American money. The host was there. In the pro am, Trump apparently completed only two or three holes and shot a twelve thousand, three d sixty four over par twelve four three six, but Trump insists he made the cut and won the champ Beanship anyway. It is by the way, a federal offense with a jail term if not more than six months, or a fine or both to use the presidential seal in a way that can leave quote, a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the government of the United States. So naturally Trump put the seal on course flags, course towels, and course golf carts. They played God Bless America at one point, and Trump could not figure out what to do. He eventually took off his trucker cap, then put his hand over his heart or whatever is in there, and then started patting his hand on his chest. And of course, Trump too took the Saudi blood money, and when asked about the effect of doing so on nine eleven Families, l Douche said, it was really too bad that nobody ever got to the bottom of nine eleven and everybody was playing great golf and all the money was there, and people were reminded that on nine eleven. When he went on local TV in New York, the only thing Trump was concerned earned about was that one of his buildings was now the tallest one in downtown New York City, but somehow overshadowing all of this the Saudi money. How deathly bad Trump himself looked, how bad the golfers who sold their souls looked. Was a little matter of the new feature just off the first tea at the Trump National Golf Club. His ex wife, her grave, Ivanna Ivannah, who died last month, is buried just behind and to the right of where you start when you played golf at the Trump course. But it's tasteful. On her tombstone, Trump did not include a marble Maga hat and did not have them embossed the presidential seal. The burial of the first Mrs Trump there brought to the four that fifteen years ago Trump went to the town of Bedminster with his plan to build a giant cemetery with a room for a thousand souls on We're slightly under the course. When everybody everybody went to he trimmed it back to just a family mausoleum with, according to the Washington Post, nineteen ft high stone obelisks right in the middle of the golf course. By the town council had agreed to let Trump dig five hundred graves on the course for members only, obviously so that they could presumably keep on paying him membership unto eternity. Yet, as several tax lawyers have confirmed, there might be another motive here. You plant some stiff somewhere in the state of New Jersey, waves your property tax, waves your income tax, and waves your sales tax. Logic would suggest that if first wife Ivana is buried near the first tea, then there's a nice hole waiting for Marla Maples near the second te and there should be a spot to plant Millanna on three. I guess near the hole itself on three, so that her spirit can help all the golfers with their putts. Thank you, Nancy Faust And in the neat trick department. To close out sports, Tracy Sandler, who covers the San Francisco forty niners for Fan Girls Sports, tweeted something about a San Francisco offensive tackle, quoting her Trent Williams is back today. He had a baby a few days ago. Now you would have thought that would have been a bigger story somehow. Ah, that sounds familiar. What would countdown be whether TV show, podcast, You're me just going door to door with it without the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effect exhibits who constitute today's worst persons in the world. Lebronze to The New York Times were printing non ironically a long article based on a Frank Luntz focus group. What happened when seven Trump voters and six Biden voters tried to find common ground? Well, I hope somebody would have noticed Frank put his thumb on the scales and had more Trump voters, which is typical of him. Here's my Frank Luntz story. In two thousand three, MSNBC had decided on a new show called Countdown because the president of NBC News loved the name and thought it would be cool to start with the least important story and build up to the most important story, like fifty seven minutes later, because that way everybody would watch the whole hour. He never gave up on the idea that this would work somehow, and he was not going to give up on the idea that the perfect host for Countdown was Sam Donaldson. There was an NBC contract with Donaldson's name on it in circulation. When MSNBC executives found out that ABC News had been trying to get out from under their contract with Sam Donaldson. How to avert the catastrophe ahead, Frank Luntz to the rescue. Get us a focus group, Frank that tells the president of NBC News not to hire Sam Donaldson, and that the best choices this other guy. Now, how do I know that I was the other guy? Presto. Frank's focus groups somehow came back with that exact conclusion. The offer to Donaldson was withdrawn. Coincidence, no doubt. The bronze to everybody who fell for the Cartoon Network viral marketing scheme about George Jetson being born yesterday July. Now, look, he's a fictional character, so it's not like this matters. But for God's sakes, if you're going to a a sist, a certain date is a fictional character's fictional birth date, prove it. As Gizmoto pointed out three years ago in the jets in verse, there's a Jetson's verse. George was forty years old as the series premiered on CBS. That was in nineteen sixty two. The show is based a century in the future twenty sixty two, So twenty sixty two minus forty is twenty twenty two, So that's right, But the reference to him being forty is in the episode that first aired on December thirtieth, nineteen sixty two, so his quote birthdate unquote could be any time in twenty two except December thirty one. More importantly, if you buy the George is born in twenty two stuff, you are led to the edge of a troubling cartoon truth. We know his wife Jane acknowledges in the first episode that she's thirty three, daughter Judy is fifteen, meeting that when Jane became a mom, she was eighteen, maybe seventeen. But the winner Arthur Lee Trotter. He died in two thousand, but for thirty years he scammed a succession of women, whining and dining them and telling them he was basketball's Bill Russell. He also at times claimed to have been former football players John Mackie and Marv Fleming. In fact, when he was arrested for impersonating Bill Russell, who died Sunday, police in Louisiana were convinced he was not Bill Russell, but he was Fleming. But he wasn't. But there was a kind of genius to Arthur Lee Trotter. He stood six ft tall, yet he insisted he was Bill Russell, who was six ten. One of his women victims said, you don't look like Bill Russell Trotter. Russell thought quickly, I had got into a car accident and had to have plastic surgery. Woman, I was expecting someone much taller Trotter. Russell then said, I had ten inches a bone surgically removed from my shins because I wanted to fit easier into my new Mercedes. You know, in that got Trotter another term in prison. In it would have gotten him the Republican nomination for Senator from Georgia. Arthur Lee, not Bill Russell Trotter. I know Arthur's dead, so what there are rules here? There are no rules here. Arthur Trotter Today's worst person in the wor so for our number one story on the Countdown my favorite topic me. Each podcast will conclude with me telling you a story from my career or life, usually hanging off the day's news or at least an anniversary of some kind. The people I've known, the places I've worked, the innumerable morons I have encountered, some of the women I've dated. If it's relevant, like Laura, don't judge me. It all began in a small five thousand one radio station in Fresno, California on Fridays. Instead, we will read from the great works of the great James Thurber, just like we used to do on the TV show. And when I say we, of course, I mean I. If you're not interested and you just want the day's news, cool, turn it off. I will not be offended, but I think these stories will explain, entertain and often enraged you. Lord knows they will enrage me. So as I launched this frail bark, we're better to start than here. If you were a viewer of the old TV show. Let me explain finally how that became this My original n 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 nine 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 seventy 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 Russer 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 thousand eight, Tim died, and suddenly NBC News 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 Kappus 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 hundred 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 wallet 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 Brocall had inherited from the late Tim Russers. So Brokell 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 Emil, 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 produced 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. I could do the catch phrases and the silly voices and say they're not gonna get them. But right before the 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 CN the hypothetical end, 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 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, that Kirsten Cinema. How many Kirsten Cinemas could there be? She told me that Galva 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. Kirsten asked, 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, oh, 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 MSNBC 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 you her anything stupid like that. Why would we do that. This is sort of our fault too, But it just looks bad. Can you you know, can you say something? And I said, 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 signature. 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. What 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 and 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 hype pathetical 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 our idea that can be the start of something big. You can bring countdown to Current TV. We'll 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 a week. And by the way, during every step of this, I kept Matto and her agents, who had been my agent for twenty seven years, fully informed, 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 thousand 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, said Conde, was Rachel Maddow. Rachel Maddow, Percy's our Conde vetoed the last chance and and did 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, and that's the short version. So last winter, that's when I began exploring a new venue for Countdown, and here we are a daily podcast, Saint Keith new platform. Him and I don't have to shave or wear makeup, and I hope you'll enjoy the content as much as I already enjoy be not shaving, so I've done all the damage I can do here. The Countdown theme from Beethoven's Ninth arranged, produced and performed by Countdown Music directors Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle. Guitarist, bass and drums by Brian Ray. Produced by T k O Brothers. Beethoven selections like this one performed by my friends in no horns allowed our sports music. The Oberman theme written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. That was the famous Nancy Faust on the organ. Our announcer today was the one and only Larry David. Everything else is my fault. If you can, please rate and review this podcast and subscribe, because apparently that's how all this works. We are here every morning. Let's countdown for this seventy second day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the government of the United States. I'm Keith all Reman. Good Morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith ol 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.