SERIES 2 EPISODE 146: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Sure, the split legal decisions in New York courtrooms matter. Trump got a brief reprieve in the business fraud case ($500 million bond reduced to $175 bond, he gets an extra 10 days grace; but his son said even a $15 million bond was almost impossible) but the Stormy Daniels election hush money case starts as scheduled April 15.
But in the span five hours, Trump posted a psalm he claimed to have "received" from somebody in which he was compared to Christ, and said that he would have to sell his "babies" due to Judge Engoron, and he announced to an uncomfortable crowd of reporters "You can’t have an election in the middle of a political season."
He's NUTS. Besides which, I always thought he'd decide he was not Jesus but Napoleon.
RFK JR'S NEVADA OOPSIE: He celebrated getting enough signatures to be a Trump stalking horse on the ballot there. Then somebody noticed that your petitions have to mention just not the presidential candidate but the VICE presidential candidate. And he's not announcing who that is until today. He has to refile all the signatures. Hopefully the likely Veep, the ex-wife of the founder of Google who wanted a divorce settlement of a billion, can front RFK Jr the cash.
THE CONTINUING RONNA McDANIEL DISASTER: No, Maddow didn't stop it last night. She could've stopped it last week, or last month if she'd stood up and threatened to quit when her bosses overruled her - live on the air - and reversed her dictum that MSNBC would not carry Trump speeches live.
And no, MSNBC's president did NOT say McDaniel won't appear on the network. And no, Chuck Todd didn't put himself at risk by speaking out. And no, don't even get me started about Joe Scarborough.
In the old days we used to have a more direct way of stopping such subversions of journalism. I threatened to quit, on the spot, at least twice. Rachel did it at least once. Scarborough used threats on a regular basis. Brokaw did it.
Ultimately the problem is: people paid big salaries to make essential decisions about the coverage of an election that will decide whether or not we still have a democracy next January, thought she was a GREAT HIRE. And nice as the protests from Todd and Welker and “Golly I hope they reconsider” Scarborough were, bluntly, the moment the hiring of Ronna Romney McDaniel was announced, MSNBC anchors and producers and writers, and NBC NEWS anchors and producers and writers, should have literally walked off the job. Gone on strike.
Because it comes down to this: the hiring of Ronna McDaniel didn’t represent some kind of political balance. It conceded – STIPULATED – that there can be some kind of balance, some kind of yes-but, some kind of bothsidesism, between the reality of the 2020 election, and election deniers and the Trumpist cult. She IS the flat earther, the climate change denier. She might as well be Q from Q-Anon. She is reality, trying to appease hallucination and mental illness in hopes of making… more… money. Her presence as an NBC News employee LEGITIMIZES the election deniers and the conspiracy theorists… and Trump. It is an act of journalistic self-defenestration and – for the future democracy in this country – an act of self-immolation.
B-Block (30:50) IN SPORTS: Shohei Ohtani makes it worse: nobody has explained the money transfer to the bookie. Now the NBA has a burgeoning scandal: the fringe player who everybody placed "prop bets" on (33:40) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The sad post-mortem for Flaco the Central Park Owl, and farewell to Bill Jorgensen. (50:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Rece Davis isn't actually one of them but his dry sense of humor created another mini-sports wagering mess at my alma mater. Now we know what Jeff Yass bought Trump with. And Charlie Kirk wants to use machine guns and whips at the border.
C-Block (57:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since I've asserted that the NBC News/MSNBC protest over Ronna McDaniel is tepid compared to the Him-Or-Me ones we had in the 2003-11 era, I'll tell you everything I know about them. It stars Tom Brokaw, John McCain, Scarborough, Michael Savage, Chris Hayes, Maddow, me, and a cast of thousands. Pull up a chair: it takes 27 minutes.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. One court ruled the Stormy Daniel's hush money trial will start on time. Another gave Trump another ten days and lowered his bond to one hundred and seventy five million. And neither of these is the lead Trump story, because the lead Trump story is Trump is nuts. He has now compared himself to Jesus, No Christ, Jesus Christ received this morning, beautiful thank you. He posted a ten thirty Eastern dementia time. It's ironic that Christ walked through his greatest persecution the very week. They are trying to steal your property from you. But have you seen this verse? Then? Whoever sent this to him sent him Psalm one oh nine three to eight, adapted for biblical purpose of election denial. And finally, I'm praying this over you daily. So many are praying for you. Thank you again for taking the arrows intended for us. He compared himself to Christ, and I always thought he would go first with Napoleon, No Bonaparte, not Napoleon dynamite Bonaparte. And then in front of the microphones outside the courtroom. One of his courtrooms, he also had another sort of Well he went a little funny in the head, you know, just a little funny.
You can't have an election in the middle of a political season. We just had Super Tuesday, and we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already.
No, we never have elections in the middle of a political season. We always have them in the middle of webbit season, duck season, webbit season. Well, you can't fight in here. This is the war room. And it's not just that the fluent aphasia or phenomic paraphasius or whatever abruptly killed off another million Trumpian brain cells while he was live on all networks had a field day yesterday. Trump the cornered animal also screwed up strategically. Just as last week, the world's leading legal authority on parking lot law missed the chance to deny that Trump would ever sell something to a foreign government or a foreign gangsters or Vladimir Putin for the money needed in the business fraud case. Now Trump has done exactly the same thing, produced an unusually cogent word salad when the one and only correct answer to this next question is quote no unquote foreign governments pay under f or no don't, I don't do that i've I think you'd be allowed to possibly, I don't know. I mean, if you go borrow from a big bank. Many of the banks are outside of this as you know, the biggest banks for actually are outside of our country Russia. If you're listening, I hope you're able to find the sixteen billion, one hundred and thirty one million, five hundred and fifty nine thou seven hundred and eighty four rubles I need. Anyway, Trump clearly had another episode or episodes, and the additional evidence was another social media post. Weird even for him. There should be no fine, he wrote at seven fifty four Eastern Dementia time, long before the bond was reduced. Did nothing wrong. Why should I be forced to sell my quote marks babies and quote marks because a, et cetera. So Trump sells babies, he says, that's another good look. If Trump is to be believed he has more than enough money to pay a bond of eleventy billion dollars but won't and would have to sell babies to get the money and devoid having his assets seized. And I happily quote my high school friend Will Bunch, noting we worry so much about Biden's health, and yet Trump is the one experiencing seizures. The legalities were overshadowed by the timeless words you can't have an election in the middle of a political season. But in the parlance of baseball spring training, Trump and his lawyers played a split squad schedule yesterday, and nominally they got one loss and one win. But I'm not exactly seeing how the win is actually a win. The loss is obvious the Stormy Daniels hush money election influence trial, thirty four felonies in all but probably no jail time will start as scheduled three weeks from yesterday, April fifteenth. This supposed win. Well, a grace period for paying the four hundred and fifty four million he owes is extended by the appeals court by ten days until a week from Thursday, and the bond is reduced tw one hundred and seventy five million. Now, how is this a win? If Eric Trump more on twin number two spent the weekend literally screaming at cameras that quote, a ten million dollar bond is a large bond, A fifteen million dollar bond is an enormous bond. So bond being reduced from half a billion to one hundred and seventy five million would seem like a token adjustment under Statute thirty nine B sub Section three make rich people feel better. Eric Trump also explained that every single person, when I came to them saying can I get a half billion dollar bond, they were laughing. They were laughing unquote. That might have a different explanation, Sonny. I mean, have you ever met yourself? If meanwhile, you were hoping Aaron Rodgers would be Robert F. Kennedy Junior's choice for vice president on his Trump Stalking Horse campaign, and thus the pair of them would immediately tear their Achilles tendons and be forced to miss the entire twenty twenty four NFL season. That's the NFL National Fruitcake League. Ah, bad news. He was expected to announce his vice president on Tuesday, and it's Nicole Shanahan. Nicole Shanahan, Nicole Shanahan. Jeez, she has superior credentials. She paid for most of Kennedy's disastrous ripoff of his uncle's nineteen sixty presidential commercial, and she was married to Google co founder Sergei Brinn and then allegedly slept with Musk and then she demanded a billion dollar divorce settlement. We don't know how much she got, but if you are bargaining down from a buy it now price of a billion, you're doing just fine. And here is my bank role, my vice president. They were to announce this at two pm Eastern in Oakland, California, at the Henry J. Kaisers Center for the Arts. Henry J. Kaiser the aluminum guy and philanthropist who also made cars for a while, one of which he named the Henry J. And he wanted to introduce steam powered automobiles in the nineteen fifties. So it's all going well for Bobby Junior except for this small detail. The news that he had fifteen thousand signatures enough to qualify for the presidential ballot in Nevada. Not so much. CBS News reporting Kennedy apparently overlooked the proviso in the law in Nevada requiring that to be valid the ballot petitions of any independent candidate must list a president and a vice president, and obviously none of them filed before today could have done that, So technically the number of petition signatures Kennedy has in Nevada is approximately carry the one turn none. Kennedy will have until August to again reach the fifteen thousand threshold if he can only find somebody to pay for printing the new petitions and the cost of canvassing the state. And all right, missus ex Google will be able to help you there. And now to the latest on the NBC Rana Romney McDaniel fluster cluck. No, she has not been spitcnned. No, the people who hired her have also not been spit canned yet. First, if you think you read somewhere that the serial liar and confessed organizer for the Trump fake elector's scheme who changed her name because Trump insisted, but she was only being a team player, a good soldier. She was only following orders. Rana Romney, not Romney, just McDaniel, would be appearing only on NBC News and not MSNBC. That was the headline everywhere over the weekend. Just NBC News and not MSNBC was somehow better. Turns out that's not true. MSNBC's president Rashida Jones, identified by Politico as one of the NBC News apparatchicks who unanimously supported the hiring of Ronald McDaniel reportedly reassured cable staffers that McDaniel would not appear on MSNBC. But the Washington Post, Deadline, the Wall Street Journal, Semaphore News, and now Politico, basically everybody but the International Stamp Gazette are all reporting that that is not what. Rashida Jones said that she responded to her angry staff only that there was no expectation that McDaniel would ever be on MSNBC. Separately, she told MSNBC talent and executives they were welcome to book McDaniel as a pundit, a guest, or whatever. And Mitchell second, if you read somewhere about Chuck Todd's principled and even self endangering stance against an apology for the foisting of one of Trump's top ten all paid toly shills on television news viewers, two caveats. I am actually going to say this. I commend Chuck Todd. We're going on Meet the Press and commencing his remarks by savaging McDaniel and saying, quote, I don't know what to believe. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract. It was ballzy and journalistic, but it wasn't that ballz or that journalistic. Chuck Todd did say, our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation. But he was looking at the Meet the Press host Kristen allegedly Welker when he said that he was not looking at the camera, not looking at the public. Chuck was mad because the next future ex host of Meet the Press had been hung out to dry. She had been told that McDaniel would be a guest on Sunday, not a paid contributor. He was angry about that. He did not say anything about being angry because NBC had hired somebody who tried to undo an election and put them in front of the public as some sort of analyst or neutral observer or who knows what. He wasn't even angry because just ten months ago, Rona tweeted quote. MSNBC's primetime propagandists wasted countless hours pushing the Russia collusion hoax. Last night, they discussed Durham's report for barely ten minutes, in which they insisted the weaponization of government found in the report was no big deal. Chuck Todd went back into the fray again last night on Twitter, and again missed the point quote. This is about whether honest journalists are supposed to lend their credibility to someone who intentionally tried to ruin hours. While that is certainly a component, it remains incidental Ronald McDaniel did not just try to make life tough for Chuck Todd or for other journalists. She tried to help install an unelected dictator in the United States of America, and do heavens know what to the elected usurped president, a man named Joe Biden. The other caveat about Chuck Todd is this he signed a two year contract extension with NBC News in July or August of twenty twenty two. They made a big deal about it. It was in all the papers, of course, they made a big deal about it. He had yet to be fired as the host of Meet the Press. There has not been word one since though, about any further contracts, which leads to the inevitable mathematical conclusion that Chuck Todd is now lame. Duck Todd he risked something by saying what he did, but that's something looks like maybe maybe at maximum nine months of a paycheck. Similarly, Joe Scarborough went out on a leaf yesterday morning. He and the latest Missus Joe accurately called McDaniel quote an anti democracy election denier, adding we hope NBC will reconsider its decision trust me on this. Joe Scarborough used far stronger language trying to get me fired at NBC in public than he did about Ron McDaniel, and I used far stronger language trying to get him fired in public. I'll go into that and the surprisingly long history of news talent daring management to fire them at thirty Rock at length at the end of this podcast. For now, though, let us salute Joe Scarborough proudly defying his masters and becoming the six three hundred and ninety seventh person to storm the bastille. Of course, back there, behind even Joey scars at six three hundred and ninety eight or later is Rachel Meadow, with her clout with NBCs terrified and unfathomable conviction that she is all but stands between them and MSNBC evaporating overnight. She should and could have said something. She could have said anything last Friday when her employers stabbed her credibility and the credibility of her network in the back. But her ship on this had sailed. Her ship on this, in fact, had sunk. On March fifth, it was Meadow who had proudly and justifiably proudly announced that her network would no longer take Trump's speeches live, and then on Super Tuesday, MSNBC carried Trump's speech live. Rachel solemnly announced that quote allowing somebody to knowingly lie on your air was irresponsible, and then she stayed on the air anyway, because the correct thing to do when your editorial bosses shit all over you and revoke your say in what your program looks like live am the air, on your program, the correct thing to do is to stand up and say I'll be back when MSNBC returns to the agreed upon journalistically correct policy of not showing Trump live. Instead, she in fact said I'll be back after this message from ozempic. No wonder they hired Rona McDaniel who was going to protest, not Matdow. Then there's Kristin Welker herself. Her protest consisted of bravely insisting to viewers that she had nothing to do with the hiring of Rona McDaniel. She might as well have called her herself what McDaniel did, called herself a team player. This was cowardice in action, buck passing. You want clean hands in this situation, then you should have refused to go on the air with her. I know of at least four occasions at NBC and MSNBC when newspeople refused to go on the air with somebody to whom they objected again details later, Mattow did it, I did it, getting no applause, while Todd and Scarborough and Welker Basque in the afterglow of having run the gamut of protest emotions from A to B is an NBC reporter named Brandy Zudrosny. She tweeted, so many talented reporters laid off this year. Workers who provided the content won the awards, built the credibility of their shops, and worked for a yearly salary at a fraction of what big name contributors get in fancy contracts to fill pundit boxes on TV. Unquote, Rona McDaniel's name is carefully excluded from her text, but not from her point. Separately, Zadrasni wrote reporters have no control over the opinion or pundit section. Not coincidentally, Brandy Sidrosny, who deserves the applause, is the specialist at NBC News covering political radicalization, extremism, and disinformation on the Internet. In other words, the Rona McDaniels of this world are her meat. Her PostScript there about reporters having no control over the McDaniels situation was not gratuitous. A prominent PR person and former Obama adviser wrote reporters to cry the demonization of the press and then offer the demonizer a three hundred thousand dollars retainer. Let me assure you nobody involved in the hiring of Rona McDaniel by NBC News was a report. The four people on the hot seat at the moment for this disaster at NBC. The four people most likely to get fired carry Bodoff Brown and Rebecca Blumenstein. They did reporting last more than a decade ago. Rashida Jones, president of MSNBC. She lasted any in college in two thousand and two. The chairman of NBC News, the chairman, Sayesar Conde, has never been a reporter, or an editor or a producer, but he is on a lot of boards of directors. Condey will likely survive this, though if he leaves NBC and Comcast in the next few years. This will have been why Boodoff Brown, NBC senior vice president in charge of Politics, and Blumenstein, the president in charge of Meet the Press, are in more imminent danger. As Politico put it, the idea of bringing the Trump flunky into NBC News began with negotiations for NBC to cover one of the Republican debates, quoting. Through that process, McDaniel built a good rapport with Budolph Brown and Blumenstein. McDaniel left the RNC, signed on with the CIA Talent Agency, and went looking for a TV contract. While McDaniel had talks with other networks, she was trying to avoid working for CNN, but had serious discussions with ABC. NBC always had the inside track. Quote Rona had a good experience with Carrie and Rebecca and felt more comfortable than with some of the other networks. A person close to McDaniel said, unquote, not good Carrie and Rebecca. After the last big disaster at NBC News, the Brian Williams I captured Saddam fiasco, NBC slowly eased out its news president, Deborah Turness, eased out her boss, the Comcast president of all the company's news presidents, Pat Philly, And of course they tried to fire Brian Williams, only to discover that in his contract there was a poisoned pill that meant if they fired him, they owed him more than if they did not fire him. Anyway, that's the future. The present. Stuff is still falling out of the sky on everybody at NBC News and MSNBC. Somebody on Fox News yesterday asked what the difference was between NBC hiring Rona McDaniel and Fox hiring a liberal guest commentator named Jessica Tarlov, an intelligent conservative friend of mine for more than three decades. Sincerely and calmly asked me to explain the difference between Rana on NBC and Donna on ABC Donna Brazil. Well, the points are Jessica Tarlov's role in the Democratic Party topped off at as she used to work for consultant Doug Showing. Doug Showen was kind of a Democrat, I guess, And while Donna Brazil was twice acting chair of the Democratic National Committee kind of a match. You know, she never did stand idly by while her president tried to foment a revolution against the government, and she didn't participate in one of his coup attempts. Neither Tarlov, nor Brazil for that matter, nor anybody else has ever said. Quote in November twenty twenty, there were concerns everywhere. Imagine you saw it, videos being put out, all types of things. You have to track that down. So where I was in twenty twenty and the quotes are that being taken a very long time ago, three and a half years ago to where I am today. You've got to allow the process to play out. And I think it is fair to say I think there were concerns. Then that's what Ronal McDaniel said about sewing conspiracy theories about an illegitimate election. It's what she's still saying. Still insists there was reason to question or challenge or undermine or reply with blood to the twenty twenty election. She's still saying it. She said that Sunday. That quote was from Sunday. That quote was from her NBC debut on Meet the Press. She is still an election denier and damn her to hell for it. More cynically, Tarlov and Brazil have some And this is the way television executives think. Television news executives are dealing with a brand. Television news executives think this way, Tarlov and Brazil have some television value. Ronald McDaniel starts with the whole insurrectionist adjacent thing, and then she goes downhill from there. She is hated by every Democrat and liberal and loyal American. Meanwhile, Trump just got her fired as head of the Republican National Committee, and any MAGA cultists who had not already blamed her for the losses in twenty eighteen, in twenty twenty, in twenty twenty two, they're blaming her now. She brings her new employer no access inside the Maga world. She's just been thrown out of what was left of the Republican world. And oh, by the way, she's terrible on television. Yet ultimately the problem is this, people paid big salaries to make essential decisions about the coverage of an election that will decide whether or not we still have a democracy next January. They thought she was a great hire and nice. As the protests from Todd and Welker and Golly I hope they reconsider Scarborough were bluntly the moment the hiring of Rona Romney McDaniel was announced, MSNBC anchors and producers and writers and NBC News anchors and producers and writers should have literally walked off that job right then gone on strike. Because it all comes down to this. The hiring of Rona McDaniel did not represent some kind of attempt gone crazy wrong for political balance the way hiring her uncle Mitt might might. The hiring of Rona McDaniel conceded stipulated that on American television news there can be some kind of balance, some kind of equation, some kind of yes, but some kind of both sides ism between the reality of the twenty twenty election and election deniers and the trumpest cult and the people who wanted to kill Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. Rona McDaniel is the flat earthers, Ronal McDaniel is the climate change deniers. Ronal McDaniel might as well be q from QAnon. This is an example of reality trying to appease hallucination and conspiracy theory and mental illness in hopes of making more money off its newscasts. Rana Romney. McDaniel's presence as an NBC News employee legitimizes the election deniers and the conspiracy theorists and Trump. It is an act of journalistic self defenestration, and for the future of democracy in this country, an act of self immolation. Until NBC News fires Rona McDaniel and all those responsible for her it, and MSNBC and CNBC and all the local NBC stations and every other NBC Comcast universal property, they all can no longer be considered part of an actual news organization. Also of interest here has promised the full story of all of the times, all the times I know about when NBC and MSNBC talent stood up to management and said if you do this, I'm out, or I'm going public, or other risky things that nobody said or did about the hiring of Ronald McDaniel. And it's not just about me. It takes a little while to tell the whole story, but only like twenty seven minutes. But first, on this all new edition of Countdown show, Hey Otani addresses the media. But it's not what he said, it's what he didn't say that just made the baseball gambling scandal way worse. And now, surprise, surprise, there's another sports gambling scandal in basketball. This is about the three pointer that never was from Why Downtown doubts that overhang. That's next. That's just countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman. Oberman.
This is Sports Center. Wait check that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Olberman.
In Sports Dateline Los Angeles. One assumes show Hey Otani's people think they made the scandal involving his former interpreter and friend and maybe involving him. Show he Otani that they made it go away yesterday by having the seven hundred million dollar Dodger read a statement to the media yesterday and then not take any questions. But it did not go away because those questions did not go away. The explanation was very simple. Otani says he never bet on baseball or any sports. He never asked anybody to bet on his behalf. He never went to a bookie. He says, is now fired interpreter and friend. If a Misuhara stole all the money from him, that Misuhara ran up the massive illegal gambling debts himself at least four and a half million, and also that Misuhara never told Otani that the story had begun to leak out. Otani implied that the interpreter went to Otani's spokespeople last week and lied to them too, by by telling them Otani was covering for a friend in trouble and paying his debts, and that Otani wanted him to have his handlers let Missahara tell the story. In an interview with ESPN, Otani says Misuhara never asked him for permission to talk to his people, never asked him for permission to do the interview, and that the spokespeople never double checked with Otani that Misihara was not making it all up, which is exactly what Otani says happened. Otani insists that the first time he heard anything about Missahara gambling or about him Otani paying the debts was when Misihara addressed the Dodger team after a game last week in South Korea to warn them that the story was about to break. This is all plausible, This is all believable. This has all happened before. Employees, even trusted ones do rip off their employers, even their friends, even their relatives all the time, even for millions, and mix this part in. If you are somebody's translator, it would be all that much easier to get away with it. But sho Haotani never addressed, didn't take questions about one pivotal detail. If he did not know Missihara gambled, if he did not know Mizihara owed a bookie four and a half million or more. If he did not know Missihara owed somebody that amount of money, how did the money get wired from sho Haotani's bank account into the bank account of the bookie. At no point in his statement did Otani even imply that he had foolishly given Misihara access to his accounts, or even that Missihara had somehow improperly gained access to his accounts. As long as questions about that remain unanswered, the story remains alive. Dateline toronto I said to a friend yesterday that the over under on an actual sports gambling game fixing scandal after the Otani stuff was now six months. I was off by five months thirty days. In about twenty two hours, ESPN quote sources who say the National Basketball Association is investigating a fringe player named John Tay Porter of the Toronto Raptors. On January twenty sixth, Draft Kings, the official betting something of the NBA, had reported increased interest from its betters on what are called prop bets involving John Tay Porter, combination bets based on his statistics in the game that night. And that night, the over unders for Porter's stats were set at five and a half points, four and a half rebounds, one and a half assists, and one half of a three point shot. But Porter played only four minutes in that game and then left the game, and the team said he had reaggravated a previous eye injury. Ultimately, he scored no points. He had only three rebounds, only one assist, no three pointers. In other words, if you bet the under on all of his stats in a prop bet on John Tay Porter, you won a bundle. Draftking said it was in fact the biggest money winner for betters of any NBA player props from games that night and then last week March twenty first, Draftking Sportsbooks reported that prop bets involving Porter produced the number one money maker the previous night in basketball betting. In the game that night, Porter scored no points. He attempted only one shot, he got two rebounds. He played only three minutes because he left the game early because of what the team said was an illness. Porter did not play in Toronto's game Saturday night, personal reasons. He did not play in Toronto's game last night, personal reasons. It is a huge, huge mess. From this angle, it looks like a bottomless pit. It's not game fixing, per se, But what it looks like is like a cousin of what they used to call point shaving. Point shaving was deliberately missing shots to keep a game close in order to beat the expectations of odds makers. Point shaving nearly destroyed college basketball in the nineteen fifties and again in the late seventies and early eighties. And no, sorry, you cannot bet on whether or not they banned John Tay Porter for a season for life or not at all. At least you can't bet on it legally. I think you can't. Postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks, some predictions, and in this edition, a lot of sadness. Dateline, Central Park in New York. The worst of our fears here has come true. Flacco, the Eurasian owl who escaped or was freed from his enclosure in the zoo here in February twenty twenty three, and who died after a collision with a Manhattan building on February twenty fourth of this year, had residue of four different rat poisons in his system when he died, and the virus contracted from eating infected pigeons. To reduce the post mortem report from Central Park to its essentials, the rat poison and the disease quote would have been debilitating and ultimately fatal even without a traumatic injury, and may have predisposed him to flying into or falling from the building. His admirers, and this city was and is filled with them, wondered why his wonderful nighttime hooting had stopped several days before he met his end. They suspect now it was because he was so sick. There's no evidence this was deliberate. It was, however, what experts worried a the day he got out of the zoo, that he could get sick eating the rodent life around here, and that the city was also full of poisons out in the open intended for rodents or already in rodents I'm not going to wax poetic about this striking, huge owl with his eerie, glowing orange eyes. But there was something transcendent about him living a year free in the neighborhood and yet choosing always to stay nearby the humans he had gotten used to in captivity. He spent time all around this city. He spent evenings as far away as sixty blocks south of the park. And then he came back, and he settled in in the park's northern reaches, enjoying this place just as the humans did. They may build a statue to him. I hope they do. It will be nice to remember him, But it was much nicer each night knowing he was out there. Eight Line, Franklin, North Carolina. This news probably will not mean much to you, but Bill Jorgensen has died. It will not mean much to you unless you know every second of the movie The King of Comedy by heart, or unless you used to watch this.
It's ten pm.
Do you know where your children are?
The tragedy on twenty eighth Street with nine Nixon talks about the dumping of sparrow Agnow money lives still on the line in Holland tonight, and for the gossips Jecki's German friends on Bill Jorgenson, this is the ten o'clock news.
That was who anchored the newscast on which I was an intern when I was nineteen years old. And you can probably understand my uncertainty that I had the skills, or the voice, or the shock of white hair to last, say, one hour in the business. Thankfully, they did not all sound like Bill Jorgensen. He was a news anchorman in Columbus, Ohio in the fifties, Cleveland starting in nineteen sixty one, and New York from nineteen sixty seven through nineteen eighty three. He pioneered the concept of the ten o'clock news here when all the other stations had network dramas on or reruns. The newscast aimed to tell you everything that happened that day in one hour, seriously everything. This was made more plausible by the fact that Bill Jorgenson kinda sounded like God. He did not suffer fools gladly, and he thought all television executives were fools. I'd like to say I got that from him, but I doubt it. By nineteen seventy eight, year twelve for him in New York. He had pretty much run out of patience with the executives at Channel five, and he was beginning to lash out, and everybody agreed a month or two off would be a good idea. So he bought a Winnebago and he and the wife took off to see America on a sabbatic They laughed about a week or ten days before my internship at Channel five started. My story with Bill Jorgensen can be summarized in four phone calls. My first week at the news assignment desk. The phone rings. I am a clan call for anyone from Kansas City, Missouri, from Bill Jorgensen. Will you accept the charges impulsively? I made an executive decision, we will operator. The next voice seemed to be coming not from the phone, not from Kansas City, but from some sort of pa system vibrating above the city, from way above my head, this is Jorgensen. Get me Monsky, please Monsky, Mark Monsky, or as it said in the credits to our newscast, Mark bvs Monsky, Director of News, Mark B von summer Monsky, the boss, the news director. The bad news was Mark b. Von sum Monsky carried a gun. The good news was he liked me, I told his secretary. His secretary handled the call, got Monsky. Three minutes later, Monsky came out and said to all of us at the desk, me included for God's sake, Jorgensen just called from Kansas City. They were having breakfast at the International House of Pancakes. They come out, he and the wife, to the parking lot and somebody has stolen the win of Bago. We got to get them out of there. They have nothing. Wire them some cash or something. Hereupon, the news director reached into his pocket and grabbed a stack of bills. Here's five hundred bucks. The sabbatical had not started all that well. On the other hand, only once before in my life had I seen five hundred dollars in cash. The sabbatical had been noticed, however, We interns were given instructions on what to do when we got phone calls like well, like phone call number two. What happened to Bill Jargenson asked the woman who said she was from Booton, New Jersey. He's on assignment, ma'am. I said, we expect him back in I believe two weeks, perhaps sooner. She laughed at me. Yeah, sabbatical like you. Bastard's assigned George Sharmon to a sabbatical. There had been three primary anchors of the Channel five ten o'clock news, Jorgensen, his deputy George Sharmon, who also had a shock of white hair, and their deputy, Bill McCreary. And then one day George Sharmon was gone and a new kid from California had replaced him. They did this to the assignment desk one weekend as well. I was interning for Steve, the assignment editor, on Friday and said goodbye and have a nice weekend to him, and he said the same to me. And then on Monday, I was working for Joe, the new assignment editor. I said to my first mentor at Channel five, a researcher named Stanley Pinsley, as quick as death. And Stanley paused, and he congratulated me. You figured out the entire news business and you're only nineteen. Bill Jorgensen came back to the newsroom soon after. I had not known him before, I didn't really know him now. He came out of his office only occasionally, might as well have won to worn a hood over his head, no eye contact. He ducked out a side door one night that they didn't fire the assignment editors. So at nine forty five we all sat back and prepared to finally exhale after a crazy day and watch the actual newscast in progress. And now comes phone call number three Channel five News. This is Jorgenson. Who's this? I thought, quickly, I'm an intern. You wouldn't know me, he thought quickly, fair enough, Tell Gary, Kay and Troffy and Jay. Tell them the elevator to the studio is stuck. Use the stairs. Goodbye. I did as told. I went back to producer's rowe. Hey, Bill just called to tell you the levator to the studio as stuck, so use the stairs. Jay, who I believe was the director that night, looked up optimistically, is is he on it? When I shook my head no. The look of disappointment verging on tears on Jay's face remains to this day indescribable. Towards the end of my internship, things went south with Bill Jorgenson and he took another sabbatical. Now, the newscast was anchored by the kid from California whose name was John Rowland and Bill McCreary, and they were great to me. As was Bill Mazer, the sportscaster for whom I interned half the time. They were all great to me. My friend Stanley Pinsley was the writer, Bobby Campbell, all of them. Bill McCreary also did the sports on Fridays, and one Friday he and Bill Maser were going to both be off and their backup was to and they and the sports producer Cliff Gelb decided I should do the sports cast, and they were serious. Mark bvs My told them, no, no, you're not serious. Even he said, soon enough, kid, you'll do it. Soon enough. I went back to Cornell for my senior year, and I realized our newscasts, which were unsurpassed for a college radio station, we're running at about nine miles an hour, while Bill Jorgenson's ten o'clock news was doing one hundred, one hundred and twenty sometimes two hundred and fifty miles an hour. I thought to myself, you're gonna have to step it up a little. Anyway. One night the next March, there's a ring in my apartment at two oh seven Delaware Avenue, Ahaca, New York, and it's a phone call, phone call number four, and it's my friend Stanley Pinsley calling from Channel five, and I'm going to emphasize this is what he told me in nineteen seventy nine. It was only later confirmed for me by one other source. So who knows, Uh, you missed it, Bubby Stanley said, Jargonson's back. Well, he was back. He comes in, he does a week, he's shaky as hell, and the general manager take him to lunch. They tell him we're letting you go, and he's like, okay with it. He's very calm. He has a little meeting with the senior staff and he thanks everybody and he apologizes and everybody goes, ah, great, But you know, he just wasn't right even for him. So today, evidently before I got in, he's got a little practical joke to play on everybody. And from what he said as they took him out of the building, he thought this would show everybody he was handling his firing. Okay, So I guess about five, he comes out of his office carrying this big box and on each side of the box it's got one word stenciled on it, dynamite. And he stands by producer's row and he says, if I have to go I'm taking all ues with me, and the box doesn't look real, but who knows with Jorgensen. So Choffey hits him high, and Gary Kay hits him low, and Jay grabs the box as it falls, and that's the last we've seen at Jorgenson. I understand he's resting somewhere. I'm sorry you missed it. On March fourteenth, nineteen seventy nine, Channel five in New York announced that Bill Jorgensen had resigned, and his lawyer told The New York Times he had quit to go do something better. And I just assumed, well, even as crazy as I found television news in my slice of my internship, that would be the end of him. And then on April sixth Stanley calls me again, Bobby, guess who's the new anchor guy at Channel eleven? Jargonson? What a business? You sure you want those job referrals? He started on the Channel eleven news at ten on April twenty third, nineteen seventy nine. He'd barely been off the air one month. He lasted four years. He was ninety six when he died, according to his daughter on March thirteenth. Nobody noted this, but March thirteenth. This March thirteenth was the fifty seventh anniversary of the first edition of Channel five to ten o'clock News with Bill Jorgenson. Even his obituary in The New York Times said quote, mister Jorgenson struggled with station management. Clearly he did not struggle enough, however, to outweigh his skill and his drive, and his brilliance and his dedication to journalism, and his voice and especially his sign off. He was, now that I think of it, the last newscaster I knew who had his own sign off.
There's our report for tonight, Bill Jorgenson, for Channel five News. Thanking you for your time this time until.
Next time, stell ahead of us on this all new edition of Countdown Things. I promised not to tell the damnedest thing about this Rona McDaniels story at NBC News. Where are all the people threatening to quit? Hell matdow wants threatened to quit over something? I threatened to quit twice, at least that I remember. Joe Scarborough blackmailed his bosses twice. Hayes refused to go on one night. And then there was the time John McCain bullied NBC News into offering me and was helped by Tom Brokaw A lot of things I promised not to tell in the wake of help Me, Rana coming up first, still more idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worse persons in the world. First the Bronze Worse Rhys Davis, one of the nicest guys in sportscasting and somebody I met thirty years ago at ESPN. And what's the one thing you do not want? In the middle of the show, Hey Otani Jazz and March Madness and the new thing in the NBA with the guy from the Raptors what you don't want? Is a controversy over sports gambling. On ESPN, Reese Davis is doing a segment with the new face of wagering there named Aaron Dolan, and she goes so overboard trying to get people to bet one way and with ESPN's betting service, by the way, suppress press that. Reese comes back with a joke about how over the top she is. But the joke is comparatively subtle, as is Reese. You know, what he says. Some would call this wagering gambling. The way you've sold this, I think what it is is a risk free investment. That's the way to look at it. Now. Reese Davis is so straight laced that it's genuinely tough to tell when he's kidding around. So the reaction was, oh God, no, he just said a bet was a risk free investment, like you couldn't lose. Tweeted a clarification and an apology. But this is another one of the risks of sports gambling, besides the whole oh yeah, now we have to ban you from basketball for life kind of thing. Jokes about gambling can't be funny because people who are gambling, at least some of them, are not necessarily in full control of their minds at that moment. By the way, two other ESPN talent, Dan Orlovsky and Mike Greenberg, they made a dinner bet again mentioning ESPN's betting site on Twitter x same day, and I was flashed back to the day the guy in charge of Sports Center in the nineties would not let me and Dan Patrick and the other fellas in an ESPN Fantasy Baseball league conduct our player draft at our desks because it was too close to the newsroom and it made him feel uncomfortable. We had to go do it in the cafeteria. I swear the runners up worser Jeff Yass and dishonest Jay Trump. So now we know what happened when Yas, who owns thirty three billion dollars worth of TikTok, met with Trump and suddenly Trump went from having threatened to ban TikTok within forty five days to demanding that it not be banned. The deal to merge that holding company with Trump's Truth Social disaster site and at minimum get him out from under the financial sort of damicles. It represents. The biggest institutional investor in that holding company that's going to merge with Truth Social is Susquehanna International, which was co founded by Jeff Yas. Always good to keep track of what Trump has been bought with this time, but our winner the worst Charlie Kirk. When last we heard from Balloonhead, he was calling for live televised pay per view executions of those trying to bring Trump to justice and forcing kids to watch the executions. Now he wants rubber bullets, whips and machine guns at the border. Quote, at what point is it time to start to at least use rubber bullets or use some sort of tear gas to prevent this and quail this invasion? At what point do we use real force? Why do we have a military? Why do we have men with guns if we can't use them? Of course you should be able to use whips against foreigners. See, I don't know. My thought is apart from this being country made up as a haven for people in trouble who are fleeing other lands, apart from the fact that everybody here is the descendant of an immigrant. Apart from that, maybe we should never resort to more force at the border than we used when Charlie Kirk's friends, many of whom got there thanks to his turning point, USA attacked the capitol on January sixth, Or we shouldn't use more force than we plan to use when they try it again next fall and winter, whips, rubber bullets, military with guns. And as to Charlie, Charlie, and if you see him, you're gonna need an elephant tranquilizer gun to bring him down with that gigantic inflated bean of his. Kirk he is two days worst person if he's a person in the way. Now to the number one story on this all new edition of Countdown and Things I promised not to tell. And in the wake of the Rna McDaniel train wreck at MSNBC and NBC News well train wrecks, how could the number one story not be this long Before MSNBC staffers forced their networks chief to guarantee them they would never have to put Rana McDaniel on their shows, there were at least six incidents in which on air talent at MSNBC stood up Ben said no and no it was These were not always good things, but they underscore a reality management cannot get away with everything, and it is often incumbent upon talent to make sure that is the case. I'll get through the two times I threatened to quick as quickly as I can. I got back to MSNBC. In two thousand and three, as NBC tried to swing MSNBC to the hard right right of Fox, it put on the disgusting radio host Michael Savage. Gave him a weekend show that was an audition for a weeknight show, and of course he couldn't resist telling a caller he was a sodomite and should get AIDS. And they got fired. But before that, they had guaranteed me upon my return that the one thing that would never appear in Countdown was a Michael Savage segment. Sure enough, one day, just weeks into the show, I come in and there in the rundout of my show page, like C eleven or something, Michael Savage commentary. Three minutes within moments, the executive producer of the show came in and said the Savage commentary was running, whether I liked it or not, and that the executive who had guaranteed to me that this would never happen, Phil Griffin, was traveling, so I couldn't complain to him, and that was it, and he left. So I called my agent and I said to her, very calmly, I have no choice here. I got to quit, right, And she said, and she had just spent seven weeks negotiating the new contract by which I returned to the place I had left five years earlier. She said, yeah, you have to quit immediately, but call Phil first. And I called Phil's office, and just as the executive producer said, he was not there. So I told his assistant, Well, I don't want to dump this problem on you, but you should find him so he can decide who's doing Countdown tonight, because if there's a Michael Savage commentary running in it, I'm not doing Countdown tonight. In fact, this is the sound of me calling a cab right now. Amazingly enough, Phil Griffin called five minutes later and said, okay, we won't run it. We won't run it, but you got to find me some non political reason to not run it. So I went along with his little game. And I looked at the commentary and the guy was dressed head to toe in brown, and he kept repeating himself. And I called Phil and they told him that, and Phil said, look good enough, we'll just put it in Scarborough's show. The other one I've told many times. It's early two thousand and eight. Now, five years later, and I'm trying to get them to let me have somebody that Phil Griffin had fired Rachel Maddow, guest host Countdown. I have gotten them to the point where they have told me they have hired her as an MSNBC contributor for fifty thousand dollars a year for comparison Ronald McDaniel got three hundred thousand. Except one night I discovered they've lied to me. They have not hired her. She was still working for free. And that night was a primary night. And I looked down at our rundown of the prime imary coverage Republicans and Democrats, and there's no Rachel. And I asked the executive producer who took over after I got the first executive producer fired. Why not? She says, Well, Rachel ran out of cash, so when Larry King offered her two hundred and fifty dollars to go on his show tonight on CNN, she had to take it. I'm sorry. So now I have to call her and apologize and offer her all the cash in my wallet except the five bucks I'm saving for the tip for the driver that night. And Rachel says okay. And I literally hire her for MSNBC out of my own pocket for four hundred and thirty seven dollars. And I call Phil Griffin and I say, you lied to me again. So now here's the deal. You get her the fifty K you told me you gave her, and you make her a contributor. And if you don't I'll be walking out in the middle of the primary coverage tonight, or maybe in the middle of my show tomorrow night. You'll never know when. Do you know how fast they can draw up a contract? Rachel had Hers. I think that night at latest the next morning. The other small ticket talent victory was on my behalf, but I had nothing to do with it. On the day, NBC suspended me for making donations to three Democratic candidates in twenty ten because that violated NBC News employee rules, even though they had drawn up a contract that specified several different times that I was not an NBC News employee and subject to none of the rules or the benefits of being an NBC News employee, and they wound up having to rescind the suspension and pay me anyway, and having to negotiate a settlement with me because what they had done was preach my contract, which was ultimately when I left in twenty eleven. That night it went down and in four hours, two hundred and fifty thousand people signed an online petition demanding my reinstatement. NBC asked Chris Hayes, who was then just getting started as my new fill in and spinoff show candidate. After Matdow and Lawrence O'Donnell, they asked Chris to do countdown and he said no. I've had my differences with Chris since then, but given that if he had a contract at that point, it could not have been for more than the fifty k they sort of gave Rachel three years earlier. Saying no was ballsy, courageous, and principle. Again. Standing up to management, however, is not necessarily a weapon that can only be used by the righteous. At the height of the Roni McDaniel thing, I saw Steve Schmidt ask rhetorically what would Tom Brokaw have done? And the answer would have been he would have done whatever was best for Tom Brokaw. In August two thousand and eight, there was a story coming out of the NBC News management end of the third floor at thirty Rock that a Republican goon with extra chins named Ed Gillespie had been in there with Phil Griffin and the president of NBC News, Steve Campus, trying to get me silenced, were fired or off the convention coverage or something. They didn't like Chris Matthews, but it was me they wanted fired, and the story was that somebody prominent from NBC News was in there with Gillespie or was invoked by Gillespie. The rumor mill was not certain. And then on September fifth, I found out without as much as a meeting, NBC ordered me and Chris Matthews off the coverage of the upcoming presidential debates between McCain and Obama. Within twelve hours, my agent had the complete story and with it the identity of which prominent NBC news guy had been in there with the Republican Party hack. Within three weeks that NBC News guy was boasting about being in there. On September twenty ninth, a lengthy and glowing profile appeared in The New York Times of Tom Brokaw. Quote. Mister Brokaw said that over the summer he had advocated within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews on election night and on nights when there were presidential debates. Unquote. This was especially odd because twice during the primary season, Brokaw had sent me emails that were so flattering that I printed them out cut them up and stuck them in my wallet about how well I had balanced the commentary part of my job with the anchoring Primary night part of my job. Well, that all changed after Tim Russert died and suddenly Tom Brokaw was to be the moderator of the NBC debate in the debate cycle of the two thousand and eight presidential election to resume from this Times piece. This is how we all found out what Brokaw did. He boasted about it quote. Mister Brokaw said he had also conducted some shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between NBC and the McCain campaign. His mission, he said, was to assure the candidate's aids that despite some negative on air commentary by mister Olderman in particular, mister McCain could still get a fair shake from NBC News. Mister Brocaw said he had been told by a senior McCain aide whom he did not name. It was Ed Gillespie, that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential debates until his name was invoked. One of the things I was told by this person was that. They were so irritated they said, if it's an NBC moderator for any of these debates, we won't go. Mister Brocaw said, my name came up, and they said, oh, hell, I have to do it because it's going to be Brokaw. This is not me quoting Tom Brokaw. This is The New York Times quoting Tom Brokaw. And in one part of this it's Tom Brokaw quoting Tom Brokaw. Translation, the GOP said, if Brokaw did not get me and Matthews bounced from the MSNBC coverage of all the John McCain would not show up for Brocaus debate. So Brocaw went in and blackmailed his own bosses. Okay, so now back to a righteous bit of talent power at MSNBC. The next June two thousand and nine, Fox put huge pressure on MSNBC and NBC News and the parent corporation GE and NBC's network, and especially the chairman of GE, Jeff Immelt. The goal was to silence my on air stories about Fox, and especially about Bill O'Reilly. The wild card here was this chairman Jeff Immelt. His mother was a fan of Bill O'Reilly's watched the show nightly and she heard all the stuff about her son and ge so she called him up and yelled at him. So the chairman of the sixth largest corporation in the world had to do something so his ninety something mother would not yell at him him again. All of us were hastily summoned that day to Jeff Zucker's office. He was president of NBC at that point. He told us that Emmelt had told him that if there were any more anti Fox stories on MSNBC, he Emmelt would simply shut the network off and fire everybody. I thought about all the money they'd have to pay me and all the work I wouldn't have to do, and thought for a second, Hey, that's a great idea, and then I thought better of it. Zucker asked me what to do, and I said, well, I don't know about long term here, but I would suggest that for a while, like a few weeks, maybe we say, shouldn't do any anti Fox stories until we figure out how we can do it safely. Zucker looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Phil Griffin and my producer and me and he said, you and you and you and I will talk tonight or tomorrow, and we'll all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox. We clear, nothing Silent. There were the assorted noises of people rising, producers for Hardball and Rachel's show and my show, and Ed Schultz's show and some of the daytime shows. And I was almost at the door of Zucker's office, which was an office so big that it was, to steal the line from the Great Ring Lardner, the size of the Yale Bowl, only with lamps. And then a voice spoke up, quietly but firmly in the silence. Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me. I will not have the content of my show dictated by any corporations, including the one I work for. Now. Remember this is June two thousand and nine. She's only been on the air like ten months, and she still felt that way then, and especially a corporation I don't work for. I'll walk out first. I cannot have the audience wondering what else I have not told them. I don't do a lot about Fox on my show, but if there's a story about Fox, I will not honor this freeze I will report that story, and if I am prevented from doing so, I will leave this place. Whereupon she left that place, just the room. When she was gone, Jeff Zucker exploded at me. I told you she was a mistake. You didn't listen to me. I told you. Now she's your problem. Oh, this is your problem. Get her back on the reservation or else. I said a few kind words about Jeff Mmel's mother, who was really running the network apparently, and they separated us. And then in the elevator, my producer said, what are you gonna do about Rachel? And I said the f if I know, I said, I did have an idea. I said. The only person she was talking to in there was herself. This was not some sort of brand new surprise for her anymore. The show was successful. She was successful. She said, she was a dancing cell phone outside a cell phone store one on. She's not going back to that voluntarily. So I went in to talk to Rachel about an hour later, and I reassured her. I said, just give me as much time as the French government took before fleeing during the Nazi advance in nineteen forty. I said, give me what was it thirty three days? Give me thirty three days. If we aren't back where we were this morning, we can both quit live on the air together, or I'll quit. They'll start your show early and then you can quit. That'd be fun, huh. Three nights later, well after midnight on a Friday, my NBC issue BlackBerry buzzed with a quick email from Rachel matdow Hey. She wrote, don't necessarily quote me because I'm really drunk, but just make the best deal you can for us. I trust you. We don't need to do Fox all the time. I never do Fox stories anyway. I just had to say that in the meeting, and this is the best platform we'll ever have eventually, between Rachel being the bad cop and me being the good cop. And I know you're not used to me in that role. We overrode the ban on criticizing Fox. Sadly, the master of threatening management at NBC does not do it for good or for fairness. He does it for himself. Joey Scars Joe Scarborough, you know who he is. He's the conservative turned liberal at the moment, maybe because Trump wouldn't take him as his vice president. In twenty sixteen, but I'm sure this is the way he really feels at the moment. Early in January twenty ten, the Republican candidate to fill the Senate seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, Scott Brown, literally a former nude model, was at a rally when one of his supporters talked about quote shoving a curling iron up the back side of the Democratic candidate he was running against, Martha Cochley. Scott Brown clearly heard the remark, and he responded, quote, we could do that. So on January eighteenth, on Countdown, I did a brief commentary about how unsuitable Brown was for public office, and this was another example of it. I said he was quoting an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary x nude model, t bagging, supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees unquote. I followed that with quotes from Brown and videotape of him disparaging his minority opponent in a local election to her face at a debate some years earlier, to back up my point of view. One hour later, Joe Scarborough did a tweet storm about me. Quote Olderman calls Brown a homophobic, racist, reactionary who supports violence against women. How reckless and how sad Joe left out. How true It is no longer enough to simply disagree with someone, just as when Beck called the President racist, this sort of rhetorical extreme as it must be discouraged. It cheapens the debate end quote. As we all know. If anybody as an expert on cheapening the debate, it's Joe effing Scarborough. But back to the point of this, there was a standing rule at MSNBC. If you want to criticize another MSNBC personality, go ahead, have a blast, but it can only be done on the air on MSNBC, and that other person must have an opportunity to reply in real time, same show, or in some face to face way. No hit and run, no tweet storms. If you criticize them by name or by inference in any other medium, in a newspaper, interview, on radio, on social media, you were to receive an automatic suspension. The only question was how long. So the next day, the nineteenth of January, called the now president of MSNBC, Phil Backbone of Jelly Griffin, and I asked him how long Scarborough's suspension was going to be. He asked me to come into his office. He said he'd already had a meeting about the tweets that morning with Scarborough's executive producer, Chris Licked. Remember Chris lickt Griffin explained that Scarborough considered Scott Brown a friend. More importantly, Licked had warned Griffin that if Griffin followed through and enforced the suspension rule, Scarborough would have no other option than to go to the media and tell reporters, especially reporters at right wing websites like Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller, to tell them that he had been suspended because he was a conservative and I was a liberal. Not that it was the rules, but because he was a conservative and I was a liberal, and I and not Phil Griffin actually ran MSNBC what can I do? Griffin was scared. Scared. I told him this was his big chance. He could fire Scarborough and Licked they'd just gone into blackmail them. Eventually, he was going to have to fire them anyway. But I also said, I know you're not going to do that, and I know you're not going to suspend Scarborough either, And he didn't despite the rule. But Griffin did send out a strongly worded memo to the entire company, insisting that anybody who criticized another MSNBC show or host in another medium would be suspended from now on, except Scarborough, who had just done exactly that and threatened his employers. Weeks later, just before my birthday, In fact, Brian Stelter's old blog TV newser got a copy of Griffin's memo. I didn't send it to him. They wondered why Scarborough had not been suspended, since he'd done exactly what was described in the memo, so they called the MSNBC president and then they printed quote Griffin responds to t V News quote an important rule was broken. I spoke to Keith and he said, in the spirit of teamwork and the free flow of ideas, he didn't think it warranted punishment or suspension. Now when have I ever been accused of the spirit of teamwork quote? I also talked to Joe and he apologized to me. That's why I made the decision that this didn't rise to the level of punishment, but I felt it was necessary to reiterate my long standing policy one hundred percent bulkrap total fabrication licked and Scarborough had blackmailed their own boss with a threat to smear them and me to Tucker Carlson, who we had fired two years earlier, into the right wing echo chamber. They all should have been fired on the spot, Griffin included. Emboldened by that win, about three months later, Scarborough said something on the air about a Democrat getting away with not being investigated for something, which is what his show used to be one hundred percent of the time until Trump turned him down. It was Marcos Malitzus, the editor of the Daily Cohost website, not just a regular contributor to Countdown, but somebody who had been promoting the MSNBC brand and my show and Rachel on that website for five years. Marcos sent a snarky but legitimate tweet questioning Scarborough's credentials to criticize others who were not investigated. Marcos invoked the staffer who died in an accident in Joe's office. Scarborough went nuts. He attacked Malitsus on Twitter. He inaccurately claimed Malitsus had accused him of murder, and a few days later I got a phone call from Phil Griffin. He told me Chris Lick has been in to see me. Remember, Chris lickt Joe won't put up with having Marcos Malitzus on his network anymore. Not only that, but Lick says many of Joe's friends, who also appear in Dayside and Primetime won't. I'm on if Marcos Mulitzus permitted to continue here, Chris is insisting Marcos must be banned from MSNBC immediately. Chris says he's afraid that if we don't do that, Joe won't come into work tomorrow. I laughed, I said, hallelujah. I congratulated Phil Griffin on the clear win win. Griffin was not a very good executive, except in terms of preserving his paycheck. He was very bad at enforcing MSNBC's rules, but very good at creating new rules on the spot in order to protect Joe Scarborough and Chris Licht's friends, and most importantly, Phil Griffin. I'm banning Mlitsus for any further appearances on MSNBC, I said Phil. He's a contributor to my show. You're suspending my guest who has driven hundreds of thousands of viewers to this show to MSNBC, and I don't have any say in it. Joe Scarborough and Chris lickt own you, buddy, what you know have to worry about his whether or not I go tell this story on the air tonight, or I wait and I tell it later. Phil scared again, got a little conciliatory, and he said it could be just a suspension if I cooperated. I didn't really feel like cooperating. I'd known Phil Griffin since nineteen eighty one, and my desire to cooperate with him ended about nineteen eighty one. But I thought I'll leave this to Marcos. I told him, and he said he enjoyed his contributions to Countdown. He also did occasional appearances on the Old Ed Schult Show. He said, if there were a chance at resuming them, he prefer to at least try that. So Phil Griffins suspended Marcos Militsus, and to my knowledge that's twenty ten and he has not been on MSNBC since. The suspension has lasted longer than the network had to that point. So that one, obviously is one where the wrong guy stood up and threatened MSNBC and NBC News. Scarborough and Licked prevailed. I did similar things again and again, and after I left, again and again and again and again. Licked was eventually mistaken because of this for some sort of responsible adult producer, and he became president of CNN and screwed that place up so much that a year after he was fired, it still got into a bidding war with NBC for Ronald McDaniel. And instead of saying, you know what, if Scarborough's not suspended, if Marcos is not on the air tonight, I'm walking, I just said, you know, I have a torn rotator cuff that makes being Justice with his shining sword all the time really painful. I mean, I've done it twenty times already this month. This time I'll just I'll just take the money and I'll go, which I did a year later. Sorry, but it should serve All of these stories should serve as reminders to everybody in similar positions. You can do it, at least once I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip schaneil arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Seriously. Jeff ML's mother ninety ninety three ninety four years old when We resolved all this when I got the right to criticize Fox back. We had a big dinner, the two of us and Zucker in the executive dining room atop thirty Rock, and I said to him, how old is your mother? He said ninety three or whatever he answered. And I said, so, why don't you just send some guys in there to pull the cable out of the wall so she can't watch Bill O'Reilly's show. Well, he did not respond well to that, and I said, understand, I understand that's stupid and ridiculous and offensive. That's what it's like to us when you say you'd rather take MSNBC off the air than find a solution to this. Well, he listened to that. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and mister Shanelle handled orchestration at keyboards produced by Tko Brothers. I think this cemented in his mind the idea that he was going to sell in BC. Unfortunately, he sold him to comcast more pillows of joenalo any Who. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by no horns allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Larry David. Everything else was pretty much my fault. Send me why are you sending improvised explosive devices to Iran Americans? That's countdown for this the two and twenty fifth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the one and seventy sixth day since dementia Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the fourteenth Amendment and the not regularly given elector objection option provided by the Supreme Court. Use the Insurrection Act, use the justice system, use the mental health system to stop him from doing it again while we still can. A final addendum on this one topic, as I say to everybody starting in the media business, one thing to remember. There are no adults. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Boltons is the news warrants till then. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.