Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump has now threatened another judge. As usual, it is by inference, with just enough space between him and the call for violence that he can deny it. When it happens, it's a fatoah, a Trump fatoah, another Trump fatoah, and he personally is now issuing more of them, and more frequently than is the government of Iran. And so Tanya Chutkin's coming decision next week the week after on the Jack Smith gag order looms even larger than before, and bluntly, she should skip the gag order now and go directly to revoking Trump's bail and putting him behind bars, because that's not just colorful imagery. These are now fatoahs. Since last Friday, Trump has tried to incite someone to kill the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he has accused the news media of country threatening treason, whatever the hell that is, and he has promised to make its newspeople pay a very big price for continuing to criticize him. Since last month, he has threatened the Special Council and the District Attorney of Fulton County Georgia, and the District Attorney of Manhattan and the Attorney General of the State of New York, and a woman he has sexually assaulted, and a next president he has docks, and everybody in the country who might fit under the phrase if you go after me, I'm coming after you. And Judge Chutkin herself, and now Judge Arthur anger On himself quote, we need justice in our country. This political hack, Judge Trump writes, must be stopped. This is about Trump defrauding the State of New York by lying about the value of Mari Lago and other properties. And the threat against the judge has nothing directly to do with Chutkin and the election coup case over which she resides. And I don't give a damn. Every day that this country delays in smashing and crushing Donald Trump is another day in which he becomes more reckless, and more desperate and more convinced that he can get away with anything, because, frankly, the government of this country and its structures of law and order, and its judicial system, and its criminal system and its news media have so far let him get away with anything. And now he has told his mob that this political hack judge must be stopped and the technicalities with which any of us dismiss is now daily calls for political violence meant only to help him and hurt this nation. Those of us who note, well, he didn't say go and kill Arthur anger On, and he did say I want you to execute Mark Millie. Those who use those niceties have outlived their function as citizens of this country, and those phrases have outlived their usefulness. Any other person in the United States today, even today, any other person on trial in four separate criminal cases, and already found guilty in part of multi billion dollar business fraud in a fifth case, throwing around carefully couched threats and stochastic incitements to terrorism, would have long since had his bail revoked, had his freedom put to an end until his trial begins. And we need to do that now. Judge Chutkin needs to do that now. I have slightly more hope than I did that she might either now or after he violates whatever restraint she issues instead, and hopefully nobody has gotten killed before then slightly more hope after she slapped him around for twenty pages last night as she rejected a demand that she recuse herself because she had referenced him while sentencing some of the other January sixth scumbag conspirators. She called his interpretation of her remarks quote hypersensitive, cynical, and suspicious. Yeah, that's him pretty much, and then she made him look stupid. A reasonable person, Well, there's your problem right there. A reasonable person would understand that in making the statements contested here, the court was not issuing vague declarations about third parties potential guilt in a hypothetical future case. She has waxed Trump there. If only Trump were smart enough to understand. So, maybe Judge Chutkin is in the right mood to revoke his bail. And if that would be unprecedented or messy or worse, or a departure from how this nation's political system has worked, well, tell anybody who says that that they can go f themselves. Because we crossed that rubicon in twenty fifteen, when this malicious psychopath came down that escalator and began his assault on everything and everyone who is good and generous in this country, and began his enabling of everything and everyone who is evil and greedy and hate filled in this country. We are not living in the United States of America, even the one we had in the year twenty fourteen. And that is the fault of Donald Trump. And if we have any hope of getting back even to that flawed and troubled culture of just nine years ago, it begins by making an example out of him. He is threatening judges with violence and violent mob action. You go to jail for doing that. His threats against judges have specifically violated the agreement he made when he was not detained without bail after indictment for his insane attempt to overthrow the duly elected government in the United States. And the judge in that case is entirely within her power to put him behind bars indefinitely and leave him there, and she should do it. And if it makes us look for a time like a third world country, or it makes the current president look like he is prosecuting a political rival, or if it makes it seem as if one political party is trying to put another political party behind bars, so be it. Because what happens if we do not act against Trump now now now is far worse. It is the degradation beyond repair of all of the rules and codes and law by which we live in this country and have done so for all of this time. Donald Trump attacked the fundamental structure of the United States in twenty fifteen the DNA, and we did nothing, And he did more and worse in twenty sixteen, and we did nothing again. And he did more and worse every year since, and we did nothing again. And he has just dog whistled to his thugs that they should attack a judge because the judge valued Crapshack a Lago at eighteen million dollars when Trump says it's worth one hundred times more than that, except that when the Florida state tax assessors valued it at twenty six million dollars three years ago, Trump responded by filing an appeal to get the value reduced. So not only is he again escalating the crisis, his crisis he creates by breathing every day, but he is escalating it over insane irrational rage that a judge basically agreed with him about how little his garbage dump of a country club isn't worth. We continue to head down a road to utter disaster in this country, where Trump's belief that he and everything connected to him is more important than the entirety of the lives and welfare of every other citizen of the United States of America, where that belief is going to lead to open systemic violence here. And it is his fault and he must be well. Let me just use his words from that post about Judge Angern quote, this political hack must be stopped, and it is his fault. But let me amend and underscore one part of that. It is not his fault alone. He has a partner in this, somewhat unwitting, somewhat deliberate. His partner is the American news media in all its variations and permutations, and it is just as broken as the American systems that are supposed to control and correct for creatures like Trump whenever they appear out of the cesspools in our land. And since Friday, the American media has greeted Trump's open threat against General Millie and this new threat yesterday against Judge anger On by reporting in breathless dire tones that President Biden is wearing new shoes because of complications after the hairline fractures to his foot three years ago, which disqualifies him he should resign. And it is reporting the both Biden and Trump went to see striking auto quote union members in Detroit. That's a quote from the goddamned New York Times, when in fact only Biden did that. Trump instead went to see scab auto parks workers in a non union factory, in a stunt arranged by the owner of the factory and by an organization that is trying to decertify Starbucks union. But of course to make that distinction is too difficult. One is a mouse's and one is an elephant. But that takes too much time, doesn't make a good headline, and it isn't balanced, And the Republicans might complain. We are owned by right leaning corporation after all, and I don't want them to cut our budget again. So let's just say the mouse and the elephant are both gray animals. I mean, that's true, right and balanced, and treats Trump and Biden evenly. The New York Times, the goddamned New York Times, living down to the same non journalistic non standards as Fox Non News or Ben Shapiro or Joe Rogan or Politico. And I feel I should spit when I mentioned Politico. If Trump regains power and starts jailing journalists, and he actually sends people from Politico to some gulag somewhere. I swear to God, I am confident that the last thing Politico will publish will be one of their cringe worthy paragraphs where they list, in bold face type exactly who has been spotted spotted inside the bus bound for the news detention camp. Politico actually began its newsletter the other morning with this paragraph. Quote. In the House, Kevin McCarthy will again try to pass a rule to advance a spending bill. In the Senate, Chuck Schumer will hold the first vote to advance as CR to avoid a government shutdog down. We'll get back to all of that in a moment, but the real gold mine of news in Washington today will be from returning Democratic senators hounded by reporters for their reaction to the Bob Menendez's indictment. The real gold mine of news. He wrote almost everything that is wrong with the American media and how it has helped Trump rise to the point where we hesitate to jail a human fatoah machine, putting the fat in fatoa, as it were. Almost everything that is wrong is contained in that six word phrase. The real gold mine of news. It's got the proverbial shiny object. It's got the media's inability to not chase it at the expensive stories of far more urgency and actual import and complexity. And by the way, this was written after Trump attacked the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Politico is not even bothering to mention that, so it can then dismiss it before getting to the Menendez SoundBite. Gold mine and the imagery is that the shiny object is where the money is at in news, that it not difficult vital, dangerous topics like who Trump wants to get killed, that all those other things is where their business is. The saddest part, of course, is that the concept the real gold mine of news is actually one of the driving forces that makes American journalism work. When it works when it isn't confronted with one of the two major political parties trying to bring American democracy and freedom of the press to an end. The real gold mine of news is what kept Woodward and Bernstein going on Watergate. Woodward closer to a Nixon Republican than a critic. Bernstein a Metro reporter for whom the politics was initially irrelevant, but who smelled the real gold mine of news and horned his way in on the story. Every good story and every great story in American journalistic history has begun because there was a real gold mine of news there. And every story that has enabled Trump has begun because of the same thing. Oh what a scoop, what a story, what audacity, what clicks. May not be good for America, as the disgraced ex CEO of CBS said of the Trump campaign, add money and the access Hollywood style coverage surrounding the candidate, but it's damn good for CBS, and they're still milling around the real gold mine of news, the one that Trump offers. It's not news, of course, it's not news. It's pseudo news, just as Trump is a pseudo politician and a pseudo government figure, and what he produces is actually gossip and conflict and plot twists stolen from professional rests. And it's not gold, it's gold spray paint. But the news consumers aren't going to know the difference, right, All we have to do is keep dining at his all you can eat salad bar and bottomless brunch, and the price is just to ignore stories like him trying to get a New York judge killed, and a Washington judge killed, and a former president killed, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs killed, and a nation killed. Nothing animates good journalism more than a reporter's desire for the glory of a scoop. And nothing animates bad journalism more than a reporter's desire for the glory of a scoop. And the latter part of it can destroy anybody at any level, no matter what kind of track record they had. I have told this story before fifteen years ago, when Tim Russert died and Tom Brokaw inherited the NBC presidential debate between McCain and Obama that Russert would have moderated. The Republicans were enraged at things I had said about them, in particular about a nine to eleven quote tribute video un quote that they had shown at their convention, which without warning turned out to be a snuff film that we involuntarily showed on MSNBC. And the Republicans went to Brokaw and they said, if you don't get Olderman off the debates and out of anchoring the election coverage, our guy will not show up to your debate, and Brokaw went into his bosses at NBC and blackmailed them on behalf of the Republican Party. And if you think I'm exaggerating or settling scores, here, Brokaw not only did all that, he then boasted about doing so on the record. And it's right there online right now. Jacques Steinberg, New York Times, September twenty ninth, two thousand and eight. Google it, Google New York Times, Brokaw, Oulderman and you'll read the whole story. And I don't know how many people are in Brokaw's shoes right now carrying Trump water for him, thinking it will advance their careers or gain them access later, or how many just think they are. But so many of them are still milling around that real gold mine of news. And there's another journalistic problem. And it was brought home to me when I was watching cable news the other night for the first time in literally months. And I'm going to mention Rachel Maadow again, and for once, I'm not going to criticize her, because this isn't about her content. It's about her advertising. The extraordinary sweep of right wing television news networks and streaming services and podcasts and radio and conspiracy theorists and publishers. The whole complex, running the gamut from Alex Jones to Fox News to Rogan to the new Marjorie Taylor green Book, is not actually profitable. Fox News is, Jones is, and they all are profitable to the performers who front them, like this Rogan idiot. But they don't have to be profitable. Each of them is bankrolled by one or more conservative billionaires who are delighted if they invest fifty million dollars and get back and buck ninety seven because the rest of the money, the other forty nine million plus has been well spent buying and creating public opinion and fomenting an environment of stupidity and hate and rage that makes a transparent two bit con man like Trump seem like George fing Washington. The far right invests in media and thus in the media narrative, and keeping the diaspora of conservative TV and conservative radio and conservative streaming and conservative podcast not just loud, but ubiquitous and ubiquitously loud. The machine is well oiled and perfected at the fringes, the John Solomons and the Gateway pundits and people like that make stuff up, and then places like One American News quote them. By the end of the week, Fox has taken the story suitably washed with lots of places they can quote so they don't have to claim they made it up. Fox is then taking that same story into voting seven shows a day to it, or in publishing, a neanderthal like Congresswoman Green can write a book, doubtless the first she will have ever read, and insist it will finally provide a chance for people to hear math ad of the story as if she does anything in life but tell her knit, witted side of the story twenty four to seven. And the right wing publisher can print one hundred thousand copies of that book or two hundred thousand or twenty million, and know they will all be b because they will all be bought by the Daily Caller or Newsmax or one hundred conservative political campaigns and then offered as free giveaways with subscriptions or in exchange for donations. And the book Marjorie Taylor Green, No I'm Not Barney Rubble by Marjorie Taylor Green, it will not actually be bought by any readers, but it will still wind up on the New York Times bestseller list. And this is where Madow comes in. Like her or not, she is the platform in what can laughingly be called liberal media. Her show is on now just once a week. She has paid thirty million dollars a year for it and other projects that for some reason have not happened yet in two years of the deal. There is nothing to rival her at MSNBC or anywhere else in liberal media. Not that it's much of a contest with many entrants, but it is the marquee platform of platforms. And I actually watched the other night to check one thing in it, and I don't remember anymore what that one thing was, because I was so horrified and consumed by the commercials at the apex of liberal media, at the peak and the pinnacle of pro democracy, anti Trump. Biden's too old, too old for what, because he seems to be doing an amazingly solid job as president media at the vertex of all of that, Rachel Maddow's weekly One Hour was sponsored by Vaccines for Respiratory Sensicial Virus RSV, two of them rival vaccines from Pfiser and Smith glaxok Line battling it out with competing commercials. During Mattow, Pfeiser bought two what I count it is thirty seven different commercials during the show, SMK bought just one. We really want to be associated, but the liberal answer to the multi billion dollar We don't care whether or not we make a dime on this so long as this country goes fascist under Trump. Propaganda complex does not just rely on three commercials a week for RSV shots. There's also its sponsors who make jellyfish based memory improvement pills and a shingles vaccine, at at least three different asthma medications and hearing aids, and weight loss shots and stretch pants. And the one advertiser which will stick with me forever, the new Doctor Shoals skin Tag Remover, now available without a prescription for home use. The Rachel Meadow Show is brought to you by Doctor Shoals skin Tag Remover. Rachel depends on advertising revenue that itself, in part, depends on sales of stuff that freezes those little ugly growths on your neck and then they fall off in about two weeks. Alex Jones and Fox and Joe Rogan and one hundred other venues have innumerable Harlan Crows sitting around their mansions, churning out millions and millions in seed money and salaries and investments and advertising buys and underwritings, and god knows how else. And Maddow has doctor Shoal's skin tag remover. But the good news is the FDA now says you can also use it on the skin tags in your groin. I don't know how democracy counters this imbalance. Corporations are by definition conservative and amoral, and Trump is satisfactorily pretending to be the first and pretty much defines the latter. And if those news organizations branded as liberal media aren't going to say, what the hell we're getting the blame and the grief, let's turn it around on the bastards and really give them something to blame us for. If The New York Times finally figures out, no, Trump wasn't going to speak to striking auto workers and finally corrects its story and then drops that story to the eighth spot on the front page layout, just above the feature on and I'm not making this up cemeteries and the women who love them, and the Times doesn't do a story on Trump trying to get Judge nger On and General Milly and Judge Chuckkin and Special Counsel Smith and everybody else killed by remote control. If the Times won't do that, I don't know what to tell you, because I know that all the news organizations, even the ones that seem to be liberal, even the ones who employ Mattow, have met to discuss how to protect their profits if Trump returns to power, and one of the answers was, uh, send Kristen Welker to uh interview him? Yeah, interview, that's the word. I don't know if there are billionaires or even upper echelon millionaires who want to spend money on anything that might even just begin to resemble the corporate park of conservative assembly line opinion factories, anything that might just be a shadow of a mouse to stand next to the conservative elephant. But I know they are not spending it bankrolling or underwriting or advertising liberal media. And I know that this is not the only reason Trump is getting away with it and probably will get away with it, And it isn't the only reason that the other meaning of that phrase, the real gold mine of news almost exclusively favors and protects and normalizes Trump and fascism and violence and the mortal threat to democracy. That is his evil, but it is one of the biggest reasons. And it leaves the rest of us who would like to see the United States of America continue. It leaves that rest of us with nothing to do except hope that they sell a whole lot of those goddamned skin tag removers. Also of interest here, second Republican debate is over. None were injured, And my god, I am going to applaud Paul Ryan because Paul Ryan has verbally slapped around not just Kevin McCarthy, but also Aaron Rodgers. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Elberman still ahead on countdown. So I invoked Brocaus selling out to the Republicans so he could keep his role as moderator of a presidential debate in two thousand and eight. I left out the part about it being Brocaus comeback presidential debate moderator role. I'll tell that whole story again next first time for the daily round up of the miscreants, morons, and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The Bronze too well, you'll hear. Former Speaker Paul Ryan was interviewed about the looming shutdown by the Madison, Wisconsin newspaper The Capital Times, and he managed to diss not one, but two of the worst persons in the world. Ryan said, the two people he feels most sorry for at the moment are quote Aaron Rodgers and Kevin McCarthy. I feel sorry for McCarthy too, Rogers. Next question the runners up. Here's a coincidence. It's the National Football League. While the NFL has tried really hard to sell itself as a home for diversity and the quality, I mean, it even had Commissioner Roger Goodell saying quote racism in any form of discrimination is contrary to the NFL's values. I wonder who wrote that for him. The league is advertising next to posts by avowed racists on Twitter or x or twigs or whatever you call it nowadays. Media Matters for America reports that ads for the NFL and its NFL Plus service and it's telecast of its games on NBC and CBS and other outlets and other broadcasts and other products and such are adjacent to posts by racists like the infamous Stu Peters, who is the idiot who insisted that Damar Hamlin of Buffalo actually died last year because he was vaccinated, of course, and was replaced by an actor. NFL ads also appear on Twitter next to posts by v Dare, including a v dare post criticizing the NFL for having an all black officiating crew. Media Matters also reports NFL ads are also next to racist posts from the likes of Richard Spencer, the one who says white people should boycott the NFL, and that guy Baked Alaska, and Andrew Torba. Andrew Torba is the one who says white people are being collectively quote conquered, enslaved, raped by non whites. NFL advertising next to their posts nice work, Goodell, but our winner. Fox's Harris Faulkner, who is such an idiot that I can't decide if she doesn't really exist but it's just a character developed by a satirist who is utterly committed to the bit, or if she is such an idiot that she's ready to take over a primetime slot as the Fox juggernaut collapses. Fox has been obsessed this week with the incidents in which the Biden's rescue dog commander has bit Secret Service agents. I mean they've done like hours at a time on this story. Faulkner yesterday has the explanation, quote, you know they had coke in the house. I just wonder if he's been to that certain lobby area, just acting all out of himself. Look, this is really on the owner of the dog. She said, I just wonder what's going on in the family that they don't get this dog some help unquote. To be fair, I've thought the same thing about what must be going on in Fox headquarters down the block here that they don't get this ass clown Harris. Faulkner's some help, Harris. Maybe the dog is snorting coke. Faulkner two days Worst Person and finally our number one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic me I miss the exact anniversary by day, but it's close enough. The demand for spots in the Shade Stadium press box that night was so great that there was a signed seating. I had no real reason to be there, but as usual, the New York Mets took care of me, and so on Friday, the fifth of September two thousand and eight, I was shoulder to shoulder with reporter friends, watching the Mets begin to blow their three game Pennant Race lead against the Philadelphia Phillyes. Sorry Mets fans for bringing this up again. Brett Myers had just struck out New York's David Wright looking when my phone rang. It was my agent, Gene Sage. They just called. She said, flatly, you and Matthews have been fired from anchoring the presidential debates because of what you said. What I had said had been said three nights previously. Chris Matthews and I were co anchoring the Republican Convention on MSNBC. He was there in Minneapolis. I was in the studios in New York, ostensibly so I could also anchor hurricane coverage, although it was pretty clear that at least half the reason I was not in Minneapolis was because the Republicans had threatened NBC or said they couldn't guarantee my safety or something like that, and NBC folded. So I was the one during MSNBC's coverage of the two thousand and eight Republican Convention who had to throw it to a video they were introducing that we had been told by the Republicans was a quote tribute to the dead of nine to eleven. It was, in fact a snuff film. All of the images that all of the networks had stopped showing within weeks or even days of the attacks, all of those images were in this video. People jumping and falling to their deaths from the World Trade Center on nine to eleven, endless replays of the planes hitting the towers, dismembered bodies in the plaza, the building collapses, the equally terrifying scenes at the Pentagon, and all with a grotesque Robert Dobby voiceover emphasizing that this was all the Democrats fault. The message was simple, elect Obama and you will die like this. I was angry, just on that base level. For the five and a half years I had been back at MSNBC, he had been rigorous about not showing any of that video. There were rules that if we had to for some reason, we should show only the skill images, and even then only with extensive warnings to the viewers. But I knew from my conversations with the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, who I'd only known for twenty eight years at that point, that he would insist that on the scene in Minneapolis, Matthews and Tom Brokaw, whose career at NBC I had resurrected after Brian Williams had buried him alive two years earlier, that one or both of them would rebuke the GOP for showing not a nine to eleven tribute, but, as I just said, a nine to eleven snuff film. The video ended, and we came out to Brokaw with Matthews and Brokaw kind of coughed, and Matthews said wow. And he turned to Brokaw and said, in that loose fire hose delivery of his Tom, the kind of hunderscorns terrorism. Big thing for Republicans, says he. Trisop Obama. Brocaw droned on approvingly the Republicans sneaking a snuff film, a banned video onto MSNBC and by the way, also onto CNN, onto NBC, onto CBS, onto ABC without any warning that was not mentioned by Brokaw or Matthews. Back to New York and Keys. I was supposed to add liberates about what we were expecting from the Republican convention for the rest of the night and then throw to a commercial instead, I said, and this is a paraphrase. The original tape disappeared that night that before we moved on, I felt I needed to apologize that we at MSNBC and for that matter, NBC News, had extremely strict rules about not showing that video. The Republicans had just shown you without any warning, without any context, and we certainly would not have shown the horror and death and blamed it on the Democrats, or for that matter, blamed it on the Republicans. I said, if we had done such a thing ourselves, there would have been people fired at NBC News. The public program the GOP provided said that was going to be a nine to eleven trip mute film, I said, And so did the private conversations with the network, which included the reminder from NBC and MSNBC that we had rules against showing the scenes of the horrible death, the mutilation, and destruction. So I apologized on behalf of whoever trusted the Republicans to live up to their word that MSNBC viewers were forced to see the video our network had long before vowed never to show again. So three nights later, without as much as an email, this Griffin guy had called my agent and told her I was fired Matthews two from our further coverage of the upcoming McGain Obama debates. She related these details to me as I walked down the many ramps in the back of Shaye Stadium towards the subway. I told her to call Griffin back and tell him I had quit on the spot right then, and he could work his way out of the ensuing disaster. Liberal network MSNBC fires liberal host Elderman for criticizing conservatives for sneaking nine to eleven snuff film onto MSNBC. He could figure that out any way he wanted, and he could hear my response on I don't know, Good Morning America, CBS, This Morning, the PBS News Hour, and any other news program that bothered to ask me to stop by and talk. I phoned my live in girlfriend, Katie Turr and told her I was on my way home, and I made a few phone calls to friendly voices within the NBC management structure and got from them a clear picture of what had happened. And despite the spotty cell service along the elevated line heading back to Manhattan, I got a message from a newspaper reporter friend who neatly tied together. All that I was hearing elsewhere Tom Brokaw is going around NBC saying he got you fired from the debates because the Republicans told him to. Nine maybe ten months earlier, Phil Griffin had come to me and asked me if I would be okay with this guy who had been kind of disappeared by the network. Tom Brokaw was his name appearing during our weekly coverage of the Democratic and republic primaries just a couple of minutes, like from a perspective desk, that's all he wants to do. He's really Tom's really unhappy Brian has frozen him out of everything. Brian Williams. Of course, I was appalled, but not surprised. The power had gone to Brian's head, and of course there it had not met much resistance. Plus, as I said to Griffin, you're asking me if I'd like to add Tom Brokaw's experience and Tom Brocaw's gravitas to stuff I'm anchoring. When I'm not sure I know as much as I really need to know to do this right. You're asking me this. Tom fit in beautifully and twice after those long Tuesday evenings in the primary season. He sent me brief emails awarding me what he called the game ball, because he was so impressed by my ability to balance the roles of political anchor and political commentator, having tried this myself. One of them read, I know what a perilous tight rupeless is. Game ball to care. I'm mocking him now, but these meant so much to me. I printed the emails out and carried them in my wallet. And now he was claiming he had gotten me fired because, as my newspaper friend said, the Republicans told him to. That was not hard to unpack either. Tim Russard had died on June third of that year. I anchored that night until two in the morning. It was still an open wound. There were still tears. We didn't know it then, but the structure of NBC News and the perilous tie group balancing NBC and MSNBC had died with Tim Russard. So did the role of moderator of the second debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, scheduled for about a month after my subway ride on October seventh in Nashville. Tim had not even been buried yet. When Brokaw began to angle to get that assignment, along with brushing away the dirt of his Penny Anti role on the MSNBC Perspective desk. We never saw him again in order that he could take Tim's spot as Brian William's sidekick on Big NBC. The month before August, there was a story coming out of the east end of the third floor at thirty Rock, where NBC News management sat around not doing much of anything, that a Republican goon named Ed Gillespie had been in there with Griffin and the NBC News president, Steve Cappus, trying to get me silenced or fired or off the convention coverage or something, and that somebody prominent within NBC News was in there with Gillespie or was invoked by Gillespie. The rumor mill wasn't certain. As I switched from the elevated seven train to the underground f train. The whole thing came together before my comments about the GOP Convention nine to eleven snuff film. Ed Gillespie had come in and had somehow vaguely threatened Cappus and Griffin about me using as leverage the debate which Tom brocall was now supposed to moderate, and when I apologized for their video on our air, Gillespie must have turned it into an either or get rid of me, or McCain would refuse to participate in any debate moderated by Brokaw or anybody from NBC News. And Brokaw had already come back from the dead once in two thousand and eight, and he would be damned if he would be forced to do it a second time. But as the train took me home to an apartment, I was now going to have to sell since I had just quit MSNBC on the spot for folding to such obvious Republican blackmail, something else now occurred to me. Why would MSNBC or NBC or our parent corporation at the time, ge actually think that they could remove me from the debate coverage on MSNBC, where the Racial Meadow Show had yet to be born, and the three times a night my show ran accounted for something like sixty percent of the entire day's network audience, and do that without getting a really bad reaction from our audience. Plus, if a newspaper man already knew the Brokaw, how could this story be avoided? MSNBC announced it had removed its liberal star Keith Alerman from coverage of the McCain Obama presidential debates. Sources confirmed former NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw, now an MSNBC commentator on Olberman's coverage, had helped her Republican Party to blackmail NBC into the decision. Ulderman immediately resigned, saying, quote in succumbing to this coercion on behalf of John McCain, NBC has now forfeited any right to further be called a news organization, And I'm sad to say MSNBC, which I built, is now dead. My god, MSNBC an NBC News for that matter, would have committed corporate suicide before the weekend was over. At that point, it dawned on me that the only thing that could save the credibility of the whole news division and the careers of Griffin and Kappus, an NBC network president Jeff Zucker, and especially the career of Tom Brokaw was for me to publicly state that I had asked to be removed from anchoring the debates because the whatever was just too much blah blah blah for me, and I felt I should stick to the post debate analysis and commentary. NBC would now have a choice. They could fire me from the debates and destroy everything, including the one hundred million dollars a year or so in profit that NBC made off MSNBC, or I could you know why and claim it was my idea and save everybody's ass, including my own. I got out of the subway and raced home. Katie met me at the door with a big hug. She had been crying. Relax, I said, I'm not quitting. In fact, I'm going to get a huge raise. Now, listen carefully. I called my agent and I explained the idea that had lit over my head on the subway like a light bulb to both of them. I said, you call Phil Griffin back and explain to him that I will personally save his job and Steve Campus's and Jeff Sookers and Tom Brokaw's and everybody else's. I'll take the fall instead of letting them all get fired by the MSNBC audience. I'll say this was my idea, and all it will cost Phil is twelve million dollars, and he has to leak the term so everybody knows it cost him twelve million dollars, and she paused for a second and said, it's genius. It might not quite be twelve million, but I bet, I bet they'll pay you at least nine. On Sunday, several news organizations reported I had asked to be taken off the anchor desk two months and one week later, The New York Times wrote, quote, Keith Olberman, the anchor of Countdown on MSNBC, has extended his contract through the next presidential election season. The network announced mister Olderman and MSNBC essentially tore up the four year, four million dollar year contract they signed last year and replaced it with one worth about seven and a.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump has now threatened another judge. As usual, it is by inference, with just enough space between him and the call for violence that he can deny it. When it happens, it's a fatoah, a Trump fatoah, another Trump fatoah, and he personally is now issuing more of them, and more frequently than is the government of Iran. And so Tanya Chutkin's coming decision next week the week after on the Jack Smith gag order looms even larger than before, and bluntly, she should skip the gag order now and go directly to revoking Trump's bail and putting him behind bars, because that's not just colorful imagery. These are now fatoahs. Since last Friday, Trump has tried to incite someone to kill the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he has accused the news media of country threatening treason, whatever the hell that is, and he has promised to make its newspeople pay a very big price for continuing to criticize him. Since last month, he has threatened the Special Council and the District Attorney of Fulton County Georgia, and the District Attorney of Manhattan and the Attorney General of the State of New York, and a woman he has sexually assaulted, and a next president he has docks, and everybody in the country who might fit under the phrase if you go after me, I'm coming after you. And Judge Chutkin herself, and now Judge Arthur anger On himself quote, we need justice in our country. This political hack, Judge Trump writes, must be stopped. This is about Trump defrauding the State of New York by lying about the value of Mari Lago and other properties. And the threat against the judge has nothing directly to do with Chutkin and the election coup case over which she resides. And I don't give a damn. Every day that this country delays in smashing and crushing Donald Trump is another day in which he becomes more reckless, and more desperate and more convinced that he can get away with anything, because, frankly, the government of this country and its structures of law and order, and its judicial system, and its criminal system and its news media have so far let him get away with anything. And now he has told his mob that this political hack judge must be stopped and the technicalities with which any of us dismiss is now daily calls for political violence meant only to help him and hurt this nation. Those of us who note, well, he didn't say go and kill Arthur anger On, and he did say I want you to execute Mark Millie. Those who use those niceties have outlived their function as citizens of this country, and those phrases have outlived their usefulness. Any other person in the United States today, even today, any other person on trial in four separate criminal cases, and already found guilty in part of multi billion dollar business fraud in a fifth case, throwing around carefully couched threats and stochastic incitements to terrorism, would have long since had his bail revoked, had his freedom put to an end until his trial begins. And we need to do that now. Judge Chutkin needs to do that now. I have slightly more hope than I did that she might either now or after he violates whatever restraint she issues instead, and hopefully nobody has gotten killed before then slightly more hope after she slapped him around for twenty pages last night as she rejected a demand that she recuse herself because she had referenced him while sentencing some of the other January sixth scumbag conspirators. She called his interpretation of her remarks quote hypersensitive, cynical, and suspicious. Yeah, that's him pretty much, and then she made him look stupid. A reasonable person, Well, there's your problem right there. A reasonable person would understand that in making the statements contested here, the court was not issuing vague declarations about third parties potential guilt in a hypothetical future case. She has waxed Trump there. If only Trump were smart enough to understand. So, maybe Judge Chutkin is in the right mood to revoke his bail. And if that would be unprecedented or messy or worse, or a departure from how this nation's political system has worked, well, tell anybody who says that that they can go f themselves. Because we crossed that rubicon in twenty fifteen, when this malicious psychopath came down that escalator and began his assault on everything and everyone who is good and generous in this country, and began his enabling of everything and everyone who is evil and greedy and hate filled in this country. We are not living in the United States of America, even the one we had in the year twenty fourteen. And that is the fault of Donald Trump. And if we have any hope of getting back even to that flawed and troubled culture of just nine years ago, it begins by making an example out of him. He is threatening judges with violence and violent mob action. You go to jail for doing that. His threats against judges have specifically violated the agreement he made when he was not detained without bail after indictment for his insane attempt to overthrow the duly elected government in the United States. And the judge in that case is entirely within her power to put him behind bars indefinitely and leave him there, and she should do it. And if it makes us look for a time like a third world country, or it makes the current president look like he is prosecuting a political rival, or if it makes it seem as if one political party is trying to put another political party behind bars, so be it. Because what happens if we do not act against Trump now now now is far worse. It is the degradation beyond repair of all of the rules and codes and law by which we live in this country and have done so for all of this time. Donald Trump attacked the fundamental structure of the United States in twenty fifteen the DNA, and we did nothing, And he did more and worse in twenty sixteen, and we did nothing again. And he did more and worse every year since, and we did nothing again. And he has just dog whistled to his thugs that they should attack a judge because the judge valued Crapshack a Lago at eighteen million dollars when Trump says it's worth one hundred times more than that, except that when the Florida state tax assessors valued it at twenty six million dollars three years ago, Trump responded by filing an appeal to get the value reduced. So not only is he again escalating the crisis, his crisis he creates by breathing every day, but he is escalating it over insane irrational rage that a judge basically agreed with him about how little his garbage dump of a country club isn't worth. We continue to head down a road to utter disaster in this country, where Trump's belief that he and everything connected to him is more important than the entirety of the lives and welfare of every other citizen of the United States of America, where that belief is going to lead to open systemic violence here. And it is his fault and he must be well. Let me just use his words from that post about Judge Angern quote, this political hack must be stopped, and it is his fault. But let me amend and underscore one part of that. It is not his fault alone. He has a partner in this, somewhat unwitting, somewhat deliberate. His partner is the American news media in all its variations and permutations, and it is just as broken as the American systems that are supposed to control and correct for creatures like Trump whenever they appear out of the cesspools in our land. And since Friday, the American media has greeted Trump's open threat against General Millie and this new threat yesterday against Judge anger On by reporting in breathless dire tones that President Biden is wearing new shoes because of complications after the hairline fractures to his foot three years ago, which disqualifies him he should resign. And it is reporting the both Biden and Trump went to see striking auto quote union members in Detroit. That's a quote from the goddamned New York Times, when in fact only Biden did that. Trump instead went to see scab auto parks workers in a non union factory, in a stunt arranged by the owner of the factory and by an organization that is trying to decertify Starbucks union. But of course to make that distinction is too difficult. One is a mouse's and one is an elephant. But that takes too much time, doesn't make a good headline, and it isn't balanced, And the Republicans might complain. We are owned by right leaning corporation after all, and I don't want them to cut our budget again. So let's just say the mouse and the elephant are both gray animals. I mean, that's true, right and balanced, and treats Trump and Biden evenly. The New York Times, the goddamned New York Times, living down to the same non journalistic non standards as Fox Non News or Ben Shapiro or Joe Rogan or Politico. And I feel I should spit when I mentioned Politico. If Trump regains power and starts jailing journalists, and he actually sends people from Politico to some gulag somewhere. I swear to God, I am confident that the last thing Politico will publish will be one of their cringe worthy paragraphs where they list, in bold face type exactly who has been spotted spotted inside the bus bound for the news detention camp. Politico actually began its newsletter the other morning with this paragraph. Quote. In the House, Kevin McCarthy will again try to pass a rule to advance a spending bill. In the Senate, Chuck Schumer will hold the first vote to advance as CR to avoid a government shutdog down. We'll get back to all of that in a moment, but the real gold mine of news in Washington today will be from returning Democratic senators hounded by reporters for their reaction to the Bob Menendez's indictment. The real gold mine of news. He wrote almost everything that is wrong with the American media and how it has helped Trump rise to the point where we hesitate to jail a human fatoah machine, putting the fat in fatoa, as it were. Almost everything that is wrong is contained in that six word phrase. The real gold mine of news. It's got the proverbial shiny object. It's got the media's inability to not chase it at the expensive stories of far more urgency and actual import and complexity. And by the way, this was written after Trump attacked the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Politico is not even bothering to mention that, so it can then dismiss it before getting to the Menendez SoundBite. Gold mine and the imagery is that the shiny object is where the money is at in news, that it not difficult vital, dangerous topics like who Trump wants to get killed, that all those other things is where their business is. The saddest part, of course, is that the concept the real gold mine of news is actually one of the driving forces that makes American journalism work. When it works when it isn't confronted with one of the two major political parties trying to bring American democracy and freedom of the press to an end. The real gold mine of news is what kept Woodward and Bernstein going on Watergate. Woodward closer to a Nixon Republican than a critic. Bernstein a Metro reporter for whom the politics was initially irrelevant, but who smelled the real gold mine of news and horned his way in on the story. Every good story and every great story in American journalistic history has begun because there was a real gold mine of news there. And every story that has enabled Trump has begun because of the same thing. Oh what a scoop, what a story, what audacity, what clicks. May not be good for America, as the disgraced ex CEO of CBS said of the Trump campaign, add money and the access Hollywood style coverage surrounding the candidate, but it's damn good for CBS, and they're still milling around the real gold mine of news, the one that Trump offers. It's not news, of course, it's not news. It's pseudo news, just as Trump is a pseudo politician and a pseudo government figure, and what he produces is actually gossip and conflict and plot twists stolen from professional rests. And it's not gold, it's gold spray paint. But the news consumers aren't going to know the difference, right, All we have to do is keep dining at his all you can eat salad bar and bottomless brunch, and the price is just to ignore stories like him trying to get a New York judge killed, and a Washington judge killed, and a former president killed, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs killed, and a nation killed. Nothing animates good journalism more than a reporter's desire for the glory of a scoop. And nothing animates bad journalism more than a reporter's desire for the glory of a scoop. And the latter part of it can destroy anybody at any level, no matter what kind of track record they had. I have told this story before fifteen years ago, when Tim Russert died and Tom Brokaw inherited the NBC presidential debate between McCain and Obama that Russert would have moderated. The Republicans were enraged at things I had said about them, in particular about a nine to eleven quote tribute video un quote that they had shown at their convention, which without warning turned out to be a snuff film that we involuntarily showed on MSNBC. And the Republicans went to Brokaw and they said, if you don't get Olderman off the debates and out of anchoring the election coverage, our guy will not show up to your debate, and Brokaw went into his bosses at NBC and blackmailed them on behalf of the Republican Party. And if you think I'm exaggerating or settling scores, here, Brokaw not only did all that, he then boasted about doing so on the record. And it's right there online right now. Jacques Steinberg, New York Times, September twenty ninth, two thousand and eight. Google it, Google New York Times, Brokaw, Oulderman and you'll read the whole story. And I don't know how many people are in Brokaw's shoes right now carrying Trump water for him, thinking it will advance their careers or gain them access later, or how many just think they are. But so many of them are still milling around that real gold mine of news. And there's another journalistic problem. And it was brought home to me when I was watching cable news the other night for the first time in literally months. And I'm going to mention Rachel Maadow again, and for once, I'm not going to criticize her, because this isn't about her content. It's about her advertising. The extraordinary sweep of right wing television news networks and streaming services and podcasts and radio and conspiracy theorists and publishers. The whole complex, running the gamut from Alex Jones to Fox News to Rogan to the new Marjorie Taylor green Book, is not actually profitable. Fox News is, Jones is, and they all are profitable to the performers who front them, like this Rogan idiot. But they don't have to be profitable. Each of them is bankrolled by one or more conservative billionaires who are delighted if they invest fifty million dollars and get back and buck ninety seven because the rest of the money, the other forty nine million plus has been well spent buying and creating public opinion and fomenting an environment of stupidity and hate and rage that makes a transparent two bit con man like Trump seem like George fing Washington. The far right invests in media and thus in the media narrative, and keeping the diaspora of conservative TV and conservative radio and conservative streaming and conservative podcast not just loud, but ubiquitous and ubiquitously loud. The machine is well oiled and perfected at the fringes, the John Solomons and the Gateway pundits and people like that make stuff up, and then places like One American News quote them. By the end of the week, Fox has taken the story suitably washed with lots of places they can quote so they don't have to claim they made it up. Fox is then taking that same story into voting seven shows a day to it, or in publishing, a neanderthal like Congresswoman Green can write a book, doubtless the first she will have ever read, and insist it will finally provide a chance for people to hear math ad of the story as if she does anything in life but tell her knit, witted side of the story twenty four to seven. And the right wing publisher can print one hundred thousand copies of that book or two hundred thousand or twenty million, and know they will all be b because they will all be bought by the Daily Caller or Newsmax or one hundred conservative political campaigns and then offered as free giveaways with subscriptions or in exchange for donations. And the book Marjorie Taylor Green, No I'm Not Barney Rubble by Marjorie Taylor Green, it will not actually be bought by any readers, but it will still wind up on the New York Times bestseller list. And this is where Madow comes in. Like her or not, she is the platform in what can laughingly be called liberal media. Her show is on now just once a week. She has paid thirty million dollars a year for it and other projects that for some reason have not happened yet in two years of the deal. There is nothing to rival her at MSNBC or anywhere else in liberal media. Not that it's much of a contest with many entrants, but it is the marquee platform of platforms. And I actually watched the other night to check one thing in it, and I don't remember anymore what that one thing was, because I was so horrified and consumed by the commercials at the apex of liberal media, at the peak and the pinnacle of pro democracy, anti Trump. Biden's too old, too old for what, because he seems to be doing an amazingly solid job as president media at the vertex of all of that, Rachel Maddow's weekly One Hour was sponsored by Vaccines for Respiratory Sensicial Virus RSV, two of them rival vaccines from Pfiser and Smith glaxok Line battling it out with competing commercials. During Mattow, Pfeiser bought two what I count it is thirty seven different commercials during the show, SMK bought just one. We really want to be associated, but the liberal answer to the multi billion dollar We don't care whether or not we make a dime on this so long as this country goes fascist under Trump. Propaganda complex does not just rely on three commercials a week for RSV shots. There's also its sponsors who make jellyfish based memory improvement pills and a shingles vaccine, at at least three different asthma medications and hearing aids, and weight loss shots and stretch pants. And the one advertiser which will stick with me forever, the new Doctor Shoals skin Tag Remover, now available without a prescription for home use. The Rachel Meadow Show is brought to you by Doctor Shoals skin Tag Remover. Rachel depends on advertising revenue that itself, in part, depends on sales of stuff that freezes those little ugly growths on your neck and then they fall off in about two weeks. Alex Jones and Fox and Joe Rogan and one hundred other venues have innumerable Harlan Crows sitting around their mansions, churning out millions and millions in seed money and salaries and investments and advertising buys and underwritings, and god knows how else. And Maddow has doctor Shoal's skin tag remover. But the good news is the FDA now says you can also use it on the skin tags in your groin. I don't know how democracy counters this imbalance. Corporations are by definition conservative and amoral, and Trump is satisfactorily pretending to be the first and pretty much defines the latter. And if those news organizations branded as liberal media aren't going to say, what the hell we're getting the blame and the grief, let's turn it around on the bastards and really give them something to blame us for. If The New York Times finally figures out, no, Trump wasn't going to speak to striking auto workers and finally corrects its story and then drops that story to the eighth spot on the front page layout, just above the feature on and I'm not making this up cemeteries and the women who love them, and the Times doesn't do a story on Trump trying to get Judge nger On and General Milly and Judge Chuckkin and Special Counsel Smith and everybody else killed by remote control. If the Times won't do that, I don't know what to tell you, because I know that all the news organizations, even the ones that seem to be liberal, even the ones who employ Mattow, have met to discuss how to protect their profits if Trump returns to power, and one of the answers was, uh, send Kristen Welker to uh interview him? Yeah, interview, that's the word. I don't know if there are billionaires or even upper echelon millionaires who want to spend money on anything that might even just begin to resemble the corporate park of conservative assembly line opinion factories, anything that might just be a shadow of a mouse to stand next to the conservative elephant. But I know they are not spending it bankrolling or underwriting or advertising liberal media. And I know that this is not the only reason Trump is getting away with it and probably will get away with it, And it isn't the only reason that the other meaning of that phrase, the real gold mine of news almost exclusively favors and protects and normalizes Trump and fascism and violence and the mortal threat to democracy. That is his evil, but it is one of the biggest reasons. And it leaves the rest of us who would like to see the United States of America continue. It leaves that rest of us with nothing to do except hope that they sell a whole lot of those goddamned skin tag removers. Also of interest here, second Republican debate is over. None were injured, And my god, I am going to applaud Paul Ryan because Paul Ryan has verbally slapped around not just Kevin McCarthy, but also Aaron Rodgers. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Elberman still ahead on countdown. So I invoked Brocaus selling out to the Republicans so he could keep his role as moderator of a presidential debate in two thousand and eight. I left out the part about it being Brocaus comeback presidential debate moderator role. I'll tell that whole story again next first time for the daily round up of the miscreants, morons, and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The Bronze too well, you'll hear. Former Speaker Paul Ryan was interviewed about the looming shutdown by the Madison, Wisconsin newspaper The Capital Times, and he managed to diss not one, but two of the worst persons in the world. Ryan said, the two people he feels most sorry for at the moment are quote Aaron Rodgers and Kevin McCarthy. I feel sorry for McCarthy too, Rogers. Next question the runners up. Here's a coincidence. It's the National Football League. While the NFL has tried really hard to sell itself as a home for diversity and the quality, I mean, it even had Commissioner Roger Goodell saying quote racism in any form of discrimination is contrary to the NFL's values. I wonder who wrote that for him. The league is advertising next to posts by avowed racists on Twitter or x or twigs or whatever you call it nowadays. Media Matters for America reports that ads for the NFL and its NFL Plus service and it's telecast of its games on NBC and CBS and other outlets and other broadcasts and other products and such are adjacent to posts by racists like the infamous Stu Peters, who is the idiot who insisted that Damar Hamlin of Buffalo actually died last year because he was vaccinated, of course, and was replaced by an actor. NFL ads also appear on Twitter next to posts by v Dare, including a v dare post criticizing the NFL for having an all black officiating crew. Media Matters also reports NFL ads are also next to racist posts from the likes of Richard Spencer, the one who says white people should boycott the NFL, and that guy Baked Alaska, and Andrew Torba. Andrew Torba is the one who says white people are being collectively quote conquered, enslaved, raped by non whites. NFL advertising next to their posts nice work, Goodell, but our winner. Fox's Harris Faulkner, who is such an idiot that I can't decide if she doesn't really exist but it's just a character developed by a satirist who is utterly committed to the bit, or if she is such an idiot that she's ready to take over a primetime slot as the Fox juggernaut collapses. Fox has been obsessed this week with the incidents in which the Biden's rescue dog commander has bit Secret Service agents. I mean they've done like hours at a time on this story. Faulkner yesterday has the explanation, quote, you know they had coke in the house. I just wonder if he's been to that certain lobby area, just acting all out of himself. Look, this is really on the owner of the dog. She said, I just wonder what's going on in the family that they don't get this dog some help unquote. To be fair, I've thought the same thing about what must be going on in Fox headquarters down the block here that they don't get this ass clown Harris. Faulkner's some help, Harris. Maybe the dog is snorting coke. Faulkner two days Worst Person and finally our number one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic me I miss the exact anniversary by day, but it's close enough. The demand for spots in the Shade Stadium press box that night was so great that there was a signed seating. I had no real reason to be there, but as usual, the New York Mets took care of me, and so on Friday, the fifth of September two thousand and eight, I was shoulder to shoulder with reporter friends, watching the Mets begin to blow their three game Pennant Race lead against the Philadelphia Phillyes. Sorry Mets fans for bringing this up again. Brett Myers had just struck out New York's David Wright looking when my phone rang. It was my agent, Gene Sage. They just called. She said, flatly, you and Matthews have been fired from anchoring the presidential debates because of what you said. What I had said had been said three nights previously. Chris Matthews and I were co anchoring the Republican Convention on MSNBC. He was there in Minneapolis. I was in the studios in New York, ostensibly so I could also anchor hurricane coverage, although it was pretty clear that at least half the reason I was not in Minneapolis was because the Republicans had threatened NBC or said they couldn't guarantee my safety or something like that, and NBC folded. So I was the one during MSNBC's coverage of the two thousand and eight Republican Convention who had to throw it to a video they were introducing that we had been told by the Republicans was a quote tribute to the dead of nine to eleven. It was, in fact a snuff film. All of the images that all of the networks had stopped showing within weeks or even days of the attacks, all of those images were in this video. People jumping and falling to their deaths from the World Trade Center on nine to eleven, endless replays of the planes hitting the towers, dismembered bodies in the plaza, the building collapses, the equally terrifying scenes at the Pentagon, and all with a grotesque Robert Dobby voiceover emphasizing that this was all the Democrats fault. The message was simple, elect Obama and you will die like this. I was angry, just on that base level. For the five and a half years I had been back at MSNBC, he had been rigorous about not showing any of that video. There were rules that if we had to for some reason, we should show only the skill images, and even then only with extensive warnings to the viewers. But I knew from my conversations with the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, who I'd only known for twenty eight years at that point, that he would insist that on the scene in Minneapolis, Matthews and Tom Brokaw, whose career at NBC I had resurrected after Brian Williams had buried him alive two years earlier, that one or both of them would rebuke the GOP for showing not a nine to eleven tribute, but, as I just said, a nine to eleven snuff film. The video ended, and we came out to Brokaw with Matthews and Brokaw kind of coughed, and Matthews said wow. And he turned to Brokaw and said, in that loose fire hose delivery of his Tom, the kind of hunderscorns terrorism. Big thing for Republicans, says he. Trisop Obama. Brocaw droned on approvingly the Republicans sneaking a snuff film, a banned video onto MSNBC and by the way, also onto CNN, onto NBC, onto CBS, onto ABC without any warning that was not mentioned by Brokaw or Matthews. Back to New York and Keys. I was supposed to add liberates about what we were expecting from the Republican convention for the rest of the night and then throw to a commercial instead, I said, and this is a paraphrase. The original tape disappeared that night that before we moved on, I felt I needed to apologize that we at MSNBC and for that matter, NBC News, had extremely strict rules about not showing that video. The Republicans had just shown you without any warning, without any context, and we certainly would not have shown the horror and death and blamed it on the Democrats, or for that matter, blamed it on the Republicans. I said, if we had done such a thing ourselves, there would have been people fired at NBC News. The public program the GOP provided said that was going to be a nine to eleven trip mute film, I said, And so did the private conversations with the network, which included the reminder from NBC and MSNBC that we had rules against showing the scenes of the horrible death, the mutilation, and destruction. So I apologized on behalf of whoever trusted the Republicans to live up to their word that MSNBC viewers were forced to see the video our network had long before vowed never to show again. So three nights later, without as much as an email, this Griffin guy had called my agent and told her I was fired Matthews two from our further coverage of the upcoming McGain Obama debates. She related these details to me as I walked down the many ramps in the back of Shaye Stadium towards the subway. I told her to call Griffin back and tell him I had quit on the spot right then, and he could work his way out of the ensuing disaster. Liberal network MSNBC fires liberal host Elderman for criticizing conservatives for sneaking nine to eleven snuff film onto MSNBC. He could figure that out any way he wanted, and he could hear my response on I don't know, Good Morning America, CBS, This Morning, the PBS News Hour, and any other news program that bothered to ask me to stop by and talk. I phoned my live in girlfriend, Katie Turr and told her I was on my way home, and I made a few phone calls to friendly voices within the NBC management structure and got from them a clear picture of what had happened. And despite the spotty cell service along the elevated line heading back to Manhattan, I got a message from a newspaper reporter friend who neatly tied together. All that I was hearing elsewhere Tom Brokaw is going around NBC saying he got you fired from the debates because the Republicans told him to. Nine maybe ten months earlier, Phil Griffin had come to me and asked me if I would be okay with this guy who had been kind of disappeared by the network. Tom Brokaw was his name appearing during our weekly coverage of the Democratic and republic primaries just a couple of minutes, like from a perspective desk, that's all he wants to do. He's really Tom's really unhappy Brian has frozen him out of everything. Brian Williams. Of course, I was appalled, but not surprised. The power had gone to Brian's head, and of course there it had not met much resistance. Plus, as I said to Griffin, you're asking me if I'd like to add Tom Brokaw's experience and Tom Brocaw's gravitas to stuff I'm anchoring. When I'm not sure I know as much as I really need to know to do this right. You're asking me this. Tom fit in beautifully and twice after those long Tuesday evenings in the primary season. He sent me brief emails awarding me what he called the game ball, because he was so impressed by my ability to balance the roles of political anchor and political commentator, having tried this myself. One of them read, I know what a perilous tight rupeless is. Game ball to care. I'm mocking him now, but these meant so much to me. I printed the emails out and carried them in my wallet. And now he was claiming he had gotten me fired because, as my newspaper friend said, the Republicans told him to. That was not hard to unpack either. Tim Russard had died on June third of that year. I anchored that night until two in the morning. It was still an open wound. There were still tears. We didn't know it then, but the structure of NBC News and the perilous tie group balancing NBC and MSNBC had died with Tim Russard. So did the role of moderator of the second debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, scheduled for about a month after my subway ride on October seventh in Nashville. Tim had not even been buried yet. When Brokaw began to angle to get that assignment, along with brushing away the dirt of his Penny Anti role on the MSNBC Perspective desk. We never saw him again in order that he could take Tim's spot as Brian William's sidekick on Big NBC. The month before August, there was a story coming out of the east end of the third floor at thirty Rock, where NBC News management sat around not doing much of anything, that a Republican goon named Ed Gillespie had been in there with Griffin and the NBC News president, Steve Cappus, trying to get me silenced or fired or off the convention coverage or something, and that somebody prominent within NBC News was in there with Gillespie or was invoked by Gillespie. The rumor mill wasn't certain. As I switched from the elevated seven train to the underground f train. The whole thing came together before my comments about the GOP Convention nine to eleven snuff film. Ed Gillespie had come in and had somehow vaguely threatened Cappus and Griffin about me using as leverage the debate which Tom brocall was now supposed to moderate, and when I apologized for their video on our air, Gillespie must have turned it into an either or get rid of me, or McCain would refuse to participate in any debate moderated by Brokaw or anybody from NBC News. And Brokaw had already come back from the dead once in two thousand and eight, and he would be damned if he would be forced to do it a second time. But as the train took me home to an apartment, I was now going to have to sell since I had just quit MSNBC on the spot for folding to such obvious Republican blackmail, something else now occurred to me. Why would MSNBC or NBC or our parent corporation at the time, ge actually think that they could remove me from the debate coverage on MSNBC, where the Racial Meadow Show had yet to be born, and the three times a night my show ran accounted for something like sixty percent of the entire day's network audience, and do that without getting a really bad reaction from our audience. Plus, if a newspaper man already knew the Brokaw, how could this story be avoided? MSNBC announced it had removed its liberal star Keith Alerman from coverage of the McCain Obama presidential debates. Sources confirmed former NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw, now an MSNBC commentator on Olberman's coverage, had helped her Republican Party to blackmail NBC into the decision. Ulderman immediately resigned, saying, quote in succumbing to this coercion on behalf of John McCain, NBC has now forfeited any right to further be called a news organization, And I'm sad to say MSNBC, which I built, is now dead. My god, MSNBC an NBC News for that matter, would have committed corporate suicide before the weekend was over. At that point, it dawned on me that the only thing that could save the credibility of the whole news division and the careers of Griffin and Kappus, an NBC network president Jeff Zucker, and especially the career of Tom Brokaw was for me to publicly state that I had asked to be removed from anchoring the debates because the whatever was just too much blah blah blah for me, and I felt I should stick to the post debate analysis and commentary. NBC would now have a choice. They could fire me from the debates and destroy everything, including the one hundred million dollars a year or so in profit that NBC made off MSNBC, or I could you know why and claim it was my idea and save everybody's ass, including my own. I got out of the subway and raced home. Katie met me at the door with a big hug. She had been crying. Relax, I said, I'm not quitting. In fact, I'm going to get a huge raise. Now, listen carefully. I called my agent and I explained the idea that had lit over my head on the subway like a light bulb to both of them. I said, you call Phil Griffin back and explain to him that I will personally save his job and Steve Campus's and Jeff Sookers and Tom Brokaw's and everybody else's. I'll take the fall instead of letting them all get fired by the MSNBC audience. I'll say this was my idea, and all it will cost Phil is twelve million dollars, and he has to leak the term so everybody knows it cost him twelve million dollars, and she paused for a second and said, it's genius. It might not quite be twelve million, but I bet, I bet they'll pay you at least nine. On Sunday, several news organizations reported I had asked to be taken off the anchor desk two months and one week later, The New York Times wrote, quote, Keith Olberman, the anchor of Countdown on MSNBC, has extended his contract through the next presidential election season. The network announced mister Olderman and MSNBC essentially tore up the four year, four million dollar year contract they signed last year and replaced it with one worth about seven and a.

Half million a year. That was a three and a half million dollar raise for four years, great total of fourteen million dollars, except the new contract added two years to my old deal, so the raise was actually twenty two million dollars. All stories have a punchline. This punchline is about Tom Brokaw. We would have gotten away with this cleanly. NBC would have gotten its money's worth for the twenty two million in hush money, which is what it was that it had to pay me because I had agreed with them rolling over for the Republican Party blackmail, except Brokaw could not keep his mouth shut. So proud was he of preserving his role as the moderator of the October seventh NBC debate that he had to explain in explicit detail in public how he went to his bosses at NBC News and threatened them on behalf of the GOP. On September twenty ninth, two thousand and eight, a lengthy and glowing Brokaw profile appeared in The New York Times. Quote Mister Brocaw said that over the summer he had quote advocated within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Skeith Alerman and Chris Matthews on election night and on nights when there were presidential debates. Mister brocas 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 candidates' aids that despite some negative on air commentary by mister Olberman in particular, mister McCain could still get a fair shake from NBC News. Unquote, Oh that was his mission. The hell it was Happily, Brocaw just could not resist boasting even further. The next sentence actually reads, quote, mister Brocaw said he had been told by a senior McCain aide whom he did not name, 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.

Half million a year. That was a three and a half million dollar raise for four years, great total of fourteen million dollars, except the new contract added two years to my old deal, so the raise was actually twenty two million dollars. All stories have a punchline. This punchline is about Tom Brokaw. We would have gotten away with this cleanly. NBC would have gotten its money's worth for the twenty two million in hush money, which is what it was that it had to pay me because I had agreed with them rolling over for the Republican Party blackmail, except Brokaw could not keep his mouth shut. So proud was he of preserving his role as the moderator of the October seventh NBC debate that he had to explain in explicit detail in public how he went to his bosses at NBC News and threatened them on behalf of the GOP. On September twenty ninth, two thousand and eight, a lengthy and glowing Brokaw profile appeared in The New York Times. Quote Mister Brocaw said that over the summer he had quote advocated within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Skeith Alerman and Chris Matthews on election night and on nights when there were presidential debates. Mister brocas 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 candidates' aids that despite some negative on air commentary by mister Olberman in particular, mister McCain could still get a fair shake from NBC News. Unquote, Oh that was his mission. The hell it was Happily, Brocaw just could not resist boasting even further. The next sentence actually reads, quote, mister Brocaw said he had been told by a senior McCain aide whom he did not name, 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.

Quote. 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 Brokaw said, quoting him again. My name came up and they said, oh, hell, we have to do it because it's going to be Brokaw. There is a second punchline after all this, when the new format came out and I was sitting there counting my money, MSNBC had David Gregory quote anchor unquote the debate coverage. David was terrific during this. Practically all this meant, anyway, was that I was on the air until literally ninety seconds before each debate began, which is when I said, now here's David Gregory, and he was then on for four or five minutes after the debate ended, which is when he said, now here's Keith Olderman. And on election night itself with David again formally anchoring per the Republican blackmail at ten fifty nine PM. To his great credit and to my eternal gratitude, David Gregory said, with the last voting booth closing at eleven PM, NBC News can now project the winner of the two thousand and eight presidential election, Keith bless him. Plus, I still have all the money, I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown has come to you from the Vin Scully Studios at the Elderman Broadcasting Empire in New York. The music you heard was, for the most part and arrange produced and performed by Countdown musical directors Ryan Ray and John Phillip Schaneil. Brian Ray handled the guitars, bass and drums. John phil Chaneille did the orchestration in keyboards that it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including other Beethoven tunes, arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports Music is courtesy of ESPN inc. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis. We caught the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are from Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the nine hundred and ninety sixth day since Donald Trump's first attempt at coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Convict him now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Quote. 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 Brokaw said, quoting him again. My name came up and they said, oh, hell, we have to do it because it's going to be Brokaw. There is a second punchline after all this, when the new format came out and I was sitting there counting my money, MSNBC had David Gregory quote anchor unquote the debate coverage. David was terrific during this. Practically all this meant, anyway, was that I was on the air until literally ninety seconds before each debate began, which is when I said, now here's David Gregory, and he was then on for four or five minutes after the debate ended, which is when he said, now here's Keith Olderman. And on election night itself with David again formally anchoring per the Republican blackmail at ten fifty nine PM. To his great credit and to my eternal gratitude, David Gregory said, with the last voting booth closing at eleven PM, NBC News can now project the winner of the two thousand and eight presidential election, Keith bless him. Plus, I still have all the money, I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown has come to you from the Vin Scully Studios at the Elderman Broadcasting Empire in New York. The music you heard was, for the most part and arrange produced and performed by Countdown musical directors Ryan Ray and John Phillip Schaneil. Brian Ray handled the guitars, bass and drums. John phil Chaneille did the orchestration in keyboards that it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including other Beethoven tunes, arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports Music is courtesy of ESPN inc. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis. We caught the Olderman theme from ESPN two. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are from Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the nine hundred and ninety sixth day since Donald Trump's first attempt at coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Convict him now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Alderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.